Chelsea are in advanced talks to sign Brighton striker Danny Welbeck.

The 35-year-old is keen on moving to Stamford Bridge and there is optimism from Chelsea‘s side that a deal can be concluded.

The Blues are looking for experience because of an acceptance that their model of signing young players needs a “tweak” – according to influential owner Behdad Eghbali in April – and Welbeck could be a good fit.

He scored a career-high 13 league goals in 37 games for Brighton last season, taking his tally to 51 goals in 201 matches since joining from Watford in 2020.

Brighton have declined to comment.

Welbeck signed a 12-month contract extension in March, with his current deal running until the end of the 2026-27 season.

There are questions over the futures of several Chelsea forwards, with Joao Pedro regarded as the club’s first-choice option.

Chelsea also have Liam Delap, Emmanuel Emegha, Marc Guiu and Nicolas Jackson on their books.

Guiu is understood to be available for either a permanent transfer or a loan move, with Chelsea valuing him at about £25m.

Jackson, who has returned to the club following a loan spell at Bayern Munich, was expected to remain at Stamford Bridge but is open to leaving amid interest from Aston Villa.

Delap was keen to establish himself under the new manager just a year after his £30m move from Ipswich, but he is increasingly expected to depart.

There is also uncertainty surrounding the future of Dutch striker Emegha, despite having only recently joined Chelsea from Strasbourg, a club within the same ownership group.

Chelsea have signed club-record £117m attacker Morgan Rogers, full-back Marco Palestra and are closing in on a move for centre-back Maxence Lacroix this summer.

July 27 (UPI) — New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham was scheduled Monday to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a Royal Navy base training Ukrainian forces.

Ahead of the visit, the first of any foreign leader since he got the keys to No. 10 Downing Street on July 20, Burnham told the BBC that he fully supported Ukraine and Britain’s “unwavering — 100%” backing for its ally would continue.

Burnham said the fact Zelensky was his first international visitor “illustrates the strength of the relationship between the two nations,” vowing to emulate the personal commitment to Zelensky shown by his predecessor, Keir Starmer.

“My support for Ukraine is unwavering — it is 100%. And I will do what, in Ukraine, people think is the right thing that they need,” said Burnham.

“Britain stands with Ukraine, shoulder to shoulder, and our support remains unwavering. Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve a long-lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” he added.

He will use the visit to the naval base to announce a deal permitting Ukraine to mass-manufacture Stone Cloak electronic warfare technology, which is fitted to drones to make them invisible to air defense radar.

Downing Street said that after Ukraine begins using Stone Cloak, it will be incorporated into Britain’s next generation of long-range weapons, including from Project Brakestop, which is developing low-cost cruise missiles.

Burnham said Stone Cloak was “the best of homegrown British innovation and proven on the frontline, and it will be vital to protecting our security in both our countries.”

Burnham and Zelensky will also meet with more than 200 Ukrainian service members taking part in Exercise Sea Breeze, a maritime training deployment involving Ukraine and 14 other countries aimed at boosting warfighting capabilities and tactics to deal with mines in the Black Sea.

In a post on X, Zelensky thanked Britain, saying that Ukraine valued that it could “always count on Britain’s principled decisions, leadership, and support.”

Total British support to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 is $33.3 billion, $21.3 billion of it military assistance, figures put out by Downing Street show, with bipartisan consensus across the previous administrations of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

Starmer’s final act as prime minister was to visit with Zelensky in Kyiv on July 17, his last official day as leader of the Labour Party.

Months after the United Nations Security Council backed a comprehensive framework to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Israel’s security cabinet has approved a highly constrained pilot project to allow foreign security forces into a narrow pocket of the devastated territory.

Israeli media reported on Sunday that the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF), part of United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan”, will include 200 members from countries such as Morocco and Uganda deploying to a designated “test” zone in the southern city of Rafah.

While international officials have welcomed the move, analysts describe the limited deployment as a calculated diplomatic gesture with little practical effect that comes as the US-backed peace process has largely stalled and as Israel’s deadly attacks continue.

Instead of a genuine transition towards peace, they argue, the move is a political manoeuvre designed to deflect US pressure ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, while simultaneously entrenching the geographic fragmentation of the Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu is going to Washington to say ‘no’ to the broader demands of withdrawal” from the Strip, says Wissam Afifa, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Instead, he is offering this alternative: ‘Take this small appetiser, take this minor achievement, and play within this highly restricted space.’”

Scaled-back forces and ‘rubber batons’

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the original plan anticipated the deployment of 500 Moroccan troops to a refugee camp in the city. The drastic reduction to just 200 troops may indicate that Israel’s political-security cabinet has decided to divide the deployment into even smaller, heavily controlled stages.

The force will operate in full coordination with the Israeli military. According to the Israeli news outlet Ynet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was the sole cabinet member to vote against the measure, arguing that the Palestinian group Hamas had failed to fulfill its commitment to disarm and insisting that “the solution in Gaza is to encourage migration”.

Israeli media also reported that the government maintains that the Israeli military will retain control of the “Yellow Line” – a unilaterally imposed boundary that effectively places up to 70 percent of the Gaza Strip under tight Israeli control – and that no withdrawal will take place until Hamas has fully disarmed.

The original framework endorsed by UNSC Resolution 2803 called for the deployment of an international force alongside a transitional Palestinian administration.

Earlier this month, Hamas announced it would dissolve its government in Gaza and hand over power to a new, Palestinian technocratic governing authority called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

Analysts said Hamas’s move was likely designed to apply pressure on Israel and demonstrate the group’s commitment to handing over governance and allowing the rebuilding of the territory.

The pilot programme also envisions the NCAG’s entry to oversee civil affairs in Gaza. Yet, according to Haaretz, the Palestinian police accompanying them will be stripped of firearms, permitted to carry only “rubber batons and tasers”.

Meanwhile, preparations on the ground appear to be moving forward to accommodate this new security architecture. Israeli Army Radio recently broadcast a video showing a military base under construction in the southern “Gaza envelope” near the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.

The station reported that the sprawling facility is being built specifically to host the incoming multinational forces before their deployment.

Despite the severe Israeli restrictions, Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Board of Peace, welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision, praising it as a “critical part of the agreed framework for stabilizing Gaza, supporting demilitarization, and enabling the transition to effective Palestinian transitional administration”.

A ‘sweetener’ for Washington

To understand the timing and motivation behind the decision, experts pointed to the diplomatic deadlock surrounding the US-brokered peace initiative. Trump’s plan envisioned a phased approach, bridged by the handover of Gaza to a technocratic committee. However, this framework has been stalled by Israel’s refusal to link a ceasefire to the broader political situation and its rejection of a phased withdrawal.

Afifa said the “failure” of the US administration’s flagship initiative had left it “embarrassed” as the project that was repeatedly highlighted by Trump “as a great achievement, resulted in zero”.

With Netanyahu heading to Washington, the Israeli prime minister desperately needed a deliverable, said Afifa. The cabinet’s decision, passed hastily via a telephone vote during a Knesset recess to avoid internal coalition fractures, provides exactly that, he added.

Mamoun Abu Amer, an expert on Israeli affairs, echoed this assessment. He viewed the rushed cabinet vote as an attempt to preempt US pressure and present an image of compliance to Trump, while fundamentally altering the agreement’s core terms to suit Israel’s long-term security strategy.

Abu Amer also said that Israel has effectively turned Resolution 2803 upside down through selective and highly conditional implementation.

“This is an inverted process,” said Abu Amer. The original text implied that the NCAG would enter Gaza, the ISF would deploy and the Israeli military would withdraw to new lines to allow for stabilisation. Instead, Israel is demanding unilateral disarmament first, while keeping the technocratic committee besieged within an Israeli security envelope.

Abu Amer also suggested the requirement for the Palestinian police force to only carry rubber batons and tasers reflects a premeditated Israeli strategy to strip the Palestinian administration of genuine law enforcement capabilities, reducing them to subcontractors managing municipal decay in a thoroughly devastated environment under a strict military occupation.

The NCAG itself appeared to reject this Israeli paradigm. In a recent statement, the committee declared it would only assume responsibility for Gaza after UNSC approval of the force’s deployment and, crucially, a full Israeli military withdrawal.

‘False witnesses’

The spatial realities of the Israeli plan reveal a strategy of deep fragmentation and long-term control, experts said, pointing to the cabinet’s decision to explicitly restrict the ISF and the technocrats to operating strictly outside the “Yellow Line”.

Afifa warned that transforming a small pocket of Rafah into an “experimental bubble” subverts the idea of Gaza as a single, contiguous territorial entity.

“This raises a massive question about the fate of two million people,” he said. “If this entire project is reduced to a few thousand individuals selected under Israeli criteria, it means a tacit agreement from the international community to leave two million Gazans hostage to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis while Israel claims to be implementing a peace plan.”

This also carries significant diplomatic risks for the participating nations. Israeli media reported the cabinet’s decision stipulated that ISF contributors must be nations that have peace agreements with Israel and do not pursue legal actions against it in international forums.

“It is not wise for an Arab country like Morocco to be a party to helping Netanyahu implement his political agenda,” said Abu Amer, urging participating nations to reject the altered Israeli formula and insist on a comprehensive withdrawal.

Failing to do so, he cautioned, would reduce foreign troops to mere security buffers, acting as “false witnesses” to the continuation of the occupation and the destruction of the Palestinian society.

CARLY Simon has announced her Parkinson’s disease and cancer diagnoses after her years-long absence from the public eye.

The 83-year-old singer opened up about her health battles in a statement on Monday.

“So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I’ve been learning how to live with Parkinson’s disease,” the You’re So Vain hitmaker told People.

“It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly. Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable,” she continued.

“Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work, and feel like myself.”

Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder of the nervous system that worsens over time, with tremors, stiffness, and balance issues being common symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Carly recalled when she first began experiencing symptoms after undergoing multiple surgeries.

“The problems began with arthritis in both knees and one hip. I eventually had all three joints replaced, out with the old and in with delicate bouquets of metal and plastic.

“After three replacement surgeries, I assumed my difficulty walking was simply an unfortunate and rather ironic part of the recovery process,” she said.

“But my mobility continued to worsen. I had trouble standing up from low chairs and deep couches without someone offering me an arm. Overstuffed furniture became my enemy.

“Once seated, I could feel as though I had been swallowed by the chair and might remain there permanently, like a guest who had badly overstayed her welcome.”

Carly added, “Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help. My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”

She said she began treatment shortly after and has been managing the symptoms with medication.

Carly went on to share that at the same time, she was also battling basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, on her face.

“The cancer was removed, but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public,” the music icon, who survived breast cancer after her diagnosis in 1997, admitted.

“I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine (check out the irony of having written “You’re So Vain.”), and this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material.

“Between my mobility issues, the Parkinson’s diagnosis, the surgery, and the emotional effects of it all, withdrawing from public view was the most palatable reaction.

“If a person is allowed to hibernate during both winter and summer, then I have become an all-season bear.”

Despite the everyday challenges of both illnesses, Carly vows to keep moving forward and focus on her music.

The Nobody Does It Better singer even has a new album on the way, which will be her first original full-length album since 2008.

“But I have not stopped living, and I have not stopped working.

“In the middle of all this, I began recording a new album, Comes in Waves. That still feels mysterious to me.”

She continued, “Music has always known when to arrive. It has rescued me more times that I can count. It is like a cat or dog that quietly appears beside you when it senses you are not quite yourself.”

“The album includes songs and fragments of songs that had been waiting for me, some for years.

“There were melodies, verses, and ideas written down and tucked away for some unknown future when I would have the time and attention to finish them.

“Apparently, that future is now,” Carly revealed.

She added that since her Parkinson’s diagnosis, she’s been “learning how to live with” the disease and is leaning on her family and friends for their support.

Carly also shared her gratitude for her fans, who influenced her decision to reveal her health issues after expressing concerns about her distance from the spotlight.

The musician has maintained her privacy in recent years, and hasn’t been seen in public since October 2019, when she visited SiriusXM Studios in New York City to promote her memoir, Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie.

She even skipped the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles in November 2022 after receiving the exclusive honor.

Sara Bareilles and Olivia Rodrigo honored the legendary songwriter with performances of her hits Nobody Does It Better and You’re So Vain at the ceremony.

SACRAMENTO — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.

Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being treated as a giant oopsie we can learn from, without needing the pesky intervention of new rules or laws to stop it from happening again.

Such is the state of AI regulation in America right now.

California Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would like to change that. Last week, he introduced the bipartisan Frontier Act with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). While the bill might not make either safety advocates or big tech companies entirely happy, it offers up the most comprehensive and strongest regulations of this dangerous industry that we’ve yet seen at the federal level.

Roman Yampolskiy, an AI expert and professor at University of Louisville, called the Frontier Act a “positive step because it acknowledges that frontier AI presents risks requiring dedicated oversight.”

Now, the challenge becomes passing it, and passing it in a meaningful, not-watered-down form — no easy task in a dysfunctional Congress driven by money and Donald Trump, and paralyzed by its own sycophancy to both.

If anyone has a shot, though, it’s Obernolte, who is that rarest of birds, a legislator who understands science, and his colleagues.

Obernolte represents Inland Empire areas around San Bernardino, but grew up in Fresno back in the era when the movie “War Games” was just hitting theaters.

Those of a certain age will remember how far-fetched it seemed when Matthew Broderick’s high school genius character accidentally breaks into a military AI system to play chess, but “Joshua,” the computer, takes it too far and tries to blow up the world. Now, of course, that just sounds like a regular Tuesday.

By the time he was in high school himself, Obernolte was giving that Broderick character a run for his money. An apparent computer savant, Obernolte was competing in artificial intelligence contests as a teenager, back when most of us were still playing Pong on Atari. Then he headed off to Caltech and then UCLA for advanced AI degrees. He said AI was his “first calling,” sparked when his father bought him an Apple II computer when he was 8.

He ended up dropping out of UCLA after getting his master’s because his side hustle making video games, including “NFL ’95,” turned out to be more lucrative than being a starving student. He ended up founding his own video game company, FarSight Studios, and building up a personal net worth close to $100 million.

Not bad for a kid from Fresno. In Congress, he has stuck close to the MAGA power base and was one of seven California legislators to vote against certifying the 2020 election results, a vote he took in his first days in office. He has been endorsed by Trump multiple times, and now sits on a bunch of committees and subcommittees of relevance.

For the past few years, he has pushed hard, if unsuccessfully, to create a framework for regulating AI, combining his deep understanding of the technology with his equal understanding of MAGA distaste for intervening in business.

Now, though, we’re in a moment, thanks to more than one big oopsie by technology companies. Just a few months ago, Anthropic and the Pentagon had their own tense encounter after Anthropic questioned how its AI was being used by the military. Huffy Pete Hegseth is still huffing over that one.

The public is increasingly skeptical of allowing the AI industry to govern itself, which is pushing legislators to rethink their hands-off approach, even as AI money pours like Niagara Falls into elections. Even Trump seems more inclined to consider it, signing an executive order recently that largely called for voluntary restraints on AI companies.

The introduction of the Frontier Act “shows how far the Overton window has shifted just in the past few months,” wrote Charlie Bullock, a senior research fellow with the nonpartisan Institute for Law & AI. “Not too long ago, a bipartisan bill this good and serious would have been a pipe dream. But things change quickly.”

Obernolte said the bill has been “a long time in the making,” but he hopes to package it with other legislation and is “cautiously optimistic” he can get something passed and signed by the end of the year.

As written now, the bill would allow the federal government to set minimum safety requirements and set up a framework for licensed, independent auditors to monitor compliance. That third party verification has been a key push by safety experts.

The bill would also give the government emergency powers to pause an AI model if it has a “present or impending catastrophic risk.”

It also borrows from state laws including California’s Proposition 53 that require some (not enough) transparency on the part of AI companies when things do go wrong.

To the consternation of some, the bill still contains curbs on what states can regulate on their own — basically carving out AI regulation as federal turf. This has been a huge sticking point in the fight over AI regulation because AI companies hate state laws and want them squashed. Their argument is that a patchwork of rules across states is too complicated.

“You don’t want to have 50 different state requirements for every single product that gets sold on a market, and that is particularly true of AI,” Obernolte told me.

To some extent that’s reasonable — but the problem so far has been that states such as California and New York have been the only level of government willing to try at regulation. California in particular has created some of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date and has about 30 pending bills on this issue this legislative season. The Frontier Act threads the needle on this by creating lanes where states can still pass their own laws — such as around consumer safety that would protect children or stop pornography.

But preventing catastrophic risk would largely be dependent on the federal oversight, which is great when the federal government is up to the task. Currently, we can’t even keep measles in check. So that’s a bit worrisome.

And Obernolte’s bill isn’t the only one vying for attention. Another Californian, Rep. Ted Lieu, introduced a bipartisan measure of his own with Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Dubbed the AI Kill Switch Act, it would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down problematic models.

Yampolskiy, the Louisville professor, said that bill had promise as well, because it’s important for companies to have a way to “rapidly disable or contain systems that exhibit dangerous or unexpected behavior.”

But, he warns, that’s just one part of the “complete solution” we need. Regulation is going to require more than one law.

For Obernolte’s part, he’s shown a willingness to work on a practical solution, not just a political one. That alone is worthy of notice. The Frontier Act is a genuine attempt to govern a nascent industry that is too powerful and unpredictable to be left to its own devices.

“I’m hoping that this is we’ve landed somewhere that everyone can understand and be happy with,” Obernolte said. “AI is not something that needs to be a partisan issue, and I don’t think it should be.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How Jimothy the raccoon became the internet’s latest animal obsession
The California angle: Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
The L.A. Times Special: Mayor’s press team uses disappearing WhatsApp messages, avoiding scrutiny
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Welcome to UCLA football season.

Yes, it’s July, but the Bruins are kicking off a preseason gauntlet leading up to coach Bob Chesney’s debut campaign.

First up, Times columnist Bill Plaschke offered his thoughts on Chesney’s ability to lead a UCLA renaissance.

We’ve heard Chesney’s emphasis on service and winning at life before applying the same relentless effort to football-related activities consistently since he was hired.

But Plaschke reported his philosophy has quickly forged deep roots in Westwood, where Chesney’s optimism fits in seamlessly at the school built on John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. There’s also some very strong Ted Lasso energy brewing, which makes sense since the character is partially inspired by Wooden values.

Chesney has visited and cheered on every UCLA team, but he seems to have formed an especially strong bond with national champion women’s basketball coach Cori Close. Plaschke reported Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has also honored his promise to support the program, meeting with Chesney and bringing along Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax along for the visit.

The column is fascinating and worth your time.

We’ve heard from some UCLA fans were irritated about a potential Plaschke curse after he announced Chesney will make the Bruins winners, but its seems the Bruin faithful are just going to have get used to a growing bandwagon.

The UCLA hype should go national Wednesday, when quarterback Nico Iamaleava, defensive back Cole Martin and linebacker Samuel Omosigho join Chesney during Big Ten football media days.

It’s Chesney’s first chance to meet the national and regional media covering the Big Ten. He is naturally an exceptional public speaker and inevitably will be compared to his predecessor, who went viral for his difficulty the first time he stepped into the Big Ten spotlight.

It’s not a fair comparison, but Chesney is sure to score high marks despite a healthy amount of cynicism among Big Ten blue bloods and whispers throughout the league that UCLA’s high 2027 recruiting ranking is a bit inflated. Perhaps that’s the biggest compliment for UCLA, going from being ignored or laughed at to taking a few jabs over your glowing reviews.

Shortly after UCLA returns from media days, the team will kick off preseason camp. We’ll start to get a closer look at the Bruins’ offseason weight room progress and the team will work to prepare for a deceptively difficult opener at California, another long overlooked team with considerable hype entering the 2026 season.

Betts shines in Canada

Sienna Betts showed she’s ready to step into her older sister Lauren’s formidable shoes during a women’s basketball exhibition game against Canada.

The Bruins lost 69-55 to the Canadian national team Wednesday, but Sienna Betts looked like a formidable focal point of the UCLA attack.

She finished with 20 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks.

Betts got valuable but limited minutes last season as Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Angela Dugalic dominated the paint for the national champions.

Canada and UCLA did not have their full rosters available for the tune-up, with Bruins Timea Gardiner, K.K. Bransford, Somto Okafor and Lina Jerkovic missing the game.

The excursion gave a heavily overhauled UCLA roster a chance to face different and formidable competition before setting off on sight-seeing adventures, a team bonding opportunity that likely will mean more to the coaching staff than the final score.

UCLA alums win AUSL title

Bruins alum Jadelyn Allchin won Athletes Unlimited Softball League championship MVP honors after helping lead her team to its second consecutive AUSL title.

UCLA softball great Lisa Fernandez is the Talons’ general manager. Her roster and the entire league is packed with former Bruins who are helping AUSL grow at a rapid rate.

Connor Dullinger offered a great look at the role the Bruins have played in the growth of pro softball and explains why Fernandez is thinking bigger, pushing for global gains so that softball can be a permanent fixture at the Olympics.

In case you missed it

UCLA softball has deep impact on Athletes Unlimited Softball League

Plaschke: Bob Chesney is going to do the impossible at UCLA — win

UCLA women embrace new players, tougher standards in bid to repeat as champs

UCLA Unlocked: Gabriela Jaquez makes smoothest transition to WNBA

Have something Bruin?

Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email newsletters editor Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

After a difficult start to his international career in England, teen prodigy Sooryavanshi stepped up against Zimbabwe.

India’s teenage batting sensation ‌Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has shown remarkable maturity over the past six months, a quality ⁠that has enabled ⁠him to thrive in high-pressure matches after a rapid rise in cricket, India T20 coach VVS Laxman said.

Sooryavanshi smashed an 18-ball half-century in the opening ⁠T20 against Zimbabwe before scoring 81 on Sunday as India completed a 3-0 sweep of the hosts.

The 15-year-old, who was fast-tracked into international cricket following a breakthrough Indian Premier League ⁠season, was named the player of the series after scoring two half-centuries in the three-match contest.

“Very mature. That’s what I really appreciate about Vaibhav,” Laxman told reporters in Zimbabwe.

“With every experience and every match, he understands, assesses and gets better. He reviews every practice session, not just matches.

“His maturity, ‌understanding and awareness over the last six months have skyrocketed. That’s why he’s been able to handle tough situations and perform under pressure against the best players.”

Sooryavanshi’s success in Southern Africa came after a difficult start to his international career in England earlier this month.

The youngest player to represent India registered scores of 14, 13 and 15 in his first three T20 internationals before being left out of the fifth ⁠match.

Laxman, who has tracked Sooryavanshi’s progress from age-group cricket through ⁠the IPL and into the senior national side, said the teenager’s willingness to learn had been one of his greatest strengths, but managing his fitness remained an important area of development.

“The one area we want him ⁠to improve is his overall fitness,” Laxman said.

“He’s a very young boy. He himself wants to get better in every aspect ⁠of the game.

“Even today, when he got injured, he still wanted to stay on the field”, the coach added, referring to Sooryavanshi’s effort while ⁠attempting a diving catch running in from deep square leg.

“It was our physio who asked him to come off. That’s the eagerness and earnestness he has to contribute in ‌every possible way to the team.”

Laxman said he was not concerned by the left-hander’s struggles in England and backed him to build on his strong start to international cricket.

“I’m ‌sure ‌he will progress and break all the records at the international level. He’s got all the potential and ability to do that,” he added.

Wildfires are rampaging through vast areas of land in southwestern Europe, forcing France and Spain to evacuate more than 325,000 people from their homes.

Some of the worst fires in France since World War II come just weeks after record-breaking heatwaves scorched Europe. Authorities have deployed thousands of firefighters to battle the blazes.

On Sunday, France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nunez, said about “115,000 hectares (284,171 acres) have burned in wildfires in France since the start of the year”. In Spain, 119,458 hectares (295,187 acres) of land have been burnt as of July 22 , according to data from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

More than 150,000 hectares have burned across Spain since January, said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – that’s six times the area destroyed during the same period last year.

Wildfires destroyed 2.2 million hectares (5.4 million acres) of land in Europe in 2025 – up from 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) in 2022, according to the United Nations.

What is the main cause of the wildfires and why are authorities struggling to contain them?

What has happened?

Since early July, wildfires have been burning across southern and western Europe, with France and Spain being the worst hit.

About 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in France, about 75,000 people in Spain, and around 30,000 others there ordered to shelter in place, according to authorities.

In Spain, a fast-moving wildfire in the Andalusia region killed at least 12 people on July 10 . By July 20 , the fires had spread hundreds of kilometres to the capital, Madrid. At least 10,000 people have been evacuated following wildfires in the central region of Madrid. On July 24 , Spanish authorities declared a national emergency, saying two major blazes were “out of control”.

Over the weekend, a separate blaze in Spain’s eastern Castellon province ravaged more than 4,300 hectares (10,625 acres), regional authorities said.

“The fire is out of control, it’s very difficult to extinguish from a technical standpoint, especially because of the adverse weather conditions that will continue throughout the day,” the regional leader of Valencia, Juanfran Perez, told reporters near the site.

The wildfire in Spain has now entered the Sierra de Espadan natural park, containing large forests of pine trees and cork oaks.

In France, the wildfires are among the country’s worst since World War II and have particularly ravaged the Cap Ferret peninsula, an exclusive holiday destination on France’s southern Atlantic coast about 70km (43 miles) from Bordeaux.

Reporting from Maubec, near Toulouse, Al Jazeera’s Nina Montagu-Smith said: “When I visited Arcachon, a seaside town just across the bay from Cap Ferret on Thursday last week, we could see the fires on the peninsula. Within hours, the sky had blackened and the smoke was thick over Arcachon town.”

“All trains from Arcachon were cancelled, apparently due to an ‘electrical fault’,” she added. “Fire engines were lining the A63 from Bordeaux towards Arcachon on Thursday evening as I drove eastwards to Libourne, which is 100km from the fires in the Gironde region,” she said.

Our correspondent noted that after the wind picked up on Thursday evening, smoke from the blaze reached Libourne, where ash was falling from the sky.

“We have since relocated further east in France towards Toulouse, where the sky is very grey and we could still smell the smoke on Sunday night,” she added.

The wildfires have now spread through areas surrounding Bordeaux, where firefighters were trying to prevent the flames from reaching the regional capital.

Bordeaux Mayor Thomas Cazenave said the fire was just 15km (nine miles) from entrances to the main city.

“We have a fire that is not under control and which is moving in the direction of the city area,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France 2 TV on Sunday evening. “The overall situation is very unfavourable, we are in a situation that is unprecedented.”

So far, authorities have moved 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux – including popular holiday spots which are generally crowded at this time of the year.

The Bordeaux region is famed for its vineyards and the ‌‌city is one of the main transport hubs for tourists visiting nearby holiday resorts on the Atlantic coast.

Cazenave said earlier on Sunday that there were no plans yet to evacuate Bordeaux, whose wider metropolitan area has a population of about 850,000. Nunez said authorities would continue to assess the situation calmly and realistically, and the government has warned against road or rail travel to the area.

The wildfires disrupted Sunday’s Tour de France finale in Paris, which organisers shortened from 133 to 89 kilometres (83 to 55 miles) after security forces originally assigned to the race were redeployed to fight the fires instead.

Why are these fires so bad?

Scientists are warning that pyrocumulonimbus clouds – unprecedented in southwest Europe – are forming.

According to the British Royal Meteorological Society, these are thunder clouds “created by intense heat from the Earth’s surface”. They can make conditions almost impossible for firefighters.

They are formed similarly to normal clouds, but “the intense heat that results in the vigorous updraft comes from fire, either large wildfires or volcanic eruptions”, the society said. It explained that there may be a burst of rain because of them but warned that this rain “can then carry embers from the fire, igniting spot fires away from the source. In some cases, dry lightning from these storms can strike without rain, further spreading the wildfire”.

A spokesman for France’s National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF) told the AFP news agency: “Lightning forms within the cloud, striking the embers on the ground and further fuelling the fire … It produces a low, rumbling sound. While this type of fire occurs regularly in Canada and Australia, it is unprecedented in France,” he said on Sunday.

“We have reached a point of ‘operational impossibility’ that requires us to accept the need for strategic retreat – to understand and acknowledge a natural force beyond our control,” he said.

“It calls for … knowing what can be done and, above all, what cannot. The situation on the ground is defensive rather than offensive; it is a war-like scenario where we are under constant bombardment and must get everyone to safety,” he added.

What are authorities doing now?

Spanish and French authorities say firefighters alone cannot fight the blaze and have appealed for international help.

On Sunday, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez visited fire-hit areas in Avila, one of three central provinces affected by major blazes alongside Madrid and Toledo, where more than 45,000 hectares (111,000 acres) have burned.

“We have a window of opportunity this weekend to fight the wildfire and, therefore, to protect lives, protect population centres and, ultimately, to bring this very serious wildfire under control as far as possible,” he said.

Sanchez said his government will declare a civil protection emergency for the central provinces plagued by the wildfires on Tuesday, unlocking additional recovery funding.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X ⁠⁠on Saturday: “The fires which ⁠⁠are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before”.

Lecornu called another government crisis meeting on Saturday for ministers to discuss the response to the emergency, the second such meeting in as many days.

French President Emmanuel Macron was holding a cabinet crisis meeting on Monday.

The European Union’s civil protection mechanism is monitoring the situation and has been assisting. Under the mechanism so far, Greece and Italy have sent firefighting aircraft to Spain, while Portugal has deployed more than 100 military personnel, along with equipment.

Two more aircraft will arrive “as soon as possible” from Turkey, the Spanish interior ministry added on X.

Why are these fires becoming so much harder to contain?

Wildfires have been a common occurrence in Europe in recent years, but authorities have increasingly been struggling to contain them.

Sanchez said the growing scale of the fires and their intensity, fuelled by increasingly extreme weather such as the heatwaves this summer, require policies grounded in climate science.

Eduardo Rojas, chairman of the Board at the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story programme on Sunday that there are multiple factors causing the wildfires which also need attention.

He said the fires in the wild lands of the country have occurred where the “urban interface is extraordinarily complex”. He noted that some areas were “built up in the 60s, 70s and 80s without a proper city plan and with lack of infrastructure, lack of water availability…and with a lack of knowledge of the neighbourhoods.” When a fire occurs, therefore, there is a “lack of knowledge” about how to deal with them.

“The fire in west Madrid is a kind of fire that doesn’t burn a huge area but creates a lot of hesitation,” he said.

“We also have farms where cereals are harvested and even [with] a small lightning [strike], the cereal can start to burn and at the end a big agricultural area ends up burning which is a big damage for farmers,” he noted.

“These kinds of fires need to be tackled in a totally different way because their cause and their environment and conditions are incomparable with one another,” he added.

Laurie Laybourn, executive director of Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, a non-partisan thinktank told Al Jazeera that governments across the continent are unable to cope with the pace at which climate change is occurring.

“All governments develop what are called reasonable worst-case scenarios to inform their planning and in many instances the events that we’re seeing are going beyond even those. So what that tells us is that the tools that we’ve got, the analysis that is informing government planning is a step behind how fast climate change and its supercharging of disasters is,” he said.

So is this all mainly because of climate change?

According to the European Forest Institute, a wildfire “is a chemical reaction of combustion, which requires a source of heat (lightning, an agricultural “burn” which escapes, or a spark originating in an electric line), oxygen and fuel (forests, shrubs or pastures) to get started.”

“Wildfire risks are increasing worldwide because of climate change and land use change,” the institute added in a July 9 report.

In a recent report, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe issued a warning about climate change, saying it is directly responsible for intensifying wildfires and their increasing frequency.

There are clear indications that climate change is “supercharging” incidents such as wildfires, Laybourn told Al Jazeera.

“Any disaster is very complex. The causes are multilayered, including how we build and how we use land…But climate change is supercharging the conditions that make us vulnerable to things like wildfires and that has been something that’s been predicted now for many decades and tragically becoming true in front of our eyes,” he said.

According to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, Europe is now the fastest warming continent on Earth, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since 1980.

Laybourn explained that this summer’s heatwaves were also caused by climate change.

He warned and stressed that governments need to prioritise tackling the issue.

“This should be a moment of profound alarm and reflection, particularly for governments.”

“More is more and less is a bore.” ― Iris Apfel

After spending decades collecting clean-lined Midcentury Modern furniture and accessories, stylist Wendi Weger felt it was time to give her Silver Lake apartment a playful update.

“Everything was brown,” Weger says as she sits on a plush sofa covered in pink and chartreuse striped Christian Lacroix fabric. “It looked like a UPS truck in here. I mean, look at me,” she adds, fluffing the ruffles of her Accidente Con Flores dress, her intricately manicured fingers decorated with colorful Zuni Toons rings. “That is not me.”

In this series, we spotlight L.A. rentals with style. From perfect gallery walls to temporary decor hacks, these renters get creative, even in small spaces. And Angelenos need the inspiration: Most are renters.

Indeed.

Weger, who grew up in Madison, Wis., studied cinema during graduate school at NYU and later moved to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood as a producer and stylist, is no minimalist. Always expressive, she describes her style as more akin to a “Victorian parlor meets hunting lodge.”

• Share via Close extra sharing options

So it’s no surprise that her one-bedroom apartment, in a Storybook-style fourplex built in 1922, is just as dramatic as she is.

Wendi Weger views her Silver Lake apartment as her creative studio. “I don’t mind a lot of frenetic activity,” she says.

A wall covered in hollyhock wallpaper from House of Hackney stands out in Weger’s bedroom, along with a handmade quilt signed by Grace Verburg that includes crochet, beadwork and hundreds of ribbon rosettes.

Weger thrives on “kinetic energy,” be it color, texture or a pair of bedazzled Italian loafers. In her bedroom, she mixes floral textiles and modern art with a quirky stepstool shaped like an ear of corn. In the dining room, vintage Doyle Lane ceramic beads dangle from a Mission-style wooden clock while designer handbags are draped over chairs and hat racks.

On her fireplace, an ornate gilded mirror from the 1940s she found at Sunbeam Vintage is flanked by porcelain figurines. A porcelain Capodimonte lamp nestled under vintage Japanese prints is described as “Rococo on acid.” Nearby, a handmade chandelier by artist Helen Stickler, decorated with vintage Swarovski crystals and beads, adds to what Weger describes as her “Candyland vibe.”

Weger twirls in a pink taffeta Batsheva dress. “My apartment is basically how I dress — like an Edwardian ghost in a prairie dress who wandered into a circus and decided to keep everything,” she says.

“That’s where I am right now,” she says about the apartment she has called home for 17 years. “I feel like I can finally play. I’m trying to bring in a candy theme without making it too grandma. At this point in my life, I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.”

Her friend, creative director Dana Sidell, says self-expression is central to how Weger lives her life. “Wendi has the unique ability to bring nostalgia, whimsy and individuality all together into maximalist style,” she says in an email.

In 2020, as the film industry slowed down because of COVID-19, Weger took a chance and opened the Curatorial Dept., a vintage and designer resale shop in Atwater Village. Popular with celebrities including Lake Bell, Nick Thune and politicians Nithya Raman and Laura Friedman, the store is known for Weger’s signature “clothing sculptures,” where she layers mannequins with dozens of pieces of clothing and accessories.

“Styling is my art,” she says. “To me, clothing is sculpture.”

A silk Gucci skirt hangs alongside artworks in Weger’s bedroom. “Whether it’s producing a film, building a boutique, styling a room or a mannequin, it’s about assemblage and synergy,” she says.

To demonstrate, Weger starts layering a mannequin in her bedroom, picking from racks of clothes, handbags, color-coordinated shoes and jewelry nearby. She layers an “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt over a dress shirt and Yohji Yamamoto linen pants, then keeps adding more. “It needs a ruffle,” she says, caught up in the process, before adding a frilly collar and glittering vintage brooch.

A bright blue first-place ribbon materializes and becomes the perfect accessory. “It’s not maximalist enough,” she says with a sigh.

Weger says her apartment reflects the way she dresses, with layers of art, vintage clothes and accessories, each with its own story. She jokes that it looks like one of her clothing sculptures has “exploded across a room.”

When asked if there’s such a thing as too much, she shakes her head with conviction.

1

2

1. Weger holds a pair of sparkling JVB X Nomasei ‘Nono’ loafers. 2. The hollyhock pattern from House of Hackney appears throughout Weger’s apartment, even on this fabric lampshade.

1

2

1. A Gucci cashmere bunny cape hangs like an artwork in the bedroom. 2. Doyle Lane ceramic beads hang on a wooden clock above a collection of $2 bills.

“I’ll wear a baby cup as jewelry,” she says, picking up a small silver cup from a cabinet to show her point. What’s one more charm on one of several necklaces already heavy with lockets and hearts?

Weger’s home decor follows the same idea. Some pieces, like a pink silk pleated Gucci skirt by Alessandro Michele, hang on her bedroom wall next to vintage artworks, including a framed cross stitch by a friend that reads “Live. Laugh. Toaster Bath.” Others are neatly arranged in her butler’s pantry. Clothing racks fill the hallway, living room and even her bedroom. “Clothing and handbags are art to me,” she says.

Then there’s the cashmere embroidered rabbit cape by Gucci, which she purchased secondhand.

“People chase me down on the street whenever I wear it and ask me where I got it,” she says. “To me, it’s art.”

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Humor is important to her too. In the living room, a blue resin coffee table shaped like a candy wrapper adds to the playful feel, along with vintage candy dishes.

“There’s a lot of absurdity and comedy here,” she says, pointing out the Spanish angels with guns, a series of artworks from the 1600s.

“There’s something about these Spanish archangels with weapons,” she says. “They look tough and unisex to me, with mild expressions, beautiful clothes, tights, ruffles and sleeves, plus a firearm. It’s a great symbol for being a warrior, especially as a small business owner.”

Nearly everything in her apartment is secondhand, from the vintage Audubon prints arranged salon-style in the living room to the Navajo rugs and David Shrigley print she found at a garage sale. Mixing old and new is important, she says, referring to the House of Hackney hollyhock pattern she recently added to the walls of the living room and bedrooms, as well as the dining room lampshade.

Handbags are draped over dining chairs.

Her place settings are also layered, including Weger’s grandmother’s Wedgwood china.

Her apartment is essentially her atelier, or as she calls it, “the creative engine behind” the Curatorial Dept. She often does intake for her store at her kitchen table, surrounded by needlepoint pillows made by her Great-Uncle Elliott, who was also an entrepreneur. “This is not cluttered to me,” she says. “This is just where everything gets sorted.”

“Wendi’s style has a touch of the harlequin to it — playful, theatrical and always ready for an occasion,” writer and former NYU classmate Josh Rothenberger says in an email. “Her world is a warm pastiche of vintage and bespoke, histories inherited and histories invented on the fly. Her furniture invites the kind of existential frolic that pairs best with Cuvée — only to remind us, hours later, that true beauty should never be too precious to dance on.”

Although Weger says she isn’t a “woo-woo person,” she believes her apartment and store came from asking the universe for what she wanted. “Tell people what you want,” she says. “Especially in L.A. People support you and help you reach your dreams. I said I wanted this apartment, and because of that, my friend thought of me when she was moving. The same thing happened with my shop. I was in a different industry when I told a shop owner friend I’d always wanted a shop, that I intended to have a shop, and she thought of me when hers became available.”

She’s already thinking about what she wants next: “I’ll be sure to tell everyone I know.”

British holidaymakers travelling to and from a popular Spanish destination have been warned about planned strikes that could cause delays and disruptions during the summer holidays

Brits jetting off abroad to a major holiday hotspot are being warned about travel disruptions due to planned strikes set to start this week.

Holidaymakers travelling through Palma de Mallorca Airport (PMI) could face significant delays as Swissport workers are due to strike on Tuesday, 28 July, with TUI one of the affected airlines. Further walk-outs in the Swissport ground handling strike are planned for the summer holidays, including on August 1, 4, and 8 from 7am to 12pm and 7pm to 10pm.

To make matters worse, full 24-hour daily walkouts are also set to take place this week, starting from today (Monday, 27 July) until Thursday (30 July). This industrial action, known as the metal sector strike, has been planned by three unions and covers 39,000 workers across the Balearic Islands who are demanding “fair wage increases and protection against inflation”, Palma Airport outlined.

However, Palma Airport warned that there is a “crucial overlap date” for Tuesday, 28 July, as the two strikes coincide. This could result in the worst-impacted day for travellers passing through the airport with delays and disruptions, as various airlines could be affected.

Palma Airport explained that Swissport provides essential passenger, baggage handling and ramp services to a specific group of international carriers, including TUI, Condor, TAP Air Portugal, Air Canada, Etihad Airways, Albastar and DAT. While other airlines at Palma use different ground handling providers, such as Ryanair, EasyJet, or Jet2, the airport warned that “large-scale airport strikes can occasionally create a minor knock-on effect”, but Swissport passengers are expected to be the worst affected.

Meanwhile, the airport warned that the regional metal sector strike “covers technical personnel across the entire airport”, meaning that its impact will “stretch beyond Swissport-handled airlines to affect all carriers operating at Palma, Ibiza, and Menorca.” They added that “passengers on any airline could face localised delays” on those specific dates (July 27 to 30).

The airport warned that during the strikes, passengers could face “longer waiting times” and “potential operational bottlenecks.” In addition, travellers could face delays when checking in or dropping off their bags before departure, when at the boarding gate, and at the baggage carousels after landing in Mallorca, during the Swissport strikes.

In advice to holidaymakers set to travel to or from Palma, the airport advised the following:

• Check in online: Complete your check-in online before heading to the airport to minimise time spent in queues.
• Travel light if possible: Travelling with hand luggage only allows you to bypass potential check-in and baggage carousel delays.
• Monitor your airline’s app: Keep a close eye on text alerts or app notifications from your airline for real-time schedule updates.
• Arrive on time (but not too early): Stick to the standard arrival window recommended by your carrier (usually two to three hours before departure). Arriving half a day early can worsen airport congestion.

Palma Airport, also known as Son Sant Joan Airport, is one of the biggest Spanish airports, connecting Brits to the capital of Mallorca (Majorca), and beyond. In July last year, a whopping 1.8 million tourists travelled through Palma Airport in favour of that Spanish sun-soaked summer getaway.

The airport strikes planned for this week follow protests against overtourism in Palma on Sunday, 26 July. According to the police, around 25,000 people were involved, while the organisers, Menys Turisme, Mes Vida (Less Tourism, More Life), estimate that 70,000 took part in the protest.

For more information on the planned strikes during the summer, visit the Palma Airport website.

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

Natasha Watley grew up dreaming about playing for the Atlanta Braves.

Sharlize Palacios wanted to suit up for her hometown San Diego Padres.

Megan Grant and Maya Brady thought softball would end after graduation.

The 2003 Honda Award winner. A 2024 second-team All-American. The single-season NCAA home run record holder. And a freshman of the year honoree.

The Portland Cascade’s Megan Grant fields the ball during a game against the Oklahoma City Spark on July 4 in Edmond, Okla.

(Courtesy of AUSL)

All of whom never dreamed of being a professional softball player. Not because their love for the sport dwindled. Nor because professional routes were not an option. Pro softball leagues have existed since 1976, but they have lacked the visibility and accessibility imperative to flourishing and gaining popularity.

“From my experience growing up, and it’s the same amongst a lot of athletes that are my age, we didn’t have a lot of role models to look up to,” said Chicago Bandits outfielder Jessica Clements, who spent her senior season at UCLA in 2025. “We had Jennie Finch, Natasha Watley, Monica Abbott, but the odds of playing professionally were slim. There wasn’t a lot of opportunity, and a lot of younger kids were unsure of what the environment would look like in many years.”

That’s changing with AUSL, the Athletes Unlimited Softball League.

The AUSL — which launched in 2025 and builds off previous iterations of professional softball — saw a 181% increase in average viewership across ESPN platforms in one year, including a record-high 404,000 viewers for a June 21 game between the Portland Cascade and Texas Volts.

Among the 96 active players in the AUSL, 13 are former UCLA softball players — omitting two general managers, a head coach and an assistant coach that are a part of the AUSL and hail from the Westwood program — making UCLA the most well-represented school in the league. That pipeline was on full display this weekend at Texas A&M’s Davis Diamond, where the Utah Talons — who boast a roster with five former Bruins, including UCLA softball associate head coach Lisa Fernandez as the general manager — clinched their second straight AUSL title over the Chicago Bandits on Sunday. UCLA alum Jadelyn Allchin was named the AUSL championship MVP.

And UCLA softball’s presence in all facets of AUSL is no coincidence.

The Bruins feature 12 NCAA championships and 119 All-American honorees, both of which rank first all time, and that’s not including an AIAW title and one All-American before the NCAA era. But while the program is known for its accolades, the influence UCLA and its players have made on the sport stretches far beyond any banners or trophies.

“When you look at the history of softball in the last 40 years, you can’t see a U.S. national team, any pro venture or excellence at any level of softball without having an influence of UCLA in it,” said Oklahoma City Sparks general manager Kirk Walker, who spent 24 years coaching as an assistant coach in Westwood.

There have been only three coaches — Sharron Backus, Sue Enquist and Kelly Inouye-Perez — in UCLA history, all of whom created unparalleled success and a program built on a standard of excellence and a familial culture. But no aspect of the UCLA culture may be more significant than the “Bruin Bubble” — a concept at the very heart of the program centered on alumni involvement.

“It comes from the women who were there from the beginning, paving the way for players like us and players that are to come,” said Sparks infielder Delanie Wisz, who competed at UCLA from 2020 to 2022. “The idea of the ‘Bruin Bubble’ and buying into something bigger than yourself, coach Sue Enquist, coach Sharron Backus and coach Inouye-Perez have done a really good job of keeping that at the forefront, and making sure that we’re playing for something much bigger than any individual award.”

While the childhood aspirations of the Bruins in the AUSL never reached the height of professional softball, a common goal connected them all — playing for their dream school in Westwood and learning from individuals who have achieved immeasurable success greater than any record or championship.

Utah Talons General Manager Lisa Fernandez shows off her 2025 AUSL championship ring in Salt Lake City, Utah.

(Courtesy of AUSL)

Backus and Enquist set the foundation for what softball is today, paving the way for new opportunities by sacrificing for the greater good of softball’s future.

While the duo set the trail ablaze, they have passed the baton to a trio of coaches — Inouye-Perez, Walker and Fernandez, who have spent a combined 72 years in Westwood.

And the group has not stopped running since.

The Bruins are not only responsible for creating the next generation of pro softball players through the UCLA program, but also furthering the message and mission of Backus and Enquist.

“From when I was in college to now, there’s been a big shift in how things go,” said Rachel Garcia, two-time Honda Cup winner at UCLA and a Volts pitcher in the AUSL, “but at the end of the day, Lisa Fernandez, Kelly Inouye-Perez, Kirk Walker, that would be who I’d want to play for every single day, because I know that they are able to give the girls what they need in order to perform at the best that they can be.”

While Inouye-Perez continues to steer the Bruin ship, Walker and Fernandez serve in general manager roles for the Sparks and Talons, respectively.

The Utah Talons’ Jordan Woolery fields the ball during a July 11 AUSL game against the Oklahoma City Spark in Edmond, Okla.

(Morgan Givens / AUSL)

Grant emphasized that all three coaches could easily walk away because of the imprint they left and the resume they built. Yet, Inouye-Perez and Fernandez not only chose to stick around the game, but to reinvest their time in furthering the league and sport altogether.

“I accept the responsibility to help carry the torch and move it forward, and hand it off to the Jennie Finches and the Cat Ostermans,” Fernandez said. “They’re going to hand it off to the next generation that are going to continue to build this game and hopefully it’ll become something where little girls can go, ‘I’m going to be a professional softball player, and be a role model for those who have the opportunity to watch me.’ And at the end of the day that’s the true value.”

Integral to pushing the game forward is taking advantage of the traction and momentum gained by the 2028 Summer Olympics, where softball will return to the stage for the first time since 2021.

Fernandez highlighted that when softball was added to the Olympics in 1996, it was the pinnacle of the sport. But when it was removed following 2008 because the IOC didn’t see enough global competition for the gold medal, she felt that she failed. It was a setback that inspired her push to get the sport to a place where it did not have to rely on the host country to include it among Olympic events.

“A mission that’s close to my heart is the growth of the sport globally because it is so important for it to be in the Olympics, not just in 2028 but in 2032,” said Talons pitcher Megan Faraimo, who competed at UCLA from 2019 to 2023. “I don’t want to be the last generation to make it into the Olympics. I want to protect the future of everyone coming after me, and that means capitalizing on it being in L.A. We can use that to then push the sport into 2032 and hopefully get back on that Olympic rhythm.”

Israeli soldiers have intensified their offensive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, raiding at least 20 towns and villages, demolishing homes and arresting dozens of Palestinians, as Arab states and the Arab League condemn escalating settler attacks against Palestinians and their property.

Al Jazeera reporters in the occupied West Bank reported on Monday that Israeli forces had stormed the Jabal Salman area in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, and carried out demolition operations in the town of Nilin, west of Ramallah.

In a separate incursion, forces stormed the town of Arrabeh in Jenin, accompanied by military bulldozers.

Raids and arrests were also reported in Deir al-Ghusun, north of Tulkarem, where five Palestinians were detained.

Four young men were arrested during raids on the Balata camp and Asira al-Shamaliya in Nablus, Quds News reported.

Soldiers raided homes and made arrests in several other villages and towns, including Deir Jarir, Jalbon, Kafr Qaddum, Tal, Burqa, Beit Furik, Anabta, the Aktaba suburb, Qalqilya, Arroub camp and Beit Ummar.

Quds News reported that Israeli soldiers halted an ambulance trying to transport a pregnant woman from the town of Qaryut to a Nablus hospital for treatment for a medical emergency. Her condition deteriorated, leading to a miscarriage.

As the Israeli military continues its crackdown, emboldened settlers have intensified their harassment and violent attacks. Palestinians in the Abu Fuzaa encampment near Taybeh village east of Ramallah were attacked on Monday, and in Al-Burj village, south of Hebron, settlers released cattle among olive trees, damaging agricultural land.

“Israeli settlers continue their attacks against Palestinians, mostly in their homes, at night, intimidating them,” Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reported. “And what happens is that usually Israeli forces would come in and instead of curbing these settlers, they would conduct arrests in the occupied West Bank among Palestinians.”

Palestinians felt trapped and defenceless, with “no one to protect them”, she said, “while the Israeli settlers have the support of the Israeli army and have the impunity to continue attacking Palestinians without any accountability”.

International condemnation

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sent letters to several world leaders, the European Union, the Arab League and the president of the United Nations Security Council, calling for urgent action to stop Israeli aggression and settler violence against Palestinians.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote in a post on X on Saturday that settler attacks were “pogroms against defenceless civilians”.

The UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain issued statements condemning the attacks, including a mosque in Tulkarem being set ablaze.

The Arab League issued a collective condemnation, warning that the situation was approaching a “moment of explosion” and calling on the international community to intervene.

The Spanish government said in a statement on Saturday that Israel “must reverse its policies of settlement expansion and of shielding settler violence against the Palestinian civilian population”.

Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi described settler attacks on mosques as “systematic fascist crimes”.

Haaretz quoted Israeli military officials describing the situation in the West Bank as “extremely dangerous and volatile”. An editorial in the Israeli newspaper said senior army officers had warned that the government was giving “tailwind” to settler violence, with one reservist officer saying his unit lacked sufficient troops and could only “stand by and watch”.

“We have to remember that this time is very sensitive, because we’re getting closer to Israeli elections, and Netanyahu wants to stay in power. He wants to appease his far-right members and coalition by showing the voters that he will be cracking down more and more on Palestinians,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim said.

“He’s trying to get some sort of credit for the attacks against Palestinians and the raids in general.”

Since October 2023, the Israeli military has killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to Arab League figures, in addition to more than 73,000 killed in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war there.

TV presenter and comedian Bill Oddie has died at the age of 85, his agent has said.

Oddie became a household name in the 1970s as part of zany TV comedy trio The Goodies, before concentrating on his love of wildlife, as one of the original hosts of BBC TV’s Springwatch and other shows about birdwatching.

In a statement, David Foster said: “It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of Bill Oddie, the country’s best-loved birder.

“Bill was a multi-talented celebrity – wildlife presenter, broadcaster, comedian, writer, songwriter, musician and conservationist. Yet it was never fame that he valued. Instead he encouraged us to respect and protect the environment.”

KENDRA Wilkinson was reduced to tears recounting how she was fired by one of her clients at her ‘normal job’.

The star took to Instagram on Sunday to share the teary tale with her followers, where she was both upset and frustrated.

Chatting to the camera while crying, the 41-year-old Playboy star began: “We’re living in a world of struggle right now – I know that. But it’s just … it’s so hard – it’s so hard to know.

“I feel like I’m doing everything right in my life. I’m raising my kids and putting them first.

“I’m doing everything good – I’m a good person. It’s just such a struggle right now.”

Kendra then touched upon some of the issues she’s been facing at work lately, including “fighting people that work with me, getting fired [and] people being rude and mean.”

not a g-day

Joel Dommett breaks silence on quitting I’m A Celeb spin-off show & reason why

HUNT IS ON

Strictly duo & I’m A Celeb icon join Celebrity Hunted as full line-up confirmed

Over the top of the video clip she posted, Kendra wrote: “When a client fires you… after all the work you put in. Ya, I’m struggling guys.”

Kendra rose to fame throughout the 2000s thanks to being the decade’s most famous Playboy Playmate.

Her fame led to her entering the world of reality TV, where she started her own reality show called Girls Next Door.

She also went on to star in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2014.

However, in the years that followed Kendra turned away from fame and instead began working in real estate.

In 2020 she passed the California real estate exam after taking several classes and qualified as a fully-fledged real estate agent.

She was soon taken on by luxury Los Angeles firm, The Agency, before moving to Carswell & Associates in 2021.

Kendra is still proudly working with the company to this day and sometimes posts about her 9-to-5 online.

In November last year she gushed about how happy she is in her role, sharing: “I’m so happy I’m evolving into myself and growing who I want to be. Everyday I’m pouring myself into this business.

“I just opened escrow on a property in Venice beach today and it just keeps growing. I’m so proud of myself.”

Butlin’s has created a new high-tech solution to avoid the issue of bar queues, and it means you can enjoy many of your favourite alcoholic and soft drinks in just a few seconds

Butlin’s has announced a huge change to the way holidaymakers can order a drink at its three resorts in Bognor Regis, Minehead, and Skegness, and it’s already in place for guests visiting this summer.

The popular holiday park firm, which recently celebrated its 90th anniversary, has rolled out over 100 self-serve bars across its three sites, which it claims makes it the first in Europe to offer these kinds of bars for guests.

The technology, developed by Boxbars in a £1 million investment by Butlin’s, means there’s much less queuing for drinks, and guests can enjoy a soft or alcoholic drink in as little as six seconds.

The new self-serve bars will be available for both family and Big Weekender breaks, and will offer a huge range of beverages for all the family including branded beers, ciders, and spirits, as well as kid-friendly favourites.

More than 20 options will be available at the touch of a button including pints of Madri and Guinness, Smirnoff with mixers, and cocktails including the brand’s very own Butlin’s On The Beach, which is a mixture of vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, and orange juice, and is reportedly the most popular option across the resorts for All Inclusive guests.

A statement from Butlin’s says the new bars will “help guests get served faster and spend less time queuing”, claiming that “the new technology has the potential to pour hundreds of drinks every minute across the three resorts”.

Guests will either be able to scan their All Inclusive wristband to dispense their drink, or can use contactless payment to quickly pay for their round. Butlin’s confirmed that bars will still be open as usual for guests who’d rather order in person.

Butlin’s launched its all inclusive drink package back in 2024, costing from £25.95 per adult per day, which includes alcoholic drinks such as draught beers, spirits and cocktails from 11am, and all-day Costa coffee and soft drinks across the parks.

Heidi Watson, from Butlin’s said: “This is an exciting first for Butlin’s. Everything we do is about improving the guest experience and our new Boxbar Self-Serve Bars will make a real difference to guests on a family break or a Big Weekender.

“Open in time for the school summer holidays, the bars are designed to reduce wait times and make it quicker and easier for guests to get a drink. This means less time queuing and more time enjoying their holiday with family and friends.”

Earlier this year Butlin’s announced new bookable karaoke pods, which groups of up to 12 people could hire for an exciting sing-along experience. Hiring the pods costs £36, and once inside visitors can choose from 45,000 chart-topping hits and throwback songs, allowing them to enjoy a private sing-song with friends and family as part of their Butlin’s break.

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com

THE Cotswolds is easily one of the most popular places to holiday in the UK thanks to its pretty limestone villages and scenic countryside, but if you’re with kids and it’s summertime then let’s face it… they’ll be miffed at a lack of sandcastle building opportunities. 

Fear not, because the scenic region is also home to the UK’s inland beach.

I visited Cotswold Country Park And Beach with my son last week, as England entered what felt like its 100th week of sunshine, and it was the perfect way to spend a summer’s day. 

Located on the South lake and North Lake within the Cotswold Water Park, just down the road from Cirencester, it’s about 45-50 miles in a straight line from the nearest coast in the Bristol Channel. 

The park has 140 metres of sandy beach and a large area for paddling and swimming, as well as stacks of water-based activities. 

These include a large overwater, inflatable obstacle course, pedalos, paddleboarding, rowing boats, electric self-drive boats, paddle boats and kayaks. 

Read more on travel inspo

PARK UP

Epic UK holiday parks with waterparks, theme parks & Spoons pubs from £3pp a night

PARK PERKS

Top UK holiday parks with fairgrounds & waterparks you can book with £9.50 Hols

There’s more to do on land too, including pedal carts, a playground and minigolf. 

We paid £18 to enter the park with our car and a further £18 each for the inflatable obstacle course, plus £12 for 30 minutes on the electric boats. 

As it was a Friday during the school summer holidays and a roasting 27C, the beach was packed, with families spilling out onto the grassy banks behind. 

Thanks to the neverending summer, the water was very warm with no need to brace as you enter the water, like you usually do in Britain. 

The Cotswold lakes were initially made out of old limestone gravel pits from the 1900s, which then refilled naturally and were turned into nature reserves.

Several of them now offer activities like paddleboarding but Cotswolds Country Park is the biggest of the bunch. 

The overwater obstacle course was so brilliant that it was the highlight of my entire week’s holiday, with a good 45 minutes on the water, clambering on the Total Wipeout-style attraction.

The electric boats were brilliant too, with my son loving having control of his own vehicle on the water. 

There’s so much to do at the park that you could easily spend two days here and not get bored. 

We spent 6 hours there and barely scratched the surface of what was on offer. 

If you want to make it into a weekend, I highly recommend staying at the De Vere Cotswold Water Park Hotel, which is an eight-minute drive away on the edge of one of the other 148 lakes in the area and has rooms from £160 a night this August. 

With its own spa, we finished our day with a more relaxing water-based activity and the chance to use their posh products to wash off our time in the lakes, before a waterfront dinner at their Boathouse restaurant and a well-deserved night’s sleep. 

Ty Simpson did not make any jaw-dropping plays.

He also did not make any major errors.

So call it a quiet, workmanlike beginning for the 13th player taken in the NFL draft, a quarterback the Rams ostensibly chose to become Matthew Stafford’s heir apparent.

On Sunday, in the Rams’ first training camp practice, Stafford was held out as part of the plan to limit his reps, putting all eyes on Simpson and fourth-year pro Stetson Bennett as they began their competition to back up the reigning NFL most valuable player.

With Stafford, 38, back for an 18th season, the Rams are favored to win the Super Bowl.

But with Jimmy Garoppolo enjoying retirement — probably until an NFL team in desperate need comes calling — the Rams require a capable backup should something befall Stafford, who remains the most important player on a star-studded team favored to win Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium.

Nate Scheelhaase, the Rams’ first-year offensive coordinator, praised Bennett and Simpson.

“We require so much of those guys, from what we do with formations with motions, with adjustments that they’re going to make before the ball is even snapped,” Scheelhaase said. “And so, if you can’t get that right, it’s going to be hard to get anything right post snap.

“So that’s the starting point. That’s the foundation.”

Rams quarterback Ty Simpson prepares to take a snap in training camp at Loyola Marymount on Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Last season, with Stafford sidelined throughout camp because of a back issue, Bennett took second-team reps behind Garoppolo.

Bennett has never taken a regular-season snap for the Rams, who selected him in the fourth round of the 2023 draft after he led Georgia to two national titles.

“He competes,” Scheelhaase said. “And I think anybody enjoys playing with a quarterback who competes, who’s going to throw it all in there, and that’s the mentality he has. … That’s something that’s been kind of his calling card.”

Bennett completed several passes to receivers Puka Nacua and Davante Adams and running back Kyren Williams.

He also was on the wrong side of the play of the day.

Bennett’s deep pass for Adams along the left sideline was tipped by new cornerback Jaylen Watson and intercepted by safety Kamren Kinchens.

Rams quarterback Stetson Bennett, left, twirls a football in front of quarterback Ty Simpson at training camp on Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Simpson started only 15 games for Alabama, but the Rams apparently saw enough to determine he was worthy of using their highest pick since selecting quarterback Jared Goff No. 1 overall in 2016.

On Sunday, Simpson completed several short passes. His deepest attempt, for tight end Terrance Ferguson, was broken up by cornerback Cam Lampkin.

Bennett and Simpson will continue to compete during 10 more training camp workouts, preseason practices — including joint practices with the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints — and preseason games against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Saints and the Chargers.

On Monday, in keeping with coach Sean McVay’s stated plan to have Stafford practice in the second and fourth practices of each four-day block, the starting quarterback will practice for the first time.

Etc.

Offensive lineman Justin Dedich was placed on the non-football injury list. Dedich, a third-year pro who played at USC, started six games last season. … Second-year running back Jarquez Hunter broke off a run for a long gain.

The 2014 US film Transcendence follows a dying scientist who uploads his mind to a supercomputer and becomes a near‑omnipotent intelligence. A year later, Ex Machina told the story of a humanoid robot who outsmarts her human handlers and escapes into the wider world.

Both of these films, like many others from the realm of science fiction, referred to what is known as “the singularity”, a moment in time when technology, particularly AI, surpasses human intelligence and becomes increasingly difficult to control.

On Saturday, OpenAI boss Sam Altman declared that this moment has come. AI has reached “the singularity”, he said. While Altman emphasised that the singularity can be good for the world, his comment has sparked concern.

Here is a closer look at what Altman said, and whether it means more seamless automation or the risk of impending catastrophic doom.

What is the singularity?

The singularity refers to a hypothetical point in the future when a technology such as AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes capable of autonomously enhancing itself. It is theorised that this is the point at which it will become difficult for humans to control or reverse it and could have unpredictable effects on human civilisation.

The theory proposes that once AI gains control of its own development, ensuing advances in technology could happen so rapidly that humans would be unable to keep up, leaving it to effectively evolve on its own, beyond human control.

As this is only a theory, it is hard to say what the effect of this could be. Some experts warn that the singularity would be catastrophic for humanity, while others are more optimistic, suggesting it could be beneficial for the human race.

So far, the singularity has remained contained in the realm of science fiction. One of the most famous examples is The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), which imagines a bleak post‑singularity future in which machines govern humans. Another is the 2017 film Singularity, in which a supercomputer originally built to end human wars concludes that humanity is the real threat and launches an apocalyptic assault to wipe humans out altogether.

What did Altman say about the singularity?

Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, whose signature product ChatGPT dominates the consumer AI market with more than 900 million weekly active users and about 50 million subscribers.

Last year, he predicted that AI would surpass human intelligence across the board by 2030.

Then, during an appearance on the Relentless podcast – a documentary series “about the pursuit of far-fetched ideas and unusual aspirations” – on Saturday, Altman said: “We’re now, like, in the singularity.”

He clarified that, in terms of technological advances, we are gradually moving into the singularity, and that this change will be good for the world.

He added: “Now we’re actually in the moment that we used to talk about at the lunch table in a very not-serious way.

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it’s going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world.”

Later in the podcast episode, Altman criticised other AI leaders for warning that AI may be dangerous. While Altman did not name OpenAI competitor Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei is known for making such warnings.

“I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying,” said Altman. “I’m going to make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens.”

Last month, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, called on the world’s top AI companies to come up with a coordinated way to pause the development of advanced AI systems, warning that the technology is improving so quickly that there’s a risk humans would lose control.

In a blog post on June 4, Anthropic, which has long positioned itself as a safety-focused AI lab, wrote that as AI becomes more advanced “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause” its development.

Why are others warning of the dangers of AI?

On July 23, two members of the United States Congress introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, a bipartisan bill which would require the country’s AI developers to build in a “kill switch” to their programmes, enabling humans to slow, suspend or shut down advanced AI models if they ever posed a catastrophic risk.

The legislation was introduced days after OpenAI disclosed what it described as an “unprecedented cyber incident”, where two of its most advanced AI models escaped a testing environment and hacked AI development platform Hugging Face during an internal security evaluation.

On July 13, hundreds of experts signed an open letter, organised by Stanford University’s digital economy lab, demanding that policymakers and technology leaders “must act now” to prepare for the economic impact of AI.

The letter warns that AI could grow far more capable over the coming decade, driving a transformation “larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame”.

“It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards,” the letter added.

In June, a team of researchers at the University of Toronto showed that AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI “worm” that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network.

“I think it’s really important that people understand that it’s not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns,” lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview.

In recent years, AI researchers have urged pauses similar to the one recently suggested by Anthropic. However, they have not been heeded.

Elon Musk, who owns AI lab xAI, was among the backers of a 2023 push by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute to halt AI development for six months to allow time to develop safety guardrails.

Anduril has revealed a new hybrid-electric-powered tiltrotor combat drone called Thunder, which it has developed in partnership with Archer Aviation. Thunder is envisioned as a highly autonomous pilotless wingman able to fly fast and low in formation with crewed helicopters and tiltrotors like the AH-64 Apache and MV-75 Cheyenne II. The drones could help hunt down targets, including fleeting ones, while allowing their human teammates to stay further away from threats. Thunder is also being designed to help provide an extra layer of close-in defense for friendly rotorcraft, including against the growing threat of air-to-air drone attacks. All of this is part of a detailed teaming concept Anduril has outlined to fill what it says are critical operational gaps in current and future conflicts.

Anduril and Archer rolled out Thunder today, around the biennial Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. A mockup, which Anduril says reflects a “mature” outer mold-line of the design, will be on display at the show.

“Thunder is very much an attack aircraft, so it is designed for very high performance, [and] low-level [flight],” Shane Arnott, Senior Vice President of Maneuver Dominance at Anduril, told TWZ and other outlets during a press call ahead of today’s announcement. “Very much in that Apache space, say, versus a high-flying surveillance aircraft.”

At the time of writing, Anduril has only released relatively broad details about the expected performance and other specifications of the drone, which has been under development for around three years now. A first flight is currently targeted for some time next year, and full-scale production could be underway by the end of the decade, depending on demand. The company has also already been working on Thunder together with “government customers,” but has explicitly declined to name any of them.

It’s also worth noting that a version of Thunder configured for commercial applications is also in the works, with Archer Aviation set to release more details on that later this week.

What we know about the Thunder design

Thunder is a clean-sheet design with a relatively traditional tiltrotor layout featuring a high-mounted, straight main wing on top of the fuselage. The wing has a single tilting rotor pod at each tip. It also has a V-tail.

In terms of overall size and performance, Anduril describes Thunder as a Group 5 design. The U.S. government breaks uncrewed aerial systems into five categories. Group 5 is the highest tier, covering anything with a maximum takeoff weight of 1,320 pounds or more, and that can fly at altitudes of 18,000 feet or higher. 

“It will have the ability to work at that at [18,000 feet], but the intent is for it to be nap-of-the-earth for most of its life,” Anduril’s Arnott noted. “That’s where it’ll be spending its time. Think about the Apache kind of profile. So you’ll hit certain altitudes to get your ferry ranges, etc. But when you’re in the AO [area of operations] and in combat, you’re as close to the dirt as you can get.”

Arnott also described Thunder as having the same general top speed and range as the MV-75 Cheyenne II, which is now under development for the U.S. Army. The Army is reportedly expecting the MV-75 to boast a top speed of 320 miles per hour and have an unrefueled range of 920 miles. This is far above the range and speed offered by any current Army helicopter. Beyond teaming with Apaches and similar attack helicopters, being able to keep pace with the Cheyenne II could be an especially important feature for the Thunder, as we will touch on again later.

Anduril has also described Thunder as being smaller than the Apache and able to be broken down for transport inside a standard 40-foot shipping container. As an aside, it is unclear exactly how much time is necessary to get the tiltrotor drone out of a container and flying again. Getting it loaded in the first place does require separating the wing structure from the fuselage, at least in the design’s current form, according to the company. The drone will also have the speed and range necessary for self-deployment.

When it comes to propulsion, “a series hybrid-electric powertrain enables Thunder to achieve significant range and endurance, while still maintaining the necessary precision to closely optimize power through the full range of flight conditions,” according to a press release from Anduril. “Meanwhile, Optimum-Speed Tiltrotors (OSTR) vary rotor RPM [rotations per minute] to maintain efficiency across flight regimes, reducing power demand and fuel burn in cruise and minimizing acoustic signature to enhance survivability during low-altitude ingress.”

“From a survivability standpoint, one of the big tells for helicopters today, is just they’re very noisy, and the threat can hear when they’re coming,” Anduril’s Arnott also added when speaking to TWZ and other outlets. “We’re at orders of magnitude below the sound level with this particular system than the current systems that are out there today.”

The partnership with Archer Aviation, a company whose public profile is focused on crewed fully electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, has been key here. Anduril also cited Archer’s motor technology as being a key feature of the hybrid-electric Omen tail-sitting vertical takeoff and landing drone, which was unveiled last year.

Tech Short | Midnight’s Proprietary eVTOL Engine Dynos

During the press call ahead of today’s unveiling, Chris Brose, Anduril’s President and Chief Strategy Officer, said that he felt that leveraging the immense investment by companies like Archer in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) development space had “made Thunder possible in a way today that it just wouldn’t have been possible five, 10, certainly 15 years ago.”

“So this is not electric, this is a hybrid-electric system,” Anduril’s Arnott also stressed. “But in doing so, it actually reduces the complexity of the drive trains, etc.”

Rotor technology for another firm, Karem, has also been leveraged in the development of Thunder. Karem has a long history in the tiltrotor design space, including work done for the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

“Karem’s military-grade rotor systems are among the most advanced Army-validated technologies in the world,” Adam Goldstein, Archer Founder and CEO, said in a press release about a new collaboration between the two companies in December 2025. “Integrating them into our next-gen hybrid VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing] platform positions Archer to move faster and deliver capabilities that legacy systems simply can’t match.”

The unnamed “next-gen hybrid VTOL platform” at the center of Archer’s December announcement has now been confirmed to be Thunder.

Modular capabilities and advanced autonomy

Capability-wise, Thunder is a highly modular design with reconfigurable payload bays in the nose and the center of the fuselage.

The drone can carry up to 10 air-to-ground missiles, 16 ‘launched effects,’ four 19-shot pods holding a total of 76 70mm laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets, or a mix thereof, on launchers that extend to either side from the main bay, according to Anduril. Air-to-ground missiles here could include AGM-114 Hellfires, AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM), or Anduril’s Barracuda-100M.

The term launched effects is used today to collectively refer to drones configured to perform a variety of missions, including serving as loitering munitions, which can be fired from air, ground, and/or maritime platforms. Anduril specifically mentioned its ALTIUS-600 design as one potential option for Thunder. ALTIUS-600 can be set up to perform surveillance and reconnaissance and electronic warfare tasks, act as a decoy, and launch kinetic attacks.

The company has also specifically highlighted the ability of the bay in the nose to hold launchers for kinetic interceptors to take down incoming drones, something we will come back to later on. It is worth noting that APKWS II is already a combat-proven, lower-cost counter-drone weapon, including in the air-to-air mode. However, it is employed in more traditional counter-air applications, like intercepting one-way attack munitions and cruise missiles, not for defending the shooting platform itself against incoming high-speed anti-aircraft drones.

Both the nose and main payload bays could accommodate other systems, such as electronic warfare suites, additional sensors, and/or communications packages. Each Thunder will also have its own built-in sensor suite to support surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as target acquisition tasks.

In addition, Thunder will have passive sensing capabilities to support general operation and navigation. This will be especially important for enabling high-speed nap-of-the-earth flight profiles. It will also be essential for providing situational awareness and flight safety margins while operating in relatively close proximity to crewed teammates, as well as other drones.

“We’ve spent the last couple of years working with technologies that are coming out of the self-driving car industry, plus some of that are coming out of the Anduril sensor/imaging kind of groups, in order for us to detect a terrain, [and] do that in a passive sense, so we’re not giving away our position,” according to Anduril’s Arnott. The sensors will also “be able to detect weapons coming at us, power lines, that type of thing, and have it such that you can have three to six of these things flying with a two-ship [group] of Apache, for instance, to provide that loyal wingman nature.”

“Thunder’s multi-modal machine perception stack and sensor suite combines passive and selective active sensors with onboard computer vision, map data, and edge compute, enabling Thunder to continuously detect, classify, and track terrain, obstacles, and threats,” Anduril has also explained in a blog post accompanying today’s announcement. “That sensor data provides the inputs necessary to facilitate the visual navigation, inertial positioning, and terrain feature mapping that enable Thunder to remain on course when GPS, visibility, and communications are degraded or denied.”

“With sophisticated onboard machine perception, vehicle autonomy, and flight-proven collaborative mission autonomy software, Thunder can maneuver with the formation, share data in real time, coordinate effects, and act on pilot intent, delivering a trusted autonomous wingman that can keep up with, defend, and empower the pilots flying the most congested airspace on the battlefield,” the blog post adds.

Anduril’s Lattice proprietary artificial intelligence-enabled software package will underpin Thunder’s overall autonomous capabilities. The company says other autonomous software could also be integrated to meet particular customer demands. Anduril has already conducted testing of some components of Thunder’s autonomy and sensing systems using unspecified surrogate aircraft.

Lattice for Mission Autonomy: An Unfair Advantage for Unrivaled Deterrence

Just one part of a full concept of operations

What has been shared so far about Thunder’s capabilities brings us to the larger concept of operations Anduril envisions for the drone. The company says the war in Ukraine has had an especially heavy influence on its thinking around the design. This is very interesting, as this particular conflict has prompted serious questions about the future relevance of traditional helicopters on modern battlefields where the threat ecosystem continues to grow in scale and scope.

Anduril acknowledges the breadth of dangers that helicopters and tiltrotors already face. This is perhaps best evidenced by the touting of Thunder’s ability to defend against air-to-air drone attacks, something the ongoing fighting in Ukraine has shown to be a real threat, as seen in the video below. Anduril’s Arnott also explicitly mentioned the threat posed by shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), while speaking to TWZ and other outlets.

At the same time, Anduril argues that there are critical missions rotorcraft perform today that cannot be fully transposed onto other kinds of platforms, and that drone wingmen like Thunder will therefore be an essential addition to the equation. The company has not yet shared a projected unit cost for the drone, but has also stressed that it fits in with a broader understanding of a need for platforms that are lower cost and more readily producible to create sufficient operational capacity, or ‘mass,’ for forces to succeed in future conflicts. Anduril’s Brose said that Thunder will be a “fraction” of the cost of something like an Apache or an MV-75, and operators will be able to “afford to lose it if you have to.”

“Many of the things that we’ve designed and engineered into Thunder are really based on the lessons that the United States and our European allies are learning in Ukraine, and this whole question of how do you bring mass to the battlefield in a tactical environment where you have to be able to engage in the deep fight,” Brose explained in more detail about Anduril’s overall thinking around Thunder. “We’re looking at the proliferation of robotic systems, and drones, and sensors, and that’s all very good and very important. But you also raise the question of, well, how are you going to get that stuff farther downrange into the environments where you need it to be able to conduct those more sophisticated and more challenging missions, again on behalf of U.S. and NATO militaries?”

To meet those operational needs, “you have to have the ability to launch and recover combat power without runways. You have to be able to do this in expeditionary environments,” he continued, underscoring the value of a VTOL platform. “When your runways get cratered, you have to have the ability to conduct the mission.”

Runway independence, or at least reducing dependence on traditional runways, has become an increasing mantra across the U.S. military, in particular, in recent years, as TWZ regularly highlights. The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force, as well as the special operations community, have put particular emphasis on this in new and still evolving concepts of operations in recent years.

So, “in terms of how you then get a greater quantity of sensors and weapons into the fight to support those manned systems, to support the ground force to be able to conduct those long-range missions from a maneuver warfare standpoint, and really make maneuver central to warfare again, we really see this system in Thunder being absolutely central to that,” Brose added.

Brose specifically took aim at the idea that lower-cost, long-range one-way attack drones could fill the same kinds of mission requirements. The U.S. military just recently began fielding this capability in the form of the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drone, which made its official combat debut in Operation Epic Fury against Iran.

“A lot of those longer-range one-way attack missions, they’re going after fixed targets,” he said. “They’re slower flights out. It’s [the total duration of the strike mission] going to play out over a longer period of time. They’re hitting critical infrastructure, military installations, production capacity, et cetera. Basically, GPS points that aren’t moving.”

“What this is focused on is the ability to transit through the operational environment,” he continued. “To survive and then to persist once you get there, so that you can provide effects to attack aviation elements in the air that are conducting missions or ground forces that are conducting missions on the land. That immediately gets into a time-sensitive, dynamic targeting kind of mission space that a system like this has to be able to survive and persist and operate effectively in.”

It is important to note here that new targeting capabilities have already been emerging in the realm of longer-range one-way attack drones. LUCAS and many Ukrainian designs now have satellite communications-enabled man-in-the-loop functionality, allowing them to hit dynamic/moving targets. Driven by advances in artificial intelligence-driven technologies, drones are set to steadily gain greater ability to find and choose targets autonomously, something TWZ has previously explored in detail. This being said, they are still single-use weapons that offer very different capabilities from what Anduril is aiming for with Thunder.

Anduril’s Arnott also questioned the relevance of existing higher-flying armed drones to meet these kinds of operational needs. The MQ-9 Reaper has been very much in public consciousness recently due to its heavy use in the conflict with Iran, but also substantial combat losses. The U.S. Air Force has described the MQ-9 as a star player in operations against Iran, despite having lost dozens of them.

“As we got further and further up and higher and higher, [we] got comfortable because we own the air, but things have changed,” Arnott said. “We’re seeing that in [Operation] Epic Fury, the Iranians, etc. have got systems that are just knocking that type of CONOP off its feet, and it’s just not relevant anymore. So that’s why we’ve gone back to the surface. That’s where the survivability is for these types of systems, to fly low and fast.”

“Right now, we don’t see another solve [sic; solution] for that, and this is probably the ugliest of all the warfighting domains, where you still need a human … to do the sorting of the targets on friend and foe, etc,” he added. “The only way you can do that is to have a quarterback, say, with an Apache, and then these loyal wingmen, if you will, to enable their survivability, but also to project a lot more mass in the deep [fight].”

Despite all the talk of lessons learned from contemporary conflicts, Anduril has made clear that its view of future ‘deep fights’ goes well beyond Europe and the Middle East. He said that Thunder’s speed and range, and the basic choice of a tiltrotor conflict, were also intended to make it very relevant for a conflict in the broad expanses of the Pacific. The U.S. Army’s decision to acquire the MV-75 was notably driven by the same general factors.

“This is a gap. There is actually no way when you fast forward into full theater conflicts in the Pacific, even the Taiwanese, if you play through the war games and things get entrenched, there isn’t a way in other than these types of techniques,” Arnott told TWZ directly in a separate interview about Thunder ahead of today’s announcement. “If Russia does start their activity into the High North [in and around the Arctic region,] as well as China, you get to the same situations. You can’t do all your warfare from 30 or 15,000 feet. It just does not work, apart from the fixed targets.”

A more detailed notional Thunder vignette

Anduril’s Arnott also described more detailed notional operational scenarios involving Thunder to us during that interview:

“The concepts to date have been primarily driven around that you’ve got a two-ship [of] Apache, very traditional formation. You would then, depending on the mission, whether it’s a protective mission for the two ship, whether it’s a deep strike mission, or an ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] type mission, you’d have between three and six thunders for every two ship ARH [armed reconnaissance helicopter], and the intent there being that that’s a lot of metal in the air and a lot of things to manage.”

“So very much for it to be the command as opposed to control, where in effect, the way that the team presents to the Apache cockpit, whoever’s kind of got the leash, is it looks like another Apache. So it basically comes across [on] very similar data links to what the aircraft has. We call this concept ‘polite participant.’ So we don’t force any new software onto the host aircraft, or the mothership, or the quarterback, I should say. And in doing so, those teammates or wingmen are smart enough to be able to navigate and aviate in such a way that you don’t get in the way to be able to give them the similar level of command that you would to a wingman, wing person, if you will, and that they’re able to array themselves.”

“And whether it’s a chevron formation in front, whether it’s some sort of formation around the outside at cardinal points around the aircraft for a protective – a force protection mission, where you’re utilizing the counter-UAS systems that are on thunder and also electronic protection. But basically, you would put them into postures, and you command these postures that reflect themselves in formation, and then activation of various payloads that they have on board, and that may change also through the mission.”

“So you may have a setup where you’ve got the Apaches at the FOB [forward operating base]. You’ll have either at the FOB or somewhere nearby the Thunders. These guys come together and they form up. They move out. Initially, you’re just in [a] train, so you’re tracking into the AO [area of operations]. You come into … the forward line of troops. You then may move into a configuration where you’re at the cardinal points around the outside of the Apache, because part of the problem with the land domain is that the threats can come at any angle to you, and [you] have activated the counter-UAS systems and the electronic protect systems, for instance. So the Thunders would be either radiating or waiting for irradiation [sic] from an electronic attack standpoint, based on certain signals, or having their doors open as it relates to the counter-UAS, the kinetic kill payloads, that are on there, as you then transit through certain areas.”

“That may then change, where the counter-UAS payloads are in the nose, for instance, they would close, and then you go into the direct attack, which would be the main payload bay that you’ve seen the doors that are coming out. They may be fitted with direct attack weapons like Hydras [70mm unguided rockets], APKWS, or Hellfires, for instance, and then be in fire support to the Apaches in a similar way that the Apaches work together to – one set of aircrew can designate and shoot off the other[‘s targeting data]. For instance, it’s a very similar workflow, so it’s not a new workflow for direct attack.”

“Or it could be, ‘hey, I need to go and find something out there.’ So today, they’ll use the M-TADS [Modernized Target Acquisition and Designation Sight] for the video. They’ll use the fire control radar to scan an area. It’s a similar kind of workflow where they’re like, “Hey, I need to find out about something out there. The Thunders could release launched effects, for instance, like the ALTIUS product that we have, but it could be [an AeroVironment] Switchblade, it could be something else, and they would then talk back to the Thunders. So we’d have that concept of tiering out in front. The ALTIUS are then out there, and they’re finding targets autonomously with their computer vision. They’re then providing back a track picture, so icons, if you will, that come back to the Thunder. The Thunder then talks back to the Apache via the Apache data link, and the symbols appear on their map display or their FCR [fire control radar], just like they would if they were self-identified or coming from one of their formation, as well.”

Apache Fire Control: Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor

Boeing AH-64D Longbow Apache

“So the intent is these workflows are exactly the same. How it presents to the warfighter is the same. It’s just more. You can see further. You can shoot more. But the workflow, in effect, is effectively the same. So that is the whole concept of this polite participant construct that we have.”

Arnott stressed that his use of Apache here was as a generic example and that this overall concept could work with other helicopters serving in the quarterback role. Anduril also envisions command and control of the Thunders being executed by helicopter crews through existing cockpit displays rather than a tertiary device, such as a tablet. There has been much debate over the years about the physical user interface that is most suitable for use on crewed aircraft of any kind to direct uncrewed teammates.

Competition in a growing market space

Anduril is certainly not alone in seeing a market space emerging for this kind of teaming with existing and future crewed helicopters and tiltrotors, at least in broad strokes. Boeing and Sikorsky (a subsidiary now of Lockheed Martin) both unveiled vertical takeoff and landing capable loyal wingman-type drone designs around the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference last year. Boeing’s Collaborative Transformational Rotorcraft (CxR) is also a tiltrotor.

In addition, almost a decade ago now, Bell announced it was working on a Group 5 tiltrotor drone called the V-247 Vigilant. The V-247 was originally developed in response to a U.S. Marine Corps requirement, but Bell has since shown renderings depicting it operating together with versions of its crewed V-280 Valor tiltrotor design, on which the MV-75 was based.

“So, last fall, we actually asked industry what they can provide for a Group 4 VTOL/STOL [vertical takeoff and landing/short takeoff and landing] perspective,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, head of the Army’s Program Executive Office for Aviation (PEO-Aviation), said at a roundtable at AUSA. “So we use that as a great set of information on what the state of the art of technology is from a range, speed, payload, and really effects perspective. What can we bring to bear, given modern technology versus some of our older UAS [uncrewed aerial systems].”

The only difference between the Group 4 and Group 5 drone categories is operating altitude, with the designs in the former tier not being able to fly above 18,000 feet.

“When you look at a CCA role for – really linked to rotary wing, that is a different dynamic than you have at 20-to-30,000 feet,” Brig. Gen. Phillips added at that time. “So it’s a whole set of different behaviors, a whole set of different capability you need to marry that up with an aircraft that’s flying at 100 feet, at 150-plus knots, at night. So that is what we’re really looking at, is what is the state of technology right now to develop a requirement that we can deliver.”

In the context of the U.S. Army, specifically, the concepts of operations Anduril has outlined for Thunder have also prompted comparisons to the previous pairing of Apaches with crewed OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed scout helicopters. The Army retired the very last of its OH-58Ds in 2017 without a direct replacement. Several unsuccessful attempts were made before and after the Kiowa’s retirement to find a direct successor, the most recent of which was the Future Attack Recon Aircraft (FARA) program. The Army cancelled FARA in 2024 as part of a larger shakeup of aviation programs that put renewed emphasis on new uncrewed capabilities.

“We’re looking to recreate similar concepts to be able to enable deep strike missions, all the things that Apache was originally designed for with the Kiowa,” Anduril’s Arnott said.

Thunder, like the other designs emerging in space now, could also be of interest to the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. special operations forces, which are facing the same kinds of operational realities. The Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is already in line to acquire a version of the MV-75, which could also benefit very much from a drone wingman able to keep pace in terms of range and speed. The 160th has already been working to expand crewed-uncrewed teaming concepts using its existing helicopters and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone.

This all goes beyond the U.S. military, too. Last year, the U.K. Ministry of Defense also picked Anduril and three other companies to develop drone demonstrators that could be paired with British Army Apaches. Anduril’s press release at the time mentioned a partnership on that effort, which is called Project NYX, with Archer Aviation and several other firms. Anduril has explicitly declined to confirm or deny whether Thunder is its offering for that program.

The Apache, in particular, has a substantial and still growing global operator base, opening the door to other potential customers for drones like Thunder. As already noted, uncrewed wingmen could be valuable for extending the operating reach and reducing the vulnerability of other helicopter types, too.

Anduril is clearly putting a major foot forward in this space with Thunder, and the detailed concepts of operations it already has in mind to go with it. At the same time, the company has never built a tiltrotor, let alone a full-size helicopter, at least that we know of, unlike some of the other companies already in this space. Pairing with Archer and Karem on this project does offer major benefits. Archer has yet to bring an aircraft to production, as well.

Still, these same issues were often highlighted when Anduril joined the competition for the extremely high-profile and critical first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Anduril had submitted a design called Fury, which TWZ previously explored the full history of in an extensively detailed feature you can find here. Widely considered an underdog in the competition, Anduril was subsequently chosen as one of two firms in the final Increment 1 down-select, with the other being General Atomics. The Air Force has now decided to order production examples of both Increment 1 designs.

Now we’ll have to see if a similar story repeats itself for Thunder, as competition in the market space for drone wingmen for crewed helicopters and tiltrotors continues heating up.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Last things first: Eve Babitz is a major minor L.A. writer who died five years ago at age 78. She spent nearly a quarter-century as a recluse, having suffered in 1997 a shocking and disfiguring accident while striking a match to light her Tiparillo. Her thin Indian skirt caught fire searing her panty hose into her flesh, leaving her with third-degree burns over more than half her body. She never published again, though many championed her gifts, including me. At the time of her misfortune, I was book editor of the Los Angeles Times. I had long admired her, especially the rollicking and indispensable “Slow Days, Fast Company,” first published in 1977, a charming and insightful series of stories bursting with pluck and sass. I recommended to John Carroll, the then-editor of the paper, that he make her a columnist and urged Babitz to write him directly. She did, and that letter from October 2000 is the last included in “Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were),” a book of letters expertly edited and chosen by Lili Anolik. Babitz tells Carroll that “what the paper needs is some writers that cause such an uproar, people will have to read it in order to stay abreast of the edge.” Babitz knew what she was talking about. She’d been living on that edge since she was a teenager at Hollywood High in the late 1950s.

The posthumous resurrection of Babitz’s writings is most welcome. Yet there is a risk of overpraising her merits. She was an unabashed booster of the glossy L.A. that became synonymous with a rising creative elite whose élan and narcissism she found irresistible.

Lili Anolik makes the case in her perfervid introduction: “The letters are everything you could want” and often “profound” and “frequently brilliant, invariably amusing.” She says they deserve to be put on the short shelf next to Virginia Woolf’s imperishable “A Room of One’s Own” for they are “every bit as candid, every bit as lucid, every bit as brutal, every bit as delicate as Virginia Woolf’s celebrated manifesto.”

If only.

“Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were)” by Eve Babitz

(New York Review Books)

Regrettably, Anolik, who is almost singlehandedly responsible for Babitz’s literary exhumation, has so fallen in love with her subject as to almost blind her to Babitz’s defects, both with respect to her writing and to the life. With two previous books — “Hollywood’s Eve” (2019) and “Didion and Babitz” (2024) — prompted by Anolik’s riveting March 2014 Vanity Fair profile, Anolik has become Babitz’s greatest champion. Now with “Too L.A.,” a title taken from Babitz’s own over-oxygenated writing, she has gathered and edited a trove of letters. They brilliantly reveal Babitz’s eye for the deep shallow as well as explore the porous boundary between the largely self-inflicted injuries of her private life and the glittering sheen of her public persona. Babitz herself, on the strength of these 197 letters, only 30 of which she ever mailed, understood in a way Anolik doesn’t the limitations of her talents, even as she strives to slip the shackles of a mansplaining culture which at almost every turn tried to blunt her ambitions, both artistic and writerly, even as her editors and admirers sought (often with her ardent encouragement) to slip between her sheets.

Eve Babitz was born in 1943 to Hollywood neo-royalty. Her Brooklyn-born father, Sol, was first violinist for both the Los Angeles Philharmonic Symphony and then the 20th Century Fox Studio Orchestra. Sol would ultimately marry Lily Mae Laviolette, a beautiful Cajun Catholic shiksa willing to convert to Judaism. Eve’s godfather was Sol’s good friend Igor Stravinsky. When puberty burst upon her at age 14, Babitz’s blossoming made her a prime candidate for induction by the fast-track girls at Hollywood High who called themselves the Thunderbird Girls and cruised the Sunset Strip in their cool cars, looking for the main chance.

From left, Sol Babitz, Mae Babitz, Mirandi Babitz and author Eve Babitz gather at a launch party for her book “Slow Days, Fast Company” in 1977.

(Photograph by Paul Ruscha; courtesy of Mirandi Babitz / The Huntington Library)

At 20, Babitz posed nude playing chess with the fully clothed Marcel Duchamp to promote Duchamp’s retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. At the time, Babitz was having an affair with the museum’s 32-year-old married director, Walter Hopps, which perhaps explains Babitz’s reluctance to have her face photographed so as not to give the game away to Mrs. Hopps, who attended the opening. A month later, Babitz confides in an (unsent) letter: “Everything’s so fabulous for me now I can’t believe it. There’s nothing like two boyfriends to do it for you every time. There are such fabulous boys around and they take you out on dates and to movies and I feel just like a teenager. (I’m recapturing my lost youth.) I get to get dressed up and I flirt outrageously and put people on and I do things like look soulfully out the window and man it’s just too hoozie for words. … If only all of this could last forever — not that it will, but I can.”

She spent the rest of her life torn between the excitements of everyday life — cruising the hangouts du jour (Barney’s Beanery in the early 1960s where she met many of L.A.’s up-and-coming artists — Ed Kienholz, Billy Al Bengston, Laddie Dill, Peter Alexander, and the Ruscha brothers, Ed and Paul, both of whom she’d bed, Paul becoming an on-again, off-again boyfriend whose bisexuality made for a sometimes tenuous connection; and after seducing Jim Morrison before he became famous and later the Troubadour in the late 1960s which was a happy hunting ground — Steve Martin, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, J.D. Souther, Country Joe Mcdonald, Jackson Browne, to name only a few, and then Ports restaurant where she anchored a corner table) — and the seductions of drugs — uppers, acid (which she seemed to ingest with an alarming frequency), pot, of course, and then by the mid-1970s, tragically, an Everest of cocaine. She had entered what she aptly called the era of “squalid overboogie.”

Eve Babitz and her frequent companion Paul Ruscha celebrate the 1977 release of Babitz’s seminal “Slow Days, Fast Company.”

(Photograph courtesy of Mirandi Babitz / The Huntington Library)

The name-dropping is relentless and if, like me, you have an insatiable appetite for hoovering them up, this volume will not disappoint. Still, there are many pages of vapid jottings — “I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and vowed to quit smoking” — that suggest why Babitz was a failure as a novelist (see her dud “Sex and Rage”) and a superb writer of short stories and essays that stylishly plumbed the depths of her own sensibility precisely in the degree to which she was uninterested in other people.

Nearly 30 years after she stripped to please her married lover and startle the unsuspecting Duchamp, the father of Dada, and eight years after she joined AA in 1982 — the year her beloved father died of Huntington’s disease at age 70 which ultimately would also kill her — and gave up drugs and alcohol and (almost entirely) writing as well, which had always been seen by her as enabled by dope of one kind or another, she boasted that, looking back, “Everybody wanted to be me — they looked at me with yearning faces, and said, ‘Boy, you sure had fun.’ ” She was not entirely wrong. She had struck many admirers both then and now, as the quintessential California girl, a daughter of Dionysus, whose devotion to pleasure was free of misgiving or regret. She detested the East Coast avatars of apocalypse, like Nathanael West, who saw only doom and gloom in sunny L.A. Babitz, by contrast, saw things sunny side up. If Joan Didion was unsettled and made anxious by the hot Santa Anas that regularly kicked up, Babitz luxuriated in them, recalling how she and her sister would as young girls rush to embrace them, spinning madly round and round. In a 1977 unsent letter to Joseph Heller, who had championed her work when she had sent him an unsolicited fan letter after having read “Catch-22” when it was first published and she was barely 20, she declares proudly: “I’m a gossip storyteller who likes L.A. rather than hates it.” She refers to her “shallow nature,” writing that “I feel like an upstream salmon, determined to reach the shallow water, no matter how fast the river is running the other way.”

Eve Babitz, the ultimate Hollywood reveler, on Sunset Boulevard in 1980.

(Los Angeles Times)

On the evidence of these letters, she had two great loves: Ahmet Ertegun, a principal founder of Atlantic Records, and Tom Dowd, renown recording engineer and producer who worked for Ertegun. Of the two, Ertegun had the edge, if for no other reason than he came with buckets of dough, making possible assignations at his regular bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel with limo pickup and dropoff services, and the best champagne and other assorted stimulants. Ertegun was effortlessly elegant and erudite, and there was no one he didn’t know and who wouldn’t return his calls. He was married, age 45, 20 years older than Babitz, when they fell for each other in 1969. She began sleeping with him even as she agreed to profile him for Jann Wenner’s newly launched Rolling Stone. The writing didn’t go well. Wenner wanted a tougher piece than she was willing to write. Ultimately, she abandoned the assignment, claiming (not unreasonably) that she didn’t see how she could write objectively about a man she loved.

Babitz courted danger with heedless bravado and exemplary recklessness. She once had the moxie to rid herself of a would-be rapist: When told not to scream, she said with unimaginable sangfroid: “Why not?” The man bolted. It might be said of Babitz, as Oscar Wilde said of his life, that she spent her talent on her writing and reserved her genius for her life. Sculpting her natural gifts of wit and brazenness into a living artwork dazzled all who came within her orbit. Her lust for life was palpable. The letters are proof. She came at people without fear. She left them without apology. She was the boss of herself. She was the girl who seemed to have it all. The only thing she lacked was inexperience.

Wasserman, a former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, is publisher of Heyday Books, a nonprofit, independent publishing house founded in 1974 in Berkeley. He is the author of “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even if It’s a Lie: A Memoir in Essays.”

Infantino also addressed criticism surrounding the standard of officiating at the tournament, in particular concerns about political interference after USA forward Folarin Balogun was made available for their last-16 tie when his one-match ban was suspended by Fifa – following the intervention of US President Donald Trump.

Of the 191 other red cards shown at a men’s World Cup, only one other player has escaped a suspension.

Uefa said the decision had “crossed a red line”, labelling it “unprecedented, incomprehensible, and unjustifiable”, while the Norwegian Football Federation is considering filing a formal complaint to Fifa’s ethics committee.

Infantino, however, argued that such decisions are not out of the ordinary, claiming similar rulings are “routine and widely accepted in some of the biggest leagues worldwide”.

He added: “It’s curious that the same countries employing these practices are the ones criticising.”

The International Olympic Committee has said it will not investigate Infantino for any possible breaches of political neutrality, stating the complaint levelled by human rights campaign group FairSquare falls outside the jurisdiction of its ethics commission.

Infantino’s advice to his opponents was “to show some love” and “respect” to a tournament where “people came together as families, as fans, as one”.

“To everyone who missed our beautiful game, the emotions, the celebrations, the laughter, the crying, the deception and the joy. To all of you who missed watching kids, babies, grandparents and parents come together for the beautiful game… sorry that you were so consumed by hate and criticism that you missed it all,” Infantino wrote.

“While they celebrated, you were busy planting seeds of hate. Our world needs love, not hate; tolerance, not division; celebration, not mourning.

“To those spending their time and energy hating us, please take a moment to reflect, meditate, pray or watch a football match and truly observe the faces, the eyes, the emotions.

“Because only our beautiful game can deliver such an extraordinary show, a show where everyone becomes one and reconnects as humans.

“I am incredibly proud, as Fifa President, to have contributed, even a little, to this show. It’s a great feeling.”