Mogadishu, Somalia- Muslims around the world celebrated Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage period.

It is the second major holiday in the Islamic calendar after Eid al-Fitr, which follows the holy month of Ramadan.

In Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, families and communities gathered across the city on Wednesday to celebrate the occasion.

The holiday is typically marked by communal prayers in the morning, family visits, festive meals and outings for children.

Popular locations for the city’s residents include Lido Beach, the Darus Salam Zoo, and Maka al-Mukarama Road, the central business district.

More broadly, Mogadishu has been tentatively emerging from the waves of violence that have rocked the city over recent decades.

Since 2006, the government has been battling al-Shabab, a local affiliate of al-Qaeda, for control of the country – a conflict that has made Mogadishu one of the world’s most dangerous capitals.

But improving security has led to a surge of investment in the city, alongside the emergence of new cafes, restaurants and other recreational spaces.

At an Eid speech at the Islamic Solidarity Mosque, Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said, “We see the change that has happened in Mogadishu’s security,” and called on the public to protect the city’s peace. Ali Jimale Mosque, the country’s largest, usually draws the biggest crowds and serves as a gathering place for the city’s residents.

Central to Eid al-Adha is the ritual sacrifice of livestock, commemorating the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son before God provided a ram in his place.

The meat is traditionally shared among relatives, neighbours and people in need, reflecting the festival’s emphasis on charity, community and devotion.

Costs for livestock have soared in recent months in Somalia due to failed rains and drought, with a United Nations hunger monitor warning of famine risk in parts of the country.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has said 6.5 million people in Somalia are facing “high levels of acute food insecurity”, a crisis worsened by the country’s ongoing armed fighting and a political standoff that has persisted since the president’s term expired on May 15.

A funeral has been held for Mohammed Odeh, believed to be the leader of Hamas’s military wing, who Israel said was killed in a strike on a busy area in Gaza City on Tuesday. Odeh’s family has reportedly confirmed his death, despite no official comment from Hamas.

CELEBS Go Dating star Professor Green rushed his five-year-old son to hospital after a nasty accident on holiday.

The star – real name Stephen Manderson – shares son Slimane with his former partner Karima McAdams.

Taking to their respective Instagram Stories, the parents revealed Slimane had suffered an accident during the May half term holidays.

Stephen, 42, wrote: “first tooth lost, first arm fractured…happy holidays” over the top of a picture of his son on a hospital bed with Karima wrapping her arms around him.

Trying to make light of the horrible situation, the star then referred to the dark patches on the bottom of Slimane’s white socks and wrote: “state of his socks.”

Meanwhile Karima shared a snap of the three of them together, with her ex covering their son’s eyes.

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She captioned the snap: “So…he lost his front tooth yesterday trying to kiss everyone and getting it head butted out.

“Today for breakfast he fell off a zipwire with a suspected wrist fracture.

“A&E on holiday is an absolute classic. @professorgreen never a dull moment, ay?”

The pair clearly have an amicable relationship following their split in 2023 after seven years together and becoming engaged in 2021.

But during his appearance on the current series of Celebs Go Dating, Stephen admitted he had found their break up hard, especially with Slimane in their lives.

Becoming emotional, he explained: “Now that we’re co-parenting, and people don’t hear men talk about this, right?

“I never had a kid to not wake up to him. You know, my dad f*****g ran.

“I’m not running. Far from it. And it’s f*****g hard. It’s so hard to put your feelings to the side and go ‘I’m going to prioritise the well-being of my kid’.

“I can’t show him how upset I am all the time. It’s so important that he sees good example, because you have to lead by example… and it’s not easy.”

Celebs Go Dating airs on E4 and is available at Channel4.com.

The EU’s new car market maintained steady growth through the first four months of 2026, with nearly 3.8 million vehicles registered, up 4.2% from the same period in 2025. This is according to data published on Wednesday by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

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The figures show a market increasingly dominated by electric and hybrid vehicles, helped by government incentives in major economies and growing competition from Chinese carmakers.

According to ACEA, between January and April 2026, battery-electric cars accounted for 19.7% of the EU market, up from 15.3% a year earlier. Growth was mainly driven by the bloc’s four largest markets, with Italy (+25.5%), Spain (+19.7%), Germany (+6.6%) and France (+2.3%) all recording gains.

In April alone, sales of battery electric vehicles were up by 37.7% in the EU from the same month last year, lifting their market share to 20.6% for the month.

Hybrid-electric vehicles remained the most popular single powertrain choice in April, up 12%, accounting for roughly 36.9% of the month’s sales.

Plug-in hybrids added 16.4%, capturing roughly a 9.8% share in April registrations.

On the other side of the ledger, petrol car registrations fell 16.3% to fewer than 218,500 units, while diesel dropped 17.1% to around 74,000.

Together, petrol and diesel cars accounted for less than 30% of vehicles sold across the EU in April.

European brands performance in 2026

Volkswagen Group retained its position as the bloc’s largest carmaker in the first four months of 2026, accounting for 26.7% of all new registrations, with just over one million units sold, up 2.9% year-on-year.

However, performance varied across the group. Skoda registrations rose 15.5%, and Audi gained 8.6%, while the core Volkswagen brand slipped 3.2%, losing ground across multiple segments.

Stellantis ranked second with a 17.1% market share and over 648,000 units, up a robust 7.8%, driven by a recovery at Fiat of over 32%, and strong gains at Opel and Vauxhall, which together rose 22% in registrations.

Renault Group was the weakest performer in the top three, declining 7.4% to around 384,250 units and accounting for a 10.1% market share, with Dacia registering a particularly sharp fall of more than 15%.

BMW Group and Mercedes-Benz posted gains of 3.9% and 3.8%, respectively, while Toyota and Hyundai Group both recorded modest declines of between 2.5% and 3.1%.

The Chinese surge

The most significant trend in April’s data was the continued rise of Chinese carmakers.

According to ACEA figures, BYD’s EU registrations more than doubled year-on-year in the first four months of 2026, surging 152.9% to more than 71,850 units.

Chery Automobile, through its Omoda, Jaecoo and Jetour brands, grew 267.1% to more than 48,350 units, while Leapmotor, distributing through its joint venture with Stellantis, soared 558.8% to over 28,700 units.

SAIC Motor, owner of the MG brand and the largest Chinese group by EU volume, added a further 10.4% to reach more than 77,000 units.

Combined, Chinese brands accounted for around 6% of EU car registrations between January and April 2026, compared with 3.2% in the same period a year earlier. Across the wider European market, including the UK and EFTA countries, Chinese brands accounted for a combined market share of roughly 7.3% over the same period, up from 3.7% a year earlier.

JOHANNESBURG — The government in South Africa and Afrikaner advocacy groups on Wednesday rejected the position of the Trump administration that there’s a humanitarian emergency affecting white people in South Africa.

The argument served as the rationale for raising the U.S. refugee cap, but only for white Afrikaners. The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its annual cap, but blocking people from other countries from entering through the program.

President Trump’s announcement on the Federal Register that he was increasing the refugee cap because of “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation.” He blamed the South African government for “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence,” but Trump gave no specific information.

The South African government’s international relations department said Wednesday that accusations of systemic persecution of white Afrikaners are unfounded, pointing out that some beneficiaries of an immigration program have chosen to return to South Africa.

“This reality is further corroborated by the actions of individuals who, despite having availed themselves of this preferential immigration program, have since resolved to return home,” spokesman Chrispin Phiri said.

Afrikaner trade union, Solidariteit, argued that refugee status isn’t a viable solution for Afrikaners, who should thrive in South Africa instead. Spokesman Jaco Kleynhans said that the organization hadn’t discussed any “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” with the Trump administration, but respects the autonomy of U.S. refugee policy toward Afrikaners.

The union “is in no way aware of anything that the Trump administration could be referring to,” Kleynhans said.

AfriForum, a lobbying organization for the country’s white Afrikaner minority with more than 300,000 members, said it “does not have information” regarding the specific assertion that there’s an emergency refugee situation.

The organization’s CEO, Kallie Kriel, said the group’s focus is “fighting to create the circumstances in South Africa where there is no need for Afrikaners to leave.”

Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the United States. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old program on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options.

Refugee groups have questioned why white South Africans are being prioritized ahead of people from countries facing war and natural disasters. Vetting for refugee status in the U.S. often takes years.

The Trump administration’s preference for white Afrikaner refugee admissions, according to Dr. Bryony Fox, a social justice researcher at Stellenbosch University, raises questions about selective humanitarianism, inconsistent refugee protection and favoring privileged groups, while ignoring other refugee populations experiencing severe hardships.

“This risks politicizing refugee protection in a way that may ultimately weaken the legitimacy and universality of the refugee regime itself,” she said.

Gumede writes for the Associated Press.

Attention screenwriters, producers and agents: The Jonah Jeovany Vasquez story continues this weekend in Clovis, and it’s giving off Disney-like vibes.

The senior at Cathedral High is running in the 1,600 at the CIF state track and field championships on Friday at Buchanan High. He had never stepped on a “squishy” surface, otherwise known as a track, before this season.

“I never even knew what a track felt like,” he said. ”Everything was new to me.”

For three years, he attended Alliance Leichtman-Levine, a small Los Angeles charter school near his home in South Los Angeles. He ran cross country on his own with little coaching.

“They would hire a random coach off the street and we’d play flag football,” he said.

His training was jogging on a treadmill for two miles and maybe getting eight to 10 miles a week.

He finished third at the 2024 City Section Division V finals in 16:48 as the only representative from his school. In the state final, he finished 76th in Division V with a time of 16:58.60. That experience gave Vasquez motivation.

“Seeing so many people pass me bothered me,” he said. “I promised myself I was going to train hard so it wouldn’t happen again. I wanted to prove to myself I could run with the top guys.”

Jonah Jeovany Vasquez of Cathedral is on the podium after finishing second in the Division 3 1,600 at Moorpark.

(Cathedral)

He transferred to Cathedral last May, and coach Martin Farfan aggressively trained him to make up for lost time. Vasquez ran 15:35 on the state championship course in Fresno. But two weeks before the state championships, he was struck by an E-bike during a 10-mile workout running along the L.A. River. He went flying and had a gash on his knee.

“It was traumatic. I was at the peak of my power. I was super fit and faster than I had ever been,” he said.

He iced the knee and stopped training. He still ran in the CIF prelims. “I had no fitness,” he said. “I was like a deer in the headlights.”

Farfan started calling coaches telling them he had a talented runner but the recruiters were unimpressed. They took to the internet and couldn’t find a single track time for Vasquez. Farfan had a ringer about to try track for the first time.

Two weeks ago at the Southern Section divisional championships, he finished second in the Division 3 final in a personal-best 4:08.44.

Vasquez is healthy and eager to be the one passing runners with his late kick on Friday and Saturday night. He also has a scholarship waiting for him at Long Beach State.

“I’ve always had natural endurance,” he said. “I’ve been active since I was little. I honestly believe when I’m in college, I’m going to do some great things. I have that spark in me not every athlete has. I have the drive to be the best I can possibly be. Maybe not by my freshman year, but I will develop. I will not stop until reaching my goal. It’s all I want. When I sleep or do activities with my family, all I think about is running.”

His father immigrated from Nicaragua. His mother has family in Guatemala. They’ve supported Vasquez as running became his passion.

“I honestly believe I have a 4:04 or 4:05 in me,” he said.

Never doubt what can happen when a teenager finds something they love and devotes time and energy to achieving their dreams.

In a new update two massive walkouts are planned – with passengers to two European countries hit

Holidaymakers have been warned holiday flights are set to be hit after a massive strike was joined. Portugese media have today reported that cancellations will result after cabin crew and ground staff decided to walk out.

EasyJet has warned of flight disruptions, whilst TAP and SATA are allowing free rebooking. The general strike on June 3 against the labour reform is expected to have a major impact on airport services in Portugal. Reports suggest up to 500 flights could be scrapped, while trains, ferries, city metros and buses are all expected to face disruption.

It comes as holidaymakers heading to Italy were warned to brace for major disruption as a nationwide transport strike threatens chaos across the country. The 24-hour walkout is expected to hit rail services, airports, metro systems, buses and regional transport networks from 9pm on Thursday, May 28, until 9pm on Friday, May 29.

Several unions have confirmed industrial action involving major rail operators including Trenitalia, Trenord and Italo, sparking fears of cancellations and delays on some of Italy’s busiest routes. Long-distance rail services connecting major cities including Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, Bologna and Naples are expected to be among the worst affected outside protected operating periods.

Italy’s Ministry of Transport has published lists of “guaranteed” services that must continue operating during protected commuter windows between 6am and 9am, and again between 6pm and 9pm. Italy’s Civil Aviation Authority, ENAC, confirmed flights are legally protected during guaranteed operating periods between 7am and 10am and 6pm and 9pm.

In Portugal TAP and the SATA group are even allowing their passengers to rebook flights scheduled for that date at no extra cost. The airlines have already posted notices on social media and are contacting passengers.

Unions in the sector were this week negotiating with the Directorate-General for Employment and Labour Relations regarding minimum services, and only then will it be known exactly how many flights will be cancelled. It is already certain, however, that there will be flight cancellations, not least because air traffic controllers will also be joining the strike.

READ MORE: EasyJet warning ahead of major national transport strike starting tomorrowREAD MORE: Portugal travel warning as up to 500 flights could be cancelled in June

“Like all airlines operating to and from the country, easyJet may experience some disruption to its flights. The airline is currently assessing the potential impact of this situation, and customers will be contacted directly if their flights are affected. easyJet assures us that it is doing everything in its power to minimise the impact of this strike,” an official source told Expresso.

The Civil Aviation Pilots’ Union (SPAC), unlike during the last general strike on December 11, will not be taking part this time. “We have decided to stand aside from this process for now,” said Hélder Santinhos, speaking to Lusa.

“The first general strike was timely. We took a stand, both pilots and workers across the country, against the labour package,” the SPAC president began by saying. Now, he said that next week’s strike “does not seem to be at the most appropriate time”, although he reserves the right to take further industrial action. This is because, he argued, “unfortunately, the changes made to the labour package do not seem sufficient for us to agree to them”.

This stance differs from that of the members of the National Union of Civil Aviation Flight Crew (SNPVAC), who approved participation in the general strike on May 19. Sitava, the largest union for ground staff and handling personnel, has also joined the strike.

The CGTP has served notice of a general strike for June 3 against the changes to the labour law, after negotiations with the Government ended without agreement.

The hospitality sector is deeply concerned about this strike. The Portuguese Hotel and Restaurant Association (AHRESP) stated on Tuesday that the general strike will exacerbate the sector’s losses, which are already being affected by the situation at border controls.

The association argues, as reported by Lusa, that “national airports are showing signs of operational collapse” and that the general strike on June 3 “could further exacerbate the losses”. It also calls for the European Union’s Entry/Exit System at border controls to be suspended with urgency until the end of September.

AHRESP said in a statement: “Portugal invests in international promotion as a destination of excellence, yet allows the visitor’s first experience to be hours spent queuing, a missed connection, a negative reaction on social media or a booking that is not repeated.”

On Tuesday, AHRESP called for the suspension of the EES (European Union Entry/Exit System) as a matter of urgency and until the end of September, which “would speed up passenger checks and reduce waiting times at airports”.

The association also calls for “negotiation and a sense of responsibility among all parties involved, in order to avoid a strike in aviation and airport services, which, were it to take place, would result in further damage to sectors that continue to face severe economic pressures”.

The Federation of Transport and Communications Unions has announced its support for the general strike. The strike notices cover workers at Lisbon Metro, Carris, Transtejo/Soflusa, Fertagus, Mondego Metro, Porto Metro, STCP and CP.

Unions representing teachers, architects, doctors, nurses and journalists have also announced their support for the protest, which promises to bring the country to a standstill.

May 27 (UPI) — The Israeli Defense Force said Wednesday that it has killed Mohammed Odeh, a senior commander in Hamas‘ military, during a strike in northern Gaza.

An airstrike in Gaza City hit a residential building Tuesday and also killed at least three Palestinians while injuring dozens more. It struck the upper three floors of the al-Kayali building above a busy shopping area in the center of the city.

The IDF claims the residential building was used by Odeh as a hideout.

The area of the strike was busy as shoppers prepared for Eid al-Adha, a Muslim holiday that began on Wednesday.

The IDF said Odeh was responsible for planning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel.

“The commander of Hamas terror [organization’s] military arm number 4 in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his partners in the depths of hell,” Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister, posted on social media.

The IDF said it had been tracking Odeh for months leading to the airstrike.

More than 900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel and Palestine reached a ceasefire agreement enacted on Oct. 11. The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that 72,803 Palestinians have been killed in the war since Oct. 7, 2023.

Both the US and Iran have recently signaled progress on efforts to reach a deal to end their conflict, though their accounts of its terms differ on some issues across respective media narratives, Anadolu reports.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said an agreement with Iran to end the war was “largely negotiated” and awaited finalization.

On Sunday morning, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency also published a report on the details of a potential agreement. However, certain aspects of what has been agreed seem to diverge.

Here is a comparison of the US and Iranian versions of the deal by key issues.

Strait of Hormuz

Citing a US official, Axios said the deal that Washington and Tehran are close to signing would extend a ceasefire by 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened.

During the 60-day period, the Strait of Hormuz would be opened without any tolls, and Iran would remove the mines it has placed there to ensure unrestricted maritime passage.

In return, Washington would lift its blockade on Iranian ports, added the report.

The New York Times also said it was informed by three senior Iranian officials that Tehran had agreed to a memorandum of understanding to halt fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said on Sunday that the agreement could, if successful, result in a “completely open” Strait of Hormuz, with no tolls or restrictions on passage.

“They don’t own it. It’s an international waterway,” Rubio told reporters of the strait, in remarks that came during his visit to India.

A report by Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim, however, said that the Strait of Hormuz will not fully return to its pre-war status if the agreement is reached.

Instead, the number of ships allowed to pass would be restored to pre-war levels within 30 days, the outlet added.

Tehran also demands an end to the US blockade on its ports, arguing that no changes will be made in the strait if the blockade remains in place.

For its part, the US argues that the quicker Iran removes the mines and allows shipping to resume, the sooner the blockade will be lifted.

READ: Iran ready to reassure world it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, president says

Sanctions relief and release of frozen Iranian assets

Iran was seeking the immediate unfreezing of funds and a permanent lifting of sanctions, but the US position indicates these measures would only be granted after Iran made concrete concessions, according to the Axios report.

As part of the proposed 60-day agreement, the US is offering temporary sanctions waivers that would allow Iran to sell its oil freely. These waivers are explicitly linked to Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, removing mines, and ending restrictions on maritime traffic. Once these steps are taken, Washington would also lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Tehran, however, says no agreement will be reached unless at least a portion of the frozen Iranian assets is released immediately. Iranian media confirmed the discussion of temporary oil sanctions waivers in the latest US proposal but insisted on broader and more permanent sanctions relief.

Nuclear file

The Axios report said the draft deal includes commitments from Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons, along with provisions to negotiate a suspension of uranium enrichment and the removal of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

The Iranian media reports, however, indicate that Tehran has not yet accepted anything on its nuclear program.

A potential deal would involve a 60-day negotiation window on Iran’s nuclear program, according to Tasnim.

Extent of ceasefire

Both US and Iranian media reports suggest that the cessation of hostilities would mean a halt to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon.

This was also highlighted by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei on Saturday, when he said Tehran was prioritizing an end to hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon.

Context

Regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in February. Tehran retaliated with strikes targeting Israel, as well as US allies in the Gulf, along with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation and was later extended by Trump indefinitely. Washington and Tehran also held rare direct talks in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on April 11-12, but have failed to reach an agreement.

Trump’s Saturday remarks came after Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran. The visit was the second of its kind in recent weeks, as Munir is directly involved in Islamabad’s mediation efforts.

READ: Trump says Iran talks ‘constructive’ but blockade will remain until final deal is reached

PALM SPRINGS — Barry Manilow steers a golf cart to the end of a long driveway, pulls to a stop and flings a plush toy goose across a manicured lawn to the delight of his two Labrador retrievers.

“OK, where we doing this?” the 82-year-old singer asks about our interview. Dressed in a khaki shirt and slim-fitting rust-colored trousers, he’s got the look of a man prepared to undertake some très chic brush clearance; in reality, he’s motored down here merely to answer questions about his fabulous life and career.

Manilow and his husband and longtime manager, Garry Kief, moved to this sprawling desert estate from Los Angeles in the late 1990s. “We kept coming out, and it’s so beautiful that eventually we said, ‘Screw it — let’s just stay,’” he says. By then, Manilow had long since established himself as one of music’s premier showmen, with a Grammy Award, 11 Top 10 hits and a storied 15-night run at L.A.’s Greek Theatre under his belt.

So you might’ve taken Palm Springs as a sign that he was ready to slow down. Instead, he launched a residency at the Las Vegas Hilton in 2005 that eventually surpassed the length of Elvis Presley’s show there; in 2006, he released “The Greatest Songs of the Fifties,” which went platinum and spawned a series of successful follow-up albums.

Last month, Sabrina Carpenter interpolated a bit of Manilow’s iconic “Copacabana (At the Copa)” into her headlining set at Coachella just days before he was honored by the American Advertising Federation for his work writing commercial jingles. The range of those achievements said something about his blend of music-nerd craft and pop-star razzle-dazzle.

“Barry loves music as much as anyone I’ve ever known,” says Bette Midler, who hired Manilow as her pianist for the name-making gig she played at New York’s Continental Baths in the early 1970s. Performing, Midler adds, “isn’t a job with him — it’s a vocation, a calling.”

Yet now that calling faces a threat. In December, Manilow announced that he’d been diagnosed with lung cancer and that surgery would require him to postpone a number of concert dates; five months later, he has yet to return to the stage — the longest break, COVID-19 aside, he can remember taking in decades.

Fortunately for Manilow, he has a new album, “What a Time,” with which to occupy himself. Due June 5, it consists mostly of original material — his first such LP in nearly 15 years — though it opens with a sumptuous rendition of Peter Allen and Dean Pitchford’s “Once Before I Go.” Manilow notes proudly that the song, which was produced by Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, recently made Billboard’s adult contemporary chart, extending his run on that tally beyond the half-century mark.

Barry Manilow performs in Beverly Hills in 2025.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Still, performing is clearly on his mind as he leads me into a tile-roofed gym equipped with weights, a treadmill and a massage table. Manilow has been working out here every morning, he says, to regain the strength needed for his show; he’s got Vegas dates on the books for July but admits he’s unsure whether they’ll happen or not. We settle into two leather club chairs, his dogs Jake and Abby at his feet.

“Please be brilliant,” he tells me. “Don’t be boring.”

What are you doing on a day you’re not working?
Working.

I see.
Since the surgery, I can’t go on the road. Ninety minutes of screaming in tune, which is what I do for a living — I’m not up for that yet. I will be, but it’s taking a long time to get my voice back. They warned me that I’d have to learn to breathe again. So these days, I get up, I go to my piano and I try to be creative. Before I know it, the afternoon’s over.

Was the diagnosis a shock?
Imagine your doctor saying, “You’ve got lung cancer.”

Fair enough.
I’ll tell you the story. I have terrible hips — bursitis and everything — and they hurt so bad that I thought maybe I broke a bone or something. So I asked my wonderful family doctor, I said, “Can you just do one of those MRIs and see?” Now, before that, I’d had two bad bouts of bronchitis, one after the next. Have you ever had bronchitis?

I have.
It stinks. So I asked him if he could check my hip, and he told the guys that were doing it, “Why don’t you check his lungs?” And I think he might have saved my life because they found a big black thing in my chest. One doctor said it was probably remnants of the bronchitis, the other doctor said it could be cancer. I voted for the bronchitis. But they went back in to see and it was a cancerous tumor.

How’d you react?
When they told me, I was on the road, and I just went back to sound check. What else could I do? I never thought cancer would get me — it wasn’t in the cards. They wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible, so we made a deal: I’d finish the couple of weeks of shows that I had, then I’d go to the hospital and they’d remove it. It was supposed to be a no-brainer — it hadn’t spread yet, thank goodness. But then my AFib kicked in and acid reflux kicked in and pneumonia kicked in. They rushed me to the ICU for seven days.

Barry Manilow with Dionne Warwick in Los Angeles in 1985.

(Paul Harris / Getty Images)

Sorry to be morbid, but were you close to death?
They said at one point — I didn’t hear them say this but I heard that they did say it — “We don’t want to lose him.” It’s all a total blur now. When they finally brought me back to my lovely room at the Eisenhower [medical center], I weighed 128 pounds.

How long you figure it had been since you weighed 128 pounds?
I don’t remember ever being 128.

You said you never thought cancer would get you. Why?
I’m too busy. Pretty stupid. What I realized is that I’ve always been the leader — leader of the band, leader of an audience — but I wasn’t the leader of this one. That was a big lesson for me. I had to rely on everybody else. Nurses, doctors, friends — you should see some of the notes people have sent.

What’s it been like to be offstage for so long?
Agony. Make an album, go on the road, come back, make an album, go on the road — that’s what my life’s been for years. And I like it. Now I just have to get better and do what the doctors are telling me. It’s the only way out.

Well, there’s one other way.
I’m not ready to croak. But I wasn’t ready to stop performing either, and it just went like that [snaps fingers]. The day before surgery, people are screaming, standing ovation, band sounds great. Next day I’m packing to go to the hospital.

Are you working with a vocal coach?
Yep. But I get winded just walking down the hallway. I turn on my old records and sing along, and three songs in I’m like [pants].

Could you do a show where you skip the uptempos? No “It’s a Miracle” or “Copacabana”?
I’m trying ballads too — my ballads end big.

Are you allowed to smoke or drink?
I stopped smoking many, many years ago. I vape but hardly — I just like holding it. I was a great smoker. Brooklyn in the ’50s? Please. I started smoking when I was 9. I got up to three packs of Pall Mall non-filters a day, and it never bothered me — never had any problem breathing. I was just a skinny piano player who smoked. That’s who I am. That’s who I was.

Before he was a skinny piano player, he was a skinny accordion player.

Manilow grew up poor in Brooklyn, the only son of a Jewish mother and an Irish father who split up right after he was born. As a kid he entertained his mom and his maternal grandparents by squeezing out the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila”; later, his stepfather brought home records by Gerry Mulligan and Judy Garland that opened his mind to jazz and pop.

He says today that he never saw himself as a performer — he wanted to write, arrange, produce. His first success came with jingles for brands like State Farm — “Like a Good Neighbor” is his handiwork — and Band-Aid.

“My ideas were good for pop music because of the commercials,” he says. “The rules are pretty much the same — you need to grab the listener as soon as possible. For a commercial, you’ve got about five seconds. For a pop song, you’ve got 10.”

In 1971, Manilow got the job with Midler and ended up working on her million-selling debut, “The Divine Miss M,” which led to a deal of Manilow’s own with Clive Davis’ Arista Records. Despite Manilow’s insistence that he was a behind-the-scenes guy, he scored a No. 1 hit out of the box with the plaintive “Mandy,” then quickly followed that with another chart-topper, “I Write the Songs” — a pop-philosophical epic, as nobody’s tired of pointing out ever since, that Manilow didn’t actually write.

Barry Manilow at home in Palm Springs.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Bruce Johnston, who wrote “I Write the Songs” — and won a Grammy for song of the year thanks to Manilow’s recording — says the key to Manilow’s performance is that “he’s never too cool for school.” A Beach Boy for six decades until he retired from the band this year, Johnston adds that Manilow’s rendition of the song, which was also cut by Captain & Tennille and David Cassidy, “is the only one I care about, honestly. He really grabbed it — he’s just as real as he could be.”

After several more Manilow hits — “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again,” “Weekend in New England,” “Looks Like We Made It” — Davis asked the singer to produce a would-be comeback album by his latest Arista signing, Dionne Warwick. Warwick’s initial reaction to that idea: “Really?” she says with a laugh. “Did Barry Manilow really know anything about Dionne Warwick? As it turned out, he knew quite a bit,” adds Warwick, who recalls turning up for their first session to discover that Manilow had laid every one of her albums on his piano. “He was letting me know: I know you,” she says.

“Dionne,” the album they made together, went on to win a pair of Grammys and spun off silky hit singles including “Deja Vu” and “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” that reinvigorated Warwick’s career and helped solidify Manilow’s standing as a kind of soft-rock auteur.

Which isn’t to say that rock’s intelligentsia ever viewed him kindly. Though his best music finds an emotional truth in over-the-top theatrics, critics routinely dismissed Manilow as a lightweight or a schlockmeister; even now, he seems an unlikely candidate for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where he’s been eligible for induction for decades.

Manilow, who entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002, insists the slights don’t bother him. “I’ve never been one of the guys,” he says. We’ve been talking for a while, and because of the bursitis, perhaps, he’s hoisted one of his legs over the arm of his chair. “I don’t think about awards and parties and stuff like that. I’m very lucky — I live in the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen and I have the most wonderful partner that you can imagine. I’m grateful he’s chosen to share his life with me. We’ve been together for over 46 years, and we still laugh and we still love each other. That’s the greatest award I’ll ever get.”

Manilow and Kief married in 2014; the singer came out as gay three years later. (Manilow was briefly married to his high school girlfriend, Susan Deixler, in the mid-1960s.) Has he found that the world looks at him differently since he came out?

“It was a non-event. Nobody gave a s—,” he says. “They all knew. I never really hid it, but in the ’70s and ’80s, that would have killed the career, and I didn’t want to do that. So I just never talked about it.” He smiles.

“Garry and I are just two guys that live in a house on a hill with two dogs that we love.”

Like many of Manilow’s hits, “Once Before I Go” was Davis’ idea.

Allen, the late Australian entertainer portrayed by Hugh Jackman in Broadway’s Tony-winning “The Boy From Oz,” had played the tune for Manilow in the early ’80s. “And I loved it,” Manilow says now. “But I was too young to sing a song like that — that song needs age to be able to pull it off honestly.”

Davis first suggested that Manilow perform it in his set at the post-pandemic We Love NYC concert that Davis put on in Central Park in 2021. After the show, which was called off due to weather as Manilow sang “Can’t Smile Without You,” Davis repeatedly advised the singer to record it.

Clive Davis, left, with Barry Manilow at an Arista Records party in Los Angeles in 1989.

(Lester Cohen / Getty Images)

“I don’t know, he had a bug up his ass,” Manilow says. “He loved it, and he loved it for me. And I’m not even on his record label anymore — he’s just a friend at this point. But he was right once again.”

Given the cancer diagnosis, did Manilow worry that fans might interpret the song — a teary goodbye from a well-wishing lover — as a more permanent farewell?

“Not one time has anybody said, ‘Is he talking about dying?’”

You wouldn’t necessarily call “What a Time” a concept album, though many of the songs ponder the ways memory and history can shape a romance. Manilow knows he’s regarded as a singles act but says that putting together LPs is what he’s always enjoyed best. His favorite is 1984’s jazzy “2:00 AM Paradise Cafe,” on which he collaborated with Mulligan, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Tormé.

“That was one where the critics who’d been killing me, they didn’t know I was capable of doing something like that,” he says. “But frankly, I’d been surprised that I was capable of doing the pop stuff.”

You made records of hits from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Why’d you stop before “The Greatest Songs of the Nineties”?
Were there songs in the ’90s?

Barry.
Didn’t it start to go downhill?

I can think of a handful of classics by Whitney Houston alone.
You can’t touch those. I’m a good arranger, but you can’t top those records. Maybe four of those albums was enough. I was ready to go back to writing.

You’ve said the problem with modern pop is that there’s no melody anymore.
That’s what I miss. Clive’s been pushing me to do “The Great New American Songbook.”

Like he did with Johnny Mathis a few years ago.
So I’ve been studying the Top 20. The one I like is Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

“Die With a Smile.”
Love that. But the way they’re writing songs these days is not the way I know how to write songs. They don’t do a verse, a chorus, a bridge, a chorus, a big ending. To me, when I listen, the songs feel like run-on sentences.

Barry Manilow with his dog Abby.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

I was trying to think of artists older than you who are still performing.
Name me one.

Willie Nelson.
Oh, yeah.

Johnny Mathis.
Mm-hmm.

Frankie Valli.
[Rolls eyes].

You’re invoking the widely held assumption that he lip syncs.
I loved Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Who didn’t?

Would you ever lip sync?
I’m terrible at it. I try now and again.

Do you find it morally objectionable?
Depends on the artist. I like being in the moment, not knowing what’s gonna happen in the next bar or at the ending. It’s exciting to me to see if I can make those high notes.

Would not being able to make them mean it’s time to hang it up?
Well, what’s happening right now, I’m on the verge. But I’m getting stronger, so maybe I don’t have to hang it up yet. I look fantastic, but I’m a hundred years old, right? I don’t know how that happened, by the way — I don’t get Botox or anything.

You’ve had no work done?
No! I must say: There was one time when we lived in L.A. that I did do a facelift. But after that it’s just been a little here, a little there.

Wait, I asked you —
“Work” is like a facelift, and I only had one of those. The rest of it — I see something falling down, sure, I’ll do that. I’m as vain as anybody else. One of my old friends, his mother said, “I always knew he was talented, but when did he get so handsome?”

The number of high school baseball and softball teams in Southern California not wanting to participate in the regional playoffs next week continues to grow. The question is: Next season, when there are state championships held in the two sports, will there be fewer opt outs?

“I would think so,” said Brian Seymour, associate executive director of the CIF.

The City Section Open Division baseball champion, Birmingham, and runner-up, El Camino Real, both passed on the regional playoffs. Three of the four Division 1 semifinalists — Norco, Harvard-Westlake and Sherman Oaks Notre Dame — also opted out. In Southern Section softball, the two Division 1 finalists, JSerra and La Mirada, are ending their seasons on Friday.

Travel ball begins in June, and that’s the big roadblock for softball, with many coaches and players participating. Next season, the state championships would be held the first weekend of June, the same dates as this year’s regional finals, so solving the softball dilemma remains uncertain.

“We’ve heard the comment from a number of different coaches [that] once we go to a state tournament, they were more inclined to make it work,” Seymour said. “Softball may take a little longer to come around. The power of representing your community and school is a little bit more than playing for your fifth travel team.”

But players invest thousands of dollars in club softball and coaches make good summer money in travel ball.

Seymour said multiple sites are under consideration in Southern California and Northern California to host the state championships.

He’s hopeful both will catch on like swimming did when the CIF first had state championships.

“We have everybody in swimming now, where the first year was hit and miss,” he said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

Nestled along the picturesque UK shoreline is a stunning beach with azure waters and stretches of soft sand – but it’s left visitors a little taken aback for one reason

A beautiful UK beach with crystal-clear turquoise waters is often dubbed the ‘Bali of the UK’, but there’s more than meets the eye.

Nothing says heatwave like a day out at the beach, and the UK is brimming with stretches of golden coastline, dramatic chalk white cliffs, and azure waters that could easily be mistaken for those found in the Caribbean. That’s if you know where to look. And one stunning beach might just stand out from them all, for more reasons than one.

Nestled on the south coast of the Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall is Pedn Vounder Beach, tucked away in a secluded, tidal cove, which could arguably be one of the most beautiful UK shores. The beach is characterised by crystal-clear turquoise waters and unspoilt, soft, golden sand, framed by towering cliffs in a UK oasis.

READ MORE: Beautiful ‘city of dreaming spires’ has UK’s best bookshops and runs on its own time

OPINION

Amy Jones

During low tide, shallow, aquamarine pools are formed – perfect for a dip during the warmer months, although people should be aware of the currents and the steep terrain to access the beach. However, it’s well worth the walk down, as those looking for a little slice of paradise will be rewarded with picture-postcard vistas of the beach, often dubbed the ‘Bali of the UK’.

It remains untouched, with stretches of pristine sand to enjoy and the lapping of azure waters in a secluded location away from the busier seaside resorts. But those taking the rugged route down to the breathtakingly beautiful beach might be caught off guard, as it’s often been known as an unofficial naturist beach.

One traveller commented on Facebook: “Beautiful but absolutely had a shock as we weren’t aware of what type of beach it was!”

Another agreed: “My partner and I also didn’t know this was a clothing-optional beach until we got down to it and saw much more than we were expecting!”

A third added: “Same until we got there.”

On TripAdvisor, one visitor also revealed: “This is a nudist beach, and the climb down is not for the faint-hearted. However, there are clear signs warning you of both of these on the way down.”

They later added: “One of the most breathtaking beaches I have ever visited. The waters were crystal blue and the beach beautifully sandy.”

Commenting further, another traveller shared: “There are clothed and unclothed bodies. Most of the nude people are on the left end of the beach, and everyone is very respectful.”

Other explorers issued a warning to those looking to access the secluded beach due to its challenging walk down.

One shared on TripAdvisor: “This beach cove really is gorgeous, the water is crystal clear and a stunning turquoise colour, you wouldn’t believe it’s in the UK! Only about a mile from the nearest parking lot, but it definitely isn’t a trip for the faint-hearted. It is a very steep hike/climb down to get onto the beach, virtually rock climbing. Make sure you take all the essentials too, as there is nothing around once you get there.”

Another commented: “A stunning beach it is quite a climb down over the rocks so you do need to be prepared for this. The beach is definitely worth the climb, especially when the tide goes out. The best beach I have been to.”

One more shared: “Totally amazing – but mainly writing this review for some advice for others, we’ve been going for 30 years, but due to social media, lots of people are now trying. “You need to be pretty fit, mobile and able to descend down a cliff face to access – getting down with buggies or people with mobility difficulties will find it difficult.”

They added: “Also, it is a nudist beach, has been for years and years – if people have an issue with this, it’s probably not the beach for you.”

Yet for those up for the challenge, who have checked the tide and planned a route, might just be met with some of the most stunning vistas that easily rival those found in the Caribbean or Bali.

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

May 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said his cabinet meeting on Wednesday afternoon will be at the White House instead of Camp David, as was planned, due to weather.

“Based on the possible bad weather conditions tomorrow, we will be having our Cabinet Meeting in the White House, and will be postponing the Cabinet trip to Camp David,” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon.

Thunderstorms are expected in the region.

The meeting will “highlight recent successes of the administration, including economy and small business wins, Task Force to Eliminate Fraud highlights, and foreign policy updates,” a White House official told ABC News.

Trump hasn’t been to the Presidential Retreat at Camp David in Frederick County, Md., in nearly a year.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to attend. She will depart her position at the end of June after announcing her resignation last week.

Michael O’Neill says he is “100% committed” to Northern Ireland after he signed a new four-year contract with the Irish FA, but he has not ruled out another dual role in the future.

O’Neill had been appointed interim Blackburn Rovers boss in February and had been balancing this role with his position at Northern Ireland, who lost to Italy in the World Cup play-offs in March.

However, it was announced earlier in the month that he would not be taking on the Blackburn job on a permanent basis.

On Wednesday, the IFA confirmed that O’Neill had extended his current contract by four years until 2032.

When asked if he would consider taking on a short-term dual role again in the future, O’Neill did not rule it out as he said: “That’s not a question I need to answer at this minute”, adding it was “hypothetical”.

O’Neill said that he did not “have any regrets” about taking on the role with Blackburn, but admitted he “probably could have done with a little less drama”.

“I said all along, I didn’t think it would affect our preparation for the Italy game, which it didn’t,” O’Neill said.

“I managed to keep Blackburn up, which was the remit of the job.

“I probably think that maybe I underestimated the reaction to it a little bit, but ultimately that’s a learning experience for me as well.”

On May 7, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka announced in parliament that the government would return 67 farms seized during the country’s land reform programme to European nationals from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The farms, he said, were protected under bilateral investment protection agreements signed between Zimbabwe and the four European states before the land seizures.

The measure forms part of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s effort to restore relations with Western governments and international financial institutions after more than two decades of crisis, sanctions, isolation and debt default linked in part to the fast-track land reform programme of the early 2000s.

Zimbabwe is trying to restructure about $11.7bn in external debt, including $7.7bn owed to multilateral and bilateral creditors. On May 20, the International Monetary Fund approved a staff-monitored programme to support reforms and debt restructuring.

Resolving disputes linked to land reform has become central to that re-engagement process. In July 2020, Zimbabwe signed a $3.5bn compensation agreement with former white commercial farmers for infrastructure and improvements on acquired land. Last year, it began compensating treaty-protected foreign farmers, including claimants from Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.

But this development also exposes a deeper contradiction embedded in the global order governing land and property rights in former settler colonies: European claims arising from postcolonial redistribution are treated as urgent, enforceable and respectable, while African claims arising from colonial dispossession remain largely outside the same legal and moral framework.

The colonial dispossession that created white land ownership in Rhodesia never received the same urgency as the one now directed at restoring European claims after postcolonial redistribution. At independence in April 1980, no comparable mechanism forced Britain, Rhodesia or settler beneficiaries to compensate Africans dispossessed through conquest, racial legislation and forced removal. Yet once postcolonial Zimbabwe attempted to redistribute that land, its protection suddenly became tied to legality, investor confidence and international respectability.

In October 1889, Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC) received a royal charter from the British Crown, accelerating white settler expansion across the territory that became Southern Rhodesia. The 1893 war against King Lobengula’s Ndebele kingdom opened vast areas of land to settler occupation, while the crushing of the 1896-97 First Chimurenga, led by resistance figures such as Mbuya Nehanda, consolidated British control across the colony.

Early dispossession was not only territorial. After 1893, BSAC forces seized cattle on a large scale in Matabeleland, weakening the economic foundations of local communities. By 1958, Southern Rhodesia’s European population of roughly 207,000 controlled almost 48 million acres of prime agricultural land, while about 2.55 million Africans had 41.95 million acres of poorer, overcrowded and less arable land.

From the 1890s onwards, colonial land seizures in Rhodesia were enforced and legitimised through the selective application of British imperial law and BSAC decrees. African ownership of land was never recognised with the same standing granted to settler occupation.

That legal order survived the expansion of settler rule through the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and continued to shape later legal frameworks.

That lopsided inheritance still shapes the global response to Zimbabwe’s land question decades after independence.

Bilateral investment treaties signed between Zimbabwe and foreign states gave protected investors the right to seek compensation when property covered by those agreements was expropriated. In practice, certain foreign-owned farms seized during fast-track land reform entered an international system backed by arbitration mechanisms, treaty enforcement and diplomatic pressure, even though the land itself had been acquired through conquest and war. The 67 farms covered by Masuka fall into that category.

Africans dispossessed under colonial rule were never granted comparable access to international reparations or protected claims against empire.

Part of this asymmetry is structural: European farmers can invoke treaties their governments signed and a compensation deal Zimbabwe itself agreed, while the dispossessed have no counterparty to sue, no instrument to enforce and, in Rhodesia, no surviving state to hold to account. But that is precisely the point. The legal architecture was built to recognise one kind of loss and not the other.

In April 2009, Dutch farmers protected under a bilateral investment treaty brought Funnekotter and others v Zimbabwe before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), and the tribunal ordered Zimbabwe to compensate them for expropriated farms. In 2015, another ICSID tribunal ruled in favour of European claimants linked to Swiss and German property interests in von Pezold and others v Zimbabwe after land seizures under fast-track reform.

The contrast is stark for everyday Zimbabweans.

My maternal grandparents lived in what was the Seke Reserve in Mashonaland, a place where most people were settled on small plots of land with “rather poor sand veldt with a lot of bush”. The reserve was created in 1899 along a boundary that ran roughly along the Hunyani River to the north and northeast, separating African-occupied land from areas soon to be claimed by white settlers.

On the other side of that line, colonial authorities allocated fertile, riverfront and midslope land to white commercial farmers, while families who had once farmed across that broader landscape were confined to a narrow, overcrowded reserve with low-grade soils and limited water.

This was part of a wider colonial regime that, from 1894, also pushed many Ndebele communities into the dry, low-rainfall and tsetse-fly-infested Gwaai and Shangani reserves in Matabeleland North.

Their subsequent, imposed impoverishment and losses, of land, cattle, livelihoods, political authority and economic autonomy, were absorbed into colonial history rather than treated as enforceable claims demanding compensation from the imperial system that created them.

They all died landless and economically broken, largely invisible to the global legal order and without meaningful redress, much like countless Indigenous communities around the country.

Yet Zimbabwe’s compensation framework, shaped largely by external pressure and Western imperatives, recognises losses arising from fast-track land reform and treaty-protected commercial farms. It does not recognise losses like those experienced by my grandparents, or by countless families whose land, cattle and livelihoods were taken under colonial rule.

For years, Zimbabwe’s debt re-engagement process has been tied to arrears clearance, economic reforms and the settlement of land-related disputes. The restoration of treaty-protected European claims has therefore become intertwined with Zimbabwe’s attempts to regain access to international finance and repair relations with Western creditors, chiefly the IMF and World Bank.

Compensation agreements and investor protections are presented as proof that Zimbabwe is becoming governable, predictable and safe again for international capital. In effect, Zimbabwe is being asked to rehabilitate confidence in settler-derived property rights as part of its return to global financial legitimacy.

Launched in 2000, Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform programme was characterised by widespread economic disruption and violence against Black farmworkers, white farmers and opposition MDC supporters. Those failures do not erase the history of land theft that made redistribution a central political question in the first place.

The unresolved collision between colonial property systems and African restitution claims extends far beyond Zimbabwe. In former settler colonies such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, it is overwhelmingly Black Africans who are expected to absorb mass land dispossession without compensation.

Colonial seizure is treated as inconvenient background history, while postcolonial attempts to restructure ownership are framed as threats to “markets” and “investor confidence”.

African efforts to recover land face more obstacles than the colonial systems that stole it.

Land reform should be lawful, accountable and economically productive. Nonetheless, international law cannot treat property rights created through settler colonialism as morally untouchable while dismissing African compensation as dangerous or illegitimate.

The 67 farms are standing remnants of an old and unresolved colonial atrocity.

My grandmother’s people also have rights.

Zimbabweans are still waiting for justice.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Loved ones and healthcare workers gathered for the burial of a doctor who died after treating Ebola patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fears among frontline medical teams are growing as the outbreak worsens, with more than 900 suspected cases of the virus.

The BBC’s hit thriller filmed in Bristol and Somerset has finally returned for its second season, but where was it filmed?

Fans want to know if Little Kilton is a real place.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is back today (Wednesday, 27th May) and sees Pip Fitz-Amobi (played by Emma Myers) delving into another chilling missing person case.

This time, she’s determined to put predator Max Hastings (Henry Ashton) behind bars, but the disappearance of a key witness, Connor’s older brother Jamie, pushes her investigative skills to the limit.

Based on the bestselling novels by Holly Black, the first series became a huge hit thanks to its addictive, edge-of-your-seat twists and a global release on Netflix.

It is also famously filmed in Bristol and other parts of the West Country, standing in for Pip’s fictional village of Little Kilton.

With six thrilling new episodes now streaming on iPlayer, let’s take a look a little closer at the locations used in the second season.

Where was A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder season 2 filmed?

The second series of the popular BBC and Netflix drama was once again filmed around Bristol and Somerset.

Much of the show’s interior scenes are shot at Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol, which reportedly includes the likes of school classrooms, investigation rooms, and darker interiors for the murder-mystery show’s more suspenseful scenes.

Bristol itself was also used for more urban areas of Little Kilton to highlight the second outing’s gritty tone. Clifton Village in central Bristol, including the Clifton Suspension Bridge, can also be seen briefly.

Standing in for the idyllic village of Little Kilton is Axbridge, a small town near Cheddar, Somerset.

The town square, the Old Station and Chestnut Avenue were all closed for filming in 2025, with a memorial, flags, and other decor put up for key scenes including the memorial service which kicks off season two. Axbridge’s St John the Baptist Church can also be seen.

Season two director Asim Abassi confirmed: “We filmed Little Kilton in the town of Axbridge, which is lovely but small, so you get the challenges of a tight-knit community curious about filming. But it is wonderfully quaint and perfect for Little Kilton.”

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Another key location this time around is an abandoned manor, which actor Zain Iqbal, who portrays Pip’s boyfriend Ravi, confirms is near Bristol.

And Abassi revealed it was his “favourite” location, adding: “It was originally meant to be something else, but I pushed for it to be a manor, so I am personally attached to it.

“It ended up being a phenomenal location and, to me, captures the essence of season 2.”

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder season 2 is available on BBC iPlayer and internationally on Netflix.

The catalog of unrequited hopes and hearts is a long one.

Captain Ahab went mad in his vengeful search for “Moby Dick.” Jay Gatsby’s ostentatious fortune failed to win the love of Daisy Buchanan. Charlie Brown never kicked the football.

Then there’s Texas, the land of broken Democratic dreams.

It’s been half a century since the party carried Texas in a presidential election. The last time Democrats won a statewide office, back in 1994, “The Lion King” was smashing box office records, Boyz II Men ruled the radio and the World Wide Web was about to change everything.

As Texas grew increasingly Republican, and politically beyond reach, Democrats insisted every election year was the one when they’d end their futility and take back power in either Washington or Austin, the state capital.

It never happened.

But is this, finally, the year?

With Ken Paxton stomping incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in a fierce and astronomically expensive U.S. Senate primary, many Democrats believe so — and even neutral observers agree they’ve been handed their best shot at resurrection in a good while.

“Paxton is going to be a much tougher guy [for Republicans] to haul over the finish line five months from now as opposed to Cornyn, who never lost an election until this one,” said Richard Murray, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Houston, who spent decades surveying Texas voters. “We’re looking at a very expensive, hard-fought race.”

Paxton, Texas’ three-term attorney general, is a singularly flawed candidate. Indicted, impeached, accused by his ex-wife of adultery, the GOP nominee is, to put it mildly, “an ethically challenged individual,” as the famously understated (and concerned) Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins put it.

But Paxton was the choice of President Trump — he, too, of impeachment, indictment and adulterous infamy — and that settled that.

Trump described Cornyn, a four-term senator and former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, as a “good man” but insufficiently supportive when “times were tough.” Among those occasions of abandonment, Cornyn voted to certify the incontrovertible result of the 2020 presidential election, thwarting Trump’s bid to illegally stay in office.

The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is James Talarico, 37, a state representative from Austin and a Presbyterian seminarian and former public schoolteacher who’s built a nationwide following with his articulate and scriptural takedown of Republican foes. Imagine Beto O’Rourke with a clerical collar and capacity to mint money.

In 2018, O’Rourke came from seemingly nowhere and nearly upset Republican Ted Cruz in the closest Texas Senate race in decades. Before that it was the filibustering Wendy Davis who fired up Democratic imaginations nationwide. She commandeered the floor of the state Senate to briefly block antiabortion legislation — This is the year! — before falling well short in a 2014 bid for governor.

The key difference this time, with all due credit to Talarico and his prodigious fundraising, is his damaged-goods opponent. Normally, all it takes to win in Texas is a Republican ‘R’ beside a candidate’s name. But polling suggests a not-insignificant number of GOP voters could have a hard time supporting Paxton, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll back Talarico. They may simply not vote in the Senate race, which could be nearly as costly.

(The counterargument is that Paxton, a martyred hero to the MAGA movement, could boost turnout among the party base at a time Trump is leaking support within the establishment GOP.)

Either way, the president’s me-first political self-indulgence is not making things any easier for his fellow Republicans as they fight to hang on to control of the House and Senate in November.

In the 2022 midterm election, Trump boosted a batch of unappealing misfits — their sole attribute being their fealty to him — with poor results. Republicans lost eminently winnable Senate contests in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and, with it, their chance at control of the chamber.

Even if Paxton prevails in November, Trump’s endorsement could prove quite costly to the GOP, and not just in the figurative sense.

Democrats need a gain of four seats to flip the Senate. To do so, they must successfully defend seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire and then pick up at least four others from a menu that includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and, now, Texas.

It’s a considerable reach. But Democratic chances look a lot better than they did just a few months ago, before Trump mired the country in an Iranian quagmire and the price of gas and just about everything else began to sail through the ceiling.

Holding on to Cornyn’s seat will end up costing Republicans a kingly sum — money that “can’t be spent in two places at the same time,” as Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Texas GOP strategist and advisor to Cornyn’s campaign, noted. “It can go either to Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa, Alaska. Or it can go here to Texas, which is extremely expensive.”

Odds are against Talarico and Democrats winning the Senate race in November, because Texas remains, fundamentally, a Republican and conservative-leaning state. Paxton may win for that reason and that reason alone.

“This is as good an environment as Democrats are going to get realistically,” said Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin, who’s witnessed many highly touted Democrats fail in a blaze of unwarranted hype. “But when you start doing the math, it’s a little bit hard to see it all adding up.”

Which is not to say it can’t happen.

Truth, as the saying goes, can be stranger than “Moby Dick” or any other fiction.

Dodgers rout Rockies, but lose Kiké Hernández

From Maddie Lee: Dodgers utility man Kiké Hernández sat with manager Dave Roberts on the dugout bench for a while after he was lifted from a 15-6 win over the Rockies on Tuesday with what the team later called a left oblique strain.

“He understood how frustrated I was,” Hernández said, “and he was trying to get me to keep my head up.”

The Dodgers plan to put Hernández on the 10-day injured list and recall infielder Alex Freeland, Roberts said after the game. Hernández expects to know more about the severity of the injury Wednesday.

“It’s a bummer,” Roberts said after the game. “He’s missed a lot of time and worked hard to get back, was in great shape, added that spark that we had hoped.”

It was his second game of the season, after starting the year on the injured list after offseason surgery on his left elbow. And he was driving the ball hard.

But he said he initially tweaked his oblique before his season debut, during batting practice Monday.

“I was pretty embarrassed about it,” Hernández said. “I thought it was just weird tightness. Never done an oblique before. So I didn’t really know what I was feeling. Came in today, wasn’t feeling great. I got treatment, but I thought I could play. … Compared to some of the things I’ve played through in the past, it was nothing.

“And, yeah, it was a little more than nothing”

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Dodgers box score

MLB standings

New Dodger Eric Lauer got early help from Mark Prior

From Maddie Lee: For a 20-year-old Eric Lauer, fresh out of Kent State University in 2016, talking pitching with Mark Prior made the big leagues feel closer.

“We were so young,” Lauer said in a conversation with The Times, “that it was kind of funny, because everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Mark Prior.’ ”

Prior, the beloved former Cubs All-Star, finished third in NL Cy Young voting when Lauer was 8 years old.

“He was one of the first experiences I had where I was like, ‘OK, like, these elite big leaguers are just normal guys. They’re just like us.’ ”

Prior was a “high-level thinker,” as Lauer put it, who steered Lauer toward in-depth self-evaluation. But he also was just “a normal dude.”

The two have reunited with the Dodgers. Lauer — who held the Rockies to one run and four hits in his six-inning Dodgers debut Tuesday — was a midseason addition as injuries thinned the team’s starting pitching depth. Prior has been on the Dodgers’ coaching staff since 2018, serving as the pitching coach since the 2020 season.

But when they first met, Lauer was a Padres 2016 first-round draft pick and Prior was the minor-league pitching coordinator.

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Angels win fourth in a row

Vaughn Grissom hit a grand slam and drove in six runs as the Angels beat the Detroit Tigers 10-6 on Tuesday night.

Detroit led 6-4 going into the eighth, and Will Vest (1-4) got the first two out with a runner on second. Logan O’Hoppe’s double made it a one-run score, Zach Neto singled and Mike Trout walked to load the bases.

Facing his ninth batter of the game — matching a career high — Vest fell behind 2-0 before Grissom homered to right-center field to give the Angels the 9-6 lead.

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Angels box score

MLB standings

U.S. World Cup roster announced

From Kevin Baxter: Mauricio Pochettino knows the joy of making a World Cup roster. But he also knows the misery of being left off one.

In the first case, you want to celebrate; in the second, you want to be left alone.

The U.S. coach said he kept both emotions in mind when informing players they had — or had not — made the roster for next month’s tournament, a roster that was formally announced Tuesday during a sun-splashed, made-for-TV rally in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, about 13 miles from where July’s World Cup final will be played.

“The most important event is to be in any single roster,” said Pochettino, who made Argentina’s team for the 2002 World Cup after being passed over four years earlier.

So when Pochettino decided which 26 men would be on his team this summer, each of them got a WhatsApp message, followed by a video, sent out at 1 p.m. Eastern Time Friday. Defender Tim Ream said he received the message as he walked to his car after training with his club team in Charlotte, N.C.

U.S. World Cup roster

Goalkeepers: Chris Brady (Chicago Fire), Matt Freese (New York City), Matt Turner (New England Revolution)

Defenders: Max Arfsten (Columbus Crew), Sergiño Dest (PSV), Alex Freeman (Villarreal), Mark McKenzie (Toulouse), Tim Ream (Charlotte FC), Chris Richards (Crystal Palace), Antonee Robinson (Fulham), Miles Robinson (FC Cincinnati), Joe Scally (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Auston Trusty (Celtic)

Midfielders: Tyler Adams (AFC Bournemouth), Sebastian Berhalter (Vancouver Whitecaps), Weston McKennie (Juventus), Gio Reyna (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Cristian Roldan (Seattle Sounders), Malik Tillman (Bayer Leverkusen)

Forwards: Brenden Aaronson (Leeds United), Folarin Balogun (AS Monaco), Ricardo Pepi (PSV), Christian Pulisic (AC Milan), Tim Weah (Marseille), Haji Wright (Coventry City), Alejandro Zendejas (Club América)

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Major League Volleyball comes to L.A.

From Marisa Ingemi: Los Angeles is getting another pro women’s volleyball team.

Major League Volleyball announced it will expand to L.A. in 2027, adding another team to the growing professional volleyball market.

The team will be co-owned by billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who also owns the Los Angeles Times and is a minority owner of the Lakers. He will operate the team alongside Ben Priest, a former investor of MLV’s Omaha Supernovas, one of the league’s first teams.

Sportico reported the duo are paying an expansion fee around $15 million-$20 million to join the five-year-old operation.

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Chargers, Derwin James agree to contract extension

Five-time Pro Bowl safety Derwin James and the Chargers have agreed to a multiyear extension.

The team announced the deal Tuesday. James was entering the final year of his contract, and general manager Joe Hortiz had said that keeping the five-time Associated Press All-Pro was a priority.

James has helped the Chargers’ defense rank fourth in the NFL in total defense over the last two years, allowing 304.8 total net yards per game. The team led the league in 2024 by allowing just 17.7 points per game.

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Kelsey Plum injured

Sparks guard Kelsey Plum sprained her ankle during practice Tuesday.

The team said she’ll be reevaluated next week.

Plum is leading the WNBA in scoring with a career-best 26.8 points per game, while shooting 59% from the floor and 49% from three-point range. Her 6.3 assists average is also a career high.

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This day in sports history

1823 — A $20,000 match race between American Eclipse (representing The North) and Henry (representing The South) is held at Union Course, Long Island, N.Y. American Eclipse wins in two-of-three heats, after his original jockey, William Crafts, is replaced by Samuel Purdy before the second heat. The race, witnessed by 60,000 spectators, is the first to have been timed by split-second chronometers, which were imported for the event.

1873 — Survivor is the winner of the first Preakness Stakes.

1882 — Trainer Robert Walden wins his fifth consecutive Preakness Stakes, with Vanguard. Walden would win a total of seven Preaknesses, a record for a trainer.

1961 — Fiorentina of Italy win 1st European Cup Winner’s Cup against Glasgow Rangers 4-2 in Florence (2nd leg).

1964 — European Cup Final, Praterstadion, Vienna: Internazionale beats Real Madrid, 3-1 for their first title.

1965 — 10th European Cup Final, San Siro, Milan: Jair da Costa scores winner as defending champions Internazionale beat Benfica, 1-0.

1968 — “Papa Bear” George Halas retires as head coach of the Chicago Bears.

1972 — Mark Donohue wins the Indianapolis 500 over two-time defending champion Al Unser with a record average speed of 162.962 mph.

1975 — The Philadelphia Flyers win their second straight Stanley Cup with a 2-0 victory over the Buffalo Sabres in Game 6.

1981 — Willie Shoemaker wins his 8,000th race and then three more. Shoemaker gets the milestone on top of War Allied in the first race at Hollywood Park.

1981 — Julius Erving of the Philadelphia 76ers is named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, making him the only player to win MVP honors in the NBA and the ABA.

1981 — 25th European Cup: Liverpool beats Real Madrid 1-0 at Paris.

1982 — The Lakers, despite an 11-day layoff, beat Philadelphia 124-117 in Game 1 of the NBA Finals for their ninth consecutive victory. The nine straight wins sets the NBA record for consecutive wins during one postseason.

1984 — Rick Mears wins the Indianapolis 500 by the largest margin in 17 years with a record-setting 163.612 mph. Mears beats Roberto Guerrero and Al Unser by two laps. Fifteen of the 33 drivers are eliminated during two crashes.

1985 — Scott Wedman sinks four three-point field goals without a miss and shot 11-for-11 overall from the field, both NBA Finals records, as Boston routs the Lakers 148-114 in Game 1. Boston’s 148 points and 62 field goals are NBA Finals records.

1987 — 31st European Cup: Porto beats Bayern Munich 2-1 at Vienna.

1990 — Arie Luyendyk wins the fastest Indianapolis 500 by overpowering former winner Bobby Rahal over the final 33 laps, for his first Indy car victory in 76 races. His average speed of 185.984 mph breaks Rahal’s record of 170.722 in 1986. Luyendyk becomes the first to finish the race in under three hours.

1998 — In one of the biggest upsets in Grand Slam history, Pete Sampras is ousted at the French Open by 21-year-old Ramon Delgado of Paraguay, ranked 97th in the world, 7-6 (8-6), 6-3, 6-4.

2001 — Hicham El Guerrouj runs the fastest outdoor mile ever in the United States, and high school sensation Alan Webb breaks four minutes outdoors. El Guerrouj wins in a sizzling 3 minutes, 49.92 seconds, shattering the U.S. all-comers’ record of 3:50.86. Webb, the 18-year-old from Reston, Va., puts on a brilliant last-lap burst and finishes fifth at 3:53.43, smashing the high school record of 3:55.3 set by Jim Ryun in 1965.

2001 — Senior PGA Championship, Ridgewood CC, NJ: 5-time British Open champion Tom Watson wins first of 6 Champions Tour major titles with a 1 stroke win over Jim Thorpe.

2004 — Brad Richards’ goal in Tampa Bay’s 4-1 victory over Calgary is the game-winner — his record-tying sixth of the postseason.

2007 — Dario Franchitti gambles on the rain and wins the Indy 500. Franchitti inherits the lead by staying on the track when the leaders pit for fuel and then drives slowly to the checkered flag in a downpour when the race is stopped 10 laps later after 415 of the scheduled 500 miles.

2007 — Senior PGA Championship, Kiawah Island Golf Resort, Ocean Course: Denis Watson of Zimbabwe wins his lone major title by a 2 stroke margin from Eduardo Romero of Argentina.

2009 — UEFA Champions League Final, Rome: Barcelona beats Manchester United, 2-0; first Spanish treble of La Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League.

2011 — Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki loses to Daniela Hantuchova 6-1, 6-3 in the third round of the French Open. It marks the first time in the Open era that the top two seeded women fail to make the round of 16 at a Grand Slam tournament. Kim Clijsters, the No. 2 seed, lost on May 26.

2012 — Dario Franchitti wins the Indianapolis for the third time, taking advantage when Takuma Sato crashes on the final lap.

2012 — Manu Ginobili scores 26 points and San Antonio wins its 19th in a row to tie the NBA record for longest winning streak in the playoffs. The Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 101-98 to open the Western Conference finals.

2014 — The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater becomes the only school in NCAA history to win championships in football, men’s basketball and baseball in the same school year.

2017 — English FA Cup Final, Wembley Stadium, London: Arsenal beats Chelsea, 2-1; Aaron Ramsey scores 79′ winner as Arsène Wenger becomes most successful manager in FA Cup history, winning his 7th title.

2018 — Chris Frome wins the Giro d’Italia to join cycling greats Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault with his third consecutive Grand Tour victory.

2018 — Senior PGA Championship, GC at Harbor Shores: Englishman Paul Broadhurst wins by 4 strokes from American Tim Petrovic.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1904 — Dennis McGann of the New York Giants stole five bases in one game to set a major league record.

1937 — Carl Hubbell, working in relief for the New York Giants, won his 24th straight game over two seasons. Hubbell pitched two innings and Mel Ott hit a ninth-inning home run to beat the Cincinnati Reds 3-2. Hubbell’s string started July 17, 1936.

1955 — Norm Zauchin of the Boston Red Sox knocked in 10 runs with three home runs and a double in the first five innings of a 16-0 victory over the Washington Senators.

1960 — Baltimore catcher Clint Courtney used the “big mitt” for the first time to catch knuckleball pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm. The mitt, designed by Paul Richards, was 50% larger than the standard. Nothing got by Courtney as the Orioles beat the New York Yankees 3-2.

1968 — Montreal and San Diego were awarded National League franchises as the league expanded for the first time in seven years.

1974 — Pittsburgh’s Ken Brett beat the San Diego Padres 6-0 with a two-hitter and in the second game of the doubleheader, hit a pinch-hit triple to give the Pirates an 8-7 victory.

1981 — Seattle’s Lenny Randle dropped to his hands and knees in an attempt to “encourage” Amos Otis’ slow roller to go foul. Umpire Larry McCoy accused the Mariner third baseman of blowing the ball foul and gave the Kansas City outfielder the single. Randle explained he was merely yelling at the ball not to stay fair. The Royals won 8-5.

1986 — At Cleveland, the Boston Red Sox were leading the Indians, 2-0, in the sixth inning when the game was delayed then called on account of fog.

1995 — Oakland’s Steve Ontiveros pitched 3-0 one-hitter against the New York Yankees. Luis Polonia got the only hit for New York.

1997 — Seattle’s Ken Griffey Jr. broke his own major league record for home runs hit through May by connecting for his 23rd of the season in an 11-10 loss to Minnesota. Griffey’s homer broke the mark he set in 1994.

2004 — Carlos Pena was 6-for-6 with two home runs, five RBIs and four runs in Detroit’s 17-7 victory over Kansas City.

2009 — Daisuke Matsuzaka and the rest of Boston’s pitchers tied a modern-day record with six wild pitches. Matsuzaka tied a franchise record set 80 years ago with four, while relievers Manny Delcarmen and Justin Masterson also sent catcher George Kottaras scrambling. It was just the fifth time since 1900 that a team threw six wild pitches in a game.

2010 — Florida International’s Garrett Wittels extended his hitting streak to 50 games with a third-inning single against Western Kentucky. Wittels moved within eight games of matching the NCAA Division I record of 58, set by Oklahoma State’s Robin Ventura in 1987.

2012 — Taylor Sewitt threw 11 shutout innings of relief, entering the game with no outs in the first, to help Manhattan College beat Canisius 3-2, for the school’s second straight Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title.

2012 — Paul Konerko hit a tiebreaking three-run homer — his 400th with the White Sox — and Chicago routed the Cleveland Indians 12-6. The offensive outburst gave Chicago nine or more runs in four consecutive games. The White Sox last accomplished that feat June 27-30, 1938.

2015 — Cubs pitcher Jon Lester sets a new record for most hitless at bats to begin a career with 58 at bats without a hit.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.