As a young sportswriter studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Seth Wickersham looked to Los Angeles for inspiration. At the campus bookstore, Wickersham bought his first sportswriting anthology, “The Last of the Best,” a collection of columns from the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray, one of four sportswriters ever to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Collections of work from Murray, Rick Reilly, Frank Deford and others offered Wickersham a road map for the career he wanted to build — and he has, with 26 years’ worth of work at ESPN meriting an anthology of his own. “Be on That Hill: Stories From the Summits of Sport,” which will hit bookshelves Sept. 22, is Wickersham’s third book. He said assembling an anthology is both “the coolest thing you could ever imagine happening” and “this weird mind warp.”

“When you’re just on a treadmill like I’ve been, the years just go,” says Wickersham, who’s been covering sports since he was hired by ESPN The Magazine straight out of college. “You don’t realize it, but then you take stock of it, and you’re like, ‘Holy cow, I’ve been doing this 26 years …’ It’s surreal to go back and look at it.”

A premier investigative and feature reporter primarily covering the NFL, Wickersham has also written “It’s Better To Be Feared: The New England Patriots and the Pursuit of Greatness,” and “American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback.” Both books combine new, headline-generating reporting with intel Wickersham has gathered over decades covering football. With “Be on That Hill,” Wickersham selected stories that he hopes, taken together, “tell a bigger story not only about the games that we love, but the ways we consume them, and even about the country.”

Football has always been Wickersham’s first love — he weaved his journey as a high school quarterback into “American Kings” — but his latest book features stories about a college basketball coach on the job hunt and an NHL enforcer’s attempts to avoid head injuries.

“I’m trying to write about people who have a certain level of inner turmoil,” Wickersham says, “whether it’s Sean McVay after he wins the Super Bowl, or Jerry Jones when he’s threatening to sue the NFL to stop Roger Goodell from signing a contract extension.”

The sports media industry has changed dramatically since Wickersham’s career began. ESPN The Magazine no longer exists. Access to coaches and players is increasingly hard to secure. But Wickersham’s journalistic goals are the same today as they were when he bought Murray’s anthology.

“I want to be a link on a chain,” he says. “It’s hopefully an installment of a body of work that one day might help me be a link on a chain of the best who did this.”

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

✍️ Author Recommendations

In addition to Jim Murray’s anthology, here are some other sports books that have inspired Wickersham.

• “The Breaks of the Game” by David Halberstam: This is the Pulitzer-winning Halberstam’s first sports book, following the 1979-1980 Portland Trail Blazers. “When it comes to trying to decode a team, that’s the standard,” Wickersham says.
• “Joe Namath and the Other Guys” by Rick Telander: Namath, the Hall of Fame New York Jets quarterback, serves as an example of quarterbacks’ rising celebrity profile in “American Kings,” and Telander is one of Wickersham’s favorite sportswriters. “The portrait he gave of Joe Namath in his twilight was just so rare,” Wickersham says. “I don’t think a book like that has ever been done.”
• “When Nothing Else Matters” by Michael Leahy: Another book about an athlete in his twilight. This one documents Michael Jordan’s time with the Washington Wizards. “He worked his tail off as a reporter and really gave a brutally honest glimpse into what it was like to live and play with Michael Jordan the last few years of his career,” Wickersham says.
• “The Franchise” by Michael MacCambridge: Wickersham read this history of Sports Illustrated in college. “It really not only gave a glimpse into how so many of these great stories by my heroes … were done,” he says, “but also how those guys got hired at Sports Illustrated. It was like a job road map.”

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Our fall book recommendations answer your call for learning and discovery this season.

(Kissi Ussuki / For The Times)

Our Fall Preview includes 29 books to keep on your radar this fall, as well as television and movies we’re excited about.

Mark Athitakis reviews Marlon James’ “The Disappearers,” a Booker Prize longlisted novel that follows gay men in Jamaica across seven decades.

Can’t get enough of “The Odyssey”? Acclaimed classicist Emily Wilson, who eviscerated Christopher Nolan’s cinematic take on the epic, is translating the Greek poem for a second time.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Sons and Daughters is a new bookstore on Melrose.

(Photo from Sons and Daughters)

This week, we caught up with Raine De Leon, owner of Sons and Daughters Books, a formerly online bookstore that opened a brick-and-mortar location earlier this year. Here’s what they had to say about their IRL location, the local bookshops that inspired them and more.

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

Your bookstore began as an online store in 2024. What motivated you to open an online store? How did it grow from there?

A brick-and-mortar was always the end goal, since I wanted a physical space for writers, readers and other artists to come together for events and community building. Originally, the online store was actually an online poetry journal, where I published poets from around the world, wrote reviews, and held virtual readings. I wanted to translate that into an in-person experience.

What other bookstores, in Los Angeles or elsewhere, served as inspiration for the type of bookstore you wanted to open?

Skylight Books in Los Feliz and Village Well Books and Coffee in Culver City really inspired how I wanted the store to feel: warm, inviting and dynamic enough to serve both a neighborhood and a larger L.A. audience. I took inspiration from the Painted Porch in Texas in regard to curating the selection of books in the store. City Lights in San Francisco was also a huge inspiration for not only my store, but my life in general. The place it holds in the history of its community, the history of publishing and the history of poetry are profound, and I am trying to emulate that legacy as best I can.

What inspired the name Sons and Daughters Books?

The poet Charles Olson wrote a landmark essay, “Projective Verse,” in 1950. In it, he talks about poetic lineage and influence, and he says something to the effect of “We are the sons of the poets who came before us,” and that really spoke to me. I expanded it out to “Sons and Daughters,” with that same sentiment, to be a little more inclusive.

What type of selection can people expect at Sons and Daughters Books?

Our selection is almost all new books with focus on fiction, poetry, social sciences and more. We also have a cart of used books out on the floor every day, and on Sundays I bring out two more carts of used books.

For the new books, I selected each book in the store myself. I may not have read every book on these shelves, but I went line by line in our inventory sheets to select books that I wanted people to be aware of. Even though I am the only staff member, our “Staff Rec” table features reviews and picks from those closest to me. I wanted our selection to be extremely specific to me, my loved ones and the community the store is now in.

In the time you’ve been open, what events have been the most popular? Any particular upcoming events you’re excited about?

Our two most popular events are definitely our weekly stand-up comedy open mic night and our thriller book club.

September is our fullest month yet in regard to events, and I’m very excited for a few. We have two book launch events. The one on Sept. 26 is for “Valley Girl Manifesto” by Noelle Cope, a collection of both poetry and prose. The other, on Sept. 19, is for “Anger Is a Gift,” a new poetry anthology from FlowerSong Press. Both celebrate poetry, locality and connection.

Our full events calendar, which continues to grow, also features community workshops, silent reading clubs and more.

Sons & Daughters is located at 7817 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles federal public defender’s office on Friday joined a renewed effort to oust Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Southern California, accusing the government of “playing shadow games with the most consequential powers a government can wield against its population.”

Citing a recent order from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Jackson, the public defender’s office renewed a motion seeking to disqualify Essayli from participating in or supervising the prosecution of their client, Jaime Ramirez.

The federal appellate court ruled last month that the Department of Justice cannot keep an official who has not been confirmed by the Senate in charge of a U.S. attorney’s office simply by giving that person a different title and the full powers of the job.

In their motion filed Friday, James Anglin Flynn and Ayah A. Sarsour, deputy federal public defenders, accused the government of asking them “to trust that there are some undisclosed limits on Essayli’s authority that render it valid.”

“The buck should stop here, and it should stop now,” they wrote.

The U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

H. Dean Steward, a defense attorney, first kicked off the renewed effort last week, filing a motion asking Senior U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright to reconsider his prior ruling. Steward argued that Essayli should not be allowed to continue leading the office.

Seabright previously disqualified Essayli as acting U.S. attorney in October, finding he was “not lawfully serving” in the top role. But Seabright — who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush — said the court had “no basis to preclude Essayli from performing the lawful duties” of first assistant U.S. attorney, which left the door open for him to remain in charge.

Seabright scheduled a hearing for Oct. 13 on the latest motion. At a Zoom hearing on Aug. 28, Seabright appeared to signal which way he is leaning.

“I’m not sure if the government is just saying my decision was different from Jackson and therefore it stands. I’m not sure that passes muster given how the 9th Circuit ruled in Jackson,” Seabright said. “I think there’s going to have to be more in-depth briefing than the government has given me to date.”

The federal appellate court ruling stemmed from a challenge to the authority of Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, whom the Justice Department had designated “first assistant” U.S. attorney. With no one above her in the office, Chattah has seemingly been calling the shots on federal prosecutions in the state, handling cases referred by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies.

The Justice Department previously said it disagreed with the 9th Circuit’s decision and plans to appeal it to the Supreme Court. The agency did not respond to questions about what effect the ruling could have on Essayli.

The Trump administration has used a similar workaround to keep Essayli running the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. without going through the Senate confirmation process, where he likely would have faced strong opposition from California’s elected representatives.

Essayli, 40, has continued leading the federal prosecutor’s office in the Central District of California as “first assistant” despite a federal judge’s ruling last year that said he was unlawfully serving as the acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department did not appeal that ruling.

Instead, Essayli’s office has maintained that he can prosecute and supervise cases as first assistant. He also was appointed as a “special attorney” by the Trump administration, a title similarly held by Chattah in Nevada.

“To be sure, First Assistant Essayli may be the highest-ranking DOJ lawyer in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and (like many in the office) he supervises others,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins said in a filing last month. “But that cannot make him a “de facto” U.S. Attorney, and he does not purport to exercise “all of the functions of [that] office.”

Flynn and Sarsour pushed back on that claim in their motion, arguing that the government “is asking this Court to accept a theory that the Ninth Circuit rejected, nearly verbatim less than three weeks ago.” The government, they wrote, “appears to be asking this Court to consider and approve a hypothetical delegation to Essayli of some subset of the U.S. Attorney powers.”

“For over a year, this illegal exercise of prosecutorial powers has violated Mr. Ramirez’s constitutional rights and undermined the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in this district,” Flynn and Sarsour wrote. “In line with Jackson, two other Courts of Appeals have now affirmed the common-sense remedy that this illegality should be stopped.”

The deputy federal public defenders said a defense analysis identified invalid service as acting or de facto U.S. Attorneys in at least 16 districts across the country.

A former Republican member of the California state Assembly from Riverside, Essayli has used his position to act as one of Trump’s fiercest legal foot soldiers. He has pursued criminal charges against protesters, activists and immigrants while dropping cases involving administration allies and supporting lawsuits challenging transgender and environmental policies in California.

Essayli was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney in April 2025. Around the time he hit that role’s 120-day limit, he resigned from his interim role and was allowed to continue under his current titles by then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

Challenges to Essayli’s position were brought in several criminal cases, with defense lawyers arguing that charges filed under his watch are invalid and should be dismissed. The federal public defender’s office in L.A. had asked the judge to disqualify Essayli from participating in and supervising criminal prosecutions.

City clung on to a nervy victory against the Sky Blues to maintain their 100% winning start to the season, but managed to get the job done courtesy of a string of saves from goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Haaland continued his fine start to the season by converting his third goal in as many games from Antoine Semenyo’s deep cross, which came after Fernandez played through a slide-rule pass to the Ghanaian.

Playing in the number eight role, Argentina international Fernandez was given licence to roam and make late bursts into the box – he touched the ball six times in the opposition area, with only Haaland managing more with 11.

Fernandez could have had a dream debut but saw two shots blocked, before being replaced after 76 minutes by fellow summer signing Ayyoub Bouaddi.

The 18-year-old Morocco international was part of City’s midfield rebuild and highlights the options available to Maresca despite the departures of Bernardo Silva, Rodri, Tijjani Reijnders and Nico Gonzalez.

Ndiaye, meanwhile, became the first Senegalese player to represent City and is bound to give opposition defenders with his trickery and pace. No player attempted more dribbles in the match than his eight.

Maresca said: “Enzo and Iliman [played their] first game with us and then Ayyoub and Ryan [McAidoo] their first game in front of our fans.

“That is why I said there are many reasons I am happy about our win. I think they were all good.

“Ili just had two sessions with us. He needs to understand how to move. Most of the time he was moving in the wrong way, wrong position, but he needs to learn and for sure he is going to learn.”

Asked to elaborate on Ndiaye’s performance, Maresca said: “When Marc Guehi has the ball and he was dropping a lot and we don’t need that.

“We need him in the last third so he can be a little bit more higher. That space was more for Josko Gvardiol.

“It is the same thing in this [other] side. But it is normal and with time they will learn the way we want them to play.”

India claim seven-wicket win after Pakistan lose 10 wickets for just 28 runs as they are bowled out for 55.

India produced a dominant display to defeat Pakistan by seven wickets in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup in Dubai, bowling their rivals out for their lowest total in the format before rattling off their target inside nine overs.

Pakistan, having won the toss and elected to bat at the Dubai International Stadium on Saturday, made a promising start but collapsed spectacularly after an opening partnership of 27.

India eventually dismissed them for just 55 in 18.1 overs, with their spinners responsible for much of the damage.

Shree Charani and Prema Rawat were the stars of the bowling attack, taking three wickets apiece. Charani finished with remarkable figures of 3 for 7 from four overs, while Rawat returned 3 for 9. Deepti Sharma added two wickets for only five runs.

Pakistan’s innings initially appeared under control. Muneeba Ali made 13, and Shawaal Zulfiqar scored 14 for the first wicket.

But Shafali Verma broke the partnership by bowling Muneeba, and Charani then struck twice in the sixth over. She dismissed Gull Feroza for a duck before removing Zulfiqar, leaving Pakistan 29 for three.

The collapse continued almost immediately as Pakistan slipped to 32 for four in the eighth over before Rawat and Deepti Sharma intensified the pressure. By the 13th over, Pakistan were 45 for seven, and there was no prospect of recovering to a competitive total.

The final three wickets eventually fell with Pakistan on 55, giving India an exceptionally modest target. The total was Pakistan’s lowest in women’s T20I cricket, surpassing their previous low of 63 against India in the 2012 Women’s Twenty20 Asia Cup.

India survive brief wobble

Despite requiring only 56, India did not have everything their own way at the start of the chase.

Pakistan’s bowlers claimed three wickets, giving their opponents a brief glimpse of an unlikely route back into the contest. Fatima Sana was Pakistan’s most successful bowler, finishing with 3 for 17.

The target, however, was simply too small. India reached 57 for three in 8.4 overs, completing a seven-wicket victory with Harmanpreet Kaur unbeaten on 18. The Indian captain ensured there was no late drama and guided her side across the line with plenty of deliveries to spare.

The victory maintained India’s perfect start to the tournament. They now have six points from three matches and have already secured their place in the semifinals.

For Pakistan, meanwhile, the defeat leaves their qualification hopes dependent on their final group match against Hong Kong. They remain on two points and need a victory to give themselves a chance of progressing.

Both Russia and Ukraine vow not to strike each other’s capitals for three days during talks in Moscow and Kyiv.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun talks with United States envoys on ending more than four years of war in Ukraine, ahead of their first visit to Kyiv expected on Sunday.

Putin met Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – respectively President Donald Trump’s special envoy and business ally, and his son-in-law – at the Kremlin on Saturday.

“Dear colleagues, I warmly welcome you to Moscow. The situation is, of course, not simple,” Putin told the envoys in a grand Kremlin hall in footage aired by Russian TV.

Both Russia and Ukraine vowed not to strike each other’s capitals for three days during the negotiations, as Washington tries to revive US-led talks to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

Trump earlier said Kushner and Witkoff were bringing “a proposal to end the war”.

In Putin’s address to the two men, he said: “I would like to ask everyone to convey their best wishes and words of gratitude to US President Mr Trump”.

Witkoff said Trump had sent his best wishes to Putin and ⁠thanked him for ⁠the limited ceasefire during the delegation’s visit. Putin said ⁠Russia would do its ⁠utmost to ensure ⁠the safety of the mediators.

‘Refrain from strikes’

The talks come as the grinding war – which began with a Russian invasion in 2022 – has seen increasing civilian deaths and attacks this summer.

Putin has repeatedly said Moscow intends to seize the rest of east Ukraine.

Russian strikes on Ukraine on Saturday killed at least seven people, including in the Kyiv suburbs, Ukrainian officials said.

The Kremlin said it would not strike Kyiv from midnight on Saturday, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would halt strikes on Moscow “from now” until Monday.

“The Russian president, the commander-in-chief, has given the order from midnight tonight not to strike Kyiv for three days,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Zelensky – who had offered a truce during the US visits – later said he had spoken to the US envoys and also promised Kyiv would not strike Moscow.

“From now through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday, Ukraine is ready to refrain from strikes on Moscow,” Zelensky said on social media.

The Ukrainian leader said he had spoken to the US officials and that he expected them in Kyiv on Sunday.

It will be the first time that Witkoff and Kushner visit Kyiv since Trump returned to office last year with a pledge to resolve the conflict.

VENICE, Italy — When Skyler Gisondo turns up in “Primetime” as “Decoy Dan” Plum, an aspiring 23-year-old actor cast to play teenage bait for an unsuspecting pedophile, the camera can’t take its eyes off him.

The second trap set in director Lance Oppenheim’s lurid sweeps-ploitation drama about “To Catch a Predator” follows Gisondo’s face, most often in extreme close-up, as Dan processes what he’s gotten himself into, attempts to make small talk with the predator and finally flees off set, where he sits down, steadies himself and sheds a shaken tear. The suspect, meanwhile, is an afterthought, or more accurately a punchline: He only truly captures the camera’s attention when he drops trou, rips the top off a canister of whipped cream and sprays.

It’s an arresting formal choice, repeated from the opening sequence — that of the viral “You see how this looks, right?” moment from the trailer — to the climatic suicide of Rockwall County, Texas, Assistant Dist. Atty. Bill Conradt Jr., whose case is explored in the Esquire magazine article on which Ajon Singh’s screenplay is based. With rare exception, “Primetime” doesn’t have the guts to look its predators in the eye.

And perhaps it doesn’t need to. The film directs its most gleeful energies instead to taking “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) down a peg. The former “Dateline NBC” correspondent, who turned a newsmagazine segment about men soliciting teens for sex online into a hidden-camera sensation in the mid-aughts, comes off here as a self-serious showboat who’s mistaken tabloid trash for accountability journalism. (As one audio technician complains, “Guy thinks he’s f— Mike Wallace.”) It’s not just that stentorian voice, either. Envy of “Dateline” co-anchor Stone Phillips provides as much motivation as ratings pressure from TV executive Jeff Zucker (playing himself), with Hansen micromanaging his crew, insulting his producer, Andie (Merritt Wever), and neglecting his wife and kids in the process.

At least in the film’s early going, this yearning for adulation is played for cringeworthy comedy, and effectively so; my hardest laugh came when Hansen screens the rough cut of a new episode for his young sons and brags to them about “To Catch a Predator” being moved to a better time slot. As the tone moves toward horror, though, the decision to make the host the story quickly stops paying dividends. Indeed, though the real-life broadcaster may not find all the ego-deflation very funny, even Hansen — who told my colleague Stephen Battaglio that he objects to the film using his name and likeness under the label “inspired by true events” — would have to admit that “Primetime” avoids the thorniest questions about the true-crime empire he built.

Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen in “Primetime.”

(A24)

Compared with David Osit’s superb 2025 documentary “Predators,” a kaleidoscopic examination of the phenomenon from the perspective of Hansen, the decoys, the suspects, law enforcement, journalistic ethics and the filmmaker’s own experience as a survivor of child sexual abuse, “Primetime” seems remarkably incurious about “To Catch a Predator” and its consequences. It would probably be too much to ask a scripted feature to explore the challenge of achieving convictions against defendants ensnared on an episode of “Dateline,” or to delve into the legal niceties of surreptitious recording. But the suspects here are so anonymized — seen in profile or steep angles through a hidden camera lens, spied at a distance on a monitor in video village, heard as a disembodied voice on a phone or read via text in an instant message — that there’s not much to argue over anyway. The predators are reduced from people to “perverts,” of scarcely more interest to “Primetime” than to the bloodthirsty viewer Hansen meets on a plane.

When an entrapped rabbi attacks Hansen during a sting, screaming in his own tight close-up, “You don’t have the right to do this. Who do you think you are?” the film briefly, mercifully breaks this pattern, and generates an electric moment of moral uncertainty. But it doesn’t last. Instead, in its depiction of the Conradt case — ostensibly meant to underscore “To Catch a Predator’s” worst extremes — “Primetime” stumbles into some of the very same gutter sleaze tactics as the original series, transforming what was in reality a grim mid-afternoon standoff into a tense, pitch-dark operation punctuated by lightning strikes, power outages and night-vision cameras.

Such poetic license offers little new insight into a topic that has already been picked over for two decades, but it might be forgiven were Hansen as easily dramatized as he is made fun of. Alas. “Primetime” itself seems to know this — why else hire Gisondo to play Jimmy Olsen to Pattinson’s unlikable Man of Zeal — yet proceeds to construct its second half around Hansen’s unraveling: an extramarital affair, about to be exposed in the National Enquirer; ratings losses to ABC competitor “Lost”; desperation to reel in a “whale” and willingness to cut corners to do it. By the time the film again confronts the specter of something wicked under “To Catch a Predator’s” glossy surface, it comes in the form of Hansen’s own phantoms, introduced in a grueling flashback to India in the 1990s and carried through to the film’s conclusion. Why we’re to care about this apparent flash of horror, if not of conscience, remains unexplained. What about the faintly ludicrous figure of the foregoing 100-plus minutes was supposed to make me care about his moral compass?

In the final estimation, then, “Primetime” isn’t a Chris Hansen hit piece. In fact, it’s so in love with its flawed protagonist that it can’t see he’s the least compelling character in the movie, an ambitious, arrogant, grasping, unscrupulous man we’ve met countless times before. Which may explain the film’s final bit of poetic license. The last we last see of Hansen, muttering lines from his script as the police process the Conradt crime scene, suggests a man disturbed, perhaps even chastened, by what he has witnessed. But of course the real-life Hansen continues his sting operations to this day under the banner of “Takedown,” a series on his streaming service TruBlu, and both there and in “Predators” he appears utterly unshaken, unhaunted, unbowed. So for all the tension between the film and its subject to come through in the press of late, the gulf between them is not so wide as one might suspect.

Maybe they deserve each other.

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said that its forces struck three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday after Iran launched ballistic missiles towards two of its Navy warships, signaling the latest retaliatory strikes between the parties this week.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary

The sun hadn’t even set yet over the Coliseum, and already Trent Mosley had broken free, with nary a defender within 15 yards on either side.

It was the start of the second quarter on Friday night, when USC quarterback Jayden Maiava spotted his budding star freshman soaring on a slot post through the wide-open center of the field. And a split-second later the crowd saw it, too — their quiet rumbles rising to a thrilling roar, as if they knew what was coming next.

One ankle-twisting stutter-step is all it took for the true freshman to take off, once again. And it didn’t take much after that for USC to stick a fork in Fresno State.

But while Mosley captivated once again and Maiava came alive, it was Gary Patterson and the Trojans’ defense that really twisted the knife in a dominant 39-0 win for USC.

A week ago, it was Patterson who took the Trojans’ poor finish the hardest after they gave up 23 points in the fourth quarter to San José State. But a week spent looking in the mirror seemed to make a major difference as USC (2-0) managed its first shutout since Week 2 of the 2024 season.

“He loves shutouts,” sophomore defensive back Alex Graham said of the Trojans’ defensive coordinator. “He thinks shutouts are the best thing in the world.”

Patterson must have felt particularly thrilled Friday, considering how thoroughly USC’s defense dismantled Fresno State. The Bulldogs had just 56 yards heading into their final drive, 52 of which they accumulated in the first quarter.

“I told you guys,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said, “he makes it challenging on the other side.”

That was an understatement, given what happened after Mosley’s tide-turning touchdown. With the Bulldogs backed up against their goal line, Patterson dialed up a nickel blitz — and Fresno State didn’t account for it. So defensive back Kennedy Urlacher came flying into the backfield and collided into Bulldogs quarterback Jayden Mandal, who fell out of the back of the end zone for a safety.

“That’s just great coaching,” Urlacher said. “Coach knows what to call in certain situations.”

USC coach Lincoln Riley, center, celebrates during the Trojans’ 39-0 win over Fresno State at the Coliseum on Friday night.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Patterson had no problem pouring it on, as it didn’t get any less demoralizing for Fresno State (0-1) after that. USC’s defense didn’t give up a single yard or a first down in the second and third quarters. And over that stretch, the Trojans gave up just one completed pass.

USC’s defense actually tallied more safeties (two) during that same stretch.

The second, from defensive back Alex Graham, came a quarter later, and it looked quite familiar. This time, Graham came screaming out of the slot on the same blitz and leveled Mandal in the end zone. It was one of three sacks that USC registered off the nickel blitz — and one of four overall.

The combination of an all-around dominant defensive effort, with the Trojans’ usual offensive mastery, offered a glimpse of what USC hopes it can be this season. The question is whether it can actually do it again moving forward.

Maiava might have a hard time staying quite this perfect. The USC quarterback had one of the most precise performances of his Trojans tenure, completing 23 of 25 passes for 349 yards and three touchdowns. Through two games, just six of his 54 passes have ended up incomplete.

“It’s more than perfect,” wideout Corey Simms said. “It’s amazing playing with a quarterback like Jayden Maiava.”

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have Mosley, who notched his second consecutive 100-yard game, tallying all of his 104 yards and two touchdowns in the second quarter. Or what about Kayden Dixon-Wyatt, his freshman counterpart? He had 102 yards on six catches.

USC was all but unstoppable through the air. But on a night where there was little to nitpick, the Trojans weren’t exactly efficient on the ground. Their ballcarriers averaged under four yards per carry, and Waymond Jordan, USC’s leading rusher with 67 yards, lost a fumble.

But with Maiava doing most of the heavy lifting, USC barely needed its backfield.

Maiava completed 19 of his first 20 passes, picking up where he left off last week when he connected on 25 of 29 in the opener. Faced with an early fourth down, he heaved a pass deep down the sideline for Dixon-Wyatt, who leaped over a defender to reel in a 31-yard reception. Three plays later, he found sophomore wideout Tanook Hines streaking across the end zone, uncovered, and hit him for an opening score.

USC running back Deshonne Redeaux scores a touchdown after Fresno State defensive back Taylor Powell, left, fails to tackle him during the second half of the Trojans’ 39-0 win Friday night at the Coliseum.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

He didn’t take his foot off the gas. After Jordan fumbled away a screen pass, Maiava later found Mosley for that 68-yard score. Then he didn’t miss a single pass for another two quarters.

By that point, USC’s defense had found another level.

It wasn’t until the final drive that Fresno State managed to move the ball. The Bulldogs tallied more yards on that possession (60) than they had the rest of the game combined, and they managed to march to the Trojans’ eight-yard line.

But that was as far as Fresno State would go. This time, on fourth down, a pack of Trojan defenders descended. They piled on Mandal for a game-ending sack.

On the sideline, players crowded around Patterson, jumping for joy. And in the center of the chaos, the Trojans’ new defensive coordinator cracked a smile.

Erling Haaland score the only goal of Manchester City’s unconvincing home win against newly promoted Coventry City.

Manchester City maintained their winning start to the season to move to the top of the Premier League, but Erling Haaland’s solitary strike against newly promoted Coventry City couldn’t hide the nerves in the Etihad Stadium.

The Enzo Maresca era has started with three consecutive Premier League wins, but it was a far from perfect performance on Saturday as the hosts needed a pair of late saves from Gianluigi Donnarumma to deny Coventry a first top-flight point for 25 years.

Haaland’s header midway through the first half proved decisive for his third goal in as many games this season.

Maresca was able to unleash summer signings Enzo Fernandez and Iliman Ndiaye after their arrivals completed a record outlay by any club of £460 million ($622m) in the transfer market to refresh the City squad after Pep Guardiola’s decade in charge.

Fernandez was supposed to start on the bench after completing his £125 million move from Chelsea to match the Premier League transfer record.

However, an injury to Nico O’Reilly in the warm-up meant the Argentine was thrust into the starting line up.

Ndiaye was also handed his City debut by Maresca alongside Haaland, Antoine Semenyo and Rayan Cherki in a fearsome front four.

Coventry had failed to score in three consecutive defeats to mark their return to the top flight after 25 years.

Yet, Frank Lampard’s men could not have come closer to breaking their duck early on thanks to a gift from Donnarumma.

The giant Italian miscontrolled a backpass and recovered to clear off his own line with inches to spare.

Taiwo Awoniyi and Jack Rudoni also missed big chances to give the visitors the lead before City began to find their stride.

Cherki smashed off the post before Fernandez was involved in the opening goal.

His pass fed Semenyo sprinting down the right and his cross was hung up perfectly for Haaland to head home at the back post.

The Norwegian was denied a second by Carl Rushworth before half-time, but City failed to build on their advantage and were left clinging on for the three points.

Donnarumma was needed to produce two huge saves to deny Loum Tchaouna and Ellis Simms an equaliser and a historic moment for Coventry.

Despite another defeat, there was plenty of encouragement for Lampard that Coventry can compete back in the big time.

Maresca will know City will need to be much improved when they travel to local rivals Manchester United next weekend.

But the blue half of the city move to the top of the table ahead of champions Arsenal’s clash against Chelsea on Sunday.

New imagery appearing out of China provides the best look yet at one of the country’s most enigmatic aircraft: the very large, low-observable, flying-wing drone widely referred to as the WZ-X. Seen previously primarily in satellite imagery, TWZ broke the story of the existence of this monster high-altitude, long-endurance drone. The new views that emerged today help clear up one of the most puzzling aspects of the aircraft’s appearance, namely the unusual shape of its enormous wings.

The aircraft was first identified in satellite imagery collected in May 2025 showing the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) sprawling test facility at Malan in Xinjiang. At the time, it was difficult to determine whether some of the apparent discontinuities in the wing planform were genuine features, visual countermeasures, or artifacts of the imagery.

The new photograph, seen at the top of the article and below, as well as a new satellite image, shows that the aircraft has a broader-chord inner wing section that transitions into a substantially narrower outer section. Rather than tapering continuously from the center section toward the tips, the wing effectively becomes much more slender over its outer portion in a ‘step down’-like fashion. The resulting planform gives the aircraft an exceptionally long, narrow outer wing. The wing arrangement differs from the B-2 and other stealthy flying wing designs because it has two outer wing sections, in addition to its diamond-like central fuselage, instead of just one.

We still can’t say for sure if this feature is just the way the aircraft’s wing was designed or if it also is due to some other exotic feature, such as wing folding or removable outboard sections. While a more novel explanation is possible, it is somewhat improbable at this point.

Seen from behind, the aircraft has a relatively shallow central fuselage section, with extremely long wings extending outward from it. The landing gear is extended, revealing large main undercarriage doors and substantial landing gear consistent with an aircraft of this size. Split rudders are visible toward the outer wing areas, broadly reminiscent of those used on the B-2.

As in previous imagery, the rear of the center section of the aircraft may also reveal slot-like exhaust openings, supporting the assessment that it is twin-engined.

For an aircraft intended to spend long periods operating at high altitude, a very long overall span combined with a relatively narrow outer wing could be advantageous. Such an arrangement would increase effective aspect ratio and reduce induced drag during efficient cruise, potentially improving endurance and high-altitude performance.

It may also allow the designers to concentrate structural mass and internal volume closer to the center of the aircraft while still achieving a very large span.

There is a potential low-observable tradeoff, however. A significant change in chord introduces additional planform geometry and potential edge-alignment discontinuities that must be reconciled with the requirements of a stealth aircraft. The transition will influence radar reflections depending on its precise shape, orientation, and relationship to the aircraft’s other edges and surfaces. This will also be highly dependent on the aspect the radar is viewing the aircraft from. Modern very low observable designs try to minimize these exact types of features, with large continuous structures being the most advantageous to radar signature. This philosophy can be seen in the design of the B-21’s planform, which was also how the B-2 was supposed to look originally. You can read all about this here.

Regardless, the WZ-X does indeed have a semi-sawtooth trailing edge due to this intriguing feature.

The overall scale of the aircraft is also becoming increasingly apparent. Our initial analysis of satellite imagery put its wingspan at approximately 170 feet, roughly comparable to the 172-foot span of the B-2. That would make it considerably larger than other Chinese flying-wing drones identified to date.

Andreas Rupprecht, an analyst specializing in Chinese military aviation and TWZ contributor, assesses that the WZ-X is likely a twin-engined design similar in configuration to the supposed U.S. RQ-180, but considerably larger.

Rupprecht estimates a length of approximately 46 feet. He also assesses the aircraft as having a relatively spacious central fuselage and a dorsal satellite communications antenna. His estimates of a range exceeding 12,000 miles and a normal cruising altitude of somewhere between 59,000 and 66,000 feet remain unconfirmed.

The WZ-X is notably different from China’s smaller flying-wing designs. The CH-7, for example, has a deeper and more curved center section and is substantially smaller. The WZ-X’s broad, relatively flattened center body and enormous span instead appear particularly compatible with high-altitude endurance.

Its apparent configuration also makes a long-duration surveillance mission plausible. The central body and inner wing section would provide substantial space for fuel, sensors, and communications systems, while the outer wing, combined with its lifting central body, could support highly efficient flight at high altitude.

A low-observable platform of this size could potentially conduct many types of wide-area surveillance and networking assistance while operating in or very near contested airspace where conventional high-altitude UAVs would face greater risks. A strike capability cannot be ruled out, particularly given China’s broader development of combat-capable flying-wing UCAVs, but the aircraft’s proportions appear especially well suited to persistence and reconnaissance.

While the location of the latest imagery is unconfirmed, Malan has developed into a massive center for Chinese drone testing, with satellite imagery showing extensive expansion of its infrastructure in recent years. The facility has been associated with multiple flying-wing designs, including the WZ-X and the similarly mysterious and also very large GJ-X. This substantially different flying-wing aircraft with a cranked-kite planform is also undergoing flight testing. That aircraft is estimated to have a wingspan of around 137 feet, underscoring the breadth of China’s experimentation with large low-observable uncrewed aircraft.

China is pursuing tailless/flying-wing designs across an increasingly wide range of sizes and missions, alongside larger crewed aircraft programs including the J-36 and J-XDS and, eventually, the H-20 stealth bomber.

The WZ-X appears to be part of a much broader effort to develop highly integrated, low-observable aircraft optimized for different combinations of range, endurance, payload, and survivability.

For now, its official designation, manufacturer, propulsion system, performance, and intended mission remain unknown.

However, its configuration appears well suited to the requirements of a very large high-altitude endurance aircraft, although the trade-off between its performance and its stealth characteristics remains equally mysterious.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Graeme Souness is one of ten celebrity contestants on Gary Lineker’s new ITV game show The Box

Graeme Souness is appearing in new ITV show The Box on Saturday night.

The Scottish former professional football player, manager and television pundit, 73, is one of ten celebrity contestants on Gary Lineker’s new game show. Also joining the line-up are Danny Aarons, Ellie Taylor, Joey Essex, JB Gill, Jenny Ryan, John Bercow, Ranvir Singh, Sara Davies and Shakira Khan on the new ITV show.

It comes as The Box crew were forced to fly a drone to find a ‘missing’ star during filming and The Chase’s Jenny, 44, admitted she felt ‘guilty’ over brutal decisions in the new ITV show.

Away from the ITV show, Graeme has spoken candidly about his health over the years after he was diagnosed with a heart condition aged just 38, which left him asking ‘how can this happen to me’.

Graeme shared his experience with the British Heart Foundation (BHF), revealing what life was like following his diagnosis and treatment for heart disease as a young, physically fit man.

While managing Liverpool in 1991, the Scot was struggling to sleep and experiencing chest pains in bed. With a family history of heart disease, alarm bells were ringing. He underwent an electrocardiogram (ECG) – a straightforward test used to assess the heart’s rhythm and electrical activity.

Following the results, he was referred for an angiogram, a specialised X-ray procedure used to examine blood vessels. Despite displaying no obvious symptoms, Graeme was diagnosed with three blocked arteries and coronary heart disease. Just five days later, he was facing open heart surgery.

Speaking on the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) podcast, the Ticker Tapes in 2021, he said at the time: “At the time I was training like the professional football players and was only 38-years-old. I kept thinking ‘how can this happen to me?’

“I looked after myself in terms what I ate and drank and had trained from the age of 15 – I trained as vigorously as a professional athlete. I didn’t carry any weight, I never had done. How had this happened to me?

“I didn’t have the obvious symptoms that there was something badly wrong with my heart so I’m so glad I got checked when I did. It’s because of this that I’m here 30 years later.

“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. At that time I was a very fit, young man. If you’re concerned about your family history, go and get checked. You must get yourself checked.”

In 2015, Graeme suffered a heart attack and has since become a British Heart Foundation (BHF) ambassador, throwing himself into numerous campaigns and events, as well as making visits to BHF research laboratories.

Graeme said of the terrifying health scare: “My heart attack was very scary but I’m still here, able to talk about it thank goodness. Fortunately, it hasn’t caused me any lasting problem.

“It’s so important to go to your doctor and get yourself diagnosed if you’re at all concerned. You owe it to yourself and those close to you – your wife, your children and your grandchildren. They want you around as long as possible.”

The Box launches on Saturday 5th September, with Episode 2 airing on Sunday 6th September, on ITV1, ITVX, STV & STV Player.

Two of US President Donald Trump’s top envoys have arrived in Moscow ahead of a weekend of talks aimed at accelerating efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will hold talks in the Russian capital before travelling to Kyiv on Sunday for discussions with Ukraine.

Trump told reporters on Friday that Witkoff and Kushner were “bringing with them a proposal to end the war”. So far, efforts from the US and its allies to broker a peace deal have failed to deliver a breakthrough.

Both Russia and Ukraine have said they will halt strikes on each others’ capital cities for three days while the delegation conducts its visit.

Zelensky said on Saturday that he had spoken to the envoys, who have “already begun working with the Russian side today”.

“The plan for tomorrow’s diplomatic engagements in Kyiv, involving the US team, has been approved. We are waiting for Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and are ready for a substantive conversation,” he added.

“From now through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday, Ukraine is ready to refrain from strikes on Moscow, and we expect the Russians to do the same regarding Kyiv.”

Russian state media reported that President Vladimir Putin had ordered a halt to strikes on Kyiv for three days due to the US visit.

Witkoff and Kushner were pictured being greeted by Russian official Kirill Dmitriev after landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport.

Flight tracking data showed a US government plane had travelled from Helsinki, Finland, where it had flown to from the US earlier in the day.

US news outlet Axios reported that the US envoys would separately meet both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Kushner and Witkoff have visited Russia several times but the talks on Sunday would be the first in Ukraine.

NICOLA Roberts has shared a sweet throwback snap online to honour the fifth anniversary of Girls Aloud bandmate Sarah Harding passing away.

The singer, 39, died in 2021 following a 13-month battle with advanced breast cancer.

The photo shows all five members of Girls Aloud from many years ago holding one another by the arm.

In utter disbelief about how half a decade has ticked by since Sarah passed, Nicola penned a touching tribute in the post’s caption.

She began: “It’s hard to believe it’s been five years already since Sarah’s passing.

‘MY HERO’

I miss Sarah Harding every day & wish I’d made her a mum, says last love Chad

STAR’s LEGACY

Women aged 30 to get breast cancer checks in trial led by Sarah Harding’s doc

“So much has happened that she should have been a part of. My heart is particularly with Marie [Sarah’s mum] today.

“Sitting with myself, hormones and sleep deprivation are probably not helping but as I type I’m feeling very sad and transported to this day 5 years ago.

“Such a milestone would have most likely had this impact anyway. Most definitely for all her friends and family.”

Nicola then took a moment to gush about her friend, sharing how proud she still is of her.

She continued: “I’m also feeling proud that Sarah left such a legacy with her charity and that everyone that vowed to help her on that quest is still powering through for that silver lining she was so passionate about.

“She’s saving lives. Wish to everything she didn’t have to lose her own xx”

The Sarah Harding Breast Cancer Appeal was founded in Sarah’s honour to fund research for women experiencing cancer in their 30s.

Thanks to the charity, women aged 30 can access breast cancer checks through a trial on the NHS.

It has gone on to raise over £1million to date from various events including performances by her bandmates Cheryl Tweedy, Kimberley Walsh, Nadine Coyle, and Nicola, as well as donations.

The healthcare sector (XLV) gained 4.91% in August, outperforming the broader S&P 500 (SPY), which advanced 2.68% during the month. Healthcare stocks benefited from strength in biotechnology and medical technology, while healthcare services, managed care, and selected pharmaceutical stocks

A few months after Mark Walter became the chairman and majority owner of the Dodgers, he was told a fan in one of Dodger Stadium’s upper decks was upset about a mix-up with his tickets.

On most days, that would be an issue for an usher to handle. Not on this day.

Walter and team president Stan Kasten decided to address the problem, climbing the narrow stairwell to the top level where they found the fan and listened to his complaint.

“Obviously the guy was floored just to see me, let alone to see Mark,” Kasten said. “Mark, he’s incredibly comfortable around people. Not just his peers, but average fans. Because he considers himself an average fan.”

The Dodgers’ billionaire owner, hardly an average fan, is under intense scrutiny these days, following the sale of his controlling interest in the Lakers and a federal investigation into his business dealings. The drama has come as a surprise to some who know Walter, who has earned respect for his financial acumen and, despite his purchases of high-profile sports teams, has tended to dodge publicity.

He put together the ownership group that bought the Dodgers in 2012. Since the purchase, the team has played in five World Series, winning three, and finished first in the National League West 12 times in 14 seasons. It’s the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball in more than a generation.

Walter waves to the crowd during the Dodgers’ ring ceremony in March.

(Jessie Alcheh/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

If the Dodgers win a third straight World Series this fall, they will become the first team to three-peat this century. And much of the credit for that would go to Walter, who has funded a front office that consistently has outspent the rest of Major League Baseball, signing seven players to contracts worth more than $2 billion combined in the last six years alone.

Now Walter faces questions about his future owning the Dodgers. Last month, his companies became the focus of two federal inquiries and a Delaware insurance regulatory review.

He is helping pay off some of his companies’ loans and sold the Lakers at a record valuation of $12.5 billion, a deal Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, says was not forced by the inquiries. Still, the sale raised questions about whether he will sell his ownership stakes in other sports properties, including English soccer club Chelsea, the Cadillac Formula One racing team, the WNBA’s Sparks and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Walter declined to comment for this article.

Kasten insists Walter has no plans to divest from the Dodgers. “The sports portfolio is going to remain intact,” Kasten said. “It’s important to Mark. I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him.”

Still, Kasten acknowledges the decision to sell the Lakers to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner just 14 months after agreeing to buy the team “was not a planned thing,” either.

Walter hoists the World Series trophy next to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last November.

(Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Like most of the middle-class kids in the class of 1978 at Jefferson High in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Walter worked in high school.

“He pumped gas and he played golf,” recalled Cathy Boland Polito, Walter’s date for the senior prom who is now a retired medical technologist living in Oro Valley, Ariz.

Walter hardly stood out in his graduating class of about 350 students. He was athletic but not a stud. He was a good student, especially in math, but not a nerd.

“He was friendly. He was nice,” Polito said. “Everybody sort of knew him.”

Walter talks with Dodgers president Stan Kasten during the playoffs last year. “I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to him,” Kasten says.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

Walter went to Creighton University , where he studied accounting and business while playing intramural sports and participating in the philosophy society. Three years later, he earned a law degree from Northwestern.

Walter met his wife, Kimbra, in Chicago, where they raised their daughter, Samantha.

After a decade split between a Chicago law firm and First Chicago Capital Markets, a financial services and securities brokerage, Walter founded an investment firm, Liberty Hampshire Co., in 1996. While there he met J. Todd Morley, who connected him with the Guggenheim family fortune. The introduction quickly led to the formation of Guggenheim Partners, an investment and advisory financial services firm that works with insurance services, among other assets, and one that has a Wall Street reputation for being low-key but aggressive.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic closed Guggenheim’s offices, the lobby of the firm’s Chicago headquarters on the 49th floor of the AT&T Center boasted one of Monet’s “Water Lilies” paintings, which hung behind the receptionist’s desk inside a glass case with an alarm. A Picasso brightened another office upstairs.

Walter with Guggenheim Baseball Management partners Peter Guber, left, Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson at Dodger Stadium in 2012 after the group bought the Dodgers for $2 billion.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

A company insider not authorized to speak publicly told The Times in 2012 that Walter was a disciplined, focused and careful investor.

“He is a guy with one of the great financial minds of our time,” the person said.

For Walter, 66, who grew up playing youth baseball about 50 miles from the Iowa cornfield that became Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams,” that financial success was all well and good. But the longtime Chicago Cubs season-ticket holder really was a die-hard baseball fan whose dream was to own a sports franchise.

Walter first explored a purchase of the Houston Astros, who eventually were sold to Houston businessman Jim Crane for $615 million ahead of the 2012 season. So Walter pivoted and formed Guggenheim Baseball Management, a group that included Kasten, Lakers Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, movie producer Peter Guber and investors Bobby Patton and Todd Boehly, to buy the Dodgers for $2.15 billion, a record at the time, in March 2012. Part of the money Walter invested in the deal came from the insurers he controlled, although that deal was vetted by state insurance regulators.

MLB engineered the sale of the Dodgers after previous owner Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy.

“The market drove the price,” Walter told The Times after the sale closed, calling the investment “a multigenerational thing my daughter’s granddaughters will own.” Walter’s daughter, who grew up joining family trips to Los Angeles for Dodgers games, is a marketing manager at TWG Global.

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1. WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 02: U.S. President Joe Biden (C) holds the jersey given to him by Los Angeles Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter during an event with the 2020 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on July 02, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the championship series at the end of an abbreviated season due to the coronavirus. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) 2. WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 07: (L-R) Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Los Angeles Dodgers Owner and Chairman Mark Walter pose with a jersey presented to Trump as he hosts the 2024 World Series champions in the East Room of the White House on April 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees with a 7-6 victory in Game 5. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Today, the team is the most lucrative in the sport and is on pace to become just the second this century to draw more than 4 million fans in consecutive seasons. The Dodgers could be sold for a valuation of $10 billion to $13 billion — at the higher end, three times as much as the record sale price for a major league team — an industry source told The Times on the condition of anonymity.

Through it all, Walter mostly has shunned attention. The exception is participating in on-field championship celebrations and joining the team for trips to the White House during the Trump and Biden administrations.

His smooth run was interrupted during the Dodgers’ run to the 2024 World Series when Walter suffered a stroke that kept him from the victory celebration. His recovery reportedly was arduous; Walter struggled to speak clearly for months and didn’t return to public view until the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Japan the following spring.

Walter didn’t publicly step down from any roles after the stroke, holding on to control of a vast portfolio. Since buying the Dodgers, he has invested in European soccer, women’s hockey and basketball, squash and auto racing. He also bought several historic buildings in the resort town of Crested Butte, Colo., where he and his philanthropist wife own a home. In 2013, the couple purchased the Wild Oak Plantation, a 17,000-acre wildlife preserve in northeast Florida, where the Walters now spend most of their time.

Kimbra has served on the boards of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, OneGoal nonprofit and Goodman Theatre and is active in the family’s charitable organization, TWF Causes, which focuses on social impact and conservation work, including owning or supporting several major conservation and private reserve properties in Africa.

The family has a limited political footprint, with Walter donating to the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and then-Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. The majority of their donations, however, run through their family foundation and the Dodgers Foundation.

“For us, my wife and I, and all of my partners believe that corporations have to be corporate citizens, and individuals who benefit from them, or who have built them, need to give back,” Walter told ESPN soon after buying the Dodgers. “You can’t take it with you, and you ought to do something philanthropic with it.”

But while he’s put money into charitable projects, he’s invested his heart and soul in the Dodgers, Kasten said.

“He cares deeply about it,” the Dodgers president said. “He’s living through every play, every out, every at-bat.”

However much longer Walter remains invested in the Dodgers — financially, at least — could come down to math.

Justice Department prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Delaware insurance regulator are investigating whether Walter funneled as much as $21 billion from the portfolios of two insurance companies he owns into private credit for loans to other companies he also controls while reporting just a fraction of the loans’ value. The Wall Street Journal and the Athletic reported Walter used billions of dollars of those insurance premiums to buy sports teams.

Such “related party transactions” are legal, within limits, but are required to be reported to guard against conflicts of interest and to protect clients.

In Walter’s case, the related-party loans f initially were reported at between $1 billion and $1.4 billion when the true total actually was between $16 billion and $21 billion. The reclassification meant the affiliated investments jumped from 2% of one insurer’s portfolio to about 40%, according to Fitch Ratings.

No formal charges have been filed, and TWG Global, the multinational holding company led by Walter, is cooperating in the investigation. Walter has declined to be interviewed or to respond to written questions about the investigation, but his representatives have strongly denied any improper behavior, describing reports of the probe as “substantial speculation and misinformation” advanced by “unnamed sources and self-serving interests.”

“It does not inspire confidence to know that this kind of wild understatement happened,” said Andrew Granato, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in corporate finance and insurance. “It also doesn’t inspire very much confidence in the system of insurance regulation we have, that there could be this big of a mess that was not caught for years.”

Walter hired veteran Goldman Sachs lawyer David Markowitz to be his chief legal officer and reportedly is exploring the sale of his 12.8% stake in the Chelsea soccer club to Clearlake Capital, a Santa Monica-based private-equity firm whose Puerto Rican-born co-founder, José E. Feliciano, recently bought the San Diego Padres.

A source close to Walter not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times he has an interest in selling Chelsea if the terms are right but insisted there is no desire to sell the Sparks, the PWHL, his investment in professional squash or, more prominently, his stake in the Dodgers.

While Kasten and TWG Global officials insist the Dodgers aren’t for sale, uncertainty likely will linger at least until all investigations are completed.

Times staff writer Mirjam Swanson contributed to this report.

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek this week, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian received precisely the kind of political support he had hoped for. The SCO condemned the military attacks against Iran, described them as violations of international law and the UN Charter, reaffirmed Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and called for the conflict to be resolved through political and diplomatic means.

But the organisation did not offer to defend Iran. That distinction between political solidarity and collective defence is important. It tells us something not only about the Iranian experience with the SCO, but about the international order that is emerging around it.

For years, discussions about multipolarity have often suggested that the US-led international system would gradually be challenged by an alternative bloc centred around China, Russia and organisations such as BRICS and the SCO. From the perspective of middle powers, joining both institutions seemed to fit neatly into this transformation. Integration into non-Western organisations was supposed to make them less vulnerable to Western isolation and pressure.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has made clear that none of these alternative relationships can produce a security guarantee comparable to those provided by formal military alliances. The lesson is not that multipolarity has failed middle powers. It is that the emerging multipolar order may work differently from what many expected.

Rather than replacing one alliance system with another, it is producing an increasingly dense network of overlapping partnerships in which states gain diplomatic and economic options without necessarily acquiring new security guarantees.

For middle powers, this may be one of the defining characteristics of the emerging order: more room for manoeuvre, but less certainty about who will stand beside them when their security is threatened.

Turkiye provides a particularly revealing example. It has been a member of NATO for more than seven decades and remains embedded in the Western security architecture. Yet Ankara has increasingly demonstrated that alliance membership does not require automatic political alignment with Washington. Turkiye has maintained relations with Russia despite the war in Ukraine, expanded its engagement with China and participated in the SCO as a dialogue partner. At the same time, its differences with the US and Israel over the future regional order in the Middle East have become increasingly visible.

This does not mean Turkiye is abandoning NATO or moving into a Chinese- or Russian-led bloc. Quite the opposite. Ankara’s strategy depends precisely on avoiding such a binary choice. Its NATO membership provides security benefits that the SCO could not replicate. Its relationships with Russia, China, Iran, the Gulf states and other regional actors, meanwhile, expand its diplomatic and economic options.

Brazil represents another good example. Unlike Turkiye, Brazil is not bound to the US through a formal military alliance. But it has traditionally operated within a US-dominated hemisphere where Washington has expected considerable political alignment from regional governments.

Brazil’s refusal to join the US-led Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition (ACCC), together with its positions on the Iran war and other recent international crises, reflects its reluctance to accept that regional proximity should translate into automatic strategic alignment.

Yet Brazil is not simply switching sides. Its participation in BRICS, its extensive economic relationship with China and its calls for reform of the international system coexist with important political and economic relations with the US and Europe. Brasília’s objective is not to exchange dependence on Washington for dependence on Beijing, but to preserve the ability to cooperate with both, and disagree with either.

This may be one of the most consequential opportunities that multipolarity offers middle powers. The rise of alternative centres of economic and political influence reduces the cost of saying no. For decades, weaker states often confronted a difficult choice when facing pressure from a dominant power: comply, resist and risk isolation, or seek protection from a rival bloc.

The proliferation of partners and institutions complicates that calculation. A government that disagrees with Washington may deepen relations with Beijing without becoming a Chinese ally. A state dependent on China economically may strengthen security ties with the US without fully aligning with Washington. Membership in BRICS does not prevent cooperation with Western institutions, just as membership in a US-led security framework does not necessarily preclude engagement with China or Russia.

India has made this logic almost an organising principle of its foreign policy. New Delhi participates in the Quad with the US, Japan and Australia while simultaneously belonging to both BRICS and the SCO. At Bishkek, India supported the SCO declaration defending Iranian sovereignty while Prime Minister Narendra Modi also stressed to Pezeshkian the importance of preserving freedom of navigation and commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Gulf Cooperation Council member states are pursuing their own version of this diversification. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for example, continue to depend heavily on their relationships with the US for security, while simultaneously expanding economic and diplomatic ties with China, India and other Asian powers and participating in new regional and international arrangements.

None appears eager to replace Washington with Beijing. They want relationships with both. This suggests that the most significant consequence of multipolarity for middle and smaller powers may not be the emergence of a new bloc to which they can attach themselves. It may be the declining necessity of attaching themselves exclusively to any bloc at all.

But greater autonomy comes with a cost. The same flexible arrangements that allow states to avoid choosing sides also provide fewer guarantees when crises become existential. BRICS does not have an Article 5. Neither does the SCO, which explicitly defines itself as a non-military organisation.

Strategic partnerships can provide weapons, investment, diplomatic backing and political support without obligating partners to go to war for one another.

The emerging international system is therefore unlikely to resemble a simple transition from a US-led order to a Chinese-led one, or even a confrontation between two clearly defined blocs. The older alliance system is not disappearing.

NATO remains central to European and Turkish security, while US security relationships remain indispensable across much of Asia and the Gulf. What is emerging alongside it is another layer, a more fluid landscape of overlapping institutions, selective partnerships and transactional relationships.

Multipolarity, in other words, may not require states to choose a new camp. That gives middle and smaller powers greater agency. But it also places greater responsibility for their own security upon them. The world they are entering may offer more partners, more bargaining power and more freedom to say no. What it may offer less frequently is certainty about who will say yes when they ask for protection.

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

The US military says it has hit three Iran-linked oil tankers after ballistic missiles were launched towards two of its warships in the region.

US Central Command (Centcom) said on Saturday it had “permanently disabled” a tanker near Kharg Island and another near the Strait of Hormuz, and “completely destroyed” a third in the Gulf of Oman.

Centcom said it “successfully evaded” multiple attacks from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting a US aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer. No American troops were harmed, it said in a statement.

Iranian state media earlier reported that one of its tankers had been struck off the coast of Kharg Island.

Tehran did not immediately acknowledge attacks on US ships.

Admiral Brad Cooper, Centcom’s commander, said in a statement on Saturday: “Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours.”

“We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Centcom, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, claimed that the three Iranian oil tankers were “part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies”.

The strikes come nearly a week after renewed attacks between the US and Iran, which followed a period of relative calm between the warring sides.

Michael Lomonaco can account for every minute of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 — including the small decision that saved his life.

Lomonaco, the executive chef who ran Windows on the World on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was on his way up to his office when he stopped at an optometrist shop on the ground level to have his eyeglass frames adjusted.

He was still inside when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the tower above him at 8:46 a.m.

“I felt the buidling shake,” he recalled in the new CNN Films documentary “Top of the World.” “And I thought that can’t be the subway. That’s impossible.”

Lomonaco was evacuated. From the street, he watched employees of his own restaurant wave a white tablecloth from a window more than 100 floors up. Seventy-nine Windows on the World employees and 91 guests died that morning in the gastronomic soul of the Twin Towers — the one part of the complex that belonged to New Yorkers who didn’t work there, and to visitors from everywhere else.

“Top of the World” premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CNN and begins streaming the following day on the network’s subscription streaming platforms. The documentary short arrives on a double anniversary: 25 years since the attacks, and 50 years since Windows on the World opened on April 19, 1976.

It is the work of producer-director team Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who made “RBG,” the Oscar-nominated portrait of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film is a production of CNN Films, TIME Studios and Tribeca Studios, in association with Montalto Pictures and Storyville Films, and was inspired by Tom Roston’s book “The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World.” Actor Denis Leary voices the restaurant’s creator, Joe Baum, drawn from decades of archival recordings.

West and Cohen were reluctant to take it on. Both were working in network television news in 2001.

“There’s like a part of you that doesn’t want to go back there,” Cohen said in a recent interview. “But when we read this book and met some of the amazing people who had worked at Windows over its 25-year history, we realized this was actually a really good way into remembering there was a lot of beautiful stuff in the Twin Towers and like we shouldn’t let that disappear just because it ended so painfully.”

What emerges is a history of how a restaurant transformed the reputation of the monolithic Twin Towers, which received little respect from architecture critics and bafflement from a public that wondered why it was built in the 1970s by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the city was fighting off financial collapse.

“This film tells a story of a restaurant that was very special to New York a time when New York was getting kicked in the teeth,” the Brooklyn-born Lomonaco said in a recent interview.

The World Trade Center operators turned to restaurant impresario Joe Baum to create a dining experience that would draw people to the Manhattan neighborhood largely known for its blocks of stores that sold radios and electronic parts. Baum was known for such New York dining landmarks as the Four Seasons and Tavern on the Green, and his new creation became an immediate hit after it opened in 1976, becoming a magnet for tourists and celebrities alike who came for the eye-popping views through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

At the time of the 9/11 attack, the World was the highest-revenue-generating privately owned restaurant in the U.S.

West noted another draw to the story was the stories of the many immigrants who worked at Windows, which proudly called itself “the U.N. of restaurants.” The film’s focus on the contribution of the foreign-born population to the restaurant industry stands in stark contrast to the image of immigrants conveyed by the Trump White House to justify its deportation efforts.

“Immigrants continue to make a contribution to our country and to the economy,” West said. “This was an opportunity to tell that positive story as opposed to what’s going on in our country now.”

Cohen and West scoured the Windows on the World Facebook page to find surviving former employees to help tell the story. Nathalie Tolentino was a hostess whose family came to the U.S. to escape political upheaval in Peru. Sekou Siby was a line cook from the Ivory Coast, who swapped shifts with one of the workers who died during a morning breakfast held in the restaurant on 9/11. Both talk about how the restaurant changed their lives.

Lomonaco is a central character in the “Top of the World,” as his arrival as the executive chef of Windows in 1997 boosted the restaurant’s culinary reputation. A hot chef who oversaw a turnaround at the 21 Club, another legendary New York dining spot, Lomonaco turned Windows into a destination for American cuisine along with the breathtaking views.

Lomonaco arrived after the restaurant was closed for three years following the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 but left the towers intact.

Once Windows on the World was gone, Lomonaco was offered high-profile restaurant jobs in other parts of the country. But he had unfinished business in New York.

“I didn’t want to abandon my city,” he said.

In the first days after the attacks, Lomonaco said, he read nothing about Windows on the World; coverage centered on the massive loss of life among the first responders and at the financial firms inside the World Trade Center. But over time, he got attention and support for the families of the employees who lost their lives that day.

Lomonaco and the restaurant’s owners formed Windows of Hope, a charitable foundation that raised more than $22 million to pay for healthcare and tuition costs for the children of the victims. “We were giving checks to people to pay their rent before federal funds came through,” he said.

Lomonaco said he still meets patrons who give him a matchbook or coaster from their visit to Windows. “They feel like they have to give me or send me these little artifacts,” he said. “That’s what has touched me the most.”

Two points from three matches is ⁠their worst start since the ​2007-08 season, when PSG came close to relegation.

Paris Saint-Germain ‌have not had as poor a start to a league season ⁠for 19 years, ⁠with Friday’s home loss to Monaco leaving them winless after three matches in the Ligue 1 season.

Days before they begin the defence ⁠of their Champions League title, however, the Parisians have handed coach Luis Enrique a contract extension until 2030.

“There is no reason to be concerned. I ⁠say that honestly. How many shots on target did Monaco have? Two. How many goals? Two. We’ll see at the end of the season whether things balance out,” he said after Friday’s 2-1 setback in which they were ahead at halftime ‌but conceded twice after the break.

“What I want to get across is that you shouldn’t look only at the result,” Luis Enrique added.

“We pressed sensationally, much better than in many matches when we did not concede a goal. But luck was not on our side.

“Monaco know that if they play against us like this 10 times, we win eight, there’d be one ⁠draw and we’d lose once. This was that one ⁠defeat,” Luis Enrique insisted as PSG look ahead to hosting Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday in their first Champions League group game, chasing a third successive European title.

Two points from three matches is ⁠their worst start since the 2007-08 season, when PSG came close to relegation, finishing 16th. In that campaign, Paul ⁠Le Guen’s side had to wait until their ⁠sixth league game to record a victory and ended up only three points above the relegation places.

This time round, the Parisians are already seven points off the pace.

“It is incredible motivation for my ‌players, for the team and for the club. If you want to bet on who will be champions at the end of the season, we can ‌place ‌a bet. Seven points? OK, we will try to make up that deficit as quickly as possible,” the coach added.