One housemate will be crowned Big Brother’s 2026 winner in just a few hours

Big Brother’s favourite to win has been revealed just hours before the live final.

It’s been eight weeks since the ITV2 experiment returned to our screens with a fresh batch of contestants. They have since faced brutal co-star feuds and tricky shopping tasks all in the battle for a huge £100,000 cash prize.

The remaining contestants are Twinks, Rochelle, Yasmin, Samuel, Lynx and Catrin. Fans are now voting for their 2026 champion, with the results set to be announced on Thursday (November 5) at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX.

Although many viewers are convinced Rochelle will take home this year’s crown, recent betting odds suggest she could miss out on the prize. Bookmaker Coral believes tonight’s final could be the closest in history, at least if its odds are accurate.

They have revealed that Twinks is the 4/6 favourite to be crowned the winner, but Rochelle is hot on her heels at 6/5 in the outright betting for this evening’s final.

“This looks set to be one of the closest Big Brother finals in history, as there is very little between Twinks and Rochelle in our outright betting,” said Coral’s John Hill.

Hill added: “Twinks just edges favouritism following what has been a rollercoaster ride in the Big Brother house since her arrival. We expect her to be in the final two with Rochelle, and the majority of our punters are backing the former to be crowned the winner.”

Both contestants have gained considerable support over the last few weeks, although Rochelle has attracted backlash at several points in her ITV journey.

Odds for the other finalists place Yasmin at 10/1, while Samuel sits at 20/1, Lynx is at 50/1 and Catrin sits at 66/1.

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The live final will be hosted by AJ Odudu and Will Best and they will return for a special reunion episode on Friday night (November 6). All the housemates will re-enter the house for the reunion, where they will revisit major moments from the series.

Viewers have been told to expect “big revelations, unfinished business and plenty of drama as they look back on the moments that had the nation talking and reveal where they stand now”.

Big Brother’s live final airs tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX

When it came to which candidate weathered the most overtly racist attacks, in a midterm election full of the most overtly racist campaign attacks in modern memory, there was no contest.

Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, was called a “jihadist” by the president. Labeled a representative of “terrible evil” by the vice president. Smeared as an “extremist” by his Republican opponent. They all intentionally mispronounced his name as if it was a poison on the tongue that needed to be expelled.

But the hate offensive didn’t work. El-Sayed, 42, stepped up to the mic late Tuesday and delivered his victory speech as the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.

“My name,” he said, pointedly using full, guttural Arabic pronunciation, “is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.”

It was a clarifying moment for Muslims and for millions of others appalled by the normalization of bigotry handed down from the White House. There is an Allah, after all.

The son of Egyptian immigrants, El-Sayed prevailed over former Rep. Mike Rogers by seven percentage points in one of the most closely watched races of the midterms.

His victory was one among several historic wins scored by the Democrats as they elected more governors and flipped the House and Senate — including the triumphs of America’s first openly gay senator (Chris Pappas of New Hampshire) and first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland of New Mexico), as well as Texas’ first Latina governor (Gina Hinojosa).

But beyond the political implications, El-Sayed speaks for those of us who have been othered by our “foreign” heritage, the color of our skin, the food we eat, our accents or the way we pray.

He embodies what it means to face blistering attacks on your background and faith, and to come out the other side as more American in your ideals and resolve than your slur-slinging detractors.

If that sounds dramatic, so be it. It’s been a brutal decade for Muslims, Arabs or anyone associated with groups maligned, targeted or in many cases deported by the Trump administration. We needed this win to prove to ourselves, and perhaps the rest of the world, that this is not a nation dominated by narrow-minded exclusionists, despite what MAGA has wrought.

El-Sayed kept his cool on the campaign trail, sticking to Michelle Obama’s motto of “When they go low, we go high.” But he showed Tuesday how to have fun poking at the opposition with one hand while holding an olive branch in the other.

“Donald, I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can go on and call me Senator,” he said, rubbing in his victory while calling out President Trump for his brazen, Islamophobic rants.

The senator-elect also indirectly responded to JD Vance’s low blows against him and his campaign, which included the vice president calling him a “psychopath” and claiming he trafficked in “anti-white racial hatred.”

In doing so, El-Sayed addressed Vance with a widely used Arabic word meaning “my love.” Why? Because when deploying it against a detractor, it’s the equivalent of sarcastically calling them “sweetheart.”

“JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” said El-Sayed before throwing a college sports rivalry barb at the Ohio native: “Wolverines 1, Buckeyes 0.”

And as he has always done publicly, El-Sayed openly embraced his Muslim faith while addressing the American people.

He reminded us of the times during his campaign when he said “inshallah” (or “God willing”) to describe his hopes for winning the seat.

“Today, tonight, we can turn that ‘inshallah’ into an ‘alhamdulillah,’” meaning “praise be to God.”

It wasn’t long ago when such words uttered by a Muslim might strike fear in Americans who interpreted them as the calling card of terrorists just before they pulled the pin, flipped the switch or lobbed the bomb (thanks, Hollywood). Now, those words are part of a future senator’s speech to the millions of Americans he’s vowed to represent.

El-Sayed may just be making Arabic halal for the masses. And as the midterm results show, we’re ready for it.

Voters sent a message to Washington rebuking MAGA’s war on DEI, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community. The Trump-era culture war against folks who look like El-Sayed has not quelled inflation, made housing cheaper, caused gas prices to drop or rendered health insurance affordable. But it may have helped us see each other again, as fellow citizens struggling to keep up.

“As I was campaigning, some of you would come up and ask, ‘How come you don’t hit back? How come you don’t call them racist or hateful?’” El-Sayed said during his victory speech. “They weren’t just attacking me. They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America.”

It is about all of us, of course. But Muslim Americans who never thought they’d see the day are basking in El-Sayed’s win.

“We knew that the attacks on Abdul’s Muslim background were a big bull’s-eye for Rogers,” said Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. “What was heartening was to see it backfire.”

I’m not naive enough to think that the racist sentiment used by some Republicans to energize facets of their electorate is now a thing of the past. It’s always there. But you know what else is always there? People who choose progress instead of fear.

“Thank you. You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates,” El-Sayed said during his victory speech.

Mabruk, Abdul. You did it. We did it.

Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp became the first chief of a major Western Big Tech company to personally visit Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in June 2022 that he was “delighted” to receive the support of such a company in the fight against Russia “on the digital front line”.

The Florida-based software development firm’s partnership has paid off.

Ukraine has since become the first nation in modern history to systematically collect battlefield data, a crucial asset for training military artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise patterns and make predictions.

The trove of real-world combat data obtained from video and sensor feeds over four years of conflict is helping Ukraine monitor, predict and respond to Russian attacks with the help of Palantir’s products.

Yet observers say the data is also boosting the capabilities of the United States corporation whose technologies are implicated in human rights abuses, including in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, raising questions about the growing leverage that private tech corporations are acquiring over sovereign states.

A ‘strategic advantage’

Palantir was founded in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on New York’s World Trade Center to help the US defence industry build a single data environment from which to monitor and respond to incoming threats.

To reflect such a mission, the company was named after a stone in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that grants powers that border on omniscience.

Yasir Atalan, deputy director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Palantir makes “different forms of data talk to each other”.

In the military context, data from missiles, radars, the automatic identification system (AIS) and open sources is gathered on one screen, offering a “larger view of the battlefield”, Atalan said.

Similar solutions are available to governments for civil purposes, including border control, health services, tax and revenue – and mass surveillance.

With more data, systems use statistical learning to recognise patterns to make accurate predictions, enabling military systems to make split-second, automated tactical decisions.

Under this premise, large datasets based on real-life scenarios are coveted by companies aiming to outperform their competitors.

“Good battlefield data is extremely rare and hard to come by,” Elke Schwarz, a lecturer focusing on digital technologies at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. Because of its scarcity, “those with access to [it] have a strategic advantage”.

Data originating from Ukraine may not be directly applicable to another conflict but is still crucial for training, Schwarz said.

“Building a system that correctly identifies a tank, for instance, requires a large volume of tank images, ideally in all kinds of weather conditions,” she explained.

Similarly, large volumes of behavioural data – information on how people react to a given scenario – are key in tracking, profiling and predicting human activity in mass surveillance systems.

Ukraine’s invaluable battlefield data

The pinnacle of the collaboration between Palantir and Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence came in January with the launch of a specialised software platform, the Brave1 Dataroom, which uses battlefield data to train artificial intelligence for military applications.

But prominent figures in Ukraine’s defence sector have questioned their government’s decision to share the country’s valuable asset with a private tech company under undisclosed terms.

“Ukraine has something that no other country in the world has,” Valerii Markus, a serviceman and former chief sergeant, wrote on Facebook. “We are paying with blood for data that someone else can convert into capital, international influence, and big money.”

The company maintains it does not acquire customer data.

In an emailed statement to Al Jazeera, it said that “customers own and control their data”.

Palantir’s software helps them “integrate and analyse their existing data sets,” the company said, adding: “Palantir never uses or retains customer data for its own purposes.”

Schwarz, at Queen Mary University London, said Palantir does not need to possess the data to benefit from it. “Rather, it works with the data that is made available,” she said.

Civil liberties and data protection

Palantir’s technologies, contracted by private clients and government agencies around the world, are known to have been implicated in human rights abuses.

Its core software platforms, ICM and FALCON, facilitated the administration of US President Donald Trump in detaining and deporting thousands of people, including asylum seekers, since January 2025. Amnesty International found the company aggregated massive amounts of data, built detailed individual profiles to track migrants and asylum seekers and assisted with deportations, contrary to its obligations to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses under international law.

The company has also assisted Israel in its war in Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry found bears the hallmarks of genocide.

Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese found “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir provided AI platforms used for battlefield data integration and automated decision-making in the war that has killed more than 74,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS), police, military and local councils all signed multimillion-pound contracts with Palantir to integrate user data, but the agreements have been met with public backlash.

Nonprofit organisation Corporate Accountability launched a campaign against the 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between the NHS and Palantir to provide a new data platform. The watchdog warned the company is “at the heart of the dystopian marriage of Big Tech, the surveillance and detention industry, and rising fascism”.

Palantir in April published a 22-point summary of Karp’s coauthored book on X, which was widely criticised for promoting an authoritarian, antidemocratic worldview by questioning the efficacy of liberal democracy and arguing that some cultures produce vital advances while others are regressive.

Fatimah Shaikh, Corporate Accountability’s deputy campaigns director, said, “Palantir is not a corporation we can trust” to hold British citizens’ sensitive personal information.

“We should all be able to get medical care without fearing for our safety or privacy,” she told Al Jazeera.

Ilia Siatitsa, senior legal officer at Privacy International in the UK, said tech companies like Palantir blur the line between military and civil applications. They are also opaque about how they use customers’ data by virtue of their involvement in national security, she added.

Siatitsa argued the company could potentially use personal information to train its products – including those with a military application – without explicit consent from the users.

“If my data is going to be feeding into a war machine, I want to know about it,” she said. “I need to have the choice, not only [as a matter of] privacy, but also from an ethical point of view.”

In June, Britain announced it was reviewing the NHS’s data contract with Palantir after parliamentary pressure.

Growing dependencies

Private tech companies are supporting military and civil infrastructure, to the point where governments may become reliant on them to conduct military operations or run national services, experts say.

Anna Nadibaidze, researcher at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, said the balance of power has been shifting.

“We’re used to state armies, nations’ armies being the main players,” Nadibaidze said, adding that now those players are reliant on products supplied by the private sector. “So what if they choose to not supply this infrastructure any more?”

She argued Elon Musk’s SpaceX offered a valid example.

Ukraine has come to rely heavily on the company’s Starlink satellites for communications on the battlefield and effective warfare, but in late September 2022, during a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake Kherson from Russia, the tech billionaire suddenly provoked a communications blackout.

Amid tensions between Washington and Europe, several countries are now refraining from using Palantir’s products. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu in June said domestic intelligence services would ditch Palantir’s products in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”. Germany’s military also said it would no longer use the company’s products.

Spanish publication El Confidencial revealed in July that Spanish authorities quietly instructed state-backed companies to avoid signing new contracts with Palantir, citing concerns that sensitive national security information could be exposed.

Palantir’s reliability as a partner has also been called into question in Ukraine after the company finalised in September a strategic partnership with Nebius, a Dutch company founded as an offshoot of Russian technology giant Yandex.

Denys Shtilerman, chief designer and co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence-tech company that develops and produces UAV and missile systems, said “the very same Palantir that works with Ukrainian combat data” had struck a deal with Yandex cofounder Arkady Volozh.

Volozh’s description of Russia’s war as “barbaric” has not eased Shtilerman’s concerns.

“Our combat data is not free raw material for Western technology corporations. It is a strategic asset of the state,” he wrote on X in a response to Kyiv’s collaboration with Palantir.

“Ukraine has paid for it with blood. We have no right to simply hand over the most valuable asset we possess.”

Accra, Ghana – Ghana needs more than 1.8 million additional housing units, but attracting investment to build them is only half the challenge. For millions of people, the deeper problem is that the homes reaching the market remain beyond their means.

That tension ran through the Africa Real Estate Conference & Expo (ARCE), which brought developers, policymakers, investors and technology entrepreneurs to Accra this week. While participants presented plans to expand construction, improve housing finance and deploy new technologies, their discussions pointed to a stubborn question: how can Ghana make housing commercially viable for developers without pricing out the people who need it?

The stakes are considerable. Some 56.7 percent of Ghana’s population lives in urban areas, yet only about 5 percent of Ghanaians can afford housing without state support. The gap between housing need and effective purchasing power continues to shape the market, limiting the reach of both private developers and conventional mortgage lenders.

Government seeks to unlock housing finance

The government has introduced measures intended to reduce borrowing costs and stimulate construction. The National Homeownership Fund has lowered mortgage rates to 8.4 percent, from 13.5 percent, while a revolving fund of three billion Ghanaian cedis (about $256m) targets public sector workers with repayment periods of 15 to 20 years.

Authorities are also seeking to revive the stalled Saglemi Housing Project, targeting the first 700 units for March 2027, and have announced plans for a 200-acre Green City Project at Dedesua.

At the National Conference on Housing Finance earlier this month, President John Dramani Mahama announced an allocation of one billion Ghanaian cedis (about $85m) in the 2027 budget for the National Housing Fund. He also highlighted the difficulties informal-sector workers face in accessing mortgages, despite earning regular incomes, because they often lack payslips and conventional banking records.

“A system that cannot recognise these livelihoods excludes a substantial part of our nation from the opportunity to own a home,” Mahama said, urging banks to develop alternative ways of assessing borrowers.

Housing Minister Ahmed Ibrahim, who represented the president at ARCE, also called for greater private-sector participation in affordable housing and mortgage finance.

These interventions address important barriers, but their impact will depend on whether financing reaches the households most in need and whether developers can build at prices those households can sustain. Lower interest rates cannot compensate indefinitely for expensive land, infrastructure and construction.

The costs behind the shortage

About 90 percent of Ghana’s housing is built through personal savings and incremental construction, while mortgage penetration stands at just 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The figures point to a market in which most households must finance construction themselves, often over many years, rather than buy completed homes through conventional mortgages.

Bako Ambianda, CEO of Backbone Capital Ventures and an ARCE keynote speaker, said the central problem was not a lack of demand but the difficulty of turning that demand into viable housing projects.

“Africa’s housing challenge is not a lack of demand,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is a mismatch between the cost of delivering homes, the financing available to build them, and the purchasing power and payment patterns of households.”

Samuel Amegayibor, executive director of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), identified access to finance and secure land as two of the biggest obstacles facing developers.

Although borrowing costs have fallen from around 30 percent to between 9 and 15 percent, depending on the bank, finance remains expensive. Land can be equally difficult to secure, with ownership complications and inadequate infrastructure adding uncertainty and expense.

“Our land tenure system, you know the problems we have. It has always been a challenge for people to get secured land,” Amegayibor said.

Even after acquiring land, developers may have to extend electricity and water connections and construct access roads before building can begin. Those costs are eventually reflected in selling prices.

Materials create another pressure. Amegayibor estimated that about 70 percent of housing inputs are imported, leaving developers exposed to import costs and taxes.

“Apart from sand, gravel and water, most of the things are import-based,” he said.

He argued that expanding local production could reduce reliance on imports while creating investment opportunities across the construction supply chain.

“That deficit is a business opportunity for both the supply side and the demand side,” he said, encouraging investors to establish domestic manufacturing capacity.

The difficulty is ensuring that lower production costs translate into lower house prices rather than simply improving developers’ margins.

Rent exposes the same affordability gap

For tenants, the financial barrier often comes before monthly rent begins. Although Ghana’s Rent Act of 1963 limits advance rent to six months, landlords routinely demand one to two years up front, forcing tenants to find large sums before securing accommodation.

Government enforcement measures reportedly introduced in April 2026 carry penalties of up to 3,000 Ghanaian cedis (about $257) or six months’ imprisonment. The FirstKey app is intended to help identify non-compliant landlords and verify listings. Under the proposed Easy Rent programme, the National Housing Fund would pay rent advances directly to landlords, with workers repaying the amount monthly.

Such measures could ease the immediate burden, but they do not address the underlying shortage of homes within reach of ordinary earners. About 70 percent of Ghanaians fall within the low- and middle-income bracket, yet much housing development continues to target higher earners.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply to increase supply, but to align that supply with what households can afford to buy or rent.

Can technology help close the gap?

At ARCE, 30 PropTech startups presented tools intended to improve building performance, reduce operating costs and modernise property management. Their innovations offer potential savings, but their contribution to affordability depends on up-front costs, adoption and whether benefits reach households rather than only property owners and developers.

Isaac Ayitey Chris-Quaye, co-founder of NeuraHomes, said smart-home systems can help residents monitor energy use, improve security and make better-informed decisions. His company allows homeowners to introduce features gradually instead of paying for a complete system up front.

“Traditional homes seem affordable or cheap,” he said. “Cheap because you end up paying the price for it in the future.”

Chris-Quaye cited one case in which property managers reduced energy costs by 20 percent annually, with the system paying for itself within four years. The result illustrates the potential to reduce operating expenses, although actual savings depend on installation costs and energy consumption.

“A smart home is not a luxury,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s human dignity.”

William Atitso Amankwah, founder of AWA Roofing Sheets, is addressing energy use through a Cool Roof coating that reflects up to 60 percent of sunlight. He estimates that it can lower indoor temperatures by 2-5 degrees Celsius (3.6-9 degrees Fahrenheit) and reduce cooling-energy consumption by 11 to 27 percent.

For a typical Greater Accra household, he estimates annual savings of 330–810 cedis (about $28–69). The coating adds an estimated 120–500 cedis (about $10–43) to the price of a pack of 20 roofing sheets. Whether the investment pays off quickly depends on energy use, installation costs, and electricity tariffs.

Alternative construction methods may also help reduce costs. Acheampong Builderman, managing partner of Builderman Estates, has developed homes using sandbags and recycled materials but is seeking partners and funding to expand the approach.

“People were interested, but they wanted you to fund everything,” he told Al Jazeera.

The examples demonstrate how technology and alternative materials could improve efficiency or lower some costs. But neither digital tools nor energy-saving products can independently resolve insecure land titles, inadequate infrastructure or expensive development finance.

As Ambianda warned, “A beautifully designed app will not make an overpriced plot affordable, provide a road or drainage system, lower the cost of capital by itself, or resolve an unclear title.”

Financing homes around people’s incomes

For Ambianda, the solution also requires rethinking how households qualify for housing finance. Conventional mortgages often fail to accommodate informal-sector workers whose incomes arrive daily or weekly rather than through regular salaries.

“We should stop assuming that the conventional mortgage is the only route to homeownership,” he said.

With borrowers’ consent, lenders could assess repayment capacity using transaction histories, savings behaviour, mobile-money activity and rental-payment records. Such approaches could bring more households into the formal financing system, provided that affordability, data privacy and responsible lending remain priorities.

Land policy also needs attention. Ambianda called on governments to make secure, serviced land available through transparent and predictable processes. The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) has proposed a National Housing Authority led by technocrats and insulated from political cycles, arguing that housing delivery requires consistent policy beyond individual governments’ terms.

For Ghana, the challenge is to connect investment with secure land, reliable infrastructure, lower construction costs and financing suited to household incomes. Government programmes, private capital and technological innovation can all contribute, but none is sufficient on its own. The measure of success will be whether they enable developers to deliver homes that ordinary Ghanaians can actually afford.

“Africa’s housing opportunity is immense, but the answer is not simply to attract more money,” Ambianda told Al Jazeera. “It is to make projects deliverable, financing accessible and homes genuinely attainable.”

There’s a deadline, and it only applies to certain families

Families are being urged to move fast if they want to cut the cost of their next holiday, with a rapidly approaching deadline to snap up a new easyJet discount.

The budget carrier and easyJet holidays have unveiled a brand new deal specifically designed to cover the cost of a baby’s first passport. Anyone who books a trip with an infant before November 26, 2026, can save £66.50 on their booking – matching the exact current fee for a standard online British child passport application.

The money-saving initiative arrives during what is traditionally one of the busiest periods of the year for new arrivals, and follows a whopping 10% surge in infant travel. In 2026 alone, easyJet has carried 22,000 more babies across its networks compared to the year before, with city breaks proving the most popular destination choice for young families venturing abroad.

With the cost of living continuing to squeeze household finances, the airline hopes the discount will give mums and dads one less thing to worry about. In a recent survey by the travel firm, three in four parents agreed the offer would make a holiday with a baby feel considerably more affordable.

How to claim the baby passport offer

The deal is simple, with no minimum spend required to unlock the savings. It applies to holidays booked with an infant aged under two years old at the time of travel, provided they are travelling on their very first passport.

Before the deadline hits you need to choose your holiday. Select an eligible break on easyJet.com/holidays, ensuring you include the infant on the booking.

You must confirm your booking before the deadline of November 26, 2026. The holiday itself must be completed by October 31, 2028.

When you reach the “extras” page online, input the promo code FIRSTPASSPORT. If you’d rather book through a high street travel agent, simply provide them with the code at the desk.

It’s worth noting that easyJet doesn’t apply for or pay for the passport directly. You still need to apply and pay for it yourself through HM Passport Office. The £66.50 is deducted straight from your total holiday bill, working as a direct discount rather than a government refund.

Please note there’s a strict limit of one promotional discount per booking.

Stuart Wright, Customer Director at easyJet holidays, said: “Travel has a unique way of bringing families together, and a baby’s very first holiday is often one of those moments parents remember for years to come. By covering the cost of a baby’s first passport, we’re helping more families start making those memories that little bit sooner.”

Film student Angela Henderson was collecting her thoughts, resting on the patio of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts on a recent sunny afternoon while listening to music on her headphones as she stared into the sky. Henderson was taking a short break after applying for dozens of Hollywood jobs.

The 22-year-old cinema and media studies student graduates in December, and she’s admittedly “a little freaked out” by what awaits her.

“What if one day, I am one of those people that ends up losing a job?” Henderson said.

She isn’t wrong to wonder.

Partly fueled by media consolidation, waves of layoffs have swept across the industry, bringing job cuts to Netflix, Walt Disney and Warner Bros., recently acquired by Paramount-Skydance.

Productions keep leaving the state and artificial intelligence and vertical video are reshaping what gets made and who makes it.

Yet aspiring actors, screenwriters and directors, many of them film school students like Henderson, are still making the pilgrimage to Los Angeles. The Times spoke with some of these students about how they plan to navigate today’s Hollywood. Most are clear-eyed about the odds, and none of them are planning to quit.

“Some of us can see a lot of doom and gloom,” said Miranda Banks, a professor of film, television and media studies at Loyola Marymount University. “But this generation has their eye on the power of human creativity in a way that I’m not sure any of us in other generations have been so attuned to.”

She thinks many of her students have a good chance at making it if they are “savvy and strategic” about where the industry is headed.

“We’ve had a lot of unprecedented years, a lot of years with strange things that have impacted the industry and made things particularly challenging,” Banks added. “That has happened before. It will continue to happen.”

Gianna Jordano, a freshman film and television production major at Loyola Marymount University, is photographed on a film stage inside the Wil and Mary Jane Von der Ahe Communication Arts Building, which houses LMU’s School of Film and Television.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Gianna Jordano, Loyola Marymount University, 19

When Gianna Jordano first applied to film schools, she said she knew the industry was in a bit of a “slump stage.” With fewer movies being made, the impact of AI and an overall lack of jobs, the Huntington Beach native said she was nervous about pursuing a career in the film business.

But after seeing movies like “Primetime,” “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in theaters this year, Jordano is more inspired than ever.

“My friends and I’ve all been watching all of these new movies, and we’re saying, ‘This is what we want to do. This is what I want to pursue in the future and be able to achieve,’” said the film and TV production major. “I feel less nervous now.”

After graduation, she plans to work her way up to directing — even if that means taking other jobs such as teaching and working in a restaurant to achieve her dream.

“The more open-minded you are, and the more willing you are to work, the easier it is to find a job, even if you’re maybe not always on the best set or doing the job that you want to do,” Jordano said.

Teddy Abularach, left, and Mitch Linebaugh, both 18, visit the Herbert E. Farmer Motion Picture Technology Collection at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Teddy Abularach and Mitch Linebaugh, USC, 18

Freshman screenwriting majors Teddy Abularach and Mitch Linebaugh had recently moved to L.A. from New York City and Des Moines, respectively, to pursue careers in screenwriting.

Despite shared concerns about landing jobs after graduation, both are determined to succeed in the business.
.

“We’re just gonna have to work that much harder to get a job. I’m already preparing myself for a brutal postgrad life,” Abularach said. “I wouldn’t be happy if I were in another job. … Even if there’s a small chance for me to succeed and be able to pay the bills and do something that I love, it’s worth it.”

They aren’t blind to the challenges of being a screenwriter.

But Linebaugh said he worries that “everything is just going to become so uniform,” as the industry seems to lean too heavily on algorithms and audiences’ preferences.

“I don’t think people in this industry will let that happen — everyone from the writers to even the executives,” Linebaugh said. “I know the stereotype is that they like to keep their jobs, but I remain hopeful that they want to make good movies too.”

The two 18-year-olds moved to the city with every intention of staying, even as the industry’s local footprint hollows out.

Linebaugh said he’s going to give screenwriting his all, and if it doesn’t work out, he will consider graduate school or entertainment law.

Abularach said there’s no “plan B outside of entertainment.”

He’s already preparing for the life.

“I still can’t get the stereotype out of my head of the L.A. writer who does all the things in L.A., like taking pitch meetings, getting coffee and being in writers’ rooms,” added Abularach.

UCLA film student Tomas Carrasco, center, has makeup applied by UCLA student Song Diqiong, right, before performing in his short film, “D-Facer, Reality Break,” on the set inside Melnitz Hall on the UCLA campus. He wrote, produced, starred in and directed his short film.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Tomas Carrasco, UCLA, 25

In a hallway lined with movie posters in UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, Tomas Carrasco was in the middle of preparing to shoot his senior capstone film: a surreal horror comedy. The senior, who’s on the director’s track of UCLA’s film and television program, said he isn’t “afraid necessarily about where the industry’s heading because there’s always going to be space for artists.”

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, Carrasco was always fascinated by moviemaking. His father worked as a soap opera editor and would sometimes bring him to set, where he learned to love the “feeling of being around people making stuff.”

He started his film education at Santa Monica College, where he took every film class offered. Now, he has his sights set on production design.

For all his artistic leanings, he said he’s well aware that movies are products that need to make money. Because of that, he sees more of the industry turning toward technology instead of taking art-centered risks.

“I see the mergers that are happening and all the AI stuff sucks. I don’t like it,” Carrasco said. “But I still have to come into class every day and do my homework. I’m thinking about where the industry is heading, but it takes up as much space as a movie idea.”

As he prepares for an uncertain future, Carrasco plans to keep working at his family’s Northridge cafe, Mate Conmigo, where he can pursue his creative ambitions while maintaining a stable job.

“I do want it as a career path, and I don’t want to be naive,” he said. “But you have to kind of be naive. You have to be delusional about wanting to have a career in the arts.”

USC film student Angela Henderson, 22, stands next to a photo of director Orson Welles at the Herbert E. Farmer Motion Picture Technology Collection at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Angela Henderson, USC, 22

For Henderson, part of the job-induced anxiety is simple math.

“Unfortunately, it’s so hard to be able to separate myself from it,” she said. “There are hundreds of people in film programs here who all want to have the same jobs and careers.”

Raised in Eagle Rock by two musician parents, Henderson always had the world of entertainment within reach. At 10, she took up acting and started doing theater and commercials. She began college at UC Berkeley, where she realized she didn’t want to be only in front of the camera, but also to study the medium from behind it. She transferred to USC with dreams of following filmmakers like Greta Gerwig, who got their start in writing and directing their own projects.

If it takes a while for Henderson to break into the industry, so be it. She said she’s open to any kind of job, including assistant work and food service.

But Henderson said her generation of filmmakers doesn’t feel discouraged, so much as eager to incite change. They’re largely tired, she said, of watching Hollywood “recycle the same material over and over again,” and want to bring new stories to the table.

“It does feel like we’re on the verge of something new. There’s a breakthrough that’s about to happen,” Henderson said. “With all the verticals happening, and the AI slop stuff happening on social media, there’s also like this huge renaissance in indie movies … there’s still this hope that there’s something new that’s going to come.”

Despite a nationwide blue wave in the midterm election, California’s much-debated billionaire tax didn’t get the support many expected in one of the country’s most liberal states.

Since the Golden State’s powerful healthcare union proposed the new tax, supporters of Proposition 40 have faced a fierce, expensive battle against the world’s richest people.

In what has been described as a David-versus-Goliath fight, the underdog appears to have lost. The proposition, which would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California billionaires to mostly fund healthcare, seemed headed toward defeat as votes were tallied Wednesday.

“In a deep blue state like California, most voters are going to support additional funding for healthcare, especially to replace Trump funding cuts. But in retrospect, the sponsors may wish they’ve been a little bit less ambitious,” said Dan Schnur, a politics and communications professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.

Nearly 56% of California voters rejected the proposal while 44% voted for Proposition 40. However, with roughly 6 million votes still needed to be counted, the results are still too close to call.

The battle over the billionaire tax has been one of the most expensive ballot-measure fights in California’s history, sparking a debate over wealth inequality and taxing the ultrawealthy. It also highlighted how billionaires have wielded more influence in politics.

Well-known politicians such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the California Democratic Party, healthcare workers and Hollywood celebrities including actor Mark Ruffalo, backed the wealth tax. But the idea drew opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the teachers union, Planned Parenthood, business groups and others who expressed fears that billionaires could flee the state.

The state’s next governor, Xavier Becerra, who just won, also opposed the tax.

Though California’s $4.25-trillion economy remains a global powerhouse, and a major draw for investments in AI and aerospace, thousands of businesses have moved to Texas and other states in recent years due to lower costs.

Opponents of the wealth tax heavily outspent Proposition 40 supporters, flooding televisions, radio, social media and smartphones with ads. Their message: the wealth tax is a reckless experiment and a tax on everyone, not just billionaires.

UC Berkeley law professor Brian Galle, who helped write the wealth tax proposal, said it’s tough to “fix a broken system” and get the facts to people when they were up against the ultrawealthy. Billionaires also own media outlets and social media companies, megaphones that help spread political messaging.

“When billionaires have half a dozen different strategies for buying this election, it shows that they already have too much money and pay too little back,” he said.

Support for the billionaire-bashing proposition had already begun to wane in recent months.

A poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and released last week, showed that voter support for Proposition 40 had fallen to 42% of voters surveyed last month from 48% in August.

The measure also may have lost fans because taxing assets rather than income can be a complicated and confusing process and sparks concerns among even non-billionaires on whether they want to allow the state to start demanding a slice of the value of the things that they own.

No matter the result, Proposition 40 also fueled a conversation about taxing billionaires that will continue, Galle said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, roughly $489 million has been raised to support and oppose Proposition 40 along with two ballot measures — Propositions 41 and 42 — that could block the wealth tax, data from the California secretary of state show.

The vast majority of that funding, more than $380 million, went toward killing the billionaire tax. Supporters of the wealth tax, including the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, trailed far behind, contributing roughly $100 million, according to filings with the California secretary of state.

Billionaires such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin contributed millions to a group called Building a Better California that funded ads against the wealth tax and propositions that could block it.

Money doesn’t always win an election, but a big funding imbalance is tough to overcome, Schnur said.

“As important as the money was to beat Prop. 40, the coalition against it may have been just as important. You didn’t see Sergey. You didn’t see tech billionaires in the ads. You saw teachers and nurses and firefighters,” he said.

The four richest Californians — Brin, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang; Google co-founder Larry Page and Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg — would owe 40% of the estimated taxes to be collected from the billionaire tax, according to an L.A. Times analysis.

Ahead of the election, billionaires made moves to prepare for the potential tax. Zuckerberg expressed concerns that if he had to sell his stock to pay the tax that could reduce his control over the company, but Meta’s board struck a deal to address that fear.

The billionaire tax proposal also faced other big hurdles. Proposition 42, which could have blocked the billionaire tax, was on track to pass. It would prohibit new taxes on “retirement holdings, individually-owned assets, and other forms of personal savings” and bar retroactive taxes.

“They didn’t just reject a single bad tax idea — millions of Californians backed the strongest protections available to protect their hard earned life savings from double taxation. They joined firefighters, law enforcement officers, building trades workers, seniors, veterans and small businesses in doing so,” said Nathan Click, a spokesman for Proposition 42.

On the other hand, Proposition 41 — a proposal that would have required audits for new state special taxes, and also could have blocked the billionaire tax — was headed for defeat.

Supporters of Proposition 40 tried to convince voters that taxing roughly 200 billionaires was the solution to raise $100 billion needed to offset federal healthcare cuts.

This week, the wealth tax’s supporters emphasized the high stakes. People won’t be able to afford healthcare coverage, children will die and hospitals will shutter, they said, if California lawmakers don’t find a way to get more funding.

“If Sacramento fails to protect patients and deliver a real solution that makes billionaires pay their fair share, healthcare workers will pursue every available avenue, up to and including returning to the ballot in 2028 with a billionaire tax,” said Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff for the SEIU-UHW.

Portugal legend Cristiano Ronaldo says he is retiring from international football.

The 41-year-old forward has scored 146 goals and won 234 caps for his country – both world records – since making his debut in 2003.

He walked out of the Portugal camp last month after being told he would not start the Nations League match against Denmark.

“To the Portuguese people, the day has come for me to hand back the number seven shirt of our national team,” Ronaldo said in an Instagram video., external.

“I never felt it belonged to me alone, but for 23 years I had the privilege and responsibility of wearing it, defending it and carrying it with me into stadiums all around the world.

“Today the time has come to pass it on to the future. It was not an easy decision, because some decisions are not made with the mind alone – they are also made with the heart.

“A journey that began in August 2003 and changed my life forever has come to and end.”

More to follow.

Khan Younis, Gaza – A few metres from the sea, near al-Qarara port on Gaza’s coast, Anas al-Shami, 33, is trying to keep his family of six warm and dry in a dilapidated tent. It offers little protection from wind and rain, while the damp seeps into their bedding and belongings at every moment. The swelling waves in the sea also pose a constant threat as winter approaches.

The beach was not al-Shami’s choice of place to live, but the refuge his family took shelter in after being displaced from their home quickly became overcrowded. They can’t afford anything safer than this tent.

Now, he and his family are living in constant fear of a repeat of last winter’s flooding.

Al-Shami and his family were forced to leave Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, when it became part of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Zone” beyond which Palestinians are not permitted to go.

“I searched for land in displacement areas where I could pitch a tent, but overcrowding and high rental costs made that impossible,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I was therefore forced to stay on the beach, despite the dangers facing my family and me.”

Al-Shami recalls last winter, when seawater and rain flooded his tent while the family was asleep. He would wake to find his children lying in water. Their bedding and belongings were repeatedly soaked, leaving him unable to protect them from the cold as the tent turned into a pond.

Despite trying all year, the family has been unable to find anywhere else to go, leaving them facing another winter on the beach.

“My children’s repeated exposure to water, cold and damp caused serious illness which threatened their lives,” he says.

‘I feel helpless in front of my children’

It’s a familiar story along this stretch of coastline.

Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, whose family has also been displaced from eastern Khan Younis, is sharing a cramped tent with his seven children on the port’s shoreline. The dilapidated shelter lacks any basic necessities and offers little protection from the cold, rain and wind.

“What hurts me most is feeling helpless in front of my children,” he says. “I cannot provide winter clothes to protect them from the cold or even a dry mattress for them to sleep on.”

The strong wind and the sound of the rising waves keep him awake at night, he says, and he is terrified of another flood like last year’s, when water inundated the tent and forced the family to endure the cold in the open. His greatest wish is to find safe shelter where his children can sleep without fear.

Some families have found a makeshift solution to keep the water at bay.

By filling damaged cooking pots with earth, they have forged a barrier against encroaching seawater alongside the tents.

Mayasem Association, an aid organisation which works in cooperation with World Central Kitchen, has seized on this innovation and is now producing these pot-barriers for families in this area close to al-Qarara port.

The initiative reuses large pots rendered unusable by repeated exposure to flames, corrosion and holes. Three pots, donated by World Central Kitchen, are filled with soil and stacked on top of one another, reaching approximately 150 centimetres in height to form barriers that hold back the incoming water and prevent waves from reaching shelter sites.

“The initiative initially involved building barriers to protect the association’s safe space, which hosts its education programmes, school, cultural activities, arts and heritage programmes,” Khalil Abu Lahia, the association’s emergency response coordinator, tells Al Jazeera. “The idea later developed into an attempt to protect the displaced families’ tents along the coastal strip.”

A winter fraught with risk

While this is an example of the innovative thinking which can help families who are destitute and at risk in Gaza, it is nevertheless only a temporary measure which cannot make up for the widespread lack of safe shelter.

The initiative comes amid a warning from Gaza’s Winter Emergency Committee of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as tents and caravans remain in critically short supply as Israeli authorities continue to prevent their entry into the Gaza Strip, alongside the delivery of critical construction materials and fuel.

The committee has reported that Israeli forces have also destroyed about 70 percent of municipalities’ essential operational equipment and 90 percent of civil defence rescue equipment. The fuel crisis means machinery and generators will soon stop functioning altogether, further limiting the ability to respond to floods, carry out rescue operations and clear roads.

In all, there are about 200,000 dilapidated tents sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children, women and people with disabilities.

Some 7,800 of them are located in extremely hazardous areas, the committee has warned, including on dry riverbeds which may now flood, rainwater collection ponds and beaches exposed to crashing winter waves. These need to be urgently relocated to safer locations.

About 2,000 cracked buildings are also at risk of collapse, threatening families who have sought refuge inside them. Building materials, caravans, shelter and fuel are all urgently needed, the committee says.

Ten suspects are accused of abusing and torturing several people in the garage of a government compound in Belgrade.

Nine active Serbian police officers and one former officer have been arrested over accusations of using excessive force against students last year during protests that culminated in October’s electoral defeat of former President Aleksandar Vucic.

The Serbian Ministry of Interior announced Wednesday’s arrests, alleging that the suspects abused and tortured several people in the garage of a government compound in Belgrade in August 2025.

In a statement, the ministry said the suspects were on duty when they “used force and threats to inflict severe pain and suffering on several injured people, in order to obtain information, intimidate and unlawfully punish them”.

Anticorruption protests began in Serbia after 16 people were killed when the canopy at a railway station in Novi Sad collapsed in November 2024. The collapse was seen as symptomatic of alleged widespread corruption under Vucic, who served as president for 12 years before conceding defeat last month after parliamentary elections.

The ministry has released only the initials of the suspects but said they served in an elite unit. According to state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia, the commander of the Special Antiterrorism Unit, Igor Zmiric, was among the detainees.

Since last month’s vote, the winning student-led protest movement has demanded reforms within state institutions, including the police and intelligence services. Protesters have also called on top officials to resign, accusing them of colluding with Vucic while he was in power.

Hopes that Belgrade would join the European Union have increased since October’s elections as the bloc offered to hold further accession talks if Serbia’s new government strengthens democracy.

In a 2025 report on Serbia, Amnesty International warned that protesters, journalists and civil society organisations “continued to face intimidation, harassment and unlawful surveillance as authorities sought to rein in widespread discontent”.

The rights group said protesters were subjected to excessive force in “multiple cases across the country”.

On weekends, 1st and 2nd streets between Alameda and Los Angeles swell with crowds of families, anime fans, sneakerheads and tourists and locals alike in search of ramen or sushi, manga and magazines, matcha, toys, Japanese crafts, groceries, traditional sweets, records, Shohei paraphernalia and vintage fashion.

This is Little Tokyo, one of the most walkable, vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles — a historic small town within a big city that has thrived, even if sometimes precariously, through waves of urban development.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

The 300 block of 1st Street is known as the Little Tokyo Historic District, a nationally registered designation that’s the heart of the neighborhood. Here more than a dozen buildings preserve the pre-World War II streetscape and represent the social and cultural history of Japanese Americans in L.A.

The block is also an emblematic crossroads, where sweeping changes and cultural preservation converge.

“People want places like Little Tokyo,” says Kristin Fukushima, executive director of Little Tokyo Community Council, a nonprofit focusing on sustainable development for more than 5,000 residents and 400 businesses. “People identify with the culture and character of the neighborhood.”

In 1884 a cook named Hamanosuke “Charles Hama” Shigeta opened L.A.’s first Japanese-owned business, Kame, a 1st Street restaurant that stood where gift shop Bunkado is today. It was the seed of what’s now the largest Japanese American neighborhood in the U.S.

In the spring of 1942, Little Tokyo was emptied almost overnight, its residents forced from their homes and sent to incarceration camps. The businesses and institutions that survived and rose after the war remain part of its foundation, including confectionery shop Fugetsu-Do, Anzen Hardware and Far East Cafe, along with Buddhist temples such as Koyasan and Higashi Honganji.

Echoes of displacement resounded last summer when masked federal agents arrived in Little Tokyo and armored vehicles flanked the Japanese American National Museum — a memorial of historic trauma turned into a backdrop for immigration enforcement sweeps.

Meanwhile, generations of activists have helped save the neighborhood from being erased by eminent domain and real estate development. Every major monument and community space exists because of negotiation between activists, city government and corporate interests. “Asian American civil rights are a critical piece of the history here,” Fukushima says, referring to a movement that fought urban displacement, created services and allied with Black, Latino and anti-war groups for social justice.

The latest chapter of endurance is taking shape at the 1st Street North Residences, a mixed-use development with 100% affordable housing that used to be a city-owned parking lot. But before the 1950s the same land was a neighborhood of Japanese American businesses and homes for a growing Black community. Those buildings were demolished following evictions via eminent domain to make way for police headquarters. Now the project represents a reclamation.

Iconic Little Tokyo restaurant Suehiro and mochi maker Fugetsu-Do are expected to move into ground-floor retail spaces surrounding a cherry tree courtyard and the Go For Broke Monument, a black granite memorial honoring the more than 16,000 Japanese American men and women who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Philip Hirose is a third-generation owner of Anzen Hardware, an institution that disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023 but returned to its original location on 1st Street earlier this year. He also operates Azay, a restaurant his mother and late father founded. “Being in Little Tokyo where families have known each other for generations, there’s a lot of interconnectedness,” Hirose says. “You get a kind of gem.”

When asked what it’s like to be part of this neighborhood, one that’s rooted in a century of resilience and renewal, he says, “It feels like everything.”

The provided text discusses historical events surrounding Colon Day in Panama, which is observed on November 5. Following a declaration of independence, the Colombian government instructed its military troops to advance toward Panama. However, on November 5, 1903, residents living in Colon successfully persuaded the stationed Colombian forces to halt their march toward Panama City. Without this crucial intervention, the military might have gained a tactical advantage that could have crushed the independence movement. Additionally, the source briefly mentions other regional occurrences, such as earthquakes in southern Panama and independence holidays in Ecuador.

This Morning returned to screens today after it was pulled from air

This Morning returned to screens today after it was suddenly pulled off air yesterday.

Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley addressed the chaos that took place on Wednesday, which resulted in This Morning being removed from the schedule altogether.

Cat said: “Hello there and welcome to your Thursday’s This Morning. Back up and running, someone’s stuck 50p in the meter, we are all good to go.”

Ben added: “There was a power cut across the whole of Covent Garden apparently, which meant that we weren’t on air. But despite that, your hair is looking rather lovely this week.”

He added: “Even when there’s a power cut, you still get our hair done”, as Cat replied: “There was one lamp working so we did it by lamp light, the water was still working at that point.”

Ben later commented: “Thank you to the team that managed to get everything back up and running again because it was a lot of hard work. But fingers crossed we are fully charged and ready to go.”

It comes after ITV was plunged into chaos yesterday (Wednesday, November 4) following an unexpected event which led to a last-minute scheduling change.

Three popular daytime programmes, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women, were pulled off air shortly before they were due to begin as ITV viewers were left confused.

Due to a power outage at ITV’s central London studio, Lorraine was the first show to be pulled off air, with Good Morning Britain hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls confirming the news on their live show.

As a result, GMB was extended until 10am. However, in further disruption, This Morning was then pulled from TV schedules, instead airing a pre-recorded best bits programme, followed by Loose Women also being pulled.

At the time, ITV issued a statement on social media, with the programmes expected to be back to their normal scheduling today (Thursday, November 5).

They wrote: “Following a power cut overnight in the wider area where our Covent Garden studio is based, we are unable to broadcast Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women live today. We will return to our normal schedule as soon as possible.”

This is a breaking showbiz story and is being constantly updated. Please refresh the page regularly to get the latest news, pictures and videos. You can also get email updates on the day’s biggest stories straight to your inbox by signing up for our newsletters.

This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV

Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.

A blue deluge had swept across the U.S. to clear out the MAGA status quo that has gaslit Americans for too long. The clueless Republican ruling class’ only defense was that the liberal alternative was worse than the crap President Trump fed Americans while calling it apple pie.

Los Angeles is as blue as the Pacific, yet the same anti-establishment wave, fueled by voters frustrated with the high cost of living and a mayor who face-planted during crisis after crisis, had crashed hard here. Raman, a City Council member, was standing on its crest.

A campaign that started on the last possible day, dismissed by rivals as amateurish and given little chance to succeed against an incumbent with decades of experience and the support of nearly the entire L.A. Democratic establishment, was poised to win. Raman, 45, was expected to pull ahead as more ballots from younger, left-leaning Angelenos were counted.

Standing before Raman was the coalition that made her unlikely rise happen — one that, despite the obvious differences between L.A. and heartland politics, paralleled the one that made the Democratic Party’s takeover of the House and Senate possible.

There were the democratic socialists, who embarrassed mainline Democrats in L.A. once again with a blockbuster night for candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. In addition to Raman’s strong initial showing, Marissa Roy was ahead in the city attorney’s race, and Angela Gonzales-Torres had a substantial lead in her Eastside congressional matchup against incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a scion of the fabled Eastside Latino machine.

There were young people like Arthur Johnson, a 23-year-old Cal State Northridge student who waited in a long line on campus earlier that day to vote in person, “because I wanted that old-school feeling.” Johnson told me that many of his friends were voting for the first time “because they hate Trump, they hate Karen, and they wanted change, however it came.”

There were Latinos like Eloisa Galindo, 45, of East Los Angeles, who showed me a cellphone video of her hanging a handmade pro-Raman manta — a bedsheet sign — on a freeway bridge over the weekend. In Texas and California, Latino voters turned out in huge numbers, helping to make history in each state by electing one of their own as governor for the first time. Galindo and her fellow members of Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, a group created to help residents affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, felt that Raman represented a new, better way.

“She paid attention to us, and the mayor didn’t,” Galindo said in Spanish. “We felt discriminated against, we felt forgotten — but Nithya did none of that.”

Galindo and her crew were far in the back but cheered so loud that it practically echoed across Griffith Park. The Four Tops’ ”Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” faded out, and Raman beamed.

L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman dances with her campaign chair, Kathleen Murray, at her election night party on the patio in front of the Greek Theater.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“Do you love Los Angeles?” she exclaimed. “Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back? Look at the space around you. Look at what we built together.”

Her rousing speech surveyed the course of L.A. history, from its striving immigrants to Cecil B. DeMille to LGBTQ+ history to the creation of San Pedro’s harbor. She tied her campaign to an election year in which voters across America “demanded change” because they were “angry about a broken status quo, and the politicians who failed them over and over again.”

Angelenos, she said, have become convinced “that this is the best that we can do. Our City Hall became a place where we became so used to saying, ‘No,’ we forgot how to say ‘Yes.’”

She decried the “cynicism that started to take over this city, that started to make us believe that L.A.’s problems weren’t just bad, but they were permanent. That L.A.’s best days were behind us.”

Raman praised her supporters for believing in “hope” — for a better city, a better future, but also hope that even the most entrenched longtimer could be brought down by people who were just tired of being told their concerns didn’t matter.

She spoke for about half an hour and apologized for going on so long in the chilly weather — but no forgiveness was needed on a night like this. Supporters cried tears of joy and hugged one another, sharing political news of the city and also the country, as the energy in the crowd further amped up seemingly every half-hour. James Talarico won in Texas! Dr. Abdul El-Sayed took it in Michigan? Mississippi was in play?!

Was the blue wave real? Could it hold against an angry, vengeful Trump? On this night, at least, it would.

“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said.

She ended her speech by inviting her Indian American family to the stage — parents, brother, husband and twin 10-year-old children. Faces of a new, more progressive America, now likely the First Family of L.A. They descended the stairs together, and then a crush of Raman supporters stopped her for photos and congratulations.

Another Motown classic — “Dancing in the Streets” — blared, a song of freedom and boogie and promise from a previous generation.

Early in Raman’s speech, she asked the crowd for a favor: “Will you all get on the dance floor with me?” Many obliged, joining their leader to shimmy to Selena and other SoCal favorites.

Tomorrow would come the hard part: What to do next. But on this night, Raman and blue America would dance.

A few hours later, with more votes counted, she was ahead of Bass.

Alan Jones’ time at the very peak of F1 was short – essentially just under three years from mid-1979 to the end of 1981 – but he left a lasting impression.

Jones is synonymous with the Williams team, having become their first world champion in 1980, and he formed a close, almost brotherly bond with co-founders Frank Williams and Patrick Head.

Williams and Head loved Jones’ pugnacious, no-nonsense approach, and between them they were the leading force in F1 for a short time, as the team first emerged at the forefront of the sport.

Future Williams drivers, whoever they were, were almost always measured against Jones, and usually came up wanting in Williams’ and Head’s eyes.

After making his debut, it took a little while for Jones’ abilities to be appreciated. But victory for the unfancied Shadow team in the 1977 Austrian Grand Prix, beating Niki Lauda’s Ferrari fair and square, was an indicator of his potential.

Moving to Williams in 1978, the team showed well with their neat FW06 design, the first led by Head at the start of his iconic career.

But it was 1979 when Jones and Williams really turned it on. When the new FW07 car debuted mid-season, it and Jones soon became the standard setters.

Early reliability problems meant he was unable to challenge Ferrari drivers Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve for the title under the season’s bizarre split scoring system, but he won four of the final six races to set the tone for the following year.

In 1980, with the upgraded FW07B, Jones and Williams were the team to beat. Pushed hard to the title by Brabham’s Nelson Piquet, for whom Jones had little time, he won five of the 14 races and clinched the title with a race to spare.

He could and arguably should have won again in 1981, but a couple of retirements and some errors restricted his victory tally to the first and last grands prix.

A dominant victory on the unloved new circuit in the Caesars Palace car park in Las Vegas was overshadowed by team-mate Carlos Reutemann’s bizarre capitulation in the championship fight with Piquet.

After it, although at the height of his powers, Jones retired at the age of 34, to return to his beloved Australia.

He thought it was the right move, but he soon got the itch to return. A one-off outing for Arrows in 1983 was followed by a full-time comeback for the new US-based Haas team – no relation to the current one of the same name.

But the project was not a success. The car did not debut until the 12th race of 1985, and in 1986 was unreliable and slow, despite help from a then unknown Adrian Newey.

It collapsed at the end of the season, and Jones left F1 for good. He continued to race intermittently into his 50s, and also spent time as an F1 driver steward.

Victor Wembanyama had 24 rebounds and 52 points as San Antonio Spurs recorded their sixth straight win in the NBA.

Victor Wembanyama has set a career-high ‌‌24 rebounds before sinking the winning free throw with 24.2 seconds left ⁠⁠to cap his ⁠⁠career-best 52-point performance as the host San Antonio Spurs outlasted the Dallas Mavericks 112-111 for their sixth straight victory.

The Spurs led by ⁠⁠19 points early in the third quarter on Wednesday before Dallas pulled within two with eight minutes and 17 seconds remaining and then took a 103-100 lead on PJ Washington’s three-pointer with 5:38 to play.

The ⁠⁠lead seesawed from there as Dallas’s Naji Marshall tied the score at 111 with a 3-pointer with 1:41 remaining, and Wembanyama’s deciding free throw put the Spurs back on top.

The Mavericks called a timeout to set up a final shot, but Kyrie Irving missed a contested ‌‌turnaround jumper in the lane with 2.5 seconds left, and time ran out.

Wembanyama also blocked eight shots in the win. Dylan Harper added 21 points, Stephon Castle had 17 and De’Aaron Fox scored 10 for San Antonio.

Irving led Dallas with 29 points, while Marshall had 22 off the bench. Washington finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Cooper Flagg contributed 19 points and 10 boards. The Mavericks ⁠⁠have lost two straight games.

Wembanyama became the first player ‌‌in the past 30 seasons to record at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and five blocked shots in a half. He made all 15 of his free throws and ‌‌reached ‌‌those totals in just 16:37 of playing time.

Harper added 13 points for San Antonio before half-time. Irving led the Mavericks with 17 points at the break, and Washington had 13.

A plane travelling from Dublin to Rome has been diverted to an airbase in France after a bomb threat, the French prime minister’s office said.

The Aer Lingus Airbus A320 plane departed Ireland on Thursday morning but it issued an emergency alert and landed at the Evreux air base in northern France.

Meanwhile, a Wizz Air flight travelling from Milan to Warsaw also issued an emergency alert before diverting to Vienna, Austria – though there has been no report of a bomb threat and the reason is unclear.

It comes just days after eight European flights, including two departing from the UK, were targeted by suspected bomb threats. No explosives were found on any of the planes after searches.

A statement from Aer Lingus confirmed that flight EI402 from Dublin to Rome “diverted to Normandy this morning as a security precaution.”

It added: “The flight landed safely and Aer Lingus will work to re-accommodate customers to their final destination as soon as possible.”

On Tuesday, seven planes were searched after bomb threats were made.

Two were from the UK – one travelling from Manchester which landed in Murcia, Spain, the other from London Heathrow to Warsaw, Poland.

Two Ryanair flights – one leaving Dublin and the other from Lisbon – were searched after landing in Rome following anonymous tips but no explosives were found, sources at the city’s Fiumicino airport told the BBC.

The sources added that police bomb disposal experts carried out standard security protocols to ensure the safety of all passengers and crew, and the alert was then cleared.

The UK government described the incidents as “malicious hoax threats”.

We’re giving away a stylish five-star retreat in the heart of Cognac, complete with Michelin-starred dining, rooftop views, and world-class heritage.

Swap the everyday routine for five-star sophistication in the heart of Southwest France! We’ve teamed up with Hotel Chais Monnet & Spa to offer one lucky winner a luxury stay at this breathtaking transformed landmark.

Once a bustling 19th-century cognac trading house, Hotel Chais Monnet & Spa seamlessly blends historic French charm with sleek, contemporary architecture set across almost five acres of heritage-protected grounds.

What makes this stay special?

• Sophisticated sipping: Step into Bar 1838, atmospheric and rich in history, set within the former cooperage of Maison Monnet. Here, guests can sample from an extraordinary collection of over 330 Cognacs in an unforgettable heritage setting.
• Gastronomic excellence: Indulge in exceptional Michelin-starred cuisine at Les Foudres , or enjoy delicious casual dining right on site.
• Ultimate relaxation: Unwind in the fabulous spa and take a dip in the indoor-outdoor pool, designed for total tranquillity.
• Unbeatable location: Situated amidst the region’s most prestigious cognac houses, including the home of Jay-Z’s signature Cognac, you’re perfectly positioned to explore France’s rich heritage.
• Curated experiences: From idyllic countryside picnics and scenic bike rides to exploring vibrant local markets, every moment is crafted for a memorable getaway.

Beyond the hotel, you are perfectly placed to immerse yourself in the culture, history, and finest spirit craft of Southwest France.

To be in with a chance of winning this ultimate luxury retreat, simply fill in your details in the form below. If you can’t see the form, click here.

This competition closes on the 6th December.