A Portland teenager found a random old Lakers jacket in a Goodwill bin in January.

He paid $3.07 for it.

Seven months later, the item sold at auction for $89,600.

Turns out the old jacket wasn’t so random after all.

Verified by Sotheby’s auction house, it was a warmup jacket worn by NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain at least three times. That includes during the 1972 NBA Finals in which the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in five games and Chamberlain was named the series MVP.

“This is Truly a once in a lifetime find,” Quinn Brown wrote on Instagram in January. “I am so grateful this jacket has landed in my hands.”

Brown, 19, has been reselling his thrift-store clothing finds online for the past three years. When he saw someone toss the short-sleeved Lakers jacket with “Chamberlain” on the back into a bin of clothes outside Goodwill, Brown grabbed it for his online shop.

Then he did some research. Brown found an online photo of Chamberlain wearing a jacket that looked very similar. He also discovered that the four-time league MVP’s jersey measurements closely matched those of the jacket.

This undated photo provided by Sotheby’s shows a warmup jacket worn by Wilt Chamberlain during the 1972 NBA Finals that was found in an Oregon thrift store.

(Sotheby’s via Associated Press)

After he posted a photo of the jacket online, Brown was contacted by Sotheby’s about consigning it for auction. He took the auction house up on the offer, and the jacket was whisked away in an armored vehicle.

Sotheby’s photomatched the jacket to three images: an undated photo from the 1972-73 season, a photo from a January 1973 game and a photo from a 1972 home game against the Knicks that was determined to be from either Game 1 or Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

Chamberlain had 12 points and 19 rebounds in Game 1, a 114-92 Lakers loss, and 23 points and 24 rebounds in Game 2, a 106-92 Lakers victory.

“I didn’t even think that finding something like this was possible,” Brown told the Associated Press. “I got very, very lucky.”

Sotheby’s estimated that the jacket could go for $150,000 to $250,000. While the final amount wasn’t quite that high, Brown told KIRO-FM (97.3) in Tacoma, Wash., that he’s “obviously happy” after making back 29,000-times his initial investment.

“$90,000 is pretty good,” he said. “I was hoping it would go higher. A little surprised, sitting there the last five minutes it didn’t really get any bids. So that was a little disappointing. But, still, a lot of money — especially since I only spent $3.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

July 22 (UPI) — The man who rushed a stage to attack author Salman Rushdie will face federal terrorism charges in a trial that began Wednesday in New York.

Hadi Matar, 28, was found guilty of murder in state court last year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the August 2022 attack that left Rushdie blind in one eye and without use of one hand.

The federal case will determine if the attack was an act of terrorism and if he was carrying out a fatwa against Rushdie, set by the former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or if it was for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, or neither.

Khomeini, then the ayatollah of Iran, created the fatwa in 1989 because of Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988. Hardline Muslims considered the book blasphemous because of the way it portrayed the Prophet Muhammad.

The attack on Rushdie happened at the Chautauquah Institution in Chautauquah, N.Y., as he was delivering a speech for more than 1,000 people on writers in political exile. Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times.

Matar is a U.S. citizen of Lebanese origin who was raised in New Jersey and California. His friends and relatives said that after some professional and academic frustration, he became religious. His mother told The New York Times that she could not support him.

Rushdie, 79, wrote and published in 2024, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir about the attack and his recovery.

Matar had written in his notebook a list of pros and cons to attacking Rushdie. The Times reported that a page provided by prosecutors showed that he wrote one reason not to do it was: “Could make life worse. But I doubt that. It kind of sucks already.”

HumAngle Foundation gathered students, professors, and community journalists on Tuesday, June 21, at the University of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria to hold timely conversations around ways to strengthen community journalism in Nigeria.

The event, which also featured the launch of a guide to community journalism, is part of the Strengthening Community Journalism and Human Rights Advocacy in Northern Nigeria (SCOJA) project, implemented with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nigeria. Through a fellowship, the project has trained 90 journalists and human rights defenders in the past year. 

During the event, three SCOJA Fellowship alumni reflected on the journey so far and called on relevant organisations to commit to similar projects. The session had Yahuza Bawage, Faiza Jibrin, and Nathaniel Ishaya in attendance. 

“There aren’t many trainings that focus on the ethics of journalism in a very practical way,” Yahuza said. “One of the sessions we treated during the three-day workshop in Plateau State was Journalism Ethics and Standards, and that taught me a lot. I was able to learn about minimising harm.”

The same sentiment was echoed by the other fellows. They highlighted that interviewing vulnerable people is a delicate skill that not many journalism training programmes cover in depth, and that they were happy to have learned it during the fellowship.

“One skill I sharpened during the fellowship was my interview skills. I learned about building connections with the subjects first, and I practised it. It really works because instead of sticking strictly to my interview guide, I connected first, and the person became eager to share [their] experience with me. I also learned about not re-traumatising my sources through the questions I ask,” said Faiza. 

They also offered some advice and encouragement for fellow young journalists trying to find their feet.

“One thing I will tell student-journalists is that they should not allow fear to hold them back. They should try out new opportunities, and with mentorship, they can do so much,” Nathaniel added. 

During another session at the event, Hassana Danyerwa, a SCOJA Fellowship alumnus, talked about the elevation she experienced as a result of the fellowship.

“Although I am not a journalist and I joined the SCOJA Fellowship as an advocate, my experiences from the fellowship set me up for a global experience where I was the only Nigerian selected. The mentorship aspect of the fellowship helped me and opened a new professional pathway for me.”

She offered some words of advice on the conditions necessary for journalists to do their work.

“Sometimes, we do not know what we need until we are given it, but one thing community journalists need is mentorship. Also, trust and avoiding micromanagement so journalists can express themselves and explore different topics is important.”

During the six-month fellowship, the fellows produced several investigative reports and carried out advocacy activities on various issues, including human rights, gender-based violence, and climate change. In Kano, northwestern Nigeria, some of the fellows launched the Kano Climate Change Journalists’ Network as a direct result of their fellowship.

RIHANNA has nearly popped out of her pink see-through Savage x Fenty lingerie in brand new pictures.

The singer, 38, took to Instagram today to share a series of sexy snaps of herself rocking the bubblegum pink slip number.

She showed off her incredible figure and plenty of cleavage in the body-hugging outfit, just 10 months after giving birth to her daughter Rocki.

The mum-of-three took part in a beach-themed photoshoot for her own body-positivity and loungewear brand.

Shr rocked wavy blonde locks and plenty of pink blush to match her dress.

In one snap, Rihanna lay in an empty blue paddle pool as she delicately placed her hand on her chest.

In another, the songwriter thrust her bum in the air and through a blue and white pool float.

She captioned the post: “Luxe. Lace. Meet our new, softest stretch lace evaaaa.”

Her followers rushed to the comments section to compliment her as one penned: “Shine bright like a diamond.”

Another fan asked: “Is this the album cover?”

Somebody else gushed: “Body is tea,” while a fourth added: “Queen,” with several fire flame emojis.

Rihanna and partner A$AP Rocky welcomed their daughter Rocki in Los Angeles in September last year.

She shared a sweet Instagram post to confirm the news as she cradled the newborn who was wearing a pink outfit.

“Rocki Irish Mayers Sept 13 2025,” Rihanna announced in the caption.

Following months of speculation, Rihanna confirmed her pregnancy hours before the Met Gala in May as she walked down the streets of New York City with her bare baby bump on display.

She then arrived late to the red carpet of the prestigious fashion event in a tailored suit, her bump clearly visible.

The couple are also parents to sons RZA and Riot.

In October last year, A$AP dropped a big hint that he and Rihanna had secretly tied the knot.

After weeks of speculation, he kept fans guessing by adding: “I’m still not gonna confirm it.”

However, in another interview weeks later with Perfect magazine, he appeared to have had a change of heart, casually describing himself as the Umbrella hitmaker’s husband in a new interview. 

He said: “Being a father and a partner and a loving husband in my family is what makes me really, really happy.”

The two performers first got together back in 2019.

To understand political consultant Clinton Reilly–the hard-charging, number-crunching, message-honing, score-evening, candidate-firing, vitriol-spewing millionaire who is running Democrat Kathleen Brown’s campaign for governor–the autumn of 1993 is a good place to start.

One year before Election Day, Reilly was looking for work. Fresh from Los Angeles, where he had helped Richard Riordan beat the odds and become mayor, the San Francisco-based strategist had no major California clients. The problem was, in partisan races at least, he worked almost exclusively for Democrats, and the Democrats at the top of the ticket–Kathleen Brown and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein–had already hired their campaign teams.

Shut out, Reilly then did what no other political player in California would dare to do–he met with Joe Shumate, a top adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson, and discussed if he could play a role in reelecting the state’s top Republican. Weeks later, he talked to Congressman Michael Huffington about managing his campaign for Feinstein’s seat. Reilly had consorted with the Republican enemy. In his business, that just isn’t done. “It’s like the Hatfields and McCoys,” says Wilson’s campaign manager, George Gorton. “You switch sides, and neither side trusts you.” Then, Reilly switched sides again. Last March, a few months after talking to Wilson’s forces, he stepped in to rescue Brown’s floundering campaign.

It was the kind of maneuver that has made Reilly one of California’s most feared and envied political consultants–and one of the most brilliant. If you don’t believe it, just ask him. To hear Reilly talk, he is to other consultants what L’Oreal is to Prell–the one candidates hire because they’re worth it. He’s the big gun, the closer, the one you call when money is no object. And Reilly lives up to his own hype just often enough to make it seem true.

In more than two decades, Reilly has run winning campaigns for some of California’s best-known politicians, including Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Tony Coehlo, Bill Honig, Robert Matsui, Nancy Pelosi and David Roberti. He has helped elect the current mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even his sharpest critics say Reilly knows the California electorate–where it lives, how it thinks, why it votes–as well as any political operative in the state. Reilly knows how to reach people, and that’s what politicians pay him handsomely to do. The 47-year-old son of a Bay Area milkman wears Italian suits, drives a lipstick-red Jaguar and lives just down the street from Robin Williams in a three-story Seacliff home that looks out at the Golden Gate Bridge.

More powerful than many candidates he’s helped elect, more influential than most Democratic party officials, Reilly epitomizes the modern campaign consultant. His loyalty lies not with his party but with himself, and his egotism is legendary. So is his paranoia. He is “Nixonian,” says one colleague. “Queeg-like,” says another. State Sen. Quentin Kopp, a former client, refers to him fondly as “Satan.”

In what is essentially an anonymous profession, Reilly has a knack for attracting attention, and not all of it flattering. In 1988, he managed–and lost–what remains the most expensive political campaign in state history, the insurance industry’s $63.8 million effort to beat back reform. (Reilly’s firm netted at least $6 million). In 1989, after working for months on Feinstein’s gubernatorial campaign, he noisily fired the candidate, faxing a press release to the media that claimed she lacked the gumption to become governor. (They haven’t spoken since.)

Last year, Reilly went to the San Francisco Examiner for a talk with Publisher William R. Hearst and Executive Editor Phil Bronstein. Reilly left on a stretcher with a broken ankle that required nine screws and a metal plate to fix. Though subsequent litigation never established whether Bronstein or Reilly was the aggressor, it did reveal that Reilly injects testosterone, a tidbit that only enhanced his fearsome reputation. (According to Reilly, his doctor prescribes the injections to correct a hormone imbalance.)

“When the opponent knows you have (him) on your side, a chill goes up their spine,” says San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan. “He’s certainly better to have inside the tent than outside.”

Now, Reilly faces his toughest test. Can he reinvigorate Kathleen Brown’s once promising campaign and propel her to victory? If he succeeds in electing the first woman governor of California, one thing is sure. Nothing will stand in the way of Clint Reilly. Except, perhaps, himself.

Reilly is holding court in the restored San Francisco warehouse that houses the Clinton Reilly Group. He sits in a conference room at one end of a long, sleek table. As always, he wears an expensive suit–today, it’s navy blue–a starched white shirt, a designer tie and patterned socks. The ovals of his wire-rimmed glasses are perched high on his pale, prominent nose. Unsmiling, he fiddles with an Evian bottle cap and crosses and uncrosses his legs.

Nine members of Kathleen Brown’s campaign staff sit around the table, and judging by the accumulation of empty coffee cups, they’ve been there for hours. The question at hand: how to energize the electorate–”to turn it on,” says Reilly, “so it votes.” The answer sounds simple: Demonize Pete Wilson. “Why is PW a bum?” asks the hand-scrawled heading atop a big sheet of paper. The answers are taped to the walls. “California in decline . . . . Never done what he’s said he’d do . . . . He’s a blank . . . . 12 years asleep at the wheel . . . . He’s a hypocrite.”

After half a day’s brainstorming, however, something is still missing. Reilly summons a female assistant who hurries off, returning a moment later with a folder stuffed with mailers from previous Reilly campaigns. He picks out a lustrous Riordan-for-mayor brochure. “The declining city,” he says, displaying a glossy four-color photograph of graffiti-scarred Los Angeles streets. “Everybody sees it. It’s not a core issue, it’s a symbolic issue. Then, you’ve got crime,” he says, pointing to another slick image: a gloved hand, aiming a revolver directly at the camera. What the Brown campaign lacks, Reilly says, are visual cues that show voters why California needs a change.

“That’s one of our problems. It’s the worst recession since the Great Depression. But how do you portray a middle-class Depression?” he asks, thinking aloud. “It’s not bread lines. It’s a whole new image for the ‘90s. And we need to capture that. We need to show people how four more years of Wilson will hurt them.” This is the Reilly trademark, distilling a race down to a few stark ideas. Political consultants like to boast of their ability to identify the themes that underlie a given election, but what sets Reilly apart is his capacity to condense those themes in evocative, elegantly produced television ads and mailers.

“The guy’s a genius,” Riordan says. “He’s weird. But he’s a genius.”

To bring home the threat of crime during the 1993 Los Angeles mayoral race, Reilly created a mailer about rape in Hollywood, the district that Riordan’s opponent, City Councilman Mike Woo, had represented for years. The text of the ad was mostly statistics. But its frightening series of photos caught the eye: a young woman, her face out of focus, with a spreading stain of red that looked alarmingly like blood. “Mike Woo,” said the punch line. “A Record on Crime That Could Kill You.”

Other consultants specialize–in mail, in television, in polling, in campaign management. Reilly prides himself on running a full-service firm, which he has deliberately modeled on a commercial advertising agency. He even went so far as to locate the Clinton Reilly Group in San Francisco’s ad district. It is, he says, a “real company” that makes a profit by meeting his clients’ every need, from speech writing to graphic design. Other consultants may ride the peaks and valleys of the campaign cycle by downsizing during the off-season. Reilly employs as many as 15 people regardless. Which, of course, costs money.

“He always talks about overhead,” says Dick Pabich, a Democratic political consultant. “We joke about his middle name: Clint ‘Overhead’ Reilly. You can’t have a 10-minute conversation without it coming up.” Not coincidentally, Reilly tends to work with deep-pocketed candidates. “His talent is he is able to convince his clients that they have to spend a lot of money,” says Ron Smith, a Republican political consultant. “I hope that comes off as a compliment.”

What do candidates get in return? His formidable ability to target key voters–a discipline known as “narrowcasting.” Using a computer-generated breakdown of the electorate, Reilly identifies groups of like-minded voters (white Democratic women who voted in five of the last six elections, for example). Then, he fills their mailboxes with custom-made Reilly brochures that dovetail with pointed Reilly television commercials. “(You don’t) talk vanilla to people who want chocolate or strawberry or rocky road,” he says.

Most important, Reilly’s clients get Reilly himself: a shrewd but unforgiving perfectionist, a relentless taskmaster who, during a campaign, rarely sleeps. “He is a nocturnal animal,” says Jack Davis, a San Francisco consultant. “He does his best work in the darkness.” There are many tales of his 3 a.m. telephone calls, and until about a year and one-half ago, he did not own a wrist watch. “He didn’t want to know what time it was,” says his younger brother, Kevin. “It was a way to extend his day and give it that little bit more that he could give it.”

When talking about the campaigns he has run, Reilly has a habit of referring to “the candidates I’ve elected,” speaking in a shorthand that strips the candidates themselves of any credit. The message is clear: Reilly is not merely an employee but a partner. Politicians aren’t the only ones with something to lose. Reilly’s reputation also is on the line.

“When it’s all over, you can’t give excuses for why you didn’t win,” says Reilly, sitting on an oversized couch in his cream-colored living room. Freshly cut roses sit in a vase, and the housekeeper has left a neat stack of logs in the fireplace, which Reilly has lit. “You basically have to live with the result for the rest of your career, for the rest of your life. So pretty soon, you start to say (to candidates), ‘Hey, look! If you don’t have the money, you’re not going to win, so get the money!’ You start saying to campaign workers, ‘Hey look, this isn’t a trial run here.’ ” He pauses. “They don’t like it sometimes. And they don’t like you.”

This take-no-prisoners behavior has taken its toll on Reilly. It has isolated him; few people call him a friend. “People either hate him and despise him or hate him and admire him,” says one former Reilly employee who puts himself in the latter group. “We used to refer to his mansion as Xanadu. The implication was that he was wandering around talking to the pictures.”

“ ‘Why do they walk away from me?’ ” Tony Coehlo, the former congressman from Merced, remembers Reilly lamenting. “ ‘I’ve helped them win and now they’re attacking me? Why?’ He gets hurt, really hurt, when people turn against him.”

Instead of dissuading clients, Reilly’s obsessiveness only adds to his allure. “You have to understand how much these people want to be elected. They’re people who want it so bad,” says one former Reilly employee. “They hire Clint because they know he has a monster in him, and that’s what they think they need to win.”

At Christmastime, 1969, Bess and Joe Reilly received a letter from the eldest of their 10 children. Clinton Thomas Reilly was 22 years old–the right age, he wrote, to tell his parents “thanks.” But the seven-page letter contained more than gratitude. It revealed the aspirations of a driven idealist who yearned to “drain myself in the service of others.”

“I am a restless man and cannot settle for least best,” Reilly wrote in careful script on lined notebook paper. “There is a strange will for perfection–not in detail but in vision–which threads my action during the day and often keeps me awake at night. . . .”

Reilly had recently left the seminary, ending nine years of study, and had decided to work in politics. “Where would I be now if your entire lives had been dedicated to the pursuit of money?” he asked his parents. “Would I be in a graduate school of business somewhere, waiting to become an executive trainee for a large corporation? What a dull–unexciting life that would be–and what a barren future that would hold.

“I am also aware that little can be done without money. Since I am primarily a doer, I plan to make enough of it to stay alive. My meager talents are worth plenty to someone! And I promise to make him pay!”

Reilly was born in Oakland in 1947, and he says he was drawn to politics even as a child. In the fifth grade, he was elected class president under the banner “Take a Hint, Vote for Clint”–a slogan crafted by his campaign manager and younger sister, Jill. Years older than their other siblings, Clint and Jill were inseparable, best friends, and when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of 11, “it was like a bullet that hit you and didn’t hit me. I had a feeling of a certain responsibility that came to me.”

Reilly’s mother, a recent convert to Catholicism, was raising her children in the Church. As Jill fought her illness, her faith became more intense. “She wanted to be a nun,” her mother says, and soon after Jill’s death, Clint announced his desire to enter the seminary. The Reilly family moved to a new home in the working-class city of San Leandro, and when Clint was 14, he went to live at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Mountain View. Pursuing the priesthood, he earned his college degree in philosophy and under the supervision of his favorite professor, the Rev. Eugene J. Boyle, he got his first taste of social activism.

In 1968, while in college, Reilly led a group of seminarians in producing a local version of the Kerner Commission report, the analysis of racial tensions that was written in the wake of the 1967 summer riots. The resulting 577-page “Little Kerner Report” concluded that white San Franciscans were “sleeping through a revolution.” (Mayor Joseph Alioto scoffed, calling the report “the product of 21-year-old students who have been secluded in their seminary and not in contact with the objective facts.”) A year later, Reilly left the seminary just three and one-half years shy of taking his vows. After a brief stint working for Planned Parenthood, he threw himself into politics.

“I think initially, intuitively, I wanted to get involved in politics because that was a place where you could improve people’s lives and make the biggest impact on the direction of the world,” says Reilly. “It was a pure motivation.”

In 1974, Reilly urged Father Boyle, well known as a liberal activist, to run for the state Assembly against another Democrat, John Francis Foran. “Loyal to the People,” was the slogan Reilly devised for Boyle, and the underdog candidate was gaining ground by the day. Then, at the last minute, Foran sent out a campaign mailer that showed a photograph of what was purported to be Boyle’s residence: a building that looked like a cross between the White House and “The Beverly Hillbillies” mansion. “Why doesn’t Father Boyle practice what he preaches?” the mailer asked. In truth, the building was the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Nobody lived there. Still, the hit piece succeeded. Boyle lost by a few hundred votes, and Reilly’s days as a political ingenue were over.

“That was a real turning point for Clint,” says John Thiella, a State Board of Equalization staffer who worked with Reilly on several campaigns during the ‘70s and ‘80s. “(Afterward), he understood that it wasn’t just the right ideology and goodness that led to success. You had to do some harsh things to win.”

Reilly puts it differently: “I learned the power of money.”

He certainly wasn’t making any. For most of the ‘70s, Reilly estimates that his campaign work earned him only a few thousand dollars a year. To make a living, he opened a high-class junk shop that sold traffic lights, milk cans, apple crates, Mao buttons–anything that would bring in cash. Reilly’s break came in 1979 when he ran San Francisco Supervisor Quentin Kopp’s campaign for mayor, forcing heavily favored incumbent Dianne Feinstein into a runoff. Kopp lost, but Reilly was on the map.

By his own admission, Reilly was drinking heavily during this period. “He was a Remy Martin kind of guy,” says his friend Jack Davis. In the middle of the Kopp campaign, Reilly was arrested for drunk driving and resisting arrest, according to police records. Then, while he was running the 1980 reelection campaign of then-Van Nuys Congressman Jim Corman, a Democrat, something happened between him and a girlfriend that would haunt him for years.

“Did you ever hit (your girlfriend)? Did you ever grab (her) in anger? Did you cause injury to (her)?”–lawyers for the San Francisco Examiner would pepper Reilly with these questions 13 years later, in response to the lawsuit he filed after his ankle injury. During legal proceedings, Reilly’s lawyer advised him not to answer. Still, by the time the newspaper settled–paying Reilly somewhere between $400,000 and $900,000–the alleged incident with his former girlfriend had become part of the Reilly lore. As the San Jose Mercury News put it: “Is . . . Clint Reilly a testosterone-crazed, woman-beating bully . . . ?”

“I just don’t feel it’s fair to ask me to answer that question,” he says, grimacing as he paces his office at Kathleen Brown’s headquarters. “I have acknowledged that I had a drinking problem, and that I also had problems coping with the pressures of the work. I stopped drinking in 1981 and sought counseling and even continue today to see the counselor that I saw back then. A number of things I did were destructive. And I felt it was real important for me to sort of look at myself and my behavior and make significant changes.”

Reilly insists that he had gotten ahold of himself by the time he opened his firm in 1982. With more than 30 campaigns behind him, it was time to make money. “I began to say to myself, ‘Well, gee, somebody who gets a job for $125,000 as a result of what I do and who may have that job for life. Because of his own good efforts but also what I did for him, he’s earned a ton of money, he’s gotten a lot of personal psychic rewards, he’s gotten to be a famous person. Now why in the heck should I do this for 2,000 bucks a month?”

He started demanding more money and getting it–at least six figures a campaign. Still, some candidates flinched. In 1982, after Reilly orchestrated a decisive primary victory for Barbara Boxer in her first congressional race, Boxer fired him for exceeding her campaign budget and leaving her in debt. “It’s very expensive to have a manager like Clint,” she said at the time. It could also be maddening. In the midst of the campaign, Reilly demanded that Boxer mortgage her house to raise more cash. When she refused, he went to her husband, who told Reilly to get out of his office. (Boxer refused to comment on the incident, saying it was “personal.”)

But Reilly was getting to be known as a winner. In the early years, he had lost business because he was not part of the San Francisco political machines of then-Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy or Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. By the mid-’80s, though, Reilly’s nonalignment had become an asset. Plenty of candidates sought his services, and he was free to work for whomever he wished. Soon, his behavior made some wonder if there was anything he wouldn’t do.

There was the way he conducted the 1988 insurance initiative campaign, spending what many people think was an obscene amount of money–and making a fair bit himself. (Afterward, he says, “I basically didn’t have to work a day in my life for the rest of my life.”) There was the way he publicly ditched Feinstein in 1989. (“That was bad judgment, a humbling experience for an arrogant man. But I’ll tell you what it did. It got Dianne off her ass.”) And there was the way, in 1990, he sought to work on behalf of a pro-development ballot measure in San Francisco. When the developers hired a rival consultant, Reilly turned around and spent $150,000 of his own money to defeat it. (“I think the message was adequately communicated.”)

Reilly had come to understand that money was more than merely a way “to stay alive,” as he’d written his parents in 1969. Money was the enduring currency of power. Money bought freedom–to be generous, perhaps, or to even old scores. And money commanded one of the things Reilly most craved: respect. No longer the idealistic 22-year-old, compelled to serve others, Reilly wanted to be appreciated, and experience had shown him that people appreciated what they paid for. He had learned this lesson, but he resented those who had taught him.

“In many ways, I see him as a high-priced call girl,” says Calvin Welch, a community activist in San Francisco whom many describe as Reilly’s Father-confessor. “On the one hand he greatly luxuriates in charging people top dollar and spending an incredible amount of money and having that reputation, which means he will only go after certain kinds of candidates. On the other hand, he despises those people for thinking they can buy Clint Reilly.”

Kathleen Brown sat down with Clint Reilly for the first time last March. Attorney Bill Wardlaw, a Brown adviser who had worked closely with Reilly on the Riordan campaign, hosted the afternoon session in his West Los Angeles office. Immediately, Brown says, she was struck by Reilly’s sophisticated analysis of California politics. Although the meeting had been arranged less than 24 hours before, Reilly had sketched out a formula for victory–”He diagnosed my campaign better than anyone had in a year and a half,” she says.

As darkness fell, Brown saw something else. “After about 2 1/2 hours, the lights went out–the building had closed down,” Brown remembers. “He kept right on going–(talking about) the Inland Empire margin of victory. We continued our conversation in semi-darkness. It was unusual.” Impressed by his intensity, Brown offered Reilly the job of campaign chairman. “He is a warrior. A commando. There’s nothing that comes across the transom that unnerves him or distracts him from the focus of this campaign.”

Reilly’s arrival unnerved some of Brown’s campaign staff, however. Within days of Brown’s decision, campaign manager Teresa Vilmain, policy director Roy Behr and media consultant Jim Margolis all resigned–opting to “make the tough decision now,” Margolis said in a statement, “rather than face difficulties later.” Reilly got what he wanted: complete control.

Reilly appeared to be just what Brown needed. Known for little more than her lineage, she lacked the very thing Reilly’s candidates are known for–a sharply defined image. But along with his expertise, Reilly brought his reputation as a walking cluster bomb. One woman fund-raiser who had worked for Brown for three years quit the campaign without even meeting him because of what she had heard. Other staffers had heard the stories, too. There were so many, they were impossible to avoid.

Among the things people claim to have seen Reilly do over the years: comment on the size of a woman’s breasts in front of a roomful of male colleagues; inform a male employee that he wanted “to vomit” at the sight of him; reduce men and women staffers to tears; throw paper clips; punch a wall repeatedly next to an employee’s head; pound a chair up and down; break a glass ashtray by slamming it on a table; knock the telephone receiver out of a woman’s hand while she was talking; chase an employee down a street.

“That’s one that does have a kernel of truth to it,” Reilly says of the last example. According to two sources, in the midst of a 1986 supervisorial race, Reilly became so upset at mistakes made by a staffer named Laurie R. Glenn that he pursued her, shouting, out of his office and into the streets of San Francisco in the middle of the night. Reilly says that he can’t recall precisely what occurred. “I wasn’t chasing her down the street,” he says. “I think, actually, she was chasing me.” (Glenn declined to comment.)

Reilly hates the subject of his temper, even though he often brings it up himself. When asked to explain it, he is by turns irate, contemptuous and remorseful. He concedes that he can be out of control sometimes and unnecessarily hurtful, though “much, much less than legend would have it.” That kind of anger “there’s no excuse for,” he says. “I feel badly about it.” During a campaign, though, Reilly says he uses anger strategically. Candidates “are not hiring me because they want me to get along with everybody. They’re hiring me because they want to win. The campaign is a war, you know?” And rage is a tactical weapon.

“We human beings on many levels are motivated by our desire to look good in front of our colleagues, and (by) the fear of shame,” he says, explaining why he has humiliated staffers in the presence of others. “I want it to be a public experience (so) that you know that everyone in the whole organization is going to know that you f- – -ed up.”

Reilly isn’t entirely wrong. He may have trouble getting along with people, but in the most fundamental sense, he understands them. He has pondered their motivations for years–as a seminarian, as a philosophy student, as a campaigner, as a boss. He has made a fortune by identifying and appealing to voters’ hopes and fears. He is a professional manipulator. That, say several former colleagues, is what makes him so cruel.

“The man possesses a superhuman ability to zero in on your emotional or psychological vulnerability. Clint’s weapon is words, and I’ve never seen anybody who can hit you so on the mark,” says one former employee who echoed the descriptions of dozens of others. Reilly often seems “loopy” and “out there,” this person says, but when he cuts into you, he does so with surgical precision. “That Jesuit training was really something he paid attention to. That priestly kind of power over you is there. It’s not just about a boss telling you you didn’t get enough widgets done. It’s about a priest making a fundamental comment about (your) character.”

As Reilly excoriates others, Calvin Welch says, he also flays himself. “He is a guy at war with himself. There’s the seminarian. There’s the hard-boiled campaigner. And then there’s what you could call the friend. Sometimes they don’t fit together. He is basically troubled by doubts as to whether or not he made the right decisions in his life.”

In 1991, those doubts made Reilly quit campaigning. He was exhausted, he said, and disillusioned. “In my experience, most politicians are not up to the task,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in announcing his retirement. But few people thought he would stay out of the game for long. Politics had made him a man about town in San Francisco–a staple of Herb Caen’s column, he escorted beautiful women to expensive restaurants and hosted extravagant parties at his home. As many had predicted, he was back at work within months, joining Frank Jordan’s long-shot campaign for mayor. He had decided to reconcile himself, he now says, to “certain realities of the business that will never change: the wear and tear, the continuous, the seven days a week, 16 hours a day, day after day after day.”

There are obvious payoffs–his museum quality art collection, his private beach, his up-close view of the Golden Gate Bridge. But they come at a price. Reilly says he doesn’t have to justify his temper, his wealth, his work. Still, he never stops doing so. “Look, you know . . . I am who I am and I am what I am and I’m proud of what I am,” he says. “I enjoy what I do. It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. It’s fun. But it’s also very difficult. It’s tiring. It’s emotionally draining. It’s sometimes frustrating. It’s full of tension. . . . Sometimes, one doesn’t have total serenity about everything that you do. But, in general, I, you know . . . I am not at peace. I’m at a relative state of happiness, with a lot of tension in there as well.”

The San Francisco fund-raiser was going marvelously. The ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel was packed with nearly 1,000 Kathleen Brown supporters who had paid at least $500 a plate. “Here Comes the Sun,” blared from the loudspeaker as Brown and Vice President Al Gore entered the room and began working their way through a crowd that included several other Reilly clients. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was seated at the head table. State Sen. Milton Marks and former Supt. of Schools Bill Honig were a few tables away. Reilly’s girlfriend–a Riordan staffer named Janet Koewler–also was there, sitting at his side. But Reilly’s gaze rarely settled on anyone but Brown and her special guest.

Reilly is running the race of his life. If Brown ousts Gov. Pete Wilson, she will instantly become the most prominent woman in American politics, and Reilly could be catapulted into the national fray as well. “Clint wants to elect a President,” says one observer. Already, there is speculation that if Brown wins, Reilly’s old friend Tony Coehlo, now at the Democratic National Committee, may try to land him a job on President Clinton’s reelection campaign.

But that’s a big if. Reilly has yet to arrest Brown’s slide. Although he has brought discipline to the Brown campaign, her lead–which had hit a high of 23 points in May, 1993–is now a distant memory. The Los Angeles Times poll in mid-September had Brown behind by nine points among likely voters. With the election five weeks away, Kathleen Brown is still struggling with the problem that has vexed her from the start: explaining to voters why she is an alternative to Pete Wilson, why she should be California’s next leader.

Reilly insists that the 1994 election is about effectiveness. He says he’s convinced that if the campaign can connect Wilson to the decline of California, voters will turn to Brown. Thus, most of the 30 different television ads he has created for Brown do little more than attack Wilson. But you can’t beat something with nothing, and for all of Reilly’s efforts, Brown’s political identity remains almost as unfocused today as when she hired him.

Still, Brown remains optimistic, saying Reilly, whom she’s paid more than $690,000 in commissions and fees so far, is worth the price. “All the polls last year were not realistic assessments of what the race was going to be about. I knew that,” she said in late August. Because of Reilly, “we are right where I needed to be–in a neck-and-neck race with an incumbent governor who will be defeated in November.”

Not everyone is so sure. “(Reilly) is the best opener I’ve ever seen. He can handicap a race, he can analyze the electorate, figure out what votes are needed where. He’s almost worth his fee for that alone,” says longtime confidant, Calvin Welch. “He never gets crazy at the beginning because he has it all figured out. But when things don’t unfold the way they’re supposed to–the candidate wears the wrong dress, some bozo doesn’t get the third mailer out to the left-handed Lithuanians — But his great weakness is his end game. That’s when he loses it. .”

Clint Reilly hasn’t lost it so far. He hasn’t thrown anything, hasn’t reduced a staffer to tears. But he continues to flog himself. He hasn’t taken a day off since he joined the Brown campaign (he has been known to chide staffers who have). He sees his girlfriend infrequently. On their one-year anniversary in June, she gave him a frame to hold a picture of the two of them. Today, it sits empty–there’s been no time to pose for a photo.

“This is the most important race for governor anywhere in the country,” Vice President Gore told the audience at Brown’s fund-raiser. Reilly’s girlfriend gave his hand a squeeze. “This is a bus,” Gore continued, “we cannot and will not allow to stall.” Reilly probably couldn’t have said it any better himself.

THE CLIENTS

“He is a warrior. A commando. Nothing unnerves him.”

STATE TREASURER KATHLEEN BROWN

(1994 gubernatorial race)

“The guy’s a genius. He’s weird. But he’s a genius.”

LOS ANGELES MAYOR RICHARD RIORDAN

(1993 mayoral race)

“When opponents know you have (him), a chill goes up their spine.”

SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR FRANK JORDAN

(1991 mayoral race)

“It’s very expensive to have a manager like Clint.”

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER

(1982 congressional race)

“He gets hurt, really hurt, when people turn against him.”

FORMER CONGRESSMAN TONY COELHO

(1982, ‘84, ’86 congressional races)

She and Reilly have not spoken in five years.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN

(1983 mayoral race)

Major League Soccer says it is investigating allegations of tampering by Inter Miami after the club signed Brazil midfielder Casemiro.

On Wednesday, Miami announced they had signed the 34-year-old – who left Manchester United at the end of last season – on a deal that runs to the end of the 2027 MLS campaign, with an option to extend until June 2029.

But moments later, the MLS released a statement saying it was “reviewing a tampering allegation” against the club.

“The league is gathering all relevant information and will refrain from further comment until the review is complete,” it added.

“While Inter Miami CF and the LA Galaxy have reached a settlement for the discovery priority [first rights] to sign Casemiro, the terms will be released upon conclusion of the tampering investigation.”

The investigation concerns Casemiro’s discovery rights, an MLS regulation that gives a specific club first refusal over a player should they want to join.

A club may have up to five players on their discovery list at any time and can add or remove players.

Los Angeles Galaxy held the discovery rights for Casemiro but in announcing the player’s signing, Inter Miami said they had acquired the rights from the Galaxy.

Casemiro announced in January that he would depart Old Trafford at the end of the 2026-27 season following a mutual decision not to renew his contract.

He won five Champions League titles with Real Madrid before moving to United in 2022, who played for Brazil as they reached the last 16 at this summer’s World Cup.

“What motivates me the most, and I think this is true for every player, is winning and continuing to grow,” he said.

Casemiro made 160 appearances for United, scoring 26 goals and providing 14 assists as he won one EFL Cup and one FA Cup.

In the wake of Casemiro’s departure, United have prioritised midfield reinforcements in this window, buying Andrey Santos for £50m from Chelsea, and Youri Tielemans from Aston Villa for £35m.

Before the announcement of the investigation, Inter Miami co-owner Sir David Beckham said of Casemiro: “He is a winner who has achieved so much in the game and after such an incredible career with Real Madrid and Manchester United I’m delighted that he’s decided to make Miami his next home.”

At Miami, Casemiro is set to join former Real and Manchester United team-mate Sergio Reguilon as well as Argentina’s World Cup finalists Lionel Messi and Rodrigo de Paul.

It is not the first time Inter Miami have been probed over transfer dealings.

In 2021 they were fined $2m after breaking MLS rules with the signing of France midfielder Blaise Matuidi from Juventus the previous year.

The MLS said Matuidi had been paid more than was allowed, effectively giving the team four “designated players” last season rather than the permitted three. Designated players’ wages do not count towards the MLS salary cap.

Known as the ‘Beckham rule’, it was introduced when the ex-England captain joined Los Angeles Galaxy in 2007.

SANTIAGO, Chile, July 22 (UPI) — Chile’s Congress approved most of the economic and tax reforms promoted by President José Antonio Kast — one of the flagship initiatives of his government agenda.

The reforms include a gradual reduction in the corporate tax rate from to 23% from 27% to encourage investment and revive economic growth.

The Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday passed the National Reconstruction and Economic and Social Development bill, which also establishes tax incentives for the repatriation of capital, creates compensation mechanisms for companies when courts overturn projects that have already received Environmental Qualification Resolution approval and eliminates the tax on a first home for older adults.

Finance Minister Jorge Quiroz said the initiative seeks to “restore tax competitiveness” and provide greater certainty for investment.

“We have approved measures to restore certainty for investment in Chile, remove permitting barriers that have kept investment projects and economic activity stalled, and provide security for those who decide to invest,” he said.

The approval represents one of Kast’s main legislative victories since taking office in March, and allows him to advance one of the pillars of his economic agenda — reducing the tax burden to stimulate private investment and accelerate growth.

Jorge Berríos, academic director of the Graduate Diploma in Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile, told UPI that the reform is intended to restore investor confidence and create conditions for the country to return to growth above 3%.

“A reduction of several percentage points in the corporate tax rate has positive effects on companies and the economy, although those results are generally seen over the long term,” he said.

Berrios said some effects could be felt sooner in the labor market because of the subsidies included in the initiative, as well as through an improved perception of Chile among domestic and foreign investors.

“The Chilean market is returning to a structure similar to that of the 1990s, with market-oriented reforms that allowed the country to achieve strong growth and stand out in Latin America,” he said.

Berríos said the Chilean economy experienced several years of uncertainty marked by increased regulation and higher taxes — factors that he believes damaged the country’s standing among investors.

The Confederation of Production and Commerce, the country’s leading business organization, welcomed approval of the bill. Its president, Susana Jiménez, said the initiative represents “an important step toward restoring the economy’s dynamism and returning to growth.”

The only provision still awaiting approval is the compensation mechanism for municipalities, which will lose part of the revenue generated by the tax on residential properties.

Anonymous donors are using food delivery apps to send food to student protesters in New Delhi, where demonstrations over alleged medical exam paper leaks continue. The youth-led movement has expanded into wider calls for educational reform and accountability.

Laird was originally predicted to be a follow-up to Yellowstone set in the Scottish Highlands.

Laird is officially on the way, jam-packed with “family feuds, buried secrets and star-crossed romances”.

Paramount Plus has given the green light for Scottish Highlands drama Laird, described as an “epic family saga in which a proud Scot defies a shadowy American billionaire hellbent on buying up the glens”.

It has also been confirmed that this Laird of Castle Drummoch, who is “determined to protect his ancestral lands from oligarchical land grabbing” will be played by none other than Oscar-winning star Kenneth Branagh.

He is famed for blockbuster films like Belfast, Dunkirk, Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot and Oppenheimer.

Earlier this month, there were rumours flying that Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan was behind Laird with yet another prequel, following in the footsteps of his hugely successful series 1883 and 1923.

No new Yellowstone prequel series from Sheridan has been announced apart from 1944 which was previously confirmed by Paramount Plus.

So Laird appears to be an entirely separate project from the Yellowstone universe with its creators behind three other big shows.

Laird will be brought to life by Paramount Plus’ Mobland creator Jez Butterworth, Nine Perfect Strangers’ John-Henry Butterworth and The 100’s Georgia Lee.

Branagh is also going to be working behind the cameras as an executive producer and Darkest Hour filmmaker Joe Wright will be directing the pilot.

Describing the upcoming Scottish drama, head of originals for Paramount Plus Jane Wiseman said: “At its heart, Laird is about one man standing his ground against unchecked wealth and power.

“There’s something universally resonant about watching someone fight to protect what matters most, and with Kenneth Branagh leading the series, and an equally remarkable creative team, we can’t wait for audiences to root for the Laird of Castle Drummoch.”

President at Paramount Television Studios Matt Thunell added: “Jez, John-Henry, and Georgia have imagined a gripping drama that explores how far one family will go to protect their land and legacy.

“With Kenneth Branagh starring and Joe Wright directing, this is a singular creative team, and we are thrilled to once again partner with 101 Studios to bring this series to Paramount+.”

Laird will air on Paramount Plus.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — After breakfast on a recent Saturday, Robert Fraass crossed the river from Omaha to this southwest corner of Iowa to catch Bernie Sanders at the opening of his newest campaign office.

He sat in the fourth row, cheering and clapping with about 200 others as Vermont’s senator delivered his familiar tirade against the oligarchs and plutocrats and greedy corporations that he said are choking the life from America’s middle and working classes.

Fraass voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary when the candidate ran as the left-leaning, fist-shaking alternative to establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. He’s still a fan. But this time, with more than two dozen presidential candidates to choose from, Fraass is shopping around.

He worries that Sanders, 77, is too old and too far left to win a general election. “Realpolitik,” said Fraass, 53, a project manager who works in the credit card industry. “I want someone who can beat Trump, and I wonder if Sanders can do it or if someone else would be better suited.”

Robert Fraass backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 but right now he’s shopping among Democratic candidates.

(Mark Z. Barabak)

By several measures — polling, fund raising, die-hard support — Sanders remains one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination. He has more cash on hand — nearly $27.5 million — than any other Democrat and commands strong on-the-ground organizations in the two most politically crucial primary states: Iowa, which he barely lost four years ago, and New Hampshire, which he won handily.

But he’s fallen behind former Vice President Joe Biden in most state and national polls, lagged several rivals in the latest fundraising quarter and is no longer the political and cultural phenom he was four years ago.

Rather, Sanders has become something considerably less buzz-worthy, just another candidate scrabbling to break from the pack of presidential hopefuls, many staking positions similar — if not identical — to his own. Most have the added benefit of seeming newer and fresher.

“He’s been consistent. I think he’s as honest as the day is long,” said Tom Stewart, 72, a semiretired educator who swung by to hear Sanders at a Sunday morning coffee-and-doughnuts stop at the United Auto Workers hall in Ottumwa. Stewart might even vote for him again. But first, he said, “I want to see other candidates.”

To some degree, Sanders has been a victim of his own success.

“Last time when I was campaigning here in Iowa, I had ideas that many people in the political establishment and the media establishment thought were really radical. Far out,” he said, with a bit of ’60s hippie intonation as a crowd of 100 or so sweltered inside his storefront campaign office in downtown Ottumwa. “Well, a lot has changed over the last four years.”

Much of what Sanders proposed then — a government-financed universal healthcare system, a $15 federal minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich, tuition-free college, nationwide decriminalization of marijuana — has, in fact, become standard orthodoxy for many of the Democrats running.

For all that has changed, however, a great deal remains the same; a person waking from a 2016 coma might not even realize time has passed.

Sanders burns with the same white-hot flame, spits out the same dramatic statistics on income inequality, gives unshirted hell to the pharmaceutical and fossil-fuel and military- and prison-industrial complexes, just as he did last time.

With a fluttery wave of his hands, like a conductor before an orchestra, he excoriates the corruption in Washington, the rotten influence of political cash, the overweening power of special interests, all heightened, he says, “by the worst president in the history of this country.”

He appears mindful, if unabashed, that he incessantly repeats himself.

“I don’t want to beat a dead horse here,” Sanders told a gathering of several dozen seniors in Council Bluffs, as he launched into his standard attack on the evils of the American healthcare system. The flogging then continued through another 20 minutes of questions and answers.

Not that his audience seemed to mind. They spent an hour recounting horror stories about insurance coverage heedlessly denied, families destroyed and lives shattered by various health crises.

To supporters, his repetition is reassuring, a sign of Sanders’ passion and dedication.

John Blasingame, who took part in a panel discussion on the candidate’s “Medicare for all” proposal, has looked over others in the Democratic field and was impressed by Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. (The two are cosponsors of Sanders’ universal healthcare legislation.) Blasingame would like to see more women elected to political office.

“But I support Bernie because he has come out continuously, year after year after year, in support of people like me,” said the 80-year-old retired construction worker. “He’s introduced bills again and again in both the House and Senate which go toward helping the mass of people, not the rich privileged few, and he’s done this forever.”

John Blasingame likes Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren but supports Sanders because of his longstanding consistency.

(Mark Z. Barabak)

Others remain to be convinced.

Sandra Cerveny, 69, a retired college administrator, likes Sanders and very much supports Medicare for all. But she also has good things to say about Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden, who has criticized Sanders’ healthcare plan and suggested expanding the Affordable Care Act instead. “Frankly, I’m for whoever can beat Donald Trump,” Cerveny said, suggesting any of several Democrats would do just fine.

Faiz Shakir, who manages Sanders’ campaign, concedes that the candidate may have lost his novelty.

“For sure, the fact is other candidates are fresher,” Shakir said. But he noted that there will be plenty of opportunities over the next several months for them to rise and, he believes, fall again. “There are going to be a lot of boomlets,” he said.

But in the end, Shakir continued, those moments “will evaporate” and the Democratic contest will come down to who can deliver fundamental change and which candidate is best poised to defeat President Trump. Sanders, with his appeal to working-class voters in key states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and unwavering call for political revolution, is the candidate best suited to achieve both, Shakir asserted.

There have been some small adjustments.

Sanders, who struggled last time for support among African Americans, has spoken more about his early involvement in the civil rights movement, seeking to broaden his appeal to black voters. He’s increased his outreach to older Americans — his recent Iowa swing was almost entirely devoted to senior issues — another group that largely spurned his insurgent 2016 effort.

After filling stadiums to deliver his angry oratorio — he packed Santa Monica High School’s amphitheater at a Friday night rally — Sanders has begun staging smaller, more intimate events intended to offer the up-close experience that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, especially, have come to expect. In two days zigzagging the breadth of Iowa, from the Missouri to Mississippi rivers, he never spoke to a crowd larger than 250 or so and sometimes spent more time answering questions than giving his standard stump speech.

He has even begun posing for selfies — by now a staple of the presidential campaign trail — a task Sanders conducts with the joyless precision of a worker manning an assembly line. Smile. Click. Next.

What Sanders can’t change is the fact he’s no longer quite so compelling. For some Democrats that’s a reason — for now, anyway — to look elsewhere.

Back in Council Bluffs, Fraass left Sanders’ campaign office happy with the scorching rhetoric he’d heard. “I really liked his energy,” Fraass said, toting a blue-and-white “Bernie 2020” poster as he stepped into the 96-degree heat.

But Fraass wasn’t through shopping. Sixty miles east, in Shenandoah, Iowa, he planned to catch an afternoon appearance by this year’s political phenom, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

To put it simply, the testing could help to combat micro-dosing. This is where tiny amounts of performance-enhancing drugs are ingested but are in and out of the rider’s system within a few hours, leaving only a short window for detection.

If a rider knows they have a seven-hour window where they are not normally tested, some believe it could be an opportunity to micro-dose.

Vaughters said: “If you introduce a low enough dose of a peptide hormone, the clearance time can be four hours. If you take it at 11pm, it’ll be out of the system at 3am, so it makes a difference.”

He added testing technology is evolving quickly but, where riders and teams push the boundaries, doping is always going to be a risk factor.

On night testing, he added: “It sucks if it happened all the time – but it’s happening once or twice a year. Listen, it’s a great deterrent. One night of lost sleep; lose a little sleep – gain a lot of credibility.”

Generally, the days when riders boosted blood values using first EPO and then moved on to blood transfusions (which is why the night-time hotel room is such a taboo backdrop in cycling) are thought to have largely gone from the top of the sport.

Since the 1990s and decade from 2000, when the disgraced once seven-time winner Armstrong tricked the world into thinking he was clean when dominating the sport, the athlete biological passport (ABP) used by Wada is sophisticated enough to pick up seemingly all inconsistencies recorded.

There have been cyclists banned recently but no high-profile names.

The sport’s lower-tiers frequently has seen riders busted for being tempted back to EPO and human growth hormones.

The ITA told BBC Sport: “Due consideration has been given to minimise as much as possible the impact testing activities have on riders.

“However, the ITA, on behalf of the UCI, has the responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of the cycling anti-doping program and the integrity of cycling races.

“As such, effective testing must, in limited and justified circumstances, be capable to occur outside standard daytime hours.”

July 22 (UPI) — Guyana will establish an independent commission of inquiry into the country’s deadliest maritime disaster after the sinking of the MV Barima left at least 53 people dead.

Meanwhile, authorities continued rescue and recovery operations while investigating discrepancies in the ferry’s passenger manifest and possible safety violations.

The MV Barima, an 87-year-old ferry operating between Georgetown and the remote community of Port Kaituma, capsized Saturday night after issuing a distress signal, Authorities described it as the worst maritime disaster in Guyana’s history.

Prime Minister Mark Phillips said Wednesday the independent inquiry will be established “as early as possible” to determine what happened before the vessel departed and whether operating procedures were followed.

Investigators will also examine how discrepancies in the passenger manifest occurred, how cargo was handled, whether the emergency response was adequate and whether violations of maritime regulations occurred, according to Guyana’s Department of Public Information.

“I can assure you, yes, we will have a commission of inquiry and people will be held responsible based on the outcome, the results and the recommendations of that commission of inquiry,” Phillips said.

Authorities now believe about 179 people were aboard the ferry when it capsized, despite the official manifest listing 116 passengers and 17 crew members, Phillips said.

He cautioned against drawing conclusions about possible overloading or operational failures before investigators complete their work, but did acknowledge discrepancies between the official records and the estimated number of passengers.

Phillips said the commission also will recommend reforms to strengthen maritime safety, improve ferry operations and help prevent similar disasters.

The announcement comes as search and recovery operations entered a new phase. President Mohamed Irfaan Ali said Wednesday that authorities planned to begin raising the wreck using specialized flotation equipment to improve access for rescue and recovery teams, according to the Department of Public Information.

Ali said additional divers and technical personnel were joining the operation, which includes the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard, police, civilian volunteers and private-sector partners. He ssaid seabed mapping technology provided with support from ExxonMobil had located the ferry resting on its starboard side, allowing engineers to plan a recovery effort.

“We have not ruled out rescue just yet,” Ali told relatives of those still missing during a late-night briefing, according to the Department of Public Information.

Authorities said 76 people have been rescued since the accident, while dozens remain unaccounted for.

Separate criminal and administrative investigations also remain underway.

Earlier this week, officials confirmed that the ferry’s captain and mate tested positive for marijuana after the accident. Maritime personnel responsible for the vessel’s operations were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to the Department of Public Information.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s judiciary has announced several executions this week linked to unrest over recent months, as part of a campaign against those accused of trying to “create divisions” during the war with the United States.

The judiciary’s official news outlet on Wednesday announced the execution of Mehdi Khanaki, who was identified as an “active element of a terrorist group” arrested during nationwide protests in January.

State television showed security forces raiding a home in Karaj near Tehran, where several handguns, ammunition and explosives were allegedly found. A “revolutionary court” in the city tried him for “operational action in favour of the Zionist regime, the United States and hostile groups”, among other things.

On Sunday, two more men were executed in connection with a 16-defendant case arising from deadly protests in Isfahan, in central Iran, on January 8. The authorities said the men played a role in the killing of several police officers, but foreign-based activists have countered the state narrative and alleged a lack of due process and the use of torture.

The protests started last December 28 in central Tehran over economic issues but quickly morphed into nationwide expressions of frustration at the establishment, as in previous rounds of demonstrations.

The authorities refer to the unrest, when thousands were killed across the country, mostly on the nights of January 8 and 9 , as a “coup” orchestrated by the US and Israel.

They also reject findings by Amnesty International and other international human rights organisations that security forces carried out “mass unlawful killings on an unprecedented scale” during a total internet and communications shutdown.

Tens of thousands have been arrested in the aftermath of the protests, as well as the US-Israeli war that started on February 28 .

The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, a non-governmental body inside Iran, last week condemned what it called “intensified prison sentences and continued pressure on teachers’ guild activists” by the authorities.

Security-related offences follow a law passed after the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025, which aims to more severely punish “espionage” and other actions perceived to be cooperating with “enemies” and undermining national security.

Hundreds of Iranians, including businessmen and celebrities based in Iran and abroad, have also had their entire assets confiscated by the state.

State TV also periodically airs “confessions” from people arrested or executed for those charges.

The latest was broadcast on Monday, when a young man with a blurred-out face could be seen saying he posted Instagram stories that opposed the Islamic Republic during the current war. Tehran’s police force said the unidentified man released “norm-breaking and anti-homeland content” online in an attempt to “damage the psychological security of the society”.

“I made a mistake and I will not repeat it. I am now sure that we must all now stand together to build Iran, nobody else has a right to commit an aggression against our country,” he said.

On July 13 , Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence released a list of “hostile media” that included dozens of media networks, 61 individual “human-media” figures and 310 accounts or online pages. It warned that sending photographs, video or information to a listed outlet, person or account can trigger a prison sentence and permanent exclusion from public employment, unless authorities invoke a more serious charge.

‘Infiltrators’

The message goes along with rhetoric of steadfastness and togetherness that has been repeatedly emphasised by Iranian authorities during the war.

Earlier this week, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader in March after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the opening salvo of the war, called for a “sacred unity” among the people and political factions.

Speaking during a televised meeting on Monday with President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior clerical judges in the judiciary, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei doubled down on the same message – complete with heavy religious undertones.

“We must not allow devils among humans and jinn to infiltrate the ranks of believers and our people to create division and schism,” he said.

The judiciary chief said these “alarmists, rumour-spreaders, hypocrites and infiltrators” would not all declare themselves as such, instead disguising themselves as insiders who would set people against each other.

This comes as the US increasingly points to alleged rifts among Iranian authorities, and categorises them into a faction that wants to keep fighting, especially over the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, and another group that wishes to reach a negotiated resolution soon in order to stop the country from being destroyed.

Iranian authorities have rejected such classifications.

The Odyssey is Sir Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited adaptation of Homer’s epic poem.

Groundbreaking new Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey stars a familiar soap legend.

EastEnders star Himesh Patel stars in the epic, which has already broken records with its cinematic release.

Former soap legend Himesh is a face familiar to many after he played Tamwar Masood, the slightly geeky son of the Masood family, on EastEnders between 2007 and 2016.

As the first Muslim family to live in Albert Square since the Karims in the late 80s, and the first Asian family since the Ferreiras in 2003, the Masoods brought a fresh perspective to the long-running BBC soap, and they quickly rose in popularity.

During his time in Walford, Tamwar was seen helping his family with their business and putting his Oxbridge dreams on hold. Eventually, he left Walford to travel the world with Nancy Carter (Maddy Hill), whom he later married, but the couple ultimately divorced.

In 2016, after nearly a decade, Himesh decided to leave his role on EastEnders to pursue new opportunities in his acting career. It seems to have been a very wise decision, as he is now a movie star with his latest role in the blockbuster movie The Odyssey.

Who is Himesh Patel in The Odyssey?

Sir Christopher Nolan’s new movie, an adaptation of Homer’s Ancient Greek epic, stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the Greek King of Ithaca, on his perilous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.

The highly anticipated film, released on Friday, July 17, is the first-ever feature film shot entirely with IMAX cameras.

It has brought in a huge $264.1million (£196m) worldwide in its first weekend, surpassing the $249million (£185million) opening of The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which went on to be Nolan’s highest-grossing film, exceeding $1billion.

In the film, Patel plays Eurylochus, Odysseus’ trusted second-in-command. He’s not only fiercely loyal, but he also calls out Odysseus and serves as his conscience as they try to make their dangerous trek home to Ithaca.

The Odyssey features a star-studded A-list cast alongside Himesh and Matt Damon, including Zendaya, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson.

“Everything I’ve done in the last seven to eight years has been beyond my wildest dreams, but this movie was such a singular experience,” Himash told the Radio Times.

“There is only one guy who makes movies like this. I don’t know where my career is going but even if I have the privilege of working with Chris [Nolan] again, it won’t be this story, it won’t be this sort of thing.”

Since his EastEnders exit, Himesh has taken on significant roles in several notable films, including Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired film Yesterday (2019) and Christopher Nolan’s time-manipulating film Tenet.

In addition, he played the part of Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s romantic partner in the Netflix disaster film Don’t Look Up.

What are viewers saying about The Odyssey?

The Odyssey has already received rave reviews, and taking to Rotten Tomatoes, one viewer dubbed the movie “phenomenal”, while another added: “This is a cinematic masterpiece. Guaranteed Oscars sweep this year!”

A third chimed in: “Film. Of. The. Year. Possibly the decade”, while another added: “A cinematic masterpiece”, while another added: “Got to be one of the best adaptations of all time.”

“The Odyssey is an absolute masterpiece and my favorite movie of the year so far. Christopher Nolan delivers a visually breathtaking epic that had me glued to the screen from beginning to end,” added another.

The Odyssey is available to watch in various cinemas across the UK

Clint Reilly, a Bay Area milkman’s son who rose to manage the campaigns of California’s most influential political figures, has died at age 79.

A savvy political consultant, Reilly spearheaded early winning campaigns for some of the most recognizable names in California politics: former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Brandon Heist, Clint Reilly Organization’s head of business operations, said in a statement to The Times that Reilly died over the weekend in San Francisco. He died surrounded by family, which requested privacy. The San Francisco Examiner newspaper, which Reilly bought in 2020, earlier announced its owner’s death Sunday.

“I will always be grateful for Clint’s friendship and counsel over so many years,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As the manager of my first campaign for Congress in 1987, he brought his unmatched strategic mind to help create and amplify my slogan: A Voice That Will Be Heard.”

In a 1987 article, The Times attributed the success of Pelosi’s congressional bid to money — her campaign spent $1 million, more than her 13 opponents combined — and a sophisticated voter turnout program devised by Reilly. At the time, Pelosi was a 46-year-old mother of five children and a party activist known for raising large sums for Democratic candidates.

Reflecting on Pelosi’s rise last November, Reilly wrote in a San Francisco Examiner op-ed, “The mystery of being a political consultant is that you never know how your winning candidate’s career will turn out.”

Reilly’s legacy went beyond catapulting politicians into office.

He helped transform modern campaigning, said Oakland political consultant Jim Ross, who worked for Reilly throughout the ’90s, including on the election and reelection campaigns of San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan.

In the ‘80s, Reilly was among the first consultants to merge grassroots organizing with new technology: using voter roll data to segment and target pivotal voters for turnout and persuasion, Ross said.

“It was a way to make sure that he spent resources effectively,” Ross said.

Reilly’s data-driven voter targeting tactics helped Feinstein, then-San Francisco mayor, beat a recall effort in 1983. They later had a public falling-out in 1989 during Feinstein’s failed campaign for governor.

Reilly’s portfolio wasn’t strictly Democratic. In 1993, he coordinated businessman Richard Riordan’s successful campaign for Los Angeles mayor by targeting homeowners’ anxieties about unemployment, crime and other symptoms of urban decay. When elected, Riordan became the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles in 36 years — and no Republican has been elected to that office since.

Reilly also advised the California insurance industry.

In 1988, he led the insurance industry’s losing $60-million initiative campaigns for Propositions 104 and 106. The pair of insurance industry-sponsored measures was designed to compete with Propositions 100 and 103, initiatives backed by trial lawyers and consumer advocates who wanted to reform the industry.

Voters ultimately passed Proposition 103, which promised insurance rate roll-backs and created the elected state insurance commissioner role. But Ross said it was one example of how Reilly would search for creative ways to achieve his client’s goals.

“Clint really pioneered in that election the idea of running competing ballot measures,” Ross said. “The reform measure was extraordinarily popular, it was going to pass, so instead of going at it directly, he ran a competing measure.”

A 1994 profile in The Times, from when Reilly was running Democrat Kathleen Brown’s bid for governor, described him as “one of the most powerful–and feared–political operatives in California.”

“When the opponent knows you have (him) on your side, a chill goes up their spine,” former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan told The Times. “He’s certainly better to have inside the tent than outside.”

Born in Oakland in 1947, Reilly was drawn to politics from an early age. He ran successfully for class president during fifth grade, with a campaign slogan his sister devised: “Take a Hint, Vote for Clint.”

Reilly’s relationship with Eugene Boyle, a Bay Area Catholic priest and liberal activist known for supporting the Civil Rights Movement, shaped his political views. He was passionate about supporting “the underdogs,” Ross said.

Reilly spent nine years in seminary before switching to pursue politics. His big break came in 1979, when he ran San Francisco Supervisor Quentin Kopp’s campaign for mayor. Kopp lost, but Reilly’s name stuck.

He soon developed a reputation for charging top dollar for his campaign strategy services and for his heavy campaign spending. In 1982, after Reilly brought Boxer to a decisive primary victory in her first congressional race, she fired him over excessive campaign spending, the Times reported in the 1994 profile.

As a boss, Reilly was “extraordinarily demanding,” Ross said, adding, “I reread pieces of direct mail five and six times now because of him.”

He also had a generous side, Ross said. Reilly spent time teaching young staffers the art of campaigning, a rarity in politics. Even after he left political consulting and shifted his focus to real estate, Reilly continued to help candidates with fundraising and messaging.

Reilly ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco mayor in 1999 and later turned his attention to local media and philanthropy, founding a nonprofit in 2008 to offer scholarships for low-income students to attend private college-preparatory high schools.

Reilly’s passing will not change the structure or current operations of the Clint Reilly Organization, Heist said. The organization’s media division includes the San Francisco Examiner — which Reilly acquired in 2020 alongside its now-defunct affiliate SF Weekly — and the Nob Hill Gazette, which he bought in 2016. The organization also has a hospitality company and real estate division.

“The organization’s commitment to its employees, partners, and the community remain firmly in place,” Heist said.

Condolences poured in from leaders across California on Monday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom in a statement honored Reilly as a “San Francisco institution” with a brilliant mind and generous heart.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said on social media the city “lost a civic leader who left a lasting mark on our city.”

Reilly is survived by his wife Janet and two daughters, Jill and Ava. Memorial arrangements will be announced later.

Rangers manager Derek McInnes has been given a four-game touchline ban, with one suspended, for calling the decision to award Celtic a late penalty at Motherwell “disgusting”.

The comments, made at the end of last season when McInnes was in charge of Hearts, related to a stoppage-time spot-kick given for handball that was converted by Kelechi Iheanacho.

Celtic’s 2-1 victory at Fir Park kept them one point behind Hearts, who they beat to the title a few days later in a final-day decider.

Speaking to Sky Sports after a win against Falkirk at Tynecastle, McInnes said: “When you heard Celtic got a 96th minute penalty that was going to VAR and they were checking it, you just assume what’s happened is they get the penalty.

“Having seen it again, it’s disgusting. It is.

“I don’t think it’s a penalty kick.

“But we’re up against it. We’re up against everybody.”

Following the late drama at Fir Park, referee John Beaton’s contact details were posted online, with police keeping his home under surveillance. A teenager was then charged “in connection with a data protection offence”.

SFA head of referees Willie Collum backed the call, citing “clear evidence” with Sam Nicholson’s hand and arm “in an unnatural position” and the resulting contact “a punishable handball”.

Motherwell and their former midfielder Elliott Watt have already been sanctioned over social media posts on the matter.

Watt, who has since joined Turkish club Samsunspor, received a four-match suspension, having described it as “the worst VAR decision in history”.

Motherwell were fined £5,000 for releasing a video with the caption: “As the world of football mocks our game, we simply have to draw a line in the sand and shift the focus.”

The Scottish FA compliance officer issued complaints to all three parties under disciplinary rule 72 stating that: ‘No recognised football body, club, official, team official or other member of team staff, player or other person under the jurisdiction of the SFA, shall in an interview, a ‘blog’ on the internet, on a social networking or micro-blogging site, or in any other manner calculated or likely to lead to publicity (i) criticise the decision(s) and/or performance(s) of any or all match official(s) in such a way as to indicate bias or incompetence on the part of such match official; or (ii) make remarks about such match official(s) which impinge on his character.”

The suspended ban for McInnes will be applicable if he is in breach of rule 72 again before the end of the 2026-27 season.

July 22 (UPI) — The author prefers to use the lowercase “n” to challenge the Kim family regime’s legitimacy.

Northeast Asia has reached a strategic inflection point.

China, Russia, Iran and north Korea can no longer be treated as separate security problems managed through isolated policies, disconnected commands or narrow bilateral initiatives.

They increasingly operate as a loose, but consequential, CRInK axis. It is not a formal alliance. It is flexible, transactional, and opportunistic. That makes it more difficult to deter because its members can cooperate without a unified command or mutual-defense treaty.

Each regime pursues distinct interests. China seeks regional dominance and weaker U.S. alliances. Russia seeks resources for its war against Ukraine and leverage against the West. Iran seeks strategic depth, sanctions relief, and stronger military partnerships. The Kim family regime seeks survival, military modernization and acceptance as a nuclear-armed state.

Their interests differ, but they converge when cooperation weakens the United States, divides democratic allies, circumvents sanctions and protects authoritarian rule.

China provides north Korea economic support and diplomatic cover. Russia provides revenue, operational experience and possible military technology. Iran contributes weapons cooperation, sanctions-evasion expertise and pressure in the Middle East. north Korea provides ammunition, missiles, personnel, cyber capabilities and a persistent threat to the Republic of Korea, Japan and the United States.

A crisis in one theater creates opportunity in another. This is more than collusion. It is coordinated political warfare.

The democratic answer must be equally coordinated. The ROK, United States and Japan need a durable trilateral strategy that connects deterrence with diplomacy, intelligence, economic security, technology protection, law enforcement, information and the human domain.

Evolution of trilateral cooperation

Wednesday’s ministerial meeting in Manila showed that ROK-U.S.-Japan cooperation is expanding beyond coordination on north Korea. The ministers reaffirmed deterrence and denuclearization, but they also addressed maritime security, economic coercion, critical minerals, nuclear energy, emerging technologies, supply-chain resilience, advanced technology protection, transnational crime and disaster relief.

That wider agenda reflects strategic reality. north Korea’s military growth cannot be separated from Russian support or Chinese protection. China’s coercion cannot be separated from maritime security, critical technologies, energy, shipping or supply chains. Iran’s support to Russia and its military relationships with north Korea connect Northeast Asian security to conflicts beyond the region.

The threats are interconnected, so the response must be, as well.

The Manila meeting demonstrated political alignment. The test is whether that alignment produces shared intelligence, integrated planning, coordinated sanctions enforcement, resilient supply chains and combined responses to coercion. Statements matter. Institutions, capabilities and sustained action matter more.

Stop calling It the gray zone

The first requirement of strategy is to describe the threat accurately. The term “gray zone” suggests uncertainty about attribution, legality, responsibility or intent. The Philippines offers a clearer description: ICAD, or illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive activities.

The actions of the CRInK regimes are rarely purposeless or truly ambiguous. China combines maritime harassment, economic pressure, cyber operations, military intimidation, information warfare and lawfare.

Russia employs sabotage, proxies, espionage, disinformation, energy leverage and military threats. Iran uses proxies, covert action, missiles, drones and economic networks.

north Korea uses nuclear coercion, cyber theft, criminal finance, missile tests, maritime incursions, subversion and information control. These are integrated instruments of political warfare.

Calling them “gray” can create passivity. Democracies debate thresholds while authoritarian regimes consolidate gains. Shared terminology should identify hostile activity, attribute responsibility and connect each act to the larger campaign. Shared language is the beginning of shared strategy.

West Sea as a test of trilateral resolve

The West Sea, also known as the Yellow Sea, shows how political warfare can change the status quo without conventional war. The unresolved maritime boundary creates opportunities for Pyongyang to manufacture disputes, employ civilian-looking vessels, deploy drones, mobilize maritime forces and portray aggression as routine law enforcement.

Such a campaign would create a dilemma for Seoul. A forceful response could be portrayed as escalation. Restraint could permit a fait accompli. The decisive terrain would not be the water alone. It would be international perception. Who changed the status quo? Who controlled the narrative? Who convinced regional audiences that coercion was legitimate administration?

China has used similar methods across the Asia Pacific through coast guard vessels, maritime militia, legal claims, economic pressure and information operations. Pyongyang could adapt those methods with Chinese political protection and Russian technical assistance.

The ROK would remain the principal actor in a West Sea crisis, but Japan and the United States would contribute intelligence, maritime domain awareness, attribution, cyber defense, diplomatic coordination, sanctions enforcement and strategic communication. A maritime provocation could test whether trilateral cooperation can recognize coordinated coercion and act before it succeeds.

From consultation to integrated campaigning

Deterrence remains necessary. It is not sufficient. The three nations need integrated campaigning across military, diplomatic, economic, financial, intelligence, informational, cyber, technological, legal and law-enforcement domains.

They should begin with a recurring trilateral strategic estimate of the CRInK axis. It should assess China, Russia, Iran and north Korea as an interacting network, identify warning indicators and vulnerabilities, trace sanctions-evasion and technology-transfer networks, and examine how simultaneous crises could divide attention and resources. This estimate should guide policy and campaign planning.

Military cooperation should build on exercises such as Freedom Edge, but interoperability must serve clear political objectives. The three countries should deepen missile warning, maritime awareness, anti-submarine warfare, cyber defense, air and missile defense, logistics, space support and intelligence sharing.

Planning must also cover crises involving coast guards, fishing fleets, commercial shipping, criminal intermediaries, cyber actors, proxies, disguised military personnel and manipulated civilian incidents. The seam between military and civilian activity is where the CRInK regimes will seek advantage.

Economic security Is national security

The Manila ministerial meeting also recognized that economic resilience is part of deterrence. China can exploit dependencies in critical minerals, manufacturing, shipping, energy and advanced electronics. Russia uses energy and commodities for leverage. Iran and north Korea rely on illicit finance, cyber theft, front companies, arms networks, overseas labor and sanctions evasion.

The ROK, United States and Japan possess immense combined economic and technological power, but only if they coordinate. They should align export controls, protect advanced technologies, diversify supply chains, strengthen access to critical minerals, enforce sanctions and develop common responses to economic coercion.

Cooperation on small modular reactors, emerging technologies, and energy security can give vulnerable states alternatives to Chinese or Russian dependence. The objective is not economic isolation. It is reduced strategic vulnerability.

Political warfare and the human domain

The CRInK regimes understand that strategic competition is a contest of will, legitimacy and political endurance. The democracies must compete without abandoning their principles. A coordinated trilateral information strategy should expose military cooperation, sanctions evasion, corruption, maritime coercion, cyber theft, technology transfers and human rights abuses, while explaining how separate incidents form a larger campaign.

For north Korea, information and human rights are strategic. The regime survives by isolating the Korean people in the north and monopolizing information. Truth weakens that monopoly. Human rights pressure exposes the regime’s illegitimacy.

Support for the Korean people affirms that the Kim family regime does not permanently define Korea’s future. The ultimate objective should not be the endless management of division, but the peaceful resolution of the Korea question and a free and unified Korea.

Holistic imperative

The central danger is not only CRInK military strength. It is allied fragmentation. The adversaries integrate military power, economic leverage, proxies, cyber operations, lawfare and information. Democracies still divide those problems among separate ministries, commands and bilateral channels.

The Manila meeting suggests that this may be changing. Trilateral cooperation is becoming a framework for regional security, maritime law, economic resilience, energy, technology and resistance to coercion. That is necessary, but not yet sufficient. Diplomatic continuity matters. Deterrence becomes credible only when political alignment produces operational capability.

The essential question is not whether the ROK, United States and Japan can issue strong statements after the next provocation. It is whether they can anticipate, decide and act together before individual acts of coercion accumulate into a new strategic reality. The CRInK axis already thinks and acts holistically. The democracies must do the same.

David Maxwell, executive director of the Korea Regional Review, is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation, where he works on a free and unified Korea. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.

The ex-chief executive of Southern Water has been charged with three others over an alleged plan to manipulate water quality tests to avoid paying financial penalties of about £45m, it can now be reported.

Matthew Wright is accused of conspiring to defraud the Environment Agency (EA) and water regulator Ofwat between 2012 and 2017, along with Philip Barker, Clive Massey and Mark Gregory, who also worked at the firm.

Wright’s solicitor says he “denies all wrongdoing and has co-operated fully” with the EA’s investigation.

Southern Water said the charges related to “a historic set of failures” uncovered in an internal investigation. It said it was a “completely different” company to a decade ago.

The EA asked a judge to issue a summons against the four, charging them with the offence, last year, but Wright launched a legal challenge, dismissed by two senior judges on Wednesday.

Massey, Gregory and Barker did not appear at the hearing in London and were not represented.

According to court documents, the allegations include arranging for wastewater to be removed from facilities by tankers in order to create “no flow” results.

This had been “with a view to covering up pollution and deceiving those whose function is to protect the public from such harm”, prosecutors allege.

In his legal challenge, Wright’s lawyers argued at the High Court in June that the EA did not have the power to issue the summons and it should be thrown out.

But the judges dismissed his claim and ruled restrictions previously preventing reporting of the legal challenge should be lifted.

Separate court listings showed the case against 60-year-old Wright, of Haslemere, Surrey; Barker, 57, of West Chiltington, West Sussex; Massey, 64, of Brandhill, Shropshire; and Gregory, 63, of Southampton, were scheduled to be heard at Medway Magistrates’ Court on 14 July.

The four are accused of conspiring between 2012 and 2017 to defraud those conducting the environmental and financial regulation duties of Southern Water, including the EA and Ofwat, by “the implementation of artificial no-flow events at wastewater treatment works”.

Lily Allen’s phenomenal musical comeback with West End Girl caused quite the stir.

Lily Allen fans will see the star as “she’s never been seen before” in a “redefining” new documentary.

Pop star Lily Allen was a cultural icon in the noughties, and was recently catapulted back into the spotlight after an eight-year break, thanks to her scandalous hit album West End Girl.

Now, the Not Fair singer is at the heart of an upcoming biographical documentary “offering an intimate portrait of the life and career of a global icon and voice of a generation”.

Set to be released on Prime Video, the film will take a deep dive into her “extraordinary journey” and why she has remained a cultural force for the past two decades.

The special will feature interviews from those closest to the star to give subscribers a real insight into the musical legend’s life away from the cameras.

The official synopsis teases: “As a pioneering woman in modern music, Lily’s sharp wit and candid storytelling directly paved the way for a generation of today’s biggest female artists.

“This is a story of resilience, reinvention, and an artist reclaiming her narrative on her own terms.

“This is Lily Allen as she’s never been seen before. Raw, real, and redefining what it means to thrive in the spotlight.”

So far, a release date for the Lily Allen documentary hasn’t been confirmed by Prime Video but it will be sometime in 2027.

Her shocking fifth studio album West End Girl was written following the collapse of her marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour.

The famous couple first started dating in 2019, got married the following year and separated in 2025.

In her 14-track West End Girl album, she accuses Harbour of infidelity and talks about their open marriage agreement.

Harbour has since addressed the album in an interview with Variety, saying “stories are complex” and that “it wasn’t my experience”. Nevertheless, he does “respect her creation of art to channel her experience”.

The Lily Allen documentary will air sometime in 2027 on Prime Video.

RYANAIR is set to cancel hundreds of flights to and from a popular European country.

Two million seats will be axed from the winter season in Belgium and next summer due to rising air passenger tax.

The airline said today that it would be removing five aircraft from its base at Charleroi, according to local media.

Cuts will affect services at Charleroi and Brussels Airport in Zaventem starting later this year.

Ryanair said the axing of routes is a decision made as part of the Federal Government’s plan to increase the departure tax on air tickets.

Just a few days ago, the Belgian government announced it would raise the amount from €5 (£4.26) to €7 (£5.97) from January 1, 2027.

COAST EFFECTIVE

Best UK family theme & waterparks with cheap stays from just £3pp a night

DIVE IN

Mega waterpark hotels with EVERYTHING you ever wanted & all inclusive from £189pp

Despite this being lower than expected, Ryanair said it is still too high.

When the tax increase was announced at the beginning of the year, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary slammed the plans, calling them “silly” and “damaging”.

He added: “Over the last 20 years, Ryanair has grown to be Belgium’s largest airline.

“This growth can easily be lost to tax abolishing countries like Sweden Hungary, Slovakia and Italy, and if Charleroi and Belgium don’t reverse these taxes.”

Ryanair currently carries 11.6million passengers to and from Belgium, making it the largest airline operating in the country.

It’s not yet clear whether the routes axed will be from the UK.

Current flights routes to Charleroi include from Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

More than 16 congressional Democrats accused the Federal Communications Commission this week of running a license-review process “tainted by animus and ideology,” demanding the agency back off its early scrutiny of Disney stations, including Los Angeles’ KABC-TV and San Francisco’s KGO-TV — while alleging the FCC has politicized its power.

The lawmakers signed letters to FCC Secretary Marlene H. Dortch to register their dismay and question the legitimacy of the FCC’s review protocol.

The letter campaign is a response to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision in April to order an early review of Disney’s licenses for the eight ABC television stations that it owns. The review is entering its home stretch; public comments are due to the FCC by July 29.

Calling a station’s licenses for an early review is rare, and it’s been four decades since the FCC revoked a TV station license.

Carr’s move requiring Disney to submit to an early review came after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump expressed outrage over a joke by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that referenced the first lady.

“This early renewal process is merely a smokescreen to pursue President Trump’s vindictive agenda to silence minority voices and punish companies that decline to do his bidding,” according to the letter signed by Reps. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Kevin Mullin (D-South San Francisco), Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and others.

The FCC maintains the ABC station review sprung from concerns about Disney’s internal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but the lawmakers said there was no evidence that Disney’s personnel policies violate any laws.

Instead, they said, Trump has made it clear that he sees TV license renewals as a means to squeeze media outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.

Disney has pushed back against the early evaluation of its TV station licenses, which were originally up for review between 2028 and 2031. The Burbank giant filed its renewal applications “under protest.”

“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” Disney’s WABC-TV station, based in New York, wrote in a May filing with the commission. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”

California congressional Democrats have strongly condemned Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision to mandate early, unprecedented license renewals for eight Disney-owned ABC stations, including KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

(Google street view)

The FCC maintains that Disney is the one politicizing the station review.

“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said in a May statement. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”

In the tussle over whether “The View” qualifies for an exemption to the so-called equal time rules for politicians, an FCC spokesperson said in a statement: “ABC should focus on complying with its public interest obligations, rather than misleading the public about them.”

The lawmakers, in the two letters, did not wade into the controversy over “The View.”

Instead, they stressed the importance of the two stations — KABC and KGO — to their local communities.

“KABC is an important local television station that millions of our constituents rely on for daily news, traffic, emergency weather alerts, and programming that serves our local community,” according to the letter spearheaded by Friedman, whose district includes Disney’s headquarters.

“Any refusal to renew this license would be strongly against the public interest,” the group wrote.

Congresswoman Laura Friedman is leading a letter campaign by Democrats in Congress to defend Disney’s KABC-TV.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

A second letter highlighted the importance of Disney’s San Francisco station, which serves nine counties in that region.

“For over 75 years, KGO has been operating in the public interest in our region, offering reliable journalism, indispensable emergency information, and steadfast community engagement that our constituents and viewers rely on,” according to the letter headed by Mullin.

The station also serves as a broadcast partner to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, the city’s Pride parade, the Oakland Black Joy parade and the Bay to Breakers race. It also raises awareness for organizations including Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Bay Area Autism Collective, the lawmakers said.

“KGO’s operations reflects the television station’s deep investment and commitment to viewers in the Bay Area,” the lawmakers wrote. “KGO is a community partner. … We urge the FCC to reconsider its unlawful censorship campaign against ABC and all other political opponents of President Trump.”