Tired of budget stalemates, deficits and continuous acrimony in the state Capitol, California voters in 2010 started taking action to temper political gridlock and loosen the grip of entrenched special interests.

They approved statewide ballot measures to create an independent congressional redistricting commission, taking that power away from self-interested Sacramento lawmakers, as well as a new “top-two” primary system intended to stifle the power of the major political parties and provide more representative, less hyperpartisan candidates with a greater chance of victory.

Now, in an era of even more bitter divisions in the state and nation, those reforms face severe threats.

Last month, supporters of a proposal to repeal the state’s current primary system, in which the two candidates in state and congressional elections who receive the most votes move on to the general election regardless of party affiliation, received permission to gather voter signatures to place the measure on the 2028 ballot.

In November, Californians voted to temporarily scrap the congressional districts that were crafted by a voter-approved independent commission and instead replace them by ones approved by Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento. The move, aimed at giving Democrats an edge in the November midterm election, was in response to President Trump urging GOP state leaders, notably in Texas, to alter their districts to boost Republican numbers in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 election.

“In the olden times, California liked to see itself as the epicenter of good-government reform,” said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.

But the sense of optimism when voters approved these reforms has faded, she said, because of the divisiveness cultivated by Trump but also because of polarization that predates him.

“There’s no world in which you can look at California or any other state in 2026 and say it looks like 2010,” Levinson said. “We, the public, speak to each other in different ways. Politicians talk to each other in different ways. … It feels to me like we talk a lot more about triage than we do about building a shining city on a hill. It’s a different universe.”

But others question the effectiveness of the California’s good-government reforms and merits of the self-glorification that followed.

“It’s not clear that any of these reforms helped elect more moderates or limit polarization,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA. “Reformers may have over-promised in the early 2010s what election reform could actually do to improve the lives of Californians. And Californians did not fully appreciate the unintended consequences of reforms enacted with even the best of intentions.”

The efforts to claw back the 2010 reforms occurs at a time of declining trust in institutions and during a fragile moment in the nation’s democracy. Trump continues to push debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as other voting misconduct conspiracies that often focus on California.

In a prime-time speech last month, the president again raised concerns about the length of time it took California elections officials to count ballots in the June 2 primary.

“It took a month to count the votes,” he said. “I wonder what they were doing.”

Lauded by civic groups, the good-government reforms were championed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and funded by major GOP donor Charles Munger Jr.

Both of the state’s major political parties as well as prominent politicians and several labor unions opposed the efforts when they were placed on the 2010 ballot.

Jessica Millan Patterson, a former state GOP chairwoman, is among those who believe the temporary pause in independent redistricting that voters approved in November will not be temporary. And she said the top-two primary is a failed experiment.

“Speaking as a Republican, I just don’t feel that it has served us well at all,” she said. “Not only has it locked us out of many general election ballots, but it has also not moderated Sacramento at all.”

California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks, who supported the suspension of independent redistricting, agreed with Millan Patterson about the top-two primary.

“The current top-two system has failed to deliver on what its supporters promised,” he said. “It’s well past time to review, revise and maybe even repeal it.”

Hicks expressed fears earlier this year that the top-two primary would result in two Republican gubernatorial candidates advancing to the November ballot in a strongly Democratic state because of a sprawling and splintered Democratic field.

Hicks’ rare public move urging low-polling Democratic candidates, which included every minority candidate of color in the race, to consider their viability sparked widespread controversy during the primary.

The tension was heightened by a controversial USC debate selection process that would have resulted in no candidates of color taking the stage. (The debate was canceled less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to take place.)

Ultimately, the June primary resulted in the same outcome Californians have seen since the top-two primary was approved — a gubernatorial general election contest between a Democrat and a Republican. Xavier Becerra, a former Biden Cabinet member, and Steve Hilton, a GOP strategist and television commentator, will face off in November.

Still, a bipartisan coalition is striving to rescind the top-two primary system, which has created many noteworthy intraparty races, such as U.S. Senate contests between Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange in 2016, and incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein and state Sen. Kevin de León of Los Angeles in 2018, all Democrats.

In Congress, independent redistricting and the top-two primary created a brutal 2012 contest between veteran Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman in the San Fernando Valley. Four years later, veteran Bay Area Rep. Mike Honda was toppled by fellow Democrat Ro Khanna, now viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

This year, a combination of the redrawing of the state’s congressional districts and the top-two primary means Republican Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona is battling with Republican Rep. Young Kim of Anaheim Hills.

On July 14, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that the proposal by veteran Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio — also backed by Republicans such as former state GOP Chair Ron Nehring — has 180 days to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters to qualify the effort for the November 2028 ballot. If approved by voters, the top-two primary would be repealed and the system would revert to its prior version, insuring every qualified political party could have a candidate advance in the primary to the general election.

Maviglio argued that the top-two primary has failed to deliver on its promises to reduce partisanship and budget deficits in Sacramento.

“It’s gotten worse, not better,” he said. “I find it’s hard to make that argument if you look at what’s coming out of the Legislature the last 10 years.”

Supporters of the top-two primary repudiated these arguments and vowed to challenge the title of the proposed 2028 ballot measure about the state’s primary, arguing it would disenfranchise 5.4 million Californians who are not registered with either major political party.

“Voters passed Proposition 14 [which created the top-two primary] to take control away from party insiders and put it in the hands of the people,” said Cara McCormick, campaign manager of More Choice California, a group opposing the top-two primary being rescinded. “This initiative does the opposite. It takes away the rights of millions of California voters and gives them back to political parties. The least voters deserve is a ballot title that says so.”

Abel Maldonado, who served as lieutenant governor under Schwarzenegger and backed both 2010 reforms, staunchly supported the top-two primary as a response to a historic state government shutdown because of the failure of lawmakers to approve a balanced budget.

“Some of us thought that a complete open primary top two would create a system [that elects] people who were open-minded, pragmatic and had common sense,” he said. “It has happened in some races, but in other areas it has not.”

Maldonado said that he disagrees with returning to the prior system, in which political parties could opt to allow only voters affiliated with them to cast ballots in their primaries. But he said the current system ought to be tweaked, allowing voters to cast ballots for a candidate of any political party in a primary, with a candidate from each party moving onto the general election.

Schwarzenegger did not respond to a request for comment. But his prior comments, as well his efforts to end gerrymandering across the nation since leaving office, have made clear that his views have not changed.

“Of course the politicians want to undo reform that is good for the people and not for the politicians,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement earlier this year after the “Undo the Top Two” ballot measure was proposed. “They will always choose to move the goal posts instead of performing better.”

After California Democrats sought to redraw the state’s congressional districts last year, Schwarzenegger posted a picture of himself on X working out wearing a T-shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering,” a reference to one of his hit films.

Munger said he hoped groups he worked with to pass these reforms such as Common Cause and the California League of Women Voters would stay “true to their principles” and defend them when they “are under assault.”

“It was disappointing they stayed on the sidelines during last year’s fight over independent redistricting, and they should not do so going forward,” said Munger, who spent more than $30 million opposing the November ballot measure to suspend independent redistricting. “In order for the citizens to trust their government, they must have confidence that our elections are fair and free.”

Maldonado, who lauded the work of California’s independent redistricting commission, said he believes California Democrats will make the temporary pause of independent drawing of district boundaries permanent.

“We as Republicans have zero say in redistricting, and as much as I like to say this is what I like to have, the Democrats control supermajorities in both houses, and they get to choose whatever the hell they want,” he said. “The only way they’ll return it is by an initiative process with the will of the voters.”

He said he supports a national effort to create independent redistricting in every state, but believes it has no chance of passage.

“That would be great. It would be a step in the right direction. I think voters would have more confidence in politicians,” Maldonado said. “But, I mean, in this polarized era, this notion — think about it. The fox is building the henhouse for the chickens.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — NFL rosters must be set in two weeks.

Will defensive tackle Aaron Donald decide in the days ahead if he will return to the Rams?

Rams coach Sean McVay is not putting a hard timeline on it.

“I’m hopeful that it will be sooner than later, but I also want to respect when he does feel like that clarity will come,” McVay said Saturday after the Rams’ 20-12 preseason victory over the Kansas City Chiefs. “I think there’s a chance that we’ll be closer to that than not. But again, I don’t want to say too much or put some sort of invisible deadline on something that doesn’t exist in my mind for him.”

Donald, 35, retired after the 2023 season. But after the Rams traded for two-time defensive player of the year Myles Garrett in June, Donald has contemplated rejoining a Rams team that is favored to win Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium.

During training camp, Donald did a workout in front of defensive line coach Giff Smith and Rams trainers. In videos posted to social media, he also was captured hitting a blocking sled at UCLA, and going through speed and agility drills at the Rams’ facility in Woodland Hills.

If Donald returns, it would impact Rams roster decisions and also have possible implications for players that are in the final years of their rookie contracts and eligible for extensions.

McVay said he has had “great dialogue” with Donald, a three-time NFL defensive player of the year and eight-time All-Pro.

“We’ve had some tentative discussions behind the scenes,” McVay said. “There’s a lot of stuff, without getting to granular with it. … He knows himself in terms of, ‘Am I able to stack back-to- back days? Am I able to do some of the benchmarks’ that he’s set out for himself.

“And what I don’t want to sit here and do is put a timeline on it, and then something comes up where I’ve got to kind of push it back. … We have some loose things where we’ve identified, you know, dates that we’d like to be able to hit. But what I don’t want to have is any sort of unnecessary pressure on him if there’s some unforeseen circumstances.”

McVay emphasized he wants to respect the decision-making process Donald is going through.

“If he’s put himself in a position to be able to say yes or no, I think he’s earned that right to have clarity on that,” McVay said. “We’re not at that point quite yet.”

The Rams will hold a joint practice this week against the New Orleans Saints, and then play the Saints on Saturday at SoFi Stadium. Their final preseason game is Aug. 27 against the Chargers.

The roster must be set three days later.

“I feel great about our football team as it currently stands,” McVay said, “and I know he’ll add value if he decides to come.”

New Delhi, India – On the night of August 4, in a counting hall in the eastern Indian city of Patna, some 1,000km (620 miles) from the national capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered one of its most stunning political setbacks in 12 years.

Bankipur, a constituency in the legislature of the state of Bihar, had been held by the BJP for three decades. But the fledgling Jan Suraaj Party, led by political strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor, ended that reign, winning a seat that the BJP’s national president, Nitin Nabin, had held until just a few months earlier.

The defeat came less than two weeks after India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, bowing to seven weeks of student-led protests that had shaken New Delhi and spread to several cities. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical outfit born on Instagram in May after India’s chief justice, Surya Kant, compared unemployed young Indians with “cockroaches” and “parasites”, had led those protests.

Nabin, the BJP chief, had spent the Bankipur campaign denouncing the country’s Gen Z protesters as “a virus and a cockroach gang devoted to breaking the country”.

Instead, it was the BJP’s stranglehold over the constituency that was broken. That surprise electoral verdict has thrust upon India a broader question, say analysts: Will India’s most formidable political machine — the BJP — be forced to change?

A charm offensive, gone slightly wrong

The clearest sign that the BJP treats the Gen Z uprising as more than a passing nuisance is the sheer awkwardness of the party’s response. During the peak of the protests, Modi released a string of selfie-style videos on Instagram addressing the exam paper leaks that led to the protests. He reportedly told cabinet colleagues that young people were “just on Instagram”, urging ministers to court them on the platform with reels rather than media briefings.

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, the party has launched a Gen Z outreach initiative directing civil administrative officers into schools for career counselling sessions.

The BJP has also released a gym-set video in which young people trade internet slang with an older trainer who steers the talk towards the government’s development record. The slang was laid on so thick that many Instagram users mocked the party, joking that it had seemingly paid young people to write propaganda aimed at their own generation.

After another video of Modi that briefly vanished from Facebook, the parliamentary committee on information technology demanded an apology from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

New Delhi-based analyst Asim Ali says this sudden scramble for social media relevance reveals a lot about the party itself.

The BJP once produced narratives that its own supporters would circulate unprompted. Today, he said, much of its messaging “feels more managed and paid for” – a mismatch for a decentralised space that rewards top-down discipline far less than Facebook and WhatsApp once did.

“The party’s communications machinery remains powerful, given its control over the mainstream media,” Ali told Al Jazeera. “But on social media, especially Instagram, it is unable to generate the kind of organic emotional identification that it could around 2011 to 2014.”

Gilles Verniers, a researcher at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po in Paris, described the BJP’s outreach as “a battle for perception” rather than a policy shift.

“There haven’t been any proposals that fundamentally change anything,” he said. “There’s a new minister for education, but he comes from the same background, an old man from the RSS.” The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is the far-right ideological parent of the BJP.

Verniers argued that what was genuinely broken is the BJP’s usual playbook against dissent: branding protesters antinational, foreign-funded or terrorists, as they did during demonstrations against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019-20. The changed citizenship law, for the first time, introduced a religious test for naturalised citizenship: non-Muslim asylum seekers from India’s neighbouring nations were given a faster track to citizenship.

That past approach towards protests failed this time partly because the movement mocked itself before the state could, and partly because it was pluralistic.

Unlike the anti-CAA or farmers’ protests, it could not be pinned to one religion or community, and also drew in young people from the BJP’s own so-called “upper-caste” Hindu base. It was a “truly caste-blind movement”, Verniers said.

The episode also punctured a notion pushed by the BJP, he said, that Modi held a natural command over the youth.

For the first time, the prime minister “appears his age”, Verniers said of 75-year-old Modi.

“What the movement has done is really turn him into a boomer in the public imagination, and that must really, really hurt,” he added.

Does any of this show up in the numbers?

The BJP lost two of the three by-elections held in the first week of August, in states it governs – Bankipur in Bihar and Datia in Madhya Pradesh. However, it comfortably retained the third, Manjalpur in Gujarat, Modi’s home state.

Opposition leaders drew a straight line from the losses to the student protests, but analysts were more cautious. Ali warned against reading too much into the Bankipur vote.

By-elections, Verniers added, are decided by a fraction of the electorate, “barely a third of the population vote”, and that the BJP’s system of power “has proved very resilient to absorbing setbacks”.

Verniers points to Haryana, where the BJP won a majority a few years after the northern state’s farmers joined a yearlong movement to oppose three controversial agricultural laws. It was an election fought “not on farmers, but on caste”, he said.

What had shifted was not the vote count but a surrounding story now building “into a broader narrative of challenges to the BJP”.

An MP on the ground

Few politicians visited Jantar Mantar, the epicentre of the Gen Z protests in New Delhi, as often as Pushpendra Saroj, 27, a Samajwadi Party member of parliament from Kaushambi in Uttar Pradesh. The Samajwadi Party is the main opposition to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

Saroj watched a gathering of a few hundred swell into thousands after activist Sonam Wangchuk was hospitalised following a 20-day hunger strike. He credited this to “the aggression from the government” – weeks of silence, alleged cuts to power and water and the July 20 baton charge against protesters in New Delhi. The crowd had grown beyond its student base to include army veterans and even serving police officers.

The politician pointed out that the education minister’s resignation came only after “fingers got pointed at the prime minister directly”.

A simpler sympathy helped, too. “Nobody likes to see children getting beaten up,” Saroj said.

‘This is not a victory in any terms’

For many who marched in New Delhi, the story is bigger than a satirical “Cockroach” Instagram page or a single resignation. Anjali, a postgraduate student and secretary of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) at the University of Delhi, an older left-aligned group that mobilised alongside the CJP, reads the protests as the surfacing of a longer-term anger.

“We know for a fact that this did not originate from a particular remark or any particular leak,” she told Al Jazeera. “This is an accumulated anger of the youth of this country for the last 12 years. As long as communal, casteist, anti-women politics is not ended, this is not a victory in any terms,” she said.

Anjali was also critical of who paid the price once the protests ended. Muslim and Dalit students, she said, were “the first to be put behind bars”, the first to face intimidation and police complaints, echoing the 2019 raid on Jamia Millia Islamia, the New Delhi university at the heart of the anti-CAA protests.

In the western state of Goa, police detained two young men for allegedly backing jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam while celebrating Pradhan’s exit, an episode she reads as part of the same pattern.

What comes next for the CJP movement?

Ali, Verniers and Anjali all agree that a leap into electoral politics is unlikely for the CJP.

Verniers called that restraint from the group so far “tactically smart”, citing the example of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a protest movement that built a successful party but, a decade into power, is “seen as a disappointment” and “on the verge of disappearance” in some former strongholds.

A national campaign demands money, volunteers and organisation that a young, often underemployed movement lacks. Its more durable influence, Verniers suggested, will be on other parties’ agendas, “as an interest group, rather than as a separate political force”, one the opposition has been unusually willing to embrace.

Anjali described AISA’s posture in similar terms: present at Jantar Mantar, but unwilling to let the fight narrow to one resignation. The group, she said, plans to keep building the argument against the government on campuses nationwide.

Al Jazeera reached out to 18 BJP national spokespeople for their responses to this article, but did not receive any replies.

The gap between power and legitimacy

Ali said he did not expect the BJP to trade its Hindu majoritarian politics — an ideology known as Hindutva — for one built on jobs and education, as demanded by CJP-led Gen Z protesters.

“I don’t think the BJP would dilute its Hindutva agenda; if anything, it would double down on it, so that the most salient issue in any election is religious identity.”

That may be, but what has changed, Verniers suggested, is not so much the BJP’s raw political power as its legitimacy.

“Electorally speaking, they are as dominant as they’ve ever been, perhaps more,” Verniers said. He cited the party’s ability to win elections, engineer defections, and outspend rivals, as proof of their continued success and of the BJP having pushed “the boundaries of what is democratically admissible”.

But the authority behind that dominance is what the protests have dented. And that gulf “between the actual power that the BJP has, and its ability to have citizens comply and obey” is harder to repair with a by-election win or a polished reel, he said.

That gap, Verniers said, “is the really important, interesting disconnect” the party now has to live with.

London, United Kingdom – For several weeks, until her daughter is paid, Donna O’Hara is unable to buy food. On those days, she goes to a food bank instead, or borrows money to get by.

The 54-year-old, who has four children, started relying on food banks, nonprofit initiatives that collect and provide free emergency food to those in need, after her son and his girlfriend moved out following the birth of their baby in February. They had been contributing to the household bills, and losing that income tipped things over the edge.

“Mentally, it’s just stressful and it’s embarrassing having to go to the food bank, utterly embarrassing,” she says. “I hate asking people for help. I hate borrowing money.”

The stress compounds an already precarious situation.

O’Hara has multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, and has been hospitalised three times since October on life-saving antibiotics after infections forced her to pause chemotherapy. Her cancer is in remission, but doctors have told her it is likely to return before she can resume treatment. Her husband died of lung cancer last year.

Two of her children are on Universal Credit, the UK’s main working-age welfare monthly payment, including support for housing, children and low income or unemployment.

After paying child maintenance, her son is left with 340 pounds ($460) a month to live on after the payment. He cannot work because he is waiting for gallbladder surgery.

“Who can live on 340 pounds a month?” O’Hara said. “And because I’m always helping him out, that cuts into my money.”

Her own housing benefit payment is 1,800 pounds ($2,440) a month, against rent of 2,500 pounds ($3,390) for a private property with the downstairs toilet she and her late husband both needed because of their cancer treatment. She has fallen behind, and expects to be evicted.

“The day the bailiffs come round, I must be packed and ready to go into the housing they put me in,” she said. “Who knows where I’m going to end up?”

‘Damaging structural factors’

The UK has been in an acute cost of living crisis since inflation surged from late 2021, driven initially by pandemic disruption and then by the spike in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But for households like O’Hara’s, the strain runs deeper, with its roots in more than a decade of austerity, weak wage growth and stagnant productivity, compounded by the economic impact of Brexit.

That longer history is central to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s political pitch. To tackle the UK’s cost of living crisis, the new premier has set out a 10-year plan built around expanding social and affordable housing, reforming Universal Credit and investing in local economies.

He is currently touring the nation to engage with people’s financial concerns.

Universal Credit is meant to act as a safety net, but for many, including O’Hara, it no longer stretches far enough to cover it.

Research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts scale behind stories like O’Hara’s.

“We estimate 7.4 million low-income families were unable to afford at least one essential item in the last six months,” said Sam Tims, the charity’s lead analyst, pointing to cutbacks on heating, toiletries and food. “This is at a record high.”

Tims traced the roots directly to policy choices.

“The combination of all these damaging structural factors has left our economy weaker, our wages lower, our rents higher and our income safety net in need of repair,” he said, noting that the basic rate of Universal Credit support is lower now than a decade ago.

He welcomes the removal of the two-child benefit limit in April, estimated to have lifted about half a million children out of poverty, but argues it needs to be paired with a “protected minimum floor” in Universal Credit and higher local housing allowance rates to make private rents affordable again.

Adam Lang, director of policy at Carnegie UK, says the think tank’s polling shows just more than a quarter of households could not afford an unexpected 850-pound ($1,150) expense, and one in 20 cannot afford to feed everyone at home.

“What is striking is that we’ve conducted the same survey for the last three years and we see no real improvement on most of these measures,” he said.

Lang cautiously supports Burnham’s approach, but warned against expecting a single set of measures to fix things.

“It is heartening to hear the UK government talk of a 10-year plan,” he said. “On the other hand, it is clear that life is too hard for too many and change is required.”

He argued that governments need to track wellbeing alongside growth and employment, so policymakers can see “not just how the economy is performing, but how people are doing”.

Evelyn Henderson-Child, senior researcher at the Centre for Local Economies (CLES), said that even when growth does happen, it does not reliably reach those navigating the crisis.

“GDP [Gross domestic product] can kind of swish on upwards while the foundational conditions of life, community resilience and people’s financial stability are eroded,” she said, pointing out that growth-focused policy tends to prioritise high-productivity sectors while overlooking the ones that actually sustain society and offer significant amounts of employment, such as food, retail, transport, housing and care.

The answer lies less in growth itself and more in who benefits from it, she believes.

“Traditional policy tends to rely on patching up inequality, if it does at all, after wealth is generated and concentrated at the top,” she said. “It’s about pre-distribution, rewiring the economic system from the get-go so that economic and social benefits are spread more evenly.”

But the debate over growth statistics and structural reform is of little consequence for O’Hara.

“Some people say ‘work on a budget’. Try working on a budget when you have to count your pennies just to get a loaf of bread,” she said. “It’s not my fault I got cancer and can’t go to work. Life shouldn’t be like that.”

Many households could be overpaying for their TV Licence without realising it

Many people may be able to get their TV Licence for less than they think, with some eligible households saving up to £90 a year.

TV Licensing says discounts are available to certain groups. For example, if you’re aged 74 or over and you, or a partner living at the same address, receive Pension Credit, you may be entitled to a free licence.

People in a care home or sheltered accommodation may also qualify for a reduced fee of £7.50, while those who only watch on a black-and-white TV pay £60.50. Meanwhile, anyone who is blind (severely sight impaired) can apply for a 50% discount, cutting the cost to £90.

50% TV Licence discount

A TV Licence costs £180 per year, following a price rise on April 1, 2026. However, TV Licensing rules state you could get it for £90.

It explains: “If you are blind (severely sight impaired) and can provide the appropriate evidence, you are eligible to apply for a 50% concession.”

“Your licence will also cover anyone who lives with you”, it confirms. However, it adds that “if you are partially sighted (sight impaired), you are not eligible.”

Do I qualify for a 50% blind concession TV Licence?

TV Licensing explains that a blind concession Licence costs £90 for colour and £30.25 for a black and white Licence. It asks that it be provided with a copy of ONE of these documents to confirm that you’re certified as blind (severely sight-impaired):

• CVI (Certificate of Visual Impairment) to confirm that you’re certified as blind (severely sight impaired)
• BD8 Certificate to confirm that you’re certified as blind (severely sight impaired)
• A certificate or document issued by a Local Authority that shows you are registered as blind (severely sight impaired)
• A copy of a certificate from an Ophthalmologist (eye surgeon), stating that you are blind (severely sight impaired).
• Tax coding notice from HMRC showing you receive Blind person’s allowance
• A copy of your National Registration Card signed by an Ophthalmologist stating that your are blind (severely sight impaired)
• DHSS documentation or certificate stating that your are blind (severely sight impaired) for Isle of Man residents only
• Health and Social Services documentation or letter from Optometrist for residents of Northern Ireland only

I live with someone who is blind, can I still get the discount?

Yes. The TV Licence experts note that if you or someone you live with is blind (severely sight impaired), regardless of their age, you can apply for a blind concession.

If you already have a TV Licence but it isn’t in the blind person’s name, you’ll need to transfer it to them. This can be done by submitting a first-time blind application and entering the TV Licence number currently linked to your address.

I am partially sighted (sight-impaired). Can I get the discount?

No. TV Licence rules state: “People who are partially sighted (sight impaired) do not qualify for a 50% blind concession.”

How to apply for a blind concession

If you already have a blind licence, you can sign in here to renew it. If you are applying for the first time, you can fill out the official form here.

Published on
17/08/2026 – 11:40 GMT+2

Two pieces of data collided in Tokyo within hours of each other.

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Bond investors pushed the 10-year Japanese government bond yield to a three-decade high before the government reported that growth had come in at barely half the pace economists had forecast, a pairing that says a great deal about what is really driving Japan’s markets right now.

The economy expanded at an annualised rate of 1.1% in the second quarter, Cabinet Office data showed, well below the 2.0% forecast and down from a downwardly revised 1.9% pace in the first quarter.

Quarter on quarter, GDP rose just 0.3% against a forecast of 0.5%, marking a third consecutive expansion. Private consumption was flat, and capital expenditure fell 1.2%, while net exports, helped by the weak yen, added 0.5 percentage points to growth.

The 10-year JGB yield touched 2.93% earlier in the day, its highest level since September 1996, before easing slightly once the GDP figures landed.

The gap between weak growth and rising bond yields helps explain what is moving Japanese bonds now: not growth, but inflation and the currency.

The GDP deflator rose 2.6% year on year, and traders are increasingly betting that the Bank of Japan will raise its policy rate, currently at 1% and already a three-decade high, as soon as September to contain inflation and support the yen.

Tokyo and Washington spent billions defending the yen

The yen slid to 163.73 per US dollar in late July, its weakest level in roughly four decades, prompting Japan and the US to carry out their first joint currency intervention since 2011.

Japan deployed an estimated $85 billion (€73.3bn) in the first two days alone, while the US intervention was much smaller, according to Goldman Sachs.

The operation pushed the yen back to around 159 per US dollar.

There is currently a wide gap between Japanese and US interest rates, with the Federal Reserve’s benchmark rate still at 3.50% to 3.75%. The Bank of Japan’s September meeting is being watched as the next test of whether the currency’s recovery can hold.

Japan’s bond market matters well beyond Tokyo because of the yen carry trade, in which investors borrow cheaply in yen to fund purchases of higher-yielding assets abroad, from US Treasuries to emerging-market debt.

Rising Japanese yields erode that trade’s profitability and can force rapid unwinding, as it happened in August 2024, when a Bank of Japan rate rise combined with weak US jobs data sent the Nikkei down more than 12% in a single session and knocked roughly 3% off the S&P 500.

With JGB yields at three-decade highs and further tightening still expected, analysts say the conditions for a similar shock have not disappeared.

Manchester City are in advanced talks with Lille over a move for Morocco midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi.

The Premier League side want to conclude the transfer this week after agreeing to sell Rodri to Barcelona.

It is understood Lille value the 18-year-old at 100 million euros (£85.6m).

Bouaddi impressed at this summer’s World Cup – starting all of Morocco’s five matches in their run to the last 16 – after a starring role in Lille’s Champions League victory over Real Madrid in 2024 announced him on the big stage.

He functions as a deep-lying conductor – much in the same vein as Rodri – and would complement summer signing Elliot Anderson, who is more of a box-to-box midfielder.

Bouaddi has played 88 times for Lille since making his debut in October 2023, three days after his 16th birthday, and helped them finish third in Ligue 1 last season.

Spain captain Rodri is set to complete a £65m move to Barcelona in the coming days on a four-year contract.

The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner has made 298 appearances across seven trophy-laden seasons at City after joining from Atletico Madrid in 2019 for a then club record £62.8m.

The 30-year-old missed much of the 2024-25 campaign with a serious knee injury, and parts of last season were disrupted by a hamstring issue.

However, he was back to his best at the World Cup in the summer, leading Spain to their second title and being named player of the tournament.

It remains to be seen how a successful move for Bouaddi would impact City’s interest in Chelsea‘s Enzo Fernandez, but well-placed sources maintain that City manager Enzo Maresca retains a strong interest in the Argentina midfielder.

Aug. 17 (UPI) — Iran has accused Qatar of holding three of its pilots for half a year in violation of international law, heightening tensions between the two nations and threatening to expand the war in the Middle East, despite Doha claiming not to have the pilots.

“Qatar’s government has exhausted its opportunity to delay and toy with the fate of three heroic Iranian pilots,” Maj. Gen. Ali Abdullahi, the newly appointed chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, said in a statement Sunday.

“They must be released immediately and unconditionally and returned to the homeland.”

Four Iranian pilots in two SU-24s were shot down over Qatari airspace March 2, as Iran was attacking Al Udeid Air Base in response to joint Israeli-U.S. attacks on Iran days earlier that ignited the ongoing war. A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said that a search had been launched for their crews, but it was never stated that they had been found. Iran later announced that one of the four pilots had died in the attack.

On Saturday, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagherzadeh, head of the Iranian military’s committee for missing personnel, identified the remaining three pilots in a letter to the International Red Cross that accuses Qatar of violating articles of the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Bagherzadeh accused Doha of denying the pilots contact with their families and Iranian authorities, citing Articles 70 and 78 of the Third Geneva Convention that states POWs have the right to submit complaints and requests to representatives who visit their place of captivity or to hold discussions and negotiations.

The letter urged the ICRC to address the situation.

“Qatar must know that Iran will not retreat from its proud pilot sons. The path for the presence of the expert team of the Islamic Republic of Iran must be facilitated as soon as possible,” Brig. Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Sunday in a statement.

“Continuing this trend will not be cost-free for Qatar, and any delay or obstruction will place a heavy responsibility on their shoulders.”

Qatar has denied the accusations. Majed Al Ansari, spokesperson for Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Qatar was not holding any Iranian pilots and had handed over the remains of one Iranian pilot that its search teams had found.

Qatar invited Iranian officials in April to visit Qatar and be briefed on the search-and-rescue operations, “but the Iranian side has yet to respond to the invitation,” he said in a statement Sunday.

A EUROPEAN airport has finally restarted flights after a week of chaos – but passengers are still being warned of cancellations.

Catania Airport in Sicily, Italy, was forced to cancel hundreds of flights last week as well as close for a number of days due to Mount Etna erupting.

Today, the airport is open again, however flights are still being cancelled.

There are currently no restrictions on departures, but only five flights are allowed to arrive at the airport per hour.

And despite departure flights going ahead, there are already several delays this morning affecting Ryanair, easyJet and British Airways passengers.

In the latest statement on the airport’s website, it says: “Due to Etna’s eruptive activity and the associated release of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, the airspace corresponding to Sectors B1 and B2 has been closed.

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“Arriving flights are limited to 5 aircraft per hour until 2:00 PM today, Monday 17 August.

“There are no restrictions on departures.

“Passengers are kindly advised to check the status of their flight with their airline before heading to the airport. Further updates will follow in the coming hours.”

In the latest update, at 7:09am this morning a new volcano vent opened, creating a new lava flow.

“Intense explosive activity” also resumed at the summit crater, with an ash plume rising a few kilometres, according to Volcano Discovery.

Some passengers have been left stranded during the volcanic activity.

Barbara Krmelj, 35 and partner Roy Barone, 46, were due to fly back to London on August 11 but their flights were cancelled.

As a result, the duo had to take an extra week’s leave from their jobs and while they have been given new flights, they anticipate that they too will be cancelled.

The couple, who said they are likely to have been left £1,000 out of pocket, added: “We can’t enjoy all the beauty around us as we feel trapped on the island.”

Another passenger, Evgenia Filimianova, 39, flew to Sicily from London to attend a friends wedding but their return flight was cancelled.

Evgenia said: “It feels like there is no way out. Emotionally, it’s not easy – it’s stressful and tiring and we weren’t prepared for it.”

Last week, the volcanic ash also caused issues at Malta International Airport.

Scheffler’s 21st career PGA Tour title earns the American $3.6m for his resounding victory at TPC Southwind.

Scottie Scheffler has had a fair share of close calls this year ‌but not in the St Jude Championship.

He shot a final-round 4-under-par 66 on Sunday in Memphis, Tennessee, and pulled away to win the tournament by eight strokes ⁠and extend his lead in ⁠the FedEx Cup playoffs.

“I felt like a week like this was coming,” Scheffler said. “I felt like I was on repeat all year just being like, ‘Hey, I’m playing solid. I’m close.’ It feels good to be answering some different questions ⁠at the end of this week.”

Scheffler is the world number one, but this marked his first victory since January.

“I have had some close calls this year,” Scheffler said. “I feel like I kept saying at the end of each tournament that I feel like I am playing pretty good – it’s just little things ⁠that aren’t going my way.”

He finished at a 17-under 263 for an eight-stroke advantage on runner-up Si Woo Kim of South Korea at TPC Southwind, where the opening event of three tournaments in the FedEx Cup playoffs took place. Kim shot 68 on Sunday.

It was the tournament’s second-largest margin of victory in the past 30 years and the largest winning gap at TPC Southwind.

“I felt like I’ve been in a good rhythm,” Scheffler said. “I didn’t hit maybe as many fairways this week, but I was ‌really sharp with the irons, and I rolled it really good on the greens. That’s a good compensation if you’re going to try to have success out here.”

None of the other contenders made much of a push on Sunday as Scheffler’s lead expanded from two strokes to five by midway through the round.

Scheffler, who secured his 21st all-time victory on the tour, poured it on with birdies on the 11th, 13th and 16th holes.

“I played solid golf all day, really all week,” Scheffler said.

The next stop in the playoffs is in St Louis, Missouri, for this coming week’s BMW Championship, which Scheffler won last year.

High Potential’s lead actress has spoken out about the toughest time of her career

The star of High Potential, Kaitlin Olson, has said she was filming two shows at the time when she ‘collapsed’.

The actress has spoken out about the most difficult time she endured while filming, recalling the scary moment on set.

For those still unaware, High Potential is a crime drama remake that sees Olson take on the role of single mother, Morgan. Not only is she juggling her hectic home life, but she has an exceptional mind.

With an unconventional knack for solving crimes, it leads her to an unusual and unstoppable partnership with a by-the-book seasoned detective. Now she is working full time with the LAPD to help them on their toughest cases.

It is based on the original Belgian French production HPI. Fans have been eagerly awaiting the third season of High Potential, which is expected to debut in early 2027.

In the meantime, Olson has not been too far away from our screens, appearing in the new season of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, reprising the character of Dee Reynolds, whom she has played since it first aired back in 2006.

She also returned in her guest role for the last instalment of Hacks. Sadly, between filming this and High Potential last year, Olson’s father become seriously ill.

Vanity Fair reports that Don Olson went into hospital for surgery to repair an aortic aneurysm that was discovered. Unfortunately, there were complications from the surgery and he suffered an inflammatory response in his lungs, causing them to fill with fluid.

He was sent to intensive care for further treatment. Olson told the publication that she learned of his condition while filming High Potential.

She admitted she did something she has never done before and left the set. She said: “I literally just got in the car and drove home, called them on the way, and was kind of shut down for a little bit.”

Olson ended up flying back and forth between Oregon and Los Angeles to be alongside her family, while also trying to film two shows back to back.

More bad news followed her first day back on set for Hacks. She revealed: “Honestly, at this point, it’s a blur. I collapsed in the line producer’s arms. I said, ‘I have to go.’ And he said, ‘Go.’”

Her dad had contracted pneumonia and slipped into a coma. Doctors said that they did not expect him to make a full recovery although he regained consciousness.

It was clearly a traumatic time for the star. Looking back she said: “I’d have to stop and take phone calls and wipe away tears and come back and then try and be funny. And it felt so weird. I felt guilty, because I was legitimately having fun. That was confusing.”

Her father was cared for at home from December last year until his death in May. However, before he died, he did see his daughter’s final bow in Hacks, and now the episode will forever remain ‘very special’ as a result.

High Potential is streaming on Disney+

Program a reminder into his phone. Tie a string around his finger. Chant his name like a mantra: Moo-kie! Moo-kie! Moo-kie!

Whatever it takes to jog Mookie Betts’ memory, to remind him he’s Mookie freakin’ Betts.

Because this Dodgers’ three-peat campaign won’t succeed without his contributions at the plate.

The Dodgers lose the plot without the swagger they’re used to from the four-time champion in their midst.

They need Betts to be that right-handed hitter who will keep opposing pitchers honest in a lineup of lefty stars. To help them compensate without Will Smith’s dependable bat and without being able to depend on $240-million-man Kyle Tucker in games at home.

They need Betts to keep feeding his “hope meter.”

“I’m always trying to remind him who he is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Wednesday before the Dodgers began a four-game series with the Milwaukee Brewers. “The guy standing 60 feet, 6 inches from him understands the baseball card, knows who’s in the box. And it’s important that [Betts] can’t forget that, regardless of what the scoreboard might say.”

That scoreboard has really not been helping.

All it’s been doing is serving an oppressive, jumbo-sized reminder every time Betts goes to bat of how un-Mookie-Betts-like he’s been for much of this season. Going into Saturday’s game against the Milwaukee Brewers, he has career lows in batting average (.239), on-base percentage (.295) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.709).

Unless, of course, this is Betts, now at 33, in his — unlucky? — 13th major league season and seventh as a Dodger? Father Time is inevitable.

But let’s remind ourselves: It’s better to be lucky than good, and that Betts has been unlucky, which is bad.

There was the oblique strain in early April that sidelined him for more than a month. Misfortune that brought back bad memories of last season’s mystery illness that caused Betts to lose nearly 20 pounds.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts (50) celebrates with teammates after hitting a home run against the Royals on Wednesday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

And there’s the data since his return this season, Baseball Savant’s evidence of Betts’ bad rolls: His .278 expected batting average — the Statcast metric measuring the likelihood that a batted ball will become a hit — is .039 points higher than his actual batting average. That’s the third-largest discrepancy in the big leagues.

Also, Betts’ HardHit% this season — measuring the rate of hard-hit balls — of 38.8%, nearly a 3% increase from last season. His exit velocity (90.5 mph) is a mile and a half more than last season.

The game honors you, and the game tests you.

Early this month, a dejected Betts had as tough a time explaining to reporters why, despite hitting the ball hard and stacking disciplined at-bats, he’d had little to show for it. He hit only .205 in July, with a slugging percentage of .313.

“I’m gonna have to help the team at some point,” Betts said on Aug. 4. “It’s really hard, I’ve just never done this so I don’t really know how to get through it. Everyday I show up and try to restore that hope meter.

“But this is very hard.”

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts throws the ball to first base for an out against the Royals on Wednesday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

That’s why Roberts has stayed on him, he said, reminding him who he is. And who Betts is, of course, is a former MVP and eight-time All-Star, a seven-time Silver Slugger and former batting champion. He’s a scratch-level bowler who made a virtually unprecedented shift from right field to shortstop in Year 11. There’s not a lot Betts hasn’t been able to do.

We got a glimpse of that guy in this recent nine-game stretch, when Betts hit .387 (12 for 31) with a .645 slugging percentage.

“For me,” Roberts said, “it’s just kind of how he’s carrying himself, really. … He’s always been good with not swinging at balls, swinging at strikes. So those components have been consistent. But, yeah, for me, it’s just I like the swagger, the demeanor.”

More like Mookie.

“He’s crucial,” Roberts said. “He’s got the experience, the talent, and he’s an emotional guy. I say that in the sense that when he’s going well, guys feed off that energy. And, when he’s not, you’re sort of trying to find it in him and get it in him.

“So when he’s going well like he has been this past series, guys feel good about it. So, it’s important … that he’s kind of found something to kind of hang his hat on.”

Put a sticky note in Betts’ locker. Better yet, stick his baseball card in there. Because the guy in the box should understand who the guy in the box is — regardless of what the scoreboard might say.

The Indomitable Lionesses outshine their opponents to claim first final victory on their fourth attempt in Morocco.

Cameroon claimed their first Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) title when they thumped surprise package Malawi 3-0 in the final, with Marie Ngah’s first-half double helping seal victory on Sunday.

Cameroon had lost three finals but made it fourth-time lucky against a Malawi side making their debut at the continental championship. Ranked 153 in the world and 32nd on the African continent, Malawi had a fairytale run to the decider.

The two finalists had already sealed their place at the Women’s World Cup in Brazil next year, along with fellow semifinalists Morocco and Algeria. The latter finished third after winning the bronze medal fixture on penalties on Saturday.

Under pressure, FIFA chief Gianni Infantino was all smiles as he handed the Indomitable Lionesses their medals in the presence of Confederation of African Football President Patrice Motsepe, with several players requesting photographs with the Swiss.

Infantino has long enjoyed the support of many on the African continent as he bids for re-election next March, despite revelations of his now-abandoned plans to sell a stake in future World Cups, which drew worldwide condemnation.

Cameroon dominated the first half and led 3-0 at the break after a superb performance against an outgunned Malawi.

Ngah reacted quickest to a loose ball in the box to give them the lead from close range after 20 minutes and they doubled the advantage on the half-hour mark as Naomi Eto added a second.

Malawi were clinging on and hoping to make it to halftime without any further damage but Ngah scored her second in the third minute of added time from Eto’s pass.

Cameroon are the fourth different winners of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations since it was first played in 1998.

Nigeria have a record 10 titles, while Equatorial Guinea have two and South Africa one.

“I want to talk a little bit about forward [forces] and air base defense. Let’s be clear, we got our rear-end handed to us from drones and other vehicles, aerospace vehicles, if you will, including three F-5s that took off in Iran and flew low level and dropped bombs on an airbase,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck just declared during a panel discussion today centered on counter-drone defenses at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, at which TWZ is in attendance. Before his retirement in 2024, VanHerck served as head of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

“That’s embarrassing as an airman to me to say that happened,” VanHerck added, noting that this was the first time in decades U.S. forces had been subjected to an aerial attack of this kind.

A series of reports, as well as unconfirmed claims from Tehran, state that Iranian F-5s targeted Camp Buehring in Kuwait on an extremely dangerous low-level bombing mission. The attack reportedly came on or around March 1, just three days after U.S. and Israeli forces began launching combined strikes on Iran.

At the time of writing, the U.S. government still does not appear to have officially confirmed the Iranian F-5 strikes on Camp Buehring. TWZ has reached out to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in light of VanHerck’s remarks today, and the command declined to comment.

NBC News was first to report on this attack in a story in April, citing anonymous U.S. officials. At that time, the outlet also said only that a single Iranian F-5 had struck Camp Buehring. American forces have been present at this base continuously since the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In June, Iranian state media outlet PressTV aired a segment with additional claimed details about the operation, as well as interviews with what were said to be the pilots who took part. That report said that a trio of heavily refurbished Iranian F-5s, known locally as Kowsars, had been sent on the mission. Iran acquired a fleet of 166 F-5E/Fs from the United States in the 1970s under the regime of the Shah. How many of those jets were still operational to any degree when the latest conflict broke out on February 28 is unclear. The Iranian Air Force was heavily targeted by U.S. and Israeli forces from the start.

According to PressTV, the F-5s flew to Kuwait from Iran at extremely low altitudes, at times below 50 feet, and at high speed to evade detection, including by E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) jets flying above. The pilots maintained radio silence the entire time.

The PressTV report also claimed that pilots followed a route specifically designed to avoid Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries and other air defenses at Camp Buehring. Though this remains unconfirmed, it is worth noting that Patriot has known limitations when it comes to its engagement envelope. New capabilities are being developed for the system now to expand its flexibility to address targets approaching from different vectors, as well as ones that have already passed overhead. Without the aid of some type of look-down sensor capability, ground-based air defense systems more broadly cannot see through the horizon or topography, either.

Furthermore, the PressTV report claimed that F-5 strikes caused broader chaos and confusion that contributed to a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet fighter shooting down three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle combat jets. Americans and Kuwaiti authorities acknowledged this friendly-fire incident at the time, which thankfully did not result in any fatalities, but have yet to offer an official explanation for how it occurred.

Many questions remain about how Iranian F-5s would have been able to ingress and egress from Kuwait unscathed, and successfully drop unguided bombs on Camp Buehring in the process. It’s unclear where the jets launched from, and it is very possible they needed to carry significant extra fuel in external tanks just to have made the trip to and from Iran in the first place. This would also have impacted their top speed and capacity to carry ordnance.

As an aside, a pair of Iranian Su-24 Fencer swing-wing combat jets also attempted to strike targets in Qatar on March 2, but that would have been a much shorter trip across the Persian Gulf. Those jets were also shot down by Qatari F-15s before they could reach their destination.

Qatari MoD released statement noting that the QEAF downed two Iranian Su-24MK strike aircraft. Would be interesting to know which asset(s) shot them down.

“Qatar Emiri Air Force successfully shot down two (SU24) aircraft coming from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” https://t.co/ZNCaOQ7xA7 pic.twitter.com/vspjHQnDi8

— Guy Plopsky (@GuyPlopsky) March 2, 2026

In addition to the sensors associated with Patriot and other air defense systems on the ground, as well as E-3s in the air, the U.S. military has spent years developing a more integrated air and missile defense network with allies and partners across the Middle East. It is also worth noting here that Iran very actively targeted air and missile defense radars in the region early in the conflict, something we noted was its own separate wake-up call, as you can read more about here. This raises a question of what else Iran may have brought to bear in support of this operation. Iranian forces could have launched additional missile and/or drone strikes against sensors, command-and-control nodes, and other sites to help clear the way. Electronic warfare, cyber attacks, and/or deception of various kinds could have been employed, as well.

During the panel today, VanHerck said he did not believe any of this should have come as a surprise, and that it speaks to larger issues surrounding base defense facing the U.S. military today.

“People are like, ‘How come that happened? We got surprised.’ No, we didn’t get surprised,” he said. “What happened was we had two services pointing fingers at each other, and nobody made a decision on whose mission and role responsibility that was, candidly.”

Whether VanHerck’s comments here reflect his specific understanding of what happened during the attack on Camp Buehring in March, or if he was speaking more generally, is unclear. The two services he refers to here are the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. As part of the delineation of official roles and responsibilities after the Air Force was split from the Army in 1947, the latter service was given the lead role in defending both services’ bases against aerial attacks. Today, the Army has a broader responsibility for ground-based air and missile defense across the joint force, abroad and at home, as well.

“The department needed to say it is this service or that service’s responsibility moving forward,” VanHerck continued today. “I’m not taking sides in that. The bottom line is, we didn’t make the decision, we accepted risk, and now we’re paying the price of that risk that we accepted, candidly.”

Now, “the Air Force chief has stood up and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to take that mission on,’” VanHerck also noted. “What we can’t have happen in the next year is a bifurcated solution where you have Patriots and THAADs [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems] operating up here, and you have counter-drone … down here, and they’re not fusing data and sharing C2 [command and control] and collaboration. That can’t happen, and we’ve got to make sure we get together and don’t allow that to happen.”

The Air Force is still very early in the process of taking on more responsibility for defending its facilities against aerial threats from the ground, and has been focusing first on acquiring and fielding new counter-drone and counter-cruise missile capabilities. Similar developments may now be afoot in the Marine Corps, particularly when it comes to ballistic missile defense. The Marines are already in the process of fielding a host of new and improved lower-tier anti-air and counter-drone systems.

For its part, in recent years, the Army has acknowledged significant gaps in its air and missile defense capabilities and capacity, especially when it comes to addressing drone threats. The service is also fully aware of the strains on its higher-end Patriot and THAAD units after decades of persistent operational demands in response to crises globally. TWZ has repeatedly called attention to concerns about the ability, or lack thereof, of the Army’s Patriot force to adequately meet operational demands now, let alone in the event of a future high-end fight against an opponent like China.

The PATRIOT Missile in Action

All of this is now further wrapped in a succession of reports that U.S. stockpiles of anti-air interceptors for Patriot and THAAD, as well as other critical munitions, are now very worryingly low after months of fighting with Iran. This follows heavy expenditures of surface-to-air missiles and other weaponry by U.S. and allied forces in the course of other conflicts and crises in recent years. Efforts to replenish those stocks, as well as expand other air and missile defense capabilities and capacity, are underway now, but are still years away from yielding real fruit.

When it comes to Iran’s reported F-5 attacks on Kuwait earlier this year, much remains unknown and unconfirmed. However, it is certainly the opinion of retired Gen. VanHerck that it should be taken seriously and speaks to the urgency with which much bigger problems with the U.S. air and missile ecosystem need to be addressed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Former University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday was found dead at his home in South London last wee

Jason Arday’s friend has reflected on his heartbreaking death at the age of 41.

The former University of Cambridge professor was pronounced dead following emergency services being called to an address in London on Friday evening (August 14) after reports that a man was ‘unresponsive’ in the property.

The week prior, he had resigned from his position at the university following allegations of plagiarism, which he denied. On Monday (August 17) morning, Jason’s friend and professor Kehinde Andrews spoke to Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley and Ranvir Singh about Jason’s death and their devastating final exchange.

Richard informed ITV viewers that in the wake of his death, there have been calls for a public enquiry into the press, which has been signed by many figures, including Professor Kehinde Andrews.

Speaking to Richard and Ranvir, he explained that the last time he had seen Jason was on the previous Monday, highlighting that when he had seen him, he’d lost weight.

He added: “He was just completely overwhelmed, I think. One of the last texts he said to me was that he just couldn’t see a way out; he couldn’t see a way forward.”

While an official cause of death is yet to be announced, the ITV star noted that people are already making assumptions about how he died.

The guest then reflected on how media and social media coverage had put “so much pressure” on the academic, adding: “Losing his job at Cambridge, having to resign, putting financial pressure on his family. This is somebody who has two children, with one child going into university.

“Imagine all that pressure on you, and you feel stuck and can’t go ahead.”

In a statement issued by his publisher, Simon & Schuster UK, Jason’s family said they are “in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son”.

The statement said: “Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him.

“The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone. We are in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son.”

Good Morning Britain is available to watch weekdays on ITV from 6am

BUTLIN’S is closing a popular attraction at one of the holiday parks – and it’s the last one of its kind.

The Bognor Regis resort confirmed the holiday park’s spa will be closing later this month.

The Ocean Spa facility opened back in 2009, as part of a huge £20million opening of the Ocean Hotel.

Inside is a hydrospa, outdoor hot tub, sauna, relaxation pods, a crystal steam room and an outside sun terrace. 

But guests have since received an email saying the facility was to shut its doors permanently on August 28, with refunds given for existing bookings.

The message read: “We’re writing to let you know that the Ocean Spa at Bognor Regis will be closing permanently from 28 August 2026.

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“This means we’re no longer able to provide the spa package you’ve booked.”

Refunds on bookings will be made automatically, and will be returned within 14 working days.

The message added: “We’re sorry for any disappointment this may cause, and we can’t wait to welcome you.”

Lots of families have been left sad by the news, with many saying it was a favourite of many adults wanting some child-free time.

One previous Butlin’s visitor said on Facebook: “This was one of the only things for adults to relax and have a break from the kids! Such a disappointment.”

Another added: “One of the highlights of the Xmas break was the hot tub in the dark bit, gutted.”

A third said: “Butlins used to be a place for all the family, now it feels that all adult things are being phased out.”

And a fourth said: “Gutted to hear that it closed for good, went there and loved it.”

The decision follows the closure of the spa facility at Butlin’s in Skegness in 2021.

The other Butlin’s resort, Minehead, has never operated a spa facility.

Butlin’s said: “We can confirm we’ll be closing our spa at Butlin’s Bognor Regis.

“We’ve contacted the small number of guests who had booked to visit the spa and they will, of course, receive a full refund.

“The spa has always been a small part of the resort experience.

“Our focus is on the activities and entertainment that families come to Butlin’s for, including recent additions such as PLAYXPERIENCE, which opened at Bognor Regis last year.”

It comes after the announcement of new self-serve booze bars being rolled out across the parks.

Hunt is not afraid to voice her bold ambitions.

Announcing that she “wants it all” before these championships, Hunt, even in these early stages of her senior career, has demonstrated a propensity to thrive on major stages, and under ever-increasing expectation.

“Four golds was the dream and perhaps dreams do come true,” said Hunt.

“It’s so beyond the bounds of my dreams that I’m just euphoric. I can’t believe it’s happening.

“I think it will sink in later, maybe on the podium. I’m just so proud of myself and the way I’ve handled this week.”

The Briton has already spoken about the big goal: repeating her sweep of the sprint golds at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Her playlist – she creates one for every major event – is already being built as she begins to visualise how that might feel.

She will be well aware how much work there is to do. So far this year, she ranks 14th-fastest worldwide in the 200m, and 25th in the 100m. Asher-Smith’s British records, at 21.88 and 10.83 seconds respectively, remain untouched since 2019.

The next opportunity for global honours, beyond the inaugural World Ultimate Championships in September, will arrive at next year’s World Championships in Beijing.

And, once the dust has settled on a momentous week, Hunt will set about translating continental domination to glory on the sport’s biggest stages – just as British team-mate Asher-Smith achieved following her European treble in 2018.

“Amy has already won world silver, but she was not a favourite then,” Jackson said.

“Now, it’s a big change. She is a champion and she has to go and take on the best in the world.

“Is it going to be easy? No. But this will fill Amy with confidence. She will be on start lines trusting her ability is great, and I’m hoping that she will go from strength and strength.”

Haylet Waters says her daughter was only ill because it was 30C in the airport and their flight had been delayed

A family was left stranded on a Greek island after Jet2 refused to let them fly home because their six-year-old daughter was sick in the departure lounge. Hayley Waters, 37, was waiting at Rhodes Airport with husband Jason, 40, and kids Addyson, six, and Xander, three, when the youngster vomited at the gate.

She said staff immediately barred the family from boarding their delayed flight to Leeds Bradford Airport shortly after midnight. They were told they could not travel with Jet2 for at least 24 hours and would have to arrange their own accommodation, transport and alternative flights – which cost them around £1,000.

Hayley, a performance analyst from Leeds, West Yorks., said: “While waiting at the gate, my six-year-old daughter was sick once. I cleaned it up immediately. She’d had no illness all holiday – she was simply exhausted after the delay, it was around midnight, and over 30C in the airport.”

The family had been due to catch the 11.15pm flight on July 31, which eventually departed at around 12.05am. They were travelling as part of a larger group of nine when a member of Jet2 staff spotted Addyson being sick.

But Hayley said nobody assessed her daughter or asked whether she had been ill during the holiday before the family was stopped from boarding. She said: “The only explanation given was ‘policy’ because my daughter had been sick.

“Nobody asked whether she had any underlying medical conditions, whether she’d been unwell during the holiday, or how she was feeling. No medical assessment was carried out – the decision was based solely on a member of staff seeing her vomit once.”

The family were forced to book an easyJet flight to Newcastle for the following day to get home. Hayley said: “We have no written explanation for why we were denied boarding, no paperwork, no medical assessment, no duty of care, and we were left stranded abroad with two young children.”

Jet2 said its team in Rhodes had followed procedures and helped the family find somewhere to stay. The airline said staff also advised them to retain their receipts so they could make a claim through their travel insurance.

A Jet2 spokesperson said: “The safety and wellbeing of our customers is our absolute priority, and our teams have processes in place to help prevent the spread of illness onboard our aircraft. We are sorry to hear that Mrs Waters was unhappy with her experience and we are in contact with her to discuss the matter further.”

However, Hayley has disputed the airline’s claim that it had been in contact with her. The airline said it had promised a response within 14 days, by August 20, and remained on track to provide one.

Hayley said the family have not had acknowledgement that their written complaint has been received – and that they have not been told about the timescales Jet2 are working to.

GDP rises 0.3 percent in the second quarter as consumption and capital spending sag.

Japan’s economy has slowed in the second quarter of the year amid moribund consumption and capital spending, according to official figures.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.3 percent in the April-June period from the first quarter, data released by Japan’s Cabinet Office on Monday showed. It was the third consecutive expansion but was down from 0.5 percent growth in the previous quarter and missed the 0.5 percent growth analysts had forecast.

On an annualised basis, the world’s fourth-largest economy expanded 1.1 percent.

A survey of 37 economists conducted by the Japan Center for Economic Research, a think tank, had forecast an annualised expansion of 1.67 percent.

Private consumption was flat in real terms while capital expenditures fell 1.2 percent, or 4.6 percent on an annualised basis, offsetting strong exports, according to the data.

Broken down by component, net exports contributed 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth while domestic demand accounted for negative 0.2 percent.

Norihiro Yamaguchi, lead economist for Japan at Oxford Economics, said he expected growth to be sluggish in the second half of 2026 as companies pass rising energy costs on to consumers.

“Although AI-related goods exports will continue to stay robust in the near term, sluggish non-AI-related global economic activities will limit overall export gains,” Yamaguchi said in a note to clients.

Japan imports almost all of its crude oil needs, leaving it exposed to elevated energy costs stemming from the fallout of the United States-Israel war on Iran.

Cost pressures on Japan’s consumers have been exacerbated by the weakness of the Japanese yen, which last month hit a 40-year low against the US dollar.

The weaker-than-expected growth figures could complicate the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ’s) upcoming decision on interest rates in September amid its push to normalise monetary policy after decades of ultra-low and negative borrowing costs.

The BOJ in June raised its benchmark interest rate to 1 percent, its highest in more than three decades.

The central bank began to move away from an ultra-loose policy in 2024 when it announced its first rate hike since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Japan’s stock market rose on Monday with the benchmark Nikkei 225 up 0.3 percent as of 05:15 GMT.

South Korea and Hong Kong’s markets also made gains with the KOSPI up 2.4 percent and the Hang Seng Index 1.6 percent higher.

Spain’s World Cup-winning captain Rodri is returning to his homeland after Man City agree transfer to Barcelona.

Manchester City have accepted a 65.4 million pounds ($88.47m) bid from Barcelona for their World Cup-winning Spain midfielder Rodri, British media have reported.

The 2024 Ballon d’Or winner has agreed a four-year deal with the Spanish champions, Sky Sports said on Sunday, and will head to the Nou Camp to complete the transfer next week.

Rodri won 12 major honours at City, including four Premier League titles, two FA Cups, three League Cups and the Champions League after 298 appearances in seven seasons at the Etihad Stadium.

Rodri, who joined City from Atletico Madrid for a then-club record 62.8 million pounds (about $80m) in 2019, had one year left on his contract and City had wanted him to sign an extension.

The 30-year-old missed City’s 3-0 loss to Arsenal in the Community Shield on Sunday, having only returned to the club’s training ground on Friday following minor back surgery.

Actor Hayden Panettiere, the child actor who rose to stardom in television and also spoke with raw frankness about her struggles with fame and mental health, died Sunday, according to her family. She was 36.

Panettiere’s father, Skip, announced the actor’s death in a statement shared with The Times on Sunday.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen,” his statement said.

No other details were released.

She starred on “Nashville” (2012-18) and, before that, “Heroes” (2006-10). Her early work included roles in the 1990s on the soaps “One Life to Live” and “Guiding Light.” She was a model and a singer, having released several singles.

Panettiere also starred in the “Scream” horror movie franchise as well as in hits “I Love You, Beth Cooper” and “Remember the Titans.”

She first gained major attention with “Heroes,” where she played a cheerleader with superpowers. On “Nashville,” she played a troubled country music star, doing her own singing and performing on tour.

Panettiere has been candid about her struggles while living so much of her life in the public eye.

Panettiere gave birth to her daughter, with boxing champ Wladimir Klitschko, in 2014 and battled postpartum depression. She gave up custody of the child in 2018, a decision she called “heartbreaking.”

In May, the actor published a memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” in which she opened up about her alcoholism and depression after the birth of her daughter.

In interviews about the book, she reflected on the scrutiny and cruelty she faced as a young actor.

“It blows my mind that people could be so cruel,” she told the New York Times. “Looking back as an adult and a mother of a daughter, it’s hard to believe that grown adults were OK with ripping you apart at such a tender age. At any age, really.

“I just can’t believe I made it through alive,” she added.

Panettiere started in movies at the age of 9 when she voiced Princess Dot in the 1998 Pixar movie “A Bug’s Life.” Two years later, she made a splash in the role of a young football-obsessed fan and daughter of assistant coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton) in the biographical drama “Remember the Titans.” The actor told “ET” in 2023, “If I had a wish to go back to any time in my life, it would be going back to ‘Remember the Titans.’ … There were so many stars made from this movie.”

Panettiere was passionate about animals and began advocating for whale conservation in her teens. She came out as bisexual earlier this year, telling Us Magazine that she was sad to have waited until age 36 to do so.

She spoke up about her experience with domestic abuse after a public altercation in Los Angeles in 2022 involving a then-boyfriend. Brian Hickerson was on probation at the time following multiple domestic violence charges that dated back to 2018.

In 2025, her brother, Jansen Panettiere, died suddenly of complications from a heart problem. He had struggled with substance abuse and she got him into treatment, she told Us Magazine.

At the height of her fame on “Heroes,” she was regularly followed by the paparazzi and was the focus of much tabloid attention. Looking back on that time recently, she told a podcaster: “It was just sheer terror.”

In the statement on Sunday, Panettiere’s father said the family asked for privacy “as our family takes time to process this unimaginable loss.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nvidia has recruited Wall Street to bankroll its own customers.

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The US chipmaker said last week it had signed memorandums of understanding with Wall Street’s largest asset managers, including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to raise upwards of half a trillion dollars for AI companies to borrow against, money that will buy its chips and build the servers that run them.

The six firms will set up what Nvidia calls “compute financing platforms,” drawing on institutional money, insurance funds and private credit. Borrowers can use the proceeds for the chips as well as servers, networking equipment, buildings and power supply.

Nvidia has the option to guarantee up to a quarter of any given deal, which lowers the interest rate its customers pay while leaving most of the credit risk with the lenders.

CEO Jensen Huang said he approached only these six companies and none refused.

Keeping that spending off their own books is precisely the point, and the fact that such a structure is needed at all tells investors a great deal about where the constraints in the AI boom now lie.

The financial engineering rests on a single reclassification. Graphics processing units (GPUs) have always been treated as equipment that loses value quickly, superseded whenever a faster generation arrives.

Nvidia is effectively asking lenders to treat them instead as long-lived infrastructure, closer to a toll road or a power plant, that can be borrowed against for years.

“These are revenue-generating assets now,” Huang said, describing them as productive, long-lived and transferable between customers.

Why the money had to come from somewhere else

The timing reflects a squeeze that has been building all year.

Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and other hyperscalers whose cloud platforms host most of the world’s AI workloads have together guided roughly $720 billion (€624bn) to $745 billion (€646bn) of capital spending in 2026, an increase of about 77% on last year.

What analysts expect the hyperscalers to spend in 2027 alone has more than doubled in the space of a year, from a consensus of $480 billion (€416bn) in August 2025 to $1.08 trillion (€943bn) this month, a rise of about 127%, according to Bank of America.

The pattern has repeated at every stage.

Analysts who already considered last year’s investment unsustainable then watched the hyperscalers guide higher at the start of 2026, revise those figures upward again through the year, and pencil in larger sums still for next year and 2028.

Moody’s has warned that spending on this scale is eating into free cash flow and pushing tech groups into heavier borrowing. Alphabet recorded negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion (€5.1bn) in a quarter when it spent $44.9 billion (€38.9bn) on projects.

That is the pressure the structure of Nvidia’s Wall Street deal relieves.

Debt raised through these “compute financing platforms” sits with the financing vehicles rather than on a hyperscaler’s own accounts and also has Nvidia’s backing, which protects credit ratings and leaves room for conventional borrowing elsewhere.

For smaller operators the effect is larger still as companies such as CoreWeave and Nebius, which lack investment-grade ratings and pay dearly for credit, gain access to capital on terms previously reserved for the giants.

What the market actually read into it

The reaction was more ambivalent than the headline number suggests, and came weeks after a July selloff driven by doubts over whether AI spending will pay for itself.

Essentially, equity investors saw a bottleneck being cleared while credit investors saw something else: the cost of insuring Nvidia’s own debt against default rose after the news and has roughly doubled since late May.

Their doubt concentrates on the reclassification previously mentioned.

“Chips depreciate fast and lose value the moment a newer generation arrives,” warned Nigel Green of financial advisory firm deVere Group, noting that lending against them only works if the collateral holds its value.

Critics also point out that Nvidia is helping finance purchases of its own products, deepening the circularity that already worries the sector.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called it “a pivotal moment of a historic AI investment cycle.”

Whether it proves pivotal in the direction Solomon means depends on a question nobody can yet answer: what will the value of a current GPU be in five years?