April 6 (UPI) — The Department of the Treasury announced Monday that The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation will handle the Trump Accounts program and that Robinhood will be the brokerage and initial trustee.

BNY will manage the initial accounts and develop the Trump Accounts app.

“Together, these partners will support Treasury’s goal of ensuring every eligible child can access a Trump Account quickly and easily,” a press release from the Treasury said.

The accounts are tax-deferred investing accounts for children born between 2025 and 2028. They are scheduled to launch on July 4 with a $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.

BNY and other large employers have pledged to match the government’s deposits for children of their U.S. employees.

“We are honored to be selected as financial agent for Trump Accounts,” BNY CEO Robin Vince said in a statement. “In collaboration with Robinhood, a leading financial technology platform committed to democratizing the markets for investors, we are helping to expand access to financial opportunity for all Americans.”

The Treasury press release said the app is being developed as a custom, white-label product. The National Design Studio, along with Robinhood, is creating an intuitive user interface and user experience that allows “families to explore their Trump Accounts with confidence and ease.”

Vlad Tenev, chair and CEO of Robinhood Markets, said in a statement that the company is “proud to power Trump Accounts with Robinhood’s technology and to work alongside a historic and trusted institution like BNY.”

“Our task is clear: to provide the next generation of Americans with a world-class, intuitive platform to jumpstart their financial future,” Tenev said.

The IRS said that as of March 31, more than 4 million children were signed up for Trump accounts, and more than 1 million were eligible for the $1,000 pilot program.

“The IRS has been working closely with the Treasury Department to make the election process as simple and easy as possible by permitting taxpayers to fill out a one-page form when they file their tax return,” IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said in a statement. “Families with eligible children born between 2025 and 2028 just need to check the box on a form to stake their claim for the $1,000 contribution. It’s that simple.”

Parents can sign up for the funds by filing IRS Form 4547 with their tax returns or via TrumpAccounts.gov. There will be an authentication process in May, and the money will be in accounts on July 4, the IRS said.

Parents and others can contribute up to $5,000 a year. Companies can deposit up to $2,500 pre-tax per year for kids of employees, within the $5,000 limit.

“It’s good to see BNY and Robinhood being named, it gives us more clarity,” Madeline Brown, senior policy associate at the Urban Institute, told CNBC.

“There are certainly still questions that remain about what the interface and product will look like for account holders … and how financial planning and coaching may be integrated. Given that at least some participants will be new to long-term savings, there is this need for advisor-type guidance.”

Why are many Latin American countries shutting down nonprofit organizations? Amnesty International claims it has the answer: in every case, it’s part of a drive to restrict human rights and “tear up the social fabric.”

Amnesty’s new 95-page report (in Spanish, with an English summary), criticizes governments across the political spectrum for attacking what it calls “civil society organizations.” But Amnesty ignores the history of many such organizations and therefore why governments might be justified in closing them.

Here we focus on the report’s deficiencies in relation to Nicaragua, Venezuela (two NGOs interviewed in each) and Cuba (none).

Data-light analysis supports preconceived conclusions

Amnesty’s report is strikingly thin. Unlike many other Amnesty investigations, this one provides scarce case studies or incidents, almost no statistics, few named victims or affected organizations, and little discussion of specific crackdowns. In most cases, substantive content about a particular country is assumed to apply to all countries.

Amnesty conducted interviews with only 15 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across six countries: Nicaragua, Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador and Ecuador. Its analysis extended to two more, Guatemala and Cuba, where no interviews took place. Yet the six countries alone have around 40,000 NGOs between them, making Amnesty’s sample minuscule. In none of the countries did Amnesty do any direct fieldwork.

Amnesty did not consult with any government sources or individuals close to governments, resulting in a one-sided narrative. According to Amnesty, the issues “should not be interpreted as… differentiation between the countries analyzed.” Thus, countries as politically different as Ecuador and Nicaragua are painted with the same brush.

While claiming to expose the real purpose of these laws, Amnesty fails to explain their political context, despite the widespread and documented use made of NGOs by the US to destabilize countries.

The authors emailed Amnesty with our key criticisms. In a lengthy response, Mariana Marques, Amnesty’s South America Researcher & Advisor, claimed that “the report intentionally prioritizes depth and comparability [between the chosen countries].” However, this is difficult to accept given that the report’s sweeping generalizations are mechanically applied to all six.

The authors also asked Amnesty if they had considered evidence that NGOs in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have indeed engaged in political activities – that would very likely be illegal in Western countries such as the US? Did they consider whether allegations that NGOs provoked political violence or other criminal activities might be true? In response, Ms. Marques wrote: “The report does not adjudicate case‑by‑case allegations about individual organizations.”

Nevertheless, the report apparently identified “selective enforcement” and “sanctions” that were “disproportionate.” But how could they reach an impartial judgment on the fairness of a government’s actions without considering whether the alleged infractions might have actually occurred?

Destabilization claims go unexamined

If governments justify their laws as efforts to halt foreign-funded destabilization, surely Amnesty should ask whether such claims have merit. Here are some examples that Amnesty might have considered:

• In Cuba, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent $15.5 million from 2009 through 2012 running “civil society” programs aimed at secretly stirring up anti-government activism. Then in just one year (2020), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a reported CIA cutout itself masquerading as an NGO even though it is largely funded by the US government – financed 40 civil-society projects in Cuba with sums up to $650,000. According to the Cuban government, these groups were directly involved in violent demonstrations that affected Cuba in July 2021.

• In Nicaragua, which suffered a major coup attempt in 2018, Global Americans reported that the NED was “laying the groundwork for insurrection” even as the violence was taking place. NED and other bodies bragged to Congress about their regime-change efforts, and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs described in detail how NGOs indoctrinated young Nicaraguans.

• In Venezuela, USAID corroborated the use of NGOs to further US regime-change activities; since 2017 it provided “more than $158 million in humanitarian aid in Venezuela” through questionably “impartial” organizations.

Well-substantiated examples of Washington’s huge investment, extending over many years, to create or infiltrate NGOs in the three countries and use them to provoke anti-government violence, were of no interest to Amnesty researchers.

Rather, the report focuses on restrictions on access to foreign funding, which allegedly have “chilling effects on legitimate human‑rights work.” Amnesty’s refusal to “map individual donors” prevents scrutiny about the purpose of Washington’s funding for NGOs, which are often framed in vague terms such as “promoting democracy” or “strengthening civic society.”

Had the researchers talked to actual NGOs doing humanitarian work, they might have heard testimony such as this one from Rita Di Matiatt with Master Mama, a Venezuelan NGO dedicated to offering support to breastfeeding mothers: “NGOs that conspire against the stability and rights of a nation or its citizens, as well as everything that does not comply with the norms and laws of a country must be held accountable.” Venezuelan National Assembly deputy Julio Chávez expressed concern about such NGO’s working “to generate destabilization.”

And, indeed, the current NED president, Damon Wilson, recently confirmed that Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are his highest priorities in the region.

Comparison with other countries

Amnesty claims a “global” trend toward laws resembling Russia’s “foreign agents” legislation. However, a more relevant comparison is the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which is really the model.

The US has some of the world’s strongest and most detailed regulatory powers governing NGOs. Indeed, the US typically closes around 44,000 nonprofits annually that fail to comply. This is not unusual. The Charity Commission in Britain closes around 4,000 nonprofits each year. New regulations have led to large-scale closures in India, Turkey, South Africa and elsewhere.

Washington’s foreign agents act is not unique: The Library of Congress has examples of 13 countries with similar legislation. In Britain, the government has consulted on the introduction of a “Foreign Influence Registration Scheme,” which is similar to FARA, as are regulations which apply in the European Union.

However, it does not suit Amnesty’s narrative to make comparisons with Western countries that might caste the laws in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in a different light.

Amnesty’s longstanding bias

Amnesty has a long history of bias against countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Ecuadorian-Canadian journalist Joe Emersberger documents how Amnesty minimizes the impact of US sanctions – illegal under international law – which target all three countries.

While Amnesty refused to recognize Nelson Mandella as a prisoner of conscious, because he failed to renounce violence in self-defense against the South African apartheid regime, Amnesty readily bestowed the honor on Leopoldo López, who fomented a number of violent coup attempts in Venezuela.

María Corina Machado is arguably Amnesty’s most lauded Venezuelan. Her legitimacy is based largely on her victory in an opposition primary. However, the contest was conducted by her personal NGO, Súmate, rather than the official Venezuelan electoral authority as is customary. This is relevant to NGO law, because Súmate received NED funds. Machado won that privately run primary by an incredible 92% landslide in a crowded field of eight candidates. When the runner-up, Carlos Prosperi, cried fraud, the ballots were destroyed to prevent an audit of the vote.

Camilo Mejia, a US military resistor and an Amnesty “prisoner of conscience,” published an open letter expressing his “unequivocal condemnation of Amnesty International with regards to the destabilizing role it has played in Nicaragua, my country of birth.”

Amnesty has long been accused of bias on an international scale. Journalist Alexander Rubinstein documented Amnesty’s collaboration with US and UK intelligence agencies dating back to the 1960s. Francis A. Boyle, human rights law professor and founding Amnesty board member, observed: “You will find a self-perpetuating clique of co-opted Elites who deliberately shape and direct the work of AI and AIUSA so as to either affirmatively support, or else not seriously undercut, the imperial, colonial, and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel.”

NGOs and the “human rights industry”

Alfred de Zayas, former UN independent human rights expert, argues in The Human Rights Industry that there are few fields that are “as penetrated and corrupted by intelligence services” as NGOs. “The level of NGO interference in the internal affairs of states and their destabilizing impact on the constitutional order has become so prevalent that more and more countries have adopted… legislation to control this ‘invasion’ of foreign interests, or simply to ban them.”

While de Zayas recognizes Amnesty International when it does good work, he points out that in Latin America it ignores the struggle of sovereign nations “to shake off the yoke of US domination.” In a general comment that might apply specifically to Amnesty’s Tearing Up the Social Fabric, de Zayas condemns “entire reports… compiled from accounts of US-backed opposition groups.”

Nicaragua-based writer John Perry publishes in the London Review of Books, FAIR, CovertAction and elsewhere. Roger D. Harrisis with the Task Force on the Americas and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Both authors are active with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

The GB News presenter continued working in a pub even after landing his first TV role at 21

GB News host Eamonn Holmes has enjoyed a career in broadcasting for decades but the Irish TV host admits that he almost never gave up his first-ever job.

The TV veteran had such a fondness for his evening job that he continued it well into the early stages of his blossoming career, until his boss eventually urged him to concentrate solely on his television aspirations.

His first television appearance came in 1979 as a reporter and presenter for Ulster Television (UTV) in Northern Ireland, and his career has gone from strength to strength ever since.

Yet Eamonn was so anxious that his TV career might suddenly dry up that he was determined to keep pulling pints while he still could, and he was in absolutely no rush to abandon his bar job before he finally did relinquish the evening role to dedicate himself fully to his television career.

Speaking to the Express. at the Young Chef, Young Waiter, Young Mixologist awards where he was a judge, Eamonn looked back on his career and said: “Nobody in the UK had been given tea time programmes at 21, so when I did, it went in my favour.

“But I was working in a pub, and the head barman said to me, ‘what is this? You serve them up the news until seven o’clock and then you’re in here at 7.30pm’.”

He revealed that his response to his manager at the time was: “But does this TV business ever last?”

The barman boldly assured Eamonn it would, invited him for a drink, and encouraged him to chase his dreams, with Eamonn saying: “That was my last night in the bar.”

Eamonn credits his bar work with helping him break into television, claiming it drew out his personality and showed him how to connect with people.

He said: “It taught me to be more relaxed with a TV audience and how to talk to people in television, so that was amazing. It was a bitb strange, I didn’t know anybody who was in television or presenting, but that’s what happened.”

His breakthrough in Ireland was merely the beginning of his broadcasting journey, transitioning to the BBC in 1986 and subsequently GMTV in 1993, where he remained until 2005, taking on a host of other television roles along the way, including stints at Sky News, BBC show Jet Set, and periodic appearances on GMB.

Eamonn’s latest venture has seen him comfortably settled at GB News, where he fronts the breakfast show.

GB News’s Breakfast Show is on weekdays at 6am

St. John Bosco, the new No. 1 high school baseball team in Southern California after taking two of three games last week from the previous No. 1 team, Orange Lutheran, could end up facing the Lancers (8-3) again at this week’s Boras Classic if both teams make it to Friday’s final at Mater Dei.

St. John Bosco, however, is in the toughest part of the 16-team Boras Classic bracket. The Braves (11-3) face a big challenge in their opener on Tuesday at 9 a.m. at Mater Dei against 12-1 Norco, which has the option of throwing either sophomore star Jordan Ayala or senior Landon Hovermale.

Also on St. John Bosco’s side is Huntington Beach and star pitcher Jared Grindlinger. The Oilers open at noon against Los Osos at Mater Dei.

Orange Lutheran plays Fountain Valley in a 9 a.m. opener at JSerra. Corona could be strongest challenger on Orange Lutheran’s side and plays JSerra in a 6 p.m. opener on Tuesday.

Quarterfinals are Wednesday and semifinals are Thursday.

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

MANCHETER isn’t short of fun hotels, but Yotel knows how to be cheeky without having to splash the cash.

So here’s what you need to know about staying at Yotel Manchester Deansgate.

Where is the Yotel Deansgate?

A short walk from the main train station, Yotel Manchester Deansgate is in the heart of the city centre.

Being on the corner of Deansgate, this means you have all of the top attractions, restaurants and bars on your doorstep.

What is the hotel like?

Expect funky decor when you walk in too, with neon signs and mismatched furniture.

The hotel even has umbrellas and power banks you can rent, so all the bases are covered.

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What are the rooms like?

My King Room had more than enough space, with a working desk, sofa and bold tropical print wallpaper transporting me to another country.

Every room has everything you need – smart TVs, fast WiFi and almost too many plug sockets.

Bathrooms are fully equipped with strong power showers and Korean-Australian toiletries by Urban Jungle.

If you need a cup of tea or coffee, or an iron, you’ll find them in the hallway ‘station’ to take back to your room.

On a budget? Opt for the Compact or Twin rooms – smaller but still with all the amenities.

Otherwise choose rooms on the 9th floor for great views overlooking the city.

Rooms start from £64 on a room only basis. See yotel.com

What is there to eat and drink there?

The Motley restaurant is the place to be with a great atmosphere all day.

There’s something for everyone, from braised beef short ribs to mushroom risottos, although I was especially impressed with the small plates, especially the bread with honey and lavender butter.

It might have been helped to go down thanks to the raspberry martini that accompanied…

Bring the pup – they get a free ‘doggy meal’ per dining guest.

The buffet breakfast was just as good. Along with the usual hot and cold options, they also had veggie dishes including shakshuka and tofu hash to choose from.

What else can you do there?

While it doesn’t have a gym, guests can book a free 45-minute work out classes at boutique fitness centre TRIB3.

If you want to do some shopping, the huge Arndale Centre is a five minute walk away too.

Is it family friendly?

The hotel has Premium King rooms that sleep three, with a king size bed and sofa-bed.

Otherwise cots can be requested, with interconnecting rooms too.

Is the hotel accessible?

There are accessible King Rooms, which have step-free access as well as roll in showers, shower seats and height adjusted sinks.

They also have visual and vibrating alerts, and widened doorways.

April 6 (UPI) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro asked Brazil to extend its instant payment system Pix to Colombia and questioned U.S. financial sanctions in a message posted on X, amid Washington investigations into the Brazilian system.

In his post, Petro called for regional integration of the Pix system and criticized international financial control mechanisms, particularly the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. Treasury agency responsible for enforcing economic sanctions.

“I ask Brazil to extend the Pix system to Colombia and hopefully stop considering the OFAC list, which no longer works,” Petro wrote Saturday.

The message comes after the U.S. government last week published the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, which mentions the Pix system.

The report includes concerns from U.S. companies that the system, operated by Brazil’s central bank, may have regulatory advantages over foreign private competitors such as Visa and Mastercard.

Pix has gained popularity for allowing fast and free transfers, which has generated tensions over its impact on the traditional financial system.

In the same message, Petro criticized the international sanctions system. “OFAC only serves to persecute political opposition and domesticate them around the world. It is an aberrant system of political control,” he said.

He also contended that drug trafficking has managed to evade these mechanisms.

“Drug trafficking mocks it, and they stay in Dubai, where they buy residency for about $4,000 and live in luxury,” he added.

The message also included references to international politics and armed conflicts. Petro said that “no war is good” and said he had asked U.S. President Donald Trump to stop ongoing conflicts.

“His circle wants blood and leads him to make mistakes all the time,” he wrote.

Petro also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza and Iran, and called for him to be tried.

Petro added that the homicide rate in Colombia has decreased, adding he hopes the trend is not temporary.

So far, the Brazilian government has not publicly responded to the request.

Brisk south-easterly winds developing on Tuesday and Wednesday will drag in much warmer air from the European continent.

Temperatures will be around 6 to 10C above average for early April.

On Tuesday temperatures will rise to the high teens and low twenties in most parts.

Across the south Midlands and the west coast of Wales it is likely to reach 22C, making it the warmest day of the year so far.

The previous highest temperature this year was 20.9C, recorded on 31 March at Pershore, Worcestershire.

Tuesday will be a mostly sunny day, especially across England and Wales but cloud will build in Northern Ireland and western Scotland with a few showers.

By Wednesday temperatures will rise even further to 23C, perhaps even 24C in south-east England.

With sunshine continuing, temperatures across England and Wales will still be into the low twenties, so it will feel more like a typical summer’s day for most of us.

However, conditions will turn a little cooler in western Scotland, Northern Ireland and Irish Sea coasts with more cloud and rain moving in later in the afternoon.

DEADLIEST Catch star Todd Meadows’ cause of death was revealed on Monday, over a month after the deck hand fell overboard into freezing waters.

Meadows died on February 25 in an accident aboard a vessel in the Bering Sea while the Deadliest Catch cameras were rolling.

Meadow, a father of three, died after he drowned “with probable hypothermia” and “submersion of body in cold water,” his death certificate said.

His death was ruled an accident.

The 25-year-old fell overboard while crabbing on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska and was pronounced dead on February 25 at 5:15pm.

His body was recovered minutes after he fell, but the several attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

read more on todd meadows

DESPERATE CREW

Deadliest Catch star’s harrowing final moments as rescue harness snaps

His death was caught on camera while filming the long-running Discovery Channel series.

Deadliest Catch premiered in 2005, giving insight into the harsh conditions fishing crews face on the Bering Sea.

His mother, Angela, told TMZ that the family doesn’t want the footage to be aired.

“We don’t want to see any footage of the accident and do not want Discovery to air any of that footage or make money off of our son’s death,” she said.

“We hope they only air good things of Todd on that boat.”

Captain Rick Shelford called February 25 “the most tragic day in the history of the Aleutian Lady on the Bering Sea.”

“Todd was the newest member of our crew, he quickly became family,” Shelford said.

“His love for fishing and his strong work ethic earned everyone’s respect right away.”

The crew later broke their silence revealing Meadows’ tragic final moments.

The crew said he was left blue and foaming at the mouth after they tried to save him numerous times.

Deckhand Trey John Green III told Page Six that Meadows ended up in the water following an incident with one of the traps used to catch shellfish.

The crew ran to the back of the boat to immediately keep their eyes on Meadows after he hit the water.

“I see Todd. He’s floating, he’s swimming. He’s got huge baby blue eyes. And I can still, probably from like 100 yards away, I could still see his eyes looking around,” Green said.

“Todd was still alive, he’s still swimming, he’s still trying to hang in there.

“We get next to him, and then Steve [Porter] — Steve is the — every boat has a designated rescue swimmer for this exact kind of scenario. Steve was already geared up and was already in the diving suit.”

Green said that when Porter jumped into the water to save Meadows, the harness attached to the crane broke.

Other crew members managed to get a life sling into the water quickly, but when Meadows was “halfway up” and “almost back on the boat,” he fell back into the sea.

“The second time we went to go lift him up, Todd was just — he was lifeless,” Green recalled.

“He didn’t have any more — like I said, the first time, he was fighting, trying to get onto the sling. And then the second time, he was just — he was lifeless.”

Green said Meadows was only in the water for “three or four minutes” before they got him back on the boat, but at that point he began “turning blue.”

“I just want to reiterate that — everybody did everything they could do,” Green said.

A GoFundMe was created after Meadows’ death, which has since raised over $56,000 for his family and his three sons.

Meadows’ mother revealed that the 25-year-old suffered a concussion just weeks before his death.

The head injury left him unable to return to work for several weeks.

He returned to Washington to recover, which was the last week his family saw him, Angela said.

“The last photo I got of him was when he was building a fire. He was listening to music in the moment and was so happy,” she said.

“That’s how I want to remember him.”

HAVANA — Two U.S lawmakers called for a permanent solution to Cuba’s crises after witnessing the effects of a U.S. energy blockade during an official visit to the island.

Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and members of Parliament during a five-day trip that ended Sunday.

Díaz-Canel wrote on X Monday that upon meeting with Jayapal and Jackson, he “denounced the criminal damage caused by the #blockade, particularly the consequences of the energy embargo imposed by the current US administration and its threats of even more aggressive actions.”

Díaz-Canel added: “I reiterated our government’s willingness to engage in serious and responsible bilateral dialogue and find solutions to our existing differences.”

Both the U.S. and Cuba have acknowledged recently that talks are ongoing at the highest level, but no details have been disclosed.

Jayapal told reporters she believes that recent steps taken by Cuba, such as opening the economy to certain investments by Cuban Americans living abroad; the recent announcement that more than 2,000 prisoners would be pardoned; and the arrival of an FBI team to collaborate in the investigation of a fatal shooting involving a U.S.-flagged boat, “indicate that the moment is here for us to have a real negotiation between the two countries and to reverse the failed U.S. policy of decades, a Cold War remnant that no longer serves the American people or the Cuban people.”

Cuba’s government has released the pardoned prisoners who were accused of a variety of crimes, although none so far appear to be political prisoners.

In late January, President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any country that would sell or provide oil to Cuba, although he made an exception for a Russian ship that reached the island last week with 730,000 barrels of crude oil. It was the first petroleum shipment in three months to dock in Cuba, which produces only 40% of the oil it needs.

“This is cruel collective punishment — effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country — that has produced permanent damage. It must stop immediately,” Jayapal and Jackson said in a statement released Sunday.

Critical oil shipments from Venezuela were halted after the U.S. attacked the South American country in early January and arrested its leader, Nicolas Maduro.

Cubans already suffering from five years of economic crisis have acutely felt the impact of the fuel shortage: national blackouts, gasoline shortages and rationing, lack of public transport, cuts in working hours, paralyzed hospitals and surgeries, and suspension of flights, among other things.

Russia has promised a second delivery of petroleum, although it’s not clear when it might arrive. Experts have said that the first shipment could produce about 180,000 barrels of diesel, enough to feed Cuba’s daily demand for nine or 10 days.

Jayapal said that while such shipments are critical, they are only temporary solutions: “We need a longer, permanent solution for the Cuban people and the American people.”

Meanwhile, Jackson compared the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast to the oil blockade in Cuba, adding that the island “is the most sanctioned part of Earth.”

“Our government is fighting to keep the Strait of Hormuz open so there is a free flow of oil around the world. We want, for humanitarian reasons, a free flow of oil, fuel, and energy in our own hemisphere,” he said.

Jackson and Jayapal said they would prepare a report and continue to work on initiatives proposed by fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives to lift sanctions against Cuba to alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Mesquita and Rodríguez write for the Associated Press.

Wales open their campaign against Scotland, who crushed their World Cup hopes last summer in a sobering opening match.

In fact, Wales have not tasted victory over their Celtic rivals in more than three years, but George says Saturday will be far from a grudge match.

“It doesn’t matter who we’re coming up against in the first week, it’s the first game, so we really want to try and put a stamp down,” she said.

“It’s a fresh start, we’ve got new coaches coming in and a different style of playing.

“It’s the same for them, they’ve got new coaches. We don’t really know what they’re going to bring, but we’re concentrating on ourselves as much as we can. Obviously we’ll look a little bit at them, but the onus is on us.”

This article from the Occasional Digest commemorates President Ntaryamira Day, a public holiday in Burundi held every April 6th. It details the historical significance of the date, marking the 1994 assassination of President Cyprien Ntaryamira when his aircraft was targeted and destroyed over Rwanda. This tragic event resulted in the deaths of two African leaders and acted as the catalyst for the Rwandan Genocide. Beyond this historical focus, the publication includes updates on modern global conflicts, such as tensions involving Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, the source provides current financial data, including internation … 

WHO driver Majdi Aslan was killed and a WHO doctor wounded, along with several other Palestinians, medical sources said.

A member of staff from the World Health Organization (WHO) has been killed in Gaza and several others injured when the Israeli army fired on their vehicle, according to sources, including an Al Jazeera correspondent.

WHO driver Majdi Aslan, 54, was killed on Monday. A doctor from the international organisation and several other Palestinians were also injured in the incident in eastern Khan Younis, according to sources at the enclave’s Nasser and Al-Aqsa hospitals.

As the world’s attention remains fixed on the United States-Israel war on Iran, Israel is continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has seen near-daily Israeli fire and strikes since a fragile ceasefire was reached in October, with more than 700 Palestinians killed since, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Monday’s incident took place in an area close to the so-called yellow line in eastern Khan Younis, reported Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.

Israeli forces shot “indiscriminately” at people and vehicles moving along the Salah al-Din Street in the southern Gaza Strip, he said.

A commercial vehicle was transporting civilians between southern and central Gaza. It was followed by a car carrying WHO employees, said Mahmoud.

“The driver was shot in the head, and by the time he was transported to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, he was announced dead,” the correspondent reported from Gaza City. Seven or so others suffered injuries, he added.

Translation: Qamar Majdi Mustafa Aslan (54 years old), a resident of Bureij camp, who ascended after being wounded in a shooting targeting a World Health Organization vehicle on Salah al-Din Street east of Khan Younis city.

WHO did not immediately confirm that the man killed was an employee, but said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera that “this morning, a critical security incident occurred in Gaza that is under review by relevant authorities”.

“As [a] result of this critical security incident, today’s medical evacuation from Gaza via Rafah to Egypt has been put on hold with immediate effect, until further notice,” the statement added.

WHO has been overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel since the opening of the Rafah crossing, which has allowed small numbers of injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave to seek treatment abroad.

Israel has, however, continued to limit the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, also shutting the vital crossing in the early days of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Elsewhere on Monday in the southern part of Khan Younis, a Palestinian man with special needs was killed after being shot by Israeli soldiers.

To the north, a drone attack in Gaza City killed one person, Mahmoud said.

“The target was an electric bike … moving in the area that was struck by drone missiles. It killed … a 36-year-old individual who was moving … around the displacement camps,” he reported.

A child was also injured in the attack and is now in critical condition in hospital, the correspondent added.

Two Palestinians were also killed in Israeli drone strikes on the Yarmouk and Shujayea neighbourhoods, according to a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital.

Sources at Gaza hospitals have reported the deaths of eight Palestinians in Israeli air strikes outside areas under Israeli control since Sunday.

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening phase of the US-Israeli war against Iran has generated a striking argument in strategic and theological circles alike: that the killing may have removed not merely a political leader but a normative brake on Iran’s possible march toward nuclear weapons. Reports indicate that Iranian decision-making has since hardened under intense military pressure and an increasingly securitised internal environment.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam. If that position represented a genuine religious constraint rather than mere diplomatic rhetoric, then his death may have removed more than a leader: it may have weakened the doctrinal restraint that helped keep Iran a threshold nuclear state.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam.

Islamic just war theory places moral constraints on indiscriminate violence, constraints that Khamenei appeared to project onto state policy. With that authority now gone, the central question is whether a moral tradition can discipline a state that increasingly experiences its insecurity as existential. Whether the next supreme leader can impose doctrinal restraint on a system drifting toward hard security logic.

The Islamic just war theory

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence. Rather, it regulates warfare through a moral-legal framework derived from the Qur’an, the practice of the Prophet, and the juristic traditions that developed in subsequent centuries. The foundational Qur’anic injunction is taken from verse 2:190: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not love transgressors.” The verse both permits fighting and limits it: war is accepted as a political reality, but not treated as morally autonomous.

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence.

The duality of permission and restraint thus runs through the Islamic just war tradition. War may be legitimate in cases of defence, resistance to aggression, or protection of the community. But even a just cause does not license unlimited means. Islamic jurists emphasised proportionality, legitimate authority, fidelity to agreements, and the protection of non-combatants—including women, children, the elderly, monks, and peasants— developing a norm of discrimination that restricted violence to active combatants.

It is from this perspective that nuclear weapons become especially difficult to reconcile with Islamic ethics. A weapon whose essence is mass, uncontrolled devastation, sits uneasily with any tradition that treats non-combatant immunity as morally central. In Islamic terms, the problem is not simply the scale of destruction, but the very structure of the act: the means themselves are transgressive.

 The fatwa: Genuine constraint or strategic cover?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reputed opposition to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War established an early precedent for this kind of doctrinal restraint. Iraq used chemical agents extensively, and Iran suffered enormously—some 20,000 Iranians were killed and over 100,000 severely injured. Yet the Islamic Republic did not respond in kind on a comparable scale. Whether that restraint was entirely theological or also strategic remains debated. Recent evidence suggests limited Iranian chemical weapons development during the war. Still, the episode reinforced the notion that certain weapons lay beyond the moral threshold that Iran’s clerical leadership was prepared to cross openly.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005. Over subsequent years, Iranian officials repeatedly invoked his religious decree as evidence of the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear intentions.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005.

But the fatwa’s authenticity and legal weight have always been contested. Some have argued that no formal written fatwa was ever issued and that what Iran marketed as a religious ruling was, in origin, merely the closing paragraph of a message to a 2010 nuclear disarmament conference, later retroactively framed by Iranian diplomats as a fatwa. Others have documented that Khamenei’s pronouncements on nuclear weapons were inconsistent: at times he categorically forbade development, stockpiling, and use; at other times he appeared to permit development and stockpiling while forbidding use.

None of this entirely strips the fatwa of significance. In political systems where legitimacy is partly theological, a public prohibition articulated by the supreme jurist, even if ambiguous in its legal form, raises the political and doctrinal cost of reversal. As one scholar observes, such declarations make it costly for the Islamic Republic to overturn the publicly stated position even if they do not constitute binding juridical rulings in the formal sense.

Succession and the question of doctrinal inheritance

The critical question of whether Khamenei’s successor would inherit his political and moral authority looms large. On March 9, 2026, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei as Iran’s third supreme leader. Whether he would inherit his father’s doctrinal commitments, especially on nuclear weapons, is far from clear. Not known as a jurist of comparable standing to his father, Mojtaba’s authority derives primarily from his revolutionary and security credentials rather than from the depth of his theological learning, a fact noted critically within Iran’s clerical establishment, which has historically resisted father-to-son succession as uncomfortably monarchical.

Khamenei’s nuclear prohibition carried weight because it came from the state’s highest religious authority. Mojtaba’s standing is far more contested, which means that any comparable prohibition would likely carry less doctrinal force—while any tacit relaxation would accelerate the erosion of the barrier his father maintained. The IRGC commanders who manoeuvred his appointment to power have long been among those pressing for a reassessment of Iran’s nuclear posture.

Islamic restraint vs strategic realism

This leads to the final and perhaps hardest question: would Iran, if acting as a pure realist state, pursue nuclear weapons regardless of the Islamic just war tradition? The realist answer is straightforward. States seek survival in an anarchic international system. When a state faces stronger adversaries, recurring coercion, and the credible prospect of regime-change violence, it has every incentive to pursue the ultimate deterrent. From this perspective, the logic of nuclear acquisition is not theological but strategic: a bomb would promise not battlefield utility but regime survival, deterrence, and insulation from future attack.

And yet Iran is not a pure realist state in the abstract. It is a political order where ideology, clerical authority, national security, and regime survival have long coexisted in uneasy combination. The more interesting possibility, therefore, is not that realism simply replaces theology, but that realism gradually colonises it. In that scenario, doctrine is not openly discarded; it is reinterpreted and subordinated to necessity, allowing the state to retain Islamic language while moving toward a posture that the older Khamenei publicly resisted.

The greater danger is that the Islamic Republic’s language of restraint may cease to anchor policy and instead begin to trail behind it. If so, Iran’s nuclear future will be decided not only in centrifuge halls or command bunkers, but in the struggle between theological limits and strategic fear.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

BBC star Dilly Carter has been part of Sort Your Life Out since it began back in 2021.

There’s good news for fans of BBC’s Sort Your Life Out as organising expert Dilly Carter has shared an exciting career update.

Sort Your Life Out Unpacked is a podcast based on the show and launches Tuesday, April 7. It will see Dilly speak to a celebrity guest as they bring along three mystery objects from their home.

At the end of each episode, BBC fans will discover if the person wants to keep, donate or recycle their item in true Sort Your Life Out Style.

With promises of tears, laughs and surprises along the way, Dilly teased what people can expect to see and hear in a behind-the-scenes preview.

On Sort Your Life Out’s official Instagram, the BBC star can be seen posing in a studio as she says: “Finally, I can reveal what I’ve been up to!

“I am going to be the host of a brand new podcast called Sort Your Life Out Unpacked. Look at my beautiful set.

Showing a tour of the studio, it had a miniature Sort Your Life Out house, which is often seen in the warehouse of the regular show, alongside a photo of the other team members, including Stacey Solomon, Robert Bent and Iwan Carrington.

Explaining a bit more about the concept of the podcast, she told people that when the celebrity brings in the items, she’ll have no idea what they are beforehand.

Dilly added: “This is going to be the celebrity podcast that teaches you all about celebrities’ homes. It’s the one you don’t want to miss.”

They captioned the post: “We can’t wait for you to listen to the brand new Sort Your Life Out Unpacked podcast with our very own Dilly Carter! Coming tomorrow on @bbciPlayer and tune in on @BBCSounds #SYLO #Podcast #SortYourLifeOut #DillyCarter.”

It wasn’t long before people commented on the clip, with many sharing their excitement at the announcement.

One person said, “Congratulations, lovely lady. Exciting, can’t wait!” Someone else wrote: “OMG I NEEDED THIS!!!!!!!!!!! Dilly, I will be listening to it on repeat.”

Sharing the news on the BBC social media account last week, another person commented: “We can’t wait to listen!” As someone else shared: “So proud of you xx”

A synopsis for the new podcast series reads: “Amongst funny anecdotes and personal revelations, we learn how to organise and sort our own lives out.

“Celebrity guests include Elizabeth Day, Lorraine Kelly, Fatiha El-Ghorri, Kerry Katona, Eddie Kadi, Dr Alex George, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Sort Your Life Out’s own Stacey Solomon and many more.”

Sort Your Life Out Unpacked launches on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer on April 7.

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of President Trump, on Monday won a Supreme Court order that is expected to lead to the dismissal of his criminal conviction for refusing to testify to Congress.

Prodded by the Trump administration, the justices threw out an appellate ruling upholding Bannon’s conviction for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

The move frees a trial judge to act on the Republican administration’s pending request to dismiss Bannon’s conviction and indictment “in the interests of justice.”

The dismissal would be largely symbolic. Bannon served a four-month prison term after a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress in 2022. A federal appeals court in Washington had upheld the conviction.

The justices also issued a similar order in the case of former Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who was pardoned by Trump last year.

Sittenfeld had served 16 months in federal prison after a jury convicted him of bribery and attempted extortion in 2022. The high court order allows a lower court to consider dismissing his indictment.

The Justice Department brought the case against Bannon during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency, but it changed course after Trump took office again last year.

Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contended such a claim was dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the Capitol riot.

Bannon separately has pleaded guilty in a New York state court to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid jail time. That conviction is unaffected by the Supreme Court action.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

Since 2024, European governing body Uefa has given club coefficients over the latest five-year period an important role via something called “title-holder rebalancing”.

Therefore, should the Champions League winners have also qualified for the league phase via their domestic league position, “the club with the best individual coefficient of all the domestic champions involved in qualifying will enter the league phase directly instead of the original round they had qualified for”.

Ironically, last season’s beneficiaries were Olympiakos, with European champions Paris St-Germain having already qualified as French title winners.

The Piraeus side had finished seven points behind Athens neighbours AEK in the Greek Super League but this season the positions look likely to be reversed.

A 1-0 defeat at home to an AEK side for whom former Hearts left-back James Penrice was back in the starting line-up after a two-game absence leaves Olympiakos five points adrift of the leaders.

Indeed, Jose Luis Mendilibar’s side have slipped to third behind PAOK Salonica, who drew 0-0 at home to Panathinaikos with former Celtic left-back Greg Taylor an unused substitute on the bench.

There are five games left of the title play-offs, during which the top four play one another twice and statisticians suggest Olympiakos only have a 16% chance of securing a 49th domestic title.

Olympiakos are again the club with the most co-efficient points from countries outside the top six in Europe but, if they fail to retain that title, Rangers are next in line for that spot straight into the Champions League’s league phase.

There will be more than a few Rangers supporters monitoring the results when AEK entertain PAOK while Panathinaikos host Olympiakos next on Sunday, 19 April.

Ukraine has increased attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in bid to disrupt financing of its war.

The Ukrainian military reported that it has struck a Russian ⁠warship and ‌a drilling rig in the Black Sea.

Kyiv’s drone forces ⁠commander Robert Brovdi said on Monday that the attack targeted ⁠the Admiral Makarov missile carrier in ⁠the port of Novorossiysk, which is Russia’s largest oil exporting outlet on the Black Sea. Ukraine has increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to disrupt export revenues that feed into Moscow’s war chest.

Russian authorities said at least eight people, including two children, were injured in Novorossiysk, without specifying whether the port was struck.

Videos posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera’s verification unit showed a fire at one of the oil port’s docks in the city.

Novorossiysk’s Mayor Andrei Kravchenko said debris from drones had fallen on two locations in the city, including a residential area.

Russia’s military said in the early morning that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period. It added that officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in ⁠outages linked to air attacks.

The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include US majors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.

Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs ‌both on the Baltic and Black Seas, as it seeks to reduce Moscow’s revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.

The Kremlin has attempted to boost its exports after US President Donald Trump gave it a temporary waiver from sanctions to ease supply constraints, as the US-Israeli war on Iran upends oil markets following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Kyiv officials complain that Russia will use the additional revenue on new weapons to hit Ukraine harder.

Later on Monday, Russia reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked the CPC terminal. The export facility, which handles 1.5 percent of global oil supply, reported damage to mooring, loading, and storage infrastructure, the Reuters news agency reported.

“The Kyiv regime deliberately attacked facilities of the international oil transportation company Caspian Pipeline Consortium in order to inflict maximum economic damage on ⁠its largest shareholders – energy companies from the United States and Kazakhstan,” ⁠the defence ministry said in a statement.

The Black Sea strikes come a day after Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk – one of Russia’s main oil exporting outlets – and the NORSI oil refinery in the central Nizhny Novgorod region.

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region, said a fuel reservoir in the Primorsk port area leaked when it was hit by shrapnel.

Ukrainian drones also repeatedly struck ⁠Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga last month, damaging several buildings in the sprawling ⁠complex of oil-processing facilities and export terminals.

In Ukraine, a Russian overnight drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa on Monday killed two women and a toddler, authorities said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that 16 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and two children.

Russia’s overnight strikes also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, Zelenskyy said.

More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the northern Chernihiv region after distribution facilities were damaged in attacks, according to the regional power utility.

The Ukrainian leader said that over the past week, Russia launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 powerful glide bombs and more than 40 missiles of various types.

US President Donald Trump has issued a direct ultimatum to Iran: reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm Eastern Time in the United States on Tuesday, April 7 (midnight GMT on April 8), or face the destruction of national power plants and bridges.

This echoes an earlier March 21 ultimatum in which he threatened to attack Iran’s power plants – “the biggest one first” – if the strait was not fully reopened within 48 hours.

President Trump has since extended that deadline several times, citing progress in negotiations he claims the US is having with Iran to end the ongoing war. Iran denies it is holding direct talks with the US.

While Trump has made grand statements such as “they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country”, he has not mentioned specific targets.

The US president has also threatened to destroy the country’s bridges. Over the weekend, a US-Israeli strike hit the B1 bridge in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. The major highway link, described as the tallest bridge in the Middle East, had been scheduled to be inaugurated soon. It sustained significant damage in the strike.

Legal experts say that targeting civilian sites amounts to “collective punishment”, which is prohibited under the laws of war.

Where are Iran’s power plants?

Iran operates hundreds of power plants which, together, form one of the largest electricity systems in the Middle East, supplying energy to 92 million people.

Most of the country’s power plants are close to major population centres and industrial hubs. The majority of Iran’s population lives in the western half of the country, with Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan the three largest cities.

Iran has a mixture of gas, coal, hydro, nuclear and oil-fired power plants, but most are gas-fired. In the north and centre of the country, clusters of gas-fired plants supply electricity to the country’s largest population centres, including Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Mashhad.

Another major concentration of power plants lies along the Gulf coast. These plants sit close to major gasfields and ports, allowing large thermal stations to run on abundant natural gas.

The coast is also home to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only nuclear power facility, which has a capacity of 1,000MW. The US and Israel have repeatedly hit this nuclear power plant, raising risks of radioactive contamination far beyond Iran’s borders, the state-run Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) has warned.

Iran also operates a handful of hydropower dams concentrated along the Karun River, the country’s most important source of hydroelectric generation.

Electricity generated from all these plants is fed into a national transmission network operated by Iran Grid Management Company, which distributes power to cities, industries and homes across the country.

The map below shows all of Iran’s power stations with a capacity of 100MW or more.

A 100MW power plant can typically supply electricity to roughly 75,000 to 100,000 homes, depending on consumption patterns.

Iran’s largest power plant by capacity is the Damavand Power Plant located in the Pakdasht area, roughly 50km (31 miles) southeast of Tehran, with a capacity of some 2,900MW, enough to power more than two million homes.

Which are Iran’s most important power plants?

Iran’s largest power plants include:

• Damavand (Pakdasht) Power Plant – Near Tehran.
  Fuel: Natural gas (combined-cycle).
  Capacity: 2,868MW.
• Shahid Salimi Power Plant – Neka, along the Caspian Sea coast.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,215MW.
• Shahid Rajaee Power Plant – Near Qazvin.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,043MW.
• Karun-3 Dam – Khuzestan Province.
  Fuel: Hydropower.
  Capacity: 2,000MW.
• Kerman Power Plant – Kerman.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 1,912MW.

Other smaller but strategically important power plants include:

• Ramin Power Plant – Ahvaz, Khuzestan.
  Fuel: Gas.
  Capacity: 1,903MW.
• Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant – On the Gulf.
  Fuel: Nuclear.
  Capacity: 1,000MW.
• Bandar Abbas Power Plant – Near the Strait of Hormuz.
  Fuel: Oil.
  Capacity: 1,330MW.

How does Iran generate its electricity?

Iran’s electricity system relies heavily on large thermal power plants fuelled by natural gas. The country has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and this fuel forms the backbone of its power system.

In 2025, 86 percent of Iran’s electricity came from natural gas.

Oil-fired plants provide a smaller share, generating roughly seven percent of electricity. Some power stations switch to diesel or fuel oil when natural gas supplies are tight, especially during winter demand peaks.

Hydropower accounts for about five percent of electricity. Large dams on rivers such as the Karun River generate power by using flowing water to spin turbines.

Nuclear energy contributes around two percent of the country’s electricity, mainly from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear reactor.

Renewables such as solar and wind play a very small role, together accounting for less than one percent of electricity generation.

Overall, more than 90 percent of Iran’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, making it one of the most gas-dependent power systems in the world.

Ashley Roberts returns to the I’m A Celebrity camp 14 years after she finished runner-up on the show Down Under and she will rejoin former stars as she bids to go one better

Ashley Roberts’ second stint in the I’m A Celebrity jungle is here after she headed to South Africa 2012. The songstress, now 44, finished runner-up in her camp behind EastEnders star Charlie Brooks.

And while she will be reappearing alongside former campmate David Haye, who finished in third, the former Pussycat Dolls star will be hoping to go one better this time around.

The second series of the ITV spin-off, which features some of the show’s most memorable campmates, is set to launch tonight (Monday, April 6) and Ashley labelled her comeback a “no brainer”.

Hosts Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly will join the returning stars in the South African jungle for some of the biggest trials in I’m A Celebrity … history. Away from the small screen, Ashley has had a lot of eyes on her for other reasons too…

READ MORE: I’m a Celeb’s Seann Walsh screams in horror in trial with Sinitta in first-lookREAD MORE: Why did Craig Charles quit I’m A Celebrity the first time as he returns for second take

Declan Donnelly links

Ashley Roberts has been linked with a number of high-profile romances over the years. A year after her first I’m A Celebrity experience, the American was rumoured to have been dating the show’s host, Dec.

While the rumours were never concrete, they were spotted together and Roberts admitted to “getting to know” him. Dec has since married talent manager Ali Astall, with the pair tying the knot in 2015.

Ryan Fletcher romance

A year after the Dec rumours, Ashley had moved on to fellow musician, Ryan Fletcher. The bassist for pop-rock band Lawson dated the Pussycat Dolls star in 2014, but their romance was short lived.

The pair were spotted at the time looking affectionate at a Justin Timberlake concert in London. Despite previously claiming to be just friends, the guitarist confirmed their relationship months later. He told us at the time: “Ashley and I are great – I’m loving it at the moment. It doesn’t feel like we’re in the spotlight and we see each other when we can.

“We are both really busy so we make the most of the time we get together. We just don’t think about everyone watching us and just get on with it.” Sadly for the pair, the flame fizzled out and they’re romance ended shortly after.

Giovanni Pernice relationship

The former Strictly star was all loved up with Ashley between 2018 and 2020. The duo met on the popular BBC dance show and quickly became an item.

The grew close in rehearsals, but managed kept their relationship a secret until after the show ended. Ashley was paired with pro Pasha Kovalev on the series, while Giovanni was teamed up with Steps star Faye Tozer.

The Italian announced the shock split in a tweet at the time, writing: “@ImAshleyRoberts and I have made the decision to separate as a couple. We remain friends and wish each other well for the future.”

He had previously gushed: “I never thought anyone would ever make me smile, laugh and steal my heart as fast as you did !! I love you amore.”

Pussycat Dolls feud

Five years after the group’s previous comeback was called off due to the coronavirus pandemic and a brutal feud, Ashley is part of the plans to bring the band back together. However, three members won’t be joining as an ongoing feud ensues.

In 2012, Ashley and Kimberly Wyatt sensationally quit the group, with Kimberly blasting Nicole Scherzinger in a scathing statement. While Kimberly claimed Nicole was “no friend of hers,” Ashley was a bit more tactful with her exit.

She said at the time on her official website: “Yes, I have left the Pussycat Dolls..I love you all sooo much!!! I am so grateful to have the love and support of all of you. It was an amazing ride and I learned so much!

“I am currently have gotten the acting bug and am falling in love with it. I have a few projects in the works and when ready I will announce more details to all of you.”

And it appears her polite exit has helped with the reunion. Nicole, Ashley and Kimberly will all return to the stage, but without Melody Thornton, Jessica Sutta or Carmit Bachar.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Intel (INTC) has been in ongoing discussions with at least two large customers, including Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) (GOOGL), for its advanced packaging services, Wired reported, citing multiple sources.

Intel’s ambitions for its advanced packaging business depend largely on

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. I hope those of you who participate enjoyed the Easter festivities over the weekend. But why does a rabbit bring eggs? Shouldn’t it be the Easter Chicken?

We are only nine games into the season, far too early to reach any conclusions. Yes, the offense struggled for a few games, but the Dodgers are still 7-2. And the offense’s struggles wouldn’t have been noticeable if it had happened for a few games in the middle of the season instead of right at the start.

So let’s turn our attention to something else. I get emails every week asking about Charley Steiner. He handled the radio call for the first three innings on opening day, then left and hasn’t been back since. Stephen Nelson put up a picture of Steiner and Rick Monday that you can see by clicking here.

In October 2024, Bill Plaschke wrote a column detailing Steiner’s battle with multiple myeloma blood cancer. You can read that column here. Steiner sat out the 2004 season because of it. He called six innings on opening day in 2025 and three innings on opening day this year.

In his column, Plaschke wrote:

—”He endured constant debilitating lower back pain. He lost 50 pounds. He was confined to a wheelchair. He initially moved his bed from the second floor of his Westside home down to the family room because he couldn’t climb the stairs. He enlisted the full-time help of nurses. It wasn’t pretty.”

—“He’s gone through hell,” said his longtime radio partner Rick Monday.

—”An extremely private person, Steiner lived the nightmare without fanfare, without telling anyone outside of his inner circle, the loquacious storyteller keeping his most important words to himself.”

At the time, Steiner’s cancer was in remission, which is why he talked about it. I don’t want to speculate too much about his current health, but the fact he has called only nine innings since then can’t be a great sign. The Dodgers have kept him on the payroll and support him, just as they have done with Andrew Toles. It is one of the great things about the organization.

When Steiner was calling games on the radio full time, I would occasionally criticize him for not mentioning the score and game situation enough. Now that seems rather meaningless.

So, with so much divisiveness and unkindness in the world, here is what I would like you to do. If you remember a particular call of Steiner’s, or a moment he made you laugh, or if you just want to wish him well and let him know Dodgers fans have not forgotten him, send me an email at houston.mitchell@latimes.com, and I will compile them in a future newsletter. I’m sure he will see it, and if we can bring a little sunshine into someone’s day, then we have accomplished a good thing.

A couple of my favorite Steiner moments:

When Steiner was with ESPN, he couldn’t stop laughing after hearing Carl Lewis singing the national anthem. His laughter will make you laugh. You can watch that here.

Steiner talks about growing up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and how much Vin Scully meant to him. You can watch that here.

Mookie injured

Mookie Betts injured his back while running the bases during Saturday’s victory and was put on the injured list on Sunday because of a strained right oblique. According to WebMD, the oblique muscles are broad, diagonal abdominal muscles located on the sides of the torso (internal and external) that enable trunk rotation, side-bending, and core stability. They assist in breathing and protect the spine, with external obliques running over internal obliques in opposite directions and…. this is why I’m not a doctor.

Injuries are one of the biggest things that could derail the Dodgers this season. Can they survive for four-to-six weeks without Betts? Sure, their offense is build to withstand things such as that. But if multiple hitters start ailing, then there could be a problem. Just look at the Lakers. Cruising toward the playoffs, with some experts saying they could at least reach the conference finals. Then, suddenly Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves are injured, and winning a first-round series now seems problematic.

The Dodgers recalled Hyeseong Kim from Oklahoma City, where he has been crushing the ball. Kim and Miguel Rojas will share time to shortstop.

How much is too much?

On opening day, the Dodgers offered a Shohei Ohtani collectors cup for $75, with free soda all game. Many fans online were outraged by the price. For the second game of the season, the Dodgers dropped the price to $68.99 and said you could get free refills of soda all season long.

And actually, if you go to a few games a season and drink soda, that is quite a bargain, considering sodas at the stadium cost around $11.99. Of course, your ensuing bill for the onset of diabetes will make it less of a bargain.

Survey says

We asked, “Which Dodger closer had the best entrance music?” The results, after 10,941 votes:

Eric Gagne, “Welcome to the Jungle” — 53.9%
Edwin Díaz, “Narco” — 30.9%
Kenley Jansen, “California Love” — 15.2%

Up next

Monday: Dodgers (*-Justin Wrobleski, 0-0, 6.75 ERA) at Toronto (Max Scherzer, 1-0, 1.50 ERA), 4:05 p.m., Sportsnet LA, FS1, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

Tuesday: Dodgers (Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 1-1, 3.00 ERA) at Toronto (Kevin Gausman, 0-0, 0.75 ERA), 4:05 p.m., Sportsnet LA, TBS, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

Wednesday: Dodgers (Shohei Ohtani, 1-0, 0.00 ERA) at Toronto (Dylan Cease, 0-0, 2.79 ERA), noon, Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020

*-left-handed

In case you missed it

Dodgers put Mookie Betts on IL, call up Hyeseong Kim before sweeping Nationals

Dodgers offense stays hot as Andy Pages and Kyle Tucker balance lineup with big hits

‘A new day’: Shohei Ohtani hits first homer of the season, Dodgers wake up at the plate

Dodgers Debate: LET’S PANIC! Or let’s wait for that?

Dodgers confident their bats will come alive soon despite series loss to Guardians

Shohei Ohtani battles through the rain to throw a one-hit gem in Dodgers’ win

And finally

Shohei Ohtani hits his first home run of the season. Watch and listen here.

Until next time….

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.