history

Kyiv, Ukraine – Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took place 82 years ago.

“He covered me with hay and told me not to get out no matter what,” the 94-year-old woman told Al Jazeera – and asked to withhold her last name and personal details.

On July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary group armed with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya’s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing ethnic Polish men and raping women.

“They also killed anyone who tried to protect the Poles,” Nadiya said.

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn’t go out much, but her face, framed by milky white hair, lights up when she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.

She also remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed or forced to flee to Poland, even though her parents never spoke about the attack, now known as the Volyn massacre.

“The Soviets forbade it,” Nadiya said, noting how Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept fighting the Soviets until the early 1950s.

Nadiya said her account may enrage today’s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed freedom from Moscow during World War II.

After Communist purges, violent atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR in 1941.

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve out an independent Ukraine and threw one of the UIA’s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a concentration camp.

But another UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a role in the Holocaust – and in the mass killings of ethnic Poles in what is now the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and adjacent areas in 1943.

Genocide?

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten or burned to death during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who consider it a “genocide”.

“What’s horrifying isn’t the numbers but the way the murders were carried out,” Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio on July 11.

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 as “The Volyn Massacre Day” in remembrance of the 1943 killings.

“A martyr’s death for just being Polish deserves to be commemorated,” the bill said.

“From Poland’s viewpoint, yes, this is a tragedy of the Polish people, and Poland is fully entitled to commemorate it,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

However, rightist Polish politicians may use the day to promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh response from Kyiv may further trigger tensions, he said.

“All of these processes ideally should be a matter of discussion among historians, not politicians,” he added.

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, call the Volyn massacre a “tragedy”. They cite a lower death toll and accuse the Polish army of the reciprocal killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych have often been hailed as national heroes, and hundreds of streets, city squares and other landmarks are named after them.

Evolving views and politics

“[The USSR] branded ‘Banderite’ any proponent of Ukraine’s independence or even any average person who stood for the legitimacy of public representation of Ukrainian culture,” Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.

The demonisation backfired when many advocates of Ukraine’s independence began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, “turning a blind eye to their radicalism, xenophobia and political violence”, he said.

In the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to celebrate the UIA, despite objections from many Ukrainians, especially in the eastern and southern regions.

These days, the UIA is seen through a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, according to Likhachyov.

Ukraine’s political establishment sees the Volyn massacre and armed skirmishes between Ukrainians and Poles as only “a war related to the Ukrainians’ ‘fight for their land’”, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University in Germany.

“And during a war, they say, anything happens, and a village, where the majority is on the enemy’s side, is considered a ‘legitimate target’,” he explained.

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters “fully accepted” Bandera’s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, he said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied throughout Ukraine to commemorate Bandera’s January 1 birthday.

“Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,” they chanted.

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations in protest, reminding them of the UIA’s role in the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.

Far-right activists began volunteering to fight Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 and enlisted in droves in 2022.

“In the situational threat to [Ukraine’s] very existence, there’s no room for reflection and self-analysis,” rights advocate Likhachyov said.

Warsaw, meanwhile, will keep using the Volyn massacre to make demands for concessions while threatening to oppose Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, he said.

As for Moscow, it “traditionally plays” the dispute to sow discord between Kyiv and Warsaw, analyst Tyshkevych said, and to accuse Ukrainian leaders of “neo-Nazi” proclivities.

Is reconciliation possible?

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre remain deeply contested. For many Ukrainians, the UIA’s image as freedom fighters has been bolstered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing aside reflection on the group’s role in the World War II atrocities.

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has become a marker of national trauma and, at times, a point of leverage in political disputes with Ukraine.

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims in the western Ukrainian village of Puzhniky after Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium on such exhumations. Some believe this may be a first step in overcoming the tensions over the Volyn massacre.

Reconciliation, historians say, won’t come easily.

“The way to reconciliation is often painful and requires people to accept historical realities they’re uncomfortable with,” Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.

“Both [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that  can handle an objective investigation of past atrocities in ways that a country like Russia unfortunately can not,” he said.

It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November, that the Democratic Party’s brand is in tatters.

This week, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that congressional Democrats have a minuscule 19% approval rating — an all-time low in the history of that particular poll. Earlier in the week, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly found that the party as a whole has an approval rating of 40% — considerably lower than the Republican Party’s 48% approval rating found by the same poll. Nor can Democrats necessarily rely on any GOP infighting to redound, in seesaw-like fashion, to their own benefit; for all the sturm und drang generated by the “Epstein files” affair, President Trump’s approval ratings have actually increased among Republicans this month.

The issue for Democrats is that their current unpopularity is not a byproduct of the political scandals of the day or the vicissitudes of Trump’s polarizing social media feeds. Rather, the problem for Democrats is structural — and it requires a rethink and a reboot from soup to nuts. As this column argued last November, it is clear that Barack Obama’s winning 2008 political coalition — comprising racial and ethnic minorities, young people and highly educated white voters — has completely withered. “Obamaism” is dead — and Democrats have to reconcile themselves to that demise. At minimum, they should stop taking advice from Obama himself; the 44th president was Kamala Harris’ top 2024 campaign trail surrogate, and we saw how that worked out.

In order for the party to rise up anew, as has often happened throughout American history following a period of dominance from a partisan rival, Democrats are going to have to move beyond their intersectional obsessions and woke grievances that have so greatly alienated large swaths of the American people on issues pertaining to race, gender, immigration, and crime and public safety. And the good news, for conservative Americans who candidly wish the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, is that Democrats seem completely incapable of doing this.

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old recent winner of New York City’s much-discussed Democratic mayoral primary, is a case in point.

The Ugandan-born Shiite Muslim Mamdani is a democratic socialist, but he is better understood as a full-fledged communist. That isn’t hyperbole: One merely needs to consider his proposed policies for New York City and review his broader history of extreme far-left political rhetoric. Mamdani won the primary, and is now seeking the mayor’s office, on a genuinely radical platform: support for citywide “free” bus rides, city-owned grocery stores, a full rent freeze on certain low-income units, outright seizure of private property from arbitrarily “bad” landlords, race-based taxation (an assuredly unconstitutional proposal), a $30 minimum wage and more. A true Marxist, Mamdani has said “abolition of private property” would be an improvement over existing inequality. And he has something of a penchant for quoting Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” too.

But Mamdani’s communism is only part of his overall political persona. He also emphasizes, and trades in, exactly the sort of woke culture warring and intersectional identity politics that have defined the post-Obama Democratic Party. Mamdani is a long-standing harsh critic of Israel who had declined to distance himself from the antisemitic rallying cry “globalize the intifada.” Most recently, he also opposed Trump’s decision to have the U.S. intervene in last month’s Israel-Iran war, condemning it as a “new, dark chapter” that could “plunge the world deeper into chaos.” (In the real world, there were zero American casualties, and the bombing run was followed promptly by a ceasefire.)

There is, to be sure, nothing good down this road for denizens of New York City. If Mamdani wins this fall, expect a massive exodus of people, businesses and capital from the Big Apple — probably to the Sun Belt. But even more relevant: There is nothing good down that road for the national Democratic Party, as a whole. In order to demonstrate that the party has learned anything from its 2024 shellacking and its current abysmal standing, it will have to sound and act less crazy on the tangible issues that affect Americans’ day-to-day lives.

That isn’t happening. If Mamdani’s rise is representative — and it may well be, especially as other far-left firebrands like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) continue to make outsize noise — then Democrats seem to be moving in the exact opposite direction: full-on Marxism and woke craziness. If the party continues down this path, it will experience nothing but mid- to long-term political pain. But as one of the aforementioned conservatives who wishes the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, I’m not too upset about that.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

WASHINGTON — Democrats may not agree on a solution to the country’s broken immigration system — but President Trump’s crackdown in Los Angeles has finally given them a line of attack.

‘Better terrain’

A flicker of hope has emerged from a brutal polling environment for the party suggesting the public is torn over Trump’s blunt tactics in the immigration raids. The recent set of numbers have been an outlier on an issue that has otherwise been Trump’s strongest since taking office.

“Absolutely, sentiment is shifting,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley. “You’re seeing more dissatisfaction and less agreeance with the president’s strategy on immigration enforcement.”

Polls released over the course of the last month found that, while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believe that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts. And a new survey from Gallup found record public support for immigration, with public concern over crossings and support for mass deportations down significantly from a year ago.

Top Democratic operatives are testing new talking points, hoping to press their potential advantage.

“The only place in the world that Donald Trump has put boots on the ground and deployed troops is in America,” Rahm Emanuel, a veteran party insider who served under President Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago, said this week. “In L.A., they get troops on the ground. That’s the Trump Doctrine. The only place he’s actually put boots on the ground is in an American city.”

In Washington, efforts to corral Democratic lawmakers behind a unified message on immigration have been futile ever since the party split over the Laken Riley Act, one of the first bills passed this term. The law allows ICE to detain undocumented immigrants that have faced charges, been arrested or convicted of nonviolent crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

But last month, when the shock of Trump’s military deployment to Los Angeles was still fresh, every single Democrat in the Senate joined in a call on the White House to withdraw the troops. The letter had no power or influence, and was paid little attention as the nascent crisis unfolded. But it was a small victory for a party that saw a rare glimpse of political unity amid the chaos.

Now, Democrats are hoping in part that Trump becomes a victim of his own success, with focus pulled from a quiet border that has seen record-low crossings since he resumed office.

In the House, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) is leading an immigration working group, sources said, hoping to foster consensus in the party on how to proceed.

“The issue has gotten a little less hot, because the border is calmed down,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now the focus is raids, which is better terrain for us.”

A party split

In May, Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a statewide race for his Senate seat in Arizona the same year that Trump handily won the state’s presidential contest, released a vision for immigration policy. His proposal, titled “Securing the Border and Ensuring Economic Prosperity,” received little fanfare. But the plan called for significant border security enhancements as well as an increase in visa and green card opportunities and a pathway to citizenship.

It was a shot at the middle from an ambitious politician scheduled to visit Iowa, a crucial state in the presidential nominating contest, early next month.

Yet it is unclear whether efforts by Gallego, a border state senator, to moderate the party’s messaging on immigration will resonate with its base. Gallego was one of only 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Laken Riley Act.

On the other side of the party, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, have focused their criticism on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with Mamdani calling the agency “fascist” in its tactics.

“Democrats built the deportation machine that Trump has now turbocharged,” said Elliott Young, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College. “The Democrats have an opportunity to stake out a humane and economically sensible position of encouraging immigration and welcoming our future citizens from around the world. The Republicans will always be better at cruelty and xenophobia, so better to leave that to them.”

In her research at UC Berkeley, Mora still sees “very strong support” across party lines for a pathway to citizenship, as well as for the constitutional preservation of birthright citizenship. But she is skeptical of an emerging strategy from a segment of Democrats, like Gallego, to adopt a prevailing Republican narrative of rampant criminal activity among immigrants while still promoting legal protections for the rest.

Having it both ways will be difficult, she said. The Trump administration says that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is a criminal, regardless of their record once they got here.

“The Democratic Party is in this sort of place where, if you look at the Ruben Gallegos and that element, they’re sort of ceding the narrative as they talk about getting rid of the criminals,” Mora said. “Narratives of immigrants and criminality, despite all the data showing otherwise, are so tightly connected.”

“It’s a tricky dance to make,” she added.

An L.A. opportunity

Before Gallego’s visit to Iowa, California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited South Carolina earlier this month, a transparent political stop in another crucial early primary state by a Democratic presidential contender.

For Newsom, the politics of the raids in his home state have been unavoidable from the start. But the governor’s speech in Bennettsville teased a political line of attack that appears to reflect shifting public opinion against ICE tactics.

Linking the raids with Trump’s response to the Los Angeles fires, Newsom noted the president was silent on the six-month anniversary of the devastating event, while that day ordering hundreds of federal troops into MacArthur Park in the heart of the city.

“Kids were taken away and hidden into the buildings, as they paraded around with American flags on horseback in military garb and machine guns — all masked,” Newsom said. “Not one arrest was made.”

“He wanted to make a point,” Newsom added. “Cruelty is the point.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom threatens Texas over power grab. He’s blowing smoke
The deep dive: Trump cuts to California National Weather Service leave ‘critical’ holes: ‘It’s unheard of’
The L.A. Times Special: These California tech hubs are set to dominate the AI economy
More to come,
Michael Wilner
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​​On the third and final day, Dizdarevic and most of those around him could not contain their emotions as they reached Potocari, the site of the memorial to Srebrenica victims.

In the grassy valley dotted with row upon row of white marble tombstones, are the remnants of the gray slab concrete buildings where the UN Dutch battalion had been stationed to protect Bosniaks during the war.

But in July 1995, the battalion was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces, leading to the bloodshed that ensued.

Reaching the site where thousands were brutally killed brought “overwhelming sadness” to Dizdarevic.

“It was very emotional,” he said.

But Dizdarevic was also awash with relief – not only from the physical toll of the march being over, but also from the emotional weight of having walked in the footsteps of victims who never made it to safety.

“It was very important for every one of us to finish this march,” he said.

“This remembrance should lead to a prevention of potential future genocide.”

As he and his companions set up one final camp in Potocari, before the memorial event there the next day on the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Dizdarevic pondered what justice for its victims looks like.

“The search for justice … is a very difficult process … Even more difficult is that the Serbian society … [is] very in favour of this genocide,” he said.

“I am afraid that Serbian society – they did not undergo this catharsis [of] saying, ‘Yes, we did this and we are guilty, sorry.’ [On the] contrary, they are very proud of it … or they deny it.”

In the years since, the International Court of Justice and courts in the Balkans have sentenced almost 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials collectively to more than 700 years in prison for the genocide.

But many of the accused remain unpunished, and genocide denial is rampant, especially among political leaders in Serbia and the Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska.

Milorad Dodik, the entity’s current leader, whose image appears on billboards flashing the three-finger salute, a symbol of Serb nationalism, has dismissed the Srebrenica genocide as a “fabricated myth”.

Still, Dizdarevic has held on to hope, a feeling renewed during the march as he watched countless young people take part, many of them born after the Bosnian war.

“What is, for me, very important, [is] that the young men and women who participate in this march understand … they should play an active role in the prevention of future genocide by creating a positive environment in their societies,” he said.

On July 11, the day after the march ended, Dizdarevic and his group joined thousands in Potocari to mark the sombre anniversary, where the remains of seven newly identified victims were laid to rest.

There, they stood in solemn silence as the coffins were lowered into freshly dug graves, soon to be marked with new marble headstones, joining the more than 6,000 others already laid to rest.

Reporting for this article was made possible by the NGO Islamic Relief. 

Like any Test match there were a number of factors at play.

The pitch certainly favoured the bowlers, with Australia’s first innings 225 the highest total of the match before the tourists were bowled out for just 121 in their second innings.

Then there is the quality of the opposition. Australia are the number one ranked Test team in the world while West Indies are eighth out of 12.

The tourists, who host England in the Ashes this winter, won their matches in the three-Test series by 159, 133 and 176 runs respectively.

Mitchell Starc, one of the best fast bowlers of this generation, bowled a fearsome opening spell that demolished the West Indies’ top order in Jamaica on Monday.

“Out of nowhere,” said Australia captain Pat Cummins, Starc can “tear an opposition apart and win a game for you.”

Left-armer Starc was also armed with a pink ball since the third Test was a day-night game. Starc has taken 81 wickets in day-night cricket, far ahead of the next best, his Australia team-mate Cummins who has 43.

The pink ball has similar characteristics to one-day cricket’s white ball in that some believe it swings more, certainly in the right conditions. Of bowlers to have taken more than 200 wickets in one-day internationals, only India’s Mohammed Shami (25.8) has a better strike-rate (average balls bowled per wicket) than Starc’s frankly incredible 26.6.

Australia were also helped by some pretty sloppy shots as the batting line-up disintegrated. Of those who played, opener John Campbell was the highest-ranked player in the world Test batting rankings at 78. Australia have four in the current top 20: Steve Smith, Travis Head, Alex Carey and Usman Khawaja.

“Assessing this series is simple: the bowlers kept us in the contest and the batting let us down time after time,” was captain Roston Chase’s frank assessment.

It is further evidence of the decline of West Indies cricket since its 1970s and 1980s heyday.

Of the 87 Test series they have played since 2000, West Indies have won just 23, with 15 of those coming against three weaker Test-playing nations in Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan.

Three of their five lowest innings totals have occurred in the 21st Century, with another in 1999.

That said, they did claim a credible draw in a two-Test series in Australia in 2024, proving they do have the quality to compete with the best on their day. They were also without some of their more established players such as Jason Holder, Kemar Roach and Gudakesh Motie.

When a country like Armenia sends a film out into the world, it’s not just art. It’s a way to preserve memory, to reach a scattered diaspora. Each film offers the world stories that might otherwise be forgotten. So when President Trump proposes a 100% tariff on all films “produced in foreign lands,” the damage isn’t limited to foreign competitors or outsourcing studios. It threatens to shut out small nations like Armenia, for whom cinema is a lifeline.

The proposal hasn’t taken effect — yet. But July 9 marked a turning point in Trump’s broader tariff agenda, with a deadline for reimposing sweeping trade penalties on countries deemed “unfair.” While the situation for films remains unclear, the proposal alone has done damage and continues to haunt the industry. The tariff idea arises from the worldview that treats international exchange as a threat — and cultural expression as just another import to tax.

Take “Amerikatsi” (2022), the extraordinary recent movie by Emmy-winning actor and director Michael A. Goorjian. Inspired by his grandfather’s escape from the Armenian genocide — smuggled across the ocean in a crate — the project is not just a movie; it’s a universal story rooted in the Armenian experience, made possible by international collaboration and driven by a deep personal mission. Goorjian filmed it in Armenia with local crews, including people who, months later, would find themselves on the front lines of war. One was killed. Others were injured. Still, they sent him videos from the trenches saying all they wanted was to return to the set. That is the spirit a tariff like this would crush.

Armenia is a democracy in a dangerous neighborhood. Its history is riddled with trauma — genocide, war, occupation — and its present is haunted by threats from neighboring authoritarian regimes. But even as bombs fall and borders close, its people create. Films like “Aurora’s Sunrise” (2022) and “Should the Wind Drop” (2020) carry voices across oceans, turning pain into poetry, history into cinema. These films don’t rely on wide releases. They depend on arthouses, festivals, streamers and distributors with the courage and curiosity to take a chance. A 100% tariff would devastate that.

Indeed, the ripple effects of such a tariff would upend the entire global film ecosystem. Modern cinema is inherently international: A Georgian director might work with a French editor, an American actor and a German financier.

So sure, many American films use crew and facilities in Canada. But international co-productions are a growing cornerstone of the global film industry, particularly in Europe. Belgium produces up to 72% of its films in partnership with foreign nations, often France. Other notable co-production leaders include Luxembourg (45% with France), Slovakia (38% with Czechia) and Switzerland (31% with France). These partnerships are often driven by shared language, which is why the U.S. is also frequently involved in co-productions with Britain as well as Canada. Israel too has leaned into this model, using agreements with countries such as France, Germany and Canada to gain access to international audiences and funding mechanisms.

The U.S. government cannot unmake this system and should not try to do so. To penalize “foreign-made” films is to punish Americans too — artists, producers and distributors who thrive on collaboration. You can’t build a wall around storytelling.

Supporters of the tariff argue it protects American workers. But Hollywood is already one of the most globalized industries on Earth, and the idea that it suffers from too many foreign films is absurd. If anything, it suffers from too few. The result of this policy won’t be a thriving domestic market — but a quieter, flatter, more parochial one. A landscape where the next “Amerikatsi” never gets seen, where a generation of Armenian American youth never discovers their history through a movie screen.

If America still wants to lead in the 21st century — not just militarily and economically but morally — it should lead through culture and avoid isolation.

Stories like “Amerikatsi” remind us why that matters. A film that begins with a boy smuggled in a crate across the ocean ends with a message of joy and resilience. That’s not just Armenian history — it’s American history too. It cannot be separated. Unless we want that kind of storytelling priced out of our cinemas (and off our streaming platforms), we must keep the doors open.

For America to turn its back on stories like these would be a betrayal of everything film can be. And it would impoverish American society too. That way lies not greatness but provinciality.

Alexis Alexanian is a New York City-based film producer, consultant and educator whose credits include “A League of Their Own” and “Pieces of April.” She is a past president of New York Women in Film & Television and sits on the board of BAFTA North America.

Hey, I’m back from Covid! Did everyone miss me? I see no hands raised out there. No one? OK, well, on to the news!

From Chuck Schilken: Shaquille O’Neal has an issue with a recent ranking of the all-time best NBA players.

On Monday, Bleacher Report released its list of the “top 100 NBA players ever,” based on a compilation of rankings from a “legion of B/R NBA experts, writers and editors.”

O’Neal finished just outside the top five. He didn’t seem to have an issue with that.

Shaq’s beef was with the placement of his former Lakers teammate, the late Kobe Bryant, who landed outside of the top 10.

“Kobe at 11 is criminal,” O’Neal wrote on X in the comments of a Bleacher Report post that revealed the list’s top 20. He left his comment a little more than an hour after the original Bleacher Report post went live.

Here are the 10 players ranked ahead of Bryant, in order from the top: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, O’Neal, Tim Duncan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain and Stephen Curry.

Bryant is followed on the list by Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Durant, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.

Do you think Bryant is one of the 10 best NBA players of all time? Click here to vote in our survey and let us know.

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From Broderick Turner: Even with all the sports dignitaries in attendance and even though they were watching a rivalry game of sorts between the Lakers and Clippers, the fans inside the Thomas & Mack Center still were mostly enamored with Bronny James.

That is the kind of drawing power James had even with his dad, LeBron James, watching again from his baseline seats. That’s the kind of draw James had even with Steve Ballmer, Tyronn Lue, JJ Redick and Rob Pelinka in attendance.

Even with Austin Reaves, Deandre Ayton and Kawhi Leonard looking on, Bronny James was the center of attention yet again.

James had one of his better NBA Summer League games, but it was the Clippers who came out on top in a 67-58 win Monday night at Nevada Las Vegas.

James had 17 points, five rebounds and five assists in 24 minutes and 17 seconds.

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Lakers-Clippers box score

CLIPPERS

From Broderick Turner: The Clippers team Brook Lopez grew up watching as a young kid in Southern California is not that same franchise anymore.

These Clippers are about putting a winning product on the court and about putting together the right talent to win games — and that is what sold Lopez on signing with them.

“It’s crazy to see, but it’s very cool — seeing the climb, the ascent,” Lopez said Monday afternoon at a news conference hours before the Clippers and Lakers played each other in an NBA Summer League game at Nevada Las Vegas. “I’m a Cali boy. I grew up in the Valley, in North Hollywood. Obviously things were very different back then and to see where the Clippers have come now, it’s just astonishing, it’s beautiful. I’m glad to be a part of it and hopefully I can help take them even further up.”

Lopez decided not to return to the Bucks after seven seasons in Milwaukee and opted not to sign with the Lakers, joining the Clippers on a two-year, $18-million deal.

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BASEBALL

From Bill Shaikin: The suspension of former Dodgers pitcher Julio Urías ends Wednesday. The next day, Major League Baseball will remove him from its restricted list, and any team that wishes to sign him can do so.

Scott Boras, the agent for Urías, said the pitcher — the only player suspended twice for violating baseball’s policy on domestic violence and sexual assault — hopes to resume playing.

“He still has every intention to continue his career,” Boras said here Monday. “He’s getting in shape. Obviously, he’ll have options that are open to him.”

Boras declined to discuss any of those potential options Monday, since the suspension has not yet expired. It is believed that multiple teams have checked in on Urías, but it is uncertain whether a deal would be struck and, if so, he might be able to help a major league team.

“It depends on how teams view the situation and view his skill,” Boras said.

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Jacob Misiorowski is the talk of the All-Star Game. Why Dodgers are partially to thank

Seattle’s Cal Raleigh becomes first catcher to win MLB All-Star Home Run Derby

MLB draft: Landon Hodge of Crespi goes to the White Sox in the fourth round

L.A. OLYMPICS

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: LA28 released the first look at the 2028 Olympic competition schedule on Monday, exactly three years before the Games open on July 14, 2028. The slate is highlighted by a break in tradition to accommodate the organizing committee’s unique, dual-venue opening ceremony plan.

Instead of beginning the schedule with swimming, as has been customary in recent Games, track and field will instead take place during the first week of competition from July 15 to 24 at the Coliseum. Swimming will follow from July 22 to 30 at SoFi Stadium, where an indoor pool will be built after the opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony, now officially scheduled for 5 p.m. PDT on July 14, 2028, will be shared between the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium. Swimming will deliver the final competition of the 2028 Olympics as the last medal events are set to begin at 3 p.m. on July 30, 2028. Three hours later, the Olympic Games will conclude with the closing ceremony at 6 p.m. at the Coliseum.

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THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1912 — Jim Thorpe wins the decathlon at the Stockholm Olympics and, in the closing ceremony, Sweden’s King Gustav proclaims Thorpe the world’s greatest athlete.

1922 — Gene Sarazen shoots a final-round 68 to beat out Bobby Jones and John Black for the U.S. Open golf championship.

1923 — Amateur Bobby Jones beats Bobby Cruikshank by two strokes in a playoff to win the U.S. Open golf title.

1927 — Bobby Jones wins the British Open shooting a championship record 7-under 285 at the Old Course in St Andrews, Scotland. It’s the second straight Open title for the amateur, who goes wire-to-wire for a six-stroke victory over Aubrey Boomer and Fred Dobson.

1945 — Byron Nelson defeats Sam Byrd in the final round of the PGA golf tournament.

1961 — Arnold Palmer shoots a 284 at Royal Birkdale to win his first British Open title.

1967 — Argentina’s Roberto DeVicenzo wins the British Open by two strokes over defending champion Jack Nicklaus.

1972 — Lee Trevino wins his second consecutive British Open title by beating Jack Nicklaus by one stroke.

1978 — Jack Nicklaus shoots a 281 at St. Andrews to win his third and final British Open.

1984 — Hollis Stacy wins her third U.S. Women’s Open golf title, beating Rosie Jones by one stroke.

1990 — Betsy King overcomes an 11-shot deficit over the final 33 holes to win her second consecutive U.S. Women’s Open as Patty Sheehan blows an eight-shot lead over the final 23 holes.

1991 — Sandhi Ortiz-DelValle becomes the first woman to officiate a men’s pro basketball game, working a United States Basketball League game between the New Haven Skyhawks and the Philadelphia Spirit.

2000 — Lennox Lewis stops Francois Botha at 2:39 of the second round to retain his WBC and IBF heavyweight titles in London.

2007 — BYU star Daniel Summerhays becomes the first amateur winner in Nationwide Tour history. Summerhays scores a two-stroke victory over Chad Collins and Chris Nallen in the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Invitational.

2007 — Copa América Final, Maracaibo, Venezuela: Defending champions Brazil win their 8th title with a 3-0 win over Argentina.

2010 — Rory McIlroy, a 21-year-old from Northern Ireland, ties the major championship record by shooting a 9-under 63 in the opening round of the British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.

2010 — Caster Semenya wins her first race since being cleared to return to competition after undergoing gender tests, winning the 800 meters in a modest time against a weak field at a low-key meet in Finland.

2018 — Novak Djokovic wins his fourth Wimbledon title with a 6-2, 6-2 7-6 (3) victory over Kevin Anderson. It’s Djokovic’s 13th major trophy, the fourth-highest total in the history of men’s tennis, trailing only Roger Federer’s 20, Rafael Nadal’s 17 and Pete Sampras’ 14. At No. 21, Djokovic is the lowest-ranked Wimbledon titlist since Goran Ivanisevic in 2001.

2018 — France wins its second World Cup title with a 4-2 win over Croatia in a dramatic final in Moscow.

THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

1901 — Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants pitched his first of two career no-hitters, beating the St. Louis Cardinals 5-0.

1921 — NY Yankees slugger Babe Ruth ties MLB record of 138 career home runs (held by Roger Connor since 1895).

1960 — Baltimore’s Brooks Robinson goes 5-for-5, hitting for the cycle and driving in three runs to lead the Orioles past the Chicago White Sox 5-2.

1969 — Cincinnati’s Lee May hit four home runs in a doubleheader split with the Atlanta Braves. May had two home runs and drove in five runs in both games. The Reds lost the opener 9-8 but won the second game 10-4.

1969 — Rod Carew stole home off Chicago’s Gerry Nyman in the Minnesota Twins’ 6-2 victory. It was Carew’s seventh steal of home for the year and tied Pete Reiser’s 1946 major league mark.

1973 — Nolan Ryan of the Angels struck out 17 batters and threw his second no-hitter of the year, beating Detroit 6-0.

1980 — Johnny Bench broke Yogi Berra’s record for home runs by a catcher, and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Montreal Expos 12-7. Bench hit his 314th homer as a catcher off David Palmer. Bench had 33 home runs while playing other positions.

1997 — The San Francisco Giants scored 13 runs to set a modern NL record for runs in a seventh inning en route to a 16-2 rout of the San Diego Padres. The Giants set the NL record for the most runs in a seventh inning since 1900.

1999 — After 22½ years in the dreary Kingdome, Seattle finally played a home game outdoors, moving into a $517.6-million ballpark with a retractable roof. Jose Mesa wasted a ninth-inning lead by walking four batters and the Mariners lost 3-2 to the San Diego Padres in Safeco Field’s opener.

2003 — Garret Anderson of the Angels went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer and a double, powering the American League past the National League 7-6 in the All-Star Game.

2005 — Baltimore’s Rafael Palmeiro became the 26th player to reach 3,000 hits, curling an RBI double into the left-field corner off Joel Pineiro in the fifth inning of a 6-3 win over Seattle. Palmeiro joined Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray as the only players with 3,000 hits and 500 homers.

2007 — The Philadelphia Phillies lost their 10,000th game, 10-2 to St. Louis. The franchise, born in 1883 as the Philadelphia Quakers and later unofficially called the Blue Jays in the mid-1940s, fell to 8,810-10,000.

2008 — Justin Morneau slid home just in time on Michael Young’s sacrifice fly in the 15th inning, giving the American League a 4-3 victory in the All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. The AL extended its unbeaten streak to 12.

2014 — With Derek Jeter going out a winner in his last All-Star appearance, Mike Trout drove in two runs with a triple and a double to lead the American League past the National League 5-3. Jeter started his 14th and final midsummer classic and went 2 for 2 before being removed in the top of the fourth inning.

2017 — Cody Bellinger became the first Dodgers rookie to hit for the cycle and Alex Wood became the first Dodgers pitcher in more than a century to win his first 11 decisions in a season, helping Los Angeles beat the Miami Marlins 7-1.

2021 — Tampa Bay catcher Travis d’Arnaud becomes first player in MLB history to hit 3 homers while catching and batting leadoff in the Rays’ 5-4 win over the NY Yankees.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Few initiatives of the Trump administration more seriously undermine our understanding of the nation’s past than Executive Order 14023 from March 27, which promises “to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments.”

The order directs the Interior secretary to cleanse all National Park Service sites of any signage that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” and instead “emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” The Park Service staff was also instructed to purge gift shops of books that could be construed as critical of any American. In a similar vein, the Smithsonian Institution was ordered to remove “improper ideology” from its properties to assure they reflected “American greatness.”

Unwilling to depend on park personnel to enforce the patriotism mandate, the Trump administration is enlisting park visitors to report potentially offending displays and ranger talks that present an insufficiently sanitized account of American history. On June 9, acting National Park Service director Jessica Bowron instructed regional directors to “post signage that will encourage public feedback via QR code and other methods that are viable” concerning anything they encounter at a park site that they believe denigrates the nation’s history. (It is worth noting that when queried about the QR code directive, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed to know nothing of the mandate, although he signed it on May 20.) How will the Trump administration respond if a visitor uses one of the mandatory QR codes to file a complaint?

And that is just the beginning. The Trump administration has also made clear it would like to eliminate entire sites that are not “National Parks, in the traditionally understood sense.” That means targeting those features that lack the grandeur of Yosemite and the Grand Tetons: smaller parks, sites and memorials, many of which honor women and minorities. Generally lacking soaring redwoods or massive gorges, these sites — many in urban areas where President Trump’s revisionist history has not caught on — would seem to describe places in California such as César Chavez National Monument outside Bakersfield, Manzanar National Historic Site and Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond.

Trump and his ahistorical myrmidons — he just mused that the Civil War ended in 1869 — regularly display an abysmal ignorance of basic American history. In their view, such federal (and presumably state) sites should present only a simplistic view of our complex 249-year history, one that virtually ignores the contributions and struggles of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Even before we see how many “tips” the Park Service’s invitation elicits from visitors eager to rat on rangers, the wording of the executive order itself is chilling. Any signage or lecture that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” — and who is to say what constitutes disparagement? — must be replaced with rhetoric that emphasizes “the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” Needless to say, the many sites that tell the stories of civil rights and anti-slavery struggles, the Civil War, the role of immigrants, the battles for labor rights and the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people are going to have a challenging time ensuring they in no way offend those willing to acknowledge only uninterrupted “greatness” of the American story. Sometimes our greatness has been manifested by our progress toward a more perfect union — and that story cannot be told without mentioning imperfections.

One need not have a PhD in history to appreciate the dire threat presented by these efforts to replace historical scholarship with uncritical flag-waving. Historians have an obligation to challenge myth, to uncover obscured stories, to give voice to those who were unable to fully participate in earlier eras of the American story because of their race, ethnicity, gender or viewpoints. That is why our government has protected sites including Ellis Island (which President Lyndon B. Johnson added to Statue of Liberty National Monument), Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument and Stonewall National Monument (both recognized by President Obama). Trump’s Orwellian orders seek to undo a half-century of scholarship that revealed a far more complex and nuanced history than the simplified versions taught to generations of schoolchildren.

Fortunately, professional historians have not been cowed like many university leaders, law firms and others who have shamefully capitulated to Trump’s assault on free speech and intellectual integrity. A March statement from more than 40 historical societies condemned recent efforts to “purge words, phrases, and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds [and] to distort, manipulate, and erase significant parts of the historical record.”

The national parks consistently rate as one of the most popular features of American government. Neither their rangers nor their exhibits should be intimidated into parroting a sanitized and distorted version of the nation’s past. As the historians declared, “We can neither deny what happened nor invent things that did not happen.” Americans should use those QR codes to send a clear message rejecting efforts to manipulate our history to suit an extremist ideological and political agenda.

John Lawrence is a visiting professor at the University of California’s Washington Center and a former staff director of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

A 3,800-year-old citadel of the Caral civilisation – one of the world’s oldest – has reopened for visitors in Peru after eight years of comprehensive restoration and research.

Researchers have identified the Penico archaeological site as a vital trading centre that connected early Pacific coastal communities with those in the Andes and Amazon regions.

Located in the Supe Valley, about 180km (110 miles) north of Lima and only 19km (12 miles) from the Pacific Ocean, Penico was an unremarkable hilly landscape until excavations commenced in 2017.

Archaeologists believe the site could provide crucial information about the enigmatic collapse of the Caral civilisation, which flourished between 3,000 and 1,800 BC.

The opening ceremony featured regional artists playing pututus – traditional shell trumpets – as part of an ancient ritual honouring Pachamama, Mother Earth, with ceremonial offerings of agricultural products, coca leaves, and local beverages.

“Penico was an organised urban centre devoted to agriculture and trade between the coast, the mountains and the forest,” archaeologist Ruth Shady, who leads research at the site, told the AFP news agency. She said the settlement dates to between 1,800 and 1,500 BC.

The site demonstrates sophisticated planning, strategically built on a geological terrace 600 metres (2,000ft) above sea level and parallel to a river to avoid flooding.

Research by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has uncovered 18 distinct structures, including public buildings and residential complexes. Scholars believe Penico was built during the same period as the earliest civilisations in the Middle East and Asia.

According to Shady, researchers hope the site will shed light on the crisis they believe hastened the Caral civilisation’s decline. This crisis, she explained, was linked to climate change that caused droughts and disrupted agricultural activities throughout the region.

“We want to understand how the Caral civilisation formed and developed over time, and how it came to be in crisis as a result of climate change,” she said.

SACRAMENTO — If there were more people like George Steffes in politics, the public wouldn’t hold the institution in such low esteem.

There’d be a lot less bull and much more thoughtful debate.

Paralytic polarization would give way to problem solving.

Steffes was the kind of person who people profess to want in the halls of government power.

If more Republicans like him were in Washington, there’d be no rationalization for tyrannical ICE raids at schools and workplaces because Congress and the president would have long ago compromised on immigration reform.

The Republican Party would still be modeled after Steffes’ early mentor — pragmatic conservative Ronald Reagan — and not be the misused tool of demagogue Donald Trump.

Steffes, 90, died peacefully in his sleep in a Sacramento hospital July 6. He was admitted two weeks earlier after a painful bathroom fall. The precise cause of death was unknown at this writing, according to his wife, Jamie Khan.

He was the last remaining top advisor of Gov. Reagan who remained in Sacramento after the future president moved on — the last person around the state Capitol with firsthand, close-up knowledge of the GOP icon’s governorship. He was Reagan’s lead legislative lobbyist.

Ordinarily, Steffes would be best known around the Capitol for being a past Reagan honcho. But he’s better known for being a classy guy.

No one in Sacramento for the last 60 years — at least — has been more liked, respected and successful as a lobbyist than Steffes. He’d easily rank in the top 10. No, make that top 5.

If there were more lobbyists like Steffes, the profession wouldn’t be such a pejorative.

He didn’t try to BS governors, legislators, clients or journalists. He was a straight shooter. People trusted him.

He always had a smile, but wasn’t a backslapper.

People instantly liked him — as I did when we first met in a Santa Cruz hotel bar one night in 1966 after a day of traipsing after Reagan running for governor. Steffes was a campaign aide. I was a reporter who found him highly interesting, thoughtful and candid.

But don’t take just my word about the guy.

“He was never part of the nonsense that is characteristic of those of us in politics,” former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told me. “I could rely on his word about good public policy. He was knowledgeable. He knew what he was doing.”

Brown, who was elected San Francisco mayor after leaving the Legislature, recalled that Steffes helped him pass a landmark bill “eliminating a law punishing people for being gay. I had to get Republican votes. George talked to them about how it wasn’t a bad vote to cast.”

The 1975 bill, signed by new Gov. Jerry Brown, repealed a century-old law prohibiting “crimes against nature.” The measure eliminated criminal penalties for oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults.

“The biggest thing that stands out to me about Steffes is how different he was from the mean-spirited slashing politics of today,” says Kip Lipper, a chief environmental consultant for several Democratic state Senate leaders. “He was unfailingly considerate, always in good spirits. He didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve like a lot of others.”

Retired journalist Lou Cannon, who has written several Reagan biographies, recalls that after the new Republican governor took office in 1967, he continued to bash Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent he had trounced the previous year.

“George told him, ‘Governor, that ‘s not worthy of you.’ So Reagan stopped. And he actually became quite fond of Pat Brown. George was never afraid to say to Reagan that he was wrong about something. And Reagan appreciated that.”

If only we had some White House aides with that courage and wisdom today.

Cannon adds: “One of the reasons I liked George is he didn’t bulls— you. If he couldn’t tell you something, he’d tell you he couldn’t tell ya. He was straight. Some people you interview them and you think, ‘Why did I waste my time?’”

Public relations veteran Donna Lucas says, “He set the standard for good lobbying in the Capitol.”

One Steffes rule: “He would never ask a legislator to do anything that wasn’t in their interest as well,” says Jud Clark, a former legislative staffer for Democrats and a close friend and business associate of Steffes.

Before he retired a few years ago, Steffes had a very long A-list of clients, such as American Express, Bechtel, IBM, Exxon and Union Pacific.

He also represented less lucrative clients such as newspapers, including The Times. And he advocated for some interests pro bono, mostly golf associations.

His passion was golf. And he became a golf instructor after retiring from lobbying.

“George was such a cerebral teacher,” says a pupil, Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen. “He didn’t spend a lot of time correcting your elbow bend. He focused on the mental part of the game.”

Steffes once told an interviewer: “Golf offered good lessons for life. If I had a bad stroke, I can’t fix it now. It’s in the past. … Sitting and stewing [about it] saps our mental energy. Focus on what you can do to move forward, win the issue.”

But Steffes did stew about the declining state of politics.

“Politics became too polarized — Republican conservatives, Democratic liberals. The middle ground where he used to operate was disappearing,” his wife, Jamie, told me last week.

Reagan’s GOP that formed Steffes’ philosophy of political pragmatism had already disappeared. In the last election, he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Trump.

Steffes was honest even with himself — a human quality possessed by too few in politics.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Glimpse of Newsom’s presidential appeal, challenges seen during South Carolina tour
The TK: New poll finds most Californians believe American democracy is in peril
The L.A. Times Special: Six months after L.A. fires, Newsom calls for federal aid while criticizing the Trump administration

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Added to the World Heritage list are two prisons: Tuol Sleng and M-13, as well as the execution site Choeung Ek.

Three notorious locations used by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime as torture and execution sites to perpetrate the genocide of Year Zero five decades ago have been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

Two prisons and an execution site were inscribed on the list by the United Nations cultural agency on Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris.

It coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to power by the communist Khmer Rouge, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, torture and mass executions during a four-year reign of violence from 1975 to 1979 before it was brought to an end by an invasion from neighbouring Vietnam.

UNESCO’s World Heritage list lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia’s Angkor archaeological complex.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message on Friday directing people to beat drums simultaneously across the country on Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO listing.

🔴 BREAKING!

New inscription on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Cambodian Memorial Sites: From centres of repression to places of peace and reflection, #Cambodia 🇰🇭.

➡️ https://t.co/seTyyVu3sT #47WHC pic.twitter.com/SPl7zlxeFh

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) July 11, 2025

“May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended,” Hun Manet said in a video message aired by state-run television TVK. “From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.”

Two sites added to the list are in the capital, Phnom Penh – the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocide Centre.

Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was converted into a notorious prison known as S-21, where an estimated 15,000 people were imprisoned and tortured.

Today, the site is a space for commemoration and education, housing the black-and-white mugshots of its many victims and the preserved equipment used by Khmer Rouge tormentors.

The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site and is among the first in the world to be submitted as a site associated with recent conflict, Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement on Friday.

‘The Killing Fields’

Choeung Ek – a former Chinese cemetery – was a notorious “killing field” where S-21 prisoners were executed nightly. The story of the atrocities committed there is the focus of the 1984 film “The Killing Fields”, based on the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg.

More than 6,000 bodies were exhumed from at least 100 mass graves at the ground in the early 1980s, according to Cambodian government documents filed with UNESCO.

Every year, hundreds hold remembrance prayers in front of the site’s memorial displaying victims’ skulls, and watch students stage dramatic re-enactments of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody crimes.

Another prison site, known as M-13 and located in a rural area in central Kampong Chhnang province, was one of the most important prisons of the early Khmer Rouge, where its cadres “invented and tested various methods of interrogation, torture and killing” but is today only a patch of derelict land.

A special tribunal sponsored by the UN, costing $337m and working over 16 years, only convicted three key Khmer Rouge figures, including S-21 chief torturer Kaing Guek Eav, before ceasing operations in 2022.

Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, died in 1998 before he could be brought to trial.

After announcing they would disarm, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) destroyed their weapons in northern Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the country has begun a new era as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began to disarm after a four-decade armed conflict that killed more than 40,000 people.

In an address to his party, Justice and Development (AKP), Erdogan said on Saturday that the “scourge of terrorism has entered the process of ending”.

“Decades of sorrow, tears and distress came to an end. Turkiye turned that page as of yesterday,” Erdogan said.

“Today is a new day; a new page has opened in history. Today, the doors of a great, powerful Turkiye have been flung wide open,” the president added.

In a cave in northern Iraq on Friday, 30 PKK members burned their weapons, marking a hugely symbolic step towards ending their armed campaign against Turkiye.

During Friday’s ceremony, senior PKK figure Bese Hozat read out a statement at the Jasana cave in the town of Dukan, 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish of Iraq’s north, announcing the group’s decision to disarm.

“We voluntarily destroy our weapons, in your presence, as a step of goodwill and determination,” she said.

Since 1984, the PKK has been locked in armed conflict with the Turkish state and decided in May to disarm and disband after a public call from the group’s long-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Ocalan said in a video earlier this week, which was recorded in June by the groups affiliated with Firat News Agency, that the move to disarm was a “ voluntary transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law” calling it a “historic gain”.

Further disarmament is expected to take place at a designated locations, which involves the coordination between Turkiye, Iraq and the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.

UN cultural organisation this week announces its choice of sites to be granted World Heritage status.

The United Nations cultural organisation has added a remote Aboriginal site featuring one million carvings that potentially date back 50,000 years to its World Heritage list.

Located on the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia, Murujuga is home to the Mardudunera people, who declared themselves “overjoyed” when UNESCO gave the ancient site a coveted place on its list on Friday.

“These carvings are what our ancestors left here for us to learn and keep their knowledge and keep our culture thriving through these sacred sites,” said Mark Clifton, a member of the Aboriginal delegation meeting with UNESCO representatives in Paris.

Environmental and Indigenous organisations argue that the presence of mining groups emitting industrial emissions has already caused damage to the ancient site.

Benjamin Smith, a rock art specialist at the University of Western Australia, said Murujuga was “possibly the most important rock art site in the world”, but that mining activity was causing the rock art to “break down”.

“We should be looking after it,” he said.

Australian company Woodside Energy, which operates an industrial complex in the area, told news agency AFP that it recognised Murujuga as “one of Australia’s most culturally significant landscapes” and that it was taking “proactive steps … to ensure we manage our impacts responsibly”.

Delegation leader Raelene Cooper said the UNESCO listing sent “a clear signal to the Australian Government and Woodside that things need to change”.

Making the UNESCO’s heritage list does not in itself trigger protection for a site, but can help pressure national governments into taking action.

African heritage boosted

Cameroon’s Mandara Mountains and Malawi’s Mount Mulanje were also added to the latest edition of the UNESCO World Heritage list.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay has presented Africa as a priority during her two terms in office, although the continent remains underrepresented.

The Diy-Gid-Biy landscape of the Mandara Mountains, in the far north of Cameroon, consists of archaeological sites, probably created between the 12th and 17th centuries.

Malawi’s Mount Mulanje, in the south of the country, is considered a sacred place inhabited by gods, spirits and ancestors.

UNESCO is also considering applications from two other African countries, namely the Gola Tiwai forests in Sierra Leone and the biosphere reserve of the Bijagos Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau.

On Friday, UNESCO also listed three notorious Cambodian torture and execution sites used by the Khmer Rouge regime to perpetrate genocide 50 years ago.

Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina – In a grassy valley dotted with white gravestones, thousands of people gathered to mark 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre on Friday.

Seven victims of the 1995 genocide, some of whose remains were only discovered and exhumed in the past year from mass graves uncovered in Liplje, Baljkovica, Suljici and Kamenicko Brdo, were buried during the sombre anniversary on Friday.

Limited remains of one of the victims, Hasib Omerovic, who was 34 when he was killed, were found and exhumed from a mass grave in 1998, but his family delayed his burial until now, hoping to recover more.

Zejad Avdic, 46, is the brother of another of the victims being buried. Senajid Avdic was just 19 when he was killed on July 11, 1995. His remains were discovered in October 2010 at a site in Suljici, one of the villages attacked that day by Bosnian Serb forces.

“When the news came, at first, I couldn’t – I didn’t – dare tell my mother, my father. It was too hard,” Avdic told Al Jazeera, referring to the moment he learned that some of his brother’s remains had been found.

“What was found wasn’t complete, just a few bones from the skull.”

Families like Avdic’s have waited decades for even a fragment of bone to confirm their loved one’s death. Many have buried their loved ones with only partial remains.

The Srebrenica massacre was the crescendo of Bosnia’s three-year war from 1992 to 1995, which flared up in the aftermath of Yugoslava’s dissolution, pitting Bosnian Serbs against the country’s two other main ethnic populations – Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces stormed the enclave of Srebrenica, ​​a designated United Nations-protected safe zone, overrunning the Dutch UN battalion stationed there. They separated at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from their wives, mothers and sisters, slaughtering them en masse.

Thousands of men and boys attempted to escape through the surrounding woods, but Serb forces chased them through the mountainous terrain, killing and capturing as many as they could. Women and children were expelled from the city and neighbouring villages by bus.

Thousands of people attended the commemoration for victims of the massacre on Friday, which began with a congregational Islamic prayer – men, women and children prostrating in unison among the rows of gravestones.

After the prayer, the remains of the victims, who have been identified using extensive DNA analysis, were carried in green coffins draped with the Bosnian flag.

The coffins were lowered into newly prepared graves. At each site, groups of men stepped forward to take turns covering the caskets with soil, shovelling from nearby mounds in a solemn conclusion to the proceedings.

After the remains had been buried, the victims’ families crowded around the sites, wiping away their tears as an imam recited verses over the caskets.

‘I will keep coming as long as I’m alive’

Fikrera Tuhljakovic, 66, attends the memorial here each year, but this year her cousin was among the victims being buried.

She said she is determined to ensure he is remembered and that all of the victims are never forgotten.

“I will keep coming as long as I’m alive,” Tuhljakovic told Al Jazeera.

Forensic scientists and the International Commission on Missing Persons have, in the decades since the mass killings, worked to locate the remains of those killed.

More than 6,000 victims have been buried at the memorial site in Potocari, but more than 1,000 remain missing.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the events in Srebrenica and the surrounding area a genocide. Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were both convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison.

In total, the tribunal and courts in the Balkans have sentenced almost 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the genocide.

But many accused remain unpunished. Denial of the genocide also continues – especially among political leaders in Serbia and the Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska, which was established in the northeast of the country at the start of the war in 1992 with the stated aim of protecting the interests of the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to Emir Cica, Islamic Relief’s Bosnia country director, international institutions have not done enough to prevent events like Srebrenica from happening again, with similar atrocities happening in Gaza at the moment.

“When we see what has happened, for example, in Gaza, it is very painful for us because we understand this [experience],” Cica told Al Jazeera.

For Avdic, Gaza is indeed a painful reminder of history repeating itself.

“Today we are burying our victims of genocide, and today in Gaza, genocide is happening, too,” he said solemnly.

“I don’t know what kind of message to send; there’s no effect on those in power who could actually do something.”

United States President Donald Trump has drawn mockery after he complimented the president of Liberia for speaking English “beautifully”, even though it is the country’s official language.

“Such good English, where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” Trump asked Joseph Boakai during a meeting with five African leaders at the White House on Wednesday.

“In Liberia?” Trump asked. Boakai seemed to chuckle before responding: “Yes sir.”

Alex Vines, head of the Africa Programme at the London think tank, Chatham House, told Al Jazeera: “President Trump’s limited knowledge of Africa was on show with his comment on President Boakai’s quality of English.”

Liberia was founded in 1822 as a colony for freed Black American slaves as white Americans sought to address what they saw as a problem – the presence of Black people in the United States once slavery ended.

Here is a potted history of the African nation:

Where is Liberia and how populous is it?

The country of five million people is located on the Western African coast and is bounded by Sierra Leone to the northwest, Guinea to the north, Ivory Coast to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west.

Liberia was founded in 1822 and became a republic in 1847. It is now Africa’s oldest republic and is seen by many as a symbol of African self-determination. Along with Ethiopia, it is the only African nation that was never colonised during Europe’s scramble for the continent.

There are officially 16 ethnic groups that make up Liberia’s Indigenous African population, with the largest being the Kpelle.

How, why and when was Liberia founded?

As the abolitionist movement against slavery gained ground in the US in 1822, a group of 86 formerly enslaved people arrived in Liberia’s present-day capital, Monrovia, the country’s largest port.

Jehudi Ashmun, a white American, was leading efforts by the American Colonization Society (ACS) to resettle free people of colour in Africa. While some chose to emigrate willingly, the organisation is known to have pressured or coerced others into relocating.

ACS was established by white Americans who believed that the presence of free Blacks in America posed a threat to the nation, as they might incite those who remained in slavery to rebel. Some also believed in the “inferiority” of Black people and thought them unable to achieve equality in American society. The organisation’s goal was, therefore, to establish a colony in West Africa that would take them in.

Liberia was proclaimed an independent republic in 1847, becoming the first African republic to achieve such status and be recognised by Western nations. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, an African American who had emigrated to Liberia in 1829 and become a politician, was elected the first president of the new country.

While Indigenous leaders resisted American attempts to purchase land, the newborn country was created after a US Navy officer coerced a local ruler to sell a strip of land to ACS. Its capital was named Monrovia after the US’s fifth president, James Monroe, who had procured government money for the project.

It is estimated that, in total, about 12,000 formerly enslaved Black Americans immigrated to Liberia between 1820 and 1861.

Who makes up the population?

African Americans and their descendants, known as Americo-Liberians, dominated the government of Liberia thanks to their ties with the US government, through which they were able to conduct trade, until a military coup ended their influence in 1980.

Despite being a minority of about 5 percent of the total population in Liberia, from the start of the republic, they mostly excluded the Indigenous African population from any meaningful participation in the political life of the country.

Indigenous people who had migrated from western Sudan in the late Middle Ages constitute a majority of the population. A smaller portion also migrated from neighbouring western African states during the anti-slave-trade campaign and European colonial rule in the 1800s.

In more recent years, it has opened its doors to refugees from neighbouring countries, especially from the Ivory Coast, where civil war broke out in 2002 and 2011.

What is the official language of Liberia?

English is Liberia’s official language, though more than two dozen Indigenous languages are spoken there as well.

Americo-Liberians, who dominated political power until the military coup in 1980, imposed English as the commonly spoken language when they founded the republic in 1847.

Other languages spoken by Liberia’s Indigenous ethnic groups fall under three main groups, all belonging to the Niger-Congo language family: the Mande, Kwa and Mel languages.

What caused the civil wars in Liberia?

Liberia has endured two major civil wars in more recent decades. The country’s conflicts were deeply rooted in ethnic divisions.

Samuel Doe, a member of the Indigenous Krahn ethnic group, led a military coup in 1980, which overthrew the Americo-Liberian government and put an end to its political dominance marked by ethnic inequalities. Liberian President William R Tolbert was assassinated during the coup.

However, Doe ushered in a period of authoritarianism and human rights abuses that led to the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars.

The first war erupted in 1989, when Charles Taylor, a descendant of freed American slaves, launched an armed rebellion against Doe, which killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.

A second war broke out in 1999 when a rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), began a military offensive to topple Taylor’s government with the support of neighbouring Guinea.

The conflict spilled over into Guinea and Sierra Leone but subsided in 2003 with the intervention of international peacekeeping forces and Taylor’s resignation and exile.

Taylor was accused of human rights violations and indicted by a United Nations-sponsored war-crimes tribunal in 2003. He received a sentence of 50 years in prison.

What is the situation now?

Liberia has mostly experienced political stability since the second civil war ended. It held democratic elections in 2017, marking the first peaceful transfer of power since 1944.

Boakai was elected president in 2023 with 50.64 percent of the vote for a six-year term, defeating former international football star George Weah.

Vines, from Chatham House, said: “Ethnicity is less important in Liberia today and Americo-Liberians are a lot less dominant.”

“Liberians still perceive close ties with the US,” especially because of deep connections with many Green Card holders, Vines said, but the significant cut of USAID funding to the African continent earlier this year came as a shock.

During Wednesday’s White House meeting with Trump, Boakai described Liberia as “a longtime friend of the United States”.

“We believe in your policy of making America great again,” he told Trump at the meeting before advocating for US investment in his country. “We just want to thank you so much for this opportunity.”

Why did Trump meet the leaders of Liberia and other West African nations?

The five countries whose leaders met Trump – namely Liberia, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Senegal – possess untapped natural resources, including rare earth minerals. The US president saluted them as “very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits and wonderful people”.

Vines said Boakai’s presence at the White House was “opportunistic”, as the Liberian president was already on a trip to the US, rather than a reflection of deep historical ties between the two nations.

Africa has become a battleground for global influence in the US-China geopolitical rivalry, but Trump is known for his apparently dismissive remarks about the continent.

During his first term as president, Trump caused outrage after criticising immigration to his country from El Salvador, Haiti and the African continent, which he reportedly dubbed “s***hole countries”.

The current Trump administration is also known to be seeking to deport people who have outstayed their visas or are otherwise in the US illegally to West African countries willing to receive them.

According to some media reports, a plan was presented at Wednesday’s meeting, but it remains unclear what Trump offered in exchange and whether any leaders were willing to accept his offer.

WASHINGTON — National Guard troops and immigration agents on horseback, clad in green uniforms and tactical gear, trotted into MacArthur Park on Monday, surrounding the iconic square with armored vehicles in a show of force widely denounced as gratuitous. The enforcement operation produced few tangible results that day. But the purpose of the display was unmistakable.

The Trump administration’s monthlong operation in Los Angeles, which began on June 6 with flash raids at work sites and culminated days later with Trump’s deployment of Marines and the Guard, continues to pay political dividends to a president who had been in search of the perfect foil on his signature issue since retaking office, officials close to the president told The Times.

At first, officials in the West Wing thought the operation might last only a week or two. But Trump’s team now says the ongoing spectacle has proven a resounding political success with few downsides. Thus far, the administration has managed to fend off initial court challenges, maintain arrests at a steady clip, and generate images of a ruthless crackdown in a liberal bastion that delight the president’s supporters.

It may be premature for the president to declare political victory. Anger over the operation has swelled, prompting activism across California. And signs have emerged that the White House may be misreading Trump’s election mandate and the political moment, with new polls showing public sentiment turning nationwide on the president’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.

The city has struggled to cope, hobbled by an unpopular mayor and a nationally divisive governor who have been unable to meaningfully respond to the unprecedented federal effort. But the raids have also provided California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, with an opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum as his party grapples to find its footing in the resistance.

Lawsuits could still change the course of the operation. A crucial hearing set for Thursday in a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the operation itself.

But critics say the pace of litigation has failed to meet the urgency of the moment, just as the president’s aides weigh whether to replicate their L.A. experiment elsewhere throughout the country.

To Trump, a gift that keeps on giving

Trump has succeeded in the most significant legal case thus far, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to maintain control of the California National Guard. Troops remain on L.A. streets despite protests that the administration cited to justify their deployment in the first place ending weeks ago. And the administration has put the city on the defensive in a suit over the legality of its sanctuary city policy.

One White House official told The Times that the administration’s aggressive, experimental law enforcement tactics in Los Angeles have proven a “grand success,” in part because national media coverage of the ongoing crisis has largely moved on, normalizing what is happening there.

A spokesperson for the White House said the administration’s mission in the city is focused on detaining migrants with violent criminal records, despite reporting by The Times indicating that a majority of individuals arrested in the first weeks of the operation were not convicted criminals.

“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens from American communities — especially sanctuary cities like L.A. that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals and put American citizens at risk,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.

“One month later it’s clear, President Trump is doing his job to protect American citizens and federal law enforcement,” Jackson added. “But Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have enabled violent rioters who attacked federal law enforcement, protected violent criminal illegal aliens, and betrayed the trust put in them by the American people.”

Trump’s use of Los Angeles as a testing ground to demonstrate raw presidential power has shown his team just how much a unitary executive can get away with. Masked agents snatching migrants has sent a chill through the city and its economy, but there is no end in sight for the operation, with one Homeland Security official telling The Times it would only intensify going forward.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested nearly 2,800 people in the L.A. area since the crackdown began.

This week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey that would bar immigration officers from wearing masks and require them to display clear identification while on the job.

“They wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the legislation, “and they obviously do.”

Trump could still face setbacks

The 9th Circuit ruling last month, allowing Trump to maintain temporary control over the California National Guard, thwarted momentum for Trump’s opponents hoping for a decisive early victory against the operation in federal court.

But a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and joined by the city of Los Angeles, set for arguments in court on Thursday, addresses the core of the raids themselves and could deal a significant policy blow to the Trump administration. The ACLU has found success in another case, over raids conducted earlier this year by Border Patrol in the Central Valley, using similar arguments that claimed its tactics were unconstitutional.

“It is far too early to say that challenge has been thwarted,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.

But Arulanantham argued that city and state officials have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the pace of their response to an urgent crisis.

“There is much more local leaders could be doing to challenge the unlawful actions the federal government is taking against their residents,” he added. “The state also could have sued but did not — they sued to challenge the guard deployment, but not the ICE raids themselves.”

The raids have generated favorable coverage for the administration on right-wing media, presenting the crackdown as Trump finally bringing the fight over immigration to the heart of liberal America. But it is unclear whether Americans agree with his tactics.

Polls released last month from Economist/YouGov and NPR/PBS News/Marist found that while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believes that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts.

Newsom, speaking this week in South Carolina, a crucial state in the Democratic presidential primary calendar, suggested he saw the president’s potential overreach as a political opportunity.

“They’re now raiding the farms,” he told a crowd. “Quite literally, federal agents running through the fields.”

The governor told the story of a teenage boy from Oxnard whose parents disappeared in a federal raid, despite having no criminal records, leaving their son helpless and alone.

“That’s America,” he said, “Trump’s America.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Stephen Miller finally gets his revenge on L.A.
The deep dive: Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
The L.A. Times Special: Most nabbed in L.A. raids were men with no criminal conviction, picked up off the street

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Lena Dunham, of “Girls” fame, with her husband Luis Felber, has created a romantic comedy, “Too Much,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. It’s lighter in tone than that previous show but still comes with plenty of dysfunction, self-sabotage and sex. (Drugs too, though it doesn’t make a case for them.) The titles of the episodes establish a negative relation to the genre: “Terms of Resentment,” “Enough, Actually,” “Notting Kill,” “Nonsense and Sensibility,” “Pity Woman,” “Ignore Sunrise,” “To Doubt a Boy.” But in the end, it wants what they’re having.

Dunham, who wrote or co-wrote all 10 episodes and directed several, has elected not to star, but has brought in Megan Stalter, from “Hacks” as her stand-in, Jessica. (Dunham plays Nora, Jessica’s depressed older sister, mostly from a bed.) Like Jessica, Dunham is an American living in England, in a relationship with a musician, so we may credit at least some details to the authority of their shared experience.

Jessica once wanted to direct films, to “say something about the female experience,” but she has been working for 15 years as a line producer for an ad agency, a job at which she is evidently good, but which means little to her. When her New York firm merges with a British company, she’s sent to London for three months to help make a Christmas commercial, starring Rita Ora. Having been left six months before by her longtime boyfriend, Zev (Michael Zegen) for willowy knitting influencer Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), to whom he’s become engaged, she is ready to go — all the more so because her happy place is “love stories set in pastoral England.”

On her first night in town, Jessica discovers that the “estate” she thought she was renting is not Pemberley but public housing; she takes a taxi to a random pub, where Felix (Will Sharpe), the boy in this 30-something love story, is performing a sad song to a few patrons. They meet-cute in the bathroom. He walks her home. They talk. He lends her his coat. (There is, interestingly, no attempt to convince us that Felix is a major talent; indeed, the suggestion is that such career as he had is on a downward slope.)

People fall out of love on television almost as often as they fall into it, sometimes as a prelude to falling back into it, or falling for someone else, and less often deciding that they are in fact happier on their own. From the wealth of self-help books, advice columns, therapists, country songs and, yes, romantic comedies that fill our culture, I reckon the messier elements of “Too Much” will feel familiar to many. There is plenty of chaos in this comedy, but its best moments come in passages of relative calm. (They are something of a relief from the dominant emotional mishigas.) A long, wordless scene consisting of a single overhead shot of Felix and Jess on a bed, as she listens to a mix he made her, is remarkably moving, not least because the actors are doing so much while doing so little.

“Too Much” on Netflix first look.

(Netflix)

Even as she becomes involved with Felix, Jessica continues her practice of recording private videos on her phone, on TikTok, as a sort of therapeutic diary, ranting about Zev; many are addressed directly to Wendy Jones. Meanwhile, she deals with Andrew Scott as a pretentious director (“We’ve got to make this feel like it’s Ken Loach doing a Christmas film”) and mucks in with new boss Jonno (Richard E. Grant) and colleagues Josie (Daisy Bevan), Kim (Janicza Bravo), who is interested in Josie, and chatterbox Boss (Leo Reich), who has published an “experimental PDF novel, to much acclaim” and broke up with someone because “he did not have the emotional intelligence necessary to deal with someone whose love language is being a b— in a fun way.” She confounds them with her loud, childlike American energy, filling empty spaces with words, making jokes that don’t come off. (“Just kidding” is a thing she says a lot.)

Recently sober, Felix has his own complement of bandmates, friends and friendly ex-girlfriends, including three women named Polly — Adèle Exarchopoulos plays the important one — whose history with Felix makes Jess nervous. (Jennifer Saunders is a bit of a surprise.) Sharpe, last seen on TV in the second season of “The White Lotus,” plays him quietly, a little melancholy, perhaps, but not unduly moody; even in a difficult situation — he’s carrying just as much baggage as Jessica — his energy remains low-key and relatively grounded, though he will be called upon to do some panicked running.

If the series has a fault, it’s that there’s possibly too much “Too Much.” In the movies, the business of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” (substitute your preferred genders), has traditionally been settled in under two hours. The streaming economy, however, has stretched the narrative timeline, elongated the arc, padding out a predetermined number of episodes with extraneous digressions, giving minor characters things to do that don’t necessarily contribute to the story, while not developing into much on their own. There are brief cutaways to Jonno’s home life, which at least has the benefit of giving us more Grant, plus Naomi Watts as his wife, Ann; scenes back in New York likewise give us unrelated time with Rita Wilson as Jessica’s mother, Lois; Rhea Perlman her mouthy grandmother, Dottie; Dunham’s Nora and Andrew Rannells as her ex-husband, Jameson, who left her in favor of “exploring non-monogamy with a couple both named Cody.”

More problematic, an exasperating character like Jessica, lived with at such length, can become exhausting, and she does. Dunham mitigates this, and the roller coaster of Jessica and Felix’s relationship, by employing an episodic structure, setting whole or nearly whole episodes against different backdrops: a wedding, a work trip, a dinner party, Felix at home with his parents (Stephen Fry and Kaori Momoi), Jess and Felix up all night (having sex, watching “Paddington”) when she has to be fresh for work in the morning, and a flashback to Jess’ history with Zev (he’s been made a “writer,” shorthand for pathetic). Taken individually, as discrete stories, they’re easier to digest. The writing is sharp, the performances spot-on.

Stalter, who is in her fourth season stealing scenes on “Hacks,” plays a character halfway around the world from her character there. Where her Kayla is brash, entitled and self-confident to a fault, Jess is needy, full of second thoughts and self-doubts, even as she projects a kind of frantic cheerfulness. (“I’m a chill girl, I’m normal,” she tells herself, doubtfully.) Dunham often shoots Stalter straight on, filling the screen with her face, which pays benefits; she has great presence. (And sings very sweetly too, better than her boyfriend.)

The endgame, when we get to it, could not be any more conventional — which, I imagine, is the idea. One might think it parodic if it hadn’t been established that this is the dream in which Jessica lives; anything less would be unkind.

I see I’ve neglected to mention the dog. There is a little dog too, who plays an important part.

SACRAMENTO — The federal safety-net healthcare system for low-income and disabled Americans, Medicaid, won’t be the only medical coverage devastated by the package of spending cuts and tax breaks signed into law by President Trump on the Fourth of July.

Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace, estimates that as many as 660,000 of the roughly 2 million people in the program will either be stripped of coverage or drop out due to increased cost and the onerous new mandates to stay enrolled. Those who do stay could be hit with an average monthly premium increase of up to 66%.

This is Phil Willon, the L.A. Times California politics editor, filling in for columnist George Skelton this week.

To find out more about how the millions of Californians who rely on Covered California for health insurance will be affected by Trump’s megabill, I spoke with Jessica Altman, the organization’s executive director.

We spoke on Thursday, while the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives was voting to approve the reconciliation legislation. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the package will lead to 11.8 million more people going without health insurance nationwide over the next decade.

Price increase imminent

Covered California serves as a marketplace exchange for state residents seeking healthcare insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, allowing them to select from name-brand insurance providers and choose from a variety of coverage plans.

“A quarter of the people we cover are sole proprietors. That’s everything from mom-and-pop Etsy shops to a consultant, a highly educated tech worker in San Francisco doing contract work. We really have that full spectrum,” Altman said.

Covered California also serves as a health insurance sanctuary for residents whose income rises enough for them to lose eligiblity for Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in California, or those who work for companies that don’t provide benefits.

The current cost for basic coverage ranges from $0 a month for individuals earning around $21,000 — just above the income eligibility for Medi-Cal — to 8.5% of the income of people making $75,000 or more, Altman said.

The vast majority of Californians receive federal subsidies to lower their premiums, including many middle-income families who had become eligible when Congress expanded the financial assistance in 2021.

Those subsidies were not renewed in the Trump megabill. In theory, the Republican-led Congress could remedy that before the end of the year but, given that Trump spent most of his first term in office trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the odds of that appear slim.

“We have many, many people paying less than $10 a month for their health insurance. We’re going to lose that price for sure,” Altman said. “We also have people, that person making $75,000 a year … they’re going to lose all of their tax credits and potentially pay hundreds more a month.”

And that price increase will start to hit home in four months, when Covered California’s open enrollment signup period begins for 2026.

Thousands of Californians will drop their coverage because they can no longer afford the expense, Altman predicts.

“This is a moment where Americans and Californians are so financially strained: Their rent, their food, their gas, their child care, all of their transportation, all of these things,” Altman said. “They are not in a position today where they feel like any of those costs can rise by 66%.”

Altman said the governor and California Legislature budgeted an additional $190 million for Covered California, which hopefully will help reduce the number of residents who will lose their healthcare coverage. But, she said, it’s nowhere near enough to make up for the federal cuts.

Targeting legal immigrants and ‘Dreamers’

Approximately 112,000 lawful immigrants in California also will be stripped of premium tax credits and cost-sharing support, essentially pushing health coverage out of financial reach, she said. That includes immigrant groups that have been eligible for assistance for years, including those with work and student visas, refugees, asylees and victims of human trafficking.

“They are limiting it so only green card holders and a couple of very nuanced categories of certain Cuban immigrants and certain immigrants from Pacific Island nations can get financial assistance,” Altman said.

Immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought here illegally as children, a group known as “Dreamers,” will be stripped of their eligibility, Altman said.

Thousands more Californians likely will drop coverage because of new burdensome verification requirements, including increased tax filings, and bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome to maintain eligibility.

Big picture

California Gov. Gavin Newsom already has warned that the cuts to Medicaid in what Trump calls the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a cornerstone of his second-term agenda, will lead to hospital and clinic closures, especially in the state’s underserved rural areas.

Altman said that impact will be exacerbated by the tens of thousands of Californians expected to lose their medical insurance they secured through Covered California. Medical facilities received higher compensation to care for patients who secured health insurance through Covered California than they do for patients on Medi-Cal. And hospitals and clinics will now take an even greater financial hit for caring for Californians with no health insurance, raising healthcare costs for everyone else.

“We know people will get less healthcare. They will not get their preventive care, they will not get their primary care at the rates that they do when they’re covered,” Altman said. “But when they really need care, they’re going to go get it. They’re going to get it at the emergency room, and our system is going to pay for it anyway.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Valadao votes for a Trump megabill expected to disrupt healthcare for many in the Central Valley
The TK: Gov. Newsom will visit South Carolina, a pivotal presidential primary state
The L.A. Times Special: Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens

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July 4 (UPI) — Most Americans are all familiar with the reason we celebrate July Fourth as Independence Day.

This was the day in 1776 that the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence explaining why the Founding Fathers wanted to separate from Britain.

Though the American Revolutionary War formally began a year earlier with the Battles of Lexington and Concord and ended several years later, July 4, 1776, would forever come to mark the founding of the United States of America.

But in the years since, there have been other important events to take place on July 4th, marking great achievements and solemn moments in American history.

1802 — West Point opens

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

Less than two decades after the conclusion of the American Revolution, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., opened on July 4, 1802. Two people graduated that first year; in 2025, that number had risen to 1,002.

1817 — Construction on Erie Canal begins

File Photo by Stephen Drew/National Park Service

The United States’ first man-made waterway, the Erie Canal was formally started on July 4, 1817. It was completed less than a decade later, in 1825. One of the most important trade routes of the 19th century, it connected the Great Lakes in the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River.

President George W. Bush named the canal the nation’s 23rd heritage corridor in 2000.

1826 — Two presidents die

Both Thomas Jefferson, a statue of whom is pictured, and John Adams contributed to the writing of the Declaration of Independence. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI

In one of history’s most notable coincidences, John Adams (the second U.S. president) and Thomas Jefferson (the third) both died on July 4, 1826. Both of these Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence 50 years earlier. The one-time rivals maintained correspondence with each other in their years after leaving Washington, D.C.

1863 — Confederates surrender at Vicksburg

The Siege of Vicksburg, Miss., was seen as a major victor for Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who later went on to become president. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

On July 4, 1863, the yearlong Siege of Vicksburg came to an end amid the American Civil War. Confederate troops surrendered to the Union in Vicksburg, Miss., one day after defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. These two events marked a turning point in the war in favor of the North.

1884 — Statue of Liberty

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

In a gesture not commonly seen at this size anymore, France gifted the United States the 305-foot Statue of Liberty on this day in 1884 to mark 100 years of independence. The government presented the copper statue to the U.S. ambassador in a ceremony in Paris. The statue would come to be one of the single most recognizable symbols of American freedom and identity.

The monument sustained damage in 2012 from Superstorm Sandy, but reopened to the public in 2013 after extensive repairs.

1895 — “America the Beautiful”

Katharine Lee Bates published her poem “America” on July 4, 1895. She said she was inspired to write the poem — initially called “Pikes Peak” and then simply “America” — during an 1893 trip to Pike’s Peak in Colorado. A church organist later added music to the poem and it became the famed song “America the Beautiful.”

1939 — The luckiest man on the face of the Earth

File Photo courtesy of Pacific & Atlantic Photos, Inc

On July 4, 1939, fans of America’s favorite pastime were rocked when one of the sports’s most beloved figures — Lou Gehrig — announced his retirement. Even worse, he revealed his diagnosis of a disease that would come to be known by his name, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a debilitating motor neuron disease.

Gehrig gave the emotional and memorable speech during Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium in New York. He said:

“For the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

1963 — Presidential Medal of Freedom

Opera singer Marion Anderson, pictured in 1987, was among the first 31 honorees of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. UPI File Photo

Nine months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy signed an order establishing the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Each July 4th, the president would bestow the medals to people who have made exceptional contributions to the interests or national security of the United States.

On July 4, 1963, Kennedy announced the first 31 honorees, including opera singer Marian Anderson, ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, writer E.B. White, and artist Andrew Wyeth.

Kennedy died before a ceremony could be held to honor the winners, so it was held instead by President Lyndon B. Johnson in December 1963.

1965 — Annual Reminder

File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI

Taking part in one of the most American of traditions, LGBTQ demonstrators organized outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4, 1965. Held each year through 1969, the demonstrators gathered at the site of the Second Continental Congress — where the Declaration was signed — to remind fellow Americans that LGBTQ people did not enjoy the same constitutional rights as the rest of the country. It was one of the earliest public events of the modern gay rights movement.

1997 — Pathfinder finds Mars

File Photo courtesy of NASA

On July 4, 1997, NASA landed its Pathfinder roving probe on Mars, the first U.S. spacecraft to land there in more than two decades. The mission ended a year later, but during that time it demonstrated a new way of landing on the Red Planet using airbags, analyzed the composition of rocks and soil, and used three cameras to take countless photos and document experiments.

Happy birthday!

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

And finally, don’t forget these famous Americans born on the nation’s birthday: writer Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1804; songwriter Stephen Foster in 1826; circus operator James Bailey in 1847; astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt in 1868; Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, in 1872; cartoonist Rube Goldberg in 1883; Louis B. Mayer, film mogul /co-founder of MGM, in 1885; actor Gloria Stuart in 1910; advice columnists Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, twin sisters, in 1918; actor Eva Marie Saint in 1924 (age 101); playwright Neil Simon in 1927; New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in 1930; musician Bill Withers in 1938; TV reporter Geraldo Rivera in 1943 (age 82); musician Annette Beard (Martha and the Vandellas) in 1943 (age 82); activist Ron Kovic in 1946 (age 79); musician Ralph Johnson (Earth, Wind & Fire) in 1951 (age 74); chef Andrew Zimmern in 1961 (age 64); tennis player Pam Shriver in 1962 (age 63); musician Matt Malley (Counting Crows) in 1963 (age 62); actor/playwright Tracy Letts in 1965 (age 60); actor Becki Newton in 1978 (age 47); musician Post Malone in 1995 (age 30); Malia Obama, daughter of former President Barack Obama, in 1998 (age 27); actor Alex Hibbert in 2004 (age 21).

Published on
04/07/2025 – 10:57 GMT+2

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The AI chipmaker Nvidia’s shares hit a new all-time high on Thursday, briefly giving the company a market capitalisation of $3.92 trillion (€3.33tn), the highest in history for any company.

This surpassed Apple’s record of $3.91tr set in December 2024, even though Nvidia’s market capitalisation dipped once again below this level at market close. 

The chipmaker’s shares traded as high as $160.98 at their peak on Thursday, before the price dipped below this level, placing the market capitalisation at around $3.89tr when daily trading wrapped up.

Tech companies’ shares benefitted from a better-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report in the US, an indicator of a resilient US economy.

This optimism was boosted by forecasts that businesses would continue to spend on AI advances, boosting demand for AI chips.

Nvidia shares are up more than 50% in just less than two months. Analysts expect that the company will break the valuation record soon and retain its elevated share price by the close of the trading day.

“Chip giant Nvidia is on track to achieve a new closing high,” said Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell, adding that the “AI revolution is still intact”.

AJ Bell head of financial analysis Danni Hewson added that, “After all the gloomy predictions that this might be the year the AI bubble bursts, Nvidia’s found another gear. The chipmaker is on track to smash a coveted record and become the world’s most valuable company ever.”

The value of Nvidia currently is more than three times the total market capitalisation of the stock market in Spain and more than four times that of the Italian stock exchange.