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Airbnb Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky said he didn’t integrate his company’s online travel app with OpenAI’s ChatGPT because the startup’s connective tools aren’t “quite ready” yet.

Airbnb will monitor the development of ChatGPT’s app integrations and may consider a tie-up in the future similar to those of its peers Booking Holdings Inc. and Expedia Group Inc., Chesky said in an interview.

“I didn’t think it was quite ready,” he said of ChatGPT’s integration abilities.

Because Airbnb is a community with verified members, OpenAI will have to build a platform so robust that Airbnb’s app can work within the ChatGPT chatbot in an “almost self-contained” manner, Chesky said.

Chesky, who is close friends with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said he advised the AI company on its new capability for third-party developers to make their apps available within the ChatGPT chatbot. The AI company announced those features earlier this month. Airbnb wasn’t among the first apps that are available on the popular chatbot.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on Chesky’s remarks, but referred to the company’s blog post earlier this month that described the app integration technology as a developer preview, with more features coming soon.

While Airbnb has set aside a possible integration with ChatGPT, the company Tuesday announced that it had updated its in-app artificial intelligence tools to let customers take more actions without the need of a live representative.

The company’s AI customer service agent, which it rolled out to all US users in English in May, now displays action buttons and links that can help people complete, say, a reservation change or cancellation.

That has led to a 15% reduction in users needing a live representative, cutting average resolution time to six seconds from nearly three hours, Airbnb said. The company plans to add Spanish and French language support this fall, and 56 more languages next year.

The agent is built upon 13 different AI models, including those from OpenAI, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and open source providers, Chesky said.

“We’re relying a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model. It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” he said. “We use OpenAI’s latest models, but we typically don’t use them that much in production because there are faster and cheaper models.”

Airbnb, which expanded its business beyond accommodations into tours and individual services earlier this year, also is adding new social features to encourage user connections and eventually make better travel recommendations within the app.

The company unveiled an option for guests to share their Airbnb profile with other travelers after they book an experience. Users who have gone on the same tours can also now directly message one another — privacy safeguards are implemented where the conversation can only continue if the recipient accepts a message request, Airbnb said.

More social features are coming next year, and Chesky said that longer term these features could lend themselves to user-generated content on the app, where people can seek travel inspiration without leaving the Airbnb site.

“I think the social features, the community, that’s probably the most differentiated part of Airbnb,” he said. “People are the reason why I think Airbnb is such a sticky service.”

Lung writes for Bloomberg.

Kelly Reichardt’s watchful cinema is one of the indie world’s most exquisite bounties, a space for pioneers (“Meek’s Cutoff,” “First Cow”), artists (“Showing Up”) and wanderers (“Old Joy,” “Wendy and Lucy”) who command your attention the way an ER waiting room does, lingering tensely.

One might not consider a heist film in such anthropological terms. And yet “The Mastermind,” Reichardt’s latest and one of her best, while set in motion by a daylight art grab orchestrated by Josh O’Connor’s middle-class Massachusetts suburbanite, is another precisely turned Reichardt movie: honest, sad, funny and inherently philosophical about our engagement with the world. As you might expect, it’s really about the crime’s aftermath, our cut from this robbery being a deft, fascinating character study rooted in an apathy that’s starkly juxtaposed with the restive year it’s set in: 1970.

By the look of things, preppy, soft-spoken James Mooney (O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter, isn’t obvious criminal material, no matter what composer Ray Mazurek’s propulsive, horn-forward jazz score might imply. James cases his local art museum, often with his unwitting wife, Teri (Alana Haim), and two young boys in tow. Otherwise, James is just a distracted dad, checked-out husband and disappointing son living off the status and largesse of his parents, an esteemed judge (Bill Camp) and a society mother (Hope Davis).

Still, based solely on the error-prone heist — it’s been ages since pantyhose masks seemed so ridiculous — thievery isn’t this spoiled man’s strong suit either. (You didn’t think that title was respectful, did you?) When he’s stashing the stolen paintings later in a farmhouse’s hayloft and accidentally knocks the ladder out from under him, the moment is amusing and appropriately metaphorical.

Reichardt is laying bare a privileged man’s half-assed delinquency, especially with O’Connor so hypnotic at conveying self-absorbed cluelessness with his woeful eyes, posture and movement. As the movie then hits the road for his escape, the early fall colors of Christopher Blauvelt’s cinematography shift to gray tones and darker interiors, and James’ vibe is less rebel eluding capture — even if a pal he visits (John Magaro) expresses admiration — than alienated loser leaving behind a mess, an assessment radiating from Gaby Hoffmann as Magaro’s wife. The bebop groove abandons James, too, slowing into jagged drum solos.

The last contextual indignity are the details of the period itself: Nixon posters, anti-war signs, Vietnam footage on televisions, a protest march. Unforced but ever-present in Reichardt’s mise-en-scène, they remind us that this bored aesthete’s misadventure is an especially empty way to buck conformity. When good trouble beckons, why pick the bad kind?

One can even detect, in this brilliant, captivating Reichardt gem about fortune and fate, a what-if attached to her disaffected male protagonist: Would today’s version of James, just as adrift and arrogant, steal art to assuage his emptiness? Or, thanks to the internet, succeed at something much worse? “The Mastermind” may be an ironic title as heists go. But it also hints at the male-pattern badness still to come.

Hedda Felin, boss of the Norwegian firm, has raised concerns about the rapid growth of the cruise industry and has issued a warning of what could happen if changes aren’t made

The cruise industry has to change or it faces being banned out of existence, the CEO of Hurtigruten has warned.

Hedda Felin, boss of the Norwegian firm, has raised concerns about the rapid growth of the cruise industry in an interview with the Mirror. She says more must be demanded of passengers visiting ports, while calling for dirty fuels to be scrapped to ease the significant environmental impact of the industry.

Hedda is particularly worried about the size of cruise ships and the burden their vast numbers of passengers are placing on coastal towns. If restrictions are not put in, anti-cruise ship protests such as those that have broken out in Barcelona and Venice will spread, she predicts.

“I am very concerned about the future. Local communities will react (if we don’t act). We will see more ‘cruise ships go home’ mentality. There will be no future if you don’t leave behind more than you take,” Hedda said.

OPINION

Milo Boyd

OPINION

Milo Boyd

Hedda spoke to the Mirror at a moment of unprecedented growth in the cruise industry. This year, the world’s largest cruise ship set sail after the industry brought in just shy of $80 billion in a year. That figure will hit $171 billion by 2035, according to one study.

Norway, where Hurtigruten is based, has seen a 70% increase in cruise traffic since 2019 – growth that Hedda calls “kind of overwhelming”.

“I am concerned, I am worried for Norway. It is a long coast, but it has small communities. The communities are overwhelmed by the size of the cruise and the number of visits every day. Local communities are more and more skeptical. 5,000 passengers are trying to fit into villages of 300 people.”

A major gripe among those living and working in busy cruise ship ports is how little passengers spend. Often they visit for a short period of time, see the public sights and then return to their all-inclusive ship.

“We (Norwegians) as a nation demand too little of the visitors and how much they leave behind. There are so many things you could do easily. We could ban heavy oil fuel along the coast. (Hurtigruten) banned it 15 years ago. There could be more restrictions on NOx emissions.

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“Hurtigruten has chosen to only use local suppliers. We get the local expertise, as well as quality food and drink. It is possible to impose requirements that, for example, 30% of the supplies must come from the nation you’re visiting.

“We have our own seaweed farm, which we use to make protein for food, soup and socks. It is a huge contrast to all-inclusive, vacuum-packed food.”

Hedda argues that the issue isn’t about growth generally but the wrong kind. Hurtigruten’s fleet has grown from seven to 10 ships over the last two years. In the future, the CEO hopes it can become less environmentally damaging. She also backs size limits on future ships.

“We want to create the world’s most energy-efficient product, as close to zero as possible. We want energy-efficient sails, solar panels powered by the midnight sun. My dream is that it will be ready by 2030,” Hedda said.

“We, clearly, need to restrict and reduce the building and size of new ships. We do not need more of the big cruise ships. They need to be a completely different environmental standard. If we managed that, it can be a good way of travelling. It has to be local value creation. If growth continues, it will be some years and then it will be completely banned. It will meet huge resistance.”

Not everyone is so pessimistic about the future of the cruise industry, however. Jonny Peat, head of cruise for Advantage Travel Partnership, is enthusiastic about the growth predicted for the coming years.

“The most striking number is that less than 3% of the leisure travel market is made up of cruise passengers. We’ve not even scratched the surface.”

Right now, 37 million passengers set sail on cruise ships worldwide each year. By 2028, that will hit 42 million. “Despite the fact that some people think there are too many ships, leisure cruise liners make up 1% of the overall maritime industry. Cruise isn’t going anywhere,” Jonny said.

Both cruise ship size and total number have rocketed in recent years. According to a Transport & Environment report, the number of cruise ships has increased more than twentyfold, from only 21 in 1970 to 515 vessels today.

The question caused Lakers coach JJ Redick to say he was “not being combative” with his answer.

Asked if the Lakers are missing opportunities to practice more and build on-court chemistry because of their busy six-game preseason slate, Redick was quick to wonder why reporters were so concerned about the situation.

“You guys are really harping on this,” Redick responded.

So, Redick was asked, is it a thing or is it not a thing?

“I’m not being combative right now,” Redick said. “I just want to acknowledge that you guys, like the last four days, like it’s becoming a little bit obsessive with all these questions about opportunities lost. So, I will answer it again. These are the cards that we were dealt. I sure would like everybody to be healthy.”

Making the most out of the situation, the Lakers held off the Golden State Warriors 126-116 Sunday night at Crypto.com Arena despite not playing with LeBron James (sciatica), Luka Doncic and Marcus Smart (Achilles tendinopathy).

Redick said the plan is for Smart to “get two games [in] this week.”

The Lakers have three remaining preseason games: Tuesday at Phoenix, Wednesday at Las Vegas against the Dallas Mavericks and Friday against the visiting Sacramento Kings — four games over a six-day span.

Redick was reminded that the Lakers as an organization have chosen to play six preseason games — the maximum allowed by the NBA.

“It’s something to be discussed I think going forward,” Redick said. “I think it’s awesome. I really do because we got to play in Palm Springs and I think it’s awesome that we get to play in Vegas and I recognize that there’s Lakers fans all over the world that maybe don’t get the chance to see us play.

“You hope that we can find some sort of balance in the future to get more practice time, less travel time. I’m sure at some point we’ll be one of the teams going overseas, so then that adds another scenario.”

Lakers guard Bronny James, front, and Golden State forward Trayce Jackson-Davis battle for a rebound in the first half Sunday of the Lakers’ 126-116 preseason win at Crypto.com Arena.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Redick did say for training camp purposes, practice tends to be more helpful in team building than preseason games.

“I think more practices would be beneficial,” Redick said. “I do think the exposure to a game situation and playing against an opponent is very beneficial. You don’t have a lot of days anymore and to try to cram six games in there [and] four games in six nights, it’s significantly difficult.”

Against the Warriors on Sunday, Austin Reaves (21 points), Dalton Knecht (16), Rui Hachimura (16) and Deandre Ayton (14 points, eight rebounds, five assists) were on top of their games.

For Ayton, who was six for eight from the field and had a blocked shot, his joy came from the fans cheering him on. Sure, it was only a preseason game, but Ayton loved the vibe and the positive energy he felt.

It was Ayton’s first time playing at Crypto.com Arena since he signed a two-year, $16.6-million deal with the Lakers.

“It hit me in the whole arena today just hearing the fans and everybody cheering,” Ayton said. “It was kind of an unusual sound other than boos. … It was everybody showing love and welcoming me to L.A. I played so freely and I had a lot of fun.”

A British woman who recently moved her family to Florida in the US has shared the top 10 things they don’t like about living in the sunshine state. There are certain things they seem to hate

A British family have relocated to America, but they’ve confessed there are certain aspects of life in the US they’re struggling to adjust to, and she’s not the first expat to be shocked by the differences. The woman who documents their experience under the username brits.inthesunshinestate on TikTok has revealed the 10 things the family dislike about living in Florida.

Despite only residing in the US for a matter of months, there are certain things they simply cannot get used to, and they’ve now laid them all bare. Emily posted her thoughts in a recent video, and her opinions have certainly sparked considerable debate.

It’s not the first occasion Brits have voiced their perspectives on the American lifestyle either. Previously, it emerged some Brits consider certain American customs completely impolite.

In the footage, she revealed: “Number one, the public bathroom stalls. The doors have a gap, probably like that either side. You can see straight through them.

“If you are sat on the toilet or, if you are washing your hands, you can see the reflection in the mirror. You can see people moving, you can see people’s clothes. I don’t like it, I don’t like the lack of privacy.

“Number two, WhatsApp does not really exist much out here. It’s all about texting and, to me, that is old school.

“Three, Florida drivers. They are wild, they are aggressive. In time, I will get used to it but, for now, it’s still a little bit crazy.

“Four. Since we’ve been here, we have had multiple people soliciting at our door, trying to sell their business, because they happen to be in the neighbourhood or going door to door. Don’t like that. We can stop it by putting a ‘no soliciting’ thing on our door. We can get that fixed.”

In the clip, Emily also pointed out the family aren’t keen on sluggish pumps at petrol stations either. According to her, filling up can “take forever.”

She also highlighted that post can take ages to turn up, unless you’re ordering from Amazon Prime. Based on her experience, she said her mail can take anything from a week to 10 days to arrive.

Insects can also be “relentless” during the evening when you go for a stroll, she added. As soon as the sun goes down, she said they appear everywhere, and she finds it really annoying.

Snakes have also been a problem for her, though she admitted one she spotted was “fine.” Emily explained they have found a cottonmouth snake in the garden, and she didn’t like this as they can be dangerous.

Last but not least, she also admitted she thinks the healthcare system is “confusing.” Even though she likes how it’s run, she doesn’t like how tricky it is to understand.

She said there’s a lot of paperwork, and it’s something they’ll have to learn to get used to. Emily admitted it’s up to them to learn all they need to know about the system. Despite listing the downsides, she insisted that moving was still the best decision they’ve ever made.

The family are over the moon with their new life and adore living in the States. The video has racked up thousands of views since it was posted, sparking a flurry of comments, and opinions were decidedly split.

One viewer remarked: “As an American, we don’t like our stalls either. Might as well leave the door open wide.”

Another commented: “That’s exactly what I thought when I went to the USA years ago. I couldn’t live there because of the public toilets.”

A third responded: “I’ve lived in America for five years and I’ve never seen snakes.” Meanwhile, a fourth added: “All my bills come by email.”

Another person chimed in with: “Most drivers aren’t from Florida. They are either tourists or live here but moved from another state. It does make driving tricky though.”

There were more than 17,000 high school sports transfers recorded last school year in California, and one of the most bizarre involved Chaminade offensive lineman Harout Agazaryan.

On a Monday in January, he checked out of Chaminade. On Tuesday, he began classes and football practice at Burbank High. By Tuesday afternoon, when his mother picked him up after football practice, he told her, “I don’t think it’s the right place for me.”

“You’re probably right,” she said. “How do you feel? Do you want to go back to Chaminade?”

“Yes,” he said.

On Wednesday morning at Starbucks, he met with Chaminade football coach David Machuca and asked to return.

By Thursday, he was back at Chaminade in the same classes. He felt awkward, but his teachers joked, “You missed me already?”

It took courage to ask for a second chance, and what a decision it has turned out to be. Five times this season, Agazaryan has been named a team captain by his coach. The 6-foot-3, 255-pound senior been a standout offensive tackle and defensive lineman.

“He’s been amazing,” Machuca said. “You talk about a kid that did a 360. He’s representing what I believe is important to being a captain — dedication, holding people accountable. He’s doing everything right.”

There’s so many lessons to be learned from Agazaryan’s experiences.

“The grass isn’t always greener where you go,” he said. “I discovered there’s not many places better than Chaminade.”

It was his parents who gave him the green light to transfer even though they wanted him to stay.

“Honestly, at the time, I had a lot of friends [at Burbank],” he said. “They were texting me every day. I wasn’t doing very good academically here. I thought I needed a restart.”

He quickly determined he was wrong. But would he have a chance to return to his old school?

One of the most important decisions he made was to have a conversation with Machuca before he left. So many times, students and their parents don’t even inform the coach they are leaving.

“I feel you have to leave on good terms because I know teammates that left last year that didn’t talk to coach Machuca at all,” he said. “I felt as a man, I had to talk to him.”

That earlier discussion made Machuca open to welcoming Agazaryan’s return as long as parameters were followed.

“I actually told him when he was leaving I’m really happy we’re at the point of having a conversation,” Machuca said.

The second chance has not been wasted.

“It’s been way better,” Agazaryan said. “I feel when I came back, my head switched. I was a way better person, better in the classroom, better on the field. I felt I was controlling my emotions more.”

Coaches have been complaining that it’s harder to coach players these days, because they know if someone takes something they say the wrong way, they immediately think about transferring to another school.

Agazaryan warns, “Don’t ever burn your bridges because you never know what will happen. Just because one thing bad happens doesn’t mean you should take your stuff off and leave. You have to build a relationship with everyone on the campus, then you’ll really be happy.”

Taylor Swift is “shockingly” offended by the idea that “The Life of a Showgirl” could be — given her recent engagement to Travis Kelce — her final album.

“It is not the last album. That’s not why people get married,” the singer told BBC Radio 2 on Monday.

“They love to panic sometimes,” she said, talking about conspiracy theorists in the Swifty-verse, “but it’s like, I love the person I am with because he loves what I do and he loves how much I am fulfilled by making art and making music.”

Rumors started to make their rounds after the couple announced their engagement in August through a joint Instagram post. Fans speculated that after she said “I do,” she would have children and move on from music — or so BBC host Scott Mills had informed his guest.

Wait, mothers can’t have careers? Swift called that a “shockingly offensive thing to say.”

Weeks earlier, the Grammy-winning singer announced the impending arrival of her 12th album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” on her now-fiancé’s podcast hosted along with brother Jason Kelce. Since the release last week, the rumors grew louder and louder, with some fans predicting this album would be it for the pop artist.

To which Swift pushed back:

“That’s the coolest thing about Travis, he is so passionate about what he does that me being passionate about what I do, it connects us,” Swift said.

Their passions in life aren’t so different, according to the singer.

“We both, as a living, as a job, as a passion, perform for 3½ hours in NFL stadiums,” the showgirl said. “We both do 3½-hour shows to entertain people.”

When she’s touring, she gets a dressing room, Swift said, but when he’s playing in the same space, they call it a locker room.

“It’s a very similar thing and we’re both competitive in fun ways, not in ways that eat away at us,” she added.

Over the weekend, while Kelce prepared for the Kansas City Chiefs’ “Monday Night Football” game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the future Mrs. Tight End released “Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” in theaters. The experience earned $33 million over the weekend, topping the box office, according to Box Office Mojo.

The music video for the album’s opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” premiered along with the release-party movie. Swift wrote and directed it.

“[The music video] is very, like, big and glitzy and it’s so fun and it’s supposed to be like the day in the life of a showgirl,” she said.

Multitasking has become a norm for the “Cruel Summer” singer, who juggled her last tour with the recording of the album.

Swift said she flew to Sweden on multiple occasions during the Eras Tour to record the album. Her loyal inner circle did not leak any information.

“My friends don’t rat, they do not rat and you can tell by the amount of stories about me that are out there that are absolutely not true,” she said.

OK, Swifties, you can breathe now. You can stop looking for clues into whether this is it for Tay-tay’s music career. Shake it off until her next release.

BBC Breakfast presenters Sally Nugent and Jon Kay were left emotional on Tuesday’s show as they spoke to a grieving mum who is still fighting for answers after her son died

BBC Breakfast presenters Sally Nugent and Jon Kay shared some heartbreaking news on Tuesday’s programme following the tragic death of a young lad.

The hosts paused to honour Jools Roome, who died three years ago, whilst his mum, Ellen, continues her battle for answers surrounding her son’s death.

Kicking off the devastating segment, Jon explained: “Now, from today, social media sites and tech companies will have to preserve data relating to the online activity of a child who has died if requested to do so by a coroner.”

Sally added: “Yes, it’s the latest part of the Online Safety Act to be rolled out, but some parents who’ve lost their children say the measures simply don’t go far enough.”

Following some footage of Jools before his passing, Jon and Sally welcomed Jools’ mother, Ellen, who made a gut-wrenching appeal, according to the Express.

Jon observed, “So it’s an important day. It’s a change. But for you, it’s not a change enough, just explain.”

Ellen responded: “So as of today, there’s something called data preservation notices, which gives the coroner the right to preserve the data. So they’d have to go to Ofcom to preserve online social media data.

“I spoke to two new bereaved parents last night who are in this position. The police are… what happens when an inquest happens is that the inquest is opened and usually suspended and handed back to the police for investigation.

“The problem is the police are then saying, ‘well, we don’t have the power to do that’, then the coroner is not in control, so they can’t use that law. So it seems ridiculous, unless it’s automatic, then the coroners can’t use that law, and then we’re waiting months or potentially years.”

She continued, “The thing that bothers me is that there’s not enough training for police and coroners as well, so the coroner needs to understand what information to ask for. Do all coroners know how TikTok works, or other apps that kids are using, or what information to ask from Snapchat, and so Ofcom needs to help the coroner understand what information to request.”

Ellen went on to reveal that she remains “planning to go to the High Court” in an attempt to “piece together what information was missing” surrounding Jools’ death.

The devastated mum became visibly emotional as she declared, “I think I’m three and a half years down the line. I could get emotional now, but I don’t know why my child’s not here, and I want to try for answers.

“And I think as a parent, I should have the right to try to look at social media, and I get we may be too late now, and this law will help other parents, which is great, but I want to try to understand what happened to my son.”

BBC Breakfast airs daily at 6am on BBC One.

Published on
29/09/2025 – 11:58 GMT+2

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In order to attract global investors, AstraZeneca said it will directly list its ordinary shares on the New York Stock Exchange, in addition to its shares trading in the UK and Sweden.

To do so, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant needs to replace its existing US listing of AstraZeneca American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq.

The company said that the move aims to harmonise its listing structure “while remaining headquartered in the UK”.

“The Board of AstraZeneca is recommending to shareholders a Harmonised Listing Structure for the Company’s ordinary shares across the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Nasdaq Stockholm (STO) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE),” the company said in a statement.

The announcement follows increased speculation that the pharma company may move its shares entirely from the London Stock Exchange, where it is one of the largest companies traded. And according to analysts, the current announcement doesn’t exclude this possibility in the future.

“While there is logic to shifting to a direct listing in the US rather than American Depositary Receipts beyond setting up for any longer-term moves, it does at least hint at the possibility of a more dramatic shift at some point in the future,” said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.  

The US has the world’s largest and most liquid public markets by capitalisation. A direct listing makes it easier for US investors to buy AstraZeneca shares directly without going through ADRs.

Compared to ordinary shares, American Depositary Receipts come with additional costs and extra steps. ADR investors may be subject to fees and double taxation, and ADRs come through a custodian bank.

“Enabling a global listing structure will allow us to reach a broader mix of global investors and will make it even more attractive for all our shareholders to have the opportunity to participate in AstraZeneca’s exciting future,” said Michel Demaré, Chair of AstraZeneca.

In response to the announcement, AstraZeneca’s shares listed on the FTSE 100 rose 0.71% at around 11.30 CEST.

Domino’s Pizza (DPZ -0.60%) may be best known for late-night delivery, but for investors it represents something bigger. One of the most durable growth stories in the restaurant industry. Over the past two decades, Domino’s has outpaced the S&P 500, delivering close to 3,000% in stock return to investors.

Now, with more than 21,000 stores worldwide, the question is what keeps Domino’s compounding from here. The answer lies in three powerful forces: International expansion, digital leadership, and menu innovation.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. International expansion, and particularly China

One of the biggest issues with Domino’s is the sheer size of its U.S. store count (7,031 as of March 23), which limits its future growth potential. While the bears are not wrong in saying that, they are missing the bigger picture, wherein the real growth engine is from overseas. For perspective, Domino’s now operates more international stores than domestic ones, and global markets (with more than 14,000 stores) are providing both scale and profitability.

The most significant growth opportunity here is China. Domino’s master franchisee there, DPC Dash, ended June 2025 with about 1,198 stores across 48 Chinese cities. Same-store sales have grown for more than 30 straight quarters, and management expects to add about 300 stores in 2025 and 350 more in 2026. It also has 30 million customers on its loyalty program there, up from 19 million a year ago.

Importantly, DPC’s growing scale is translating into profitability. In the first half of 2025,  Domino’s China generated $362.7 million in revenue and a fivefold increase in net profit year over year, with adjusted EBITDA margins climbing to 12.4%. Those numbers highlight a rare combination: Rapid revenue growth alongside improving margins.

While impressive, the growth in China is likely to be in the early days. With a population of 1.4 billion, the country can certainly accommodate many more thousands of stores. For investors, that’s a blueprint that could extend to other emerging markets as Domino’s replicates the model in emerging markets like India or Southeast Asia.

2. Ongoing investment in digital and technology

Domino’s has long differentiated itself through technology. It was one of the first pizza chains to roll out mobile ordering, and today, digital accounts for a large share of its sales base. In the U.S., more than 85% of sales now come through digital channels.

That’s more than just a convenience metric. Digital orders typically carry higher average tickets and lower error rates, and foster customer loyalty through push notifications and rewards. By steering customers to its own app, Domino’s also collects valuable data, enabling upselling and targeted marketing.

The company is also partnering with other tech companies. Its DoorDash deal, announced in May 2025, allows Domino’s stores to appear on DoorDash’s marketplace while still using Domino’s drivers for fulfillment. This hybrid model expands customer reach without compromising the delivery experience for customers.

Looking ahead, Domino’s ongoing investment in the latest technology and innovations could further enhance the customer experience while making its operation leaner and better. Both will add to the bottom line over the long run.

3. Menu and value innovation

People crave variety, even in a category as simple as pizza. Domino’s continually updates its menu with new toppings, sides, and limited-time offers that encourage repeat visits from loyal customers while attracting new demographics.

Internationally, Domino’s adapts to local tastes — paneer pizzas in India, durian pizzas in China — to ensure cultural relevance while still leveraging its global brand. That balance of localization and consistency is a significant strength as it expands into new markets.

Value remains just as crucial as novelty. Domino’s has consistently positioned itself as an affordable option in quick-service dining, offering carryout deals, bundles, and promotional pricing that appeal to price-sensitive consumers. This approach has helped Domino’s not only sustain demand through economic cycles, but also gain market share during more challenging times.

The combination of menu variety and value pricing has cemented Domino’s position as the largest pizza chain in the world, and it gives the company multiple levers to drive growth even when broader consumer spending slows.

What does it mean for investors?

Domino’s isn’t just a restaurant chain anymore — it’s a global platform powered by scale, technology, and relentless customer focus.

International expansion, particularly in China, offers a long runway for store growth. Its digital leadership strengthens customer loyalty and operational efficiency. And menu and value innovation keep the brand relevant and affordable across markets.

That’s why, even after two decades of outperformance, Domino’s story may just be getting started. Investors should keep the company on their radar.

MAFS UK’s Emma Barnes knows first hand what it’s like to walk down the aisle towards a stranger and is ready to give her insight in a weekly column

The autumn chill is settling in, and what better way to celebrate than with a dose of wedding chaos!

Luckily, we have Married At First Sight legend Emma Barnes here to give her verdict for the Mirror on all the weekly tears and madness the E4 show…

Firstly… Welcome to my weekly column! Honoured to pen my thoughts on, let’s face it, the UK’s welcome to Autumn. Darker nights, drama-filled dinner parties and clinging onto the hope of some happy endings while our dating life is in tatters: MAFS IS BACK PEOPLE!

What a first couple of episodes! The series will fly by with this new format, switching between weddings and honeymoons. We all get a bit bored of the often repetitive nuptials and personally I’d send Mel, Charlene and Paul to the honeymoons, some of these couples need them.

The cast seem a kind, calmer collective than the previous couple of series (for now, we all know!). I think I’d totally fit in with this group had I not made it into last series. Love that there’s two same sex couples, and I want to be bezzies with Nelly immediately.

This week Davide and Keye hitched in a classy, emotional day (round of applause on their guest’s pure style please!). Sarah’s asked for a bad boy and her new husband pre-wrote an acapella number that went down like a lead balloon, and we all learnt some lessons in feminism from Grace’s protective pal.

READ MORE: ‘I’m a beauty writer and this Clarins deal stack gets £278 worth of free products’

If you go into this experiment expecting the full package, you’re going to be disappointed, and emotions were running high. Types come up every year, two brides had tears after their vows. Sarah’s never dated someone like Dean. She likes a flirt, a cheeky wink and someone to through her down on the bed and rip her clothes off. Dean with the dimples is a kind, gentle, poet, and that’s not helping his sex appeal.

Grace expected an instant spark, (Ashley is going to have queues at his door if this doesn’t work out, he’s totally a bit of me!) but here’s the thing; from my experience women are more open to getting to know the person if the spark isn’t there. It will be a refreshing twist on blokes wanting fit birds and nothing else. Mark my words I predict one of these couples will go some distance with a sprinkling of expert help.

This is why we get hooked, the twists, turns, feedback and growth. The happiest couples on their wedding day face rocks in the road, while what starts off Grace’s tears after the ceremony could turn in a river of love by Christmas. Plenty of weddings to go so strap in, get hitched onto that sofa and get a wine and crisp in hand.

P.S I hate taking out the bins – totally a blue job if I had a boyfriend…

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

Stocks that pay big dividends can give your portfolio a big boost, but beware! Some high dividends could be … traps!

A yield trap is a type of dividend stock offering a very high yield. But the only reason its yield is so high is that the share price dropped significantly over a relatively short time (and is likely to stay down for a while), increasing the odds that the dividend will need to be cut (or even suspended altogether). Investors who buy in chasing the high yield can get hit with the double whammy of a dividend cut and a sharp share price drop as investors dump the stock.

Here are three stocks paying high dividends that look very risky right now, and one high-yielding stock that’s a much safer pick.

Image source: Getty Images.

At-Risk Dividend No. 1: LyondellBasell (current yield: 10.4%)

Industrial chemical and materials companies like LyondellBasell (LYB -1.76%) have had a rough few years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these companies could count on steady, if slow-growing, demand for their products, which include construction materials, lubricants for industrial machinery, automobile coatings, consumer packaging, and other industrial products.

Usually, this diversified customer base would prevent a slowdown in one sector from affecting a company like LyondellBasell’s bottom line too much. However, the sectors that rely on these products the most — automotive, construction, and manufacturing — are in a multi-year slump.

This has hurt LyondellBasell’s bottom line. Trailing 12-month net income has collapsed by 96.7% over the past three years and free cash flow has dropped by 91.6% to $453 million. Considering that dividends are paid out of free cash flow, and the company’s current dividend payouts add up to $1.72 billion per year, investors should be concerned about dividend sustainability.

The company is clearly hoping it can power through. It has launched a “Cash Improvement Plan” and sold some assets in an effort to “support shareholder returns.” But with just $1.7 billion in cash left on its balance sheet, it won’t be long before the company has to either turn to borrowing to support its dividend — which isn’t sustainable over the long term — or cut it, like…

At-Risk Dividend No. 2: Dow (current yield: 5.8%)

LyondellBasell’s fellow chemical company Dow (DOW -1.36%) is facing the same headwinds, but has fared even worse, with earnings and free cash flow that both turned sharply negative in the most recent quarter.

Like LyondellBasell, Dow’s dividend yield crept above 10% as its share price dropped by more than 60% from its highs. However, with negative cash flow eating into the company’s balance sheet, Dow ripped off the bandage and cut its quarterly dividend in half, from $0.70/share to $0.35/share.

It’s ironic that even after that major cut, Dow still has a higher yield than most other companies. But if the industry doesn’t pull out of the slump it’s currently in, further cuts could be coming.

At-Risk Dividend No. 3: UPS (current yield: 7.8%)

In a case of “same song, different beat,” shipping and logistics giant UPS (UPS 0.43%) has seen a post-pandemic collapse in net income (down 50% in the last three years) and free cash flow (down 65%), as the pandemic-era delivery boom — for which UPS made major capacity upgrades — fizzled. Investors responded by sending shares down 57% from their highs.

With dividend payouts of $5.4 billion outstripping the company’s trailing cash flow of $3.5 billion, and tariffs expected to reduce shipping and delivery volume even further in the near term, the company’s $6.3 billion cash hoard may not last long enough to avoid a cut, although CEO Carol Tome is trying to. “You have our commitment to a stable and growing dividend,” she said on the most recent earnings call, but investors should remember that dividend policy can change without warning.

Safe Dividend: MPLX (current yield: 7.6%)

If high dividends are what you’re after, why pick UPS’ risky 7.8% yield when you could get a nearly identical 7.6% yield that’s much more secure? Midstream energy company MPLX (MPLX -0.48%) offers just such a payout.

MPLX operates pipelines, storage units, and shipping terminals for the oil and gas industry. As a master limited partnership (MLP), it gets favorable tax treatment in exchange for paying out almost all of its cash flow as dividends to investors. The only drawback to MLP ownership is some increased reporting at tax time if you hold your MLP shares in certain types of accounts.

Unlike the other three companies listed here, MPLX’s net income and free cash flow have only been growing over the past three years. Better yet, so has its dividend payout. But it still has plenty of dividend coverage, with its distributable cash flow currently 1.5x higher than its payouts, meaning MPLX has ample room to address a potential business slump without cutting its dividend.

That’s the kind of peace of mind you won’t get from LyondellBasell, Dow, or UPS right now, and why MPLX is a better choice for most dividend investors.

THE saying goes, ‘less is more’, but celebrities are taking that a little too literally as flashing thongs return.

The trend was big in the noughties with the ‘it’ girls of the day, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, showing the tops of their G-Strings.

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And TV royalty, Gillian Anderson flashed hers on the red-carpet at the Oscars in 2001 but later was killed off by fashion notoriety – along with tramp stamps.

Flashing your thongs had a resurgence in 2020 with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian flashing their underwear, but now the trend is more than just peeking above your jeans.

It’s about basically doing a moony, but getting away with it because you’re in couture.

Last week Margot Robbie paid tribute to the late, and great, Mr Giorigio Armani who sadly passed away earlier this month by wearing one of his spring designs, a completely sheer and bejewelled dress.

At the premier of her new film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the 35-year-old undoubtedly looked incredible in the see-through gown with plunging back that showed she was only wearing a thong.

Just a couple of days later fellow actress Dakota Johnson, 35, wore a similar look.

A high neck, long sleeved, floor length dress made from lace that also flashed her bum in a black thong.

Her Gucci gown for a charity dinner in New York, again, looked incredible on her.

But we need to think about their consequences.

Thongs, a piece of fabric that connects from the front to the back and no more than a few centimetres thick. And that connection of fabric goes via your, erm, bum.

When it’s in black and white it sounds vulgar, and not to mention uncomfortable.

And I don’t want to see that when I’m in a bar sipping my glass of Sauvignon, because let’s face it where celebs lead – we all follow.

When you’re a Hollywood A-lister with the pristine figure good enough to better the world’s best supermodels, sure flash away – you look sensational.

But let’s not make this trend grip the nation or we’ll be faced with fleshy, droopy, white bottoms on the loose up and down the country.

Pants for a charity fundraiser? No thank you.

Clemmie Fieldsend

And if you shudder at the sight of a ‘builders bum’ then don’t, please don’t, let this trend catch on – because your Friday night in your local ‘Spoons will be overrun with bums.

And it’s not just Margot and Dakota that could lead us into the cringe fashion flop.

Actress Helen Flannagan celebrated her 35th birthday by wearing a gold dress with a thong-bodysuit underneath.

Whilst on holiday the Corrie star went for a more toned down version of the trend wearing something similar to a thong cossie under a beach dress.

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Singer Dua Lipa, 30, hit the streets of New York for the Charlie Chaplin Gala this April in a beautiful black knitted dress with a fine weave that revealed her underwear.

Another modest style of the trend but nevertheless, pants for a charity fundraiser? No thank you.

Model Cara Delevingne has been at it too.

In May at the premier for the Ocean With David Attenborough documentary in London she flashed her thong, and the rest of her body all within spitting distance of our national treasure, Sir David.

There’s no escaping the fact that if we copy you we’ll become the butt of every joke

Clemmie Fieldsend

Complete with plunging neckline, the 33-year-olds chainmail grown might have been a bit too risque for such an occasion and a bit too chilly.

In the same month, Britney Spears did her one of her usual dancing around on Instagram videos, but this time just in thread-bare underwear.

The 43-year-old chose to wear just her bra and knickers for the video and black leather knee high boots.

Now, I’m all for doing what you like in your own home, but maybe the rest of us don’t need to see it.

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Love Island host Maya Jama was reviving the noughties trend way back in January.

For the All Stars series she headed back to the villa wearing a Norma Kamali see-though, ruched gown with off-the-shoulder straps with nothing but black underwear underneath.

With the warm temperatures of South Africa, she may have felt hot and wanted something cool to wear, and if anyone is going to look amazing in this trend it’s Maya, but let’s save it for private holidays.

For high days and holidays maybe, but come on ladies.

There’s no escaping the fact that if we copy you we’ll become the butt of every joke.

So let’s leave this trend, and cracks, in the past.

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SACRAMENTO — Hello and happy Monday.

Pigs are flying and Satan has on a puffer jacket. I know these things because the impossible is happening — I am writing about why Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert are right.

And why California’s Republican congressional representatives should be ashamed and shamed.

You may know these women as beacons of the far right, maybe even the fringe-right, in Congress. Hailing from Georgia, South Carolina and Colorado, respectively, they have dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, including about sex trafficking and powerful pedophiles, among other questionable actions.

But I’ll say this for the trio — they’ve stayed true to their beliefs, even under direct pressure from the White House. So a (limited) shout-out to Greene, Mace and Boebert.

What am I talking about? Jeffrey Edward Epstein, of course (I think he committed enough crimes to earn his middle name included, serial killer style).

Boebert, Mace and Greene are three of only four Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a discharge petition (a kind of work-around to bypass leadership) to release the full Epstein files, supposedly containing a trove of information on men who bought and sold sex with teenage girls.

“These are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world that could sue these women into poverty and homelessness,” Greene said at a recent news conference with some of the victims. “Yeah, it’s a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I’m not afraid to name names, and so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women. I can do that for them.”

And, to my immense shock at having something in common with Greene, I say — that is how it’s done, lady. You go.

Not a single Republican House member from California has backed releasing the Epstein files. Every California Democratic representative has signed. So let’s talk about that.

I am sick of Epstein. Why are you writing this?

Like most of you, I too am tired of hearing endless political chatter about Epstein.

For the blessedly uniformed among you, Epstein was an extremely rich dude. No one is quite sure where all that money came from, but he apparently used a great deal of it to buy influence with powerful men, and sex traffic underage girls — allegedly children as young as 11 .

He died by suicide while in jail in 2019 (lots of conspiracy theories on whether it was in fact suicide) but in 2021 his paramour-partner Ghislaine Noelle Maxwell was also convicted of child sex trafficking and other offenses.

Epstein and Maxwell have ties to Donald Trump, including a much-discussed “birthday book” that honestly I do not care about other than to say, “Ick.” That has made the whole thing an endless political brouhaha.

But many of the many victims of Epstein and Maxwell have called for their information to be released by the Justice Department, which holds more than 100,000 pages of the investigation. They, like survivors of sexual assault everywhere, want accountability, if justice remains elusive. They want names named. They want to stop being afraid, stop being stuck by their pain and their past, and allow the world to decide, if courts won’t, just how much truth they are telling.

These are brave women who were brutalized as children for the pleasure of men with money. They have a right to have their stories known if that’s what they choose.

This is not politics. This is decency.

The California problem

Like Greene, I’m willing to name some names. Here they are — California’s GOP representatives in the House:

Releasing the Epstein files requires only one of them to sign the discharge petition. Just one of these fine representatives from the Golden State could do the right thing, stand for a bipartisan value that Californians of both parties hold — sex trafficking is bad — and show what real leadership looks like.

Anyone? Anyone?

“If Epstein survivors want this information released, it should be released. These women have had the courage to speak out and it’s infuriating that Congress would block release of information — they’d rather help with a cover-up than stand with survivors,” state Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento) told me.

She’s a former state Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in trafficking, and has worked on controversial bipartisan legislation at the Capitol with Republican Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield. That legislation earned her the ire of her own party, but on an issue this important, she did what she believed was right over what was easy.

“Protecting kids and standing up for survivors of human trafficking should not be a partisan issue and in California, we’ve shown it doesn’t have to be,” Krell said.

In fact, the discharge petition in the House is a bipartisan effort — introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and our own Ro Khanna of California, a Democrat.

In particular, I’d like to call out Kiley for his hypocrisy. Recently, he introduced a bipartisan sex trafficking bill in Congress that’s a smart idea — the National Human Trafficking Database Act, which would create a database at the Department of Justice that tracks cases across the country. He did it with Reps. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga). Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are carrying the bill in the Senate.

“We must do everything we can to prevent human trafficking and having the necessary tools at our disposal will bring us closer to stopping this awful crime,” Kiley said in a press release.

Huh.

Seems like Kiley gets the issue. Seems like he’s saying the right things. And for a guy about to be gerrymandered out of his own district — with his own party not seeming to care — he doesn’t have much to lose by doing the right thing and signing the discharge petition. My email to his office on the topic remains unanswered.

Liz Stein, an Epstein and Maxwell survivor who spoke at the news conference, said (as reported by the 19th News) that her life has never been the same since the abuse started. Since then, it has “felt like someone shut off the lights to my soul.”

There. Is. No. Excuse.

“This is not a partisan issue, but an American issue,” New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said in a press release. “To my Republican colleagues, if these heartbreaking stories aren’t enough, sign the petition for your daughters and for all the women in your lives that you would want protected from pedophiles. Because it’s not just about Epstein, but about all the women and children who are trafficked, abused, sexually assaulted, and ignored in their pain. The survivors today told their stories to not only push for the Epstein files to be released, but for a better future where women and girls are believed and supported, and abusers are held accountable.”

I can’t say it any more directly. Hiding behind politics on this one is the act of a coward.

If you won’t stand up against the rape of children, what do you stand for?

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: L.A. fires burned their block. For each, the disaster was just beginning.
The what happened: Lawyers fear 1,000 children from Central America, dozens in California, are at risk of being deported
The L.A. Times special: What the writings on the bullet casings from Charlie Kirk’s killer might mean

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With the current growing tensions between Venezuela and the United States, it’s worth recalling a little-known aerial mission that the U.S. military launched to interdict narcotics coming out of Central and South America back in the 1990s. Most notably, the announcement earlier this week that 10 F-35s will deploy to Puerto Rico startled some, but it is actually far from unprecedented. In fact, something similar was happening for years, decades ago. This was Coronet Nighthawk, which employed U.S. Air Force fighters to patrol against suspected drug traffickers.

Starting with the current situation, the deployment of F-35s has been taken by some as evidence that the United States is planning to go to war directly with Venezuela. However, as we have previously pointed out, these stealth jets could also be used for a range of other relevant tasks. In particular, their advanced sensors make them ideal intelligence-gathering platforms. You can read more about that here.

We are still waiting to hear more about the F-35 deployment. Currently, it remains unclear where they will come from, when they arrive, and what they will do once they get there.

However, the deployment does have some parallels with Coronet Nighthawk, a counterdrug operation that began in the early 1990s and employed fighter aircraft to patrol the skies of Central America and the Caribbean and detect suspected drug-running aircraft. This was at a time of huge concern around drug trafficking and smuggling into the United States, which had begun to peak during the era of the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s.

The main facility for Coronet Nighthawk was Howard Air Force Base in Panama, although assets would eventually also be rotated into other airfields in the Caribbean and Central America.

This mission was initially undertaken by Air Combat Command before transitioning from the active-duty component to the Air National Guard. Fighters were on 24/7 alert to intercept possible drug-trafficking aircraft and to provide overwatch to dissuade such flights. On receiving coordinates of a suspect flight, fighters were expected to scramble within 15 minutes and would then go and investigate them.

F-15s and F-16s were involved, with an example of the former pictured at the top of this story. Dated 1993, the original caption describes it as an F-15 sent to identify an aircraft that was possibly hauling drugs as detected by the Southern Regional Operations Center.

A Washington Post article from 2000, detailing the 113th Wing’s activities in Curaçao provides an idea of how the mission worked:

“The fast, agile F-16s would quickly intercept the suspect planes in international airspace as they flew over open water. The aircraft would be identified and tracked along their route and then followed again after making suspected deliveries. Information on the planes’ actions and location would be passed on to law enforcement agencies and local civil authorities for possible arrests and seizures.”

It appears the U.S. Air Force fighters flew their missions unarmed, serving as the ‘eyes in the sky’ to locate suspect aircraft as well as to dissuade them from being in the airspace in the first instance.

However, intercepting ‘slow-movers’ was and remains a challenge for a jet fighter.

“The drug runners aren’t running at high noon,” Col. Mike Redman, the 113th Wing vice commander, told the Washington Post. “They’re doing it very early in the morning, and they’re flying low over the water.” Typically, the drug-runners would try and fly at low speed, just below the clouds.

The Coronet Nighthawk mission was wound up in 2001, due to the implementation of the Panama Canal Treaty, which handed the canal back to the Panamanian government at the end of December 1999, together with U.S. military bases in the country. (In 2002, the Coronet Nighthawk name would be resurrected for the deployment to Europe of Air Force F-117 stealth fighters).

Clearly, however, the mission had been successful in terms of its original remit.

As of the early 1990s, 75 percent of the drugs in the region were assessed to be transported by air, according to an official history from the 142nd Wing, one of the units that provided fighter jets. By the time the mission ended, the percentage of drugs transported in the region by air had been reduced to 25 percent, as the drug traffickers changed their approach accordingly.

According to one publicly available account, between September 1994 and the end of the decade, Coronet Nighthawk fighters were credited with ensuring the disruption or seizure of over 33,000 metric tons of cocaine.

“We didn’t go over there expecting to completely stop the flow of cocaine coming into the country,” Maj. Conal J. Brady III, a 199th Fighter Squadron F-15 pilot, said in one contemporary account. “But we did make a dent in it and made it a lot harder for the drug runners.”

As far as the 142nd Wing and its F-15s were concerned, they made six deployments to Panama for Coronet Nighthawk, first in 1992, twice in 1993, again in 1994, over the New Year 1995–96, and lastly in 1999. A typical deployment involved five F-15s and around 50 airmen, with personnel rotating every two weeks.

“It’s a real-world mission, but at least the weather’s nice and you’re working under the palm trees near white sand beaches,” Redman explained to the Washington Post.

It should be recalled that, during the same timeframe, an overseas F-16 assignment might otherwise take airmen to a desert base in the Middle East, to fly long-duration ‘no-fly’ zone missions over Iraq.

The current F-35 deployment is a fairly clear indication that the situation in the region is currently heating up.

Back in the 1990s, most of the narcotics traffic was underway in the air. The pulse-Doppler lookdown radars on the F-15s and F-16s were key to finding aerial targets, which were mainly active at night.

Now, most of the drugs in the region are moved on the surface of the water. Modern fighters have even more powerful radars paired with electro-optical systems that can detect and investigate targets on the surface and do so very quickly. With the U.S. military now also engaging suspected drug traffickers at sea, fighters would also be able to attack those targets themselves. The air threat from Venezuela is also not nonexistent. While the token fleet of aging F-16s is not a huge concern, Venezuela does have 21 more potent Su-30MK2V Flanker multirole fighters.

For the time being, at least, it seems that the favored option for counter-narcotics missions involves the MQ-9 Reaper drone, at least two of which have recently been noted in Puerto Rico. Although these are among a number of different aircraft now involved, MQ-9s can carry a variety of missiles as well as sensors for surveillance and can loiter for more than 24 hours over a target, making them an ideal platform for these missions. What they cannot do is respond anywhere near as rapidly as a fighter.

Meanwhile, although Coronet Nighthawk was just one of many military efforts by the U.S. government to try to stop the flow of drugs into the country from Central and South America, it appears to have been one of the more successful ones.

Contact the author: [email protected]

EastEnders made an announcement just days ago confirming why Wednesday’s episode isn’t on iPlayer and what time fans can watch it on BBC One as Zoe Slater’s secret is revealed

In a twist to the usual proceedings, EastEnders will air on both BBC iPlayer and BBC One at 7:30pm on Wednesday and will not drop on iPlayer in the morning.

Normally the episode drops each morning on the streaming platform ahead of it airing that same evening on TV. But to preserve some big twists, bosses have made the decision not to release it on iPlayer so that everyone sees it that evening at the same time.

The decision was announced over the weekend, with it revealed the episode would see returning character Zoe Slater’s secrets finally exposed. Not only that, but Tuesday’s episode ended with a deadly cliffhanger as a gun was fired.

Fans will find out who was shot in Wednesday’s episode, after Jack Branning and Ravi Gulati accidentally fired the gun during a struggle. It’s set to be a huge episode as we also find out what has gone on in Zoe Slater’s life for the past 20 years.

READ MORE: Who gets shot in EastEnders? What is Zoe’s secret? Mystery as episode kept off iPlayerREAD MORE: EastEnders’ Sharon Watts’ ‘tragic return sealed’ after jaw-dropping cliffhanger

Zoe made her big comeback to Walford for the first time in two decades this week. Michelle Ryan reprised the role, and Zoe’s first scenes with mum Kat Moon, played by Jessie Wallace, aired across Monday and Tuesday.

Viewers praised this week’s episodes, and were left excited for what was to come. Soon, fans were sharing their theories about what would happen on Wednesday knowing there was a long wait until they knew the full details.

The BBC soap confirmed the episode would explore Zoe’s past, with her return sending “shockwaves through the Slaters and Walford”. EastEnders Executive Producer Ben Wadey teased “dramatic” scenes ahead, and said she had more than one secret.

He said: “As Zoe makes her dramatic return to Walford next week, more than one secret in her past will come to light as we look to explore the reasons behind her return, and what has happened in the past twenty years to make her the person she is today.”

It comes as fans feared over who would be shot in the episode, as other fans predicted Zoe’s secrets. Fans are convinced she is the mother of troubled teen Joel Marshall after some apparent hints in recent months.

Other fans think it will be revealed that she is married to Max Branning who is returning to the BBC soap. As for the shooting victim, fans have named Sharon Watts, Kat, Zoe, Howie Danes and Oscar as potential victims.

In a sad twist fans are also guessing Kat’s nan Mo Harris is the one who gets shot, and that she might be killed off in a tragedy. Fans will just have to tune in on Wednesday evening to find out.

EastEnders airs Mondays to Thursdays at 7:30pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

King Gavin is at it again!

That’s the cry coming from Republicans across California as Newsom pushes the state Legislature to approve a November special election like none this state has ever seen. Voters would have the chance to approve a congressional map drawn by Democrats hoping to wipe out GOP-held seats and counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Trump-driven redistricting.

The president “doesn’t play by a different set of rules — he doesn’t believe in the rules,” the governor told a roaring crowd packed with Democratic heavyweights last week at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. “And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. … We have got to meet fire with fire.”

California Republicans are responding to this the way a kid reacts if you take away their Pikachu.

“An absolutely ridiculous gerrymander!” whined Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the state’s rural northeast corner, on social media. Under the Democratic plan, his district would swing all the way down to ultra-liberal Marin County.

The California Republican Party deemed the new maps a “MASTERCLASS IN CORRUPTION” (Trumpian caps in the original). National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Christian Martinez said “Newscum” was giving “a giant middle finger to every Californian.”

Intelligent minds can disagree on whether countering an extreme political move with an extreme political move is the right thing. The new maps would supersede the ones devised just four years ago by an independent redistricting commission established to keep politics out of the process, which typically occurs once a decade after the latest census.

Good government types, from the League of Women Voters to Charles Munger Jr. — the billionaire who bankrolled the 2010 proposition that created independent redistricting for California congressional races — have criticized Newsom’s so-called Election Rigging Response Act. So has former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fierce Trump critic who posted a photo of himself on social media working out in a T-shirt that read, “F*** the Politicians / Terminate Gerrymandering.”

I’m not fully convinced that Newsom’s plan is the MAGA killer he thinks it is. If the economy somehow rebounds next year, Republicans would most likely keep Congress anyway, and Newsom would have upended California politics for nothing.

I also don’t discount the moderate streak in California voters that pops up from time to time to quash what seem like liberal gimmes, like the failed attempt via ballot measure to repeal affirmative action in 2020 and the passage last year of Proposition 36, which increased penalties for theft and drug crimes. Nearly two-thirds of California voters want to keep redistricting away from the Legislature, according to a POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll released last week.

If Californians reject Newsom’s plan, that would torpedo his presidential ambitions and leave egg on the face of state Democratic leaders for years, if not a generation.

For now, though, I’m going to enjoy all the tears that California Republicans are shedding. As they face the prospect of even fewer congressional seats than the paltry nine they now hold, they suddenly care about rescuing American democracy?

In this image from video, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa speaks at the U.S. Capitol in 2020.

(House Television via Associated Press)

Where were they during Trump’s fusillade of lawsuits and threats against California? When he sent the National Guard and Marines to occupy parts of Los Angeles this summer after protests against his deportation deluge? When his underlings spew hate about the Golden State on Fox News and social media?

Now they care about political decency? What about when LaMalfa and fellow California GOP House members Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa — whose seats the Newsom maps would also eliminate — voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 victory? When the state Republican Party backed a ridiculous recall against Newsom that cost taxpayers $200 million? Or when the Republican congressional delegation unanimously voted to pass Trump’s Big Bloated Bill, even though it’s expected to gut healthcare and food programs for millions of Californians in red counties? Or even when Trump first pushed Abbott to pursue the very gerrymandering Newsom is now emulating?

We’re supposed to believe them when they proclaim Newsom is a pompadoured potentate who threatens all Californians, just because he wants to redo congressional maps?

Pot, meet black hole.

If these GOPers had even an iota of decency or genuine care for the Golden State, they would back a bill by one of their own that I actually support. Rep. Kevin Kiley, whose seat is also targeted for elimination by the Newsom maps, wants to ban all mid-decade congressional redistricting. He stated via a press release that this would “stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”

That’s an effort that any believer in liberty can and should back. But Kiley’s bill has no co-sponsors so far. And Kevin: Why can’t you say that your man Trump created this fiasco in the first place?

We live in scary times for our democracy. If you don’t believe it, consider that a bunch of masked Border Patrol agents just happened to show up outside the Japanese American National Museum — situated on a historic site where citizens of Japanese ancestry boarded buses to incarceration camps during World War II — at the same time Newsom was delivering his redistricting remarks. Sector Chief Gregory Bovino was there, migra cameramen documenting his every smirk, including when he told a reporter that his agents were there to make “Los Angeles a safer place, since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves.”

The show of force was so obviously an authoritarian flex that Newsom filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding to know who authorized what and why. Meanwhile, referring to Trump, he described the action on X as “an attempt to advance a playbook from the despots he admires in Russia and North Korea.”

Newsom is not everyone’s cup of horchata, myself included. Whether you support it or not, watching him rip up the California Constitution’s redistricting section and assuring us it’s OK, because he’s the one doing it, is discomfiting.

But you know what’s worse? Trump anything. And even worse? The California GOP leaders who have loudly cheered him on, damn the consequences to the state they supposedly love.

History will castigate their cultish devotion to Trump far worse than any of Newsom’s attempts to counter that scourge.

By midmorning in the Central Valley, the light turns hard and white, bleaching the sky and flattening every shadow. The rows of melons stretch to the horizon, vines twisted low in cracked soil. Pickers move in the rhythm the crop demands — bend, twist, lift, drop — their long sleeves damp with sweat, caps pulled low, bandanas hiding heat-burned cheeks. Spanish drifts along the rows, a joke here, a warning there, carried in the heavy air.

These are the cruelest days of harvest, when the sun turns fields into slow ovens and the heat climbs before breakfast, holding on until the stars are out. By nightfall, the damage is done: another collapse in the dirt, another family handed a death certificate instead of a paycheck.

It’s an all-too-familiar old problem in California. Nearly 20 years ago, in the shadow of four farmworker funerals — Arvin, Fresno County, Kern, Imperial Valley — California enacted the nation’s first heat rules for basic worker safety: water, shade, rest. Mercies you’d think needed no law. My fellow lawmakers and I who wrote those rules, along with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed them into law, believed they were enough. But two decades on, the grim reaper still walks the rows: 110 degrees, no tree, no tarp, a single water jug growing warm, its handle slick from dust and hands. Breaks denied, not from cruelty alone, but from the unrelenting clock of the harvest.

This is not a failure of the law itself, but of enforcement. Some treated the bill’s signing as the finish line instead of the starting gun. Inspectors are too few. Penalties too light. Investigations too slow. The state auditor’s latest report read like an obituary for Cal/OSHA’s credibility: outdated rules, missed chances, offices too empty to answer the phone.

Meanwhile the climate has turned meaner. Nights that once cooled now hold the day’s heat like a grudge. And the danger in the fields isn’t just the sun. Immigration raids now sweep through the Valley like dust storms — sudden, unannounced, merciless. For more than half of California’s 350,000 farmworkers, the greater threat isn’t heat stroke but a knock on the door before dawn or a traffic stop that ends with a vehicle full of workers detained and trucked to some distant site. The food that feeds the nation is pulled from the earth by people who work under triple-digit skies yet live in the shadows, where one complaint can cost them their job, their home, their freedom.

Twenty harvest seasons later, I’m calling for action — not another bill signing on the Capitol steps, but dollars, real and committed, and the regulations to match. With that will and funding, four simple fixes can turn promise into protection.

First, bring 21st century tools to the fields. In 2005, the “high-tech” solution was a plastic water jug in the shade and a flapping pop-up canopy. Today, for $50 — the price of two boxes of gloves — employers can deploy a wearable sensor clipped to a worker’s arm to track core temperature and heart rate, sending a warning before the body crosses the edge into heatstroke. That’s not Silicon Valley moonshot money. It’s pocket change for agribusiness, and for workers it could mean the difference between walking out of the rows or being carried out.

Second, enforce in real time. If a worker drops to one knee in the heat, the state shouldn’t hear about it days later in a report. Imagine a network linking growers, regulators and emergency crews to the same pulse of information — turning a slow, reactive system that documents tragedies into one that can act quickly and prevent many of them.

Third, train before the first row is picked. Ten minutes — no more — for workers to stand upright and learn, in their own language, the signs: dizziness, nausea, the creeping fog in the mind that means it’s time to stop. Not a photocopied handout in English tucked into an envelope behind a paycheck, not a rushed talk in Spanish at the field’s edge, but a verified safety course — certified by labor contractors and farmers alike. Knowledge here is as life-saving as water and shade.

Lastly, match the urgency we see in other arenas. While Cal/OSHA limps along, starved of staff and mired in red tape, Immigration and Customs Enforcement charges in the opposite direction — spurred by $170 billion in new funding, an immigration-enforcement and border-security blitz hiring thousands, dangling $50,000 signing bonuses, paying off student loans, waiving age limits, even pulling retirees back for double-dip salaries. That’s what happens when a government decides the wrong mission matters most. We pour urgency into chasing farmworkers from the fields, yet can’t muster the will to protect them in the heat. Until Cal/OSHA gets that same drive — inspectors recruited in every corner of the state, incentives to bring in a new generation, hurdles stripped away — the laws we wrote will remain a promise without a witness.

Some will say it’s too much, that the industry can’t bear the cost. But I’ve walked behind the hearses through Valley dust, stood in the gravel lots of farm town funeral homes, watched wives clutch work shirts as if they still held his warmth, seen children in Sunday clothes staring at the dirt. No budget line can measure that loss.

The Valley will keep feeding the nation. The question is whether we will keep feeding the graveyards too.

Once, by enacting heat safety rules, California declared that a life was worth more than a box of produce. If we let that promise wither in the heat, all we wrote back then was a press release. Government systems can fast-track billion-dollar projects, but until this much more affordable priority gets that kind of attention, the rules are just ink on paper, and the roll call of the dead just grows longer.

Dean Florez is a former California Senate majority leader, representing portions of the Central Valley.

Matthew Stafford was at the Rams’ facility on Monday, but not on the field for his first scheduled practice.

Instead, the 37-year-old quarterback with a back issue was in a shiny metal Airstream-like trailer that sat next to the field and was emblazoned with the Ammortal logo. The chamber offers “absolute state of the art in restoration and rejuvenation,” according to the company’s website.

“It wasn’t anything specifically related to his back that he was doing in there,” coach Sean McVay said.

Hmm…

Stafford’s back, specifically what McVay has described as an aggravated disc, has been the overarching story for a Rams team that will be regarded as a Super Bowl contender if the 17-year pro is physically sound enough to lead them.

A restorative and rejuvenation chamber parked at Rams practice in Woodland Hills. Matthew Stafford spent time in the chamber while his teammates practiced Monday.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

From the day the Rams reported for training camp last month, McVay maintained that Stafford would be ready for the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans. And given Stafford’s well-documented toughness and grit, it would not be a complete surprise if he is under center that day at SoFi Stadium.

McVay said from the start that he was not concerned about Stafford’s condition — the Rams, Stafford, team trainers and spine specialist Dr. Robert Watkins had a “week to week” plan in place to manage his workload in the run-up to the opener.

Asked Monday if he was now concerned, McVay moved a bit from his previous answers.

“The fair answer is I’m going to take it a day at a time as well,” McVay said, “because I can’t be 27 days from now [playing] Houston. We have to be able to have agility and flexibility, and that’s not exclusive to Matthew. … I do think it’s important to get some work in, but not at the expense of following the plan that we’ve talked about.”

Veteran Jimmy Garoppolo will continue to take first-team reps in team workouts and during Thursday’s joint practice with the New Orleans Saints in Carson.

Stafford would not have participated in the joint practice, but McVay had hoped he would have emerged from a throwing session on Saturday without any setbacks.

According to McVay, Stafford had looked good while throwing more than 60 passes at the Rams’ Woodland Hills facility hours before the preseason opener against the Dallas Cowboys.

“Had a great workout, felt good, but then came in [Monday] and it doesn’t feel great,” McVay said. “And so, didn’t feel like it was the right decision to be able to push him.”

The Rams will be “flexible and fluid” with Stafford’s situation, McVay said.

“We’re going to be smart,” he said.

Stafford was sidelined the final seven games of the Rams’ lost 2022 season because of a spinal bruise. But McVay has said his current condition was not related to that injury.

Stafford received an epidural injection a few weeks ago.

When asked if surgery had been discussed, McVay said “that hasn’t been a conversation that we’ve had.”

If the Rams were opening the season this week, would Stafford be able to play?

“I don’t know that,” McVay said. “I think he still probably would be able to play just based on how he feels.”

Will Stafford practice Tuesday if he is feeling better?

“I don’t know if we’ve gotten to that point yet,” McVay said. “Sometimes when you set expectations, they’re not met. What’s the first response? There’s frustration, and that’s OK to feel that way.

“But how can we move forward accordingly and most importantly, support a guy that when he gets out here we are going to be really excited about it.”

Etc.

Defensive linemen Kobie Turner and Poona Ford and safety Kam Curl returned to practice after sitting out a few days because of injuries. … Cornerback Emmanuel Forbes Jr. (hamstring) and rookie tight end Terrance Ferguson (hamstring) worked on the side with trainers. … Rams signed tight end McCallan Castles to a one-year deal and waived injured tight end Anthony Torres.

Mookie Betts offered a new perspective Tuesday afternoon on his season-long slump, which is that it wasn’t a season-long slump.

In his view, it actually extended back to last season.

“I really haven’t been right since I came back from my hand last year,” Betts said.

Betts fractured his left hand in mid-June last season when he was struck by a 98-mph fastball. He was sidelined for almost two months.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts stares down at his batting gloves after flying out in the ninth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Dodger Stadium on July 22.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“Think about it,” Betts said. “Go and look at it. I haven’t been right since.”

Betts was a MVP candidate when he went down, hitting .304 at the time. He batted .263 after his return, including .185 over the final 17 games of the regular season.

The troubles from last year have carried into this year, in which he’s batting a career-worst .236.

Betts wanted to clarify the point he was trying to make.

“I wasn’t blaming it on my hand or anything,” he said. “I was just saying since coming back, I haven’t done anything. It’s not just this season.”

Betts even went out of his way to downplay the severity of the injury or how it has affected him since.

“It wasn’t like I obliterated my hand,” he said. “It was a fracture.”

Betts pointed to how his grip strength was measured in spring training. The readings showed his grip was stronger than he was the previous year.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts makes a play during a game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 4.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

“There’s no correlation to anything,” he said. “I wish I could blame it on something, but nah.”

My visit to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday was prompted by what Betts told reporters after a weekend series in Tampa. The remarks in question were made when Betts was hitless in his last four games; the streak extended to a career-high five after another hitless game on Monday against the St. Louis Cardinals.

“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” Betts told reporters. “It’s up to God at this point.”

In print, at least, he sounded defeated. His quotes, I told him, were depressing.

“I don’t know if you’re watching what’s going on, but it is depressing,” Betts said with a smile.

So he still had a sense of humor.

Which isn’t to say he’s not baffled or frustrated by his lack of production.

“It’s unexplainable,” Betts said. “I don’t know. It sucks. You know how in Space Jam, they take your superpowers away? Kind of what it feels like. I’ve never been there, never done that, so to have that happen, I don’t know how to get out of it.”

Without any specific answers, he’s doubled down on the general philosophy that made him one of baseball’s greatest players.

He’s worked.

“That’s the only thing I can do,” he said. “The only thing I can control is my effort and my attitude.”

When Betts says he’s done everything he could do to recapture his old magic, what he’s really saying is that he’s doing everything he can.

“I hit for three or four hours a day,” he said. “At some point, your body breaks down, but I’d rather break down than not give the effort.”

Betts showed up at Dodger Stadium before 1:30 p.m. on Monday for the series opener against the Cardinals, which started at 7:10. He hit in the batting cages, worked on his defense on the field, and participated in batting practice. He returned to the batting cages at around 4:30 and stayed there until 6:15.

“Just trying to relearn, going to the basics, relearning myself,” he said. “I had to go back and think about what I used to do in the minor leagues, [those] types of things.”

Betts might not have yet figured out the adjustments required from him to break out of his slump, but he’s also not out of ideas. He acknowledged he’s purposely sounded more clueless than he actually is in order to avoid discussing changes he’s trying to implement.

“There’s a bunch of stuff that I’m working on,” he said. “That’s stuff that, no offense to you guys, but you guys wouldn’t understand.”

The former right fielder didn’t think the workload at shortstop was the source of his problems, and he didn’t think his batspeed had declined in the last couple of years, as data from baseball’s tracking system had indicated.

“I haven’t hit the ball solid,” Betts said. “Naturally, you slow down because you try to hit the ball solid.”

While the experiment of deploying Betts as a leadoff hitter ended after only two weeks, manager Dave Roberts said he was committed to batting him near the top of the lineup.

“If that’s not confidence from a manager to a player,” Roberts said, “I don’t know what is.”

Betts rewarded Roberts’ faith on Tuesday in a 12-6 victory over the Cardinals on Tuesday, as he was three for four with a double, a walk and three runs. The three-hit game was his first in almost two months.

Betts refused to read too much into the performance.

“It’s good to get the results, but it’s one game,” he said. “Every time we talk about [a good game], I go 0 for 20 after. So we’ll see about tomorrow.”

He departed the stadium uncertain of what the results would be the next day, but he knew what the process would be. He would continue to work and continue to search for answers.