US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran is seeking to work on a broader Middle East peace deal after lending its support to his plan to bring a ceasefire to the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
“Iran wants to work on peace now. They’ve informed us, and they’ve acknowledged that they are totally in favor of this deal. They think it’s a great thing, so we appreciate that, and we’ll work with Iran,” Trump said as he prepares to head to the Middle East this weekend.
“As you know, we have major sanctions on Iran and lots of other things. We would like to see them be able to rebuild their country too, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Trump was alluding to strikes he authorized on Iran’s nuclear program in June, which he and his senior officials have maintained completely destroyed any Iranian nuclear capability.
The US president said during a Fox News interview Wednesday evening that Tehran was “about one month, maybe two months, away from having a nuclear weapon” when he launched the attacks during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel.
Trump earlier announced that Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a 20-point plan he laid out Sept. 29 to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, release all Israeli captives being held there in exchange for around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, and a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the entire Gaza Strip.
A second phase of the plan calls for the establishment of a new governing mechanism in Gaza without Hamas’ participation, the formation of a security force comprising Palestinians and troops from Arab and Islamic countries, and the disarmament of Hamas. It also stipulates Arab and Islamic funding for the new administration and the reconstruction of the Strip, with limited participation from the Palestinian Authority.
Arab and Muslim counties have largely welcomed the plan, but some officials have also said that many details in it need discussion and negotiations to be fully implemented.
STOCKHOLM — Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, whose philosophical, bleakly funny novels often unfold in single sentences, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for his “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
The Nobel judges praised his “artistic gaze which is entirely free of illusion, and which sees through the fragility of the social order combined with his unwavering belief in the power of art,” Steve Sem-Sandberg of the Nobel committee said at the announcement.
“László Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through (Franz) Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess,” the Nobel judges said.
The work that won the Nobel Prize in literature
Zsuzsanna Varga, a Hungarian literature expert at the University of Glasgow, said Krasznahorkai’s apocalyptic and surreal novels probe the “utter hopelessness of the condition of human existence,” while also managing to be “incredibly funny.”
Varga said Krasznahorkai’s near-endless sentences made his books the “Hotel California” of literature – once readers get into it, “you can never leave.”
Other books include “The Melancholy of Resistance,” a surreal, disturbing tale set in a small Hungarian town, and “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” the sprawling saga of a gambling-addicted aristocrat.
Several works, including his debut, “Satantango,” and “The Melancholy of Resistance” were turned into films by Hungarian director Béla Tarr.
Varga suggested readers new to Krasznahorkai’s work start with “Satantango,” his debut, which set the tone for what was to follow.
“Satan who is dancing a tango — I mean, how surreal can you be?” she said.
Krasznahorkai has also written several books inspired by his travels to China and Japan, including “A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East,” published in Hungarian in 2003.
How Krasznahorkai came to win
Sem-Sandberg said that Krasznahorkai had been on the Nobel radar for some time, “and he has been writing and creating one outstanding work after another.” He called his literary output “almost half a century of pure excellence.”
Krasznahorkai, 71, couldn’t immediately be reached for his reaction. He didn’t speak at the announcement.
He was born in the southeastern Hungarian city of Gyula, near the border with Romania, and has since traveled the world. Throughout the 1970s, he studied law at universities in Szeged and Budapest before shifting his focus to literature.
Krasznahorkai has been a vocal critic of autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, especially his government’s lack of support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
But in a post on Facebook, Orbán was quick to congratulate the writer, saying: “The pride of Hungary, the first Nobel Prize winner from Gyula, László Krasznahorkai. Congratulations!”
In an interview with Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet earlier this year, Krasznahorkai expressed criticism both of Orbán’s political system and the nationalism present in Hungarian society.
“There is no hope left in Hungary today and it is not only because of the Orbán regime,” he told the paper. “The problem is not only political, but also social.”
He also reflected on the fact that he has long been a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, saying: “I don’t want to lie. It would be very interesting to get that prize. But I would be very surprised if I got it.”
Previous awards for Krasznahorkai and the other Nobels this year
Krasznahorkai has received many earlier awards, including the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. The Booker judges praised his “extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate as they go their wayward way.”
He also won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the U.S. in 2019 for “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.”
The American writer and critic Susan Sontag once described Krasznahorkai as the “contemporary master of the Apocalypse.” He was also friends with American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg and would regularly stay in Ginsberg’s apartment while visiting New York City.
He’s the first winner from Hungary since Imre Kertesz in 2002. He joins an illustrious list of laureates that includes Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Kazuo Ishiguro.
The literature prize has been awarded by the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy 117 times to a total of 121 winners. Last year’s prize was won by South Korean author Han Kang for her body of work that the committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
The literature prize is the fourth to be announced this week, following the 2025 Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The final Nobel, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, will be announced on Monday.
Nobel Prize award ceremonies are held on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Nobel was a wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes.
Each prize carries an award of nearly $1.2 million, and the winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and a diploma.
Manenkov, Lawless and Corder write for the Associated Press. Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Lawless from London. Justin Spike contributed to this report from Budapest, Hungary.
“Grounded,” the newly opened exhibition of relatively recent acquisitions of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, starts out setting a very high bar. It’s a compelling launch, even if the spotty show that unfolds in the next several rooms falls apart.
Grounded, it isn’t.
“Land Deeds,” a 1970 work by Iranian American artist Siah Armajani (1939-2020), is the opener, and it’s terrific. The piece is composed of 50 documents recording real estate purchases that the artist made in all 50 U.S. states, spending less than $100 on each. Sometimes, I’d guess, much less: Armajani only bought a single square-inch of land in each place, so the properties were cheap. Maybe that would cost a hundred bucks in Beverly Hills or Honolulu, but a square-inch of Abilene, Kan., or Whitefish, Mont., would be lucky to get a buck.
In true Conceptual art form, the notarized documents confirming the transactions are lined up on the wall in alphabetical order, from Alabama and Alaska to Wisconsin and Wyoming, in two rows of 25. Visually dry, they nonetheless quickly pull you in. These are warranty deeds, a legal document used to guarantee that a property being sold is unencumbered and the transfer of ownership from seller to buyer is legit. In good Dada and Pop art-style, the work’s title turns out to be a pun: A deed is not just a real estate certificate but an endeavor that one has undertaken.
Siah Armajani’s 1970 “Land Deeds” records his purchase of one square-inch of all 50 U.S. states.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Other artistic resonances unfold. Land art was then at the cutting edge of avant-garde activity.
By 1970, sculptors Christo and Jeanne-Claude had just wrapped a million square-feet of coastal Australia in tarpaulin lashed with rope. Robert Smithson had bulldozed dirt and rocks to build a spiral jetty coiling out into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Michael Heizer had dug a huge trench across Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nev., making a sculptural object out of empty space. Armajani’s unusual earthwork joined in: Embracing a legal, bureaucratic form, he pointed to land as a decidedly social structure.
The document display is droll but serious. It may be a layered example of up-to-the-minute Conceptual art, deeply absorbing and surprisingly suggestive, but the deeds are also lithographs, a perfectly traditional medium. They’re signed by administrative officials — one Julian Allison, warranty trustee, and notary public Brenda J. Hord — rather than being autographed by the artist. An art experience is a social transaction.
Armajani, an immigrant working as an artist in New York but not yet a U.S. citizen, was profoundly committed to democratic principles. (His citizenship would come in the wake of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which installed a disastrous theocracy from which the Middle East still suffers.) With “Land Deeds,” he put his finger on a critical real estate context: From the get-go, full participation in American democracy had been limited to white male landowners. The explanation was that they had a vested interest in the community.
The deeper reasons, however, were profoundly anti-democratic — the noxious intransigence of patriarchy and white supremacy in Western culture, which drastically narrowed the eligible land-owning class. Women and people of color, except in limited instances, need not apply. (And suffice to say that warranty deeds for land transfers from Indigenous people were in rather short supply.) Gallingly, this autocratic check on egalitarian participation was also spiked with an element of informed equanimity: An educated populace is essential to democracy’s successful functioning, but in the 1770s, that mostly meant white male landed gentry, since they were likely to have had formal schooling.
At LACMA, Armajani’s marvelously revealing “Land Deeds” sets the stage for “Grounded.” The show was organized by LACMA curators Rita Gonzalez and Dhyandra Lawson, and deputy director Nancy Thomas. Entry wall text — there is no catalog — says it “explores how human experience is embedded in the land, presenting the work of artists who endow it with meaning.”
But, collectively, the 39 assembled contemporary paintings, sculptures, photographs, textiles and videos by 35 artists based in the Americas and areas of the Pacific underperform. Sometimes that’s because the individual work is bland, while elsewhere its pertinence to the shambling theme is stretched to the breaking point.
Familiar photographs of figures in the landscape by Ana Mendieta, left, and Laura Aguilar, center, offer background for the theme explored in “Grounded.”
(Museum Associates / LACMA)
The land theme is so loose and shaggy that, without the contemporary time frame, the show could start with prehistoric cave paintings, toss in a Chinese Song Dynasty scroll whose pictures follow a journey down the Yangzi River, add a Central African Kongo spirit sculpture filled with grave dirt and, for good measure, suitably hang a Jackson Pollock drip painting solely because it was made by spreading raw canvas flat on the ground.
Superficial bedlam, in other words.
Some work does stand out. Across from the Armajani is Patrick Martinez’s “Fallen Empire,” which takes a sly commercial real estate approach. The poignant mixed-media painting doubles as a large shop façade of crumbling, graffitied ceramic tiles with signage attached on a tarp. The name “Azteca” evokes a long-gone historical realm, here attached to a shop now falling into ruin. Martinez scatters ceramic roses across the painting, a mordant honorific to past glory and current hopes.
In the next room, Connie Samaras’ serendipitous landscape photograph unshackles whatever might be meant by being grounded. Shot from her L.A. home in the hills, what at first appears to be a strange cloud in the night sky over the twinkling city below turns out to be the vapor trail of a Minuteman missile deployed one night in 1998. A tangle of light above a black silhouette of a palm tree emits a sulfurous glow, its nauseous beauty balanced on the tip of potential annihilation.
Also among the more engaging works are two well-known photographic excursions into the landscape. Laura Aguilar’s “Grounded #111,” from a large series that likely gave the show its name, poses her corpulent nude body before a majestic boulder in the Joshua Tree desert, as if a secular saint enclosed within a sacred mandorla.
Six adjacent photographs in Ana Mendieta’s “Volcano Series no. 2” record a performance type of Land art in which a female form seems to erupt from within the Earth, spewing a volatile shower of flaming embers and smoke. Forget placid if repressive fantasies of Adam’s rib. The volcanic explosion provides a theatrically dramatic precedent for Aguilar’s contemplative composition.
Other impressive works include Mexico City-based Abraham Cruzvillegas’ exceptional sculpture, “Autoconcancion V” — the title’s made-up word translates to “auto with song” — which upends conventional L.A. car culture. An old automobile’s beat-up rear bench seat becomes the launching pad for a wooden box holding a small fan palm, held aloft on buoyant metal rods and exuding a witty mix of aplomb and high spirits.
A 70-foot video projection by Lisa Reihana reimagines a famous scenic French wallpaper.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana, who is of Māori British ancestry, transformed a famous early 19th century French scenic wallpaper designed by Jean-Gabriel Charvet into an equally extravagant, 70-foot-wide projection of video animation. The showily exoticized wallpaper, sold throughout Europe and in North America by celebrated manufacturer Joseph Dufour, was the culmination of Western public fascination with British Royal Navy Capt. James Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific. In a big, darkened room, Reihana redecorates.
Amid dreamy island landscapes, “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]” beautifully mixes interactive scenes of playful harmony and brute conflict between red-uniformed colonizers and colonized Polynesians. She maintains a nuanced sense of humanity’s transgressions and innocence, without demonizing or idealizing either side. Emblematic is a wickedly funny episode where a British plein-air painter at his easel bats away pesky tropical insects, invisible to a viewer’s naked eye, as he attempts to render a still life of a dead fish.
What either the Reihana video or the Cruzvillegas sculpture has to do with how human experience is embedded in the land — “grounded” — I cannot say, except in the most superficial ways. The land is certainly not a major focus of either one. The Cruzvillegas sculpture celebrates varieties of youthful play, while the Reihana animation ruminates on dimensions of cultural collision. The exhibition’s purported theme unhappily narrows perspectives on the assembled works of art, rather than opening wide their myriad readings.
Lisa Reihana, “in Pursuit of Venus [infected],” 2015, projected video animation.
(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)
Essentially, “Grounded” is an old-fashioned “Recent Acquisitions” show, with most works entering LACMA’s collection in the last half-dozen years or so. (The big exception is Mendieta’s “Volcano” series, easily the show’s most famous work, purchased a quarter-century ago; it’s apparently included here as a benchmark.) Six pieces are shared with the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the new MAC3 (Mohn Art Collective) program, and the Aguilar is shared with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East L.A. College.
The exhibition is on view in LACMA’s Broad Contemporary Art Museum for eight months, until late June 2026. The unusually lengthy run will put recent art on par with LACMA’s historical departments, when the new Geffen Galleries building opens in April. Those rooms are also expected to thematize the museum’s diverse permanent collection of art’s global history.
But “Grounded” would have been better left without its imposed topic, which inadvertently casts much work as ugly stepsisters unsuccessfully trying to jam their feet into Cinderella’s glass slipper. Skepticism over the coming Geffen theme idea mounts.
Newcomers Reiss Boyce and Leisha Lightbody tied the knot in Tuesday night’s episode
22:39, 07 Oct 2025Updated 22:59, 07 Oct 2025
A groom from Married at First Sight has revealed the heart-wrenching reason why he believes the show’s matchmaking “has to work”.
Tuesday’s episode (7 October) introduced us to newbies Reiss Boyce and Leisha Lightbody, who said their vows. The pair joined the programme on Monday, along with four other latecomers.
The couple were matched by experts Paul C Brunson, Charlene Douglas and Mel Schilling, and are now set to experience married life over the next few weeks.
Before his nuptials, 33-year-old decorator Reiss confessed that people often perceive him as a “pretty boy”. However, the lad from Essex was quick to point out that there’s much more to him than meets the eye.
Discussing his dream relationship, Reiss stressed the importance of family to him. He then revealed that he found out his dad wasn’t his biological father when he was just seven years old, reports OK!
Reiss stated: “When I get married, I don’t want to be having kids and breaking up. No way!”
He went on to say: “I want to do my best to keep it that [his family] all bonded and sealed together forever. When I was seven years old I found out that my dad wasn’t actually my real dad.”
Reflecting on this tough revelation, he added: “Looking back, at the time, I was only a young nipper. I didn’t really know what was going on. It was just a bit of a whirlwind, it was a lot to take in.
“That’s why I’ve got to do it properly. I’ve got one shot here, it’s got to work.”
Despite this, the new groom appears to share a close bond with his grandparents and is searching for a love story similar to theirs.
Sadly, Reiss’ MAFS experience has got off to a bumpy beginning.
Whilst he’s physically drawn to his new bride, the groom considers her “quite loud” and “a little bit over the top”.
The pair even clashed following the ceremony when Leisha challenged her new spouse for only pecking her on the cheek in front of their wedding guests.
They subsequently shared a kiss that Leisha appeared to relish but Reiss criticised because “there was no passion”.
Married at First Sight UK continues on E4 tomorrow night at 8pm
Christopher Soto, the founder of the Center for California Literature.
Los Angeles is, historically, a haven for writers and poets. In its city sprawl and California light, L.A. has fostered legendary writers from Joan Didion to Octavia E. Butler, created countercultural literary communities like the Watts Writers Workshop, and inspired Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”
Despite Los Angeles’ contributions to a rich literary history, the literary community struggles to stay rooted in place as writers’ spaces and financial support move elsewhere.
Take the National Endowment for the Humanities, which canceled over $10.2 million in humanities and arts funding to already-awarded projects in California. Or the devastating Pasadena and Altadena wildfires that decimated historic libraries and cultural archives.
For writers across the city, L.A. can feel like shaky literary ground. That’s where Christopher Soto has stepped in.
The Center for California Literature is Soto’s hopeful initiative for connecting writers across L.A. through readings, conversations and advocacy. In a period in which writers feel unsupported and concerned about the state of the arts, Soto says that the center is needed in L.A. more than ever.
The inspiration came about after Soto was commissioned by the L.A. Times to write a piece titled “Writers on Loving and Leaving Los Angeles,” about writers having to move out of L.A. due to a lack of opportunities. He says right as he was working on the article, it was decommissioned. The reason? The books editor who would have worked on it was laid off and subsequently had to leave L.A.
“It was so ironic. That article and the research I did for it really led me to see that there is a need for a structural solution. People shouldn’t have to choose between having a thriving arts life and having to leave their home,” Soto says.
Soto knew that waiting would only exacerbate the literary loss; if he wanted change, he said he needed to make it. He reached out to inspiring writers in his community for their support and found that people were searching for a place to gather and organize themselves. Roxane Gay, renowned author of the New York Times bestselling novels “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger,” is one of the center’s biggest supporters.
“There’s a lot of stories that literature is dead, or that literary communities are dying, but clearly they’re not. They’re alive and they’re well and we have to remember that,” Gay says. “Writing is a very solitary endeavor, but while we might write alone, we don’t exist as writers in the public sphere alone. We need community, whether it’s people to share our work with, people who understand our frustrations, or having people who will read our work.”
Soto and Gay imagine a future where the center is shaped by writers’ needs. With community as a centerpoint, the organization aims to serve poets and authors by giving them a platform to share their work, attend workshops and create connections among peers.
Gay joined a collective of notable speakers the night of the center’s official launch, which took place at Central L.A. start-up gallery Giovanni’s Room and was co-hosted with the Los Angeles Review of Books. Outside the launch, pupusas were sizzling and poets and book nerds stood in line for a bite or a read from a nearby Libros con Alma pop-up book cart.
The long line approaching the door was full of chatter and reunited friends, who stepped into the lobby and talked closely over the music mixed by DJ Izla. Although the gallery itself filled up quickly, growing warm and pupusa-scented, the energy was one of excitement and anticipation for people’s favorite authors and for a new beginning in the L.A. writers world.
In a corner of the gallery, in front of a paper backdrop and lush potted plants, Grammy-nominated contemporary poet aja monet stepped before the mic to open the night. She was assertive the moment she spoke, clarifying the pronunciation of her name (ah-ja) and simply introducing poems from her time as a political organizer in Florida.
As monet delved into her work, her voice was serious, contained and bursting with emotion. With every stanza, she settled into a musical rhythm that was satiric and bitingly honest. Her poems ranged from swampy oppressive memories of Florida to the nature of poetry to musings on hypocritical activists.
“A poem can rinse, reflect and reveal us / I give thanks for the intimacy of planting poems / the living that brings poems into being,” monet read.
The crowd hummed and swayed in agreement and cheered in recognition of the feelings that she captured. After her moving set, Viet Thanh Nguyen picked up right where she left off. Nguyen is best known for his debut Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” which discusses the Vietnam War’s impact on the U.S. through the lens of a Vietnamese American immigrant who navigates Hollywood social politics, integration and racial tension.
In the section Nguyen read that night, the main character challenges stereotypes of Vietnamese characters in a film, an attempt that is quickly shut down by a Hollywood executive. Nguyen chuckled as he finished — “The Sympathizer” was adapted into an HBO show, placing Nguyen into the very Hollywood spaces he criticized. He acknowledges this and affirmed that “after spending a lot of time in Hollywood, nobody has disputed this characterization.”
Author, actor and television writer Ryan O’Connell added to the conversation with a lengthy reading of “The Slut Diaries,” explorations of rediscovering sexuality in his 30s as a gay man with cerebral palsy. His reflections on sex and dating through the lens of gay and disabled identity, and the hilariously vulgar encounters that ensued, drew hoots and hollers from the crowd.
Camille Hernandez, a writer and poet laureate of Anaheim, was among O’Connell’s laughing audience.
“I love being from here, and I want to lift up the literature from here. It is really beautiful that you could be from some place with such a rich literary heritage, but it’s such a travesty that not many people know about it, so efforts like this are so important to uplifting writers like us, who can be funny and honest like Ryan O’Connell or inspiring like Roxane Gay once they have the community to support them,” Hernandez says. “We deserve this.”
As Gay closed the night, her brief statement encapsulated the promising energy of the center’s first gathering.
“We deserve the material and creative resources to practice our craft. We deserve an abundant community that is mindful of the past and active and engaging the present and able to imagine a radical and expansive future,” Gay said. “And so I hope that everyone here will join us in that work.”
As authors, poets and hopeful writers filtered out into the crisp night, conversations abounded about what was next. Some were excited for an afterparty rumored to feature Erykah Badu. Others projected a next reading presided by an even bigger crowd, feeding the hunger for the literary arts that the center aims to feed. Whatever comes next, the literary community of L.A. has a new home to gather in.
Charlotte Church was once one half of Wales’ most high-profile power couple – now she is taking on Celebrity Traitors
17:26, 07 Oct 2025Updated 17:31, 07 Oct 2025
Church and Henson were together for five years
Few players have transcended the game of rugby quite like Gavin Henson, with the former Wales international earning comparisons to David Beckham for the talent he showed on the pitch and the life he lived off of it.
The flamboyant back was one of the most naturally talented players of his generation and few could take their eyes off him as he shone on the international stage and for his many clubs, single-handedly turning games on their head on more than one occasion.
In addition to winning 33 caps for Wales and touring with the British & Irish Lions in 2005, Henson represented three out of the four Welsh regions – the Ospreys, Dragons and Cardiff – while he also played in England with Saracens, Bath, Bristol and London Welsh, as well as in France with Toulon.
He tasted glory with Wales, being part of two Grand Slam campaigns in 2005 and 2008, while he also won two domestic titles and the Anglo-Welsh Cup with the Ospreys. But for all the headlines he made for his success on the pitch, he would make just as many off it, sometimes for the wrong reasons.
He would later have stints on reality TV shows including Strictly Come Dancing but things now look very different for the former rugby star, who is now 43-year-old. From his romance with Church to running his own pub, here’s what you need to know about Henson’s life away from the pitch.
Relationship with Charlotte Church
Henson and Church – who rose to fame as a classical singer before pursuing a pop career – sparked a media frenzy when they were first seen in public together in April 2005, shortly after she split up with her previous boyfriend Kyle Johnson.
On her BBC podcast, Kicking Back With the Cardiffians, Church said she went looking for the rugby star after watching him play on TV, explaining: “I remember watching on this television, Wales vs England, when Gavin kicked the kick over.
“Then that night – I didn’t know Gav before that – I was like, I’m going to go out and find him in town. He is nice. Actually I was going round asking everybody, ‘Do you know Gavin Henson? Where will he go out drinking afterwards?’ Nobody knew – but I did find him.”
The Welsh power couple moved in together the following year, while in March 2007, Church revealed that she was pregnant with the couple’s first child. They welcomed a daughter, Ruby, later that year, with their second child, a son, Dexter, born in January 2009.
They looked to be going from strength to strength, with Henson proposing to Church on her 24th birthday in February 2010, the same month she landed a big TV gig on BBC singing show Over The Rainbow. However, it all fell apart just six weeks later, as the couple confirmed they were splitting up after five years together.
It was later confirmed that the decision was a joint one, with Church explaining: “When he proposed, I was overjoyed. It was amazing. I really was going to marry Gav and spend the rest of my life with him. But then he came back from Norway, and he’d changed, and I’d had time to think. We had both had a change of heart – so we were both of the same mind.”
Church later hit out at the “insane” media intrusion she had to deal with before and during her relationship with Henson, having also claimed that her phone was hacked by the News of The World, for which she later received an apology and substantial damages.
“The press intrusion was insane, there was all sorts of dark stuff going on,” she said. “There were stories in the papers all the time and lots of things were blown up, misconstrued and made seedy – when they really weren’t.
“There was a lot of shame being thrown at me, with the press desperately trying to make me a figure of sin and push this ‘fallen angel’ narrative. If I had let that shame in, or internalised it, my life could have gone in a very different way.”
Today, Henson and Church maintain a good relationship and co-parent Dexter and they have both found love again. While the former rugby star married long-term partner Katie Wilson Mould in 2019, Church tied the knot with musician Jonathan Powell in 2017, having asked Henson for his blessing before they started dating.
Past controversies
Aside from his relationship with Church, Henson found himself making headlines for all the wrong reasons on more than one occasion, sometimes landing himself in trouble with the law and his clubs.
In 2007, he and three other men were charged with disorderly conduct for drunken behaviour on a train between London and Cardiff, only for the case to be dropped due to insufficient evidence. In 2009, he was also given a police caution over his behaviour on a night out in Cardiff following Wales’ Six Nations win over England.
Henson also landed himself in hot water after some drinking sessions went too far, as he was sacked by Cardiff after playing just eight games for them following his “inexcusable” and “inappropriate” drunken behaviour on a flight back from Glasgow in March 2012.
A year later, a drunken comment he made to new Bath teammate Carl Fearns led to the two-time Grand Slam winner being knocked out by the flanker during a team bonding night, with the incident caught on CCTV.
However, Henson has since opened up on his past behaviour and revealed he has been able to understand himself better after discovering the ‘chimp’ that had been running his mind, leading him to put boozing behind him.
Having “battled for a long time” with his own mind, Henson was captivated by Professor Steve Peters’ mind-management book The Chimp Paradox, which outlined how to control the ‘chimp’, or “the voice which tells you to do things you maybe shouldn’t.”
“I didn’t understand the thoughts I was having after games where I wanted to go out and drink,” he explained in an interview with MailOnline. “They were a million miles away from my core values and goals in rugby.
“Now, having read the book, I understand that for most of my rugby career, the chimp was controlling me and running my life more than I was. If I’d found the book while I was still playing rugby, I’d 100 per cent have been a better player and maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I did.”
“In social interactions, I probably need a drink because I’m an introvert,” he continued. “If I have a drink, I become more of an extrovert and the chimp has more confidence! I can be good fun on a night out! But now I choose not to go into those environments. I’m not tee-total. In the last year, I’ve probably had one good drink. There’s a place in rugby for sharing a drink with your team-mates”.
New life as pub landlord
While Henson has cut down on his drinking habits, these days he can be found pulling pints, having become the landlord of The Fox & Hounds pub in St Brides Major, Vale of Glamorgan in 2019.
After carrying out an extensive refurbishment and restaurant upgrade, the former Wales international shortened the name of the pub to The Fox and manages the venue with his wife Katie.
Speaking to The Times about the venture, Henson said: “I was coming to the end of my career, and it [the pub] had been sat here for 18 months, two years. It was not nice for the village, and I needed something to do after rugby and to be busy, not to mourn rugby and get depressed, as they say everyone does.
“But be careful what you wish for because this is so full-on. We want to feel like we’ve achieved something with the pub. We’re perfectionists. We’re all about the detail.”
Henson – who is believed to have a net worth of around £800,000 after once earning roughly £120,000 a year at the height of his career – has also recently pulled his rugby boots back on again.
In September last year, he returned to the field with his boyhood club Pencoed and he is now into his second season in League 2 West Central, in the fourth tier of Welsh rugby.
Speaking to BBC Scrum V, Henson admitted he is “loving” being back in rugby, explaining: “I’m 43 now, so a bit old, as my wife tells me. But I’ve missed it, I’ve missed the physicality of it, and being in a team environment again and trying to win.
“I’m very competitive, I like trying to win, that’s the main thing. We have a good group of boys. We’re aiming for promotion, so hopefully it will be a good season and great for the club.
“I’m playing 10, I would like to play 12 but I am just not quite big enough yet. So I’ll still try to aim to get there but 10 at the moment.”
1 of 4 | A trio of U.S. scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for discoveries in quantum mechanics. Photo by Christine Olsson/EPA
Oct. 7 (UPI) — Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale, the Nobel Foundation announced Tuesday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded British-born John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley), French-born Michel H. Devoret (Yale University and UC Santa Barbara) and American John M. Martinis (UC Santa Barbara) the prestigious award. It comes with a $1.17 million prize the three men will split evenly.
The scientists are being recognized for creating an electrical circuit system large enough to be held in the hand that demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels, or specific, measurable amounts of energy.
Tunneling is the ability for particles to move through a barrier. Once a large number of particles are involved, they’re typically unable to move through this barrier, also called a Josephson junction.
“The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale,” a release from the Nobel Foundation said.
Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, applauded the work by the three scientists.
“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises,” he said. “It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation for all digital technology.”
Wayne Rooney, Kelly Somers, Kae Kurd and John Gibbons from The Anfield Wrap discuss Liverpool’s loss of form, and why their talisman Mohamed Salah looks “lost”.
UC Irvine has officially acquired Orange County Museum of Art, bringing the two organizations together under a new name: UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. I first reported on the possibility of the merger in June when the two entities first signed a nonbinding letter of intent that needed approval by the University of California Board of Regents.
With the legal details now set, UC Irvine is absorbing OCMA’s 53,000-square-foot, $98-million Morphosis-designed building on the eastern edge of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus. According to UC Irvine, no money changed hands in the acquisition, which also finds the university taking over OCMA’s assets, employees and debt.
Just how much debt the Costa Mesa-based museum was in has not been disclosed by either organization, and a rep for UC Irvine declined to comment on that number.
OCMA’s board has been dissolved, and CEO Heidi Zuckerman, who announced her intention to step down in December, vacated her role. She had been planning to stay until her successor was found, but UC Irvine is now that successor and has launched a search for a new leader to take over the merged museums. A rep for the university said it is hoping to announce a candidate by early next year.
UC Irvine had long planned to build a museum for its California art collection, including its celebrated Gerald Buck Collection, but it now intends to move it to OCMA when the lease on its current off-campus space, on Von Karman Avenue, expires in late 2026. The Buck Collection, bequeathed to UC Irvine by Gerald Buck when he died in 2017, is the museum’s crown jewel, consisting of more than 3,200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by some of the state’s most championed artists, including Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha.
OCMA opened to much fanfare in 2022 and its expansive contemporary art collection drew museum-goers from across the country. More than 10,000 visitors arrived in its first 24 hours, and admission was to remain free for the first decade of operation thanks to a grant from Newport Beach’s Lugano Diamonds.
All did not seem well at the new museum, however. Times art critic Christopher Knight and former Times architecture columnist Carolina Miranda wrote that the highly touted building remained oddly unfinished. Murmurs about the museum’s financial problems persisted when Zuckerman announced her departure three years later.
According to a rep for OCMA, the museum had a $7.7-million annual budget and had attracted 600,000 visitors since 2022, which is a healthy number by industry standards. Still, questions circulated among museum insiders about what OCMA’s long-term financial plan was, and how much it might have been struggling toward the end.
A rep for UC Irvine would say only that the museum had done its due diligence before the acquisition.
“UC Irvine is committed to ensuring that the region benefits from a world-class art museum that enriches the cultural fabric of Orange County, advances groundbreaking scholarship, nurtures the next generation of creators and thinkers, and inspires curiosity and connection across diverse audiences,” said Chancellor Howard Gillman in a news release.
I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, looking to acquire a healthy breakfast in a few minutes. Here’s your arts news for the week.
On our radar
You’re reading Essential Arts
Martha Graham Dance Company performs “Night Journey” and other works Saturday at the Soraya.
(Brigid Pierce)
Martha Graham Dance Company Centennial The Soraya continues its celebration with Graham’s 1947 ballet “Night Journey,” which is based on the Oedipus myth and has not been widely performed; a 2024 piece titled “We the People,” featuring folk music by Rhiannon Giddens; and the world premiere of “En Masse,” which builds on the Soraya’s exploration of Graham’s collaborations with various composers. The last — a new commission choreographed by Hope Boykin — marks the first time Graham’s work has been paired with the music of Leonard Bernstein. The posthumous partnership was inspired by a musical excerpt that was found in correspondence between the two arts legends. Christopher Rountree’s experimental classical ensemble Wild Up will perform a new arrangement of Bernstein, as well as William Schuman’s score for “Night Journey.” — Jessica Gelt 8 p.m. Saturday. The Saroya, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. thesoraya.org
Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour hits town for five shows at the Forum in Inglewood.
(Katja Ogrin / Getty Images)
Dua Lipa Lipa has found a formidable second life as a public intellectual with her fantastic book club, Service95. (This month’s suggestion: David Szalay’s novel “Flesh.”) But on the heels of last year’s (unfairly!) slept-on “Radical Optimism,” the singer returns to SoCal for five nights at the Forum, where that record’s exquisite catalog of disco-funk effervescence will hopefully get its due on the dance floor. — August Brown 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday. Forum, 3900 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood. thekiaforum.com
Pat O’Neill, “Los Angeles — From Cars and Other Problems,” 1960s, gelatin silver print
(Graham Howe)
Made in L.A. 2025 UCLA Hammer Museum’s seventh biennial survey of mostly recent art from the sprawling region will include 28 artists and collectives — including influential elder statesman Pat O’Neill, 86. The artists work in every imaginable medium, from traditional painting and sculpture to theater and choreography. The always much-discussed result will reflect the diverse artistic interests of the changing curatorial team, which this time is composed of independent curator Essence Harden, Art Institute of Chicago (and former Hammer) curator Paulina Pobocha and Hammer curatorial assistant Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow. — Christopher Knight Sunday through March 1, 2026. Closed Mondays. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY 🎭 Family Meal A famous chef serves his last meal, and you’re invited to this immersive theatrical experience that seats the audience at the dinner table for a round of foodie “Succession.” 7 p.m. Friday-Sunday; Oct. 10-12; Nov. 7-9; 14-16. Rita House, 5971 W. 3rd St. speakeasysociety.com
🎶 🎤 Ledisi: For Dinah The Grammy-winning singer’s new album pays tribute to Dinah Washington, “The Queen of the Blues.” 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Untitled, 2025, by Calvin Marcus. Oil on linen, 48 by 72 inches, 49 by 73 inches framed.
(Karma)
🎨 Calvin Marcus Building on a coat of deep umber, the artist adds layers of lime, Kelly, forest and other shades of green to mimic the growth cycle of his subject in the Grass Paintings. This isn’t the type of nature you can touch, but the vivid compositions of the series may offer their own sense of the sublime to the viewer. 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday through Nov. 1. Karma, 7351 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. karmakarma.org
🎹 🎺 🎶Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance presents an evening with the Grammy-winning octet, featuring pianist and composer O’Farrill, son of the late Cuban jazz pioneer Chico O’Farrill. 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Music director Rafael Payare and the San Diego Symphony open their new season Friday.
(Courtesy of Gary Payne)
🎼 French Fairytales: Ravel and Debussy San Diego Symphony music director Rafael Payare opens his orchestra’s second season in the brilliantly renovated Jacobs Music Center by staging Ravel’s one-act opera, “The Child and the Magical Spells” (commonly known by its French title, “L’enfant et les sortileges”). A kind of French “Alice Wonderland,” this is the most enchanted work by a composer for whom enchantment was bedazzling second nature. The stellar cast is headed by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and soprano Liv Redpath. The stage director is by the orchestra’s creative consultant, Gerard McBurney, who recently created for Esa-Pekka Salonen a new version of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which was the hit of this year’s Salzburg Easter Festival. Plus Debussy’s “The Joyful Isle (L’isle joyeuse)” and “The Box of Toys (La boîte à joujoux).” (Mark Swed) 7:30 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Jacobs Music Center, 1245 Seventh Ave, San Diego. sandiegosymphony.org
SATURDAY 🎼 🎤 Current: Reflections in Song Countertenor John Holiday, pianist Lara Downes and an 18-piece Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra lineup glide through Chris Walde’s arrangements of Gershwin, Ellington, Strayhorn, Korngold, Chaplin and more in a program that unites cinematic romance with the elegance of jazz. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Cicada Restaurant and Lounge 617 S Olive St., downtown L.A. laco.org
🎨 The HWY 62 Open Studio Art Tours For a 24th year, High Desert artists open their studios and share their work for three weekends of free self-guided tours. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; Oct. 11-12 and 18-19. Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and surrounding areas. hwy62arttours.org
🎭 Public Assembly’s Soirée “Everything Everywhere All At Once” director Daniel Scheinert, actor Jena Malone and other celebrities gather for this fundraiser for the non-profit theater company featuring staged readings of the group’s earlier works. 6 p.m. VIP-only cocktail party; 7:30 p.m. staged readings. Eagle Rock (location to be sent along with ticket purchase). publicassembly.us
📚Rare Books LA Union Station This year’s fair features antiquarian books, maps, fine prints and book arts, while celebrates Guillermo Del Toro’s new film adaptation of “Frankenstein,” streaming on Netflix this November. (A Frankenstein Fundraiser, hosted by Netflix in association with Rare Books LA and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, is scheduled Friday night in Hollywood). 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. Union Station, 800 N. Alameda Street. rarebooksla.com
🎨 🚘 🎶 Venice Afterburn This official Burning Man Regional brings art cars, installations, theme camps and music to the beach. Noon-10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Windward Plaza, Venice Beach. veniceafterburn.com
SUNDAY
Jiji performs Sunday at BroadStage.
(BroadStage)
🎼 🎸 Jiji: ‘Classical Goes Electric’ The Korean guitarist and composer who goes by Jiji Guitar and is a member of the L.A. new music collective Wild Up exchanges her acoustic guitar for electric in a solo recital program that ranges across centuries as part of the endearing Sunday morning series at BroadStage (bagels and cream cheese included). Jiji begins with an arrangement of a vocal piece by the mystical 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who happens to be the subject of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new opera, “Hildegard,” that L.A. Opera presents Nov. 5-9 at the Wallis. Elsewhere on the program, the guitarist electrifies a neglected Baroque composer, Claudia Sessa (all women Baroque composers suffer obscurity), with Max Richter and new music including neglected electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. (Mark Swed) 11 a.m. Sunday. Broad Stage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St. broadstage.org
🎼 Two Titans: The Music of Beethoven and Verdi The Los Angeles Master Chorale performs the epic works “Mass in C” and “Four Sacred Pieces” by Ludwig Van Beethoven and Giusseppe Verdi, respectively. 7 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org
Claude Monet, “The Water Lily Pond (Clouds),” 1903, oil on canvas
(Brad Flowers/Dallas Museum of Art)
🎨 The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse Is there anyone who doesn’t like Impressionist paintings and sculptures? As the Dallas Museum of Art renovates and expands its building, a selection of 50 Impressionist and early Modern works from its permanent collection, dating from the 1870s to 1925, has embarked on a three-year, five-city tour. Six paintings by Claude Monet and four by Piet Mondrian are featured. (Christopher Knight) 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; Oct. 5 through Jan. 25, 2026. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St. sbma.net
TUESDAY 🎨 Glass Sukkah: This Home Is Not a House Sukkot, an ancient Jewish harvest festival, and its messages of the temporary nature of shelter, the value of welcome and belonging, the importance of honoring ancestors and the preciousness of the natural world are themes of artist Therman Statom’s work, including glass face jugs and paintings. Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday–Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, ongoing. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. skirball.org
🎵 🎭 Les Misérables Cameron Mackintosh’s evergreen production of Boublil and Schönberg’s Tony Award- winning musical – billed as “the world’s most popular” – arrives for a two-week run. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, through Oct 19. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd. broadwayinhollywood.com
🎼 Strauss, Pärt & Glass Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform 20th century chamber music. 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
THURSDAY 🎼 Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ The conductor’s “Second Symphony” is performed by Soprano Chen Reiss, mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the L.A. Phil, under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel, for only the second time in the maestro’s tenure. 8 p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. Oct. 10; 8 p.m. Oct. 11; 2 p.m. Oct. 12. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
🎭 Paranormal Inside Playwright Prince Gomolvilas’ latest is a sequel to “The Brothers Paranormal,” which had its Los Angeles premiere at East West Players in 2022. In returning to the ghost-hunting business launched by two Thai American brothers, the author continues his examination of intergenerational trauma through the lens of the occult. Jeff Liu directs what sounds like a wild ride into the Freudian uncanny, where the repressed makes a startling return. (Charles McNulty) 8 p.m. Thursday, through Nov. 2; check days and times. David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 N Judge John Aiso Street, Little Tokyo. eastwestplayers.org
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Francesca Zambello’s staging of “West Side Story.”
(Todd Rosenberg / Lyric Opera of Chicago)
The legendary Broadway musical “West Side Story” is getting the L.A. Opera treatment as it opens the company’s 40th anniversary season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Times classical music critic Mark Swed caught a show and gives a bit of history in his review — namely that when choreographer Jerome Robbins talked with Leonard Bernstein in 1949 about the idea of updating ‘Romeo and Juliet’ into a contemporary musical, “Robbins didn’t know what it would be, but he knew what it wouldn’t be: An opera!” Nonetheless, the show is operatic, Swed notes, and redoing it as an opera means one important thing: more attention is given to the music.
Gustavo Dudamel is currently straddling two worlds as he kicks off his final season at the Los Angeles Philharmonic while at the same time assuming the role of music director designate at the New York Philharmonic, prior to becoming the orchestra’s artistic director in 2026. The opening concerts for both orchestras were a mere two weeks apart, with New York coming first. Swed invokes Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” to explore the new state of affairs that finds one city losing a beloved figurehead to another. In both cities, however, Dudamel is making superb music.
I spoke with a member of the anonymous “satirical activist” group the Secret Handshake, which recently installed a 12-foot-tall statue of President Trump holding hands with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The statue was removed less than 24 hours later by the National Park Service despite having a permit. The NPS claimed the statue had violated height restrictions, but the Secret Handshake rep said that it should have been given 24 hours to fix the problem before the statue was removed. The following day the group again tried to get a permit to reinstall the statue, and was denied without explanation. On Thursday afternoon, however, the statue was reinstalled for a limited time. Stay tuned.
Enjoying this newsletter? Consider subscribing to the Los Angeles Times
A brand new mural of ballet star Misty Copeland by the artist El Mac is being unveiled on Oct. 5 in San Pedro. The colorful painting takes up an entire outside wall of San Pedro City Ballet at 13th Street and Pacific Avenue, and was made possible by Arts United San Pedro. The unveiling also includes the renaming of the building in homage to donor Dr. Joseph A. Adan. “I’m incredibly honored to be featured in this stunning mural by El Mac at San Pedro City Ballet, my very first ballet studio and a place that will always feel like home,” Copeland said in a news release. “What he’s captured through my image is so much bigger than me, it represents every young person from this community and beyond who deserves access to the arts. This is such a beautiful tribute to where it all began for me.”
Long Beach Opera has named former L.A. Opera Production Director Michelle Magaldi its new chief executive officer. While at L.A. Opera, Magaldi oversaw the company’s popular Santa Monica Pier simulcasts; helped guide operations for L.A. Opera Off Grand; was responsible for hiring and training various producers and technical staff and also helped spearhead the world-premiere production of Ellen Reid’s “Prism,” which later won a Pulitzer Prize. Magaldi has a long working history with LBO’s Chief Creative Officer and Artistic Director James Darrah. Magaldi succeeds Marjorie Beale, who served as interim managing director since 2024.
Doja Cat will be the musical guest for Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art+Film Gala, the museum announced earlier this week. The always glitzy soiree is set to take place on Saturday, Nov. 1, and will honor artist Mary Corse and filmmaker RyanCoogler. It’s co-chaired by LACMA trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Christine Vendredi has been apponted Palm Springs Art Museum’s new executive director, the board of trustees announced Monday. It’s a role Vendredi has occupied on an interim basis since April 2025. Prior to that she served as chief curator — a role she took on after serving as global director of art, culture and heritage at Louis Vuitton.
— Jessica Gelt
And last but not least
Join me in a moment of silence for Jane Goodall. She communicated across species, showing the world that we have more in common with all living creatures than we think. It’s a lesson we would do well to remember in these trying times.
Those were among the visceral reactions this week from Emily Blunt, Whoopi Goldberg, Natasha Lyonne and many other actors and filmmakers over the sudden fame of Tilly Norwood.
Norwood isn’t real — the brunette who appears in a comedy sketch on her Instagram page is in fact a computer-generated composite.
“I may be AI, but I’m feeling very real emotions right now,” states a message on Norwood’s Instagram page. “I am so excited for what’s coming next!”
The sentiment was not widely shared, at least in Hollywood, where anxieties about the use and abuse of artificial intelligence replacing actors runs deep.
Norwood’s creator ignited a furor after she announced that the digital actress would soon be signed by a talent agency.
This week, SAG-AFTRA weighed in with a withering response. Two years ago, the union’s members engaged in a 118-day strike to fight for more AI protections in their contracts with major studios.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” the guild said. “It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”
Norwood was created by AI through Xicoia, a London-based AI talent studio launched by Dutch actor Eline Van der Velden. Xicoia is working with estates and Hollywood stars who want to appear as their younger selves on screen, according to Deadline, which first reported talent agency interest in Norwood.
Van der Velden, who is also the founder of AI production company Particle6, was not available for comment on Wednesday. But in a statement posted on Instagram following the backlash, Van der Velden stressed that Norwood is “a creative work — a piece of art.”
“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool — a new paintbrush,” Van der Velden said. “Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.”
SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin disputed the claim.
He said in an interview with The Times that the material used to create Norwood was “improperly obtained” from SAG-AFTRA members’ work without permission, compensation or acknowledgment.
“It manipulates something that already exists, so the conceit that it isn’t harming actors — because it is its own new thing — ignores the fundamental truth that it is taking something that doesn’t belong to them,” Astin said.
“We want to allow our members to benefit from new technologies. … They need to give permission for it, and they need to be bargained with.”
Norwood has 44,000 followers on Instagram and is portrayed as an aspiring young actor based in London who enjoys shopping and iced coffee.
The social media page depicts Norwood in various scenes. In one, she’s armed and ready to battle a monster; in another, she’s running away from a collapsing building in a futuristic city.
At an industry panel in Zurich on Saturday, Van der Velden touted her creation.
“With Tilly, you know, when we first launched her, people were like, ‘That’s not going to happen,’” Van der Velden said. “And now, we’re going to announce which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months. It’s all changing and everyone is starting to see the light, fortunately.”
Talent agencies have represented digital characters used in ad campaigns. And seeing such avatars in the mainstream has become increasingly common — in 2024, Japanese digital character Hatsune Miku performed at Coachella and an AI model was featured in the August issue of Vogue magazine for L.A. brand Guess.
And some studios, including Lionsgate, have partnerships with AI startups to explore using the technology in areas such as storyboarding. Others, such as Netflix and Amazon MGM Studios, have series that use AI in visual effects.
Tech companies have argued that they should be able to train their AI models on content available online and bring up relevant information under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of content without permission from the copyright holder.
But the proliferation of AI has also fueled concerns that AI companies are using copyrighted material to train their models without compensation or permission. Earlier this year, Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery sued AI companies over copyright infringement.
Some actors called for a boycott of any agents who decide to represent Norwood. “Read the room, how gross,” “In the Heights” actor Melissa Barrera wrote on Instagram.
“Our members reserve the right to not be in business with representatives who are operating in an unfair conflict of interest, who are operating in bad faith,” Astin said.
Chaminade Prep in West Hills expects to begin demolition soon of the 4.8 acres of buildings it acquired in 2018 that will become its.sports fields. Next year construction will begin on a baseball field, pool and training fields that could be completed by 2027, according to athletic director Todd Borowski. Both projects need final approval from the city before work can begin.
Buildings from the old shopping center have been abandoned and the property is fenced.
Chaminade has phases planned for construction that will include a pedestrian bridge to link its main campus across the street with the new fields. A new softball field will replace the current baseball field. There will be new campus classrooms and a new school entrance.
Chaminade is the second Mission League school adding new sports fields. Harvard-Westlake is scheduled to open its River Park complex next year that includes a gym, fields, pool and parking.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
The shutdown of the U.S. government has brought work determined by the Trump administration to be “nonessential” to a halt across the country as thousands of federal employees have been furloughed and ordered not to do their jobs.
The shutdown — the first in six years — began late Tuesday and could last days if not weeks. Many employees may not return to work at all, as the White House’s Office of Management and Budget recently advised federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown.
While much of the fallout remains to be seen, federal agencies that deal with wildfires, weather and disaster response — including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency — expect to see some impacts.
Here’s what we know:
The U.S. Forest Service will shut down activities on more than 193 million acres of land across 46 states, including at least 154 national forests, according to the agency’s most recent contingency plan, published in September. Hundreds of recreational sites and facilities will be closed, while work on operations such as timber sales and restoration projects will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity in the country — will continue its work geared toward responding to and preparing for wildfires, according to the plan. However, the agency will reduce some work related to fire prevention, including prescribed burns and the treatment of vegetation to reduce fire risk.
What’s more, the shutdown will delay state grants for forest management and wildland fire preparedness; delay reimbursement for ongoing forest management work on non-federal lands; and may affect states’ ability to train firefighters and acquire necessary equipment, among other impacts, the plan says.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection works closely with the Forest Service to manage fire preparation and response. Cal Fire officials said it does not anticipate any impacts to its ability to respond to blazes, and that the agency is fully staffed.
However, effects may be seen when it comes to federal grant programs that support fire prevention work in the state. For example, private property owners in California who rely on federal funds to conduct vegetation reduction work or create defensible space on their land may have to “front the money themselves” while they await reimbursement said Jesse Torres, deputy chief of communications with Cal Fire.
“The other thing is there are a lot of unknowns,” Torres said. “We don’t know what this is going to look like — is it going to be two days, two weeks, two months?”
Other agencies that play key roles in California’s disaster response and preparation — including the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — are largely deemed essential and will face fewer interruptions, according to their contingency plans.
“We are still operating in our core mission function and providing most of our normal services,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. That includes weather forecasts and extreme weather watches and warnings.
“The things that we do for public safety will continue as normal,” Kittell said.
About 84% of FEMA employees, meanwhile, are exempt from shutdown-related furloughs, according to its plan, which provides few additional details about which operations will cease or proceed.
Officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said FEMA staff have advised them that they will continue to make payments for existing disaster declarations made by President Trump, but there’s no guarantee that new or additional disaster declarations or funding will be made available.
FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund — the main source of funding for response and recovery efforts following major disasters — is also running low and is not likely to be replenished during the shutdown. It requires congressional approval for additional funds.
What’s more, FEMA, the National Weather Service and the Forest Service have already been affected by significant budget cuts and layoffs this year as part of the Trump administration’s larger reorganization of the federal government, which it says will help save taxpayers money.
These agencies, including NWS’ parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have lost thousands of employees to layoffs and buyouts and have experienced reduced operations, grant cancellations and the closure of offices and research arms.
The same is true for the EPA, which has undergone staff cuts and layoffs in addition to a considerable shift in its organizational priorities. The nation’s top environmental agency has spent the last several months loosening regulations that govern air and water quality, electric vehicle initiatives, pollution monitoring and greenhouse gas reporting, among other changes.
Experts said the shutdown could further weaken the EPA’s capabilities, as nearly all of its employees — about 90% — will be furloughed. While the EPA’s imminent disaster response work will continue, such as work on oil spills and chemical releases, longer-term efforts including research projects and facility inspections will halt, according to the agency.
Meanwhile, H.D. Palmer, a spokesman with the California Department of Finance, said impacts to the California EPA’s environmental programs should be minimal if the shutdown is brief, but that problems could arise if it drags on long enough to create backlogs and funding lapses.
The average length of government shutdowns over the last 50 years was seven days, Palmer said. However, he noted that the most recent federal shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 — during Trump’s first term — lasted 35 days.
NEW YORK — A new report on book bans in U.S. schools finds Stephen King as the author most likely to be censored and the country divided between states actively restricting works and those attempting to limit or eliminate bans.
PEN America’s “Banned in the USA,” released Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago, when PEN didn’t even see the need to compile a report.
Some 80% of those bans originated in three states that have enacted or attempted to enact laws calling for removal of books deemed objectionable — Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.
“It is increasingly a story of two countries,” says Kasey Meehan, director of PEN’s Freedom to Read program and an author of the report. “And it’s not just a story of red states and blue states. In Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for banning books. You can find differences from county to county.”
King’s books were censored 206 times, according to PEN, with “Carrie” and “The Stand” among the 87 of his works affected. The most banned work of any author was Anthony Burgess’ dystopian classic from the 1960s, “A Clockwork Orange,” for which PEN found 23 removals. Other books and authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” Judy Blume’s “Forever” and Jennifer Niven’s “Breathless,” and numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.
Reasons often cited for pulling a book include LGBTQ+ themes, depictions of race and passages with violence and sexual violence. An ongoing trend that PEN finds has only intensified: Thousands of books were taken off shelves in anticipation of community, political or legal pressure rather than in response to a direct threat.
“This functions as a form of ‘obeying in advance,’” the report reads, “rooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed controversial.”
The PEN report comes amid ongoing censorship efforts not just from states and conservative activists but from the federal government. The Department of Education ended an initiative by the Biden administration to investigate the legality of bans and has called the issue a “hoax.” PEN’s numbers include the Department of Defense’s removal of hundreds of books from K-12 school libraries for military families as part of an overall campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “un-American” thinking.
In Florida, where more than 2,000 books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were responsible for many of the King removals: Dozens were pulled last year as a part of a review for whether they were in compliance with state laws.
“His books are often removed from shelves when ‘adult’ titles or books with ‘sex content’ are targeted for removal — these prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race, racism, and people of color — but also affect titles like Stephen King’s books,” Meehan says. “Some districts — in being overly cautious or fearful of punishment — will sweep so wide they end up removing Stephen King from access too.”
PEN’s methodology differs from that of the American Library Assn., which also issues annual reports on bans and challenges. PEN’s numbers are much higher in part because the free expression organization counts any books removed or restricted for any length of time, while the library association only counts permanent removals or restrictions.
Both organizations have acknowledged that because they largely rely on media reports and information that they receive directly, their numbers are far from comprehensive.
The PEN report does not include data from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas and other red states because researchers could not find adequate documentation. Meehan said PEN also doesn’t know the full impact of statewide laws.
Italie writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.
For the past five years, I’ve been interviewing Hollywood professionals about what they wish they’d known when they were starting out. The entertainment business can feel opaque and overwhelming, and many who navigated it the hard way said they want to help level the playing field for those arriving with passion but without connections.
The best advice — which is collected in a book I co-wrote with my former Times colleague Jon Healey, “Breaking Into New Hollywood: A Career Guide to a Changing Industry” — was often about how they handled chaos. The key to longevity, many said, is how you manage the rejection, instability and heartbreak that are unavoidable in the industry.
And as Hollywood has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes, recessions and periods of contraction — some reports estimate Hollywood jobs were down 25% in 2024 from their 2022 peak — many of them have had to take their own advice. Decades-long industry veterans have pivoted to adjacent professions, including teaching and advertising. Some of them have left Hollywood altogether.
But others have landed their dream jobs. They’ve learned how to build something from nothing. They’ve gotten to show what they’re capable of, once someone finally gave them a chance.
The most sensible advice to give young people who dream of working in the entertainment industry, they said, is to run in the other direction — or at least have a backup plan. There are so many practical, safer choices that can result in a happy, fulfilling career.
But dreams have a way of resurfacing, no matter how deep you try to bury them. So here’s what I would tell my own kids if they felt Hollywood was their calling.
Learn how all the different parts of Hollywood come together and figure out which jobs best suit your skills.
Many people, when they imagine working in Hollywood, think of only the most high-profile jobs: actor, writer, director and producer. But Hollywood is made of hundreds, if not thousands, of careers, from pre-production, production and post-production, to representation (publicists, agents and managers), design and more.
Some questions you can ask yourself: Do I like being in front of the camera or do I prefer being behind it? Do I want to be on set or would I prefer a desk job? Do I want a leadership role or do I prefer going deep into the day-to-day details? This can help you determine which path you should pursue.
Consider whether this is something you’d do even if no one paid you to do it.
Many Hollywood professionals will tell you not to take unpaid gigs, as it devalues your work and the industry itself. But that’s different from the time and effort you’ll have to devote to becoming extremely reliable at your craft — as well as the work you’ll do to convince people to give you the job (filming auditions, developing pitch decks, building portfolios and creating demo reels).
People across the industry consistently told us it often takes five to seven years before you earn a living wage. You not only have to keep wanting to do it for that long, with no guarantees of success, but you have to see it as an investment in yourself as an artist.
Anchor yourself with two essentials: money and community.
People who come into the industry with wealth and connections will have an advantage. But if you don’t know anyone in the industry, be diligent about saving and investing the money that you’re making from your day job or side gigs.
Prioritize networking by joining or creating your own communities. Networking isn’t just about attending intimidating Hollywood events — it can also mean going to film festivals, taking classes, joining a gym, engaging with your favorite social media influencers, collaborating on passion projects, joining Facebook groups or finding other whisper networks.
Make friends inside of the industry who are going through the same struggles so you can lift each other up. But also make friends outside of the industry who will remind you that there is life outside of Hollywood.
Figure out how you’re going to distinguish yourself.
Hollywood is an extremely competitive industry. The harsh reality is that most people are replaceable. So why would a producer or showrunner hire you over someone else? What unique skills or viewpoints could you bring to a project? Figure this out; it will be your advantage and calling card.
And once you pinpoint what sets you apart, create your own work (whether it’s sketches, designs, animations, TikTok videos or web series) and put what you’re proud of online. You’ll need to get very comfortable with self-promotion. Make sure that you’re on people’s minds if a job opens up that you’d be perfect for.
Learn AI tools.
If I were talking to a current working professional about AI, we would discuss its ethical and legal implications and what unions can do to protect worker rights and fight for fair compensation.
But if I were talking to a young person starting their career, I’d say, embrace the technology and figure out how it can make you more — not less — creative.
Know that it’s good to take breaks from Hollywood — and OK to leave.
Hollywood veterans will tell you that they’ve seen the industry rise and fall, again and again. Each time there’s an upturn, it feels like it won’t last. And each time there’s a downturn, it feels like it might be the end.
If Hollywood is your calling, you owe it to yourself to try, but if your experience in the industry starts to resemble a destructive relationship, you owe it to yourself to take some space or call it quits.
But for as long as you’re out there hustling, have fun on the roller coaster and appreciate every moment you get paid to do what you love.
China is rolling out a new visa aimed at attracting foreign talent in the fields of science and technology.
The K visa comes into effect from Wednesday, following a proclamation last month by the State Council, China’s cabinet.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
The visa has attracted particular attention in light of United States President Donald Trump’s tightening of the eligibility rules for the H-1B, which Silicon Valley heavily relies on to recruit skilled labour from overseas.
What is the goal of the K visa, and how does it work?
The Chinese government has cast the visa as part of its efforts to attract foreign talent to boost the country’s competitiveness in science and technology.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun on Tuesday said the visa’s purpose was to “promote exchanges and cooperation” between science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent from China and other countries.
The visa is the latest in a series of recent reforms intended to make China more attractive to foreigners, including streamlined visa processing and the introduction of a redesigned permanent residency card.
“From the 1980s to the 2010s, China used to lose talent to developed countries such as the United States,” Zhigang Tao, a professor of strategy and economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing, told Al Jazeera.
“Now the task is to keep local talent and also attract some global talent.”
Chinese officials have said the K visa, which will be open to graduates of recognised universities and young professionals engaged in STEM-related fields, will offer more flexible conditions than existing options.
The main advantage of the visa is that, unlike previous skilled migrant programmes, it does not require sponsorship by an employer.
However, many key details of the visa remain unclear, including duration of stay and unspecified requirements related to age, educational background and work experience.
Is the K visa likely to attract foreign talent?
Edward Hu, immigration director at consultancy Newland Chase in Shanghai, said there has been strong interest in the visa, with inquiries up more than 30 percent since August.
Hu said there has been particularly strong interest from prospective applicants in India, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the US.
“The K visa fills a gap in China’s talent system by lowering entry barriers for younger STEM talents – complementing the existing R visa, which targets top-tier experts,” Hu told Al Jazeera, referring to the visa as a “strategic move” to position China as a top destination for early-career STEM talent.
The R visa, introduced in 2013, is aimed at “high-level and professional” foreigners who are “urgently needed” by the state, and requires sponsorship by an “inviting organisation”.
Still, China’s drive to expand its talent pool with the K visa faces challenges.
While China has made moves to open to foreigners, the country is still far less internationalised than the US.
Unlike the US, China rarely grants citizenship to foreigners.
While Chinese permanent residency is more feasible to obtain, it is still only granted to a tiny fraction compared with the roughly one million non-US citizens who receive green cards each year.
Chinese work environments also present a language barrier for English-speaking applicants when compared with their Silicon Valley counterparts.
Michael Feller, chief strategist at Sydney-based business consultancy Geopolitical Strategy, said Chinese companies would need to offer English-language roles and “international-style” work schedules to compete with US firms.
“I can’t imagine many foreign graduates interested in the ‘9-9-6’ work-life balance that many Chinese firms are known for,” Feller told Al Jazeera, referring to the 72-hour workweek famously endorsed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
A US flag and a H-1B visa application form are displayed together on September 22, 2025 [Dado Ruvic/Reuters]
What does the K visa have to do with the H-1B?
While China’s drive to recruit talent has cast Trump’s crackdown on immigration in sharp relief, there is no direct link between the introduction of the K visa and his moves to rein in access to the H-1B.
However, many observers have suggested that the US’s inward turn could be to the benefit of other countries seeking to attract talent, including China.
“The K visa is incredible timing from China’s perspective,” Feller said.
“It’s unlikely that Beijing knew that Washington was about to hike the fees for its own H-1B visa category, but it certainly gives the K visa added impetus in the global war for talent.”
Hu of Newland Chase said he expected the shift in policy around the H-1B to “significantly boost” the appeal of the K visa, “positioning it as a timely alternative for affected talent”.
“The K visa offers a low-cost, sponsor-free pathway – aligning with the global surge in STEM talent demand and making China a more accessible option,” he said.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
A design of a patch for the F-47 System Management Office (SMO) that has been circulating on social media was indeed created by members of that organization, but is still being refined and hasn’t been formalized, the Air Force has confirmed. The patch’s central feature, which appears to be a phoenix or a firebird, raises the question of whether the sixth-generation fighter may already have a nickname.
User @SR_Planespotter on X was first to share a look at the patch earlier this month. In March, Boeing’s next-generation fighter was officially declared the winner of a competition for what had previously been referred to as the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet or “platform.”
“The patch is an early design concept that was generated within Air Combat Command’s F-47 System Management Office,” an Air Combat Command (ACC) spokesperson told TWZ. “It is still being developed, and there is currently no official patch being worn by anyone in the Air Force.”
A rendering the Air Force has released of the future F-47 sixth-generation fighter. USAF
In addition to the phoenix or firebird, the circular patch has “ACC F-47 SMO” in white lettering and three yellow or gold-colored triangles/arrows/deltas with trailing lines along the left side. On the right side, there is “FBC” written in black lettering and a white-colored ‘path,’ which we will come back to later on. There are six red stars of equal size, three above and three below the central ‘bird’ motif, as well.
Under the main body of the patch is the Latin “Superamus Perstamus Letamus” written in white lettering. A basic machine translation of this is “We overcome. We Persist. We Rejoice.” The same motto has been seen on other patches and insignias, some dating back many years now, associated with the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative and the Agile Development Office within the Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). The Agile Development Office evolved from the Program Executive Office for Advanced Aviation, first created in 2019 to serve as a central manager for NGAD efforts, including the work that led to the F-47, which you can read more about here.
An official logo for the Agile Development Office featuring the same Latin motto as the unofficial F-47 SMO patch. USAF
Much about the meaning of the various elements of the F-47 SMO patch design otherwise remains unconfirmed.
Triangles, arrows, and delta shapes are often used in Air Force heraldry to symbolize aircraft or subordinate units. The Agile Development Office insignia seen earlier in this story also has three deltas with trailing lines, but in gray. In addition to Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman had also competed in the NGAD combat jet competition, but whether any of this is a reference to that fact is not known. Northrop Grumman had bowed out in 2023, and there are indications that its entrant would have otherwise been cut.
Stars are also common. Six of them together often refers to the top-secret flight test center at Groom Lake in Nevada, better known as Area 51. It is worth noting here that Boeing and Lockheed both built top-secret X-plane demonstrators as part of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) efforts that fed into NGAD and ultimately the F-47. They are understood to have been flight tested at Area 51.
The Desert Prowler patch seen here is a particularlywell-known example of a design with six stars, in this case in a five-plus-one arrangement. AviatorGear.com
The white ‘path’ on the right side of the patch looks to be an outline of a portion of China’s eastern coastline. The Air Force has framed the F-47 as key to ensuring it can achieve air superiority in future conflicts, especially high-end fights against an opponent like China. The sixth-generation fighters would be at the ‘tip of the spear’ to penetrate through the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) extensive anti-access and area denial ‘bubbles’ in any such scenario in the Pacific.
The central phoenix/firebird motif (which may or may not be tied in some way to the as yet unexplained “FBC” acronym) is particularly interesting to consider in light of what is known about the history to date of the F-47 program and the work that preceded it. Until President Donald Trump’s administration decided to proceed, there was a very real chance of the program being cancelled in favor of other priorities. In April, former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who left his post in January, penned an opinion piece questioning the decision to move ahead.
Another rendering the Air Force has released of the F-47. USAF
Whether it is the intended symbolism of the patch or not, a phoenix would certainly be appropriate for the F-47 program. A legendary immortal bird commonly associated with ancient Greek mythology, but also found in other traditions, it is often depicted ‘rising from the ashes’ of its own demise.
There is also the mythical firebird found across Slavic folklore, which is both a blessing and a curse to anyone who tries to capture it.
In the same way, phoenix or firebird might be plausible nicknames for the F-47, officially or unofficially. However, phoenix, at least, is unlikely to become the formal name for the jet. The U.S. military just announced in August that Phoenix II is now the official moniker for the U.S. Navy’s future E-130J aircraft. Some kind of double-up (Phoenix III on top of Phoenix II), or a renaming of the E-130J, are possibilities, but seem less likely. The E-130J is a so-called ‘doomsday plane’ that will be tasked with acting as an airborne command and control node for the Navy’s nuclear ballistic missile submarines, including being able to send orders to them to launch strikes while submerged, a mission set referred to as Take Charge and Move Out (TACAMO) that you can learn more about here.
A rendering of the future E-130J Phoenix II for the US Navy. Northrop Grumman
We already know the F-47 designation is tied to the Republic P-47 of World War II fame, the official nickname for which was Thunderbolt. The Air Force has also said the “47” is a reference to the year the Air Force was founded (1947) and President Trump (the 45th and 47th President). The P-47 was subsequently redesignated the F-47 before the type was retired.
A post-World War II picture of what had, at that point, been redesignated an F-47 Thunderbolt. USAF
It’s worth noting here that the A-10, better known by its unofficial nickname, Warthog, is also officially dubbed the Thunderbolt II, in homage to the P-47. The Warthogs are set to be retired well before the new F-47s start to enter service, which would free up the Thunderbolt name.
As the A-10 underscores, unofficial nicknames for American military aircraft are also common, in general, and sometimes become more widely used than the official ones.
The formal naming of an aircraft like the F-47, expected to be a centerpiece of Air Force power projection for decades to come, is likely to be the subject of significant debate, whatever unofficial monikers it might pick up along the way. Prime contractor Boeing is now building the first of the jets, and the hope is that a first flight will occur in 2028. When operational units might begin to receive F-47s is unclear.
More details about the F-47 SMO patch’s symbolism may emerge as the program gets more underway. In the meantime, we at least know it is a real design that is still a work in progress.
CHRISTIAN HORNER has been warned that a Formula One return with Aston Martin would “not work”.
Horner, 51, was handed a whopping £80million payout for leaving Red Bull Racing after he was sacked as team principal in July and replaced by Laurent Mekies.
3
Guenther Steiner has warned Christian Horner an F1 return would not workCredit: Getty
3
Horner can return to the sport in 2026 and has been linked with a number of teamsCredit: Shutterstock Editorial
But the ex-F1 chief, formerly the longest-serving team boss in the paddock with 20 years of service which yielded 14 drivers and constructors titles, is already plotting a way back into the sport after it was revealed he was “missing” it.
Horner’s payout was less than the £110m he could have had for the full duration of his deal which had run to 2030.
But SunSport understands taking the lower offer means he is free to return to F1 as early asspring2026.
However, former Haas boss and Drive to Survive fan favourite Guenther Steiner has claimed reuniting the pair at the team’s Silverstone base would not work.
Steiner, 60, told Lottoland: “In the last year the problem between Adrian and Christian was one of the reasons why Adrian left Red Bull.
As Dickens prophetically reminds us, ours is hardly the first age of wisdom and of foolishness, the first epoch of belief and of incredulity. Dudamel’s great challenge is to make his 17th and final season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic — and his prelude season before taking over the New York Philharmonic (in September he officially became designate music and artistic director) — the best of musical times for both cities.
The opening concerts for the two orchestras were two weeks apart, the Big Apple having come first. The main works on the New York-centric program were by two great 20th century composers, Bartók and Charles Ives, who were treated as outsiders by the city’s musical establishments during their lifetimes.
The performances were impressive. An orchestra that has a reputation for being difficult was responsive. If I read the room right, there was a genuine, if somewhat guarded, sense of optimism from a welcoming crowd.
Following a tradition he started with his first season in L.A., Dudamel opened with a newly commissioned work, Leilehua Lanzilotti’s “of light and stone.” He struck instant sonic gold with this mystical evocation of Hawaii, wondrous in sound, Lanzilotti, a hopeful good start.
Dudamel has a different look these days when he walks out on stage for an L.A. Phil concert after he’s been away for a while. Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, he again seemed ever so slightly hesitant, as if not knowing what to expect now that his leaving has become manifest. But greeted by a full house’s demonstratively embracing thankful enthusiasm, he beamed, the hesitant posture turning into ownership.
The conductor opened his farewell season with Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” a joint commission bridging his two orchestral families.
(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
The new work this year is Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” and it is Dudamel’s first effort at bringing together what he calls his two families.
Reid, who is herself bicoastal between L.A. and New York, narrates, through astonishing orchestral properties and powers, an environmental tale of her two cities. The work is a joint commission with the New York Philharmonic; Dudamel will take it east in the spring.
Earth, air, water and fire are Reid’s subject matters, which she translates into four movements that cover a New York winter, an aerial approach to Manhattan’s noise and quiet, the Altadena and Pacific Palisades conflagrations, ending on a sort of surfboard ride over crashing blue waves. With the help of a wordless Los Angeles Master Chorale, Reid tells the story through ever-surprising instrumental evocation.
Nothing, however, sounds like you might expect in Reid’s massive orchestral soundscape capable of holding a listener in tight grip for 30 minutes. Is that percussive pounding in earth the ground moving under our feet and the cello solo snowy Central Park? I don’t know how she does it, but I immediately bought into weird sounds from the chorus indicating something words can’t express about what those New York skyscrapers are up to. The effect of what sounded like ticking clocks going astray felt like an inviting dip in the lake.
Dudamel ended the concert with Richard Strauss’ “Alpine Symphony,” 125 orchestral musicians schlepping up the mountain, finding spiritual ecstasy at the summit and getting drenched on the way down, a self-satisfied drinking in of nature with every step. It is an astonishing, so to speak, over-the-top score, which you either love or abhor for its instrumental vulgarity.
Love was in order Thursday. Dudamel first performed “Alpine Symphony” at Disney in 2008, a year before beginning as music director. He jogged up the mountain and back, full of beans, showing off but also sharing his enthusiasm and demonstrating a skill that gave confidence that this 20-something conductor had the chops.
Dudamel’s performance of Strauss’ “Alpine Symphony” demonstrated the L.A. Phil’s distinctive immediacy compared with his more formal European interpretations.
(Timothy Norris / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
Last summer, I heard Dudamel conduct the “Alpine” with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival. The playing was sumptuous but formal and distant. These were the Alps as seen from a comfortable gondola taking in the view, and what a view, indeed.
The L.A. Phil sound, on the other hand, reveled in being-there, huffing-and-puffing immediacy. A rainstorm was a rainstorm: wet. The pastures replete with cowbells weren’t so much scenic as earthy, the real thing.
The orchestra sounded rapt and ready for ecstasy Thursday. There are two new first-chair players. A member of the orchestra’s second violin section, Melody Ye Yuan, has become her section’s principal. Ryan Roberts is the new principal oboe, and he had a luminous solo in the “Alpine.”
It was only after Roberts, who grew up in Santa Monica, won the L.A. Phil blind audition for principal oboe that Dudamel discovered he had just hired away a rising star in what is about to become his New York Philharmonic. But it’s all in the big new family.
More so than with other directors, it’s always tempting to overly psychologize Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, looking for traces of his personal development and hints of autobiography: the father figures of “Magnolia” or “The Master,” the partnership of “Phantom Thread,” parenthood in the new “One Battle After Another.” Yet two things truly set his work apart. There’s the incredibly high level of craft in each of them, giving each a unique feel, sensibility and visual identity, and also the deeply felt humanism: a pure love of people, for all their faults and foibles.
Anderson is an 11-time Academy Award nominee without ever having won, a situation that could rectify itself soon enough, and it speaks to the extremely high bar set by his filmography that one could easily reverse the following list and still end up with a credible, if perhaps more idiosyncratic ranking. Reorder the films however you like — they are all, still, at the very least, extremely good. Simply put, there’s no one doing it like him.
Perhaps nothing marks Anderson as a filmmaker from the ’90s as much as his impeccable use of music, from the drowned-in-sound deluge of “Boogie Nights” to his ongoing collaboration with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood as a composer. So just to add to the arguability of the following list, we’ve also noted a favorite song or two from each movie, the song titles often becoming surprise summations of the plots themselves.
This list is made in good faith, without any purposeful stuntery (honest). Feel free to let us know how your opinions vary.
![Lisa Reihana, "in Pursuit of Venus [infected]," 2015, projected video animation.](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/1760007267_726_LACMAs-Grounded-a-rambling-show-of-acquisitions-jumps-the-rails.jpeg)
