When the pitcher, batter, catcher, umpires and video-replay officials all have no idea what the call should be, that means it’s time to fix the rule book. Read More
I guess it’s official: I’ll never quite be able to describe myself as a Toronto Blue Jays fan. I say this by way of paying tribute to the particular team we all just watched fall short in an epic World Series. Like many Canadian lovers of baseball, I’m a middle-aged Montreal Expos widower who has stubbornly resisted getting on board the Jays bandwagon as a matter of identity. I’m not buying the merch. I’m not bothered when they’re lousy. Read More
The long-smouldering debate over the Supreme Court’s treatment of mandatory minimum sentences was reignited Friday by its 5-4 decision in Quebec (Attorney General) v Senneville, which struck down the one-year minimum sentences for possessing or accessing child pornography. The overarching principle for deciding whether a minimum sentence breaches the guarantee against “cruel and unusual treatment or punishment” in section 12 of the Charter attracts little controversy. It cannot be “grossly disproportionate” to the punishment that an offender would receive without the minimum. Read More
The board is fielding shareholder demands for a clear plan to boost the bank’s stock price – and a strategy to compete against its archrival, Jamie Dimon's JPMorgan Chase.
New Yorkers will have the chance to check the box on six ballot measures Tuesday — one at the state level and five citywide — which could drastically change the current methods by which affordable housing is approved.
House Republicans believe they have "clear momentum" one year out from the 2026 midterm elections, despite historical headwinds against the party in power.
Root also among 14 players committed to national team
Bethell and Jofra Archer among other notable inclusions
Ben Stokes has signalled his desire to play in the 2027 Ashes at home after signing a new two-year central contract with England.
Stokes will be 36 the next time England host the Ashes and, having suffered hamstring and shoulder injuries over the past 12 months, there was a school of thought that this winter’s series could be his last.
Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.
In a hugely successful TV and film career, her waitresses, neighbours, moms and daughters ranged from comedy to drama to David Lynch films, always with compelling authenticity
Diane Ladd was part of a Hollywood aristocracy of character actors who from the golden period of the American New Wave onwards lent star quality to supporting roles. She brought an authentic, undiluted American screen-acting flavour to everything she was in, and ran hugely successful movie and TV careers in parallel for decades, playing waitresses, neighbours, moms, sirens and daughters, and ranging from comedy to drama.
She was famously the mother of screen actor Laura Dern and wife of Bruce Dern, and repeatedly acted with Laura in a remarkable mother-daughter partnership in which the two women’s closeness always shone through. You might compare it to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, or Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher — although Diane Ladd and Laura Dern were far more trouble-free and without that kind of angst. They were Oscar-nominated together for their joint appearance in Martha Coolidge’s Depression drama Rambling Rose from 1991. And they also both appeared in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Inland Empire, Alexander Payne’s Citizen Ruth, and in Mike White’s HBO drama Enlightened – and in three of these they played, naturally, a mother and daughter. In Joel Hershman’s 1992 comedy Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Ladd acted alongside her own mother, the stage actor Mary Lanier.
Defence argued police engaged in ‘fishing expedition’ when they stopped far-right activist in Folkestone in July 2024
Tommy Robinson has been cleared of a terror-related offence after being accused over a refusal to give police access to his phone during a border stop.
Robinson, 42, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was driving a silver Bentley Bentayga SUV and was on his way to the Spanish tourist hotspot of Benidorm when he was stopped by officers at the Channel tunnel in Folkestone on 28 July 2024, Westminster magistrates court previously heard.
Balco boss revealed Marion Jones used growth hormones
Conte served four months in prison over involvement
Victor Conte, the architect of a scheme to provide undetectable performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones decades ago, has died. He was 75.
The federal government’s investigation into another company Conte founded, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), yielded the convictions of Jones, elite sprint cyclist Tammy Thomas, and former NFL defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield along with coaches, distributors, a trainer, a chemist and a lawyer.
This past week, Gen. Jennie Carignan, Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, tearfully apologized for what she called “systemic racism and racial discrimination” in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The intention was noble. Yet the sweeping assertion that the CAF is “systemically racist” demands closer scrutiny. Read More
Bucking the anti-immigration trend in British politics, remote areas of Scotland would like to attract foreign workers to offset declining local populations.
Kaja Kallas to issue update this afternoon on progress countries are making towards becoming union member
Meanwhile over in the Netherlands, the coalition forming process is about to start this afternoon as leaders of the main parties meet to discuss next steps and appoint a “scout” to see what’s possible.
The meeting is scheduled for 4pm local time today, and will be hosted by the parliament speaker, Martin Bosma.
In The White House Effect, now available on Netflix, archival footage is used to show how the US right moved from believing to disputing the climate crisis
In 1988, the United States entered into its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Crops withered in fields nationwide, part of an estimated $60bn in damage ($160bn in 2025). Dust storms swept the midwest and northern Great Plains. Cities instituted water restrictions. That summer, unrelentingly hot temperatures killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Yellowstone national park suffered the worst wildfire in its history.
Amid the disaster, George HW Bush, then Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, met with farmers in Michigan reeling from crop losses. Bush, the Republican candidate for president, consoled them: if elected, he would be the environmental president. He acknowledged the reality of intensifying heatwaves – the “greenhouse effect”, to use the scientific parlance of the day – with blunt clarity: the burning of fossil fuels contributed excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, leading to global warming. But though the scale of the problem could seem “impossible”, he assured the farmers that “those who think we’re powerless to do anything about this greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House Effect” – the impact of sound environmental policy for the leading consumer of fossil fuels. Curbing emissions, he said, was “the common agenda of the future.”
The Liberty Justice Center led by Sara Albrecht is better known for backing right-leaning causes, but it filed the tariff case that will be heard by the Supreme Court this week.
“We’re going to make them proud,” Mike Lindell, the owner of LindellTV, said of the administration. His outlet supports the president and is among those that agreed to the Pentagon’s new press rules.
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