The News

The World Cup's 'sexiest fan' Ivana Knoll has opened up on her devastation following the news that Jack Grealish will not be a part of England's Euro 2024 squad.

The former Miss Croatia became an internet sensation during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, after various photos of her wearing revealing outfits in the country's colours went viral during the tournament.

The former Miss Croatia has three million followers on Instagram and has been pictured with some of the biggest names across sport, including Erling Haaland, Shaquille O'Neal and ex-Formula One champion Fernando Alonso.

She claimed that she was upset to see the Three Lions at the tournament without the Manchester City star but insisted his absence will give Croatia an advantage in Germany. 

'I'm sad England doesn't have the best team selected but as a Croatia fan I'm happy.' Knoll told The Sun. 'With [Kylian] Mbappe not playing and all these other big players not playing then we have a bigger chance.'

 READ FULL ARTICLE 

The head of Canada’s intelligence agency made two unannounced visits to India in the first quarter of this year to meet Indian officials to discuss the killing of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, people familiar with the matter said. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director David Vigneault travelled to New Delhi in February and March – before Canada announced the arrest of four Indian nationals in connection with Nijjar’s killing – a person in Canada said on condition of anonymity. Dig deeper

The INDIA bloc, a group that has 236 lawmakers in the Lok Sabha, must function “cohesively and collectively both in Parliament and outside”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said at the meeting of the extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Saturday as he also emphasised that “people have reposed their faith back in us (the Congress) in substantial measures and we must build on it”. 

The Congress president, who played a key role in forming the alliance, said, “I will be failing in my duty if I don’t acknowledge the INDIA alliance partners, in which each party played its designated role in different states, each party contributed to the other. Our determination is that the INDIA group must continue. We must function cohesively and collectively both in Parliament and outside.” Dig deeper

 SOURCE 

 Jessica Alba put on a chic display as she attended a party to celebrate her upcoming film, Trigger Warning, in Los Angeles on Tuesday. 

The actress, 43, who both stars in and also executive produced the action thriller, wore a lace corset top for the event at The Hideaway in Beverly Hills. 

She teamed the stylish number with a pair of black wide leg trousers and elevated her height with stylish Santoni heels.

Following an earlier screening of the film at Netflix Tudum Theater, Jessica was joined by her husband Cash Warren who showed his support. 

The film producer, 45, looked smart in a navy blue suit and white shirt while posing for photos with his wife. 

+

15

View gallery

Jessica Alba, 43, put on a chic display as she attended a party to celebrate her upcoming film, Trigger Warning, in Los Angeles on Tuesday

+

15

View gallery

The actress, who both stars in and also executive produced the action thriller, wore a lace corset top for the event at The Hideaway

essica stars as Parker, an active-duty Special Forces officer who takes over her father's bar in her hometown after his sudden death.

After returning home, she realizes a violent gang has been terrorizing her small town, as she aims to stop them in their tracks.

Alba not only stars but also serves as an executive producer through her newly-minted Lady Spitfire production company, which was formed in February 2024.

The film also features Sixteen Candles star Anthony Michael Hall, 56, who portrays Senator Ezekiel Swann, a powerful politician.

The production companies for the film are Santa Monica, California-based Thunder Road Films, which previously has produced John Wick, The Town and Sicario, as well as Lady Spitfire that Jessica announced she had formed in February.

Trigger Warning will premiere on June 21 on Netflix.

The trailer, which was released last month, shows Jessica as the highly-trained operative who channels her brute force into cleaning up her hometown.

It begins with a mournful parker clad in black, spreading his father's ashes, while an older man says, 'I'm sorry about your dad... but I'm glad you're home, kid.'

 SOURCE 

The Supreme Court sided with an Austin gun store owner Friday morning in a case concerning whether bump stock rifle attachments convert the weapon into a machine gun.

In an opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court has decided that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock attachment is not a “machinegun” because the gun does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” as the statute requires.

“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does.” Justice Thomas wrote.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The dissenting justices argued that bump stocks allow a semiautomatic rifle to fire in a way that meets Congress’s definition of “machinegun.”

“All the shooter had to do was pull the trigger and press the gun forward,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “The bump stock did the rest.”

The Court heard arguments earlier this year on the legality of a federal ban on bump stock rifle attachments, a case that was brought forward by an Austin gun store owner. Michael Cargill surrendered his bump stock devices in compliance with the 2018 ban issued by the Trump administration. This ban followed the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting in which the gunman used several firearms, some with bump stock attachments, to kill 58 people.

A bump stock is a device attached to a semiautomatic firearm that “allow(s) a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger,” according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The final rule went into effect in March 2019.

“The final rule clarifies that the definition of ‘machinegun’ in the Gun Control Act (GCA) and National Firearms Act (NFA) includes bump-stock-type devices, i.e., devices that allow a semiautomatic firearm to shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the recoil energy of the semiautomatic firearm to which it is affixed so that the trigger resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter,” the ATF wrote on its website.

Cargill’s attorneys argued that bump stocks don’t change the function of a semi-automatic weapon enough to constitute that the device is illegal. The Biden administration said bump stocks meet the legal definition of a machine gun because it only takes one action to fire the weapon. 

Before the Las Vegas shooting, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives had determined that only specific types of bump stocks could convert semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. The ATF later issued a rule classifying all bump stocks as machine guns. Under the 2018 rule, anyone who owned or possessed a bump stock had to either destroy it or turn it in to the ATF to avoid criminal penalties.

Garland v. Cargill reached the Supreme Court in February after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in favor of the previously existing legislation, determining that bump stocks are not defined by semi automatic rifles. During oral arguments, the Supreme Court appeared divided on the case. Conservative justices expressed concern that the regulation could subject bump stock owners to criminal liability, even though the devices were legal when they bought them.

Michael Cargill declined requests to comment until after the Supreme Court has announced the decision.

SOURCE 

Sadly, on April 22, 2024 Victor lost his long battle with pulmonary fibrosis. Ayers Family Cremation prepared him for his final wishes — to have his ashes scattered at sea in the Pacific Ocean he loved. He will be missed.

SOURCE 

Three seasons into its run, Bridgerton has fallen into a pattern: great at foreplay, iffy on the climax. No one signs up for a romance with the prospect of an underbaked conclusion, and it’s frustrating when the momentum and groundwork of a slowly built relationship culminates in a finale that’s just … fine. Still, Bridgerton’s third season, with its expansion of bubbly minor characters and ample time spent on the other Bridgerton siblings, reduces the pressure on this underperforming high point, and there’s enough fun and anticipation in everything around the central couple that it almost doesn’t matter that the apotheosis of Polin is more of a gentle plateau.

Like its first two seasons, this installment of Bridgerton is a delightful romp with towering heaps of confectionary-sweet silliness, an overlay of Barbie feminism, and the occasional baffling structural flaw. Every season of Bridgerton has some amount of imperfection, but each season is imperfect in its own way: Season one, sexy and unrestrained, was a mess of racial politics and reproductive anxiety coursing beneath the show’s fantasy of the Regency period. Season two, which included a somewhat more careful approach to the racial aspects of this universe, got pushback for not having enough sex and failing to adequately navigate the emotional ins and outs of its sisterly love triangle. In both cases, the season started from a promising premise but could not live up to the complexities of its own emotional stakes in the back half.

Season three is built for success. Both Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington had plenty of time for development in seasons one and two, and Penelope’s identity as Lady Whistledown, anonymous author of the ton’s most influential gossip pamphlet, gives the Colin/Penelope match-up an immediate source of tension and an obstacle to overcome. Nicola Coughlan’s performance as Penelope is much-loved by the show’s fans, and beautifully calibrated to accomplish the shift from awkward side character to stunning central love interest. Luke Newton’s Colin is endearing, gentle, and more than capable of staring at Penelope with both longing and dismay. Colin loathes Lady Whistledown because of all the mean things she’s said about him and his family; Penelope’s secret is a buried bomb with a guaranteed explosive release.

Until the last couple of episodes, everything appears to be ripping along like a brand-new two-horse phaeton on a bright spring day. Colin and Penelope, after dealing with the emotional aftermath of their devastating balloon-based trauma, have a carriage-based digital exploration that launches them into giddy matrimonial accord. The Lady Whistledown secret lurks in the background, even while Colin and Penelope have one of the show’s lovelier and more tender sex scenes in their unfurnished future home. Everything’s ripe for a big, passionate, highly combustible, and ultimately satisfying conclusion! Except there’s a concerning absence of important groundwork with relation to Colin. While Penelope has a whole hidden life and ambitious desire for social influence, Colin had one underwhelming trip to Europe where he got less mail than he hoped and had to soothe himself with the Regency equivalent of a buy-ten-get-one-free brothel-membership card. He wants to be a writer, maybe, an idea introduced abruptly in the premiere, but he struggles to actually write anything even though he’s a wealthy man with lots of free time and the ability to publish whatever he wants. He wears a big Mr. Rochester–esque great coat and walks around with an unbuttoned shirt to signal his flirtation with Brontë-style masculine angst, but his sadness is unpersuasive at best and completely laughable at worst.

This is not necessarily a flaw with Bridgerton’s chosen storytelling setting, or its tendency to focus on wealthy aristocrats; this is a fantasy world where money almost never matters and all the rules of race, class, aristocratic titles, and the plausible load-bearing capacities of any given hair accessory are invented and discarded on a scene-by-scene basis. The problem is entirely structural. Without money or class concerns, tragedy, trauma, ambition, unfulfilled sexual desire, poor health, or even a hobby he’s particularly devoted to, Colin has no obstacles. He loves his neighbor! She’s hot for him! He has ample resources, the social standing to survive a scandal, and almost no responsibilities. He’s the most-desired bachelor of the season — he’s doing great! So when the inevitable fallout of Penelope’s secret identity finally reaches Colin, the betrayal and sadness that should feel equal on each side instead feel obnoxiously lopsided. Ideally, when two romantic leads clash, the audience should be able to sympathize with both parties, understanding whatever perspective is keeping them apart even if they’ll clearly work it out. But because Colin has so little growth over the course of the season, the viewer is mostly waiting for him to get over himself.

Unsurprisingly, this does not make for an ecstatic emotional reunion between the two. Penelope and Colin carry on with the wedding as planned, which creates the opportunity for even more heightened tension between them — they’re going to be stuck forever in this deeply miserable relationship! Except Bridgerton can’t fully commit to an angry wedding, and Colin smiles gently at Penelope as she walks down the aisle. This is lovely for two people who are trying to make it work and terrible momentum for a romance plot. Are they supposed to be fine now? Have they come to some sort of agreement? No, because Colin reverts to being furious with her after the wedding, and then everything is apparently solved once she publicly comes clean about Lady Whistledown in the finale. Even though they barely talk about it! And Penelope is clear-eyed about the problems still on the horizon! But there’s no reason for concern: They have a baby, Colin publishes his book, and everything is perfect in the end.

Despite this underwhelming conclusion for Polin, Bridgerton’s third season is still a compulsively enjoyable watch, in large part because the unfulfilled potential of the Polin plot is immediately passed along to engaging side characters and the promise of future seasons. Season three should be about Polin, but it really belongs to the Featheringtons, particularly Polly Walker’s Lady Featherington, who runs away with every scene she’s handed and juggles cruelty, pragmatism, fondness, exasperation, sadness, and love while also being infallibly funny. She and the two other Featherington sisters are the MVPs of this season, no contest.

Even without the Featheringtons, though, the Bridgerton siblings are given so much to do that as the Polin plot starts to cool off, their stories pick up the slack. The best and most outright absurd goes to Benedict (Luke Thompson), who engages in a sexual encounter that should win an improbable endurance award. And there’s lots of promise for Francesca (Hannah Dodd), as the finale introduces her love story with an intriguing potential shift for the future of the show. The Bridgerton world feels bigger than it has in the past, to its benefit: Story development for Cressida Cowper, Violet Bridgerton, and Lady Danbury and her newly introduced brother all bode well for new seasons. The expansion isn’t always successful, particularly for the Mondrich family, whom Bridgerton clearly wants to invest in but who, for this season, suffer from a near-fatal case of Colin Bridgerton Lack-of-Problems Syndrome. But these storylines are more than enough to counteract any potential Bridgerton fatigue. By the end of the season the overall sense is, “This was an unfortunate mess and I’d love to watch more immediately.”

In its efforts to build out the Bridgerton world, and to tell stories about more than one Bridgerton family member at once, the series has effectively embraced the narrative changes necessary to translate from a romance-novel series into a TV show. It’s also departed enough from Julia Quinn’s original books that it’s become completely its own work rather than a pale retelling of the original, which is always the most important standard for any adaptation. A Bridgerton series should be able to do both: embrace ensemble storytelling while also achieving the full satisfaction and painstaking structural balance of a romance novel. Season three does not pull this off, but Bridgerton remains too much fun to consider breaking up with anytime soon.

 SOURCE 

 Show up for work at 9 am, scan your social media pages to check up on your friends, and then begin thinking about an early afternoon exit to walk your dog. At least that was what was going through my mind when my boss, Michael Fragale, walked into the office to tell me that Jerry West had just died.