Man arrested in UK on suspicion of terror offense over incident at US-run air base

• October 6, 2026

LONDON (AP) — British police on Tuesday arrested a 22-year-old man in London on suspicion of a terror offense over a security incident at a U.S.-run military air base in England that authorities have linked to Iran.

Counter Terrorism Policing said the man, a British national, was detained in the Westminster area of central London on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts.

The arrest is the seventh in connection with a suspected plot against RAF Fairford in western England, which has been used by American bombers to strike Iran.

Six other men have been released on bail while the case is under investigation.

Scores of residents were evacuated from their homes near the base early on Sept. 27 as armed police officers and army bomb-disposal experts swooped on the rural area. Police later said they had found a quantity of an accelerant – gasoline – in three vans linked to the five suspects, but no explosives.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the U.K. sees “strong indications” that Iran played a part in the incident

Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing said detectives “continue to pursue multiple lines of enquiry” and “remain committed to investigating all possible angles.”

​ Orange County Register 

Why Nathaniel Philbrick says California’s Gold Rush led to the Civil War

• October 6, 2026

In his new book, “The Rush,” National Book Award-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick offers a salty anecdote to illustrate the boom-or-bust economy of the California Gold Rush.

“We think of the gold rush as a rush, but it had sort of micro-bursts within that first year,” says Philbrick via Zoom from his home in Nantucket. “Where, OK, we need a lot of beef jerky because there are all these guys here, and so a lot of beef jerky comes up from Chile. But then the market gets overloaded, and the jerky is worthless.” 

Too much jerky — who knew there could be such a thing? But it was just one of the challenges facing the rapidly expanding city of San Francisco, which didn’t yet have proper sidewalks or paved roads as gold-crazy newcomers arrived en masse via ship, stagecoach and, if you believe a fanciful 1849 illustration included in the book, airships and rockets, too.

“And the problem is no one can go down the muddy, flooded streets of San Francisco,” says Philbrick, whose previous books include “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War,” and a three-volume American Revolution series. “So, what do you do?”

If any urban planners are reading this, you might want to look away.

“You use the beef jerky to pave the roads of San Francisco,” says Philbrick, who writes that instead of gold, the city’s sidewalks were lined with bundles of dried meat — that is, “until the city’s booming rat population devoured it.”

But Philbrick says this kind of frenzied decision-making was all just part of the times.

“It’s an indicator that they’re just making it up as they go along … trying to make money, throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks,” says Philbrick. “Tiptoeing through the muddy streets of San Francisco on little islands of beef jerky.”

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The capitalist chaos turned out well for some: One new arrival, a middle-aged piano builder named James Lick, found he didn’t care for gold mining, so he started buying up cheap plots of San Francisco land, quickly becoming the richest man in California. He also introduced locals to the chocolate produced by a former neighbor in Peru, a fellow named Ghirardelli. 

But for many, especially the Indigenous population, who were nearly completely wiped out in the two decades following the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, the period was a dark one, as violence erupted across the territory, from vigilante mobs looking to usurp local government to racially and financially motivated attacks upon Californian tribes, established Mexican landowners, immigrant Chilean miners and Chinese railroad workers.

In a conversation edited for length and clarity, Philbrick discussed how the impact of the gold rush can still be felt on our economy and environment, how the territory was coveted as a state by both pro-slavery and free state proponents ahead of the Civil War, and how his research discovered fresh voices who wrote accounts of life during this period.

Q: With the Gold Rush, so much happens in such a compressed amount of time. How do you describe the period that you are writing about?

The California Gold Rush, as we know it, was basically about 10 years before it burned itself out. People were still getting gold, but it was no longer the rush that it had been. But just before the Civil War, gold and silver are discovered on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and you have another rush to the Comstock Lode.

What became clear to me was that California’s gold rush was absolutely essential to the history of the United States, and the world, and it would contribute to the run-up to the Civil War. This was something that had tentacles that reached farther than I had ever imagined.

Q. Is there something about this story of Bay Area millionaires controlling vast amounts of land, labor, and emerging technology that made you think this might be timely?

I began this book five years ago, and at that point, San Francisco seemed to be in a downward spiral. So initially I’m thinking of this as something in the past, but then as I was approaching the end of things, AI began to kick in big time, and the San Francisco real estate market is suddenly transformed, and the whole area is in the midst of yet another rush. It’s cyclic, of course; there are booms and busts, but it’s still going on. It happened in 1848, and it’s happening today in 2026.

Q. Does that cyclical nature give you a sense of hope, or not, about where we are today?

Yeah, it does. Writing this book, it got really bad at a lot of points in the years I describe, and it’s not like wrongs would be completely righted, but things would gradually be addressed to a certain extent.

We’ve been to the brink of some really bad situations in the past. Certainly, it feels to me and a lot of people like we’re at a point I never experienced in my many years on this planet. But I do have hope that we’ll somehow figure it out. It won’t be pretty. But hopefully, we’re gonna get to the other side and see a new future.

Q. In your book, you reveal some astonishing pieces of information, such as the fact that there is not a single known letter surviving from any of the thousands of Chinese railroad workers who lived and died here. Can you discuss both your research and when you know you’ve found a fact that seems to pull a lot of the story together?

When I work on a book, it takes me years, obviously, to do this. When you immerse yourself in an era, you lose that sense of “Gee whiz, wow!” You almost know too much. So I will return to my research journal just to see what was igniting my enthusiasm and imagination. So what you just mentioned — the fact that no journals or letters, even from the 20,000 Chinese workers that worked on the transcontinental railroad, have been found in either China or America — I mean, that is just stunning.

Going back to my notes reminds me, because all I’m trying to do is create a sense of life as lived in the past, but also try to create a sense of the wonder and excitement I get in connecting with the past. These are spectacular things, and it’s important that they be right up front when I’m writing this book.

Q. There are memorable characters who power your narrative. Was there someone who acted as a throughline for you?

The Gold Rush helped to light the long fuse of the Civil War. That was interesting to me, and so I had to go with the two guys who would end up being the two U.S. senators from California just as slavery is dividing the country.

One was William Gwin, who had several plantations in Mississippi and hundreds of enslaved workers and was making a lot of money from that. He came out to California not to mine for gold, but for political power. He was in Washington when he heard about the discovery of gold and realized, wait, that place is going to become an instant state, and there are going to be two senators. I’m going to be one of those. So he got out to California as fast as he could.

California became a free state not because there was any abolitionist sentiment in California. It was because the miners didn’t want to share the gold mines with African Americans. They viewed Southerners with enslaved workers as having an unfair advantage. And so Gwin realized that’s a non-starter; it’s got to be a free state. But wait a minute, it can be a free state in name only. So he and his party did everything they could to roll back the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, particularly when it came to African Americans, Native peoples, and foreigners.

By 1857, 1858, an opponent emerged, a relatively young guy in his 30s from the mean streets of New York who had become the political boss of San Francisco. His name was David Broderick, and he was a Free Soiler, opposed to everything the pro-slavery Southerners were trying to do, and the two of them ended up in the Senate at the same time amidst this whole chaos.

[Gwin’s party, known as Chivalry] sees Broderick as dangerous, and they put a hit on him. And so, in September of 1859, just a month before John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, David Broderick would be shot to death in a duel just outside San Francisco by a state Supreme Court justice from Texas, the pro-slavery David Terry, and this left California seemingly wide open to the South getting to California’s gold and possibly making it help the Confederacy in the Civil War.

22 new books coming in October 2026 to add to your reading list

Q. There’s shocking brutality during this period: massacres, racially motivated attacks, mob violence, and even a settlement called Hangtown, named for the frequency of its lynchings.

It was a wild situation. One miner described it as “pandemonium on a frolic.” Particularly in the early stages of the gold rush, there really was no one controlling any of this. Around a campfire in a gold mining town, someone said, “I can just murder someone. There’s really nobody to bother me.”

And so the only form of law, if you can call it that, in the gold mines was vigilante justice. People would just get hanged, and an inordinate number of them were foreigners, and so there was this brutality when it came to the Native peoples.

In the early days of the gold rush, half the people in 1848 in the gold fields were Native Californians, many of them working for White Californians. There was a tremendous ethnic diversity in the mines. But as Americans arrived from Oregon in the beginning, and then from the rest of the United States, they don’t know how to mine, so they learned it from the Native peoples, from the Chileans, from the Mexicans from Sonora. Then, once they figured out how to do it, they’d pull out their guns and say, “OK, get off! I’m an American, and this is my gold.” This is how it was done. So there’s a tremendous brutality, arrogance and national chauvinism that was part of the gold mines.

Even in the city of San Francisco. In 1856, a group of vigilantes organized by the business community there, who were not happy with what elected officials were doing, put together a 5,000-man army and took over San Francisco for two and a half months, and they would rule San Francisco. They would hang four people and deport dozens more.

Californians had a real tradition of taking the law into their own hands when it suited their purposes.

Q. Nearly everything these days gets drawn into the political sphere; how do you navigate this while doing the work of a historian?

A: I love my country. I really do, and I’ve studied it now for decades and I think the most patriotic thing a writer, a historian, can do is to look at the past as thoroughly as possible, recognize the good that occurred, but also recognize the bad — because that’s an act of patriotism. If we do not look at what went wrong, how is that going to give us any perspective on what we’re doing today or will do in the future? It’s essential; it’s a patriotic act. To look at the past through rose-colored glasses is basically putting blinders on and stunting your country’s ability to grow in the future.

I think it’s wrong to look at America as something that was better in the past, that the people were better than we are now, and that we’ve all declined. That’s baloney. The one thing I’ve learned is people are people, and history is made by ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Some people rise to it; others don’t. But everyone in every generation is capable of these kinds of things.

I see this tremendous evolution and a continual challenge to be an American. We aspire to bring prosperity to people, to claim that everyone is equal. That’s in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, and each generation has a responsibility to clarify what those words mean at that particular moment in history.

Q: You’re telling the story of the Gold Rush, and you choose interesting characters to focus on — some you expect and others you might not, like a family of Chilean miners who come to California to work. They may not have been the most important people in all of California at that time, but they provide a lot of interesting information about life then.

I was looking for characters that were not the usual grizzled prospectors with their pans. I was looking for different, hopefully surprising, angles into the story. I think it’s important to get some of the traditional great men of the past; you can’t just tell the story without them, but I was always trying to put them in the context of not just their own world, but what was happening around them.

So I was looking for characters. One of them is James William, a fugitive slave from Maryland, who realizes that with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, he’s got to get out of there. But it’s winter; he doesn’t want to go to Canada, so he goes west to California, and this was a way to follow William and have a different way into the story.

I tell a narrative history. I’m telling a story full of smaller stories, and they’re about people.

50 books for America250: Novels and nonfiction telling the nation’s stories

Q. You write about the building of the railroad through the experiences of people like Stanford, Huntington and Crocker, and also about the Chinese railroad workers who built it under the most extreme conditions. 

It begins with the men that became known as the Big Four, basically shopkeepers in Sacramento who decide, Hey, there might be some money to be made building a transcontinental railroad. They really don’t have the economic wherewithal to pull it off, and so they’re taking out huge loans and all of this sort of thing. Finally, things come together, and they need labor.

What they’re doing is impossible. They’re trying to build a railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountains at Donner Pass to Nevada and then on to Utah and meet up with the Union Pacific. To do this, they need labor. They put out the call for 5,000 men; just a handful answered, and they realize we have to find an alternative source. Maybe the Chinese?

Over the years of the building of the transcontinental railroad, approximately 20,000 Chinese would be brought over from China to work, many under false pretenses. They were lured to America under the impression that they were going to mine for gold in the gold fields.

Many of them are herded onto railroad cars and taken against their will up into the mountains, where they have no choice. They’re stuck there working just about every day of the year through winter — where 40 feet of snow is falling in the Sierras — building the transcontinental railroad. It’s just amazing what they did.

Q: Can you talk about mining’s continued impact on the environment?

They put mercury into their pans, and these machines they called rockers, and the mercury would fuse with the gold. Then you put heat under it, the mercury evaporates, and you get the gold. It’s called amalgam, and tons of this mercury ended up in the environment of California.

Then in the mid 1850s, you get the development of a new technology called hydraulic mining, in which basically industrial-scale fire hoses are used to wash away hillsides, so instead of thousands of miners pecking away, you just go at it with this hose, wash it away, so you can get immediately at the gold. This took a lot of economic wherewithal. So these corporations were taking over the gold mines from the individuals and destroying the environment.

The San Francisco Bay is considerably shallower than it was before the gold rush from all the silt that washed down the rivers into the Bay. Much later in the century, the courts would finally put an end to hydraulic mining, but it just denuded the landscape worse than a lunar landscape. It turned the rivers into this yellow broth, rivers that had once been clear.

But this is the ethic of the gold mines. You went in there to make your money and get out. And you didn’t give a damn what you did to the environment around you, to the people around you, because you were there to make your money and go.

Q: What were your impressions of this period of time?

Mark Twain is very good on this. He was a teenager in Hannibal, Missouri, at the time of the discovery of gold, and he said, Growing up, no one thought about getting rich, but then came the California Gold Rush, and that changed things. Suddenly, the pursuit of happiness described by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence was about becoming instantly wealthy rather than doing what your parents had once done. I think we’re still there. It’s about getting out there and making your fortune and moving on.

This happened just as technologies were changing everything. The steam engine, railroads, steamships. The pace of life was growing. You had the telegraph making communication almost instantaneous. This was changing everything, and when the gold rush happens, that kind of increase in velocity became a part of life, and we’re in it today.

And then just the whole ethic of you don’t ask permission; you just do it and if [people] don’t like it, screw them. That’s the ethic inherited by many a mogul in Silicon Valley.

Nathaniel Philbrick in conversation with Stephen Aron

Hosted by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the event features a reception, author program, dinner and book signing. There is a dress code.

When: 6 p.m., Oct. 20

Where: Bel-Air Country Club, 10768 Bellagio Road, Los Angeles

Ticket prices, dress code and event information: lfla.org/event/philbrick26/

Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026

​ Orange County Register 

Jim Bakker, who built ‘PTL Club’ televangelism empire, has died at 86

• October 6, 2026

By JIM SALTER and HALLIE GOLDEN

Jim Bakker, who along with his first wife Tammy Faye built an evangelical empire around the hugely successful “The PTL Club” TV show, only to lose it all over a sex scandal and financial crimes, has died. He was 86.

Bakker died Monday, his second wife, Lori Bakker, said in a statement. His cause of death was not immediately clear.

“He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend, and the man I was honored to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry,” she said.

The pair lived near the Missouri entertainment town of Branson and filmed their TV show “The Jim Bakker Show” there since it launched in 2003. Bakker suffered a stroke in 2020.

But it was another evangelical program that made Jim and his first wife Tammy Faye Bakker cultural icons — so much so that they were often skewered in the 1980s and 1990s by late-night comedians and parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” A theatrical movie on their lives, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” was released in September 2021.

At its peak in the mid-1980s, the Bakkers’ ministry included not only the TV show drawing up to 13 million nightly viewers but also the Christian-based Heritage USA theme park and hotel in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Bakker got his start as a traveling preacher

Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and attended North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where he met Tammy Faye. They married in 1961 and dropped out of college to start their own traveling ministry — he preached, she sang and played the accordion as they crossed the country visiting churches and tent revivals.

They caught the attention of televangelist Pat Robertson, and in 1965 launched a children’s show on Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. By 1966, he was hosting “The 700 Club,” a Christian talk show.

Bakker left CBN in 1972 and two years later formed the PTL Satellite Network. “The PTL Club” — PTL stands for “Praise the Lord” — became its signature show.

When it hit its heyday in the 1980s, “The PTL Club” was drawing millions of viewers — and bringing in millions of dollars annually from followers.

The show featured chats with guests and Christian entertainers. Bakker offered upbeat sermons and Tammy Faye — charismatic and always wearing her trademark heavy mascara — sang. Most episodes were taped at their sprawling complex just south of Charlotte, North Carolina.

The couple was so famous that they were often parodied by TV comedians for their lavish lifestyle and Tammy Faye’s abundant makeup.

Sex scandal and financial crimes damage his empire

In March 1987, their empire began to crack when Bakker admitted to a sexual encounter with church clerk Jessica Hahn. Bakker was forced to resign from his own empire, turning over operations to pastor and broadcaster Jerry Falwell.

Tammy Faye stuck by Bakker, often with tears running down her mascara, even as many saw his downfall as a fitting symbol of the greed and hypocrisy of the 1980s.

Things only got worse.

In 1988, Bakker was indicted for mail fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy after an investigation of PTL’s finances. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison, though the sentence was later reduced to eight years.

At a news conference after Bakker was found guilty, Tammy Faye stood in front of the microphones and sang the hymn, “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.”

Their marriage crumbled and Tammy Faye divorced Bakker in 1992, just short of their 31st anniversary, while he was still in prison. She later married Roe Messner, a building contractor whose projects included the Heritage USA theme park. Messner was convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 1995 and spent about two years in prison.

Tammy Faye died of colon cancer in 2007.

Bakker was released on parole in 1994. He married his second wife, Lori, in 1998. The couple launched “The Jim Bakker Show” on the PTL Satellite Network five years later.

In June 2021, Bakker and his Morningside Church Productions Inc. settled a lawsuit accusing him of falsely claiming the health supplement Silver Solution could cure COVID-19. The settlement called for $156,000 in refunds to people who paid money or gave contributions to obtain the product in the early days of the pandemic.

The lawsuit said Bakker and a guest made the cure claim during 11 episodes in February and March of 2020.

Bakker and Tammy Faye had two children. He and his second wife adopted five children in 2002.

___

Salter, a former Associated Press journalist, was the main author of this obituary.

​ Orange County Register 

Bijan Robinson, Falcons run over Saints, spoil Superdome celebration

• October 6, 2026

By BRETT MARTEL AP Sports Writer

NEW ORLEANS — Bijan Robinson ensured there would be no punt to block this time – and the Atlanta Falcons were off and running.

Robinson rushed for 145 yards and two touchdowns – starting with a 59-yard scoring run on Atlanta’s third play – and the Falcons routed the New Orleans Saints, 45-24, on Monday night, dampening celebrations commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Superdome reopening after Hurricane Katrina.

Robinson said the Falcons wanted to silence the crowd early “and make sure that pin drop happens in the first quarter.”

“For it to come after that third play was pretty special,” Robinson said. “We just went back to the sideline and said, ‘That’s what we talked about – make sure that we put it on them early so the crowd doesn’t become an issue.’”

Brian Robinson Jr. ran for three short touchdowns for the Falcons (2-2), who never trailed and controlled the line of scrimmage while outgaining the Saints (1-3) on the ground, 205 yards to 50.

Atlanta quarterback Michael Penix Jr., who returned from a major 2025 knee injury last week for a 35-14 victory at Green Bay, was an efficient 15-of-20 passing for 223 yards and a touchdown. His 31-yard scoring strike to Jahan Dotson in fourth quarter sent Saints fans toward the exits.

“Mike played well; he took care of the football and made some really good throws,” Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski said. “I really like his demeanor and how he is operating.”

New Orleans fans booed at times and Saints quarterback Tyler Shough didn’t blame them, calling his team’s performance “embarrassing.”

“Fans understandably are upset,” said Shough, who passed for 286 yards and a late touchdown to Devaughn Vele. “You’re playing the Falcons and you lose like that? I’d boo, too.”

Saints running back Alvin Kamara scored his first two touchdowns of the season, the second cutting Atlanta’s lead to 31-17 early in the fourth quarter.

“We’re all frustrated, all disappointed with where we’re at,” Saints second-year coach Kellen Moore said.

“This was a special night,” said Moore, who had gathered the team to watch videos about Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Superdome’s reopening on a Monday night against the Falcons in Week 3 of the 2006 season.

“We understood the opportunity and I thought there was great energy,” but the Falcons “were able to get things going early and we weren’t able to catch up,” Moore said.

Ignited by Steve Gleason’s punt block for a touchdown on the 2006 game’s opening possession, the Saints beat the Falcons, 23-3.

Like that meeting two decades ago, the Falcons, wearing red, received the opening kickoff. The similarities ended soon after.

For a fourth time in four games, the Saints were playing from behind early – a challenge made more difficult by Daniel Carlson’s missed 52-yard field goal attempt and running back Kendre Miller’s lost fumble on the New Orleans 22-yard line one possession later.

Atlanta cashed in on the turnover when Bijan Robinson made it 14-0 on a 4-yard power run, set up in part by cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry’s third-down defensive holding penalty.

Brian Robinson Jr. summed up the Falcons’ past two games, during which they have scored 80 points, as “the most fun I’ve had in my career.”

“We can be as good as we want to be,” he said.

PREGAME CEREMONIES FEATURE 2006 PLAYERS

Wearing white jerseys, retired Saints players Drew Brees, Scott Fujita, Scott Shanle, Deuce McAllister, Devery Henderson and Curtis Deloatch joined Gleason on the field before kickoff to lead fans in the club’s familiar “Who dat!” chant. Gleason, using a wheelchair because of ALS, was joined by his son, Rivers, who raised his father’s arm and then pulled it down to signal the start of the chant.

Irma Thomas, a New Orleans native and resident who sang the National Anthem when the dome reopened, returned to perform it again.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell attended, spending pregame warmups on the home sideline conversing with Saints owner Gayle Benson and other dignitaries.

Before the game, Gleason shared a moment with former Falcons punter Michael Koenen outside the dome at the “Rebirth” statue that depicts both players at the moment of the punt block.

Earlier in the day, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno gave Gleason a key to the city.

INJURIES

Falcons: Defensive end Za’Darius Smith received several minutes of attention on the field, but was able walk to the sideline after a stretcher had been brought out for him. He was placed in the concussion protocol. … Left tackle Jake Matthews (groin) left the game in the first quarter.

Saints: The Saints began without two key defensive starters: end Carl Granderson (ankle) and linebacker Kaden Ellis (calf), who were ruled out on Saturday. Tight end Noah Fant (abdomen) was a game-night scratch.

UP NEXT

The Falcons host Baltimore on Sunday night.

The Saints host Minnesota on Sunday.

​ Orange County Register 

Lakers dominate preseason opener vs. Kings as Kessler, Reaves sit with injuries

• October 6, 2026

The Lakers made their return to the hardwood on Monday night – albeit in preseason action – with a dominating 127-103 road victory over the Sacramento Kings, despite playing without two of their stars.

Luka Doncic scored a team-high 21 points on 5-for-12 shooting in the first half before taking a seat for the night and guard Quentin Grimes scored 16 points, but Kessler and Reaves did not play Monday after each suffered minor injuries, Lakers coach JJ Redick told reporters before the game.

Reaves “tweaked” his ankle, Redick said, while Kessler – the Lakers’ prized offseason addition at center – jammed his finger against the backboard. Redick added that both players would be “fine.”

Throughout training camp, the Lakers – across the board – have emphasized defensive effort and their disruptive wings. Both showed up in a big way on Monday. The Lakers forced 14 turnovers in the first half alone, finishing the game with 15 steals while the Kings turned the ball over 26 times overall.

New Lakers wings Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle, along with Grimes, a 3-and-D guard, earned starts alongside Doncic and presumed backup center Kevon Looney. During a halftime interview on Spectrum Sportsnet, Redick credited Williams (13 points) and Thybulle (six points, 2-for-4 shooting from 3-point range) with setting the defensive tone.

The Lakers shot 50% from the field and connected on 45.5% of their looks from 3-point range (20 for 44), while holding the Kings to 45.1% shooting overall.

Of the young Lakers who saw the court, guard Bronny James had three points and five rebounds in 16 minutes and rookie guard Cameron Carr scored 19 points on 7-for-13 shooting in his preseason debut. Second-year wing Adou Thiero was one of the first Lakers off the bench, showcasing improved decision-making along with his high motor en route to four rebounds and four assists in 17 minutes.

The Lakers played 15 players on Monday, with forward Jarred Vanderbilt and guard Dalton Knecht as the final two guaranteed contract players to enter the game – the pair subbing in to play in the fourth quarter.

Guard Collin Sexton and two-way contract forward Arthur Kaluma have “very light” lower-body injuries, Redick told reporters, and both sat out Monday as well.

Redick told reporters that all four of the Lakers’ inactive players on Monday are “day to day” and said none of the ailments are considered major. The Lakers continue preseason play with the second half of a Bay Area back-to-back set on Tuesday night against the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center in San Francisco.

The Lakers will have three more preseason games after that – two at Crypto.com Arena (this Thursday and on Oct. 16) and one at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas next Tuesday (Oct. 13).

​ Orange County Register 

Trump’s comment on Iran taking out LA and San Diego is either crazy or gibberish

• October 6, 2026

During a rally in Nebraska on Monday, the president of the United States of America defended his failed war in Iran by seemingly suggesting it would be fine if Iran took out Los Angeles and San Diego. Or maybe not, depending on how you hear him.

In his characteristic word salad defending high gas prices, he said: “With the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, for keeping our country safe. They could take out a city.  Let ’em take, let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. That’s.. this is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

Now, one interpretation, from a plain reading of that text, is that he was saying it would be “a very small price to pay” for Iran to “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. Which would be crazy talk. Trump talk. Not to mention a bit of a non-sequitur. But then again, Trump talk.

In hearing it, though, it’s possible he was saying the war was justified to keep the country safe because Iran could take out a city and then vomited out the specific cities as examples of what could happen if Iran was allowed to continue being a threat to America. That’s the interpretation his supporters are defending online.

It didn’t help the latter interpretation, though, that the Nebraska crowd seemed to cheer as he said the bit about taking out LA and San Diego. Or that he picked two California cities, one of which is deep blue and the other which has become blue over the last decade. Or that he said, “Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego” in the first place.

That Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria have all condemned the statement is obvious.

More of a surprise is Republican San Diego Supervisor Jim Desmond, who is running for an open congressional seat, taking to X to express his “disagreement” with the president. “Disagreement,” even vehement, is a bit, I don’t know, mild if one heard the president say it was fine to nuke millions of Americans to death but it is nonetheless significant that he would say something. One can disagree over tariff policies, but the annihilation of American cities seems to merit a “condemnation” or something like that.

“As a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war,” Desmond declared. “Our job is to keep Americans safe, stand up to our enemies, and make sure a threat like that never becomes reality. No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”

That’s all fair and basically true. Unfortunately, Desmond also basically agrees with the war and probably wouldn’t vote to stop it if he won the race to succeed Darrell Issa.

Even going with the charitable interpretation of Trump’s remarks, it’s just wrong. Iran has never been a serious threat to the United States, despite Trump now doing a cheap imitation of John McCain and Lindsey Graham. As the world has seen, Iran barely has anti-missile and anti-aircraft capabilities. It’s a sitting duck for whatever Israel and the United States want to do. Its only advantage is that it can strangle the world’s energy supply via the Strait of Hormuz under the threat of cheap drones.  But it only came to that after Trump chose to go to war.

And no, it’s not worth the increased cost of gas.

Anyway, if the president of the United States really meant to say it’d be fine if LA and San Diego were taken out, that’s another data point that Trump is probably losing his mind because that’s an insane thing to say. If he didn’t mean that, then wouldn’t it be great to have a president someday who can speak like an intelligible human being again?

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com

​ Orange County Register 

ALDS: Small-ball Rays beat sloppy Yankees for 2-0 series lead

• October 6, 2026

By ROB MAADDI AP Sports Writer

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Richie Palacios hit a two-run single in a four-run fifth inning and the Tampa Bay Rays took advantage of New York’s sloppy defense, beating Cam Schlittler and the Yankees, 5-2, on Monday night to take a 2-0 lead in their American League Division Series.

The Rays are one victory from reaching the AL Championship Series. Game 3 in this best-of-five series is Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.

Ben Rice hit a pair of homers for the Yankees, who are on the verge of elimination – which would extend their World Series drought to 17 seasons. They were dominated by Drew Rasmussen in the series opener and have scored just two runs in two games with three-time AL MVP Aaron Judge out of the lineup due to a calf injury.

The small-ball Rays chased Schlittler, the likely AL Cy Young Award winner, in the fifth aided by New York’s defensive miscues.

Jonathan Aranda lined a single to start the inning and Junior Caminero ripped a double to right-center. With the infield drawn-in except second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr., who was standing several feet further back on the dirt, Liam Hicks hit a bouncer to second that scored Aranda for a 2-1 lead. Chisholm’s only play was at first because he wasn’t all the way in like the rest of the infielders.

Chandler Simpson then hit a grounder that shortstop George Lombard Jr. booted, scoring Caminero to make it 3-1. It was initially ruled a hit and then changed to an error and eventually a fielder’s choice. Brent Headrick replaced Schlittler and struck out Victor Mesa Jr. After Simpson stole second, Jonny DeLuca reached on a grounder when Lombard’s throw to first was wide for New York’s fourth error.

Palacios followed with a hard single to center that increased Tampa Bay’s lead to 5-1.

That was plenty of support for one of the best bullpens in the majors.

Freddy Peralta allowed one run and three hits in 4⅔ innings, Cam Booser pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth and Ian Seymour gave up one run on Rice’s solo shot in three innings. Bryan Baker finished with a perfect ninth for his second save in two games.

Schlittler, who was 14-6 with a 1.95 ERA and dominated Boston in the opener of the wild-card round, lasted 4⅓ innings. He allowed four runs – two earned – and six hits. Schlittler only fanned two.

Rice sent a 2-and-2 changeup into the right field seats to tie it at 1-1 in the fourth, ending New York’s scoreless drought in the ALDS. Rice hit 41 homers in the regular season. His drive awakened Yankees fans in the ballpark, who were drowned out by Rays fans until that point.

But a sellout crowd of 40,226 was mostly full of cowbell-ringing Rays fans who reveled in New York’s misery.

Peralta retired the first two batters in the fifth before Austin Wells ripped a double and Ryan McMahon walked. Booser replaced Peralta and walked Rice to load the bases but the lefty escaped trouble when Cody Bellinger flied out to the warning track in center.

The Yankees made three errors in the first inning, but Schlittler limited the Rays to one run. New York became the first team to commit three errors in the first inning of a postseason game since the Oakland Athletics in Game 1 of the 1975 ALCS against Boston, according to Sportsnet Stats.

OFF THE CATWALK

Yankees rookie Spencer Jones hit a towering flyball off a catwalk at the quirky Trop that was caught by Rays right fielder Mesa for an out in the second inning. Jones kept running around the bases as the ball rattled around and fell to Mesa, who ran over to make the catch in center field. DeLuca thought he was camped under it in center but started pointing upward when the ball hit one of the two rings high above the field and below the roof. Mesa caught it several feet in front of DeLuca. Umpires conferred and confirmed the out, per the stadium’s ground rules.

UP NEXT

Yankees left-hander Max Fried (5-5, 2.80 ERA) and Rays right-hander Nick Martinez (15-6, 3.10 ERA) are the projected starters for Game 3 on Wednesday in New York.

More to come on this story.

​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: For Dodgers and Braves, generating offense will be tough

• October 6, 2026

Postseason baseball is supposed to be low-scoring. The teams still standing generally got there because of quality pitching, and the onus is on the hitters to adjust, to generate offense and apply pressure.

So consider: In their first two games of the National League Division Series, the Dodgers are 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position, and all eight of their runs have come via the home run. Going back further, they were 10 for 53 in the last seven games of the regular season, four against the San Francisco Giants and three against the San Diego Padres.

That’s not going to get it done. Especially since the Dodgers figure to be up against it on Tuesday in Atlanta, in the type of marquee pitching matchup we don’t see often enough: Braves left-hander Chris Sale against the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Atlanta manager Walt Weiss wound up playing this one perfectly when he opted to give Sale two extra days of rest by holding him back for Game 3 … or, at least, that’s the apparent plan for the moment.

Weiss threw some more mystery into the mix during his media availability on Monday afternoon in Atlanta when, asked if there were any thought to moving Sale back to Game 4 and using Tyler Mahle in Game 3 instead, he said: “We’ve had all these conversations, but yeah, look, we’re not done talking. As we sit here, we’re looking at Sale for Game 3.”

Leave just enough doubt, in other words. Isn’t gamesmanship wonderful?

“We were ready for anything,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before Game 2. I’m guessing that still applies.

The mystery originally developed because Sale (14-9, 2.16 ERA, 0.98 WHIP in 27 starts) was used in relief in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series against Philadelphia last Thursday, striking out Bryce Harper to get out of the eighth inning and then working the ninth to finish off the 6-2 victory that sent Atlanta on to the NLDS.

The part of that move that seemed puzzling at the time, and potentially fodder for a huge second-guess: With a four-run lead, why send Sale back out for the ninth? Weiss’ explanation, when asked before Game 2: “If it starts to go sideways (in the ninth) and Sale is now out of the game, we’re in a tough situation. So he was going to stay in and finish that game, and I’m glad he did.”

Now Weiss looks smart. The Braves threw bullpen games twice in L.A., got a split and are playing with house money. Would he dare roll the dice again and save Sale for Game 4, with the possibility that his team would be facing elimination if the Dodgers were to win Tuesday?

From here, that’s doubtful. Why wouldn’t he press the advantage right now?

“I told (Weiss) I was available” for Game 2, Sale told reporters in Atlanta on Monday. “I told him even if they needed me for Game 1, which I knew was probably a stretch – again, like I said, the work that I put in, the work that our training staff and our strength coaches put in to get me to this position, I felt confident in my ability to go out there and be able to perform at a high level.

“… You get to this time of the year, and again, it’s all hands on deck. It’s everybody doing everything they can to get one out, to get a run, to get a base runner. I think, again, that’s who our team is and that’s what everybody in here is willing to do.”

This is Sale’s 16th major league season, and he has 159 victories and a 2.95 ERA in the regular season. He does have a 1-3 record and 5.83 ERA in 12 postseason games, eight of them starts. But he also pitched twice for Boston against the Dodgers in the 2018 World Series: A four-inning no-decision in Game 1 at Fenway Park in an 8-4 Red Sox victory, and a 1-2-3 relief appearance in the ninth inning of Game 5 in which he struck out Justin Turner, Kiké Hernández and Manny Machado to wrap up a 5-1 victory and Boston’s championship.

Sale noted Monday that he learned a lot about winning after going from the Chicago White Sox to the Red Sox.

“I’ve never been in the postseason before I got to Boston,” he said. “When you get there and you’re around winners and that mentality and that kind of culture, you see what winning at all costs looks like.”

The Dodgers have seen him twice this season. Sale gave up two earned runs in seven innings and lost, 3-1, at Dodger Stadium in May, and he pitched a five-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts in a 1-0 victory on Aug. 27 to complete a three-game sweep of the Dodgers in Atlanta.

Sale “just sort of bullied us with the fastball at the top of the zone, and then there was some chase down below,” Roberts said Monday, recalling that August start. “And with the lefties, throwing more two-seamers to keep us honest and to then expand away.”

But Tuesday’s other starter has had his own memorable moments on the postseason stage. Yamamoto was the World Series MVP last year, with three victories – one his second complete game of the postseason, the last a memorable 2⅔ inning relief stint to close out Game 7. Yamamoto’s postseason numbers in two years on this side of the Pacific: 7-1 with a 2.25 ERA.

“There should be a lot of talk about Chris Sale,” Roberts said. “But our guy has been pretty dang good and has been a very good pitcher in the postseason. So we feel very good about that.

“Now, (it’s about) going out there, defending the way we should, capable of. And then on the other side just – it’s going to be a good fight. I think both pitchers are going to pitch well. And it’s kind of who grinds out at-bats best.”

Given the last couple of weeks, for the Dodgers that would be a most welcome change.

jalexander@scng.com

​ Orange County Register