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George Miller remembers Sam Neill as ‘comprehensively an amazing person’

Acclaimed director George Miller shared memories of the late Sam Neill, who died yesterday at the age of 78.

He was such an exemplary human being. We saw him as an actor and we got to know him as an actor. The world did. But what was so amazing about him is that he was comprehensively an amazing person. …

He lived life very, very fully, basically with an enormous amount of wisdom ultimately.

He was, you know, part of the global industry, but never, never pretended he was from anywhere else. He’s one of those people that at heart, I guess he was a Kiwi, but Australia, he had significant influence on Australian cinema, and globally.

South Carolina's governor says he is appointing Darline Graham to finish the term of her late brother. Top Republicans, including President Trump, have coalesced around the pick.

(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch)

NPR has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally.

(Image credit: Erik McGregor)

England Test head coach vacancy may not appeal to the Zimbabwean who is at the top of his field

That Andy Flower emerged as the favourite to take over England’s Test team so soon after Brendon McCullum’s demotion should come as no surprise. Put simply, the Zimbabwean is the leading active head coach on the circuit.

During his first spell in the job from 2009 to 2014, England won three successive Ashes series, ended a 27-year wait to win a Test series in India, and rose to No 1 in the Test rankings. The men’s white-ball team also broke its duck in global tournaments by lifting the World T20 in the Caribbean in 2010. Flower has since carved out a successful second career. In franchise cricket, his teams have won the Pakistan Super League, the Hundred, the ILT20, and the Indian Premier League (twice). When Australia broke India’s hearts by securing the 2023 World Cup, Flower was in their camp as a batting consultant.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Hi, friends, and good afternoon — I’m delighted to be coming to you, for the very first time, at this far more civilized and adequately caffeinated hour. 

As I previewed here on Friday, Today, Explained has undergone a little makeover: We’re now shipping this newsletter on weekday afternoons. And we’ve tweaked the format to make it more useful, entertaining and elucidating, with a renewed focus on exploring the fascinating, big ideas and hidden forces that drive the news cycle. 

Every afternoon, my pal Cameron or I will catch you up on the two to three big stories you need to know to feel grounded and informed about the day. Then we’ll go deeper on one thread from one story: a fascinating bit of related science, an economic concept that might change the way you think, or the little-known context behind a pop culture fad that suddenly and surprisingly explains everything. 

My goal here isn’t to help you “keep up” with the news — as if the news were some terrible, never-ending treadmill you could fly off the back of — but to find better, smarter, more durable ways to think about the fast-moving infopocalypse that is our inescapable reality now.

Speaking of inescapable realities: What better place to start, really, than with an…unexpected death? South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday of likely complications from heart disease, shortly after traveling from Ukraine back to the US.

Graham was 71 years old, and — at the risk of sounding ever-so-slightly macabre — no one had the late senator on their Congressional death watch bingo card. A number of other high-profile national politicians are in visibly poor health: Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, for instance, who on Sunday finally explained that his mysterious, weeks-long hospitalization followed a minor fall. Or President Donald Trump himself, who often appears in public with visible bruising on his hands, and who is maybe/probably receiving a high-powered, experimental obesity drug to treat pulmonary hypertension. 

The White House strenuously disclaims all speculation about Trump’s health, of course. But in America’s so-called gerontocracy, health problems are something of an occupational hazard.

How Congress got so old

You’re not imagining it: Congress has never been this old. In January 2025, the median age for a sitting US senator was 64.7 — up more than a decade from 40 years ago.

The simplest explanation is basic demographics: America is getting older as a whole. 

But there’s also another, more troubling reason for Congress’s demographic shift. Over the past century, growing political polarization and partisan gerrymandering have made congressional elections far less competitive. 

As a result, many races are essentially decided by the primaries, where older, incumbent candidates have huge advantages: More voters recognize their names and more donors contribute to their reelection funds, for instance. Despite some high-profile upsets — like the recent triumph of political newcomer Melat Kiros in Colorado — only a handful of incumbents lose their primaries each cycle. 

Critics have floated a number of interesting remedies, including term and age limits for federal lawmakers. Lots of Americans say they’d support those types of reforms. But the problem with the gerontocracy isn’t actually lawmakers’ ages — after all, older people benefit from a lifetime of accrued experience! — but the sense that voters don’t really have the opportunity to elect younger candidates, even if that’s their preference.

Changing that would require sweeping structural reforms that help newcomers challenge incumbent politicians and that make it more possible for either party to win a given district. Unfortunately, that’s not at all the direction the US is moving in.

One link for later

➨ Keeping up with friends is hard. A weekly photo dump can help. Vox’s Allie Volpe observes this little digital ritual in her own group chat. Every Friday, her friends share a handful of casual, lo-fi photos from the preceding week to keep up with the small stuff in each other’s lives. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s actually in keeping with recent research about the most effective ways to nurture friendships online.

Before you go…

• Did you know…that axolotls, those adorable smiling amphibians, can regrow limbs, spinal cords, and even portions of their brains? It’s made them particularly popular in laboratory studies. 
• Today’s trivia: What’s the name of the American politician and businessman, recently portrayed (but not necessarily spotlighted) in a hit Broadway musical, who served as the third vice president of the United States? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.
• Something to watch: The Vox podcast Unexplainable is now on Netflix! You can catch new episodes there every Monday (and still listen every Monday and Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts).
  
  

Good, an unarmed US citizen and mother, was killed by immigration officer and Pretti was shot by CBP officials

Previously withheld evidence regarding the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti is now in the hands of Minnesota prosecutors, helping the state gain clarity on the deaths that occurred earlier this year during protests against a federal immigration crackdown.

“Through the cooperation of our federal partners, we have obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence in the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis,” the Hennepin county attorney, Mary Moriarty, said in a video statement posted on social media.

The actor, who has died aged 78, was refreshingly candid about Hollywood, filmmaking, his cancer treatment – and why he preferred life on his New Zealand farm to the movie business

• Sam Neill’s 20 best performances

• A life in pictures

• ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill

• Obituary

• Neill interviewed in 2023, 2024 and 2026

I interviewed Sam Neill in 2024, remotely: he was in Vancouver filming a Netflix series, Untamed, but we were there to talk about a quirky Australian court-room drama, The Twelve. He was immediately, disarmingly frank. Its second season, he said, was “considerably stronger” than the first, which was absolutely true, the first being a little schlocky, and the second showing more trust in its audience and our tolerance for nuance.

But actors, generally speaking, will never say anything remotely critical of any project, it’s just not worth the hassle. This can make even the most reflective among them sound anodyne, and the feeling of being in a conversation with a real, three-dimensional human was unfamiliar and warm.

Scientists worry that current eradication efforts won’t be able to contain parasitic infestation pushing into US

When conservationists set up cameras in remote regions of Central American forests, they wanted to monitor illegal cattle movement, which can lead to deforestation. But in recent months, they discovered another alarming development: wildlife rapidly infected with the new world screwworm.

It’s a warning sign of how the fly could spread in the US – and it signals new difficulties in pushing it back south, a process that will probably take years, experts say.

National Fire Chiefs Council say emergency services dealing with 19 wildfires across Britain, many near urban areas

The UK is in the grip of a “firewave”, as the summer’s extreme heat produces the ideal conditions for wildfires, scientists and environmentalists have warned.

A particular danger was that more blazes seem to be taking place closer to urban areas rather than in remote countryside, causing hazards to homes and health, they said.

Carl McDaniel was ‘respectful distance’ from animal when it charged and has severe injuries, including broken bones

A tourist who was tossed 8ft in the air by a bison at Wyoming’s Yellowstone national park – an encounter viewed by more than a million social media users thanks to a viral video online – has been identified as a “community-minded” grandfather from Washington state.

Carl McDaniel had severe injuries including broken bones after Friday’s campsite encounter with the bison, which was posted to YouTube by the Wyoming news outlet Cowboy State Daily. A photographer named Mike MacLeod rushed to help the victim on the ground after making the recording.

Carl McDaniel was ‘respectful distance’ from animal when it charged and has severe injuries, including broken bones

A tourist who was tossed 8ft in the air by a bison at Wyoming’s Yellowstone national park – an encounter viewed by more than a million social media users thanks to a viral video online – has been identified as a “community-minded” grandfather from Washington state.

Carl McDaniel had severe injuries including broken bones after Friday’s campsite encounter with the bison, which was posted to YouTube by the Wyoming news outlet Cowboy State Daily. A photographer named Mike MacLeod rushed to help the victim on the ground after making the recording.

Extreme heat led to 440 deaths a day during June peak, say scientists, with climate crisis ramping up temperatures

The heatwave that affected England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak, scientists have estimated. Across the whole of the June heatwave, plus the one in May, about 2,700 people lost their lives prematurely.

The data starkly illustrates the danger of extreme heat, which is being supercharged by the climate crisis. More than 40% of the people affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused global heating to date, according to the analysis. For comparison, about four people die each day as a result of road traffic collisions and about 35 a day because of alcohol and drug use, according to government statistics.