Land Rover unveiled a road-legal version of its Dakar Rally-winning race vehicle this week, revealing the Defender Dakar during Monterey Car Week festivities in California, a limited-run SUV that carries over much of the engineering from the company’s competition-class rally car directly onto public roads.

The Defender Dakar is built as a production evolution of the Defender D7X-R, the race vehicle Land Rover fielded in the Stock class of the 2026 Dakar Rally earlier this year. That rally effort proved highly successful, with Land Rover’s three-car team finishing first, second and fourth in class on the marque’s Dakar debut, sweeping every stage podium position across 10 of the rally’s 13 stages. Drivers Rokas Baciuška and Oriol Vidal claimed the Stock-class victory for the team.

Mark Cameron, managing director for Defender, said the road-going Defender Dakar was designed to channel that competition pedigree directly into a vehicle customers can drive on public streets. “It’s the ultimate expression of adventure and is a true reflection of how we embrace the impossible,” Cameron said, describing the new model as an embodiment of both the Defender rally team’s spirit and the brand’s broader history of off-road engineering.

Mechanically, the Defender Dakar retains the same body structure, transmission and driveline as its Dakar-winning counterpart. Both vehicles are built on a foundation derived from the range-topping Defender Octa, and both are powered by a 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V8 engine sourced from BMW. Because the road-going version is not bound by motorsport regulations that limited the race car’s output, Land Rover was able to unlock significantly more power for the production model, with the Defender Dakar producing 626 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque, an increase over the roughly 394 horsepower the competition version was permitted to run under Dakar’s Stock-class rules. Power is sent to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission.

The Defender Dakar rides on 35-inch all-terrain tires mounted to forged 20-inch wheels, with a widened track, raised ride height and rally-tuned suspension featuring motorsport-style dampers, all changes intended to further enhance the vehicle’s off-road capability beyond even the already highly capable standard Defender Octa. Beyond the Octa’s existing drive modes, the Defender Dakar adds dedicated settings for dunes and gravel terrain, along with a “Flight Mode” carried over directly from the competition car, which Land Rover says is designed to help ensure smoother landings when the vehicle catches air over rough or uneven terrain.

Visually, the Defender Dakar incorporates a range of rally-inspired design elements, including roof-mounted light pods, a fixed metal roof, carbon-fiber trim across the hood and air intakes, exposed rivets along extended wheel arches, additional underbody protection, and a blanking plate covering the tailgate area where a spare wheel would normally be mounted, mirroring the rally car’s own design. Buyers will be able to specify the same sand-colored body paired with a turquoise roof used in the D7X-R’s competition livery, along with other color options.

Inside, the cabin adopts what Land Rover has described as a “tough luxury” aesthetic, featuring a 2+2 seating layout with dedicated racing bucket seats up front designed specifically for the Defender Dakar. Buyers will be able to option four-point racing harnesses and a rear storage area intended for stowing helmets, details drawn directly from the vehicle’s motorsport origins, even though the production version omits certain full-race features found in the D7X-R itself, such as a complete roll cage, perspex windows and built-in intercom systems.

Land Rover has not yet disclosed pricing or confirmed exactly how many units of the Defender Dakar it plans to build, though the model is being positioned as a limited-run offering. The company has said reservations for the vehicle will open in early 2027, with additional technical details expected to be released around the same time as the 2027 Dakar Rally. Given that the Defender Dakar sits above the already premium Defender Octa, which starts at £147,245 in the United Kingdom, industry analysts expect the new model’s pricing to land meaningfully higher once officially announced.

The Defender Dakar’s debut adds to a broader wave of high-performance, motorsport-inspired production vehicles unveiled during this year’s Monterey Car Week, with automakers increasingly using the event to showcase halo models that translate racing technology directly into limited-edition road cars aimed at enthusiast buyers and collectors.

With full specifications and pricing still to come, the Defender Dakar’s reveal at this stage functions primarily as a statement of intent from Land Rover, signaling the brand’s ambition to more directly connect its Dakar Rally success with a tangible, road-legal product for customers, even as many of the finer production details remain to be finalized ahead of the vehicle’s planned 2027 arrival.

At seven o’clock on Friday evening, every mobile phone in England and Wales went off at once. Not a ring. Not a polite buzz. The screech. That ten second government klaxon previously reserved for floods, incoming missiles and, we now discover, the disposable barbecue.

An entire nation shot two feet into the air. At the Royal Albert Hall, one imagines the Proms audience concluding that Russia had hacked every handset in the stalls to give the 1812 Overture an unusually literal opening. In a thousand pub gardens, overlooking lawns the colour and texture of a digestive biscuit, men quietly lowered bags of charcoal back into their boots with the practised calm of getaway drivers returning the loot.

It was a severe alert. Very high risk of wildfires nationally, it said. No firepits, no garden incinerators, no fireworks, and under no circumstances a barbecue.

Every family in Britain used to contain an uncle of a very particular sort. Call him Derek. Forty Rothmans a day, a good number of them in bed, and yet, to be entirely fair to him, the finest domestic smoke alarm network in the Home Counties.

Detectors in every room, tested each Sunday before lunch. An interlinked system, so that a crisp packet smouldering in the kitchen would summon a full choir upstairs. A heat sensor in the garage, though the garage contained nothing but paraffin and old copies of Exchange and Mart. No man in the land took fire detection more seriously.

What Derek would not do, under any circumstances, was stop smoking in bed. Prevention, he felt, was a job for the alarms.

I raise this great British archetype because on Friday the government officially became him.

Consider Friday’s running order. In the evening, Whitehall pressed the big red button on the most extensive emergency alert ever sent for a live incident, a warning triggered by a drought that has left nearly three quarters of England officially parched after the driest July in 190 years, and by fires that had already taken 19 homes in Stourbridge. That very same day, the Department for Transport opened a consultation asking whether the 2030 electric car sales targets remain, in its word, practical, with ministers briefing that the 80 per cent goal could soften towards 50.

Nor was that the only quiet loosening of the week. Ministers also let it be known that public contracts worth £5 million or more may soon be scored more heavily on jobs and training than on net zero and diversity measures. Each move is defensible on its own terms, no doubt. So, Derek would tell you, is one cigarette.

Same government. Same week. One hand on the fire alarm, the other patting its pockets for the lighter.

And the fire is not hypothetical. Reservoirs are at 69 per cent and falling, 27 million people are under hosepipe bans, and this summer’s heatwaves have already cost the economy £4.4 billion in lost output. I wrote earlier this summer about Britain’s browning fields, and they have only got browner since.

Business readers will recognise the arrangement, because every one of us has sat in that meeting. The risk register says severe. The mitigation budget says deferred. If a FTSE board flagged a threat as critical, texted every employee about it, then diluted the one policy addressing its cause in the same afternoon, the auditors would be through the door by Monday and the share price through the floor by lunch.

And here is the question someone should force a minister to answer. If the consequence is grave enough to interrupt the Proms, why are the causes a matter for leisurely consultation? A wildfire is not weather, it is arithmetic. Emissions warm the planet, the warming dries the land, and the dry land sits waiting for a spark. You cannot classify the bottom line of that equation as a national emergency while filing the lines above it under red tape.

Yet that is the official position. Sirens for the symptom, consultations for the causes. Transport remains Britain’s largest source of the emissions doing the drying, and the message it received this week was: as you were. An emergency that changes nothing except the volume of your phone is not a policy. It is a ringtone.

No business would survive run this way. When the warehouse is smouldering, you do not commission a review into whether the sprinkler budget remains practical.

Derek’s alarms, I should record, worked flawlessly. They sang like a cathedral choir right up to the night the mattress finally caught. He escaped in his slippers, the bedroom did not, and the man from the Prudential asked the only question that ever mattered. You knew the risk. You measured the risk. You wired the whole house to scream about the risk. So why were you still feeding it?

Next time my phone screeches on a Friday evening, I shan’t wonder whether there’s a fire. I’ll wonder who is still smoking in bed.

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ANAHEIM, Calif. — Lucasfilm and Disney gave fans their first extended look at “Star Wars: Starfighter” on Friday night, unveiling exclusive footage and confirming that star Ryan Gosling will play a pilot named Kade Auberon in the standalone film set in an uncharted corner of the “Star Wars” timeline.

Director Shawn Levy and Gosling appeared together on stage at the Honda Center during Disney’s D23 Entertainment Showcase to present the footage, which was shown exclusively to the audience in the room and was not released publicly online. Levy introduced Gosling’s character to the crowd, describing him as someone shaped by his origins on the margins of the galaxy. “Kade is a guy from the wrong side of the galaxy,” Levy said, tying the character’s story directly to his connection with an extraordinary vessel at the center of the film’s plot.

According to multiple outlets that attended the presentation, the footage opened with newcomer Flynn Gray’s as-yet-unnamed young character uncovering a weathered starfighter inside a rundown spaceship garage. Gosling’s Kade then enters the scene, chiding the boy for touching the ship despite having been warned not to. When the boy asks what the vessel is, Kade identifies it as a decommissioned G17, describing it as the fastest starfighter ever built, a detail that gives the film its title.

The footage went on to show a series of action sequences, including speeder bikes racing across swampy terrain, large Imperial-style starships, and a brief cameo of the same bridge Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa famously swung across in the original 1977 “Star Wars” film. The sequence closed with a cockpit-view shot of Gosling piloting the ship, a moment several outlets compared visually to similar shots from “Top Gun.”

“Star Wars: Starfighter” is set after the events of 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” taking place in a portion of the franchise’s timeline the filmmakers have said has never previously been explored on screen and deliberately steers clear of the Skywalker family storyline that has anchored the core “Star Wars” saga. Levy described the film’s tone to the D23 crowd as one built around a sense of adventure distinct from earlier entries in the franchise, saying it embodies the hope, family and adventure long associated with “Star Wars” while venturing into new territory for the series.

Gosling also addressed the crowd directly, reflecting on his own history with Disney dating back to his early career on “The All-New Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1990s. Before Gosling took the stage, Levy played a clip from that Disney Channel show poking fun at his young co-star. Once Gosling appeared, he credited the company with giving him his start in entertainment. “I owe a lot to Disney,” Gosling said, reflecting on how the opportunity, which brought him from his hometown decades earlier, had once again reshaped his career with the new role.

The film is written by Jonathan Tropper and also stars Amy Adams, Aaron Pierre, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman and Daniel Ings, alongside Gosling and Gray. “Star Wars: Starfighter” is scheduled to arrive in theaters and IMAX on May 28, 2027, a release date Levy noted carries special significance: it falls on the same Memorial Day weekend that the original “Star Wars” opened in theaters exactly 50 years earlier. Levy called the timing an unplanned but deeply meaningful coincidence.

The film represents a significant bet for Lucasfilm following a challenging summer at the box office. The studio’s most recent live-action release, “Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu,” finished as the lowest-grossing live-action “Star Wars” film to date, closing out its run at roughly $345 million worldwide against a production budget reported at around $165 million before marketing costs. With Levy coming off directing “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the highest-grossing R-rated film in box office history at $1.33 billion worldwide, and Gosling bringing broad star power following roles in films including “La La Land,” “Blade Runner 2049” and “Drive,” Lucasfilm is positioning “Starfighter” as a potential reset for the franchise’s theatrical fortunes.

Friday’s D23 presentation was part of a broader night of “Star Wars” news at the event, which also included the release date and costume reveals for the second season of “Ahsoka.” The Starfighter reveal capped months of anticipation, following Lucasfilm’s earlier confirmation of the project’s basic premise at prior fan events, including Star Wars Celebration.

With the footage limited to those in attendance and no confirmed date yet for a public trailer release, fans outside the Honda Center will need to rely on secondhand descriptions from journalists who attended the showcase until Lucasfilm and Disney decide to release footage more broadly ahead of the film’s Memorial Day 2027 debut.

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia’s Flores Island early Saturday, killing at least five people and damaging buildings across East Nusa Tenggara province as aftershocks continued and rescue teams searched for survivors.

The governor of East Nusa Tenggara, Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena, told a press conference that the five victims died in their sleep when rubble collapsed on them. Local search and rescue officials later reported a higher toll. Fathur Rahman, head of the Maumere Search and Rescue Agency, said rescuers had recovered 20 bodies in the affected regencies of Sikka, West Manggarai and East Manggarai, with six people injured and two still believed trapped under debris or landslide material.

The United States Geological Survey located the epicenter about 68 kilometers (42 miles) north-northwest of the city of Ende at a depth of approximately 10 kilometers. Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency recorded the main shock shortly before 6 a.m. local time at a depth of 15 kilometers. Multiple aftershocks followed, including one measuring magnitude 6.1.

Authorities issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas of East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi shortly after the quake. The warning was lifted about three hours later after monitoring showed no significant sea-level changes that posed a threat. Waves of less than 1 meter were recorded in some locations.

The shallow quake caused strong shaking across Flores, a mountainous island in eastern Indonesia. Video verified from the port in Maumere showed concrete falling from a terminal building onto waiting passengers. In Labuan Bajo and other towns, residents fled homes and hotels. About 2,000 people in Nagekeo regency, near the epicenter, evacuated to safer ground. Power outages and damaged roads, including some cut by landslides, complicated communications and access for emergency teams.

National disaster mitigation agency BNPB said preliminary assessments showed damage to homes, warehouses, government facilities, health centers and places of worship. Search and rescue teams focused on collapsed structures and areas affected by landslides. In one village in Manggarai, eight bodies were recovered from landslide debris.

At St. Peter Major Seminary in Sikka, students and nuns fled during morning Mass when the roof of an assembly hall partially collapsed. “Our students and nuns ran out in panic beneath a collapsing roof,” the seminary’s rector, the Reverend Guidelbertus Tanga, said. At least one priest suffered a broken leg after jumping from a second-floor building.

East Nusa Tenggara police chief Rudi Darmoko said power outages in cities and villages had hampered the flow of information. “We are continuing to collect reports of damages and casualties, but there are communication disruptions,” he said.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates meet and generate frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. The Flores region experienced a destructive magnitude 7.5 earthquake in 1992 that caused widespread damage and a tsunami. Officials noted the latest event was linked to the Flores back-arc thrust fault, which has potential for large quakes.

Rescue operations continued through the day as teams worked to free anyone still trapped and to assess the full extent of damage. Hospitals treated the injured, and patients at some facilities were moved outdoors as a precaution. Authorities urged residents to stay away from damaged buildings and to remain alert for aftershocks.

The death toll remained fluid as verification of reports from remote areas continued. National and provincial agencies said they were still compiling confirmed figures. In the meantime, emergency workers prioritized locating survivors under rubble and providing assistance to those displaced by the shaking and subsequent aftershocks.

Flores and surrounding islands are popular with tourists, though the hardest-hit areas were more inland and less visited. Damage was reported at ports and along coastal zones that initially came under the tsunami alert. Australian authorities confirmed no tsunami threat to their mainland or territories.

As night fell on Saturday, search efforts were expected to continue with the aid of heavy equipment where roads allowed access. Officials stressed the need for accurate casualty and damage data before determining the scale of national assistance required. Residents in the affected regencies faced ongoing aftershocks while assessing the condition of their homes and preparing for possible further evacuations if conditions worsened.

The earthquake underscored the persistent seismic risks facing eastern Indonesia. Local governments activated emergency response protocols, and national agencies coordinated the deployment of additional teams and supplies. Further updates on the confirmed death toll, injuries and infrastructure damage were expected as communications improved and field assessments advanced.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s secretive wedding to Georgina Rodriguez has drawn a new round of speculation after a Portuguese television presenter suggested the football star’s family may have learned about the ceremony only moments before it took place.

Ronaldo and Rodriguez married August 11 at Ronaldo’s mansion in the exclusive Quinta da Marinha area, a ceremony the couple announced afterward on Instagram. According to a copy of the couple’s marriage certificate published by the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias, only four witnesses and the couple’s children were present at the wedding itself, a notably small guest list for one of football’s most high-profile couples.

Speaking on the Portuguese TVI program “Dois,” presenter Cristina Ferreira raised questions about whether Ronaldo’s extended family had been informed of the wedding in advance. “It will cause a lot of problems because the family wasn’t present,” Ferreira said, suggesting that if relatives had learned of the ceremony at all, it may have only been moments before it occurred. Ferreira later expressed hope that the speculation surrounding the family’s absence had not caused any actual hurt within the family, acknowledging that her comments were based on impressions drawn from social media activity rather than confirmed information.

Central to the speculation is the absence of Dolores Aveiro, Ronaldo’s mother, who was reportedly not present at the ceremony. Aveiro has never directly addressed persistent rumors of tension between herself and Rodriguez, though she appeared to offer public support for the couple following the wedding, posting a heart emoji in response to their announcement on Instagram. Ronaldo’s sister was reported to have traveled to Madeira, the Portuguese island where Ronaldo was born, to meet with family and friends over the same weekend, adding to questions about why the immediate family did not attend the wedding itself.

The wedding capped a relationship between Ronaldo and Rodriguez that began in 2016, when the two met in Madrid while Rodriguez was working as a sales assistant at Gucci. The couple announced their engagement in August 2025, with Rodriguez sharing a photo of her ring on social media captioned, in Spanish, “Yes I do. In this and in all my lives.” Ronaldo later described the proposal in an interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” recalling that his children walked in on the moment and asked whether he was about to propose to their mother, a coincidence he said convinced him it was the right time to go ahead.

In that same interview, Ronaldo indicated the couple always intended to keep their eventual wedding small and private, consistent with Rodriguez’s preference for intimate gatherings over large-scale celebrations. “We decided the wedding should be small and elegant,” Ronaldo said, tying that decision directly to Rodriguez’s personality and her wish for privacy. That stated preference for a smaller ceremony offers one possible explanation for the limited guest list, separate from the specific questions Ferreira raised about whether extended family members were informed in advance.

Reports ahead of the wedding had initially suggested the ceremony might take place at Funchal Cathedral in Madeira, Ronaldo’s home island, following the couple’s engagement. The wedding ultimately took place instead at Ronaldo’s private residence in mainland Portugal, a shift from the earlier reported plans that added to the sense of secrecy surrounding the event’s final details.

Ronaldo and Rodriguez share two daughters together, Alana Martina and Bella Esmeralda, with Rodriguez also helping raise Ronaldo’s three children from previous relationships. The couple also experienced the loss of a newborn son, Bella’s twin brother, in April 2022, a loss they addressed publicly at the time.

The wedding drew attention beyond just questions about family attendance. Local reports also described fans mistakenly gathering at an incorrect venue in Madeira, believing it to be the site of the ceremony, prompting a public response from Ronaldo addressing the mix-up. Separate reports in the days leading up to the wedding described Ronaldo taking steps to safeguard his substantial personal fortune ahead of the marriage, though details of any such arrangements have not been independently confirmed.

Neither Ronaldo nor Rodriguez has publicly addressed Ferreira’s specific claims about the timing of when family members may have learned of the wedding. With the marriage certificate now publicly confirmed and the couple having shared their own announcement of the ceremony, the remaining questions surrounding the wedding have increasingly centered on the circumstances behind the notably small guest list and the unclear role, if any, that family tension may have played in shaping it.

India’s primary market, which has already seen 42 mainline companies raise Rs 54,378 crore through initial public offerings (IPOs), is set for another busy week, with five companies scheduled to launch their public issues between August 17 and August 21, seeking to raise a combined Rs 5,499.32 crore.

Among them, Horizon Industrial Parks alone accounts for nearly 47% of the total fundraising planned through the five IPOs. Lalithaa Jewellery Mart is the second-largest issue, while the remaining three offerings together account for around Rs 1,199.32 crore.

The fundraising will begin on Monday, August 17, with Horizon Industrial Parks and Lalithaa Jewellery Mart opening their IPOs. Horizon is looking to raise Rs 2,600 crore, while Lalithaa Jewellery Mart is targeting Rs 1,700 crore. Both issues will remain open until August 19.

Horizon Industrial Parks has set a price band of Rs 57-60 per share, while Lalithaa Jewellery Mart has fixed its price band at Rs 190-201 per share. Both companies are scheduled to list on the BSE and NSE.

Shankesh Jewellers, Sunshine Pictures to open on August 18

Shankesh Jewellers and Sunshine Pictures will open their issues on August 18. Shankesh Jewellers is seeking to raise Rs 367.18 crore, with a price band of Rs 88-93 per share, while Sunshine Pictures plans to raise Rs 282.14 crore, with its price band set at Rs 342-360 per share. Both issues will remain open for subscription until August 20 and are scheduled to list on the BSE and NSE.

The week’s final IPO will be Gaja Alternative Asset Management, which will open for subscription on August 19 and close on August 21. The company is looking to raise Rs 550 crore through the issue, with a price band of Rs 152-160 per share. Its shares are scheduled to list on the BSE and NSE.

5 listings lined up next week, Shiprocket in focus

While five companies are set to tap the primary market, shares of five companies that have already completed their IPOs are scheduled to make their stock-market debut next week. Together, these companies raised Rs 7,478.69 crore through their public issues.

Dhoot Transmission, which raised Rs 3,066.89 crore, and Molbio Diagnostics, which raised Rs 939.70 crore, are scheduled to list on August 17.

Milky Mist Dairy Food, which raised Rs 1,553 crore, is scheduled to list on August 18.

Shares of Shiprocket and Behari Lal Engineering are scheduled to make their stock-market debut on August 19. Shiprocket raised Rs 1,617.48 crore, while Behari Lal Engineering raised Rs 301.62 crore.