ALL OF THEM WERE ON PAROLE OR PROBATION. SACRAMENTO CITY LEADERS ARE EXPECTED TO VOTE TOMORROW ON CHANGING CONTRACT POLICIES TO REPLACE OLD SACRAMENTO’S BOARDWALK. THE FOCUS HERE IS ON QUALITY BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE KNOWS HOW TO WORK IN HISTORIC AREAS. THE CITY IS REVITALIZING OLD SACRAMENTO, INCLUDING REPLACING THE OLD BOARDWALK. NORMALLY, THAT WOULD INVOLVE ASKING FOR CONTRACTS TO BID ON THE JOB AND THEN HIRING THE COMPANY THAT COMES IN CHEAPEST. BUT THE VOTE TOMORROW WOULD ALLOW THE CITY TO HIRE THE CONTRACTOR THAT’S MOST QUALIFIED, ACCORDING TO THE STAFF REPO
Sacramento considers changing contract policies for Old Sacramento Boardwalk project
Sacramento City Council is considering changing contract policies for the replacement of the Old Sacramento Boardwalk.The city would normally ask for contractors to bid competitively for the job, and hire the company that is most cost efficient. City staff, however, say revitalizing the historic boardwalk requires a contractor with experience working in historic environments.Former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg first announced plans to revitalize the Old Sacramento Waterfront back in July 2024. That plan includes replacing the wooden boardwalk. | PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Mayor pushing for plans to change the Old Sacramento WaterfrontSee more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter
Sacramento City Council is considering changing contract policies for the replacement of the Old Sacramento Boardwalk.
The city would normally ask for contractors to bid competitively for the job, and hire the company that is most cost efficient.
City staff, however, say revitalizing the historic boardwalk requires a contractor with experience working in historic environments.
Former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg first announced plans to revitalize the Old Sacramento Waterfront back in July 2024. That plan includes replacing the wooden boardwalk.
California members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives’ approach to President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night are as varied as their politics and their districts.
Before the speech, Sen. Adam Schiff described Trump as an out-of-control and corrupt president who has ignored pressing issues such as climate change in order to enrich himself and punish his political enemies, including by turning the U.S. Department of Justice and the rest of the federal government into a “personal fiefdom,” unbound by the law.
“From the birth of our nation, our founders were obsessed with preventing tyranny and the emergence of another king, another despot. They created checks and balances, separation of powers, an independent judiciary. They understood that the greatest threat to liberty wasn’t foreign invasion, it was the concentration of power in the hands of one person or faction,” Schiff said on the floor of the U.S. Senate. “This president has systematically dismantled these safeguards in his second term.”
Schiff is among the Democrats boycotting the speech. Other Californians include Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) and Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village).
Sen. Alex Padilla, the son of immigrants who was tackled in Los Angeles last year when he attempted to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during the immigration raids, will deliver a Spanish-language response after Trump’s address on television and online.
California has the largest congressional delegation in the nation, so its elected officials frequently have an outsized presence in the nation’s capital. An especially memorable moment was when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) ripped up a copy of Trump’s speech after the 2020 State of the Union address.
It’s unclear whether California elected officials plan anything as dramatic tonight. But their guests are notable.
Though Garcia is not attending the speech, his guest at the event is Annie Farmer, a woman who was abused at the age of 16 by sexual predators Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), who is attending, is bringing Teresa J. Helm — another Epstein abuse survivor.
Others plan to bring constituents from their districts — Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) is bringing Ben Benoit, the Riverside County auditor-controller who is a longtime friend.
Pelosi’s guest is the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford, senior pastor of historic Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. And some have surprise guests who will be unveiled later tonight.
Downtown Los Angeles’ infamous eyesore is one step closer to being cleaned out.
The skyscraper known as the Graffiti Towers — officially the Oceanwide Plaza development — has reached a bankruptcy exit agreement that paves the way for a potential sale, court records show.
A federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday signed an order approving the agreement, which was filed on Jan. 28 and resolves various disputes between creditors.
Lawyers for Oceanwide argued in the Jan. 28 court filing that the agreement would put an end to “value-destructive litigation” and allow Oceanwide to focus on selling the project and confirming a plan.
“A prompt sale and eventual completion of the Project is a major priority for the City and the public at large, particularly with the upcoming 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles,” Oceanwide’s lawyers wrote.
The settlement is a “critical step” toward selling the property, which will allow for the “permanent removal” of graffiti and “permanent elimination of safety concerns at the Property,” they continued.
The real estate broker managing the sale, Mark Tarczynski of Colliers, declined to comment.
A potential investor is in talks to acquire the property, but the deal depends on the bankruptcy being resolved, as reported by Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources.
The settlement agreement resolves various legal battles between creditors over the order that they get repaid in, sets the amounts of the claims and provides a “framework for a consensual chapter 11 plan and sale, and a distribution waterfall for the proceeds from a sale.”
Under the agreement, L.A. Downtown Investment LP will receive a $230-million claim, while the “mechanics” liens — which are typically associated with unpaid construction work and are held by Lendlease (US) Construction Inc. and DTLA Funding LLC — total $168 million.
The agreement also includes a $20-million payment from Lendlease (US) Construction Inc. to Chicago Title Insurance Co. to resolve disputes between the two companies.
Oceanwide Plaza, located across Figueroa Street from Crypto.com Arena and on the site of a former event parking lot, was once envisioned as a crown jewel of downtown Los Angeles.
The Chinese-backed, mixed-use development project would have included more than 500 condos and 180 hotel rooms across three towers. It would have also included nearly 170,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
“The draw power of this location is tremendous. We’re in the heart of the entertainment and sports district,” Thomas Feng, then-chief executive of Oceanwide’s American subsidiary, told The Times in 2016.
The $1-billion development started in 2015 and was originally slated to be completed in 2019. But construction stalled in January 2019 as the owner — the publicly traded, Beijing-based conglomerate Oceanwide Holdings — ran out of money to pay contractors.
As the luxury building sat vacant, taggers armed with spray paint flocked there, hoping to leave a colorful mark on the city skyline. Some even filmed themselves walking on ledges of the unfinished skyscrapers.
In 2024, the Los Angeles City Council allocated $3.8 million to clean up and secure the building. About $2.7 million was allocated for security services, fire safety upgrades and graffiti abatement. Another $1.1 million was set aside to build fences and secure the ground floors of the building.
Oceanwide Holdings also planned to build two skyscrapers in San Francisco’s Financial District, but construction halted in 2020 after the company ran out of money, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported.
China Oceanwide Holdings was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year.
Plans for a new water park at Cal Expo appear to be slip-sliding away.Water park fans have been dreaming for years of a return to the site of Sacramento’s former Raging Waters park, which closed in 2022 after 15 years of operation. (Previous coverage in the video above.)A new water park called Calibunga has been the brainchild of California Dreamin’ Entertainment executive Steven Dooner, who initially planned to open it in 2024 as part of a three-year plan for renovations. Dooner later said the park needed to be fully renovated and his company planned a target opening date for 2027. At one point, Chuck E. Cheese was said to be a partner on the project. But there were financial issues behind the scenes. California Dreamin’ Entertainment has been in violation of its lease agreement with more than $202,000 owed to Cal Expo, according to a letter included with a Cal Expo board packet last month. The letter, dated Jan. 16, said that California Dreamin’ Entertainment missed a final extension for paying up. It warned that the lease agreement would be voided on Feb. 2 and Cal Expo would take possession of the water park on Feb. 3. Cal Expo said in a statement that, as of Tuesday, California Dreamin’ Entertainment was in breach of its contractual obligations. This came after it first sent a notice to the company on Oct. 31, 2025, about an unresolved past-due balance. An initial deadline to pay was Dec. 4 and then extended to Dec. 18. Cal Expo said its Long-Range Planning Committee denied another request for an extension on Dec. 11. “Cal Expo looks forward to exploring partnerships and new opportunities for the water park that align with our long-term vision and operational goals that maximize the site’s potential,” Cal Expo said. KCRA 3 also reached out to Dooner for comment. He acknowledged that Cal Expo had terminated the lease. “We don’t believe it’s appropriate to litigate business disputes in the media, but we acknowledge the termination and are focused on addressing matters through the appropriate channels,” he said. Dooner is also the head of another company called California Dreamin’ Presents. The company’s website says it is an official licensing partner of the X Games, which are slated to take place at Cal Expo this summer. A Cal Expo spokesperson said that X Games are “its own entity” and are still scheduled to take place from June 26-28.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
Plans for a new water park at Cal Expo appear to be slip-sliding away.
Water park fans have been dreaming for years of a return to the site of Sacramento’s former Raging Waters park, which closed in 2022 after 15 years of operation.
(Previous coverage in the video above.)
A new water park called Calibunga has been the brainchild of California Dreamin’ Entertainment executive Steven Dooner, who initially planned to open it in 2024 as part of a three-year plan for renovations. Dooner later said the park needed to be fully renovated and his company planned a target opening date for 2027. At one point, Chuck E. Cheese was said to be a partner on the project.
But there were financial issues behind the scenes. California Dreamin’ Entertainment has been in violation of its lease agreement with more than $202,000 owed to Cal Expo, according to a letter included with a Cal Expo board packet last month.
The letter, dated Jan. 16, said that California Dreamin’ Entertainment missed a final extension for paying up. It warned that the lease agreement would be voided on Feb. 2 and Cal Expo would take possession of the water park on Feb. 3.
Cal Expo said in a statement that, as of Tuesday, California Dreamin’ Entertainment was in breach of its contractual obligations.
This came after it first sent a notice to the company on Oct. 31, 2025, about an unresolved past-due balance. An initial deadline to pay was Dec. 4 and then extended to Dec. 18. Cal Expo said its Long-Range Planning Committee denied another request for an extension on Dec. 11.
“Cal Expo looks forward to exploring partnerships and new opportunities for the water park that align with our long-term vision and operational goals that maximize the site’s potential,” Cal Expo said.
KCRA 3 also reached out to Dooner for comment. He acknowledged that Cal Expo had terminated the lease.
“We don’t believe it’s appropriate to litigate business disputes in the media, but we acknowledge the termination and are focused on addressing matters through the appropriate channels,” he said.
Dooner is also the head of another company called California Dreamin’ Presents. The company’s website says it is an official licensing partner of the X Games, which are slated to take place at Cal Expo this summer.
West Sacramento’s mayor is the latest person to announce plans to campaign for one of California’s congressional districts in the 2026 midterm election since the passing of Proposition 50.The voter-approved measure aims to send more Democrats to Congress by redrawing five Republican-heavy districts to include more Democratic voters. While District 6 is not one of those five targeted districts, the current officeholder — Democrat Ami Bera — has since announced plans to run for District 3, which is targeted.As a result, several people have announced campaigns for District 6, which now includes Martha Guerrero running as a Democrat.“I am running for Congress because our communities deserve a representative who has been in the trenches for working families,” Guerrero said in a release. “They deserve someone laser-focused on lowering costs and protecting their rights.”Guerrero in the release also touted her achievements in serving West Sacramento, citing public safety, flood protection, supporting small business and job growth, government transparency and homelessness.The mayor is in her third term as West Sacramento mayor after serving in the city council.Other candidates for District 6 include former State Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and Republican Christine Bish.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
West Sacramento’s mayor is the latest person to announce plans to campaign for one of California’s congressional districts in the 2026 midterm election since the passing of Proposition 50.
The voter-approved measure aims to send more Democrats to Congress by redrawing five Republican-heavy districts to include more Democratic voters. While District 6 is not one of those five targeted districts, the current officeholder — Democrat Ami Bera — has since announced plans to run for District 3, which is targeted.
As a result, several people have announced campaigns for District 6, which now includes Martha Guerrero running as a Democrat.
“I am running for Congress because our communities deserve a representative who has been in the trenches for working families,” Guerrero said in a release. “They deserve someone laser-focused on lowering costs and protecting their rights.”
Guerrero in the release also touted her achievements in serving West Sacramento, citing public safety, flood protection, supporting small business and job growth, government transparency and homelessness.
The mayor is in her third term as West Sacramento mayor after serving in the city council.
Other candidates for District 6 include former State Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho and Republican Christine Bish.
In a decision that could complicate Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to build a giant water tunnel and remake California’s water system, a state appeals court has rejected the state’s plan for financing the project.
The 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled against the state Department of Water Resources’ plan to issue billions of dollars in bonds to build the 45-mile tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The decision is a win for California ratepayers and taxpayers, said Roger Moore, a lawyer representing six counties in Northern California and two water agencies in the Delta region.
He said it underlines that state agencies “have to take real steps to make sure that there is transparency and accountability.”
Upholding a 2024 decision by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge, the court ruled the water agency does not have the authority under a 1959 law to issue bonds for a new “unit” of the State Water Project, which delivers water from the Delta to farms and cities, and “exceeded its delegated authority” in planning to finance the tunnel through bonds.
Kirsten Macintyre, a spokesperson for the department, said the court didn’t say the Department of Water Resources lacks the authority to build the project or borrow funds to pay for it, but rather that the description the state presented in the case was “overly broad.”
“While DWR respectfully disagrees with that conclusion, we have taken additional steps to resolve the issue,” she said in an email.
Last year, the agency opened a second court case in an effort to confirm its bond-issuing authority, a step that Macintyre said was taken to “address the court’s concerns.”
If the appeals court decision stands and the ongoing case doesn’t bring a different conclusion, it might lead the Newsom administration to revise its plan for financing the project. Officials could also petition for the California Supreme Court to hear the case.
State officials have said that the tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project, ultimately would be paid for by participating water agencies that agree to repay the bonds.
The tunnel would create a second route to transport water from new intakes on the Sacramento River to the south side of the Delta, where pumps send water into the aqueducts of the State Water Project.
The system of aqueducts and pipelines transports water from the Delta to 27 million people in cities from the Bay Area to San Diego, and to 750,000 acres of farmland.
In 1960, California voters approved bonds for the construction of the State Water Project. Legislation in 1959 had given DWR the authority to build the Feather River Project, an initial component of the State Water Project.
But in the ruling last week, the court said DWR officials were wrong to rely on that provision. The three judges said it doesn’t allow the agency to issue bonds “under the guise of a ‘further modification’” of that original water system.
Newsom has said the project is essential for the state’s future and has made it a central priority of his administration.
State officials and supporters of the project have said the tunnel would modernize the state’s water system for more severe droughts and deluges with climate change, and would withstand sea level rise and the risks of a major earthquake in the region.
Opponents, including environmental advocates, fishing groups and tribal leaders, argue the project would harm the Delta’s communities and ecosystem, and further threaten native fish that are already in decline.
A plan to attack several Los Angeles-area businesses on New Year’s Eve was detailed, dangerous and already in motion, authorities said.
But as four people allegedly tied to an anti-government group gathered last week in the Mojave Desert to make and test several test bombs, FBI officials foiled the terror plot.
“They had everything they needed to make an operational bomb at that location,” First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said at a news conference Monday morning. “We disrupted this terror plot before buildings were demolished or innocent people were killed.”
The four people were arrested on suspicion of plotting an attack that Essayli called “organized, sophisticated and extremely violent.” They were all tied to a radical faction of the Turtle Island Liberation Front called Order of the Black Lotus, which FBI Assistant Director in Charge Akil Davis called “a violent homegrown anti-government group.”
Officials wouldn’t say what buildings or businesses were planned to be targeted but Essayli said they were different “logistics centers” similar to ones that Amazon might have.
Officials said they believe that everyone involved in the planned attack has been arrested, though the investigation into the plot remains ongoing.
The four alleged conspirators, Audrey Carroll, Zachary Page, Dante Gaffield and Tina Lai, have been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device, Essayli said.
“The subjects arrested envisioned planting backpacks with improvised explosive devices to be detonated at multiple locations in Southern California, targeting U.S. companies,” Davis said.
The plans the FBI uncovered also included follow-up attacks after the bombings, which included plans to target ICE agents and vehicles with pipe bombs, Essayli said.
ABHA, Saudi Arabia — From the air, Abha’s mountains emerge as a shock of emerald green rising from a sea of sand. Terra firma brings other surprises: a bracing wind that has me grabbing for a jacket — a piece of clothing all but ignored in other parts of Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, so much of Abha, the capital of the southwestern province of Asir, seems a world away — and two dozen degrees cooler — from the scorching desert that dominates Western notions of the kingdom.
I’m here as a tourist — and Saudi Arabia hopes for many more. The government is spending nearly $1 trillion to make attractive what, just over a decade ago, was one of the most tourist-averse countries on earth.
If you’ve read anything about tourism in Saudi Arabia, you’ve probably seen mention of Vision 2030, the all-out diversification plan to reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil; Neom, the sci-fi-esque desert metropolis with plans for an artificial moon and flying cars; or the Red Sea Project, which intends to turn a 92-island archipelago off the country’s pristine Red Sea coast into a network of 50 luxury hotels and about 1,000 residential units.
Those two flagship projects were heavily featured during President Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May, which saw Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — Vision 2030’s architect — guide him to a hall with elaborate mock-ups of the finished product.
A man sits in an old fort on Mt. Qais, one of the verdant areas in southwestern Saudi Arabia.
(Tasneem Alsultan)
Abha and Asir weren’t in the prince’s presentation, but they are nevertheless part of the tourism transformation, though for now they offer more grounded and arguably more authentic pleasures — the primary reasons why I chose to come here. (The other, less whimsical reason is that I wasn’t sure I could convince my editors to OK a $2,500-a-night private “dune villa” at the St. Regis Red Sea for “journalistic purposes.”)
Perched at almost 7,500 feet above sea level, Abha is occasionally nicknamed by Saudis as the “Lady of the Fog” or “the Bride of the Mountain.”
Both titles seemed apt on the day I arrived, and, as fog wafted over a nearby summit, I visited Art Street, a park with theaters, music festivals, restaurants and cafes. Lilac jacaranda trees were in full bloom. Later, I took a 20-minute drive to Al Sahab Park, a short distance outside Abha, crowded with people admiring the evening mist shrouding Jabal Soudah, the country’s highest peak at 9,892 feet.
“People come here to touch the clouds,” said Hussein al-Lamy, a 42-year-old pharmaceutical company employee who lives two hours away. He smiled, taking in the Harley bikers parked near the cliffs and the men and women strolling nearby sporting Asir’s traditional garlands made of orange marigold, dill and artemisia, a gray-green plant similar to sage.
“I left my kids and wife at home for a few days’ visit here,” he said. “It’s a good place to clear the mind.”
Men gather for a wedding in Abha, the capital of Saudi Arabia’s Asir province.
(Tasneem Alsultan)
Next morning, I took a walk through Souq Al Thulatha, a central shopping thoroughfare that despite its name (which in Arabic means Tuesday Market) is open every day of the week.
One stall sold slices of mangoes brought in from Jazan, the fertile southern province famous for its tropical fruits, wheat and coffee; others sold raisins, spices, nuts and gourmet honey from Yemen. Traffic was still light, but vendors told me that at the height of the summer season — when many Saudis flee the fry-an-egg-on-your-hood heat of Riyadh and Jeddah to Abha — you would barely have room to stand.
In its drive to become a must-see destination, the kingdom is ecumenical about its audience, hoping to attract not only Saudis who in the past would travel elsewhere — and who spent $27 billion on international travel in 2024, according to government figures — but also international visitors.
There are signs it’s working: An International Monetary Fund report noted that annual tourists exceeded the Vision 2030 target of 100 million seven years ahead of schedule.
Work is already underway on Abha’s touristic makeover. All over the city, you see signs advertising projects sponsored by the Public Investment Fund, the oil-backed sovereign wealth fund overseeing the gargantuan investments in the kingdom’s no-holds-barred metamorphosis. Construction will soon begin on upgrading the airport.
Locals pose at a mural in one of the many parks in Abha, which has been working to attract more international tourists.
(Tasneem Alsultan)
Beyond the city limits, the fund is planning six tourist districts in the region’s choicest spots; they’ll leverage the area’s majestic vistas to focus on wellness spas, yoga pavilions, meditation retreats, golf courses and glamping pods, according to promotional materials.
“We’re in a transitional phase for the moment, so there’s construction and it can be a bit inconvenient, but things are already getting better,” said Mohammad Hassan, 36, owner of a cafe in Abha called Bard wa Sahab (Cold and Clouds), near an Instagram-ready mountaintop vantage point.
Hassan acknowledged that the spate of development was likely to increase competition and had already spurred a rise in rents. But he appeared happy about what the changes will mean for his business.
“Before, Abha mostly got Saudi visitors or people from the [Persian] Gulf,” he said. “We’re already seeing more foreigners, but the government’s plans will make Abha known internationally.”
Other locals grumble that the construction has made Asir’s most beautiful areas off-limits, and that the focus on luxury will change the freewheeling character of the region.
“We would go to the mountains and camp for days. Authorities have stopped all that, and of course we won’t be able to do it when the resorts open,” said Nasser, a municipal worker who gave only his first name for privacy reasons.
“Maybe all that the government is doing will make it better, but it’s impossible for the old way of life we had here to return,” he said.
Another potential break with the past is possibility of allowing alcohol in the country. But crossing that Rubicon is no easy decision for authorities all too aware of the kingdom’s status as the birthplace of Islam, which bans alcohol and takes a dim view of those who drink and sell it.
Rijal Almaa, an ancient village about 15 miles from Abha, is a popular destination for tourists in Saudi Arabia’s Asir province.
(Tasneem Alsultan)
Nevertheless, many believe it’s coming. Staff working on the construction designs for the Red Sea Project say hotel rooms in various resorts will be equipped with elaborate minibars. And the Four Seasons in Riyadh has opened a tonic bar — but with no booze — that asks you to “delight in a symphony of handcrafted cocktails meticulously prepared to elevate your senses.”
Despite the hundreds of billions Saudi Arabia has spent, there are skeptics. They point to depressed oil prices that mean the government can’t balance its budget or keep up with Vision 2030’s ballooning costs. A few projects have already stalled; architects working on the resorts say that layoffs have spiked and that the scope of their work has been reduced. Other flagship projects, including the Line, have seen their once-fantastical goals grounded by the realities of physics and finance.
Whatever the fate of Vision 2030’s grander plans, Abha’s charms await.
The Rijal Almaa heritage village, located in Asir province, is more than 900 years old.
(Tasneem Alsultan)
One afternoon, I decided to brave Jabal Soudah, figuring a short hike was in order. I started down a barely there path with a vague plan to soon turn back. Indeed, I was so ill-equipped (with inappropriate walking shoes, a tiny bottle of water and a massive cold) that I should have done so. But I kept going, curious to see what the next bend would bring.
Four hours later, sunburned and more winded than I like to admit, I reached a hamlet where I later hitched a ride back to the city.
But before I found the ride, I ignored the exhaustion and lingered for a moment in this corner of a country more known for desert than the dense forest I had crossed. Before me, the mountain range extended somewhere beyond the haze. The fog coalesced around the summits, with sunset’s final rays transforming them into a gracefully undulating landscape of golden gauze.
Talks between Ukraine and its Western allies on a U.S.-proposed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion got underway in Geneva on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak, wrote on social media that they held their first meeting with the national security advisers from the U.K., France, and Germany. The allies have rallied around Kyiv in a push to revise the plan, which is seen as favoring Moscow.U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to join the talks together with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.”The next meeting is with the U.S. delegation. We are in a very constructive mood,” Yermak said. “We continue working together to achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was waiting for the outcome of the talks. “A positive result is needed for all of us,” he said.”Ukrainian and American teams, teams of our European partners, are in close contact, and I very much hope there will be a result. Bloodshed must be stopped, and it must be guaranteed that the war will not be reignited,” he wrote in a post on Telegram on Sunday.Ukraine and allies have ruled out territorial concessionsThe 28-point blueprint drawn up by the U.S. to end the nearly four-year war has sparked alarm in Kyiv and European capitals. Zelenskyy has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs.The plan acquiesces to many Russian demands that Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people”will always defend” their home.Speaking before Sunday’s talks, Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the Defense Ministry, told broadcaster France Info that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty.””Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years.”Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump said the U.S. proposal was not his “final offer.””I would like to get to peace. It should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened,” Trump said. “One way or the other, we have to get it ended.”Trump didn’t explain what he meant by the plan not being his final offer, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.Rubio’s reported comments cause confusionPolish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”Some U.S. lawmakers said Saturday that Rubio had described the plan as a Russian “wish list” rather than a Washington-led proposal.The bipartisan group of senators told a news conference that they had spoken to Rubio about the peace plan after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva. Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The Secretary of State doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.___Associated Press writers Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
GENEVA —
Talks between Ukraine and its Western allies on a U.S.-proposed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion got underway in Geneva on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak, wrote on social media that they held their first meeting with the national security advisers from the U.K., France, and Germany. The allies have rallied around Kyiv in a push to revise the plan, which is seen as favoring Moscow.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to join the talks together with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
“The next meeting is with the U.S. delegation. We are in a very constructive mood,” Yermak said. “We continue working together to achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was waiting for the outcome of the talks. “A positive result is needed for all of us,” he said.
“Ukrainian and American teams, teams of our European partners, are in close contact, and I very much hope there will be a result. Bloodshed must be stopped, and it must be guaranteed that the war will not be reignited,” he wrote in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
Ukraine and allies have ruled out territorial concessions
The 28-point blueprint drawn up by the U.S. to end the nearly four-year war has sparked alarm in Kyiv and European capitals. Zelenskyy has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs.
The plan acquiesces to many Russian demands that Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people”will always defend” their home.
Speaking before Sunday’s talks, Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the Defense Ministry, told broadcaster France Info that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty.”
“Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years.”
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump said the U.S. proposal was not his “final offer.”
“I would like to get to peace. It should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened,” Trump said. “One way or the other, we have to get it ended.”
Trump didn’t explain what he meant by the plan not being his final offer, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
Rubio’s reported comments cause confusion
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”
Some U.S. lawmakers said Saturday that Rubio had described the plan as a Russian “wish list” rather than a Washington-led proposal.
The bipartisan group of senators told a news conference that they had spoken to Rubio about the peace plan after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva. Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”
A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”
Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The Secretary of State doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.
___
Associated Press writers Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
The distinctive former headquarters of the Christian media company Trinity Broadcasting Network in Costa Mesa has sold for $44.5 million, clearing the way for new housing.
The purchase of the ornate palazzo-style structure by Meritage Homes was expected after city officials in August approved Meritage’s plan to build 122 townhouses and 20 single-family homes on the site just south of the 405 Freeway.
Trinity, one of the world’s largest religious television networks, sold its Costa Mesa complex in 2017 after describing it as obsolete. The center dates to 1978.
It was most recently owned by Khoshbin Co., a Costa Mesa real estate company that positioned the property as an event venue.
Khoshbin paid $22 million for the six-acre property in 2021, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
“We’ve spent over $1 million improving the site, beautifying it, and I think the neighborhood really enjoys seeing some life [come back] into the property,” Manny Khoshbin told the city Planning Commission last year.
“We’ve been getting a lot of requests for events, weddings and birthdays, because it’s such a beautiful landscape,” he said.
The structure across the freeway from South Coast Plaza on Bear Street will be torn down to make way for the new housing. It has been a subject of fascination for years.
“With its classical columns, mirrors, faux gold and white marble everything, the Trinity compound’s look is ‘Gone With the Wind’ meets Caesars Palace,” The Times wrote in 1998.
“White walls are adorned with gold-framed floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Visitors climb the sweeping white marble stairway and come upon a 15-foot-tall statue of Michael the Archangel, his wings spread, his left foot planted on Satan’s head, hovering over the gilded grandeur,” the Times article said back then.
The gold-painted dome ceiling has a florid original mural of angels that Trinity Broadcasting founder Paul Crouch called “Orange County’s own Sistine Chapel.”
It will take about two years to redevelop the site as housing, Meritage told the city.
Planning commissioners credited Meritage’s plan for providing more housing in Costa Mesa, where 60% of residents rent their dwellings. There is high demand for housing in the coastal city and costs are climbing, the Daily Pilot said.
Meritage will designate seven units for very low-income occupants.
The new complex aims to provide housing for “the missing middle,” a segment of the population looking to move beyond renting but who cannot yet afford single-family homes, by offering townhouses that enable buyers to build equity, then move up the housing pyramid, the Daily Pilot said.
The U.S. Department of Education announced new steps Tuesday in President Donald Trump’s push to downsize the federal agency. Trump signed an executive order in March that called for eliminating the Education Department, but his administration has previously acknowledged that dissolving it entirely would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979. For now, the department is moving forward with plans to shift key services to other parts of the federal government through six new interagency agreements. “The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”The announcement is already facing pushback. Critics fear that the Education Department shakeup will disrupt critical services that students rely on.The National Education Association called it an “illegal plan to further abandon students.”Minnetonka Public Schools Superintendent David Law, who serves as president of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said the reorganization could prove counterproductive. “It talks about streamlining and efficiency, and yet it’s counterintuitive to me that multiple agencies having their hand on something is more efficient,” Law said.Under the plan, the Labor Department will co-manage the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs and Title 1 funding for low-income schools, as well as the Office of Postsecondary Education, which oversees grants for institutions of higher education.The Department of the Interior will take on a greater role in administering Indian Education programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will co-manage the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program and Foreign Medical Accreditation. The State Department will help oversee international education and foreign language studies programs. In the past, the Trump administration has also talked about moving management of other Education Department services, like the student loan portfolio and civil rights enforcement. The administration is still “exploring options,” according to a senior department official who briefed reporters on Tuesday ahead of the official rollout. Tuesday’s announcement builds on a sweeping downsizing effort that started earlier this year. The Trump administration has already launched an interagency partnership with the Labor Department to manage adult education and career and technical education programs.In July, the Supreme Court paved the way for the Education Department to move forward with roughly 1,400 layoffs.The Education Department said in an email on Tuesday that no additional layoffs are expected at this time as a result of the new interagency agreements.
Trump signed an executive order in March that called for eliminating the Education Department, but his administration has previously acknowledged that dissolving it entirely would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979.
For now, the department is moving forward with plans to shift key services to other parts of the federal government through six new interagency agreements.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”
The announcement is already facing pushback. Critics fear that the Education Department shakeup will disrupt critical services that students rely on.
The National Education Association called it an “illegal plan to further abandon students.”
Minnetonka Public Schools Superintendent David Law, who serves as president of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said the reorganization could prove counterproductive.
“It talks about streamlining and efficiency, and yet it’s counterintuitive to me that multiple agencies having their hand on something is more efficient,” Law said.
Under the plan, the Labor Department will co-manage the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs and Title 1 funding for low-income schools, as well as the Office of Postsecondary Education, which oversees grants for institutions of higher education.
The Department of the Interior will take on a greater role in administering Indian Education programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will co-manage the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program and Foreign Medical Accreditation. The State Department will help oversee international education and foreign language studies programs.
In the past, the Trump administration has also talked about moving management of other Education Department services, like the student loan portfolio and civil rights enforcement. The administration is still “exploring options,” according to a senior department official who briefed reporters on Tuesday ahead of the official rollout.
Tuesday’s announcement builds on a sweeping downsizing effort that started earlier this year.
The Trump administration has already launched an interagency partnership with the Labor Department to manage adult education and career and technical education programs.
In July, the Supreme Court paved the way for the Education Department to move forward with roughly 1,400 layoffs.
The Education Department said in an email on Tuesday that no additional layoffs are expected at this time as a result of the new interagency agreements.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday accelerated the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education with a plan to transfer key, legally required functions to other agencies, including oversight of its $18-billion, core anti-poverty program, Title 1.
Critics said the move was politicized and counterproductive and fear future program cuts. California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said vital services to the state and nation’s most vulnerable students were likely to be disrupted.
The steps move toward fulfilling a Trump campaign promise to eliminate the department, which some conservatives have long derided as wasteful, ineffective and unnecessary.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”
President Trump called for the department’s elimination in a March executive order. Both he and McMahon have spoken of a broad goal of sparking innovation through local control.
Even before this effort, states provided about 90% of their own funding for education, but federal investment is still crucial, advocates say. In particular, the federal role has focused on ensuring services are provided for overlooked students and students with higher needs, such as those facing discrimination and poverty, and students with disabilities.
While slashing the Education Department workforce, which Trump officials have characterized as a bloated bureaucracy, the president has adopted an interventionist agenda in education as well. He has threatened pulling federal funding if states and schools don’t follow his directives to combat antisemitism, clamp down on campus protests, end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and oppose expanded rights for transsexual students, among other issues in keeping with his agenda.
The strategy behind the moves
The key strategy announced Tuesday creates partnerships with other federal agencies, which will take on Education Department responsibilities. The department would retain legal authority even as the actual work shifts elsewhere.
These partnerships are meant to sidestep federal rules — under the jurisdiction of Congress — that place programs, including Title I, specifically within the Education Department.
Title I is expected to shift to the Department of Labor, which is likely to absorb an unknown number of education workers with the necessary experience and expertise. The long-term goal is to win buy-in from Congress — and then to eliminate the Education Department entirely, which requires congressional approval.
“As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state,” McMahon said.
She also spoke of working “with Congress to codify these reforms,” an acknowledgment that the Department of Education was created by an act of Congress.
Administration officials insist that their actions to date are legal, citing as precedent earlier agreements between federal agencies, including one example from the Biden administration. The scale of the current effort, however, is a much larger order of magnitude.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) questioned Trump’s authority to take this action. “Not only is dismantling the education department without congressional approval illegal, but they chose today because they knew the Epstein vote would dominate the headlines. They clearly didn’t want the public to see what they were doing to our kids’ futures.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union, accused the administration of “taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need.”
How the action affects vulnerable students
The changes will complicate efforts to get money and services where they are needed, Thurmond said.
“This is an unnecessary, disruptive change that is going to harm students, especially the most vulnerable,” Thurmond said. “It is clearly less efficient for state departments of education and local school districts to work with four different federal agencies instead of one.
“Experience also tells us that any time you move expertise and responsibilities, you disrupt services. There is no way to avoid negative impacts on our children and our classrooms with a change of this magnitude.”
But administration officials talked of new efficiencies and synergies, asserting that associating education with workforce development in the Department of Labor would make education more relevant to a student’s employment future.
What happens to other programs?
The Labor Department would oversee almost all grant programs that are now managed by the Education Department’s offices for K-12 and higher education. That includes funding pools for teacher training, English instruction and TRIO, a program that helps steer low-income students to college degrees.
Tuesday’s action leaves in place the Education Department’s $1.6-trillion student loan portfolio and its funding for students with disabilities.
But ultimately moving these programs seems likely if the mission remains to shutter the department.
Another transfer puts Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents who are attending college, along with management of foreign medical school accreditation. The State Department will take on foreign language programs. Interior will oversee programs for Native American education.
Federal officials said states and schools should see no funding disruptions. Liz Huston, White House assistant press secretary, said Tuesday the administration “is fully committed to doing what’s best for American students, which is why it’s critical to shrink this bloated federal education bureaucracy while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs.”
The Education Department tested this approach in June, announcing the transfer of adult education programs to the Labor Department. Working out essential details took some five months, officials said Tuesday.
The administration’s plan immediately drew support from Tim Walberg, a Republican who represents a southern Michigan district.
“The past few decades have made one thing clear: The status quo is broken,” Walberg said. “As the bureaucracy swelled, left-wing bureaucrats were emboldened to waste taxpayer dollars on a radical agenda. As a result, our students have been left in the dust. Test scores are plummeting, students can’t read, and college graduates leave school burdened by debt rather than equipped with workforce-ready skills.”
But the Education Department — and its central programs — has bipartisan support.
One Republican expressing concern is Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
“The United States Congress created the U.S. Department of Education for very good reason,” Fitzpatrick said. “And for millions of families, particularly those raising children with disabilities or living in low-income communities, the Department’s core offices are not discretionary functions. They are foundational. They safeguard civil rights, expand opportunity, and ensure that every child, in every community, has the chance to learn, grow, and succeed on equal footing.”
Feds say programs’ funding will continue
Department officials said programs will continue to be funded at levels set by Congress. But that doesn’t stop programs from running afoul of another portion of the Trump agenda. For example, the Tuesday announcement notes that a program to help with the education of the children of migrant workers will transfer to the Labor Department.
However, on other fronts the Trump administration is trying to eliminate that program. The administration first tried to hold back funding approved by Congress. The administration relented under pressure. But the administration also cut funding for migrant education from its budget proposal for future years.
Officials said they did not yet have details on whether the changes would bring further job cuts at the Education Department, which has been thinned by waves of layoffs and retirements under pressure.
Blume is a Times staff writer. Binkley writes for the Associated Press. Times staff writers Daniel Miller and Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
The Trump administration reportedly has plans to open the waters off California’s coast to new oil and gas drilling for the first time in four decades, drawing swift condemnation from Gov. Gavin Newsom, lawmakers and environmental groups who say it would be disastrous for the state’s environment, economy and clean energy targets.
Whether energy companies would be interested in such leases is another question. Experts say the resources are limited and oil majors may not clamor for leases that could ensnare them in the Golden State’s stringent environmental policies.
Trump has focused heavily on increasing fossil fuel production in the United States, yet some say offering the opportunity to drill in the Pacific is more likely a political move from an administration that has repeatedly targeted California’s green ambitions.
Details of the administration’s plan are still emerging, but maps from the Bureau of Ocean Energy identify four West Coast planning areas, three off the coast of California and one off Oregon and Washington. The administration is planning to propose up to six offshore lease sales off the coast of California between 2027 and 2030, according to internal documents first reported by the Washington Post.
Officials with the U.S. Interior Department declined to comment, citing the U.S. government shutdown. Last month, the administration also announced plans to open the entire 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing, which Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said would create jobs and strengthen U.S. energy independence.
California has about two dozen operating oil platforms in state and federal waters, some of which are visible from the shore in different parts of Southern California. But new leases have not been granted in federal waters since 1984, in part due to strong opposition stemming from a 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara that spewed an estimated 100,000 barrels of crude oil into the water and helped jumpstart the modern environmental movement.
The years that followed saw a string of actions to protect the Outer Continental Shelf from oil and gas development, including bipartisan actions from the state, Congress and presidents including George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama. In January, President Biden signed an executive order protecting more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean from offshore drilling, which Trump repealed on his first day back in office.
Oil companies have expressed some interest in new offshore leases. The American Petroleum Institute and other leading oil and gas trade groups encouraged the Trump administration in a June letter to evaluate and consider all areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for oil and gas drilling, noting that “continuous exploration and drilling will be needed” to ensure long-term energy security and meet U.S. energy demands into 2050.
But the opposition from California could be strong. The state has set ambitious climate goals, including reaching 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.
“Nobody really wants offshore oil, except for maybe Texas and Louisiana,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy industry analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “In my mind, this is at least in part politically motivated rather than substantively motivated.”
Trump — who received record donations from oil and gas companies during his 2024 presidential campaign — has moved to block clean energy projects in the state and repeal its authority to set strict tailpipe emissions standards, among other challenges.
Williams-Derry noted that offshore oil drilling is a speculative and risk-laden venture for oil companies, and prospects are better in fracking basins in Texas and New Mexico.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s most recent federal assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Outer Continental Shelf estimates there are about 9.8 billion barrels of untapped oil off the coast of California — the majority off Southern California — compared with about 29.6 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico.
Offshore oil platforms often send oil ashore, requiring pipelines and other infrastructure. California isn’t likely to cooperate with that onshore work, and in fact has built up something of a “blue wall” of opposition to offshore drilling through local resolutions and legislative efforts, according to Richard Charter, senior fellow with the nonprofit Ocean Foundation.
A network of state laws such as the longstanding California Coastal Sanctuary law, the California Coastal Act, the California Environmental Quality Act and a 2025 assembly bill would effectively prevent oil companies from using existing oil and gas infrastructure in state waters to export or bring ashore new production from federal offshore leases, Charter said. State waters are the first three miles offshore.
“I think we have as many layers of protection as it is possible to get — certainly more than any other state,” he said, adding that “the limited petroleum potential is not worth the effort and the risk.”
However, it’s possible that interested oil companies could bypass the state altogether by loading crude onto tankers and shipping it elsewhere, something the Sable Offshore Corp. is now considering for its controversial project to restart oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara.
Energy companies have also been making use of floating oil processing centers that dramatically reduce the need for pipelines.
Rumors of the Trump administration’s plans drew sharp criticism from state leaders, including Sen. Alex Padilla, who led an Oct. 30 letter signed by more than 100 lawmakers demanding the administration reverse course to open up the Outer Continental Shelf.
“This is a matter of national consequence for coastal communities across the country, regardless of political affiliation,” the letter said. “It puts our economies, national security, and our most vulnerable ecosystems at severe risk.”
The lawmakers noted that the U.S. already leads the world in oil and gas production, and the industry already holds more than 2,000 offshore leases covering more than 12 million acres of federal waters, but fewer than 500 of those leases are actively producing oil and gas.
“There is no justification for opening vast swaths of our oceans to leasing when existing leases remain largely unused, while imposing mounting environmental and economic costs on coastal communities,” they wrote.
At the same time, any expanded drilling would meet with weakened oil spill prevention and response programs at the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which have lost about 30% of its staff to layoffs and buyouts and face a potential 50% budget cut.
The Trump administration has caved to at least some political pressure on the issue: The administration largely backed off plans to open the Atlantic Ocean for drilling after reports drew the ire of Republican coastal state leaders.
But advocacy groups say the administration is less likely to give favor to California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom — a 2028 presidential contender — has repeatedly sparred with Trump over energy and the environment. Newsom is currently at the United Nations climate conference in Brazil, which Trump opted not to attend.
Shipping gifts for the holidays. If it’s important they arrive at their destination by December 24, you’ll want to be aware of these ship by dates. The US Postal Service says the latest you’ll want to ship by ground anywhere in the contiguous US is December 17. You can literally buy yourself *** few more days using Priority Mail Express, but of course that will cost you. If you opt for FedEx or UPS ground delivery, plan for December 16th being your last date. They both offer faster delivery services if you’re in ***. But know that it might not be an option in all locations and could significantly increase the cost. Each company offers online tools to help you compare delivery and cost. Make sure to enter the origin and destination zip codes to get the clearest picture of timing. Any other arrive by date around the holidays, the normal transit window is up to 5 days, but we suggest assuming it may take *** full week for ground services. Carriers warn that volume and weather in December can add delays. Reporting in Washington, I’m Amy Lou.
Shipping gifts for the holidays? If it’s important they arrive at their destination by Dec. 24, you’ll want to be aware of these “ship by” dates. The U.S. Postal Service says the latest you’ll want to ship by ground anywhere in the contiguous U.S. is Dec. 17. You can literally buy yourself a few more days using Priority Mail Express, but, of course, that will cost you.If you opt for FedEx or UPS ground delivery, plan for Dec. 16 or 17 being your last date. Both carriers offer faster delivery services if you’re in a pinch, but know that it might not be an option in all locations and could significantly increase the cost. Each company offers online tools (UPS, FedEx) to help you compare delivery and cost. Make sure to enter the origin and destination zip codes to get the clearest picture of timing.For any other arrive-by date around the holidays, the normal transit window is up to five days, but they suggest assuming it may take a full week for ground services. Carriers warn that volume and weather in December can add delays.
Shipping gifts for the holidays? If it’s important they arrive at their destination by Dec. 24, you’ll want to be aware of these “ship by” dates.
The U.S. Postal Service says the latest you’ll want to ship by ground anywhere in the contiguous U.S. is Dec. 17. You can literally buy yourself a few more days using Priority Mail Express, but, of course, that will cost you.
If you opt for FedEx or UPS ground delivery, plan for Dec. 16 or 17 being your last date. Both carriers offer faster delivery services if you’re in a pinch, but know that it might not be an option in all locations and could significantly increase the cost. Each company offers online tools (UPS, FedEx) to help you compare delivery and cost. Make sure to enter the origin and destination zip codes to get the clearest picture of timing.
For any other arrive-by date around the holidays, the normal transit window is up to five days, but they suggest assuming it may take a full week for ground services. Carriers warn that volume and weather in December can add delays.
My first reaction, when I heard about the proposed $2.3-million fence around MacArthur Park, was skepticism.
Yeah, the park and the immediate neighborhood have long dealt with a nasty web of urban nightmares, including homelessness, crime and a rather astonishing open-air drug scene, all of which I spent a few months looking into not long ago.
But what would a fence accomplish?
Well, after looking into it, maybe it’s not the worst idea.
Skepticism, I should note, is generally a fallback position for me. It’s something of an occupational duty, and how can you not be cynical about promises and plans in Los Angeles, where each time you open the newspaper, you have to scratch your head?
I’m still having trouble understanding how county supervisors approved another $828 million in child sexual abuse payments, on top of an earlier settlement this year of $4 billion, even after Times reporter Rebecca Ellis found nine cases in which people said they were told to fabricate abuse allegations.
The same supes, while wrestling with a budget crisis, agreed to pay $2 million to appease the county’s chief executive officer because she felt wronged by a ballot measure proposing that the job be an elected rather than appointed post. Scratching your head doesn’t help in this case; you’re tempted instead to bang it into a wall.
Drone view of MacArthur Park looking toward downtown Los Angeles.
(Ted Soqui/For The Times)
Or maybe a $2.3-million fence.
The city of L.A. is primarily responsible for taking on the problems of MacArthur Park, although the county has a role too in the areas of housing, public health and addiction services. I made two visits to the area in the last week, and while there are signs of progress and slightly less of a sense of chaos — the children’s playground hit last year by an arsonist has been fully rebuilt — there’s a long way to go.
In a story about the fence by my colleague Nathan Solis, one service provider said it would further criminalize homelessness and another said the money “could be better used by funding … services to the people in the park, rather than just moving them out.”
The vast majority of people who spoke at the Oct. 16 meeting of the Recreation and Parks Commission, which voted unanimously to move forward with the fence, were adamantly opposed despite claims that enclosing the space would be a step toward upgrading and making the park more welcoming.
“Nothing is more unwelcoming than a fence around a public space,” one critic said.
“A fence can not solve homelessness,” another said.
The LAPD underwater dive unit investigates activity in MacArthur Park Lake.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Others argued that locking up the park, which is surrounded by a predominantly immigrant community, recalls the ridiculous stunt that played out in June, when President Trump’s uniformed posse showed up in armored vehicles and on horseback in what looked like an all-out invasion of Westlake.
But another speaker, Raul Claros — who is running against Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in the 1st District — said he’d spoken to residents and merchants who support the fence, as long as it’s part of a greater effort to address the community’s needs.
Claros said he has three questions: “What’s the plan? What’s the timeline? Who’s in charge?”
Hernandez, by the way, is not opposed to the fence. A staffer told me there’s a fence around nearby Lafayette Park. Other fenced parks in Los Angeles include Robert Burns Park, adjacent to Hancock Park, and the L.A. State Historic Park on the edge of Chinatown, which is locked at sunset.
As for the long-range plan, the Hernandez staffer said the councilwoman has secured and is investing millions of dollars in what she calls a care-first approach that aims to address drug addiction and homelessness in and around the park.
Eduardo Aguirre, who lives a couple of blocks from the park and serves on the West Pico Neighborhood Council, told me he’s OK with the fence but worried about the possible consequences. If the people who use the park at night or sleep there are forced out, he said, where will they go?
“To the streets? To the alleys? You know what’s going to happen. It’s a game,” Aguirre said.
Last fall I walked with Aguirre and his wife as they led their daughter to her elementary school. They often have to step around homeless people and past areas where dealing and drug use, along with violence, are anything but infrequent.
Families and others should be able to feel safe in the park and the neighborhood, said Norm Langer, owner of the iconic Langer’s deli on the edge of the park.
A visitor takes in the view at MacArthur Park.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“I completely understand why you’re skeptical,” Langer told me, but he said he’s seen improvements in the last year, particularly after fences were installed along Alvarado Street and vendors were shut down. Police say some of the vendors were involved in the drug trade and the resale of stolen merchandise.
“The point isn’t to limit access,” Langer said. “The fence is intended to improve safety and quality of life for the people who live, work, and spend time here. It gives park staff a fighting chance to maintain and restore the place, especially at night, when they can finally clean and repair without the constant chaos that made upkeep nearly impossible before.”
LAPD Capt. Ben Fernandes of the Rampart division told me police are “trying to make it not OK” to buy and use drugs along the Alvarado corridor. Drug users often gather in the northeast corner of the park, Fernandes said, and he thinks putting up a fence and keeping the park off limits at night will help “deflect” some of “the open-air usage.”
The park has a nice soccer field and a lovely bandstand, among other popular attractions, but many parents told me they’re reluctant to visit with their children because of safety concerns. If a fence helps bring back families, many of whom live in apartments and have no yards, that’s a good thing.
But as the city goes to work on design issues, questions about enforcement, opening and closing times and other details, it needs to keep in mind that all of that is the easy part.
It took an unforgivably long time for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and other elected officials to acknowledge a social, economic and humanitarian crisis in a place that’s home to thousands of low-income working people.
The world was on the brink of a climate milestone: adopting a global carbon tax for the shipping industry. Countries had spent years crafting the plan, hoping to throttle planet-warming pollution from cargo vessels. They had every reason to think the measure would pass when the International Maritime Organization met in mid-October.
Enter Donald Trump. After returning to the White House for a second term, the president and his top officials undertook a monthslong campaign to defeat the initiative. The U.S. threatened tariffs, levies and visa restrictions to get its way. A battery of American diplomats and Cabinet secretaries met with various nations to twist arms, according to a senior U.S. State Department official, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. Nations were also warned of other potential consequences if they backed the tax on shipping emissions, including imposing sanctions on individuals and blocking ships from U.S. ports.
Under that Trump-led pressure — or intimidation, as some describe it — some countries started to waver. Ultimately, a bloc including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Iran voted to adjourn the meeting for a year, killing any chance of the charge being adopted anytime soon.
The U.S. “bullied otherwise supportive or neutral countries into turning against” the net-zero plan for shipping, says Faïg Abbasov, a director at the European advocacy group Transport & Environment. With its intense lobbying at the International Maritime Organization, the Trump administration was “waging war against multilateralism, UN diplomacy and climate diplomacy.”
At first glance, it might look like the U.S. has exited the climate fight. The president is once again pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement, and he may not send an official U.S. delegation to next month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil. But don’t be confused: America is still in the arena; it’s just fighting for the other side.
Since his return to Washington, Trump has used trade talks, tariff threats and verbal dressing-downs to encourage countries to jettison their renewable energy commitments (and buy more U.S. oil and liquefied natural gas in the process). Just 10 months into his second term, the campaign is showing surprising success as key figures and countries increasingly buckle under the determined pressure.
Trump was elected to implement a “common sense energy agenda,” says White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. He “will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.”
Oil and gas supporters champion the president’s ambition. They say he’s helped reset the global conversation around climate change and given a welcome political opening to banks, corporations and other governments that wanted to back away from some sustainability targets in the face of growing electricity demand. “President Trump is sort of providing the banks, the European Union and others cover for tempering their climate ambitions,” says Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group. “He gives these countries the ability to say, ‘Hey, I’m just trying to go along with the United States here. That’s why I’m buying all this LNG.’”
But in the eyes of environmental advocates and leaders who depend on multilateralism as a means for global climate action, Trump is unfairly asserting his will on a world that’s running out of time to rein in emissions and avert the worst consequences of global warming. “They’re clearly casting a much wider net to the climate destruction than they did the first time,” says Jake Schmidt, a senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They have more people engaged in it, and they obviously had more time to plan for it.”
The strong-arming is happening on multiple fronts. Among the biggest is trade, where Trump has already compelled Japan, South Korea and the EU to pledge to spend on American energy and energy infrastructure. Japan, for instance, agreed to invest $550 billion on U.S. projects, and talks are underway to steer some of that funding to a $44 billion Alaska gas pipeline and export site. South Korea has pledged roughly $100 billion in U.S. energy purchases.
The EU, meanwhile, has vowed to spend some $750 billion buying American energy, including LNG, to secure lower tariffs on its exports to the U.S. Analysts have questioned whether those sales will fully materialize, since they’d require Europe to more than triple its annual energy imports from the U.S. But the public commitment by itself was a stunning move for a bloc that’s led the world in pushing policies to combat climate change — including by setting binding targets for slashing planet-warming pollution, establishing a “green deal” plan to shed fossil fuels and slapping a tariff on carbon-intensive imports.
Trump administration officials have seized on the U.S.-EU trade deal to urge other changes. For instance, Energy Secretary Chris Wright is pressuring the bloc to relax curbs on the methane footprint of imported gas. The EU is already easing corporate sustainability requirements so fewer companies are compelled to limit their environmental harms, a retrenchment that came after pressure from Germany and other European stakeholders as well as the White House.
Meanwhile the administration has been goading the International Energy Agency to shuffle its leadership and urged the agency to reinstate forecasts that show a rosier outlook for fossil fuel demand. It has pressed multilateral development banks to prioritize fossil fuels over climate adaptation and clean energy projects when their financing of those green initiatives has become critical given widespread foreign aid cuts.
And Trump himself has berated countries that aren’t falling in line. In a September speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he chided nations for setting policies around what he called the “hoax” and “con job” of climate change, warning that they can’t be “great again” without “traditional energy sources.” He’s also told UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to reject wind turbines and embrace the North Sea’s oil riches.
It’s a marked acceleration from term-one Trump. During his first four years in the White House, Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda amounted to rally cries of “drill, baby, drill” and slow steps to encourage more domestic oil and gas production. This time around, the president’s approach has global reach — and far fewer limits. And when it comes to international agreements relating to energy and climate, “the U.S. has an interest in divide and rule, and thus breaking the potential for cooperation,” says Abby Innes, an associate professor in political economy at the London School of Economics.
Whether or not U.S. officials attend COP30 in November, the U.S. president’s influence will loom large. “Countries like Saudi Arabia feel emboldened by Trump to promote fossil fuels,” says Linda Kalcher, founder of the Strategic Perspectives think tank and a veteran of the annual UN climate summits. One European diplomat said the main goal now at COP30 is just to avoid being bullied.
To be sure, other countries haven’t followed the U.S. exodus from the Paris Agreement, and the deployment of clean energy is still soaring globally. Even tax incentive phaseouts and project cancellations in the U.S. are only slowing, not stopping, the country’s adoption of wind and solar power. And while multinational companies may be dialing down their green rhetoric, analysts say many are still quietly cleaning up their supply chains and operations to keep selling in California, Europe and other places demanding more sustainability.
And in a perverse twist for a U.S. president who’s decried the world’s reliance on China, other nations are increasingly linking arms with Beijing as they bid for zero-emission energy tech. “When it comes to dealing with China, whether it’s countries or companies, politicians and executives tell me: ‘Better the devil that you know,’” says Ioannis Ioannou, an associate professor at the London Business School whose research focuses on sustainability and corporate social responsibility. “It offers more stability than the Trump administration.”
Dlouhy and Rathi write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s Jack Wittels and John Ainger contributed to this report.
The strange political bedfellows created by efforts to save spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest just got even stranger.
Already Republican members of Congress were allied with animal rights activists.
They don’t want trained shooters to kill up to 450,000 barred owls, which are outcompeting northern spotted owls, under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year that would unfold over three decades.
Now, timber interests are aligning with environmentalists in favor of culling the owls.
Some logging advocates are afraid nixing the plan will slow down timber harvesting. Roughly 2.6 million acres of timberlands in western Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management are governed by resource management plans contingent on the barred owl cull going forward, according to Travis Joseph, president and chief executive of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing mills, loggers, lumber buyers and other stakeholders in the region.
The area can produce at least 278 million board feet per year under current plans, “with the potential for significantly more,” Joseph said in a mid-October letter to Congress.
If the cull is scrapped, he said, the federal agency likely will need to restart Endangered Species Act consultation for the northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened. It’s a process that could take years. According to the letter, it would create “unacceptable risks and delays to current and future timber sales.”
Timber production goals laid out by the Trump administration also could be jeopardized.
Momentum to stop the cull grew this summer when Sen. John Kennedy, a conservative from Louisiana, introduced a resolution to reverse the Biden-era plan.
That move reflected an unlikely alliance between some right-wing politicians and animal rights advocates who say it’s too expensive and inhumane. Some Democrats have also opposed the cull, and companion legislation in the House has bipartisan backers.
The stakes are high. Many environmentalists and scientists maintain that northern spotted owls will go extinct if their competitors aren’t kept in check. Barred owls — which originally hail from eastern North America — are larger, more aggressive and less picky when it comes to habitat and food, giving them an edge when vying for resources.
Last week, Politico’s E&E News reported that Kennedy said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had asked him to stand down from his effort to stop the owl-killing plan. The legislator told the outlet he would charge ahead anyway.
“I don’t think the federal government ought to be telling God, nature — whatever you believe in — this one can exist, this one can’t,” Kennedy told E&E. “The barred owl is not the first species that has ever moved its territory and it won’t be the last.”
Kennedy did not respond to The Times’ request for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said they could not respond to the inquiry because of the government shutdown.
“It’s strange that a Republican in the South is taking on the owl issue, specifically, when its consequences will impact western Oregon BLM timber sales,” Joseph said in an interview. “It will lead to lower revenues for counties, it will impact jobs and it will put the spotted owl on a trajectory towards extinction.”
The stance aligns in part with that of environmental groups like the Environmental Protection Information Center and Center for Biological Diversity, which have supported culling barred owls to help the beleaguered spotted owls in their native territory. It’s an unexpected overlap, given environmentalists’ long history of fighting to protect old-growth forests in the region the owls call home.
Tom Wheeler, chief executive of EPIC, said it’s possible that culling barred owls could lead to a bump in timber harvest on the BLM land in western Oregon but overall it would lead to more habitat being protected throughout the spotted owls’ expansive range. The presence of spotted owls triggers protections under the Endangered Species Act. If the cull boosts the spotted owl population as intended, it means more guardrails.
“It puts us in admittedly an awkward place,” Wheeler said. “But our advocacy for barred owl removal is predicated not on treating the northern spotted owl as a tool against the timber industry and against timber harvest. What we’re trying to do is provide for the continued existence of the species.”
Many Native American tribes support controlling barred owls in the region. In a letter to Congress last week, the nonprofit Intertribal Timber Council said barred owls threaten more than the spotted owl.
“As a generalist predator, it poses risks to a wide range of forest and aquatic species that hold varying degrees of social and ecological importance to tribes, including species integral to traditional food systems and watershed health,” wrote the council, which aims to improve the management of natural resources important to Native American communities.
Since 2013, the Hoopa Valley tribe in Northern California has been involved with sanctioned hunting of the owls and has observed the spotted owl population stabilizing over time, according to the letter.
However, groups like Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy argue that the plan to take out so many barred owls over a vast landscape won’t work, aside from the high owl death toll. More barred owls simply will fly into where others were removed, said Wayne Pacelle, president of both groups.
That makes habitat key — and the prospect of losing more to logging in western Oregon devastating, according to Pacelle.
To stop the owl-culling plan, both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution and President Trump would need to sign it. If successful, the resolution would preclude the agency from pursuing a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.
The plan already faced setbacks. In May, federal officials canceled three related grants totaling more than $1.1 million, including one study that would have removed barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Orlando police discuss how to stay safe this Halloween
The Orlando Police Department will hosts its annual trunk-or-treat event on Thursday, Oct. 30 from 4-7 p.m.
AGENCIES ACROSS CENTRAL FLORIDA ARE GOING INTO OVERDRIVE TO HELP KEEP EVERYONE SAFE AND MAKE THE MOST OF HALLOWEEN. YOU SEE OUR COUNTDOWN TO DAYS 14 HOURS, 17 MINUTES AND 45 SECONDS. BUT WHO’S GETTING SPECIFIC? CORPORAL MICHELLE ROGERS AND SERGEANT RODNEY VANCE FROM THE ORLANDO POLICE DEPARTMENT ARE JOINING ME THIS MORNING. THANKS SO MUCH FOR COMING IN, GUYS. THANK YOU FOR HAVING US. WE’RE HAPPY TO BE HERE. LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT PARENTS GUARDIANS NEED TO BE THINKING ABOUT. WE IT’S A VERY EXCITING TIME OF YEAR. BUT ALSO WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATIONS MAYBE WE SHOULD BE HAVING WITH OUR KIDS AHEAD OF FRIDAY. IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS ALWAYS ABOUT SAFETY, AND SAFETY IS ALWAYS PARAMOUNT WHEN IT COMES TO HAVING FUN, AND SOMETIMES WE GET CAUGHT UP IN THE MOMENT, SO IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE REMINDING YOURSELF ABOUT THINGS OF SAFETY, LIKE WEARING REFLECTIVE CLOTHING, STAYING WELL LIT, THINGS THAT GLOW, MAKING SURE THAT PARENTS ARE CHECKING CANDY IF THINGS ARE UNWRAPPED, MAKE SURE YOU JUST TOSS IT. DON’T EVEN BOTHER FOLLOWING TRAFFIC RULES. THINGS OF THAT NATURE. LET’S TALK SPECIFICALLY WHEN IT COMES TO OUR YOUNGER KIDS, WHEN THEY GO OUT TRICK OR TREATING, MINE ARE SEVEN AND NINE AND THEY ASK, MOM, CAN WE GO OUT BY OURSELVES? I SAID, NO, SORRY, I’M GOING TO BE GOING WITH YOU. WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATION SHOULD WE BE HAVING WITH THAT AGE? SO WITH THAT AGE AND I HAVE LITTLE ONES TOO, SO I CAN RELATE. I USUALLY SIT DOWN WITH THEM AND TALK ABOUT A PLAN. INVOLVE THEM IN YOUR PLAN. PLAN YOUR ROUTE. ALSO TALK ABOUT WE’RE ONLY GOING TO VISIT HOMES THAT ARE WELL LIT, THAT HAVE DECORATIONS OF HALLOWEEN, AND THEY’RE PARTICIPATING IN THE FESTIVITIES. ANOTHER THING TO REMIND OUR LITTLE ONES TOO, IS THAT USE THE SIDEWALK. THEY KNOW. LOOK TO THE LEFT. LOOK TO THE RIGHT. BEFORE CROSSING. USE MOMMY’S HAND. THOSE ARE THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT THAT THEY ALREADY KNOW. BUT LIKE I SAID BEFORE, SOMETIMES THEY GET EXCITED AND CAUGHT UP IN THE MOMENT MOMENT. SO STRENGTH IN NUMBERS RELY ON YOUR NEIGHBORS, YOUR FRIENDS, MORE EYES. TRICK OR TREAT. AS A GROUP. IT’S A GREAT THING AND A GREAT TOOL TO HAVE AS YOUR FRIENDS. MINE IS A WEREWOLF AND EVEN HIS MASK. I WAS LIKE, I MIGHT HAVE TO CUT THE HOLES AROUND THE EYES A LITTLE BIT MORE BECAUSE I FELT LIKE HE COULDN’T EVEN SEE, YOU KNOW, WHERE HE WAS WALKING. SO HAVING TO BE CAREFUL. THAT’S A GREAT IDEA ABOUT OUR TEENS. I KNOW OUR TEENS PROBABLY WANT TO GO OUT AND BE BY THEMSELVES. SO WHAT SHOULD WE TELL OUR KIDS THAT ARE A LITTLE BIT OLDER, A LITTLE BIT OF THE SAME TIPS THAT GO ALONG WITH THE YOUNG ONES. MAKE SURE THEY STAY IN GROUPS. MAKE SURE THEIR COSTUMES THAT IF THEY’RE CARRYING ANYTHING THAT MAY LOOK LIKE A WEAPON, THAT THE WEAPONS CLEARLY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE FAKE. SO PEOPLE DON’T CONFUSE THEM WITH BEING REAL. MAKE SURE THAT THEY ALL HAVE PHONES THESE DAYS. SO MAKE SURE IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE WITH THEM THAT THEY HAVE THEIR LOCATION SERVICES ON THEIR PHONE ON. SO IF SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN, YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. AND JUST MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE, AS A PARENT, HAVE A GENERAL IDEA OF WHO THEY’RE GOING OUT WITH. DON’T JUST LET THEM GO ON OUT WITH PEOPLE WHO YOU MAY NOT KNOW. THAT WAY, IF YOU CAN’T GET IN CONTACT WITH THEM, THERE’S SOMEBODY ELSE IN THE GROUP THAT YOU CAN GET IN CONTACT WITH. I WAS RAISED BY MILITARY FOLK. THEY SAID, FILE THE FLIGHT PLAN AND STICK TO IT. THAT’S RIGHT. MISCONCEPTIONS, THINGS THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT PARENTS SHOULD KNOW, THINGS THAT WE DON’T THINK ABOUT SOMETIMES IS JUST TRICK OR TREATING AS A GROUP. SOMETIMES WE JUST GET SO CAUGHT UP IN THE RUSHING OF GETTING THE COSTUMES ON AND RUSHING AND TRYING TO GO BEFORE IT GETS DARK OUT. BUT ONE THING THAT YOU CAN REMEMBER IS BRING A FLASHLIGHT. A FLASHLIGHT CAN ALSO LIGHT YOUR PATH ONCE THE STREETLIGHTS COME ON, IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT IT’S TIME TO STOP HAVING FUN. IT JUST MEANS THAT WE’RE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR SAFETY. AND IF WE WORK TOGETHER, IT’S GOING TO BE AWESOME AND YOU GUYS CAN HAVE A SAFE HALLOWEEN. SPEAKING OF SAFE, YOU GUYS HAVE AN EVENT. WHAT ARE THE DETAILS FOR THAT? YES. SO ON THURSDAY AT OUR HEADQUARTERS BUILDING ON SOUTH STREET, WE’LL BE HAVING A TRUNK OR TREAT EVENT FROM 4 TO 7 P.M. WE’RE GOING TO HAVE OFFICERS FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT THAT ARE GOING TO BE SETTING UP THEIR CARS. WE’LL HAVE PLENTY OF CANDY AND EVENTS FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES TO COME OUT AND ENJOY IN THE SAFETY OF THE POLICE STATION. YOU KNOW IT’S SAFE AND YOU GET TO MEET SOME OF YOUR LOCAL HEROES, TOO. THAT IS A GREAT WAY TO DO THAT. WE DID HAVE THE INFORMATION UP ON THE SCREEN. WE’LL ALSO POST A LINK TO THIS ON OUR WEBSITE WESH.COM. SERGEANT VANCE
Orlando police discuss how to stay safe this Halloween
The Orlando Police Department will hosts its annual trunk-or-treat event on Thursday, Oct. 30 from 4-7 p.m.
Sergeant Rodney Vance and Corporal Michelle Rogers of the Orlando Police Department join WESH 2 to discuss how kids, teens and families can stay safe this Halloween.OPD will hosts its annual trunk-or-treat event on Thursday, Oct. 30 from 4-7 p.m. The free community event will be held at the department’s headquarters on West South Street.Click here to learn more.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
Sergeant Rodney Vance and Corporal Michelle Rogers of the Orlando Police Department join WESH 2 to discuss how kids, teens and families can stay safe this Halloween.
OPD will hosts its annual trunk-or-treat event on Thursday, Oct. 30 from 4-7 p.m.
The free community event will be held at the department’s headquarters on West South Street.
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas for the Gaza Strip came into effect at noon local time, the Israeli military said Friday, adding that troops were withdrawing to agreed-upon deployment lines. The announcement came hours after Israel’s Cabinet approved President Donald Trump’s plan for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the release of the remaining hostages and of Palestinian prisoners.Tens of thousands of people who had gathered in Wadi Gaza in central Gaza in the morning started walking north after the military’s announcement at noon local time. Beforehand, Palestinians reported heavy shelling in parts of Gaza throughout Friday morning.The Israeli Cabinet’s approval of Trump’s plan marks a key step toward ending a ruinous two-year war that has destabilized the Middle East.A brief statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office early Friday said the Cabinet approved the “outline” of a deal to release the hostages, without mentioning other aspects of the plan that are more controversial.An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the withdrawal, said the military would control around 50% of Gaza in their new positions.Shelling continues through early hoursAfter the Cabinet approval, Gaza residents reported intensified shelling well into Friday morning.In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Mahmoud Sharkawy, one of the many people sheltering there after being displaced from Gaza City, said artillery shelling intensified in the early hours.“The shelling has significantly increased today,” said Sharkawy, adding that low flying military aircraft had been flying over central Gaza.In northern Gaza, two Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that bombing had been ongoing since the early hours, mostly artillery shelling.The managing director of Shifa hospital, Rami Mhanna, said the shelling in southern and northern Gaza City had not stopped following the Israeli Cabinet’s approval of the ceasefire plan.“It is confusing, we have been hearing shelling all night despite the ceasefire news,” said Heba Garoun, who fled her home in eastern Gaza City to another neighborhood in the city after her house was destroyed.Details of the dealA senior Hamas official and lead negotiator made a speech Thursday laying out what he said were the core elements of the ceasefire deal: Israel releasing around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, opening the border crossing with Egypt, allowing aid to flow and Israeli forces withdrawing.Khalil al-Hayya said all women and children held in Israeli jails will also be freed. He did not offer details on the extent of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.Al-Hayya said the Trump administration and mediators had given assurances that the war is over, and that Hamas and other Palestinian factions will now focus on achieving self-determination and establishing a Palestinian state.“We declare today that we have reached an agreement to end the war and the aggression against our people,” Al-Hayya said in a televised speech Thursday evening.To help support and monitor the ceasefire deal, U.S. officials said they would send about 200 troops to Israel as part of a broader, international team. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not authorized for release.
TEL AVIV, Israel —
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas for the Gaza Strip came into effect at noon local time, the Israeli military said Friday, adding that troops were withdrawing to agreed-upon deployment lines. The announcement came hours after Israel’s Cabinet approved President Donald Trump’s plan for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the release of the remaining hostages and of Palestinian prisoners.
Tens of thousands of people who had gathered in Wadi Gaza in central Gaza in the morning started walking north after the military’s announcement at noon local time. Beforehand, Palestinians reported heavy shelling in parts of Gaza throughout Friday morning.
The Israeli Cabinet’s approval of Trump’s plan marks a key step toward ending a ruinous two-year war that has destabilized the Middle East.
A brief statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office early Friday said the Cabinet approved the “outline” of a deal to release the hostages, without mentioning other aspects of the plan that are more controversial.
An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the withdrawal, said the military would control around 50% of Gaza in their new positions.
Shelling continues through early hours
After the Cabinet approval, Gaza residents reported intensified shelling well into Friday morning.
In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Mahmoud Sharkawy, one of the many people sheltering there after being displaced from Gaza City, said artillery shelling intensified in the early hours.
“The shelling has significantly increased today,” said Sharkawy, adding that low flying military aircraft had been flying over central Gaza.
In northern Gaza, two Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that bombing had been ongoing since the early hours, mostly artillery shelling.
The managing director of Shifa hospital, Rami Mhanna, said the shelling in southern and northern Gaza City had not stopped following the Israeli Cabinet’s approval of the ceasefire plan.
“It is confusing, we have been hearing shelling all night despite the ceasefire news,” said Heba Garoun, who fled her home in eastern Gaza City to another neighborhood in the city after her house was destroyed.
Details of the deal
A senior Hamas official and lead negotiator made a speech Thursday laying out what he said were the core elements of the ceasefire deal: Israel releasing around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, opening the border crossing with Egypt, allowing aid to flow and Israeli forces withdrawing.
Khalil al-Hayya said all women and children held in Israeli jails will also be freed. He did not offer details on the extent of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Al-Hayya said the Trump administration and mediators had given assurances that the war is over, and that Hamas and other Palestinian factions will now focus on achieving self-determination and establishing a Palestinian state.
“We declare today that we have reached an agreement to end the war and the aggression against our people,” Al-Hayya said in a televised speech Thursday evening.
To help support and monitor the ceasefire deal, U.S. officials said they would send about 200 troops to Israel as part of a broader, international team. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not authorized for release.
President Donald Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown hit a legal roadblock in Portland, Oregon, as new details emerged about the administration’s plan to send federal troops into Chicago. On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effort to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut said the plan to send troops to Portland likely overstepped Trump’s authority and threatened state sovereignty. “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation,” Immergut said. The decision was celebrated by state and local leaders who brought the lawsuit, but the White House vowed to appeal. “President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement — we expect to be vindicated by a higher court,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland has been at the center of recent protests. On Saturday, hundreds marched to the building, prompting federal agents to deploy tear gas, among other crowd-control munitions. At least six people were arrested. Similar demonstrations and a similar debate have been playing out in Chicago. On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said federal agents shot and injured one woman during what the agency described as a “defensive” response to an alleged vehicle-ramming attack. On Saturday, Trump authorized 300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, despite opposition from Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker. The timeline of the National Guard’s arrival was not immediately clear. More from our Washington Bureau:
President Donald Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown hit a legal roadblock in Portland, Oregon, as new details emerged about the administration’s plan to send federal troops into Chicago.
On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effort to federalize 200 members of the Oregon National Guard. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut said the plan to send troops to Portland likely overstepped Trump’s authority and threatened state sovereignty.
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation,” Immergut said.
The decision was celebrated by state and local leaders who brought the lawsuit, but the White House vowed to appeal.
“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement — we expect to be vindicated by a higher court,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland has been at the center of recent protests. On Saturday, hundreds marched to the building, prompting federal agents to deploy tear gas, among other crowd-control munitions. At least six people were arrested.
Similar demonstrations and a similar debate have been playing out in Chicago. On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said federal agents shot and injured one woman during what the agency described as a “defensive” response to an alleged vehicle-ramming attack.
On Saturday, Trump authorized300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, despite opposition from Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker. The timeline of the National Guard’s arrival was not immediately clear.
