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Lacrosse: Southern Section championship results

https://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/story/2021-06-08/lacrosse-southern-section-championship-results

SOUTHERN SECTION BOYS’ LACROSSE DIVISION 1 Championship, Tuesday Loyola 9, Foothill 7 DIVISION 2 Championship, Tuesday St. Francis 15, Culver City 8 SOUTHERN SECTION GIRLS’ LACROSSE DIVISION 1 Championship, Wednesday Foothill 21, Newbury Park 5 DIVISION 2 Championship, Wednesday Corona del Mar 12, Anaheim Canyon 8

High school baseball: City and Southern Section playoff results and updated pairings

https://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/story/2021-06-08/high-school-baseball-city-and-southern-section-playoff-results-and-updated-pairings

CITY BASEBALL OPEN DIVISION First round, Wednesday, 3 p.m. unless noted #9 Narbonne at #8 Birmingham #12 Venice at #5 Wilmington Banning El Camino Real 9, Sylmar 1 (Tuesday) #10 Chatsworth at #7 Palisades Quarterfinals, Friday, 3 p.m. unless noted Birmingham/Narbonne winner at #1 Granada Hills Banning/Venice winner at #4 San Pedro, Saturday, 11 a.m. #11 El Camino Real at #3 Los Angeles Roosevelt Palisades/Chatsworth winner at #2 Cleveland NOTES: Semifinals, June 16, 3 p.m. Championship, June 19, 3 p.m.. DIVISION I First round, Wednesday, 3 p.m. #16 Los Angeles CES at #1 Sun Valley Poly #9 South East at #8 Carson #12 North Hollywood at #5 Granada Hills Kennedy #13 San Fernando at #4 Taft #14 Valley Arts/Sciences at #3 Verdugo Hills #11 Roybal at #6 Los Angeles Hamilton #10 Bell at #7 Los Angeles Marshall #15 Torres at #2 Garfield NOTES: Quarterfinals, Friday, 3 p.m.; semifinals, June 16, 3 p.m. Championship, June 19, 12 p.m. DIVISION II First round, Tuesday Los Angeles Wilson 11, Reseda 0 Harbor Teacher 33, Santee 1 Van Nuys 9, Monroe 6 Maywood CES 8, Fairfax 1 Legacy 8, Canoga Park 1 Marquez 12, Fremont 2 Franklin 10, Vaughn 5 Port of Los Angeles 17, Contreras 4 Quarterfinals, Thursday, 3 p.m. #9 Harbor Teacher at #1 Los Angeles Wilson #5 Van Nuys at #4 Maywood CES #6 Marquez at #3 Legacy #10 Franklin at #2 Port of Los Angeles NOTES: Semifinals, June 15, 3 p.m. Championship, June 18, 3 p.m. DIVISION III First round, as noted #1 King/Drew 9, North Valley Military 5 (Friday) #4 Los Angeles University 8, West Adams 2 (Friday) #3 Mendez 16, Animo Robinson 2 (Friday) Bravo 9, WISH 1 Semifinals, Saturday, 3 p.m. #4 Los Angeles University at #1 King/Drew #3 Mendez at #2 Bravo NOTES: Championship, June 18, 3 p.m. SOUTHERN SECTION BASEBALL DIVISION 1 Second round, Tuesday JSerra 4, Capistrano Valley 0 Yucaipa 9, Damien 7 Corona 4, Huntington Beach 3 Ayala 3, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 2 Orange Lutheran 5, Mira Costa 1 Bishop Amat 8, La Mirada 2 Cypress 4, King 2 Harvard-Westlake 13, Arcadia 0 Quarterfinals, Friday Yucaipa at #1 JSerra #4 Ayala at Corona Bishop Amat at #3 Orange Lutheran Cypress at #2 Harvard-Westlake DIVISION 2 Second round, Tuesday unless noted Thousand Oaks 6, Mission Viejo 2 San Dimas at Maranatha, Wednesday, 3:15 p.m. Los Alamitos 2, El Dorado 1 Bonita 3, Ocean View 0 Yorba Linda 2, Alemany 1 Camarillo 6, Corona del Mar 3 Trabuco Hills 16, Quartz Hill 4 Sierra Canyon 10, Gahr 1 Quarterfinals, Friday Maranatha at #1 Thousand Oaks OR #1 Thousand Oaks at San Dimas Bonita at Los Alamitos Yorba Linda at Camarillo #2 Sierra Canyon at Trabuco Hills DIVISION 3 Second round, Tuesday Hart 5, Cerritos 2 Calabasas 4, Lakewood 1 Millikan 3, Torrance 0 Saugus 3, Redlands East Valley 1 Fountain Valley 3, Chino Hills 2 Palos Verdes 6, Sonora 3 Arlington 9, Ontario Christian 1 Capistrano Valley Christian 8, Warren 5 Quarterfinals, Friday Calabasas at #1 Hart Millikan at Saugus Fountain Valley at Palos Verdes Arlington at Capistrano Valley Christian DIVISION 4 Second round, Tuesday Murrieta Mesa 15, Woodcrest Christian 3 Monrovia 3, Grace Brethren 0 Rancho Cucamonga 5, La Sierra 4 Downey 4, Kaiser 3 Royal 11, Montebello 3 Charter Oak 3, Woodbridge 2 Heritage 7, Corona Centennial 6 Paraclete 6, La Serna 3 Quarterfinals, Friday Monrovia at #1 Murrieta Mesa Rancho Cucamonga at Downey #3 Royal at Charter Oak #2 Paraclete at Heritage DIVISION 5 Second round, Tuesday Citrus Valley 10, Highland 1 Sultana 5, San Marcos 4 Laguna Hills 2, Walnut 1 Crean Lutheran 15, St. Anthony 0 Malibu 10, Savanna 2 Cajon 5, Schurr 3 Hemet 4, Burbank 2 North Torrance 10, Flintridge Prep 6 Quarterfinals, Friday Sultana at #1 Citrus Valley #4 Crean Lutheran at Laguna Hills #3 Malibu at Cajon Hemet at #2 North Torrance DIVISION 6 Second round, Tuesday, 3:15 p.m. unless noted Aquinas 10, Orange 0 Buena 10, de Toledo 0 Elsinore 8, Ontario 6 South Pasadena 1, Viewpoint 0 Santa Ana Calvary Chapel 2, Ramona 1 Barstow 9, Pasadena Marshall 6 Linfield Christian 2, Carpinteria 1 La Habra 5, Bishop Montgomery 1 Quarterfinals, Friday #1 Aquinas at Buena Elsinore at South Pasadena Santa Ana Calvary Chapel at Barstow #2 La Habra at Linfield Christian DIVISION 7 Second round, Tuesday Hesperia Christian 14, Santa Clarita Christian 7 Temecula Prep 4, La Verne Lutheran 3 Arroyo Valley 19, Indian Springs 6 Milken 9, Lancaster Desert Christian 2 Tarbut V’Torah 7, Santa Monica Pacifica Christian 0 Lancaster 5, Gabrielino 4 Western Christian 12, Verbum Dei 2 Vasquez 6, Santa Rosa Academy 2 Quarterfinals, Friday Temecula Prep at #1 Hesperia Christian Milken at Arroyo Valley #3 Tarbut V’Torah at Lancaster #2 Vasquez at Western Christian NOTES: Semifinals, June 15. Championships, June 18 at Blair Field (Long Beach) and June 19 at Cal State Fullerton.

Coronavirus Today: A pandemic's public health lessons

https://www.latimes.com/science/newsletter/2021-06-08/barbara-ferrer-public-health-pandemic-coronavirus-today

Good evening. I’m Russ Mitchell, and it’s Tuesday, June 8. First, thanks to those of you who responded to our survey last week. If you missed it and want to share your feedback, you can do so here. Now, here’s what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond. Journalism is sometimes called the first draft of history. It’s far too early for deep, researched assessments of how Los Angeles County handled the coronavirus, but Times reporter Jaclyn Cosgrove gets things off to a running start with this well-researched, strongly written profile of Barbara Ferrer, the county’s public health director and one of California’s most aggressive public officials in pushing for lockdowns and business shutdowns. Cosgrove, who covers county government for The Times, starts out by recounting some of the anger, hate and sometimes even death threats aimed at Ferrer over the past 14 months, from some business owners, churchgoers, protesters and politicians angry at lockdowns and mandates. Public health leaders across the nation faced similar ire, in a divided nation whose culture throbs with love for individual freedom and support for free enterprise. Their pandemic responses have put these officials, who by definition are charged with serving the public as a whole, on the defensive, and nationwide, at least 190 have resigned, retired or been fired. Ferrer, 65, has not, and even some of her critics credit her with stable leadership, as direction and information shifted dramatically from federal, state and local leaders. But she has been pilloried too — by some as too restrictive and hurting businesses, by others as too lax and putting people at risk. Much of the criticism has been aimed at the perception — which Ferrer acknowledges was accurate — that the county didn’t do enough to protect people of color in poorer neighborhoods, where infection and death rates proved far higher than in largely white more prosperous cities and neighborhoods. “When you have a responsibility and opportunity to help protect people’s health, and 24,000 people die, I think rightfully, I should feel bad,” Ferrer told Cosgrove. “I think it’s OK for me to feel bad about it — because it’s devastating.” Ferrer had promised that the vaccine distribution would play out differently than testing, where the county had seen racial inequities — but by February, vaccine disparities were apparent. Ferrer pivoted and moved to improve distribution when she realized how poorly the system served the disadvantaged, who may not have the internet access, the mobility or the time to book and show up for appointments. She began to work more closely with community leaders to bring tests and vaccines directly to those communities. “The intentions were good all around, but this pandemic necessitated a response that our systems weren’t ready to give,” said Louise McCarthy, president and chief executive of the Community Clinic Assn. Of Los Angeles County. Anger and questions remain in some quarters about whether the county could have handled matters better. And whether California leaders learn their lessons and improve their systems for future pandemics remains to be seen. Ferrer’s agency made big strides in a short period of time, said Dr. Joai Crear-Perry, senior advisor the the equity-focused We Must Count Coalition. “We’re building relationships that we need to maintain for a long time. The trust-building is going to take awhile.” Not just in L.A. County, but across the state and the nation. California cases, deaths and vaccinations as of 7:38 p.m. Tuesday: Track California’s coronavirus spread and vaccination efforts — including the latest numbers and how they break down — with our graphics. As we Californians approach reopening day, June 15, the state’s color tier system becomes a bit less meaningful. The tier-based rules governing what can reopen, how and when will be subsumed into the mostly minimalist reopening guidelines. In fact, the color tier system goes away next week. Still, the colors do indicate just how far the state has come from the dark days of COVID-19 winter. As more people become vaccinated, fewer people become infected, giving the state has a chance to reach herd immunity. Five more counties, including San Diego, moved into the least restrictive yellow tier on Tuesday. The others are Alameda, Napa, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. They join Los Angeles and Orange counties, already yellow. That means more than half of all California residents will live in yellow-tier counties. Achieving yellow status required an adjusted daily rate of fewer than 2 new cases per 100,000 people, an overall rate of positive test results less than 2%, measured over two straight weeks. Even at reopening, though, counties can opt to keep some restrictions in place, and businesses may face more specific rules, either self-adopted or imposed by state workplace safety regulators. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll retain his powers under California’s COVID-19 state of emergency order beyond June 15. With all the hoopla around June 15, it’s important to remember that “reopening” does not mean “COVID’s over.” People are still getting sick and dying, if in dramatically reduced numbers. The more people get vaccinated, the safer everyone will be. As more people get back to work, more people will be taking the train, and on Tuesday, a new vaccination site opened at Union Station. Located at the station’s East Portal and run by the Los Angeles Fire Department, the site will be open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It’s one of five walkup centers offered by Metro. The others are in Hawthorne, Gardena, Rancho Dominguez and El Monte. Also this week, Los Angeles County is dispatching 237 mobile vaccination sites — the most operating in a single week. The move parallels the city’s shift from mass immunization sites to mobile clinics operating at special events, in places with lots of traffic, in areas with low vaccine rates and vulnerable populations and with evening and weekend hours. Another reminder not to let your guard down even as restrictions ease comes from Napa County, which recorded its first death of a fully vaccinated person from COVID-19. The patient, who died June 2, was described as over 65 with underlying health conditions — factors that could have made her more vulnerable. Coronavirus vaccines have proven tremendously effective, but the record is not perfect. In Napa, of 71,370 fully vaccinated residents, 32 have shown symptoms and tested positive for the coronavirus. There are two primary factors behind such breakthrough infections, according to Dr. Edward Jones-Lopez at USC’s Keck School of Medicine: Most commonly, coronavirus variants evade vaccine immunity designed to protect against the original strain; less frequently, some people — such as the immunosuppressed and the elderly — cannot mount a strong enough immune response, and the vaccine doesn’t work for them as it should. However, vaccines have shown to be largely effective against variants that have appeared thus far. Breakthrough infections are rare. And the few COVID-19 cases that do break through tend to be far less serious in vaccinated people than in those who’ve not received the vaccine. “No vaccine is 100% effective,” said Napa County Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Relucio. But the vaccines, she said, “provide exceptional protection against death and illness.” See the latest on California’s coronavirus closures and reopenings, and the metrics that inform them, with our tracker. Consider subscribing to the Los Angeles Times Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Become a subscriber. Recent polls show President Biden continues to draw high marks in public opinion polls for his handling of COVID-10: A recent FiveThirtyEight analysis shows a pandemic-handling approval rating of 62.7 percent. But it looks like Biden won’t accomplish his mission of getting 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4. About 15.5 million unvaccinated adults would need to receive at least one dose before then for the goal to be met. But the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. has dropped to below 400,000 people per day, down from nearly 2 million a day two months ago. Many of the low-participation states are in the Midwest and the South. The White House is pressing governors to “pull out all the stops” on the vaccine campaign. But some resist the cheerleading. Take Mississippi, which trails the nation in vaccination rates; only about 34% of the population has received at least one shot. Its vaccination rate in the state has dropped off so sharply that it would take the better part of a year for the state to reach the 70% target. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has called Biden’s goal “arbitrary to say the least.” Reeves appeared on CNN Sunday and urged residents to get vaccinated, but he said the more important marker is the decline in cases: On Jan. 10, Mississippi reported a 7-day-average daily case rate of 2,432; on June 6, that number was 112. The Biden administration has begun to downplay the goal, saying there will be little effect on the nation’s overall recovery even if it isn’t reached. The U.S. State Department, meantime, has loosened travel warnings for dozens of nations, including Mexico, Canada, France, Germany and Spain. The new designations moved nearly 60 nations and territories from Level 4, or “do not travel,” to Level 3, or “reconsider travel.” And Spain on Monday began welcoming vaccinated visitors from most countries, including the U.S., for the first time since the pandemic began. Visitors must prove they were fully vaccinated at least 14 days before their trip. European tourists who offer proof they overcame COVID-19 sometime in the previous six months can get in without having been vaccinated. Spain for now will retain a ban on nonessential travelers from Brazil, India and South Africa, where virus variants remain a cause for concern. Some people want to go to Spain. Others just want to see their kids. COVID-19 put tremendous strain on foster care systems meant to provide temporary shelter to children, and parents have been waiting to reconnect with them far longer than they’d imagined. Thousands of families have found their reunification attempts snarled as courts delayed custody cases, went virtual or temporarily shut down. An Associated Press analysis of child welfare data in 34 states concluded there were 8,700 fewer reunifications in the early months of the pandemic than in the same period a year before, a 16% drop. Foster care adoptions fell 23%. That means vulnerable families are suffering long-term and perhaps irreversible damage, which could leave parents with weakened bonds with their children, according to child welfare experts. One child, identified as D.Y., a 13-year-old from Seattle, has been out of his mother’s custody since 2016 after an abuse report said she was physically disciplining her children. Living in a group home, he was able to get visits from his mother, and lawyers expected her to win back custody. But after the pandemic hit, staffing shortages and COVID-19 protocols meant that ended, and already-limited privileges were scaled back or revoked. “I still want her to baby me,” D.Y. said. “I can tell she has high faith of when I’ll come home. I don’t know if it’s going to happen anymore.” Today’s question comes from readers who want to know: Do COVID-19 vaccines cause problems with pregnancy? No. There’s new evidence that both mRNA vaccines currently authorized for use in the U.S. — those from Moderna and from Pfizer-BioNTech — are completely safe and effective for pregnant women, the National Institutes of Health says. One recent NIH-supported study found that not only was the vaccine well tolerated by pregnant and breastfeeding women, it also produced antibodies against the coronavirus that neutralized variants of concern. Those antibodies were also found in infant cord blood and breast milk, suggesting that they were passed on to give some protection to babies. Another study explored possible safety concerns for pregnant women by looking for any negative effects of vaccination on the placenta, the vital organ that sustains the fetus. That research found no signs that the shots led to unexpected placenta damage, and it too found that vaccinated pregnant women produced needed levels of antibodies. That’s a welcome update to the dispatch my colleague Karen Kaplan brought you in January, which we detailed in response to a reader question in this newsletter. At the time, there were no hard data on the subject, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists both struck a neutral tone. It’s also a welcome antidote to a completely false rumor making the rounds on social media that has scared a lot of pregnant women. The misinformation began circulating with false claims that amino acid sequences on the spiky crowns that protrude from the coronavirus, helping it invade human cells, are similar to the genetic code of the placenta protein. A petition in the United Kingdom that sought to stop COVID-19 vaccine trials wrongly suggested that because of chemical similarities, the vaccine would attack a pregnant woman’s placenta and cause a miscarriage. That’s not true, scientists say. “It’s inaccurate to say that COVID-19’s spike protein and this placenta protein share a similar genetic code,” says Dr. D’Angela Pitts, a maternal fetal medicine specialist with Henry Ford Health System. “The proteins are not similar enough to cause placenta to not attach to an embryo.” “The protein on the virus, and the protein on the placenta, are both spike proteins,” said Ferrer, the L.A. County public health director. But they “are different spike proteins, and your antibodies can and do tell the difference,” she said. There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines affect fertility or pregnancy. We want to hear from you. Email us your coronavirus questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them. Wondering if your question’s already been answered? Check out our archive here. Resources Need a vaccine? Sign up for email updates, and make an appointment where you live: City of Los Angeles | Los Angeles County | Kern County | Orange County | Riverside County | San Bernardino County | San Diego County | San Luis Obispo County | Santa Barbara County | Ventura CountyNeed more vaccine help? Talk to your healthcare provider. Call the state’s COVID-19 hotline at (833) 422-4255. And consult our county-by-county guides to getting vaccinated.Practice social distancing using these tips, and wear a mask or two.Watch for symptoms such as fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and loss of taste or smell. Here’s what to look for and when.Need to get tested? Here’s where you can in L.A. County and around California.Americans are hurting in many ways. We have advice for helping kids cope, resources for people experiencing domestic abuse and a newsletter to help you make ends meet.We’ve answered hundreds of readers’ questions. Explore them in our archive here.For our most up-to-date coverage, visit our homepage and our Health section, get our breaking news alerts, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Harvard-Westlake freshman Bryce Rainer deserves comparison to first-round draft picks

https://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/story/2021-06-08/freshman-bryce-rainer-of-harvard-westlake-makes-quite-an-impression

To understand what 15-year-old freshman Bryce Rainer of Studio City Harvard-Westlake has accomplished in his first high school baseball season, you have to be reminded that two first-round draft picks out of the same school, Jack Flaherty and Lucas Giolito, never reached a similar skill level as freshmen. “I can’t think of a freshman who’s had better numbers,” said Harvard-Westlake athletic director Matt LaCour, who coached Flaherty and Giolito. On Tuesday in a second-round Southern Section Division 1 playoff game, Rainer became the first Harvard-Westlake freshman to earn a playoff victory. He struck out nine in five innings and allowed one hit in a 13-0 victory over Arcadia. He’s 8-0 this season and batting .391. The impact he’s had speaks for itself in comparison to pitchers Flaherty and Giolito. Flaherty was 6-2 with a 2.51 ERA as a freshman in 2012. Giolito was 1-0 with a 5.91 ERA in 2009. Seven strikeouts in three innings for Bryce Rainer. Harvard-Westlake 1, Arcadia 0. pic.twitter.com/tnokEVXwTd “Lucas didn’t throw enough strikes as a freshman,” LaCour said. “Jack did throw many strikes, but Jack’s stuff as a pitcher was steady progress through the years. He didn’t come in as a freshman with the stuff Bryce has. Bryce is also a pure hitter.” Yes, Rainer could still end up being a better hitter than pitcher if you believe his coaches. It’s going to be the same situation Flaherty faced early in his high school days when he was a third baseman and pitcher and people wondered what skill he’d be better at. Well, I don’t know if you can be anymore impressive for a freshman pitching in D1 playoff opener than Bryce Rainer. pic.twitter.com/usNtJUgsoR “I’m not quite sure what he’s going to be,” LaCour said. Said Rainer: “I say I like both.” Pitching coach Joe Guntz marvels at Rainer’s abilities. “He’s special,” Guntz said. “He’s the best freshman I’ve seen at this level.” Freshman Bryce Rainer gave up a two-out double to Mickey Easter, then came back with this nasty pitch. End of one, Harvard-Westlake 1, Arcadia 0. pic.twitter.com/B5KZOh5z4l Catcher Jakob Galloway said Rainer’s command was his best this season as far as accuracy with his pitches. “Our team came out and hit really well today,” said Rainer, who’s committed to UCLA. The No. 2-seeded Wolverines (26-4) scored six runs in the fourth inning to open a 7-0 lead. Two runs came home on wild pitches. Alex Shane had an RBI single, Andrew Citron contributed a two-run double and George Cooper added an RBI single. Bennett Markinson and Jordan Kang each finished with three hits. Harvard-Westlake will face Cypress in the quarterfinals. JSerra 4, Capistrano Valley 0: The top-seeded Lions got a combined no-hitter in their Division 1 opener. Gage Jump struck out 13 in six innings. Orange Lutheran 5, Mira Costa 1: Mikey Romero went three for three to help the Lancers advance to a quarterfinal game against Bishop Amat. Ayla 3, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 2: Jacob Badawi hit a leadoff home run. He and Ty Borgogno finished with two hits each. Jack Gurevitch went three for three for Notre Dame. Cypress 4, King 2: Neil Jansen hit a two-run home run in the sixth to lead Cypress. Braden Genera struck out seven and walked none in six innings. Corona 4, Huntington Beach 3: Freshman Josh Springer had two hits and two RBIs, and freshman Ethan Schiefelbein struck out 14 in six innings for Corona. High School Sports Vista Murrieta wins the Southern Section Division 5 golf crown. Jillian Kelly fans 12 in El Camino Real’s City softball playoff victory over Legacy. June 7, 2021 Bishop Amat 8, La Mirada 2: Tyler White contributed two hits and Jake Hernandez, Adrian Verduzco and Jose Marquez each had two RBIs to lead Bishop Amat. Yucaipa 9, Damien 7: Aiden Richert had three RBIs for Yucaipa and Carter Herrera struck out six in 4 1/3 innings. Sierra Canyon 10, Gahr 1: Jackson Slipock hit a three-run home run and Jaden Noot had three hits. Sierra Canyon set up a huge Division 2 pitching showdown for Friday matching Noot against Trabuco Hills’ Mason Molina at Trabuco Hills. Thousand Oaks 6, Mission Viejo 2: Dylan Jackson and Max Muncy hit home runs for Thousand Oaks, seeded No. 1 in Division 2. Trabuco Hills 16, Quartz Hill 4: Mason Molina hit two home runs and finished with six RBIs. Fountain Valley 3, Chino Hills 2: Blake Wentz came through with two innings of shutout relief. Palos Verdes 6, Sonora 3: Jamie Robertson had a two-run single for Palos Verdes. Camarillo 6, Corona del Mar 3: Matt Lopez finished with three hits and JT Schardt had two hits and two RBIs to lead the Scorpions. Brian Uribe allowed one run in five innings. Los Alamitos 2, El Dorado 1: The Griffins advanced. Royal 11, Montebello 3: Troy May blasted a three-run home run. Saugus 3, Redlands East Valley 1: Connor Bates struck out two and walked none in a complete game. Michael DeSantiago had two hits and two RBIs. Hart 5, Cerritos 2: Freshman Brayden Jefferis hit a two-run home run and Matt Quintanar had three hits for Hart, seeded No. 1 in Division 3. Calabasas 4, Lakewood 1: Chase Call had three hits for the Coyotes, who will play Hart on Friday. El Camino Real 9, Sylmar 1: Josh Wood struck out seven in six innings and Josh Klein had three hits for El Camino Real in a City Section Open Division playoff opener. The Conquistadores will play Roosevelt in the quarterfinals. Yorba Linda 2, Alemany 1: Yorba Linda held on and will play Camarillo in a Division 2 quarterfinal. High School Sports High school softball: City playoff results and updated pairings June 7, 2021 Norco 15, Los Alamitos 1: Mya Perez had five hits for the 27-1 Cougars, who hit four home runs. Alyssa Hovermale hit two home runs. Villa Park 3, Downey 0: Sydney Somerndike struck out six and allowed one hit. Esperanza 5, Murrieta Mesa 2: The Aztecs pulled out the 11-inning win on a walk-off three-run home run from Hannah Coor. Eastvale Roosevelt 5, Garden Grove Pacifica 2: It took nine innings before Roosevelt prevailed. Westlake 13, Grand Terrace 0: Kylie Chung struck out 14 in six innings. Loyola 9, Foothill 7: In the first Southern Section Division 1 championship lacrosse game, the Cubs came away victorious behind Matteo Silvestri, who scored four goals. Aidan Lee added three goals and Owen Gaffney two. 𝐂𝐈𝐅 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒! 🏆No. 1-ranked @LoyolaLX (20-1) makes history as the first 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 winners of the @CIFSS Division I Lacrosse Championship! #LoyolaLax | #GoCubs | #C4L pic.twitter.com/agHdPsjjkh St. Francis 15, Culver City 8: The Golden Knights won the Division 2 championship. 🎉🏆CONGRATULATIONS TO ST. FRANCIS!! Your 2021 CIF-SS FORD Division 2 Boys Lacrosse Champions!!! 🥍👏🏼 @AthleticsSFHS pic.twitter.com/pT6FwNcLx7

High school softball: City and Southern Section playoff results and updated pairings

https://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/story/2021-06-08/high-school-softball-city-southern-section-playoff-results-pairings-tuesday

CITY SOFTBALL OPEN DIVISION Quarterfinals, Monday unless noted San Pedro 4, Los Angeles Marshall 2 Granada Hills 13, Granada Hills Kennedy 6 (Tuesday) Carson 5, Birmingham 0 El Camino Real 11, Legacy 0 Semifinals, June 15, 3 p.m. #5 Granada Hills at #1 San Pedro #3 Carson at #2 El Camino Real NOTES: Championship, June 19, 12 p.m. DIVISION I Quarterfinals, Tuesday Chavez 10, Harbor Teacher 0 Venice 9, Sun Valley Poly 5 San Fernando 6, Wilmington Banning 5 Garfield 9, Los Angeles Roosevelt 4 Semifinals, June 15, 3 p.m. #5 Venice at #1 Chavez #7 Garfield at #3 San Fernando NOTES: Championship, June 18, 3 p.m. DIVISION II Quarterfinals, Tuesday unless noted Gardena 3, Fairfax 1 Bravo 20, South East 0 Palisades 19, Franklin 0 #10 Arleta at #2 South Gate, Thursday, 1:30 p.m. Semifinals, June 15, 3 p.m. #9 Gardena at #4 Bravo #3 Palisades vs. #2 South Gate/#10 Arleta winner NOTES: Championship, June 17, 3 p.m. DIVISION III Quarterfinals, Tuesday Smidt Tech 11, Bright Star 6 Belmont 11, Contreras 4 Mendez 20, Maywood CES 2 Canoga Park 17, Torres 2 Semifinals, June 15, 3 p.m. #5 Belmont at #1 Smidt Tech #7 Canoga Park at #3 Mendez NOTES: Championship, June 17, 3 p.m. SOUTHERN SECTION SOFTBALL DIVISION 1 Quarterfinals, Tuesday Norco 15, Los Alamitos 1 Esperanza 5, Murrieta Mesa 2 (11) Eastvale Roosevelt 5, Garden Grove Pacifica 2 (9) Chino Hills 7, Mater Dei 3 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. #4 Esperanza at #1 Norco Chino Hills at Eastvale Roosevelt DIVISION 2 Quarterfinals, Tuesday unless noted Camarillo 5, Riverside Poly 0 Upland 6, San Dimas 0 (Monday) Westlake 13, Grand Terrace 0 Villa Park 3, Downey 0 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. unless noted #1 Camarillo vs. #4 Upland at Green Belt Park (Upland), 10 a.m. #3 Westlake at #2 Villa Park DIVISION 3 Quarterfinals, Tuesday Cerritos 4, Whittier Christian 3 Sultana 12, Culver City 8 Beckman 5, Arcadia 0 Redondo 7, Don Lugo 5 Semifinals, Thursday Sultana at Cerritos Redondo at Beckman Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. Sultana at Cerritos Redondo at Beckman DIVISION 4 Quarterfinals, Tuesday Hemet 14, Summit 6 Segerstrom 5, Sunny Hills 2 (8) Oxnard 8, Arlington 0 Rosary 5, Citrus Valley 1 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. #4 Segerstrom at Hemet Oxnard at #2 Rosary DIVISION 5 Quarterfinals, Tuesday Western Christian 3, Colton 0 Heritage Christian 2, Santa Clara 1 (9) San Marcos 17, University Prep 3 Ocean View 3, Capistrano Valley 1 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. unless noted #4 Heritage Christian vs. #1 Western Christian at Green Belt Park (Upland), 10 a.m. San Marcos at Ocean View DIVISION 6 Quarterfinals, Tuesday St. Bonaventure 9, Lancaster 0 Alhambra 2, Arroyo 1 Lompoc 15, Rio Hondo Prep 1 Orange Vista 4, Azusa 2 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. unless noted Alhambra at #1 St. Bonaventure #3 Lompoc at #2 Orange Vista, Friday, 11 a.m. DIVISION 7 Quarterfinals, Tuesday St. Monica 16, Southlands Christian 8 Alverno 8, Glenn 4 Lakeside 7, Viewpoint 6 (10) Burbank Providence 17, Cobalt 6 Semifinals, Thursday, 3:15 p.m. St. Monica at Alverno #3 Lakeside at #2 Burbank Providence NOTES: Championships, June 18-19 at Barber Park (Irvine).

Rural Arizona residents wait as wildfire spreads uncontained

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/rural-arizona-residents-wait-as-wildfire-spreads-uncontained

Firefighters in Arizona were fighting Tuesday to gain a foothold against a massive wildfire, one of two that have forced thousands of evacuations in rural towns and closed almost every major highway out of the area. The Telegraph fire, straddling two counties, has burned 112 square miles and is at 0% containment. The blaze was first reported Friday south of Superior in Pinal County, about 60 miles east of Phoenix. Residents in neighboring Gila County, which includes Globe, Miami and smaller communities, have been in various stages of the evacuation process. The town of Miami is among those under an evacuation order. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers confirmed that a family home he owns in the woods southeast of the Globe-Miami area burned down overnight. He toured the gutted property Tuesday. The home was a family retreat, said Andrew Wilder, a spokesman for House Republicans. Bowers, who lives in Mesa, would go there weekly and often do his artwork. At least 2,500 homes in Gila County have been evacuated, said Carl Melford, the county emergency manager. He estimated that there are twice as many households who are in “set” mode with bags packed just in case. “Over the past three years, we’ve had some pretty extreme fire seasons,” said Melford, who has bags at his front door. “We’ve become very familiar with the process, with what it takes to evacuate a community. But this is the largest evacuation to date.” Becky Stephenson, 37, whose Globe home sits on a hill near the U.S. Highway 60, is feet away from a zone under set status. Still, she decided to have essentials ready to go, including her pet parrot, Buddy, and his travel cage. Watching flames climb trees Monday night from her home as the fire made its way into the Pinal Mountains and create an eerie orange glow was surreal, Stephenson said. “Honestly, it just makes me feel like I can’t wait till they get it under control and I can go out and start helping them revegetate,” said Stephenson, who is a plant biologist. “It’s just really sad to think about all of the torched plants and all of animals that lost their habitat during breeding season.” Meanwhile, Superior residents remain in set mode. But about 400 people in nearby Top-Of-The-World have been evacuated, said Lauren Reimer, a Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman. Officials with the American Red Cross say 90 residents in total stayed Monday at shelters in Globe and Mesa. Nearly 750 firefighters are working on the blaze, which gained momentum in the last few days thanks to gusty winds and low humidity. The top-tier Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team is conducting some controlled fires and dropping flame retardant by air in other areas. Dean McAlister, a spokesman for the fire’s incident command center, said crews were having success as of Tuesday afternoon holding the fire at bay in some places. They are closely monitoring a constructed fire line on the east side of the blaze. “The intent is to try to create a catcher’s mitt to trap the fire as it continues to move east, and our intent is to try to stop the fire before it gets any further into the Globe area,” McAlister said. The fire was human-caused, fire officials said, but they have not shared further details. Several miles east of the wildfire, the smaller Mescal fire was 23% contained Tuesday. Fire officials lifted evacuation orders for residents of the community of San Carlos and in the areas of Soda Canyon and Coyote Flats. But the community of East El Capitan was still on mandatory evacuation. The fire has burned nearly 105 square miles — mostly desert brush, oak and grass. It was first reported June 2 southeast of Globe. The cause is still under investigation. Meanwhile, in northern Arizona, a much smaller wildfire closed a stretch of U.S. Highway 180 on Tuesday. The fire, enveloping two square miles, was reported Monday 23 miles northwest of Flagstaff. The cause is unknown. Associated Press writers Bob Christie and Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Rams' DeSean Jackson can see how his connection with Matthew Stafford will be the bomb

https://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/story/2021-06-08/day-1-of-rams-minicamp

It’s not that complicated, according to DeSean Jackson. During offseason workouts, the new Rams receiver has worked to get a feel for new quarterback Matthew Stafford. Jackson has been one of the NFL’s top deep-ball threats since he entered the league in 2008. Stafford, a 13th-year pro, has one of the league’s strongest arms. Jackson said Tuesday that establishing a connection and timing ultimately comes down to communicating and understanding what each player does best. Instructions for both apparently are simple. “You continue to be great and just throw the ball, and I’m going to continue to be great and just run past everybody and use my speed,” Jackson said, chuckling, during a videoconference with reporters. “I think that’s the good niche about us, we’re just going to be dialed in and just continuously just learn the plays — and once the season starts, we’ll be in rare … form.” Jackson, 34, is regarded as the deep threat who can help coach Sean McVay return the Rams offense to its high-powered form of the 2018 season, when the Rams advanced to the Super Bowl. Rams Cam Akers did not have the benefit of a normal offseason because of restrictions caused by the pandemic, but the rookie still was able to establish himself as the Rams’ lead running back. June 7, 2021 The offense was devoid of a deep threat last season, when the Rams lost in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. In January, general manager Les Snead traded quarterback Jared Goff and two first-round draft picks to the Detroit Lions for Stafford. Then he signed Jackson, the former Long Beach Poly High star who played in a McVay-designed offense in Washington during the 2014 to 2016 seasons. Jackson said McVay was smart when he was the offensive coordinator in Washington, and that he has only grown smarter since. The Rams offense is similar in many ways to the one Jackson executed in Washington — but also different. “He’s always adding twists and schemes into his offense to keep the defenses off guard,” Jackson said of McVay. “So I’m still diving into it and trying to gather all the information and still learn, but it’s been a great process so far working with the new guys on the team and just having a lot of fun doing it.” After his stint in Washington, Jackson played two seasons for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and two injury-plagued seasons for the Philadelphia Eagles before the Rams signed him to a one-year contract that includes $2.75 million in guarantees, according to overthecap.com. Rams Punter Johnny Hekker always had been a huge asset to the Rams, but his salary is getting higher and he had a down season in 2020, so he is competing to keep his job. June 4, 2021 Some of the play-call verbiage has changed since he last coached Jackson, but McVay said the receiver’s transition has been smooth. “He’s so smart,” McVay said, “he picks things up quickly.” Jackson said he has enjoyed sharing information with and learning from Rams veterans Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp, and mentoring young receivers such as Van Jefferson and rookie Tutu Atwell. The receivers, along with tight end Tyler Higbee and running back Cam Akers and others, should provide Stafford with multiple weapons. “It’s going to be definitely a scary group for defenses and defenders,” Jackson said, “because Sean McVay, one thing about it, he’s going to figure out how to get people open. “So we just look forward to having a lot of fun doing it.” Sports Despite evidence of cognitive issues, ex-NFL safety Toi Cook was denied compensation without explanation. Did a banned practice have something to do with it? June 7, 2021 Jackson, a three-time Pro Bowl selection, has amassed 612 catches, 56 for touchdowns, while averaging 17.4 yards per catch. He acknowledged that statistics and accolades were important to his younger self, but after watching teams such as the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers annually contend and win titles with proven systems, he wants a championship. “I’ve accomplished a lot of great things in my career,” he said, “but for me I haven’t held up that trophy.” Jackson was limited to eight games the last two seasons because of abdominal, hamstring and ankle injuries. He appeared to be practicing without limitations Tuesday and said he would spend time between the end of minicamp Thursday and the start of training camp in late July preparing his body for what will be the NFL’s first 17-game season. “I know what I need to do to get right,” he said.

COVID prolonged foster care stays for thousands, according to analysis

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/covid-prolonged-foster-care-stays-for-thousands

Leroy Pascubillo missed his daughter’s first step, her first word and countless other milestones. After being born addicted to heroin, she’d been placed with a foster family, and he counted the days between their visits as he tried to regain custody. But because of the pandemic, the visits dwindled and went virtual, and all he could do was watch his daughter — too young to engage via computer — try to crawl through the screen. They’re among thousands of families nationwide whose reunifications have been snarled in the foster care system as courts delayed cases, went virtual or temporarily shut down, according to an Associated Press analysis of child welfare data from 34 states. The decrease in children leaving foster care means families are lingering longer in a system intended to be temporary, as critical services were shuttered or limited. Vulnerable families are suffering long-term and perhaps irreversible damage, experts say, which could leave parents with weakened bonds with their children. The AP’s analysis found at least 8,700 fewer reunifications during the early months of the pandemic compared with the March-to-December period the year before — a decrease of 16%. Adoptions, too, dropped — by 23%. Overall, at least 22,600 fewer children left foster care compared with 2019. “Everybody needed extra help, and nobody was getting extra help,” said Shawn Powell, a Parents for Parents advocacy program coordinator in King County, Wash. California A long-simmering crisis of mental health struggles among students has been magnified by the pandemic, and most teachers are not adequately prepared to deal with it as campuses reopen. May 31, 2021 For months, King County, like many parts of the country, suspended nearly all hearings except emergency orders, which led to prioritizing child removals over family reunifications. Adoptions slowed. Services needed for reunification — psychiatric evaluations, drug testing, counseling, and public transportation to access these services — also were limited. During the period examined in the AP’s analysis, the total foster care population dropped 2% overall — likely a result of the significant decrease in child abuse and neglect reports, where the process to remove a child from a home typically begins. Those in foster care are disproportionately children of color and from poor families, national data show. Those groups tend to have more contact with social service agencies that are mandated to report potential abuse and neglect, which means the pandemic has amplified not just the challenges of poor parenting but of parenting while poor. “The systemic problems around racism and poverty in COVID and how people are treated in the child welfare system may be compounding,” said Sharon Vandivere of the group Child Trends, who noted that longer stays in foster care are inherently traumatic and make reunifications less likely. For D.Y., a Black teenager at a Seattle-area group home, the pandemic has magnified the isolation of being in the care of child protective services. He’s been out of his mother’s custody since 2016, after a report found she physically disciplined her children. They had visits in the years following; lawyers expected his mom would regain custody in fall 2020. But because of COVID-19 protocols and staffing shortages, already-limited privileges at the group home were scaled back. In-person visits ended. Group activities all but disappeared. Inside, D.Y. resented wearing a mask and washing his hands constantly. With each exposure scare, he and others had to quarantine. When he resumed in-person school, he hoped officials would find it safe to see his mom again, too — but that didn’t happen for months. His sister — who was placed with relatives and whose case was further along at the pandemic’s start — was returned home to their mom last summer. D.Y. wants the same: to taste his mom’s cooking, to make eggs in his own kitchen, to sit on the couch with his family without masks. California If LAUSD — and all other California districts — do not fully reopen, they would lose state funding under rules already set to take effect. May 24, 2021 “I still want her to baby me,” the 13-year-old said of his mother, who declined to comment for this story while the cases of D.Y. and her third child remain active. “I can tell she has high faith of when I’ll come home. I don’t know if it’s going to happen.” The AP is not naming D.Y., instead referring to him by the initials used in his lawsuit against the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families. The lawsuit accuses the state of providing inadequate care as D.Y. was bounced through 50 placements before the pandemic, some days housing him in a motel or the agency’s office building. The state declined to comment on his case and lawsuit. Frank Ordway, chief of staff at Washington’s child welfare agency, blamed court-system closures for the drop in reunifications and implored those that haven’t fully reopened to prioritize cases like D.Y.’s. “When those systems aren’t working, those families and those children are left in limbo,” Ordway said. Illinois was the only state that saw an increase in foster care exits. Others in AP’s analysis acknowledged drops but said each case has unique circumstances beneath the numbers. Pascubillo, now 51, had used drugs over the course of four decades, but said he started working toward sobriety after his daughter’s birth, in February 2019. The court put him in the only Seattle-area rehab center that allows children to stay on site with their fathers. He had a few in-person visits with his daughter weekly and believed that if he got through the initial stages, she could join him in March 2020 while he completed treatment. The pandemic upended that plan. “You start building that relationship, and then it’s taken away,” he said. All the more painful was that he knew his daughter, now 2, had no contact with her mother. Pascubillo said she hasn’t participated in the custody case; she couldn’t be reached by the AP. Once courts began to hear existing cases again, Pascubillo was able to reunite with his daughter, complete rehab and land a Seattle apartment with the help of state and nonprofit services. He wants to work as an advocate to help fathers find their way back to their kids. He still weeps over the time he’s lost. “I figured she would have forgotten me. But as soon as I looked at her and sang ‘baby, baby, baby,’ she started kicking like she was in the womb,” Pascubillo said. “We have this bond.”

L.A. County Sheriff's deputy charged with assault, evidence tampering

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/la-sheriffs-deputy-charged-with-assault-evidence-tampering

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with assault and evidence tampering stemming from an arrest she made in Lancaster two years ago, prosecutors said. Nicole Bell, 27, is accused of deleting video footage from a witness’ cellphone after she arrested and allegedly beat Anthony Wilson in the back of her patrol car in July 2019, according to a statement issued by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office on Wednesday. “Tampering or destroying evidence tarnishes law enforcement and creates mistrust among the public,” L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in the statement. Charges of evidence tampering, assault by a peace officer and altering computer data without permission were filed against Bell on June 4, according to the district attorney’s office. It was not immediately clear when Bell’s first court appearance would take place or whether she had retained a defense attorney. Prosecutors did not say what type of call Bell was responding to when the incident occurred. Jail records show Wilson was arrested on suspicion of a felony by deputies from the Lancaster station around 4:30 p.m. on July 30, 2019, and released about two weeks later. The only reason listed for his release was “probation.” The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attempts to contact Wilson were not successful. California Prosecutors have charged a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy with lying in his testimony against two men accused of weapons crimes. May 27, 2021 The incident marks at least the sixth time an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with a crime since March. Late last month, Deputy Kevin Honea was charged with perjury in connection with a 2019 vehicle stop; he is accused of lying about where he found a firearm during a search of a car. The district attorney’s office launched an investigation into Honea after The Times asked questions about his testimony. California Two L.A. County sheriff’s deputies are indicted on charges of lying in a drug and weapons investigation, district attorney’s office says. May 14, 2021 A day earlier, Deputy Daniel Auner was charged with murder and reckless driving stemming from an off-duty car wreck that claimed the life of his passenger last year. Deputies Pedro Guerrero-Gonzalez and Noel Lopez were also charged last month with perjury and filing false reports in connection with a 2018 drug and weapons investigation. When prosecutors learned of the alleged misconduct, they had to dismiss criminal charges filed as a result of that investigation. San Bernardino County prosecutors brought child molestation charges against L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Whitten in March after he was accused of sexually abusing his underage niece, but the charges were not made public until a Times report last month.

Women's pro soccer coming to San Diego in 2022

https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/story/2021-06-08/nwsl-expansion-team-san-diego-jill-ellis-ron-burkle-torero-stadium-wusa-spirit

The San Diego Spirit was part of the Women’s United Soccer Association, averaging nearly 6,000 fans per game at USD’s Torero Stadium and featuring U.S. national team legends Julie Foudy, Joy Fawcett and Shannon Mac Millan. The Spirit began in 2001. The league folded in 2003. Nearly two decades later, women’s professional soccer will try again in San Diego. The National Women’s Soccer League confirmed Tuesday what the Union-Tribune had reported earlier, that a San Diego expansion team will begin play in 2022 at Torero Stadium with plans to move to a more permanent home somewhere in the county no later than 2023. The owner is billionaire businessman Ron Burkle, who initially planned to take an NWSL team to Sacramento as part of his MLS expansion bid that has since collapsed. That will give the league 12 teams as it enters its 10th season in 2022, the existing 10 plus expansion clubs in Los Angeles (Angel City FC) and San Diego. It also gives San Diego an instant regional rival. The club president will be Jill Ellis, the former U.S. women’s national coach from England who was a TV commentator for Spirit broadcasts while coaching at UCLA. The vision, she told the Union-Tribune, is to create an all-female executive and coaching staff — believed to be a first in pro sports history. And that’s president, not coach. “There were some other coaching opportunities in terms of people reaching out, a lot of national team positions open,” said Ellis, 54, who stepped down from the U.S. women’s team in 2019 after winning the World Cup for a second time. “I did explore some of those. This just felt right. Part of it is this desire that I can do more. “Now I get to go hire a female GM and hire a female head coach and provide opportunities for others, and then there’s a ripple effect from there. I just felt that, gosh, I had 30 years on the sideline and it was awesome. But being able to open doors for others, that’s just a really good space to be in — to really help them pursue their dreams and, in doing so, provide role models for the next generation.” Soccer Soccer-wise, Carli Lloyd did not have a happy 2020. However, the year turned out to be one of her best once she reunited with her family from which she was estranged. April 9, 2021 NWSL Commissioner Lisa Baird unveiled a Sacramento expansion franchise in January, saying a formal announcement from the ownership group would follow shortly. It never came, and a month later Sacramento’s MLS hopes were on indefinite hiatus after Burkle, the lead investor, backed out. It was only a matter of time before his NWSL expansion rights were headed elsewhere, and in recent weeks speculation focused on San Diego. It makes sense. Burkle owns a 12-bedroom, 26,674-square-foot home on the cliffs above Black’s Beach that one real estate website estimates is worth $63.9 million. Ellis’ involvement stems from a conversation with Burkle a year ago. “He was looking for some advice,” Ellis said. “He’s really excited about soccer, really intrigued by it, a fan of it. I said, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ … We wanted to be in California, and Ron has a very strong affinity for San Diego. Was I doing cartwheels for San Diego? Sure, because I think it’s an amazing place. It’s got everything. “We believe this is an ideal place for women’s soccer.” Baird, the NWSL commissioner, said in a statement released Tuesday morning: “We’ve always said that growth has to be done thoughtfully and deliberately. That’s exactly what we’ve done here. San Diego NWSL has all the hallmarks of a successful expansion club: a committed ownership group with the resources required to invest in the success of our league and our players, in a community full of soccer players and fans, in a region that has been underrepresented in our league. I can’t wait to watch it all come together.” The announcement encompassed only the basics: an expansion team launching in 2022 with Ellis as the president who ideally will hire an all-female executive staff. Burkle designated business associate and film producer Matt Alvarez “to lead the project on his behalf.” Ellis said she hopes to hire a female head coach (something only one other team currently has) by July 1, declining to confirm reports that Casey Stoney, who recently left Manchester United women’s team, is the lead candidate. The team’s branding — name, colors and mascot — will be revealed over the summer as well. There also are plans for a new stadium and training facility. The stadium would be “world-class” and seat at least 10,000, but Ellis did not provide more details beyond saying “we’re exploring everything.” She said the training facility would have two fields, offices, a locker room, weight room, athletic training area and player’s lounge and theoretically be completed before the players assemble in January ahead of the spring start of the season. “Ron was very clear: The players’ experience has to be top quality,” Ellis said of Burkle, who is part-owner of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. “His facilities with the Penguins are phenomenal. Instead of a (budget) number, it’s making sure we’ve hit and provided everything possible we can to make sure our players feel supported and have an opportunity to be in a high-performance environment. What does that mean in terms of numbers? Whatever it takes to get that done.” The stadium issue may be trickier. The soccer climate in San Diego has changed significantly since the days of the WUSA and the Spirit. There are now three other pro teams — the USL’s Loyal, the NISA’s 1904 FC and the indoor Sockers — and all have made overtures about constructing their own facilities. The Sockers recently broke ground on a 6,000-seat arena in inland Oceanside in an effort to tap into the North County market. In 2017, 1904 FC announced plans to build a $15 million, 10,000-seat modular stadium on that same Oceanside property that houses the 22-field SoCal Sports Complex but has since shelved them. Last summer, the Loyal proposed a $20 million, 15,000-seat venue adjacent to the Sports Arena in the Midway District, but the city chose an alternative development bid that does not include a stadium. There’s also the 35,000-seat football stadium that San Diego State is building in Mission Valley to replace SDCCU Stadium and was designed to meet international soccer specifications. It is scheduled to open in August 2022. Asked if that’s too big for a league that had an average announced attendance of 7,337 in its last pre-pandemic season and has never had a crowd over 25,218, Ellis said: “I’ve seen stadiums filled with 50,000 for women’s soccer games. I don’t think we should think small as a sport — 35,000, no, I don’t think that’s too big. If you can build a phenomenal product and build excitement and just knowing the passion in the area for soccer and women’s soccer, we want it big. I’m not going to put a number on the size of the stadium.” Another issue: Do you locate in San Diego city like the Loyal or dust off the 1904 FC blueprints and head north into an untapped but unproven market? And if traffic patterns return to their pre-pandemic levels, will people drive that far for games? “We want to be in a position where we’re going to be an exciting enough team and strong enough brand that people are either going to make the drive down or the drive up,” said Ellis, who is in the process of moving from Florida to San Diego. “We are looking at various options. You’ve got the stadium aspect and you’ve got the training center. Do you put them in different places? Do you put them in the same place? Where do you want your players to live?” Torero Stadium, Ellis said, is a temporary solution for part or all of the 2022 season. It will be a crowded venue with teams fighting for coveted weekend dates. In the spring, the NWSL will share the 6,000-seat facility with the Loyal and San Diego Legion, a pro rugby team. Starting in August, USD’s football and soccer teams have priority for their seasons. Sports Major League Soccer will play its midseason all-star game at Banc of California in August after being forced to postpone the match last summer because of COVID-19. June 7, 2021 Six of the current 10 NWSL teams partner with men’s franchises, saving overhead and often sharing a home venue. The Loyal has talked about adding a women’s pro team as part of its long-range strategy and, according to one source, reached out to the NWSL about collaborating. Burkle and Ellis, though, opted to go it alone. “We want to focus on ourselves at this point,” Ellis said, “and we have the resources to commit with the support and backing of an ownership that has a vision. A big part of Ron’s vision was to be a female-run organization. So we wanted to make it first about ourselves. This is going to be groundbreaking in terms of what we’re creating here. “We want to have an organization that sets the bar not only here but around the world.” Founded: 2013 Teams: 10, expanding to 12 in 2022 with Los Angeles (Angel City FC) and San Diego Commissioner: Lisa Baird, former chief marketing officer of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Reigning champion: North Carolina Courage won the last two full seasons, in 2018 and 2019. Season: 24 games per team between April and November, with the top six advancing to the playoffs. Salary cap: $682,500 in 2021, with individual salaries ranging from $20,000 and $52,500. TV: Most games are on streaming services like Paramount+ and Twitch. Fourteen regular-season games in 2021 are on CBS Sports Network and two on CBS. Stadiums: Range from 5,000 to 25,500. Average attendance in 2019 was 7,337. Nine of the 10 largest all-time crowds have been at Portland’s Providence Park.

U.S. increasingly unlikely to meet Biden's July 4 vaccination goal

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/us-unlikely-biden-july-4-vaccination-goal

For months, President Biden has laid out goal after goal for taming the COVID-19 pandemic and then exceeded his own benchmarks. Now, though, the U.S. is unlikely to meet his target to have 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4. The White House has launched a month-long blitz to combat vaccine hesitancy and a lack of urgency to get shots, particularly in the South and Midwest, but it is increasingly resigned to missing the president’s vaccination target. The administration insists that even if the goal isn’t reached, it will have little effect on the overall U.S. recovery, which is already ahead of where Biden said it would be months ago. About 15.5 million unvaccinated adults need to receive at least one dose in the next four weeks for Biden to meet his goal. But the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. has dropped below 400,000 people a day — down from a high of nearly 2 million a day two months ago. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told reporters at a briefing Tuesday that he still hopes the goal will be met “and if we don’t, we’re going to continue to keep pushing.” So far, 14 states have reached 70% coverage among adults, with about a dozen more on pace to reach the milestone by July 4. But the state-to-state variation is stark. Fauci said the administration is “pleading” with states, particularly those with low vaccination rates, to step up their efforts in the coming months, though some of the states trailing behind are hardly sharing the urgency. California Alameda, Napa, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties have moved into the yellow tier as part of California’s last reopening update. June 8, 2021 On a conference call Tuesday, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients delivered an impassioned call for governors to join the administration in “pulling out all the stops” on vaccinations this month. “We need your leadership on the ground — which is where it matters the most — more than ever,” he said. In Mississippi, which trails the nation with only about 34% of its population vaccinated, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has called Biden’s goal “arbitrary, to say the least.” The vaccination rate in the state has dropped off so sharply that it would take the better part of a year for the state to reach the 70% target. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Reeves said he encouraged residents to get vaccinated, but that the more important marker was the decline in cases in the state. That sentiment makes winning over people like University of Mississippi student Mary Crane all the more important to Biden meeting his goal. She hasn’t felt much urgency to get the COVID-19 vaccine because she’s already had the virus, and the family she’s living with during the summer break has been vaccinated. “Initially, it was to wait on everyone else to get it and not take a vaccine,” she said, explaining why she hasn’t been vaccinated. “But now that it’s available, there’s really not a reason I haven’t gotten it, other than I just haven’t gotten it.” Travel & Experiences Many countries move from “do not travel” to “reconsider.” June 8, 2021 Crane, 20, said she’s seen classmates who were eager to get the vaccine right away — there was a trend when the vaccine first came out of posting vaccination cards on social media sites like Instagram. But now that the vaccine has been available for a few months, Crane said she sees fewer young people talking about it. “Everything’s pretty much back to normal now,” she said. Fauci on Tuesday emphasized that increased vaccination was essential to stamping out potentially dangerous variants, including the so-called Delta variant first identified in India that is now the dominant strain in the United Kingdom and is growing in the U.S. Vaccines have proven less effective against that variant when people are not fully immunized, and evidence points to it being more transmissible and more deadly. In an attempt to drive up the vaccination rate, the White House has worked to encourage an array of incentives for people to get shots — from paid time off to the chance to win $1 million. It’s partnered with community groups, businesses and health providers to make it easier than ever to get a shot. Those efforts have helped sustain some of the interest, but the trends point to Biden missing the target by several percentage points. In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine created a lottery offering $1 million prizes for vaccinated adults and full-ride college scholarships for children. Ohio’s lottery kicked off a wave of similar incentive lotteries nationally. DeWine’s May 12 announcement of the state’s Vax-a-Million program had the desired effect, leading to a 43% boost in state vaccination numbers over the previous week. But the effect was short-lived, with vaccinations falling again the following week. California Through distance learning Black parents were able to see how their children were treated by their peers and teachers and saw a system that did not benefit them, the report said. June 8, 2021 For some, the chance of winning $1 million isn’t enough to overcome skepticism about the need for the vaccine. Joanna Lawrence of Bethel in southwestern Ohio says the COVID-19 survivability rate is so high, and the experiences of people she knows who took the vaccine are so bad, that she sees no need to risk a shot for herself. She made it through her own bout of the coronavirus in August. “My life is not worth money,” said Lawrence, 51, who farms and works in commercial real estate. “I can always get more money if I need to. I cannot get another life.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to make a prediction on whether the goal would be met but said the administration was using “ every tool at our disposal to get there.” “Regardless of where we are on July 4th, we’re not shutting down shop,” she said. “On July 5th, we’re going to continue to press to vaccinate more people across the country.” Husband and wife Keila Moore 41, and Willie Moore, 42, of Pearl, Miss., have disagreed on whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Willie said he knew he wanted to get it because he has high blood pressure and other preexisting conditions and is a front-line worker. “As soon as I had the chance to get it, I took it,” said Willie, who was vaccinated in February. But Keila, who doesn’t have preexisting conditions and works from home, has chosen not to be vaccinated. After her husband was vaccinated, she tested positive for the virus. Keila said it was a mild case but that it was still a scary experience. She said she’s feeling more open to getting the vaccine and is considering getting it this fall, if reports of side effects continue to be minimal. “I’m just still weighing the options and the time frame. I’m a little bit more confident in it now,” Keila said. “Because the time is going by and I’m not really seeing any side effects that are too worrisome.”

Explainer: The differences between the two voting rights bills

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/explainer-the-differences-between-the-two-voting-rights-bills

The Democratic Party’s hopes of passing a massive overhaul of elections may have suffered a fatal blow when West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III became the first member of the party to say he wouldn’t support it, ensuring the bill, known as HR 1, would not pass the Senate. Manchin, however, does favor an update to the Voting Rights Act known as HR 4, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after the late congressman and civil rights leader. HR 1 is an ambitious proposal that would transform many aspects of elections and campaigns across the country, including how they’re financed. Written in 2017, when Democrats were out of power, it was then referred to as a messaging bill — a proposal for candidates to tout on the campaign trail and not crafted specifically to garner enough votes to pass into law at that time. In contrast, the John Lewis Act is a comparatively narrow bill designed to fix a specific problem, in this case, addressing a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that made it harder for the federal government to block racially discriminatory voting laws and redistricting proposals. Democrats will struggle to get either bill through Congress, as they look for a way to combat the Republican-led efforts to restrict voting in state legislatures around the country. Here’s a look at the differences between the bills: World & Nation A key Democratic senator says he won’t vote for the largest overhaul of U.S. election law in at least a generation. June 6, 2021 What’s in the Bills? HR 1’s number shows its importance to Democrats. Also known as the For the People Act, it became HR 1 because it was the first bill on the House floor after Democrats retook the chamber in the 2018 election. (The Senate version is known as S 1.) The bill does a little about a lot of topics. It changes the way people vote by automatically registering every eligible citizen, guaranteeing mail and early in-person voting options in every state and in effect neutering voter identification laws. The legislation would also establish bipartisan commissions to draw the lines for legislative districts and require redistricting not favor either major party. The provision has the potential to create scores of newly competitive districts and, supporters say, would help counter the partisan polarization in the House. The bill would provide $6 in public money to campaigns for every $1 in small-dollar donations they raise. Finally, it’d require groups currently shielded from disclosing their donors to identify their funders. The last provision targets a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, known as the Citizens United decision, that lets “dark money” groups hide their contributors even while getting involved in elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act was written in reaction to a different Supreme Court decision. It tries to essentially reverse the 2013 Shelby County case, in which the court’s conservative majority threw out the formula the federal government used to determine which states had such a history of racial discrimination in elections and were, under the Voting Right Act, required to have Justice Department approval before implementing new voting laws or redrawing legislative districts. HR 4 would put in place an updated formula designed to meet the court’s Shelby County test. That would once again require about a dozen mostly Southern states to get approval from the Justice Department’s civil rights division before making those changes. The bill would also make it easier for the department to send election observers and for courts to block election law changes for violating the constitutional protections guaranteeing voting rights for all U.S. citizens. And, of course, some of the elements from HR 1 could always be added in if the John Lewis Act becomes Democrats’ primary vehicle for an election overhaul. Opinion Biden calls a Texas bill part of an ‘assault on democracy’ June 2, 2021 How Would the Bills Affect the New State GOP Laws to Restrict Voting? The Democrats’ voting push isn’t happening in a vacuum. Republican-controlled states are passing new voting restrictions at a remarkable clip — the Brennan Center for Justice, a group that supports both HR 1 and HR 4, tallied up 14 states that have passed 22 laws putting new restrictions on when and how Americans vote. The GOP push has been fueled by former President Trump’s lies that he lost the election due to fraud. HR 1 could neutralize some of these laws because it creates national standards for voting access. For example, new laws in Arizona and Florida that potentially remove from people from the states’ mail voting lists could be moot, because all voters would have a right to cast ballots by mail. But the John Lewis Act would have no impact. The Justice Department would only be required to approve new laws, not ones that passed before the bill was approved. What’s more, the bill’s “preclearance” provision would only affect about a dozen states and some additional counties or cities that meet its standard. Manchin has talked about expanding preclearance nationwide, but that could run into problems with the Supreme Court. Additionally, future laws could only be blocked under the bill’s new legal formula if they were deemed to be racially discriminatory by making it harder for specific racial groups to vote. Laws that present new hurdles for other groups — such as no longer accepting student IDs as voting identification, as Montana has done — could still be allowed. Most importantly, neither bill would stop a trend of Republicans making it easier for partisan political officials to interfere in elections. In Georgia, for example, the GOP-controlled state Legislature now will appoint most members of a board that can replace local election officials. In Texas, Republicans are considering legislation that would make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. Politics A restrictive voting bill in Texas failed to pass Sunday after a dramatic Democratic walkout from the House chamber before a midnight deadline. May 31, 2021 What Are the Chances of Either Bill Passing? Not good. Democrats control the House and Senate, but narrowly. HR 1 has passed the House but is stuck in the Senate, where Manchin’s opposition means the bill doesn’t even get a majority and is nowhere near the 60 votes it needs to break a filibuster and pass. Currently, no Republican backs the bill. The John Lewis Act hasn’t even been introduced in this Congress because of a lengthy fact-gathering and hearing process required to meet the Supreme Court’s new standard. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) in a letter to colleagues Tuesday predicted the bill won’t be introduced until the fall. Prior updates to the Voting Rights Act passed the Senate unanimously — 98-0 as recently as 2006 — but earlier versions of HR 4 have only drawn one Republican sponsor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. That’s a testament to how partisan even the basic act of voting has become, a phenomenon that predates Trump. Indeed, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, on Tuesday criticized the John Lewis Act. “It’s against the law to discriminate in voting on the basis of race already, and so I think it’s unnecessary,” McConnell said. Time is not on the side of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.), said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, a conservative group that opposes both bills. “Every day we inch closer to 2022, the harder it is for Schumer to get this to the finish line.” What is Manchin’s Plan? It’s unclear. He’s the former West Virginia secretary of state and warns that any voting reform that’s too partisan will simply increase distrust in elections. On the other hand, he says there needs to be some new election overhaul to protect voting rights. One of those principles may have to give.

Spain opens borders to tourists and cruise ships

https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2021-06-08/spain-opens-borders-to-tourists-cruise-ships

Spain jump-started its summer tourism season Monday by welcoming vaccinated visitors from most countries as well as European tourists who can prove they are not infected with coronavirus. It also reopened its ports to cruise ships. The move opened borders for the first tourists from the United States and other countries outside the European Union since those travelers were banned in March last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit global travel. Matthew Eisenberg, a 22-year-old student, excitedly stepped out of Madrid’s airport, ready to enjoy the Spanish capital along with two more American friends. “We came to Spain the first day we could, because we are very excited to travel here,” Eisenberg said, showing a certificate for the two Moderna vaccine jabs he received in February and March. But Spain is still banning nonessential travelers from Brazil, India and South Africa, where virus variants have been been a major source of concern. Visitors need proof they were fully vaccinated at least 14 days before the trip or that they overcame a COVID-19 infection in the last six months. The certificates can be in Spanish, English, French or German — or their equivalent translations in Spanish, the government order said. Travel & Experiences Many countries move from “do not travel” to “reconsider.” June 8, 2021 The vaccines accepted are those approved by Europe’s drug regulator — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — as well as two Chinese vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization, Sinopharm and Sinovac. The same documents will be valid for visitors from the European Union until the bloc fully rolls out its “Digital Green Certificate” as expected on July 1. Spain on Monday joined seven other EU countries already implementing the program. Alfredo González, an official in charge of digital health and innovation at Spain’s Health Ministry, said the certificate is not a passport but a document that eases mobility across Europe. “Without the certificate, travel will be possible, but the entry in every country will be slower and controls such as quarantines could apply,” said González, adding that all airports had established fast-track channels with technology able to confirm the digital certificates issued by other EU countries. Beginning Monday, nonvaccinated travelers from the EU’s 27 countries could also enter Spain with the negative results of recent coronavirus antigen tests, which are cheaper and faster than PCR tests. The Spanish government hopes to welcome 14.5 million to 15.5 million visitors between July and September. That’s about 40% of the tourists in the same period of 2019 but twice as many as last summer, when only EU visitors could enter Spain. Tourism is a major industry that in 2019 accounted for more than 12% of Spain’s GDP. In a setback, many British tourists who love Southern Europe’s beaches aren’t expected in large numbers yet because they must quarantine upon their return to the U.K. Still, Manchester resident Randolph Sweeting said his holiday on the Spanish island of Mallorca was worth the mandatory self-isolation when he gets home. “I was here twice last year, and when I went home, I had to quarantine on my own for two weeks. So it’s not a problem for me. I’ve done it before,” the 68-year-old said at Palma de Mallorca Airport. Belén Sanmartín, director of the Meliá Calviá Beach Hotel in Mallorca, said the U.K. government’s decision to keep Spain in its list of higher-risk territories was hard to understand in the Balearic Islands, where the infection rate is lower than in Britain. “It has been a big disappointment, because we were ready to receive visitors from the British market,” Sanmartín said, adding that bookings in her hotel were slowly picking up, thanks to Spanish mainlanders and German and French tourists. In another move to boost tourism, Spanish ports opened to cruise ships on Monday, nearly 15 months after they were banned. After peaking in late January at nearly 900 new cases per 100,000 residents in 14 days, Spain’s coronavirus contagion indicator has dropped to 115 per 100,000. Still, its descent has slowed down in the last days as new infections spread among unvaccinated groups. Spain has counted more than 80,000 COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic.

Stocks end mostly higher; Wendy's becomes latest meme stock

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-08/stocks-end-mostly-higher-wendys-becomes-latest-meme-stock

U.S. stock indexes meandered to another uneven finish Tuesday after spending much of the day swaying between small gains and losses. The modest moves reflect a wait-and-see attitude among investors amid a light week of earnings and new economic data, though some corners of the market — cryptocurrencies and some social media-hyped stocks — kept traders busy. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index inched up less than 0.1% after earlier veering between a loss of 0.4% and a gain of 0.2%. The benchmark index has barely moved the last two days after notching two straight weekly gains. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 0.1%, while the Nasdaq mustered a 0.3% gain. Smaller-company stocks once again outpaced the broader market. The S&P 500 remains close to its May 7 all-time high, but has not been able to climb higher. Business For entrepreneurs of color and women of all races, venture funding remains a nearly impenetrable barrier to success. New players are trying to change that. June 5, 2021 The S&P 500 added 0.74 of a point to 4,227.26. The Dow slipped 30.42 points to 34,599.82. The Nasdaq gained 43.19 points to 13,924.91. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 24.58 points, or 1.1%, to 2,343.76. A variety of companies that rely on direct consumer spending made solid gains. Domino’s Pizza rose 1.2% and Gap gained 2.9%. Industrial stocks also ticked higher. Energy companies rose along with the price of crude oil. Those gains were kept in check by falling healthcare and communication stocks. Banks fell, weighed down as bond yields slipped. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.54% from 1.57% late Monday. Elsewhere in the market, Wendy’s jumped 25.9% as it seemingly joined a list of companies that have gained the attention of individual investors taking their cues from social media forums. Clover Health Investments soared 85.8%. Other companies that have seen their stock values soar and fall sporadically include AMC Entertainment, Blackberry and GameStop. Cryptocurrency traders appeared to be in a selling mood. Bitcoin and other popular digital currencies, including Ethereum and Dogecoin, all fell sharply, according to Coindesk. Bitcoin, which climbed above $60,000 early this year, slid 7% to $32,690. The stock of Fastly, an internet cloud services provider, climbed 10.8% after the company said it had addressed an internal problem that caused dozens of websites around the globe to go down briefly, including the home page of Britain’s government and The New York Times. Investors have been navigating a choppy market as they digest information on how the economy is recovering. The World Bank upgraded its outlook for global growth this year, predicting that COVID-19 vaccinations and massive government stimulus in rich countries will power the fastest worldwide expansion in nearly five decades. The 189-country anti-poverty agency forecasts that the world economy will grow 5.6% this year, up from the 4.1% it forecast in January. The global economy last year shrank 3.5%. The upbeat forecasts for growth and greater demand from consumers have raised concerns about rising inflation. Investors have been trying to gauge whether the increase will be temporary and tied to the recovery or will run hot and become a more permanent fixture of the post-pandemic economy. The path of inflation could determine whether central banks continue to generously support economies or pull back. The economy is still being distorted by the pandemic and its aftermath. Factories are still ramping up production, but it’s simply not quick enough to meet demand for a wide range of goods as people move past the pandemic. That has resulted in prices on such items as food and household staples rising.

This speech made Jim Fassel a legend in New York and ended with a Giants Super Bowl

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/jim-fassel-new-york-giants-playoffs-speech-2001-super-bowl

The New York Jets had their famously outlandish guarantee. And, thanks to Jim Fassel, the New York Giants had their own. Three decades after quarterback Joe Namath vowed his underdog Jets would beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, coach Fassel promised the football world that his Giants — fresh off a home loss to the mediocre Detroit Lions — would improbably climb to their feet and make the playoffs. The video of Fassel’s guarantee went viral again Tuesday in the wake of his death from a heart attack. He died at 71, at a hospital near his Las Vegas home, on Monday after he had been admitted with chest pains. His promise came during a news conference when his Giants team was 7-4 and struggling to regain its balance after consecutive losses. “This is a poker game, and I’m shoving my chips to the middle of the table,” Fassel said, his words as unwavering and decisive as his sharp jawline. “I’m raising the ante, and anybody who wants to get in, get in. Anybody who wants out can get out. This team is going to the playoffs, OK? This team is going to the playoffs.” Sports Jim Fassel, an Anaheim High grad, was the league’s coach of the year in 1997 June 7, 2021 That might have sounded at the time like the wishful thinking of a coach on the hot seat, except that the Giants went on to run the table. They closed the season with victories over Arizona, Washington, Pittsburgh, Dallas and Jacksonville to clinch the NFC East, then beat Philadelphia (for the third time that season) in the playoffs and annihilated favored Minnesota in the NFC title game, 41-0. The Big Blue juggernaut ended in the Super Bowl against Baltimore, which boasted one of the best defenses in NFL history and won, 34-7. But Fassel, the NFL’s coach of the year in 1997, permanently endeared himself to Giants fans with his bold — and accurate — proclamation. The following season, Fassel devoted his time not just to coaching the Giants but also to establishing a foundation for families impacted by the 9/11 terror attacks, raising $1 million on their behalf. “Jim distinguished himself by the way he managed our team and devoted his efforts to the fire fighters and other families following the tragedy of 9/11,” Giants president John Mara said in a statement. “The players respected Jim and enjoyed playing for him and his coaching staff. And we appreciated his seven years of leading our team.” Sports Despite evidence of cognitive issues, ex-NFL safety Toi Cook was denied compensation without explanation. Did a banned practice have something to do with it? June 7, 2021 Fassel, a star quarterback at Anaheim High who went on to play at Fullerton College, USC and Long Beach State, rounded into an outstanding offensive mind with a prodigious career in both college and pro coaching. He was beloved by his players and peers, something plainly obvious in the aftermath of his unexpected death. On a Twitter thread Tuesday, retired Giants running back Tiki Barber wrote: “Jim Fassel drafted me & was my champion inside the Giants when everyone else was ready to give up on me. He challenged me to excel at the small things, then allowed me to run with the big ones. He’d put his arm around me when I made mistakes, and trusted me not to make them again. “Most people will remember his ‘guarantee’ from 2000, which was genius :) because if he was wrong, he’d have been fired and it’d have been forgotten; when he was right, it became legendary. We didn’t win a Super Bowl that year, the Ravens were just better, but he was a champion of friendship to me, and I’ll never forget how he made me feel. So, I’ll remember those unseen things. How he encouraged me when I was down, kicked my ass when I needed it, and beamed with pride when I fulfilled the ideal he had for me.” Sports Race-norming assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive function, making it harder for them to qualify for league concussion case payouts. June 7, 2021 Fassel’s son, John, is the former special teams coach of the Rams — a role he now holds with the Dallas Cowboys — and briefly was interim coach in Los Angeles in the wake of Jeff Fisher’s firing. He provided a statement to the Los Angeles Times on the death of his father: “It is with a very heavy heart to announce that we lost our Dad yesterday. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. While our Dad will be remembered as a longtime fan and face of the football world, his legacy will live forever in our hearts as the greatest Dad and Grandpa of all time. He leaves behind his wife Kitty, their 5 kids and spouses, as well as 16 happy and healthy grandkids. We love you Dad.”

NBA: Nikola Jokic becomes lowest draft pick ever to win MVP award

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/nba-nikola-jokic-lowest-draft-pick-mvp-award

Nikola Jokic was selected with the 41st draft pick when he entered the NBA seven years ago. Now, by overwhelming consensus, he’s No. 1. The Nuggets’ big man was revealed Tuesday as the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for 2020-21, making him by far the lowest draft pick ever to win the award. “The Joker” now has his name etched alongside the greatest players in league history, which surely seemed unlikely when he was that unheralded prospect out of Sombor, Serbia in 2014. “To be honest, I didn’t even think I would be in the NBA,“ Jokic said. “My goal when I started to play basketball back home, it was playing in Euroleague because that was kind of the closest top league to my country.“ He did a little more. Jokic was the runaway winner, getting 91 of the 101 first-place ballots cast — 100 of them from a global panel of sportswriters and broadcasters who cover the league, the other being an aggregate first-place ballot compiled from fan voting. That fan vote was the outlier: It went to 2011 NBA MVP Derrick Rose of the New York Knicks, the only vote Rose got. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid was second, Golden State’s Stephen Curry was third, 2019 and 2020 MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee was fourth and Phoenix’s Chris Paul was fifth. Sports Tom Thibodeau got the New York Knicks back to the playoffs, guiding the team to its second-best record in 20 years. June 7, 2021 The previous record-holders for lowest draft picks who became MVPs were Steve Nash and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who were both chosen 15th overall. Antetokounmpo won the MVP award each of the last two seasons. Greece now cedes the bragging rights to Serbia — the fifth nation outside of the U.S. to claim an MVP, joining Canada (Nash), Greece (Antetokounmpo), Nigeria (Hakeem Olajuwon) and Germany (Dirk Nowitzki). The news came in a team meeting Tuesday, with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver appearing on a video screen to deliver the word. “First of many,“ Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. After the top five, the rest of the voting was Dallas’ Luka Doncic, Portland’s Damian Lillard, New York’s Julius Randle, Rose, Utah’s Rudy Gobert, Washington’s Russell Westbrook, Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons and, tying for 13th, was the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, Brooklyn’s James Harden and the Lakers’ LeBron James. James got one fifth-place vote — extending his streak to 18 years with at least one vote in the MVP race. Jokic’s rise was meteoric, but not totally unexpected after the way he played in recent years. Even Kobe Bryant, back in 2019, said he had challenged Jokic to fulfill his potential and win an MVP award. Challenge accepted. Challenge met. And now Jokic has the trophy that Bryant won in 2008. “MVP! BEST PLAYER IN THE NBA!“ Nuggets teammate Will Barton posted on Instagram. “I couldn’t win it without you guys,” Jokic told his teammates when the word came. Jokic had a league-high 60 double-doubles and added 16 triple-doubles — second-most in the NBA behind only triple-double king and former MVP Westbrook — this season. Jokic’s scoring average jumped from 19.9 points per game last season to 26.4. He tied his career high with 10.8 rebounds per game and his average of 8.3 assists was just shy of Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time season average (8.6) for a center. He shot 56% from the field and 39% from 3-point range. “The Denver Nuggets drafted me, it was an opportunity for me to become an NBA player,“ Jokic said. “I think I did a good job of using that opportunity.“ A year after leading the Nuggets to the Western Conference Finals in the Walt Disney World bubble in Florida, Jokic steered his team through a trying season marked a rash of injuries, most notably to fellow star Jamal Murray, who tore his left ACL in April. Amid all those injuries — not to mention a jampacked season where virtually everyone got some rest along the way — Jokic was a rare everyday player, a big man who logged big minutes. He’s the only player to start all of his team’s regular-season games in the last two seasons, being on the floor for tip-off all 145 times. Others have also played in every game, but no one else has started them all. Clippers Rudy Gobert reached out to Nicolas Batum before he joined the Clippers to consider joining the Jazz. Now the friends from France meet in the playoffs. June 8, 2021 Including playoffs, Jokic has logged 5,766 minutes in the last two seasons. That’s nearly 300 more than anyone else; he’s one of only six players to eclipse 5,000 minutes in that span. Despite that ever-changing cast around him, Jokic guided Denver to the No. 3 playoff seed in the West. Behind Jokic, the Nuggets went 13-5 after Murray tore his ACL on April 12 and he led Denver past the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the playoffs. And his numbers against the Blazers? Historic. He averaged 33 points and 10.5 rebounds on 53% shooting from the field, 43% from 3-point range and 92% from the free throw line — making him the first player in NBA history to average 30 points and 10 rebounds with the lofty benchmarks of 50% from the field, 40% from 3 and 90% from the foul line in a playoff series. “Life’s about little moments,“ Malone said late in the regular season. “And Nikola’s got about 56

'America's Got Talent' Season 16 premiere wins the prime-time ratings race

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/tv-ratings-story-for-the-week-of-may-31-june-6-wed-june-9-2021

The top ranked program during the first full week of prime-time television’s summer season was NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” one of two programs to average more than 6 million viewers. The 16th season premiere of the NBC series averaged 7.372 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released Tuesday by Nielsen. An edition of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” with repeats of three previously broadcast segments that were updated for Sunday’s broadcast was second, averaging 7.064 million viewers. The highest ratings scripted program between May 31 and Sunday was the fourth-season finale of the action drama “Station 19,” fifth for the week, averaging 4.903 million viewers. The 17th season finale of the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” that followed on ABC finished second among scripted programs and seventh overall, averaging 4.759 million. The biggest audience for a sporting event and cable’s rating winner was TNT’s coverage of the sixth and final game of the NBA first-round playoff series between the Lakers and Phoenix Suns that averaged 4.531 million viewers, ninth for the week. Univision’s coverage of Sunday’s CONCACAF Nations League final between Mexico and the United States was second among the week’s prime-time sporting events and first among Spanish-language programming, averaging 3.923 million viewers, 16th overall. In a week that mixed a substantial amount of alternative programming with reruns and some first-run scripted programming, CBS was first, averaging 3.32 million viewers for its prime-time programming. ABC edged NBC, 3.17 million-3.16 million for second. Fox was fourth among English-language broadcast networks, averaging 1.65 million viewers. The CW was fifth among the five major English-language broadcast networks, averaging 460,000 viewers. ABC’s biggest draw was the seventh-season premiere of “Celebrity Family Feud,” which was third for the week, averaging 5.741 million viewers for a matchup between the families of actors Rob Lowe and Terrence Howard. Fox’s ratings leader was “Fox Saturday Baseball,” 53rd among the week’s broadcast and cable programs for its regionalized coverage of three games, including one between the Dodgers and Atlanta Braves, that averaged 2.678 million viewers. The CW’s superhero drama “Superman & Lois,” which averaged 1.237 million viewers, had its highest ranking, tying for 125th among broadcast programs with a 1964 episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” which aired on Me TV. Its overall rank was not available. There were two series premieres on the five major English-language broadcast networks. The NBC game show “Small Fortune” averaged 1.472 million viewers, 71st among broadcast programs. The Fox animated comedy “Housebroken” averaged 994,000 viewers, 101st among broadcast programs. The overall ranks for both programs were not available. TNT’s NBA playoff coverage made it the top ranked cable network for the second consecutive week, averaging 2.357 million viewers. Fox News Channel was second for the second consecutive week following eight consecutive first-place finishes, averaging 1.953 million viewers. HGTV was third, averaging 1.254 million viewers. The top 20 cable programs consisted of 10 NBA playoff games on TNT, seven Fox News Channel programs — four broadcasts of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and three of “Hannity” — two broadcasts of the MSNBC news and opinion program “The Rachel Maddow Show,” and one NBA playoff game on ESPN. “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” topped the weekly list of the programs on the four streaming services whose viewership figures are announced by Nielsen, with viewers spending 853 million minutes watching the Netflix computer-animated science fiction comedy film between May 3-9, its first full week of release. Viewership was up 65.3% from the previous week when viewers spent 516 million minutes watching it during its first three days of release, ninth for the week.

State Department eases its travel warnings on Mexico, Canada, other countries

https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2021-06-08/state-department-eases-advice-on-travel-to-mexico-canada-other-countries

The U.S. State Department has loosened its travel warnings for dozens of nations, including Mexico, Canada, France and Germany, in a move that could ease airline restrictions for people wanting to go overseas as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes in parts of the world. The department changed its travel warnings Tuesday for nearly 60 nations and territories from Level 4, or “do not travel,” to Level 3, or “reconsider travel,” according to the agency’s website. Mexico and Canada are among those countries, as are France and Germany. In a statement, the department said it was updating the advisories after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the methodology for its travel health notices. Get inspired to get away. Explore California, the West and beyond with the weekly Escapes newsletter. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Other countries affected by the latest change included Japan, South Korea and Singapore. An additional 16 nations have been downgraded from Level 3 to Level 2, or “exercise increased caution,” while about a dozen have been lowered to Level 1 — “exercise normal caution.” Tuesday’s change will “provide U.S. travelers detailed and actionable information to make informed travel decisions,” the department said. It amounted to the first major relaxation of such warnings since the agency slapped a Level 4 travel advisory on the entire globe in March 2020 as the pandemic gained speed. The advisories aren’t binding but can help airlines and other nations set their own restrictions for travel. Other countries often reciprocate for American citizens based on the department’s advisories. The move comes days before President Biden plans to visit the U.K. for a Group of 7 meeting and as Vice President Kamala Harris visited Mexico. Airlines and some nations have complained that current travel restrictions to the U.S. are out of step with rising vaccination rates and the reduced threat of contracting COVID-19, and many limits on U.S. travelers remain in place. “We have heard very clearly the desire of our friends in Europe and the U.K. to be able to reopen travel across the Atlantic Ocean, and we want to see that happen,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. “But we have to follow the science, and we have to follow the guidance of our public health professionals. We’re actively engaging them to determine the time frame.” Get The Wild newsletter. The essential weekly guide to enjoying the outdoors in Southern California. Insider tips on the best of our beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. In the U.S., new infections are at the lowest levels since the pandemic began in March 2020. Weekly cases worldwide have been declining for six weeks as the outbreak in India wanes and global vaccination efforts ramp up.

Hauser & Wirth will open in West Hollywood. Why the DTLA art gallery is expanding now

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-06-08/hauser-and-wirth-los-angeles-west-hollywood

Rumors have been swirling that Hauser & Wirth is leaving its downtown L.A. Arts District location for a new West Hollywood space. The contemporary art gallery said Tuesday that it’s not leaving its East 3rd Street location. It is, however, expanding, opening a second Southern California location in West Hollywood. The gallery is leasing a former vintage car showroom at 8980 Santa Monica Blvd., a few blocks west of San Vicente Boulevard. The property will house 5,000 square feet of public exhibition space, about a quarter of Hauser & Wirth’s downtown exhibition space. The WeHo site will feature indoor and sidewalk seating for a restaurant whose chef has not yet been finalized. The gallery aims to open in fall 2022. “Since the beginning, we always thought of L.A. as a city where we would love to have more than one location,” Hauser & Wirth President Marc Payot said in an interview. “We really expect L.A. to come back to its full bloom after the pandemic, and this is really the next step for us. It’s first and foremost a commitment to L.A.” Payot called Los Angeles a “world capital of imagination, reinvention and new forms of cultural expression” and noted that Hauser & Wirth already represents 14 local artists and artist estates. The new space, he said, is not meant to complete with the downtown location but to complement it. If L.A. is a city of individualized communities, he said, the new space will offer a distinct Westside home for Hauser & Wirth artists, who include Paul McCarthy, Mark Bradford, Larry Bell, Diana Thater, Henry Taylor and Charles Gaines, as well as the late Mike Kelley and Luchita Hurtado. “Over the many years we’ve worked closely with artists, curators, collectors and so many colleagues in L.A., we have come to prize the way the city operates as a collection of unique communities, each making its own contribution to renowned energy and character of the whole,” Payot said. “So just as our 5-year-old downtown Arts District location, with its grand historical mill structures, serves as a very special arts destination redolent of its place, our new West Hollywood location will express the vibrant atmosphere of that part of L.A.” It’s not uncommon for Hauser & Wirth — which has outposts in London, Monaco and Hong Kong, among other places — to have multiple locations in the same city. It has three spaces in Zurich, with a fourth in the works, and two spaces in New York City, as well as one in nearby Southampton. Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects will design the new 10,800-square-foot West Hollywood space, a 1930s Spanish Colonial Revival-style building featuring large windows facing the street. Selldorf also designed Hauser & Wirth’s Arts District complex, which opened in 2016 in a revamped 19th century flour mill. “This opportunity was presented to us,” Payot said of the new location, “and it’s a space that gives us great possibilities of mixing hospitality and the gallery, which has proven so successful in the downtown space. We are beyond excited to continue here what we started downtown.” Entertainment & Arts What can you see at the Broad, La Brea Tar Pits Museum, LACMA, California Science Center, Grammy Museum and beyond? Here’s a quick rundown. June 14, 2021

She's baaack. Tyler Perry brings Madea out of retirement for another movie

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-06-08/tyler-perry-brings-madea-character-back-for-netflix-movie

Boo! Here she comes again. Mourners of the “Madea” franchise can take off their black veils. Tyler Perry is rebooting it with a 12th installment, “A Madea Homecoming,” for Netflix after saying goodbye to the iconic character in 2019. Perry, who won an honorary Oscar for humanitarian work this year, said he planned to part ways with Madea at the premiere of the franchise’s 11th film, “A Madea Family Funeral.” “I don’t want to be her age playing her, so it was time to shut it down and move on,” Perry told the Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “I’ve got some other things I want to do … I’m going to do something different.” Movies Entertainment mogul Tyler Perry, the first African American to independently own a studio, is now a billionaire, according to Forbes magazine. Sept. 2, 2020 The Madea character has appeared in 11 plays, 11 movies, a handful of TV episodes and one animated feature called “Madea’s Tough Love.” Played by Perry, she is known for being a foul-mouthed, spunky grandmother. The character, however, has been criticized, most notably by director Spike Lee, for its resemblance to minstrel shows that depicted racist stereotypes of Black people. Perry shot back at Lee in 2011, stating that the franchise was being unfairly maligned. 2019 also marked the end of Perry’s contract with Lionsgate, the movie studio that has released the “Madea” movies since 2005. While at Lionsgate, the franchise grossed more than $500 million dollars. Television This weekend, ‘Madea’ mogul Tyler Perry expands one of the largest film/TV studios in the country — and pays homage to pioneering African American entertainers. Oct. 2, 2019 “A Madea Homecoming” will premiere on Netflix, which has worked closely with Perry in the past. Perry’s “A Fall From Grace” reached 39 million streams on Netflix, and the streaming giant is shooting another Perry-affiliated original titled “A Jazzman’s Blues,” starring Joshua Boone, Solea Pfeiffer, Amirah Vann and Austin Scott. Perry will be the writer, director and executive producer of the movie. Perry and Michelle Sneed will be the executive producers on the project, with Will Areu and Mark Swinton joining them as producers. The movie will be filmed at Perry’s studio in Atlanta.

These 'Bachelor' fans are rejoicing at Chris Harrison's exit: 'This is great news'

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/chris-harrison-the-bachelor-exit-fans-react

Myah Genung was not particularly surprised when the news broke early Tuesday that Chris Harrison, the longtime host of “The Bachelor,” would be leaving the hit ABC reality show. Rumors about Harrison’s future had been circulating for days among the Bachelor Nation fan base. Genung, who has been a fan of “The Bachelor” since its debut in 2002, was upbeat when she heard about Harrison’s departure, saying the move represents a positive step for the troubled franchise. “This is a unique opportunity for the show to shift and rebrand itself and be less racist,” said Genung, who started watching “The Bachelor” as a teenager and is part of a Facebook group dedicated to the franchise. “It depends a lot on what happens moving forward. But this is a positive sign.” Harrison is leaving the franchise several months after coming under fire for making racially insensitive comments during a Feb. 9 interview on “Extra” with former “Bachelorette” Rachel Lindsay. Although Harrison apologized for the remarks and stepped aside for the season finale, the furor surrounding his statements never subsided. Television The longtime face and voice of the franchise is “stepping aside” for good, ABC and Warner Horizon confirmed Tuesday. June 8, 2021 “This is great news,” said Justine Kay, who cohosts the “Bachelor”-themed podcast “2 Black Girls, 1 Rose” with best friend Natasha Scott. “Here is a white man, a millionaire, that had a job that was extremely easy for 19 years and was fired for saying racist things. He didn’t have a hood in the closet. He didn’t upload any crazy pictures on Instagram. He didn’t do anything crazy besides saying what he really feels.” The departure comes nearly three months after the conclusion of the latest season of “The Bachelor,” which featured its first Black lead, Matt James. The season was supposed to represent a reversal of the franchise’s problematic history with race, including its reluctance to cast Black men as leads. Instead, James’ season ended up becoming the most tumultuous in the history of the franchise, clouded by controversy and negativity. Much of the controversy centered around Harrison’s defense of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell. During the season, James fell for Kirkconnell, unaware that she had been photographed at an antebellum South-themed party in 2018 and that she had “liked” racially insensitive social media posts. In the “Extra” interview, Lindsay questioned Harrison about Kirkconnell’s delay in addressing the situation. Harrison stood up for her, saying, “This judge-jury-executioner thing is tearing this girl’s life apart.” He also suggested that attending a party celebrating the South’s racist, slave-owning past wasn’t defined as socially unacceptable when Kirkconnell was photographed three years ago. When pressed on Kirkconnell’s silence, Harrison shot back, “When is the time? And who is Rachel Lindsay and who is Chris Harrison and who is whatever woke police is out there? ... Who the hell are you? Who are you that you demand this?” After months of silence about Harrison, ABC and Warner Horizon, which produces the show, released a terse joint statement on Tuesday: “Chris Harrison is stepping aside as host of ‘The Bachelor’ franchise. We are thankful for his many contributions over the past 20 years and wish him all the best on his new journey.” Harrison sent out his own statement on Instagram: “I’ve had a truly incredible run as host of The Bachelor franchise and now I’m excited to start a new chapter. I’m so grateful to Bachelor Nation for all of the memories we’ve made together. While my two-decade journey is wrapping up, the friendships I’ve made will last a lifetime.” Media critic and author Jennifer Pozner, who has studied the franchise, said that the forces behind the series likely felt pressure to take action due to protests against police brutality and the reignited Black Lives Matter movement that followed the killing of George Floyd last year. “This is a new moment in time when there is sustained public push for accountability from media companies around racial discrimination and racist representation,” said Pozner, author of “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV.” “I assume that ABC, [‘Bachelor’ creator] Mike Fleiss and ‘The Bachelor’ franchise thought that no one would care that much about racism in the franchise a year later. But that hasn’t happened.” Ashley Tabron, a high school teacher in North Carolina who started watching the show in 2017 when Lindsay made history as the first Black “Bachelorette,” said, “What Chris said was indefensible. ABC had to cut ties with him if they wanted to move forward. That type of behavior just can’t be tolerated.” Brett Vergara, who hosts the “Bachelor”-themed podcast “Baby Got Bach,” added, “It started to feel like Chris was not the right person to be at the helm of this franchise if they want to move in a more inclusive direction.” Celebration over the move was tempered by reports that Harrison received an eight-figure payout as part of his severance. Podcaster Kay said, “That is deeply disturbing. It shows that ‘cancel culture’ is being used as a weapon by white conservatives in this country, and never against them. ‘Cancel culture’ for white people does not exist.” Others felt that Harrison was only the beginning of the problems facing the franchise when it comes to race. Media critic Pozner repeated her conclusion that racism has been baked into the DNA of the franchise since its premiere: “Removing Chris Harrison does very little to solve ‘The Bachelor’ racism problem.” Maintaining that Fleiss is at the core of the show’s problems, she compared Harrison to a maître d’ at a restaurant where the real problem is the chef in the kitchen. Podcaster Vergara echoed Pozner’s concerns: “This franchise has a lot more problems than Chris Harrison. Hopefully this frees up space for there to be a BIPOC executive producer.” Television The franchise attempts to turn the corner after a season tarnished by controversy as two former “Bachelorettes” step in for host Chris Harrison. June 7, 2021 Still, Kay said she was encouraged by Monday’s episode of “The Bachelorette,” which featured former “Bachelorettes” Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe stepping in for Harrison. The duo functioned mainly as support and encouragement for “Bachelorette” Katie Thurston. “Those two really added a fun element,” Kay said. “It changed the dynamic. It was really refreshing.” Adams and Bristowe also were praised by Vergara. “It brought a younger feel. Those two have been through this before. They’ve literally been in Katie’s shoes, and it made the show feel more personal.” He added that this season of “The Bachelorette” “shows a commitment to trying to move in the right direction. Whether it really goes in that direction we still have to wait and see.”

Review: Staying 'Awake' isn't hard in this apocalyptic nightmare

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2021-06-08/review-awake-netflix-gina-rodriguez

If the end-of-the-world genre seems downright somnambulant lately, “Awake” is jolting proof a fiendishly clever twist can shake it from its doldrums. In the effectively made, low-key but laser-focused thriller, something like a global electromagnetic pulse fries all electronics on Earth — and rewires humans so they can’t sleep. At all. Ever. Gina Rodriguez plays ex-soldier and recovering addict Jill, a widow trying to make ends meet and show up for her kids, who live with her mother-in-law. When the event occurs, society staggers. When people realize they can’t sleep, it disintegrates. Jill finds herself on a harrowing journey with embittered teen son Noah (Lucius Hoyos) and intelligent young daughter Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt). Her quest is not only for her family’s survival but potentially that of the human race. What extreme sleep deprivation does to humans makes this a diabolical snare, one of the better premises to come down the sci-fi pike in a while. As every person’s cognition fogs, then slowly crumbles, a government-run team supposedly works against the clock in a hub somewhere. Should the family ever reach them, there’s no guarantee they’d be walking into anything but more desperation and madness. What Jill knows for sure is it’s getting worse by the minute and if the puzzle isn’t solved soon, the entire human race will drop dead. Rodriguez’s Jill is smart and cool under pressure, sans outsize heroics. Greenblatt is excellent, making us believe her Matilda could think of the things she does and feel the fear and dread she does. Barry Pepper contributes one of the film’s more memorable turns as a priest trying to herd his flock on the brink of what looks like the least fun stuff from the Book of Revelation. Entertainment & Arts We know. We know. You want to look away, but you can’t. May 18, 2020 Director and co-writer Mark Raso (“Kodachrome”) effectively uses extended single takes to immerse us in the moment and has a casual touch with action that offers respite from the usual orange fireballs and acrobatic gunfights. Sparing us such theatrics roots us in a real-feeling world, so it’s extremely tense when, say, the family’s car cruises by glassy-eyed, ordinary-looking people standing naked in the road and staring at the sun. We don’t need big bads; it’s scary enough that Jill is doing worse and worse at her quickie mental acuity checks. Very much to the film’s credit, it feels less like the calculated spectacle of “Army of the Dead” than the slow-motion deadfall of “The Road.” Raso’s touch with score can feel heavy, but he more than makes up for it with honest emotional moments and well-executed plot points. Jill makes good decisions — a major relief to those exhausted by the horrible-choices-for-plot-convenience trope. A word to the interested: Avoid the trailer, as it contains a fair number of spoilers. 'Awake' Not rated, contains violence, language and nudityRunning time: 1 hour, 36 minutesPlaying: Available June 9 on Netflix

Evacuation orders and warnings lifted in 850-acre Yuba County fire

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/evacuation-warnings-issued-in-yuba-county-wind-driven-vegetation-fire

Officials have lifted evacuation warnings for a wind-driven vegetation fire near the community of Wheatland in Yuba County. Forward progress of the fire, which began just past 2 p.m. in an unincorporated area of the county, has stopped at about 850 acres, said Mary Eldridge, a public information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. About 9 p.m., it was 28% contained. One residence was destroyed, Eldridge said. Evacuation warnings had been in place for a zone that includes Kapaka, Hokan and Intanko lanes, as well as Monarch Trail Drive and Wichita Way, as well as another zone that included the Waldo Junction area, according to the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department. The fire had been heading toward the Beale Air Force Base. Base residents east of East Garryanna Drive who had been ordered to evacuate have been allowed to return home. Firefighters will continue checking for hot spots throughout the night, Eldridge said.

Senate approves expansive bill to boost U.S. competitiveness with China

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/senate-approves-expansive-bill-to-boost-u-s-competitiveness-with-china

The Senate on Tuesday approved a sweeping effort to fortify the nation’s ability to compete with China’s economic and political ambitions by investing billions of dollars in scientific research and American manufacturing across several industries, including artificial intelligence, robotics and wireless service. The quarter-trillion-dollar package, approved 68 to 32, earmarks $52 billion to address the domestic manufacturing shortage of semiconductors, which has slowed the production of cars, laptops and video game consoles. The bill also strengthens the nation’s intellectual property rules, gives the federal government new authority to limit foreign visitors who may be conducting espionage and imposes a “diplomatic” boycott of the Olympic Games scheduled to take place in China next year. Under such an action, American athletes could participate in the Games, but the State Department could not sponsor trips by U.S. government employees. Called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the legislation marks one of the most significant steps Congress has taken in decades to stand up to the growing power of Beijing. The rare bipartisan effort comes after the pandemic brought into sharper focus long-simmering concerns about China’s growing manufacturing capabilities and a decline in the domestic production of pivotal goods, such as personal protective equipment and computer chips. It also underscores how both political parties have come to view China’s threat as a vital national priority. The bill is a significant agreement for Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana. One of his party’s earliest China “hawks,” Schumer has been pushing the issue for years in hopes of thwarting China’s economic influence. He said the U.S. had settled into a complacency “at the top of the global heap,” which allowed China to outpace the country in funding for basic scientific research as a percentage of gross domestic product. “We have put ourselves in a very precarious position of potentially falling behind the rest of the world in the technologies and industries that will define the next century,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, hailing the bill as a chance to turn the tide. “It could be a moment in history that future generations look back on as a turning point for American leadership in the 21st century,” he said. Schumer was able to weave together a political coalition by channeling both parties’ interest in helping U.S. manufacturing and standing up to China. By involving several different Senate committees, he hoped to give every senator a chance to get skin in the game. To that end, the bill ballooned to 2,400 pages and several extraneous measures made their way into the debate, including funding for NASA, a ban on the sale of some shark fins and labeling requirements for king crab important to Alaskans. The bill went on a bumpy ride through the Senate, where some Republicans held up action on the bill last month in an attempt to get additional concessions, including new trade policy and unrelated southern border funding. Republicans ultimately got votes on 18 amendments, an unusually high number in a chamber that has operated without many amendment opportunities in recent years. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the bill has “several smart, targeted measures,” but remains incomplete and an “imperfect approach to an extremely consequential challenge.” Many senators privately believe the competitiveness bill could be one of the few bipartisan bills enacted this year, particularly as negotiations over policing reform and an infrastructure package slow to a crawl. “The bill is not perfect,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). “There are elements that I can do without and there are parts that I wish were included, but on the whole, this is a necessary step to keep our nation competitive.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others opposed a provision to fund $10 billion for NASA’s lunar landing program that appears likely to help Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space company. The bill now faces an uncertain future in the House, where members are writing their own policy, according to a House Democratic leadership aide. It is unknown how much of the bill would have to change in order to get through both chambers and to the president’s desk. The Senate bill includes $195 billion in funding for scientific research and development. It provides $10 billion to create 10 technology hubs across the country to connect researchers to develop ideas with manufacturing sectors for products. It would ban nearly all U.S. involvement in nuclear cooperation with the Chinese government or entities incorporated in the country. Federal agencies would be prohibited from hosting certain Chinese visitors and many agencies would have to take steps to ensure data, such as intellectual property or biomedical research involving the human genome, are safe from national security risks. The federal government could prohibit foreign nationals from entering the country if it is determined they are trying to spy on sensitive or emerging technologies.

French Open: Stefanos Tsitsipas beats Daniil Medvedev, will face Alexander Zverev in semifinals

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/french-open-stefanos-tsitsipas-daniil-medvedev-alexander-zverev-semifinals

Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev both have been viewed as potential future stars of tennis. Both have come close to Grand Slam titles. Now the pair of 20-somethings will meet each other for a berth in the French Open final after straight-set quarterfinal victories Tuesday. It will be the youngest matchup in the men’s semifinals at Roland Garros since a couple of guys named Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic met in 2008. The No. 5-seeded Tsitsipas reached his fourth major semifinal — and third in a row — by upending No. 2 Daniil Medvedev 6-3, 7-6 (3), 7-5 at Court Philippe Chatrier in the last no-spectator night session of this year’s tournament. “I feel privileged that I’m in that position, and I feel obviously I’ve put in a lot of daily hard work (that) has been a key element of me being here,” Tsitsipas said. “But, you know, my ego tells me I want more.” He escaped two set points held by two-time Slam runner-up Medvedev at 5-4 in the second, but otherwise required only slightly more work than was demanded of 2020 U.S. Open finalist Zverev in his 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 victory over 46th-ranked Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. That put No. 6 Zverev in his third career Slam semifinal, first in Paris. Tsitsipas is a 22-year-old from Greece. Zverev is a 24-year-old from Germany. Both have won Masters 1000 titles on red clay this year. Both have won the season-ending ATP Finals. Both intend to — and, truthfully, are expected to — claim one of the four biggest prizes in their sport. “Obviously, the Grand Slams are the tournaments that we want to win the most,” Zverev said. “Before, maybe, the last few years, I was putting too much pressure on myself. Before Medvedev and Tsitsipas arrived, I was seen as this guy that was going to all of a sudden take over the tennis world.” Added Zverev: “I was putting pressure on myself, as well. I was not very patient with myself, which I feel like now, maybe, I learned how to deal with the situation a little bit better.” He showed that quality at a key juncture Tuesday. Zverev did not want to believe that Davidovich Fokina had saved a break point with a shot that landed on — or was it merely near? — a line in the fourth game. Zverev crouched down near the mark on the red clay and engaged in a bit of an argument with chair umpire Alison Hughes, repeatedly saying, “No!” and then “How?” Hughes, whose call was backed up by an unofficial video rendering shown on TV, didn’t budge, and Zverev quickly lost that game, then the next one, too, to fall briefly behind. Could have been the start of an unraveling. Instead, Zverev grabbed 16 of the remaining 19 games. “I’m maybe a little bit calmer at the tournaments,” he said. “But the end goal hasn’t changed.” For Tsitsipas, who goes into Friday with an 0-3 mark in Slam semifinals, the key moment came late in the second set. Medvedev, who suddenly found his footing on clay this year after arriving in Paris with an 0-4 career record at the French Open, sort of snapped to and made things interesting. Indeed, Medvedev made so much headway that he held a pair of set points after Tsitsipas dumped an overhead into the net and was forced to serve at 15-40 while trailing 5-4. But Medvedev let Tsitsipas out of the predicament with a bad return of a second serve, followed by a flubbed forehand, and soon enough it was 5-all. Less than 15 minutes later, Tsitsipas hit a swinging forehand volley winner to close out that set and was on his way to his second win in eight career meetings against Medvedev. “To be honest, the biggest difference was the surface,” Medvedev said, “but when I say this, I finally do not say it in a way, ‘Oh, I cannot play on clay! Mamma mia!’ or whatever. It’s just that his shots were better on clay.” While Medvedev briefly led by a break in the third, Tsitsipas pulled even, then broke after being down 40-love in the last game. He closed his victory with a passing shot winner off a return when Medvedev charged the net behind an underarm serve on match point. “Didn’t work out at all,” Medvedev said. Tsitsipas’ take? He called it “a very millennial shot.“ The quarterfinals on the top half of the men’s bracket are Wednesday: Djokovic vs. Matteo Berrettini, and 13-time champion Nadal vs. Diego Schwartzman. In the women’s quarterfinals Tuesday, No. 31 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia and 85th-ranked Tamara Zidansek of Slovenia each earned her first berth in a major semifinal. Pavlyuchenkova entered the day with an 0-6 record in Slam quarterfinals but edged her doubles partner Elena Rybakina 6-7 (2), 6-2, 9-7. Zidansek got past No. 33 seed Paula Badosa 7-5, 4-6, 8-6. Zverev was broken three times in the opening set against Davidovich Fokina, but never faced so much as one break point the rest of the way. Zverev began this French Open in the worst way possible: He lost the initial two sets he played against qualifier Oscar Otte. But Zverev hasn’t dropped a set since, reeling off 15 in a row. “After the first round, it kind of started to go very smoothly,” Zverev said. “I’m happy about that.”

Many of the uber-rich pay next to no income tax, report says

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/many-of-the-uber-rich-pay-next-to-no-income-tax-report-says

The rich really are different from you and me: They’re better at dodging the tax man. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill was zero in 2018. And financier George Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax, according to a report Tuesday from the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. Overall, the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — an average of 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security and Medicare, ProPublica found. Its findings are likely to heighten a national debate over the vast and widening inequality between the very wealthiest Americans and everyone else. An anonymous source delivered to ProPublica reams of Internal Revenue Service data on the country’s wealthiest people, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. ProPublica compared the tax data it received with information available from other sources. It reported that “in every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources.’’ Using perfectly legal tax strategies, many of the uber-rich are able to shrink their federal tax bills to nothing or close to it. Politics President Biden acknowledges he’s unlikely to get support from Republican lawmakers for any type of tax hike but said he would get Democratic votes. March 17, 2021 A spokesman for Soros, who has supported higher taxes on the rich, told ProPublica that the billionaire had lost money on his investments from 2016 to 2018 and so did not owe federal income tax for those years. Musk responded to ProPublica’s initial request for comment with a punctuation mark — “?” — and did not answer detailed follow-up questions. The federal tax code is meant to be progressive — that is, the rich pay a steadily higher tax rate on their income as it rises. And ProPublica found, in fact, that people earning between $2 million and $5 million a year paid an average of 27.5%, the highest of any group of taxpayers. Above $5 million in income, though, tax rates fell: The top .001% of taxpayers — 1,400 people who reported income above $69 million — paid 23%. And the 25 very richest people paid still less. The wealthy can reduce their tax bills through the use of charitable donations or by avoiding wage income (which can be taxed at up to 37%) and benefiting instead mainly from investment income (usually taxed at 20%). President Biden, in seeking revenue to finance his spending plans, has proposed higher taxes on the wealthy. Biden wants to raise the top tax rate to 39.6% for people earning $400,000 a year or more in taxable income, estimated to be fewer than 2% of U.S. households. The top tax rate that workers pay on salaries and wages now is 37%. Biden is proposing to nearly double the tax rate that high-earning Americans pay on profits from stocks and other investments. In addition, under his proposals, inherited capital gains would no longer be tax-free. The president, whose proposals must be approved by Congress, would also raise taxes on corporations, which would affect wealthy investors who own corporate stocks. ProPublica reported that the tax bills of the rich are especially low when compared with their soaring wealth — the value of their investment portfolios, real estate and other assets. Using calculations by Forbes magazine, ProPublica noted that the wealth of the 25 richest Americans collectively jumped by $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes over those years — equal to just 3.4% of the increase in their wealth. Politics Biden’s ambitious child tax credit, putting cash in families’ bank accounts soon, could cut child poverty in half. But a lot has to go right on a tight deadline. May 18, 2021 Chuck Marr, a senior director at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggested that Biden’s proposals, which face fierce opposition from Republicans in Congress and from businesses, are “modest” given how much the wealthy have benefited in recent years and how comparatively little tax many of them pay. “It always seems like the solutions are cast as radical when there’s less focus on the current situation being radical,” Marr said. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among others, have proposed taxing the wealth of the richest Americans, not just their income. On Tuesday, Warren tweeted in response to the ProPublica report: “Our tax system is rigged for billionaires who don’t make their fortunes through income, like working families do. The evidence is abundantly clear: it is time for a #WealthTax in America to make the ultra-rich finally pay their fair share.″ ProPublica’s data “reveals that the country’s wealthiest, who have profited handsomely during the pandemic, have not been paying their fair share of taxes,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) who leads the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said at the start of a hearing Tuesday on the IRS budget with Commissioner Charles Rettig. Wyden has proposed legislation that would tighten enforcement of tax collection against wealthy individuals and corporations that use artifices and loopholes to skirt paying taxes. For his part, Rettig said that the IRS is investigating the leak of the tax data to ProPublica and that any violations of law would be prosecuted. (ProPublica reported that it doesn’t know the identity of the source who provided the data.) “We will find out about the ProPublica article,” Rettig said. “We have turned it over to the appropriate investigators, both external and internal.” Now controlling the White House and Congress, Democrats are focusing on the tax gap — the hundreds of billions of dollars’ difference between what Americans owe the government in taxes and what they pay — and its connection to economic inequality. The top 10% of earners have accounted for most of that gap, experts say, by underreporting their liabilities, intentionally or not, as tax avoidance or as outright evasion. The tax gap is under a spotlight as a potential source for recouping some revenue to help pay for Biden’s proposed spending on infrastructure, families and education. Democrats have been pushing the IRS to invigorate its enforcement of tax collection and make it fairer, by pursuing the big corporations and wealthy individuals who manage to game the system. At Tuesday’s hearing, Wyden told Rettig that it’s wrong “how the wealthy always seem to skip out on their obligations.” “You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than being audited if you’re a partner in a partnership,” Wyden said. Rettig responded, “We are outgunned.” Business Biden is proposing to nearly double the tax rate that the highest-earning Americans pay on profits made from stocks and other investments. April 29, 2021 Democrats have argued that the tax gap has widened mainly because big U.S. corporations have parked revenue overseas and wealthy individuals have failed to pay their fair share. They assert that the IRS, long understaffed and underfunded, has tended to pursue taxpayers of modest means more aggressively than high-powered businesspeople and corporations. Taxpayers with annual incomes under $25,000 are audited at a higher rate (0.69%) than those with incomes up to $500,000 (0.53%), according to IRS data. Taxpayers who receive the earned-income tax credit, which applies mainly to low-income workers with children, are audited at a higher rate than all but the very wealthiest tax filers. The audit rate for millionaires fell from 8.4% in 2010 to 2.4% in 2019. The agency’s funding has been slashed about 20% since 2010. Biden’s new spending proposals include an extra $80 billion over 10 years to bolster IRS audits of upper-income individuals and corporations, with an eye toward recovering an estimated $700 billion. Much of the gap comes from the use of overseas havens. The government loses an estimated $40 billion to $120 billion a year from offshore tax evasion. Biden’s tax plan includes measures to stop corporations from stashing profits in countries with low tax rates. Last weekend, the Group of Seven wealthy democracies, which includes the United States, agreed to support a global minimum corporate tax of at least 15% to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries.

Bob Baffert files suit to spur more testing on Medina Spirit sample

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/bob-baffert-files-suit-more-drug-testing-medina-spirit

Attorneys for Medina Spirit trainer Bob Baffert and owner Amr Zedan filed suit Monday to compel the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to allow further testing on the biological samples taken from the Kentucky Derby winner. It is the first of what is expected to be a series of lawsuits over the upcoming months — and possibly years — over who will be deemed the winner of this year’s Kentucky Derby. According to the complaint filed in Franklin (Ky.) Circuit Court, Baffert and Zedan want the KHRC to release what samples it has remaining on the 3-year-old colt for further testing. After Baffert was informed of the positive test for betamethasone, a legal anti-inflammatory but not on race day, it was requested that a split sample also be tested, as is standard. There is zero tolerance for race-day presence of the drug in Kentucky and many other states, including California. The drug is not considered a performance enhancer. Baffert and Zedan wanted testing for other substances than betamethasone but the KHSC refused. The second test was also positive. An agreement was reached May 24 whereby the remains of the split sample could be tested by a lab. But they were informed around June 1 that the sample was damaged or compromised before reaching the lab. According to the suit, the KHSC has in a freezer an “unopened, untested and hopefully pristine sample” of Medina Spirit’s urine. That is what Baffert and Zedan want tested. Sports After second failed drug test, Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit could be disqualified and forfeit his purse money. Trainer Bob Baffert is suspended. June 2, 2021 The strategy is to scientifically prove that the betamethasone was introduced topically by an ointment to clear up a case of dermatitis and not through interarticular injection, which is the most common form of administration. Then the argument will be made that the rule was intended only for interarticular injections. “The manner in which the betamethasone found its way into Medina Spirit is critical,” according to the suit. “There is a huge difference in a betamethasone finding from an interarticular joint injection versus one from a topical ointment.” All of this has played out publicly without an official finding or notice from the KHSC. It likely will disqualify Medina Spirit and then a hearing will be held. Depending upon the outcome, litigation will continue. Sports Rombauer won the 146th running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore on Saturday, finishing ahead of Midnight Bourbon. May 15, 2021 Churchill Downs has suspended Baffert from running at any of its tracks for two years. The New York Racing Assn. also has a “temporary” ban of the trainer from its tracks. The Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, and Del Mar are waiting for more information or a finding from a state regulatory board before deciding what to do. Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president for PETA, an animal rights group, said the additional testing wouldn’t exonerate the trainer. “A test result revealing that he used ointment on Medina Spirit wouldn’t prove that he didn’t also inject the horse’s joints.” Guillermo said. Craig Robertson, attorney for Baffert, said last week that there would be no further comment until all testing is complete. He reiterated that point to The Times on Tuesday.

Tituss Burgess sends love to Ellie Kemper after her apology for 'racist, sexist' event

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/ellie-kemper-apology-tituss-burgess-vp-fair

Broadway and TV actor Tituss Burgess expressed support on social media for his “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” costar Ellie Kemper after she apologized for participating in a debutante ball with a racist past. On Monday, Burgess shared Kemper’s apology to his own Instagram page after evidence resurfaced online of the “Office” alum being crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at the Fair Saint Louis in 1999 when she was 19. The annual event, previously called the Veiled Prophet Ball, and the organization behind it have a history of excluding Black people and have been accused of affiliating with the Ku Klux Klan — prompting some to dub Kemper a “KKK princess” after details and a photo from her coronation recently went viral. “I love my Ellie,” Burgess posted on Instagram, along with a heart emoji. “Oh, & P.S. Next time, just ask me, I’ll tell ya what to do.” A post shared by Tituss Burgess (@instatituss) In the Netflix sitcom “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Burgess and Kemper portrayed roommates and friends Titus and Kimmy, respectively, navigating life in New York City. The popular series, co-created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, ran for four seasons from 2015 to 2019. “I love you Tituss,” Kemper replied to her longtime scene partner’s Instagram message. Earlier that day, Kemper released a statement on social media addressing the controversy surrounding her former involvement with the VP, which began admitting Black members two decades before Kemper won the Fair Saint Louis pageant. Entertainment & Arts Actor Ellie Kemper was called a ‘KKK princess’ for winning a debutante crown back in 1999. Now she has apologized after last week’s online outcry. June 7, 2021 “The century-old organization that hosted the debutante ball had an unquestionably racist, sexist and elitist past,” Kemper wrote. “I was not aware of this history at the time, but ignorance is no excuse. I was old enough to have educated myself before getting involved. “I unequivocally deplore, denounce, and reject white supremacy. At the same time, I acknowledge that because of my race and my privilege, I am the beneficiary of a system that has dispensed unequal justice and unequal rewards.” In addition to Burgess, the comedian and actor also received words and emojis of encouragement from Hollywood figures such as Angela Kinsey, Mindy Kaling, Yvette Nicole Brown and Alec Baldwin, who showed up for her in the comment section. Television For Tituss Burgess, the end of Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” after four seasons felt like a graduation. June 7, 2019 “There is a very natural temptation, when you become the subject of internet criticism, to tell yourself that your detractors are getting it all wrong,” Kemper continued her remarks. “But at some point last week, I realized that a lot of the forces behind the criticism are forces that I’ve spent my life supporting and agreeing with. ... “I want to apologize to the people I’ve disappointed, and I promise that moving forward I will listen, continue to educate myself, and use my privilege in support of the better society I think we’re capable of becoming.”

Palestinians find new unity in struggle against Israel

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/new-palestinian-solidarity-israel-hamas-gaza-war

A cease-fire in the Gaza Strip usually means calm across Israel. Not this time. Near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinians enraged over the occupation of the territory continue to face off against security forces firing tear gas and rubber bullets. In Lod, Jaffa and other mixed Israeli cities, Palestinian residents warily eye their Jewish neighbors — and vice versa — as they walk streets that were battlegrounds weeks ago. Every day in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah district brings fresh confrontations between Israeli riot police and Palestinian activists. The war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza was stilled after a May 21 cease-fire. But tensions between Palestinians and the state of Israel have remained and — together with the 11 days of bloodshed — have catalyzed a newfound Palestinian solidarity that could mark an important new moment in the Mideast conflict, activists say. For years, Palestinians have been subject to geographical and political divisions that have created vast differences between those living under the Palestinian Authority’s aegis in the occupied West Bank, under Hamas’ control in Gaza or under Israeli government rule as citizens of Israel, not to mention the Palestinian diaspora spread across the Middle East and beyond. But the clashes in East Jerusalem, the sectarian violence in Israeli cities and the fighting in Gaza have narrowed those divisions, said Adrieh Abou Shehadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who lives in Jaffa, outside Tel Aviv. Palestinians from all regions awoke to what they saw as a common thread running through their struggles: their quest for recognition and equality, and Israel’s resistance to it. “What Israel did recently was its biggest strategic mistake: It showed Palestinians the reality, that it deals with all of us this way … that we’re all unequal,” said Abou Shehadeh, the founder and curator of Hilweh Market, a Palestinian artisanal boutique. “Israel created a hierarchy for Palestinians from different places. But the way it dealt with us in this time, there was no difference. It showed us the cause is one.” World & Nation As rockets from Gaza streaked overhead, Arabs and Jews fought each other on the streets below. May 12, 2021 Mariam Barghouti, a Ramallah-based writer and researcher, agreed that the latest crisis has helped galvanize unity of purpose among Palestinians across the Holy Land. “It’s pressuring all representatives to try to listen to the Palestinian population and respond to the reality on the ground,” she said. “This isn’t just a problem of negotiations, but a problem of the practices being faced by us as Palestinians.” That growing sense of solidarity among Palestinians is playing out against the backdrop of political turmoil in Israel, where a new government is all but certain to take power in coming days. But because the incoming ruling coalition draws from across the Israeli political spectrum, it is not expected to achieve consensus on issues such as reviving talks over the creation of a Palestinian state. In a historic first, an Islamist party will also participate in the new government, in what it says is a bid to redress government discrimination against Palestinian-dominated municipalities, as well as legal practices targeting Palestinians living within Israel’s borders. California Activists say American discourse on Israel is changing as communities and progressive politicians throw their weight behind the Palestinian cause. May 25, 2021 Palestinians say there is much to redress. For proof, many look to East Jerusalem and the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settler groups have fought to take over houses from longtime Palestinian residents following a court ruling. Israeli authorities dismiss the battle as a “real-estate dispute.” But Palestinians insist it’s part of a wider effort to expand Jewish control that amounts to a form of apartheid — a controversial term that has gained currency among Palestinians to describe their experiences and that Israel’s own leading human-rights group, B’Tselem, has adopted. Drawing particular ire is a 2018 law defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, which acknowledged only Jews’ right to self-determination in the Holy Land, and the removal of Arabic as an official language of the state, even though Arab citizens of Israel account for one-fifth of the country’s population. “These are systemic practices that we’ve seen in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Lydd [the Palestinian name for Lod] and Jaffa, turning Palestinians into tokens that are only symbols of Israel’s democracy, instead of what is actually happening: the erasure of Palestine and the Palestinians,” Barghouti said. World & Nation A leading Israeli human rights group has begun describing both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single ‘apartheid’ regime. Jan. 12, 2021 In the Old Quarter of Lod, a city of 77,000 people 10 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, clashes erupted between Jewish ultra-nationalists and Palestinian Israelis last month as the war between Hamas and Israel inflamed ethnic passions. Two residents were killed: a 32-year-old Arab man, Musa Hassuna, and a 56-year-old Jewish man, Yigal Yehoshua. The city’s mayor, Yair Revivo, has been accused of fomenting division. He said recently that crimes by Palestinian residents represented an “existential threat to the state of Israel,” and in December, he told Israeli radio that “Jewish criminals have a drop of compassion. Arab criminals ... don’t have any inhibitions.” Israeli security forces remain on Lod’s streets, where Palestinian rioters set patrol cars, synagogues and homes on fire during the war last month. As for the Omari mosque, one of the Jewish ultra-nationalists’ targets, it remains barricaded, with Mohammad Abu Sahaab, a burly 30-year-old, standing sentinel to stop any break-ins. Under the shade of a tree, he and other neighbors stared at a police car that approached the group before abruptly turning away. “Why was there anger here? It’s because everything is available to the Jews, not to the Arabs,” Abu Sahaab said. News Alerts Get breaking news, investigations, analysis and more signature journalism from the Los Angeles Times in your inbox. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. He pointed to the asphalt lot across the street. “Even parking they give to them, not to us.” Near him, Ghassan Mounayer, a Palestinian resident of Lod and a political aide with the Joint List, a coalition of the main Palestinian parties in Israel, complained of increasing discrimination against Arabs, with restrictions going as far as dictating where they could live in the city. “Jews won’t sell property to us. There are no new neighborhoods where we can go,” he said, adding that though Palestinian residents made up more than a third of Lod’s population, most were crammed into the Old Quarter. Two weeks after the last missiles and rockets flew over Gaza, there has been no return to calm in Sheikh Jarrah, near Jerusalem’s historic Old City. World & Nation A reporter in Tel Aviv describes what she’s seeing during the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. May 12, 2021 Sometime last month, Israeli authorities set up checkpoints at the neighborhood’s entrances, checking the IDs of those who enter and turning away activists who show up in support of those living there. The main street of the neighborhood has become a social media battleground, with Palestinian activists and Jewish settlers walking by each other with smartphones filming. On Sunday, Israeli police arrested Muna and Mohammad Kurd, a sister and brother who have emerged as the focal point of the Sheikh Jarrah protests. (They were released a few hours later.) The Kurds, who are 23-year-old twins, hint at a generational change underway. Like other younger Palestinians, they’re less concerned with the traditional debates over Palestinian statehood and with old-guard political parties — including Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority — than they are with more general notions of equality. They draw inspiration from movements like Black Lives Matter, employing the same rhetoric to capture the zeitgeist, as well as world attention. World & Nation Samir Mansour’s bookstore was a cultural magnet for residents of the Gaza Strip until an Israeli airstrike leveled it. Now he has to start over. June 1, 2021 “Viewing the police as a dangerous force against us, we took this from BLM,” said Jack Saba, Abou Shehadeh’s husband and a community organizer in Jaffa. He believes that President Biden’s support for Black Lives Matter compelled him into pushing for the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel last month. “The reason Biden couldn’t toe the line he wanted, about Israel’s right to self-defense, was BLM,” he said. Still, the rise in attention to the plight of Palestinians hasn’t translated into official policy on the part of Israel or the U.S., its biggest ally, said Khaled Elgindy, director of the program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli affairs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “The Biden administration is very old school on this, very out of touch with the grass roots of the Democratic Party but also members of its own caucus,” Elgindy said. He noted that during the recent war with Hamas, some progressive Democratic leaders were uncomfortable giving unqualified support to Israel. Saba said he had no illusions “about waking up one day and being able to raise the flag of Palestine” or of restoring lands and property taken in the past. “We’re the ones who know we need to build a new future, that 1947 isn’t coming back,” he said, referring to the year before Israel’s creation. (Arabs call Israeli statehood the nakba — the catastrophe.) “It’s not a function if the Jews stay here or not,” Saba said. “It’s whether they choose to live here as superiors or not. That’s what this moment has taught us.” Times staff writer Laura King in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

Hit-and-run crash in Lucerne Valley kills 3 girls, critically injures another

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/hit-and-run-crash-in-lucerne-valley-kills-3-girls

Four girls — two of them in wheelchairs — were struck in a hit-and-run crash on a rural Lucerne Valley road late Saturday, leaving three of the children dead and one critically injured, officials said. The four pedestrians were in the north lane of Camp Rock Road, north of Rabbit Springs Road, around 10:20 p.m. when a pickup driving in the same direction struck the girls from behind, the California Highway Patrol said in a news release. The driver and passenger of the truck, a 2002 white Chevrolet Silverado, fled the area on foot, the CHP said. Three of the girls — Willow Sanchez, 11; Daytona Bronas, 12; and Sandra Mizer, 13 — died at the scene. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Coroner’s Division released their names and identified all as residents of the Lucerne Valley. A fourth girl, who was not identified, was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center, where her condition was listed as critical. The crash occurred in a remote desert area of western San Bernardino County. There is no sidewalk where the girls were traveling, CHP Officer Dan Olivas said. “It’s pretty desolate out there, and there are hardly any shoulders at all,” he said. No information about the people in the truck has been released, and it was unclear whether speed or drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash, officials said.

Skateboarder Ryan Sheckler quietly sells San Clemente home for $3 million

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2021-06-08/skateboarder-ryan-sheckler-quietly-sells-san-clemente-home-for-3-million

Skateboarding star and San Clemente native Ryan Sheckler just closed a sale in his hometown, unloading his coastal home a few blocks from the beach for $3 million in an off-market deal. That’s a profit of $500,000 over what he paid in 2015, records show. There’s no half-pipe, but the two-story spot has plenty of other amenities, including a billiards room, hot tub, custom built-ins for skateboard storage and dining cabana with an outdoor fireplace. Stacked stone covers the exterior, and the living spaces add distinct style with fireplaces and TVs built into walls of polished concrete. Wide-plank floors and pocketing doors touch up the 3,000-square-foot floor plan. Elsewhere are four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. A deck faces the ocean at the front of the home, and out back, there’s a private space with turf and citrus trees. A skater since the late 1990s, Sheckler racked up eight medals — three gold — at the Summer X Games over the course of his career. The 31-year-old also starred in three seasons of the reality TV show “Life of Ryan,” which aired on MTV from 2007 to 2009. Mitchel Bohi of Compass held the listing.

Biden ends infrastructure talks with group of GOP senators

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/biden-ends-infrastructure-talks-with-group-of-gop-senators

President Biden ended talks with a group of Republican senators on a big infrastructure package on Tuesday and started reaching out to senators from both parties in a new effort toward bipartisan compromise, setting a summer deadline for Congress to pass his top legislative priority. The president is walking away from talks with lead Republican negotiator Sen. Shelley Moore Capito after the two spoke Tuesday, but would welcome her in the new bipartisan group, according to an administrative official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations. At the same time, with anxiety running high as time slips by, Democrats are laying the groundwork to pass some or all of the ambitious package on their own. Biden conferred Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer about launching the budget resolution process for Senate votes in July, the White House said. “The President is committed to moving his economic legislation through Congress this summer, and is pursuing multiple paths to get this done,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. The breakdown comes after weeks of prolonged infrastructure talks between the president and Capito as the two sides failed to broker the divide over the scope of Biden’s sweeping infrastructure investment and how to pay for it. The Republican senators offered a $928-billion proposal, which included about $330 billion in new spending — but not as much as Biden’s $1.7-trillion investment proposal for rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, highways and other infrastructure, including Veterans Affairs hospitals and care centers. Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, a nonstarter for Republicans, and rejected the GOP senators’ suggestion of tapping unspent COVID-19 aid money to fund the new infrastructure spending. Politics The meeting, at least part of which was not expected to include even senior aides, appeared to be an effort to build more of a personal rapport than to hash out the specifics of a deal. June 2, 2021 In a statement, Capito said she was disappointed that Biden ended the talks, but also expressed interest in ongoing bipartisan work. “While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions,” she said. “However, this does not mean bipartisanship isn’t feasible.” As Biden aims for a compromise deal, he has begun reaching out to other senators, including Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and two key centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose votes will be crucial in the evenly split Senate. Those senators receiving phone calls from Biden are engaged in bipartisan talks, and a bipartisan group with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was meeting later Tuesday at the Capitol to negotiate a fresh proposal. Psaki said the president urged the senators to continue their work “to develop a bipartisan proposal that he hopes will be more responsive to the country’s pressing infrastructure needs.” Biden tapped Cabinet and White House aides to meet with the senators in person. With the narrowly split House and the 50-50 Senate, the White House faces political challenges pushing its priorities through Congress with Democratic votes alone. Biden’s party holds a slight majority in the Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie. The special budget rules could provide Biden with an alternative path, particularly in the Senate, because they allow legislation to be approved with a 51-vote threshold, rather than the 60 votes typically needed to advance a bill past a filibuster — in this case, led by Republicans against the Biden package. Politics Six months into the Democrats’ hold on Washington, the party’s progressive wing is growing increasingly restless. June 7, 2021 Democrats are watching warily as time passes and anxiety builds over an agreement, with many lawmakers worried they are not fulfilling their campaign promises to voters who put the party in control of Congress and the White House. During a private discussion among Democratic senators at lunch Tuesday, there were differing views over whether they should keep talking with Republicans or pursue an approach that would allow them to pass a bill on their own, through the budget reconciliation process. Schumer told reporters afterward that Democrats are pursuing “a two-path approach.” The bipartisan talks led by Sinema with the other senators are underway, Schumer said, while the budget committee is preparing the legislation that would allow passage through the reconciliation process. “It may well be that part of the bill that is passed will be bipartisan, and part of it will be in reconciliation,” he said. “But we’re not going to sacrifice bigness and boldness.” The president is expected to engage with lawmakers while he sets out this week on his first foreign trip for an economic summit of the Group of 7 industrialized nations in Europe. Ahead of Biden’s announcement, the White House had also spoken to other lawmakers, including from the House. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), the co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, spoke late Monday with Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, about bipartisan efforts to reach an infrastructure deal, according to an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. Gottheimer is also working with Cassidy and Sinema from the senators’ group, the aide said.

CMT tweets in support of gun-violence awareness; viewers fire back

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/cmt-tweets-in-support-of-gun-control-viewers-dont-like-it

Country-music network CMT supported the gun-control themed “Wear Orange Day” last weekend by urging its viewers, via tweet, to take part. Angry responders were quick to pepper its Twitter page. “We’re (virtually) wearing orange today in support National Gun Violence Awareness Day and to call attention to the more than 100 lives that are lost every day to gun violence. #WearOrange and visit http://wearorange.org for more,” CMT said in a tweet posted Friday. A survey of the first 100 direct responses on the channel’s page showed an overwhelming majority unhappy with the message. Among the 100, only four were supportive (i.e., “Good for you! When they wrote the second amendment all they had were one shot rifles. I don’t think they ever imagined that weapons of war could be purchased! Gun control is desperately needed, background checks and a waiting period. Those who [are] against gun control are idiots!”), one neutral (“Data?”) and 95 disapproving. That’s 95% of 100 responders not in favor of CMT’s “Wear Orange” message. A sampling of the dominant sentiment: “@CMT and @NASCAR have both forgotten who their core audience is again I see.”; “I changed the channel”; “Great job alienating your audience”; “Rest assured I’ll never subscribe or watch anything else sponsored by you...... The 2nd amendment is still there. Get off this soapbox before you find yourself in the dustbin of history”; “You just lost 75% of your viewers. I for one, will not ever watch any station who champions any campaign against the 2nd Amendment, which is what CMT just did. You’d think they would know their audiance [sic], but you put woke idiots in charge, and you get stupidity.”; and multiple messages with clown emojis. Opinion Having Brooks on stage was a way to reach out to the entire country, including his fans in red states. Jan. 20, 2021 Some made their commercial threat explicit, not only toward CMT but also toward any artists showing support: “Yeah...that’ll ensure we don’t buy the songs of anyone who wears orange. Understand your data before you push an agenda.” Many attacked the “100 lives” figure by pointing out that more than 60% of that number is acknowledged to represent suicides (commenters explicitly excluding suicides from “gun violence”). Many attacked CMT for allying with former New York Mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the primary funder of Everytown for Gun Safety, which promotes the Wear Orange campaign (Wear Orange is “a coalition we help lead,” an Everytown spokesman told The Times). The Wear Orange site explains, “Orange is the color that Hadiya Pendleton’s friends wore in her honor when she was shot and killed in Chicago at the age of 15 — just one week after performing at President Obama’s 2nd inaugural parade in 2013. After her death, they asked us to stand up, speak out, and Wear Orange to raise awareness about gun violence. Since then orange has been the defining color of the gun violence prevention movement ... Wear Orange originated on June 2, 2015 — what would have been Hadiya’s 18th birthday. Now, it is observed nationally on the first Friday in June and the following weekend each year.” Science & Medicine A state’s laws governing the sale, ownership and use of guns — or its lack of such laws — are a powerful influence on rates of suicide and of firearms-related homicide there, new research shows. March 5, 2018 The coalition lists hundreds of large corporations, small businesses, cities and nonprofits on its “2021 partners & supporters” page. Among these: The Boston Red Sox and San Francisco Giants, Lionsgate and WarnerMedia, and Amnesty International and the National PTA. CMT is not on that list. Celebrities tweeting last weekend with the hashtag #wearorange included John Legend, Bette Midler, Shonda Rhimes and a number of Democratic politicians such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Obama. On National Gun Violence Awareness Day, we #wearorange to honor those we’ve lost. As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, let’s not forget the other epidemic killing far too many Americans—and keep working to pass commonsense gun safety laws that will protect our communities. Among those currently in office, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Vice President Kamala Harris also tweeted in support. To all those who have lost someone to gun violence, I want you to know that @POTUS and I see you—and we will not stop working toward an America that is free from gun violence. #WearOrange Shannon Watts, founder of the gun-control organization Moms Demand Action (a part of Everytown for Gun Safety), told The Times, “We’re proud to see such broad support from all across the country, including by CMT, to raise awareness and work to end gun violence. Because the fact is, the vast majority of Americans — including gun owners — support common sense gun safety laws to save lives.” How extensive the viewer blowback to CMT’s tweet is may be measurable Wednesday night, when the channel is set to broadcast the 2021 CMT Music Awards (though a drop in viewership may not be entirely related, as awards shows across the board have suffered in the ratings recently). CMT did not immediately respond to Times inquiries. Music There are plenty of questions the Country Music Assn. would like viewers to have on their minds Wednesday night as they tune in to the Nashville trade group’s annual televised awards show on ABC. Nov. 8, 2017

Actor Alyssa Milano has her eye on a congressional seat in California

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/alyssa-milano-congressional-run-house-of-representatives

Alyssa Milano, veteran of TV shows including “Who’s the Boss?,” “Charmed” and “Insatiable,” has her eye on a seat in Congress. “I am confirming that it is possible that I will run for office in 2024,” the actor-activist said Tuesday in a statement to The Times. Milano told the Hill on Tuesday that she was possibly interested in challenging California’s 4th District Rep. Tom McClintock for his House seat, building on a tweet she floated in late May. “I split my time between Truckee, Calif., and Bell Canyon, Calif., and the Republicans have basically had a strong arm there in the 4th District,” Milano told the Hill, saying she would love to potentially flip the red district to blue. The district has consistently chosen a Republican as its House member since 1992, though Democrats were in charge there for 30 years prior. McClintock, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in the 2003 recall, has held his seat since the 2008 election. Entertainment & Arts Actress Alyssa Milano tested negative twice for the coronavirus despite having “every Covid symptom” and later testing positive for virus antibodies. Aug. 6, 2020 Milano’s decision wouldn’t happen in time for the 2022 midterms, though. She has a “Who’s the Boss?” reboot in the works, in addition to other commitments, and she couldn’t do that and run for Congress simultaneously. “It’s going to take someone with, I think, name recognition and deep pockets to be able to run against McClintock, and so I’m considering it,” the COVID-19 long-hauler told the Hill. “I’m basically gathering information right now, speaking to different consultants, speaking to the community.” Milano’s political ambitions build on her history of activism and embrace of liberal and progressive causes, which is mirrored in her “Sorry, Not Sorry” podcast and likely in her upcoming book of the same name. She was an online leader, for example, in the #MeToo movement and has defended abortion rights. On Wednesday she will rally virtually with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss canceling student debt. Milano has worked with UNICEF, PETA and other animal rights groups, and canvassed for various candidates. Leading up to the 2016 election, Milano first threw her support behind Sen. Bernie Sanders before switching to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She endorsed Biden in the 2020 presidential race. Entertainment & Arts Alyssa Milano was swiftly criticized on Twitter after comparing President Trump’s red Make America Great Again hats to the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. Jan. 23, 2019 In a May tweet, the 48-year-old actor asked her followers whether she should run against McClintock, who was among 62 Republican representatives who voted against the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which focused on violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The bill, which President Biden signed into law May 20 after it was approved by both branches of Congress, was criticized by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley — the Senate’s lone dissenting vote — as too broad, giving the government “open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents.”

Editorial: Biden needs bolder, more creative answers to Central American migration

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/biden-harris-central-america-migrants-guatemala-mexico

Vice President Kamala Harris’ quick two-day visit to Guatemala and Mexico won’t, obviously, fix the problems that have spurred tens of thousands of people to migrate northward. But the trip underscores the Biden administration’s recognition that addressing unsanctioned migration is more complicated than building a wall and denying migrants the right to seek asylum, which was the core of the Trump administration’s approach. Where the administration goes from here will be critical to making headway on the problem. Harris and President Biden have told Central Americans contemplating migrating northward “don’t come over” because “you will be turned back.” Telling desperate migrants “don’t come” is reminiscent of Nancy Reagan’s admonition to would-be drug users: “Just say no.” A lot of good that did. People in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador generally don’t just wake up one morning and think, “You know, I want to move to the U.S.” Opinion Clinical trials looked bad for Biogen’s pharmaceutical to treat Alzheimer’s. So how did it win approval over the objections of an FDA advisory panel? June 8, 2021 Years of reporting by journalists and research by nongovernmental experts reveal the factors pushing people north: powerful gangs conscripting teenage boys, sexually abusing young women, extorting local businesses and committing astonishing levels of murder; corrupt governments unable or unwilling to take control; broken economies; and climate-change-driven droughts in agricultural regions that have made subsistence farming impossible. No slogans or admonitions are going to fix those problems, and until regional governments address the basic instability of their countries, their residents will continue to pack up and leave. International aid is one obvious tool, but only if it is applied in workable ways. The U.S. has sent billions in aid over the years ($2.4 billion from 2013 through 2018), but relatively little of that has reached the people who need it most. A 2019 Government Accountability Office report declared that “limited information is available about how U.S. assistance improved prosperity, governance, and security in the Northern Triangle,” and found that the government lacked a comprehensive plan for determining how to allocate and account for the aid money it was spending. Much of the aid, according to a recent New York Times report, goes to contracts with American organizations that take as much as 50% for administrative costs, including salaries, and often develop programs of questionable use, such as an app to give rural farmers instant access to market information for their crops. But an app isn’t very useful for people with sporadic access to cell towers or the internet. Another program built outhouses that went unused in a region with a pressing need for jobs and income. A key hurdle is the endemic corruption in the Northern Triangle countries. The United Nations’ Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala began in 2007 to help prosecutors in Guatemala investigate and build cases against corrupt officials, leading to more than 300 convictions and the dismissal of 1,700 police officers. But when the organization, known by its Spanish acronym CICIG, turned its attention to the family of then-President Jimmy Morales, it was shut down. As Harris was heading to Central American, the White House announced a new anti-corruption task force, under which U.S. investigators are to help their Guatemalan counterparts. That’s a good start. Opinion The federal court ruling tossing out California’s 30-year-old ban on assault weapons reads more like an NRA policy statement than a legal decision. June 7, 2021 So the issue here seems to be less the notion of using foreign aid to stabilize governance and help relieve poverty than the practical realities of how that aid is directed and spent. The Biden administration earlier announced that it would not send aid to Northern Triangle governments because of the corruption, instead channeling it to nongovernment organizations. But that has created its own problems. In Mexico, some USAID money goes to the Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity group investigating political malfeasance. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday asked the U.S. to suspend aid to the group, which he has accused of targeting his government. “It’s interference, it’s interventionism, it’s promoting coup plotters,” López Obrador said of the aid. We broadly support using U.S. funds and pressure to stabilize the Northern Triangle as a counterweight to the factors promoting migration but also recognize that the money alone won’t solve the problem. In fact, some analysts suggest that increasing income for folks in impoverished areas could actually underwrite efforts to migrate. Experts have found that local levels of violence have a direct relationship with the population outflow. Pairing community-level anti-violence programs with a program for more generous and targeted work visas — allowing more people to enter the U.S. legally to work — could make a difference in reducing the numbers of people arriving at the border. The daily crises that lead so many people to decide that the dangerous trek to the border is a safer alternative to staying put will not be easy to solve. This will take patience, bold policy visions, and the support of an American public that sees the human tragedies at hand.

Could Frank Sinatra be Ronan Farrow's dad? A Sinatra buddy (and biographer) says no

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-06-08/frank-sinatra-ronan-farrow-paternity-biographer-tony-oppedisano

Frank Sinatra’s newest biographer says the late singer can’t be Ronan Farrow’s biological father because former spouses Sinatra and Mia Farrow couldn’t have worked out the logistics around the time of conception. “Over the years, there’s been a lot of gossip about Frank’s possibly being Ronan’s secret biological father — rumors that I believe I’m in a position to tamp down, if not put to rest,” Tony Oppedisano writes in “Sinatra and Me: In the Wee Small Hours,” which came out Tuesday. Ronan Farrow was born Satchel Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow in December 1987, more than 20 years after Ol’ Blue Eyes served the actress with divorce papers to end their 16-month marriage. From 1980 to 1992, Mia Farrow was in a relationship with Woody Allen, Ronan Farrow’s legal father. Farrow and Allen split after the director pursued a relationship with stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn. But there has been buzz over the years that Ronan was really Frank’s son, as Sinatra and Mia Farrow continued their friendship long after their split. Also, Ronan, now an award-winning journalist, has the same bright blue eyes as the singer — and the actress. Television HBO’s new docuseries details the couple’s partnership, its dissolution and Allen’s alleged abuse of daughter Dylan Farrow. Here’s a timeline of key events. Feb. 21, 2021 Oppedisano, who became Sinatra’s pal in his early 20s and was later his best friend and road manager, said the artist had emergency diverticulitis surgery in late `1986 and was left wearing a colostomy bag during recovery. That bag was replaced by another, he writes, after another hospitalization in February 1987. By the author’s calculations, conception would have had to take place between March and early April 1987. Sinatra, however, was at home with fourth wife Barbara, recovering, all during that time, with the exception of a short trip to Vegas for shows April 3-6. Then, with Barbara, he went on a tour that started April 12 and included shows in Chicago, Boston and Atlantic City, N.J. “Throughout this time, Frank had to continue wearing the colostomy bag,” Oppedisano writes. “As for Mia, throughout March and April of 1987, she was shooting a movie called ‘September’ that Woody was directing on location at their home in Connecticut.” “September” came out Dec. 18, 1987, a day before Ronan Farrow was born. Oppedisano posits only two ways the former spouses could have connected during that period: “Either Mia made a secret trip to shack up with Frank in his California home with Barbara present, or Frank, wearing his always romantic colostomy bag, made a quick secret trip to Connecticut between his Atlantic City performances to rendezvous with Mia.” Entertainment & Arts Saying “few families are perfect,” Mia Farrow details the deaths of three of her children in an attempt to silence rumors she says are based on lies. April 1, 2021 He holds out one final observation: “If Ronan had been Frank’s son, Frank would have acknowledged him. There’s no way he would have denied Ronan if there’d been any possibility Ronan was his. Frank adored his children, all of them.” That said, Oppedisano later noted a meeting he says he arranged between Mia Farrow and Sinatra in 1992, when he created a diversion so the security team wouldn’t be able to tell Barbara Sinatra about their hotel-room interaction. Despite their split, Mia Farrow and Sinatra remained friends until the singer’s death. “[W]hen the news of Woody Allen’s sexual relationship with his stepdaughter hit the news,” Oppedisano writes, “Frank immediately reached out to Mia to offer his support, whether it be financial assistance or a sympathetic ear.” Meanwhile, Mia Farrow told Vanity Fair in 2013 that Ronan was “possibly” Sinatra’s son and that Sinatra was the great love of her life. Ronan Farrow attended the singer’s funeral in 1998 with his mother. “He is a big part of us, and we are blessed to have him in our lives,” Frank Sinatra’s daughter Nancy Sinatra said of Ronan Farrow in that same article, adding that she and Mia Farrow “have been like sisters. ... We are family and will always be.”

Former longtime L.A. Times sportswriter Rich Roberts dies at 88

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/former-los-angeles-times-sportswriter-rich-roberts-dies-88

Rich Roberts, a longtime Los Angeles Times sportswriter whose passion was racing sailboats, has died at 88. Roberts retired from The Times in 1994 after a distinguished career highlighted by his coverage of the Rams and the outdoors. Roberts was a lifelong resident of Wilmington. His grandfather started the Wilmington Press-Journal, a small daily newspaper, in the 1920s. Roberts’ father, aunt and grandmother managed the paper into the 1950s. Roberts worked there as the sports editor and photographer until 1957 while also attending USC. He left to become a sportswriter at the San Pedro News Pilot and also worked at the Long Beach Press-Telegram before The Times hired him in 1973. While serving as the Rams beat writer, Roberts continued to spend free time racing his Catalina 22 sailboat with his son, Rick. When the 1984 Olympics came to Los Angeles, there was little doubt who would cover the sailing competition. “I covered pro football and the outdoors beat most of my newspaper career while taking up sailing on my own,” Roberts said in a 2007 interview with Arizona Boating & Watersports. “I was assigned to sailing — America’s Cup, the ’84 Olympics — as a secondary beat because nobody else on the staff knew — or cared — squat about the sport.” Bill Dwyre, former sports editor of The Times, said Roberts’ coverage helped America’s Cup gain popularity. “Rich made America’s Cup significant to a large number of readers,” said Dwyre, who recalled sending Roberts to Fremantle, Australia, to cover the 1987 America’s Cup, won by Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes. “Rich was in Australia so long I didn’t think he’d come back.” After leaving The Times, Roberts handled public relations for various sailing events. “Many complain to me that, say, the L.A. Times doesn’t run anything about sailing,” Roberts said in the 2007 interview. “I try to explain that I’m only the shill. What they need is a delegation of influential representatives ... to approach editors and publishers and explain that it’s a dynamic sport with interesting people of all ages who seldom get arrested for crashing their cars, using steroids, snorting cocaine or beating up their girlfriends.” Roberts is survived by Frances, his wife of 68 years, daughter Lorraine, son Rick, a granddaughter, grandson and four great-grandsons.

Editorial: The Justice Department rightly tightens protections for journalists

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/editorial-the-justice-department-rightly-tightens-protections-for-journalists

The Justice Department’s damaged reputation suffered further last month, when the Washington Post revealed that the department in 2020 had moved to obtain telephone records from Post reporters who’d broken stories three years earlier about Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election. That’s why it was welcome news when the department announced that it won’t use “compulsory legal process” in leak investigations to obtain information from members of the news media. For the record: 10:19 a.m. July 20, 2021This editorial has been corrected to note that the Justice Department reportedly decided to obtain telephone records of three Washington Post reporters in 2020, not 2019. Protecting the confidentiality of newsgathering isn’t a concession to a special interest. Society as a whole benefits when reporters are able to aggressively investigate official wrongdoing or incompetence, even if that sometimes means obtaining government information not authorized for public release. Yet questions remain not only about the investigations that prompted this change of policy, but also about the White House’s role in the department’s decision to change course. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, who will be testifying Wednesday before a Senate subcommittee, should be prepared to address both subjects. Last month the department acknowledged that during the Trump administration it had acquired telephone records of reporters who work for the Washington Post and the phone and email records of a reporter for CNN — two news outlets repeatedly criticized by the president. Last week the New York Times, another frequent target of President Trump, reported that the department had secretly seized phone records from 2017 related to four of its reporters and obtained a court order to obtain logs of reporters’ emails. Google, the newspaper’s email provider, resisted supplying the latter information — and in March the Justice Department obtained a judicial gag order preventing New York Times executives from publicizing the matter. A court eventually lifted the order. Trump’s Justice Department was hardly the first to target reporters in leak investigations. Most recently, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations did so as well. But in 2013, then-Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. tightened the guidelines governing the acquisition of information from journalists. The guidelines say that prosecutors must notify news organizations before seeking records of contacts between reporters and their sources unless the attorney general determines that notification would threaten the integrity of the investigation, risk grave harm to national security or present an imminent risk of death or serious bodily injury. Given Trump’s attempts to politicize the Justice Department, Congress and the public need assurances that these guidelines were followed. But the fact that the department was apparently able to exploit exceptions in the guidelines strengthens the case for the department’s new, more protective policy. It’s notable, too, that the gag order preventing New York Times executives from publicly discussing the case involving Google was obtained by the Justice Department during the Biden administration. Presidential Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the White House had been unaware of the order. The Justice Department’s change of policy followed a statement by Biden that it was “simply, simply wrong” for the DOJ to gain access to journalists’ phone and email records. The president said that he “would not let that happen” in the future. Psaki suggested that Biden’s comments didn’t amount to an attempt to intervene in criminal investigations. Rather, she said, issuing subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations “is not consistent with the president’s policy direction to the department.” The distinction between a general policy established by the president and the handling of particular cases is an important one. But it’s vital in light of Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department that “policy” guidance from the president never be deployed to influence particular cases. Finally, although the new Justice Department policy is welcome, the best way to protect newsgathering from intrusion by the government is for Congress to follow the example of many states and enact a shield law protecting journalists’ confidential sources. Then, protections for reporters — and the public interest in coverage of the people’s business — wouldn’t depend on transitory decisions by a particular administration.

COVID-19 vaccination site opens at Union Station as state hurtles toward reopening

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/covid-19-vaccine-site-opens-la-union-station

A COVID-19 vaccination site opened Tuesday at downtown Los Angeles’ Union Station as the effort to get shots into more residents’ arms ramped up ahead of the state’s planned reopening next week. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti highlighted the convenience of the site at a news conference, noting that the transportation hub is widely used by commuters. Before the pandemic, roughly 110,000 people traveled through the station every day, he said. “Now, Union Station will be a place that can help us recover from this most traumatic year of our lives — to be much more than a place to head to a platform and to board a train, but a place where you can protect yourself, your life, your family, loved ones and friends,” Garcetti said Tuesday. Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said the station’s strategic location also enabled it to distribute vaccines to underserved communities, including people of color, older adults and those without access to a car. “We want everyone in L.A. County who is eligible to have convenient access to COVID-19 vaccinations to ensure an equitable recovery,” said Wiggins, who recently took over as the agency’s CEO. “We cannot overstate the importance of equity in all we do, whether it’s providing essential transit services or access to vaccinations.” Located at the East Portal of the station, the clinic will be open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Los Angeles Fire Department, in partnership with the nonprofit CORE, will operate the site. No appointment is necessary, and vaccinations are free. The site is one of five walk-up vaccination centers offered throughout the Metro system, with other locations in Hawthorne, Gardena, Rancho Dominguez and El Monte, said Garcetti, who chairs Metro’s board of directors. Beginning Tuesday and running through Saturday, new vaccination locations are opening at Metrolink stations in Fontana, Montclair and Upland in San Bernardino County, with additional sites launching the following week, said Larry McCallon, vice chair of the Metrolink board. California Here are five things to expect as L.A. County fully reopens after COVID-19 restrictions. June 7, 2021 Union Station and the other sites are ramping up operations amid a push to increase inoculations across California ahead of June 15, the date Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to reopen most sectors of the economy and remove many coronavirus-related restrictions. This week, Los Angeles County is dispatching 237 mobile vaccination sites — the largest operating in a single week, according to L.A. County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis. “We’re directing a lot of resources toward mobile vaccination sites out of a real sense of urgency to get as many residents vaccinated as we can before June 15 and beyond,” Davis said at a recent briefing. The city of L.A. has administered 1.3 million vaccines, with 70% “going to people of color, who have been the hardest hit,” Garcetti said. At the county level, the number of vaccinations given out has reached 9.5 million, with about 64% of adults having received at least one dose. Garcetti said L.A. was joining a national effort of administering one dose to 70% of all adults by July 4. President Biden declared June a national month of action to work toward the goal. California as a whole has one of the lowest coronavirus transmission rates in the country, tying with Nebraska for the third-lowest case rate level as of Monday, trailing only the less-dense states of Vermont and South Dakota.

What's on TV Wednesday: 'BET Presents The Encore'; 2021 CMT Music Awards

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/whats-on-tv-wednesday-bet-presents-the-encore-2021-cmt-music-awards

During the coronavirus crisis, the Los Angeles Times is making some temporary changes to our print sections. The prime-time TV grid is on hiatus in print but an expanded version is available in your daily Times eNewspaper. You can find a printable PDF online at: latimes.com/whats-on-tv. Kids Say the Darndest Things (N) 8 p.m. CBS Press Your Luck Contestants from Valley Village and Oakland. 8 p.m. ABC MasterChef Legendary Michelin star chef Curtis Stone is a guest judge. 8 p.m. Fox “They are works of art,” chef Gordon Ramsay says proudly. Aug. 8, 2017 North Woods Law: Wildside (premiere) 8 p.m. Animal Planet The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (N) 8 p.m. Bravo Television As reality TV’s perpetual best friend, the confidante of Nicole Brown Simpson has helped define one of the genre’s key roles — and redefine her image. May 18, 2021 Expedition Unknown Josh Gates and Christopher Lloyd go on a cross-country adventure starting in Hollywood, heading to Texas and then Massachusetts in the first of two parts. 8 p.m. Discovery Mysteries of the Unknown Host Don Wildman recounts a chilling tale of two global superpowers on the brink of Armageddon. 8 p.m. Travel A Million Little Things Sophie (Lizzy Greene) is determined to win justice for the trauma she suffered, while Maggie (Allison Miller) forces Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) to look at the kind of relationships he has been having in the two-hour season finale. Also, Rome and Regina (Romany Malco, Christina Moses) make big changes in their lives, while Eddie (David Giuntoli) fights for his family. Paul Rodriguez, Andrew Leeds and Kari Matchett guest star. 9 p.m. ABC Crime Scene Kitchen (N) 9 p.m. Fox Tyler Perry‘s Sistas The season premiere of this comedy drama picks up the action right where it left off in the second-season finale. KJ Smith, Mignon, Ebony Obsidian and Novi Brown star. 9 p.m. BET Guy’s Grocery Games (N) 9 p.m. Food Network BET Presents The Encore Nine of the most memorable solo artists and girl-group members from the 1990s and 2000s team up for this unique musical experiment in which they’ll try to form the ultimate R&B supergroup. Helping them along the way are music producer Kosine, choreographer Aliya Janell, songwriter Elijah Blake and vocal coach Cynnamyn. 10 p.m. BET The Bold Type Jane (Katie Stevens) faces unexpected performance reviews that shake her confidence. Meghann Fahy, Aisha Dee and Nikohl Boosheri also star. (N) 10 p.m. Freeform Queen of the South The story of self-invented drug queenpin Teresa Mendoza (Alice Braga) draws to a close in the series finale. Hemky Madera, Molly Burnett, Peter Gadiot, Jamie Hector, Joseph T. Campos star. (N) 10 p.m. USA Television Once upon a time, not that very long ago, a show called “Queen of the South” would have centered on some steel magnolia solving mysteries out of her Charleston bakery. June 23, 2016 2021 CMT Music Awards From Nashville, country superstars Kelsea Ballerini and Kane Brown host the ceremonies honoring the year’s best country music videos and TV performances as selected by fans. Among the nominees, Maren Morris and Miranda Lambert lead the pack with four nominations apiece. Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood, Needtobreathe, Thomas Rhett, Chris Stapleton, H.E.R., Luke Bryan, Lady A and Chris Young are scheduled to perform. 8 p.m. CMT; LOGO; MTV; Paramount; TV Land Baseball The San Francisco Giants visit the Texas Rangers, 11 a.m. MLB; regional coverage, 2 p.m. MLB; the Dodgers visit the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4 p.m. SportsNetLA; the Kansas City Royals visit the Angels, 6:30 p.m. BSW and ESPN 2021 Women’s College Softball World Series Championship finals, Game 3, 4 p.m. ESPN Sports While pitchers in softball might face less risk than those in baseball because of the windmill motion, proper training is key to preventing injuries. June 7, 2021 Soccer International Friendly: United States versus Costa Rica, from Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah, 4 p.m. ESPN2 NBA Basketball The Denver Nuggets visit the Phoenix Suns, 6:30 p.m. TNT CBS This Morning Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jon M. Chu; Ibram X. Kendi. (N) 7 a.m. KCBS Today The Tribeca Film Festival; Jack Baker and Michael McConnell on the book “Two Grooms on a Cake.” (N) 7 a.m. KNBC KTLA Morning News (N) 7 a.m. KTLA Good Morning America Authors Kiley Reid and Emily Henry. (N) 7 a.m. KABC Good Day L.A. (N) 7 a.m. KTTV Live With Kelly and Ryan Helen Hunt (“Blindspotting”). (N) 9 a.m. KABC The View Michael Strahan. (N) 10 a.m. KABC Home & Family Chef David Rose; Dr. Tiffany Moon. (N) 10 a.m. Hallmark The Wendy Williams Show Aaron Carter (“Celebrity Boxing: Odom vs. Carter in HD”). (N) 11 a.m. KTTV The Talk Dax Shepard; Marcela Valladolid. (N) 1 p.m. KCBS The Kelly Clarkson Show Clarkson covers “Ghost”; Derek Hough; Leslie Grace; Stokley performs. (N) 2 p.m. KNBC The Ellen DeGeneres Show Kevin Nealon (“Hiking With Kevin”). (N) 3 p.m. KNBC The Daily Show With Trevor Noah (N) 11 p.m. Comedy Central Conan Kevin Nealon. (N) 11 p.m. TBS The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Kristen Bell; Dane DeHaan; Migos performs. (N) 11:34 p.m. KNBC The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Samuel L. Jackson; Padma Lakshmi. (N) 11:35 p.m. KCBS Jimmy Kimmel Live! Liam Neeson; Gugu Mbatha-Raw; T-Pain and Kehlani perform. (N) 11:35 p.m. KABC Amanpour and Company (N) midnight KCET and KVCR Late Night With Seth Meyers Will Forte; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Brendan Buckley. (N) 12:36 a.m. KNBC The Late Late Show With James Corden Lisa Kudrow; Clea Duvall; Rostam performs. (N) 12:37 a.m. KCBS Nightline (N) 12:37 a.m. KABC First Reformed (2017) 8 a.m. TMC Misery (1990) 8:34 a.m. Cinemax Captain Phillips (2013) 9 a.m. AMC Knocked Up (2007) 9 a.m. MTV Love and Monsters (2020) 9:15 a.m. Epix Kingdom of Heaven (2005) 9:31 a.m. Starz War Horse (2011) 10:25 a.m. HBO End of Watch (2012) 11:05 a.m. Encore Harriet (2019) 11:55 a.m. Cinemax No Country for Old Men (2007) Noon Showtime The Kid Detective (2020) Noon and 9:17 p.m. Starz Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015) 12:55 p.m. Epix Dreamgirls (2006) 12:55 p.m. HBO Judge Hardy and Son (1939) 1:30 p.m. TCM A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) 2:15 p.m. Starz The End of the Tour (2015) 3 p.m. TMC The Aviator (2004) 3:10 p.m. HBO Scrooged (1988) 4:15 p.m. Epix The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) 4:16 p.m. Cinemax Matilda (1996) 5 p.m. Freeform Hoosiers (1986) 5 p.m. FS1 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) 5 p.m. TCM The First Wives Club (1996) 5:05 p.m. Encore Us (2019) 5:30 p.m. FX Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) 5:30 p.m. Showtime Wall Street (1987) 5:52 p.m. Cinemax Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) 6:30 p.m. FXX The Usual Suspects (1995) 6:30 p.m. Ovation Morris From America (2016) 6:30 p.m. TMC The Parent Trap (1998) 7 p.m. Freeform Scary Movie (2000) 7 p.m. VH1 Singin’ in the Rain (1952) 7:15 p.m. TCM The Most Dangerous Game (1932) 8 p.m. KVCR Lethal Weapon (1987) 8 p.m. AMC Clueless (1995) 8 p.m. HBO Eighth Grade (2018) 8 p.m. TMC An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) 9 p.m. Encore Moneyball (2011) 9 p.m. Showtime And Then There Were None (1945) 9:10 p.m. KVCR It Happened One Night (1934) 9:15 p.m. TCM Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) 9:40 p.m. Epix The Italian Job (2003) 9:44 p.m. Cinemax Tenet (2020) 10:05 p.m. HBO Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) 10:30 p.m. AMC The Rundown (2003) 10:40 p.m. Paramount Television Movies on TV this week: June 6: ‘The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” on Cinemax; ‘Taxi Driver’ on TMC; ‘The Crying Game’ on Showtime and more June 4, 2021 Movies on TV for the entire week, June. 6 - 12 in interactive PDF format for easy downloading and printing June 4, 2021 TV Grids for the entire week of June. 6 - 12 in downloadable and printable PDF files June 4, 2021 Television Looking for what to watch on TV? Here are the television listings from the Los Angeles Times in printable PDF files. June 18, 2021

Aaron Rodgers not present as Packers open mandatory minicamp

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/aaron-rodgers-not-present-packers-mandatory-minicamp

Aaron Rodgers wasn’t with the Green Bay Packers for their first mandatory minicamp session Tuesday, the latest chapter in the standoff between the team and its MVP quarterback. Rodgers also hadn’t participated in the Packers’ voluntary organized team activities, which represented a change from his usual offseason routine. The Packers have the option to fine Rodgers just over $93,000 if he misses all three minicamp sessions this week. The three-time MVP has spent his entire career with the Packers, who selected him with the 24th overall pick in the 2005 draft. But his future with the team has been uncertain ever since ESPN reported in the hours leading up to this year’s draft that Rodgers doesn’t want to return to Green Bay. Rodgers was noncommittal about his future in an ESPN interview that aired May 24 but did discuss his frustrations with the organization. Chargers Shane Day already was the quarterbacks coach in San Francisco, but he could not turn down the opportunity to work with the Chargers’ Justin Herbert. June 7, 2021 “I think sometimes people forget what really makes an organization,” Rodgers said. “History is important, the legacy of so many people who’ve come before you. But the people, that’s the most important thing. People make an organization. People make a business, and sometimes that gets forgotten. Culture is built brick by brick, the foundation of it by the people, not by the organization, not by the building, not by the corporation. It’s built by the people.” Although Rodgers wasn’t at at Tuesday’s practice, the Packers did have their top five receivers present. Those receivers, a group headed by all-pro selection Davante Adams, had sat out the organized team activity sessions. The Packers are seeking to take the next step after losing in the NFC championship game each of the last two seasons, but the uncertainty surrounding Rodgers’ future has dominated offseason discussions. Packers coach Matt LaFleur and general manager Brian Gutekunst have both said they want Rodgers back. Gutekunst has said he won’t trade Rodgers, who has three years left on his contract. Sports Jim Fassel, an Anaheim High grad, was the league’s coach of the year in 1997 June 7, 2021 Packers CEO Mark Murphy noted in a monthly column posted Saturday on the team’s website that the issue had divided the team’s fan base. Also in the column, Murphy replied to a letter critical of Gutekunst by expressing support for the general manager. “We remain committed to resolving things with Aaron and want him to be our quarterback in 2021 and beyond,” Murphy said as he reiterated comments he’d made in a column a month earlier. “We are working to resolve the situation and realize that the less both sides say publicly, the better.”

Robert Kraft gets a super nice car from super rich friends for his 80th birthday

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-08/robert-kraft-gets-bentley-80th-birthday-meek-mill-jay-z

Here’s a question probably on the mind of every sports fan everywhere at this exact moment: What does one multibillionaire professional sports team owner do to commemorate a milestone birthday of his BFF, who also happens to be a multibillionaire professional sports team owner? Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin recently was faced with that dilemma regarding bestie and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Here’s what he did: Rubin acknowledged Kraft’s 80th birthday Saturday with a message on Twitter — just a couple of lines about their friendship along with a comment about Kraft’s youthful appearance and spirit. That’s it. Just a sweet and simple tweet. Rams Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford opened up in an interview, including his decision to ask for a trade and an eating contest he had with Clayton Kershaw. May 19, 2021 Oh yeah, and a car. A really, really nice car. A car so rare that even Kraft hadn’t been able to track one down. But somehow Rubin was able to do so. He got several other of their rich and famous friends (a group that apparently includes rappers Meek Mill and Jay-Z, restaurant owner Will Makris and others) to help him purchase a custom blue Bentley convertible and have it shipped from Florida to Kraft’s home in Southampton, N.Y. Mill posted a video Monday on Instagram of Rubin surprising Kraft with the sweet ride. Sports New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft spent some time Tuesday in a Pennsylvania state prison visiting Meek Mill and emerged calling for the rapper’s release and an overhaul of the criminal justice system. April 11, 2018 “Oh my God, that’s exactly ... how the fudge did you get it?” a stunned Kraft asked. “Cuz we couldn’t get it.” “We have resources,” Rubin answered. Kraft, who could afford to purchase roughly 24,117 similar cars at any given time, was visibly touched by the gesture. He embraced Rubin, 48, multiple times and the two men exchanged heartfelt kisses on the cheek. “We killed it,” Makris commented on Mill’s Instagram post.

Rapper Polo G lands a Chatsworth mansion for $4.9 million

https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2021-06-08/rapper-polo-g-lands-a-chatsworth-mansion-for-4-9-million

Chatsworth is becoming a hip-hop haven with musicians such as Swae Lee, YG and DJ Mustard taking up residence there in recent years. Rapper Polo G is the latest to flock to the San Fernando Valley suburb; he just shelled out $4.885 million for a Mediterranean-style spot in the guard-gated community of Indian Falls Estates. Claiming nearly two acres, the property has waffled on and off the market since it was built in 2018. Records show it first listed for $6.2 million and was most recently offered at $5 million before Polo G, whose real name is Taurus Bartlett, scooped it up. The place is packed with amenities, but what really makes it stand out is the garage. There’s a standard two-car garage attached to the house, but out back, a custom garage the size of a guesthouse features 14-foot doors and space for 14 cars. A circular driveway approaches the home, which sets a dramatic tone with six front-facing balconies, a double-door entry and grand foyer with a sweeping staircase and porcelain floors. Inside, six bedrooms and eight bathrooms are spread across nearly 11,000 square feet. Pretty much every space is oversize, from the kitchen complete with huge granite slabs to the two-story living room with a custom bar and wine cellar and a catwalk overlooking the space from above. Covered patios line the back of the home, leading out to a swimming pool and lighted tennis court. Second-story terraces take in views of the neighborhood. Polo G rose to fame with the hits “Finer Things” and “Pop Out” before releasing his debut album, “Die a Legend,” in 2019. His second album, “The Goat,” dropped last year, and the 22-year-old is set to release his third, titled “Hall of Fame,” in June. Emil Hartoonian and Bryan Castaneda of the Agency held the listing. Daniel Dill of Westside Estate Agency represented Polo G. Neither could be reached for comment.

Column: A Nobel laureate backs off from claiming a 'smoking gun' for the COVID-19 lab-leak theory

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-08/nobel-laureate-baltimore-smoking-gun-for-the-covid-lab-leak-theory

For those concerned with the origins of the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic, a few words from Nobel laureate David Baltimore seemed to settle the debate, decisively in favor of the theory that the virus was man-made before it escaped from a Chinese laboratory. A feature of the virus’ genome known as the furin cleavage site “was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus,” Baltimore said. Using virologists’ shorthand for the virus, SARS2, he continued: “These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.” I believe that the question of whether the sequence was put in naturally or by molecular manipulation is very hard to determine but I wouldn’t rule out either origin. — Nobel laureate David Baltimore Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis — that is, that the virus escaped from a lab rather than reaching humans as a natural spillover from a wild animal host — could scarcely have hoped for a more substantial endorsement of their views. Baltimore is one of the nation’s most eminent scientists, a former president of Rockefeller University and Caltech, where he still serves as president emeritus and remains on the faculty as distinguished professor of biology. Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. His expertise is virology, which places the inquiry into the structure of SARS2 squarely in his professional wheelhouse. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discoveries related to “the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell,” as the Nobel citation stated. Baltimore’s “smoking gun” quote appeared in a May 5 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but a respected publication that has run numerous articles on the COVID-19 pandemic. (Founded by former scientists of the Manhattan Project to carry their warnings of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, it’s probably best known for its cautionary Doomsday Clock.) The article itself, by science writer Nicholas Wade, has become one of the most often-cited pieces in support of the lab-leak hypothesis. The quote from Baltimore is part of its argumentative bedrock. The bulletin’s editor, John Mecklin, even invoked the quote to me in a Twitter exchange in which he criticized my earlier column questioning the hypothesis. “I think David Baltimore should be listened to,” Mecklin tweeted. Business The lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19 is getting lots of attention, but there remains no evidence for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else. June 3, 2021 Here’s the problem: Baltimore regrets using the phrase “smoking gun” to describe his conclusion, and doesn’t agree that it validates the lab-leak theory. Baltimore told me by email that he made the statement to Wade, also by email, and granted him permission to use it in print. But he added that he “should have softened the phrase ‘smoking gun’ because I don’t believe that it proves the origin of the furin cleavage site but it does sound that way. I believe that the question of whether the sequence was put in naturally or by molecular manipulation is very hard to determine but I wouldn’t rule out either origin.” Baltimore has made similar statements to others who have asked him about the quote, including Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University, a former lab colleague of Baltimore’s, and Amy Maxmen of Nature. Baltimore told Maxmen that while evolution could have produced the virus, “there are other possibilities and they need careful consideration, which is all I meant to be saying.” Per Racaniello, Baltimore “said he should not have used the phrase ‘smoking gun.’ What he meant to say was that it was a striking suggestion of a possible origin of the virus.” Wade told me by email that he still believes that Baltimore intended the “smoking gun” phrase “to be understood in the light of his next sentence, that ‘These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.’” Wade said the phrase should be understood in the context of “the totality of the quote.” All this might seem inside baseball to casual followers of the COVID origin debate, but it’s more important than that. As I reported in my earlier column, the question of the origin of the virus boils down to two categorical possibilities. One is that the virus reached the human population through a release — accidental or deliberate — from a virus laboratory in Wuhan, China, which either had a variant in its inventory or had created the virus through genetic manipulation. Whether the researchers were trying to create a super-spreading bioweapon or merely doing research into its features is a sub-category of this theory. The other is that the virus reached humanity by spilling over from animals. The two theories point to sharply different policy responses. A lab leak tells us that the biological security of institutions doing research into live pathogens needs to be dramatically shored up. Natural spillover warns us that contacts between human communities and wildlife harboring potentially infectious pathogens, such as bats, should be better monitored and regulated. Business Republicans and conservatives think that just invoking Fauci’s name is enough to validate their COVID-19 claims, but they’re wrong June 8, 2021 Experienced virologists heavily favor the natural-spillover theory. That’s because the phenomenon has been common throughout history, accounting for the spread of most viruses and indeed for most pandemics. The direct animal source hasn’t been identified; it’s not unusual for investigations of that nature to take years. SARS2 has been known to scientists for only about 18 months. No one denies that a lab leak is possible. But the theory presupposes a complex series of events coming together perfectly in a Chinese lab — secrecy and coordination, perhaps abetted by extreme sloppiness, or even deliberate malevolence. Balancing the commonplace nature of animal-human spillover against the complex assumptions required by the lab-leak theory, virologists say, tips the scales in favor of the former. “We cannot prove that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin and we cannot prove that its emergence was not the result of a lab leak,” Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, lead author of a seminal paper on the origin of the virus, told me by email. “However, while both scenarios are possible, they are not equally likely,” Andersen wrote. “Precedence, data and other evidence strongly favor natural emergence as a highly likely scientific theory for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, while the lab leak remains a speculative incomplete hypothesis with no credible evidence.” The weakness of the lab-leak theory is underscored by the character of the evidence invoked to support it — exaggeration of supposed research findings, the magnification of coincidences into certainties, the interpretation of heightened interest in the theory as proof of its validity, supposition piled upon conjecture. Business With the pandemic ebbing across the US, the debate over lockdowns continues -- but the evidence shows they worked. May 19, 2021 That brings us back to Baltimore’s specific assertion regarding the furin cleavage site. This concerns the protein “spikes” on the surface of the virus. The spike penetrates healthy cells, allowing the virus to inject its infectious content and start replicating. To work, the spike must be cut in two, which is done by the enzyme furin. Wade asserted that the presence of the furin cleavage site on the SARS2 virus was so unusual that it could not have occurred in nature. “Anyone who wanted to insert a furin cleavage site into the virus’s genome,” he wrote, would “synthesize” the necessary genomic sequence “in the lab.” He then quoted Baltimore citing the furin cleavage site as the “smoking gun” constituting a “powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.” Other virologists challenge the assumption by Wade and the assertion by Baltimore that there’s anything unique or especially unusual about the furin cleavage site on SARS2. Such sites have been found in similar viruses, and natural mechanisms for their appearance have been identified. In other words, the furin cleavage site on SARS2 does nothing to validate the lab-leak theory. Baltimore plainly recognizes this, which is why he regrets calling it a “smoking gun.” If he really believed it was, then he wouldn’t say that he hasn’t ruled out either theory for the virus’ origin, as he told me by email. The last question raised by Wade’s article and Baltimore’s quote is whether the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists owes its readers some context. I asked Mecklin whether that was so, but he hasn’t replied. Yet Baltimore has effectively disavowed his characterization of the furin cleavage site. As with so many other claims made to support the lab-leak theory, this “smoking gun” turns out to be mostly smoke.

Lin-Manuel Miranda had little but good advice for 'In the Heights' star Anthony Ramos

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/in-the-heights-lin-manuel-miranda-anthony-ramos-jimmy-fallon

Anthony Ramos spoke briefly with Lin-Manuel Miranda before succeeding him as the star of “In the Heights,” and this week, he transported “Tonight Show” viewers to the room where it happened. Appearing on Monday’s episode of the late-night program, Ramos said people often ask him what advice he received from Miranda before following in his footsteps as Usnavi de la Vega, the charismatic protagonist of “In the Heights.” In addition to penning the music and lyrics for the Tony-winning production, Miranda also originated the role of Usnavi on Broadway. “He literally said nothing,” Ramos quipped, drawing laughter from the show’s first full audience since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “He was just like, ‘Yo, do your thing, papa,’ like, ‘Yo, get after it. Just tell the truth.’” Movies Anthony Ramos leads a terrific ensemble in this vibrant ode to life in a Washington Heights barrio from director Jon M. Chu (‘Crazy Rich Asians’). May 21, 2021 Ramos stars as Usnavi in director Jon M. Chu’s long-delayed and highly anticipated film adaptation of “In the Heights,” which centers on a pure-hearted bodega owner and his vibrant community living in the prominently Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City. While shooting the movie musical, co-produced by Miranda, Ramos said the “Hamilton” composer and playwright visited the set “all the time.” Miranda also makes a cameo in the film as a piragua (shaved ice) vendor, or piragüero. “It was a special experience, ’cause as a kid growing up, I never had a movie like this to watch,” Ramos told Fallon. “And then we’re seeing this Latino explosion on the screen like this.” During production, Ramos said, one of his favorite numbers to film was “Carnaval del Barrio,” which involved dancing and waving the flags of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and others through the streets of New York City. Movies Why Lin-Manuel Miranda says Chu was right to direct “In the Heights” and the circuitous journey the “Crazy Rich Asians” helmer took to the musical remix. June 3, 2021 “We’re singing these songs about being proud of where you’re from or where your ancestors are from, and I had this moment on set,” said Ramos, who is of Puerto Rican descent. “I was like, ‘I hope, Grandma, I hope you’re looking down.’” Ramos, who landed his big break among the original Broadway cast of Miranda’s “Hamilton,” also teased his sophomore studio album, “Love and Lies,” which includes the single “Échale” and debuts June 25. “The second album is just like riding the Nitro at Six Flags,” he said. “We just on a never-ending roller coaster of 12 bangers. ... We have reggaeton vibes, we got the Caribbean vibes ... we got R&B vibes. ... There’s something for everybody on this album, so go get it.” Movies Lin Manuel-Miranda’s hit Broadway debut, “In the Heights,” is getting a movie makeover from Warner Bros. and “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu. Dec. 12, 2019 “In the Heights” was originally set to open in June 2020 before theaters across the country shut down to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. A year later, Chu’s “In the Heights” — also starring Melissa Barrera, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace and others — premieres in theaters Friday. Watch Ramos and Fallon’s full conversation here.

Police Commission to consider new alcohol rules for armed off-duty officers

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/police-commission-consider-new-alcohol-policy-armed-off-duty-officers

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday said it was considering changing LAPD policy to restrict the use of alcohol by armed off-duty officers. Commissioners requested a report from the department on the issue, as well, citing an article in the L.A. Times on Sunday that detailed how the LAPD had failed for years to develop clear policies on the issue despite a series of problems involving drunk and armed officers. “No one wants anyone using a firearm while impaired,” said Eileen Decker, the commission president. “A more specific policy — the time may have come for that.” The Times article cited multiple cases in recent years in which off-duty officers had allegedly caused trouble, broken laws and shot people after drinking alcohol while armed. California The LAPD doesn’t bar armed, off-duty officers from drinking alcohol despite repeated problems. June 4, 2021 A department spokesman told The Times that LAPD leaders “have and will hold our personnel accountable should they misuse alcohol and cannot exercise reasonable care and/or control of a firearm,” including by using existing policies against “unbecoming” behavior by off-duty officers. Still, the department’s lack of a clear policy — one that would not only punish off-duty officers who get into trouble while drunk and armed but also preclude them from carrying weapons while intoxicated in the first place — puts the LAPD at odds with other law enforcement agencies in the region and country. During the commission’s virtual meeting Tuesday, LAPD Chief Michel Moore brought up The Times article, calling it “serious” and “concerning.” He said the misuse of alcohol by officers was “a very serious matter and one we pay a great deal of attention to,” and that LAPD officers who have been found to have misused alcohol — resulting in “terrible outcomes” — have faced “swift and certain” consequences. At the same time, he said he realized that policies played an important role in dictating behavior, and that the department would “continue to review” its policies around alcohol use by off-duty officers. Decker responded by requesting the report, which she said should include “factual incidents involving the excessive use of alcohol and the use of a weapon or firearm” by LAPD officers, as well as a “comparative analysis” of alcohol policies from other law enforcement agencies across the country. Commissioner William Briggs said he wanted the report to include the policies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, while Decker said it should include policies from various large agencies. Decker said the report should be delivered first to her and Briggs, who comprise the commission’s executive committee. They will then work with the department to produce a fuller, public report for the commission to consider as it weighs new policies for LAPD officers, she said. The Times article included the L.A. County sheriff’s policy, which states that armed off-duty deputies “shall not consume any intoxicating substance to the point where the employee is unable to or does not exercise reasonable care and/or control of the firearm.” The policy says deputies with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08% or more are unable to do so by definition but may rebut claims that they violated the policy by showing they acted reasonably. The Times article also noted policies that discourage, restrict or bar off-duty officers from drinking alcohol while armed in Orange County and in Chicago, Houston, New York and San Francisco.

Commentary: Art museum endowments soared in the pandemic. So why sell art to pay the bills?

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-06-08/art-museums-endowments-covid-pandemic-dividend

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted last year, predictions were dire for how shuttered art museums might fare in the coming storm. Fourteen months later, many seem to have lucked out. One silver lining, largely unreported, has been a sharp rise in endowments — the banked funds whose income supports museum operations. Surprising, often double-digit, increases have reached as high as 40%. Forty percent! Call it the pandemic dividend. Against this consoling, unexpected windfall, however, a discouraging development has been unfolding. At least half a dozen museums have turned to selling art from their collections to pay bills. That dispiriting practice has long been forbidden. One example: Last month, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego sent nine paintings and one sculpture from its collection of about 5,900 works to auction in New York. When the hammer fell May 14, noteworthy examples by Roy Lichtenstein, Conrad Marca-Relli, Lorser Feitelson and six other postwar American artists had been transformed from paint, canvas and stainless steel into nearly $900,000 in cash. A museum news release explained that monetizing some museum art was necessary to “help stabilize collection care efforts in these times of economic downturn.” Did it? More important, was it necessary? Has the upheaval caused by the cruel COVID-19 pandemic destabilized essential care of art collections, which is a museum’s most basic institutional function? The likely answer is no. Forty percent growth is what MCA San Diego endowments witnessed year over year since the pandemic began, rising by a startling $14 million. Almost none of the gain represented gifts, according to a museum spokesperson. On average, the museum earned more each month through routine investment than it did by unloading all that irreplaceable art at auction. It was not alone. MCA San Diego was at the high end of a phenomenon repeated at art museums across Southern California — and no doubt elsewhere. I approached half a dozen museums, large and small and in different locales, to get a sense of how endowments had fared year over year. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art saw its endowments rise by 37%. The city’s Museum of Contemporary Art witnessed 23% growth. The Palm Springs Art Museum jumped 20%, not including income from its own controversial sale last year of a monumental Helen Frankenthaler painting. The mighty Getty Trust grew 10%, packing $700 million onto its $7 billion in endowments. At UCLA, the Hammer Museum’s funds expanded 9%, just missing double digits. On average, the gain was almost 24%. Setting aside the Getty behemoth — always an outlier in discussions of cultural finances — the five art museums in my unscientific regional sample together have about $104 million more in their coffers today than a year ago. For endowments, that’s pretty much the opposite of an economic downturn. And if economists in the new UCLA Anderson quarterly forecast are correct, things look promising going forward. The pandemic dividend should continue. Nonprofit institutions typically make conservative investments, which generate modest yields. Market indexes had gone into free fall in March 2020, but since then the Dow rallied, climbing 12,000 points, and tax laws were tweaked. Robust endowment performance has been one bright spot for art museums amid the pervasive gloom of the past pandemic year. That doesn’t mean that they are rolling in dough, of course. It does mean that epic catastrophe across the sector, widely predicted, did not materialize. Museums typically fund operations from three sources — earned income plus annual giving, as well as from drawing on endowments. (A common draw is 4% or 5%.) When the pandemic forced museum closures for months on end, earned revenue from memberships, restaurants, shops and the like plummeted. Annual giving became a looming question mark as competing social service demands widened at other charities across the nation. So as museums across Southern California reopen, things may not be entirely rosy. But together with lowered operating costs during closure, partial compensation from healthy endowment performance has helped mitigate what could have been a doomsday scenario. Disappointingly, however, that silver lining has been tarnished by an unconscionable rush to the auction house by numerous museums eager to take advantage of a very bad decision made last year by the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. To ward off expected catastrophe, AAMD hastily relaxed a fundamental prohibition against using income from the sale of museum art to pay for museum operations, which includes collection care. For a period of two years, the customary ban was lifted for museums that found themselves in extremis, unable to care for their collections. That panicked green light has been a disaster. Multiple museums immediately pushed the boundaries of the AAMD’s poorly crafted pandemic response, ignoring the relaxed rule’s palliative intent. Instead, they’ve seen it as a brief window of opportunity for some fast cash. New Jersey’s Newark Museum of Art is the most scandalous recent example. Its important 1846 landscape, “The Arch of Nero,” by the great American Romantic painter Thomas Cole, was among several works dumped at the spring auctions. Cole’s crumbling ancient castle tower atop a ruined Roman aqueduct conjures the decadence of empire. The apparent metaphorical content — a warning as the westward-pushing United States invaded Mexico in 1846, roiling the slavery dispute on the way to Civil War — forms an eloquent historical backdrop to understanding today’s powerful Black Lives Matter movement. The painting would seem to be especially relevant to residents of a Black-majority city, but now, after 64 years hanging on its walls, it’s gone from Newark’s art museum. AAMD’s cautionary words in announcing the temporary rule change — that it was “not intended to incentivize” the sale of museum art — seem impossibly naive. Perhaps tellingly, the director of every museum that jumped onto the monetizing bandwagon is a specialist in contemporary art, where the market is the liveliest. None is a historian of earlier painting, sculpture or other global art. Their generation was raised speaking the neoliberal language of the primacy of the commercial marketplace, which arose in the 1980s and dominates art life today. When the terrifying health crisis erupted, a discredited doctrine once shared by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan reared its ugly head. Privatized public resources were proposed as the best, most immediate answer to looming social problems. (Thatcher, doing her best Ayn Rand imitation in the face of her own calamitous economic recession, had likewise proposed that her nation’s art museums sell some masterpieces to stay afloat; she was ultimately rebuffed.) AAMD essentially followed suit. Even now, as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes and art museum endowments wax, the hapless directors’ group has not fixed its fatally flawed prescription, which remains in place for another year. (It has no plans to, either, according to a spokesperson.) In March, trustees at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where a search for a new director is underway, amended its guidelines to conform to AAMD’s relaxed rule, eliciting a shudder of concern across social media that sales from its collection might be in the offing. Frankly, I’ll be shocked if the fall auctions don’t feature more museum art. The fatal flaw in the relaxed rule is that it turns a museum’s collection into a financial asset, contrary to established charitable practices. No museum in America carries its collection as a financial asset on its tax returns — and for good reason: In common law, no charity may own corporate property. Tax-exempt museums don’t own the art in their collections; the public does. Museums are instead nonprofit stewards of a public asset. The AAMD surely had the best intentions for protecting those assets, but it ended up needlessly pushing assets out the door. In a panic, what was then the leading professional group in the art museum field threw the fundamental principle of stewardship under the bus. Turns out it didn’t need to. Performance of museum endowments — an actual, existing financial asset, rather than a made-up one — has offered unexpected help. And I don’t just mean because museums will have a bit more principal in the bank on which to draw. If the MCA San Diego took a 5% draw on the $14 million its endowment gained so far, that would be $700,000 — a tidy sum, but still less than the total income from the art the museum unfortunately chose to sell. Instead, here’s a better solution: Cash in the pandemic dividend. How? Suppose a museum facing fiscal woes figured out how its endowment performed on average annually over, say, the previous five-year period, before the cruel pandemic turned life upside down. The same percentage gained during the pandemic year could be dedicated to augmenting the endowment principal, just like always. But the difference — and this is the dividend part — between that prior average and the exceptional growth since 2020 could be made available as a cash reserve fund. The unexpected windfall could be applied to emergency needs. With the pandemic dividend, millions of dollars would be on hand for museums to use as they see fit, without a raid on the collection. It could be spent toward: hazard pay or straight remuneration for beleaguered or furloughed staff, conservation or purchases of art, upgrades in gallery ventilation systems or expanded digital infrastructure for online programming. Or, if the museum chose, leave some or all the exceptional gain alone, keeping it as a welcome addition to endowment principal. The Palm Springs Museum, for example, is terribly underfunded; a pre-pandemic endowment of just under $15 million is less than a third of what it needs to sustain its annual operating budget, according to numbers provided by the museum. That’s bad, but it’s not a crisis caused by the public health emergency. Legally, endowments can be complicated. Some are restricted in their uses, others are not. Different states have different laws. The percentage of annual draw can be limited, uses of principal proscribed. In general, though, most are designed to keep the principal amount safely intact while income is spent on charitable purposes. Given the extraordinary social and cultural trauma brought on by the pandemic, a state attorney general would be unlikely to come down on an art museum that was trying to maintain a public asset under unprecedented stress, especially if the historic value of the principal were being maintained. When L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art got in trouble with the state of California a dozen years ago for spending down its endowment principal, the issue was charitable mismanagement during ordinary times. A pandemic dividend is not that. These times are extraordinary. In the past, museum endowments were untouchable. Until now, so was the art collection. If AAMD wants to make itself useful, and perhaps restore some of the luster lost in its relaxed-rule fiasco, it might craft a window of opportunity around endowment uses that could pass muster during a crisis, one that has had a terrible effect on life in every state. During this awful crisis, after all, doesn’t everyone agree it’s best to give priority to protecting the art, which is the reason the museum exists, rather than sheltering the money?

Los Angeles Times appeals judge's ruling denying access to Sen. Burr search warrant

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/la-times-appeals-judges-ruling-denying-access-to-sen-burr-search-warrant

The Los Angeles Times has appealed a federal judge’s ruling denying the news outlet’s request to unseal an FBI search warrant in a 2020 investigation into a senator’s stock trades. The search warrant permitted FBI agents last year to obtain the cellphone of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). The Times in February filed a lawsuit seeking to unseal the warrant and accompanying affidavit that prosecutors used to justify obtaining the phone as part of an investigation into whether the Republican senator illegally used information from congressional briefings about the coronavirus to sell as much as $1.7 million in stock before the pandemic hit. Burr’s lawyers announced in January that the Justice Department had notified them it would not bring charges. “It’s a matter of strong public interest — a search warrant directed at a sitting U.S. senator,” said Katie Townsend, a lawyer for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of The Times to unseal the warrant and was handling the appeal filed Monday. “We think the district court’s analysis, in denying public access to the search warrant application and related judicial records, was flawed.” The FBI seized the phone on May 13 of last year, according to officials familiar with the investigation and multiple media reports. A day after The Times first reported the seizure, Burr stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The 65-year-old is not seeking reelection next year. Burr was one of several senators — including Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California — whose sales and purchases of stock were scrutinized by the Justice Department to see if they violated a congressional insider-trading law. But his was the only case in which warrants were obtained. All such investigations were closed without charges being filed. The Justice Department contested The Times’ suit but filed its motions under seal. In a 10-page opinion issued May 26, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of the federal court in Washington refused the news outlet’s request to read the Justice Department’s pleadings and rejected its arguments that the search warrant should be made public. “Assuming the requested materials exist,” Howell wrote, “and that the qualified right of access attaches, no disclosure of search warrant materials would be appropriate in a closed, non-public investigation that has not resulted in criminal charges, and where individual privacy and government interests may be implicated.” In court papers, The Times argued that search warrants were “routinely made public after the search warrant is executed, as a matter of standard practice in this and other federal courts.” The news outlet’s attorneys added that the federal courts in Washington had held that the “public has a qualified right to inspect search warrant materials in closed investigations as matter of both constitutional and common law.” Open records advocates chafed at Howell’s ruling, noting that search warrants have frequently been unsealed before charges are brought, or even when no charges are filed. They were concerned that Howell’s ruling could cripple the public’s ability to assess how the Justice Department handles investigations, even high-profile ones, that do not result in criminal charges. Seamus Hughes, a George Washington University researcher who has aggressively pressed for the unsealing of court documents, told Politico that the judge’s opinion was “offensive.” “It’s going to radically restrict public access to the court records,” Hughes told the website. “Search warrants provide a level of sunlight that is important in a democracy.”

Sex offender released by L.A. County judge is charged with sexually abusing two boys

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/sex-offender-released-by-l-a-county-judge-arrested-for-child-sex-abuse

A registered sex offender who was set free by a Los Angeles County judge in 2018 because of a 17-year delay in his trial has now been charged with sexually abusing two children in Tulare County, records show. Jorge Vasquez, 48, was charged with eight counts of child molestation stemming from incidents involving two young boys that spanned the past three years, according to a criminal complaint made public Tuesday. Vasquez was arrested by Porterville police on Sunday. In a statement, Tulare County Dist. Atty. Tim Ward said the alleged abuse began in June of 2018, less than six months after Vasquez was released from Coalinga State Hospital by order of a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge. Vasquez had been in either prison or a state hospital since 1995, when he pleaded no contest to multiple counts of child molestation, court records show. He allegedly lured several children ages 6 to 8 to an alleyway in South L.A. in 1994 with the promise of candy, where he performed oral sex on three of the boys and forced one to perform oral sex on him, court records show. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But in 2000, L.A. County prosecutors sought to have him committed to a state hospital under California’s sexually violent predator act. The law — which was drafted in response to complaints about supposedly short sentences for sex offenders — allows prosecutors to seek to have defendants committed to treatment for an indeterminate amount of time if they have been convicted of a serious or violent sex offense, suffer from a mental illness and are highly likely to reoffend. But Vasquez never received a trial date. Over the course of 17 years, five different public defenders rotated on and off his case, each asking to push back the trial so they could adequately prepare for a hearing. L.A. County Superior Court Judge James Bianco disqualified the public defender’s office from the case in late 2017, and early the next year, he granted a motion to dismiss the case against Vasquez, ruling his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated. “There was a systemic breakdown of the public defender system,” Bianco said at the time. California Just before George Vasquez was scheduled to get out of prison, Los Angeles County prosecutors made a plea to the court: Don’t let him free — he’s too dangerous to live in public. Jan. 10, 2018 Public defenders involved in the case shared Bianco’s frustrations. In a 2014 hearing, Deputy Public Defender Terry Shenkman told the court the public defender’s office had slashed the number of attorneys working on cases involving sexually violent predators in half. In 2016, Deputy Public Defender David Santiago told Bianco he did not “think Mr. Vasquez is being treated fairly by my office either,” according to a motion to dismiss the charges against Vasquez at that time. Concerns about overburdened public defenders in L.A. County resurfaced last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive backlog in the county’s court systems. At least a dozen public defenders told The Times their workloads had doubled, and in some cases tripled, with some expressing fear they could not competently represent their clients. Attempts to contact Bianco on Tuesday were not successful, and a court spokeswoman could not immediately provide a comment. Judith Green, a spokeswoman for the L.A. County public defender’s office, declined to comment. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Ceballos, who was assigned to the case when Vasquez’s attorneys filed their motion to dismiss in 2016, had previously complained to Bianco that he believed Vasquez would reoffend and said he was extremely frustrated to learn Vasquez had once again been arrested in connection with sex abuse allegations. “This is every prosecutor’s worst nightmare,” Ceballos said. “You work hard to keep someone in custody … when [the Tulare County district attorney’s office] called me, I was just sick to my stomach.” According to the criminal complaint filed Tuesday, Vasquez allegedly groped the genitals and buttocks of the two children on multiple occasions between June 2018 and June 5 of this year. At least one of the incidents occurred while one of the boys was playing video games, according to the complaint, and another took place in San Luis Obispo County, though all the charges will be prosecuted in Tulare County. Ward filed a number of special circumstance allegations, meaning it is likely Vasquez would face life in prison if convicted as charged, according to Stuart Anderson, public information officer for the Tulare County district attorney’s office. It was not immediately clear who Vasquez’s defense counsel would be, and he had not appeared for an arraignment as of 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. His former defense attorney in Los Angeles did not respond to an email seeking comment. Vasquez had been diagnosed with a learning disability from age 8 and may have also suffered a neurological injury during birth, according to the 2017 motion to dismiss charges against him in L.A. County. California Public defenders across Los Angeles County say their caseloads have doubled, and in some cases tripled, as the coronavirus has all but paralyzed jury trials. Dec. 13, 2020 Court records show one state psychologist did rule Vasquez ceased to meet the definition of a sexually violent predator under California law while he was housed at Coalinga, but Ceballos said several others filed reports stating he was at a high risk to reoffend. Ceballos said Vasquez’s release, and alleged re-offense, were the result of a breakdown across the entire court system. “I did talk to one of the deputy public defenders about the case, and they have equal frustrations with their higher-ups too,” he said. “They were constantly asking for assistance, and no one was getting it. No one was placing a high priority on these cases.” Times staff writer Marisa Gerber contributed to this report.

San Jose woman arrested in Denver after 7-year-old son's body found on Las Vegas trail

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/california-mother-arrested-in-denver-in-sons-vegas-death

A San Jose woman was arrested Tuesday in Colorado less than 12 hours after she was identified by Las Vegas police as the suspect in the death of her 7-year-old son, whose body was found by hikers in Nevada more than 10 days ago. An FBI task force arrested Samantha Moreno Rodriguez, 35, at a hotel in eastern Denver not far from Interstate 70, Las Vegas police Lt. Ray Spencer said. “We are all relieved that we were able to get her into custody so quickly,” said Spencer, the homicide lieutenant who has made nearly daily pleas for public help in identifying the boy since his body was found May 28. Rodriguez will be jailed in Denver pending a court appearance and her extradition to Nevada to face a murder charge, Las Vegas police said. Spencer said Las Vegas police detectives were on the way to Denver to interview Rodriguez. It was not immediately known whether she had a lawyer to speak in her defense. On Monday, the child was identified for the first time as Liam Husted, and a murder warrant was issued in Las Vegas for Rodriguez. Las Vegas police used DNA evidence collected from clothing and a pillow that belonged to Liam to confirm his identity, Spencer said. Authorities have not disclosed how Liam died, but Spencer has said it was clear he had been killed. Rodriguez and her son left San Jose on May 24 in a dark-blue 2007 Dodge Caliber packed full of belongings, Spencer said. Police said Liam’s father in San Jose reported the boy missing June 1, and said he was not a suspect in Liam’s death. The mother and son were seen May 26 in Laguna Beach and Victorville, Spencer said, before they arrived in Las Vegas. Police believe Liam’s body was dumped after dark on May 27 or early May 28, hidden behind a bush at a trailhead off State Route 160, the main highway between Las Vegas and Pahrump. Police learned where mother and son had stayed in the Las Vegas area, but Spencer declined Tuesday to describe the place or what investigators found there. Liam’s body remained unidentified until a family friend told San Jose police on Friday that she had not seen Rodriguez or Liam and she recognized the boy from a widely distributed rendering prepared by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The boy’s identity was the focus of an intense public campaign that included an offer from the FBI of up to $10,000 for information. Officials have not said whether anyone is eligible for the reward. Associated Press writer Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.

In state's final weekly COVID-19 assessment, more than half of Californians living in yellow tier

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/more-than-half-of-california-residents-in-covid-yellow-tier

Five more counties — including San Diego — officially moved into California’s least restrictive category this week as part of the final update to the state’s color-coded COVID-19 reopening roadmap. Although reaching the yellow tier in the state’s blueprint allows businesses and other public spaces to operate more widely than they have in months, the state is gearing up to roll back virtually all coronavirus-related business restrictions next week as part of its long-awaited economic reopening. Tuesday’s advancements have come late in the pandemic but still indicate progress achieved in California’s battle against the virus. Los Angeles County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis noted Monday that California now had one of the lowest levels of coronavirus transmission in the country. “This is not an accident,” he said during a briefing. “It is the result of many, many hours invested by countless community leaders in educating people about preventing transmission and working to maximize access to vaccine, as well as the efforts of every single person who continues to make prevention a priority and has gotten the vaccine or shared their vaccination story to help someone else get vaccinated.” California The low coronavirus case rate underscores California’s continued progress toward extinguishing the health crisis a week ahead of its planned reopening. June 7, 2021 According to the latest state data, Alameda, Napa, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties all have now reached the yellow tier. “I commend everyone who has worked hard to help us reach this milestone, and I encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated so we can put this pandemic fully in the past,” Dr. Penny Borenstein, San Luis Obispo County’s health officer, said in a statement. Additionally, Stanislaus County advanced to the orange tier, the next-least-restrictive rung of California’s reopening ladder. Once the new tier assignments go into effect Wednesday, more than half of all California residents will live in yellow-tier counties. San Diego’s advancement means the state’s three most populous counties have reached the final stage of the current reopening strategy — joining Los Angeles and Orange. “San Diego continues to really perform well as we work our way out of COVID and we return to a very normal way of life — something that, after a very long year, year and a half, I think we should all take a measure of pride in,” county Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said Tuesday. Under the existing blueprint, counties are sorted into four color-coded tiers based on their rates of new coronavirus cases, adjusted based on the number of tests performed; the rate at which conducted tests come back positive; and a health-equity metric applied to ensure that the positive test rate in poorer communities is not significantly higher than the county’s overall figure. Getting into the yellow tier, for instance, requires an adjusted daily rate of fewer than 2 new cases per 100,000 people, an overall rate of positive test results of less than 2%, and, within communities hard-hit by the virus, a rate of positive tests below 2.2%. Counties need to record two straight weeks of qualifying data to advance to a less restrictive tier and have to remain in a tier for three weeks before moving again. California Here are five things to expect as L.A. County fully reopens after COVID-19 restrictions. June 7, 2021 Upon reaching the yellow tier, counties can allow a host of business sectors to beef up their operating capacity — including restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, amusement parks, sports venues, card rooms, museums, wineries and breweries. Bars, which in the orange tier were allowed to accommodate patrons only outdoors unless they served food, can reopen indoors with a maximum capacity of 25% or 100 people, whichever is fewer, with the limit increasing to 37.5% if all guests show proof of full vaccination or a negative test. Amusement parks and fairs also can expand attendance to 35% of capacity, up from 25% in the orange tier. Visitors must either be California residents or fully vaccinated. Notably, with temperatures on the rise, water parks can expand to 40% capacity outdoors, up from 25%. Indoor water parks, pools and rides can expand to 25% of capacity, up from 15%. Indoor seated live events and performances in large-capacity venues — those with seating for more than 1,500 guests — can reach 10% of capacity or 2,000 guests, whichever is less. But if everyone has a negative test or proof of full vaccination, the limit can increase to 50%, up from 35% in the orange tier. And outdoor seated live events, such as baseball games, can expand to 67% of capacity in the yellow tier, up from 33% in the orange tier. Attendees must live in California or be fully vaccinated. Science & Medicine Are vaccines safe? When can I get a booster dose? Do I have to wear a mask? We’ve answered hundreds of newsletter readers’ questions. Here’s an archive. Feb. 18, 2021 This week marks the ultimate update to the state’s tiering system, which was unveiled in late August to guide California’s reopening in the aftermath of the summer coronavirus surge. In the months that followed, the regular release of new assessments — “Tier Tuesdays,” as they were sometimes called — were closely watched, with each new batch of data carrying the promise that a county could further unlock its economy. But the framework could not withstand the fury of the state’s devastating fall-and-winter COVID-19 spike. In mid-November, officials said they were pulling an emergency brake, dramatically rolling back reopenings and placing much of the state into the purple tier — the strictest category. When that proved insufficient to blunt the virus’ rampage, the state took an even more drastic step in December: suspending the framework in favor of a new stay-at-home order tied to regional strains on critical care services. The last of those orders was lifted in late January, and counties have since steadily marched into less restrictive tiers as their coronavirus metrics have improved. Such moves were made easier when California officials announced a pair of goals aimed at boosting equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Once 2 million doses were administered in targeted communities statewide — those in the lowest quartile of a socioeconomic measurement tool called the California Healthy Places index — the state relaxed the case rate threshold necessary to escape the purple tier. And when 4 million doses were doled out to these lower-income communities, state officials similarly eased the thresholds for entering the orange and yellow tiers. Reaching the yellow tier used to require an adjusted daily new case rate below 1 per 100,000 people, compared with the current requirement of less than 2. Though seemingly slight, the practical effects of the tweak have been massive. As of last week, only nine of California’s 58 counties would have met the former yellow-tier threshold — compared with the 24 that now fall under that category. Science & Medicine It is possible for schools to reopen safely in places where coronavirus is under control as long as certain steps are taken to mitigate the risks. June 7, 2021 Come June 15, though, Californians will awake to a new world, one where many restrictions that have become part of daily pandemic life will no longer be in place. Effective that day, coronavirus-related capacity restrictions and physical distancing requirements at almost all businesses and other institutions will be lifted, and people who are fully vaccinated will be allowed to go without masks in most situations. There are some caveats. Counties may ultimately opt to keep some restrictions in place, and individual businesses may have their own rules — either self-adopted or imposed by state workplace safety regulators. Gov. Gavin Newsom has also said that California’s COVID-19 state of emergency order — which gives him and health officials broad authority to temporarily impose new rules and restrictions — will remain in place beyond next Tuesday. “I’m mindful of the work that we’ve done, the progress we’ve made in the state as it relates to mitigating the spread and transmission rates of this disease,” he said last week. But given that history has shown the pandemic’s trajectory can change quickly, Newsom added that “we’ve never said that we were not going to consider some modifications post-June 15.”

Colonial Pipeline CEO: Ransom payment among my 'toughest decisions'

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/colonial-pipeline-ceo-ransom-payment-among-my-toughest-decisions

The chief executive of the massive fuel pipeline hit by ransomware last month told senators on Tuesday that authorizing a multimillion-dollar payment to hackers was the right thing to do to bring an end to fuel shortages affecting much of the eastern United States, even as authorities have discouraged such payments. Asked how much worse it would have been if Colonial Pipeline hadn’t paid to get its data back, CEO Joseph Blount said, “That’s an unknown we probably don’t want to know. And it’s an unknown we probably don’t want to play out in a public forum.” He said that given the company’s crucial role in fuel transportation, and the potential for “pandemonium” arising from a prolonged shutdown of the pipeline, he made the decision to pay a ransom to the hackers. The encryption tool the hackers provided the company in exchange for the payment helped “to some degree” but has not been perfect, with Colonial still in the process of fully restoring its system, Blount said. Blount faced the Senate Homeland Security Committee, one day after the Justice Department revealed it had recovered the majority of the $4.4-million ransom payment the company made in hopes of getting its system back online. Blount’s testimony marks his first appearance before Congress since the May 7 ransomware attack that led Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline, which supplies roughly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast, to temporarily halt operations. The attack has been attributed to a Russia-based gang of cybercriminals using the DarkSide ransomware variant, one of more than 100 variants the FBI is currently investigating. The company began negotiating with the hackers on the evening of the attack and, the following day, paid a ransom of 75 bitcoin — then valued at roughly $4.4 million. Though the FBI has historically discouraged ransomware payments for fear of encouraging cyberattacks, Colonial officials have said they saw the transaction as necessary to resume the vital fuel transport business as rapidly as possible. Business The payment came shortly after the attack got underway last week. The FBI discourages organizations from paying ransom to hackers. May 13, 2021 “It was one of the toughest decisions I have had to make in my life,” Blount said in prepared remarks. “At the time, I kept this information close hold because we were concerned about operational security and minimizing publicity for the threat actor. But I believe that restoring critical infrastructure as quickly as possible, in this situation, was the right thing to do for the country.” The attack, which Blount says began after hackers exploited a virtual private network that was not intended to be in use and has since been shut down, had significant collateral consequences, including gas shortages as concerned motorists rushed to fill their tanks. The operation to seize cryptocurrency paid to the Russia-based hacker group is the first of its kind to be undertaken by a specialized ransomware task force created by the Biden administration Justice Department. It reflects a rare victory in the fight against ransomware as U.S. officials scramble to confront a rapidly accelerating threat targeting critical industries around the world. “By going after the entire ecosystem that fuels ransomware and digital extortion attacks — including criminal proceeds in the form of digital currency — we will continue to use all of our resources to increase the cost and consequences of ransomware and other cyber-based attacks,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Lisa Monaco said at a news conference announcing the operation. In a statement Monday, Blount said he was grateful for the FBI’s efforts and said holding hackers accountable and disrupting their activities “is the best way to deter and defend against future attacks of this nature. “The private sector also has an equally important role to play and we must continue to take cyber threats seriously and invest accordingly to harden our defenses,” he added. Cryptocurrency is favored by cybercriminals because it enables direct online payments regardless of geographical location, but in this case, the FBI was able to identify a virtual currency wallet used by the hackers and recovered the proceeds from there, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said. The Justice Department did not provide details about how the FBI had obtained a “key” for the specific bitcoin address, but said law enforcement had been able to track multiple transfers of the cryptocurrency. Politics The U.S. government recovered millions of dollars in Bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline to ransomware hackers who locked up its computer system last month. June 7, 2021 “For financially motivated cyber criminals, especially those presumably located overseas, cutting off access to revenue is one of the most impactful consequences we can impose,” Abbate said. The bitcoin amount seized — 63.7, currently valued at $2.3 million after the price of bitcoin tumbled— amounted to 85% of the total ransom paid, which is the exact amount that the cryptocurrency-tracking firm Elliptic says it believes was the take of the affiliate who carried out the attack. The ransomware software provider, DarkSide, would have gotten the other 15%. “The extortionists will never see this money,” said Stephanie Hinds, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, where a judge earlier Monday authorized the seizure warrant. Ransomware attacks — in which hackers encrypt a victim organization’s data and demand a hefty sum for returning the information — have flourished across the globe. Last year was the costliest on record for such attacks. Hackers have targeted vital industries, as well as hospitals and police departments. Weeks after the Colonial Pipeline attack, a ransomware attack attributed to REvil, a Russian-speaking gang that has made some of the largest ransomware demands on record in recent months, disrupted production at Brazil’s JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processing company. The ransomware business has evolved into a highly compartmentalized racket, with labor divided among the provider of the software that locks data, ransom negotiators, hackers who break into targeted networks, hackers skilled at moving undetected through those systems and exfiltrating sensitive data — and even call centers in India employed to threaten people whose data was stolen to pressure for extortion payments.

Border Patrol agents find 5-year-old girl dropped alone at U.S.-Mexico wall

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/border-patrol-agents-find-5-year-old-at-u-s-mexico-wall

U.S. Border Patrol agents found a 5-year-old Guatemalan girl running along the border wall in San Ysidro after she’d been dropped off alone, the agency said Tuesday. About 10:45 a.m. Monday, agents spotted someone leaving the child at the end of a border wall just west of the San Ysidro Point of Entry, the agency said in a news release. The girl walked north along the Tijuana River channel into the United States, the agency said. Surveillance video shows the girl running along the wall, her ponytail swinging. Border Patrol agents picked her up and brought her back to a nearby station. The little girl told them her parents were in the United States, but she did not have contact information for them. She also told agents that her 7-year-old cousin was still in Mexico with an unidentified man. The agency said it contacted both the Guatemalan and Mexican consulates. “Sadly, this is the latest example of how the most vulnerable populations are being exploited for financial gain,” Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said in the news release. “Thankfully our agents encountered this child before any harm could befall her.”

Review: What lawmakers should know about the first Federal Writers Project. (It was a glorious mess)

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-06-08/a-new-book-shows-the-federal-writers-project-was-a-mess-and-a-glorious-one

On the Shelf Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America By Scott BorchertFSG: 400 pages, $30If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. For a few years during the Great Depression, the federal government paid writers to write. Novelists, poets, journalists, teachers, librarians, ministers — pretty much anyone who could put a sentence together (and some who couldn’t) got a paycheck for producing hundreds of publications that captured the highways and folkways, history and zeitgeist of America. Though it saved some of the country’s most talented authors from starvation, the Federal Writers Project had a short life. Targeted by anti-Communist crusaders and budget slashers, the FWP expired during World War II. But now it’s 2021, and after a year of Covid-19, many organizations that support writers are on life support. Could the writers project rise again? Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, thinks so, and has sponsored legislation that would revive a version of the FWP. He would do well to read Scott Borchert’s engaging new book, “Republic of Detours,” a lively chronicle of the rambunctious years of the FWP. Borchert begins his story with Henry Alsberg, a writer, playwright, foreign correspondent and international relief worker with the looks of “a loveable Saint Bernard” who became the FWP’s first director. Alsberg helped shape the organization, which at its peak employed about 4,500 people and produced hundreds of publications, including a groundbreaking collection of oral histories from former slaves. Books Congressman Ted Lieu introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project act on May 6. It all started with an article by David Kipen in the L.A. Times. May 6, 2021 But its main brief was to produce a series of American Guides, one for each state. They were conceived as a way to document local history and promote travel, but morphed into “a mélange of essays, historical tidbits, folklore, anecdotes, photographs, and social analysis — along with an abundance of driving directions thickened by tall tales, strange sites and bygone characters.” In short, writers were given a very long leash. They mostly worked from state offices with patchy supervision, and the quality of their work vacillated from inspired to insipid to just plain awful. Vardis Fisher personified the challenges of supervising a bunch of writers in an age before the internet. The son of Mormon homesteaders and the apotheosis of rugged Western individualism, Fisher was chosen to run the FWP’s Idaho office and instructed to hire local researchers and writers to chronicle the state’s history, folkways and superstitions. Fisher, convinced no one could do it as well as he could, wrote almost the entire guide . Editing him was an ordeal: “Alsberg wrote to Fisher to remind him that it was unacceptable for the guidebook to point out which towns were ugly, even if it was true.” Despite or because of Fisher’s bullheadedness, the Idaho guide, the first one published, received rave reviews from historians on the order of Bernard DeVoto. Other writers used the FWP to launch their own work. Nelson Algren joined the Chicago office in a city reeling from the Depression. In later years, Algren would “credit the FWP for keeping the suicide rate down”; he went to work on an array of bread-and-butter assignments. But he was mostly a field worker, set loose to gather primary material. He “hung out around grimy boxing rings and gangsterish social clubs and the city night court; he observed inveterate gamblers and exhausted dance marathoners and denizens of the racetrack.” He wrote it all down, and this rich material helped form the core of Algren’s later novels, including “The Man with the Golden Arm” in 1950, which won a National Book Award. The pioneering Black writer Zora Neale Hurston worked out of the project’s Florida unit, in a rigidly segregated state hostile to President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hurston had made a name for herself as an anthropologist, folklorist, dramatist and author, and she resisted joining the FWP because of a required “pauper’s oath” certifying that applicants were indigent. But she needed the money. Easily the best-known author in the Florida office, Hurston was given the lowly title of “junior interviewer” and assigned to one of the project’s “Negro Units.” But Hurston had a talent for turning racial roadblocks to her advantage. As she worked on a new novel she would disappear for weeks at a time; her superiors would fire off a letter seeking an update and eventually a thick manila envelope would arrive, “stuffed with material on Florida folkways.” Much of it was material gathered for other projects, but it was gold no one else could have mined. Books ‘The Man Who Lived Underground,’ newly expanded from a story into a novel by the Library of America, may revise the seminal Black author’s reputation. April 19, 2021 Hurston was a “keen strategist of racial deference,” and her views on America’s racial travail clashed with those of another project writer and seminal Black author, Richard Wright. But like Hurston, Wright turned work at the FWP to his advantage. Eventually, he got a grant to work on his own writing and produced one of the most searing indictments of American racism written, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” his chronicle of growing up terrorized in segregationist Mississippi. Wright’s essay, collected in an FWP publication, fueled the animus of politicians aiming to kill the program. As a management challenge, the FWP’s Manhattan office was the worst of the worst, a pot stirred by 31 different unions and splinters of unions including an active cell of the American Communist Party. One director, Orrick Johns, was beaten senseless by a spurned job seeker, who then “poured liquor all over John’s wooden leg and set it on fire.” When Rep. Martin Dies Jr. of Texas held hearings to investigate alleged Communist infiltration of the Works Progress Administration (the FWP was a division of the WPA), his committee homed in on the labor unrest as well as Wright’s essay, which one witness railed against as “so vile that it is unfit for youth to read.” The Dies report put the FWP on life support. But by any commercial or literary measure, it was a raging success: By 1941 there were 268,967 American Guides in print, with nearly as many city and town guides. The FWP circulated more than 3.5 million items, and its liberal hiring philosophy kept thousands of people off the bread lines and engaged in meaningful work. Today, with systemic unemployment worsened by the pandemic and many arts organizations decimated, Lieu’s legislation would seek to replicate this success in a 21st century version of the project. California legislators are considering a similar bill. Borchert has produced an essential road map for their efforts: “Republic of Detours” is a lively history of the project and its writers, but it offers something even more valuable: a lesson in the organizational challenges and poisonous politics that eventually doomed the FWP not in spite of its best intentions, but because of them. Books On the anniversary of the birth of the Works Progress Administration, it’s worth asking what a post-COVID Federal Writers Project might look like. May 6, 2020 Gwinn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who lives in Seattle, writes about books and authors.

Editorial: This isn't how the FDA should OK Alzheimer's drugs

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/fda-alzheimers-drug-biogen-approval

The Food and Drug Administration didn’t just make a mistake by approving a new Alzheimer’s disease drug this week. It turned what is supposed to be an objective and science-based process on its head, giving the go-ahead to a drug for which there is far more evidence that it doesn’t work than evidence that it does. Patient advocates were, of course, avid to see drugmaker Biogen’s aducanumab come to market as a potential treatment for mild stages of the dementing disease, which so far has resisted efforts to combat it. Any hope, no matter how dim, is at least something in the eyes of families who watch their loved ones deteriorate mentally and physically for years before death takes them. The problem is that in this case, the hopes may be false ones. Aducanumab’s performance in two large clinical trials was so unimpressive that Biogen halted the studies. But then a collaborative effort by the FDA and Biogen teased out additional data from one of the studies that showed a small reduction in cognitive decline among a subset of subjects with mild Alzheimer’s who were given a higher dosage of the drug. And even then, the effects were modest. No previous trials examining this same therapeutic pathway — using an antibody to remove amyloid beta, a protein associated with the development of Alzheimer’s — succeeded in humans. It was odd and unsettling for the FDA to collaborate with the drugmaker applying for approval — so much so that the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen appealed to the Department of Health and Human Services to examine what they said represented an overly cozy relationship. The FDA then overruled its own advisory committee, which overwhelmingly recommended against approving the drug. To be clear, we are all for the federal government throwing its dollars and research might into solving the Alzheimer’s puzzle. That should be a top priority, considering the severity of the disease and the greater toll it is expected to take as Baby Boomers age. But the agency’s job is to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs, not find ways to make them look better. Still, if some people might benefit, if only a little bit and only for a short while, why not allow the drug to be used? It does have some side effects in sizable numbers of patients, including brain swelling and bleeding, but those effects were mild and easily controlled. So why not give it a shot when there are no other real options? The answer is twofold: High cost and misdirection of resources. Aducanumab is expected to cost $20,000 to $50,000 a year per patient, and 2 million Americans — about a third of all those with Alzheimer’s disease — would be considered candidates to take it. Further, in order to identify and manage the possible side effects, the patients taking aducanumab would need ongoing, expensive screening. There’s a notion in this country that cost is no object when it comes to new treatments to dread diseases — a nice saying but a false one. Because Alzheimer’s is primarily a disease of age, Medicare would pick up most of the tab for a pharmaceutical that shows little benefit, at the same time that patients who desperately need nursing and memory care get practically nothing in the way of Medicare coverage. Government programs, private insurers and healthcare providers make choices to withhold healthcare all the time; it’s just that the system generally favors covering drugs, devices and surgeries over ongoing caregiving to improve quality of life. While the cost of healthcare heads inexorably higher, the nation has to start asking itself what to do with its finite healthcare dollars. Massive expenditures on pharmaceuticals that lack robust results in clinical trials aren’t the way. In addition, the approval of aducanumab could slow the development of other, more effective treatments. If most of the patients with mild Alzheimer’s are on this drug, they’re not good candidates for clinical trials of other drugs. Various scientists recommended at least a third large clinical trial, using the higher dose, to produce stronger evidence one way or the other. The FDA decided against even that prudent route. This drug needs continued study in the general population of Alzheimer’s patients, and if it isn’t proving its mettle, it should be pulled from market. The worst scenario of all would be for the approval of aducanumab to represent a lopsided new process for considering drug applications. Yes, the nation developed a streamlined approval path for vaccines against COVID-19, but that was an emergency situation and the vaccines were shown in trials to be extremely effective and safe — which is how they have operated in the general population. That’s not the situation here. The FDA should be casting a rigorous eye on new medications, not collaborating with drug companies to ease the path of drugs with a dubious record of success.

Chris Harrison is out as 'Bachelor' host. How his 20-year stint came undone

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/chris-harrison-the-bachelor-exit-matt-james-rachael-kirkconnell

In the aftermath of a racism controversy that engulfed the first Black Bachelor’s season earlier this year, Chris Harrison is officially parting ways with the popular reality series, network ABC and production company Warner Horizon announced Tuesday. “Chris Harrison is stepping aside as host of ‘The Bachelor’ franchise,” read the joint statement. “We are thankful for his many contributions over the past 20 years and wish him all the best on his new journey.” Harrison posted his own statement on Instagram: “I’ve had a truly incredible run as host of The Bachelor franchise and now I’m excited to start a new chapter. I’m so grateful to Bachelor Nation for all of the memories we’ve made together. While my two-decade journey is wrapping up, the friendships I’ve made will last a lifetime.” Television After pledging ‘real change’ amid last year’s protests, ABC and owner Walt Disney Co. stayed silent as a firestorm over race consumed its reality-TV flagship. March 12, 2021 “The Bachelor” faced a racial reckoning last season after photos surfaced of contestant Rachael Kirkconnell at an Old South-themed party in 2018. Harrison himself was caught up in the scandal following an interview with Rachel Lindsay, the first Black “Bachelorette,” in which he made racially insensitive statements minimizing those images. Soon thereafter, Harrison announced he was stepping back from Season 25 of “The Bachelor” before the finale aired. The end of Harrison’s long tenure as the face and voice of the franchise comes one year after last summer’s protests against police brutality spurred disappointed “Bachelor” fans to action. Spearheaded by the Bachelor Diversity Campaign, a petition was created last June, demanding change from the franchise and expressing viewers’ frustration with the lack of diverse representation on the show. In 18 years and 40 seasons of the series, Lindsay was the only Black lead. Later that month, 29-year-old Matt James was announced as the first Black “Bachelor.” His season kicked off in January, boasting the most diverse cast ever — only to be derailed by fans’ discovery of the 3-year-old photos of Kirkconnell. Television The franchise attempts to turn the corner after a season tarnished by controversy as two former “Bachelorettes” step in for host Chris Harrison. June 7, 2021 In an interview about the images with Lindsay for “Extra,” Harrison stated that “there is a big difference” between 2018 and 2021 and used the term “woke police” to describe those who were demanding accountability. The interview elicited a social media outcry and resulted in an apology from Kirkconnell as well as Harrison, who said that he “will always own a mistake” and promised “to do better.” Harrison later posted on Instagram that he would be “stepping aside for a period of time” and would not be joining the “After the Final Rose” special. Ex-NFL player Emmanuel Acho hosted the finale, which featured a sit-down conversation between Kirkconnell and James. While the two claimed they were no longer a couple when the special aired, James shared weeks later that he would be pursuing a relationship with Kirkconnell. By contrast, it appears that Harrison and the franchise were unable to reconcile. The season premiere of “The Bachelorette,” starring Katie Thurston, aired without a hitch on Monday, with former “Bachelorettes” Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe front and center. Though it went unmentioned in the episode, Harrison’s absence was noted by some fans, who commented on social media that he was a victim of “cancel culture” and vowed to boycott the new season. Staff writer Greg Braxton contributed to this report.

After 30 years as Hollywood's coolest film composer, Danny Elfman still has something to prove

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-06-08/danny-elfman-solo-album-tim-burton

If Disney ever wanted to reboot “Toy Story” as a horror franchise, they’d do well to tap the curiously creepy collection that famed film and TV composer Danny Elfman keeps in his East Hollywood recording compound. Animators could do a tracking shot through the enclosed loading dock, into Elfman’s studio, and be greeted by the man himself, who’d introduce his little buddies: a pair of fist-sized, shrunken human heads that occupy space on a table in the corner of a cavernous entry room. Protected in glass display cases a few steps away from a similar case housing an original Jack Skellington doll from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (Elfman provided the singing voice of Skellington, as well as the film’s songs and score), the shriveled noggins sit among various Victorian medical devices, detached mannequin hands, busts of clowns, doll parts and other macabre curios that constitute the life-long Angeleno’s aesthetic. Recently Elfman, who just turned 68, opened his studio doors for an extended conversation on his life’s work as a composer — a résumé filled with Oscar, Emmy and Grammy nominations, but best known for his 16 film scores for director Tim Burton and for the theme song to “The Simpsons” — and how all that informed “Big Mess,” Elfman’s first solo album in more than 30 years, which comes out via Anti-/Epitaph on June 11. During the afternoon, Eflman variously describes himself as insecure, competitive, hyperactive, weird and obsessive. At one point he pulls up his shirt to reveal six-pack abs and a torso dense with tattoos. “I thrive on negative energy,” he says. “I was reviled by every other composer, understandably. I was a jerk from a rock band,” referring to his punk-era art-rock band Oingo Boingo. That disdain, he continues, was “the best thing that could have happened to me because every single score I did for Tim was all about, ‘I’ll show those motherf—. Give me your hate. All you motherf— are going to be imitating me in your next score.’ “I’m a little bit like Godzilla,” he says. “You try to throw an atomic bomb on me and it just makes me stronger.” “Big Mess” is the closest Elfman has come to making a rock album, and it’s as filled with sonic incitements as his compound is with grimly alluring paintings and images by Joel-Peter Witkin, Mark Ryden and Henry Darger. Spanning 18 songs and nearly 75 minutes, it’s a fiercely political work filled with bombastic peaks and strikingly meditative valleys that focuses on the internal and external strife caused by living in a country torn apart by hate, racism, ignorance and corruption. “We reached a point in 2020 where I felt like we were living a dystopian novel version of America,” he says. “Trumpism is literally ‘Two plus two equals five because Trump says it’s five.’ I didn’t think that was possible. The big mess was all around me.” How fans of Elfman’s filmic work receive “Big Mess” depends on whether or not they’re willing to fully immerse themselves in such a beast of a project. As if anticipating the reaction, the artist apologizes five times in the first song, “Sorry,” and again in the second song, “True,” a work whose opening stanza concludes with the line, “Why do I live in hell?” Music With Renée Zellweger in attendance, Rufus Wainwright performed Judy Garland’s immortal ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ album with a small ensemble at Capitol Studios. June 7, 2021 In fact, Elfman lives “somewhere north of Los Angeles” with his wife, actor Bridget Fonda, and their teenage son, Oliver. (The family recently sold their two homes in Hancock Park.) Elfman also has two adult daughters, Lola and Mali, from his marriage to Geri Eisenmenger. Elfman grew up in Baldwin Hills, the son of a novelist mom and teacher dad. As a student at University High School in West Los Angeles, Elfman ran with the respected percussionist William Winant, West Coast new-music composer Michael Byron and former Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon. Elfman and Gordon dated, in fact. “We were as different as night and day,” Elfman says, sitting on a comfortable couch in a room filled with drums the size of redwood stumps. “She was always cool — and I don’t mean ‘trying to be cool.’ The kind that you’re born with and other people try to imitate. I was the opposite — a hyperactive OCD geek.” At 18, he and a friend booked a flight to Paris with the intention of heading south into Africa. While in France, they met up with Elfman’s older brother, Richard, who was performing in noted French theater director Jérôme Savary’s traveling Le Grand Magic Circus. Obsessed with French Italian jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, Danny had packed his violin for his transcontinental adventure. Upon arrival, Savary invited him and his friend to join the circus band as they traveled through Europe and Africa. Elfman called his yearlong journey an exile from “middle-class white suburbia in the most extreme way ... like my DNA was being reprogrammed.” Any notion that Elfman might settle for a 9-to-5 job upon his return was rendered moot. He joined his brother’s Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo as musical director the day after he landed at LAX. Established in 1979, Oingo Boingo, as they became known, mixed ska, punk, jazz and a Zappa-esque experimental streak during the rise of new wave. Elfman became Oingo Boingo’s leader after Richard left to produce and direct the 1980 cult classic “Forbidden Zone,” which starred Danny as Satan. “I never fit into anything in my life here,” Elfman says. “There was nothing I ever felt aligned to.” Oingo Boingo “might as well have come from Mars — this weird, surrealistic cabaret. Theater critics hated it. We used to print the worst reviews in our ads.” Still, the band became a SoCal mainstay, releasing eight albums between 1981 and 1994 and earning attention for songs including “Little Girls,” “Dead Man’s Party” and “Weird Science.” That’s their “Goodbye Goodbye” playing over the closing credits of the 1982 teen classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Burton first saw the band as a CalArts student at early punk clubs Madame Wong’s and the Whisky a Go Go. “I don’t know if it’s my background in animation but it seemed very filmic,” Burton recalled on the phone from England. “They had different instrumentation — more of a theatrical experience and a funny way of being a rock spectacle. Something about the rhythm sounded like weird animation music.” At the height of Oingo Boingo’s popularity, Elfman entered the world of film scoring, collaborating with Burton on the director’s first feature film, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” the now-classic 1985 movie starring Paul Reubens. “None of the old guard really accepted him,” Burton recalls, describing the tension as “a rite of passage, but it was a two-way street.” Famously, Elfman fired legendary film composer and conductor Lionel Newman (of the famed family of L.A. film composers) after a “Beetlejuice” session in which a sarcastic Newman derisively called him “Beethoven” in front of the orchestra. Elfman’s Oingo Boingo bandmate and longtime orchestrator Steve Bartek witnessed the Newman exchange from the control room. “Lionel thought it was his place to have an idea what the score should be like, and it was not Danny’s idea,” says Bartek. According to Bartek, they later learned that Newman had been telling the orchestra the opposite of what Elfman had instructed. “Danny is very adept at how to say what it is he wants,” observes Bartek. That skill has continually drawn Elfman into Burton’s world, even if both have acknowledged creative tension in the past. Asked whether his and Elfman’s partnership has ever devolved into screaming, Burton replies dryly, “It’s more like psychological torture.” Despite the torture, Burton keeps returning to his decades-long collaborator because his work wends its way into movies until it becomes an invisible character. Elfman’s scores also perform well, which Burton first witnessed during a pre-release “Beetlejuice” showing. Producers first screened the film without Elfman’s score. “It didn’t test that well,” says Burton. “Then when we put the score in, it was like adding a character — it was part of [the movie]. It was like missing an actor if you didn’t have it in there. That’s happened quite a bit.” Elfman’s scores have gone on to propel hit films from Burton’s “Batman” to Gus Van Sant’s “Good Will Hunting” to Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man.” He won an Emmy for his opening theme to “Desperate Housewives” and earns Screen Actors Guild money every time his theme song to “The Simpsons” drifts in with a trio of voices, one of them his, singing a three-note theme. And local Halloween celebrants have come to revere Elfman for his annual Hollywood Bowl performance of “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” backed by a full orchestra. (The live-to-film concert comes to Banc of California Stadium on Oct. 29.) Elfman had begun preparing for a full-blown return to live music when the pandemic hit. Coachella promoter Paul Tollett, who had been unsuccessfully pushing for an Oingo Boingo reunion, flew Elfman to the festival via helicopter in 2019. That year, composer Hans Zimmer brought film scoring to the festival with a well-received set of his movie themes. But Elfman was more struck by Janelle Monáe’s show and the way she wed sound and visuals. He pitched a performance that was half film music and half band. Tollett agreed and Elfman enlisted Bartek and a band that included Nine Inch Nails’ Robin Finck and session drummer Josh Freese. Music Liz Phair’s new album, ‘Soberish,’ reunites her with the producer of ‘Exile on Guyville,’ her influential indie-rock masterpiece. June 3, 2021 Elfman and band spent three months producing and rehearsing for Coachella by revamping a half-dozen Oingo Boingo songs. “I looked where we are politically and I said, ‘Which of these old songs feel relevant today? Oh, my God, we were already talking about dystopian fascism and everything else.’” Elfman also dug into his popular TV and movie themes and composed a few new songs. April 2020 was supposed to be a momentous month for Elfman. Not only was there Coachella but he was scheduled to begin rehearsals with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for the world premiere of an Elfman symphonic work. He’d booked dates for “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and there was the premiere of a new percussion piece. “I was hyped and ready to go,” Elfman says. When COVID brought the curtain down on live music, Elfman fell into what he called “a deep funk.” Because of his anticipated concert schedule, he’d turned down all 2020 scoring projects. He was as idle as he’d ever been. “The first year that I’m finally taking no film music in order to commit to live performances — and it completely implodes.” Despite the disappointment, he was still buzzing from the Coachella rehearsals and the way in which the band manifested his ideas, so he kept grinding away in his home studio. “Big Mess” wasn’t finished when Elfman invited Epitaph Records owner and Bad Religion founder Brett Gurewitz to his studio. Gurewitz likened the meeting to “having a tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory by Wonka himself. He showed me his collection of esoteric instruments and objects and eventually took me to a studio where we listened to highlights from the record.” Gurewitz was awed by what he heard, telling Elfman that it reminded him of “a gothic ‘Sgt. Pepper.’” Gurewitz adds, “Danny doesn’t really have a rock background — he just sort of makes it up as it goes along. But he’s taking everything he’s learned on the scoring and orchestral side, and combining that with his innate goth-rock style. “He’s uncompromising,” Gurewitz adds. “He has a vision. It’s a bizarre vision, and we just want to facilitate it.” “He really should have done it a long time ago,” Bartek concludes. Asked why he thought Elfman waited 30 years to release another solo album, Bartek replies with affection, “His agents kept him busy.”

Op-Ed: How to stop hedge funds from wrecking local news

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/newspapers-hedge-funds-journalism-business-models

With Alden Global Capital’s recent acquisition of the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain, the country has reached a troubling milestone: Half of the daily newspaper circulation in America is now owned by hedge funds. This is a real threat to democracy, because hedge funds and private equity firms have a track record of cutting the reporting staff of local newsrooms to increase profits. We must stop viewing this trend as inevitable. We need to confront it head on, including with public policies. With its latest move, Alden now controls the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Allentown Morning Call, the Virginia Pilot, the Orlando Sentinel, the Hartford Courant and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis. All of these papers are now owned by an economic interest divorced from the communities they serve. Some 1,200 newspapers are now owned partially or entirely by hedge funds, private equity or investment firms, according to Penny Muse Abernathy, an expert on the local news industry. The problem is not that hedge funds or private equity firms are run by evil people. It’s that when it comes to newspapers, their aim has been to maximize cash flow by slashing costs (namely, the reporting ranks), without investing in digital subscription growth that could make the papers sustainable in the long run. These financial institutions did not by themselves cause the local news crisis that has left thousands of communities without adequate information. The number of reporters has dropped by 60% since 2000 largely because the internet dismantled newspapers’ revenue sources — advertising and subscriptions. Industry consolidation — big newspaper chains buying other big chains, all financed with large amounts of debt — also contributed to the crisis. And many news organizations failed to adapt, even as the challenges became obvious. But hedge fund ownership will make it nearly impossible for these papers to climb out of the ditch. While these seem like seismic forces, we can counter them if we adopt a strategy to “replant” struggling newspapers back into communities. Hundreds, if not thousands, of the 6,700 local newspapers in the U.S could be strengthened if acquired by local nonprofit institutions. That’s what happened with the Salt Lake Tribune, which converted into a nonprofit organization. Sometimes a local business group or family can take over. That’s how the Berkshire Eagle was saved in Massachusetts. In Colorado, a new nonprofit called the National Trust for Local News (of which I’m a cofounder) last month acquired a chain of suburban weeklies with the help of local and national philanthropy. The trust is operating these papers in partnership with the Colorado Sun, which was formed by reporters who had left the Denver Post after it had been gutted by Alden Capital. The philanthropic world needs to help such efforts to preserve local ownership. But the big action must come from Congress. It could offer incentives for owners to sell these papers to local interests by waiving capital gains taxes if the acquirer is a local nonprofit organization or public benefit corporation. It could give a time-limited payroll tax break to the acquiring organizations. Congress could also, through the Small Business Administration or Commerce Department, provide loan guarantees for low-interest financing for such transitions or special tax credits, similar to those available to businesses operating in enterprise zones. These tax changes would also benefit family newspapers that have served their communities for years and want to find new owners. Many — including newspapers historically rooted in Black and Latino communities — may want to sell their operations to community-based owners, but may not be able to find a buyer right now other than a hedge fund. We also need to consider improving antitrust enforcement. The Justice Department could block newspaper mergers that have a high likelihood of hurting communities. Safeguarding “localism” has been a staple of communications policy in America for almost a century. It’s the right idea. These strategies would be more likely to work if Congress also took a few steps to help local news more generally. A bipartisan bill called the Local Journalism Sustainability Act provides tax credits for consumers to either buy a news subscription or donate to a local news nonprofit. It also provides a tax credit for small businesses to advertise in local newspapers. This measure has support from both political parties because consumers and businesses choose which newsrooms to subsidize, not someone at a federal government agency. In addition, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has proposed including assistance for local news in the infrastructure bill. Local news is the infrastructure of democracy, and it is crumbling. This is not a partisan issue. If I were a conservative Republican, I’d be worried that the great majority of counties that have become news deserts are Republican. And fiscal conservatives should be very concerned. The decline of local news is associated with more government waste. Beyond that, the closure of newspapers also causes higher political polarization, decreased voter turnout and increased corruption. A well-informed citizenry is essential to solving local problems. The collapse of local news was caused by powerful forces. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to change the course. It starts with a simple principle: Keep local news in local hands. Steven Waldman is president of Report for America and chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

HBO Max’s global expansion faces intense competition and tangled rights

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-06-08/hbo-maxs-global-expansion-faces-intense-competition-and-tangled-rights

From his home in the English port city of Sunderland, John Campbell reads everything he can about HBO Max. When theaters across the U.K. shut down because of the pandemic, Campbell got excited about potentially being able to see new movies on the streaming service. But like everyone else in the U.K., Campbell will have to wait for his chance to sign up, possibly for several years. HBO Max may not arrive in some of Europe’s largest markets, including the U.K., Germany and Italy, until 2025, when an exclusive deal between HBO and the European pay-TV provider Sky expires. Campbell, a 27-year-old TV cord-cutter, predicts the delay could push people to pirate HBO Max programming illegally or lose interest altogether. “It’s shocking for anyone wanting new exclusive content,” he said. The deal with Sky is an example of the tangled international rights that HBO Max is navigating as it tries to catch up with Netflix and Disney+ around the world. The Sky agreement has been lucrative for its parent, WarnerMedia. But analysts say it threatens to slow down HBO Max in a fast-moving global race for streaming domination. “A few years might be a dangerously long amount of time in the future given the pace at which other streaming services are continuing to grow,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at the advertising giant GroupM. HBO Max made its debut in the U.S. last May. After a tumultuous start, the streaming service gained traction late last year when its app arrived on Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, and it started showing Warner Bros. movies such as “Wonder Woman 1984” the same day they arrived in theaters. With 64 million worldwide subscribers to HBO and HBO Max, WarnerMedia still has a long way to go to catch up with the industry’s leaders. Netflix has over 200 million global subscribers. Disney+ has more than 100 million. Success in streaming, as Netflix has shown, ultimately requires reaching subscribers in every corner of the planet. But taking a streaming service around the world is complicated and expensive. It involves creating locally-sourced shows in multiple languages and navigating regions that don’t have reliable broadband or many consumers with credit cards. For HBO Max, it also means deciding when is the right time to give up revenue from licensing deals. HBO Max’s global strategy could be totally upended a year from now when its parent, WarnerMedia, completes its merger with Discovery Inc., which has its own streaming service, Discovery+. In the meantime, HBO Max will kick off its international expansion on June 29 in Latin America and the Caribbean, where subscriptions will start at $3 per month — far less than the $15 price in the U.S. The HBO brand is already well-known in the region, where the network has enjoyed a presence since 1991. HBO Latin America, as the division is called, operates its own channels, which collectively have about 10 million subscribers. HBO Max has committed to making 100 original productions in Latin America over the next two years and will stream the popular UEFA Champions League soccer matches live to subscribers in Brazil and Mexico. HBO Max will be available on several pay-TV services in the region including those of AT&T Inc., which currently owns WarnerMedia and is a major wireless operator in Mexico. Even with such advantages, HBO Max will find itself competing for customers in a crowded market. Netflix is the dominant streaming player in Latin America, with about 38 million subscribers. Disney+ launched in the region in November. Paramount+ arrived in March. Another Disney-owned streaming service, Star+, which will have live sports from ESPN, will debut in August. A service from Televisa-Univision, a new Spanish-language media venture, will show up next year. “HBO Max is walking into a region where there’s a lot of competition already,” said Simon Murray, the principal analyst at Digital TV Research. Expanding in Europe may be even more challenging. Sometime later this year, HBO Max will launch in 21 countries in Europe. While WarnerMedia will be able to offer HBO Max directly to streaming subscribers in several areas, including the Nordics, Spain and Portugal, it will not be able to launch the service in France until the end of HBO’s deal with OCS, which is owned by the French telecom giant Orange SA. That deal expires at the end of 2022. HBO Max’s European expansion could be particularly hampered by WarnerMedia’s current deal with Sky, a dominant pay-TV provider with about 23 million subscribers, which first struck a deal to air HBO programming in 2010. Unlike the U.S. market, where HBO can be seen on a range of cable and satellite TV services and streaming platforms, Sky is the exclusive home of HBO in its territories. In the fall of 2019, HBO and Sky renewed their deal. The move was financially beneficial for WarnerMedia but may have been short-sighted, said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at MoffettNathanson. “It was a legacy of the old Time Warner,” Nathanson said, referring to HBO’s former owner. “The old Time Warner, when they had a chance way back when to take the easy money or go the hard route, they took the easy money.” In an interview, Johannes Larcher, head of HBO Max International, praised the benefits of the Sky deal for both HBO and HBO Max. “Sky is a very good partner to us,” he said. “Not only is this financially super-lucrative for us but it also helps fund the rollout of HBO Max in other territories.” Sky, he said, also helps to popularize HBO programming — priming customers for HBO Max’s eventual arrival, whenever that may be. Still, he acknowledged, “our hands are tied there a little bit.” Larcher, a former Hulu executive who also oversaw Shahid VIP, an Arabic language streaming service, said his goal is “to bring HBO Max to every place and corner of the world,” including, eventually, the markets dominated by Sky. “Anyone who is serious about being a global player in streaming has to have a presence there,” he said. “You can expect we will be looking very closely at launching in these markets as soon as we can.” As part of their deal, HBO and Sky also co-produce shows together like “Chernobyl” and “Catherine the Great.” Even after the current agreement expires, they may want to continue that partnership, said François Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis. Another complicating factor is that Sky is now owned by Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable operator and a key distributor of WarnerMedia cable channels such as HBO, CNN, TNT and TBS. Comcast also owns NBCUniversal and is planning to expand NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, in Sky markets across Europe and other territories, competing with HBO Max when it arrives. Due to past licensing deals, HBO Max could face additional marketing challenges. While Sky has advertised itself as the “Home of HBO,” many British viewers don’t know the HBO brand well because it doesn’t operate as an independent channel on Sky’s pay-TV service as it does in the U.S., Godard said. Instead, HBO shows like “Game of Thrones” air on Sky Atlantic, which features a mix of American programming. “The bulk of viewers would first think of Sky not HBO,” Godard said. “They would have to spend a lot of money to explain what the brand is about.” HBO Max could get some help in Europe next year when its parent merges with Discovery, which has a large business on the continent. Discovery’s chief executive, David Zaslav, who will run the combined company, is well-versed in the nuances of Europe’s media landscape. At an investor conference in late May, Zaslav said his international experience is “a really significant” competitive advantage. At one point, he was asked about American media companies getting more aggressive in expanding their businesses outside the U.S. “I would say welcome to the party,” said Zaslav. “Put your seatbelt on because this is not for the faint of heart.”

Suspect charged with murder in road rage shooting death of Aiden Leos

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/aiden-leos-road-rage-killing-suspects-face-charges-couldve-happened-to-any-one-of-us

A former auto body shop worker who boasted about his love of guns on Instagram is now facing the possibility of life in prison for his alleged role in the road rage shooting death of 6-year-old Aiden Leos. Marcus Anthony Eriz, 24, has been charged with murder and discharging a gun into an occupied vehicle, the Orange County district attorney’s office announced Tuesday, with sentencing enhancements for firing a gun and causing great bodily injury or death. Wynne Lee, who authorities say was driving the car from which Eriz fired the fatal shot, has been charged with one felony count of accessory after the fact and a misdemeanor count of having a concealed firearm in a vehicle. Prosecutors say Lee, 23, concealed the shooting, which led to the accessory charge. The charges against Eriz mean he could face 40 years to life in prison if convicted, while Lee faces up to three years in prison and one year in jail if convicted of her two charges. The pair’s arraignment, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, was postponed until June 18. “Mr. Eriz, if he is convicted on any or both charges, will spend a significant portion of his adult life in prison,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said during a media briefing Tuesday. California Investigators are revealing how they found the suspects in the killing of 6-year-old Aiden Leos, which left the Orange County community shocked. June 7, 2021 The charges allege that Eriz committed the murder with “malice aforethought,” of which there are two kinds: Express malice, when the accused intended to kill the victim, and implied malice, when the accused demonstrated a conscious disregard for human life. Spitzer said he believes he can prove implied malice in the case using the depraved heart theory. In a depraved heart murder case, an individual acts in a way that shows a depraved indifference to human life and recklessly engages in conduct that not only creates a grave risk of death to another person, but also causes their death. “Our theory today is that it’s reckless indifference to life,” Spitzer said. Based on the evidence, prosecutors said they could not file murder charges against Lee on Tuesday, noting that her actions after the shooting — and not any conduct before — led to the charges against her. The couple were taken into custody Sunday at their home in Costa Mesa, more than two weeks after Aiden was fatally shot while riding in a booster seat in the back of his mother’s car. The boy was struck by a bullet in an apparent act of road rage on the Orange County freeway, authorities said. “We would not file these charges unless we could prove them beyond a reasonable doubt,” Spitzer said, adding that he’s “absolutely convinced” they are “rock solid.” Spitzer also noted that there is no evidence that any other people were involved in the fatal shooting. He called on the community not to harass the suspects’ relatives or other residents at their homes. In court Tuesday, Eriz appeared on video from the county jail while Lee agreed to appear only via audio for reasons that were not explained. She spoke in a soft voice when addressing the judge to agree to delay her arraignment. Bail had initially been set at $1 million each. Prosecutors argued that Eriz’s bail should be increased to $2 million due to the seriousness of the crime, and because they said he posed a danger to the public and was a flight risk. They also requested that Lee’s bail be set at $500,000 — less than the initial amount, but more than it would typically be based on her charges. Judge Larry Yellin agreed to the revised amounts, but said that they may be adjusted at the June 18 arraignment, and that it is probable Lee’s amount will be reduced. Spitzer said his office will submit a brief to the court with the justifications for bail at those levels. California Aiden Leos was fatally shot while riding in his mother’s car on the 55 in Orange. Two people have been arrested in the alleged road rage incident. June 7, 2021 Aiden’s death on the morning of May 21 left the Orange County community reeling and looking for answers. That morning, Aiden’s mother, Joanna Cloonan, told another motorist that she and her son were in the carpool lane when another car cut her off as she started switching lanes to exit. She made an obscene gesture toward the people in the other car, who then maneuvered behind her and fired a gun at her vehicle, officials said. A bullet entered Cloonan’s car from the rear, striking her son through his back. She pulled over and took the bleeding boy into her arms until paramedics arrived. Doctors could not save him. “It could’ve happened to any one of us,” Spitzer said while holding up a photograph of Aiden during a news conference Monday. “We all drive the freeways of Southern California. We’ve all gotten upset at other motorists, other motorists have gotten upset at us. I’ve thrown some gestures about myself. But it’s never come to a situation of violence and certainly not in my realm or your realm, to the loss of a life.” Neither of the suspects nor their attorneys could be reached for comment. The Walnut Avenue overpass above the 55 Freeway where Aiden was shot now acts as a makeshift memorial, with balloons, stuffed animals and signs honoring the little boy. California Six-year-old Aiden Leos lay dying in his mother’s arms on the 55 Freeway in Orange last month. June 6, 2021 Other details have emerged about Eriz and Lee in the days since their arrest. Eriz grew up in Weaverville near Redding, with family in the Whittier area. He often shared content on social media about cars and guns. He posted several pictures and videos of himself shooting an array of assault-style rifles and pistols outdoors and at a shooting range. One of the weapons he displayed was capable of delivering the shot that killed Aiden, officials said. Spitzer on Tuesday said he believed the gun recovered by California Highway Patrol officials this week was registered to Eriz, but did not say where it was recovered. A source with the agency said the vehicle used in the shooting, a white 2018 Volkswagen Golf SportWagen SE, was in the garage of a Whittier home belonging to one of Eriz’s relatives and that the relative has been away from the home. CHP Border Division Assistant Chief Donald Goodbrand said Tuesday that there are about 20,000 such cars in the immediate four-county area and that investigators were able to narrow that number down to about 130. Eriz worked at an auto body shop in Corona and reportedly left in January, but in recent weeks, he texted and asked for his job back, his former boss told KCBS-TV Channel 2. Investigators said Eriz changed his appearance after the shooting, shaving off a large black beard that had been seen in many of his Instagram photos. Lee grew up in Diamond Bar, where she attended Diamond Bar High School and Mt. San Antonio College. Surveillance, investigation and tips all played a part in identifying Eriz and Lee, officials said. But Spitzer said officials could not discuss the specific investigation techniques. After circulating an image of the white vehicle said to belong to the suspects in the weeks after the shooting, investigators received hundreds of calls and emails. A reward funded by family members, donations, county officials and local businesses climbed to $500,000. Officials are still reviewing the potential distribution of that reward. Spitzer said it is contingent upon both an arrest and a conviction. Calling it an “intensive manhunt,” Goodbrand said several agencies, including the CHP, the Orange County district attorney’s office and other law enforcement officials and leadership in Orange County and Southern California helped with the case. “Never in my 25-year career have I witnessed those components work together so strongly to solve a crime as I have during this investigation,” he said. Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, whose office contributed $50,000 to the reward fund, thanked the community for its support. “This is a crime that obviously grabbed the heartstrings of the community and allowed us to come together in some effort toward healing,” he said Tuesday. “It allowed us to collectively say we will pursue justice in this county.”

Smoking supplies explode as downtown L.A. building erupts in flames

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/downtown-l-a-warehouse-erupts-in-flames-overnight-smoking-supplies-explode

A fire that erupted at a downtown Los Angeles commercial building overnight burned through the roof and charred the three-story structure early Tuesday as more than 100 firefighters battled the blaze. The flames ignited at 1:50 a.m. at a 100-year-old building in the 200 block of East 3rd Street that housed at least five businesses on the ground level, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. At least two of the businesses contained smoking supplies, including pressurized gas canisters, which caused small explosions during the fire. The building’s top two levels housed commercial storage. No injuries were reported, LAFD spokesman Brian Humphrey said. Despite the massive blaze, evacuations of a nearby retirement home and other high-rise apartments were not needed, he said. The cause of the blaze is under investigation. Kimberly Vargas, 26, woke to the sound of an explosion just outside the window of her East 3rd Street apartment. A lifelong resident of her building, Vargas is accustomed to random loud noises or fireworks. But after the initial boom, a loud, steady crackling that sounded like gunfire wrested her out of bed. Then she smelled smoke. “That’s finally when I knew something was happening because it went from two explosions and then it was finally smoke,” Vargas said. “Your mind just goes to the worst places these days.” She called 911 and then went outside, where several of her neighbors had gathered to watch what was happening at the building next door. Flames lapped the structure, which Vargas said housed gift and luggage stores in addition to the smoke shops. Across the street, an encampment of tents where homeless people lived also caught fire, LAFD officials said. More than 90 minutes after the fire began, 150 first responders were working at the scene, according to an LAFD alert. But that number had fallen by half by 7:30 a.m. Humphrey said he expected firefighters would have to stay at the building through the morning to finish battling the fire and then clean up. Vargas, who remained perched at her window most of the morning to watch and film the incident, said she planned to work from home for the day, buy an air purifier for her apartment, which smelled like smoke, and go to sleep early Tuesday night. “I’m just happy, honestly, that everything’s OK,” she said. Video from the scene showed that the blaze charred much of the building’s 23,000 square feet. Small canisters from the smoking stores littered the street. “There may have been other [materials] inside,” Humphrey said, adding that in past incidents, chemicals like butane or nitric acid have caused explosions in fires. Last year, nearly a dozen firefighters were injured in a fire in downtown L.A. caused by an explosion at a smoke shop.

A slap in the face: French president gets struck by man during visit to small town

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/french-president-macron-slapped-visit-small-town

French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped in the face by a man during a visit Tuesday to a small town in southeast France. Macron’s office confirmed the authenticity of a video of the incident that is circulating widely online. The French president can be seen greeting people waiting for him behind traffic barriers in the small town of Tain-l’Hermitage after he visited a high school that trains students to work in hotels and restaurants. The video shows a man slapping Macron in the face and his bodyguards pushing the man away as the French leader is quickly rushed from the scene. French news broadcaster BFM TV said two people have been detained by police in connection with the assault. Macron has not commented on the incident and continued his visit. World & Nation France’s interior minister says the country faces a ‘very high’ risk of terrorist attack and is increasing security at religious sites. Oct. 27, 2020 Speaking at the National Assembly in Paris, Prime Minister Jean Castex said that “through the head of state, that’s democracy that has been targeted” — a comment that prompted loud applause from lawmakers of all parties, who stood up in a show of support. “Democracy is about debate, dialogue, confrontation of ideas, expression of legitimate disagreements, of course, but in no case can it be violence, verbal assault and, even less, physical assault,” Castex said. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen tweeted her condemnation of “the intolerable physical aggression targeting the president of the Republic.” Visibly angry, she said later that while Macron is her top political adversary, the assault was “deeply, deeply reprehensible.” World & Nation France’s anti-competition watchdog has fined Google $268 million for abusing its ‘dominant position’ in the complex business of online advertising. June 7, 2021 Less than a year before France’s next presidential election, and as the country gradually reopens its pandemic-hit economy, Macron last week started a political “tour de France,” seeking to visit French regions in the coming months to “feel the pulse of the country.” Macron has said in an interview that he wants to engage in a mass consultation with the French public aimed at “turning the page” of the pandemic — and preparing his possible campaign for a second term. The attack follows mounting concerns in France about violence targeting elected officials, particularly after the often-violent “yellow vest” economic protest movement, which resulted in repeated clashes between demonstrators and riot officers in 2019. Village mayors and lawmakers have been among those targeted by physical assaults, death threats and harassment. France’s well-protected head of state had been spared until now, which compounded the shock waves that rippled through the French political establishment after the incident.

Harris' visit to Guatemala and Mexico a mix of diplomacy and controversy

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/vice-president-harris-mexico-lopez-obrador-discuss-border-issues

Vice President Kamala Harris wrapped up her first official foreign trip Tuesday, having gained exposure on the world stage in trying to reset U.S. relations in Latin America. But she got more attention back home for something else: controversies over her words on immigration. Harris first angered some on the left in the United States with her strong statement Monday in Guatemala telling desperate would-be migrants, “Do not come” to the U.S. border, and warning that they’d be “turned back.” She then created a political dust-up — fanned on the right — with her replies to questions about why she had yet to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. The blowback swirled amid the vice president’s diplomatic debut in Mexico City on Tuesday, a day after her visit to Guatemala’s capital. She met for more than two hours with Mexico’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and declared “we are embarking on a new era” in U.S.-Mexico relations, and with the world more broadly. Harris, sitting across from the Mexican president at a long polished-wood table in a salon of the National Palace, noted the “interconnection and interdependence” of the two nations. At a later news conference before returning to the United States, Harris said, “Do I declare this trip a success? Yes, I do.” She added, “It is a success in terms of creating a pathway that is about progress.” Asked whether she would commit to visit the border, where migrants have converged seeking entry, and do so soon, she replied, “Yes, I will, and I have before.” In her two stops, the vice president pledged millions of dollars in U.S. loans and investment for housing and agriculture in both southern Mexico and northern Guatemala, and $130 million for improving working conditions in Mexico, including addressing safety issues and child labor. Such projects are key to the focus of Harris’ diplomacy: trying to discourage residents from fleeing the impoverished region. Her two-day trip to Guatemala and Mexico was aimed in particular at curbing the influx of Central American migrants through Mexico to the U.S. border, by addressing the root causes such as poverty and violence that spur their flight. In Guatemala City, she also met with that nation’s president, community activists and entrepreneurs. In her news conference, Harris emphasized, “The issue of root causes is not going to be fixed in one trip that took two days.” But the questions that dogged the vice president, as well as administration officials back at the White House on Tuesday, were from reporters and politicians asking why she has not visited the border as part of her mandate to confront the “root causes” of Central Americans’ migration, and about the criticism of her warning to migrants. “The U.S. spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter. “We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.” The Interfaith Migration Coalition, a group of U.S.-based religious leaders, admonished Harris that seeking asylum was not illegal. Harris told reporters traveling with her, “The work that we are doing by being in Guatemala yesterday and in Mexico today is the work of reinforcing the point that we have to look at not only what is actually happening at the border, but what is causing that to happen.” In Guatemala, she’d made a similar point and added, “I will continue to be focused on that kind of work as opposed to grand gestures.” Harris especially provoked criticism with her remarks in an interview with NBC News late Monday. She bristled when broadcaster Lester Holt pressed her about a border visit. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris responded. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.” In Mexico City, Harris’ primary focus was immigration but she also sought to more broadly define the Biden administration’s pivotal diplomatic relationship with Mexico, America’s southern neighbor, close ally and No. 1 trading partner. “We made clear that the United States considers Mexico to be a partner on many of these issues,” Harris said, characterizing her talks with López Obrador as candid and covering migration, human smuggling and drug trafficking. Before their one-on-one session Tuesday, López Obrador welcomed Harris in a brief ceremony on the central patio of the National Palace. “Mucho gusto,” she responded in Spanish. “It’s very good to see you.” They were greeted by salutes from uniformed military personnel and looked on as American and Mexican representatives signed an agreement to broaden U.S.-Mexico cooperation on sending development money to the three Central American countries that are the source of most northbound migrants fleeing poverty and violence — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. As López Obrador showed Harris the spectacular mural by Diego Rivera that overlooks the courtyard and depicts centuries of Mexican history, he responded to a question shouted by a reporter asking whether he would increase security at Mexico’s border with the United States. “We are very pleased to have her here and we will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes,” he said. The Mexican president was the only member of either delegation who did not wear a mask. Ricardo Zúñiga, the administration’s special envoy to the three Central American countries known as the Northern Triangle, said Mexico, like the United States, had an interest in deterring migration from them. “We are both destination countries” for migration from the Northern Triangle, he told reporters aboard Air Force Two on Monday night. In addition to meeting with López Obrador, Harris spoke with female entrepreneurs and held a separate meeting with labor leaders. She is leading the Biden administration’s efforts to expand organized labor in the United States, and administration officials see López Obrador, who has also championed labor rights, as a kindred spirit. Yet some U.S. unions complain that Mexico is not living up to its promises in trade deals to support labor rights. Administration officials had not expected the meeting with López Obrador to be necessarily easy or predictable. In national elections Sunday, he appeared to be losing sway in the legislative branch, where many of his allies were defeated. The final results are not yet clear. López Obrador has at times taken shots at the United States to win favor with his domestic audience. Just before a virtual meeting with Harris in May, he sharply criticized American aid to an anti-corruption group, even as Harris was emphasizing the need to root out corruption in Latin America to stem migration north. López Obrador has attacked other independent watchdogs and reporters, posing a challenge to the Biden administration given its stated goal of promoting democratic institutions around the world. Yet the leftist leader has maintained favor with the United States, including during the Trump administration, for helping with border enforcement. Bierman reported from Mexico City and Wilkinson from Washington.

Soccer newsletter: Young Americans show grit during epic win over Mexico

https://www.latimes.com/sports/newsletter/2021-06-08/soccer-usmnt-el-tri-nations-league-soccer

Hello, and welcome to the L.A. Times soccer newsletter. I’m Kevin Baxter, The Times’ soccer writer, and we begin today with Sunday night’s CONCACAF Nations League final, which provided another chapter in the storied U.S.-Mexico rivalry. It was an epic game that had a little bit of everything — and not all of that was good. We’ll get to the truly distributing stuff in a minute, but let’s start by focusing on the positive because the Americans’ 3-2 extra-time win could mark a turning point in one of the more hard-fought rivalries in international soccer. The United States displayed heart and determination, twice rallying from one-goal deficits to force extra time, where it won on a penalty-kick goal from its captain, Christian Pulisic. Mexico built big leads in possession and shots, but the U.S. suffered through more than 130 minutes to truly earn the victory. When they could have packed it in, they grinded it out. When they could have pointed to their blue-blood pedigree playing for big clubs in Europe, they turned blue collar, scratching, clawing and fighting for the crest on the front of their shirts. How the U.S. won was just as important as that it won. The Americans lost their starting goalkeeper, Zack Steffen, to a knee injury in the 69th minute but got a game-saving performance from backup Ethan Horvath. In the final minute of regulation, Horvath pushed Hirving Lozano’s curling shot from the top of the penalty area wide. Then deep in the second overtime, he dove to this right to block an Andres Guardado penalty-kick try to preserve the win and give Gregg Berhalter his first trophy as coach of the national team. Hometown hero came up 𝐇𝐔𝐆𝐄. Ethan Horvath was INCREDIBLE last night. 🙌🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/v2IwRkIQYU The U.S. was on the back foot from the start. But it never lost its balance. A goal by Jesus Corona 65 seconds into the game put Mexico ahead, and only a VAR ruling, which erased a second goal midway through the first half, kept it from getting worse. However, the U.S. responded, tying the score in the 27th minute on a goal by Gio Reyna. When Diego Lainez put Mexico back in front in the 79th minute, a minute after coming off the bench, Weston McKennie needed just four minutes to pull the U.S. even again. The roster Berhalter has gathered is undoubtedly the brightest collection of young talent in national team history, including 10 players who won titles with their respective club teams in Europe and one, Pulisic, who became the first American to play in and win a Champions League final. The starting 11 Berhalter selected from that roster Sunday was the youngest ever to start a tournament final for the U.S., averaging 24 years 206 days. But neither talent nor youth is generally enough to survive in CONCACAF, where games can quickly dissolve into street fights — as Sunday’s did, both on and off the field. How the young Americans responded to those challenges — with Pulisic going so far as to pull off his shirt and taunt the Mexican fans by placing an index finger to his lips after his game-winning goals — showed this team might be able to stand up to the pressure of playing World Cup qualifiers in raucous places such as Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca. WHAT A MOMENT FOR THE @USMNT 🏆 pic.twitter.com/rPi2mIIbLG “The only way you can get comfortable in that environment is with experience at it ... and realizing and feeling the pressure involved,” Landon Donovan, who engaged in some memorable battles with Mexico during his national team career, said before the game. “That’s just the reality. We don’t have enough guys right now who have been through enough of those experiences to confidently go into a place like Azteca and say they’re going to win the game every time.” They do now. Mexico’s veteran team did everything it could to disrupt the Americans — and none of it worked. Mexican coach Tata Martino drew a red card deep in extra time, and Hector Herrera should been given one for his reckless play. But the Americans didn’t back down, committing 18 fouls and drawing five cautions of their own. Reyna, a teenager who has already played in 10 Champions League games, not only scored the first U.S. goal but also assisted on the second one by McKennie, who played last season with Cristiano Ronaldo at Juventus. “At no point in our sport’s very short history have we had the type of player — the type of age and the type of team — come together like this,” said former national team player Herculez Gomez. “You are seeing very young players play on teams where Lionel Messi plays. Where Cristiano Ronaldo plays. Some of the best teams in the world, coached by some of the best coaches in the world. “Never have we ever seen that.” To that youth and talent you can now add grit and determination after watching the Americans go toe-to-toe with an experienced and wily Mexican team Sunday, beating it for just the second time in nearly six years. Mexico is ranked 11th in the world, and while its roster is aging, Sunday’s loss was just the third in 26 games under Martino and the second since September 2019. The young Americans showed Sunday they’re not impressed. Or at least not intimidated. The U.S. and Mexico will likely meet again in July’s Gold Cup final, when both figure to be playing a “B” team. So circle Nov. 12 on your calendar; that’s when the countries play in the first of two World Cup qualifiers. “That will be the ultimate test,” Donovan said. “That’s where everyone’s measured. I think there’s enough quality [in the U.S.] and probably enough shared experiences that they can grind through qualifying and then have a successful World Cup. “But obviously that remains to be seen.” The behavior of the coronavirus-limited crowd of 37,648 at Sunday’s Nations League final in Denver was deplorable and dangerous — ranging from an offensive chant and objects being thrown on the field, injuring Reyna, to a pitch invader storming the field late in the match. These actions cannot be allowed to continue if soccer is to grow into a mainstream sport in the U.S. and not into some stadium-sized version of “Fight Club.” It’s well beyond time to enact and enforce serious zero-tolerance measures to curb this kind of behavior. Buying a ticket doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to be a dangerous and offensive jerk. It should be considered a privilege and not a right, and if it means fans have to register to buy tickets, that seems like a small hassle to make stadiums safe for all fans and players. FIFA used similar measures during the last World Cup in Russia, and they appeared to work fine. Sunday’s problems started with many in attendance continuing to use an anti-gay chant whenever Steffen or Horvath attempted a goal kick. FIFA, CONCACAF and the Mexican soccer federation have, at various times in recent years, undertaken measures to try to eliminate the offensive chant, but none have succeeded — partially because the penalties are not being enforced. The Mexican federation pretended to be serious this time, promising to follow a graduated three-step procedure that could lead to fans being ejected and/or the referee ordering the match to be abandoned. “This time is different,” said Yon de Luisa, president of the Mexican federation. “This time the sanctions are for real.” Uh, no they’re not. Sunday’s Nations League final was Mexico’s third match in the U.S. in nine days, and all three were marred by the chant, which also has stained MLS games in recent seasons. Some fans reportedly were ejected at some of those Mexican games, but the most serious interruption came late in Sunday’s final when Panamanian referee John Pitti halted play for three minutes as players on both sides pleaded for the crowd to behave. It didn’t. Less than a half-hour later, when the U.S. was celebrating Pulisic’s game-winning penalty kick, fans pelted the team with cups, water bottles and worse, with one of the objects striking Reyna in the head. After what has been going in our prep matches and the Nations League Finals, we want to ask you to please stop the offensive chant and avoid any violent behavior in the stands.🙏🏽🇲🇽We know we have the best fans in the world, and we're better than this. #SupportWithoutOffending https://t.co/tgKkHveDUp Reyna stayed down for several minutes before walking off the field with trainers. Then just before the final whistle a fan delayed play again by running onto the field. “Total lack of respect for what’s happening on the field and all effort that both teams are putting into the game,” Berhalter, the U.S. manager, told the media. Of Reyna he added: “I think he’s going to be OK, but he did take something to the head, and it could have been a lot worse.’’ There are disagreements over the intent and meaning of the anti-gay Spanish-language chant, with some translating it as a slur and others saying it’s a harmless taunt. Those arguments are immaterial. A sizable portion of the population — both inside and outside soccer — is offended by the chant and FIFA has said it must stop. We don’t all agree that driving 65 mph is the safest speed limit, but you can get a ticket if you violate that law regardless of your personal opinion. It’s the same with the chant. It’s prohibited, and we need to enforce that prohibition. Members of Pasión 1927, a Los Angeles-based fan group of the Mexican national soccer team, share their thoughts on a popular chant that is widely considered homophobic. There is far less debate about the other actions at Sunday’s game. No one in their right mind would argue players should be targets for angry fans. Or that the playing field should be anything other than a safe zone where players are free to compete without fear of either having their space invaded or having dangerous projectiles thrown into it. So what to do? In England, where violent hooligans once turned soccer games into full-scale brawls, politicians got involved and enacted several measures to impede or prevent unruly behavior. Not all of the measures were successful, but the additional focus on the problem helped. During a 2012 game at Manchester City, a fan threw a coin from the stands and struck Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand on the head while he was celebrating a game-winning goal. Police used CCTV video from cameras placed throughout the stadium in an effort to identify the fan — and more recently similar security footage was used to identify and eject fans for using racist taunts or throwing other objects on the field. The increased vigilance and the seriousness of the penalties meted out to offenders hasn’t totally cured English soccer, but it’s helped. In Germany, fans have taken the lead. When the stands at Bayern Munich were invaded by skinheads and fascist sympathizers, one of the team’s largest supporter groups took it upon itself to create an atmosphere in which those fans did not feel welcomed — and it worked. In the largest stadium in the city that gave rise to the Nazis, fascism no longer is a problem. We need similar civic-spectator cooperation here. Fans cannot passively complain about unruly, offensive and sometimes dangerous behavior but not help groups like FIFA and the Mexican federation in their efforts to counter it. And politicians and other stakeholders cannot pass the buck and act like it’s not their concern. Such actions would be tolerated in a public park or library and should not be tolerated in a stadium either. In Europe, the behavior of hooligans long kept families from attending matches and attendance suffered. Now attendance records are being shattered in England while the German Bundesliga trails only the NFL in terms of average attendance. Riding the stadiums of the riff-raff has made the game better, safer and more popular in much of Europe. Allowing the behavior we witnessed at Sunday’s game to continue will seriously harm any chance the sport has to flourish here. MLS rosters contain players from a record 76 countries this season, up four from last year. That makes it one of the world’s most diverse top-tier leagues in any sport, but it’s only the second-most-diverse league in North American because the 43 teams in the second-division USL Championship boasts players from 82 nations. According to the league, 79 USL Championship players have represented their senior national teams, including more than 20 this past March in CONCACAF 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying. Italy’s Serie A is the most diverse of Europe’s “Big 5” leagues, with 65 countries represented on its rosters. However, Serie A has just 20 teams, seven fewer than MLS and 23 fewer than the USL Championship. Last season, when MLS had 26 teams, 48.9% of the league’s 754 players came from the U.S. and Canada. An MLS official said the percentage of domestic players this season is expected to be about the same given the addition of an expansion club in Austin. MLS will announce Wednesday morning that it’s annual all-star game will be played Aug. 25 at Banc of California Stadium and feature a team of MLS players facing Mexico’s Liga MX all-stars, a league source told the Los Angeles Times. The game, under the same format, was originally scheduled to be played in Los Angeles last July but was canceled by COVID-19. ... Speaking of which, if you think the coronavirus is gone, you might want to think again. The European Championships, delayed a year by COVID-19, is still being harassed by the virus on the eve of its delayed resumption with the Spanish team in isolation after Sergio Busquets tested positive. Spain is scheduled to face Sweden in its opener Monday; the month-long tournament kick offs with Turkey-Italy on Friday. ... According to a study of social media following and Google Trends searches conducted by English bookmaker William Hill, Manchester United and Liverpool are the two most popular Premier League teams in the U.S. The EPL is broadcast in 188 countries worldwide, making games available to more than 3.2 billion viewers “We needed everyone today, and it was a phenomenal performance. We’re so proud and we still have a long way to go, but we’re happy with this.” U.S. captain Christian Pulisic, who scored the winning goal in Sunday’s 3-2 Nations League win over Mexico Until next time... Stay tuned for future newsletters. Subscribe here, and I’ll come right to your inbox. Something else you’d like to see? Email me. Or follow me on Twitter: @kbaxter11.

Phoebe Dynevor on 'Bridgerton's' female gaze and women's sexuality

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-06-08/phoebe-dynevor-bridgerton-rege-jean-page

Last year was a wild ride for everyone, but Phoebe Dynevor’s unique highs may have been more extreme than most: The show she’d just finished shooting pre-lockdown — Regency England-era “Bridgerton,” in which she stars as ambivalent, highly eligible Daphne — became a phenomenon as fans parsed it endlessly on social media, and some even created a musical. Dynevor, 26, has been a pro performer since she was a teen (“The Village,” “Younger,” the upcoming feature “The Colour Room”) and comes from a showbiz family (Mom’s a vet of “Coronation Street,” Dad’s a screenwriter), but she says this level of fame takes some getting used to. She spoke with The Envelope via Zoom to discuss the start of Season 2, the importance of corsets to acting, and that scene that had so many viewers up in virtual arms. “Bridgerton’s” first season shot in something of a vacuum and then it took off. How is shooting Season 2 different? Seeing everyone on set was amazing and overwhelming; we cried and hugged. We hadn’t been all together since before the pandemic, because we finished filming and then a week later the pandemic blew up. It was such a quick transition from shooting to pandemic to then it being a huge hit. Did you ever wonder why audiences embraced it so thoroughly? I watched it before it came out and I did think, “Wow, this has something I haven’t seen before. A lot of people could enjoy this. My grandparents, my friends, my little sister would love it.” But you never know what it’s going to mean to the world, because as soon as you do a piece of art and let it out, people claim it and it becomes something else. The show was intentionally diverse in its casting and storytelling. As a white performer, do you feel you have any responsibility to seek out jobs that actively reflect diversity? I do, I really do. When Black Lives Matter happened last year — it was just after we finished filming — it brought up a lot of conversations and cemented those things for me, especially working with people like Adjoa [Andoh] and Golda [Rosheuvel] on the show, seeing how people like that had not been represented in these stories before. We all have to contribute in any way we can to telling stories that include everyone; that’s our jobs, to speak out and make sure we’re representing people. Because in the past we haven’t. Another aspect of what made “Bridgerton” fresh was the way in which it portrayed sex and romance through a generally female gaze. It was a really conscious decision for us to have Daphne lying in bed and seeing Simon, instead of it being a male gaze — it was her gaze and her sexuality. That thing where some people pretend women don’t have a sexual drive or whatever — we need to see it. Because we do. We have orgasms and we have all those feelings. Being able to portray that was new for me. Awards The Envelope Showrunners Roundtable gathers the creators of ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘Dickinson,’ ‘Hacks,’ ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘Genius: Aretha’ and ‘Small Axe’ to talk television today. July 2, 2021 That said, there was the one scene some found controversial, in which Daphne figures out what Simon’s (Regé-Jean Page) been doing to prevent having children and has sex with him despite his telling her “no.” Did you find that troublesome either during the shoot or after? I mean, I didn’t. At the end of the day, we’re telling a story, and in the book [by Julia Quinn] that’s what happened, so we played that. It’s brilliant that as artists we can spark that conversation and have people say, “Hold on, that wasn’t OK.” Just because I played a part in that, I don’t condone that behavior. I agree with people who were outraged by it in a way, but also — what a great conversation to spark, you know? You had experience with period dress before this show, but what’s it like to try to play a character while being bound in corsets or specific period outfits? I was lucky because I only had a half-corset, so it wasn’t bad. You do get used to them, but I was very relieved to take it off at the end of the day. Daphne had about 104 dresses in the end that were all completely handmade. To me, the costume does half the job for you, or even more than half of the job. You have to pull your shoulders back and then your chin comes up because of the way the straps pull you. The same for the men — they had a really high neck and couldn’t move their neck properly. You’ve been acting since you were a teenager in one form or other. But if the whole thing hadn’t worked out, what would you have wanted to make your career? Some sort of psychologist. I’m really interested in how people’s minds work — what makes them sad or happy. I’m intrigued by and care about people. But I get to do that with acting. So I’m not missing anything!

Should we really worry about ticks on L.A. beaches, and what can we do to stay safe?

https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2021-06-08/ticks-on-california-beaches-how-to-prevent-lyme-disease

For years, hikers have worried about ticks and the Lyme disease they can transmit. Now a new study, based on field work in the San Francisco Bay Area, has some scientists thinking that there may be more disease-carrying ticks near beaches than we thought. This, just as summer begins. But should we worry in Southern California, and what can we do to stay safe? The first thing to remember is that disease-bearing ticks are not creeping beneath your beach blanket. “Ticks aren’t going to be in the sand, obviously,” said Dr. Raphael Stricker, medical director of Union Square Medical Associates in San Francisco. He also serves as medical director of lymedisease.org and is on the California Department of Public Health’s Lyme Disease Advisory Committee. There are plenty of protective moves to think about if you’re hiking to the sand, Stricker said, but “once you’re on the beach, you’re probably OK.” Daniel J. Salkeld, of Colorado State University, wrote April 23 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology of finding “a surprising diversity of tick-borne pathogens” in coastal chaparral areas of Marin and Sonoma counties. California Lyme disease-carrying ticks usually found in woodlands and fields are spreading along California’s beaches, carried by an unknown host. June 6, 2021 But that doesn’t mean anything has changed in Southern California. “We haven’t heard anything about the tick population increasing on our beaches. From what we’ve read about the study about ticks in Northern California, it sounds like the ticks were found in the brush and vegetation that beachgoers walk through to get to the sand, but not on the sand itself,” said Nicole Mooradian, spokeswoman for L.A. County’s Department of Beaches and Harbors. “Our beaches are mostly sand, with little vegetation for visitors to walk through.” At the Orange County Mosquito and Vector Control District, communications director Lora Young said that since 1989, the agency has tested more than 18,000 ticks for the bacteria that causes Lyme disease and hasn’t had a positive test since 1991. So far this year, Young said, the agency has tested 1,381 ticks, all with negative results for the disease. Ticks live by sucking blood from humans and other animals, including lizards, rodents, deer, dogs and horses. They often wait on leaves or grass blades, then transfer to humans and animals as they pass by. Salkeld and his coauthors noted in the study that “outdoor recreation in Southern California has lower risk for tick-borne disease exposure than outdoor recreation in Northern California.” Their tick-gathering never ventured south of Monterey County. But those who hike to the beach, passing through woodlands, grass or coastal chaparral, could encounter ticks, including the Western black-legged tick, which can spread Lyme disease. What preventive measures can you take? County and state public health websites include these and other tips: Lyme disease was first diagnosed in the 1970s in Lyme, Conn., according to the website of the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management Program. From 2005 through 2014, California authorities reported 57 to 97 cases per year statewide. In Los Angeles County, about 20 to 30 suspected cases are reported a year, according to the county’s Department of Public Health. Its website notes that fewer than 10 cases per year have been confirmed, most of those involving people who contracted Lyme disease outside the county. But many Lyme disease sources note that the affliction, often difficult to diagnose, may be under-reported or misclassified. Symptoms over time can include rashes, headaches, arthritis, facial palsy and nerve pain. “The risk of Lyme disease is really hard to define these days, because we’ve found it in every state and all sorts of environments,” Stricker said. The L.A. County West Vector and Vector-Borne Disease Control District said the Western black-legged tick is one of most abundant among the nine varieties found in California, and the one most closely linked to Lyme disease. The ticks can be as small as a poppy seed. The idea of ticks living near the beach “isn’t really anything new,” Stricker said. “Ticks like that kind of brush that’s close to the ocean just because there’s a lot of humidity.” In this region, the youngest ticks (nymphs) often come out in January and February, rather than May or June in the rest of the country, he said. Similarly, this region’s peak tick season often ends before mid-summer because “when it gets really hot [and dry], then it’s harder for them to get around.”

Dodgers Dugout: Right now, Dodgers are third in a three-way race

https://www.latimes.com/sports/newsletter/2021-06-08/dodgers-giants-padres-dodgers-dugout

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell and what did I miss while I was gone? OK, really, I wasn’t on the moon, so I was able to keep track of what the Dodgers were doing and technically, I am still on vacation, but I wanted to take a time out from that to take a quick look at the team. It is becoming apparent that the pre-season prognostications by most that the Dodgers would open a 20-game lead in April and then slowly pull away is not going to happen. Are you a true-blue fan? Get our Dodgers Dugout newsletter for insights, news and much more. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. And it looks as if the Giants are not going anywhere either, a quick check of the NL West standings reveals: San Francisco, 37-22, —San Diego, 37-25, 1.5 GBDodgers, 34-25, 3 GB In fact, let’s compare the three teams in a few other areas: Enjoying this newsletter? Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Become a Los Angeles Times subscriber. HomeGiants, 18-9Dodgers, 19-10Padres, 21-12 RoadGiants, 19-13Padres, 16-13Dodgers, 15-15 Run DifferentialDodgers, +83Padres, +75Giants, +70 DayGiants, 17-6Padres, 11-10Dodgers, 8-10 NightDodgers, 26-15Padres, 26-15Giants, 20-16 One-runGiants, 10-9Padres, 8-8Dodgers, 7-13 Extra inningsPadres, 5-3Giants, 2-4Dodgers, 1-6 Runs per gameDodgers, 5.31Giants, 4.81Padres, 4.60 Batting AverageDodgers, .238Padres, .236Giants, .235 OB%Dodgers, .337Giants, .322Padres, .321 SLG%Giants, .420Dodgers, .404Padres, .377 ERAPadres, 2.89Dodgers, 3.26Giants, 3.30 FIP (click here for an explanation)Dodgers, 3.58Padres, 3.66Giants, 3.73 Starters’ ERAGiants, 3.06Dodgers, 3.07Padres, 3.23 Bullpen ERAPadres, 2.51Giants, 3.70Dodgers, 3.72 Blown SavesDodgers, 15Giants, 13Padres, 10 Inherited runners who scored %League average: 35.7%Dodgers, 25.7%Padres, 26%Giants, 42.3% OK, I realize that is a lot to take in, but a couple of numbers jump out at me: The Dodgers’ record in one-run games is atrocious. That can be a sign of a number of things: Bad luck, poor bullpen, weak defense, lack of clutch hitting. All things the Dodgers have had at times this season. Also, the Dodgers do really horrible in extra innings, again a sign of bullpen depth causing issues. On the other hand, the Dodgers do better than the Padres and Giants in quite a few categories. Combine everything and you get a three-way race for the division title, which will provide for some exciting baseball down the stretch. The thing to keep in mind about the Dodgers when you are ready to throw your hands in the air in frustration: They have the third-best record in the National League. They just happen to be in the same division with the teams with the best and second-best record. Are the Dodgers playing to their full potential? No. But to be playing this erratically and still have the third-best record is a positive sign, not a negative sign. Scott Alexander, LHP: Still rehabbing his shoulder at the spring training site in Arizona. Return in not imminent Garrett Cleavinger, LHP: Out with shoulder inflammation, he recently threw a bullpen session and will need a rehab assignment in the minors before he returns. Caleb Ferguson, LHP: Not expected to return this season after having Tommy John surgery last September. Tony Gonsolin, RHP: Rehab complete and is expected to start Wednesday against Pittsburgh. Brusdar Graterol. RHP: Completed his injury rehab assignment and was send to triple-A Oklahoma City to work on his command. Tommy Kahnle, RHP: Not expected to pitch this season after Tommy John surgery last August. Corey Knebel, RHP: Has a strained back muscle and won’t return until July at the earliest. Dustin May, RHP: He had Tommy John surgery and may not be back until 2023. Max Muncy, 1B: Should return from his sprained ankle today against Pittsburgh. Edwin Rios, INF: Out for the season after shoulder surgery. Corey Seager, SS: On the current road trip with the Dodgers. Taking grounders at short (but not throwing) and swinging the bat one-handed. Could return at the end of the month. One thing is very apparent about Albert Pujols: He has smiled more with the Dodgers since they got him than he did in the last three seasons with the Angels. He seems so happy to be with the team. With the Dodgers, he is hitting .229/.288/.521 with two doubles, four homers and 12 RBIs, good for an OPS+ of 122. Something to keep an eye on going forward: Last week, MLB announces they are going to seriously crack down on pitchers who use foreign substances to help them grip the ball. The theory being that the substances help the pitchers spin the ball faster, making it move more and/or travel faster, making it more difficult for the hitter. Sunday, Trevor Bauer pitches and his spin rate is his lowest of the season. He has his worst outing of the season. Coincidence? Here was what Bauer said after the game: “Hot, humid day in Atlanta. I just want to compete on a fair playing field. I’ll say it again. That’s been the whole point this entire time. Let everyone compete on a fair playing field. So if you’re going to enforce it then enforce it. And if you’re not then stop sweeping it under the rug, which is what they’ve done for four years now. “So, I’d just like to see everyone be able to compete on a fair playing field so we can see who the best players are and who the best team is, according to the given rules and the given enforcement of the rules.” Jorge Castillo has a great look at the whole spin rate story here. As does Dylan Hernández here. The fifth episode of our “Fernandomania @ 40” docuseries went live last week. When Fernando broke camp in 1981, he was penciled in as the Dodgers’ No. 3 starter. But when Opening Day pitcher Jerry Reuss came down with a calf strain, manager Tommy Lasorda tapped the unheralded 20-year-old rookie to replace him. Valenzuela proceeded to throw a four-hit shutout over the Houston Astros. It was not only the first win of an amazing 8-0 start for the pitcher - it was ground zero for Fernandomania. You can watch the latest episode here. If you haven’t already, I’d still love for you to send me your first Dodgers memory, and it might run in an upcoming Dodgers Dugout. Include your name and where you live. And don’t send only a sentence. Tell why that memory sticks out in your mind. You can email me your memory at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. Thanks. Michael Canup: I was 7 the year the Dodgers came to Los Angeles. That first year my Dad took me to see them at the Coliseum several times. I have vague memories of seeing Wally Moon hit a Moon Shot, watching batting practice and just the pure joy of being at a baseball game. My absolutely clearest memory is seeing this one player run by, fairly close, the number 4 on his back, and asking my dad who that was. “Why that’s Duke Snider!”, my Dad said. The Duke at that moment became my favorite Dodger. Paul Hunt of Sierra Madre: Sometime during 1962 I started to become a baseball fan by listening to Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett broadcast the Dodgers. That was the year that Maury Wills stole 104 bases, Tommy Davis led the league in batting average, and Don Drysdale won the Cy Young Award. But it wasn’t enough and the Dodgers and Giants tied for the National League pennant. They had a three-game playoff and the teachers had the radio on at my school. The Dodgers lost the third game of the playoff and I was heartbroken. I hadn’t learned that your favorite team doesn’t always win. Betty True of Clovis, Calif: It must be about 80 or 81 years ago when I was a regular at the Saturday matinees in a very small town in southern Kansas. I’m not sure if I heard them called Bums in a movie or possibly a newsreel but at the tender age of 9 or 10, I felt sorry for them and I have been on their side ever since! Ed Arvizo: In 1962, the Dodgers did a promotion with Farmer John (can still smell and taste the Dodger Dog as I am writing this) and some of the players would go and visit cities and hand out pictures and sign autographs. Not sure if they came to Buena Park where I lived or another nearby city but my Dad took me and I still have the signed pictures of Larry Burright and Ron Fairly. It was something as an 8-year-old boy I will never forget. The next year my dad said “Guess where you are going tomorrow? The World Series!” A friend had an extra ticket and they raffled it off at the bar and my Dad won. Game 4, Sandy Koufax vs. Whitey Ford. In the seventh inning we were getting a Dodger dog below the pavilion in left field as the Yankees batted. We heard this tremendous roar and the other kid from the family I was with comes running down the stairs shouting “Mickey Mantle just hit a home run!” Missed seeing that home run but remember Frank Howard’s blast half way up the stadium down the left-field line. Still have the program and the great Dodger memories my Dad helped create for me. Today: Dodgers (Walker Buehler, 4-0, 2.82 ERA) at Pittsburgh (JT Brubaker, 4-4, 3.74 ERA), 4 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570 Wednesday: Dodgers (Tony Gonsolin) at Pittsburgh (*Tyler Anderson, 3-5, 4.67 ERA), 4 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570 Thursday: Dodgers (*Julio Urías, 8-2, 3.48 ERA) at Pittsburgh (Mitch Keller, 3-6, 6.65 ERA), 9:30 a.m., YouTube, AM 570 *left-hander Vin Scully appears on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Watch it here. Until next time... Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

To pandemic or not? How TV writers choose whether to include the harsh reality

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-06-08/pandemic-on-tv-how-much-too-much

In spring 2020, those in the “black-ish” writers’ room faced a conundrum: To pandemic or not to pandemic? With the world heading toward lockdown and a next season that had to be written, would the Johnson family still feel the effects of what might be a passing phase, a brief blip that was old news by the time their shows began airing in the fall? But quickly the choice — a decision made in writers’ rooms across Hollywood — became clear: They had to work the ever-changing real world into the “black-ish” universe. It was something they’d done before, but not to this extent. So with Courtney Lilly at the showrunning helm, they wrote a show that would air in September — but take place back at the start of the lockdown. “We knew we would have to comment and address it in some way,” says Lilly. “We assumed that by the time we got to September or October we’d be in a different place — but then things started going viral again in December, and we were surprised in a negative way. We were disappointed that something we’d done months ago would still be relevant — was actually too relevant.” It was an issue, if not the big issue, that writers across Hollywood had to face: how to plan a season amid an evolving crisis. Would their universe feature COVID-19, see it in the rearview mirror or pretend it never even happened? And if featured, what would that world even look like? It’s not as though any of them had a crystal ball. “You have to have a little bit of ESP,” says “Law & Order: Organized Crime” showrunner Ilene Chaiken, whose show tackled it by examining how the mob and COVID intersected. “You have to calibrate how much is too much. Even if we weren’t telling a story that revolved around COVID, [the virus] would still exist on the show. We’re grounded in the real world, the world of current events.” “A lot of crystal ball decisions were going on,” agrees Dave Caplan, executive producer on “The Conners.” On their show, one character contracted COVID, but the story lines were just as likely to revolve around economic issues and online learning. “We realized our obligation was to be realistic about what’s going on in the country, and it would feel false to not include what was going on in their lives on the show.” Television Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson discuss the Season 3 premiere of “The Conners,” ABC’s first comedy to go back into production during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oct. 21, 2020 Meanwhile, “Superstore” executive producers Gabe Miller and Jonathan Green felt they’d be cheating viewers to ignore what it was like to be considered essential (if nonmedical) workers during such an upheaval. “One benefit is that we’re set in a store and not a hospital, so we could explore what COVID meant to these people’s work lives without seeing the worst side of the virus,” says Miller. “We could also present themes like how corporate presents itself as caring about workers and celebrates people like our characters as heroes — but doesn’t protect them.” But for shows that were set in medical facilities, discussing the pandemic was an imperative. On “Chicago Med,” characters contracted the virus, a separate “COVID ICU” was set up, and regular testing became a part of every show. But it still wasn’t COVID 24/7. “Just because we had this horrible new disease, it didn’t mean people wouldn’t get heart attacks or cancer,” says Andy Schneider, co-showrunner with Diane Frolov. On “Grey’s Anatomy,” showrunner Krista Vernoff did briefly consider whether “depicting the pandemic in the middle of the pandemic would be too much pandemic” but ultimately dived in with the appropriate medical elements — and then branched out to find ways to show her characters unmasked, like in a character’s backyard, which had never been seen before. Still, she notes, even when immersed in a tragedy, TV can provide a cathartic outlet. “The news and social media provides a constant barrage of pain that can leave us numb and depressed,” she says. “What we did was provide an opportunity to focus on one story, on one character, one victory or one loss to give you time and permission to feel it.” “Part of me wants the escape from my entertainment, for it to take me someplace else,” says “In Treatment” co-showrunner (with Jennifer Schuur) Joshua Allen. The series returned to HBO after a 10-year hiatus in large part to focus on the importance of therapy during the stressful days of a situation like COVID. “But part of me wants to see the experience of what I’m going through reflected. When it’s coming into your room and you’re consuming a story, it’s an intimate way of absorbing perspective and messages.” Having now addressed COVID in various ways, though, many showrunners suggest they’ll be backing away from it, or treating it as less of an urgent plotline, in seasons to come. Vernoff’s new show “Rebel,” for example, will take place in a post-COVID world, she says. And her goal at “Grey’s” is to “distance ourselves so it’s a background element.” And then there’s “Mythic Quest,” which devoted two heartfelt episodes to the pandemic — one using remote cameras, the other in a postpandemic world where characters returned to the offices in triumph. “We wanted to have an optimistic future,” says creator-star Rob McElhenney. “We literally do not say COVID the entire [second] season. We felt if we were going to project into a future where we put it all behind us, we’d do this [return-to-work] episode and close the door on the issue.”

Mandy Moore braces for a tough, and final, Season 6 of 'This Is Us'

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-06-08/mandy-moore-braces-for-a-tough-and-final-season-6-of-this-is-us

Mandy Moore describes herself as “lucky” many times during a recent call from her Pasadena home, and she’s not just tossing the word around lightly. Five years ago, the singer-actress, newly divorced, hadn’t made a new record in half a decade. Aside from the animated feature “Tangled,” her movies had yet to surpass the commercial success of 2002 teen romance “A Walk to Remember.” And on the network TV front, Moore was beginning to wonder if she should call it quits. “I’d been doing pilot season four years in a row,” she recalls. “Some came close to getting picked up but it never happened, so I was starting to question if I should be in this acting game anymore at all. Did I have my moment in the sun and maybe I should go back to school? Maybe just turn back to music full-time? I was very lost.” Then came “This Is Us.” “I read the pilot script and my jaw was on the ground,” she says. “It was unlike anything I’d read before.” Moore auditioned for the role of Rebecca Pearson, mother of three, and six weeks later got a call back to read with Milo Ventimiglia as her husband, Jack. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to have chemistry with Milo,” she says with a laugh. “I remember at the audition he asked me if it was OK if he nuzzled my neck. He’s such a gentleman.” The pairing of Moore with Ventimiglia galvanized viewers of “This Is Us” even as her personal life found fresh footing with a 2018 marriage to musician Taylor Goldsmith, leader of the band Dawes. In February, Moore gave birth to her first child, Gus, having worked on the show’s fifth season under COVID-19 protocols until she was 9½ months pregnant. She says, “I felt pretty strong and healthy, so I was like, ‘Let me in, coach. I want to keep going!’” Moore, who concealed her pregnancy on the series with loose clothing, strategically placed props and the occasional digital removal of her baby bump, had good reason to persevere. “I’ve never been part of a project before that resonated so deeply with people,” she says. The show, created by Dan Fogelman, boasts a fervid fan base often moved to tears by the Pearson family’s journey, portrayed in nonlinear time jumps across five decades of weddings, deaths, births, break-ups and reconciliations. “Memory is the glue in the way we parse out our stories,” says Moore, who earned a 2019 Emmy nomination for her performance as Rebecca. “We ask our audience to look at their own lives in the same way, out of order, sort of inviting people to think back to their childhood or romanticize what they think their future is going to be. I know it’s just a television show but I feel a certain responsibility, we all do, because it’s like we’re holding up a mirror to the audience, perhaps unlocking conversations about their own lives and maybe forcing them to ask tough questions about choices they’ve made.” Moore, 37, used her own experience to infuse Rebecca with a depth that might have been lacking earlier in her career. “Until the last couple of years,” she muses, “I don’t think I would have had a real idea of who I was, or what I deserved, or what family really means to me, or who I wanted to be as a mother and as a partner. I wouldn’t have been able to bring a fully realized vision of that stuff to the show. I think there’s a lot of shared grief between myself and the character, so I’ve been lucky to find catharsis through my job.” In Season 5, Moore portrayed Rebecca mainly as a 68-year-old matriarch dealing with her grown-up “triplets” (Sterling K. Brown, Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz) and their significant others. She’d spend 3½ hours in the makeup chair before donning her character’s glasses and bob wig. “I play present-day Rebecca a little slouchy,” Moore says. “There’s an exhaustion at that point in life from having tumultuous relationships with her children, from having lost a child, from having lost a spouse, from having these deep dark family secrets that no one knows about.” She laughs. “I could go on and on.” In a cruel twist for a show fueled from the start by the binding power of memory, Rebecca in Season 5 learns she has Alzheimer’s. “Rebecca knows this disease will eventually rob her of everything so she’s pushing herself to spend time with her family and loved ones,” Moore says. “I feel like her light had sort of dulled after Rebecca lost Jack. Ironically, this diagnosis forces her to live life with joie de vivre.” Before “This Is Us” resumes filming in August, Moore plans to spend the summer hanging out with her family, working on new music and bracing for the show’s sixth and final season. “I’m getting ready for what Dan has told me is going to be a really challenging year,” Moore says. “I’m going to have to save all my tears, calibrate all my adrenals, get myself into a stable place before all of that gets wrecked and ruined!”

Column: High cost of hearing aids shows (yet again) the insanity of medical pricing

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-08/column-healthcare-medical-devices-hearing-aids

Larry Hicks was diagnosed with significant hearing loss about six months ago. He blames it, with a bit of embarrassment, on blasting music at crazy-high levels in the car. The Burbank resident is now shopping for hearing aids and is stunned by the cost, which can run as much as $6,000 for a pair. Medicare and most private plans don’t cover hearing aids. “It feels like price gouging,” Hicks, 51, told me. “They’re taking advantage of the disabled and the elderly.” It’s hard to disagree. Medical devices are a prime example of a relative handful of manufacturers exploiting a captive market with excessively high list prices. Whether we’re talking hearing aids, insulin pumps, pacemakers or other life-altering technologies, patients almost always are forced to pay far more than the cost of developing and making the devices. Business A SoCal woman with Alzheimer’s was convinced by a telemarketer to switch health insurers. Untangling that became a huge challenge for her family. May 4, 2021 “The medical device industry is largely an oligopoly, with some of the companies holding effectively a monopoly position,” said Roberta N. Clarke, an adjunct professor of social policy and management at Brandeis University, specializing in healthcare marketing. Limited competition, she told me, “allows the medical device companies to charge higher prices because of a lower threat of a competitor entering the market at a lower price.” “This effect is exacerbated by the tight relationships that the medical device companies form with physicians,” Clarke observed. There’s so much wrong with the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system, it’s hard to know where to start fixing it. Maybe that’s one reason lawmakers are so reluctant to try. I wrote the other day about starting with price transparency. I made the case for hospitals and doctors emulating Amazon’s straightforward presentation of costs prior to customers making a purchase. Business Amazon makes online shopping easy and convenient, and keeps people coming back for more. The healthcare industry could learn a thing or two. May 28, 2021 High-priced medical devices represent another area ripe for reform — another step toward creating a healthcare system that doesn’t relentlessly put profits ahead of patients. We have the world’s largest market for medical devices, which should come as no surprise in light of America’s population, wealth and technological prowess. A recent report from Grand View Research estimates that about $177 billion worth of medical devices were sold in this country last year. Sales this year are projected to reach $186.5 billion. By 2028, the report forecasts, U.S. sales of medical devices will reach $262.4 billion — a roughly 48% increase from last year’s total. “The rising prevalence of chronic diseases and the increasing geriatric population in the country are the key market drivers,” Grand View’s researchers concluded. Defenders of the healthcare status quo will be quick to play the innovation card. They’ll argue that the high cost of medical devices encourages businesses to continue seeking technological advances, which in turn can help save lives. There’s something to this. Look at the billions invested in developing COVID-19 vaccines in record time. No drug company or research lab got into that race without an expectation of a massive payday down the road. But, as with all questions of healthcare costs, the key issue is how much profit is enough. Business A San Diego hospital’s sky-high bill for outpatient treatment undercuts conservatives’ argument that “socialized medicine” is bad for the country. Jan. 28, 2021 No one begrudges device makers or drug companies earning a reasonable profit or recouping multimillion-dollar R&D expenses. That’s only fair. The problem with the status quo is that prices never seem to go down. Even after R&D and marketing costs have been amortized many times over, even after economies of scale have been realized, list prices keep rising. All other cutting-edge consumer goods — TVs, laptops, cellphones — get cheaper over time, reflecting how competitive their markets are. Most medical devices and prescription drugs just get more expensive as time passes. In large part, this is because these markets have costly barriers to entry (R&D, patents, etc.). The products also require strict regulatory approval. Less competition almost always means higher prices. But let’s call this what it is: taking advantage of sick people. Archives It’s a question I get asked frequently, most recently by a colleague who was shocked to find that his new pair of prescription eyeglasses cost about $800. Jan. 22, 2019 “Taking advantage of sick people is wrong,” acknowledged Matthew Grennan, an assistant professor of healthcare management at the University of Pennsylvania. “But I’m not sure where the line is.” By that, he means it can be hard from an economic perspective to flat-out reject sky-high prices for medical advances. “Medical devices are this weird class of goods where the manufacturing cost is relatively low but the value they create is high,” Grennan told me. The creation of “value” is a big deal in the healthcare industry. The argument is basically that treating an illness or managing a chronic disease brings so much value to society, you can charge as much as you want. When the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences introduced its hepatitis C drug Harvoni in 2014 with a list price of more than $1,000 a pill, it defended that mercenary move by saying, “The price of Harvoni reflects the value of the medicine.” Not how much it cost to develop. Not how much it costs to make. The “value” to patients and society. And what value do you place on human lives? Grennan said economists appreciate that argument. “Value” is a legitimate economic proposition and it has worth. As a person forced to pay thousands of dollars annually managing a chronic disease, I say “value” is just an excuse for businesses to write themselves blank checks. At some point, a drug’s or device’s value to society needs to be accepted as the new normal, and it has to be priced accordingly. Let’s get back to hearing aids, which, as noted above, routinely cost thousands of dollars — a cost borne directly by the majority of people with hearing problems because most insurers don’t cover them. As best as I can tell, nearly all of the key components for hearing aids come from Asia, and many are manufactured there as well. It’s hard to know how much it costs to make a hearing aid. There are references in the New York Times and elsewhere to a manufacturing price as low as $100. Grennan called this a realistic estimate. A fancier hearing aid may cost $200 or $300 to produce, he said. A 2015 report by former President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology placed the typical list price of a single hearing aid at $2,400 — a 1,100% markup if the device cost $200 to produce. The report noted that “innovation has not reduced cost,” and that nearly half of all people ages 60 and older have hearing loss. Captive market. Steadily rising prices. Huge markups. That’s not value. It’s immoral.

Hugh Grant's desire to kill and other insights from 6 drama actors

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2021-06-08/envelope-drama-roundtable-hugh-grant-ethan-hawke-emma-corrin-anthony-mackie-jurnee-smollett-elisabeth-moss

“The Crown” doesn’t always paint a rosy picture of the royals. So what do Brits think of it? “Well, to some of us, it’s treason,” said Hugh Grant, dryly, as the other five actors gathered remotely for The Envelope’s annual Drama Roundtable conversation laughed. One of those was Emma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana in the Netflix show’s fourth season. “I adore ‘The Crown,’” Grant said to her during the May 3 chat. “I did think this last one was probably the most controversial. I have a question for you.” “OK,” she said, with a touch of hesitation. “I genuinely adored it,” “The Undoing” actor reassured her. “I hope you can tell from my tone. And you were sensational.” “Thank you,” she said graciously, waiting for that other shoe to drop. Awards The Comedy Roundtable calls on Wanda Sykes, Jane Krakowski, Kenan Thompson, Anna Konkle, Robin Thede, and newcomer to funny Michiel Huisman to cheer us up. June 18, 2021 “And I know [showrunner] Peter Morgan; I used to play golf with him — a very bad-tempered golfer,” Grant continued. “But I thought, when you go to Balmoral and then [the royal family is] horrible to you, that was the first time ever in the series I thought, ‘I don’t think they would have been that horrible, they wouldn’t have been that rude.’” “You mean when I walk in and am standing in a circle [of family members]?” “Yeah, particularly that scene. And then they won’t help you with ‘Who do you bow to first.’ And then Princess Margaret’s horrible to you and all that. Is that all accurate? I felt they just would have been too English to be that nasty.” “Honestly, I’m not sure. I know that there are certain things that the research team know happened. And I think Peter elaborates on it for the purposes of the story,” Corrin explained. “I think that what he wants to get out of that scene was that Diana walked in expecting a family, and what she got was The Firm.” Grant said, “But I thought all the way through the series that [Morgan] basically liked them. And then suddenly I thought, ‘Oh, Christ, he hates these people.’ ” “If I may say, I’ve had a lot of British people be absolutely nasty and horrible to me, Hugh, so I believe it,” chimed in Ethan Hawke, who stars as abolitionist John Brown in Showtime’s “The Good Lord Bird.” “We do hate you,” said Grant, to laughter. Did we mention this was a drama panel? The group that also included Anthony Mackie (Disney+’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”), Elisabeth Moss (Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Jurnee Smollett (HBO’s “Lovecraft Country”) undeniably found some moments to have fun in the conversation that covered finding the keys to their characters, stories that couldn’t have been told a few years ago and how much Grant likes killing. Awards The Envelope Showrunners Roundtable gathers the creators of ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘Dickinson,’ ‘Hacks,’ ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘Genius: Aretha’ and ‘Small Axe’ to talk television today. July 2, 2021 These excerpts of their conversation have been edited for length and clarity. And there are spoilers ahead. Hugh, I heard an interview where you refused to call HBO’s “The Undoing” “television.” TV used to be considered the impoverished cousin to film, but does it still have that feeling for you? Hugh Grant: Only for me. Everyone else has moved on. So what lured you into “The Undoing?” Grant: Well, it seemed like a very classy project. I don’t get offered that many classy projects. It was Susanne Bier, very distinguished Danish director. It was David Kelley, who’s the king of television in America, apparently, and Nicole [Kidman], with all her Oscars. So I felt I couldn’t possibly say no, although I did try, because I hate working. Ethan, do you think it was easier to get “Good Lord Bird” made now than it would have been, say, 10 or 15 years ago? Ethan Hawke: I don’t know. Yes. I mean, to speak to the question that you asked Hugh, I feel like the landscape of what we do is changing. The industry is always changing how we tell stories. I felt very much like “The Good Lord Bird” was just a six-, seven-hour movie. When I was a kid, television just entertained you for as long as they could. The stories didn’t have a beginning, middle and an end. They didn’t have a theme, they didn’t have a thesis, they didn’t have metaphor. They were generally a smaller budget. Now, we had one of the hugest budgets I’ve had on “The Good Lord Bird.” And so that was exciting to me to work on a much bigger canvas and to have more time with the character but to not feel like I was pouring water in my beer. There’s a political atmosphere to our show. I think had Showtime foreseen how volatile this year would be, they might not have made the show. I never understand why people greenlight what they do and why they don’t. Elisabeth, I wonder if “Handmaid’s” is one of those shows that a few years ago would have been hard to get made? Elisabeth Moss: Oh, I think it was definitely helped by the era of streaming, because it can be a pretty tough show to watch. With the limitations of network television, obviously we wouldn’t have been able to make it. But I echo what Ethan said where I don’t quite understand, even as a producer, why things get greenlit and why some things don’t. I do think that our show in 2016 obviously came along at a time that people were really looking at certain things that were paralleled on our show. But also, that book is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book and has been resonant over the years. This streaming thirst for content seems to have knocked down some genre barriers. Horror and sci-fi, and even superhero fare, traditionally have been the province of white men as creators and characters, but your shows don’t follow that mold. Jurnee Smollett: I say all the time how I’m not the only one who feels like as a Black artist you can be a fan of horror but horror hasn’t always been a fan of us. There was a time in which I just told my agents, “Do not send me a horror film, because I know I’m just going to be the Black chick that dies on page 37.” With “Lovecraft Country,” it was so exciting for me to be a part of a counter-narrative to such a dominant narrative. Anthony, your Sam Wilson is a world-famous Avenger yet can’t get a bank loan. He gets racially profiled. There’s a subplot about Isaiah Bradley, the Black super-soldier, that has very strong resonances from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Anthony Mackie: [Marvel exec] Kevin Feige called me and told me that they were going to introduce Isaiah Bradley and the arc of the character and the story and what they were going to do with it. I was blown away that Marvel, to speak frankly, would have the balls to do that. The relationship between Black men and America is one of abuse, betrayal, disheartened love and no appreciation. It’s [Sam] having to come to grips with the abusive relationship that he has with the country that he lives in and then having to stand up and fight for that country. That was something that as a Black man with my four Black sons, with my Black dad and two Black brothers, we’ve always had that conversation. Emma, as Princess Diana, there must have been a great deal of responsibility there because of what people feel about her, right? Emma Corrin: There was this huge tidal wave of responsibility and also just so much out there. I mean, you can type the name into Google, and there are still news articles. People just have this endless fascination but also so much feeling towards her. So I struggled to get beyond that and figure out how I was going to actually make this person, who felt so unapproachable in scale, someone who I could actually inhabit in some way. I think that’s something that people weirdly love about “The Crown”; it turns these people who feel very removed from our everyday life into human people with human stories. And at the end of the day, what [costar Josh O’Connor, who plays Prince Charles] and I were doing was exploring the nuances and complexities in two people’s marriage. Ethan, you have a very different historical-figure challenge in playing John Brown. He’s somebody I think most Americans have heard of but don’t know that much about. Hawke: I wasn’t playing John Brown as he was. I was playing John Brown as imagined by [author] James McBride. And our narrator’s this young kid, Henry Shackleford, and he’s kind of like Huck Finn or something; he’s an unreliable narrator. He’s telling you the John Brown he knows. I remember when I was a kid, everybody that I met who was extremely religious or extremely political, I always felt like they were yelling at me. I just remember my grandfather saying to me, “What do you think about Jimmy Carter?!!” I was afraid of them. So I had this idea that maybe [Henry, aka] Onion would perceive me as yelling at him all the time. I just kind of ran with that idea and tried to base it off something personal. Hugh, your character Jonathan’s state of mind, or who he really is, is one of the key pillars of “The Undoing.” Did you seek out a professional opinion of what he is? Is he a psychopath, is he a narcissist? Grant: I did Google all that stuff, like the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath and a narcissistic sociopath. I think it was quite useful, but it’s all a bit dry. And in the end, a bit like Ethan basing his character on his grandfather, I find it more useful to find real people that one knows and use them as models rather than some academic model. So I was lucky to have Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, narcissistic sociopaths, on my TV screen. Jurnee, I heard you say you thought of your grandmother as the basis for Leti. Smollett: Yeah, my grandmother, she was nicknamed “Showtime,” because she could show you a good time. [She was] the first Black Miss Galveston, Texas; a beauty queen, an extraordinarily intelligent woman, and a single mom who raised four Black children in the 1950s. My mom would talk about the dignity that my grandmother had. This real indomitable spirit. She was a beauty queen, but she cleaned the homes of white folks. And every single day she would go to work with her hair done and her lipstick on and her dress pressed and clean their toilets. And it didn’t matter how much they disrespected her or underpaid her or tried to rob her of her dignity. She wouldn’t give them that power over her. I thought about that so much in my approach to Leti. I thought a lot about my grandmother and women in the 1950s, who had to fight the patriarchy and white supremacy at the same time. Emma, when I saw the scene of you dancing alone as Princess Diana, I thought, “This is like a window into who this person really is.” Is there a moment that reveals who you think Diana is? Corrin: It was that episode “Fairytale.” You experience Diana’s intense isolation. That dancing scene was such a joy to do. I remember Ben Caron, the director, saying, “Oh, we’ve got a choreographer who will choreograph something for the dance scene tomorrow where you lose yourself.” And I remember saying — I mean I’m not a dancer at all, in fact, like, notoriously bad — but I remember that I just had this weird gut instinct, and I was like, “Do you mind if we don’t choreograph it? I’d really just like to feel it. And is it OK also if I pick the music?” So I came in the next day, and everyone was quite nervous about what I was about to do. And I danced to Cher, “Do You Believe?” They set up one camera, and I just danced for three minutes. And it was euphoric, and it was incredible. I just loved it. And I think for me that got to the crux of Diana, the child within her who just needed to be seen and to be held. I think that’s really all she wanted the entire time. And it got her spirit of this energy she had that was infectious. And I think people felt that, this spirit that you couldn’t dampen. Hugh, about what you’ve called Innocent Jonathan/Guilty Jonathan: Do you feel there were moments in the show that revealed him? Grant: I think he would have a tough time answering your question, because 99.9% of the series is Innocent Jonathan — who, of course, is a lie. But it’s a lie that he absolutely believed, in the way that real sociopaths, they do believe their own lies. For him, it’s impossible that he could have committed this appalling act. But the truth of the matter is, the real Jonathan, the Guilty Jonathan, is only exposed once in a scene that actually was never in the script. It was put in by me having a little tantrum. And Susanne Bier agreeing with me, because I felt it wasn’t really clear in the scripted version of Episode 6 who really had done it. And I thought, “Is this just them leaving the door open for a subsequent series?” And I’d really signed up on the basis of being a killer. I wanted to kill. So I was cross. So then Susanne said, “So we’ll shoot the murder, and then there won’t be any debate about it.” So in that scene, the beast Jonathan has sex with that poor girl, that poor actress — Christ, quarter of my age, awful for her — and then I smash her against the wall, and then I kill her. Obviously, that’s the only real Jonathan. Ethan, can you tell me about a key moment for John Brown? Hawke: One of the fascinating things about John Brown is that he was really proud of his boys for dying. I was reading these letters and people would say, “How could you do that? You’re crazy. You got your sons killed,” and he said, “Someday, America is going to be ashamed of slavery, and they’ll never be ashamed of my sons.” He has a line where he says — it’s in the novel, and it’s one of my reasons to make the show — “There’s an eternity ahead of us, and there’s an eternity behind, and this one little speck in the middle, that’s our life,” and he’s just charged to live that speck to the fullest. Anthony, when I think about kids seeing that Captain America is Black, I think that’s profound. Mackie: The reactions have been amazing. They’ve been huge, but it’s been the same reactions when little girls watch “Wonder Woman” or when you’re watching “Black Panther” and there’s an army of Black women. The idea of representation, the idea of recontextualizing what you think the norm is, is always important. Every time the Doras [the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther’s all-female, elite bodyguards] come on, my boys are like, “Those chicks are bad.” And my 11-year-old goes, “Dad, those ladies are badass,” and I’m like, “Hell, yeah, they are.” So, the idea of that, them growing up with that, it changes everything. But the response has been great. We think it’s an awful world that we live in and people are sh— but don’t let the 1% mess it up for the 99%. I haven’t had any negative feedback or response. Just a lot of people picking up my tab at restaurants. Elisabeth, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” of course, spawned red-cloaked protesters. Have there been responses that mattered to you? Moss: We make this show for people who don’t have a voice and for people who feel like they can’t speak up about what’s happening to them, whether that’s on a small scale or a large scale, whether it’s about race or gender, sexual identity. That’s who that speech [June’s testimony in Episode 8] is for: It’s for those people who don’t have the chance to stand up and speak out against people that are oppressing them. So, yeah, any time that costume is used to speak for women’s rights, human rights, that is incredibly meaningful. That’s largely due to the book, what Margaret Atwood wrote. You make something to entertain people, to tell a story. But when something can go a step further, like in Anthony’s case, it means something to you.

Wide Shot: Inside Warner Bros.'s risky streaming movie strategy

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2021-06-08/warner-bros-streaming-release-strategy-the-wide-shot

Humphrey Bogart’s final line in the 1941 Warner Bros. noir classic “The Maltese Falcon” — when he calls the titular statuette “the stuff that dreams are made of” — is drenched in irony. But when Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav debuted it as the slogan for the proposed combination of his company and WarnerMedia, it signified something different: optimism for the future and respect for the 98-year-old studio’s legacy of making such gems as “Casablanca” and “The Dark Knight.” It was a hopeful message for a studio that has been through an extraordinary amount of upheaval. Just weeks ago, the studio learned it would be merged with Discovery, home of HGTV, Food Network and Animal Planet, only three years after it was acquired by AT&T. Meg James and I last week wrote about the challenges Discovery faces, but for now, the mood sounds fairly positive. Not long after the surprise announcement of the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger, I spoke with Warner Bros. Pictures Group Chairman Toby Emmerich and Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Blackwood about their film strategy. Here’s the story. This was before the town hall where WarnerMedia Chief Jason Kilar interviewed Zaslav on the Warner Bros. studio lot, and there’s clearly still a lot we don’t know about Discovery’s intentions in film (a business it hasn’t really touched in its roughly 35 years of existence). Inside the business of entertainment The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. I tried to frame some of the context in my story on how Warner Bros.’s film division is looking to adapt to a world where streaming is growing but theatrical releases are still key for many movies’ profitability. The executives also addressed the sharp criticism of how the same-day release plan for its 2021 movies (on HBO Max and in theaters) was disclosed to creative partners. Here’s a key section, which clarifies Warner Bros.’s film release strategy for 2022 and the future, depending on what Discovery has in mind: [A]s the $43-billion Discovery merger ambles toward regulatory approval next year, Warner Bros.’s risky release strategy, internally dubbed “Project Popcorn,” appears to be working. Movies such as “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” have done better than expected at the box office and brought million of subscribers to HBO Max, according to executives. “I’m both happy and relieved, because it has ultimately played out almost exactly as we hoped it would,” said Carolyn Blackwood, chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Pictures Group. “We’ve got filmmakers and talent who are now happy, we’ve got exhibitors that are happy, we’ve got audiences that are happy, and our partners at HBO Max are thrilled.” Despite skepticism, Warner Bros. leaders had long insisted that same-day releases were a pandemic special — a 2021-only solution to the problem of COVID-19 shutting down cinemas. Although the future of Warner Bros. under Discovery remains unclear, the studio’s strategy for next year and beyond is coming into focus. After this year, the Burbank studio will go with a half-and-half approach to its schedule, executives said. Of the roughly 20 movies Warner Bros. makes annually in the coming years, 10 to 12 will be designated specifically for HBO Max. The other 10 to 12 will launch in theaters exclusively for at least 45 days before they’re available for home viewing. A couple of other quotes of note from my conversations that aren’t in the piece: How will HBO Max and Warner Bros.’s DC strategy dovetail? Emmerich: HBO Max presents a huge opportunity for DC. It allows us to make high-quality mid-budget superhero movies that reintroduce lesser-known DC titles, while also crossing over stand-out characters from our bigger films into original series. Connecting the DC cinematic universe with Max gives our fans more ways to explore the DC multiverse and more chances to enjoy more great stories with these beloved characters. One of the first examples of a stand-out character crossing over from film to Max is the “Peacemaker” series, which is a spin-off from James Gunn’s “Suicide Squad 2.” Why not do day-and-date releases just for the first half of the year rather than all of 2021? After all, we seem to be getting closer to the end of the pandemic. Blackwood: The decision was made to apply this strategy to all of the 2021 slate not only because we were unable to predict the continued impact of the pandemic, but also because of the importance and value in having and marketing a full film slate for HBO Max. We were trying, during a very difficult time, to be decisive and provide both much-needed clarity and some protection to all the different players and stakeholders involved, and ultimately I think we did that. Where do things stand with Christopher Nolan? Emmerich: Only Chris Nolan knows what his next movie’s going to be, but we do hope it will be at Warner Bros. — After 10 years of early mornings, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie still lives for “Today.” The coolheaded co-anchor survived a turbulent decade on NBC’s morning program, which is adapting to the new TV landscape, reports Stephen Battaglio. — More than 100 film producers recently ratified the constitution for a new union they hope will provide the kind of protections afforded by other unionized Hollywood workers. Will it succeed? asks Anousha Sakoui. — With “In the Heights,” Jon M. Chu disrupts the movie musical. Ashley Lee explains how the “Crazy Rich Asians” filmmaker did it. And there are GIFs! — After the pandemic ends, the streaming binge will continue, according to a survey of 1,000 consumers conducted by UTA’s consumer research division and first reported by Wendy Lee. That’s the 52-week range of AMC’s share price, which, to use a technical finance-y term, is totally cuckoo bananas. Imagine buying a bunch of AMC stock at the height of the pandemic on Jan. 1, and seeing your holdings increase by more than 2,400% as of last week. Maybe you are one of those people. If so, congratulations. Wall Street analysts, naturally, expect the shares to plunge eventually. A brief recap. About the time the Reddit retail trader army squeezed short-sellers and hedge funds by piling into struggling retailer GameStop, folks began doing much the same thing with equally struggling theater chain AMC. AMC’s leadership didn’t say much about it at the time, because this was very new and new things are scary, especially when they send your stock flying in all directions like a loose balloon. Anyway, AMC sold a lot of stock and greatly improved its cash reserves. Then things got weirder. On its most recent earnings call, AMC’s CEO Adam Aron started treating the individual stockholders like they were his bosses, which they kind of are now that AMC’s former Chinese owner Dalian Wanda Group has unloaded almost all of its stake in the country’s largest theater chain. Last week AMC raised $230 million by selling shares to hedge fund Mudrick Capital, which then sold the shares for a profit. AMC said it was now playing offense and kicking the tires on ArcLight locations, which is catnip for movie fans (we wrote about that here). The stock surged and AMC sold even more of it — 11.55 million shares, raising $587.4 million — on the open market. Why exactly is everyone buying AMC, which teetered on the edge of bankruptcy throughout the COVID-19 crisis, other than the default memestock explanation (“We like the stock!”)? My colleague Matt Pearce, in his highly entertaining essay on optimism bias, made a connection between AMC’s stock surge and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Wheel of Fortune”-style prize lottery for encouraging vaccinations. Here’s Pearce: The meme-hyped stock for the struggling movie theater chain AMC is one of the hottest things out there for some reason, leading Bloomberg financial writer Matt Levine to conclude this week that “the way to understand AMC is to abandon your conscious mind for a while and just float on a sea of vague associations.” It may not be quite the same as a lotto jackpot, but AMC is now offering a free large popcorn to shareholders, as well it should. You really can’t make this stuff up. The surge in post-lockdown on-location weekly production appears to have dipped slightly since April, tallying 453 shoot days in the Los Angeles region last week, according to data from FilmLA. — “SpongeBob” and “Transformers” cost U.S. taxpayers $4 billion, study says. A new report details ViacomCBS’s use of a labyrinthine tax shelter to sell rights to its shows and films overseas. (NYT) — Bill Ackman’s planned Universal Music deal includes his grandfather’s hit song. Great angle by Anne Steele on the deal talks that began in November. (WSJ) I hope this Philadelphia punk band gets a lot more attention after its songs were featured on HBO’s “Mare of Easttown.” Its song “Drunk II” is an anthem, and its new EP “Perfect” is very punk rock. Speaking of which, PONY (Sam Bielanski’s Toronto indie band, not the ‘90s Ginuwine banger) released a full-length album, “TV Baby,” in April, and it’s giving me nostalgic grunge-pop vibes.

What's on TV Tuesday: 'America's Book of Secrets'; the season finale of New Amsterdam'

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/whats-on-tv-tuesday-americas-book-of-secrets-the-season-finale-of-new-amsterdam

During the coronavirus crisis, the Los Angeles Times is making some temporary changes to our print sections. The prime-time TV grid is on hiatus in print but an expanded version is available in your daily Times eNewspaper. You can find a printable PDF online at: latimes.com/whats-on-tv. America’s Got Talent Auditions continue. (N) 8 p.m. NBC The Flash Cisco and Kamilla (Carlos Valdes, Victoria Park) tell everyone they are leaving Central City, but then the team must join together one final time to save the city. Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker and Jesse L. Martin also star in this new episode of the superhero action series. 8 p.m. The CW LEGO Masters (N) 8 p.m. Fox Superman & Lois Lois, Chrissy and Clark (Elizabeth Tulloch, Sofia Hasmik and Tyler Hoechlin) try to figure out why Smallville is so important to Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner). 9 p.m. The CW Chopped The chefs try to make trendy foods from the 1990s appetizing for a new era. (N) 9 p.m. Food Network Tyler Perry’s Assisted Living Leah (Courtney Nichole) struggles to fit in at the Pleasant Days assisted living facility. 9:30 p.m. BET New Amsterdam Max (Ryan Eggold) is ready to turn the hospital upside down after he misplaces his wedding ring in the season finale of the medical drama. Also, Reynolds (Jocko Sims) gets an exciting offer, while Iggy (Tyler Labine) ponders a major life change. Janet Montgomery and Freema Agyeman also star, with guest star Shiva Kalaiselvan. 10 p.m. NBC Crikey! It’s the Irwins (N) 10 p.m. Animal Planet Mr Inbetween (N) 10 p.m. FX America’s Book of Secrets This new episode of the documentary series looks back to 1962, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. criticized the FBI for declining to prosecute white supremacists who’d burned down Black churches in Georgia. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took it as a personal attack and embarked on a vendetta against the civil rights leader. Lance Reddick hosts. 10 p.m. History Baseball The Washington Nationals visit the Tampa Bay Rays, 4 p.m. FS1; the Dodgers visit the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4 p.m. SportsNetLA; the Kansas City Royals visit the Angels, 6:30 p.m. BSW; regional coverage, 7 p.m. MLB 2021 Women’s College Softball World Series Championship finals, Game 2, 4:30 p.m. ESPN CBS This Morning Author Gina Yashere (“Cack-Handed: A Memoir”). (N) 7 a.m. KCBS Today Model Karlie Kloss; author Aviva Romm (“Hormone Intelligence”); author Samah Dada. (N) 7 a.m. KNBC KTLA Morning News (N) 7 a.m. KTLA Good Morning America Lin-Manuel Miranda; Tom Hiddleston; Zooey Deschanel. (N) 7 a.m. KABC Good Day L.A. (N) 7 a.m. KTTV Live With Kelly and Ryan Former President Clinton and author James Patterson (“The President’s Daughter”). (N) 9 a.m. KABC The View (N) 10 a.m. KABC Rachael Ray Michael Peña; June Ambrose. 10 a.m. KTTV Home & Family Chef Jamika Pessoa; Dr. Jennifer Ashton. (N) 10 a.m. Hallmark The Wendy Williams Show Jennie Garth (“Left for Dead: the Ashley Reeves Story”). (N) 11 a.m. KTTV The Talk Wilson Cruz; Marcela Valladolid; guest cohost Steven Weber. (N) 1 p.m. KCBS Tamron Hall Lin-Manuel Miranda and Dascha Polanco (“In the Heights”); Black Pumas perform. (N) 1 p.m. KABC The Kelly Clarkson Show Clarkson covers “Boom Clap”; Michael Douglas; Yvonne Orji; Ben Platt performs. (N) 2 p.m. KNBC The Ellen DeGeneres Show Garcelle Beauvais; Winnie Harlow; guest host Stephen “tWitch” Boss. (N) 3 p.m. KNBC Amanpour and Company (N) 11 p.m. KCET; midnight KVCR; 1 a.m. KLCS The Daily Show With Trevor Noah (N) 11 p.m. Comedy Central Conan Sarah Silverman. (N) 11 p.m., 12:30 a.m. TBS The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Lin-Manuel Miranda; Phoebe Dynevor; Sharon Van Etten. (N) 11:34 p.m. KNBC The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Clive Owen; Ziwe. (N) 11:35 p.m. KCBS Jimmy Kimmel Live! Tom Hiddleston; Maya Erskine; Anna Konkle; Chiiild performs. (N) 11:35 p.m. KABC Late Night With Seth Meyers Joel McHale; Bill Cowher; Carmen Christopher; Brendan Buckley performs. (N) 12:36 a.m. KNBC The Late Late Show With James Corden Chelsea Handler; the Wallflowers perform. (N) 12:37 a.m. KCBS Nightline (N) 12:37 a.m. KABC Emma. Autumn de Wilde, who made her feature film directorial debut with this 2020 adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a headstrong young woman in Regency-era England who can’t stop meddling in the lives of those around her. Bill Nighy, Johnny Flynn and Miranda Hart also star. 8 p.m. Cinemax Movies Directed by Autumn de Wilde and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, this latest version of “Emma,” Jane Austen’s beloved novel, lives up to its predecessors. Feb. 20, 2020 Killerman Malik Bader’s (“Cash Only”) gritty 2019 crime thriller stars Liam Hemsworth as a Manhattan jeweler whose services at money laundering are much in demand. Emory Cohen and Diane Guerrero also star. 8 p.m. HBO Movies ‘Killerman’ stars Liam Hemsworth as a New York diamond district criminal who turns his connections in the neighborhood into literal gold. Aug. 29, 2019 The Family Man (2000) 8:25 a.m. HBO A Few Good Men (1992) 9 a.m. AMC The Negotiator (1998) 9:24 a.m. Encore Seabiscuit (2003) 9:45 a.m. Sundance Kate & Leopold (2001) 10 a.m. TMC The Birdcage (1996) 10:55 a.m. Epix World War Z (2013) 11:30 a.m. FXX Talk to Me (2007) 12:35 p.m. Cinemax Beetlejuice (1988) 1 p.m. Freeform The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 1:55 p.m. HBO Knocked Up (2007) 2:30 p.m. MTV The Namesake (2006) 2:36 p.m. Cinemax Runaway Jury (2003) 3:41 p.m. Starz The Bank Job (2008) 4 p.m. Ovation The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) 4:30 p.m. Epix Dunkirk (2017) 4:40 p.m. HBO Brokeback Mountain (2005) 4:45 p.m. Showtime Tombstone (1993) 5 p.m. AMC Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) 5 p.m. Freeform Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) 5 p.m. TCM As Good as It Gets (1997) 5:03 p.m. Encore RoboCop (1987) 5:30 p.m. TMC The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (2014) 7 p.m. Paramount Django Unchained (2012) 7 p.m. Showtime Us (2019) 7:30 p.m. FX The Hunt for Red October (1990) 8 and 11 p.m. BBC America Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019) 8 p.m. Epix Matilda (1996) 8 p.m. Freeform Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) 8 p.m. IFC The Client (1994) 9 p.m. Ovation Love and Monsters (2020) 9:45 p.m. Epix The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 (2015) 10 p.m. Paramount Once (2006) 10:05 p.m. Cinemax Se7en (1995) 10:30 p.m. Syfy Fargo (1996) 10:35 p.m. TMC Argo (2012) 10:55 p.m. HBO Walk the Line (2005) 11:33 p.m. Cinemax The Adventures of Tintin (2011) 11:35 p.m. Epix Television Movies on TV this week: June 6: ‘The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” on Cinemax; ‘Taxi Driver’ on TMC; ‘The Crying Game’ on Showtime and more June 4, 2021 Movies on TV for the entire week, June. 6 - 12 in interactive PDF format for easy downloading and printing June 4, 2021 TV Grids for the entire week of June. 6 - 12 in downloadable and printable PDF files June 4, 2021 Television Looking for what to watch on TV? Here are the television listings from the Los Angeles Times in printable PDF files. June 18, 2021

The Sports Report: Clippers ready to do 'whatever it takes' to beat Jazz

https://www.latimes.com/sports/newsletter/2021-06-08/the-sports-report-clippers-jazz-playoffs-sports-report

Howdy, I’m your host, Iliana Limón Romero, filling in for Houston Mitchell, who is on vacation (probably wondering whether MLB’s sticky stuff ban will kill the free Jumbo Jack promotion). Let’s get right to the news. Andrew Greif on the Clippers: Nearly two hours after playing 43 minutes during the Clippers’ 126-111 victory over Dallas to advance to the second round of the playoffs, Paul George emerged for his postgame videoconference after receiving treatment. Every moment of recovery since the final horn had become precious, not that the Clippers will complain — their season is still alive. Their reward for a first-round victory over the Mavericks is a quick turnaround against the top-seeded and well-rested Utah Jazz, who will have gone six days between games after beating Memphis in five. Tipoff for Game 1 of the best-of-seven series is Tuesday at 7 p.m. PDT in Salt Lake City. “At this point everyone has something going on” physically, George said Sunday. “I just try to get to a mindset to go out and perform and just help my team keep the series and the season alive. “At this point, it’s just all-in. It’s just all-in, committed to doing whatever it takes, and you know, help try to keep us going.” Go beyond the scoreboard Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Kevin Baxter on soccer: Major League Soccer will play its midseason all-star game at Banc of California in August after being forced to postpone the match last summer because of COVID-19. The game, to be played Wednesday, Aug. 25, will match a team of MLS all-stars against a team of Liga MX all-stars for the first time, a league source told the Los Angeles Times. The league, which had been expected to keep the game in Los Angeles, called a Wednesday morning news conference at Banc of California, where MLS commissioner Don Garber and Mike Arriola, the executive president of Liga MX, will make a formal announcement. The unique cross-border format marks the latest in a series of cooperative endeavors between CONCACAF’s top two leagues, following Campeones Cup, which matches the respective league champions, and the Leagues Cup, an eight-team summer tournament. Enjoying this newsletter? Consider subscribing to the Los Angeles Times Your support helps us deliver the news that matters most. Become a subscriber. Jack Harris on the Angels: Speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, injured Angels center fielder Mike Trout gave a simple evaluation of his team’s performance in recent weeks. “It seems like some games, we score a lot of runs and then the next game it’s pretty quiet from an offensive standpoint,” he said. Monday night was definitely the former. In an 8-3 win over the Kansas City Royals, the Angels scored four runs in the first inning en route to a series-opening victory at Angel Stadium. Max Stassi had three hits, including a home run and double, and three RBI. Anthony Rendon, José Iglesias, Juan Lagares and David Fletcher all drove in runs, as well. And Dylan Bundy gave up only two runs in 5 ⅔ innings to earn his first winning decision of the season. Jorge Castillo on the Dodgers: PITTSBURGH — The Dodgers’ 2021 season so far resembles the cryptocurrency market, cycling through spikes and dips, in the green but still waiting to blast to the moon. The club, pegged as the overwhelming World Series favorites two months ago, is now navigating through another downswing. The Dodgers lost two of three games to the Atlanta Braves over the weekend. They’ve lost six of nine games and sit in third place in the National League West. The stretch comes after they began the season 13-2 then went 5-15 then went 13-2 again. What was projected as a two-team race between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres has a third wheel out front — the San Francisco Giants sitting in first place. The Dodgers’ three games in Atlanta were the first of 15 games against teams under .500. Next up is a three-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team best known this season for letting Javy Báez toy with them on the bases, starting Tuesday at PNC Park. Dan Woike on the Lakers:On his way into free agency, veteran Wesley Matthews made it clear that he wanted to re-sign, the pain from the Lakers’ unrealized potential after a first-round playoff exit forcing him to declare his desire to “run it back.” While the Lakers universally said they thought this team was good enough to win it all had it not been for key injuries, roster changes are almost always assured. The NBA is projecting a $112.4-million salary cap for next season, with teams spending more than $136.6 million subject to luxury tax penalties. Here’s a quick look at who is under contract, who can walk in free agency and how the Lakers can keep some key role players. The Core (2021-22 salaries via Spotrac) LeBron James — $41.2 million Anthony Davis — $35.4 million Any roster building happens around this foundation, a good head start for the Lakers’ front office. Roberto José Andrade Franco on boxing: On June 7, 1996, Julio César Chávez faced Oscar De La Hoya. Promoters called the fight “Ultimate Glory.” Held outside of Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace on a hot Friday night, the fight was, in many ways, a clash of opposites. Chávez, 33, was a Mexican national hero entering the 100th professional fight of his career. De La Hoya, 23, was a once-in-a-generation Mexican American boxer about to enter his prime. But more than a fight between a once-great boxer versus another with expectations of greatness, Chávez versus De La Hoya symbolized something more in the United States’ Mexican community. Chávez versus De La Hoya divided people, even families, splitting them along generational, gender and class divides. The fight between Chávez and De La Hoya became a proxy for all the complexities that come from being of Mexican ethnicity, living in a place that was once Mexico. And when the fight began, 15,283 people gathered in Las Vegas. Across Mexico and the United States, hundreds of thousands more gathered to watch Chávez, a man some saw as a god, box against De La Hoya, a man who sought to escape from the Mexican’s shadow. This is the story of that fight — 25 years ago — between a man who epitomized everything Mexican boxing was and a man who’d be criticized for not being Mexican enough. Sam Farmer on the NFL: Jim Fassel, a longtime NFL offensive coach who was the league’s coach of the year in 1997, has died. He was 71. Fassel’s son, John, confirmed his father’s death to the Los Angeles Times on Monday night, saying he got the news during a phone call in the afternoon. John Fassel formerly was the Rams’ special teams coach and briefly served as the team’s interim head coach. Jim Fassel, who lived in Las Vegas, suffered chest pains Monday and was taken to a local hospital by a friend. He died of a heart attack while under sedation, his son said. The entire family has since convened in Las Vegas. Jim Fassel was coach of the New York Giants from 1997 to 2003. He is one of three coaches to lead the Giants to the Super Bowl. His team lost to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV at the end of the 2000 season. ————— Jeff Miller on the Chargers: Justin Herbert’s influence is so substantial that he is impacting both coaches’ decisions and coaching decisions. The quarterback became the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year in 2020 with a performance that dictated so many of the things the Chargers attempted to do with the football. Then, after the season, following the dismissal of coach Anthony Lynn and most of his assistants, Herbert’s presence was one of the main reasons Shane Day agreed to join the new staff. Asked Monday what appealed to him about the job, Day mentioned Herbert first before citing head coach Brandon Staley and offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi. ————— Gary Klein on the Rams: With the NFL’s offseason program conducted virtually last year, Cam Akers missed out on real-time, on-field opportunities to learn coach Sean McVay’s offense. Akers, a second-round draft pick from Florida State, proved a quick study, emerging as the starter for the season opener. Injuries sidelined him for three games, but Akers finished with a dynamic second half and established himself as a key player for a team that, following the addition of quarterback Matthew Stafford, is regarded as a Super Bowl contender. Akers, who turns 22 on June 22, spent the last few weeks participating in organized-team activity workouts. On Tuesday, the Rams begin a three-day minicamp that will conclude Thursday with a practice before fans at SoFi Stadium. The Rams’ running back corps also includes third-year pro Darrell Henderson, Xavier Jones, Raymond Calais and rookie Jake Funk. But Akers is the lead back — and comfortable with the status. Thuc Nhi Nguyen on softball: OKLAHOMA CITY — Odicci Alexander winced in pain as a not-as-soft-as-advertised ball bounced off her left foot in the batter’s box. James Madison’s star pitcher would lose some toenails after getting hit by the pitch in a game Sunday, ESPN reported the day after, but Alexander dutifully stepped back into the circle when called. When she pitched, the right-hander dragged her injured foot through the dirt. “Blood, sweat and tears,” Alexander said. “I was going to keep pitching for my teammates.” Alexander’s heroic effort pitching James Madison to the national semifinals — the longest run for an unseeded team at the Women’s College World Series — won hearts as she became the latest pitcher to step into the spotlight on college softball’s biggest annual stage. Along with an electrifying defensive play and trending on Twitter, the redshirt senior threw 434 pitches in four games in Oklahoma City, where No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 10 Florida State play in a best-of-three championship series starting Tuesday. FIRST ROUNDAll times Pacific WESTERN CONFERENCE No. 1 Utah vs. No. 8 Memphis Memphis 112, Utah 109Utah 141, Memphis 129 Utah 121, Memphis 111Utah 120, Memphis 113Utah 126, Memphis 110Utah wins series, 4-1 No. 2 Phoenix vs. No. 7 Lakers Phoenix 99, Lakers 90Lakers 109, Phoenix 102Lakers 109, Phoenix 95Phoenix 100, Lakers 92Phoenix 115, Lakers 85Phoenix 113, Lakers 100Phoenix wins series, 4-2 No. 3 Denver vs. No. 6 Portland Portland 123, Denver 109Denver 128, Portland 109Denver 120, Portland 115Portland 115, Denver 95Denver 147, Portland 140 (2OT)Denver 126, Portland 115Denver wins series, 4-2 No. 4 Clippers vs. No. 5 Dallas Dallas 113, Clippers 103Dallas 127, Clippers 121Clippers 118, Dallas 108Clippers 106, Dallas 81Dallas 105, Clippers 100Clippers 104, Dallas 97Clippers 126, Dallas 111Clippers win series, 4-3 EASTERN CONFERENCE No. 1 Philadelphia vs. No. 8 Washington Philadelphia 125, Washington 118Philadelphia 120, Washington 95Philadelphia 132, Washington 103Washington 122, Philadelphia 114Philadelphia 129, Washington 112Philadelphia wins series, 4-1 No. 2 Brooklyn vs. No. 7 Boston Brooklyn 104, Boston 93Brooklyn 130, Boston 108Boston 125, Brooklyn 119Brooklyn 141, Boston 126Brooklyn 123, Boston 109Brooklyn wins series, 4-1 No. 3 Milwaukee vs. No. 6 Miami Milwaukee 109, Miami 107Milwaukee 132, Miami 98Milwaukee 113, Miami 84Milwaukee 120, Miami 103Milwaukee wins series, 4-0 No. 4 New York vs. No. 5 Atlanta Atlanta 107, New York 105New York 101, Atlanta 92Atlanta 105, New York 94Atlanta 113, New York 96Atlanta 103, New York 89Atlanta wins series, 4-1 SECOND ROUNDAll times Pacific WESTERN CONFERENCE No. 1 Utah vs. No. 4 ClippersToday: at Utah, 7 p.m., TNTThursday: at Utah, 7 p.m., ESPNSaturday: at Clippers, 5:30 p.m., ABC*Monday, June 14: at Utah, TBD, TNT*Wednesday, June 16: at Clippers, TBD, ESPN*Sunday, June 20: at Utah, TBD, TBD No. 2 Phoenix Suns vs. No. 3 Denver NuggetsPhoenix 122, Denver 105 Wednesday: at Phoenix, 6:30 p.m., TNTFriday: at Denver, 7 p.m., ESPNSunday: at Denver, 5 p.m., TNT*Tuesday, June 15: at Phoenix, TBD, TBD*Thursday, June 17: at Denver, TBD, ESPN*Sunday, June 20: at Phoenix, TBD, TBD EASTERN CONFERENCE No. 1 Philadelphia vs. No. 5 AtlantaAtlanta 128, Philadelphia 124Today: at Philadelphia, 4:30 p.m., TNTFriday: at Atlanta, 4:30 p.m., ESPNMonday: at Atlanta, TBD, TNT*Wednesday, June 16: at Philadelphia, TBD, TNT*Friday, June 18: at Atlanta, TBD, ESPN*Sunday, June 20: at Philadelphia, TBD, TBD No. 2 Brooklyn Nets vs. No. 3 Milwaukee BucksBrooklyn 115, Milwaukee 107Brooklyn 125, Milwaukee 86Thursday: at Milwaukee, TBD, ESPNSunday: at Milwaukee, Noon, ABC*Tuesday, June 15: at Brooklyn, TBD, TNT*Thursday, June 17: at Milwaukee, TBD, ESPN*Saturday, June 19: at Brooklyn, TBD, TNT SECOND ROUNDAll times Pacific East Division New York Islanders vs. Boston Boston 5, New York 2New York 4, Boston 3 (OT)Boston 2, New York 1 (OT)New York 4, Boston 1New York 5, Boston 4Wednesday: at New York, 4:30 p.m., NBCSN*Friday, June 11: at Boston, TBD, TBD Central Division Tampa Bay vs. Carolina Tampa Bay 2, Carolina 1Tampa Bay 2, Carolina 1Carolina 3, Tampa Bay 2 (OT)Tampa Bay 6, Carolina 4Today: at Carolina, 3:30 p.m., NBCSN*Thursday: at Tampa Bay, TBD, TBD*Saturday, June 12: at Carolina, TBD, TBD West Division Colorado vs. Vegas Colorado 7, Vegas 1Colorado 3, Vegas 2 (OT)Vegas 3, Colorado 2Vegas 5, Colorado 1Today: at Colorado, 6 p.m., NBCSNThursday: at Vegas, TBD, TBD*Saturday, June 12: at Colorado, TBD, TBD North Division Winnipeg vs. Montreal Montreal 5, Winnipeg 3Montreal, 1, Winnipeg 0Montreal 5, Winnipeg 1Montreal 3, Winnipeg 2*Wednesday: at Winnipeg, 5 p.m., CNBC*Friday, June 11: at Montreal, TBD, TBD*Sunday, June 13: at Winnipeg, TBD, TBD *-if necessary 1935 — Omaha, ridden by Willis Saunders, becomes the third horse to win the Triple Crown by capturing the Belmont Stakes with a 1½-length victory over Firethron. 1950 — Boston beats the St. Louis Browns 29-4 at Fenway Park, and the Red Sox set six major league records: most runs scored by one team; most long hits in a game with 17 (nine doubles, one triple and seven homers); most total bases with 60; most extra bases on long hits with 32; most runs for two games with 49 (20 a day earlier); and most hits in two games with 51. 1958 — Mickey Wright beats Fay Crocker by six strokes to win the LPGA Championship. 1980 — Sally Little wins the LPGA Championship by three strokes over Jane Blalock. 1985 — Creme Fraiche, ridden by Eddie Maple, becomes the first gelding to win the Belmont Stakes, beating Stephan’s Odyssey by a half-length. 1986 — Larry Bird scores 29 points to lead the Boston Celtics to a 114-97 victory over the Houston Rockets and their 16th NBA title. 1990 — The “Indomitable Lions” of Cameroon pull off one of the greatest upsets in soccer history, 1-0 over defending champion Argentina in the first game of the World Cup. 1991 — Warren Schutte, a UNLV sophomore from South Africa, shoots a 5-under 67 to become the first foreign-born player to win the NCAA Division I golf championship. 2000 — Mike Modano deflects Brett Hull’s shot at 6:21 of the third overtime, ending the longest scoreless overtime game in Stanley Cup finals history and helping the Dallas Stars beat the New Jersey Devils 1-0 in Game 5. 2005 — Freshman Samantha Findlay hits a three-run homer in the 10th inning to lead Michigan to a 4-1 win over UCLA for its first NCAA softball title. Michigan is the first team from east of the Mississippi River to win the national championship. 2008 — Rafael Nadal wins his fourth consecutive French Open title in a rout, again spoiling Roger Federer’s bid to complete a career Grand Slam. Dominating the world’s No. 1 player with astounding ease, Nadal wins in three sets, 6-1, 6-3, 6-0. 2008 — Yani Tseng of Taiwan becomes the first rookie in 10 years to win a major, beating Maria Hjorth on the fourth hole of a playoff with a 5-foot birdie on the 18th hole to win the LPGA Championship. 2012 — I’ll Have Another’s bid for the first Triple Crown in 34 years ends shockingly in the barn and not on the racetrack when the colt is scratched the day before the Belmont Stakes and retires from racing with a swollen tendon. 2013 — Serena Williams wins her 16th Grand Slam title and her first French Open championship since 2002, beating Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-4. 2014 — Rafael Nadal wins the French Open title for the ninth time, and the fifth time in a row, by beating Novak Djokovic 3-6, 7-5, 6-2, 6-4. Nadal improves his record at Roland Garros to 66-1. 2015 — The NCAA approves multiple rule changes to men’s basketball for the 2015-16 season, including a 30-second shot clock and fewer timeouts for each team. The shot clock was last reduced, from 45 to 35 seconds, in 1993-94. 2018 — Golden State romps to its second straight NBA championship, beating Cleveland 108-85 to finish a four-game sweep. Stephen Curry scores 37 points and Kevin Durant, who is named MVP for the second straight finals, has 20 for the Warriors. It’s the first sweep in the NBA Finals since 2007, when James was dismissed by a powerful San Antonio team in his first one. Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani is tied for fifth in Major League Baseball home runs this season, reaching sweet 16 this week. Click here to watch every homer he’s hit so far this season. The Times recently featured an illustration of Ohtani as a Japanese Manga character on our sports cover, highlighting the ways the Angels’ starting pitcher and designated hitter most resembles a comic book hero he grew up reading about in Japan. A poster version of the cover is now on sale in The Times store and can be purchased by clicking on this link. Until next time... That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Delicious dishes that happen to be Keto-friendly

https://www.latimes.com/recipe/list/delicious-dishes-that-happen-to-be-keto-friendly

A trick for feeding a crowd when one or more guests has a dietary restriction is to focus on what they can eat rather than what they cannot. Instead of substituting for forbidden ingredients, I make dishes that use only permitted ingredients. Take the trendy, rather controversial ketogenic (keto) diet, for example. Rather than focus on no grains, no legumes, no sugar aspects of the diet, I concentrate on yes meats and poultry, yes fat, yes seafood, yes cheese and dairy, yes vegetables and yes nuts and seeds. Truth is, there are wonderful dishes in our archives that meet the requirements of the keto diet (and others) without even trying — and you don’t have to include all of the yeses in one recipe. You probably already enjoy many delicious keto-friendly foods such as ribeye steak and pulled pork. If you serve a summer squash chowder, for example, and salmon — slow-roasted with charred garlic aioli or with green curry and yogurt sauce or pan-roasted with crispy skin, brown butter and chile vinaigrette — nobody will accuse you of kowtowing to a specialty diet and depriving other diners of appetizing, delectable food. Likewise, brine-braised chicken thighs with kale and avocado and pork chop paprikash are tasty, savory keto-friendly preparations that appeal to most carnivores and do not scream or even hint at “special diet food.” One hardly thinks “diet food” when contemplating a crackling roast pork shoulder with fennel and chile or mustardy meatballs and cauliflower gratin. The term “cauliflower rice” may elicit a raised eyebrow but serve flavorful cauliflower and kimchi “fried rice” and your guests might not even guess that the “rice” is actually cauliflower. While the benefits of the keto diet may be debated, there is nothing contentious about delicious food that happens to adhere to the tenets of a particular diet. Whether you are a keto dieter looking to add to your repertoire or merely looking for a keto-friendly dish to feed to your keto guests, these recipes are sure to please most everyone at your dinner table.

Essential California: Revealing data about COVID cases in California

https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2021-06-08/california-covid-cases-cdc-data-essential-california

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s June 8. I’m Justin Ray. Do you remember what happened back in November? California had been successful at managing COVID-19 until that month, when the virus wreaked havoc on the state. Hospitals overflowed with COVID patients, overwhelming already exhausted healthcare workers. Officials were caught off guard by the sudden, rapid spread of the virus, which only got worse as the state entered holiday season. Fortunately, we’ve come a long way since then, and new numbers indicate that California in particular has done a good job keeping the virus at bay. However, there remains one area where the state is still lacking. The good news California has been able to maintain one of the lowest COVID-19 case rates in America, as my colleagues Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money report. According to new data released Monday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state’s seven-day case rate per 100,000 people was 11 — tying Nebraska for the third-lowest among all states. Only Vermont and South Dakota have lower rates, with 6.9 and 9.2 respectively. On Sunday, California met the threshold necessary to meet the CDC’s definition of having a low level of community coronavirus transmission. But new data took the state out of the qualification that requires cases over a seven-day period to be under 10 per 100,000 residents and its rate of positive test results to be less than 5%. Despite stepping into the moderate transmission categorization, its seven-day case rate is less than half the nationwide figure of 28. Meanwhile, five states — Colorado, Wyoming, Florida, Washington and Utah — are considered to have substantial transmission. This means all have seven-day case rates that exceed 50 per 100,000 residents. The bad news While the state appears in good shape, we continue to struggle in one specific area. Although around 68% of eligible Californians 12 and older have received at least one shot, only 52.7% are fully vaccinated. That’s a problem because, as The Times has previously reported, 80% of residents need to get vaccinated or have natural immunity for us to achieve herd immunity. Meanwhile, vaccine enthusiasm has fallen, prompting Gov. Gavin Newsom to use flashy measures to boost immunizations. Newsom has promised a “full reopening” of the state on June 15. What will a reopened L.A. County look like? Here are five things to expect as L.A. County fully reopens. And now, here’s what’s happening across California: Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing. Here’s how authorities identified the two suspects arrested in the apparent road rage killing of a 6-year-old. Officials said Marcus Anthony Eriz, 24, and Wynne Lee, 23, were taken into custody after Aiden Leos died during the incident last month. Surveillance, investigation and tips all played a role in identifying the suspects, according to a new report from The Times’ Richard Winton, Hayley Smith, Hannah Fry and Leila Miller. After the shooting, authorities shared an image of a white vehicle of interest. In the following weeks, hundreds of calls and emails came in regarding the case. Officials said they received a tip and worked to enhance an image of the license plate on the vehicle, which led them to identify the couple. Social media may have also helped tie one of the suspects to the crime. On May 21, the boy’s mother had been traveling on the northbound lanes of the 55 Freeway in Orange. Leos was hit when a round entered through the trunk of the vehicle. The two suspects were taken into custody at their home in Costa Mesa on Sunday. Police also said they believe that a gun recovered from the home was used in the fatal shooting. Both suspects are expected to be charged with murder. They are being held in the Orange County jail on $1-million bail each, and are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. Is it too late for L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón to review some controversial police killings? When he ran for district attorney, Gascón promised to review four police shootings in which his predecessor Jackie Lacey declined to bring charges against officers. But the effort is running into roadblocks. For instance, the statute of limitations to bring manslaughter charges in three of the shootings he previously highlighted has passed. This means that if any are to be reopened, he would face the extremely difficult task of convicting a police officer of murder. Los Angeles Times Meet an L.A. public transit superfan. Kenny Uong doesn’t work for Metro, but he’s one of its greatest ambassadors. Columnist Nita Lelyveld and staff photographer Francine Orr explain how the 21-year-old became an authority on public transit in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times Support our journalism Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. Political rock star Katie Porter talks about that controversy involving Michelle Steel. On an episode of our daily podcast, Gustavo Arellano caught up with California Rep. Katie Porter (D -Irvine). Of course, the pair discussed those viral whiteboard lectures during congressional hearings. Porter also addressed the controversy involving comments made by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Seal Beach) about work the two performed for a resolution condemning hate crimes against Asian Americans: “It was disheartening for me.” Los Angeles Times Despite the passing of the “Golden State Stimulus,” undocumented people can’t access funds. Many of the undocumented residents of California have not been able to access pandemic relief previously handed out in three rounds of payments. The “Golden State Stimulus” that was approved by the State Legislature and signed into law by Newsom was supposed to provide that support. However, various obstacles have prevented many from accessing these funds. KQED A kayaker attempting an epic voyage was rescued. U.S. Coast Guard officials say a kayaker who was attempting a trip from California to Hawaii was rescued about 70 miles from Santa Cruz. Cyril Derreumaux departed May 31 in hopes of reaching Honolulu in 60 to 70 days. Sadly, Derreumaux’s trek was cut short. His kayak nearly capsized and he wasn’t able to adequately use GPS “due to heavy weather,” Coast Guard authorities said. Back in 1987, a solo kayaker completed the trip from California to Hawaii, and it has never been successfully completed since. Sacramento Bee Tap in. Tap, tap, tap in. California districts won first and second prize at an international tap water tasting contest (which is apparently a thing that exists). The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California won first place at the 31st annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting event in West Virginia. Santa Ana took second place. Associated Press How a coalition galvanizes the conversation about anti-Asian hate incidents. Despite being small, Stop AAPI Hate has become a prominent outlet for the recording of hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders nationwide. In March, the group released a study revealing that thousands of Asian Americans have faced racist verbal and physical attacks during the pandemic. A new report from Mallika Seshadri explains how the coalition does the work of collecting, categorizing and reporting incidents. CalMatters Woman arrested after attack that went viral on social media. A 21-year-old who was captured on security footage attacking a woman outside a Castro Valley apartment has been arrested. Video of the incident went viral on social media. The woman, who had reportedly been delivering packages for Amazon, is no longer working for the company, a spokesperson said. SFGATE After 42 years, the original rainbow flag is coming home to San Francisco. In 1978, San Francisco resident Gilbert Baker stitched a rainbow flag that would end up becoming a global symbol of the LGBTQ community. A piece of the original fabric was unveiled Friday at the GLBT Historical Society. But there’s so much more to the story behind the original flag, including a chance phone call that led to a realization about its location. Los Angeles Times A 13-year-old wins accolades for a stop-motion short film. Seventh-grader Hailey Johnston of Redondo Beach created a two-minute video explaining “why she matters.” In the video, Johnston becomes a gymnast, runner and superhero. “I really wasn’t expecting to get that far,” Hailey says, “but I’m really excited I did; the feeling was amazing.” Daily Breeze Also: I received over 200 responses to my first newsletter and the first thing I want to say is thank you so much for all the love and support. I will respond to you all, but while I was receiving warm messages and stories about frogs, I was moving to a new apartment. As you can see, I wasn’t super pumped about the experience. Free online games Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games in our new game center at latimes.com/games. Los Angeles: Partly cloudy skies, 72. San Diego: Partly cloudy, 72. San Francisco: Sunny skies with gusty winds, 61. San Jose: Sunny, 72. Fresno: Sunny, 80. Sacramento: Sunny, 75. Today’s California memory comes from Beth Herman: We came to California after living in NYC for many years and a brief residency in Austin, Texas. My rescue dog, Sisko, was with us. We liberated him from the shelter in Austin, which was otherwise filled with pit bulls. For some reason Sisko has bright blue eyes. He caught the attention of an artist who owned a large brown lab in the dog park as Sisko flew through the air retrieving a frisbee. I now own an oil painting of a portrait of Sisko. Right next to him in the painting is a Weber kettle, as big as Sisko. For some reason this artist was obsessed with Weber kettles and they appear in every painting he does! If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

Virginia Democrats pick Terry McAuliffe as nominee for governor, setting the stage for a bellwether election

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/virginia-governor-primary-in-bellwether-election

Virginia Democrats chose Terry McAuliffe to be their nominee for governor Tuesday, setting the stage for one the biggest electoral tests of strength between the parties since President Biden ousted Donald Trump from the White House. McAuliffe, a former governor trying to make a comeback, built on a big fundraising advantage and easily won the state’s primary, beating four Democratic rivals who vied to succeed Gov. Ralph Northam. Now McAuliffe takes on GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive who has been endorsed by former President Trump. Politics Virginia race, coming a year after Biden won on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment, will test the parties’ strength ahead of the 2022 midterm election. May 24, 2021 Buoyed by great personal wealth that could supplement his fundraising, Youngkin has already been attacking McAuliffe, portraying him as Biden’s ally in steering the country too far to the left. In turn, McAuliffe is tagging Youngkin as an apostle of Trumpism. The off-year election will be watched nationally as a political bellwether heading into the midterm election of 2022, a window onto how the parties fare without Trump on the ballot as a galvanizing force for both his friends and foes. Politics Virginia race, coming a year after Biden won on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment, will test the parties’ strength ahead of the 2022 midterm election. May 24, 2021 Virginia has been trending Democratic in recent years, but Republicans believe they have a chance in 2021 because history is on their side: The commonwealth’s gubernatorial contest is almost always lost by the party that holds the White House. The Democratic primary offered voters a choice between elevating a new generation of leadership, including two Black women running for governor, or going with an older, familiar white political figure who once headed the Democratic National Committee, and has been portrayed as the safest bet to win in November. Democrats nationally faced a similar choice in the 2020 presidential primary, when they chose Biden over a diverse field of younger candidates largely because he was seen as the most electable. “I know how to defeat Republican extremists like Glenn Youngkin,” McAuliffe said Monday on Twitter. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.” McAuliffe’s strongest opponents were state Sen. Jennifer McClellan and former state Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy. Their supporters had hoped that, with one of them as the nominee, Virginia could have made history this fall by selecting the nation’s first female Black governor. Also running were progressive state Delegate Lee Carter, and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax — who might have been a leading contender and could also have been the state’s second Black governor had he not been confronted with sexual assault allegations, which he strongly denied, maintaining the relations were consensual. McAuliffe’s rivals argued that the commonwealth’s leadership needs new blood, and warned that McAuliffe would not generate the voter enthusiasm and high levels of turnout that will be needed to beat the well-funded GOP nominee and keep the state Legislature in Democratic hands. “If we want something different, we gotta do something different,” said Carroll Foy at a church in Hampton Roads on Sunday. McClellan, at the candidates’ final debate in Newport News last week, said Democrats needed “a nominee who will excite and expand” the base of the party. “It’s not enough to give someone something to vote against,” McClellan said. But McAuliffe was the front-runner from the start. He served as Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018, then left office because of the commonwealth’s ban on anyone serving more than one consecutive term. He campaigned this year as if he is seeking a second term, touting his record of overseeing economic growth, restoring voting rights for many felons and vetoing conservative social policies approved by the state Legislature, then controlled by Republicans. He was endorsed by Northam.

No more masks at work? California’s rules are on track to change

https://www.latimes.com/business/newsletter/2021-06-08/masks-work-california-rules-cal-osha-business

Good morning. I’m Rachel Schnalzer, the L.A. Times Business section’s audience engagement editor, back with our weekly newsletter. Mask-optional workplaces are almost here, as long as a proposal from California’s workplace safety agency gets final approval. As the state moves toward lifting many COVID-19 pandemic restrictions June 15, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, is proposing to loosen the emergency workplace rules it established late last year. Among the proposed changes: Workers in indoor spaces could stop wearing face coverings, perhaps as soon as Tuesday of next week — though everyone present would have to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and the employer would have to verify each worker’s vaccination status. Distancing requirements for workers also would be eased. My colleagues Luke Money and Rong-Gong Lin II published a detailed breakdown of what you need to know about Cal/OSHA’s proposal. Here are some highlights, along with some additional updates: Is this really going to happen? The Cal/OSHA proposal got one crucial approval a few days ago. It’s still subject to review by the state Office of Administrative Law. But that office is expected to approve it, and new rules could go into effect as soon as June 15. Under Cal/OSHA’s proposal, who could go without a mask while working indoors? Most workers would be allowed to bare their noses and mouths if every other person in the room does not have COVID-19 symptoms and is fully vaccinated. If anyone present is not fully vaccinated, masks would still be mandated. People are fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or the single shot of Johnson & Johnson‘s vaccine. To comply with the rules, employers will need to have their employees’ vaccine records on file. Employees of retail stores, restaurants and other establishments where workers interact with the public would still need to wear masks. The rule change also would not affect employees in some other settings, such as hospitals. What else does Cal/OSHA’s proposal cover? The agency also recommends ending the requirement that employees remain distanced from others. That should kick in July 31, it suggests. Until then, when dealing with employees who work inside or work at outdoor events of 10,000 people or more, employers will need to either continue distancing those workers or offer respirators such as N-95 masks. Do vaccinated workers need to keep getting screened for COVID-19? The state’s guidance just changed. On Monday, the California Department of Public Health said nonhealthcare workers who are fully vaccinated do not need to be screened for COVID-19. In addition, the department said, fully vaccinated people don’t need to be tested after exposure to someone who has COVID-19 unless the fully vaccinated person is showing symptoms or working or living in a crowded environment. Can some places keep stricter rules? Yes, businesses and other employers can choose to require employees or customers to wear masks even after the state no longer mandates it. Were some pandemic-era changes recently extended? California’s COVID-19 state of emergency order — which gives Gov. Gavin Newsom and health officials broad authority to temporarily impose new rules and restrictions — will remain in place beyond June 15, Newsom said Friday. California is also extending the ability of restaurants and bars to serve alcoholic drinks in outdoor dining areas, for delivery and to-go orders through the rest of the year. Curious about what a reopened Los Angeles County will look like? Read the full story. ◆ COVID-19 restrictions protected California’s economy, and now it’s poised for a “euphoric’” rebound, Margot Roosevelt reports. ◆ Unsure about the difference between a Roth IRA and a Roth 401(k)? Certified financial planner Liz Weston explains how to pick the best retirement account for you. ◆ Want free accommodations when traveling? Look into housesitting sites, SideHusl.com’s Kathy Kristof suggests. ◆ A solar-power company sold a 25-year contract to a 91-year-old woman, David Lazarus writes. After she died, the company refused to cancel her contract. ◆ Fisher-Price ignored safety warnings over its infant sleeper linked to dozens of deaths, an investigation found. Now, Sasha Hupka reports, lawmakers say they’ll enact tougher consumer protection laws if the company doesn’t shape up. ◆ Hashtags often feel dated and cringeworthy. So why are influencers still using them? Brian Contreras digs into the importance of hashtags on platforms such as TikTok. ◆ The California recall seems to be commanding the attention of people everywhere — except in California, columnist Michael Hiltzik writes. Why do East Coast TV anchors care about this? Venture funding is a major gateway to success for those starting a company, especially those in tech. But most venture capitalists still ignore Black, Latinx and female entrepreneurs. My colleague Ronald D. White recently reported on the impenetrability of venture funding for people of color and women -- as well as the people who are trying to change that. “The disparity in who the venture capitalists are and where their money goes is just phenomenal,” Katherine Klein, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, told White. Read the full story here. Have a question about work, business or finances during the COVID-19 pandemic, or tips for coping that you’d like to share? Send us an email at californiainc@latimes.com, and we may include it in a future newsletter.

Today's Headlines: Kamala Harris' message to migrant hopefuls

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/newsletter/2021-06-08/kamala-harris-guatemala-todays-headlines

In Guatemala, Vice President Kamala Harris told would-be migrants to not come to the U.S. VP Harris’ Message to Migrant Hopefuls During her trip to Guatemala’s capital, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a stark message to would-be migrants from Central America, saying they “will be turned back” if they attempt to cross the U.S. border illegally. On her first foreign trip as vice president, Harris also gently criticized her host, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei. He and other regional leaders, she said, must work to reduce poverty, violence and corruption and give their citizens reasons to stay in their home countries — to create “hope” for citizens about their futures there. President Biden asked Harris in March to tackle what the administration called the root causes that had led an increased number of people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including many families and unaccompanied children, to head toward the United States. Harris is under political pressure to show results. Republicans have tried to tie her to the administration’s struggles to manage the border and have attacked her for not acting more aggressively in her assignment. A Big Battle Over Tiny Shelters Over the last decade, Los Angeles County’s homeless problem has spread from urban hot spots to the suburbs. While Arcadia has relatively few homeless people, the idea of providing them a place to live is stoking anger and fear in some quarters, compassion in others. The battle is notable for another reason. Many who have taken up the cause to stop homeless housing are Asian American — the latest demonstration, after similar controversies in Irvine and Koreatown, of how Asian people have mobilized around the issue. Yet in this San Gabriel Valley city, some of the staunchest supporters of the tiny home plan are Asian American students from Arcadia High School. A New, Much-Debated Alzheimer’s Drug Government health officials have approved the first new drug for Alzheimer’s disease in nearly 20 years, disregarding warnings from independent advisors that the much-debated treatment hasn’t been shown to help. The lack of a clear clinical benefit after two late-stage clinical trials prompted a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel to urge that the drug, called aducanumab, be rejected. The agency acknowledged the uncertainties about the medication but said its approval was justified by the seriousness of the disease and the dearth of options for treating it. The drug, which is given as an infusion every four weeks, was developed by Biogen with the Japanese pharmaceutical firm Eisai Co. The FDA requires the drugmaker to conduct a follow-up study to confirm the drug’s benefits for patients. In the summer of 1940, thousands gathered at a peace rally at Los Angeles City Hall to urge the United States to stay out of World War II. Many were armed with posters — some stating, “The Yanks Are Not Coming.” On Sept. 4, 1940, the non-interventionist movement organized into the America First Committee. At its peak, the AFC had 800,000 dues-paying members. The organization folded days after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. — Los Angeles County is eagerly preparing for a full reopening on June 15. But despite the excitement, it won’t be a complete return to a pre-pandemic normal. Here are five things to expect. — One of the first in-person events in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election centered on the issue likely to animate the entire race: homelessness. It ended with a homeless woman being arrested after she pulled out a knife a few feet from City Councilman Joe Buscaino. — A dozen female water polo players who accused their coach of sexual abuse will split nearly $14 million after settling a lawsuit against USA Water Polo and a California club. — A kayaker hoping to paddle solo from California to Hawaii was rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter six days after he set out, amid rough seas and high winds. — Eggs littered the sand, but there was no sign of life around or in them. Scientists say a drone scared off nesting seabirds at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, wiping out a generation of birds. Support our journalism Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. — The Justice Department announced it will require federal agents to wear body cameras when serving arrest warrants or conducting raids. This shift aligns federal law enforcement more closely with the growing legion of local police officers who wear such devices. — The Justice Department recovered $2.3 million in cryptocurrency ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers whose cyberattack last month shut down its major East Coast pipeline, leading to gas shortages up and down the East Coast, authorities said. — Nicaraguan judicial authorities ordered that a potential opposition presidential candidate be held for three months while his case is investigated. — Raymond Donovan, a construction company executive who resigned as secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor after grand larceny and other charges of which a jury later acquitted him, has died at his home in New Vernon, N.J. — Over his three-plus decades running police departments in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles, Bill Bratton branded himself as America’s top cop. His new memoir reflects on law enforcement and the police murder of George Floyd. — An L.A. Times profile launched Judith Sheindlin, a.k.a. Judge Judy, to daytime TV dominance. To mark her final episode, reporter and subject look back on an unlikely journey. — A week after resurfaced photos resulted in an online uproar accusing “The Office” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” star Ellie Kemper of being a “KKK princess,” the actor has issued a detailed apology. — Elton John and husband David Furnish joined FX’s “Pose” stars Billy Porter and MJ Rodriguez and series co-creators Steven Canals and Ryan Murphy for a discussion at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The duo, who rescheduled their vacation to attend the For Your Consideration panel, spoke onstage about their love for the show. — After 10 years of early mornings, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie still lives for “Today.” — France’s competition watchdog decided to fine Google 220 million euros ($268 million) for abusing its “dominant position” in the online advertising business — an unprecedented move. — Jeff Bezos and his brother will go to space next month when Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, launches its first passenger-carrying mission. — On June 7, 1996, a boxing god met an up-and-comer. This is the oral history of how the fight between Julio César Chávez and Oscar De La Hoya became a proxy for all the complexities that come from being of Mexican ethnicity. (This story is a subscriber exclusive.) — Tom Thibodeau got the New York Knicks back to the playoffs, guiding the team to its second-best record in 20 years. And in the eyes of the voters, that coaching job was the best in the NBA. Free online games Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games in our new game center at latimes.com/games. — Columnist Michael Hiltzik: The right’s attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci shows it has nothing in its policy tank but slogans. — An AR-15 is like a pocket knife? Maybe federal judges shouldn’t get lifetime appointments, columnist George Skelton writes. — At some top companies, Asian Americans are overrepresented in midlevel roles and underrepresented in leadership. The root of this workplace inequality could stem from the all-too-common experience of being confused for someone else. (New York Times) — Sophia Kianni is a 19-year-old climate advisor who started her own nonprofit and worked on Greta Thunberg’s youth strikes. She spends her days meeting U.N. officials and grabbing pizza with friends. (Business Insider) For decades, the primary LGBTQ symbol was a small, pink triangle — first displayed on uniforms of Nazi concentration camp prisoners who had been labeled as homosexual. In 1978, San Francisco resident Gilbert Baker stitched a new symbol: a striped rainbow flag of pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue and purple. After a four-decade-long journey from a leaky storage unit to a dusty closet, a piece of the original fabric returns to San Francisco. Comments or ideas? Email us at headlines@latimes.com.

Column: Embracing Trump, an ambitious Bush plays up ties to man who gleefully belittled his father

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-06-08/texas-ag-race-george-p-bush-favors-trump-over-family

George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner, announced last week his bid for the Republican nomination for state attorney general. “We need an attorney general that’s above reproach,” Bush said in a swipe at the GOP incumbent, Ken Paxton. “Not under criminal indictment for securities fraud and under FBI investigation for bribery and corruption.” Perhaps that name — Bush — rings a bell. Here are a few hints: His great-grandfather was a U.S. senator. His grandpa and uncle were presidents of the United States, Nos. 41 and 43, respectively. His father was governor of Florida and in 2016 became the third member of the Bush clan to seek the White House. But you wouldn’t know any of that from George P. Bush’s announcement speech, or the video accompanying his campaign launch. It’s evident, though, he has a major crush on Donald Trump. Politics Stu Spencer says President Trump killed the GOP of old and Reagan would have been disgusted with him. June 3, 2021 In fact, in a 10-minute address that name-checked virtually every president since Gerald Ford, the only mention that Bush made of his famous family was to say he was the only one who endorsed Trump after he ridiculed and gleefully humiliated his father, Jeb, en route to the GOP nomination. Trump also insulted Bush’s mother, Columba, who was born in Mexico. The former-president-not-named-Bush appears several times in George P.’s launch video, which includes a Trumpian vow to “drain the swamp” in both the state capital of Austin and in Washington, D.C., even though the latter lies 1,500 miles away from Texas. You can’t say the 45-year-old political scion lacks for ambition. There’s a bit of a tradition in Texas, heaving one’s family under the bus in service to Trump. The state’s junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz, was a fierce Trump critic in 2016 when the two battled in the GOP primaries, calling him “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar.” Cruz then went on to be one of Trump’s most fervent loyalists, even after he linked Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and belittled the looks of the senator’s wife, Heidi. Bygones. Elections are, of course, about winning and in that way Bush’s fealty to Trump makes perfect sense, even if some consider the erasure of his family unseemly. “An anti-Trump Republican winning a Republican primary is about as likely as a pro-Trump Democrat winning a Democratic primary,” said Matthew Dowd, who was chief strategist for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign but has since departed the GOP. Bush is perhaps best known in Texas for a dust-up over renovation of the Alamo, that most sainted of Texas shrines. The costly project has been enmeshed in a heated debate over how best to tell the story of the 1836 battle near the present-day city of San Antonio, leading the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, to threaten to remove oversight from Bush’s General Land Office. The two managed to square things away, however, and avoided a further collision when Bush signaled his intention to run for attorney general and not challenge Patrick’s bid for a third term in 2022. For his part, Atty. Gen. Paxton may have set some kind of modern-day record by serving most of his time as Texas’ chief law enforcement officer while under indictment on charges of securities fraud. The FBI is also probing allegations by former aides that Paxton abused his office to benefit a wealthy donor. Paxton called the charges “an unsubstantiated smear campaign.” Taking aim at Bush, he suggested his rival is running for attorney general merely to position himself for an inevitable run at the White House. “Texans know Attorney General Paxton’s rock-solid conservative record,” a spokesman said after Bush entered the race. “Ken Paxton has been and will continue to be the tip of the spear in protecting President Trump’s America First principles.” It will be hard for Bush to out-Trump Paxton, who demonstrated his allegiance to Trump by going to the U.S. Supreme Court and filing a meritless lawsuit seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s November victories in four states. None of them was Texas, which Trump carried. The high court brushed aside the suit without a hearing. Politics Efforts by Texas Republicans to pass voting restrictions tests the enduring relationship between the party and big business in the state. May 7, 2021 Still, Bush is doing his best to curry favor. He teased his announcement with tweets vowing to “restore Trump-era immigration policies” and gushing over a “great” conversation with the ex-president about the future of Texas and their alliance going forward. (Trump, though, has yet to make an endorsement.) Bush campaign swag includes drink koozies that feature a quote from a 2019 Trump appearance in Texas, when the land commissioner joined him onstage: “This is the only Bush that likes me! This is the only Bush that got it right. I like him!” The attorney general’s race promises to be fierce, and nasty. Despite his legal difficulties Paxton remains a formidable candidate for reelection, in part because some conservative Republicans associate the Bush name with a kind of moderation — relatively speaking — that has fallen from political fashion. Those with long enough memories remember how George W. Bush, a former Texas governor and George P.’s uncle, worked closely with Democrats on, among other things, an overhaul of the state’s education system. Some voters may question Bush’s character and integrity for ditching his family and wedding himself to their nemesis, but Wayne Slater doesn’t see that being a problem inside the Bush clan. “They support George P. as part of the family business and understand he needs to do whatever he needs to do, including cozying up to Donald Trump,” said Slater, who spent 30 years covering Texas politics for the Dallas Morning News. A onetime political advisor who remains close to the Bushes agreed. “Blood is very thick in that family,” said the Texas Republican, who asked not to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. “I doubt there’s even a moment when they think he’s being disloyal.” George P. Bush suggested as much, telling Fox News, “Dad gets it” and saying “a few Bushes” might even join him at some point on the campaign trail. Maybe in disguise, hidden beneath a Trump 2024 banner.

Theaters or HBO Max? Warner Bros. movie plans take shape as Discovery merger looms

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-06-08/can-warner-bros-keep-movie-dreams-alive

On Dec. 3, Warner Bros. — the 98-year-old studio known for such gems as “Casablanca” and “The Dark Knight” — stunned Hollywood by announcing its entire 2021 film lineup would be available on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day in the U.S., where theaters were hobbled by the coronavirus. Many people in the industry, as well as Warner Bros. insiders, worried that a studio that had made talent relationships its signature for decades had lost its way. After three years of upheaval under owner AT&T, Warner Bros. is confronting another industry-changing shakeup. Just weeks ago, the studio learned it would be merged with Discovery, home of HGTV, Food Network and Animal Planet. But as the $43-billion Discovery merger ambles toward regulatory approval next year, Warner Bros.’ risky release strategy, internally dubbed “Project Popcorn,” appears to be working. Movies such as “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” have done better than expected at the box office and brought millions of subscribers to HBO Max, according to executives. “I’m both happy and relieved, because it has ultimately played out almost exactly as we hoped it would,” said Carolyn Blackwood, chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Pictures Group. “We’ve got filmmakers and talent who are now happy, we’ve got exhibitors that are happy, we’ve got audiences that are happy, and our partners at HBO Max are thrilled.” Despite skepticism, Warner Bros. leaders had long insisted that same-day releases were a pandemic special — a 2021-only solution to the problem of COVID-19 shutting down cinemas. Although the future of Warner Bros. under Discovery remains unclear, the studio’s strategy for next year and beyond is coming into focus. After this year, the Burbank studio will go with a half-and-half approach to its schedule, executives said. Of the roughly 20 movies Warner Bros. makes annually in the coming years, 10 to 12 will be designated specifically for HBO Max. The other 10 to 12 will launch in theaters exclusively for at least 45 days before they’re available for home viewing. Warner Bros. Pictures Group Chairman Toby Emmerich said, “What we’re really excited about is, when HBO Max is a big, robust global platform — which will happen — we will have first-class direct-to-consumer as well as worldwide theatrical capability, and I think that’s an advantage.” Inside the business of entertainment The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. The studio’s 2022 theatrical film lineup features five DC movies: “The Batman” with Robert Pattinson, “Black Adam” starring Dwayne Johnson, “The Flash” with Ezra Miller, the animated feature “DC Super Pets” and James Wan’s “Aquaman 2.” “This movie has to be played on the biggest screen around the world, and the studio gets that as well,” said Wan, who directed two “Conjuring” horror films with the studio. The next “Fantastic Beasts” film, Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” and the Olivia Wilde-directed thriller “Don’t Worry Darling” are also headed to theaters next year. For HBO Max, Steven Soderbergh recently wrapped shooting on his feature “Kimi,” starring Zoë Kravitz. Also on the docket: a Latinx re-imagining of “Father of the Bride” starring Andy Garcia and a “House Party” reboot from LeBron James’ production company Spring Hill Entertainment. Additionally, Warner Bros. has mid-budget DC movies on the way for streaming, “Batgirl” and “Blue Beetle.” The tilt toward streaming represents a significant departure from pre-pandemic norms. HBO Max, which had a rocky start when it debuted in May 2020, needs content to convince subscribers to pay $15 a month as it competes head-on with Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and others. Netflix is releasing at least one movie a week. Amazon is buying MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, largely for its film library. Universal recently moved its “Boss Baby” sequel to parent company Comcast’s streaming service, Peacock. Disney is releasing Pixar’s “Luca” directly to Disney+ and selling Marvel’s “Black Widow” on the app for $30. Company Town Warner Bros. is making its entire 2021 slate of movies available for streaming on HBO Max as soon as they hit theaters. Critics say the studio is being “dismantled.” Dec. 11, 2020 “When streamers were starting ... the common wisdom was, ‘series drive subscription; movies reduce churn,’” Emmerich said. “Movies weren’t really the drivers of getting people to sign on. And I think now, the perception with film on these streaming services is that they’re punching above their weight in sign-ups.” Indeed, movies have been crucial to the growth of HBO Max. COVID-19 slowed production, and Warner Bros. had a lineup of movies with combined budgets of $1.5 billion sitting on the shelf. WarnerMedia has not said how many subscribers have viewed the films online. HBO and HBO Max now have 44.2 million subscribers combined, up from 38 million in September 2020. Andy Forssell, head of HBO Max, said the new movies have helped the service acquire subscribers, reduce churn and drive viewers to other content on HBO Max, like “The Nevers.” Of the people who signed up to watch “Wonder Woman 1984” in December and didn’t cancel, about two thirds watched the Denzel Washington movie “The Little Things,” which debuted in January, he said. “These films have been very helpful in acquisition and more helpful in retention than we ever could have seen or hoped,” Forssell said. The films have also injected much-needed life into the box office. Though “Wonder Woman 1984” posted modest results domestically in December, “Godzilla vs. Kong” grossed $99 million in the U.S. and Canada, while family film “Tom & Jerry” collected $45.9 million and the R-rated “Mortal Kombat” did $42 million. Last weekend’s “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” the latest in the popular spooky franchise, opened with a solid $24 million. The strategy faces its latest test this weekend with “In the Heights,” Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical, which has earned enthusiastic reviews. So far this year, Warner Bros. movies have accounted for more than 35% of the domestic box office, according to Comscore, helping struggling theater chains bring in patrons at a time when there were few big movies to play. The studio agreed to take a smaller cut of the box office it splits with theater chains, who were concerned that streaming movies would cannibalize ticket sales. Warner Bros. executives said there are no plans to return to exclusive theatrical windows before 2022, despite the success of Paramount’s “A Quiet Place Part II,” which is not available for streaming and set a pandemic box office record. “To their credit, they released a lot of movies, they supported the heck out of them with their marketing, they were flexible with their licensing terms and they committed to a 2022 slate with an exclusive window,” said Mark Zoradi, chief executive of Plano, Texas-based theater chain Cinemark. “For all those reasons, the relationship was repaired.” Still, the announcement of the same-day release plan damaged talent relations. Top filmmakers Christopher Nolan (“Tenet”) and Denis Villeneuve (helming the upcoming Legendary and Warner Bros. release “Dune”) blasted the strategy, and the studio had to scramble to do damage control. Resentment lingers among some top agents, though they largely blame AT&T. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who will remain at least until the merger closes, acknowledged in a recent Wall Street Journal profile that creative partners could have been given more of a heads-up. “There’s the Toby that I know that is super artist friendly and built a career on relationships, and then there’s the Toby that’s had to work for people that made him deliver just the opposite of artist-friendly news,” said Bryan Lourd of Creative Artists Agency. When asked if he thinks the company has made progress repairing those relationships, Lourd was blunt: “No, I don’t.” Lourd added that he expects things to improve under Discovery. Said Emmerich: “The initial reaction of the town, we get it. But I think we’re in a better place now. Hopefully we’ve restored trust.” Charles Roven, producer of “Wonder Woman 1984,” was pleased that Warner Bros. promised to return to theatrical windows for next year’s movies, even though his upcoming movie “The Suicide Squad” is still among the films going on HBO Max and theaters. “Of course I’m going to say that I would obviously prefer it was just a theatrical window, because I think it’s one of the most anticipated movies of the year,” Roven said. “The good news is, they limited it to 2021.” WarnerMedia’s plan for making movies for HBO Max has shifted over time. In early 2020, the company announced a mini-label called Warner Max, run by Emmerich and HBO Max’s Chief Content Officer Kevin Reilly, that would make films for the streaming service. Reilly was ousted in August, and Emmerich, a movie business veteran who’d run Warner Bros.’ New Line division for years, consolidated control over movies for the service. The studio’s plan to make movies for HBO Max adds another layer to Emmerich’s green-light process. How do you decide what movies belong on the big screen and which ones are destined for streaming? Movies Why Lin-Manuel Miranda says Chu was right to direct “In the Heights” and the circuitous journey the “Crazy Rich Asians” helmer took to the musical remix. June 3, 2021 “The Batman” and the next “Fantastic Beasts” film are obvious theatrical choices. With other genres, like thrillers and comedies, it’s not so straight forward, though some mid-budget fare will go to the big screen. Those include Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling,” a psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh that was bid on by 18 studios before Warner Bros. secured it. Though the project wasn’t a big-budget visual effects bonanza and wasn’t based on any well-known existing intellectual property, executives pegged it as a theatrical release. “For a filmmaker, you just want to work with people who love movies, and Toby Emmerich loves movies,” Wilde said. “I come in with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of ideas, and he’s a great partner because he’s equally enthusiastic. ... Their enthusiasm for my ambition was really empowering.” It’s still unclear what exactly Discovery’s plan is for Warner Bros. Discovery has said it expects $3 billion in annual synergies from the deal, which usually means layoffs. Warner Bros. under AT&T already suffered from job losses and belt-tightening, which diminished its reputation in the town. WarnerMedia Studios and Networks head Ann Sarnoff said she was cheered by the recent town hall meeting with David Zaslav, at which the Discovery chief focused on Warner Bros.’ legacy of making film and TV shows. “Everybody is excited about the enthusiasm that the Discovery folks have for all the heritage and success for WarnerMedia to date,” she said “It was great to feel David’s enthusiasm and passion for what we do.”

Asian Americans protest homeless housing near upscale Arcadia, sparking suburban battle

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/tiny-homes-homeless-housing-project-divides-affluent-arcadia

The caravan of BMWs, Audis and Teslas broke the tranquility of an overcast Saturday morning in an affluent Arcadia neighborhood, where homes sit neatly behind manicured lawns. Out of the vehicles emerged dozens of sign-carrying and slogan-yelling protesters with one destination in mind: the home of City Councilwoman April Verlato, who supported a plan to build shed-like structures for homeless people. The protesters held up banners in English and Chinese that read: “We need a safe place to live. No Tiny Shelters!” “April Verlato needs to understand that tiny homes are not the answer for Arcadia,” said Fenglan “Juli” Liu, a resident of neighboring Temple City who organized the protest on Facebook. “They’re prisons that no homeless person wants to stay in. I know. I’ve asked them.” Away from the streets of downtown L.A.’s skid row and gentrifying Echo Park, the debate over tiny homes in Arcadia offers a stark lesson in the challenges of finding shelter for unhoused people. Over the last decade, Los Angeles County’s homeless problem has spread from urban hot spots to the suburbs. While Arcadia has relatively few homeless people, the idea of providing them a place to live is stoking anger and fear in some quarters, compassion in others. The battle is notable for another reason. Many who have taken up the cause to stop homeless housing are Asian American — the latest demonstration, after similar controversies in Irvine and Koreatown, of how Asians have mobilized around the issue. Yet in this San Gabriel Valley city, some of the staunchest supporters of the tiny home plan are Asian American students from Arcadia High School. “Maybe it’s a generational thing,” 17-year-old Becky Chen said. “But I feel like we’ve done our homework, and so many of the people against tiny homes haven’t.” Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, who are 62% of the city’s roughly 59,000 residents, have taken leading roles on both sides of the debate. People have used social media platforms such as Facebook and Weibo, popular among Chinese immigrants, to attack one another. At meetings and forums, some tiny homes opponents have asked the City Council to authorize the Arcadia police to drive homeless people out of town. A rally against a proposed plan to build tiny homes has propped up outside the home of Arcadia city councilmember April Verlato #homeless #housing pic.twitter.com/zLmHh12qOe Police Chief Roy Nakamura said his officers will remove unhoused people from private property, stop those committing criminal offenses and offer motel vouchers. Nakamura, who is of Japanese descent and is the first Asian American police chief in Arcadia’s history, added, “Homelessness is not a crime.” California Arcadia announced that 28-year veteran Capt. Roy Nakamura will officially take over as head of the police department Jan. 9 Oct. 24, 2020 The controversy began in February after the Arcadia City Council voted to study installing a Tiny Shelter Project funded by grants from Measure H, the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative. If approved, the one-year pilot program would house up to 30 of the area’s growing homeless population, which is estimated at just over 100 people. The 15 tiny homes — each 8 by 8 feet in size — would have Wi-Fi, and occupants would have access to food, showers, laundry and job placement services. There would be security, and the structures would be placed in an unincorporated area next to the city, away from more affluent neighborhoods and business districts. The location selected is near Peck Park, about five miles from City Hall and around the corner from a strip club. “I don’t think anywhere else in Arcadia would have been approved,” Verlato said. “I mean, residents didn’t protest the strip club, didn’t protest the objectification of women, so I didn’t think they would have problems with a temporary homeless shelter in the area.” A May 6 public forum on the Tiny Shelter Project drew hundreds of questions from participants, and subsequent council meetings have dragged on for hours with people lining up to speak. Supporters of the project said it wouldn’t cost the city any money and is the right thing to do. Opponents said the city has not been transparent and argued the homes would increase crime and drug use. A well-organized group called the Arcadia Safety Guardians, primarily consisting of Asian Americans, gathered around 150 residents to protest outside City Hall before the council’s last two meetings. The group, founded by 20-year resident Linda Xu, started an online petition against the project, garnering 3,700 signatures as of Thursday. Arcadia Councilmember April Verlato has had protests in front of her home twice over a proposal to build 15 temporary tiny homes in town to house up to 30 homeless. She has fought back on Facebook & today she punched back with coffee & pastries. #Arcadia #Tinyhomes #protest pic.twitter.com/07VZW4cdtC The homeless population has grown significantly in Arcadia, according to some counts. In 2018, three people were tallied in city reports. That number grew to 77 in 2019 and 106 in 2020, according to information the city submitted to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said during a town hall in early May that the city “started taking the annual homeless count seriously” in 2018. That year, Verlato saw three homeless people sleeping near her office on Huntington Drive. She asked city officials to redo the count, skeptical that she had just glimpsed Arcadia’s entire homeless population. That number was amended to 15. “Tiny homes is about offering people a little bit of dignity, a little bit of hope and autonomy,” she said. When some students supporting the project showed up at the protest outside the council member’s home, some older residents were upset. “I want to know where the parents of these students are?” asked Susan Gao, an Arcadia Safety Guardians member who is Chinese American. “This was very disrespectful of these students to speak against the elders.” The group of Arcadia High students and recent alums was accused by some residents of being radicalized because of ties to the national Sunrise Movement, which has advocated for defunding the police and for supporting the Green New Deal. “I do think it’s hilarious,” Becky said, “that the people calling us out think housing the houseless is ‘communism.’” Sumie Okazaki, a New York University professor of applied psychology, said the generational rift is not surprising. Older Asian immigrants and Asian Americans often believe in an idealized meritocracy and see their hard work and struggles as a pathway to success, Okazaki said. According to that worldview, homeless people are “not living up to their abilities.” On the other hand, younger Asian Americans are more likely to believe that there are certain factors, such as racism and inequitable power structures, that can lead to homelessness, Okazaki said. Gao and the teens did find some common ground: They criticized the Arcadia City Council for being late to translate material related to the Tiny Shelter Project into Chinese. Gao also disagreed with the protest at Verlato’s home, believing the action was over the top. That day, the group led by Liu had driven a homeless man to the protest. He stood at the end of the line of demonstrators and briefly chanted against the tiny homes. The man refused to talk to a Los Angeles Times reporter and sat silently through much of the event. Verlato posted on Instagram that she was “beyond disgusted” by the tactic. During a City Council meeting, she criticized the use of “homeless people like they are zoo animals.” One of those unsheltered people in Arcadia is Benny Lozano, a 64-year-old who uses a wheelchair and who sleeps outside a thrift store. “Maybe once a week, the police come to check to see how I’m doing and if I’m not on drugs or drunk,” Lozano said. “When they see I’m not, they don’t bother me, and sometimes they give me motel coupons.” The native of Acapulco, Mexico, said he once was employed in canneries in Alaska and Hawaii and lived comfortably until crippling arthritis in both legs forced him out of work. He eventually gravitated to an unincorporated area next to Arcadia to be near his mother, who lives in a nursing home in El Monte. He laughed when asked if he would sleep in a tiny home. “If I had a chance to live in a tiny home, I would do it,” Lozano said. “It’s better than sleeping on the floor.” For a little over two years, Rodney Cabral, 38, has lived in Arcadia under bridges, in an abandoned parking lot and behind building spaces where tents, torn mattresses and broken office furniture offer unhoused people some comfort. The El Monte native said he started living on the street shortly after his mother died in 2018 and he lost his job as a cashier at Arcadia’s 99 Cents Only store. Cabral said he has had job opportunities denied because he has no home address, and the pandemic shutdown only worsened things. He said that opponents and proponents of the project have taken photos and interviewed many of the area’s homeless to make their case. “Some have said we have mental illness, and it’s kind of hard not to when you’re unemployed and depressed,” Cabral said. Cabral said he wouldn’t mind living in a tiny home, though he’s wary of restrictions such as curfews. But what he really wants is a job so he can pay his own rent. Mayor Pro Tem Paul Cheng said he was hopeful Arcadia could find a solution and avoid a situation in which a federal judge could mandate terms for dealing with local homelessness, as Judge David O. Carter is doing in Los Angeles. California Rather than funding an escrow account, the city of L.A. has 60 days to detail how it will spend $1 billion to combat homelessness, a federal judge says. April 26, 2021 In February, Arcadia passed an ordinance that prohibited homeless people from “camping” between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. in the city — except in the case of rain. Many of the area’s homeless people had already been sleeping in an unincorporated area next to Arcadia. Arcadia City Council votes to table talk of a Tiny Shelter Project to build 15 8 x 8 homes indefinitely, while agreeing to public forums on homelessness in English & Mandarin within 120 days. City will also form a citizen's committee "sometime in the future." #Arcadia #TinyHomes “What you’re seeing in this debate is the rise of Asian American politics,” said Cheng, who is Taiwanese American. “Throw in the rise of Asian hate crimes and this pandemic, and you’re seeing a lot of Asian Americans finding strength in numbers.” The protests seemed to have found their mark. Last Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to hold multiple forums on homelessness within 120 days — in English and Mandarin — and to create a citizen’s committee to investigate ways to house people who are unsheltered. The vote put an indefinite hold on the installation of the tiny homes. “In the end, we’re going to listen to our constituents,” Cheng said. “They have the power.”

Column: The right's attack on Fauci shows it has nothing in its policy tank but slogans

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-06-08/fauci-attack-slogans

All politicians appreciate the power of a symbol, a slogan or a mantra. That must account for the right wing’s transformation of the name of Anthony S. Fauci, America’s best-known and most respected immunologist, into an all-purpose swear word. The right wing has tried to make Fauci, 80, the face of a supposed campaign to absolve China from responsibility for ushering the virus that causes COVID-19 into the world, which is known as the “lab leak hypothesis.” No. — White House Press Secretary Jen Pasaki, answering whether she could imagine President Biden ever firing Anthony Fauci Tucker Carlson of Fox News alleges Fauci lied to the public to protect a virus lab in Wuhan, China, and has mocked him via graphics on his show as “Lord Fauci, Patron Saint of Wuhan.” Republican officeholders have called for Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to be fired or subjected to criminal prosecution. They accuse him of being complicit in the alleged release or escape from a Chinese laboratory of the virus causing COVID-19, a “manufactured plague,” according to a letter sent out June 4 by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Greene demanded action against Fauci by the Biden administration by June 31, a date that doesn’t exist on the calendar.) As I wrote recently, there is no evidence whatsoever that the virus originated or was warehoused in a Chinese lab and was released, either inadvertently or deliberately. Get the latest from Michael Hiltzik Commentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize winner. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Former President Trump used an attack on Fauci for an applause line during a rally Saturday in Greenville, N.C., calling him “not a great doctor but a great promoter” and asserting “he’s been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also.” Most recently, Fauci’s critics have picked over a trove of his emails, released to BuzzFeed and the Washington Post via Freedom of Information Act requests, to search for evidence of Fauci’s duplicity in commenting on the pandemic. The emails covered the period from January through June last year. They assert that the emails prove their point. In fact, they prove nothing of the kind. Instead, they portray a public servant taking pains to be judicious about theories for the origin of the virus and about purported remedies. Today, I sent this letter to Joe Biden to demand an immediate investigation into Anthony Fauci’s lies and his potential involvement in the cover up of the origins of the China virus.The American people deserve answers on the Wuhan lab & Fauci deserves to be held accountable! pic.twitter.com/ka8PdgZrlk Fauci tends to favor the hypothesis that the virus reached humans from animal hosts through natural means rather than from a laboratory accident, much less a deliberate release. But he doesn’t rule out either theory or advocate abandoning one or the other course for further investigation. That hasn’t stopped those determined to point fingers at the Chinese from bandying Fauci’s name as if it’s a magical incantation. For some audiences, his name has become shorthand for an inchoate doubt about all things COVID-related. None of this is novel as a political technique. Facts are complicated and often can’t be explicated without nuance. That process bores audiences and glazes people’s eyes. It’s much easier, and effective, to cast nuance aside and bundle every detail of a position into a simple one- or two-word mantra. Neither side of the political aisle is immune from this temptation, but it certainly seems as if the right has become more adept at employing it. Republicans rechristened the estate tax as the “death tax,” which concealed from voters the facts that it was levied not on the dead but their heirs and that its effects fell chiefly on the very richest families in America, not the average mom and dad. Similarly, the Affordable Care Act was repositioned by its enemies as a “government takeover” of healthcare and America’s health insurance companies, which were roundly detested by their customers before the ACA, were newly depicted as sources of healthcare policies that Americans loved and would hate to lose. Further back in history, the American Medical Assn. defeated President Truman’s effort to remake the healthcare system by labeling it “socialized medicine.” Indeed, “socialism” has become the all-purpose Republican label for any Democratic-supported government policy, evidently on the assumption that average Americans don’t actually know what socialism is or that the Democratic platform doesn’t resemble it at all; voters only need to think that “socialism” is a bad thing for the label to do its job. Part of the calculation behind repackaging complex matters as simple slogans is the hope that the media will be fooled into following along. This sometimes happens —”climate change,” a phrase championed by GOP pollster Frank Luntz as a less menacing alternative to “global warming,” has become the quasi-official label for, well, global warming. Luntz also contrived the “death tax” dodge, which hasn’t caught on to the same extent. Business The lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19 is getting lots of attention, but there remains no evidence for the claim that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in China or anywhere else. June 3, 2021 Possibly, Fauci’s detractors hope that his name will gain the status of an eponym, a noun formed from the name of an individual, much as the name of Vidkun Quisling, the front man for the Nazi regime during its occupation of Norway, has become synonymous with “traitor.” It’s proper to take a close look at what Fauci is specifically accused of. In the most general terms, he’s being painted as the villain in the U.S. response to the coronavirus. Americans’ doubts about the pandemic include questions about the deadliness of the virus, the efficacy of countermeasures such as masks or anti-malarial pills, and where the virus came from. Professional scientists’ views on many of these issues evolved over the last 18 months, and as a professional scientist, so did Fauci’s. The attack line that he was “wrong” in the past for advising against widespread mask wearing or doubting the scale of the pandemic’s threat merely shows that he was open to new information about a virus about which we knew almost nothing at the outset but learned quickly. As knowledge grew, Fauci’s views changed; what didn’t change was his willingness to admit that he was learning something new every day and to adjust his conclusions to the facts at hand. Since he was placed front and center as the spokesman for sober science as the pandemic unfolded, perhaps it was inevitable that he would be used to symbolize doubts about the pandemic too. More recently, however, this process has taken a distinctly sinister turn. The right wing now accuses him of having participated in the funding of so-called gain-of-function research at the Chinese government lab in Wuhan. The big promoter of this febrile theme is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Tenn.) who engaged in a notable diatribe against Fauci during a May 11 Senate subcommittee hearing at which Fauci flatly denied that the government had funded that research. For Paul’s purposes, the term gain-of-function is useful because the vast majority of laypersons have no idea what it means, so Paul can invest it with all the ominous significance he wishes. (In fact, it’s a common technique in virological and vaccine research.) Business With the pandemic ebbing across the US, the debate over lockdowns continues -- but the evidence shows they worked. May 19, 2021 As I wrote recently, the goal of promoters of the lab-leak theory such as Paul, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Trump is political, not scientific. By placing the blame on China, they hope to distract the public from Trump’s abject failure in managing the pandemic to the extent of more than 350,000 U.S. deaths from the virus in 2020. Fauci is an obstacle to this effort because like other experts he believes the probability of a lab leak to be well below that of a natural source. They also hope to distract from the Biden administration’s success in combating the pandemic by accusing the White House of being in cahoots with Fauci. For that to matter, Fauci’s reputation must be smeared. Whatever the goal, the fundamental truth is that neither Fauci nor any other virological authority is opposed to investigating the source of the virus, and no one places the probability of a lab leak at 0%. The issue is important because policy choices to avoid new pandemics in the future depend closely on the answer — if it’s a lab, then the security of virological research labs needs to be stepped up; if it’s animals in the natural environment, then animal-human contacts need to be better monitored and managed. But the attacks on Fauci have nothing to do with anything resembling responsible scientific inquiry. They’re a partisan sideshow. Luckily, the Biden White House seems at this date to be fully alive to that aspect of the campaign. Biden was asked at a June 4 news conference in Delaware literally as he was walking out the door, “Mr. President, are you confident in Dr. Fauci?” Biden thought the question so important that he stuck his head back through the door to say, “Yes, I’m very confident in Dr. Fauci.” That same day, in Washington, Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, fielded a similar question about Fauci from a Fox News reporter. “Can you imagine any circumstance where President Biden would ever fire him?” he asked. Without a moment’s hesitation, she replied, “No.”

Rick Warren to retire as lead pastor of Saddleback Church

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/rick-warren-will-retire-lead-pastor-saddleback-church

Rick Warren, the founder of a sprawling megachurch, a bestselling author and one of the most influential figures in American evangelicalism, is retiring as lead pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County. In a video service streamed to thousands of congregants on Sunday, Warren explained that he will take the title of “founding pastor,” and that the church he has led for over 40 years will soon begin a search for a successor. “This isn’t the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. It’s the beginning of the beginning,” Warren, 67, said in the video. “But we’re going to start looking for the next-generation pastor who will replace me and lead our family into the future.” Warren cited his declining health as a reason for his decision. He has a rare neurological disease called spinal myoclonus that causes spasms and blurs his vision when he gets a jolt of adrenaline. That makes preaching six services in one day a tough task, Warren said. “Serving as your pastor, it’s been the greatest privilege in the world,” he said. “And regardless of whatever new roles God has for me, I’m never gonna stop loving you. I’m never gonna stop praying for you. I’m never gonna stop serving you.” He is also stepping down to fulfill a promise he made on an Easter Sunday in 1980, during the first service of Saddleback Church, when he told his fledgling congregation of around 200 people that he would commit to leading the church for the next 40 years. Over the next few decades, Warren transformed his church into a behemoth of evangelical Christianity. What began as Rick and Kay Warren’s home Bible study exploded to over a dozen campuses in California — including the 120-acre main campus in Lake Forest — as well as churches in Argentina, Hong Kong, Germany and the Philippines. He gave the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. Over 30,000 tune in each week to hear Warren speak. While leading his church, Warren achieved influence in other ways: he became a bestselling author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book that sold more hard copies than any other in the U.S. except the Bible, according to Tanya Luhrmann, an anthropology professor at Stanford who has written about American evangelicals. He interviewed national leaders like George Bush and John McCain, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hosted Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Lake Forest campus. Time magazine flashed his face across its cover. Warren’s megachurch model became a paradigm for other church leaders. In 1995, he published “The Purpose Driven Church,” part of his effort to export Saddleback’s megachurch pattern to other congregations. Over 200,000 church leaders studied the principles in that book, according to the Saddleback Church website. Warren is both the proponent and product of the American evangelical megachurch movement— a movement characterized by multimillion-dollar buildings, enormous congregations and iconic leaders. “Rick Warren is the pope of a version of American evangelicalism,” said Amy Hall, associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School. In this “Warren-ified,” celebrity evangelicalism, churches are often defined by a single face, Hall said. Warren emerged as one of the key early figures in Orange County evangelicalism — a roster that included Paul and Jan Crouch, who founded Trinity Broadcasting Network, and Robert Schuller, founding pastor of Crystal Cathedral, said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange County. “These people are ‘charismats,’” Smoller said. “People became more attracted to the individual rather than, say, the liturgy.... Everyone knows Rick Warren. How many priests in Orange County can you name?” Smoller added that compared to previous megachurch pastors, Warren is less focused on wealth and more “transparent and authentic.” He said this could be partly attributed to Warren’s experience with tragedy. In 2013, Warren’s 27-year-old son, Matthew, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Matthew had battled “dark holes of depression” and mental illness, Warren told his congregation at the time, also posting his thoughts on his Twitter account, which now has 2.2 million followers. Warren’s time as pastor wasn’t without controversy. Obama’s choice of Warren as his invocation speaker drew the ire of civil rights groups and gay rights activists, who criticized Warren for supporting Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage. He didn’t always fit in with conservatives, either: he dedicated money to helping people with AIDS, opposed the use of torture and worked to combat global warming. Now, Saddleback Church faces a daunting task: finding a new face for the church. “It’s something like Steve Jobs leaving Apple,” Smoller said.

Some Black parents see less bullying, racism with online learning and are keeping kids home

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-08/black-parents-see-less-bullying-racism-with-online-learning

Some parents of Black Los Angeles school students opted to keep their children in distance learning after schools reopened in April because they wanted to shield them from inequitable and sometimes harsh treatment on campus, according to a report from a local advocacy group. Among Black parents surveyed, 82% cited COVID-19 as one factor for keeping their children home and 43% said they were concerned about bullying, racism and low academic standards, according to the report by Speak Up, which conducted focus groups, analyzed district data and conducted its own survey. The survey of 500 L.A. Unified parents — 96 of whom were black — asked parents about their children’s academic experiences during the pandemic. The opinions expressed by Black parents added new insights into the low return-to-school rates this spring in the nation’s second-largest school district. Speak Up’s survey respondents roughly match district demographics. Additional Black parents were then surveyed to take a closer look at themes that emerged from focus groups that Speak Up conducted with Black students in 2020. The survey was conducted March 18 to 23. Participants were recruited by Facebook ads that targeted parents who lived in L.A. and were screened to exclude those who did not identify as LAUSD parents. The survey was conducted by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points for the entire survey, the report said. “Black parents were able to see how their children were treated by their peers and instructors while kids learned at home, and in some cases, saw a system that did not benefit them,” the report said. “Many of the same parents who saw that their children seemed to learn better and thrive emotionally away from school now question whether it is in their child’s best interest to return to campus.” National polls have found that Black and Latino parents — whose communities have been disproportionately hit by COVID-19 — were far more likely than white parents to keep their children in distance learning when schools reopened. Overall, 12% of LAUSD high school students, 20% of middle school students and 36% of elementary school children returned to L.A. Unified campuses, where the majority of pupils are Latino. Among Black students, 15% returned to high school and 22% to middle school, 36% to elementary school. According to the survey, 27% of Black parents said their child’s behavior improved during the pandemic, while 8% said it got worse. And 34% said their children received better support from their teachers during distance learning, compared with the 12% who said their children got worse instruction while learning at home. “This loss of faith in the public school system will have long-term repercussions,” the report said. “The only way to undo the damage of the pandemic is to dramatically reimagine how the public schools system serves its Black students.” Speak Up is calling for LAUSD to dedicate more time and resources to the needs of Black students, who have continued to achieve lower rates of academic success in LAUSD and across the U.S. when compared with their peers. School board President Kelly Gonez said it is a district priority to ensure “our Black students and families are safe, welcomed, and supported on campus.” “While the survey had a small sample compared to the full Black student population, even a single student experiencing bullying or racism in L.A. Unified is unacceptable,” she said. The survey also asked about general satisfaction with distance learning. On this parameter, 72% of Black parents and 66% of Latino parents agreed that they were satisfied with how distance learning was working for their child, compared with 36% of white parents. In February, the district announced that $36.5 million — with $25 million from diverted school police funds and the remaining $11.5 million from next school year’s general fund budget — will go toward an achievement plan for Black students. Most of that money will fund the hiring of school climate coaches and other support staff, such as school nurses and counselors. The coaches will be responsible for applying de-escalation strategies for conflict resolution, eliminating racial disparities in school discipline practices and addressing implicit bias. A restorative justice advisor will also be placed at 53 schools where more than 200 Black students are enrolled. Reforming systemic inequities in the district will require much more than a funding commitment, said Katie Braude, chief executive of Speak Up. The group also recommends more frequent teacher evaluations to help improve anti-bias practices. “We have seen the district implement multiple initiatives to address Black student achievement in the past, but without true accountability that authentically acknowledges and incorporates the voices of Black parents and their experiences, these measures have been meaningless,” she said. “The needle has not moved.” L.A. Unified board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin, who represents neighborhoods including parts of South L.A. and Watts, said the district must develop a strategic and inclusive approach to support the academic achievement of Black students. “This report reminds us that we are not just recovering from 15 months of a global health pandemic, but also from over 400 years of neglect, abuse and mistreatment,” Franklin said. “This coming school year, particularly with the additional relief dollars, is an important opportunity to collectively plan, act, reflect, and serve in truly anti-racist ways that result in transformational outcomes for our Black scholars in L.A. Unified.” Black parents surveyed by Speak Up said they felt they had to advocate more persistently for their children than white parents. Michelle Tillett, whose daughter is a second-grader at Birdielee V. Bright Elementary in South L.A., said that when her older son was a middle schooler at Audubon Middle School, he had a semester-long substitute for his algebra class who “just didn’t want to teach Black kids.” “I wanted my voice to be heard, I wanted my son to learn math. I knew it was a critical subject,” Tillett said in an interview with The Times. The mother of three took several days off from work to speak to school administrators about the issue. She also drove her son to math enrichment programs in West L.A. to help him catch up. So when Tillett was able to monitor what and how her daughter was learning over Zoom, she saw it as an opportunity to have greater agency over her daughter’s education. “I was worried about distance learning at first, but I now see that it’s very beneficial to have her at home because I am able to see what’s taking place in the classroom, and whether or not the curriculum is set up to benefit her as an African American student,” said Tillett, who now works remotely half the time so she can stay at home with her daughter. Surveyed Black parents also said that some LAUSD teachers and administrators could not communicate effectively with them or their students — they often felt like their kids were automatically seen as guilty in any student conflict, according to the report. Speak Up’s findings of racial bias are not unique to LAUSD, said UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard, who also directs the Black Male Institute. “I think LAUSD has taken some steps over the last 15 months ... to try to be more intentional about how it can best support black students and families,” Howard said. “But I think more needs to be done structurally, and the data bear this out.” A 2021 report by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools found that Black students with learning disabilities are two to 10 times more likely to be suspended than the overall suspension rate in the county across 13 of the 14 school districts studied in L.A. County, reflecting national trends of high rates of punitive treatment of Black students. Jan Williams, the parent of a student at Dorsey High School, agreed with what the survey found. “The report is right about its most basic finding, which is that Black students face a great deal of institutional racism at LAUSD,” said Williams, a leader in Reclaim Our Schools LA, a teachers-union-backed coalition that includes parents and other local organizations. In addition to investing in Black student achievement, Williams also called for eliminating school police as part of any systemic effort to improve the fate of Black students. Speak Up, which has had funding from union opponents, and the Reclaim group have often been at odds over education issues, including when it was safe to reopen campuses.

Editorial: When will California's state of emergency stop being an emergency?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/editorial-when-will-californias-state-of-emergency-stop-being-an-emergency

California’s Emergency Services Act doesn’t detail when an emergency declaration should be made or terminated. It leaves it up to the discretion of the governor to determine what constitutes an emergency and to decide when it’s over. The only imperative is that the latter happens “at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant.” But when will conditions warrant the end of the state of emergency called by Gov. Gavin Newsom 15 months ago to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? And what will it take to reach that point? Newsom hasn’t said, other than it won’t be on June 15,when the state is expected to lift the stay-at-home order, the mask mandate and the remaining business pandemic restrictions. “We’re still in a state of emergency. This disease has not been extinguished. It’s not vanished. It’s not taking the summer months off,” he explained Friday during the first drawing in a series of cash prizes to encourage vaccinations. It’s was not a very illuminating response, and Newsom’s political opponents immediately accused him of trying to have it both ways. They have a point; even as he’s touting the economic recovery and enviable vaccination rates, he is holding on to the broad emergency powers that allow him to unilaterally suspend and alter laws, curtail people’s private movements and award no-bid contracts, an authority Newsom has used at times to direct state dollars to his campaign donors. Indeed, the crisis that gripped the state just a few months ago is gone. By most measures California is in a pretty good place, with COVID-19 tests coming back positive only 0.7% of the time on average over the past week and the lowest spread of the virus of any U.S. state. About 65% of the population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nevertheless, what Newsom should have said Friday is that there are good reasons to keep the emergency declaration in place even if it seems as if the emergency is over. For one thing, it allows for federal emergency funding to keep flowing to the state and for programs launched to address the pandemic to stay in place. The moment the declaration is terminated, all the executive orders the governor has issued, such as the one allowing pharmacy technicians to give COVID-19 shots, will end. The reality is that it is not unusual for state of emergency declarations to linger long after the crisis appears over. A case in point: The state of emergency declared after the Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018 is still in effect, and could be for years more to help facilitate the rebuilding of the community. Yet no one appears to be especially upset about that. The governor and other top officials have often made their jobs more difficult during the pandemic by trying to control the narrative rather than being straightforward and transparent. This has no doubt contributed to some of the frustration that drove more than 1.5 million Californians to sign the Newsom recall petition. While it appears that Newsom is acting in good faith to protect Californians, he hasn’t done a great job communicating that. He needs to make it clear what it will take to lift the 58 executive orders and end the suspension or alteration of the 400-some laws he’s targeted, as well as what conditions will signal that there is no more state of emergency. The public can handle the full and unfiltered truth.

The improbable true story of Judge Judy and the reporter who made her a star

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-08/judge-judy-final-episode-cbs-imdb-tv-amazon

For a courtroom TV show that has dominated daytime since 1998, the case decided April 15 on “Judge Judy” was hardly memorable: A building contractor who repaired a ceiling was suing the homeowner for an unpaid $500 bill. Judge Judith Sheindlin, who instantly smelled a rat, probed the defendant’s rambling excuses and delivered a swift verdict. “Pay your bills,” she told the stunned homeowner. “Judgment for the plaintiff, and that’s all. We’re finished. Thank you very much!” It’s a moment that would be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Emmy-winning phenomenon — which is to say, just about anyone — but as the courtroom cleared and the set went dark, history was made. The contractor’s case, running Tuesday, marks the last of more than 12,500 taped by Sheindlin during 25 years in the spotlight. “Judge Judy’s” final season on CBS ends Sept. 10. As family members joined with her to celebrate, producers had a surprise: They played a video tribute with cameos by Jimmy Kimmel, Whoopi Goldberg, Ryan Seacrest, Kelly Ripa, Joy Behar, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Meghan McCain and Wendy Williams. All showered praise on a woman who worked for more than two decades as a family court judge and prosecutor, reinvented herself at age 52 and went on to a brilliant second act. As staff members said their heartfelt goodbyes, the judge herself was uncharacteristically soft-spoken. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Sheindlin told them via video conference, set up as part of the show’s COVID-19 safety protocols. “I feel so blessed that you’ve given me the benefit of your talents over all these years — and changed the dynamic of me, my family and friends forever.” An era had ended. But if you think Her Honor is slowing down, think again. The woman who cracks that her only hobby is work will unveil a new courtroom program, exclusively on Amazon’s free streaming service IMDb TV, later this year. Looking back, she reflected on her improbable rise to the top. “Let me start by thanking the two people who actually started my journey,” she told her staff. “Josh Getlin and Heidi Evans.” World & Nation It was just another tragedy in family court. Feb. 14, 1993 In fall 1992, I was a national features writer for The Times, based in New York City. I’d begun a series about hardworking Americans who shook the bureaucratic cage with little or no success, but kept tilting at windmills. There would be four profiles, and the idea for the first one came from my wife, Heidi, a reporter for the New York Daily News. She’d written a series about the state’s deteriorating juvenile justice system that summer, and she marveled at Sheindlin, a fiery, 5-foot 2-inch force of nature in Manhattan’s Family Court. Fed up with lazy colleagues and political correctness, the judge called the bureaucracy “a disaster” that didn’t protect the public against violent young criminals. “Shirley MacLaine will play her in a movie someday,” Heidi said. Intrigued, I called Sheindlin to ask if I might write a profile about her. She agreed. It helped that she was the only Family Court judge who allowed the press into her courtroom. When I asked if there were any rules to follow, I got my first dose of what later would become familiar to millions: “No chewing gum,” she snapped. “And leave your gun at home.” I watched Sheindlin in action for three weeks, handling 50 to 60 cases a day. She popped eight Tylenols each morning to prepare for an onslaught of juveniles who had been charged with violent crimes, custody disputes and child abuse cases. She smoked and worked out like a fiend to ward off the stress. There were no relaxing moments, not even during lunches we shared in her chambers. One day, Sheindlin — who’d ordered her usual sushi — watched, appalled, as my giant burrito began spurting sour cream and guacamole after I bit into it. “And you wonder why you get heartburn,” she said. “Men!” After finishing the article, I needed a vacation. But a larger story was just beginning — a Great Chain of Serendipity that would change her life and mine. The profile ran on Valentine’s Day 1993, and I got an early morning call from the judge. She loved the piece, saying it was honest and fair. I learned later that she’d found a Manhattan newsstand that sold the Sunday Los Angeles Times and snapped up all the copies. “In those days, this kind of expense ate into the budget,” she jokes during a recent interview from her home in Naples, Fla. “But it was worth it. You’re talking about someone who was, other than in my own little world, anonymous. Sometimes I felt in Family Court that, although I was respected, my views were as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party. So I enjoyed the moment.” Several hours later, I got another call — from a “60 Minutes” associate producer. She’d read the profile and told me that Sheindlin was a natural candidate for a segment. Could I put her in touch with the judge? Judy (by now we were on a first-name basis) agreed to do the story, which aired in October 1993. She watched nervously in her bedroom with her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, a New York Supreme Court judge, and was relieved that correspondent Morley Safer had treated her fairly. “That night, we went to a diner with my friend Elaine and her husband, Barry, to celebrate,” she recalls. “I had a tuna fish sandwich. Again, we thought that would be it.” Several days later, Judy got a call from literary agent Jane Dystel, who saw the “60 Minutes” segment and told her she could write a compelling book. The judge said she wasn’t much of a writer, but agreed to try if she could write it with me. We began collaborating on weekends, working at a small glass table in her tiny one-bedroom apartment on East 52nd Street in Manhattan. She had no food in her fridge, just Kodak film. Jerry ran out for bagels and coffee when I started to look faint. She talked, I typed. My job was to shape her language, not her message. Every time I suggested that her view might be a bit harsh, she’d crack, “Josh, don’t be such a liberal.” I thought the furious pace would ease when she announced one Sunday that she and Jerry were taking a Caribbean vacation. No such luck. While I had lunch at my desk the next day, the phone rang. It was Judy. “I got an idea for a new chapter walking on the beach,” she said. “Take this down.” HarperCollins bought the book, but we needed a snappy title. Heidi said it could be a zinger the judge used in court, and Judy blurted out: “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” She loved the idea, but the publisher balked, saying TV shows would not interview her with such a title. Judy prevailed, and the book has sold 216,709 copies. But the biggest surprise was still around the corner. In 1993, Judge Joseph Wapner ended his 12-year run on the syndicated courtroom show “The People’s Court.” Two of its producers told Judy, who was looking to leave Family Court, that she could star in her own show. Larry Lyttle, head of Big Ticket Television, shot a marketing reel and the rest is history: Three years later, “Judge Judy” was the highest-rated show in daytime TV. The Times profile had launched a legend, as Judy became one of TV’s most well-paid stars, earning $47 million annually. Today, she owns beautiful homes in several states and no longer inhales Tylenols to start her day. Otherwise, she’s remarkably unchanged. While celebrity warps many stars, Judy insists she’s the same person who survived Manhattan’s Family Court. “I’ve always been me,” she says. “I came to Hollywood as a fully-cooked gal.” Television executives learned this the hard way, when Judy put on a master class in how to get paid what she was worth, given the show’s astronomical profits — without even the semblance of negotiations. She’s also one of the most fun-loving people I know. Judy threw a bash for family and friends one night in 2015 aboard the World cruise ship, docked in Manhattan. The highlight came when she sat at a piano, vodka and diet cranberry cocktail in hand, to belt out a duet with Neil Sedaka on “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” As a journalist, I’ve interviewed thousands of people , but only a handful have turned into sustained friendships like the one my wife and I have with Judy. Over 29 years, she’s become more family than friend. When our daughter, Alex, turned 1, Judy and Jerry came to her birthday party in judicial robes. With great ceremony, they “swore her in” as a citizen of New York City. When Heidi expressed a vague yearning to have a second child, Judy ruled her out of order, saying that one kid was a full-time job and that she already had a second full-time job at the Daily News. “Take a deep breath and count to 10,” she advised. “The feeling will pass. Get a dog.” Over the years, we gathered at her home in Greenwich, Conn., for Thanksgiving. One night, Judy took Alex, then 8, by the hand to meet Michael Feinstein, a Grammy-nominated performer and music historian, who was a friend. “This is Alex,” she said with a wink, as the two shook hands. “She also sings and plays the piano.” Entertainment & Arts ‘Byrd’ and ‘Judge Judy’: It’s a bond that’s secure April 15, 2012 Judy had set up a karaoke machine for guests and grandkids who wanted to perform, and Alex began singing Broadway tunes in the judge’s living room, every year for nine years. Feinstein became Alex’s mentor, and at 17, she performed a solo cabaret show at his Park Avenue club. The judge was there that night, cheering her on. “The world is big, but the circle is small,” Judy says of our history. “Every once in a while you meet someone who falls into your life and changes your life.” As “Judge Judy” ends, pundits will speculate on Sheindlin’s legacy. The show is comfort food for those who love it when the bad guys get their comeuppances. Her focus on personal responsibility also resonates. At the same time, the national conversation around criminal justice, especially juvenile justice, has changed since her battles as a hard-liner in Family Court. “The country is reflecting on historic and current inequities with a goal of meaningful change,” she says. “But to me, there are constants: Take care of the children that you bring into this world. Don’t steal other people’s property. Respect the community where you live.” Asked about her show’s impact, Judy adds: “So many of the emails and letters I get are from women who watched me and had their daughters watch me. They told me the show helped them take the next step, whether it was getting a divorce, leaving an abusive person, asking for a raise and never, ever becoming somebody’s prisoner.” Judy knows from next steps. She has no plans to retire, no desire to dial it down. At age 78, she’s moving full speed ahead on a new show. And that, for me, is her true legacy — that there are second, third and maybe even fourth acts in American life. As she said at her last taping: “That’s all. We’re finished. Thank you very much!” Next! ‘Judge Judy’ ’Where: CBSWhen: 4 p.m. WeekdaysRating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

The Times podcast: How the Los Angeles Public Library made libraries cool

https://www.latimes.com/podcasts/story/2021-06-08/the-times-podcast-la-public-library

Listen to this episode of The Times: Apple | Spotify | Stitcher | Google It’s been quite the year for the Los Angeles Public Library — and the COVID-19 pandemic is only part of the story. Inauguration Day cast a national spotlight on Amanda Gorman, who got her start reading poetry via the L.A. Public Library’s youth program. And teen punk group the Linda Lindas gained worldwide fame after a concert at the Cypress Park branch of one of America’s largest public library systems. Today, we talk to L.A. librarian Kevin Awakuni about how the city’s system has become an incubator for making libraries hip. We also get L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison to explain how a city long dismissed as an intellectual wasteland learned to treasure its libraries in the wake of a devastating fire. Host: Gustavo Arellano Guest: Los Angeles Public Library librarian Kevin Awakuni, and L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison More reading: ‘Whoa, this is crazy’: L.A. teen punks the Linda Lindas on going viral (just before finals) How a 22-year-old L.A. native became Biden’s inauguration poet Who started the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Library? Susan Orlean investigates in her new book Listen to more episodes of The Times here

Senate report details sweeping security failures around Jan. 6 insurrection

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/senate-report-details-sweeping-failures-jan-6-capitol-riot

A Senate investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has uncovered broad government, military and law enforcement missteps surrounding the violent attack, including breakdowns within multiple intelligence agencies and a lack of training and preparation for Capitol Police officers, who were quickly overwhelmed by the rioters. The Senate report released Tuesday is the first — and could be the last — bipartisan review of how hundreds of former President Trump’s supporters were able to breach security lines and break into the Capitol that day, interrupting the certification of President Biden’s victory. The report includes new details about the police officers on the front lines who suffered chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones, and who told senators that they were left with no direction when command systems broke down. The report recommends immediate changes to give the Capitol Police chief more authority, to provide better planning and equipment for law enforcement and to streamline intelligence gathering among federal agencies. As a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, such as Trump’s role as he called for his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat that day. It does not call the attack an insurrection, though it was. And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection more broadly. “This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which conducted the inquiry along with the Senate Rules Committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.” The House passed legislation in May to create a commission modeled after a panel that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks two decades ago. But the Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to pass the measure there, with many Republicans pointing to the Senate report as sufficient. Politics The network canceled a nearly $200,000 ad buy about the insurrection, according to the PAC behind the commercial. June 6, 2021 The top Republican on the Rules Committee, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, opposed the commission, arguing that an investigation would take too long. He said the recommendations made in the Senate could be implemented faster, including legislation that he and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the rules committee chair, intend to introduce soon that would give the Capitol Police chief more authority to request assistance from the National Guard. The Senate report recounts how the Guard was delayed for hours on Jan. 6 as officials in multiple agencies took bureaucratic steps to release the troops. It details hours of calls between officials in the Capitol and the Pentagon and as the then-chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, desperately begged for help. The report says the Pentagon spent hours “mission planning” and seeking multiple layers of approvals as Capitol Police were being overwhelmed and brutally beaten by the rioters. It also states that the Defense Department’s response was “informed by criticism” of its heavy-handed response to protests around the nation in the summer of 2020 after George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. In the report, senators are heavily critical of the Capitol Police Board, a three-member panel made up of the heads of security for the House and Senate and the architect of the Capitol. The board is required to approve requests by the police chief, even in urgent situations. Senators found that on Jan. 6 none of the board members understood their own authority or could detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance, and recommend in the report that members “regularly review the policies and procedures.” Politics An independent commission to study the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection would be modeled after a similar panel that studied the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has long been hailed as a bipartisan success. May 20, 2021 Two of the three members of the board, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, were pushed out in the days after the attack. Sund also resigned under pressure. Klobuchar said Congress needs to change the law “immediately” to give the police chief more authority. The report recommends a consolidated intelligence unit within the Capitol Police after widespread failures from multiple agencies that did not predict the attack, even though insurrectionists were planning it openly on the internet. The police’s intelligence unit “knew about social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, including a plot to breach the Capitol, the online sharing of maps of the Capitol Complex’s tunnel systems, and other specific threats of violence,” the report says, but agents did not properly inform leadership of everything they had found. On Dec. 28, for example, the report notes that an individual emailed a public Capitol Police account and warned about “countless tweets from Trump supporters saying they will be armed on January 6th” and “tweets from people organizing to ‘storm the Capitol.’” There were also internal warnings of an uptick in posts on various sites that included maps of the Capitol, including its underground tunnels. But those specifics were never disseminated widely. Start your day right Sign up for Essential California for the L.A. Times biggest news, features and recommendations in your inbox six days a week. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. The senators also criticize the FBI and the Homeland Security Department for downplaying online threats and for not issuing formal intelligence bulletins to help law enforcement plan. In a response to the report, the Capitol Police acknowledged the need for improvements, some of which they said they are already making. “Law-enforcement agencies across the country rely on intelligence, and the quality of that intelligence can mean the difference between life and death,” the police statement said. During the attack, the Capitol Police, or USCP, were heavily compromised by multiple failures: bad intelligence, poor planning, faulty equipment and a lack of leadership, the report says. The force’s incident command system “broke down during the attack,” leaving officers on the front lines without orders. There were no functional incident commanders, and some senior officers were fighting instead of giving orders. “USCP leadership never took control of the radio system to communicate orders to front-line officers,” the investigation found. World & Nation Amid the uproar since last week’s riot in Washington, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman — whom some are hailing as a hero — has stayed silent. Jan. 15, 2021 “I was horrified that NO deputy chief or above was on the radio or helping us,” one officer told the committee in an anonymous statement. “For hours the screams on the radio were horrific[,] the sights were unimaginable and there was a complete loss of control.... For hours NO Chief or above took command and control. Officers were begging and pleading for help for medical triage.” Acting Chief of Capitol Police Yogananda Pittman, who replaced Sund, told the committees the lack of communication resulted from “incident commanders being overwhelmed and engaging with rioters, rather than issuing orders over the radio.” The committees’ interviews with police officers detail what one officer told them was “absolutely brutal” abuse from Trump’s supporters as they ran over officers and broke into the building. Police described hearing racial slurs and seeing Nazi salutes. One officer trying to evacuate the Senate said he stopped several men in full tactical gear who said, “You better get out of our way, boy, or we’ll go through you to get [the senators].’” The insurrectionists told police officers they would first kill them, and then kill the members of Congress. One officer said he had a “tangible fear” that he might not make it home alive. The senators acknowledged the officers’ bravery, noting that one told them, “The officers inside all behaved admirably and heroically and, even outnumbered, went on the offensive and took the Capitol back.”

Clippers vs. Jazz: The French connection collides in this series

https://www.latimes.com/sports/clippers/story/2021-06-08/clippers-jazz-game-1-preview-rudy-gobert-nicolas-batum

Before Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Toronto and the Clippers could reach Nicolas Batum last November, inquiring about the soon-to-be free agent’s services, his first call was from the Utah Jazz. It wasn’t surprising that Rudy Gobert, Utah’s 7-foot-1 center, called Batum after his surprising release by Charlotte (Batum learned of it via social media). The friends and teammates on France’s national team are “really close,” Batum told The Times in February, and they share an agent. “It was like, ‘Yeah, Nico, come on. Come with me, let’s do it together,’” Batum recounted. Within 24 hours, as contenders kept contacting Batum, the 6-8 forward made his own call — deciding to join the Clippers in hopes of providing a dose of redemption for both a player seeking a career rebound and a franchise in need of stable, veteran voices. He said Gobert was happy for him. Seven months later, that decision has helped the Clippers reach a second-round series against Gobert and the top-seeded Jazz that begins Tuesday in Salt Lake City. No need for FaceTime. Batum and Gobert will be seeing plenty of one another during the next two weeks. Clippers After defeating Dallas in Game 7, the Clippers are trying to erase their curse by getting past top-seeded Utah for their first conference finals. June 6, 2021 “It’s always fun to match up against guys from your country, same country in the playoffs,” Batum said after contributing 11 points and five assists in the Clippers’ 126-111 victory Sunday over Dallas in Game 7 of their first-round series. “I’ve faced Tony [Parker] before, but I’ve never faced Rudy. So it’s going to be a very good matchup. “He had a great season. I guess maybe he’s going to be the defensive player of the year. I hope he wins, he deserves it, but now we have to beat him. We have to beat him now. Utah had a great, great season. Great players, great coaching staff, but we want the same thing. We have the same goal.” With a series win, the Clippers would advance to the first conference finals in the franchise’s 51-year history; the Jazz are seeking their first conference finals appearance since 2007. Asked about the matchup only minutes after Sunday’s win, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue wasn’t yet ready. “Can we enjoy this one first?” he asked. The reaction was as much about his desire to savor the moment — he joined Red Auerbach as the only coaches in NBA history to win his first four Game 7s — as it was about staving off the work of breaking down how to attack a deep, talented Jazz team whose 52-20 record and plus-9.0 net rating, the difference between points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, were the NBA’s best. (Second place in net rating? The Clippers.) In whatever plan Lue chooses, Batum figures to play a prominent part for a second consecutive round, even if Utah’s size might lead Batum to return to a reserve role. To outlast Dallas in seven games, one of Lue’s most influential tactical changes was calling on Batum to start as part of a smaller lineup beginning with Game 4. When Batum sat while Luka Doncic played, the Clippers were picked apart, outscored by 44 points in 87 minutes. Yet during the 194 minutes that the young Slovenian superstar and veteran Frenchman overlapped, the advantage flipped, with the Clippers outscoring Dallas by 37. In the last four games, Batum deflected a team-high 17 passes. The Clippers were profoundly better with Batum on the court, outscoring Dallas by 17 points per 100 possessions when he played while being outscored by 11.5 points when he sat. Eight Clippers played at least 90 minutes in the series, and none produced a higher combined net rating than Batum’s, only 15 months after his career-worst season led Charlotte to move him from its rotation to make way for a youth movement. During his final nine minutes of Sunday’s fourth quarter, Batum grabbed three of his seven rebounds and blocked a layup by 7-4 Boban Marjanovic. When Lue described the win as a “total team effort,” he meant not only his star duo of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George — both of whom called Batum in November as part of the Clippers’ recruitment — but the invaluable contributions of Batum, Terance Mann, Luke Kennard and Marcus Morris, who combined for 58 points two days after combining for just 12 in Game 6. “Marcus made shots. Batum, what we asked him to do defensively,” said guard Reggie Jackson, who had 40 combined points in Games 6 and 7. “But T-Mann and Luke, for their minutes to fluctuate the way they have through the season, not necessarily always in the series — coming in and playing big minutes and not being afraid of the moment in Game 7, hats off to them.” The Clippers surely would rather enter the second round as rested as Utah, which has not played since Wednesday after needing only five games to eliminate Memphis. Still, the Clippers’ fatigue comes with confidence. “This series opened our eyes to certain things we need to get better at,” Mann said. “I think it will definitely help us. We definitely got better as a team this series.” Clippers The Utah Jazz won the season series 2-1, but in January when both teams were at full strength the Clippers won. A first look at the series. June 7, 2021 Lue viewed it as a test his team needed to prepare for the top-seeded Jazz, whose net rating of plus-8.4 ranked fourth best among the 16 playoff teams. “Just battle tested going to seven games in the first round, coming out here, winning the game on our home floor, which we didn’t play well [on] the first three games, it just shows a lot about our team, about the resilience, about what we have done all season long,” Lue said. The unenviable task of containing Doncic could be, in hindsight, an invaluable stress test for a defense that will need to remain focused to slow down Utah. In the playoffs, the Jazz have generated the fifth-most points per play in the half-court offense and are the best team at converting put-backs into points by a significant margin. “Just the mindset of having to sit down and guard, help, rotate came into play again this series,” George said. “And it’s definitely what we are going to have to do going into the next one.” Should the Clippers need another long-armed veteran defender on the court, or just an insider’s scouting report on what makes Gobert tick, there is little doubt whom they will call.

U.S. identifies 3,900 children separated from parents at border under Trump

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/3900-children-identified-separated-parents-border

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it has identified more than 3,900 children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy on illegal crossings, providing one of the more detailed accounts of a chapter in U.S. immigration history that drew widespread condemnation. The Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force count of 3,913 children separated between July 1, 2017, and the end of Trump’s presidency is well below the more than 5,500 children identified by the American Civil Liberties Union in court filings, based on government information. The task force said it identified “nearly all” children who were separated under the zero-tolerance policy but will review another 1,723 cases since July 2017, which would bring total cases examined to 5,636, close to the ACLU tally. The discrepancy appears to stem largely from a federal court ruling in San Diego that excluded 1,723 children who were separated for reasons other than Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, such as risk of endangerment or questions about parentage. The task force will also try to determine if children were separated during the first six months of Trump’s presidency, starting in January 2017, which was outside the scope of the ACLU lawsuit. That could raise the final number. Of the 3,913 children, 1,786 have been reunified with a parent, mostly during Trump’s tenure. Parents of another 1,965 have been contacted, and the whereabouts of 391 have not been established. The report provided data that had not been previously released. Nearly 60% of children separated under the zero-tolerance policy were Guatemalans (2,270), followed by Hondurans (1,150), Salvadorans (281), Mexicans (75), Brazilians (74) and Romanians (23). World & Nation The 5-year-old is one of thousands of children and teens who have arrived at the U.S. southern border without a parent or legal guardian since January. March 29, 2021 The Border Patrol’s Yuma, Ariz., sector recorded the highest number of separations of the agency’s nine sectors on the Mexican border, with 1,114. The Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which dominated media attention as the busiest corridor for illegal crossings by far, was second with 1,025 separations. The El Paso sector, which was the site of a trial run of the policy in 2017 that was not publicly disclosed at the time, was third with 982 separated children. The Biden administration has vowed to reunite parents who are still apart from their children, but the pace has been slow. The first four parents were returned to the United States last month, part of what the task force identified as an initial group of 62 people.

Many websites disrupted by outage at San Francisco cloud company Fastly

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/many-websites-disrupted-outage-cloud-company-fastly

Multiple websites went offline briefly across the globe Tuesday after an apparent outage at the San Francisco-based cloud service company Fastly, revealing how crucial a handful of companies running the internet’s plumbing have become. Dozens of high-traffic websites, including the New York Times, CNN, Twitch, the Guardian and the British government’s home page, could not be reached. In Asia, cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore were also affected, with users unable to access the CNN website. In China, where most foreign media websites are blocked, there was little discussion on the outage on social media platforms such as Weibo. Fastly acknowledged a problem just before 3 a.m. Pacific time. It said in repeated updates on its website that it was “continuing to investigate the issue.” About an hour later, the company said: “The issue has been identified and a fix has been applied. Customers may experience increased origin load as global services return.” A number of sites that were hit early appeared to be coming back online. Fastly said it had identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions, meaning the outage appeared to be caused internally. Business Many people back at work in the new year are running into a messaging obstacle as the widely used Slack platform experiences a global outage. Jan. 4, 2021 Still, all major futures markets in the U.S. fell sharply minutes after the outage hit almost exactly a month after a cyberattack that caused the operator of the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S. to halt its operations. There was no indication early Tuesday, however, that the outage was an attack. Internet traffic measurement by Kentik shows that Fastly began to recover from the outage roughly an hour after it struck at midmorning European time — and before most Americans were awake. “Looks like it is slowly coming back,” said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert at Kentik. He said it was a serious incident “because Fastly is one of the world’s biggest CDNs” — content delivery networks — “and this was a global outage.” Politics The U.S. government recovered millions of dollars in Bitcoin paid by Colonial Pipeline to ransomware hackers who locked up its computer system last month. June 7, 2021 As a content-delivery network, Fastly provides vital but behind-the-scenes cloud-computing “edge servers” to many of the web’s popular sites. These servers store, or “cache,” content such as images and video in places around the world so that they are closer to users, who can fetch the content more quickly and smoothly instead of having to access the site’s original server. Fastly says its services mean that a European user going to an American website can get the content from 200 to 500 milliseconds faster. The impact of Fastly’s trouble highlights the relative fragility of the internet’s current architecture, given its heavy reliance on Big Tech companies — such as Amazon’s AWS cloud services — as opposed to a more decentralized model. “Even the biggest and most sophisticated companies experience outages. But they can also recover fairly quickly,” Madory said. When the outage hit, some visitors trying to access CNN.com got a message that said: “Fastly error: unknown domain: cnn.com.” Attempts to access the Financial Times website turned up a similar message while visits to the New York Times and the British government’s gov.uk site returned an “Error 503 Service Unavailable” message, along with the line “Varnish cache server,” which is a technology that Fastly is built on.

Driver deliberately plows into Muslim family, killing four, Canadian police say

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/muslim-family-targeted-deadly-attack-canada

A driver plowed a pickup truck into a family of five, killing four of them and seriously injuring the other in a deliberate attack that targeted the victims because they were Muslims, Canadian police said Monday. Authorities said a young man was arrested in the parking lot of a nearby mall after the incident Sunday night in the Ontario city of London. Police said a black pickup truck mounted a curb and struck the victims at an intersection. “This was an act of mass murder perpetuated against Muslims,” Mayor Ed Holder said. “It was rooted in unspeakable hatred.” The extended family issued a statement identifying the dead as Salman Afzal, 46; his wife Madiha, 44; their daughter, Yumna, 15; and a 74-year-old grandmother whose name was withheld. The hospitalized boy was identified as Fayez. “Everyone who knew Salman and the rest of the Afzal family know the model family they were as Muslims, Canadians and Pakistanis,” the statement said. “They worked extremely hard in their fields and excelled. Their children were top students in their school and connected strongly with their spiritual identity.” A fundraising webpage said the father was a physiotherapist and cricket enthusiast and his wife was working on a PhD in civil engineering at Western University in London. Their daughter was finishing ninth grade, and the grandmother was a “pillar” of the family, the page said. Technology and the Internet Muslim Advocates’ lawsuit claims Facebook officials broke a consumer-protection law by falsely promising the company would remove content that ran afoul of its moderation standards. April 8, 2021 The family said in its statement that the public needs to stand against hate and Islamophobia. “This young man who committed this act of terror was influenced by a group that he associated with, and the rest of the community must take a strong stand against this, from the highest levels in our government to every member of the community,” the statement said. Nathaniel Veltman, 20, was in custody facing four counts of first-degree murder. Police said Veltman, a resident of London, did not know the victims. Detective Supt. Paul Waight said police had not determined if the suspect was a member of any specific hate group. He said London police were working with federal police and prosecutors on potential terrorism charges. He declined to detail evidence pointing to a possible hate crime charge but said the attack was planned. Technology and the Internet The Muslim Pro app has features that make it easier to practice Islam. But revelations about its data collection have upset some users. Nov. 23, 2020 About a dozen police officers combed the area around the crash site looking for evidence Monday. Blue markers on the ground dotted the intersection. “We believe the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” Police Chief Stephen Williams said. Canada is generally welcoming toward immigrants and all religions, but in 2017, a French Canadian man known for far-right, nationalist views went on a shooting rampage at a Quebec City mosque that killed six people. One woman who witnessed the aftermath of Sunday’s deadly crash said she couldn’t stop thinking about the victims. Paige Martin said she stopped at a red light about 8:30 p.m. when a large pickup roared past her. She said her car shook from the force. World & Nation A new report says New Zealand’s intelligence agencies were so focused on Islamic extremism that they neglected threats such as white supremacism. Dec. 8, 2020 “I was shaken up, thinking it was an erratic driver,″ Martin said. Minutes later, she said, she came upon a gruesome, chaotic scene at an intersection near her home, with first responders running to help, a police officer performing chest compressions on one person and three other people lying on the ground. A few dozen people stood on the sidewalk and several drivers got out of their cars to help. “I can’t get the sound of the screams out of my head,” Martin said. From her apartment, Martin said she could see the scene and watched an official drape a sheet over one body about midnight. “My heart is just so broken for them,” she said. Breaking News Get breaking news, investigations, analysis and more signature journalism from the Los Angeles Times in your inbox. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Zahid Khan, a family friend, said the Afzal family had immigrated from Pakistan 14 years ago and were dedicated, generous members of the London Muslim Mosque. “They were just out for their walk that they would go out for every day,” Khan said through tears near the site of the crash. “I just wanted to see.” Qazi Khalil said he saw the family Thursday when they were out for their nightly walk. The families lived close to each other and would get together on holidays, he said. “This has totally destroyed me from the inside,” Khalil said. California Muslims voted in record numbers in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Now they want a voice in policy-making decisions. Nov. 8, 2020 The National Council of Canadian Muslims said Muslims in Canada have become all too familiar with the violence of Islamophobia. “This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil, and should be treated as such,″ council head Mustafa Farooq said. London’s mayor said flags would be lowered for three days in the city, which he said has 30,000 to 40,000 Muslims among its more than 400,000 residents. “To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. “Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities. This hate is insidious and despicable — and it must stop.”

FBI-run messaging app tricks gangs, leads to hundreds of arrests in global sting

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/global-sting-fbi-messaging-app-tricks-organized-crime

A global sting involving an encrypted communications platform developed by the FBI has sparked a series of raids and arrests around the world, delivering “an unprecedented blow” to crime gangs, authorities said Tuesday. Operation Trojan Shield involved police swoops in 16 nations. More than 800 suspects were arrested, and over 32 tons of drugs — cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines and methamphetamines — were seized along with 250 firearms, 55 luxury cars and more than $148 million in cash and cryptocurrencies. An indictment unsealed Tuesday in San Diego named 17 foreign distributors charged with racketeering conspiracy. Australian Federal Police Commander Jennifer Hearst called the operation “a watershed moment in global law enforcement history.” Dutch National Police Chief Constable Jannine van den Berg said the sting dealt “an unprecedented blow to criminal networks, and this is worldwide.” The seeds of the operations were sown when law enforcement agencies earlier took down two other encrypted platforms, EncroChat and Sky ECC. That meant that crime gangs trafficking in drugs and ordering underworld killings across the globe were in the market for new secure phones. The FBI had just what it needed. An app called ANOM was installed on modified mobile phones. Unlike typical cellphones, the devices do not make phone calls or browse the internet. Over the last 18 months, the FBI provided those phones via unsuspecting middlemen to more than 300 gangs operating in over 100 countries. World & Nation Encrypted-messaging app Signal appears to have been blocked in mainland China, where the internet is tightly controlled by the government. March 16, 2021 “There was a void that was created by a lack of these encrypted platforms,” said Calvin Shivers of the FBI. “So that created an opportunity for collaboration with our international partners to not only develop the specific tool, but also to develop the process of gathering the intelligence and disseminating the intelligence.” The app formed the backbone of Trojan Shield, an operation led by the FBI that also involved the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the European Union police agency Europol and law enforcement agencies in more than a dozen countries. It allowed police to look over the shoulders of criminals as they discussed hits, drug shipments and other crimes on what they thought was a secure platform. Intelligence gathered and analyzed “enabled us to prevent murders,” Shivers said. “It led to the seizure of drugs that led to the seizure of weapons. And it helped prevent a number of crimes.” World & Nation The Telegram messaging app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unprecedented mass demonstrations that have rocked Belarus. Aug. 21, 2020 Law enforcement agencies from Sweden to New Zealand attested to the effectiveness of the operation. Swedish police prevented a dozen planned killings and believed they had arrested several “leading actors in criminal networks,” according to a statement from Linda Staaf, the head of Sweden’s national criminal intelligence unit. Finnish police said Tuesday that nearly 100 people had been detained and more than half a ton of drugs confiscated, along with dozens of guns and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. In Germany, the general prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt said more than 70 people were arrested Monday; drugs, cash and weapons also were seized. Australian authorities said they arrested 224 people and seized more than four tons of drugs and $35 million. New Zealand police said they had arrested 35 people and seized drugs and assets worth millions of dollars. Breaking News Get breaking news, investigations, analysis and more signature journalism from the Los Angeles Times in your inbox. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. “Today, the Australian government, as part of a global operation, has struck a heavy blow against organized crime,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters. “Not just in this country, but one that will echo around organized crime around the world.” European police last year delivered a major blow to organized crime after cracking an encrypted communications network, known as EncroChat, used by criminal gangs across the continent. In March, Belgian police arrested dozens of people after cracking another encrypted chat system, called Sky ECC, and seizing more than 17 tons of cocaine. The latest operation went even further. “The success of Operation Trojan Shield is a result of tremendous innovation, dedication and unprecedented international collaboration,” Shivers said. “And the results are staggering.”

Letters to the Editor: Where were Democrats when Trump was trying to get rid of the filibuster?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/democrats-trump-filibuster

To the editor: I had no idea columnist Virginia Heffernan was a Trump supporter. I do not remember her writing supportively of the former president four years ago when he was calling on the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. (“What’s the matter with Kyrsten Sinema?” Opinion, June 4) In 2017, 28 Republicans, 32 Democrats and one independent in the Senate signed a letter in support of the filibuster, citing its importance in facilitating bipartisanship. Now, the only Democrats willing to stand up for the filibuster are Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Where are all those other Democratic senators who signed that letter four years ago? Who is playing politics here? Donald Lau, Los Angeles .. To the editor: Sinema sounds like a child psychologist trying to explain to concerned parents why they should use reasoning instead of some sterner method when dealing with their tantrum-throwing toddler. In her unyielding support for keeping the filibuster, Sinema has also stated that Democrats should try to change their colleagues’ behavior, not the rules. Whose behavior is she advocating changing? The Senate is not some social science lab where there is time to experiment with behavior modification. As nice as it would be to modify many of the current senators’ behavior, we just do not have time for that. Our democracy as we have known it for more than 200 years is at stake, coming perilously close to being destroyed. Jacqueline West, Inglewood

Op-Ed: Will the U.S. finally correct its course in Haiti?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-06-08/haiti-moise-organization-of-american-states-joe-biden-oas

This month may prove to be crucial for Haiti’s future. Americans used to think that any country’s political problems — and thus all its other difficulties — could be solved with a good, solid, democratic, U.S.- supported election. But in many countries where we’ve proposed and followed through with backing for such elections, problems have continued or even been exacerbated. Haiti is one extreme example. One reason for this, in Haiti as elsewhere, is that when the U.S. wants to help support and certify democratic elections, it usually already has a preferred dog in the race. And that dog is not always a good dog. In Haiti today, the dog also has many masters, who are collectively known as the Core Group, which consists of powerful outside advisors including the U.S., France, Canada, the Organization of American States and the U.N. Together they have supported specific candidates in past elections, viewing these as change vehicles for Haiti. Unfortunately, two things are true: These vehicles have a tendency to break down. And no Haitian government can exist without ongoing Core Group support. Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moise, whose marred election was certified by the OAS in 2016, has been one such failure, and on a grand scale. After much controversy, he was finally seated as president in 2017, with Core Group backing. But over time, Moise, theoretically chosen to bring Haiti along the democratic road, has shown himself to be a natural autocrat. Since early 2020, he has ruled by decree. He has not held legislative elections, letting Haiti’s law-making body become utterly depopulated through term-limit attrition and termination by Moise himself. He has also replaced mayors around the country with his own choices as each terms out, consolidating his hold on the central government and on the countryside. He sent troops against Haiti’s Supreme Court and closed it down. He has arrested and jailed his political opponents and their family members, presided over grotesque corruption that has impoverished Haiti further, and failed to address — and is thought to have encouraged — escalating violence in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. He has ignored the COVID-19 crisis, while accepting international funds to address it. No vaccinations have been given in the country. Gang killings and kidnappings have shut down businesses and schools. People are afraid to go out, and the police have been cowed into passivity by brutal killings of officers. In effect, these gangs — heavily armed and well-organized — run the streets of Haiti. They are a rivalrous and vicious cohort, several with proven ties to the Moise government and various nefarious Haitian businessmen. The gangs attack nurses, doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, priests, ministers, nuns, the occasional foreign visitor and assorted professionals, as well as police officers — it can seem as if they are targeting Haiti’s future. Often, after an attack, a kidnapping, an assassination, a massacre, the government issues no statement, provides no response. As the weeks tick by, the gangs grow stronger. In the midst of this dark situation, Moise has remained in power in spite of reasonable opposition claims that his term ended by law in February. He says his presidency will come to its grand finale in February 2022. Certainly he has overstayed his welcome with the Haitian people. Moise has also announced that he will hold presidential and legislative elections, but only after a national referendum that would make autocratic changes to the Haitian Constitution. The referendum and the elections would be under Moise’s control and would take place in the ongoing atmosphere of extreme instability and danger in which voters’ security cannot be assured. Until now, the U.S., along with the Core Group, has backed Moise’s claim to his extra year of rule. And until now, Haiti’s traditional international advisors have not publicly suggested Moise’s rule is corrupt and violent. Pity the members of the Core Group, because the only explanation for their behavior is fear; they haven’t had the imagination to envision a Haiti without a despot at the wheel. The belief among those who advise Haiti has often been that, as the saying goes, you pick Haiti up and it explodes in your face. Last month, the Biden administration reinstated Temporary Protected Status for about 100,000 Haitian migrants in the U.S., citing “serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses” among other woes preventing their safe return home. The TPS reinstatement, with its implicit judgment of Moise’s regime, has brought hope to many Haitians. In recent days, the U.N. has also seemed to distance itself from Moise. Maybe the U.S. is shifting course, and the constitutional changes and votes proposed by Moise will never come to be. Perhaps his ruinous vision for Haiti finally went too far even for his friends and supporters in the Core Group. A little whisper of hope is fluttering around Port-au-Prince, with the news that in next few days, a five-member team from the OAS will visit Haiti to discuss the current crisis and possible solutions. Rumors are bouncing back and forth on WhatsApp, and suddenly among opposition parties and grass-roots organizers, the prospect of an OAS Haiti delegation is being greeted less with distrust than with a degree of optimism. One wonders how the gangs will welcome the team, however. If nothing comes of this visit, there’s no telling toward what dark star Moise will next point the prow of his sinking ship of state. Amy Wilentz is the author of “The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier” and “Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti,” among other books.

British police officer admits kidnapping, raping woman whose death caused national outcry

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/british-police-officer-admits-kidnapping-raping-sarah-everard

A British police officer has pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape of a woman as she walked home in London and whose body was found a week later in the woods. A court at London’s Old Bailey heard Tuesday that Wayne Couzens, 48, accepted responsibility for the death of Sarah Everard though he was not asked to enter a plea to a charge of murder. Medical reports into the former Metropolitan Police officer, who appeared by video link from Belmarsh prison, are being prepared. A further hearing before the judge, Adrian Fulford, will take place July 9. Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, went missing as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, in south London, on March 3. A major police investigation was launched, and her body was found a week later in a woodland in the southeast county of Kent. Everard’s disappearance and killing caused a nationwide outcry, with women sharing experiences of being threatened or attacked — or simply facing the everyday fear of violence when walking alone. Members of Everard’s family sat in court to witness the defendant enter his pleas.

Death toll rises to 63 in Pakistan train crash

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-08/death-toll-rises-pakistan-train-crash

The death toll from the horrific crash of two trains in southern Pakistan rose to 63 on Tuesday after rescuers pulled 12 more bodies from crumpled cars, officials said. The crash happened Monday on a dilapidated railway track in Ghotki, a district in southern Sindh province, when an express train barreled into another that had derailed minutes earlier before dawn. Most of the passengers — there were about 1,100 on both trains — were asleep when the Millat Express, traveling between the southern port city of Karachi to Sargodha in eastern Punjab province, derailed and many of its cars overturned. As passengers scrambled to get out, another passenger train, the Sir Syed Express, crashed into the derailed coaches. Rescue work continued throughout the day Monday, overnight and into Tuesday. Bodies of passengers were taken to their hometowns for burial. Shafiq Ahmed Mahisar, commissioner in Sukkar district, said 12 more bodies were retrieved after the overnight efforts. More than 100 passengers were injured, he said. Army engineers and soldiers dispatched from a nearby military base assisted in the rescue, and heavy machinery arrived in Ghotki hours later to cut open some train cars. World & Nation A 2008 train crash in Chatsworth killed 25 people and broke a long congressional stalemate on a nationwide rail safety project known as “positive train control.” Twelve years later, that system is finally in place. Jan. 2, 2021 It was unclear exactly what caused the derailment. Aijaz Ahmed, the driver of the Sir Syed Express, said he braked when he saw the disabled train but did not have time to avoid impact. The more critically injured were taken to hospitals with better facilities in Sindh and also Punjab province, while those less seriously hurt were being treated in Ghotki hospital, said Usman Abdullah, who also confirmed the 63 fatalities. Ata Mohammad, a passenger, said he was asleep on the Millat Express when it derailed. He woke to a big jolt and saw other passengers trying to climb out from overturned and derailed coaches. Then the other train hit. “I feel as if I am still hearing cries,” said Mohammad, weeping. He lost family members in the crash. World & Nation A decision to change cars to be closer to a station exit may have saved Erik Bravo when a Mexico City subway line collapsed, killing 25 people. May 7, 2021 Sher Muhammad, a 45-year-old farmer, was working on his land when he saw a train derail on the tracks some distance away. He rushed to the scene, but before he could reach it, the second train crashed into the first. “I don’t know whether I will be able to forget that tragic scene,” Muhammad said, recounting how he saw women, children and men crying for help. Villagers who reached the scene first started helping the victims, pulling the injured and the dead from the wreckage until ambulances started coming. According to Azam Swati, the minister for railways, experts were still trying to determine the cause of the crash. Swati said all aspects would be examined, including the possibility of sabotage. News Alerts Get breaking news, investigations, analysis and more signature journalism from the Los Angeles Times in your inbox. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. By noon Tuesday, the military said that the rescue operation was complete and that the railroad track in Ghotki was being repaired to resume train service. Train accidents are common in Pakistan, where successive governments have paid little attention to improving the poorly maintained signal system and aging tracks. In 1990, a packed passenger train plowed into a standing freight train in southern Pakistan, killing 210 people in the worst rail disaster in the nation’s history.

Jim Fassel, longtime NFL coach, dies at 71

https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-06-07/longtime-nfl-coach-jim-fassell-dies-at-71

Jim Fassel, a longtime NFL offensive coach who was the league’s coach of the year in 1997, has died at age 71. Fassel’s son, John, confirmed his father’s death to the Los Angeles Times on Monday night, saying he got the news during a phone call in the afternoon. John Fassel formerly was the Rams’ special teams coach and briefly served as the team’s interim head coach. Jim Fassel, who lived in Las Vegas, suffered chest pains Monday and was taken to a local hospital by a friend. He died of a heart attack while under sedation, his son said. John Fassel provided The Times with a statement Tuesday morning on his father’s death: “It is with a very heavy heart to announce that we lost our Dad yesterday. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. While our Dad will be remembered as a longtime fan and face of the football world, his legacy will live forever in our hearts as the greatest Dad and Grandpa of all time. He leaves behind his wife Kitty, their 5 kids and spouses, as well as 16 happy and healthy grandkids. We love you Dad.” Jim Fassel was coach of the New York Giants from 1997 to 2003. He is one of three coaches to lead the Giants to the Super Bowl. His team lost to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XXXV at the end of the 2000 season. He spent the bulk of his career as a quarterbacks and offensive coordinator in the college ranks (Utah — where he was later head coach — Weber State, Stanford) and NFL (Denver, Oakland, Arizona, Baltimore). His last football job was as head coach of the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League from 2009 to 2012. A graduate of Anaheim High, Fassel played quarterback at Fullerton College, USC and Long Beach State. He was the Chicago Bears’ seventh-round selection in 1972. It led to stints that year with the San Diego Chargers and Houston Oilers before brief stops with the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts and The Hawaiians of the World Football League. Chargers Shane Day already was the quarterbacks coach in San Francisco, but he could not turn down the opportunity to work with the Chargers’ Justin Herbert. June 7, 2021

Trump not liable for 'crude' remarks about accuser E. Jean Carroll, Justice Department lawyers say

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-06-07/trump-not-liable-for-crude-remarks-at-accuser-e-jean-carroll-doj-argues

Donald Trump cannot be held personally liable for “crude” and “disrespectful” remarks he made while president about a woman who accused him of rape, Justice Department lawyers said Monday in arguing for him to be replaced by the United States as defendant in a defamation lawsuit. The lawyers told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that responding to allegations of misconduct falls within activities that form part of any president’s office. Trump was acting “within the scope of his office” in denying wrongdoing after White House reporters asked him about claims by columnist E. Jean Carroll in a June 2019 book that he attacked her in the mid-1990s at an upscale Manhattan department store, the lawyers from the Washington office of the Justice Department wrote. “Elected public officials can — and often must — address allegations regarding personal wrongdoing that inspire doubt about their suitability for office,” the lawyers said. “Such wrongdoing can include not only the serious charges of criminal behavior leveled here, but a range of activities including fraud and malfeasance. Officials do not step outside the bounds of their office simply because they are addressing questions regarding allegations about their personal lives,” they said. World & Nation Lawyers for a woman who says President Trump raped her in the 1990s are asking for a sample of his DNA. Jan. 30, 2020 “Even reprehensible conduct ... can fall within the scope of employment,” the lawyers said. Trump’s statements about Carroll included that she was “totally lying” to sell a memoir and that “she’s not my type.” Federal lawyers have said he had to respond to her claims because they essentially questioned his fitness to hold public office. In Monday’s papers, they wrote that Trump used “crude and disrespectful” language in questioning Carroll’s credibility. The lawyers conceded that comments attacking her appearance, impugning her motives and implying she had made false accusations against others “were without question unnecessary and inappropriate.” But they said they “all pertained to the denial of wrongdoing.” The papers were filed after the Justice Department appealed a decision by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who ruled in October that Trump cannot use a law protecting federal employees from being sued individually for things they do within the scope of their employment. Opinion The Justice Department claims that when the president calls his accuser a liar, it’s official business. Oct. 21, 2020 Arguments supporting the Justice Department’s position were also filed Monday by a personal lawyer for Trump. Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said in a statement that it was horrific that Trump raped her client but it was “truly shocking that the current Department of Justice would allow Donald Trump to get away with lying about it, thereby depriving our client of her day in court.” “The DOJ’s position is not only legally wrong, it is morally wrong since it would give federal officials free license to cover up private sexual misconduct by publicly brutalizing any woman who has the courage to come forward,” she said. “Calling a woman you sexually assaulted a ‘liar,’ a ‘slut,’ or ‘not my type,’ as Donald Trump did here, is not the official act of an American president.” In a statement, Carroll said: “As women across the country are standing up and holding men accountable for assault — the DOJ is trying to stop me from having that same right. I am angry! I am offended!”