year

It was the last story I wrote before everything changed.

It was Jan. 5, 2025, and I was marveling at the Rams gumption in their short-handed loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

“It was weird,” I wrote. “It was wild.”

I was so witty. I was so wrong.

Two days later, I was fleeing for my life, steering my car down narrow Altadena streets with a fireball at my back and a nightmarish future sprawled across the smoke-filled streets ahead.

Now that was weird and wild.

The year 2025 was more tumultuous than any silly football game and its accompanying overwrought metaphors. It was a year that knocked me flat, tearing me apart from so many things that once anchored me, setting me afloat in a sea of guilt and despair and ultimate uncertainty.

Today, I have a home but no home. My days are filled with the beeps and growls of bulldozers. My nights are draped in the silence of emptiness. What was once one of the coolest secrets in Los Angeles has become a veritable ghost town, the vast empty spaces populated by howling coyotes and scrounging bears.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

A lot has changed in the 12 months since the Eaton Fire spared my house but destroyed my Altadena neighborhood. I say a daily prayer of thanks that I did not endure the horror of the 19 people who lost their lives and thousands more who lost their homes. I am beyond fortunate to live in what was left behind.

But virtually nothing was left behind. Venerable manicured homes have been replaced by weed-choked vacant lots. Familiar local businesses are now empty parking lots. There is the occasional sighting of new construction, but far more prevalent is “For Sale” signs that have seemingly been there for months.

After living in the limbo of hotels and Airbnbs for two months while my home was remediated, I was blessed to return to four walls and running water, but beset with the guilt of having a front-row seat to the pain of so many who lost everything. I was spared, but nobody in Los Angeles was spared, and it wasn’t until halfway through the year that I noticed a consistent light from the strangest source.

Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani points as he rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run during Game 3 of the World Series.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Every night, I would watch the Dodgers. At least once every couple of weeks, I would attend a Sparks game with my daughter, MC. Soon, there would be Saturdays with one of our college football teams, then Sundays with the NFL then, the baseball playoffs, leading to the insane Game 7 and morphing into the annual Lakers winter drama.

By the final weeks of December, I realized that one thing has consistently kept my spirits strong, perhaps the same thing that has helped keep our city upright through trials much tougher than mine.

Sports.

The highs, the lows, the dramatics, the desperation, it was all there when nothing was there, it was the feeling that even with everything gone, you still belonged to something.

UCLA women’s basketball players celebrate as confetti falls after they beat USC to win the Big Ten tournament title.

(Michael Conroy/AP)

From Dodgers exhilaration to Laker despair, from USC football frustration to UCLA women’s basketball greatness, sports has been the bright wallpaper on a year of Southland darkness.

It is sports that kept me grounded, kept me steady and somehow kept me believing.

In the worst year of my life, it was sports that saved me.

The path back to normalcy began two weeks after the Eaton fire, when I left my temporary hotel room to attend a press conference for the Dodgers’ latest Japanese import, Roki Sasaki.

“Invincible,” I wrote about the team’s rebuilt roster, a word that was so comforting during such a time when everything in life felt tenuous.

I came back to the hotel after the press conference, wrote my story then, like thousands of others in my situation, packed up and moved to another hotel.

Lakers guard Luka Doncic claps hands with forward LeBron James during a game against the Clippers on March 2.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Soon thereafter I was awakened late one night with the news of the Lakers stunning acquisition of Luka Doncic. I wrote this column from a rental house while preparing to move to yet another new place. My clothes were in a plastic grocery bag. My house was still in shambles. In Doncic, as least, there was hope.

Several days later I attended the Doncic press conference, asked a question, and Doncic asked me to repeat it. Turns out, it wasn’t a language barrier, it was a sound barrier. I was speaking too softly. It was then I noticed that the trauma from the fire had exacerbated my Parkinson’s Disease, which affected my voice, one of the many symptoms which later led me to acknowledging my condition in a difficult mid-summer column.

Yeah, it was a helluva year.

Good news returned in early March when it was announced that the Dodgers had made Dave Roberts the richest manager in baseball, giving him a new four-year, $32.4 million contract. In a bit of dumb luck that hasn’t stopped me from bragging about it since, 10 years ago I was the first one to publicly push for Roberts’ hiring. In such unstable times in our city, Roberts had become the new Tommy Lasorda, and his presence became a needed jolt of smile.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts salutes fans during the team’s World Series celebration at Dodger Stadium on Nov. 3.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

In early April, I wrote a column I never thought I’d write — that Bronny James had been transformed from circus to contributor. I also wrote a column that I maybe wish I hadn’t written so soon, that JJ Redick was a Laker success.

By then, writing stories about Laker conflicts was a refreshing respite from dealing with fire hassles. We were back in the house, but were we safe? Did we test enough for toxins? And how can we look our next-door neighbor in the eye when she comes to examine the giant empty scar where her house once stood?

In late May I sadly said goodbye to my second family when I wrote about the end of my 22-year run on ESPN’s popular “Around the Horn” game show. It wasn’t the first time in 2025 that a column brought me to tears, witness the video immediately after the fire. Agreed, I spent the year showing so much emotion for someone who had gotten so lucky. But I’m guessing I wasn’t alone.

Two weeks later I wrote about my new family, the group of boxers I have joined in my fight against Parkinson’s. That was the toughest column I have ever written, as I was acknowledging something I refused to admit for five years. But the fire had seemingly set the disease ablaze, and I could hide it no longer.

The year continued with columns about the soon-to-be-retiring Clayton Kershaw, the greatest Dodger pitcher with the greatest entrance song. Hearing “We Are Young” when he took the mound consistently gave me hope that, through the treacheries of a summer that marked the escalation of those insane ICE raids, we can continue to strive for rebirth.

That’s what sports consistently provided in 2025, the hope that from beneath the rubble, we could all fly again.

I voiced this hope in a Rams preview column that predicted they would go to the Super Bowl. I later wrote a Rams column predicting they would actually win the Super Bowl. I stand by my stories.

All of which led to a series of Dodger playoff columns that hopefully reflected the building energy of a town enthralled. After their Game 7 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays, I was so spent that I hyperventilated for what felt like an hour.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto holds up the MVP trophy after beating the Blue Jays and winning the World Series.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“In the end, they not only ran it back, they sprinted it back, they slugged it back, and then, finally, they literally Will-ed it back,” I wrote.

In hindsight those words could have been written not only about a team, but a city, fighting back, staying strong, the results of its struggle mirroring the Dodgers’ consecutive championships, punching through desperation, from struggle to strength.

In 2025, sports showed me that life can get better, life will be better, that if we hang in there long enough we can all hit that Miggy Ro homer, make that Andy Pages catch, stay forever young.

And thus I offer a heartiest and hopeful welcome to 2026.

Bring it on.

Yes, Oprah Winfrey has discussed her weight loss and weight gain and weight in general before — many, many times before. The difference this time around, she says, is how little food noise there is in her daily life, and how little shame. It’s so quiet, in fact, that she can eat a whole croissant and simply acknowledge she had breakfast.

“Food noise,” for those who don’t experience it, is a virtually nonstop mental conversation about food that, according to Tufts Medicine, rarely shuts up and instead drives a person “to eat when they’re not hungry, obsess over meals and feel shame or guilt about their eating habits.”

“This type of obsessive food-related thinking can override hunger cues and lead to patterns of overeating, undereating or emotional eating — especially for people who are overweight,” Tufts said.

Winfrey told People in an exclusive interview published Tuesday that in the past she would have been thinking, “‘How many calories in that croissant? How long is it going to take me to work it off? If I have the croissant, I won’t be able to have dinner.’ I’d still be thinking about that damn croissant!”

What has changed is her acceptance 2½ years ago that she has a disease, obesity, and that this time around there was something not called “willpower” to help her manage it.

The talk show host has been using Mounjaro, one of the GLP-1 drugs, since 2023. The weight-loss version of Mounjaro is Zepbound, like Wegovy is the weight-loss version of Ozempic. Trulicity and Victroza are also GLP-1s, and a pill version of Wegovy was just approved by the FDA.

When she started using the injectable, Winfrey told People she welcomed the arrival of a tool to help her get away from the yo-yo path she’d been on for decades. After understanding the science behind it, she said, she was “absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself” after so many years of weathering public criticism about her weight.

“I have been blamed and shamed,” she said elsewhere in that 2023 interview, “and I blamed and shamed myself.”

Now, on the eve of 2026, Winfrey says her mental shift is complete. “I came to understand that overeating doesn’t cause obesity. Obesity causes overeating,” she told the outlet. “And that’s the most mind-blowing, freeing thing I’ve experienced as an adult.”

She isn’t even sharing her current weight with the public.

Winfrey did take a break from the medication early in 2024, she said, and started to regain weight despite continuing to work out and eat healthy foods. So for Winfrey the obesity prescription will be renewed for a lifetime. C’est la vie seems to be her attitude.

“I’m not constantly punishing myself,” she said. “I hardly recognize the woman I’ve become. But she’s a happy woman.”

Winfrey has to take a carefully managed magnesium supplement and make sure she drinks enough water, she said. The shots are done weekly, except when she feels like she can go 10 or 12 days. But packing clothes for the Australian leg of her “Enough” book tour was an off-the-rack delight, not a trip down a shame spiral. She’s even totally into regular exercise.

Plus along with the “quiet strength” she has found in the absence of food noise, Winfrey has experienced another cool side effect: She pretty much couldn’t care less about drinking alcohol.

“I was a big fan of tequila. I literally had 17 shots one night,” she told People. “I haven’t had a drink in years. The fact that I no longer even have a desire for it is pretty amazing.”

So back to that croissant. How did she feel after she scarfed it down?

“I felt nothing,” she said. “The only thing I thought was, ‘I need to clean up these crumbs.’”

For faith leaders supporting and ministering to anxious immigrants across the United States, 2025 was fraught with challenges and setbacks. For many in these religious circles, the coming year could be worse.

The essence of their fears: President Trump has become harsher with his contemptuous rhetoric and policy proposals, blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages and, in a social media post, demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.”

Haitians who fled gang violence in their homeland, as well as Afghans allowed entry after assisting the U.S. in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, now fear that their refuge in America may end due to get-tough policy changes. Somali Americans, notably in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, worry about their future after Trump referred to them as “garbage.”

After Trump’s slurs, the chair of the Catholic bishops conference’s subcommittee on racial justice urged public officials to refrain from dehumanizing language.

“Each child of God has value and dignity,” said the bishop of Austin, Texas, Daniel Garcia. “Language that denigrates a person or community based on his or her ethnicity or country of origin is incompatible with this truth.”

Here’s a look at what lies ahead for these targeted immigrant communities, and the faith leaders supporting them.

Haitians in limbo

In 2024, Trump falsely accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. It worsened fears about anti-immigrant sentiment in the mostly white, blue-collar city of about 59,000, where more than 15,000 Haitians live and work.

Thousands of them settled in Springfield in recent years under the Temporary Protected Status program.

Their prospects now seem dire. The TPS program, allowing many Haitians to remain legally in Springfield and elsewhere, expires in early February.

“It’s going to be an economic and humanitarian disaster,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, pastor of Central Christian Church — one of several Springfield churches supporting the Haitians.

Ruby and Viles Dorsainvil, a leader of Springfield’s Haitian community, traveled recently to Washington to seek help from members of Congress.

“Every single legislator we’ve talked to has said nothing is going to happen legislatively. Trump’s rhetoric keeps getting harsher,” Ruby said. “It just doesn’t feel like anything is going our way.”

Many Haitians fear for their lives if they return to their gang-plagued homeland.

Faith communities have come together to support immigrants in the face of Trump’s crackdown, Ruby said.

“It’s increasing our resolve to oppose this,” he said. “There are more and more churches in Springfield saying we will provide sanctuary. … We will do whatever it takes to protect our members.”

Afghan refugees

Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on the first day of his second term. Halting the program and its federal funding affected hundreds of faith-based organizations assisting refugees.

Among them was Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which serves the region around Washington, D.C., and lost 68% of its budget this year. The organization laid off two-thirds of its staff, shrinking from nearly 300 employees to 100.

Many of its employees and nearly two-thirds of its clients are Afghans. Many worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan and fled after the Taliban’s takeover from a U.S.-backed government in 2021.

The Trump administration announced new immigration restrictions after an Afghan national became the suspect in the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington.

“It shook up our team. It was awful,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of LSSNCA.

Peck said there is increased fear among Afghans on her staff and a false public narrative that Afghan immigrants are a threat.

“A whole group of people have now been targeted and blamed for this senseless act of violence,” she said.

She still finds reasons for hope.

“We continue to do the good work,” Peck said. “Even in challenging moments, we just continue to see people putting their faith into action.”

Volunteers have stepped up to provide services that employees no longer have funding to provide, including a program that helps Afghan women with English-language and job-skills training.

U.S.-based World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization overseen by the National Association of Evangelicals, has joined left-of-center religious groups decrying the new crackdown on Afghan refugees.

“When President Trump announces his intention to ‘permanently halt’ all migration from ‘Third World countries,’ he’s insulting the majority of the global Church,” declared World Relief CEO Myal Greene. “When his administration halts processing for all Afghans on account of the evil actions of one person, he risks abandoning tens of thousands of others who risked their lives alongside the U.S. military.”

Somalis targeted by Trump

In mid-December, imams and other leaders of Minnesota’s Somali community established a task force to tackle the fallout from major fraud scandals, a surge in immigration enforcement, and Trump’s contemptuous words toward the largest group of Somali refugees in the U.S.

“We’re not minimizing the crime, but we’re amplifying the successes,” said imam Yusuf Abdulle.

He directs the Islamic Association of North America, a network of more than three dozen mostly East African mosques. About half are in Minnesota, which, since the late 1990s, has been home to growing numbers of Somali refugees who are increasingly visible in local and U.S. politics.

“For unfortunate things like fraud or youth violence, every immigrant community has been through tough times,” Abdulle said. “For the number of years here, Somali is a very resilient, very successful community.”

Even though most Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens or lawfully present, Abdulle said, many deserted local businesses and mosques when immigration enforcement surged.

The new task force includes more than two dozen faith and business leaders, as well as community organizers. Addressing their community’s fears is the first challenge, followed by increased advocacy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“Every election year the rhetoric goes up. And so we want to push back against these hateful rhetorics, but also bring our community together,” said community leader Abdullahi Farah.

Faith leaders respond

In mid-November, U.S. Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a “special message” decrying developments causing fear and anxiety among immigrants. It marked the first time in 12 years that the bishops invoked this urgent way of speaking collectively.

“We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” said the message. “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”

The bishops thanked priests, nuns and lay Catholics accompanying and assisting immigrants.

“We urge all people of goodwill to continue and expand such efforts,” the message said.

The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Yehiel Curry, issued a similar pastoral message last month thanking ELCA congregations for supporting immigrants amid “aggressive and indiscriminate immigration enforcement.”

“The racial profiling and harm to our immigrant neighbors show no signs of diminishing, so we will heed God’s call to show up alongside these neighbors,” Curry wrote.

HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers, has condemned recent Trump administration moves.

“As a Jewish organization, we also know all too well what it means for an entire community to be targeted because of the actions of one person,” HIAS said.

“We will always stand in solidarity with people seeking the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety, including those being targeted now by harmful policies and hateful rhetoric in the Afghan American and Somali American communities.”

Crary, Dell’Orto, Henao and Stanley write for the Associated Press.

When Virginia Guevara moved into a studio apartment in Orange County in 2024 after nearly a decade of homelessness, she needed far more than a roof and a bed.

Scattered visits to free clinics notwithstanding, Guevara hadn’t had a full medical checkup in years. She required dental work. She wanted to start looking for a job. And she was overwhelmed by the maze of paperwork needed simply to get her off the street, much less to make any of the other things happen.

But Guevara had help. The Jamboree Housing Corp., an affordable-housing nonprofit that renovated a former hotel in Stanton that Guevara now calls home, didn’t just move her in — it also provided her a fleet of wraparound services. Jamboree counselors helped Guevara navigate the healthcare system to see a doctor and a dentist, buy a few things for her apartment, and get training to become a caregiver.

“I was years on the street before I got the kind of help I needed so I could help myself,” said Guevara, 68.

Amid the Trump administration’s apparent opposition to using Medicaid funding for such social services, staffers at Jamboree and similar affordable-housing providers in California have feared losing federal money. The experimental waivers that provide the primary funding for the program expire at the end of 2026. But as it turns out, the state had the foresight several years ago to designate certain nonhousing social services — such as mental health care, drug counseling and job training — as a form of Medicaid spending that will continue to be reimbursed.

Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed that California’s use of the “in lieu of services” classification for these wraparound programs is allowed under federal regulations.

“It is starting to sound positive that we will, at the very least, be able to continue billing for these services after the waiver period,” said Natalie Reider, a senior vice president at Jamboree Housing.

During President Trump’s first term, states were permitted to use Medicaid money for social support services not typically covered by health insurance. But the second Trump administration is reeling that policy back in, saying that the intervening Biden administration took the supportive services process too far. Howden said in a statement that the policy “distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans.”

Through CalAIM, a five-year experimental build-out of the Medicaid system, programs such as Jamboree were able to leverage federal funding to offer the kinds of nonhousing social services that experts contend are essential to keeping people permanently housed.

However, these wraparound services are only one component of the CalAIM initiative, which is attempting to take Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, in a more holistic direction across all areas of care. And when CalAIM launched, California officials gave the programs the Medicaid “in lieu of services” designation, known as ILOS, in effect putting them outside the waiver process and ensuring that even when CalAIM sunsets, money for those social initiatives will continue to flow.

“California has tried to future-proof many of the policy changes it has made in Medi-Cal by including them in mechanisms like ILOS that do not require federal waiver approval,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “That allows these policy changes to continue, even with a politically hostile federal administration.”

The designation allows these social services to be funded through Medicaid managed-care plans under existing federal laws because they are cost-effective substitutes for a Medicaid service or reduce the likelihood of patients needing other Medicaid-covered healthcare services, said Glenn Tsang, policy advisor for homelessness and housing at the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The state could not provide an estimate of the annual funding for these wraparound services because they are not distinguished from other payments made to Medicaid managed-care plans.

“We are full steam ahead with these services,” Tsang said, “and they are authorized.”

Although California was the first state to incorporate the designation for such housing and other health-related social support, Tsang said, several other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York and North Carolina — are now using the mechanism in a similar fashion.

Paul San Felipe, senior program manager for Jamboree, speaks during a meeting at Clara Vista in Stanton on Dec. 29, 2025.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Early results suggest such support saves on healthcare spending. When Jamboree, MidPen Housing Corp. in Northern California, RH Community Builders in the Central Valley and other permanent supportive housing providers employ a holistic approach that includes social services, they reported higher rates of formerly homeless people remaining in housing, less frequent use of costly emergency health services, and more residents landing jobs that help them pay rent and stay housed.

At the nonprofit MidPen Housing, which serves 12 counties in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly 40% of the units in the program’s pipeline are earmarked for “extremely low-income” people, a group that includes those who are homeless, said Danielle McCluskey, senior director of resident services.

CalAIM reimbursements help fund the part of MidPen that focuses on supportive services across a wide range of experiences, such as chronic homelessness, mental health issues and those leaving the foster care system. McCluskey described it as one leg of a three-legged stool, the others being real estate development and property management.

“If any of those legs are not getting what they need, if they’re not funded or not staffed or resourced, then that stool is kind of wobbly — off-kilter,” the director said.

A recent state evaluation found that people who used at least one of the housing support services — including navigation into new housing, healthcare assistance and a deposit to secure an apartment — saw a 13% reduction in emergency department visits and a 24% reduction in inpatient admissions in the six months that followed.

Documenting those outcomes is crucial because the department needs to show federal officials that the services lessen the need for other, often costlier Medicaid-covered care — the essence of the classification.

Advocates for the inclusion of supportive services argue that the American system ultimately saves money on those investments. As California’s homeless population has soared in recent years to more than 187,000 on a given night — nearly a quarter of the U.S. total — Jamboree has been allocating more of its resources to permanent supportive housing.

Founded in 1990 in Orange County, Jamboree builds various types of affordable housing using federal, state and private funding. Reider said about a fifth of the organization’s portfolio is dedicated to permanent supportive housing.

“They’re not going back out to the streets. They’re not going to jail. They’re not going to the hospitals,” Reider said. “Keeping people housed is the No. 1 outcome, and it is the cost-saver, right? We’re using Medicaid dollars, but we’re saving the system money in the long run.”

Guevara spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. Now she also has found work as a caregiver.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Guevara, who wound up on the streets after a falling-out with family in 2015, spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. There, she was paired with a specialist to help her figure out how to get and see a doctor, and to keep up with scheduling the battery of medical tests she needed after years spent living in temporary shelters.

“I also got a job developer, who helped me get this job with the county so I can pay my rent,” Guevara said of her position as a part-time in-home caregiver. “Now I take care of people kind of the same way people have been taking care of me.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

2025 was challenging for Angelenos. The year began with the double firestorms, and chaos and uncertainty continued into June when immigration agents and protesters clashed, as the Trump administration deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the city. Unquestionably, these news events were among the most-read articles published by the Los Angeles Times this year.

However, several other stories made the list, including two notable faith-focused stories, how Cesar Galan joined the priesthood after belonging to a violent L.A. street gang and how the hosts of a popular evangelical podcast known as “Girls Gone Bible” have become unlikely religious authorities.

To look back on the diverse stories that defined this year, we compiled our most-visited coverage into three categories: The articles that attracted the highest number of readers, the stories our audience spent the longest time reading (most of them are accompanied by audio) and the most popular stories that only our subscribers get to read.

Most-read stories | Deep reads | Subscribers’ favorites

Most-read stories

(ranked by overall number of visits)

1

The Times published countless live blogs, stories, investigations and feature pieces related to the catastrophic January fires that blazed through thousands of acres, killed 31, forced the evacuation of roughly 100,000 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures.

These stories, undoubtedly, received the highest number of visits, as the Eaton and Palisades fires brought disruption, displacement and uncertainty across the city.

Residents received faulty emergency alerts, exposing early on the systemic failures in preparedness, evacuation protocols and emergency response. The Times reviewed the aftermath of L.A.’s double disaster to call city and county officials to account, reveal critical gaps and make the case for ensuring that we’ll be better prepared next time.

2

The news of the killings of “When Harry Met Sally” director Rob Reiner and his photographer wife, Michele Singer Reiner, sent shock waves across Hollywood and the country’s political establishment — Reiner championed progressive causes and was involved in efforts to challenge the proposition that had banned same-sex marriage in California in 2008. Reiner’s son Nick, who struggled with addiction for years, was arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents.

What we know about Nick’s addiction struggle and the hours before the director and his wife were killed.

3

A massive earthquake of magnitude 8.8 in Russia brought tsunami alerts to a wide swath of the Pacific. After the tsunami waves arrived in California, advisories were downgraded and canceled for much of the state. Southern California saw only modest waves and the highest tsunami waves reported on state shores peaked around 4 feet in Crescent City, about 20 miles from the Oregon border, where a dock was damaged. For how monstrous the earthquake was, why was there so little damage?

4

In September, detectives discovered a girl’s badly decomposed remains in an abandoned Tesla registered to rising singer D4vd at a Hollywood tow yard. Authorities identified the remains as those of 15-year-old Celeste Rivas, an Inland Empire resident who was reported missing in April 2024. According to court documents reviewed by The Times, the LAPD is now investigating Rivas’ death as a homicide.

5

The fifth-most read story of the year was those pertaining to the June immigration raids and protests in L.A. On June 6, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents carried out a series of immigration sweeps, including two downtown that sparked a tense standoff. In the following days, immigration agents and protesters clashed across L.A. In a show of force, President Trump sent 2,000 California National Guard troops to the city, marking the first time in 60 years that a president had deployed a state’s National Guard without a request from that state’s governor.

Read more about what happened in the days following the National Guard’s arrival in L.A. and find more immigration stories here.

6

As the wildfires raged into Wednesday, Jan. 8, scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out and all water storage tanks in the area quickly “went dry.” Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation into the causes behind the dry fire hydrants that hampered firefighting efforts and L.A. City Council called on the city’s water utility to explain why firefighters ran out of water and why a key reservoir was offline.

Nearly a year later, residents and experts are examining the weaknesses of L.A.’s water systems and are calling to redesign Southern California’s water infrastructure.

Also widely read: State to probe why Pacific Palisades reservoir was offline, empty when firestorm exploded

7

Seven-month-old Emmanuel Haro disappeared on Aug. 14 after his mother, Rebecca Haro, said she was assaulted by an unknown man in a sporting goods store’s parking lot and was rendered unconscious. The missing baby’s mom told investigators that when she awoke, her son was gone. More than a week later, baby Emmanuel’s parents were arrested on suspicion of murder.

According to a news release from the San Bernardino County sheriff’s department, the couple faked the story about their son being kidnapped. In November, Jake Haro, Emmanuel’s father, was sentenced to 25 years to life for the murder of his son.

8

In late January, after President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had “entered” California and “TURNED ON THE WATER,” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dramatically increased the amount of water flowing from two dams in Tulare County. In a visit to L.A. the previous week, Trump had also vowed to “open up the valves and pumps” in California to deliver more water. Local water managers were caught off-guard by the decision, but they said they convinced Army Corps officials to release less water than originally planned.

9

A week after the Palisades fire began, several areas reopened to residents as officials continued to investigate the cause of the wildfire. Officials focused their efforts on a popular hiking trail that reveals the famous Skull Rock and views of the Pacific Ocean. The general area was the site of a small fire on New Year’s Eve that burned for a few hours before fire officials said they extinguished it.

In October, authorities offered a detailed timeline about what they allege caused the fire: The Jan. 1 blaze, now known as the Lachman fire, rekindled to become the Palisades fire days later. They also simultaneously announced the arrest of a 29-year-old man whom they suspected of setting the initial fire on New Year’s Eve. He has now been charged with deliberately setting the Lachman fire.

A Times investigation later found that firefighters were ordered to leave the smoldering burn site, instead of monitoring the burn area for reignitions.

10

Over the first weekend of the January fires, firefighters were able make progress with the help of calmer winds and higher humidity. As a fleet of aircraft worked to prevent the Palisades fire from scorching homes in Brentwood and Encino, officials warned that Santa Ana gusts were expected to pick up again the following week and cautioned the public to stay on alert.

Most-read stories | Deep reads | Subscribers’ favorites

Deep reads

(ranked by average time spent on the page)

1

This is the story of Father Cesar Galan, a chaplain at St. Francis Medical Center, who experienced the lowest moment of his life and found the grace to change in the very hospital in which he now listens to patients’ fears, prays with them and offers to hear their confessions if they are Catholic. Galan grew up in the heart of Chivas and belonged to its street gang until a bullet spun him down to the ground on his stomach.

2

For Alejandro Sánchez, reclaiming a gold mine in Mexico, which was taken over by the sons of the drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was more than a business proposition. It was a reckoning with his past.

For years, Sánchez had worked to revive the mine, encountering corrupt officials and cartel operatives who demanded hefty bribes. He once had to dive for cover during a firefight. But now he was close to resuming operations at the mine with deposits worth billions.

Why did the billion-dollar mine matter so much to Sánchez and was he able to reckon with his past and reclaim the billion-dollar mine?

3

Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma are best friends who both have a background in modeling and acting. Nearly every week for the last two years, the two have shared heart-to-hearts that are at the core of “Girls Gone Bible,” their faith-based podcast they launched in 2023. The evangelical podcast now has millions of listeners and as a result, Halili and Reitsma have built a two-microphone megachurch. They have gone on a national live tour and prayed at President Trump’s pre-inauguration rally.

The co-hosts of this podcast that tops religious charts on Spotify predict that a Southern Californian Christian revival is coming.

4

Times staff writer Christopher Goffard revists old crimes in L.A. and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, in his series “Crimes of The Times.” In this installment of the series, Goffard examined the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in California, after the Trump administration released a cache of classified files.

Convicted gunman Sirhan Sirhan’s current attorney, Angela Berry, said a team of researchers is combing the files for new evidence. Have they been able to find anything of use?

5

As the Eaton fire devastated parts of the San Gabriel Valley, Santa Anita Park stepped up and fulfilled its role as a community citizen. Even though the 80-year-old track was unaffected by the fires and the air quality was well within the range for safe racing, the park canceled racing the first week after the fires and opened up its expansive space to be used as a center for donation collection and distribution among other charitable gestures.

But horse racing is decades past the days when spectators lined up to watch the sport. As attendance continues to decline from what it was years ago, many battle with the unfathomable idea that the track may soon close or be sold.

6

This is the story of Jerardyn, a 40-year-old refugee from Venezuela, who at the height of the immigration raids and protests in Southern California, confronted a painful decision: After entering the United States last year with her family in hopes of obtaining asylum, Jerardyn would migrate again, this time, voluntarily.

7

Authorities initially ruled the 2023 death of 18-year-old Amelia Salehpour an open-and-shut case of accidental overdose. The medical examiner’s office agreed, deciding against a more thorough autopsy. But Salehpour’s family was unconvinced. They hired a high-end investigative firm that uncovered evidence that Amelia was being groomed for sex work, that she was strangled to death and that her death had been made to look like an overdose.

The contradictory findings have since triggered internal conflict among L.A. County prosecutors and detectives from the LAPD’s homicide and narcotics units.

8

From Andrew Garfield to Zendaya, Daniel Craig and Demi Moore, Hollywood’s biggest stars dressed to impress at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards.

Also widely read: Oscars red carpet 2025: Ariana Grande, Mikey Madison and all the best looks

9

Since L.A. experienced its first wide-scale homelessness during the Great Depression and the housing crunch after World War II, it has suffered chronic homelessness. Former Times staff writers Mitchell Landsberg and Gale Holland explored the key events and policies that shaped L.A. to become the homeless capital of the U.S.

10

In April 2024, USC hired a new coach for its men’s basketball program. USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen declared the day Eric Musselman was introduced as a “transformational day for USC men’s basketball.” Almost a year later, in March, Times USC beat writer Ryan Kartje joined Musselman toward the end of a hard first season.

Most-read stories | Deep reads | Subscribers’ favorites

Subscribers’ favorites

(subscriber-exclusive stories ranked by number of visits)

1

A new California housing bill, which took effect July 1, has changed the way homeowners associations are allowed to discipline homeowners. The changes came just in time for Jinah Kim, who was set to be fined up to $500 per day for fixing a doorway inside her condo even though her homeowners association said she couldn’t. Under the new rules, she now owes only $100.

Will the new rules allow homeowners to get away with things they shouldn’t and abuse community rules?

2

In July, talk show host Phil McGraw’s TV network, Merit Street Media, which launched last year, filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors and sued its distribution partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network. During a nearly three-hour hearing in Dallas in October, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Scott Everett said that he’d “never seen a case” like the Chapter 11 filing Dr. Phil’s company was attempting.

How did the genial celebrity psychologist’s media network crash?

3

Entering the job market can be a stressful endeavor for new graduates and for a fresh generation of students behind them who are preparing to start their college journeys. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is at its highest nationwide since 2021. What are the lowest- and highest-paying majors according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report?

4

This investigation was so popular, it also landed on our list of deep reads.

5

Every year for the last 13 years, The Times has published its essential guide to L.A.’s dining scene. This year, Times restaurant critic Bill Addison took the challenge further and spent months journeying California to find the best restaurants that depict the state’s eclectic food scene accurately. Instead of ranking the restaurants that make the Golden State, in Addison’s words, a “culinary juggernaut,” the list, which is only a beginning, offers a glimpse into the cultures and diversities that make up California. Start eating!

Also widely read: These are the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

6

This is the grisly story of Patrice Miller, 71, who was found dead with her right leg and left arm partially gnawed off in her kitchen and whose autopsy determined, officials said, that she had probably been killed by an animal after it broke into her home. Miller’s death marked the first known instance in California history of a fatal bear attack on a human and has sparked increasingly heated battles around predators in the state.

What solutions are lawmakers representing conservative rural districts in the state’s rugged northern reaches pushing forward? Would measures to ward off California’s predators increase safety?

7

Tulsa Remote is a program that pays remote workers to relocate to Oklahoma’s second-largest city for at least a year. Since its inception in 2019, the program has attracted more than 3,600 remote workers. More than 7,800 Californians have applied to the program and 539 have made the move.

Why are Californians moving to Tulsa through the program, cementing California as the second-most popular origin state behind Texas?

8

In a more recent edition of the “Crimes of the Times” series, Goffard writes about a 50-year-old West Virginia man, Alex Baber, who dropped out of high school and taught himself codebreaking. Baber now says he has cracked the Zodiac killer’s identity, and in the process solved the Black Dahlia case as well.

9

This series attracted a high number of readers and also landed on our list of deep reads.

10

Artificial intelligence’s coding capabilities and tools are rapidly advancing, making experienced engineers more productive. But these improvements now outpace entry-level programmers, making job prospects for early-career software engineers more difficult to find.”We don’t need the junior developers anymore,” said Amr Awadallah, chief executive of Vectara, a Palo Alto-based AI startup. “The AI now can code better than the average junior developer that comes out of the best schools out there.”

We need to talk about Hull City. No, we really do.

Four wins during a five-match unbeaten run have been eye-catching enough but when you consider those victories have come against Wrexham, Millwall, West Bromwich Albion and Middlesbrough it is time we took notice.

Those victories have also come without the Championship’s joint second top scorer, Joe Gelhardt, who may still be out for at least another fortnight before he can add to his 10 goals, while winger Mohamed Belloumi has also joined the casualty list.

Under their previously unheralded boss Sergej Jakirovic, the Tigers have quietly sneaked into fourth place, two points outside the automatic promotion places.

“I’m very pleased because we are playing well and we will try to push this but it will not be easy because everyone is struggling with injuries,” said Jakirovic after Monday’s win at Middlesbrough.

A title winner in his native Bosnia as well as Croatia, he knows how to get the job done but sustaining it with limited trading ability in the January transfer window will be a test of his skills.

Also, before any fans in East Yorkshire get too excited they may like to look at Thursday’s opponents Stoke when they arrive at the MKM Stadium (15:00 GMT).

Second at the end of November, the Potters’ poor run of five defeats from their past seven outings finds them now in 10th place, four points short of the top six.

Fortunes can fluctuate quickly in football, particularly in the chaos that is the Championship.

In an African media landscape often praised from afar but punished up close, the real story of leading an independent newsroom rarely makes the headlines. People romanticise the adrenaline of the newsroom, the thrill of the scoop, the excitement of breaking news. But leadership in accountability journalism—in a country where truth does not trend—is a different story entirely. It is a story of hidden battles, bruised spirits, and a vision stretched thin by a society that prioritises entertainment gossip over existential truths.

This reflection is a continuation of my thoughts from June 3, 2025 – The Unseen Struggle of Leading a Media Platform in a Turbulent Environment.

In Nigeria, where insecurity is the biggest factor shaping daily life, the public’s attention is captured instead by comedy skits, celebrity feuds, gossip threads, political gaffes, and Premier League debates. This is the ecosystem in which independent journalism is expected to survive.

And so, every morning, I walked into the HumAngle building, feeling the weight of a mission at odds with its environment—carrying not just the hopes of nearly 40 staff members, but also the invisible pressure to prove that public-interest journalism can exist in a society that has never been structured to sustain it.

Across Africa, there is no real culture of donations, subscriptions, or even crowdfunding. Journalism is consumed as if it should be free, but demanded as if it should be perfect. Donors are inconsistent, and local philanthropy often fails to acknowledge the media as a public good. Here, running a newsroom is not merely difficult—it is punishing.

Leadership in this terrain? It is an unending battle.

The weight no one talks about

There is no handbook for running a mission-driven newsroom in Africa. No manual for balancing editorial courage with collapsing revenue. No chapter explaining the emotional labour required when staff look to you for stability, even as you drown quietly inside.

Personal and organisational debts blur. Health suffers. Nights become battlegrounds of fear and self-doubt. To the world, you remain the unshakeable face of the mission. Inside, you are a flickering candle refusing to die out.

And then comes the perpetual churn of young talent. Some join the newsroom committed; others see it as a stepping stone to something more glamorous or better-paying. Training becomes constant. Expectations clash with reality. The hunger to build a long-term institution is met with the short-term ambitions of individuals trying to survive.

These are the unseen struggles—never spoken, barely acknowledged. But none of these internal pressures compares to the most suffocating question of all: How do you keep the lights on in a continent that does not invest in the truth?

Here, many media outlets pay little or nothing, causing many workers to moonlight. The public expects reliable news for free. Donor funding becomes increasingly precarious year after year, and local businesses view journalism as little more than an expense.

Yet the expectation is always that we must remain fair, independent, ethical, and unbroken.

It is a war fought alone.

The year the floor gave in

At the start of 2025, HumAngle lost nearly 90 per cent of its income. Years of careful building felt undone in a single moment. By mid-year, we had clawed back a small fraction of that loss, but over 60 per cent of what sustained us in 2023–2024 never returned. The ground under our feet cracked open. 

I drafted a resignation letter twice. But who would I send it to? To the staff who trusted me beyond the title? To the public, would my exit be seen as a surrender? To the displaced communities whose stories depend on our presence? I stayed—not because I felt strong, but because leaving felt weaker.

And yet somehow, we built more

The cruel irony is that even in our most challenging year, we produced some of our most important work. We published roughly 450 written stories and over 70 video reports in the forms of:

• Deep investigations.
• Ground reporting from places others avoid.
• Explainers, data stories, GIS maps.
• Cartoons and motion graphics.
• VR documentaries.
• Stories of insurgency, displacement, bureaucracy, climate vulnerability, abductions, disappearances, corruption, and the human will to survive.

We created an animated series. We mapped conflict. We exposed truths hidden in plain sight. While our budget shrank, our creativity expanded and our resolve sharpened. 

In-between the nonstop cycle of proposals, investor pitches, and fundraising, I managed to write about 20 articles; one ended up HumAngle’s number one most-read story of 2025.

If leadership is measured by scars, 2025 carved its initials into my spirit.

A break in the clouds

Then, in November—when the exhaustion in my bones felt older than the year—I received the news that I had been selected as a 2026 Yale Peace Fellow.

It felt like the universe placing a hand on my back, whispering, “I see your sacrifices. Keep going.”

It was both validation and oxygen. A reminder that the mission is still worthy. For the first time in months, I exhaled.

Gratitude

To the team members who witnessed the storm’s impact on me yet never wavered in their confidence—thank you. Your presence gave me the strength to keep fighting and to ensure the wheels of HumAngle continued to turn.

And to myself, I owe a whisper of recognition:
I stood when it made no sense to stand.
I held the line when hope dimmed to a shadow.
I carried HumAngle through a year that nearly broke me.

Abandoning the communities we serve would have been a more profound betrayal than any financial strain.

This is Ahmad Salkida saying: Thank you—and I see you—to Ahmad Salkida.

Why we must continue

Our reporting led to the release of over 1,000 men who had been arbitrarily detained for years by the military. It also strengthened accountability in the management of IDP camps and contributed to several rescues as well as improved humanitarian response efforts. There is so much more that our reporting and advocacy have achieved.

If we stop, who documents the disappeared? Who tracks the terrorists expanding violently across borders? Who exposes the illicit financial networks funding terrorism? Who tells the stories of those the state has forgotten? Who protects truth in a time when truth is expendable?

Looking toward 2026

I do not know what the coming year holds. But I hope— stubbornly—that it will be kinder. Kinder to those who witness suffering so others may understand. Kinder to organisations like HumAngle that stand between injustice and oblivion. Kinder to the idea that journalism still matters.

The year 2025 almost broke us. It almost broke me. But ‘almost’ is not the same as ‘did’.

HumAngle stands—scarred, stretched, humbled—but standing. And in 2026, we continue, more determined than ever to continue to bear witness.

OUR team of intrepid showbiz reporters have brought you all the latest on the Brooklyn Beckham saga, blow by blow accounts of JoJo Siwa dumping her girlfriend for Chris Hughes and we broke the news about Danny Jones kissing Maura Higgins to name just a few astonishing showbiz scoops from 2025.

But while we’ve been filling the paper and gracing the internet with story after story, there’s actually been A LOT we haven’t told you… until now.

We may not be able to name names. but we CAN give you all the dirty secrets the stars definitely don’t want you to know… Prepare to be shocked.

A SCARY TYPE OF LOVE 

We shook our heads in disbelief when we were told all a Love Islander had a violent criminal family member.

No wonder her boyfriend was scared to dump her despite seeming completely over her as their romance hit the rocks. Once he’d heard about the jailed man’s crimes, he’d be scared to upset her.

GUILTY GIFT 

One huge reality star managed to keep the details of an explosive breakup with her ex under wraps.

It’s known that she cheated on her former flame before their split, but what remains secret is that the person she cheated with was married, and their affair sparked a very messy divorce. Worse still, the star was gifted a Rolex from her lover… which belonged to his wife.

HOT AND STEAMY

One former I’m A Celebrity star has been using the sauna at a well known private members club for their illicit hookups.

Fellow members are thought to have been shocked when they spotted him, but have quickly got used to his steamy antics. 

THEY’VE GOT THE SAME TYPE

These two TV stars appeared blissfully happy when they got wed but we were told they were both having it off with the same bloke before the big day.

Affairs are nothing new but it turns out these two had no idea they were copping off with the same person. When that gossip finally filters back, we expect divorce papers to be drawn up pretty fast.

MONEY TALKS

Tis the season to be jolly, but we can reveal a well known BBC star turned into a real life Grinch after attending an Uber Xmas party where guests were given one box containing an uber code.

After making full use of the free bar this person proceeded to nab the lot and hastily open them all in the lift…

NOT SURE PICTURE PERFECT

Our jaws hit the floor when we were told all about the well-loved female BBC star who showed an explicit and unwanted picture of a penis to a junior member of staff.

The woman, who ranked among the Corporation’s top 50 highest paid this year, asked the junior member of staff about her preferences and then showed her a nude image on her mobile phone.

But her actions were considered so offensive that the female talent was called in by execs and asked to apologise.

PARTY POOPER

It’s not just celebs who haven’t been on their best behaviour this year. The father of one very well-known bride caused a scene at her wedding by getting smashed and being inappropriate with female guests.

He spent the rest of the next day hungover and phoning round everyone apologising. 

REALITY BITES

One reality star was shouting from the roof tops when she got a new man this year.

But when the latest love of her life didn’t turn up for her birthday party, she wasted no time in hopping into bed with her ex – that very same night. And her new bloke is still none the wiser. 

TELLING TALES

Celebs will do anything to keep themselves out of the news  – like the TV star who was caught getting up to no good in the toilet. Let’s just say she looked a little too familiar with a little bag of white stuff.

She begged for her secret to be kept hidden and offered up some scandal on another star, one of her pals, instead. No wonder they say keep your enemies closer. 

DES MOINES, Iowa — Democrat Renee Hardman was elected to the Iowa state Senate on Tuesday in a year-end special election, denying Republicans from reclaiming two-thirds control of the chamber.

Hardman bested Republican Lucas Loftin by an overwhelming margin to win a seat representing parts of the Des Moines suburbs. The seat became vacant after the Oct. 6 death of state Sen. Claire Celsi, a Democrat.

Hardman, the CEO of nonprofit Lutheran Services of Iowa and a member of the West Des Moines City Council, becomes the first Black woman elected to the 50-member Senate.

“I want to recognize that while my name was the one on the ballot, this race was never just about me,” Hardman told a room of supporters in West Des Moines after declaring victory.

With 99% of votes counted, Hardman led by about 43 percentage points.

Her win is latest in a string of special election victories for Iowa Democrats, who flipped two Senate seats this year to break up a supermajority that had allowed Republicans to easily confirm GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds’ appointments to state agencies and commissions.

Democrat Mike Zimmer first flipped a seat in January, winning a district that had strongly favored Republican President Trump in the 2024 election. In August, Democrat Catelin Drey handily defeated her GOP opponent in the Republican stronghold of northwestern Iowa, giving Democrats 17 seats to Republicans’ 33. Celsi’s death brought that down to 16.

Republicans would have regained two-thirds control with a Loftin victory Tuesday. Without a supermajority, the party will need to get support from at least one Democrat to approve Reynolds’ nominees. The GOP still has significant majorities in both legislative chambers.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Hardman’s victory “a major check on Republican power.”

“With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections,” Martin said.

In November the party dominated the first major Election Day since Trump returned to the White House, notably winning governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey. Democrats held onto a Kentucky state Senate seat this month in a special election. And while Republican Matt Van Epps won a Tennessee special election for a U.S. House seat, the relatively slim margin of victory gave Democrats hope for next year’s midterms. The party must net three House seats in 2026 to reclaim the majority and impede Trump’s agenda.

Loftin, a tree trimmer turned data manager, congratulated Hardman and told the Associated Press he’s praying for her as she embarks on this important chapter.

Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann applauded Loftin and his supporters for putting up a fight in what he described as “a very tough district.” Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 3,300 voters, or 37% to 30%.

“Although we fell short this time, the Republican Party of Iowa remains laser-focused on expanding our majorities in the Iowa Legislature and keeping Iowa ruby-red,” Kaufmann said.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee pledged Tuesday to help defend the party’s gains in Iowa and prevent the return of a GOP supermajority next year.

Schoenbaum and Fingerhut write for the Associated Press. Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

Gold and silver have seen a rollercoaster end to a year in which their prices are on track to record their biggest annual gains since 1979.

The price of gold soared by more than 60% this year to hit a record high of more than $4,549 (£3,378) an ounce before slipping after Christmas to stand at about $4,350 on New Year’s Eve.

At the same time, silver was trading at about $74 an ounce after hitting an all-time high of of $83.62 on Monday.

This year’s gains were fuelled by a number of reasons including expectations of more interest rate cuts, gold purchases by central banks and as investors buy so-called “safe haven” assets due to concerns about global tensions and economic uncertainty.

“Gold and silver prices are experiencing a notable rise due to the interplay of several economic, investment, and geopolitical factors,” said Rania Gule from trading platform XS.com.

The main driver of the price rises of precious metals, she added, are expectations that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again in 2026.

Also this year, central banks around the world added hundreds of tons of gold to their reserves, according to the World Gold Council trade association.

Daniel Takieddine, co-founder of investment firm Sky Links Capital Group, points to “supply tightness and industrial demand” for helping to push up the price of silver.

China, which is the world’s second biggest producer of silver, has said it would restrict the export of the precious metal.

In October, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced new restrictions on exports of silver as well as the metals tungsten and antimony to “to step up the protection of resources and the environment”.

Responding to a post on social media about Chinese government restrictions on silver exports, Tesla boss Elon Musk said: “This is not good. Silver is needed in many industrial processes.”

Mr Takieddine also highlighted the large amounts of money that have flowed into the precious metals market through investments like exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

ETFs are baskets of investments that trade on a stock exchange like a single stock. They can be seen as a convenient way to trade precious metals as investors do not have to take possession of physical bullion.

Ms Gule said she expects gold to continue to rise in 2026 but “at a more stable pace compared to the record highs observed in 2025”.

Silver also has the potential to rise again in the coming year, said Mr Takieddine. But he warns “rallies may be followed by sharper corrections.”

WASHINGTON — In the whirlwind first year of President Trump’s second term, some of the most polarizing changes have taken place within the Department of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has openly rebuffed the medical establishment as he converts the ideas of his Make America Healthy Again movement into public policy.

Since entering office in February, the Health secretary has overseen a dramatic reshaping of the agencies he oversees, including eliminating thousands of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of dollars for scientific research. As part of his campaign against chronic disease, he has redrawn the government’s position on topics such as seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol. He also has repeatedly used his authority to promote discredited ideas about vaccines.

The department’s rapid transformation has garnered praise from MAHA supporters who say they long viewed Health and Human Services as corrupt and untrustworthy and have been waiting for such a disruption. And both Democrats and Republicans have applauded some of the agency’s actions, including efforts to encourage healthy eating and exercise, and deals to lower the prices of costly drugs.

But many of the drastic changes Kennedy has led at the department are raising grave concerns among doctors and public health experts.

“At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health law professor who was removed from a National Institutes of Health advisory board this year with a letter that said he was no longer needed. “I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage.”

Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon denied any threat to scientific expertise at the agency and lauded its work.

“In 2025, the Department confronted long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon said in a statement. “HHS will carry this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”

The overhaul comes alongside broader uncertainties in the nation’s health system, including Medicaid cuts passed by Congress this year and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that are putting millions of Americans’ insurance coverage in jeopardy.

Here’s a closer look at Kennedy’s first year leading the nation’s health agency:

Kennedy’s vaccine views ripple across the department

After many years spent publicly assailing vaccines, Kennedy sought during his confirmation process to reassure senators he wouldn’t take a wrecking ball to vaccine science. But less than a year later, his Health Department has repeatedly pushed the limits of those commitments.

In May, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by public health experts who saw no new data to justify the change.

In June, Kennedy fired an entire 17-member CDC vaccine advisory committee — later installing several of his own replacements, including multiple vaccine skeptics.

That group has made decisions that have shocked medical professionals, including declining to recommend COVID-19 shots for anyone, adding new restrictions on a combination shot against chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella and reversing the long-standing recommendation that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

Kennedy in November also personally directed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, without supplying any new evidence to support the change. Although he left the old language on the agency website to keep a promise he made to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, he added a disclaimer saying it remained because of the agreement.

Public health researchers and advocates strongly refute the updated website and note that scientists have thoroughly explored the issue in rigorous research spanning decades, all pointing to the same conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Kennedy has promised a wide-ranging effort to study environmental factors that potentially contribute to autism and in an Oval Office event with Trump in September promoted unproven — and in some cases discredited — ties among Tylenol, vaccines and the complex brain disorder.

Kennedy reconfigures department with massive staffing and research cuts

Within two months of taking office, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of Health and Human Services that would shut down entire agencies, consolidate others into a new one focused on chronic disease and lay off about 10,000 employees on top of 10,000 others who had already taken buyouts.

Although parts of the effort are still tied up in court, thousands of the mass layoffs were allowed to stand. Those and voluntary departures significantly thinned out the sprawling $1.7-trillion department, which oversees food and hospital inspections, health insurance for roughly half of the country and vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy also has fired or forced out several leaders at the department, among them four directors at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration’s former vaccine chief and a director of the CDC whom he had hired less than a month earlier.

On top of staffing reductions, he has overseen significant cuts to scientific research. That includes the NIH slashing billions of dollars in research projects and the termination of $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Amid the cuts, Kennedy has proposed or funded some new research on topics related to his MAHA goals, including autism, Lyme disease and food additives.

MAHA gains momentum despite some stumbles

Kennedy started using the phrase “MAHA” on the campaign trail last year to describe his crusade against toxic exposures and childhood chronic disease, but 2025 was the year it became ingrained in the national lexicon.

In his tenure so far, the Health secretary has made it the centerpiece of his work, using the MAHA branding to wage war on ultra-processed foods, pressure companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticize fluoride in drinking water and push to ban junk food from the program that subsidizes grocery store runs for low-income Americans.

The idea has even spread beyond Kennedy’s agency across the federal government.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared with Kennedy to promote fitness with pull-up displays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy teamed up with Kennedy in early December to announce $1 billion in funding for airports to install resources including playgrounds and nursing pods for mothers and babies. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced he is working toward unveiling a MAHA agenda with health-related goals for his own department.

MAHA has earned widespread popularity among the American public — even as it has endured some administration foibles. In May, for example, Health and Human Services faced scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that contained several citations to studies that didn’t exist.

But to the extent that the initiative has included calls to action that aren’t based on science — such as urging distrust in vaccines or promoting raw milk, which is far more likely than pasteurized milk to lead to illness — critics say it can be dangerous.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

It’s the final days before the Alamo Bowl, the last gasps of USC’s football season, and Rock Hanson is still getting over a fever.

For USC offensive line coach Zach Hanson and his wife, Annie, who previously was Trojans recruiting director, the timing isn’t ideal to be tending to a sick 1-year-old. The Trojans are shorthanded in trying to finish out a 10-win season on Tuesday against Texas Christian. The transfer portal opens three days after that. And the coaching carousel is already in full swing, with one assistant already gone and Zach garnering outside interest, namely from his alma mater, Kansas State.

But they’ve been parenting long enough now to know not to stress over a fever. And they’ve been working in college football long enough to know the timing is never ideal. Their past decade together has been a testament to that. Last December, Rock was born on early-signing day, hours after Annie had wrapped up USC’s 2025 recruiting class. Two weeks after that, Zach was thrust into a new role as USC’s offensive line coach. They spent the bowl season in a Las Vegas hotel, walking the Strip with a three-week old, in a new-parent-induced delirium, their whole lives having suddenly turned upside down.

“It was a lot of learning on the fly,” Zach said. “We were figuring all of that out together.”

Rock Hanson, son of USC assistant coach Zach Hanson, wears a Trojans jersey while sitting on the team’s practice field.

(Courtesy of Hanson family)

There aren’t many in college football who have navigated all that the Hansons have during the past two seasons at USC. But their resilience has been the beating heart behind an unexpectedly strong season for a Trojans offensive line that overcame its own harrowing hurdles. Even as injuries forced USC to reshuffle the line on a near weekly basis, Zach still guided the group to its best season since 2022.

“To lose all that we lost, then to have all the reshuffling on the offensive line we had, normally that could almost be a death sentence for an offense,” coach Lincoln Riley said. “We’ve had some big challenges. We’ve been able to respond.”

That’s a credit not only to Zach, who has become one of the most critical assistants on USC’s coaching staff, but also to Annie, who has remained an essential part of the program, albeit now in a more unofficial capacity.

That they’ve proven so adept at navigating such adverse circumstances should come as no surprise considering the uphill climb they faced from the start of their relationship. When they first met on a blind date at an Eric Church concert in 2014, Annie worked at Oklahoma in the development office. Zach was a graduate assistant at Kansas State, a five-hour drive away in Manhattan, near where Annie grew up. They hit it off so well right away that both knew they had to make it work. A year in, just as Zach planned to propose, Annie got a job in Chapel Hill, N.C., leading the Tar Heels recruiting office.

For years, they toiled away, rising through the ranks, hoping their paths would converge. They never did for long. They spent the 2015 season apart, before Zach got the job as North Carolina’s special teams assistant coach in 2016. They spent a year together, then hired Annie was hired to run recruiting at Oklahoma in 2017. They spent another season apart, before Zach returned to Kansas State and that same five-hour drive into Oklahoma.

When Kansas State coach Bill Snyder retired, Zach joined Riley’s staff as a grad assistant in 2019, finally back at the same school as his wife. But in 2020, Tulsa offered him a job two hours away, coaching the offensive line. He took it. They bought a house. And Annie drove two hours every day, there and back, to work in Norman.

It felt, by then, like a blessing.

“You just find a way, right?” Annie says.

Zach dreamed one day of being a head football coach. Annie had gotten into college athletics to someday be an athletic director. At USC, they could pursue those paths for the first time together. Zach coached tight ends while Annie ran the recruiting office. For the first time, it felt like they might stay in the same place for a while. They decided to start a family.

Annie got pregnant in 2024. Then last September, just before the start of the football season, she started to experience serious pain in her leg. One doctor brushed it off. But eventually she went back to the hospital. Another doctor discovered a significant blood clot running from the middle of her calf, all the way up near her belly.

Emergency surgery was scheduled for the very next morning. Annie spent the next six weeks relegated to a wheelchair or a walker. With her husband in the throes of the football season, the Riley family insisted Annie live in the casita of their Palos Verdes home. So for six weeks, while she recovered, Riley’s wife, Caitlin, waited on her every need. “I mean, [she did] everything you could think of,” Annie says, still blown away by the kindness.

After all that, having a baby didn’t feel so daunting. Riley told her to take the time after Rock was born. She still worked from home, setting up recruiting visits for January. She didn’t want other women in the business to think you couldn’t have a baby and run recruiting for a major college football program. But one day, she came into USC’s football office and set Rock up in a pack-and-play in one room while she ran a staff meeting in another. As she spoke to her staff, Rock wailed silently on the baby monitor app on her phone. She couldn’t take it.

USC assistant coach Zach Hanson embraces his wife, Annie, and son, Rock, share a hug on the field at the Coliseum after a USC football game.

(Courtesy of Hanson family)

“I turned to my counterpart [current director of USC recruiting strategy] Skyler [Phan] and said, ‘Girl, it’s your turn. You’ve got it,’” Annie recalled.

She’d already told Riley she was thinking about stepping away. Actually doing so “was incredibly difficult” for Annie, Zach said.

She made it official in March; though, she maintains it’s just temporary.

“My time in college football is not over,” Annie says. “I truly believe whenever I do return, I’ll be a much better leader now that I’m a mom.”

Just as Annie stepped away, Zach set out to put his imprint on USC’s offensive line. Immediately upon taking over the group, he started switching up combinations, to ensure that each linemen learned multiple positions, never knowing which combinations he might need.

He’d also learned over the course of his career how critical chemistry could be up front. If it was off, it could sink the whole season. So he made a concerted effort from the start to bring the group together outside of football.

USC offensive line coach Zach Hanson; his wife, Annie; and son, Rock, join linemen and staff for a group photo in the Trojans’ locker room.

(Courtesy of Hanson family)

“One of the coaches I worked for several years ago told me, the players aren’t just going to come to you,” Zach said. “You’ve got to bring them in.”

So they hosted dinners at their house. Annie baked every lineman their favorite cake on their birthdays. They wanted the linemen to know that they cared about them as more than just football players.

“He’s a great coach,” guard Alani Noa said. “There’s nothing too personal. There’s nothing out of whack. Everything is open as far as conversations.”

They’ve even taken to holding Rock, who’s now already 33 pounds.

“It’s so important to Zach,” Annie says, “that those kids understand, like, ‘You can do this, and we believe in you, and we are going to prepare you to a point of trusting your training. So when you get out on that field, like there’s not even a question, you know, and I think that those guys very much played that way this year.”

USC was without stalwart left tackle, Elijah Paige, for half the season. Starting center, former walk-on Kilian O’Connor, played in eight games. And just two of its starting lineman — Tobias Raymond and Justin Tauanuu — started all 12 games heading into the Alamo Bowl.

USC offensive lineman Alani Noa (77), Amos Talalele (75) and Kilian O’Connor (67) warm up before facing Notre Dame at the Coliseum on Nov. 30.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“This is a position group where it’s not always the most talented guys you throw out there,” Zach said. “It’s the five guys who played best together.”

Zach managed to keep finding those five all season, keeping the front steady all season in spite of injuries. USC gave up just 15 sacks, fewer than all but 14 teams in college football. The line also cleared the way to average 5.29 yards per carry, the highest rushing clip at the school in over a decade.

Other schools are starting to notice. At Kansas State, his alma mater, Hanson’s name has been mentioned as a potential offensive coordinator under newly hired coach Collin Klein, who Hanson described to The Times as “one of my best friends” whose “family is like family to us”. Annie’s family also hails from just outside of Manhattan, Kan.

“That place is certainly a place that’s special to us,” Zach said of Kansas State.

But in the same breath, Zach says he’s “extremely happy [at USC] doing what we’re doing.” It’s not lost on the Hansons how much the Rileys have done for them.

In the coming days, those questions will surely come up again. But for now, the Hansons were more preoccupied with kicking a 1-year-old’s fever and preparing USC to play Texas Christian without three of its top seven linemen.

“Our philosophy has always been, as a family, we’re going to be all in no matter where we’re at,” Zach says.

At USC, that has certainly been the case. That includes Rock, who is a perfect 9-0 at USC games he’s attended heading into Tuesday’s Alamo Bowl — and can now say the word “ball.”

Whether he’ll get to build on that record beyond the bowl game remains to be seen. But there have been other options elsewhere before. Options closer to family, for childcare purposes.

But USC, Annie says, “has made our experience so incredible and worth the sacrifices.”

“We’ve chosen to stay because of how special this place is, you know?”

NEW ORLEANS, La. — A National Guard deployment in New Orleans authorized by President Trump will begin Tuesday as part of a heavy security presence for New Year’s celebrations a year after an attack on revelers on Bourbon Street killed 14 people, officials said Monday.

The deployment in New Orleans follows high-profile National Guard missions the Trump administration launched in other cities this year, including in Washington and Memphis, Tennessee. But the sight of National Guard troops is not unusual in New Orleans, where troops earlier this year also helped bolster security for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras.

“It’s no different than what we’ve seen in the past,” New Orleans police spokesperson Reese Harper said.

The Guard is not the only federal law enforcement agency in the city. Since the start of the month, federal agents have been carrying out an immigration crackdown that has led to the arrest of at least several hundred people.

Harper stressed that the National Guard will not be engaging in immigration enforcement.

“This is for visibility and just really to keep our citizens safe,” Harper said. “It’s just another tool in the toolbox and another layer of security.”

The Guard is expected be confined to the French Quarter area popular with tourists and won’t be engaging in assisting in immigration enforcement, Harper said. Guardsmen will operate similar to earlier this year when they patrolled the area around Bourbon Street following the vehicle-ramming attack on Jan. 1.

The 350 Guard members will stay through Carnival season, when residents and tourists descend on the Big Easy to partake in costumed celebrations and massive parades before ending with Mardi Gras in mid-February.

Louisiana National Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins said in a written statement that the Guard will support local, state, and federal law enforcement “to enhance capabilities, stabilize the environment, assist in reducing crime, and restoring public trust.”

In total, more than 800 local, state and federal law enforcement officials will be deployed in New Orleans to close off Bourbon Street to vehicular traffic, patrol the area, conduct bag searches and redirect traffic, city officials said during a news conference Monday.

The extra aid for New Orleans has received the support of some Democrats, with Mayor LaToya Cantrell saying she is “welcoming of those added resources.”

The increased law enforcement presence comes a year after Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove around a police blockade in the early hours of Jan. 1 and raced down Bourbon Street, plowing into people celebrating New Year’s Day. The attacker, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran who had proclaimed his support for the Islamic State militant group on social media, was fatally shot by police after crashing. After an expansive search, law enforcement located multiple bombs in coolers placed around the French Quarter. None of the explosive devices detonated.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, 100 National Guard members were sent to the city.

In September, Gov. Jeff Landry asked Trump to send 1,000 troops to Louisiana cities, citing concerns about crime. Democrats pushed back, specifically leaders in New Orleans who said a deployment was unwarranted. They argued that the city has actually seen a dramatic decrease in violent crime rates in recent years.

Cline and Brook write for the Associated Press. Cline reported from Baton Rouge.

This is a column about lies. Big lies. Presidential lies. Dumb lies. The type of lies that have made life in the United States a daily dumpster fire of bad news. The kind of lies that would’ve made Frank Sinatra want to knock out a palooka.

More on Ol’ Blue Eyes in a bit.

For now let me tell you about one victim of President Trump’s mountain of lies whose brush with the administration defined our 2025.

On June 7, Brayan Ramos-Brito drove east on Alondra Boulevard from Compton toward a Chevron in Paramount to buy some snacks. It was his day off. It also was the weekend when Trump unleashed his deportation Leviathan on Southern California in a campaign that hasn’t stopped.

Ramos-Brito, a cook, had no idea that was going on as traffic froze on Alondra in front of a Home Depot. A “stay-at-home type of guy,” he didn’t even vote in the 2024 election because “politics isn’t my thing.”

But as the slender 30-year-old sat in his car, he saw federal immigration agents who had gathered across the street from the Home Depot fire flash-bang grenades at protesters who were screaming at them to leave. That’s when the moment “got to me.”

Ramos-Britos, a U.S citizen, got out of his car to yell at la migra, accusing those who looked Latino of being a “disgrace.” He said one of them shoved him into a scrum of protesters. After that, “all I remember were knees and kicks” by agents before they dragged him on the pavement and into the back of a van.

For hours Ramos-Brito and others stayed zip-tied inside as “craziness” erupted outside. Hundreds more residents arrived, as did L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. Smoke from blazes set by the former and tear gas canisters tossed by the latter seeped inside the van — “we kept telling agents we couldn’t breath, but they just ignored us.”

Photos and footage from the Paramount protest went viral and sparked an even bigger rally the following day near downtown L.A. that devolved into torched Waymo cars and concrete blocks hurled at California Highway Patrol vehicles. Soon, Trump called up the National Guard and Marines to occupy the City of Angels under the pretense that anarchy now ruled here — even though protests were confined to pockets of the metropolis. Siccing the National Guard on cities is something Trump has since tried to replicate across the country in any place that has dared to push back against immigration sweeps.

Ramos-Brito spent two weeks in a detention facility in Santa Ana stuffed in a cell with undocumented immigrants facing deportation. He faced federal felony charges of assaulting a federal agent and was accused of being one of the Paramount protest’s ringleaders as well.

Prosecutors tried to scare him into pleading guilty with threats of years in prison. Despite having no money to hire a lawyer, he refused: “I wasn’t going to take the blame for something I didn’t do.”

Federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega represented Ramos-Brito during a two-day September trial. Ortega screened video footage to the jury that proved his client’s version of what happened and easily caught federal agents contradicting each other and their own field reports.

The jury took about an hour to acquit Ramos-Brito on misdemeanor assault charges. He wants to move on — but the mendacity of the administration won’t let him.

The lies it used to try to railroad an innocent man turned out not to be an aberration but a playbook for Trump’s 2025.

The stretch of Alondra Boulevard in Paramount where a June 7 protest against immigration agents resulted in the arrest of 30-year-old Compton resident Brayan Ramos-Brito on allegations he assaulted one of them. A jury found him not guilty.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Lies, of course, have fueled the president’s career from the days he was was a smarmy New York developer riding the coattails of his daddy. This year he and his apologists employed them like never before to try to consolidate their grip on all aspects of American life. They lied about the economy, about the contents of the Epstein files, about the efficacy of vaccines, the worth of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our supposed noninterventionist foreign policy and so much more.

Above all, or at least most malignantly, Trump and his crew lied about immigrants. The big lie. The lie they thought everyone would believe and thus would excuse all the other lies. They have lied about and maligned just about anyone they don’t see worthy of being a so-called “heritage American,” aka white.

Trump ran for reelection on a promise to focus on targeting “the worst of the worst” but has shrugged his shoulders as most of the people swept up in raids have no criminal record and are sometimes even citizens and permanent residents. He vowed that deporting people would improve the economy despite decades of studies showing the opposite. Trumpworld insists immigrants are destroying the United States — never mind that the commander in chief is the son of a Scotswoman and is married to a Slovenian while vice president JD Vance’s in-laws are from India.

The administration maintains unchecked migration is cultural suicide even as cabinet members sport last names — Kennedy, Rubio, Bondi, Loeffler — once seen by Americans of past generations as synonymous with invading hordes.

This is where Frank Sinatra comes in.

Over the Christmas weekend, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media that his family watched a Christmas special starring the Chairman of the Board and his fellow paisan, Dean Martin.

“Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world,” Miller sneered. It didn’t matter that the crooners were proud children of Italian immigrants who arrived during a time where they were as demonized as Venezuelans and Somalis are now.

Take it from Sinatra himself.

In 1945 he released “The House I Live In,” a short film in which he tells a group of boys chasing one of their Jewish peers to embrace a diverse America. In 1991 as his Republican Party was launching an era of laws in California targeting illegal immigrants, Sinatra penned a Fourth of July essay for The Times opposing such hate.

“Who in the name of God are these people anyway, the ones who elevate themselves above others?” Sinatra wrote. “America is an immigrant country. Maybe not you and me, but those whose love made our lives possible, or their parents or grandparents.”

As 2025 went from one hell month to another, it really felt like Trumpworld’s lies would loom over the land for good. But as the year ends, it seems truth finally is peeking through the storm clouds, like the blue skies Sinatra sang about so beautifully.

Trump’s approval ratings have dropped greatly since his inauguration even among those who voted for him, with his deportation disaster playing a role. Judges and juries are beginning to swat away charges filed against people like Ramos-Brito like they were flies swarming around a dung pile. Under especial scrutiny is Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, the public face of Trump’s deportation ground game.

In November, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis ruled the federal government had to stop using excessive force in Chicago after months of agents firing pepper balls and tear gas at the slightest perceived insult. Her decision reasoned that Bovino’s sworn testimony about a Chicago under siege by pro-immigrant activists was “not credible” because he provided “cute” answers when he wasn’t “outright lying.”

Among the victims of those lies: Scott Blackburn, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting Bovino during an immigration raid even though videos showed the migra man tackle Blackburn like they were playing sandlot football, and Cole Sheridan, whom Bovino claimed injured his groin while arresting him during a protest; federal prosecutors quickly dropped all charges against Sheridan when they realized there was a lack of evidence to back up Bovino’s story.

And then there is Ramos-Brito, who had to endure a federal trial that hinged on Bovino insisting he was guilty of assaulting a federal agent in Paramount. He shook his head in disgust when I told him about Bovino’s continued tall tales.

“Justice was served for me,” Ramos-Brito said, “but not for others. I got lucky.”

Brayan Ramos-Brito, 30, of Compton, was found not guilty of assaulting a federal agent during June’s immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles County.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

We spoke in front of the Home Depot where the June 7 protest happened, where Trump’s year of immigration lies went into overdrive. The day laborers who used to gather there for years weren’t around. The gate where la migra and protesters faced off was closed.

Ramos-Brito still drives down that stretch of Alondra Boulevard for his snacks from the Chevron station that stands a block away from where his life forever was changed. It took him months to go public with his story. Scars remain on his ribs, back and shoulders.

“There’s times when little moments come through my head,” he acknowledged.

What finally convinced him to speak up was think about others out there like him. He now realizes speaking out against Trump’s lies is the only way to stop him for good.

“Whoever is going through the same that I did, keep fighting,” Ramos-Brito said softly. “They should look at my experience to give them hope.”

A TOWN frozen in time since World War II will open to the public for a limited time.

The abandoned ghost village stays cut off from the world for most of the year, with visits only permitted this week.

History buffs and nature lovers alike swarm to the area, where 150 people once lived until 1943.

Since then, the abandoned village of Imber in Wiltshire, only sees visitors for 12 days out of the year.

During the second World War, residents of the area were given 47 days to evacuate their homes so the village could be turned into a military training area for troops.

While they were promised they would be able to return after the war, the village is still occupied by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to this day.

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And now it has invited the public to visit, with roads opening through Imber this week, until 8am on Friday, January 2.

Public access has been granted to the village as well as the Grade I-listed St Giles Church, which will be open from 11am to 4pm daily.

The original surviving building is free to visit during open days with any donations going towards the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) for maintenance and restoration.

Along with an old pub, the church is one of the few remaining original structures in the village.

Most of the larger stone buildings were damaged during military training, and were subsequently demolished.

Meanwhile, other houses in the village are either hollowed-out shells or have been converted into modern windowless buildings createdto simulate urban environments for military training.

While those who once lived in the village have the right to be buried on the church grounds, the only living residents now are an abundance of undisturbed wildlife, including owls, badgers, birds, and foxes.

Imber also holds open days during Easter weekend and a single day in summer, with all visitors required to adhere to the public rights of way and designated areas, and comply with signposting.

Knighthood

Christopher Dean (former ice skater), for services to ice skating and to voluntary service

Damehood

Jayne Torvill (former ice skater), for services to ice skating and to voluntary service

Sarina Wiegman (England football manager), honorary damehood as she is a Dutch national

Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)

Jonathan Davies (former Welsh rugby player), for work as president of the Velindre Cancer Care Trust

Daniel Levy (former Tottenham Hotspur executive chairman), for services to charity and the community in Tottenham

Leah Williamson (England captain), for services to football

Fergus McCann (former Celtic chief executive) for services to the economy and charity.

Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)

Zoe Stratford (England captain), for services to rugby union

Derek Brewer (former Nottinghamshire and MCC chief executive, and former board adviser, England and Wales Cricket Board), for services to cricket

Dr Ann Budge (former chair and chief executive officer, Hearts), for services to sport and to the community in Midlothian

Dr James Craig (former Celtic player), for services to Scottish football and to charity

Gabby Logan (broadcaster), for services to sports broadcasting and to charity

John Mitchell (England head coach), for services to rugby union

Barry O’Brien (cricket administrator), for services to the law, to cricket and charity

Marlie Packer (England international), for services to rugby union

Sarah-Jane Perry (squash player, grassroots champion and mentor), for services to squash

Stuart Pringle (chief executive officer, Silverstone Circuit), for services to motorsport

Paula Radcliffe (broadcaster and former athlete), for services to sport

Clive Tyldesley (broadcaster), for services to sports broadcasting and to charity

Gill Whitehead (chair, Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025), for services to women’s rugby

Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)

Dr Frances Akor (non-executive director, UK Anti-Doping), for services to sport

Joe Appiah (athlete), for services to sport, public health and public service

Susan Briegal (chief executive, World Netball) for services to sport

Daniel Costello (chair, Spartans Football Club), for services to community, sport and youth development

Kerry Davis (former England international), for services to football and to diversity in sport

Simone Fisher (director of equality, diversity and inclusion, Professional Footballers’ Association), for services to football

Alex Greenwood (England international), for services to football

Isa Guha (broadcaster and former England cricketer) for services to inclusivity and cricket

Megan Jones (England international), for services to rugby union

Tara Jones (referee), for services to rugby league

Sadia Kabeya (England international), for services to rugby union

James Keothavong (umpire), for services to tennis and tennis umpiring

Ellie Kildunne (England international), for services to rugby union

Louise Kingsley (director of performance, Great Britain rowing team), for services to sport

David Laing (chair, Scottish Borders Disability Sports Group) for services to sport

Julia Lee (former referee and advocate for women’s rugby league), for services to rugby league

Sarah Massey (managing director, Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025), for services to women’s rugby union

Rhys McClenaghan (gymnast), for services to gymnastics

Dr Ritan Mehta (head of medical and team doctor, England women’s football team), for services to football

David Perks (athletics coach), for services to athletics

Kambiz Ramzan Ali (Taekwondo master) for services to taekwondo and the community

Toby Roberts (Olympic champion), for services to sport climbing

Georgia Stanway (England international), for services to football

Ella Toone (England international), for services to football

Nigel Travis (boxing coach), for services to boxing and the community

Keira Walsh (England international), for services to football

Colin Wright (co-founder, Rushmoor Gymnastics Academy), for services to women’s gymnastics

Marie Wright (co-founder, Rushmoor Gymnastics Academy), for services to women’s gymnastics

George Clooney, wife Amal Clooney and their 8-year-old twins are officially citizens of France, as of the day after Christmas.

The news was reported by multiple French outlets as well as the Guardian, all citing an announcement published in a French government journal.

The Clooneys bought property in France — a farm, he recently told Esquire — in August 2021, when their twins were 4. He said it was a “much better life” there for Ella and Alexander.

“Yeah, we’re very lucky. … A good portion of my life growing up was on a farm, and as a kid I hated the whole idea of it. But now, for them, it’s like — they’re not on their iPads, you know?” he said in the interview, published in the magazine’s October/November issue.

“I was worried about raising our kids in L. A., in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France — they kind of don’t give a s— about fame. I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”

George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin in September 2014 in Venice, Italy.

Domaine Le Canadel in France is, according to Hello, “an enchanting and sprawling 425-acre Provence wine estate” that cost the Clooneys a reported $8.3 million. It has a pool, tennis court, gardens, a lake, an olive grove and a 25-acre vineyard, the outlet said. But, you know, it’s just a farm.

Other celebrity couples have put down roots in the area, of course, with less than charmed results over time. Then again, those folks weren’t French citizens, for the most part.

Clooney’s remarks about the French attitude toward fame echoed previous comments made by Johnny Depp, who years ago found refuge in France for himself and his children, Jack and Lily-Rose, until he split in 2012 from longtime partner Vanessa Paradis, a French singer, model and actor.

The country “afforded [Depp] the possibility of living a normal life. Really a simple life,” the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor told SFGate in 2001.

In 2010, Depp told People, “With Vanessa and the kids, we live in a sort of little village in the south and I have the impression of being in paradise … and you know what I do there? Absolutely nothing.”

Depp, who started dating his “The Rum Diary” co-star Amber Heard the year he broke up with Paradis, listed his Provence property for sale for almost $26 million in June 2015, then reportedly put it on the market again in the years that followed for more than twice the price. However, despite containing an entire village in its 37 acres, the property appears not to have sold.

Heard and Depp married in 2015 but divorced two years later amid allegations of abuse. Of course, dueling defamation lawsuits followed. It got ugly.

Meanwhile, Clooney’s buddy Brad Pitt and Pitt’s ex, Angelina Jolie, have been battling in court for years over the 2021 sale of her half of their Provence wine estate, Chateau Miraval, which actually produces wine. The former couple signed a long-term lease on the property in 2008 and later bought a controlling interest in the company that owned it.

Pitt and Jolie married at Chateau Miraval in 2014 after meeting in 2004 on the set of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” when he was still married to Jennifer Aniston. (They went official as a couple the following July after Aniston filed for divorce in March 2005.) Jolie and Pitt had kids and adopted kids together over the decade leading up to the wedding, but Jolie filed for divorce after only two years as husband and wife following a fight on a private plane. That also got ugly.

The story of the Pitt-Jolie court battle over the chateau and its winery is long and complicated, but it began with Pitt alleging that he and his ex had an agreement that if either wanted to sell their half of the place, the other would have to consent. Jolie, who sold her shares to Stoli’s wine division, Tenute del Mondo, said they had no such agreement in place.

Although the winery lawsuit remains active, Pitt and Jolie finally reached a divorce settlement in December 2024.

For McClenaghan, having the surgery this year hopefully paves the way for an uninterrupted two-year build-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“It was a thought that crossed my mind when I opted to get the surgery.

“We’ve got the time now. We’d rather miss out on 2025 as opposed to push through an injury that will haunt me until 2028. You need to think big picture sometimes.”

He added: “In terms of my gymnastics, I’m going to take it competition by competition, really work hard and assess how I’ve been competing and performing.”

One of the athletes hoping to deny McClenaghan a second Olympic crown will be Great Britain’s three-time gold medallist Max Whitlock, who has come out of retirement after stepping away from the sport following the Paris Games.

“I don’t blame him because I spent a bit of time away from gymnastics with my injury and I missed it,” said McClenaghan.

“I don’t blame him for stepping away and being like ‘you know what, this is actually a pretty awesome job, I don’t want to stop this’. Fair play to him and I look forward to seeing him in the next pommel final, hopefully.”

Regardless of the opposition, McClenaghan is determined to win another gold.

“The ultimate goal, similar to the Paris Olympics where it was my most difficult routine, is to peak at that right time, on the day when it matters.

“That’s certainly the goal for the LA Olympics, to piece together this puzzle of a routine and hopefully produce a world’s best again.”

Two weeks before the Alamo Bowl, USC got its best news of the bowl season: Star quarterback Jayden Maiava was forgoing the NFL draft to stay in L.A. for another year.

Two days later, TCU’s star quarterback, Josh Hoover, delivered his own announcement: He was entering the transfer portal.

Those two decisions will have the teams in drastically different places on offense. USC won’t have two of its starting offensive linemen or most of its regular receiving corps, but will have one of the Big Ten’s best quarterbacks at the helm. TCU, meanwhile, has most of its offense available, including star receiver Eric McAlister, but a backup quarterback who last started in 2023 in Ken Seals.

“Ken started 22 games in the SEC,” TCU coach Sonny Dykes said. “He’s been a great teammate, a great practice player. Now he’s going to get a chance to go perform on the big stage.”

Maiava should get plenty of chances Tuesday to show why he’ll be seen as a serious Heisman contender next season. TCU struggles to pressure opposing passers, ranks 109th in the nation in yards allowed through the air and has yet to face a passing attack this season as prolific as USC’s.

Not to mention there’s a notable calm to Maiava that wasn’t there at this point last bowl season.

“He’s just taken giant steps,” offensive coordinator Luke Huard said. “[You] just see him playing free and with a lot of confidence.”

What’s not clear is how much he’ll play, with freshman Husan Longstreet waiting in the wings and USC still hoping he’ll settle for another season sitting behind Maiava.

Washington, DC – For United States President Donald Trump, 2025 was a year of crisis.

Roaring into office on January 20 on the heels of a raucous political comeback, the president’s own telling describes a series of actions that have been swift and stark.

To name a few, he has envisioned rooting out a migrant “invasion” that includes staunching legal immigrants, and, potentially, targeting US citizens; he has touted a hard reset of uneven trade deals that pose “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security”; and, in the final months of the year, he has gone on the military offensive against “narcoterrorists” that he claims seek to topple the US through illicit drugs, possibly used as “weapons of mass destruction”.

For legal observers, Trump’s approach has been a yet-undecided stress test on presidential power, cranked by the gears of broadly interpreted emergency statutes and untrammelled executive authority.

Decisions by the court, lawmakers and voters in the 2026 midterm elections could determine how that strategy resonates or is restrained.

“The use or abuse of emergency powers is only one corner of a larger picture,” Frank Bowman, professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri, told Al Jazeera.

“In many cases, the administration is simply doing stuff that certainly any pre-existing understandings of executive authority would have said you cannot do,” he said.

Emergency powers and ‘national security’

The US Constitution, unlike many countries, has no catch-all emergency power authorisation for presidents.

In fact, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that presidents have no such implied authorities, explained David Driesen, professor emeritus at Syracuse University College of Law. Still, Congress has passed “numerous statutes that grant the president limited emergency powers under limited circumstances to do specific things”.

Nearly every modern president has used emergency powers with varying degrees of gusto, with Congress and the Supreme Court historically wary of reining in those actions.

Like many US presidents, Trump has also used broad and ambiguous national security claims to justify expanding his reach.

But several factors have set Trump’s second term apart, most notably the lack of distinct inciting events for many of the powers claimed, Driesen said.

“I’ve never seen a president invoke emergency powers to justify practically all of this policy agenda,” he told Al Jazeera, “and I’ve also never seen a president use them to seize powers that really are not in the statutes at all.”

Put simply, he added, “to Trump, everything is an emergency”.

The tone was set on day one, with Trump’s broad executive order declaring that irregular crossings at the southern border meant nothing less than “America’s sovereignty is under attack”. The order has been used to indefinitely suspend US asylum obligations, surge forces to the border, and seize federal land.

The same day, Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to designate Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) as “foreign terrorist organizations”, posing a threat to the “national security, foreign policy, and economy” of the US.

The administration has, in part, relied on and expanded that order in efforts to circumvent due process in its mass deportation push and to rhetorically justify a militaristic approach to Latin America.

Simultaneously, Trump also declared a wide-ranging energy emergency on his first day in office, laying the groundwork to bypass environmental regulations.

To be sure, as Bowman explained, Trump’s use of official emergency statutes has been only a piece of the puzzle, combined with his broad interpretation of constitutionally mandated power to reshape the government in ways big and small.

That has included cleaving civil servants from congressionally created government departments via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), trying to fire heads of independent agencies, renaming institutions – possibly illegally – in his likeness, and allegedly bypassing required approvals to physically transform the White House.

But the invocation of emergency statutes has remained a backbone of his second term. Trump invoked an emergency to justify sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its investigations into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

He used the “emergency” of fentanyl smuggling to justify tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, later unilaterally labelling the drug “weapons of mass destruction”.

In April, in one of his most challenged uses of an emergency authority, Trump cited an emergency statute to impose sweeping reciprocal tariffs against nearly all US trading partners.

A ‘mixed picture’

In review, 2025 has shown virtually no willingness from Congress, where both chambers remain narrowly controlled by Trump’s Republican Party, to challenge the president.

Rulings from lower federal courts, meanwhile, have offered a “mixed picture”, according to the University of Missouri’s Bowman, while the country’s top court has left wider questions unanswered.

Bowman noted the six conservative members of the nine-judge panel ascribe to varying degrees to the “unitary executive theory”, which argues the drafters of the constitution envisioned a strong consolidation of presidential power.

“On the one hand, Trump is obviously willing to declare emergencies where no rational person would really believe they exist,” Bowman said.

“On the other hand, at least the lower courts have pushed back, but it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will back them up.”

For example, Trump has been temporarily allowed to continue the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, a federal district where he declared a “crime emergency” in August. City officials have said the characterisation defies facts on the ground.

Despite claiming similar overlapping crime and immigration crises in liberal-led cities in states across the country, Trump has had far less success. Lower courts have limited deployments of the National Guard in California, Illinois, and Oregon.

Trump has also floated, but not yet invoked, the Insurrection Act, another law in the crisis portfolio dating back to 1792 that allows the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement to “suppress insurrections and repel invasions”.

A judicial response to the tactics behind Trump’s deportation drive has also been mixed.

Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act – a 1798 law designed to quickly expel foreign nationals during times of war – to swiftly deport undocumented individuals without due process has been constrained, but allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court with limited due process protections.

In one of the most-watched cases on the docket, the Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling when it returns to session in January on the legal justification of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

A lower court has previously ruled that Trump deployed the emergency statute illegally. Some conservative justices on the top court have also expressed wariness over the president’s claim.

The panel has appeared more amenable in a landmark case determining whether Trump can fire heads of independent agencies, also set to be decided in the new year.

The spectre of war

When it comes to unilaterally making war, Trump has been bounding down a well-trodden path of misused presidential power, according to Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy.

The end of the year has been marked by US military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats from Venezuela, decried by rights groups as extrajudicial killings.

The administration has claimed, without evidence, that over 100 people killed had sought to destabilise the US by flooding it with drugs. Trump has made a similar claim about the Nicolas Maduro-led government in Venezuela, as he has continued to rattle the sabre of land strikes.

The actions have been accompanied by a pugilistic rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a reframing of criminal Latin American cartels as so-called “narcoterrorists” and declaring a new drive to bring the Western Hemisphere firmly under the US sphere of influence.

“We have to understand this in the context of multiple administrations of both parties abusing executive authority to essentially go to war,” said Duss, who explained that the practice accelerated in the so-called “global war on terror” post-September 11, 2001 attacks.

Most recently, Republicans – and a handful of Democrats – in the House of Representatives voted down two separate war powers resolutions that would require congressional approval for future strikes on alleged drug boats or on Venezuelan territory.

The vote, Duss said, underscored “Trump’s near-total control of the Republican Party despite the fact that he is blatantly violating his own campaign promises to end wars, rather than to start them”.

Public opinion

Trump’s control over his party and his influence writ-large over the country will largely be tested in next year’s midterm elections. The vote will determine control of the House and the Senate.

A slate of polls has indicated at least some degree of wariness in Trump’s use of presidential power.

In particular, a Quinnipiac poll released in mid-December found 54 percent of voters think Trump is going too far in his authority claims, while 37 percent think he is handling the role correctly. Another 7 percent believe Trump should go further in using the power of the presidency.

Another Politico poll in November found that 53 percent of US residents think Trump has too much power, while the president has seen an overall slump in his approval ratings since taking office.

To be sure, a panoply of factors determine US elections, and it remains unclear if voters were more likely to respond to the results of Trump’s approach to the presidency, or to the approach itself.

“Does the average person really think much about any of the theoretical bases for the things Trump is doing? And frankly, would the average person care very much if the results were, in the short term, results of which they approved?” University of Missouri’s Bowman mused.

“I don’t know the answer … How all this is perceived across the country, and what’s going to happen next, is anybody’s guess.”

As “Avatar: Fire and Ash” headed to the big screen this month, theater owners held their breath.

In an uneven year that saw two billion-dollar hits and a viral “chicken jockey” craze, but also a disastrous first quarter and a nearly 30-year-low at the October box office, the end of December was the last chance for theaters to make up ground.

But even James Cameron and the Na’vi — the latest “Avatar” film has already grossed more than $472 million globally — couldn’t save 2025 from a disappointing conclusion.

Box-office revenue in the U.S. and Canada is expected to total $8.87 billion for the year, up just 1.5% from last year’s disappointing $8.74 billion tally, according to movie data firm Comscore. More troubling is that 2025’s domestic box-office haul is projected to be down more than 20% compared with 2019, before the pandemic changed audiences’ movie-going habits and turbocharged streaming in ways that the exhibition industry is still grappling with.

The problem: Fewer people are buying movie tickets. Theatrical attendance is running below last year’s levels, with an estimated 760 million tickets sold as of Dec. 25, according to media and entertainment data firm EntTelligence. Last year, total ticket sales for 2024 exceeded 800 million.

Part of the explanation for the falloff in cinema revenue and admissions lies in the movies themselves.

Industry experts and theater owners say the quality and frequency of releases led to dips in the calendar that put extra pressure on the other movies to perform. Once-reliable genres such as comedies and dramas are facing a much tougher time in theaters, and female moviegoers — who came out in droves in 2023 for “Barbie” — were underserved in a year that largely skewed toward male-leaning blockbusters.

“It’s fair to say that 2025 didn’t quite reach the levels many of us expected at the start of the year,” Eduardo Acuna, chief executive of Regal Cineworld, said in a statement. “A big part of that comes down to a lack of depth in the release schedule, and the struggle of many smaller titles to break through.”

Even big-name stars such as Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson and Sydney Sweeney couldn’t prop up attendance for films such as Sony Pictures’ “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” A24’s “The Smashing Machine” and Black Bear Pictures’ “Christy,” all of which flopped.

And despite the critical acclaim and stacked cast list for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” the film has stalled domestically at $71 million, with a global total of $205 million.

“One Battle After Another” had a budget of about $130 million, while “The Smashing Machine” reportedly cost $50 million and has grossed just $21 million worldwide.

“The challenge facing Hollywood is how to reconcile the budgets of these films with how much they can earn in theaters and down the road, eventually, in streaming,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” hauled in more than $324 million, but it was one of few big blockbusters targeted to women. (Taylor Swift’s “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” which brought in $50 million globally, was another.)

Though the summer was marked by a number of big films, including Warner Bros.-owned DC Studios’ “Superman,” Universal’s “Jurassic World Rebirth” and Apple’s “F1 The Movie,” most were geared toward male audiences.

Female-focused films are “are few and far between,” said Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, an entertainment data and research firm. “There should be something for everyone playing most of the time, and that isn’t the case.”

To be sure, there were some bright spots for the industry, including success from young audiences.

Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie” was the highest-grossing domestic film this year, with $423.9 million. Close behind was Walt Disney Co.’s live-action adaptation “Lilo & Stitch,” which collected $423.8 million in the U.S. and Canada and a total of $1 billion worldwide.

Counting those two, five of the year’s top 10 domestic-grossing films had PG ratings, including “Wicked: For Good,” Disney’s animated “Zootopia 2” and Universal’s live-action “How to Train Your Dragon.”

“In general, the good news about the year is that most of the big hits involved young audiences,” said Tom Rothman, chair and CEO chief executive of Sony Pictures’ motion picture group. “There is a bit of a youth-quake.”

Disney capitalized on the big year for family-friendly fare.

The Burbank entertainment giant recently crossed $6 billion at the global box office for the year, powered by billion-dollar hits such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “Zootopia 2,” and marking the company’s biggest year since 2019. (Though it wasn’t all sunny for Disney this year, as Pixar’s original animated film “Elio” misfired, as did the live-action film, “Snow White,” which was mired in controversy.)

Another notable youth driver was “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” from Sony Pictures in partnership with its anime banner, Crunchyroll. The film had a massive opening weekend haul of $70 million in July on its way to a domestic gross of $134 million and a global total of $715 million, highlighting the increasing popularity of anime.

“The mainstreaming of anime at the theatrical box office is a really significant part of what happened this year and a really good sign,” Rothman said. “You’re bringing in young audiences.”

Not surprisingly, established intellectual property — whether video games, known franchises, novels or comic books — still topped the charts this year, with nine of the top 10 domestic films tied to an existing title.

That familiarity at the box office counts when moviegoers, particularly families, are looking for movies to watch. Viewers can be choosy about how they spend their cash and time, and may not always want to gamble on a movie they’ve never heard of.

“Meaningful IP still has an advantage in getting people to come to the theater, though it’s not the only way to do it,” said Adam Fogelson, chair of Lionsgate’s motion picture group, which saw success this year with an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Long Walk,” as well as franchise film “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”

Horror flicks also scared up plenty of business in 2025. Warner Bros., in particular, had a string of wins in fearful films, including Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” and “Final Destination Bloodlines.”

In one notable exception, Blumhouse had a rare miss with “M3GAN 2.0,” the follow-up to the 2022 cult favorite. In an interview on “The Town” podcast, Blumhouse Productions Chief Executive Jason Blum blamed the sequel’s shortcomings on a change in genre from the original.

As 2025 draws to a close, industry insiders and theater owners are more optimistic about next year’s box office prospects.

Several big films are set to release in 2026, including Christopher Nolan’s much anticipated “The Odyssey,” Disney and Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three,” as well as Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” and “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” from Universal, Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment.

That anticipation is also clouded by the uncertainty of the impending Warner Bros. deal and what that will mean for movie releases.

Many cinema owners fear that a takeover by Netflix will limit or eliminate the theatrical exclusivity of Warner Bros. films, though Netflix executives have said they will honor the company’s current and future commitments to the big screen. And if Paramount were to buy the company, theatrical exhibitors fear that the number of films would decrease, leaving them with less content to show. (Paramount CEO David Ellison has said the company did not plan to release fewer movies.)

Any deal is expected to take at least a year to complete.

In the meantime, Hollywood will wait to see how strong the 2026 slate truly is.

“There are a lot of great titles out there, and that’s why people have been calling 2026 a return to form,” said Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “Even though 2026 is very promising, can Hollywood keep delivering year-in and year-out?”