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Roberto Delgado and his wife were praying the rosary on the night of Jan. 7 when they heard two loud booms that shook their Sylmar home. Then came a flash of light so bright that in the dead of night they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills behind their house.

Seconds later, Delgado said in an interview, the couple saw flames under two electric transmission towers owned by Southern California Edison — even more shocking because they had seen a fire ignite under one of those towers just six years before.

“We were traumatized,” he said. “It was almost the exact same thing.” In both fires, the family was forced to race to their car and flee with few belongings as the flames rushed through the brush toward their home, which survived both blazes.

Edison’s maintenance of its power lines is now under scrutiny in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people. Video captured by eyewitnesses shows the Eaton fire igniting under Edison transmission towers.

A lawsuit making its way through Los Angeles County Superior Court is raising new questions about Edison’s role in the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire in Sylmar and whether the company was transparent about the cause of the blaze. The fire killed at least one person and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures. Firefighters were able to contain the more recent Sylmar fire, called Hurst, before any homes were destroyed.

The lawyers contend that both fires were caused by the same problem: an improperly grounded transmission line running through the foothills of Sylmar that Edison failed to fix, which the company denies.

In a court filing, the lawyers included a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.

Edison has flatly disputed the lawyers’ assertions, calling their claims about the 2019 fire an “exotic ignition theory” based on “an unproven narrative.”

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said that the utility had complied with the requests of investigators looking into the two fires and that “there is no connection” between the incidents.

Dunleavy said Edison did not tell the fire department about the failure of its equipment in 2019 because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited. And she said it is common for any investigator to seek to obtain video that could aid in an investigation. “SCE’s investigator did not offer to buy surveillance video,” she said.

“We follow the law. Period,” she said.

Dunleavy said the company has completed tests that show the transmission line is safe. She declined to share the results and pointed to testimony by Edison’s expert in the case — Don Russell, a Texas A&M professor of electrical engineering — who said the line was properly grounded.

As for the Jan. 7 Hurst fire, the utility told regulators in a February letter that it believes its equipment “may be associated with the ignition” of the blaze. The letter said the company found two conductors on the ground under a Sylmar tower. The repairs, the letter said, included replacing equipment at several towers and more than three miles of cable.

Delgado and Perez say that on the night of the fire they heard two loud booms and a flash of light so bright they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Undergrounding of towers questioned

In dispute is whether the failure of steel equipment at the top of an Edison transmission tower on the night of Oct. 10, 2019, caused a massive power surge across the system, resulting in multiple towers becoming electrified and intensely hot.

The tower, where the steel part known as a y-clevis broke, sits just off the 210 freeway in Sylmar on land shared with a nursery. The Edison tower behind Delgado’s home where investigators say the 2019 fire ignited is more than two miles away from the nursery.

The attorneys said in court filing that Edison made a “cost-saving choice” when building the transmission line in 1970 to not include “any purposeful grounding devices” that would enable power surges to dissipate down the tower and into the earth. Instead, the company used “only insufficient concrete footings,” the lawyers said in their filing.

Mark Felling, an electrical engineer and paid expert in the case, testified that he found that the size of the cement footings under the towers along the line varied by a factor of 10. The size of the footings, he said,affects whether the tower is properly grounded.

Felling said he believed that a sudden power surge could cause some towers to become “electrified and potentially very hazardous.”

Edison has disputed that theory and said in court that the electrical surge caused by the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery safely dispersed. The utility said it was scientifically impossible that the electrical surge caused a fire 2½ miles away.

“The undisputed material facts cannot support plaintiff’s theory that SCE caused the Saddleridge fire,” the company wrote in a motion this month, which asked the judge to dismiss the case. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Edison’s motion included a copy of the L.A. Fire Department’s investigation, which included new details of how the company responded to fire investigators days after the 2019 fire.

Delgado said his rosary and prayers were important to surviving the fires.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Failure to report power surge

L.A. Fire investigator Robert Price arrived at the dirt road leading up to the hillside transmission line where the fire had ignited the night before to see the yellow crime scene tape lying on the ground and an Edison truck driving out, Price said in his report.

Price also wrote that Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m. But the company did not tell the Fire Department about the fault, Price wrote.

Instead, L.A. Fire Capt. Timothy Halloran learned from a news report that Sylmar resident Jack Carpenter had recorded a large flash of light on his dashboard camera at 8:57 that night as he was traveling west on the 210 freeway.

Halloran traced the flash to a transmission tower built on land used by Ornelas Wood Recovery Nursery. Halloran interviewed employees at the nursery, who told him that an Edison employee had offered to buy the surveillance footage from the nursery’s camera, according to a deposition Halloran later provided to lawyers representing the victims.

A nursery employee also had taken photos of the broken steel equipment he found at the foot of the tower, according to Price’s report. The employee told Halloran that an Edison crew came the day after the fire and cleaned up the shattered pieces.

Halloran said in the deposition, according to a June court filing, that the company’s failure to report the fault and its offer to buy the nursery’s surveillance video made him believe that the company’s actions were “deceptive.”

Price said in his report that he also saw Edison crews cleaning the towers along the line three days after the fire’s start. An Edison employee told him that the utility cleans the towers once a year but had decided to clean them that day “because they were dirty from the smoke and fire,” Price wrote.

The cleaning did not prevent fire investigators from finding burn marks at the bottom of a second tower not far from where Delgado and his wife live, which Price said may be related to the “catastrophic failure” of equipment at the tower by the nursery.

In his final conclusion on the fire, Price wrote that it was “outside my expertise” to determine whether the failure of equipment at the tower above the nursery “could cause high voltage to travel back through the conductors … and cause a fire, possibly through the tower’s grounding system” more than two miles away.

“Therefore the cause will be undetermined,” Price wrote.

Dunleavy said that Edison had notified the California Public Utilities Commission about the fire before it began cleaning up the broken pieces of equipment found under the tower at the nursery. That cleanup and the company’s repairs, Dunleavy said, were needed to “ensure safety and reliability” of the line.

She added that it was common practice for utilities to wash down equipment after a fire before the system was reenergized.

According to an L.A. Fire investigator, Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

State utility investigators find violations

Also investigating the 2019 fire in the days after its start was Eric Ujiiye at the Public Utilities Commission.

The commission’s safety staff investigates fires that may have been caused by electric lines to determine whether the utility violated safety regulations.

Ujiiye said in his report that he found that Edison violated five regulations, including failing to safely maintain its equipment at the tower by the nursery.

Even though Price’s investigation for the L.A. Fire Department stated that the cause is undetermined, Ujiiye said in his report that he believed that the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery “could have led to a fire ignition” at the pylon more than two miles away.

The commission’s staff asked Edison to perform tests to show that the towers on the line were properly grounded. According to a written response from Edison, the utility objected to the request as “vague and ambiguous.” But the company agreed to do the tests, which would be observed by the commission inspectors.

Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the commission, said that the agency’s staff was planning to meet with Edison at the transmission line to witness the tests. However, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions delayed that meeting and the requested undergrounding tests. She said that commission staff later learned that Edison had performed similar tests soon after the fire. Those test results “sufficed,” Prosper said, and the company “was not made to re-do the tests.”

Prosper said the commission did not fine or otherwise penalize Edison for the five violations because the LAFD report said the cause was undetermined. She said company had corrected the violations.

April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which has challenged Edison’s requests to have utility customers pay for fire damages, questioned the commission’s handling of the 2019 fire.

“You would think that the Public Utilities Commission would use fines to address really egregious behavior in the hope it would deter future behavior that causes catastrophic fires,” she said.

Maurath Sommer noted that Edison has been repeatedly found to have failed to cooperate with investigators looking into the cause of devastating fires. For example, commission investigators said in a report that the utility refused to provide photos and other details of what its employees found at the site where the Woolsey fire ignited in 2018. The Edison crew was the first to arrive at the scene of the fire that destroyed hundreds of homes in Malibu. Edison argued that the evidence was protected by attorney-client privilege.

Edison’s Dunleavy said the allegation by commission investigators was later resolved. “We take our obligation to cooperate with the CPUC seriously,” she said.

Prosper of the commission said, “Public safety is, and will remain, our top priority,”

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1. Fire fighters kept an eye on the wild fire burning behind Olive View Medical Center. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 2. A firefighting plane drops red Phos-Chek, a fire retardant, to protect Olive View Medical Center from wind driven Saddle Ridge wild fire in October 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 3. Interstate 5 and California State Rute 14 were closed to traffic through Newhall Pass due to the Saddle Ridge fire. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 4. Firefighters cleared brush and mopped up a hillside along California State Highway 14 due to fire in 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

Another fire in Sylmar

At about 10:30 on the night of Jan. 7, Katherine Twohy heard a loud crack and saw a bright flash. Edison’s transmission towers in Sylmar skirt around the edge of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where Twohy, a retired psychologist, lives.

“I was just coming in my back door and there was just this incredible flashing of white lights,” Twohy said. “Incredibly blue-white lights.”

She walked to her living room window where she can see two Edison towers, which are separated by more than a hundred yards. Twohy said she could see flames at the base of each one.

“The fires had made little circles around the base,” she said.

Twohy said she saw flames under the same towers the night the Saddle Ridge fire ignited in 2019.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s just like last time,’” Twohy said.

In court, lawyers representing victims of the 2019 fire have seized on Edison’s admission that its equipment may have sparked the Jan. 7 fire.

“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner” as the 2019 fire, they wrote in a June court filing.

Delgado’s home sits next to the dirt road leading up to the towers. The Jan. 7 fire melted his backyard fence but did little more damage. In the days after the fire, he found that some of the same Edison employees he spoke to in 2019 as a witness reappeared.

“I saw the exact same people from Edison show up,” he said. “I told them your towers almost killed my family again.”

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

Reporting from Sacramento — The job of state treasurer today involves managing billions of dollars, overseeing complex borrowing and investment decisions and working to restore California’s reputation on Wall Street.

It follows that candidates face particular scrutiny over their own finances, and the two leading candidates have each provided plenty of fodder for the opposition.

Incumbent Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, has spent campaign funds on a variety of items related loosely if at all to his reelection bid. His expenditures include $1.2 million to help his wife win election as a county supervisor in the Bay Area, $16,000 in babysitting bills and a weekend trip with his family to the resort at Disneyland.

His GOP challenger, state Sen. Mimi Walters of Laguna Niguel, has voted on numerous bills that could affect her husband’s business interests. David Walters is the president and largest shareholder of a medical services firm whose subsidiary was paid more than $34 million in the last four fiscal years by the state’s prison system.

The subsidiary, Drug Consultants Inc., provides nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers for California’s overcrowded prisons. Federal courts seized control of prison healthcare several years ago because judges said unwarranted inmate deaths were civil rights violations. Outside firms such as Walters’ have been hired to provide medical staff until the corrections department can ramp up its own operations.

Mimi Walters declined to speak with The Times but said in a radio appearance this month that “whenever there has been any sort of slightest conflict, I’ve always recused myself.” Her campaign strategist, Dave Gilliard, said Walters has consulted with legislative lawyers about what bills she should abstain from voting on and has followed their advice.

Gilliard could not identify any bills on which Walters abstained because of a conflict.

This year, she voted against an $811-million cut in the prison healthcare budget, the largest cutback in a package of spending reductions that lawmakers approved through AB2 x8. Gilliard said Walters’ vote reflected her concern that reducing prison spending would result in a court-ordered early release of criminals.

As an assemblywoman and then as a state senator, Walters has also voted against legislation requiring more disclosure of state contracts (AB 2603 in 2008 and AB 983 in 2007) and against giving contract bid preferences to small businesses and those that hire California workers (SB 1108 and SB 967 in 2010). None of the bills became law.

“She’s a pro-business, conservative Republican,” Gilliard said, adding that the legislation would have imposed more costly regulations on state businesses. “You’re going to see very consistently: Anything that increases the cost of doing business in the state, she votes against.”

The chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, Democrat Mark Leno of San Francisco, said that even if legislative attorneys said Walters did not violate state ethics laws, “it’s just hypocritical for someone who is so outspokenly opposed to government to have her family at the public trough.”

Her tough-on-crime stances, he said, “would only benefit her husband’s business: more prisoners, more potential contracts.”

If elected treasurer, Walters, who chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, would face other financial entanglements. Her husband also owns a boutique investment bank, Monarch Bay Associates, and financial disclosure forms show that her holdings include between $100,000 and $1 million in Goldman Sachs, the powerful and controversial Wall Street firm that has business with the state treasurer’s office.

Gilliard said Walters would consult with attorneys in the treasurer’s office to avoid conflicts.

The treasurer is California’s chief banker, serving on the board of the state’s two giant pension funds and managing billions in taxpayer assets. The treasurer also oversees the state’s debt and finances public works projects.

Lockyer cites among his accomplishments a campaign to get Wall Street rating agencies to abandon practices that cost state taxpayers millions in extra interest payments, opening California’s bond market to small investors and maximizing public works spending to create jobs.

He has shown little fear that Walters or any other candidate will muster enough support to overcome Democrats’ double-digit voter registration advantage in California. As of mid-October, Walters’ campaign treasury was more than $14,000 in debt; Lockyer was sitting atop nearly $5 million.

That cushion has allowed him to spend on other things, such as the effort to elect his wife, Nadia Lockyer, to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. “I think Nadia Lockyer is particularly qualified to be a county supervisor and will do an excellent job,” he said.

With both parents on the campaign trail, Lockyer has also used his campaign funds to pay for at least $16,000 in babysitting services, according to the campaign’s filings with the state. Although campaign funds can be used only for governmental or political purposes, the state’s ethics watchdog agency has advised candidates in the past that babysitting can qualify under limited circumstances.

In 2009, Lockyer spent the weekend after Thanksgiving at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim with his wife and son. He billed the campaign $884.28, citing a meeting with Frank Barbaro, the chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party.

Lockyer said he wanted to stay in a hotel “in the heart of Orange County” and did not recall if he and his family went to Disneyland that weekend. The campaign was billed only for the hotel stay, he said. The following winter, Lockyer used campaign money to buy wedding and holiday gifts for his staff and spent more than $17,000 on two holiday parties.

Lockyer defended the spending: “I am not personally benefiting from my campaign expenditures.”

Gillard, the Walters strategist, said such spending “shows an attitude of entitlement” common among veteran politicians. “It only gets worse the longer they are there,” he said.

Walters has vowed to bring a limited-government approach to the job if elected: pulling back on borrowing she says the state cannot afford, curbing government spending and using the position to argue for lower taxes.

Walters’ lone TV ad pillories Lockyer’s decades-long tenure in office; he is a former state attorney general, assemblyman and leader of the state Senate. “After 37 years in Sacramento … Bill Lockyer is the problem,” the ad says.

Lockyer accused Walters of masking her own role as a legislator in the state’s recent fiscal meltdown. On the June primary ballot, she identified herself as a “businesswoman/senator.” This fall, she has dropped “senator” from her ballot designation.

Lockyer called it “hypocrisy” that she “hides that she’s an elected official.”

Also running for the post are Charles Crittenden of the Green Party, Robert Lauten of the American Independent Party, Debra Reiger of the Peace and Freedom Party and Edward Teyssier of the Libertarian Party.

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US president condemns Russian attacks on Kyiv as Ukraine’s Zelenskyy calls for ‘regime change’ in Moscow.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened new sanctions while slamming Russia’s military actions in Ukraine as “disgusting”.

“Russia – I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting,” Trump told reporters on Thursday, the same day Moscow’s attacks on Kyiv killed more than a dozen people.

Trump also said he would send his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, currently in Israel, to visit Russia next.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already met Witkoff multiple times in Moscow, before Trump’s efforts to mend ties with the Kremlin came to a grinding halt.

Washington has given Moscow until the end of next week to cease hostilities in Ukraine, under threat of severe economic sanctions.

Trump reiterated the deadline on Thursday.

“We’re going to put sanctions. I don’t know that sanctions bother him,” the US president said, referring to Putin.

Trump has previously threatened that new measures could mean “secondary tariffs” targeting Russia’s remaining trade partners, such as China and India. This would further stifle Russia, but would risk significant international disruption.

The US president began his second term with his own rosy predictions that the war in Ukraine, raging since Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022, would soon end.

In recent weeks, Trump has increasingly voiced frustration with Putin over Moscow’s unrelenting offensive.

Call for ‘regime change’

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his allies to bring about “regime change” in Russia, hours after the deadly attack on Kyiv.

Speaking virtually to a conference marking 50 years since the signing of the Cold War-era Helsinki Accords on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he believed Russia could be “pushed” to stop the war.

“But if the world doesn’t aim to change the regime in Russia, that means even after the war ends, Moscow will still try to destabilise neighbouring countries,” he said.

Russia’s predawn attacks on Kyiv on Thursday killed 26 people, including three children, and wounded 159, Ukraine’s interior ministry said on Friday.

On Thursday, officials said the drone and missile strikes had killed at least 18 people, and reduced part of a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv’s western suburbs to rubble.

Among the victims was a six-year-old boy who died on the way to hospital, the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, posted on Telegram.

From late Wednesday to early Thursday, Russia fired at least 300 drones and eight cruise missiles at Ukraine, with Kyiv the main target, the Ukrainian air force said.

Zelenskyy late on Thursday denounced the “unimaginable scale of terror and brutality” of the Russian strikes.

The Russian army, meanwhile, claimed to have captured Chasiv Yar, a strategically important hillside town in eastern Ukraine where the two sides have been fiercely fighting for months.

Moscow has stepped up its deadly aerial assaults on Ukraine in recent months in the conflict, resisting US pressure to end its nearly three-and-a-half-year invasion as its forces grind forward on the battlefield.

WASHINGTON — If he wins the presidential election, Joe Biden will find a Middle East quite different from the one at the end of the Obama administration.

Nuclear threats may once again be on the horizon in Iran. Militant groups are on the ascendance in Lebanon and Yemen. And Israelis and Palestinians stand further away from settling their conflict than they have in a long time.

Biden says his first task will be repairing much of what he and his supporters consider to be the damage done by President Trump, who demolished long-standing norms and decades of U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Joe Biden will benefit just by not being President Trump,” Biden’s top foreign policy advisor Tony Blinken said in a recent interview. “That is the opening opportunity.”

More difficult will be deciding whether to reverse some of Trump’s controversial actions and, if so, which ones.

The Palestinian Authority leadership boycotted administration-led peace talks after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.

Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city — which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East War — as their capital. For decades the U.S. avoided recognizing either side’s claim in Jerusalem pending a final peace agreement.

Biden’s advisors say he will not return the U.S. Embassy to Tel Aviv, but it is likely he would reopen a U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem that would cater to Palestinians and allow a Palestinian de facto embassy in Washington.

Regaining Palestinian trust will be a major challenge. The Biden team has released careful, measured policies for the decades-old conflict, a clear rebuke to Trump, but disappointing to many progressives.

Unlike Trump, Biden supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

“There will be a very important statement about the intention to pursue a two-state solution,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy organization in Washington and informal advisor to the campaign. “Those signals will be sent early.”

And Biden said he plans to revive U.S. financial aid to support Palestinians that was cut off by Trump as punishment for what he termed their lack of cooperation.

His hands will be partly tied by Congress. The 2018 Taylor Force Act prohibits U.S. aid from going to some Palestinian entities as long as the Palestinian Authority gives stipends to families of Palestinians killed in attacks on Israelis. It will be easier to resume funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which supports hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and to hospitals in Palestinian-dominated parts of East Jerusalem, all cut off by Trump.

Biden is likely to frown on any Israeli annexation of West Bank land it seized during the 1967 war and that Palestinians have claimed for their state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexation plan was tacitly approved by Trump, but has since been put on hold, partly out of concern about hurting Trump in November and partly because of a pending agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with United Arab Emirates.

How strongly Biden might act to block annexation remains to be seen. He has been careful not to say that U.S. aid to Israel would be conditioned on Israeli behavior.

Much of what Biden could do might be mired in U.S. domestic politics. Any action risks antagonizing either the pro-Israel lobby or the progressive wing of his party.

“I think the best we can hope for from a Biden government is undoing a lot of the damage and doing no more harm, while giving the Palestinians space to get their own house in order,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, and director of the Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian affairs program.

Elgindy and others predicted there would be no bold initiatives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning of a Biden administration. There will be more-pressing crises, his advisors say, and the environment is not ripe for new negotiations.

Netanyahu got nearly everything he wanted with no concessions from Trump, so he has little incentive now to negotiate.

Palestinians, long skeptical about whether the U.S. could be a neutral broker in peace talks, gave up any hope of that after Trump. Members of the governing Palestinian Authority are biding their time, Elgindy and others said, hoping that a Biden victory at least returns the troubled U.S-Palestinian relationship back to a better footing.

“Have we given up on the U.S.? Yes,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian attorney and former legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. At most, she predicted, “we will see that Biden will reach out to Abbas, but won’t do much other than that.”

She said that in addition to failing to condemn the U.S. Embassy relocation, Democratic Party leadership declined to include a reference in its platform to the “ongoing occupation” of Palestinian territories by Israel.

Another of Trump’s surprising breaks from years of U.S. policy came when he recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a large, fertile plateau that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war. It is unclear whether such a move can be easily reversed, and there appears to be little precedent for it. On the other hand, recognition did not lead to any concrete U.S. action and put the United States in conflict with the rest of the international community, which views Israel’s control over Golan as a violation of international law.

On Iran, Biden is expected to chart a dramatically different course, and one that Netanyahu won’t like.

Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which forced the Islamic Republic to dismantle most of its infrastructure that could be used to produce nuclear weapons, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions on Tehran and release of its assets frozen in banks all over the world.

Trump — prodded by Netanyahu — contended the deal was flawed because it failed to limit other Iranian activities such as its support for the region’s militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen. In recent months, the Trump administration has piled on new sanctions and other punishment to increase pressure on Iran in hopes of destroying the deal once and for all.

Biden wants to revive it by first bringing Iran back into compliance, and then reenlisting the United States.

“Assuming the deal is still on life support when he takes office, [Biden] would move toward mutual reentry,” said Colin Kahl, who served as national security advisor to the then-vice president and now consults with the campaign.

Biden said this year that once the deal is revived, he would work with European allies to “strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.”

Israel’s government, which views Iran as an existential threat, has been working to undermine the nuclear agreement since before it was signed.

Another unknown will be the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu.

Trump and Netanyahu had one of the warmest relationships between any U.S. and Israeli leaders. That’s a hard act for Biden to follow, particularly since he’s associated with the Obama administration, which repeatedly and bitterly clashed with Netanyahu.

But Biden has known Netanyahu for decades, including during the years the Israeli leader spent in the United States. According to aides, the pair enjoy an amiable if sometimes prickly friendship.

Love Island’s Remell, who was voted out as the least favourite boy, has defended his actions and said things might be different if he and Alima ‘set boundaries’

Love Island’s Remell has hit back at cheating claims as he defended his decision to stick with Alima after he spent a few days away at ‘The Sleepover’. The latest episode saw the viewers vote for their favourite boy and favourite girl, with the two islanders with the fewest votes getting dumped from the villa.

Remell said that he wasn’t surprised that he was chosen to leave and admitted to taking a ‘risk’. Opening up about his connections, he said: “Despite me having what seemed to be a good connection with Poppy, my heart was telling me that I had to see it through with Alima.

“The dynamic with Poppy was more what I’m used to on the outside. But building up slowly with Alima made me realise that that’s important.”

Remell continued and said that while he “didn’t necessarily have to share the bed and kiss outside of the Truth or Dare game”, he acted how he would have done on the outside and was “being true” to himself.

Defending his actions, he said: “There was never a conversation with Alima about being exclusive, we hadn’t had that chat and hadn’t spoken properly about boundaries either.”

Alima was not pleased with Remell’s actions while he was away and called it off straight away. Reflecting on the experience, he said: “As soon as I came back from The Sleepover, I was ready to speak from the heart. But when I realised that she was hurt, I learned that it was a lot deeper than I originally thought.”

He added: “If Alima and I had had a conversation about boundaries, it would have made a difference. Communication is important and I’d do my best to change.”

Remell said they didn’t leave things on the best of terms, but that he would be open to having “conversations”. He said: “Things were left a bit sour. The reality is, the woman that was opening my heart and turning me into a lover boy is never going to truly know how I feel about her.

“I was ready to tell her everything once I came back to the Villa, but because the conversation didn’t end well, we didn’t get to properly talk. We’re both stubborn so it was hard to see eye to eye.

“I would be open to a conversation, but if she’s not open to it then it’s fine. It was hard for us to talk in the Villa because I felt a bit disrespected and put my guard up.”

Elsewhere in the latest episode, Megan was voted as the least favourite girl and was sent packing despite getting to know Conor.

Love Island continues tonight at 9pm on ITV2 and ITVX

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

An EU diplomatic service audit report, seen by Reuters and AFP, looked at Israel’s actions in Gaza and occupied West Bank.

There are indications Israel may have breached its human rights obligations under the terms of a pact governing its ties with the European Union, a review of the agreement shows.

According to an EU document seen by the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Friday, the European External Action Service said that Israel’s actions in Gaza were likely not in line with rules laid out in the EU-Israel Association.

“On the basis of the assessments made by the independent international institutions … there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations,” the audit drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service read.

The report comes after months of deepening concern in European capitals about Israel’s operations in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

“Israel’s continued restrictions to the provision of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other vital supplies affect the entire population of Gaza present on the affected territory,” it said.

The document includes a section dedicated to the situation in Gaza – covering issues related to denial of humanitarian aid, attacks with a significant number of casualties, attacks on medical facilities, displacement and lack of accountability – as well as the situation in the occupied West Bank, including settler violence, Reuters reported.

The document said it relies on “facts verified by and assessments made by independent international institutions, and with a focus on most recent events in Gaza and the West Bank”.

The audit was launched last month in response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, in a push backed by 17 states and spearheaded by the Netherlands.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is expected to present the findings of the report to the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

EU-Israel agreement

Under the EU-Israel agreement, which came into effect in 2000, the two parties agreed that their relationship would be based on “respect for human rights and democratic principles”.

Suspending the agreement would require a unanimous decision from the bloc’s 27 members, something diplomats have said from the beginning was virtually impossible.

According to AFP, diplomats have said that they expect Kallas to propose options on a response to the report during the next foreign ministers’ meeting in July.

“The question is … how many member states would still be willing not to do anything and still keep on saying that it’s business as usual,” an unnamed diplomat told the news agency ahead of the review’s findings.

“It’s really important to not fall into the trap of Israel to look somewhere else,” they said.

The EU is Israel’s largest commercial partner, with 42.6 billion euros ($48.2bn) in goods traded in 2024. Trade in services reached 25.6 billion euros ($29.5bn) in 2023.

Israel’s mission to the EU did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the contents of the document.

British sympathy for the Palestinian cause – and criticism of Israel – is surging, according to a new survey.

London, United Kingdom – Most Britons who oppose Israel’s war on Gaza believe the onslaught, which has to date killed more than 55,000 people, amounts to genocide, according to a new poll.

The survey, carried out by YouGov and commissioned by the Action for Humanity charity and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) advocacy group, found that 55 percent of Britons are against Israel’s aggression. A significant number of those opponents – 82 percent – said Israel’s actions amount to genocide.

“This translates to 45 percent of adults in the UK who view Israel’s actions as genocidal,” said Action for Humanity and ICJP.

Details of the poll, which 2,010 people responded to in early June, were released on Wednesday.

Sixty-five percent said the UK should enforce the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were to visit Britain.

“It is clear that a majority of the public here are disgusted with Israel’s conduct, and a growing number agree that this is clearly a genocide,” said Othman Moqbel, head of Action for Humanity.

He added that all but a few believe the UK should do “everything in its power to stop Israel and seek justice against those responsible”.

“The government’s failure to recognise the scale of the crimes being inflicted upon Gaza is not just putting them on the wrong side of history, it’s putting them on the wrong side of the present day.”

Tens of thousands of Britons have taken to the streets over the past 20 months to protest against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government has in recent weeks adopted harsher tones on Israel and sanctioned top officials. In 2024, the UK suspended 30 arms export licences to Israel for use in Gaza amid concerns Israel was violating international humanitarian laws.

But critics have lamented the pace and power of the UK’s response, calling for tougher sanctions and measures that would prevent Israel from receiving F-35 components made in Britain.

The survey also highlighted the positions of Britons who voted for the Labour Party in the 2024 general election.

Of the 68 percent of Labour voters who are against Israel’s actions in Gaza, 87 percent believe they amount to genocide. Seventy-eight percent of Labour voters said the UK should enforce the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

The UK has suggested it would comply with the ICC warrant.

“The UK government is totally out of touch with the British public they are supposed to represent, and the Labour Party are even more out of touch with their own voters,” said Jonathan Purcell of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians.

“UK policymaking should be based on complying with international law obligations, regardless, but this poll just goes to show the level of popular support for such policies too. There is absolutely no appetite to drag our national reputation through the mud by continuing to stand with a rogue, pariah state.”

NEW YORK — All 17 experts recently dismissed from a government vaccine advisory panel published an essay Monday decrying “destabilizing decisions” made by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that could lead to more preventable disease spread.

Kennedy last week announced he would “retire” the entire panel that guides U.S. vaccine policy. He also quietly removed Dr. Melinda Wharton — the veteran Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who coordinated the committee’s meetings.

Two days later, he named eight new people to the influential panel. The list included a scientist who criticized COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns and someone who worked with a group widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

“We are deeply concerned that these destabilizing decisions, made without clear rationale, may roll back the achievements of U.S. immunization policy, impact people’s access to lifesaving vaccines, and ultimately put U.S. families at risk of dangerous and preventable illnesses,” the 17 panelists wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The new committee is scheduled to meet next week. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

In addition to Wharton’s removal, CDC immunization staff have been cut and agency experts who gather or present data to committee members have resigned.

One, Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, resigned after 12 years at CDC, disclosing her decision early this month in a note to members of a COVID-19 vaccines work group. Her decision came after Kennedy decided — without consulting the vaccine advisers — to pull back COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women.

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” she wrote in a message viewed by the Associated Press.

Those CDC personnel losses will make it hard for a group of new outside advisers to quickly come up to speed and make fact-based decisions about which vaccines to recommend to the public, the former committee members said.

“The termination of all members and its leadership in a single action undermines the committee’s capacity to operate effectively and efficiently, aside from raising questions about competence,” they wrote.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to the JAMA commentary, but instead pointed to Kennedy’s previous comments on the committee.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the CDC director on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations, which are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

June 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced that the nation’s large Democratic-run cities are to be the new focus for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this Truth, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest mass deportation program in history,” Trump posted to his Truth Social account Sunday night.

The post goes on to order the expansion of the efforts of ICE within cities Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, where he also alleged “millions upon millions of illegal aliens reside.”

Trump went on to call the cities the “core of the Democrat Power Center,” each of which he purports uses migrants to control elections and expand the use of welfare in actions that he alleges simultaneously take jobs and benefits from citizens.

“These radical left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our country, and actually want to destroy our inner cities,” Trump further wrote, and went on to declare the same cities believe in “transgender for everybody, and men playing in women’s sports.”

He went on to say he has directed his entire administration “to put every resource possible” behind the efforts of ICE, and that the federal government is focused on the “remigration of aliens to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of anyone who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States.”

Trump said Thursday there will be policy changes that promised migrant farmers and those employed across the hospitality industry would be protected from deportation after he heard complaints from others in those fields.

“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump posted to Truth Social Thursday, “This is not good. We must protect our farmers but get the criminals out of the USA.”

Jetting of to a country you’ve never visited before is an exciting adventure but it can bring risk. Here’s what to do case one of your loved ones go missing, according to the experts at the charity Missing People

Ahead of the summer holidays, here are three key things you should do as soon as someone you know goes missing. The charity Missing People have shared a plan of action to follow.

With over 13.5 million Brits jetting off last year according to a Kwik Fit study, and 82% of Brits saying their “number one holiday priority in 2025” is to explore somewhere new, according to the Great British Holiday Audit report – it’s wise for holiday makers to have a plan of action in case a member of their party goes missing.

The UK police define a missing person as anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established. They will be considered missing until located and their wellbeing confirmed. By this, the definition means that if a person is expected at home and aren’t there, or did not arrive at an expected location, they can be reported missing. Once they are reported missing to the authorities, a public appeal is released via social media.

READ MORE: When is a person considered missing? And how long until they’re presumed dead

Following a number of recent tragedies involving Brits on holiday abroad in recent years, it is safe to say there is a now a certain nervousness about travelling, especially as a young person. The Missing People’s charity have developed guidance, along with the Lucie Blackman Trust, to help prepare jet setters in case of such emergency.

Providing sympathy and support, the advice can be summarised as such:

Think of simple steps to try and find your loved one

If you know the location of where they were staying, try to call the establishment to ask whether the missing person has been spotted on the premises or if someone there knows where they are. If this is unsuccessful, you should contact the local police or any nearby hospitals to ask whether they may be held there or whether they are aware of the person’s location.

Contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or UK police

If they appear to be missing after these steps, the charity advise you to contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 020 7008 1500 and ask for the Consular Directorate. The Foreign Office will then assign a caseworker if appropriate and contact the British Embassy in the country of said visit on your behalf.

Despite not being in the UK if travelling, you are advised to contact UK police for either the area where the missing person lives, or your own local police station. Request that they inform the UK National Central Bureau of Interpol.

If needed, Interpol can contact the relevant foreign police, however this is normally only the case if the missing person is considered to be at risk of harm.

Be prepared with information about your missing person

To help aid any potential searches, Missing People also advise travellers to collect as much information as you can about the missing person and their recent activity and travel plans. This could be essential to an effective search and result in the local authorities finding them. See below for a list of questions to consider as seen on the Missing People Guidance Sheet:

• The missing person’s full name, date of birth and place of birth
• His/her mobile phone number and email address
• The last time you or anyone else that you know had contact with him/her and where this was
• His/her travel plans
• His/her passport details
• His/her travel insurance details
• Any travel blog/personal website/social network details
• Bank or building society account details (the police may ask the bank or building society for details of when and where the account was last accessed)
• A recent photo
• When you were expecting the missing person to contact you and why
• Whether there was anything in his/her last email/phone call/text/blog/social network message which could give a clue as to whereabouts and/or who he/she could have been with
• Whether the families of fellow travellers could provide any useful information
• Whether there is anyone else the missing person could have been in touch with
• Any other relevant information which could be of use in the search such as, and including any physical or mental health issues

The Lucie Blackman Trust can provide help and support tailored to your situation. It is open 24 hours a day and you can contact them for support and advice by calling 020 7047 5060, emailing [email protected] or visiting their website: http://www.lbtrust.org

If you suspect a child may have been abducted abroad then see here (p. 3) for Missing People’s advice to further ensure their safety, how to proceed.

For advice, support and options, if you or someone you love goes missing, text or call Missing People’s Helpline on 116 000 or email [email protected]. It’s free, confidential and non-judgmental, and sightings information can also be taken. Or visit www.missingpeople.org.uk