building

For many years, I have highlighted in detail the threat posed by lower-end drones, ranging from off-the-shelf and standard remote-controlled types to short-range First Person View (FPV) types to much longer-range, but comparatively inexpensive one-way attack munitions that blur the lines between cruise missiles and unmanned aerial systems. Combined, these weapons represent a vast and truly game-changing asymmetric threat that the Pentagon has long overlooked. Now the Department of Defense (DoD) is desperately trying to play catch-up at a time when the evolution of these systems is fast outpacing countermeasures to them. This massive failure in vision could be heavily paid for in blood if a major conflict were to erupt between the U.S. and a capable adversary.

At the same time, the Pentagon has also been bizarrely slow at widely adopting lower-end drones for its own offensive operations. This is glaring for short-range types, especially after all the lessons learned in Ukraine. Thankfully, we are finally seeing some much-needed change in this regard. But what’s arguably even more frustrating is the DoD’s lack of urgency when it comes to producing massive numbers of long-range one-way attack drones, even now, when the need for these weapons, which have transformed modern warfare, isn’t just clear, it’s absolutely critical for deterring and, if all else fails, winning a conflict.

For our regular readers, what you are going to read isn’t exactly new. It is something we have been harping on for many years. In recent times, the lack of movement on doing everything reasonably possible to produce as many relatively inexpensive long-range attack and decoy drones borders on downright negligence when it comes to ensuring America’s national security. That being said, I have hopes the Trump administration will reverse this wrong, and there are indications from the very top that it will, but the Pentagon cannot approach it like it has done with any other weapon system in the recent past. This urgent challenge requires a more aggressive and streamlined approach that looks at the procurement of these weapons differently. There simply isn’t the time left to obtain this critical combat mass using the DoD’s ‘business as usual’ procurement playbook.

We are talking about putting in place the means to sustain rapid production of tens of thousands of these weapons a year, not hundreds or a few thousand. If the U.S. fails to do this, it hands a massive advantage to our near-peer adversaries, China and Russia, which are in far more advantageous positions to supply these capabilities in very large numbers today.

To put it bluntly, this post is not just a prediction of things to come, it is a plea for urgent action.

Attack of the clones

The drones that are so desperately needed are not complex. They are not expensive. They are anything but exquisite. They are also not innovative in any way. In fact, they take a play right out of our adversary’s playbook. They are clones of a long line of clones — that’s a huge feature, not a bug. And as a result of these attributes, they are intrinsically repulsive to the Pentagon’s legacy vision for America’s dominance in future wars.

Those making the decisions for the DoD have been dreaming up how to fight wars of the past — ones dominated by qualitative advantage. The last decade and a half or so has seen a stunted force transformation that was designed in denial of what’s on the horizon, specifically when it comes to unmanned technologies.

The same exact flavor of apathy and lack of vision within the DoD that has been occurring toward long-range one-way attack munitions was present in the last decade with the much higher-end, opposite end of the future unmanned air war. You can read about this bizarre reality in our 2016 exposé on a capability — unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) — that remains an obvious hole in America’s aerial force mix as our adversaries and some allies alike pursue it with urgency.

Not surprisingly, these polar opposites in terms of deferred unmanned aircraft capabilities have one thing in common — a massive premium put on range. The decision not to aggressively procure high-end unmanned combat aircraft in the last decade was a luxury that no longer exists, but doing so with the lower end of the drone spectrum is arguably even a bigger mistake today.

A loose vision of what we so desperately need is already being mass-produced in Russia today. It is also Moscow’s primary standoff weapon with which it bombards Ukraine on a daily basis. This is the Shahed-136 — renamed Geran in Russia — long-range one-way attack munition.

This weapon was ‘designed’ by Iran, who loosely cloned it from Israel, which largely originated the development and operational use of this type of capability decades ago, a reality which you can read all about here. Today, Russia is producing thousands of ever-improving variants and derivatives of the Shahed-136 per month. That production is set to expand drastically in the near term. It is very possible that 2026 could see Russia build over 50,000 of these drones annually. The basic Shahed concept has also been copied by other countries in recent years, from China to North Korea, as well as some U.S. allies.

The Shahed-136 is an efficient delta planform, modified flying-wing-like design. It can carry plenty of fuel to get to its destination, roughly around 1,000 miles away, give or take a couple of hundred miles, as the range varies quite dramatically depending on the sub-variant. It measures around eight feet wide by 11 feet long. It delivers a roughly 50-to-100-pound warhead. It does this at plodding light aircraft speeds with the use of a small and simple internal combustion engine. The basic engine/airframe combination is intrinsically adaptable. While primarily a ‘kamikaze drone,’ it can be viewed simply as a platform. Development of improved configurations and ones capable of tackling emerging mission sets is done in a low-cost and high-risk, rapid iterative manner, not over years of development and prolonged procurement processes. The Russians have been steadily evolving their Shahed variants in exactly this way.

As noted earlier, the Shahed-136, and many other types with a similar mission, blur the line between cruise missiles and drones. This often frustrates those who obsess over definitions and designations. The fact is, you can look at these weapons as slow, low-cost cruise missiles or long-range drones that are designed, at least primarily, to fly a single, one-way suicidal mission. It is worth noting that some variants can be reused under various circumstances when used for non-strike missions.

While there are many drone configurations that could do this job, from traditional fuselage-and-wing combinations to more exotic ones, the delta planform design has proven itself as something of a sweet spot for similar drone performance capabilities dating back many decades. That being said, any airframe design that can be built as cheaply as possible and can achieve very basic range and payload objectives will work.

When it comes to this class of drone, speed and advanced guidance concepts do not define its utility. Range and cost do. Survivability comes in numbers, and due to their smaller size, use of composite materials, and small internal combustion engine, as well as their slow speed. These attributes, along with their low-altitude flight profile, mean they possess a reduced signature and general level of detectability that can be a challenge for traditionally configured ground-based radars. Despite their smaller signature, the fact that they are still somewhat vulnerable to interception is actually a positive, but we will get to that in a moment.

Above all else, the Shahed-136 and other long-range one-way attack drones exist to put a relevantly-sized warhead on a target far from their launch position at the lowest possible cost. It was previously estimated that the Russian Shahed-136 variant costs around $50,000 per copy, with some estimates being far lower. This cost has also likely declined significantly since Russia has mastered the design and drastically ramped up serial production. By comparison, traditional cruise missiles with similar range have costs in the millions of dollars per round, so the price differential is very dramatic. The Shaheds are also just far easier to build and can be produced in much less time than a typical cruise missile.

Go big or choose to lose

Before we continue, it’s absolutely crucial that if you take away anything from this piece, it’s that the U.S. military needs to acquire many long-range one-way attack munitions very fast. The basic framework for doing so that I lay out below is not the only way to realize that goal, although I believe it is, by far, the best way to do so. Regardless, the DoD must act now, and at dramatic scale, to stockpile as many of these weapons as possible in the near term.

The Shahed-136 was developed by Iran with, ironically considering its roots, Israel in mind as a primary target. Russia has tweaked their versions for range and payload optimization dictated by the conflict it is in with Ukraine — and for a potential future broader European fight by default. The U.S. military needs a drone to meet similar requirements, but it also needs another, less numerous type that is better suited for the extreme challenges of the Pacific. Critical to the latter design would be the objective of having the range to reach from the Second Island Chain to the Chinese mainland — this is roughly 2,000 miles one-way.

Having two variants, one that can reach around 1,000 miles and one that can reach over 2,000 miles, provides maximum tactical unpredictability and theater optimization. This addresses the extreme challenges of a Pacific contingency while also providing a more prevalent and efficient type for potential wars anywhere, including the Pacific.

Considering the shorter-range variant can be launched from any ship that can hold a shipping container, or that those containers can be placed on any landmass and even be activated remotely, the enemy has no way of targeting them at scale. These drones can also be launched by a small catapult or even from a moving truck bed. Air launch is also an interesting concept to ponder. Because they can be launched from pretty much anywhere, the drones can approach the enemy from every vector accessible to the launching force.

The smaller, cheaper, far more prevalent of the two ‘U.S. Shahed’ configurations can be just as useful for posing a threat to China virtually everywhere within the First Island Chain and out to 1,000 miles from Chinese shores as it would be in Europe. The larger, more expensive 2,000-plus-mile configuration is less flexible, but it’s so important because it provides an even greater targeting problem to the adversary, and extra ‘left of launch’ survivability via the sheer distance it can attack from. Its utility would be highly important in a scenario where accessing anywhere within 1,000 miles of the Chinese mainland becomes highly dangerous after the opening shots of a conflict, making resupply and distribution of additional shorter-ranged one-way attack munitions to areas within that bubble very problematic.

It’s also worth noting that the range of these drones can be consumed by flying circuitous routes to maximize survivability or to assist in coordinated attack operations with other standoff munitions and crewed platforms. Regardless, the existence of many thousands of these drones packed in non-assuming containers ready to fire, or in ships’ holds, or storehouses with a catapult nearby, and forward positioned across a vast battlespace, will demand that the enemy’s available defenses be distributed beyond their capacity to defend.

So, to sum this up, the U.S. military needs two classes of long-range one-way attack munitions and, for at least by far the most prevalent one, cloning the Shahed-136 will do. While an infinite number of configurations from different suppliers could fill those two requirements, going that route only lessens the ability to produce, stockpile, maintain, and employ the extreme quantities required. This is why two standardized configurations are absolutely key. Making such weapons is easy and by no means requires the expertise of huge defense contractors. Quite the opposite. Producing them and stockpiling them in bulk is where the biggest opportunities and challenges lie for the United States.

A new way

When I say stockpile, I don’t think it’s intuitive to visualize the scale of such an operation that is required. While the Pentagon is now slowly trying to pivot to a high-low mix of some classes of standoff munitions, with the lower end of that spectrum also being focused on the ability to rapidly produce them on demand, it is very debatable that this concept will meet expectations. This is especially true during a wartime scenario when the possibility of massive disruptions in global supply chains and even within the homeland will be part of a near-peer enemy’s battle strategy.

Yes, in a major all-out fight in the Pacific, the war will come home to the United States, too.

This could manifest in the form of some very concerning cyber weaponry China has amassed, as well as potential sabotage and kinetic operations targeted at degrading America’s ability to respond militarily and its citizens’ will to support such a response. Defense production will be among the top targets, as well as military assets. Transportation, energy, and financial infrastructure are also likely to be in the crosshairs.

Just look at what happened in Russia and Iran when it comes to near-field attacks inside their countries with adversaries using relatively basic drones and other short-ranged guided weaponry. These were precisely the kind of potential attacks we have been predicting for many years, right down to the very details. As it sits now, there are no robust domestic defenses in the United States against these kinds of enemy actions. This is another byproduct of the U.S. government’s massive lapse in not taking the drone threat seriously. This appears to be changing now, hopefully. Regardless, these are just one set of tactics, but China has clearly dreamed up many. While we can hope the words I am writing here prove to be hyperbolic and that things don’t actually occur this way should a U.S.-China fight come to pass, that is a massive ‘divorced from the facts’ gamble that nobody should be willing to take at this point.

China is also the industrial production powerhouse of the globe. It can produce things at truly massive scales to a degree the United States can’t really replicate. This is especially true when it comes to relatively long-range one-way attack drones. Famously, the first time Ukraine used such systems on Russia, they were drone airframes available on Alibaba converted into weapons. The possibility of how many of these systems China could pump out on short order presents a very dark picture when compared with America’s industrial capacity, as well as its available air defense capabilities to counter throngs of Chinese drones.

So yeah, we are far behind in the rapid production capacity realm, and especially when it comes to cheap composite airframes, basic flight control systems, and small and relatively crude internal combustion engines. So instead of living in denial, let’s work around the problem while growing production capacity in the United States. We can do this by building many of these airframes and their basic subsystem components now, in peacetime, so we have a deep, widely distributed, and resilient magazine to rapidly draw from in wartime. This, paired with the ability to scale up production during a time of crisis to counter the massive use rate of these weapons in the early days and weeks of the conflict, will be key. Initially obtaining a shallow stockpile with the hopes that production can be scaled to deal with a crisis is a very risky and foolish strategy for such a critical capability.

What the U.S. needs to do right now is an industrial push to use many contractors to mass produce the same two basic airframe designs, and the flight control systems and powerplants needed to make them fly. It is critical that the U.S. government owns the rights to the basic designs so that it isn’t ‘vendor locked’ to a single contractor. This way, the Pentagon can openly compete every component of the common designs in perpetuity, as well as assembly, payload integration, and sustainment of the stockpile, all without being held hostage by a single contractor and lopsided licensing agreements.

Once again, these drones are just simple platforms, crude ‘open architecture’ ones by default due to their inherent simplicity. As noted earlier, Russia is taking advantage of this reality with its rapid evolution of its Shahed derivatives. What we need as fast as possible is a large stockpile of the basic components that make up a completed airframe, then we can insert payload advancements as they make sense and as tactics, countermeasures, and general technology evolve. This will allow us to achieve a proper capabilities mix that can fluctuate elastically over time.

Two standardized designs also mean launch systems and backend mission planning components can also be standardized, mass produced, trained on, distributed, and sustained at the cheapest cost.

It’s critical to note that there are a small but growing number of firms that are now actively pitching U.S.-built Shahed-like clones to the U.S. military. Spektreworks and Griffon Aerospace, for example. So far, beyond some financial assistance in prototype development, the DoD has mainly only shown interest in procuring them as threat representative targets for testing and training purposes. It’s possible that there have been orders for offensive configured types, but not at anywhere the scale needed as outlined in this post. While Shahed-like target drones are certainly badly needed, it’s a bit ironic that they want them for this use alone, because they represent a new threat that is vexing and asymmetric, but they aren’t rushing to actually obtain the same class of weapon in huge quantities for offensive use. Regardless, these firms are exactly the ones that can play a major part in bringing these two designs into service, along with other manufacturers, big and small.

Another Group 3 threat system (target) broadly similar to the FLM 136 G3 ‘reverse-engineered Shahed’ threat system.

“The MQM-172 Arrowhead is designed as a high-speed, maneuverable one-way-attack and target drone platform—perfect for realistic threat emulation, training, and… https://t.co/qaEanNEC8T pic.twitter.com/DwxlGypV4E

— AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) August 12, 2025

The American version of the “Shahed-136” — the “Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System” (LUCAS) — its production facility, although currently still at the CGI animation stage. via the second 2025 Technology Readiness Experimentation event (T-REX 25-2). https://t.co/y64Xd1B9QA pic.twitter.com/x4qwVvfTBx

— 笑脸男人 (@lfx160219) July 22, 2025

With all this in mind, the plan of action needs to include finding a slew of firms with the capability and the will to produce the basic standardized airframe, propulsion, and flight controls, and build these U.S.-Shaheds as fast and as cheaply as possible. Again, this cannot be the domain of one primary manufacturer. It requires many companies. This is how the United States can achieve a highly resilient supply chain, immediate scale, and rampant competition to drive the price of each drone down over time and increase capability while piling on our combat mass. With every dollar saved via this strategy, we can buy more drones. Once we have stockpiled tens of thousands of these weapons, we can taper production strategically to keep production lines warm and work to export them to our allies.

Other companies can produce insertion payloads — anti-radiation and optical seekers, electronic warfare payloads, swarm networking communications, warheads, hardened GPS and PNT capabilities, and especially revolutionary AI infusion that will allow the use of these common airframes in innovative and outright new ways. This includes taking on missions well beyond striking static targets or acting as decoys. Cooperative swarming capabilities and mesh network deployments could all be ported into these airframes as needed.

In summary, the DoD needs to consolidate around two long-range kamikaze drone designs that it owns the intellectual property to and stockpile them very rapidly.

Striking on the cheap

The most obvious drivers for an Americanized Shahed-136, and a bigger brother to it, are the ability to hit a target at great distance cheaply and having enough weapons that can do so to sustain a fight against a major foe.

The DoD’s rush to build cheaper cruise missiles, alongside far more expensive and capable models, is one intended measure to address this reality. The fact is that in even a limited conflict with China, the target sets will be measured in the tens of thousands. A much wider conflict will see that number balloon. So the U.S. military needs weapons that can put many thousands of targets at risk without rapidly consuming all of its multi-million-dollar cruise and ballistic missiles or putting its aircraft at much higher risk by requiring them to make closer proximity or even direct attacks because stockpiles of long-range standoff weapons are depleted. The fact that these weapons require a small logistical footprint with small groups of minimally-trained personnel able to deploy them, and that they don’t depend on a host delivery system, such as an aircraft or ship, to get them to their launch points are massive added bonuses.

As we noted earlier, as it sits now, the DoD’s hope for less expensive and faster-to-produce cruise missile options is palpable, but still unproven. These weapons will still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — far cheaper than current options, but still not exactly dirt cheap, even when built at scale. We need a much lower-end option for the standoff munitions arsenal to complement these new lower-cost missiles, and that’s where the two classes of standardized one-way attack munitions come in. Additionally, they will possess far greater range than these lower-cost cruise missiles. They can also be stockpiled with far less sustainment demands and can be produced much faster and easier during an actual crisis. Just their forward presence by the thousands in a theater would act as a major deterrent against aggression.

It seems that the U.S. military has bet on any future war being quick and very violent, but that line of strategic thinking is extremely optimistic at this point, and it borders on outright hubris. Some would argue that it is unlikely in the China scenario. So we must prepare for much longer, sustained operations. Procuring the cheapest and easiest to build long-range strike weapons and stockpiling them en masse is a critical hedge against less convenient conflict timelines.

Effector depletion — a modern battle of attrition

The massive need for this critical capability goes beyond just putting tens of thousands of targets at risk over great distances on the cheap. That is the baseline threat the drones provide to the adversary. The byproduct of it is that, to the enemy, these weapons, whether they are decoys or armed with high-explosive warheads, need to be shot down before they reach a potential target. As a result, the attritable combat mass they provide gives them a secondary role — or it can even be considered a primary one, depending on the circumstances — to consume massive amounts of expensive and hard to quickly replace counter-air weapons. These include surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles primarily, as well as counter-drone loitering munitions.

Each combatant’s stockpile of kinetic counter-air effectors is relatively finite in the short term. These weapons are generally very costly, filled with complex proprietary components, and take a long time to procure. The faster you degrade the enemy’s stockpile of these effectors, the better off you are. This impacts everything, from the enemy’s resource allocation in peacetime to the downstream effects of enhancing the survivability of friendly platforms participating in an air war to making potential targets more vulnerable to attack. Being on the right side of the cost ‘exchange rate’ is critical here. The enemy using multi-million-dollar hard-to-replace interceptors to down $50,000 easy-to-replace drones is a win in many circumstances.

The cold, hard truth of America’s and its allies’ stockpiles of advanced interceptors has been all too clearly highlighted by the war in Ukraine. The U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to produce more interceptors, not just to replace those Ukraine has consumed, and for the U.S., those used up in actions in the Middle East, but also because it’s clear they do not have enough stockpiled for future fights. These contingencies will include facing thousands of enemy drones just like the Shahed-136, which will chew through effector reserves at an alarming rate.

China is not immune to this issue either, although they have a far larger industrial capacity and more government control over it to stockpile weapons and replenish them quickly, if needed. Still, during major conflict, especially a fast-developing and extremely violent one, the consumption rate will vastly outpace any production rate.

So, for examples of American Shaheds that never make it to their targets, if they are even intended to hit targets at all, their deaths at the hand of anything but a specific set of very short-range enemy point defense systems, could be considered a win — one that, collectively, could very well be critical to succeeding in a conflict over the long term.

Let’s talk about that short-range air defense caveat for a moment. The mainstream media has painted a picture that directed energy weapons — lasers and high-power microwave systems specifically — are the antidote to low-cost, but effective aerial attack drones. Today, these directed energy systems are still in their infancy, and delays in development and fielding have put many predictions of them dominating the battlefield in the near term in check. Regardless, these are very short-range systems with major operational limitations, even when they work as advertised. They are meant to protect a small area or a large facility at short distances measured in single miles, at best. The same can be said for gun and guided rocket counter-drone systems.

For high-value targets, these short-range protection measures can play a major defensive role, but they are far too costly to deploy over large areas. Even when used to defend high-value targets, they are a last line of defense, not a panacea for long-range one-way attack drones and other standoff munitions. In order to rely on them solely, the party being attacked has to be willing to let very dangerous weapons get within extremely close proximity of their most valued assets — ones that could be attacked en masse in an attempt to overwhelm these kinds of point defenses. So yes, they are a critical layer of defense under certain circumstances, and their role will grow as their capabilities do, but they are in no way an antidote for the long-range one-way attack drone threat.

Electronic warfare has its own limitations, including its reach, depending on the tactic being deployed. In order to act as an effector-consuming target, a one-way attack drone could rely on nothing that could be impacted by traditional electronic warfare. This includes just flying on a heading once entering into GPS-disrupted areas or working off of onboard inertial navigation system (INS) guidance alone, if it’s so equipped. Remember, the drone doesn’t even have to end up at a specific target for it to consume an effector. The enemy doesn’t know if it has a warhead or an advanced navigation system or not, nor what its target is. For basic missions, they do not need to be equipped to communicate, so jamming communications is not a viable vector of electronic attack, either.

Modern positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies will only improve upon this resilience to electronic warfare, even for those drones configured to strike with precision. Basic infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) is fast approaching over the horizon for lower-end drones, which will enable adaptive autonomous navigation without GPS and strikes even on mobile targets of opportunity. Again, you can read all about this in our previous feature linked here. Electronic warfare will not be able to impact these systems.

The key takeaway is that having tens of thousands of real threats that cost a fraction of the price of a standard cruise or ballistic missile, ready to gobble up precious air defense effectors, will be an absolutely critical factor in any major future conflict.

The enemy is also fully aware of this vulnerability and tactical opportunity, too, but that’s another post entirely.

Starting tomorrow is too late

Rapidly amassing a fleet of two types of relatively crude long-range, expendable drones seems remarkably simple for a country that builds stealth bombers and reusable rockets. The good news is that this isn’t technically wrong. What’s missing is the strategic vision and the urgency to actually do it. The fact that I am even having to write this about a weapon that has already changed modern warfare and is being used by the thousands every month in an active war in Europe certainly is as troubling as it is outright strange.

There is absolutely nothing sexy or innovative about any of this. This is borrowing and scaling, not innovating and slowly iterating. In simple terms, it is everything the Pentagon isn’t known for, regardless of its leadership’s constant messaging on needing to change the way they do procurement and ‘move fast.’ You can look at the scope of the Biden administration’s Replicator initiative to get an idea of just how out of touch the powers that be were when it comes to needing a huge infusion of combat mass ‘yesterday.’

Then again, we are at an inflection point. The picture isn’t pretty when it comes to the United States facing off with China, especially at the same time Russia’s war machine is being spun into high gear and poses an increasing threat to Europe, and other hot spots around the globe burn ever brighter. The good news is that we are seeing some promising signs within the DoD that this reality is sinking in that the need for change isn’t some nebulous goal for generals to pine about in future tenses.

Two types of relatively simple and adaptable long-range, expendable drones, built at scale by multiple companies, big and small. No, it’s not that much of an ask, is it?

So let’s do it.

Waiting for tomorrow is now too late.

Contact the author: [email protected]

LONDON — A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy showing a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel has appeared outside a London court.

The mural depicts a protester lying on the ground holding a blood-splattered placard while a judge in a traditional wig and black gown beats him with a gavel. Banksy posted a photo of the work Monday on Instagram, his usual method of claiming a work as authentic. It was captioned “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.”

While the artwork does not refer to a particular cause or incident, activists saw it as a reference to the U.K. government’s ban on the group Palestine Action. On Saturday almost 900 people were arrested at a London protest challenging the ban.

Defend Our Juries, the group that organized the protest, said in a statement that the mural “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed” by the government ban. “When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent, it strengthens it,” the statement said.

Security officials outside the courthouse covered the mural Monday with sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers, and it was being guarded by two officers and a CCTV camera.

Banksy began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the world’s best-known artists. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.

Banksy’s work often comments on political issues, with many of his pieces criticizing government policy on migration and war.

At the Glastonbury Festival last year, an inflatable raft holding dummies of migrants in life jackets was unveiled during a band’s headline set. Banksy appeared to claim the stunt, which was thought to symbolize small boat crossings of migrants in the Channel, in a post on Instagram.

The artist has also taken his message on migration to Europe.

In 2019, “The Migrant Child,” depicting a shipwrecked child holding a pink smoke bomb and wearing a life jacket, was unveiled in Venice. A year prior, a number of works including one near a former center for migrants that depicted a child spray-painting wallpaper over a swastika were discovered in Paris.

Banksy has also created numerous artworks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the years, including one depicting a girl conducting a body search on an Israeli soldier, another showing a dove wearing a flak jacket, and a masked protester hurling a bouquet of flowers. He also designed the “Walled Off Hotel” guesthouse in Bethlehem, which closed in October 2023.

Last summer, Banksy captured London’s attention with an animal-themed collection, which concluded with a mural of a gorilla appearing to hold up the entrance gate to London Zoo.

For nine days straight Banksy-created creatures — from a mountain goat perched on a building buttress to piranhas circling a police guard post to a rhinoceros mounting a car — showed up in unlikely locations around the city.

Doye writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 7 (UPI) — A Russian airstrike hit and damaged the upper floors of the Ukraine Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv for the first time since the war began in February 2022.

The building is among the most prominent Ukrainian government buildings and houses the offices of the executive branch’s top officials, including the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The strike is significant because it shows Moscow’s strikes can reach the heart of Kyiv’s government district, hitting a central symbol of executive authority.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement Sunday that the strike on the cabinet building was part of a sweeping attack on cities across the country, including Sumy, Kremenchuk, Odesa, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia used more than 800 drones, as well as four ballistic missiles and nine cruise missiles in the attack, making it the largest such strike since the war began, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in its own statement.

At least four people were killed in the broader airstrike, Zelensky said in an earlier statement. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that at least one of the people killed was a child.

“In Kyiv, the rubble is still being cleared — there may still be bodies beneath it. The Cabinet of Ministers building has been damaged. As of now, more than forty people have been reported injured across the country, 20 of them in Kyiv,” Zelensky said.

Yulia Svyrydenko, who has served as prime minister of Ukraine since July 17, shared photos of the destruction on Telegram and said that there were no injuries at the cabinet building during the broader airstrike.

“Russian terror will not stop the work of the government,” she said. “We will restore the destruction. But the lives of Ukrainians cannot be brought back. During the night, four people were killed and more than 44 were injured across the country due to Russian shelling.”

Zelensky said that air raid sirens in the capital alone lasted for more than seven and a half hours, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the strike to test whether the world would tolerate escalating attacks by Moscow as he praised the response of Western allies who decried the airstrike. He also called for sanctions and tariffs on Russia.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack as a “brutal overnight assault on Kyiv and across Ukraine,” stressing that “for the first time, the heart of Ukraine’s civilian government was damaged,” and warning that Putin “believes he can act with impunity” and “is not serious about peace.”

French President Emmanuel Macron similarly denounced the strikes on social media, stating that “Russia, meanwhile, is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of war and terror,” and affirmed that “together with Ukraine and our partners, we stand for peace.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it carried out a large-scale strike with precision weapons and drones against facilities used to produce, store and launch unmanned aircraft, as well as military airbases across central, southern and eastern Ukraine.

The ministry said the attack included strikes on an industrial plant on the western outskirts of Kyiv and a logistics center on the city’s southern edge.

It said all intended targets were destroyed and stressed that no other sites inside Kyiv were hit, making no mention of any government structures in Kyiv.

Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that Ukraine attempted a large-scale overnight drone attack overnight into Sunday, with its air defenses shooting down 69 unmanned aircraft across southern and central Russia.

The ministry said the drones were intercepted over Krasnodar, Voronezh, Belgorod, Astrakhan, Volgograd, Rostov, Bryansk, Kursk and Ryazan regions, as well as over Crimea and the Sea of Azov.

In its daily summary of war accomplishments, Russia claimed that its troops advanced in eastern and southern Ukraine, capturing the village of Khoroshe in the Dnipropetrovsk region and striking Ukrainian units across Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The ministry claimed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the fighting, along with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and supply depots destroyed.

It said Russian air and missile forces also hit Ukrainian military-industrial sites, drone bases and transport hubs in nearly 150 locations, while air defenses intercepted three U.S.-made HIMARS rockets, guided bombs and more than 200 drones.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries are alive with sound and activity. Voices echo through the vast, concrete space and a cacophony of drills and electric lifts beep, buzz and blare. A unique colored glaze is being applied to gallery walls, and paintings and photos are being installed throughout.

That gritty whir? It’s the Hilti TE 4-22 cordless rotary hammer drill. “A very fine product,” says senior art preparator Michael Price with a sly smile. He’s been drilling holes in the concrete walls with the large red contraption, which comes with a small attached vacuum that sucks up concrete dust as it penetrates the wall. The work is simple and done in a matter of seconds.

Senior art preparator Michael Price drills into concrete walls to hang art in LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. He jokingly calls the Hilti TE 4-22 cordless rotary hammer drill “a very fine product.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Some of the first holes were drilled a little more than a week ago for the installation of a photo sculpture LACMA commissioned for its entrance by Los Angeles-born artist Todd Gray, titled “Octavia Butler’s Gaze.” Last Wednesday, Gray, along with LACMA director and Chief Executive Michael Govan and curator Britt Salvesen, watched the final panel of the 27-foot-long assemblage being hoisted onto the wall and put in place using wooden cleats that fit together much like a jigsaw puzzle.

“This is another thing that concrete makes possible,” says Salvesen, the head of the photography, and prints and drawings, departments, noting with satisfaction how flush the photographs sit against the wall. “The traditional sheetrock drywall used in many museums have been painted and repainted so many times, they’re not exactly pristine when it comes to leveling.”

Gray steps back and looks at the finished product, nodding with quiet pride. The L.A. native attended Hamilton High School and CalArts and felt deeply honored to have been tapped for a permanent commission. He was therefore among the first people to take a hard-hat tour of the building when it was under construction so he could familiarize himself with the space. The new building opens in April 2026.

“I was kind of overwhelmed,” Gray says. “I had never been in an architectural space like this so I was just really curious. But I must admit, I was much more concerned about this wall.”

The wall is big — a blank, concrete slate — and Gray’s piece will be the first work of art guests see when they walk up the broad staircase leading to the new galleries. In Butler’s portrait, which Gray took in the 1990s, the influential writer looks contemplatively off into the distance — whether near or far, one can’t be sure. Her expression is unreadable, at once thoughtful, curious, interested and detached.

A portrait of Octavia Butler, taken by Todd Gray in the 1990s, anchors the 27-foot-long photo sculpture commissioned by LACMA for the entrance of its new David Geffen Galleries.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Her face is in a gold, oval frame and the viewer’s eyes follow hers to other aspects of the piece — an assemblage of large and small photos taken by Gray in places around the world, including Versailles, Norway and Ghana. It includes an image of an idyllic-looking path through bright green foliage that leads to a slave castle in Cape Coast, Ghana. There is also a striking image of stars in the cosmos, a lovely fresco from a church in Rome, a picture of traditional sculpture housed at the AfricaMuseum in Belgium and a series of stoic Greek columns.

“A lot of my work is contesting art history, or talking about art history, or photography’s place in history, my history, various histories culturally,” said Gray, explaining why he likes that LACMA’s collection will not be exhibited chronologically, or by medium or region, but rather in a series of interwoven exhibits that connect vastly different art in dialogue. “So it was really a commission made in heaven.”

The new galleries, explained Govan, will focus on “migration and intersection, rather than American art over on one side of the museum and European art in a different wing.”

Gray’s photo sculpture, for example, will be adjacent to a gallery featuring African art and near another with Latin American art.

It will also be directly across from a floor-to-ceiling window. These giant windows are a key part of Zumthor’s design — and a flash point for controversy, with critics arguing that too much sunlight could harm fragile art.

Translucent curtains are being designed for some of the windows, but won’t be used throughout, and not in the entrance across from “Octavia’s Gaze.” For that reason, Gray said he employed a relatively new technique called UV direct printing that was developed for outdoor signage. The process involves intense ultraviolet lights that cure and harden the ink, ultimately searing it into the printing material. These prints won’t fade, Gray said.

Todd Gray, left, oversees the installation of his photo sculpture “Octavia Butler’s Gaze.” The piece used a new UV printing technology to ensure it won’t fade in the sunlight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows across from it.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Delicate and old art will not be put at risk by light, Govan said. The interior of Zumthor’s building is dotted with boxy, windowless galleries that Govan and Zumthor call “houses.” And like houses, the interior of galleries are being treated to color — not in the form of paint, however.

Zumthor conceived of three colors that he wanted used in the galleries, explained Diana Magaloni, senior deputy director for conservation, curatorial and exhibitions, who has been mixing the glazes and working with a team of four trained artists to apply them. The colors are a reddish black, a Renaissance ultramarine blue and a blackish burgundy that Zumthor hoped would conjure a cave-like dimness. Overall, Magaloni said, Zumthor wanted the color to look as if it were emerging from darkness.

There are 27 galleries and the colors will be divided by section: Nine on the south side are red, nine on the north side are black and the nine in the middle are blue.

The glazing technique was conceived by a friend of Zumthor’s who lives in Switzerland, and LACMA is currently the only organization to employ it, Magaloni said.

Pigments made of minerals including hematite and rocks like lapis lazuli are ground into nanoparticles and suspended in silica, resembling “melted glass,” as Magaloni describes. The glaze is then applied to the walls, a process that must be done at once in order to prevent any impression of brushstrokes, and also because the glaze hardens quickly. Once it’s dry, the team applies a second coat of glaze pigment infused with black carbon nanoparticles. The effect is dark and mottled — it looks as if the concrete has swallowed the color.

“The concrete has all this life in and of itself,” said Magaloni. “You can walk through the building and you can see that those surfaces are not really homogeneous. The material expresses itself with no artifice, and we wanted to preserve that.”

Painting the concrete would erase that life, she added.

A gallery blushing in a deep wine color, with the theme of “Leisure and Labor in the American Metropolis,” is almost ready. Work by George Bellows, James Van Der Zee, Mary Cassatt and Robert Henri adorn the walls, and there is a table ready to receive a Tiffany lamp. Govan points out that such paintings would not have been originally displayed on white walls but rather on walls of richly colored fabric.

“She’s asking you something,” Todd Gray said of his portrait of Octavia Butler.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Gray’s piece will also be in dialogue with this room, calling to it from another time and place — asking viewers to turn their gaze to history, slavery, transcendence, salvation, power and so much more.

At this moment in time, when arts institutions are grappling with the implications of the Trump administration’s claim that the Smithsonian Institution presents “divisive, race-centered ideology” and vow to monitor what other museums around the country are putting on display, Gray’s piece feels like a small bit of resistance.

“She’s asking you something,” Gray says of Butler.

The answer is yours to declare.

At least three people have been killed and several injured in a fire blamed on protesters in Sulawesi island.

At least three people have been killed and five were injured in a fire blamed on protesters at a regional parliament building in eastern Indonesia, as widespread demonstrations rock the Southeast Asian nation.

Indonesia’s disaster management agency, in a statement on Saturday, confirmed the deaths following the Friday evening fire in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, some 1,600km (994 miles) east of the capital, Jakarta.

“From last night’s incident, three people died. Two died at the scene, and one died at the hospital. They were trapped in the burning building,” the secretary of Makassar city council, Rahmat Mappatoba, told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

He accused protesters of storming the office to set the building on fire.

Indonesia’s official Antara news agency also said the victims were reported to have been trapped in the burning building, while the disaster agency said two of the injured were hurt while jumping out of the building.

Several people injured in the fire are being treated in hospital, officials said.

The fire has since been extinguished.

Indonesia has been rocked by protests across major cities, including Jakarta, since Friday, after footage spread of a motorcycle delivery driver being run over and killed by a police tactical vehicle in earlier rallies over low wages and perceived lavish perks for government officials.

In West Java’s capital city of Bandung, commercial buildings, including a bank and a restaurant, were also reportedly burned on Friday during demonstrations.

In Jakarta, hundreds of demonstrators massed outside the headquarters of the elite Mobile Brigade Corp (Brimob) paramilitary police unit that was blamed for running over motorcycle delivery driver Affan Kuniawan.

Protesters threw stones and firecrackers, and police responded with tear gas as a group tried to tear down the gates of the unit, which is notorious for its heavy-handed tactics.

On Saturday, a local online news site reported that young protesters had massed in Jakarta and were heading to the Brimob headquarters before they were stopped by a barricade.

Police said they had detained seven officers for questioning in connection with the driver’s death. The number of protesters injured in the violence is reported to be more than 200, according to the Tempo news site.

The protests are the biggest and most violent of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s tenure, and are a key test less than a year into his presidency.

Prabowo has urged calm, ordered an investigation into the unrest, visited the family of the slain delivery driver, while also warning that the demonstrations “were leading to anarchic actions”.

Architect Simon Ha was trying to squeeze an apartment building onto a 6,400-square foot lot in Hollywood.

The city of Los Angeles requires two stairways for such buildings, which limited the configurations Ha could use. After racking his brain, he finally came up with a solution.

“It was like designing a Swiss watch,” he said of the 2023 project.

Now, the L.A. City Council is on the brink of allowing just one stairway for buildings of up to six stories, making it easier and cheaper to build on smaller lots — but raising concerns about escape routes in a fire or earthquake.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who introduced the single stairway proposal with Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, said she wants to speed up development to address the city’s housing crisis and to encourage the construction of apartments big enough for families. And she believes safety needn’t be sacrificed.

“We’re trying to say, ‘How can we build more safely — and build more overall?’” Raman said in an interview.

Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Until recently, New York, Seattle and Honolulu were among the few American cities that allowed single stairways in buildings of up to six stories. Since 2022, amid a nationwide affordable housing crunch, at least 16 cities and states have proposed or enacted single stairway regulations, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released in February.

The double stairway rule, in place in California since 1981, makes it harder to build apartments with more than two bedrooms, urban planners and architects said.

Apartments typically have to be laid out along a long hallway, with windows on only one side of each unit, resulting in less light and ventilation, said Stephen Smith, who is executive director of the Center for Building in North America and one of the single stairway’s biggest advocates.

“For small lots in particular, the second stairway can eat up a huge amount of the building’s footprint,” he said.

A single stair layout without a long hallway could mean more room for larger units

Based on design by Simon Ha

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee LOS ANGELES TIMES

Under state law, L.A. can reduce the number of stairways it requires, as long as it implements other restrictions, such as high-end sprinkler systems. Raman and Yaroslavsky’s proposal for single stairway buildings would limit the number of units per floor to four.

But proponents of double stairways say they are a key safety measure, giving residents two options for fleeing a fire, along with a separate route for firefighters.

Frank Lima, a Los Angeles firefighter and general secretary-treasurer of the International Assn. of Fire Fighters, or IAFF, said the stairways are a life-and-death issue.

“[A single stairway] forces building occupants to go down a stairwell while firefighters go up a stairwell,” Lima said. “That delays fire attack, delays people getting out of a building — when seconds count.”

“When you try to cut corners to save money or make more units, it shouldn’t be at the price of children that die,” Lima said.

The IAFF, which represents firefighters and emergency medical technicians across the U.S. and Canada, has strongly opposed single stairway proposals — “I’d rather call it ‘only one way out,’” Lima said.

On Aug. 20, the City Council voted 13 to 1 to request that city staffers draft a single stairway ordinance.

In a memo to the council, City Planning Director Vincent Bertoni wrote that the single stairway proposal could make a “substantial contribution” to the city’s housing supply.

“The result is that family-sized units — a much needed segment of Los Angeles’ housing stock — are not being produced at the scale required to meet existing and projected needs,” he wrote of the double stairway requirement.

About 14% of rental units in the city are three or more bedrooms, according to the Planning Department.

Zachary Pitts, the Los Angeles director of YIMBY Action, which advocates for more affordable housing, said he had a hard time finding a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Los Angeles.

There were plenty of studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, but places big enough for his family of four cost a small fortune.

“We ended up buying a single-family home, since a mortgage was lower than the prices we were being quoted,” Pitts said.

Ha, the architect, said that ditching the double stairway requirement could enable developers to produce “East Coast-style” townhouses like those in New York — a contrast to the “podium-style” buildings now going up in L.A., which generally take up a half or whole block.

Ha has designed buildings from San Francisco to San Diego, though most of his work is in Los Angeles, where he is the architect of many micro-apartment complexes, which contain only studios.

Small parcels of 7,500 square feet or less, where a single stairway would make apartments easier to build, often sit empty for long periods, creating “missing teeth” in the city’s layout, Ha said.

Simon Ha stands inside one of two stairways at the Hollywood Premiere Apartments. Architects such as Ha are in support of single stairway reform that would make it easier and cheaper to develop on small lots.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Fire Department declined to comment on the single stairway proposal, saying it is under review by the city fire marshal. The councilmembers behind the proposal say the department has been consulted every step of the way.

Raman said she sees “no reduction in fire safety.”

“New fire safety standards in our building code have made it so new buildings are much safer overall,” she said.

Architect Simon Ha shows the two stairways at the Hollywood Premiere Apartments.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The Pew Charitable Trusts study, co-written and researched by Smith of the Center for Building in North America, found that in New York, the rate of fire deaths in single stairway buildings was the same as in other residential buildings.

“This [double stairway] code originates from when people were cooking with open flames, when there were no sprinklers or fire alarms,” Smith said.

City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian voted yes on the Aug. 20 motion to draft a single stairway ordinance, though he had previously expressed reservations about earthquake safety.

Seattle has single stairways but “less than one-tenth the number of seismic activity we have in our region,” he said during a council meeting.

Councilmember Traci Park was the lone no vote.

“Generally in life, when you have more exits and evacuation routes, things are generally more safe,” she said.

An Indian military helicopter rescued several people stranded by raging flood waters from the roof of a collapsing building in Punjab state. At least 36 people have been killed over the past 24 hours as heavy rains swept the Himalayas.

Video shows the moment a building collapsed into an overflowing river in Kullu in northern India, where heavy rains have caused severe flooding and landslides. The floods have damaged roads, swept away bridges and disrupted water and power supplies in several areas.

SPORTING’S stadium underwent an incredible transformation during the summer.. but they’re STILL working on it with the 2025-26 season underway.

The iconic Portuguese ground – which was only built in 2003 for a cost of £150million – was given a bit of a facelift during the offseason.

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And it left the arena looking utterly unrecognisable – particularly after the entire pitch was ripped up and left looking like a building site.

Following the end of the 2024-25 season – in which Cristiano Ronaldo‘s old club won the league in no small part down to Arsenal new-boy Viktor Gyokeres‘ goals – Sporting got to work on the makeover.

Most-notably, the pitch was ripped up and replaced by a hybrid surface.

And it passed the first test with flying colours, as Primeira Liga officials gave it a 10/10 for the club’s 6-0 win over Arouca in their first home game of the season.

But it wasn’t just re-laying the pitch – the entire playing surface was LOWERED to allow the club to add 2,000 more seats around the base of the stadium.

That boosted the capacity from 50,095 to 52,095.

And that new feature – not ready for the Arouca battering – WILL be ready for the massive derby game against Porto on August 30 with seats now being installed.

The dugout area has been completely renovated, too – with the bench now boasted a capacity of 28 players and coaches.

CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO BONUSES FROM £10 DEPOSITS

On top of that, Sporting have opened a new “Emerald Lounge” for corporate ticket holders.

Club chiefs also splashed out £15m on repurchasing the adjacent Alvalaxia entertainment complex earlier this month.

Their plan is to re-home their club museum – which features their most important trophies, including replicas of individual Ballon d’Or gongs won by former players, Ronaldo and Luis Figo.

For now, the exhibition has been moved inside the stadium and is open to the public until the permanent residence is completed.

There is more work to be done inside the stadium, still – with the big screens currently being installed.

For now, supporters have a tiny scoreboard displayed on advertising hoardings on the side of the pitch.

But in time, the plan is to install multiple big screens.

Their plan moving forward is to cash-in on their corporate lounges – renting them out on non-matchdays for private events.

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TRANSFER NEWS LIVE – KEEP UP WITH ALL THE LATEST FROM A BUSY SUMMER WINDOW

After a tense and sharply divided debate Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to oppose a state bill that aims to vastly expand high-density housing near public transit hubs, arguing that the state should leave important planning decisions to local legislators.

The council voted 8 to 5 to oppose Senate Bill 79, which seeks to mitigate the state’s housing shortage by allowing buildings of up to nine stories near certain train stops and slightly smaller buildings near some bus stops throughout California.

“A one-size-fits-all mandate from Sacramento is not safe, and it’s not responsible,” said City Councilmember Traci Park at a news conference before the vote.

Park, who was joined at the news conference by Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and John Lee, said the bill was an attempt by its sponsor, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), and other state legislators to “hijack” local planning from the city.

Lee, who authored the resolution opposing the bill, called it “not planning” but “chaos.”

Wiener lamented the City Council’s vote.

“Opponents of SB 79 are offering no real solutions to address our housing shortage at the scale needed to make housing more affordable,” Wiener said in a statement. “California’s affordability crisis threatens our economy, our diversity, and our fundamental strength as a state.”

In addition to creating more affordable housing, the bill would increase public transit ridership, reduce traffic and help the state meet its climate goals, he said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who voted against opposing the bill, said the city’s housing crisis is so dire that the council needs to work with the drafters of the bill — even if there are elements of it they do not support.

“Overall, we talk a lot about our housing crisis on this body, but our actions have not met the moment,” she said. “If I thought that this body was acting in good faith to address our housing crisis, I would support this [resolution].”

The bill, which passed the Senate and is before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, would allow heights of nine stories near major transit hubs, such as certain Metro train stops in L.A. A quarter-mile from a stop, buildings could be seven stories tall, and a half-mile from a stop, they could be six stories. Single-family neighborhoods within a half-mile of transit stops would be included in the new zoning rules.

Near smaller transit stops, such as light rail or bus rapid transit, the allowed heights would be slightly lower.

Next week, the Appropriations Committee will determine whether the bill goes to the Assembly floor for a vote. If passed in both chambers, the bill would go to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign by mid-October.

The City Council’s resolution opposing the bill has no binding effect on the state Legislature but gives the council a platform to potentially lobby in Sacramento against its passage. The resolution also called for the city to be exempt from the bill because it has a state-approved housing plan.

“If they hadn’t taken a position on this, the state Legislature would say, ‘Well, the city of L.A. doesn’t care,’” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former City Council member and now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Mayor Karen Bass has not yet taken a position on the bill. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto came out against it in May, arguing that it would cost the city billions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure such as sewage and electrical systems to handle an influx of residents in previously low-density neighborhoods.

Wiener’s office said the bill allows for cities to exempt some properties near transit hubs if they meet density guidelines.

This year, the City Council passed the Citywide Housing Incentive Program, which provides incentives for developers to build market-rate and affordable units and aims to boost building along commercial corridors and in dense residential neighborhoods.

The council passed the ordinance, which left single-family zones largely untouched after pushback from homeowners groups, a week before a state deadline for the city to have a housing plan in place. As part of the plan, the city was required to find land where an additional 255,000 homes could be built.

DOZENS of residents have been evacuated from their homes in a popular seaside town while firefighters tackle a major blaze.

Emergency crews rushed to attend the building fire in Clacton, Essex, in the early hours this morning.

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Locals have been advised to keep their windows and doors shut as plumes of smoke rise from the building on West Avenue.

Teams from seven local fire stations, including Weeley, Colchester and Chelmsford, were scrambled to the scene at around 12.35am.

Essex Fire Brigade confirmed the building was still fully alight just before 5am.

Incident Commander Nick Singleton said: “Crews have worked hard to surround the fire.

“We will be remaining here for a significant time during the day to make sure the fire is fully extinguished.

“Jackson Road, Penfold Road and Agate Road will be shut and experience disruption while our crews remain at the incident. 

“Thank you to our emergency services colleagues who have helped us safety evacuate nearby residents.” 

More to follow… For the latest news on this story keep checking back at The Sun Online

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Lisa Berns, the niece of retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, passed by a newsstand in Los Angeles over the weekend and found herself reacting with dread and alarm to the news that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had just been assassinated.

The Orange County woman’s reaction surfaced again Wednesday, when her uncle announced he would not be running for President, a decision that, in Berns’ words, “hasn’t ruined my day. . . . It takes a lot of the pressure off of us. It takes the worry away.”

“People in public office just put themselves at risk every day, so I’m not unhappy that he decided not to run,” she said.

Lisa Berns’ mother, Marilyn Berns, whose only sibling is Powell, said she had never discussed the dangers of running for office with her brother, “But I know that it concerned us–my husband and our family. I think Colin’s decision was made prior” to Saturday’s tragedy in Israel.

“I wasn’t surprised [by Wednesday’s announcement] because Colin called me [Tuesday] night and told me what his decision was,” said Marilyn Berns, 64, a teacher at Martin Elementary School in Santa Ana until her retirement in June. “I’m pleased about the decision. It’s important to us that he do the thing he feels most comfortable with. . . . We were all getting very edgy about it.”

Berns said that her brother’s consideration of seeking the presidency had left his family subject to prolonged stress.

“There was this monumental decision that had to be made,” Marilyn Berns said. “Both of them [Powell and his wife, Alma], along with their kids, were just meeting and meeting and thinking it over. I didn’t realize until I spoke to him the gravity of what my brother was dealing with. That was very disturbing to me. I got a little teary over that.”

Elsewhere in Orange County, the response was less personal and more political as Democratic and Republican leaders found a common ground: Albeit for their own reasons, both parties agreed that Powell had done the right thing–the only thing he could do, really–in not seeking the White House.

But private citizens throughout the county reacted glumly, saying that Powell’s decision deprived American voters of a candidate whom many felt was potentially the best President of anyone in public life.

Others expressed relief, however, saying the timing just didn’t feel right.

Numerous political pundits said Wednesday that Powell’s wife had been “adamant” about having him decline, language with which both Berns women took issue.

Marilyn Berns said that her sister-in-law “has a lot of input” into her husband’s choices and that “they do things together as a team”–to a point.

Even if Alma Powell had strongly resisted her husband’s running, “she’s not the type of woman who is so forceful that she would ram her views down someone’s throat. That’s not Alma Powell’s style. She gives her input, and that’s it. She doesn’t beat a dead horse.”

“I haven’t talked to my aunt [Alma, Powell’s wife]. I don’t know that she’s adamant about him not running,” said Lisa Berns, a computer saleswoman in Orange County, “but I don’t think she’s got a burning desire for him to run.

“I don’t know what she feels precisely about Rabin’s assassination. I don’t know that it played a big part in their decision, but I will tell you this: I was in L.A. over the weekend visiting friends. I hadn’t been watching the news, or reading the newspaper.

“But at 5 o’clock when I walked by a newsstand and saw that Rabin had been assassinated, my heart sank. I don’t know if anybody else in the family had it cross their minds, but it certainly crossed mine.”

The Berns family is so concerned about its own privacy that both mother and daughter asked not to have published the name of the Orange County community where the family lives.

Despite her uncle’s decision, “I think he would have been great” as President, Lisa Berns said. “I think he would be good at anything he sets out to do. He’s obviously very bright, very well spoken, level-headed, cool. . . . He knows how to work under tremendous pressure in various capacities. He’s a fair person, an eminently decent person.”

On other fronts, Democrats and Republicans across the county were not about to try to persuade Powell to change his mind.

“If he had run, it would have made the Republican [presidential] race even uglier than it is already,” by pitting the moderate Powell against GOP conservatives, said Irvine attorney Jim Toledano, chairman of the Democratic Party in Orange County.

“The announcement comes as no surprise to me,” countered Thomas A. Fuentes, chairman of the Republican Party in Orange County. “I never met a party activist who was favorable to [Powell’s] nomination during all the time the press was touting it.”

It was always the media and never the GOP constituency who wanted Powell to run, Fuentes said, claiming the negative feeling was far more prevalent in the ultraconservative, Republican stronghold of Orange County.

“If there were ever a media-contrived candidacy, this was the best example,” Fuentes said. “To carry our banner requires some time of service to the party and also the full embrace of the values and ideals of the party–and that was lacking.”

Fuentes suggested that party regulars felt the would-be candidate had not yet paid his dues, noting that Powell’s most trusted advisers “obviously shared with him the reality that there was no Powell ground network. There has to be some structure, some network, some reality to a campaign. That not being in place, I think he just came to grips with reality.”

But some people reacted to Wednesday’s news with disappointment.

At the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, about 150 people watched Powell’s announcement on a big-screen television. Many were both surprised and crestfallen at his decision. “I really thought he had the impetus and the appeal to win,” said 54-year-old Beverly Nocas of Pasadena. “He’s very articulate and I think he could have done a lot for us.”

Norma Canova, a 50-year-old resident of Yorba Linda, said, “I think he could have had a great role in healing racial problems in this country.”

But several onlookers, who had gathered to watch a fashion show called “Dressing the First Lady,” expressed relief.

“I couldn’t vote for him because I don’t know what he stands for,” said 81-year-old Henry Boney of San Diego. “I know that he’s a good salesman though. He created a lot of publicity for his book.”

Newport Beach resident Elaine Parks said she was “very impressed” with Powell, but was heartened by his decision to stay out of the race.

“It would have been divisive to the party, and we need complete unity to beat the current President, which I sincerely hope happens,” Parks said.

We asked L.A. Times readers: “Thinking ahead to 2050, how might you reconfigure the city so it is a sustainable home for everyone?” Here is a sampling of their comments:

Use the Chicago riverfront, apartments, architecture, etc., as your example. We could have a thriving green space with the L.A. River, bike paths, community parks, gardens, etc.

Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.

Go international and use Florence or Tokyo as your examples. Enact beautiful single-stair buildings, public art, clean sidewalks and streets that are protected in the city budget, and reliable automatic trains that run every four minutes so people don’t feel trapped by their cars.

Our legislators must enact public policy and change their cities for the better. Instead, the L.A. City Council allows a literal dirt space behind City Hall to be used for random events instead of new housing or a shared, protected public park.

— Rachel Smith

I would put an emphasis on clean air in every public space. Whether the concern is viruses or wildfire smoke or anything else, no public space should have poor air quality. We need to be monitoring air quality levels in all public spaces and putting in appropriate air filtration.

The Pacific Palisades house is clad in fiber cement. The roof is made of fireproof TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin), the deck is made with specially treated wood for fire resistance and a fire suppression system in the back of the house sprayed fire retardant onto the vegetation.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

— Annette Majerowicz

I do not live there, but hope to retire there. I want walkable areas with maintained sidewalks and shade.

— Cindy Riachi

The time has finally come for Los Angeles to build up in earnest. The urban sprawl that has come to define the city has now become one of its biggest threats. One estimate is that in the United States, one in four new homes are built in areas prone to wildfires and an estimated 95% of wildfires in California are “man-made.” This existential question has largely been unaddressed in the past 25 years, especially as the region has stuck to its formula of growing communities further outwards.

Now we find a region that has begun to stagnate as fires continue to pound on its doors and its residents are questioning their future and safety there, all the while fighting rising prices.

There is much opportunity that comes with building up, the ability to reshape the city, bring forth high density, sustainable, residential buildings that can alleviate the housing crisis and even reduce traffic as some studies have shown. An emphasis on land management and parks can open up city spaces while protecting it from the threat of wildfires.

— Matthew Perez

For the love of God, can we just get some bike lanes?

— Evan Gillespie

Landscaping? Yes, but make sure it’s drought-tolerant and geographically appropriate.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

To transform Los Angeles into a sustainable and equitable city by 2050, we need a holistic approach that addresses climate challenges while fostering community well-being. My vision is rooted in architecture, landscaping, neighborhood planning and inclusive design practices.

Resilient Architecture and Housing: Buildings must be designed to withstand the increasing threat of wildfires and other climate-related events. This means using fire-resistant materials, integrating green roofs for natural cooling and air quality, and designing adaptable, modular structures that can be quickly reconfigured or relocated if needed. Housing should be dense but human-scaled, with flexible spaces that accommodate changing family structures and community needs.

Sustainable Landscaping and Urban Ecology: Landscaping in 2050 Los Angeles will move away from water-intensive practices, embracing native, drought-tolerant plants that support local biodiversity. Urban forests will play a crucial role in reducing heat islands, while community gardens and urban farms will become integral to neighborhood identity, providing both food security and green space.

Connected and Climate-Conscious Neighborhoods: To minimize car dependency, neighborhoods will be designed as walkable, bike-friendly hubs that mix housing, workspaces, and recreational areas. Public transportation will be integrated seamlessly into these communities, encouraging active mobility and reducing emissions. We will rethink zoning to allow for more live-work spaces, eliminating long commutes and fostering local economies.

Community-Centered Planning: Planning will be community-driven, prioritizing equity by involving residents in decision-making processes. Each neighborhood will develop its own identity and purpose — some focusing on water management and treatment, others on urban agriculture or community energy production. This localized approach will build social cohesion while addressing specific climate challenges.

Welcoming and Inclusive Urban Fabric: By 2050, Los Angeles will embrace its diverse population by valuing skills and contributions from all residents, including immigrants. Adapted housing and support systems will ensure no one lives on the streets, and public spaces will be accessible and inclusive

Could AI robots pick up all our trash in the future?

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

— Ena (Ana) Yanchapaxi

Stop catering to developers, large corporations and monopolies. We need to prioritize citizens and businesses so people can stay locally.

— Josh Walters

*Use AI Robots to pick up and organize all trash 24/7.

*Double-decker light rail on the 10 and 405, 105, 101, 5. Put light rail on every major east to west artery.

*Close all oil refineries

*Move the airport outside the city.

*Make coastal areas into massive wetland / chaparral ecosystems.

*Return Altadena and Pacific Palisades into a chaparral ecosystem.

*Expand sidewalks / pedestrian access; create plazas to increase walkability.

*Reduce water imports to help the rest of California and make it more resistant to climate change.

*Create more freeway overpasses for wildlife.

*Replace gas stations with state-run electric charging stations

*Fruit trees throughout the city

*Dense communal living options.

Plant more fruit trees? Why not?

(Jeanette Marantos / Los Angeles Times)

— Matt Ceran

Repeal and phase out Prop. 13, and rezone most of the city so we can build multi-family housing, more walkable communities. Just build more housing and see how a majority of the city’s problems will diminish or disappear altogether. Oh, and plant more trees. I think it’s a tragedy that the city with the most incredible weather in the world was made so un-walkable.

— Michele Medina

Los Angeles needs to rethink its car-first history first and foremost if we are ever going to make inroads toward a more sustainable future. Fighting constantly for better public transit is the easy answer as we see Metro working in new projects, but there also has to be a hyper-local push toward smart density, advocating for more walkable neighborhoods, fewer single-family housing developments, and completely redesigning towns and cities so folks can access what they need without needing to drive everywhere.

— Charles Vignola

I think Los Angeles needs to make more space for people and nature, and less for cars. Tons of apartments everywhere, bike and bus lanes, trains, and parks. A lot of that is hard, small work you see on a neighborhood scale, but there’s one big project I’d like to see: burying the 101 and building a linear park in the Cahuenga Pass. This would give more people access to a giant park, reduce car pollution, and provide safe passage for mountain lions to cross into Griffith Park. The views of the valley and the basin would be spectacular, and it would be a refuge, a reconstruction of the ancient Tongva walking path.

— Jonathan Eby

THREE in four Brits want all foreign criminals deported, a poll shows.

Two-thirds back building mega-jails on remote Scottish islands to deal with prison overcrowding.

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Nine in ten would rather new prisons be built than see softer sentences.

And 77 per cent want courts open longer to deal with the backlog of cases.

The same number back building temporary “Nightingale-style” prisons.

Julian Gallie, from Merlin Strategy — who carried out polling for campaign group Crush Crime — said: ““There is overwhelming public support for a tougher stance on crime.

“There is a desire for the government to deal with a justice system the country do not think is working.

“Options including nightingale prisons and even deporting all foreign criminals gain overwhelming support.”

Reform MP Sarah Pochin said: “It’s no surprise the public support the need for urgent action to fix the crisis in our prison system.”

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Already the home of Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles is now also the home of South Korea’s Shohei Ohtani.

Like Ohtani, Son Heung-min has been the most popular athlete in his home country by a wide margin for close to a decade. Like Ohtani, Son has a pleasant disposition that has endeared him to people from a wide range of backgrounds.

Son was introduced as the latest addition to LAFC at a news conference on Wednesday at BMO Stadium, and he was everything he was made out to be.

He came across as sincere.

He was warm.

He was funny.

“I’m here to win,” Son said. “I will perform and definitely show you some exciting …

“Are we calling it football or soccer?”

None of this means Son will turn LAFC into the Dodgers overnight, of course. By this point, Major League Soccer and its teams understand that profile players aren’t transformative figures as much as they are building blocks. Son will be the newest, and perhaps most solid, block that will be stacked on the foundation established by the club’s first designated player, the now-retired Carlos Vela.

Outside of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, there might not be a player in the world who could be of a greater value than Son to LAFC, which continues to fight for relevance on multiple fronts. There was a reason the transfer fee paid by LAFC to Tottenham Hotspur of England was the highest in MLS history, a reported $26 million.

“Son’s arrival marks a new chapter, not just for LAFC but for the league and for football in the United States,” general manager John Thorrington said. “He brings not only incredible quality on the field but a magnetic presence off it, someone who inspires millions around the world and now will do so here in Los Angeles.”

The most talented Mexican player of his generation, Vela forged an immediate connection with the community, carving out a place for LAFC in the congested Los Angeles sports market. Son will do the same, as this city is home to a large Korean community.

Supporters of Mexico’s national soccer team also share a fondness of Son because of a late goal he scored against Germany in the group stage of the 2018 World Cup, which enabled El Tri to advance to the round of 16.

More than ethnic background, Vela’s success with LAFC was driven by performance. Son is expected to deliver on that front as well. Son might be 33, but he remains a world-class attacker. He should be one of MLS’ best players from the moment he steps on the field, if not the best after Messi of Inter Miami.

“We can say I’m old, but I still have good physicality, good legs and still I have good quality,” Son said.

South Korean national team Son Heung-min poses for a photo with his new LAFC jersey.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

LAFC has become a model franchise in MLS not just because of how it markets itself. The club makes smart soccer decisions and Son is the latest.

What will distinguish Son from Vela is the opportunity he will present LAFC to build its global brand.

“From the early days of building this club, we’ve dreamt of building a club that would win trophies and make a major positive impact in our community and Los Angeles, but also make a mark on the world stage of global football,” lead managing owner Bennett Rosenthal said.

As much success as it has enjoyed domestically, as much attention as it received for participating in the recent Club World Cup, LAFC doesn’t have as much international name recognition as Inter Miami, which employs Messi; or the Galaxy, for which David Beckham played; or even the New York Cosmos, which made its name by signing Pele in the 1970s.

Son played 10 seasons with Tottenham, and by one estimate, the club had 12 million supporters in South Korea — or about one in four people in the country. Koreans traveled to London to watch Son play for Tottenham, just as many Japanese people travel to watch Ohtani at Dodger Stadium. Korean companies sponsored the Spurs.

The eyes of South Korea have shifted to LAFC. The team scheduled Son’s introductory news conference for 2 p.m. local time — or 6 a.m. in South Korea. An estimated 40 Korean journalists were issued credentials to cover the event.

Son acknowledged that as he prepared for life after Tottenham, LAFC was “not my first choice.” A conversation with Thorrington after the season changed his mind.

“He showed me the destination where I should be,” Son said.

Son attended LAFC’s Leagues Cup victory over Tigres of Mexico on Tuesday night and received a loud ovation when he was shown on the video scoreboard.

“It was just insane,” he said. “I just wanted to run into the pitch.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass presents new LAFC star Son Heung-min with a certificate of recognition during an introductory news conference on Wednesday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Son will be reunited with goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, his former teammate at Tottenham.

“He’s back to [being] my captain,” Son said. “So I have to say something good about him because otherwise in the locker room, he’s just going to kill me.”

Son laughed.

His personality will play in Los Angeles, just as it did in London. He will make LAFC a known commodity in South Korea, perhaps beyond. He will further enhance a structure that was built by Vela, ensuring the team’s next star will have an even greater platform on which to perform. He won’t be as prominent locally as Ohtani or Luka Doncic, but he doesn’t have to be.

A newly unsealed court document alleges that Richard Tillman admitted to police officers that he drove a vehicle into a Northern California post office and set the building on fire, “trying to make a statement to the United States Government.”

It’s unclear what the statement was intended to be. According to the document, Tillman also told San Jose Police officers at the scene that he was responsible for spray-painting “Viva La Me” on the building as it was burning but was unable to finish writing because of the heat.

The youngest brother of late NFL star and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman has been charged with the federal crime of malicious destruction of government property by fire in connection with the incident at Almaden Valley Station Post Office on July 20 at around 3 a.m. Sunday.

The 44-year-old San Jose resident was arrested at the scene. The criminal complaint against Tillman was filed July 23 but remained sealed until Wednesday when Tillman made his initial appearance in federal district court in San Jose. KRON-TV in San Francisco reports that Tillman did not enter a plea.

Tillman is in federal custody and has a status conference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins scheduled for Aug. 6, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a press release.

The criminal complaint includes a statement of probable cause by U.S. Postal Inspector Shannon Roark. According to the statement, Tillman told officers on the scene that he had placed “instalogs” throughout his vehicle and doused them with lighter fluid. He then backed the vehicle into the post office, exited the vehicle and used a match to set the car ablaze.

The building was “partially destroyed by the fire,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

Roark also stated that Tillman told officers at the scene that he had livestreamed the incident on YouTube. Tillman’s channel has since been removed from the site.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Pat Tillman famously walked away from a three-year, $3.6-million contract offer from the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army, along with his younger brother, Kevin.

On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in the province of Khost, Afghanistan. He was 27.

The day after the post office fire, Kevin Tillman released a statement.

“Our family is aware that my brother Richard has been arrested. First and foremost, we are relieved that no one was physically harmed,” Kevin Tillman stated. “ … To be clear, it’s no secret that Richard has been battling severe mental health issues for many years. He has been livestreaming, what I’ll call, his altered self on social media for anyone to witness.

“Unfortunately, securing the proper care and support for him has proven incredibly difficult — or rather, impossible. As a result, none of this is as shocking as it should be.”

As rebuilding ramps up in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles leaders are restricting the building of duplexes on single-family-home lots.

The move follows an executive order issued Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom that allows exemptions for the Palisades and other areas devastated by January’s Palisades and Eaton fires from Senate Bill 9. The landmark 2021 law, passed in response to the state’s housing shortage, lets property owners divide single-family-home lots and build up to four units.

In recent days, Palisades residents have raised alarms about SB 9, worrying that their historically single-family-home community would be transformed by the additional density allowed under the law and become more dangerous in the event of future fires. On Jan. 7, the chaotic evacuation amid the flames led residents to abandon their cars on Sunset Boulevard and escape on foot, forcing bulldozers to clear the road so that emergency responders could enter the area.

No outcry has erupted over the addition of accessory dwelling units in the Palisades, even though they could bring similar increases in building, and have been far more common in permit applications.

Some 4,700 single-family homes were destroyed or severely damaged in the Palisades fire, the majority of which were in the city of Los Angeles.

Newsom’s order applies to the Palisades and parts of Malibu and Altadena — areas that burned and that are designated as “very high fire hazard severity zones” by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It mandates a weeklong pause on SB 9 projects to allow the city and county of Los Angeles and Malibu to develop restrictions.

In response, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who alongside City Councilmember Traci Park had urged Newsom to act this week, issued an executive order blocking future SB 9 development in the Palisades.

“I thank Governor Newsom for working with my office to provide some sense of solace for a community working to rebuild,” Bass said in a statement accompanying the order.

Since the fire, the prospect of greater density, including increased affordable housing, has raised tension in the neighborhood. Some of the debates have been mired in misinformation and conspiracy theories falsely asserting that the wealthy community would be rezoned for mass building of low-income apartments.

But residents retain deep scars from January’s tumultuous evacuation and fear that such a situation would be even worse with a larger population, said Larry Vein, founder of wildfire recovery group Pali Strong. They also want the area to return to the predominately single-family-home neighborhood it was, he said.

“The community does not want higher density,” Vein said.

Officials’ push to restrict SB 9 construction stands in stark contrast to their efforts to allow more building on single-family-home lots through different means.

Newsom and Bass each issued earlier executive orders to streamline permitting reviews for accessory dwelling units on single-family-home properties in burn zones.

There are some practical distinctions between the two ways of adding homes. Generally, ADU law permits up to three units on a lot. SB 9 can allow four or potentially more if combined with ADU law. SB 9 units often can be larger than ADUs as well.

Yet the possibility of increased ADU construction has not attracted the same opposition in the community; instead, data indicate that it’s been popular.

The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety does not specifically track permit requests for ADUs or SB 9 projects among home rebuilds, and could not immediately verify their numbers. However, department rebuilding data analyzed by The Times includes a description of each proposed development that is supposed to note if an additional unit is planned.

As of July 28, 500 homeowners had submitted permitting applications to rebuild in the Palisades, The Times’ analysis of department data found. Of those, 73 — nearly 15% — included at least one ADU, according to project descriptions. Per the descriptions, three intend to use SB 9, but that number is an undercount, said Devin Myrick, the department’s assistant deputy superintendent of building. Myrick said the department was still analyzing its data to come up with the actual number of SB 9 projects.

Property owners have cited ADU construction as a way to return to the Palisades more quickly, with some planning to build an ADU before tackling their primary home. For others, the opportunity for building any additional unit, under ADU law or SB 9, provides a financial benefit that could be used to cover gaps in the cost to rebuild.

Vein said Palisades residents are friendlier to ADUs because their construction may not necessarily lead to a larger population. Many people, he said, would use an ADU to work from home, as a guesthouse or allow members of multigenerational families to have their own space. By contrast, he said, SB 9 duplexes inevitably will add people.

“You’ve just doubled the density,” he said.

Some pro-development organizations are blasting the SB 9 restrictions. Matthew Lewis, a spokesperson for California YIMBY, which advocates for greater home building across the state, said that residents’ evacuation concerns are legitimate but that officials should focus on resolving that issue rather than limiting duplexes.

Lewis said the proliferation of ADUs in the area’s rebuild shows that it’s not actually the potential for increased building that’s motivating the opposition. Instead, he said community groups and L.A. politicians are using that argument to thwart a law they’ve long disliked because it expressly calls for changes to single-family-home neighborhoods.

“What we’re talking about is a powerful constituency making enough noise to cause a suspension of laws that were duly passed by the state Legislature,” Lewis said. “That’s very concerning.”

Bass believes her backing of ADUs and opposition to SB 9 in the Palisades do not conflict, mayoral spokesperson Zachary Seidl said. SB 9 was not anticipated to be used after a major wildfire, he said, while streamlining ADU permitting assists property owners with reconstruction.

“The mayor with both of these positions is supporting community members in the Palisades rebuild,” Seidl said.

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

L..A. County plans to pay more to upgrade the Gas Company Tower than it did to buy the downtown skyscraper in the first place.

County officials agreed last November to pay $200 million for the 52-story tower, which they planned to make the new headquarters for county employees.

The estimated price tag to earthquake-proof the tower: more than $230 million. Lennie LaGuire, a spokesperson for the county Chief Executive Office, said the tower is already safe, and the upgrades are “proactive.”

County officials had said some improvements to the tower might be necessary, but the cost and extent had been murky until now.

This week, the county received final proposals from firms looking to secure a contract for “voluntary seismic upgrades” to the Gas Company Tower, located at 555 W. 5th Street.

The Chief Executive Office, which negotiated the purchase, stressed in a statement that the seismic work was expected and far cheaper than the estimated $1 billion it would take to retrofit the county’s current downtown headquarters, the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which was built in 1960 and is vulnerable to collapse during the next major earthquake.

The Gas Company Tower “does not require any seismic work to provide a safe, up-to-code and modern workplace for County employees. The County is choosing to perform this work proactively with an eye to the future, to ensure that the building performs optimally in the decades ahead,” LaGuire said. “The cost of this work, even when combined with the cost of the building, is a fraction of the cost of making urgently needed and long-overdue seismic and life safety improvements to the Hall of Administration.”

The $200-million sale was considered a bargain compared with the building’s appraised value of more than $600 million a few years earlier — a symptom of plummeting downtown office values.

Supervisor Janice Hahn, the only board member who opposed the purchase, said Friday that county officials never should have entered into the real estate transaction before they “had all the facts” on the cost.

“This is turning out to be a bigger boondoggle than was originally sold to the public,” said Hahn, who said she had not been told about the upgrade costs. “I am only more convinced that we are better off retrofitting the historic Hall of Administration and keeping the heart of county government in our Civic Center.”

At the time of the sale, Hahn argued that the purchase would be a fatal blow to downtown’s civic heart and make the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration obsolete. The building is named after her father, who served a record 10 terms as a supervisor.

The Hall of Administration is one of several county-owned properties considered vulnerable in an earthquake. The Gas Company Tower, built in 1991, was considered much safer, but at the time of the county purchase, it was unclear whether it was fully earthquake-proof.

The tower is one of many L.A. skyscrapers that incorporates a “steel moment frame” as part of its structure. In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, buildings with the frame did not collapse, but some were badly damaged.

Most of the seismic strengthening for the Gas Company Tower would involve “reinforcing of the welded steel moment frame connections,” according to the request for proposal for the $234.5-million project.

The contract will be awarded in October, according to the bidding documents, and the tower could be occupied during construction. County officials said they have already begun moving employees into the tower.

Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.