car

The historic venue was paved over to provide beach parking, but a bold plan could see the lido revitalised for year-round swimming could “bring new life to the town” according to a local organisation

In 1935, the Marina Bathing Pool opened in a stunning seafront location, offering locals and tourists the chance to take a dip in fresh seawater. Over the years, it brought in huge crowds, especially at weekends when families would flock to the area to cool off, take a dive, or even learn to sail in the boating pool. Its was part of a complex that even had a space for dancing and a roller rink.

But despite its beautiful Art Deco architecture, the lido, like so many others eventually closed down and the site was abandoned. In the 1970s, it was paved over to create a car park, in a twist worthy of a Joni Mitchell song.

However, the council owned car park is now being considered by Thanet District Council for disposal, and an enthusiastic non-profit organisation is hoping to take it over, potentially bringing back the lido for year-round outdoor swimming.

Non-profit organisation Heritage Lab Ramsgate said its in “early discussions” with a developer to create an outdoor swimming complex at the site, which it hopes would “help re-establish Ramsgate as a distinctive coastal destination”.

A spokesperson for Heritage Lab Ramsgate said: “Thanet has a thriving sea and open-water swimming culture, with people of all ages swimming year-round for wellbeing, connection and community. Outdoor swimming is no longer niche – it’s part of a wider shift in how people travel and spend time at the coast.

“When combined with elements such as saunas, cafés and social spaces, an outdoor pool can become something more than a place to swim — it can be a year-round destination that locals and visitors return to again and again.

“The former Marina Bathing Pool site offers a rare opportunity to reinstate a high-quality outdoor swimming facility in a location that has been associated with leisure and seaside holidays since the mid-1930s.”

A Facebook post showing potential plans for the site received a number of positive comments, with one saying: “Brilliant idea- kudos to the person/persons who conceived this project. It makes perfect sense to restore what once was a vital part of the town.” Others shared fond memories of the original lido, and one commenter said: “Used to spend all day in the old marina pool when it was there. Mum never saw us from 0900 until about 1730.”

However, one comment questioned the feasibility of the project, asking: “But would people use it? Did it originally close for lack of use? Like when people try to reopen village pubs and it struggles and struggles, many different landlords come and go eventually they close again. Not all but most. Personally I’d like to see this happen but I doubt I’d actually use it. Good luck I say.”

A report is due to be submitted to Thanet District Council ahead of a February 26 meeting recommending a marketing exercise which will invite proposals from a range of parties who may be interested in the site. The council previously explored transforming the site for leisure use.

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A spokesperson for Heritage Lab Ramsgate added: “If a scheme were to progress, it would need to be developed responsibly and in close consultation with local residents, with careful attention paid to affordability, accessibility and ensuring the benefits are widely shared.”

The non-profit has also nominated the site to be designated an Asset of Community Value (ACV), which prevents the asset owner from selling it for up to five years, unless the nominating group has a chance to bid for it. Giving the car park ACV status will also give locals more of an opportunity to formally have their say over what happens to the site.

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com

BBC Morning Live viewers said instead of £700 they will get £420 payout – and be ‘bombarded with calls and texts’

A BBC expert has given a warning to anyone who bought a car between 6th April 2007 and 1st November 2024. Finance expert Iona Bain told BBC Morning Live viewers that they face losing out by £280 on average if they make the wrong decision.

Ms Bain told hosts Helen Skelton and Rav Wilding that the car finance compensation scheme final details will be released in March – but people could miss out by appointing a claims company.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is hoping to compensate motorists who were unfairly sold a car loan between 2007 and 2024 because they were not properly informed about the commission paid to brokers, including car dealers.

Under the current proposals, about 14 million car finance deals could be eligible for compensation, with people estimated to get an average of £700 per agreement.

Ms Bain said: “So, if you took out car finance with a vehicle that was bought between 6th April 2007 and 1st November 2024, and if the car finance deal you got was Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), then you could be eligible for a share of this compensation bill, which is £8 billion.

“Essentially, we’re talking about the commission that was paid behind the scenes by car finance lenders to brokers whenever they sold one of these deals. Customers weren’t always aware of the level and scale of this commission, and that meant, in many cases, customers ended up with car finance deals that were more expensive and less competitive than they should have been.

“And that’s certainly what the Supreme Court ultimately ruled, and it decided that compensation was due to all those customers that were potentially in that situation. So look, it’s taken a while to get to this point, but now the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)—which is Britain’s regulator in this area—it’s said it’s going to be publishing the system for how people can apply for compensation in the next month or so.”

She said that the system being created will be straightforward and most importantly free to use. She said: “You can make a claim yourself; you don’t have to rely on a third party like a claims company. It should be completely straightforward for you to do yourself.”

She warned about claims management companies bombarding people – and explained they are making unfair claims and then will take large fees. She said: “If you see these adverts online, they are very enticing. They make claims like, “We’ll handle your claim for you,” “No win, no fee,” or “You could get thousands. But this is the reality: if you use one of these claims companies—whilst it’s perfectly legal to do so—they can take 20% to 40% of your compensation.”

Someone getting a payout of £700 would end up paying £280 to the company. Ms Bain added: “It is a lot. It means you won’t keep all the money that you’re ultimately owed. The fees can be buried in the small print, and you may not be aware of them until you’ve signed on the dotted line.

“So, one example is: let’s say you’ve signed up for a claims company, but then you change your mind—and that’s your right to do so. Some of these claims companies are charging termination fees for the work that’s been done, and those termination fees can be spurious and disproportionate for the work that’s actually been done.”

She said one prominent advert claimed the average car finance compensation that’s being paid out is going to be over £1,800. Ms Bain added: “I’m just going to say it: that’s not true. It’s not true, and the reason for that is that the FCA has not confirmed what compensation people are going to be getting. So, it has said that the average amount that will be paid out will be £700. Some people will get more, some people will get less, but it’s impossible to say at this stage what individuals will be getting until we know more about that FCA process.

“And also, I’m hearing these reports of people seeing these adverts, then giving their contact details to these claims companies, and then being bombarded by texts and calls trying to persuade them to sign up. I personally think that’s unacceptable.”

Other things to watch out for are:

• Upfront fees
• Unexplained charges
• A company promising guaranteed payouts or huge sums of money.

Ms Bain explained: “These are all big red flags. Just a reminder: you don’t need to use one of these companies. You can do this yourself and you get to keep all the compensation.”

Morning Live has provided a template for this on their website here.

Feb. 7 (UPI) — Investigators towed a vehicle and searched Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson, Ariz., home and property and are seeking a vehicle of interest seven days after she went missing.

Investigators searched her home and property on Friday and towed a car that was parked near it, but they still have no suspects.

Instead, they have a vehicle of interest and obtained video footage of the vehicle and possibly one or more occupants that was recorded by a surveillance camera at an Arizona Circle K.

Digital billboards in Texas, New Mexico and California are assisting with the hunt for information that might lead to Guthrie’s recovery or identify her potential kidnappers.

The digital billboards mostly are placed along the I-10 corridor, from Houston to San Diego, and in Albuquerque, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Guthrie, 84, is the mother of NBC Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie and likely was abducted from her home during the early morning hours on Sunday.

Investigators have no persons of interest so far, despite receiving several ransom notes, including one on Friday that might be genuine.

They said she likely was abducted from her Tucson home early Sunday morning and are treating a prior ransom note that was sent to multiple news outlets as authentic due to the detailed information that matches what was found at her home.

A local television station received another ransom note on Friday morning, which authorities are trying to authenticate.

Investigators also confirmed that blood drops near her home’s entrance are Guthrie’s.

They have not received any proof of life regarding her condition, but they are working on the assumption that she is alive until proven otherwise, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters on Thursday.

The FBI has issued a $50,000 reward for information leading to Guthrie’s recovery.

Before her disappearance, investigators said Nancy Guthrie visited with family members at 5:32 p.m. on Saturday and returned to her home at 9:48 p.m.

She obtained rides from the Uber ride-hailing service, and investigators spoke with the driver who took her home.

Investigators said a doorbell camera on her home was disabled at 1:47 a.m. on Sunday, but its software detected movement at 2:12 a.m.

Her pacemaker disconnected from her personal device at 2:28 a.m., and her family arrived at the home to check on her several hours later at 11:56 a.m.

They placed a 911 call minutes later at 12:03 p.m., and Pima County Sheriff’s deputies arrived about 10 minutes later.

Chinese company AutoFlight conducted a public flight demonstration for its 5-tonne-class flying car V5000 Matrix on Thursday. It can carry 10 passengers, and the company says its operating costs are one-tenth of those of traditional helicopters.

“In 2008, my wife, my then-7-year-year-old daughter and I were going to take Amtrak from Los Angeles to Chicago, but the Amtrak booking agent screwed the reservations up so badly that we instead decided to take a train from Montreal to Vancouver.

There was some poignancy to this, as my grandmother was a picture bride from Greece. She had grown up on a small Dodecanese island and crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s. For the last leg of her journey, she took a train from Montreal to meet my grandfather (for the first time) in Vancouver. They met on a Saturday and married on a Monday in a Russian Orthodox Church. Experiencing the same journey that my grandmother had taken seemed like a good vacation hook.

Montreal was our point of departure, an enchanting city with fantastic food and charming denizens. After a few days we headed out to Toronto on a commuter-style train. It was perfectly adequate, but not particularly enchanting, and certainly not what my grandmother would have traveled on.

In Toronto, my daughter and I had afternoon tea at the Fairmont Royal York across from the train station, where we embarked on a more picturesque excursion.

We had a triple compartment. It was located in a stainless-steel streamlined car that was built in the 1950s, spot on for our little family of Midcentury Modern enthusiasts. We saw the train snake through Ontario forests, felt it rumble along Canada’s midwestern plains and then head up through the spectacular Canadian Rockies. There were plenty of bear, elk and other wildlife sightings along the way. We ate surprisingly good food like trout and pork chops for dinner. At night we watched train movies like “Murder on the Orient Express.”

We got off in Jasper, the Yellowstone of Canada, filled with glaciers, craggy mountains, waterfalls, rivers and spectacular vistas. We took bike and horseback rides. When I admonished my 7 year-old for complaining too much during a particularly wonderful excursion, she retorted, “Daddy, complaining is my passion!”

After a few days we got back on the train and headed to Vancouver. This was another scenic parade of mountains, rivers and forests.

In Stanley Park I pondered my grandmother’s voyage. Our trip was one of leisure. Hers was a life decision to escape the bleak prospects of an island girl.”

— George Skarpelos, Los Angeles

MINNEAPOLIS — For weeks, administrators at this charter high school have arrived an hour before class, grabbed neon vests and walkie-talkies, and headed out into the cold to watch for ICE agents and escort students in.

Lately, fewer than half of the 800 sudents show up.

“Operation Metro Surge,” the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to nationwide protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, has had students, parents and teachers on edge regardless of their immigration status.

Signs of a fearful new normal are all over the school. Green craft paper covers the bottom of many first-floor windows so outsiders can’t peer in. A notice taped outside one door says unauthorized entry is prohibited: “This includes all federal law enforcement personnel and activities unless authorized by lawful written direction from appropriate school officials or a valid court order.”

Students at a Minneapolis high school classroom with many empty seats on Jan. 29, 2026.

Staff coordinate throughout the day with a neighborhood watch group to determine whether ICE agents are nearby. When they are, classroom doors are locked and hallways emptied until staff announce “all clear.”

Similar tactics have been utilized by schools in other cities hit by immigration raids across the country. The Los Angeles Unified School District established a donation fund for affected families and created security perimeters around schools last summer.

But it appears nowhere have students felt the repercussions of local raids more than in Minneapolis.

Many schools have seen attendance plummet by double-digit percentages. At least three other, smaller charter schools in Minneapolis have completely shut down in-person learning.

At this high school, which administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, 84% of students are Latino and 12% are Black. Staff and students are being identified by first or middle names.

A balloon sits in a hallway at the high school.

Doors and windows are covered at the school so outsiders can’t see in.

Three students have been detained — and later released — in recent weeks. Two others were followed into the school parking lot and questioned about their immigration status. Several have parents who were deported or who self-deported. Latino staff said they have also been stopped and questioned about their legal status.

“Our families feel hunted,” said Noelle, the school district’s executive director.

Students returned from winter break on Jan. 6, the same day 2,000 additional immigration agents were dispatched to Minneapolis to carry out what Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons called the agency’s “largest immigration operation ever.” The next day, an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.

“I describe that day as if you’re on an airplane and it’s really bad turbulence, and you have to keep your cool because, if you don’t, you lose the entire building,” said Emmanuel, an assistant principal. “It felt like we went through war.”

Attendance dropped by the hundreds as parents grew too afraid to let their children leave home. School leaders decided to offer online learning and scrambled to find enough laptops and mobile hotspots for the many students who didn’t have devices or internet. Some teachers sent packets of schoolwork to students by mail.

A teacher at the Minneapolis high school that administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. Teachers and students there also asked not to be identified.

Noelle said in-person attendance, which had dropped below 400 students, increased by around 100 in the third week of January. Then federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, and attendance plummeted again.

Rochelle Van Dijk, vice president of Great MN Schools, a nonprofit supporting schools that serve a majority of students of color, said many schools have redirected tens of thousands of dollars away from other critical needs toward online learning, food distribution and safety planning. For students still attending in person, recess has frequently been canceled, and field trips and after-school activities paused.

Even if students return to school by mid-February, Van Dijk said, they will have missed 20% of their instructional days for the year.

“A senior who can’t meet with their college counselor right now just missed support needed for major January college application deadlines. Or a second-grader with a speech delay who is supposed to be in an active in-person intervention may lose a critical window of brain plasticity,” she said. “It is not dissimilar to what our nation’s children faced during COVID, but entirely avoidable.”

At the high school, administrators said they tried to create “a security bubble,” operating under protocols more typical of active shooter emergencies.

Gym class at the Minneapolis school, where many students are so afraid of ICE that they won’t go to the campus.

If agents were to enter the building without a judicial warrant, the school would go into a full lockdown, turning off lights, staying silent and moving out of sight. That hasn’t happened, though ICE last year rescinded a policy that had barred arrests at so-called sensitive locations, including schools.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that blaming ICE for low school attendance is “creating a climate of fear and smearing law enforcement.”

“ICE does not target schools,” McLaughlin said. “If a dangerous or violent illegal criminal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect the safety of the student. But this has not happened.”

Alondra, a 16-year-old junior who was born in the U.S., was arrested after school Jan. 21 near a clinic where she had gone with a friend, also 16, to pick up medication for her grandmother.

She said that as she was about to turn into the parking lot, another car sped in front of her, forcing her to stop. Alondra saw four men in ski masks with guns get out. Scared, she put her car in reverse. Before she could move, she said, another vehicle pulled up and struck her car from behind.

Alondra shared videos with The Times that she recorded from the scene. She said agents cracked her passenger window in an attempt to get in.

“We’re with you!” a bystander can be heard telling her in the video as others blow emergency whistles.

She said she rolled her window down and an agent asked to see her ID. She gave him her license and U.S. passport.

“Is it necessary to have to talk to you or can I talk to an actual cop?” she asks in the video. “Can I talk to an actual cop from here?”

“We are law enforcement,” the agent replies. “What are they gonna do?”

In another video, an agent questions Alondra’s friend about the whereabouts of his parents. Another agent is heard saying Alondra had put her car in reverse.

“We’re underage,” she tells him. “We’re scared.”

A sign directs students to line up for their school bus route. Bus pickups are staggered, with one group of students escorted outside at a time. This way, the children can be taken back inside the school or onto the bus more easily if ICE arrives.

A Minneapolis Public Radio reporter at the scene said agents appeared to have rear-ended Alondra’s car. But Alondra said an agent claimed she had caused the accident.

“It’s just a simple accident, you know what I mean?” he says in the video. “We’re not gonna get on you for trying to hit us or something.”

“Can you let us go, please?” her friend, visibly shaken, asks the agent at his window.

Alondra and her friend were handcuffed and placed in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle as observers filmed the incident. At least two observers were arrested as agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray, according to an MPR report.

The agents took the students to the federal Whipple Building. Alondra said the agents separated the friends, looked through and photographed her belongings and had her change into blue canvas shoes before chaining her feet together and placing her in a holding cell alone.

“I asked at least five times if I could let my guardian know what was happening, because I was underage, but they never let me,” she said.

Finally, around 7 p.m., agents released Alondra — with no paperwork about the incident — and she called her aunt to pick her up. Her friend was released later.

Meanwhile, school administrators who saw the MPR video called Alondra’s family and her friend’s.

Alondra said officers didn’t know what had happened to her car and told her they would call her when she could pick it up. But no one has called, and school administrators who helped her make calls to Minneapolis impound lots haven’t been able to locate it either.

Though Alondra could attend classes online, she felt she had to return to campus.

“I feel like if I would have stayed home, it would have gone worse for me,” she said, her lip quivering. “I use school as a distraction.”

The backstage of the auditorium, dubbed the bodega, has been turned into a well-stocked pantry for families who are too afraid to leave their homes.

A volunteer organizes donated items for distribution to families at the Minneapolis high school.

A teacher makes a delivery to a family in Minneapolis.

Teachers and volunteers sort donations by category, including hygiene goods, breakfast cereals, bread and tortillas, fruit and vegetables, diapers and other baby items. Bags are labeled with each student’s name and address and filled with the items their family has requested. After school, teachers deliver the items to the students’ homes.

Noelle said some students, particularly those who are homeless, are now at risk of failing because they’re in “survival mode.” Their learning is stagnating, she said.

“A lot of these kids are — I mean, they want to be — college-bound,” Noelle said. “How do you compete [for admission] with the best applicants if you’re online right now and doing one touch-point a day with one teacher because that’s all the technology that you have?”

On Thursday afternoon, 20 of 44 students had shown up for an AP world history class where the whiteboard prompt asked, “Why might some people resort to violent resistance rather than peaceful protest?”

Upstairs, in an 11th-grade U.S. history class, attendance was even worse — four students, with 17 others following online. The topic was what the teacher called the nation’s “first immigration ban,” the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Students head to their bus at the high school.

Morgan, the teacher, asked the students to name a similarity between the Chinese exclusion era and current day.

“Immigrants getting thrown out,” one student offered.

“Once they leave, they can’t come back,” said another.

“The fact that this is our first ban on immigration also sets a precedent that this stuff can happen over and over and over again,” Morgan said.

Sophie, who teachers English language learners, led the effort to organize the online school option. She is from Chile and says she has struggled to put her own fear aside to be present for the students who rely on her. Driving to school scares her, too.

“It’s lawless,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that I have my passport in my purse. The minute I open my mouth, they’re going to know that I’m not from here.”

Sophie said she once had to call a student’s mother to say her husband had been taken by immigration agents after another school staffer found his car abandoned on a nearby street.

“Having to have that conversation wasn’t on my bingo card for that day, or any day,” she said. “Having to say that we have proof that your husband was taken and hearing that woman crying and couldn’t talk, and I’m like, what do I say now?”

Close to the 4:15 p.m. dismissal, administrators again donned their neon vests and logged on to the neighborhood Signal call for possible immigration activity.

Students walk to a bus Thursday. Dismissal used to be a free-for-all, with large numbers of students rushing outside as soon as the bell rang.

Dismissal used to be a free-for-all — once the final bell rang, students would rush outside to find their bus or ride or to begin the walk home.

Now pickups are staggered, with students escorted outside one bus at a time. Teachers grab numbered signs and tell students to line up according to their route. If ICE agents pull up, administrators said, they could rush a smaller group of students onto the bus or back inside.

In yet another example of how the immigration raids had crippled attendance, some buses were nearly empty. On one bus, just two students hopped on.

After last year’s fires, cars were often all that remained on the lots of homes reduced to rubble. Some sat remarkably untouched, but most were damaged beyond repair — crushed by falling beams, burned to a shell, and covered in toxic dust. The steely husks stood sentinel over unfathomable loss for weeks or months until they were towed away and sold as scrap.

More than 6,000 cars were destroyed in the Pacific Palisades alone. Some were used for daily commutes and left in garages as families fled; others were trucks and vans packed with landscaping gear or tools.

Then there were the showpieces: steel-and-glass representations of an owner’s love for the open road and classic automotive design. It was these vehicles that captured the imagination of Ben Tuna, a self-described car guy and stained glass artist, who saw a way to create something beautiful from the rubble.

Pieces of salvaged glass and other tools litter the work table of artist Ben Tuna as he works to create sculptures using vintage Porches that were burned in the L.A. fires.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Beginning in March 2025, Tuna snagged five burned-out Porsches from the L.A. fires, and began turning the shells into cathedral-like creations using salvaged stained glass from old churches.

Armed with a soldering iron and good intentions, Tuna paid tribute to what the fires took.

Tuna said that he was moved by posts on Instagram of cars getting taken away on trailers, and by reading about the loss in news stories. He couldn’t stop thinking about what the collectors were experiencing.

“It was all so sad to imagine losing something that you might have worked 30, 40, 50 years to collect,” Tuna said. “And it kind of broke my heart. A lot of those cars were history. They’re not making new ones.”

Tuna made connections through social media to obtain the Porsche shells, with four coming from a single collector’s garage in the Palisades. As a fan of classic automotive design, Tuna calls the Porsches “icons of design” and “the most recognizable cars in the world,” despite what they looked like after the fires. He wishes he could have collected many more.

“I probably could have gotten 300, but I just didn’t have the space and couldn’t act fast enough,” he said, adding that he also acquired two additional Porches that were not burned in the city’s fires.

One of five vintage Porches burned in the L.A. fires that Ben Tuna reimagined as works of art using salvaged stained glass.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Tuna’s first post-fire project was a 1965 Porsche 356 that he turned into a 700-pound piece of movable sculpture. The artwork took him and two helpers several months to complete at his workshop on the east side of L.A. They wore respirators while they worked to avoid dangerous ash and chemicals, and began by stripping the car down to bare metal.

Next came the meticulous glass work. Tuna used pieces of glass from what he estimates are about 15 different salvaged stained glass windows from decommissioned churches. He thinks they were likely all created in different countries, eras and studios. Much of the illustrated glass in the car was hand-painted in Germany in the late 1800s, a look he grew to love as a kid after hearing how much his father — also a stained glass artist — adored it.

Tuna says he’s not trying to tell a story with the windows. Instead, he’s assembling them by feel: matching pieces of cut glass by size and color on top of a dark table before using lead to solder them together in a perfect arch for the car’s back window. Tuna says he never knows what a window is going to look like before the end, when he lights it up — but by merging the glass and the car he’s aiming to honor the design legacies of both.

Stained glass windows salvaged from churches are key to artist Ben Tuna’s practice. “All these windows were beautiful back in the day but have been forgotten,” he said.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“All these windows were beautiful back in the day but have been forgotten,” he said.

Though Tuna’s cars are still works in progress, his goal is to eventually display all seven as part of a gallery show. In the meantime, he’s hosting visitors who want to see the work so far — including the owner of the four cars salvaged from the Palisades, who cried.

Tuna says everyone who has come to see the art has left feeling a bit more reverent.

Artist Ben Tuna stands with a piece of art he made from a vintage Porsche that was burned in the L.A. fires. “Because these cars are so big, when you’re standing around them, you really see what fire can do,” he says.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“Because these cars are so big, when you’re standing around them, you really see what fire can do,” he said. “You can really study it, and you start to think about loss and how hot the fire must have burned and what shape the buildings around the cars must have been in afterwards.”

Each car is an altar of remembrance to the fires, Tuna said, but they’re also a reminder.

”Even when you lose everything, there’s still beauty that can come from that loss,” he said. “You can take all that devastation and still make something good.”