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Days after the top elections official in Shasta County announced that he planned to hire an election denier who served prison time for tampering with voting machines, county leaders there made an extraordinary plea to state and federal authorities: Please come investigate.

A statement released by the county Tuesday afternoon said Clint Curtis, the registrar of voters, had made “frivolous” claims and “unproven statements” about the June primary election, which he administered and certified.

“The County condemns the conduct of the Clerk-Registrar of Voters and invites all relevant state and federal agencies to review the allegations he has made and to proactively investigate his official actions and practices as Shasta County’s elections official,” read the statement released by Stewart Buettell, the county’s deputy chief executive officer.

Curtis — whose name was on the ballot, in a race he lost — has sequestered primary ballots in a room in the elections office in Redding, sealing the doors with locks, duct tape and red-lettered signs that read: “KEEP OUT PER ROV CLINT CURTIS.”

Curtis has told reporters that the ballots did not look, feel or smell right and that he had directed facilities workers to put a lock on the room and destroy the keys so that if anyone tries to gain access, they will need a warrant and bolt cutter.

Curtis said he, too, had asked the FBI to investigate.

The county fired back, saying in its statement that it wanted the FBI — as well as the California secretary of state and the attorney general — to investigate Curtis, whose short tenure as registrar has been fraught with controversy.

“Mr. Curtis was appointed to enhance transparency, strengthen election integrity, and restore trust in the democratic process,” the county wrote. “While some progress has been achieved, including the promotion of meaningful observation within the Elections Office, Mr. Curtis has failed significantly in other core responsibilities, undermining the very principles he was appointed to uphold.”

Curtis could not immediately be reached for comment. The FBI field office in Sacramento said it was unable to comment.

The new observation area at the Shasta County elections office.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson, in a statement Tuesday, said he was “aware of the controversy involving the ROV and ballots,” including claims on social media that he had been requested “to sequester alleged illegal or illegitimate ballots locked in the ROV’s office [and] addressing threats made to burn down the facility.”

Johnson said Curtis had agreed to provide a statement regarding a person who allegedly threatened the facility and that it was “an active investigation.”

“It is the Sheriff’s understanding that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is investigating the matter; therefore, Sheriff Johnson is urging members of the public to be patient and await the results of that investigation,” Johnson wrote. “At this point, launching a second investigation could complicate a process already in place.”

In an interview on Lindell TV, created by MAGA conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, Curtis said that the ballots “are being held at my office, which is kind of problematic because it’s a really old building and we have a lot of Antifa people,” including one who “once commented how easy it would be to burn that building down.”

The showdown in Shasta comes as Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — who in February used armed deputies to confiscate more than half a million ballots from last year’s special election for Proposition 50 to determine if they were fraudulently counted — is defending that seizure before the California Supreme Court this week.

The Supreme Court justices hammered Bianco, a Republican who came in fourth in this spring’s crowded California gubernatorial primary, in back-to-back hearings Monday. They appeared poised to order the ballots returned and to sharply limit the sheriff’s power to snatch election materials in the future.

In February, Curtis was the first person to publicly announce Bianco planned to confiscate the ballots.

Curtis had worked with the Riverside County citizens group whose fraud allegations sparked Bianco’s investigation, even traveling 600 miles south to speak on their behalf.

Potential hiring of election denier sets off alarm bells

Last week, Curtis drew national headlines by saying he wanted to hire election denier Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was released early from prison this summer amid a pressure campaign from President Trump.

Curtis, himself a longtime election denier, told The Times in an email that he wanted to hire Peters as a consultant to “to assist with supervision of the November election.”

Tina Peters speaks at the Colorado State Capitol in downtown Denver on April 5, 2022.

(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)

“None of our consultants have access to the voting systems, so she would be insulated from false claims,” he wrote.

Peters was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to nine years behind bars for breaching her county’s voting machines as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

She was found guilty of helping an outside computer expert, an associate of Lindell, gain unauthorized access to Mesa County’s Dominion election equipment in 2021 and make copies of its hard drive before and after a software upgrade.

Peters was released from prison in June. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted her sentence after months of haranguing from the president.

Shasta County officials told The Times that any prospective employee or consultant would have to go through the same hiring process as anyone else seeking employment with the county.

Talk of hiring Peters drew swift condemnation from California lawmakers, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said it was looking into whether a contract with Peters violated state law.

And on Aug. 19, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both Democrats, wrote in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that they had “grave concern” about Curtis’ plan to hire Peters.

“We are concerned that this hiring decision in Shasta County has less to do with Ms. Peters’ qualifications, and more to do with the President’s obsession with interfering in the midterm elections,” they wrote.

The senators said that if the county hires her, Weber should “provide the maximum oversight possible to ensure that Ms. Peters does not improperly access ballots, voting systems, or sensitive information that could impact the rights and privacy of the over 100,000 registered voters in Shasta County.”

Controversy and censure

Curtis, a 68-year-old attorney, was appointed by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors in the spring of 2025 to fill the position vacated by two previous registrars who resigned for health reasons.

Curtis lived in Florida then, had no previous ties to the area and had never run an election. He got the position after advocating for hand-counting ballots and bragging in a public job interview that he had worked with Lindell.

He promptly eliminated nine of the vast, mostly rural county’s 13 ballot drop boxes. He accused his predecessors, without evidence, of stuffing ballots to sabotage conservative Republicans, and repeatedly called on federal authorities to raid the office and seize ballots from previous elections.

The Board of Supervisors censured Curtis on Aug. 11 for his treatment of staff.

A ballot drop box at the Shasta Lake Visitor Center in February.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

He responded by inviting reporters to the elections office in downtown Redding, where he shared security footage that, he said, showed employees breaking into a room in the building. He allowed reporters to take video of the footage.

The county condemned those actions in an Aug. 14 news release, saying he “has repeatedly been advised of appropriate procedures for addressing and investigating personnel matters and advised of the importance of maintaining confidentiality of such matters.”

Earlier this spring, the county released the findings of two personnel investigations into Curtis’ conduct that were spurred by concerns raised by elections employees and their union representatives.

An internal investigation and an external inquiry by Oppenheimer Investigations Group found that Curtis made phone calls related to his own campaign during county work hours and casually threatened to kill, spank, slap or “throat punch” staffers.

He threatened to have one employee dragged out of the office by their hair, according to an internal investigation report by Monica Fugitt, the county’s director of support services, who wrote that he had “demonstrated a clear pattern of unprofessional and abusive conduct toward staff.”

Curtis has denied the findings.

In its statement Tuesday, the county said he “has made and continues to make unsubstantiated accusations of illegal activities against employees without due process or an investigation.”

Buettell, the deputy chief executive, told The Times that the county does not have the power to terminate Curtis’ employment because he was appointed to fill a vacancy in an elected position.

“As soon as they assume that office, it’s as if they were elected,” Buettell said. To be removed from the office, he said, Curtis would have to be recalled by voters.

California Supreme Court justices hammered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco over his seizure of hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots in a pair of back-to-back hearings on Monday, appearing poised to order the ballots returned and sharply limit the sheriff’s power to snatch similar election materials in the future.

Bianco, a Republican who came in fourth in this spring’s crowded California gubernatorial primary, carted off truckloads of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in February, after securing a warrant based on claims that the office allowed fraudulent votes in the special election to redraw California’s congressional districts last fall.

According to a sworn declaration by one of Bianco’s sergeants, armed deputies from Riverside County’s Special Investigations Bureau, Emergency Response Team and SWAT unit were sent to sweep up pallets of sealed votes and bring them to the Moreno Valley Sheriff’s Station on Feb. 26 — a day after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber ordered Bianco to stand down.

In the days that followed, deputies began their own ad hoc recount — an activity they’d never been trained for, and which state officials and civil liberties groups say flies in the face of the plain language of the state’s election law that says “in no event shall ballots be moved.”

Voters sued. So did Bonta. In oral arguments on both cases Monday morning, California‘s seven Supreme Court justices appeared at times flabbergasted by claims that the move was not only permitted but blessed under state law — and that California’s top cop had no power to block it.

“I’m just wondering … why didn’t the sheriff’s office contemplate the available routes under the elections code for resolving the alleged disparity?” asked Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu. “Isn’t there a procedure for resolving this?”

“Certainly there are other paths,” said Bianco’s attorney, Bradley W. Hertz.

Hertz, who argued the sheriff’s case after Riverside’s county counsel largely sided with the plaintiffs, said Bianco simply exercised his legal discretion.

“This wasn’t come in with guns blaring and take the documents,” Hertz said.

The dispute began over handwritten notes made as part of an experimental program to increase voter confidence in the county’s election procedures. That informal tally fell about 46,000 votes short of the official count, prompting accusations of fraud.

Officials contend the discrepancy between the computer count and the paper tally is “a good deed that went punished” — the result of exhausted officials being handed an extra-credit project they couldn’t quite execute.

“It was a pilot program that the registrar implemented at the request of the public, on top of all their other duties, to do these handwritten logs to try to track 350,000 pieces of mail that come in,” said Dale Larson, who represented Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco at the hearing.

Both times it was attempted, the hand tally produced a significant undercount, prompting officials to cancel the pilot, Larson said.

Bianco and his allies insist the difference is evidence of maleficence, and that criminal law authorizes the sheriff to sidestep the state’s detailed election code and the attorney general’s sweeping authority to get to the bottom of it.

The justices repeatedly pressed on Hertz to explain how the general authority conferred to the sheriff under criminal law could trump the specificity of the state’s election rules — a position that would seem to upend foundational rules of American law.

They also cast doubt on Bianco’s “counterintuitive” claim that Bonta’s “supervisory” role over the state’s elected sheriffs was merely advisory and did not carry the authority of law.

“It’s not just counterintiitive — again, we’ve said a million times, we’ve got to just look at the plain language,” said Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban. “Nobody would think that’s what ‘supervised’ means, so why should we think that here?”

The court battle has played out with the UCLA Voting Rights Project bringing the suit on behalf of voters, and the Riverside County district attorney’s Office and the California State Sheriffs’ Assn. backing many of Bianco’s claims.
But it has also pitted the sheriff against the registrar, who was named as a co-defendent in the UCLA suit despite siding with plaintiffs in all but a narrow subset of its claims.

In court filings, Riverside County Counsel Minh C. Tran co-signed claims that Bonta and the voters had it right, carving out a narrow disagreement over whether Tinoco should have ignored the sealed warrant and faced arrest rather than allow ballots to be taken. They also questioned whether he was obligated to go to court himself to stop the seizure.

UCLA hit back at that claim, saying it was “the responsibility of the registrar to go to jail rather than hand over the ballots.”

“I know that’s strong medicine,” said Chad W. Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “The registrar has a duty to announce publicly and get into court immediately, or at least allow the public to get into court immediately to contest the movement of ballots before it occurs.”

The decision looms as the Trump administration has moved to restrict mail-in voting and signaled it could contest results of the upcoming midterms — partisan flash points UCLA urged the court to address.

“This is bound to be repeated again,” Dunn said. “These are the public’s ballots, that’s why the election code is crafted the way it is, so that the public have a right to weigh in.”

Indeed, sources suggest there is some sympathy with Mateta, even in the light of the contractual dispute, amid a feeling the striker could have been advised differently, though supporters on social media have been far less compassionate towards him.

Employment lawyer Libby Payne said: “It is possible to argue that the terms of the option are inherently unfair and therefore void, although the threshold for this is high and such challenges rarely succeed.”

So with just eight days left of the transfer window left, you cannot help but wonder if this once happy marriage is heading towards divorce.

There is said to be interest from rival clubs heading into the deadline; Aston Villa are among the clubs credited with an admiration for Mateta, with Ollie Watkins’ future in doubt at the midlands club.

Despite his efforts to prove otherwise, Mateta still has 10 months left on his contract.

That is significant for a number of reasons.

It means if Palace are to recoup any money in transfer fees for Mateta before he is eligible to sign a Bosman pre-contract with an overseas club in January, then this window provides their last opportunity to do so.

That fact will not be lost on those at Palace and there is a view from some at the club that they should look to sever ties in the coming days.

But with Mateta less than 12 months away from a free transfer, which would most likely be more financially lucrative for him than leaving for a fee this month, it would be understandable if the striker was not rushing out of the exit door.

Palace have attempted to renew Mateta’s contract over the past the 12 months but to no avail.

And while the option of an extension cannot be completely discounted, it seems inconceivable that Mateta would U-turn now given the lengths he has gone to to prove his current one is invalid.

Palace are likely to, at the very least, listen to offers for Mateta, who – by his actions – has indicated he views his future away from Selhurst Park.

Phil McGraw’s longtime publicist has filed a lawsuit against the celebrity therapist, better known as Dr. Phil, on claims of wrongful termination and discrimination.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Jerry Sharell said McGraw recruited him to continue working for him after he left CBS in 2023 and relocated to Dallas, where he planned to start his own television network, Merit Street Media.

But Sharell alleges in his complaint that he was “intentionally excluded” from the group of 20 employees who migrated to Texas because he is openly “homosexual,” and was later singled out before being put on hiatus.

The suit is the latest legal fight for McGraw. Last year his new network Merit Street filed for bankruptcy protection, a little more than a year after he launched the media startup, and then sued its distribution partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Last fall, a federal bankruptcy judge ordered the network liquidated, finding evidence that McGraw deleted text messages to conceal plans favoring certain creditors over others.

At the time, a spokesperson for McGraw’s production company vigorously denied the accusation that he destroyed evidence and said he was appealing the ruling.

McGraw later launched Envoy Media, prompting accusations the bankruptcy was filed in bad faith specifically to escape creditors and fund his new venture, which he denied.

Chip Babcock, a lawyer representing Envoy Media, disputed Sharell’s allegations, calling the lawsuit “an effort to avoid a pending arbitration to which Sharell contractually agreed which he has now violated in a number of ways. The company and Dr. Phil will vigorously defend these claims,” in a statement to The Times.

“Jerry Sharell was put on hiatus over the summer as is common in this industry, especially with a media start up. He was not fired for any reason and certainly not because of his sexual orientation. These allegations against Envoy and Dr. Phil are made up out of whole cloth as he has a 25 year history of treating the LGBTQ+ communities with dignity and respect, including standing up for his guests who were attacked because of their sexual preferences.”

In his complaint, Sharell states that McGraw told him he would remain in California, saying, “you’re Hollywood.” However, the publicist said he came to the realization that “McGraw did not want him present in the building or attending meetings with TBN executives.”

Merit Street was a joint venture with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Christian-based network. Sharell said that he was given a copy of the Employee Handbook, and employees “were asked to sign a ‘Statement of Faith’ declaring their devotion to Jesus.”

Although he remained in L.A., starting in spring 2024 Sharell began traveling monthly to the Dallas headquarters of Merit Street, where he said many TBN employees now worked. During his first visit he alleged that a man known as “Pastor D” came weekly to pray with employees, leaving prayer cards on the desks of those who did not participate including that of Sharell’s.

Pastor D also led prayer services at an open house event for advertisers, prospective investors and media, that Sharell found “both disturbing and shocking, given he had never known Defendant McGraw to be overly religious,” according to the complaint.

During another visit, Sharell alleges that an IT employee noticed a photograph of Sharell while working on a staffer’s computer and said, “There’s too many of THEM around here. And it’s evil.”

While traveling on a private plane with McGraw, wife Robin McGraw and other individuals, Sharell claims he was answering emails and did not hear McGraw, who said, “Jeez, he’s gayer than a fruit basket and not listening.”

The publicist said that he worked for McGraw for 10 years until March 2026, “advancing, protecting, publicizing, protecting, and supporting” McGraw and his enterprises.

According to the suit, Sharell worked through the Merit Street bankruptcy and the subsequent establishment of Envoy Media, “receiving assignments and direction” from McGraw, dealing with executives and securing media placements among other duties.

After the company transitioned to Envoy Media, Sharell states in his lawsuit he went from being treated as an employee with benefits to being characterized as an independent contractor, losing his benefits, including health coverage and his compensation was reduced by 30%.

Sharell alleges that although his job remained the same, that he felt “compelled” to accept the new arrangement while under “a great deal of duress and stress,” during which he said he was “reminded” by Envoy Media Chief Executive Ken Solomon that McGraw valued “loyalty.”

Then, in March, Sharell received a call from Solomon informing him that his position was being put on “hiatus” due to “financial considerations,” even though no other employees were put in hiatus or had their salaries reduced.

He said he told Solomon that he felt he was “being singled out or targeted,” according to the lawsuit.

A former ABC News journalist is suing former colleague CBS News Chief Correspondent Matt Gutman over inappropriate remarks he allegedly made when they worked together several years ago.

Samira Said, a field producer for ABC News for four years, included the claims related to Gutman in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court against her former employer and its parent The Walt Disney Co. Gutman, who joined CBS News in January, is named as a defendant as well.

The suit cited two incidents where Said claims Gutman created a hostile work environment by making inappropriate sexual comments while on the job. While waiting on a public line with Said during an assignment, Gutman allegedly “initiated a discussion rating a female correspondent’s appearance and reducing her professional standing to a numerical score based on her physical attributes.”

Said claims the other male crew members on the assignment joined in and tried to draw her into the conversation by soliciting her views. Said declined and stated the conversation was inappropriate.

The suit cited another exchange when the two covered a press event for a movie release. Said claims she and Gutman disagreed about whether they should leave the work site. “In front of multiple coworkers, Gutman responded by making a sexualized insinuation that Said must have an after-hours date in the city,” the suit said.

The suit also said the remarks made in front of co-workers were demeaning and “reduced [Said’s] professional judgment to a sexualized stereotype.”

Gutman, 48, was the first high-profile talent hire by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who took charge of the division in October 2025. He recently filled in as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and scored higher ratings than the program’s regular anchor Tony Dokoupil.

Gutman spent 17 years at ABC News where he mostly reported from Los Angeles.

The suit also claims Said was wrongfully terminated from ABC News in 2025 after dealing with mental health issues. The suit accuses the company of violating California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act by not making accommodations for her.

A Disney representative declined comment as executives have yet to see Said’s complaint. CBS News and Gutman also declined comment, having not seen the suit.

Said was assigned to cover the 2022 shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where she was required to interview child survivors who had witnessed the killing of their classmates. Afterward, she told her supervisor she needed a short leave to attend to her health but was denied.

A psychiatrist eventually approved a medical leave. The suit alleges that shortly after it began Said continued to get assignment requests from David Herndon, then head of ABC’s Los Angeles bureau.

Said was assigned to cover the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. She was sent home three weeks in after a supervisor observed her deteriorating physical condition, according to the suit.

Said injured her foot later that year while covering a weather-related story in the area. She reported the injury to supervisors but was denied a request for medical leave after being evaluated by a company doctor.

Said is seeking compensatory and punitive damages along with her attorneys’ fees.

Following the latest news that beloved Loose Women panellist Denise Welch is departing the ITV show, many viewers are now labelling the programme a ‘sinking ship’

Daytime TV favourite Loose Women has recently undergone some of the most sweeping structural and staffing shake-ups in its 26-year history, and following the latest news that beloved panellist Denise Welch is departing the show, many viewers are now labelling the programme a ‘sinking ship’.

As part of a sweeping broadcaster-wide cost-cutting drive by ITV, the format of the show has changed dramatically this year. Rather than broadcasting all year round, Loose Women was scaled back to a seasonal format in January, airing for just 30 weeks a year. The show also axed its live studio audience entirely. This decision led to the dismissal of long-serving studio warm-up comedian Lee Peart, sparking an emotional outcry from remaining cast members.

Loose Women also vacated its former home and relocated to The H Club Studio in Covent Garden. It now shares a centralised, 360-degree LED-walled studio space with This Morning and Lorraine in a bid to significantly slash production costs.

While its standard runtime remains one hour (12:30 pm to 1:30 pm), the show has trialled temporary extensions – such as 15-minute “extra time” segments to accommodate sports scheduling and specific themed features.

It was also revealed this month that panellist Nadia Sawalha had been dropped from the programme by ITV following controversy over her beliefs. Now, news has broken today (August 13) that Denise Welch has quit the show.

The 68-year-old, who has appeared on-and-off the programme for 25 years, says she wants to throw herself wholeheartedly into her acting career, which she has described as her true passion and “first love”.

She has enjoyed a remarkable professional resurgence of late, landing major television roles including the Channel 4 sitcom Stepping Up and the Channel 5 drama Forever Home.

In a video uploaded to her personal Instagram account, Welch opened up about the reasoning behind her departure.

She said: “Acting has always been my first love and, I think, the thing I’m best at.

“At the moment, I’m having the most wonderful opportunities coming my way and I’m grabbing them by the you-know-whats and running with it for this new chapter of my life.”

Reflecting on her time on Loose Women, she added: “This show has been part of mine, and my family’s life, for nearly a quarter of a century. I have the most wonderful, wonderful memories.

“I’ve shared my life with you, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m very Marmite, but I cherish all the comments, good or bad, that I’ve had over the years.”

Amid growing public speculation over the state of the show, she moved to clarify her relationship with her fellow cast members, adding: “I’ll miss everybody, but I will remain friends with the whole gang because, despite what you might read, we are a happy band of campers.”

Her announcement triggered an enormous outpouring of support from her fellow panellists, underscoring her reputation as the “beating heart” of the show.

Host Kaye Adams wrote: “You have broken my heart but I shall watch your Den-aissance with love and pride.”

While Nadia Sawalha added: “You are such a fantastic actress. Fly high lovely.”

Scores of fans also told Denise how much they had enjoyed watching her on the programme, though some predicted its decline following her exit and other recent developments.

One person wrote: “It’s not fun to watch anymore and it feels like people are not allowed to have different opinions on the important things! Plus ITV deciding to get the rid of the audience is the beginning of the end. You were my favourite one!”.

Another claimed Loose Women is “grinding to a halt”, while a third added: “I’m glad you jumped before the ship went down.”

The news comes amid separate claims that ITV recently shelved a Loose Women spin-off project as part of sweeping budget cuts across the broadcaster.

In July 2026, reports emerged that ITV executives quietly pulled the plug on a planned Loose Women spin-off podcast.

An insider noted that while the broadcaster remains hopeful for another run in the future, the project will not feature on the immediate calendar due to sweeping cost-cutting measures impacting ITV Daytime.

The South American nation is only the second country to recognise Israel’s claims over the illegally annexed Syrian territory.

Colombia has become only the second country to recognise Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, just days after far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella took power.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry made the announcement on Monday, joining the United States as the only other country to recognise Israel’s annexation of the territory in 1981.

“The Government of Colombia recognises Israeli sovereignty over this territory, as well as that State’s right to protect itself against external threats,” read a statement published on X.

“Colombia recognises that maintaining Israel’s control and sovereignty over the Golan Heights is an essential component of its national defence,” it added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked his “good friend” de la Espriella for the “historic” recognition.

He said the pair had agreed on the move in the Colombian city of Barranquilla a day before de la Espriella’s inauguration.

Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, before illegally annexing the territory in 1981. The move was rejected by most of the international community, although the US formally recognised Israel’s claim in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

The United Nations recognises the region as a part of Syria, and last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that stance, describing Israeli occupation as “totally unacceptable”.

Syria tried to regain the Golan in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but was thwarted. Israel and Syria signed an armistice in 1974, and the Golan has been relatively quiet since.

Colombia’s recognition of the Israeli claim comes as Israel expands its military footprint in Syria following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024. Israel has moved troops into a UN-monitored buffer zone and seized strategic territories, including the Syrian side of Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon), which overlooks the capital, Damascus.

De La Espriella, the new Colombian president, ran a bombastic campaign during which he promised close relations with the US and Israel as a way to combat armed groups in his country.

The US-backed millionaire has promised to restore Bogota’s ties with Israel after his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, criticised Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, severed diplomatic relations and halted Israeli arms imports.

De La Espriella has also cancelled Petro’s plans to open an embassy in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The Russian Athletics Federation has filed a new claim with the Court of Arbitration for Sport to challenge sanctions imposed by World Athletics.

Athletes from Russia and Belarus have been banned from international competition under the world governing body since the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian Athletics says the ongoing sanctions “infringe on the organisation’s rights”, adding they “prevent it from fully representing the interests of Russian athletes on an international level.”

The International Olympic Committee provisionally lifted Russia’s suspension in July, potentially allowing the country to compete at the 2028 Olympics Games in Los Angeles.

Cas, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, serves as sport’s highest arbitration body and hears disputes involving athletes, federations and governing organisations.

“The sanctions against Russian Athletics are unprecedented. No other sports federation faces such severe restrictions,” Boris Yaryshevskiy, chief executive director of Russian Athletics, said in a statement.

“They not only hinder the federation’s normal operation but also hold back the development of athletics in Russia, particularly among young athletes, preventing us from properly representing our sport in the international arena.

“That is why we will consistently defend our rights, pursue the lifting of the sanctions through the courts, and continue our work in this direction. We are already preparing our next steps to restore justice.”

Russian Athletics lodged a separate appeal on 9 July challenging a decision by the World Athletics Council – the main rule-making and executive body of World Athletics – to extend the ban on Russian athletes from international events.

Other sporting federations, including World Gymnastics, World Aquatics and World Boxing, have this year eased restrictions on Russian athletes competing.

Some Russian and Belarusian athletes competed as neutrals at both the 2024 Paris Games and this year’s Winter Olympics in Milan.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security’s system for paying for detainee medical care has collapsed, records show, leaving a backlog of unpaid claims likely costing millions of dollars.

With a new payment system still not in place, advocates for immigrant detainees fear some are going without necessary treatment as medical providers near a year without compensation.

Newly released federal records reveal what that treatment could be for, detailing more than 233,000 claims for off-site medical and dental care between January and early October of 2025. The claims, for which Homeland Security spent $96 million, show detainees were treated for a wide variety of conditions, including strokes, pregnancy, suicide attempts and frostbite.

For years, Homeland Security relied on a unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs, its financial services center, to process reimbursement claims for detainee medical care. But since that arrangement abruptly ended Oct. 3, the company hired to create a new payment processing system has yet to start reimbursing the medical clinics, dental practices and pharmacies that treat detained patients.

The documents were released by the VA to the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act and shared exclusively with The Times. They paint the clearest picture yet of the off-site medical care received by immigrants in the custody of the federal government before the payment system fractured.

The old system used by Homeland Security was scrapped after critics questioned why the VA was processing paperwork for a different federal department.

During the Biden administration, Republicans claimed that the contract between Homeland Security and the VA took resources from veterans to facilitate healthcare for immigrants and introduced a bill to stop it.

Last year, with President Trump back in office, the VA wrote Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 19 to say that it would stop processing detainee medical claims by Feb. 28, 2026.

“This termination is necessary to reallocate resources to support mission-facing programs,” the letter states.

On Sept. 30, the right-wing Center to Advance Security in America filed a lawsuit against the VA seeking answers to a year-old request for records related to the alleged diversion of resources. The VA didn’t respond to requests for comment. But then-VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz told the Daily Signal that the department had, under President Biden, focused on unnecessary activities such as processing healthcare claims for immigrants.

“Under President Trump, the department has abandoned these radical liberal priorities and rededicated itself to providing the best possible care and benefits to the Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors we serve,” he said.

Three days after the lawsuit was filed, the VA stopped processing Homeland Security claims. Later that month, ICE awarded multimillion dollar no-bid contracts to two companies tasked with taking over claims processing: Acentra Health for healthcare services and Ardent Group for pharmacy services.

Federal law requires Homeland Security to provide medical care to the people in its custody. Those held by Customs and Border Protection near the border, or by ICE in the country’s interior, are civilly detained for the purpose of removal proceedings. ICE is holding more than 65,000 detainees as the agency touts record-high arrests this summer.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection rely on about 3,000 community-based providers and local hospitals, which submit about 300,000 claims annually for detainee care, according to ICE.

The claims outlined in the VA documents show ICE paid $77.3 million, 80% of the total, and CBP paid $19 million. Together, the agencies paid on average about $260 for off-site care per detainee from January to October 2025, a Times analysis found. By comparison, federal prisons in fiscal year 2025 spent about $2,700 per inmate on external medical care.

For ICE, medical conditions that had the highest number of claims included screenings for tuberculosis and other diseases and treatment for hypertension, chest pain and type 2 diabetes. Some of the highest-paid amounts related to treatment of psychosis, schizophrenia and sepsis.

More than a third of the claims for CBP — and more than half of the total paid amount — went to a category of claims called “injury, poisoning and certain consequences of external causes.” That includes traumatic injuries such as fractures, concussions and hemorrhages.

Among other notable claims are 2,267 for pregnancy, birth and maternal care, 1,793 for seizures and 419 for suicide or self-harm. The most expensive claim was $292,199 for treatment of leukemia.

Homeland Security did not return requests for comment but frequently says it provides comprehensive medical, dental and mental health care, which officials tout as the best healthcare many detainees ever received.

Dr. Amy Zeidan, an emergency medicine doctor and associate professor at Emory University who studies immigrant detainee health outcomes, said the VA data show detained immigrants require significant medical care. She said some of those entering detention facilities likely have chronic conditions and don’t get proper care, while others likely develop serious conditions while detained.

“There is a high burden of disease in detention facilities that we have always suspected but really had no evidence to support,” she said. “It’s not like these are people getting routine visits for mildly high blood pressure — these are people who require hospitalizations.”

“If claims are no longer being paid, this is a big problem because outside care is certainly needed,” she added.

The decision to end the processing agreement with the VA “created an emergency,” according to ICE officials. That phrase appears in a contracting document for Acentra Health that was first reported on by independent journalists through the newsletter Popular Information.

Several vendors expressed interest in the job, but ICE said a formal competition would take months and the lack of a way to process claims could delay necessary medical care, such as dialysis, prenatal care and chemotherapy.

ICE needed to come up with a new way to process medical claims “instantly” in order to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life,” the contracting document states. “Off-site providers who are not paid timely may not accept new patients or continue to provide vital care and services.”

The ICE officials wrote that Acentra Health provides the same claims processing system used by the VA and would be able to restore claims processing services quickly.

Claims processing was slated to resume April 30, but providers still haven’t been paid.

The ICE Health Service Corps website says providers should “hold all claim submissions while we work to bring the new system online.”

Lindsey Rodarmer, public relations manager for Acentra Health, said the company’s role under its contract is solely to build out the claims processing system — not to start processing claims.

“The timeline for the completion of this project depends on factors beyond any single party, including two government shutdowns, funding lapses, and the timing of federal authorizations, all of which have impacted the project schedule,” Rodarmer said.

According to a federal contracting website, Acentra has been paid $44.6 million of its $67.5-million contract, which Rodarmer said was extended until Sept. 24. Ardent Group has been paid $26.7 million of its $42.6-million contract, which is slated to end Oct. 24.

In June, Homeland Security posted a request for information to identify other potential vendors. The agency wants companies to answer 29 questions. The first asks for a “realistic timeline” on when the processing of claims can begin.

Rodarmer said Acentra responded to the request for information and, if chosen, would begin paying out claims under the system it built.

Last month, Reps. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) and Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) wrote to the leaders of the VA and Homeland Security seeking answers about when Acentra will begin processing reimbursements, whether any claims have been paid since Oct. 3, and how many detainees have had health complications or died because they were unable to access off-site healthcare. The lawmakers said the agencies haven’t responded.

In an interview, Ramirez said she believes the lack of payment for medical claims is directly tied to an increase in detainee deaths. At least 23 people have died in immigration custody this year. Last year the agency reported 33 in-custody deaths.

She said that without answers to the questions she raised with Takano, there’s no way to know what Homeland Security has been billing for and how much care has been put on hold.

“In our current system, if no one is paying for services, no one gets healthcare,” Ramirez said. “Since DHS and VA stopped processing medical claims nine months ago, it is clear that our neighbors are being deprived of necessary medical care in violation of the law.”

Meanwhile, detained immigrants and their supporters have raised increasing alarms over medical care provided by ICE.

ICE said Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, 41, of El Salvador suffered a medical emergency on Saturday and was pronounced dead after being taken to a New Jersey hospital.

The agency said Lopez Cornejo had received proper medical care and was seen by medical professionals. His mother, however, told a local immigrant rights group that she believed he hadn’t received his medication for diabetes, high blood pressure and seizures.

In California, a court-appointed medical monitor issued a report last month finding that the state’s largest immigrant detention center repeatedly has delayed assessments, treatment and administration of medication for detainees. The center’s operator told The Times it was reviewing the report and that nothing matters more than the health, safety and well-being of people under its care.

At the California City Detention Facility, one man waited months for a surgery he never received. The 34-year-old man asked to be identified by his initials, A.S., over concerns about his immigration case.

A.S. said he tripped and broke an ankle while detained in late February. He was transported to a local hospital and placed in a cast.

Medical records show A.S. didn’t see a specialist until April 10, when it was determined he needed surgery. At an appointment June 1, A.S. said a doctor told him he had missed a scheduled operation, which medical records appear to confirm.

He said the doctor told him too much time had passed and the surgery no longer was possible because of risk of complications. The doctor ordered physical therapy, A.S. said, but medical records show he didn’t receive any.

A.S. was released from the detention center last month still limping and in pain. Unable to find work or pay to see a doctor, he has resorted to recycling cans and bottles to support himself.

“They knew about my situation — there were requests asking to be seen, there were complaints I had filed, so it’s not like they didn’t know,” A.S. said. “Instead, it’s as if they didn’t want to give me the medical attention.”

WASHINGTON — Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche cleared a critical hurdle Tuesday in his bid to be confirmed to the post after swaying Republican holdouts on a Senate committee to advance his nomination for a floor vote.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 along party lines in support of the nomination of President Trump’s former personal attorney, who has aggressively pushed the Republican administration’s priorities since taking over from Pam Bondi in April.

The vote followed a deal struck late Sunday between Blanche and two Republican senators who had been threatening to block his confirmation over the settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service regarding the president’s leaked tax returns.

Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had said they were withholding their support unless the Justice Department confirmed in writing that it was not moving forward with a $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they were prosecuted for political purposes, which the administration had announced as part of the settlement.

After days of negotiations, Blanche issued an order Sunday evening confirming “beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”

Since the settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was announced, “No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,” the order said.

Cornyn and Tillis had also pressed for clarification on a separate part of the settlement that would grant Trump and members of his family immunity from tax audits.

Democrats complain about the fund

Under the deal, the Justice Department clarified in writing that the tax audit immunity agreement applies only to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect Trump from examination of future tax filings. It also makes clear that only the parties that brought the lawsuit — Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization — are covered by the tax agreement.

Democrats say Blanche’s order doesn’t go far enough to prevent the Trump administration from reviving the fund after the acting attorney general’s confirmation and have called for legislation to permanently bar it. The order also doesn’t stop the administration from compensating Trump allies — including people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — through a previously established process that allows people to file claims for damages if they believed they were wronged by the government.

The fund “can easily be revived with a new order from the Department of Justice 15 minutes after Mr. Blanche is confirmed as attorney general,” said Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.

Blanche’s independence has been called into question

Blanche has faced intense scrutiny regarding his ability to maintain independence from the White House, the Justice Department’s pursuit of the president’s political foes and the agency’s handling of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.

But it was the settlement of Trump’s $10-billion lawsuit against the IRS that threatened to derail Blanche’s nomination, forcing a delay in the committee vote last week amid pressure from the two Republican senators, who are not returning to Capitol Hill after their terms end in January.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the committee, said Tillis and Cornyn’s demands were “common sense.” Grassley said the senators’ concerns about the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and the IRS settlement were shared by many other lawmakers, including himself.

“I’m grateful that they as well as Mr. Blanche and the White House worked in good faith to solve them, formally rescinding the fund, clarifying the scope of the release of claims has put this issue to bed once and for all,” Grassley said.

Trump’s lawsuit has been sharply criticized because of the highly unusual way it was handled, with the president challenging an agency overseen by the executive branch he leads. A judge last month slammed the case as an improper exercise in self-dealing and referred one of Trump’s attorneys who filed it for potential disciplinary action.

Blanche was an important figure for Trump’s defense

Blanche, a former federal prosecutor and key member of Trump’s defense team as the Republican battled four indictments, arrived at the Justice Department last year as deputy attorney general. He was elevated to acting attorney general following Attorney General Pam Bondi’s failure to meet Trump’s demands to successfully prosecute his perceived political opponents.

While Blanche insisted he wasn’t auditioning for the permanent post, he moved swiftly to accelerate investigations into Trump foes and advance other White House priorities, drawing condemnation from critics who say he has not shed his title as Trump’s personal lawyer.

Shortly after Blanche took the top post, the Justice Department moved to indict longtime Trump adversary James Comey, the former FBI director, on charges of threatening the 47th president by posting a social media photograph of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47.”

Comey’s lawyers have accused the Justice Department of misleading judges, submitting documents containing false statements and withholding key facts to bring what the defense described as a politically motivated prosecution.

Blanche separately appointed Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.

Richer and Jalonick write for the Associated Press.

MoneySavingExpert, which was founded by Martin Lewis, shared a tip for plane passengers

Some customers could be owed back hundreds after purchasing plane tickets, according to MoneySavingExpert (MSE). The consumer website, founded by journalist and TV personality Martin Lewis, regularly shares advice to help Brits.

In advice for travellers, the money experts pointed out that passengers who book non-refundable plane tickets but don’t end up using them can still request a refund for some of their money. While the refund won’t cover the entire cost of the tickets, they can get the Air Passenger Duty refunded.

In a Facebook post, MSE said: “Air Passenger Duty is a tax only paid by the airline to HMRC if you fly. If you don’t fly, whether you cancelled a non-refundable ticket or you missed your flight, you can request a refund from £8 to £253 per person.” The post also included a real-life success story from MSE Clare.

Clare revealed that her in-laws received a refund of £92 each after realising they needed to change their return flight home after visiting the UK from Australia. The family members had assumed they wouldn’t get any money back from their non-refundable tickets after their plans changed, but a “quick email” to their airline confirmed the good news. Clare said it was “a small consolation, but better than nothing.”

In the comments under the post, MSE added: “There’s no deadline for how far back you can claim – though some airlines impose their own (and a few charge an admin fee).” More information is available on the MSE website.

It said: “When you book a flight departing the UK, your ticket price will include various fees, such as airport tax. However, this isn’t collected by HM Revenue and Customs from the airline until after you actually fly. If you don’t fly – even by choice – you shouldn’t have to pay the tax.”

If you’re looking to make a claim, airlines publish information for passengers explaining exactly how to get it. Skyscanner explains: “The procedures for claiming an airport tax refund vary from airline to airline.

“Some will refund it automatically, whereas others require you to fill out a form. It’s worth noting that some carriers will charge an admin fee for the refund application, and with budget airlines, that fee can often surmount the amount you’ll get back.

“Each airline should publish details of how to claim back APD tax on its own website. If you cannot find this, call the airline and request details.”

Skyscanner added: “Some airlines have commercial agreements with various airports and may not always pay airport taxes. If you didn’t initially pay them, you wouldn’t be eligible for a refund.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claims.

Pirro’s office, in a court filing Friday, moved to drop criminal charges against a former Olympian, David Hearn, who had been accused of deliberately damaging the pool after it went through a renovation ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration last month.

Trump, in a posting on social media, acknowledged that there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the installation of a new pool liner. But he continues to insist, without evidence, that “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump added in his post.

The dismissal was a striking reversal for a Justice Department that had previously echoed Trump’s claims and billed the prosecution as pursuing accountability for damage at a Washington landmark, a pet project of Trump. Despite Pirro’s conclusion that there was no evidence of vandalism resulting in widespread damage, the president continued to allege Saturday that most of the damage to the pool was caused by vandals.

Government lawyers in their 20-page court filing Friday said that additional documents provided by the Interior Department since the indictment of Hearn show that the damage was the result of a botched installation by a contractor as well as “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”

In addition, a recent visual inspection revealed damage throughout the pool, including in the middle — where prosecutors say a vandal would not likely have attempted to peel the lining.

Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was accused of pulling up a two-foot-square piece of the pool’s lining.

“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pirro, a Trump appointee and former Fox News host, said in her filing asking a judge to formally dismiss the case.

In the filing, Pirro also blamed the Interior Department for providing “less than fulsome information at the outset of the case.”

The filing added that had “DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.” It was a jarring turn in position from Pirro, who claimed the government’s case was built on “tremendous evidence” when she announced the indictment against Hearn last month.

Hearn’s legal team on Saturday criticized both Trump and Pirro and said it was weighing “legal remedies” on behalf of their client.

“Trump is mad at Pirro because she finally admitted what we made clear in our legal filings all along: Trump’s botched renovation was responsible for the damage — not Davey Hearn,” the legal team said in a statement. “However, her claim that she and her office were previously duped by Interior is nonsense. Starting immediately after the arraignment, our motions repeatedly proved that the administration was to blame for the Reflecting Pool failures, not Davey.”

Trump on Saturday also posted a nearly four-minute video that appears to have been taken from a security camera, in which three individuals can be seen with their hands in the pool, including one for an extended period.

The president claimed the video shows “material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”

It’s not clear from the video, which appears to be shot from some distance, that any vandalism occurred. Workers can also be seen standing nearby and don’t appear to notice the people sticking their hands into the water.

In May, Trump announced plans to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring. Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded a $14.7-million, no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment.

Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted with what he called “American flag blue.”

But problems emerged within days of the project’s completion, with chunks of the new liner peeling off.

Trump was quick to blame vandals. And the National Park Service reported to the U.S. Park Police a June 9 incident in which it claimed a sharp knife or razor cut the pool’s new liner.

The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

On the heels of the trailer reveal for the big-screen adaption of “Children of Blood and Bone,” the book’s author is claiming in a new video that an on-set ordeal traumatized her — and fans have been left with more questions than answers.

On Wednesday, Tomi Adeyemi upped the ante when discussing the ongoing behind-the-scenes drama that’s overshadowed the new film. Although the author, in her latest video on the falling-out, hinted at a painful ordeal that unfolded on set, fans are still scratching their heads as to what exactly happened and who was involved.

“I’m gonna post this so ideally I won’t have to talk about this anymore,” she said in a five-minute, 40-second video posted to social media. “And what I’m about to share is not a secret to the people involved. It’s a reality that I’ve had to live with for about a year and a half, and everyone involved, at least at the highest level, has been made aware of this reality, and they haven’t done anything to make it better. If anything, they’ve only antagonized me, and I accept that, but I also accept if I don’t say something, I think it’s just going to be worse.

“I’m not gonna speak on what I endured to make it through the young adult trilogy, and I’m not going to speak about everything that I also suffered through to make the adaptation a reality,” she continued. “I’m actually only going to speak about what happened after I left that set of my own film adaptation, hyperventilating and sobbing, and there are many witnesses, so it’s not really a secret.”

The author continued that, when she returned to America from an overseas filming location, she suffered “such severe somatic pain and so many panic attacks” that she knew she would never be able to watch the film.

“But as it is being marketed, and as I am still being antagonized behind the scenes, which is where I hoped all of this would stay, it’s become apparent to me that reality needs to at least be made known so that you guys can understand how this film — which I worked on to make it a little better for us to be alive — is also the worst thing I have ever had to live through, and I don’t wish to speak on it anymore.”

Adeyemi concluded that she never wants to hear about the film adaption again, and then she seemingly threw shade at director Gina Prince-Bythewood, whom she co-wrote the screenplay with, saying, “I don’t have anything to say about the people who made it. I do not care anymore. I’m trying to move on. This video might make it worse, but I don’t know how it can be any worse.”

Representatives for Prince-Bythewood and Paramount Pictures did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Earlier this month, the Nigerian American author posted a since-deleted video on TikTok that also left her followers puzzled in which she said there was a reason she stopped promoting the forthcoming film. Although she didn’t spell out the reason, she posted a screen shot of a February 2025 text exchange with one of the film’s stars, Amandla Stenberg, in which she told the actor not to use her name in interviews and then blocked her.

Stenberg, who is African American and Danish, had been at the center of a casting controversy due to claims that colorism was at play when she landed the role of Princess Amari. (Read more about the controversy here.)

On Monday, Paramount held a “Children of Blood and Bone” trailer launch event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. In a discussion moderated by “Master of None” actor Lena Waithe, Prince-Bythewood and the A-list cast talked about the making and almost-not-making of the film, and Prince-Bythewood seemed to reveal her stance on the fallout over Stenberg’s casting.

The director said her big-screen adaptation was “beautifully inspired by Nigeria and also inclusive of the whole diaspora. We wanted all of us to be able to see ourselves within this, just our complete and utter humanity, all the beautiful hues.”

In the comments section under Adeyemi’s Wednesday video, frustrated fans asked the author to be more transparent while others suggested maybe a non-disclosure agreement was hindering her ability to offer any specifics on the incident.

“Children of Blood and Bone” is slated to hit theaters Jan. 15.

After a relatively quiet day, the first medal was claimed by the men’s 3×3 basketball team just before 17:00 BST.

A couple of hours later, three more followed in the space of five minutes.

The women’s wheelchair 3×3 basketball team took silver; Evans added her second gold – and third medal – of the Games in the 200m breaststroke; then Woods claimed gold in the women’s T54 1500m.

Shaw then joined in with bronze in the women’s S9 100m freestyle before MacInnes was edged into second place in the women’s 200m butterfly to take her second individual silver of the meet.

Around the same time, MacKenzie was leaping to long jump bronze, before the haul was completed in the pool when Evans and MacInnes teamed up with Katie Shanahan and Evie Davis to take silver in the women’s 4x100m medley.

Three more further medals are guaranteed in boxing – with fighters in semi-final action on Friday – while further prospects remain in athletics, bowls, cycling, judo and weightlifting.

Jared Leto faces allegations of criminal sexual conduct by several women who allege the sexual incidents with the musician and Oscar-winning actor occurred when he was in his 30s and 40s and they were teenagers.

In a BBC documentary titled “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” multiple women spoke about their experiences with the “House of Gucci” star and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman, detailing allegations of inappropriate text messages, sexual assault and statutory rape from 2002 to 2016. Among the allegations, one woman said she was 17 years old when Leto sexually assaulted her in a motel bathroom. Another woman alleges Leto continued to sexually pursue her in Los Angeles despite knowing she was 17 years old, younger than the age of consent in California.

Leto, in a statement shared with The Times on Wednesday, denied the allegations raised by the BBC documentary: “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”

Journalist and documentarian Jessica Sartenaer said in the segment published Wednesday that the BBC began its investigation into allegations against Leto after noting an Instagram story from a prominent DJ based in Los Angeles. In a since-expired Instagram story, DJ Allie Teilz, resurfaced a 2012 Facebook post in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz captioned her repost: “Jared Leto was a creep then..still a creep now, going on 15+ years of being Hollywood’s most persistent predator,” according to the BBC documentary.

Numerous social media users reportedly responded to Teilz’s posts with their own claims about Leto’s alleged predatory behavior, many noting they were subject to Leto’s misconduct when they were teens. A woman identified as “Etta” told the BBC she was 14 when Leto approached her outside of a modeling agency and invited her to an Oscars party. Etta provided email correspondences to the outlet and said the “Morbius” actor encouraged her to stay in contact via text after the invite. Text messages turned into phone calls and conversations about her modeling career quickly turned sexual, according to the documentary. Leto allegedly asked Etta about her virginity, her kinks and sexual capabilities.

Etta said in the documentary that Leto’s legal team allegedly contacted her and urged her to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her relationship with the actor, though she never did.

The documentary portrays Leto as a celebrity who leveraged his fame to connect with young fans and control them. The woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by Leto at age 17 in a motel bathroom told the BBC she met Leto in 2002 at a mall in Las Vegas. Leto would have been in his early 30s at the time. He invited her to meet him at a nearby motel. She waited in the room while he stepped into the shower, but he eventually called her over and began kissing her, according to the BBC. The woman, identified as “Isabelle,” accused Leto of forcing her hand to his genitals and using her hand to masturbate. Isabelle pulled away and moved to leave the room, but Leto allegedly looked outside the motel room for any potential bystanders before letting her out, she recalled to the BBC.

The BBC also published allegations by “Clara,” the woman who said Leto knowingly had sex with her when she was 17 — he was 34 at the time — at his house in California. Clara said she connected with Leto after his associate requested her phone number. She and her friend were invited to spend time with the band at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, where the age of consent of California became a topic of conversation. Leto, who allegedly shrugged off the conversation, invited Clara and her friend back to his home and told the friend to wait in another room while he had sex with Clara. Clara visited Leto’s home a total of three or four times, according to the BBC. She also alleged that Leto often requested that she call him “daddy” and that she pretend to be a little girl.

Leto in 2013 allegedly invited another woman, named Alex, to his band’s concert at London’s O2 and to an after-party. She was 19 at the time but told Leto she was younger out of a need to protect herself, the BBC reported. Leto allegedly replied: “Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.” Alex alleges Leto threatened to sexually assault her in a hotel room later that evening.

The BBC also spoke to men who who worked closely with Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars. One man said Leto was often texting girls to invite them to spend time with the band. Leto also allegedly asserted control by ignoring the girls he invited and speaking to them rudely. The man also recalled that Leto took one fan, who was dropped off by her parents, “off to the bedroom.” Afterward, she called her parents to pick her up.

Leto has long faced quiet scrutiny for his alleged behavior with women and girls. In 2005 the New York Post published a story accusing the actor of “aggressively pursuing many” teen models. Last year Air Mail published accusations against Leto of impropriety by nine women, though he denied those claims at the time.

Still, the actor-musician has moved on from those allegations seemingly unscathed. Leto, who won his Oscar in 2014 for “Dallas Buyers Club,” most recently appeared in “Masters of the Universe” and is set to tour with his band next year.

FOUR women have accused Hollywood actor Jared Leto of criminal sexual misconduct.

The allegations against the Oscar winner and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman, 54, come from when the women were teenagers aged 16 to 19.

One accuser alleges she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17.

Another claims the Dallas Buyers Club star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 after the pair were left alone in a hotel room.

A third alleges she had sex with Leto when she was 17, which under California laws would be classed as statutory rape.

The fourth woman has accused Leto of grooming her and alleges he once took advantage of his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16.

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He suggested they should have sex on at least one occasion, the alleged victim claims.

Four other women also allege they received strange and often sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger.

A ninth woman also accuses the Morbius lead of ordering a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival when she was 14.

The woman alleges he made a sexual comment about her chest during an autograph-signing before claiming her mother confronted him.

The allegations all come from between 2002 and 2016 when Leto was in his 30s and 40s.

Leto is yet to respond to the allegations.

He has previously denied historic sexual misconduct accusations by nine women, including some who said they were teenagers at the time.

The Sun has reached out to Leto’s team for comment.

The allegations all come from a new BBC documentary titled Jared Leto: Hollywood‘s Dark Secret.

One unnamed accuser said: “This was 25 years ago… he has gotten away with it.”

Leto starred as The Joker in Suicide Squad and won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Dallas Buyers Club. 

He is also the frontman to rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars. 

The Houthis recently declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, targeting several tankers.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group says it has fired ballistic missiles at a Saudi oil tanker, more than a week after imposing a naval blockade on Saudi vessels in the Red Sea.

In a post on X, Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, said the group had “carried out a military operation targeting the Saudi oil tanker (NCC GHAZAL) for violating the maritime navigation ban” that the group had imposed on Saudi vessels.

He added that the group had used several ballistic missiles and forced the vessel to retreat.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a maritime security monitor, said a tanker reported an explosion while transiting the Red Sea, adding that the crew is safe and no environmental damage was reported.

The Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and have fought the internationally recognised Yemeni government, which Saudi Arabia backs, for more than a decade.

On July 20, the Houthis announced their maritime blockade, accusing Saudi leaders of imposing “an unjust and oppressive siege” on Yemen for nearly 12 years, “plundering our resources and imposing a comprehensive blockade”.

It went on to affirm “the right of our great people to respond to the blockade with a blockade”.

Second attack

The Houthis have also claimed an attack on two Saudi oil tankers transiting the Red Sea last week.

“We targeted two Saudi oil tankers, named Encelia and Layla, for their violation of the blockade decision issued by the armed forces,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on July 22.

The Saudi Press Agency reported that the Encelia had been hit, citing an official source at Saudi Arabia’s Transport General Authority who said all crew members were safe.

The Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s most important shipping routes, including for oil exports.

Between Yemen to the northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa to the southwest, the strait is just 29km (18 miles) at its narrowest point, limiting traffic to two channels for inbound and outbound vessels heading to the Suez Canal.

In 2024, about 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum products passed through the strait – about 5 percent of the global total.

Megan Keith was the sole Scottish representative in the women’s 10,000m after McColgan dropped out.

Despite a swell of cheers from the crowd at every pass, the Inverness runner was unable to replicate the iconic 2022 performance of her compatriot, finishing ninth in a time of 32:22.11.

Canada’s formidable Olympic hammer champion Ethan Katzberg drew gasps of awe from the Glasgow crowd with his herculean throw of 80.97m, which set a Commonwealth record.

But the biggest cheers in the hammer were reserved for Scotland’s Chris Bennett, competing in his fourth and final Games.

He finished fifth with his longest throw of 69.48m, clearly emotional as he wrapped up a 24-year career.

Alexander Thomson – who trains just down the road at Victoria Park and had fought back from knee surgery – finished ninth in the T38 100m final.

Jemma Reekie comfortably booked her place in the semi-finals of the 800m, finishing second in her heat with a time of 2:03.09 behind England’s world indoor 1,500m champion Georgia Hunter Bell.

Erin Wallace also booked her place in the semi-finals with a time of 2:03.15, but Mena Scatchard just missed out on qualification by 0.06 seconds after finishing fourth in her heat.

In the early sessions, Stephen Mackenzie got Scotland off to a strong start as he progressed to the men’s long jump final on Wednesday.

A second-round leap of 7.75m was enough to see him through in eighth place.

Meanwhile, hammer thrower Angela McAuslan-Kelly progressed to the women’s final, with a throw of 60.59m in the first round securing her place.

July 23 (UPI) — The Houthis in Yemen claimed responsibility for two attacks on Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea with missiles and drones.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who have been fighting for control of Yemen, claimed on Wednesday that they had hit the Encelia and the Layla oil tankers, which they said were violating their blockade of Saudi ships. They had announced the blockade on Monday.

Saudi Arabia’s transportation authority confirmed the attack on the Encelia in a statement. It said there was a fire on board but the crew were all safe. It didn’t mention the Layla.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group promised to continue naval operations and would continue “enforcing the ‘siege for a siege’ equation,” the BBC reported.

The Houthis claimed they had also forced “10 ships to retreat and return.” That claim could not be independently verified, The Times said, but at least six vessels reversed course in the Red Sea on Monday and Tuesday after the Houthis warned shipping companies to avoid Saudi ports, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. It was not clear if those ships were part of the Houthis’ claims.

The Saudis and the Houthis have been in an effective cease-fire since 2022. But last week, tensions flared when the Houthis accused the Saudis of striking the airport in Yemen’s capital Sanaa. The spat came from a dispute when an Iranian plane had tried to land at the airport.

The Houthis then attacked the Abha airport in Saudi Arabia.

When the Houthis announced the “maritime embargo,” they didn’t give many details. But a media official said they would close the Bab al-Mandab Strait. That strait is on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz. It’s the gateway between the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, and blockades of both straits would cut off Saudi Arabia ships entirely.

The United States and Iran continued to trade attacks for the 12th consecutive night after the cease-fire between the two countries ended.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Claimed attacks come days after Houthis announced naval embargo on Saudi vessels.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have claimed an attack on two Saudi oil tankers transiting through the Red Sea.

“We targeted two Saudi oil tankers, named ENCELA and LAYLIA, for their violation of the blockade decision issued by the armed forces,” Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Wednesday.

Saree added that the attacks were carried out, “using a number of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones”, and led to fires on the ships.

The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, had also forced “nearly ten ships… to abandon their routes, and turn back”, Saree said.

Saudi Arabia has not commented on the claims, but the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said it had received reports that a tanker has been struck.

“The master of a tanker reports being struck by an unknown projectile which has caused a fire onboard that the crew are currently fighting,” UKMTO, which monitors shipping in the region, said.

Yemen’s Houthi group, which has fought the Yemeni government and a Saudi-led coalition that backs it for more than a decade, imposed a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia on July 20. That followed some of the worst violence Yemen has seen for four years, after the Yemeni government bombed the Houthi-controlled Sanaa airport to stop an Iranian plane from landing.

The Houthis said the declaration of the maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia was “based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye’ and affirmed “the right of our great people to respond to the blockade with a blockade”.

The group, which seized Sanaa in 2014, accused Saudi leaders of imposing “an unjust and oppressive siege” for nearly 12 years, “plundering our resources and imposing a comprehensive blockade on our ports and airports by land, sea, and air”.

“The Saudis feel that they can instigate a popular uprising against the Houthis using these economic strangulation methods,” Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a journalist based in Sanaa told Al Jazeera.

Riyadh has rejected claims that it was imposing a siege on the Yemeni people, and the group’s critics point out that they have rejected a proposal from Jordan to resume flights between Amman and Sanaa.

“The ultimate goal for Ansar Allah’s naval blockade against the Saudis, is to force Riyadh to lift its embargo on the ports and airports controlled by the Houthis,” al-Bukhaiti said.

Amid the disruption in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz due to the US-Israel war on Iran, Saudi Arabia has been attempting to facilitate oil flow through alternative routes through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. But that route is now under threat from the Houthis.

The Houthis disrupted global commerce when they began attacking ships around the Bab al-Mandeb after the launch of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. The attacks ended with the announcement of a “ceasefire” in Gaza in October 2025.

“The people who are questioning if the Houthis can successfully do a blockade against the Saudis should remember, how successfully the Houthis closed access to the Red Sea for the Israeli ports, which in fact resulted in the closure of Eilat port in southern Israel,” said al-Bukhaiti. “Eventually the Americans had to do a deal with the Houthis, with mediation from Oman,” he added, referring to a May 2025 agreement.

The Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s most important shipping routes, including for oil exports.

Between Yemen to the northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa to the southwest, the strait is just 29km (18 miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting traffic to two channels for inbound and outbound vessels using the Suez Canal.

In 2024, about 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum products passed through the strait – about 5 percent of the global total.

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed since Israel and the US launched their war on Iran in late February, shutting down Bab al-Mandeb as well could block 25 percent of the world’s oil and gas supply.

Wilfredo Engalla, a 51-year-old Filipino immigrant, alleged in a medical malpractice case that Kaiser doctors misdiagnosed him with colds and allergies for years before eventually informing him he had terminal lung cancer.

He died before his complaint could be heard by an arbitrator, which his Kaiser policy required. His case prompted a withering rebuke from the California Supreme Court, which said Kaiser’s system of arbitrating legal disputes was subject to long delays and unfair to its members. The year was 1997.

Nearly three decades after the landmark decision, the HMO giant — which made a series of sweeping reforms after the ruling — is once again facing questions over whether its arbitration system is stacked against the interests of its members.

Plaintiffs attorneys, legislators and patients say Kaiser’s private and confidential process for arbitrating legal disputes over medical care still has key flaws that favor Kaiser over patients bringing malpractice cases. The company insures about 25% of Californians, including some employees of the Los Angeles Times.

“Kaiser has really lost its way,” said Assemblyman Robert Garcia (D-Rancho Cucamonga). Garcia, who is a longtime Kaiser member, recently introduced a bill to require the California attorney general to oversee arbitrations mandated by any health plan.

Kaiser defended its arbitration system, saying in a statement that it was fair for both patients and the nonprofit.

Many companies and other organizations, including some hospitals, HMOs and physician groups, require their customers or patients to take their complaints to private arbitration rather than to court.

But unlike most other companies, which send claims to large arbitration firms, Kaiser created its own system back in 1971.

Under Kaiser’s system, once a neutral arbitrator is selected, either party can opt to disqualify that person without cause. There is no limit on the number of disqualifications.

Although the health plan designed the system to be fair, patients and their lawyers have alleged that in reality Kaiser’s greater knowledge of arbitrators’ past rulings and its ability to veto arbitrators give it an advantage to pick favorable judges.

Critics such as Arlan Cohen, a physician and attorney who has brought more than two dozen cases against the health plan, say the system also provides a financial incentive to arbitrators to rule in Kaiser’s favor in order to be selected for future cases.

While Kaiser has access to all the decisions made by arbitrators in its system, the patient’s family gets a more limited disclosure of an arbitrator’s history of cases, lawyers say, adding that it’s not easy to see which arbitrators have ruled frequently for Kaiser.

Kaiser said it disagreed that the system allowed it to select favored arbitrators.

“The appointment process is not influenced by whether the arbitrator has ruled for or against KP or has a record of ruling against Kaiser Permanente,” its statement said.

“As required by law, both parties receive information about potential arbitrators and can decline to move forward with any they are not comfortable,” the statement said.

One problem is what experts call the “repeat player effect,” in which a large company appearing repeatedly before the same panel of arbitrators allegedly gains an advantage over the individual bringing a single complaint.

David Allen Larson, past chair of the American Bar Assn.’s dispute resolution section, said the repeat player effect happens because the patient will likely be choosing an arbitrator on the health plan’s system just once, while “Kaiser is selecting them every single day.”

“They know the system. They know the rules,” Larson said of Kaiser. “The entire process gives them an advantage.”

Alan Kang, a lawyer, in a recent petition filed in L.A. County Superior Court, contends that the fees the arbitrators earn from hearing cases — as much as $2,000 an hour — give them an incentive to rule in Kaiser’s favor so they are chosen to hear more cases.

“When a judge’s future income is at stake, it is impossible to be impartial,” Kang wrote in the petition.

The petition seeks to void the December decision of an arbitrator who ruled against the family of Evangelina Aquino, a Kaiser employee who died of cancer at age 40.

Kang, the Aquino family and the medical experts they hired for the case say her cancer would have been treatable if Kaiser doctors had found it with a test they said her symptoms called for. Kaiser argued it was a different kind of cancer that was aggressive and untreatable. The arbitrator agreed with Kaiser in the December decision.

After the ruling, Kang began analyzing data from Kaiser’s system.

His review of dozens of cases in the last six years found that judges overseeing the most cases nearly always ruled for Kaiser.

“The message is clear: deliver wins for Kaiser and you will get additional business,” Kang wrote in his court petition.

The Oakland-based health plan declined to answer questions about its arbitration system and Kang’s claims, but said in a statement that its “arbitration process is designed to be fair, impartial, and accessible to all members. While some arbitrators may handle multiple Kaiser Permanente-related cases, they are not employed by Kaiser Permanente, and they are selected by both parties, in accordance with the law.”

“We recognize that arbitration cases often involve difficult and deeply personal experiences for patients and families,” the statement said, “and we take all concerns raised through these processes seriously.”

Kaiser’s unique arbitration system

Arbitration can have advantages over the court system, including allowing Kaiser to save on legal costs, which otherwise would raise the price of premiums it charges to families, employers and governments.

Kaiser offers to pay the arbitrators’ fees, which can save families tens of thousands of dollars.

Arbitration may also lead to faster outcomes, possibly avoiding years of litigation. Unlike civil litigation, arbitration decisions are especially difficult to appeal.

After the criticism by the state Supreme Court in 1997, Kaiser reformed the system by creating the Office of the Independent Administrator. The office is funded by a Kaiser trust and the $150 fee each patient filing a claim must pay, said Marcella Bell, who serves as the independent administrator.

Bell said the office works independently from Kaiser.

The office selected 195 retired judges and lawyers to serve on a panel that patients and Kaiser can choose from when selecting a neutral arbitrator to oversee and decide a malpractice case.

Rules written by the independent administrator, in consultation with the health plan and an advisory board, allow Kaiser and the family to cut an arbitrator they don’t like, at multiple steps in the process.

The administrator’s office randomly selects 12 members from its panel. Both sides can each remove any four of those arbitrators. The two sides then rank the remaining arbitrators in order of preference. The administrator selects the top-ranked arbitrator to hear the case.

The two parties then still have the ability to disqualify that selection without cause.

Members of the United Nurses Assns. of California and Union of Healthcare Professionals strike outside Kaiser Permanente in Oakland on Jan. 28.

(Jessica Christian / San Francisco Chronicle)

Last year, Kaiser’s arbitration system closed 529 arbitration cases.

The arbitrators threw out 14% of the cases, ruling in favor of Kaiser’s motion for summary judgment, and dismissed an additional 5% of cases on technical or procedural grounds.

Only 23 cases, or 4% of the total, went to a hearing. Among those, the arbitrator decided for Kaiser in 17, with the patient winning the remaining six.

Patients and their families withdrew their claim in 20% of the cases. About half of those patients did not have a lawyer and had tried to represent themselves.

The parties settled for an undisclosed sum in 57% of the cases. The settlements are confidential.

Patient safety questions

Those who have studied the use of arbitration by Kaiser and other HMOs for medical malpractice claims say the secrecy of the settlements and the closed hearings could keep safety problems from coming to light.

“The secrecy of arbitration proceedings may prevent publicity that could reveal poor doctors,” the California Research Bureau warned in a report in 2000 that analyzed Kaiser’s system. That compares with public court cases that could deter “bad behavior” in the future, the researchers wrote.

In December 2023, 53-year-old Francisco Delgadillo arrived at the Kaiser ER in Vallejo with severe chest pain. After an initial assessment, he waited eight hours for care, according to state regulators.

He died in the lobby. A state and federal investigation found multiple violations, including that Kaiser failed to have a licensed nurse monitoring the dozens of patients in the ER’s waiting room.

The Delgadillo family filed an arbitration claim. Their lawyer Jeff Mitchell said the case settled for a confidential sum and he could not discuss it.

Mitchell agreed that the secrecy raised patient safety concerns.

“They love the system, otherwise they would not be so hellbent to keep it,” Mitchell said of Kaiser’s repeated efforts to dispel criticism. “They don’t want these cases to get in front of juries.”

A licensed practical nurse attends to a patient at a Kaiser Permanente in Culver City in September.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Calls for reform

Despite the changes Kaiser made after the 1997 court decision, patients and their families have continued to complain.

According to the administrator’s 2025 annual report, the “most common” complaint the office heard last year was about the neutral arbitrator.

“Most complained that the arbitrator was biased, partisan, unjust, and in Kaiser’s favor,” the report said.

Stephen Martinez, a retired aerospace engineer from Bellflower, is leading the effort to pass the state bill introduced by Garcia.

At an April hearing in the state Assembly, Martinez spoke about how his wife had found a lump in her breast and asked for an appointment with her longtime caregiver at Kaiser to examine it. Instead she was sent to a physician assistant, who dismissed it, he said.

“The PA prescribed warm compresses, a sports bra, and limited chocolate,” Martinez testified. “We would later find that Lindalee did have breast cancer that had already spread.”

Martinez and his wife said they spent $175,000 on lawyers and medical experts to bring that arbitration case. A chief breast surgeon at Kaiser and another surgeon who had retired from that job both testified that the Kaiser physician assistant failed to follow the health system’s guidelines.

Kaiser’s expert argued that the physician assistant did an appropriate exam and that his low suspicion of breast cancer was reasonable. The neutral arbitrator concurred and ruled against the couple.

After passing the Assembly, Assembly Bill 1770 is now in the state Senate for consideration. The bill lets the attorney general decide what actions they will take to ensure health plan arbitrations are handled fairly and transparently. If the bill passes, the state would add four deputy attorneys general, a legal analyst and three legal secretaries to do that work, according to a legislative analyst’s report.

Kaiser says it has concerns about the bill, including that it would “create overlapping state oversight and duplicative reporting requirements.”

Kaiser Permanente’s corporate offices in downtown Oakland in January 2025.

(Jane Tyska / East Bay Times via Getty Images)

Questions of a missed diagnosis

When Janene Fowler was 22, her body seemed to turn against her. She grew weak, pain shot through her hands and feet, her heart raced. She soon required a wheelchair.

Fowler’s medical chart detailed what could have caused her disabling problems. A test eight years before had found a deficiency of vitamin B12, according to the chart. Over the years, Kaiser doctors noted problems such as depression, unexplained pain, shortness of breath, a sore tongue and an abnormal gait — all possible symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency.

In February 2022, after her family complained about her not being able to see a neurologist, she got an appointment. The specialist noted her vitamin deficiency, telling the nurse to start her on a supplement at once. But the treatment did not begin because the paperwork was lost, her medical records show.

Two weeks later, Fowler left Kaiser to see a doctor at UCLA. A doctor there quickly started injections of B12.

Her symptoms gradually got better, but her new doctors say the years-long deficiency left permanent damage. She still can’t walk without help.

The arbitrator, a retired judge, sided with Kaiser’s doctors and experts, who questioned whether Fowler’s problems were caused by a deficiency of vitamin B12. While one test showed a deficiency, he noted that a second test failed to confirm it. He wrote that Fowler and her lawyers had failed to prove that Kaiser “breached its duty of care.”

Cohen, Fowler’s lawyer, asserted that the retired judge’s decision was contrary to UCLA medical records, which detail her deficiency and treatment.

Fowler now spends most of her time at home. She can’t drive. She often falls when she tries to get around with a cane. She loves to cook, but said she burns herself when she tries.

“My hands don’t really do what I tell them,” she said.

Kaiser declined to answer questions about her case, citing patients’ privacy rights.

Fowler said she’s angry about how the health plan’s doctors and its arbitration system treated her.

“I thought I was going to die, and no one at Kaiser seemed to care,” she said. “What justice can you have in a system that is run by those you are trying to sue?”

Tourists say people were putting the towels on the beds first thing then not coming back until 4pm

Resort workers have been hailed heroes after being filmed removing piles of towels from unoccupied sunbeds reserved by holidaymakers. The viral clip has delighted travellers fed up with people claiming loungers for hours without using them.

It was filmed at Camping Le Marsouins in Argelès-sur-Mer, near Perpignan, France. With several holiday resorts now introducing rules to stop guests reserving sunbeds they are not using, staff at the campsite decided to take matters into their own hands.

The clip, which has racked up over three million views and 80,000 likes, showed two members of staff in yellow and red uniforms collecting towels from empty loungers. They piled the abandoned towels onto a single sunbed, freeing up the rest for guests who are actually using the pool

Vir Ginie, who filmed the video, explained why staff stepped in. She said: “The idea is to free up unoccupied sun loungers. People come and leave their towels as soon as the pool opens, then leave and come back around 4pm, for example.

“So the loungers are unavailable for people at the pool and, in high season, it causes problems and annoys the other holidaymakers.”

The clip reignited the long-running debate over holidaymakers reserving poolside loungers for hours before returning to use them.

One viewer said: “About time – all hotels should be doing this.” Another said: A big round of applause for these staff members.

“This is exactly how it should be in every hotel.” While a third said: “All hotels should do this.”