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A proposal to make daylight saving time the year-round default nationwide is once again coming before Congress.

And, as in the past in both California and nationally, proponents and opponents of the switch cite the potential effects (good or bad) on health, business and agriculture as reasons to support or oppose the plan.

The House is expected to vote on the Sunshine Protection Act this week, according to the office of Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), the bill’s author.

The Senate version of the bill, SB 29, is sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). In a statement last year he said, “More daylight after work means more business and more active, safer California communities.”

Most of the U.S. went on daylight saving time in the spring, moving clocks one hour ahead of standard time. The bill would end the “fall back” to standard time that typically takes place in November. The change would mean darker mornings and later sunsets. President Trump has indicated that he supports the plan.

It won’t be the first time the debate over timekeeping has made its way to Capitol Hill. In 2022, a bill to make daylight saving time permanent was approved by the Senate, but the effort stalled in the House.

“It’s clear that year-round daylight saving time is a popular, commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions of Americans,” Buchanan said in a statement to The Times. “Passing my bipartisan Sunshine Protection Act will bring us one step closer to ending the outdated and unpopular practice of changing our clocks twice a year.”

Areas that already do not observe daylight saving time would be able to stay on permanent standard time, according to the bill text. For example, Arizona and Hawaii do not move their clocks forward or backward.

Lawmakers in California and other states could opt out making daylight saving time permanent, but would need to decide before the law takes effect, Josh Gregory, a senior advisor to Buchanan, said in an email.

The effort has drawn support from both sides of the aisle. In California, Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake), Ken Calvert (R-Corona) and Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) are cosponsors of H.R. 139.

The proposal also has bipartisan opposition.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has also been a vocal opponent of permanent daylight saving time. In a speech last year, Cotton argued that while year-round daylight saving time might benefit some activities and areas — such as golfing in Florida and Alabama — residents of northern states and on the western sides of time zones might not see the sun rise until 9 a.m. in the winter.

Cotton raised concerns that students would need to walk to school in the dark and risk being struck by drivers, as was the case in 1974 when the U.S. briefly adopted year-round daylight saving time to combat an energy crisis.

“The darkness of permanent daylight saving time would be especially harmful for schoolchildren and working Americans,” Cotton said.

Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-San Pedro) told The Times in a statement that she plans to vote against the bill because “medical experts have warned that permanent daylight saving time is bad for our health.”

She supports a different proposal, the Sunshine for Our Kids Act, which seeks to make permanent standard time the default nationwide but gives states the option to opt out. The bill, HR 9638, has been endorsed by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Stanford professor Jamie Zeitzer, a physiologist who studies circadian cycles and how humans respond to light, supports ending the twice-a-year time changes.

The “spring forward” shift results in a loss of sleep and has been associated with a number of negative health effects, he said. The spring clock change has also been linked to more car accidents and cardiovascular incidents, he added.

Zeitzer’s research found that the darker mornings and brighter evenings of permanent daylight saving time weaken the circadian clock for many people.

“The abundance of biological evidence is clear that permanent standard time is a better solution,” Zeitzer said. “When you have a more robust light signal early in the morning, that will help keep your internal circadian system synchronized to the day.”

A 2025 AP-NORC survey found that the current system of changing the clocks twice a year is unpopular. According to the poll of nearly 1,300 U.S. adults, only 12% of respondents favored the current system, while 47% were opposed and 40% were neutral.

In the business world, there’s no consensus on making daylight saving time permanent. Many chambers of commerce and businesses that want to lure customers later in the day generally support it, while agricultural interests and some industries oppose it.

As for making standard time permanent, that faces opposition too. Among the opponents: golf course owners.

Jay Karen, the chief executive officer of the National Golf Course Owners Assn., testified at a congressional hearing in November that losing extra evening daylight could cost the industry $1.6 billion in green fees alone because so many Americans tend to golf in the afternoon or evening.

Buchanan’s office said in a statement that the “well-documented benefits of having more sunshine later in the day after school and after work will be beneficial for millions of Americans’ health and well-being.”

There have been previous attempts to put an end to the twice-annual clock adjustments in California.

In 2018, California voters approved Proposition 7, which was supposed to give the Legislature the authority to impose year-round daylight saving time — but only if the federal government allowed states to do so. It has not yet led to any meaningful change.

Earlier this year, state Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) introduced SB 1197, which seeks to “ditch the switch” by moving the state to permanent standard time.

A spokesperson for Niello’s office said that because his previous efforts failed to gain traction, his current proposal includes a provision requiring California to conform if the federal government adopts permanent daylight saving time.

For half a century, Deidre Hall has taken on every kind of disaster in the drama-packed town of Salem, Ill., as a star of “Days of Our Lives.”

There was the time — actually, it happened twice — when her character, Dr. Marlena Evans, was famously possessed by the devil and even levitated.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Or the time a serial killer, who was actually Marlena under hypnosis, seemed to kill several beloved characters. The long-running show’s storylines have become legendary, and in March, while promoting “Hail Mary,” actor Ryan Gosling even gave Hall a shout-out, admitting he was a fan, praising the hard work of soap opera actors and calling her an “OG acting inspiration.”

But Hall’s real life in Santa Monica is much quieter than her character’s, and she likes it that way.

“When I bought my house in Santa Monica, I didn’t realize how great it would be to live near Montana Avenue,” says Hall, 78, about the popular shopping spot. Every day, she walks to the main street with her golden retriever, Riley, and enjoys Pilates, art and good food along the way. “The owners of the Farms Market even keep dog biscuits, so guess where the dog wants to go every time we walk — the Farms, of course,” she says, laughing.

When she isn’t filming the daily soap opera, which airs on Peacock, Hall enjoys raising monarch butterflies, exploring the shops and restaurants on Montana, and hosting movie nights at home with her two sons.

Here’s what a perfect day in L.A. looks like for her.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: Breakfast and dog walk

I usually kick off my day with a protein shake, feed our golden retriever and take her out for a walk. She’s a phenomenal girl. When we adopted her, her name was Riley, but I did think about naming her after Mrs. Hughes from “Downton Abbey.”

10 a.m.: Church and garden time

After I walk the dog and go to church, I like to spend some time in my yard. I’m not a natural gardener, but I really enjoy it. I started raising monarch butterflies because my identical twin sister, who played my twin on the show, planted a butterfly garden. Monarchs are amazing because they are transitional. Every year, they travel from Mexico to southern New England, but it’s getting harder for them. Their numbers have dropped by about 80%. To help, I plant milkweed, which is what they need to survive. I buy my milkweed from the Staghorn Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Julie, who owns the nursery, is delightful and has a wide variety of milkweed. The monarchs always seem to find my garden. Julie was raising some caterpillars too, and she cared a lot about them. We talked about how important it is to help the butterflies. That’s why I do this. Sometimes I get milkweed with eggs already on it, and Julie knows her butterflies are going to a good home.

1 p.m.: Walk to Montana Avenue for some lunch

I live near Montana and love taking long walks, going to Pilates and trying out the great restaurants nearby, like R+D Kitchen and La La Land. I’m a big fan of the waffles at the Courtyard Kitchen. Just a few days ago, I had a chicken salad on raisin bread with an Arnold Palmer, and it was delicious. It is right on Montana and has a nice outdoor seating area. It’s one of my favorite spots. La La Land always has a long line in the morning, which is perfect if you want coffee. They serve coffee, doughnuts, croissants and avocado toast. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, and you can even bring your dog.

2 p.m.: Peek inside a clock shop

There’s a small clock shop on Montana Avenue that’s closed on Sundays, but if you walk by, you’ll see all kinds of clocks — standing, table and wall clocks. The owner is great at fixing them. Once, I bought a wall clock from MacKenzie-Childs, but it didn’t work. And I was really upset because it matched everything else on my countertop. I brought it to the owner and said, “I love this, but I can’t make it work.” He fixed it right away. His name is John, but I call him Geppetto. And we all know why. He really does have a magic touch.

2:30 p.m.: Visit a neighborhood art gallery

Ten Women Gallery is run by 10 artists, all of whom show their work there. I was drawn to some watercolors there, bought a few cards and spoke with one of the artists. She told me, “You seem to love watercolors,” and mentioned that the artist who painted them, Pamela Harnois, lives in Los Angeles and teaches nearby. I got Pamela’s name and found out she taught at the Brentwood Art School. I was so inspired by her gift that I started taking private lessons with her on Saturdays. That gallery is where I discovered my love for watercolor painting.

3 p.m.: Grab some ice cream at Rori’s

The other day, my longtime girlfriend wanted to get ice cream and told me, “We are walking to Rori’s Artisanal Creamery.” It’s a small shop on Montana near Lincoln. They make everything themselves, using local ingredients from grass-fed cows with no added hormones. The place is family-owned and probably has the healthiest ice cream you’ll find. They switch up their flavors often, but my favorite is the salted caramel.

6 p.m.: Family dinner and movie night at home

R+D Kitchen is always packed, so my sons, who are 31 and 33, do the cooking. They come over, and together we make salads and cook dinner. There’s a neighborhood grocery store called the Farms, off Montana, a small family-run place that has everything we need. Everyone knows each other there, and people bring their dogs. We try to have movie night every Sunday. Sometimes the day changes, but we always make sure to have one night a week where we cook a meal and sit down as a family. Keeping that tradition has become really important to us. My sons are great cooks, which is funny because they definitely didn’t get that from me. [Laughs]

9 p.m.: Take Riley for one last walk and visit neighbors

After dinner, I take my dog for a walk. It’s a great way to meet neighbors. We always go around the same block. We’ve met so many people, and since she’s a golden retriever, she loves meeting everyone.

10 p.m.: News, knitting and bedtime

I am a news junkie, so I usually watch whatever is on the news before I go to bed. I have a long-standing passion for knitting. Lately, though, the news would make me drop a stitch.

Rescue teams and volunteers are working around the clock in search for survivors trapped beneath the rubble in Venezuela, as families cling to hope days after the June 24 twin earthquakes, with tens of thousands of people still missing. Zein Basravi reports from Caracas.

The final journey

“By mid-June it is over,” Evansis says.

The mature cicadas, dark-shelled and spent, begin flying towards the Umrong River in large numbers and drop into the rapids. The river fills with them. Along the banks, dead cicadas collect against wet stones and bamboo roots, their wings plastered flat by the current.

Locals call it niangtaser suicide. Hajong offers a simpler explanation: Cicadas are naturally drawn to sound and movement, and the fast-moving river may trigger that instinct in their final hours.

For the fish below the surface, it is a feast. For the forest above, closure.

The journey that began four years earlier beneath the ground ends in the same river that separates Livi’s home from the sanctuary.

Not everyone has watched that cycle for as long as Kewstar Majaw.

At 92, he has witnessed more emergences than almost anyone alive in the village. He served in the Indian Army. He loves watching football. And every four years, without fail, he waits for his noisy visitors.

For Kewstar, the passing of the cicadas has become another way of measuring life. World Cups came and went. Governments changed. Forests retreated. But every four years, if the rains arrived on time and the bamboo still held, the forest sang.

As a boy, he would follow his parents into the forest carrying bamboo containers, the sound reaching them before the insects came into view. In those days, the niangtaser was everywhere. Behind houses. In the trees along village paths. Young ones, mature ones – the forest floor was alive with them.

The chorus was so loud, he recalls with a laugh, that people stuffed cotton into their ears to bear it.

The insect did not need to be searched for. It found you.

Kewstar sits quietly for a moment. At his age, he has watched the forest retreat, the bamboo thin, and the chorus fade with each passing emergence. The insect that once appeared on his doorstep now requires a torch and a walk in the dark to be found.

“It was everywhere,” he says softly. “Now you have to go looking for it.”

In a few weeks, the cicadas will disappear beneath the earth once more,  keeping time in darkness until the cycle begins again. By the next emergence, another football World Cup will be under way somewhere else in the world.

Whether Saiden’s forests will still sing with them depends on what survives until then.

May 18 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has renewed his threats of mass violence against Iran, warning Tehran that “the Clock is Ticking” as the stalemate in talks to end the war shows no signs of ending.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night, Trump wrote: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

“TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

The two-sentence statement echoed the scale of violence he threatened April 7, shortly before the cease-fire was announced, when he warned Iran to make an agreement to end the war or “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Trump has been seeking an agreement with Iran to end the war since the conflict was halted April 8 with a cease-fire to permit negotiations.

Those negotiations have progressed little if at all since talks broke down in Islamabad in mid-April.

An Iranian proposal recently sent to the United States was rejected by Trump, who told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday en route to Washington from China that he looked at it and found the first sentence unacceptable.

“Well, I looked at it, and if I don’t like the first sentence, I just throw it away,” Trump said.

Asked what the first sentence was, Trump replied, “An unacceptable sentence.”

Trump said he is seeking a lengthy suspension of Iran’s nuclear program, stating that two decades may comply with his demands but “it’s got to be a real 20 years.”

According to Iranian state media Press TV, Iran’s proposal calls for a comprehensive end to the war, full compensation from the United States for damages, the removal of sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets and recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported the United States responded with five demands: no compensation, no unfreezing of assets, the handover of 881.8 pounds of uranium to the United States, only one nuclear facility remaining active and making a halt to the war on all fronts conditional on negotiations.

In response to Trump’s threat on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, senior spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces, called Trump “delusional,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“Repeating any foolishness to compensate for America’s disgrace in the third imposed war against Iran will bring no consequence other than receiving more crushing and severe blows for that country,” Shekarchi said.

He warned Trump if the United States resumed its attacks, “the assets and decayed army of that country will face new, offensive, surprising and stormy scenarios.”

“Implementing the U.S. blockade is not without risk, and itself is hostilities. Given the fragility of the ceasefire and President Trump’s own messaging about resuming strikes on Iran, there is a risk that they may need to use force, and they have been and remain in hostilities,” she continued.

April 24 (UPI) — A bill to legalize assisted-dying in England and Wales was Friday set to run out of time to complete all the necessary stages for it to become law in the current session of parliament, 10 months after MPs passed the legislation.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been stalled in its committee stage in the House of Lords since June but with Friday set to be the final debate in the upper chamber before the 2024-2026 session ends in early May, it has run out of road.

“Detailed line-by-line scrutiny of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill continues,” The Lords said Friday in its order of business for the day.

Members have used up all 14 committee-stage days allotted for the bill as they attempted to grapple with more than 1,000 amendments covering everything from blocking overseas patients from accessing the treatment and the inclusion of people injured serving in the military or in industrial accidents to making patients aware of non-lethal treatment options.

Only around halfway through the stages required before it can receive “Royal Assent” from King Charles and finally become law, the bill can no longer proceed and cannot be carried over to the 2026-2027 session.

Supporters vowed not to give up on the bill, which would give terminally ill adults with less than six months to live the legal right to end their lives with the help of medical professionals, saying they would try to reintroduce it when the new parliament convenes on May 13.

The bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, said she had a group of backers who had agreed to try to bring back the bill immediately following the state opening of parliament.

To do so, they need to prevail in a ballot in which MPs compete for 25 slots to introduce legislation they have authored to the House of Commons, so-called private members’ bills.

The next private members’ bill ballot is scheduled for May 21.

Leadbeater said she was disappointed, upset and angry at the outcome.

She said that terminally ill patients and their families she had been speaking with felt “a real sense of feeling let down by our democratic system.”

“This is not over. The issue is not going to go away just because of an undemocratic filibuster in the Lords. We will keep pushing for a safer, more compassionate law until parliament reaches a final decision.”

Opponents were concerned over the watering down of key safeguards in the original bill introduced in the House of Commons in November 2024, including dropping the requirement for a High Court judge to review every case.

“If we’re going to do this, we have to have safeguards and I really don’t think there are anywhere near enough safeguards in it,” said Baroness Grey-Thompson, adding that it was the job of peers to go through every line in legislation.

She told the BBC that when bills failed it because it was usually because they were poorly drafted, rather than because of the number of amendments tabled.

“It was written in haste and there are so many gaps in it that a number of peers are really uncomfortable with this particular bill, even though they may be in favor of the principle,” she said.

Leadbeater said she hoped the Commons would pass the bill again and an accommodation could be agreed with members of the upper house over amendments.

She did not rule out invoking a very rarely used procedural maneuver, a theoretical nuclear option that dates back more than a century in which the Lords is rendered powerless to stop a bill that the House of Commons has passed more than once from becoming law — but said she hoped that would not be necessary.