community

Bello Gambur dreads going to the stream before 2 p.m. 

Every morning, he leaves home with a herd of over 30 cattle, with his staff slung across his shoulders as they head into the bush. For about five hours, he watches them as they graze, rest, and wander, but none can drink. The only stream in the community lies just a short walk away, yet he must wait until 2 p.m. to take them there.

Going earlier, he says, could have deadly consequences.

All his life, the forty-year-old has lived as a herder in Mararaban Bare, a small community in the Numan Local Government Area of Adamawa State, North East Nigeria, where his ancestors migrated and settled a long time ago.  

Over the years, the herders lived in peace with their host community, but in 2017, violence broke out over water. The clash claimed many lives, and several properties were destroyed. In October, security operatives stepped in to quell a similar incident. 

So, Bello doesn’t mind his herd enduring hours of thirst if it helps keep the fragile peace.

He leads the cattle to the stream when most locals have finished using it and are back at their homes. Bello and the other herders go there between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to prevent coming in contact with the locals who visit the stream every morning to bathe, wash, and fetch water for domestic chores.  

The rationing also requires the locals to leave before 2 p.m. 

However, this arrangement has not ended the clashes between the groups, as locals believe it does little to address deeper grievances.

Tension keeps building 

“Irrigation farmers use the water from the canal to farm. And other community members drink the water, the cattle also drink from it, so this is a problem,” Alphonsus Bosso, a 55-year-old farmer and resident of Mararaban Bare, told HumAngle.

He said the tension is unlikely to end soon, especially with the dry season approaching. This competition for access to the stream intensifies during this period.

Alphonsus said a lasting solution would be to provide the herders with their own water source “because we no longer co-exist”. In some other Adamawa communities, humanitarian organisations have already supported the creation of alternative water sources, which have helped ease similar tensions, a model yet to reach Mararaban Bare.

“We used to have canals that served as water sources for our cattle, and we barely used the stream until the canals began to dry up,” said Muza Alhaji Shenya, a 37-year-old herder in the area. He linked the recent drying up of water bodies in the area to industrial expansion, particularly the construction of embankments to store water for sugarcane plantations. HumAngle saw some of these embankments during a visit.

However, environmental experts say the problem extends beyond industrial activity.

Hamza Muhammed Usman, the Executive Director of Environmental Care Foundation, a non-governmental organisation in Adamawa State that promotes a climate-friendly environment, food security, and peacebuilding, explained that prolonged dry spells, erratic rainfall, and deforestation, among other factors, are responsible for the shrinking water bodies in the state.

He said that overgrazing by livestock and human activities such as excessive farming on the same location and mining reduce vegetation cover, which disrupts the natural flow of water into its channels and bodies, especially in local government areas such as Numan, Fufore, some parts of Madagali, Maiha, Gombi, and the southern zone. 

Hamza also noted that migration and growing birth rates in the affected areas have increased the competition for water. “There are people from Borno, Gombe, Taraba, and other places trooping into Adamawa for greener pastures. This leads to overdependence on the limited resources,” he said. 

‘They pollute the water’

Locals insist that sharing the water with the cattle is unhealthy. 

“The cattle are polluting the water with mud and urine,” said Silas Simon, the community leader. “We dilute the water with alum when we want to consume.”

Even this treatment becomes difficult during the dry season, which starts in October. 

During the season, the herders in Mararaban Bare are left with two options: lead their cattle to the local stream or trek six kilometres into Bare, the nearest village with multiple water sources. The journey takes about six hours, making the local stream the closest option for many.

One herder, who treks to Bare to avoid being attacked by locals, said his cattle often drink water once a day, mostly in the afternoon, and sometimes, in the evening while returning to their settlement. There, water is provided for them in small containers, but much priority is given to the calves since the water is not enough. 

“The cows are getting thinner; their health has deteriorated over the years,” he said. “Every water source is drying up.”

“If we can have alternative water sources, then we won’t go to the stream for water where the people drink from,” Muza said. 

There is a borehole in Mararaban Bare, but it barely functions. 

Silas noted that if the borehole was functional, locals would use it as a water source and leave the stream for the herders, which would reduce the clashes.

“The borehole barely works. If it ever pumps water, it ceases at any time, so one has to wait for hours before the water runs again. Sometimes, people queue up from morning to evening and get unlucky because it ceases anytime,” he said. 

‘No agreement’

Several meetings have been held between the locals and herders to resolve the conflict, but no lasting agreement has been reached apart from a temporary water-use arrangement. Silas said tensions remain high, as youths from both groups often act as the main instigators during clashes.

“We do not wish to provoke anyone; we are only after the welfare of the cattle,” said Alhaji Ngala, the chairperson of herders in the community. He also noted that farms have taken over grazing routes, leaving them with “no freedom”. 

“If we can have access to grazing routes and enough water supply, then our minds will be at peace,” Ngala told HumAngle. 

Hamza, the climate-friendly environment advocate, urged the government to invest in solar-powered boreholes as a way of promoting clean energy and sustainable water supply across communities facing similar challenges. He also called for stronger conflict-resolution mechanisms across the state.

“Water scarcity is not just an environmental issue but a driver of insecurity, because in a place where there is tension, certain groups can take advantage of the situation to infiltrate such communities and cause problems,” Hamza said. 

Although the state government has collaborated with civil society organisations to adopt measures like afforestation, small-scale irrigation projects, and awareness campaigns, among other initiatives, to address the recurring clashes over water and limited resources. Hamza noted that many communities still lack the technical capacity and financial support to sustain these interventions.

“Some of the measures, like afforestation and proper waste management, are not owned properly by the locals,” Hamza said. 

He further called for integrated water resource management and inclusive governance to protect watersheds and prevent further land degradation. “Degraded lands can be restored through rotation. Herders should not graze on the same spot for more than five years, and farmers should do the same,” he said.

He also stressed the need for interdependence; farmers relying on cow dung as manure, and herders being granted access to reserved grazing areas.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, across the U.S. and the world, millions of quarantined citizens appeared nightly at their windows and balconies, offering thanks to the healthcare workers whose lives were dedicated to saving theirs. In my little corner of Silver Lake, 7 p.m. commenced a daily cacophonous communal concert of pots and pans banging, trombones and trumpets blaring, dogs and coyotes howling: a grateful group roar. I was 67 with a history of respiratory illness: extra high risk. My younger neighbors, knowing this, grocery-shopped for me, sweetening my mornings with fresh milk and fruit during those long, grim days.

“Sacrament” is Susan Straight’s homage to a small fictional band of ICU nurses battling the 2020 COVID-19 surge at a San Bernardino hospital. Her 10th novel follows the beat she’s been covering, and living, since her first. “Aquaboogie,” her 1990 debut, was set in Rio Seco, a fictional stand-in for Riverside, where Straight grew up and still lives. The first in her bloodline to graduate high school, Straight earned an MFA at the University of Massachusetts and brought it home to UC Riverside, where she’s been teaching creative writing since 1988. Her twin passions for her homeland and lyrical artistry bloom on every page. “All summer, there had been fewer cars on the road in Southern California, and everyone remarked on how with no smog, the sunsets weren’t deep, heated crimson. Just quiet slipping into darkness.”

As Susan Straight’s work invariably does, “Sacrament” challenges the prevailing notion that the overlooked Californians she centers in her work and in her life are less worthy, less interesting, less human than their wealthier, whiter, more visible urban counterparts.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Times dubbed Straight the “bard of overlooked California,” and “Sacrament” proves the praise. Straight’s African American ex-husband and three daughters; her Latino, Filipino, white, Native and mixed-race neighbors; and her immersion in overlooked California bring new meaning to the advice “write what you know.” Straight’s personal and literary missions extend to who she knows.

In “Sacrament,” Straight turns her singular focus to a handful of nurses camping in a wagon train of funky, sweltering trailers near the hospital they call Our Lady. Separated from their spouses and kids — “Six feet apart or six feet under,” Larette’s son Joey chants — Larette, Cherrise, Marisol and their colleagues are themselves underprotected from the virus, which they eventually contract, and from the domestic dramas that seep from home into their pressure-cooker days. Fearful that her mom will die, Cherrise’s teenage daughter, Raquel, convinces Joey to drive her to the hospital from the date farm where Raquel has been deposited into her Auntie Lolo’s care. The drive should take two hours, but the teens are MIA for two nightmare days. Having narrowly escaped a would-be captor, Raquel remains haunted by her near fate. “The fingers in her hair pulling so hard her scalp felt like it had tiny bubbles under the skin. Wait till I pull your hair for real, bitch. She heard him even now.”

Diving deeper than the quotidian insults of her characters’ loneliness, poverty and fear, Straight brings us inside their exhausted minds. Attempting a nap, Larette lies on the break room cot, eyes closed, to no avail. “Ghost fingers in her left palm. Her right hand holding the phone on FaceTime for the wives. The husbands. The children who were grown,” she writes. “All their faces. Stoic. Weeping. Biting their lips so hard.” Later, Larette tells her husband, “Everyone you see on TV, banging pots and pans, everyone doing parades, it’s so nice. But then I have to be all alone with — their breath. Their breath just — it slows down and it’s terrifying every time.”

Perhaps most painful among the nurses’ many miseries is their isolation: the secrets they keep in hopes of sparing their loved ones an iota of extra suffering. “None of us are telling anyone we love about anything, Larette thought. She hadn’t told [her husband] anything true in weeks.”

As Straight’s work invariably does, “Sacrament” challenges the prevailing notion that the overlooked Californians she centers in her work and in her life are less worthy, less interesting, less human than their wealthier, whiter, more visible urban counterparts. Programmed to equate “rugged independence” with success, many advantaged Americans first appreciated human interdependence (berries in our cereal, test kits on our porches) in lockdown. In Straight’s world, raising each other’s kids, feeding each other’s elders, keeping each other’s secrets, mourning the dead and fighting like hell for the living is not called exigence. It’s called life.

“Sacrament” broadens the reader’s understanding of community beyond flesh-and-blood friends, family and neighbors. The love and care that flow within her community of characters draws the reader into their bright, tight circle, making the characters’ loved ones and troubles feel like the reader’s own.

Spoiler alert: The nurses’ sacrifices, strengths and foibles; their families, robbed not only of their moms and wives and daughters but also of any shred of safety; and their patients — who have tubes stuffed into their urethras and down their throats, blinking their desperate last moments of life into iPads as they take their final breaths — will likely make the reader see and respect and love not only these characters, but the consistently brilliant author who gave them life on the page of this, her finest book.

Maran, author of “The New Old Me” and other books, lives in a Silver Lake bungalow that’s even older than she is.

Let’s just kick the elephant out of the room right away. It’s hard to write a guide to Highland Park without addressing the “G” word. The neighborhood has been described as a poster child of gentrification, and for anyone who spends time there, it’s easy to see why.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

Within the Northeast neighborhood nestled between downtown L.A. and Pasadena, you’ll see the Highland Park of the past: find remnants like the stone castle that was once the home of Charles F. Lummis, a poet and journalist who famously walked from Cincinnati to Highland Park — yes, you read that correctly — to accept a job at the Los Angeles Times in the mid 1880s. (He later went on to found the Southwest Museum, L.A.’s first museum, close by.)

You’ll see the Highland Park that remains: a working-class hub where bandas practice outside for all to hear, the smell of street tacos fills the air, multigenerational families play together at the park and iconic fixtures like the 22-foot-tall Chicken Boy statue that hovers over North Figueroa like a friendly mascot.

And you’ll see the Highland Park that’s emerging: an L.A. hot spot where young people flock to sip on fancy cocktails along York Boulevard and hang out at a chic Prohibition-era bowling alley.

Somehow, all these versions exist together. These days, it’s common to see luxury companies like Le Labo, which sells candles for upward of $90, move next door to small businesses such as the beloved Mexican family-owned Delicias Bakery & Some that has been serving fresh pan dulce for nearly 35 years. The community collectively mourned when its 100-year-old historic movie theater closed last March.

As one of L.A.’s first suburbs, Highland Park began the 20th century as an artsy oasis that was dotted with charming Craftsman homes. By the 1960s, the neighborhood had transformed into an epicenter for Latino life. The evolution of Highland Park has brought all the usual tensions between longtime residents and newcomers, many of whom were priced out of areas like Silver Lake and South Pasadena.

In spite of that, Highland Park has managed to hold onto its roots and small-town charm. This is in part thanks to nonprofits like the Highland Park Heritage Trust and community members who have been working to preserve the neighborhood’s rich history and cherished cultural hubs.

“A lot of the identity is still here, things that just make it feel like home,” says Michael Nájera, 35, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for three generations. He and his wife co-founded a running club called Tofu Scramble that meets at local coffee shops on Friday mornings.

“There’s a strong sense of community here. Even with everything going on these days, it’s amazing to see people out — some of us because we can, and others at risk because they have to,” he adds, referring to the recent ICE raids. “And still, this feels like a place where it’s OK to be brown and to be outside.” It’s common to see local businesses displaying Know Your Rights cards in support of their neighbors.

Rocio Paredes, a director and photographer who attended Franklin Middle School and High School in Highland Park, adds that “Chicanoism is very engraved in our DNA here.” You can see the culture’s influence in spaces like the Centro de Arte Público and the Mechicano Art Center, both of which were home to Highland Park’s Chicano Arts Collective, an organization that helped advance the political aims of L.A.’s Chicano movement in the 1970s. And also at local restaurants. At Las Cazuelas, a family-run Salvadoran pupuseria that’s been open since 1985, Parades says, “It’s like a f— time capsule.”

From historic Craftsman homes, beautiful hills, bountiful green spaces, cuisine from various cultures, vintage shops of varied prices and a vibrant nightlife scene, there’s so much to appreciate about Highland Park.

OAKLAND — President Trump said Thursday that he had called off a planned federal “surge” into San Francisco after speaking with Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city leaders — a detente that officials and activists in the East Bay said they were not welcomed into and viewed with some suspicion, as potentially enlarging the target on their own communities.

Trump’s announcement came amid protests at the entrance to the U.S. Coast Guard base across the bay in Alameda County, where the Department of Homeland Security has begun staging additional forces. It followed a similar announcement by Lurie, who said he had told Trump during a phone call late Wednesday that San Francisco is “on the rise” and that “having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”

Lurie said Trump agreed to call off any federal deployment to the city, and that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — who is in charge of federal immigration forces — had “reaffirmed that direction” in a conversation with him Thursday morning.

Trump said on social media that his administration had been planning a “surge” in San Francisco beginning Saturday, but that Lurie had asked him “very nicely” to “give him a chance to see if he can turn it around,” and that other “friends” of Trump’s in the city had asked him to call it off because they believe Lurie is “making substantial progress.”

Trump said he told Lurie that he was “making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove,” but that he had ultimately agreed to pause the surge — in part because Lurie has the support of prominent business leaders Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce.

During a Thursday morning briefing less than an hour after Trump’s post, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and other East Bay leaders said they had “no information” about such a stand-down in their communities, and were still bracing for increased federal immigration raids given the staging of forces at nearby Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.

“The federal administration, of course, has escalated its rhetoric and its enforcement posture in the Bay Area. We know that Border Patrol agents are being stationed on Coast Guard Island,” Lee said. “But … we are fully prepared. We’re monitoring developments closely and we’ll keep our residents informed if there are any confirmed changes. Oakland is and will continue to be a welcoming city for our immigrants and our refugees.”

The Department of Homeland Security defended the deployment of its agents to the region, saying they would be “targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists.”

Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson said the staging of immigration forces in the East Bay was part of an established Trump administration “playbook” to rile up communities with immigration actions and then use any unrest to justify further force — and called on East Bay residents not to fall for it.

“We know that they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,” Jones Dickson said. “So I’m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.”

Lourdes Martinez, co-director of the immigrant rights program at Centro Legal de la Raza, said communities are understandably scared given recent legal rulings that federal immigration agents can stop people based on factors such as the color of their skin, the language they are speaking and the job sectors they work in — and organizers expect more such stops given the latest deployments.

She called on immigrants and others to protect themselves by readying documentation and making sure that they and their families are familiar with their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney — and how to contact legal advocacy groups in case of trouble. She also urged community members to report any detentions, to “make sure that nobody disappears.”

“We know this is an uncertain and stressful time. However, this is a moment of unity and power, not panic,” she said.

Shortly after Lee’s event, about 40 protesters gathered near a bridge leading to Coast Guard Island.

Music was blasting. One person wore a blow-up animal costume, a trend that gained momentum amid similar protests in Portland recently. Coast Guard members in tactical gear stood in a line across from protesters who screamed at them.

“We knew there was going to be [an immigration enforcement] presence here and we wanted to disrupt in a peaceful way — to make it harder for them to abduct people,” said Lindsey Swanson, 32, a financial planner who lives in Oakland.

Swanson and others said they believed immigration enforcement would also ramp up in San Francisco, despite Trump and Lurie’s morning assurances, and would continue in the East Bay regardless.

“There’s East Bay — Oakland, Berkeley — so calling off San Francisco means nothing,” said Rachel Kim, a 28-year-old Berkeley resident who is training to become a therapist.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump’s conversation with Lurie was an example of how he is willing to work with Democrats and other states to “do the right thing and clean up America’s cities.”

“He is genuinely interested in this effort to make our streets safer, to make our cities safe and clean again,” she said.

The morning events followed days of growing tensions in the Bay Area over Trump’s plans for the region, after he repeatedly suggested that he would send federal forces into San Francisco — which he called a “mess” in desperate need of help, despite data showing decreasing crime and homeless encampments and surging positive sentiment.

On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom confirmed the staging of immigration agents in the area, and suggested it was the first move in a broader effort by Trump and his administration to stoke chaos and intimidate residents in yet another liberal part of the country.

“He sends out masked men, he sends out Border Patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving that by sending in the Guard,” Newsom said. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”

The response echoed those of leaders and activists in other cities where immigration forces and federal troops have been deployed, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland. It added to an already rancorous debate around Trump’s mass deportation initiative, which he campaigned on heavily, and the role of federal forces in American cities — something the founders of the nation limited to extreme circumstances.

Central to that debate has been Trump’s repeated and unprecedented decision to repeatedly send troops into American cities without the explicit support of state or local leaders. Federal judges have been divided on that issue, though it has so far been allowed to continue in Los Angeles by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

But even in the appellate court, there has been tense disagreement.

Liberal judges on the court recently called for the decision allowing the deployments to continue in Los Angeles, which was made by a three-judge panel, to be reheard before a larger, 11-judge panel. When that request was denied, several dissented Wednesday — excoriating the deployments as a clear breach of constitutional law and the separation of powers.

Judge Marsha Berzon, in a dissent joined by 10 fellow 9th Circuit judges, wrote that the smaller panel in its preliminary deference to Trump had “invited presidents, now and in the future, to deploy military troops in response to the kinds of commonplace, shortlived, domestic disturbances whose containment conventionally falls to local and federal law enforcement units.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Ajike “AJ” Owens was a dedicated 35-year-old mother of four when she was shot and killed by her 58-year-old neighbor, Susan Lorincz, in June 2023. The tragedy, which rocked the otherwise peaceful, tight-knit community of Ocala, Fla., followed years of Lorincz making habitual calls to the police to report neighborhood kids, including Owens’, for playing in a vacant lot next to her home. Lorincz, who is white, claimed that the children — most of whom are Black and were under 12 — were a threat, citing one of the nation’s many “stand your ground” laws, which allow individuals to use deadly force to protect themselves if they feel their life is in danger.

Now award-winning filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, with the support of producer-husband Nikon Kwantu and such nonfiction luminaries as Sam Pollard and Soledad O’Brien, has chronicled the two years leading up to Owens’ death in “The Perfect Neighbor,” premiering Friday on Netflix after an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run. Composed almost entirely of police body camera footage, the moving and powerful verité documentary uses the case to depict the perils of such laws, which are all too easily misused or abused in a society where not every claim of self-defense is treated equally.

A jury convicted Lorincz of manslaughter in August 2024, but the repercussions of her erratic and violent behavior continue to impact the Owens family and their neighbors. Gandbhir, whose sister-in-law was a close friend of Owens, hopes “The Perfect Neighbor” will honor Owens’ memory while showing how our nation’s growing fear of “the other” and the proliferation of “stand your ground” laws are a deadly combination.

Initially, you weren’t planning on making a film about this tragic killing, but you were documenting the aftermath of the crime. Why?

We got a call the night Ajike was killed, and we immediately jumped into action to try to help the family. We stepped in to be the media liaisons. They looked to us to try to keep the story alive in the media, just because they were worried [it would be overlooked]. This is Ocala, Fla., the heart of where “stand your ground” was born. Susan wasn’t arrested for four days because they were doing a “stand your ground” investigation. We were not thinking about making a doc, really. We were just terrified that there would be no justice.

That’s happened before …

Yes, Trayvon Martin’s case being the most notorious.

But in Ajike’s case, there’s reams of footage and audio recordings that captured what happened. How were you able to obtain so much of that material from the police department?

Anthony Thomas, who works with [civil rights attorney] Benjamin Crump, had sued the police department through the Freedom of Information Act and got them to release all of the material that they had pertaining to the case. That’s how we got the footage. What came to us was the police body camera footage, detective interviews, Ring camera footage and cellphone footage. There was also all the audio calls that Susan had made to the police, and then after the night of the [killing], the calls the community had made. There was basically a plethora of stuff that we were handed, in a jumble, and Anthony was like, “Sort this out. See if you can find anything that makes sense for the news, like snippets we can share.”

I was surprised at how much material there was, and I’m just talking about what made it into the film.

It speaks to how much Susan called the police. Basically, the body cam footage [was a result of those calls]. What’s interesting is the reaction when we screened the film for the community. They agreed to be part of this so we wanted to show them before it came out. We’re very concerned with participant care and the ethics of this. They said that they didn’t think that we had everything, because Susan [allegedly] called the police sometimes, like, 10 times a day. They [said they] think the police gave us maybe what they could organize, where they don’t look terrible. But they don’t think that that’s everything.

Ajike “AJ” Owens, pictured on the poster, was shot and killed by her neighbor in 2023. The crime is at the center of Geeta Gandbhir’s new documentary “The Perfect Neighbor.”

Ajike’s mother, Pamela Dias, has been a major force in keeping her daughter’s memory alive — and seeking justice. How did she feel about you making this film?

I went to Pamela and said I could make a movie and maybe we could make a change. It’s quite an endeavor to try to change gun laws or the “stand your ground” law, but maybe we can reach people. She said yes. This is a woman who by her own admission was blinded by grief [when Ajike was killed], who said she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. But she knew even then that her daughter’s story had to be told. She said her daughter died standing up for her kids, and she felt it was her turn to stand up.

I told her the material was graphic. But Pam was inspired by Emmett Till and how his mother had an open-casket funeral and told the photographers to take pictures because she wanted the world to know what had happened to her baby. Plus, we thought about George Floyd and [how footage of his killing] sparked a movement. It is a terrible thing to bear witness, but if we let these things continue to happen in the shadows, then they will happen forever. It’s only by bearing witness that things might change.

What about your own emotional well-being while making this film?

See all my gray hair? [Laughs.] I realized later it was grief work for me, because I needed to know what happened. I had to know what happened. I couldn’t understand how someone could pick up a gun and kill their neighbor over children playing nearby. How did we get here? So many questions were just eating me, so the work was in some ways cathartic. Then once we had it all strung out and I thought it was a film, I brought on Viridiana Lieberman, who’s our editor. We had a similar sensibility about what we wanted this to be and we really committed to living in the body camera footage.

“Body camera footage is a violent tool of the state,” Gandbhir says. “It’s often used to criminalize us, particularly people of color. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to protect the police. What I wanted to do with this material was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this community.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Why not use narration?

I worked for 12 years in narratives and scripted before I segued into documentary. I learned that the best vérité documentaries are show and not tell. If you tell people what they’re seeing, there’s some room for doubt or for your bias or some questioning around it. But to me, this footage plays like vérité. There’s no reporter on the ground. There’s no one influencing what’s happening in the neighborhood, other than the police who are coming in and asking questions. I felt that made the footage and the story undeniable. No one could say that we were down there asking provocative questions. And the body camera footage is so incredibly immersive, I wanted people to have the experience of what the community experienced.

How would you describe what they went through?

Their experience felt a bit like a horror film. You have this beautiful, diverse community living together with a strong social network, taking care of each other and each other’s kids. What was so powerful to me in the body camera footage is you really got to see this community as they were before [the tragedy], and you never get that. There’s horrible shootings all the time, and we see the aftermath, right? We see the grieving family, we see the funeral. We have to re-create what their lives were like before. And in this, you see this beautiful community thriving and living together, and that was so profound. I wanted to rebuild their world so everyone could see the damage done by one outlier with a gun. How she was the only one who was repeatedly calling the police and seeing threats where there were none.

We’re used to seeing police body cam footage used as evidence following a police brutality incident, or as entertainment in true crime shows. It’s used to tell a very different story in your film.

I wanted to subvert the use of body cam footage. Body camera footage is a violent tool of the state. It’s often used to criminalize us, particularly people of color. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to protect the police. What I wanted to do with this material was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this community.

Why do you think that Susan was not seen as a threat by the police?

She’s a middle-aged white lady. She weaponized her race, her status, and she kept trying to weaponize the police against the community. The fact that she was using hate speech against children [she allegedly called them the N-word]. She was filming them. She was throwing things at them. She was cursing at them. But the police didn’t flag her as more than just a nuisance…. After the third time she called and it was unfounded and not about an actual crime, there should have been some measure taken to reprimand her. They didn’t tell the community that they could file charges against her: “She’s harassing you all. She’s harassing your children.” It was systemic neglect. And honestly, should the police be a catch-all for everything? Probably not. But they were not equipped. They didn’t take the necessary steps and the worst outcomes happened, which is that we lost Ajike, and Susan is in prison for the rest of her life. I’m sure that’s not the outcome she wanted.

There’s a moment in the film where a policeman knocks on Susan’s sliding glass door. She doesn’t know it’s a cop. She opens the curtain and screams at him in a terrifying, almost demonic voice. It’s quite a switch from her nervous, genial 911 calls.

Yeah, the jump scare. That was one of the moments where I was like, “Oh, there she is.” And the 911 call, after she shot Ajike. She was hysterical. Then her voice changes when she says, “They keep bothering me and bothering me, and they won’t f— stop.” I felt my heart clench, because it’s like, “Oh, there she really is.” She has this way of going between victim and aggressor. A little Jekyll and Hyde. It’s frightening.

The victim/aggressor dynamic is part of what makes “stand your ground” laws so dangerous. They can be weaponized.

“Stand your ground” policy was born in Ocala and now it’s in around 38 states, in different forms. It’s a law that emboldens people to pick up a gun to solve a dispute. If you can other-ize your neighbor to the extent of [killing] them, the question is, what else will you do? What else will we tolerate? As human beings, how we show up in our communities is a reflection of how we show up in the world. This film takes place on this tiny street, but it is a microcosm of what is happening today. Susan represented the dangers, and that little community represented the best of what’s under threat.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — The Palm Bay City Council in central Florida censored council member Chandler Langevin after controversial remarks about the local Indian community on social media, including a call to “deport every Indian immediately” and “Indians are destroying the South.”

The 3-2 decision Thursday restricts his ability to introduce agenda items, speak during council reports and serve on city-appointed committees and boards. Langevin now has to receive majority approval from the council to place an item on the agenda.

Langevin voted against the measure.

Palm Bay, with a population of 142,000, is located about 50 miles south of the Kennedy Space Center.

Langevin is a 33-year-old Republican elected to a four-year term in November after serving in the U.S. Marines.

He has targeted others with incendiary, racist and xenophobic statements online though his X account.

Regarding Indians in the community, he wrote: “Indian migration has to cease immediately.”

He also wrote: “There is not a single Indian that cares about the United States. They are here to exploit us financially and enrich India and Indians.”

“I not only have a constitutional right, but I personally believe that I have a duty and an obligation to engage other elected officials, to have dialogue with my constituents and to drive policy in a matter that I deem best,” Langevin said, in describing the situation as a witchhunt.

Langevin, wearing a U.S. Flag around his neck during the meeting, said he would sue, alleging a violation of the First Amendment.

Anthony Sabatini, an attorney and Lake County commissioner, posted on X: “This textbook first amendment retaliation & totally illegal -tomorrow we will file a lawsuit and now they will pay.”

“The government cannot punish and limit your rights just purely based on your viewpoint,” Sabatini said in a report by WKMG-TV. “You can pass a censure motion, that’s fine, but you can’t limit his ability to speak based on his opinion.”

The council also voted 4-1 to look into hiring an outside attorney to investigate whether Langevin made any ethics violations.

Two weeks earlier, the commissioners wrote a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis asking to have Langevin removed from his elected seat.

Commissioners, as well as Mayor Rob Medina, said his comments are serious misconduct.

“I think if we represent the population at large, there’s some issues then we need to tailor our speech,” Medina said. “We represent everyone, right, so it is conduct unbecoming.”

Councilman Richard “Mike” Hammer voted against the censure. Hammer posted on Facebook that he did not agree with the things Langevin said about Indian Americans, but he did not agree with the restrictions placed on him, he said.

Indian American Chamber of Commerce President Jan Gautman told Spectrum News that he was satisfied with an apology.

“After meeting with several community leaders, he came to understand the tremendous value the Indian American community brings to this country — especially through business ownership, job creation, and contributions as one of the strongest economic drivers in our nation,” Gautman said. “Our community appreciates his apology and chooses to move forward with positivity, focusing on unity, understanding, and the betterment of our shared future.

“We wish him well and look forward to continued collaboration in building stronger communities together.”

On Oct. 6, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement: “Chandler Langevin’s comments towards the Indian American community are vile and reprehensible. The people of Palm Bay deserve better leadership than someone who so proudly displays his hateful ignorance through divisive and racist rhetoric.

“The Florida Democratic Party proudly stands in solidarity with our Indian American neighbors and is grateful for their contributions to our State. We look forward to beating bigots like Mr. Langevin at the ballot box to ensure Florida’s elected officials represent the best of our shared values.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott wrote on X on Oct. 1 that there is “no place for this kind of hate in Florida. As Governor and now as U.S. Senator, I’ve been proud to stand with our state’s incredible Indian American community, who are proud Americans and value the ideas that make our country great.”

“We have to die so people can keep working.” Canada’s Grassy Narrows First Nation is taking on the government over a local employer’s poisoning of their water.

Christopher Soto, the founder of the Center for California Literature.

Los Angeles is, historically, a haven for writers and poets. In its city sprawl and California light, L.A. has fostered legendary writers from Joan Didion to Octavia E. Butler, created countercultural literary communities like the Watts Writers Workshop, and inspired Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”

Despite Los Angeles’ contributions to a rich literary history, the literary community struggles to stay rooted in place as writers’ spaces and financial support move elsewhere.

Take the National Endowment for the Humanities, which canceled over $10.2 million in humanities and arts funding to already-awarded projects in California. Or the devastating Pasadena and Altadena wildfires that decimated historic libraries and cultural archives.

For writers across the city, L.A. can feel like shaky literary ground. That’s where Christopher Soto has stepped in.

Soto is a poet and author of the debut collection “Diaries of a Terrorist,” a contributing writer at Image and now the founder of the Center for California Literature.

The Center for California Literature is Soto’s hopeful initiative for connecting writers across L.A. through readings, conversations and advocacy. In a period in which writers feel unsupported and concerned about the state of the arts, Soto says that the center is needed in L.A. more than ever.

The inspiration came about after Soto was commissioned by the L.A. Times to write a piece titled “Writers on Loving and Leaving Los Angeles,” about writers having to move out of L.A. due to a lack of opportunities. He says right as he was working on the article, it was decommissioned. The reason? The books editor who would have worked on it was laid off and subsequently had to leave L.A.

“It was so ironic. That article and the research I did for it really led me to see that there is a need for a structural solution. People shouldn’t have to choose between having a thriving arts life and having to leave their home,” Soto says.

Soto knew that waiting would only exacerbate the literary loss; if he wanted change, he said he needed to make it. He reached out to inspiring writers in his community for their support and found that people were searching for a place to gather and organize themselves. Roxane Gay, renowned author of the New York Times bestselling novels “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger,” is one of the center’s biggest supporters.

“There’s a lot of stories that literature is dead, or that literary communities are dying, but clearly they’re not. They’re alive and they’re well and we have to remember that,” Gay says. “Writing is a very solitary endeavor, but while we might write alone, we don’t exist as writers in the public sphere alone. We need community, whether it’s people to share our work with, people who understand our frustrations, or having people who will read our work.”

Soto and Gay imagine a future where the center is shaped by writers’ needs. With community as a centerpoint, the organization aims to serve poets and authors by giving them a platform to share their work, attend workshops and create connections among peers.

Gay joined a collective of notable speakers the night of the center’s official launch, which took place at Central L.A. start-up gallery Giovanni’s Room and was co-hosted with the Los Angeles Review of Books. Outside the launch, pupusas were sizzling and poets and book nerds stood in line for a bite or a read from a nearby Libros con Alma pop-up book cart.

The long line approaching the door was full of chatter and reunited friends, who stepped into the lobby and talked closely over the music mixed by DJ Izla. Although the gallery itself filled up quickly, growing warm and pupusa-scented, the energy was one of excitement and anticipation for people’s favorite authors and for a new beginning in the L.A. writers world.

In a corner of the gallery, in front of a paper backdrop and lush potted plants, Grammy-nominated contemporary poet aja monet stepped before the mic to open the night. She was assertive the moment she spoke, clarifying the pronunciation of her name (ah-ja) and simply introducing poems from her time as a political organizer in Florida.

As monet delved into her work, her voice was serious, contained and bursting with emotion. With every stanza, she settled into a musical rhythm that was satiric and bitingly honest. Her poems ranged from swampy oppressive memories of Florida to the nature of poetry to musings on hypocritical activists.

“A poem can rinse, reflect and reveal us / I give thanks for the intimacy of planting poems / the living that brings poems into being,” monet read.

The crowd hummed and swayed in agreement and cheered in recognition of the feelings that she captured. After her moving set, Viet Thanh Nguyen picked up right where she left off. Nguyen is best known for his debut Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” which discusses the Vietnam War’s impact on the U.S. through the lens of a Vietnamese American immigrant who navigates Hollywood social politics, integration and racial tension.

In the section Nguyen read that night, the main character challenges stereotypes of Vietnamese characters in a film, an attempt that is quickly shut down by a Hollywood executive. Nguyen chuckled as he finished — “The Sympathizer” was adapted into an HBO show, placing Nguyen into the very Hollywood spaces he criticized. He acknowledges this and affirmed that “after spending a lot of time in Hollywood, nobody has disputed this characterization.”

Author, actor and television writer Ryan O’Connell added to the conversation with a lengthy reading of “The Slut Diaries,” explorations of rediscovering sexuality in his 30s as a gay man with cerebral palsy. His reflections on sex and dating through the lens of gay and disabled identity, and the hilariously vulgar encounters that ensued, drew hoots and hollers from the crowd.

Camille Hernandez, a writer and poet laureate of Anaheim, was among O’Connell’s laughing audience.

“I love being from here, and I want to lift up the literature from here. It is really beautiful that you could be from some place with such a rich literary heritage, but it’s such a travesty that not many people know about it, so efforts like this are so important to uplifting writers like us, who can be funny and honest like Ryan O’Connell or inspiring like Roxane Gay once they have the community to support them,” Hernandez says. “We deserve this.”

As Gay closed the night, her brief statement encapsulated the promising energy of the center’s first gathering.

“We deserve the material and creative resources to practice our craft. We deserve an abundant community that is mindful of the past and active and engaging the present and able to imagine a radical and expansive future,” Gay said. “And so I hope that everyone here will join us in that work.”

As authors, poets and hopeful writers filtered out into the crisp night, conversations abounded about what was next. Some were excited for an afterparty rumored to feature Erykah Badu. Others projected a next reading presided by an even bigger crowd, feeding the hunger for the literary arts that the center aims to feed. Whatever comes next, the literary community of L.A. has a new home to gather in.

Standing under four palm trees in the quad area of Calabasas High, Los Alamitos football players have their eyes trained on coach Ray Fenton’s face for more than five uninterrupted minutes.

Looking to see if anyone loses focus when a mother walks by and starts yelling at her daughter, the answer is incredibly no. The players keep listening and keep their eyes directed on Fenton.

It’s tough enough to make teenagers listen for 30 seconds to adults these days, but to see an entire football team not letting anyone or anything disturb their focus while their coach is speaking provides a hint why Los Alamitos is 7-0 and the surprise high school football team in Southern California this season.

“Everyone has their eye on coach,” offensive lineman Braiden McKenna said. “It’s all the little things that keep you disciplined. Wearing your mouthpiece, keeping your eyes on him.”

It’s not true that Los Alamitos doesn’t have any stars. They might not have been mentioned much in preseason hype lists, but players have performed at a high level so far.

Tight end Beckham Hofland, 6 foot 5 and 230 pounds, is a load to cover and also serves as a kicker. Running backs Kamden Tillis and Lenny Ibarra are versatile and reliable. Quarterback Colin Creason, who sat out last season while transferring from Long Beach Poly, keeps improving. The offensive line, led by the veteran McKenna, who plays center, is very good. Ibarra leads the defense with 66 tackles.

Coach Ray Fenton and his 7-0 Los Alamitos football team.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s so much easier to want to win with someone you care about and they care about you,” McKenna said of the team chemistry.

Los Alamitos has had more talented teams in recent years aided by transfer students. This one is mostly home grown, and Fenton couldn’t be happier.

“They’re friends,” Fenton said. “They’ve grown up together. You play harder with guys you’re friends with. You don’t want to let them down. They’re Los Al kids. They take pride in the community.”

They won in Hawaii 34-31 on tying and game-winning field goals by Ibarra, who practiced kicking the ball between two palm trees at a park. They knocked off Gardena Serra 42-21. They beat a good Granite Hills team 49-42. Seven straight wins came over seven weeks, so now they are on a two-week break to prepare for the daunting task of facing three good Alpha League opponents — Edison at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 16, at San Clemente on Oct. 24 and a finale against Mission Viejo on Oct. 30 at Artesia.

They are serious contenders for a Southern Section Division 1 playoff berth even though some people still can’t figure out how they keep winning.

The answer is simple: they’re hungry. Never underestimate a team where one teammate after another supports each other no matter the challenges, no matter the obstacles, no matter the skepticism of others.

“This is throwback,” Fenton said. “It’s old school. Play for your local school, play for your community, play for your friends. The kids you played Pop Warner with are the kids you’re playing high school football with. It’s the way it was supposed to be.”

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who loves Saturday college football games and … catfish?

This week saw the premiere of “Chad Powers,” Hulu’s new comedy starring Glen Powell, who co-created and co-wrote the series with Michael Waldron. It’s based on a viral sketch by former NFL Giants quarterback Eli Manning (he’s a producer on “Chad Powers” as well), who birthed the character. But Powell and Waldron have expanded the premise and backstory of a man named Russ Holliday who makes another go at playing college football by donning a disguise à la “Mrs. Doubtfire.” In a conversation with reporter Kaitlyn Huamani, Powell said the show was an attempt at making the “greatest football experience, whether in movies or TV shows, that people have ever seen.” Times TV critic Robert Lloyd says while the show has some tropes, characters played by Steve Zahn, Perry Mattfeld and Wynn Everett add drama and laughs. Waldron, whose previous TV work is instrumental to the show’s ethos, stopped by Guest Spot this week to talk more about “Chad Powers,” and what he’s watching lately.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been staying up this week, late-night TV has been not only a hotbed of laughs, but also political discourse. On Tuesday, Jimmy Kimmel, who has been taping his L.A.-based show in Brooklyn this week, and Stephen Colbert took turns as guests on each other’s shows, creating a memorable crossover event thanks to some fortuitous timing. It was the first time either has discussed in detail how their shows were disrupted this year — Colbert’s “Late Show” was canceled in July (it will air through May 2026) and Kimmel was suspended by Disney for several days in September. We have a rundown of the conversations along with clips of their visits, which are worth watching. And don’t forget “Saturday Night Live,” another late-night show that’s been in the crosshairs of politicians, returns this weekend for its 51st season, with Bad Bunny as host and Doja Cat as musical guest (we’ll be recapping the show again this season).

This week, our streaming recommendations include films from a master of horror, who is much more multifaceted than he might get credit for, and a new action-packed film on Prime Video.

ICYMI

Must-read stories you might have missed

Loren Bouchard, creator of the adult animated comedy series “Bob’s Burgers.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

‘Bob’s Burgers’ creator and cast celebrate 300 episodes of their heartfelt and edgy ‘comfort show’: “Bob’s Burgers” creator Loren Bouchard and cast discuss how it achieved “comfort show” status, the Belcher’s family dynamic and their favorite episodes.

This ‘Love Is Blind’ star had Season 9’s most cringey breakup. But he’s OK: Patrick Suzuki, a participant on Netflix’s hit reality dating series, spoke about his connection with two women on the show.

All the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson, ranked from worst to best: The director’s latest, “One Battle After Another,” is now in theaters, but the career of the Valley’s No. 1 filmmaker stretches over three decades. What’s his best?

‘Maigret’ on PBS is the latest version of Simenon’s sleuth. Here are 6 more to watch: PBS’ “Maigret” follows a long line of portrayals of the Parisian fictional detective created by Georges Simenon. Here’s a guide to other great versions to watch.

Tony Shalhoub loves bread, and he thinks it can get you ‘out of your own sphere’: “Breaking Bread,” the actor’s new CNN travel show premiering Sunday, is centered on the food staple, but it also uncovers stories about how it relates to migration, labor and his own family history.

Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Jeff Bridges in John Carpenter’s 1984 movie, “Starman.”

(Sony Pictures)

John Carpenter (Criterion Channel)

An extensive October series on the director who redefined the season of the witch — but one without “Halloween” or “The Thing”? We love it. John Carpenter contains multitudes and it’s high time people began thinking beyond his twin horror landmarks. You could think of these collected movies as being about antiheroes navigating a broken America (“Escape from New York,” “They Live,” “Assault on Precinct 13”). Or maybe they’re cracked romances (the Oscar-nominated “Starman,” “Christine”). Vicious comedies? (“Dark Star” and “Vampires” both have their share of laughs.) One thing they’re decidedly not is boring. And if you let a more metaphysical dimension in (“Prince of Darkness,” “In the Mouth of Madness”), Carpenter suddenly becomes profound. I’m stoked to return to the ones that let me down at first — looking at you, “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” — because I know I’ve grown up since. This is a filmmaker who was always a few steps ahead of me. — Joshua Rothkopf

Chai Hansen, left, Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield in “Play Dirty.”

(Jasin Boland / Prime)

‘Play Dirty’ (Prime Video)

It’s Christmas in New York, and one pack of amoral thieves with little regard for human life are at odds with another pack of amoral thieves also with little regard for human life in this action film based on Parker, the Donald E. Westlake character. The inspiration under another name (Walker) for John Boorman’s “Point Blank” and (in a very roundabout way) Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in USA,” the character is played here by Mark Wahlberg, with a cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Tony Shalhoub, Keegan-Michael Key and Gretchen Mol dignifying the violent fluff. (Shootings, crashes, runaway subway train and the like.) Many things go wrong before they go (sort of) right, heists follow heists, and there’s a high body count, mostly of characters without names, but some with. (You do need to be in the right mood for this.) I am here above all for “Atlanta’s” Stanfield, as Parker’s laconic partner, who brings spacey warmth to the icy goings-on. — Robert Lloyd

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

Glen Powell, left, with Michael Waldron on the set of “Chad Powers.”

(Daniel Delgado Jr./Disney)

How do you attempt to create a show that you hope is the best depiction of college football ever? Well, it helps to be a superfan of the sport, which is precisely what Waldron and Powell are (ESPN’s Tori Petry even spoke to Powell on the sidelines of the Texas vs. Sam Houston game last week). Deep knowledge of college football was essential because Waldron wanted to convey to fans that they were not going to leave any detail untouched. While the school the show is set at, South Georgia, is fictional, the rest of the world on “Chad Powers” is not. “We always wanted real schools to be the teams that they were playing, just to ground our show and the world in authenticity, the real world of college football,” Waldron told The Times this week. “I think that’s what fans want to see.”

But even if you aren’t a superfan of college football or sports in general, Waldron, whose work on television includes creating Marvel’s “Loki” on Disney+ and “Heels” on Starz, a short-lived but critically acclaimed show about pro wrestling, knows that the writing on a TV show is key to getting viewers hooked and wanting more. “Chad Powers” is infused with references to internet personalities and memes, which anyone who is very online will understand and relate to, giving the series an opportunity to spark interest with a more expansive audience. And it works, especially if you are a looking for a comedy that will deliver some easy belly laughs. The Hulu series drops new episodes every Tuesday through Oct. 28, easily filling the time between the next Saturday game. Here, Waldron tells us about how he and Powell first connected, a special cameo on the series and a couple of films you should watch. — Maira Garcia

How did you and Glen Powell first meet and how did it lead to your new show? Are you big followers of sports or football?

Like all legendary Hollywood friendships, ours began on a Zoom general meeting during a pandemic. We hit it off talking about our mutual love of college football (I went to UGA [University of Georgia] and Glen went to [University of] Texas), which is why we were both excited to do a series set in this world.

You were a writer on “Community” and “Rick and Morty,” both shows that have reverberated among millennial viewers because of their self-awareness and/or pop culture references. Did either of those shows inform your approach to “Chad Powers”?

Well, to be clear, I was just the writers’ PA on “Community,” but that show might have been where I learned the most. Dan Harmon is one of the best writers alive and was doing “meta” before we had a word for that. In writing stuff that is “self-aware,” there’s an instinct to be cynical. Dan runs in the opposite direction, and he taught me that genuine earnestness can be a very subversive tool.

A very surprising and funny moment we get right at the start of the show is a cameo from Haliey Welch, aka Hawk Tuah Girl. How did that come about?

We were reshooting the nightclub sequence in Act 1 of the pilot to get more comedy and L.A. scope, and include the character of Russ’ agent. We wanted to populate his world with other people who felt defined by a singular viral moment, and for a show set in 2025, who better than Haliey?

What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?

Have you heard of this movie “One Battle After Another”? It’s pretty damn good.

What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?

I think I watch “Tenet” [VOD] once a month. That’s as cool as a movie can possibly be. Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.

Residents in UK’s Crumpsall say they are shocked after a car and knife attack near synagogue kills two people.

Manchester, England – As people gathered near a synagogue in Manchester, hours after an attack there killed two people, many struggled to make sense of the assault. Attacks don’t happen in places like this, locals say, not least on Yom Kippur.

About 9.30am (08:30 GMT) on Thursday, a man drove his car into people near the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall in the north of Manchester before emerging to attack others with a knife.

The synagogue’s security staff and members of the public prevented him from entering the building before police arrived and fatally shot the assailant, who appeared to be wearing an “explosive device”, police said. Four injured people were admitted to hospital in serious condition.

Two people have been arrested since the attack, said the Metropolitan Police’s head of counterterrorism policing, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor. The identity and potential motives of the attacker have not been disclosed.

Standing with some of his family on the corner of a nearby road with a police helicopter hovering overhead, 23-year-old Zaki said he still can’t believe what happened.

“I heard the shots this morning,” he told Al Jazeera. “It didn’t seem believable. I thought it was fireworks.”

Zaki echoed the comments of many who gathered around the synagogue. These things don’t happen here, onlookers said. Crumpsall has long been a multicultural area. “Everyone in our community gets on well,” Zaki said. “Our neighbours are Jewish.”

Another resident, 41-year-old Sam Martin, also described struggling to understand the attack.

“There’s everyone here,” he told Al Jazeera, “Muslims, Jews, everyone. I’ve known nothing but love and kindness from our Jewish community. I’m just shocked this could happen.”

According to many people in the neighbourhood, even Israel’s war on Gaza hasn’t caused any great division within the community. However, many expressed concerns that far-right groups – their confidence fuelled after an August campaign to hang English flags across the country and a mass rally in London a month later – would seek to take advantage of the attack to further unrest.

Far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who uses the pseudonym Tommy Robinson, quickly seized upon the attack, assigning blame to groups from the Board of Deputies of British Jews to the United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party for the assault despite the identity and potential motives of the attacker remaining unclear.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar criticised British authorities, accusing them of failing to curb anti-Semitism.

“Blatant and rampant antisemitic and anti-Israeli incitement, as well as calls of support for terror, have recently become a widespread phenomenon in the streets of London, in cities across Britain, and on its campuses,” he wrote on X.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the attacker was a “vile” person who was motivated to attack Jews “because they are Jews.”

I am appalled by the murderous attack near the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on the morning of the holiest day for the Jewish people: Yom Kippur.
My deepest condolences go to the families who have lost their loved ones,and I wish a swift and full recovery to the injured.…

— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) October 2, 2025

One of the young men gathered near the police cordon, 23-year-old Akiva, who asked neither to be recorded or have notes taken during his interview out of respect for the holiday, was sure the English far right would seize upon the attack. He said the attack has shaken Jewish residents and would likely sow divisions in the otherwise quiet and well integrated community.

Akiva had come to the synagogue to check on his brother, who normally took a route past the synagogue on his way to worship. He said his mother collapsed when she first heard of the attack so close to their home in Manchester.

Other members of the district’s Jewish community gathered nearby spoke of feeling targeted for their identity, of having been attacked on their holiest day of the year.

A VAST “mini-city” of 5,500 homes, schools and green space is set to rise on the edge of Birmingham.

Council chiefs gave given the go-ahead for the first stage of works.

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The Langley development, near Walmley in Sutton Coldfield, will eventually see around 5,500 homes.

There will also be schools, community facilities and green spaces, built across a huge swathe of land.

Described by developers as an “unparalleled opportunity to establish a new sustainable community”, the scheme promises to transform the area.

Ahead of the latest council planning meeting, permission was sought to begin “strategic infrastructure” works on the site.

These include demolishing Langley Park House, creating open space and play areas, carrying out major earthworks, and building new highway, cycle and pedestrian networks.

But concerns were raised over how future residents will travel.

Conservative councillor Gareth Moore argued that Labour’s transport policy risks being “outdated” and could turn the new neighbourhood into a “heavy car-use area.”

“Despite the best will in the world, the council is not going to change that,” he said.

“I’m really concerned that long-term this is going to build up problems because we’re going to try and discourage people from owning cars.

“We’re going to try and encourage everyone to walk, cycle and get the bus – but they’re not.

“They’re going to own cars and they’ll be parked all over the place. Yes, in 50 years’ time that might be different but the important thing is the here and now.”

A council report defended the plans, pointing to an “extensive network” of new walking and cycling routes across the site.

This is including segregated cycle paths, bus-only connections and a traffic-free bridge linking eastwards over the A38.

It said: “The intention is to not give equal priority to all modes through the road space allocation, instead encouraging sustainable travel which adheres to the objectives of the Birmingham Transport Plan.”

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Officials have previously stressed that prioritising active travel and public transport will help cut road danger, connect communities and tackle the climate emergency.

According to the scheme’s official website, the new development will also bring schools, leisure facilities and large areas of “well-connected green spaces.”

“We are committed to working with the local community to deliver a beautifully designed scheme that puts placemaking at its heart and provides long-term benefits for both new and existing residents,” it said.

With the application now approved, work can begin on laying the groundwork for one of the biggest housing projects Birmingham has ever seen.

This follows after reports of a huge new town with up to 25,000 homes is set to be built in the UK, as part of a government scheme.

The ambitious plans are set to ease Britain’s housing crisis, and the project is expected to create 30,000 jobs.

The Brabazon development, in South Gloucestershire, is set to become a “thriving new town, designed around people, nature and opportunity: the best place in the UK to live, work and play”, according to YTL, the group facilitating its construction.

Proposals for the project include 6,500 homes (which could rise to 25,000), and student accommodation big enough to house 2,000 people.

The new town will also have a 20,000 capacity arena, three new schools and community facilities, and is predicted to add £5 billion to the GVA.

A new train station, Metrobus links, cycle routes and walking paths will ensure the town is well connected to Bristol and over 3.6 million square feet of commercial space will house shops, businesses and offices.

Brabazon will also have an abundance of parks and green spaces, including a 15 acre park and lake, which will be the largest in the South West for 50 years.

The government has thrown its backing behind the development, as part of a £48 billion scheme to build 12 new homes across the nation.

Work has already begun on Brabazon, with 500 homes completed, and £400 million invested by YTL.

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PARADISE, Calif. — When Jen Goodlin visited Paradise six months after the 2018 Camp fire, she thought she was saying goodbye.

A town native, Goodlin was living in Colorado with her husband and four children. She wanted to witness the devastation that wiped out 10,700 homes, including the small white cottage where she grew up, and turned the dense forest of her youth into a bleak landscape. But once she arrived, she was surprised at her reaction. She could envision so much more than the burned trees and abandoned businesses around her.

Here, she saw, her family could live on a big piece of land as they’d always wanted. Her husband thought she was crazy, but they ran the numbers, bought a 1.2-acre vacant lot and put a trailer on the property. A few years later, they moved into a new, four-bedroom house.

“It took the fire to bring me home,” said Goodlin, 43, who now runs a local wildfire recovery nonprofit.

Jen Goodlin, executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, in Paradise, Calif., in June 2024.

(Nic Coury / Associated Press)

Young families like Goodlin’s are coming to Paradise, shifting the town’s demographics away from the retirees who once lived there. Attracted by cheap land — lots cost less than a mid-range car— newcomers can build a larger home on larger parcels for less than buying a house in Chico, a city of 100,000 people 15 miles away.

Though Paradise’s current population is less than half of what it was, the local Little League already has more kids than before the fire.

Nearly a decade of megafire in California has brought profound changes to recovering communities. Paradise has become younger. Some rebuilt areas have become wealthier. Renters and people on fixed incomes have found themselves pushed to more urban locales. Both devastated neighborhoods and fire survivors face an unpredictable future that, given the recent intensity of wildfires in California, many more areas will have to face.

Reminders of fire are inescapable in Paradise, from the roadside signposts that designate evacuation routes to the alarm that blares at noon on the 15th of every month, a test of the system that will tell everyone if they need to flee once again. At the same time, the activity in the town belies the desolation implied by building data that show only 30% of destroyed homes have been replaced. Dog walkers and parents with small children play in refurbished parks. At lunchtime, construction workers in reflective vests gather around taco trucks.

A deer treks over an empty lot as homes continue to be built throughout Paradise years after the Camp fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Local boosters tout that for every year after the fire, Paradise has been one of the fastest-growing communities in California. Another half-dozen homes are being rebuilt each month, according to a Times data analysis.

But as shown in Paradise, the statistics tell only part of the story. The Times found that of the nearly 22,500 homes lost in the Camp fire and California’s four other most destructive wildfires from 2017 to 2020, just 8,400, or 38%, have been rebuilt.

Given the time that has already passed, it’s unlikely that some places — the forests below the northern Sierra Nevada, parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, pieces of old Shasta County mining towns — ever will have the same number of homes as before. In Paradise, it’s essentially guaranteed. Many returning homeowners purchased their neighbors’ burned out lots to build a larger house or simply expand the size of their property.

Instead of simply repopulating these areas, there has been a subtle shift toward living in more urban communities, especially for renters or homeowners who couldn’t afford to rebuild. In Butte County, disaster relief dollars from both the Camp fire and North Complex fire, which destroyed 1,500 homes in even more rural areas two years later, have been funneled toward affordable housing projects largely in Chico and smaller nearby cities untouched by the blazes. Not one such development has been proposed in the North Complex burn scar.

The rationale is straightforward: More people can be housed more safely and sustainably in cities than in mountainous, fire-prone tracts with little public infrastructure. The urban developments also provide access to grocery stores, public transit and other amenities that give them a higher chance of winning state financing competitions and being completed.

Local officials welcome the investments but feel uneasy about what’s happening. Katie Simmons, deputy chief administrative officer overseeing recovery efforts for Butte County, said many rural fire survivors don’t want to move to the city. She called the new developments “displacement housing” that doesn’t address the needs of those in remote areas who continue to “flounder in disaster-caused homelessness.”

As time wears on, fewer and fewer people find themselves in positions to return, sometimes despite extraordinary efforts to allow them to do so.

Palm trees rising over the vacant lot in November 2020 where Journey’s End Trailer Park once stood in Santa Rosa.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In Santa Rosa, the 2017 Tubbs fire wiped out Journey’s End, a 162-space mobile home park next to a hospital and the 101 Freeway. A partnership between the landowner, the city and for- and nonprofit developers led to plans for more than 400 apartments on the site, including full replacement of 162 units for low-income seniors.

But it wasn’t until summer 2023 that the first apartments opened. Journey’s End residents, so long as they qualified under the age and income restrictions, could return if they wanted.

Few did. About three dozen expressed interest, 12 initially moved in, six of whom remain.

A lot of her former neighbors from the mobile home park died waiting, said Pat Crisco, 75, one of the Journey’s End residents who came back. Others didn’t want to live in apartments. More had settled elsewhere and didn’t want to uproot themselves again, she said.

Pat Crisco is a former resident of the Journey’s End mobile home park that burned in the Tubbs fire. Crisco is now living in the affordable housing apartment development that was built on the site.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The stray cats Crisco used to feed at Journey’s End are gone and when the hot wind blows outside her apartment building she gets the “heebie jeebies.” But she feels great about her decision to return. The location is close to the bus, her doctors and grocery stores.

“This is brand spanking new,” Crisco said. “And everything is very convenient.”

Research shows that communities that rebuild more fully tend to end up wealthier than they used to be. Homeowners who come back are the ones able to afford to navigate the process, and brand-new houses in established areas attract outsiders.

Before the Tubbs fire, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park subdivision was middle-class, with its tract homes routinely going for around $500,000. Nearly all the 1,300 houses lost have been rebuilt. Residents were astounded recently when they began selling at more than $1 million.

Jeff Okrepkie, 46, a Coffey Park renter who used his insurance payout as a down payment for a new home on his old street, said it’s undeniable that the neighborhood is more upscale now, with amenities hard to find elsewhere.

“This is the cliche, Americana, suburban single-family-detached homes,” Okrepkie said. “It’s 1980s-style lots, 1980s-style streets with 2020s-style houses.”

Jeff Okrepkie outside his rebuilt home, second from left, in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

What’s happening in Paradise and Santa Rosa provide continually evolving answers to weighty questions: When has a community recovered? And what does recovery even mean?

In 2019, Paradise received a $270-million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric, whose power lines caused the Camp fire. The town is using the money to backfill lost tax revenue. But it won’t last forever.

That’s why local leaders are pushing for a new sewer system as part of an expanded town center to attract restaurants and business that would make more young families want to live there. The lack of one limited the commercial district in the past.

For Paradise officials, recovery is when the community can sustain itself once again.

“It looks like it’s going to serve us for 25 years,” said Colette Curtis, the town’s recovery and economic development director, of the PG&E settlement.

Some residents of communities reshaped by fire have found themselves both drawn and repelled by the place they call home.

Roger and Lindy Brown lived in Paradise with their daughter before the fire and their home burned. Their daughter went to Chico State, and Roger and Lindy moved to Oregon. Roger and Lindy moved back to a rebuilt home near their old one a couple of years ago.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Roger and Lindy Brown had lived in Paradise for 12 years when the Camp fire struck. After the blaze, the Browns rented an apartment in Chico so their daughter could finish her last year at Paradise High School, which held classes in a mall and then a warehouse in Chico.

Roger, 60, worked in heating and air conditioning and had to return to the town often. He couldn’t take seeing the burned-out trees, cars and homes. The couple took their insurance money and moved to a small town in Oregon. From a distance, the upkeep on their vacant lot proved to be too much so they sold that too.

But Paradise pulled at them, especially Lindy, 66. Their daughter never left, attending Chico State, where she recently graduated. Some of their friends had rebuilt. To her, Oregon felt lonely. Paradise, she said, was their community.

Tom and Diane Boatright built back their home in the second-fastest time after the Camp fire using a modular homebuilding company.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Last year, Roger and Lindy bought a house in Paradise, a newly built, blue, two-bedroom with a white picket fence. The home had all they wanted. Solar power. A large lot. Apple, cherry and peach trees in the back. And they were overwhelmed with the thought of starting from scratch.

They’ve kept a Little Free Library on their lawn stocked with books. In the spring, they traded their extra peaches for eggs from their neighbor’s chickens.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Roger and Lindy stood in their frontyard admiring the finishing touches on their only major construction project. They were replacing some of the landscaping with gravel, a decision that made their home more fire-resistant and cut their insurance costs in half.

Roger still felt unsure about returning. Before the fire, he would go to breakfast with the town’s classic car club every Saturday. The 1971 Chevy Nova Roger had restored was lost in the blaze and the car club was no more.

“It’s never going to be the Paradise it was,” Roger said to Lindy.

His wife turned to him. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.

Teresa Sánchez-Gordon was just a girl when federal immigration agents came for her.

She and her mother had been on their way to drop off a jacket at the dry cleaners when they spotted a group of suspicious-looking men, watching intently from down the street.

Sánchez-Gordon remembers her heart pounding with dread that the men were there to haul them away for being in the country without papers. Her mother grabbed her and they beelined back to their house. From their hiding place in a closet, they could hear loud knocks on their front door, Sánchez-Gordon recalled.

The agents’ demeanor turned “cordial,” Sánchez-Gordon suspects, only after her light-skinned father let them in.

“Dad could pass — he had blond hair, blue eyes,” she said in an interview earlier this year. “So when he opened the door and these agents are there, they just assumed he was an American citizen.”

Looking back decades later, Sánchez-Gordon, 74, said that that experience would shape her views and career. In her new role as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, she will help guide a Los Angeles Police Department that faces questions about how to handle the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign.

Sánchez-Gordon said she recognizes the fear and desperation felt by the immigrants even while living in so-called sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles, which try to shield immigrants from deportation unless they have committed serious crimes.

“Even my housekeeper today said, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m even afraid to go outside and go to the market, because I’ve got the ‘nopal en la frente,’” she said, pointing to her forehead while using a popular expression for someone who appears to be of Mexican descent. “So my perspective, as an East L.A. girl: I’m horrified, I’m angry.”

After her close brush with deportation as a child, Sánchez-Gordon eventually gained citizenship. An early adulthood steeped in Latino activism led to a career in law, first as a federal public defender and later a Los Angeles County judge. She retired in 2017 after two decades on the bench and was appointed last October by Mayor Karen Bass to lead the Police Commission.

Much like a corporate board of directors, the commission sets LAPD policies, approves its multibillion-dollar annual budget and scrutinizes shootings and other serious uses of force to determine whether the officers acted appropriately.

Sánchez-Gordon was born in the western Mexico state of Jalisco. Her father, a butcher by trade, emigrated and found work as a bracero picking crops in fields up and down the West Coast. He sent for his family when Sánchez-Gordon was 3. She recalled how her mother bundled her and her siblings into a bus that took them to the border, where they hired a “coyote,” or human smuggler, to get the rest of the way. They eventually settled in East L.A.

The government granted a path to legal status to laborers like Sánchez-Gordon’s father that no longer exists. In recent months, she said she has been troubled by “the way that people are being treated and the separation of families in our community … and this level of hatred toward the immigrants, the people that sustain this city.”

Of particular concern for Sánchez-Gordon is the perception that LAPD officers are working closely with federal immigration agents.

“The optics of the military being here, the optics of the National Guard being in our city, the optics of our community seeing the LAPD in some of these raids is troubling,” she said.

Sánchez-Gordon said she is open to revisiting “certain language” in Special Order 40, the policy that bars officers from stopping people for the sole purpose of asking them about their citizenship status. But she doesn’t think it necessarily needs to be overhauled in order to add more protections.

At commission meetings, she has pushed harder than her colleagues to get answers from LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell about the department’s response to the immigration raids and the protests that ensued — but stopped short of openly challenging the chief.

Sánchez-Gordon replaces Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent who is now a security official at USC, as president of the commission. Southers may still remain on the body, pending a decision by the City Council.

The commission has been down a member for months, since former member Maria “Lou” Calanche resigned so she could run for City Council. A lack of quorum has led to the cancellation of roughly a third of its meetings this year. To fill Calanche’s seat, the mayor has nominated Jeff Skobin, vice president at Galpin Motors Inc. and the son of a former longtime police commissioner.

Activists have long denounced commissioners as being puppets of the Police Department who are disconnected from the everyday struggles of Angelenos. Week in and week out, some of the board’s most vocal critics show up to its meetings to blast commissioners for ignoring the threat of mass surveillance, hiding their affiliations with special interest groups and failing to curb police shootings, which have risen to 34 from 21 at this time last year.

Sánchez-Gordon said she was surprised at first by the intensity of the meetings, but that she also understands the desire for change. Early in her career, she organized to improve conditions for people who had moved to the U.S. from other countries as part of the AFL-CIO’s Labor Immigrant Assistance Project.

She got her first taste of politics volunteering for the City Council campaign of Edward R. Roybal, who would go on to serve 15 terms in Congress. She later enrolled at the People’s College of Law, an unaccredited law school in downtown, where she rubbed shoulders with other Latino political luminaries such as Gil Cedillo and future L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

She credits conversations around the breakfast table with her husband and father-in-law, both prominent civil rights lawyers, with inspiring her to pursue a law career. After working for several years as a federal public defender, she decided to run for judge at the prodding of a mentor. Like many activists of her generation, she thought that the best way to effect change was from the inside.

Since retiring from the bench, she has continued to work as an arbitrator and is a partner at a local injury law firm.

Sánchez-Gordon said her to-do list on the commission includes understanding the department’s ongoing struggles with recruiting new officers, and getting the department ready for the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games. Once she gets settled, she said she intends to spend more time outside the commission’s meetings attending community events.

Given the recent rise in police shootings, she said it’s also important that officers have the right training and less-lethal options so they don’t immediately resort to using their guns.

She sees her new role as an extension of the work she’s been doing her whole career: “I just see it as what I’ve always done as a judge: You ask questions.”

Boko Haram insurgents raided Wagga Mongoro, a rural community in Madagali Local Government Area (LGA), Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria, on Tuesday night, Sept. 23. They killed four residents, injured several others, and destroyed property, including a church, homes, and vehicles.

Cyrus Ezra, a resident, told HumAngle that several residents began fleeing when the terrorists invaded the community at about 11:40 p.m. “They killed David Mbicho, his son Daniel, Jude Jacob, and Omega Duda. They burnt churches, motorcycles, houses, and a car,” he said, adding that the local vigilante group tried to repel the attack but was outnumbered and outgunned. 

“The group was heavily armed, and there was no official security presence, so our vigilante group had to abandon the fight,” he explained. “So far, we don’t know the total number of injured persons apart from the deceased.”

Cyrus said security operatives arrived only the following morning, Sept. 24, after fleeing residents had begun returning to assess the damage. 

Residents told HumAngle that security operatives deployed to Madagali LGA are usually stationed in the town centre or in Nimankara, leaving villages like Wagga Mongoro vulnerable. 

This was not the first time the community had been targeted. Barely two months ago, in July, terrorists raided the community, burning houses and forcing residents to flee to Madagali town and other neighbouring communities. They returned weeks after calm was restored. Now, after the latest assault, residents are fleeing once again.

“Right now, people have packed their bags and are leaving for Yola, the Adamawa State capital, and other places to go and stay with their loved ones.  Nobody wants to stay behind to witness this kind of incident again,” Cyrus said. 

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, Boko Haram has displaced over 200,000 persons in Adamawa State so far, most of them from Michika and Madagali LGAs. 

“We are scared,” Cyrus said. “Our greatest need right now is security. Some of us don’t want to leave our homes.”

Mention Aaron Donald and nearly everyone thinks Rams, the team he spent his entire 10-year NFL career with and led to a Super Bowl championship in 2022. Donald was a three-time NFL defensive player of the year, nine-time All-Pro and is regarded as one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time.

But before Los Angeles there was Pittsburgh, where Donald grew up and where he went to college. And it is the University of Pittsburgh where Donald became an unstoppable force from 2010 to 2013, setting an NCAA record with tackles for loss by an interior lineman before the Rams plucked him as their first-round draft pick.

So it is Pitt that will retire Donald’s No. 97 on Nov. 15 during a home game against Notre Dame, Panthers athletic director Allen Greene announced Monday. Donald also will be enshrined in the Pitt Hall of Fame this weekend, joining other iconic alumni names Dan Marino, Tony Dorsett, Mike Ditka and Larry Fitzgerald.

“Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I’m grateful to the University of Pittsburgh for taking a chance on me when so many others wouldn’t,” Donald said in a statement. “I accomplished more in my career than I ever dreamed of, and for that I’m truly blessed.

“To soon see my number hanging alongside other Pitt greats is an honor beyond measure. I will always love this University. Hail to Pitt!”

Donald starred at Penn Hills High, east of Pittsburgh. As a Pitt senior in 2013, Donald led the nation with 28.5 tackles for loss and added 11 sacks and four forced fumbles. He was a unanimous first-team All-American and won every award that exists for a lineman: the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, Chuck Bednarik Award, Outland Trophy and Rotary Lombardi Award.

“Aaron Donald is a proud Pittsburgher who embodies the very best of what it means to be a Pitt Panther,” Greene said. “His humility, determination, and work ethic reflect the character of this community. Retiring his jersey honors not only an extraordinary athlete, but a leader whose relentless pursuit of excellence has defined his legacy.”

The first floor of Pitt’s Duratz Athletic Complex was renamed the Aaron Donald Football Performance Center in 2019, after Donald made a seven-figure gift to the program. He also set a high bar for workouts, as Rams teammate Jared Verse learned when he joined Donald for a punishing series of full-body circuit training in July — months after Donald retired.

“His wife came in laughing at me — I told her to call the police,” Verse joked, adding, “I tried to lie and say my mom was at my house and I had to go let her in. He told me to give my keys to his management or assistant and that they would go let my mom in. So I wasn’t leaving.

“Finished the workout. I’m dead tired, I’m exhausted. I had a plan to go jump in the sauna afterwards, didn’t happen. I had plans to watch film, didn’t happen. Went home and I didn’t work out for another day and a half because I couldn’t move my body.”

Donald also founded the AD99 Solutions Foundation, which provides Pittsburgh’s underprivileged youth access to education, nutrition and community involvement.

Accolades for his Rams career will be forthcoming. Donald will be eligible for the NFL Hall of Fame in 2029 and is considered a lock for first-ballot induction. The Rams have retired eight players’ jersey numbers and Donald’s No. 99 likely will be the ninth.

“I had the privilege — and sometimes the misfortune — of facing Aaron 14 times in his first seven years, and every snap was a reminder of his complete domination,” said Fitzgerald, an NFL Hall of Famer who spent 17 years with the Arizona Cardinals. “As a Pitt man, I was filled with pride watching him redefine what it meant to play defense, but as an [NFL] opponent, I knew he was carving his name into history at our expense.

“He wasn’t just disruptive. He was destructive, bending entire offenses to his will and still making plays no one else could make. Retiring his number is the perfect tribute because there will never be another Aaron Donald, and there will never again be another 97 at Pitt.”

Uniform numbers retired by the Rams

• #7: Bob Waterfield
• #28: Marshall Faulk
• #29: Eric Dickerson
• #74: Merlin Olsen
• #75: Deacon Jones
• #78: Jackie Slater
• #80: Isaac Bruce
• #85: Jack Youngblood

The population of Am Dafock, situated on the border between  Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR), have been forced to abandon their homes and take refuge in the camp of the United Nations Multidimensional Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) following an attack early this morning of Monday, Sept. 22, by unidentified assailants from Sudan.

This attack is suspected to be a reprisal, happening three days after the killing of four Sudanese Arabs by Russian mercenaries on Sept. 16, in Am Dafock, and marks an escalation of violence on the border between Sudan and CAR. The attack happened in a village seven kilometres from Am Dafock on the  CAR side of the border. The Sudanese conflict has been spilling into the country for some time now. 

“Today’s attack was concentrated in the Bilibili zone, where clashes took place between youths and yet to be identified assailants. Several victims were recorded, but the casualty figure remains unknown due to the confusion that currently reigns in the area,” an anonymous military source told HumAngle. 

Zachir Eric Takiya, former president of the youth prefectural council in Vakaga, has confirmed the ‘attack by Sudanese aggressors’, adding that it resulted in deaths and injuries within the local population, but no exact numbers of casualties were confirmed.

“Faced with this new wave of violence, the population of Am Dafock have massively fled from their homes in search of places of refuge, with most of them going to the MINUSCA base in the town. This collective escape is proof of the terror that has seized the inhabitants who are now convinced that their security can no longer be ensured by their national army,” opined an anonymous civil society activist. 

“The behaviour of the national army, popularly known by the acronym FACA, deployed in the zone has been contributing to the confusion, visiting the local population. The behaviour of the FACA forces is proof of the fact that they are incapable of facing the attackers,” the activist added. 

Am Dafock is currently in a state of total paralysis. This situation is proof of the collapse of state authority in this strategic border region.

This new escalation in violence confirms the analysis by Zachir Eric Takiya, who had alerted the authorities to the porous situation of the CAR border with Sudan during the national dialogue in 2022. According to him, the border resembles “two passageways which enable Sudanese and Chadians to enter and go as they like in the Central African Republic territory. These foreign populations, most times, know the terrain more than the Central African Republic natives themselves.” 

“The contrast between the reality lived by the populations and the official version of events is becoming more and more difficult to decipher,” declared another anonymous civil society activist.

The Am Dafock crisis demonstrates the total failure of the security strategy based on the use of Russian mercenaries. Their initial attack against innocent herders has sparked off a cycle of reprisals which have spiralled out of control. 

Stay with a herding family in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert

Eternal Landscapes offers individual and small-group trips to Mongolia, with a focus on supporting local communities. On the five-day Erdenedalai Explorer trip, guests stay with a herding family in the vast steppes of the “Middle Gobi”, an area often bypassed by travellers heading to the better-known sights of the desert’s southern region.

The trip offers a glimpse into local life in a wild landscape. A tour of the capital Ulaanbaatar is also included, during which you can visit projects working to improve life in the community. Eternal Landscapes (a member of The Conscious Travel Foundation) also visits other towns overlooked by mainstream tourism and provides employment for local women by using only female trip assistants.
From $1,045pp (£773) in a group of six ($1,800 for a solo traveller or $1,265pp in a group of two), including meals and transfers outside the capital, eternal-landscapes.co.uk

Book into a hotel run by women in Sri Lanka

Opened in January, Amba Yaalu, on a mango plantation on the banks of the Kandalama Reservoir, is Sri Lanka’s first hotel fully managed and staffed by women. In a country where less than 10% of the country’s workforce is female, the aim is to promote equality and provide employment for women – many of whom leave the island in search of opportunities in the Gulf states.

Part of the eco-friendly hotel chain the Thema Collection, the idea for Amba Yaalu came from its founder, Chandra Wickramasinghe, who was inspired by his mother raising eight children while working as a nurse. A selection of immersive experiences are on offer, from cooking classes to village visits, allowing guests to delve into local life and culture.
Rooms from $120 (£89) B&B, themacollection.com

Take the road less travelled in Morocco

Intrepid Travel’s 11-day South Morocco Discovery adventure heads to the Atlas Mountains and deep into the Sahara, and includes plenty of community-led experiences. Guests stay in a family-run mountain gite, and head to Tafraoute to visit an Amazigh home and learn about traditional life and how it’s changing.

There’s the chance to visit a women’s cooperative outside Essaouira, which specialises in argan oil production. Camping under the stars, a camel safari at sunset and discovering ancient sites with a local guide are also part of the package.
From £662, including accommodation, breakfast, two lunches and dinners and activities, intrepidtravel.com

Serengeti safari with a clean cooking initiative in Tanzania

Small-group adventure specialist G Adventures puts community tourism at the heart of many of its itineraries, with more than 130 projects built into its trips, working with nonprofit partner Planeterra. Local nurseries also grow a tree for every day a traveller is on a trip, providing revenue for communities too.

Among its initiatives in Tanzania is the Masai Clean Cookstoves project that helps people to replace their traditional stoves, which cause deadly household air pollution, with modern models. An all-female team of engineers has so far installed 4,000 stoves across 60 Masai villages in the Serengeti.
The 12-day Serengeti Safari and Zanzibar trip includes a visit to the Clean Cookstove project, from £2,649pp, including hotels, camping, breakfast and some meals, gadventures.com

Preserving traditional customs in Georgia

Adventure specialist Wild Frontiers offers a range of tailored community-led trips, including Adventures with Purpose: Georgia, a 13-day itinerary with a focus on social enterprise projects that are preserving traditions and empowering locals, combined with classic sights such as Tbilisi old town and the Gergeti Trinity church.

Highlights include staying in the Tusheti region, a protected landscape managed by the Tushetian people, contributing to the preservation of the area and village life. In the Kakheti wine region, guests visit the Nukriani Workshops, a scheme that supports local communities and encourages the preservation of traditional crafts.
From £3,090, including accommodation, some meals and transport, wildfrontierstravel.com

Village life in Peru

The Rukha Ayllu project helps families in the traditional weaving village of Huilloc, in the Peruvian Andes, to benefit from responsible tourism. Despite being on a popular trekking route, the village was marginalised, with poor living conditions, until tour operator Valencia Travel Cusco launched the initiative to improve infrastructure and develop community-based experiences.

Now, the 25 families there welcome travellers into their homes and share their cultural heritage, food and crafts, with tourism bringing a welcome new revenue stream. Valencia Travel Cusco is a finalist in this year’s ICRT Global responsible tourism awards, the winners of which will be announced in November.
The 14-day Colours of Peru trip costs from $2,607 (£1,929), including a visit to the project, accommodation, breakfast and some other meals, valenciatravelcusco.com

Safaris and storytelling in rural India

One of the newest trips from operator Village Ways takes visitors to the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to stay with forest-dwelling communities and learn about traditional life and crafts, and ancient beliefs. From staying in a community-owned guesthouse to discovering the Baiga and Gond people’s connection to the land, rivers and forests – and their medicinal use of local plants – the nine-night itinerary delves into village life.

Hikes through forests, fireside dances and storytelling, and a safari in Kanha national park are among many highlights. Village Ways is a pioneer in sustainable tourism, providing rural communities with additional income streams and job opportunities and helping to reduce urban migration.
Forests and Fables: A Discovery of Ancient India, from £889pp, including transfers, accommodation and meals, villageways.com

Volunteering with children in Ghana

For travellers aged between 18 and 30, Gap360 offers a choice of trips of two to 12 weeks that support local communities. One option is the Ghana Teaching and Childcare Project, where volunteers work alongside locals in a school or childcare centre. This involves spending between four and six hours a days supporting children.

Staff and volunteers live together, and there’s plenty of free time to get immersed in Ghanaian culture and explore the country’s national parks and beaches. Volunteers can get involved in a youth development programme too. Alternatively, those with the skills can opt to work as a sports coach in anything from athletics to swimming or tennis.
From £599 for two weeks, including accommodation and meals, gap360.com

Hiking through farms and paddy fields in Bali

Astungkara Way is an 85-mile (137km) hiking route across Bali, designed to boost community tourism and regenerative farming. Walkers can choose sections or take on the entire 10-day route, either self-guided or with a group, meandering through paddies and forests, staying with local farming families, joining various daily activities, and tucking into farm-to-table dinners.

The project brings income to the villages and profits support regenerative rice farming along the trail. Besides benefiting from employment, many of the young Indonesians involved have become national spokespeople for ecotourism and sustainable agriculture.
The four-day Tree to Waterfall hike covers 29 miles and costs 6,100,000 rupiah (around £276) all inclusive, astungkaraway.com

Dinner in a South African township

Township and Village (a finalist in the 2025 ICRT Global responsible tourism awards) welcomes visitors into communities in the town of Stellenbosch and its surrounding vineyards to experience day-to-day life in the Western Cape province.

Launched in 2023, the social enterprise offers a host of activities, from dining on traditional Xhosa cuisine at a family home in the Kayamandi township, to djembe drumming sessions and guided walks to learn more about the area’s cultures and turbulent history. Community-based guides ensure authentic encounters, and visitors contribute directly to the local economy.
A three-course home dining experience is 550 rand (around £23), townshipandvillage.co.za

Homestays run by women in Nepal

Nestled in the Kathmandu Valley, Nagarkot Community Homestay Network is a cornerstone for building businesses. It enables women to grasp financial independence by opening up their homes to tourists. It was an enriching cultural experience for both me and my host. Their support of each other spilled over during my stay, in their warmth, delight and genuine desire to share and learn.
Vicky Bamford

Fishing conservation in Mexico

I had the trip of a lifetime in Mexico and out in the Pacific, diving with some incredible creatures. We funded – and were joined on the trip by – two young women who were learning to dive with a charity called Héroes del Mar, which works with Mexican young people in fishing communities to raise awareness of conservation and how it can go hand in hand with fishing as an economic lifeline for rural areas. They should be able to gain a career in conservation, train the next generation in their community and ensure fishing benefits communities and wildlife.
Holly

Dolphin-watching in East Sussex

Sussex Dolphin Project runs some fantastic boat trips from Newhaven and Brighton marinas, including a wildlife sailing experience and a sunset cruise, on which you may be lucky enough to see dolphins. Trips are from £30 for adults and £19 for children. The Trust focuses on education, training and citizen science in the local community.
Ayesha Twyman

Giving peace a chance, worldwide

Not one trip but many – like thousands of others across the world, we are members of Servas, set up in 1949 as a volunteer-run NGO to build international friendships, and promote peace and understanding. We have learned about urban ecology in Nantes, self-sufficiency in Asturias and what it was like to live in Ceaușescu’s Romania, and met like-minded people who have become friends. We have also welcomed visitors from all over the world. Others who travel more widely than we do tell us about warm welcomes and fascinating experiences all across the globe.
Barbara Forbes

Time for tea in Sri Lanka

In the mountains on the outskirts of Kandy sit the lush hills that host the plantations of this famous tea-growing region. We visited our female hosts as they finished their eight-hour shift, for which they earn £20 a week for working six days and carrying 20kg a day on their backs. We visited their home close by, where we mixed spices, cooked our dinner and enjoyed a typical evening with several generations of the family. A truly authentic experience, steeped in the local culture, with our payment supporting and benefiting the entire community.
Julie Fell

Crofting and standing stones on Lewis

A small village in mainland terms, Carloway runs an annual agricultural show which attracts about 2,000 visitors to what is now the best window on crofting in the Western Isles. It’s located on the western fringe of Lewis, the most northerly island in the Outer Hebrides. The mixture of fete, Highland games, baking and fruit-and-veg competitions with best sheep, dog, horse and cattle show is all run by local volunteers. Held on the first Wednesday in August, it also has ceilidhs and Highland dance events through the week. There’s a community-owned shop, self-catering and bunks (Garenin village) – and it’s only a few miles from the world-famous Callanish or Calanais standing stones. You have to pinch yourselves at the privilege of listening to superb Gaelic singers while supporting their culture and community.
Foster Evans

Winning tip: Local hosts on an Alpine hike in Italy

We completed three weeks of the Grande Traversata delle Alpi, an 800km (500 mile) long-distance trek in the Italian Alps. It was conceived as an economic regeneration project in the 1970s to join up and provide tourism to tiny villages with ageing populations and declining industry. In each location, one or more providers elects to supply overnight accommodation and food to hikers; as a result the variety in our stays was immense. It cost €60-70pp pn for half-board, sometimes less in dormitories. It’s a very quiet trail compared with many in the Alps, and we often had it to ourselves. Villagers are really friendly and we enjoyed some delicious local food, always at least three courses, with vegetarians fully catered for.
Samantha McGrady

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving California the power to set its own immunization schedules based on state health experts and independent medical groups — a sharp break from decades of reliance on guidance from the federal government.

The move came the same day that California and its West Coast allies issued joint recommendations for COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines, part of a regional alliance formed to counter what they say is a politicized U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

“Our states are united in putting science, safety, and transparency first — and in protecting families with clear, credible vaccine guidance,” said the governors of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, which make up the West Coast Health Alliance.

The flurry of vaccine actions came as lawmakers and the University of California proposed a $23-billion ballot measure to replace federal research dollars lost to Trump-era cuts, underscoring efforts by Democrats in the state to shield science and public health from shifting federal policies. The measure, if passed by the California Legislature when lawmakers return in January, would go before voters in November 2026.

“The loss of critical federal funding awarded to the University of California presents an unprecedented and perilous moment for the state and its communities,” Theresa Maldonado, UC vice president for research and innovation, said in a statement.

The healthcare clash comes following a wave of COVID cases and as the annual flu season nears. For decades, the CDC has been the nation’s trusted authority on vaccines — setting childhood immunization schedules, guiding which shots adults should receive and shaping state health policies across the country.

Now, at the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump ally, the CDC fired top leadership, lost senior scientific advisors and remade its vaccine advisory committee with members who the Associated Press found spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about immunizations.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has defended the shakeup as necessary to create trust and “eliminate politics from science.”

“They deserve the truth and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of the agency,” Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month during a contentious hearing.

The overhaul triggered a fierce backlash as more than 1,000 employees at the health agency and national health organizations have called on Kennedy to resign. Some states, however, have embraced the approach — Florida announced plans to become the first state to end all vaccines mandated, including for schoolchildren.

The polarization is taking a toll. A recent KFF poll found Americans are increasingly uncertain about public health guidance and whether new recommendations from the administration will make them more or less safe.

Public health experts say that not only are vaccines crucial for the health of individuals and the community but they also ultimately save money — preventing sickness and the rise in healthcare costs that would accompany widespread disease outbreaks.

The changes in federal vaccine recommendations have been sweeping. The Food and Drug Administration, which falls under Kennedy’s purview, now requires adults 65 and younger and otherwise healthy — who report no underlying health issues — to consult with a healthcare provider before getting the COVID vaccine. Similarly, the CDC requires parents of healthy children to talk to a healthcare provider before their child can receive the COVID vaccine, a barrier the American Academy of Pediatrics called “deeply troubling.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued its own COVID vaccine guidance, countering what the CDC recommended, that says all young children 6 months to 23 months should be vaccinated, as well as certain high-risk older children. The group has also said that older children should be offered the vaccine if their parents request it.

The CDC also changed its vaccine schedule from recommending the COVID vaccine to all pregnant women to offering “no guidance” as to whether healthy pregnant women should get the vaccine. In response, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that people receive the updated COVID-19 vaccine at any point during their pregnancy.

California said it too will reject CDC guidance, starting with the recommendations released Wednesday from the West Coast Health Alliance. Those recommendations were developed by health officers and subject matter experts from each state, who considered guidelines from medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

The COVID-19 vaccine recommendations from the West Coast Health Alliance include vaccinating all children 6 months to 23 months and those 2 years old to 64 years old with risk factors. The alliance also recommended all pregnant and postpartum women or those planning to become pregnant to be vaccinated.

The alliance recommended children 6 months and older and all adults and pregnant women to receive the flu shot. For the RSV vaccine, the alliance recommends it for children younger than 8 months, as well as anyone 75 years or older. The alliance recommends the RSV vaccine for all other ages if a person has risk factors.

“We want the people who live and work in our states to know that there is a strong public health, healthcare and scientific community that will continue to stand together to provide and use the data and evidence needed for you to make healthy choices, and we are here to protect our communities,” said Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, in a statement.