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They had come to hear plans for the privately funded rebuilding of the Palisades Recreation Center that was badly damaged in the January fire that tore through Pacific Palisades.

Most of the hundreds crammed into the rec center’s old gym cheered about plans for new park space, pickleball courts and basketball hoops to be paid for by some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest and most prominent philanthropists.

But that Tuesday night — nine months to the day since the Palisades fire began — they were angry, too. With City Hall.

During public comments, Jeremy Padawer, whose home in the Palisades burned, said of the city-owned rec center: “We need this. We need churches, we need synagogues, we need grocery stores. We need hope.”

But he said he didn’t trust the municipal government to run the beloved rec center and reminded the crowd that the city, which is navigating the complex recovery from one of the costliest and most destructive fire in its history, is “a billion dollars in debt.”

“What are they going to do with this brand new facility when [philanthropists] turn the keys over to them?” he asked. “Do we trust them?”

“No!” the crowd shouted.

He added: “Where is Mayor Bass?” The audience cheered. Someone hollered back: “Lost cause!”

Bass and other city leaders dispute they have neglected the fire-ravaged Palisades, but the scene encapsulated the anger and disappointment with City Hall that has been building in one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest neighborhoods. There, scores of yard signs depict the mayor wearing clown makeup à la the Joker. On one cleared lot, an enormous sign, roughly 7 feet tall, stands where a home once did, declaring: “KAREN BASS RESIGN NOW.”

Residents have blamed city leaders for a confusing rebuilding process that they say is being carried out by so many government agencies and consultants that it’s difficult to discern who is in charge. They also say that the city is moving too slowly — a charge that Bass and her team vehemently reject.

On Wednesday, a day after the meeting at the rec center, federal prosecutors announced that the deadly Palisades fire was a flare-up of a small arson fire that had smoldered for six days, even after city firefighters thought they had it contained. Authorities said they had arrested Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver who is suspected of setting the initial fire on New Year’s Day.

Hours after the arrest was announced, the Los Angeles Fire Department — which failed to pre-deploy engines despite extreme wind warnings — released its long-awaited after-action report that said firefighters were hampered by an ineffective process for recalling them back to work, as well as poor communication, inexperienced leadership, and a lack of resources.

Many Palisadians had already suspected the fire was a rekindling of the smaller blaze, said Maryam Zar, who runs the citizen-led Palisades Recovery Coalition. But the onslaught of news landed “like a ton of bricks” in the frustrated community.

Zar got home late after attending the meeting at the rec center Tuesday night. Then, on Wednesday morning, her phone buzzed with text message chains from Palisadians telling one another to brace for a traumatic day — not necessarily because they would learn how the fire started, “but because we all knew that it was so unnecessary,” she said.

While people were happy there was “finally some accountability” with the arrest, she said, conversations in the Palisades quickly turned to: “Had the city been prepared, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Zar, who has spent more than a decade serving on and founding volunteer organizations and task forces in Pacific Palisades, said she was well accustomed to byzantine government processes.

“But for the first time, I’m worried because the wheels just aren’t turning,” she said.

One project that has, for some, become surprisingly emblematic of working with the city is the promised-but-delayed installation of a small temporary space for the Palisades Branch Library, which stood next to the rec center campus before it was destroyed.

Cameron Pfizenmaier, president of the volunteer group Friends of the Palisades Library, said Los Angeles Public Library officials told her in July that the city would be placing a 60-by-60-foot prefabricated building — essentially a large trailer — on a grassy space at the entrance to the rec center.

It would include lockers for patrons to pick up books ordered online, computers, printers and scanners, and public meeting space. The building, she said she was told, would be up and running by August.

Then, she said, the building’s installation was delayed to October. And the location was changed, with the temporary space — which probably will stand for several years while the library is being rebuilt — now set to be placed atop two tennis courts at the rec center.

In an email to The Times this week, Bass’ office said that the building’s installation is expected to begin in November and that it should open by the end of January.

“The community is losing faith that the city is actually able to do anything,” said Pfizenmaier, who lost her home. “It’s such a missed opportunity for good news and hope.

“It’s not that hard to drop a bungalow and hook it into power. … The only thing that’s making it hard is the bureaucracy that’s preventing it.”

Yet Palisadeans themselves seem divided on the library, with some decrying the proposed use of the rec center’s grassy expanse, a rare green oasis in the charred neighborhood. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home, posted a photo of the space on Instagram, complaining that “Karen Bass and her city goons want to put a temporary library on top of it” and that he figured “the library will be designed in the shape of an empty water reservoir.”

Others have blasted the decision to place the structure atop the popular tennis courts.

In a statement to The Times, Bass’ office said the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and the Los Angeles Public Library are gathering community feedback about the modular building, which the two agencies will share. They also are still determining how to hook up plumbing, sewage and electricity on site and are ordering books, computers, supplies and furniture, the mayor’s office said.

“This effort needed to be coordinated with and adjusted to the plans to redesign and rebuild the Palisades Rec Center to ensure the temporary site would not impede future construction,” Bass’ office said.

From the days just after the fire through July, the library lot on Alma Real Drive served as a staging area for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s emergency response, including distributing water and providing electric vehicle charging stations for Palisades residents, Bass’ office said.

Bass has issued a swath of executive orders to aid recovery, including providing tax relief for fire-affected businesses and streamlining permitting. And she has touted the speed with which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency, cleared debris from the library lot, citing her own “call to prioritize public spaces in the debris removal operation.”

The lot was cleared in April in six days — 24 days ahead of schedule.

Bass’ office said the L.A. Public Library is working to select an architect from a list of preapproved contractors through the Bureau of Engineering “to expedite the rebuilding of the permanent library.”

Joyce Cooper, director of branch library services for the library, said in an interview that the Palisades Branch Library held more than 34,000 items, including books, audiobooks, DVDs and CDs.

“Pretty much our entire collection — everything was lost,” Cooper said. “It was a community hub. When the fire destroyed the branch, it took that away from everybody.”

The city established limited library services in the nascent Pacific Palisades in the 1920s, and the community got its first branch library in 1952.

The most recent facility opened in 2003 and was damaged by a 2020 electrical fire that destroyed much of the children’s collection, said Laura Schneider, a board member and former longtime president for Friends of the Library.

After a long closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, volunteers worked hard to draw people back to the library, Schneider said. Children and teenagers competed in writing contests, volunteers hosted big weekend book sales, and older people sought help with computers.

Schneider — whose still-uninhabitable home was damaged by the January fire — was first drawn to the library as a young mom. She moved to the Palisades when her son, now 23, was 2 years old and was enchanted by the big, circular window with a window seat in the fairy-tale-themed children’s section.

“I really believe it’s the heart of the Palisades,” Schneider said. “It’s a place that welcomes everyone. … There’s no community center. There’s no senior center in the Palisades. The library is as close to that as it comes.”

At the start of Tuesday night’s meeting at the Palisades Recreation Center, Jimmy Kim, general manager of the city’s cash-strapped parks department, made clear that questions about the location of the temporary library were “outside the scope” of the gathering and would not be answered. Many in the audience groaned.

The recreation center will be rebuilt through a public-private partnership that Bass and her onetime political adversary, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, promoted in a joint appearance in the spring. There, Bass told reporters that the city’s job was to ensure the project was able to move quickly through the permitting process and that “the role of government is to get out of the way.”

Private donations from Caruso’s philanthropic group Steadfast LA will help pay for the roughly $30-million rebuilding of the rec center. Another major donor is LA Strong Sports, a group started by Lakers coach JJ Redick, a Palisades resident who coached a youth basketball team at the center and appeared at the Tuesday meeting.

Speaker after speaker praised the private donors for making speed a priority.

“I’m so grateful that this is going through private [development] and not city because otherwise it would not be up for another 10 years,” said one woman, who said she had lived in the Palisades for two decades and had an 8-year-old boy who used the park often.

She added: “I just want to thank Rick Caruso for being the savior of our community.”

Caruso — who defeated Bass in the Palisades by wide a margin in the 2022 mayoral election — smiled and waved at her from the front of the room as the audience clapped.

A 15-year-old girl came to the microphone and said the rec center was where she learned to ride a bike and where her brothers played Saturday basketball games. Please, she pleaded with the donors in the room, hurry.

“Please don’t let us age out,” she said. “Please don’t let this take so long that kids never get to experience what I have. We’re ready to come back stronger. We just need help getting there.”

Caruso told the audience he expected construction to begin in January and for the center to reopen in January 2027. He said his group will not operate the space — the city will — but that he thought it would be in better hands if a community foundation took it over from the government.

At the end of the meeting, a City Hall staff member told the crowd that Bass had sent several staffers that night. The mayor, she promised, was listening.

Philippe Laffont was known for successfully investing in technology stocks before he founded Coatue Management, a technology-focused hedge fund, in 1999. Since then, he has grown the fund’s size to more $35 billion in assets under management.

Laffont has his finger on the pulse of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. His contrarian investment in Super Micro Computer, a company that manufactures high-end servers for data centers, turned some heads earlier this year.

Coatue bought into Supermicro at a controversial moment, but it seems Laffont had a change of heart. At the end of June, there were zero shares of the custom server builder in its portfolio.

While Coatue was disposing of Supermicro with its left hand, it was buying up shares of Intuitive Surgical (ISRG -1.34%) with its right. The hedge fund snapped up 39,512 shares of the robot-assisted surgery pioneer in the second quarter.

Intuitive Surgical stock has tumbled this year, but Laffont has reasons to expect a rebound. Here’s a look at what they are to see whether this stock could be a good fit for your portfolio.

An unbeatable advantage

When the market closed on Sept. 12, 2025, shares of Intuitive Surgical were up 19,390% since its initial public offering (IPO) 25 years ago. A few years before its IPO, the Food and Drug Administration made the company’s da Vinci robotic surgical system the first one with clearance to assist with minimally invasive abdominal surgeries.

Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and Stryker market surgical robots, but they entered the market after Intuitive Surgical. The pioneer is still the largest member of its industry. At the end of 2024, there were 11,040 Intuitive Surgical systems installed in hospitals worldwide.

Intuitive’s massive installed base of machines isn’t sitting idle either. Surgical teams trained to use da Vinci systems performed 2.7 million procedures last year. Plus, Ion, its more recently launched lung tumor biopsy machine, performed 95,000 procedures last year.

To date, competing systems generally address procedures that don’t already employ da Vinci systems, such as knee replacements and spinal surgeries. Hospital systems can spend more than $1 million installing a da Vinci system and then an even larger sum supporting and training the professionals who will use it. That’s a huge advantage over newer surgical systems that competitors probably won’t be able to overcome.

Placing systems and training surgeons to use them generates revenue for Intuitive, but these aren’t the main sources. Around 84% of total revenue last year came from recurring sources such as instruments and accessories that must be replaced before each procedure.

Why Intuitive Surgical stock is down

Intuitive Surgical has been a terrific stock for its long-term shareholders, but it’s been a stinker this year. It’s down about 26% from a peak it set in February.

Fear that tariffs will pressure profit margins has been a weight on Intuitive Surgical’s stock price. When reporting second-quarter results in July, management reduced its adjusted gross profit margin expectation to a range between 66% and 67%. That would be a minor decline from the 69.1% gross margin reported last year, but this temporary setback is hardly a reason to avoid the stock.

Earlier this year, Medtronic submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration to perform urology procedures with its Hugo RAS system. Roughly one-fifth of all procedures performed with da Vinci machines last year were in the urology category.

Investors concerned that the Hugo system will pull market share from da Vinci should know that its launch overseas hasn’t been very successful. It’s been authorized for sale in the European Union since 2021, but Medtronic still doesn’t tell investors how much revenue Hugo’s generating in its quarterly reports.

Time to buy?

In the U.S., hospitals considering a new surgical system for urologic surgeries could have a new option from Medtronic by the end of the year. Luckily for Intuitive Surgical, the da Vinci 5 system, which launched in March 2024, already makes Medtronic’s Hugo system seem outdated.

Despite tariff pressure, investors can expect significant growth from Intuitive Surgical. Management is forecasting overall procedure growth of 15.5% to 17.0% this year. High switching costs for hospitals could lead to procedure growth that continues rising for another decade or two.

With a stock price that’s been trading at 55.3 times forward earnings expectations, investors are already expecting profit growth at a double-digit percentage for years to come. Intuitive Surgical stock could fall hard if Medtronic or another competitor begins pressuring sales growth in the years ahead.

Given Hugo’s performance in the E.U., threats from well-heeled competitors appear toothless. Adding some shares to a diverse portfolio now could be the right move for investors with a high risk tolerance.

Cory Renauer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intuitive Surgical. The Motley Fool recommends Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $75 calls on Medtronic and short January 2026 $85 calls on Medtronic. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Leo XIV will canonize Italian teen Carlo Acutis, who died from cancer almost 20 years ago, in a ceremony on the first Sunday of September. Acutis will be become the first millennial saint. File Photo by Stefano Spaziani/UPI | License Photo

June 13 (UPI) — An Italian teenager dubbed “God’s Influencer” is to become the first saint from the millennial generation Sept. 7, after Pope Leo XIV announced the date of his canonization in the Vatican on Friday.

British-born Carlo Acutis, a keen computer gamer who died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15, will be declared a saint by Leo in a St. Peter’s Square ceremony, after the Holy See verified two miracles attributed to him and in recognition of his use of Internet technology to spread the Catholic faith.

Approved back in July under the previous pontificate of the late Pope Francis, Acutis will be canonized along with another candidate recognized by Francis, Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1924 at age 24.

“This morning, Pope Leo XIV presided over the Ordinary Public Consistory for the Canonization of the Blesseds, announcing that these Italian young men will be inscribed in the Register of Saints on the first Sunday of the month [of September],” the Vatican said in a social media post.

Acutis, a typical jeans and sneakers-wearing teen who has emerged as a poster boy for the church and helped to attract a new generation of younger adherents, was beatified in 2020 after a Brazilian boy unable to eat normally due to a birth defect was allegedly cured after his mother prayed to Acutis.

The second miracle in May 2024 involved a Costa Rican student with a severe, life-threatening head trauma from a cycling accident in Florence, which resolved after her mother prayed to Acutis at his tomb in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis.

The Pontiff’s Office for Liturgical Celebrations also named seven other candidates, who are to be be canonized on the third Sunday of October.

May 29 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department Thursday sanctioned a Philippines-based computer infrastructure company and its administrator for allegedly providing services for sites involved in cryptocurrency scams.

Treasury said Funnull Technology and administrator Liu Lizhi provides infrastructure for hundreds of thousands websites allegedly involved in the scams known as “pig butchering.”

“Today’s action underscores our focus on disrupting the criminal enterprises, like Funnull, that enable these cyber scams and deprive Americans of their hard-earned savings,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said in a statement.

The sanctions were imposed in close cooperation with the FBI.

The Treasury described the “pig butchering” scams as Southeast Asian organized crime using victims of labor trafficking to scam millions of unsuspecting people worldwide.

“The scammers leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to deceive victims into believing they are in trusted relationships. The scammers then steal victims’ assets by convincing them to invest in virtual currency through a fake website designed to look like a legitimate investment platform that reflects significant, but fabricated, returns on the investment,” the Treasury said.

When victims stop paying more into the scam, the Treasury said the scammer “will abruptly cease communication, taking the victim’s entire investment with them.”

Funnull’s role, according to the Treasury, is to buy IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies and then sell them to cybercriminals to host the scam web platforms.

Treasury said Funnell is linked to the majority of virtual currency investment scam websites reported to the FBI.

U.S. victims, Treasury said, have lost over $200 million with an average loss per person of $150,000.

The Treasury alleged that in 2024 Funnell bought a repository of code used by web developers and “maliciously altered the code to redirect visitors of legitimate websites to scam websites and online gambling sites, some of which are linked to Chinese criminal money laundering operations.”

According to Treasury the Lizhi, a Chinese national, is an administrator of Funnell involved in tasks allegedly including “assigning domain names to cybercriminals, including domains associated with virtual currency investment fraud, phishing scams, and online gambling sites.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — One program distributes laptops in rural Iowa. Another helped people get back online after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones in western North Carolina. Programs in Oregon and rural Alabama teach older people, including some who have never touched a computer, how to navigate in an increasingly digital world.

It all came crashing down this month when President Trump — on his own digital platform, Truth Social — announced his intention to end the Digital Equity Act, a federal grant program meant to help bridge the digital divide. He branded it as “RACIST and ILLEGAL” and said it amounts to “woke handouts based on race.” He said it was an “ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway.” The program was funded with $2.75 billion.

The name seemed innocuous enough when the program was approved by Congress in 2021 as part of a $65-billion investment meant to bring internet access to every home and business in the United States. The broadband program was a key component of the $1-trillion infrastructure law enacted under the Biden administration.

The Digital Equity Act was intended to fill gaps and cover unmet needs that surfaced during the massive broadband rollout. It gave states and tribes flexibility to deliver high-speed internet access to families that could not afford it, computers to kids who did not have them, telehealth access to older adults in rural areas, and training and job skills to veterans.

Whether Trump has the legal authority to end the program remains unknown. But for now the Republican administration can simply stop spending the money.

“I just felt my heart break for what we were finally, finally in this country, going to address, the digital divide,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit that was awarded — but has not received — a $25.7-million grant to work with groups across the country to help provide access to technology. “The digital divide is not just physical access to the internet, it is being able to use that to do what you need to do.”

The word ‘equity’

While the name of the program probably got it targeted — the Trump administration has been aggressively scrubbing the government of programs that promote diversity, equity or inclusion — the Digital Equity Act was supposed to be broader in scope.

Though Trump called it racist, the words “race” or “racial” appear just twice in the law’s text: once, alongside “color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability,” in a passage stating that no groups should be excluded from funding; and later, in a list of covered populations, along with older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, English learners, people with low literacy levels and rural Americans.

“Digital Equity passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the act’s chief proponent, noted in a statement. “And that’s because my Republican colleagues have heard the same stories as I have — like kids in rural communities forced to drive to McDonalds parking lots for Wi-Fi to do their homework.

“It is insane — absolutely nuts — that Trump is blocking resources to help make sure kids in rural school districts can get hot spots or laptops, all because he doesn’t like the word equity!”

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which administers the program, declined to comment. It’s not clear how much of the $2.75 billion has been awarded, though in March 2024 the NTIA announced the allocation of $811 million to states, territories and tribes.

‘More confident’

On a recent morning in Portland, Ore., Brandon Dorn was among those taking a keyboard basics class offered by Free Geek, a nonprofit that provides free courses to help people learn to use computers. The class was offered at a low-income housing building to make it accessible for residents.

Dorn and the others were given laptops and shown the different functions of keys: control, shift and caps lock, how to copy and paste. They played a typing game that taught finger and key placement on a color-coded keyboard.

Dorn, 63, said the classes helped because “in this day and age, everything has to go through the computer.” He said it helped him feel more confident and less dependent on his children or grandchildren to do things such as making appointments online.

“Folks my age, we didn’t get this luxury because we were too busy working, raising the family,” he said. “So this is a great way to help us help ourselves.”

Juan Muro, Free Geek’s executive director, said participants get the tools and skills they need to access things like online banking, job applications, online education programs and telehealth. He said Trump’s move to end funding has put nonprofits such as Free Geek in a precarious position, forcing them to make up the difference through fundraising and “beg for money to just provide individuals with essential stuff.”

Sara Nichols works for the Land of Sky Regional Council, a multi-county planning and development organization in western North Carolina. On the Friday before Trump’s inauguration in January, the organization received notice that it was approved for a grant. But like other groups the Associated Press contacted, it has not seen any money.

Land of Sky had spent a lot of resources helping people recover from last year’s storms. The award notice, Nichols said, came as “incredible news.”

“But between this and the state losing, getting their letters terminated, we feel just, like, stuck. What are we going to do? How are we going to move forward? How are we going to let our communities continue to fall behind?”

Filling unmet needs

More than one-fifth of Americans do not have broadband internet access at home, according to the Pew Research Center. In rural communities, the number jumps to 27%.

Beyond giving people access to technology and fast internet, many programs funded by the Digital Equity Act sought to provide “digital navigators” — human helpers to guide people new to the online world.

“In the United States we do not have a consistent source of funding to help individuals get online, understand how to be safe online and how to use that technology to accomplish all the things that are required now as part of life that are online,” said Siefer of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. This includes providing families with internet hot spots so they can get online at home and helping seniors avoid online scams, she said.

“Health, workforce, education, jobs, everything, right?” Siefer said. “This law was going to be the start for the U.S. to figure out this issue. It’s a new issue in the big scheme of things, because now technology is no longer a nice-to-have. You have to have the internet and you have to know how to use the technology just to survive, let alone to thrive today.”

Siefer said the word “equity” in the name probably prompted Trump to target the program for elimination.

“But it means that he didn’t actually look at what this program does,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want Grandma to be safe online? Who doesn’t want a veteran to be able to talk to their doctor rather than get in a car and drive two hours? Who doesn’t want students to be able to do their homework?”

Ortutay and Rush write for the Associated Press and reported from San Francisco and Portland, Ore., respectively.