According to local media, this has also affected Brussels Charleroi Airport, with 30 flights cancelled so far.
This mainly means Ryanair passengers, who are the primary carrier at Belgium‘s second biggest airport.
Ryanair slammed the strike, which has affected 20,000 passengers.
The airline’s boss Michael O’Leary said: “While we respect the right to strike, it is unacceptable that airlines were given zero notice of today’s Belgian ATC strike.
“As a result, airlines were forced to cancel flights at short notice, unfairly impacting thousands of passengers travelling to/from Belgium – many of whom are now stranded at Charleroi and Zaventem Airports.”
But Wizz Air passengers are also being hit, with flights being forced to divert and land at other airports.
Ryanair has slammed the strikeCredit: EPA
Brussels Charleroi said in a statement: ” A new work stoppage will bring operations to a standstill starting at 2:15pm at Charleroi Airport.
“As a result, all flights scheduled to depart or arrive from 2:15 p.m. onward are canceled.
“Passengers with a flight scheduled after 2:15pm departing from or arriving at Charleroi Airport are advised to contact their airline for refunds or rebooking.
“Passengers with flights scheduled after 9:00pm are advised to check their flight status on their airline’s website.”
Similar restrictions are affecting other airports in Belgium too, including Antwerp, Liege, Ostend-Bruges.
The strikes are due to a disagreement over a new digital control tower being introduced.
A UK waterpark has closed suddenly as the country experiences 33C heat.
Blackpill Lido in Swansea, Wales, is a popular spot that is free for visitors – and is even more popular with the current heat the UK is experiencing and the half-term holidays.
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Blackpill Lido in Swansea has closed after damage to the pool floor was foundCredit: Supplied
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However, Swansea Council was forced to drain the lido yesterday after the pool floor became damaged.
It is the pool’s second closure in the past month, following sprinklers being stolen from the lido earlier this month.
According to Swansea Bay News, the council revealed that they had been forced to drain the pool on Tuesday after parts of the pool flooring came away.
A spokesperson for the council said: “Sadly the Lido at Blackpill will be closed for a number of days due to a technical issue.
“Sincere apologies for any inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your understanding.”
In a later update, a council spokesperson added: “Unfortunately, the lido’s flooring has come away in some areas and we’re looking into how it happened.
“We’re aiming to get it fixed as quickly as possible over the coming days and then we’ll refill the lido.”
The council also revealed that even once repair works are complete, it could take a number of days to refill the lido, which will prolong the closure.
Currently, no expected reopening date has been announced.
Blackpill Lido underwent refurbishment in recent years, including launching new water features.
On a Tuesday evening in Eagle Rock, used-bookstore owners Jeremy and Debbie Kaplan were closing up for the day when a stranger rushed through the entrance. He tossed an envelope onto the counter, said something like: “Building’s been sold,” and slipped out.
Inside the envelope, the Kaplans found a 30-day notice: The shop’s $1,200 monthly rent would be increasing to $2,805 on April 1, they were required to decide whether they would accept the more than 133% price hike a month in advance, and they’d need to agree to a three- to five-year lease if so. The letter arrived Feb. 17, which meant the Kaplans had 11 days to accept the new landlord’s terms or leave.
“We couldn’t even consider it,” Jeremy Kaplan said. “It would be suicide.” The couple looked around the 680-square-foot shop. From the floor to ceiling, more than 20,000 books were crammed every which way into shelves they’d built and stained themselves nearly 20 years before. “My first reaction was panic,” he said. “How are we going to move out of this place?”
Their children had grown up at Read Books (pronounced like the color, as in: “These aren’t new books, they’re previously read books.”) The realization began to set in, Jeremy said, that they were being pushed out with intimidation tactics. “We started getting angry. So the next day, we started looking into our legal rights.”
After searching the internet, the Kaplans found California’s Senate Bill 1103, the Commercial Tenant Protection Act that passed last year. The law offers protections for “qualified commercial tenants” and requires landlords to give a 90-day notice for rent increases surpassing 10%.
When the Kaplans tried to contact the new property management company, Jeremy said, Systems Real Estate was evasive.
“It’s the one bill that protects commercial tenants, and it’s a fairly toothless bill because they don’t have to acknowledge it, unless you make them acknowledge it,” he said. The Kaplans, along with Sharon Kroner, whose neighboring vintage boutique Owl Talk is facing the same fate, wrote to Systems Real Estate, citing SB 1103. They had the letter certified and attached their rent checks for the next month.
In response, the 30-day notice was amended to 90 days. Systems Real Estate did not respond to a request from The Times for comment.
The Kaplans had more time to search for a new location, but Jeremy quickly saw a trend in Northeast Los Angeles. “Vacant spaces all over the place,” he said. “When we inquired, they were ludicrously expensive, most over $5 per square foot. The second thing we started noticing was small stores like ours going out of business or being priced out in the exact same way we were.”
Jeremy Kaplan stands inside his bookstore on the last day Read Books is open for business.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Building a coalition
When Jeremy started posting about Read Books’ plight, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Many customers who reached out said they wanted to help — the bookstore had been in Eagle Rock for as long as they had.
“Not mere condolences but calls to action from people I barely knew,” he said. “Lawyers, journalists, activists, parents, children.”
Two days after the rent-increase notice was delivered, the Kaplans and their supporters were devising a plan to fight back — if not to save Read Books, then to save other small businesses.
Save North East Los Angeles Shops was born.
Chris Newman, an immigrant rights lawyer whose son learned to read with books bought at the Eagle Rock shop, told The Times he showed up to the group’s first official meeting with the intention of trying to save the bookstore.
“I was surprised to see so many people talking not just about the situation that Jeremy’s in, but an epidemic that small businesses are facing,” Newman said.
At one coalition meeting in April, Jeremy rushed in late.
He’d just come from an event where he’d been able to talk with Mayor Karen Bass about the plight small businesses are facing and asked about the possibility of imposing a commercial vacancy tax on property owners who leave storefronts vacant for extended periods.
Although sympathetic, the mayor shot him down pretty swiftly, Jeremy said, saying nobody in L.A. wants more taxes.
A representative for Bass told The Times that under her leadership, “the City is focused on cutting red tape, expanding support for local businesses, and advancing solutions that address the broader affordability crisis.”
Signs against rent increases are posted outside Read Books.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
The precedent
In March 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down, small businesses in San Francisco had been grappling with rising rents that increasingly led to empty storefronts. Then North Beach’s beloved corner gem, Caffe Sapore, got its notice. Like Eagle Rockers, San Franciscans were done merely lamenting the community’s loss. They started organizing.
Aaron Peskin, who at the time served on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, said that while there are a variety of factors contributing to the vacancy issue, impractical property owners were the most common thread.
“Commercial landlords had unbelievably unrealistic expectations of rent, and a small business can only sell a T-shirt or a hamburger or a service for what the market will bear, and none of them could swing the rent,” Peskin said.
That year he authored Proposition D, a commercial vacancy tax ordinance that applies to street-facing, ground-floor properties that sit vacant for more than 182 days a year. It passed with nearly 70% of the vote.
“I served on that Board of Supervisors for 17 years, and it’s one of my proudest pieces of public policy,” Peskin said. “In the years since it passed, it has been working and has really helped in the post-pandemic recovery in our neighborhood commercial corridors. It’s been a rare instant success story.”
Demonstrators march toward Eagle Rock City Hall carrying protest signs against rent hikes for small businesses.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
The landlords
The question as to why someone would purchase a commercial property, raise the rent so current tenants are displaced and prospective tenants look elsewhere, only to have a onetime community hub collecting cobwebs, has inspired myriad theories.
Peskin pointed to an impractical landlord mentality; an L.A. council member suspected landlords were after tax breaks; a professor of economics said that his sense is that there’s more going on and tax benefits are likely not the driving factor; and a commercial real estate expert said landlords are likely pricing tenants out so they can tear the buildings down.
The Times reached out to Dr. Ari Ucar, the new owner of the Eagle Rock Boulevard building, who did not respond.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, a former tenant rights attorney, told The Times that landlords can benefit by claiming the vacancy as a loss on their taxes. “For landlords who own multiple commercial properties in a wide portfolio, a vacancy can be marked as a loss. In essence, when you file taxes and mark this as a loss, it reduces the total income generated. That’s the perverse incentive of having a vacancy.”
But a tax attorney in Los Angeles, Andrew Gradman, wasn’t convinced the tax incentive was enough to curb a landlord’s appetite for the passive income of steady rent payments. “You have to consider the most reasonable premise, which is that these landlords think they can get a better tenant, or they think that the lease would stand in the way of their getting some other better deal, in the form of, say, selling the whole building.”
A commercial real estate broker, Nick Quackenbos, said the likely motive for such a price hike is plans to scrape the building and build apartments in its place. He pointed to a recent landmark bill, State Senate Bill 79, which overrides local zoning laws to allow for taller, denser buildings near major transit stops. The bill will take effect statewide July 1, but L.A. plans to delay citywide upzoning until 2030 by carving out bespoke plans that target 55 single-family and low-density areas, allowing for 4-16 unit buildings up to four stories tall.
The 55 areas are mostly in Central L.A., West L.A., the Eastside and the San Fernando Valley. While Eagle Rock isn’t what L.A. city planners are designating an “opportunity hub” right now, Read Books is located a stone’s throw from the upcoming Colorado/Eagle Rock station, a stop on the North Hollywood to Pasadena BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) line slated to launch ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“The bill is allowing things to take place which could disfigure a city like Eagle Rock,” said Quackenbos. “I bet that’s what you’re going to find down the road: These places will become vacant, and suddenly there’s groundbreaking for a new apartment building going up.”
Jeremy Kaplan speaks to community members outside his store, Read Books, about the issues small business owners face.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
The rally
Read Books was set to close last weekend, and the Kaplans wanted to go out with a bang. In the shop’s front window was a single book: “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto” by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, surrounded by signs that read “Forced Out!,” “Shame on Greedy Landlords,” and “Our Family Loves Read Books.”
As Debbie sat at the register inside, helping a steady flow of the shop’s final patrons, protesters gathered behind the building, clutching homemade posters and waiting for Jeremy to speak. Choking up, he addressed the crowd.
Debbie Kaplan, who co-owns Read Books, hands a customer books.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“Three months ago, when this all began, my initial action was to fight back, because fighting is my default setting. But I also felt … fear of insignificance, of disappearing, as if everything we built in the last 19 years, often working seven days a week, might soon be dismantled and forgotten. The support you’ve gifted us with these last few months has been a constant reminder that we’re all in this together.
“The real estate lobby is rich and powerful. They have more lobbyists than our representatives have staff, but we are building a coalition to fight them.
Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL most valuable player, was in a tower at the starting line.
Ty Simpson — the 13th pick in the draft — and the rest of the Rams rookie class were at the finish.
The Rams present and presumably heir-apparent quarterback bookended Saturday’s WalkUnitedLA fundraising event at Hollywood Park.
On Monday, they will be in the same meeting room and on the field together for the first time as the Rams continue their voluntary offseason workout program in Woodland Hills.
“So excited to be here, not only in a great city like Los Angeles, but a great organization like the Rams,” Simpson said in an interview after greeting and presenting medals to runners and walkers who completed a 5K. “There’s great people and great friends in the rookie class, just excited to get started.”
Rams quarterback Ty Simpson, right, poses with a fan during a WalkUnitedLA fundraising event on Saturday.
(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)
Simpson was back in Los Angeles for the first time since April 24, the day after the seemingly Super Bowl-ready Rams surprised many by passing up the opportunity to select a receiver to choose an Alabama quarterback with only 15 starts. Simpson said he was not aware of the initial reaction by some fans.
“I just know they called my name on the 13th pick — and, sign me up, I was going to Los Angeles,” he said. “I don’t really get into all that. … I just have to make sure I do whatever my process is, and make sure that I do whatever the team needs me to do.”
On the night the Rams drafted Simpson, general manager Les Snead and coach Sean McVay were uncharacteristically subdued during a news conference. McVay later explained he was attempting to be respectful of Stafford’s status as the team leader, and that a personal situation also had affected his demeanor on draft night.
Asked if he had watched the news conference, Simpson said, “I didn’t really see it.”
“I know one thing though,” he said. “I know coach McVay has been in contact and he’s super fired up. And I’m super excited.
“I know that I couldn’t have asked for a better situation, not only with the best player in the league in front of me but the best coach in the league at the helm.”
After he was drafted, Simpson, 23, received a message from Stafford’s wife, Kelly, welcoming him and offering assistance to him and his family. He said he also received a text from Stafford that he did not initially see.
“It was really cool too,” Simpson said, “because they didn’t have to do that.”
Stafford, 38, was the No. 1 overall pick out of Georgia in 2009. His message to Simpson?
“It was funny because, of course, he was like, ‘Welcome, man. I’m super pumped,’” Simpson said. “He was like, ‘Loved watching you play, but you played for the wrong jersey,’ because he’s pumping up Georgia.”
Simpson chuckled.
“So when I see him on Monday, I’m going to give him heck about that,” he said. “But it’s cool. I’m super excited, especially having him and [quarterback] Stetson [Bennett] in there, Georgia guys, and me, an Alabama guy, so I’ve got to stand up for myself.”
Simpson spent the last few weeks working out in Tennessee. He requested a Rams playbook immediately after he was drafted, but said that McVay, quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone and offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase counseled that all of the rookies would be onboarded together.
He is eager to get started with the first phase of his pro career.
His goal for offseason workouts?
“Just get my feet underneath me,” he said. “Be the best guy I can be. It’s going to be such a different vibe, whatever you want to call it, from college.
“I just want to go in there, soak up as much as I can from Matthew and the guys and be the best player I can be.”
WASHINGTON — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.
Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.
Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.
Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.
“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.
At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess’ asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.
The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.
