project

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that the massive arch he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery would become a “top grade military complex” able to host drones and snipers while storing ammunition.

It is one more example of how Trump is insisting that his initiatives to remake the White House and its environs are also serving a defensive purpose. Trump has been calling the new White House ballroom a “military complex” and arguing it is necessary for national security purposes, at least in part to help it pass legal muster.

The Pentagon said it had no information beyond the president’s statement.

Trump’s announcement comes as the arch, like his other projects, faces legal challenges. Though the arch has received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all appointed by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian sued, saying the project needs to be approved by Congress.

“The president’s belated efforts to manufacture a national security justification for this project do nothing to cure its fundamental illegality,” Nicolas Sansone, one of the attorneys representing the litigants, said Sunday. “Congress has not authorized the arch, and unless and until Congress does so, the project should not be permitted to move forward.”

The president said in a social media post that he had agreed, at the “strong request” of the military, to convert the planned 250-foot-tall memorial arch “into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

The arch is proposed for a circle adjacent to the Memorial Bridge, which is a heavy traffic area as one of several connecting bridges between the nation’s capital and northern Virginia.

Among the other projects Trump is pursuing to refashion Washington’s cityscape are renaming and renovating the Kennedy Center, refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and rebuilding a golf course in East Potomac Park that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths. Some of the projects have run into trouble: The Kennedy Center now faces closure and perhaps demolition, and the botched Reflecting Pool renovation, originally set for completion by July 4, remains incomplete.

The groundbreaking for the arch was to have happened sometime this month. The project has not yet received final approval from the National Capital Area Planning Commission, which greenlighted the site and preliminary plans at its July meeting. The commission is expected to take up the matter again this fall.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

The symbolic move comes as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory.

An Argentinian judge has ordered the suspension of a British-Israeli oil project near the Falkland Islands in a purely symbolic move as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory.

Wednesday’s interim ruling issued by a court in Argentina’s southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, follows a lawsuit filed by 1982 war veterans and environmental lawyers earlier this month.

The plaintiffs sought to block Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum from the Sea Lion oilfield, located about 220km (137 miles) from the islands.

The judge ordered the companies to “refrain from initiating, pursuing, carrying out or having carried out any material actions” that would involve drilling, installing infrastructure or extracting hydrocarbons, according to a ruling seen by the AFP news agency.

Additionally, the suspension applies “until such time as the environmental impact assessment procedure has been conducted before the national authority competent in environmental matters”.

The judge gave the parties 10 days to provide information, including details about the status of the project, its contractors and its financiers.

President Javier Milei’s administration has also taken legal action against the project, arguing it violates a United Nations resolution calling for both sides to desist from unilateral actions in the islands until their dispute is resolved.

The court order comes just a day after Argentina announced it would file further legal complaints against companies exploring for oil near the islands, intensifying its campaign against businesses operating in the British overseas territory.

Britain and Argentina fought a brief but bitter 10-week war in 1982 over the South Atlantic islands, known to Argentines as the Malvinas.

The 1982 war ended with an Argentinian surrender after 74 days of conflict that killed 649 Argentines and 255 British troops, as well as three Falkland Islanders.

Buenos Aires has doubled down on its claim over the Falkland Islands after US President Donald Trump said Washington was open to reviewing its historically neutral stance on the territory.

London maintains the islands are British and rejects the jurisdiction of Argentinian courts in the Falklands.

The islanders themselves voted overwhelmingly in 2013 to remain British.

But Argentina rejects that outcome, arguing that the principle of self-determination does not apply to a population it considers implanted by Britain after 1833.

France is accelerating work on the Rafale F5 standard, bringing forward development of a major new configuration of its combat aircraft at a time when the country’s planned next-generation fighter with Germany has effectively collapsed in its original form. The contracts cover the equipment judged to have the highest technical risk, ahead of the overall development contract for the F5 standard, expected for the end of this year.

The French defense procurement agency, the Direction générale de l’armement (DGA), ordered the first upstream development work for F5 from Dassault Aviation, Thales, MBDA, and Safran. The contracts cover key areas including navigation, datalinks, radar, electronic warfare, and propulsion, laying the groundwork for the next configuration of the Rafale, which is planned to enter service with the French Air and Space Force and the French Navy starting around 2033.

The most extensive modernization of the Rafale yet, the F5 standard was originally part of a longer transition toward France’s next-generation combat-air capability. But with the Franco-German New Generation Fighter (NGF) effort now effectively dead in its original configuration, the accelerated F5 program is taking on a much larger strategic role.

Rather than simply keeping the Rafale relevant until NGF arrives, France is now developing a version of the aircraft that is set to carry much of the country’s high-end combat-air capability well into the 2030s and potentially beyond.

The increasingly capable F5 could, in turn, reduce the urgency of finding a replacement for the Rafale — while potentially adding to the fighter’s export appeal. After a slow start, Dassault has recorded export sales of 299 new-build Rafales to eight nations.

The DGA’s contracts engage four of France’s principal combat-aircraft industrial players. Dassault Aviation remains responsible for the aircraft and its overall integration; Thales is involved in major sensor, electronic warfare, and communications capabilities; MBDA is responsible for much of the weapons system; and Safran is responsible for propulsion.

Previous Rafale standards have largely consisted of incremental upgrades, focusing on software and other improvements to the existing aircraft configuration. F5 is notably more extensive, addressing many of the critical systems that determine how the aircraft senses the battlespace, communicates with other platforms, conducts electronic warfare, and generates the power needed to operate increasingly demanding equipment.

The DGA has specifically identified the Thales RBE2-XG radar as one of the major technological advances associated with F5.

The RBE2-XG is expected to feature gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. Compared with previous technology, GaN generates less heat and has the capacity to operate at higher voltages, meaning that output power can be increased, while component size can be reduced. Overall, using GaN should help to get more power out of the radar without increasing its size.

According to the DGA, “This new radar will benefit from a substantial increase in power, and consequently in detection range, as well as improvements in the identification of targets with an extremely low radar cross-section (RCS). Its computing capabilities will also be enhanced to facilitate the integration of artificial intelligence.”

The RBE2-XG will also be “designed with collaborative combat in mind, featuring sensors capable of working together without the need for pilot intervention.” It is also planned to have enhanced resilience, including against cyber threats.

France is already working on the concept of a combat drone to accompany the Rafale, with the future F5 standard providing the crewed aircraft around which those systems can operate.

The new radar will be combined with more capable electronic warfare equipment, improved communications and datalinks, expanded processing capacity, and a more capable propulsion system.

To be developed by MBDA and Thales, the forthcoming F5 version of the SPECTRA self-protection suite is intended to significantly improve detection and jamming capabilities, the DGA says, “through a fully digital approach, enabling a complete overhaul of the core electronic warfare system to counter the increasing density and broadening of the threat spectrum, as well as the growing complexity of threat waveforms, expected by 2035.”

Thales à bord du Rafale de Dassault Aviation

Thales will also be responsible for the new Inter-Vehicle Data Link (IVDL) system, described as a “stealthy and resilient datalink.” The DGA says the new datalink will expand connectivity “thanks to a new high-speed, discreet, and jamming-resistant waveform. IVDL will allow the Rafale to penetrate hostile areas where jammers are widespread, while maintaining optimal quality of communication and dialogue between aircraft.”

Safran will begin preliminary design work on the M88 T-Rex engine, which is planned to increase the turbofan’s thrust from around 16,500 pounds to nearly 19,850 pounds, an increase of roughly 20 percent.

M88 T-REX: A 9-ton thrust predator serving the Rafale

In terms of armament, the contract announcement mentions the ASN4G missile, set to be introduced to service by 2035, which will allow the Rafale F5 to continue to serve as the airborne nuclear component. The munition remains in the early stages of development, but it will be capable of hypersonic speeds — defined as speeds greater than Mach 5 — with a range in excess of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

Other likely new missiles include a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile to succeed the current Meteor. As you can read about here, France’s Comet program, apparently led by the French side of MBDA, is already looking into this requirement, with an apparent plan to introduce the weapon around 2030.

An older video from MBDA showing some of the company’s weapons integrated on earlier versions of the Rafale:

PARIS AIR SHOW 2021: MISSILES ON THE RAFALE

For France, the original logic behind the pan-European FCAS program was that Rafale would eventually give way to the NGF as its principal crewed combat aircraft, operating from land bases and aircraft carriers.

With the collapse of the Franco-German effort, France cannot simply wait for a next-generation fighter program whose industrial and political future is uncertain. Instead, the Rafale has to remain capable against rapidly evolving threats throughout the 2030s and beyond.

With the F5 standard, however, France is looking to incorporate some of the concepts envisaged for NGF. These include distributed architectures in which crewed fighters, uncrewed aircraft, remote carriers, missiles, and offboard sensors cooperate across a battlespace.

A highly upgraded Rafale operating as the crewed controller of uncrewed combat aircraft and remote weapons could perform some of the missions that France originally expected from NGF.

For now, F5 also sidesteps the central problem in the now-defunct Franco-German effort: whether the two countries could agree on the requirements, industrial structure, and workshare behind a new-generation combat aircraft.

Despite its advances, the F5 airframe remains derived from a design dating back to the 1980s, which first entered French service in the early 2000s. In particular, it falls well short of fifth-generation designs — let alone sixth-generation ones — in terms of low observability. This is one area where collaborative drones could potentially help compensate for the Rafale’s inherent limitations.

France has therefore bought itself some time with the F5 program. But it may eventually decide that it needs a future high-end crewed fighter to provide capabilities that an upgraded fourth-generation airframe cannot fully replicate, particularly in terms of survivability against advanced integrated air-defense systems, signature reduction, internal weapons carriage, and operations deep inside heavily contested airspace.

On an industrial level, F5 is also significant because it brings together the same French industrial heavyweights that would have formed the backbone of its FCAS effort. Dassault Aviation, Thales, Safran, and MBDA are now well-positioned to work together on whatever comes after F5, whether that is a crewed combat aircraft, uncrewed CCA-type platforms, or a combination of both. Based on its experience with the nEUROn program, France would be well placed to develop a UCAV that can work cooperatively as well as independently, taking over the deeper-penetrating fighter mission set, and potentially skipping a sixth-generation fighter altogether.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNsu7g7r94

Meanwhile, success with F5 — and, in particular, with the wider combat ecosystem planned around it — could put France in an even stronger position when it comes to any future European fighter project.

For the time being, Britain, Italy, and Japan are pursuing the GCAP/Tempest pathway toward a new combat aircraft. Germany and Spain remain tied to the wider FCAS architecture, even as the original Franco-German NGF arrangement has fractured. Sweden’s position is less clear, with indications that it could collaborate with either France or Germany.

France, for its part, is now investing heavily in an increasingly sophisticated Rafale architecture while maintaining its own sovereign industrial base.

In terms of acqusition, France is expected to pursue a mixed approach, buying new-build Rafales while upgrading suitable aircraft already in service to the F5 standard. The oldest jets are unlikely to receive the full F5 treatment, however.

The irony is that the failure of the NGF effort may ultimately make Rafale F5 more important — and potentially more capable — than it was ever expected to be.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

A sweeping bipartisan bill that seeks to prevent catastrophic wildfires and restore fire-ravaged forests has revealed a schism in the nation’s environmental movement as some conservation advocates find themselves allied with a longtime foe: loggers.

The Fix Our Forests Act, which Congress is close to passing, aims to speed up forest management projects on public and tribal lands by reducing regulatory and legal hurdles.

The proposed legislation comes at a time of increasingly devastating wildfires and has garnered wide support among Republicans and the timber industry.

However, the traditional Democratic coalition of environmental groups is split over the role humanity has to play in forest management. Some argue ecosystems are best protected when humans leave them alone — a view that dominated during the timber wars of the ’80s and ’90s. Others argue that humans have a responsibility to intervene — an increasingly popular idea as climate change threatens ecosystems around the world.

Among the major environmental groups that oppose the legislation are the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity. They worry that limiting environmental review and litigation will allow timber companies to heavily log these areas instead of gently thinning them. Meanwhile, some Southern California groups worry the bill would allow well-meaning land managers to approve misguided projects that ultimately harm local shrublands, which have a very different relationship with fire than the bill’s namesake, forests.

“It’s really handing the keys to the Trump administration to be able to push forward a lot of their timber agenda,” said Anna Medema, deputy legislative director for forests and public lands at the Sierra Club.

But the Nature Conservancy and other groups have voiced support for the bill, citing the constant and imminent threat that increasingly severe wildfires pose to communities and ecosystems.

“We do advocacy at a twofold level. We are doing defensive work to fight back against bad things, and we’re also trying to promote the good things that are happening on the ground,” said Morgan Cashwell, North America director of legislative affairs for the Nature Conservancy. Right now, that good work needs to “meet the moment in the current wildfire crisis.”

That sentiment appears to have motivated Western lawmakers in particular.

In the House of Representatives, roughly half of the Democrats from Western states voted for the bill, compared to about a quarter of Democrats from elsewhere in the country. Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor. The legislation is now awaiting a final vote in the Senate. Congress has until Jan. 3, 2027, to pass it.

“Wildfires today are very different than wildfires from a generation ago,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who co-introduced the Senate version of the bill. “Oftentimes, they’re irreversibly devastating ecosystems and watersheds.”

“So,” he said, “ the status quo is clearly not working.”

Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), center, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, delivers remarks at the Capitol in March 2023.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

The act was born when Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), a former forester, stole a seat on a plane next to Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego). He used the opportunity to talk Peters’ ear off about a beloved species of tree that is under threat from worsening wildfires: the giant sequoia.

The two introduced a bill to protect them, called the Save Our Sequoias Act, and quickly saw an opportunity for something bigger.

“I knew right away that this could be a gateway to talking about permit reform,” Peters said. So, “we started working on a bigger, nationwide reform of forestry practices which have been really, really clogged up.”

While California grasslands, shrublands and woodlands are adapted to different frequencies and intensities of wildfire, research has found that high-severity fires — which kill the vast majority of trees in their path — are scorching 30 times more land area than in the 1980s.

The result: California is losing, on average, more than 200,000 acres of forest every year — or roughly 2.5% of all woodlands in the state every decade. U.S. Forest Service efforts to resuscitate these ecosystems have failed to keep pace. In recent years, the agency has reforested only about 1% of woodlands that are unlikely to recover on their own.

Californian supporters of the Fix Our Forests Act argue the problem has more to do with permitting delays than finances.

Marin County firefighters train during a prescribed burn in June in San Rafael.

(Heather Diehl / Getty Images)

Rep. George Whitesides (D-Santa Clarita), who co-sponsored the Fix Our Forests Act, pointed to nonpartisan research that found it takes the Forest Service more than five years on average to complete a full environmental review and begin work on forest thinning projects that use mechanical equipment like bulldozers and wood chippers. For prescribed burns, it takes more than seven years on average.

“That’s insane,” he said, that it “takes as long as a kid growing up to be a first grader to be able to move on this.”

The Fix Our Forests Act would exempt projects from the full permitting process if they were in areas with the most extreme fire risk and would expand existing exemptions for projects under 3,000 acres to cover projects up to 10,000 acres. It also would limit the window during which environmental groups can sue over project approvals.

These projects tend to employ a combination of harvesting timber and thinning smaller trees and plants with heavy machinery (often the favored tools of Republicans and the timber industry) and using prescribed fire to clear out the forest floor (often favored by environmental groups).

The “environmental left” has “made it endlessly time-consuming and ultimately cost prohibitive to maintain our forests, all with the promise that this would improve the forest environment,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), a co-sponsor who authored some of the permitting exclusions. “Well, after 50 years, I think we’re entitled to ask, how’s the forest environment doing?”

In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that blamed “our inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply” as a contributor to disastrous wildfires. In response, the U.S. Forest Service set a goal to increase the amount of timber open to logging by 25% nationwide over five years.

Scott Dane, executive director of the American Loggers Council, argued the nightmare scenarios of expansive clear-cutting from the timber wars are not on the table for America’s public lands.

“It’s a boogeyman position that they love to take from 100 years ago,” he said. “It’s not, in reality, in modern forest management at all.”

Watchdogs in Southern California have a different concern: While research shows forest thinning is an effective tool in overgrown Sierra Nevada woodlands, the state’s coastal shrublands are not denser than they historically have been. Consequently, the type of projects the Fix Our Forests Act would expedite are far more controversial and contested in shrublands. Local advocates fear the act would undermine their ability to push back on proposals with questionable scientific backing.

Goats and sheep graze on top of Kite Hill in May 2025 in Los Angeles for wildfire prevention.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

In contrast to projects in conifer forests that aim to decrease the density of trees and vegetation across the landscape, shrubland projects are typically centered on creating a network of corridors hundreds of feet wide with no vegetation throughout the wildlands and clearing plants away from existing buildings.

While firefighters rely on these networks of fuel breaks to access the wildlands during fires and build containment lines, research has found that when firefighters cannot reach the fuel breaks — which is often the case during extreme winds — the lines only stop fires about 13% of the time. If they are not routinely maintained, they also risk supporting the growth of flammable invasive grasses.

In Los Padres National Forest, near Santa Barbara, officials proposed in 2022 creating roughly 187,000 acres of fuel breaks and structure defense zones. After organizations like Los Padres ForestWatch pushed back on the plan through the environmental review process, the national forest ultimately scaled the proposal down to about 22,000 acres this July.

“You had community input, and you had the federal government incorporating that input into a plan that is grossly improved,” said Benjamin Pitterle, director of advocacy and field operations at Los Padres ForestWatch. “It’s arguably a perfect example of how the process should work.”

Sept. 8, 2026 9:01 AM PT

WASHINGTON — Work on the White House North Portico appears to be nearing completion before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States in late September.

Scaffolding was being taken down Tuesday after workers over Labor Day weekend removed a shroud that had obscured the work. The Executive Mansion’s front columns had been covered since July. The work, ordered by President Trump, began in June.

The portico was first completed in 1830 during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. Administration officials said previously that stonework and plaster on the structure were being refurbished because of routine damage from age and weather exposure.

Trump has said he noticed it was in “deplorable condition” before insisting on repairs. The work is part of the president’s sweeping overhaul of the White House and other federal property in the nation’s capital — with most of his more ambitious moves drawing lawsuits and criticism from preservationists.

Trump said last week that workers finished construction of a helipad on the South Lawn.

His signature project, a White House ballroom and underground bunker, continues as legal fights play out. Multiple lawsuits were filed after Trump demolished the East Wing before going through the usual regulatory steps for major work on historic federal buildings in Washington. The massive project will add more square footage than what the existing White House footprint comprises.

That means Trump must host Xi’s state dinner, scheduled for Sept. 24, in existing spaces and in a construction zone — a circumstance that will afford the president a new opportunity to extol his ballroom project.

Barrow and Martin write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — The Telluride Film Festival has always enjoyed keeping a secret. Tucked away in the Colorado mountains with nary a red carpet or paparazzo in sight, the low-key film festival doesn’t announce its lineup until the day before opening and surprise additions have long been a fixture of the event.

But even by Telluride standards, organizers went to unusual lengths this year to keep their biggest surprise under wraps. They had carved out a prime Sunday evening slot for a world premiere that, fingers crossed, would remain unknown until the audience was seated inside the theater. Festival director Julie Huntsinger offered only a few clues beforehand. The film involved some “very known names,” she told The Times. “Do not miss it. Your jaw will be on the ground for the entire length of the film.”

For three days, trying to crack the mystery became Telluride’s unofficial parlor game. Was it Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning”? Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three”? Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary “Musk”? By Sunday, the mounting speculation had become fodder for jokes: Introducing his new movie “Club Kid” earlier in the day, writer-director-star Jordan Firstman announced that the evening’s TBA would be a newly restored print of Jerry Seinfeld’s 2007 animated film “Bee Movie.” “Just kidding,” he added. “I love Jerry.”

The festival kept the suspense going right up to showtime. Before entering the Werner Herzog Theatre on Sunday evening, hundreds of moviegoers were required to lock their phones in pouches to prevent spreading the word. Inside, they were warned that security guards equipped with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone who managed to keep a phone accessible.

Taking the stage, Huntsinger made one last plea for secrecy. “What happens in Telluride stays in Telluride,” she told the crowd, before bringing out Nathan Fielder, the deadpan comic mind behind the reality-bending television shows “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal” and “The Curse.”

What Telluride had been guarding so carefully was “You Can See Everything,” a nearly three-hour documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Fielder and documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim. The film, which A24 will release theatrically in October, had been made largely in secret over three years.

“For those of you who don’t know who we are and are disappointed, I apologize,” Fielder, joined onstage by Oppenheim, told the crowd to laughs. “But hopefully by the end of the film, you’ll be slightly less disappointed.”

The movie begins 34 days before Holmes is due to report to federal prison, with Fielder, Oppenheim and a small crew given extraordinary access to her life with her partner, Billy Evans, and their young children. Holmes and Evans embrace what they call “radical transparency,” opening their home to the cameras in hopes of convincing the filmmakers — and eventually the world — that the public has fundamentally misunderstood her.

But as anyone familiar with Fielder’s reenactment-heavy work can imagine, “You Can See Everything” quickly becomes something far stranger than a conventional documentary. Fielder finds himself drawn from behind the camera into the story, struggling to determine whether Holmes and Evans are being candid with him or manipulating him. From there, the movie takes a series of increasingly surreal turns, including elaborate reenactments involving a Hollywood actress (her arrival is too good to spoil) that further scramble the line between reality and performance.

During a post-screening Q&A moderated by Emma Stone, who co-starred with Fielder in the darkly comic A24 series “The Curse,” Fielder said that his own inability to get a firm grip on what he was witnessing became one of the forces driving the project.

“We’re all smart and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence,” he recalled thinking as he and the crew tried to make sense of their time with Holmes and Evans. “Why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?”

The project began, appropriately enough, with a magic trick.

Oppenheim said he and Fielder were at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles several years ago when a magician asked the audience to name a celebrity. Someone called out Elizabeth Holmes. Afterward, Oppenheim told Fielder he had heard through a friend of a friend that Holmes was looking for someone to document her life.

Fielder had read John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood,” the bestselling 2018 account of Theranos’ rise and collapse and initially saw little reason to make another documentary about Holmes.

“I thought the story was really fully told,” he told the Telluride crowd. Holmes, however, had largely disappeared from public view, and Fielder was curious about what she might have to say for herself.

Meeting her only deepened that curiosity. Sitting across from Holmes, Fielder said, he found her “sort of honest and charming,” even as his brain was warning him, “No, don’t trust.” That disconnect — between what he knew about Holmes and what he felt in her presence — became central to the movie.

A24 gave Fielder and Oppenheim unusual freedom to pursue the project without any deadline or obligation to turn what they captured into a finished film. If nothing came of it, Fielder recalled being told, “you can just throw everything away.”

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and became one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated young entrepreneurs by claiming the company could perform a wide range of medical tests using only a few drops of blood. The company collapsed after investigations exposed serious problems with its technology and business practices. In 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts related to defrauding investors and later sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison.

As shown in “You Can See Everything,” once Holmes reports to federal prison, the filmmakers’ access to her changes dramatically, with Evans — who takes over Holmes’ Twitter feed and assumes power of attorney over her decisions — becoming their main conduit. Fielder said the relationship grew strained as Evans tried to exert greater control over the project. Neither Holmes nor Evans has seen the finished movie.

Fielder is hoping to keep the film’s biggest surprises under wraps. During the Q&A, he told the Telluride audience he hoped future viewers could experience the film without knowing where it was headed. Stone seconded the request.

“You won’t be upsetting me,” Fielder joked. “You’ll be upsetting Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone.”

Fielder said that even after three years immersed in her world, he still doesn’t know quite what to make of Holmes — or how much of what she says can be believed.

“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” he said. “I don’t quite know what I went through.”

As the crowd filed out of the Herzog, one reaction seemed to recur more than any other: “That was wild.”

WASHINGTON — President Clinton was forced to retreat Monday in the face of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole’s angry accusation that the White House had told “a $23-million lie” about a project in his state.

The White House said that Clinton “regrets” any misunderstandings caused by “hyperbole” in a barbed joke the President told that brought the house down Saturday at an annual black-tie dinner hosted by White House correspondents.

Clinton had said that the Republican lawmaker from Kansas was seeking $23 million from the federal government to convert a senior citizens’ center into a boathouse, at the same time that he was assailing Clinton for wasteful “pork barrel” spending.

Dole, who led the Republican battle that scuttled Clinton’s economic stimulus package, first challenged the accuracy of the statement in a television interview show Sunday but he seemed confused about the details. Monday, he flatly denied the claim and issued a belated blast.

“The White House lied,” Dole said, carefully avoiding a direct attack on the President himself. “There’s no $23-million boathouse, no deficit spending, no new money, no connection with the President’s deadbeat ‘stimulus’ bill and no truth coming from a White House staff that is ill-serving the President with these sophomoric attacks.”

Dole said that he had sought a federal waiver to clear the way for privately funded construction of a public boathouse in Wichita.

“If the White House wants to play hardball, I’m ready to suit up,” Dole concluded, sending an ominous signal that the issue could spill over into future relations with Senate Republicans.

George Stephanopoulos, the White House communications director, issued a statement late Monday afternoon.

“The President regrets the misunderstanding that may have been caused by any hyperbole in his jokes at Saturday’s White House dinner,” he said.

“While Sen. Dole did make the case that the Wichita boathouse is a legitimate Community Development Block Grant project, the potential cost to the taxpayer is not as high as stated in the President’s joke,” the statement concluded.

While the war of words may be forgotten, the harshly worded statement by Dole signaled that the lack of harmony between the Senate GOP leader and the Clinton White House could affect the future of the President’s programs in Congress.

Dole is in a key position as commander of 43 Republicans and as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, where the defection from party ranks of a single Democratic senator could block Clinton’s proposed tax increases.

As Dole described the situation, Wichita received $500,000 from the federal government’s Community Development Block Grant program in 1980 to help the city buy a building for use as a senior citizen center.

The center, however, moved to a larger facility in 1992, and the building along the Arkansas River has been standing vacant since then.

Wichita officials, Dole continued, wanted to lease the building to a charitable foundation that intends to use private funds to transform it into a boathouse. To change the use of the building, however, the city was required to seek a waiver from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Dole and Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kan.), who represents the area in the House, supported the city’s request for a waiver in letters to a HUD regional official. HUD had planned to tear the building down.

The Wichita Eagle Monday quoted an official of the charity, the Arkansas River Foundation, as saying that the boathouse project would cost $850,000 and the funds would come from donations and not the federal government.

“The White House really missed the boat on this one,” Dole said.

Sacramento — Year after year, owners of professional sports teams and developers of proposed skyscrapers have pleaded with California lawmakers to grant relief for their projects from the state’s environmental regulations. They’ve found a largely receptive audience.

“It’s a job creator,” Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) told his colleagues while successfully pressing earlier this month for approval of his bill that could speed up an expansion of Facebook’s headquarters and the construction of twin skyscrapers in Hollywood.

The passage of Santiago’s bill highlighted a continually messy debate at the state Capitol concerning which projects deserve breaks from strictly complying with the California Environmental Quality Act, the primary environmental law governing development. The law, known as CEQA, requires developers to disclose and reduce projects’ effects on the environment, often a time-consuming and costly process made longer by lawsuits that can last years.

Legislators have long talked about overhauling CEQA — Gov. Jerry Brown has called doing so “the Lord’s work” — but the rare measures that advance often only provide relief for deep-pocketed developers or have the backing of Sacramento’s most powerful interests.

Earlier this month, GOP Assemblyman Dante Acosta pushed to ease burdens under CEQA for all housing projects amid the state’s affordability crisis. But his effort was rebuffed in a legislative committee.

“A good project is a good project, whether it’s housing for middle-class Californians or a stadium for millionaire athletes and billionaire owners,” said Acosta, who represents Santa Clarita.

Since its enactment in 1970, CEQA has become a touchstone for environmentalists who credit it for preserving California’s coastline and natural beauty. Its rules are written so broadly that the law also has become a tool for neighborhood preservationists, business competitors, unions and others to oppose a wide-range of projects including some, like bike lanes, that might otherwise seem environmentally friendly.

Housing has become a particular flashpoint. In Acosta’s district, developers have proposed the 21,500-home Newhall Ranch project, which has been stymied by environmental lawsuits during the more than two decades it’s been under consideration. On Monday, some environmental groups reached an agreement to end their lawsuits against the project in exchange for $25 million for conservation efforts and other concessions from the developer.

Developers of low-income homes also struggle with litigation filed by neighborhood groups and others that use the law simply to oppose their projects, but not on environmental grounds, said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which represents such developers.

“CEQA is used as a weapon and the environment is lost in the shuffle,” Pearl said.

This year, bills that passed the Legislature had a common theme: the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California, which represents 400,000 construction workers, supported them.

Santiago’s bill updates an existing law allowing any project that costs more than $100 million to build and meets union-level wage and greenhouse gas reduction standards to aim for a final court decision in any CEQA lawsuit within nine months. The Golden State Warriors used this law for the team’s arena now under construction in San Francisco. Facebook has said it plans to use the law to speed up the expansion of its Menlo Park headquarters. So has Millennium Partners, a New York developer that wants to spend $1 billion to build 500 homes and a 200-room hotel and provide office and retail space around the Capitol Records building in Hollywood.

The housing legislation approved at the end of the legislative session also allows some developers to sidestep the environmental law in limited situations. One bill says cities must approve projects that comply with existing zoning rules without forcing developers through additional CEQA reviews. Two other bills provide cities financial incentives to complete environmental reviews of entire neighborhoods so developers won’t have to do them later for their projects. In all three cases, developers will only qualify if they reserve parts of their projects for low-income residents and abide by union-level pay and hiring rules.

Another bill, authored by Assemblyman Jose Medina (D-Riverside), would block developers from pursuing local ballot initiatives to get their projects approved, a process that allows them to avoid CEQA entirely. That method allowed the Rams to secure approval for their Inglewood football stadium in just six weeks, something unheard of in California development politics.

Cesar Diaz, the building trades’ legislative director, said labor’s involvement in CEQA policy ensures that the profits from growth are shared more widely.

“When you look at environmental standards and look at creating benefits for the economy, the people who benefit shouldn’t just be the developer,” Diaz said. “It should be those building the project.”

How much the environmental law affects housing production is disputed. A recent report from a law firm that promotes overhauling CEQA contended that litigation from 2013 to 2015 challenged more 10,000 homes in Southern California neighborhoods planned for the most growth. A counter report from environmentalists found few projects were sued when compared with the rate of development.

Still, it’s clear the environmental law matters. Backers of a proposed Inglewood arena for the Clippers put forward a last-minute bill that would have given them CEQA relief beyond what many prior professional sports stadium and arena developers have received from the Legislature. The Clippers legislation would have shortened court-decision timelines and limited a judge’s ability to halt construction during any environmental lawsuit against the project, while offering a full CEQA exemption for a transit link between a light-rail stop and the arena.

The Clippers and opponents of the bill — chiefly the owners of the rival Forum arena in Inglewood — each hired an army of lobbyists. The team argued that if the bill didn’t pass, its competitors could drown the proposed arena in CEQA litigation.

The measure stalled in a legislative committee, leaving its author, state Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), deeply frustrated. In a speech on the final night of the legislative session, Bradford argued that his colleagues have decided to prioritize CEQA relief for projects proposed in wealthier communities, not lower-income neighborhoods with predominantly black and Latino residents.

“There is clearly a double standard and this situation is not just wrong, it’s racist,” Bradford said. “The well-to-do areas of this state are given much more help, and economically disadvantaged areas around the state, such as the areas that I represent, do not receive the same support.”

Brown has pledged to sign the three CEQA-related housing bills as part of a larger package of legislation aimed at addressing the state’s housing problems. He has not commented on the Santiago or Medina bills, but has supported prior versions of the Santiago effort. The governor has until Oct. 15 to approve or veto the legislation.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

Twitter: @dillonliam

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Sept. 4 (UPI) — Rescuers pulled two workers alive from hydropower project tunnel in Nepal nine days after devastating flash foods in the central Bagmati region and across the border in Tibet killed thousands of people, with as many 4,000 still unnaccouted for.

The two men, a supervisor on the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Station who was in a critical condition and a foreman, were taken by helicopter to the hospital in Kathmandu. At least one body was also pulled from the tunnel.

Tunnelling expert Arnold Dix told the BBC the rescue was the result of a highly complex and painstaking effort using engineering processes, old maps and aerial and satellite imagery to find the entrance of the tunnel, on a mountainside before the floods but now underground, and blast their way ahead, foot by foot.

At the same time they had to clear the tunnel at the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Station of water, using pumps and excavators to dig channels to drain the water to the river on the outside.

The team eventually reached two men more than 550 feet beneath the ground after digging “a tiny” person-sized tunnel, pulling foreman Sanjaya Shah and project supervisor Kabir Maharjan early on Friday, local time, and now hope to rescue more people.

Shah who was conscious but dazed, said he had been in the control room with 40-45 others when disaster struck and that he became trapped as he ran up and down the tunnel telling workers to get out.

“It’s like layer upon layer of miracles. We got two people out. If we were playing at a casino, some might say it’s time to walk away, but we say game on, time to take on the house,” said Dix, who credited Nepalese Army engineers for their expert assistance, particularly with the explosives used.

Dix said rescuers were 200 feet into the tunnel with another 500 feet to go where he said he believed there was a “Goldilocks zone” where he anticipated they may find more people alive from among dozens of people believed to remain trapped.

The “Goldilocks zone,” a space with conditions supporting life, is located on the uppermost level of the hydropower station.

“We got two people out. If we were playing at a casino, some might say it’s time to walk away, but we say game on, time to take on the house,” said Dix.

Walking through downtown Santa Barbara, it’s impossible to not turn your head when you see it: those marshmallow-like plaster walls, wiggly wrought ironwork and tile that looks as though it belongs in a palace you’d stumble upon in a storybook.

This is the effect architect Jeff Shelton’s signature design has on viewers: the ability to pluck you out of the monotony of the day, if only briefly.

When asked why he thinks this is so, Shelton is quick to point to the tried-and-true architectural methods of the past, which he proudly uses. Buildings, he said, had to be designed “to act more independently” in serving the needs of their specific inhabitants. A window’s primary purpose, for example, was to allow the ideal amount of light to enter.

“So therefore they had taller windows,” he said, sitting opposite me in his Fig Avenue office in downtown Santa Barbara, surrounded by endless sketches and pattern mock-ups.

Shelton obsesses over other design details that are often overlooked in modern architecture yet instinctively felt when you encounter them: high ceilings, for one (his are 14 to 18 feet from the ground floor), as well as smaller touches like ironwork, stonework and glass. Crucially, all are made by people, designed by people — “nothing,” he said, “out of the catalog.”

Before going solo, Shelton spent a decade working in downtown Los Angeles with architect Brenda Levin on projects including the Bradbury Building and Grand Central Market. He then returned to his hometown of Santa Barbara, where he has designed 90 buildings since 1994, many of them within Santa Barbara’s Historic Landmarks District, commonly referred to as El Pueblo Viejo.

Following Santa Barbara’s 1925 earthquake, which destroyed much of downtown, new construction in the area was required to adopt the Spanish Revival style, which, according to the city’s website, “is key to the identity and beauty of Santa Barbara.” New buildings in the district must draw inspiration from Andalusia and Southern Spain and incorporate elements such as tile, terra-cotta, plaster and ironwork.

For Shelton, the guidelines are merely a reference. When designing, he doesn’t “try to make it like Spain at all,” he said, rather matter-of-factly. “I try to just use the materials and proportions and the craft of what’s so great about being in Spain.”

That approach shines through in his many projects near his Fig Street office, a 10-block radius Shelton has dubbed the “Fig District,” where 10 of his most lauded projects lie, inadvertently creating a kind of architectural museum in the heart of downtown.

Seeing them requires little more than a two-hour self-guided tour, carving your own path or following the map on Shelton’s website. By the end of the excursion, you, too, may ask yourself the same question I did: Why did we ever stop building this way?

Shelton didn’t have an answer. He could only promise to never stop.

“Every building I do is my last building,” said Shelton, now 68. “If I die tomorrow, at least I put everything in this last building.”

Without further ado, here are designs by Shelton all located in the Fig District, including iron gates designed by his brother, David.

WASHINGTON — A new National Park Service report backs President Trump’s proposed arch, despite what it says are adverse effects to the sightline between a host of landmarks in Washington, including the Washington Monument and Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The report released Friday says the 250-foot-tall arch is likely to disrupt the historically significant layout of dozens of sites near its planned location adjacent to Memorial Bridge.

Many of Washington’s monuments, buildings and sites have been carefully planned over decades to reflect significant moments in the nation’s history and to evoke symbolism through sightlines that connect them to other sites. The arch will disturb the sightline between more landmarks than anticipated, the report said.

But the Park Service report says “the same characteristics that make Memorial Circle sensitive from a preservation perspective are also the characteristics that make it the historically appropriate location for the undertaking.”

The project’s effects cannot be “fully avoided without either relocating the Arch away from the historically identified site or eliminating the principal commemorative feature, both of which would fail to meet the undertaking’s purpose and need,” the report said.

“For this reason, alternative locations outside Memorial Circle are not reasonable avoidance alternatives,” the report said.

The 133-page report by the Park Service supports Trump’s plans for the controversial arch and could play an important role in bolstering the administration’s case in its fight against a legal challenge filed by three veterans and a group of historians.

The proposed towering arch, which last month received initial approval from a key federal commission, would impact the “integrity” of dozens of historic properties because it would change “character-defining visual and spatial relationships” between them.

One of the most obvious elements the report cited is that the arch would break alignment between the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge and Arlington House that was formerly Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s home. That alignment was “intended to physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition extending across the Potomac River,” the report said.

The Lincoln Memorial Arlington House connection was one of dozens of historic sites and structures listed as being impacted directly by the proposed structure. It added that the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, Georgetown Historic District, Old Naval Observatory, Key Bridge, National Cathedral and other sites also would be affected.

Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group representing the plaintiffs, said the report again “confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the project will have an enormous impact and transform that National Mall.”

The report underscores the legal challengers’ claim that a project of this size and importance “is a decision for Congress to make” and should not be rushed through by executive decree, Sansone said.

Daly writes for the Associated Press.

Some locals claim the tunnel is haunted by the ghost of a murdered teenager.

Hidden at the bottom of the world is a tunnel which is shadowed in years of history. Thousands of cars travel through it daily, and as they do, they sound their horns.

The tunnel is a cacophony of beeping and tooting at all hours of the day and night – all thanks to a murder which has haunted the city since 1931. The Mount Victoria Tunnel is part of a well-used stretch of highway in Wellington, New Zealand.

According to legend, the reason drivers lean on their horns as they travel through the tunnel is in tribute to murdered teenager Phillis Symons.

Phillis was buried alive in dirt fill during the tunnel’s construction.

She was only 17 and was pregnant when her boyfriend George Coats, a worker on the construction of the tunnel, knocked her unconscious with a pipe.

George then dumped Phillis in the dirt fill. Her body was found hunched over, meaning she had tried to escape the soil.

George was sentenced to death for the murder, and was hanged in December 1931.

The tunnel was opened to the public in the same year.

Now, almost a hundred years later, the 632 metre long tunnel echoes constantly with the sound of car horns which residents believe either wards off spirits, or pays tribute to the memory of Phillis.

Some locals say the tunnel is haunted – others say the constant beeping is the only thing that haunts the road.

The tunnel is the subject of a £1.27billion (between NZD$2.9b and NZD$3.8b) infrastructure project which would see a second tunnel built alongside the first to try and alleviate the severe bottlenecks which occur in the tunnel.

The current one is only two lanes, and frequently closes due to crashes, causing traffic jams that can last hours.

According to RNZ, the project has been granted fast track approval – but as of last week there was still no expected start date.

The Trump administration is considering trading a parcel of Yosemite National Park to a private commercial developer, according to administration officials, members of Congress and documents reviewed by The Times.

The proposed deal would allow the developer to build a road connecting adjacent property it already owns in the Stanislaus National Forest to a service road within Yosemite, providing any future development on that property with unique access to the famed public wilderness, documents show.

According to a Friday report by the news outlet NOTUS, Trump administration officials have been quietly pressuring the National Park Service to approve the deal for the land despite such pressure being highly unusual and previous proposals for the land being repeatedly denied under the Bush and Obama administrations and in court.

The Department of the Interior, which includes the National Park Service, acknowledged in a statement to The Times on Friday that a land deal is under consideration, but denied any inappropriate influence from the White House.

It said negotiations for the land will comply with all federal rules for federal lands, and that “no final decisions have been made.”

An attorney for the private developer said the deal has nothing to do with politics and is in fact an “environmentally friendly” solution, in that it would dramatically cut down on the amount of driving the future upscale development’s residents would have to do to access the park.

President Trump speaks to astronauts aboard the International Space Station as he visits NASA’s Mission Control Center on Aug. in Houston, Texas.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

Congressional Democrats — including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California — are trying to block the deal, after being informed of it earlier this year by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The fund was created by Congress in 1964 to safeguard natural areas and public lands, and often works to acquire lands to add to national parks.

A fact sheet on the project reviewed by The Times identified the parcel by a former name, the “Hazel Green Ranch,” and said the landowner is seeking to acquire an “interest” in land within the park in order to build a new road connecting “a planned commercial development” to Big Oak Flat Road, an existing federally owned road that “provides access to the park and is a major route to Yosemite Valley.”

The fact sheet said the National Park Service does not have the authority to grant that interest, but has been working with the landowner to facilitate an “exchange” of the land for some other, unidentified parcel of land that is beneficial to the U.S., as allowed under law for federal land swaps.

The project has been identified to lawmakers, without explanation, as a “priority.” Both Padilla and Schiff have objected to it, and Padilla’s office said it is working with Senate Appropriations Committee staff to block the deal.

“The Land and Water Conservation Fund exists to acquire land and interests in land in order to safeguard natural areas, water resources, and cultural heritage — and to provide recreation opportunities for all Americans,” Padilla said in a statement to The Times. “Projects should be chosen on merit, not on an applicant’s connections to high-ranking Trump administration officials.”

Schiff, in his own statement, said Yosemite is “one of California’s natural wonders, and must be protected from further development.”

He said the Trump administration “appears hellbent on moving forward in the face of opposition from the public, Congress and the courts,” and that “the only thing the administration cares about is whether there is money involved.”

The company behind the private development is Nevada-based real estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. According to Federal Election Commission records, Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori is a donor to Trump, the Republican National Committee and other Republican groups.

Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton, represents Kingsbarn, and said the notion the project is moving forward due to Trump administration pressure and Pori’s political contributions despite being environmentally detrimental is false.

He said Kingsbarn wants to build “upscale, single-family houses” on its property, but hasn’t so far because residents would have to drive 28 miles using current roads to reach the park.

To cut that distance down and make the development more feasible, it asked the National Park Service to purchase an 11-mile strip of land within Yosemite to build a shorter, more direct access road, Davis said.

The Park Service responded by saying the company could not purchase park land directly, but could purchase other nearby land of equal or greater value, and then swap it for the park land, Davis said.

It is now working with the Interior Department to identify such land, and is “very close” to doing so, Davis said — calling it a “pro environmental solution” that follows federal law and has “nothing to do” with Pori’s politics.

The White House referred questions about the proposed deal to the Interior Department.

In its statement to The Times, the Interior Department said the NOTUS story “relies on anonymous allegations to manufacture a political narrative that simply is not true. There has been no political pressure to reach a predetermined outcome, and claims suggesting the Department is secretly working to hand over National Park Service land to a private developer are false.”

If a proposal does advance, the statement said, the department will follow established procedures with “transparency and public involvement consistent with federal law. Anonymous speculation does not change those facts.”

The department did not respond to a request for more details as to the proposal.

The land in question represents a tiny portion of the sprawling Yosemite National Park, which is nearly 750,000 acres in total — or roughly the size of Rhode Island. Still, slicing off any piece of the California wilderness — considered a crown jewel in the national park system — runs counter to promises from Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

“My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world,” Trump said in a presidential message on Monday.

Ceding federal lands is also anathema to land preservation groups, which expressed dismay at the idea that any piece of Yosemite might be lost, no matter how small.

Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said that the NOTUS reporting was “consistent” with what his organization has been hearing “for several months” — and would be inconsistent with public desires for national park lands.

“The American people have consistently said that our public lands, especially our national parks, are not for sale,” he said. “If Secretary Burgum spent more time listening to Americans instead of indulging President Trump’s whims on the National Mall, he’d understand what a terrible idea this is.”

Jayson O’Neill, a spokesman for the group Save Our Parks, said the proposed deal as described by NOTUS represented the latest attempt by the Trump administration and Burgum to gut the Park Service and “then quietly cede treasured park land to private developers, thinking nobody’s watching.”

“National parks belong to the American people, not monied developers who are part of Trump’s donor class,” O’Neill said.

Mark Rose, senior Sierra Nevada program manager for the National Parks Conservation Assn., slammed the proposed land swap as a “secretive, backroom deal” and “an attack on the American people that own this national park.”

He said Yosemite is already facing overcrowding due to “run-away lodging” development outside its borders and the Trump administration’s decision to do away with the park’s reservation system, and a new development would “exacerbate the chaos.”

“The National Park Service needs to get back to prioritizing conservation, not helping bulldoze land, cut down towering trees and construct a luxury development that will harm Yosemite’s wildlife and increase wildfire risks,” Rose said.

PHOENIX — The Trump administration has begun work on a project to build a stretch of border wall in southern Arizona along part of a Native American tribe’s reservation, pushing ahead with one of its signature projects despite protests from the tribe.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the area is a dangerous smuggling route and that building the wall will close a longstanding security gap. But members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose membership spans both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, have accused the administration of trespassing and say the construction will damage land sacred to the tribe.

The wall segment is part of a $46 billion effort by the Trump administration to fill the border with 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, and technology designed to stop undocumented immigration and smuggling.

But as building efforts have ramped up, the administration has run into opposition from landowners, environmental groups, and Native American tribes who say construction is violating property rights and desecrating sacred Indigenous sites.

The Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement Tuesday that about 20 Customs and Border Protection officers, working with contractors, went onto the tribe’s land early that morning to begin construction.

Drone videos published by nation officials show roughly 14 vehicles and an industrial drill at one of the sites.

A federal judge permitted the government to move forward with construction earlier this month, but the tribe says the contractors are violating tribal codes and trespassing to access the border wall site.

The Tohono O’odham Nation, which has 37,000 members including thousands who live in Mexico, sued the federal government in June in an attempt to block construction of the border wall. The tribe argued that the wall would cause “significant devastation” on the reservation, including the destruction of mountain peaks sacred to the tribe, and would alter boundaries of their nation.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the government, noting that the border wall would be built on a 60-foot wide buffer zone of federally owned land called the Roosevelt Reservation.

“Defendants have not yet articulated plans to construct outside the Roosevelt Reservation,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

The Tohono O’odham Nation said that even if construction were contained to the Roosevelt Reservation, driving onto tribal land to access the area still constitutes trespassing.

“The contractors, who are on the Nation illegally, were accompanied by agents as they worked on three separate locations near the border with drill trucks to conduct soil sampling and other activities,” tribal officials said in a statement.

The CBP agents were masked, armed, and set up a vehicle blockade to stop tribal police from removing the contractors, according to Tohono O’odham officials. The nation had set up “No Trespassing” signs before Tuesday.

So far, no physical confrontations between police or members of the Tohono O’odham Nation have been reported.

CBP defended the need for the wall in a statement Tuesday, saying the desert spanning the Tohono O’odham Nation is a corridor for drug smuggling.

“The project will close one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors on the Southwest border: remote desert that has facilitated decades of drug loads, migrant deaths, and cartel activity,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott.

Tribal officials said they’re exploring further legal actions in an effort to remove contractors.

SLSCO Ltd., the Texas-based construction company building the section in Arizona, has secured over $390 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security to build the border wall since 2023.

Schuettler writes for the Associated Press.

When Dolly Parton sang, “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living,” it was an understatement.

The legendary country singer, who died Tuesday after a brief battle with cancer, “worked up until the day she died” on multiple projects, her longtime manager Danny Nozell said in a statement to The Times.

“She loved seeing her dreams come to life, and loved knowing her work brought people joy,” Nozell said. “Ever the planner, Dolly worked with the team that she handpicked, for the past several years to build a project roadmap that will guide us for decades to come.”

The projects vary from a line of Dolly Parton dolls, which will launch online Sept. 15, to a biopic and a docuseries with release dates to be revealed later. A scripted show and an animated series based on Parton’s “Billy the Kid” book franchise are scheduled to be released on a date to be determined.

Other projects announced were Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop — a travel center in Cornersville, Tenn. — which will celebrate National Truck Driver Appreciation Week beginning Sept. 13; and Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel in Nashville, where patrons can book stays starting Sept. 14, with a grand opening scheduled for Sept. 29.

The Parton estate will open the 20,000-square-foot Dolly’s Life of Many Colors Museum at the SongTeller Hotel on Sept. 29 and launch Dolly’s Cup of Ambition Coffee online on the same day. The coffee line will be available at retail stores starting spring 2027.

Dolly’s Dog Treats are on the calendar for early 2027, along with Dolly Bedding & Home Decor debuting in the third quarter of next year.

Broadway previews for “Dolly: A True Original Musical” will begin in December, with opening night scheduled for Jan. 19, 2027. The estate is also collaborating again with fashion designer Kendra Scott for a “9 to 5” jewelry collection.

Nozell guaranteed Parton’s fans that if any unreleased music, products, books, experiences and campaigns are launched through the official Dolly Parton channel, each was personally stamped on by the singer.

“As the leader of the team responsible for overseeing her legacy, we will ensure the many dreams she had yet to fulfill are brought to life,” Nozell said. “Many projects were in various stages of development, and we want to be transparent with her fans about this fact.”

NOT ONE but three new theme parks have been given the go-ahead to open in Europe, which they claim could even rival Disney.

A deal between France and Saudi Arabia for three theme parks near Paris has been announced.

The project is expected to cost €6bn (£5.13bn) overall and will include a manga-themed park, inspired by the popular Japanese franchise Dragon Ball Z.

Little details have been revealed about the theme parks, but local media has reported that it could be built on the site of the former Mirapolis park in Val-d’Oise, which has been closed for 35 years.

The opening dates for the parks are not known yet, but they will be built near Cergy-Pontoise and expected to take years to construct.

French President Emmanuel Macron said that the development would be “extraordinary” and would create a “new global destination”.

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He also said: “Nothing like this has been seen since Disneyland Paris.”

The project is thought to have transpired from a conversation between Macron and bin Salman about their love for Japanese comics.

It is expected to create around 22,000 jobs.

Despite no details being revealed about the new theme parks yet, it is believed that the Dragon Ball Z theme park could be based around the park of the same theme currently being built by Qiddiya in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The Riyadh theme park is set to have seven zones including Turtle House, Capsule Corporation and Beerus’s Planet.

There is also set to be a 70-metre high rollercoaster running through the park.

Overall, the Riyadh theme park is expected to have 30 themed attractions, five of which are set to be next generation rides.

Guests will be able to stay in themed hotels as well, and there will be a number of restaurants at the park.