reforms

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday aimed at improving the county’s restraining order system in order to better support and protect victims of domestic violence and stalking.

The measure, which was co-authored by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis, also begins the process of officially making gender-based violence and intimate partner violence a “Board-directed priority” and calls on county agencies to identify millions of dollars of funding to help bolster the efforts.

The motion cited an investigation published by The Times in September that examined L.A. County’s restraining order system and the ways it often fails to support people who seek protection through the courts.

“These are signs that systems aren’t doing enough to help people,” Horvath said Tuesday. “A survivor should never have to fight the system while fighting to survive.”

The motion calls on the county’s chief executive officer to identify millions of dollars in new funding for self-help legal centers, courthouse domestic violence clinics, and the launch of a hotline to help connect the public with services.

The motion also calls on the county’s chief executive, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and other agencies to assess their current efforts, plans for improvement and opportunities for additional funding and present their findings to the board.

Sheriff Robert Luna told The Times in an interview last month that he thinks his department is “going to be able to figure out” how to improve how it handles serving restraining orders and responds to reported violations. The Times reported in September that in 2025, sheriff’s deputies failed to locate targets of restraining orders 49% of the time.

“This motion,” Luna said, “is causing my entire staff and different parts of the department to really look in the mirror and say, ‘What are we doing, and what could we do to improve?’”

Supervisor Janice Hahn said she supported the motion because it’s critical that “survivors are able to get the help they need without hitting any additional barriers.” Like Horvath and Solis, Hahn thanked The Times during the meeting for exposing problems with the restraining order system and for compiling and publishing data that quantified the difficulties people face when trying to obtain protection from abusers and stalkers.

The September investigation found that only 21% of restraining orders requested in L.A. County are granted. The Times also found that in 2025, the county’s courts dismissed 57% of the nearly 15,000 petitions for domestic violence restraining orders they received, nearly double the 29% statewide dismissal rate in the same types of cases.

The Times reported that at least 63 homicides in L.A. County in 2024 and 2025 involved a woman with a former partner or close relative who was arrested or charged in connection with their killing. At least 10 of the slain women had filed for restraining orders.

The reporting highlighted the experiences of Nora Villanueva Campanor, who was killed by her estranged husband in Lancaster in 2024 after she struggled for months to get L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors and other stakeholders to take her fears seriously.

Her sister, Jazmin Villanueva, addressed the board on Tuesday to advocate on behalf of the motion, which she said will address issues with the county’s system — implementing changes that could have benefited Nora and potentially helped keep her alive.

“We need funding for navigators inside the courts to help victims directly with paperwork and the process,” she said. “I have young daughters and I don’t want them standing here 30 years from now asking for the same changes. This needs to change now.”

The motion directs county officials to develop a plan for peer navigators to support domestic violence victims and recommend ways to help them navigate restraining order service and court delays. It also calls for an assessment of the resources needed to provide emergency housing to all people fleeing gender-based violence who seek it.

An earlier version of the motion came before the board on Oct. 6. Since then, the Board of Supervisors collected input about how to improve the measure.

One key change since October was the addition of language directing county officials to recommend ways “to better support survivors seeking civil protection restraining orders due to physical or attempted violence, stalking, a credible fear of violence, or a pattern of behavior that seriously alarms, annoys, or harasses and causes substantial emotional distress,” broadening the scope beyond cases of domestic violence and stalking.

A key goal of the motion and the board’s efforts is to “acknowledge where failures exist and where we need to do better,” Horvath said Tuesday.

“Often we are asking our survivors to go to multiple different places to get the resources and support they should get through one unified response … Public safety means more than responding after violence occurs.”

Demonstrators allege Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his coalition’s proposed reforms pose a threat to press freedom.

Several thousand people have taken to the streets in Prague to protest against plans to change the funding system for the Czech Republic’s public media, accusing the government of stifling press freedom.

On Sunday, protesters demanded the withdrawal of legislation seeking to abolish household licence fees and replace them with state budget allocations for public radio and television.

The Czech lower house of parliament approved fast-tracking the bill in a rare overnight vote on Saturday after governing coalition lawmakers rushed to open the issue, limiting the opposition’s ability to engage in debate before the vote was held.

The bill, proposed by the governing coalition led by billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis, which includes two far-right parties, must still be passed by the upper house before becoming law.

The opposition has pledged to challenge the legislation in the constitutional court. The plan would cut funding for public media by about 15 percent, possibly as early as next year.

At the protest in Prague’s Old Town Square, demonstrators chanted, “We’ve had enough”, “This must not be allowed to pass”, and “4:36”, referencing the early morning hour when the draft was approved by parliament.

Babis has said the plan is not an attack on media independence but a matter of funding transparency.

Critics warn the proposed change would allow the governing coalition to take control of the media. They compare it with the actions of populist governments, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Babis and his coalition, whose agenda includes reducing support for Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion, have a record of attacks against the media.

Public media staffers announced they would go on strike on November 3. They are backed by labour unions, university rectors, churches, international media organisations and many others.

A rally is also planned at Prague’s Letna park on November 15, two days before the anniversary of the 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution that ended more than 40 years of totalitarian government.

Caracas, October 24, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez announced a series of measures aimed at expanding tax collection.

In a televised broadcast on Wednesday, Rodríguez announced the immediate suspension of the mandatory use of fiscal printers. Introduced in 2018, the devices recorded every transaction and reported it in real time to the country’s National Integrated Customs and Tax Administration Service (SENIAT).

The costly equipment posed a significant barrier for entrepreneurs and small business owners, particularly in the country’s interior, where authorized suppliers are scarce.

Superintendent Román Maniglia said the decision is part of SENIAT’s technological modernization that will pave the way for the gradual introduction of digital invoicing, which will soon be available free of charge to all economic sectors. 

“We seek to lower the barriers to formalization across all sectors, particularly for the smallest businesses, entrepreneurs, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” he stressed.

Rodríguez also announced a review of the registry of Special Taxpayers, known as “special contributors,” with the list reduced from 132,000 to around 44,000. These are individuals or legal entities that, because of their high income or assets, are subject to additional tax obligations.

According to the acting president, the review will add those who should have been included in this category and remove those who were classified as special taxpayers without meeting the relevant criteria.

Rodríguez said the changes are intended to improve tax services and expand revenue collection. She added that fiscal revenues rose by 27% in October, although she did not specify the basis for comparison or provide a breakdown of the amount collected. 

“We have been discussing the very low number of people who pay taxes in the country. This is a matter of fairness,” she added.

The latest announcements follow prior measures to facilitate tax collection. Earlier in October, SENIAT and banking superintendency SUDEBAN formalized an agreement to exchange information in real time in order to “strengthen revenue collection” and “facilitate the identification of potential tax discrepancies.”

The tax authority is now also interconnected with the Autonomous Service of Registries and Notaries (SAREN), the Administrative Service for Identification, Migration, and Immigration (SAIME), and the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV).

“We have a very important system for cross-referencing information which, together with a new statistical information system, will allow us to start collecting what is owed,” Rodríguez said in this week’s broadcast. She added that the fiscal revenues will be directed to the Venezuela Renace Foundation, which is responsible for repairing and rebuilding homes damaged by the twin earthquakes of June 24.

The acting government has likewise announced a tax reform to be unveiled before the end of 2026. Its stated goal is to “harmonize the tax burden” so that it supports economic growth and private-sector production. 

In parallel, the Rodríguez administration is also pushing labor reform plans alongside private sector lobbies FEDECAMARAS and FEDEINDUSTRIA. The business representatives are proposing a “Law on Labor and Social Consensus,” also referred to as the Labor Emergency Law, that will reportedly reduce labor costs for employers. 

The proposal is being discussed with select trade unions, including the government-aligned Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Central of Venezuela (CBST).

According to reports, the draft legislation seeks “transitional and alternative solutions” to the crisis in workers’ incomes and the stagnation of the minimum wage, which has remained frozen since 2022 while authorities prioritized non-wage bonuses. The proposal would not formally overhaul the entire Organic Labor Law, Workers and Employees (LOTTT), enacted under President Hugo Chávez in 2012, but labor activists warn that it would effectively sideline some of its provisions.

The landmark 2012 legislation reinstated the retroactive calculation of social benefits and severance based on a worker’s last salary, a provision that business groups want to eliminate, while trade unions consider it a red line. Workers’ organizations have staged multiple protests in recent months, demanding that the Rodríguez administration convert non-wage bonuses into salaries and reinstate collective bargaining rights.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.