Army says military doctors are treating survivors and engineers are repairing damaged infrastructure.
Pakistan has restored 70 percent of electricity service and reopened damaged roads in the north and northwest after flash floods killed more than 300 people, officials say.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Tuesday that engineers were working to fully restore the electricity system that was knocked out by flooding last week.
Monsoon rains triggered floods that have killed more than 700 people nationwide since June 26, the National Disaster Management Authority reported, while Tarar said more than 25,000 people have been evacuated.
The information minister said most roads have been cleared, facilitating the supply of food and other essentials to flood-affected areas.
Army spokesman Ahmed Sharif said military doctors are treating survivors and engineers are repairing damaged infrastructure. Soldiers using helicopters have also delivered food and supplies to remote villages cut off by floods and landslides.
Monsoon rains continued to lash the country on Tuesday, including the southern port city of Karachi, flooding streets and disrupting everyday activities, officials said. Despite the government’s claims of preparedness, people could be seen wading through chest-high water along many roads.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered authorities to accelerate recovery efforts in Buner, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where torrential rains and a cloudburst on Friday killed at least 280 people, Tarar said. It was among the worst flooding since the rains began,
Twenty bodies were found on Tuesday there, the local district commissioner said.
Rescue teams are still searching for about 150 missing people, rescue official Mohammad Suhail said.
Angry villagers said there was no warning broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, as is often the case, and government relief has been slow. The government said the deluge struck before residents could be informed.
Sharif chaired a high-level meeting on Monday to review relief efforts in flood-hit areas.
Every year, many cities in Pakistan struggle to cope with the annual monsoon deluge, drawing criticism about poor planning. The monsoon season runs from July through September.
Authorities have warned of a possible repeat of Pakistan’s catastrophic 2022 floods, which killed more than 1,700 people and were blamed on climate change.
Booking tumbled in the summer months as consumers pulled back on travel expenses
American Airlines has restored its full-year outlook as broader economic uncertainty continues to weigh on domestic consumer demand across the travel industry.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier on Thursday offered a wide range for its full-year forecast on the heels of its earnings report, saying the broader economic uncertainty is hobbling consumer spending. The airline had suspended financial guidance in April.
The airline says it expects an adjusted loss per share of 20 cents a share to a profit of 80 cents a share in 2025. The midpoint of the forecast is 30 cents per share, compared with analysts’ average estimate of 61 cents a share, according to LSEG data.
American, which generates more than two-thirds of its passenger revenue from the US domestic market, said that if domestic travel demand continues to strengthen, it expects to hit the top end of its outlook. But if the economy weakens, it only expects to be at the bottom end of the forecast.
“The domestic network has been under stress because of the uncertainty in the economy and the reluctance of domestic passengers to get in the game,” CEO Robert Isom told analysts on an earnings call.
American said tepid domestic travel demand affected its bookings in July. Isom, however, said the performance is expected to improve sequentially in August and September.
“We expect that July will be the low point,” he said.
The company expects its domestic unit revenue, or revenue generated from each seat, to remain lower year-over-year in the third quarter. Its non-fuel operating costs are estimated to be up as much as 4.5 percent in the September quarter.
American expects an adjusted loss per share in the range of 10 cents to 60 cents in the third quarter, compared with analysts’ estimates of a loss of 7 cents, according to data compiled by LSEG.
The company’s outlook contrasts with upbeat forecasts of rival Delta and United Airlines. Alaska Air Group has also reported improvements in passenger traffic and pricing power.
Most US airlines withdrew their financial forecasts in April as President Donald Trump’s trade war created the biggest uncertainty for the industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. While some have reinstated their expectations, there is lingering uncertainty as to how the economy will fare in an ever-evolving tariff landscape.
Demand in the domestic travel market has remained subdued, with budget travellers approaching their plans with caution, hurting carriers that primarily service the US domestic market and price-sensitive customers.
Even summer, typically the peak money-making season for airlines, is falling short this year, with unsold standard economy seats forcing carriers to cut fares.
It dented the second-quarter earnings of Southwest Airlines, the largest US domestic airline.
At American, the domestic market was the weakest in the second quarter, with its unit revenue declining 6.4 percent from a year ago. The company’s unit revenue in international markets was up, led by a 5 percent annual jump in the transatlantic market.
On Wall Street, the stock is taking a hit and was down 7.2 percent from the market open as of 11:30am in New York (15:30 GMT).
The Syrian government has announced that local leaders will take control of security in the southern city of Suwayda in an attempt to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of people and triggered Israeli military intervention.
Syrian forces had entered Suwayda, reportedly to oversee a ceasefire after deadly clashes between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes killed more than 350 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
Witnesses, however, reported that government forces had aligned with Bedouin groups in attacks against Druze fighters and civilians.
Israel carried out deadly strikes on Syria on Wednesday, including on its army headquarters in Damascus, saying they were aimed at defending Syria’s Druze minority. It threatened to intensify its attacks unless Syrian government forces withdrew from the south.
On Wednesday, Syria announced its army’s withdrawal from Suwayda while the United States – Israel’s close ally working to rebuild Syrian relations – confirmed an agreement to restore calm, urging all parties to honour their commitments.
Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced on Thursday in a televised address that security responsibility in Suwayda would transfer to religious elders and local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.
“We are eager to hold accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.
Before government intervention, Druze fighters largely maintained control of their areas.
Al-Sharaa emphasised to the Druze community that it is “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation. … Protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities.”
Al-Sharaa blamed “outlaw groups” whose leaders “rejected dialogue for many months” of committing the recent “crimes against civilians”.
He claimed the deployment of forces from the Ministries of Defence and Interior had “succeeded in returning stability” despite Israel’s intervention, which included bombings in southern Syria and Damascus.
Israel, with its own Druze population, has positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian minority although analysts suggested this may justify its military objective of keeping Syrian forces away from their shared border.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern about the Israeli bombings on Wednesday, stating, “We want it to stop.”
Rubio later announced on X that all parties had “agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end”, adding that implementation was expected without detailing specifics.
Al-Sharaa praised US, Arab and Turkish mediation efforts for preventing further escalation.
“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” he said, adding that it would have triggered “large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.
He did not specify which Arab nations participated in the mediation.
Turkiye strongly supports Syria’s new leaders, and Arab states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have also demonstrated backing for the new government.
When President Trump deployed the National Guard to quell protests last month against immigration raids unfolding across Los Angeles County, he claimed widespread lawlessness forced him to send in the troops.
Days later, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman stepped in front of news cameras to announce charges against people who allegedly attacked police during the demonstrations. He avoided mentioning Trump or the swarms of masked federal agents descending on parks, workplaces and schools, but tried to push back against the White House’s chaos narrative.
Noting that the unrest was confined to a small section of downtown, Hochman promised to hold the lawbreakers accountable and disputed that Los Angeles was “under siege.”
Reflecting on the moment in a recent interview with The Times, Hochman said he wanted to set the record straight without igniting a partisan dispute.
“What I’m hearing and reading and seeing is a political discourse that I have no interest in engaging in,” he said. “But one that is misstating what the factual context is on the ground.”
A former Republican who rebranded as an independent last year, Hochman promised to “get politics out” of the district attorney’s office. He endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race but has stuck to his self-described “hard middle” since, focusing instead on restoring order to an office he criticized as being too chaotic under his predecessor.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Now more than six months into Hochman’s first term, prosecutors and law enforcement officials say the new district attorney has delivered “a return to normalcy” after the contentious term of progressive luminary George Gascón. By repealing nearly all of Gascón’s sweeping policies, Hochman is allowing his prosecutors to mete out justice as they see fit, restoring a relative degree of harmony to an office that spent four years at war with itself.
But Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign is testing the limits of Hochman’s neutrality.
“When the head prosecutor in the county doesn’t take a position, silence may appear to the community as support,” said L.A. County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia.
Hochman said that his office is not collaborating with the federal government on immigration enforcement and that he would prefer if immigration agents let state-level cases play out before taking action.
“I’m doing my best to focus on my mission, which is public safety. There’s a lot of politics going on and a lot of noise above that mission, whether it’s the president squabbling with the governor, squabbling with the mayor or anybody else who wants to interject in the political discussions,” he said. “I’m going out of my way nowadays to keep our focus in this office on the public safety aspect.”
It was that focus that made Hochman speak up at the news conference. He recalled watching TV news and social media clips of the first weekend of protests that echoed Trump’s proclamations that the city might burn down.
“You’d swear to God, L.A. was under siege. I mean I got scared the first night,” he said. “I’m calling up my people and I’m saying, ‘Is this going on throughout the city and the county?’”
Superpowers, celebrity trials and stark contrasts
Hochman’s measured approach stands in contrast not only to Gascón’s but also to his counterpart’s at the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles.
During a news conference on arrests of people who allegedly attacked police during last month’s protests, Hochman calmly laid out the legal reasoning for the various prosecutions during the politically charged events. By comparison, U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli took the microphone minutes later and parroted Trump verbatim before pushing a long-held conservative suspicion about out-of-state agitators causing violence.
Although Hochman talked as a candidate about crime in apocalyptic tones, took significant money from conservative megadonors and worked with fundraisers tied to Trump, his overhaul of the district attorney’s office has not resembled the right-wing makeover some feared it would. If anything, Hochman’s law and order orientation is in line with statewide voter shifts on criminal justice reform.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announces “aggressive action” against retail theft during a news conference outside a 7-Eleven in May.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
Gone are Gascón’s reformist policies discouraging the use of cash bail and limiting the use of sentencing enhancements. The death penalty is back on the table, although Hochman has not yet pursued it against a defendant.
Six months into his term, data show Hochman is charging felonies at roughly the same rate Gascón did. Although the new district attorney vowed during his campaign to charge more juveniles as adults, so far he has pursued a total of five cases — the same number Gascón had at this time last year, according to a spokesperson for the office.
After Hochman wiped out Gascón’s ban on filing certain misdemeanors, prosecutors charged nearly 70% of all low-level cases presented by police in the first half of 2025, records show. Hochman says it’s a necessary step to deter criminals, but Garcia and other advocates warn it puts more people at risk of deportation.
Hochman says he’s merely enforcing the law, and often presents himself as a man trying to get the trains back on time. In his downtown office, a framed silver age comic book sits by his desk, chronicling the adventures of “Mr. District Attorney.” Hochman laughs when describing the 1940s hero who seems to share his straight-ahead approach to the job.
“He doesn’t have any superpowers,” Hochman says. “Turns out, he’s just a really good lawyer.”
In an attempt to win over rank-and-file prosecutors, Hochman filled his administration with office veterans. And he’s made a point of dropping in on trials large and small — from celebrity defendants to juvenile cases far from the headlines — to cheer on his staff.
“We’ve seen a return to normalcy. We have a general understanding of what the expectations are of us,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Erlich, president of the union that represents most of Hochman’s staff. “We feel the upper management understands the job that we do, and it allows us to communicate and work on issues.”
Marilyn Manson, Menendez brothers and political pitfalls
Good vibes aside, some of Hochman’s decisions have rankled line prosecutors and led to political pitfalls.
The office has been on the wrong end of several high-profile cases this year, leading some prosecutors to question why the district attorney’s even-keel behavior tends to falter when the lights are on brightest.
“He wants to be recognized, so he’s always involved in these high-profile cases,” said one veteran deputy district attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Sometimes to the detriment of the case.”
During his campaign for district attorney last year, Nathan Hochman spoke alongside actor Esme Bianco to criticize his opponent’s handling of a case involving singer Marilyn Manson.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
“You don’t parade people out. … I found that so deeply offensive,” said Lenora Claire, a former member of the district attorney’s office’s victim advisory board. “What was that choice other than being completely irresponsible? He hadn’t reviewed the case.”
Hochman said the case was handled appropriately and prosecutors made a decision not to charge that was “rooted in facts and the law, not a political agenda.”
Hochman’s personal involvement in the resentencing hearings for Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers who killed their parents in a pair of brutal shotgun murders in 1989, also drew scrutiny. The brothers were each serving a life sentence with no hope of release until Gascón petitioned for their resentencing last year, a move Hochman opposed both on the campaign trail and then in court.
Hochman’s interactions with the Menendez family drew allegations of bias and his decision to transfer the prosecutors who filed Gascón’s petition resulted in a civil suit. During one hearing in May, he personally took over arguments in the courtroom and said the brothers needed to show proper “insight” into their crimes, even after a judge repeatedly warned him it was legally irrelevant.
“When people say did you win or lose the Menendez case, I say we won. The defense was asking for immediate release through a voluntary manslaughter finding. The judge didn’t go there,” Hochman said.
Tougher sentences, ticked off attorneys
After a campaign fueled by pro-law enforcement rhetoric, some defense attorneys say Hochman’s election has emboldened prosecutors to become unnecessarily aggressive.
“They are focused more now on incarceration and high prison sentences, as opposed to probation and the opportunity for rehabilitation,” attorney Damon Alimouri said.
One of Alimouri’s clients, Gerardo Miguel, is currently awaiting trial in a vandalism and burglary case after allegedly smashing his way into a Los Angeles home while screaming, “call the police” before hiding in the victim’s bathroom, according to court records.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman outside the Van Nuys Courthouse during a hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez in May.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
No one was injured in the incident. Miguel did not steal anything, nor does he have a criminal record. Yet, Alimouri said, the district attorney’s office’s only plea offer would send his client to state prison.
“[The prosecutor] said, I’m concerned about the safety of the public, this guy could have done X, Y and Z,” Alimouri said of the plea negotiation. “But the fact of the matter is [my client] didn’t do X, Y and Z. He curled up in the fetal position and called for help.”
Garcia, the public defender, also expressed frustration that Hochman’s prosecutors have been fighting attempts to get defendants into the county’s Rapid Diversion Program, which allows defendants to get treatment without taking on a criminal conviction. The program has a 90% success rate, according to Garcia.
Hochman, who championed the use of some mental health diversion programs during his campaign, says it’s a lack of county resources that limits the use of alternative justice programs.
“We don’t have enough beds, anywhere in this county, for dealing with that whole population,” Hochman said.
Allocating resources is the job of L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors, a panel that leans heavily left. Hochman won’t face reelection until 2028, and until then observers say his centrism could be an asset.
“The advantage to being an independent is he can put the voters in the city before his political party,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California. “Anyone with a D or an R next to their name comes under immense pressure to toe their respective party lines.”
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
The Trump administration has lifted a freeze on federal funds for HIV prevention and surveillance programs, officials said, following an outcry from HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health received notice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday that it had been awarded nearly $20 million for HIV prevention for the 12-month period that began June 1 — an increase of $338,019 from the previous year.
“Let’s be clear — the Trump administration’s move to freeze HIV prevention funding was reckless, illegal and put lives at risk,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) in a statement. “I’m relieved the CDC finally did the right thing — but this never should have happened.”
The CDC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Friedman and other advocates for HIV prevention funding sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, warning that proposed cuts to these programs would reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases — especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community.
The letter cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, suggesting the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years.
Los Angeles County, which stood to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding, was looking at terminating contracts with 39 providers. Experts said the dissolution of that network could result in as many as 650 new cases per year — pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000.
“Public Health is grateful for the support and advocacy from the Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles County Congressional delegation, and all of our community based providers in pushing CDC to restore this Congressionally approved funding,” a spokeswoman for the county’s health department said.
“Looking forward, it is important to note that the President’s FY26 budget proposes to eliminate this funding entirely, and we urge our federal partners to support this critical lifesaving funding,” she said.
Charter Communications is returning the Walt Disney Co.-owned cable channels that were dropped from its Spectrum TV service in 2023 after the two sides negotiated new terms for carrying ESPN and ABC.
The companies announced Thursday an “expanded distribution agreement” that will give Spectrum TV Select customers the ad-supported version of streaming platform Hulu and eight linear TV channels: Disney Jr., Disney XD, Freeform, FXX, FXM, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo and BabyTV. They will be added at no additional cost for subscribers.
The cable channels were dropped in 2023 when the companies were unable to agree on terms for carrying ESPN and ABC, which led to a 10-day blackout for Spectrum customers.. The standoff kept tennis fans in Spectrum homes from seeing ESPN’s U.S. Open coverage and threatened access to the season premiere of “Monday Night Football.”
At the time, Charter resolved the dispute by agreeing to pay higher fees to keep the rights to carry the main engines of Disney’s TV lineup — including ESPN and ABC — but had to sacrifice some of the company’s smaller channels. Charter had sought to get free access to Disney’s streaming channels for its customers as well.
The terms of the expanded deal to return the dropped channels and add Hulu were not disclosed beyond saying it was “financially net positive for both companies.” It’s likely Disney needed to maintain the distribution of the channels to Charter’s nearly 15 million cable homes to keep them viable for advertisers.
“These channels expand Spectrum’s entertainment offering and create meaningful value for both companies by boosting advertising reach and strengthening audience engagement across platforms,” Charter said in its announcement of the deal.
The Disney-Charter pact is a sign of how both programmers and cable and satellite services are being more flexible as they contend with the steady decline of pay TV customers. Pricing is a key reason consumers have abandoned traditional TV for streaming.
Separately, satellite TV provider DirecTV announced Thursday it will offer a new slimmed-down package of channels called MyKids, designed for younger viewers. The package offered for $19.99 a month will provide access to kid- and teen-oriented channels from Disney, Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery and Weigel Broadcasting.
MyKids, which includes Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and MeTV Toons, is one of the newest lower priced genre-based packages DirecTV is offering to customers. In addition to MyKids, DirecTV customers can select packages with news, entertainment, sports and Spanish-language channels, all priced well under the monthly cost of subscribing to the entire channel lineup.
June 12 (UPI) — The Supreme Court brought back a lawsuit against the FBI over a mishandled home raid from 2017 in Atlanta on Thursday.
A unanimous decision moved the case over an incident in which federal agents broke through the door of Trina Martin’s home with a search warrant at the wrong address, back to a lower court to look at it again to see if the lawsuit can move forward.
Martin sued the government for assault and battery, false arrest and other violations, after the FBI entered her home, where she lived with her then-boyfriend Toi Cliatt and 7-year-old son Gabe Watson, believing it was the home of an alleged violent gang member.
The suit alleged that agents entered the home with their guns drawn and set of a flash bang that startled the family and caused Gabe to scream.
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal judge in Atlanta and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were wrong to dismiss the suit, ordering them to determine whether the discretionary-function exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act in 2019, under which the suit was filed, would allow the case to go forward.
The justices did not answer the question, but allowed the plaintiffs to argue it in the lower courts.
“It is work enough for the day to answer the questions we took this case to resolve, clear away the two faulty assumptions on which that court has relied in the past and redirect it to the proper inquiry,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.
“We readily acknowledge that different lower courts have taken different views of the discretionary function exception,” Gorsuch continued.”We acknowledge, too, that important questions surround whether and under what circumstances that exception may ever foreclose a suit like this one.”
During the raid Martin’s former boyfriend was handcuffed and she wanted to go to her son. She wasn’t allowed to move and the 7-year-old woke up to see agents with guns in his room.
After the agents realized their mistake they left the house and their supervisor came back to apologize.
The FBI had an arrest warrant out for Joseph Riley. After they left Martin’s house, FBI raided Riley’s house and arrested him.
Pattrick Jaicomo, Martin’s lawyer in a statement said the court was right to revive the Martin family’s case
“The Court’s decision today acknowledged how far the circuit courts have strayed from the purpose of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which is to ensure remedies to the victims of federal harms-intentional and negligent alike,” he said. “We look forward to continuing this fight with the Martins in the Eleventh Circuit and making it easier for everyday people to hold the government accountable for its mistaken and intentional violations of individual rights.”
