The Rams traded for cornerback Roger McCreary, star receiver Puka Nacua is expected to return for Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints and receiver Tutu Atwell will spend at least four games on injured reserve.
All of those moves were announced by the Rams or discussed by coach Sean McVay on Monday as the Rams returned from an off week.
With the NFL trade deadline approaching next week, the Rams acquired McCreary, 25, and a conditional 2026 sixth-round pick from the Tennessee Titans in exchange for a conditional 2026 fifth-round pick.
McCreary, a 2022 second-round pick from Auburn, has three career interceptions, including one this season. He is expected to provide depth to a cornerback group that lost Ahkello Witherspoon early in the season because of a broken collarbone. Witherspoon, who has been doing some individual work, was expected to be sidelined 12 weeks.
McVay said veteran Darious Williams also suffered a shoulder injury in the Rams’ Oct. 19 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
So McCreary, who is in the final year of his rookie contract, could fortify a position group that includes Cobie Durant and Emmanuel Forbes Jr. Safety Quentin Lake has played as a slot cornerback and hybrid linebacker.
The Rams played against McCreary and the Titans in Week 2.
“We were looking to be able to add some depth,” McVay said, according to a transcript of a videoconference with reporters. “He was a guy that we respected from playing against him earlier this year.”
Nacua sat out against the Jaguars because of a high ankle sprain he suffered during an Oct. 12 victory over the Baltimore Ravens.
Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua catches a pass against the Baltimore Ravens on Oct. 12.
(Terrance Williams / Associated Press)
McVay said he expected that Nacua would practice this week and play against the Saints.
Nacua ranks fourth in NFL with 616 yards receiving.
“We do expect him to be back on Wednesday and expect him to play this week unless there are setbacks,” McVay said.
Atwell, who signed a one-year, $10-million contract before this season, played only 10 snaps against the Jaguars after sitting out against the Ravens because of a hamstring injury. He has four catches for 164 yards, including an 88-yard touchdown.
McVay said offensive tackle Rob Havenstein also is expected to return this week from an ankle injury that has sidelined him for three games.
The Rams are 5-2 heading into their game against the Saints (1-7) at SoFi Stadium.
PARADISE, Calif. — When Jen Goodlin visited Paradise six months after the 2018 Camp fire, she thought she was saying goodbye.
A town native, Goodlin was living in Colorado with her husband and four children. She wanted to witness the devastation that wiped out 10,700 homes, including the small white cottage where she grew up, and turned the dense forest of her youth into a bleak landscape. But once she arrived, she was surprised at her reaction. She could envision so much more than the burned trees and abandoned businesses around her.
Here, she saw, her family could live on a big piece of land as they’d always wanted. Her husband thought she was crazy, but they ran the numbers, bought a 1.2-acre vacant lot and put a trailer on the property. A few years later, they moved into a new, four-bedroom house.
“It took the fire to bring me home,” said Goodlin, 43, who now runs a local wildfire recovery nonprofit.
Jen Goodlin, executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, in Paradise, Calif., in June 2024.
(Nic Coury / Associated Press)
Young families like Goodlin’s are coming to Paradise, shifting the town’s demographics away from the retirees who once lived there. Attracted by cheap land — lots cost less than a mid-range car— newcomers can build a larger home on larger parcels for less than buying a house in Chico, a city of 100,000 people 15 miles away.
Though Paradise’s current population is less than half of what it was, the local Little League already has more kids than before the fire.
Nearly a decade of megafire in California has brought profound changes to recovering communities. Paradise has become younger. Some rebuilt areas have become wealthier. Renters and people on fixed incomes have found themselves pushed to more urban locales. Both devastated neighborhoods and fire survivors face an unpredictable future that, given the recent intensity of wildfires in California, many more areas will have to face.
Reminders of fire are inescapable in Paradise, from the roadside signposts that designate evacuation routes to the alarm that blares at noon on the 15th of every month, a test of the system that will tell everyone if they need to flee once again. At the same time, the activity in the town belies the desolation implied by building data that show only 30% of destroyed homes have been replaced. Dog walkers and parents with small children play in refurbished parks. At lunchtime, construction workers in reflective vests gather around taco trucks.
A deer treks over an empty lot as homes continue to be built throughout Paradise years after the Camp fire.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Local boosters tout that for every year after the fire, Paradise has been one of the fastest-growing communities in California. Another half-dozen homes are being rebuilt each month, according to a Times data analysis.
But as shown in Paradise, the statistics tell only part of the story. The Times found that of the nearly 22,500 homes lost in the Camp fire and California’s four other most destructive wildfires from 2017 to 2020, just 8,400, or 38%, have been rebuilt.
Given the time that has already passed, it’s unlikely that some places — the forests below the northern Sierra Nevada, parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, pieces of old Shasta County mining towns — ever will have the same number of homes as before. In Paradise, it’s essentially guaranteed. Many returning homeowners purchased their neighbors’ burned out lots to build a larger house or simply expand the size of their property.
Instead of simply repopulating these areas, there has been a subtle shift toward living in more urban communities, especially for renters or homeowners who couldn’t afford to rebuild. In Butte County, disaster relief dollars from both the Camp fire and North Complex fire, which destroyed 1,500 homes in even more rural areas two years later, have been funneled toward affordable housing projects largely in Chico and smaller nearby cities untouched by the blazes. Not one such development has been proposed in the North Complex burn scar.
The rationale is straightforward: More people can be housed more safely and sustainably in cities than in mountainous, fire-prone tracts with little public infrastructure. The urban developments also provide access to grocery stores, public transit and other amenities that give them a higher chance of winning state financing competitions and being completed.
Local officials welcome the investments but feel uneasy about what’s happening. Katie Simmons, deputy chief administrative officer overseeing recovery efforts for Butte County, said many rural fire survivors don’t want to move to the city. She called the new developments “displacement housing” that doesn’t address the needs of those in remote areas who continue to “flounder in disaster-caused homelessness.”
As time wears on, fewer and fewer people find themselves in positions to return, sometimes despite extraordinary efforts to allow them to do so.
Palm trees rising over the vacant lot in November 2020 where Journey’s End Trailer Park once stood in Santa Rosa.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In Santa Rosa, the 2017 Tubbs fire wiped out Journey’s End, a 162-space mobile home park next to a hospital and the 101 Freeway. A partnership between the landowner, the city and for- and nonprofit developers led to plans for more than 400 apartments on the site, including full replacement of 162 units for low-income seniors.
But it wasn’t until summer 2023 that the first apartments opened. Journey’s End residents, so long as they qualified under the age and income restrictions, could return if they wanted.
Few did. About three dozen expressed interest, 12 initially moved in, six of whom remain.
A lot of her former neighbors from the mobile home park died waiting, said Pat Crisco, 75, one of the Journey’s End residents who came back. Others didn’t want to live in apartments. More had settled elsewhere and didn’t want to uproot themselves again, she said.
Pat Crisco is a former resident of the Journey’s End mobile home park that burned in the Tubbs fire. Crisco is now living in the affordable housing apartment development that was built on the site.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The stray cats Crisco used to feed at Journey’s End are gone and when the hot wind blows outside her apartment building she gets the “heebie jeebies.” But she feels great about her decision to return. The location is close to the bus, her doctors and grocery stores.
“This is brand spanking new,” Crisco said. “And everything is very convenient.”
Before the Tubbs fire, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park subdivision was middle-class, with its tract homes routinely going for around $500,000. Nearly all the 1,300 houses lost have been rebuilt. Residents were astounded recently when they began selling at more than $1 million.
Jeff Okrepkie, 46, a Coffey Park renter who used his insurance payout as a down payment for a new home on his old street, said it’s undeniable that the neighborhood is more upscale now, with amenities hard to find elsewhere.
“This is the cliche, Americana, suburban single-family-detached homes,” Okrepkie said. “It’s 1980s-style lots, 1980s-style streets with 2020s-style houses.”
Jeff Okrepkie outside his rebuilt home, second from left, in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
What’s happening in Paradise and Santa Rosa provide continually evolving answers to weighty questions: When has a community recovered? And what does recovery even mean?
That’s why local leaders are pushing for a new sewer system as part of an expanded town center to attract restaurants and business that would make more young families want to live there. The lack of one limited the commercial district in the past.
For Paradise officials, recovery is when the community can sustain itself once again.
“It looks like it’s going to serve us for 25 years,” said Colette Curtis, the town’s recovery and economic development director, of the PG&E settlement.
Some residents of communities reshaped by fire have found themselves both drawn and repelled by the place they call home.
Roger and Lindy Brown lived in Paradise with their daughter before the fire and their home burned. Their daughter went to Chico State, and Roger and Lindy moved to Oregon. Roger and Lindy moved back to a rebuilt home near their old one a couple of years ago.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Roger and Lindy Brown had lived in Paradise for 12 years when the Camp fire struck. After the blaze, the Browns rented an apartment in Chico so their daughter could finish her last year at Paradise High School, which held classes in a mall and then a warehouse in Chico.
Roger, 60, worked in heating and air conditioning and had to return to the town often. He couldn’t take seeing the burned-out trees, cars and homes. The couple took their insurance money and moved to a small town in Oregon. From a distance, the upkeep on their vacant lot proved to be too much so they sold that too.
But Paradise pulled at them, especially Lindy, 66. Their daughter never left, attending Chico State, where she recently graduated. Some of their friends had rebuilt. To her, Oregon felt lonely. Paradise, she said, was their community.
Tom and Diane Boatright built back their home in the second-fastest time after the Camp fire using a modular homebuilding company.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Roger and Lindy bought a house in Paradise, a newly built, blue, two-bedroom with a white picket fence. The home had all they wanted. Solar power. A large lot. Apple, cherry and peach trees in the back. And they were overwhelmed with the thought of starting from scratch.
They’ve kept a Little Free Library on their lawn stocked with books. In the spring, they traded their extra peaches for eggs from their neighbor’s chickens.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Roger and Lindy stood in their frontyard admiring the finishing touches on their only major construction project. They were replacing some of the landscaping with gravel, a decision that made their home more fire-resistant and cut their insurance costs in half.
Roger still felt unsure about returning. Before the fire, he would go to breakfast with the town’s classic car club every Saturday. The 1971 Chevy Nova Roger had restored was lost in the blaze and the car club was no more.
“It’s never going to be the Paradise it was,” Roger said to Lindy.
His wife turned to him. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.
Jack Osbourne fired back this week at the insults that Roger Waters hurled last month at his late father Ozzy Osbourne, who died in July at the age of 76.
During an interview with the Independent Ink, Waters had expressed his feelings about the “Prince of Darkness” and his music.
“Ozzy Osbourne, who just died, bless him in his whatever that state that he was in his whole life,” the 81-year-old rocker told host Dwayne Booth. “We’ll never know. The music, I have no idea, I couldn’t give a f—.”
He added: “I don’t care about Black Sabbath, I never did. Have no interest in biting the heads of chickens or whatever they do. I couldn’t care less, you know.”
Osbourne’s son, Jack, caught wind of Waters’ words and turned on the war machine. He took to his Instagram on Tuesday to defend his dad.
“Hey Roger Waters F— You,” Jack posted on his page, using white lettering on a red background. “How pathetic and out of touch you’ve become.”
Waters, who co-founded the band Pink Floyd in 1965 and has toured as a solo act since 1999, typically posts politically driven messages in a similar style on his account.
“The only way you seem to get attention these days is by vomiting out b— in the press. My father always thought you were a c— thanks for proving him right,” he added. He ended the post with a clown emoji.
The youngest of the Osbourne clan appeared alongside his father in the MTV reality series “The Osbournes” from 2002 through 2005 and the History Channel’s “Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour” from 2016 through 2018.
The Black Sabbath frontman revealed to David Letterman in an episode of “Late Night” in 1982 that he had beheaded a bat onstage by accident, a feat that had added to the considerable lore built around the heavy metal legend.
Ozzy Osbourne made his last public appearance during the band’s farewell concert, “Back to the Beginning,” on July 5 at their hometown of Birmingham, England. He died on July 22 of a heart attack.
Reporting from Sacramento — The state ethics agency cited the serious illness and death of key witnesses in its decision to drop charges that political contributions were laundered to the 2010 campaign of Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina).
Ending a protracted legal battle that began three years ago, the state Fair Political Practices Commission has also notified Hernandez’s attorney that it will not pursue allegations that the candidate failed to report spending on a mass mailing on the West Covina City Council elections.
“After a full investigation, the Enforcement Division did not find sufficient, reliable evidence to conclude that your client violated the [Political Reform] Act in this instance and is closing the file on this matter,” wrote Zachary W. Norton, an attorney for the FPPC, to Hernandez’s lawyer.
The state agency launched the probe after receiving a citizen complaint questioning loans of $100,000 that Hernandez made to his campaign in 2009 and 2010.
The commission issued a finding of probable cause in January. At that time, an attorney for the state agency alleged Hernandez’s committee filed “an inaccurate semi-annual campaign statement with the Secretary of State, falsely reporting information regarding the true sources of contributions received.”
Hernandez challenged the allegations, and in preparing for an administrative hearing, commission attorneys found “inconsistencies in previous witness testimony” and that key witnesses were not available, Norton said.
“Specifically, one key witness has serious medical issues that would prevent him from testifying and another has passed away,” Norton wrote in the case-closing letter. “The standard for proving a violation of the Act administratively is based on the preponderance of the evidence and, at this point, the evidence is not sufficient to meet that standard.”
The allegation involving failure to report a mass mailer was dropped after Hernandez’s campaign provided information that the campaign staffer who approved it was not authorized to do so, Norton said.
Jimmy Gutierrez, an attorney for the Assemblyman, said the letter provides false excuses for why the case was dropped.
“They had issued probable cause findings with no facts whatsoever and they know it,” Gutierrez said. “There was absolutely no merit to it whatsoever.”
Roger Nichols, the songwriter who penned “We’ve Only Just Begun” and other hits for folk-rock duo the Carpenters, has died. He was 84.
Nichols’ death on May 17 was confirmed in a social media post from Nichols’ longtime songwriting partner, Paul Williams. He did not list a cause of death.
“The first song Roger Nichols and I wrote was called ‘It’s hard to say goodbye …’ Sadly, we hit the nail on the head. Roger Nichols passed away peacefully four days ago, at home with his beautiful family,” Williams wrote. “His wife Terry and the daughters he was so proud of, Claire and Caitlin at his side.
“He was as disciplined as he was talented,” Williams continued. “The words were born of the beauty in his completed melodies. I wrote what I heard, note for note …word for word. The lyrics waiting in the emotion already in his music. He made it easy.”
Nichols, a Montana native, released his first solo LP, “Roger Nichols & the Small Circle of Friends,” on A&M Records in 1968. It’s now regarded as a cult classic in the California pop-rock canon, with guest credits from Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks and Lenny Waronker. However, he earned his big break as a songwriter after he penned an unexpectedly poignant jingle for a Crocker-Citizens National Bank commercial.
Richard Carpenter, who formed the popular duo with his sister Karen, heard the tune on television and asked if Nichols and Williams had a full version of the song. They quickly extended it into a tune that became the duo’s 1970 smash “We’ve Only Just Begun.” The single was nominated for song of the year at the following Grammys.
With Williams (and other lyricists), Nichols co-wrote many of the Carpenters’ most beloved songs, including “Rainy Days and Mondays,” “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” “Let Me Be the One” and “I Kept on Loving You.” Beyond his hits for the Carpenters, Nichols co-wrote songs that were recorded by the Monkees, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Petula Clark and Art Garfunkel, among many others.
In a comment on Williams’ post, Nichols’ daughter Claire wrote, “My mom, Terri, and my sisters, Caroline and Caitlin, are all so proud of the man he was, and are in awe of the legacy he leaves.”
LEAD ARTIST wore down Dancing Gemini in the final strides to deny Roger Teal a fairytale Lockinge win at Newbury.
Teal’s well-backed 2-1 favourite headed the eventual winner with a furlong to run, but the petrol tank began to empty and John Gosden’s runner got back up close home.
1
Lead Artist (left) edged out Dancing Gemini in the Lockinge StakesCredit: Getty
It was heartbreak for nice guy Teal, who was seeking just his third Group 1 win, but he took it on the chin and is up for another crack at the winner.
There was promise, too, from Richard Hannon’s Classic winner Rosallion, who was a few lengths away in third on his first run for nearly a year.
But it was Gosden who had the last laugh, winning a Group 1 just 10 days after sacking Kieran Shoemark as his stable jockey.
He will no doubt feel his decision has been vindicated after Oisin Murphy steered home 17-2 shot Lead Artist by a neck, a result Gosden admitted he didn’t see coming.
He said: “It was a very strong Lockinge and if you’d asked me beforehand I’d have said we’d be in the first three, I didn’t expect him to win.
“He is a lovely horse and he’s won over nine furlongs before, so Ryan came at us from off the pace and used up petrol and we’ve just been able to get back past him.
“We’ll go to the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot now where I expect we’ll meet several of these horses again, and it should be a hell of a race.”
Dancing Gemini will definitely be there, and Teal said he won’t duck and dive his way through the season with his stable star.
The Lambourn trainer said last month he wanted to emulate last season’s top miler Charyn, and so far the four-year-old is sticking to the script.
Teal said: “We said we were going to try and do a Charyn and he was second in the Lockinge last year, so it’s not the end of the world. We’ve run better than Charyn did, he ran great.
“Ryan said the ground was probably a bit lively for him, it was the quickest ground he’s been on.
“We don’t duck and dive, we’ve only gone down a neck and he has put the rest of the field to bed so we’ll go to the Queen Anne now.
“It was a bit of an awkward draw, we had to take him back further than we wanted to. He’s gone down on his sword and he’s a Group 1 winner waiting to happen.”
Hannon was a bag of nerves before Rosallion’s long overdue return to action, but he was pleased with the colt after such a long lay-off.
He said: “It was a very good run, he was pretty fit coming here but there is nothing like race fitness.
“I’ve no doubt he’ll improve loads for that, so we will go again and head to Ascot.”
