“Home Improvement” teen heartthrob of yore Jonathan Taylor Thomas spent the night in jail for allegedly getting unruly with police after a night of drinking.
The 45-year-old actor was detained by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and taken to the Malibu/Lost Hills station in Agoura Hills shortly after midnight on Monday, according to Sheriff’s Department booking records.
Thomas’ trip to the slammer stemmed from a traffic stop that went awry in Westlake Village. He was the passenger in the car and exited the vehicle after a police officer told him to stay inside, according to TMZ. The outlet reported that Thomas was allegedly inebriated, refused the officer’s instructions and did not cooperate.
Arrest records show that the “Lion King” star was booked at the station on a felony-level charge, with total bail set at $0, which can be a temporary holding classification used during the initial intake before a prosecutor or district attorney formally evaluates the case.
Thomas spent the night in jail, but police let him go Tuesday afternoon, with records indicating that no formal criminal complaint was filed and the incident was reclassified as a detention only, rather than an arrest, which should wipe the arrest from the actor’s official record.
Thomas, perhaps best known for starring in the beloved 1990s sitcom “Home Improvement” opposite Tim Allen, also voiced Simba in Disney’s “The Lion King” and starred in other ’90s family films, including “Man of the House” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
After a decade of starring roles and magazine covers, Thomas stepped away from the limelight to focus on school, and attended Harvard, Columbia and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
“I’d been going nonstop since I was 8 years old,” he told People in 2013. “I wanted to go to school, to travel and have a bit of a break.”
The Southern Section has no authority to tell a school to get rid of a coach. It has no control over personnel matters. But there’s precedent that when a coach knowingly plays an ineligible player, it expects a school district to take appropriate action.
In the case with Inglewood football coach Mil’von James, he has a history of using ineligible players. James came to Inglewood, which is 4-1 this season, after being fired at Hawkins in 2016 following the discovery of ineligible players, resulting in Hawkins forfeiting all of its games to finish 0-13. Since then, the City Section established a rule that teams must exchange rosters before games to verify that players are eligible, known as the “Hawkins rule.”
Inglewood Unified School District administrator James Morris told the Daily Breeze that James is scheduled to return to coach on Friday after missing last week’s game against Long Beach Poly at SoFi. That means he received a two-game suspension for using two ineligible players in a game last month, since it is believed he also didn’t coach a game against Elk Grove Franklin.
James appears to have knowingly played two players listed on the Southern Section transfer portal that had not been cleared when Inglewood played in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 28. Video obtained by The Times shows the players in the game.
Add to that, both players’ names and numbers were missing from Inglewood’s MaxPreps’ roster, something that was also a tactic when James coached at Hawkins and resulted in the new City Section rule to exchange roster before games.
Shame on the Inglewood Unified School District for failing to hold its coach accountable for a serious violation of CIF rules.
If the two-game suspension stands, shame on the Southern Section, too. The message being sent to other coaches and other schools is that it’s OK to cheat as long as you don’t get caught, and if you get caught and only get suspended for two games, it’s worth it.
The Southern Section, under commissioner Mike West, went out of its way to try to catch those breaking transfer rules last year. It was a sign maybe things were changing and people were paying attention to the games being played with more than 17,000 transfers in California. But if the Southern Section settles for a two-game suspension for James, it will lose credibility among coaches and programs trying to follow CIF rules.
Southern Section spokesman Thom Simmons has declined comment and declined to make West available.
As always, they’re afraid of legal action. And it must be pointed out again the Southern Section has no authority to discipline coaches. But at some point, to save credibility, they will need to address this breaking of rules that goes to the core of what the CIF is supposed to guard against.
The Southern Section Council has a meeting on Thursday. If any of the representatives have concerns, maybe then they’ll get to ask West how this could be acceptable.
In 2014 Long Beach Unified suspended Long Beach Poly basketball coach Sharrief Metoyer for one year for after he was caught using an ineligible player during a state basketball playoff game. He did it on purpose being frustrated at the CIF transfer policies. The CIF could not tell administrators what to do. But if they did nothing or put in only a two-game suspension, there’s no doubt that the Southern Section leadership had the authority to take action.
According to Southern Section’s Blue Book rule 500.5, “Any school knowingly or unknowingly violating the rule may be suspended from membership in the CIF Southern Section.”
Hopefully the Southern Section is keeping its options open, but it’s time for West, the commissioner since 2023, to get his credibility back. If not, it’s up to the Southern Section Executive Committee to launch its own investigation of what the section is supposed to do when schools and districts don’t take their rules seriously.
Finding cheap holidays during the school holidays may feel like an impossible task for parents but according to one travel pro there are some easy tricks that could help
The Travel Mum shared a handy trick to save money(Image: Apple Photos Clean Up)
When it comes to cheap holidays, most parents have already resigned themselves to the fact that prices surge during school holiday dates – but according to one travel expert, there are some minor tweaks that could actually help families save money on their next getway.
Mum-of-two and avid traveller Jen Carr has built up a following of over 349,000 on Instagram where she shares her top tips for finding cheap family travel deals.
While the peak holiday season comes with inevitably higher prices, according to Jen just changing the dates of travel by a few days could mean you save hundreds of pounds, without having to take the kids out of school during term time.
“Booking at the end of summer,” she told the Mirror exclusively. “It’s so much cheaper to go the last week of August compared to the first week of August. I guess that’s just because demand’s probably a lot less. Nobody really wants to get back off holiday the day before the kids go back to school, but if you’re willing to do that, it is a lot cheaper.”
It’s not a hack that’s specific to summer holidays either, as Jen recommended considering dates for the upcoming October half term. She added: “If, for example, in the October half term you fly three days before half term starts, you’re going to save literally hundreds of pounds. So I mean, it’s just how much you want/appreciate that attendance!”
Of course it’s worth noting that parents who do consider taking their kids out of a school for a few extra days may need to check their school’s policy on absences of this nature, or they could risk being fined per child. Currently the fine for school absences around the UK are £80 if paid within 21 days, but this can go up to £160 if paid within 28 days. This is for unauthorised absences; if you can get permission from the school for the absence, then you won’t be fined.
As for the best destinations where families can get more bang for their buck? Jen suggested that while the major hotspots are popular for a reason, there are some alternatives that deliver the same levels of experience but without the hefty price tags.
She explained: “There are destinations that are a lot cheaper than others and it seems to kind of go on a bit of a cycle with what’s popular. But places like Menorca and Majorca and Ibiza are always going to be a lot more expensive than somewhere like Agadir in Morocco, but you’re still getting the beach, the pool, holiday vibes and the sunshine. Go where the destinations are cheaper, and that does seem to change year-on-year. I’m sure next year Agadir will be really expensive, but this year it’s been really good value, all-inclusive.”
Speaking about further alternatives, Jen urged parents not to discount the likes of a city break; in fact, she herself enjoyed a family trip to Paris earlier this year, and said that both the kids and grown-ups had a brilliant time. She added: “I think it’s about knowing where to look. It’s, a like-for-like holiday is going to be more expensive in the school holidays. I guess it’s just being a bit more flexible and thinking, ‘Okay, well, it’s the August summer holidays. Do we need to go to Menorca for a week all-inclusive or could we maybe go for a road trip around Austria?’ Because it’s going to be a lot cheaper to do something a bit more off-piste.”
Jen Carr, family travel expert and founder of The Travel Mum, shares the best affordable holiday deals for families throughout the week. Jen’s new book ‘Yes You Can Travel With Kids’ is available now.
When Inglewood High traveled to Texas last month to play Westlake High from Austin, two football players who were listed on the Southern Section transfer portal as not cleared played in the game, according to video obtained by The Times.
Last week, in a game against Long Beach Poly played at SoFi Stadium, Inglewood coach Mil’Von James was not on the sideline, according to a report from the Daily Breeze.
The Southern Section cannot make personnel changes when a school violates rules, but it can prevent teams from playing in the playoffs if schools don’t self-report violations and decline to take action.
The Southern Section and Inglewood Unified School District have declined comment. The two players are still eligible to play this season if cleared. One was cleared last week with a valid change of address. The other has not been cleared. Both are missing from Inglewood’s roster on MaxPreps.
James came to Inglewood, which is 4-1 this season, after being fired at Hawkins in 2016 following the discovery of ineligible players, resulting in Hawkins forfeiting all its games and going 0-13. Since then, the City Section established a rule that teams must exchange rosters before games to verify that players are eligible, known as the “Hawkins rule.”
James took over at Inglewood in 2019 and has built a successful program.
It’s not known if James’ absence will be for one game or multiple games. The only other Southern Section action would be forcing Inglewood to forfeit games the players played in, but the school lost to Westlake, making a forfeit moot.
Eleven pupils were wounded after a student opened fire near a secondary school in Manisa, western Turkiye, on Tuesday morning, with two reported to be in critical condition. The suspect was detained shortly after the attack while authorities continue to investigate the motive.
Police arrest suspect in shooting near high school as injured are rushed to local hospitals for treatment.
Published On 22 Sep 202622 Sep 2026
An armed man has opened fire near a high school in western Turkiye, wounding eight people, including students, authorities said.
The injured were rushed to hospitals after the shooting early on Tuesday near a vocational and technical high school in the Turgutlu district in the western Manisa province, the governor’s office said in a statement on X.
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Police arrested the suspect after he attempted to flee the scene.
“A report was received regarding gunfire in the vicinity of the Inci Uzmez Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in our Turgutlu district at 07:59,” the governor’s office said.
The motive for the attack was under investigation, it added.
“After the incident, the suspect believed to have fired the weapon was caught by security forces and taken into custody,” the statement read.
Several images of the suspect were posted online, showing him walking near the school holding a gun.
Security camera image of an armed man near a school in Turgutlu, west of the resort city of Izmir, Turkiye [Handout/DHA via AFP]
The attack comes months after two school shootings in Turkiye.
In April, 16 people, mostly students, were wounded when a former student opened fire at a high school in the Sanliurfa province. The attacker later killed himself.
The following day, a 14-year-old killed nine people, including students and teachers, and wounded 13 others in an attack at his school in the Kahramanmaras province. The assailant was killed by police.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. I’m Eric Sondheimer. Teacher/coaches are always teaching lessons, but what lessons do they learn from players?
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Coaches learning lessons
Tom Harp, the longtime girls’ volleyball coach at Granada Hills.
(Craig Weston / For The Times)
Coaches are trained to be good teachers, which means offering life lessons and sports lessons. But what do they learn from their players?
For months, a simple questions has been asked: What’s the best lesson a player taught you?
Very few coaches asked could immediately answer. They needed to think long and hard, which meant the question was good.
It was the battle in the trenches between Orange Lutheran and Sierra Canyon, which won 28-10.
(Craig Weston / For The Times)
Sierra Canyon and Orange Lutheran engaged in a penalty-filled nonleague game that should get both teams ready for league play. Thanks to running back Jaxsen Stokes, Sierra Canyon won 28-10. Here’s the report.
Bishop Amat made JSerra pull out every trick before the Lions prevailed 37-28 behind quarterback Hayes Cloutier. Here’s the report.
One of the best games of the week was Corona del Mar holding off La Serna 30-24. Here’s the report.
The Long brothers growing up, with the youngest, Grady, now the quarterback at La Serna.
(Long family)
The quarterbacks in the game are youngest brothers from families that combined to produce six quarterbacks. Here’s the report.
Receiver Paul Turner had five catches for 134 yards and two touchdowns to help Birmingham win its first game against a Southern Section opponent, beating Burbank 23-18. The Patriots play unbeaten Harvard-Westlake on Friday before switching to City Section action.
Marshall improved to 5-0 with a 28-27 win over Marquez, stopping a two-point conversion try in the final minute.
Marshall quarterback Nathaniel Cadet started work for his senior season on New Year’s Eve.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, Marshall quarterback Nathaniel Cadet was jump roping. He practices morning, afternoon and night trying to put himself in position to play college football. He has led his team to a 5-0 start.
JSerra is 17-0 and keeps beating one challenger after another. The Lions will face Trinity League rival Orange Lutheran at home Tuesday. The Lancers’ only loss was to Orange Lutheran.
El Camino Real, which looked competitive with top City Section teams during the summer, will make its debut this week.
The No. 1 and No. 2 teams in Southern California, Sierra Canyon and Mater Dei, played in the championship of the Durango tournaent in Las Vegas. Mater Dei handed the Trailblazers their first defeat by sweeping both sets.
Girls Volleyball: The 13th Annual Chatsworth Invitational Is In The Books! Oak Park Claims Gold, ECR Takes Silver, GHC Captures Bronze & Roosevelt Brings Home Copper. Full Tournament Results From A Packed Weekend Of Volleyball! @CIFLACS#RepTheCitypic.twitter.com/PVnJjdWy3R
This was supposed to be the year another team in boys water polo was supposed to rise up and end Newport Harbor’s domination.
Last week’s South Coast tournament showed Newport Harbor isn’t going away without a fight.
The Sailors won the tournament title with lots of drama, beating Cathedral Catholic 16-15 in the semifinals, then winning the championship in three overtimes over Miramonte 11-10.
The DeShaun Jackson Story
A documentary on former Long Beach Poly and NFL receiver DeShaun Jackson debuts Sept. 24 on Prime Video.
(Amazon MGM Studios.)
Former Long Beach Poly and NFL receiver DeShaun Jackson gets the documentary treatment beginning Thursday when Amazon Video runs, “Going deep: The DeShaun Jackson Story.”
The story is told from his Pop Warner days through the NFL.
Notes . . .
The PE teachers at El Camino Real welcomed back Josh Lienhard and Jason Grider. Eric Choi also will be back. His mother recently passed. RIP. pic.twitter.com/PB7PQKIbrp
Baseball coach Josh Lienhard was reinstated as a teacher and coach at El Camino Real and returned Wednesday. He was one of three coaches placed on administrative leave last month after school officials had questions why his CPR and first-aid courses he said he completed were not in the Red Cross database. The school spent thousands of dollars on an investigation that remains uncompleted. Two other coaches, tennis coach Jason Grider and girls soccer coach Eric Choi, also were allowed to return….
Junior Karl Robinson from Santa Margarita has committed to Notre Dame for lacrosse….
Catcher Logan Miller of Mater Dei has committed to San Diego State….
Shortstop Zion Avina of Orange Lutheran has committed to USC….
Junior pitcher Jax Janeski of JSerra has committed to USC….
Junior infielder/pitcher Griffin Doane of Santa Margarita has committed to UC Santa Barbara….
Junior Theo Swafford of Sierra Canyon has committed to Texas….
Standout guard Maxwell Scott of Corona del Mar has committed to Harvard….
Tess Oldenburg from Etiwanda has committed to Nevada for women’s basketball….
Former Crenshaw football coach Robert Garrett said he’s a volunteer at Lawndale, where he “coaches the coaches.”…
Offensive lineman Dylan Felli of Mission Viejo has committed to the University of San Diego….
Eliana Corona from La Habra has committed to Cal Baptist for softball….
Longtime basketball coach Joe Reed has been reinstated as the head coach at Huntington Park. He had been coach since 1991, then lost his position when placed on administrative leave for 14 months because of an investigation. After being cleared to return, he was not given his coaching position back….
Evan Guadalupe from Summit has committed to Loyola Marymount for baseball….
Cody MacArthur has been promoted to interim football coach at Royal. He took over after the head coach was dismissed following an incident when he angrily kicked a football that struck a Royal player and was dismissed….
The Woodbridge Classic in cross country featured lots of race winner from outside Southern California. Here’s the results. …
Servite’s baseball team has one player signing with USC next month and another with UCLA. Let the rivalry begin.
From the archives: Cody Decker
Once a baseball player at Santa Monica High and UCLA, Cody Decker has taken his personality and ability to talk about anything to sports talk radio as a morning co-host for 97.1 with Crespi basketball coach Derek Fisher.
He had 11 at-bats in major league baseball with the San Diego Padres.
He showed off his entertainment and singing skills by getting the top role in the school production of “The Music Man.” He had 18 home runs when he was playing catcher, then singing, so he knows how to multi-task.
From the Star-Telegram, a story on a top high school baseball pitcher being ruled ineligible in Texas for transferring for athletic reasons.
From the Daily Bulletin, a story on a 6-7 tight end who’s overcome the death of his father when he was 4 to become a top athlete at Webb School.
From Wyomingnews, a story on former Banning football standout Steve Perez.
Tweets you might have missed
I have never seen a photo where one 7-footer towers over another 7-footer. St. Francis’ twin towers 7-1 Yann Kamagate and 7-5 Cherif Millogo (he’s clearly grown). The high-low pass will be something to see. Please keep track of dunks. pic.twitter.com/DLJLXqchei
🧵Last week was a big week for Oaks Christian graduates. Max Emberson, Class of 2026, earned Folds of Honor medalist honors (-11) while leading Georgia Tech to the tournament title in his collegiate debut. Emberson outpaced junior Daniel Bennett (Texas) by two strokes. pic.twitter.com/IdM2xPN10L
Santa Margarita girls golf are champions of the prestigious Lady Tritons Invitational (6th time in a row) at San Clemente Municipal GC (Par 73), hosted by San Clemente High School. 1st: Santa Margarita / 357 2nd: Peninsula HS / 380 3rd: Huntington Beach HS / 390 SMCHS Junior,… pic.twitter.com/pY4S7QRraA
— SANTA MARGARITA Catholic High School (@SMCHSEagles) September 15, 2026
Tatianna Griffin, one of the top girls basketball players in the nation, is listed in the Southern Section transfer portal “under review.” She left Ontario Christian for Mater Dei. There’s questions whether Mater Dei’s head coach coached her in club basketball. That needs to be…
L.A. Jordan has dropped flag football. Not enough players. The boys 11-man team also has forfeited this week’s game against Santee. Not enough players.
Paul Sutton was the athletic director, basketball coach, track coach and cross-country coach at Providence in Burbank. He died in 1999 at the age of 41 of cancer. The school created a memorial in the gym foyer with his photo and a plaque. Now it’s been taken down. His widow,…
They’ve been best friends since kindergarten. La Serna raised in Whittier. What a game tonight for Landon Armenta and Grady Long in loss to Corona del Mar. pic.twitter.com/aZ4nmN5gUG
Mil’Von James did not coach Inglewood on Friday against Long Beach Poly at SoFi Stadium. His absence comes as Inglewood looks into an ineligible player who allegedly played in a game in Texas.
I did not know this was happening in high school football but a coach confirmed: He’s now hearing from agents about players wanting to transfer to his school. AGENTS. Welcome to 2026.
#60 (2030) Noah Austin 6’0” (Fairfax High) Austin put on a show at Pangs this past weekend recording two 30 point games. His ability to get down hill and put pressure on the defense was extremely impressive. He’s definitely a freshman to keep an eye on. Crafty with the ball. pic.twitter.com/dR0ZRUfOQa
Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latsondheimer.
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Within hours of a Feb. 28 missile attack that hit an Iranian school, some Pentagon personnel knew the U.S. was responsible, according to officials involved in an internal investigation of the incident. That probe found what the officials now describe as a cascade of preventable failures.
Two Tomahawk missiles struck the building and its grounds that Saturday, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children. The strikes devastated the two-story school, which was built on land that was part of a military compound in the southern Iranian town of Minab. In terms of child casualties, it’s the deadliest American military targeting error of the 21st century.
United Nations investigators said Thursday that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the strike on Minab and another U.S. attack that took place on the same day amounted to war crimes. The U.S. has yet to publicly accept responsibility for the school strike, and President Trump has previously suggested it was Tehran’s fault. As recently as July 14, he told Fox News, “I don’t think anybody’s going to ever be able to say what happened there.”
But in interviews, officials with direct involvement in the Pentagon’s internal investigation have offered some of the first accounts of the probe. The strike didn’t result from a single catastrophic decision but an accumulation of smaller ones, they said, and their review has identified a series of missed opportunities to prevent the disaster. The officials, like more than two dozen others who provided descriptions of targeting procedures or background information for this story, asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters.
In the final days of February, the Trump administration demanded an overwhelming aerial assault. More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit within the first 24 hours alone. That order compressed the time frame for finalizing targets, the officials said, instilling an urgency that — combined with gaps in underlying information about the site, cuts in civilian protection personnel and an overreliance on artificial intelligence technology — set the stage for the deadly error.
Full details from the investigation remain tightly held. Officials who described it said they faced constraints on the amount of information they could share. Previous news reports have indicated that by early March, a preliminary internal review determined the U.S. was likely responsible for the Minab strike.
A report on the full Pentagon investigation, which commenced in March, hasn’t been released — though the officials said it has been all but complete for several months.
Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads U.S. Central Command and ordered the investigation, told members of Congress in May that he’s committed to providing transparency. Yet it’s not clear how much detail will be included, nor how much of the report ultimately will be released to the general public.
A child runs past a banner strung across the rubble of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School showing portraits of the children and teachers killed there by a U.S. missile strike.
(Vahid Salemi / Associated Press)
A Pentagon spokesperson said the incident remains under investigation and declined to comment further.
In response to questions, including about when the White House was informed that the strike was a mistake, a senior administration official also cited the ongoing probe and added: “The United States does not target civilians.”
Last week, a report from the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said that the U.S. had “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military target and that the failure “went beyond negligence.” The U.S. Department of Defense has declined to comment on the report.
U.S. officials have said that outdated intelligence was a problem. Although the site in Minab had been identified years earlier as a military compound, there was clear evidence that it had been modified and undergone a change of purpose, the officials said. Physical changes reflecting new construction — visible on satellite imagery — dated back almost a decade, they said, and the site operated openly as a school.
Analysis of commercially available satellite images shows construction of walls and entrances that separate the school site from the military base, work that appears to have been completed by 2017. An image from 2018 shows brightly painted walls alongside a soccer pitch, assembly rows and play markings on the ground.
Some U.S. intelligence analysts took notice, the officials said. Bloomberg reported in June that one analyst detected changes to the site as early as 2019, and logged remarks about the modifications in a system that wasn’t connected to the primary military intelligence database, which informs targeting.
Inside Centcom, which conducted the U.S. attack, some personnel relied too much on the artificial intelligence embedded in Maven Smart System, the officials said. Maven, which is made by Palantir Technologies Inc., allows users to view and coordinate complex military operations — from targeting to command and control — using AI-enabled software that fuses more than 150 different data inputs into a coherent set of information to inform commanders’ decisions.
In the past year, the Defense Department has rapidly made Maven a cornerstone of the U.S. military apparatus. Several former senior U.S. military officials now work for Palantir, including some with high-level security clearances in Centcom’s Tampa headquarters. Their role is to keep the software functioning inside secure military environments.
Some Centcom personnel expected Maven to flag stale information or inconsistencies in the underlying intelligence assembled for potential targets, the officials said. It’s not clear why they had such expectations.
A Palantir spokesperson said that the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there’s no evidence that its software was at fault in the Minab strike.
Two people familiar with the firm’s Pentagon contracts said the government retains primary responsibility for the quality of the information that’s fed into Maven. But they said it’s not uncommon for personnel who use tools such as Maven to develop operational understandings that differ from contractual terms.
After the Minab strike, Palantir built new capabilities into Maven that “re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed,” according to a person familiar with the matter. That work has already caught some anomalies, the person said.
The ‘kill chain’
As Feb. 28 approached, Pentagon officials were tasked with identifying strikes they thought would paralyze Iran’s military before Tehran had a chance to respond, the officials said.
High on Centcom’s list: the naval division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful force across the country’s military, economy and politics. It’s tasked with defending — and at times, disrupting — the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The Minab school site — with its uncorrected classification as a Revolutionary Guard facility — was fed into Maven along with other potential targets. It ultimately emerged as one of the recommended Day 1 targets, people involved in the investigation said.
As all targets do, the Minab site moved through a multi-stage assessment process known by the military as the “kill chain.” Steps in that process have traditionally involved intelligence analysts, imagery specialists, targeteers, lawyers, operational commanders and launch crews, according to U.S. military doctrine and interviews with current and former Defense officials. Today, Maven sits at the heart of those operations — between the initial intelligence inputs and the latter review stages, officials said.
In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets — work that includes assessing how they align with an operation’s objectives — had taken hours for staffers to complete. Ahead of the U.S. attack on Iran, much of that work was condensed into several minutes via Maven, people involved in the Pentagon’s internal review said.
Officials involved in the investigation pointed to gaps that they said were left after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation, or CHM, units — cutting headcount across a number of teams by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 staff members, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Centcom’s team was reduced from 10 to 1.
No CHM team member reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the internal investigation. That was a consequence of the cuts in staffing but also a decision not to involve the group in planning and operations, the officials said. While not mandatory, that sort of review had become routine in recent years, they added. It’s unclear whether such checks, which include mapping the civilian environment, assessing noncombatant presence and developing lower-risk strike options, would have been enough to raise questions about the Minab site.
The Biden administration had built up civilian-harm-prevention capabilities within the Pentagon after an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians — based on the misidentification of an aid worker as a threat. Hegseth has characterized his subsequent cuts to those efforts as a shift away from “Biden-era, non-lethal programs.”
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth said at a news conference March 2, days after the Minab attack. “All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
Under Hegseth’s leadership, the U.S. military has prioritized speed of delivery. People involved in the Pentagon probe said a rush to finalize targets shortly ahead of Feb. 28 contributed to the tragedy.
“Haste can lead to errors,” said Laurie Blank, who was appointed a special counsel at the Pentagon’s general counsel during the Biden administration from 2022 to 2024. She drew a distinction between planned targets and those that arise in the heat of battle. “A rush to hit pre-planned targets just isn’t the same thing,” she said, “especially when the operations are launched by choice and not in response to an attack where you are responding without time to plan.”
Why Minab?
A little more than 800 miles south of Tehran, the city of Minab sits on the critical Strait of Hormuz, at the crossroads of centuries-old trade routes and the nation’s modern military might. As the U.S. attack on Iran began, it was deemed a high-value target, according to people involved in the investigation.
As the strait’s significance grew in the 1980s, so did the number of military assets devoted to protecting it and projecting power into the Persian Gulf. The Revolutionary Guard’s missile units, naval facilities and logistics compounds operate alongside neighborhoods where fishermen, teachers and civil servants have lived for generations in the city of 76,000.
Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School was built almost a decade ago on land originally occupied by a Revolutionary Guard naval unit. The Pentagon had cataloged the site as a military base several years earlier — a determination that wasn’t updated before the February attack. The New York Times reported in June that targeting officials used satellite imagery that hadn’t been updated in seven years and that did not show a school at the site. Investigators have focused on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s failure to reclassify the location, officials involved in the inquiry said.
On Feb. 28, Minab awoke to clear skies. Shopkeepers unlocked their storefronts. Fishing crews unloaded ice chests along the docks. Children in green-plaid uniforms walked through the gates of the 260-student school, before heading into classrooms.
Firsthand descriptions of the events that took place in and around the school that day have been gathered by a group of human rights advocates, lawyers and digital forensics experts who’ve spent months reconstructing the attack. Members of the informal consortium — including some based in the U.S. and Europe — asked not to be named given the sensitivity of their outreach efforts with victims’ families. Their work and an assessment by the U.K.-based watchdog group Airwars — viewed as a highly reliable source by some Pentagon officials — provides the following account:
After the first reports of attacks on Iran emerged that Saturday morning, teachers called parents and asked them to collect their children, saying the school planned to close early. Shortly after 11 a.m., a first missile hit part of the school, triggering an explosion that reverberated across the neighborhood. Panicked shrieks filled the air. Teachers ushered children from the playground back inside to take cover in a prayer room.
Within minutes, a second missile struck, sending metal fragments across the school. Part of the roof collapsed. Only a few children inside the prayer room survived, buried beneath the rubble.
Rescue vehicles rushed to the scene while passersby helped the wounded. Some injured children were pulled from the rubble while dozens more, deceased, were slowly identified. One rescue crew member stumbled upon a child’s hand, detached and laying on the ground. He wept as colleagues continued to hunt through the debris alongside him.
Some parents were left to identify their dead children by fragments of clothing or belongings — a pencil case, bracelet or shoe — as many faces were no longer distinguishable. The father of Arash Gol-Azin didn’t learn the fate of his 7-year-old son until reaching the morgue. Only then did he spot him by identifying his sock.
Payam Akhavan, a Toronto-based lawyer who has practiced before the International Criminal Court and is an expert on civilian protection, said it’s important for investigators to determine what efforts U.S. officials made to try to ensure they were targeting a military installation.
“The Geneva Convention says you must take all feasible measures to determine that this is, in fact, a military objective,” said Akhavan, who spoke before Thursday’s U.N. report was published. “This does not mean that every mistake is a war crime, because mistakes will be made, even if you take all feasible measures.
“But if all feasible measures were not taken,” he added, “then that raises a question of criminal responsibility.”
At least 1,701 civilians were killed in the opening 39 days of the war, according to data compiled by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran. That’s an average of 43 people a day, and the group — viewed by some in the Pentagon as an authoritative source for Iranian casualty figures — said it’s a low estimate.
“We should be asking how so many civilians were killed amid an unprecedented tempo of strikes over just a matter of weeks,” said Skylar Thompson, the group’s deputy director.
More recently, Iranian officials and a United Nations body said the U.S. was responsible for a Sept. 1 strike on Kuhestak — some 20 miles south of Minab — that hit a residential area where a wedding party was underway and killed at least five people with dozens more injured. The U.S. is investigating the incident, Vice President JD Vance said earlier this month.
Target libraries
For decades, American military planners had maintained extensive target libraries in anticipation of potential conflict with Iran, encompassing everything from limited strikes to maritime war and major air campaigns. The list stretched into the thousands and included air bases, missile factories, nuclear facilities and ports, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans.
Some potential targets had remained on the books for years, accumulating layers of satellite imagery, intelligence reports and legal reviews.
But these catalogs can age quickly, according to people who’ve dealt with them. Buildings appear and disappear. Headquarters switch locations. Where a military barracks once stood, schools, hospitals and mosques may now exist. So the libraries’ contents require close and continual review well before any particular building or site winds up on a target list.
Maintaining the lists is critical but labor-intensive. Officials involved in the internal investigation of the Minab incident described gaps in vetting — or checking whether the underlying information is accurate, reliable and timely — that came well before the school site was selected.
Some of the most sensitive sites, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities — attacked by Israel in its 12-day war with Tehran in June 2025 — faced relentless attention from U.S. intelligence analysts ahead of the 2026 war, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter. Less prominent locations, such as Minab, went months without receiving another close look, the officials added.
War planners start to think they’ll have time to revisit the less urgent sites, current and former Pentagon officials said.
That assumption evaporated during the final days of February as diplomatic talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Geneva faltered and then collapsed on Feb. 26.
Work that had unfolded in previous conflicts over weeks or months — matching sites from the library, such as buildings, airfields or bases — was completed in a matter of days, according to officials involved in the inquiry. More than a thousand potential targets had to be reassessed and approved.
By the time the first Tomahawk missile bound for the Minab site left its launcher on a ship operating in the Arabian Sea, roughly three dozen people were involved along the kill chain, the officials said.
Most sat in secure facilities more than 7,000 miles away in Tampa, Fla., studying maps, imagery and databases in preparation for a war that, until 48 hours before the Minab attack, many officials had believed for decades wouldn’t occur.
Typically, part of their work entails refining a list based on satellite imagery and on-the-ground intelligence that’s used to create a pattern-of-life analysis reflecting human movements on the site and changes over time. In Iran, a bitter U.S. adversary for almost half a century, such intelligence was limited, especially in the south of the country, people involved in the probe said.
Additional steps in the kill chain address other types of issues. Lawyers assess whether each proposed target is a lawful military objective. Specialists estimate potential collateral damage. Weapons experts debate not only which missiles to fire but when.
Every stage leaves a record. Analysts sign off on each piece of the chain. They’re told to report any inconsistencies to superiors.
Then a series of questions is asked by the senior commander: Is the target lawful? Is there sufficient intelligence? And have reasonable precautions been taken to minimize civilian harm? In the early hours of Feb. 28, the answer to each question about the Minab site was yes, according to the officials involved in the probe.
The Pentagon’s internal investigators, who examined the satellite imagery, intelligence databases, targeting materials, operational chat logs and computer records that analysts used, concluded that there was high confidence throughout the kill chain that the Minab site was a Revolutionary Guard facility, according to people involved in the probe.
“Insufficient intel wasn’t really viewed as a concern before the war,” said one Pentagon official involved in the internal probe. “We were confident in our intel. Minab proved you should never be too confident.”
Political pawns
Government researchers and auditors have noted deficiencies in the primary intelligence database that’s used to develop strike targets, and the Pentagon is working to replace it with one that will introduce more automation. And Minab isn’t the first time that flawed intelligence has directed U.S. precision weapons toward the wrong target.
The accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the Serbian capital Belgrade in 1999 killed three people and injured 27 others. A mistaken 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan killed 42 people. More recently, soon after the Pentagon’s civilian-harm-mitigation teams were disbanded, a strike on the Ras Ina port in Yemen in April 2025 resulted in at least 80 civilian deaths.
In the months since the attack, the children of Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary have become symbols. Their faces were plastered on the backs of the seats of Iranian planes ferrying diplomats to Islamabad for talks with the U.S. in April. They adorn memorials on the streets of Minab. Some families have complained that their injured children haven’t received the treatment they need. Critics accuse Iranian officials of leveraging the school attack to their political advantage.
In the U.S., the disaster has become a different sort of political touchstone. Democratic lawmakers, who are seeking to take control of the Congress in the November election, are asking how the attack could have happened.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the Pentagon of deliberately withholding the results of the investigation, and his Republican counterpart, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, called for congressional briefings on what went wrong.
That call is echoed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who also sits on the committee, which helps set spending caps for the Pentagon’s roughly $1-trillion annual budget.
“The administration should have been forthcoming within hours or days, and here we are months later and nothing has been provided,” Blumenthal said.
For months, current and former high school coaches have been asked to respond to my simple question:
“What’s the best lesson a player taught you?”
It’s so hard to come up with an answer that many can’t do it immediately. They’re forced to think, which means the question is very good.
Stories are always written about lessons learned by students in the classroom and on the field, but what do coaches, most of them teachers, learn from their students?
Here are some answers.
Weeks before he died last March, Venice football coach Angelo Gasca told me the story of a player who wanted to quit and what he learned. That player later became one of his assistant coaches.
“I’m not accepting your resignation today,” Gasca told him. “You need to go home and think about it.”
Venice coach Angelo Gasca showing off the City Division I title trophy in 2021.
(Cliff Kensinger)
“He said he went home and thought about it and stayed on the team and was our starting center. He taught me the best thing we can teach is come to school and you never know what connections you’ll make at the school you grew up at. He taught me there’s more to coaching than winning games and scoring touchdowns. In our lives as teachers and coaches, we do learn from players. When we stop learning from our players, it’s time to stop coaching.”
Former Edison football coach Dave White remembers suspending his team’s best player before a trip to Hawaii for a team rule violation. He had to stay home even though his parents had paid money for the trip.
Dave White speaks to a crowd, including the football team, during the official naming of the Belcher White Strength Training Facility at Edison High School in 2022.
(Scott Smeltzer / Los Angeles Times)
“He taught me that I made the right decision and it was best for the team and in the long run best for him,” White said. “I was proud how he handled things. There are consequences for bad decisions. I really enjoyed and respected him more after that.”
Granada Hills girls volleyball coach Tom Harp said he had a player with a disability. She lost sight in an eye during an accident.
“She taught me how to overcome a difficult situation with a positive attitude,” he said. “She was a shining example of how to overcome adversity. It showed me my little problems aren’t as bad as they seem if she can overcome that.”
Lorenzo Hernandez, the football coach and athletic director at Whittier and former head football coach at Garfield, said a comment from a player made him realize to change tactics.
Former Garfield coach Lorenzo Hernandez runs onto the field with his players and assistant coaches.
(Hernandez family)
“You grow up in a certain era and have to adapt,” he said. “These kids want to enjoy themselves. They taught me to keep it as fun as possible. We worked on discipline. A kid said, ‘That’s great coach, but I don’t think we’re having fun.’ It made me take a step back. We have to understand it’s a different era of athletes and they require different ways to handle things. That’s helped me build better relationships. I’ll meet you halfway.”
Former Crenshaw football coach Robert Garrett said he learned to talk to students about their personal lives to understand why they are behaving in certain ways. He discovered one of his players had nowhere to wash his clothes.
Longtime Crenshaw football coach Robert Garrett talks to De’Anthony Thomas, one of his best former players, in 2011.
(Robert S. Helfman)
“Some don’t have a stable household,” he said. “You don’t learn that until you talk to them. I knew he was intelligent and studious but until I found out his hygiene wasn’t good, I realized the environment he was up against. It wasn’t until he shared with me what he was going through I offered assistance to wash his clothes.
“He didn’t need tough love. He needed kid gloves. Every day I try to find at least one child I didn’t know and have a personal conversation, ‘What middle school he went to, where does he live, are his studies OK.’ I try to learn the child before I learn the body. Adults never talk to kids. We just assume a kid is a certain way until you have a conversation and know their background and what they are going through.”
Former Hart baseball coach Jim Ozella, retired and watching his grandson play sports, told the story of his former player, Jack Ralston, reaching the major leagues this year taught him about perseverance.
“Everyone wants instant gratification,” Ozella said. “Here’s a kid who didn’t make the major leagues until he was 29. For us, he was an outstanding pitcher. We made it to the CIF final. Then he walked into UCLA, didn’t pitch as a freshman or sophomore, pitched a little as junior, then boom as a senior. He got drafted. His lesson has been off the charts for me.
Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow with Hart coach Jim Ozella, who coached him in high school.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
“You can’t expect results immediately. You’re talented, put in all the work and effort. In this case, it didn’t work. He kept plugging along. His lesson is everyone is different. His was keep plugging away and it will happen. I called him after he gave up a home run. He said, ‘Today I woke up and it’s a new day.’ What a role model. Don’t expect everything overnight. It takes time. Be patient.”
Then Ozella quoted a famous line, “The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit.”
Hall of Fame football coach Paul Knox had a situation early in his coaching days at Dorsey dealing with two brothers and figuring out what you’re supposed to do when they’re different.
“They were very close in age,” he said. “I learned by trying to coach them you can’t coach everyone the same. Whatever I tried, one was very coachable and his younger brother all the things I tried never worked with him. We went back and forth.
Dorsey coach Paul Knox celebrates a miracle win in the 2001 City championship game at the Coliseum.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I found out I had to find a whole other way to reach him. I learned you can say how you treat everyone the same, but you approach some kids differently. You never really know precisely who’s listening to you and sometimes the satisfaction of being a teacher or mentor is delayed and you don’t know until years later.”
It remains illegal in California for a school district to force teachers and other staff to alert parents about their child’s gender identity, but parents must be told when they ask about it, a judge ruled Tuesday in a widely watched case dealing with parental rights.
San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs, weighing both state law and a Supreme Court order, rejected an attempt by the Chino Valley Unified School District to reinstate its mandatory parent-notification policy.
“There is no requirement that the school district, on its own, after learning of transgender issues, contact parents and let the parents know of them,” Sachs said in court. At the same time, “in the event a parent makes an affirmative inquiry of a minor child regarding their status, whether transgender or not, that will trigger an obligation by the school district to respond.”
Under the Chino Valley policy, approved in July 2023, a school would have to notify parents of any request by a student “to use pronouns that do not align with the student’s biological sex or gender listed on the student’s birth certificate or other official records.” The same notification rules applied to the use of bathrooms or participation in sports.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately challenged that policy in court and it was put on hold. In October 2024, Sachs had ruled that most of the policy was discriminatory — and therefore illegal — because it singled out a group of students for treatment that was different than the treatment of other students.
As an example, he cited the possibility that a student would come out confidentially to a school counselor — and then that counselor would immediately be required to alert the parents, even against the student’s wishes.
A policy that could result in mandated actions by a school employee continues to conflict with the intent of a 2025 California law that barred a school system from forcing teachers to tell parents about a student’s gender, Sachs concluded.
“That’s inappropriate and it’s still inappropriate,” Sachs said Tuesday.
New rules, new rulings
What has changed in the legal landscape, he added, is what happens when a parent requests information about their child’s gender status or sexual orientation or any number of other issues affecting that child.
Trial court rulings — affirmed by a Supreme Court majority in March — said that parents have the right to demand information about their child’s gender identity at school. School staff cannot lie to parents — including matters that a student wishes to conceal from their parents.
Attorney Emily Rae, representing Chino Valley, said Sachs was correct to acknowledge that parents had the right to information about their child, but that his ruling did not go nearly far enough — and that parent notification should be mandatory statewide.
Chino Valley also has a separate pending court challenge to the 2025 California law, contending it is at odds with the direction of the Supreme Court, which should take precedence.
Dept. Attorney General Delbert Tran, representing the state, declined to be interviewed Tuesday, but in his exchanges with Sachs, it was clear that he saw the ruling as about as much of a win as would be possible, given the Supreme Court’s recent directives.
He also said that supporters of parent-notification policies misstate or misunderstand the parent-teacher relationship that exists in practice and under state law. Parents, he said, have the legal right to observe classes and meet with teachers, and the expectation is that teachers will communicate freely and often with parents about a child’s needs and progress.
Chino Valley champions its view of parent rights
Chino Valley, a school district of 26,000 students in San Bernardino County, has adopted and defended a series of policies favored by parent activists, religious conservatives and President Trump under the leadership of school board President Sonja Shaw, a Republican currently running for the office of state superintendent of public instruction.
Under her leadership, the school system has taken a stand for a flag-ban policy in schools and classrooms, widely viewed as targeting gay pride flags; for removing school library books with passages deemed to be sexually obscene, and for working to ban trans athletes from girls sports and girls locker rooms.
Shaw attended Tuesday’s hearing and criticized Sachs’ reasoning.
“When he talks about a parent has a right to know now only if they ask, how do you know you’re being lied to or secrets being kept?,” Shaw said after the hearing. “That absolutely makes no sense.”
Shaw said the judge should have done “what’s right: Upheld parents’ constitutional right to the upbringing of their own child.”
In anticipation of Sachs’ ruling against the original policy, the Chino Valley school board revised the policy, expanding it to all students. Under the current policy, if any student “requests a change to their official or unofficial records, parents/guardians shall be notified to ensure that parents/guardians are informed and involved in all aspects of their child’s education.”
In other words, if a straight male student named William suddenly decided he wanted to be referred to as Robert on the class roll sheet — an official record — his parents would be notified.
In 2024, Sachs accepted this version of notification because students were not singled out for different treatment on the basis of their gender.
That form of the policy remains in effect.
Since that time, Shaw said, the district has been “transparent” with parents regarding important issues in the lives of their children. And Tuesday’s ruling would not change that.
Moving forward, she added, the district could assertively ask parents if they want to be informed about their child’s gender issues and that permission — if given — would continue to apply as the student proceeds through grade school.
LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have moved their two children to a new school over security concerns, a spokesperson said Tuesday, just weeks after the family returned to the U.K. to make a fresh start.
“The decision for the children to move school was taken following a discussion with the family’s security team about the practicalities of their current arrangements,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, had only just started the new school year in England after the family relocated from California in late August.
British media reported that the distance of the school run and the heavy traffic on the route were among the concerns raised by the couple and their security team. The family is living at a private, non-royal residence outside of London.
“This decision should in no way be interpreted as a reflection on the school or the exceptional care the children have received there,” the statement added.
The news followed reports that Harry and Meghan were awaiting a new risk assessment from the government committee that reviews protection of VIPs, including a decision on whether the family should be entitled to publicly funded security now that they live in the U.K.
Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago, saying they wanted to earn their own living. They later signed lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.
Although relations with the rest of the royal family have soured since then, Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III.
Harry has fought a long-running battle with Britain’s government for the restoration of publicly funded police protection, which was canceled when the couple gave up their royal roles.
He had previously said he couldn’t “see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K.” without a security guarantee.
Earlier this month, the king reiterated that Harry and Meghan remain non-working members of the royal family and would continue to refrain from using formal royal titles, such as his royal highness and her royal highness, as they have done since 2020. The couple said they were surprised by the way the monarch issued that statement because they were given little time to review it.
