screening

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing to improve security around the White House by putting up a fence around nearby Lafayette Park to help limit public access when law enforcement authorities determine doing so is necessary.

The proposal is scheduled for consideration on Thursday by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, according to a meeting agenda and the plans posted on the agency’s website. The agency has oversight over the design of construction on federal land in Washington.

The commissioners are also set to take another look at the design for an underground facility to screen the thousands of tourists and others who visit or work at the White House. All seven commissioners were appointed by the Republican president.

The proposals are being considered at a time when security for the president has become a top concern. President Trump has been the target of multiple assassination attempts, including two during the 2024 campaign and a third this past April as he attended a dinner in Washington with White House journalists.

Those concerns were heightened the following month after U.S. Secret Service officers fatally shot a man who opened fire near a White House security checkpoint.

The administration says the projects will be an improvement over temporary structures that have long been used to aid perimeter security, like barriers fashioned out of bicycle racks, and for screening the many guests who access the White House and its grounds.

A look at both projects:

Lafayette Park last had a permanent fence in the late 1800s

Trump was accompanied by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on a recent tour of the park to see updates being made at his direction. The president has worked with the Interior Department and one of its agencies, the National Park Service, to restart dormant park fountains.

“We’re really doing a job at Lafayette Park, which is really the entrance to the White House, and that’s going to be completed very shortly and it’ll be incredible,” Trump said in June.

The administration’s 79-page proposal for the 8-acre (3-hectare) park calls for fencing it all the way around with gates at the north and south entrances to control public access. Options call for either including or excluding four monuments located at each of the park’s four corners.

The proposal, which is backed by the Secret Service and the Executive Office of the President, in coordination with the Interior Department and National Park Service, notes that leaving out the monuments would expose them to vandalism.

The report says the goal of the plan is to “enhance long-term safety,” preserve the Lafayette Park’s identity as a significant National Park Service landscape and “maintain public access to this nationally symbolic space.” Throngs flock to the park to protest or celebrate major events.

Lafayette Park has not had a permanent fence around it since the 19th century. The Secret Service anticipates the fence would start going up sometime next year.

The administration wants similar fencing along Pennsylvania Avenue on the north side of the White House complex, from the Treasury Department building at 15th Street to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at 17th Street. The report said that will be treated as a separate proposal and submitted to the commission at a later date.

White House visitor screening facility could replace currently used tents

The commission is set to review a revised design for the facility, which would be built beneath Sherman Park, federal land southeast of the White House, to support screening for public tour participants, guests attending large events, White House staff and contractors.

The original design called for locating the facility’s entrance at the southern end of the park, but meetings and consultations led to a revised proposal that shifted the entrance to the western edge of the park to avoid conflicts with infrastructure and minimize the impact on the surrounding views, according to the report submitted for the commission’s review on Thursday.

The administration said the permanent facility will eliminate the need for a series of temporary screening tents currently used for events, improve security on the White House complex and enhance the experience for visitors.

The Secret Service, Interior Department, National Park Service and Executive Office of the President want to start construction in August on the 33,000-square-foot (3,066-square-meter) underground facility. They have set a July 2028 date for it to be operating.

White House visitors would face an initial ID check before they enter the facility through a pavilion located above ground, then head down to a lower level and a second checkpoint. After they are cleared, visitors will ride escalators that will take them up to the White House grounds.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on Gaza just before the kickoff of the Egypt-Argentina World Cup match killed a top Palestinian aid official who helped organize public screenings of the game across the enclave, according to local health officials.

The blast turned what was supposed to be a moment of celebration — the live screening of a potential Argentina upset by an Arab team — into a reminder of how the near-daily Israeli strikes across Gaza are continuing to kill civilians despite a truce reached in October.

The bomb hit a car in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City at dusk Tuesday, killing passersby Mohamed al-Wahidi, an official at the Egyptian Committee in Gaza, 10-year-old boy Hamza al-Deri and his 8-year-old brother, Fari. Ahmed Daghmush, 33, the driver of the car, was also killed. That’s according to Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya, the director of Shifa Hospital, which received the four bodies.

The Israeli military said al-Wahidi, who helped organize the soccer screenings, was not a target of the strike. It said the strike was aiming for a Hamas militant, and it was checking if Daghmush was the target.

Daghmush is a taxi driver not known to be affiliated with any militant group, Abu Selmiya said.

An Israeli strike hit the same street half an hour earlier, causing no casualties.

The committee for which al-Wahidi worked is the relief arm of the Egyptian government, which provides food, shelters and other assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. The committee organized the initiative to put up screens across Gaza to watch soccer matches, it said.

Many in the Palestinian diaspora live across the border in Egypt, which was a key mediator of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Team Egypt’s Gaza fanbase has only grown since the start of the tournament, as coach Hossam Hassan has spotlighted the plight of the Palestinian people in press briefings and on the pitch. He dedicated his team’s victory over Australia on Friday to both Egyptians and Palestinians and waved a Palestinian flag on the pitch.

In a Monday briefing before the match against Argentina, Hassan urged the world to do more for the Palestinian people.

“I urge you, I urge all media officers, all athletes worldwide, regardless of their identities, maybe we can convey a collective message that is as follows, let the Palestinian people be, let them exist, let them live a life of their own,” he said.

Israel’s military says its strikes target militants and it regrets harm to civilians. At least 1,084 people, including 258 children, have been killed since the truce took effect in October. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed in that time.

The Palestinian death toll from the Israel-Hamas war stands at 73,110, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government and is staffed by medical professionals who maintain detailed records viewed as generally reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. It does not distinguish between civilians and militants but says women and children make up around half of all fatalities.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

Shurafa, Magdy and Frankel write for the Associated Press. Magdy reported from Cairo and Frankel from Jerusalem.

The first film by Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg to be shot partly in the U.S. is, perhaps not surprisingly, a freaky satire of Hollywood. Its take on fame has only grown more accurate in the years since its premiere in 2014. Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson star in a demented tale of family, celebrity, ambition, ego and limousines. Funny and perverse, the film captures the uncanny cocktail of mean-spirited malignancy, self-obsessed delusion and just plain obliviousness that runs rampant around town. Presented by the screening series Mezzanine and the local literary magazine the Big One, the evening will be introduced by the film’s screenwriter, Bruce Wagner, a longtime chronicler of Los Angeles.

“Maps to the Stars” is playing June 14 at Brain Dead Studios. Tickets here.

May 23 (UPI) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday added two more airports that travelers to the United States can be routed through for Ebola screening when entering the country.

The enhanced travel screening announced earlier this week by the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security is meant to screen people for the virus on entry to the country if they have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda.

The outbreak, which started in the DRC and has spread to neighboring South Sudan and Uganda, is estimated to have 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, the World Health Organization on Friday said, adding that the “real scale of the outbreak is likely far larger.”

The CDC first issued restrictions on Thursday for Americans returning to the United States to be screened at Washington Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., before continuing on to their final destinations.

The two additional airports will be Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which started to accept travelers at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Friday, and George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, which will start to accept travelers on Tuesday, May 26, at 11:59 p.m. EDT, the CDC said on Saturday.

“These travelers will have their air travel re-routed to arrive at select airports,” CDC officials said in the update.

The enhanced health screening includes being escorted to a designated screening area; completing a questionnaire about their travel history and symptoms; having their temperatures checked using non-contact thermometers; and observation by CDC staff for signs of illness.

“Travelers with fever or other symptoms that could be Ebola will receive additional evaluation by a CDC public health officer,” the agency said.

“If the assessment shows that a traveler may be sick with Ebola, the traveler will be transferred to a hospital for further medical evaluation,” it said.

The WHO on Friday raised the national risk assessment during the outbreak in the DRC to “very high,” but officials said that global risk for infection with the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, for which there is no approved vaccine.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus during a meeting on Friday thanked the efforts of neighboring nations in Africa who have assisted during the outbreak, as well as the various regional and global health agencies that also have done so.

Although the United States last year pulled out of the WHO, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday that it has activated a dedicated Ebola Response Task Force that is led by “senior experts with direct experience managing prior Ebola outbreaks” in 2014 and 2018.

The department also has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team and provided $32 million in assistance to U.S. partners in the region, it said in a press release.

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