scrutiny

Roberto Delgado and his wife were praying the rosary on the night of Jan. 7 when they heard two loud booms that shook their Sylmar home. Then came a flash of light so bright that in the dead of night they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills behind their house.

Seconds later, Delgado said in an interview, the couple saw flames under two electric transmission towers owned by Southern California Edison — even more shocking because they had seen a fire ignite under one of those towers just six years before.

“We were traumatized,” he said. “It was almost the exact same thing.” In both fires, the family was forced to race to their car and flee with few belongings as the flames rushed through the brush toward their home, which survived both blazes.

Edison’s maintenance of its power lines is now under scrutiny in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena and killed 19 people. Video captured by eyewitnesses shows the Eaton fire igniting under Edison transmission towers.

A lawsuit making its way through Los Angeles County Superior Court is raising new questions about Edison’s role in the 2019 Saddle Ridge fire in Sylmar and whether the company was transparent about the cause of the blaze. The fire killed at least one person and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures. Firefighters were able to contain the more recent Sylmar fire, called Hurst, before any homes were destroyed.

The lawyers contend that both fires were caused by the same problem: an improperly grounded transmission line running through the foothills of Sylmar that Edison failed to fix, which the company denies.

In a court filing, the lawyers included a deposition they took of an L.A. Fire Department captain who said he believed that Edison was “deceptive” for not informing the department that its equipment failed just minutes before the 2019 blaze ignited, and for having an employee offer to buy key surveillance video from that night from a business next to one of its towers.

Edison has flatly disputed the lawyers’ assertions, calling their claims about the 2019 fire an “exotic ignition theory” based on “an unproven narrative.”

Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokeswoman for Edison, said that the utility had complied with the requests of investigators looking into the two fires and that “there is no connection” between the incidents.

Dunleavy said Edison did not tell the fire department about the failure of its equipment in 2019 because it happened at a tower miles away from where the fire ignited. And she said it is common for any investigator to seek to obtain video that could aid in an investigation. “SCE’s investigator did not offer to buy surveillance video,” she said.

“We follow the law. Period,” she said.

Dunleavy said the company has completed tests that show the transmission line is safe. She declined to share the results and pointed to testimony by Edison’s expert in the case — Don Russell, a Texas A&M professor of electrical engineering — who said the line was properly grounded.

As for the Jan. 7 Hurst fire, the utility told regulators in a February letter that it believes its equipment “may be associated with the ignition” of the blaze. The letter said the company found two conductors on the ground under a Sylmar tower. The repairs, the letter said, included replacing equipment at several towers and more than three miles of cable.

Delgado and Perez say that on the night of the fire they heard two loud booms and a flash of light so bright they could briefly see out their window the rocks and gullies of the San Gabriel foothills.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Undergrounding of towers questioned

In dispute is whether the failure of steel equipment at the top of an Edison transmission tower on the night of Oct. 10, 2019, caused a massive power surge across the system, resulting in multiple towers becoming electrified and intensely hot.

The tower, where the steel part known as a y-clevis broke, sits just off the 210 freeway in Sylmar on land shared with a nursery. The Edison tower behind Delgado’s home where investigators say the 2019 fire ignited is more than two miles away from the nursery.

The attorneys said in court filing that Edison made a “cost-saving choice” when building the transmission line in 1970 to not include “any purposeful grounding devices” that would enable power surges to dissipate down the tower and into the earth. Instead, the company used “only insufficient concrete footings,” the lawyers said in their filing.

Mark Felling, an electrical engineer and paid expert in the case, testified that he found that the size of the cement footings under the towers along the line varied by a factor of 10. The size of the footings, he said,affects whether the tower is properly grounded.

Felling said he believed that a sudden power surge could cause some towers to become “electrified and potentially very hazardous.”

Edison has disputed that theory and said in court that the electrical surge caused by the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery safely dispersed. The utility said it was scientifically impossible that the electrical surge caused a fire 2½ miles away.

“The undisputed material facts cannot support plaintiff’s theory that SCE caused the Saddleridge fire,” the company wrote in a motion this month, which asked the judge to dismiss the case. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Edison’s motion included a copy of the L.A. Fire Department’s investigation, which included new details of how the company responded to fire investigators days after the 2019 fire.

Delgado said his rosary and prayers were important to surviving the fires.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Failure to report power surge

L.A. Fire investigator Robert Price arrived at the dirt road leading up to the hillside transmission line where the fire had ignited the night before to see the yellow crime scene tape lying on the ground and an Edison truck driving out, Price said in his report.

Price also wrote that Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m. But the company did not tell the Fire Department about the fault, Price wrote.

Instead, L.A. Fire Capt. Timothy Halloran learned from a news report that Sylmar resident Jack Carpenter had recorded a large flash of light on his dashboard camera at 8:57 that night as he was traveling west on the 210 freeway.

Halloran traced the flash to a transmission tower built on land used by Ornelas Wood Recovery Nursery. Halloran interviewed employees at the nursery, who told him that an Edison employee had offered to buy the surveillance footage from the nursery’s camera, according to a deposition Halloran later provided to lawyers representing the victims.

A nursery employee also had taken photos of the broken steel equipment he found at the foot of the tower, according to Price’s report. The employee told Halloran that an Edison crew came the day after the fire and cleaned up the shattered pieces.

Halloran said in the deposition, according to a June court filing, that the company’s failure to report the fault and its offer to buy the nursery’s surveillance video made him believe that the company’s actions were “deceptive.”

Price said in his report that he also saw Edison crews cleaning the towers along the line three days after the fire’s start. An Edison employee told him that the utility cleans the towers once a year but had decided to clean them that day “because they were dirty from the smoke and fire,” Price wrote.

The cleaning did not prevent fire investigators from finding burn marks at the bottom of a second tower not far from where Delgado and his wife live, which Price said may be related to the “catastrophic failure” of equipment at the tower by the nursery.

In his final conclusion on the fire, Price wrote that it was “outside my expertise” to determine whether the failure of equipment at the tower above the nursery “could cause high voltage to travel back through the conductors … and cause a fire, possibly through the tower’s grounding system” more than two miles away.

“Therefore the cause will be undetermined,” Price wrote.

Dunleavy said that Edison had notified the California Public Utilities Commission about the fire before it began cleaning up the broken pieces of equipment found under the tower at the nursery. That cleanup and the company’s repairs, Dunleavy said, were needed to “ensure safety and reliability” of the line.

She added that it was common practice for utilities to wash down equipment after a fire before the system was reenergized.

According to an L.A. Fire investigator, Edison’s equipment recorded a fault that resulted in a surge of electricity about three minutes before Delgado reported the fire to 911 at 9 p.m.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

State utility investigators find violations

Also investigating the 2019 fire in the days after its start was Eric Ujiiye at the Public Utilities Commission.

The commission’s safety staff investigates fires that may have been caused by electric lines to determine whether the utility violated safety regulations.

Ujiiye said in his report that he found that Edison violated five regulations, including failing to safely maintain its equipment at the tower by the nursery.

Even though Price’s investigation for the L.A. Fire Department stated that the cause is undetermined, Ujiiye said in his report that he believed that the failure of equipment at the tower by the nursery “could have led to a fire ignition” at the pylon more than two miles away.

The commission’s staff asked Edison to perform tests to show that the towers on the line were properly grounded. According to a written response from Edison, the utility objected to the request as “vague and ambiguous.” But the company agreed to do the tests, which would be observed by the commission inspectors.

Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the commission, said that the agency’s staff was planning to meet with Edison at the transmission line to witness the tests. However, COVID-19 pandemic restrictions delayed that meeting and the requested undergrounding tests. She said that commission staff later learned that Edison had performed similar tests soon after the fire. Those test results “sufficed,” Prosper said, and the company “was not made to re-do the tests.”

Prosper said the commission did not fine or otherwise penalize Edison for the five violations because the LAFD report said the cause was undetermined. She said company had corrected the violations.

April Maurath Sommer, executive director of the Wild Tree Foundation, which has challenged Edison’s requests to have utility customers pay for fire damages, questioned the commission’s handling of the 2019 fire.

“You would think that the Public Utilities Commission would use fines to address really egregious behavior in the hope it would deter future behavior that causes catastrophic fires,” she said.

Maurath Sommer noted that Edison has been repeatedly found to have failed to cooperate with investigators looking into the cause of devastating fires. For example, commission investigators said in a report that the utility refused to provide photos and other details of what its employees found at the site where the Woolsey fire ignited in 2018. The Edison crew was the first to arrive at the scene of the fire that destroyed hundreds of homes in Malibu. Edison argued that the evidence was protected by attorney-client privilege.

Edison’s Dunleavy said the allegation by commission investigators was later resolved. “We take our obligation to cooperate with the CPUC seriously,” she said.

Prosper of the commission said, “Public safety is, and will remain, our top priority,”

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1. Fire fighters kept an eye on the wild fire burning behind Olive View Medical Center. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 2. A firefighting plane drops red Phos-Chek, a fire retardant, to protect Olive View Medical Center from wind driven Saddle Ridge wild fire in October 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 3. Interstate 5 and California State Rute 14 were closed to traffic through Newhall Pass due to the Saddle Ridge fire. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times) 4. Firefighters cleared brush and mopped up a hillside along California State Highway 14 due to fire in 2019. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

Another fire in Sylmar

At about 10:30 on the night of Jan. 7, Katherine Twohy heard a loud crack and saw a bright flash. Edison’s transmission towers in Sylmar skirt around the edge of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, where Twohy, a retired psychologist, lives.

“I was just coming in my back door and there was just this incredible flashing of white lights,” Twohy said. “Incredibly blue-white lights.”

She walked to her living room window where she can see two Edison towers, which are separated by more than a hundred yards. Twohy said she could see flames at the base of each one.

“The fires had made little circles around the base,” she said.

Twohy said she saw flames under the same towers the night the Saddle Ridge fire ignited in 2019.

“I thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s just like last time,’” Twohy said.

In court, lawyers representing victims of the 2019 fire have seized on Edison’s admission that its equipment may have sparked the Jan. 7 fire.

“The evidence will show that five separate fires ignited at five separate SCE transmission tower bases in the same exact manner” as the 2019 fire, they wrote in a June court filing.

Delgado’s home sits next to the dirt road leading up to the towers. The Jan. 7 fire melted his backyard fence but did little more damage. In the days after the fire, he found that some of the same Edison employees he spoke to in 2019 as a witness reappeared.

“I saw the exact same people from Edison show up,” he said. “I told them your towers almost killed my family again.”

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

The Southern Section has declared five football transfers to Bishop Montgomery ineligible for violating CIF rule 202, which is a bylaw about providing false information and comes with a penalty of up to two years of ineligibility.

Bishop Montgomery has been under scrutiny for months because of numerous transfer students, coaching changes and a decision to try to upgrade the program by scheduling powerhouses Mater Dei and Honolulu (Hawaii) Saint Louis.

The Southern Section could offer no response until paperwork was submitted by the school. Now those five players, plus potentially others, are facing the possibility of missing the 2025 and 2026 seasons.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles replaced the president and principal of Bishop Montgomery last school year. New president Patrick Lee is a former St. John Bosco administrator.

BBC Sport pundit Julien Laurens believes Lucas Chevalier recovered well from his early mistake in his PSG debut and has dealt with the pressure of replacing Gianluigi Donnarumma, as the French goalkeeper saved a penalty to help PSG beat Tottenham Hotspur win the UEFA Super Cup in Udine.

MATCH REPORT: UEFA Super Cup – Tottenham v Paris Saint-Germain

Available to UK users only.

A march has begun from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas northward to the central part of the country, in protest of policies that make legal immigration status difficult to achieve.

Wednesday’s march set out from the border city of Tapachula, near Guatemala, and nearly 300 migrants, asylum seekers and supporters took part.

But the demonstration was overshadowed by the arrest one day earlier of one of its leaders, prominent immigration activist Luis Garcia Villagran.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the arrest in her morning news conference on Wednesday. She alleged that Garcia Villagran had been detained for taking part in human trafficking.

“That is the crime,” she said, adding that Garcia Villagran was “not an activist”.

She added that an arrest warrant had been pending for the activist for years. But it was unclear why his arrest was carried out now.

The nonprofit Pueblo Sin Fronteras, however, disputed Sheinbaum’s characterisation of Garcia Villagran.

“The detention of Luis Villagran, director and human rights defender, is an unacceptable assault,” the nonprofit’s head, Irineo Mujica, wrote in a post to social media.

“Luis Villagrán’s only ‘crime’ is to defend those who have no money or voice, and to tell the truth, which bothers the powerful. Stop criminalising human rights defenders!”

Mujica – who was detained himself in 2019 on similar charges, only to be released – argued that Garcia Villagran’s arrest was a political distraction.

“This is a smokescreen: dirty and corrupt politics to cover up the true networks of corruption,” he said.

Mujica and Garcia Villagran have both been prominent voices in a movement to make legal immigration pathways more accessible.

They have also been among the organisers associated with the trend of the migrant “caravans” that travel from southern Mexico to the United States border in recent years.

Some of those past caravans have involved thousands of people, many of whom banded together for protection against criminal networks, corrupt officials and other threats they may face as they migrate.

Migration northwards, however, has slowed, particularly since US President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January.

Trump quickly attempted to bar asylum claims at the border, a move that has spurred a legal backlash.

Last month, a court blocked his asylum ban on the basis that it created an “alternative immigration system” without deference to Congress’s laws.

But Trump’s policies have nevertheless had a dampening effect on immigration at the border. In June, US Customs and Border Protection recorded only 9,306 “encounters” with migrants and asylum seekers at the country’s southern border – a nearly 93 percent drop compared with the same period last year.

Wednesday’s march had a different objective than those past caravans, though, particularly as migrants and asylum seekers turn away from the US and seek other destinations.

Organisers of the march sought to draw attention to the slow processing time for asylum applications in Mexico and other hurdles to achieving legal immigration status.

It also served as a demonstration against Mexican policies that have sought to keep undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in the south of the country, away from the US border.

The Trump administration has pressured Mexico to crack down on immigration into the US, including through the threat of tariffs.

Garcia Villagran’s arrest in the hours leading up to the march, however, left some migrants and asylum seekers fearful of taking part in the march.

The news agency AFP obtained one message that was circulating among participants that read, “Hide, don’t let yourselves get caught.”

A Catholic priest who took part in Wednesday’s march, Heyman Vazquez, told The Associated Press news agency that Garcia Villagran’s arrest was “unjust”.

He added that the arrest revealed a sense of insecurity in the government over the question of migration. The solution, he explained, would be to make it easier for migrants and asylum seekers to obtain legal status, thereby removing the need for such protests.

An ITV documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, features medical experts questioning the evidence that convicted nurse Lucy Letby of killing seven babies and attempting to kill seven others, as her legal team pursues a potential appeal

Several medical experts criticise the “deeply disturbing” and “flawed” evidence used to convict killer nurse Lucy Letby in a new documentary on TV tonight.

Letby was found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill seven others and was handed 15 whole life sentences, meaning she will never be released from prison.

But in ITV’s Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? her barrister Mark McDonald says: “There’s no direct evidence, no one saw her do anything wrong.” It comes after it was reported that ‘scared’ Letby can’t lose weight as she hoards ‘junk food’ behind bars.

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He adds: “In the trial, they started from the starting point, ‘She has done harm. Now we have to show how she has harmed each child….we’re just going to put together a theory.’ And she was convicted on that theory.”

Two appeals have failed. But in February a panel of medical experts, led by Dr Shoo Lee, found Letby did not murder any babies. Her defence team has now submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Dr Neena Modi, ex-president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, says: “It’s been deeply disturbing that one can have such a… tremendously important trial that seems to have been conducted with so many flaws.”

One alleged flaw is a shift chart, used to prove Letby was always present when the babies were harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2015 to 2016.

But statistician Professor Jane Hutton says some incidents, when Letby was not working, were left off, adding: “This is a summary that is so crude it can only be described as grossly misleading.”

It was also claimed Letby must have caused one baby’s death by removing a breathing tube. But several experts say the tubes can be dislodged for a “variety of reasons”.

Notes by Letby, including the phrase “I am evil I did this” were presented as confessional in court. But it is claimed she was encouraged by hospital staff to write down her feelings to help cope with stress.

It is also alleged the prosecution’s lead expert, Dr Dewi Evans, has altered his view about how three babies died since the case.

But he denies this, saying his evidence has been agreed by a jury and the Court of Appeal. He also argues the case by Dr Shoo Lee’s panel has not been held to scrutiny in court and contains significant factual errors.

The CPS said: “Lucy Letby was convicted of 15 separate counts following two jury trials.

“In May 2024, the Court of Appeal dismissed Letby’s leave to appeal on all grounds, rejecting her argument that expert prosecution evidence was flawed.”

It added that it is considering police files on further baby deaths and collapses at the Countess of Chester and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? is on ITV1, at 10.20pm, tonight.

READ MORE: ‘I tried Emma Stone’s hooded eye make-up trick that has fans saying she’s had a facelift’

July 15 (UPI) — As South Korea’s special prosecutor’s office expands its investigation into the Unification Church’s alleged political lobbying and financial misconduct, rising attention is turning to Won-joo Jung, deputy director of the Cheonmu Institute — the church’s top administrative body.

According to a report by The Hankyoreh, Jung is widely recognized as the de facto second-in-command, operating directly under church head Hak-ja Han.

In a notarized letter to church authorities, Young-ho Yoon, the former director-general of the church’s World Headquarters and now under investigation, named Jung in connection with the delivery of luxury gifts — including Chanel handbags and a Graff diamond necklace — to former First Lady Keon-hee Kim, wife of the recently impeached former President of South Korea Suk-yeol Yoon.

The gifts allegedly were funneled through Seong-bae Jeon, a spiritual figure known publicly as “Geonjin Beopsa.”

Yoon claimed to submit internal records linking Jung to the operation and requested that she face equivalent disciplinary action. His statement challenges the official church narrative that the gift transfer was merely an isolated case of individual misconduct.

The Hankyoreh reported that Jung, as deputy director of the Cheonmu Institute, is considered internally to be “the effective No. 2 figure in the church hierarchy,” suggesting she wields considerable influence over the organization’s strategy and finances.

Although subject to a travel restriction, Jung was granted permission to leave South Korea to visit her critically ill husband in the United States. It appears she has not yet returned from the United States to South Korea.

Meanwhile, in South Korea, there is ongoing investigation and growing public demands for accountability. Her prolonged absence amid escalating legal exposure has led to speculation that she may be avoiding potential legal consequences.

While she has not yet been formally indicted, prosecutors are believed to be examining her role in key decision-making processes and internal coordination, including allegations of document destruction tied to ongoing investigations.

Public scrutiny of Jung has intensified due to her close connections to major media outlets affiliated with the Unification Church. Her younger brother, Hee-taek Jung, is currently the president of Segye Ilbo (Segye Times), a South Korean daily owned by the church’s media arm. Jung’s husband’s younger brother is Tom McDevitt, the current chairman of The Washington Times, the U.S. newspaper funded by the church.

These family ties have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest and the influence of internal media networks in shaping narratives surrounding the ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors have already executed search and seizure operations at the National Police Agency and Chuncheon Police Station on July 8, targeting communications and financial records tied to earlier church-related investigations.

While no formal indictments have been announced against Jung, Special Prosecutor Sang-jin Park confirmed — according to a DongA Ilbo report on July 8 — that his office is preparing to summon senior Unification Church figures, including Won-joo Jung and former World Headquarters director Young-ho Yoon, for questioning as part of its expanding investigation into alleged bribery, embezzlement, and obstruction of justice.

Though Hak-ja Han remains the public face of the Unification Church, insiders and former members describe Jung as a behind-the-scenes operator with sweeping authority over the church’s administration, finances, and crisis management. She has reportedly been involved in overseeing responses to allegations involving the misuse of church funds — some of which were allegedly spent on gambling trips in Las Vegas.

Her high-level authority, absence abroad, and looming summons suggest she may be a pivotal figure in unraveling the deeper structure of influence within the church’s leadership.

Abraham Márquez, a reporter with the nonprofit investigative news startup Southlander, was filming a tense standoff between Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and immigrant rights protesters in Paramount on Saturday night when he saw a deputy aim a “less-lethal” launcher in his direction.

Sensing a confrontation, Márquez said, he raised his press credential and “kept yelling press, press, press,” even as he turned and began running in the opposite direction. He barely made it a few feet before he felt a stinging pain as first one foam round, then another slammed into his buttocks and his back.

“They just unloaded,” he said of the deputies.

He was nearly struck again a short time later, when deputies riding by in an armored vehicle sprayed foam rounds into a gas station parking lot where Márquez and a KTLA-TV news crew had sought cover, he said. He was shaken, but said that he felt compelled to keep reporting.

“I got hit and whatnot but I’m glad I was there to document it,” he said.

The incident was one of dozens in which journalists have been shot with less-lethal police rounds, tear-gassed, shoved and detained while chronicling the ongoing civil unrest and military intervention in the nation’s second-largest city, according to interviews and video footage reviewed by The Times.

The police actions have drawn angry condemnation from public officials and 1st Amendment advocates. There have been multiple reported instances of reporters not only being struck by projectiles, but also having their bags searched, being threatened with arrest and getting blocked from areas where they had a right under state law to observe police activity.

Among those hit by police projectiles were several Times reporters in the course of covering protests in downtown L.A. over the past few days.

The LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department have faced criticism and lawsuits over their treatment of news media during past crises, but some covering the recent events say the situation has only gotten worse with the inflammatory anti-media messaging coming from the Trump White House.

“The price for free speech should not be this high,” said Arturo Carmona, president and publisher of Caló News, a news site that covers issues that matter to English-speaking Latinos. “Several of our reporters, several of whom are women of color, have been harassed and attacked by law enforcement.”

In one high-profile case, a CNN reporter was briefly detained by officers while doing a live on-air segment.

In another, Australian TV news reporter Lauren Tomasi was shot in the leg by a less-lethal round by an riot gear-clad officer moments after she wrapped up a live on-air segment. The incident became an international affair, with Australian Prime Minister Tony Albanese calling it “horrific.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said it “sends a terrible message,” and several city councilmembers referenced it while grilling LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell on Tuesday about his department’s response to the protests.

In a statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it was reviewing video footage from several incidents involving the news media to determine whether any of its deputies were involved.

The department said it is “committed to maintaining an open and transparent relationship with the media and ensuring that journalists can safely perform their duties, especially during protests, acts of civil disobedience, and public gatherings.”

“Our goal is to support press freedom while upholding public safety and operational integrity,” the statement said.

LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Rimkunas said that two of the roughly 15 complaints the department was investigating as of Tuesday involved possible mistreatment of journalists — a number that is expected to grow in the coming days and weeks.

Rimkunas said the department decided to launch an investigation of the Tomasi incident on its own, but has since been in contact with the Australian consulate.

A coalition of 27 press and civil liberties advocacy groups wrote to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday “to express alarm that federal officers may have violated the First Amendment rights of journalists covering recent protests and unrest related to immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.”

Multiple journalists who covered the protests told The Times that officers and deputies used physical force or the threat of arrest to remove them from areas where they have a right to be.

In doing so, the journalists said, police were ignoring protections established by state law for journalists covering protests, as well as their own departments’ policies adopted after mass protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and over the clearance of a homeless encampment in Echo Park in 2021.

On Saturday, journalist Ben Camacho was documenting the scene in Paramount, where images of people vandalizing and burning cars dominated the nightly newscasts. Wearing his press pass and with a camera hanging around his neck, he watched in shock as law enforcement opened fire on the crowd with less-lethal munitions, striking Nick Stern, a British news photographer, who crumbled to the ground in front of him.

After helping carry Stern to safety, Camacho said he too was struck by a round in the kneecap.

“I start to screaming pretty much at the top of my lungs,” he said. “It was like a sledgehammer.”

He noted that many people are working on freelance contracts that don’t offer medical insurance, and said officers sometimes brush aside reporters with credentials from smaller independent outlets, which have an important role in monitoring events on the ground.

Some police officials — who were not authorized to speak publicly — said officers try their best to accommodate reporters, but the situation on the street involves split-second decisions in a chaotic environment where they find themselves being attacked. They also contend that journalists from newer outlets or those who primarily post on social media act in adversarial or confrontational ways toward officers.

Los Angeles Press Club Press Rights Chair Adam Rose said he has been collecting examples of officers from local, state and federal agencies violating the rights of journalists — seemingly ignoring the lessons learned and promises made the wake of past protests.

Rose said many of the incidents were documented in videos that journalists themselves posted on social media. As of Wednesday morning, the tally was 43 and counting.

The mistreatment of journalists at the recent protests are part of a “history of ugly treatment by police,” Rose said, which included the 1970 killing of one of the city’s leading Latino media voices, Ruben Salazar, who had been covering a Chicano rights protest when he was struck by a tear-gas canister fired by a sheriff’s deputy.

Even in cases where police abuses are well-documented on video, discipline of the offending officers is rare, Rose said.

With plunging revenues leading to the downsizing of many legacy newsrooms, a new generation of citizen journalists has taken a vital role in covering communities across the country — their reporting is as protected as their mainstream counterparts, he said.

“The reality is police are not the ones who’re allowed to decide who is press,” he said.

Some larger news companies have taken to hiring protective details for their reporters in the field, largely in response to aggressive crowds.

On Saturday, L.A. Daily News reporter Ryanne Mena was struck in the head by a projectile fired by law enforcement during a demonstration in Paramount.

She wasn’t sure whether it was a tear gas canister or less-lethal munition, but said she later sought medical treatment and was diagnosed with a concussion. The day before she was hit in the thigh by another projectile while reporting downtown outside the jail, she said.

Covering a few prior protests had taught her to always be mindful of her surroundings and to “never have my back toward anyone with a weapon.”

“It’s still kind of unbelievable that that happened,” she said of her concussion. “It’s unacceptable that that happened that other journalists were targeted.”

Times staff writers Connor Sheets and David Zahniser contributed to this report.

JOE Biden is facing fresh scrutiny over his health while in office amid his “aggressive” prostate cancer diagnosis.

The former president, 82, claimed to have had cancer in a speech he gave three years ago – which sparked fears for his health at the time.

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Biden’s comments came during a speech about “cancer-causing” emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Delaware.

He said: “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

Biden’s use of the present tense led to speculations that the president was suffering from cancer.

But these were dismissed after it was suggested that the comments were a reference to “non-melanoma skin cancers”.

Before assuming the presidency, Biden had a number of “localized, non-melanoma skin cancers” removed by surgery.

In November 2021, Biden had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.

And in February 2023, he had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer.

Non-melanoma skin cancer typically develops in the areas of the body most exposed to the sun such as the face, ears, hands, shoulders, upper chest, and back.

But Biden is now facing fresh scrutiny over his cancer comments following the announcement of his cancer diagnosis on Sunday.

This comes as Donald Trump took a swipe at his predecessor and said he was “surprised” the public wasn’t told long ago about Biden’s cancer.

The US President cast doubt on the timeline of Biden’s diagnosis on Monday as he said it usually takes a “long time” to reach such an aggressive stage of cancer.

Trump was backed up by a leading oncologist who claimed that the former president likely had cancer when he took office in 2021.

Dr Zeke Emanuel said: “He had it while he was President.

“He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021.”

Biden announced his cancer diagnosis in an official statement from his personal office on Sunday.

The statement said that he was seen by doctors last week after suffering urinary symptoms, with a prostate nodule then being found.

He was then diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.

The statement read: “Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms.

“On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.

“The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

A Gleason score of 9 means the cancerous cells “look very abnormal” and that the disease is “likely to grow quickly”, according to Cancer Research UK.

Biden served as US president from 2021 to 2025, with his term ending on January 20 when Donald Trump took office.

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