Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, is suing his former project manager and his lawyers, alleging they wrongfully put a $1.8 million lien on his former Malibu mansion.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, alleges that Tony Saxon, Ye’s former project manager on the property, and the law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, “wrongfully” placed an “invalid” lien on the property “while simultaneously launching an aggressive publicity campaign designed to pressure Ye, chill prospective transactions, and extract payment on disputed claims already being litigated in court.”
Saxon’s lawyers were not immediately available for comment.
Saxon, who was also employed as West’s security guard and caretaker at the Malibu property, sued the controversial rapper in Los Angeles Superior Court in Sept. 2023, claiming a slate of labor violations, nonpayment of services and disability discrimination.
In Jan. 2024, Saxon placed the $1.8 million “mechanics” lien on the property in order to secure compensation for his work as project manager and construction-related services, according to court filings.
A mechanics lien, also referred to as a contractor’s lien, is usually filed by an unpaid contractor, laborer or supplier, as a hold against the property. If the party remains unpaid, it can prompt a foreclosure sale of the property to secure compensation.
Ye has denied Saxon’s allegations. In a Nov. 2023 response to the complaint, Ye disputed that Saxon “has sustained any injury, damage, or loss by reason of any act, omission or breach by Defendant.”
According to Ye’s recent complaint, he listed the property for sale in December 2023. A month later, he alleged, Saxon and his attorneys recorded the lien and “immediately” issued statements to the media.
The suit cites a statement Saxon’s attorney, Ronald Zambrano, made to Business Insider: “If someone wants to buy Kanye’s Malibu home, they will have to deal with us first. That sale cannot happen without Tony getting paid first.”
“These statements were designed to create public pressure and to interfere with the Plaintiffs’ ability to sell and finance the Property by falsely conveying that Defendants held an adjudicated, enforceable right to block a transaction and divert sale proceeds,” the complaint states.
The filing contends that last year the Los Angeles Superior Court granted Ye’s motion to release the lien from the bond and awarded him attorneys fees.
The Malibu property’s short existence has a long history of legal and financial drama.
In 2021, West purchased the beachfront concrete mansion — designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando — for $57.3 million. He then gutted the property on Malibu Road, reportedly saying “This is going to be my bomb shelter. This is going to be my Batcave.”
Three years later, the hip hop star sold the unfinished mansion (he had removed the windows, doors, electricity and plumbing and broke down walls), at a significant loss to developer Steven Belmont’s Belwood Investments for $21 million.
Belmont, who spent more money to renovate the home, had spent three years in prison after being charged with attempted murder for a pitchfork attack in Napa County. He promised to restore the architectural jewel to its former glory.
However, the property has been mired in various legal and financial entanglements including foreclosure threats.
Last August, the notorious mansion was once again put on the market with a $4.1 million price cut after a previous offer reportedly fell through, according to Realtor.com.
The legal battle surrounding Ye’s former Malibu pad is the latest in a series of public and legal dramas that the music impresario has been involved in recent years.
In 2022, the mercurial superstar lost numerous lucrative partnerships with companies like Adidas and the Gap, following a raft of antisemitic statements, including declaring himself a Nazi on X (which he later recanted).
Two years later, Ye abruptly shut down Donda Academy, the troubled private school he founded in 2020.
Ye, the school and some of his affiliated businesses faced faced multiple lawsuits from former employees and educators, alleging they were victims of wrongful termination, a hostile work environment and other claims.
In court filings, Ye has denied each of the claims made against him by former employees and educators at Donda.
A broadcast TV show about a middle-aged guy who becomes an LAPD cop wouldn’t seem like your typical teen magnet.
Yet, the “The Rookie” was the most-streamed show among young people under 18 across all broadcast series in the 2024-2025 broadcast TV season, according to Nielsen data.
Odd as that may seem, the numbers match showrunner Alexi Hawley’s own experience. He says he is often approached by parents telling him how much their kids gravitate to the ABC police procedural.
Recently, he said, actor Dwayne Johnson visited the Los Angeles set with his preteen daughter, who loves the Nathan Fillion-led series, now in its eighth season.
“You’re always surprised in this business at success,” Hawley said in an interview.
He offers multiple explanations: “A lot of it has to do with the comfort food of the show. Bad things happen on our show a lot, but I think the mix of humor and action and heavy stuff resonates with people.”
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Part of it, too, he says, is that the show is very “clippable.”
“The Rookie,” which is produced by Lionsgate Television and 20th Television and shot in Los Angeles, has 2.8 million followers on TikTok. In the last 12 months, its biggest audience on the platform were people aged 18 to 24, according to TikTok Studio.
At a time when the broadcast TV business faces steep challenges — including continued cord-cutting and declining ad dollars — the ability of “The Rookie” to captivate young viewers is noteworthy. And its stars’ embrace of social media, particularly TikTok, might have lessons for other broadcast shows looking to draw new and younger eyeballs in the streaming era.
Eric Winter, who plays the serious Sgt. Tim Bradford on “The Rookie,” is especially active on the platform, despite some initial resistance.
“I was anti-TikTok,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m never doing it. I’m never gonna have an account. I won’t be seen doing a post or a dance, acting like a fool.’ And my wife was like, ‘You’re launching a premium rum brand. You’ve got to be out there. You’ve got to be public with it.’”
And he’s seen teen fandom up close — at publicity events kids will line up to get his autograph.
After launching his TikTik about two years ago, Winter now has about 6.6 million followers, and he’ll post pranks with his co-stars from the set or group TikToks.
Even Fillion has gotten in on the action and has asked Winter for advice. Many other cast members are active on the platform as well.
“We’re all trying to outdo each other with TikTok, and it’s grown into its own little beast that drives the eyeballs,” Winter said. “I just started doing a lot of goofy ones that worked.”
Beyond jokes from the set, clips from the show itself have driven people to the series who may not have otherwise found it. Scenes involving the will-they-won’t-they romance between Winter’s character Bradford and co-star Melissa O’Neil’s Sgt. Lucy Chen (collectively known to fans as “Chenford”) also drive major views, as do shorts with Fillion.
“We have these funny moments, and these little stories that we can do because we’re a patrol show where anything can happen anytime they get out of their car,” Hawley said. “And I think those translate really well to 30-second, one-minute clips that just bring people to want to watch more.”
It’s kind of like movie trailers for the new generation. While young viewers can’t watch an entire show via social media, the shorter clips are clearly one way of introducing them to the series — and getting them hooked. Collaborations with YouTube stars also help.
Last season, YouTube personalities Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej guest starred in an episode of “The Rookie” in which the pair investigates a haunted psychiatric facility. Hawley learned of Bergara and Madej’s “Ghost Files” paranormal show through his kids.
This year, he’s planning a similar crossover with comedy streamer Dropout.TV.
“Rather than doing crossovers with traditional shows, like other ABC shows, given our growing young fan base, I’m like, ‘Well, what can I pull into our show that younger people relate to more,’” Hawley said.
“The world is hard right now,” Hawley said. “It’s very stressful. There’s something that’s just comforting about putting us on and the number of episodes we have. Our show is an escape for people.”
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Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “Avatar: Fire and Ash” cracked the $1-billion mark at the global box office on Sunday. The film is the third Disney film released in 2025 that has crossed $1 billion worldwide, following the animated “Zootopia 2” and the live-action adaptation of “Lilo & Stitch.”
Topping it off, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is the third of three “Avatar” films to reach $1 billion globally. The James Cameron-directed franchise has now grossed more than $6.35 billion so far.
CINCINNATI — A man who broke windows at Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio home and caused other property damage was detained early Monday, the U.S. Secret Service said.
The man was detained shortly after midnight by Secret Service agents assigned to Vance’s home, east of downtown Cincinnati, agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement emailed to the Associated Press. He has not been named.
The Secret Service heard a loud noise at the home around midnight and found a person who had broken a window with a hammer and was trying to get into the house, according to two law enforcement officials who were not publicly authorized to discuss the investigation into what happened and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The man had also vandalized a Secret Service vehicle on his way up the home’s driveway, one of the officials said.
The home, in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, on hills overlooking the city, was unoccupied at the time, and Vance and his family were not in Ohio, Guglielmi said.
The Secret Service is coordinating with the Cincinnati Police Department and the U.S. attorney’s office as charging decisions are reviewed, he said.
Vance, a Republican, was a U.S. senator representing Ohio before becoming vice president. His office said his family was already back in Washington and directed questions to the Secret Service.
Walnut Hills is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and is home to historic sites, including the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
Richer and McCormack write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mike Balsamo and Sarah Brumfield contributed to this report.
When Virginia Guevara moved into a studio apartment in Orange County in 2024 after nearly a decade of homelessness, she needed far more than a roof and a bed.
Scattered visits to free clinics notwithstanding, Guevara hadn’t had a full medical checkup in years. She required dental work. She wanted to start looking for a job. And she was overwhelmed by the maze of paperwork needed simply to get her off the street, much less to make any of the other things happen.
But Guevara had help. The Jamboree Housing Corp., an affordable-housing nonprofit that renovated a former hotel in Stanton that Guevara now calls home, didn’t just move her in — it also provided her a fleet of wraparound services. Jamboree counselors helped Guevara navigate the healthcare system to see a doctor and a dentist, buy a few things for her apartment, and get training to become a caregiver.
“I was years on the street before I got the kind of help I needed so I could help myself,” said Guevara, 68.
Amid the Trump administration’s apparent opposition to using Medicaid funding for such social services, staffers at Jamboree and similar affordable-housing providers in California have feared losing federal money. The experimental waivers that provide the primary funding for the program expire at the end of 2026. But as it turns out, the state had the foresight several years ago to designate certain nonhousing social services — such as mental health care, drug counseling and job training — as a form of Medicaid spending that will continue to be reimbursed.
Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed that California’s use of the “in lieu of services” classification for these wraparound programs is allowed under federal regulations.
“It is starting to sound positive that we will, at the very least, be able to continue billing for these services after the waiver period,” said Natalie Reider, a senior vice president at Jamboree Housing.
During President Trump’s first term, states were permitted to use Medicaid money for social support services not typically covered by health insurance. But the second Trump administration is reeling that policy back in, saying that the intervening Biden administration took the supportive services process too far. Howden said in a statement that the policy “distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans.”
Through CalAIM, a five-year experimental build-out of the Medicaid system, programs such as Jamboree were able to leverage federal funding to offer the kinds of nonhousing social services that experts contend are essential to keeping people permanently housed.
However, these wraparound services are only one component of the CalAIM initiative, which is attempting to take Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, in a more holistic direction across all areas of care. And when CalAIM launched, California officials gave the programs the Medicaid “in lieu of services” designation, known as ILOS, in effect putting them outside the waiver process and ensuring that even when CalAIM sunsets, money for those social initiatives will continue to flow.
“California has tried to future-proof many of the policy changes it has made in Medi-Cal by including them in mechanisms like ILOS that do not require federal waiver approval,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “That allows these policy changes to continue, even with a politically hostile federal administration.”
The designation allows these social services to be funded through Medicaid managed-care plans under existing federal laws because they are cost-effective substitutes for a Medicaid service or reduce the likelihood of patients needing other Medicaid-covered healthcare services, said Glenn Tsang, policy advisor for homelessness and housing at the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The state could not provide an estimate of the annual funding for these wraparound services because they are not distinguished from other payments made to Medicaid managed-care plans.
“We are full steam ahead with these services,” Tsang said, “and they are authorized.”
Although California was the first state to incorporate the designation for such housing and other health-related social support, Tsang said, several other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York and North Carolina — are now using the mechanism in a similar fashion.
Paul San Felipe, senior program manager for Jamboree, speaks during a meeting at Clara Vista in Stanton on Dec. 29, 2025.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Early results suggest such support saves on healthcare spending. When Jamboree, MidPen Housing Corp. in Northern California, RH Community Builders in the Central Valley and other permanent supportive housing providers employ a holistic approach that includes social services, they reported higher rates of formerly homeless people remaining in housing, less frequent use of costly emergency health services, and more residents landing jobs that help them pay rent and stay housed.
At the nonprofit MidPen Housing, which serves 12 counties in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly 40% of the units in the program’s pipeline are earmarked for “extremely low-income” people, a group that includes those who are homeless, said Danielle McCluskey, senior director of resident services.
CalAIM reimbursements help fund the part of MidPen that focuses on supportive services across a wide range of experiences, such as chronic homelessness, mental health issues and those leaving the foster care system. McCluskey described it as one leg of a three-legged stool, the others being real estate development and property management.
“If any of those legs are not getting what they need, if they’re not funded or not staffed or resourced, then that stool is kind of wobbly — off-kilter,” the director said.
A recent state evaluation found that people who used at least one of the housing support services — including navigation into new housing, healthcare assistance and a deposit to secure an apartment — saw a 13% reduction in emergency department visits and a 24% reduction in inpatient admissions in the six months that followed.
Documenting those outcomes is crucial because the department needs to show federal officials that the services lessen the need for other, often costlier Medicaid-covered care — the essence of the classification.
Advocates for the inclusion of supportive services argue that the American system ultimately saves money on those investments. As California’s homeless population has soared in recent years to more than 187,000 on a given night — nearly a quarter of the U.S. total — Jamboree has been allocating more of its resources to permanent supportive housing.
Founded in 1990 in Orange County, Jamboree builds various types of affordable housing using federal, state and private funding. Reider said about a fifth of the organization’s portfolio is dedicated to permanent supportive housing.
“They’re not going back out to the streets. They’re not going to jail. They’re not going to the hospitals,” Reider said. “Keeping people housed is the No. 1 outcome, and it is the cost-saver, right? We’re using Medicaid dollars, but we’re saving the system money in the long run.”
Guevara spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. Now she also has found work as a caregiver.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Guevara, who wound up on the streets after a falling-out with family in 2015, spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. There, she was paired with a specialist to help her figure out how to get and see a doctor, and to keep up with scheduling the battery of medical tests she needed after years spent living in temporary shelters.
“I also got a job developer, who helped me get this job with the county so I can pay my rent,” Guevara said of her position as a part-time in-home caregiver. “Now I take care of people kind of the same way people have been taking care of me.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Walt Disney Co. is on track to fully integrate its streaming platforms Hulu and Disney+ in 2026.
Hulu isn’t disappearing; Disney hasn’t set a date to retire the stand-alone app. But the Burbank entertainment giant is making progress on its plan to fold Hulu content into the Disney+ platform sometime next year.
The Burbank entertainment giant announced last summer that it was merging Hulu programming onto Disney+. Executives declined Tuesday to provide a timetable for the launch of the integrated platform.
“We are building on Disney’s value proposition in streaming by combining Hulu into Disney+ to create a unified app experience featuring branded and general entertainment, news, and sports, resulting in a one-of-a-kind entertainment destination for subscribers,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told Wall Street analysts during an August earnings call.
Until 2019, Hulu was owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Disney and Fox.
Earlier this month, Disney engineers refreshed the Disney+ homepage to allow users to seamlessly move among its various catalogs — Disney+, Hulu and ESPN.
Disney has said Hulu will live on as the global brand for general entertainment, with such shows as “Only Murders in the Building,” “Paradise” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
As part of the Mouse House’s choreographed months-long rollout, the company switched the Star tile for international Disney+ customers in October. Now, the green Hulu logo appears for those users. (Star, a popular television service in India, was also among the Fox assets that Disney acquired nearly seven years ago.)
Disney separately operates Hulu + Live TV, a pay-TV service with popular broadcast and cable channels, including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and ESPN. Eventually, that service will be folded into the Disney+ app.
Hulu subscribers will continue to be able to access the app well into next year.
After the launch of the combined platform, Hulu subscribers will be able to watch Hulu-branded shows, but Disney is designing the experience to entice users to upgrade to a Disney bundle. The company’s goal is for fewer subscribers to drop their plans and, instead, spend more time on the Disney+ app.
As the year draws to a close, Disney is celebrating a successful year at the box office. It released two movies that surpassed $1 billion in global ticket sales: “Zootopia 2,” and “Lilo & Stitch.” The James Cameron movie “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which debuted this month, so far has made more than $750 million worldwide.
The company’s TV programmers are under pressure to boost their slate of original television and streaming shows.
Disney mustered just three entries in Nielsen’s Streaming Top 10 for the last week of November, according to the rating agency’s most recent report.
All were acquired shows, including “Homeland,” a decade-old Showtime production that runs on both Hulu and Netflix. “Homeland,” starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, was ranked fifth for that week, lagging well behind Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” which broke records. Paramount+’s “Landman,” from Taylor Sheridan, was the second-most popular streaming show.
“Bob’s Burgers,” a show created for Fox and available on Hulu, ranked seventh. “Bluey,” an Australian cartoon distributed by Disney+ was the eighth most popular streaming show.
A handout photo made available by the presidential office shows South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (L) and first lady Kim Hea Kyung (R) participate in a Christmas Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in central Seoul, South Korea, 25 December 2025. Photo by SK PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE HANDOUT SOUTH KOREA/EPA
Dec. 25 (Asia Today) — President Lee Jae-myung and first lady Kim Hye-kyung attended a Christmas service Thursday with about 130 worshippers at Haein Church in Incheon, the presidential office said.
Spokesperson Kim Nam-joon said in a written briefing that the visit was meant to reflect on the meaning of Christmas, offer a message of comfort and hope to the public beyond religion and reaffirm the value of social integration.
Kim said Lee met Pastor Lee Jun-mo and his wife, Pastor Kim Young-sun, upon arriving at the church and thanked them for the opportunity to share Christmas greetings there.
The pastors offered well-wishes and urged Lee to embrace vulnerable members of society, the spokesperson said.
Haein Church was founded in 1986 as what the presidential office described as a workers-funded “people’s church.” It is located in Gyeyang District, which was Lee’s constituency when he served as a lawmaker. The church is known for community projects supporting people including the homeless and victims of domestic violence, the presidential office said.
After the service, Lee and Kim had bibimbap with church members in the church dining hall, the spokesperson said. They later visited the Notre Dame Convent in Gyeyang District to exchange Christmas greetings.
Lee also attended a Christmas Mass Thursday afternoon at Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul, which the presidential office said drew about 1,000 worshippers, including Archbishop Chung Soon-taek of Seoul.
The year was 1923, and thousands of people a month were flooding into Los Angeles in hopes of finding a job in the nascent film business.
Many planned to start as background actors, dreaming they’d be discovered by a director and finally get their big break. These behind-the-scenes actors would wander from studio lot to studio lot, lining up in hopes of being cast.
But the chaos of aspiring actors searching for jobs eventually became too much. Even silent screen star Mary Pickford took to warning wide-eyed newcomers that they should save enough money to survive for five years before coming out to Hollywood.
Out of calls to create safeguards around this fledgling business, and more order around background acting opportunities, emerged the Central Casting Corp.
Central Casting — now so eponymous that its name has become a cultural phrase — celebrated its 100th anniversary earlier this month.
I recently spoke with Mark Goldstein, president and chief executive of the Burbank-based company, to talk about changes in the industry, including the threat of artificial intelligence, runaway production and the role of a background actor in 2025.
Goldstein acknowledged the tough environment for background performers, also commonly known as extras, who populate restaurants, parks and other film and TV scenes to make the environment seem more realistic — all without saying a word.
After the lows of the pandemic, and then the explosion of content during the peak TV era, one of the main challenges for Central Casting’s members is just finding new roles, he said.
“There’s been a little bit of a pullback in production over the last year,” said Goldstein, who serves as president and CEO of Central Casting as well as production finance and management tools firm Entertainment Partners, which owns the agency. “It’s really just constantly finding the right roles for people.”
In Southern California, of course, jobs have been more scarce as production has flowed to other states and countries offering steeper film incentives.
Then there is the advent of computer-generated imagery, which has lessened the need for massive crowd scenes that were once standard.
“Before [CGI] technology, we may fill up an arena, like we may fill a 5,000-person shoot or a 10,000-person shoot,” Goldstein said.
Remember the long lines for casting calls?
No more.
More recently AI has been a key concern for background actors, though Goldstein said he doesn’t think the new digital tools and the rise of synthetic characters will eliminate the need for background actors.
“There’s a lot of conversation [about] is it human or technology? And we kind of view it as human and technology,” he said. “The consumer wants believability, and so there’ll be situations where it’s really important to have the human role involved, but there may be other situations where AI and technology can be helpful.”
He added: “We have legendary people that started their career because they wanted to follow their dream to become an actor in Hollywood,” he said, ticking off the names of famous alumni such as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Eva Longoria, Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt. “And we don’t see that changing.”
Despite the challenges, aspiring actors still register with Central Casting every day, Goldstein said. The company has 200,000 background actors in its database, with more than 20,000 new names added a year. About 3,000 are placed in roles each day, the company says.
One of those is Jaylee Maruk, 38, who signed up with Central Casting in 2009 and has worked steadily ever since.
Maruk works often on “Grey’s Anatomy” and has credits on Hulu’s “Paradise” and Apple TV’s “Shrinking.” She once stood in for Greta Lee in Apple TV‘s “The Morning Show.”
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“What I love about doing background is it really gives a solid foundation about what it’s like to be on set and what the expectations are,” Maruk said.
But she worries about her future, especially with the rise of AI and the migration of production.
“Productions will pack up and leave,” she said. “They’ll go somewhere cheaper, and it’s becoming harder and harder for us. That’s really the biggest concern, trying to entice and support productions staying here.”
Towns in far-off countries like Hungary and Turkey can be made to look just like places in America, she says. And they can cast local residents instead of U.S.-based performers like Maruk. After all, background actors don’t have speaking roles, so not speaking English isn’t a problem.
“We want our work to be here,” said the Lake Balboa resident. “Our families are here, our lives are here.”
Last year, I got a glimpse into the world of background acting when I covered the annual Los Angeles Union Background Actors Awards. Though tongue-in-cheek at times — the awards themselves are called Blurries — the ceremony and winners’ speeches also highlighted these actors’ key roles in Hollywood.
I met background actors who had done the job for years, including one who got his first role as a 12-year-old in “Hello, Dolly!” Many talked about the difficulty of the last few years and the desire for respect for their professional work. Some were full-time background actors; others did the work part time. All were passionate about what they did.
“It really is just preparedness and luck, as they say,” Maruk said. “And also just having a lot of motivation and resilience.”
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Film shoots
Number of the week
James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” brought in $89 million in the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend. Globally, the film made $346 million, with big hauls in China and France.
That opening total came in at the lower end of box office analysts’ expectations and is also less than the massive opening weekend for its predecessor film, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which grossed $134 million in its domestic debut. But “Avatar” films tend to build momentum at the box office over subsequent weekends, so the Na’vi aren’t vanquished yet.
In addition to “Avatar,” this past weekend also saw strong performances from Angel Studios’ animated “David,” as well as Lionsgate’s thriller “The Housemaid,” pushing the year-to-date domestic box office total a slim 1% above the same time period last year. That’s helpful for theaters but doesn’t bode well for the box office’s overall performance this year.
Finally …
My colleague Josh Rottenberg looks at what movie stardom will mean in an age of AI. In that story, he has an interview with the creator of Tilly Norwood, the AI-generated character that recently sparked a furious debate in Hollywood about the role of synthetics in film and TV.
If you’re looking for a completely unique weekend away, there’s a hotel with colourful themed rooms and lots of fun surprises, and it’s set in the UK’s coolest city with plenty to do nearby.
Each room in the hotel has its own unique theme such as the Salon Rouge(Image: Hotel Pelirocco)
While staying in a hotel for the weekend can be nice, one criticism you can level at them is that so many hotel rooms look the same. They may be comfy, but it’s easy to get bored of the same beige style you get in every hotel room.
However, whatever words you use to describe Hotel Pelirocco, “boring” is not one of them. This boutique hotel has 19 rooms, each one with a different theme, and each room is its own colourful little world.
Set on a quiet square in Brighton, the hotel is the perfect place to stay if you’re looking to enjoy the UK’s coolest city. Brighton recently beat competition from cities such as Edinburgh and Manchester to cinch the title, thanks to its independent shops, unique restaurants, and lively music scene.
The hotel is just a 15-minute stroll from the North Laines, famous for its colourful shops including vintage stores, bookshops, record shops, and quirky cafes. There’s also The Lanes area, which has a more historic vibe with narrow cobbled streets full of pretty jewellery stores and designer shops.
Historic Brighton Pier is also just a short walk away, with old-fashioned rides, amusements, and stalls. And of course, there’s the iconic Brighton Beach, a long stretch of shingle that has a promenade full of clubs and bars, and becomes a lively area for nightlife as the sun goes down.
Hotel Pelirocco is set inside two converted Regency townhouses, with its historic façade blending in with the other buildings in a pretty square. However, once you step inside, it’s a maximalist’s dream with colourful walls covered in vintage art and posters. Downstairs it has a bar that hosts live music and events, and opens until the small hours for guests returning from nights out.
However, it’s the rooms that the hotel has become famous for, and themes range from David Bowie to pin-up girls and local artists. The Mod-themed room is perfect for visitors to Brighton who are there to see the city’s filming locations for Quadrophenia, while Do Knit Disturb is a room dedicated to knitting and crochet, with accessories including a knitted telephone.
Brighton has long been a destination for couples’ weekends, and the hotel has a cheekier side to it too. The Botanica suite, for example, comes with a dancing pole and a mirrored ceiling, among other surprises, and there are rooms such as Taboo with more romantic vibes.
The hotel also offers a range of extras that are perfect for couples celebrating a special occasion, from Champagne to boudoir photography in your bedroom. And if you want to really surprise your other half, you can arrange for a hamper from independent store Lust!, which includes an array of toys for couples for a fun start to your break.
Find out more about the Hotel Pelirocco or book a room on their official website.
Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com
Dec. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has awarded 13 soldiers and Marines the newly established Mexican Border Defense Medal for their contributions to safeguarding the U.S. southern border.
The service members are the first to receive the commendation, created Aug. 13 in a memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to honor those deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The commander-in-chief awarded the medals to the service members at the White House.
“On day one of my administration, I signed an executive order making it [the] core mission of the United States military to protect and defend the homeland. And today, we’re here to honor our military men and women for their central role in the protection of our border,” Trump said during the ceremony.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has overseen crackdowns on immigration and crime that have included the deployment of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
More than 10,000 U.S. military service members attached to Joint Task Force Southern Border have been deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border in support of the Department of Homeland Security, with the missions to secure the border, disrupt transnational criminal organizations and respond to national security threats.
Trump said Monday that more than 25,000 service members have served in this “incredible and historic operation,” which has overseen 13,000 patrols along the border.
“They’ve spent night and day enduring scorching hot and bitter cold, and they’ve given up their holidays and their weekends, working with the offices of Customs and Border Protection,” Trump said.
“And today, we give these great warriors the recognition that they have earned — and they have really earned it.”
The medal, according to the Department of Defense, is identical to the Mexican Border Service Medal awarded for service in 1916 and 1917 in the Mexican state of Chihuahua as well as the U.S.-Mexico border regions in New Mexico and Texas.
It is bronze with a sheathed Roman sword hanging on a tablet on the front, which bears an inscription that reads: “For Service on the Mexican Border.”
Those eligible for the award must have been permanently assigned to a designated Department of Defense military operation supporting CBP within the area of eligibility for at least 30 consecutive or non-consecutive days from Jan. 20 of this year.
“We’re proud of this mission,” Hegseth said during the White House event. “We’re proud to defend the American people and pinning these medals on is an example of how important it is to us.”
The Trump administration states that its crackdown has resulted in more than 2.5 million undocumented migrants removed from the United States and the lowest level of illegal border crossings since 1970.
