US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have shuttled between Dublin and Moscow in efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal. The meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin followed the first direct Russia-Ukraine talks in nine months.
Published On 13 Nov 202613 Nov 2026
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Los Angeles is going to get more expensive next year thanks to a half-cent sales tax hike approved by voters last week, but city officials say the benefit will be a stronger fire department and faster response times.
Measure FD will generate about $345 million annually for the city Fire Department by raising the city’s retail sales tax from 10.25% to 10.75%, which is about 5 cents more for every $10 spent.
That means filling up the gas tank, eating out and shopping for clothes will all get more expensive — to the tune of roughly $86 per person on average, according to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which opposed the measure.
The ordinance requires a 110-day waiting period after the votes are certified on Nov. 27, and won’t kick in until the first day of the next calendar quarter, so the earliest people could see the increase would be April 1.
The sales tax hike was spearheaded by the city’s firefighters union and Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Pacific Palisades community devastated by fire in January 2025.
The measure passed by roughly a 54% to 46% margin, according to the latest tally, although some mail-in ballots are still being counted.
L.A. firefighters had warned their department was in crisis long before the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire in Altadena cast a brighter light on the issue, Park said.
“These matters were urgent before, but the Palisades fire laid bare how urgent it was that this investment be made,” Park said. “The reality that it was not going to be solved inside the four walls of the city budget or by politicians inside City Hall.”
The sales tax is an unprecedented move by the city, and vital for the department to hire more personnel, open more stations and lower the department’s response times, said Doug Coates, the fire union president.
The Fire Department says its response time averages just under eight minutes — nearly double the national standards set by the National Fire Protection Assn., an international nonprofit that creates and maintains fire safety standards.
The number of firefighters in the department has stayed largely stagnant since the 1960s, according to the fire department, even as the city’s population grew. City officials say some fire stations have leaky roofs and broken HVAC systems. Broken rigs have sat unused because there was no money to fix them, Park said.
Coates said the union pushed for the sales tax as a last resort, following years of pleas to the City Council for more money, even though it would be the third sales tax hike affecting Los Angeles since 2024 (the other two sales tax hikes were countywide).
“When they call, we show up,” Coates said. “Now it appears that, really, they’ve answered our call for help.”
The Police Protective League, the union representing L.A. police officers, opposed Measure FD, objecting to the permanency of the tax and that the revenue is limited to one department. The PPL expressed concern that the extra funding would be used to spike firefighter pensions. Voters were misled into believing the tax would focus on revamping the fire department’s infrastructure, said Sgt. Chris Wecker, the union’s vice president.
The union pointed to a motion written by Councilmember Heather Hutt and Councilmember Park in May, which sought to explore giving firefighters extra pension credit for mandatory overtime.
“We would support the exploration of a tax repeal measure on a future ballot that would allow enough time for voters to be educated about this bait-and-switch pension spiking scheme and give them an opportunity to cut their taxes,” Wecker said.
Coates said that motion had nothing to do with Measure FD and asked only for a study into what additional costs the city would undertake if extra shifts firefighters are forced to take on were pensionable.
“The attacks on this motion and Measure FD were misguided and just flat out incorrect,” Coates said. “It will not spike pension benefits in any way, shape or form.”
The sales tax revenue from Measure FD will be in addition to the money the department already receives from the city’s general fund, which Coates said was a crucial factor in winning voter support. The sales tax will continue unless it’s repealed by voters, according to the ordinance.
The fire union hopes city residents will notice a change in the department within a year, Coates said.
L.A. Fire Chief Jaime Moore said the department will prioritize recruiting and hiring more firefighters, repairing existing equipment — a task that could exceed $9 million — and undergoing critical station repairs. The new pool of money will also be used to expand dispatch centers and eventually build more fire stations, Moore said in a presentation to the City Council last month.
Another critical issue the department hopes to address is hiring more personnel to reduce delays in hiring and training new firefighters, Moore said.
The department will also begin a process to identify where new stations are needed. With the 106 active stations, firefighters can reach just under half the city within four minutes. The department will utilize operational data to determine where new stations fit best.
The funds must be used for eligible core fire department services. The department will separately track Measure FD revenue, create dashboards to monitor all expenditures and provide quarterly reports to the City Council to ensure transparency, Moore said.
The measure also requires a citizen oversight committee that will review the department’s spending of this money.
“This is the biggest deal in the Los Angeles Fire Department. We couldn’t be more grateful to the citizens of L.A. for helping us pass this,” Coates said. “The men and women in the field are ecstatic that change is coming, and we’re going to be able to better respond to the residents of L.A.”
Measure FD was one of eight measures on the Nov. 3 Los Angeles city ballot, all of which were approved by voters. Other measures will allow the City Council to meet once a week and allow it to disband the Board of Public Works, and allocate more money to the Department of Recreation and Parks.
Voters also approved a measure that exempts Palisades fire victims from paying the so-called mansion tax if they sell their properties within five years of the disaster.
In the hours before Game 1 of the World Series, as the Violent Femmes played “Kiss Off” before their hometown fans in Milwaukee, Bruce Meyer talked about getting blown off by baseball’s owners.
He didn’t put it quite that way. But Meyer, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn., expressed his frustration that months of collective bargaining over dozens of issues has boiled down to what he sees as one gigantic, inflexible roadblock: “They’ve made clear they’re not willing to talk about anything outside of their cap system.”
The league and its owners are willing to talk about key issues for the union: higher minimum salaries, fewer years to free agency, an end to the qualifying offers that can dampen the market for free agents. But the price would be a salary cap.
The players have made clear they’re not willing to consider the salary cap that owners insist would underpin everything else in what would be a radical new economic system. That could backfire: a wonky provision in labor law could give the owners the option to adopt a salary cap no matter what the players want.
With three weeks left before the current collective bargaining agreement expires — and with the owners planning to lock out players immediately thereafter — player representative and former Philadelphia Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs called the negotiations “a complete waste of time” and “a charade.” He told the Philadelphia Inquirer the owners continue to present proposals “with the salary cap attached to every single proposal.”
So why wouldn’t the union just walk away from the bargaining table and tell the owners to call when they get serious?
Under labor law, parties in collective bargaining must negotiate in good faith. If the union refuses to discuss a salary cap, the owners could at some point declare an impasse. That would mean the owners would end the lockout by imposing their last offer as a new labor agreement — including a salary cap — and claiming the players would not negotiate in good faith.
That would not be a risk-free strategy. The players could ask the National Labor Relations Board to intervene, arguing they had offered solutions to the owners’ economic concerns — expanded revenue sharing, for instance — that the owners would not consider.
In the 1994-95 strike, the last time the league sought a salary cap, the owners played the impasse card. However, the NLRB found that the owners were the party that had failed to negotiate in good faith. United States District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor agreed — you know her as a Supreme Court justice now — and ordered the old collective bargaining agreement reinstated.
In this moment, with the NLRB generally considered more business-friendly under President Trump, the union might not find the board as receptive to its positions as it did then.
“I could certainly imagine a scenario where the owners get into his ear how it’s going to destroy baseball and America and everything else, and he puts his thumb on the scale or otherwise reaches out to the decision makers at the NLRB and says, ‘You’re not finding a violation here,’” Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB general counsel during the Biden administration, told The Times.
Ivan Smith, a partner in labor and employment law at Seyfarth Shaw and leader of the firm’s sports and entertainment division, said the short-term gain of declaring an impasse might not be worth the potential long-term pain for the owners.
“Ultimately, they want to be able to put enough pressure on the players to get them to give them (the cap) for their business,” Smith said. “But, if you impose, you’re now giving players more tools to fight you. Why go through that?”
Jennifer Abruzzo, the National Labor Relations Board general counsel during the Biden administration, said it’s entirely possible that the NLRB under President Trump might not be as receptive to the positions of the players’ union.
(Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / Associated Press)
One powerful tool, according to Abruzzo and Smith: If the owners go the impasse route — hey, we’re putting in a new labor contract and we’re ending the lockout! — the players could simply respond by going on strike.
The players would have another card to play too, separate from the impasse question. They could vote to decertify their union, which would be something of a chaos option: Hello, owners, who ya gonna negotiate with now?
Under a collective bargaining agreement, the league and the union negotiate various restrictions on negotiation by individual players — draft pick signings, international player signings, minimum salaries, arbitration, free agency, and more.
“If there is no union in place, then they’re not represented by anybody,” Abruzzo said. “So there would be a free-for-all. You would have independent employment agreements with every player.”
On the one hand, that could flood the market with players forced to take whatever salary an owner offered. On the other hand — and this likely would be the objective of decertification — individual players could sue for antitrust violations and the triple damages that can accompany them, pursue a judge’s order to end the lockout, and/or leverage those options toward a new collective bargaining agreement. (And, if the union quickly reassembles, the owners could then argue in court the decertification was a sham.)
Trump is the wild card in all of this. In the 1994-95 strike, President Clinton appointed a federal mediator, although the mediator was unsuccessful in leading the two sides to an agreement.
After Americans largely rebuked his leadership by thumping Republicans in last week’s midterm elections, Trump might well savor an opportunity to get involved and portray himself as the guy who saved baseball.
“He might say, ‘Hey, let me focus on anything else,’” Smith said.
In September, Trump said he would welcome a chance to bring labor peace to baseball.
“If I could help, I’d love to help,” he said.
What do the league and the union have to say about all this? Both sides declined comment for this column.
But baseball runs on deadlines, and the one for missing games next season is about four months away. The options for impasse, decertification and presidential involvement all could require longer than that to resolve.
That means the quickest route to resolution could be Plan A: Actual bargaining, with give and take.
“I’m not prepared to write the process off as ending in a really ugly labor battle,” Manfred said at the World Series. “I believe in the process of collective bargaining. I believe, if people approach the table not with preconceived notions about what has to happen and commit to the process, that we can make an agreement without having a disruption.”
On Kalshi, the “official and exclusive prediction market partner” of the Dodgers, only 39% of bettors say the full 162-game schedule will be played next year.
In late October, two non-Equity touring musicals opened on the same night at two of L.A.’s largest theaters: “Tommy” at the Hollywood Pantages and “The Music Man” at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson. The shows — which operate outside of the Actors’ Equity Assn., the union that represents more than 51,000 professional stage actors and managers nationwide — reignited a contentious debate about whether a major regional nonprofit like CTG should host nonunion shows.
Critics questioned whether these productions threaten CTG’s artistic mission and if Angelenos should pay top dollar for nonunion shows. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what should matter more, a theater’s bottom line or its core values? The underlying implication in much of the criticism was that non-Equity shows are subpar and that hosting them implies a tacit acceptance of the mistreatment of actors.
Savannah Stevenson, who plays Mrs. Paroo in the national tour of “The Music Man,” would like to banish those concerns.
“We should completely dispel the notion that because we’re a non-Equity tour, we’re somehow put through the wringer,” Stevenson said during a phone interview from the Airbnb she was sharing with three cast members. It was a few hours before curtain during the final days of the show’s nearly two-week run in downtown L.A., before it departed for the Capitol Theatre in Yakima, Wash.
Touring small towns like Yakima is a big part of why non-Equity shows exist. The tours began popping up in the 1990s after the rise of the Broadway megamusical, to bring shows to places that would otherwise go without. Before its arrival in L.A., “The Music Man” was in Senatobia, Miss., with a population of about 8,500. A major union show like “The Lion King” will never stop in Senatobia, but the people there can enjoy a bit of River City thanks to Stevenson and the rest of “The Music Man” cast.
“The biggest difference in my mind is, frankly, the schedule. As a non-Equity tour, we do significantly more one-nighters or short engagements,” Stevenson said. “But we also all knew that when we signed up for it. And that is what allows us to share this particular piece of musical theater and musical theater history with such a wide swath of the country.”
Many professional actors choose to remain non-Equity for a variety of reasons, Stevenson said. Jobs are more plentiful for non-Equity actors, she noted, especially if you make a living working at regional houses outside of major cities, which often book only a handful of Equity actors per show. Stevenson recently shared a dressing room and top billing with an Equity actor in a Connecticut show — and other than the fact that the Equity actor was paid more, their treatment was the same, she said.
“We worked side by side every single day, had equally large parts, and I don’t think that anyone coming to that show would have said, ‘Oh, well, gosh, the Equity girl was the real standout in that show,’” Stevenson said gamely.
Elizabeth D’Aiuto, left, Addie Jaymes and Savannah Stevenson in the touring production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.”
(Marshall Meadows)
Stevenson spoke in the wake of a review by Times theater critic Charles McNulty, which called “The Music Man” a “community-theater-level production,” and slammed CTG for “damaging its stature as a nonprofit theater leader by offering such an important showcase to this second-tier touring production.”
The public reception for “The Music Man” was quite warmer. The show ranked above “Amélie, A New Musical,” “Latin History for Morons” and “Paranormal Activity” in audience surveys, according to CTG, and late last week it was on track to outsell “Parade,” “Life of Pi” and “Paranormal Activity.” CTG’s Artistic Director Snehal Desai said each year fans ask for a classic musical and this season only two such shows were on tour: “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man.” The former (an Equity tour) went to the Pantages, which is run by the for-profit Nederlander organization. That left the latter available to CTG.
The uproar resulting from the non-Equity “The Music Man’s” arrival at the Ahmanson ties directly into the ongoing — and at times overheated — conversation about the future of the American nonprofit theater movement that erupted in late July when the Public Theater’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis announced his intention to step down after 23 years, declaring the movement “over” and “not coming back.” Since then, theater leaders, including Desai, have been casting around for a brand new way of building a sustainable future. In Desai’s case, that meant attempting to stay in the black — a course of action that is not always looked upon kindly.
The decision to book non-Equity shows was less about saving money than it was about the Tetris-like planning required to keep the Ahmanson gainfully booked, Desai said. The cost of hosting an Equity versus a non-Equity show is about the same for CTG. Non-Equity shows get paid a flat-rate guarantee that is less than what Equity shows seek, but that’s just one piece of the pie, Desai said. CTG also must factor in overhead and local labor costs, production and marketing expenses, and more. This year there are 25 touring Equity shows and 24 non-Equity shows (a number that has stayed fairly steady for the last eight years, with the exception of the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when Equity tours shut down completely). More than 20 available Equity shows went to the Pantages — along with at least five non-Equity shows. This left only a few Equity shows for CTG to choose from, and Desai had to make sure those fit into the schedule.
Aliya Grace in the North American tour of “Boop!,” which is coming next year to the Ahmanson Theatre.
(Matthew Murphy)
This season will see three non-Equity shows: “Clue,” “The Music Man” and Boop!,” which is the rare show to go straight from Broadway to a non-Equity tour.
“The three [non-Equity shows] that we programmed were what was available to us,” Desai said, adding that the shows came from producers CTG had worked with before so he was confident that “they’re maintaining a certain quality. That they’re taking care of the companies. That they’re adhering to standards.”
Daniel Sher, the president of Big League Productions, which is producing “The Music Man” tour, said the organization does its best to follow union rules that are “reasonable.” Big League has produced mostly non-Equity touring shows for about 35 years, and Sher noted that the show’s crew is union, so the production adheres to many union rules by proxy. The Ahmanson is a union house, with its own union crew — so those rules also apply. Sher wishes he could provide health insurance for his actors, but that is cost-prohibitive, so he gives a small health stipend instead.
“I think there’s just a lot of non-Equity work now,” Sher said. “So it’s kind of like it’s a natural market force. As long as there remains this kind of vast amount of work, there are actors who will choose to remain non-Equity.”
Broadway hits will almost always start as Equity tours, he said, but once they stop being money-making juggernauts, they often go nonunion by necessity. That’s the case with “The Music Man,” he said, noting that a show of its size and scope would be financially impossible to stage as an Equity tour in the current marketplace. He would love for the union to consider allowing a mix of union and nonunion actors on national tours — like it does for regional theaters: “There’s a world where the producers and Equity could try to find a way, but the economics just have to work.”
Stevenson’s goal is to keep performing. She was an Equity member at the beginning of her career, then took 18 years off to practice law before returning to acting — this time without an Equity card.
“Whether you are a presenter or a producer or an actor or a member of the crew, or an audience member, we are all aligned around the notion of ensuring that the theater industry does not continue to contract in the way that it has, particularly since the pandemic,” she said. “So if we can ensure that we’re keeping a variety of shows alive and reaching more corners of the country, then we have to make room for both Equity and non-Equity tours.”
The 2025 North American tour of “Clue,” which played at the Ahmanson Theatre during a non-Equity tour.
(Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)
Even Actors’ Equity has changed its approach to non-Equity shows. In 2001 the union picketed a previous non-Equity tour of “The Music Man” and in 2014 it ran an ad campaign urging theatergoers to “Ask if it’s Equity,” before buying tickets. That campaign, along with more demanding rules around how an actor could join the union, were scrapped in 2023 out of concern for “small ‘e’ equity and justice, and who should have the decision to join the union,” said Actors’ Equity Assn. sopkesperson David Levy.
Prior rules relied on the employer to decide whether an actor was worthy of joining the union, “and we wanted to put that power back in the hands of the actual members themselves,” Levy said. Actors’ Equity currently has an “open access” policy that allows anyone who has worked in any kind of professional theater in the U.S. to join.
“The quality of the talent in these tours is not any less than the quality of talent on any union stage,” Levy said. “What’s at issue is how that talent is treated, how they’re paid, what the workplace safety rules are, what accommodations they’re given as they travel, whether they get appropriate rest time.”
While the union would prefer that every theater show operate under an Equity contract, it’s aware that this may not be financially feasible in all situations, Levy said, noting that nonunion shows might be the only viable option for smaller towns across the country without rich and diverse theater ecosystems.
“We would never want to deprive those audiences of having that transformational opportunity of seeing singers and dancers and actors and musicians do their thing,” Levy said, adding that L.A., unlike less populous cities, doesn’t have a dearth of theater offerings. “Now, in a perfect world, that job would come with both standardized wages and work rules and benefits, as well as the safety guarantees of a union contract.” He paused, “We do not live in a perfect world.”
CTG came perilously close to financially bottoming out in 2023 when it closed the Mark Taper Forum for almost a year and a half. This happened just before Desai took over from Michael Ritchie as the third artistic director in CTG’s history, arriving just in time to pick up the pieces following the COVID-19 pandemic. When CTG finally reopened its theater doors after an astonishing 56 weeks, its staff was decimated, tickets sales had plunged and the cost of putting on productions had skyrocketed. CTG’s staffing still remains more than 20% down from its pre-pandemic high, although its subscriptions are on the rise — up 226% over last year.
“We used to talk to donors about how CTG valued union-only productions, even though they are more expensive, because CTG valued more than just the bottom-line,” former CTG board chair Kiki Ramos Gindler wrote on Facebook in response to McNulty’s review. “Unlike the Nederlander Organization, a for-profit theatre business keenly focused on profits. … The mission is to support our community, not to find ways to keep from going out of business. If this is a path to staying in business, it’s a wrong path and maybe time to take a final bow rather than completely throw away core values.” (Nederlander declined a request for comment on the issue.)
In late September the DeVos Institute of Arts and Nonprofit Management, which was founded at the Kennedy Center in 2001 and supports arts groups nationwide, hosted a nearly two-hour Zoom forum called “Is the American Nonprofit Theater Movement Over?” About 17 major theater leaders spoke on the call that had 800 participants, including Eustis and Desai, all seeking to examine what elements of “a historical model for producing and presenting nonprofit theater in America” have ended, and which remain relevant.
Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in 2019, four years before it was temporarily closed due to a financial crisis.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
“When I first became an artistic director, there were two words that I had never heard before that became my mantra for years: cash flow. These days, a lot of my conversations seem to be focused on three words: minding the gap,” Desai said. “There are so many gaps confronting our field right now. There is the gap between what a production costs and the revenue it can generate. The gap between the impact of the work we make and the value we assign it. The gap between the origin stories of our institutions and the communities we serve. And perhaps, most importantly, there is the gap between the models we inherited and the world we actually live in.”
For CTG, that means keeping the 2,000-seat Ahmanson Theatre booked with revenue-generating shows in order to afford to continue producing work the company does at the Taper and at Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre. “Phantom of the Opera” ran for 4½ years straight at the Ahmanson from 1989 to 1993, a commercial success that enabled a golden age at CTG under founding Artistic Director Gordon Davidson that included the 1992 premiere of Tony Kushner’s groundbreaking two-part play “Angels in America.”
The Ahmanson needs to be that commercial vehicle again, if CTG is to continue pushing artistic boundaries, Desai said. CTG-produced shows are always Equity, while major touring shows arriving at the Ahmanson sometimes aren’t.
“When a show doesn’t meet its goal, it is a huge swing. It is millions of dollars. And so we have to be super careful about what we’re programming,” Desai said. “And I’m also trying to take care of the audience that I’m building in line with the artistic vision.”
Last week, sports drama series “The Greatest” debuted on Prime Video, detailing the life of Muhammad Ali and how he grew from Cassius Clay, the Olympic champion, to one of the biggest sports and civil rights icons of all time.
The show has gotten high marks from critics and counts Michael B. Jordan and Ali’s widow, Lonnie, as executive producers. But what might not be known is the role another major sports heavyweight played in its inception.
Authentic Brands Group, which owns the likeness of Ali, was inspired by the post-NBA career and platform of Shaquille O’Neal in thinking about how to tell Ali’s story to a new generation. Authentic also owns the likeness of O’Neal, who is a significant owner of the New York-based brand management company, and saw how he leveraged his basketball fame into all manner of endorsements after his retirement, from pitching Epson printers and Carnival Cruise Line to DJing at music festivals. (O’Neal also spoke with Lonnie Ali regularly, and was instrumental in helping to make her feel comfortable with the project and production team.)
“He’s still incredibly popular, and his businesses are doing amazing. It’s really all because of his platform,” Corey Salter, chief executive of entertainment at Authentic Brands Group, told me. “So what we wanted to do with Muhammad Ali, and this was a long time in the making, is what is Muhammad’s platform? How do we make that come to life again?”
Authentic Brands Group has an extensive portfolio, ranging from clothing brands (Quiksilver, Champion and Forever 21, to name a few) and media (Sports Illustrated), to likenessess of celebrities such as O’Neal, Marilyn Monroe, David Beckham and Elvis Presley. (The company recently filed lawsuits with other Presley music rights holders against AI companies Anthropic and Suno, alleging copyright infringement. Salter said the lawsuit is ongoing and that the company will “vigorously defend” its intellectual property.)
In 2023, Authentic Brands Group launched its film, TV, audio and commercial production arm that’s focused on telling stories around the company’s intellectual property.
In many ways, the origin story of “The Greatest” exemplifies how Authentic Studios thinks about its projects and why they’ve embarked on the production business.
Though Ali died in 2016, “The Greatest” will allow him to remain in the cultural zeitgeist, Salter told me.
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“We are giving platforms for our living legends and our icons,” Salter said. “It just really brings him back to people that unfortunately didn’t get to see him in his prime and what he accomplished in his lifetime.”
The genesis of the studios segment goes back to the 2022 release of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis.”
Years earlier, Authentic Brands had licensed the Elvis IP to Warner Bros. and built a good working relationship with the Australian film director Luhrmann. But as the team sat as guests in the mezzanine section during the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the group realized there could be more opportunities in being directly involved in production, rather than just licensing their IP.
“If we make compelling, interesting and great content, the brand should get that lift,” said Colin Smeeton, president of Authentic Studios. “It’s just a way for us to expand the reach and scope of the brands.”
The Authentic Studios banner has four labels: O’Neal’s Jersey Legends Productions, Beckham’s Studio 99, Sports Illustrated Studios and Authentic Productions, which includes all of the other Authentic-owned brands. The studio is based in Beverly Hills and has about 35 employees. The entertainment segment of Authentic Brands Group makes up about 25% to 30% of the company’s overall business, and the studio is profitable, Smeeton said.
Among the projects that O’Neal’s production company has released are a three-part docuseries on the life and career of NBA legend Allen Iverson and a Netflix show called “Power Moves with Shaquille O’Neal,” about his and Iverson’s plans to revitalize the Reebok brand. The company also has produced commercials.
“When a project comes to me, I like to do what’s known in my office as ‘Shaq it up,’” O’Neal told me in an interview. “You’ve got to allow the writers and everybody else to have their creative process, and then I’ll make it Shaq.”
What exactly does Shaqing it up entail?
“A lot of humor has to be involved,” he said. “When you get home and you turn on the TV, I want to make you smile.”
As I’ve written, IP has become the name of the game in Hollywood. With reboots and sequels, the entertainment business is betting that people will flock to familiar stories and names. Just look at the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — a major draw for bidders Skydance and Netflix was the company’s extensive portfolio of IP, which includes “Harry Potter,” “The Lord of the Rings” and DC Studios.
Expanding that thinking to brands is a logical next step. After all, the success of 2023’s “Barbie” may be the best recent example of harnessing a brand name with a compelling storyline. And, for a while, that film boosted sales of Mattel’s Barbie dolls.
Authentic Studios wants to expand into digital, build on its YouTube footprint and explore vertical storytelling. The studio is developing projects based on the brand Quiksilver’s origin story and the story of retail brand Guess.
“It’s not about doing more; it’s about making sure that the projects that we do make and do develop actually matter and make them count,” Smeeton said. “If we’re going to spend the time and energy, we want to make sure that it is going to be entertaining for the viewer and the fan, but it ultimately is going to be a good outcome for the brand as well.”
NBC News data analyst Steve Kornacki has become a mainstay of election coverage. And that paid dividends for the network last week, when its “Kornacki Cam” drew a record 29 million views across all platforms, my colleague Stephen Battaglio reported.
Kornacki’s coverage spanned 10½ continuous hours and was woven into NBC’s election night broadcast.
Final figures showed NBC averaged 6.7 million viewers in prime time, followed by ABC (5.2 million), Fox (4.31 million), CNN (4.1 million), MS NOW (3.7 million) and CBS (2.7 million).
Other than watching UCLA continue its 9-0 season with a win over Minnesota this past weekend, I caught the first episode of “The Greatest,” as part of my reporting for the newsletter. The season starts with Cassius Clay’s gold medal-winning match at the 1960 Rome Olympics. I thought the acting was strong, and the theme of fighting racism and injustice at home was especially compelling.
Barri Worth Girvan, a veteran government employee who ran on a platform of leveraging her experience to advocate for residents, declared victory in the race for Los Angeles City Council’s Third District seat late Friday.
Worth Girvan’s announcement came after the latest vote tally Friday evening showed her widening her lead over rival Tim Gaspar, with 51% of the vote to Gaspar’s 49%.
“I will bring competence, transparency, follow-through, and ethical leadership to City Hall, which Angelenos deserve and too often do not get,” she said in a statement, which also thanked Gaspar for stepping up to run as well.
“I know how City Hall works, and I know how to make it work for you,” Worth Girvan said. “I am ready to hit the ground running on Day One, delivering the services our neighborhoods deserve, and leading with the integrity you have every right to expect.
Earlier Friday, Gaspar’s campaign said he wasn’t yet ready to concede. The campaign couldn’t immediately be reached for comment following Worth Girvan’s announcement.
The current Third District councilmember, Bob Blumenfield, is leaving office because of term limits. The 3rd District seat includes Woodland Hills, Reseda and Canoga Park.
Worth Girvan and Gaspar were virtually tied on election night Tuesday, but on Thursday Worth Girvan began pulling ahead as more mail-in ballots were counted.
Before entering the race, Worth Girvan was L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s district director for three years, handling constituent services on the Westside and in the Valley.
A former insurance company owner, Gaspar is running on a pro-business platform and has been endorsed by the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn. and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a union representing LAPD officers. He’s also been endorsed by Blumenfield, L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, real estate developer Rick Caruso and former Democratic state Assemblymember Bob Hertzberg, Worth Girvan’s former boss.
Worth Girvan was endorsed by the L.A. County Democratic Party and labor unions including the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Service Employees International Union. She’s also been endorsed by Horvath and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
In the race for District 9, both Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Mazariegos remain locked in a tight contest. Councilmember Curren Price is also termed out.
District 9 encompasses South L.A. neighborhoods, the Convention Center and USC. But no matter who wins, District 9 will undergo a shift in representation after decades of being represented by a Black council member.
Price is currently facing charges of embezzlement and conflict of interest and he has denied wrongdoing. Price has endorsed Ugarte, his former deputy chief of staff, whose platform includes protecting city residents from federal immigration enforcement and the Trump administration.
Mazariegos is backed by the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He’s worked as a community organizer for decades and said he’s running to improve quality of life in the city, including by making housing more affordable and spending money on basic services other than policing.
Ugarte’s campaign received outside support from special interest groups including Airbnb, Uber, the California Apartment Assn. and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents workers at the Department of Water and Power.
Mazariegos was supported by groups including United Teachers Los Angeles and the Progressive Era PAC. Special interest groups have spent more than $250,000 supporting his campaign.
The EU office carries out probes at Spanish rail network administrator, safety agency and state auditors.
Published On 7 Nov 20267 Nov 2026
The European Union’s public prosecutors have launched a probe into possible fraud in the financing of Spain’s rail network after a high-speed train crash killed at least 69 passengers last month.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said on Friday that it had carried out investigations at the headquarters of Spain’s railway infrastructure manager, its railway safety agency and its court of auditors to determine possible fraud in the financing of the Madrid-Seville high-speed line.
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“Today, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Madrid (Spain) is conducting investigative measures at the Administrator of Railway Infrastructure (ADIF), the State Railway Safety Agency (AESF) and the Court of Auditors in Spain,” a statement from the prosecutors said.
“This comes after the opening of an investigation into possible fraud affecting EU funds allocated to the renovation and upgrading of safety, signaling and communications systems on the Madrid-Seville high-speed railway line,” the EPPO added.
Spain’s rail infrastructure manager, Adif, confirmed the visit from the EPPO to the Reuters news agency, stating that it complied with the search and provided any requested information. The other two organisations did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The October 28 train collision in Urda, Toledo province, was the second fatal crash this year and led to the resignation of Transport Minister Oscar Puente.
The EPPO had already carried out a probe into the Spanish rail network in March, after a high-speed train crash in the Adamuz region killed 46 passengers in January.
There are no updates on this investigation, which looks into how the EU funds for track maintenance were used on the network line.
EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas expressed concern at a news briefing on Wednesday over the proximity of the two fatal accidents, calling it “very worrying” and “not something we want to see”.
Tzitzikostas also noted that Spain reached out to the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) to assist with an ongoing national investigation.
Puente resigned on Tuesday, in what he described as a “matter of political dignity”, and Adif President Luis Pedro Marco de la Pena quit the next day. Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo will fill in for Puente’s role until the elections in Spain later this month, which could be hampered and influenced by last month’s tragedy.
At the end of October, soon after the crash in Urda, survivors from three of Spain’s most fatal train crashes gathered to demand better safety procedures and larger investment into network maintenance to avoid further tragedies.
“Now we have seen three dreadful crashes in Spain, at Angrois, Adamuz and Urda. They will keep happening if we do not act,” train crash survivor Cristobal Gonzalez told Al Jazeera.
“At Angrois, the driver was going too fast; at Adamuz, an investigation said there was a problem on the track; and at Urda, it might have been human error and a problem with the control system. Whatever, we must stop these crashes happening by investing more in safety,” he added.
The Angrois accident in 2013, which killed 79 people, is Spain’s deadliest rail crash in modern times.
For more than a year, Marissa Roy has vowed to turn the Los Angeles city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm.”
Now, she has a sweeping mandate to put that plan into action.
As of Wednesday morning, Roy had nearly double the vote tally of her opponent, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, all but assuring the 34-year-old progressive will walk into City Hall in one of her jewel-toned blazers next year as Los Angeles’ chief lawyer. While the contest has not officially been called, McKinney effectively conceded the race in an interview with The Times on Wednesday.
For decades, the L.A. city attorney’s office has focused almost exclusively on prosecuting minor crimes and defending the city from increasingly expensive litigation. In an interview in May, outgoing City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto scowled when a reporter mentioned Roy’s campaign line about running the office as a “public interest law firm.”
“That’s insane,” Feldstein Soto said, days before her historic primary defeat.
But in Roy, an enthusiastic and tenacious California deputy attorney general, the city will have a proactive top litigator who’s ready to play offense. Roy has promised to take her experience from a years-long legal battle with Meta to aggressively pursue litigation against corporations and landlords for alleged misconduct that harms the average Angeleno.
Long before she announced her candidacy, Roy had begun courting public servants inside the sprawling city attorney’s office to ensure her plan passed muster.
What began as a series of informal coffees at Pitchoun! Bakery downtown quickly evolved into a network of trusted advisors, who helped shape her campaign promises and fine-tune policy proposals so they could be executed on Day One.
“There’s not a single word on my website that they haven’t reviewed first to make sure that we can implement it,” Roy said in an October interview. “It’s why sometimes I won’t take a hard line on something, because I talk to the deputies involved and they say they need discretion.”
Despite attack ads saying otherwise, Roy hasn’t vowed to block prosecution of certain misdemeanor crimes — even though she prefers diversion programs as a way to aid homeless defendants.
She’s been more direct about her plans to protect the city’s immigrant communities from potential future raids and aggressively fight the Trump administration in court when it targets Los Angeles. Given her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, Roy’s stances on litigation involving the Los Angeles Police Department could also depart from her predecessors’.
The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers spent millions against Roy. Feldstein Soto also steadfastly defended the LAPD’s widely criticized uses of force on protesters and journalists during immigration raids last year.
Roy also benefits from a deep bench of elected allies across the state, including her current boss, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, and fellow progressive city attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland. Many local supporters showed up to toast her presumptive win Tuesday night, already riding high on the blue wave that crashed across the U.S. when the first Los Angeles returns dropped around 8:20 p.m.
The event at Audio Graph Brewery in downtown L.A. had all the energy of a wedding reception, with DSA acolytes munching cookies emblazoned with Roy’s face in icing and union organizers bopping up and down to the viral Slayyyter track “Dance…” as results rolled in.
Roy is an evangelist for affirmative litigation, proactive suits of the type that forced President Trump to cede control of the California National Guard late last year after he deployed thousands of soldiers to quell protests and aid immigration enforcement across the state.
“We need someone who knows how to sue the Trump administration, who also has the relationships and can pick up the phone and call the San Francisco and San Diego city attorney,” Roy said. “We’re all part of this very tiny niche of municipalities suing the federal government. We all became experts [in those methods] together.”
Despite at times amplifying inaccurate claims that McKinney was a conservative, Roy and her opponent shared some policy planks. Both were highly critical of ballooning legal costs under Feldstein Soto, as well as her penchant for hiring outside law firms to fight the city’s battles. Both also said they wanted to revive internal programs the outgoing city attorney had scuttled, such as neighborhood prosecutors and specialized units for handing child abuse and domestic violence.
“This election is gonna go her way, and I’m just really truly grateful for the opportunity to be part of this over the last nine months,” McKinney said Wednesday morning. “I met a remarkable group of people. I learned a lot about the city, the City Attorney’s office, about city politics and I’m a better person for it. I congratulate Marissa on her victory, I wish her well.”
McKinney said he hopes Roy can “uplift that office to be the finest municipal law office in the country,” but also suggested she spend her energy on more than legal combat with business leaders or the White House.
“She’s gonna have to broaden her focus to issues related to public safety, homelessness. Obviously, we both agree that city liabilities need aggressive proactive risk management,” he said.
Meanwhile, Roy could scarcely contain her excitement as she laid out her plan to supporters chanting her name.
“I’m much more comfortable when people chant things like ‘Let’s sue it’, because that’s the work that we’re going to do,” she said.
“Let’s sue it!” the crowd cheered.
A ballot measure that would funnel more money to the Los Angeles city Fire Department by raising sales taxes by a half-cent was leading in early returns Tuesday night, along with seven other ballot measures before city voters.
“I’m humbled by the support of the voters,” said Doug Coates, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, which spearheaded the measure. “We showed up and we did what we needed to do … Thank you to the voters.”
Partial returns also showed L.A. voters turning thumbs up on a City Charter amendment that would allow the City Council to meet just once a week, instead of the thrice-weekly meetings now required.
Measure FD would increase the city’s retail sales tax from 10.25 cents to 10.75 cents per dollar spent, with all of the extra revenue going to the Fire Department. The city still would be required to fund firefighters at its normal rate, meaning the measure would add an estimated $345 million annually to the department’s budget.
Proponents of the measure include the union representing rank-and-file firefighters, who say the department is underfunded. The tax fund is needed to lower response times across the city and increase the number of firefighters, according to the union.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., a nonprofit that advocates for lower taxes, opposed the measure. The organization raised concerns that this would be the third sales tax hike since 2024, costing an average of $86 per person and $345 for a family of four in additional sales taxes each year.
It also was opposed by the union representing Los Angeles Police Department officers, which objected to limiting the revenue to one city department.
The measure that would allow the City Council to meet just once a week was included in Charter Amendment EE. Most City Council members supported it, with Councilmember Tim McOsker noting his time is better spent working in his district.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez opposed the measure, arguing that having fewer public forums is a disservice to constituents, who would have less time to meaningfully engage with their representatives. She also worried fewer meetings would mean council members would rush through deliberations.
The amendment also would make smaller changes to how the city governs, including giving more power to independent inspectors to conduct audits of the L.A. Police and Fire Departments, and increase the penalties for campaign finance violations.
The number of signatures needed for a ballot referendum also would rise, and ethics commissioners would be barred from City Council or the L.A. Unified Board of Education for five years.
The six other measures were leading by wider margins.
Proposition TE was ahead in early results. Measure ULA, also known as the “mansion tax,” imposes additional taxes on L.A. property sales above $5.4 million. Proposition TE would allow Palisades fire victims who own homes in the area to avoid the tax as long as they sell the property within five years of the disaster.
Charter Amendment LA, which aims to streamline how the city delivers basic services for infrastructure in need of repair, was leading in early results. The measure would reduce the power of the city Board of Public Works and possibly lead to eliminating it.
Charter Amendment PL took a big lead in partial early returns. The measure folds in five proposals, including to consolidate the city’s planning department, to facilitate building and opening businesses in the city.
Charter Amendment PRK, which would double the minimum amount of money earmarked for the Department of Recreation and Parks, had a big early lead in early results. If it passes, the department could receive a minimum of $986 million annually by 2036, up from the current rate that would generate $493 million by that year.
A measure that would make changes to the city’s airports, harbor and Department of Water and Power had a big lead in early results. Charter Amendment PRT would require the Los Angeles World Airport’s board of commissioners to include two members who live in Van Nuys and three who live around LAX.
Charter Amendment SC, which makes small clarifying changes to language surrounding campaign finance rules for the LAUSD Board of Education, also led in early results. Those changes would affect campaign contribution limits, filing deadlines, public disclosures and fundraising windows.
Your ballot is overflowing with decisions you need to make. Some you’ve probably heard about — Karen Bass vs. Nithya Raman for L.A. mayor, Xavier Becerra vs. Steve Hilton for California governor, the controversial billionaire tax.
But there are also some more obscure races on the L.A. County ballot that are important as well. Here are seven to keep an eye out for.
This is a rematch between rivals for the job of running the Sheriff’s Department, which also oversees county jails.
This measure deals with labor negotiations for key public safety personnel in L.A. County.
Basics
Measure A is a charter amendment that would require binding arbitration between county government and negotiators representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, lifeguards and other public safety workers if contract talks reach an impasse and no compromise can be reached. It would alter the current last step, in which county supervisors can impose a final offer that these employees must accept — by law, public safety personnel cannot strike.
Impact
The initial phase of contract talks still would have union and county representatives seeking to hammer out a mutually beneficial deal, with a presumption that both sides would negotiate in good faith. But if a gap remains and an impasse ultimately is declared, the supervisors no longer would dictate the final offer. Instead, a three-member arbitration panel would be formed. The county and union each would select one member, with the sides together choosing the third person, who would serve as chair. If they can’t agree on the final panelist, a state entity could provide a list of qualified arbitrators to choose from. The arbitrators would focus on key employment elements such as wages and hours and would hold hearings and receive evidence from the parties. At the end of the process, a binding result would be issued and made public.
Read more:
This is a highly complicated measure that involves jail financing and seeks to clean up some bureaucratic muddles.
Basics
Jails: In 2020, 57% of county voters approved Measure J. This mandated that at least 10% of locally generated, unrestricted revenue be allocated to incarceration alternatives. The problem? Voters later approved the county reform effort Measure G, which had the unintended effect of repealing Measure J. Measure E would ensure that Measure J remains in effect.
Governance: Measure G also created, among other things, a county ethics commission and an ethics compliance office. Officials determined that for true independence, the commission and the compliance office must be permanently enshrined in the county charter.
Impact
Backers say Measure E would clean up those messy governmental issues.
Voters will decide runoffs for four open judge seats:
EUFOR confirms Chinook CH-47 helicopter crash in Bosnia, with four Italian nationals confirmed dead.
Published On 30 Oct 202630 Oct 2026
Four people belonging to the European Union Force in Bosnia (EUFOR) have been killed after an Italian military helicopter conducting a training operation crashed.
EUFOR said a CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed during “routine training” in the Brcko region on Thursday, about 180km (110 miles) north of Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo.
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A total of 11 people were injured in the crash, EUFOR said, adding that all the injured are receiving treatment and are in stable condition.
The Italian government said in a statement that all those on board the military helicopter were its nationals.
The victims were two soldiers and two Red Cross volunteers, according to the Italian defence ministry.
“At this moment of immense grief, my thoughts go first and foremost to the families of our fallen, to whom I extend my personal condolences and those of the entire defence establishment,” Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said.
Bosnian media outlets published photos of the wreckage showing the helicopter overturned on the ground in a flat field.
A spokesman for Brcko hospital told the AFP news agency that there were 15 people on board at the time of the crash, which initially killed three people.
“Twelve people were transported to our hospital. Unfortunately, a fourth person succumbed to injuries in the hospital,” the spokesman said.
“EUFOR is conducting a full and thorough investigation of the incident and will release more information as it is verified, and when appropriate,” the force said in a statement.
EUFOR, which has between 1,000 and 1,500 personnel, has been deployed in Bosnia since 2004, when it replaced a NATO peacekeeping force that had been in the country since the Bosnian War ended in 1995. The mission oversees the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the three-year war.
Dolores Huerta, the fiery and resolute activist who helped launch and guide the nation’s first enduring labor union for poor farmworkers and later became an inspiration to women and liberal true believers, has died. She was 96.
Erik Olvera, a spokesman for Huerta’s family, told The Times on Wednesday that Huerta died in Bakersfield, surrounded by members of her “huge family.” The cause, he said, was cancer.
“It’s a tough time,” Olvera said. “She was incredibly beloved, and not only was she beloved, but she was an icon to so many people around the country and around the world, really. If anything, her family is clinging to memories and clinging to each other as they mourn.”
Huerta never gave up on her dream of a more equitable distribution of wealth in America, campaigning for working people for years beyond standard retirement age.
The emotional compass of the United Farm Workers of America for decades, the petitemother of 13 attained singular stature as a rule-breaking proto-feminist, godmother of the Chicano power movement and doyenne of American labor.
Huerta’s fervent crusading for the dispossessed made her the potent alter ego to her union co-founder, the soft-spoken and methodical César Chávez, though the full complexity and pathology of their relationship only became apparent late in her life.
The duo’s history took an unexpected and dark turn in March 2026, when two women came forward to say they had been sexually assaulted by Chávez when they were teenage girls, with Huerta telling the New York Times that the venerated labor leader also had twice forced sex on her, resulting in a pair of pregnancies.
Nearly 96 at the time, Huerta said she had remained silent for six decades to protect the farmworker movement. But she added: “I now understand that I am a survivor — of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”
Some wished Huerta had spoken out earlier, at least within the insular union, in order to prevent others from being victimized. But her many champions insisted the late-life revelation reflected badly only on Chávez, who for decades before his fall from grace had been an American civil rights icon and a virtual secular saint to the political left.
Some historians insist that Huerta be given full recognition for teaming with Chávez during much of the early foundational work that produced the UFW, from its founding in 1962 in the San Joaquin Valley farm town of Delano through her leave from full-time work with the union in the late 1980s.
It was Huerta who hurried from pickup truck to back stoop to pool hall, to recruit many of the union’s first members; Huerta who stormed up and down the picket lines to keep striking workers out of the fields; Huerta who helped negotiate one of the first contracts ever for farmworkers in North America; and Huerta who struggled to keep the union relevant, as its membership and clout faded. She turned the phrase “Sí, se puede!” into a chant that animated rallies and marches well into a new century.
Complications and byzantine controversies helped stymie the union in its adolescence, with Huerta usually supporting Chávez, even as he became distracted from the union’s central work and demanded absolute power. Their obsession with loyalty and often-imagined conspiracies ended with purges of some of the UFW’s most dynamic leaders and organizing stagnation, even as field hands continued to labor under abysmal conditions.
Huerta later devoted much of her time to women’s rights, Democratic Party politics and community organizing.
In 1999, the 69-year-old great-grandmother helped obtain extra government benefits for workers who lost their jobs in a citrus freeze and stared across the contract bargaining table at lawyers for the giant Gallo wine company. Even late in life she still toured the nation as a public speaker and used her foundation to register voters and campaign for progressive causes. Liberal groups clamored to have Huerta at the front of their marches. Often sporting a jaunt red beret, she locked arms with activists one-quarter her age.
Her Dolores C. Huerta Foundation supported endeavors as diverse as a performing arts camp for children, higher education mentoring for high school students and food distribution to victims of floods that inundated the Central Valley in 2023. The foundation became something of a family business — headed by her daughter, Camila Chávez, and supported by legal advice from her son, Emilio Huerta, while four other relatives served on the board.
In another step to cement Huerta’s legacy, one of her nonprofits broke ground in 2025 for the Dolores Huerta Peace & Justice Cultural Center in Bakersfield, the San Joaquin Valley city she called home. The $35-million project, paid for largely by the state of California, will include an academy to teach future generations how to become community organizers. “They are the ones who are going to guide us forward,” the 95-year-old told a crowd, which stood under a scorching sun for the groundbreaking.
Through it all, Huerta insisted her primary loyalty remained la causa — the struggle to win better wages, working and living conditions for poor people, particularly farmworkers.
Beginning with the early organizing days in the 1960s, Huerta inspired passions almost as intense as her own. She won almost breathless admiration from followers for the way she faced down sometimes violent anti-union forces, worked for days with little rest and negotiated late into the night, while others faded. She alienated others with a waspish temper, an unwillingness to forgive even small slights and inattention to some of the details that make a union work.
To the union faithful, she was the “Madonna of the Fields.” Some said Huerta reminded them of the soldaderas, a handful of women warriors who followed Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa into battle during the Mexican Revolution. The growers, whom she almost always scorned, had another name for her: “the dragon lady.”
A woman of frenetic energy who lived in a world of myriad contradictions, Huerta was one of the only women in many board rooms and union halls full of men. She was a jet-setting, president-schmoozing pragmatist, who in unguarded moments spoke mystically about her two youthful encounters with UFOs. She was the devout Catholic who had the last four of her children with a man she never married, Richard Chávez, Cesar’s younger brother. (Only in 2026 did she acknowledge having two other daughters, given to others to raise, fathered by César Chávez.)
Her relationship with Cesar Chávez was as complex as it was volatile — a fact acknowleged by UFW regulars long before Huerta’s charges about his sexual misconduct.
The two met through their work for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a progressive group that sought better government services and equal rights for poor and minority people. Both were called to the cause by the organization’s founder Fred Ross Sr. — Huerta in Stockton and Chávez in San Jose — and later united over their common concern for farmworkers. But even when he became statewide leader of the CSO, Chávez could not persuade the group to focus its energies on organizing field workers.
It was 1961 and Chávez was living in East Los Angeles when he called Huerta to his home one day and said, “We have got to start the union. If we don’t do it, nobody else will,” Huerta once recalled. He left the CSO, and Huerta followed.
Both soon moved their families to the Kern County farm town of Delano. Chávez relied on Huerta for nearly everything. When she wasn’t going door-to-door to recruit new members, Huerta negotiated with growers and created union hiring halls. She formed farmworker ranch committees and moved to the East Coast for months to promote the union’s national grape boycott.
But Chávez and his right hand also clashed routinely during their decades-long collaboration. The two would explode in shouting matches over strategy, while other union leaders shrank from the room. In audio recordings of one 1979 confrontation reviewed by the New York Times, Huerta fought back and demanded respect as Chávez called her a “stupid bitch” and accused her of stealing. Huerta might quit, or be fired. Inevitably, she would be back in the fold within a few days or weeks.
“Their commitment to the cause trumped all else and grew into a mutual dependence that survived decades of discord,” wrote Miriam Pawel, a former Los Angeles Times editor, in the biography “The Crusades of Cesar Chávez.” Asked by ABC News if she tried to protect Chávez, Huerta replied, “Always. Always.”
During a wine grape strike in the Central Valley, Huerta and other UFW women once locked arms in a human blockade between the union’s male picketers and replacement workers wielding two-by-fours. She blocked one worker’s car with her own, to prevent him from going to work and breaking a 1965 strike against rose growers in McFarland.
Chávez never doubted Huerta’s resolve. He once called her “totally fearless, both mentally and physically.”
Her years of community organizing in Stockton taught Huerta how to inspire even the most humble of her poor constituents.
In the union’s founding days, Huerta helped recruit a 19-year-old grape picker named Eliseo Medina to perform a one-man picket at the Port of Los Angeles — supposedly to stop the loading of a shipment of non-union grapes. The grapes never materialized. But Medina recalled how Huerta’s spirit and determination galvanized him.
“Dolores had a gift for making you believe in yourself,” Medina said. “She has an ability to inspire you and urge you to do things you could not think were possible. She is one of those life-changers.”
An Echo Park mural features Dolores Huerta alongside artist Frida Kahlo.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Medina left the Chávez-Huerta led union, believing it had strayed from its core work. He went on to become the international secretary treasurer of the more than 2-million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — just one of many UFW acolytes who fueled the labor movement as it staged a modest resurgence in the 21st century.
Huerta was at the center of many of the union’s landmark achievements, including the negotiation of a contract in 1966 with the Schenley Wine Co. It was the first labor agreement obtained by farmworkers themselves with an agricultural company, according to the union’s history.
But the UFW’s fortunes would rise and fall. One low ebb came in 1973 with the loss of many contracts to the Teamsters Union, which struck sweetheart deals with growers. But some union insiders also complained that the UFW had failed by not winning enough concessions for the workers it represented. The union’s membership plummeted.
Two years later, momentum swung again, as the union helped persuade California Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. to impose the toughest farm labor regulations in the nation.
The union’s membership would spiral downward until Chávez’s death, at 66, in 1993. There was a sense among many insiders that the union became overly insular, with repeated purges designed to promote absolute fealty to Chávez.
In one incident, students graduating from English classes at the union’s headquarters, La Paz, ended a slide show with the words: “The Union is not César Chávez, the Union is not La Paz, the Union is the farmworkers.” Huerta, fuming, demanded to know which of the teachers had planted this message, which she viewed as an act of treason against Chávez — an episode detailed by one of the teachers, Jeffrey W. Rubin, who went on to become a history professor at Boston University.
“Confronted there by Huerta, Richard Chavez, and Cesar Chavez himself, we were accused of being part of a subversive plot, railed at, called ‘chicken s—’ by Cesar, and thrown out of La Paz and the union,” wrote Rubin, who kept the episode quiet for years.
At the same time, the UFW lost contracts and sometimes failed to provide the benefits it promised to workers. Huerta was one of many union leaders unable to set Chávez, and the UFW, on a better path.
Dolores Huerta at rosary, standing next to the body of labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) at rest in the pine coffin in Delano, Calif., on Wednesday, April 28, 1993.
(Jose Galvez/Los Angeles Times)
As Chávez’ son-in-law Arturo Rodriguez took control of the union in 1993 and began clawing to regain members and clout, Huerta remained the UFW’s most public persona.
At hundreds of marches across the nation that she attended with regularity throughout her life, parents would push forward, telling their children they were witnessing a historic figure. Asked for an autograph, she would boldly scrawl: “Sí, se puede.”
The phrase — “Yes, it can be done” — had been part of the union’s fabric since 1972, when some doubters suggested the union would fail in its campaign against an anti-union law in Arizona. Huerta responded, “Sí, se puede,” creating a mantra for the American left.
Born April 10, 1930, in Dawson, a small mining town in the mountains of northern New Mexico, Dolores Clara Fernandez moved to Stockton when she was 3, along with her mother, two brothers and two sisters. Her father and mother had divorced, but Juan Fernandez’s legend had been fixed — a brawling union leader and New Mexico state legislator. Her mother, a hotel operator, believed in public service and would not let the poorest guests go hungry.
Dolores thrived on a middle-class upbringing of Girl Scouts, violin lessons and tap dancing, describing her mother’s generosity as a guiding force. She was bright and popular and even founded a teen center where she and other kids hung out.
But Dolores would recall her high school years as a time of slights and rewards not received — injustices she linked to her Mexican American heritage. When police ordered her teen center shut down, it became clear it was because they did not like whites socializing with Mexican American, Black and Filipino kids.
Those setbacks would not be forgotten.
Dolores Huerta in Santa Fe, N.M., in 2019.
(Associated Press)
After community college in Stockton, Huerta became a teacher. But she left after just a year, because, she said: “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children.”
Soon she met Ross and Chávez and her life’s path would be set. Even her name seemed to brand her for the work. When she divorced her second husband, Chávez advised her to hold on to her last name. Dolores Huerta means Sorrows of the Orchard.
Along the way, there would be great personal heartache.
In 1968, she was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot. The Democratic presidential front-runner had just finished his California primary victory speech — thanking Chávez and Huerta — when an assassin gunned him down.
Twenty years later, her politics thrust Huerta even more directly in the path of violence. A television camera captured the images of a San Francisco police officer clubbing her as she and others peacefully picketed an appearance by Vice President George H.W. Bush. The blows ruptured Huerta’s spleen and nearly killed her.
She later won an $850,000 settlement from the city for the attack. Some in the union said that Chávez‘s insistence that Huerta give the money up to the UFW created another rift that caused her to leave the union.
Huerta would struggle, as well, to find time for her expansive family — which in the end included 13 children, counting the two fathered by César Chávez.
Among her greatest heartaches grew out of the struggles of her oldest daughter, Celeste, a schizophrenic who, on occasion, would leave the institutions where she lived and wander the streets.
Huerta’s union zealotry would inspire a range of emotions from her other children.
“We understood very quickly she wasn’t ours to have,” said son Emilio, the lawyer, a Central Valley activist.“She sort of belonged to the farmworker movement. And it was our job to support her.”
He and several other of the Huerta offspring devoted their lives to the UFW and related causes, basking in a sense that their family played a part in history. That did not always make up for the personal slights — the times their mother would fob them off on union allies or neighbors, or miss a birthday.
In a bittersweet essay, Dolores’ daughter Juanita once recalled how her mother forgot to pick her up from junior high school. She compared Huerta to a train “rattling all the windows behind me, blaring out its horn, announcing its simultaneous arrival and departure with an incredible clamor, but rushing constantly forward.”
At a 69th birthday party in 1999, Huerta told a large dinner gathering that her own sacrifices had been overblown.
“It was our families who sacrificed,” she said. She then told a story about driving a carload of children to school one day in an automobile limping along because a tire had been slashed by union opponents. “That,” she said, “was kind of how we made it through life.”
Approaching her 90th birthday in 2020, Huerta spent a day that might have been more typical for someone half her age. She protested at the Fresno County Board of Supervisors for increased pay for home healthcare workers, who made just $12 an hour. Huerta hadn’t planned on being arrested that day, but when she felt police used excessive force on one of the protest leaders, she changed her mind. Take me too, she said, according to USA Today. Officers cinched a plastic zip-tie around her wrists and led her away.
More typically in her later years, she supported her foundation. In one moment, she might be campaigning for a bond measure for a middle school gym in the poor San Joaquin Valley community of Weedpatch; in seemingly the next, she would be stumping via Zoom for Joe Biden, during his fight to take the White House from President Trump.
In 2020, USA Today named Huerta one of the 100 women “who’ve made a substantial impact on our country or our lives over the past 100 years.” By then, at least half a dozen schools across America bore her name. Others considered taking her name after they removed Chávez’s following the sexual abuse revelations.
President Obama presented Huerta with the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2012; the one-time community organizer, who made his way to the White House, honoring a woman still doing the work.
“The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized and took direct action,” Huerta said in accepting the honor. “It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today.”
Olvera, the family spokesman, said Wednesday that Huerta’s relatives would be announcing the details of a public memorial in the coming days.
Voters in the Northern California city of Vallejo passed a ballot measure adopting binding arbitration with its public employee unions more than 50 years ago, following a bitter police strike.
The goal was labor peace. Under binding arbitration, an independent referee is brought in when negotiators hit an impasse. The final decision on wages, benefits and working conditions is taken out of the hands of the local elected officials and placed squarely with the arbitrator.
With Measure A on the Nov. 3 ballot, Los Angeles County voters have a chance to do much the same thing here.
The measure is being pushed by unions representing county firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and other public safety employees who by law cannot go out on strike, and who say binding arbitration adds balance to the negotiation process by taking away the unilateral authority held by the county Board of Supervisors.
No formal opposition to Measure A has been submitted. But in his summary of the potential impact this year, county chief executive Joe Nicchita shared news stories showing how binding arbitration has played out in other jurisdictions, including Vallejo.
In 2007, a mediator determined that despite fiscal travails, Vallejo couldn’t reduce the size of its fire department. Eight months later, with little budgetary wiggle room, the city declared bankruptcy.
Vallejo had been the first California municipality to adopt binding arbitration. In 2010, the voters decided to ditch it.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell voiced concerns about Measure A when the board discussed placing it on the ballot this year.
“Arbitrators aren’t elected,” she said. “They’re not required to weigh countywide trade-offs like homeless services, like healthcare, capital improvements, all those things.”
The board voted 4-0 to place binding arbitration on the Nov. 3 ballot, with Mitchell abstaining. Supporters say there are sufficient protections to prevent the county from experiencing the financial tribulations that Vallejo and other cities suffered in part because of binding arbitration.
“This process opens up the books, allows the parties to come together and base decisions on facts rather than political preferences, and it also shows whether there are actually resources to meet the demands that are coming,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, an architect of the measure, said in an interview.
Horvath previously noted that just six of the 21 jurisdictions in California that have instituted binding arbitration, including two counties, have had to resort to it.
If a majority of county voters approves Charter Amendment A, it will cover 14 bargaining units representing some 16,500 county workers, among them lifeguards and deputy medical examiners. It would not apply to bargaining units whose workers can strike.
In the current system, if the sides are unable to reach an agreement, the supervisors can impose a final offer that the unions must accept. While contract negotiations are frequently contentious, historically the supervisors mandating final terms is rare; The Times previously reported that it has happened only twice since 2001.
Under the proposed measure, contract negotiations would begin as they do now, with the presumption that both sides bargain in good faith. However, if agreement proves impossible and an impasse is declared, a three-member arbitration panel would take over.
In that case, the county and the union each would select one member, with the sides together choosing the third person, who would serve as the panel’s chair. The arbitrators would hold hearings and weigh evidence related to employment elements such as wages and hours. In the end, the binding ruling would be made public.
Derek Hsieh, executive director of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, said the current process began with a group of labor unions launching a signature-gathering drive to put binding arbitration before voters. That led to working with the supervisors and the county chief executive, who, Hsieh said, wanted to ensure there were certain safeguards.
Hsieh said binding arbitration would represent an important and balanced change.
“Currently, the employer has near unilateral control over what the contract provisions are,” he said.
He added that the threat of going before arbitrators would spur both county and union negotiators to reach an agreement before someone else takes over, and that it would prevent either side from pushing a “wild proposal” that arbitrators would quickly reject.
Dave Gillotte, president of the International Assn. of Firefighters Local 1014, which represents more than 3,000 L.A. County Fire Department employees, agrees that the very threat of winding up in binding arbitration would encourage negotiating teams to cut a deal.
“Binding arbitration really brings about leverage to move both parties to work hard to get a contract done, where we don’t have that now,” Gillotte said.
The practice of using binding arbitration to resolve union and government disputes has been around for decades.
“These are routine laws that are part of the labor relations framework,” said Justin McBride of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
The strong union support for binding arbitration would seem to suggest that the process favors organized labor over elected local governments. McBride said academic studies don’t support that premise, and that neither side overwhelmingly comes out on top.
He pointed to a 2010 study from Cornell University that examined decades of negotiation outcomes in New York. One finding was that after a few years, the number of cases that wound up in arbitration declined, indicating that the sides learned to work together.
“Everyone gets a deal, and just like in a lot of contracts maybe both parties aren’t 100% with it, but that’s kind of the nature of collective bargaining,” McBride said.
Still, there have been instances in which decisions by independent arbitrators contributed to a municipality’s economic challenges, and elected officials were unable to unwind the rulings.
In her interview with The Times, Horvath said arbitrators would be expected to make decisions that consider the county’s fiscal situation.
“That’s what this is designed to do,” she said.
While no formal opponents to Measure A are listed on the ballot, some progressive groups aren’t on board. The voter guides for community organization L.A. Forward and prison abolition proponents La Defensa both urge a “no” vote. The inclusion of the Sheriff’s Department influenced that decision.
“We believe law enforcement special interest groups should not be treated as labor or given more leverage in negotiations,” La Defensa wrote in its guide. “More money and more power for the Sheriff’s Department is the crux of our opposition. By bundling deputies with firefighters and lifeguards, Measure A weaponizes a process we would otherwise support.”
Labor unions and other supporters are digging deep. The unions representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and other employee groups reported raising $7.7 million through mid-October to campaign in favor of Measure A, according to financial disclosure reports.
No campaign funds have been reported in opposition to Measure A.
The first minister of Wales says his nation deserves a new deal from the United Kingdom. Rhun ap Iorwerth says its relationship with the UK is not working because the union is not one of equals. That is why he is pushing for an agreement that will fix what he calls “historic unfairness”.
In a letter to the British prime minister, the Welsh first minister has formally requested the transfer of more power to Wales to allow it to control its policing, justice system, rail network and natural resources. His centre-left Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, came to power in May, ending more than a century of Labour Party dominance in Wales. Just four months into his term, he signed a pact with Scotland and Northern Ireland declaring their right to self-determination, and warning the British Parliament that its time is coming to an end.
He insists that the agreement is not meant to tear down the UK but rather to allow the Welsh government to decide its own future. He says Wales is on the journey towards independence. But he will not push for a referendum this parliament.
Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026
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MILWAUKEE — It was an evening for pomp and pageantry, for celebrating a World Series between two of the five major league teams never to win one. But, before the first pitch of the first game, the commissioner of baseball and the head of the players’ union held separate media gatherings that only served to reinforce the notion that a lockout in December is a virtual certainty and Opening Day next March is in serious jeopardy.
Of all the major North American sports, baseball is the only one without a salary cap. The players and their union vow to keep it that way, and union chief Bruce Meyer said every proposal the owners make on every issue is contingent upon a salary cap. How, someone asked commissioner Rob Manfred, can the owners strike a deal if the union is entrenched against a cap?
“Re-thinking where you are is a really important part of trying to make a deal,” Manfred said. “It’s actually a skill in collective bargaining. It’s easy to say, ‘I’m here and I’m never moving.’ That’s not a particularly skilled approach to the process.”
That is perilously close to telling the other guy at the negotiating table how to negotiate. It’s also something you might say when you’re feeling pretty darn good that you’re going to win the negotiation.
“We have an unprecedented level of unanimity among ownership that it is something that we need to do,” Manfred said.
He wouldn’t say otherwise at this point, of course. The owners were unified in 1994, when they last demanded a salary cap. They didn’t win, and fans lost the final two months of the 1994 season and the first month of the 1995 season.
When the NHL got its salary cap, owners shut down the league for a full year. Would MLB owners forgo a year — or at least several months — of ticket sales and media revenue to get their cap? Would MLB players forgo a year — or at least several months — of their salaries to stave off a cap?
We won’t know the answer to either question until the spring, and until then a new collective bargaining agreement would require one side or the other to abandon its position.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred speaks with the media before Game 1 of the World Series in Milwaukee on Friday.
(John Fisher / Getty Images)
That makes this year’s World Series something of a Rorschach test: Is a Brewers-Rays series proof that the system actually works just fine the way it is?
To Manfred, the answer is no. A series featuring two of baseball’s smaller markets is an anomaly when history shows a correlation between payroll and success, not only in the regular season but in advancing through the playoffs.
“It’s not that no small market can win,” Manfred said. “It’s just that it’s pretty rare.”
To Meyer, the answer is yes.
“It has nothing to do with what the Dodgers are doing,” Meyer said. “There is no reason whatsoever that the Pirates can’t do what the Brewers have done, or what the Rays have done.”
The Pirates, Meyer said, do not spend all the money they are allotted to sign draft picks. The Brewers, playing in baseball’s smallest market, might not routinely hand out free-agent riches, but owner Mark Attanasio said his team ranks “right in the middle” of the 30 teams in spending on baseball operations.
Attanasio publicly stumped for a salary cap here Friday, saying it would “help us compete but more importantly all of the other teams with lower payrolls too.” He said Brewers fans already fear it might take another 44 years to return to the World Series.
Said Meyer: “That doesn’t seem like a great way, with all due respect, to try and generate excitement among your fans.”
Meyer said this year’s series “undermines their argument” for what he called “the nuclear bomb of a salary cap.” He said the owners are uninterested in the union’s proposals for addressing competitive balance, including increased revenue sharing among owners and a tax against teams that fail to win consistently, and he alleged the league’s argument is “a charade” for what the owners really want: “to suppress salaries and gut player rights.”
The takeaway: Don’t book non-refundable airline tickets and hotel rooms for spring training.
On other topics:
— As The Times has reported, MLB is keeping an eye on federal investigations into Dodgers owner Mark Walter and his insurance empire, which is under scrutiny for allegedly violating laws designed to protect investors. Walter also is a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits filed by investors alleging fraud and breach of contract.
“As always when we have an investigation — external, law enforcement, whatever — we monitor that,” Manfred said. “That’s where we are right now. We’re just watching what’s going on right now.”
Over the past two months, amid efforts to find what could be more than $20 billion to recapitalize insurance funds, Walter has sold his controlling interest in the Lakers and a minority share of Chelsea, the English Premier League club. On Friday, Bloomberg reported he is seeking to sell the Sparks. He has no plan to sell the Dodgers, team president Stan Kasten has said.
— Meyer said the MLBPA continues negotiations with LA28 over how major league players would be accommodated in the 2028 Olympics. “As of now, we’re not getting satisfaction on those things,” Meyer said.
Both the league and the union say they want to participate in the Games, but Manfred said MLB would normally start preparing its 2028 schedule early in 2027. The league has agreed to an extended All-Star break to accommodate the Olympics, but MLB also could tire of waiting for the union to agree with LA28, which badly wants MLB players to participate.
Catapult Books, an indie publisher that has supported authors across Southern California and beyond, has been sold.
Launched by Elizabeth Koch and Andy Hunter more than a decade ago, the independent publisher will shutter operations in just over a week, per Publisher’s Weekly, which spoke with members of the publisher’s union. The Catapult Workers Collective said the company’s sale included the assets only and that the union was notified their employment would not be rolled over to the new buyer.
According to union reps, the publisher announced plans to sell the business while staff were in the midst of a union vote. The union, which includes roughly 20 staff members across various publishing departments, told the outlet that they had filed for an election earlier in the year seeking better pay, job stability, and clearer communication from executives.
The union is now hashing out a severance package, according to Publisher’s Weekly, and it’s unclear what will happen to the 16 upcoming book titles scheduled through spring 2027.
“Catapult is intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature. So many of their writers are in this area,” Gina Frangello told The Times on Thursday. The author penned “Blow Your House Down,” published by Counterpoint Press, an imprint of Catapult.
“It’s a huge loss for L.A.,” she said. “It’s a huge loss for the West Coast.”
Frangello has been publishing books for more than 20 years, and she said she’d never had the intimate publishing experience she had with Counterpoint, specifically with Dan Smetanka. The editorial director and senior vice president of Catapult is widely known in literary circles for his meticulous and thoughtful approach to editing and for his support of the authors he works with.
“As someone who has been in indie publishing culture since the ’90s, Catapult was a holdout of an old world,” Frangello said. “Dan ran things the way they used to, in the storied, fabled days of publishing before everything went corporate.”
Susan Straight, author of “Sacrament” and winner of the L.A. Times Book Prizes’ Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, emailed The Times a missive on the Catapult news. She wrote that on Wednesday she attended the grand opening of Barnes & Noble’s new location in Ontario, “where more than a hundred readers were lined up outside, some having brought chairs to wait.”
“We keep hearing that Americans aren’t reading — for two hours I saw people of all ages browsing, buying books, and talking to each other,” she continued. “About fifty people came and talked to me, and bought copies ‘In the Country of Women,’ my memoir published by Catapult, and ‘Sacrament,’ my latest novel, published by Counterpoint. Both are indelibly So Cal Books, filled with Fontana, East Hollywood, Santa Ana, Los Feliz, and San Bernardino, and the readers were from all these places. …
“I lit a veladora last night, the Virgen de Guadalupe, set it next to a bouquet of California sage from my yard, because I’m a So Cal native, and whatever happens, I wanted to thank the universe for the editors like Dan Smetanka who’ve brought our stories to the rest of the world.
“Wednesday morning, I spent time talking about narrative with nurses, teachers, students, mothers, and nascent writers from all over So Cal. Americans are still reading — I see it every day in my community, which needs books by presses like Counterpoint and Catapult.”
Since Catapult’s debut in 2015, the indie outfit and its authors have been a force on the awards circuit, landing the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award in Literature, a PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, the Maine Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Meredith Maran, the author of more than a dozen books including a novel published by Counterpoint in 2012, “A Theory of Small Earthquakes,” also mourned the publisher in a note to The Times, writing, “Counterpoint, its imprints, and its beating heart, Dan Smetanka, have been (I cannot bring myself to say ‘were’) the stuff of legends. True legends. I’ve published books with all of the big 5 houses and comparing those experiences to the Counterpoint experience, the Dan experience, is like comparing an AI-generated metaphor, to, well, this one. Counterpoint humanized publishing, revered its authors, honored and will live on in its books.”
Over the last decade, Catapult included a publishing imprint, digital magazine, and courses for budding and established writers. (The latter two were nixed in 2023.) In 2016, it merged with Counterpoint Press, which brought into the fold its own imprint, Soft Skull Press. Last fall, Catapult also acquired Hawthorne Books. In 2023, Catapult Chief Executive Koch — the daughter of billionaire industrialist and businessman Charles Koch — launched another pet project in 2021, Unlikely Collaborators, a nonprofit storytelling and experiential organization.
Bestselling author Tod Goldberg, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction this year for his novel “Only Way Out,” posted a tribute to the publisher on social media Wednesday night, crediting Smetanka and Counterpoint with taking a chance on “a book others wouldn’t touch” and with that book’s subsequent success, which changed Goldberg’s life.
“Since their founding, Counterpoint has published books that matter, has taken chances on authors and topics that others wouldn’t, and have been celebrated for this strident independence with wide critical acclaim and commercial success. From their roots in the Bay Area — where they published the likes of Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Anne Lamott, Mary Robison early on — to their move south into Los Angeles, where they took on writers like myself, Natashia Deon, Karen Bender, Gina Frangello, Elizabeth Crane, Ben Ehrenreich, Dana Johnson, Vanessa Hua, Joan Silber, to name just a few, plus the late Eve Babitz.”
“Counterpoint took big risks and found big rewards. I’m confident that whomever the buyer is (and I’ve not been told, so y’all can stop texting me…) will keep these great writers in print while also continuing to publish new work from them, but what’s lost here is not merely a publishing house, but a culture of excellence, of risk taking, plus a dash of punk rock.”
The new strategy shifts the bloc’s focus from long-term climate concerns to urgent security measures.
Published On 20 Oct 202620 Oct 2026
The European Commission has unveiled a new Arctic strategy for the European Union that lists security and resilience first among four priorities, alongside climate change, economic prosperity and opportunities for Arctic communities.
The strategy calls for a new maritime security hub to help member states and partners share information and monitor maritime activity in the Arctic, the Commission said on Tuesday.
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The hub would later expand to track shadow fleet vessels, detect illegal fishing and pollution, and improve search and rescue coordination.
The Commission also said the EU will work to expand European icebreaker capacity. Icebreakers are specialised vessels designed to navigate ice-covered waters by breaking up sea ice and maintaining safe shipping routes.
“The Arctic is one place where the tectonic plates of geopolitics are colliding,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, adding that sovereignty and territorial integrity can no longer be taken for granted.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russia is expanding its military footprint in the high north, citing drone incursions, GPS jamming and cable sabotage, the AFP news agency reported.
Several measures appear aimed at reducing dependence on the United States. The Commission said the EU will back a strategic pan-Arctic fibre-optic telecommunications cable project linking Greenland directly to Europe. It is part of a wider plan that would also connect Canada, Japan and South Korea.
The EU will also provide secure satellite connectivity for government communications through the IRIS² constellation, a constellation AFP said is meant to rival US tech mogul Elon Musk’s Starlink.
The shift follows US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands to take control of Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory. Although his tone has softened this year, with a security deal signed with Greenland and Denmark, many in Europe remain wary, AFP said.
The strategy follows last month’s meeting of leaders from 12 countries, including Germany, France, Finland and Denmark. Member states urged the EU to take a more strategic and proactive role, according to a joint statement.
Participants identified Russia as the largest threat while noting the ambitions of China and the US.
At the meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the era of “high north, low attention” was over. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo called Russia the most significant long-term threat and said the EU must treat the Arctic as a strategic frontier.
The Commission reiterated the EU’s position remains that oil, coal and gas should stay in the ground, including in the Arctic.
To combat increasing climate concerns, the Commission pledged to “strengthen climate research, observation and monitoring to better understand these changes and support effective responses”, while working in tandem with the people who live and work in the Arctic.
It’s been nearly 40 years since the dread-filled tones of the “Unsolved Mysteries” theme song first hit network TV airwaves.
In that time, the celebrated documentary series has been through nearly every iteration of the TV business — and is about to embark on a new one.
Next week, “Unsolved Mysteries” will launch a video podcast in partnership with the audio and entertainment firm Audacy. The weekly podcast, which will be available on YouTube and on all podcast platforms, will release new episodes starting Oct. 29 that explore cases such as mysterious deaths and unexplained disappearances.
The podcast will be hosted by actor and TV host Jordan Murphy and will include interviews with the people involved in the case, “Unsolved Mysteries” co-creator Terry Dunn Meurer told me in a recent interview.
“We’re still trying to expand the brand and pivot,” she said. “It just feels like that’s where the industry is heading. The YouTube audience is the biggest audience out there, and we are looking for the biggest audience because we’re trying to help solve these cases. So the more viewers we can get with these episodes, the better.”
Samantha Masunaga delivers the latest news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production — and what it all means for the future.
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“Unsolved Mysteries” isn’t the only Hollywood player to bet on video podcasts. Spotify has bet big on video podcasts, and Netflix has added them to its platform, both of which are attempts to compete with YouTube, diversify their offerings and keep consumers tuned in.
For “Unsolved Mysteries,” the move is just the latest way the show has tried to evolve with the TV industry’s ups and downs.
The show debuted in 1987 as a series of specials NBC used to fill holes in its lineup, Dunn Meurer said. That kind of pinch-hitting meant there was no marketing or publicity to get audiences excited about the show, but viewers started tuning in anyway.
Eventually, the specials became a weekly show that aired on NBC for nine seasons before moving to CBS. “Unsolved Mysteries” also had a syndication run on cable channels Lifetime and Spike TV.
Throughout its TV lifetime, the show would highlight stories of mysterious disappearances, escaped fugitives, lost connections and even the occasional paranormal story. “Unsolved Mysteries” made appeals to viewers, urging them that someone out there “knows the truth” and encouraged them to write in with tips or new suggestions for investigation, which has resulted in tens of thousands of submissions over the years.
More recently, “Unsolved Mysteries” was revived on Netflix for three seasons, with a format focused on a single story. The series also previously had an audio-only podcast.
In addition to the video podcast, “Unsolved Mysteries” also recently produced a full-length documentary on new evidence surrounding the so-called Tylenol Killer, a 1982 case in which seven people died after unknowingly taking cyanide-filled pill capsules.
Though the method of delivery has changed, Dunn Meurer said the show’s mission remains the same. Over the years, the series has helped to directly solve more than 260 cases, she said, though many are so-called lost love cases of missed connections, as well as fugitive whereabouts and some murders.
“There’s so many mysteries out there that need attention, cases that have gone cold,” she said. “For me personally, it’s hard to not keep putting those stories out there and helping these families and law enforcement that need the help to solve these cases.”
In notable media news, the TikTok ad account for Bleecker Street’s documentary “Musk” was “permanently suspended” Friday, the day the film opened nationwide, a spokesperson for the indie studio confirmed.
But on Sunday, a spokesperson for TikTok said the account was restored “after an error.”
The documentary, directed by Alex Gibney, follows billionaire Elon Musk and the effect he has had on politics and his support for the GOP and President Trump.
The ban raised suspicions in Hollywood as TikTok is now partially owned by Oracle, which was co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison. Ellison, who still serves as executive chairman of the tech company, is briefly mentioned in the documentary when he offers to help Musk finance his acquisition of Twitter, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The documentary will make its streaming debut on HBO Max, which is owned by Ellison’s son, David.
In its second weekend in theaters, “Musk” grossed about $306,700 across 472 screens in the U.S. and Canada, for a $650 per-screen average. The film has notched a 97% critics rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
A24’s “You Can See Everything” brought in $15 million at the domestic box office over the weekend, a huge feat for the nearly three-hour documentary that delves into the life of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes shortly before she reported to federal prison for defrauding investors.
The documentary, directed by deadpan comic Nathan Fielder and “Primetime” filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, got a ton of buzz after its surprise debut at the Telluride Film Festival last month. The $15-million opening is even more impressive given that it was available only on 855 screens.
That was good enough for second place at the weekend box office. In first was Skydance-owned Paramount Pictures’ “Street Fighter,” which scored $31 million domestically for a worldwide gross of $51.1 million.
During a busy (news) week like last week, sometimes you just need a comfort watch. For me, that’s HGTV.
There’s nothing more calming than watching people try to redo their houses into the home of their dreams. But because it’s spooky season, I ended up watching “Scariest House in America,” a hilarious home makeover competition hosted by “Parks and Recreation” comedian Retta, where homeowners show off their creepy, strange or wildly dilapidated houses in hopes of winning a renovation. After watching the travails of people who chose to live in a former jail or a self-constructed giant gingerbread house with a rickety single-person elevator, I was oddly soothed.
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans took to the streets for separate demonstrations putting pressure on governments across the EU.
Published On 17 Oct 202617 Oct 2026
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans have taken to the streets in separate, uncoordinated demonstrations to protest against the rising cost of living in their countries.
Saturday’s protests were in Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal in a wave of unrest that has put pressure on national governments across the European Union.
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France experienced one of its most turbulent days of protests in decades, with over 550,000 people joining demonstrations and police facing off with protesters across the country – but it was not the only country to see significant demonstrations.
In Belgium’s capital Brussels – which has already seen weeks of protests by students against university registration fees – police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters, who they accused of launching missiles at them and setting fires.
In Liege, a smaller city east of Brussels, police also deployed water cannon to break up demonstrations. Police did not say how many people attended.
An estimated tens of thousands of protesters marched in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, against the cost of living crisis, low wages and an inability to access housing in major cities. House prices in Portugal have more than doubled since 2017, while rents for new leases have increased nearly as much.
Portuguese Parliamentary Affairs Minister Carlos Abreu Amorim said on Friday that the “government will not yield to shouts from the street”.Protesters said their leaders are “out of touch” with the problem.
In Milan and Bologna, Italian police reported that, alongside peaceful cost of living rallies, protesters threw stones and clashed with officers.
Italian media reported several injuries and arrests.
![Demonstrators sit amid 40 tents set up to protest against housing shortage, soaring rents and low wages on Rossio square in central Lisbon on October 17, 2026. Thousands of people marched on October 17, 2026 through the centre of Lisbon at the call of the CGTP trade union to protest against increasingly difficult living conditions. The slogans and demands focus mainly on higher wages and pensions, as well as protests against the rising cost of housing and fuel. [Filipe Amorim/AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AFP__20261017__D3LK2MC__v1__HighRes__PortugalPoliticsHousingDemo-1792267175.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
None of the protests reached the same scale as the nationwide rallies in France but they may be a sign of spilling over into other European nations, according to Alberto Alemanno, Professor of EU Law & Policy at HEC Paris business school.
“France is the epicentre of this movement … and there are signs now that this is spreading beyond France,” Alemanno told Al Jazeera.
He said Saturday’s protests may not be the last in many of these countries and new hotspots could emerge.
In Greece, Germany, and Austria, the “early stages” of a movement is emerging, with mobilisation expected “in the coming week”, he said.
They are not a single movement, he explained, but several protests happening at the same time, with some “shared grievances”: underfunded education, rising costs and, for students, uncertain prospects after graduation.
The unrest comes at a crucial time for Europe, as the continent prepares for what Alemanno called an “unprecedented super-cycle of national elections” in the coming 12 months, with votes scheduled in Spain, France, Italy and Poland.
“Inevitably, all these protests, all these mobilisations, are going to be at the centre of the political conversation,” Alemanno said.
![Riot police uses a water cannon against demonstrators in Brussels during a youth protest [Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/afp_6ad3d52b2c56-1792267563.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)