President Trump’s choice of Dr. Casey Means, a Los Angeles holistic medicine doctor and wellness influencer, as his nominee for surgeon general appears to mark another attempt to defy establishment medicine and longstanding federal policy.

Trump portrayed Means — a 37-year-old Stanford medical school graduate and author who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “former surgeon turned metabolic health evangelist” — in his announcement as fully in sync with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mission to “Make America Healthy Again.”

“Casey has impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social.

But some who know Means question whether she is completely aligned with Kennedy.

Robert Lustig, professor emeritus of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at UC San Francisco, who is a friend of Means, told The Times he was shocked and surprised.

“What’s surprising to me is that she wanted the job, because she had difficulties adopting RFK’s full portfolio,” Lustig said, citing Kennedy’s controversial pronouncements on vaccines and fluoride in public water supplies. “She didn’t want to be part of the administration, in part because she couldn’t accede to those views. So what has changed is not clear.”

Means did not respond to requests for comment. Still, she celebrated in February when Kennedy was sworn in, saying on an X post that “his vision of the future aligns with what I want for my family, future children, and the world.”

Over the last year, she has raised public concerns about some vaccines. In August, she spoke out on X against CDC guidelines that all infants should receive a dose of hepatitis B vaccine at birth.

“The idea of giving a newborn the hepatitis B vaccine (followed by 2 additional doses) if the baby is born to parents *without hepatitis B* is absolute insanity and should make every American pause and question the healthcare system’s mandates,” she said.

“I have said innumerable times publicly I think vaccine mandates are criminal,” she said on X in November.

But when Lustig spoke to Means four weeks ago, he told The Times, Means had left her home in Pacific Palisades, worried about toxic air and water after the L.A.-area wildfires, and had moved to Hawaii. He said she wanted to start a family and did not express interest in working with Kennedy at the time.

“I know that her views are not his — that’s why she didn’t accept it earlier,” Lustig said. “If you’re an employee, you have to take the whole portfolio. You don’t get to choose parts of it, and she was uncomfortable.”

The president announced Means as his pick a day before his initial choice for the position, New York family physician and Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat, was scheduled to have a hearing with senators Thursday.

Trump has yet to explain why Nesheiwat was replaced as his nominee, but he said she would work at the Department of Health and Human Services in “another capacity.”

The U.S. surgeon general is known as “the nation’s doctor.” According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the role is to provide Americans with “the best advice on how to improve their health, by issuing advisories, reports and calls to action to offer the best available scientific information on crucial issues.”

Lustig said he had no doubt Means — whom he got to know by advising Levels Health, a digital metabolic health company she co-founded — would bring a different perspective to the U.S. government.

“Here’s the problem: We have an epidemic of chronic disease and there are no medicines that fix any of these diseases,” Lustig said. “They’re not fixable by drugs. They’re fixable by food. And the reason is because all of these diseases are mitochondrial diseases, and we don’t have drugs that get to the mitochondria.

“We have to change the food supply,” he added. “There is no option. Casey knows that. So as surgeon general, she would be able to make that case.”

In that sense, Lustig agreed with Trump, who said, “Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”

“I think she’s a terrific person,” Lustig said. “She will bring a very different mindset to the office.”

But Lustig said he believed Kennedy was flat out wrong on vaccines.

“I know why he’s wrong on vaccines,” he said. “I understand where his brain is, because I got a half hour with him on the phone, one on one. But I cannot alter my integrity to match that — and I thought that Casey couldn’t either.”

Means is an unorthodox pick for a president famed for his diet of Big Macs and Diet Cokes.

Her website features pictures of broccoli and almonds. Her Instagram page shows bright bowls of tofu scrambles with heirloom tomatoes, avocado and beet sauerkraut.

Her newsletter recounts how, at the age of 35, after she moved to L.A., she embraced the “woo woo (aka, the mystery),” set up a meditation shrine in her home and sought relationship advice from trees.

Means was raised in Washington, D.C., the daughter of mildly religious, Republican parents. Her Californian-born father, Grady Means, a retired American business executive and government official, served in the White House as assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, led the Food and Nutrition Task Force to reform the food stamp program and provided oversight to the National Health Insurance Experiment.

After graduating from Stanford Medical School, Means was 4½ years into a five-year residency to be a head and neck surgeon at Oregon Health & Science University when she dropped out, disillusioned with the healthcare system.

“During my training as a surgeon, I saw how broken and exploitative the healthcare system is and left to focus on how to keep people out of the operating room,” she says on her website.

“The reason she quit was because she saw that the same patients were coming back with the same problems, and her mentors, the faculty at Stanford, when she would ask, ‘Why is this happening?’ would say, ‘Shut up and operate,’” Lustig said.

“She had a crisis of confidence that she was actually not helping the problem, or was actually part of the system that was actually making the problems.”

In 2019, Means co-founded Levels Health, which works to “empower individuals to radically optimize their health and wellbeing by providing real-time continuous glucose biofeedback.”

Two years later, her break with establishment medicine became more intense — and more personal — when her mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“What put her over the edge was when her mother passed away of pancreatic cancer, and it was missed,” Lustig said. “She had all the symptoms and signs of metabolic syndrome in her and none of her doctors addressed any of them.”

Means served as Levels Health’s chief medical officer until last year, when she and her brother, Calley, published a 400-page diet and self-help book titled “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.”

In August, she catapulted to mainstream fame — particularly on the right — when Tucker Carlson featured her and her brother on his podcast for a show titled “How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick, and the Dark Truth About Ozempic and the Pill.”

“The system is rigged against the American patient to create diseases and then profit off of them,” Means told Carlson.

Over the last few months, Means and her brother, who now serves as a White House health advisor, made public appearances at “Make America Healthy Again” events.

In September, she addressed a U.S. Senate roundtable on chronic disease listing all the things she didn’t learn in medical school: “For each additional serving of ultra-processed food we eat,” she said, “early mortality increases by 18%.”

Critics were quick to take to X to mock her statistics.

“I’ve easily had 1000 bags of chips in my life,” said Brad Stulberg, adjunct clinical assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan’s School of Health. “If this is true, it means my mortality risk has increased by 18,000 percent. That seems unlikely.”

From Gary Klein: Rams coach Sean McVay typically rewards players for their dedicated voluntary offseason work by not holding a mandatory minicamp.

This year, players are apt to welcome one.

The Rams and the Hawaii Tourism Authority announced Wednesday that the Rams will hold a minicamp and other events on Maui from June 16-18.

The Rams will conduct football activity workouts at War Memorial Stadium in Wailuku, including one open to the public on June 18, and will also participate in girls’ flag football and tackle football clinics as well as community events. Rams staff and some players will also work with Habitat for Humanity to assist in the rebuilding of four homes in Lahaina that were affected by the devastating wildfire in 2023.

The Rams view the trip as an opportunity to further expand their brand.

The NFL awarded the Rams marketing rights to Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates.

The Rams will be the home team for a 2026 regular-season game in Melbourne, Australia. The opponent for the game has not been announced.

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NBA PLAYOFFS RESULTS

All Times Pacific

Conference semifinals

Western Conference

No. 1 Oklahoma City vs. No. 4 Denver Nuggets
Denver 121, at Oklahoma City 119 (box score)
at Oklahoma City 149, Denver 106 (box score)
Friday at Denver, 7 p.m., ESPN
Sunday at Denver, 12:30 p.m., ABC
Tuesday at Oklahoma City, TBD, TNT
Thursday, May 15 at Denver, TBD, ESPN*
Sunday, May 18 at Oklahoma City, TBD*

No. 6 Minnesota Timberwolves vs. No. 7 Golden State
Golden State 99, at Minnesota 88 (box score)
Thursday at Minnesota, 5:30 p.m., TNT
Saturday at Golden State, 5:30 p.m., ABC
Monday at Golden State, 7 p.m., ESPN
Wednesday at Minnesota, TBD, TNT*
Sunday, May 18 at Golden State, TBD*
Tuesday, May 20 at Minnesota, 5:30 p.m., ESPN*

Eastern Conference

No. 1 Cleveland vs. No. 4 Indiana
Indiana 121, at Cleveland 112 (box score)
Indiana 120, at Cleveland 119 (box score)
Friday at Indiana, 4:30 p.m., ESPN
Sunday at Indiana 5 p.m., TNT
Tuesday at Cleveland, TBD, TNT*
Thursday, May 15 at Indiana, TBD*
Sunday, May 18 at Cleveland, TBD*

No. 2 Boston vs. No. 3 New York
New York 108, at Boston 105 (OT) (box score)
New York 91, at Boston 90 (box score)
Saturday at New York, 12:0 p.m., ABC
Monday at New York, 4:30 p.m., ESPN
Wednesday at Boston, TBD, TNT*
Friday, May 16 at New York, TBD, ESPN*
Monday, May 19 at Boston, 5 p.m., TNT*

*if necessary

DODGERS

From Jack Harris: When minor-league reliever Matt Sauer showed up in the Dodgers clubhouse Wednesday afternoon, it was a sign that something was amiss.

In the middle of the first inning of the team’s 10-1 win against the Miami Marlins, the reason for his arrival finally became clear.

In yet another blow to their increasingly banged-up pitching staff, the Dodgers placed right-handed reliever Evan Phillips on the injured list with forearm discomfort, leaving an already overworked bullpen without one of its most trusted arms.

Phillips missed most of the first month of the season while recovering from a tear in his rotator cuff he suffered during last year’s postseason. He hadn’t given up a run in seven outings since coming back, but had been dealing with the discomfort in recent days.

The good news for the Dodgers: Neither he nor the team believe the injury to be serious. Phillips and Roberts described his IL stint as a “precautionary move.” They said they expected him to return once his minimum 15 days are up.

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Dodgers box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

ANGELS

Jorge Soler lined a double into the left-field corner with the bases loaded to drive in three runs in the ninth inning and lift the Angels to a 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night.

Trailing 4-2, the Angels loaded the bases with no outs against Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman (3-1) when Kyren Paris drew a four-pitch walk and Zach Neto and Nolan Schanuel singled.

Hoffman struck out Taylor Ward for the first out, but Soler drove a ball that rolled into the corner and past left fielder Jonatan Clase for the comeback win.

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Angels box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

BYRON SCOTT

From Steve Henson: Former Lakers player and head coach Byron Scott is accused in a lawsuit obtained by The Times of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student at Studio City Campbell Hall High School in 1987.

The former student alleges that Scott escorted her into a janitor’s closet and that according to the lawsuit he “began kissing her on the mouth as she repeatedly asked ‘what are you doing?’

“Then, despite her clear protests, Scott pushed [her] to her knees, and, against her will, pulled off her top. Scott then pulled down his shorts, exposed his erect penis, and tried to force [her] to perform oral sex on him.”

The lawsuit originally was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Dec. 30, 2022, but Scott was referred to as “John Doe,” the Lakers as “one of the most popular NBA franchise teams” and Campbell Hall as “Private School Doe.” An amended complaint filed May 1 named Scott, the Lakers and Campbell Hall after a judge denied objections by Scott that he shouldn’t be identified because he is a public figure and that there wasn’t evidence to corroborate the woman’s claims.

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LAFC

From Kevin Baxter: Three weeks ago Steve Cherundolo said this season would be his last as coach at LAFC. On Wednesday he explained why.

“I just feel like the next step, reconnecting with the European game and coaching in Europe, is something that I would like to do,” said Cherundolo, who is returning to Germany, where he starred as a player. “The timing of it and the messaging, I think the sooner the better so we can all kind of plan and move forward and get it out of the way and focus on this season’s goals.

“I’m not a great fan of leaving things to the last minute.”

Cherundolo, 46, spent his entire 16-year club career in Germany at Hannover, where he met his wife, started a family and still owns a house. That’s also where he started coaching. The decision to go back was a family one, he said, as was the decision to come to the U.S. four years ago.

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NHL PLAYOFFS SCHEDULE, RESULTS

All times Pacific

Conference semifinals

Pacific 1 Vegas vs. Pacific 3 Edmonton
Edmonton 4, at Vegas 2 (summary)
Thursday at Vegas, 6:30 p.m., ESPN
Saturday at Edmonton, 6 p.m., TNT
Monday at Edmonton, 6:30 p.m., TNT
Wednesday at Vegas, TBD, ESPN*
Friday, May 16 at Edmonton, TBD, TNT*
Sunday, May 18 at Vegas, TBD, TNT*

C1 Winnipeg vs. C2 Dallas
Wednesday at Winnipeg (summary)
Friday at Winnipeg, 6:30 p.m., TNT
Sunday at Dallas, 1:30 p.m., TBS
Tuesday at Dallas, 5 p.m., ESPN
Thursday, May 15 at Winnipeg, TBD, TNT*
Saturday, May 17 at Dallas, TBD*
Monday, May 19 at Winnipeg, TBD, ESPN*

Eastern Conference

Atlantic 1 Toronto vs. Atlantic 3 Florida
at Toronto 5, Florida 4 (summary)
at Toronto 4, Florida (summary)
Friday at Florida, 4 p.m., TNT
Sunday at Florida, 4:30 p.m., TBS
Wednesday at Toronto, TBD, ESPN*
Friday, May 16 at Florida, TBD, TNT*
Sunday, May 18 at Toronto, TBD, TNT*

Metro 1 Washington vs. Metro 2 Carolina
Carolina 2, at Washington 1 (OT) (summary)
Thursday at Washington, 4 p.m., ESPN
Saturday at Carolina, 3 p.m., TNT
Monday at Carolina, 4 p.m., TNT
Thursday, May 15 at Washington, TBD, TNT*
Saturday, May 17 at Carolina, TBD*
Monday, May 19 at Washington, TBD, ESPN*

* If necessary

THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1907 — Canadian Tommy Burns retains his world heavyweight boxing title after beating ‘Philadelphia’ Jack O’Brien on points in 20 rounds.

1915 — Regret, ridden by Joe Notter, becomes the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby, with a 2-length wire-to-wire victory over Pebbles.

1937 — War Admiral, the favorite ridden by Charles Kurtsinger, wins the Kentucky Derby by 1 3/4 lengths over Pompoon.

1943 — Count Fleet, ridden by Johnny Longden, wins the Preakness Stakes by 8 lengths over Blue Swords.

1954 — World record holder William Parry O’Brien becomes the first man to put the shot more than 60 feet with a 60-5¼ toss at a meet in Los Angeles.

1967 — Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in U.S. Army.

1970 — Walt Frazier scores 36 points to lead the New York Knicks to a 113-99 victory over the Lakers and the NBA championship in seven games.

1974 — FC Magdenburg of East Germany win 14th European Cup Winner’s Cup against AC Milan of Italy 2-0 in Rotterdam.

1984 — On the day the Olympic torch relay begins, the Soviet Union announces it will not take part in the 1984 Summer Olympics. The Soviet National Olympic Committee Union said the participation of Soviet athletes would be impossible because of “the gross flouting” of Olympic ideals by U.S. authorities.

1993 — Lennox Lewis of Britain scores a unanimous 12-round decision over Tony Tucker in his first defense of the WBC heavyweight title in Las Vegas.

1995 — New Zealand’s Black Magic 1 takes a 2-0 lead, defeating Young America by the widest margin for a challenger since the 1871 America’s Cup.

1996 — Paris Saint-Germain of France win 36th European Cup Winner’s Cup against Rapid Wien of Austria 1-0 in Brussels.

2003 — Minnesota becomes the first team in NHL history to rebound from two 3-1 series deficits to win in one postseason with a 4-2 victory at Vancouver.

2011 — University of Georgia senior Russell Henley becomes the second amateur winner in PGA Nationwide Tour history, shooting a 3-under 68 for a two-stroke victory in the Stadion Classic.

2011 — The Tradition Senior Men’s Golf, Shoal Creek G&CC: Tom Lehman wins second of 3 Champions Tour majors with par on 2nd playoff hole against Australian Peter Senior.

2013 — Alex Ferguson announces his retirement as Manchester United’s manager at the end of the season.

2014 — The Houston Texans takes South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney with the first pick in the NFL draft. The draft’s other big name, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, sits until Cleveland makes its third trade of the round and grabs the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner at No. 22.

THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

1906 — Philadelphia manager Connie Mack needed a substitute outfielder in the sixth inning of a game against Boston and called on pitcher Chief Bender. Bender hit two home runs, both inside the park.

1907 — Boston’s Big Jeff Pfeffer threw a no-hitter to give the Braves a 6-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds in Boston.

1929 — Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants pitched a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the first by a left-hander in the majors in 13 seasons.

1935 — In the first game of a doubleheader, Ernie Lombardi of the Cincinnati Reds hit four doubles in consecutive innings (sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth) off four different Phillies pitchers. Lombardi also singled to send the Reds past Philadelphia 15-4.

1946 — Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky scored six times, an American League record, in a 14-10 win over the White Sox. Pesky, who was 4-for-5 with a walk and two RBIs, matched Mel Ott’s National League mark for runs scored in a game.

1963 — A Stan Musial home run against the Dodgers gives him 1,357 extra-base hits, surpassing Babe Ruth’s major league record. He will get 20 more; his record will later be broken by Hank Aaron.

1963 — Pirates LF Willie Stargell’s first major league homer and Cubs P Bob Buhl’s first major league hit in 88 at-bats highlight a 9-5 Chicago win over Pittsburgh.

1966 — Frank Robinson became the only player to hit a home run out of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The shot over the left-field wall came off Cleveland right-hander Luis Tiant. The Orioles won 8-3.

1966 — The St. Louis Cardinals closed old Busch Stadium with a 10-5 loss to the San Francisco Giants.

1966 — Orioles outfielder Frank Robinson hits the only ball ever completely out of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. The shot clears the left-field single-deck grandstand’s rear wall, 451-feet away, going an estimated 541 feet.

1968 — Jim “Catfish” Hunter of the Oakland A’s pitched a perfect game to beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0.

1983 — Darryl Strawberry gets his first major league hit, a single that scores Danny Heep, in a 10-5 Mets win over the Reds.

1984 — Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett had four singles in his first major league game, and the Twins beat the California Angels 5-0.

1994 — Danny Tartabull, Mike Stanley and Gerald Williams hit back-to-back-to-back home runs for the Yankees in the 6th inning of New York’s 8-4 win over Boston.

1994 — The Colorado Silver Bullets, the first women’s team to play a pro men’s team, lost 19-0 to the Northern League All-Stars. Leon Durham hit two homers and Oil Can Boyd started for the All-Stars. The Silver Bullets had two hits, struck out 16 times and made six errors.

1998 — Cardinals 1B Mark McGwire hits his 400th home run in a 9-2 loss to the Mets. He is the 27th player to reach 400, and does so in fewer at bats than anyone in history, 4,726. Babe Ruth had taken 127 more at-bats, having held the old record.

2000 — Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hits his 12th home run of the season, against the San Francisco Giants. The homer ties “Big Mac” with Jimmie Foxx for ninth place on the all-time list with 534 career homers. McGwire needs just two taters to catch number eight on the list, Mickey Mantle, at 536.

2001 — Randy Johnson became the third pitcher to strike out 20 in nine innings, but didn’t finish the game in which the Arizona Diamondbacks beat Cincinnati 4-3 in 11 innings. Johnson, the first left-hander to strike out 20, missed a chance to join Roger Clemens and Kerry Wood as the record-holders for a nine-inning game because Arizona could not finish off the Reds in regulation.

2001 — The Devil Rays edge the Orioles, 4-3, as Tampa Bay’s Fred McGriff joins Mark McGwire, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Eddie Murray and Reggie Jackson as the only players to homer off 300 different pitchers in their career.

2009 — In his first game of the season after missing six weeks because of hip surgery, Alex Rodriguez hits the first pitch he sees from Baltimore’s Jeremy Guthrie for a three-run home run in a 4-0 Yankees win that ends a five-game losing streak. CC Sabathia pitches a four-hit shutout in his best performance since signing a huge free agent contract over the winter.

2010 — Jody Gerut hit for the cycle and drove in four runs, and the Milwaukee Brewers pounded the Arizona Diamondbacks 17-3. Gerut hit a solo home run in the second inning, singled in the third, drove in a run with a triple in the fifth and added a two-run double in the ninth.

2012 — Josh Hamilton became the 16th player to hit four home runs in a game. His four two-run drives came against three different pitchers, carrying the Texas Rangers to a 10-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

2015 — Bryce Harper hit two more home runs, giving him five in two games, and Danny Espinosa also connected twice to power the Washington Nationals to a 9-2 win over the Atlanta Braves. The 22-year-old Harper became the youngest in major league history to hit five homers in two games.

2018 — James Paxton of the Mariners becomes only the second-ever Canadian-born pitcher to throw a no-hitter, after Dick Fowler in 1945, turning the trick against the Blue Jays in a 5-0 win.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

May 8 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced Thursday morning that the United States is set to sign a trade deal with Britian.

“The agreement with the United Kingdom is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come,” Trump said Thursday in a post to his Truth Social account. “Because of our long time history and allegiance together, it is a great honor to have the United Kingdom as our first announcement.”

Trump closed the post with a notification that “Many other deals, which are in serious stages of negotiation, to follow.”

The White House is slated to hold a press conference at 10 a.m. EDT Thursday from the Oval Office to officially proclaim the deal, which would be the first trade deal the United States has made since Trump announced a slew of tariffs against most countries around the globe.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will also declare the deal from an unannounced location at around the same time Thursday.

Britain was not hit with the higher levies some other countries received when Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April but was struck with the minimum global 10% duty. Britain already runs a trade deficit with the United States.

Canadians have long spent wintertime in Florida, trading in frigid temperatures for the Sunshine State’s sunny beaches and spending money in restaurants and hotels that cater to Canadian tourists.

But President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions targeting Canada have given some Canadians pause about spending money in the United States. Trump has repeatedly said Canada should become the 51st US state, called then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “governor” and enacted substantial tariffs.

Canadians replied, “excusez-moi?” and, on April 28, elected Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. And according to a Florida congressman, many Canadians also ditched their Florida travel plans.

In a May 1 interview with Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he had heard from friends in Boca Raton, Florida, that many Canadians are not travelling to the state because of Trump’s actions. Blitzer asked Moskowitz: “Have you noticed a drop in Canadian tourism to Florida?”

Moskowitz said: “It’s 80 percent less is what we’re seeing in the travel data.”

When we asked Moskowitz’s team for comment, his spokesperson Christopher Bowman said Moskowitz referred to an April 2 report by WPTV, the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach. The WPTV report said, “Airline reservations from Canada to Florida are down 76 percent this April compared to April 2024.”

WPTV’s report cited OAG, an aviation firm. In a blog post, the firm said April bookings recorded in March for the entire US-Canada market were down 75.7 percent compared with March 2024. It did not report Florida-specific numbers.

OAG said the nationwide drop “suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute“.

We found other sources of data pointing to a decline in Canadian visitors to Florida, but by much less than the 80 percent cited by Moskowitz.

In 2024, more Canadians travelled to Florida by air (2.1 million) than by other means (1.1 million), such as road travel, according to Visit Florida, the state’s tourism arm.

Some data points to Canadian tourism drop, but full picture not yet available

Statewide estimated visitor data for the first quarter of 2025 won’t be available until May 15, according to Visit Florida. In 2024, about 3.27 million Canadians visited Florida, representing about 2 percent of tourists to the state.

Governor Ron DeSantis’s office said in April that in January and February, Florida saw a “0.5 percent increase in Canadian air visitation” compared with the same months in 2024.

Aviation firms and airports have said they’ve seen decreases.

OAG Chief Analyst John Grant told PolitiFact that in early March, there were 698,000 scheduled airline seats, or seats made available by airlines, between Canada and Florida from May to August. “That now stands at 628,000, so a reduction of 10 percent,” he said. He noted that his firm’s data includes anyone booked on a flight between Canada and the US, so a traveller could be a connecting passenger from China travelling via Vancouver to Denver, for instance.

Courtney Miller, founder of aviation data firm Visual Approach Analytics, told PolitiFact that Canadian airline seats to Florida are down by 13 percent for May and 10 percent for June compared with the same periods in 2024.

“I have not seen any data that suggest 80 percent,” Miller said. “We are seeing overall Canadian travel to the entire US down no more than 25 percent.”

A Visual Approach Analytics analysis showed that from January to March 27, two Florida airports – Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Orlando International Airport – had the biggest decrease in monthly arrivals from Canadian airlines, at 20 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Other Florida areas are also experiencing declines in travel. “Fort Myers and Palm Beach are down 30 percent and 43 percent, respectively, compared to April schedules as they existed on January 1, 2025,” the analysis said.

A Miami International Airport spokesperson told PolitiFact that from January 1 to April 23, the number of arriving passengers from Canada was down 5.9 percent.

National data for Canada-US road travel also shows a drop.

US Customs and Border Protection data shows about 4.1 million travellers arriving from the northern border in March 2025, compared with 4.9 million the same time last year – a 17.4 percent decrease. The data doesn’t specify whether the travellers entered the US as tourists.

Richard Clavet, a longtime owner of Hollywood, Florida, motels and hotels, said his properties for years have attracted Canadians who gather at the pool or Friday night hot dog cookouts. Clavet told PolitiFact he saw a drop in Canadian visitors starting in February.

“A lot of them were blaming it on the political situation,” said Clavet, who is originally from Quebec. “They were not happy with the way Trump was talking about their prime minister. They wanted to boycott the US and make a statement so a lot of them cancelled.”

Clavet estimated that in recent months the number of Canadians staying in his properties was 50 percent less than last winter.

Usually, Canadians rush to book for the following year, but that hasn’t happened this year, Clavet said.

“They want a piece of the sun where it’s safe, the weather is great, that’s what I have been working on for so many years,” Clavet said. “I really enjoyed dealing with Canadians; hopefully they will come back.”

Our ruling

Moskowitz said Canadian tourism to Florida has declined by 80 percent.

His office pointed to information from a TV report, which cited information from aviation data firm OAG. The firm said April airline bookings recorded in March for the entire US-Canada market were down 75.7 percent compared with 2024. It did not report Florida-specific numbers.

Other data sources confirm a drop in Canadian tourism to Florida, but by far less than the percentage cited by Moskowitz. For example, individual airports in Florida cited declines from 6 percent to 43 percent over a few months.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

THE tragic death of a teenager is still being probed by cops a year after she disappeared.

Reagan Brown disappeared on May 6 last year after meeting a friend at Leazes Park in Newcastle.

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The 19-year-old and her pal had been sitting on a bench in the park when Reagan disappeared behind a bush to go to the toilet and never returned.

At around 10:30pm on the night of her disappearance her parents received a call saying that she had gone missing.

Searches involving police divers and mountain rescue teams were launched.

Her body was sadly discovered two days later in the lake in Leazes Park.

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An inquest into the teen’s death was opened in December with a coroner stating the provisional cause of death was “drowning.”

The inquest into Reagan’s death was adjourned.

Northumbria police have now confirmed that they are still looking into the tragic death of the teen.

Two suspects, who were arrested after Reagan’s death, are still under investigation.

Reagan’s parents, Frank and Katrina Brown, live in Hexham, Northumbria.

They have previously criticised police for their poor communication.

They told of how they were left “begging” for updates on their daughters case.

Reagan’s father, Frank Brown, spoke to The Sun today on behalf of the family.

He said: “There’s a hole in our family with Reagan gone. We will never be the same again.

“There is a headache that follows us from when we wake till when we sleep.

“Reagan will always be missed but never forgotten.”

Reagan’s parents were subjected to multiple raids on their home in the wake of their daughters disappearance.

On May 7 and May 8 last year Frank and Katrina’s home was turned over by cops.

Katrina believes that the police were looking for a body or suicide note in her home.

She claimed at the time that the police were using drones to follow the couple.

According to Frank, police were in their home when they received the call stating a body had been found in the lake.

Despite making two arrests Police said at the time they did not believe Reagan’s death was suspicious.

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A Northumbria Police spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain firmly with the family and friends of Reagan Brown following her tragic death in May last year.

“Almost a year on, our investigation into Reagan’s death remains ongoing.

“As part of our enquiries, two people in their 20s were arrested – one was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of Class B drugs and the second on suspicion of threats to kill.

“They were subsequently released under investigation pending further enquiries.

“Both people remain under investigation at this time.”

The Newsom for President bandwagon hit another rut this week.

A new poll by the L.A. Times and UC Berkeley found California’s registered voters believe — by a margin of more than 2 to 1 — the state’s gallivanting governor is more focused on boosting his chances of winning the White House than fixing the multitude of problems facing him here at home.

Which is not great news if you believe the best credential when seeking a new job is high praise for the one you’re doing.

Those surveyed were decidedly mixed on Newsom, with a tepid 46% approving of his performance in his second and final term. (Presumably few, if any of them, have listened to Newsom’s unctuous political podcast.) The same percentage of registered voters said they disapprove of his job performance.

That’s not a great look compared with other Democratic governors swirling about the 2028 gossip mill.

Pennsylvania voters give their chief executive, Josh Shapiro, a healthy 59% approval rating and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer gets favorable marks from 54% of her constituents. Kentucky’s Andy Beshear boasts a positively gaudy 68% approval rating in his deep-red state, the highest of any Democratic governor in the country, according to Morning Consult’s nationwide survey.

Of course, Newsom insists he’s not even thinking about running for president, though a simple application of the duck test — if it waddles and quacks like a duck, you can be reasonably certain of its waterfowl status — suggests otherwise.

In a recent interview with video podcaster Mark Halperin, the governor insisted he’s more undecided about a 2028 run than people think.

“I have to have a burning why, and I have to have a compelling vision that distinguishes myself from anybody else. Without that, without both … I don’t deserve to even be in the conversation,” Newsom said.

All the while very purposefully thrusting himself into the conversation — which is sort of like someone stripping naked, standing in a department store window, then asking why everyone is staring.

But whatever.

The good news for Newsom is that California voters probably won’t have an opportunity to weigh in on his presidential candidacy, should he run, until well into the nominating contest. Come March 7, 2028 — the date currently set for the state’s presidential primary — California will almost certainly continue its 50-plus years of having very little bearing on the outcome.

Maybe next century.

The full 2028 political calendar has yet to be determined. In 2024, Democrats shook things up at the behest of President Biden, eliminating their kickoff caucuses in Iowa and pushing South Carolina and Nevada to the fore. More changes may be coming, though New Hampshire, which has held the first presidential primary for more than a century, may very well hang on to its lead-off spot, which might not be a bad thing for Newsom.

Jim Demers, a lobbyist in Concord — the state capital — and a longtime Democratic activist, said California’s governor stands as decent a shot as any Democrat thinking of running.

“Whether it’s Gavin Newsom, or [Illinois Gov.] JB Pritzker, or Shapiro or Whitmer or [New Jersey Sen. Cory] Booker — whoever — people are ready to hear them out and want to see who’s going to really be willing to take Trump on and stand up,” said Demers, who’s so far neutral in the contest.

Newsom, he said, is “pretty much a blank slate” in New Hampshire. “The average person really doesn’t know that much about him, other than they know of him.”

What’s more, Demers doesn’t see Newsom’s California return address as necessarily a detriment.

“You probably will have Republicans who’ll paint a California candidate as being a lefty liberal,” Demer said. “But I think you have a lot of Democrats … who look at many of the policies that have occurred in California and see them as maybe progressive, but forward thinking.”

Dick Harpootlian is certainly no Republican. He’s a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, state senator and veteran of decades of presidential politics.

His tongue is sharp and pungent, like the vinegar-pepper barbecue sauce favored in parts of his state and — though, he too, has no early favorite — Harpootlian had little good to say about California’s governor, or his 2028 prospects.

“I think Gavin Newsom is what all of us think of when we think of a slick, wealthy California playboy kind of guy,” Harpootlian said from his law office in Columbia. “I mean, his hair is perfectly coiffed. His shoes are shiny, and probably Italian.

“Many of us,” he went on, “remember during COVID when he was telling everybody not to go out and he was having a fabulous dinner at the French Laundry in Napa. I just think he’s out of touch with the blue-collar folks we need to get back in the [Democratic] Party.

Nor, Harpootlian suggested, is California a particularly good place to hail from politically. He cited the state’s “huge homeless population,” its tent cities, looming budget deficit and taxes that “are so freaking high.”

“It’s not,” he said dryly, “a model the rest of the country wants to follow.”

Iowa has probably lost forevermore its privileged place on the political calendar after the disastrous 2020 caucuses, which took days to yield a winner.

Still, Democratic strategist Jeff Link has a practiced eye from observing scores of presidential candidates pass through over the years. He worked for half a dozen of them.

“I don’t think 2024 helped the California cause,” Link said of the chances Democrats would turn, after Kamala Harris, to another San Francisco-bred Democrat, as their nominee. “But I don’t think it’s a death sentence.”

Newsom might arrive in Iowa toting some baggage. (Assuming he shows up as a presidential hopeful.) But “there is real credibility in governing a state of that magnitude, even if it’s seen as too liberal and too quirky at times,” Link said from Des Moines. “I think people would be open to learning more.”

Which suggests a Newsom tilt at the White House is not entirely far-fetched.

Assuming he first gets his own house in order.

Sweden forward Lina Hurtig will leave Arsenal when her contract expires this summer.

The 29-year-old joined the Gunners from Juventus in the summer of 2022.

She has endured a series of injuries during her time at the north London club, and missed much of the 2024-25 season for personal reasons.

Hurtig has made five Women’s Super League appearances this season, scoring once, with her other goal for the club this term coming in the win against former club Juve which sealed the Gunners’ progression to the knock-out stages.

In total Hurtig has scored seven goals in 36 appearances for Arsenal and was part of the side which won the League Cup in 2023 and 2024.

The forward, who was part of the Sweden side that finished third at the 2023 World Cup, could make her final league appearance for Arsenal against Manchester United on Saturday.

She will also be available for the Women’s Champions League final, with Arsenal facing Barcelona on May 24 in Lisbon.

“Everyone at Arsenal Football Club would like to thank Lina for her contribution to the club, and we wish her well for her next chapter,” the Gunners said.

Kyiv, Ukraine – The Kremlin duped the White House into accepting and promoting its view on how the Russia-Ukraine war should end, according to a Ukrainian military analyst.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “imposed his narratives on [his US counterpart Donald] Trump,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.

“Trump repeats them, tries to implement them, frightens and pressures Ukraine that already is in a pretty precarious situation,” he said about the peace talks that seem to have reached an impasse.

But some Western observers disagree.

“In this case, Putin played himself,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

“The talks failed because of both sides, but Zelenskyy scored more moral points in this competition, because he proposed a more significant version of a truce, Trump is satisfied with him in general,” Mitrokhin said.

Putin suggested a three-day ceasefire between May 8 and 11 so that Russia could celebrate its victory over Nazi Germany with a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square.

Putin also plans to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other helmsmen from former Soviet republics, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The May 9 festivities are a focal point of the Kremlin’s political calendar as Moscow claims to have “liberated” Europe from Nazism – and accuses some European leaders, as well as Zelenskyy, of “neo-Nazi” leanings.

Zelenskyy retorted to Putin’s proposal by offering a monthlong cessation of hostilities.

Meanwhile, Putin “showed his feathers as a totally non-constructive character capable only of tiny pittances in the negotiation process”, Mitrokhin said.

“The next step would be a rapprochement between the United States and Ukraine, additional arms supplies to Ukraine, and, probably, new, stronger and more shocking sanctions against Russia a la Trump.”

There is, however, room for Trump’s unpredictability if there is a “destiny-changing summit in May, when Trump and Putin will sort it all out,” he added.

Trump’s ‘final offer’

Before his re-election, Trump boasted he would end the Russia-Ukraine war “in 24 hours”.

But more than 100 days into his presidency, even a temporary ceasefire is not on the horizon as Russian missiles and drones keep pummelling Ukrainian cities.

Trump’s peace plan has never been made public, but his “final offer” leaked to the press in late April largely benefits Moscow and leaves Kyiv with no security guarantees from Washington.

The document reportedly included a ban on Ukraine’s membership in NATO, Washington’s “de jure” recognition of annexed Crimea as part of Russia and a “de facto” recognition of Moscow’s occupation of large chunks of four Ukrainian regions.

Russia currently occupies some 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory; Kyiv has liberated seven more percent since 2022.

The “de facto” recognition of the four regions follows Putin’s largest “concession” so far – he agreed not to claim the Kyiv-controlled parts of them.

Trump’s “final offer” also included a ceasefire and a freeze along the current front lines in return for the immediate lifting of all US sanctions slapped on Russia since Crimea’s 2014 annexation.

Kyiv also gets back the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, a giant nearby dam that was bled dry by a powerful explosion in 2023, and small Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine’s northeast and south.

A Kyiv-based analyst called the Trump-proposed compromises “disgusting”.

“A compromise between what and what? Between Russia’s desire to kill, rape, loot, seize territories, and our demands that our territories are not taken away and we are not killed? There’s no room for compromise,” Maria Kucherenko, an expert with the Come Back Alive think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“We have already eaten these ceasefires and concessions to Russia with a big spoon,” she said, referring the US-mediated discussions of a ceasefire between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine during Trump’s first presidency.

“The thing is not what Zelenskyy says or doesn’t say. The thing is that Russia will only do exactly what it is allowed to do. And turning a blind eye to its further acts of aggression will not do,” she said.

The White House threatened to walk away if Kyiv and Moscow didn’t agree to the “final offer.”

Russia ‘getting ready for an active summer offence’

To a Ukrainian serviceman recovering from surgery, the aim of Moscow’s delay tactic is crystal clear.

“Moscow postponed talks until the fall and is getting ready for an active summer offence, trying to probe weak spots in our defence,” Kirill Sazonov, a political analyst-turned serviceman fighting in the Donetsk region, wrote on Telegram on Monday.

“Currently, Putin doesn’t want peace and that’s why the talks make no sense. The White House can get out of them – and nothing will change at all,” he wrote.

After signing the long-awaited minerals deal last week, Washington distanced itself from the talks.

“It’s going to be up to them to come to an agreement and stop this brutal, brutal conflict,” Vice President J D Vance told Fox News on Thursday.

The change of rhetoric means that Trump considers the minerals deal a diplomatic victory ahead of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a Kyiv-based analyst.

Moscow expects only a “full or partial capitulation” of Ukraine, but as Kyiv keeps fighting, for Trump, “it’s irrational to play a middleman,” Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s backers remain puzzled about Trump’s chameleonic mood swings.

“Is the Trump temptation over? Are we recovering?” Vladimir Solovyov, a popular television host who once threatened to turn the West into “radioactive ashes”, asked rhetorically during his Sunday show.

Clad in a quasi-military overcoat and speaking in an ominous voice, he uttered yet another warning to the West: “We don’t need your love, we need your fear.”

“We lived to witness a merry time, when only our part of the world boasts psychological health,” he concluded.

David Hockney and his mother.

(photograph by Lester Sloan)

I ask my students: What would an essay be like if it were structured like a grid? What would it be like to structure it as a lopsided, organic shape?

I am teaching a class called “On Collage.” Every time I do, we make a new center of gravity for the course together. One or two students will explain collage each week, introducing a collage or an artist, but first I offer my own version: a slideshow I have no notes for. Depending on the way I’ve prepared for class that week, I’ll compose a narrative about the slides in a way that articulates what collage might offer us.

The slideshow begins with a black-and-white photograph of a man with light hair, a cap and glasses standing behind a tall rattan chair where an older woman is seated. She smiles broadly, her chest puffed out like a robin in early spring. His face is a bit more fluid, untraceable, tucked into itself, echoed by the arm he holds across his body, drawing his striped tie askew. His glasses hold a reflection that must include the photographer, but when I zoom in, the shadow and light become a bunch of shapes, and I get distracted by an unsettling look in the man’s eyes, which have an air of surprise or warning. His ears are quotation marks. His mouth is as close as a mouth can come to a sideways question mark, punctuated by a cautious smile line. I’ve watched enough documentaries to know that this is as likely a response to the photographer as it is to the woman whose shoulder he is grasping with his other hand. David Hockney and his mother.

In the 1980s, my father, Lester Sloan, was a photojournalist for Newsweek magazine assigned to photograph Hockney for a story about artists designing posters for the 1984 Olympics. Hockney made a poster of a swimmer underwater, captured through 12 Polaroid photographs arranged in a grid. Swimming figures ripple through Hockney’s early paintings as if swimming from one frame to another. When I read from an essay that I wrote on Hockney’s swimming pools once, two scholars wondered aloud about John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” and I am often haunted by this moment, as if I should have known better than to write about swimming pools without reading more things great men had said about them. But what I notice now, looking literally over my shoulder as if I’ll see the memory, is that the essay as a genre favors the unique thread of one person’s associations. As Hockney puts it, “We always see with memory. Seeing each person’s memory is a bit different. We can’t be looking at the same things, can we?”

Art offers or asks us to sketch a thing that has moved through us too quickly to capture it completely. It should throw a shadow of chemical memory across our faces like the smell of chlorine.

On the day he took this photograph, my father went to Hockney’s California home, tucked into the Hollywood Hills. The artist wanted to show him the Polaroid collages — what he coined “joiners” — he had begun to make. My father has recalled Hockney’s sense of wonder at this new approach to artmaking so many times over the course of my life that I can see it — the sun-lit table on which Hockney laid those pieces. Hockney has said that he was so distracted by the joiners that he couldn’t sleep at night. “I used to get up in the middle of the night and sit and look at them to find out what I was doing,” he told Paul Joyce. He bought thousands of dollars’ worth of film and roamed his own house in search of compositions. “Time was appearing in the picture. And because of it, space, a bigger illusion of space.”

Some of the photographs are arranged in a grid, though the dissonance between them — one square depicting a table from inches away, another from across the room — creates an ethereality, a wind within the frame. Some of the photographs are arranged freely, as if to follow the line of sight as it traces figures in a space — wind-scattered. Overlapping, stuttering, arcing upward.

When I first asked my father about this day, he recalled the degree to which Hockney oriented toward his mother when he came to take this portrait. The painter was orbiting her, asking her thoughts on the conversation, nodding toward her with his body.

At this point in the slide show, I show some frames from the film “Blow-Up,” wherein a London photographer snaps some pictures of a couple kissing in the park. As he develops the film later, he tries to zoom in more and more on a particular frame. He realizes that there is a man with a gun in the bushes. There is, perhaps, at the heart of every composition, the door to a great mystery you might not even have realized you were bracketing.

The Hockney joiner that most haunts me is called “My Mother, Bolton Abbey.” This is not a grid but a scatter. The same woman my father met that afternoon is seated in a cemetery, and the Polaroids of her begin to spill downward, giving the whole frame a gravitational pull. Hockney’s sister describes their mother in the documentary “David Hockney: A Bigger Picture”: “She was a very great power. She had a very great emotional power that’s a bit hard to describe. That pulled you in.”

When I recently ask my father about the portrait he shot of Hockney and his mother, he begins to reminisce about his own late mother sitting on the porch of the house where he grew up. He recalls a man who would visit: “I asked him once, ‘What’s the deal with you coming around here, hanging around my mother?’ He said, ‘You know, when I was in jail, my mother died, and they wouldn’t let me out to come and see her. So I picked somebody to be a mother to me, and it was your mother.’” The image he took of Hockney has become a hall of mirrors, an entrance into the very notion of what a mother means. What it means to lose her.

The next slide is a quotation by Roland Barthes about his own mother in “Camera Lucida”: “I dream about her, I do not dream her. And confronted with the photograph, as in the dream, it is the same effort, the same Sisyphean labor: to reascend, straining toward the essence, to climb back down without having seen it, and to begin all over again.” In the first essay I wrote about collage, I talked about how they have an air of mistake. Like spilling something. Capturing the weird way that one moment is every moment, which is also death. Or as Hockney puts it in the “The Bigger Picture,” “It’s now that’s eternal, actually.”

I am writing this while visiting Santa Monica, which exists through the collage of memory since I left years ago. The first thing I do when I get here is drive through my old neighborhood, hungry to see the way time and distance have warped the familiar contours of buildings and trees and streets that served as the entirety of my early childhood world. I enter into my old neighborhood with a fluttering in my periphery where new construction or paint camouflages lines and angles and patches of scenery until the unmistakability of my childhood street reveals itself. I look for the jade plant in front of our apartment building, whose leaves I would press with my thumbnail while waiting for my parents to come downstairs. I look for the grate that would make a cha-choonk sound as the car passed over it on the way into the garage, signaling home when I was a child asleep in the backseat. I weep my ugliest, snottiest cry at an awkward intersection, looking for the place where Blockbuster used to be, happy that the library is still there. Parsing which businesses remain. Which left turns are the way I left them, framed by the corner of a blue-gray building I can only see when I’m dreaming.

Even though many of Hockney’s joiners were taken in his own California home, they blur with our own family photographs. They are the slippage of places and people, the grief you can feel for the way someone’s face was held by a particular slant of light only moments ago. If you tear yourself away from a place too quickly, the maw of memory will ask you to re-leave it over years and years.

My students and I end the semester by reading a book where poems and essays and operas arrange themselves across the page like children on a preschool floor. Some cup, some rove, some cascade.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan is an essayist and the author of four books, including “Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit” and “Captioning the Archives,” which she co-authored with her father, photographer Lester Sloan.

Who Killed Shireen? also lifts lid on US attempts to stifle truth about the 2022 killing of veteran Al Jazeera journalist.

Filmmakers behind a new documentary on the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces say they have uncovered the identity of the soldier who pulled the trigger.

Who Killed Shireen?, a 40-minute investigative documentary released on Thursday by Washington, DC-based media company Zeteo, identifies the killer as a 20-year-old Israeli soldier who was on his first combat tour in the occupied West Bank and lifts the lid on attempts by the United States to avoid holding ally Israel accountable for the murder.

Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of the documentary, told Al Jazeera that its makers had set out to uncover exactly who was behind the killing – a secret closely guarded by Israel up to now, according to Zeteo – and that they hoped the findings would lead to further investigations by the US.

The administration of former US President Joe Biden had “concluded early on that an Israeli soldier had intentionally targeted her, but that conclusion was overruled internally”, he said.

“We found some concerning evidence that both Israel and the Biden administration had covered up Shireen’s killing and allowed the soldier to get away without any accountability,” he added.

Anton Abu Akleh, Shireen’s brother, said the documentary was “really important” for her family. “I’m sure it will shed more light and prove that she was systematically targeted like other journalists in Palestine by the Israeli army,” he said.

The documentary features exclusive interviews not just with ex-US officials but also former top Israeli officials and soldiers, as well as journalists who knew Shireen personally.

“We hope that people will be reminded of what an icon Shireen was,” said Nissenbaum.

In ‘cold blood’

Abu Akleh was wearing a helmet and a clearly marked press vest when she was killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp on May 11, 2022, an act that the Al Jazeera Media Network condemned as a “cold-blooded assassination”.

Investigations into her killing carried out by news agencies, rights groups and the United Nations have all concluded that Abu Akleh was killed – likely deliberately – by Israeli soldiers.

Israel initially tried to deflect blame for the incident and suggested that Palestinian fighters killed the journalist, but it eventually walked back that claim and acknowledged its troops were responsible for her death, saying it was “an accident”.

A year later, Israel’s military said it was “deeply sorry” for the death of Abu Akleh, but said it would not launch criminal proceedings against the soldiers believed to be behind the killing.

The US dropped its request for an Israeli criminal investigation after Israel’s apology.

Abu Akleh’s death shocked the world and focused an international spotlight on Israeli killings of Palestinian journalists.

Reporters Without Borders said on Friday that Israeli forces killed nearly 200 journalists in the first 18 months of Israel’s all-out assault on Gaza, at least 42 of whom were slain while doing their job.

Elizabeth Warren had the crowd going wild over pennies.

Halfway through her Wednesday campaign event in Los Angeles, the crowd erupted into a chant of “Two cents! Two cents!” after Warren detailed her signature plan — a 2% tax on the ultra-wealthy that would amount to two cents on every dollar over $50 million.

The Massachusetts senator got a robust reception in the cavernous Shrine Expo Hall near USC, as she detailed the litany of programs she says she would fund with the revenue from her tax plan, including universal child care and tuiton-free higher education, and preached her message of structural change to combat government corruption.

It was the 127th town hall of her presidential run, according to her campaign, and it borrowed much from the 126 events that came before it. She began with biography, including her emotional recollection of her mother averting foreclosure by taking a minimum-wage job.

Next she was on to the core tenet of her campaign — that government has been derailed by serving corporate interests — and her myriad plans to address it. It ended with the finely tuned “selfie” line, with a queue of thousands snaking around the auditorium waiting for their chance to take home a memento of the evening.

Warren did not introduce new plans, as she did in her last visit to Los Angeles, when she unveiled her universal child care and pre-K proposal. (Earlier this week, her campaign released new plans on addressing the needs of Native Americans and reducing mass incarceration.) Her fans seemed content to watch her increasingly polished stump speech.

“She didn’t say anything new, but she said it really well,” said Andrea Rifelli, 72, as she waited in line to get her photo.

The audience was a mix of committed enthusiasts and curious Democrats still shopping for a candidate.

“I want to be where people are watching her,” said Sheila Fox, 68, a retiree from Reseda. “I’m all in behind her. I just want to see where everybody else is.”

Tracy Escobedo, 29, entered the event unattached to any particular candidate; afterward, she said she was leaning more toward Warren, although she cautioned it was still early to say definitively.

“It was the first time I saw her in person, and now I almost want to see them all in person,” she said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Alejandra Benavides, 75, was also uncommitted at the outset but gushed about Warren’s speaking style. She thought Warren missed an opportunity, however, not to speak more forcefully against President Trump’s immigration policy.

“She didn’t take advantage of the fact this is L.A.,” said Benavides, a court translator from San Gabriel. “In the Latin community, there is raw pain right now.”

Warren has faced some unease among even her most ardent supporters that she would be too liberal to win a general election. One audience member asked how supporters should respond to fears that big-business interests would try to thwart her campaign.

“If we don’t get in the fight, that’s exactly what’s going to happen,” she responded. The crowd roared in approval.

She was also asked whether she might nominate Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, President Obama’s 2016 nominee whom Republican Senate leaders refused to consider.

“You bet,” Warren replied, before pivoting to speak more broadly of the politicization of the high court.

Supporters at Wednesday’s events were largely optimistic about her prospects against Trump.

“At first, I kind of lumped her in with Hillary Clinton as someone that would not appeal to a lot of the country,” said Kevin Oreck, a 59-year-old architect from Highland Park. “But I now think she really has branded herself [as] a political outsider, in a similar way to Trump even though the politics are absolutely different. So I think she could appeal to the people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump.”

There’s a reason we categorize dishes like fried chicken, pizza and mac ‘n’ cheese as comfort food. Whether they hold nostalgic value or are simply go-to favorites, their familiarity offers a gentle lift and sense of ease when we need it most.

But it can be challenging trying to replace beloved staples like fried chicken with plant-based alternatives. Replicating that perfect crispy crunch and juicy, tender interior isn’t easy. And while vegan proteins have come a long way, finding one that truly delivers the full experience — without animal products — can feel like chasing a unicorn.

L.A.’s plant-based chefs are proving it’s possible. Forget bland substitutes; today’s vegan chicken is made from soy, wheat gluten (seitan), mushrooms and/or cauliflower and transformed through creative textures and spice-packed batters. From crispy oyster mushroom cutlets to juicy soy wings and fried cauliflower with a kick, these inventive takes aren’t just imitating chicken — they’re reimagining it.

For chef Doomie, who prefers to be known by his first name only, the secret is keeping it simple. The founder of Doomie’s Home Cookin’ said, “We try to keep the ingredients as traditional as possible and often would prefer to just omit an ingredient rather than substitute it with something that doesn’t usually belong.” For his fried chicken batter, he swaps out dairy and plant milks in favor of water. For crunch? “The secret is always flour, batter, flour.”

“The magic of fried chicken lies in the interplay between the meat, the skin and the thin layer of fat that separates them,” he explained. At Doomie’s, they’ve created a plant-based version of all three components, even using two types of vegan chicken to mimic the contrast of white and dark meat.

Then there’s chef Mignon (also known by her first name only) of Champignon Eats. A mainstay at Smorgasburg L.A., she uses lion’s mane, oyster and enoki mushrooms. She recommends seasoning and frying them just like real chicken. “Mushrooms take on any flavor you cook them in,” said Mignon, who defaults to a special blend of spices and a chickpea flour mix for Champignon’s batter. “You’d be surprised at how versatile they are.”

In a city where plant-based cuisine is a lifestyle, chefs across L.A. are pushing boundaries and redefining comfort food on their own terms. Whether you’re craving spicy Thai wings, Southern-style comfort or something totally unexpected, these seven spots prove that vegan fried chicken isn’t just an alternative — it can be the main event.

Jorge Soler lined a double into the left-field corner with the bases loaded to drive in three runs in the ninth inning and lift the Angels to a 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday night at Angel Stadium.

Trailing 4-2, the Angels loaded the bases with no outs against Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman (3-1) when Kyren Paris drew a four-pitch walk and Zach Neto and Nolan Schanuel singled.

Hoffman struck out Taylor Ward for the first out, but Soler drove a ball that rolled into the corner and past left fielder Jonatan Clase for the comeback win.

The Blue Jays opened the seventh with five straight hits, including Myles Straw’s go-ahead RBI single and Bo Bichette’s two-run single, to take a 4-1 lead.

Toronto starter José Berríos gave up two runs — solo homers by Paris and Yoan Moncada — and five hits in six innings, striking out nine, walking five and inducing 18 swinging strikes.

Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi gave up one run and five hits in six innings. Brock Burke (3-0), the Angels’ fifth pitcher, got the win with one scoreless inning.

With the score tied at 1, Ernie Clement opened the seventh with a double off Reid Detmers. Andrés Giménez beat out a sacrifice bunt for a single and Straw singled home Clement to give Toronto a 2-1 lead. Bichette singled in two runs to make it 4-1.

Paris homered in the seventh off Berríos to pull the Angels within 4-2.

Key moment

With two on and one out in the eighth, Moncada made a diving backhand stop of Straw’s grounder down the third-base line, got up, stepped on the bag and threw to first to complete an inning-ending double play and preserve a 4-2 deficit.

Key stat

The Angels have given up nine bunt hits this season, tied with Miami for the most in the majors.

Up next

Chris Bassitt (2-2, 2.95 ERA) will start Thursday’s series finale for the Blue Jays against Jose Soriano (2-4, 3.83 ERA).

May 8 (UPI) — In a rare public appearance at a time when the courts have come under attack, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated his support for judicial independence and his rejection of calls to impeach judges.

Roberts, a conservative appointee of President George W. Bush, made the comments Wednesday in Buffalo, N.Y., during a talk held in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

With District Judge Lawrence Vilardo of the court being honored, Roberts discussed his career and spoke of his ascent to the highest court in the country. Though President Donald Trump was not mentioned by name, his presence loomed over the conversation, which was held against the backdrop of judges who have ruled against the Trump administration being attacked and calls for their resignation coming from the president, members of his party and his supporters.

oOn Wednesday, Roberts championed the independence of the judicial branch from the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government as “the only real political science innovation of our Constitution.”

“In our Constitution, the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. That innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent,” he said.

“Its job is to decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.”

In response to a question from Vilardo concerning the calls for impeachment of judges, Roberts highlighted the statement he issued in mid-March that decried such calls as an inappropriate response to decisions one disagrees with.

“Impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions,” the chief justice reiterated Wednesday. “That’s what we’re there for.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly attacked the judicial system, attracting condemnation from legal and other organizations since early in its second term.

Those criticisms have only increased amid growing fears about the potential that the White House will defy court orders it disagrees with, ignore the due process rights afforded immigrants by the Constitution and threaten — and potentially arrest — judges who stand against its policies.

Roberts issued his rare public statement in mid-March in response to Trump calling for the impeachment of a judge who blocked his attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelans.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What. we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Trump had lambasted Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia hours earlier, calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic,” “crooked,” “a troublemaker,” and an “agitator” who “should be impeached!!!”

On Monday, a group of more than 140 retired state and federal judges sent Attorney General Pam Bondi a letter condemning the Trump administration’s attack on the judiciary, including the April arrest of a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge in her courthouse on allegations of aiding a migrant defendant in evading federal immigration arrest.

They called Hannah Dugan’s arrest the latest action by the Trump administration “to intimidate and threaten the judiciary” following rulings by judges appointed by both parties holding it “accountable for its countless violations of the Constitution.”

“The American people understand that the Constitution of the United States has made the nation’s judicial officers the guardians of the rule of law in our country, not the president. The nation’s judiciary does not operate at the President’s instruction or at his discretion,” they said.

“We unequivocally reject your and the Trump Administration’s assault on the judiciary, the Rule of Law and those who administer it, including Judge Dugan. This does not make us ‘deranged,'” the retired judges continued, quoting an often-uttered insult by Trump directed at members of the judiciary who rule against him.

“It’s what makes us Americans.”

Love Island’s Molly-Mae Hague has clashed with her sister Zoe following her decision to rekindle her relationship with ex-fiancé Tommy Fury, leaving their bond strained

Molly-Mae Hague and her sister have become embroiled in a feud after she confirmed her relationship with Tommy Fury. The Love Island stars left fans shocked when they announced in August last year that they had called off their engagement.

While many speculated that Tommy had been unfaithful, a representative for Tommy later exclusively told the Mirror that this was not the case and he’d been left hurt by the claims. But over Christmas, the pair appeared to be getting their relationship back on track. We later revealed that they’d spent time together and were rekindling their romance.

But while fans seemed happy for the pair, it appears that their new relationship has taken its toll on Molly’s relationship with her sister, Zoe. In a new teaser clip for Molly’s upcoming Amazon Prime reality show, the pair clashed in the car after Zoe admitted she didn’t feel “comfortable” not discussing Molly’s relationship.

She added: “Sisters need to be able to tell each other everything.” Before Molly-Mae, 25, fumed: “Right, then I need to be able to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly.” Zoe went on to say: “Your relationship and how you feel and how you are with Tommy is my only concern.”

This, however, appeared to touch a nerve for Molly who quipped: “Well what a lovely life you have, that, that is your only concern.” Pleading with her reality star sister, Zoe commented: “Nothing I do or say to you is going to change what you do, your opinion or how you feel towards him.”

“You know what Zoe, that’s the wisest thing you’ve ever said,” an annoyed Molly responded. Standing her ground, Zoe said: “I know at some point Mol, in the next year, however long it is, there will be a time, where unfortunately, and I hate to say it – you probably will be upset again.”

Molly, however, said that her sister had no need to be “annoyed” over the situation. Speaking to the camera, Zoe responded: “I would always, always, always, 100 percent be there for her but I do worry for my relationship with her if they were to get back together, definitely.”

Zoe said to her sister: “I just want us to get on. I actually don’t hate you in the slightest but I feel like you actually hate me,” as Molly confirmed she had no hatred towards her sibling. She explained: “Sometimes, I feel that anger from you, towards me, from years of years of us sometimes having arguments.”

The new teaser comes after Molly took to social media to gush over her partner after previously shying away from discussing their relationship. Taking to her Instagram stories on Wednesday evening, Molly-Mae finally put the rumours to bed about her and Tommy’s relationship status as she penned an emotional birthday message.

The social media megastar, who shared two-year-old daughter Bambi with Tommy, shared an adorable photo from the family’s recent trip to Dubai. After admitting that the getaway to Dubai was ‘the best holiday of her life’, Molly-Mae delighted fans as she shared a snippet of her and Tommy’s time with Bambi in the United Arab Emirates.

Alongside an adorable snap of Tommy embracing Bambi while watching the sunset, she wrote: “Happy Birthday to you. You make our little girls world light up.”

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Seoul’s military says launches may have been to test weapons intended for export.

North Korea has fired a flurry of short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military has said, in what Seoul called a possible test of weapons intended for export.

North Korean forces launched the missiles from an area near the eastern port city of Wonsan between 8:10am (23:10 GMT on Wednesday) and 9:20am (00:20 GMT), South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Thursday.

The missiles flew up to 800km (500 miles) before landing in the Sea of Japan, the JSC said.

The launches are the fourth round of ballistic missile tests carried out by North Korea this year, after the firing of several different missile types in January and March.

“Our military, under the strong South Korea-US combined defense posture, is closely monitoring various North Korean activities to prevent any misjudgment (by the North),” the JSC said in a statement.

Lee Sung Joon, a JSC spokesperson, said in a briefing that the launches may have been to test the “performance or flight stability” of planned missile exports.

Lee did not specify which country might receive the missiles, but Pyongyang has been a key backer of Russia in its war in Ukraine.

North Korea has sent missiles, artillery and some 15,000 soldiers to Russia to support its war effort, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

About 4,700 North Korean soldiers have been killed or injured in fighting so far, according to the intelligence service.

Pyongyang last month acknowledged the deployment for the first time, with state media quoting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un saying his forces would help “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces”.

North Korea signed a landmark mutual defence treaty with Russia last year following a state visit to the reclusive country by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thursday’s missile launches also drew condemnation from Japan, with Japanese Defense Minister Nakatani Gen telling reporters that Tokyo had lodged a protest with Pyongyang.

AN ALLERGY threat for a popular beef lasagne has led to customers being urged to bin the product.

Health chiefs issued an urgent recall last night after the La Famiglia Rana Slow-Cooked Braised Beef Lasagne was discovered to contain lobster.

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They cited a ‘packaging error’ as the cause of the issue which could impact shoppers with an allergy to crustaceans.

The Food Standards Agency warned that “some packs may contain Prawn & Lobster Lasagne, that contains crustaceans, (prawn and lobster) which are not mentioned on the label.”

Shoppers should look out for the batch code L0B510816 and a use by date of 17 June 2025 for the 700g pack of the product.

The alert said that Giovanna Rana Ltd is “recalling the above product from customers.”

They added: “If you have bought the above product and have an allergy to crustaceans, do not eat it.

“Instead return it to the store from where it was bought for a full refund, even without a receipt.”