history

April 30, 1975, marked a brilliant milestone in the history of the Vietnamese nation when the country was officially reunified after more than twenty years of protracted resistance. Since that sacred moment, national defense and security have always played a key role in protecting the achievements of the revolution, rebuilding the country, and affirming Vietnam’s position in the international arena. After half a century of development, Vietnam has transformed from a country suffering many consequences of war into a dynamic entity, contributing to peace and stability in the region.

This article analyzes the development process of Vietnam’s defense and security over the past 50 years, from the focus on protecting sovereignty and territorial integrity to the increasingly clear role of creating a regional position. During his lifetime, the then Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan wrote an essay titled “Security, development, and influence,” which are not only the three strategic goals in the process of “building and protecting the homeland” during the Doi Moi period but also strongly affirm the role of security for Vietnam in the current “era of rising up.” With guaranteed security and defense, the economy is developed in the highest and most sustainable way. With strong security and defense, it creates a strong voice in the international arena, weighing down on bad wills that threaten national sovereignty.

After national reunification, Vietnam entered a post-war recovery period with numerous socio-economic difficulties. In that context, the primary task of national defense was to maintain revolutionary achievements and protect independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity from external threats. During the 1980s, Vietnam faced border wars in the North and Southwest and was subject to embargoes from Western countries. This was a period that demonstrated the bravery, resilience, and absolute loyalty of the people’s armed forces to the cause of defending the Fatherland.

The turning point came after the 6th Congress in 1986, when the Communist Party of Vietnam initiated the Doi Moi process. In the national development strategy in the new period, national defense and security were placed in correlation with the tasks of economic development and international integration. The policy of national defense and people’s security was consolidated, closely combining the people’s hearts and military and security positions. Vietnam shifted from a defensive mindset to a preventive mindset, taking stability as the foundation, cooperation as the tool, and development as the motto.

Entering the 21st century, especially since 2010, Vietnam’s defense and security have recorded many significant advances, reflecting flexible adaptation to the changing regional and global security environment. In the context of increasing sovereignty disputes in the East Sea, Vietnam has always persevered in resolving disputes by peaceful means , on the basis of international law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982). At the same time, Vietnam has actively modernized its army, focusing on building a strong enough navy and air force to protect its sovereignty over its seas and islands. According to the 2019 Vietnam Defense White Paper, Vietnam maintains a defense policy of “no military alliances, no use of force or threat of force, no participation in military alliances, and no foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory.” This is a principle that demonstrates the peaceful, autonomous, and transparent nature of Vietnam’s defense.

In the context of the Asia-Pacific region, especially the East Sea, becoming the focus of strategic competition between major powers, Vietnam must both strengthen its defense capacity and persist in its independent, multilateral, and diversified foreign policy. The “four no’s” defense policy continues to affirm Vietnam’s commitment to peace and stability.

A highlight in the defense and security policy over the past 50 years has been the expansion of international defense cooperation. Vietnam has continuously strengthened bilateral and multilateral defense cooperation with many partners, from traditional Russia and India to “former enemies” such as the United States, Japan, and France, demonstrating Hanoi’s skillful strategic balancing role in a period of complex geopolitical competition. In addition, Vietnam is currently an active member of regional defense cooperation mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+), the Shangri-La Dialogue, etc. Vietnam has also sent forces to participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations since 2014 in South Sudan and the Central African Republic. This is evidence that Vietnam not only focuses on protecting domestic security but also actively contributes to the common security of the region and the world.

In addition, ensuring national security and defense has also undergone major changes. In the context of non-traditional security emerging as a transnational challenge, Vietnam has promptly adjusted its awareness and response methods. Risks such as cybercrime, terrorism, energy security, environmental security, epidemics, etc. are included in the national security strategy. Vietnam has strengthened cooperation with INTERPOL, ASEANPOL, and major partners in preventing transnational crimes, ensuring social order and safety, and strengthening people’s trust in the national security apparatus.

On the basis of socio-political stability and firmly protected national sovereignty, Vietnam has increasingly affirmed its role in creating and promoting a stable, peaceful, and rule-based regional order. As the 2020 ASEAN Chair and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2020-2021 term, Vietnam has actively proposed initiatives on preventive diplomacy, security dialogue, and trust building in the region. Vietnam’s extensive participation in new-generation trade agreements such as CPTPP, EVFTA, and RCEP is not only an economic achievement but also a lever to enhance economic security and national comprehensive strength.

In addition, Vietnam is gradually investing heavily in military science and technology and applying technological achievements in protecting national sovereignty and security. Fields such as digital technology, artificial intelligence, big data, remote sensing, and cybersecurity are gradually being integrated into smart defense strategies. The construction and deployment of cybersecurity operations centers, organized cyberattack prevention, and the development of high-quality human resources in the defense and security sector are opening up a new step of development in depth and breadth.

At the same time, defense policies also play a fundamental role in enhancing soft power, creating the image of a peace-loving nation, ready to cooperate and responsible to the international community. Vietnam’s efforts in humanitarian initiatives, disarmament, humanitarian assistance, and regional disaster response have contributed to enhancing the country’s prestige and position. In particular, Vietnam has always promoted its role as a mediator and coordinator in regional and international disputes, which shows that its capacity for conflict management and defense diplomacy is increasingly mature and professional.

In conclusion, after half a century of unification, it can be affirmed that national defense and security have always been a solid pillar of the cause of “building and defending the Fatherland.” At the same time, Vietnam’s national defense and security have transformed from a model tasked with protecting territorial sovereignty in the early post-war years to participating in shaping the regional and global security structure. Vietnam has gradually enhanced its strategic position, affirming its role as a partner of peace, stability, and cooperation. The achievements are clear evidence of the effectiveness of the national defense and people’s security policy under the correct leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In the future, Vietnam’s national defense and security will not only stop at protecting sovereignty but also aim to create a peaceful environment for development, making a more positive contribution to global security.

SACRAMENTO — When the top Democratic candidates for governor took the stage at a labor forum last week, the digs at Gov. Gavin Newsom were subtle. The message, however, was clear. Newsom’s home stretch as California governor may be a bumpy ride.

Newsom hopes to end his time as governor in an air of accomplishment and acclaim, which would elevate his political legacy and prospects in a potential presidential run. But the Democrats running to replace him have a much different agenda.

“Lots of voters think things are not going well in California right now. So if you’re running for governor, you have to run as a change candidate. You have to run as ‘I’m going to shake things up,’ ” said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) at UC Berkeley. “In doing that, you’re at least implicitly criticizing the current governor, right?”

Not only must Newsom swim against that tide until his final term as governor ends in less than two years, he’s being buffeted by the perception that he’s moving rightward to broaden his national appeal in preparation for the 2028 presidential race.

A new IGS poll, co-sponsored by the L.A. Times, earlier this month found that California registered voters by a more than two-to-one margin believe Newsom is more focused on boosting his presidential ambitions than on fixing the problems in his own state.

Newsom faced criticism for showcasing conservative activists on his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” especially when he agreed with Trump loyalist Charlie Kirk that it was “unfair” for trans athletes to compete in women’s sports.

But he also pushed back against Kirk and others during the interviews. He said from the outset that he intended to engage with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, but that did not blunt the criticism he received. Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), the chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said he was “profoundly sickened and frustrated” by Newsom’s remarks about trans athletes.

The Democratic governor took heat last week from progressives for his proposed budget cuts to close a $12-billion deficit, including cuts to free healthcare for eligible undocumented immigrants. Sociologist G. Cristina Mora, also co-director of Berkeley’s IGS, said it’s not surprising “knives are going to be out” during tough budget times, but there’s more to Newsom’s current predicament.

“The big problem for Newsom is that most people see him as focused outside of California at a dire time,” Mora said. “So all his moves that he’s making, whether this is truly him being more educated and coming to the middle, are seen through that lens.”

Not-so-friendly fire

Though Newsom’s name was not uttered when seven of the Democratic candidates for California governor took the stage last week in Sacramento, his presence was certainly felt.

The event was held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, so there was ample praise for California workers and plenty of epithets hurled at President Trump.

And a healthy dose of dissatisfaction about the tough economic times facing many Californians. Notably, Newsom had just a couple of weeks before he celebrated California’s rank as the fourth-largest economy in the world; for years he has boasted of the state’s innovative and thriving economy.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa didn’t appear that impressed, saying California also has the highest cost of living in the nation.

“We love to say we’re the fourth-largest economy in the United States, what we don’t say is we have the highest effective poverty rate,” Villaraigosa said to a hotel ballroom packed with union leaders. “So let’s deal with the issues that are facing us here in California.”

Former Controller Betty Yee offered a similar assessment.

“In California, we are the fourth-largest economy in the world, but when you peel that back, how’s that working for everybody?” she asked.

Six of the seven Democratic candidates said they would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers. Villaraigosa was the sole candidate who expressed reservations. Newsom vetoed a bill in 2023 that would have provided such coverage, saying it would make the state’s unemployment trust fund “vulnerable to insolvency.”

Every candidate present vowed to support regulating how employers use artificial intelligence in the workplace, technology that labor leaders fear, if unchecked, would put people out of work. Newsom has signed legislation restricting aspects of AI, but he has also said he wants to preserve California’s role at the forefront of technology.

Afterward, Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, complained that labor leaders “can’t even get a conversation out of Gavin Newsom” about regulating AI.

Barbs from labor aren’t a new experience for Newsom. Union leaders have at times clashed with the ambitious governor over legislation he opposed that supported pro-union labor agreements with developers and regulating Big Tech.

Gubernatorial candidates taking direct or indirect shots at the incumbent, even those who belong to the same party, also is nothing new. During a candidate debate in 2018, Newsom took a subtle jab at then-Gov. Jerry Brown for the state’s response to the homelessness crisis.

“What lacks is leadership in this state,” Newsom said.

To this day, Newsom says he is the only California governor to launch a major state effort to address the crisis.

Knives out during tough budget times

Newsom also faces the difficult task of having to wrestle with an additional $12-billion state budget shortfall next year, a deficit caused mostly by state overspending Newsom says is being exacerbated by falling tax revenues due to Trump’s on-again-off-again federal tariff policies.

The governor’s proposed cuts drew criticism from some of his most progressive allies and again stirred up rumblings that he was trying to recast himself as a moderate.

To save money, Newsom proposed scaling back his policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants. The governor’s budget also proposes to siphon off $1.3 billion in funding from Proposition 35, a measure voters approved in November that dedicated the revenue from a tax on managed care organizations to primarily pay for increases to Medi-Cal provider rates.

Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, called the governor’s proposed budget cuts “cruel.”

Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), co-chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, said members would oppose Newsom’s Medi-Cal cuts, and rallies against Newsom’s proposal are planned at the Capitol this week.

During his budget news conference on Wednesday, Newsom also took aim at California’s cities and counties, blasting them for not doing enough to address the state’s homelessness crisis. Newsom also renewed his call for cities and counties to ban homeless encampments.

“It is not the state of California that remains the biggest impediment,” Newsom said. “The obstacle remains at the local level.”

Carolyn Coleman, executive director of the League of California Cities, returned fire, saying Newsom’s proposed budget “failed to invest” adequately in efforts by cities to not only alleviate homelessness, but also improve public safety and address climate change.

The Onion, the satirical website that delights in needling politicians in faux news stories, didn’t miss the opportunity to send a zinger Newsom’s way at the end of last week.

Under the headline “Gavin Newsom Sits Down For Podcast With Serial Killer Who Targets Homeless,” the fake article mocks both the governor’s podcast and efforts to address homelessness and purports that Newsom asked the killer what Democrats could learn from his tactics.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: For Kamala Harris, it’s not just whether to run for California governor. It’s why
The deep dive: Europe’s free-speech problem
The L.A. Times Special: When the deportation of an illegal immigrant united L.A. to bring him back

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

No forgiving a Brexit betrayal

WILL today go down in history as the day Sir Keir Starmer betrayed Brexit and the British people?

From the moment he entered No10, or Remainiac Prime Minister — who spent years in Opposition trying to reverse the historic 2016 vote — has been hellbent on securing a so-called “reset” with the EU.

1

His approach to the negotiations with Brussels has been naive at best, and craven at worst.

Indeed, the message his public desperation sent to the hard-nosed Eurocrats was “I want a deal at any price, so shaft me”.

The vengeful EU — which will never get over Brexit, and cannot stand the idea of us being a sovereign nation again — duly obliged.

Its list of demands, in return for a defence partnership, a sop on passport queues and the simple lifting of some spiteful checks on British food exports, would put a mafia extortionist to shame.

Through a series of snide anonymous briefings (the EU’s tactic of choice for decades), we know it expects to agree the following at today’s Lancaster House talks:

Britain to slavishly adhere to every pettifogging Brussels edict on standards, a straitjacket known as “dynamic alignment” which would make trade deals with the rest of world far harder.

Subservience to the over-mighty, expansionist European Court of Justice.

Generous access to our fishing waters for mostly French vessels for ever more, undermining a core reason why millions voted Leave.

Bundles of cash to once again be paid into the EU’s coffers for participation in its various programmes and schemes.

Most unbelievably, a “youth mobility scheme” for anyone under 35 – yes, 35! – which would restore free movement by the back door, and give 80 MILLION EU citizens the chance to live and work here.

So much for getting a grip on runaway immigration.

And what has Sir Keir’s response been to all of this?

He and his Chancellor have effectively said bring it on, and that this is just the start of a much deeper future partnership with the EU.

We remind them both of two things, before they sit down to formally ink this seemingly wretched surrender deal.

First, the best economic days of the EU are long behind it — look at the state of the German and French economies.

Britain should be looking to do ambitious trade deals beyond Europe — indeed the new partnership with India, and the recent easing of US tariffs were only possible because of Brexit.

Not tying our hands and alienating allies like Donald Trump.

And, second, the British people voted nine years ago to take back control of our money, borders and laws.

If the PM hands all of this back over to Brussels today, he will not be forgiven.

In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe, as a record 1.3 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing civil war, sought asylum, Pau Aleikum Garcia was in Athens, helping those arriving in the Greek capital after a perilous sea journey.

The then 25-year-old Spanish volunteer arranged housing for refugees in abandoned facilities like schools and libraries, and set up community kitchens, language classes and art activities.

“It was kind of a massive cascade of people,” Garcia recalls.

“My own memory of that time is oddly patchy,” he admits. Though there was one encounter that stood out.

In one of those schools in Athens’ Exarcheia neighbourhood, where refugees painted the external wall to illustrate their memories of their journeys, Garcia met a Syrian woman in her late 70s.

“I’m not afraid of being a refugee. I have lived all my life. I’m happy with what I have lived,” he recalls her telling him. “I’m afraid that my grandkids will be refugees for all their life.”

When he tried to reassure her that they would find a place to start anew, she protested: “No, no, I’m worried, because when my grandkids grow [up] and they ask themselves, ‘Where do I come from?’ they won’t be able to answer that question.”

The woman told him how, during the family’s journey to Greece, all but one of their photo albums were lost.

Now, she said, all the memories of their lives in Syria existed only in her and her husband’s minds, unrecorded and unrecoverable for the next generation.

Connecting generations

The woman’s story stayed with Garcia after he returned to Barcelona and his work as cofounder of the design studio, Domestic Data Streamers (DDS).

Over the years, the studio has grown into a 30-person team of experts in varied disciplines such as psychology, architecture, cognitive science, journalism and design. The studio has collaborated with diverse institutions such as museums, prisons and churches, as well as the likes of the United Nations, and uses technology to bring “emotions and humanity” to data visualisation.

Then, in around 2019, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence – a model of machine learning that uses algorithms to create new content from data scraped from the internet – the team began to explore image-generating technology, following the release of ChatGPT.

As they did, Garcia thought of the grandmother from Syria and how this technology might help someone like her by constructing images based on memories.

He believes that memories – captured through records like photographs – play an integral role in connecting generations.

“Memories are the architects of who we are. … It’s a big part of how social identities are built,” he says.

He also likes to cite Montserrat Roig, a Catalan author, who wrote that the biggest act of love is to remember something.

But in the past, people had fewer opportunities to document their lives than their mobile phone-wielding contemporaries, he says. Many experiences have been omitted or erased from collective memory due to lack of access, persecution, censorship or marginalisation.

So with this in mind, in 2022, Garcia and his team launched the Synthetic Memories project to use AI to generate photographic representations of memories that were lost, due to missing photos, for instance, or never recorded in the first place.

“I don’t think there was an eureka moment,” Garcia says of the evolution of the idea. “I’ve always been intrigued by how documentaries reconstruct the past … our goal and approach were more focused on the subjective and personal side, trying to capture the emotional layers of memory.”

For Garcia, the chance to recover such memories is an important act in reclaiming one’s past. “The fact that you have an image that tells this happened to me, this is my memory, and this is shown and other people can see it, is also a way to say to you, ‘Yes, this happened’. It’s a way of saying, of having more dignity about the part of your history that has not been depicted.”

Building memories

To create a synthetic memory, DDS uses open-source image-generating AI systems such as DALL-E 2 and Flux, while the team is developing its own tool.

The process starts with an interviewer asking a subject to recall their earliest memory. They explore various narratives as people recount their life stories before picking the one they think can be best encapsulated in an image.

The interviewer works with a prompter – someone trained in the syntax that the AI uses to create visuals – who inputs specific words to build the image from the details described by the interviewee.

Nearly everything, such as hairstyles, clothing, and furniture, is recreated as accurately as possible. However, figures themselves are usually depicted from behind or, if faces are shown, with a degree of blurriness.

This is intentional. “We want to be very clear that this is a synthetic memory and this is not real photography,” says Garcia. This is partly because they want to ensure their generated images don’t add to the proliferation of fake photos on the internet.

The resulting images – usually two or three from each session, which can last up to an hour – can appear dreamlike and undefined.

“As we know, memory is very, very, very fragile and full of imperfections,” Garcia explains. “That was the other reason why we wanted a model that could be full of imperfections and also a bit fragile, so it’s a good demonstration of how our memory works.”

Garcia’s team found that people who took part in the project said they felt a stronger connection to less detailed images, their suggestive nature allowing for their imagination to fill in the blanks. The higher the resolution, the more someone focuses on the details, losing that emotional connection to the image, Airi Dordas, the project’s lead, explains.

The team first trialled this technology with their grandparents. The experience was moving, Garcia says, and one that grew into medical trials to determine whether synthetic memories can be used as an augmentation tool in reminiscence therapy for dementia sufferers.

From there, the team went on to work with Bolivian and Korean communities in Brazil to tell their stories of migration, before partnering with Barcelona’s city council to document local memories. The sessions were open to the public and held last summer at the Design Museum in Barcelona, generating more than 300 memories.

Some wanted to work through traumatic experiences, like one woman who was abused by a relative who avoided jail and wanted to recreate a memory of him in court to share with her family. Others recalled moments from their childhood, like 105-year-old Pepita, who recreated the day she saw a train for the first time. Couples came to relive shared experiences.

There was always a moment, Ainoa Pubill Unzeta, who carried out interviews in Barcelona, says, “when people actually saw a picture that they would relate to, you could feel it … you can see it”. For some, it was just a smile; others cried. For her, this was confirmation that the image was done well.

One of the first memories Garcia recorded during their pilot sessions was that of Carmen, now in her 90s. She remembers going up to a stranger’s balcony as a child, her mother having paid the owners to let them in, because it looked into the courtyard of the jail where her father, a doctor for the Republican front during the Spanish Civil War, was being held. This was the only way the family could see him from his cell window.

By incredible coincidence, Carmen’s son was employed in the same prison as a social worker decades later, but neither son nor mother knew that. When the whole family came to see an installation at the Public Office of Synthetic Memories last year, her son recognised the prison immediately from his mother’s reconstruction. “It was a kind of closing the loop … it was beautiful,” Garcia says.

Clandestine assemblies

The team was particularly interested in telling stories of civic activists who have played a key role in different social movements in the city over the last 50 years, including those concerning LGBTQ and workers’ rights. While initially the focus was not on the dictatorship era, it “naturally brought us to engage with people who, by the historical circumstances, were activists against the regime,” Dordas explains.

One of them was 74-year-old Jose Carles Vallejo Calderon.

Born in Barcelona in 1950 to Republican parents who faced oppression under General Francisco Franco, Vallejo came of age during one of Europe’s longest dictatorships, which lasted from 1939 to 1975. During the civil war of 1936-39, and following the defeat of the Republican forces by Franco’s Nationalists, enforced disappearances, forced labour, torture and extrajudicial killings claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

Vallejo became involved in opposition to the fascist regime first at university, where he attempted to organise a democratic student union, and then as a young worker at Barcelona’s SEAT automobile factory.

He recalls an atmosphere of fear, with most people terrified of speaking out against the authoritarian government. “That fear sprang from the terrible defeat in the Spanish Civil War and from the many deaths that occurred during the war, but also from the harsh repression from the post-war period up to the end of the dictatorship,” he explains.

Informants were everywhere, and the circle of trusted individuals was small. “As you can imagine, this is no way to live – this was living in darkness, silence, fear, and repression,” Vallejo says.

“There were few of us – very few – who dared to move from silence to activism, which involved many risks.”

Vallejo was imprisoned in 1970 for attempting to set up a labour union among SEAT employees, spending half a year in jail, including 20 days being tortured by Barcelona’s secret police. After another arrest in late 1971 and the prosecution demanding 20 years for what were then considered crimes of association, organisation and propaganda, Vallejo crossed the border with France in January 1972. He ultimately gained political asylum in Italy, where he lived in exile before returning to Spain following the first limited amnesty of 1976, which granted pardons to political prisoners after Franco’s death in 1975.

Today, Vallejo dedicates his time to human rights activism. He presides over the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of Francoism, created in the final years of the dictatorship.

He learned about synthetic memories through Iridia, a human rights organisation that collaborated with DDS to help visualise memories of police abuse victims during the regime in a central Barcelona police station.

Vallejo was drawn to the project, curious about how the technology might be applied to capturing resistance activities too dangerous to record during Franco’s rule.

In 1970, SEAT workers organised clandestine breakfasts in the woods of Vallvidrera. On Sunday mornings, disguised as hikers, they would make their way through the dense forests surrounding the Catalan capital to discuss the struggle against the dictatorship.

“I think I must have been to more than 10 or 15 of these forest gatherings,” Vallejo recalls. Other times, they met in churches. No records of these exist.

Vallejo’s synthetic memory of these meetings is in black and white. The image is vague, almost like someone has taken an eraser to it to blur the details. But it is still possible to make out the scene: a crowd of people gathered in a forest. Some sit, others stand beneath a canopy of trees.

Looking at the image, Vallejo says he felt transported to the clandestine assemblies in the Barcelona woods, where as many as 50 or 60 people would gather in a tense atmosphere.

“I found myself truly immersed in the image,” he says.

“It was like entering a kind of time tunnel,” he adds.

Vallejo suffered memory loss around the ordeal of his arrests, imprisonment and torture.

The process of creating the image provided “a feeling – not exactly of relief – but rather of reconciling memory with the past and perhaps also of filling that void created by selective amnesia, which results from complicated, traumatic, and above all, distant experiences”. He found the reconstruction a “valuable experience” that helped him process some of these events.

‘We are not reconstructing the past’

Emphasising that memory is subjective, Garcia says, “One of the things that we are kind of drawing a very big red line about is historical reconstruction.”

This is partly due to the drawbacks of AI, which reinforces cultural and other biases in the data it draws from.

David Leslie, director of ethics and responsible innovation research at the Alan Turing Institute, the United Kingdom centre for data science and AI, cautions that using data that was initially biased against marginalised groups could create revisionist histories or false memories for those communities. Nor can “simply generating something from AI” help to remedy or reclaim historical narratives, he insists.

For DDS, “It is never about the bigger story. We are not reconstructing the past,” Garcia explains.

“When we talk about history, we talk about one truth that somehow we are committed to,” he elaborates. But while synthetic memories can depict a part of the human experience that history books cannot, these memories come from the individual, not necessarily what transpired, he underlines.

The team believes synthetic memories could not only help communities whose memories are at risk but also create dialogue between cultures and generations.

They plan to set up “emergency” memory clinics in places where cultural heritage is in danger of being eroded by natural disasters, such as in southern Brazil, which was last year hit by floods. There are also hopes to make their finished tool freely available to nursing homes.

But Garcia wonders what place the project could have in a future where there is an “over-registration” of everything that happens. “I have 10 images of my father when he was a kid,” he says. “I have over 200 when I was a kid. But my friend, of her daughter, [has] 25,000, and she’s five years old!”

“I think the problem of memory image will be another one, which will be that we are … [overwhelmed] and we cannot find the right image to tell us the story,” he muses.

Yet in the present moment, Vallejo believes the project has a role to play in helping younger generations understand past injustices. Forgetting serves no purpose for activists like himself, he believes, while memory is like “a weapon for the future”.

Instead of trying to numb the past, “I think it is more therapeutic – both collectively and individually – to remember rather than to forget.”

WASHINGTON — Markets rejoiced this week over news that the Trump administration, after six weeks of maximalist rhetoric, had struck a preliminary deal with China to lower tariff rates between the two countries. Tech stocks led the rally, with investors hopeful that President Trump had finally retreated from plans for a protracted trade war with a vital trading partner.

But the celebration may be premature, industry insiders, foreign diplomats and market experts said, telling The Times that Silicon Valley will face strong headwinds in the months ahead — the makings of a perfect storm of uncertainty that could still tip the U.S. economy into recession.

Investigation at Commerce

Wall Street reacted with similar exuberance last month on word that tech products, such as smartphones and computers, would be exempt from Trump’s 145% tariffs on China — a figure that was reduced in the deal struck on Monday to 30%, marking a significant reduction, but still far higher than tariffs have ever been on Chinese imports.

And yet the April 12 White House announcement outlining exemptions was widely misunderstood as a walk-back. In fact, those tech products, including the iPhone, are exempted from existing tariff rates only temporarily, because the Commerce Department is conducting an ongoing review of whether to impose separate import duties on the sector over specific national security concerns.

The investigation, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, is progressing, with the Commerce Department recently ending its acceptance of public comments. The department, led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, could issue findings anytime in the coming months, alongside a tariff rate of unknown size that may severely affect Silicon Valley companies.

The review is causing uncertainty in its own right. But Lutnick has indicated that action is forthcoming. He has repeatedly advocated for the iPhone to be manufactured in the United States — a process that would require a large, skilled workforce in high-tech manufacturing produced by the very universities being targeted by the Trump administration, and would substantially increase the price of computing products for American households.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary who has earned greater confidence than Lutnick from the business community, is the one leading trade negotiations with China, where many of those products are made. That has Silicon Valley executives questioning which one of them is in charge, and whom they should be speaking with, according to one tech executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

“The core issue for Silicon Valley lies in the uncertainty and potential cost disruption these bring to critical technology components, especially semiconductors,” said Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, a professor of information systems and operations management at the University of Florida.

“While ostensibly about national security, the application of these investigations can introduce significant volatility into supply chain planning and investment decisions. Companies might hesitate to commit to certain sourcing strategies if there’s a persistent threat,” he added. “All of which is to say that there will be quite a bit of turbulence ahead for strategic planners of Silicon Valley firms.”

Looming battle with Europe

Announcing the reduction in trade tensions with China on Monday, Trump turned his attention to the European Union, another major trading partner, and levied a threat.

“The European Union is in many ways nastier than China,” the president said. “They’ll come down a lot. You watch. We have all the cards. They treat us very unfairly.”

But the Europeans believe they have some cards, as well.

Trump’s focus on trade with Europe has been on tangible goods, such as agricultural products, manufactured items, pharmaceuticals and cars — a grouping of products that on their own would show a significant U.S. trade deficit with the continent. But European officials use different math. They want to account for European use of U.S. digital services to level the playing field.

One European official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the taxation of digital services — such as online advertising, social media platforms and streaming services — is expected to be a “significant” component of the upcoming negotiations.

“Silicon Valley should be very concerned,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The U.S. really stands to lose if there are certain tariffs that are brought to services, and I think people in the U.S. understand that, and would try to prevent it from happening.”

Targeting the U.S. digital sector offers Europe potent leverage in negotiations with the Trump administration, not only because it represents such a large portion of the American economy, but also because it applies acute pressure on Trump’s political allies in Silicon Valley — a tactic that could ultimately persuade him to cave.

“Trump blinked on the China tariffs at least in part because China aggressively retaliated,” Strain said. “That will be interesting to watch if other trading partners modify their strategy: learning that punching the bully in the nose is the right thing to do.”

Rates remain high on China

One of Trump’s first calls on Monday morning after announcing his temporary truce with China was to Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook. “He’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple,” Trump said. “We look forward to that.”

Apple can’t build them fast enough. Although it committed $500 billion in investments over the next four years in U.S. production, including new plants and a manufacturing academy, uncertainty in the interim will force the company to make hard decisions on its product lines.

Despite some protection from the exemptions in place as the Commerce investigation proceeds, the California tech giant still faces hurdles from the tariffs that remain high across supply chains — not just in China, where rates remain at 30%, but also elsewhere in Asia, including India and Vietnam, which face 10% import duties. In the most recent earnings call, before the China deal was announced, Cook estimated that Apple could incur a $900-million hit from tariffs.

“For companies like Apple, and indeed much of Silicon Valley, this overall environment isn’t just about weathering a storm; it’s about fundamentally rethinking global operations,” Bandyopadhyay said. “We’re already witnessing the strategic pivots.”

To offset the costs of tariffs, Apple could increase the prices of iPhones in the fall. But the company also has to walk a fine line both politically and financially. The Trump administration has been critical of companies such as Amazon that have considered showing consumers the impact of tariffs.

“This is all sort of a game of poker, and also remember, Tim Cook is 10% politician, 90% CEO,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst who covers the technology sector.

Ives said the upcoming iPhone 17 could cost $100 more than the current model, but his firm estimates that could reduce demand by 5%, delaying consumers’ purchases of new devices. Other analysts said it is tough to say if prices will increase, with the smartphone maker keeping prices relatively stable in recent years.

The debate over Apple’s fate has proved to be a sensitive point in U.S. negotiations with Beijing. Last month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry recirculated a video from a visit Cook made to China in 2017, in which he explained why Silicon Valley companies find themselves so reliant on the Chinese supply chain.

“The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I am not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being a low-labor-cost country many years ago,” Cook said at the time. “The reason is because of the skill, the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill it is.”

“The products we do require really advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with materials that we do are state-of-the-art,” he added. “If you look at the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill a room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”

Times staff writer Queenie Wong in San Francisco contributed to this report.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California to ask federal judge for sweeping pause to Trump’s tariffs
The deep dive: Trade truce with China is hailed, but it may not be enough to stop shortages
The L.A. Times Special: Newsom claims Trump’s tariffs will reduce California revenues by $16 billion

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

The month before Sampdoria’s play-off exit Pirlo was called “a key part of the project” by the club’s owners, but three games into the current campaign he was dismissed following two defeats and a draw.

Andrea Sottil replaced him and oversaw a Coppa Italia penalty-shootout victory against Genoa in the first Derby della Lanterna in two years.

However, he too was jettisoned in October 2024 after just four wins in 14 games and replaced by Leonardo Semplici.

With the club in the drop zone, a 3-0 home defeat by Frosinone at the end of March was the tipping point for the fans as patience with Semplici ran out.

The team bus carrying Semplici and his Sampdoria players was pelted by stones and flares by angry supporters after the match at the Luigi Ferraris Stadium.

Semplici was relieved of his duties in April with Alberico Evani – the club’s fourth coach of the season – tasked with keeping them up.

Things began promisingly for Evani with club legend Attilio Lombardo in as assistant and another Sampdoria icon in Roberto Mancini helping in an unofficial capacity.

Evani began with a 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Cittadella, but three draws, a defeat and just one win since then have not been enough to keep them up.

Latin music reigns supreme in los Estados Unidos.

Bad Bunny and Fuerza Regida just made history for Spanish-language music. As of this week, the Puerto Rican artist’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” and the San Bernardino group’s “111XPANTIA” became the first-ever Spanish-language albums to simultaneously sit at Nos. 1 and 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Fuerza Regida’s album, which dropped May 2, debuted in the No. 2 spot on the chart. According to Billboard, it became the highest-charting música regional album and Spanish-language album by a group or duo.

Bad Bunny’s wide-spanning love letter to his beloved Puerto Rico — “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” — regained the top spot in the charts after he released a vinyl edition of the album. It was previously sitting in the seventh position on the Billboard 200 and has lingered in the top 10 since it debuted on Jan. 5.

Bad Bunny announced a 23-date stadium tour in support of the album that will kick off Nov. 21 in the Dominican Republic, followed by shows in Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina. There are currently no U.S. dates scheduled for the tour.

“111XPANTIA,” Fuerza Regida’s ninth studio album, released under Rancho Humilde and Street Mob Records, marks the group’s return to its original corrido style, in contrast to its last album, 2024’s “Pero No Te Enamores,” which explored more electronically-geared genres like Jersey club, drill and house music.

The album title itself, “111XPANTIA,” is made up of two parts: the first is a palindrome, “111,” which some call an “angel number,” or a sign of luck; the second part stems from the Nahuatl word for manifestation, “ixpantia.”

“The meaning of this album is to manifest an idea, to think your dreams into reality and to prove something through the power of the mind and the concept of the law of attraction,” said Fuerza Regida frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz, a.k.a. JOP, in a press release.

California voters have sharply differing views over two of the state’s most prominent Democrats, according to a new poll.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to decide by the end of the summer whether she runs for California governor in 2026, has near universal name recognition among California voters, and 50% view her favorably, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times.

In contrast, California voters, notably residents of the city of Los Angeles, are more likely to view Mayor Karen Bass unfavorably. In the aftermath of the devastating fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades earlier this year and criticism of the city’s response, Bass’ approval ratings are dire among Angelenos, who are overwhelmingly Democratic. Voters’ unhappiness with the mayor could create difficulties for her reelection campaign next year if the mood persists.

“When you’re underwater and almost universally known — 82% of voters can offer an opinion of Bass in Los Angeles city — one of the hardest things to overcome is an accumulated negative image,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll. “Once you develop an unfavorable image, it’s hard to overcome. It almost requires another major event she can take credit for or look good in handling.”

The Democrats are longtime allies — Harris swore Bass in when she was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 after defeating real estate developer Rick Caruso by nearly 10 points.

Both women were among the elected officials vetted to be Joe Biden’s running mate in the 2020 election. Harris ultimately prevailed, was elected vice president and then became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 after Biden decided not to run for reelection.

But California voters have strikingly different thoughts about the veteran elected officials.

Perceptions of Bass, a longtime member of Congress and the state Legislature, have faltered in the aftermath of the fires — a notable reversal among Californians who were optimistic about her prospects shortly before she won the mayoral election in 2022.

In October of that year, 50% of likely voters in Los Angeles had a positive opinion of Bass, while 35% had a negative view, according to a UC Berkeley/Times poll conducted at the time.

Now, half of the city’s voters surveyed perceive her negatively, while 32% have a favorable impression, according to the new poll. In Los Angeles, with the exception of Black voters and senior citizens, Bass is viewed more unfavorably than positively among voters of every other age group, and men and women. Statewide, 42% of voters do not have a favorable view of Bass, who is facing a recall effort that is unlikely to make the ballot. Only 1 in 5 (19%) give her high marks.

Harris, despite losing the presidential election to Donald Trump in 2024, is faring better than Bass among California voters as she weighs a gubernatorial bid next year to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cannot run for the seat again because of term limits.

Roughly 96% of California voters know enough about Harris to have an opinion about her, according to the poll. That’s a stratospheric level of name identification in an enormous state where lesser-known candidates must spend tens of millions of dollars in hopes of raising their profile.

Voters’ views of Harris, a former U.S. senator, state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, are split, with 50% having a positive image of the Bay Area native, compared with 46% holding a negative impression, according to the poll. She drew stronger support from voters who tend to cast ballots more frequently in statewide elections — women, younger and older voters, and residents of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County.

Voters’ views of Harris varied dramatically over the past 15 years. She barely won the state attorney general’s race in 2010 and was unknown by a large segment of voters, DiCamillo said. By the time Harris ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016, she was viewed favorably by the state’s voters, though many did not know enough about her to offer an opinion.

“As she settled into her job as U.S. senator, people started to pay more attention to her. Obviously, she was getting a lot of attention when she was grilling Supreme Court nominees,” DiCamillo said, with voters becoming far more familiar with Harris and having positive views of her.

Those impressions sank during her unsuccessful run for president in 2020, improved in the early days of the Biden administration, and then dipped again when she was vice president and assigned intractable issues such as the flow of immigrants fleeing Central America, he said. Her image has improved slightly since then, but is strong among Democrats, frequent voters, women and residents of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, subgroups that would be critical sources of support if she decides to run for governor.

Harris has kept a relatively low profile since her November loss in the presidential race, but delivered her most full-throated remarks about Trump in late April. Blasting his policies as a betrayal of the nation’s founding principles, the former vice president warned of a looming constitutional crisis.

But fellow Democrats have criticized Harris for not planning on making a decision about whether to run for governor until the end of the summer. Her delayed plans have put the race in limbo and made some deep-pocketed political donors hesitant to write checks.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Harris supporter in prior elections, is among the Democrats running for governor who have publicly expressed frustration about her delay in announcing her intentions.

Harris’ team has a “level of arrogance” about their lackadaisical approach to leading a state with the fourth-largest economy in the world, he said in an interview in Sacramento on Tuesday, six days before the poll was published.

“California is not a steppingstone,” Villaraigosa said, shortly after speaking at a Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California conference. “Stop playing footsie. Either run for governor or not.”

The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 6,201 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from April 21 to 28, including 611 voters living in the city of Los Angeles. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups. Details of the poll results on Harris and Bass will be made public on Tuesday.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Despite political promises, Californians are stressed about their finances
The TK: The Partisan Mind Virus
The L.A. Times Special: Trump is wrong. My dad was a trucker, and he didn’t need much English to do his job

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: During the near decade since L.A. was awarded the 2028 Olympics, new venues have arrived, proposed venues have fallen through and sports have shuffled, but the centerpiece of the ever-evolving plan has always been clear.

The Coliseum.

The iconic stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, LA28 announced Thursday, officially locking in the organizing committee’s proposal. While the Coliseum will become the first venue to host the Olympics three times, the 2028 Games will also showcase one of the region’s newest cornerstones by using SoFi Stadium as a second venue for the Olympic opening ceremony and to host the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games.

The dual-venue opening ceremony is a first for the Olympic Games, following another unprecedented format in Paris where athletes paraded down the Seine in boats.

“We’re going to be celebrating the past and we’re also going to be celebrating the future,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said Thursday at a news conference held at the Coliseum. “It is what’s next. The iconicness of the Coliseum and all the things that it represents and the ’32 Games and the ’84 Games, and then the technology and the next stage of Games and experience that the Inglewood stadium represents is going to be an amazing juxtaposition.”

Continue reading here

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)
at Minnesota 117, Golden State 93 (box score)
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: It’s much too early to call it 2021 yet.

But, just like the last time the Dodgers tried to defend a World Series title, the National League West isn’t presenting the easiest of paths.

Entering Thursday night, the division was home to the best team in baseball, the 25-win Dodgers. But, based on overall league records, it also included the clubs ranked third (San Diego at 23-13), fifth (San Francisco at 24-14) and 13th (Arizona at 19-18) in the majors, too.

“I think we’re the best division in baseball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I don’t think anyone is gonna run away with it.”

In 2021, of course, the Dodgers faced a similar test in the NL West. That year, the division wasn’t as deep, the bottom three teams all finishing below .500. But at the top, the Dodgers and Giants duked it out to the end. The Dodgers finished with 106 wins. The Giants topped them with 107. It forced the Dodgers to settle for a wild-card berth in the playoffs, and down an elongated October path that saw them run out of steam in the NL Championship Series.

While this season isn’t even at its quarter-point yet, a similar threat is starting to brew.

In a 5-3 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday night, the Dodgers got their first taste of the challenge that might lie ahead. Over the next several weeks, plenty more intradivision tests loom.

Continue reading here

Shaikin: Agent Nez Balelo ‘wouldn’t do anything different’ with Shohei Ohtani’s $700-million deal

Hernández: Shohei Ohtani pitching this season initially felt like a luxury. Now it’s a necessity

Dodgers box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

ANGELS

Anthony Santander hit a go-ahead, two-run single during Toronto’s four-run sixth inning, and the Blue Jays snapped their four-game losing streak with an 8-5 victory over the Angels on Thursday night.

Daulton Varsho homered and drove in three runs on three hits for the Jays, who rallied from an early four-run deficit with 14 hits to avoid a series sweep. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. also had three hits as Toronto won for just the fifth time in 17 games.

Taylor Ward and Jo Adell hit early homers for the Angels, who failed to earn their first series sweep.

Continue reading here

Angels box score

MLB scores

MLB standings

DUCKS

Joel Quenneville returned to hockey Thursday with contrition. He acknowledged mistakes and said he accepted full responsibility for his role in the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault scandal.

The second-winningest coach in NHL history said he is a changed man after nearly four years away from the game. As he took over behind the bench of the Ducks, he vowed to continue to educate himself about abuse, to expand his work with victims, and to create a safe workplace with his new team.

Quenneville also realizes that’s not nearly enough to satisfy a significant segment of hockey fans who believe his acknowledged inaction during the Blackhawks scandal should have ended his career.

“I fully understand and accept those who question my return to the league,” Quenneville said. “I know words aren’t enough. I will demonstrate (by) my actions that I am a man of character.”

Continue reading here

NHL PLAYOFFS SCHEDULE, RESULTS

All times Pacific

Conference semifinals

Pacific 1 Vegas vs. Pacific 3 Edmonton
Edmonton 4, at Vegas 2 (summary)
Edmonton 5, at Vegas 4 (OT) (summary)
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
Dallas 3, at Winnipeg 2 (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 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 3 (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)
at Washington 3, Carolina 1 (summary)
Saturday at Carolina, 3 p.m., TNT
Monday at Carolina, 4 p.m., TNT
Thursday at Washington, TBD, TNT
Saturday, May 17 at Carolina, TBD*
Monday, May 19 at Washington, TBD, ESPN*

* If necessary

THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1930 — Gallant Fox, ridden by Earl Sande, wins the Preakness Stakes by three-quarters of a length over Crack Brigade. Gallant Fox becomes the only Triple Crown winner to win the Preakness a week before the Kentucky Derby.

1932 — Burgoo King, ridden by Eugene James, withstands a strong drive by Tick On to win the Preakness Stakes by a head.

1942 — Alsab, ridden by Basil James, wins the Preakness Stakes by one length over Requested.

1944 — Jockey Walter Warren is involved in a rare feat in thoroughbred racing history, riding two horses to dead heat first-place finishes at Sportsman’s Park. In the sixth race, Warren rides Maejames to a dead heat finish with Piplad. In the eighth, Warren rides Susan Constant in another dead heat with Three Sands.

1990 — Sampdoria of Italy win 30th European Cup Winner’s Cup against Anderlecht of Belgium 2-0 in Gothenburg.

1993 — The Phoenix Suns beat the Lakers 112-104 in overtime to become the first NBA team to lose two playoff games at home and come back to win three straight games.

2004 — Jay Bouwmeester scores the winning goal, and Canada rallies to beat Sweden for the second straight year in the gold-medal game at the world hockey championships, 5-3.

2006 — Joffrey Lupul becomes the first player in NHL playoff history to cap a four-goal game with an overtime score, netting the game-winner at 16:30 of the extra period to give the Ducks a 4-3 victory over Colorado.

2009 — LeBron James scores 47 points to lift Cleveland to a 97-82 win over Atlanta. The Cavaliers sets an NBA record with its seventh straight double-figure win to eclipse the mark set by the 2004 Indiana Pacers.

2011 — The ATP and WTA tennis rankings are released with no American man or woman in the top 10 for the first time in the 38-year history of the rankings. Mardy Fish and Andy Roddick are Nos. 11 and 12, while Serena and Venus Williams were Nos. 17 and 19, respectively.

2016 — Stephen Curry returns from a sprained right knee to score an NBA-record 17 points in overtime, finishing with 40 as the Golden State Warriors rally to take a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference semifinals with a 132-125 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

2018 — Manchester City smashes EPL records in 3-1 win over Brighton — most goals (105), most points (97) and most wins (31).

2018 — The Lehigh Valley Phantoms beat Charlotte Checkers 2-1 in the longest game in the 82-year history of the American Hockey League. Alex Krushelnyski’s goal at 6:48 of the fifth overtime period gives the Phantoms a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven Atlantic Division Finals series.

2019 — English clubs create football history by taking all 4 final spots in Europe’s 2 major competitions; Chelsea & Arsenal qualify in Europa Cup after ‘miracle’ Champions League wins for Liverpool & Spurs.

THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

1901 — Earl Moore of the Cleveland Indians pitched nine hitless innings against the Chicago White Sox before giving up two hits in the 10th to lose 4-2.

1937 — Ernie Lombardi of the Cincinnati Reds went 6-for-6 in a 21-10 rout of the Phillies in Philadelphia.

1947 — In his first game outside of New York City, Jackie Robinson has two hits and scores twice in the Dodgers’ 6-5 loss to the Phillies.

1961 — Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles hit consecutive grand slams in the first and second innings of a 13-5 rout of Minnesota.

1962 — Brooks Robinson becomes the 6th major leaguer this century to hit grand slams in back-to-back games, as he hits one against Kansas City’s Ed Rakow. Baltimore wins, 6-3, at home.

1967 — Cardinals outfielder #9 Roger Maris hits his first National League home run on the ninth day of the month in seat 9 of section 9.

1973 — Johnny Bench of the Reds hit three home runs off Philadelphia’s Steve Carlton for the second time in his career. Bench drove in seven runs in Cincinnati’s 9-7 victory.

1984 — The Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers played for 8 hours, 6 minutes in the longest game. After playing 17 innings the previous day, the teams met again before a regularly scheduled game, making the total 34 innings for two days. Harold Baines homered off Chuck Porter with one out in the bottom of the 25th for a 7-6 victory. Tom Seaver won both games for the White Sox.

1987 — Baltimore’s Eddie Murray became the first major leaguer to homer from both sides of the plate in consecutive games as the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox 15-6 at Comiskey Park.

1993 — Cubs 1B Mark Grace hits for the cycle in Chicago’s 5-4 loss to the Padres. He is the 14th Cub to do so.

1999 — Marshall McDougall hit six consecutive homers and knocked in 16 runs — both NCAA records — in Florida State’s 26-2 rout of Maryland. The second baseman opened with an RBI single, then hit six straight homers. After his base hit, McDougall had a solo homer in the second inning, a three-run shot in the fourth, a solo homer in the sixth, a three-run shot in the seventh, a grand slam in the eighth and a three-run shot in the ninth.

2006 — Tampa Bay prospect Delmon Young was suspended for 50 games without pay by the International League for throwing a bat that hit a replacement umpire in the chest. IL president Randy Mobley said he believed the suspension was the longest in the league’s 123-year history. The suspension is retroactive to April 27, the day after Young tossed his bat in a Triple-A game while playing for Durham.

2010 — Dallas Braden pitched the 19th perfect game in major league history, a dazzling performance for the Oakland Athletics in a 4-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. He struck out six in the 109-pitch performance, throwing 77 strikes in his 53rd career start.

2011 — Zack Greinke wins his first game for the Milwaukee Brewers, striking out 9 batters in 6 innings in a 4-3 win over San Diego at Miller Park.

2013 — For only the third time ever, the reigning Cy Young Award winners face off. David Price and R.A. Dickey get no-decisions as the Rays top the Blue Jays, 5-4. The other match-ups had been Orel Hershiser vs. Frank Viola in 1989 and Tom Glavine vs. Roger Clemens in 1999.

2015 — Bryce Harper did it again, extending his remarkable homer streak with a two-run shot in the bottom of the ninth inning that sent the Washington Nationals over the Atlanta Braves 8-6. Harper homered for the sixth time in his last three games, one off the major league record set by Shawn Green in 2002.

2019 — With a solo homer in the 3rd inning in a 13-0 win against the Tigers, Albert Pujols of the Angels becomes the fifth player in major league history to collect 2,000 RBIs.

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.

India and Pakistan are locked in a rapidly escalating military exchange that threatens to explode into a fully fledged war, triggered by a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22 in which 26 civilians were killed, but rooted in decades-old hostilities.

On May 7, India launched a wave of missiles into Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, striking at least six cities and killing at least 31 people – including two children – according to Islamabad. Since then, Indian drones have hit major Pakistani cities and military installations, and India has accused Pakistan to launching a barrage of missiles and drones at its cities and military facilities.

Alongside the missiles and drones, the nuclear-armed neighbours have also traded allegations and denials. India says its May 7 missiles only struck “terrorist infrastructure” while Pakistan insists civilians were killed. Pakistan denies that it launched missiles or drones towards India, and both claim to be victims of the other’s aggression.

Yet the origins of this latest crisis between India and Pakistan go back to their very formation as sovereign nation states in their current form. Here is a recap of the state of near-constant tensions between the South Asian neighbours.

1940s-50s: A tale of two countries

The Indian subcontinent was a British colony from 1858 until 1947, when British colonial rule finally ended, splitting the subcontinent into the two countries. The Muslim-majority Pakistan gained its independence on August 14 that year as non-contiguous and culturally distant zones, West Pakistan and East Pakistan. The Hindu-majority but secular India gained its independence on August 15, 1947.

The partition was far from smooth, causing one of the largest and bloodiest human migrations ever seen, displacing about 15 million people. The process also sparked horrific communal violence and riots between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs across the region, in which between 200,000 and two million people died. Border disputes and separatist movements sprang up in the aftermath.

What stuck out as a major sticking point between the neighbours was the question of where the Muslim-majority Himalayan region, Kashmir, would go. The monarch of Kashmir initially sought independence and the area remained disputed.

In October 1947, the first war over Kashmir broke out when armed Pakistani tribesmen invaded the territory. The monarch of Kashmir asked India for its assistance in driving out the tribesmen. In return, the monarch accepted India’s condition for help – that Kashmir join India.

Fighting continued until 1948, when it ended with Kashmir divided. Pakistan administers the western part of Kashmir, while India administers much of the rest, with China holding two thin slices of Kashmir’s north. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan also claims the part that India holds but not what China, its ally, holds.

1960s: Failed Kashmir talks and the second war

The decade started with a promise of better ties. In 1960, India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty, a World Bank-mediated deal under which they agreed to share the waters of the six Indus Basin rivers they both relied – and still rely – on.

The treaty gives India access to the waters of the three eastern rivers: the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Pakistan, in turn, gets the waters of the three western rivers: the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. After the April 22 Pahalgam attack, India has suspended its participation in the treaty but until recently, the deal stood as a shining example, internationally, of a water-sharing pact that survived multiple wars.

One of those wars would take place in the 1960s.

In 1963, the then-foreign minister of India, Swaran Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, held talks over the disputed territory of Kashmir. These talks were mediated by the United States and the United Kingdom.

While exact details of the discussions were not made public, no agreement was reached. In 1964, Pakistan referred the Kashmir case to the United Nations.

In 1965, the two countries fought the second war over Kashmir after between 26,000 and 33,000 Pakistani soldiers dressed as Kashmiri residents crossed the ceasefire line into Indian-administered Kashmir.

As the war escalated, Indian soldiers crossed the international border into Pakistan’s Lahore. The war ended inconclusively, with a ceasefire. In 1966, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Mohammad Ayub Khan signed an agreement in Tashkent, mediated by the Soviet Union, restoring diplomatic and economic relations.

1970s: Bangladesh and the first step towards a nuclear race

In 1971, East Pakistan and West Pakistan went to war after then-president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto refused to let Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the East Pakistan-based Awami League, assume the premiership. This was despite the fact that the Awami League won the majority of seats in Pakistan’s 1970 parliamentary elections.

In March, the Pakistani military began a crackdown in East Pakistan’s Dhaka and in December, the Indian army got involved. The Pakistani army eventually surrendered. East Pakistan became the independent country of Bangladesh.

In 1972, Bhutto and Indian PM Indira Gandhi signed an agreement in the Indian town of Simla, called the Simla Agreement where they agreed to settle any disputes by peaceful means.

The agreement established the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries, which neither side is to seek to alter unilaterally, and which “shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side”.

In 1974, Kashmir’s state government affirmed that it “is a constituent unit of the Union of India,” an accord rejected by Pakistan.

In the same year, India detonated a nuclear device in an operation codenamed “Smiling Buddha”. India deemed the device a “peaceful nuclear explosive”.

1980s: The rebellion in Kashmir

By the early 1980s, Kashmir was back at the centre of India-Pakistan tensions. A separatist movement took root, as popular sentiment started turning against the elected government of Indian-administered Kashmir, which many locals felt was betraying their interests in exchange for close ties with New Delhi.

A tipping point was the 1987 election to the state legislature, which saw the National Conference, a party committed to the Indian Constitution, win amid widespread allegations of heavy rigging to keep out popular, anti-India politicians.

By 1989, a full-blown armed resistance against India had taken shape in Indian-administered Kashmir, seeking secession from India.

New Delhi has consistently accused Islamabad of financing, training and sheltering these armed groups, who India describes as “terrorists”. Pakistan has insisted that it only offers “moral and diplomatic” support to the separatist movement, though many of those groups have bases and headquarters in Pakistan.

1990s: More agreements, nuclear tests and the Kargil conflict

In 1991, both countries signed agreements on providing advance notification of military exercises, manoeuvres and troop movements, as well as on preventing airspace violations and establishing overflight rules.

In 1992, they signed a joint declaration banning the use of chemical weapons.

In 1996, after a series of clashes, military officers from the countries met at the LoC in order to ease tensions.

In 1998, India detonated five nuclear devices. Pakistan responded by detonating six nuclear devices of its own. Both were slapped with sanctions by many nations – but they had become nuclear-armed states.

In the same year, both countries tested long-range missiles.

In 1999, Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee met with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. The two signed an agreement called the Lahore Declaration, reaffirming their commitment to the Simla Accord, and agreeing to undertake a number of “confidence building measures” (CBMs).

However, later in the same year, the Pakistani military crossed the LoC, seizing Indian military posts in the Kargil mountains, sparking the Kargil War. Indian troops pushed the Pakistani soldiers back after bloody battles in the snowy heights of the Ladakh region.

2000s: Tensions and the Mumbai attacks

Tensions across the LoC remained high throughout the 2000s.

In December 2001, an armed attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi killed 14 people. India blamed Pakistan-backed armed groups for the attacks, that led to a face-to-face standoff between Indian and Pakistan militaries along the LoC. That standoff only ended in October 2002, after international mediation.

In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, amid Western pressure following the 9/11 attacks, pledged that Pakistan would combat extremism on its own soil, but affirmed that the country had a right to Kashmir.

In 2003, during a UN General Assembly meeting, Musharraf called for a ceasefire along the LoC, and India and Pakistan came to an agreement to cool tensions and cease hostilities. In 2004, Musharraf held talks with Indian PM Vajpayee.

But in 2007, the Samjhauta Express, the train service linking India and Pakistan, was bombed near Panipat, north of New Delhi. Sixty-eight people were killed, and dozens injured. Hindu extremists were charged by the Indian government at the time, but have subsequently been set free.

In 2008, trade relations began to improve across the LoC and India joined a framework agreement between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan on a $7.6bn gas pipeline project.

However, in November 2008, armed gunmen opened fire on civilians at several sites in Mumbai, India. More than 160 people were killed in the attacks.

Ajmal Kasab, the only attacker captured alive, said the attackers were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Kasab was executed by India in 2012. India blamed Pakistani intelligence agencies for the attacks.

In 2009, the Pakistani government conceded that the Mumbai attacks may have been partly planned on Pakistani soil, but denied that the plotters were sanctioned or aided by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

2010s: ‘Jugular vein’ and Pulwama

In 2014, Pakistan’s then army chief General Raheel Sharif called Kashmir the “jugular vein” of Pakistan, and that the dispute should be resolved in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of Kashmiris and in line with UN resolutions.

In 2016, armed fighters killed 17 Indian soldiers in Uri, Indian-administered Kashmir. As a response, India carried out what it described as “surgical strikes” against bases of armed groups across the LoC.

In 2019, a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir. Jaish-e-Muhammad claimed the attack.

In the aftermath, the Indian Air Force launched an aerial raid on Balakot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, claiming it targeted terrorist hideouts and killed several dozen fighters. Pakistan insisted that Indian jets only hit a forested region and did not kill any fighters.

Later in 2019, India revoked Article 370, which granted Kashmir a special, semi-autonomous status and began a crackdown that saw thousands of Kashmiri civilians and politicians arrested, many under anti-terror laws that rights groups have described as draconian.

2020s: Pahalgam and the drones

On April 22 this year, an armed attack on tourists in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, killed 26 men.

An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF), which demands independence for Kashmir, claimed responsibility for the attack. India alleged that TRF was an offshoot of the Pakistan-based LeT. Islamabad denied allegations of its involvement in the attack and called for a neutral investigation.

On May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor, carrying out missile strikes on multiple targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistani authorities have claimed that at least 31 people were killed in six targeted cities.

President Trump surprised California with a pair of announcements over the weekend to impose tariffs on films produced abroad and to reopen Alcatraz, a San Francisco landmark, as a working prison, all without consultation with state officials.

The White House would not offer details on either plan, perplexing industry executives and local lawmakers who see both as highly impractical, and prompting a series of basic questions that administration officials pressed by The Times were unprepared to answer.

How does Trump’s team plan to collect import duties on a product that amounts to intellectual property? Does the president’s team understand that most Hollywood productions are at least partially filmed overseas? And why is the federal government going to shut down a national historic landmark, reconverting it into a prison in the heart of a city after closing it 60 years ago due to skyrocketing costs?

Yet Trump’s focus on Hollywood, in particular, has gained him praise for drawing national attention to a growing crisis for Los Angeles, which is losing its prized industry at a concerning speed. Film executives aren’t asking whether the president’s intentions are in the right place. They are asking whether his solutions make any sense — or might backfire.

Trump’s move to protect ‘America’s cultural dominance’

Trump’s announcement on film tariffs came after one of his three named ambassadors to Hollywood, Jon Voight, flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the weekend to present ideas on how to reverse an exodus of production from Los Angeles — a list that proposed tariffs in only “certain limited circumstances,” according to a statement from Voight’s manager.

A White House official told The Times that “while President Trump regularly corresponds with his Hollywood ambassadors, including Jon Voight, to restore America’s cultural dominance, it was President Trump himself who formulated the idea of using tariffs to Make Hollywood Great Again.”

But the White House could not provide additional details on the plan, which could ultimately hurt the very production companies that Trump and Voight seek to protect.

Actor Jon Voight, shown at President Trump’s Jan. 19 victory rally in Washington, visited the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over the weekend.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Hollywood is facing a real crisis over its historic entertainment industry, with production work moving not only overseas but also to competing domestic hubs. Hollywood executives and California leadership, including its Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, have welcomed presidential attention to the matter, extending offers to collaborate on a solution.

“California built the film industry — and we’re ready to bring even more jobs home,” Newsom wrote on social media this week, proposing a federal tax credit for Hollywood filmmakers to the White House and telling Trump, “Let’s get it done.”

But a Times investigation last month found that Voight and Trump’s other two ambassadors, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone, had barely engaged with industry stakeholders on a working plan before the president made his plans public. The White House has also been limited in its outreach. At least one of the special Hollywood envoys learned of their appointment by tweet, sources said.

Another front in California’s tariff battle

Trump said the film tariffs would be implemented to combat foreign nations attempting to siphon industry dollars from the United States, a practice he characterized as a “national security threat.” But the announcement comes as California is leading a lawsuit against the U.S. administration over the legality of Trump’s use of tariffs in the first place — particularly its national security rationale.

“The president of the United States simply does not have the legal authority, under the Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose tariffs. Period, full stop,” Newsom said last week.

Even if Trump were to proceed with the plan, his team probably would have to come up with another legal vehicle: A 1988 amendment to the Emergency Economic Powers Act explicitly exempts films, publications and artwork, among other items, from foreign duties.

Meanwhile, all other tariffs currently in place against foreign nations — particularly against China — are beginning to affect American families, including those in California.

Furniture and fast fashion retailers have begun urging customers to make purchases now before imminent increases take effect, raising prices 30% or more.

And prices increased overnight for parents of young children this week. Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, expects prices to increase, while the signature stroller from UPPAbaby, listed at $899 on Sunday, cost $1,199 as of Monday.

“All costs are down,” Trump said aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening. “Everything is down, other than the thing you carry the babies around in.”

‘Law and order’ at Alcatraz

Trump’s announcement on Alcatraz came just hours after the 1979 Clint Eastwood film “Escape from Alcatraz” aired on South Florida public television, prompting questions to the president this week about how he came up with the idea.

“Well, I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker. We’re talking — we started with the moviemaking, it will end,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful, in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate, right? Alcatraz — Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies.”

“But uh, it’s right now a museum,” he continued. “Believe it or not. Lotta people go there. It housed the most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and uh, it was a lot of shark bites, lot of problems. Nobody’s ever escaped from Alcatraz, and just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. And so we’re going to look at it.”

Trump’s proposal was quickly dismissed by local lawmakers, and drew confusion among tourists at Alcatraz. In order to revoke the site’s status as a national historic landmark, the National Park Service probably would have to conduct an extensive review before the Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, makes a decision on how to proceed.

“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a former speaker of the House, said on X in response to the idea. “The President’s proposal is not a serious one.”

Trump’s plan to revive Alcatraz as a “symbol of law and order” comes as Californians are increasingly losing faith in his adherence to the rule of law.

A new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times found that 65% of registered voters across the state believe that Trump’s actions have “gone beyond his constitutional authority as president,” including 24% of Republicans and 63% of independents.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz falls flat with tourists, who ask: Why?
The deep dive: Newsom wants a federal tax credit to save Hollywood. Why that’s a long shot
The L.A. Times Special: Trump’s popularity in a slump in California amid abuse-of-power concerns

More to come,
Michael Wilner

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

During the near decade since L.A. was awarded the 2028 Olympics, new venues have arrived, proposed venues have fallen through and sports have shuffled, but the centerpiece of the ever-evolving plan has always been clear.

The Coliseum.

The iconic stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, LA28 announced Thursday, officially locking in the organizing committee’s proposal. While the Coliseum will become the first venue to host three Olympic events, the 2028 Games will also showcase one of the region’s newest cornerstones by using SoFi Stadium as a second venue for the Olympic opening ceremony and to host the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games.

The dual-venue opening ceremony is a first for the Olympic Games, following another unprecedented format in Paris where athletes paraded down the Seine in boats.

“The venues selected for the 2028 opening and closing ceremonies will highlight Los Angeles’s rich sporting history and cutting-edge future, showcasing the very best that L.A. has to offer on the world stage,” LA28 president Casey Wasserman said in a statement. “These two extraordinary venues will create an unforgettable experience, welcoming fans from across the globe to an Olympic and Paralympic Games like never before.”

The Olympics will open on July 14, 2028 and close on July 30, while the Paralympics — the first to be hosted in L.A. — run from Aug. 15-27.

SoFi Stadium was one year into construction when L.A. was awarded the Games in 2017. The home of the Rams and Chargers will also host the Olympic swimming competition that was shifted to the second week of the Games while track and field at the Coliseum will take place during the first week.

The only two surviving buildings from Terminal Island’s days as a thriving Japanese American fishing village in the early 1900s have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2025 list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places.

The designation, announced Wednesday morning, is meant to elevate the visibility of the site, which stands as a physical reminder of a story that ended with the incarceration of the island’s residents — among an estimated 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, who were forcibly removed following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in World War II.

Today, Terminal Island is part of one the country’s busiest container ports, and many people don’t know that it was the first place from which Japanese Americans were uprooted and sent to government camps such as Manzanar in the Owens Valley.

Buildings along Tuna Street on Terminal Island have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2025 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

(Los Angeles Conservancy)

“It’s a story that hasn’t been really told,” said Los Angeles Conservancy President and Chief Executive Adrian Scott Fine, adding that his organization has been working to preserve Terminal Island’s structures for close to two decades. “And if you go there, you’re not going to know that unless you stumble across these two buildings and then learn the story, because everything, with the exception of these two buildings, has been cleared away.”

The village was home to more than 3,000 people living in small wooden cottages and bungalows. Tuna Street was the main business thoroughfare and home to the two remaining buildings: the dry goods store Nanka Shoten (1918) and the grocery A. Nakamura Co. (1923). The destruction of the village began immediately following its residents’ removal in 1942, and over the years more structures were razed as the island grew into an industrial and commercial port.

Buildings along Tuna Street on Terminal Island have been placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2025 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

(Los Angeles Conservancy)

Historic sites on the annual National Trust list are chosen in part “based on the urgency of the threat, the viability of the proposed solution and the community engagement around the site,” said National Trust President and Chief Executive Carol Quillen.

A group of survivors and descendants of the Terminal Island community — the Terminal Islanders Assn., formed in the 1970s — has been crucial to preservation efforts and has partnered with the National Trust and the L.A. Conservancy to propose meaningful and practical preservation solutions. Fine said discussions have included turning the structures into stores selling food and other necessities to port workers, who have few options on the island.

“They were always community-serving, and that would continue the original function and use even today,” said Fine, while helping to tell the history.

The Tuna Street buildings are being considered for a historic-cultural monument designation with the city of L.A., a lengthy process that does not totally protect any site from destruction.

The Port of Los Angeles is reportedly considering demolishing the vacant and deteriorating buildings to make room for more container storage. Fine said the port has done a study that found the buildings to not be historic. But razing the buildings, he said, would contradict a master plan that the port hammered out with the L.A. Conservancy in 2013 after the entire island was placed on that year’s National Trust list of endangered places.

The report allows the port to conduct a streamlined environmental review leading to demolition, “which they’ve done for some of the other tuna canneries and structures that were there just in the last 10 years,” Fine said. “So in pattern and in practice, we believe that that’s very much how they’re approaching this one as well.”

The National Trust’s Quillen said the goal is to highlight “the contributions of these folks to our country’s history and economy, and the ways in which this community fought for the rights that we all subscribe to. So when I think about the promise of this country, the ideals that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I want to honor the people whose lives and work exemplified the fight to realize those ideals.”

A memorial to the Japanese American fishing village on Terminal Island.

(Los Angeles Conservancy)

The other 10 sites on the 2025 National Trust list are:

• Cedar Key, Fla.
• French Broad and Swannanoa River corridors in western North Carolina
• Hotel Casa Blanca, Idlewild, Mich.
• May Hicks Curtis House, Flagstaff, Ariz.
• Mystery Castle, Phoenix
• The Chateau at Oregon Caves, Caves Junction, Ore.
• Pamunkey Indian Reservation, King William County, Va.
• San Juan Hotel, San Juan, Texas
• The Turtle, Niagara Falls, N.Y.
• The Wellington, Pine Hill, N.Y.

At noon Wednesday, the L.A. Conservancy will hold a virtual program about the history of Tuna Street and efforts to preserve it.

May 6 (UPI) — More than a dozen people were arrested and a “record-breaking” quantity of fentanyl seized with other illicit items across several states in a blow to one of the largest and “most dangerous” drug cartels in America, according to U.S. officials.

“Our communities are safer today because of the tireless dedication and coordination among federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison for the District of New Mexico said Tuesday in a release.

Federal authorities arrested 16 individuals as part of a multi-state, multi-agency coordinated effort across New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Arizona and Nevada that uncovered millions of dollars in cash, ammo and dozens of items of weaponry such as ghost guns. They also seized illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and meth.

On Tuesday, DEA Acting Administrator Robert Murphy confirmed it was the “largest single seizure of fentanyl pills to date” by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in what U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called “historic.”

According to Bondi, federal agents seized about $4 million worth of illicit substances.

New Mexico’s Ellison said the effort to dismantle “one of the largest and most dangerous fentanyl trafficking organizations in U.S. history” ultimately removed “millions” of possibly lethal doses of fentanyl from the streets, adding that “the fight continues” but the successful sting marked a “decisive first step” to protect more families across the western United States and beyond.

Heriberto Salazar Amaya, 36, was named as the alleged leader of the drug trafficking syndicate and with his accomplices was charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and various other alleged drug-related crimes.

27-year old Cesar Acuna-Moreno and Bruce Sedillo, 26, along with 35-year-old Vincent Montoya were also charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl. They were also joined by 27-year-old Francisco Garcia; David Anesi, 42; George Navarette-Ramirez, 25; Alex Anthony Martinez, Jose Luis Marquez, Nicholas Tanner, Brian Sanchez, Kaitlyn Young, Alan Singer and David Altamirano Lopez as alleged co-conspirators in the bust.

Amaya also faces additional charges for alleged illegal re-entry after deportation, hiring an unauthorized alien and “conspiracy to harbor unauthorized aliens.”

Three other individuals — Roberta Herrera, Phillip Lovato and Misael Lopez Rubio — were arrested and charged by criminal complaint on drug charges.

Lovato, 39, is a convicted felon with similar drug-related charges following his 2015 arrest by the FBI in Santa Fe, N.M. that included firearms. He was reported to have at least 110,000 fentanyl pills stashed away when federal agents executed a search warrant on April 29 at his residence in the 3200 block of Sante Fe authorized by U.S. District Judge Karen Molzen, according to court documents.

It arrived as evidence in March showed fentanyl was evidently getting cut with the horse tranquilizer xylazine after a batch was found near the U.S.-Mexico border.

DOJ says this “historic” recent bust signals a “significant blow” to the Sinaloa Cartel that “removes poison from our streets and protects American citizens from the scourge of fentanyl.”

Meanwhile, a CDC report in February shed some encouraging news on the opioid crisis in the United States, where nearly 200 people die a day via fentanyl.

It showed signs of subsiding with a decrease in drug overdose by 4% between 2022 and 2023, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

“When we continue to have 100,000 people a year dying from fentanyl and other drug overdoses, we have to evaluate what have we been doing,” Murphy told WSB-TV in Atlanta in February when he took over the DEA’s day-to-day ops.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on the U.S. opioid epidemic.

ATLANTA — It’s what one historian calls an “elaborate, clunky machine,” one that’s been fundamental to American democracy for more than two centuries.

The principle of checks and balances is rooted in the Constitution’s design of a national government with three distinct, coequal branches.

President Trump in his first 100 days tested that system like rarely before, signing dozens of executive orders, closing or sharply reducing government agencies funded by Congress, and denigrating judges who have issued dozens of rulings against him.

“The framers were acutely aware of competing interests, and they had great distrust of concentrated authority,” said Dartmouth College professor John Carey, an expert on American democracy. “That’s where the idea came from.”

Their road map has mostly prevented control from falling into “one person’s hands,” Carey said. But he warned that the system depends on “people operating in good faith … and not necessarily exercising power to the fullest extent imaginable.”

Here’s a look at checks and balances and previous tests across U.S. history.

A fight over Jefferson ignoring Adams’ appointments

The foundational checks-and-balances fight: President John Adams made last-minute appointments before he left office in 1801. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, and Secretary of State James Madison ignored them. William Marbury, an Adams justice of the peace appointee, asked the Supreme Court to compel Jefferson and Madison to honor Adams’ decisions.

Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in 1803 that the commissions became legitimate with Adams’ signature and, thus, Madison acted illegally by shelving them. Marshall, however, stopped short of ordering anything. Marbury had sued under a 1789 law that made the Supreme Court the trial court in the dispute. Marshall’s opinion voided that law because it gave justices — who almost exclusively hear appeals — more power than the Constitution afforded them.

The split decision asserted the court’s role in interpreting congressional acts — and striking them down — while also adjudicating executive branch actions.

Hamilton, Jackson and national banks

Congress and President George Washington chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791. Federalists, led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and wanted a national bank that could lend the government money. Anti-Federalists, led by Jefferson and Madison, wanted less centralized power and argued Congress had no authority to charter a bank. But they did not ask the courts to step in.

Andrew Jackson, the first populist president, loathed the bank, believing it to be a sop to the rich. Congress voted in 1832 to extend the charter, with provisions to mollify Jackson. The president vetoed the measure anyway, and Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majorities required by the Constitution to override him. In 1836, the Philadelphia-based bank became a private state bank.

Lincoln and due process

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus — a legal process that allows individuals to challenge their detention. That allowed federal authorities to arrest and hold people without granting due process. Lincoln said his maneuver might not be “strictly legal” but was a “public necessity” to protect the Union. The Supreme Court’s Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, declared the suspension illegal but noted he did not have the power to enforce the opinion.

Congress ultimately sided with Lincoln through retroactive statutes. And the Supreme Court, in a separate 1862 case challenging other Lincoln actions, endorsed the president’s argument that the office comes with inherent wartime powers not expressly allowed via the Constitution or congressional act.

Reconstruction: Johnson vs. Congress

After the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, “Radical Republicans” in Congress wanted penalties on states that had seceded and on the Confederacy’s leaders and combatants. They also advocated Reconstruction programs that enfranchised and elevated formerly enslaved people (the men, at least). President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean, was more lenient on Confederates and harsher to formerly enslaved people. Congress, with appropriations power, established the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist newly freed Black Americans. Johnson, with pardon power, repatriated former Confederates. He also limited Freedmen’s Bureau authority to seize Confederates’ assets.

Spoils system vs. civil service

For a century, nearly all federal jobs were executive branch political appointments: revolving doors after every presidential transition. In 1883, Congress stepped in with the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Changes started with some posts being filled through examinations rather than political favor. Congress added to the law over generations, developing the civil service system that Trump is now seeking to dismantle by reclassifying tens of thousands of government employees. His aim is to turn civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers who are more easily dismissed from their jobs.

Wilson’s League of Nations

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles called for an international body to bring countries together to discuss global affairs and prevent war. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the League of Nations. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, brought the treaty to the Senate in 1919 with amendments to limit the League of Nations’ influence. Wilson opposed the caveats, and the Senate fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the treaty and join the League. After World War II, the U.S. took a lead role, with Senate support, in establishing the United Nations and the NATO alliance.

FDR and court packing

Franklin D. Roosevelt met the Great Depression with large federal programs and aggressive regulatory actions, much of it approved by Democratic majorities in Congress. A conservative Supreme Court struck down some of the New Deal legislation as beyond the scope of congressional power. Roosevelt answered by proposing to expand the nine-seat court and pressuring aging justices to retire. The president’s critics dubbed it “a court-packing scheme.” He disputed the allegation. But not even the Democratic Congress seriously entertained his idea.

Presidential term limits

Roosevelt ignored the unwritten rule, established by Washington, that a president serves no more than two terms. He won third and fourth terms during World War II, rankling even some of his allies. Soon after his death, a bipartisan coalition pushed the 22nd Amendment that limits presidents to being elected twice. Trump has talked about seeking a third term despite this constitutional prohibition.

Nixon and Watergate

The Washington Post and other media exposed ties between President Richard Nixon’s associates and a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel during the 1972 campaign. By summer 1974, the story ballooned into congressional hearings, court fights and plans for impeachment proceedings. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Nixon in his assertion that executive privilege allowed him not to turn over potential evidence of his and top aides’ roles in the cover-up — including recordings of private Oval Office conversations. Nixon resigned after a delegation of his fellow Republicans told him that Congress was poised to remove him from office.

Leaving Vietnam

Presidents from John F. Kennedy through Nixon ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. But Congress never declared war in Vietnam. A 1973 deal, under Nixon, ended official American military involvement. But complete U.S. withdrawal didn’t occur until more than two years later — a period during which Congress reduced funding for South Vietnam’s democratic government. Congress did not cut off all money for Saigon, as some conservatives later claimed. But lawmakers refused to rubber-stamp larger administration requests, asserting a congressional check on the president’s military and foreign policy agenda.

The Affordable Care Act

A Democratic-controlled Congress overhauled the nation’s health insurance system in 2010. The Affordable Care Act, in part, tried to require states to expand the Medicaid program that covers millions of children, disabled people and some low-income adults. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress and President Obama could not compel states to expand the program by threatening to withhold other federal money already obligated to the states under previous federal law. The court on multiple occasions has upheld other portions of the law. Republicans, even when they have controlled the White House and Capitol Hill, have been unable to repeal the act.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Last week, President Trump announced he won’t recognize Indigenous Peoples Day and will bring Columbus Day “back from the ashes” — another sign some Native leaders say that advocacy for Indigenous representation must continue during Trump’s second term.

Columbus Day, celebrated annually in October, venerates the accomplishments of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.

Native Americans have been lobbying local and federal governments for decades to replace celebrations of Columbus with a holiday that recognizes the contributions of Indigenous peoples. For many, the goal was to not only create a celebration of Indigenous cultures and experiences but to also recast Columbus’ historical framing.

Instead of focusing on his navigation to the Americas, many Native people want to increase awareness of the role Columbus played in the mass atrocities and deaths inflicted upon Indigenous peoples.

Democrat Joe Biden was the first president to mark Indigenous Peoples Day, issuing a proclamation in 2021 that celebrated “the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples” and recognized the sovereignty and self-determination of tribal nations. The proclamation did not establish Indigenous Peoples Day as a federal holiday, nor did it remove Columbus Day as one.

Trump said he would not follow his predecessor’s practice of recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day, accusing Democrats of denigrating the explorer’s legacy as he pressed his campaign to restore what he argues are traditional American icons.

However, Trump has previously acknowledged National Native American Heritage Month, which is celebrated in November. “As business owners, artists, teachers, writers, courageous members of our Armed Forces, and so much more, [Native American] contributions to our society are cause for celebration and appreciation by all Americans,” reads a 2020 heritage month proclamation issued by Trump.

That year, the Trump administration also awarded $30,000 for the restoration of a Columbus statue in Baltimore torn down by protesters. And during the 2020 presidential election, the administration released a policy vision for Indian Country entitled “Putting America’s First Peoples First — Forgotten No More!” in which Trump pledged to “honor the storied legacy of American Indians and Alaska Natives.”

But last weekend on his social media site, Trump insinuated that Columbus’ legacy was another victim of “wokeness.”

“The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,” Trump wrote.

Former president of the Navajo Nation, Jonathan Nez, was with Biden when he signed the Indigenous Peoples Day proclamation. He said it was an acknowledgment that generations of Native Americans fought and died for their right to be recognized as citizens of sovereign nations and the nation-to-nation relationship they have with the United States.

“We have this special relationship with the federal government, but yet actions like this, it just takes us back in time, to a time where Indigenous peoples were not respected and were not seen as human beings,” Nez said.

Although Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations began in the 1990s, they didn’t gain widespread momentum until the last decade, as more state and local governments recognized the holiday. At the same time, as a broad reckoning on racial injustice swept across the U.S., statues of Columbus have been ripped down by activists and protesters — part of a generations-long push to have more honest conversations about the history of the country and its founding.

Columbus Day first gained traction in the 1890s after the lynching of several Italian men in New Orleans. President Benjamin Harrison used it as a way to quell anti-immigrant sentiments against Italians and to court their votes in the presidential election. Since then, Columbus Day has not only become tied to Italian American ethnicity but has also been a part of American nationalism identity, said Philip Deloria, a Harvard historian and member of the Dakota Nation.

“It’s pretty clear that Trump is seeing the ethnic strain — he said as much — but not really seeing the American nationalist strain,” Deloria said. “It’s a history he doesn’t want to hear. It seems like it might play into the kind of grievance politics he typifies. So it’s not at all surprising.”

During the Biden administration, the necessity for Indigenous Peoples Day was something that most Americans understood and respected, said Bryan Newland, former assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior under Biden and a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe).

The work Native people have done to push the federal government to recognize Indigenous peoples’ dignity doesn’t end with an administration, Newland said. It’s generational work.

“As you go through four-year presidential terms and two-year election cycles it’s going to ebb and flow, but that toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube,” he said.

“Once you know the historical record of Columbus’ impact on Indigenous peoples, you can’t unlearn it,” said Montana state Sen. Shane Morigeau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, who has a bill in the state Legislature to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day.

“It’s not like you’re trying to erase him from history. What you’re trying to do is teach through history, an accurate history, and not ignore it,” he said.

Brewer writes for the Associated Press.

Riley Tiernan scored her second goal of the match in the eighth minute of second-half stoppage time to give Angel City a 4-3 win over the Washington Spirit on Friday night.

Tiernan opened the scoring at Audi Field with a quick finish from the center of the box in the eighth minute. Gisele Thompson scored off a cross from her sister Alyssa Thompson in the 22nd minute to make it 2-0. It was the first time sisters had combined for a goal in NWSL history.

Spirit defender Esme Morgan scored her first NWSL goal in the 30th minute and Gift Monday finished into an open net in the 40th to make it 2-2 at halftime.

Angel City’s Katie Zelem made it 3-2 with a left-footed shot in the 72nd minute, but the Spirit tied it again on Morgan’s second of the match.

Angel City (3-2-2) interim head coach Sam Laity received a red card after Tiernan’s winning goal. It is the first time that the Spirit (4-3-0) has lost two consecutive NWSL matches since September 2023.

Harar, Ethiopia – When Abdallah Ali Sherif was growing up in eastern Ethiopia, his parents never spoke about the history of his city.

“When I asked my parents about our history, they told me we didn’t have one,” the kind-faced 75-year-old recalls as he reclines on a thin mattress on the floor of his home in Harar’s old walled city. Shelves of dusty cassettes line the walls and old newspapers lie scattered about the floor.

The father of five and grandfather of 17 pauses to pluck some khat leaves to chew as he explains: “Our parents were afraid to teach us about our culture or our history.”

‘Peeking through a window’

For centuries, Harar, with its colourful clay houses and narrow cobblestone streets, was a centre of Islamic scholarship and home to a thriving manuscript culture producing Qurans, legal texts and prayer books in Arabic and Ajami, a modified Arabic script used to write Indigenous African languages.

Nestled atop a plateau that overlooks deserts and savannas linking the coastal lowlands and central highlands of Ethiopia and Somalia, in the 16th  century, Harar became the capital of the Adal Sultanate, which at its height controlled large parts of modern-day Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea.

Governed by powerful Muslim rulers, it was situated along trade routes that traversed the Red Sea to connect the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.

Then, in 1887, Harar’s military was defeated by the forces of Menelik II, and the city was forcefully absorbed into a Christian empire.

The following decades were shaped by state repression, social discrimination and the erosion of the city’s Islamic culture and institutions.

Arabic street signs were replaced with Amharic ones, Harar’s largest mosque was turned into an Ethiopian Orthodox Church and numerous Islamic educational centres were demolished. Severe restrictions were placed on religious practices and education – once a central part of Harar’s identity.

It was against this backdrop that Sherif grew up.

“We learned from a young age that if we expressed our culture or talked openly about our history, then we could end up in the prisons,” he explains, smacking his wrists together to mimic handcuffs.

Then, in 1991, ethnic federalism, which organised and defined federated regional states by ethnicity, was implemented throughout the country, allowing newfound religious and cultural freedom. The Harari people now belonged to the Harari region, with Harar as its capital.

Ever since, Sherif has been on a mission: To explore his city’s cultural identity by collecting artefacts, from old music cassettes to minted coins and, most importantly, manuscripts.

After years of painstaking searches going from household to household, he collected enough items to open Ethiopia’s first private museum, Abdallah Sherif Museum, 14 years ago in the hope of reconnecting Harar’s people with their history. The collection of hundreds of old manuscripts has become a particular passion.

“Each book I find, it feels like I am peeking through a window into a beautiful and rich culture that was almost forgotten,” he says.

To preserve these manuscripts, Sherif has also revitalised the ancient tradition of bookbinding. By tracing the last Hararis with knowledge of this art form, he has brought a once-extinct practice back to life.

A city of manuscripts

The production of manuscripts – as a way of sharing and safeguarding religious knowledge – was an important aspect of Harar’s culture, says Nuraddin Aman, an assistant professor of philology at Addis Ababa University.

Manuscript making is believed to have emerged in the city in the 13th century, when an Islamic scholar, known colloquially as Sheikh Abadir, is said to have come from what is today Saudi Arabia and settled in the area with about 400 followers.

According to Sana Mirza, a researcher at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University who specialises in Islamic art, Harari scripts were influenced by Indian Gujarati, Yemeni, and Egyptian Mamluki styles.

“The Indo-African relationship was very deep,” explains Ahmed Zekaria, an expert in Islamic and Harari history. “There was a strong linkage between India and Africa for centuries before the British arrived.”

Some Qurans found in Harar use a unique cursive calligraphic script said to have been developed in India’s northern Bihar region at about the 14th century and rarely seen outside India.

Manuscript makers developed their own style that merged local creativity and outside influences.

Within families, manuscripts were considered sacred heirlooms passed down through generations. Each Harari house had at least two or three manuscripts – often, the Quran, Hadiths, or other religious texts – Zekaria says.

According to Aman, the structured production of manuscripts made the city unique. Artisans were required to get permission from a local Islamic scholar – someone descended from Sheikh Abadir or one of his followers – to produce each religious manuscript. Then, before circulation, they needed approval from the incumbent emir. Still, full-time scribes were rare. “Most of them were farmers and produced manuscripts in their free time,” says Zekaria.

Harar also grew into a centre for bookbinding with artisans making leather covers to protect manuscripts, and people travelling to the city to learn the craft.

When Harar was absorbed into the Ethiopian empire, education centres, once responsible for manuscript production, were shut down or destroyed. Without new manuscripts, bookbinding disappeared. Meanwhile, madrasas (religious schools) were shuttered, and children were forced to attend government schools teaching only Amharic.

Sherif was born into a middle-class Muslim family in 1950. He grew up during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, who ruled Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and under whom repression of Muslims escalated.

In the 1940s, Harari elites united with their Somali neighbours inside Ethiopia to organise a rebellion, advocating for Harar to join Somalia. When Selassie caught wind of this, he deployed thousands of soldiers into Harar. Mass arrests followed, leading to dozens of Hararis being imprisoned for years without charge or trial. Selassie’s forces confiscated the properties and belongings – including cherished manuscripts – of residents believed to be rebellion supporters. An estimated 10,000 Hararis fled to other Ethiopian cities or Somalia and Middle Eastern countries.

While Sherif says he grew up knowing he was Harari, he did not know what that meant outside of being Muslim and speaking the Harari language. Fearing state repression, Harari families were forced to hide their histories from their children. But as a teenager, Sherif could no longer suppress his curiosity about his identity.

In high school, he remembers asking his teacher if the city ever had Muslim leaders.

“The teacher responded that we had no leaders outside the Ethiopian Christian ones. After this, the other [Christian] students began teasing me about not having a history,” he recounts.

“I was taught that Haile Selassie was our king, and there was one country, one history, one language, and one culture,” he continues.

“Our community was too afraid of the state to challenge this or to teach us about our real history. They feared we would become angry over it and fight against the state.”

In 1974, when Sherif was in his 20s, the Derg, a Marxist-Leninist military group, overthrew Selassie.

The group brutally suppressed any opposition. Half a million Ethiopians were killed and thousands were crippled as a result of torture.

When the 1977-1978 Ogaden War broke out, with Somalia attempting to annex Ethiopia’s Ogaden region that is inhabited by ethnic Somalis, the Derg accused Hararis of collaborating and carried out massacres of civilians in Harari neighbourhoods of Addis Ababa.

In their region, Hararis were still the land-owning class, and many were completely dispossessed of their livelihoods as the Derg sought to eradicate private land ownership. Harari youth – like young men from all communities – were forcibly conscripted into the army. When an anti-Derg resistance movement emerged in Harar, the repression increased, while more Hararis moved abroad to escape it.

Today, Hararis are a minority in their region, with more living abroad than in Harari.

‘Missing pieces of myself’

Like many Harari families, when Sherif graduated from high school, his parents began educating him on who he really was.

He was bewildered to discover that what he’d been taught in school was a lie. “My whole life, I have suffered from a severe identity crisis,” says Sherif, sighing loudly and tossing a leafless khat stalk to the side. “I have always felt like there were pieces of myself that were missing – and I couldn’t feel peace until I found them.”

After high school, Sherif began a science degree in Addis Ababa, but dropped out within a year when he found out the woman he loved, who was his then-girlfriend, was being forced by her family to marry another man in Harar. “There was nothing in my life more important to me than her,” he says, with a wide, bashful smile. He returned home to marry this woman, Saeda Towfiqe – today his most enthusiastic supporter – and began working in the family business.

It wasn’t until 1991, when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), overthrew the Derg and implemented a system of ethnic federalism designed to promote minority ethnic and religious rights, that Hararis, along with various other groups, suddenly found themselves with the freedom to develop and express their cultures and histories.

“I became mad to understand my history,” explains Sherif, the tone of his speech rising sharply as he smacks his head. “I really became mad.”

Taking advantage of this opening, Sherif began collecting hundreds of old cassettes of traditional Harari music. But he quickly realised that the history he sought existed in the old manuscripts still owned by many families in Harar. Through these religious and legal manuscripts, Sherif was able to glimpse the rich intellectual life of his ancestors.

“Each manuscript I found added a missing piece to a puzzle,” he explains.​​

Over centuries, families had developed a practice of conserving and transmitting manuscripts to the next generation, Aman explains.

Manuscripts were inherited or given at significant life events, such as weddings, the birth of a child, or during religious ceremonies. Scholars and religious leaders also gave them to students as a token of appreciation, “thereby fostering an environment of knowledge sharing and manuscript mobility”, says Aman.

People kept the manuscripts wrapped in cloth and would only uncover them on special occasions.

At first, Sherif, who was 40 when he began his project, purchased the manuscripts. “Eventually, when the community saw the importance of what I was doing for our heritage, they started donating manuscripts and other artefacts to me.”

But Sherif found that the covers and bindings of many manuscripts he acquired were in disarray.

The last bookbinder in Harar was Kabir Ali Sheikh, a local Quran teacher who learned the craft from elders and kept the tradition alive until his death in 1993. The ancient art of Harari bookbinding died with him. But Sherif was able to learn the traditional process from a few of Ali’s former students. He also went to train in Addis Ababa and Morocco.

“If you don’t bind the books, then you will lose them,” Sherif says. “Collecting manuscripts is useless if you do not also work on their restoration and preservation. If you lose just one page, you can lose the whole book. Beautiful things need to be protected and covered.”

It took Sherif two years of practice to perfect the art. He is now considered one of the best bookbinders in Africa, Zekaria says.

Sherif has strictly adhered to the traditional Harari way of bookbinding by using old ornamental stamps retrieved from around Harar – which are also displayed at his museum – to block-press motifs onto the front and back of covers, in the same way his ancestors did.

Ensuring a history stays alive

In 1998, Sherif opened his private museum in his house. But, in 2007, a year after Harar’s old town with its unique architecture was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the regional government provided Sherif with the double-storey former residence of Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, the father of Selassie who served as governor of Harar under Menelik II, to use for his museum. The museum reopened to the public in 2011.

Sherif’s museum now houses the world’s largest collection of Islamic manuscripts from Harar, numbering about 1,400. Almost half are Qurans, one of which is more than 1,000 years old. There are also more than 600 old music recordings, tools, swords, coins, and items of jewellery, basketry, and weaponry.

Over time, Sherif’s museum has transformed from a space showcasing Harar’s cultural heritage to one actively revitalising it. In a side room of the museum is a manuscript conservation room with locally assembled tools and equipment for restoring manuscripts, with a particular focus on bookbinding.

Scholars are still tracking down various manuscripts from Harar that are scattered around the world, Zekaria says. Most of them left with European travellers, especially in the 19th century, when colonialists were expanding into the Horn of Africa. Many of these manuscripts are preserved in Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In the US, the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC alone has 215 manuscripts from Harar.

In the meantime, Sherif continues to look after the manuscripts he acquires.

“When I first get a manuscript, I carefully clean it,” he explains. He removes dust and dirt, adds new pages to damaged manuscripts, and fills in the missing text. He covers the paper in transparent paper and has bound and digitised almost all the books.

“Each new piece of information I get about my history, it opens up a new world for me and I realise how far we still have to go to preserve our culture,” Sherif says.

About a decade ago, Sherif began training dozens of youths around Harar in bookbinding and has also led training in neighbouring Somaliland.

One of his students was Elias Bule, a soft-spoken 31-year-old, who was first hired as a security guard at Sherif’s museum. After a few months, “Sherif asked me if I wanted to learn the Indigenous way of bookbinding,” explains Bule, as he sorts through scattered pages of an old manuscript in the museum’s conservation workshop. “Of course, I accepted immediately.”

Bule is now employed full-time at the museum, supporting Sherif’s various endeavours and giving tours to visitors.

“I feel very happy that I can give this to the future generations,” Bule says, with a proud grin, gesturing at the papers on the table. “With each manuscript that is bound, we are ensuring that knowledge is preserved and that our culture and heritage will continue to survive.”