officials

When survivors from January’s wildfires in Los Angeles County apply to rebuild their homes, their first interaction might be with a robot.

Artificial intelligence will aid city and county building officials in reviewing permit requests, an effort to speed up a process already being criticized as too slow.

“The current pace of issuing permits locally is not meeting the magnitude of the challenge we face,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said when announcing the AI deal in late April.

Some 13,000 homes were lost or severely damaged in the Eaton and Palisades fires, and many families are eager to return as fast as they can. Just eight days after the fire began and while it was still burning, the city received its first home rebuilding application in Pacific Palisades.

Wildfire recovery foundations purchased the AI permitting software, developed by Australian tech firm Archistar, and donated it to the city and county. When property owners submit applications, the software first will examine them for basic compliance with zoning and building codes, suggest corrections and provide a standardized report on the submission for human plan checkers to review.

L.A. County officials hope the software — believed to be the first large-scale use of such permitting technology nationwide after a natural disaster — will slice the time its employees now spend performing menial tasks, such as measuring building heights, counting parking spaces and calculating setbacks, said Mitch Glaser, an assistant deputy director in the county’s planning department.

“We see our planners doing things that are more impactful for our fire survivors,” Glaser said.

Disaster relief and government technology experts said they’re encouraged by the initiative. Municipal permitting is the type of highly technical, repetitive and time-consuming process that AI software could make more efficient, they said, especially as residents are expected to flood local building departments with applications to rebuild.

Still, they warned that for the AI software to be effective, the city and county would have to integrate the technology into its existing systems and quickly correct any errors in implementation. If not, the software could add more bureaucratic hurdles or narrow property owners’ options through overly rigid or incorrect code interpretations.

“This could be fabulously successful and I hope it is,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Urban Institute, where he studies disaster response. “But experimenting with technology in the context of people who’ve lost a lot is risky.”

Immediately after the fires, leaders at all levels of government pledged to waive and streamline rules for property owners to rebuild, promising that regulatory processes wouldn’t hold up residents’ return. Noting the pace of ongoing debris removal, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has called the region’s recovery “on track to be the fastest in modern California history.” A mayoral spokesperson said that the building department is completing initial permitting reviews twice as fast as before the fire.

More than 200 Pacific Palisades property owners have submitted applications to rebuild or repair their homes, according to a Times analysis of city permitting data, with 11% approved. Last week, 24 property owners submitted applications, the highest amount since the disaster, the analysis shows.

L.A. County, which is responsible for permitting in Altadena and other unincorporated areas, has a separate system for tracking permits which the Times has not been able to independently verify. On Monday, the county listed 476 applications for zoning reviews on its data dashboard, with eight building permits approved. By Tuesday, the number of zoning reviews listed had increased to 486 while the number of building permit approvals dropped to seven.

Besides Newsom, architects, builders and homeowners have grumbled about the permitting process, expressing frustrations at what they say are confusing and inconsistent interpretations of regulations. Last week, actress Mandy Moore, whose family had multiple homes damaged or destroyed in the Eaton fire, blasted the county for “nonsensical red tape” that is making it difficult for her to rebuild.

The wildfire recovery nonprofit Steadfast LA, started by developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, took the lead on securing the Archistar software and is covering much of the up to $2-million tab for its implementation. LA Rises, the foundation started by Newsom after the fires, will pay Archistar’s $200 fee per application.

Caruso, who declined an interview request from The Times, has said that turning to AI was a no-brainer.

“Bringing AI into permitting will allow us to rebuild faster and safer, reducing costs and turning a process that can take weeks and months into one that can happen in hours or days,” Caruso said in the news release announcing the deal.

Archistar’s AI permitting software has been in development since 2018. The company has contracts with municipalities in Australia and Canada and is expanding to the United States. In the fall, after a successful pilot program in Austin, Texas, Archistar signed an agreement with the city to perform initial assessments of building projects, similar to its intended use in Los Angeles. Austin has not implemented the software yet, but city officials said they believe it could cut preliminary reviews there to one business day from 15.

Once Archistar’s program is online in L.A. County, Glaser said, officials hope it will reduce the first analysis for rebuilding projects to two or three business days from five.

It could save additional time for projects by minimizing revisions and corrections, said Zach Seidl, a Bass spokesperson.

“The biggest potential for reducing permitting time comes from improving the quality of initial plans that homeowners submit to the city,” Seidl said.

Land use consultants and architects in Los Angeles said they were happy with any technology that could hasten approvals of their projects. But they said that AI wouldn’t ease the hardest parts of the permitting process.

Architect Ken Ungar, who is working with roughly two dozen Palisades property owners who are rebuilding, said his biggest headaches come from needing multiple city departments, such as those that oversee fire safety and utilities, to sign off on a project. Applications can get stuck, he said, and even worse sometimes one department requires changes that conflict with another’s rules.

Artificial intelligence, Ungar said, “sounds great. But unless the city of L.A. changes its whole M.O. on how you get building permits, it’s not super helpful.”

The state’s Archistar deal allows the city of Malibu, where the Palisades fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes, to receive the donated software as well. Malibu officials say they’re still deciding on it, noting that the community has specialized building codes addressing development on coastal, hillside and other environmentally sensitive habitats.

Governments are right to look to technology for help in speeding up disaster permitting, Rumbach said, but they also should ensure that human plan checkers provide oversight to account for nuances in zoning and building codes.

“I hope there are people more seasoned in communicating with disaster survivors who are the face of this,” he said. “A lot of people could be frustrated because they don’t want to deal with AI. They want to deal with a person.”

Although L.A. city and county might be the first to use AI for permitting after a major disaster, experts expect the technology to become mainstream soon.

“I’m confident there is no way back,” said Sara Bertran de Lis, director of research and analytics at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence.

L.A. County expects to implement the Archistar software within six weeks after programming and testing, Glaser said. At a recent disaster recovery panel, Bass said the city will do so “in the next couple of months.”

The victims were mostly children and elderly people, with an additional 28 injured.

Heavy overnight floods have washed away several villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing more than 100 people, according to local officials, in a nation suffering war and mass displacement.

The floods were triggered by torrential rains and surged through the Kasaba village, in South Kivu province, during the night of Thursday into Friday, regional official Bernard Akili told news agency AFP on Saturday.

Torrential rains caused the Kasaba River to burst its banks overnight, with the rushing waters “carrying everything in their path, large stones, large trees and mud, before razing the houses on the edge of the lake”, he said.

“The victims who died are mainly children and elderly,” he said, adding that 28 people were injured and some 150 homes were destroyed.

Sammy Kalonji, the regional administrator, said the torrent killed at least 104 people and caused “enormous material damage.”

South Kivu’s provincial health minister, Theophile Walulika Muzaliwa, told the Associated Press news agency that rescue operations were hampered by a lack of services and a shutdown of telephone lines due to the flooding.

“Sector chiefs, village chiefs and locality chiefs, who are also members of the local government, are on site. The only humanitarian organisation currently present is the Red Cross,” he said.

A local resident told AFP that some 119 bodies had been found by Saturday.

Such natural disasters are frequent in DR Congo, particularly on the shores of the Great Lakes in the east of the country, as the surrounding hills are weakened by deforestation. In 2023, floods killed 400 people in several communities located on the shores of Lake Kivu, in South Kivu province, while last month, 33 people were killed in flooding in the capital, Kinshasa.

DR Congo has also been subject to decades of fighting between government troops and rebels in the eastern part of the country, which escalated in late January when the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group captured Goma, the capital of North Kivu state, in a rapid and surprise offensive.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed and 2,880 injured in the Goma offensive, worsening what is already considered one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than seven million people remaining displaced.

The tribunal will hold Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ministers to account for the invasion of Ukraine.

Kyiv’s European allies have endorsed the creation of a special tribunal to hold top Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, to account for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

European Union foreign ministers, who met in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Friday, signed off on the tribunal, named the “Lviv statement”, to mark the conclusion of the technical work to draft the legal body.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told reporters there was no space for “impunity”.

“Russia’s aggression cannot go unpunished and therefore establishing this tribunal is extremely important,” Kallas said.

“This tribunal will ensure that those most responsible for the aggression against Ukraine are held accountable,” she added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said the tribunal was part of the continent’s moral duty to hold Russia accountable for the war.

“A strong tribunal for the crime of aggression can – and must – make any potential aggressor think twice,” he said in a video address to the meeting.

Meanwhile, Russia declined to respond to news of the tribunal. “We are not reacting to this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, according to the TASS state news agency.

An EU official told the Reuters news agency that the tribunal would have to respect Putin and his officials’ immunity while in office, but a prosecutor could investigate and propose an indictment ready for when the immunity is dropped.

Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel welcomed the move and told Reuters that the tribunal was a good step because it “fills a void that currently exists”.

“Which is how can you prosecute the leadership for the crime of aggression against another country,” he said.

While the tribunal could start operating this year, it is not the only legal instrument being used against Russia for its war on Ukraine.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Putin and other Russian officials for the forced deportation of children and attacks on Ukrainian energy sites.

Frozen Russian assets

Elsewhere on Friday, France announced that it would begin tapping into income from frozen Russian assets to help maintain about 60 French-made Caesar howitzers delivered to Ukraine.

France’s foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that using the funds will ensure the “continued maintenance of the Caesar cannons it has supplied to Ukraine to help resist Russian attacks”.

“We want peace, and today the only obstacle to peace is in Moscow, parading around under the name of Vladimir Putin,” said Barrot, adding that pressure must be put on the Russian leader to agree to a ceasefire.

In Lviv, the EU’s Kalas also pledged to disburse one billion euros ($1.1bn) from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to Ukrainian arms companies.

“We have just made available 1 billion euros for the Ukrainian defence industry so that Ukraine could better defend itself,” Kallas said. “This funding will directly support Ukrainian defence companies and secure additional military aid over the coming months, which are critical.”

The West has frozen around $300bn of Russian central bank assets – most of which are located in Europe – over Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.

Friday’s developments came as Putin told a military parade in front of key allies, including China’s Xi Jinping, that Russia would be victorious in Europe.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last week with representatives from a teachers union in his home state when things quickly devolved.

Before long, Fetterman began repeating himself, shouting and questioning why “everybody is mad at me,” “why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do” and slamming his hands on a desk, according to one person who was briefed on what occurred.

As the meeting deteriorated, a staff member moved to end it and ushered the visitors into the hallway, where she broke down crying. The staffer was comforted by the teachers, who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.

The interaction at Fetterman’s Washington office, described to the Associated Press by the two people who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity, came the day before New York Magazine published a story in which former staff and political advisors to Fetterman aired concerns about the senator’s mental health.

That story included a 2024 letter, also obtained by the AP, in which Fetterman’s one-time chief of staff Adam Jentleson told a neuropsychiatrist who had treated Fetterman for depression that the senator appeared to be off his recovery plan and was exhibiting alarming behavior, including a tendency toward “long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues.”

Asked about the meeting with teachers union representatives, Fetterman said in a statement through his office that they “had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system.” He also said he “will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program.”

Fetterman earlier this week brushed off the New York Magazine story as a “one-source hit piece and some anonymous sources, so there’s nothing new.” Asked by a reporter in a Senate corridor what he would say to people who are concerned about him, Fetterman said: “They’re not. They’re actually not concerned. It’s a hit piece. There’s no news.”

Reached by telephone, Aaron Chapin, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Assn. who was in the meeting with Fetterman, said he didn’t want to discuss what was a private conversation.

Surviving a stroke, battling depression

The teachers union encounter adds to the questions being raised about Fetterman’s mental health and behavior barely three years after he survived a stroke on the 2022 campaign trail that he said almost killed him. That was followed by a bout with depression that landed him in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks, barely a month after he was sworn into the Senate.

The scrutiny also comes at a time when Fetterman, now serving the third year of his term, is being criticized by many rank-and-file Democrats in his home state for being willing to cooperate with President Trump, amid Democrats’ growing alarm over Trump’s actions and agenda.

Fetterman — who has been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes weakened and enlarged, and auditory processing disorder, a complication from the stroke — has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help.

In November, he told podcast host Joe Rogan that he had recovered and fended off thoughts of harming himself.

“I was at the point where I was really, you know, in a very dark place. And I stayed in that game and I am staying in front of you right now and having this conversation,” Fetterman said.

But some who have worked closely with Fetterman question whether his recovery is complete.

In the 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, Jentleson warned that Fetterman was not seeing his doctors, had pushed out the people who were supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan and might not be taking his prescribed medications. Jentleson also said Fetterman had been driving recklessly and exhibiting paranoia, isolating him from colleagues.

“Overall, over the last nine months or so, John has dismantled the early-warning system we all agreed upon when he was released,” Jentleson wrote. “He has picked fights with each person involved in that system and used those fights as excuses to push them out and cut them off from any knowledge about his health situation.”

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where Williamson works, declined to make him available for an interview, citing privacy and confidentiality laws protecting patient medical information.

A lone wolf in the Senate

Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party.

As a small-town mayor in Braddock, the plainspoken Fetterman became a minor celebrity for his bare-knuckled progressive politics, his looks — he’s 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head — and his unconventional efforts to put the depressed former steel town back on the map.

He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in 2016’s Senate primary. In 2020, when he was lieutenant governor, he became a top surrogate on cable TV news shows for Joe Biden’s presidential bid and gathered a national political following that made him a strong small-dollar fundraiser.

Elected to the Senate in 2022, he has made waves with his casual dress — hoodies and gym shorts — at work and at formal events and his willingness to chastise other Democrats.

Fetterman returned to the Senate after his hospitalization in 2023 a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways with the assistance of an iPad or iPhone that transcribes conversations in real time.

Yet two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate.

He has separated himself from many of his fellow Democrats on Israel policy and argued at times that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. He met with Trump and Trump’s nominees — and voted for some — when other Democrats wouldn’t.

He has stood firmly with Democrats in other cases and criticized Trump on some issues, such as trade and food aid.

One particularly head-scratching video of Fetterman emerged earlier this year in which he was on a flight to Pittsburgh apparently arguing with a pilot over his seat belt.

Despite fallout with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza, Fetterman was still an in-demand personality last year to campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania for Biden and, after Biden dropped his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since Trump won November’s election — and Pennsylvania — things have changed. Many one-time supporters have turned on Fetterman over his softer approach to Trump and his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats for raising alarm bells.

It nevertheless brought Fetterman plaudits.

Bill Maher, host of the political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” suggested that Fetterman should run for president in 2028. Conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman’s defense.

Still, Democrats in Pennsylvania say they are hearing from people worried about him.

“People are concerned about his health,” said Sharif Street, the state’s Democratic Party chairman. “They want to make sure he’s OK. People care about him. There’s a lot of love for him out there.”

Levy writes for the Associated Press. The AP’s Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Arabia, according to two U.S. officials.

Arab nations have pushed for a change to the geographic name of the body of water off the southern coast of Iran, while Iran has maintained its historic ties to the gulf.

The two U.S. officials spoke with the Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The White House and National Security Council did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf of Arabia” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps.

On Google Maps in the U.S., the body of water appears as Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf). Apple Maps only says the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. military for years has unilaterally referred to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf in statements and images it releases.

The name of the body of water has become an emotive issue for Iranians who embrace their country’s long history as the Persian Empire. A spat developed in 2017 during Trump’s first term when he used the name Arabian Gulf for the waterway. Iran’s president at the time, Hassan Rouhani, suggested Trump needed to “study geography.”

“Everyone knew Trump’s friendship was for sale to the highest bidder. We now know that his geography is, too,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote online at the time.

On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister also weighed in, saying that the naming of Mideast waterways does “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity.”

“Politically motivated attempts to alter the historically established name of the Persian Gulf are indicative of hostile intent toward Iran and its people, and are firmly condemned,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on the social platform X.

“Any short-sighted step in this connection will have no validity or legal or geographical effect, it will only bring the wrath of all Iranians from all walks of life and political persuasion in Iran, the U.S. and across the world.”

Trump can change the name for official U.S. purposes, but he can’t dictate what the rest of the world calls it.

The International Hydrographic Organization — of which the United States is a member — works to ensure all the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them. There are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentation.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, Trump is also set to visit Doha, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which also lies on the body of water. Originally planned as Trump’s first trip overseas since he took office on Jan. 20, it comes as Trump has tried to draw closer to the Gulf countries as he seeks their financial investment in the U.S. and support in regional conflicts, including resolving the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and limiting Iran’s advancing nuclear program.

The U.S. president also has significant financial ties to the countries through his personal businesses, over which he has retained ownership from the Oval Office.

The move comes several months after Trump said the U.S. would refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

The Associated Press sued the Trump administration earlier this year after the White House barred its journalists from covering most events because of the organization’s decision not to follow the president’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” within the United States.

U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Trump, ruled last month that the 1st Amendment protects the AP from government retaliation over its word choice and ordered the outlet’s access to be reinstated.

Lee writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., contributed to this report.

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.