Report: Power problems disrupt Port of LA’s green transition

• July 30, 2024

Power surges and outages at the Port of Los Angeles are hindering efforts to phase out diesel-powered machinery as officials rely more on the electric grid to power their operations, a news report said on Tuesday.

Representatives of private companies that handle containers at the port said power surges and lulls are knocking out cranes and other cargo equipment, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The terminal operators have been asking how the port expects to achieve a mandate to phase out diesel-powered machinery by 2030 when the  power supply is so unreliable, the newspaper reported.

Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said the port’s main problem isn’t power supply but power distribution.

“The surges and the lulls are magnified with more sensitive electrical equipment,” Seroka told the Journal.

Several executives told the newspaper the power issues are knocking out not just cranes but also the automated gates that accept and deliver boxes to trucks and the computer systems that manage the location of containers.

The terminals are leased to private companies by the city-controlled port, and they get their power from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Simon Zewdu, senior assistant general manager at LADWP, told the Journal one of the port’s major weaknesses is that it is served by overhead power lines that are exposed to the elements. LADWP officials said the outages were caused by a series of unusual events, including equipment failure, bad weather and birds hitting power lines.

Zewdu said LADWP is working on a $500 million project to bring extra power to the port using underground lines, which should improve reliability, according to the Journal. The project is expected to be complete by 2029.

The terminal operators upgraded ship-to-shore cranes to run on electric power decades ago. Now, they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in electric- and battery-powered equipment such as yard cranes and massive forklifts, the Journal reported.

Los Angeles and Long Beach ports committed in 2017 to phase out diesel-powered cargo-handling equipment as part of a wider push in California to reduce emissions.

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​ Orange County Register 

Police clash with an unruly crowd gathered near the site of UK stabbing attack that killed 3 girls

• July 30, 2024

By JILL LAWLESS and BRIAN MELLEY

LONDON — Police clashed with an unruly crowd of far-right protesters outside a mosque Tuesday in northwest England near where three girls were stabbed to death in a dance class as demonstrators, some in masks, hurled bottles and stones at officers, Merseyside police said.

Police said the crowd was believed to be supporters of the English Defence League, a far-right group, and the unrest was inspired by speculation about the teenage boy arrested in the stabbing that injured 10 other people, including seven who were in critical condition.

“There has been much speculation and hypothesis around the status of a 17-year-old male who is currently in police custody and some individuals are using this to bring violence and disorder to our streets,” Merseyside Assistant Chief Constable Alex Goss said. “We have already said that the person arrested was born in the UK and speculation helps nobody at this time.

RELATED: Taylor Swift in ‘complete shock’ after fatal stabbings at U.K. dance class

Shortly after a peaceful vigil was attended by hundreds in the center of Southport to mourn the stabbing victims, the crowd near the mosque became unruly. A police van was set ablaze and sent thick dark smoke billowing into the sky. One officer suffered a broken nose.

Officers in riot gear policed the area amid chants of “No surrender!” and “English till I die!” Firecrackers exploded, sirens wailed and helicopter hovered overhead amid the chaos. Some officers appeared to have minor injuries.

A day earlier, the girls killed had taken part in a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga workshop on the first week of summer vacation when a person armed with a knife entered the studio and began a vicious attack, police said.

“It’s difficult to comprehend or put into words the horror of what happened,” Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said while briefing members of Parliament. “What should have been a joyful start to the summer turned into an unspeakable tragedy.”

Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6, died from their injuries, police said.

“Keep smiling and dancing like you love to do our princess,” Aguiar’s parents said in a statement released by police. “Like we said before to you, you’re always our princess and no one would change that.”

King’s family said no words could describe their devastation at the loss “of our little girl Bebe.”

Eight children and two adults remained hospitalized after the attack in Southport. Both adults and five of the children were in critical condition.

An emotional crowd that gathered in Southport outside the Atkinson theater and museum in the early evening held a minute of silence for the victims.

June Burns, the mayor of neighboring Sefton, called for calm and respect and urged people to be good to one another. She said she was overcome with emotion when she visited the scene of the tragedy earlier.

“It’s unbelievable that we find ourselves laying flowers for little girls who just wanted to dance,” she said.

Swift said earlier on Instagram that she was “completely in shock” and still taking in “the horror” of the event.

“These were just little kids at a dance class,” she wrote. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”

People left flowers and stuffed animals in tribute at a police cordon on the street lined with brick houses in the seaside resort near Liverpool where the beach and pier attract vacationers from across northwest England. They also posted online messages of support for teacher Leanne Lucas, the organizer of the event, who was one of those attacked.

Witnesses described scenes “from a horror movie” as bloodied children ran from the attack just before noon Monday. The 17-year-old suspect was arrested soon afterward on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. Police said he was born in Cardiff, Wales, and had lived for years in a village about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Southport. He has not yet been charged.

The rampage is the latest shocking attack in a country where a recent rise in knife crime has stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more to clamp down on bladed weapons, which are by far the most commonly used instruments in U.K. homicides.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer was jeered by some as he visited the crime scene and lay a wreath of pink and white flowers with a handwritten note that said: “Our hearts are broken, there are no words for such profound loss. The nation’s thoughts are with you.”

“How many more children?” one person yelled at Starmer was getting in his car. “Our kids are dead and you’re leaving already?”

Starmer told reporters earlier that he is determined to get a grip on high levels of knife crime but said it was not a day for politics.

Witnesses described hearing screams and seeing children covered in blood in the chaos outside the Hart Space, a community center that hosts everything from pregnancy workshops and meditation sessions to women’s boot camps.

Joel Verite, a window cleaner riding in a van on his lunch break, said his colleague slammed on the brakes and reversed to where a woman was hanging on the side of a car covered in blood.

“She just screamed at me: ‘He’s killing kids over there. He’s killing kids over there,’” Verite told Sky News.

The woman, who was on the phone with police, directed him to where the violence was unfolding and then collapsed. Verite said he ran in the direction she had pointed.

A woman honking the horn of her car caught his attention and he found her with five or six bloody children inside. The woman said she was trying to get the kids to safety.

“It was like a scene you’d see on a disaster film,” he said. “I can’t explain to you how horrific it is what I saw.”

He ran to the dance studio, where he was startled to lock eyes with a man in a hooded tracksuit holding a knife at the top of the stairs.

“All I saw was a knife and I thought: ‘There are more people in there,’ and I just wanted to hurt him so bad,” Verite said. “But I was scared for myself and I wanted to help people. So I came outside and I was screaming because I knew where he was.”

He said the first officer who arrived waited for backup and then they went up the stairs and tackled the suspect.

A group of Swift’s U.K. fans calling themselves “Swifties for Southport” launched an online fundraiser to help families of the victims. It raised over 216,000 pounds ($277,000) a little over 24 hours.

Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot 16 kindergartners and their teacher dead in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The U.K. subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.

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Mass shootings and killings with firearms are exceptionally rare in Britain, where knives were used in about 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023.

Mass stabbings are also very rare, according to Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence.

“Most knife attacks are one-on-one and personal — either domestic violence or gang related — so this tragedy is very unusual and, accordingly, garners lots of media interest,” Overton said. “This offers no comfort to the grieving families, of course.”

​ Orange County Register 

Meet Kneecap, the Irish-language hip-hop trio with a Sundance hit film coming out

• July 30, 2024

When director Rich Peppiatt first approached the three members of Kneecap, a Belfast hip-hip trio that raps in the Irish language, they weren’t sure what to make of his completely unsolicited pitch to make a feature film about them.

“We were very hesitant,” says rapper Naoise Ó Cairealláin. “At first because, well, No. 1 he’s English, and that’s enough for us to be quite skeptical because for a long time the English would profit off the Irish labor.

“Also, we’re the band; we’re Kneecap,” he says as bandmate JJ Ó Dochartaigh looks on. “We’re a real-life band, not a mythical made-up band. And if we made a film that was cringy, everybody else would move onto the next film. We’d still be Kneecap, and if the film was crap, it would be very detrimental to our music careers, I could imagine.

“But thankfully, I think it paid off.”

“Kneecap,” Peppiatt’s biopic of the band, won the NEXT Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in January. In addition to the band members, the cast includes the internationally known Irish actor Michael Fassbender as Ó Cairealláin’s father, as well as the familiar faces of Irish actors such as Simone Kirby and Josie Walker.

Recently, Ó Cairealláin, Ó Dochartaigh, and Peppiatt came to Los Angeles for a few days to talk about the movie before it opens in theaters on Friday, Aug. 2. (Third member Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, was delayed leaving Northern Ireland after he contracted COVID-19.)

“We have a WhatsApp group that I set up in December 2019,” Peppiatt says. “It’s called ‘Kneecap Go to Hollywood,’ at the time as a joke. That was when I first met them. And flying over, I looked at the group and the date and I was like, ‘That’s crazy.’ We’re flying to L.A. with the film all this time later.’

“So yeah, that was quite nice at the moment,” he says. “We had a little cheers to that.”

‘That punk energy’

Peppiatt might never have stumbled onto Kneecap, the movie never made, but for going a little stir-crazy at home in Belfast a few weeks after the birth of his second daughter.

“I needed to get out of the house and have a drink for an hour,” he says from a table on a terrace at the London West Hollywood hotel. “I was wandering down the street and saw a sign for Irish hip-hop playing that night and I went.

“I was just blown away by their charisma, their stage presence,” Peppiatt says. “It reminded me of my favorite band growing up, Rage Against the Machine, which felt like a political act.

“Often in music, the politics have gone out of it in a way today. Everything was so PR-ed and managed, and it was all career-driven.

“And the idea of having these three lads on stage who were throwing fake bags of drugs into the crowd, and pulling their trousers down with ‘Brits Out’ (written on their bums),” Peppiatt continued. “They didn’t care. It was just that punk energy about that that just connected with me.

“I don’t know whether it was part of me sort of feeling I was in my mid-30s, a father of two now,” he says. “Suddenly, there was this something that felt youthful and vibrant, and I was going, ‘I want a bit of that back in my life.’”

Peppiatt, who had previously made documentaries and worked in television, knew that the obvious move was to do a documentary on Kneecap, but neither he nor the band wanted to be obvious.

“They were interested in the idea of a narrative feature,” he says. “But they’re also very skeptical. Because when somebody approaches you and goes, ‘I want to make a film about you, and you’re going to play yourselves in it’ you kind of go, ‘Uh, really? OK, whatever you say, mate.’”

Of course, the idea of making a biopic about a band almost nobody knew outside of Belfast, and maybe just West Belfast at that, might not have been the smartest idea either.

“It made no sense in a way to be making a biopic about a band that’d never released an album, weren’t signed to a record label, rapping in a language that no one spoke,” Peppiatt says. “Why the hell would you make a biopic about these guys?

“But it was so illogical, so stupid and foolhardy, that it actually in its own way came out the other side and was like, ‘Well, that is the very reason to make it, because it’s never been done, right?’” he says. “The minute you go, ‘It’s never been done,’ it’s going to be a disaster or it could be cool.”

For the ‘craic’

Kneecap’s name has roots in The Troubles, those three decades of violence between those who wanted the British out of Northern Ireland and those who wanted to maintain British rule. Kneecapping – shooting someone in the knee – was a punishment administered by members of the Irish Republican Army for a range of perceived infractions, such as selling and using drugs, as Ó Cairealláin and Ó Hannaidh are seen doing in the movie.

Growing up with that history, the members of Kneecap developed a sharp political edge to its songs and performances.  As part of the post-Troubles generation, they also sought to be a new voice in Northern Irish youth culture too, the band members say.

“We met organizing contemporary Irish language festivals in Belfast,” says Ó Cairealláin, whose stage name, Móglaí Bap, is a reference to a boyhood haircut that resembled that of Mowgli from “The Jungle Book.” JJ used to play pop music in Irish before he embarked on this journey. And Liam Óg used to come as a young fellow to the festivals and help us organize them.

“There was a subculture of young people growing up in Belfast who spoke Irish, and we all kind of found each other,” he says. “We would go partying together all the time on the weekends, and we noticed that a lot of the terms that exist in English didn’t exist in Irish. Youth culture terms, like terms for drugs and that there.”

So they created their own translations, says Ó Dochartaigh, who performs wearing a balaclava in the tricolors of the Irish flag, and goes by DJ Próvai, a reference to the Provisional IRA, which fought to end British rule of Northern Ireland.

“We had words like ‘snaois,’” he says. “The old fellas in the bar used to have snuff, so we kind of repurposed that to mean cocaine.”

Dúidín, the word for a traditional Irish clay pipe, was appropriated to use for a different kind of smoking, Ó Cairealláin adds.

“And it was from that tiny subculture, that tiny movement, that Kneecap was born,” he says. “We wanted to let people know that we exist. Because I figured out people probably didn’t know that, No. 1, Irish language isn’t just a funny accent in English, No. 2, that there are young people who speak it.”

“December 2017 we put our first track out, ‘C.E.A.R.T.A.’” – the letters spell the Irish word for “rights,” Ó Cairealláin says. “Just, as we say in Ireland, for the ‘craic,’ for fun. We had no intentions of really even being in a band or playing gigs. We had no idea anyone would be interested in hip-hop in Irish.”

The song was chosen for a spotlight on an Irish-language radio station but was pulled at the last minute when local politicians caught wind of its drug-fueled, anti-police lyrics.

“No one actually listened to it at the start,” Ó Cairealláin says of how the song originally was chosen. “They just assumed, ‘Ah, lovely song in Irish, it must be very artsy, and about the green fields of Ireland.”

A petition drive ensued, and “C.E.A.R.T.A.” went viral.

“If you want anything to do good, ban it,” Ó Dochartaigh says. “Sure way to get some promotion for it.”

Kneecap goes Hollywood

After several months of wooing, Kneecap told Peppiatt they were in.

“We became friendly,” Ó Cairealláin says. “He bought us some Guinness, which is the way to any Irishman’s heart. And we just kind of realized he was serious, and he had a plan for us.”

Peppiatt, who signed up for Irish language classes the day after that first night of Guinness, went to work immediately, hunting down development funds and signing up the three rappers – and himself – for six months of acting classes.

“It was a very complicated script,” he says. “Lots of different themes. It’s tri-protagonist. I remember realizing that and going, ‘I’m going to watch all tri-protagonist films to get a grasp on how structurally people pull it off. Then you realize there aren’t really any, and you go, ‘Oh, that’s a bit ominous.’

“It took quite a while to nail that, particularly because the band themselves were very keen that no one was a lead character,” Peppiatt says. “They were bickering like children about, you know, who’s got more lines? Saying, his lines are a bit more than my lines, he got the best jokes.

“And then the almighty row that occurred when I revealed that Liam Óg was going to be the narrator,” he adds, laughing. “All, ‘We want to be the narrator, we’ll all be the narrator,’ and me like, ‘That’s not really how narration works, you know.’”

To be clear, he’s joking about the difficulty of working with his three-headed protagonist, partly in awe of just how quickly they learned their way around filmmaking.

“The one thing that did annoy me about them was that they had such an innate grasp of story, something that they really understood, where the beats of a story were as if they’d been involved in scripts for years,” Peppiatt says, laughing. “And that really grated on me, because I’ve spent years trying to be able to do that.”

The film traces the anarchic rise of Kneecap from the banned single and its first sparsely attended pub gig through its scrapes with police, politicians and paramilitary. Its unvarnished narrative includes plenty of drugs, dealt and consumed, while also deftly pairing the rise of Kneecap’s popularity with the long, hard-fought political campaign that in 2022 led to the recognition of Irish as an official language in Northern Ireland.

Peppiatt jokes that the biggest challenge with the first-time actors of Kneecap was to get them to stay sober for the shoot. In truth, they were naturals, he says.

“Sometimes people think if you’re playing yourself it’s kind of easy,” he says. “I think it’s the opposite of that. There’s a real vulnerability for them to put themselves up there that way when the plotlines are really tracking really some very vulnerable moments in their lives.”

All flashing before their eyes

The first-time director and cast saw the finished film was when “Kneecap” screened at Sundance. Suddenly, what had seemed their little project was splashed across the big screen, before an audience of Hollywood movers and shakers.

“It’s a nerve-racking thing, seeing yourself as a big 50-foot head for the first time,” Ó Dochartaigh says. “You see all the blemishes, you see all the worry and distress. The makeup.”

When that screening ended and the positive reviews poured in, the reality of what they’d sank in, Ó Cairealláin says.

“Obviously, the movie is colloquial, all that slang and terminology that wouldn’t be quite common in America,” he says. “So we weren’t sure. I mean, we had a class film. We love it. But we weren’t sure how it would translate in America.

“As soon as we won the audience award at Sundance, it just kind of relieved all that. We were like, It’s not just something that would be well-received in Ireland, it’s going to be something that’s internationally well-received too.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Wells Fargo sued over drug costs in employee health plan

• July 30, 2024

By John Tozzi | Bloomberg

Wells Fargo & Co. was accused of overpaying for prescription drugs by former employees, who claim mismanagement of the bank’s health plan drove up costs for workers.

A lawsuit filed in federal court in Minnesota Tuesday alleges that the country’s fourth-largest bank squandered money in its health plan, sometimes causing workers to pay far more for medications than they would have if they’d paid cash. For example, the Wells Fargo plan paid almost $10,000 for a generic pill for multiple sclerosis that Wegmans pharmacies sold for $648, according to the complaint, driving up premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

The former Wells Fargo employees are seeking class action status. A Wells Fargo representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Also see: Angry patients spur new state watchdogs to bring down drug prices

US employers spend about $1 trillion annually on company-sponsored health plans, the main source of insurance for working-age Americans. While employees typically are responsible for part of the premiums and out-of-pocket costs of their care, the prices they pay are determined by deals that their employers strike.

Companies are facing increasing questions over how they manage those contracts and potential legal risks about their oversight as employees find themselves paying more and more for medical care.

This is at least the second lawsuit from workers alleging they paid more than they should have for medications because their employers struck bad deals with the companies that oversee drug benefits for health plans, known as pharmacy benefit managers.

More on healthcare costs: FTC slams pharmacy benefit managers CVS, Cigna, UnitedHealth for high drug prices

In February, a Johnson & Johnson worker made similar claims against the drugmaker in a New Jersey federal court. J&J has sought to dismiss the suit, arguing the plaintiff wasn’t prescribed any of the drugs and thus isn’t in a position to file such a complaint. The case is pending.

Employers typically rely on brokers, outside administrators and pharmacy benefits managers to design and run their health plans. Critics say those relationships can be rife with conflicts of interest and hidden fees that increase costs.

Some large companies and union plans have sued their health plan administrators, seeking more access to data on where their money is going.

Fiduciary breach

The plaintiffs allege that Wells Fargo breached its fiduciary duty under the law that governs large corporate benefit plans, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Similar litigation targeting companies over fees in their retirement plans has led to millions of dollars in settlements. Trial lawyers are now testing whether that strategy can be replicated for health benefits and are recruiting people to bring cases against their own employers.

The lawsuit against Wells Fargo doesn’t name the bank’s pharmacy benefit manager as a defendant, but it does allege that a deal with Cigna Group’s Express Scripts unit raised costs for employees. Drugs on the plan considered “preferred” cost more than twice as much as what Express Scripts paid pharmacies, according to the complaint.

Representatives for Cigna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pharmacy benefit managers are facing intensifying backlash in Washington, as members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission fault them for driving up costs in the convoluted US drug supply chain. Pharmacy benefit managers counter that drug manufacturers set prices and should take the blame for rising costs.

The Wells Fargo complaint alleges that the plan steered members to Express Scripts’ mail-order pharmacy, which charged higher prices. It cites one drug, a generic gel used to treat lymphoma, that costs almost $70,000 from Cigna’s specialty pharmacy but less than $4,000 at Rite Aid. That echoes allegations made in a recent FTC report that said PBMs paid higher rates to their affiliated mail-order pharmacies.

The plaintiffs say the bank also overpaid in fees for administering the drug plan, paying $25 million to Express Scripts in 2022, or $136 per plan participant, which they said was higher than other plans.

The four named plaintiffs in the case worked for Wells Fargo for various periods between 1980 and 2023. The complaint names the company and top benefits executives as defendants.

The case is Navarro v. Wells Fargo & Co., 24-cv-03043, US District Court, District of Minnesota.

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​ Orange County Register 

California lawmakers debate sending local health inspectors inside immigration facilities

• July 30, 2024

By Vanessa G. Sánchez | KFF Health News

Covid-19, mumps and chickenpox outbreaks. Contaminated water, moldy food and air ducts spewing black dust.

These health threats have been documented inside privately run immigration detention facilities in California through lawsuits, federal and state audits, and complaints lodged by detainees themselves.

But local public health officers who routinely inspect county jails and state prisons say they don’t have the authority under state law to inspect detention centers operated by private companies, including all six federal immigration centers in California.

Also see: Immigration activists demand freedom for Black Mauritanians at Adelanto ICE facility

State Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) wants to close that loophole with legislation that would allow county health officers to conduct inspections at the facilities if health officers deem them necessary.

Durazo said that many detainees live in substandard conditions and that communicable diseases sweeping through these facilities could pose a risk to surrounding communities.

Opinion: It’s time to shut down the Adelanto ICE Detention Center

“Unfortunately, our detainees are treated as if they’re not human beings,” she said. “We don’t want any excuses. We want state and public health officials to go in whenever it’s needed.”

It’s not clear how much authority local health officers would have to implement changes, but public health experts say they could act as independent observers who document violations that would otherwise remain unknown to the public.

The state Senate passed the bill, SB 1132, unanimously in late May. It is now under consideration in the state Assembly.

Also see: Detainee who pleaded for release from ICE immigration center in Adelanto dies from COVID-19

Immigration is regulated by the federal government. GEO Group, the country’s largest private prison contractor, runs California’s federal centers, located in four counties. Together they can house up to 6,500 people awaiting deportation or immigration hearings.

While campaigning in 2020, President Joe Biden pledged to end for-profit immigration detention. But more than 90% of the roughly 30,000 people held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on any given day remain in private facilities, according to a 2023 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union. Congress members in both chambers have introduced legislation to phase out private detention centers, while other lawmakers, including at least two this month, have called for investigations into substandard medical and mental health care and deaths.

Lawmakers in Washington state passed a law in 2023 to impose state oversight of private detention facilities, but the GEO Group sued and the measure is tied up in court. California lawmakers have repeatedly attempted to regulate such facilities, with mixed results.

In 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a measure banning private prisons and detention facilities from operating in California. But a federal court later declared the law unconstitutional as it related to immigration detention centers, saying it interfered with federal functions.

In 2021, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring private detention centers to comply with state and local public health orders and worker safety and health regulations. That measure was adopted at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, as the virus tore through detention facilities where people were packed into dorms with little or no protection from airborne viruses.

For instance, at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, one outbreak at the start of the pandemic infected more than 300 staff members and detainees.

The Health Officers Association of California, which represents the public health officers for the state’s 61 local health departments, supports Durazo’s legislation.

“These investigations play a pivotal role in identifying and addressing health and sanitary concerns within these facilities, thereby mitigating risks to detainees, staff, and the surrounding communities,” according to a letter from the association’s executive director, Kat DeBurgh.

Under the measure, public health officers would determine whether the facilities are complying with environmental rules, such as ensuring proper ventilation, and offering basic mental and health care, emergency treatment, and safely prepared food.

Unlike public correctional facilities, which local health officers inspect every year, private detention centers would be inspected as needed, to be determined by the health officer.

GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira and ICE spokesperson Richard Beam declined to comment on the measure.

American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges Benjamin said public health officers are well positioned to inspect these facilities because they understand how to make confined spaces safer for large populations.

Even though they likely can’t force the detention centers to comply with their recommendations, their reports could provide valuable information for public officials, attorneys, and others who want to pursue options such as litigation, he said. “When the system isn’t working, the courts can play a very profound role,” Benjamin said.

The federal system that monitors health care and the transmission of communicable diseases inside immigration detention centers is broken, said Annette Dekker, an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at UCLA, who studies health care in these facilities.

Inspections of detention centers are typically conducted by ICE employees and, up until 2022, by a private auditor. In a paper published in June, Dekker and other researchers showed that immigration officials and the auditor conducted inspections infrequently — at least once every three years — and provided limited public information about deficiencies and how they were addressed.

“There’s a lot of harm that is happening in detention centers that we are not able to document,” Dekker said.

ICE and the GEO Group have been the subjects of lawsuits and hundreds of complaints alleging poor conditions inside the California facilities since the pandemic began. Some of these lawsuits are pending, but a significant share of complaints have been dismissed, according to a database maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The most recent lawsuits by detainees allege crowded and unsanitary conditions, denial of adequate mental and medical health care, medical neglect, and wrongful death by suicide.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined the GEO Group about $100,000 in 2022 for failing to maintain written procedures to reduce exposure to covid. The GEO Group has contested the fine.

“I have experienced really inhumane living conditions,” 28-year-old Dilmer Lovos told California Healthline by phone from the Golden State Annex immigration detention center in McFarland, Kern County. Lovos has been held there since January while awaiting an immigration hearing.

Lovos, who was born in El Salvador and uses the pronouns they/them, has been a legal permanent resident for 15 years and was detained by immigration officials while on parole.

In early July, Lovos and 58 other detainees from Golden State Annex and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield started a labor and hunger strike demanding the end of poor living conditions, solitary confinement, and inadequate medical and mental health services.

Lovos described a packed dorm room, clogged air filters, mice and cockroaches scurrying in the kitchen, water leaking from the ceiling, and detainees with flu-like symptoms who couldn’t get access to medication or a covid test when requested.

ICE protocols require testing of detainees with symptoms upon intake into facilities with no covid hospitalizations or deaths in the previous week. In facilities with two or more hospitalizations or deaths in the previous week, all detainees are tested during intake. It is up to each facility’s medical providers to decide when a test is necessary after that.

After Lovos filed a complaint with the GEO Group in June, alleging medical and mental health neglect, they said they were placed in solitary confinement for 20 days without a properly functioning toilet. “I was smelling my urine and feces because I was not able to flush.”

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Ferreira declined to address Lovos’ allegations but said via email that detainees receive “around-the-clock access to medical care,” including doctors, dentists, psychologists, and referrals to off-site specialists.

“GEO takes exception to the unsubstantiated allegations that have been made regarding access to health care services at GEO-contracted ICE Processing Centers,” he said.

An unannounced inspection by federal immigration officials in April 2023 found Golden State Annex employees did not respond within 24 hours to medical complaints, which the report said could negatively affect detainees’ health, and did not properly store detainees’ medical records.

Lovos said that no one has addressed their concerns and that conditions have only worsened.

“Please come check these places out,” Lovos said in a plea to local health officials.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

​ Orange County Register 

Olympic rugby: U.S. women take bronze in spectacular finish over Australia

• July 30, 2024

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Alex Sedrick ran most of the length of the field to give the U.S. women a first Olympic rugby sevens medal with a stunning stoppage-time comeback win over Australia in the bronze-medal match on Tuesday.

The 2016 champion Australians were leading 12-7 with seconds remaining and deep in U.S. territory. The ball went to Sedrick and she bumped off two tacklers before racing all the way to the other end to score and spark jubilation for the Americans.

The U.S. women reached the Olympic semifinals for the first time and lost to defending champion New Zealand. That made the playoff for a third a case of winning a medal or going home without.

The Americans rushed onto the field to celebrate the 14-12 victory. Sammy Sullivan was in tears. Ilona Maher raised both arms up in triumph.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” blared over the stadium speakers.

The U.S. women had to wait until after the final between New Zealand and Canada to take their place on the podium.

A FINISH YOU HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE!

ALEX SEDRICK LEADS TEAM USA TO THE FIRST-EVER OLYMPIC RUGBY SEVENS MEDAL FOR THE UNITED STATES ON THE FINAL PLAY OF THE GAME! #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/1FMu9SWxDo

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 30, 2024

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​ Orange County Register 

Olympic soccer: U.S. men reach quarterfinals for the 1st time since Sydney 2000

• July 30, 2024

By JAMES ROBSON

SAINT-ETIENNE, France (AP) — Kevin Paredes scored two goals as the United States advanced to the quarterfinals of the Olympic men’s soccer tournament for the first time since Sydney 2000 by beating Guinea 3-0 on Tuesday.

Victory in Saint-Etienne ended a 24-year wait for the U.S. to reach the knockout phase and it will play Morocco in the quarterfinals in Paris on Friday.

First-half goals from Djordje Mihailovic and Paredes put the Americans on course for the next round. Paredes sealed the win with his second after the break.

The U.S. advanced in second place behind Group A winner France, which beat New Zealand 3-0.

France plays Argentina in the quarterfinals in a repeat of the World Cup final in 2022. The game is in Bordeaux on Friday.

France stays undefeated

France remained undefeated at the Olympics with a 3-0 victory over New Zealand in Marseille, to advance atop its group

France captain Jean-Philippe Mateta came down the left side and clipped the ball into the far corner in the 19th minute. He celebrated by high-fiving Rayan Cherki and the French fans in the crowd.

France made it 2-0 on Desire Doue’s goal in the 71st minute. Arnaud Kalimuendo added a third some three minutes later.

Goalkeeper Obed Nkambadio made a leaping save in stoppage time to preserve the clean sheet.

New Zealand was eliminated with the loss. The OlyWhites, as they are known, had advanced to the quarterfinals of the Tokyo Games but fell to Japan on penalties.

France won its lone Olympic gold medal in 1984.

Argentina advances

Thiago Almada scored a brilliant solo in Argentina’s 2-0 win over Ukraine.

Almada’s strike — two minutes into the second half in Lyon — set Argentina on course for the knockout phase with back-to-back wins following its shock opening defeat to Morocco. Claudio Echeverri sealed the win in the 91st minute.

But it was Almada’s goal that lit up the match. Collecting the ball just past the halfway line, he charged upfield before curling a shot past Ukraine goalkeeper Kiril Fesiun from around 25 yards.

Echeverri pounced to convert on the rebound to make it 2-0 after Fesiun had made a late save.

Morocco advanced as Group B winner after beating Iraq 3-0 in Nice.

Morocco and Argentina were level on points and had identical goal difference and goals scored. It meant Morocco took first place by virtue of its 2-1 win over Argentina at the start of the tournament, which included a delay of around two hours after Moroccan fans rushed the field.

Morocco raced to a 3-0 lead before halftime against Iraq.

Amir Richardson opened the scoring in the 19th and Soufiane Rahimi scored his fourth goal of the Games in the 28th

Abde Ezzalzouli made it 3-0 in the 36th.

Play was briefly suspended during the second half after a man holding a Palestinian flag invaded the pitch. He was swiftly removed by police. Several dozen riot police were then deployed along the field to prevent further incidents.

Egypt stuns Spain

Ibrahim Adel scored a pair of goals and Egypt advanced to the men’s soccer quarterfinals of the Paris Olympics atop its group by beating Spain 2-1 on Tuesday.

Spain had already reached the knockout round and was vying for a first-place finish in Group C but was instead leapfrogged by determined Egypt in Bordeaux.

In the other match of the group, the Dominican Republic played to a 1-1 tie with Uzbekistan, which had already been eliminated. The draw in Paris was not enough to get the Dominican Republic into the next round.

The quarterfinal matchups won’t be determined until Wednesday’s games are complete. The top two teams in each of the four groups advance.

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Adel’s first goal came off a cross from Zizo late in the first half. His second came in the 62nd minute, when he worked around Spanish goalkeeper Alejandro Iturbe, who had come forward to stop him.

Samu Omorodion scored for Spain in the final moments of regulation but the comeback fell short.

In the group’s other match, Rafael Nunez converted on a penalty early in the second half to put the Dominican Republic in front, but Alisher Odilov tied it in the 58th.

AP Sports writers Anne M. Peterson in Marseille and Barbara Surk in Nice contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Stellantis offers US employees buyouts in new round of job cuts

• July 30, 2024

By Albertina Torsoli and Gabrielle Coppola | Bloomberg

Stellantis NV will offer voluntary buyouts to US employees as the carmaker looks to cut costs amid slumping profits.

Non-unionized US workers from vice president level and below in certain functions can opt for the package, which is intended to “assist those interested in pursuing other career options or retirement,” Stellantis said in a message sent on Tuesday to employees that was seen by Bloomberg. There will be no minimum service requirement to be eligible for the offer, unlike previous programs, the letter said.

A Stellantis media representative declined to comment on the total number of job cuts targeted.

Automakers including the maker of Jeep SUVs and Ram pickups are under pressure from waning demand from consumers squeezed by rising expenses and huge investments needed to electrify their vehicles. First-half earnings fell sharply at the Amsterdam-based automaker as soft demand fueled lower vehicle sales in the US and Europe.

Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares has pledged a further €500 million ($540 million) in savings in the second half compared with the first six months of 2024.

The company has also already cut about 400 salaried engineering jobs in the US earlier this year. Stellantis, increasingly criticized by analysts for its lack of innovative new car models, on Tuesday announced it has started shipments of China-made Leapmotor vehicles to European ports.

The Stellantis letter was reported earlier by Automotive News.

​ Orange County Register