Lifeguards who saved July 4 pier jumper in Venice Beach earn Medal of Valor

• July 30, 2024

The frantic woman was clutching onto a small nylon rope attached to the pier piling, clinging on for her life.

The sun had gone down and fireworks lit the night’s sky, the colorful bursts reflecting off the dark ocean. Thousands of people watched the display above the Venice Pier from the sand, unaware of the dire situation unfolding in the saltwater sea, where a building south swell was creating hazardous conditions as big waves roared toward shore.

Alerted by people on the pier who saw the woman jump into the ocean, Los Angeles County Fire Department Ocean Lifeguards Max Malamed and Ryan Aronson jumped into action to rescue the pier jumper on July 4, 2023 – a heroic save that earned the duo this year’s Medal of Valor award at a ceremony to take place on July 31 at King Harbor Yacht Club.

The 2024 International Surf Festival “Lifeguard Medal of Valor” dinner will also give the   “Distinguished Service Award” to Paramedic Rescue Boat Captain Brian Kari and Paramedic  Ocean Lifeguard Specialist Sean Kennedy, along with the Avalon City Fire Department, for a call on Dec. 18, 2023 on Catalina Island to help a young female giving birth.

Also being honored is retired Captain Jim “Jake” Jacobson, who will be given the “Lifetime Achievement Award.” Jacobson began his career in 1971 and retired in 2008 after 37 years of service.

“Known as a “lifeguard’s lifeguard” Captain Jacobson worked on every beach within Los Angeles County, from Malibu to San Pedro and is known as one of the most inspirational lifeguard mentors in the Department,” reads an announcement.

The awards started in 1981 as a way to recognize “that the public recognizes and appreciates the tremendous efforts they undertake,” according to organizers.

The Medal of Valor recipients will receive a bronze medal featuring a running lifeguard carrying a rescue buoy.

“We are delighted to recognize these exceptional acts of courage and public service, combined with professionalism and quick-thinking,” said Chris Linkletter, president of the International Surf Festival, in the announcement. “Our event proudly celebrates these L.A. County Ocean Lifeguards who embody going above and beyond the call of duty.”

For Malamed and Aronson, the distress call for the fully-clothed woman who jumped off the pier came just as they were ready to get off duty. After the people on the pier pointed out her location, they jumped into action – literally.

“With eyes on the victim, the duo performed an extremely difficult night pier jump into large surf to rescue a fully clothed adult woman who was grasping a tiny piece of nylon rope attached to a pier piling and apparently experiencing a psychiatric emergency,” reads a description of the rescue.

“Upon jumping off the pier, I swam to the victim and noticed that she was clinging onto the rope very tightly, which she refused to let go of,” recalled Aronson. “And she was not responsive verbally to me. I had no idea of her psychological state.”

The duo convinced her to let go of the rope and grab onto the rescue buoy, said Malamed, just as a set of two-to three-wave set slammed on top of them inside of the pilings.

“We got the victim away from the pier, swam her up the coast and when the sets had passed, we were able to get out of the water where ALS resources were on scene waiting,” Aronson said.

While pier rescues are not uncommon, the nighttime conditions and few resources available because of the late time, as well as the crowds and fireworks, made the scene “extremely chaotic,”  Malamed said.

“Despite the hazardous, complicated, and arduous aspect of the rescue, the trio made it safely to shore,” the announcement reads.

The emergency call on Catalina Island on Dec. 18 came following a young woman giving birth.

“Upon arrival, the baby was cold, dark blue and still attached to the umbilical cord,” the announcement reads. “After assertive and successful treatment by Kari, Kennedy, and members of the Avalon City Fire Department, both the baby and mother were stabilized enough to transport.”

The mother and child were transported by two ALS helicopters from Air Mercy and L.A. County Fire Department to a mainland NICU.

The theme of this year’s event is “Celebration of the L.A. County Junior Lifeguard Program,” which for nearly 100 years every summer has offered as many as 3,000 kids from across the region education and training in ocean and beach safety, physical conditioning, basic first-aid, CPR, and environmental awareness, while developing the next generation of lifeguards and leaders.

The “Lifeguard Medal of Valor Awards” dinner is presented in conjunction with the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce and is the kick off to the International Surf Festival, which hosts several athletic events throughout the South Bay through the weekend, from swims and relays to paddleboard and surf contests, volleyball and more.

“The chamber is honored to recognize these heroic and inspirational individuals, and to have supported the ‘Lifeguard Medal of Valor’ dinner for the past 43 years,” said Dominik Knoll, CEO and president of the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce, in the announcement. “It is always our pleasure to shine a deserving spotlight on the dedicated professionals who protect our beachgoers.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Donald Trump says Kamala Harris, who’s married to a Jewish man, ‘doesn’t like Jewish people’

• July 30, 2024

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump in an interview on Tuesday claimed Vice President Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, “doesn’t like Jewish people” and seemed to agree with a radio host who called second gentleman Doug Emhoff “a crappy Jew.”

Trump, in an interview on WABC radio on Tuesday, claimed Harris looked uncomfortable while meeting last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“You can see the disdain,” he said, adding, “No. 1, she doesn’t like Israel. No. 2, she doesn’t like Jewish people. You know it, I know it and everybody knows it and nobody wants to say it.”

Trump has tried to capitalize on divisions in the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war and sought to paint his political opponents as antisemitic while overlooking some of his own past comments and behavior, such as dining at his Florida club with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist. With Harris replacing President Joe Biden as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Trump has escalated his attacks on her.

“America is better than the fear, hate, and despicable insults of Donald Trump,” said James Singer, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign. “Vice President Harris believes Americans want a president who unites our country instead of divides it, uses the power of the presidency to help families instead of hurt them, and has a vision for our future, instead of taking us backwards.”

In the interview, the Republican former president repeated comments he has made before lashing out at Jewish voters who back Democrats, saying anyone who does “should have their head examined” and “if you’re Jewish, if you vote for a Democrat, you’re a fool, an absolute fool. They have let Jewish people down since Obama at a level that nobody could believe.”

As Trump continued on, he again said of Harris, “She dislikes Jewish people and Israel even more than Biden did.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The interview host, Sid Rosenberg, then mentioned Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and said, “He’s Jewish like Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Are you kidding me?”

“Yeah,” Trump said.

“He’s a crappy Jew,” Rosenberg said, continuing.

“Yeah,” Trump said again.

Rosenberg went on, saying of Emhoff, “He’s a horrible Jew.”

They then moved on to criticizing Harris on other issues.

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Trump made a similar claim about Harris disliking Jewish people on Friday while speaking to a Christian group at a Turning Point USA gathering in Florida. He has also ignited blowback in the past for making similar remarks about Jewish people, like when he said in March that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and hate “their religion.”

Emhoff, the first Jewish person to serve as the spouse of a nationally elected U.S. leader, has been one of the most visible members of the Biden administration speaking about combating antisemitism. He hung mezuzahs on the doorposts of the vice president’s residence and led Passover celebrations at the White House.

Emhoff’s office declined to comment Tuesday.

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Trump’s campaign has also criticized Emhoff’s adult daughter Ella for posting on her social media account a fundraising link for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. Israel has sought to ban the group and suggests it supports terrorists. European leaders have said that is a baseless accusation.

Rosenberg, who is Jewish, is a longtime conservative New York City radio personality who hosts “Sid and Friends in the Morning,” on 77 WABC. Guests on his show have included Trump-world figures like Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump Jr.

Rosenberg came to prominence as a sidekick and sports anchor on Don Imus’ long-running morning radio show. He drew backlash in 2001 for making racist comments calling tennis star Venus Williams an “animal” and saying that she and her sister Serena should pose for National Geographic magazine. He was fired from Imus’ show over those remarks but re-appeared on the show later and was involved in the incident that got Imus fired in 2007, in which Imus made a racist and misogynist remark about the mostly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington and AP writer Michael R. Sisak in New York contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

New Habitat for Humanity homeownership opportunities coming to Santa Ana

• July 30, 2024

The rising costs of living have left little hope for folks with dreams of homeownership, but Habitat for Humanity wants to change that by developing affordable homes for low-income families.

The organization broke ground on new projects in Santa Ana on Saturday, July 27, marking the construction of six new affordable homes for low-income families, including three duplexes.

Each 1,403-square-foot home will have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a private yard, an attached two-car garage and guest parking space. One unit will be constructed as an accessible unit for veterans or a person with disabilities.

“I’m very happy about these homeownership opportunities coming to the Artesia Pillar neighborhood,” Councilmember Johnathan Hernandez said of the project during a City Council meeting earlier this month. “I encourage (residents) to reach out to Habitat for Humanity and the city of Santa Ana for more information.”

The City Council earlier this month approved a $2.2 million grant agreement for the project from the city’s inclusionary housing fund.

Currently, 1 in 5 families are paying 50% of their household income for their rent or mortgage, officials said in a statement. With that in mind, homes built by Habitat for Humanity Habitat in Orange County are available for qualifying families at a reduced purchase price and interest rate based on up to 35% of their annual income and a reduced down payment.

For more information about the application process, visit habitatoc.org/apply-for-a-home. Homes are expected to be available in fall 2025.

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​ Orange County Register 

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