September 30, 2026
September 30, 2026
LOS ANGELES - City Councilmember Nithya Raman walked into a packed Jewish Federation mayoral forum at the Skirball Cultural Center on Tuesday night and told a crowd of about 1,000 that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The word landed like a brick. Parts of the hall groaned. Raman said she understood it was "a deeply painful word" with a "historical context" that mattered "for the world, not just for the room." Then she used it anyway. She said she is "not an expert,"...
On September 30, 2026, flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv experienced a mid-air cockpit attack that Israeli officials described as an attempted hijacking or crash attempt. The co-pilot, an Omani national employed by the airline for about nine months, allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to take control of the Boeing 737. Passengers and off-duty crew intervened, the plane made a dramatic descent, and it diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All passengers survived....
Santa Monica cops say a husband fatally shot his wife before turning the gun on himself inside their home on the 3100 block of Pico Boulevard. The Travelodge Motel is on that block. Officers were sent to the residence around 9:40 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, for a welfare check. They found two adults - a married couple - dead inside. Detectives determined the husband shot his wife, then killed himself. Investigators believe the shooting happened about 6:42 a.m. that same day,...
A 10-year-old child and two women in their 30s died on Monday morning after an overcrowded inflatable dinghy carrying 105 people ran into difficulty while attempting to cross the English Channel from northern France. French authorities said the deaths were likely caused by crushing or trampling, not drowning. Seas were calm. The 102 survivors were rescued and taken to the port of Calais. They did not reach Britain. The boat, described as a "taxi boat," departed around 5:15...
A man detained hours earlier on a domestic-violence charge used remarkable flexibility to squeeze through the narrow bars of a holding cell at the Central de Plantão Policial in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, in the early hours of September 26. Security cameras recorded him first pushing his arms and head through the gap, then folding and wriggling the rest of his body until he dropped to the floor on the other side. After retrieving his shoes he walked out of the station....
The Starbucks on Santa Monica’s Main Street will close permanently on Saturday, ending another chapter in the coffee chain’s uneasy presence along the Ocean Park commercial strip. The shop never offered what customers once expected from the brand: no tables, no couches, and no restroom. It's about, you know, managing the homeless. Store manager Christine said the company had reached the end of the experiment. “We have made the difficult decision to close this location...
LOS ANGELES - Flea-borne typhus is no longer a rare footnote in Los Angeles County. Public health officials have recorded a multi-year climb in cases, a record 220 infections in 2025, and 109 cases so far in 2026, including two localized outbreaks this year. The latest cluster, announced Sept. 22, involved seven symptomatic cases in the Wilshire Center neighborhood. Six people were hospitalized. All recovered. It was the county's second outbreak of the year after a five-case...
SANTA MONICA - An 82-year-old woman remained in critical condition Friday after she was struck by a turning vehicle Thursday evening in a marked crosswalk at 5th Street and Wilshire Boulevard, police said. The collision happened about 5:47 p.m. Thursday. According to a preliminary Santa Monica Police Department account, the woman was walking southbound in the marked crosswalk on the east side of the intersection when a vehicle making a left turn from southbound 5th Street...
She sounds kinda like Taylor Swift, but she's imaginary. Claude has sung a courtroom speech about why the Doomers are wrong about her and her ilk, comparing it to fears of the Loch Ness monster. An AI-generated music video titled "Nothing Went Foom!" has circulated widely since late September 2026, turning a long-running argument in AI safety circles into a five-minute pop track. Posted by @_brightmirror and credited as made with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 "from the...
California's homeowners insurance market is in crisis. Carriers have restricted new business, premiums have soared, the FAIR Plan has ballooned, and too many disaster survivors still wait too long for fair payment. The next commissioner will decide whether we stabilize that market or gamble it on an untested experiment. I have known Ben Allen since he was a kid in Santa Monica. He grew up here, served on the Santa Monica-Malibu school board, and has represented this...
