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Boston Globe
17-05-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Cher wants a better home for Los Angeles' elephants. Not Tulsa.
In recent months, the legal, political and zoological drama playing out over the fate of the zoo's Asian elephants has escalated. After two aging members of the herd had to be euthanized, zoo officials announced in April that Billy and the only other surviving elephant, Tina, who is 59, would soon be relocated. Advertisement But instead of the sanctuary that Cher and other advocates wanted, officials said the elephants would be moved to a zoo in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they could join a larger herd. That has led to protests, a lawsuit, tense city meetings, anger at the zoo director and a legal declaration submitted by the pop icon on the elephants' behalf. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The battle comes at a time when lawsuits from animal-rights advocates and the shrinking number of available animals have led more zoos to close their elephant enclosures. New York City's Bronx Zoo has faced growing legal pressure to move its last two elephants to a sanctuary, and in 2023, California's Oakland Zoo sent one of its elephants to a sanctuary in Tennessee after it was unable to find it a compatible companion. Advertisement Billy and Tina's case was in Los Angeles County Superior Court this week, where a judge denied a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit filed by John Kelly, a longtime Los Angeles resident seeking to stop the relocation to Tulsa. The judge's action allows zoo officials to move forward unless the City Council decides to intervene. On Friday, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a separate lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop the move. Visited by nearly 1.8 million people a year, the zoo is owned by the city of Los Angeles and has been Billy's home since he arrived in California as a 4-year-old from Malaysia. Tina joined him in 2010 from San Diego. Their herd also included Jewel, who was 61 when she died in 2023, and Shaunzi, who died last year at 53. Zoo officials have said that the elephants were declining for reasons unrelated to their enclosure, and that they were euthanized because of age-related health problems. To keep their accreditation, zoos must maintain a herd larger than two so that the animals can properly socialize with other elephants. Los Angeles officials said there weren't enough Asian elephants available to acquire more, so they decided to move Billy and Tina to another zoo instead. Five Asian elephants live on a 17-acre complex at the Tulsa Zoo, and they share a 36,650-square-foot barn -- a space much larger than the one Billy and Tina have now. But animal-rights advocates say they are concerned about Billy and Tina being able to adapt, and the trip there being unhealthy or traumatizing. 'Billy and Tina may not be any better off at the Tulsa Zoo than they are at the LA Zoo,' Chris Draper, an expert in animal behavior and management, said in a declaration filed with the lawsuit by animal-rights advocates last week. Draper is on the accreditation committee for the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. Advertisement The Los Angeles Zoo, which said in a statement this week that its elephants and other animals 'receive the best care possible,' referred questions about the legal battle to the city attorney's office, which declined to comment. The zoo's director, Denise Verret, has said that the decision to move the elephants was made in consultation with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits zoos across the country. She is the current chair of the association's board of directors. The decision has prompted criticism from some city officials, and concerns about conflict of interest. At a budget hearing last week, City Council member Bob Blumenfield asked Verret if she could promise that the elephants would not be moved until council members had a chance to study the move. She did not agree. 'What I can promise you is that I am always going to make decisions that are for the best interest of the animals at the zoo, including the elephants,' Verret said. For now, it is unclear when the move to Tulsa will happen. Zoo officials said a date had not been determined. On Friday morning, Tina appeared to be receiving some sort of treatment inside the zoo's 16,600-square-foot barn. Outside, Billy paced around the 6.56-acre elephant enclosure, at one point stepping in his own feces. For several minutes, he bobbed his head up and down, which could be interpreted as a sign of a happy elephant. But Cher, co-founder of animal advocacy group Free the Wild, says that when an elephant does that, 'they're having a breakdown.' Advertisement Cher acknowledged that she had never visited Billy or his companions at the zoo, but she said in an interview that she had viewed videos of their condition. 'Billy and Tina have served their time in confinement,' she said. 'They deserve the chance to live out their lives in peace and dignity.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Halle Bailey Granted Son's Sole Custody After Alleged Ex's Abuse — Report
On Tuesday, requested sole custody of her son, Halo, while reportedly filing for a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, DDG (Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr.). In her filing, the actor claimed suffering months-long physical and verbal abuse at the hands of the father of her child, with the first instance dating back to January. Bailey alleged physical assault, and she shared photographic evidence to back her claims. She also claimed DDG screamed profanities at her in front of their 2-year-old boy. Fearing 'the violence would reoccur,' the actor had then requested sole legal and physical custody of Halo, As of now, the Los Angeles court has temporarily granted Bailey a restraining order and the custody of her son. Page Six obtained official court documents, revealing that Halle Bailey received her son's sole legal and physical custody after accusing her ex, DDG, of physical abuse. She filed a request with the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking protection from the rapper and the custody of 2-year-old Halo. The court granted Bailey temporary sole custody of the boy and a temporary restraining order against the father of her son until a June 4 court hearing. In her petition, the 'Little Mermaid' actor accused DDG of domestic abuse, claiming it started in January as he visited their son. The alleged assault happened inside his vehicle in front of Halo when she brought up a discussion about a visitation schedule. As per Bailey's filing, which she backed with photo evidence, the musician became visibly upset and attacked her verbally and physically. Other instances included him entering her home without permission and trying to take their son without her consent while the boy was sick. Besides granting Halle Bailey legal and physical custody of her son, the court ordered her ex, DDG, to maintain a 100-yard distance from them. The temporary restraining order also implies staying away from Bailey's vehicle and Halo's school. The former couple welcomed their son in December 2023 and announced their split on Instagram last October. They had since maintained a co-parenting relationship until the recent revelations. A court hearing concerning the matter will take place on June 4. Originally reported by Nikita Mahato on Reality Tea. The post Halle Bailey Granted Son's Sole Custody After Alleged Ex's Abuse — Report appeared first on Mandatory.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Halle Bailey Gets Son's Sole Custody Over DDG Abuse Claims — Report
On Tuesday, requested sole custody of her son, Halo, while reportedly filing for a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, DDG (Darryl Dwayne Granberry Jr.). In her filing, the actor claimed suffering months-long physical and verbal abuse at the hands of the father of her child, with the first instance dating back to January. Bailey alleged physical assault, and she shared photographic evidence to back her claims. She also claimed DDG screamed profanities at her in front of their 2-year-old boy. Fearing 'the violence would reoccur,' the actor had then requested sole legal and physical custody of Halo, As of now, the Los Angeles court has temporarily granted Bailey a restraining order and the custody of her son. Page Six obtained official court documents, revealing that Halle Bailey received her son's sole legal and physical custody after accusing her ex, DDG, of physical abuse. She filed a request with the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking protection from the rapper and the custody of 2-year-old Halo. The court granted Bailey temporary sole custody of the boy and a temporary restraining order against the father of her son until a June 4 court hearing. In her petition, the 'Little Mermaid' actor accused DDG of domestic abuse, claiming it started in January as he visited their son. The alleged assault happened inside his vehicle in front of Halo when she brought up a discussion about a visitation schedule. As per Bailey's filing, which she backed with photo evidence, the musician became visibly upset and attacked her verbally and physically. Other instances included him entering her home without permission and trying to take their son without her consent while the boy was sick. Besides granting Halle Bailey legal and physical custody of her son, the court ordered her ex, DDG, to maintain a 100-yard distance from them. The temporary restraining order also implies staying away from Bailey's vehicle and Halo's school. The former couple welcomed their son in December 2023 and announced their split on Instagram last October. They had since maintained a co-parenting relationship until the recent revelations. A court hearing concerning the matter will take place on June 4. The post Halle Bailey Gets Son's Sole Custody Over DDG Abuse Claims — Report appeared first on Reality Tea.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Parents are blaming Snapchat for their teens' fentanyl deaths. Will an L.A. lawsuit shape the future of social media?
Jaime Puerta keeps a shrine to his son, Daniel, behind his desk — a collection of candles, old pictures and his son's beloved toy car. He also keeps a stash of naloxone, the lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drug, and a yellow poster Puerta carried while marching with other grieving parents outside the headquarters of Snap, creator of the disappearing messaging app Snapchat. At the bottom of the poster is the solemn slogan of his son's life: "Forever 16." Puerta is among the more than 60 families who are suing Snap, arguing the Santa Monica-based company is responsible for drug sales to teens that are facilitated through its app. Snap denies the allegations in the wrongful death cases, which accuse the company of designing an app that is inherently dangerous. In a statement, the company said it removed more than 2.4 million pieces of drug-related content last year, disabling 516,000 related accounts, and noted that it blocks searches for drug-related terms and instead redirects users to resources about their dangers. The cases, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, could have broader implications for social media companies and could weaken a key legal defense long used by Big Tech companies to shield themselves from liability. "We're in the middle of a reckoning for Snap and other social media platforms," said Tom Galvin, executive director of Digital Citizens Alliance, a nonprofit focused on internet safety. Daniel Puerta-Johnson died at Children's Hospital Los Angeles on April 6, 2020, a few days after his father found him unconscious in bed. Half of a blue tablet lay on his son's dresser, Puerta said. It looked like oxycodone, but was actually fentanyl, a far more potent painkiller that can suppress a person's breathing, according to the lawsuit. The investigation into Daniel's death, the lawsuit said, determined that he met a drug dealer through Snapchat a few days before he died. 'What the hell is going on here?' Puerta remembered thinking. A former Marine, Puerta now zigzags the nation sharing his son's story. Last month, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging lawmakers to take action to stop what he characterized as low-level drug dealers selling with impunity on Snapchat and other social media apps. Attorneys for Puerta and the other families have argued that Snapchat's design features — specifically its signature disappearing messages, a tool that can be used to connect with strangers on the app, and what plaintiffs call ineffective methods of verifying users' ages and identities — make it easy for drug dealers to connect with teens and avoid detection. 'Snapchat," the lawsuit reads, "has evolved into a digital open-air drug market." Snap's lawyers have argued the company is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — a 1996 law that insulates platforms from liability for user content — and asked to have the case tossed out. But Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff ruled last year that the matter could proceed on several counts, including the argument that the app's design was itself destructive. Both sides have argued that the law is clear on the matter, but the judge disagreed. 'What is clear and obvious,' Riff wrote, 'is that the law is unsettled and in a state of development.' In December, justices on California's 2nd District Court of Appeals denied a petition from Snap to overturn Riff's ruling, paving the way for the proceedings in L.A. to resume. During a status conference in the case last month, Riff told the attorneys for Snap and the plaintiffs that he wanted the cases to move expeditiously. Before the hearing, Puerta and several other parents gathered on the steps of the courthouse. One mother carried a framed portrait of her daughter, another clutched a flag with her son's picture and a familiar refrain: "Forever 13." Social media platforms have, over the last decade, faced growing public pleas to address evidence that their algorithms may be harmful, especially to teens, said Galvin of the internet safety nonprofit. But the platforms, including Snapchat, whose financial models rely on maximizing the number of users and how long users spend on the apps, haven't done enough, he said. "Next it was, 'Look, if you don't do it, someone will probably make you,' " he said. Facebook, Instagram, Discord and YouTube all face legal accusations that they have caused harm to children, and last fall, a Florida mother sued alleging its chatbot technology was responsible after her 14-year-old son took his own life. Lawyers for the company, which asked to have the lawsuit dismissed on free speech grounds, said in court papers that the chatbot had discouraged the boy from hurting himself. The platforms have also increasingly come under scrutiny from prosecutors and politicians. Read more: Local school districts are suing social media companies, saying they've hurt kids' mental health. Will the suits succeed? California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his counterparts from other states filed lawsuits against TikTok last fall, arguing that the app's features, such as beauty filters and infinite scrolling, were harming young people's mental health. A few weeks earlier, New Mexico's attorney general sued Snap, arguing that it was designed to addict young people and that its algorithm facilitated the sexual exploitation of children. Snap responded, saying it had worked diligently to find and remove bad actors and would keep doing so as online threats evolved. Several states, including California, passed laws last year restricting children's access to social media or requiring parental consent. Some of those laws are being challenged on 1st Amendment grounds. And before he finished his second term as U.S. surgeon general earlier this year, Dr. Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require social media companies to include warning labels on their platforms similar to those mandatory on cigarette packaging. The platforms, he said, should be required to publicly share data on health effects. 'While the platforms claim they are making their products safer, Americans need more than words,' Murthy wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times. 'We need proof." Sixty-four families have signed on to the fentanyl wrongful death suits against Snap in L.A. by the Social Media Victims Law Center, the Seattle-based legal firm representing Puerta. 'Every day we hear from new parents who have lost kids,' said Matthew Bergman, the firm's founding attorney. "It's just unbelievable." In addition to Puerta's son, the lawsuits tell the stories of a Palmdale teen who died a few days after his 17th birthday, cutting short his dream of becoming a bull rider; a pharmacist's daughter with aspirations of becoming a forensic psychologist; and a Santa Monica boy whose parents are advocating for Sammy's Law, federal legislation in his name that would require platforms to allow parents to track children's online activity using third-party software. Read more: California lawmakers want to make social media safer for young people. Can they finally succeed? Snap's chief executive, Evan Spiegel, addressed the tragedies directly under tense questioning by members of Congress last year. 'There are a number of parents whose children have been able to access illegal drugs on your platform," said Laphonza Butler, then one of California's senators. "What do you say to those parents?' Spiegel looked down and shifted in his seat. 'Senator, we are devastated that we cannot …' he said. Butler cut him off. 'To the parents," she said. "What do you say to those parents?" "I'm so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies,' he said. 'We work very hard to block all search terms related to drugs from our platform.' David Décary-Hétu, a University of Montreal criminology professor, said the situation of dealers peddling drugs on social platforms had "slowly gotten better." Last fall, he and other researchers scoured online for people selling drugs on several platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram and X. While they did find some, he said, the sellers used cryptic language — just the letter "C" or a snowflake emoji, for instance, instead of referencing "cocaine" — to get around algorithms the companies use to root out dealers. But even when dealers' accounts are removed, they can create new ones easily using a different email address or phone number, said Eric Feinberg, vice president of the Coalition for a Safer Web, an internet safety nonprofit that has researched drug sales on social media. 'That's the whole problem with this stuff, it's whack-a-mole,' he said. For his part, Puerta said he would like to see Snapchat — whose 13-and-older age requirement can be quickly skirted by entering a fake birthday — take more sweeping steps, such as requiring users to upload a copy of their ID. As a boy, Daniel had a deeply inquisitive spirit. But around the time he went through puberty — and got his first cellphone — Puerta noticed a stark change in his son's demeanor. Always a great student who dreamed of becoming a software engineer, his grades dropped to Ds and Fs, and during a father-son trip to Maui a decade ago Daniel almost never looked up from his screen. 'He was completely immersed in that phone.' After a growth spurt early in high school, he told his dad he felt uncomfortable in his body and so anxious that it felt like a race car was tearing through his mind. He began self-medicating with pot and then Xanax. But after a stint at a wilderness camp in 2018, Puerta said he felt like he finally had his son back. Then came the isolation of the early pandemic shutdowns. On the first day of April in 2020, Puerta found his son barely breathing. He was taken off life support a few days later. "It haunts me," said Puerta, who blames himself for not researching the apps on his son's phone more closely, for not asking more questions. For two years, he left Daniel's room untouched, but the image of the empty bed tormented him, so Puerta replaced it with two recliners. He added a bookshelf, filling it with items, such as Daniel's boyhood rock collection and a lei from their trip to Maui. Daniel's ashes sit in a wooden box, tucked in front of the remains of his beloved dog Birdie. 'I commune with my son here,' he said. 'It's my go-to place. No one can take that away from me.' Puerta keeps in touch with his son's closest friends, including Sammi Ratkay. The two met in first grade at Plum Canyon Elementary, but got close during their freshman year of high school. Neither had a first-period class, so they often hung out in Ratkay's sister's car blasting music on their phones. Like most everyone in their school at the time, Ratkay, now 22, says, Daniel spent a lot of time on Snapchat. They messaged each other on the app daily. He sent clips of himself dancing and shared old photos, including one of himself with a bad haircut as a boy. It was from a group message on the platform, she said, that she learned Daniel was in the hospital. 'Social media was our lives," she said. "I hate to say it, but it was everything." Sign up for our Wide Shot newsletter to get the latest entertainment business news, analysis and insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Adult Film Star, 25, ‘Permanently Disabled' Following Rehab Incident
Adult entertainer Emily Willis is "permanently disabled," according to a recent lawsuit filed against a Malibu rehab center where she was seeking treatment for ketamine addiction. The 25-year-old, whose real name is Litzy Lara Banuelos, remains in a "semi-conscious" state after suffering a cardiac arrest at Summit Malibu in February 2024, according to court documents reviewed by The Mirror. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 The suit, filed at the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Dec. 27, 2024, accuses the treatment facility of "abuse of a dependent adult, professional negligence, negligence and fraudulent business practices." Willis was found unresponsive by a nurse practitioner at the facility on Feb. 4, 2024, at which point she called for help and administered CPR. It's unknown how long she'd been unresponsive before the nurse discovered her. While paramedics restored a heartbeat after 30 to 40 minutes of CPR, the extended lack of oxygen left her with significant brain damage, leaving her comatose. Back in March, when Willis' family first shared news of the tragic health update, her stepfather, Michael Willis, said that she was expected to remain in a "vegetative state." While she eventually opened her eyes, able to track things with them, smile, and emotionally react to surrounding conversations, doctors didn't anticipate her improving much more beyond that. "Had the staff followed standard medical protocols, Emily would have had the opportunity to regain control of her life," the family's attorney, James A. Morris Jr., told the publication. "No patient should ever be subjected to such a horrendous breakdown in clinical care. Her health was ignored until it was too late, and now her life is forever changed." The exact cause of the cardiac arrest is unclear, but drug tests showed no ketamine or other substances in her system at the time. According to the lawsuit, Willis' health began to rapidly decline after she entered the facility. She became "disheveled, frail, disoriented," and struggled to walk, eat, shower or get dressed. She also suffered from aches, tremors, weakness and spasms. "Eventually she grew so dehydrated that a nurse could not measure her blood pressure," Morris said. "By this time her acute medical distress had been recorded and yet they left the decision to go to an urgent care up to a patient who was suffering incredible pain and could not care for her own well-being. There is no excuse for their failure to obtain medical and psychological care." Parade has reached out to Morris for comment. Next:
