Latest news with #LosAngelesAirport
Otago Daily Times
03-06-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
World closing down — when it reopens is anyone's guess
Los Angeles Airport. Straws in the wind: recently I ran across a post by the chief executive of a nationwide professional association in Canada. People like him are used to hopping across the United States border for various meetings several times a month, but he was remarking on what people had been talking about at the association's recent annual conference in a big Canadian city. His post said "consensus here is that it's risky to travel to [US flag emoji] but if you have to go, bring a burner phone". "Have a plan in case you get detained. Watch what you say. Who you meet." And I thought "yeah, me too". I am a journalist so I will still go to the US if I absolutely have to, but not for pleasure, not for paid lectures and things, and yes please on the burner phone. Back when I started out in this trade half the world was off limits, especially for freelance journalists. The Cold War reached a second peak in the early '80s and you couldn't go to the Soviet Union unless you had a big media organisation negotiating for you. Even then it took months for a visa, and you were followed everywhere. The communist-ruled "satellite" countries in Eastern Europe were a little easier, and China was letting tourists in to some parts of the country — but not stray journalists. Albania, North Korea and Iran were completely closed, and most of Southeast Asia and much of Central and South America were ruled by military dictators who ran death squads. Then non-violent democratic revolutions began all over the Third World, the communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed, and the old Soviet Union itself followed suit. Soon almost the whole world opened up. It was a nice ride while it lasted but then the whole process went into reverse. You won't feel the effects much if you travel as a tourist or even do business abroad, but journalists — including foreign journalists — are the canaries in the coalmine on this and I'm certainly feeling the change. The number of countries I won't go to any more is growing every year. It started, weirdly enough, with Turkey, a place I thought I knew well. I've lived there, I speak the language — or at least I used to — and I even thought President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a welcome change from a militantly secular government that ignored the rights of the pious half of the population. Then the editor of the newspaper that ran this column in Turkey was jailed, the publisher went into exile and the new regime turned the paper into a government propaganda outlet. I know there's a fat file on me somewhere in Ankara and I've seen the inside of a Turkish jail (as a visitor), so I don't go there any more. Twenty years now. Next was Russia, where I had been practically commuting in the early '90s. Vladimir Putin was elected in 1999 and it was still all right for a while, but by 2005 he was killing opposition leaders and I started reporting from afar. Note, by the way, these changes were happening after more or less free elections — although they tended to be the last fair elections. Then came a round of non-violent pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East, most of them drowned in blood. That set off a whole cluster of civil wars, and the whole region became very hard to work in. It still is. Next was China, where they arrested, tried and jailed two random Canadian businessmen in 2018, really as hostages to exchange for a Chinese citizen in Canada whom they wanted back. It wasn't aimed specifically at journalists and the victims were freed after 1000 days in prison, but I and many other people took it as a signal to do your Chinese business from afar. However, I never thought that I would be adding the US to the list. Even during Donald Trump's first term foreign journalists were no more at risk of arbitrary imprisonment than the average US citizen, and nobody followed you around or listened to your phone calls. Well, no more than they listen to everybody else's calls. Now, quite suddenly, the US has become just another great power where foreigners watch what they say, try to minimise contacts with official bodies, or just stay away. The thought even occurs that, as in so many other cases, there will still be elections but we will know the outcome in advance. It sounds almost hysterical to talk like this and many non-journalist travellers won't even notice it, but the world is closing down again. I have no idea if or when it will reopen. • Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
The Age
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
In The Dream Hotel, even thinking about murder is enough to send you to jail
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard – doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner – they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
The Age
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
Al-Ahram Weekly
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Mohamed Ramadan 1st Egyptian to perform at Coachella
Mohamed Ramadan will be the first Egyptian artist to perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, alongside headliners Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, Travis Scott, and dozens of other heavyweights of American and international music. The festival will be held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, where Ramadan will perform on the Gobi stage on two Sundays, 13 and 20 April. The first time Ramadan announced his participation in the festival was in November 2024 via his Instagram account. Then, he promoted his concerts and detailed his trip through many social media posts, especially on Instagram and TikTok, since 4 April. US trip and successes On 5 April, Ramadan also shared on Instagram a video and photos of him with his wife and children arriving at Los Angeles Airport, driving across the city, resting in a place surrounded by nature, and playing with his son. Moreover, he posted tracks of songs he had released over the past few weeks. Among these songs is Rolla Rolla, a multilingual track by Gaurang Doshi & Madhu Bhandari featuring Ramadan alongside French Montana, Rusha & Blizza, Jasmine S, and DJ Shadow. Ramadan released this song on 17 March. He also shared his most recent track, 2aloo Eh, which was released on YouTube on 4 April. This song's lyrics highlight Ramadan's confidence and self-assurance as he addresses his fame and the admiration he receives from those around him. "My last concert in US" Recently, Ramadan posted another video regarding his US trip, which he later removed. However, other social media users caught the video and shared it on TikTok. In the video, he hinted that this upcoming concert would be a precious opportunity for him and his Arab fans to make their strong voices heard by US and global audiences. 'This could be my last concert in the US. Perhaps I won't be able to enter the country after this concert,' he said without details. Ramadan's words sparked controversy, especially as he deleted the video, leaving his fans trying to read between the lines. Ramadan in Coachella The 36-year-old actor initially gained fame as a cinema and television star. In the past six years, Ramadan has pursued a singing career alongside acting. Later, he gained much popularity as a rap-Mahraganat singer with multiple hits. These include Baba, which got over 30 million views in the first few weeks of its release; Bum Bum, which got over 200 million views weeks after its release; Coronavirus; and Aladdin Lamp. Coachella, founded in 1999, is one of the USA's most important music festivals. The festival has grown substantially over the last decade, and in 2012, its organizers launched a second weekend to accommodate everyone who wanted to experience it. Coachella now consists of two separate events held over two consecutive weekends. Each weekend's festival has the same lineup and is held in the same place but with different attendees. This year's lineup features several renowned artists and DJs, including Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, Green Day, Zedd, Tyla, Dennis Cruz, Missy Elliott, and Benson Boone. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
