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Fox News
an hour ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Los Angeles Mayor Bass says 'hell yeah' she regrets Ghana trip after wildfires ravaged city
Print Close By Cameron Arcand Published July 25, 2025 Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass continued to express regret for her controversial Ghana trip ahead of the devastating fires earlier this year in a recent interview with Vice News. "I was asked, 'Do I regret going?' Hell yeah. I mean, let me just do a comparison. If you are out of town and your kid or a member of your family gets sick or hurt, it doesn't matter where you were or why you were there. You feel horrible," Bass said in an interview with Vice News earlier this month. "I'm really not trying to give excuses, but there was no way in the world I knew that the city was in danger when I left," she later added. "Absolutely no way. And if you think about it through, if you take a step back, and because I did ask the chief when I came back, you know, like 'Why didn't you tell me?' and basically the response was 'Because we have Santa Anas all the time and nobody expected hurricane-force winds.'" The mayor faced intense scrutiny for the presidential delegation's visit to Africa even though there were warnings of the fire ahead of time. The Los Angeles Times reported that her team was aware of the fire risk before her trip. She ended up returning the day after the fires began ripping through Los Angeles neighborhoods, like the Pacific Palisades, where thousands of buildings were destroyed. LA MAYOR RIPPED FOR INTERFERING WITH ICE RAID AT CRIME-RIDDEN LOCAL PARK: 'FULL OF S---' "Well, I mean to be with honest with you. Well, I didn't get briefed. That's true. But I think that, again, people did not anticipate the historic wind. And it wasn't just LA. It was the county too." "What typically happens is that if there's going to be a big weather event, there are these briefings that happen and, uh, it's either initiated by the fire department or the emergency department," she said. "I was used to the fire chief calling me and telling me, you know, this is getting ready to happen. Come over. I need to brief you and all, you know, everything goes into motion. That didn't happen in the county, meaning LA and LA County." On her flight back, she said she was on the phone almost the entire 12-hour flight back to the U.S. from Ghana. SOCIAL MEDIA, TRUMP ADMIN ERUPTS OVER LA MAYOR'S REACTION TO ICE RAIDS: 'YOU'RE A CRIMINAL TOO' "Well, they're telling me what's happening in the fire. We were preparing the emergency declaration. They were talking to the mayor, the council president who serves as acting mayor while I'm gone. I don't remember if I talked to him or not then, but because there were just a lot of phone calls. Sometimes a lot of people. I think I even did a news interview, but all of that was while I was on the way home," she said, noting that she had phone access on the plane because it was a military plane, and she did not realize that the Sky News, who she went viral for not answering his questions, was even on the flight. Bass ousted Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley from her position in February, and Crowley unsuccessfully appealed her removal. "Our firefighters support Chief Crowley because she stood up for the men and women of our department," United Firefighters of Los Angeles City posted to X at the time. In the interview, Bass claimed there were "lies told" about the budget and fire engines. LOS ANGELES MAYOR SLASHES FIRE DEPARTMENT DEI BUREAU IN PROPOSED BUDGET MONTHS AFTER WOKE BACKLASH "Yes, there were broken fire engines. We find out later that those fire engines were there broken because they're used for spare parts. But there were 40 fire engines that were idle because they didn't have the staff that [Crowley] sent home. And the budget cut and I don't I don't know the reasons for it, and then the budget cut that never happened," she added. "Yes," Crowley notably responded in an interview at the time of the fires when asked if city leadership "failed" her when it came to resources. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "What we did when we did the budget was we put money aside for fire because we were in labor negotiations. If the budget was signed before then, but when the labor negotiations were done, we put it back in the budget. Which is a common thing. We're doing that right now," Bass said. When asked about the after-action report for the fire, Bass said she would 'look and see, but they should be about finished now." Fox News Digital reached out to Bass' office and Crowley. Fox News Digital also reached out to the Los Angeles Fire Department, but they did not immediately comment. Print Close URL
Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
How aggressive do the Dodgers need to be at the trade deadline?
The Dodgers are… not where anyone thought they would be. Still first in the NL West, but not with a huge lead. Star players slumping. A bullpen struggling. What do they need to do with the upcoming trade deadline? Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Harris and columnists Bill Plaschke and Dylan Hernández pinpoint what moves need to be made to make sure the team, at the very least, makes it to the postseason.
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Why ‘Piano Man' is not Billy Joel's best song
You like 'Piano Man?' Nothing wrong with that, other than it's not Billy Joel's best song. Los Angeles Times music critic Mikael Wood on why and what actually is Joel's best.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
Why Anthony Bourdain Loathed This Iconic American Sandwich
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Most folks have the odd food and drink bugaboo here and there. For some, it's the genetic quirk that makes cilantro taste like soap. Others simply have an antipathy toward olives, anchovies, and other such divisive items. The internationally renowned food world personality and occasional crime novelist Anthony Bourdain was particularly prickly about the club sandwich, which he compared to the terrorist network Al Qaeda (via the Los Angeles Times) in his 2016 cookbook "Appetites." This relatable bit of vexation was particularly focused on the hotel room service staple's over-reliance on carbohydrates. "I'm really irritated by that useless middle slice of bread on the club sandwich," Bourdain told the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of "Appetites'" publication. "It's been there forever; it's not a trend. It's lasted for decades and why, when we can so easily dispense with it," he said. Hypotheses abound — maybe it's to fortify the towering sandwich's architecture, maybe it's to make it more sharable, maybe it's merely an aesthetic choice — but we've yet to see a recipe that totally justifies all that extra rye or sourdough. The good news is that you can actually eschew those pesky middle bits. And the club sandwich is even more adaptable from there. Read more: The Most Iconic Sandwich In Every State Bourdain Wasn't The Only Chef Who Had A Bone To Pick With Club Sandwiches Another late culinary icon, James Beard, also hated the "modern" club sandwich. Beard posited in his own 1972 book "James Beard's American Cookery" that the darn middle bread was actually a latter day addition to what had been a much more manageable sandwich. "Nowdays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic," Beard wrote, adding the damning parenthetical, "whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life" (via What's Cooking America). Let that serve as the one-two punch of authority to skip the extra bread once and for all. Once you've gotten your previously Jenga-like sandwiches down to size, you should also feel empowered to build your club with chicken or turkey, (also a matter of much debate) or even use both at the same time. You can likewise make those clubs as hot or cold as you wish. Just make sure to pin them together with those festive, frilly toothpicks. That's one exchange that nobody should have to abide. Read the original article on Chowhound.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Ed Park drops clues like ‘Barbie' throughout ‘An Oral History of Atlantis'
Realism may still command the heights of American fiction, but insurgents are in it to win it. With titans such as Pynchon and DeLillo in their late 80s, now comes a generation captained by Ed Park, whose capacious, zany 'Same Bed Different Dreams' won the Los Angeles Times fiction prize and was a Pulitzer finalist. Park samples many of that novel's tricks in his new story collection, 'An Oral History of Atlantis,' creating his own brand of Dada. Watch closely for patterns, though: films, ranging from pulp movies to Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie'; technology, from laptop passwords to algorithm fails; politics, from class warfare to the Korean conflict; sex, from hormone-crazed teenagers to a gaggle of lesbians; and metafiction, from Vonnegut to John Barth. If there's a pea (or more) of genius hidden amid the walnut shells he's shuffling across the book, it's on us to find it. 'A Note to My Translator' serves as a preface: An acclaimed author, Hans de Krap, blasts E.'s egregious translation slip-ups. 'Only 10 pages into my novel and already all seems lost,' he rants. 'I no longer recognize characters, points of plot, dialogue. ... Can you help me? Please?' De Krap isn't just full of crap; this is Park's appeal to his readers, drawing us into the collection's linked pieces. 'Machine City' offers clues to his method — intersections between straightforward narrative and experimentation — as a middle-aged man remembers a role in a Yale student film. First published in the New Yorker, 'The Wife on Ambien' is a fragmentary, oddly compelling riff on marriage. 'An Accurate Account,' composed as a letter, urges us to question its accuracy. Park includes references to 'Same Bed Different Dreams': Penumbra College, for instance, appears in both books. After the ornate sprawl of the novel, he revels in the shorter form, a palpable joy on the page. Irony has never had it so good. He showcases figures with mysterious agendas, such as 'Seven Women's' Hannah Hahn, an enigmatic editor of a '90s East Village magazine. Midway through the story, the narrator reveals herself as the queer Miriam, who also recounts 'Watch Your Step,' an edgy espionage tale set in Seoul and addressed to Chung — like Miriam, a spy, but a bumbling liability to their network. Both are Korean Americans who'd met in a theater-arts course in college, along with the sinister Johnny Oh, who is possibly a spy, too. This drama will not end well: 'Watch Your Step' has a coiled energy, a cobra poised to strike. Ditto for 'Weird Menace': Two Hollywood has-beens sip 'itty-bitty drinklets' while screening a low-budget sci-fi DVD they'd shot in 1984. Neither have seen it in decades, yet they've reunited for an online viewing as fans of the cult classic follow at home. The story is pure dialogue between the star, Baby, and director, Toner: They've forgotten much of the plot and tipsily put it together. Park formats their banter in left and right margins with plenty of blank space, a visual back-and-forth that enhances spontaneity, a sense of unease. As Toner observes, 'Meteors are metaphors, at some level.' Hannah makes a cameo, and a producer, Tina, shoves notes in Baby's face, nudging the drunken actor toward a grim conclusion. Park's not indifferent to normie concerns, such as family tensions and floundering careers, communities and their discontents. His forays into realism pay off. In 'The Air as Air,' Sidney, a vet maimed in Iraq, belongs to a recovery movement focused on breath. He agrees to meet his distant, macho father at a hotel near a California beach, a dash of beautiful prose: 'The breeze freed fat drops from the trees as I walked from the parking lot to the turquoise hotel. Around a corner, a worker was standing by a ladder while another worker, unseen, narrated something in Spanish from the roof. Little green lizards and red crabs bright as poker chips scurried from my path,' the author writes. 'I looked to the water. ... No boats were out, and the ocean looked tight as cellophane.' Mostly, Park challenges us to keep up: 'The idea of unstable reality would be reflected in the form of the piece,' one character opines. The collection is like an elaborate crossword puzzle designed by Borges. 'Slide to Unlock' employs second person as the protagonist sees his life flash before his eyes. Fritz, Hannah's ex-husband, is literally losing his face, a conceit Park develops elsewhere in 'An Oral History of Atlantis,' recalling Mariana Enriquez's 'Face of Disgrace.' He invokes the mythological trope of the floating island (also an allusion to Atlantis) in 'Well-Moistened With Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts': 18 women named Tina labor on an archaeological dig in the Pacific, funded by a shadowy foundation. There's British Tina, Pageboy Tina, French Manicure Tina, Tina with the scorpion tattoo, even the Anti-Tina, a bit of fun tucked among Park's coded riddles. The Tinas argue as they decipher an ancient script. A few want to escape the island. Is Gerwig available to direct the film version? And is 'An Oral History of Atlantis' a code-breaker or deal-breaker for readers? What are we to make of Park's fusion of comedy and danger, his puns and wordplay and arcane theories? He's testing our patience for excellent reasons: We're complicit in his fiction, perpetrators at the scene of a crime, the act of reading a jumble of synapses in our brains, spinning in all directions like a spray of bullets. 'Everything could mean anything, as well as its opposite,' Park writes in his tale of the Tinas, a gesture to his craft. 'You had to pick which side of the contradiction to embrace, or else record the whole unholy snarl itself.' Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, 'This Boy's Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.' He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
