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Reuters
11-08-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Rams QB Matthew Stafford (back) still unable to practice
August 11 - Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford missed Monday's practice in an unexpected development as he continues to nurse a back injury. Los Angeles coach Sean McVay declared over the weekend that the 37-year-old signal-caller would participate in his first training camp practice on Monday. Instead, Stafford was dressed in street clothes and reporters observed him stepping into an Airstream-type trailer known as an Ammortal chamber at the team's training complex in Woodland Hills, Calif. The Ammortal chamber is advertised as a "wellness device that aims to optimize human performance and promote holistic health through a combination of non-invasive technologies." Stafford is dealing with an aggravated disc in his back, which has limited his preparation as he heads into his 17th season. In his absence, Stetson Bennett IV threw for 188 yards and two touchdowns in Saturday's 31-21 preseason win against the Dallas Cowboys in Inglewood, Calif. The Rams open the regular season on Sunday, Sept. 7, with a visit from the Houston Texans. Stafford completed 340 of 517 passes (65.8 percent) for 3,762 yards, 20 touchdowns and eight interceptions last season while starting all 16 games in which he appeared. A two-time Pro Bowl selection, Stafford has completed 63.4 percent of his passes for 59,809 yards, 377 TDs and 188 interceptions in 222 regular-season games (all starts) with the Detroit Lions (2009-20) and Rams. He ranks 10th all-time in touchdown passes and passing yardage -- and second to Aaron Rodgers among active quarterbacks. The Lions selected him with the first overall pick of the 2009 NFL Draft out of Georgia. Stafford led the Rams to a 23-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI. --Field Level Media
Wall Street Journal
10-08-2025
- Automotive
- Wall Street Journal
She Spent 20 Years Restoring a Rare 1958 Cadillac Convertible
Themis Z. Glatman, 66, a construction contractor who lives in Woodland Hills, Calif., on her 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible, as told to A.J. Baime. When I was growing up in Brazil, both of my parents loved American cars. My father did all the work on his cars himself, and he drove me to school in a Dodge Charger R/T muscle car he called tufão, which means hurricane or typhoon. My mother loved classic Cadillacs. She called them rabo de peixe, which is 'fish tail' in Portuguese, because of the tail fins.
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Yahoo
Masked robber put L.A. family in boarded-up closet. DNA revealed he was no stranger
Lara Starr had just walked in through the door when she saw a masked man holding a gun inside her Woodland Hills home. Starr assumed this was part of a game called Water Assassins that her son, a high school senior, played with his classmates. "It wasn't totally unusual for kids to be creeping around our house with big squirt guns," she said. Starr testified at a preliminary hearing Wednesday in a Van Nuys courtroom, where she described a bizarre and disturbing series of events that began the afternoon of March 3. She, her son and husband were held captive by a man who forced them into a closet and boarded up the doors with plywood. Starr and her spouse testified that the man said he intended to empty their retirement accounts. If they resisted, he promised to burn down the house with them trapped inside. Read more: Inside the high-stakes clandestine poker world that led to a Hollywood Hills murder The man eventually charged with kidnapping, robbing and threatening her family turned out to be no stranger to Starr. But when she first saw the person standing in her hallway dressed in a long sleeve white shirt, dark pants, balaclava and blue latex gloves, she had no idea who he was. One of her son's friends had taken the squirt gun game too far, she thought. Thinking she'd call his bluff, she turned to walk away. Something hard crashed into the back of her head. The intruder shoved her against a wall and threw her to the ground. "There was blood everywhere," she said. The intruder held out some zip ties. "Behave," he said. Starr slipped the ties around her wrists, and the intruder cinched them tight. He dragged Starr to her feet and zip tied her to a chair inside a walk-in closet attached to the master bedroom. She asked what he wanted. Money, he said. Starr told him where to find the keys to their safe, which held about $3,000 in cash belonging to her in-laws, who'd been displaced by the Palisades fire. "Please," she said, "take the cash and go." After dragging Starr's son into the closet and zip tying him to another chair, the intruder offered to put a compress on her head, which was leaking blood. He spoke in "a sort of Eastern European accent," Starr testified, but lapsed at times into "other unidentified accents." As they waited for her husband to return, the masked man rambled about himself. He'd been smuggled through the "port of Atlanta" inside a shipping container, he said. Describing himself as a kind of indentured servant, he said he'd been "forced to work in a criminal enterprise, and if he didn't, he would be killed," Starr testified. "He made a point of saying he knew a lot about us," Starr recalled. The intruder said he'd watched the family's comings and goings by hacking into a neighbor's surveillance system that provided a view of their driveway. He also, oddly, knew the names of the people who lived in the house before Starr did. Two hours crept by. Then Starr heard the sound of her husband punching in the code to their door and the click-clack of his cycling shoes on the floor. Read more: Reputed Mexican Mafia member charged in killing of L.A. club owner, B-movie actor "You can hear him walking through the house, trying to figure out what was going on," she testified. The intruder pointed a gun at the bedroom door, "waiting for him to turn the corner," Starr said. Craig Didden testified he was met with a gun pointed at his face. "Relax," the masked person holding the gun said. That voice sounds familiar, Didden recalled thinking. The intruder ordered Didden to send emails to his and his wife's employers and his son's school, explaining they'd be gone for the next few days. Didden testified that he tried his best to type with his wrists zip tied together while the man read over his shoulder. It would take five days to transfer all of the money from their retirement accounts, the intruder told the family. "He said he had a number of tools to get us to cooperate," Starr testified, "but worst case-scenario, he'd leave us zip tied in the closet and burn the house down." When the suspect brought them snacks — bananas, beef jerky and sparkling water — Starr felt the ordeal had veered into the absurd. "It just seemed so incongruous to zip tie someone in their closet," she said, "and then bring them a bottle of Perrier." Left in the darkened closet, Starr testified she heard the whir of an electric drill as the intruder boarded up the doors with sheets of plywood. After the house fell silent, they rifled through pockets of clothes inside the closet, finding a manicure kit and a ninja star inside a box of childhood mementos. Using these tools and a nail file that Starr had slipped in her pocket when she used the restroom, they cut the zip ties and came up with a plan. Once the light peeked through a gap in the closet doors, Didden called out for water. Hearing nothing, he kicked the plywood off the doors and crawled out. The three climbed out of a bathroom window, scaled a fence in the backyard and banged on the window of a neighbor who called 911. Starr and Didden walked through their home with officers from the Los Angeles Police Department. Starr testified her and her mother's engagement rings were missing. So was a string of pearls she'd worn at her wedding and her great-grandfather's pocket watch. The doorjambs had been screwed shut and food was scattered around the kitchen. In trash cans in the kitchen and bathroom, detectives found ripped blue latex gloves, Deputy Dist. Atty. Catherine Chon said in court. Police tested the gloves for DNA. After receiving the results, they arrested Rodolfo Christopher Gil — the son of Starr and Didden's next-door neighbor. Starr testified that she and Gil's family, while "not terribly close," were "pleasant neighbors." She'd known Gil for the 15 years she'd lived next to his family. "We share a driveway," she said. In a motion for bail, Gil's attorney said the 35-year-old father of one has no "prior violent criminal history." According to a tax return attached to the motion, Gil reported being self-employed and earned about $40,000 in 2024, including more than $13,000 in unemployment benefits. His lawyer, Paul Geller, asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Diego Edber to dismiss the charges against Gil, saying they weren't supported by evidence. "It's very possible this was a replica gun," he told the judge. Read more: Hit men on motorbikes, wearing clown masks: Armenian gang war roils San Fernando Valley Edber ruled he'd heard enough testimony for Gil to stand trial on 16 counts of kidnapping, assault, false imprisonment, burglary, robbery and criminal threats. A sheriff's deputy led Gil back to a jail cell in handcuffs as he nodded to his family in the courtroom audience. It's unclear if they still live next door to Starr and Didden. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
Associated Press
04-07-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Declare Your Financial Independence: New Calculator Helps Americans Break Free from Annuity Traps
Revolutionary tool exposes how restrictive contracts and hidden fees are holding millions of retirees' wealth hostage WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., July 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As Americans celebrate Independence Day, American Alternative Assets announced the launch of its 'Annuity Trap Calculator,' a revolutionary tool designed to help retirement savers declare independence from wealth-draining annuity contracts. It can be found at This timely release comes as millions of retirees discover their pursuit of financial liberty is being undermined by restrictive insurance products that promise security but deliver financial captivity. To help retirees understand the true cost of annuities, they created a helpful guide available for free download at The calculator addresses a growing crisis among patriotic Americans who trusted their retirement savings to products that now hold their wealth hostage through surrender charges, excessive fees, and liquidity restrictions. The very opposite of the financial freedom they worked decades to achieve. Breaking the Chains of Financial Oppression American Alternative Assets developed this liberation tool after analyzing thousands of annuity contracts that trap retirees' hard-earned savings behind walls of fees and restrictions reminiscent of the very tyranny our founders fought to escape. 'Too many Americans have unknowingly surrendered their financial independence to insurance companies that profit from keeping their money locked away,' said a company spokesperson. 'Our calculator helps people break free from these financial shackles and reclaim control over their retirement destiny.' The Cost of Financial Tyranny The analysis reveals how modern annuity contracts mirror the oppressive taxation and restrictions that sparked the American Revolution. Except instead of King George, it's insurance companies extracting wealth through: Early case studies show some retirees could liberate over $400,000 in potential wealth by declaring independence from these restrictive contracts. Freedom Versus Financial Bondage The calculator compares the liberty offered by alternative retirement strategies against the constraints of traditional annuities: Financial Freedom Features: Annuity Restrictions: Historical Lessons in Financial Liberty incorporates lessons from America's economic history, showing how citizens who maintained control over tangible assets prospered during times of crisis, while those dependent on institutional promises often suffered. During the 1970s inflation crisis, much like the economic challenges facing America today, those who maintained financial independence through precious metals and other real assets preserved their wealth, while fixed annuity holders watched their purchasing power vanish like tea dumped in Boston Harbor. Your Declaration of Financial Independence American Alternative Assets specializes in helping patriots reclaim their financial freedom through education about precious metals IRAs and alternative retirement strategies that honor the principles of self-reliance and independence our nation was founded upon. Free the Trapped Wealth The complete Annuity Trap Calculator and companion guide 'Escaping the Annuity Trap " are available as free resources to help Americans declare independence from restrictive financial products at About American Alternative Assets American Alternative Assets provides educational resources to help freedom-loving Americans understand portfolio diversification strategies that honor principles of financial independence and self-reliance. The company specializes in precious metals IRAs and wealth preservation strategies designed to protect against government overreach and economic tyranny. Media Contact: Customer Care Team American Alternative Assets (888) 503-1553 [email protected] View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE American Alternative Assets
CBS News
27-06-2025
- CBS News
California Highway Patrol in pursuit of a road rage suspect near Woodland Hills
More from CBS News The KCAL News Staff is a group of experienced journalists who bring you the content on The California Highway Patrol is in pursuit of a road rage suspect near Woodland Hills. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On
