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At least 14 hurt as L.A. bus is part of multi-car ‘rollover collision’

Published

2 months ago

March 28, 2024

At least 14 people were injured in a multi-vehicle collision Thursday afternoon in South Los Angeles that involved a Metro bus, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The Fire Department issued an alert at 3:40 p.m. of a “multi-vehicle collision, with rollover, that included an MTA bus with passengers,” off Crenshaw Boulevard at 39th Street in Baldwin Hills.

Firefighters and paramedics were on the scene and had assessed and treated 14 people, including bus riders and other vehicle passengers, according to a 5 p.m. update. Three people were taken to hospitals in “moderate condition” and six in “fair condition.”

“The rest declined ambulance transport to an area hospital after being assessed on scene,” officials said.

It is unclear how many vehicles were involved in the crash, although NBC Los Angeles reported that at least four were involved.

A bus, van, minivan and firetrucks at the scene of a crash where another vehicle rests on its side.

Aerial video by NBC showed one badly damaged car rolled over on its side in the middle of the street, and a van whose side was crumpled. The MTA bus did not appear to be seriously damaged. Another car was reportedly towed from the scene.

At least seven fire engines and ambulances could be seen in the aerial video.

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Putin Will Visit Xi, Testing a ‘No Limits’ Partnership

Published

1 hour ago

May 14, 2024

David Pierson and Paul Sonne

When China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, hosts President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in China this week, it will be more than two years since the two autocratic leaders declared a “no limits” partnership to push back against what they consider American bullying and interference.

Growing challenges from the West have tested the limits of that partnership.

Mr. Xi is walking a narrowing tightrope, coming under increasing diplomatic and economic pressure to curtail Chinese support for Russia and its war in Ukraine. A tighter embrace of Mr. Putin now could further alienate Europe, a key trading partner, as Beijing seeks to improve its image in the West, and retain access for Chinese exports to help revitalize its sluggish economy.

“China sees Russia as an important strategic partner and wants to give Putin proper respect, but it also wants to maintain sound relations with Europe and the United States for economic reasons and beyond. It is a very difficult balancing act,” said Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations scholar.

Mr. Putin, for his part, may be testing Mr. Xi’s appetite for risk, as he tries to deter Western nations from more actively supporting Ukraine. Last week, while Mr. Xi was in France meeting President Emmanuel Macron, Mr. Putin ordered drills for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The move was seen as the most explicit warning so far that Russia could potentially use battlefield nuclear weapons in the war, which Mr. Xi has explicitly drawn a line against.

The Russian leader is also likely to press Mr. Xi for more support to sustain his country’s isolated economy and its war machine in Ukraine.

Show of Unity and Strength

Mr. Putin has just celebrated his fifth inauguration as president, setting him up to become the longest-serving Russian leader in centuries if he serves his full term. And Mr. Xi has just returned from a trip to Europe where he was exalted in the pro-Russian states of Serbia and Hungary and wined and dined in France. He left the region without making any major concessions on trade or Ukraine.

Mr. Xi has met with Mr. Putin over 40 times, including virtually, more than any other leader. The two often exchange birthday greetings and refer to each other as an “old” or “dear” friend. More crucially, they also appear to see in each other a strategic partner in a great geopolitical rivalry and will likely use the talks to depict themselves as leaders of an alternative global system aimed at eroding American dominance.

“The goal is to demonstrate how closely China and Russia are standing next to each other,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

But this solidarity with Russia makes China a target for Western pressure.

The United States asserts that Beijing, while not supplying lethal weapons, is still aiding the Kremlin’s war efforts by providing satellite intelligence, fighter jet parts, microchips and other dual-use equipment in addition to filling Moscow’s coffers as a top buyer of Russian oil. Washington has imposed sanctions on a slew of Chinese companies for links to the war, and threatened to blacklist Chinese financial institutions doing business with Russian firms.

Beijing’s tacit support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine has also hurt China’s standing with the European Union. In France, when confronted about the war, Mr. Xi bristled and said China was “not at the origin of this crisis, nor a party to it, nor a participant.”

China’s ‘Straddle’ May Be Working

Mr. Xi has made no suggestion that he would use his influence on Mr. Putin to bring the war to an end. And he may feel little need to do so.

China’s strategy of aligning with Russia while attempting to steady ties with the West at the same time, which some have described as a strategic straddle, may be paying off.

China’s relationship with the United States, which plummeted to multi-decade lows last year, is somewhat more stable now. And major European leaders continue to engage with Mr. Xi, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, who brought business executives with him on a visit to Beijing last month.

The approach is winning more support at home for Mr. Xi. Chinese scholars and think tank analysts see the momentum on the battlefield shifting in Russia’s favor, said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University.

“For Xi, the strategic straddle is working better than they could have imagined, and China has paid little cost for it,” he said.

Mr. Xi also needs Russia as a counterweight in his country’s rivalry with the United States, which plays out over U.S. support for Taiwan, China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and access to cutting-edge technology. China and Russia have ramped up military drills in the East China Sea, placing pressure on Taiwan, the self-governed island Beijing claims as its territory.

“Even if the China-Russia relationship was not as close,” said Xiao Bin, a Beijing-based expert on China’s relations with Russia, “the political elites in the U.S. may not regard China as a strategic partner, but would keep viewing China as a potential threat, even an enemy.”

Putin’s Growing Dependence on China

Mr. Putin, however, runs the risk of becoming over-reliant on China to a degree that might have made Russian officials uncomfortable in the past. China has become Russia’s lifeline since the invasion of Ukraine, displacing the European Union as Russia’s largest trading partner.

Mr. Putin is still pursuing his own interests. His growing coziness with North Korea, which is supplying Russia with munitions, could result in both countries being less reliant on Beijing.

But amid its isolation from the West, the Kremlin has been left with little choice: Mr. Putin needs China to buy energy, to supply dual-use components such as computer chips to sustain his military, and to provide a currency with which to carry out foreign transactions.

Last year, some 89 percent of the “high-priority” imports necessary for Russian weapons production came from China, according to a customs data analysis by Nathaniel Sher, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Those include everything from machine tools used to build military equipment to optical devices, electronic sensors and telecommunications gear, the analysis found.

“It’s much more survival mode. You are in a war situation,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and an expert in Sino-Russian relations.

For Mr. Putin, hedging against China “is a luxury he doesn’t have anymore,” he added.

Olivia Wang contributed reporting.

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World News

Mental Health Week: Chelsea’s Millie Bright on how injury led to career doubts

Published

4 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Emma Sanders

Millie Bright went from leading England in a World Cup final to missing over five months of the Women’s Super League season with a knee injury.

Bright says it “hurts” she has missed most of manager Emma Hayes’ final campaign at Chelsea, while her team-mates have suffered disappointment in the Women’s Champions League and domestic cup competitions.

Footballers experience the highs and lows of everyday life, as well as the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with the game.

For Mental Health Awareness Week – which runs until 19 May – Bright has discussed how injury setbacks led to her questioning whether her “career was done”.

“There’s been ups and downs. Most people probably won’t ever know about the downs. I should probably be a little bit more open about those,” Bright told BBC Sport when asked about her mental health experiences.

“I don’t want to accept that I’ve been injured and I’ve missed most of the last season under Emma. That’s been really hard to take. I’ve not been able to contribute to the team when I can see they have been struggling.

“This season more than ever has been extremely difficult. I’ve had plenty of moments where I’m like: ‘Eurgh, shall I just call the season and have a break and not try any more?’

“I’ve even thought: ‘Is that my career done? Shall I just call it a day?’

“I’ve not really told anyone that to be honest. It’s tough.”

Bright, 30, joined Chelsea in 2014 and has played under Hayes for a decade.

The Blues captain – who led the Lionesses at last year’s World Cup – says Hayes has been a “massive” support for her whenever she has needed to talk through problems – and it is reciprocated.

“I have this thing where I feel I need to protect the ones around me,” said Bright.

“As athletes, I think we’re driven into being thick-skinned and being tough on the outside – so we don’t show emotions.

“I let my walls down, but only with people like Levi [her fiance], my family or Emma Hayes. She knows when I feel like I’m about to explode.

“She’s like, ‘It’s written on your face, I can see it. Tell me what’s wrong.’

“It annoys me that she knows even when I’ve not said anything! But it’s been massive.”

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Wayfarers, Instagram-famous L.A. chapel, to be taken completely apart

Published

8 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Grace Toohey

Each day, landslide damage at the historic Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes worsens.

More windows in the famous glass chapel shatter. Metal framing along its walls and ceiling further torque. New fissures open across the parking lot.

The landslide beneath the chapel — mostly manageable for decades prior — has accelerated to unprecedented rates, likely upending the possibility of a future for the chapel at its idyllic seaside site.

Chapel leaders announced on Monday their plans to begin taking the chapel apart. The hope, they said, is to preserve what they can of the national historic landmark, longtime spiritual sanctuary and well-known wedding venue.

“We are taking immediate action to carefully disassemble the chapel’s historic materials as a necessary step in the preservation of the chapel for generations to come,” Dan Burchett, the executive director of Wayfarers Chapel, said in a statement. “Wayfarers is committed to preserving our iconic chapel exactly as it has always been, either on the current site or a similar site close by in Rancho Palos Verdes.”

Burchett and his team have been searching for another nearby location — on more stable ground — where the chapel could be rebuilt in as close to its original form as possible. He said they would also continue to monitor the landslide to see whether the chapel could be reassembled on-site — but that continues to look less feasible by the day as the land movement has intensified.

In February, Wayfarers closed its doors, worried about safety due to the landslide. Last month, city officials red-tagged the administration building that sits not far from Wayfarers Chapel, and as of Monday, all the underground services for the site, including electricity, water, sewer and gas, were broken and unusable, officials said.

The 100-seat glass-and-wood sanctuary was built in 1951, designed by architect Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Disassembly, carried out by preservation design firm Architectural Resources Group, will be a tedious process, Burchett said. This week, the team is preparing the property for the large-scale project, and Burchett expected work to begin next week.

“The chapel will not be able to withstand much more damage before it becomes impossible to preserve,” Wayfarers officials said in a news release. “It has been determined that the immediate deconstruction of the chapel is the safest and most viable preservation action to take at this time and will prevent further irreparable damage to the chapel’s structure and materials.”

Many of the chapel’s building materials are no longer available, Burchett said, so deconstruction allows the structure to keep its historical designation and paves the way for “a future careful and thoughtful rebuilding of the chapel.”

“With each passing day, more of this material is lost or irreparably damaged,” said Katie Horak, principal of Architectural Resources Group. With deconstruction set to begin, “our team is working against the clock to document and move these building components to safety so that they can be put back together again.”

She said some of the irreplaceable parts included old-growth-redwood glulam (or laminated timber bonded with adhesive), blue roof tile and the elegant network of steel that holds the windows together.

The city’s latest report on the historical landslide complex, which affects about 700 acres on both sides of Palos Verdes Drive South in Rancho Palos Verdes, found that land movement in March and April had further accelerated, almost two times the movement recorded from January through March — when leaders were already sounding the alarms about the situation. In some of the fastest-moving areas, the hillside was shifting up to nine inches per week, the city’s geologist found.

“Wayfarers Chapel has been a treasured part of our community for generations,” Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank said in a statement. “The city … is committed to working with Wayfarers Chapel to ensure it can be quickly rebuilt on a geologically safe location somewhere within the city, if possible.”

Burchett said the deconstruction and closing of the campus is estimated to cost $300,000 to $500,000 — well beyond the almost $70,000 raised through an online fundraiser that was started after the chapel had to close and cease most of its operations.

The full rebuild is estimated to cost near $20 million, Burchett said.

The nonprofit has about $5 million in savings reserved for that effort, revenue primarily from weddings at the site. Couples would pay more than $5,000 to marry at the highly sought-after Instagram-famous chapel.

Burchett, however, said Wayfarers would still need further community support, and is planning a fundraising drive for the rest.

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