Proponents say it will make Los Angeles the world’s progressive capital. Sceptics say it will mean diarrhea, lots of diarrhea.
The proposal, which has divided scientists and animal rights groups and inflamed social media, is to put dogs in the city’s public shelters on a vegan diet.
The Los Angeles animal services commission is considering the idea after lobbying by prominent vegans, including Moby, the dance music pioneer.
The commission unanimously voted earlier this month for a feasibility study and analysis of the benefits and risks. A report detailing pilot project options is expected in February.
Roger Wolfson, a commissioner and television screenwriter who is driving the initiative, cites ethical, environmental and health reasons to switch dogs to plant-based food.
Currently more than 20,000 chickens, 10,000 turkeys and 1,000 lambs die each year in order to be churned into food for the 33,000 dogs in LA’s public shelters, he said.
“We are the department of animal services, not the department of animal companion services,” he told the Guardian this week. “So we need to start from a place of avoiding unnecessary killing of animals. We already shelter pigs and chickens and turkeys and we wouldn’t think about killing them unnecessarily. So if dogs can get their needs met without killing animals we owe it to the citizens of Los Angeles to try.”
Wolfson, who was a political speechwriter in Washington DC before moving to LA and writing for shows such as Fairly Legal and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, also cited the impact of meat and dairy consumption on deforestation, greenhouse gases and ocean dead zones.
Several high-profile allies endorsed Wolfson’s proposal at a public hearing in November, including the musician and DJ Moby, who owns a vegan restaurant in LA. “If we adopt this, it’s just one more thing that proves to the world that Los Angeles really is the progressive capital of the world,” he said, according to meeting minutes, which used his real name, Richard Hall.
However, the city’s chief veterinarian, Jeremy Prupas, cited clinical nutritionists, a veterinary toxicologist and other experts who advised against a vegan diet. In addition to health questions, workers at the understaffed shelter would confront canine diarrhea, “a big issue,” Prupas said.
Armaiti May, an LA-based veterinarian who supports the proposal, told the Guardian that abrupt changes in diet can lead to looser stools but that a gradual transition would avoid major problems. “It’s a small issue in the grand scheme of things.” May believes meat-based kibbles have fueled a cancer and allergy epidemic in dogs.
Tracy Reiman, executive vice-president of the animal rights group PET, said a vegan diet was healthier and more ethical than feeding dogs “factory farmed animals who have endured miserable lives and gruesome deaths and whose dead, dying, diseased, or disabled carcasses are found in most commercial dog foods."
Other voices urge caution. Lisa Freeman, a veterinary nutritionist and Tufts University professor, told the New York Times earlier this year there were no long-term studies on the effects of veganism in dogs. “We know a lot about dog nutrition, but there are unknowns as well … it isn’t easy to formulate a high-quality diet for dogs, and it’s particularly difficult with a vegan diet.”
Social media has bristled with arguments for and against, the latter insisting dogs need meat.
Owners who have put their dogs on vegan diets say diarrhea fears are overblown and that health benefits are tangible. “Winky had been plagued with recurring ear infections which disappeared permanently after I phased the meat-based food out of his diet,” Karen Dawn, an author and activist, wrote in an LA Times op-ed.
It was a picture postcard California beach wedding. The bride wore white. The Pacific Ocean lapped at the altar. The violinist played Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love.
Then, upon being declared husband and wife, Zak Walton and Dani Geen inclined their heads, puckered their lips, closed their eyes and took long, deep puffs of potent cannabis.
A table by the altar had all the accoutrements: pots of cannabis concentrate, a torch lighter to heat it up, and glass vessels known as rigs, through which they inhaled the vapour.
The family and friends sat before them minded not a bit. This, after all, was a weed wedding and most of them had also ingested.
Melissa Cunningham, the wedding planner, said: “The psychic effect you get from it is very calming. Dani and Zak want to be on the same spectrum going into their matrimony.”
Everybody seemed to be on the same spectrum during the ceremony on Thursday at Stewart’s Cove, a bucolic beach near Carmel, south of San Francisco.
Walton, 30, savouring his first minutes of married life with a joint alongside bridesmaids and groomsmen, all smoking, said: “I’m feeling good. Nice and relaxed, medicated.”
What had he consumed so far? “I had some dabs at the hotel, a joint, some edibles. Not too much, not too little,” he said.
It was all legal: the cannabis buds in the bouquet and floral arrangements, the goody bags with joints and cannabis vapes, the cannabis-infused munchies (“handcrafted to melt in your mind”) and the dab bar at the reception in nearby Monterey, where a pot sommelier in a three-piece suit offered guests different ways to get lightly, blissfully stoned.
California voters approved recreational marijuana last November, a landmark victory in the fight for legalisation that has paved the way for the largest commercial pot market in the US.
Activists and entrepreneurs have found ways to “weedify” multiple products and services, including weddings.
It was news to the catering guys setting up chairs on the beach before the ceremony. “A cannabis wedding, really?” said one, astonished. “Is it, like, a thing?” asked another.
To evangelists, it’s the future.
Philip Wolf, the co-founder of the Cannabis Wedding Expo, which showcases industry products and services, said: “Down the road, people won’t call it a cannabis wedding, because bud bars will be normalised. Smoking creates a bonding aspect. People did it in ancient times. It enhances conversations.”
Luna Stower, 33, a friend of the bride, said cannabis soothed nerves and made couples more romantic. Stower, the wedding officiant and sales director for a cannabis distribution company, had benefited from munching toffee hours earlier made by a company called Mind Tricks. “It’s very relaxing. An aphrodisiac and a euphoric sedative that lasts a very long time. It has organic sugar so it’s a quality high,” she said.
The high did not addle Stower’s brain. She led the ceremony fluidly, without notes, and made a quip about the the couple loving and honouring each other “till dab do you part”. Dabbing is the term for heating a dose of concentrate on a hot surface and inhaling it through glass.
Cannabis brought the Oakland-based couple together because they started out as smoking buddies, said Walton, who works on cars. “One thing led to another and here we are 12 years later,” he added.
He uses the herb to ease backache and Geen, 31, uses it for fibromyalgia, tumours and other conditions. “Cannabis has been my medicine and my saviour,” she said. Not to mention her employer: she works for Harborside Health Center, a medical cannabis dispensary.
She wanted her wedding to show that cannabis could be classy – integrated into decor and menus, with the reception hosted at Monterey’s Victorian-era Perry House – and safe, with controls to keep it away from children.
Geen laughed off the stereotype of zonked stoners, saying certain strains of pot sharpened concentration. “I’m going to remember my night better than someone who has had a lot of alcohol,” she said.
Steve DeAngelo, her boss and guest, agreed, citing Carl Sagan, Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as evidence that weed did not engender low functionality.
The drug also did wonders for intimacy, he said. “It opens you to more sensual experiences. It allows men, especially young men, to match their sexual rhythm to a woman’s rhythm,” DeAngelo added.
Geen reckoned that about 60 of the 70 guests were using cannabis.
Some were exultant, like David Nevitt, 34, who dabbed, munched, vaped and toked. “We’re at a weeding! Usually at weddings you have to be discreet, do it in the car park. Doing it here right in front of everybody, it feels revolutionary,” he said.
Others were grateful. Holly Alberti, 34, said: “I’ve taken several concentrated dabs and I could use some more. The ride over was quite stressful, we got lost.”
And some, including a pair of college professors, were coy, saying they might partake. They declined to give their names lest Google for ever link them to pot.
The groom’s mother, Aurea Walton, 55, was one of the few to opt out. “I’m Catholic,” she said. “So no, I won’t partake.” Then she smiled. “Unless it’s by mistake.”
The guiltiest pleasure at Los Angeles international airport’s (LAX) new private terminal for the mega-rich is not the plush, hushed privacy, or the beds with comforters, or the massages, or the coriander-scented soap, or the Willie Wonka-style array of chocolates and jelly beans, or the Napa Valley cabernet.
It is the iPad that sits on a counter at the entrance, with a typed little note: “Here is a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now.”
The screen shows travellers hauling bags through packed terminals, queuing in long lines, looking harassed and being swallowed into pushing, shoving paparazzi scrums – routine hazards for the 80 million people who pass through LAX each year.
“There they process thousands of people at a time, they’re barking. It’s loud. Here it’s very, very lovely,” said Gavin de Becker, who runs the new terminal, called Private Suite.
He wasn’t wrong. The $22m facility, the first of its kind in the US, opens on Monday, giving the 1% a whole new way to separate themselves from everyone else’s reality.
Luxury, de Becker said while giving the Guardian a tour, is secondary to convenience – to escaping the hassle of modern air travel. “The real purpose here is logistics.” He reckons about a tenth of his clients will be celebrities who are fed up with the paparazzi staking out LAX. The rest will be corporate – CEOs and other members of capitalism’s top brass.
De Becker, who runs a security consulting firm, borrowed the concept from Heathrow’s Windsor Suite, a marbled sanctuary for popes, presidents and other VIPs tucked in a corner of Terminal 5.
Instead of battling the traffic jams that clog LAX you reach Private Suite via the Imperial Highway, leading to a discreet turn-off where an armed guard checks your identity and pushes a button. Tall grey gates open and you enter the haven.
It is pricey. In addition to annual membership of $7,500, you pay $2,700 per domestic flight and $3,000 per international flight. The cost covers a group of up to four people. If you aren’t a member, you pay $3,500 for a domestic flight and $4,000 for international flight for a group of up to three people.
There are 13 suites, each with bathrooms, televisions, drinks, organic snacks, wifi, gadgets and views of planes trundling across runways. There are menus of toys for children and prayer mats for Muslims.
If you spill some cabernet, no worries: pick up the phone and within minutes a man in a blazer will wheel in a cart with Calvin Klein socks, Banana Republic dress shirts, Anne Klein blouses and Steve Madden shoes. If the weather at your destination looks a bit damp help yourself to a water-resistant jacket.
If in need of some Hunger Games-style schadenfreude check out the iPad showing the hoi polloi running gauntlets over at the main terminal.
Another man in a blazer will check in your luggage and let you know when it is time to leave your suite and enter the “gallery”, a mini-terminal disguised as a hotel lounge. It is decorated with rotating art installations – currently it is a series of humming bird portraits by the photographer Gary Yost – which you can buy, with proceeds going to charity.
When it is time to leave a TSA agent from the main terminal will pop over to screen you and any companions. A BMW will then whisk you to your plane. Arrivals receive the same treatment, with leather armchairs and platters of chocolates flanking the customs and immigration desk.
De Becker rebuffed any suggestion that his terminal symbolised inequality.
It cost taxpayers nothing and would generate $34m for LAX over the next nine years, he said. Plus it would make his clients likelier to use commercial flights rather than charter private jets. “It’s all about the airport, about predictability. When you charter you can buy your way out of the line.”
So Private Suite was an egalitarian advance? De Becker nodded. “It’s a voluntary tax on the wealthy.”
America’s most famous socialist, he suggested, would approve. “I love Bernie Sanders.”
It sounds like a scene from a Hollywood film: an actor-turned activist sits in a jungle clearing interviewing the world’s most wanted drug lord, a notorious fugitive who after two decades on the run decides the time has come to tell his life story.
An implausible plot, except it is true: Sean Penn interviewed JoaquÃn “El Chapo” Guzmán in a remote part of Mexico’s Durango state last October amid a huge manhunt involving US and Mexican intelligence agencies and security forces.
The actor revealed the encounter in an article in Rolling Stone magazine published on Saturday, just a day after Mexican authorities nabbed Guzmán in the Pacific town of Los Mochis – a capture to which Penn may have inadvertently contributed.
In the interview, the Sinaloa cartel leader admitted – boasted – about his underworld empire: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.”
That was a dramatic change from his last known interview, in 1993, when he claimed to be a farmer.
He also told Penn about his humble origins selling oranges, details of his escape from a maximum-security prison last July and that he does not consider himself a violent man. “Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more. But do I start trouble? Never.”
The interview burnished the Mystic River star’s credentials as a part-time journalist who lands big scoops. An outspoken leftwing activist, the Oscar winner has previously interviewed Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez.
With questions about journalistic ethics swirling around Penn and Rolling Stone – it showed the article to Guzmán before publication – the drug lord was back in Altiplano, from where he escaped last July via a motorbike in a tunnel, facing a prospect he has long dreaded: extradition to the US.
Mexican officials said they would begin the extradition process in line with previous US requests. No time frame was given but experts said it could take months.
Penn may also find himself answering questions from the authorities: on Sunday, Reuters cited a law-enforcement official saying Mexico was considering investigating the movie star and Del Castillo.
Asked whether Penn could face charges over his contacts with Guzmán, Peter Carr, a US justice department spokesman, said: “We do not have any comment or additional information at this time.”
Critics, however, rounded on Penn for giving a platform to a bloodstained criminal. Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, said allowing Guzmán to boast about smuggling heroin was “maddening”. The Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio accused Penn of fawning over his interviewee. “I find it grotesque,” he said.
El Chapo may use his time to reflect on the possibility that his seven-hour meeting on 2 October with Penn, atop a densely wooded mountain and surrounded by more than 100 cartel gunmen, contributed to his downfall.
Security forces tracked him down to a house in Los Mochis, triggering a battle that left five cartel gunmen dead and Guzmán scrambling through sewers in a doomed attempt to escape, partly thanks to a trail left by his communications with outsiders.
“He contacted actresses and producers, which was part of one line of investigation,” said Mexico’s attorney general, Arely Gómez. She did not mention names but Penn, along with Del Castillo, are the only film people known to have met Guzmán in recent months.
Del Castillo, who played a top narco herself in a soap opera, apparently won the drug lord’s trust and affection in a series of supportive Twitter posts. Penn said he asked her to facilitate the interview, which happened three months after Guzmán’s prison breakout.
Penn said he took elaborate security measures, using disposable “burner” phones. “One per contact, one per day, destroy, burn, buy, balancing levels of encryption, mirroring through Blackphones, anonymous email addresses, unsent messages accessed in draft form.”
Even so, Penn wrote, he did not doubt the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican authorities were tracking him.
Penn’s account of reaching the jungle redoubt reinforced perceptions of complicity between El Chapo and security force elements: he describes being waved through a military road checkpoint, apparently because the troops recognised Guzmán’s son.
While flying in a small plane apparently equipped with a device for scrambling ground radar, an insider assured him the cartel had an informant who relayed details when the military deployed surveillance planes.
When they arrived, the drug lord, according to Penn, welcomed Del Castillo “like a daughter returning from college”. She translated their conversation.
Guzmán was sanguine about his trade: “Well, it’s a reality that drugs destroy. Unfortunately, as I said, where I grew up there was no other way, and there still isn’t a way, to survive.”
If he disappeared, he said, the narcotics industry would continue regardless.
Guzmán said he had not consumed drugs himself in 20 years. Asked how he envisaged his final days, he replied: “I know one day I will die. I hope it’s of natural causes.”
He shed light on his escape from Altiplano, saying he sent engineers to Germany for specialised training, leading to an elaborate tunnel with a motorcycle on rails modified to run in a low-oxygen environment.
The interview touched on Donald Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner who has railed against Mexican immigrants to the US, calling them rapists and criminals. (Guzmán has reputedly put a $100m (£69m) bounty on him.) “Ah! Mi amigo!” Guzmán responded.
In the article, Penn said the narco boss was less violent than rivals but expressed ambivalence about his assignment: “I take no pride in keeping secrets that may be perceived as protecting criminals.”
Rolling Stone prompted widespread criticism when it admitted submitting the story to Guzmán for his approval. He apparently requested no revisions.
Two weeks after the encounter, the Mexican authorities said the cartel leader narrowly evaded capture and suffered face and leg injuries as he fled. On Sunday Reuters cited a law-enforcement official saying Mexico was considering investigating Penn and Del Castillo.
It was a sun-drenched afternoon, with another autumnal heatwave cooking the concrete of Los Angeles, but Joanne Pilecki hugged her green fleece close as she stepped into a cinema foyer.
“I don’t take the cold too well,” said the 61-year-old, adjusting to the abrupt drop in temperature. “I have a sweater with me all the time.” Without it she would feel like an icicle by the end of The Intern, even though it was supposedly a heartwarming comedy. “I’m always cold. On planes I bring my own blankets.”
Other cinema-goers, in contrast, came precisely because it was cool, said Cerise Cobbs, who was manning the ticket booth at the Third Street Promenade shopping centre in Santa Monica. “Folks who don’t have good air con at home come, especially at weekends — they say they’ve got to get out of the house.”
Too hot, too cold, just right — Americans may differ over where to set the dial but they agree air conditioning is integral to modern life.
It is ubiquitous, whirring in homes, offices, stores, schools, elevators, factories, cars, trains, gyms, stadiums, tunnels, a communion of cool stretching from California to New York.
“It’s made its way into American life,” said Salvatore Basile, author of Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything. “This idea for millennia that God made hot weather so you should put up with it — that attitude has relaxed.”
But with the vertiginous rise of the “cold economy” — and the energy it demands — becoming more and more visible, there is finally a growing awareness of the problem in the US.
New York City recently passed a law that will oblige nearly all shops and restaurants to keep front doors and windows shut while air conditioners are on, a response to the practice of wooing sweaty passers-by with the promise of chilled respite. Innovators are promising more efficient devices in the next decade, including one that makes and stores ice cheaply at night to cool buildings during the day, from a California firm called Ice Energy.
Only now is the U.S. waking up to the environmental cost of such massive energy consumption — and to the chilling prospect that the rest of the world may follow its example. The proportion of homes in Chinese cities with air conditioning rocketed from 8 percent to 70 percent between 1995 and 2004.
Vehicle air conditioners in the U.S. use 7-10 billion gallons of petrol annually. Each home with an air conditioner emits about two tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air each year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Air conditioners employ the same operating principles as refrigerators: transfer heat from the cool interior, be it a fridge, room or building, to the relative warmth outside.
This can contribute to an urban heat island effect. A study found that AC units in Phoenix, Arizona, heat the night-time air temperature outside by up to 2C which, of course, encourages residents to blast even more air conditioning to compensate. New York’s subway stations bake in summer at more than 48C, partly because air-conditioned trains are pumping out heat.
Freakishly hot weather across the U.S. increases the temptation to ratchet up air conditioning, especially in California, which has endured record heat along with massive wildfires and a drought. During the summer, energy providers often implore people to reduce their use of air conditioners and other devices to avoid crashing the grid.
Silicon Valley is another guzzler. The water used to cool California’s estimated 800 data centers each year could fill approximately 158,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Reducing energy consumption can be tricky, according to Aaron James, a professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of California, Irvine. “People often feel a sense of entitlement about what they have become accustomed to. So even if it wouldn’t be asking much – a small behavioural change in the face of a severe problem – it can make us feel morally defensive.”
Filling a recycling bag that neighbours may see, for instance, can feel more important and virtuous than lowering the AC. “In the U.S. there’s not an established awareness of air conditioning as a climate change problem,” said James, the author of Assholes: A Theory .
Air conditioning, it should be stressed, is an important economic and social technology. It saves lives. An average of 618 people in the US die each year from exposure to excessive natural heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a far cry from a century ago when heat killed thousands. It also cuts absenteeism and raises productivity. In a 1957 survey, 90 percent of U.S. firms named cooled air as the single biggest boost to their productivity.
Nelson Polsby, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who died in 2007, suggested air conditioning also reshaped American politics by enabling Republican pensioners to migrate to southern and western states, paving Ronald Reagan’s way to the White House.
“Air conditioning probably did foster migration in the Sun Belt,” said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. “How many people want to endure Orlando in mid-August without air conditioning? Without it, Disney World would be more like Devil’s Island.”
The technology also influenced the Hollywood blockbuster. In the early 20th century few braved sweltering cinemas in summer. That changed once they installed air conditioning — an innovation advertised with letters dripping with icicles. It remains a selling point to this day. AMC Theatres, the U.S.’s second largest cinema chain, keeps the temperature at 21C in winter and 23C in summer.
Bar Armageddon, the technology is here to to stay, said Basile. “It’s not possible to go back once you’ve been going forward. From a philosophical standpoint I, an air-conditioning junkie, can’t tell someone they can’t have it.”
He feels, however, that the U.S. overuses the technology. “I noticed that cooled spaces in the U.K. were comfortable, but nowhere near as icy-frigid as their American counterparts.”
With billions of people in warm climates wanting “bearable lives”, the race for efficiency is rather urgent, according to Basile. He is optimistic. “We will get more bang for our buck.”
Barack Obama may be pushing America into an abyss of gay-loving, Iran-hugging, welfare-splurging socialist ruin, but conservatives can console themselves with at least one piece of good news: the “beepocalypse” is over.
Market forces have helped tame the mysterious plague which wiped out bee colonies over the past decade – a phenomenon more formally known as colony collapse disorder – and the US need no longer fear a future without honey, pollination or food.
This was the message delivered to Republican legislators and lobbyists at this week’s annual meeting in San Diego of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), one of the nation’s most controversial and powerful lobbying networks.
It was a striking gleam of optimism amid dour fulminations against same-sex marriage, the Iran nuclear deal and Obamacare from keynote speakers such as presidential candidates Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee.
“The term ‘beepocalypse’ was hype and focused on the wrong issues,” Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Guardian on Friday before giving an official conference talk titled: “Beepocalypse Not”.
“The issue has been way overblown. We’re not in a battle against nature. It’s an agricultural management issue.”
This being Alec, where corporations and politicians forge common interests, Logomasini had a pointed conclusion: pesticides are OK.
Other factors hurt bees, not pesticides, and so the US should resist pressure to ban them. “The reality,” Logomasini said, “is without these products we can’t produce enough food at low cost.”
Companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto, in other words, were innocent of colony collapse disorder – also known as “beemaggedon” – and the Obama administration should avoid following the European Union’s “unscientific” crackdown on a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids.
“The Europeans jumped the gun. The US hasn’t regulated yet but federal policy is drifting in the wrong direction,” said Logomasini.
Tiffany Finck-Haynes, a bee specialist with Friends of the Earth, disagreed. US bees are in bad shape and scientific research increasingly blames neonicotinoids, she said, prompting pesticide makers to wage a public relations campaign to avert action by the Environmental Protection Agency.
“They’re worried,” Finck-Haynes. “They’re trying to manufacture doubt and spin the science to downplay the role of pesticides.”
A Friends of the Earth report last year titled “Follow the honey” accused the industry of mimicking underhand public relations tactics used by tobacco and fossil fuel companies.
Both sides agree the stakes are high. Bee pollination of crops has been valued at $20bn in the US and $217bn worldwide. Honeybee pollination benefits about one third of US food production, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Since about 2006 beekeepers have recorded mysterious mass die-offs ranging from 20% to 40% of managed honeybee colonies each winter. A sustained net loss of 30% per year would swiftly lead to no colonies at all.
Environmentalists say neonicotinoids, which are used as seed treatments on more than 140 crops, attack bees’ nervous and immune systems and disrupt their navigation, learning, communication, memory and foraging abilities, leaving them vulnerable to disease and pests.
The pesticide makers concede problems with hive health exist but say the real culprits are the varroa mite, degraded foraging habitats and poor land management, including the overuse of pesticides. In an increasingly polarised, politicised battle, each side cites scientific studiesto support its claims.
Honeybees are at no risk of extinction. In the past decade the number of colonies in the US has actually risen, from 2.4m to 2.7m. The explanation: beekeepers are more than replenishing the losses by splitting healthy colonies into two separate colonies, and by simply buying packages of bees which include queens. It is an apparent triumph of market forces.
Even so, concern over hive health prompted a recent White House policy framework – the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. Few expect it to emulate the EU’s suspension of the three major neonicicotinoids – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam – but it may curb usage.
Finck-Haynes said the “Beepocalypse Not” narrative in San Diego, where hundreds of legislators and lobbyists charted conservative policies over three days, reflected the pesticide industry’s public relations fightback.
Logomasini’s group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is a libertarian thinktank. It does not reveal funding sources but the Koch brothers and fossil fuel companies are believed to be big donors.
“They have a stake in conservative policies,” said Finck-Haynes.
The Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group, said that until recently Bayer, which sells more than $1bn worth of neonicotinoids each year, had a representative on Alec’s corporate board and wished to sow scientific doubt in San Diego.
“At this meeting, Alec is denying more than climate change,” a CMD statement said. “It also is apparently denying the mass die-off of bees.”
Colin Dunn, a spokesperson for Bayer, said no company representative attended the conference. Bill Meierling, a spokesperson for Alec, was unable to immediately confirm that. The “Beepocalypse Not” session, like other non-plenary talks, was off-limits to media.
In a phone interview from Bayer CropScience’s headquarters in North Carolina, Becky Langer, director of the company’s bee care programme, said she had nothing to do with the lobbying fest in California.
“I don’t know what Alec is,” she said.
Langer said Bayer CropScience had promoted education through a “Bee Care Tour” in 2013 and 2014, which spread the message that there was no bee apocalypse. Neonicotinoids were safe if used correctly, she said, but farmers and ordinary gardeners were not always “reading the label correctly”.
Logomasini, speaking in an interview before her official talk, said her approval of pesticides was rooted in scientific evidence. They were “not zero risk” but accounted for just a small part of the bees’ problems and in return provided huge benefits, such as freeing up land for nature rather than agriculture.
She said she had intellectual freedom and was not beholden to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s donors. “I can do what I want,” she said.
Independent experts, Logomasini said, had praised her “Beepocalypse Not” report, which came out in April.
The other speaker at Alec’s closed-door bee session was Todd Myers, the environmental director at the Washington Policy Center, a pro-business think tank in Seattle, and the owner of four hives which do not use pesticides. Multiple factors were killing hives, he said, and pesticides were a minor culprit.
The solution to the crisis, said Myers, expressing a core conservative principle, lay with beekeepers, not government.
Federal agencies tried to use vehicle license-plate readers to track the travel patterns of Americans on a much wider scale than previously thought, with new documents showing the technology was proposed for use to monitor public meetings.
The American Civil Liberties Union released more documents this week revealing for the first time the potential scale of a massive database containing the data of millions of drivers, logged from automatic license plate readers around the US.
As President Obama’s nominee for attorney general prepared for a second day of confirmation hearings in Washington, senior lawmakers also called on the US Justice Department to show “greater transparency and oversight”.
Further documents released by the ACLU on Wednesday show that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials in Phoenix planned on “working closely” with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to monitor public gun shows with the automatic technology in 2009.
Although the DEA has said the proposal was not acted upon, the revelations raise questions about how much further the secret vehicle surveillance extends, which other federal bodies are involved and which other groups may have been targeted.
“The broad thrust of the DEA is to spread its program broadly and catch data and travel patterns on a massive scale,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with ACLU, told the Guardian. “This could be a really amazing level of surveillance that we’ve not seen before in this country.”
The ACLU warned that the buildup of a vehicle surveillance database, the existence of which first surfaced on Monday, stemmed from the DEA’s appetite for asset forfeiture, a controversial practice of seizing possessions at traffic stops and vehicle pullovers if agents suspect they are criminal proceeds.
“I think that a number of people would have questions about how the Department of Justice manages its asset forfeiture program,” Loretta Lynch, Holder’s would-be replacement, said before a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
In a letter to Holder on Wednesday, senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy wrote that they “remain concerned that government programs that track citizens’ movements, see inside homes and collect data from the phones of innocent Americans raise serious privacy concerns.”
Citing the ACLU’s first batch of documents, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the senators referred to the attorney general’s flagging of the forfeiture problem. “Any program that is dedicated to expanding the Justice Department’s forfeiture efforts requires similar oversight and accountability,” they wrote.
Senator Leahy’s office did not respond to multiple requests for clarification from the Guardian on Wednesday and Thursday, but privacy advocates said the revelations raised serious questions that demanded answers from Washington.
Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based libertarian law firm, said Americans would be disturbed to know that law enforcement’s quest for revenue impelled mass surveillance.
“It’s deeply concerning and creepy,” Neily said. “We’re Americans. We drive a lot.”
The ACLU followed up Monday’s tranche of DEA documents, which were obtained under Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests, with the further documents revealing that federal agents planned to use automatic license plate readers to monitor attendees at gun shows in April 2009. The group said it did not know whether the car surveillance was still going on, or how wide it ever spread.
The heavily redacted documents show that DEA officers in Phoenix planned on “working closely” with ATF officials “in attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs [license plate readers] at the gun shows.”
DEA administrator Michele Leonhart later told the Wall Street Journal that the plan was never implemented and was “only a suggestion”.
The Department of Justice, which encompasses the DEA, did not respond to a further request for clarification from the Guardian.
The perception that an average citizen’s car could be monitored upon entering or leaving a gun show – or any other lawful assembly – infringed upon civil rights, said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
“It would be chilling,” Olson said. “You could think twice about exercising that right.”
The latest redacted responses left many questions unanswered, said Stanley, the ACLU analyst. “We just happened to get that tidbit about the gun shows. Whether they targeted other groups we just don’t know. That’s the problem. We’re like archaeologists trying to read a scrap of bone and build a picture of the whole organism.”
The license-plate readers have fed hundreds of millions of records about motorists into a national database, the first round of ACLU documents show. If license plate readers, also known as LPRs, continued to proliferate without restriction, and the DEA held ldata for extended periods, the agency would soon possess a detailed and invasive depiction of people’s lives, the ACLU has warned.
Officials have publicly acknowledged they track vehicles near the Mexican border to combat drug trafficking.
According to DEA documents, the primary goal of the program was to seize cars, cash and other assets belonging to criminals. However, the database’s expansion “throughout the United States”, as one email put it, also widened law enforcers’ capacity for asset forfeiture.
The revelation that asset forfeiture was linked to mass surveillance could unite progressives and conservatives, Olson said. “At some point left and right come together.”
Neily, the Institute for Justice attorney, said government assurances about surveillance safeguards “varied tremendously from reality”.
The ACLU noted that other law enforcement bodies have used license plate readers to monitor public events in the past. In 2009 the Virginia state police collaborated with the US secret service to monitor license plates at President Obama’s inauguration and campaign rallies for then vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The ACLU also questioned why documents proving the gun show proposal’s cancellation were not returned in the Foia request.
The revelations highlight the risks federal agencies endure as they implement widespread scale surveillance technology to fight crime.
Further documents included in the most recent publication, show the DEA believe elements of the national LPR database has “verified defendant statements, tracked fugitives, solved a gang related homicide, identified vehicles involved in vehicular homicide and used to injure CBP [Customs and Border Protection] checkpoint officers” as well as identified routes used by criminals in drugs and weapons smuggling.
In Orange County, California, wealthier, better-educated parents are less inclined to immunise their children. Doctors warn of a public health time-bomb
Travel north to south in Orange County, a coastal strip of 34 cities in southern California which includes Disneyland, and the growing size and opulence of the houses show people getting richer.
Trawl medical records, and you notice something else: children getting fewer vaccinations.
“The rate of immunisation falls as you go north to south. It tracks the socio-economic statistics in the county,” said Matt Zahn, medical director of Epidemiology and Assessment for the Orange County Health Care Agency.
At Capistrano Unified school district, for instance, there was a 9.5% rate of children not fully vaccinated because of parents’ beliefs. At the nearby, poorer Santa Ana Unified district, in contrast,only 0.2% of kindergartners had exemptions on file .
A measles outbreak at Disneyland , stemming from an unvaccinated young woman dubbed patient zero, has shone a light on such dichotomies. Officials have confirmed at least 32 cases, almost all of them unvaccinated.
It is a strange first-world irony that wealthier, better-educated parents are the ones reducing infant vaccination rates, said Zahn. “Many people in this country have never seen a case of measles,” he said. “We’re a victim of our own success.”
The outbreak has triggered recrimination towards an eclectic group of activists who are accused of sabotaging immunisation campaigns by peddling medical myths.
“If we get to a few thousand cases in this country we’ll start seeing deaths. That’s unconscionable,” said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Patient zero became sick and contagious on 28 December, while at Disneyland. She flew to Snohomish County in Washington state for a few days, then returned to Orange County on 3 January. Health officials announced the outbreak on 7 January.
Her proximity to crowds at the theme park and airports and on planes helped spread the the extremely contagious virus: state health departments in Colorado, Utah and Washington have confirmed cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls measles, a virus that lives in the nose and throat, the “most deadly of all childhood rash/fever illnesses”. About 90% of those who are not immune will become infected if they come close to an infected person, according to the CDC.
An estimated 20 million people worldwide contract measles each year. In the US, the CDC typically expects only 220 cases. Last year there were 644, a nearly two-decade high.
Measles vaccines are said to be 99% effective but anti-vaccine sentiment is growing in the US, especially in wealthy areas. In California more than 150 schools have exemption rates of 8% or higher for at least one vaccine. All are in areas with incomes averaging $94,500, nearly 60% higher than the county median, according to a Los Angeles Times study last year .
The virus’s relatively low prevalence in the US has emboldened parents to eliminate or delay children’s vaccinations, said Zahn, because they assume the risk of infection is negligible thanks to widespread vaccinations. “You’re riding on the immunisation rates in your community,” he said.
If enough parents do it, the system breaks down. But increasing numbers appear to be doing so over concerns about vaccine safety.
A debunked and withdrawn 1998 Lancet report linking vaccines to autism still lingers in some parents’ minds along with other worries, such as overloading a child’s immune system with multiple, simultaneous vaccinations – a concern lacking scientific basis, said Zahn.
“It’s a grab-bag of issues,” he said.
High-profile opponents of existing protocols include the actor Jenny McCarthy, the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center and an Orange County doctor, Bob Sears, who is famous for authoring The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since 2007.
Sears declined an interview request for this article but directed the Guardian to a Facebook blog in which he played down the gravity of the latest outbreak, saying complications from measles were treatable and that the risk of fatalities in the US was close to zero.
Officials needlessly fanned anxiety about measles by giving “just the part of the truth that they want you to believe”, he wrote. “Don’t let anyone tell you you should live in fear of it. Let’s handle it calmly and without fear or blame.”
Offit, who battled a measles epidemic in Philadelphia in 1991, accused Sears of recklessness, ignorance and doing harm.
“In an ideal world, which this is not, he would be censured by the Californian medical state licensing board, by a medical ethics board, by the American Academy of Pediatrics,” he said. “I find it unconscionable that a man in his position puts out incorrect information about measles.”
Offit assailed Sears in a 2009 article for the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Sears declined to respond to the accusations and pointed the Guardian to his published response to Offit.
“Ignorance cannot dictate public health,” wrote Richard Wulfsberg, a Studio City-based physician. “No unvaccinated child should be allowed to enter public school.”
The United States may classify North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism after its “cybervandalism” of Sony Pictures, President Barack Obama has said.
The president said the hack on the Hollywood studio was not an act of war but was “very costly”, and could land Pyongyang back on the administration’s terror list, a designation lifted by the Bush administration in 2008 during nuclear talks.
“We’re going to review those [issues] through a process that’s already in place,” he told CNN in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “I’ll wait to review what the findings are.”
Obama spoke as Sony Pictures raised the prospect of releasing The Interview, the film which allegedly provoked North Korea’s attack, online, possibly via YouTube.
Michael Lynton, the studio’s chief executive, said it had “not caved” to the hackers and was considering various options to release the comedy, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as journalists who are charged with assassinating North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. “We would still like the public to see this movie, absolutely,” he told CNN.
North Korea has denied any involvement in last month’s hack which crippled Sony’s Hollywood studio, and threatened to hit back at the White House and other US targets if Washington sanctions it.
The country’s top military body, the National Defence Commission, said in a statement on the country’s official news agency that the army and people “are fully ready to stand in confrontation with the US in all war spaces including cyber warfare space to blow up those citadels”.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US mainland, the cesspool of terrorism, by far surpassing the ‘symmetric counteraction’ declared by Obama,” it said.
John McCain, the Arizona senator, led Republican calls for a robust response from the US, including a restoration of sanctions lifted under the Bush administration.
“The president does not understand that this is the manifestation of a new form of warfare,” McCain said, also on CNN. “When you destroy economies and are able to impose censorship on the world … it’s more than vandalism, it’s a new form of warfare.”
In his interview, which was recorded on Friday, Obama said the hack was not act of war. “It was an act of cybervandalism,” he said.
Foreign governments and freelance hackers presented cyberthreats to commerce, he said, adding: “If we set a precedent in which a dictator in another country can disrupt through cyber a company’s distribution chain or its products, and as a consequence we start censoring ourselves, that’s a problem.”
The hack was a challenge to the news media as well as the entertainment industry, he said. “CNN has done critical stories about North Korea. What happens if in fact there is a breach in CNN’s cyberspace? Are we going to suddenly say, are we not going to report on North Korea?”
Restoring North Korea to the terrorism sponsorship list could be difficult. The State Department would have to determine that the regime repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, something traditionally understood to mean violent, physical attacks rather than hacking.
Obama and Hollywood’s creative community last week accused Sony of surrendering to intimidation and setting a precedent for censorship by cancelling the planned Christmas Day release of The Interview. The studio responded by blaming cinema chains which refused to show the film following anonymous terrorist threats.
The president expressed sympathy for Sony’s plight but renewed his claim that he might might have been able to help if given the chance: “You know, had they talked to me directly about this decision, I might have called the movie theater chains and distributors and asked them what that story was.”
On Saturday, it was reported that the US was seeking China’s help in containing North Korea.
Lynton said Sony Pictures still wanted to show the film – a shift in tone from last week when a spokesman said there were no plans for any release – but so far had been stymied by cinema chains and online distributors.
“We have not given in. And we have not backed down. We have always had every desire to have the American public see this movie,” he said, adding that the company was exploring all options, including YouTube.
The Los Angeles Times on Sunday quoted film industry analysts speculating that Sony Pictures’ parent corporation in Japan may sell the studio, a relatively small part of its global operations, in order to get rid of the headache.
A spate of revolts against school dress codes appears to be gaining momentum across the United States, with students staging walkouts and other protests to complain at the way girls have been “humiliated” and forced to cover up.
A vocal campaign has emerged after recent incidents angered students in New York, Utah, Florida, Oklahoma and other states, with some accusing schools of sexism and so-called “slut shaming”.
The protests have spawned a hashtag, #iammorethanadistraction, and expressions of support from some parents who say the application of dress codes can be capricious and unjust.
“I do think these protests are a trend and I think it’s a good trend,” said Ruthann Robson, a City University of New York law professor and author of Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality and Democracy.
The mass walkouts showed that dress codes related to public policy and were not just confined to individual students and schools, she said. “Such resistance points out the larger structural issues. There is a problem here of state power getting confused with matters of good taste.”
The recent protests have coincided with the resumption of the school year but the controversy is not new. In March a group of middle-school girls in Evanston, Illinois picketed their school for the right to wear leggings. In August a school superintendent in Oklahoma allegedly referred to “skanks” with inappropriate clothing, prompting calls for her resignation.
Previous dress code battles have focused on issues such as the length of boys’ hair or sagging trousers. The current round centres on girls revealing skin or wearing figure-hugging attire such as leggings or yoga pants.
Schools have expressed concern such attire could “distract” other pupils and responded by sending students home or obliging them to wear oversized, baggy “shame suits”.
Since such punishment predominantly affects girls some commentators think it could violate Title IX, the federal law that ensures non-discrimination in educational environments.
There were laws against indecent exposure but some schools went further by decreeing what was and was not good taste, said Robson. “Just because someone wears something that we consider bad taste doesn’t mean the state should mandate.”
In the most recent backlash about 100 pupils walked out of Bingham high school in South Jordan, Utah, on Monday to protest the turning away of female classmates from a homecoming dance last weekend.
School staff allegedly lined up girls against a wall as they arrived and banished about two dozen for having dresses which purportedly showed too much skin and violated the rules.
“It was embarrassing and degrading to them. It was shaming. She came home very upset,” said Chad Perhson, whose teenage daughter, Tayler Gillespie, was among those refused entry.
School administrators said her knee-length purple dress breached a rule that “hemlines should go no higher than mid-thigh when seated”. Gillespie disputed that and said she was not given a chance to prove it. Some, including the homecoming queen, were allowed into the dance after donning their dates’ jackets.
The school, which did not respond to a request for comment, said in a statement to local media that dress codes were clear and publicised in advance. Perhson said the problem was not the rules but erratic and insensitive application.
On one of the hottest days of the year earlier this month administrators at Tottenville High School in Staten Island, New York, intercepted more than a hundred students, mostly girls, and ordered them to cover up or to summon parents with additional clothing. Many were given detention.
In response many returned to school in crop tops and tank tops, deliberately breaking the code in protest. A leaflet appeared urging staff not to humiliate girls for wearing shorts. “It’s hot outside. Instead of shaming girls for their bodies, teach boys that girls are not sexual objects.”
A department of education spokesperson said it was the first year Tottenville implemented its dress code. The school did not respond to a request for comment.
Oakleaf high school in Florida made headlines for forcing Miranda Larkin, 15, to wear oversized red sweatpants and a neon yellow shirt, each with “dress code violation” written on them, in punishment for wearing a skirt that was above the knee.
Her mother, Dianna Larkin, said the punishment amounted to humiliationand that she would file a complaint with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Other students around the US have adopted the hashtag #iammorethanadistraction, including Anna Huffman, 17, who has organised a petition asking Western Alamance, her North Carolina high school, to amend certain restrictions and to allow leggings, yoga pants and other comfortable attire.
“These codes really target women. You don’t see boys being sent home for wearing shorts above the knee.”
Such an approach condoned boys seeing women as sexual objects, said Huffman. “It perpetuates the idea that girls need to conform to satisfy the males. If girls are getting harassed, we should blame the boys, not the girls.”
Workers at big hotels in Los Angeles have won one of the highest minimum wages in the United States after a campaign by unions and civil rights groups.
The city council voted on Wednesday night to establish a minimum hourly wage of $15.37 for employees of hotels with more than 125 rooms, a decision expected to boost campaigns for better wages in other industries and cities.
Hotel workers in yellow T-shirts packed city hall and cheered as the council voted 12 to 3 for the ordinance, delivering a potentially landmark victory for the living wage movement and a defeat to business groups who warned of job losses.
“We’re thrilled that the city has passed such a historic ordinance,” said Ruth Dawson, a staff attorney and reproductive justice fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of South California, which was part of the coalition lobbying for the measure.
Most of the affected workers – estimated to range in number from 5,300 to 13,500 – were women and many were mothers, so a living wage meant reproductive justice as well as economic, said Dawson. “We hope this decision will extend far beyond LA as an example.”
Victor Narra, a project director at the UCLA Labor Center, which also lobbied for the measure, said it was a necessary response to poverty. A report last year found that 27% of LA’s population, more than New York or Chicago, lived in poverty.
“We’re the largest major city with the deepest poverty. In non-unionised jobs it’s impossible for people to sustain themselves. To work full time and be in poverty flies in the face of the American dream.”
The city council’s decision followed nation-wide momentum this year to alleviate so-called poverty wages. Eleven state legislatures approved minimum-wage increases. President Barack Obama lobbied to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. Seattle voted for a gradual rollout of a $15 overall minimum wage. Eric Garcetti, LA’s mayor, wants to raise the city’s overall minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017.
A coalition of neighbourhood councils, advocacy groups and unions such as Unite convinced LA’s city council that workers at dozens of big hotels merited special attention. It cited research suggesting the wage increase would boost the local economy and allow parents, some of whom do two jobs to make ends meet, spend more time with their children.
Opponents said city hall ignored two other reports which warned of job losses. “Today a whole bunch of people in the hotel industry lost their jobs; they just don’t know it yet,” Ruben Gonzalez, of LA’s chamber of commerce, told the LA Times.
Christopher Thornberg, a partner of Beacon Economics, which produced one of the two critical studies, said hotels around LA’s international airport shed 10% of their jobs in the six years after city hall mandated a pay rise for the area’s workers in 2007. Hotels in the rest of LA county, in contrast, gained 10% more jobs in the same period, he said.
Economists disagree on the overall impact of higher minimum wages. Narra said exemptions for small and struggling hotels meant the sky would not fall on local businesses.
The measure will go into effect next July for hotels with more than 300 rooms. Those with more than 125 rooms, but fewer than 300, will have until July 1016. Because Wednesday’s vote was not unanimous it will go to a second vote next week, which is expected to be a formality.
Israel spied on the US secretary of state, John Kerry, during peace talks with Palestinians and Arab states last year, the magazine Der Spiegel has reported.
The German weekly said on Sunday that Israeli intelligence and at least one other secret service intercepted Kerry’s phone calls during a doomed, nine-month effort to broker a peace deal.
If confirmed, the report will further sour the diplomat’s relationship with Binyamin Netanyahu’s government and raise fresh questions about the vulnerability of phone communications to eavesdropping.
There was no immediate reaction from Jerusalem or Washington. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The report was published on another bloody day in Gaza, where a projectile hit a street outside a school where people were sheltering, killing at least seven and wounding dozens, many of whom were buying sweets and biscuits from stalls.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called the attack a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and said the Israel Defence Forces had been repeatedly informed of the location of civilian shelters.
Citing “several intelligence sources”, Der Spiegel said Israeli spies and an unidentified intelligence agency listened in on Kerry’s talks with high-ranking officials from Israel, the Palestinian territories and Arab states. Some calls were allegedly made on normal phones and were not encrypted.
“The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East,” it said.
Kerry invested his authority in the ambitious attempt to relaunch moribund Middle East diplomacy last year and persuaded Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to resume negotiations. The effort fizzled out in April, with each side accusing the other of bad faith.
Kerry made several publicly reported comments during the talks that frayed his relationship with Jerusalem. He warned that Israel risked becoming an “apartheid state” if it did not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, prompting protests by Israeli and US politicians. Kerry apologised.
The secretary of state ignited another furore by warning that failure to reach a peace agreement would damage Israel’s capacity to be a democratic state and could lead to more boycotts.
Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, called Kerry “obsessive and messianic” in his pursuit of an agreement. Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s intelligence minister, called his comments “offensive, unfair and insufferable”.
Two weeks ago, Kerry, who was making a tour of the US Sunday talk shows, was recorded by an open Fox News microphone appearing to criticise Israeli claims of a measured approach to its strikes on Gaza. “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation, it’s a hell of a pinpoint operation,” Kerry said, while on the phone to an aide.
That Israel would wish to eavesdrop on its envoy is unlikely to surprise Washington but the allegation that it succeeded, along with another intelligence agency, may raise alarm.
US intelligence agencies are acutely aware of communication vulnerabilities – and are presumed to take countermeasures – given that they themselves tapped the phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, among others.
The whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Agency snooping on foreign leaders as well as millions of ordinary Americans makes it awkward for Washington to respond to reports of foreign intelligence agencies – be they Chinese, Israeli or anyone else – spying on US officials and corporations.
In May, Newsweek reported “unrivalled and unseemly” Israeli espionage in the US under cover of trade missions and joint defence technology contracts. Israeli officials called the report false and malicious.
It was reported in March that Israel and the Washington were discussing the possible release of the spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for selling US secrets to Israel in the 1980s, as part of Kerry’s efforts to keep the peace process afloat.
Sunday’s attack on the school in Gaza was the third time in 10 days that a UN school had been hit. Regional efforts to broker a diplomatic end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas have so far proved elusive; the conflict is now in its 27th day and more than 1,700 people have been killed.
Activists in Albuquerque have held a march and a “people's trial” of the city's police chief, to protest dozens of fatal police shootings.
Hundreds rallied in the New Mexico city on Saturday, some carrying fake tombstones, to denounce what they called a culture of police brutality and official complicity.
It was the latest event in a vocal campaign demanding reform of a police department which has recorded 40 shootings, 26 of them fatal, since 2010.
Reforms are expected to be announced in coming weeks, following a Department of Justice report in April which detailed a pattern of excessive, unreasonable use of deadly force against residents.
Marchers said they needed to continue to pressure local authorities to prevent more officially justified shootings. “They say ‘justified’! We say ‘homicide’!” they chanted, as they gathered at Roosevelt Park.
The “people's trial” accused police chief Gorden Eden, who took over the department earlier this year, of failing to curb abuses.
One speaker, a retired police veteran named Samson Costales, said the department's trigger-happy culture led to the harassment of officers who did not shoot at citizens.
The marchers held a “die-in”, with participants holding fake tombstones for those shot dead.
Protest organisers liaised with police, who monitored the gathering. It passed off peacefully. "We acknowledge their first-amendment rights to voice their concerns," said Eden. A previous demonstration ended with riot police using tear gas.
Simmering anger towards the police erupted into coordinated protest after a video surfaced in March showing officers shooting James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man.
In May, activists took over a council meeting and attempted a symbolic citizens' arrest of the police chief. They staged a silent protest at a subsequent council meeting, prompting guards to escort them out.
Earlier this month about two dozen activists occupied the office of mayor Richard Berry, prompting chaotic scenes and 13 arrests. June also saw the city of Albuquerque ordered to pay more than $6m in connection with the wrongful death of Christopher Torres, a man with schizophrenia who was killed by police in 2011.
The Department of Justice report highlighted troubling police practices such as shooting at moving vehicles to disable them, and letting officers use personal weapons instead of standard-issue firearms.
“Officers see the guns as status symbols,” the report said. “APD personnel we interviewed indicated that this fondness for powerful weapons illustrates the aggressive culture.”
The police force subsequently announced changes to training and ordered officers to stop shooting at moving vehicles. Federal authorities, currently in talks with the police department, are expected to mandate further changes.
It was billed as an apology for racist comments that created a firestorm – but the Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has unleashed a new row by launching a searing attack on Magic Johnson and wealthy African Americans.
The tycoon used an interview aired on Monday to apologise for the tirade against black people caught on tape last month but then depicted Johnson, who has HIV, of being a womanising disease-carrier.
In what may become a case study in how not to defuse a crisis, Sterling, a national pariah who is battling to keep his basketball team, also accused wealthy black people of being stingy philanthropists in contrast to Jews such as himself.
The 80-year-old, speaking to CNN's Anderson Cooper in his first television interview since the crisis broke, insisted he was no racist and asked forgiveness for making derogatory comments about black people in the leaked tape, saying he had been “baited” into doing so.
But then the attempt at damage control self-destructed. Sterling accused Johnson, a basketball legend turned investor and one of the US's most beloved African Americans, of deceitfulness and promiscuity.
"Big Magic Johnson, what has he done? He's got Aids ... what kind of a guy goes to every city, has sex with every girl, then he catches HIV?”
The former Lakers star was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 and through the Magic Johnson Foundation is a leading campaigner for awareness and treatment. His infection has not led to Aids.
Sterling conflated the virus with the full-blown disease and referred to it in the plural. “When he had those Aids I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him.”
Sterling said he admired Johnson, 53, as a “good” man, then contradicted himself. “Is that someone we want to respect and tell our kids about? I think he should be ashamed of himself. I think he should go into the background. But what does he do for the black people? He doesn't do anything."
In the original leaked conversation, which was posted on the celebrity news site TMZ, Sterling complained to a female friend, V Stiviano, that she had posed for photographs with Johnson and asked her to not bring black people to Clippers games.
President Barack Obama led a wave of condemnation and the National Basketball Association banned Sterling for life, saying he would have to sell the team.
The real estate magnate replied that he wished to keep it, signalling a possibly protracted legal battle, and blamed his delay in publicly responding on Johnson, who is part of a consortium that wants to buy the Clippers.
Sterling said the retired athlete called him when the furore broke and told him to remain silent in apparent hope of negotiating a quick sale. "He just said 'Wait, be patient, I'll help you, we'll work it out' ... I think he wanted me to do nothing so he could buy the team.”
Sterling also contrasted Jewish philanthropy with that of African Americans. “Jews when they get successful, they will help their people, and some of the African Americans – maybe I'll get in trouble again – they don't want to help anybody," he said.
Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, issued a swift statement condemning Sterling's latest outburst. “I just read a transcript of Donald Sterling’s interview … and while Magic Johnson doesn’t need me to, I feel compelled on behalf of the NBA family to apologize to him that he continues to be dragged into this situation and be degraded by such a malicious and personal attack. The NBA board of governors is continuing with its process to remove Mr Sterling as expeditiously as possible.”
Johnson tweeted: “I'd rather be talking about these great NBA playoffs than Donald Sterling's interview.” Lon Rosen, his friend and business partner, defended the basketball star as a man devoted to creating business opportunities in urban America. "He has literally donated tens of millions of dollars of his own money to organizations and individuals forever and ever and ever.”
In trying to atone for the original comments that ignited the controversy, Sterling said he had been “foolish” and “baited” into making the comments by Stiviano, a woman 51 years his junior. “I don't know why the girl had me say those things … I mean that's not the way I talk. I don't talk about people for one thing, ever. I talk about ideas and other things. I don't talk about people."
He said he was a good member of the NBA and requested forgiveness. "Am I entitled to one mistake? Am I? After 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It's a terrible mistake and I'll never do it again."
However even before his latest gaffe political and sporting figures insisted Sterling must sell the Clippers, with some warning of a player boycott if he tried to remain as owner.
LeBron James of the Miami Heat said players also opposed Sterling's wife, Shelly, remaining as an owner. “As players we want what's right, and we feel like no one in his family should be able to own the team.” The NBA has also said that Shelly Sterling should not remain as owner.
Sterling has faced previous accusations of racism related to the Clippers and his property empire.
Lately the Clippers have also offered compelling drama on the court. They made a thrilling comeback on Sunday to beat Oklahoma City Thunder and tie their play-off series 2-2, with some calling it the biggest victory in the team's history. The teams meet again on Tuesday.
Ricardo Sanchez came to the United States from his native Mexico, illegally, when he was nine. He grew up, got married, raised five children. During the day, he sold fruit from a stall; nights, he cooked in a restaurant, where his specialty was a steak with blue cheese, bacon and bourbon sauce that the regulars knew by his name.
He built a life.
Last month, police caught Sanchez, who is now 34 years old, driving without a license, and handed him over to immigration authorities. Within days, he was walking into Tijuana, a city alien to him, the gate to the US clanging shut behind. As he moved forward through a metal passageway, he could see a concrete riverbed of slime dotted with the homes of some of his fellow deportees – shacks, sometimes, or just holes dug into the muck by hand.
He shuddered, later, thinking of it. “That’s grim, man,” he said, in fluent English.
With just a few pesos in his pocket, converted from the few dollars he had on him when detained, Sanchez had three choices: take a bus to Mexico City, where he’s originally from, and seek out distant relatives there; ask his wife to borrow the $4,000 he’d need to hire a smuggler who could help him try to sneak back into the US; or hang on in Tijuana and hope for a miracle.
Thousands of people like Sanchez choose the last option. Around 40% of all Mexicans deported from the US are repatriated into Tijuana, on Mexico's Pacific coast. Just under 60,000 people arrived here last year. Some are first-time crossers, caught at the border by the formidable array of manpower and technology that has been assembled there. But according to migrant shelters which initially house them, most have lived in the US and consider it home, despite lacking documents.
To Americans with only a superficial knowledge of the city, Tijuana is the tourist trap right over the border, the sketchy city for vice, or pharmaceuticals, on demand. To many deportees, it is the place where they become stuck – or simply the least-bad choice available.
Some of the people deported from the US into Tijuana remain there because they feel physically and psychologically closer to their US families than they would in Mexico's interior, said Laura Velasco Ortiz, a professor and immigration expert at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
Previous generations of deportees were cushioned by having their wives, children and cultural mindset in Mexico. Now, Ortiz said, “The profile has completely changed. It is much more traumatic for the ones coming now.”
The separation fractures and can destroy families. If partners who remain in the US are undocumented they cannot cross to visit. In any case they have their hands full coping in the absence of a breadwinner. “We're struggling,” said Elena, Sanchez's wife, speaking by phone from California, where she and her husband and their kids had lived together. “The children don't understand much, they ask when he'll be back. I have bills to pay.”
In the US, there is a growing outcry over deportation. A recent milestone – there have now been 2m deportations in the five years that Barack Obama has been in the White House – has fuelled Latino anger towards a president who promised immigration reform. Congress has stymied legislation, leaving 11m undocumented Latinos with no road to citizenship. With immigration authorities sweeping up thousands weekly, many fear they could be next.
Criticism tends to focus on the political deadlock in Washington and the activities of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Less attention has been paid to the fate of deportees deposited across the border.
“Their world has been turned upside down. They've lost everything,” said Fr Pat Murphy, who runs a shelter, Casa del Migrantes, hosting 140 men. For decades it catered to migrants en route north. Now 90% of occupants are deportees. Murphy disputed US claims that it was deporting mainly felons. “That's not our experience.”
Of 13 deportees the Guardian interviewed in Tijuana last week, nine said they were picked up for minor infractions. It was a random, unscientific sample, but one supported by a New York Times analysis of internal government records published this week which found that two thirds of the 2m deported under Obama had committed only minor infractions or had no criminal record.
Compounding the banishment is the fact that the journey north is typically made in a spirit of adventure, often coupled with dreams of investing in the future and providing for the family, but the trip south comes with no such optimism. The American dream is not the future but the past, the deportee no longer a provider but a burden, begging for dollars down a phone line.
Religious-run shelters offer free accommodation for 15 days, after which deportees typically either leave town, move to downtown hostels, where conditions range from adequate to squalid, or head out onto the streets.
“They feel like failures, abandoned. They're not here because they want to be,” said Fr Ernesto Hernandez Ruiz. He helps run a soup kitchen, Padre Chava, that feeds 1,200 people daily, most of them deportees.
People start queueing for breakfast before dawn, some well-groomed, others in blackened rags. The new arrivals are watchful, observing the protocol of hand-washing, saying grace and wasting nothing. They stare at the food. “Most haven't eaten anything since [breakfast] yesterday,” said Margarita Andonageui, a veteran volunteer.
The lucky ones are those like Joaquin Orozco Rodriguez, 39, who found his footing. A welder for most of his life in California, he was caught drunk driving and deported in 2012, leaving a wife and four children, all US citizens, behind. “I didn't want to believe it, my mind couldn't absorb it,” he said. He recovered from the shock and Padre Chava hired him as a cook.
Orozco hopes that when his children grow up they will find a way – hire a hotshot lawyer, maybe – to legalise his status and bring him back. Fanciful or not, it is a common refrain.
Some of those without regular jobs stand by motorways holding placards advertising skills such as plumber or electrician. Others beg at intersections.
Those with the deepest roots in the US have lost the most and often adapt badly, if at all, to their new circumstances, said Velasco, the immigration expert. “They feel lost. It's a type of purgatory.”
The truly unlucky are the estimated 700 to 1,000 people who dwell in the holes and shacks by the riverbed, a mile-long, stinking stretch of sewage and debris known as El Bordo from which the US, in the form of shopping malls and flags, can be seen peeking over a graffiti-covered fence.
At the soup kitchen, the queues for breakfast begin before dawn. Photograph: Felix Clay
There are three communities inside El Bordo, each defined by a particular drug. The alcoholics pass out, oblivious to sun or moon, on the slopes. The heroin addicts shoot up in a tunnel padded with soiled blankets. The meth addicts cluster on the riverbed, improvising tents with tarpaulin and shoelaces.
Samuel Cabrera, a 39-year-old whose features have been hollowed by crystal meth, is a veteran of the squalor. He used to harvest plums around Fresno; now he survives by collecting recyclable rubbish. He hardly eats, barely notices the stench. “I'm into drugs,” he said, matter-of-fact. “I get by.”
Squinting across the riverbed Cabrera could see a new neighbour: Sergio Avinia, 42, a recent arrival cleaved from a family in California, waist-deep in a hole, bare-chested and sweating, excavating a hovel with improvised tools.
Police, who blame El Bordo’s residents for crime, routinely demolish the flimsy homes, but they are, inevitably, rebuilt.
After years of neglect, local authorities have started a programme, Somos Mexicanos (We are Mexicans), to help integrate deportees. It is a small, positive first step, but activists want to see more done to help those returned to Mexico integrate back into the country and tap language and other skills learned in the US.
It may be too late for the wretched denizens of El Bordo, but there is potential hope for the likes of Sanchez, the cook. The father of five had just a few days left in a religious shelter, after which he would have to find his own lodgings and decide his next move. “All I know is that I don't want to be here.”
The hot sauce apocalypse looms again. Officials in California have declared the production of sriracha, the wildly popular chili sauce, a public nuisance because of the smell.
Irwindale's city council voted unanimously on Wednesday night to give the manufacturer an ultimatum to reduce the odour itself or have officials march in and do it themselves.
There is no immediate risk of shutdown but foodies who declared “srirachocalypse” last November after a court-ordered Huy Fong Foods to partly shut down bristled anew over the latest threat.
“They can't do this,” tweeted @ishak777. “Blasphemy!” wailed another. Sriracha is so beloved it has spawned T-shirts, a documentary, a cookbook and a food festival.
The council determined that the spicy odour had caused a problem for residents in the industrial town east of Los Angeles. Some have complained of headaches and sore throats and demanded the plant's closure. Air quality officials said they had received 69 complaints in recent months.
The company's attorney promised that Huy Fong Foods would have an action plan within 10 days and a system to control the smell operational by June, when it traditionally starts grinding chili peppers.
Representatives from the South Coast Air Quality Management District said its inspectors had visited the factory and would work with the company to curb the smell.
“We have shared the results of our air sampling with both Huy Fong Foods and the city of Irwindale and believe that the information we have gathered should allow Huy Fong Foods and the city of Irwindale to resolve their differences,” a spokesperson, Tina Cox, told reporters.
The company, founded by a Vietnamese businessman, David Tran, processes about 45,000 tonnes of chili pepper per year and produces about 200,000 bottles daily.
Fans say the paste of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt, named after the Thai city of Si Racha, transforms and enriches dishes for those who can stand the heat.
Many vowed to stockpile last November after the court ordered a partial shutdown. One would-be entrepreneur offered a pack on eBay for $10,000.
The company defiantly strung a banner outside its facility stating “No tear gas made here,” a reference to complaints about stinging eyes and throats.
Tran said any ban could trigger bankruptcy or force the company to move. In fact the company never ceased operating because the smelliest phase of production – chili grinding – happens over summer and autumn.
In February Irwindale gave the Huy Fong Foods, which last year earned $60m in revenue, six weeks to conduct testing along with air quality officials.
Wednesday night's vote, which was live tweeted by the Pasadena Star News, renewed the pressure but gave breathing space for a solution. The council was expected to give the company a 90-day deadline.
The dispute is an unexpected twist to what had been a runaway success story. Tran, 68, was an officer in South Vietnam's army who fled with his family to the US after communist North Vietnam took over the country.
Jobless but with a passion for hot sauce, he started making his chili concoction in a bucket and delivering it by van around San Gabriel valley, outside LA. He named his company Huy Fong Foods after the freighter he sailed in from Vietnam.
California is bracing for two storms which are expected to dump the most significant rainfall in almost three years, promising a brief respite to the state’s drought.
Moderate to heavy showers on Wednesday were due to be followed on Friday by heavier torrents, a blessing for farmers and water management authorities but unwelcome news for motorists and organizers of the Oscars.
A weather system moving in from the Pacific will “broadside” the region, with rain strenghtening throughout Wednesday and ebbing on Thursday before a second, more powerful storm hit, said Bob Benjamin, of the National Weather Service. “It has the potential to be messy.”
The deluge is expected to dump between one and three inches of rain in coastal and valleys areas and five to seven inches in hills and mountains – a dramatic event by California’s desiccated standards.
“Big rain storms may hit #Malibu this week. Could these be the answer to the drought?” asked the Malibu Times.
The experts’ consensus: no. The rain will moisten soil, partly replenish reservoirs, may help save some crops and above 5,000 feet it will bring snow, boosting struggling ski resorts.
But it will add up to only marginal relief after 13 months of devastating drought. “It all goes in the plus column. But it is still far outweighed by the negative column,” said Benjamin.
Nasa underlined the drought’s impact on Tuesday by releasing images of Folsom Lake, a reservoir north of Sacramento, juxtaposing a July 2011 image, when it was 97% full, with a bleak, parched contrast taken last month, at just 17% capacity.
Authorities continued appeals to conserve water, stressing the deficit will remain huge. “Take advantage of the coming #LARain and simply shut your sprinkler systems off,” tweeted Don Knabe, chairman of the LA county board of supervisors.
President Barack Obama pledged tens of millions of dollars in federal aid when he visited Fresno last week in the wake of Governor Jerry Brown declaring a state of emergency.
The drought has wrought havoc on a $45bn agriculture sector which supplies much of the country’s fruit, nuts, vegetables, wine and dairy products. The crisis could leave thousands of farm workers jobless and increase food prices.
Nasa announced on Thursday it was partnering with state agencies to apply advanced remote sensing and forecast modeling to better assess water resources and drought.
“Early detection of land subsidence hot spots, for example, can help forestall long-term damage to water supply and flood control infrastructure,” said Jeanine Jones, a manager at the California Department of Water Resources.
Not everyone will benefit from the rain. Officials warned that parts of the San Gabriel mountains scorched in last month’s wildfire – an unseasonal burn blamed on the drought – could dissolve into mudslides and send debris down slopes. Fire stations were offering sandbags. An electrical utility offered safety tips.
Motorists braced for traffic disruption: a drizzle can prompt southern Californians to drive extremely slowly or even stop. Hollywood also cast its eyes skyward: there was a 40% chance the second storm will drench the red carpet at Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony.
Some on social media mocked the city’s hyper-sensitivity to moisture given hurricanes and blizzards elsewhere in the US, coining terms like soakzilla, stormageddon and downpourpocalypse, via the hashtag #LARain.
“Only in Los Angeles do they start talking about an inch of rain a week before its going to happen,” tweeted one. “Must be winter in California. There are a few clouds in the sky,” tweeted another.
A man named as Paul Anthony Ciancia, said to be in his early 20s, used an assault rifle to cause chaos in Terminal 3 before being shot and captured by airport police.
The victim who died was an employee with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which administers security checkpoints at US airports. The TSA said a number of its agents were injured. At least one was in critical condition.
Ciancia's condition was not immediately known but he reportedly had multiple gunshot wounds. The Los Angeles fire department said seven people were hurt, of whom six were taken to local hospitals. The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said it received three male casualties, one of whom was in a critical condition.
Patrick Gannon, the airport police chief, told a news conference that the gunman entered Terminal 3, home to airlines including Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic and JetBlue, at 9.20am local time. He took an assault rifle out of a bag and began shooting at the screening area, where security agents check passengers' travel documents.
He breached the screening checkpoint and continued shooting as he entered deeper into the airport, Gannon said, until police cornered him near a Burger King. "Personnel officers responded immediately … They tracked the individual through the airport and engaged him in gunfire and were able to successfully take him into custody. As you can imagine a large amount of chaos took place."
A California congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, citing a briefing from law enforcement officials, confirmed local media reports that named the shooter as Ciancia.
Airports around California were put under heightened alert and the White House was briefed. Paramedics set up a medical triage area outside the terminal. LAX operated at reduced capacity after the incident. The Federal Aviation Administration halted all flights to LAX that were not already in the air.
Brian Adamick, 43, was at Terminal 3 preparing to board a Spirit Airlines flight to Chicago when people started running through the area. Adamicktold reporters he went through an emergency exit, down stairs and out on to the tarmac, with several other passengers.
"While I was on the tarmac, I heard two gunshots from the same area where the people had been running and screaming," he said. Minutes later buses evacuated passengers and a TSA agent with a bloodied ankle who appeared remarkably calm, saying "I got shot, I'm fine", according to Adamick.
The agent told passengers not to worry about him and that he had been shot before, Adamick said. "It looked like it was straight out of the movies." he added.
A reporter for NBC4 News said he saw two injured people leave the terminal. One was in a wheelchair, while another walked out accompanied by emergency personnel, the reporter said.
Bill Reiter, a reporter for Fox Sports, said gunfire in the terminal had prompted a "stampede". He said on Twitter, at 9.30am local time: "I was at the Virgin terminal at LAX when gunfire broke out. Many of us have run on the tarmac. I don't know what's happening but I'm fine."
He added: "When gunfire broke out there was a stampede people, all of us hiding under seats we didn't fit under, we burst through the door to outside. After the initial burst of gunfire and hiding, people started jumping over one another, jumping off chairs, pushing each other. Chaos & fear."
Another passenger told CBS of surreal moments as police surrounded the gunman: "Some people were running for their lives, others remained calm."
The actor James Franco arrived at LAX as the incident was unfolding. "Some s** tbag shot up the place," he tweeted.
The rumours raced across these woodland communities faster than the fire: the Groveland firehouse had burned down; authorities were cutting power lines to force people to evacuate; police had arrested an arsonist who started it; the sequoias were going up in smoke.
None of it was true but the speed and reach of social media, especially Facebook, convinced many otherwise, compounding alarm amid one of the biggest wildfires in California's history.
"Social media is a wonderful tool but I've seen here it's not always our friend," James Mele, the sheriff-coroner of Toulumne county, told hundreds of residents at a town hall-style meeting on Monday night.
People listened in on authorities' radio communications and disseminated fragments which often misled, he said. "Folks pick up chatter and it spreads."
He debunked a rumour that authorities cut power lines to encourage recalcitrant homeowners to obey evacuation orders. People should follow instructions, not gossip, he said. "If we come to your door there's a reason. It's time to go."
The deployment of more than 3,700 firefighting and support personnel, 15 helicopters and two DC-10 jets has crackled the airwaves with reports, commands and acronyms. Even if you don't intentionally eavesdrop you hear fragments – "more air support, now" – from the walkie-talkies of firefighters resting by roadsides, or in cafes.
Twitter, Facebook and other social media can swiftly amplify an incomplete or misinterpreted message, officials complained, but they also credited Google with directing people to reliable information such as the inter-agency emergency site Inciweb.
The blaze grew to about 280 square miles on Tuesday, up from 252 square miles on Monday, partly because of controlled burns by fire crews. Authorities said 20% was contained, up from 15% a day earlier, stoking cautious optimism that they were winning the battle.
The Rim fire has devastated forests, destroyed 31 homes and 80 outbuildings and continues to threaten historic sequoia groves and San Francisco's water supply. Given its magnitude the damage to human infrastructure so far has been relatively slight.
Residents have remained largely calm during the ordeal but the digital rumour mill has at times churned anxieties into terrors, including the report of the Groveland firehouse becoming a grim pyre. "That would be a surprise to the firefighters sleeping there," Tuolumne county Sheriff Sergeant Scott Johnson told the Modesto Bee.
"The problem is there's no way of verifying that information. If people didn't exaggerate things and actually gave out factual information it would be a very good tool."
The cause of the fire, which started on 17 August in a remote canyon of the Stanislaus national forest, remains unknown but false reports of police arresting an arsonist conjured the spectre of an evil or insane pyromaniac.
California's prison hunger strike is pitting hundreds of inmates against authorities in a battle of wills largely invisible to outsiders.
A mass protest which has just entered its second month is playing out in the solitary confinement units of maximum security jails where an estimated 400 prisoners are refusing food to demand an end to what they call inhumane conditions.
Some have been hospitalised as their bodies, stripped of fat, now consume muscle, a point when health can be permanently damaged.
The core demand is an end to indefinite solitary confinement in Security Housing Units, known as SHUs. Some inmates have been in such cells for decades, prompting denunciations from Amnesty International and other human rights advocates.
Strike leaders – an unusual alliance of whites, African Americans and Latinos – say the conditions amount to torture and that the system for selecting those for segregation is callous and capricious. A condition of release into the general jail population is to "debrief" – inform – against gang members.
Authorities reject the criticism and say the strike is an attempt by gang leaders to regain the ability to terrorise fellow prisoners, staff and communities throughout California. Each side accuses the other of brutality and manipulation. There is little sign of negotiation or compromise.
The media have not been granted access to striking inmates but eight in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay state prison, an isolated, windswept facility outside Crescent City, and the protest's epicentre, have written to the Guardian shedding light on their motivations and states of mind.
In handwritten letters on A4 notepaper they all pledged continued defiance and gave no indication about when the strike may end. Todd Ashker, an outspoken member of the so-called Short Corridor Collective, a group of segregated strike leaders, said he was inspired by the 1981 hunger strikes by republican prisoners in Northern Ireland which left 10 men dead.
Ashker said he had become friends with Denis O'Hearn, a sociology professor and author of Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker who Ignited a Generation. He called the book "one of many inspirations" and vowed to continue his protest. "Staying strong and committed!!"
Ashker, 50, a convicted killer with neo-Nazi tatoos, has obtained a paralegal degree and initiated multiple lawsuits, helping inmates win the right to order books and earn interest on jail savings accounts.
He said he had been denied human contact with loved ones during 27 years in solitary confinement. "Each minute has been torturous to my mind and body." He would be released into the general prison population only if he informed against others but he had no information, he said.
Ronnie Dewberry, 54, another strike leader who has adopted the name Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, called himself a "captive new Afrikan prisoner of war" unjustly jailed for a 1980 murder he denies.
An alleged member of the Black Guerrilla Family, he enclosed a five-page essay titled "I know my destiny" which vowed to never inform on fellow inmates. "From this day until the day I die I shall always be ready to keep fighting/struggling and liberating the mental chains from our people's minds."
Marcus Harrison, who has adopted the name Kijana Tashiri Askari, sent "revolutionary greetings" and said he was a political prisoner at a "slave kamp" which waged psychological war against inmates.
Fati Carter, who has been in the Pelican Bay SHU "for 23 years and one month", alleged authorities were manipulating the media by giving occasional access to inmates who had been released from solitary confinement after informing. Such men were compromised and "attempting to curry favor with their handlers", said Carter.
Strikers could not communicate but were united, he added. "The motive force which inspired those I know to support the strike is the injustice we suffer."
The Aryan Brotherhood and Black Guerrilla Family reportedly instigated the hunger strike and persuaded traditional latino rivals, the Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia, to join.
Inmates abandoned two hunger strikes in 2011 after authorities promised to review solitary confinement cases and change selection procedures. Activists say some 33,000 inmates joined the beginning of the latest strike and that the number has settled to around 400. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has not supplied a recent estimates but usually gives a lower number than activists.
Martin Bibbs, who was convicted of attempted murder, said this time strikers would continue until obtaining meaningful change. "Change is sometimes just a new pile of shit. And that's what we've been getting – new piles of shit which they call change."
There are 122,000 inmates in California's 33 state prisons. Last week the US supreme court upheld a federal court ruling that the state cut its jail population to 110,000 by the end of the year to reduce overcrowding, which has been blamed for illness and violence. Four of the state jails – Pelican Bay, Corcoran, Folsom and Tehachapi – have the special security SHU units.
Jeffrey Beard, who heads the California department of corrections and rehabilitation, urged the public not to be "fooled" by the strike, calling it an attempt by homicidal gang leaders to turn the clock back to when they ran jails like fiefdoms.
Many of those refusing food were doing so under duress, he said in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. "The inmates calling the shots are leaders in four the most violent and influential prisons gangs in California. Brutal killers should not be glorified. This hunger strike is dangerous, disruptive and needs to end."
A group of young immigration reform activists known as the "Dream Nine" has been released from federal custody after spearheading a campaign against mass deportation.
The five men and four women emerged late on Wednesday from the Eloy detention centre in Arizona, where they were held for two weeks after entering the US from Mexico.
They were let out on parole and allowed to return home pending an immigration judge's decision on their asylum claim, a ruling that could take years.
"I am good, very excited. It's a big surprise," Maria Peniche, 22, one of the nine activists, told the Associated Press. "This opens a path for other Dreamers in Mexico," she said, using the term for young undocumented people who hope to qualify for citizenship under theDream act.
A crowd of supporters gave a hero's welcome, cheering, crying and declaring victory, when the group emerged from a bus at Tuscon. The nine held a banner saying: "We're home."
Their incarceration spawned the Twitter hashtag #BringThemHome and a Facebook page by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance. The nine were brought to the US illegally as children and in theory would qualify for a path to citizenship.
However they objected to the exclusion of their parents from citizenship and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of undocumented people during Barack Obama's administration, a sharp increase from the Bush era.
To pressure Congress for change they made a risky protest: some crossed into Mexico – in some cases for the first time since childhood – and notified authorities about their attempted re-entry at the Nogales border point on 22 July. Six others who had returned to Mexico earlier joined them for the crossing. All were arrested, some wearing university gowns and mortar boards.
The case presented an awkward dilemma for the Obama administration, which has chided Republicans for blocking immigration reform. Earlier this week the department of homeland security provisionally approved asylum requests on grounds the nine had "credible fear" of persecution if sent back to Mexico.
Edward Snowden has accused Barack Obama of deception for promising in public to avoid diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over his extradition, while privately pressuring countries to refuse his requests for asylum.
Snowden, the surveillance whistleblower who is thought to be trapped in the legal limbo of a transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, used his first public comments since fleeing Hong Kong to attack the US for revoking his passport. He also accused his country of bullying nations that might grant him asylum.
"On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic 'wheeling and dealing' over my case," Snowden said in a statement released by WikiLeaks.
"Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the president ordered his vice-president to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression."
Snowden's increasingly desperate predicament became further apparent on Monday night with the leak of a letter he had written toEcuador praising its "bravery" and expressing "deep respect and sincere thanks" for considering his request for political asylum.
But the change in mood in Quito, already apparent at the end of last week, was underlined by an interview Rafael Correa, the president, gave to the Guardian on Monday in which he insisted Ecuador will not now help Snowden leave Moscow and never intended to facilitate his attempted flight to South America.
Correa blamed earlier signs of encouragement on a misunderstanding by its London embassy.
"That we are responsible for getting him to Ecuador? It's not logical. The country that has to give him a safe conduct document is Russia," Correa said at the presidential palace in Quito. Correa said his government did not intentionally help Snowden travel from Hong Kong to Moscow with a temporary travel pass. "It was a mistake on our part."
In his statement through WikiLeaks, which has been assisting him since he left Hong Kong on 10 June, Snowden contrasted the current US approach to his extradition with its previous support of political dissidents in other countries.
"For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum," he said. "Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the US in article 14 of the universal declaration of human rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country."
Snowden also accused the Obama administration of "using citizenship as a weapon", which has apparently left him unable to leave the airport in Moscow.
"Although I am convicted of nothing, [the US] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person," he said. "Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."
Moscow confirmed earlier on Monday that Snowden had applied for political asylum in Russia. The LA Times said Snowden had made similar applications to a total of 15 countries.
The former NSA contractor struck a defiant tone on Monday night. "In the end, the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake," he said. "We are stateless, imprisoned or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you.
"It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised – and it should be. I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many."
His statement also came shortly after one of Obama's top intelligence officials, US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, was forced to apologise to Congress</a> for "erroneous" claims that the US did not collect data on its own citizens.
Snowden paid tribute to those who had helped him force such disclosures.
"One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth," he said.
"My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful."
