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Meatloaf, a green sea turtle weighing nearly 250 pounds, swims in a rehabilitation tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Wednesday.The Aquarium of the Pacific is putting out a call for donations to raise $50,000 for a surgery to save the front flipper of its newest green sea turtle, Meatloaf.
The 240-pound turtle was taken to the aquarium in January after being found entangled in fishing line and rope in the San Gabriel River. Meatloaf is as wide as a manhole cover and several times the size of the facility’s former tenant,. Right now, Meatloaf’s swollen flipper is more than twice the size it should be. If Meatloaf’s fluid buildup, called edema, persists, the turtle likely will require reconstructive surgery.Green sea turtles like Meatloaf can grow up to five feet long and weigh 500 pounds. They typically have tropical haunts — sandy beaches along the Mexican coast where they lay eggs. But in recent decades, the chunky oddballs have continued to wander upstream, usually in search of food, toward the San Gabriel River’s mouth in Long Beach. Aquarium officials say there can be a dozen to nearly 100 turtles in the river at a time.The Aquarium of the Pacific is putting out a call for donations to raise $50,000 for a surgery to save the front flipper of its newest green sea turtle, Meatloaf. The 240-pound turtle was taken to the aquarium in January after being found entangled in fishing line and rope in the San Gabriel River. For two months, she has undergone rehabilitation and several surgeries to nurse her front-right flipper back to health. Dr. Lance Adams, the aquarium’s director of veterinary services, said the plan is to keep Meatloaf for at least another six months as they redress her wounds. Dr. Lance Adams watches Meatloaf, a green sea turtle, swim in a rehabilitation tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Wednesday. The turtle was rescued from the San Gabriel River after she got tangled in fishing line and rope.Wide as a manhole cover and several times the size of the facility’s former tenant, Porkchop, Meatloaf is the latest ward at the aquarium’sRight now, Meatloaf’s swollen flipper is more than twice the size it should be. Adams said aquarium staff repeatedly have cleaned out the wound and used a number of methods to drain it. Past surgeries were done to remove scar tissue that had built up. But Meatloaf’s fluid buildup, called edema, persists and likely will require reconstructive surgery. It’s hard to tell, Adams said, as turtles are slow to heal. Turtles tended to at the aquarium include loggerheads, leatherbacks, ridleys and green sea turtles, which arrive on the coast and warmer waters each summer to mate, nest and battle natural and human-made threats: speedboats, water skiers, baited hooks, urban runoff, tons of garbage and harassment. Green sea turtles like Meatloaf can grow up to five feet long and weigh 500 pounds. They typically have tropical haunts — sandy beaches along the Mexican coast where they lay eggs. But in recent decades, the chunky oddballs have continued to wander upstream, usually in search of food, toward the San Gabriel River’s mouth in Long Beach. Aquarium officials say there can be a dozen to nearly 100 turtles in the river at a time. They eat almost anything they can clamp their mouths on, including snails, eel grass and — to the ire of scientists — rotting garbage along the waterway floor. It’s an unfortunate circumstance that volunteers with the aquarium’s Southern California Sea Turtle Monitoring community science program see on a weekly basis.Julia Barajas Published April 8, 2026 3:44 PMThe trial for a Cal State lecturer who’s been charged with assault with “a deadly or dangerous weapon” after allegedly throwing a tear gas canister back at federal immigration agents started Wednesday.Jonathan Caravello is a philosophy lecturer in Cal State Channel Islands’ math and data science department. Last summer, Caravello was arrested while protesting a raid at a licensed cannabis farmThe federal government says agents were executing a search warrant at the farm, in search of evidence of unlawful employment. In his opening statements Wednesday, assistant U.S. attorney Roger Hsieh said agents deployed tear gas because protesters were obstructing traffic on a two-lane road. Hsieh said Caravello picked up a canister agents deployed and threw it back at them.Caravello's legal team, led by attorney Knut Johnson, said the lecturer did not hurt anyone and shared a video showing federal vehicles making their way across the road. The defense also says Caravello picked up and threw the canister as far as he could — past the agents — to keep protesters safe from harm.Parking tickets in Boyle Heights have increased at a rate much higher than the city of Los Angeles as a whole, making it one of L.A.’s most ticketed neighborhoods, according to an analysis of city data by Crosstown. Residents say they aren’t sure what could help remedy the issue but acknowledged that multiple parking tickets feel even heavier as gas and grocery prices rise.Last year, Boyle Heights was the sixth-most ticketed community among the city’s 114 neighborhoods, receiving a total of 60,695 citations, an average of 5,057 per month.The most ticketed location in Boyle Heights is Cesar Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street, where 1,070 tickets were dispensed for illegally parking in a bus lane, a $293 infraction.Boyle Heights residents have seen it all when it comes to finding a place to park: cars in the red, blocked driveways, double parking and evenThe longstanding struggle for parking in the neighborhood only seems to be getting worse as more developments go up across the city — often with limited parking — and multi-generational households share space. Many people have memorized their block’s street sweeping schedules and no-parking zones to avoid a ticket. A city of Los Angeles parking violation sits on the windshield of a car near Michigan Avenue and Cummings Street in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, March 18.Parking tickets in Boyle Heights have increased at a rate much higher than the city of Los Angeles as a whole, making it one of L.A.’s most ticketed neighborhoods, according to an analysis of city data by Crosstown. Residents say they aren’t sure what could help remedy the issue but acknowledged that multiple parking tickets feel even heavier as gas and grocery prices rise. Last year, Boyle Heights was the sixth-most ticketed community among the city’s 114 neighborhoods, receiving a total of 60,695 citations, an average of 5,057 per month. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of parking tickets handed out across the city of Los Angeles increased by 4.9%. In Boyle Heights, however, the rise was more than three times that — the 60,695 citations dispensed in 2025 was 17.6% more than two years prior, theThat is likely an undercount, as city citation data is not available after Dec. 14, 2025 . Even so, the increase in Boyle Heights surpasses that in some other frequently ticketed neighborhoods. Van Nuys registered an increase of 4.5% during that time, while citations in Hollywood fell by 9.6%. Hernan Gabriel, who has lived in Boyle Heights for 10 years, said parking hasn’t always been easy, but tickets have been part of his routine. On a recent afternoon, he stood outside his home near Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street, keeping an eye on the time before street sweeping restrictions began. “This is my first ticket of the year,” Gabriel said, as he pulled a $73 parking ticket from the dashboard of his truck that he received in February. Hernan Gabriel received a $73 parking violation in February for failing to move his vehicle for street sweeping near Cesar E Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street.But it hasn’t been his only one. In 2023, he racked up over $2,800 in parking tickets while working deliveries downtown. “Since I received those tickets, I’ve been paying closer attention,” Gabriel said. While he has access to a parking spot at his home, many of his neighbors don’t. Not only are tickets increasing in Boyle Heights, but residents are being cited at higher rates than in much of the city. People in the neighborhood of roughly 81,000 residents received 60,695 citations last year — about 0.75 tickets per resident. Citywide, the rate is significantly lower: 0.48 citations per resident, based on 1.87 million tickets issued across Los Angeles. Approximately one of every four tickets written in Boyle Heights is for parking in a street sweeping zone — a $73 infraction. Last year, 16,776 such tickets were issued.register your address The second-most frequent infraction is parking in a red zone — a $93 hit. In Boyle Heights, these made up 20.9% of the community’s total, well above the citywide rate of 12.4%. Stephanie Sanchez, a lifelong Boyle Heights resident, has gotten used to the struggle of looking for a spot and avoiding parking tickets. “It’s expensive,” she said. “I’ve noticed people from a couple blocks away coming to park here or people who live here going a couple blocks away just to park because it is so cramped.”“ buy more groceries, lots of things for my day-to-day living. It would help with gas because gas is ridiculous right now,” she said.The Los Angeles Department of Transportation said the number of citations issued across L.A. is a “direct result of posted restrictions, driver behavior, and officer staffing.” According to the department, of the 502 traffic officers deployed citywide, 115 serve the Central Division, with 24 officers specifically assigned to Boyle Heights. In response to community concerns regarding street congestion and parking, LADOT said in a statement, “street improvements require identifying specific locations and coordinating between multiple City departments. LADOT remains committed to collaborative solutions that address the needs of every neighborhood.” A spokesperson from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office echoed the community’s sentiment about parking issues in the neighborhood and said Jurado is looking into addressing them.The most ticketed location in Boyle Heights is Cesar Chavez Avenue and Chicago Street, where 1,070 tickets were dispensed for illegally parking in a bus lane, a $293 infraction. Just south is the neighborhood’s second-most ticketed location. A 76-space public parking lot at 249 Chicago St. produced 669 citations in 2025. Most were for an expired meter. On the stretch of Cesar Chavez between Boyle Avenue and Fickett Street, more than 3,200 bus-lane parking tickets were given out. On a recent visit to the area, there were no easily visible signs warning about bus zone infractions.Maria Solis and Orlando Cervantes have lived in Boyle Heights for 30 years and said finding a spot to park in their neighborhood is harder than ever before. After 5 p.m., it is nearly impossible, Cervantes said. Another more obvious solution would be for the city to create more parking lots but that comes with its own problems. “The more parking there is, the more cars you will see,” Solis said.“Theres no space to even create like a parking lot, even then I feel like that would be expensive to pay for a spot,” she said.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.Published April 8, 2026 2:17 PMMayoral candidate and City Councilmember Nithya Raman released a homelessness platform Tuesday calling for L.A. to prepare to break from LAHSA, shift spending toward rental vouchers and shared housing, and deploy more street medicine teams citywide.Raman proposes scaling back Inside Safe and redirecting dollars to more cost-effective programs. The average Inside Safe bed, usually a hotel room, costs the city more than $225 a night, compared to an average nightly cost of about $86 at other shelter options. Raman calls for expanding shared housing, modular units and a new strategy for the 6,500 people living in cars and RVs.L.A. currently funnels about $300 million in annual homelessness funding through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. Raman wants the city to prepare to take over those contracts directly, calling LAHSA scandal-plagued and potentially on the verge of shuttering.Read on...Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman — who is also a sitting L.A. City Council member — unveiled a homelessness policy platform Tuesday that calls for the city to prepare for a breakup with the region’s troubled lead homelessness agency and to scale back Mayor Karen Bass' signature Inside Safe motel program., she vowed to build an effective homelessness response system in the city, arguing it’s something that hasn’t existed during her five years as a city official. “ One of the most persistent challenges with homelessness is that no one is in charge at City Hall,” Raman told LAist. “ There is no centralized management or oversight over our homelessness response system at the city. What we have is a patchwork of programs that have very different outcomes and hugely differential costs.” Raman, who represents Council District 4 stretching from Silver Lake to Reseda, argues only the Mayor’s Office has the authority to fix that fragmentation and deliver transparency.Homelessness is one of the top issues in the mayoral race. Los Angeles is home to nearly 44,000 unhoused residents and budgets about $1 billion a year for homelessness. In response to Raman’s announcement, a spokesperson from Bass’ campaign defended the incumbent mayor’s homelessness strategy and noted Raman had supported it. “Councilmember Raman has been on the City Council since 2020 and is Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, and frankly the most success she has achieved is voting yes on Inside Safe,” Alex Stack said in a statement., with a goal of moving more unhoused residents from encampments into temporary shelter. Raman later voted with the L.A. City Council 13-1 to accept Bass’ 2023-24 budget, which included $250 million for the program. Raman argues that L.A. should shift spending away from expensive motel-based programs like Inside Safe, toward lower-cost interventions like short-term rental vouchers and shared housing. “What I'm proposing is to look across our shelter beds and really investing in what works and stretching every dollar as far as possible at a time when the Trump administration is about to cut funds for homelessness response here in Los Angeles significantly,” Raman told LAist.“The campaign plan she threw out there relies on private landlords turning over apartments to people living in tents — it's unrealistic and would increase homelessness,” Stack said. The campaigns for other candidates, including Spencer Pratt, Rae Huang and Adam Miller, did not respond to requests on Tuesday. Each includes some homelessness policy proposals on their campaign websites.Raman’s proposal took aim at Inside Safe, a city program designed to clear tent and vehicle encampments and move people into shelter, primarily hotel rooms. The city of L.A. has spent more than $300 million on Inside Safe over the past few years. During that time, the program has moved more than 5,800 unhoused people indoors, according to theThe average Inside Safe bed, usually a hotel room, costs the city more than $225 a night, compared to an average nightly cost of about $86 at other shelter or “interim housing” options,Raman called Inside Safe “the most expensive temporary housing intervention in the city by far,” estimating the program costs the city about $85,000 per motel room annually. For the same money, the city could rent three apartments and provide services through its Time Limited Subsidy Program, she said. Since Bass took office, L.A.’s overall homeless population estimates have declined by about 5%. The “unsheltered” population — those who live outside in tents or vehicles, instead of in homeless shelters or similar facilities — declined even more during that period, as Inside Safe moved more Angelenos living on the streets into hotel rooms and other shelters.“Mayor Bass launched L.A.'s first-ever comprehensive street homelessness strategy, driving street homelessness down nearly 18 percent, posting the first-ever consecutive-year decline in overall homelessness and achieving the first decline in homeless mortality since records have been kept,” Stack said. As a candidate for City Council in 2020, Raman’s homelessness platform had called for eliminating “policies that criminalize people who are unhoused,” including sweeps of unhoused encampments led by the LAPD and sanitation workers. Raman’s 2026 mayoral homelessness platform calls for “maintaining” the city’s “capacity for encampment resolution.” "My approach to homelessness in my district would be exactly what I would be doing citywide, which is trying to ensure that we are using every single dollar and resource that we have to move people indoors as quickly as possible," Raman told LAist.whether to redirect about $300 million in annual homelessness funding away from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and, if so, whether to put the funds under city or county oversight. As chair of the L.A. City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, Raman is expected to preside over that committee's final discussion on the issue, before it issues a recommendation and sends the issue to the full council for a vote. Last year, L.A. County officials voted to move hundreds of millions away from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and administer the funds itself through a new county homelessness department. That funding shift begins July 1.“Withdrawing from LAHSA too quickly, without a plan and without the capacity, will no doubt cause unintended consequences that will leave more Angelenos to die on our streets,” Bass said in a statement last month. Raman said her mayoral platform sets a framework for moving hundreds of millions in city homelessness contracts away from LAHSA. “The city needs to be prepared to make significant changes including taking on direct contracting for some funds and potentially contracting directly with the county,” Raman told LAist. “The biggest challenge right now is that, despite my efforts, the city still doesn't have the capacity to manage this transition effectively.”Raman’s platform describes LAHSA as “plagued with scandal” and “may be on the verge of shuttering.” Bass and Raman both point to the city’s Bureau of Homelessness Oversight, created last year within the Los Angeles Housing Department, which they say can help deliver accountability and oversight if scaled up. According to Raman, that bureau has not yet hired a single person, but it is doing some data work using consultants via a private grant. Raman criticized the current city approach to the 6,500 people living in cars and RVs as"haphazard" and"ineffective, vowing to develop a clearer strategy. Raman wants more street medicine teams — funded through Medi-CAL reimbursements — to meet health needs in encampments.Spencer Pratt, a former reality television personality who lost his home in last year’s Palisades Fire, urges a “treatment-first” approach to homelessness, according to his “For years, the Homeless Industrial Complex has prioritized process over outcomes, warehousing over treatment, and press releases over results,” the site states. His approach would redirect resources to mental health care, drug treatment and stabilization services, according to campaign material. The Rev. Rae Huang, a community organizer and Presbyterian minister running to the left of Raman, has proposed a new “Mayor’s Office of Housing For All” to coordinate housing and homelessness efforts in the city.Candidate Adam Miller is a tech entrepreneur who founded Better Angels LA, a nonprofit that distributes small loans to families facing eviction.lists a range of proposals for L.A.’s homelessness system, including 50 more tiny home village sites, more enforcement of anti-camping laws and a better tech system for managing shelter bed reservations. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes in the June Primary Election, the top two vote-getters will face off in a November runoff.The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to medical records for millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families.from the Office of Personnel Management could dramatically change which personally identifiable medical information the agency obtains, giving it the power to see prescriptions employees had filled or what treatment they sought from doctors. The regulation would require 65 insurance companies that cover more than 8 million Americans — including federal workers, retired members of Congress, mail carriers, and their immediate family members — to provide monthly reports to OPM with identifiable health data on their members.The proposal is prompting unease from insurers as well as health policy and legal experts, who are concerned about the legality of OPM acquiring such a sweeping database of sensitive health information, and the agency’s ability to safeguard it.The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to medical records for millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families.from the Office of Personnel Management could dramatically change which personally identifiable medical information the agency obtains, giving it the power to see prescriptions employees had filled or what treatment they sought from doctors. The regulation would require 65 insurance companies that cover more than 8 million Americans — including federal workers, retired members of Congress, mail carriers, and their immediate family members — to provide monthly reports to OPM with identifiable health data on their members. The proposal is prompting unease from insurers as well as health policy and legal experts, who are concerned about the legality of OPM acquiring such a sweeping database of sensitive health information, and the agency’s ability to safeguard it. OPM could use the data to analyze costs and improve the system, said Sharona Hoffman, a health law ethicist at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. “But,” she said, “they are going to get very, very detailed and granular data about everything that happens. The concern here is the more information they have, they could use it to discipline or target people who are not cooperating politically.” OPM spokespeople did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The agency’s notice asks insurers that offer Federal Employees Health Benefits or Postal Service Health Benefits plans to furnish “service use and cost data,” including “medical claims, pharmacy claims, encounter data, and provider data.” It says the data will “ensure they provide competitive, quality, and affordable plans.” The notice, posted and sent to insurers in December, does not instruct them to redact identifying information — a burdensome process that they would need federal guidance to complete. Instead, it states that insurers are legally permitted to disclose “protected health information” to OPM. Several experts in health policy and law consulted by KFF Health News said they interpreted the request to mean the Trump administration was seeking identifiable data. The ask comes a year into a Republican administration that has been defined by haphazard mass layoffs and firings of thousands of federal workers,. Under President Donald Trump, the government has also routinely tested the legal bounds of sharing sensitive and personally identifiable tax or“You can anticipate a scenario where this information on 8 million Americans is now in the hands of OPM and there’s a real concern of how they use it,” said Michael Martinez, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, an advocacy organization that filed a public comment opposing OPM’s proposal in February. Martinez previously worked at OPM. “They’ve given no information about how they would treat that information once they have it,” he said. Among Martinez’s concerns is how the administration might use information about employees who have sought abortions — 41 states have some type of abortion ban — or transgender treatment, medical care that the Trump administration has tried to curb. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, did not respond to requests for comment. Martinez and others who reviewed the notice for KFF Health News said the proposal was so vague that they were uncertain, exactly, what medical records OPM wants to access. At the very least, they said, the proposal would allow the agency to access the medical and pharmaceutical claims of patients with their identifying information, such as names and birth dates. Claims data also includes diagnoses, treatments, visit length, and provider information. OPM’s request to view “encounter data” could allow the agency to look at “anything and everything,” Hoffman noted.Jonathan Foley, who worked at OPM advising on the Federal Employees Health Benefits program during the Obama and Biden administrations, said he doubts the agency has the capability to ingest such minutiae. The agency, however, could easily begin collection of personally identifiable medical and pharmaceutical claims information from insurers, he said. Foley said he sees a benefit to OPM having broader access to de-identified claims data. In recent years, OPM has ramped up its analysis of claims data, which has allowed it to examine prescription drug costs and encourage plans to offer federal workers cheaper alternatives. He’s worried, though, that the Trump administration’s proposal goes too far, because it appears to seek identifiable data. “It’s kind of shocking to think of them having protected health information without having strict guardrails,” he said. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, requires certain organizations that maintain identifiable health information — such as hospitals and insurers — to protect it from being disclosed without patient consent. Those entities can disclose such information without consent only in specific scenarios, with a justification that it is deemed “reasonable” or “necessary.” Even then, HIPAA mandates that they provide only the minimum amount of information required. OPM argues in its notice that it is entitled to the information from insurers “for oversight activities.” But several people who reviewed the notice questioned whether OPM’s explanation for requesting the information is sufficient. “The language in it seems quite broad and encompasses potentially a lot of information and data and is sort of light on justification,” said Jodi Daniel, a digital health strategist who helped develop the legal framework for HIPAA privacy rules over two decades ago. Several major insurers that offer federal employee health plans — including the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Kaiser Permanente, and UnitedHealthcare — declined to comment on their plans to comply with the notice or offer insight on where plans to implement the data sharing stood. Only one insurer individually weighed in with a public comment on OPM’s plan. In March, CVS Health executive Melissa Schulman urged the federal agency to reconsider its proposal. “OPM’s request raises substantial HIPAA compliance issues,” Schulman wrote, arguing that federal law allows the agency to examine records but not to collect data. Insurers would be breaking the law by providing personal health information for OPM’s “vague and broad general purposes,” she added. Schulman, who did not respond to additional questions from KFF Health News, also raised concerns about a lack of data privacy protections. She noted that insurers could be liable for security breaches or other situations “where consumer health information is inappropriately shared and outside of our control.”The Association of Federal Health Organizations, which represents CVS Health and dozens of other federal health plan carriers, also weighed in with a 122-page comment opposing the notice. In it, AFHO Chair Kari Parsons emphasized that insurance carriers are bound by HIPAA to safeguard personal health information. Federal law requires carriers “to furnish ‘reasonable reports’ OPM determines to be necessary,” Parsons wrote, “not to furnish the individual claims data of every individual.” This isn’t the first time OPM has requested detailed data from insurers. In the AFHO comment, Parsons noted OPM had made a similar proposal in 2010, prompting HIPAA concerns. She described how, after several years of negotiations with AFHO, they discussed — but OPM never finalized — an agreement in 2019 for carriers to share de-identified data with OPM. But since then, Parsons wrote, OPM has collected such detailed information on enrollees and their families that, with OPM’s new request, the agency may be able to trace even de-identified records to individuals. OPM has not provided any update since closing comments in March. The agency would need to publish a final decision before anything officially changes.is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about
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