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Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Monday backed a proposed fan boycott of World Cup matches in the United States because of the conduct of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.
The international soccer community's concerns about the United States stem from Trump's expansionist posture on Greenland, and travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protesters in American cities, particularly Minneapolis. Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country.Travel plans for fans from two of the top soccer countries in Africa were thrown into disarray in December, when the Trump administration announced an expanded ban that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast following their teams unless they already have visas. Trump cited"screening and vetting deficiencies" as the main reason for the suspensions. Fans from Iran and Haiti, two other countries that have qualified for the World Cup, will be barred from entering the United States as well; they were included in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration. Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country. He called for the boycott in a post on X that supported Mark Pieth's comments in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund. Pieth, a Swiss attorney specializing in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, chaired the Independent Governance Committee's oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago. Blatter was president of the world's governing body for soccer from 1998-2015; he resigned amid an investigation into corruption. In his interview with Der Bund, Pieth said,"If we consider everything we've discussed, there's only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA! You'll see it better on TV anyway. And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don't please the officials, they'll be put straight on the next flight home. If they're lucky." In his X post, Blatter quoted Pieth and added,"I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup."The international soccer community's concerns about the United States stem from Trump's expansionist posture on Greenland, and travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protesters in American cities, particularly Minneapolis. Oke Göttlich, one of the vice presidents of the German soccer federation, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in an interview on Friday that the time had come to seriously consider boycotting the World Cup. Travel plans for fans from two of the top soccer countries in Africa were thrown into disarray in December, when the Trump administration announced an expanded ban that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast following their teams unless they already have visas. Trump cited"screening and vetting deficiencies" as the main reason for the suspensions. Fans from Iran and Haiti, two other countries that have qualified for the World Cup, will be barred from entering the United States as well; they were included in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.Downtown L.A.’s central library on Fifth Street first opened its doors in 1926, making it 100 this year. But it took decades before the book collection moved into its forever home. We dig into its founding history.While the city of L.A.’s library system dates back to 1872, we didn’t get the Central Library until over 50 years later. Until then, the city’s main book collection moved around, couch-surfing in different locations, including a department store.As the collection and the city’s population grew rapidly, it became clear the collection needed a permanent home so the city could really address resident’s learning needs.Multiple groups tried to create a central library over the decades, but money was often the key issue. In 1921, this was finally solved when voters passed a measure to fund $2 million for a new building. The Central Library building would go on to become one of the most renowned in the library world.The Central Library in downtown Los Angeles hits a big milestone this year: It’s turning 100 years old.To understand what it took to get here, we’ll go back to 1872. Back then, the city of L.A. only had about 6,000 residents. Dirt roads were everywhere and agriculture was king. The region was still fresh off the transition to American rule, and local leaders were just starting to dream up what the city could look like, especially in the downtown area. There was no “LAPL” during this time — a group called the Los Angeles Library Association attended to local reading needs. John Szabo, current L.A. city librarian, says that early system was pretty bare bones. “ It was a very small one room library with a handful of books,” he told host Larry Mantle on LAist 89.3’sat Temple and Main streets, which is where the Federal Courthouse stands today. There were newspaper racks and shelves with about 750 books, while another space had checkers and chess — because what more do you need to fuel young minds?The city needed a lot more because of rapid growth, but money was an issue. To help meet the demand, the association became an official city department in 1878. That allowed local officials to fund their new “Los Angeles Public Library.” Over the years, LAPL would open satellite “reading rooms” and branch libraries. However, the main collection was expanding quickly. The books were essentially couch-surfing for years. They movedThis was a temporary home that lasted for a couple of decades. Then, the effort to build a central library picked up steam. One of those was with a plan to put it in Pershing Square, but the project went awry. So the collection moved again — this time into a department store building and other immigrant rights organizations sued the Department of Homeland Security last year over new immigration enforcement policies. Erika Cervantes, an attorney representing ICWC in the case, told LAist that until early 2025 there was a presumption that victims who came forward to help law enforcement would be protected, but she claims some of those protections have been unlawfully removed. She said hundreds of people have been affected by the policy changes.for more about Sithy Yi’s story and changes in how immigration enforcement agencies treat victims of crime, torture and human trafficking.Sithy Yi fled genocide in Cambodia and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1981. She was detained earlier this month at a regular immigration check-in in Santa Ana, and her lawyer, Kim Luu-Ng, says Yi is being held unlawfully at the Adelanto detention center. Luu-Ng said Yi was ordered by an immigration court to be removed from the country in 2016, but her removal was withheld out of concerns she would be tortured if she returned to Cambodia. After 10 years complying with ICE instructions and initiating a still-pending visa application, Luu-Ng claims that federal immigration officials detained Yi two weeks ago as a form of punishment and to instill fear in immigrant communities. Yi is one of potentially hundreds of people with pending visa applications meant to protect victims of crime or human trafficking whose status has been abruptly put at risk by immigration policy changes ordered by the Trump administration, Luu-Ng and other immigration attorneys told LAist. Yi cannot be deported back to Cambodia, her attorney said. Luu-Ng said immigration officials have not told her where Yi might be deported to and says her detention is unconstitutional and inhumane without a plan of where to send her. Luu-Ng has filed a petition in federal court arguing for Yi to be released from detention. Federal officials have not yet responded in court. ”I think this case asks a very simple question,” Luu-Ng said. “Can the government jail someone when it has no real plan to deport them?Sithea San, Yi’s sister, remembers the day her family was forced to leave their home. According to her recollection, the Khmer Rouge approached them at gunpoint April 17, 1975, saying they had to leave before American forces were expected to bomb their city, Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge was a Communist regime that brutally tortured, murdered and starved more than a million Cambodians in the 1970s. A United Nations-assisted tribunal began investigations in 2007 and found surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The family left that day thinking they would be gone for only three days. Their horrific experience would last years, until they arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1981. Sithea San recounted how Yi, the eldest sister who was just 9 years old when they left their home, used to steal food to keep her family alive in Cambodia. After getting caught stealing by the Khmer Rouge several times, San said her sister was given a final warning: If she got caught again they would kill her entire family. They led Yi to a place where they said she, her mother and two sisters would all be buried. Yi was subjected to forced labor and torture at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, which she later described to Luu-Ng in 2016 as she fought in immigration court to be allowed to stay in the U.S. Yi still carries scars from where guards would burn her with cigarettes, Luu-Ng told LAist. She said Yi has other scars that lie deeper.San said her family came to the U.S. in 1981, sponsored by her uncle. They arrived in California with just $10. Yi’s mother and sisters had all become U.S. citizens by 1990, San told LAist, but Yi’s path to legal residency was more complicated. San said their family did not understand it at the time, but Yi suffered from PTSD. She began to have seizures after they escaped Cambodia, which often prevented her from going to school once they arrived in the U.S.Far from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, she again became a victim of abuse. Yi fell into a cycle of domestic violence, Luu-Ng told LAist, and she was severely abused by multiple partners over the years. In 2011, Yi was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to probation. The abuse she faced at home continued and after being so severely beaten by her partner that she could not walk, Luu-Ng said, Yi missed one of her probation appointments. She said that probation violation led to about a year in state prison, and from there Yi was transferred to ICE custody for removal proceedings.Luu-Ng began working under a United Nations grant to help survivors of torture in immigration proceedings in 2009, and first met Yi in 2013. She had talked with survivors of torture camps in Germany, Poland, Afghanistan and many other countries, but the story of what Yi and her family went through still left her shocked. “ I've spoken to a lot of survivors of torture,” Luu-Ng told LAist. “Sithy’s story impacted me very, very deeply.” Luu-Ng took on her case and argued in immigration court that Yi fell under protections granted by the United Nations Convention Against Torture — commonly known as CAT — banning anyone from being deported to countries where they will most likely be tortured.“ We literally walked out of court within 30 minutes,” Luu-Ng said, “even the government counsel acknowledged the grave humanitarian concerns with this case.” LAist reached out to ICE and an attorney who represented the agency, but they did not comment on the case. Luu-Ng said Yi is not eligible for asylum status because of her conviction, but she has never heard of anyone being deported after receiving CAT protection. “ Individuals who receive CAT withholding typically are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in the United States with a work permit,” she told LAist. Even so, Luu-Ng said Yi also applied for a U visa in 2022 to further protect her from being deported. U visas are intended to give temporary immigration status to crime victims who have cooperated with law enforcement. Luu-Ng said Yi did cooperate with law enforcement in a case against one of her abusers and should qualify for a U visa, but she said they can take eight to ten years to be granted in some cases. She is still waiting for a decision on whether Yi’s visa will be approved. Jennifer Diep, San Croucher, Sithy Yi and Sithea San attend the book release for "Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back," by Katya Cengel. The family was featured in the book.The Immigration Center for Women and Children and other immigrant rights organizations sued the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, in October of last year over new immigration enforcement policies on how immigration agents treat victims of abuse or human trafficking. The group claims in court documents that the new policy “has allowed, for the first time in decades, the detention and removal of survivors of these violent crimes as a routine matter, without regard for the many protections Congress put in place for them.” Erika Cervantes, a staff attorney for The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, is part of the legal team representing ICWC in the case. She told LAist that until early 2025 there was a presumption that victims who came forward to help law enforcement would be protected. She said that U visas and T visas — another type of visa for victims of human trafficking — have strengthened law enforcement by allowing victims to be comfortable coming forward and telling police about their abuse without risk of being deported.that removed previous requirements for agents to identify whether their targets are victims of crimes that might qualify them for protections against deportation. Cervantes said the memo also cuts protections that had been in place for victims who are waiting for their U and T visas to be approved. Attorneys for ICE previously had been instructed to not seek deportation of U and T visa applicants unless there were “exceptional or exigent circumstances,” according to the new ICE memo, but Cervantes said the new memo removes the presumption that victims would be protected. “ essentially green lights targeting this vulnerable community who went out of their way to share their story, go through this visa process,” Cervantes said. “There’s an about face, and now they’re being put behind bars.” Cervantes said the ICE memo has affected hundreds of people, and ICWC is asking a federal judge to set aside the policy changes.According to her sister, Sithea San, she had helped the government when she came forward as a victim and always went to her monthly check-ins with ICE.In November, two months before her detention, Luu-Ng and San went with Yi for her check-in with ICE. Luu-Ng said they were concerned at that time that Yi could be detained because they saw reports of other people being taken from their families during check-ins. After discussing Yi’s case with Luu-Ng, the immigration officials at the Santa Ana facility said she would need to start wearing an ankle monitor, but she was free to go home. Luu-Ng recalled one official telling her that as long as Yi didn’t tamper with the ankle monitor or violate any conditions of her electronic monitoring, ICE would not detain her.Yi continued to check in, and Luu-Ng thought she would be fine because she was following ICE’s instructions. The next two months Yi went to her check-ins without a lawyer, but her sister still came along. At her January check-in, San said they saw people crying in the waiting area. She said Yi approached them and tried to comfort them.Yi can’t read in English, San said, and sometimes she struggles to understand when people talk to her. San wanted to accompany her sister to be sure she understood any questions she might be asked.“ And then I heard the sound . . . the handcuffs,” San said. “And that moment I feel like, am I dreaming? Is this real?” San said she told the ICE agents that her sister had CAT protections and a pending U visa application, which she showed them. She said they told her it didn’t matter. When San was later able to visit her sister in detention, she said Yi told her the ICE agents tried to coerce her to sign legal documents she couldn’t understand and threatened that things would get worse for her if she refused.Yi would not be in this situation under any other administration, said Mariko Khan, who is on the board of the nonprofit organization Cambodia Town, where she met Yi about 15 years ago. “ Things would've been taken care of years ago and she certainly would not have had to be corralled at her check-in,” Khan said. “I mean, that's so unfair.” Khan said Yi has been a consistent volunteer with Cambodia Town, which serves the largest Cambodian community outside Cambodia itself. Khan had heard about some of Yi’s background over the years, and she learned that Yi had first found counseling when she was in prison. Having a background as a mental health professional, Khan said she was amazed to see Yi’s improvement. “ I think it shows a lot of character and integrity that she could, given all that she had suffered, actually get better,” Khan said. Yi has also been a mainstay with the Cambodia Town Parade. Khan said Yi had led a group of up to 30 women in the parade’s “Stop the Hate” event for the past three years. Sithea San said Yi planned on coming to her house on Jan. 8 to work on the choreography for this year’s parade after they went to check in with ICE.Manju Kulkarni is the executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, and she says people being detained by masked agents in the streets and others being held at their immigration appointments reminds some in Southeast Asian communities of the governments their families once fled. “ Communities that are made up often of refugees who escaped an American war in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam . . . are faced with the familiar terror,” Kulkarni told LAist. “Terror from which they thought they had escaped.” Kulkarni and Luu-Ng told LAist they are deeply concerned that if Yi is deported to a third-country, she will then be sent by that country back to Cambodia despite an immigration judge already acknowledging she would most likely be tortured.that 22 people who were deported to Ghana as a third-country were then sent to their country of origin last year, despite court orders in the U.S meant to prevent that from happening.When San visited her sister at the Adelanto detention center on Jan. 18, Yi said she’d just had a nightmare, with scenes from her time under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge. She told San being detained reminds her of those times, and she tries to keep her mind on other things.Yi told her sister she had been trying to fill her time by teaching the other detainees how to do traditional Cambodian dances.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.A tiny Altadena water company plans to continue finalizing a strategy to stay in business a year after the Eaton Fire destroyed its two reservoirs and the homes of 75% of its customers. No vote was taken at a meeting last week.after the small Las Flores Water Company, which only has about 1,500 customers, proposed charging an extra $50 a month for the next five years to keep from going bankrupt. After a recent meeting at which more than 200 residents showed up, Las Flores Board President John Bednarski said the board will"deliberate at one of our upcoming meetings to take into account the feedback that we got."A tiny Altadena water company plans to continue finalizing a strategy to stay in business a year after the Eaton Fire destroyed its two reservoirs and the homes of 75% of its customers. No vote was taken at aafter the small Las Flores Water Company, which only has about 1,500 customers, proposed charging an extra $50 a month for the next five years to keep from going bankrupt. After a recent meeting at which more than 200 residents showed up, Las Flores Board President John Bednarski said the board will"deliberate at one of our upcoming meetings to take into account the feedback that we got."Not only did the fires destroy homes and businesses, but also critical infrastructure. Small private water companies, such as Las Flores and two others that serve unincorporated Altadena, have received limited insurance payouts and don’t have access to as many state and federal grants to rebuild, experts say.Bednarski said the company is interested in consolidating with neighboring water companies and is lobbying the public water district it purchases much of its water from, Foothill Municipal, to allocate some state funding to restore one of the company’s reservoirs. Outside of charging customers a new surcharge, Bednarski said additional funding is needed not only to restore, but also shore up their infrastructure to withstand future fires, earthquakes and other disasters.Social media apps have long been accused of being harmful to children. Now those claims will come before a jury for the first time in a trial kicking off today in a Los Angeles courtroom.Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Google's YouTube will stand trial in California state court after TikTok settled the lawsuit on the eve of the trial.Social media apps have long been accused of being harmful to children. Now those claims will come before a jury for the first time in a trial kicking off Tuesday in a Los Angeles courtroom.Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Google's YouTube will stand trial in California state court after TikTok settled the lawsuit on the eve of the trial. Terms of the settlement were confidential, said Matthew Bergman of the Social Media Victims Law Center, who represents the plaintiff. Tiktok didn't respond to a request for comment about the settlement on Tuesday. Snapchat was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit but reached its own undisclosed settlement with the plaintiff last week. The LA case is the first of a wave of lawsuits headed for trial this year that have been brought against social media companies by more than 1,000 individual plaintiffs, hundreds of school districts and dozens of state attorneys general. It's drawing comparisons to the legal campaign against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, which accused cigarette makers of covering up what they knew about the harms of their products. The suits accuse Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat of engineering features that make their apps nearly impossible for kids to put down, like infinite scroll, auto-play videos, frequent notifications and recommendation algorithms, leading in some cases to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and even suicide. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages as well as changes to the way social media apps are designed. The trial starting on Tuesday in LA will give a rare look inside how the most popular and powerful social media platforms operate. Jurors will be presented with thousands of pages of internal documents, including research on children conducted by the companies; expert witnesses; and the testimony of the teenage plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., who says her excessive use of social media led to mental health problems. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, are also set to take the stand in the trial, which is expected to last several weeks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen here in 2025, is expected to testify in the upcoming trial about social media addiction."The public is going to know for the first time what social media companies have done to prioritize their profits over the safety of our kids," said Bergman, who represents K.G.M. and other plaintiffs.between using social media and mental health problems has been proved. They say they've rolled out safety features for kids in recent years, including parental controls, guardrails on who can contact teen accounts and time limits. They also cite the First Amendment, saying that just as people's speech is protected from government censorship, the decisions that social media companies make about content are also a type of"protected speech" — an argument the Supreme Court has Both Meta and YouTube parent Google said in statements that the allegations in the lawsuits are baseless. "These lawsuits misportray our company and the work we do every day to provide young people with safe, valuable experiences online," Meta said in a."Despite the snippets of conversations or cherry-picked quotes that plaintiffs' counsel may use to paint an intentionally misleading picture of the company, we're proud of the progress we've made, we stand by our record of putting teen safety first, and we'll keep making improvements." The YouTube logo is displayed on a sign outside the company's corporate headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., in 2025."The allegations in these complaints are simply not true," said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. He added that YouTube works with experts to provide"age-appropriate experiences" and"robust" parental controls.Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who studies internet law, is skeptical of the plaintiffs' argument that the companies should be held liable for the features they've designed. "Essentially what the plaintiffs are trying to do is argue that social media is the virtual equivalent to a soda bottle, like a Coca-Cola bottle, that explodes and sends shards of glass to anyone in the nearby area," he said."And if that doesn't make any sense to you, it doesn't make any sense to me either. The entire premise of treating publications as products is itself architecturally flawed."The cases are on two tracks: some in state court and others in federal court. In each, a handful of"bellwether" cases head to trial first. The outcome of those cases could affect how the rest play out and could open the door for wide-ranging settlement talks. Jury selection in the first bellwether case starts Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The plaintiff K.G.M, now 19 years old, says her use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok led to depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia. K.G.M. began using social media at age 10, despite her mother's efforts to block her from the apps, according to the complaint. She"developed a compulsion to engage with those products nonstop" as a result of their"addictive design" and"constant notifications." "The more K.G.M. accessed Defendants' products, the worse her mental health became," the complaint says. "She is going to be able to explain in a very real sense what social media did to her over the course of her life and how, in so many ways, it robbed her of her childhood and her adolescence," Bergman told reporters at a briefing last week."She is very typical of so many children in the United States, the harms that they've sustained and the way their lives have been altered by the deliberate design decisions of the social media companies." Last week, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, settled with K.G.M., meaning it will not be involved in the first trial. No details about the settlement were publicly released. Still, the company remains a defendant in the other cases in both the state and federal consolidated proceedings. "The Parties are pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner," Snap said in a statement. The company has previously disputed the allegations in the lawsuits."Snapchat was designed differently from traditional social media; it opens to the camera, allowing Snapchatters to connect with family and friends in an environment that prioritizes their safety and privacy," its lawyers toldIt has been an uphill battle for the plaintiffs to bring their claims at all, because online platforms are broadly protected by a controversial legal shield known asThe plaintiffs hope to get around the immunity usually afforded to tech companies by focusing on features they say are designed to keep kids coming back to social media apps rather than on the specific posts or videos that users encounter. "We are not talking about third-party content. We are talking about the reckless design of these platforms that are designed not to show kids what they want to see, but what they can't look away from," Bergman said.on the grounds they were about third-party content and therefore covered by Section 230. But she said the question of whether features like infinite scrolling could contribute to harming users is something a jury should decide. Goldman, the Santa Clara University law professor, said the potential damages should the plaintiffs win pose"an existential threat" to the social media companies and beyond — not just in terms of financial impact but also if tech companies were forced to change how their products work. "The internet is on trial in these cases," he said."If the plaintiffs win, the internet will almost certainly look different than it does today. And probably it will be a far less conversational one that we have today."
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