The Brief

Rat poison continues to sicken and kill California’s wildlife at alarming rates, despite legislation designed to prevent the use of such chemicals.

That’s according to a recently published report from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The 2024 survey found anticoagulant rodenticides — a fancy name for one of the most toxic types of rat poison — in the bodies of 95% of mountain lions and 83% of bald eagles tested, as well as dozens of other species, including foxes, bobcats, owls, hawks, black bears and endangered California condors.

Even river otters have been poisoned, a sign these chemicals may be seeping into waterways.

“We’re still seeing too many animals being victims of rat poison,” said Lisa Owens-Viani, director of Berkeley-based nonprofit  Raptors Are the Solution.

How we got here

Rats are a big problem in Southern California. And people resort to rat poison to solve the problem, placing it in baits and traps. The problem with that is wild animals also fall for the lures. Or, hungry predators feast on the poison-filled rats.

Anticoagulants were one of the final blows to L.A.’s most famous mountain lion, P-22. He was sickened by such rodenticides likely after eating prey that had ingested them. Disoriented and ill, the beloved puma then wandered into the road and was struck by a car just south of his home in Griffith Park. P-22 later died from his injuries.

Famed mountain lion P-22 suffered from mange linked to rat poisons and died after being struck by a vehicle near Griffith Park.

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Why legislation hasn’t solved it

For more than two decades, California has passed laws to limit the use of certain pesticides. Starting in 2020, the state passed a series of legislation banning some of the most toxic types:

• The Ecosystem Protection Act of 2020 (AB1788) placed a moratorium on all second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides, which are stronger and last in animal tissue longer than earlier types. 
• The California Ecosystem Protection Act of 2023 and the Poison-Free Wildlife Act of 2024 expanded that moratorium to first generation anticoagulant rodenticides, including chlorophacinone and warfarin, which are older versions of rat poison that take longer to build up in the body.

However, there are exemptions in those laws, including the use of such rodenticides in agriculture, certain public health settings, such as hospitals, and other sensitive settings.

Owens-Viani thinks that’s a big reason why the number of poisonings continue to be high.

“We're not seeing the decreasing trend that we had hoped for,” she said.

A bobcat sickened by rodenticides is cared for at Simi Valley-based wildlife rescue Wildlife Care of Southern California.

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Jonathan Evans, the Environmental Health Legal Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that some of the state’s best protections against rat infestations — great-horned owls, hawks and other raptors — are also dying at some of the most alarming rates from rat poisons.

“All of these animals are some of our best rodent control mechanisms. Like these animals feed on rats and mice and can do it very efficiently,” Evans said. “We really should be looking at figuring out why we still have high levels [of poisonings] and what we can do to close the loopholes and make rodent control more ecologically effective."

Why the problem could get worse

There are also gaps in the data, meaning the real numbers of poisonings are likely far higher, Evans said.

As part of its methods to calculate poisoning rates, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has to analyze dead carcasses that often have to be submitted to them by the public, he said.

“Most of these animals that die of rodenticide poisonings are going to die out in the woods where nobody finds them,” Evans said.

A mountain lion photographed with a motion sensor camera in the Verdugo Mountains overlooking the city lights of Los Angeles.

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And now, the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation is considering rolling back many of these protections by allowing more than 100,000 new locations, including grocery stores, restaurants and even parks, to use most toxic rat poisons.

Six lawmakers who helped craft the 2024 moratorium on these chemicals sent a letter to the agency earlier this year asking them to rescind the proposal.

Here’s how you can help protect wildlife 

• For one, don’t use rodenticides in your yard. Death by anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning is painful and slow — these poisons cause species to slowly bleed out from the inside, with signs in hawks and other raptors often being blood seeping from their beaks and eyes. Larger mammals, such as mountain lions and coyotes, can also develop mange as a result of the poisons weakening their immune systems.
  
• Securing your trash, pet food and even bird feeders are other important ways to keep rats (and unwanted wildlife) from your home. Evans noted there are also new technologies, such as fertility control, electric traps and improved methods of fortifying buildings from rats. You can find additional resources for wildlife-safe rodent control from the Center for Biological Diversity and Raptors are the Solution at SafeRodentControl.org or here.
  
• And if you do come across wild animal you suspect has been poisoned, report it to your local wildlife rescue agency or animal control office, as well as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife at WHLab@wildlife.ca.gov or (916) 358-2790.

A person was fatally shot on a Los Angeles Metro bus Wednesday afternoon in South L.A.

According to Metro, a group of “young men” got into an altercation on the street.

That altercation then continued on a bus on Route 206, where “a member of the group shot and fatally injured another member of the group,” the transportation agency said to LAist.

The suspects fled before police arrived, according to Metro.

LAist has reached out to the LAPD for further information.

Safety on Metro

Since summer 2024, the transportation agency has been testing scanners that can detect concealed weapons at the entrances to rail stations throughout L.A. County and is in the early stages of possibly adopting the same approach for its buses.

In the latest 12-month-long phase of the pilot, which began in late April, Metro has been testing the technology at two rail stations at a time in two-month increments.

In a September report to its board, Metro staff said the “most frequently encountered” items during screenings have been “bladed objects.”

“In most cases, these were legitimate work-related tools that patrons were lawfully transporting,” staff said, adding that only one firearm had been detected as of the report.

Metro tested its weapons detection system at the San Pedro stop along the A line.

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In the same September update to its board, Metro staff said the transportation agency remains in “active discussions” with a vendor for its bus-centered program.

Over the summer, the vendor demoed how the scanners would work on different size buses, according to the update.

“Further coordination with the vendor will take place to determine which bus or buses will be equipped and when the installation will occur,” Metro staff said in the update. “The pilot has not yet been finalized.”

According to Metro, systemwide violent crime in September 2025, the latest month for which data is available online, fell nearly 15% compared to last September.

If you’re out in nature this weekend, you might see people combing spots in search of one thing: monarch butterflies.

The community science initiative, known as the Western Monarch Count, is led by the Xerces Society, a conservation nonprofit that looks for the insects annually. This is the last count for the year, and it runs through Jan. 11.

The count is run mostly by hundreds of volunteers and partners of the Xerces Society across the state.

Why the count matters

Across California, monarch butterflies have been in steep decline in recent decades. The count is one of the ways the Xerces Society is trying to understand what’s happening and how we can help them recover.

The count looks specifically at the habits of a specific type of monarch known as overwintering monarchs, which travel hundreds of miles to our coast to escape harsh winters. They have special fat reserves in their tiny bodies, which make them beefier than breeding ones, says Sara Cuadra-Vargas, a  conservation biologist at the Xerces Society.

“ You can think of it … like if your great-great-great-great-grandfather was a superhuman that lived extra long and was extra large,” Cuadra-Vargas said.

The count happens over three periods, starting in October. This period is called the late-season count, which can show biologists how many monarchs are moving away from our sites and what mortality is looking like.

How you can help monarchs

They’re set for volunteers for this count, but you can volunteer for next year’s count by signing up to volunteer here. They require at least 15 hours of commitment — you’ll get set up with training.

Volunteers typically are assigned a site for the season and go out early in the morning when it’s too cold for monarchs to move. You’ll scan for the orange butterflies with binoculars and document things like habit quality and disturbances.

Cuadra-Vargas says our region has dozens of confirmed and potential overwintering sites, but the bulk of monarchs are seen in the central coast. In training, she tempers expectations.

“ We do still get overwintering monarchs here in Southern California, in Los Angeles and Orange counties,” she said, “but it’s a bit of more presence-absence that we’re looking for.”

That means you also may report where monarchs aren’t anymore, which is an important piece of data for biologists.

If you want to help out now, though, there’s still a few ways to do it:

• Help track where monarchs get their nectar by snapping a photo and sharing it through the Monarch Nectar Plant Database submission form.
• Add pictures of monarchs you see to the Xerces Society’s project on iNaturalist.
• If you want to get real high-tech, there’s a separate program that’s asking people to download a phone app to track specially tagged monarchs with solar transmitters.
• You also can go the low-tech, old-school route: Plant milkweed at home to give them something to eat.

A ping pong hustler for the ages, a Neil Diamond interpreter for the '80s, choral music both comic and spiritual, plus tormented teens, twisted families, and a giant snake on the loose. It's quite the jolly holiday at your local cineplex.

They join a new Avatar sequel, a Bradley Cooper-directed drama, and more in theaters.

Marty Supreme

In theaters Thursday

I feel as if I should tell you to speed-read this review, preferably with Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" blaring in your ear. Josh Safdie's adrenaline-fueled, screwball comedy about a table tennis hustler who dreams of world domination — in a sport that hasn't registered yet with the American public — is a mesmerizing cinematic tour de force. Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser (loosely based on real-life 1940s and '50s U.S. ping pong champ and petty criminal Marty Reisman), graduating from determined kid-with-a-passion to aggrieved also-ran-in-full-melt-down mode, attracting and then alienating everyone he comes across. We meet him as a New York shoe salesman having storeroom trysts with his married childhood sweetheart (Odessa A'zion) and prepping for a bout in England for which he can't even afford plane fare.

Marty establishes with a series of heists and scams that he's got no problem cheating or stealing to get there, then regales the press with a pugnacious racist routine that lands him on front pages before his first serve. Chalamet's live-wire approach is neatly countered by a serenely sensual turn by Gwyneth Paltrow as an aging movie star who finds Marty amusing and alarming in about equal measure. And the film's just getting started at that point, careening towards a championship in Japan with the propulsive, harrowing, rush-to-judgment feel of Safdie's Uncut Gems mixed up with dizzying comedy. It's a thrill ride, pure and simple. — Bob Mondello

Song Sung Blue

In theaters Thursday

Mike and Claire Sardina, the real-life, blue-collar Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act in the 1980s, get the sequin-and-spangle treatment in this Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson love-fest. Writer and director Craig Brewer keeps the music central and the sentiment tolerable as the couple meets cute, bonds quick, and forms a musical act known professionally as Lightning and Thunder. The stars are well-matched and appealing — Hudson does a winning Patsy Cline impersonation, and Jackman completely nails Neil Diamond's sound and bearing. The couple's story, which has more downs than ups, doesn't quite match the mood of a movie determined to be ever-and-always-up. Still, the stars are engaging, the supporting cast great fun, and the music rousing. — Bob Mondello

Anaconda

In theaters Thursday

The original Anaconda movie came out almost 30 years ago, sending an assortment of '90s movie stars down the Amazon, where they were menaced and occasionally crushed and/or devoured by giant deadly snakes. That film, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, was a hit that spawned a handful of lightly regarded sequels.

Heavy on meta references to the original film, the new Anaconda is not quite a reboot, it's not quite a sequel, and it's played for laughs. Jack Black and Paul Rudd star as lifelong friends who grew up wanting to be filmmakers. But they've followed different career paths — Paul Rudd's character is a struggling actor whose biggest role was a bit part on the TV show S.W.A.T., while Jack Black's character makes wedding videos while yearning to shoot something more creative. They gather their old friends and collaborators — played by Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn — and head to the Amazon to shoot a meta reimagining of Anaconda. As you can imagine, this proves harder than it sounds. — Stephen Thompson

The Plague

In limited theaters Wednesday

The first image is an eerie, underwater shot — sun-dappled blues, greens, and greys — its peace suddenly exploded as bodies plunge into the pool. Middle school boys, limbs all akimbo, almost literally at sea, as they struggle for equilibrium. It's an apt beginning for the story of a youngster trying to figure out where he fits in among the cliques at a summer water polo camp. Ben (Everett Blunck) is the camp newbie, Jake (Kayo Martin) its smirking cool kid who picks up on his fellow campers' idiosyncrasies and exploits them.

He tells Ben that Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a withdrawn boy with a rash, has the "plague" and must be avoided. Ben, seeing the obvious pain the outcast is in, can't square that with his own sense of decency, but also doesn't want to be ostracized, and his attempt to split the difference leads the film into Lord of the Flies territory. Charlie Polinger's directorial debut looks breathtaking, feels unnerving, and traffics cleverly in body-horror tropes as it basically establishes that 12-year-old boys are savages who should never be without adult supervision. — Bob Mondello

Father Mother Sister Brother

In limited theaters Wednesday

You might expect Jim Jarmusch to look at family relationships with a certain eccentricity, but not necessarily in the elegantly framed way he does in this triptych about adult children and the parents they don't begin to understand. The Father segment casts Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik as siblings who are stiff with each other, and even less comfortable with their garrulous con man of a dad (Tom Waits). Driver's come with provisions and cash, Bialik's come armed with an arched eyebrow, and Waits is ready for them both.

The second part, Mother, finds a sublimely chilly Charlotte Rampling hosting an awkward once-a-year tea for her daughters, one primly nervous (Cate Blanchett), the other pink-haired and boisterous (Vicky Krieps). And the final third, Sister Brother, finds Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat bonding in their recently deceased parents' now-empty Paris apartment. This segment seems less about estrangement, until you realize how little they actually know about their dear departed folks. There are running jokes about Rolexes, the expression "Bob's your uncle," and toasts to tie things together, along with a sweet, reflective tone that makes this one of the year's most compassionate films. — Bob Mondello

The Choral

In limited theaters Thursday

Director Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett, who previously teamed up on The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and The Lady in the Van, are plumbing shallower depths in this gentle dramedy about an amateur chorus in 1916. When their choirmaster leaves to fight in World War I, grieving mill owner Roger Allam, who funds the chorus, reluctantly hires Dr. Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes), a gifted choirmaster but a divisive choice in this intensely nationalistic moment — because he's spent the last few years in Germany. He also exhibits "peculiarities" (code for being gay) but this seems less important to the locals.

Fiennes is briskly dismissive of local traditions, snippy about English appreciation for the arts, and celebrated enough in music circles to persuade composer Edward Elgar (Simon Russell Beale) to let them perform his oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius." Elgar is less thrilled when he discovers the chorus is turning the oratorio into a story about the war, casting its elderly hero as a young soldier and generally making it what later generations would call "relevant." It's all sweet and sentimental, and though it's being released during awards seasons, feels as if it really wants to be considered for best picture of 1933. — Bob Mondello

No Other Choice

In select theaters Thursday

"I've got it all," says paper factory supervisor Man-su as he hugs his family at a barbecue in the backyard of his elegant Korean home. He's grilling some eels given to him by the paper company's new American owners, secure in the knowledge that this must mean they value him. This being a social satire by director Park Chan-wook, it's reasonable to expect he will shortly be dealt a blow, and one day later, he's been axed. (The film is based on Donald E. Westlake's 1997 horror-thriller novel The Ax). He's distraught but can't express, or even really understand, that he feels he has lost his manhood, his mojo, and his reason for being.

On top of that, his industry is consolidating, so finding another job before his severance pay runs out and he loses his house (his childhood home) will be tricky. Asked if he'd consider a job outside the paper industry, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) says that for him there is "no other choice," echoing the words his American bosses uttered about bringing down costs as they did layoffs. But with the end of severance payments looming, he hatches a plan to knock off his job market competition one by one. Isn't this mass murder? Well, he has "no other choice."

At first it seems as if we're in serial-killer comedy territory, but the filmmaker widens the frame to include narrative side trips — a stepson who's stealing cellphones, a daughter who's a cello prodigy, a wife who's working for a dentist that Man-su suspects has designs on her. Oh, and pig-farm trauma from his youth, and a passion for greenhouse gardening. Director Park has a lot going on, and a final paper-plant-mechanization sequence suggests that all these stabs at human agency may just have been humanity's last gasp. — Bob Mondello

The Testament of Ann Lee

In limited theaters Thursday

Ambitious, stylized, intense, and thoroughly unorthodox, Mona Fastvold's religious biopic tells the story of Shakers founder Ann Lee (a wild-eyed, fiercely committed Amanda Seyfried) as a full-scale musical drama. That's not to say there are finger-snapping tunes. The score adapts 18th century Shaker spirituals, and the choreography involves the thrusting limbs and clawing fingers of the seizure-like dancing that earned this puritan sect of "Shaking" Quakers their nickname.

We meet Ann as a pious youngster more interested in spiritual matters than matters of the flesh. Marriage to a man who enjoys inflicting pain during sex, and the deaths of her four children in infancy lead Ann to the conclusion that lifelong celibacy is among the keys to salvation. With the help of her younger brother (Lewis Pullman), she finds adherents to a religious philosophy that also emphasizes gender equality and simple living, and leads them to found a utopian, crafts-based community in America. Director Fastvold and her co-writer Brady Corbet (the couple flipped roles from last year's The Brutalist) serve up Ann's spiritual journey in ecstatically musical terms, which is at once distancing and … well, ecstatic, though it pales a bit over the course of two-and-a-quarter hours. — Bob Mondello 

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In the 1940s and '50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence's, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.

His game was electric. "Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him," someone identified only as "the shirt king" told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.

The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet's character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.

Nicknamed "The Needle" for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.

Like Chalamet's Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it "involved anatomy and chemistry and physics."

One of the game's "bad boys"

Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. "His personality made him legendary," said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. "The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man."

He was also one of the game's "bad boys," just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn't show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated — but later fined the players $200 and suspended them "indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis" worldwide for breaking the sport's "courtesy code."

Marty Reisman demonstrates an under-the-leg trick shot in 1955.

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Ping pong offered quick cash — and an outlet 

Reisman grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. "It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine," Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in a garment factory. When he was 14, Marty went to live with his father at the Broadway Central Hotel.

Hustling was "just baked into his DNA," said Leo Leigh, director of a documentary about Reisman called Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler.

"I remember [Reisman] telling me that when he wanted to eat, he would wait until there was a wedding in the hotel, put on his best suit and just slip in and just sit and eat these massive, amazing meals," said Leigh, "And then he'd be ready for the night to go and hustle table tennis."

Reisman suffered panic attacks as early as nine years old. Playing ping pong helped with his anxiety. "The game so engrossed me, so filled my days, that I did not have time to worry," he wrote.

"Finding this game of table tennis — and finding that he had this amazing ability — became almost like an escape, a meditation," said Leigh.

Marty Reisman shows a behind-the-back trick shot in 1955.

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"Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one"

Reisman wanted to be the best ping pong player in the world. "To be an Einstein in your field, or a Hemingway, or a Joe Louis — there could be nothing, I imagined, more noble," Reisman wrote. "And table tennis champions were to me Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one."

The game was respected throughout Europe and Asia, turning ping pong stars into big names: In Marty Supreme, one who was imprisoned at Auschwitz tells the story of being spared by Nazi guards who recognize him. (Reisman's memoir tells a similar true story of the Polish table tennis champion Alojzy "Alex" Ehrlich.)

But in the U.S., ping pong was considered a pastime people played in their basements. New York City was an exception: "Large sums of money were bet on a sport that had no standing at all in this country," wrote Reisman.

Reisman dazzled spectators with his flair on the table.

"If you look at footage of Marty in the '50s and '60s, you could almost compare it to the footage of Houdini," said Leigh. "He would blow the ball into the air and then he would, you know, knock it under his leg or just do some acrobats. It was almost like putting on a show."

One of his gimmick shots was breaking a cigarette in two with a slam.

Marty Reisman after winning the final men's singles game at the English Open in 1949.

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Chasing a dream "that no one respected"

Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. "I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful," he told NPR. "It's a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision." Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence's and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman's friend and competitor Dick Miles.

It was Safdie's wife who found Reisman's book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. "Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face," said Safdie, "And very few believers in that project."

Safdie likened the experience to Reisman's obsession with becoming a table tennis champion "who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected."

A new racket changes the game

In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men's Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball "to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering."

"Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat," said Asgarali, "When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn't competitive anymore. He totally fell out of the game."

Leigh said Reisman would tell just about anyone who would listen how Hiroji Satoh destroyed his game.

He was "constantly analyzing and reanalyzing his personality, who he is, where he's going," said Leigh. He would "sit with all these academics and these writers and these almost philosophers and just talk for hours" about how the rubber bat "completely" ruined his game. "He was always searching for something."

In 1958, Reisman bought the Riverside Table Tennis Club on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a popular spot frequented by celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Dustin Hoffman. In 1997, at age 67, he won the United States Hardbat Championship.

Marty Reisman died in 2012 at age 82. A The New York Times profile of him less than a year prior started with the headline, "A Throwback Player, With a Wardrobe to Match."

Copyright 2025 NPR