Tom Sizemore, the “Saving Private Ryan” actor whose bright 1990s star burned out under the weight of his own domestic violence and drug convictions, died Friday at age 61.

The actor had suffered a brain aneurysm on Feb. 18 at his home in Los Angeles. He died in his sleep Friday at a hospital in Burbank, California, his manager Charles Lago said.

Sizemore became a star with acclaimed appearances in Natural Born Killers and the cult-classic crime thriller Heat. But serious substance dependency, abuse allegations and multiple run-ins with the law devastated his career, left him homeless and sent him to jail.

As the global #MeToo movement wave crested in late 2017, Sizemore was also accused of groping an 11-year-old Utah girl on set in 2003. He called the allegations “highly disturbing,” saying he would never inappropriately touch a child. Charges were not filed.

Despite the raft of legal trouble, Sizemore had scores of steady film and television credits — though his career never regained its onetime momentum. Aside from Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, most of his 21st century roles came in low-budget, little-seen productions where he continued to play the gruff, tough guys he became famous for portraying.

“I was a guy who’d come from very little and risen to the top. I’d had the multimillion-dollar house, the Porsche, the restaurant I partially owned with Robert De Niro,” the Detroit-born Sizemore wrote in his 2013 memoir, By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There. “And now I had absolutely nothing.”

The book’s title was taken from a line uttered by his character in Saving Private Ryan, a role for which he garnered Oscar buzz. But he wrote that success turned him into a “spoiled movie star,” an “arrogant fool” and eventually “a hope-to-die addict.”

He racked up a string of domestic violence arrests. Sizemore was married once, to actor Maeve Quinlan, and was arrested on suspicion of beating her in 1997. While the charges were dropped, the couple divorced in 1999.

Sizemore was convicted of abusing ex-girlfriend Heidi Fleiss in 2003 — the same year he pleaded no contest and avoided trial in a separate abuse case — and sentenced to jail. The former Hollywood madam testified that he had punched her in the jaw at a Beverly Hills hotel, and beaten her in New York to the point where they couldn’t attend the Black Hawk Down premiere.

The sentencing judge said drug abuse was likely a catalyst but that testimony had revealed a man who had deep problems dealing with women. Fleiss called Sizemore “a zero” in a conversation with The Associated Press after his conviction.

Sizemore apologized in a letter, saying he was “chastened” and that “personal demons” had taken over his life, though he later denied abusing her and accused her of faking a picture showing her bruises.

Fleiss also sued Sizemore, saying she suffered emotional distress after he threatened to get her own probation revoked. Fleiss had been convicted in 1994 of running a high-priced call-girl ring. That lawsuit was settled on undisclosed terms.

Sizemore was the subject of two workplace sexual harassment lawsuits related to the 2002 CBS show Robbery Homicide Division, in which he played a police detective. He was arrested as recently as 2016 in another domestic violence case.

Sizemore ended up jailed from August 2007 to January 2009 for failing numerous drug tests while on probation and after Bakersfield, California, authorities found methamphetamine in his car.

“God’s trying to tell me he doesn’t want me using drugs because every time I use them I get caught,” Sizemore told The Bakersfield Californian in a jailhouse interview.

Sizemore told the AP in 2013 that he believed his dependency was related to the trappings of success. He struggled to maintain his emotional composure as he described a low point looking in the mirror: “I looked like I was 100 years old. I had no relationship with my kids; I had no work to speak off. I was living in squat.”

He appeared on the reality TV show Celebrity Rehab and its spinoff Sober House, telling the AP that he did the shows to receive help, but also partly to pay off accumulated debts that ran into the millions.

Many of Sizemore’s later-career films had a sci-fi, horror or action bent: In 2022 alone, he starred in movies with such titles as Impuratus, Night of the Tommyknockers and Vampfather. But Sizemore still nabbed a few meaty roles — including in the Twin Peaks revival — and guest spots on popular shows like Entourage and Hawaii Five-O.

A stuntman sued Sizemore and Paramount Pictures in 2016, saying he was injured when the allegedly intoxicated actor ran him over while filming USA’s Shooter. State records obtained by the AP showed that Sizemore was only supposed to be sitting in the unmoving car and that he “improvised at the end of the scene and drove away in his car.” Sizemore was fired from Shooter, and the stuntman’s lawsuit was settled on undisclosed terms.

In addition to his film and TV credits, he was part of the voice cast for 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City video game. He also taught classes at the LA West Acting Studio, according to recent advertisements.

He is survived by his 17-year-old twin sons, Jayden and Jagger, and his brother Paul, all of whom were by his side when he died.

“I’ve led an interesting life, but I can’t tell you what I’d give to be the guy you didn’t know anything about,” Sizemore wrote in his memoir.
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The second half-century for the world’s most famous sled dog race is getting off to a rough start. 

Only 33 mushers will participate in the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Saturday, the smallest field ever to take their dog teams nearly 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) over Alaska’s unforgiving wilderness. This year’s lineup is smaller even than that of the 34 mushers who lined up for the very first race in 1973. 

The small pool of mushers is raising concerns about the future of an iconic race that has taken hits from the pandemic, climate change, inflation and the loss of deep-pocketed sponsors, just as multiple big-name mushing champions are retiring with few to take their place. 

The largest field ever was 96 mushers in 2008; the average number of mushers starting the race over the last 50 years was 63. 

“It’s a little scary when you look at it that way,” said four-time winner Martin Buser, 64, who retired after completing his 39th race last year. “Hopefully it’s not a state of the event and … it’s just a temporary lull.” 

The Iditarod is the most prestigious sled dog race in the world, taking competitors over two mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and treacherous Bering Sea ice in frigid temperatures before ending in the old Gold Rush town of Nome. The roughly 10-day event begins with a “ceremonial start” in Anchorage on Saturday, followed by the competitive start in Willow, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) to the north, on Sunday. 

And while the world-renowned race has the highest winner’s purse of any sled dog competition, the winner only pockets about $50,000 before taxes — a payout that is less appealing amid inflation and the continued reverberations of the pandemic. 

Many mushers supplement their income by offering uniquely Alaska experiences to cruise ship passengers, but for several years the pandemic has meant fewer summer visitors to shell out money for a sled dog ride on a glacier. 

“There’s a lot of kennels and a lot of mushers that rely on that to keep going,” said Aaron Burmeister, a Nome native who is sitting out this year’s race to spend more time with family. Burmeister, who works construction, has had eight top 10 finishes in the last decade. 

“Being able to race the Iditarod and the expense of putting together a race team became more than they could bear to maintain themselves,” he said of mushers. 

Inflation has also taken a toll, and several mushers said they’d like to see a higher prize purse to attract younger competitors. 

Defending champion Brent Sass, who supplements his income as a wilderness guide, isn’t surprised some mushers are taking a break to build up bank accounts. 

Sass, who has 58 dogs, orders 500 bags of high-quality dog food a year. Each bag cost $55 a few years ago, but that has swelled to $85 per bag — or about $42,500 total a year. That’s about how much money Sass pocketed from his Iditarod win last year. 

“You got to be totally prepared to run Iditarod, and have enough money in the bank to do it,” said Sass, who lives in Eureka, about a four-hour drive north of Fairbanks. 

With other race costs, Buser said running the Iditarod now can mean spending $250,000 to win a $40,000 championship. 

The race itself has suffered under the increased inflation, Iditarod CEO Rob Urbach said. Supply costs have gone up about 30%, he said, and last year it cost nearly $30,000 to transport specially certified straw from the lower 48 for dogs to sleep on at race checkpoints. 

The Iditarod also continues to be dogged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has targeted the race’s biggest sponsors. Over the past decade, Alaska Airlines, ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo have ended race sponsorships after being targeted by PETA. 

PETA took out full-page newspaper ads in Anchorage and Fairbanks in February with a husky — the predominate sled dog breed — prominently featured with the headline, “We don’t want to go to the Iditarod. We just want the Iditarod to go.” 

But Urbach said the race’s financial health is good, and payouts should be a little higher this year. The top 20 finishers receive payouts on a sliding scale, and every other finisher gets $1,049, reflecting the stated mileage of the race, though the actual mileage is lower. 

Urbach noted they are paying “the healthiest prize money” among competitive sled dog races and called the PETA campaign “pretty offensive, I think, to most Alaskans.” 

There’s also worry about the future of the race because of climate change. 

The warming climate forced organizers to move the starting line 290 miles (467 kilometers) north from Willow to Fairbanks in 2003, 2015 and 2017 because of a lack of snow in the Alaska Range. Poor winter conditions and urban growth likewise led the Iditarod to officially move the start from Wasilla about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north to Willow in 2008, even though Wasilla last hosted the start in 2002. 

Moving the start of the race north will likely become more common as global warming advances, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ice on Alaska’s western coast could also get thinner and more dangerous, he said. 

“It doesn’t have to be that there’s waves crashing on the beach,” Thoman said of the impacts of ice melt. “It just has to be at the point where the ice is not stable.” 

As challenges stack up, several veteran mushers with multiple championships have stepped away this year after decades of braving the frigid and windy conditions to train in the dead of the Alaska winter for the Iditarod. They are finding that few are willing to take their place, at least this year. 

“I just got back from Cancun to see the Grateful Dead play on the beaches of Mexico,” said four-time champion Jeff King, who is now 67. “I first said I was going to retire at 40, and I ran the race at 66, so I don’t feel like I’m bailing on anybody.” 

Five-time champion Dallas Seavey said last year’s race would be his last, at least for a while, to spend time with his daughter. Other past champions not racing include Dallas’ father, three-time champion Mitch Seavey, and Joar Leifseth Ulsom and Thomas Waerner, who have one title each. 

Waerner said sponsors are holding back, and it’s too expensive to pay $60,000 to get his team from Norway to Alaska. 

Lance Mackey, another four-time champion, died last year from cancer. He is the honorary musher for this year’s race, and his children, Atigun and Lozen, will ride in the first sled to leave the ceremonial start line in Anchorage and during the competitive start Sunday. 

That leaves two former winners in this year’s field, Sass and Pete Kaiser.

Sass said he is confident the Iditarod will survive this downturn. 

“If we can just keep the train rolling forward, I think it’s going to come back, and hopefully our world can get things under control and things maybe get a little less expensive,” Sass said. “I think that’s going to help get our numbers back up.” 
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U.N. countries appeared Friday to be nearing an agreement on a long-awaited treaty to protect the high seas, a fragile and vital treasure that covers nearly half the planet. 

After more than 15 years of informal and then formal talks, negotiators are coming to the end of two more weeks of discussions, the third “final” session in less than a year. 

“I do not believe that a solution is not in sight,” conference chair Rena Lee told a short plenary session Friday afternoon, calling on delegates to “stock up on snacks” as they tried to get the treaty over the finish line before the scheduled end of talks later in the day. 

“We have a window of opportunity to seal the deal, and we mustn’t let this opportunity slip through our hands,” she added, conceding though that the highly political issue of benefit-sharing for marine genetic resources remained a sticking point. 

Even if compromises are found on all the remaining disputes, the treaty cannot be formally adopted at this session, she said. 

But it could be “finalized” without the possibility of reopening discussions on substantive sections before a formal adoption at a later date, Lee added. 

Even without adoption Friday, “it’s a massive step,” Veronica Frank of Greenpeace told AFP. 

Disputes include the procedure for creating marine protected areas; the model for environmental impact studies of planned activities on the high seas; and the sharing of potential benefits of newly discovered marine resources. 

The high seas begin at the border of countries’ exclusive economic zones, which extend up to 370 kilometers (200 nautical miles) from coastlines. They thus fall under the jurisdiction of no country. 

While the high seas make up more than 60% of the world’s oceans and nearly half the planet’s surface, they have long drawn far less attention than coastal waters and a few iconic species. 

Only about 1% of the high seas is currently protected. 

Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen humans breathe and limit global warming by absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. 

But they are threatened by climate change, pollution and overfishing. 

North-South ‘equity’

For many, any agreement hinges on equity between the rich North and poor South. 

Developing countries, without the means to afford costly research, say they fear being left aside while others make profits from the commercialization of potential substances discovered in the international waters. 

In a move seen as an attempt to build trust between rich and poor countries, the European Union pledged $42 million (40 million euros) in New York to facilitate the ratification of the treaty and its early implementation. 

The EU also pledged $860 million for research, monitoring and conservation of oceans in 2023 at the Our Ocean conference in Panama, where the United States announced $6 billion in commitments. 

Observers interviewed by AFP said that resolving these politically sensitive financial issues could help ease other sticking points. 

If agreement is reached, it remains to be seen whether the compromises made will result in a text robust enough to protect oceans effectively. 

“The text is not perfect, but it’s got a clear path towards 30 by 30,” said Greenpeace’s Frank, referring to world governments’ commitment to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, as agreed upon in Montreal in December. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s doctor said Friday that a skin lesion that was removed from the president’s chest last month was a common form of skin cancer.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor, who has served as Biden’s longtime doctor, said “all cancerous tissue was successfully removed” during the president’s routine physical February 16.

O’Conner said in a letter released Friday that a biopsy confirmed the removed legion was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer that does not tend to spread quickly. The slow-growing cancer is often easily treated if detected early.

The doctor said the site of the removal has “healed nicely” and that the president does not need any further treatment.

O’Conner said that Biden previously had “several localized non-melanoma skin cancers” removed from his body before he became president and noted that the president spent a lot of time in the sun when he was younger.

After last month’s physical, doctors described Biden, who is 80, as “healthy” and “fit” to carry out his White House responsibilities.

Biden’s wife, Jill, had two basal cell lesions removed from her body in January.

Their son Beau died in 2015 at the age of 46 from brain cancer.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The United States is taking steps to better protect public drinking water and sewer systems from cyberattacks that could cut off service or contaminate supplies.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday issued a new memorandum, ordering all public water systems to meet a series of basic cybersecurity requirements while also making cybersecurity audits a part of regular scheduled safety inspections.

“We know Americans rely on these critical services, and we know that Americans expect that they are resilient to cyberattacks,” White House Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger told reporters, ahead of the memorandum’s release.

“There have been cyberattacks against water systems in the United States and in countries around the world, so this is an incredibly timely action,” she added.

The rollout of the new cybersecurity requirements for public water systems comes just a day after the White House unveiled what it described as a new, aggressive National Cyber Strategy that seeks to shift much of the responsibility for cybersecurity from individuals and consumers to tech and software companies, in part through more stringent federal regulation.

“We need to change the underlining rules of the game to get ourselves the advantage,” Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden told an audience in Washington Thursday. “I want cybersecurity to be an unfair fight.”

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), there are approximately 153,000 public drinking water systems in the U.S. which provide water to more than 80% of the U.S. population.

Another 16,000 publicly owned systems provide wastewater treatment services to about 75% of the U.S. population.

But despite the heavy reliance on these systems, U.S. officials warn cybersecurity has been weak, with some surveys finding that only about 20% of publicly owned water systems have implemented basic cybersecurity measures, leaving the water sector “at risk” to cyberattacks.

“This is not hypothetical,” EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox told reporters.

“This is happening right now,” she said. “We have seen these types of attacks from California to Florida, Kansas, Maine and Nevada.”

Data provided by CISA shows that between 2019 and early 2021, there have been at least five cyberattacks on U.S. public water systems.

Four of the attacks involved the use of ransomware and in one of those incidents, a wastewater treatment center was forced to switch to operate manually until control of the computer system was restored.

In the fifth case, a former employee tried unsuccessfully to contaminate the water supply, using his still active credentials to access the system.

In yet another incident, in February 2021, hackers accessed a water system serving about 15,000 people near Tampa, Florida, and sought to add a dangerous amount of lye to the water supply, though officials say the attempt was detected and stopped before anyone could have been hurt.

U.S. national security and intelligence officials have also warned repeatedly that key sectors, including water, could come under cyberattack from U.S. adversaries.

“We have to be concerned about the possibility of Russian action, Russian aggression against Western infrastructure, Western facilities,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in September 2022, following the sabotage of one of the Nord Stream pipelines.

In its 2022 Worldwide Threat Assessment, the U.S. intelligence community further warned China could seek to exploit cybersecurity gaps plaguing U.S. critical infrastructure.

“China almost certainly is capable of launching cyberattacks that would disrupt critical infrastructure services within the United States, including against oil and gas pipelines and rail systems,” the report said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented heightened cybersecurity requirements for rail and air transportation in October 2021. New cybersecurity requirements for pipeline owners and operators were introduced last July.
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This month, the U.S. Commerce Department launches its first application under the CHIPS Act to build more semiconductors inside the United States. But officials in Taiwan say the U.S. push to build chips domestically could compromise their national security. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports.
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