A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation has exposed the activities of a violent Los Angeles gang, Barrio 18, which was distributing Mexican cartel drugs on the streets. The group sold methamphetamine with 100% purity (even higher than the 99.1% boasted by Walter White in Breaking Bad), used a business as a front, and relied on dealers who did not fit the usual profile. One of their stash houses was located in the exclusive neighborhood where the Kardashian family lives, while gang members sold their product in a park crowded with addicted homeless people — described by authorities as an “open‑air drug market.”

On Wednesday, as the operation came to a head, dozens of federal and local agents took control of MacArthur Park, a few blocks west of downtown, and raided two homes and a business in the early morning hours. They arrested at least 18 people, including Yolanda Iriarte-Avila, a 40-year-old woman identified as the area’s main drug distributor. All of them face sentences of between 10 and 20 years in prison.

Iriarte-Avila lived in Calabasas, a wealthy and quiet town north of Los Angeles. She was a neighbor of the Kardashian family, Drake, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Will Smith, and Miley Cyrus, among other celebrities. Her apartment was the perfect stash house, until she sold a kilo of fentanyl for $10,000 to a DEA informant, and her cell phone was found to contain some 150 phone conversations she had over 30 days with her boyfriend, Jesús Morales-Landel, a known drug dealer in MacArthur Park.

On Wednesday, authorities found 18 kilograms of fentanyl at Iriarte-Ávila’s hideout. She and her partner have been linked to the Barrio 18 gang, a rival of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). The DEA has not revealed who supplied the drugs to Iriarte-Avila, although it said that the gang has formed alliances with the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and Los Zetas.

A park disputed by three gangs

The federal indictment names at least 25 people involved in this criminal network and details 27 undercover purchases of fentanyl and methamphetamine made between March 9 and April 15, both inside and around the park. To track them, the DEA had the support of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office, who deployed drones, surveillance cameras, and a tracker installed in one of the suspects’ vehicles.

Agents monitored suspects’ movements through houses, parking lots, restaurants, clothing stores and supermarkets, until they reached what investigators describe as the group’s center of operations: a business called El Paraíso, located across from the park, where — according to the investigation — they stored narcotics and coordinated sales ranging from $10 to $40.

At the mid-level of distribution were Mallaly Moreno-López, 31, and her boyfriend, Jackson Tarfur, 28. A swarm of police officers woke them while they slept in their Westlake apartment. As a desperate measure, they flushed the fentanyl pills they had with them down the toilet, and some remained in the toilet bowl; this was seen in a video released by the DEA as the final piece of evidence against them. Both are now in jail.

“For far too long, MacArthur Park has been plagued by drug addiction, crime, and despair,” said Anthony Chrysanthis, head of the DEA’s Los Angeles office, in a statement. “While this is a drug enforcement operation, it is also an effort to restore safety and wellness, and to return MacArthur Park back to the community.”

For years, MacArthur Park has been a recreational space for dozens of Hispanic migrant families. But it also became contested territory for gangs such as Barrio 18, MS‑13, and the Crazy Riders. According to authorities, to avoid clashes between rival groups, the prison gang known as the Mexican Mafia divided control of different sections of the park among them. After the pandemic, the area filled with homeless people and drug users, creating a lucrative open‑air market for these criminal structures.

“We witnessed drug activity return to MacArthur Park, ” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in the statement.

Covert purchases

Amid the constant bustle of Alvarado Street, a man approached Jordan Jaramillo, who was wearing a black sweatshirt, camouflage pants, and a black mask covering his face. He asked for “crystal,” handed him a $20 bill, and received a small white rock. The dealer had a Chilean accent, uncommon in this neighborhood that has welcomed Central American and Mexican diasporas for decades. The customer, who was actually a police informant, placed the rock on a napkin and put it in his bag. Tests by a DEA lab revealed it to be 1.74 grams of methamphetamine with a purity level of 100%.

That same day, March 9, agents arrested Jaramillo while he was traveling in a car with one of his accomplices, and his Chilean passport appeared in the police database. According to the Department of Justice, Barrio 18 has been using undocumented South Americans to carry out street-level drug sales, in an apparent attempt to mislead authorities and break with the typical profile of dealers.

Other undercover police buyers approached Jaramillo to purchase powdered fentanyl for $20 to $40. In code, they asked him for “fettie.” This Chilean man was recorded by surveillance cameras that the Los Angeles government had installed in various areas of the park, and those images are now part of the evidence presented by the Central District of California. According to the indictment, at one point, this gang’s operations became so blatant that they stopped taking precautions: they were constantly entering the El Paraíso store and selling the merchandise in plain sight, right in front of the shop.

During Wednesday’s operation, as a loudspeaker warned in English and Spanish that it was a DEA raid, an agent used a saw to cut through El Paraíso’s metal shutter. The scene marked the end of the hideout from which Barrio 18 had operated with impunity.

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Real Madrid midfielders Federico Valverde and Aurélien Tchouameni trained together again on Thursday morning in Valdebebas, a day after their altercation in Wednesday’s session. The fallout from their fierce confrontation the day before still hung in the air, and the dispute flared again in the dressing room, ending with Valverde on his way to the hospital after slipping in the scuffle and hitting his head on the central table. In line with protocol, he was taken to a medical center for tests and discharged shortly afterward.

The soccer club has opened an internal inquiry to clarify what happened between the two players. And the chief executive, José Ángel Sánchez, went to the training area to gather the squad.

The confrontation began during a training match on Wednesday when, according to sources close to Valdebebas, Valverde began flying into tackles on Tchouameni with more force than the drill required. When the session ended, the Uruguayan still hadn’t cooled off and waited for the Frenchman to continue the dispute, which carried on into the dressing room.

On Thursday, Real Madrid held another training session to prepare for Sunday’s clásico — the name given to any match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona — at the Camp Nou, and Valverde still hadn’t cooled off after his clash with Tchouameni. Arbeloa put them on opposing sides in the training match, and the Uruguayan again directed his aggression toward the Frenchman. Once more, the dispute carried into the dressing room. There, they grappled, a few blows were exchanged, and Valverde slipped and hit his head against the table in the changing area. Medical staff treated the cut on site in Valdebebas, with Arbeloa present, before a doctor accompanied the player to the hospital for further checks.

Alarmed by the seriousness of the situation, José Ángel Sánchez summoned the squad for a meeting. Some players, like Dani Carvajal, had to return to the training complex to attend the club’s attempt to restore order.

Real Madrid has been sending out unmistakable signals of a club in turmoil, and the pace of the unraveling has quickened this week. On Tuesday afternoon, an anonymous source close to the club’s highest‑paid player, Kylian Mbappé, sent a statement to AFP insisting his holiday with his partner had been misinterpreted and defending his “commitment” to the club.

That same night, Álvaro Carreras posted on Instagram that Antonio Rüdiger had hit him in the dressing room — something the German player later apologized for — while also defending his own “commitment” to the team.

On Wednesday, training at Valdebebas ended with the first heated confrontation between Tchouameni and Valverde, confirmed to this newspaper by people present at Valdebebas.

The looming prospect of a second consecutive trophyless season has brought long‑simmering tensions and divisions in the dressing room to the surface. Since the 2024 Champions League, relations have broken down in a squad where some players haven’t spoken to each other for months. According to several sources with access to the dressing room, the group is still shaped by old youth‑team loyalties and resentments: one faction fell out with football manager Xabi Alonso during their academy years, and another has recently clashed with head coach Álvaro Arbeloa. Those fractures have now resurfaced in the first team.

The disappointing performances on the pitch and the internal divisions have pushed the board to work on what several people familiar with the plans call “a small revolution” for next season. They believe the situation cannot be fixed simply by appointing a new coach — something they already take for granted — but will require both departures and arrivals. In fact, what they describe as a small revolution may not be small at all: the same sources insist that the club needs “something people will notice.”

The board has identified shortcomings in footballing quality, leadership, and maturity. Across different levels of the club, there has been growing concern — and frustration — over the indifference shown by some of the younger players, including a recent signing. They have been alarmed by the drop in professional commitment, by egos inflated without results to back them up, and by the dismissive attitude certain players have shown after defeats and poor performances. Long‑serving staff members say they miss the standards of discipline, competitiveness, and commitment embodied by the heavyweights who have left the dressing room in recent years: Nacho, Kroos, and Modric, to name only the most recent.

With the departure of the squad’s senior leaders, the dressing room has been left without figures capable of imposing order, and players have grown wary of two inexperienced coaching staffs. A group distrusted Xabi Alonso’s assistants from the start, and Alonso’s authority weakened further when the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, publicly backed Vinicius after the forward’s very visible defiance during the first clásico. Arbeloa’s staff, with even less top‑level experience, has faced similar pushback, leading to tensions with Dani Carvajal, Raúl Asensio, Álvaro Carreras, and Dani Ceballos.

The club is also troubled by the presence of several individuals inside the dressing room who appear intent on leaking internal conflicts — something senior figures describe as a betrayal of trust. They believe the leak about the Valverde–Tchouameni incident was meant to cause damage.

Suspicion also surrounds the criticism of Mbappé’s holiday in southern Italy with his partner during his injury recovery. He returned to Madrid minutes before the Espanyol match, drawing heavy criticism from fans and irritation from some teammates. Inside the club, the uproar is seen as an attempt to shift blame toward Pérez, who spent years pursuing the player. Even so, the club’s leadereship believes Mbappé has yet to fully grasp what it means to be the cornerstone of Real Madrid.

Against this bleak backdrop, with no trophies in sight to mask the crisis, Arbeloa’s team prepares for Sunday’s clásico — a dangerous fixture in which Mbappé remains doubtful. If Madrid fail to win at Sunday’s game, they will be forced to watch Barcelona celebrate a second straight league title, confirming Real’s second consecutive season without a trophy.

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“The Men Who Want Their Foreskin Back,” reads the title of an article published in The Cut by Bianca Bosker, in which she discusses the case of a man named David Floyd, who discovered the concept of “foreskin restoration” through various online forums. Upon turning 18, he purchased a TLC Tugger, a non-surgical medical device designed for foreskin restoration (it uses silicone and tension to stretch the remaining penile skin and promote the growth of new tissue). This is a popular option for men seeking to recreate their foreskin after being circumcised. But it wasn’t enough. Over the years, he tried all sorts of methods to recover his foreskin until last winter, when he decided to undergo surgery, opting for an experimental procedure. He says that when he had sex with his husband after the operation, he cried with emotion.

The operation cost him $25,000, including travel from Pennsylvania to California, where plastic surgeon Sven Gunther operated on him. The surgeon proposed dissecting the penile skin and sliding it forward, incorporating a small portion of the scrotum into the shaft, and then reshaping the skin — transforming it from a column into a cone — so that the glans would remain covered.

Floyd has shared before‑, during‑, and after‑surgery photos of his penis on Reddit for anyone interested in following his path. And there’s no shortage of interest: Dr. Gunther has said he performs this type of operation every week. “I probably have an obsession,” he told The Cut.

The reporter notes that in recent years, physicians and scientists have quietly begun exploring the field of foreskin‑reconstruction surgery, driven by rising demand, the expansion of gender‑affirming care (which has helped surgeons like Gunther refine their skills in genital reshaping), and the decline in circumcision rates.

Male circumcision involves removing the skin that covers the tip of the penis, leaving the glans exposed. There are medical reasons for performing it (such as when a patient has phimosis), religious reasons (it is very common among Jews and Muslims), and also pediatric‑cultural ones (in the United States, it is believed to make hygiene easier and potentially reduce the risk of urinary infections and STIs).

Although circumcision rates range from 2% to 20% in Europe and reach up to 71% in the United States, experts say the figure is considerably higher than what would be acceptable. Opponents argue that far from being harmless, circumcision is irreversible and marks men for life, with some going so far as to claim that it infringes on a child’s right to physical integrity and bodily autonomy.

Dr. Juan Manuel Poyato, urologist and andrologist at Next Fertility, tells EL PAÍS that prophylactic circumcision is a topic that has always generated much controversy and conflicting opinions. “In the current view, it is very important to address the issue based on scientific evidence and respect for patient autonomy, but above all, separating myths from realities,” he says.

The doctor clarifies that, technically speaking, it is not currently possible to reimplant the original tissue once it has been removed, especially if several years have passed. What some men often seek is foreskin restoration, whether for religious reasons or personal preferences.

“To achieve this, there are aesthetic reconstruction techniques, through the design of a neoprepuce using skin from the body or the base of the penis, with quite satisfactory results,” he says. “By exerting constant mechanical tension on the skin of the penis for several hours a day, after months or years, the skin cells [keratinocytes and fibroblasts] detect the stretching and activate cell division [mitosis], so that the skin tissue is stretched to cover the glans.”

Sex and human rights

When Marilyn Milos, a nursing student, first witnessed a baby being circumcised, she was shocked when the doctor told her there was no medical reason to do it. That was in 1979. Since then, she has become an advocate for eradicating medically unnecessary circumcision and founded the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Center (NOCIRC). “It’s a sexual issue and it’s a human rights issue,” she said.

Dr. Juan Manuel Poyato points out that Milos’s stance has been fundamental in shifting the debate from the purely medical realm to one of ethics and human rights. “From the perspective of established science, her argument regarding bodily integrity carries considerable weight: the foreskin is, after all, healthy and functional tissue, which is why Milos doesn’t hesitate to describe circumcision as an unnecessary mutilation,” he explains.

For his part, José Martín del Pliego, a sexologist and psychologist, says that many men feel this procedure was performed on them in childhood without their consent. “This generates feelings of loss, anger, or betrayal, and questions about bodily autonomy,” he says. “Previously, it was common practice due to cultural and religious traditions, old medical beliefs about hygiene or prevention, and social normalization. For decades, and even today, the child’s opinion wasn’t considered important.”

He continues: “Today, the trend is toward preservation whenever possible, unless the man expressly wishes otherwise. Most international pediatric associations maintain that, although it has certain benefits, these are not significant enough to justify standardized, routine, or mandatory procedures, preferring that the individual decide upon reaching maturity.”

“The foreskin isn’t extra skin, it’s essential,” says attorney Eric Clopper, president of Intact Global Inc., which protects children from non-religious genital mutilation, in a video on Instagram. “The foreskin contains many thousands of fine tactile nerve endings. It protects the head of the penis and it enables natural lubrication during intimacy. It is not a mistake. It is a feature.”

“More and more men are turning to non-surgical foreskin restoration,” he adds in another video. “Whether for comfort, sensitivity, or to reclaim what was taken, the growing number of restorers shows one thing: circumcision is NOT as ‘harmless’ as they say.”

Dr. Gabriel Bastidas agrees, pointing out that far from being just “excess skin,” the foreskin is a specialized tissue containing thousands of fine tactile nerve endings. “It is designed, among other reasons, to ‘caress’ the glans and generate a soft, pleasurable sensation during sexual intercourse,” he explains. “When the glans is permanently exposed [post-circumcision], it undergoes a process called keratinization. The mucosa becomes thicker and less sensitive to protect itself from constant friction with clothing.”

He continues: “By covering the glans again, whether through restoration or surgery, the epithelium could regain its moisture and a thinner texture, which usually translates into increased tactile pleasure and a lower arousal threshold. Therefore, these men’s desire might not be a whim, but rather a quest to recover a biological sensory function.”

“The interesting thing is to understand that it is not just a medical or sexual issue,” concludes José Martín del Pliego, “but one where body, identity, culture and consent intersect.”

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