Biman Bangladesh Airlines is working to expand its international routes to enhance air connectivity for Bangladeshi passengers, Managing Director and CEO of the national flag carrier, Shafiul Azim, has said. “We have taken initiatives to operate flights on some important routes across the globe including to New York, Chennai, Bengaluru, Los Angeles, Rome, Male, and Guangzhou.” The Biman CEO shared the information during an exclusive interview with UNB “Gradually we will be able to start flights on these routes. We are evaluating and working on how to start flights on each of these routes within the shortest possible time,” he added. Biman currently operates regular flights to 19 destinations around the world. “We have a fleet of 21 aircraft including Dreamliners. Ten new aircraft are being purchased from Airbus,” he added. New aircraft from Airbus will facilitate the expansion of routes and will open up new directions in coordination with other countries, the Biman CEO hoped. Read: Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Gulf Air forge strategic partnership for enhanced travel connectivity With the addition of the new aircraft, the number of flights on popular routes can also be increased, which would in turn create a more competitive market and help in reducing ticket prices. The Biman CEO said, “We are working on expanding our network not only in Asia but also in western countries, especially in Europe.” Besides, Biman has already done everything to launch direct flights from Dhaka to New York, he said. He further said some formal work is going on with Civil Aviation, Federal Aviation Authority and their Department of Transport. If everything goes well, all activities regarding flight operations on the new routes, including New York, are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. He said that Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Gulf Air have recently started a partnership – set to revolutionise travel between Bangladesh and the Gulf region. As a result, passengers can travel from Dhaka to Bahrain and Bahrain to Dhaka with onward connection to Chattogram and Sylhet via both airlines (Biman and Gulf Air). Read: Biman Bangladesh Airlines launches online travel date change service In addition, it will benefit both airlines through enhanced operational efficiency and shared expertise in the aviation industry, he added. “We are starting flights to Narita (Tokyo), Japan from September 1. Chennai is also being considered as a destination. Apart from this, we are going to resume flights to Guangzhou in China by the middle of September. Besides, we are trying to establish communication and code sharing with other countries through Narita in Japan,” the Biman CEO said. Regarding the launch of flights to Japan, he said that Bangladesh has very good bilateral relations with Japan, and they have investments here. “We are launching a direct Dhaka-Narita (Tokyo) flight from September 1, 2023 and it is a major achievement for us,” the Biman Bangladesh Airlines CEO said, adding, “Bangladeshi students are going to study in Japan and Japanese businessmen are coming here. Besides, many people travel to Japan from neighbouring countries. We have a good air network with the West compared to the East. Through Dhaka-Narita (Tokyo) direct flights, a new horizon will open,” CEO Azim added. Besides, Biman will take initiative for improvement of the Bangladesh-Japan tourism sector. Read more: 2 flights of Biman Bangladesh Airlines on Friday cancelled At the same time, “we are moving forward with marketing strategies so that passengers from neighbouring countries can travel to and from Japan via Dhaka,” the Biman Bangladesh Airlines CEO said.

Authorities searched for a motive for the gunman who killed 10 people at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club during Lunar New Year celebrations, slayings that sent a wave of fear through Asian American communities in the region and cast a shadow over festivities nationwide. The suspect was found Sunday, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a van in which authorities say he fled after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting Saturday night. The massacre was the nation’s fifth mass killing this month. It was also the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the man as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran and said no other suspects were at large. Luna said the motive remained unclear for the attack, which wounded 10 people, seven of whom were still hospitalized. Speaking at a Sunday evening news conference, the sheriff said he didn't have their exact ages but that all of the people killed appeared to be over 50. The suspect was carrying what Luna described as a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine, and a second handgun was discovered in the van where Tran died. Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese said Sunday evening that within three minutes of receiving the call, officers arrived at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park. There, they found carnage inside and people trying to flee through all the doors. “When they came into the parking lot it, was chaos,” Wiese said. Read more: LA mass shooting suspect kills 10 near Lunar New Year fest About 20 to 30 minutes after the first attack, the gunman entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in the nearby city of Alhambra. But people wrested the weapon away from him and witnesses said he fled in a white van, according to Luna. The van was found in Torrance, another community home to many Asian Americans, about 22 miles (34.5 kilometers) from that second location. After surrounding the van for hours, law enforcement officials swarmed and entered the vehicle. A person’s body appeared to be slumped over the wheel and was later removed. Members of a SWAT team looked through the van’s contents before walking away. The sheriff’s department earlier released photos of an Asian man believed to be the suspect, apparently taken from a security camera. Congresswoman Judy Chu said she still has questions about the attack but hopes residents now feel safe. “The community was in fear thinking that they should not go to any events because there was an active shooter,” Chu said, speaking at Sunday's news conference. “What was the motive for this shooter?” she said. "Did he have a mental illness? Was he a domestic violence abuser? How did he gets these guns and was it through legal means or not?” Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and is composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans. The shooting happened in the heart of its downtown where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities. A police car was parked near a large banner that proclaimed “Happy Year of the Rabbit!” The celebration in Monterey Park is one of California’s largest. Two days of festivities, which have been attended by as many as 100,000 people in past years, were planned. But officials canceled Sunday’s events following the shooting. Tony Lai, 35, of Monterey Park was stunned when he came out for his early morning walk to learn that the noises he heard in the night were gunshots. Read more: 12 people injured in shooting at Louisiana nightclub “I thought maybe it was fireworks. I thought maybe it had something to do with Lunar New Year,” he said. “And we don’t even get a lot of fireworks here. It’s weird to see this. It’s really safe here. We’re right in the middle of the city, but it’s really safe.” An Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. shows that 2022 was one of the nation's worst years with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed, not including the perpetrator. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were briefed on the situation, aides said. Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were thinking of those killed and wounded, and he directed federal authorities to support the investigation. The Star Ballroom Dance Studio's website said it was hosting an event Saturay called “Star Night” from 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. The studio is a few blocks from city hall on Monterey Park's main thoroughfare of Garvey Avenue, which is dotted with strip malls of small businesses whose signs are in both English and Chinese. Cantonese and Mandarin are both widely spoken, Chinese holidays are celebrated and Chinese films are screened regularly in the city. Wynn Liaw, 57, who lives about two blocks from the Monterey Park studio, said she was shocked that such a crime would happen, especially during Lunar New Year’s celebrations. “Chinese people, they consider Chinese New Year very, very special” — a time when “you don’t do anything that will bring bad luck the entire year,” she said.

Nick Barragan is used to wearing a mask because his job in the Los Angeles film industry has long required it, so he won’t be fazed if the nation’s most populous county reinstates rules requiring face coverings because of another spike in coronavirus cases across the country. “I feel fine about it because I’ve worn one pretty much constantly for the last few years. It’s become a habit,” said Barragan, masked up while out running errands Wednesday. Los Angeles County, home to 10 million residents, is facing a return to a broad indoor mask mandate later this month if current trends in hospital admissions continue, county health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week. Nationwide, the latest COVID-19 surge is driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant, which now accounts for 65% of cases with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to get around the protection offered by vaccination. With the new omicron variants again pushing hospitalizations and deaths higher in recent weeks, states and cities are rethinking their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public. Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late.  “It’s well past the time when the warning could have been put out there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.” Global trends for the two mutants have been apparent for weeks, experts said — they quickly out-compete older variants and push cases higher wherever they appear. Yet Americans have tossed off their masks and jumped back into travel and social gatherings. And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against COVID-19′s worst outcomes. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of U.S. officials. “We learn a lot from how the virus is acting elsewhere and we should apply the knowledge here,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha appeared on morning TV on Wednesday urging booster shots and renewed vigilance. Yet Mokdad said federal health officials need to be push harder on masks indoors, early detection and prompt antiviral treatment. “They are not doing all that they can,” Mokdad said. The administration’s challenge, in the view of the White House, is not their messaging, but people’s willingness to hear it — due to pandemic fatigue and the politicization of the virus response. For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to make use of free or cheap at-home rapid tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death. On Tuesday, the White House response team called on all adults 50 and older to urgently get a booster if they haven’t yet this year — and dissuaded people from waiting for the next generation of shots expected in the fall when they can roll up their sleeves and get some protection now. Requiring masks again “helps us to reduce risk,” Ferrer told Los Angeles County supervisors. She is expected to discuss details of the potential new county mandate during a public health briefing Thursday afternoon. “I do recognize that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards,” Ferrer said Tuesday. For most of the pandemic, Los Angeles County has required masks in some indoor spaces, including health care facilities, Metro trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. The new mandate would expand the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools. It’s unclear what enforcement might look like. Under past mandates, officials favored educating people over issuing citations and fines. Sharon Fayette ripped off her mask the moment she stepped out of a Lyft ride in Los Angeles Wednesday and groaned when informed another universal mask requirement might be coming. “Oh man, when will it end?” she wondered about the pandemic. Fayette said she was exhausted by shifting regulations and dubious another mandate would be followed by most residents. “I just think people are over it, over all the rules,” she said. Barragan said he learned a harsh lesson about the effectiveness of masks when he went without a face covering at a film industry mixer last month in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be fine because we were all outdoors,” said Barragan, 35. A few days later he started feeling sick and, sure enough, tested positive. He’d avoided catching the virus for more than two years because he was religious about masking up. “The one time I took it off, I caught it!” he laughed. The nation’s brief lull in COVID deaths has reversed. Last month, daily deaths were falling, though they never matched last year’s low, and deaths are now heading up again. The seven-day average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose 26% over the past two weeks to 489 on July 12. Also read: Ensure wearing masks, social distance, health guidelines amid Covid surge in world: NTAC The coronavirus is not killing nearly as many as it was last fall and winter, and experts do not expect death to reach those levels again soon. But hundreds of daily deaths for a summertime respiratory illness would normally be jaw-dropping, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June. “That would be all hands on deck,” Noymer said. “People would be like, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’” Instead, simple, proven precautions are not being taken. Vaccinations, including booster shots for those eligible, lower the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. But less than half of all eligible U.S. adults have gotten a single booster shot, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster have received one. “This has been a botched booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. “They haven’t gotten across that two shots is totally inadequate,” he said. Noymer said if he were in charge of the nation’s COVID response he would level with the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask indoors and “until we get better vaccines, there’s going to be a new normal of a disease that kills over 100,000 Americans a year and impacts life expectancy.” That message probably wouldn’t fly for political reasons, Noymer acknowledged. It also might not fly with people who are tired of taking precautions after more than two years of the pandemic. Valerie Walker of New Hope, Pennsylvania, is mindful of the latest surge but is hardly alarmed. “I was definitely concerned back then,” she said of the pandemic’s early days, with images of body bags on nightly news broadcasts. “Now there’s fatigue, things were getting better and there was a vaccine. So I would say from a scale between one and 10, I’m probably at a four.” Even with two friends now sick with the virus, and her husband recently recovered, Walker says she has bigger problems. “Sometimes when I think about it I still put a mask on when I go into a store, but honestly, it is not a daily thought for me,” she said.

Video streaming platform Bongo will release Christian Bale's "Harsh Times" dubbed in Bangla as "Bondhu Amar" Friday. Christian Bale (Jim) plays the role of a Gulf War veteran, and he believes it is his sworn duty to protect Americans by policing the streets of Los Angeles. His dreams are shattered when he is rejected by the Los Angeles Police Department. Read: Three films to enthral moviegoers on Eid-ul-Adha But, Jim is soon offered a position in the Department of Homeland Security, leading him to recruit his unemployed best friend Mike (Freddy Rodriquez). The story revolves around how they fight against a lurking crime. Bongo already released comedy film "The Good Girl" dubbed in Bangla as "Nishidhdho Prem.'' Here, Jennifer Anniston portrays the role of a depressed woman who lives with her husband in a small local town in Texas. Out of boredom, she starts an affair.

Four people were killed and one was wounded when multiple shooters opened fire at a house party near Los Angeles early Sunday, authorities said. Police responded around 1:30 a.m. to reports of shots fired at a home in the city of Inglewood, Mayor James Butts told reporters. Read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas Two women and two men were shot and killed and another man was hospitalized in critical condition and expected to survive, CBS2 reported. Butts called the shooting an “ambush” involving multiple weapons including a rifle and a handgun. The mayor described the incident as the worst single shooting crime in Inglewood since the 1990s. The victims appear to have been targeted, he added. Butts urged the suspects to turn themselves in. “We will find you and prosecute you,” he said. Authorities are searching for multiple suspects, he said. Officers interviewed witnesses and canvassed the neighborhood looking for possible security camera footage. Read: 4 people injured after shooting at Chicago-area mall The man who survived admitted being a member of a street gang in another city and investigators are trying to determine if the shooting was gang related, CBS2 said. Inglewood is a city of about 100,000 people 10 miles (16 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It’s home to SoFi Stadium, where the Super Bowl will be played next month.

The pilot of a small plane averted death twice in a span of minutes on Sunday, first when he crash-landed onto railroad tracks, then when Los Angeles police rescued him just before a commuter train smashed into the aircraft. Bodycam video showed the officers working furiously to disentangle the bloodied pilot from the cockpit of the crumpled Cessna 172. “Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!” someone yelled as the officers dragged the man away seconds before the Metrolink train, its horn blaring, barreled through the plane. The single-engine plane had engine failure during takeoff from Whiteman Airport in the San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima and went down moments later, police Capt. Christopher Zine told reporters. The plane ended up on a rail crossing in an intersection adjacent to the airport and just blocks from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division station. Officers arrived at the crash scene almost immediately. Read: Sorrow, grief shatter Bronx community after deadly fire “I had requested Metrolink to cease all train activity, but apparently that didn’t happen,” Sgt. Joseph Cavestany told CBSN Los Angeles. Officer Christopher Aboyte told KABC-TV that he initially stood by the plane trying to keep the pilot, who was seated, conscious and alert. Then, bells and flashing lights signaled an oncoming train, Officer Robert Sherock told the station. “We looked and sure enough there was a train headed right for us at full speed,” he said. Officer Damien Castro told KNBC-TV that training and experience kicked in, and adrenaline helped. “When things like that happen you kind of just go and do it,” Castro said. “You don’t really have much time to think.” The bodycam captured the sight and sound of the train blasting through where the pilot had been seconds earlier. “I think this guy needs to buy a lottery ticket ’cause he pretty much cheated death twice within 10 minutes,” Sherock told KNBC. Read: Myanmar’s Suu Kyi sentenced to 4 more years in prison The pilot was the only person on board. He was taken to a hospital. He was identified as 70-year-old Mark Jenkins by a relative, Dan Mortensen, who told KNBC-TV that the pilot suffered “pretty significant” damage to his face including broken bones and also had broken ribs. Jenkins is a “very experienced” former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, said Mortensen, who co-owns the plane. Mortensen said Jenkins probably intended to land on the tracks to avoid possibly hitting people on the ground. “He didn’t anticipate a train coming through at 80 mph,” Mortensen said. Metrolink service was halted and road traffic was detoured in the area about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.

Kevin Spacey and his production companies must pay the studio behind “House of Cards” more than $30 million because of losses brought on by his firing for sexual misconduct, according to an arbitration decision made final Monday. A document filed in Los Angeles Superior Court requesting a judge's approval of the ruling says that the arbitrators found that Spacey violated his contract's demands for professional behavior by “engaging certain conduct in connection with several crew members in each of the five seasons that he starred in and executive produced House of Cards.” MRC, the studio behind “House of Cards,” had to fire Spacey, halt production of the show's sixth season, rewrite it to remove Spacey's central character, and shorten it from 13 to eight episodes to meet deadlines, resulting in tens of millions in losses, the document said. “The safety of our employees, sets and work environments is of paramount importance to MRC and why we set out to push for accountability," MRC said in a statement Monday. Also read: Disney’s 'Eternals' tops domestic box office for 2nd weekend A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. His attorneys argued that the actor's actions were not a substantial factor in the show's losses. The ruling came after a legal fight of more than three years and an eight-day evidentiary hearing that was kept secret from the public, along with the rest of the dispute. Spacey appealed the decision to a panel of three more private arbitrators, who found for the plaintiffs, making the decision final, and public, on Monday. "MRC stood its ground, pursued this case doggedly, and obtained the right result in the end,” plaintiff's attorney Michael Kump said in a statement. The 62-year-old Oscar winner's career came to an abrupt halt late in 2017 as the #MeToo movement gained momentum. Actor Anthony Rapp, who has appeared in “Rent” on Broadway and film as well as in “Star Trek: Discovery” on television, said Spacey made a sexual advance on him when he was 14 at a party in the 1980s. Also read: Brazilian singer and Latin Grammy winner dies in plane crash At the time, Spacey issued a statement saying he didn’t remember the encounter but apologized. Several other accusers followed. Some, including Rapp, have filed lawsuits. Independent investigations found widespread sexual harassment of those who worked under him. Spacey was fired or removed from several projects, most notably “House of Cards,” the Netflix political thriller where for five seasons he played lead character Frank Underwood, a power-hungry congressman who becomes president. The one criminal case brought against him, an indecent assault and battery charge stemming from the alleged groping of an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket resort, was dismissed by Massachusetts prosecutors in 2019.

A wildfire that burned several homes near Los Angeles may signal that the region is facing the same dangers that have scorched Northern California. The fire in San Bernardino County erupted Wednesday afternoon, quickly burned several hundred acres and damaged or destroyed at least a dozen homes and outbuildings in the foothills northeast of LA, fire officials said. Crews used shovels and bulldozers and mounted an air attack to keep the South Fire from the tiny communities of Lytle Creek and Scotland near the Cajon Pass. Some 600 homes and other buildings were threatened along with power transmission lines, and 1,000 residents were under evacuation orders. Read:Crews struggle to stop fire bearing down on Lake Tahoe By nightfall, firefighters appeared to have gained the upper hand and few flames were to be seen. But the blaze was worrying because Southern California’s high fire season is typically later in the year when strong, dry Santa Ana winds blast out of the interior and flow toward the coast. After a few cooler days, the southern region was expected to see a return of hot weather heading into the weekend. In addition to dangerously dry conditions, the region is faced with firefighting staffing that is increasingly stretched thin, said Lyn Sieliet, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino National Forest. “Some of our firefighters that we normally have on our forests are working on fires in Northern California, or Idaho and Washington,” she told KTLA-TV. “We don’t have the full staff that we normally do.” The largest fires in the state and in the nation were in Northern California, where they have burned down small mountain towns and destroyed huge swaths of tinder-dry forest. The Caldor Fire destroyed some 500 homes since Aug. 14 in the Sierra Nevada southwest of Lake Tahoe, including much of the tiny hamlet of Grizzly Flats. It was 12% contained and threatened more than 17,000 structures. Buck Minitch, a firefighter with the Pioneer Fire Protection District, was called to the fire lines last week while his wife fled their Grizzly Flats home with their two daughters, three dogs, a kitten and duffel bag of clothes, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Read:Pristine Lake Tahoe shrouded in smoke from threatening fire Hannah Minitch evacuated to her parents’ property and the next morning received a text from her husband showing only a chimney where their house once stood. The two briefly wept together during a telephone call before he got back to work. “‘We’ve got nothing left here,’” she recalled him saying. “‘I’ve got to go protect what’s left for other people.’” At times the wind-driven fire was burning 1,000 acres of land per hour and on Wednesday it was less than two dozen miles from Lake Tahoe, an alpine vacation and tourist spot that straddles the California-Nevada state line. There weren’t any evacuations in Tahoe but the fire continued to cast a sickly yellow pall of smoke over the scenic region. South Lake Tahoe and Tahoe City on the west shore had the nation’s worst air pollution at midmorning Wednesday, according to AirNow, a partnership of federal, state and local air agencies. Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history at 1,160 square miles (3,004 square kilometers), was burning only about 65 miles (104 kilometers) to the north. It was 45% contained. Some 700 homes were among nearly 1,300 buildings that have been destroyed. In the southern Sierra Nevada, there was growing concern as the French Fire expanded near Lake Isabella, a popular fishing and boating destination. About 10 communities were under evacuation orders. The fire has blackened 32 square miles (83 square kilometers) since Aug. 18. Read: Winds threaten to fan destructive California wildfire Smoke from the fires had fouled air farther south. The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an advisory through Thursday morning for large portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Nationally, 92 large fires were burning in 13 mainly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Climate change has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.

A passenger was taken to the hospital Friday night after jumping out of a moving plane at Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said. United Express flight 5365, operated by SkyWest, was pulling away from a gate shortly after 7 p.m. when the man unsuccessfully tried to breach the cockpit, then managed to open the service door and jumped down the emergency slide onto the tarmac, according to the airport and SkyWest. The man was taken into custody on the taxiway, treated for injuries that were not life-threatening and taken to the hospital, authorities said. READ: Israeli warplanes stage more heavy strikes across Gaza City The twin-engine Embraer 175, which was headed to Salt Lake City, returned to its gate, the airport said. It was still there hours later. Nobody else aboard the plane was injured. The FBI was investigating. It was the second disruption at LAX in two days. READ: FAA grounds certain planes after engine failure over Denver On Thursday, a driver plowed through a chain-link fence at a FedEx cargo facility and went onto the airfield, crossing runways as police chased the car. Police said the driver was detained and no injuries were reported. Two runways were briefly closed.

After 13 years of near silence in the conservatorship that controls her life and money, Britney Spears passionately told a judge Wednesday that she wants to end the “abusive” case that has made her feel demoralized and enslaved. Speaking in open court for the first time in the case, Spears condemned her father and others who control the conservatorship, which she said has compelled her to use birth control and take other medications against her will, and prevented her from getting married or having another child. “This conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good,” the 39-year-old Spears said. “I deserve to have a life.” She spoke fast and sprinkled profanity into the written speech that lasted more than 20 minutes as her parents, fans and journalists listed to an audio livestream. Many of the details Spears revealed have been carefully guarded by the court for years. Spears told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny that “I want to end this conservatorship without being evaluated.” Penny thanked the pop star for her “courageous” words but made no rulings. A long legal process is likely before any decision is made on terminating the conservatorship. Spears said she wants to marry her boyfriend Sam Asghari and have a baby with him, but she is not allowed to even drive with him. “All I want is to own my money and for this to end and for my boyfriend to be able to drive me in his (expletive) car,” Spears said. “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,” Spears said, adding at another point, “I want my life back.” When an attorney representing her co-conservator said the hearing and transcript should be kept sealed if private medical information was to be revealed, Spears shouted her down, saying her words should be public. “They’ve done a good job at exploiting my life,” Spears said, “so I feel like it should be an open court hearing and they should listen and hear what I have to say.” She went on to say she was forced to take lithium — which made her feel “drunk” — after rehearsals broke down for a Vegas residency in 2019, which was subsequently canceled. She said all she had done was disagree with one part of the show’s choreography. “I’m not here to be anyone’s slave,” Spears said. “I can say no to a dance move.” “Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it,” Spears said. She accused her father of relishing his power over her, as he showed when she failed a series of psychological tests in 2019 and forced her to go into a mental hospital. “I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it,” Spears said. ”The control he had over someone as powerful as me, as he loved the control to hurt his own daughter 100,000%.” Spears said she felt forced to do the Las Vegas residency on the heels of a tour, and felt like a great weight was lifted when it was canceled. She has not performed or recorded since. Spears also said several nurses often watch her every move, not even letting her change her clothes in private. Vivian Thoreen, attorney for Spears’ father, James Spears, gave a brief statement on his behalf after conferring with him during a recess. “He is sorry to see his daughter suffering and in so much pain,” Thoreen said. “Mr. Spears loves his daughter, and misses her very much.” James Spears serves as co-conservator of his daughter’s finances, and also had control of her life decisions for most of the conservatorship. He currently serves as co-conservator of her finances. Britney Spears said her years-long public silence has falsely created the impression that she approved of her circumstances. “I’ve lied and told the whole world, ‘I’m OK, I’m happy,’ ” she said. “I’ve been in denial, I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized.” More than 100 fans from the so called #FreeBritney movement gathered outside the courthouse before the hearing, holding signs that read “Free Britney now!” and “Get out of Britney’s life!” Fan Marissa Cooper was inside the courtroom, and cried and occasionally clapped during the remarks. “It was insane,” Cooper said outside court. “Everyone that’s been following this has been called crazy since the beginning, and conspiracy theorists, so it just feels really really good to actually hear it from her.” Spears said she has not felt heard in any of her previous appearances before the court, all of which were sealed from the public. Her court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham III, said he made no attempt to “control, or filter, or edit” his client’s words. He said Spears has not officially asked him to file a petition to end the conservatorship. Spears said she had done research that showed her conservatorship could be ended without further evaluation of her. But under California law, the burden would be on her to prove she is competent to manage her own affairs, and an intensive investigation and evaluation is probably inevitable before it can come to an end. The conservatorship was put in place as she underwent a mental health crisis in 2008. She has credited its initial establishment with saving her from financial ruin and keeping her a top flight pop star. Her father and his attorneys have emphasized that she and her fortune, which court records put at more than $50 million, remain vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. Under the law, the burden would be on Spears to prove she is competent before the case could end. Britney Spears’ ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake was among many who expressed outrage at her revelations. “What’s happening to her is just not right,” Timberlake tweeted. “No woman should ever be restricted from making decisions about her own body.”