LOS ANGELES — Here’s the story … of how a modest mid-century home became a Los Angeles landmark.

The LA city council voted unanimously on Wednesday to designate the the so-called “ Brady Bunch ” house in the San Fernando Valley as a historic-cultural monument.

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The vote grants landmark protections to the house on Dilling Avenue that was used for exterior shots of the TV sitcom that ran from 1969 to 1974.

Interior scenes were shot on a soundstage, with sets that bore no resemblance to the property that become a photo-op magnet for “Brady Bunch” fans.

The show, which lived on for decades in syndication, featured the comic travails of a family of six blended-family siblings — “the youngest one in curls,” as the theme song explained.

The shingle-and-stone home with a peaked roof also appeared in the 1995 big screen film “The Brady Bunch Movie” and its sequel.

The landmark status protects the home, built in 1959, from demolition or major renovations — but doesn’t prohibit them. If owners ever decide to make big changes, they would be subject to a design review and the Cultural Heritage Commission can delay the process to find preservation solutions.

The nonprofit LA Conservancy pushed for the landmark status and CEO Adrian Scott Fine said he was thrilled it was approved. He said fans of the show have a personal connection to the property.

“If you watched the ‘Brady Bunch,’ you knew this house. People make a pilgrimage to see it,” Fine said Wednesday. “To have it designated like this, it makes it all the sweeter.”

When the house went on the market in 2018, the cable network HGTV won a bidding war that drove the price up to $3.5 million — or $1.6 million over the listing price for the then-2,400-square-foot residence.

The house was expanded, remodeled and redecorated to give it trademark elements of the set version, including the wood-paneled living room with a floating staircase and an orange-and-green kitchen.

The process was documented in a four-part HGTV miniseries called “A Very Brady Renovation.”

By MILEXSY DURÁN

HAVANA (AP) — Swaths of Cuba remained without power on Thursday nearly a day after a huge blackout hit the western part of the island in the latest outage blamed on a fragile electric grid and a lack of fuel.

Crews worked overnight to repair a broken boiler at one of Cuba’s largest thermoelectric plants, but officials have warned that it could take three to four days for power to be fully restored.

State media reported that some 444,700 customers in Havana, or 52%, had power, as well as 30 hospitals and 10 water supply stations.

But millions still remained without power, including Miguel Leyva, 65, who lives with his mother and brother, both of whom are ill.

“I have no words to describe what I’m going through: the heat, the mosquitoes and no electricity. The food could spoil,” he said. “I’m aware of all the problems that exist, but listen, it’s been more than 24 hours now.”

Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines wrote on X that the electrical system is operating “in a limited capacity, prioritizing basic services, primarily health and water supply.”

State media reported that two power plants are offline because of a lack of petroleum.

Sonia Vázquez, 61, said the blackout didn’t stop her from selling coffee to passersby daily, saying she prepared it with gas at 5 a.m. under a rechargeable lamp.

“I didn’t sleep last night. Too many mosquitoes,” said Vázquez, who lives with her grandson.

Meanwhile, 57-year-old cafe owner José Ignacio Dorta, said that some of his frozen food has spoiled.

“We’ve looked for ways to prevent further spoilage. We’re working on it. We hope nothing else will spoil,” he said.

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Cuba has long struggled with an aging electric grid and intermittent fuel supplies, but the crisis has deepened in recent months.

Key oil shipments from Venezuela were halted after the United States attacked the South American country in early January. Then later that month, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that he would impose tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.

Last month, Cuba’s government implemented austere fuel-saving measures and warned that jet fuel wouldn’t be available at nine airports until mid-March.

Wednesday’s outage is the second one to hit western Cuba in three months.

The outage in early December lasted nearly 12 hours. Officials said that a fault in a transmission line linking two power plants caused an overload and led to the collapse of the energy system’s western sector.

Some of Cuba’s thermoelectric plants have been operating for more than three decades and receive little maintenance because of high costs. U.S. sanctions also have prevented the government from buying new equipment and specialized parts, officials say.

Dánica Coto contributed to this report from San José, Costa Rica.

By JOSEPH WILSON

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s Pedro Sánchez has once again emerged as Europe’s most consistently vocal critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, drawing his ire for refusing to allow the American military to stage operations for its attacks on Iran from Spanish military bases.

Trump lashed out at the Spanish prime minister on Tuesday, saying he would “ cut off all trade with Spain ” in retaliation for the affront. The spat intensified the next day when Spain’s foreign minister contradicted a claim by the White House press secretary that Spain had heard Trump’s message “loud and clear” and was cooperating with the U.S. military.

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While denouncing the repressive regime in Tehran, Sánchez said he would not back a war that he said was an unjustified assault.

“We are not going to be complicit in something that is bad for the world and is also contrary to our values and interests, just out of fear of reprisals from someone,” Sánchez said, using the slogan “No to the war” in a speech this week.

The tussle over the Spanish military bases is likely more a diplomatic question than one of military consequence. The U.S. has bases across Europe and the Middle East, and other European countries have agreed to cooperate.

Madrid and Washington have had stable, friendly and mostly low-key relations for decades, starting in the 20th century when the U.S. began sharing military bases with Spain when the latter was still under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

Sánchez, 54, first took power in 2018 and is one of Europe’s most prominent left-leaning leaders.

He has stuck by the pillars of progressive politics, defending feminism, authorized immigration, human rights, the rules-based international order and the importance of climate change — all topics that have become punching bags of Trump’s MAGA movement and far-right politicians in many European neighbors.

Even before the Iran war, Sánchez has stood out as an ideological rival to Trump on a number of issues.

Calls for peace in Gaza

Sánchez has been among the most vocal critics of Israel’s military action in Gaza. He has consistently criticized the massive civilian causalities from Israel’s campaign following Hamas’ surprise attack on Israeli territory in 2023.

“This is not self-defense, it’s not even an attack — it’s the extermination of a defenseless people,” he said, while touring Europe and the Middle East to try to broker a peace deal.

No to more defense spending

Among NATO members, Spain was the only country to refuse to agree to commit to increasing military spending to 5% of gross domestic product. Sánchez secured a last-minute exemption in a NATO meeting last year, saying that Spain will only spend up to 2.1%, which he called “sufficient and realistic.”

Trump responded by floating the idea that Spain should be kicked out of the military bloc. That has so far remained a veiled threat.

Bucking the anti-immigrant trend

While many European countries raised barriers at their borders and the Trump administration broadened an immigrant crackdown in the U.S., Spain is in the process of granting work and residency permits to half a million foreigners already in Spain.

Sánchez has pointedly alluded to Trump as he extolled the benefits of migration for the country’s strong economy.

“MAGA-style leaders may say that our country can’t handle taking in so many migrants — that this is a suicidal move, the desperate act of a collapsing country,” he wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. “But don’t let them fool you. Spain is booming.”

Against the Tech Bros

Under Sánchez, Spain has joined countries like Australia and France in trying to curb the use of social media among younger teens. That’s in direct contrast to the Trump administration’s embrace of Big Tech companies and what they consider the defense of the freedom of speech on social media.

Elon Musk, X’s owner, lashed out at the Spanish leader last month, calling Sánchez “the true fascist totalitarian” after he announced a plan to prohibit under 16-year-olds from accessing social media accounts.

AP journalist Suman Naishadham contributed from Madrid.

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

MIAMI (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday urged Latin American countries to take a more aggressive approach against drug cartels, warning that the Trump administration would be forced to act by itself if governments fail to effectively combat criminal organizations that directly threaten the United States and border security.

“America is prepared to take on these threats and go on the offense alone if necessary,” Hegseth said in a speech at U.S. Southern Command in Miami with defense officials from allied governments around the region.

Hegseth spoke at what the Pentagon billed as the first “Americas Counter Cartel Conference,” with representatives from Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic among more than a dozen conservative governments closely aligned with President Donald Trump. Most of the military leaders came to Florida with their presidents, who on Saturday are scheduled to attend a summit with Trump at his nearby golf club.

The defense secretary said the U.S. and Latin America had a shared Christian heritage and that it was at stake as a result of decades of inaction and a purely law enforcement approach to fighting organized crime and terrorist networks in the Western Hemisphere.

“Business as usual will not stand,” he said, pledging U.S. support to combat cartels, restore deterrence and “make the Americas great again.”

His comments were echoed by Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff who is a key architect of Trump’s aggressive stance in the region.

“Cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS (Islamic State group) and al-Qaida of this hemisphere and must be treated just as ruthlessly,” Miller said, adding that “hard power” and lethal force — not criminal justice — must be used to repel the groups.

“The human rights that we are going to protect are not those of the savages that rape, torture and murder but those of the average citizens,” he said.

The meetings come as the Republican administration seeks to leverage military assets to restore dominance in the hemisphere while now also fighting a war in Iran.

When Trump took office in January 2025, he pledged a renewed focus on Latin American, a strategic pivot that his national security strategy describes as the “Trump Corollary” to the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to ban European incursions in the Americas. Key to that objective is a greater reliance on the U.S. military to neutralize drug cartels long blamed for soaring crime and murder rates that hold back Latin America’s economic potential and fuel migration to the United States.

“For too long, leaders in Washington abandoned the simple wisdom of the Monroe Doctrine,” Hegseth said, referring to Trump’s focus on the region’s security as the “Donroe Doctrine.”

Trump early on designated cartels from Mexico and Venezuela as foreign terrorist organizations. Later, he declared that Washington was in “armed conflict” with those groups.

The extraordinary assertion of presidential power to combat drug trafficking is at the heart of the White House’s legal rationale for dozens of strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean — so far, 44 boat strikes that have resulted in at least 150 deaths.

A massive naval deployment, unseen in Latin America since the end of the Cold War, also paved the way for the U.S. military operation in early January that captured Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolas Maduro. He is now facing drug charges in New York.

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Trump’s approach has won support among conservatives in the region such as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who rode to power on promises to use a “mano dura” — iron fist — against criminal groups. Just this week, Ecuador for the first time carried out joint operations with U.S. military forces against organized crime groups.

But relying on the military to supplant the role traditionally performed by civilian law enforcement entails risks in a region where military institutions and oversight are weaker, armed forces have a legacy of human rights abuses and corruption is a perennial challenge.

“Without strong rule-of-law institutions and civilian oversight, militarizing the fight against cartels can weaken the very institutions needed to defeat them,” said Rebecca Bill Chavez, president of the Inter-American Dialogue and a former deputy assistant defense secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs.