LOS ANGELES: A woman allegedly known as the “Ketamine Queen,” who prosecutors say sold “Friends” actor Matthew Perry the drugs that would kill him, didn’t look very regal when she appeared in a Los Angeles court this week.
If they can prove their case against Jasveen Sangha — that she made thousands of dollars from the troubled celebrity, selling him ketamine from her North Hollywood drug emporium — she might never see the outside of prison again.
In the meantime, her court appearance in a green Nirvana sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants was a far cry from the party-filled jet set lifestyle that investigators say she normally leads.
The dual British-American national was one of five people charged in connection with the October 2023 death of the much-loved Perry, who was found unresponsive in the pool of his swanky Los Angeles home.
Others included Perry’s live-in personal assistant, a go-between and two medical doctors who are alleged to have sold $12 vials to the celebrity for as much as $2,000 each, as they exchanged texts wondering “how much this moron will pay.”
But it was the arrest and charging of Sangha that has particularly shone a light on the seedy side of Hollywood glamor.
Court documents allege Sangha, 41, ran a huge drug operation out of her comfortable apartment — dubbed the “Sangha Stash House” — where investigators discovered ketamine, methamphetamine, cocaine and prescription medication like Xanax.
Her source for the ketamine, she told broker Erik Fleming — who is also charged in connection with Perry’s death — was a “master chef” and a “scientist” through whom she boasted she could “fill any order.”
“She only deal[s] with high end and celebs,” Fleming is said to have written to Perry’s personal assistant. “If it were not great stuff she’d lose her business.”
Photos posted on the Internet show Sangha partying with actor Charlie Sheen, a man with well-documented addiction problems.
Her own Instagram account is packed with proof of a glitzy lifestyle that appears to include trips on private jets and plates of caviar in an airport lounge.
Other photos show her sporting a range of designer wear, including jewelry from Van Cleef & Arpels, shoes by Louis Vuitton and clothes from Chanel.
But the high-roller lifestyle was apparently funded through a trade in misery, exploiting the desperation of addicts like Perry.
The dozens of doses of ketamine she allegedly sold him came in unmarked glass vials with a cheap blue plastic cap.
Prosecutors say Sangha was a consummate saleswoman, offering a sample for Perry to try before he committed serious money.
“It’s unmarked but it’s amazing,” she allegedly texted the middleman. “He [can] take one and try it and I have more if he likes.”
And the final batch Sangha is alleged to have supplied — the one that resulted in Perry’s death at just 54 — came with a sweetener: ketamine lollipops, prosecutors say.
Hours after news of the actor’s death emerged, Sangha set out to cover her tracks, investigators say, ordering middleman Fleming to “delete all our messages.”
Two weeks later, she jetted off to Tokyo, posting smiling pictures of her posing in a kimono.
The trip was one of around a dozen foreign jaunts she has taken since Perry died, a Los Angeles judge heard on Wednesday, which have also included Antigua and Mexico.
That judge remanded Sangha in custody on Wednesday and ordered her to stand trial in October, after hearing her deny all charges.
If convicted of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and the other charges she faces, Sangha could be jailed for the rest of her life.
Salvador Plasencia, one of the doctors also charged with supplying Perry, also denied the charges he faces.
The other defendants have either pleaded guilty or agreed to do so in relation to their charges. They face between 10 and 25 years in prison.
Ketamine Queen: the alleged dealer charged over Matthew Perry’s death
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Ketamine Queen: the alleged dealer charged over Matthew Perry’s death
Scientists show how pregnancy changes the brain in innumerable ways
- Although the study looks at only one person, it kicks off a large, international research project that aims to scan the brains of hundreds of women
Neuroscientist Liz Chrastil got the unique chance to see how her brain changed while she was pregnant and share what she learned in a new study that offers the first detailed map of a woman’s brain throughout gestation.
The transition to motherhood, researchers discovered, affects nearly every part of the brain.
Although the study looks at only one person, it kicks off a large, international research project that aims to scan the brains of hundreds of women and could one day provide clues about disorders like postpartum depression.
“It’s been a very long journey,” said Chrastil, co-author of the paper published Monday in Nature Neuroscience. “We did 26 scans before, during and after pregnancy” and found “some really remarkable things.”
More than 80 percent of the regions studied had reductions in the volume of gray matter, where thinking takes place. This is an average of about 4 percent of the brain — nearly identical to a reduction that happens during puberty. While less gray matter may sound bad, researchers said it probably isn’t; it likely reflects the fine-tuning of networks of interconnected nerve cells called “neural circuits” to prepare for a new phase of life.
The team began following Chrastil — who works at the University of California, Irvine, and was 38 years old at the time — shortly before she became pregnant through in vitro fertilization.
During the pregnancy and for two years after she gave birth, they continued doing MRI brain scans and drawing blood to observe how her brain changed as sex hormones like estrogen ebbed and flowed. Some of the changes continued past pregnancy.
“Previous studies had taken snapshots of the brain before and after pregnancy, but we’ve never witnessed the brain in the midst of this metamorphosis,” said co-author Emily Jacobs of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Unlike past studies, this one focused on many inner regions of the brain as well as the cerebral cortex, the outermost layer, said Joseph Lonstein, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Michigan State University who was not involved in the research. It’s “a good first step to understanding much more about whole-brain changes that could be possible in a woman across pregnancy and postpartum,” he said.
Research in animals has linked some brain changes with qualities that could be helpful when caring for an infant. While the new study doesn’t address what the changes mean in terms of human behavior, Lonstein pointed out that it describes changes in brain areas involved in social cognition, or how people interact with others and understand their thoughts and feelings, for example.
The researchers have partners in Spain and are moving forward with the larger Maternal Brain Project, which is supported by the Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Eventually, they hope scientists can use data from a large number of women for things like predicting postpartum depression before it happens.
“There is so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy that we don’t understand yet, and it’s not because women are too complicated. It’s not because pregnancy is some Gordian knot,” Jacobs said. “It’s a byproduct of the fact that biomedical sciences have historically ignored women’s health.”
Thai baby hippo Internet star draws thousands to her zoo
- Moo Deng, whose name means “bouncing pig” in Thai, has millions of fans on social media following her clumsily charming adventures, including trying to nibble her handler despite still lacking teeth
CHONBURI: Thailand’s latest Internet celebrity, baby hippo “Moo Deng,” is challenging her keepers with the unexpectedly big crowds she is drawing to her zoo, two hours south of the capital Bangkok.
Moo Deng, whose name means “bouncing pig” in Thai, has millions of fans on social media following her clumsily charming adventures, including trying to nibble her handler despite still lacking teeth.
“Normally on weekdays and in the rainy season — which is a low season — we’d be getting around 800 visitors each day,” said Narungwit Chodchoy, director of the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province.
But the zoo is now getting 3,000 to 4,000 people on weekdays, and welcomed 20,000 visitors over the weekend, he said — most of them lining up to see Moo Deng.
“Moo Deng fever means we will have organize better so all visitors can see her,” Narungwit said.
On Monday morning, the pink-cheeked hippo, whose siblings are called Pork Stew and Sweet Pork, was sitting happily in a bowl of vegetables and other snacks.
“I left home in Bangkok from 6:30 this morning just to come and see Moo Deng,” said 45-year-old Ekaphak Mahasawad. “I’m only here to see her.”
Moo Deng’s grandmother, Malee, recently celebrated her 59th birthday as Thailand’s oldest hippo.
Shy penguin wins New Zealand’s bird election after campaign filled with memes and tattoos
- The hoiho — a noisy, smelly and shy bird believed to be the world’s rarest penguin — was propelled to its second victory by a star-studded campaign
WELLINGTON: It’s noisy, smelly, shy — and New Zealand’s bird of the year.
The hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, won the country’s fiercely fought avian election on Monday, offering hope to supporters of the endangered bird that recognition from its victory might prompt a revival of the species.
It followed a campaign for the annual Bird of the Year vote that was absent the foreign interference scandals and cheating controversies of past polls. Instead, campaigners in the long-running contest sought votes in the usual ways — launching meme wars, seeking celebrity endorsements and even getting tattoos to prove their loyalty.
More than 50,000 people voted in the poll, 300,000 fewer than last year, when British late night host John Oliver drove a humorous campaign for the pūteketeke — a “deeply weird bird” which eats and vomits its own feathers – securing a landslide win.
This year, the number of votes cast represented 10 percent of the population of New Zealand — a country where nature is never far away and where a love of native birds is instilled in citizens from childhood.
“Birds are our heart and soul,” said Emma Rawson, who campaigned for the fourth-placed ruru, a small brown owl with a melancholic call. New Zealand’s only native mammals are bats and marine species, putting the spotlight on its birds, which are beloved — and often rare.
This year’s victor, the hoiho — its name means “noise shouter” in the Māori language — is a shy bird thought to be the world’s rarest penguin. Only found on New Zealand’s South and Chatham islands — and on subantarctic islands south of the country — numbers have dropped perilously by 78 percent in the past 15 years.
“This spotlight couldn’t have come at a better time. This iconic penguin is disappearing from mainland Aotearoa before our eyes,” Nicola Toki, chief executive of Forest & Bird — the organization that runs the poll — said in a press release, using the Māori name for New Zealand. Despite intensive conservation efforts on land, she said, the birds drown in nets and sea and can’t find enough food.
“The campaign has raised awareness, but what we really hope is that it brings tangible support,” said Charlie Buchan, campaign manager for the hoiho. But while the bird is struggling, it attracted a star billing in the poll: celebrity endorsements flew in from English zoologist Jane Goodall, host of the Amazing Race Phil Keoghan, and two former New Zealand prime ministers.
Aspiring bird campaign managers — this year ranging from power companies to high school students — submit applications to Forest & Bird for the posts. The hoiho bid was run by a collective of wildlife groups, a museum, a brewery and a rugby team in the city of Dunedin, where the bird is found on mainland New Zealand, making it the highest-powered campaign of the 2024 vote.
“I do feel like we were the scrappy underdog,” said Emily Bull, a spokesperson for the runner-up campaign, for the karure — a small, “goth” black robin only found on New Zealand’s Chatham Island.
The karure’s bid was directed by the students’ association at Victoria University of Wellington, prompting a fierce skirmish on the college campus when the student magazine staged an opposing campaign for the kororā, or little blue penguin.
The rivalry provoked a meme war and students in bird costumes. Several people got tattoos. When the magazine’s campaign secured endorsements of the city council and local zoo, Bull despaired for the black robin’s bid.
But the karure — which has performed a real-life comeback since the 1980s, with conservation efforts increasing the species from five birds to 250 — took second place overall.
This weekend as Rawson wrapped up her campaign for the ruru, she took her efforts directly to the people, courting votes at a local dog park. The veteran campaign manager who has directed the bids for other birds in past years was rewarded by the ruru placing fourth in the poll, her best ever result.
“I have not been in human political campaigning before,” said Rawson, who is drawn to the competition because of the funds and awareness it generates. The campaign struck a more sedate tone this year, she added.
“There’s been no international interference, even though that was actually a lot of fun,” she said, referring to Oliver’s high-profile campaign.
It was not the only controversy the election has seen. While anyone in the world can vote, Forest & Bird now requires electors to verify their ballots after foreign interference plagued the contest before. In 2018, Australian pranksters cast hundreds of fraudulent votes in favor of the shag.
The following year, Forest & Bird was forced to clarify that a flurry of votes from Russia appeared to be from legitimate bird-lovers.
While campaigns are fiercely competitive, managers described tactics more akin to pro wrestling — in which fights are scripted — than divisive political contests.
“Sometimes people want to make posts that are kind of like beefy with you and they’ll always message you and be like, hey, is it okay if I post this?” Bull said. “There is a really sweet community. It’s really wholesome.”
Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.
SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles (1,408 kilometers) following Tuesday’s liftoff.
Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.
During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s brand new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week.
The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.
SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.
This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t divulge how much he spent.
A river otter attacks a child at a Seattle-area marina
- River otters can be territorial and “like any wildlife, are inherently unpredictable,” officials said
BREMERTON, Washington: A river otter attacked a child at a Seattle-area marina, dragging the youngster from a dock and into the water before the mother rescued her child, wildlife officials said.
The child was pulled underwater and resurfaced after a few moments during the encounter Thursday at 9:30 a.m. at the Bremerton Marina in Kitsap County, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers said in a press release.
The otter continued to bite and scratch as the mother pulled the child out of the water. The animal chased them as they left the dock, wildlife officials said. The child was treated at a hospital.
“We are grateful the victim only sustained minor injuries, due to the mother’s quick actions and child’s resiliency,” said Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Ken Balazs. “We would also like to thank the Port of Bremerton for their quick coordination and communication to their marina tenants.”
Officers trapped the otter and took it to a disease diagnostic lab for testing, including for rabies, the release said. The agency did not respond to questions Saturday about test results.
River otters are common throughout Washington and can be found in fresh and saltwater habitats, officials said. Encounters with humans are rare, with six occurring in the past decade, they said. River otters can be territorial and “like any wildlife, are inherently unpredictable,” officials said.
