SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) – Another step towards rent control in Santa Barbara could happen on Tuesday.

The city council first discussed it late last year in a five-hour session, and instructed the staff to come back with a plan.

It would include a rent freeze until the ordinance can be discussed and voted on, possibly in the summer.

The tenants union has rallied in support of the rent stabilization efforts saying rents and increases in recent years are drastically beyond the reach of many residents, including low and middle income workers and families.

Landlords say a rent freeze or limits on rent increases would impact their ability to keep up their property or make their payments in some cases.

The discusson on this began when two council members Wendy Santamaria and Kristen Sneddon had it added to the agenda to open the process that included staff input and many community members speaking out.

Mayor Randy Rowse has not waited for this issue to move forward and has already spoken out against the plan.

City council will take up the issue after 2:00pm tomorrow afternoon.

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By Adam Cancryn, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration has finalized a deal with drugmaker AbbVie to cut the cost of certain medicines, marking the latest pact as part of its “Most Favored Nation” pricing initiative.

The deal comes days after the administration inked a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which was announced by the drugmaker without the White House fanfare that accompanied the agreements unveiled with more than a dozen manufacturers last year.

Under the agreement, AbbVie said Monday it will offer a series of drugs to Medicaid as well as directly to consumers at “Most Favored Nation” levels, or the lowest price available in peer countries. It will sell some other medications at a deep discount compared to their list prices.

The drugs subject to “Most Favored Nation” pricing include glaucoma treatment Combigan and thyroid hormone medicine Synthroid. AbbVie is separately expected to reduce the price of its popular rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, as well as another glaucoma medicine, Alphagan.

AbbVie declined to disclose the specifics of the discounts it plans to offer for the drugs.

Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that it, too, would sell medicines directly to patients at “significantly discounted rates,” as well as provide drugs to Medicaid at prices comparable to those in other developed nations. The manufacturer also said it would enable American patients to access medicines at those prices but did not provide any details on the products that would be available or the size of the discounts.

The deals represent the latest in a string of administration pacts with major pharmaceutical companies aimed at lowering the price of drugs, as President Donald Trump tries to assuage voters’ concerns over the cost of living.

Trump has touted the “Most Favored Nation” initiative as a centerpiece of his health care agenda, vowing to push more companies to strike deals to sell their medicines directly to consumers willing to pay cash and forgo insurance at discounts through a soon-to-be-launched TrumpRx online platform.

Yet the size of the overall impact on Americans’ budgets remains unclear. The administration’s agreements cover only a small fraction of drugs sold in the US. And some of the discounted drugs may still be too costly for consumers who will need to pay for them out of pocket.

Plus, it’s unclear how much these agreements will benefit the Medicaid program, which already receives discounts on drugs.

Drugmakers, in the meantime, have sought to strike such deals in an effort to avoid hefty tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on the industry by promising to expand manufacturing in the US, which has also been a top priority for the president.

In addition to the discounts on certain medicines, AbbVie is expected to commit to investing $100 billion in research and development and manufacturing over the next decade, the source said. The company will receive a three-year exemption from tariffs in exchange, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Johnson & Johnson, which previously announced $55 billion in investments in the US by early 2029, said it expects to announce additional commitments this year. It is also receiving a tariff reprieve. In its press release last week, the company highlighted two new domestic manufacturing facilities, including a cell therapy manufacturing site in Pennsylvania and a drug product manufacturing facility in North Carolina.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Por Pablo A. Garcia Escorihuela, CNN en Español

La postemporada de la NFL está en marcha, y con ella, mucho de lo que se mueve alrededor de lo que significa llegar, jugar y ganar el partido del año, el Super Bowl LX.

La liga publicó esta semana en su sitio web cuánto serán las ganancias por jugador en bonificaciones otorgadas por la institución, para cada jugador participante de estos playoffs 2026.

Las cifras varían, evidentemente, dependiendo de qué tan lejos pueda llegar el equipo en la ronda de eliminación directa.

Los jugadores del equipo que llegue a la ronda de comodines recibirán como pago, por parte de la NFL, un total de US$ 58.500, si el equipo es campeón divisional, como los Patriots o los Rams en esta campaña, y si entró por la vía de los mejores récords, entonces se llevan US$ 53.500.

Pero si el equipo trasciende a la ronda Divisional, ya el premio se mantiene en US$ 58.500, pero si el jugador llega a la ronda de Campeonato, la última antes del Super Bowl, recibirá US$ 81.000.

En el Super Bowl los premios son para los dos finalistas. El jugador del equipo que pierda el partido por el título se llevará US$ 103.000 en esta temporada, mientras que el jugador del equipo que alce el trofeo Vince Lombardi, se llevarán de la NFL un total de US$ 178.000.

Hay que destacar que si un jugador gana en las cuatro rondas de playoff, incluyendo el Super Bowl, se lleva un total acumulado de US$ 357.000, que son adicionales a su contrato de la temporada regular, y que también están fuera de la consideración de sus contratos de patrocinio o premios extra del equipo por lograr el objetivo de ganar el campeonato.

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By Kylie Atwood, Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration is under pressure to step up its efforts to support internet freedom in Iran after it cut funding backing that work last year, as widespread technology blackouts have hampered the efforts of anti-government protesters facing violent crackdowns through Iran.

Experts say the days-long digital blackout, imposed in response to sweeping anti-government protests, may be the most severe in Iran’s history. The Iranian government is accused of cutting off internet access in order hide evidence of its killings and repression of protesters across the country.

Last year, the Trump administration slashed US funding to organizations that work on internet freedom issues amid a dramatic reduction in US foreign assistance across the board and as the State Department eliminated offices working on democracy-building and human rights.

It also cut funding for efforts to provide circumvention tools like VPNs to help Iranians get around government censorship, sources told CNN.

Satellite internet services like Elon Musk’s Starlink have allowed some to break through the blackout and share dispatches and images from inside the country.

US President Donald Trump has threatened action against Iran for killing protesters.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump and Musk had discussed the topic of Starlink access in Iran, which provides access to the internet through the use physical terminals and a network of orbiting satellites. But it is unclear if they reached an agreement to provide more access.

The Iranian government has a long history of shutting down access to the internet during times of civil unrest, and every shutdown allows them to become more sophisticated in their approach, experts said. Under the Biden administration, there was a concerted and public effort by the US government to surge support to Iranian anti-government activists and help restore access to the internet when it was blocked during widespread protests in 2022.

At least one organization that worked to provide Starlink terminals to the Iranian people also lost US funding last year.

Some groups still have their US government support intact, but they are wary to discuss the details publicly because they do not want to risk their funding being pulled, said two sources familiar with that ongoing work.

NetFreedom Pioneers (NFP) were able to get about 200 Starlinks into Iran during the 2022 protests, a source from the organization said. But last year, they lost funding from the US government that supported their internet freedom work. That includes efforts to get the Starlink kits into Iran. During the so-called “12-day war” between Israel and Iran last year, the organization pleaded with the administration to restore funding to help their efforts, but their requests went unheeded.

Now, the organization said it has not bothered to make another request, with the source saying, “there is no funding and there is no strategy, it feels like there is nobody running the State Department.”

“We could be doing so much more with their support,” the source said. They have been using private funding efforts to support their work for Starlink terminals.

A State Department spokesperson said the “Trump Administration is committed to helping to preserve and protect the free flow of information by the most effective means to the people of Iran in the face of the Iranian regime’s brutal repression that include the campaign of internet disruptions and censorship dissent.”

And the administration says it is exploring providing technology like Starlink to bol