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  • 70 new food items each week? South Korea is the convenience store capital of the world

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    SEOUL  — In many parts of the world, convenience stores are the shops of last resort: cigarettes, sodas and laundry detergent. But in South Korea, you might find single malt whiskies, $800 French wines, 24K gold bars, shampoo and conditioner refill stations, televisions or a dine-in instant noodle bar with more than 200 varieties of ramyon.

    A customer might be able to pick up a package, wash and dry their clothes, or sign up for a new debit card.

    The stores are best known for their numerous feats of “instant-izing” food, a process in which nearly every conceivable dish is turned into a packaged meal: spaghetti, Japanese udon, fried rice that you squeeze out of a tube. These have turned convenience stores into a $25-billion industry in South Korea and those food products are churned out at a staggering pace: up to 70 new food items hit the shelves each week, effectively offering a live feed of South Korean tastes.

    “In South Korea’s food retail market, you go extinct if you’re not quick to change,” says Chae Da-in, who says her obsession with convenience stores is decades old. “It’s all about being diverse and fast.”

    Known in the national media and on social media as a “convenience store critic,” Chae is the author of three books on the world of convenience store foods, which has led to TV appearances and newspaper interviews.

    Every Friday, she tours a handful of convenience stores near her home to keep up with what’s new. Over the last two decades, she estimates she has consumed at least 800 varieties of convenience store samgak gimbap — rice wrapped in dried seaweed and a grab-and-go staple.

    A detail of a person cooling down noodles in a DIY cone made from the ramyon bowl cover.

    Lee Hee Chul, 21, from Incheon, South Korea, cools down his ramyon in a DIY cone made from the ramyon bowl cover at a CU convenience store in a popular tourist area in Myeongdong.

    People shop and eat in the dining area at a CU convenience store in Seoul.

    Shoppers prepare their dinner at one of the self-serve machines in the dining area at a CU ramyon convenience store.
    Ye Yan and her girlfriend, Quan Chuxi, eat ramyon, kimchi and sausage at a CU convenience store.

    Shoppers prepare their dinner at one of the self-serve machines in the dining area at a CU ramyon convenience store.

    In recent years, Chae has watched her obsession go global. Much like South Korean movies, TV shows and music, South Korean convenience stores have become a cultural sensation.

    Specific locations, such as the store that appeared in Netflix’s hit series “Squid Game,” have made the news. On TikTok and YouTube, mukbang — videos of people eating — of South Korean convenience store foods have gathered millions of views.

    “Giant cheese sausage,” announces one reviewer in a TikTok video series titled “ONLY Eating Food from a Korean Convenience Store.” The meal also includes blue lemonade that comes in a plastic pouch, a “3XL” spicy tuna mayo samgak gimbap and a carbonara-flavored Buldak (“fire chicken”) noodle cup.

    South Korean convenience stores are now expanding into nearby countries such as Mongolia or Malaysia. CU, one of the country’s leading operators with more than 600 stores in Asia, is set to open its first U.S. location in Hawaii later this year.

    “The percentage of the Asian population in Hawaii is six times that of the mainland U.S., making it a place where there is a high level of familiarity and positive attitudes toward Korean culture,” said Lim Hyung-geun, the head of overseas operations at BGF Retail, CU’s parent company.

    “On top of that, we’re seeing the sustained popularity of Korean culture, such as a Korean food boom among American teenagers and young people in their 20s and 30s, which we believe will be a big boost for CU’s future expansion.”

    Lim calls CU’s overseas locations “‘miniature South Koreas’ where people can experience the products that have become popular with the K-wave.

    “But as is the case here, K-convenience stores aren’t just a place to experience South Korean culture,” he said. “They are also restaurants, cafes and a general amenity.”

    In other words, everything stores that are everywhere and open all the time.

    ***

    The GS25 convenience store is collaborating with FC Seoul, a South Korean football club, in the Hongdae neighborhood.

    The GS25 convenience store is collaborating with FC Seoul, a South Korean football club, in the Hongdae neighborhood.

    Mirrors reflect people shopping and eating at a GS25 convenience store.
    A teenage boy drinks a beverage in the dining area at a GS25 convenience store.

    Like many things South Korea has embraced and spun off into something novel, convenience stores are an import to the country. The first such store was American — the Southland Ice Co., which was founded in Texas in 1927 and changed its name to 7-Eleven in 1946. The first of the 7-Elevens opened for business in Seoul in the 1980s.

    Today, South Korea is the convenience store capital of the world. Like the bodegas of New York, they have become part of the fabric of contemporary urban life, multifunctional spaces that can be restaurants or coffee shops or bars with microwaves and outdoor seating. Chae calls them the “oasis of the streets.”

    “People hang out in convenience stores,” she said. “They’ve become a social place.”

    Part of what makes them such a force in the country is their sheer numbers.

    There are around 55,000 convenience stores in South Korea — a country the size of Indiana — amounting to one convenience store for every 940 people. In Seoul, where their numbers have quadrupled in the last 15 years, it sometimes feels like there’s one on every corner.

    Much of this has to do with the fact that roughly one in every four workers in South Korea is self-employed, a high number relative to other developed countries. For those in this mom-and-pop economy, which includes older workers pushed into early retirement or others who have been boxed out of the traditional labor market, convenience stores offer the most accessible form of entrepreneurship.

    “Compared to the hundreds of thousands it would cost to open another business, the main draw of convenience stores is that you can open one with starting capital as little as 20 million won [$14,000],” said Oh Sang-bong, the head of social policy research at the Korean Labor Institute. “Of course it’s not easy. There are a lot of cautionary tales. But there are success stories, too.”

    ***

    Images of a boy band decorate the windows of a convenience store.

    Images of the boy band Tomorrow X Together decorate the windows of the Nice to CU music library convenience store in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul.

    This profusion has made the convenience store business one of the most fast-paced and competitive in the country — one that moves in lockstep with boom-and-bust social media attention spans.

    Hit products generate the kind of buzz you might see only for a limited-edition sneaker or the latest iPhone, necessitating preorders or, when inventories inevitably dry up, leading to scalping.

    But the lows are abrupt. When it was first released last year, CU’s “Dubai-style chocolate” — an in-house take on the global TikTok food trend — commanded lines outside of stores and sold out in a day. Four months later, sales had dropped to a sixth of what they were.

    “The lifespan of products is now incredibly short because social media fads come and go so quickly,” said Kim, a merchandiser for a leading convenience store franchise who asked to be identified only by his surname because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

    “In the past when the market wasn’t so saturated, revenue would naturally rise as everyone opened more stores. But now there are so many stores, and then you’re competing not just with other convenience stores but with e-commerce platforms, coffee shops, restaurants — everybody who’s following the same trend.”

    Most of Kim’s job involves scrolling through social media platforms such as TikTok, looking for the next hot-ticket item, such as a distant food trend that shows signs of making landfall.

    “It’s brutal. It’s like trying to find the eye of a needle over and over again,“ he said. “If you miss something big and a competitor releases it first? Then you’re getting chewed out by your boss.”

    Kwon Sung-jun is a chef who specializes in Italian cuisine and the winner of “Culinary Class Wars,” a hit reality cooking competition released by Netflix last year. He has a ritual of stopping by a convenience store every night after work — even if he doesn’t have anything to buy.

    “It’s very useful for staying abreast of any trends in the culinary world,” he said, and his routine proved to be pivotal in winning the $223,000 prize for “Culinary Class Wars.”

    In one stage of the competition, contestants were tasked with cooking a dish using ingredients sourced from a true-to-life replica of a convenience store on set. Kwon, 30, handily won with a chestnut tiramisu whipped together from chestnuts, milk, coffee and a package of biscuits.

    “I came up with the idea in 30 seconds,” he said. “Because I had a mental list of what convenience stores have, I also planned substitute options for each of the key ingredients like chestnut, cream and so on.”

    Since winning the competition, he has avoided convenience stores; just two weeks after that episode aired, CU released a mass-produced version of his tiramisu, with Kwon’s face on the packaging.

    “It’s a little embarrassing to see those photos of myself,” he said.

    ***

    A woman walks by a building with a sign that reads GS25 x FC Seoul at night.

    “Most of the tourists come looking for products related to Korean movies or TV shows like dalgona [a traditional Korean candy] because they saw it on ‘Squid Game,’” says Kim Hye-ryeon, the owner of a GS25 in the Hongdae district of Seoul.

    All of this makes running a convenience store no easy feat, says Kim Hye-ryeon, the 52-year-old owner of a GS25 in Seoul’s Hongdae district.

    Because franchisees are responsible for picking out their own inventory from the company catalog, which is updated three times a week, running a successful convenience store is less about the labor of stocking shelves and cashing out customers than keeping up with the frenetic cycle of food trends.

    “Whenever there’s a popular item, the owners who are a step ahead buy up all the stock so sometimes I can’t get any for my store,” she said. “You have to know what’s popular with young people at all times.”

    In recent years, as South Korea’s cultural footprint has expanded, the assignment has gotten even more complicated. Streets that were once quiet are now popular thoroughfares for tourists staying in the guesthouses and Airbnbs that have opened in the area. Global tastes must be accounted for, too.

    A customer heads for the exit at a GS25 convenience store.

    A customer heads for the exit at a GS25 convenience store.

    “There’s been a noticeable increase since the pandemic,” she said. “Before, it was mostly Chinese or Japanese tourists, but now it’s from all over, especially Americans and Europeans.”

    From behind the counter, she has been keeping mental notes of what this international consumer base is buying, noting, for example, how her Muslim customers carefully study the labels to check whether the item is halal.

    “Most of the tourists come looking for products related to Korean movies or TV shows like dalgona [a traditional Korean candy] because they saw it on ‘Squid Game,’” she said. “They also really like ice creams, especially bingsu [Korean shaved ice].”

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    Max Kim

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  • Employees are back, bosses say. In California? Not so much

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    Even as bosses across the country report a jump in the number of people returning to the office, attendance in California remains less than half of what it used to be.

    A recent survey shows that managers’ push to get workers back in the office is bearing fruit, but executives would still like to see people at their desks more often. A different dataset demonstrates that much of the lag is due to California.

    Companies are stepping up enforcement of their attendance policies even as many workers try to avoid the daily routine of commuting and clocking in, real estate brokerage CBRE found in a national survey of office tenants.

    Companies made “significant” progress in the last year in moving toward their office-attendance goals and enforcing their attendance policies, moving closer to cementing their long-term work guidelines than at any time since the COVID-19 pandemic, CBRE said.

    The annual survey found that 72% of the companies surveyed have met their attendance goals, up from 61% the previous year.

    “Companies have made significant progress on establishing a new baseline for work habits and office attendance after five years of adapting to hybrid work,” said Manish Kashyap, CBRE’s global president of leasing.

    Still, a separate indicator released Tuesday shows how office visits are stuck below the national average in California.

    The Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas still have some of the lowest office attendance in the country, according to the latest data from Kastle Systems, which provides key-card entry systems used by many companies and tracks patterns of workers’ card swipes.

    Business in the regions is dominated by the entertainment and tech companies, which can often be more freewheeling because much of the work is done alone and on computers that could be located anywhere.

    Bosses in Los Angeles tend to be more flexible when it comes to remote work in part because commutes can be so long there, said Mark Ein, Kastle’s executive chair. “It’s just harder to get to the office.”

    In the week that ended Aug. 20, the average office population was 48.3% of full occupancy in Los Angeles, Kastle said Tuesday. Attendance was 41.8% in San Francisco and 49% in San Jose.

    That’s well above the lows below 20% during the pandemic, but still behind places including New York and Chicago and far behind cities in Texas, which had more than 60% attendance.

    People walk by the 777 Tower on Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. In the week that ended Aug. 20, the average office population was 48.3% of full occupancy in Los Angeles, according to Kastle Systems.

    (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

    In the CBRE annual survey, the most notable change was in the level of enforcement of back-to-office policies. The share of companies monitoring attendance jumped to 69% this year from 45% last year. Those enforcing attendance policies rose to 37% from 17%.

    Bosses said they want to see even more people in the office. Surveyed companies reported that they want employees in the office an average of 3.2 days per week. Actual attendance is close to that at 2.9 days a week.

    The fact that people aren’t in the office every day creates vibe issues for some managers who are trying to recapture the buzz their workplaces had before the pandemic.

    More than half of organizations reported that a lack of office vibrancy on non-peak attendance days is a central challenge. Uneven attendance patterns create peaks and valleys throughout the week, something managers say makes it difficult for them to provide a consistent experience for employees.

    “We’ve seen Los Angeles lag behind other cities in getting people back to the office,” CBRE real estate broker Jeff Pion said. “I would hypothesize that we didn’t have as many people in the office five days a week, even pre-COVID, just because of the nature of the work that takes place in Los Angeles.”

    The data suggest that better offices are more likely to have more people. Average occupancy in what Kastle considers the best quality offices is higher than at lower quality offices.

    “If someone is paying a lot for their office space, they’re going to want people to use it,” Kastle’s Ein said. “People who spend a lot on office space are ones who value it.”

    Century City, L.A.’s hottest and most expensive office rental market, known for its elegant office towers full of financial companies and lawyers, is performing better than most, Pion said.

    The commercial real estate industry needs people to return to the office. The overall drop in attendance and related cutbacks in leased office space have been particularly hard on landlords, some of whom have lost their buildings to forced sales or foreclosure due to falling revenues.

    Downtown L.A. has 54 office buildings that are at immediate risk of devaluation and could result in nearly $70 billion in lost value over the next 10 years, a recent report by BAE Urban Economics said. That could lead to a loss of $353 million in property tax revenues.

    The report recommended converting some of them partially or completely into housing.

    Companies’ growing sense of clarity about their attendance policies offers some good news for struggling landlords as 67% of the managers CBRE surveyed said they plan to keep their offices the same or expand them within the next three years, a slight increase from last year’s survey.

    Decisions about where offices will be located and what they’ll look like are being made more often with employees’ interests in mind, CBRE said.

    “Employers are much more focused now than they were pre-pandemic on quality-of-workplace experience, the efficiency of seat sharing and the vibrancy of the districts in which they’re located,” said Julie Wheland, CBRE’s global head of research on tenant preferences.

    In some cases, making the workplace more attractive may include offering employees a low-cost concierge to perform such services as filling employees’ cars with gas, picking up their laundry or retrieving their dogs from day care, as L’Oréal does in El Segundo.

    Other inducements from companies adopting a carrot-and-stick approach to getting people back in the office include free food and drinks, comfortable furniture and communal workspaces. Some newer offices have designated library-type spaces as quiet zones, where cellphones and conversations are prohibited.

    Many companies seek to be near public transportation, he said, but would also like to be near outdoor recreational facilities, such as parks and bike paths, where employees can exercise at lunchtime.

    “They’re looking for amenity-based locations where there’s just lots and lots for people to do,” Pion said. “That is a trend that will continue.”

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    Roger Vincent

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  • L.A. congressional Democrats demand answers on Border Patrol force outside Newsom event

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    Two weeks ago, scores of masked, gun-toting federal immigration agents assembled in front of the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

    Inside the museum, Gov. Gavin Newsom was surrounded by nearly every powerful Democrat in California, preparing to announce that he would take on President Trump’s redistricting plans with a special election campaign. Outside, Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino was flanked by dozens of agents who looked ready for battle.

    Now, a number of Southern California members of Congress are demanding answers about the enforcement action outside Newsom’s news conference — and the decision-making process behind it — in a letter sent Tuesday to Department of Homeland Security leaders.

    “We just wanted to get some questions answered,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who spearheaded the letter. “I was at Newsom’s press conference. It was really shocking to have as many as a hundred federal officers in tactical gear just appear.”

    The letter was sent to Bovino, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and White House border advisor Tom Homan. It was signed by at least 12 other congressional Democrats, including Sen. Alex Padilla and Reps. Judy Chu (Monterey Park), Gil Cisneros (Covina), Robert Garcia (Long Beach), Luz Rivas (North Hollywood), Ted Lieu (Torrance), Nanette Diaz Barragán (San Pedro) and Brad Sherman (Sherman Oaks).

    The letter requests that answers to a number of questions be provided in writing by Sept. 4.

    The group asked who originally made the request to deploy agents outside the Japanese American National Museum on Aug. 14; whether the subject matter of Newsom’s news conference was a consideration in the decision to deploy federal agents; and whether the size of the force was standard; and what operational criteria were used to determine the size and composition of the force deployed.

    As the agents massed outside the building, Newsom was announcing a plan to counter a Republican-led redistricting push by redrawing California’s own congressional districts to favor Democrats. Last week, the California Legislature approved a November special election where voters will decide the fate of the measure.

    The letter also asks for details about the two arrests made during the Little Tokyo operation and whether Homeland Security knew those individuals would be present when it decided to conduct its immigration enforcement action. One of the individuals arrested happened to be delivering strawberries as the agents convened at the museum. He now faces deportation to Mexico.

    “It was outrageous that Trump and his supporters called ICE on us as we were conducting our redistricting press conference,” Chu said. “It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us and to send a political message that he would use his law enforcement capabilities to make us feel afraid.”

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    Julia Wick

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  • Tropical Storm Fernand pulls away from US

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    Tropical Storm Fernand pulls away from US

    Tropical Storm Fernand is now rumbling through the Atlantic

    >> JUST GETTING IN THE LATEST INFORMATION FROM THE 05:00AM ADVISORY ON TROPICAL STORM FAIR. NOT NOW. THIS IS REALLY JUST MAINTAINING STRENGTH, BUT IT’S OVER 300 MILES NOW EAST-NORTHEAST OF EVEN BERMUDA. SO THIS IS JUST OVER THE OPEN ATLANTIC AND IT IS MOVING TO THE NORTH-NORTHEAST AT 12 MILES PER HOUR. SO NOT LOOKING ALL TOO IMPRESSIVE. AND WITH THE LATEST SPAGHETTI PLOTS, WE DO HAVE A REALLY GOOD CONSENSUS THAT HIGH PUNCHING THAT THIS CONTINUES TO TRACK NORTHEAST HEADING TOWARD THE FAR NORTHERN SUBTROPICAL ATLANTIC WHERE I DO EXPECT IT TO EVENTUALLY DISSIPATE BY THE END OF THE WEEK. SO THE LATEST FORECAST CONE SHOWING THAT WHAT WE COULD SEE SOME WOBBLES IN INTENSITY, PERHAPS SOME OCCASIONAL STRENGTHENING, NOT FOR LONG. WE DO NOT EXPECT THIS TO REACH HURRICANE STATUS OF HER. AND WE EXPECT THIS TO EVENTUALLY ON WEDNESDAY TRANSITION TO A POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE MEETING. IT WILL HAVE LOST ALL OF ITS TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND IT POSES NO THREAT TO THE U.S.. THAT IS, OF COURSE NOT. THE ONLY THING I’M MONITORING THIS MORNING ON TOP OF TROPICAL STORM FAIR NON-LOCAL INTO THE SOUTH OVER THE WINDWARD ISLANDS THIS MORNING. A DISTURBANCE WITH LOW ODDS FOR DEVELOPMENT. WE’RE TALKING HAD DECREASED OVER THE WEEKEND TO JUST 10%. SO OVER THE NEXT 2 DAYS, EVEN THE NEXT WEEK, LOW ODDS TO SEE SOME SORT OF TROPICAL DEVELOPMENT. HOWEVER, REGARDLESS OF DEVELOPMENT, THIS IS STILL PRODUCING DISORGANIZED SHOWERS AND STORMS. EVEN THOUGH THE COVERAGE IS DECREASING A BIT THIS MORNING AND FOR THE WINDWARD ISLANDS, AT LEAST SOME GUSTY WINDS AND HEAVY RAIN POSSIBLE THROUGHOUT E DAY TODAY, EVEN INTO TOMORROW AS THIS TROPICAL WAVE MOVES WEST. SO AS OF NOW, NOT SEEING HIGH LIKELIHOOD THAT THIS EVER ACTUALLY DEVELOPS. BUT WE’RE GOING TO BE STAYING ON TOP OF IT, OF COURSE, AT THIS POINT IN HURRICANE SEASON. WE’RE ALSO 3RD THROUGH OUR STORM NAMES LIST. THE NEXT NAME ON THE LIST. GABRIEL AND THEN UMBERTO. SO WE’RE GONNA BE WATCHING FOR THAT. AND KEEP IN MIND, WE’RE JUST ABOUT 2 WEEKS OUT FROM THE STATISTICAL PEAK OF HURRICANE SEASON. ALL RIGHT, LIVE RADAR, SWEEPING, CLEAR WATCHING SOME OF THOSE SPOTTY SHOWERS JUST OFF THE COAST OF CHARLOTTE COUNTY. BUT MOST OF US IN GREAT SHAPE AFTER A VERY SOGGY WEEKEND, HOWEVER, WITH EVEN SOME FLOODING CONCERNS FOR PARTS OF LEE COUNTY. SO WHO IS FAVORED TO SEE THE RAIN AGAIN TODAY? WHILE COASTAL SPOTS, SOME SPOTTY SHOWERS AND STORMS INTO THE MORNING HOURS. AND WE’RE LOOKING AT THAT POSSIBLE HEADING INTO THE AFTERNOON. SCATTERED STORM. SO WE DO NOT EXPECT THE COVERAGE TO BE NEARLY AS HIGH AS WHAT WE SAW SATURDAY OR SUNDAY. HOWEVER, YOU ARE STILL GOING TO WANT THE UMBRELLA HANDY. WE’RE LOOKING AT A RINSE AND REPEAT PATTERN STILL EVERY SINGLE DAY OVER THE NEXT WEEK. SO NOT SEEING THE RAINY SEASON WEAKENING ANYTIME SOON. IN FACT, THE RAINY SEASON DOESN’T COME TO AN END UNTIL USUALLY THE MIDDLE OF OCTOBER. SO WE STILL HAVE QUITE A WAYS TO GO TEMPERATURE NO RELIEF THERE. LOW TO MID 90’S EVERY SINGLE DAY MORNINGS WILL BE IN THE MID TO UPPER 70’S. SO PRETTY SEASONAL. I DON’T EXPECT RECORD HEAT, BUT WE’RE ALSO NOT GETTING IN ON ANY SORT OF COOL DOW

    Tropical Storm Fernand pulls away from US

    Tropical Storm Fernand is now rumbling through the Atlantic

    Updated: 2:28 AM PDT Aug 25, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The Atlantic Basin remains active as Tropical Storm Fernand spins over the open Atlantic and a disturbance near the Windward Islands has a low chance for development.Tropical Storm Fernand At 5 a.m. Monday, Tropical Storm Fernand maintained strength with sustained winds at 50 mph. It’s currently 360 miles east-northeast of Bermuda and moving north-northeast at 12 mph.It is forecast to head toward cooler sea surface temperatures and high wind shear, making a transition to post-tropical by Wednesday.Fernand poses no threat to the U.S. and is expected to dissipate by Thursday.Invest 99LNear the Windward Islands, the National Hurricane Center has designated a tropical wave as Invest 99L in the region highlighted in yellow. Chances for development have decreased to only 10% as the system tracks west. Regardless of development, heavy rainfall and gusty winds are the main threats in the Windward Islands over the next two days.As 99L pushes deeper into the Caribbean, there is potential that it could reach an area of more favorable development conditions later this week. Count on the Gulf Coast Storm Team to keep you informed.

    FORT MYERS, Fla. —

    The Atlantic Basin remains active as Tropical Storm Fernand spins over the open Atlantic and a disturbance near the Windward Islands has a low chance for development.

    Tropical Storm Fernand

    At 5 a.m. Monday, Tropical Storm Fernand maintained strength with sustained winds at 50 mph. It’s currently 360 miles east-northeast of Bermuda and moving north-northeast at 12 mph.

    Tracking the tropics

    hurricane

    It is forecast to head toward cooler sea surface temperatures and high wind shear, making a transition to post-tropical by Wednesday.

    Fernand poses no threat to the U.S. and is expected to dissipate by Thursday.

    Invest 99L

    Near the Windward Islands, the National Hurricane Center has designated a tropical wave as Invest 99L in the region highlighted in yellow.

    Area of Interest

    Chances for development have decreased to only 10% as the system tracks west. Regardless of development, heavy rainfall and gusty winds are the main threats in the Windward Islands over the next two days.

    As 99L pushes deeper into the Caribbean, there is potential that it could reach an area of more favorable development conditions later this week. Count on the Gulf Coast Storm Team to keep you informed.

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  • San Diego Zoo mourns deaths of three beloved animals in less than a week

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    It has been a challenging time for the San Diego Zoo, where three beloved animals — a polar bear, giraffe and gorilla — died within days of each other.

    The latest death occurred Monday, when Maka, a 30-year-old Western lowland gorilla, suffered a cardiac event, according to zoo officials.

    His sudden death came four days after Kalluk, a 24-year-old male polar bear; and Nicky, a 28-year-old Masai giraffe, were euthanized on the same day to minimize suffering as they neared the end of their lives.

    “That week was hard. We were like: ‘We just can’t catch a break right now,’” said Nicki Boyd, curator of mammals, ambassadors and applied behavior at the zoo.

    The three animals were longtime residents of the zoo, capturing the eyes and hearts of visitors while helping promote conservation efforts for their species.

    Kalluk, a 24-year-old polar bear at the San Diego Zoo, was euthanized on Aug. 14.

    (Ken Bohn / San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)

    The woeful week began on Aug. 14, when a wildlife health and care team conducted a medical examination of Kalluk. They had noticed a change in his behavior for the past few weeks.

    “Getting the call that he was in kidney failure was just a gut punch,” Boyd said.

    Kalluk arrived at the San Diego Zoo as a cub in 2001 after being orphaned along with his sister, Tatqiq. Zoo officials said he was inquisitive, gentle and smart.

    “His presence in Polar Bear Plunge helped foster bonds with his sister and Chinook, another orphaned female polar bear,” zoo officials said in a statement. “Through caring for Kalluk, the zoo has supported a large number of polar bear conservation projects over the years that aid in the protection of polar bears around the world.”

    Kalluk had exceeded the typical lifespan of a male polar bear in the wild, which is about 18 years, according to zoo officials.

    The same day Kalluk’s life was coming to an end, so was Nicky’s.

    Nicky was not only the matriarch of her herd, but was believed to be the oldest giraffe in North America, according to zoo officials.

    She helped show other first-time mothers how to care for their calves. Her son was also the bull of the herd.

    Nicky, a 28-year-old Masai giraffe.

    At 28 years old, Nicky was believed to be the oldest Masai giraffe in North America, and was the matriarch of her herd at the San Diego Zoo.

    (Ken Bohn / San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)

    “She just had a grandson born and to see her go up to that new mom and that new giraffe calf and nuzzle that baby, she’s always been a great leader in that giraffe herd,” Boyd said. “ She’s always been a fan favorite from guests to the employees.”

    The wildlife care team was able to have quality time with Nicky, spoiling her with leaves from her favorite tree and allowing former staffers to visit and say goodbye.

    “That’s what makes us feel better that her last day is not her worst day,” Boyd said.

    San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance staff members were still grieving when they were further rocked by Maka’s death this week.

    Maka was born at the zoo and became leader of the zoo’s bachelor troop, officials said in a statement.

    “He was the oldest, most experienced member and patiently guided his younger brothers, Ekuba and Denny,” the statement read.

    Zoo officials said that Maka was 5 when he was diagnosed with chromosomal abnormalities and had been receiving treatment throughout his life.

    “Recently, he began experiencing brief seizures, prompting our team to monitor his wellness closely and schedule ongoing comprehensive evaluations,” zoo officials said on a recent Instagram post about his death. They said he experienced a cardiac event during this week’s exam.

    “Despite the heroic and sustained efforts of our wildlife health and care teams, we lost our gentle giant,” zoo officials wrote on the social media post.

    Boyd, who has been working at the zoo for more than 30 years, said it was the first time three animals had been lost in such a short period.

    She said the zoo is home to more than 12,000 animals, each with its own lifespan.

    While death is inevitable, it’s always difficult for the wildlife health and care teams who spend years forming bonds with the animals.

    Boyd said there’s some comfort in knowing the animals lived long good lives, which spoke to the attention and care they received from the staff.

    Maka the gorilla sits in an enclosure.

    Maka, who was born at the San Diego Zoo and became the leader of the zoo’s bachelor troop, died on Aug. 18.

    (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)

    “But you know, finality and letting go is always hard,” she said.

    As a way to help with the grieving process, Boyd said they’ve made stickers of Nicky and Kalluk and plan to make some of Maka that will get distributed to staff.

    Zoo officials have notified the public about the losses on their Instagram. Hundreds of people as well as other zoos across the country, have responded with empathy, expressing their love and support.

    Boyd said the responses have helped her and the staff with their own healing processes.

    “I’m so sorry! You guys have had to deal with so much loss these past two weeks, I’m so sorry! My heart goes out to you and all of the staff and volunteers,” one user commented on Instagram.

    “Sending you and your teams our thoughts during this time! Be proud of the powerful conservation work you continue doing each and every day,” wrote the account for the Toronto Zoo.

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    Ruben Vives

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  • High School Playbook Show: Watch Week 1 recaps, highlights and game scores

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    High School Playbook Show: Watch Week 1 recaps, highlights and game scores

    STARTS NOW. ALL RIGHT. THOSE ARE THE HELMETS. THAT CAN ONLY MEAN ONE THING. WELCOME TO KCRA 3’S HIGH SCHOOL PLAYBOOK SHOW. I’M DEL RODGERS DURING THE NEXT 14 FRIDAYS, WE WILL BRING YOU EVERY ASPECT THAT MAKES UP THE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL EXPERIENCE. FROM THE BANDS, THE FANS, CHEERLEADERS, GAME OFFICIALS, AND EVEN THE PARENTS IN THE STANDS. TONIGHT IS WEEK ONE OF THE FOOTBALL SEASON. WE BEGIN IN STOCKTON WITH THE SAINT MARY’S RAMS. THEY PLAYED HOST TO BISHOP MANOGUE FROM RENO, NEVADA. THERE WE GO. RIGHT THERE. BISHOP MANOGUE MINERS. THEY FOUND PAYDIRT EARLY. CHECK OUT BRANDON MUNN TO NATE SIMMONS. THIS 35 YARD SCORING PLAY PUT BISHOP MANOGUE UP SEVEN TO NOTHING. BUT SAINT MARY’S WOULD ANSWER THE BELL. NUMBER FIVE DIEGO HERNANDEZ GOES AND GETS SIX POINTS FOR THE SAINT MARY’S RAMS WITH THAT GREAT AGGRESSIVE NEVER SAY DIE PLAY RIGHT THERE LATER IN THE GAME FOR SAINT MARY’S JADEN GALVIN FINDS KENNY MOORE THE THIRD KENNY MOORE HAS COMMITTED TO PLAY FOR UCLA NEXT YEAR. HE RECORDS THE TOUCHDOWN FOR SAINT MARY’S. SAINT MARY’S RAMS WOULD HANG ON TO BEAT BISHOP MANOGUE FINAL SCORE TONIGHT, 51 TO 38. THAT TOOK PLACE DOWN IN STOCKTON TOMORROW NIGHT. TWO OF THE TOP TEAMS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WILL SQUARE OFF ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. THE FOLSOM BULLDOGS WILL PLAY THE GRANT PACERS ON ESPN TOMORROW NIGHT AT 7:00 TONIGHT IN ELK GROVE. THE MONTEREY TRAIL MUSTANGS HOSTING THE INDERKUM TIGERS. AND EVEN THOUGH TONIGHT BELONGED TO THE MONTEREY TRAIL MUSTANGS, INDERKUM TIGERS DEFENSE MADE SOME BIG PLAYS LIKE THIS ONE HERE. XAVIER BRANCH GETTING THE SACK OF THE MUSTANGS QUARTERBACK. BUT CADEN LOVE FROM MONTEREY TRAIL WOULD HAVE THE LAST LAUGH. LOVE RUNS AROUND THE END FOR 27 YARDS. TOUCHDOWN! MONTEREY TRAIL WOULD WIN THEIR SEASON OPENER, TAKING DOWN INDERKUM FINAL SCORE 27 TO 22. ALL RIGHT, NOW TO OUR KCRA 3 HIGH SCHOOL PLAYBOOK AND VISION MOTORS. MERCEDES BENZ OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA GIRLS VARSITY FLAG FOOTBALL GAME. IT’S A FEATURED GAME OF THE WEEK THIS YEAR. THE CIF HAS CLEARED THE WAY FOR THESE YOUNG LADIES TO BATTLE FOR A STATE TITLE. AT THE END OF THE SEASON, THEY WILL BE FOUR DIVISIONS IN THE SAC-JOAQUIN SECTION FOR GIRLS FLAG FOOTBALL THIS YEAR, AND OUR WEEK ONE VISION MOTORS GIRLS FLAG FOOTBALL FEATURED GAME HAS THE FRANKLIN YELLOWJACKETS FROM STOCKTON AT THE SHELDON HUSKIES. EARLY IN THE GAME, THE HUSKIES REACH INTO THE BAG OF TRICKS WITH THE OLD HOOK AND LADDER. CALISTA PHAM ENDS UP WITH THE BALL AND IN THE END ZONE FOR SIX POINTS FOR THE SHELDON HUSKIES. RIGHT THERE. NOW LATE IN THE GAME, SHELDON TRYING TO PAD THEIR LEAD, BUT THEY GET PICKED OFF BY LILIANA FIELDS. BUT IT WASN’T ENOUGH AS SHELDON WINS BIG FINAL SCORE 27 TO NOTHING. IT MEANS A LOT TO US. LIKE WE LIKE, REALLY WANTED IT SO BAD. SO I MEAN, WE WORKED HARD FOR IT TOO. WE’VE BEEN WORKING FOR LIKE PROBABLY THREE MONTHS NOW, SO WE’VE BEEN WORKING HARD. WE TAKE ONE WIN AT A TIME. YOU KNOW? I GOT A LOT OF SPEED ON MY SIDE. YOU KNOW, IT’S JUST ABOUT THE DETAILS. GETTING READY FOR A BIG SEASON. THE GAME HAS CHANGED A LITTLE BIT. SO IT’S GOING TO BE A LONG SEASON. SO ONE GAME AT A TIME. YOU KNOW WE LEARN. WE LEARN AS WE GO. RIGHT NOW WE’RE GOING TO ENJOY THIS. WE’RE GONNA ENJOY THIS TODAY. BUT BE BACK TO IT TOMORROW. KIND OF EXPECTED THAT IN SACRAMENTO TONIGHT. THE DEL CAMPO COUGARS TAKING ON THE BURBANK TITANS. DEL CAMPO LOOKING TO SCORE FIRST. QUARTERBACK JAXON MORGAN HANDS OFF TO NUMBER THREE. HE WEAVES THROUGH THE TITANS DEFENSE FOR A COUGARS TOUCHDOWN AND DEL CAMPO LEAD AT SEVEN TO NOTHING. LATER FOR BURBANK. ANDRES ORTIZ SHOWS GREAT EFFORT TO PICK UP A TITANS FIRST DOWN. ORTIZ KEPT THE FIRST DOWN. CHAINS MOVING ON THAT PLAY RIGHT THERE AND TONIGHT BELONG TO THE DEL CAMPO COUGARS. BRYCE SMITH TAKES THIS ONE UP THE MIDDLE SHAKING OFF A DEFENDER PICKING UP 25 YARDS. DEL CAMPO OPENS THEIR SEASON WITH A VICTORY TAKING DOWN BURBANK. FINAL SCORE 55 TO 21. KEEP OUR PROMISE OF BRINGING YOU EVERY ASPECT OF FRIDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. IT’S TIME TO INTRODUCE YOU TO OUR SHRINERS CHILDREN’S OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHEER TEAM OF THE WEEK. HERE THEY ARE. THEY ARE THE 35 MEMBER VARSITY CHEERLEADERS FROM VISTA DEL LAGO HIGH SCHOOL. THAT’S IN FOLSOM. THE EAGLES CHEERLEADERS LOVE TO MAKE THEIR FANS IN THE STANDS, STAND UP AND CHEER EVERY GAME AS THEY LOVE CONTROLLING THE EMOTIONS OF EVERYONE DURING THEIR WAY AND DURING THEIR HOME GAMES. WELL, THAT DOES IT FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THE PLAYBOOK SHOW COMING UP AFTER A QUICK COMMERCIAL BREAK. I’VE GOT OUR FAN OF THE WEEK, PLUS OUR GAME OF THE WEEK, BUT FOR NOW, IT’S TIME TO MEET OUR HIGH SCHOOL PLAYBOOK GAME OFFICIALS OF THE WEEK. THE FIVE VARSITY CREW, THE CREW CHIEFS IN THE WHITE CAP, MY MAIN MAN, TONY KARBOWSKI. TONY HAS REFEREED HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAMES FOR 14 YEARS. WHEN HE’S NOT THROWING HIS YELLOW FLAG, TONY KAYE WORKS IN THE USED CAR BUSINESS, WHICH HE HAS DONE FOR THE LAST 28 YEARS.

    High School Playbook Show: Watch Week 1 recaps, highlights and game scores

    Updated: 11:38 PM PDT Aug 22, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    KCRA 3’s High School Playbook show is sharing the highlights from Friday Night Lights.Watch Del Rodgers give a recap of the second week of playoff games across the Sac-Joaquin Section in Northern California on Aug. 22.Part 1 of the show is in the video above with game recaps, cheerleaders of the week and more. You can watch part 2 with Game of the Week and Catch of the Week coverage in the video below.See more high school football scores below.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    KCRA 3’s High School Playbook show is sharing the highlights from Friday Night Lights.

    Watch Del Rodgers give a recap of the second week of playoff games across the Sac-Joaquin Section in Northern California on Aug. 22.

    Part 1 of the show is in the video above with game recaps, cheerleaders of the week and more. You can watch part 2 with Game of the Week and Catch of the Week coverage in the video below.

    See more high school football scores below.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • Best Photos of the Week! (100 Photos)

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    Bob

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  • More frozen shrimp has been recalled for possible radioactive contamination

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    More frozen shrimp has been recalled for possible radioactive contamination

    Updated: 7:44 AM PDT Aug 22, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    More packages of frozen shrimp potentially affected by radioactive contamination have been recalled, federal officials said Thursday.California-based Southwind Foods recalled frozen shrimp sold under the brands Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American and First Street. The bagged products were distributed between July 17 and Aug. 8 to stores and wholesalers in nine states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state.In the video player above: Get a look at the product labelsThe products have the potential to be contaminated with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear reactions.Related video below: Are Recalled Products Hiding in Your Home?Walmart stores this week recalled packages of Great Value frozen raw shrimp sold in 13 states because of potential radioactive contamination.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert after federal officials detected Cesium-137 in shipping containers sent to four U.S. ports and in a sample of frozen breaded shrimp imported by BMS Foods of Indonesia.The FDA advises consumers not to eat the recalled products. Traces of Cesium-137 are widespread in the environment including food, soil and air. The primary health risk is through long-term, repeated low-dose exposure, which can increase the risk of cancer.

    More packages of frozen shrimp potentially affected by radioactive contamination have been recalled, federal officials said Thursday.

    California-based Southwind Foods recalled frozen shrimp sold under the brands Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American and First Street. The bagged products were distributed between July 17 and Aug. 8 to stores and wholesalers in nine states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state.

    In the video player above: Get a look at the product labels

    The products have the potential to be contaminated with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear reactions.

    Related video below: Are Recalled Products Hiding in Your Home?

    Walmart stores this week recalled packages of Great Value frozen raw shrimp sold in 13 states because of potential radioactive contamination.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert after federal officials detected Cesium-137 in shipping containers sent to four U.S. ports and in a sample of frozen breaded shrimp imported by BMS Foods of Indonesia.

    The FDA advises consumers not to eat the recalled products. Traces of Cesium-137 are widespread in the environment including food, soil and air. The primary health risk is through long-term, repeated low-dose exposure, which can increase the risk of cancer.

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  • To counter Texas, California lawmakers take up plan to redraw congressional districts

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    SACRAMENTO — California Democrats on Monday kicked off the process to redraw the state’s congressional districts, an extraordinary action they said was necessary to neutralize efforts by President Trump and Texas Republicans to increase the number of GOP lawmakers in Congress.

    If approved by state lawmakers this week, Californians will vote on the ballot measure, labeled Proposition 50, in a special election in November.

    At a news conference unveiling the legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said they agreed with Gov. Gavin Newsom that California must respond to Trump’s efforts to “rig” the 2026 midterms by working to reduced by half the number of Republicans in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

    They said doing so is essential to stymieing the president’s far-right agenda.

    “I want to make one thing very clear, I’m not happy to be here. We didn’t choose this fight. We don’t want this fight,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park). “But with our democracy on the line, we cannot run away from this fight, and when the dust settles on election day, we will win.”

    Republicans accused Democrats of trying to subvert the will of the voters, who passed independent redistricting 15 years ago, for their own partisan goals.

    “The citizens seized back control of the power from the politicians in 2010,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), flanked by GOP legislators and signs in the Capitol rotunda that said, “Rigged map” and “Defend fair elections.”

    “Let me be very clear,” DeMaio said. “Gavin Newsom and other politicians have been lying in wait, with emphasis on lying … to seize back control.”

    After Trump urged Texas to redraw its congressional districts to add five new GOP members to Congress, Newsom and California Democrats began calling to temporarily reconfigure the current congressional district boundaries, which were drawn by the voter-approved independent redistricting commission in 2021.

    Other states are also now considering redrawing their congressional districts, escalating the political battle over control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressional districts are typically reconfigured once every decade after the U.S. census.

    Newsom, other Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders launched a campaign supporting the redrawing of California’s congressional districts on Thursday, and proposed maps were sent to state legislative leaders on Friday.

    The measures that lawmakers will take up this week would:

    • Give Californians the power to amend the state Constitution and approve new maps, drawn by Democrats, that would be in place for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 congressional elections, if any GOP-led states approve their own maps.
    • Provide funding for the November special election.
    • Return the state to a voter-approved independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional districts after the 2030 census.

    Whereas Texas and several other GOP-led states are considering an unusual mid-decade redistricting to keep the Republican Party’s hold on Congress, Ohio is an anomaly. If its congressional districts are not approved on a bipartisan basis, they are valid for only two general elections and can then be redrawn.

    McGuire said California would go forward if Ohio does.

    “The state of Ohio has made it clear that they are wanting to be able to proceed. They’re one of the few states in the United States of America that actually allow for … mid-decade redistricting,” he said. “We firmly believe that they should cool it, pull back, because if they do, so will California.”

    Republicans responded by calling for a federal investigation into the California Democratic redistricting plan, and vowed to file multiple lawsuits in state and federal court, including two this week.

    “We’re going to litigate this every step of the way, but we believe that this will also be rejected at the ballot box, in the court of public opinion,” DeMaio said.

    He also called for a 10-year ban on holding elected office for state legislators who vote in support of calling the special election, although he did not say how he would try to do that.

    McGuire dismissed the criticism and threats of legal action, saying the Republicans were more concerned about political self-preservation than the will of California voters or the rule of law.

    “California Republicans are now clutching their pearls because of self-interest. Not one California Republican spoke up in the Legislature, in the House, when Texas made the decision to be able to eliminate five historically Black and brown congressional districts. Not one,” he said. “What I would say: Spend more time on the problem. The problem is Donald Trump.”

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    Seema Mehta, Laura J. Nelson

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  • Commentary: Can homegrown teens replace immigrant farm labor? In 1965, the U.S. tried

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    I sank into Randy Carter’s comfy couch, excited to see the Hollywood veteran’s magnum opus.

    Around the first floor of his Glendale home were framed photos and posters of films the 77-year-old had worked on during his career. “Apocalypse Now.” “The Godfather II.” “The Conversation.”

    What we were about to watch was nowhere near the caliber of those classics — and Carter didn’t care.

    Footage of a school bus driving through dusty farmland began to play. The title of the nine-minute sizzle reel Carter produced in 1991 soon flashed: “Boy Wonders.”

    The plot: White teenage boys in the 1960s gave up a summer of surfing to heed the federal government’s call. Their assignment: Pick crops in the California desert, replacing Mexican farmworkers.

    “That’s the stupidest, dumbest, most harebrained scheme I’ve heard in my life,” a farmer complained to a government official in one scene, a sentiment studio executives echoed as they rejected Carter’s project as too far-fetched.

    But it wasn’t: “Boy Wonders” was based on Carter’s life.

    Randy Carter’s collection of historical photos and other memorabilia of A-TEAM, a 1965 program that sought to recruit high school athletes to pick crops during the summer.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    In 1965, the U.S. Department of Labor launched A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower — with the goal of recruiting 20,000 high school athletes to harvest summer crops. The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before.

    Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown urged teen jocks to join A-TEAM because “Farm Work Builds Men!” as one ad stated. But only about 3,000 made it to the fields. One of them was a 17-year-old Carter.

    He and about 18 classmates from University of San Diego High spent six weeks picking cantaloupes in Blythe. The fine hairs on the fruits ripped through their gloves within hours. It was so hot that the bologna sandwiches the farmers fed their young workers for lunch toasted in the shade. They slept in rickety shacks, used communal bathrooms and showered in water that “was a very nice shade of brown,” Carter remembered with a laugh.

    They were the rare crew that stuck it out. Teens quit or went on strike across the country to protest abysmal work conditions. A-TEAM was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again, and the program was considered so ludicrous that it rarely made it into history books.

    Then came MAGA.

    Now, legislators in some red-leaning states are thinking about making it easier for teenagers to work in agricultural jobs, in anticipation of Trump’s deportation deluge.

    “I used to joke that I’ve written a story for the ages, because we’ll never solve the problem of labor,” Carter said. “I could be dead, and my great-grandkids could easily shop it around.”

    I wrote about Carter’s experience in 2018 for an NPR article that went viral. It still bubbles up on social media any time a politician suggests that farm laborers are easily replaceable — like last month, when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” could pick crops, instead of immigrants.

    From journalists to teachers, people are reaching out to Carter anew to hear his picaresque stories from 50 years ago — like the time he and his friends made a wrong turn in Blythe and drove into the barrio, where “everyone looked at us like we were specimens” but was nice about it.

    “They are dying to see white kids tortured,” Carter cracked when I asked him why the saga fascinates the public. “They want to see these privileged teens work their asses off. Wouldn’t you?”

    But he doesn’t see the A-TEAM as one giant joke — it’s one of the defining moments of his life.

    A black and white photo of 11 men dressed in 1960s clothes.

    An old photo belonging to Randy Carter shows, seated at bottom right, his boss at the time, Francis Ford Coppola. “Everyone in this photo won an Academy Award except me,” Carter said.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter moved to San Diego his sophomore year of high school. He always took summer jobs at the insistence of his working-class Irish mother. When the feds made their pitch in the spring of 1965, “there wasn’t exactly a rush to the sign-up table,” Carter recalled. What’s more, coaches at his school, known as University High, forbade their athletes to join. But he and his pals thought it would be the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

    “You’re a teenager and think, ‘What the hell are we going to do this summer?’” he said. “Then, ‘What the hell. If nothing else, we’ll go into town every night. We’ll meet some girls. We’ll get cowboys to buy us beer.’”

    Carter paused for dramatic effect. “No.”

    The University High crew was trained by a Mexican foreman “who in retrospect must have hated us because we were taking the jobs of his family.” They worked six days a week for minimum wage — $1.40 an hour at the time — and earned a nickel for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 cantaloupes.

    “Within two days, we thought, ‘This is insane,’” he said. “By the third day, we wanted to leave. But we stayed, because it became a thing of honor.”

    Nearly everyone returned to San Diego after the six-week stint, although a couple of guys went to Fresno and “became legendary in our group because they could stand to do some more. For the rest of us, we did it, and we vowed never to do anything like that as long as we live. Somehow, the beach seemed a little nicer that summer.”

    Carter’s wife, Janice, walked in. I asked how important A-TEAM was to her husband.

    She rolled her eyes the way only a wife of 53 years could.

    “He talks about it almost every week,” she said as Randy beamed. “It’s like an endless loop.”

    University High’s A-TEAM squad went on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They regularly meet for reunions and talk about those tough days in Blythe, which Carter describes “as the intersection of hell and Earth.”

    As the issue of immigrant labor became more heated in American politics, the guys realized they had inadvertently absorbed an important lesson all those decades ago.

    Before A-TEAM, Carter said, his idea of how crops were picked was that “somehow it got done, and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared.”

    “But when we now thought about Mexicans, we realized we only had to do it for six weeks,” he continued. “These guys do it every day, and they support a family. We became sympathetic, to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say, ‘Don’t even go there, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

    Carter’s experience picking cantaloupes solidified his liberal leanings. So did the time he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 1969 during Operation Intercept, a Nixon administration initiative that required the Border Patrol to search nearly every car.

    The stated purpose was to crack down on marijuana smuggling. Instead, Carter said, it created an hours-long wait and “businesses on both sides of the border were furious.”

    In college, Carter cheered the efforts of United Farm Workers and kept tabs on the fight to ban el cortito, the short-handled hoes that wore down the bodies of California farmworkers for generations until a state bill banned them in 1975.

    By then, he was working as a “junior, junior, junior” assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. Once he built enough of a resume in Hollywood — where he would become a longtime first assistant director on “Seinfeld,” among many credits — Carter wrote his “Boy Wonders” script, which he described as “‘Dead Poets Society’ meets ‘Cool Hand Luke.’”

    It was optioned twice. Henry Winkler’s production company was interested for a bit. So was Rhino Records’ film division, which explains why the soundtrack features boomer classics from the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. But no one thought audiences would buy Carter’s straightforward premise.

    One executive suggested it would be more believable if the high schoolers ran over someone on prom night and became crop pickers to hide from the cops. Another suggested exploding toilets to funny up the action.

    “The mantra in Hollywood is, ‘Do something you know about,’” he said. “But that was the curse of it not getting made — because no one else knew about it!”

    A farm field with rows of water, with mountains in the background.

    Colorado River water irrigates a farm field in Blythe in 2021.

    (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

    Carter continues to share his experience, because “as a weak-kneed progressive, I always fancied we could change the situation … and that some sense of fair play could bubble up. I’m still walking up that road, but it seems more distant.”

    A few weeks ago, federal immigration agents raided the car wash he frequents.

    “You don’t even have to rewrite stories from years ago,” he said. “You could just reprint them, because nothing changes.”

    I asked what he thought about MAGA’s push to replace migrant farmworkers with American citizens.

    “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go to Dodger Stadium, grab someone from the third row of the mezzanine section, and they can play the violin at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.’ OK, you can do that, but it’s not going to work,” he said. “I don’t get why they don’t try to solve the problem of fair conditions and inadequate pay — why is that never an option?”

    What about a reboot of A-TEAM?

    “It could work,” Carter replied. “I was with a group of guys that did it!”

    Then he considered how it might play out today.

    “If Taylor Swift said it was great, you’d get people. Would they last? If they had decent accommodations and pay, maybe. But it would never happen with Trump. His solution is, ‘You don’t pay decent wages, you get desperate people.’”

    He laughed again.

    “Here’s a crazy program from the 1960s that’s not off the map in 2025. We’re still debating the issue. Am I crazy, or is the world crazy?”

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    Gustavo Arellano

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  • Energy secretary says Trump administration may alter past National Climate Assessments

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    U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said this week that the Trump administration plans to review and potentially alter the nation’s climate science reports.

    In a Tuesday appearance on CNN’s “The Source,” Wright told CNN host Kaitlan Collins the National Climate Assessments have been removed from government websites “because we’re reviewing them.”

    “We will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those,” Wright said.

    The National Climate Assessments are mandated by Congress and have been released five times since 2000. The federal reports, prepared by hundreds of volunteer scientists, are subject to extensive peer review and detail how climate change is affecting each region of the United States so far and provide the latest scientific forecasts.

    Wright accused the previous reports of being politically biased, stating that they “are not fair assessments of the data.”

    “When you get into departments and look at stuff that’s there and you find stuff that’s objectionable, you want to fix it,” he said.

    His statements came after the Trump administration in April dismissed more than 400 experts who had already started work on the sixth National Climate Assessment, due for publication in late 2027 or early 2028. The administration in July also removed the website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which housed the reports.

    The move marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to downplay climate science. The president and Department of Energy in recent months have championed fossil fuel production and slashed funding and incentives for renewable energy projects. This week, the Energy Department posted an image of coal on X alongside the words, “She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she is the moment.”

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed looser regulations for polluting sectors such as power plants and vehicles. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in March proclaimed the administration was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

    In his CNN appearance, Wright said the previous climate change assessments — including the 2018 report prepared during Trump’s first term — were not “a reasonable representation of broad climate science.”

    “They have been more politically driven to hype up a real issue, but an issue that’s just nowhere near the world’s greatest challenge,” he said of climate change. “Nobody’s who’s a credible economist or scientist believes that it is, except a few activists and alarmists.”

    Environmental experts were concerned by Wright’s comments.

    “Secretary Wright just confirmed our worst fears — that this administration plans to not just bury the scientific evidence but replace it with outright lies to downplay the worsening climate crisis and evade responsibility for addressing it,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was among the authors dismissed by the administration.

    “This is one more alarming example of the Trump administration’s ongoing and highly politicized effort to obfuscate scientific truth to further its dangerous and deadly pro-fossil fuel agenda,” Cleetus said.

    The Energy Department last week also released its own climate report, commissioned by Wright, that questions the severity of climate change.

    “Both models and experience suggest that [carbon dioxide]-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and excessively aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial,” the report says.

    Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, noted in a post on X that the previous National Climate Assessments were authored by hundreds of scientists who were leading domain experts in their fields.

    “This would mark an extraordinary, unprecedented, and alarming level of interference in what has historically been a fair and systematic process,” Swain said of the possibility that previous reports could be altered.

    The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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    Hayley Smith

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  • 2 weeks after they inherited a home, the Mountain fire wiped away their fresh start

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    Two weeks ago, Brittanie Bibby, husband Kenneth and their 15-month-old baby moved from Arizona to Camarillo to live in the home she inherited from her father, maxing out their credit cards to turn the dilapidated property into a safe place to live.

    On Wednesday, that safe place burned to the ground, leaving the family with no home, no savings and no clue what comes next.

    The next day, the shellshocked parents struggled to come to grips with the financial toll of the incident and the catastrophic sentimental loss.

    “We lost everything,” said Brittanie. “All of our family memories, all of our possessions, Social Security cards, death certificates, birth certificates, my husband’s father’s ashes, my father’s ashes and my mother’s ashes.”

    Brittanie Bibby holds her baby, Ken. Brittanie and her husband lost their Camarillo house to the Mountain fire two weeks after moving in.

    (Brittanie Bibby)

    Their property was among the 132 structures destroyed by the fast-moving Mountain fire, which ignited Wednesday morning and scorched more than 20,000 acres in the mountains of Ventura County by Thursday evening.

    The family started to collect donations on GoFundMe on Thursday and was able to get diapers and fresh clothes for baby Ken. Brittanie planned to sleep in the evacuation shelter Thursday night and take a fresh stab at her mountain of tasks Friday morning.

    “Being a mom, I don’t really have a choice to panic or to not think through the steps, because I have a tiny human that is 100% dependent on me,” she said. “So while I feel a whole bunch of things, I have to try to keep a clear mind so that I’m giving him the best care.”

    At the top of her priority list is trying to find a pediatrician; Ken suffers from asthma and his health is put at risk by the thick wildfire smoke.

    “We have been doing everything in our power to keep him in filtered air and clean air so he doesn’t get triggered by the ash,” she said, “because all of his medication and inhaler burned up.”

    When Brittanie received the evacuation alert around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, she ran to the nursery to try to pack up the baby’s essentials, such as clothing and medicine. But, glancing out a window, she was met with a terrifying sight — giant flames leaping from structures just one street away as the wind swept smoke up the hill and toward her house.

    There was no time to pack; the priority now was getting everyone out alive.

    Ruins in a residential neighborhood after the fire

    The Mountain fire destroyed homes on both sides of Old Coach Drive in Camarillo.

    (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

    She grabbed her baby and helped her mother-in law, Denise Bibby, her grandmother-in-law, Huguette Doucette, and her two elderly dogs get out of the house.

    As she sped away, flames from burning brush leaped up and lapped over the car. A dark thought went through her head — “I’m not going to survive.”

    The Bibbys made it safely to a friend’s house. About three hours later, Brittanie felt herself going into shock.

    “I went from being somewhat comfortable to absolutely freezing,” she said. “Even though the house was like 75 degrees, my fingers turned blue and I had to be covered in blankets and sweaters.”

    Baby Ken has also been affected and is having difficulties sleeping in his confusing new surroundings.

    “We’re very sleep-deprived, because he spends a lot of the night crying,” she said.

    His parents are also on edge as they face an uncertain future.

    They are still awaiting information from their trust attorney on whether the home was insured and are researching relief grants they may be eligible for.

    On Sunday, Kenneth is planning on returning to work as a crew member at Trader Joe’s. On Monday, Brittanie is scheduled to start a full-time customer service job at Walmart.

    After feeling so happy to finally be settled into their new home, it’s hard for the couple to adjust to this post-fire reality.

    “It’s a big system shock, almost like you’re in a bad dream,” said Brittanie. “You just want to wake up.”

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    Clara Harter

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  • Strong winds, cooler temperatures and possible rain forecast for Los Angeles region

    Strong winds, cooler temperatures and possible rain forecast for Los Angeles region

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    Much of the San Fernando Valley, northern L.A. County and Malibu will be under a wind advisory starting Monday morning, the National Weather Service said.

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    Dakota Smith

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  • ‘Celebrity A’ accused of raping 13-year-old during a VMAs afterparty hosted by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, lawsuit alleges

    ‘Celebrity A’ accused of raping 13-year-old during a VMAs afterparty hosted by Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, lawsuit alleges

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    When Sean “Diddy” Combs was charged last month in a federal sex-trafficking probe, it unleashed a wave of lawsuits detailing how the music industry mogul allegedly drugged and assaulted men and women for years undeterred.

    But the piecemeal allegations leveled in the criminal and civil cases stopped short of answering an essential question that’s been hinted at by attorneys, investigators and internet sleuths: Who else was involved?

    This week, for the first time, celebrities other than Combs have been accused in civil lawsuits of participating in assaults during parties hosted by the Bad Boy Records founder. The stars, however, have not been identified by name.

    A federal lawsuit filed this week in the Southern District of New York involves a woman, identified as Jane Doe, who says she was 13 when she was raped by Combs and a male celebrity, identified only as Celebrity A, while a female celebrity, referred to as Celebrity B in court papers, watched.

    The woman alleges in the legal filing that the night of Sept. 7, 2000, began with her outside Radio City Music Hall in New York City, trying to talk her way into the Video Music Awards. She approached several limousine drivers, including one who claimed to work for Combs, she said.

    “He told her that Combs liked younger girls and she ‘fit what Diddy was looking for,’” the lawsuit states. The driver invited her to an afterparty and told her to return later that night.

    When she did, the driver took her to a large white house with a gated U-shaped driveway and, once inside, she was told to sign a nondisclosure agreement, the suit says. A luxurious party was unfolding inside. Waitstaff carried trays of drinks, loud music blasted throughout the house and partygoers were snorting cocaine and using marijuana, according to the lawsuit.

    After finishing one drink — a concoction of orange juice, cranberry juice and something bitter — she says she began to feel lightheaded and found an empty bedroom to rest. Combs walked into the room with two celebrities. He approached her “with a crazed look in his eyes, grabbed her and said ‘You are ready to party!’” the lawsuit states.

    The unnamed male celebrity raped the girl, while Combs and the unidentified female celebrity allegedly watched. Combs then raped the girl as the other two celebrities watched, according to the lawsuit.

    Combs’ attorneys denied the latest allegations in a statement.

    “The press conference and 1-800 number that preceded [Sunday’s] barrage of filings were clear attempts to garner publicity,” they said. “Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.”

    Attorney Tony Buzbee, who is representing more than 100 people who say they were victimized by Combs, has previously vowed to name celebrities who had been involved in the alleged sexual abuse. He said during a news conference last month that the names contained in the suits would “shock.”

    “Many of you came here thinking or hoping or perhaps believing that I may start naming names,” Buzbee said last month. “That day will come, but it won’t be today.”

    But it hasn’t happened.

    Several sources involved in representing Hollywood A-listers told The Times they feared their clients being implicated even by mere association with Combs. Many have clients who went to Combs’ parties.

    Buzbee, they allege, is playing on the fear of implication. The Texas-based attorney has already claimed to have made deals with “a handful” of notable individuals who could be linked to Combs.

    Buzbee did not return a phone call from The Times seeking additional comment.

    David Ring, who has represented sex crime survivors in some of California’s biggest cases, said that not naming celebrities who may have been involved in wrongdoing gives the victims’ lawyers leverage to negotiate settlements.

    “If they are publicly identified, the celebrity will likely dig in and deny all charges and fight until the end,” he said. “However, if they are given the opportunity to quickly settle and prevent their name from ever being announced publicly, many of them will jump at that opportunity.”

    In another lawsuit Buzbee filed this week against Combs, a personal trainer identified only as John Doe alleges he was drugged and forced to perform oral sex on an unnamed male celebrity during an awards show afterparty at Combs’ house in the Hollywood Hills in June 2022.

    “While in and out of consciousness, individuals at the party forced Plaintiff into sexual acts with both men and woman. Plaintiff’s physical disposition made it impossible for him to reject their advances or otherwise control his body. These individuals, including Combs, essentially passed Plaintiff’s drugged body around like a party favor for their sexual enjoyment,” the lawsuit states.

    U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ordered Buzbee this week to file a motion seeking to allow the personal trainer to proceed in the case using a pseudonym. He also required a declaration to be filed under seal “disclosing his identity and the identity of any party that is not named in the complaint to the court.”

    Combs, 54, remains in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied multiple abuse claims that have been outlined in at least 18 civil lawsuits filed against him in the past year.

    The criminal case laid out by federal prosecutors alleged an extensive network that would have required multiple people to recruit victims, organize the sex performances called “freak-offs,” clean up and cover tracks to avoid outside scrutiny.

    “Combs did not do this all on his own,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in announcing the charges. “He used his business and employees of that business and other close associates to get his way.”

    Federal prosecutors said early this month that Combs may face a superseding indictment that would open the door to more charges for Combs and possibly other defendants.

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    Hannah Fry, Richard Winton

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  • D.A. says he will make decision on Menendez brothers by week’s end

    D.A. says he will make decision on Menendez brothers by week’s end

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    L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced that he would make a decision on the possible resentencing of the Menendez brothers by the end of the week.

    Erik and Lyle Menendez have spent 34 years behind bars after being convicted of the 1989 slaying of their parents, but evidence recently surfaced supporting the brothers’ claims that they were sexually abused by their father, prompting a reexamination of the case.

    Gascón had promised to offer a position on the case by a November hearing but told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday that he was accelerating this timeline in response to increased public attention.

    The famous case has soared back into the public eye thanks in part to a new Netflix miniseries and documentary that shone a light on the violent past of Jose Menendez, the brothers’ father. It has also sparked a heated public discourse over whether the brothers deserve a new shot at justice and if societal views of rape have evolved since the pair were sentenced to life in prison in 1996.

    Gascón, for his part, told Tapper it was concerning that one of the prosecutors made comments about “how men cannot be raped.”

    “There was certainly implicit bias that took place at that time that perhaps may have had an impact in the way the case was perceived and presented to the jury,” he said.

    He said prosecutors in his office today were split into two camps regarding a possible resentencing.

    “I have a group of people, including some that were involved in the original trial, that are adamant that they should spend the rest of their life in prison and that they were not molested,” he said. “I have other people in the office that believe they probably were molested and that they deserve to have some relief.”

    Gascón said the Menendez brothers were facing two possible forms of relief.

    The first is a petition filed by the brothers’ defense team arguing that new evidence challenges the argument prosecutors made during trial — that the murders were motivated by the boys’ desire to secure their $14-million inheritance and that Jose Menendez did not abuse his sons.

    This evidence includes a letter that attorneys say Erik Menendez wrote about the sexual abuse he endured as a teenager prior to committing the killings as well as new claims brought forward by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who said he too was raped by Jose Menendez.

    The second possible form of relief is a California law that allows for the early release of prisoners who have already served long sentences and are not deemed a threat to the community, Gascón said.

    Gascón said he was considering both options and noted that either one would require a court approval.

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    Clara Harter

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  • Kaiser mental health professionals in Southern California go on strike

    Kaiser mental health professionals in Southern California go on strike

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    Psychologists, therapists and other mental health professionals who work for Kaiser Permanente across Southern California went on strike Monday morning, protesting that the healthcare organization had failed to address enduring problems that hamper its mental health care.

    The National Union of Healthcare Workers said that nearly 2,400 mental health workers had launched their job action after Kaiser management had turned down proposals that the union said would stanch employee turnover and improve care. The NUHW contract for the workers expired Sept. 30.

    “Unless we strike, our coworkers are going to keep leaving,” San Diego psychologist Josh Garcia said in a union statement before the walkout, “and our patients are going to keep struggling in an underfunded, understaffed system that doesn’t meet their needs.”

    Ahead of the strike, Kaiser said it had made strong proposals to improve wages, benefits and preparation time for therapists. It faulted the union for “slow walking the negotiation process,” saying that any strike was “because NUHW leadership chose this path — rather than a path to an agreement.”

    The strike comes one year after Kaiser agreed to a $200-million settlement with California regulators who found that patients were subjected to excessive wait times for therapy appointments. Kaiser agreed to pay a $50-million penalty and spend $150 million over five years to improve its mental health care.

    Kaiser said that even before the state settlement, it had started ramping up mental health care spending. The organization said it had spent more than $1 billion to expand its mental health care in recent years and increased its Southern California mental health workforce by more than 30%.

    As the healthcare organization was seeing “throughout California, throughout the nation, this mental health crisis, we knew that we needed to act quickly,” said Rhonda Chabran, its vice president of behavioral health and wellness for Southern California and Hawaii.

    Union leaders said problems have persisted. In a recent letter to the state, NUHW alleged Kaiser was continuing to violate California law, which sets timelines for providing mental health care, and that “these failures are widespread.” NUHW said in its surveys of the Kaiser mental health workers in Southern California, 62% of respondents said their departments lacked enough staff to provide timely and appropriate care.

    The union said it was pushing for higher wages, better benefits and more guaranteed time to handle duties outside of patient appointments. NUHW members lamented that unlike in Northern California, where the union said that Kaiser therapists are now guaranteed seven hours a week to handle tasks such as preparing treatment plans, Southern California therapists with Kaiser may only get two hours a week to do so.

    “There’s a lot of things that we need to do in preparing for a visit: Developing appropriate treatment plans. Writing letters for our clients … They do not give us the time to do that,” said Lisa Delgadillo, a Kaiser psychiatric social worker in Fontana. “People think therapy is just talking to people, but it’s more than that.”

    Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, a psychiatric counselor, said she sees a dozen or more patients a day in a Kaiser virtual therapy program meant for “mild to moderate” patients. The sessions each last a half hour, she said, but scheduling and other tasks cut into that time.

    Gutierrez-Thompson likened it to being a factory worker. “It’s really hard to stay a good therapist in this system,” she said. “We have to make choices like, ‘Do I make eye contact, or do I finish this note?’”

    NUHW has also proposed a series of raises totaling more than 30% over four years. Union leaders said the wage hikes were needed to bring their compensation in line with other health professionals at Kaiser.

    Kaiser said that its Southern California therapists already have generous benefits and compensation, with wages that are above market rates, and that it had offered raises at the bargaining table totaling more than 18%. It also said it had offered more time for duties outside of face-to-face appointments, but that the union proposal could pull therapists away from seeing patients for a significant chunk of their working week.

    The healthcare system said it had plans in place to minimize possible disruptions from the walkout, which has no defined length. Because Kaiser relies not only on employees but “an external network of contracted providers” for mental health care, it estimated that 60% of its patients receiving mental health and addiction services are currently getting care from providers who will not be participating in the NUHW strike.

    If their regular provider is on strike, Kaiser said, “patients will have the opportunity to be seen by another professional in our extensive network of highly qualified, licensed therapists.”

    Union leaders urged the state to keep tabs on how Kaiser was providing care during the strike, pointing out that the state Department of Managed Health Care found it had canceled appointments for tens of thousands of patients during a walkout by Northern California therapists two years ago.

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    Emily Alpert Reyes

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  • California’s October heat wave to again peak this weekend, as health concerns mount

    California’s October heat wave to again peak this weekend, as health concerns mount

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    After days of record-breaking temperatures, weather officials are warning that California’s unusual October heat wave is expected to peak again this weekend, with millions facing another round of dangerous heat through Monday.

    Temperatures are expected to remain 10 to 15 degrees above average for this time of year, with much of the state under a significant heat risk — with the Bay Area and inland Southern California classified as major to extreme heat risk. The National Weather Service defines extreme heat risk as “rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief, likely to affect “anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”

    Across the majority of the Bay Area, officials warned of highs up to 105 Friday and Saturday, with even coastal areas reaching up to 95 degrees. The weather service warned that the hot conditions there could have “life-threatening impacts or major impacts to commerce and travel.”

    The unseasonable heat has become a concern for the San Francisco 49ers game Sunday at 1 p.m., ensuring that fans and players at Levi’s Stadium will be out in the heat of the day.

    Highs in Santa Clara are expected to soar into the mid 90s Sunday, according to Roger Gass, a National Weather Service meteorologist for the Bay Area. An analysis from SFGate found that Sunday’s game will likely be the hottest ever in the stadium, which has drawn concerns about uncomfortable heat — if not dangerous — since the stadium opened in 2014, as the majority of seats are positioned in the direct sun.

    “We’re expecting [highs] anywhere from 93 to 96 degrees on Sunday,” Gass said. “It’s among the warmest” for this time of year in Santa Clara.

    Earlier this week, the San José Mineta International Airport — the closest climate site to Levi’s Stadium — hit 100 degrees over three consecutive days for the first time, among a slew of hot temperatures records set this week.

    Not far away in Mountain View, Stanford’s football team will kick off Saturday against Virginia Tech, where highs are expected to reach into the mid-90s.

    “We are most concerned for people without adequate access to cooling,” Gass said. “Take frequent breaks in the shade if possible, don’t over exert yourself by any means.”

    Heat deaths have become a growing crisis across California and the U.S. as climate change has made heat events more frequent, more persistent and more dangerous. Extreme heat has killed more Americans on average over the last three decades than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined, according to the National Weather Service.

    Earlier this week, five students at a school cross country meet in Riverside County required medical attention after experiencing “general weakness,” including three who were taken to the hospital for further evaluation, according to the Riverside County Fire Department, which responded to the scene.

    In June, a woman in San Diego County died while hiking on an unusually warm day, a death that local officials told NBC 7 San Diego appeared to be heat-related.

    This weekend, Southern California’s coastal areas are mostly excluded from the major heat concerns, but in the Los Angeles and San Diego county mountains, valleys and foothills, weather officials warned temperatures up to 108 are possible from Saturday through Monday, creating “a high risk for dangerous heat illness for anyone, especially for the very young, the very old, those without air conditioning, and those active outdoors.”

    The hottest temperatures across the state are forecast for the Coachella Valley and Palm Desert region, where highs could reach up to 112 this weekend.

    Officials across the state have opened cooling centers for anyone without air conditioning and are working to increase awareness about the signs of heat illnesses.

    “It’s important for Californians to continue taking action to protect themselves, including checking in on friends and neighbors, who can be vulnerable to heat when they are alone,” Amy Palmer, a spokesperson for California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said in a statement.

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    Grace Toohey

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  • Fall baking! SoCal temperatures are set to soar above normal. How high will they go?

    Fall baking! SoCal temperatures are set to soar above normal. How high will they go?

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    For a minute there, it felt like fall.

    But even as October kicks off, the cool weather reprieve is ending, and Southern California is going to see temperatures climb into the extreme range again, forecasters say.

    “There is some potential for record-breaking heat,” said Todd Hall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

    Highs in some areas could soar into the triple digits.

    Temperatures this week in Southern California are expected to be about 10 degrees above normal, according to the weather service. Parts of Los Angeles County will begin to see high temperatures starting Tuesday, with Wednesday the hottest day of the week, Hall said.

    Palmdale and Lancaster are among the areas that could see records fall.

    Hall said L.A. County usually sees warm weather this time of year, but the Santa Ana winds have not yet arrived, and cloudy weather has kept the region cooler.

    Last October, the state faced a heat wave that drove temperatures across Southern California 15 degrees above normal and brought record heat to Northern California.

    Hall said that after the heat peaks on Wednesday, cooler temperatures should arrive later in the week.

    Woodland Hills is expecting a high of 105 degrees on Wednesday, and Burbank could see 97, Hall said. The weather service issued an excessive heat advisory beginning Tuesday through Wednesday evening for the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, with temperatures reaching as high as 106.

    Other parts of Southern California will also face triple-digit temperatures. Ojai is expected to hit 105 on Tuesday and Wednesday, while residents in Paso Robles could see temperatures reach 108. San Luis Obispo will see temperatures as high as 100 on those days as well.

    Hall advised residents to be cognizant of the hot weather and avoid outdoor activity, or confine their activity to the early morning hours.

    There is also an elevated fire risk with the rising temperatures, Hall said. But there are no high winds in the forecast that could drive the fire risk even higher.

    Firefighters are still working on fully containing three Southern California wildfires. The Airport, Bridge and Line fires started near the beginning of September and have been burning for weeks.

    The Airport fire in Orange and Riverside counties has burned 23,526 acres and is 95% contained. Authorities have made daily progress, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. The Bridge fire in L.A. and San Bernardino counties has burned 54,878 acres and is 97% contained.

    The most active fire remaining is the Line fire in San Bernardino County, which was 83% contained but had a significant flare-up on Sunday, as the Victorville Daily Press reported. The county Sheriff’s Department issued an evacuation order Sunday afternoon for the community of Seven Oaks.

    Cal Fire said the Line fire was still burning actively in Bear Creek on Sunday and producing a lot of smoky conditions because of dried-out fuels. Relative humidity in the fire area was expected to range as low as 12%, with winds gusting to about 15 mph. Cal Fire said it had strengthened the containment line on the ridge and had at least 10 helicopters working in the area.

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    Melissa Gomez

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  • Lionsgate, Meta, and a Wild Week in AI

    Lionsgate, Meta, and a Wild Week in AI

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    Matt is joined by Justine Bateman—writer, director, producer, and SAG-AFTRA negotiation committee consultant on the use of AI—to check in on the latest developments on AI in entertainment. They discuss Lionsgate’s new deal with AI company Runway to make movies and shows more efficiently, Meta’s new deal with celebrities to voice a new AI chatbot, and whether other studios will follow suit (02:24). Matt finishes the show with two opening weekend box office predictions for Megalopolis and the animated film The Wild Robot (26:03).

    For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.

    Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com

    Host: Matt Belloni
    Guest: Justine Bateman
    Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

    Subscribe: Spotify

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    Matthew Belloni

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  • Slain couple found under neighbor’s home died from blunt force trauma to head, coroner says

    Slain couple found under neighbor’s home died from blunt force trauma to head, coroner says

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    A Southern California couple whose bodies were found under their neighbor’s home after being reported missing died from “blunt force trauma to the head,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.

    Daniel Menard, 79, and his wife, Stehanie Menard, 73, had been reported missing in late August from their home on a nudist ranch in Redlands, sparking a search by police and concerns by their friends and family.

    Less than a week later, police were tipped off that their neighbor, Michael Royce Sparks, 62, in Olive Dell Ranch had admitted killing the couple to a family member and was threatening to harm himself. Police surrounded the home and took him into custody Aug. 29 and discovered the couple’s bodies in a concrete bunker under the home.

    Sparks was charged with two counts of murder Sept. 3. The couple’s cause of death was confirmed this week by the county coroner.

    The Menards and their pet shih tzu, Cuddles, were reported missing by a friend after the couple missed a church service. Their car was found unlocked down the road from their home, and Stephanie Menard’s purse and their cellphones were found inside their home.

    A neighbor told local TV stations that Sparks hated the couple and that they feuded over a tree between their properties. The Redlands Police Department gave no comment when asked for an update on a possible motive Tuesday.

    At a candlelight vigil for the couple, friends and neighbors gathered under an Olive Dell Ranch sign with candles, flowers and music to celebrate the Menards’ lives.

    “It’s disheartening, it’s uncomfortable,” one neighbor said of the killings. “In a week, we as a community of Olive Dell Ranch lost three members of our family.” He characterized Stephanie Menard, whom he played bingo with, as a spitfire. “She knew what she wanted, she meant what she said, but she always did it caringly.”

    Olive Dell Ranch is a residential RV park and “the ideal spot to enjoy the nudist/naturist lifestyle whether visiting for a day or an overnight stay,” according to its website.

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    Sandra McDonald

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