A 14-year-old boy has been arrested this week on suspicion of killing his parents and critically injuring his younger sister in rural Fresno County, authorities said.
The boy, whose name has not been released because he is a minor, faces two charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Detectives have not determined a motive in the case.
The boy’s parents, Lue Yang and Se Vang, both 37, were found dead by officers in the family’s Miramonte home around 7:40 p.m. Wednesday, authorities said in the release. The boy’s 11-year-old sister “suffered major injuries” but is expected to survive.
The boy placed a 911 call earlier to report that someone had broken into his home and attacked his mother, father and sister, then fled in a pickup truck, according to the news release. Detectives who spoke with the boy discovered “inconsistencies” with his story, determining he fabricated the story and had used “multiple weapons to attack his family members,” authorities said.
A 7-year-old boy was also home during the attack, but was not physically injured, authorities said. Other family members are now caring for the boy.
Officers had not previously received any calls for service to the family’s home, Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni said during a news conference this week.
The Los Angeles area is heading for a wet end to the year, with rain showers forecast for later this week, raising the possibility that Rose Parade attendees might need a poncho or umbrella on New Year’s Day.
This week will be overcast, and a light storm is expected to arrive in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties by Wednesday, dropping a quarter of an inch of rain or more, according to the National Weather Service. Los Angeles and Ventura counties could receive a quarter of an inch of rain Friday heading into Saturday and likely clearing up by Sunday.
Last week, a winter storm drenched Southern California and dropped a month’s worth of rain in some areas. The latest storm passing through the region this week pales in comparison.
“Not even close. This is not even in the same realm as that one,” said meteorologist Mike Wofford of the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. “This storm system will be much weaker.”
Temperatures are expected to drop to below normal for most areas heading into the weekend, hovering around the 60s in the coastal and valley areas and the 50s in the Antelope Valley.
Forecasts are still too far out to determine what the weather holds for New Year’s Day in Southern California. But there is still a slight chance of rain for the Los Angeles region, including right over the Rose Parade route in Pasadena — though it should not be anything close to the downpour that drenched the area in 2006, raining on the parade for the first time in 51 years.
Los Angeles Unified School District band director Tony White remembers that soggy parade route — it rained when his students got off the bus and kept going all while they marched down Colorado Boulevard.
“That was a tough parade,” said White, who has led the district marching band for the last 22 years.
This year, 330 students will march with the L.A. Unified band and will likely start getting prepared by 2:30 a.m., White said. A bit of rain shouldn’t be too much of a problem; brass instruments, cases and drums made of wood can take a beating during a rainy march.
“There’s excitement and enthusiasm from students whenever they participate. They see the people cheering them on,” White said. “If it rains, we’ll make the best of it.”
Another group gearing up for the parade, rain or shine, includes a shiba inu with an underbite, a Chihuahua, a pug, a Pomeranian, and a mixed pit bull terrier. The dogs will ride aboard the Pasadena Humane Society’s first Rose Parade float in 20 years, said President and Chief Executive Dia DuVernet.
“We’re ordering rain ponchos for the dogs just in case, and even for the humans too,” DuVernet said.
The timing of a New Year’s Day storm is still uncertain, Wofford said; the rain could arrive later Monday after the parade is over, but the forecast will become clearer heading into the weekend. The Rose Parade sets off at 8 a.m., followed by the national semifinal Rose Bowl Game between Michigan and Alabama at 2 p.m.
“You can’t rule out that there could be some light rain during the parade,” Wofford said.
Southern Californians will also be under a high surf warning or advisory over the next few days, depending on where they live. Residents along northwest- and west-facing beaches can expect to see large swells, reaching 3 to 5 feet in Los Angeles County on Wednesday, but giving way to much larger swells starting Thursday with some waves around 10 to 15 feet, and peaking around 15 feet and over Saturday. Surfers along the Central Coast might also spot waves around 13 to 15 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
Hermosa, Santa Monica, Venice, Dockweiler and Redondo beaches will be among those with the most wave activity, said Kealiinohopono “Pono” Barnes, spokesperson for the L.A. County Fire Department’s Lifeguard Division.
“This will be the first relatively big swell event of the year,” Barnes said.
The widespread high surf is expected to coincide with high morning tides on Thursday, bringing an increased threat of coastal flooding and beach erosion and flooded beach-side parking lots. The advisories and warnings will end Saturday or Sunday, depending on the location, so residents are advised to stay up to date with their local areas or Los Angeles County lifeguards.
Coupled with the high surf, large tidal swings are expected to reach around 5.5 feet. Anyone heading out to the beach this weekend should check in with an on-duty lifeguard, officials said.
“Let them know you’re there and the lifeguard can point you in the direction of the best spot to put you in the water,” Barnes said.
Moderate swimmers should be cautious when heading to the water during the advisories this weekend.
“You should swim, surf or board within your abilities,” Barnes said. “This may not be the best time to try and flex your skills.”
Mortgage rates fell for the eighth consecutive week, giving cash-strapped home buyers some relief as the new year approaches.
The average interest rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage clocked in at 6.67% for the week ended Dec. 20, down from 6.95% a week earlier, according to data released Thursday by mortgage giant Freddie Mac. As recently as late October, rates were 7.79% — the highest in more than two decades.
The drop in borrowing cost saves new buyers hundreds of dollars each month, but experts said consumers shouldn’t expect drastic improvement in 2024.
The interest rate on mortgages changes based on a variety of factors, including inflation expectations and Federal Reserve policy.
Keith Gumbinger, vice president of research firm HSH.com, predicted rates will bottom out around 6.4% in 2024 as economic growth and inflation remain elevated enough to prevent further declines in borrowing costs.
“Cheaper mortgage money doesn’t necessarily mean that cheap mortgage money is coming,” Gumbinger said. “If you really want the lowest possible interest rates, you really have to hope for the most horrific economic climate.”
Rates have fallen since October, however, in large part because multiple economic reports have signaled inflation is slowing.
The most recent decline comes after the Federal Reserve signaled last week it may be done raising its benchmark interest rate, which helps set a floor on all types of borrowing costs, including mortgage rates.
For prospective homeowners, housing remains drastically more expensive than when rates were 3% and below during the early part of the pandemic. But the decline from 7.79% to 6.67%, equals $486 in monthly savings for a $800,000 home, assuming a buyer puts 20% down.
What effect somewhat lower mortgage rates will have on the housing market depends on how buyers and sellers react.
When mortgage rates first surged in 2022, home prices fell in response as buyers quickly pulled away and inventory swelled. But prices started rising again this year as well-heeled first time buyers returned and existing homeowners increasingly chose not to sell, unwilling to give up their rock-bottom mortgage rates on loans taken out before or during the pandemic.
In most counties, home prices are near their all-time peaks, while in Orange County, prices are setting new records, according to data from Zillow.
Jordan Levine, chief economist with the California Assn. of Realtors, said rates likely will end 2024 in the “low-6% range,” which should convince more existing homeowners to sell.
But he said the increase in supply isn’t likely to be enough to offset an increase in buyers who will also be lured by lower borrowing costs. As a result, Levine said the market may actually be more competitive in 2024, with prices up around 8% by year’s end in Southern California.
A recent forecast from Zillow predicted values would be flat to down slightly in Southern California between November 2023 and November 2024.
Zillow senior economist Nicole Bachaud said falling rates could mean home price growth comes in stronger than that forecast, but maybe not.
“Given the affordability crisis in Los Angeles, we might see sellers move before buyers have enough room in their budgets to respond,” she said.
COVID-19 and flu are rising across California, sparking new warnings from health officials to take precautions as the wider winter holiday season looms.
The uptick is modest and not wholly unexpected — wintertime surges have been an annual occurrence since the coronavirus first emerged. But experts say lagging uptake of the latest reformulated vaccines has left some populations particularly vulnerable to severe health outcomes that are largely preventable at this point.
Over the week that ended Dec. 9, 2,449 Californians were newly admitted to hospitals with a coronavirus infection, up 40% over the last month, according to federal data.
California was considered to have “high” viral illness activity level as of Dec. 9, among the worst designations in the country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
As of Dec. 9, California was considered to have a “high” level of flu-like illness, which includes viral illnesses such as COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
(U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention )
“Respiratory illness activity is rapidly increasing across the United States,” the CDC said in a bulletin Thursday afternoon. “Millions of people may get sick in the next month or two, and low vaccination rates mean more people will get more severe disease. Getting vaccinated now can help prevent hospitalizations and save lives.”
A rise in viral illness is expected this time of year, but the prevalence of COVID-19 adds a considerable health burden that didn’t exist before the pandemic. COVID-19 remains the primary cause of new respiratory hospitalizations and deaths nationally, causing 1,000 fatalities a week.
“COVID is still causing the most number of cases, the most number of hospitalizations and the most, unfortunately, number of deaths that we’re seeing week over week,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the CDC, said in an online discussion Tuesday. “So while we all wish we could leave COVID in the rearview mirror, it is still here with us, and so we need to make sure we are continuing to take it very seriously.”
Cohen last week urged people to take precautions such as getting vaccinated, avoiding people who are sick and staying home when ill, regular hand-washing, improving air ventilation and wearing a mask.
“And get tested, so you know what you have and you can get treatment,” she said. “Getting tested and treated early can prevent you from getting severely ill, being hospitalized and can potentially save your life.”
Relatively speaking, COVID-19, flu and another ailment — respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — aren’t at the heights they were this time last year, when their simultaneous circulation spawned a “tripledemic” that stressed healthcare facilities across the state, especially children’s hospitals.
Kaiser Permanente Southern California began noticing more COVID-19 illness starting in mid-November, with the rise accelerating after Thanksgiving, said Dr. Nancy Gin, regional medical director of quality and clinical analysis for the health system.
Coronavirus levels in Los Angeles County wastewater were at 38% of last winter’s peak for the week that ended Dec. 2, the most recent data available. That’s exactly the same as the height seen late this summer, when the region experienced a prolonged uptick in infections.
The latest figure signals a “medium” level of concern, as defined by L.A. County health officials.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, coronavirus levels in the San Jose watershed’s sewage have been at a “high” level for weeks.
Rising viral levels in wastewater is “like the canary in the coal mine,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert. Higher concentrations could be followed by more illness, potentially severe enough to require hospital care.
“I’m just worried that it’s going to translate into hospitalizations around Christmastime,” he said.
Chin-Hong said he’s particularly concerned about seniors who haven’t received their updated vaccinations this autumn. Among Californians ages 65 and older, just 27% have received the latest COVID-19 vaccination that became available in September. Uptake is even lower in Los Angeles County — 21% — but higher in the Bay Area, where it’s around 40% in the most populous counties.
Seniors who have not gotten the latest vaccine are “the population we’re seeing in the hospital,” Chin-Hong said, and, especially those who are older than 75, “the population that’s dying.” It’s also likely that many of those who are dying aren’t getting anti-COVID drugs in time.
Flu vaccination rates are slightly lower than they were at this time last year, according to data shared by the CDC. As of early November, 36% of U.S. adults had received their flu shot, compared with 38% at that time last year. And for RSV, just 16% of adults ages 60 and older had received the newly available vaccine as of Dec. 2.
Alarmed by low vaccination rates, the CDC issued a health advisory on “the urgent need to increase immunization coverage for influenza, COVID-19 and RSV.” The agency asked healthcare providers to strongly urge immunizations, noting that “low vaccination rates, coupled with ongoing increases in national and international respiratory disease activity … could lead to more severe disease and increased healthcare capacity strain in the coming weeks.”
The CDC recommends virtually everyone ages 6 months and older get the latest flu and COVID-19 vaccinations. Adults ages 60 and older are also eligible to be vaccinated against RSV, which can be especially risky for older people with heart disease. There are two vaccines available for older adults: Abrysvo, made by Pfizer; and Arexvy, made by GSK.
The CDC also recommends the Abrysvo vaccine for pregnant people and immunizing babies against RSV with an antibody known as nirsevimab, also known by the trademarked name Beyfortus.
The agency is also urging doctors to recommend antiviral drugs for flu and COVID-19, such as Tamiflu and Paxlovid, for eligible patients. These “antiviral medications are currently underutilized, but are important to treat patients, especially persons at high-risk of progression to severe disease with influenza or COVID-19, including older adults and people with certain underlying medical conditions,” the CDC said.
Such antiviral drugs “are most effective in reducing the risk of complications when treatment is started as early as possible after symptom onset,” the CDC said.
So far, hospitals in Southern California and the Bay Area appear to be in fairly stable shape. More people are becoming ill, but so far, many aren’t needing to be hospitalized, Chin-Hong said.
Kaiser Southern California has been noticing more people ill with COVID-19 in its clinics and urgent care centers, “but they’re not landing in the hospital nearly as much compared to last year, certainly compared to two years ago,” Gin said. “Time will tell if the numbers that we see continue to go up.”
The health system, which serves 4.8 million members and operates 16 hospitals throughout the region, has observed a bit of a rise in the use of ventilators and intensive care units related to COVID-19, “but it’s certainly nothing dramatic,” Gin said.
But cases of influenza type A virus nationally “are really shooting up quite a bit. We are seeing that as well,” Gin said.
As for RSV, levels rose steadily from the end of September through mid-November. In the last few weeks, however, that virus seems to have flattened out at “less than half of what we saw last year at this time, at least by our testing numbers. So that’s a good sign,” Gin said.
Increasing coronavirus transmission is probably being assisted by waning immunity from past infections and older booster shots.
Officials are also monitoring the rapid rise of the JN.1 subvariant. Because of its unusually high number of mutations, this subvariant — described as a closely related offshoot of the BA.2.86, or Pirola strain — might be able to more easily infect people who had previously caught an older version of the coronavirus or haven’t yet received an updated shot.
Nationally, JN.1 is estimated to account for about 21% of coronavirus cases for the two-week period that ended Dec. 9, up from 8% in the prior two-week period. It’s the fastest-growing subvariant being tracked.
JN.1 is on the ascent while the current most dominant subvariant, HV.1, is declining. A descendant of the XBB subvariants that were dominant over the summer, HV.1 was estimated to account for 30% of coronavirus specimens for the most recent two-week period, down from 32% in the prior comparable period.
The rise of the new subvariant should encourage people, especially those who are older, to get the new vaccine, as outdated booster shots or natural immunity from past infections may not be protective enough. The new vaccine will replenish antibodies, Chin-Hong said, which will be especially important for at-risk people.
“Most people have gotten a previous infection, like during the summer, with one of the XBBs,” Chin-Hong said. The rise of JN.1 “just makes the clock tick faster before they’re more susceptible [to another coronavirus infection]. In other words, if the XBBs were the main game in town, you might have had a little bit more time before you would get infected again.”
The CDC said available vaccines, tests and antiviral medication continue to work well against JN.1.
Southern California home prices dipped from October to November, the first decline in nine months.
The average home price in the six-county region clocked in at $829,557 in November, down 0.1% from October, according to data released by Zillow this week.
All counties saw drops except Orange County, where values rose slightly.
Nicole Bachaud, a senior economist with the real estate website Zillow, said the small price declines across much of Southern California can be attributed to two things: Fall is typically a slower time of the year for home sales and buyers are struggling with high prices and high mortgage rates.
“It’s really challenging,” she said.
According to the California Assn. of Realtors, only 11% of households in both Los Angeles County and Orange County could afford a median-priced house during the third quarter; that measure stood at 19% in Riverside County and 25% in San Bernardino County.
When mortgage rates first surged last year, home prices fell in response as buyers pulled away and inventory swelled. But prices started rising again this year as homeowners increasingly chose not to sell, unwilling to give up their rock-bottom mortgage rates on loans taken out before or during the pandemic.
In most counties, home prices are near their all-time peaks despite November’s small decline. In Orange County, prices are setting records.
Prospective buyers received a sliver of good news in recent weeks. Mortgage interest rates have fallen from a high of 7.79% to the low-7% range, giving them a bit more buying power.
But experts don’t expect a significant improvement in affordability.
Bachaud said mortgage rates are likely to remain high, which will keep inventories tight as many existing homeowners choose to stay put. At the same time, those high rates should also keep prices from surging, since they limit how much people can afford, Bachaud said.
Overall, Zillow expects home prices over the next year to rise 0.1% in the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino. Across Los Angeles and Orange counties, prices should fall 1.6%. In San Diego County, prices are expected to remain flat, while in Ventura County they should drop 2%.
When it comes to the rental market, prices are also dropping slightly. Experts say that’s because the number of vacancies is rising as apartment supply expands and consumers worry about the economy and inflation.
In November, the median rent for vacant units of all sizes across Los Angeles County was $1,900, down 1.9% from a year earlier, according to data from Apartment List.
If the Federal Reserve’s actions to tame inflation push the economy into recession, home values and rents could drop further. However, there’s growing optimism that the country will avoid an economic downturn.
Melinda Bettencourt was still in her nightgown when the police showed up at the door. It was a slow Saturday morning last fall, but her heart raced when she heard the uneasy tone in the officer’s voice.
The Fresno woman knew her youngest daughter, Amanda Bews, had been struggling for years. After battling a painful nerve condition, the 29-year-old started using drugs and had taken to living on the street. Eventually Bettencourt lost track of her. So when men with badges showed up at her home, Bettencourt feared she knew why — and she was right.
Bews had been arrested on a pair of misdemeanor charges, and died in a Los Angeles County jail two days later. But the officer who showed up at her door couldn’t tell Bettencourt anything about how her daughter died.
And a few weeks later, no one could explain what had happened to the rotting body Bettencourt saw at the funeral home.
“She looked like she was mummified,” Bettencourt told The Times, describing the “horrible” shock of watching bugs hover around her dead daughter’s face as a foul stench emanated across the room.
Even the pictures are gruesome: A side-shot of a face so bloated with death it’s gone flat. A close-up of skin, one patch bloodied and another so decayed it’s turned gelatinous. Part of the nose is missing, and the features are bloated beyond recognition.
When Bettencourt saw what was left of her daughter, she screamed.
“I couldn’t believe it was my baby,” she said.
Earlier this month, after more than a year of looking for answers, San Diego-based attorneys Lauren Williams and Timothy Scott filed a lawsuit against county officials, jail medical providers and the funeral home that handled Bews’ body.
“Folks whose family members die in custody are often waiting months for information about how their loved ones passed away. And even when they do find out from an autopsy, the answers are still vague — and that’s what we see here,” Williams told The Times.
“We see a lot of facts consistent with the county failing to treat a case of alcohol withdrawal, but no one is accepting responsibility and calling it what it is,” she said. “And the same is true about any questions the family has about how and why Amanda’s body decomposed to the extent it did.”
Citing pending litigation, the medical examiner’s office declined to comment. Both the funeral home and jail medical providers did not respond to emails this week. And the Sheriff’s Department sent a general statement, but did not address several specific questions about the case.
“Any loss of life is tragic, especially those who are within our custody and care,” the statement said. “The Department takes every in-custody death seriously and strives to make every effort possible to prevent similar deaths in the future.”
It was in herearly 20s that Bews really started drinking. By that point, she had a husband and two children and, according to her mother, “nobody could really figure out why” her life took such a turn. But it was right around the same time her medical problems started.
At first, Bews complained of pain in her feet and ankles, but the problem grew steadily worse. For months, doctors couldn’t figure out why, until a spinal tap revealed she had Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack its own nerves, leading to tingling, weakness and pain.
Sometimes, her mother said, Bews couldn’t walk or take care of herself. Then during a hospital stay, she was prescribed painkillers. Soon, she turned from prescription pills to heroin and alcohol. Eventually, she stopped coming home.
“She just didn’t want to subject her kids to this,” Bettencourt said. “She was embarrassed.”
By the time Bews got arrested, her mother hadn’t heard from her for three years.It was Sept. 7, 2022, and court filings show that sheriff’s deputies had picked her up in Santa Clarita for allegedly shoplifting at a BevMo. During her arrest, records show, she admitted to using heroin and said she’d been drinking.
Before booking, the deputies took her to a nearby hospital, where records show she told the staff she had been drinking “a fifth to a handle [1.75 liters] a day” for the past six years. According to the lawsuit, they discharged her just after midnight and noted that she should go “TO ACUTE CARE FACILITY,” meaning she would need consistent monitoring and treatment once she arrived at the jail.
Medical records shared with The Times show she was prescribed medications for anxiety, blood pressure and alcohol withdrawal. She was assigned to a cell in the 1400 Module, an intake unit where another woman had died months earlier. But just after midnight on Sept. 9,medical staffat the jaildecided she was “cleared for detox” and did not require any medications.
According to the lawsuit, that meant the jail staff stopped treating her — neither for her opioid withdrawal nor for the even deadlier alcohol withdrawal.
When a nurse came to check on her a little over four hours later, Bews didn’t respond and her cellmate couldn’t rouse her. Deputies tried giving her an overdose-reversing drug, but it didn’t help.
Lab tests found drugs in her system, but at such low levels that her lawyers said they were more indicative of withdrawal than overdose. And according to the autopsy report, her body also showed signs of dehydration, and there was vomit in her airways.
“Based on the toxicology results, Amanda did not die of acute drug intoxication or drug overdose,” her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. “Rather, Amanda died of untreated or inadequately treated effects of withdrawal from alcohol and drugs.”
In addition to allegedly failing to treat Bews’ withdrawal, the suit says jailers also erred by not checking on her more often. Under state requirements, jailers are required to check on inmates at least once an hour. Though the autopsy makes clear that medical staff did not check on her for at least four hours, the records don’t say whether any jailers checked on her during that time, and the Sheriff’s Department did not clarify.
Instead, this week the department told The Times Bews’ death had been thoroughly investigated and that “appropriate administrative action” was taken against “several” employees.
After the police left the Bettencourts’ home that morning in September, Melinda sat down to cry. Her husband tried to calm her enough to call the phone number the officers had left behind, so she could talk to the Los Angeles detective in charge of the case.
As she waited in vain for answers, Bettencourt had to figure out how to get her daughter’s body from Los Angeles to Fresno for the funeral.
First, Bews’ body was sent to the Los Angeles County medical examiner for an autopsy, which ultimately declared her death an accident resulting from the “effects of heroin, methamphetamine and chronic alcohol use” — a description indicating Bews’ death was drug-related without clearly calling it an overdose.
In mid-September — less than a week after Bews died — an embalmer from the Chapel of Light, a Fresno-based funeral home, came to pick up her body in Los Angeles.
Though the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office confirmed to The Times earlier this year that their standard practice is to refrigerate dead bodies to slow down decomposition, the embalmer — Catherine Valenzuela — later said the body she received was already noticeably decayed.
“She was decomposed,” Valenzuela wrote in a Sept. 21, 2022, letter turned over to Bettencourt’s lawyers. “Her face has major skin slippage and discoloration was apparent throughout her remains.”
According to Valenzuela’s letter, the smell was “so strong and offensive” that she drove with the windows down all the way back to Fresno. But according to Bettencourt, if there was already a clear problem, no one at the funeral home told her. She didn’t find out until several weeks later, when she and her husband showed up at the funeral home for a viewing just before theOct. 7 service.
An employee led the couple to a back room to see Bews’ remains. As she took in the scene — the bugs, the smell, the decaying flesh — Bettencourt’s heart raced and, for a moment, she thought she was dying, too.
Afterwards, she realized it was a panic attack. She’s been having them ever since she learned of her daughter’s death — along with nightmares, anxiety and regret.
“I had almost been hoping she would get arrested so she could get some help — and then I find out she got arrested and died,” she said. “I feel guilty for even thinking that now.”
The lawsuit filed Nov. 17 in federal court lists 11 claims, including negligence, wrongful death and deliberate indifference. It doesn’t name a dollar amount in damages.
But Bettencourt and her lawyers said that aside from any compensation, they hope the case leads to some accountability – and some more answers.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom released an ad Sunday attacking Florida’s six-week abortion ban as he and Gov. Ron DeSantis get set for a televised debate at the end of the month.
The ad, called “Wanted,” lays the abortion restriction on DeSantis, who in April signed into law the “Heartbeat Protection Act” prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. DeSantis is also a Republican candidate for president.
The ad was set to run in Florida and Washington, D.C., television markets on NFL Sunday Night Football, as well as on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on days leading up to the governors’ debate on Nov. 30. Hannity will moderate the 90-minute debate in Georgia, which will be broadcast on Fox News.
In the ad, which looks like a wanted poster, Newsom intones: “By order of Gov. Ron DeSantis, any woman who has an abortion after six weeks and any doctor who gives her care will be guilty of a felony. Abortion after six weeks will be punishable by up to five years in prison. Even though many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks. That’s not freedom. That’s Ron DeSantis’ Florida.”
The debate will come in the midst of a contentious Republican presidential contest, offering an odd sideshow in an already unusual political season dominated by former President Trump’s campaign to return to the White House while fighting criminal charges in Florida, New York, Washington, D.C., and Georgia.
Newsom posted his ad on X, formerly known as Twitter, where DeSantis has posted a video criticizing California and promoting Florida.
“Decline is a choice and success is attainable,” DeSantis said in a tweet accompanying the video. “As President, I will lead America’s revival. I look forward to the opportunity to debate Gavin Newsom over our very different visions for the future of our country.”
DeSantis will also appear at the next Republican presidential primary debate on Dec. 6.
Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.
Good news for Los Angeles commuters: A crucial tranche of the 10 Freeway south of downtown L.A. will open Sunday night and will be ready for the busy morning commute — a day earlier than previously expected and weeks ahead of original projections.
“This thing opens tonight and will be fully operational tomorrow,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Sunday morning news conference, where he was joined on the deck of the freeway by Mayor Karen Bass, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “This is a significant and big day.”
The mile-long section of freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue has been closed for more than a week, since a massive pallet fire broke out below it Nov. 11. About 300,000 vehicles use the freeway corridor daily.
Newsom and Bass stressed that it was the urgent action and collaboration of local, state and federal officials and construction crews that made it possible to get the freeway open so quickly. Repair crews have worked around the clock since the fire.
“This is a great day in our city,” Bass said Sunday. “Let me thank everyone who worked 24 hours to make this effort happen.”
The closure did not cause widespread gridlock across the city’s freeway system, but it has snarled traffic in parts of the city and created longer-than-normal commutes for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos. Preliminary data from transportation officials also suggest that the closure has prompted more Angelenos to take public transit, heeding calls from local officials.
“Thanks to the heroic work of Caltrans and union construction crews and with help from our partners — from the Mayor’s office to the White House — the 10’s expedited repair is proof and a point of pride that here in California, we deliver,” Newsom said in an earlier statement.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, there had been fears that the damaged section of freeway might have to be demolished and replaced, potentially putting it out of commission for a far longer duration. But within days, it became clear that the impaired section could, in fact, be repaired, and Newsom announced Tuesday that the freeway would reopen in three to five weeks.
An all-hands-on-deck scramble toward a more ambitious target paid off, with Newsom telling reporters last week that all lanes in both directions would be open to traffic by this coming Tuesday “at the latest.”
The freeway will now be fully open to traffic by Monday morning — ahead of the holiday weekend.
“To all Angelenos, I would just say this, tomorrow the commute is back on,” said Harris, who has a home in Brentwood. “Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.”
The fire is being investigated as an arson. The California Office of the State Fire Marshal on Saturday released a photo and description of a “person of interest” in connection with the fire.
Caltrans, the state transportation department that is part of Newsom’s administration, has long been aware of conditions under the freeway, where small businesses stored supplies including flammable wood pallets. Caltrans inspectors were on site as recently as Oct. 6, according to state officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land.
When a series of atmospheric rivers flowed into California last January, the Big Sur coastline was quickly swamped, and Highway 1, a lone life raft connecting San Simeon in the south and the Monterey Peninsula to the north, was overcome.
Long vulnerable to the whims of nature, the iconic serpentine is especially susceptible to landslides, debris flows and terrain ever bowing to the weight of water, no more so than a lonely and lovely stretch of road just south of the New Camaldoli Hermitage and the nearly forgotten outpost, Lucia, and just north of redwood-forested Limekiln State Park and the Ragged Point headlands.
Here at Paul’s Slide, fencing and K-rails were no match for last winter’s deluge that piled stones, mud and debris over the pavement, forcing Caltrans to stop traffic and once again create two of the most picturesque cul-de-sacs in California, if not the country.
Ten months later — even with crews working seven days a week throughout most of the year — the road is still closed, and holiday travelers, hoping to take in the broad vistas of sea and sky en route to destinations north or south, will be frustrated, having to settle for Highway 101 or even Interstate 5.
The effect of last week’s rain on the construction site is not known, but with an El Niño-fueled winter ahead, no one is making any predictions.
“Highway 1 is a dynamic location due to the geography and nature,” said Jim Shivers, public information officer for Caltrans’ District 5. “It is always in a state of movement. In recent weeks we have been able to make good progress … but the exact opening is unknown.”
Famously troublesome, Paul’s Slide has long been scrutinized by geologists ever mindful of the large movements of land along this edge of the continent. Unlike Mud Creek 13 miles to the south — where one Saturday morning in May 2017, a hillside collapsed, sloughing an estimated 1.5 million tons of rock and mud over the highway and into the Pacific — Paul’s Slide is less dramatic.
But, said Shivers, “each incident on the Big Sur coast is different; no two situations are the same. When you talk about Mud Creek, an entire mountain came down and took out the highway and spilled into the ocean. That was a major landslide.”
Paul’s Slide, however, is a different geological phenomena. It moves slowly yet persistently, raining the highway with debris and topsoil and ever gradually shifting underneath to the weight of water and gravity. One-lane closures are not uncommon.
Earlier this year, as designers for Caltrans completed one set of blueprints for rerouting Highway 1 in the aftermath of last winter’s storms — and as contractors began to line up their skip loaders and dump trucks — Paul’s Slide shifted a second time, according to Shivers, requiring a new design and causing new delays.
“We had a plan,” said Shivers, “and then things kept moving.”
The new and improved road will eventually take travelers further inland and slightly higher, according to Shivers.
Until then, the two scenic dead ends invite travelers to linger without traffic, without rushing, without a destination in mind — before turning around and going back the way they came.
Soon after Jude Francis moved into his new three-story Tustin townhouse in 2012, he attended an open house at his famous neighbor across the street: the city’s twin blimp hangars.
Seventeen stories tall, as wide as a football field and over 1,000 feet long, the wooden structures were built by the Navy in World War II to house dirigibles assigned to patrol the Pacific Coast. The Marines took over during the Korean War, storing military helicopters there until shutting down the facility in 1999.
By then, the hangars had become a beloved part of the Orange County landscape. For decades, they were the tallest buildings in the area, towering over a county that went from agriculture to suburbia to today’s metropolis of nearly 3.2 million people. The elegantly curved behemoths were visible by plane when landing at John Wayne Airport, from the 55 Freeway and for miles around.
They got the Hollywood treatment in films like “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” and the 2009 reboot of “Star Trek.” As surrounding neighborhoods developed, people got a better view of the fenced-off hangars, inspiring a new generation to fall in love with them and reigniting a question that city, county and military officials had long avoided:
What the hell would O.C. do with these white elephants?
Francis got a glimpse of the future when he and other residents attended the open house.
“They had a grand plan of how they were going to keep one and convert the other one into ice rinks and duck ponds,” said the tech consultant. “And I thought, ‘Oh, man, I’m going to live next to heaven.’”
We stood near his residence on a recent morning, looking onto a small version of hell.
Residents watch a stubborn fire burning the North Hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin on Nov. 7. The structure was still smoldering a week later
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
On Nov. 7, the North Hangar caught fire. Firefighters tried to put out the flames before deciding the sheer size of the structure made the task too dangerous. So they let it burn.
The hangar’s roof had completely collapsed. The top edge of the wall that once held it up was jagged and blackened. Worse, the inferno had spewed toxic substances like asbestos and nickel. Tustin schools were planning for remote learning through the week; eight nearby city parks were closed indefinitely.
A squadron of men wearing half-face respirators and covered in flimsy personal protective equipment from head to foot vacuumed every crack of the parking lot at nearby Veterans Sports Park. A plume of black smoke puffed up from the hangar’s ruins.
“This is horrible,” Francis said, shaking his head. His roof and gutters had been clogged with ash and debris. “They should’ve done something to develop it. They did nothing.”
Next to us, Tom Hammer (“like the tool”) narrated videos that he was recording for his brother-in-law in Michigan. The retired fourth-grade teacher had driven up from San Clemente that morning with his black Chihuahua, Lola. His late father had served at the air station, as had his brother-in-law, who “was crying his eyes out,” Hammer said. “I was too busted up to come earlier. That’s my childhood there, burning up in flames.”
That was the first sentiment felt by many Orange County residents when news of the fire hit. The Tustin blimp hangars were our version of the Watts Towers: beloved architectural marvels of a bygone time that we drove past but rarely stopped to visit.
A week later, sadness had turned to anger.
Authorities still have no idea when the fire will die down, but demolition will be the next step. The hangar shouldn’t have suffered such an ignominious end.
It, along with its sibling, had stood empty for nearly 25 years, as local, county and Navy authorities dallied on what to do with them. Ever-changing plans were proposed to demolish both, keep one, or keep both, but money always got in the way. A section of the North Hangar’s roof collapsed in 2013, but Navy officials did little more than make sure it didn’t break any further. A 2017 Orange County grand jury urged action before the hangars decayed even more.
A disaster cleanup crew picks up potentially toxic debris from the still-burning WWII-era blimp hangar at the former Tustin Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Hammer brushed his foot on the lawn and kicked up white shards. “Light this with fire, and it burns like a lantern,” he said.
“I hate to say it, but it had become an eyesore,” he continued. Near the bottom of the smoldering North Hangar were long-abandoned, boarded-up barracks surrounded by dead, overgrown grass. A flimsy fence was all that kept the public away.
“I’m old and fat, and I could get over that fence,” he joked, before getting serious and gesturing at Francis.
“From my father to me to this gentleman, we’ve been saying ‘Do something.’ Either fish or cut bait. Either do something, about it or knock it down. People wanted to do something. But …”
He stopped to emphasize what he was about to say: “They never did anything with it.”
It’s usually about a minute-long drive from Veterans Sport Park down Valencia Avenue to the intersection of Kensington Park Drive, which offers the best place to see the other side of North Hangar. Street closures forced me to go through residential streets instead. People walked their dogs wearing masks and sunglasses while 18-wheelers followed by trucks flashing hazard lights rumbled past.
I parked in a nearby shopping plaza and made my way to the outdoor patio of a Sweetgreen, where Andirondack chairs sat empty. The downed hangar looked even worse from here.
The eastern wall was completely gone, revealing timber arches that reminded me of an exposed rib cage. The hangar’s huge door, which weighed over 100 tons, leaned off its steel rails and seemed a Santa Ana wind away from collapsing.
The obvious comparison would’ve been to a decomposed beached whale, or one of the destroyed alien spaceships from “Independence Day.” But my mind went to Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Ozymandias,” the immortal poem about hubris told through the scene of a shattered statue.
Soon after the air station’s closure, Tustin officials allowed luxury neighborhoods with gag-inducing names like Levity at Tustin Legacy and Amalfi Apartments to spring up near the hangars. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy sent letters to local homeowners associations two years ago warning that the groundwater under their homes might hold toxic chemicals from the military past.
The destroyed North Hangar represents the folly of Orange County, a place that romanticizes its past while letting it rot if there’s no profit to be made. Now, residents are suffering.
A disaster cleanup crew picks and vacuums up potentially toxic debris from the still-burning WWII-era blimp hangar at the former Tustin Marine Corps Air Station on Monday. Orange County Fire Authority personnel remained on the scene keeping watch on the blaze, with one firefighter telling KTLA-TV Channel 5’s Annie Rose Ramos that all they could do was let it burn out.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The air began to sting my eyes and throat as Irvine resident Rebecca Flores and her son, Christian, took photos of the scene.
“This is a worst-case scenario,” she said. “No one knows what’s going to happen.”
“They’re not holding press conferences. They’re not doing much of anything,” said Christian, who works at a nearby retailer and said his colleagues were afraid to show up. “They’re just letting it burn.”
Before us, a row of workers with vacuums slowly walked down Valencia like crime scene investigators. Next to them was Legacy Magnet Academy, a middle and high school built in the style of the hangars. It was closed.
Rebecca kept brushing debris from Christian’s shoulders. We all wore facemasks. Hers bore a Stars and Stripes-style logo of The Punisher, a Marvel superhero popular among law enforcement supporters.
“I don’t like wearing masks,” Rebecca said, before offering a laugh. “But I’m wearing one for this.”
The first significant storm of the season is expected to arrive midweek in Southern California, bringing cooler temperatures and 1 to 2 inches of rain over several days.
The predicted rainfall total is “fairly significant for this early in the season,” said meteorologist David Gomberg with the National Weather Service. “This is more typical of what you would see in the winter.”
Current models show a 60% to 70% chance of rain beginning Wednesday, with the storm possibly extending into Saturday.
“It’s a fairly long duration of off-and-on rain, but the intensities at any given point don’t look to be too extreme as it stands right now,” Gomberg said Sunday morning. “It’s just kind of this longer duration of light-to-moderate rainfall that adds up over time.”
The storm’s expected steadiness “will help delay any severe fire weather conditions for a while,” he said. Foothill and mountain areas could receive slightly more rain, but the National Weather Service isn’t expecting significant debris flow or flash flooding.
Up in the Bay Area, weather officials are predicting 1 to 3 inches of intermittent and widespread rain throughout the week. Coastal areas could see rain as early as Monday night.
A massive former military hangar that burned in Tustin earlier this week, closing schools over asbestos worries, reignited Saturday night.
The city of Tustin tweeted that there was “an active flare-up above the north doors of the north hangar” around 5 p.m. Saturday, adding that the Orange County Fire Authority and the Tustin Fire Department were on scene.
The north hangar was one of two enormous structures on the property, 17 stories high and 1,000 feet long, that were used by the military during World War II and later served as sets for the TV show “Star Trek” and the film “Pearl Harbor.”
One of those hangars burned last week, creating a spectacle for drivers passing by.
The city also closed several public parks and canceled a planned Veterans Day celebration over health concerns stemming from possible contamination.
A note on the Tustin Unified School District’s website on Saturday said that Monday will be a “non-student day” on all campuses and that an environmental consulting firm has been retained to test all schools for contamination stemming from the fire.
In a delicate maneuver, crews this week successfully lifted into place giant rockets at the California Science Center, the first large components installed at the future home of the space shuttle Endeavour.
Donated by Northrup Grumman, the solid rocket motors are each the size of a Boeing 757 fuselage and weigh 104,000 pounds. They had to be carefully moved from a horizontal to vertical position by crane before being lowered into place in the new exhibit at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.
Crews were then able to place the 177 pins attaching each solid rocket motor to the base of the solid rocket booster, known as the aft skirt. Each pin is 1 inch in diameter and about 2 inches long.
“It felt great,” California Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph said of the successful installation. “We’ve got two solid rocket motors standing tall in the new building now.”
Visitors to the museum can now see the top of the rockets from outside the construction site. At one point during the crane lift, the solid rocket motors could even be seen from the 110 Freeway.
This week’s installations mark the latest milestone in the six-month mission to assemble the permanent exhibit for Endeavour, the last space shuttle orbiter ever built. When completed, it will be arranged in a full stack configuration as if it were ready for launch. It will be the only surviving U.S. orbiter displayed in this position.
The future home of Endeavour is under construction at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center site.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Typically, during the era of space shuttle flights, this procedure would’ve been done at NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There, the shuttle’s full stack would‘ve been assembled in one of the largest buildings by volume in the world, rising more than 50 stories and equipped with plenty of cranes and platforms from which to work.
At the California Science Center, crews had to develop unique techniques for the installation. This week, workers put together scaffolding along the aft skirts so they could get where they needed to insert the connecting pins.
If the aft skirt and solid rocket motors didn’t align correctly, every pin could’ve taken some banging and pounding to insert, and the installation of each rocket could’ve taken all day and into the night.
Instead, Tuesday’s work began around 9 a.m. and ended before 1 p.m. With one successful installation under their belts, workers were even quicker Wednesday — beginning at 8 a.m. and wrapping up by 10.
“The crew worked really well, did an excellent job and things came together effectively and quite quickly,” Rudolph said.
The next step will be to build another 30 vertical feet of scaffolding to install external tank attach rings, which eventually will serve as a connection between the solid rocket motors and the giant orange external tank.
Later, even more scaffolding will rise to the top of the 116-foot solid rocket motors. That will help workers install the tips of the rockets, known as the forward assembly, which includes the nose cone and forward skirt.
The forward skirt is particularly important as it will be the primary weight-bearing connection between the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. It is likely to be installed in early December.
Each solid rocket motor makes up most of the length of the 149-foot solid rocket boosters. At liftoff, the white boosters were set underneath Endeavour’s wings and produced more than 80% of the lift.
A child walks to the California Science Center in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, where the space shuttle is slowly being pieced together.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
The most dramatic installations will take place after the winter holidays. The external tank will be lifted into place no sooner than early January.
The Endeavour orbiter will be installed no earlier than the last week of January. Cranes — the tallest of which will be about the height of Los Angeles City Hall — will raise Endeavour from its horizontal position to point vertically to the stars for its final display. The rest of the museum will then be built around it.
Once complete, the $400-million Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will rise 20 stories tall. The California Science Center Foundation is still raising funds for the last $50 million needed for the project.
Since Endeavour’s arrival at the center in 2012, the orbiter has been on display in the temporary Samuel Oschin Pavilion, essentially a warehouse, where it will be shown until Dec. 31. After that, it could be years before Endeavour will again be available for up-close viewing.
A retired Major League Baseball player accused of killing his father-in-law and attempting to kill his mother-in-law also was charged with child abuse of two infants, according to court documents.
Danny Serafini, 49, was arraigned this week on a murder charge in the killing of Robert Spohr, his wife’s father, and attempted murder in the shooting of Wendy Wood, his wife’s mother. In a criminal complaint, prosecutors also alleged that Serafini committed “cruelty to child by abuse, neglect, or endangering health,” citing his treatment of a 3-year-old and an 8-month-old.
The complaint did not say whether the children were Serafini’s and did not spell out the specific actions related to the alleged abuse.
North #LakeTahoe homicide suspect Daniel Serafini entered a not guilty plea on all charges in court today. His next hearing is scheduled for 11/27 at 1 p.m. at the Santucci Justice Center. The sheriff’s office is still awaiting the extradition of Samantha Scott from Nevada. pic.twitter.com/r4uDW3DxQR
Serafini was arrested last week — along with a woman, Samantha Scott, 33 — in connection with the June 5, 2021, shootings of Spohr and Wood. Deputies at the time responded to a 911 call from a residence in Homewood, a neighborhood in North Lake Tahoe. They found Spohr dead from a single gunshot wound. Wood had also been shot but was still alive.
Wood died by suicide a year after the attack.
Serafini and Scott were both arrested in Nevada, and Serafini was quickly extradited to California.
The criminal complaint said that Serafini or an accomplice used a .22-caliber gun to carry out the shootings, which were committed during the course of a burglary.
Serafini pleaded not guilty to all charges and was ordered held without bail. He’s due back in court on Nov. 27.
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons remembers Matthew Perry (1:21), before he is joined by Cousin Sal to draft the 12 worst NFL QBs after some truly poor Week 8 quarterback play (11:30), and answer some NFL burning questions like: “Do you believe in Will Levis,” “Are the Bengals officially back,” “Who will be the NFC 7-seed,” and more (25:30). Then they guess the lines for NFL Week 9 (57:49), and close the show with Parent Corner (1:26:19).
Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Cousin Sal Producer: Kyle Crichton
Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members. And for the last few weeks, it’s been reeling.
Since the ambush by Hamas militants left more than 1,400 Israelis dead and saw the kidnapping of at least 200 others, Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip from vital resources and launched a barrage of airstrikes.
Jewish Angelenos are largely supportive of Israel, which declared war on Hamas, the local authority in Gaza, following the deadly Oct. 7 attack. Many also disagree with the military assault on Gaza, and are heartbroken over the mounting Palestinian death toll, which has exceeded 7,000, including nearly 3,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. About 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced, and Gaza’s healthcare system is teetering on the brink of collapse as water, fuel and vital medicines are running out, according to the World Health Organization.
The world is watching as Israel mounts an all-out invasion of Gaza.
The war is creating dual tragedies across the Israel-Gaza boundary. And in L.A.’s Jewish community — whose members hail from different backgrounds, ideologies, cultures and religious sects — people are coming together in unique ways.
Amid the anguish and anger, the confusion and conflicts, some have found a new kind of resolve and a newfound community.
Music as a healer
The crowd held its breath at Sinai Temple as Nilli Salem played an extended note on the shofar, an instrument typically made from a ram’s horn and used in important Jewish rituals.
“I really believe that artists are the healers of our time,” Chloe Pourmorady said outside the Westwood synagogue, where about 100 people gathered for a night of solidarity weeks after the initial attack on Israel.
Music is “something beyond words that connects people and brings comfort,” Pourmorady said.
Cantor Marcus Feldman, left, Chloe Pourmorady and Nilli Salem perform at a concert to support Israel at Westwood’s Sinai Temple.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
For many Jews in Los Angeles, there are few degrees of separation between the U.S. and Israel. The extent of death and warfare in the region, considered the Holy Land for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, has been staggering — and has hit close to home.
Pourmorady had initially planned a musical gathering for friends, but felt compelled to invite the public so the community could dance, sing and cry together.
“Music is being used as a tool for comfort, healing and prayer during this time of great sadness and anguish,” said Cantor Marcus Feldman, who oversees the musical department at Sinai Temple and who sang at the event, which included performances in both Hebrew and English.
Mikey Pauker shared his frustration and anger during the Sinai Temple gathering.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Emotions overtook many that night. Mikey Pauker’s voice broke before he started singing. He told the congregation that in the last few weeks, he’d been called a white supremacist for supporting Israel.
Azar Elihu, a former temple member, said the pain is universal, and she grieves for both sides.
“Even I feel for the Palestinians. I cried so much for the little boy that was killed in Chicago,” she said, referring to 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Muslim boy who was stabbed dozens of times in a deadly attack carried out by his family’s landlord.
But after the musical performance, Elihu said, “This felt like something of a healing.”
How do you talk to your children?
Nicole Guzik, a senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, said that in the weeks following the declaration of war, many in their Jewish community had drawn closer together, checking on one other. They ask: “Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Did you cry today?”
But they are also filled with outrage — and fear — as both antisemitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric abound online and in person.
While some in Israel have called for a full attack on Gaza, including a ground invasion, Sinai Temple congregants say they worry about innocent lives lost.
‘I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school. I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.’
— Amanda Kogan, of Sinai Temple’s board of directors
“I think what gets lost is that there isn’t a single Jew or Israeli who wants to see a single hair hurt on the head of any innocent civilian,” said Jason Cosgrove, who grew up in the synagogue and said he now finds himself explaining the war in Israel to his 7-year-old daughter and wondering when he will have to discuss antisemitism with her.
“I’m sparing her all of the gory details,” said Cosgrove, who finds himself taking breaks from the news when he can, but who also feels compelled to stay up to date on what’s happening. “I think you obviously can’t bury your head at a time like this.”
Amanda Kogan, who’s on the board of directors at Sinai Temple, also finds herself in the difficult position of trying to explain the war to her children. Her teenage daughter recently attended an event that involved a bus trip in Los Angeles, and the group was accompanied by an armed guard.
“I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school,” Kogan said. “I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.”
“War is not fair to the innocent people. It’s terrible,” she added. “We’re trying to explain all of this as best we can in a very balanced manner. And no matter what, it’s all horrific.”
Sinai Temple boasts roughly 5,000 members and includes a private Jewish day school with about 600 students, a recreation center and a mental health center that offers counseling to the community.
Duvid Swirsky joins other musicians and cantors in a meditation circle before performing at the Sinai Temple benefit.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members say their support for Israel is unwavering, and have gathered supplies, including headlamps, tents, blankets and phone chargers to be sent in care packages, which also include notes from children.
But grief hangs heavily over the community.
“As you walk through the halls here, it feels like a house of mourning,” said Senior Rabbi Erez Sherman.
Sherman and Guzik, husband and wife, became senior rabbis about two weeks after the attack on Israel as they worked to console their congregants.
Working for peace
Estee Chandler was a child living in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Syria and Egypt. At the time, she worried every time her parents left their house at night. She would sometimes hear air raid sirens go off and hide with the rest of her family in the unfinished basement of their apartment building.
“Even back then, we had those places to go in. Now, Israelis have safe rooms in their homes,” the 50-year-old said. “[But] Palestinians who are being bombed — they have nothing. They don’t have those rooms to run into. They have no way to protect their children.”
When Chandler awoke to the news that Israel had declared war with Hamas, she started reaching out to friends and family living overseas. Then, she reached out to her colleagues at Jewish Voice for Peace, whose Los Angeles chapter she founded nearly 13 years ago.
“My heart sank thinking about what we were surely going to start seeing in the hours, days and weeks to come, and unfortunately, that has all borne out,” she said.
“I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed … for only one-half of the people who are bleeding,” says Estee Chandler, who lived through the 1973 Yom Kippur War and has loved ones in Israel — and friends whose loved ones in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Jewish Voice for Peace and another Jewish organization, IfNotNow, have staged protests outside the White House and the homes of other politicians, demanding a cease-fire. Hundreds have been arrested while protesting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
While working for former President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Chandler said she saw “the intersection between the Israeli lobby and the Democratic Party politics.” She was upset by “a lot of horribly racist things” that were happening and tried to educate herself as much as possible about Israel.
Chandler later discovered Jewish Voice for Peace, which was supporting a movement at UC Berkeley to divest from weapons manufacturers providing arms to Israel. The group contacted Chandler and asked whether she would be interested in starting an L.A. chapter.
The daughter of an Israeli father, Chandler has relatives and friends in Israel and some fighting in the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s national military. She also has friends whose family members were killed in Gaza by the Israeli airstrikes.
“My concern for my family’s safety and my friends’ safety doesn’t stop at any border,” she said. “It’s not a choice that has to be made. I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed in the same situation for only one-half of the people who are bleeding.”
One of Chandler’s friends is L.A. resident Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders. Tarifi has lost 69 family members in the bombings in Gaza.
‘I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. … I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred.’
— Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders
“I have a roller coaster of emotions,” said Tarifi, who was born in Gaza and moved to L.A. in the mid-1990s.
“I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. I want to cry, but I can’t cry. I’m mad, and at the same time, because I have to be their voice, I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred,” she said. “I need to pull myself together and be their voice.”
Chandler and other Jewish Voice for Peace supporters want a cease-fire. They have been protesting in Los Angeles and recently attended a county supervisors meeting where a resolution condemning Hamas and supporting Israel was unanimously adopted after tense public comments.
She has been disheartened by media portrayals of the war as simply a battle between Israel and Hamas, noting that the events of Oct. 7 “didn’t come in a vacuum.”
“You can’t say that anything that happened there is unprovoked. You have people who have been living under siege for 75 years, people who’ve been living in a state of constant ethnic cleansing.”
While her support of Palestinian rights may seem unconventional in light of her heritage, Chandler said she wouldn’t be deterred — even if friends and family have opposing views.
“My family loves me anyway,” she said.
‘Never again’
When Mor Haim finally turned on the TV on Oct. 7 — breaking her usual observance of Shabbat — she watched as Hamas trucks bulldozed through a neighborhood in Sderot, an Israeli city near Gaza where she lived until the age of 7. She immediately recognized the street where her cousin lived.
‘I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, “Hey, she’s Jewish.” ’
— Mor Haim
“Life was sucked out of me at that second,” said Haim, 31. Luckily, none of her family was killed, but the grief has been no less soul-crushing. The brother of her cousin’s wife went on a run the morning of the ambush, and was killed. Many childhood friends were slain. A friend’s father died shielding his children.
“Even though I’m far away, I feel as if I’m physically there,” said Haim, a dual Israeli American citizen who lives in Woodland Hills.
Since that night, Haim said, she’s had panic attacks and has been unable to sleep well.
She said she tries to go about her daily life for the sake of her four young children. She’s found solace baking challah with friends and family or just sitting in silence with others who share her pain.
For Mor Haim, who lived near Gaza in Sderot, Israel, as a child, the Hamas attack hit too close to home.
But the images from that day are seared in her mind, and she is afraid.
“I’m scared for my safety. I’m scared for my children’s safety,” she said. “I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, ‘Hey, she’s Jewish.’”
“We’ve kind of been in hiding,” she said.
Haim wants people to understand why the attack on Israel — carried out on the holiday of Simchat Torah, a day meant for rejoicing — cannot be ignored.
She said no one wants innocent people to die — “not our people and not their people in Gaza.”
But Jewish people can’t stand idly by, and Israelis must fight to defend their country, their people, she said.
“We said ‘never again’ when we went through the Holocaust. And this is the never again,” she said. “It feels like we’re screaming our life out and nobody’s hearing us.”
Los Angeles police detectives found and reunited a Boyle Heights teen with her family after she had been missing for nearly two weeks, the girl’s sister confirmed Friday afternoon.
Michelle Giselle Lopez, 15, disappeared on Oct. 12 after being dropped off for class at Downtown Magnets High School.
Hollenbeck Division detectives, whose area includes Los Angeles’ Eastside, called Lopez’s mother on Wednesday evening and reunited the mother with her daughter at the station, according to the girl’s sister, Nataly Jaqueline Arias, 27.
“It’s been a crazy last few days and we were finally able to sleep yesterday,” Arias said. “We finally feel like she’s safe and resting.”
Since the reunion, the family has spent the last couple of days at the home of a relative outside of Los Angeles County and avoiding media contact, Arias said.
“We want to try our best to make her feel like her old self,” Arias said of Michelle. “She’s starting to eat again and talk and feel more and more like that.”
Arias said Michelle hasn’t shared what happened since she went missing on Oct. 12. On that day, Michelle’s mother arrived on campus to pick up her son, Carlos, and Michelle at 3 p.m. but never met up with her daughter. The mother filed a missing person report that day.
Arias also said that detectives have provided no details on what may have occurred.
An LAPD spokesperson only confirmed that Michelle had been found and returned to family members, but said no other information about the search was available.
Police Cmdr. Lillian L. Carranza, of the Central Division, tweeted that Hollenbeck investigators “exhausted every lead until the [missing] person was located and safely returned to the family.”
Arias said that her sister was likely “going to need a lot of therapy” and that the family was working to “give her everything she needs.”
Early in the week, Arias expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the case.
She thanked members of the public and media for “pressuring the authorities to finally follow every lead.”
“Without that support, I don’t know how much attention this story would have got,” Arias said.
The family created a GoFundMe account earlier this week that Arias previously said would be used to hire a private investigator. The account raised more than $5,300 and was disabled.
The family said the money would now be used to provide Michelle with “therapy and any resources she may need to overcome this ordeal.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday as the U.S. grappled with rising tensions with the world’s second-largest economy and the Democratic governor worked to navigate a challenging diplomatic landscape on a trip meant to promote climate cooperation.
The meeting at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing came as China’s top diplomat announced plans to visit to Washington on Thursday, and weeks before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco where President Biden may meet with Xi — signals that both sides could make efforts to improve what’s become a frosty relationship.
It was Newsom’s second meeting with a foreign government leader in less than a week after he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Friday — an extraordinary foray into international affairs for a governor who has no authority on global matters. Though he has repeatedly said he is not planning a run for president, Newsom’s sudden pivot to international diplomacy allows him to build experience that could help in a future run for higher office.
In Beijing, where Chinese handlers tightly controlled media access, American reporters were not allowed into the meeting between Newsom and Xi.
Talking with reporters afterwards, Newsom said he spoke with Xi about climate change, trade and tourism, and the fentanyl crisis that has gripped the United States, areas where he hopes the two nations can cooperate.
On fentanyl, Newsom said the two men discussed so-called “precursor chemicals” that make their way through the black market from China to Mexico and then into the U.S. as deadly pills.
“We talked about the importance of this issue and how it’s played an outsized role as the leading cause of death for 18-to-49-year-olds in the United States,” Newsom said. “It’s taking the life of one-plus person every single day in San Francisco.”
He described fentanyl as an issue that “should scare every parent out there” because of how many young people are dying from taking pills that they don’t know contain the drug.
“This is a big, big issue,” Newsom said.
Before his talks with Xi, Newsom met with three other Chinese officials. American media were allowed to cover just a few minutes of each of those meetings as Newsom and the Chinese dignitaries made introductory remarks.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom shakes hands with Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, in Beijing on Wednesday.
(Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)
Newsom said he talked with them about issues including human rights abuses in Hong Kong, his desire to see a two-state solution in Israel and his hope that China will release David Lin, a California resident who has been detained in China for many years.
“We hope David Lin comes back. We hope he’s released,” Newsom said. “He’s 67 years old, he’s a man of faith, and he’s being held. … On the basis of what I know, and with humility, but with what I know, he should be released.”
Newsom said he sees discussions about cooperating to fight climate change as a way to open the door to broader alliances between nations, noting that “we all breathe the same air.”
A tense geopolitical climate has loomed over Newsom’s voyage to promote cooperation on climate-friendly technologies such as electric vehicles and wind energy. Relations between the U.S. and China were already strained before this month’s eruption of war between Israel and Hamas presented a new potential wedge between the world’s two superpowers.
China and Russia announced last week that they intend to work together to create an alliance that could attempt to counter U.S. support for Israel. The Pentagon reported recently that China is building up its nuclear weapons arsenal faster than previously projected and is likely studying Russia’s war in Ukraine to get a sense of how a conflict over Taiwan could play out. China immediately fired back that the report is false, and blasted the U.S. as the world’s “biggest disruptor of regional peace and stability,” citing America’s recent actions to help Israel and Ukraine.
All that comes on top of disagreements between the U.S. and China over trade, human rights and the militarization of the South China Sea. In February, the U.S. shot down a Chinese balloon that flew over sensitive military installations. In August, Biden signed an executive order to block and regulate U.S. investments in Chinese tech companies.
Newsom said he urged Xi to come to San Francisco for the APEC conference next month but said it was up to the Chinese president to announce if he will make the trip.
Newsom is the first U.S. governor to visit China since 2019. His visit could help improve dynamics between the two nations, said Susan Shirk, a political scientist who is the founding chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego.
“Right now the U.S. and China are in a downward spiral in their relationship. It’s really quite dangerous and we’re not going to prevent further deterioration of relations — or even the risk of war — unless our decision-makers talk to one another,” Shirk said.
“So diplomacy is really important.”
Newsom began the day in Beijing on Wednesday by signing a clean-energy agreement with the leader of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which oversees the country’s economic development plans. Then he met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is traveling to Washington this week to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
It was Newsom’s meeting with Vice President Han Zheng that showed the personal dimension of political relationships built over time. Han recalled meeting Newsom almost 20 years ago when he was the mayor of Shanghai and Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco. As sister cities, San Francisco and Shanghai developed longstanding economic and cultural exchanges that Han called “a good example of China-U.S. subnational cooperation.”
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China-U.S. relations are “the most important bilateral relations in the world, and subnational cooperation [plays] an indispensable part to facilitate a sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relations,” he said through an interpreter.
“National-level relations must also include the relations between states, between sectors of society and between the business communities. Only by doing this can we bring the relations back to the right channel of development.”
Newsom paid tribute to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in his remarks to the vice president, recalling her work to establish the sister-city relationship with Shanghai when she was San Francisco mayor in the 1980s:
“I cannot impress upon you more how indelible her memory and her mentorship is in relationship to maintaining the relationship to China,” Newsom said. “It’s the foundation that was built that reminds me of how important it is to continue to advance this spirit that unites us here today.”
Shirk at UC San Diego said it’s risky for American politicians to engage with Chinese officials. But, she said, it’s also beneficial.
“China’s going to be there forever, even after Xi Jinping,” she said. “So it’s really good to maintain relations at the people-to-people level.”
The political fight over whether workers on strike should be allowed to collect unemployment benefits is reigniting in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is running for Senate, is planning to introduce legislation on Tuesday that would provide unemployment benefits nationwide to workers on strike. Most states don’t allow striking workers to collect unemployment with the exception of New York and New Jersey. Eligibility requirements and the amount of weekly unemployment pay also varies by state.
Under the Empowering Striking Workers Act of 2023, workers would be able to collect unemployment pay after two weeks on strike, according to a draft of the bill viewed by The Times. Workers would also be eligible for unemployment benefits starting on the date a lockout begins, when the employer hired permanent replacement workers or if the worker becomes unemployed after a strike or lock-out ends, whichever is earlier.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Donald Norcross of New Jersey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also are sponsoring the bill. Labor unions SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO are supporting the legislation as well, according to Schiff’s office.
But with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the odds that the bill will pass are slim. Businesses have strongly opposed the idea because they said it would lead to higher employer taxes. Employers pay state and federal payroll taxes to fund the unemployment insurance program.
The expected introduction of a federal bill comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed state legislation in September to provide unemployment for striking workers. Newsom said he did so because of financial concerns, a move highly criticized by labor leaders.
California borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to cover unemployment benefits, and the state’s unemployment fund debt was projected to be nearly $20 billion by the end of the year. California’s unemployment pay is $450 a week for a maximum of 26 weeks. Business fought the bill because they said they would pay additional taxes annually to repay California’s loan from the federal government.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA lobbied for the expanded benefits, saying that they would help workers pay their bills. While members rely on side jobs and strike funds to stay afloat, that income dwindles the longer a strike goes on. The 148-day Hollywood writers strike ended after WGA members ratified a new contract. Actors and crew members represented by SAG-AFTRA have been on strike for more than 100 days.
Democrats have expressed support for labor unions ahead of the 2024 elections. Labor unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Communication Workers of America and the Amalgamated Transit Union have endorsed Schiff for Senate, while other unions have endorsed his main Democratic rivals in the race.
During an October debate in Los Angeles, Schiff, along with California Democratic Senate candidates Barbara Lee and Katie Porter, disagreed with Newsom’s decision to veto the bill to provide striking workers unemployment benefits. He mentioned during that event he was working on federal legislation.
“When they go and strike for better work and better wages for themselves and others, they need to have unemployment compensation, because they’re striking for all workers,” Schiff said at the debate.
