Author: CaliNews

It’s alive! Amazon is launching a free, month-long House of Horrors pop-up shop in West Hollywood. Inspired by its “Now Screaming” Prime Video content, the shop will open Oct. 1, and continue through Nov. 1. The House of Horrors will be located near the intersection of Melrose Avenue and Westmount Drive. Visuals will include show-inspired costume displays from the streaming service’s available shows, the Orange County Register reported. Guests can also expect photo ops and a Halloween candy kiosk, according to the Register. Hours will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.

Global shoppers face possible shortages of smartphones and other goods ahead of Christmas after power cuts to meet official energy use targets forced Chinese factories to shut down and left some households in the dark. In the northeastern city of Liaoyang, 23 people were hospitalized with gas poisoning after ventilation in a metal casting factory was shut off following a power outage, according to state broadcaster CCTV. No deaths were reported. Factories were idled to avoid exceeding limits on energy use imposed by Beijing to promote efficiency. Economists and an environmental group say manufacturers used up this year’s quota faster than planned as export demand rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic. A components supplier for Apple Inc.’s iPhones said it suspended production at a factory west of Shanghai under orders from local authorities. The disruption to China’s vast manufacturing industries during one of their busiest seasons reflects the ruling Communist Party’s struggle to balance economic growth with efforts to rein in pollution and emissions of climate-changing gases. “Beijing’s unprecedented resolve in enforcing energy consumption limits could result in long-term benefits, but the short-term economic costs are…

Two California water districts have settled a legal fight over a Colorado River drought deal.

The shortfall of close to 6% in the nation’s second-largest school district is about twice what district officials had predicted.

ORANGE (CBSLA) – Authorities are searching for a man who attacked and attempted to sexually assault a Chapman University student near her dorm in the city of Orange last week. Surveillance video of the suspect following the attack. Sept. 24, 2021. (Orange Police Department) The attack occurred at 12:40 a.m. Friday in the area of Walnut Avenue and Grand Street, according to the Orange Police Department. The suspect attacked the student while wearing a skeleton-style mask or gator and black clothing, police said. The victim was standing in a courtyard of Henley Hall making a phone call when the suspect jumped out of the bushes and attacked her, according to a bulletin that went out to the university community. The victim described the incident to CBSLA Monday. “He punches me in the face, I hit the trash can behind me, like a concrete trash can, he’s just like beating me up,” she said. “I don’t know if I hit him off, or like pushed him off, or I don’t know if he heard people coming. Sometime he got off and I chased him back up…

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – Firefighters battled a large fire which broke out at a commercial building in Boyle Heights late Monday night and continued to burn for hours well into Tuesday morning. A commercial fire burns in Boyle Heights, Calif., on Sept. 28, 2021. (CBSLA) The greater-alarm blaze in the 1600 block of East 1st Street broke out before 11:40 p.m. Monday, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Crews arrived to find heavy flames coming from the one-story 50-foot by 100-foot building. Firefighters battled the fire for hours, with flames burning in deep pockets of the building that crews could not reach, LAFD reports. The blaze caused portions of the building to collapse, and due to unsafe conditions, firefighters were forced to take a more defensive position. There was no word of any injuries. The fire was still burning as of 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. LAFD arson investigators were on scene working to determine a cause.

LONG BEACH (CBSLA) – A woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition Monday after she was shot by a school safety officer in Long Beach Monday afternoon. Long Beach Police Department officers responded just after 3:10 p.m. to the area of Palo Verde Avenue and East Spring Street, near Millikan High School, on reports of the shooting, according to a department spokesperson. Paramedics were called to the scene and took one shooting victim to a hospital in critical condition, a Long Beach Fire Department spokesperson said. Millikan High School confirmed in a statement that no students were injured in the shooting. The LBPD confirmed someone was struck in the shooting, but did not have any further details and could not confirm if the victim was struck by the school safety officer’s gunfire. #LBAlert: LBPD is at the scene of an officer involved shooting in the area of Spring and Pablo Verde assisting another agency. #LBPD was not involved in the shooting incident and our Department is assisting with the investigation. More to follow. — Long Beach PD (CA) (@LBPD) September 28, 2021

Homicides in the U.S. in 2020 increased nearly 30% over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records, according to figures released Monday by the agency. Homicides and non-negligent manslaughters climbed an estimated 29.4% to 21,570, an increase of 4,901 over 2019, FBI data showed. It is the highest estimated total since the early 1990s, when homicides stayed above 23,000 a year as drug wars played out in many places in the U.S. Violent crimes in 2020 went up by a more moderate 5.6% over the previous year while property crimes continued a nearly two-decade decline, falling 7.8%. Robbery and rape dropped 9.3% and 12% respectively. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, said he considered 2020 a “unique situation” and not part of any sort of long-term trend. He attributed the dramatic uptick to a confluence of factors, including the coronavirus pandemic, conflicts over politics and race and people just generally having too much free time. “I don’t want to minimize what’s happened. I just don’t want people to believe that the sky is falling and…

Bowing — perhaps only for a moment — to pressure from lawmakers, critics, the media and child development experts, Facebook said Monday it will “pause” its work on a kids’ version of its photo and video-oriented Instagram app. But what’s not yet clear is just how seriously Facebook is taking the concerns of experts and parents. Its decision to merely pause the project suggests it still plans to expose a much younger audience to Instagram, its well-documented harms and possibly the user profiling that feeds Facebook’s targeted ad machine. That ad machine, of course, has made the company one of the most profitable on the planet. WHY IS FACEBOOK DOING THIS NOW? The company’s move follows an explosive mid-September report by The Wall Street Journal that found Facebook knew from its own research that Instagram was harming some teems, especially girls, leading to mental health and body image problems and in some cases eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. In public, however, Facebook has consistently played down the app’s negative side and until now has barreled ahead with the kids’ version despite alarms from experts, lawmakers and its own research.…