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Los Angeles

Columbine survivor on 25 years since mass shooting

Columbine survivor on 25 years since mass shooting – CBS News Watch CBS News The Columbine High School mass shooting in Littleton, Colorado, left behind many survivors and families who are still dealing with the massacre’s trauma. Zach Cartaya, a Columbine student and co-founder of The Rebels Project, joins CBS News with more on his mission to help other victims of violence. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

Los Angeles

Man who set himself on fire near Trump trial in critical condition, NYPD says

Man who set himself on fire near Trump trial in critical condition, NYPD says – CBS News Watch CBS News New York officials are investigating the scene near former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial where a man set himself on fire after pouring a form of liquid over his head. Officials with the New York Fire Department and New York Police Department give an update on their investigation. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

Los Angeles

2 planes come close to colliding at Reagan National Airport

2 planes come close to colliding at Reagan National Airport – CBS News Watch CBS News The Federal Aviation Administration is probing a close call between two planes at Washington’s Reagan National Airport Thursday. A JetBlue flight and a Southwest flight almost collided before an air traffic controller warned both pilots to stop immediately. CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave reports. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

Bay Area

Mailbag: Next steps for the ‘Pac-2’ schools and a possible reverse merger with the Mountain West

The Hotline mailbag publishes each Friday. Send questions to pac12hotline@bayareanewsgroup.com and include ‘mailbag’ in the subject line. Or hit me on Twitter/X: @WilnerHotline. Please note: Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity. What are the odds of a reverse merger between the Mountain West and the Pac-12 versus the Pac-12 simply poaching a selection of Mountain West schools to rebuild the conference? — @MarcSheehan006 It hinges, in part, on your definition of a reverse merger. But generally, we see three possible outcomes: — All 12 schools vote to dissolve the Mountain West and join Washington State and Oregon State in rebuilding the Pac-12. — At least nine but not all 12 schools vote to dissolve the Mountain West — a super-majority vote is required — and they join the Pac-12, leaving a few behind. — Between four and eight schools give notice that they are leaving the Mountain West in the summer of 2026 to join the Pac-12, a scenario that leads to departure fees for the outbound schools and a poaching penalty for the Pac-12. The top candidates to leave are fairly

Bay Area

Five-bedroom home sells in Los Gatos for $4.9 million

16171 Short Road – Google Street View A 3,190-square-foot house built in 1956 has changed hands. The spacious property located in the 16100 block of Short Road in Los Gatos was sold on April 5, 2024, for $4,925,000, or $1,544 per square foot. This single-story home offers a roomy layout with five bedrooms and four baths. Additionally, the home is equipped with a two-car garage, accommodating vehicles and storage needs efficiently. Nestled on a generous 0.6-acre lot, the property provides abundant outdoor space including a pool. Additional houses have recently changed hands nearby: On Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos, in May 2023, a 1,982-square-foot home was sold for $2,625,000, a price per square foot of $1,324. The home has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. In August 2022, a 2,870-square-foot home on Lansberry Court in Los Gatos sold for $3,300,000, a price per square foot of $1,150. The home has 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. A 2,845-square-foot home on the 16000 block of Stephenie Lane in Los Gatos sold in February 2024, for $4,265,000, a price per square foot of $1,499. The home has 4 bedrooms

Bay Area

Tech companies slash hundreds more Bay Area jobs as layoffs persist

PALO ALTO — Tech companies have revealed plans to chop hundreds more jobs in the Bay Area, in an unsettling reminder that the crucial industry’s layoffs have yet to run their course. SAP America and Checkr, both software companies, have decided to slash 368 jobs in two Bay Area locations, officials notices on file with the state Employment Development Department show. Here are the details of the latest job cuts, their location, and their proposed timing, based on posts on the EDD’s website: — Checkr is cutting 260 jobs in San Francisco. Checkr supplies a software platform to conduct background checks on people whom a company may recruit. Checkr reported the layoffs will occur around June 10. — SAP America is eliminating 108 jobs in Palo Alto, the software company. The SAP filing stated the layoffs are due to take place around June 17. During 2022, 2023 and so far in 2024, tech companies have revealed plans to eliminate well over 39,000 jobs in the Bay Area.

Bay Area

San Jose: The first Burger Pit opened in 1953. The last one is closing Tuesday

Bacon cheese Steerburger with fries on a customer’s table at the Burger Pit on Blossom Hill Road. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)  When the Burger Pit opened for lunch at noon earlier this week, 29 customers stood in the line that snaked from the register to the front door. Less than an hour later, 25 more eager eaters had arrived at this restaurant that’s been a fixture on San Jose’s Blossom Hill Road since 1964. And then more. “It’s been this way for two months,” said the aptly named owner, Paul Berger, who arrived at 8 a.m. and wouldn’t get a chance to sit for even a few minutes until 3 p.m. He’d actually given his devoted clientele a year’s worth of notice that his lease would be up in April 2024. Many hoped it wouldn’t come to this conclusion, but Tuesday, April 23, is the last day for the last remaining location. Burger Pit waitress Sandy Castillo shares a laugh with a group of longtime customers including Guy Ferrante, 76, of San Jose, on Wednesday. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)  When the last Steerburger

Sacramento

Column: As ‘Tortured Poets Department’ arrives, we wondered: Can Taylor Swift be poetry?

The Tortured Poets Department does not exist, but if it did, there would be a lot of pillows for reclining. There would be a circular track for fretting. There would be skylights because, you know, vitamin D. There would be a liquor license. The door to every poet’s office — yes, office — would be soundproof, and the lighting would be smart and because the chair of the department would be Taylor Swift — large expense accounts. When she first heard about this department, B. Metzger Sampson, executive director of the Chicago Poetry Center, rolled her eyes. That name alone, Tortured Poets Department, “it sort of brings to mind poetry as black berets and a lot of turtlenecks.” Swift, she said, seemed to have the outdated image of poets as revolutionary brooders. If Taylor Swift robs a bank in her Patty Hearst beret, I said, you’re going to feel dumb. “If Taylor Swift robs a bank and redistributes income,” Sampson said, “I’ll accept that.” Since February, when Swift announced that her next album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” would be arriving on April 19, I’ve wondered

Sacramento

A new Mediterranean cookbook from José Andrés celebrates ‘dishes that belong to the people’

Stephanie Breijo | (TNS) Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES — José Andrés spends much of his time contemplating the unifying nature of food, both in and out of the world’s most dangerous conflict and disaster zones. Days before an Israeli airstrike killed seven members of his aid organization working to feed Palestinians in Gaza, Andrés spoke to The Times about his recently published cookbook “Zaytinya.” Andrés is scheduled to speak at the 2024 Los Angeles Festival of Books, on April 21. The April 1 Gaza bombing that killed his fellow aid workers thrust Andrés further into the global limelight, and spurred international calls for accountability from the Israel Defense Forces and for an independent investigation. In addition to owning dozens of restaurants spread around the globe, the Spanish chef has become synonymous with food aid through his organization World Central Kitchen, which dispatches chefs and other volunteers to feed people in the wake of wars and natural disasters. “I wish that the world was run by people that cook and feed, because this is something that brings everybody together,” Andrés said on a phone call three days before

Bay Area

States want to make it harder for health insurers to deny care, but firms might evade enforcement

Shalina Chatlani | (TNS) Stateline.org For decades, Amina Tollin struggled with mysterious, debilitating pain that radiated throughout her body. A few years ago, when a doctor finally diagnosed her with polyneuropathy, a chronic nerve condition, she had begun to use a wheelchair. The doctor prescribed a blood infusion therapy that allowed Tollin, 40, to live her life normally. That is, until about three months ago, when it came time for reapproval and Medicaid stopped paying for the therapy. It was the result of an increasingly common process among private and public insurers known as prior authorization. The monthly infusions for Tollin’s condition cost about $18,000 for each session. When Medicaid stopped covering the infusions, she simply stopped getting them. “The doctor has shown why I need it and they just decided I don’t,” Tollin, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, told Stateline. “It’s been awful. I’m in pain.” To curb health care costs and block unnecessary services, insurers have long required doctors to obtain their approval before they’ll pay for certain drugs, treatments and procedures. But in recent years insurers have ratcheted up their use of

Sacramento

Recipe: Asian grilling unleashes dazzling flavors in meat and vegetables

Oh, the allure of food grilled Asian style, the primordial perfume of smoke melding with the scent of caramelized basting sauces and marinades. Sweet and sour, salty, and spicy tastes form an irresistible, crisp jacket of flavor over grilled vegetables and meat. Fish and fowl, too. Su-Mei Yu, author of “Asian Grilling” (William Morrow), writes that it’s the balance of flavors used to marinate and/or baste that makes Asian-grilled dishes so appealing. She explains that it is the distinct flavors of Asian seasonings that make it so delicious, adding that they are designed to match perfectly with the main ingredient. She advises readers to find the primary taste that they like best (sweet, sour, salty or spicy hot) and build on that, contrasting it with other flavors. In her book she explains that each Asian region has its own distinct seasoning style. In Southeast Asia, garlic, lemon grass, salt, turmeric, white pepper, and ginger or galangal (a rhizome with ginger-peppery flavor)  are generally signature ingredients. In China, sesame oil, soy sauce, cinnamon, five-spice powder, and ginger often play a key role. Koreans, she says, prefer

Sacramento

Sealing homes’ leaky HVAC systems is a sneaky good climate solution

Leslie Kaufman | Bloomberg News (TNS) There’s a hidden scourge making homes more harmful to the climate and less comfortable: leaky heating and cooling systems. Plugging those leaks may be the dull stepchild of the energy transition, but that doesn’t make it any less important than installing dazzling solar arrays and getting millions of electric vehicles on the road. The problem, however, is that energy efficiency pays back over time, but it comes with high upfront costs. “It can be a very, very labor intensive process to capture all the efficiency improvements in the housing stock and a lot of the issues — as well as a lot of the solutions — are pretty much unknown, or invisible to the average consumer,” said Jennifer Amann, a senior fellow with the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s buildings program. “You could pay somebody a few $1,000 to come in, and insulate your home and do air sealing, but those aren’t improvements that you are going to see or engage with,” Amann said. “So a lot of times people are thinking, ‘Well, do I want to

Inland Empire

Ohlone tribe’s Great Gathering Pow Wow to celebrate its 30th anniversary in Pomona

The Costanoan Rumsen Ohlone Tribe will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its Great Gathering Pow Wow with music, storytelling and community. The event will take place Friday, April 26, through Sunday, April 28, beginning with a California tribe-focused ceremony Friday at 6 p.m. that will feature Chumash singers and members of the Tongva tribe. A basket-making session is also set for Saturday. Participants will learn traditional weaving techniques from Jacque Nunez, an Acjachemen cultural educator. About 2,000 visitors attend the annual event, according to tribe representative Carla Marie Munoz. Originally known as the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe of Native Americans, the tribe is from the central coastal region of California. It relocated to the Pomona Valley about 1864, according to the tribe’s webpage. “This is our way of coming together to bring our unity back and celebrate who we are as a tribe,” Munoz said. The gathering will be at Tony Cerda Park, W. Grand Ave, Pomona. The park is named after tribal elder Tony Cerda, a longtime community volunteer before he had health complications. Cerda will attend the event because he played a pivotal

Los Angeles

California returns to job growth in March, but unemployment rate remains highest in nation

For the second month in a row, California posted the highest unemployment rate in the country, according to new data for March. And it was one of only two states, the other being Nevada, with a March jobless rate above 5%, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the positive side, data released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department showed that California’s job growth turned upward last month, though the improvement still lagged behind the national average. California’s jobless rate remained steady at 5.3% last month, even as unemployment for the nation ticked down to 3.8% in March. Over the last year, California’s employment growth has been lagging behind the nation as a whole, in large part due to the deleterious effects of high interest rates on three pillars of the state’s economy — high-tech, entertainment and housing. Analysts say that near-term job growth in California is likely to remain comparatively weak, but prospects down the road look brighter. Despite the immediate hiring doldrums, the state’s budget woes — including costs for unemployment claims — and stubbornly high inflation, experts think California will not

Los Angeles

A drunk driver killed her husband and daughter. His 11-year sentence brings no comfort

Erika Lopez would give anything for her 1-year-old daughter, Estrellita, to know her father. She holds the little girl in front of framed pictures of her husband on the wall of the bedroom in their Anaheim apartment, pointing out the man who loved her mother so well that he’d bring her a red rose nearly every day after work. She shouts one of the first words in her budding vocabulary — “Papa! Papa!” — and pats the pictures with her tiny hands. On Jan. 25, 2023, Lopez’s husband, Alberto Vicente Lopez, and their 10-year-old daughter, Lucero, were killed when a drunk driver crashed into the van they were riding in on their way home from church. Lopez, who was also in the van, along with their now 9-year-old son Anebel, was seven months pregnant with Estrellita at the time. Erika Lopez and her family were riding in a van on the way home from church when it was struck by a sedan driven by a drunk driver in January 2023. Lopez’s husband and daughter died, along with another van passenger. (OnScene.TV) “She will never meet

Los Angeles

Person sets self on fire outside courthouse where Trump is on trial

A person set themselves on fire Friday outside the courthouse in New York where former President Trump is facing trial. The shocking and gruesome incident occurred about 1:30 p.m. Eastern time in a park across from the downtown Manhattan courthouse, where protesters, supporters of the former president and media have been stationed for days because of the historic trial. For a few seconds, CNN showed video as the person was engulfed in flames in Collect Pond Park. Bystanders could be seen running away as dark smoke began to rise from the body. The flames continued to burn for a few minutes before a New York police officer was seen running toward the fire with an extinguisher to douse the flames. The Associated Press reported some people tried to bat the flames away. The person, who was not identified, was rushed away by paramedics on a stretcher. A full jury of 12 people and six alternates had been seated in Trump’s hush money case just minutes before the incident, drawing the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president a step closer to opening statements. This

Los Angeles

Opera gets slapped with the ‘elitist’ label. L.A. proves just how wrong that is

The label of elitism sticks to opera like superglue. The label is a fake, but one for which no cultural chemical capable of removing it has yet proved effective. Still, opera populists are trying and appear to be making progress. Los Angeles Opera last week unveiled two new productions of operas old or avant-garde: Verdi’s 19th century chestnut “La Traviata,” and Huang Ruo’s 2021 “Book of Mountains and Seas,” based on ancient Chinese myths. Both are literally worlds apart, they were given in theaters large (the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown) and small (the Broad Stage in Santa Monica), and they were designed for different audiences. The performances I saw were well attended and enthusiastically received. Both raised the question of what makes opera elite, as opposed to, say, a Lakers game. Wealth or privilege, say the lexographers at Oxford, a university where wealth and privilege have sway. As I write, tickets purchased on the L.A. Opera website for the Wednesday performance of “La Traviata” range from $89 to $329. The next night, the Lakers take on the Denver Nuggets at Crypto.com Arena. Cash in your

Los Angeles

Person sets themself on fire outside Trump trial courthouse

NEW YORK (WPIX) — A person set themself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump was on trial Friday. A person could be seen lying on the ground outside at a park across the street from the Manhattan courthouse. People rushed over to douse the person with a fire extinguisher and try to bat the flames away. NewsNation crews at the courthouse witnessed court officers and New York police officers rushing toward the flames in a chaotic scene. Emergency responders then rushed the person away on a stretcher. No other details were immediately available from police. Police confirmed to The Hill and WPIX that the person had self-immolated, or set themself on fire. Jury selection complete in Trump’s hush money trial Protestors and counter-protestors have been gathered at the park outside the courthouse all week as the first stages of the trial got underway. A full jury of 12 people and six alternates had been seated in Trump’s hush money case just minutes before the fire, drawing the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president a step closer to opening statements. The trial

Los Angeles

Final alternate jurors in Trump’s “hush money” trial seated

Final alternate jurors in Trump’s “hush money” trial seated – CBS News Watch CBS News The final alternate jurors have been seated in former President Donald Trump’s criminal “hush money” trial. Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Monday. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman is following the latest, and CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson breaks down how the case could play out. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

Los Angeles

U.S. measles cases reach 125 this year, topping 2022’s large outbreaks

By Alexander Tin Edited By Paula Cohen Updated on: April 19, 2024 / 3:03 PM EDT / CBS News Measles cases continue to rise Measles infections are on the rise, with more cases so far in 2024 than all of last year 02:22 At least 125 measles cases have been reported across 17 states so far this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday, up from 121 cases last week. More cases have now been reported this year than in all of 2022, the most recent annual peak of measles infections . Cases of measles had surged that year from outbreaks linked to unvaccinated Afghan refugees.   Illinois remains the state with by far the largest number of measles cases this year, after a large outbreak at a Chicago migrant shelter that the city’s health department now says has slowed significantly in the wake of a major vaccination push.  Massimo Pacilli, a deputy commissioner for the Chicago Department of Public Health,  acknowledged CDC reports of higher rates of fully vaccinated people catching measles during the outbreak, which he chalked up to intense

Los Angeles

Ex-Customs and Border Protection Worker Pleads Guilty in Wife’s Death

A Covina man who worked for U.S. Customs and Border Protection pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge for kidnapping his wife in 2016 in an incident that resulted in her death. Eddy Reyes, 38, who lived with his wife in Santa Ana before she vanished, entered his plea in downtown Los Angeles to one count of kidnapping resulting in death. The charge carries a potential sentence of life in federal prison. However, the government has agreed not to seek more than 30 years in exchange for Reyes’ guilty plea. If prior to sentencing, Reyes provides information leading to the recovery of the remains of Claudia Sanchez Reyes — so they can be returned to her parents in El Salvador — federal prosecutors will lower their recommendation to 25 years, according to the plea agreement. Sentencing was set for Aug. 2. Reyes — who was a civilian employee of CBP’s Long Beach office — admitted that he kidnapped his then-21-year-old wife on May 6, 2016 after suspecting she was having an affair with another man. Claudia Reyes was last seen leaving work that night at