Category: Los Angeles

Eye Opener: The legacy of O.J. Simpson, who became most famous for being acquitted of murder – CBS News Watch CBS News The death of O.J. Simpson reopens old debates. Also, deadly storms sweep the north, bringing dangerous flash floods and tornadoes to yet another region of the U.S. All that and all that matters in today’s Eye Opener. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

“The Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner was overjoyed when he proposed to financial services professional Theresa Nist, putting a fairy-tale stamp on his journey to find love again at 72. The couple rushed to get married, eager to start their new life together. But the fairy tale is over. Just more than three months after their sprint to the altar, in a gala ceremony televised live on ABC, the widower and his new bride are breaking up. The couple announced the bombshell during an emotional interview Friday on “Good Morning America.” While maintaining that they still love and cherish each other, they say they realized the obstacles of moving forward as husband and wife are too daunting. After a number of heart-to-heart conversations, “we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably time to dissolve our marriage,” Turner said in the interview. They also said they were nervous about how fans would react to the shocking news. Much of the decision was linked to the inability to decide how to merge their lives. One challenge? Nist lives in New Jersey, while Turner is from Indiana. They

One person died early Friday morning after they crashed a car into a tree in Stevenson Ranch, the California Highway Patrol confirmed. The crash was first reported around 12:42 a.m. in the area of Constitution Avenue and The Old Road. A person was found trapped inside the vehicle, authorities said. Crews pulled the person out of the vehicle, though they were pronounced dead at a local hospital. No identifying information for the person was released as of Friday morning. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.

Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown Jr. on his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – CBS News Watch CBS News Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s highest ranking military officer, is someone President Biden relies on for advice on how to handle some of the world’s most dangerous situations. He discussed his position and major issues facing the U.S. with CBS Mornings. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

By Stephen Smith April 12, 2024 / 8:57 AM EDT / CBS News Tracing family trees to catch killers Inside the genetic genealogy being used to solve crimes 13:49 Hiram “Ross” Grayam was a decorated World War II veteran who survived the Battle of the Bulge and witnessed the liberation of two concentration camps. After the war, he returned to Indian River County, Florida, and became a beloved milkman — only to be shot dead while on his delivery route in 1968. Now, 56 years later, the so-called “Milkman Homicide” has finally been solved. Thomas J. Williams, who died in 2016, has been identified as Grayam’s killer, the Indian River Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday. Williams “had confessed to Grayam’s murder, his guilt echoing from beyond the grave,” officials said while announcing that the cold case had been cracked. Hiram “Ross” Grayam  Indian River County Sheriff’s Office Grayam, a Purple Heart recipient, had relocated to Vero Beach with his family in the 1960’s and became a salesman for Borden Milk Company, CBS affiliate WPEC-TV reported. He went out to do his routes

Former NFL star O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of double murder, dies at 76 – CBS News Watch CBS News O.J. Simpson, a former NFL star who was acquitted of double murder, died following a battle with cancer at the age of 76. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On

La comida nunca surgió de la nada para Karla Tatiana Vásquez. Las historias siempre seguían. Cada vez que su abuela o su madre cocinaban, Vásquez sabía que algo especial se avecinaba. Su comida desveló recuerdos, especialmente sobre El Salvador, la patria de la que habían huido a finales de los años 1980 durante la guerra civil del país. Vásquez nació en el país centroamericano pero no tenía ningún recuerdo de ello. Era una bebé cuando su familia se la llevó a Los Ángeles, donde muchos miembros de la familia terminaron estableciéndose. Cuando era niño, a Vásquez le costaba mucho decir “salvadoreño” sin tropezar en la montaña rusa de una palabra. En la escuela, luchó contra la ansiedad y el sentido de pertenencia. Se sintió perdida. Pero en la mesa se sintió castigada. Entre bocados de tortilla y el plato frío de carne picada salpicón de res, la abuela, la madre, el padre y las tías de Vásquez se turnaron para desentrañar historias que sirvieron como fragmentos de un tapiz más grande que constituía su identidad. El plato favorito de Vásquez cuando era niño: salpicón de

A notorious fake priest who left a trail of doubt and disbelief among the faithful he’s accused of swindling from coast to coast will soon face judgment in Riverside County, sheriff’s officials say. For months, Malin Rostas, aka “Father Martin,” donned black garb and showed up at Catholic churches across the U.S. and Canada claiming to be “a visiting priest from Chicago,” according to investigators. But when his all-too-trusting hosts would leave him alone in the rectory — a priest’s personal quarters next to the church — investigators say Rostas would rifle through their valuables and make a hasty exodus with their cash. In March, Father Peter Raydar, of the appropriately named American Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Queens, N.Y., got burned for $900. “He’s a vulture, he’s a vulture,” Raydar told a local TV station. “It’s very sad that someone is going to come to any house of worship and just violate everybody.” But, Raydar confessed, the alleged fake priest had done his homework. He’d learned the names of people at the church, used ecclesiastical vocabulary and knew where to find the loot, he

In just the last few years, two former Los Angeles City Council members have gone to prison for corruption, one more has been sentenced for fraud and bribery and two current members face accusations of ethics violations. At least four high-ranking city officials have pleaded guilty to or been found guilty of roles in various corruption schemes. It should be obvious that L.A. needs a stronger, more independent Ethics Commission to prevent and penalize corruption and help rebuild public trust in scandal-plagued City Hall. But doing so requires voter support, and time is running out to get a comprehensive reform package on the November ballot. This is a test for Council President Paul Krekorian and his fellow council members’ commitment to fixing City Hall. If they fail to act quickly, it will be clear that they cannot be trusted to make substantial changes to the city’s political structure. Activists and civic leaders will have to organize and impose reform from outside. The City Council has about two months to sign off on the proposals, which may sound like a long time. But there’s been almost

My mother, a UCLA graduate, switched her allegiance on a dime the day I enrolled at USC. She and my father attended every Trojans home game from that day forward. Familial blood may be thicker than alumni water but not so, it seems, when it comes to spousal relations. And I know about it all too well. My husband, Brad, and I, both divorced and not in the market for anyone who didn’t ooze quality, had engaged in a keyboard courtship. He was avid, while I was reluctant at best. I refused to meet him for months, having been single for six years and not the least bit interested in sharing anything with anyone ever again. But he said he was willing to wait however long it took for me to muster up the courage, and he would even manage to overlook the fact that my diploma was from USC because he (unfortunately) was a devoted Bruin. Letters soared back and forth between us, and because we were both 50 and counting, once I caved and we came face to face we wasted no time

Many state capitol buildings feel unapproachable, tucked away downtown or barricaded behind lanes of noisy traffic. Not so in Salt Lake City. The Utah Capitol sits at the mouth of a verdant canyon, flanked by parks and neighborhoods, perched below the Wasatch Mountains and presiding over the city with authority. It’s a grand building , just over a century old, with a copper-clad dome and a neoclassical design that mirrors the U.S. Capitol. Inside, the state Legislature convenes every January for 45 days. In deeply conservative Utah, the Republican supermajority passes one law after another that outrages progressives, educators, young people and more. Outside the walls, these marginalized groups protest these same bills. Ten years ago, my wife and I moved a block away from this stately old building, serendipitously finding our new home an easy launchpad to attend rallies. The stack of homemade signs accumulating in our basement testifies to our proximity. In January 2017, we joined 6,000 Utahans in the Capitol rotunda — 1,000 more than the official capacity of the space — for the existential roar of the Women’s March. The following

By Jordan Kinsey Updated on: April 12, 2024 / 7:56 AM EDT / CBS News Sneak peek: The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury Sneak peek: The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury 03:46 The morning of March 31, 2023, for Megan Kingsbury began with a funny text exchange with her younger sister, 26-year-old Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury , who lived in Winona, Minnesota. But that would be the last communication, Megan Kingsbury says, she would ever have with her sister. Later that evening, Megan Kingsbury says her mother, Krista Naber, reached out to see if she had spoken to her sister recently because Naber had not heard from Maddi Kingbsury in hours. Megan Kingsbury says she wasn’t worried at first, but then Maddi Kingsbury did not respond to her new messages or phone calls either.  “…regardless of how busy she was or what she had going on, she always got back to us,” Megan Kingsbury told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant. Her interview is featured in “The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, April 13, at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+. Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury Maddi

Like a lot of parents, I’ve carried a picture of my son everywhere I go for many years. Unlike a lot of them, I have a child who never ages: My son George was shot and killed on July 17, 1996. My photos of my son remind me of the days before I had to tell my grandson Gabriel, on what happened to be his 6th birthday, that his father had died. The scream I heard on the other end of the phone is one I wouldn’t wish on my enemies. Though I turned my pain into purpose as the president of the anti-gun-violence group Brady California , I trudge through every day with unanswered questions, one of which echoes the loudest: Who killed my son? That’s because my son’s killer has never been brought to justice. Not knowing who killed George is unfathomably difficult but not unusual. California’s statewide case clearance rate for homicides has been near or under 65% for the last decade. That means more than a third of the state’s killings go unsolved, leaving families and communities to bury people they

April 12, 2024 / 7:02 AM EDT / AP Detroit — The U.S. government’s auto safety agency has opened an investigation into a Ford recall for gasoline leaks from cracked fuel injectors that can cause engine fires, saying in documents that the remedy doesn’t fix the leaks. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in the documents posted Friday on its website that the probe will “evaluate the adequacy and safety consequences of the remedy” that Ford specifies in the recall. The agency moved with unusual speed, posting documents detailing the “recall query” just two days after the recall was made public. The recall covers nearly 43,000 Ford Bronco Sport SUVs from the 2022 and 2023 model years, and Escape SUVs from 2022. All have 1.5-liter engines. The NHTSA said that fuel injectors can crack, causing gasoline or vapors to leak at a high rate onto hot surfaces in the engine compartment. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Ford’s remedy for the leaks is installation of a drain tube to send the gas away from hot surfaces and a software update to detect a pressure

Updated on: April 12, 2024 / 6:22 AM EDT / CBS/AP Inside Mexican/American gunrunning networks Inside Mexican/American gunrunning networks 03:12 The head of traffic police was shot to death Thursday in Mexico’s troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco . The city government said gunmen killed Eduardo Chávez, the head of municipal traffic police. The assailants opened fire on Chávez on a street relatively far away from the resort’s beaches. The crime is under investigation. Drug cartels in Mexico often force bus and taxi drivers to work for them, and thus could have been angered by traffic stops of such vehicles. Videos posted on social media in March showed drug gang enforcers brutally beating bus drivers in Acapulco for failing to act as lookouts for the cartel. One video showed a presumed gang enforcer dealing more than a dozen hard, open-hand slaps to a driver and calling him an “animal,” and demanding he check in several times a day with the gang. It was the latest incident of deadly violence in Acapulco, which is still struggling to recover after being hit by Category 5 Hurricane Otis

California’s highest-ranking court officials are warning of a growing “constitutional crisis” playing out across the state’s judicial system, as hundreds of thousands of hearings are held without a precise record of what occurred. The problem is a shortage of public court reporters, the stenographers who transcribe proceedings, and state law that bars electronic recording devices from being used in certain types of hearings — even when a reporter isn’t available. Courts have tried to triage the problem by reserving available court reporters for the most important cases, such as felony trials. But other critically important proceedings — such as for domestic violence restraining orders and child custody disputes — routinely are going unrecorded. On a daily basis, litigants are told they can either hire their own reporters — for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hearing — or simply go without a record. The result, officials and advocates agree, is that poorer Californians have less access to justice. Without a verbatim record of a proceeding, litigants can struggle to defend their rights — including against abusers — and find it impossible to appeal rulings

Of all the sounds now vanished from the heart of old downtown Los Angeles — the songs of the Tongva , the whistles of steam locomotives, the clanging of streetcars — there’s one you’d never have expected: the Rebel Yell. The battle cry of the Confederacy resounded a long way from its home, but throughout the Civil War, you could hear it in secessionist hangouts like the old Bella Union Hotel. The yell usually went along with hollering and arguing, and maybe the bibulous singing of “We’ll Hang Abe Lincoln To A Tree.” That was the Confederates’ poor rejoinder to the Yankees’ insult song about the Confederate president, “We’ll Hang Jeff Davis From a Sour Apple Tree.” (Poor, because the meter doesn’t scan, and who hangs anyone to a tree, anyway?) Like the song, the Confederacy was a failure. But here — here, in now politically azure-blue L.A. — sympathy for the South was muscular and, as far as the U.S. government was concerned, a potential menace. Think of Jets and Sharks decked out in buckskins or Yankee blue, ambling down our grubby streets, swapping

After the Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision in 2022, jeopardizing abortion access for millions nationwide, California emerged as a “hot spot” and saw a surge in procedures — an influx probably due in part to out-of-staters facing new restrictions and looking for care. Tuesday’s decision by the Arizona Supreme Court that aims to impose a near-total abortion ban in the neighboring state has put Southern California providers on alert and reignited leading state Democrats’ efforts to provide a “safe haven” for reproductive rights. “We stand with the people of Arizona, and all those who live in states that have enacted dangerous abortion bans and restrictions. No matter what comes, we remain steadfast in our resolve to protect and expand access to safe and legal abortion care for all,” said Darrah DiGiorgio Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. The regional Planned Parenthood operates clinics in Imperial, Riverside and San Diego counties, where 10% of patients are from outside California. Arizonans were already traveling to California for abortion, because before this week’s ruling the state banned abortions at

With two major expansions of downtown Los Angeles cultural institutions in the works, Bunker Hill is primed to elevate its status as the region’s leading arts center even as the area around it struggles with persistent homelessness and post-pandemic losses of office tenants. Bunker Hill will soon have the largest concentration of buildings designed by Frank Gehry in the world and promises to become a cultural center “like no other place,” the architect told the Los Angeles Times. The Broad recently announced a $100-million project that will increase gallery space at one of the city’s most popular museums by 70%, and the Colburn School for performing arts just broke ground on a $335-million expansion that will include a mid-size concert hall — designed by Gehry — that is expected to be in near-constant use for events put on by students, professional artists and academics. Gehry has been a key player in the decades-long comeback of Bunker Hill, a former residential neighborhood that is now home to cultural institutions, office skyscrapers, apartment towers and hotels. With the coming additions, Gehry said, Bunker Hill stands to surpass

Sunday is Tia Mowry’s favorite day of the week because it’s the day that she gets to do whatever she wants. “With my career, there’s always some sort of schedule,” the actor and entrepreneur said. But on Sundays, “it’s just really free-flowing. I mean, yes, there are some routines and traditions that we have on Sunday, but it’s not a strict schedule.” Mowry has been lighting up our TV screens since her debut on the beloved ‘90s sitcom “Sister, Sister” alongside her twin sister, Tamera. Since then, Mowry has picked up several other notable roles on shows and films like “The Game,” “Twitches” and “Family Reunion.” She also starred in a Style Network reality show about her and her sister’s lives called “Tia & Tamera,” released two cookbooks and launched 4u by Tia, a sustainable, science-backed hair care line for natural hair. In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends. The latest venture for the mom of two? Mowry

By Shawna Mizelle April 12, 2024 / 6:00 AM EDT / CBS News Katie Hobbs backs repeal of 1864 abortion ban Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs calls for repeal of near-total abortion ban 10:57 A Colorado campaign that’s trying to enshrine abortion rights into the state’s constitution has gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot this November, CBS News has learned.  To amend Colorado’s constitution, petitioners must gather 124,238 signatures from the state’s voters, including 2% of the total registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 Senate districts, according to the secretary of state’s office. Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom said its volunteers gathered more than 225,000 signatures and met the district requirements, as well. The deadline to turn the signatures in is April 18. A person familiar with the operation told CBS News that the group expects challenges from opposition groups on the validity of the signatures. The announcement underscores the ongoing push to put abortion on the ballot at the state level after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which struck down the landmark