California Dolphin

Hosting the Olympics is a feat for any city, and after Paris’ many successes, fans are looking to see how Los Angeles will meet the challenge in 2028. One issue already on people’s minds: Will L.A.’s notorious traffic and air quality be the Achilles’ heel of our Games? Mayor Karen Bass wants a car-free Games, though the LA28 committee in charge of staging the events prefers to say “public-transit first.” While those efforts may ease congestion on our roads, addressing L.A.’s air quality during the Olympics requires much more. Southern California has long had the smoggiest air in the nation, making it unhealthy to breathe on hundreds of days each year, especially for vulnerable populations. To ensure cleaner air for visitors and athletes in 2028, as well as for L.A. residents long after the Games, we will need as many zero-emission vehicles as possible by 2028. In 2018, public and private sector partners came together to use the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a catalyst for accelerating transportation electrification by the time the world arrives in Los Angeles. We set ambitious targets to get

Avantika Vandanapu has a bad date to thank for discovering one of her favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. On a recent afternoon, the actress, who goes by her first name only, sits at the counter at Gyoza Bar, a small, dimly lit restaurant on that stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park in the shadow of Dodger Stadium. Ongoing Series Columnist Jenn Harris joins your favorite celebrities to explore their go-to cuisines and restaurants in Los Angeles. “I came here on a first date and I never spoke to this person again,” she says with a laugh. “But I left with wonderful memories of Gyoza Bar.” 1:59 p.m. Gyoza Bar (Jane Kim / For The Times) As the star of “Spin,” Disney’s first TV film with an Indian American lead and breakout roles in the recent musical remake of “Mean Girls” and the horror film “Tarot,” multiple projects in the pipeline (she can’t mention them just yet), her own production company in the works and school at Columbia University (she’s majoring in Cultural Anthropology and Economics), Avantika doesn’t have much time to eat out. But

After his heartfelt reaction to his father’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention thrust him into the spotlight, 17-year-old Gus Walz has become one of the most high-profile people with nonverbal learning disorder. The condition doesn’t mean Gus can’t speak — he does. After hearing his dad, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, describe his family as “my entire world” Wednesday night, the tearful teenager rose to his feet, pointed toward the stage and said, “That’s my dad!” Gus is one of millions of Americans with nonverbal learning disorder. A 2020 study in JAMA Network Open estimated that 3% to 4% of children and adolescents in the U.S. may have the condition, and another study this year in Scientific Reports concluded that the prevalence in children may be as high as 8%. The condition, known as NVLD, was first recognized in 1967 and doesn’t yet have a formal clinical definition. It is characterized by a significant gap between verbal abilities — which are just fine — and nonverbal kinds of learning that involve visual-spacial processing, such as telling time on an analog clock, reading a map

For the second time in two years, the California Legislature passed a one-off law to circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act. And this time, the optics aren’t good: In June, the Legislature exempted its own new office building project from CEQA. The new law passed quickly. Even Sen. John Laird of Santa Cruz, one of the state’s leading environmentalists, expressed concern about the way CEQA was driving delays and therefore the cost of the project, which is more or less the same concern that developers have been expressing forever about CEQA. The state office building exemption comes on the heels of a similar action last year that kept a UC Berkeley dorm and apartment project alive on the site of People’s Park, despite a court finding that noisy students in the new residences might constitute a significant environmental impact that required CEQA analysis and mitigation. Everybody loves to hate the California Environmental Quality Act — except the environmentalists, neighborhood groups and unions that use it and often abuse it. Those groups have enough political power to create an eternal stalemate in Sacramento over whether and

August 23, 2024 / 5:16 AM EDT / AP 8/22: CBS Evening News 8/22: CBS Evening News 19:25 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — A woman plunged Friday into a 26 feet deep sinkhole in the Kuala Lumpur city center after the pavement she was on caved in, burying her alive, Malaysian authorities said. The incident happened in Dang Wangi area of the Malaysian capital, where local police chief Sulizmie Affendy Sulaiman said that based on eyewitness accounts, the woman was walking along the pavement when the earth suddenly collapsed beneath her. Kuala Lumpur’s fire and rescue department, which received a distress call early Friday, has said the woman was believed to be an Indian national. This photograph provided by Fire and Rescue Department of Malaysia shows rescue personnel entering a deep sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur after receiving reports that a woman had fallen in after a section of the sidewalk caved in on August23, 2024. Fire and Rescue Department of Malaysia / AP But Sulizmie said he couldn’t confirm her identity, as investigations are ongoing. Rescuers have barricaded part of the area and used an excavator

TAIPEI, Taiwan —  In the early hours of June 4, 1989, Chinese soldiers — under orders from the country’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, to clear pro-democracy protesters from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square — opened fire, killing hundreds. Times journalist David Holley watched from the window of a nearby hotel, using a phone in a coffee shop to report what he saw to colleagues in the Beijing bureau as gunfire crackled in the background. Three decades later in an article reflecting on what he saw and why it remains one of the most pivotal moments in China’s modern history, he wrote: “This Beijing massacre ultimately strengthened Deng’s control and froze into place his formula for China’s modernization: one-party dictatorship paired with market-oriented reforms. … Over the last 30 years, China has grown stronger and more prosperous, but the formula remains unchanged.” Holley spent two decades as a Times foreign correspondent, covering pro-democracy street protests in nearly a dozen other countries before going into teaching. He died Aug. 4 in Nagano, Japan, at age 73. His cousin Frederick Holley said the cause was complications from a chronic health condition. Former