By Elvia Limón and Laura Blasey
Howdy, it’s Wednesday, April 13, and listed below are the tales you shouldn’t miss at the moment:
TOP STORIES
LAPD says 17 L.A. gangs have despatched out crews to observe and rob the town’s wealthiest
Greater than a dozen Los Angeles gangs are focusing on a number of the metropolis’s wealthiest residents in a brand new and aggressive method, sending out crews in a number of automobiles to search out, observe and rob folks driving high-end autos or sporting costly jewellery, in accordance with police. In some circumstances, police say, suspects have been arrested however then launched from custody, solely to commit extra robberies.
In accordance with Capt. Jonathan Tippet, who spearheads a Los Angeles Police Division process power investigating these crimes, police have recognized at the least 17 gangs, most based mostly out of South L.A. and working independently, which might be concerned. There have been 165 such robberies in 2021 and 56 to date this yr, he mentioned, together with a number of over the weekend.
As Russia menaces Ukraine’s east, Putin says peace talks hit ‘lifeless finish’
As Russian forces pressed forward of their drive to grab the strategic southern port of Mariupol and encircle Ukrainian defenders within the nation’s east, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his invasion as a noble trigger. Putin mentioned there was “little doubt” Moscow would obtain its goals to guard Russian safety and, blaming Ukraine, mentioned talks between the 2 sides had reached a “lifeless finish.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in flip, mentioned the practically 7-week-old warfare could possibly be getting into a “new stage of terror” for his embattled nation after Russian troops’ withdrawal from the capital, Kyiv. He once more accused Russia of warfare crimes. Western and Ukrainian army officers have been making an attempt to determine whether or not Russia had used or supposed to make use of chemical weapons in a bid to subdue Mariupol.
Extra on Ukraine
- The large battle for japanese Ukraine is coming, however within the south, Ukrainian troopers have pushed again the entrance traces of Russian forces.
- Nuns on the Greek Catholic Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Household, 60 miles from Lviv, have granted refuge to some 40 folks fleeing combating with Russian forces in japanese and central Ukraine.
In California’s governor’s race, challengers assault Newsom’s file on homelessness
Two of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most vocal challengers — Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle of Bieber in Lassen County and Bay Space vitality and homeless coverage activist Michael Shellenberger, a Democrat turned impartial — hope to faucet into festering voter anger over homelessness, crime and different quality-of-life points as a strategy to overcome Newsom’s huge political benefits.
They've accused the governor of being beholden to the failed housing and homelessness insurance policies of the far left. Whereas ideologically totally different, each males are calling for a crackdown on homeless encampments and larger incentives for drug customers and the mentally sick to obtain therapy when offered housing.
Rampant inflation and anxiousness stymie Biden’s effort to concentrate on robust financial progress
It’s a maxim in politics: Dangerous financial information trumps the nice. And that's what scares President Biden and the Democrats. On Tuesday, inflation hit a new 40-year excessive.
Simply 5 days earlier, the nation’s unemployment charge had plummeted to just about a 50-year low, an indication of a robust economic system that the White Home worries is getting misplaced in a swirl of shopper considerations about rising prices and deeper anxieties triggered by warfare and pandemic.
Wanting to recast the general public’s view of the economic system on the optimistic indicators whereas acknowledging and responding to inflation considerations, Biden traveled to Iowa on Tuesday to showcase a brand new effort to decrease gasoline costs, asserting that E-15 gasoline, with its increased ethanol content material, will be capable to be offered this summer time.
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Coachella, spring break, Easter and rising coronavirus: How one can keep secure
A latest uptick in circumstances is fueling some concern in regards to the trajectory of the coronavirus in California, particularly as April brings a bustling vacation season and a social calendar full of spring break journey plans and main occasions just like the Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals.
The variety of newly reported coronavirus infections is rising modestly in some elements of the state. The numbers stay pretty low, and officers mentioned it’s removed from clear the state will see one other main spike. However they're urging folks to be cautious.
L.A. County Public Well being Director Barbara Ferrer this week urged folks to “do our best to utilize the highly effective instruments at hand, vaccinations, boosters, testing and masking, to maintain ourselves and people most weak to extreme sickness as secure as attainable.”
Extra prime coronavirus headlines
- COVID-19 and drug overdoses pushed the U.S. to its highest dying whole ever in 2021.
Keep updated on variant developments, case counts and vaccine information with Coronavirus As we speak.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
CALIFORNIA
California may shrink water use in cities by 30% or extra, examine finds. Inexperienced lawns, outdated home equipment and leaky pipes all devour important quantities of California’s water, and researchers have calculated in a brand new examine that the state may make important reductions by investing in measures to make use of water extra effectively. They mentioned the largest potential lies in Southern California.
DWP, mired in scandal, has its first inspector basic. He vows to carry a ‘zeal for independence.’ The Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy has tapped civil rights legal professional Sergio Perez because the inaugural inside watchdog, beginning Might 9. However Perez faces a troublesome process forward: the company has turn out to be mired in a sprawling corruption scandal, and a string of plea offers involving former DWP executives and metropolis legal professionals has revealed malfeasance on the highest ranges.
It’s the final day for an opportunity to get $1,000 a month from L.A. County. Right here’s tips on how to apply. In case you dwell in a poor or working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles County and the pandemic has harm your pocketbook, you might be eligible to obtain $1,000 a month for 3 years with no strings hooked up. However if you happen to’re , you must act shortly. To be thought-about, you could apply by at the moment.
Los Angeles gasoline costs drop for a fifteenth consecutive day after ‘unprecedented rise.’ A median gallon of standard gasoline decreased 1.3 cents to $5.849, in accordance with figures from the American Vehicle Assn. That quantity was down from $5.96 only one week in the past and $6.07 on March 28.
Lethal overdoses have spiked amongst teenagers, whilst drug use dropped, UCLA researchers discover. The findings underscore that teenagers face critical hazard from the varieties of medicine circulating in america, together with the highly effective opioid fentanyl and different artificial opioids and benzodiazepines.
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NATION-WORLD
10 folks shot in Brooklyn subway assault. A gunman crammed a rush-hour subway prepare with smoke and shot a number of folks Tuesday, leaving wounded commuters bleeding on a Brooklyn platform as others ran screaming, authorities mentioned. Police have been nonetheless trying to find the suspect, however mentioned there was no identified hyperlink to terrorism.
Oklahoma governor indicators invoice to make abortion unlawful. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a invoice into regulation that makes it a felony to carry out an abortion, punishable by as much as 10 years in jail, as a part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states throughout the nation to reduce abortion rights. Comparable legal guidelines accepted just lately in Arkansas and Alabama have been blocked by federal courts.
El Salvador police are pressured to fulfill arrest quotas. Marvin Reyes, a consultant of the Salvadoran Police Staff Union, mentioned the actions of some police officers would lead to arbitrary arrests. He mentioned commanders are telling officers to present “false statements” towards some who've been arrested however who don't have anything to do with gangs.
Infants die as congenital syphilis continues a decade-long surge throughout the U.S. In 2012, 332 infants have been born contaminated with the illness. In 2021, that quantity had climbed practically sevenfold, to at the least 2,268, in accordance with preliminary estimates. And 166 of these infants died.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS
Gilbert Gottfried, comic and ‘Aladdin’ voice actor, dies at 67. Gottfried was revered for his brash, irreverent fashion of stand-up comedy. The famend voice actor was additionally identified for lending his piercing, squawky vocals to Jafar’s avian minion within the Disney animated basic “Aladdin,” in addition to the immediately recognizable Aflac duck.
Sleeper hit ‘Our Flag Means Demise’ left us hanging. Season 2 would ‘reorient’ issues. The little pirate present has turned out to be something however little — when it comes to each ambition and viewer enchantment. Half romantic comedy, half interval piece, the collection is surprisingly massive in scope, and it’s swiftly emerged as a sleeper hit.
Millie Bobby Brown on being sexualized at a younger age: ‘It’s gross and it’s true.’ On a latest episode of the “Responsible Feminist” podcast, the “Stranger Issues” star opened up about being sexualized as a baby movie star and the “overwhelming” expertise of rising up within the leisure trade.
BUSINESS
AriZona iced tea has value 99 cents for 30 years. As inflation soars, how does the corporate pull it off? The quick reply: It’s making much less cash proper now. The longer one: AriZona is without doubt one of the few impartial non-public corporations remaining within the consolidated nonalcoholic beverage world, and the household behind it is dedicated to its method.
Twitter bots helped construct the cult of Elon Musk and Tesla. However who’s creating them? Preliminary analysis concludes that automated Twitter accounts pushing optimistic sentiments about Tesla have performed a important half within the “inventory of the long run” narrative that propelled the electrical automobile maker’s market worth to altitudes loftier than any conventional monetary evaluation may justify.
SPORTS
What’s the deal behind Apple TV’s deal to broadcast baseball video games? We requested MLB. The Apple deal is price $85 million per yr to MLB, in accordance with Forbes. The common annual worth for all of the league’s nationwide broadcast offers — ESPN, Fox, TBS, Apple TV+ and Peacock — is $2 billion.
Sparks go for Candace Parker vibes, taking Tennessee’s Rae Burrell within the WNBA draft. Fourteen years after Candace Parker started her WNBA profession with the Sparks, fellow Woman Volunteer Rae Burrell will make the trek to Los Angeles because the Sparks picked the 6-foot-1 guard ninth total.
Doc Rivers? Nick Nurse? A Lakers insider’s information to Frank Vogel’s alternative. Essentially the most intriguing teaching names they in all probability will take into account are Utah’s Quin Snyder, Toronto’s Nick Nurse, Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers and Michigan’s Juwan Howard, however all of these coaches are beneath contract.
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OPINION
A rape survivor will get her day in court docket. It’s one I’ll always remember. An emotional rape survivor tells the court docket she went from being a “sunshiny” particular person to being crippled with concern by “waking nightmares.”
Tens of millions are locked down in Shanghai due to ‘zero COVID’ protocols. One thing wants to alter. As near-daily obligatory testing expanded, folks’s concern turned palpable. They weren’t frightened of the virus. The dread was over the authorities’s “zero COVID” coverage, which is carried out by putting anybody who assessments optimistic in centralized quarantine services till they're decided to be COVID-free.
ONLY IN L.A.
Poachers are wiping out SoCal’s wild white sage to make smudge sticks. You possibly can cease them. The tall, silvery Salvia apiana is native solely to Southern California and northern Baja, a habitat that's more and more shrinking. However over the past decade, there’s been one other rising menace: sage stick smudgers.
You’ve seen them on social media, tv and movie: folks waving thick, smoldering bundles of dried white sage leaves to smudge away detrimental vitality or evil spirits, or simply purify the air. And over the past 5 years, the mania for white sage has turn out to be a worldwide phenomenon with actual penalties.
It’s dangerous sufficient that smudgers are appropriating and trivializing the traditions of Chumash, Tongva and different Southern California Indigenous peoples, one skilled mentioned, however what’s actually distressing is that, within the course of, they could be unwittingly serving to to destroy the few remaining stands of the plant rising in its native habitat as poachers hack into wild vegetation to money in. Right here’s tips on how to assist.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Who says cowboys can’t win Oscars? Fifty-two years in the past this month, actor John Wayne took an Oscar residence for his position in “True Grit.” The movie for which Wayne would win his solely Oscar was launched and the important, in addition to public, acclaim started to roll in. It was as if for the primary time, critics appeared to really feel snug assessing Wayne as a gifted actor.
Wayne, whose display portrayals of males of responsibility, honor and braveness coupled together with his personal off-camera model of private true grit, died from most cancers 9 years after receiving the award. Later that yr, Orange County supervisors christened the county airport with Wayne’s title on the urging of Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.
Nonetheless, in recent times, there was a push to rename the airport after the recirculation of the actor’s racist and bigoted statements made towards Black folks, Native People and the LGBTQ group in a 1971 interview with Playboy journal.
For the file: Yesterday’s e-newsletter mentioned shopper inflation jumped 7.9% over the past yr. The right determine is 8.5%.
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