Thursday, October 16, 2025
spot_img
spot_img
Home Blog Page 391

Outbreak Prevention Strategies Can Slow Spread In Preparation For Graduations and Other Large Events

Reporters Desk
-
0
Outbreak Prevention Strategies Can Slow Spread In Preparation For Graduations and Other Large Events

Positive cases and test positivity at Los Angeles County schools continue to increase, highlighting the importance of layering in all safety measures as many schools prepare to host end-of-year events and gatherings such as graduations.

The number of cases among students and staff increased nearly four-fold in one month, likely reflecting higher rates of community transmission and the large number of gatherings associated with end-of-year events. For the week ending May 8, there were 5,620 positive cases at schools across the county, of which 4,465 were among students and 1,155 among staff. A month prior, for the week ending April 10, there were 1,422 positive cases, of which 1,167 were among students and 255 among staff.

Test positivity also increased this past month at schools from 0.19% for the week ending April 8 to 0.61% for the week ending May 13.

For the week ending May 14, nine new outbreaks were reported (seven in elementary schools and two in middle schools).

In the past month, larger outbreaks, ranging from 25-60 infected students and staff, have been associated with proms, school performances and events, and field trips.

With higher transmission rates in the community, there is the potential for continued increases in student and staff cases. Minimizing transmission at schools and school events remains a high priority with the Public Health school support team offering school partners information, resources, help with outbreak management, and technical assistance to layer in strategies that enhance safety.

Public Health emphasizes that with more spread of highly infectious new variants, all students, staff, and visitors wear well-fitting masks or respirators when indoors. Masking indoors is required for any asymptomatic staff and students who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.

Schools are encouraged to conduct response COVID-19 testing to protect students and staff. Response testing includes ensuring access to testing for students and staff who have been exposed to a person with COVID-19 and/or who have COVID-19 symptoms. If resources are available, schools can also offer weekly testing for those who are not fully vaccinated.

Parents and students are expected to follow the isolation and quarantine health officer orders. Students who are required to isolate shouldn’t return to school until they’ve been released from isolation. If they meet the criteria to leave isolation early, they should wear a highly protective mask around others, except when eating or drinking, for 10 days after their symptoms started or the date of their first positive test if they’re asymptomatic.

Vaccines continue to provide the best protection against illness and hospitalizations and are the safest way to keep children in school and other activities. This week there are 242 school vaccine clinics scheduled, and these sites offer pediatric doses for ages 5-11, as well as vaccines and boosters for eligible individuals 12 years of age and older.

Details: http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov and VaccinateLACounty.com or VacunateLosAngeles.com (Spanish) and 833-540-0473 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. seven days a week.

Metro Committee Advances Hahn’s Motion for Alternatives to Widening 710 Freeway

Reporters Desk
-
0
Metro Committee Advances Hahn’s Motion for Alternatives to Widening 710 Freeway

LOS ANGELES — A committee of the Metro board of directors May 18, voted to advance a motion authored by Supervisor Janice Hahn to end a decades-long effort to widen the 710 freeway. The long-planned widening would have destroyed homes and neighborhoods in Southeast Los Angeles, displacing families living along the freeway. With the committee’s unanimous approval, the motion moves on to consideration by the full Metro Board next week.

Early last year, federal and state agencies denied the approval of an environmental impact report for the widening, prompting Metro to explore alternatives to widening in consultation with local groups. With her motion, which is co-authored by Supervisor Hilda Solis, Supervisor Holly Mitchell, and Director Fernando Dutra, Supervisor Hahn proposes using the $750 million in local sales taxes already dedicated to the project to invest in more innovative solutions to traffic congestion, air pollution, street safety challenges and other problems communities along the 710 face.

Since the widening of the 710 freeway was first proposed two decades ago, the project has faced opposition from community groups along the corridor. The decision to move away from widening and Supervisor Hahn’s motion to direct funding to improvements instead was met with support from a wide range of stakeholders from environmental organizations to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

If passed by the full Metro board, the motion will do four things:

  1. Direct staff to come back to the board in June with new project vision and objectives, after final consultation with the 710 Task Force
  2. Call for the project to be renamed to shift focus from being just on the freeway to addressing the broader issues of air quality, goods movement, mobility and safety in the corridor cities
  3. Remove capacity enhancing freeway widening from the project altogether
  4. Direct staff to create an investment plan, with short- and mid- and long-term initiatives, with at least three initiatives to request funding in 2022, as informed by the Task Force.

The motion moves to the full Metro board of directors for a vote during their regular meeting on May 26.

Thousands Attend Beach Life Festival

Mark Friedman
-
0
Thousands Attend Beach Life Festival

The Beach Life Festival, which took place over three days, May 13-15 highlighted local and national music talents.

There were notable headliners like Weezer, the Smashing Pumpkins and the Steve Miller Band but also scores of others, especially up and coming new talent, at four different venues.

An exemplary performance by LA band Ozomatli, going strong after 27 years, got everyone jumping, shouting and dancing to their mix of cumbia, rock, jazz and hip-hop. Their playlist included Como Ves, Saturday Night and Cumbia de los Muertos. They ended by taking their instruments and jumping into the crowd and leading a conga line.

The Smashing Pumpkins played a set list that included more than a dozen songs like Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Drown, Today, Quiet, Ava Adore, Tonight, Tonight, Cherub Rock, 1979 and Zero.

Artistic talent was also on display at an outdoor gallery.

Vendors included local eateries, Heal the Bay, The Wyland Foundation (which has a mural on the AES Redondo Beach Power Plant) and a range of other commercial enterprises. Attendees were plied with new drink products, energy bars, games of chance and expensive food.

The festival offered expensive VIP packages that included private cabanas, lounges and eateries; those with a general admission ticket could readily hear all the performances happening concurrently.

Journalist Held Incommunicado by Russian Authorities in Crimea for 13 Days

Reporters Desk
-
0
Journalist Held Incommunicado by Russian Authorities in Crimea for 13 Days

https://rsf.org/en/journalist-held-incommunicado-russian-authorities-crimea-13-days

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the arbitrary detention of Irina Danilovich, a journalist who was abducted in Russian-annexed Crimea on 29 April and was held incommunicado by the Russian authorities for 13 days. She must be freed at once, RSF says.

Read in Russian / Читать на русском

Danilovich’s lawyer finally located her yesterday in a detention center in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol and, although still unable to see her, he learned that she is facing up to eight years in prison and a fine of 100,000 roubles (1,400 euros) on a charge of “illegal manufacture, transport or possession of explosives” under article 222-1 of the Russian penal code.

“After her 13 days incommunicado, with no news given to her family, we are relieved to know that Irina Danilovich is still alive but we fear she has been mistreated,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “We condemn her abduction and arbitrary detention in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Moscow, and we call on the Russian authorities to release her at once.”

On the day that Danilovich disappeared, her home was searched by hooded special unit members, according to Krym.Realii, an offshoot of the Prague-based US broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Her father was told at the time that she had been arrested for ten days, but he was given no further details. Her lawyer says she is being detained provisionally for at least two months.

Although her lawyer had filed a complaint about her disappearance with the Crimean prosecutor’s office, she has only been allowed access to a lawyer appointed by the authorities. The legal proceedings against her were officialised on 7 May without any member of her family being notified.

Danilovich’s father said she was probably abducted at a bus stop on the outskirts of Koktebel, a small town in eastern Crimea. He said he managed to view a service station video that showed a woman dressed like her being kidnapped by several men in civilian dress, who bundled her into a car. He told Krym.Realii that the police made no attempt to get the video from the service station, whose owner refused to give it to anyone other than the police.

A nurse by profession, Danilovich has been harassed ever since the height of the Covid pandemic because of her journalistic reporting on the Crimean health system’s problems, which she was posting on a public Facebook page. She also collaborated with Krym.Realii, the human rights news outlet Zmina.ua, the judicial violations outlet Crimean Process and the local website InZhir-media.

Vladislav Yesypenko, another journalist reporting for Krym.Realii in Crimea, was sentenced to six years in prison on a charge of “possession and transport of explosives” at the end of a sham trial on 16 February. He had no access to an independent lawyer, was tortured for two days after his arrest in March 2021, and made two forced confessions on a local TV channel.

Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index. Ukraine is ranked 106th.

City Attorney Mike Feuer Endorses Karen Bass

Reporters Desk
-
0
City Attorney Mike Feuer Endorses Karen Bass

LOS ANGELES – City Attorney Mike Feuer May 17, suspended his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles and endorsed Karen Bass. The two city leaders held a press conference at Encino Park earlier today to make the announcement.

“Exactly three weeks from today, this city will head to the ballot box to elect a battle-tested, mission-driven leader — someone who has proven in the face of violent crime, economic disaster and a pandemic, that she will always deliver for the people of Los Angeles.” said City Attorney Feuer. “Thirty-second ads don’t trump more than thirty years of results. Karen Bass is the only person in this race with the experience to bring our unhoused neighbors indoors, tackle our affordability crisis, and make our communities safer by getting guns off of our streets. The stakes of not getting this right are too high. I am proud to support Karen Bass to be the next Mayor of Los Angeles.”

Rep. Karen Bass has also received endorsements from the Los Angeles Times, labor and civil rights Leader Dolores Huerta, Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sierra Club and EMILY’s List. View the complete list of individuals and organizations who have endorsed Karen Bass for mayor here.

LA County Public Health and First 5 LA launch Help Me Grow LA

Reporters Desk
-
0
LA County Public Health and First 5 LA launch Help Me Grow LA

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and First 5 LA on May 17, launched Help Me Grow LA or HMG LA, to ensure every family that has developmental concerns about their child receives guidance and support. Help Me Grow will also help families navigate what can be a fragmented and challenging network of existing services, working with local programs to ensure that children are connected to services as early as possible — when it can help the most.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 1 in 6 children ages 3-17 have one or more developmental delays and disabilities. These children may not be connected early enough, or at all, to appropriate services and supports. These services include timely developmental screening; assessment and diagnosis of developmental delays and disabilities; and early intervention supports and services. A survey by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research showed that children of color have lower rates of access to both screening and early intervention services compared to white children. Furthermore, families in L.A. County are impacted by inequities that exist in access to early screenings, connections to intervention services and quality of services.

Families and providers can connect with HMG LA through a call center (833-903-3972) staffed by a team of trained resource liaisons who assist them with navigating the county’s complex system of care. The call center is available Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 3 p.m. HMG LA also has an online hub (HelpMeGrowLA.org) that offers information and resources about infant and young child developmental milestones, screenings, and community services. Parents, caregivers, early learning, health and early intervention providers can contact the call center or submit an online contact form on the website to be connected to a resource liaison.

In addition, HMG LA is working with local community partners, and health plans to make sure all children are screened for developmental concerns in a timely manner, according to a schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

HMG LA is advised by a Community & Family Engagement Council comprised of parents, caregivers, and community advocates.

Details: HelpMeGrowLA.org

After Two-Year Hiatus, soundpedro Bounces Back to Angels Gate

Greggory Moore
-
0
After Two-Year Hiatus, soundpedro Bounces Back to Angels Gate

In many ways, 2020 and 2021 will forever be defined by absence, by the lack of all that would have existed but for the intrusion of COVID-19.

After three highly successful years of transforming Angels Gate Cultural Center into a one-night-only indoor/outdoor gallery of multisensory sound-centric installations, soundpedro was derailed just as it became an annual tradition.

But fuck COVID — soundpedro is back!

In truth, it never fully left. Despite being unable to hold the onsite event during the last two years, curatorial group FLOOD pivoted toward the virtual.

“When COVID lockdowns hit, it was kinda like landing on Gilligan’s Island,” explained FLOOD’s Marco Schindelmann last year. “We had a choice: wait for rescue, or build huts.”

That hut-building resulted in dozens of sound artists reimagining what would have been (i.e., in a COVIDless world) their onsite installations as virtual experiences or virtual performance samples; and an extension of soundpedro programming from one night to “a season of experimental sound art events.” (The current season began on April 9 and lasts through November 27.)

But soundpedro2022 is subtitled “BounceBack,” as there’s no replacing the experience of moving in/around/through Angels Gate’s seven acres when it’s been transformed into a landscape of sonic-and-more stimulation.

“Our emergence from COVID captivity to an in-person happening will reunite a community of niche artists and aficionados longing to hear one another’s voices and artworks and to again exchange ideas face-to-face,” Schindelmann says. “Even the most hermetic among us are ready to step out of our caves into the fresh air.”

Noting that soundpedro became one of Angels Gate’s signature events in its three pre-COVID years, AGCC Executive Director Amy Eriksen is delighted to have it back.

“soundpedro is one of our premiere events and is held in high esteem by both the sound-art community and Angels Gate Cultural Center,” she says. “It is thrilling to have this great immersive experience bounce back after such a lengthy COVID hiatus, especially during our 40th anniversary year. There are so many ways to engage in the arts at AGCC. Our hope is reinvigorated as we celebrate the return of a host of diverse innovative events and welcome the community back to campus. […] soundpedro helps us to support artists that don’t always get seen, or heard, locally. The chance to walk around this great campus and fall upon a new sound-art installation around every corner draws crowds to the top of the hill each year.”

To minimize COVID concerns, this year only one of Angels Gate’s interior spaces will be activated. Nonetheless, soundpedro2022 will feature more installations than ever before, roughly three dozen “sculptures, environments, installations, timed and ongoing performances, interactions, and presentations [that] explore or incorporate acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, audio technologies, listening actions, performance actions, spatialization, conceptualization, timbralization, hearing anatomies, found sound, environmental sound, AI, etc.”

As an example, M A Harms’s “This Body is a Play Thing” is an interactive installation “about abuse and harm done to those around us [that] point[s] out significant flaws within the music and art world via abuse, sexism, fatphobia, and transphobia” by employing written prompts questioning how we use the word “play” ringing a circle of instruments made from mannequins. “It will then be up to the participants to rely on their remembered interpretations of the prompts as they navigate into the inner circle to explore the mannequins and the sounds that they are capable of producing.”

But written descriptions only hint at the experiences that will be on offer at San Pedro’s apex — and because of the interactive, immersive nature of the night, soundpedro attendees will co-create their own completely unique experience.

“soundpedro is a chance for visitors to broaden the auditory perception of sound as a meaningful phenomenon towards the physical reception of sound as experiential,” says Schindelmann. “Each visitor to the onsite soundpedro will decide what that means to them. Some will wait until dark and go on a nocturnal sound safari, some will get stoned and stagger or dance to sonic staccatos and legatos animating the air around them, and others will simply close their eyes and listen through the skins on their bodies — including, of course, their ears.”

What: soundpedro, an evening of ear-oriented multisensory presentations; soundpedro.org
When: Saturday, June 4, 7pm to 10pm
Where: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro 90731; angelsgateart.org
Admission: free! (includes parking)

Museum Of Latin American Art to Celebrate International Museum Day With Free Admission, May 18

Reporters Desk
-
0
Museum Of Latin American Art to Celebrate International Museum Day With Free Admission, May 18

The American Alliance of Museums Also Re-Accredited MOLAA For Another 10 Years.

LONG BEACH — The Museum of Latin American Art or MOLAA, the country’s pioneer in exhibiting Latin American art, will celebrate International Museum Day May 18, and the museum’s recent re-accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums with free admittance for the public during its regular operating hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

International Museum Day is an international event spearheaded by the International Council of Museums or ICOM, and this year’s theme is The Power of Museums. Since 1977, ICOM has organized International Museum Day, which represents a unique moment for the international museum community. According to ICOM, the objective of International Museum Day or IMD is to raise awareness that “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”

More and more museums participate in International Museum Day all around the world. Last year, more than 37,000 museums participated in the event in about 158 countries and territories. More information on this special day is here: https://icom.museum/en/our-actions/events/international-museum-day/.

MOLAA was also recently awarded the highest honor a museum can receive—re-accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums or AMA, which covers 10 years. Developed and sustained by museum professionals for nearly 45 years, AAM’s museum accreditation program is the field’s primary vehicle for quality assurance, self-regulation, and public accountability. More on this here: https://www.aam-us.org/2022/03/15/aam-announces-latest-accreditation-awards-12-museums-receive-this-high-honor/

AAM accreditation brings national recognition to a museum for its commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards, and continued institutional improvement. It also strengthens the museum profession by promoting practices that enable leaders to make informed decisions, allocate resources wisely and remain financially and ethically accountable to provide the best possible service to the public.

On this day, MOLAA will also launch its online crowdfunding campaign (The Power of Giving) hosted through GiveButter with a target goal of $50,000 (https://givebutter.com/). This campaign aims to sustain the popular “MOLAA Free Sundays” program. Pre pandemic, attendees for MOLAA Sundays averaged 400 to 450; when MOLAA has regular programming, including festivals during MOLAA Free Sundays, attendees can fluctuate between 4,000 – 6,000 people.

LA Abortion Rights Activist Take to the Streets

Mark Friedman
-
0
LA Abortion Rights Activist Take to the Streets

More than 10,000 supporters of abortion rights for women rallied here as part of national actions May 14. Other California protests took place in San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Long Beach, Pasadena and a host of smaller cities.

La Opinion reported protests in 430 cities. These were the largest demonstrations since the nationwide explosion of actions after the killing of George Floyd. The May 14 actions follows the Senate defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act. The Washington, DC protest was 20,000 according to US News and World Report.

Sponsored by Planned Parenthood and Women’s March, and endorsed by local groups, the overwhelmingly young and heavily Latinx crowd was loud and vocal. Hundreds of homemade signs said “Get your hands off my uterus. We shall not go back to illegal, unsafe abortions. My body, my choice. Not the church, not the state women will control our fate. Get your rosaries off my ovaries.” Young women carried coat hangers which said “never again” referring to their use in back-alley abortions before Roe V. Wade.

Hundreds of participants were veterans of the 1973 battle that led to the Supreme Court decision of Roe V. Wade that opened the way for legal abortions. In conversations they pointed to the onslaught of efforts to overturn legal abortions by both Democratic and Republican parties, but adding that they “will not give up the fight as we did 50 years ago.”

The rally featured a parade of Democratic politicians including Mayor Garcetti and Mayoral candidate Karen Bass and others who told the crowd that if they wanted action “Vote blue, no matter who they are.” There were no other initiatives proposed. There were no union speakers. Yet one called attention the fact that President Biden voted for the Hyde-Amendment which cut federal funds from use for abortion services.

Celebrity women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred told the crowd about her own “back-alley abortion” as a young woman when she became pregnant from a rape at gunpoint before Roe. “I almost died,” she recounted. “I was left in a bathtub in a pool of my own blood, hemorrhaging.”

“We take to the streets because women will be in danger if we are prohibited from having legal abortions, and we will not remain silent,” the founder of the Women’s March Foundation, Emiliana Guereca, told the LA crowd.

Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee members, who had just returned from Cuba’s May Day march and international solidarity conference, staffed a table with a giant banner reading, “End the Blockade of Cuba.” A thousand flyers were distributed calling for an end to the blockade and sanctions and building a May 21 report back meeting (write LA.US.handsoffcuba@gmail.com for exact information). Flyers documenting the gains of women under the Cuban revolution (where abortion has been free and legal for 60 years) were also distributed at multiple cities across the country by anti-blockade activists.

Diana Cervantes, who staffed the table, commented afterwards that “There were no proposals to go forward, except to vote which is not a strategy to protect women’s rights. It is frustrating as a young Latina to keep hearing these politicians’ promises and yet they do nothing to improve women’s lives. Cuba was such a difference.”

Fire Doused In Peck Park Area

Reporters Desk
-
0
Fire Doused In Peck Park Area

The Los Angeles Fire Department responded to multiple calls of a brush fire in the area of Peck Park around 6 p.m. May 13.

Upon arrival firefighters found about an acre of brush burning in rugged terrain.

Due to the high winds the fire quickly began to spread, pushing the incident to become a greater alarm fire requiring several additional resources throughout the city and county of Los Angeles to respond.

After about an hour and forty-five minute assault from the air and ground with about eighty firefighters on-scene, firefighters were able to get the upper hand.

No injuries or significant damages were reported.

Resources remained at the scene overnight battling hotspots. Firefighters returned May 14, after a small pile of brush rekindled from the previous day’s fire, that incident was handled quickly with no further incident.

A total of ten acres were reportedly burned in the fire.

The cause remains under investigation.

1...390391392...942Page 391 of 942

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

ABOUT US

Real people. Real news. Random Lengths is the Los Angeles harbor area's remaining independently owned progressive news magazine. We cover news in Carson, Wilmington, Long Beach, Lomita, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro.

Contact us: letters@randomlengthsnews.com

FOLLOW US

© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv