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| USC and L.A. Metro announce winners of the inaugural Shade Zone Design Competition - USC Today | | Surreal floral blooms, sails and delicate lattice work are among the winning student designs for the first annual Shade Zones Design Competition, a new annual program of ShadeLA that challenges teams to envision innovative shade and cooling solutions for Los Angeles. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Supervisors Have Questions About County Contract Oversight | | Four of the county’s five elected supervisors say they have tough questions and requests for the county’s top bureaucrat since learning that the chief operating officer of a former county contractor is facing criminal misappropriation charges. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Lawsuit alleges LA County's $2M settlement payout to CEO was an illegal gift | LAist | | A new lawsuit alleges L.A. County’s $2 million settlement payout to its CEO was an illegal gift of public funds and asks a judge to order it paid back. The August payout to Fesia Davenport was first revealed by LAist, months after it was approved and paid in secret by the county.
The allegation: The lawsuit, filed by attorney Alexander K. Robinson on behalf of county resident Ana Cristina Lee Escudero, alleges the payout is illegal because Davenport did not have a valid legal dispute with the county. It also claims county supervisors illegally used the litigation exemption to discuss and approve the settlement in closed session, despite a letter from Davenport informing supervisors she had “no intentions of litigating this matter.” [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Newport Beach Restricts Beach Shade Sizes for Safety | | Visitors to Newport Beach might have to pack up their tents moving forward after city leaders adopted new rules cutting the maximum shade sizes almost in half. [Article] | | by , Voice of OC. 2026-02-25 | | | | L.A. County sued over alleged child abuse that killed 1-year-old - Los Angeles Times | | The mother of Tilly Servin, a toddler who prosecutors believe was tortured to death in Long Beach last year, is suing Los Angeles County’s child protection agency for leaving her daughter in the custody of the child’s father, who was previously sentenced to four years in prison for child abuse.
In a lawsuit filed Feb. 19, Alexis Servin claims that the county Department of Children and Family Services should have known the toddler’s father, Alfredo Muñoz Jr., and stepmother, Kelly Muñoz, presented an “extreme and foreseeable danger.” The couple were charged with felony abuse of two children in November 2021.
Alfredo, 41, and Kelly Muñoz, 34, were arrested on suspicion of murder and torture in November after Tilly was rushed to the hospital with a severe brain injury. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of felony child abuse.
Alfredo Muñoz initially said he tripped over a baby gate while holding Tilly, according to an autopsy report from the L.A. County medical examiner.
Tilly died Nov. 10. The autopsy found a “constellation of injuries that cannot be explained by a single low-level or short-distance accidental fall,” including blunt head trauma and a severe spinal cord injury.
At 14 months old, Tilly had “repeated inflicted trauma,” the medical examiner found.
Tilly was the latest in a long line of children who have died while under the supervision of the Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | California proposes new regulations for Easter lily farms to curb pollution | Jefferson Public Radio | | A region in Del Norte County bills itself as the Easter lily capital of the world. California regulators have now published a draft order to monitor pollution from those flower farms.
California’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board has released a draft order to control pesticide pollution from Easter lily farms in Del Norte County. Environmental groups have raised concerns for decades about the potentially harmful effect of agricultural chemicals on wildlife and residents. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Brightline West field work to impact I-15 traffic for high-speed rail | | Brightline West will perform field investigation work on the Southern California side of the Las Vegas, Nevada to Rancho Cucamonga high-speed rail project.
Work will be performed this week along the Interstate 15 right-of-way for the 218-mile project that also includes stops in Apple Valley and Hesperia. [Article] | | by , Victorville Daily Press. 2026-02-25 | | | | More infill pitched for 2239 S. Amherst Ave. in Sawtelle | Urbanize LA | | Developer Terra Capital is cooking up more plans for housing near the E Line's Expo/Bundy Station in Sawtelle, according to a new application to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Proposed ballot measure that would heavily tax thousands of second homes in San Diego clears critical hurdle – San Diego Union-Tribune | | A proposed ballot measure that would impose a hefty tax of as much as $15,000 a year on thousands of empty second homes in San Diego cleared a major hurdle Wednesday when elected leaders agreed to advance it to the full City Council next week.
The council’s Rules Committee voted unanimously to move the proposal forward so council members can decide whether it should be placed on the June ballot. The deadline for doing so is next Friday. The council is expected to weigh the ballot measure on Tuesday.
The proposal, which initially calls for an annual $8,000 tax on more than 5,000 largely unoccupied homes — plus a $4,000 surcharge for corporate-owned dwellings — is being pushed by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who just a month ago failed to win support from his colleagues for a far broader measure that would have also taxed whole-home short-term rentals. [Article] | | by , San Diego Union-Tribune. 2026-02-25 | | | | LA’s program that diverts mental health crisis calls away from police becomes permanent | LAist | | The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.
Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | In wildfire country, EVs aren’t a grid problem — they’re a power solution - Los Angeles Times | | When wildfire risk spikes in Southern California, the lights often go out before the flames arrive. Public safety power shutoffs have become a grim ritual: Utilities cut electricity to prevent sparking fires, leaving families without refrigeration, medical devices, internet access or a way to cool their homes during heat waves. For many in Los Angeles, resilience now means planning for outages — not assuming the grid will always be there.
That reality makes one thing clear: California doesn’t just need more electricity. It needs smarter, more flexible power. And electric vehicles, often portrayed as a strain on the grid, are actually one of the most powerful tools we have to strengthen it.
The California Energy Commission’s latest forecast projects a major rise in electricity demand through 2045, with EVs expected to be the largest driver of that growth — even larger than data centers. EVs account for roughly one-third of projected demand growth, a fact critics often cite as a warning sign.
But that projection should be seen for what it is: an opportunity. EVs are a solution that California must intentionally harness for people and for the grid.
Unlike data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity around the clock, EV charging is flexible. Most EV charging happens at home overnight or during other low-demand periods, when electricity is cheapest and renewable generation is high. Managed charging systems enable this by allowing EV owners to take advantage of discounted utility rates. Utilities already plan for load growth, and EVs are no exception.
That matters because instead of paying money at the pump, EV charging shifts investments to the grid — investments that help fund upgrades and spread fixed costs across more kilowatt-hours, putting downward pressure on electricity rates for everyone, not just EV drivers. At a time when Californians are struggling with rising utility bills, that affordability benefit should not be ignored.
And unlike other growing electricity uses, every kilowatt-hour used to charge an EV replaces gasoline combustion — cutting smog and cancer-causing pollution in regions like Los Angeles that already bear some of the nation’s worst air quality.
What’s often missing from the grid debate is what happens when the power goes out. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | Contributor: RFK Jr.'s focus on viral nonsense is putting children's lives at risk - Los Angeles Times | | This week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the individual entrusted with safeguarding the health of 330 million Americans — posted a 90-second video of himself and Kid Rock doing shirtless calisthenics in blue jeans, riding a stationary bike in the sauna, doing a slow-motion cold plunge and toasting glasses of whole milk in the pool. The internet responded with memes and mockery. I sat in my office at UCLA, where I’ve practiced pulmonary and critical care medicine for more than 40 years, and I did not laugh.
I felt the anger, real anger.
Because here’s what was not in that video: the more than 2,200 Americans who contracted measles in 2025, in a country that effectively eliminated the disease in 2000. The three who died. The more than 900 confirmed cases already reported in the U.S. in 2026. The children in South Carolina — totaling nearly 1,000 cases from a single outbreak — whose parents were persuaded by rhetoric this secretary spent decades amplifying about how the MMR vaccine was more dangerous than the disease. It is not. Decades of rigorous science have shown it is not.
When the absurd reaches a certain pitch, mockery is a natural defense. But I worry we’ve become so numbed by spectacle, so conditioned to treat governance as entertainment, that we’ve lost our capacity for the emotion this moment demands: genuine outrage. The real thing. The kind that mobilizes physicians, parents and legislators to say, “This is not acceptable.”
Let me be precise about what Kennedy has done in his first year as HHS Secretary, because the shirtless antics are designed to distract you from it. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | County Contractor Case Getting More Troubling | Voice of San Diego | | Prosecutors now believe Amy Knox, ex-chief operating officer of the nonprofit Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego, misappropriated at least $210,000 in public funds for everything from plastic surgeries to family vacations – more than they originally alleged. The DA’s Office is also trying to account for another $600,000 that at least initially landed in Knox’s bank accounts. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | | | Advocates remember two immigrants who died in ICE custody in Imperial County | KPBS Public Media | | The papers fluttered in Sergio Ojeda’s hand as he read from a letter written by the dead man’s daughter.
“We miss you so much, my old man,” Ojeda said aloud – first in Spanish, then in English. “Thank you, Dad, for never leaving us alone. Thank you for being such a loving grandfather.” [Article] | | by , KPBS - San Diego. 2026-02-25 | | | | Contributor: If social platforms are harmful, don't just ban kids. Regulate the harms - Los Angeles Times | | As major social media companies head to court this year to defend themselves against claims that their products have harmed young people’s mental health, policymakers are searching for decisive responses. The lawsuits, which focus on whether platforms knowingly designed addictive, psychologically harmful systems for youth, are bringing long-avoided questions into public view: Who bears responsibility for online harm? And what, exactly, should be done about it?
Across the globe, one policy response has already gained momentum. Facing tremendous public pressure, legislators are increasingly turning to bans: prohibiting or sharply restricting adolescents’ access to social media altogether. These proposals are politically attractive. They are simple, signal action and promise protection without requiring the nuanced, slow and logistically complex work of regulating trillion-dollar companies.
But blunt-force bans are the wrong response to this moment. As an adolescent psychologist and researcher who studies scalable digital mental health interventions for youth, I believe bans without systemic oversight are worse than ineffective; they are a form of policy abdication. They kick the can down the road, shift responsibility away from technology companies and give up on the far harder task of making online spaces genuinely safer for the millions of young people who already use them every day and will likely continue to do so — with an attempted ban or without (given known challenges in ban enforcement).
The ongoing trials are not contesting whether social media exists. They are investigating how the platforms have been allowed to operate. Plaintiffs are arguing that companies knowingly engineered design features that maximize engagement by exploiting young people’s psychological vulnerabilities, while downplaying or obscuring the risks. That distinction is important: If the platforms’ safety risks lie in their design, then banning youth access does nothing to fix the underlying problem.
Decades of research complicate the popular narrative that social media, in and of itself, is the primary driver of the youth mental health crisis. Across large studies, the association between overall time spent on social media and mental health outcomes is often small or inconsistent. What matters far more than screen time alone is what young people encounter online, how content is delivered, and whether platforms are structured to support or undermine users’ well-being. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | As robots hit the streets, they’re creating a hot new job | | Charlie Snodgrass used to be a gig driver, delivering burritos and pad Thai around Los Angeles. Today, he handles the robots that do his old job.
He is one of the first of a new class of workers — a robot wrangler — paid to care for and train AI-powered bots as they learn to work in the real world.
There’s a job that AI isn’t eliminating: Robot wrangler
At 5:45 a.m., in a small warehouse in West Hollywood, Snodgrass tends to rows of identical delivery robots standing wheel to wheel, 150 in all. The quiet morning was punctuated by the high-pitched swoosh sounds of the robots powering up and the occasional beep.
Each robot is topped with a colored disc cone — a visual triage system for identifying the status of each machine. A green cone indicates the robot is checked, its sensors are clean and its battery is charged. An orange cone means it’s waiting for tech support.
Snodgrass is in a rush. Before 7:15 am, he has to load 27 healthy robots from Serve Robotics into a U-Haul truck and deliver them around L.A.
Snodgrass walks up to a robot named Singta and begins his morning check: Battery charged to at least 70%? Yes. External damage? None. Food bin clean and locked? Check. Software updates installed? All good.
He swaps the pink cone on top — indicating it was yet to be checked — with a green one and unplugs the charger.
“Singta is on duty,” the robot display reads.
Snodgrass is one of the behind-the-scenes humans who flies into action when the bots are in trouble. The cute little bots need cleaning, charging, maintenance and sometimes rescue. They regularly get stuck and knocked over.
Last month, in downtown L.A., wranglers responded when a Waymo collided with a delivery robot. Early this month, another bot was recorded struggling through flooded roads after heavy rains.
“She’s doing her best!” said the person recording the video. “She is doing her best, you guys.”
As autonomous delivery robots proliferate, more wranglers — Serve Robotics calls them field operations executives — will be needed. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | Costa Mesa commission approves permit for sober living home despite neighbors' concerns - Los Angeles Times | | The Costa Mesa Planning Commission found no grounds to deny a special use permit at their meeting Monday for a sober living home at the site of a former drug treatment facility located in a residential neighborhood.
People living near the property at 1601 Baker St. wrote letters and showed up Monday to raise alarm over possible overcrowding and safety. Some claimed that it was already operating as an unlicensed sober living home, and that people staying there had broken into neighborhood properties. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | Autism training for law enforcement aims to prevent tragic outcomes - Los Angeles Times | | Kate Movius moved among a roomful of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, passing out a pop trivia quiz and paper prism glasses.
She told them to put on the vision-distorting glasses, and to write with their nondominant hand. As they filled out the tests, Movius moved about the City of Industry classroom pounding abruptly on tables. Then came the cowbell. An aide flashed the overhead lights on and off at random. The goal was to help the deputies understand the feeling of sensory overwhelm, which many autistic people experience when incoming stimulation exceeds their capacity to process.
“So what can you do to assist somebody, or de-escalate somebody, or get information from someone who suffers from a sensory disorder?” Movius asked the rattled crowd afterward. “We can minimize sensory input. ... That might be the difference between them being able to stay calm and them taking off.”
Movius, founder of the consultancy Autism Interaction Solutions, is one of a growing number of people around the U.S. working to teach law enforcement agencies to recognize autistic behaviors and ensure that encounters between neurodevelopmentally disabled people and law enforcement end safely.
She and City of Industry Mayor Cory Moss later passed out bags filled with tools donated by the city to aid interactions: a pair of noise-damping headphones to decrease auditory input, a whiteboard, a set of communication cards with words and images to point to, fidget toys to calm and distract.
“The thing about autistic behavior when it comes to law enforcement is a lot of it may look suspicious, and a lot of it may feel very disrespectful,” said Movius, who is also the parent of an autistic 25-year-old man. Responding officers, she said, “are not coming in thinking, ‘Could this be a developmentally disabled person?’ I would love for them to have that in the back of their minds.” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | Data center construction fell for the first time in years as permits and power constrain growth - Los Angeles Times | | Construction of new data centers in the U.S. fell for the first time since 2020 despite soaring demand for artificial-intelligence computing capacity, as developers face delays in permitting, zoning and power procurement.
Capacity under construction fell to 5.99 gigawatts at the end of 2025 from 6.35 gigawatts at the end of 2024, real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc. reported Wednesday.
The construction delays and faster long-distance networks are driving development to move outside traditional data center sites such as northern Virginia, Gordon Dolven, CBRE’s data center research director, said in the report. The overall vacancy rate in primary markets fell to a record low 1.4% at year-end.
“Combined with growing interest in markets that offer available land and power, this is spurring investment beyond traditional hubs and reshaping the North American data center market,” Dolven said.
Local pushback against massive AI data center projects has intensified in recent months, with the tide turning from welcoming the economic benefits of major construction projects to scrutinizing their resource-intensiveness.
Last week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker sought to temporarily halt incentives for data centers in a bid to contain soaring power costs. An Oracle Corp. site in New Mexico that scored a package of tax incentives and support from government-backed bonds has prompted protests largely focused on its potential environmental impact. And tensions have flared in northern Virginia, where some residents are now looking to flee what’s become one of the largest data center hubs in the world.
AI demand is forecast to require more than $3 trillion in data center investment, including related power supplies, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley and Moody’s Ratings. New tenants absorbed a record 2.5 million gigawatts in 2025, up 38% from a year earlier, CBRE said. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-02-25 | | | | State law puts more homes near train stops. If LA wants to delay that, it must pick areas to upzone | LAist | | After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone. [Article] | | by , . 2026-02-25 | | |
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