Aretha Franklin, the preacher’s daughter who became the “Queen of Soul” and forged the template of the larger-than-life pop diva with her exuberant, gospel-rooted singing, has died. She was 76. Franklin died Thursday of advanced pancreatic cancer, according to her publicist Gwendolyn Quinn. In…
Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner met Wednesday with the head of the teachers union and outlined a possible contract deal. But it’s not clear that the terms would be acceptable to the union, which has scheduled a strike authorization vote. The meeting is described in a follow-up letter,…
Garry “Twin” Dorton tried to keep young people in South Los Angeles from making the same mistakes he did when he was an active gang member. He helped them get jobs and stay out of trouble. After a killing, he talked them out of retaliating. He led his neighborhood in a softball league that aimed…
SANTA ANA — A 50-year-old man with a history of arrests for flashing and drug offenses, who pleaded guilty in July to indecent exposure and possessing drug paraphernalia in Fullerton, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison. Frank Xavier Vega pleaded guilty July 13 to a felony count of indecent exposure, a misdemeanor count…
In 2013, Veronica Pratt, a transgender woman, was arrested and booked into the Alternative Lifestyle Tank at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. There, along with other gay, bisexual and transgender inmates, Pratt was kept in her cell for about 23 hours a day. She was not allowed…
Homebuying in what we’ll call the “Beach Blvd. Corridor” — in and around Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove and Westminster — fell 2 percent this spring vs. a year ago. That’s what we found when we looked at Orange County house hunting patterns at the neighborhood level in 2018’s second quarter vs. the April-to-June…
When the Trump administration proposed opening California waters to drilling on an unprecedented scale, state leaders said they would do whatever it takes to keep new oil operations at bay. But promises only go so far. So some in Sacramento now are trying to lock those pledges into law — safeguarding…
FBI agents earlier this year investigated a series of cyberattacks executed against former Democratic House candidate Hans Keirstead during his unsuccessful bid for Orange County’s coastal 48th Congressional District, according to a report released Wednesday by Rolling Stone. The attacks began in Aug. 2017, when Keirstead – a Laguna Beach stem-cell scientist who was vying…
Following the recent death of dog that was sexually abused after being adopted from an Orange County shelter, county supervisors want to create a coordinated regional system to prevent known animal abusers from adopting pets. Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Andrew Do directed county staff at the board’s Tuesday meeting to pursue the information-sharing partnerships with…
There was no set deadline, but the perception of one seemed real enough. It was a Saturday in early August and Jose Lopez’s downtown Los Angeles apartment looked like a command center of sorts. With a printer set up on the center of the kitchen table, a dozen young immigrants sat with computers in the…
