Category: 1-HeadlineNews

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict keeps a cease-fire, its proxy wars continue to rage worldwide. One of the latest battlefronts has been in California classrooms. This past March, the California Department of Education approved an ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 students that schools can adopt voluntarily. It seeks to teach students a more diverse take on history. Not only does the move influence the next generation of students, but this could go on to affect school districts across the country. But it didn't come easy. One of the key points of contention? What California students should learn about the fraught history between Israel and Palestine. Our guests are Max Samarov, executive director of research and strategy for Stand With Us, and Samia Shoman, Palestine Teaching Project member and former advisory board member for California's ethnic studies curriculum program.

More reading:

California approves ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 schools after years of debate

Cease-fire holds during first day as Palestinians, Israelis take stock

Opinion: Is California’s draft ethnic studies curriculum anti-Semitic?

Peter Daszak is president of the EcoHealth Alliance, where he leads a team of researchers working to identify emerging diseases around the world, the so-called zoonotic viruses that leap from animals to humans. This year, he went to China with the World Health Organization to track the origins of COVID-19. Daszak says cooperation with China — which theorizes that the coronavirus originated in the wet markets of Wuhan — is important to understanding and preventing future outbreaks. But some vocal skeptics — politicians, media pundits and a few scientists — don't believe the virus jumped from animals to humans. They think Chinese scientists let the virus loose somehow. L.A. Times staff writer James Rainey takes over the mic to explain why it’s a theory that just won’t go away.

More reading:
Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses
Why China’s wildlife ban is not enough to stop another virus outbreak
Commentary: No, China’s fresh food markets did not cause coronavirus

This last year, we've seen multiple rallies in Los Angeles — organized by Black Lives Matter, against the clearing of a homeless encampment in Echo Park, in celebration of the Dodgers' World Series win. Each one of these events was for a different cause but they ended in the same way: with the Los Angeles Police Department coming in, declaring an illegal gathering and clearing the crowds with tactics that many activists have deemed heavy-handed and violent. Frequently the police also fired hard foam projectiles. In some cases, the protesters and reporters covering these events were arrested and even shot with these projectiles, with police alleging various offenses. The police contend that the people assembled at these rallies failed to follow orders. Today, we talk to freelance journalist Lexis-Olivier Ray about what it's been like to cover these protests and to L.A. Times reporter Kevin Rector about a federal injunction that would temporarily restrict the LAPD's use of less-lethal weapons.

More reading:
‘The Scariest Days of My Life:’ As a Black Journalist, Covering Civil Rights Protests Has Been Harrowing
Judge grants preliminary injunction limiting LAPD projectile weapons at protests
Photojournalists sue LAPD, L.A. County sheriff over alleged abuses at protests

Together, Brazil and India now have half the COVID-19 cases in the world. We speak to L.A. Times foreign correspondents David Pierson and Kate Linthicum about what the plight of these global powerhouses suggests about the spread of coronavirus around the world.

A junk snack may not seem like a big deal, especially in this current world. But the story of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — a gnarled, messy, crunchy, bright-red corn puff that debuted in the early 1990s — and its creation has long been told as an inspirational fable from classrooms to boardrooms because of one man: Richard Montañez. His tale was irresistible: he was a former janitor at a Frito-Lay plant who became a high-ranking executive. That is all true. But he credited his rise to his creation of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Now, an L.A. Times investigation has cast doubts on those claims, and the internet is, well, aflame. We get some insight into the matter from Times business reporter Sam Dean and our very own senior podcast producer Denise Guerra.

Just five months into the year, the U.S. is on track to break a troubling record. Last year, 44 transgender people were killed in the U.S. and its territories. So far this year, the count is close to two dozen, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Those are just the cases that we know of. More than half the victims were Black trans women, and the region with the highest rate is Puerto Rico. Today, we’ll speak with Marc Ramirez about the rise in transgender violence in Puerto Rico and across the U.S. He’s a USA Today national correspondent who covers identity and inclusion issues. We’ll also speak to Maria José, a trans woman who heads a safe space in Puerto Rico for LGBTQ folks.

Four decades ago, Barry Rosen was one of 52 Americans held hostage for 444 brutal days in Iran. After their release in 1981, Rosen and the other hostages received a rare gift from Major League Baseball: a "golden ticket." Signed by then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn under the words “In Gratitude And Appreciation,” the lifetime pass entitled each hostage and a guest admittance to any regular-season game. But when Rosen tried to attend a game this year, the New York Mets said they were no longer honoring his pass. What happened next showed just how much baseball continues to mean to Rosen.

The California dream comes with more than its fair share of disasters — earthquakes, wildfires, fire tornadoes, eroding coasts, and so much more. The L.A. Times has a disasters unit to cover them, and our reporters are some of the best in the business. So we invited three of them — Rong-Gong Lin II, Rosanna Xia, and Alex Wigglesworth — to talk about how to prepare for the unpreparable. Think of this as a regular monthly series about calamities, with our Masters of Disasters as your guides.

A populist becomes his country’s president with a historic win. He’s a brash outsider, a relative newcomer, and he promises to drain the swamp. No more politics as usual, he says, because his country is under attack — and he’s here to save it. But this new president begins to upend democracy. Ousts his opponents to consolidate power. Declares he wants to change the country’s constitution to suit him. And trolls his haters on social media all along the way. These are the hallmarks of Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador. If Bukele succeeds in his power grabs, it has big implications for the United States. Today, L.A. Times Latin America correspondent Kate Linthicum and El Faro reporter Jimmy Alvarado take us into the current crisis in El Salvador and explain how we got here. Author Roberto Lovato also talks about how Bukele’s actions affect the Salvadoran diaspora in the United States.

California's high-school athletes were bona fide ballers during the pandemic. They trained alone or over Zoom during lockdowns and are now facing off against each other on the field. How these student athletes coped with COVID-19 this past year offers lessons in resilience and ingenuity that all of us can learn. Today, we learn how the football team at Loyola High School in Los Angeles came together to help teammate Josh Morales and his family survive COVID-19. Then, we’ll chat with L.A. Times’ longtime high school sports columnist Eric Sondheimer about the bigger challenges ahead for young athletes.