California

An Inglewood man is accused of traveling to Bakersfield to meet a 13-year-old girl who he allegedly raped, killed and then set on fire, court documents show. Armando Cruz, 24, pleaded not guilty to charges including murder, kidnapping, rape by force and aggravated assault Wednesday in connection with the death of Patricia Alatorre. Patricia Alatorr...

Stanford University on Wednesday announced it will discontinue 11 varsity sports programs at the end of the 2020-21 academic year, according to an open letter from university officials.

The use of legal and illegal fireworks around Southern California brought the worst air quality to the region in a decade, the South Coast Air Quality Management District reported Wednesday. Concentrations of PM2.5 were 70% higher than previous years between 7 p.m. on the Fourth of July and 7 a.m. the next day in the South Coast Air Basin, which&#8...

Hawthorne-based SpaceX will try again Wednesday to launch 57 internet satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida as it continues its quest to build a worldwide broadband network. The launch of the Starlink satellites, along with a pair of Earth-observation satellites operated by a separate company, was originally planned for June 26, but ...

Fourteen firefighters at the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Station 80, near LAX, were home Tuesday after testing positive for COVID-19. The firefighters tested positive either Monday or Tuesday, according to LAFD’s Margaret Stewart. The station, which is part of the fire department’s West Bureau, has since been disinfected and the...

The Laugh Factory sent a serious message Tuesday by unveiling a 148-foot-long mural as a tribute to Black Lives Matter. “This mural is an important avenue for Black artists to present societal challenges in a public and impactful way through the lens of their experiences,” club owner Jamie Masada said about the paint...

Inmates at San Quentin say the deadly COVID-19 outbreak that has killed at least six inmates is getting worse by the day. Now they say there’s no hot meals and the men have to rely on crackers, cheese and slices of bread.

An emergency room nurse in Riverside is struggling with COVID-19, and his wife is pleading with survivors of the virus to donate plasma because the antibodies could help save her husband’s life, along with the lives of others. “He comes home, locks himself in the garage while he takes all of his gear off,” Maria Fernandez, whose h...

The University of California system has named Dr. Michael Drake to replace Janet Napolitano and become its first Black president. A physician, Drake was unanimously approved Tuesday by the Board of Regents. He enters the president’s office as campus budgets are being slashed and campus life upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Drake was chancellor ...

A new COVID-19 rapid test promises results before you leave the clinic, when you still may be contagious, not days later. Law school graduate Whitney Williams was worried she might have been exposed to coronavirus by someone she encountered during the holiday. She went to Culver City Urgent Care, one of the locations offering the faster test. &#822...

The U.S. Marine Corps says a Marine suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound ending a two-hour standoff with military police on a California Marine Corps base

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday was set to meet with organizers of an advertiser boycott that has been growing by the day over the company’s inaction against hate speech across its network of nearly 1.7 billion users.