The Wright Taylor Building, as it's formally known, is on the market for $4.5 million, according to WDRB, which reports the building houses the Mercury Ballroom. The listing was also reported by the Courier-Journal. The two-story masonry and terracotta building was originally constructed in 1928, according to Weyland Ventures, the development firm that has owned and operated the property.

A Tudor-Gothic Landmark With Deep Roots

Weyland Ventures renovated the building and reopened it in 2014 as the Mercury Ballroom, transforming what had been a historic structure into one of downtown's go-to concert venues. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, per the same developer, and it remains a rare local example of Tudor-Gothic architecture. That historic designation stays intact even as the property changes hands, with the building continuing to hold National Register status while operating as a working music venue, the station's report notes.

Weyland Ventures said it is selling the building to generate money that can be reinvested in other downtown projects, including redevelopment of the Henry Clay building, per the same account. The move signals a broader strategy of recycling capital from one downtown holding into the next, rather than any indication of trouble for the Mercury Ballroom's operations.

Live Nation's Lease Outlasts the Sale

Whoever buys the Wright-Taylor Building won't be taking over an empty shell. The venue is fully leased by Live Nation through 2036, meaning concertgoers can expect the Mercury Ballroom to keep its name and booking pipeline regardless of who owns the real estate underneath it. Over the years the venue has hosted artists including Meghan Trainor, Andy Grammer, SZA, Mac Miller, and Louisville's own Jack Harlow and Bryson Tiller, according to WDRB.

Figures describing the venue's size and capacity vary depending on the source. Mercury Ballroom's own visit page states the space can accommodate from 25 to 750 guests, while other online references list a capacity of 900 people. Square footage is similarly inconsistent: one report describes the building as having approximately 14,000 square feet of space, while a Cvent listing for the venue cites 11,490 square feet of total meeting space. Neither source clarifies whether the differing numbers reflect different measurement standards.

Part of a Broader Regional Pattern

Part of a Broader Regional Pattern The Mercury Ballroom listing follows a string of similar moves among Louisville-area music venues. Headliners Music Hall's owners listed the 6,736-square-foot complex on Lexington Road for $995,000, or roughly $147.71 per square foot, in June 2020, as reported by WLKY. In February 2025, the owners were exploring a sale, according to wdrb.com, while saying they intended for music to keep playing there.

Across the river, the historic Thompson House music venue near Newport on the Levee was listed for sale for $1.5 million earlier this year, according to WLWT. Taken together, the listings suggest regional venue owners are increasingly treating their buildings as separable assets from the entertainment businesses running inside them — a dynamic playing out now at the Wright-Taylor Building, where the Mercury Ballroom's marquee is expected to keep lighting up long after any sale closes.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the restaurant opened its first Natomas location at 3551 Truxel Road in late summer 2026, and the Natomas Marketplace spot is the chain's fifth overall. The taquería is best known for its tacos and super-sized burritos, and its menu also stretches into carne asada, enchiladas, quesadillas, tortas and breakfast burritos. Regular tacos run $3.25 each, while super burritos cost $14.50 and jumbo burritos go for $15.45, per the same report.

A Former Rubio's Space Gets New Life

The Natomas restaurant took over a location previously occupied by Rubio's Coastal Grill, the Bee reports. That chain, which opened in San Diego in 1983, closed its Sacramento-area location in 2024 according to its Yelp page, part of a broader retreat that saw it shut down 11 Northern California stores. The Sacramento Business Journal reported that Rubio's closed its five remaining Sacramento-area restaurants as of June 2024, according to the chain's website.

Los Inmortales isn't the only newcomer filling the Truxel Road corridor's turnover. The Sacramento Business Journal also reported that El Tapatio Mexican Restaurant opened at 3521 Truxel Road in Natomas in October 2025, putting two Mexican restaurants within close reach of each other in the same stretch of south Natomas.

Building Out a Regional Footprint

Beyond the new Natomas shop, Los Inmortales operates restaurants at 3131 Fruitridge Road in North City Farms, 6670 Valley Hi Drive in the Valley Hi/North Laguna area, 2598 Alta Arden Expressway in Arden Arcade, and 501 Broadway in Land Park. The Land Park location opened as the chain's fourth Sacramento-area restaurant on September 25, 2023, the Bee has previously reported.

Earlier coverage from What Now Sacramento had flagged the Natomas expansion while it was still in progress, noting the chain was working on a new location at 3551 Truxel Road before it opened. Los Inmortales Taquería is listed as open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, though the restaurant's own online ordering page cautions that hours may vary by location, so diners heading to the new Natomas shop may want to confirm its schedule directly.

The taquería has described itself as the new go-to Mexican spot in Sacramento, offering a full menu of Mexican food across its five locations. For south Natomas residents who watched the old Rubio's sit vacant after its 2024 closure, the arrival gives the neighborhood another option for tacos and the oversized burritos that have become the chain's calling card.

From Screening Mandate to Treatment Mandate

SB 626 requires health plans and insurers regulated in California to cover at least one FDA-approved medication, such as zuranolone, and at least one FDA-approved digital therapeutic, such as MamaLift Plus, for perinatal mental health conditions, according to the California Health Benefits Review Program. The bill was authored by state Sens. Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside, and Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, a Democrat from Los Angeles, as reported by Fox 5 San Diego. The law defines maternal mental health conditions as those occurring during pregnancy or the postpartum period, with the postpartum window defined according to American College of Obstetricians standards, per the same outlet's reporting.

Beyond coverage, the law requires health plans to provide care coordination and case management for enrollees who screen positive, and it forces insurers to publicly post annual utilization and outcome data on their own websites, according to LegiScan. That transparency requirement is designed to hold insurers accountable for what happens after a positive screening, rather than leaving the follow-through to chance.

A Decade of Screening Mandates That Still Left Half of Mothers Unscreened

This is not California's first attempt at the problem. The state enacted Assembly Bill 2193 in 2018, making it the fifth U.S. state to mandate maternal mental health screenings by obstetric providers and requiring health plans to establish maternal mental health programs, according to Maternal Mental Health NOW. Under SB 626, those programs must now include mental health screenings during pregnancy as well as one or more screenings during the postpartum period, per Fox 5 San Diego.

Despite AB 2193 being on the books for years, a California Department of Public Health report based on 2020-2021 survey data found that only 50% of pregnant individuals in the state were screened for mental health conditions both during pregnancy and postpartum, according to the UCSF Center for Health Equity. That gap between what the law required and what actually happened is a central reason lawmakers pushed for a stronger mandate this year.

Who Gets Screened, and Who Doesn't

The scale of the underlying problem is significant. Roughly one in three birthing individuals in California experiences anxiety or depression symptoms during or after pregnancy; maternal depression rates during pregnancy rise as high as one in two among people on Medicaid, while Medi-Cal covers 45% of births statewide, according to the California Health Care Foundation. State survey data also shows that low-income, young, and Black birthing individuals are significantly less likely to receive both prenatal and postpartum mental health screenings than higher-income or white parents, despite reporting higher rates of depressive and anxiety symptoms, per the UCSF Center for Health Equity's research.

Untreated maternal mental health conditions carry a steep cost. Maternal suicide is a leading cause of maternal mortality in the United States, the California Health Care Foundation's research notes.

Survivors Carried the Bill to the Governor's Desk

SB 626 did not emerge solely from legislative offices. It originated from grassroots storytelling by survivors and advocates under the From Pain to Power campaign, which delivered 67 personal survivor accounts directly to Newsom and was co-sponsored by Black Women for Wellness Action Project, Maternal Mental Health NOW, and Postpartum Support International-California, according to the California Perinatal Wellness Alliance. Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas framed the bill as a human rights and racial justice initiative aimed at closing persistent maternal mortality disparities facing Black and Brown families.

Postpartum psychosis is a far rarer and more severe condition than the mood disorders SB 626 primarily targets.

The celebration is being hosted by the Long Beach Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine in partnership with the Department of Public Works, according to the Press Telegram. The renovated center sits in the Willmore neighborhood, where it has long served as a hub for community gatherings and city programming, per the outlet's reporting.

Construction on the roof and HVAC systems began in fall 2023, and city records describe that work as nearing completion, according to a Long Beach Department of Public Works project page, which also notes that restroom construction was ongoing. The Press Telegram's reporting adds that the full scope of upgrades included a new roof, new interior lighting, improved HVAC systems, a remodeled kitchen, remodeled interior and exterior restrooms, a new gender-neutral restroom, and new furniture and an office area to support programming.

A Project Years in the Making

The improvements were designed to boost functionality, accessibility, comfort and usability at the facility, the Press Telegram reports. The city's project page for the site, part of the Elevate ’28 Infrastructure Investment Plan, states that the goal is to increase outdoor recreational access with a new city asset while enhancing the visitor experience.

Elevate ’28 itself has become a massive undertaking. What began as a $533 million plan has grown into an investment of more than $1 billion, according to the same Elevate ’28 project page, which calls it the largest infrastructure investment program in Long Beach history. A separate city resource page describes Elevate ’28 as a five-year infrastructure plan, covering fiscal years 2023 through 2027, that spans parks, public and community facilities, mobility and streets, funded in part through voter-approved Measure A along with other grant sources, per the city's Infrastructure Investment Plan page.

Funding for the Drake Park project specifically drew on $2.95 million in Measure A infrastructure funds, including Measure A bonds, and $1 million in Assembly Bill 32 funds, which are designed for energy-efficient improvements that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Press Telegram's reporting.

City Leaders Weigh In

Mayor Rex Richardson said Drake Park has always been a gathering place where neighbors connect, people recreate and history lives, and that the city looks forward to welcoming the community back to a revitalized Drake Park Community Center, per the Press Telegram. Councilmember Mary Zendejas said the city is proud to reopen the center, adding that children in the Willmore neighborhood and surrounding communities will have a safe and welcoming place to play, learn, grow and create lasting memories, the outlet reported. A city official identified as Stephen Scott said the renewed facility will continue to bring people together and strengthen the community, according to the same report.

The center has a history of serving the neighborhood through free afterschool youth programming, youth sports programs, summer food service programs, recreation contract classes and Movies in the Park community events, per the Press Telegram's account. Construction on the project was completed this past summer, the outlet reported.

Part of a Broader Parks Strategy

The city's Parks, Recreation and Marine Department is guided by the Parks Make Long Beach strategic plan, according to the Press Telegram, and has focused broadly on expanding access in park-deficient areas, creating safe and inclusive spaces, and supporting environmental sustainability. The department's own site separately identifies a draft version of that strategic plan as a guiding document for its work.

A city parks listing also points to Saturday's event at the Drake Park Community Center, describing the same 12:30 to 2 p.m. window. Residents interested in seeing the finished renovation firsthand can head to 951 Maine Ave. this weekend for the ribbon-cutting, remarks and community activities marking the center's return.

The show is set to film at the studio used for Guy's Grocery Games, according to realityblurred.com, which reports that season 8 filming starts the following week, with the first taping scheduled for October 8, and that the season is scheduled to cover 16 episodes. Anyone 18 or older can request free seats in the live studio audience through On-Camera Audiences, which describes the show as Food Network and host Guy Fieri gathering 32 of the world's greatest chefs for the single-elimination, sudden-death bracket tournament.

How the Format Works

Every matchup in Tournament of Champions is head-to-head, and every battle hinges on a spin of the randomizer, according to a press release from press.wbd.com. Chefs compete for a Tournament of Champions belt and a $150,000 cash prize, per the same release, a payout that turns every round into must-watch drama for the home audience and the people in the seats.

Getting into those seats takes some planning. On-Camera Audiences notes that the minimum age to attend is 18, and the site says shows may be posted up to 60 days in advance, so availability can shift as filming dates approach. When a single day includes two episodes, producers ask ticket holders to choose only one arrival per day, the same report notes, rather than trying to catch both tapings.

A Hometown Draw for Fieri Fans

For North Bay viewers, the appeal goes beyond reality-TV spectacle. As East Bay Times reports, Guy Fieri is a celebrity chef and longtime Sonoma County resident, giving the production a hometown flavor even as it draws a national audience of Food Network fans. The East Bay Times account also describes how tournament chefs must prepare a dish using a protein, produce item, and cooking equipment determined by the randomizer, which independent judges then taste without knowing who cooked what.

That blind-tasting twist has become one of the signature elements of the competition, forcing judges to evaluate each plate purely on its merits. With season 8 filming set to begin the following week, fans eager to see the format play out in person have a limited window to request their free tickets before the October filming schedule wraps.

According to ABC7 Los Angeles, witnesses described Huntington Park police officers chasing a man riding a minibike through the city, with at least five patrol vehicles following the bike with lights and sirens on. One witness recounted watching the minibike and the trailing cruisers speeding through the neighborhood before the crash unfolded. The Huntington Park Police Department vehicle involved ended up with a completely smashed front end, per the outlet's report.

Witnesses told the station the crash involved four vehicles total, including at least one car that had been parked at the time of impact. The minibike rider reportedly got away from the scene, and it remains unclear whether investigators have identified him. The station has reached out to the Huntington Park Police Department for details on the officer's condition and has not received a response.

Why the Minibike Was Already Breaking the Law

The bike at the center of the chase was reportedly illegal, the station's report notes, a detail consistent with state rules governing this category of small motorized cycles. Under California Vehicle Code Section 21720, as detailed by the Modesto Police Department, pocket bikes and minibikes that fail to meet federal safety standards and DMV registration requirements are strictly prohibited from operating on public roads, bikeways, or sidewalks. Most stock minibikes simply lack the turn signals, headlights, and mirrors required for street legality, which is why officers across the region keep encountering them in the first place.

The intersection where the crash happened sits along a heavily trafficked corridor. Florence Avenue is a major east-west arterial highway in Southeast Los Angeles County that carries between 24,000 and 29,000 vehicles daily, according to LA County Planning records, making it a key commercial and commuter transit route. That volume underscores the public safety stakes any time a pursuit runs through the area, regardless of the hour.

A Pattern of High-Speed Pursuits in Huntington Park

This is not the first time a Huntington Park police pursuit has ended in a serious crash. Just weeks before this incident, in August, a chase stretched over 12 miles to Highland Park, ending when the suspect's vehicle T-boned an innocent driver at Figueroa Street and South Avenue 52. Back in December 2023, a Huntington Park pursuit of a road-rage suspect crossed multiple jurisdictions before ending in Hacienda Heights, where officers opened fire after patrol cars were rammed.

Minibike pursuits specifically have proven tricky for Southern California police departments. In June, a Los Angeles Police Department chase of an illegal minibike rider dragged on for more than an hour across South Los Angeles to LAX before crashing at Hyde Park Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, according to Key News Network. Officers chasing nimble, off-road-capable minibikes face distinct tactical challenges compared to pursuing standard vehicles.

The Numbers Behind Pursuit Risk

Statewide data gives some sense of how often chases like this one go wrong. California law enforcement agencies recorded 11,985 vehicular pursuits in 2022, with 19 percent resulting in collisions that caused 34 fatalities; 798 crashes were injury crashes, injuring 1,345 people, according to a California Highway Patrol report submitted to the state legislature. State law requires local departments to submit detailed pursuit reports to the CHP within 30 days of an incident.

Huntington Park Police Department operates with 56 sworn officers and 52 civilian employees covering a municipal area of just 3.02 square miles, according to Greg Hill & Associates, giving it a relatively dense officer presence for its footprint. That footprint is packed tightly with people: Huntington Park is home to more than 50,000 residents within roughly three square miles, a density exceeding 16,000 residents per square mile, per the U.S. Census Bureau.

Legal Framework Governing Police Chases

California law gives public agencies some protection when pursuits go wrong. Under California Vehicle Code Section 17004.7, police departments receive statutory civil liability immunity for pursuit-related collisions if the agency maintains a qualifying written pursuit policy and mandates annual officer training, per Justia Law. The California Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that agencies do not need full written officer certification compliance to retain that immunity.

State regulations also set minimum training standards for the officers themselves. California Penal Code Section 13519.8 and POST Commission regulations require all peace officers to complete at least one hour of annual pursuit training covering risk evaluation, public safety balancing, and pursuit termination criteria, according to the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. Those standards direct officers to weigh the severity of a suspected offense against the potential hazards to bystanders before continuing a chase.

What remains unknown is the condition of the Huntington Park officer involved in the crash, whether any civilians in the four involved vehicles were hurt, and whether the fleeing minibike rider has since been identified. The Huntington Park Police Department had not responded to inquiries from ABC7 Los Angeles as of its report.

The news conference begins at 12:30 p.m. and will be livestreamed, according to KTVU, though authorities have not said publicly which case the announcement concerns. Still, the timing and details point squarely to one of Oakland's oldest unsolved mysteries: the woman found inside Room 15 of the St. Louis Hotel at 539 7th Street on October 2, 1969.

According to Oakland Tribune reports from the time, cited by the station, the woman had been beaten and strangled. A separate account from the case-research site Stories of the Unsolved describes the victim as a white female between 16 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and 105 pounds, with an autopsy determining she was murdered after being beaten and strangled with an article of her own clothing.

A Decades-Old Trail With One Named Suspect

The case has lingered for generations without a resolution. Court records referenced by Stories of the Unsolved show a warrant was issued in 1972 for a man named Taylor Morris Teaford in connection with the killing, though that detail comes from a non-law-enforcement research source, and police have not confirmed any arrest or charge tied to today's announcement.

What is clear is that the case has sat cold for more than half a century, the kind of file that depends on persistent, often under-resourced detective work to ever move again. That makes the timing of today's news conference notable, given what has happened to Oakland's cold case operation in recent years.

Cold Case Unit Dissolved Amid Budget Cuts

Oakland's cold case homicide detail had solved 30 cases over a three-year stretch before it was effectively dismantled, according to NBC Bay Area. The station reported that the unit, which had consisted of two full-time investigators and a sergeant, was dissolved as the department grappled with staffing losses and budget cuts, with investigators reassigned earlier this year.

Investigations Captain Omar Daza-Quiroz told a city council public safety committee, “We have just shut down our cold case unit,” per the same NBC Bay Area report. Police have said any of the city's 10 homicide investigators can still pick up cold cases, but the dedicated team built specifically for decades-old files is gone.

How Other Cold Cases Have Broken Open

Elsewhere, similar decades-old cases have been cracked using forensic genetic genealogy, a technique that has reshaped cold-case work nationally. In Riverside County, investigators announced in November 2024 that DNA testing had confirmed the identity of the man responsible for the 1979 murder of 17-year-old Esther Gonzalez, who was attacked while walking from Beaumont to Banning, according to the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.

In that case, investigators sent evidence to a Texas genealogy lab in 2023, and the California Department of Justice later confirmed that the suspect's DNA matched material recovered from the victim's body — a sample obtained from his 2014 autopsy in Florida, per the same office. Whether similar genetic techniques played any role in today's Oakland announcement has not been disclosed.

For now, the identity of the woman found in Room 15 of the St. Louis Hotel remains whatever officials reveal at this afternoon's news conference. After nearly 57 years without a name, Oakland police and the FBI are poised to finally give her one.

UH President Wendy F. Hensel and UMass President Marty Meehan signed the five-year memorandum of understanding, according to University of Hawaiʻi System News. The agreement sets up a framework for the two university systems to pursue joint research, student and faculty exchanges, training programs and other initiatives, rather than locking in any specific projects right away.

Potential collaboration areas span cyber-physical systems, microgrids, advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, maritime technologies and sensing, per the same announcement. The agreement also calls for exploring research and workforce development opportunities aligned with U.S. Department of Defense priorities, with an initial focus on energy resilience and critical-infrastructure protection.

Two Coastlines, One Shared Vulnerability

The partnership recognizes the shared importance of resilient infrastructure in Hawaiʻi and Massachusetts — two states, the university system noted, with extensive coastal and maritime environments. Hensel said Hawaiʻi has a responsibility to use its expertise and unique position in the islands to address challenges both locally and across the nation, adding that Hawaiʻi is an important place to develop and test solutions that can strengthen resilience.

Meehan said the agreement creates opportunities for researchers, faculty and students from both institutions to work together on challenges affecting communities across the country, and that the two university systems share a commitment to research and education addressing real-world problems. He also said the partnership can help prepare students for the workforce of the future.

UH Regent Neil Abercrombie, who attended the signing, said the partnership was a perfect opportunity for the two universities. Abercrombie and Meehan reportedly first crossed paths years earlier while both were serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Also on hand for the signing were UH Mānoa Chancellor Vassilis Syrmos, UH Board of Regents Chair Lauren Akitake, UH Director of Federal Relations Anthony Ching and UMass Lowell Associate Vice Chancellor for Sustainability and Enterprise Development Ruairi O’Mahony.

What a Microgrid Actually Buys You

Microgrids, one of the technologies flagged for potential joint research, are systems that can disconnect from the main power grid and operate independently in what's known as island mode, according to MassCEC. That ability lets a facility keep its lights on even when the broader grid goes down — exactly the kind of resilience both states have been chasing independently for years.

In Massachusetts, MassCEC-backed upgrades gave UMass Amherst more than $1.6 million in federal funds to overhaul its campus microgrid, including new automatic transfer switches at five buildings, protective relay upgrades at 45 locations and an underground duct bank, the organization notes. That campus system now includes advanced battery storage alongside the largest behind-the-meter solar array in the state. MassCEC also funded a separate microgrid for the Wakefield Municipal Gas and Light Department, which received over $2.8 million to support its Energy Park project serving Wakefield High School and Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational High School.

Hawaiʻi has its own microgrid efforts already underway. Hensel Phelps, Sustainability Partners and the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation broke ground on two microgrid projects on Oʻahu and Kauaʻi featuring solar canopies, battery storage and EV charging stations, according to Solar Builder Magazine. The Oʻahu system is set to serve HDOT Highways' Oʻahu District Main Office Facility near downtown Honolulu.

Defense Dollars Already Flowing to UMass Campuses

The new UH-UMass pact's nod toward Department of Defense-aligned research echoes work already happening at UMass Lowell. The U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research awarded UMass Lowell and Stony Brook University a grant to advance energy-resilience technologies, with UMass Lowell putting the figure at $6.3 million, while Stony Brook University has separately described an earlier Navy grant for similar energy-resiliency research as totaling $7.36 million and running through fall 2022. Researchers on the UMass Lowell-Stony Brook effort are working across 12 projects in four focus areas: power-grid management, structural health monitoring of energy infrastructure, energy storage and materials, and fuels and power systems.

Crucially, UH News notes the new memorandum is a framework rather than a commitment to specific projects — individual research initiatives between UH and UMass would still need to be developed through separate agreements. Whether any of the listed collaboration areas, from microgrids to autonomous systems, actually advance beyond this starting point will depend on those future deals.

A False Child-Endangerment Report

As reported by TMZ, a swatting call came in around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, with the caller falsely claiming a 3-year-old child had been thrown to the ground. Deputies arrived to find Blueface livestreaming, with no children or informant on site.

The 1:30 p.m. call matches an incident detailed by KHTS Radio, which reported that Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff's Station deputies responding to the call alleging a 3-year-old child was thrown to the ground found the rapper livestreaming, with no children or informant actually on site. Blueface's residence sits in the Canyon Country neighborhood of Santa Clarita, an area that has become a repeat target for hoax callers over the past several months.

A Pattern Stretching Back to Summer

Wednesday's double call was not an isolated event. On August 24, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies detained Blueface and others at gunpoint inside his King of Crab restaurant in Santa Clarita after a caller falsely claimed someone had been shot five times inside, according to footage reviewed by Key News Network. Per the same account, deputies released everyone once it became clear no crime had occurred.

Weeks before that, on July 21, law enforcement swarmed Blueface's Santa Clarita residence and detained occupants at gunpoint after a swatting call falsely claimed the rapper had fatally shot his girlfriend and tied up their daughter, according to The Independent. The July 21 call was one of several false reports involving the rapper.

Swatting Calls Target Home and Business

The rapper has faced a stream of hoax calls aimed at his home and business.

What Swatting Involves

Swatting involves making a false emergency report to prompt a law-enforcement response.

Other Recent Los Angeles-Area Swatting Calls

Recent Los Angeles-area cases have included swatting calls that interrupted livestreamers N3on and Benjy Chavez on Melrose Avenue and a swatting scare that triggered a heavy police sweep at a home in Encino.

The restaurant says it signed its first brick-and-mortar lease in August 2026 and aimed to open within three months, according to a statement on chiquoandeva.com. The Mercury News reports the restaurant is targeting a Nov. 13 soft opening and will serve a 48-ounce wagyu tomahawk. The restaurant's own menu lists its Australian wagyu tomahawk at 40 to 44 ounces, so the exact weight diners should expect remains unclear.

From Pop-Up Favorite to Permanent Address

The Layosos' restaurant plans grew out of a decade running a barbecue-catering business in Texas and a later Filipino-cuisine pop-up in the Bay Area, according to The Mercury News. They began considering a full-service restaurant in 2024. The pop-up menu included dry-aged American USDA Prime beef and American crossbred wagyu, but customers showed stronger interest in 100% wagyu. Japanese and Australian cuts reportedly sold better, and the Stone Axe Wagyu tomahawk became the pop-up's most popular item.

That steak is now central to the permanent menu. According to the restaurant's wagyu steak menu, the full-blood Australian wagyu tomahawk ribeye carries an Australian marble score of 9 or higher and is sourced from Stone Axe Wagyu in Victoria, Australia. The menu also features a 22-ounce Japanese A5 wagyu ribeye from the Miyazaki Prefecture with a Japanese marble score of 10 or higher.

A Menu Built Around Family Flavors

Alongside the steaks, diners can expect Filipino staples including lumpia Shanghai, chicken wings marinated in gochujang and mochiko batter, and garlic fried rice topped with a fried egg and fried garlic chips, per the restaurant's menu. Phil Layoso has called the Stone Axe wagyu tomahawk the greatest steak he has ever eaten, and per Layoso, restaurants across the United States now sell the Stone Axe tomahawk because the company is, in his telling, the largest full-blood wagyu program outside Japan. Stone Axe's own site backs up part of that pedigree, stating that its herd maintains 100% Full Blood Japanese Black Wagyu genetics, and the company says on its website that it has won Wagyu-branded beef awards grand champion titles back-to-back.

Renovations and 15 Tables

Inside the former Rookies space, Chiquo and Eva's has ongoing interior renovations underway, with plans for 15 tables and a look the owners describe as warm rather than the dark, dim feel typical of a traditional steakhouse.

First Street's commercial and waterfront role

A 2009 City of Benicia reuse study described First Street as the city's largest retail concentration, with restaurants, shopping and overnight lodging. The Press Democrat describes downtown First Street as an 11-block route from Military West to the Carquinez Strait waterfront, placing the restaurant in a district that serves both local businesses and visitors.

The name honors two deceased family members. Chiquo was Phil Layoso's dog, whom he credits with supporting him through major life events, including graduating, his mother's death, his marriage and his wife's chemotherapy. Chiquo later died of cancer. The couple's site sums up the idea behind the restaurant: “Wagyu is how we celebrated our loved ones.”

Part of a Broader Wagyu Moment

Benicia's new steakhouse joins a wave of high-end wagyu concepts that have cropped up around the Bay Area in recent years. San Francisco's Niku Steakhouse, a 60-seat spot that opened at 61 Division Street, built its entire identity around wagyu, offering everything from A5 Kobe beef to flights of wagyu jerky, as Eater SF reported. That restaurant served its dishes à la carte at first, with plans to add a tasting menu later, and paired its steaks with a 100-wine by-the-glass list using a Coravin system. Whether Chiquo and Eva's follows a similar format remains to be seen, but the appetite for premium wagyu in the region is clearly well established.

For now, Benicia diners curious about the new waterfront steakhouse can follow updates on chiquoandeva.com or on Instagram at instagram.com/chiquoevasteaks as the Nov. 13 soft opening approaches.

According to the Claremont Courier, this year’s tour is built to represent the arc of the city’s growth, from its founding through the rapid post-World War II boom and into the 1960s. Two of the featured properties, one on Indian Hill Boulevard and the other on Kemper Avenue, trace back to Claremont’s citrus industry and showcase Spanish and Craftsman architectural styles, the Courier reports. The Indian Hill Boulevard home still includes a guesthouse built inside the former citrus ranch’s original barn and farm implement buildings.

A Barn Reborn as a Family Home

One of the tour’s more unusual stops is a home long dated to 1908 that, per the Courier, most likely started out before 1900 as an agricultural building before it was converted into a house. This year, owners added a modern addition to the structure that now houses both an art studio and a music studio, according to the same report. The juxtaposition of a century-old farm structure with brand-new creative studio space fits neatly into organizers’ framing of the tour as a walk through Claremont’s evolving architectural story.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, which first reported this year’s ticket details and logistics, notes that the tour also includes houses once owned by celebrated artists and homes directly tied to Route 66, alongside properties designed by renowned architects. Two of those architect-designed homes get individual mention in the Courier’s coverage: a modern residence by Claremont architects Criley and McDowell, credited with many of the city’s mid-century modern homes, and another designed by artist James Heuter working in partnership with architect Everett Tozier.

Tickets, Check-In and Where to Start

Tour-goers will check in at Garner House, a historic building inside Memorial Park at 840 N. Indian Hill Blvd., beginning at 9:30 a.m., according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Advance tickets run $40 for Claremont Heritage members and $50 for nonmembers, and are sold through the nonprofit’s website and at locations throughout the city. Prices rise on the day of the event, climbing to $50 for members and $60 for nonmembers, per the Daily Bulletin’s report.

Claremont Heritage is a nonprofit formed in 1976 by a group of Claremont residents, and the organization describes its mission as working to advance, preserve and celebrate the architectural, natural and cultural resources of the community through collaboration, education and advocacy, according to its official site. This year’s tour also marks the organization’s 50th anniversary, a milestone the group has built an entire 2026 theme around.

A 50th Anniversary Tied to Route 66’s Centennial

The Courier reports that this year’s Home Tour weekend and related programming are centered around two milestones at once: Claremont Heritage’s 50th anniversary and the 100th anniversary of Route 66, with the organization adopting “Preservation 50: Our Legacy, Our Future” as its theme for the year. The group says its five decades of work have resulted in saving, documenting and celebrating the city’s historic and cultural resources.

That anniversary framing also helps explain why most of Claremont’s housing stock looks the way it does. Per the Courier’s reporting on last year’s tour, the vast majority of homes in Claremont were built between 1950 and 1980, and most of those are ranch style, a wave of development that followed the earlier citrus-era homesteads now spotlighted on this year’s route.

How This Year Compares to Past Tours

Claremont Heritage’s home tours have leaned into different eras from year to year. Last year’s 43rd annual tour featured seven mid-century homes, including a Jo Paul Rognstad design, the home of Charles Phoenix, the former home of management consultant Peter Drucker, and residences by B.H. Anderson and by Criley and McDowell, according to the Courier’s earlier coverage. That 2025 weekend was built around the theme of preserving the recent past and included a Friday bus and walking tour led by Charles Phoenix and a Saturday visit to four mid-century churches, the same report noted.

This year’s tour widens that lens, pairing citrus-industry homesteads and a converted pre-1900 agricultural building with the mid-century architecture that has defined past years. Garner House in Memorial Park remains the starting point for the day, with check-in opening at 9:30 a.m. before ticket holders fan out across the city’s eight featured properties.

Gallego shared the number in a post on X, writing, “A stunning number of nearly 3.8 million birds crossed through Maricopa County last night—the peak of migration season as they fly south for the winter.” The mayor's post, found at her account on X

, also announced that Phoenix had teamed up with Audubon Southwest this week to launch a new initiative called Bird-Friendly PHX.

The timing lines up with the formal kickoff of that campaign, which the city and Audubon Southwest held Tuesday, Sept. 29, at the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, according to the Daily Independent. The free public event ran from 5 to 7 p.m., giving residents a chance to learn about the new push before the flood of migrating birds Gallego described just days later.

Why Phoenix Sits in the Flight Path

Phoenix lies along the Pacific Flyway, a migration corridor stretching from Alaska into South America that carries millions of birds each year, per the same report. That geography helps explain why a single overnight count in Maricopa County could run into the millions, even as the mayor's office framed it as the seasonal high point.

Bird-Friendly PHX focuses specifically on hazards tied to urban growth, including reflective or transparent windows and artificial nighttime lighting that can disorient migrating birds and raise collision risks, the outlet reported. The campaign also encourages residents to plant native species that offer food and shelter for birds passing through.

As part of the rollout, residents were invited to take the Bird-Friendly PHX pledge and pick up practical tips for their own homes — turning off unnecessary lights, closing curtains and blinds at night, and making windows more visible to birds in flight, the Daily Independent noted.

Putting the Number in Context

The scale of overnight bird movement isn't unique to Phoenix. A broader study using weather radar data to track migration stopovers nationwide found that 48 percent of U.S. bird-migration hotspots show up in metropolitan areas during spring, and 44 percent in fall, according to Audubon. That research also found more urban migration hotspots in the western United States than in the East, with Phoenix named alongside Los Angeles and San Diego as a dry Western city where higher-income neighborhoods tend to host more birds, likely tied to extra water and vegetation.

The stakes behind campaigns like Bird-Friendly PHX are real: Audubon reports more than one billion birds die from window collisions across the country each year, with the toll rising especially during migration. That backdrop gives the city's push for darker nights and more visible glass added weight beyond a single dramatic count.

Not every number tells the full story on its own, though. BirdCast, which tracks migration activity nationally, cautions that its totals are estimates rather than direct counts, noting that the number of birds in flight may occasionally be greater than the number that actually passed through a given area. BirdCast's live migration tracking runs from August 1 through November 15 each fall, comparing current activity against historical data spanning 2013 through 2021.

A Decade-Plus of Bird-Friendly Efforts

Phoenix's bird-safety push isn't entirely new. The city was designated an Urban Bird Treaty City back in 2011, after Audubon Southwest received a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Challenge Grant, according to the federal agency's Rio Reimagined Urban Bird Coalition page. Bird-Friendly PHX builds on that history, aiming to make the city a more welcoming place for both migrating birds and the residents who share their neighborhoods with them.

The Long Beach Post described plans to reconfigure the museum's Robert Gumbiner Sculpture Garden into a temporary ring. The Saturday lineup included wrestlers El Cumbias, Kensei, Destiny, Rayo Star, El Muerto, Último Príncipe and Red Spider Rudo, with Mercurio Jr. greeting the crowd and Mariachi Loco and Romeo helping pump up the energy in the stands. The Long Beach Current reported that four matches took place that evening.

A Weekend Built Around Mexico's Masked Icons

Lucha libre, the fast-paced, acrobatic wrestling style long associated with Mexico's intricately masked performers, formed the throughline of the entire weekend's programming. MOLAA described Saturday's event as an unforgettable evening filled with high-flying action, colorful masks, and the vibrant spirit of one of Latin America's most beloved cultural traditions, according to a press release cited by the Press-Telegram. Live music from La Nueva Ola de Cumbia ran alongside the matches as part of the band's own nod to the museum's 30th anniversary, with the Saturday schedule, per MOLAA's official event page, running from 3:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

The celebration didn't start with the wrestling, though. Friday night kicked off the festival with the launch of “Luchadores Versus Everything,” a book by Viviana Garcia Besne, Jeffrey Everett and Kevin Kleinrock, described by the museum as internationally acclaimed. That opening reception also featured a live installation of rare, historic “El Santo” film trailers playing throughout the evening.

Food, Film and a Batwoman Horror Flick Close Out the Run

By Sunday, the festival shifted gears again. Programming that day centered on a Lucha Libre Expo running from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., alongside film screenings, a marketplace and what organizers billed as special meet-and-greets with wrestlers. The day's screenings paired the 2024 short film “El Luchador” with “La Mujer Murciélago,” a 1968 Mexican film in which a crime-fighting Batwoman takes on a mad scientist who kidnaps and experiments on wrestlers to create a monster — a campy artifact from an era when lucha libre and horror cinema frequently collided on Mexican screens.

Across all three days, the festival wove in art workshops, panel discussions and a marketplace alongside the headline wrestling and film programming, according to Long Beach Current. The outlet reported that the anniversary event offered live music, local food trucks and drinks throughout the evening, rounding out an expo-style atmosphere that drew families and lucha libre devotees alike into the museum's outdoor space.

Port and County Backing Helped Bring the Spectacle to Life

The three-day celebration was sponsored by the Port of Long Beach and the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, according to MOLAA's event listing, lending institutional weight to a festival that blended fine-art programming with the populist spectacle of masked wrestling. Photographer Gil Castro-Petres documented Saturday's live matches, capturing a scene that fused the museum's gallery walls with the chaos of a wrestling ring — a combination that, for one sold-out night, turned Long Beach's art museum into a lucha libre arena.

The warning came from the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, which posted the advisory through its official account at 4:47 pm UTC, telling residents and workers that “further instructions” would follow and urging them to “follow the instructions of public safety units in the area,” according to a post from the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management

. The department runs the city's AlertSF system, which pushes location-specific safety warnings to anyone who texts their ZIP code to 888-777, according to

SF.gov

.

The blocks named in the alert sit at the commercial core of downtown San Francisco, anchored by office towers including the 15-story building at 100 California Street, according to Pembroke. Front Street between California and Sacramento streets carries its own distinct identity beyond office space — in 2024 it became California's first officially designated Entertainment Zone, allowing brick-and-mortar businesses to sell alcohol for outdoor consumption during public block parties, per the San Francisco Recreation and Parks department. That designation underscores how the stretch has evolved from a purely commercial corridor into a pedestrian gathering spot, raising the stakes for any street-level emergency that forces people indoors during business hours.

How AlertSF Warnings Typically Play Out

Wednesday's notice fits a familiar pattern for the city's emergency alert system. A review of 377 AlertSF advisories issued between October 2024 and September 2026 found that 92% specified an exact location and 98% gave people actionable instructions, but 86% left out any estimate of how long the incident would last, according to data from AlertSF Health. That pattern held true Thursday: the alert named the affected blocks and told people what to do, but offered no timeline for when normal activity might resume.

San Francisco Fire Station 13, located at 530 Sansome Street just blocks from the affected intersection, serves as the primary fire and emergency medical station covering the Financial District's high-rise core, per 5280Fire. The fire's exact origin, containment status, and whether any buildings were evacuated remain open questions.

Why Officials Tell People To Stay Put

EPA wildfire guidance discusses staying indoors to reduce smoke exposure, but also advises evacuation when fire is close.

A Corner in the City's Commercial Core

Front and California streets sit in downtown San Francisco's commercial core. Modern fire suppression systems and high-rise construction standards now govern the area.

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management had not released further details as of this writing, and the department said additional instructions would be issued as the situation develops.

The price tag and funding source trace back to Measure CC, a $577.86 million voter-approved bond measure passed in 2016, according to KESQ. The station reported that the stadium project cost $38.5 million in all, part of a broader slate of capital upgrades the bond has financed across the Desert Community College District. As Uken Report notes, the stadium itself was completed in August 2026 in the Coachella Valley, following a design process that began in 2021 after a 2020 feasibility study first identified potential improvements to the campus's athletic facilities.

From Demolition to Natural Grass Fields

Getting here meant tearing down the old campus football stadium. College of the Desert officially broke ground on the new project in December 2024, per the same KESQ report, clearing the way for a facility built from scratch. Both the football and soccer venues inside the new complex feature all-natural grass playing surfaces, the station added, a deliberate upgrade meant to serve student-athletes training and competing on campus.

The new stadium building itself runs roughly 20,000 square feet, per Uken Report, and houses team locker rooms, a roughly 3,000-square-foot weight room, facilities for sports officials, and equipment storage, laundry, video and information technology spaces. The project also added new sports lighting at the football and soccer fields and renovated an existing parking lot, the outlet reported. According to a December 2024 announcement from College of the Desert, the venue seats 1,068 spectators total, split between 799 seats on the home side and 269 on the visitor side, replacing the capacity of the demolished legacy structure.

Soccer Got There First, Football Makes It Official

Soccer actually broke in the new building before football did. College of the Desert Athletics reported that the Roadrunners men's soccer team earned a 2-1 win over San Diego Miramar College on September 1, marking the facility's first official athletic contest and the program's inaugural meeting against Miramar. Saturday's football opener against LA Valley, by contrast, doubles as the formal homecoming celebration — a tradition that, per Uken Report, has connected generations of Roadrunners for 63 years.

Saturday's pregame lineup includes a public ribbon-cutting ceremony from 3:30 to 4 p.m. and a community Fan Fest from 5 to 8 p.m. featuring a Kids' Center, according to Uken Report's coverage of the opening. Once the football game itself gets going, fans can expect a 10-minute drone show at halftime, part of the celebratory programming built around the new venue's debut.

A Program Built Around 13 Teams and New Leadership

The stadium serves a sprawling athletics program. COD fields 13 intercollegiate sports teams — seven women's and six men's — under the California Community College Athletic Association, with football competing in the Southern California Football Association, according to the college's academic catalog. The new facility is designed to support those student-athletes' training, preparation and competition going forward, and to double as a venue for broader campus gatherings beyond game day.

Overseeing the district during the stadium's debut is Superintendent/President Val Martinez Garcia, selected by the College of the Desert Board of Trustees in May 2025 after previously serving as vice president of instruction and vice president of student services, per MyNewsLA.com. He leads a district serving more than 14,000 students across the Coachella Valley. The stadium's opening also lands amid a broader wave of regional sports investment — Hoodline has reported that nearby Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms is expanding its own footprint by hosting the relocated Coachella Valley Lakers starting in November, alongside the AHL's Coachella Valley Firebirds.

Gene and Scott Snyder founded the eatery shortly after moving to the Phoenix Valley from New York, according to Phoenix New Times. The restaurant takes its name from the generations of Snyders who have run it, including Scott's son, Ross. The father and son opened Scott's Generations in June 1989, per azfamily.com, with the family having arrived in the Valley the year before with the goal of bringing a taste of New York to the desert.

“This restaurant has been part of our family for nearly four decades,” Scott Snyder said, per the same outlet's report. The deli currently sits at 742 E. Glendale Avenue, Suite 142, near Glendale Avenue and Seventh Street — a location it has called home since a 2017 move about 1.5 miles from its original spot near Seventh Street and Missouri Avenue, a relocation documented at the time by azcentral.com amid a wave of new restaurants, including celebrity chef Scott Conant's Mora Italian, moving into that stretch of central Phoenix.

A Menu Built on Tradition

Over the decades, Scott's Generations built its reputation on deli sandwiches, matzo ball soup, smoked fish, knishes, kugel and rugelach, alongside latkes, bagels and lox, pastrami Reubens, cheesecake, potato salad, cured meats and Hanukkah sufganiyot. Azfamily.com has described the kitchen as serving the Valley authentic New York, kosher-style deli cuisine, a distinction that helped the restaurant earn Phoenix New Times' 2026 Best of Phoenix award for Best Jewish Deli just before the closure announcement.

The honor made the timing especially bittersweet for longtime fans. On Instagram, a commenter named Cindy said the deli will truly be missed and called it a Phoenix treasure, a sentiment the Snyder family has echoed in thanking customers for their decades of support.

Family Reflects as Final Weeks Begin

The Snyder family said the relationships, stories and memories created at the restaurant will always remain part of their family, and they've encouraged customers to stop by during the restaurant's remaining weeks before the Oct. 25 close. The closure adds Scott's Generations to a list of long-running Phoenix institutions saying goodbye this year, following Cafe Lalibela, which closed after 30 years in business; that restaurant's owners cited a slowdown in business that hadn't fully bounced back since the pandemic, according to Phoenix New Times' broader roundup of shuttered Valley restaurants.

For now, the deli counter at Glendale Avenue and Seventh Street remains open, with just a few weeks left for regulars to order one more pastrami sandwich or bowl of matzo ball soup before Scott's Generations closes its books on 37 years of family history.

The celebration unfolds across two days. According to The Kansas City Star, Atlas 9 will host an artists' panel discussing its sculptures and designs beginning at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, followed Friday by the free outdoor movie event, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. and Back to the Future starting at 7:30 p.m. on the side of the building. No tickets are required for the screening, and performance troupe Quixotic will perform live before the film begins.

Atlas 9 co-founder Tucker Trotter told the Star that the attraction has been embraced more enthusiastically than he and his team expected. Trotter credited the staff and performers at Dimensional Innovations, the Overland Park-based experience design firm that created Atlas 9, for much of that success, saying the people behind the scenes show pride, excitement and passion in their work.

A Story World Built Around a Fictional 1990s Theater

Atlas 9 presents itself as a fictional 1990s movie theater, with a story centered on a projectionist and a mad scientist who creates a mysterious projector. Visitors use an RFID-activated wristband to solve puzzles throughout the space, which includes a retro movie theater setup alongside interactive games, videos and AI-powered experiences, per the same Star report.

Caleb Holder, managing director of day-to-day experiences at Atlas 9, said the attraction is designed to be more than a one-visit experience. The venue periodically changes its rooms, performances and games, and Atlas 9 still has empty rooms that have not yet been revealed to the public. The team has also developed an easier version of its central game for visitors who want a lighter challenge, the Star reported.

National Recognition Follows a Six-Year Build

Atlas 9's first year has come with national validation. USA Today readers named it the No. 2 Best New Attraction in the country in 2026, according to the Star's reporting, a ranking that built on earlier recognition detailed by Kansas City Magazine in its USA Today 10Best Readers' Choice coverage earlier this year.

The attraction's roots stretch back to 2020, when Dimensional Innovations' leadership conceived the project during pandemic shutdowns that had disrupted traditional design work, according to a release distributed via PR Newswire. Atlas 9 officially opened to the public on September 18, 2025, after a six-year development process. The $26.7 million project was built out over 14 months by DI Build, which served as the primary construction partner overseeing structural work and audiovisual installations, according to DI Build's own project documentation.

The finished venue was a joint effort among four entities — Dimensional Innovations, Homefield, Swell Spark and performance troupe Quixotic — and involved artistic contributions from more than 250 local and regional creatives, as reported by KC Studio. The space includes more than 70 interactive touchpoints, a 1940s-style jazz club, a hidden speakeasy bar, a 240-seat auditorium with projection mapping, and a pizza parlor.

Part of a Booming National Industry

Atlas 9's growth mirrors a broader surge in immersive entertainment spending nationally. U.S. consumer spending on immersive entertainment reached roughly $33 billion in 2023 and is projected to climb to $122 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research data cited in the PR Newswire release. Locally, Kansas City's nonprofit arts and culture sector generates more than $615 million in annual economic activity while supporting over 9,000 regional jobs, per the same release.

The attraction sits inside Tanger Kansas City at Legends, an open-air shopping complex in Wyandotte County that was rebranded following its $130 million acquisition by Tanger, according to KSNT 27 News. Trotter has described Atlas 9 as drawing visitors well beyond the metro, including a significant fan base making repeat trips from Omaha.

Normally, admission to Atlas 9's indoor experience ranges from $29 to $45, but the anniversary celebration includes $9 admission through Friday. Dimensional Innovations, the firm behind the project, has deep roots in the Kansas City area, having previously designed the giant Community Bookshelf exterior wall at the downtown Kansas City Public Library — still a landmark today — along with design elements for CPKC Stadium.

The indictment charges Gomez with Voting by Alien, False Statement in Application of Passport, and Fraud in Connection with Identification Documents, along with wire fraud, theft of government funds, and firearms violations. Prosecutors say Gomez used fraudulent identity documents to illegally obtain Medicaid benefits funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. ATF Seattle also ATF Seattle

flagged the indictment, noting the firearms counts included unlawful possession of a firearm and a false statement made during a firearm purchase.

The allegations center on a false birth certificate that Gomez allegedly used to obtain state identification cards. The scheme allegedly ran for more than nine years, from at least March 2017 through June 2026, according to the Idaho Statesman, which reports court records indicate Gomez used a false birth certificate to obtain state identification cards.

Fake ID Allegedly Opened Doors to Voting, a Passport and a Gun

Those state-issued cards, the newspaper's report notes, were then allegedly leveraged to secure a U.S. passport and purchase a firearm, with Gomez making false claims about his citizenship status on federal firearm transaction forms. The indictment also alleges Gomez falsely claimed U.S. citizenship to register to vote in Idaho, then cast illegal ballots in two separate contests — the May 2022 primary election and the November 2024 general election. Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections under 18 U.S.C. § 611.

Votebeat identified Gomez as the Idaho defendant in its report on noncitizen voting cases. The indictment also charges him with unlawful firearm possession.

Multi-Agency Investigation Led to Charges

The case against Gomez came out of a joint investigation involving Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the HHS Office of Inspector General, and the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Gomez made his initial federal court appearance Monday in Boise before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham, the Idaho Statesman reported. He faces a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison if convicted. As with any indictment, the charges represent allegations only, and Gomez is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in federal court.

Part of a Wider Federal Crackdown

Gomez's case is one piece of a broader nationwide push by the U.S. Department of Justice, which in September charged 16 individuals across states including Texas, Georgia, New Jersey and Idaho with noncitizen voting or election-related crimes, per Votebeat's reporting. Hoodline has covered related cases in that sweep, including a Del Rio woman charged with illegal voting and a Carlisle couple swept into the same effort.

Despite the recent flurry of indictments, federal noncitizen voting prosecutions remain historically rare. Reuters figures cited in Hoodline's earlier reporting on the statute's enforcement history put charges under 18 U.S.C. § 611 at 129 nationwide since the law passed in 1996, with 73 convictions or guilty pleas. The case involves allegations beyond voting, including identity theft, passport fraud, and federal firearms violations.

The fire report traces back to the Sacramento Bee, which published its initial account using an AI tool built on newsroom-created templates that are reviewed and edited by journalists. That dispatch credits the National Interagency Fire Center as the source for the Quimby Fire report, with the article first published at 10:17 p.m. Wednesday. Details beyond the fire's location, land ownership, and discovery time were not yet available at publication.

The Quimby Fire report was an early alert; details such as acreage or containment were not yet available.

A Foothill Corridor With a Fiery History

This is not the first time a fire bearing the Quimby name has burned through this stretch of East San Jose. In August 2024, a 33-acre blaze also called the Quimby Fire ignited near the 4700 block of Quimby Road, where three separate spot fires broke out in steep foothill terrain before CAL FIRE and the San Jose Fire Department reached full containment, as CBS Bay Area reported at the time. Hoodline covered that earlier fire's 75% containment milestone while evacuation warnings remained in place.

The 2024 fire burned in steep foothill terrain, and crews faced difficult access.

Who Responds, and Why the Foothills Burn

The 2024 Quimby Fire was managed under a unified command structure, as CBS Bay Area reported.

The unit has already had a busy 2026 fire season elsewhere in the county. CAL FIRE crews responded to the 282-acre Mines Fire in San Antone Valley and the 15.6-acre McKean Fire in New Almaden this past July, both of which required extensive air tanker and ground crew deployments. Those incidents underscore how active Santa Clara County's brushland has been even before this week's new ignition near Quimby Road.

Jurisdiction over unincorporated county land has also shifted. On July 1, the Santa Clara County Fire Department took direct responsibility for fire protection on unincorporated lands that had previously been contracted out to CAL FIRE under a special district arrangement dating back to 1980, according to KTVU FOX 2.

Why Foothills Stay Vulnerable While the Valley Floor Is Shielded

Coastal marine air flow generally protects the Santa Clara Valley basin from severe offshore wind-driven fire expansion, but elevated inland slopes along the Diablo Range remain dry and prone to fast-moving grass and brush fires through the summer and autumn months, San José Spotlight has reported. That dynamic helps explain why a corridor like Quimby Road, perched above the valley floor, keeps generating fire activity even when conditions closer to downtown San Jose stay calm.

The scale of what the Diablo Range foothills can produce was on full display in August 2020, when the SCU Lightning Complex ripped across six counties and burned 396,624 acres, destroying 222 structures before crews achieved full containment that October. CAL FIRE has noted the complex stands as the fifth-largest wildfire in California's recorded history, a benchmark that looms over any new ignition in this terrain even when, as with the current Quimby Fire, the burn footprint remains unknown.

Concern over smoke from these foothill fires has also reached local policy circles. On July 15, 2026, the Santa Clara County Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution recognizing wildfire smoke and air pollution as public health threats to students, a measure driven by a youth advocacy campaign among local high schoolers who cited their own experiences during prior Bay Area wildfires, Hoodline previously reported.

No containment percentage, acreage estimate, or cause has been released for the new Quimby Fire as of the latest update. Hoodline will continue to follow developments as fire officials provide further information.

According to the New York Post, the advertisement appears to depict the West Bank and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, with no border distinctions shown and landmarks including Jerusalem, Haifa, Acre and Tel Aviv highlighted across the map. Nika Soon-Shiong, who founded Drop Site News in 2024, responded to the ad with a blunt “What on earth?” Her outlet, which she was named publisher of in September 2025, described the map as showing a single borderless Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

Nika Soon-Shiong argued the promotion does not break U.S. law but runs contrary to international law, per Drop Site News. The dispute centers on L.A. Times Studios, the commercial arm that produced and ran the ad — a separate company that uses Los Angeles Times branding for advertisements, sponsored content and other non-journalism material, and which is part of the Los Angeles Times Media Group that Patrick Soon-Shiong chairs as chief executive. The campaign, titled “Israel: Land of Creation” and tagged as a Paid Program on latimes.com, promoted a nine-day itinerary across Israel and the occupied territories and was paid for by Israel's Ministry of Tourism.

Newsroom Says It Had No Hand in the Ad

Los Angeles Times reporter James Queally said the newspaper itself was not responsible for the advertisement, but acknowledged that the lack of separation between the Times and L.A. Times Studios frustrates the entire staff. That friction is not abstract: the advertisement's masthead redirects to the Los Angeles Times homepage, and its URL uses the same domain name as the newspaper itself, blurring the line between journalism and paid promotion for readers clicking through.

The episode lands at a moment when the Los Angeles Times editorial operation has already been stretched thin. By March 2025, consecutive rounds of buyouts and layoffs had left the editorial board with no remaining full-time staff writers, with the Los Angeles Times Guild reporting 48 staff departures in that buyout round alone. Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune from Tronc for $500 million in February 2018, and in July 2025 he announced plans to take the paper public within a year, an effort he said was meant to let readers hold a stake on its board.

A Father-Daughter Rift With a 2024 Precedent

This is not the first time Nika Soon-Shiong has broken publicly with her father's newspaper over Middle East coverage. She has claimed the Los Angeles Times declined to endorse Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a decision that followed the paper's practice of backing Democratic presidential candidates in every cycle since 2008. Editorials editor Mariel Garza and board members Robert Greene and Karin Klein resigned that October after Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the planned endorsement.

At the time, Nika Soon-Shiong publicly attributed the blocked endorsement to opposition to the Biden-Harris administration's Gaza policy. Patrick Soon-Shiong responded with a statement saying his daughter speaks in her own personal capacity, has no role at the Los Angeles Times, and does not participate in editorial-board decisions or discussions.

Her advocacy on Middle East press issues extends beyond her father's paper. In June, Nika Soon-Shiong publicly criticized a Committee to Protect Journalists board proposal to redefine “journalist,” calling it a betrayal. Before her media career, she served as a Public Safety Commissioner for the City of West Hollywood from 2021 to 2022 and directed the Fund for Guaranteed Income, which ran basic-income pilots in Compton and Long Beach, before stepping down to finish her doctorate at the University of Oxford.

Questions Remain Over Commercial Policies

Whether the Los Angeles Times will revisit its commercial advertising policies around disputed territorial maps remains an open question, as does how the newsroom Guild will press the branding concerns Queally described. The California Post said it contacted both the Los Angeles Times and Drop Site News for comment.

The honor followed two days of blind cupping in Houston on Aug. 10 and 11, according to globalcoffeeawards.com, where Sweet Bloom's coffees were judged alongside other roasters from the U.S. and Canada. Sweet Bloom itself confirmed the win on its own site, stating plainly that “the 2026 Global Coffee Awards have named Sweet Bloom the U.S. & Canada's Best Roaster,” per sweetbloomcoffee.com. Beyond the top prize, the roastery also picked up a Flat White Plant-Based Milk category win, along with additional Gold and Silver awards in other categories, according to the competition's results.

One standout among Sweet Bloom's entries was Angel Paz, a coffee that achieved one of the four highest overall scores in the entire competition, the awards organization reported. It's a notable showing for a roastery that started small and has steadily built a reputation well beyond Colorado's borders.

From a Lakewood Storefront to a Growing Footprint

Sweet Bloom Coffee is based in Lakewood, Colorado, and was founded in 2013 by Andy Sprenger, a specialty roaster, according to the Global Coffee Awards. The company's flagship shop sits at 1619 Reed Street in Lakewood, per Westword. It's worth noting that a 2014 Denver Post article also identified Sprenger as the roastery's owner at the time, while a more recent Denver Gazette report names Eric Yochim as owner in a company press release — the dossier does not resolve which ownership description applies today.

The roastery's growth has been gradual but steady. It began with a wholesale roasting operation and retail shop in Lakewood before expanding to Arvada through a merger with another company, Two Rivers, and later adding a Westminster location, according to the Denver Post. That gives Sweet Bloom three storefronts across metro Denver today, with a fourth planned for Golden's Clayworks development inside The Pottery building, set to open in fall 2026, per the Denver Gazette.

A Philosophy Built Around Freshness

Sweet Bloom has built its identity around sourcing coffee at its peak. The company says it sources smaller, recently harvested lots that shine for just one to three months, according to its own site, with offerings that change frequently in step with harvest seasons in coffee-growing regions around the world. That approach has been part of the roastery's identity since the beginning — the Denver Post notes Sweet Bloom helped usher in what's described locally as the fourth wave of coffee when it launched in 2013, with an emphasis on beans' agricultural roots and techniques like pour-over brewing.

That reputation has translated into other accolades too. Sweet Bloom ranked No. 43 on The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops' 2026 list covering North America, Central America and the Caribbean, per the same Denver Post report, while fellow Denver roaster Queen City Collective Coffee came in at No. 61 on that list. Food and Wine magazine had already named Sweet Bloom's Westminster location the best coffee shop in Colorado back in 2022.

Part of a Record Year for Specialty Coffee

The win also lands amid a broader surge in specialty coffee demand nationwide. Roughly 47% of American adults reported drinking specialty coffee in the past day in 2026, a record high, according to Perfect Daily Grind. The same competition recognized winners across other categories including Filter, Espresso, Flat White Dairy and Ready to Drink, with Cafe Kreyol of Manassas, Virginia, taking the Filter category.

For Sweet Bloom, the national title is the latest marker in a years-long climb from a single Lakewood storefront to a roastery with regional and now continental recognition. As the company put it on its own website, “we don't take any of it for granted.”

As WTTW News reported, nominations go to dcase@cityofchicago.org and must include the owner's name, address, phone number and email address, along with a brief description of the tree. Applicants should attach at least two photos: one close-up and one taken from a distance, giving officials a view of its size and shape.

The requirements narrow the field: a tree must be at least 45 feet tall and located within 50 miles of the Loop. WTTW reported that officials prefer trees within 15 miles of downtown. Norway spruce and fir trees are eligible and preferred; pine trees are not eligible.

Donated Trees, From Yard to Park

Recent selections illustrate the range of locations and trees that have met the search criteria. WTTW reported that the 2025 tree was a 68-foot Norway spruce donated by the Mason family of Glenview; the 2024 selection was a 53-foot Colorado blue spruce donated by the Holden-Shaddick family of Logan Square.

That towering Glenview spruce almost met a much quieter fate. The Mason family had decided the tree needed to come down anyway, telling CBS News Chicago that its roots were tangling with their home's foundation ahead of planned renovations — a reminder that some of the city's most memorable trees start out as a homeowner's headache rather than a holiday dream.

The Journey From a Yard to the Park

Choosing a tree is one step; removing it from a residential property and moving it downtown is another. A recent example offers a glimpse of that process.

A Long-Running Tradition, and a Carefully Timed Move

The city described its 2023 Christmas tree as the 110th annual selection: a 45-foot Colorado Blue Spruce donated by the De La Cruz family of Darien, according to City of Chicago records. That example offers a historical marker for the tradition, though it does not document how the tree’s location or public display has changed over time. For the separate 2025 selection, Fox 32 Chicago reported that the 68-foot Glenview spruce was scheduled to be cut at the Mason family’s home on Monday and transported to Millennium Park on Tuesday.

Once a winner is chosen, the tree will be illuminated in Millennium Park from Nov. 20, 2026, through Jan. 10, 2027, lighting up the park through the heart of the holiday season. For now, the only thing standing between a backyard spruce and that downtown spotlight is an email, two photos, and a few weeks before the Oct. 23 deadline arrives.

As reported by NBC Palm Springs, the property is listed for $1,688,000 and includes the historic cafe and market building, a fully equipped commercial kitchen, two residences, designated camping areas, and an outdoor event space complete with a stage. Real estate agent Steve Lyle is marketing the listing, framing it as a chance to own not just a restaurant but a slice of mountain life — the surrounding real estate and lifestyle that come bundled with the business, per the station's report.

The cafe sits roughly 20 minutes from Palm Desert along Highway 74, nestled in the community tied to both Mountain Center and Pinyon Pines, in the heart of the San Jacinto Mountains above the Coachella Valley. The overall parcel includes about 5,784 square feet of improvements spread across the property, the same NBC Palm Springs report notes.

Roots Tied to the Highway Itself

The Sugarloaf property's history is inseparable from the road outside its door. Highway 74 — known along this stretch as the Pines to Palms Highway — was built through a joint effort between Riverside County and the U.S. Forest Service during the 1920s, received official county designation in 1930, and opened to traffic in June 1932, according to Gribblenation. The 93-mile route still links the coastal valleys to the desert floor of the Coachella Valley below.

Local mechanic Art Nightingale founded the surrounding community of Pinyon Pines in the 1930s as a roadside camp meant to house the crews building that mountain highway, before the original Sugarloaf Cafe building went up, per Wikipedia. NBC Palm Springs reports that Nightingale established a store and other services in the area around that same era, cementing the outpost's role as a stopover for workers and travelers alike.

The property sits at roughly 4,000 feet of elevation in a valley wedged between the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa ranges, within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, according to the Pinyon Pines County Water District. That elevation brings pinyon-juniper woodlands and markedly cooler air than nearby Palm Desert, making the cafe a natural mountain retreat above the desert heat.

What's Actually for Sale

Commercial listing specs reviewed by LoopNet show the main complex spans a 3,200-square-foot restaurant and market building paired with a 1,500-square-foot patio that includes two serving bars and seating for up to 200 guests. That outdoor patio, NBC Palm Springs notes, has long doubled as a performance space, hosting bands and community gatherings over the years, with a built-in stage and an oversized fire pit rounding out the setup per the listing.

Marketing materials from Equity Union Real Estate detail the residential side of the deal: the 17.43-acre property is split across four separate parcels and includes a three-bedroom, three-bathroom main house along with a two-bedroom, one-bathroom guest cabin, offering a buyer either live-in quarters or potential rental income.

A Pandemic-Era Pivot, Then a Quiet Close

The property's camping grounds trace back to a 2020 reinvention. In September of that year, then-owner Gabbi Rose unearthed 12 historic campsites scattered across the 17-acre parcel and launched campsite food delivery along with community meal assistance to keep the business afloat during pandemic restrictions, according to the Idyllwild Town Crier. Rose also started a “Pie it Forward” program aimed at supporting struggling local families.

That resilience didn't last past the heat of the following summer. Active restaurant service at the Sugarloaf Cafe ceased around June 2021 when Rose closed the eatery, which had built a local following for its mountain barbecue and homemade pies, the Coachella Valley Independent reported at the time.

Pricing It Against the Mountain Market

Pricing It Against the Mountain Market At $1.688 million, the Sugarloaf listing offers a multi-parcel compound with dining, lodging and event infrastructure, rather than a typical single-family lot.

It isn't the only headline-grabbing mountain property to surface along this stretch of Highway 74 recently. In August, influencer Logan Paul listed the 78-acre Fobes Ranch for roughly $3 million.

For now, the Sugarloaf Cafe waits for a buyer willing to take on both its roadside legacy and its blank-slate potential — a historic stopover reborn, perhaps, as a working restaurant, an event venue, or something in between.

The project, first reported by New Orleans CityBusiness, grew well beyond its original scope. According to the Holy Name of Jesus School capital campaign page, the Foundations for the Future effort started with a $5 million fundraising target meant to cover a new early childhood wing, but donor response was strong enough that the goal was raised to $7 million and ultimately $9 million was collected. That surge in giving, paired with a $4.2 million construction loan the School Board and Finance Council secured for a 12-year repayment term, let administrators build the full gymnasium right away instead of pushing it to a later phase.

Inside the New Three-Story Wing

The ground floor now houses the ten early childhood classrooms that serve the school's Little Gators and PK3 programs, per the seed facts in CityBusiness's reporting. The second floor contains the full-size gymnasium and concession stand, while the third floor holds art and music studios along with an elevated running track overlooking the gym below. An ADA-compliant elevator and restrooms on multiple floors round out the new construction, which was designed by Mathes Brierre Architects.

Construction broke ground in spring 2025 and wrapped up in summer 2026, with Ryan Gootee General Contractors serving as general contractor on the build. The firm, which was named one of New Orleans CityBusiness's Best Places to Work for the 12th consecutive year in 2026 according to a Ryan Gootee General Contractors post, has handled several major institutional projects around the city, including historic renovations. Students got to put their own mark on the build early on: in April 2024, kids brought soil from their homes to pour onto the construction site before crews poured the concrete slab, a moment documented in a Ryan Gootee General Contractors video that also showed earlier work including test pile driving and structural steel erection.

A Campus Built on a Decades-Old Partnership

The expansion sits on the Loyola University New Orleans campus, reflecting ties between the two institutions that date back years. Holy Name took over operations of Loyola's Whelan Daycare Center in 2021, folding it into what became the Little Gators early childhood program now housed in the new wing's first floor, according to Loyola University New Orleans. In January 2022 the two formally announced a strategic partnership giving Holy Name's elementary students access to university STEM labs, media studios and athletic facilities.

The push toward early childhood education also reflects archdiocesan policy. Under a 2014 restructuring by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans that took effect for the 2015-2016 school year, parish elementary schools were required to add pre-kindergarten programs and cap enrollment at 7th grade, shifting 8th-grade students exclusively into Catholic high schools, per Wikipedia. That policy helps explain why schools like Holy Name have leaned so heavily into expanding early childhood capacity rather than upper grades.

Honoring 135 Years of History

Holy Name of Jesus School traces its roots to September 1891, when it was founded by Jesuit Fr. Joseph Gerlach. The Sisters of Mercy took over administration in 1909 and laid the cornerstone for the Cromwell Place campus on July 24, 1932; classes first opened in that building on January 3, 1933, according to the school's history page. The new expansion's main entrance has been designated the Mother McAuley Entrance in honor of the Sisters of Mercy's founder, and the school sold commemorative bricks and pavers to alumni, families and supporters to help pay down construction debt.

The project comes amid a leadership transition at the parish. Rev. Mark E. Thibodeaux, S.J., who helped launch both the capital campaign and the Loyola partnership during his tenure as pastor of Holy Name of Jesus Parish and School, announced he would step down in April 2026, according to a message posted by Holy Name of Jesus Parish. Thibodeaux said he was transitioning to the Jesuit Novitiate in Denver to help train future pastors, leaving the school's next chapter — including the remaining balance on its 12-year construction loan — to new leadership.

The round was co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with participation from John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic and Susa Ventures, according to a company announcement. The round also included angel investments from Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao and Sholto Douglas, per reporting from Reuters. The fresh capital arrives as chipmakers across the industry scramble to solve what's become known as the AI memory wall.

Why Memory, Not Just Processing Power, Is the Bottleneck

Today's AI systems face a memory-bandwidth challenge: connecting processors with enough high-bandwidth memory is a key part of scaling performance.

Volantis says its approach sidesteps that constraint entirely. Its optical fabric connects large numbers of memory chips into a unified pool, aggregating their bandwidth as memory is added, the company said in its announcement. Reuters reports that Volantis's technology would let a single GPU pack 220 memory chips — nearly 28 times what Nvidia's current chips can hold.

Betting on Light Over Copper

The company's system relies on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, a type of laser technology. Volantis says its custom micro-VCSELs enable end-to-end links consuming less than one picojoule per bit, a power-efficiency figure detailed in its announcement.

Volantis says its A-1 architecture is designed to run models exceeding 20 trillion parameters at up to 10,000 tokens per second per user, while simultaneously increasing memory capacity and bandwidth by nearly two orders of magnitude, according to the company. Separately, Embedded.com reports that Volantis's photonic motherboard is designed to pool more than 100 terabytes of memory per chip at bandwidth above 30 terabytes per second. The outlet also reports that the company's first-generation motherboard uses silicon nitride wafers, with a next generation planned to use glass substrates, and that Volantis says it has protected its innovations with 25 patents.

Timeline: Samples This Year, Volume Next

Volantis plans to deliver its first integrated inference engines to customers in 2027, the company said in its funding announcement. Embedded.com reports a fourth-quarter 2026 market timeline for the first-generation motherboards. Reuters frames the 2027 timeline as Volantis aiming to deliver a chip that would speed up AI coding and other tasks.

Tapa Ghosh, the company's CEO and co-founder, framed the challenge as one of engineering discipline rather than scientific breakthrough. Ghosh told Reuters, “Advanced packaging is always to be respected — it's never trivial — but it's not necessarily a new thing to do.” Ghosh also told the outlet, “No one is going to win a Nobel Prize if our project works, but the good news is, they won't need to.”

Volantis was founded in 2022 by Ghosh and chief technology officer Roy Meade, according to Optics.org. The company previously raised a $9 million seed round, as reported by Optica-OPN, before closing Thursday's much larger Series A.

A Crowded Race to Replace Copper With Light

Volantis isn't alone in betting that light will replace copper inside AI data centers. Industry analysis from SemiEngineering forecasts that all high-bandwidth data-center interconnects could become optical within the next five years, with co-packaged optics expected to replace pluggable transceivers for scale-out connections and copper for scale-up connections.

Volantis faces well-funded rivals chasing the same prize. Lightmatter expects to ship co-packaged-optics parts built at TSMC and GlobalFoundries in 2028, according to Tom's Hardware. SemiEngineering also reports that Ayar Labs demonstrated an all-optical scale-up rack system alongside Taiwan's Wiwynn at the OFC conference in March.

The couple tied the knot in a small, private ceremony in Los Angeles, according to TMZ, which reported that Carrey and Min Ah had actually been spotted together privately as far back as 2022. KTLA reports that PEOPLE confirmed the marriage through Carrey's spokesperson on Wednesday. Details of the wedding venue and guest list have not been made public.

A Romance That Stayed Mostly Out of View

The earliest publicly reported sighting of Carrey and Min Ah together dates back to February 2022, when the pair were photographed leaving a charity comedy show in Los Angeles, according to News18. The outlet describes it as a relationship that mostly stayed out of the spotlight for years before the couple finally stepped into public view together.

That public debut came on February 26, 2026, when Carrey arrived at the César Awards in Paris with Min Ah at his side, as reported by News18. The appearance, roughly seven months before Wednesday's wedding, gave fans their first real look at the relationship that had quietly unfolded over the preceding years.

Carrey's Emotional César Awards Speech

Carrey was in Paris that night to receive an honorary lifetime achievement award at the 51st César Awards ceremony, as reported by KTLA. During his acceptance speech, the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective star thanked his family, including daughter Jane and grandson Jackson, as well as his father, Percy Joseph Carrey, for teaching him love, generosity and laughter.

It was during that same speech that Carrey turned his attention to Min Ah directly. “Thank you to my sublime companion, Min Ah … I love you, Min Ah,” he said, according to Open The Magazine. The moment, delivered on an international stage months before the couple's wedding, offered an early public glimpse of how much she meant to him.

Two Marriages That Came Before

Carrey's path to Wednesday's wedding includes two earlier marriages that both ended within a decade of each other. He married actress Melissa Womer in 1987; the couple had a daughter, Jane, before divorcing in 1995, Open The Magazine reports. Justjared.com also notes that Carrey was previously married to Womer, with whom he shares Jane.

In September 1996, Carrey married Lauren Holly, his co-star from Dumb and Dumber. That marriage lasted less than a year, with the pair separating in June 1997, according to the same Open The Magazine account. Min Ah now becomes the third woman to marry the actor, closing out a chapter that began quietly in 2022 and played out largely away from public attention until this year.

Empty Driver's Seat, a Dozen Dogs, and a Woman Searching for Her ID

According to the Summit County Sheriff's Office, the deputy watched the van weave down the center of the roadway as it approached Boreas Pass, the narrow, 11,481-foot unpaved mountain route that links Breckenridge to Como along an old 1880s narrow-gauge railroad bed, according to the White River National Forest. The road's upper stretches have no guardrails or street lighting, making it a particularly unforgiving place for an impaired driver after dark. As reported by the Denver Gazette, the deputy found the van empty up front and the woman rummaging in the back for her license.

The woman told the deputy she had been dancing around a little at a bar, the Gazette's report states, though the deputy noted that no bars were actually located in the immediate vicinity. The van smelled like alcohol, and the report described the woman as having fresh blood on her face and extremely dilated pupils. She was arrested on suspicion of DUI and taken to the Summit County Detention Facility without further incident.

Oktoberfest Weekend and a Mountain Town's Free-Ride Push

The stop came during the same weekend as Breckenridge's 2026 Oktoberfest, which ran along historic Main Street from September 25 through September 27 and drew thousands of visitors for beer, traditional food, and stein-hoisting competitions, per the same account from The Lodge at Breckenridge. The town and Summit County run free late-night transit during major festival weekends specifically to keep drinkers off the road, including the Breckenridge Free Ride bus, which runs until 11:15 PM, and the countywide Summit Stage buses — festival organizers have explicitly urged attendees to go car-free, according to the Breckenridge Free Ride Transit System.

A male passenger in the van told the deputy he was too drunk to drive the vehicle home himself, the Gazette's report notes. With the woman arrested, the deputy obtained her consent to drive the van to the man's house instead, where the 12 dogs were secured for the night.

Why Deputies Didn't Just Drop the Dogs at the Shelter

That decision solved an immediate logistical problem: the Summit County Animal Control and Shelter in Frisco, a division of the Sheriff's Office located roughly 10 miles north of Breckenridge on Nancy's Place, only keeps regular public hours from 10 AM to 4 PM, Monday through Saturday, according to Summit County Government. Deputies avoided bringing the 12 dogs to the shelter in the middle of the night, opting instead for the passenger's home. Countywide, Summit County Animal Control Officers responded to 1,240 calls for service in 2025 — covering everything from animal cruelty to strays to officer assists — while also conducting 1,229 proactive patrols, per Summit County Government's statistics.

Under Colorado Revised Statute § 42-4-1301, a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% or higher faces DUI per se charges, while a BAC between 0.05% and 0.08% creates a legal inference of Driving While Ability Impaired, according to FindLaw. Separately, Colorado Revised Statute § 18-9-202 classifies carrying or confining domestic animals inside a vehicle in a cruel or reckless manner as misdemeanor animal cruelty, per the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The dossier of facts in this case does not indicate whether animal cruelty charges under that statute have been filed. As with any case, the potential crimes described here are merely accusations until proven in court.

A Pattern of DUI Enforcement on Summit County's Mountain Roads

This is not the first high-profile DUI stop Summit County deputies have made near Breckenridge this year. In July, Hoodline's prior reporting detailed how deputies arrested an off-duty Florida police sergeant near Breckenridge back in February on DUI and lane-weaving charges, after which the sergeant was relieved of driving duties pending internal review. Together, the cases underscore how actively deputies patrol the area's winding mountain roads, where loose-dog calls and impaired-driving stops both show up regularly in the Sheriff's Office's periodic traffic and animal response summaries.

The homestand arrives at a pivotal moment for the Rattlers, who sit fifth in the 10-team Professional Bull Riders Team Series standings with a 12-11 record, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Fort Worth's opponents this weekend are bunched close by in the standings: the Austin Gamblers rank fourth at 13-10, the Arizona Ridge Riders sit sixth at 10-13, and the Oklahoma Wildcatters are eighth at 9-14. Atop the league, the Missouri Thunder and Nashville Stampede are tied at 16-7, with Missouri holding the points edge for the top spot.

Former Champs Looking to Climb

The Rattlers know what it takes to peak at the right time. Fort Worth won the 2023 PBR Teams Championship, defeating the Austin Gamblers 355.25 to 265.25 in Las Vegas to become the first professional sports team in the city's history to capture a national title — a milestone Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and the City Council formally recognized in September 2024, according to The Business Press. That championship run included a perfect 3-0 record on home dirt during the 2023 Rattler Days homestand, per PBR, a reminder of how much a hot weekend in Fort Worth can shift a season.

Heading into this year's homestand, the Rattlers enter with one of the league's top individual talents. Rider Brady Fielder ranks third in the league's individual MVP race this season, per the Star-Telegram's report. Fielder and fellow rider Daniel Keeping signed multi-year contracts ahead of the 2026 season, marking the franchise's first long-term core player signings, according to Dickies Arena.

A Coach Who Changed the Sport's Safety Rules

Leading the Rattlers is head coach Cody Lambert, a PBR co-founder whose influence extends well beyond Fort Worth. Lambert invented the protective vest now mandated across professional bull riding after witnessing the fatal 1989 injury of his friend Lane Frost at Cheyenne Frontier Days, according to information compiled from PBR's rider profile. He also served as PBR's Director of Livestock for more than two decades before taking over as the Rattlers' head coach in 2022, the same source notes.

Under PBR Team Series rules, coaches like Lambert do not simply send out their best rider at will — they receive pre-assigned bull matchings before each game, deciding strategically which of their five riders to pair against specific bulls, according to 360West Magazine. Rides are scored on an eight-second count, with points awarded for both rider control and the difficulty of the bull. That structure is part of what sets the PBR Team Series apart from traditional individual bull riding, which the league converted into a team format when it launched the series in 2022.

Big Business Behind the Chutes

The Rattlers compete as one of the league's founding franchises, with Ariat as title sponsor and Bass Pro Shops among the team's sponsors. The league itself has grown quickly since its 2022 launch, expanding from eight original teams to 10 by adding the Oklahoma Wildcatters and New York Mavericks.

That growth has come with serious corporate backing. In February 2025, TKO Group Holdings — the parent company of UFC and WWE — completed its $3.25 billion acquisition of PBR, along with IMG and On Location, from Endeavor Group Holdings, according to a filing with the SEC. The deal brought PBR's roughly 200 annual live events under TKO's global sports umbrella, the filing states.

What's at Stake for the Playoff Picture

Every point matters now. Each of the league's 10 franchises hosts an annual three-day homestand during the regular season, and this weekend's results in Fort Worth will factor directly into playoff seeding for the PBR Teams Championship, set for November 6-8 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, according to PBR Teams Championship. The top three seeds after the regular season earn a first-round bye in Las Vegas, where all 10 teams will compete in a progressive elimination format.

Dickies Arena, the Rattlers' home venue, is the setting for the homestand. Friday's game starts at 7:45 p.m., Saturday's at 6:45 p.m., and Sunday's at 1:45 p.m., with tickets available through Ticketmaster, PBR.com, by phone, or at the Dickies Arena box office, per the Star-Telegram.

The Spartan Classic has grown into one of the bigger single-day marching band gatherings in the region, and as reported by Shaw Local, this year's field includes Round Lake, Providence Catholic, Marengo, Bloom Township, Morris Community, Glenbrook South, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harold Richards, Buffalo Grove, Plainfield South, Joliet West, Grayslake Central, Rolling Meadows, Warren Township, Oswego, John Hersey and A.A. Stagg. The Cornerstone Drumline of Joliet is also slated to showcase its 2026 production during the day's events. Competing bands are split into three classes based on size, with top finishers in each class recognized alongside specialized caption awards for outstanding percussion, color guard, visual effects, drum major and music, plus an overall grand champion award for the highest score regardless of class size.

Scoring Rules and What Winners Take Home

Performances are judged using the Bands of America evaluation rubric, which scores music execution, visual performance and general effect — the same standardized system used across much of the state's competitive marching circuit. Caption award winners don't just walk away with trophies, either. The same report notes that top performers in categories like percussion and color guard receive practical equipment for their programs, including snare drums, flag packages, tuners and metronomes, turning a single Saturday's performance into a resource boost for visiting music departments. Proceeds from admission — $15 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, a $40 family package covering two adults and two students or seniors, and free entry for children 5 and younger — go toward funding Romeoville's own marching band program.

Romeoville's band has plenty of recent momentum to build on heading into its home event. The Marching Spartans took first place at the Stagg Marching Jamboree in Palos Hills last year and again at the Red and Black Fall Classic in DeKalb, and the band's percussion section earned a Best Percussion award at the Victor J. Andrew Marching Invitational in Tinley Park. At the 2025 Illinois State Marching Band Championships, Romeoville finished eighth in the Class 4A finals.

A Growing Ensemble Under Experienced Direction

This year's Marching Spartans field 135 members, up from the 125-piece roster that performed during the 2025 season, according to Patch. The band is led by Dr. DaJuan Brooks, who holds a Master of Music from Northwestern University, is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in wind conducting at the University of Michigan, and was named a national DCI Bluecoats Fellow in 2023 — a credential detailed by Bluecoats. Brooks also directs Chromium Winds, the indoor wind ensemble affiliated with The Cavaliers.

Percussion Director Adam Hill brings his own national profile to the program. He also leads the Pack Drumline, an ensemble that advanced to the finals of NBC's America's Got Talent: Fantasy League in February 2024, according to a post from the Romeoville High School Band Boosters Association. That kind of experience helps explain the percussion section's recent caption win at the Victor J. Andrew Marching Invitational.

Looking Ahead to State Finals

Romeoville's season continues through October 17, with the Illinois State Marching Band Championships serving as the ultimate destination. Those statewide finals are held each October at Illinois State University's Hancock Stadium in Normal, where top-scoring bands across six class divisions, 1A through 6A, compete in an evening program, as reported by The Pantagraph. Romeoville placed eighth in the Class 4A finals there in 2025.

The Spartan Classic and Romeoville's broader band program operate within Valley View Community Unit School District 365U, which educates roughly 14,500 students across 20 schools in Romeoville and Bolingbrook and counts more than 2,400 staff members among its ranks, making it one of Will County's largest employers. The district carries strong financial ratings of AA- from Standard & Poor's and Aa2 from Moody's and has operated on a balanced budget without an additional local tax levy since 2002, a financial footing that has helped sustain extracurricular and arts programs like the Marching Spartans. Romeoville High School itself enrolls about 1,850 students in grades 9 through 12, meaning the 135-member marching band represents roughly 7% of the student body. More information on Saturday's event is available at the band's website, romeovillehsband.wordpress.com.

According to The New York Times, Paxton was recorded saying of the convention's fallout: “it dropped our numbers. Everybody's numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” The fund-raiser was attended by roughly a dozen people, and the recording was made by an attendee who later provided it to the Times.

Three other people with knowledge of the event confirmed Paxton's attendance, the paper's report notes, and two of them recalled that he was asked directly about the convention's impact, with one recalling his answer about its negative consequences. The person who supplied the recording opposes Paxton's campaign and was granted anonymity because the remarks were made in private.

What Happened at the Dallas Convention

The comments trace back to a two-day Republican gathering in Dallas on Wednesday and Thursday, September 9 and 10, where Vice President JD Vance delivered the keynote address before Trump closed the convention as its final speaker, as The Texas Tribune reported. During his remarks, Trump joked about Paxton's appearance, clothing and speaking style. He also made clear he was not overly concerned with his relationship to Paxton personally, saying, “I really don't care. I don't have to speak to him. He's going to vote the way we would vote.”

Chron also covered the leaked audio, framing the recording as catching Paxton admitting the GOP event had tanked his numbers. A Paxton campaign spokesperson, Nick Maddux, denied that Paxton made the alleged comments about Trump's impact on his campaign, and said separately that Paxton's numbers had improved since early September and that the campaign's latest internal poll showed him leading by three points. Maddux also said Paxton looked forward to campaigning alongside Trump when the president came to Texas that week.

Polls Show a Tightening Race

The private remarks surfaced amid a run of public polling that has shown the Texas Senate race narrowing considerably since Paxton's May endorsement boost from Trump. A September survey from Emerson College Polling found Talarico edging Paxton 47% to 46% among likely voters, with Talarico gaining a point and Paxton losing one compared with August. That poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters with a credibility interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

A Marist Poll taken later in September found an even wider gap, with Talarico leading Paxton 50% to 44% among the 1,139 registered voters it surveyed, a sample carrying a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 points. The same poll found Democrats holding a three-point edge on the generic congressional ballot in Texas, 49% to 46%, and found Trump's approval among Texas registered voters underwater at 43% approval versus 55% disapproval. Texas voters told Marist they were more likely to see their congressional vote as one against Trump (39%) than one in support of him (25%). Still, 52% of voters overall told Marist they expect Paxton to win the race despite trailing in that survey.

Other Surveys, Other Numbers

Not every recent poll tells the same story by the same margin. A Decision Desk HQ polling average had Talarico ahead of Paxton 47.4% to 43.5%, according to The Hill. A Big Data Poll taken in late September found a smaller four-point gap, with 43.6% backing Talarico and 39.3% backing Paxton. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report currently rates the race a toss-up.

Trump has reaffirmed his endorsement of Paxton's candidacy multiple times in recent months, and while traveling in Ireland the following week, he called the Dallas convention very successful and said it had really helped Paxton — a characterization at odds with what Paxton reportedly told donors in Washington. In Dallas, Trump also said Paxton deserved to be Texas's next senator. The dossier does not resolve which account of the convention's effect on Paxton's standing is accurate, and Maddux's denial of the alleged remarks stands unaddressed by any further campaign statement in the available record.

Texas voters will settle the matter when the 2026 midterm elections are held on November 3.

According to the San Bernardino Sun, about 25 family members and supporters packed the courtroom when the jury's recommendation was read, according to Jacquelyn Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office. A multiple-murder special-circumstances allegation made Lucero eligible for the death penalty in the case. Detectives believe Villareal and her sons left the Victorville home they shared with Lucero and were killed at an unknown location before their bodies were left in the desert, per the same account.

How the Bodies Were Found and the Manhunt That Followed

Deputies found the Victorville home shared by Villareal and Lucero empty on April 29, 2020, while an off-roader discovered the victims' remains that same day in a desert area near Waalew Road and Corwin Road in Apple Valley, roughly eight miles from the home, according to VVNG. The emergency response had been triggered after a child inside the home called an older sibling to report hiding in a bathroom during a domestic argument, which led the boy's biological father to enter the house, discover blood, and contact police, VVNG reported.

Lucero fled the area and was arrested in Colorado on April 30, 2020, after leading deputies on a high-speed chase in a stolen vehicle along Interstate 70 that ended in a crash near Red Cliff, according to 9News. Deputies had initially responded to a report of a stolen vehicle in Dotsero before the pursuit began. During the early hours of the search, law enforcement had broadcast a warning for Lucero and sought a silver 2008 Ford Explorer bearing California license plate 6HCF706, CBS News reported, noting that Lucero abandoned his own vehicle before acquiring the stolen one in Colorado.

From Not Guilty to Guilty but Insane

Lucero initially entered pleas of not guilty, but he changed his pleas to guilty but insane on August 5, 2026. A jury subsequently found that he was sane, clearing the way for the penalty phase that concluded with the death recommendation. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records show Lucero served three prison sentences out of San Bernardino County between 2004 and 2018 and was paroled in 2018, then violated that parole by failing to report on April 30 of that year.

Lucero is scheduled to appear at the San Bernardino Justice Center on December 4, where Superior Court Judge Cheryl C. Kersey will either affirm the jury's death recommendation or sentence him to life in prison without parole.

Why a Death Sentence May Never Lead to Execution

Even if Judge Kersey affirms the jury's recommendation, Lucero will not face execution under the current administration. Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-09-19 on March 13, 2019, placing an executive moratorium on the death penalty in California, closing San Quentin's execution chamber and repealing lethal injection protocols, according to the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. The order grants reprieves without altering underlying criminal convictions or sentences.

As of September 2026, California retains the nation's largest death row population with 564 condemned inmates, despite having executed no prisoners since 2006, according to CalMatters, which reports that advocates are currently pressing Newsom for mass commutations before he leaves office. Under Proposition 66, approved by California voters in 2016, condemned prisoners no longer must be housed exclusively at San Quentin and can be transferred to any state facility offering adequate security, per the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

San Bernardino County is one of five Southern California counties that produce a disproportionately high number of death sentences statewide, maintaining a capital sentencing rate roughly 40 percent higher than the California average, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That pattern has continued locally: San Bernardino County prosecutors are also seeking capital punishment in the 2024 El Mirage killings, where District Attorney Jason Anderson's office filed death penalty charges against two co-defendants.

The dispute traces back to an August 24 report from WWL-TV investigative reporter David Hammer detailing how Holmes’ former fiancé, Arthur Allen, transferred ownership of a house in the English Turn neighborhood to Holmes while he was negotiating a federal fraud plea deal. According to WWL-TV, the station’s video initially showed an image of the public document transferring the house, including the home’s address, and displayed the license plate of a Corvette leased by Allen, which WWL says it obtained from a confidential source. The station has said Holmes has never disputed the accuracy of its reporting.

The property transfer carried real consequences in federal court. U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey said he only learned about the transfer after watching the WWL report, and he wrote that Allen had donated the remaining portion of his home ownership within days of being formally charged, according to nola.com. Zainey had been prepared to sentence Allen to probation but instead denied Allen’s request to soften his punishment and sentenced him to two years in federal custody. Allen had pleaded guilty to providing a false statement to a federal agency and defrauding Covid-relief programs of $712,000, and he is expected to pay some or all of that amount in restitution under federal sentencing rules. Holmes, who is running for reelection in New Orleans’s fall municipal cycle, has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the transfer.

A Letter, Then a Police Complaint

Before Holmes went to police, Criminal District Court Judicial Administrator Rob Kazik sent a letter dated September 10 to WWL-TV General Manager Tod Smith demanding the station remove Holmes’ address and the Corvette’s license plate number within 72 hours. Kazik also asked WWL to reveal its anonymous sources, a request the station declined. The report notes that WWL removed the images from its online report within 24 hours of the letter and later reposted the videos with the address and license plate blurred.

Holmes filed her criminal complaint with the NOPD First District the day after Kazik’s letter went out, invoking Louisiana Revised Statute 44:11.2, which bars dissemination of certain officials’ personal information and had allowed those who shared such information 72 hours to remove it. The complication is one of timing: Act 543 of 2026, which took effect August 1, stripped references to private third parties from the statute and repealed its criminal penalty provision entirely, meaning the law Holmes cited no longer carried the misdemeanor punishment of up to 90 days’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine it once did, as reported by the Guardian.

Threats and a Political Backdrop

Holmes has said that revealing her address and license plate put her at risk, and her office received calls containing racial epithets. Her campaign has said no one should threaten judges with hate speech or photograph their cars in a secure garage to win a political campaign. First Amendment attorneys, however, have said Holmes’ request to police threatened news organizations’ rights, and they have questioned the constitutionality of the statute she invoked.

Bruce Hamilton, director of Tulane University’s First Amendment Clinic, called Holmes’ request a phenomenally bad decision. He said attempts to criminalize news gathering and reporting could cause journalists to self-censor, and that special statutory privacy protections carved out for certain individuals amount to bad policy. Hamilton added that criminalizing news gathering could ultimately produce a less-informed public and a less robust marketplace of ideas.

Part of a Wider Pattern at the Courthouse

The complaint against WWL-TV is not an isolated flashpoint between journalists and Louisiana’s court system. On July 2, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office court security officers handcuffed WWL-TV producer Danny Monteverde and First Amendment lawyer Elana M. Beiser in a courthouse hallway after the pair asked Criminal District Court Judge Leon Roche to reopen his courtroom for the return of a grand jury indictment naming Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill. Monteverde and Beiser were briefly detained and released without charges; Louisiana law requires grand jury indictments handed up in state courts to be returned in open court, according to nola.com. The Guardian has described the complaint against WWL-TV as only the latest in a series of high-profile matters pitting Louisiana journalists against members of the state’s court system.

The project sits between Cleavers and Byblos, with its upstairs lounge, Vango, nearby, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The space has sat vacant since Franklin left in 2021, and To, Ng, and Scott will all be partners in the new venture. A name and an opening date have not yet been announced.

A Split Personality Across Two Floors

The new bar will divide its identity between two very different rooms. The long, narrow lower level is designed to be calm, dark, and intimate, built around a single cocktail theme that could stay on the menu for 12 to 18 months, the Inquirer reports. Upstairs will be the opposite: brighter, livelier, and built to handle a much bigger crowd.

The rooms will offer two contrasting experiences. The upstairs menu will differ from the downstairs cocktail program, with selections likely sticking around for about a year.

Why Almanac Needs More Room

Almanac has built a reputation well beyond its size. The bar was named a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Bar, a distinction also noted by Billy Penn, which listed it among the city's semifinalists in Old City. Bon Appetit separately profiled Almanac.

But that acclaim has come with a catch: capacity. Almanac's small footprint limits how many people can be served each night. The new project is meant to fix that by increasing volume upstairs so more guests can experience Scott's hospitality without needing a reservation, while the downstairs room preserves the intimate experience Almanac is known for.

Almanac itself opened in 2024 above Ogawa Sushi & Kappo in Old City. The bar's evolution has been notable in its own right; according to Bon Appetit, it scaled up from a reservation-only spot run by one bartender three nights a week into a walk-in-friendly hang open six nights a week, with a menu that changes every two or three weeks based on seasonal ingredients. Highballs remain a huge part of the program, and the bar ferments its own sodas and kombucha alongside house-made tinctures, bitters, liqueurs, amari, and vermouths.

How the Partnership Came Together

The team's collaboration traces back to 2024, when the Drexel Food Lab connected To and Ng with Danny Childs, who then recruited Scott, his former colleague at Cherry Hill's Farm & Fisherman, to run Almanac. That same Drexel Food Lab is now developing a small-bites menu for the new Rittenhouse-area project, and kitchen and prep staff will work across both floors.

Behind Bars Agency of Oslo is designing a customized downstairs bar system that will let two bartenders work independently, per the Inquirer's reporting. Philadelphia designer Ian Chapin is handling the interiors, with plans to divide the downstairs room into smaller lounge areas while keeping sightlines open to the bar. Upstairs will get custom lighting and metalwork, and Kylie Silvestri will oversee graphic design for the project.

Building a More Durable Business

The expansion will give the team more room to serve guests across both floors.

No timeline has been set for construction or an opening, and the bar's eventual name remains unannounced. For now, Rittenhouse-area drinkers will have to wait to see whether the team can translate Almanac's small-room magic into a room built for a crowd.

The settlement in Pigford v. Glickman followed a class-action lawsuit filed in 1997 by Black farmers who said the USDA had systematically denied or delayed loans through local county committees, according to KCUR. That year, the USDA admitted its programs had routinely discriminated against Black farmers. The case named then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman as defendant, and its settlement promised nearly $2.2 billion in collective compensation. KCUR reports that the case became the largest civil rights court case in U.S. history.

Timothy Pigford, the case’s lead plaintiff, said in 1996 that Black farmers could not get loans and that their loans were deliberately delayed when they did. He died this year at age 74, KCUR reports. Shirlette Ammons, creator of the six-part podcast series Tending about the lawsuit and the discrimination behind it, said the USDA had a long history of keeping Black people from owning and stewarding land.

A Kansas Farm Lost to Foreclosure

A 2012 affidavit from a regional credit association president admitted discriminatory treatment of Bates, according to KCUR. The account traces the dispute to the early 1980s, when bad weather destroyed crops on Bates’s Nicodemus farm and the USDA denied his request to extend his loans. His farm was foreclosed on soon after. KCUR reports that the Production Credit Association of Stockton, Kansas, preferred foreclosing on Bates even if it meant losing money, and that farmland taken from foreclosed Black residents in the area was transferred to white neighbors.

Despite his role as an original plaintiff, Bates and his family received no check from the Pigford v. Glickman settlement, and by the time of his death in 2022, Nicodemus residents were no longer actively farming, according to the same reporting. His niece, Dr. Johnella Holmes, now serves as president of the Kansas Black Farmers Association, an organization founded in Nicodemus in 1999 that works to preserve the legacy of Black agriculturalists in Kansas and educate younger generations on sustainable farming and land preservation. Holmes said her uncle's activism made a lasting impact.

Nicodemus's Place in Black History

Nicodemus was founded in 1877 by formerly enslaved Black people and is recognized as the last remaining African American settlement west of the Mississippi River. Established by roughly 350 Black Exodusters primarily from Kentucky, the town reached a peak population of about 600 in the late 1880s before rail lines bypassed it, and fewer than 40 residents live there today, according to the National Park Service. Congress designated the settlement's five surviving structures — including the St. Francis Hotel, the AME Church, and the Township Hall — as the Nicodemus National Historic Site in 1996. Nicodemus still holds an annual Emancipation/Homecoming celebration every late July.

Decades of Legal Fights Over Compensation

The scale of the underlying settlement helps explain why so many claims, including the Bates family's, remain unresolved decades later. Strict notification rules and gaps in legal representation meant more than 70,000 applicants missed the original September 12, 2000, filing deadline for the Pigford consent decree, according to a Congressional Research Service report. By late 2011, about $1.06 billion in direct cash relief, tax payments, and debt relief had gone to more than 15,600 approved class members under the settlement's Track A and Track B processes, per the same report. Congress later included a provision in the 2008 Farm Bill letting late filers petition federal court for their own determinations.

That provision led to a second wave of compensation. In December 2010, President Barack Obama signed legislation appropriating $1.15 billion for a follow-up claims process known as Pigford II, formally In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation, which covered late filers who had been shut out of the original 1999 settlement. Even that expansion didn't close every gap: more recent federal efforts have tried to reach farmers still left behind. In July 2024, the USDA completed payouts under the Inflation Reduction Act's Section 22007 Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, issuing $2.2 billion to more than 43,000 farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who experienced USDA lending discrimination before 2021, according to a Roanoke Cooperative news release. Under that 2024 distribution, more than 23,000 operating or former farmers received individual awards between $10,000 and $500,000, averaging nearly $82,000, while more than 20,000 prospective farmers who were prevented from ever starting operations received smaller awards of $3,500 to $6,000, per the Intertribal Agriculture Council.

Other cases and local farm data

A separate USDA discrimination case involved Native American farmers and ranchers: in October 2010, the Obama administration announced a $760 million settlement to resolve allegations of loan discrimination, according to The Washington Post. The available details distinguish the case by its claimants and settlement amount, but do not establish its eligibility rules or how relief was distributed. For local agricultural context, the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 347 farms in Graham County, where Nicodemus is located, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. That countywide total does not provide a comparison of Black farm operators or Black-operated acreage with Kansas overall.

A Legacy of Land Loss

The Bates family's story reflects a much larger national pattern. The number of Black farmers in the United States fell from a peak of nearly 950,000 in 1920, when they owned 16 to 19 million acres, to fewer than 20,000 by the late 1990s — a loss of more than 90% of Black-owned farmland, according to USDA Census of Agriculture data analyzed by the American Economic Association. A 2022 study published in AEA Papers and Proceedings estimated that discriminatory USDA lending practices and land dispossession cost Black farmers roughly $326 billion in lost agricultural property value, compounded between 1920 and 1997.

For a settlement meant to make families whole, those numbers underscore what the Kansas Black Farmers Association is still working against in Nicodemus. The Tending podcast series that chronicles Bates's story and the broader discrimination case was reported and produced by Ammons, Mosi Secret, and Andrea Weigl, with additional reporting from David Condos and the Kansas News Service, according to KCUR's account. Holmes and the association continue pushing to preserve what farmland and history remain in the settlement her uncle once called home.

Zoe Sinclair, an assistant coach for the reigning NCHSAA Class 4A state champions, is currently battling cancer for a second time, according to the Charlotte Observer. Freshman Avery Caruso, who was diagnosed with leukemia at age 9 and underwent three years of chemotherapy, has now been cancer-free for three years, the newspaper reported. Caruso, now 15 and carrying a 4.5 GPA, still deals with memory problems connected to her treatment, per the same account.

A Freshman's Long Road Back to the Court

Caruso did not start playing volleyball until after she finished cancer treatment, and coach Bethany Kiley said she was not guaranteed a roster spot when she arrived, the Observer reported. She has since earned a role in the Knights' back row. Her older sister, Riley Caruso, who began playing volleyball in middle school and is committed to Army volleyball, said the team thrives under pressure, according to the report.

Avery Caruso credited support from her family and her faith in God for getting her through treatment, and said she fell in love with volleyball afterward, per the Observer's reporting. Kiley said the team's shared experience with cancer, through players and coaches alike, has made the group closer and more determined. Senior London Stewart said that cohesiveness carries directly into the team's winning mentality, the newspaper noted.

A Dominant Night on the Court

The Go Gold match itself was no contest. Lake Norman Charter swept Community School of Davidson 3-0, with Stewart posting 15 kills and Julia Pacitto adding 12. Riley Caruso and Avery Caruso each contributed 8 assists and 6 digs, while libero Danielle Lewis, who is committed to Missouri volleyball, tallied 2 aces and 15 digs, according to the Observer.

The win carried extra weight given the opponent: Community School of Davidson entered the match as the reigning NCHSAA Class 2A state volleyball champion, having claimed that title on November 1, 2025, at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, according to NCHSAA and NCVBCA records. Beating a fellow reigning champion, even one from a different classification, underscored the level of competition the Knights have been chasing down all season.

Chasing a Second Straight Title

Lake Norman Charter enters the stretch run of the season at 19-1, having shut out 17 opponents and dropped just 5 of 57 sets played, per the Observer's reporting. The Knights carried a state-best 43-match winning streak into a September 24 showdown with Marvin Ridge, the reigning Class 7A state champion, which snapped that streak with a 3-0 win, according to HighSchoolOT. Stewart had 22 kills in that loss, and Marvin Ridge is ranked No. 3 overall in North Carolina, per the Observer.

Despite the loss, MaxPreps still ranked Lake Norman Charter No. 1 overall among North Carolina girls volleyball teams as of late September, with an 18-1 record and a 31.52 strength rating in the outlet's proprietary formula. The Knights had four regular-season matches remaining as they aim to repeat as state champion in their classification, the Observer reported.

The Classification Shakeup Behind the Matchups

Marvin Ridge's presence in Class 7A while Lake Norman Charter competes in Class 4A traces back to a historic overhaul. Starting with the 2025-26 academic year, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association expanded from four classifications to eight for the first time in its 112-year history, according to NC Football News. The realignment doubled the number of statewide postseason championship brackets, setting up the kind of cross-classification, champion-versus-champion matchups the Knights have now faced twice this fall.

Building on a Historic Championship Run

Lake Norman Charter's current title defense stems from a comeback that still stands as the defining moment in program history. In the 2025 Class 4A state final at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem, the Knights overcame a 5-0 deficit in the decisive fifth set against Uwharrie Charter, scoring 15 of the final 19 points to win 3-2, according to HighSchoolOT. Stewart was named the match's Most Valuable Player, and the North Carolina Volleyball Coaches Association recognized Kiley as head coach of that championship team following the program's undefeated late-season run.

Before that 2025 playoff run, Lake Norman Charter had never advanced beyond the third round of the state playoffs, per HighSchoolOT. The tuition-free, K-12 charter school in Huntersville, which opened its high school campus in 2007 and competes in the Catawba Shores Athletic Conference, has since built on that breakthrough. In July, Lake Norman Publications reported that Lake Norman Charter won the 2025-26 NCHSAA Class 4A Wells Fargo Cup, honoring the top overall high school athletic program in its classification, after previously winning the 3A version of the award the prior school year.

The 2026 NCHSAA volleyball regional playoffs are set to begin October 27, with the state finals scheduled for October 30-31. For a program that once couldn't get past the third round and now plays through personal battles with cancer as motivation, the coming weeks offer a chance to defend the title that changed everything.

According to SFist, gunfire was reported around 11:09 p.m. Tuesday near Haight and Ashbury streets, and San Francisco police responded to the scene within four minutes. Officers did not find any injured victims at the intersection itself, but they did turn up multiple spent shell casings. A person with a gunshot wound separately arrived at an area hospital that night, though police have not confirmed any link between that patient and the gunfire at Haight and Ashbury.

Responding officers also discovered physical property damage caused by gunfire in addition to the shell casings, according to reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle, which placed the time of the SFPD response at around 11:13 p.m. Tuesday. The same report, per police dispatch records, noted multiple calls about shots fired at other nearby intersections within minutes of the initial 11:09 p.m. report — including callers who said they heard shots at Fulton and Lyon streets, and others who reported gunfire at Haight and Masonic streets.

Open Questions on Suspects and Scope

It remains unclear whether a single shooter was responsible for gunfire reported across multiple intersections, or whether separate incidents were unfolding simultaneously in the same stretch of the neighborhood. Police have not released suspect information, and no arrests had been announced as of Tuesday night. SFist's report also notes that gunfire is not common in the Haight-Ashbury vicinity, even as the outlet recalled a 2021 homicide near Haight and Masonic.

The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood falls within the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Police Department's Park District Station at 1899 Waller Street, which deploys dedicated foot-beat patrol officers along the Haight Street commercial corridor, according to the department. Those officers typically engage with merchants and respond to calls along the corridor, though Tuesday night's gunfire erupted well after the evening foot-traffic hours when those patrols are most visible.

A Corner With a Troubled History

This is not the first time gunfire has rattled the intersection. In February 2020, an off-duty FBI agent shot a local musician twice in the chest near Haight and Ashbury, leaving the victim with non-life-threatening injuries, as Hoodline reported at the time. And in October 2021, a Friday afternoon shooting along Upper Haight near Central Avenue shattered a window at Ritual Coffee Roasters, damaged several parked vehicles, and left one victim critically injured.

Should investigators determine the shots were fired recklessly rather than at a specific target, California Penal Code Section 246.3 makes willfully discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner punishable by up to a year in county jail or state prison, according to FindLaw. If evidence instead shows a shooter targeting individuals, assault with a firearm under Penal Code Section 245(a)(2) may be at issue.

Gunfire Amid a Broader Safety Decline

Tuesday's shooting lands against a backdrop of improving citywide crime numbers. San Francisco Police Department data through July 5, 2026, recorded 44 fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents citywide resulting in 51 victims, an 18% decline in total gun violence compared to the same period in 2025. The city also logged 28 homicides in 2025 — the lowest annual count since 1954 — alongside double-digit drops in major violent and property crime categories, according to an SFPD report released in January. Total violent crimes were down 9% year-to-date as of July, even with a temporary early-year uptick in homicide cases, per the same SFPD data.

The shooting also arrives amid an unrelated but notable moment for the Doolan-Larson building that anchors the Haight and Ashbury corner. Hoodline reported on a leasing dispute this month in which SF Heritage proposed handing the landmark building to KEXP and the Blue Bear School of Music, drawing pushback from six ground-floor merchants currently facing eviction from the historic counterculture corner.

Settlement Papers Filed Ahead of Dismissal Deadline

Guereque's attorney filed court papers notifying Judge Wendy Chang of a conditional resolution, according to court papers, with the case expected to face a dismissal request deadline of November 30. The settlement's terms were not disclosed. Guereque, 32, filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and St. Gregory the Great School, alleging wrongful termination and a violation of the state Labor Code, according to mynewsla.com.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles and St. Gregory the Great School denied Guereque's allegations in court papers and argued her claims were barred by the statute of limitations. The defendants also stated that their actions regarding Guereque were taken for legitimate purposes, as reported by MyNewsLA.com.

Allegations of Rough Treatment Toward Young Students

Guereque was hired as an instructional assistant in August 2023, with duties that included making copies of course materials, supervising students during lunch and recess, and distributing papers. Her lawsuit alleges that a vice principal pushed a kindergarten student into a room, then jerked him by one wrist, grabbed him under the arms, lifted him to her face and screamed at him before bringing him down to the floor, where he fell on his buttocks and hit his head, according to the mynewsla.com report that first detailed the case.

The suit also alleges that the vice principal grabbed a 4-year-old student by one wrist and took him to his classroom, and that she directed students to clean lunch tables with disinfectant wipes despite manufacturer instructions. Separately, the lawsuit alleges the vice principal restricted student access to restrooms by locking doors or standing in front of them, and that a kindergartener had an accident after being denied access, the outlet reported.

Principal Allegedly Dismissed Complaints as Vice Principal's 'Reputation'

When Guereque reported the alleged student misconduct to the principal, the principal allegedly acknowledged the vice principal had “a reputation” before telling Guereque she “needed to toughen up and deal with it,” according to the lawsuit. The principal reportedly only later said, “fine, I'll investigate it.” Guereque, who the suit says was a mandatory reporter of alleged child abuse, also notified the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and a priest with the archdiocese about the allegations.

A separate incident described in the suit filed in June 2025 states that Guereque reported concerns in June 2025 about a student who was having trouble breathing and needed an inhaler and supervision until his mother arrived at school. The principal allegedly ordered Guereque back to her classroom after she brought the student to the administration offices, as noted by MyNewsLA.com.

Suspension and Termination Followed Complaints

Guereque alleges she was suspended in November 2024 for alleged insubordination, escorted off the property and terminated the next day, per a report from MyNewsLA.com. She has characterized the sequence as retaliation for her complaints about the vice principal's alleged conduct toward students.

The dispute later moved into a discovery fight over internal school records. Judge Wendy Chang ordered the defendants to turn over some of the internal documents sought by Guereque's attorneys and imposed $8,480 in sanctions, the outlet reported in a follow-up account of the case. The order pertained to portions of the vice principal's personnel file relating to a suspected child abuse report within the past five years, as well as the turnover of the principal's personnel file pertaining to any complaints of retaliation, whistleblower retaliation or wrongful termination within the same five-year window.

At the time of that ruling, the archdiocese said it had not yet been served with the complaint and that no comment could be made on its merits because it considered the matter a personnel issue. Cases alleging retaliation against school employees who report safety concerns to outside authorities have surfaced elsewhere in California; a former Elk Grove Unified School District social worker, for instance, has claimed the district retaliated against her after she provided documents to law enforcement during a threat investigation, according to The Sacramento Bee. The outcome of the Guereque settlement's specific terms remains undisclosed as the November 30 dismissal deadline approaches.

The findings come from the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the CFPB, which released a report Wednesday, September 30, titled “CFPB: Hardware Assets at Former Regional Offices May Not Be Appropriately Secured.” As reported by Bloomberg, the audit warns that government databases containing sensitive financial information for millions of Americans may have been placed at risk after the Trump administration gutted the agency last year. The four abandoned regional offices were located in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco, and the bureau also terminated the lease on its Washington, D.C. headquarters six years early in February 2026, according to American Banker.

Then-Acting Director Russell Vought ordered the CFPB to terminate the leases on those four regional offices in 2025, Bloomberg reports, and the bureau abandoned technology assets at the sites in the process. The security of equipment or information stored at the locations could not be validated, according to the audit.

A Cybersecurity Program Already in Decline

The hardware concerns don't exist in isolation. An October 31, 2025 audit from the Federal Reserve OIG downgraded the CFPB's overall information security program maturity from Level 4, described as “managed and measurable,” down to Level 2, or “defined,” in fiscal year 2025 — and declared the bureau's cybersecurity program “not effective,” per the inspector general's own findings. The same October 2025 report found that the CFPB maintains an extensive inventory of aging, unassigned IT hardware assets lacking standardized storage, tracking, or disposal protocols, according to the Federal Reserve's oversight office.

That decline tracks with a broader thinning of the bureau's risk-management apparatus. The CFPB's Enterprise Risk Management program was placed on hold in March 2025 after the departure of former Chief Risk Officer Marianne Roth and other key risk personnel whose positions were never backfilled, American Banker reported. The pause coincided with the bureau's continued responsibility for sensitive consumer financial records.

Contracts Cut, Oversight Interrupted

In February 2025, CFPB leadership issued stop-work orders or termination notices affecting nearly all of the agency's 525 contracts, ultimately canceling 79 of them before court intervention halted further cancellations, according to an August 2026 report from the Federal Reserve inspector general. Those abrupt contract terminations severed external IT continuous-monitoring and technical support services the bureau had relied on, the same report found.

The fallout extended into the bureau's core technology systems. On June 1, 2026, the Federal Reserve OIG terminated security control reviews for three CFPB systems after discovering the agency was operating them without formal Authorizations to Operate or documented risk assessments, as required under federal FISMA regulations.

Staffing Cuts and a Forced Return to Washington

The technology troubles have unfolded alongside a sweeping reduction in the bureau's workforce. The U.S. Department of Justice submitted a court proposal in April to permanently trim CFPB staffing to roughly 556 workers, a move that would eliminate 85% of supervision staff and 80% of enforcement staff, Hoodline previously reported. The employee union NTEU has challenged the staffing cuts in federal appellate court.

Separately, internal memos issued in May ordered 1,100 employees nationwide — including 450 regional staff — to end remote telework and report in person to a new Washington headquarters at 445 12th St. N.W. by late August, according to the Consumer Finance Monitor. The building is the former headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission. CFPB Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta stepped in as acting director on August 1, succeeding Vought, who had led the agency's initial 2025 office closures and restructuring.

It remains unclear how, or whether, the abandoned hardware and records at the four closed regional offices will be audited and secured going forward, as ongoing litigation with NTEU and court injunctions continue to shape the bureau's operations. The bureau's own acknowledgment that it cannot validate the security of equipment at those sites leaves open the question of what, if anything, has been exposed in the meantime.

According to City of Houston Newsroom, Houston Fire Department paramedics pronounced the female driver dead at the scene. One officer was transported to an area hospital with what authorities described as minor injuries. The young woman's identity has not yet been released and remains pending verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, which under Chapter 49.25 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure serves as the county's official medicolegal agency tasked with determining cause and manner of death and completing toxicology testing in traffic fatalities.

The HPD Vehicular Crimes Division is continuing to investigate the crash, with Sergeant E. Fendia and Officer J. Baker listed on the case, which carries case number 124079926-B, per the same City of Houston Newsroom report. No additional details about what led up to the impact, including speed or possible distraction, have been released.

A Stretch of Freeway Known for Danger

Wednesday's crash is at least the third fatal or near-fatal incident to strike the Eastex Freeway corridor this year. In January, Hoodline reported on a chain-reaction crash during a lane closure on the same freeway that killed a 23-year-old woman and injured several others. In late August, a wrong-way crash also killed a driver along the Eastex Freeway, and in July, two people died after an SUV collided with an 18-wheeler and caught fire near Beltway 8, as reported by Click2Houston.

The corridor's danger is backed by state data. The Eastex Freeway segment between SH 288 and I-10 ranks as the second most congested road stretch in all of Texas, according to a 2025 TxDOT and Texas A&M Transportation Institute report cited by Joe I. Zaid & Associates. That level of congestion makes lane closures and stationary emergency vehicles especially vulnerable to late-night, high-speed impacts.

Move Over Law Carries Steeper Penalties Since 2023

Texas Transportation Code § 545.157, the state's Move Over or Slow Down law, requires drivers approaching a stationary emergency vehicle with flashing lights to either change lanes away from it or slow to 20 mph below the posted speed limit. Under House Bill 898, which took effect in September 2023, penalties for violating the law increased to fines between $500 and $1,250 for a first offense, and violations resulting in bodily injury are now punishable as a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail, according to records from LegiScan.

Despite the tougher penalties, roadside collisions involving stationary patrol vehicles keep happening across the Houston area. Earlier Tuesday, Hoodline reported on a nearly identical crash on the 610 Loop, where a speeding pickup truck struck a parked HPD cruiser, killing the driver and injuring an officer.

The risk extends beyond Houston as well. In August, Hoodline covered the case of Austin County Deputy Alyssa Lopez, who faced surgery after being struck while working a roadside stop, a case that similarly drew attention to Move Over law enforcement and the dangers officers face on Texas roads.

Countywide Numbers Paint a Grim Picture

Harris County recorded 546 fatal crashes resulting in 579 traffic deaths in 2024, leading every county in Texas in overall traffic fatalities, according to the Texas Department of Transportation's 2024 Crash Facts Report cited by Todd E. Webb Law. Within city limits, Houston logged 301 motor vehicle traffic fatalities in 2024, a new citywide record that surpassed the previous high of 295 deaths set in 2021, per TxDOT data reported by Houston Public Media and cited by Hollingsworth Law Firm.

No further information about the circumstances leading up to Wednesday's crash, including whether speed or distraction played a role, has been released. The HPD Vehicular Crimes Division's investigation remains ongoing, and the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has not yet confirmed the victim's identity.

Torres was elected to represent District 3 in November 2025 for a four-year term that was supposed to run through 2029, according to the Denver Gazette. His resignation followed a 26-slide presentation delivered by Board President Xóchitl Gaytán in September, in which she accused Torres and Vice President Monica Hunter of 19 policy violations collectively, as detailed by Chalkbeat. The allegations against Torres reportedly included repeatedly missing board meetings, work sessions, Latino Education Advisory Committee meetings, and Finance and Audit Committee meetings in his role as treasurer. Torres defended himself during board meetings before ultimately stepping down, per the same outlet's reporting.

A Board Already Under Scrutiny

Torres' exit is only part of a broader pattern of discord on the Denver board. Gaytán simultaneously accused Vice President Monica Hunter of policy violations, including alleged antisemitic slurs directed at fellow board member Amy Klein Molk, according to 9News. The allegations prompted the board to schedule a vote Thursday — the same day Torres resigned — on launching an independent investigation into Hunter. Hunter has denied the allegations and said she welcomes an independent review, the station reported.

CBS News Colorado framed Torres’ resignation as occurring amid a lack of focus on students. Before joining the board, Torres worked as a Denver Public Schools teacher, and he currently serves as a faculty member and teacher coach at the Metropolitan State University of Denver School of Education, according to the Denver Gazette. He had cited that classroom experience, along with his role as a parent, when he ran for the seat last year.

Filling the Vacant Seat

Colorado law lays out a clear process for what happens next. Under Colorado Revised Statutes § 22-31-129, the board must pass a resolution declaring the District 3 seat vacant at the next board meeting immediately following the vacancy, then appoint a replacement within 60 days; if the board has not made an appointment within 60 days, the board president appoints a replacement, according to FindLaw. If the vacancy occurs more than 90 days before the next biennial school election and more than two years remain, the appointee serves until that election, when a successor for the remainder of the term is elected and qualified.

This isn't the board's first attempt to address its internal dysfunction. In August, the board held a daylong retreat aimed at restoring trust, improving civility, and reforming how agendas get set, following months of squabbling, Chalkbeat reported. Members acknowledged during that session that better collaboration was needed — an acknowledgment that now looks premature given the events of the past few weeks.

Administrative Fallout and the Ballot Measure

The board-level turmoil has reportedly rattled district leadership too. An internal email obtained by news outlets in June revealed that Superintendent Alex Marrero was actively seeking executive roles in other school districts, citing concerns that board members were overly micromanaging administrative matters.

The resignation lands just weeks before Denver voters decide on a $43.9 million mill levy override on the November ballot, a measure that would fund $1,750 base pay increases for district staff along with mental health and career programs, as Hoodline previously reported. It marks the district's first request for new operational tax revenue in years, adding fiscal stakes to a governance crisis already playing out in public.

The current conflicts follow the November 2025 election, after voters swept multiple incumbents from the board in 2023, the Denver Gazette reported. Despite that earlier turnover, interpersonal friction has persisted among board members. Denver Public Schools remains Colorado's largest school district, serving approximately 89,000 students across nearly 200 campuses, according to The Colorado Sun, which also notes the district is grappling with declining enrollment even as its board struggles to keep its own house in order.

According to CBS News, officers were called to the Starbucks at 3330 Central St., near Crawford Avenue and Gross Point Road in northwest Evanston, at 1 p.m. on July 28. Police say Russell appeared to be recording the two teens, ages 16 and 17, with his cellphone, and that he exposed himself and touched his genitals in front of them. One of the teens confronted him before he left the scene ahead of officers' arrival, the outlet reports.

Investigation Led to Chicago Address

The case sat open for weeks before detectives connected Russell to the incident. Per the same CBS Chicago report, an Evanston police investigation identified Russell as a suspect, and the department's Special Operations Group later located his vehicle parked in front of his residence on Chicago's South Side.

Detectives took Russell into custody there, according to police. He appeared before a judge at the Skokie Cook County Courthouse and remained in custody as of Thursday, the station reported, with a court date set for Oct. 14.

A Similar Case Months Earlier in Joliet

The Evanston allegations echo an earlier case involving Russell in the southwest suburbs. According to Patch, Russell was accused of exposing his sex organ at the Fun Flatables indoor play center inside the Louis Joliet Mall on Dec. 10, 2025. He was charged with public indecency and disorderly conduct in that case, with the disorderly conduct count alleging he masturbated in the presence of another person and disturbed or alarmed that person, Patch reported.

The Will County Sheriff's Office arrested Russell in connection with the Joliet Mall case and booked him into the Will County Jail on the morning of Jan. 29, 2026, per Patch's reporting. He was released from that jail by 3 p.m. the next day. A warrant condition in that case barred Russell from coming within 300 feet of schools, parks, or other places designed for children, according to the same report.

Evanston's Broader Crime Picture

The Starbucks case comes as Evanston's overall crime numbers have been trending downward. The city recorded 3,420 total incidents in 2025, a decrease of nearly 18 percent from the 4,186 incidents logged in 2024, according to Patch. Crimes against persons fell to 730 from 882 the year before, and the city reported zero murders for the second consecutive year, the outlet noted. Property crimes dropped to 2,562 incidents, an 18.36 percent decline, while crimes against society fell nearly 23 percent to 128 incidents.

None of those citywide figures are specific to the Starbucks incident, but they offer context for a city that has otherwise been reporting broad declines in reported offenses even as this case unfolded. Russell's next court appearance in the Evanston case is scheduled for Oct. 14.

According to San Francisco YIMBY, the development team released the more up-to-date visual around the same time the project was issued some of its building permits earlier this week. Design Manou is listed as the project architect and applicant, filing through Project Zero LLC. Notably, the publication reports that the updated plans retain approximately the same height and number of units as what was approved earlier this year, suggesting the changes are mostly cosmetic rather than structural.

What's Actually Getting Built

The project is expected to yield 10 new residential units, per the same report, along with a new street-front commercial space facing San Pablo Avenue. The structure is expected to rise to roughly 40 feet, with the building expected to contain around 8,555 square feet overall, of which approximately 380 square feet is set aside for the ground-floor commercial area.

Exterior finishes will reportedly mix brick veneer, multicolor siding, and stucco cladding, with the facade's illustrated color palette running through green, brown, orange, white, blue, and grey. The design also calls for a narrow stylized retail entrance, porthole-style windows, and an articulated facade, the outlet notes — details that suggest the developers are aiming for a building that stands out rather than blends in along the corridor.

It's worth noting that an earlier record told a slightly different story. A 2025 Oakland applications-on-file document had listed a proposal for the same address calling for nine residential units and 480 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, figures that don't quite match this week's 10-unit, 380-square-foot description. The dossier doesn't clarify whether one figure supersedes the other, so both versions are worth keeping in mind as the project moves through construction.

A Prime Spot Near Three Cities

The parcel sits along San Pablo Avenue between 65th and 66th streets, close to Oakland's borders with both Berkeley and Emeryville — a location that puts future residents within easy reach of neighborhood amenities on either side of the city line. Future residents are expected to be about 13 minutes on foot, or roughly five minutes by bicycle, from Berkeley Bowl West.

The 6518 San Pablo project isn't happening in isolation. Just down the street, a separate proposal at 6500 San Pablo Avenue would turn a 3,600-square-foot lot into a five-story mixed-use building with 10 residential units spread across the upper four stories and a ground-floor commercial space, according to a separate San Francisco YIMBY report. That project, designed by ICE Design Inc., would expand to 14,330 total square feet and reserve its top story as a shared roof deck for residents, sitting right at the corner of San Pablo and 65th Street near the Emeryville and Berkeley borders.

Berkeley Loosens Height Limits Next Door

The timing lines up with a bigger shift just across the city line. Berkeley officials this week approved zoning changes raising the height limit along the West Berkeley stretch of San Pablo Avenue from three stories to seven for residential and commercial developments, according to Berkeleyside. The new plan also lets developers put apartments, instead of commercial space, on ground floors of projects built outside five designated commercial nodes along the avenue.

Together, the changes on both sides of the Oakland-Berkeley line point to a corridor in flux, with San Pablo Avenue positioned to absorb considerably more housing in the years ahead. For now, the 6518 San Pablo Avenue project remains the more concrete near-term development, having already cleared its approval and begun collecting permits this week.

The restaurant first opened in 2016 under chef Jaime Young alongside partners Todd Enany and Adam Landsman, according to Patch. Young's résumé includes stints at Eleven Madison Park and Atera, a pedigree that helped turn Sunday's hazelnut-maple praline and brown butter pancakes into a Williamsburg brunch institution. The Sunday Stack Series, presented by Resy, will roll out a new pancake collaboration every week throughout the month, Patch reports.

The lineup pulls from some of the neighborhood's most talked-about kitchens. Time Out reports the series includes Kellogg’s Diner, Leo, Laser Wolf and JR & Son, giving fans four chances to add pancakes to their October calendar.

Two Different Schedules, Same Four Collaborators

Exactly which restaurant gets which week depends on who you ask. Patch's lineup has Kellogg’s Diner kicking things off on Oct. 1, followed by Leo on Oct. 8, Laser Wolf on Oct. 15 and JR & Son closing out the series on Oct. 22. Time Out, however, reports that JR & Son gets the first turn starting Oct. 1, with Leo following on Oct. 8, Kellogg’s Diner on Oct. 15 and Laser Wolf wrapping things up on Oct. 22.

Both outlets agree on the four participants and the weekly cadence, even if the order differs depending on the source. Per Patch, each pancake will be available for one week, with specific details to be announced on Sunday in Brooklyn’s Instagram.

What's Actually on the Plate

Time Out has details on at least one of the stacks: the JR & Son collaboration is layered with coffee syrup, whipped mascarpone, cocoa and espresso powder. The specific creations for Leo, Kellogg’s Diner and Laser Wolf haven't been detailed publicly, with Sunday in Brooklyn expected to reveal those specifics on Instagram as each week arrives.

JR & Son itself has its own recent comeback story. The Williamsburg restaurant just reopened last May after five years of sitting dark and empty, according to Brooklyn Magazine. Chef Patricia Vega, formerly of Thai Diner, now runs the kitchen at 575 Lorimer Street, at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue, where the restaurant is currently open Wednesday through Sunday from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

A One-Day Ice Cream Detour

Caffè Panna is also joining the festivities, though with a twist: rather than a weeklong run, the ice cream shop's contribution is a single-day event. The Sunday Pancakes pint, available for one day only on next Friday, Oct. 9, combines Sunday in Brooklyn's pancakes with sweet cream ice cream layered with maple-praline caramel, per the same Time Out report.

The anniversary series also arrives as Sunday's parent company has grown well beyond its original Williamsburg dining room. Sunday Hospitality has since expanded to include Rule of Thirds, Café Chelsea, Teruko and the newly opened Dynamo Room, Time Out notes, making the pancake series as much a showcase of the group's expanding footprint as it is a birthday party for the original restaurant.

The man was walking westbound on Central Avenue, outside of a crosswalk, when he was hit by a vehicle heading southbound, according to Los Angeles Daily News. The driver did not stop to identify himself or render aid, as required by law, police said. Los Angeles Fire Department personnel responded to the scene and pronounced the victim dead there.

No description of the fleeing vehicle or the suspect was immediately available, the outlet reported. Video from the scene showed a white medical examiner tent set up at the site of the collision as investigators worked to piece together what happened. Police units remained on scene as of 1 a.m. Thursday, the report noted.

A Pattern of Deadly Hit-and-Runs in South LA

This is not the only recent case of a driver abandoning a victim on South Los Angeles streets. Just a month earlier, at least two drivers fled after three vehicles struck and killed a man in Watts, according to CBS Los Angeles, in a collision that happened near Imperial Highway and Central Avenue around 10:03 p.m.

Elsewhere in South Los Angeles, a 16-year-old boy named Hernan Martinez was killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking with his mother and sister, CBS Los Angeles reported separately. Neighbors told the station that the intersection where he died had been dangerous for years, with drivers often speeding and running stop signs. Another possible hit-and-run killed a man near West 54th Street and South Broadway in the South Park neighborhood, according to KTLA, though details about that vehicle and whether its driver stayed at the scene were never made available.

A Citywide Problem Despite Falling Numbers

The Tuesday night death adds to a grim count across Los Angeles. Traffic collisions killed 290 people citywide in 2025, and more than 150 of those fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to LAPD data cited by LAist. That marked a 6% decrease from 2024, and the second consecutive year that traffic deaths on city streets had declined, though the outlet noted fatalities remained above pre-pandemic levels.

The city has poured nearly $350 million into its Vision Zero safety program as of February, per the same outlet's reporting. Still, an audit released in April 2025 found that a lack of cohesion across departments, an unbalanced approach, and insufficient political will had hampered the initiative's effectiveness. For now, the driver who struck and killed a man on Central Avenue remains unidentified, and the investigation continues.

Co-owners Lily Ji (Mama Ji) and her husband Marv Wolpa shared the news in a letter posted in the restaurant's window.

"To our neighbors and friends, we are so appreciative of your support over these past 15 years," wrote Lily and Marv. "We have truly enjoyed sharing meals and stories together."

"And getting to know so many of our neighbors has been great," they added.

Mama Ji's at 4416 18th St. will close at the end of October. | Photo: Steven Bracco/Hoodline

Mama Ji's originally opened in 2012 as a pop-up inside Queen Malika Cafe. Then in 2013, Ji and Wolpa converted the space to Mama Ji's full-time.

Ji is originally from China's Sichuan province and moved to the United States in 2000. In 2016, Wolpa told Hoodline that Ji’s overarching goal with Mama Ji's is “to share the kind of food she used to eat at home.”

“She just wants to serve traditional Sichuan food," added Wolpa. Many of the recipes come from Ji's family, and the couple has undertaken research trips to Chengdu as well. 

Diners could often find long lines outside wildly popular Mama Ji's while waiting to get into the restaurant.

A letter from owners Lily Ji and Marv Wolpa announcing Mama Ji's closure. | Photo: Steven Bracco/Hoodline

While Ji and Wolpa enjoyed owning Mama Ji's they said, "running a successful restaurant is both satisfying and exhausting. We recognize it's time for us to put our time and energy into our non-work life."

Customers have a few more weeks to enjoy Mama Ji's dim sum and traditional Sichuan dishes before the restaurant closes for good.

Inside Mama Ji's restaurant. | Photo: Steven Bracco/Hoodline

"We are so thankful that our business has remained vibrant due to customer loyalty," said Ji and Wolpa. "We will miss seeing many of you regularly. That said, we still live in the neighborhood where you may run into us on the street."

Longtime Castro residents might recall that 4416 18th Street was once home to Full Moon Coffeehouse and Bookstore (1974-1977), a pioneering lesbian-feminist community hub and collective space.

Flight FZ 1073 was roughly two and a half hours into its journey when the attack unfolded, according to The New York Times, which reported that “one pilot stabbed another at the controls.” The captain, identified by NPR as Indian national Capt. Smit Machchhar, managed to open the cockpit door after being wounded, and that single act may have saved everyone on board — it gave passengers and crew the chance to rush in and subdue the attacker, the outlet reported.

A Wild Plunge Near the Jordanian Border

The descent that followed was harrowing by any measure, though exact figures vary across reports. The Times described the plane dropping more than 17,000 feet in less than two minutes, while a separate account carried by WRAL, citing the Associated Press, put the drop at roughly 33,000 feet down to 17,000 feet in about one minute. During the chaos, the aircraft transmitted the universal emergency code 7700, then switched to code 7500 — the signal for unlawful interference, including a possible hijacking, per that same wire account.

The jet flew an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border before touching down in Tabuk, the wire report noted. Flight crew ultimately secured the aircraft and carried out the emergency landing, according to the earlier NPR account. FlyDubai confirmed the outcome in a statement, writing that “all passengers and crew are safe and accounted for,” and said the on-duty crew members diverted and landed the aircraft safely.

Passengers Continue On To Israel

With the original jet grounded in Saudi Arabia, the stranded travelers were eventually flown onward to Israel aboard a different FlyDubai aircraft, NPR reported. Passenger counts have varied by outlet — the Times cited a range of 160 to 180 people aboard, while the wire report put the figure at 182, mostly Israelis, and the Times of Israel reported that 166 Israelis and eight other passengers from the initial flight arrived in Israel that evening.

According to the Times of Israel's reporting, Israeli or regional officials identified the suspected attacker as an Omani citizen, and he was under arrest. The airline itself was careful not to speculate on why the attack happened, stating plainly that “the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation.”

Fallout Across the Region's Skies

FlyDubai moved quickly to suspend all flights to and from Israel while the investigation continues, the airline said in its own statement. Emirates likewise suspended its codeshare flights with FlyDubai to and from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport until further notice, the Times of Israel reported. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have begun tightening security checks on pilots flying into the country, according to the BBC.

Israel also arranged a special repatriation effort to bring home Israelis who were left stranded in Dubai after the suspension took effect, the Times of Israel reported, citing El Al's planned service. As of the latest reporting, the precise cause behind the mid-air stabbing remained unresolved, with the airline and investigators alike describing the motive as unknown pending further inquiry.

According to Chron, the Katy restaurant posted its closure announcement on September 30, telling customers it had done its very best to provide the experience they deserved and thanking the Katy community for welcoming it. The restaurant also said it put its hearts and passion into every plate, table, and celebration. Owner Julio Amer did not disclose why the Katy location closed, per the same report.

Amer opened the first Red Flame Steak & Grill in April 2019 at 7214 FM 1488 in Magnolia, in a building that had previously housed Patron Azteca until that restaurant closed in March 2016, Chron notes. He expanded to Katy in August 2023, envisioning the concept as a dining experience suited for both special occasions and casual nights out.

An International Menu Built Around Open Flame

Red Flame's menu centered on open-flame cooking and hardwood smoking, according to Chron, with a lineup that included specialty burgers, pasta, seafood, soups, and salads. The approach traces back to the restaurant's founding concept, when Amer hired three chefs with roots in Yucatán, South America, and El Paso to build an international menu that paired Brazilian picanha alongside traditional USDA Prime steaks, as Community Impact reported.

Amer, who serves as CEO of Amer Enterprises, also operates three Mexican restaurants under the Julio's Mexican Grill brand in Spring and Magnolia, according to WhatNow. He immigrated from Mexico to San Antonio in 2006, worked at Mexican restaurants, and became a Rico's Mexican Grill franchise owner in Spring, Community Impact reports, eventually purchasing the former Patron Azteca property in Magnolia to launch his steakhouse concept.

A Suburban Squeeze Hitting Independent Restaurants Statewide

The Katy shutdown lands amid a brutal stretch for Texas restaurants. The state recorded 1,039 restaurant closures in the first six months of 2026 alone, leading all U.S. states and accounting for 12.7% of the 8,171 total closures across the U.S. and Canada during that span, according to RestaurantData.

Half of Texas restaurant operators reported their businesses were not profitable in 2025, driven by food costs that jumped 35% above pre-pandemic levels along with rising commercial rents and labor costs, per Community Impact. Nationally, 46% of restaurant operators reported lower customer traffic in August 2026 compared with the year before, marking 18 of the past 19 months with net traffic declines, according to the National Restaurant Association. The Texas Restaurant Association reported in August that operators statewide are also contending with steep workforce shortages and double-digit jumps in commercial insurance premiums, as KSAT reported.

Red Flame's Katy spot sat inside the Peek Elite Center, an 18,000-square-foot strip mall built in 2022 along Highway 99. The freeway-facing center offers high visibility, but that hasn't been enough to insulate suburban concepts from the broader slowdown.

For now, Red Flame's Magnolia flagship remains open, giving Amer's steakhouse concept a continued foothold even as its suburban Katy expansion comes to an end.

According to Denver7, which partners with the American Lung Association on the event, the race offers both a 5K course and a shorter 1.3-mile run/walk, with live music and an afterparty featuring vendors, activities and refreshments afterward. Organizers designed the event for participants of all fitness levels, and the field typically includes lung cancer survivors, people living with lung disease, caregivers, families, friends and company teams. A kids zone will be set up on site, and participants are welcome to bring their dogs along for the walk.

As of early October, more than 900 registered participants and 70 teams had raised over $141,000 toward the $215,000 goal, according to the American Lung Association. Per the same event registration page maintained by Red Rocks, online advance sign-up costs $40, with day-of registration priced at $45. Check-in opens at 8 a.m., and the surrounding park roads close at 9 a.m. to secure the course for runners.

A Steep Physical Test at High Altitude

The course itself is part of the draw. Red Rocks Amphitheatre sits at 6,450 feet above sea level, and the race route sends participants up high-altitude park roads before they tackle the amphitheatre's signature 193 stairs, which climb 100 vertical feet from the stage to the top plaza finish line, the venue's event page notes. The amphitheatre's elevation is another feature of the course.

Red Rocks has operated under the City and County of Denver since 1927; the amphitheatre was formally dedicated in 1941, after the site's public grand opening in 1906. The amphitheatre's seating area has a capacity of 9,525 between two 300-foot sandstone monoliths, according to Wikipedia's entry on the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The venue's acoustics and dramatic geology earned it such acclaim that Pollstar magazine renamed its annual Best Small Outdoor Venue honor the Red Rocks Award in 1999, after the site won the category eleven consecutive times.

Why the Fundraiser Matters for Colorado

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in both Colorado and the United States, and the American Lung Association has reported that someone is diagnosed with the disease about every two minutes. Survival rates have improved in recent years, a trend the organization attributes to greater awareness along with advances in detection and treatment. Nationally, the five-year lung cancer survival rate climbed 26% over five years to reach 29.7%, according to the Lung Association's research updated in 2026.

Colorado's numbers tell a more complicated story. The state's 2025 State of Lung Cancer report ranked Colorado 4th best in the nation for new lung cancer cases, recording 37.3 cases per 100,000 people against a national average of 52.8. Yet the same report ranked Colorado 48th out of 51 states and Washington, D.C. for lung cancer screening among high-risk individuals, a gap that fundraisers like Run the Rocks are aimed at closing through research investment, screening awareness and stigma reduction.

How to Join Run the Rocks

Funds raised through Run the Rocks go toward lung disease prevention and improving the lives of people living with lung conditions statewide, with the American Lung Association in Colorado hosting the race for the 21st consecutive year. Participants can register online at runtherocks.org ahead of the Oct. 11 event.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the first robbery happened at about 9:30 a.m. on September 28 in the 5900 block of South Parnell Avenue, police said. Minutes later, at 9:47 a.m., the gunman struck again in the 5500 block of South Union Avenue, and by 9:50 a.m. he had hit a third worker in the 5500 block of South Ashland Avenue, police said. Each time, the masked suspect approached lawn care workers while they were on the job, demanded their phones and wallets, and then fled by car.

A Pattern of Targeting Outdoor Workers

The rapid-fire nature of the spree, with three stickups inside 20 minutes across a handful of blocks, points to a mobile offender moving quickly between job sites before police could respond. Outdoor service crews have been targeted this way before in the Chicago area; a 2017 case saw two gunmen rob a landscaping crew at gunpoint in Calumet City, making off with cash, watches, and personal belongings, as reported by CWBChicago. Outdoor crews often carry cash and electronics while working in full public view, making them an easy target for someone looking for a fast grab-and-run.

The spree unfolded in the 7th Police District, which covers Englewood and has routinely ranked among the city's most violence-impacted districts. CWBChicago's analysis of police staffing and crime data found the district recorded 141 shooting victims in 2025 alone. Englewood itself, designated Community Area 68 on the city's South Side, spans roughly 3 square miles and had an estimated population of 23,195 in 2024, with Black residents making up about 86% of that population, according to Wikipedia.

Detectives Investigating, Asking Public for Tips

Area 1 Detectives, who handle felony and violent crime cases across South Side districts including the 7th District, are investigating the robberies. Anyone with information is asked to call detectives at 312-747-8380. Chicago police's standard community safety guidance for armed robbery sprees urges victims and witnesses never to resist or chase fleeing suspects, to try to remember distinct physical traits of the offender, and to preserve any surveillance video immediately for detectives.

The Englewood robberies weren't the only daytime armed crime activity reported on the South Side that day. Chicago police also issued separate warnings on September 28 about dozens of car burglaries across the Near South Side and South Commons, where armed suspects threatened vehicle owners, according to CBS News Chicago. The overlapping alerts underscore how stretched South Side patrol and detective resources can be on any given day.

Citywide Robbery Trends Shape Police Strategy

The Englewood spree also fits into a broader pattern city officials have been grappling with for several years. Back in April 2024, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling and Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a focused department strategy aimed at curbing persistent robbery sprees after the city recorded more than 11,000 robberies in 2023, a 23% jump over the prior year driven largely by armed, mobile crews, per WTTW News. That strategy leaned heavily on video tracking and license-plate readers to chase down fast-moving crews like the one that hit Englewood lawn care workers on September 28, though no arrests had been announced as of this report.

The crash happened along southbound U.S. 67 north of Riverlands Way at around 4:20 a.m., according to the First Alert 4 report, which cited the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Troopers reported the man's death and the circumstances of the crash, but as STLtoday.com noted, his name has not been released.

Per the crash report, the driver overcorrected and began to slide along the road before crossing to the other side and going off the right shoulder. The SUV then struck a sign, slid down the grassy embankment, flipped over and hit the ground multiple times, ejecting the driver before coming to rest.

A Stretch of Highway Already Under Scrutiny

This is not the first fatal rollover troopers have investigated on U.S. 67 in West Alton. In a separate incident, a 52-year-old St. Louis man died late on a Friday night after the driver of a 2012 Chevrolet Camaro veered off the right side of northbound U.S. 67 near Missouri Route 94 and overturned, according to Fox 2 Now. That driver was also pronounced dead at the scene, and his identity was similarly withheld by the patrol, with Troop C handling the investigation.

Route 67 through West Alton has drawn safety concerns for years. A corridor assessment found 227 reported crashes between 2017 and 2022, including seven fatal injuries and 11 serious injuries, according to The Telegraph. About 65% of those crashes were associated with intersections, and prevailing speeds on the road were found to exceed 65 mph, roughly 12 to 15 mph above the posted 55 mph limit.

Safety Improvements Still Years From Finished

The Missouri Department of Transportation broke ground in spring 2026 on a Route 67 Safety and Operational Improvements project through West Alton, the same outlet reported. Plans call for new J-turn lanes, improved acceleration and deceleration lanes at cross streets, and upgrades to drainage, signing, lighting and guardrails along the corridor.

MoDOT engineers expect the $18.367 million project to wrap up in spring 2028, leaving the corridor under construction for some time to come. Thursday's crash remains under investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which has not released further details about the driver or the cause of the crash.