Kcharlee Hughes couldn’t get out of the way when a man running from an alleged gunman barged into the McDonald’s restaurant where she works last summer and tried to hide in the kitchen. The man pushed her into an empty fryer just two feet away from hot grease, twisting her knees in the process, Hughes said in a Cal-OSHA complaint she filed after the incident.

The executive director of California’s largest labor union resigned after the state Attorney General’s Office this month charged her and her husband with multiple counts of tax fraud, embezzlement, perjury and failure to pay unemployment insurance taxes. The office filed its charges against SEIU California Executive Director Alma Hernández and her husband, Jose Moscoso, on Oct. 4 in Sacramento Superior Court.

Conservatives call it a job killer. Liberals call it an anti-poverty measure. However you describe it, a $15-an-hour minimum wage is coming to California. It will become a reality for the state’s bigger employers by next year. California set out in 2016 to become the first state on a path to a $15-an-hour minimum wage, capping a major victory for unions and low-wage workers who began pushing for the law in 2012. The state’s minimum wage now stands at $13 or $14 an hour, depending on the size of the business.

Just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced a plan to close a prison in Susanville last month, dozens of “for sale” signs for homes began popping up in a rural Lassen County town. “We went from a market where there were no homes,” said Patricia Hagata, executive director at the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce. “To where we have an overload of homes.”

It took a lot of discussion, but in December, California came up with a multi-tiered, multi-phase plan on how the state would vaccinate its residents against the coronavirus. First would be healthcare workers, followed by teachers, farmworkers, emergency responders and people 75 years and older. In the subsequent phases, people’s jobs, medical conditions, disabilities and living situations would all be factors in deciding whether someone got a vaccine ahead of others.

Come Jan. 1, many of California’s food banks will get food distributed from a new organization, which promises cost savings that could result in more supplies for the facilities, more frequent delivery and a “produce mobile” with fresh fruits and vegetables. But Sacramento-based California Emergency Foodlink, the current entity in charge of distributing the food, is asking the federal government to stop the change. The state used a flawed and biased method to pick the new organization, a Foodlink representative said in his October letter to the federal government.

Jim Pyatt and Carlos Ramos both live in the Central Valley and drive for gig companies in the Bay Area. But their thoughts on Prop. 22, which would keep gig workers such as Uber and Lyft as independent contractors, are worlds apart. Pyatt, a 63-year-old living in Modesto, usually drives full-time for Uber on Fridays and Saturdays, as well as a couple hours on some weekdays.

Huntington Beach police fired pepper balls at demonstrators who would not disperse on Sunday, though a crowd of hundreds of protesters had shrunk significantly after unlawful assembly was declared. The demonstration – one of many around Southern California and the nation protesting the death of George Floyd – began about 11:30 a.m. and proceeded largely peacefully for several hours, with some protesters and counterprotesters urging their groups to calm down and avoid confrontation.

Orange County officials ordered 1 million N95 respirator masks on March 16, but more than three weeks later, with demands for protective gear at an unprecedented level, the supplier can’t say when they might be delivered. Out of 1,203,000 N95 masks ordered since mid-March, 200,000 should be delivered on April 13.

A controversial extension of the 241 Toll Road was officially dropped Thursday, March 12, likely ending a bitter debate that’s lasted more than two decades about how to best address transportation needs in south Orange County. Board members of the Transportation Corridor Agencies – which oversees the county’s toll roads – unanimously voted on Thursday to support instead extending Los Patrones Parkway to Avenida La Pata, concluding the study of how the 241 could be connected to the 5 Freeway. W

With limited English, 10-year-old James Kim broke the ice at lunch with his new classmates talking about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, and how they took the Los Angeles Lakers to the championships in 2001. Now living in Long Beach, cheering for Bryant was how Anne Milo Shanahan’s family still connected with cousins back home in the Philippines. And, watching the basketball legend run the court on television with her 90-year-old grandmother are special memories for Yvette Tung.

When the usual city tools – code enforcement visits and increased police presence – weren’t enough, frustrated officials reached for a sledgehammer to address the problems of the Richman Park neighborhood in south Fullerton: The city would buy all of the properties in the neighborhood, and convert them into affordable housing.

Two years ago, Ruben Hernandez didn’t know what the Korean boy band BTS was. But his students at the Los Angeles Academy Middle School in South Los Angeles surely did. They asked him to play the band’s songs over speakers at lunchtime. “When I put on the songs, I could hear the screaming,” said Hernandez, the school’s principal. The student body of 1,246 is more than 90% Hispanic; only one person identified as Asian, according to 2018 state data.

Welcome to Garden Grove Boulevard: The birthplace of Orange County’s Korean American community, established in the 1970s. Here, the cool kids were grilling pork belly and briskets in the ’80s at what is believed to be Southern California’s first Korean barbecue restaurant. For decades, a bakery at Gilbert Street has been selling traditional Korean rice cakes, so chewy some stretch like mozzarella cheese. Korean celebrities held huge parking lot concerts here in the ’90s

Ahmad Zahra is not here to make history. But he — a gay Muslim immigrant film producer from Syria — knows what his election to the Fullerton City Council means. “It’s a pleasant surprise,” he said. “We’re maturing as a county.” Election results still need to be finalized and certified, but if Zahra, 50, holds on to his substantial lead, it is believed he will be the country’s first ever openly LGBTQ Muslim city councilman, according to the political action committee LGBTQ Victory Fund. The gr

TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. — It doesn't take long to get Earl McCoy's message. Look at his latest television commercial, where many people knock on a door of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse. "Each one of these people represent the thousands of criminal cases that have not been filed by our current prosecutor," the voice-over says. "Leaving our community feeling unsafe, unimportant and ignored." McCoy is challenging the incumbent county prosecutor Pat Harrington, who has held the office since 20

Just a single street separates Epic Church and InChrist Community Church, both in the same Fullerton neighborhood and both led by Asian-American ministers. But when it comes to their stance on same-sex relationships, the two churches feel miles apart. One welcomes the LGBTQ community, the other views homosexuality as an affront. The difference isn’t trivial. In a newsletter written earlier this year, the leader of InChrist Community Church urged his congregation to aggressively fight homosexua