State

SAN LUIS OBISPO—The body of Olivia Gonzalez was found and identified in San Luis Obispo on Tuesday, January 3, officials confirmed. Gonzales, 20, and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Brian Fernandez, both from North Hollywood, went missing after leaving for a road trip to Big Sur with their two dogs on December 23. The couple was expected to return on December 25.  California...

WESTWOOD—According to US News & World Reports inaugural Best Global University rankings, UCLA stands as the No. 8 university worldwide and the No. 2 public institution behind rival University of California Berkeley. The rankings, covering 500 universities across 49 different countries, are based upon an institution's influence in both the academic and research communities. UC Berkeley, only ranked behind Harvard and...

SAN FRANCISCO—On Tuesday July 21, the San Francisco law firm, Dhillon Law Group Inc., filed for an injunctive relief against Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement of school closures. Newsom first proclaimed a State of Emergency as a result of the of COVID-19 threat on March 4. Various steps have been taken to direct California residents to follow statewide public health directives. In...

CALIFORNIA—Officials said there has been evidence that the outbreak of measles has been linked to people that visited Disneyland between December 17 and December 20, 2014. Since then, 51 cases of the illness has doubled, infecting people in larger communities. The kindergarten measles vaccination rates have been falling almost every year since 2002 in the state, but the virus now...

UNITED STATES−On Monday, March 23, Congress was not able to agree upon the Stimulus Bill for $1.8 trillion to combat the effects of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. The final vote ending with one Democrat, Alabama senator, Doug Jones, voting in favor of the bill, 49 to 46. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needed a total of 60 votes for the...

CALIFORNIA—A new child safety law issued by the state of California went into effect in January 2017. The new law makes it mandatory for all kids under the age of 2 to be buckled up in rear-facing car seats. Previous child safety car laws required all kids under the age of 8 years-old to sit in booster seats, securely fastened with seat belts.  Assembly Bill No. 53 makes it mandatory...

CALIFORNIA—On July 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced new orders to shutdown restaurants and entertainment centers in 19 California counties as a response to a rapid rise in coronavirus cases across the state. “As a consequence, we are doing everything we can to focus in on certain sectors of our economy where that spread is more likely to occur, where...

SANTA MONICA—California Highway Patrol Captain Gregory Hammond filed a lawsuit on February 27 alleging that he was wrongly punished for resisting pressure to find that an officer acted improperly in an altercation with a woman alongside the Santa Monica I-10 Freeway. A bystander, David Diaz, caught the dramatic altercation on video, which shows CHP officer, Daniel Andrew, tackling a woman,...

UNITED STATES—On Thursday, June 10, President Joe Biden announced a donation of half a billion Pfizer vaccines for COVID-19 to the world’s poorest countries. https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1402606367345623048 According to the White House website, 500 million vaccines will be delivered by June 2022, with 200 million of those being delivered by the end of 2021. https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1402946174663938053 A White House press release relayed that a billion vaccines...

SAN FRANCISCO—SF State University has announced the $1.5 million program ASPIRE (Asian American and Pacific Islander Retention and Education) to assist low-income students, specifically, Asian American and Pacific Islanders. The 5-year program has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education Asian American & Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI). Primary goals of the ASPIRE program are to improve the...