Residents Swarm Council Meeting After Plan for LGBTQ+ Festival Draws Scowls

The commotion broke out at UCLA in Westwood after several agitators attempted to break down a barricade set up on campus.

The Duke of Sussex, 39, is gearing up to return to London on May 8.

Judge Juan Merchan has already fined the former president and "incarceratory punishment" may be necessary for future violations.

Jose Siri and Abner Uribe threw punches against one another on Tuesday night in a benches-clearing melee on Tuesday night in Milwaukee.

Taylor Swift spent the weekend with partner Travis Kelce in Las Vegas, but some fans worried she got too much sun.

The country is seeing a surge in small business creation.

Home Depot has restocked its viral 12-foot tall skeleton and other Halloween decorations, but a limited amount are available and many items are already sold out.

WWE star A.J. Styles said he was blown away by praise from WWE legend The Undertaker in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.

Alicia Paans, a 31-year-old trans athlete, is expected to participate for the Michigan Wolverines' women's waterpolo club team in a national championship this weekend.

President Joe Biden has canceled $6.1 billion of student debt for 317,000 borrowers.

After beekeeper Matt Hilton removed the swarm, the Diamondbacks had him throw out the first pitch.

Ukraine has spent long months waiting for Lockheed Martin-made F-16 jets to take to the skies against Russian jets.

To be as tough as the guys, Republicans Kristi Noem shot her dog, Joni Ernst castrated hogs, Sarah Palin advocated shooting wolves from the air.

Benchmarked against her conservative colleagues, Justice Barrett has been a pleasant surprise.

Aldon Smith was a name believed to end up in Canton, Ohio, one day, but off-the-field issues stymied a once-promising career. Today, Smith is using his journey to mentor NFL rookies.

Plus, a possible shift on marijuana policy.

Violence broke out at UCLA overnight between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters, prompting police to arrive.

Restaurants still need humans to do much of the labor. Working people deserve to have their voices heard in determining how, when or whether AI and automation should be used.

A reader says she miscarried in Florida in 1989 and had to bleed for week to get needed care. She fears abortion bans will harm miscarriage patients.

Experts describe the plan as a legal long shot, but say it could sow doubts about the integrity of a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump.

ESPN analyst and former tennis pro Brad Gilbert consulted on the film ‘Challengers,’ starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.

Trump's politics and alleged criminal acts don't matter to many of his voters. They just admire his over-the-top tough-guy swagger.

Tensions have escalated and arrests have been made as protesters continue to stake out areas on the campuses of many California universities, including UCLA, USC and Cal Poly Humboldt.

Poker-playing artists have let the cigar smoke out and opened up the tables to a more diverse, inclusive and female-friendly pool of players.

The laundromat is your rare “third place” — a spot to go to that’s not your house, nor your office, but a secret third thing.

In a case that could shape the future of psychedelic medicine, a palliative care physician is challenging a DEA decision that bars him from prescribing psilocybin to late-stage cancer patients.

The Southern California Independent Bookstore Bestsellers list for Sunday, May 5, 2024, including hardcover and paperback fiction and nonfiction.

Artist Joel Coplin has a complicated relationship with homeless people. He sued Phoenix to clear an encampment. But he also befriended them and found inspiration for his art.

How will the DEA's decision to reclassify marijuana affect California's ailing pot industry?

Podcast hosts and comics Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer are rallying their fans and fellow comedians for a run at Rose Bowl.

For frequent fliers, Clear's line-skipping service is worth paying for. The state shouldn't limit its expansion to other airports.

From his rival’s hair to his maturity level, the president is no longer determined to stay above the fray

Their lobbying campaign targets a federal push to subject some tech companies to the same rigorous oversight as banks.

Chris Pratt demolishing a classic mid-century California home is part of a larger trend: buy a house, tear it down, build bigger.

In a new district, the fiery Colorado congresswoman enjoys a solid base among the GOP's MAGA wing. But some are put off by her indiscretions and messy personal life.

The automatic braking requirement for new cars is a milestone for U.S. road safety, on par with seat belts and airbags.

The Biden administration is arguing that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban violates a federal law on emergency treatment.

No singular cause was found for last year's high death toll before the Kentucky Derby, but the hope is that technology can mitigate future problems.

President Biden is putting his reelection at risk by not publicly calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza.

Sarah McLachlan is touring this summer, 30 years after the release of 'Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,' the album that made her a star.

Borrowing costs for home loans have been elevated and discouraged activity in the housing market.

Campus protests across the country have renewed Americans' attention on the Israel-Gaza war and are scrambling U.S. politics, particularly on the left. Senior Opinions Editor Amanda Katz speaks with columnists Dana Milbank and Shadi Hamid about how their views have evolved since Oct. 7, whether there’s a double standard on free speech, and what the protests could foreshadow for the upcoming presidential election, particularly among young people.

There are no bad Pet Shop Boys albums, many great ones, and a few that will change your life.

Mirna Soza Arauz was one of tens of thousands who work at low-paying jobs in a high-rent region. As an older woman, she didn't think she would be targeted, but her death was violent

Confronting the reality of China’s threat to the U.S.-led global order requires a deep, hard reassessment.

Heat waves have begun to take hold in Asia as El Nino begins to wane. | Kazi Salahuddin Razu/NurPhoto via Getty Images Climate change and the outgoing El Niño will likely ignite more weather extremes. The Pacific Ocean — Earth’s largest body of water — is an engine for weather around the planet, and it’s about to shift gears this year. The warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, known as El Niño, is now winding down and is poised to move into its counterphase, La Niña. During an El Niño year, warm water starts to spread eastward across the surface of the equatorial Pacific. That warm water evaporates readily, adding moisture to the atmosphere and triggering a cascade that alters rainfall, heat waves, and drought patterns across the world. The current El Niño is among the strongest humans have ever experienced. It fueled wildfires, droughts, and floods in South America. It bent the jet stream, trapping heat over the southern United States last summer, and ended the year with the warmest winter on record for much of the country. It fueled both heavy rain and extreme dry conditions in southern Africa, killing crops and putting millions at risk of hunger. It heated the world’s oceans to the highest levels ever measured. It raised global temperatures to their tallest peaks scientists have ever recorded. “The last year has been an amazing year in terms of records set around the world for extreme heat,” said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The periodic swings between El Niño and La Niña, collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is a natural phenomenon cycling every three to seven years. Over the past year, the El Niño also synced with other natural patterns like the warm phase of the Atlantic Ocean’s temperature cycle, driving thermometers up further. But humanity’s relentless injection of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere is pushing these changes to greater extremes. Forecasters now expect that warm water across the Pacific to begin retreating westward, heralding a shift to La Niña. McPhaden said one of the most common definitions of La Niña is when surface water temperatures over a large area of the Pacific drop by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius below the historical average for three months or more. El Niño is typically defined when the same region is a half-degree Celsius hotter. NOAA projects an 85 percent chance that the ENSO cycle will shift to its neutral phase between April and June 2024, and then a 60 percent chance a La Niña will develop between June and August 2024. Historically, strong El Niños are followed by short neutral phases, about three to five months, before switching to La Niña. “The handwriting is on the wall with regard to this La Niña,” McPhaden said. “The question is exactly when will it come and how strong will it be?” It also takes several months between when ENSO changes and when it starts to influence weather. So the warming impact of the outgoing El Niño is likely to persist and could raise global temperatures this year even higher than they were last year if the rising La Niña is weak or moderate. Heat waves are currently baking Southeast Asia, triggering school closures and health warnings. When La Niña does set in, it will slow and reverse some of the intense weather patterns the world experienced over the past year. But it will also set the stage for more hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. To make this all even more complicated, this is all occurring in a world that’s warmed to the highest levels humans have ever experienced, so it’s not clear yet how far some of these extremes will go. How La Niña will likely play out in different parts of the world Though they are on opposite sides of a cycle, the effects of El Niño and La Niña are not quite mirror images of each other. “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Pamela Knox, an agricultural climatologist at the University of Georgia Extension. The specific types of weather impacts also vary by region, but looming shifts in the cycle can help forecasters calculate what kinds of heat, rain, and drought conditions are in store in the coming months. For instance, ENSO makes it easier to predict climate variability in the southeastern US, particularly in cooler months. “We have a pretty strong signal here compared to the central plains,” Knox said. During a La Niña, the cooler waters in the equatorial Pacific soak up heat energy from the atmosphere while air currents deflect the jet stream — a narrow, high-altitude band of fast-moving air — pushing it northward. NOAA La Niña tends to push the jet stream northward, leading to cooler weather to its north and drier conditions to the south. That air current then tends to box in cold weather to its north in places like Canada and Alaska while trapping moisture in regions like the Pacific Northwest. States like Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina tend to be warmer and drier during La Niña winters, while the Midwest tends to be cloudier, cooler, and wetter. (NOAA has published maps of the globe showing how these patterns typically play out around the world). Mickey Glantz, director of the Consortium for Capacity Building at the University of Colorado Boulder, who studies the impacts of ENSO, noted that La Niña doesn’t just shift weather — it can also intensify existing rain and heat patterns in some regions. “La Niña, to me, is ‘extreme normal,’” Glantz said. “You have a wet season, it’s going to be really wet. If you have a dry season, the probability is it’s going to be really dry.” La Niña may bring about a more severe hurricane season One of the biggest consequences of a shift to La Niña is the higher likelihood of major hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. Hurricanes are built from several ingredients, but two parameters are especially important when it comes to ENSO: water temperature and air stability. The ocean needs to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter to form a hurricane, and the air above it needs to hold steady. El Niño years tend to heat up the Atlantic Ocean, but they also induce wind shear, where air rapidly changes speed and direction in the atmosphere, disrupting tropical storms before they can form. Still, the Atlantic was so abnormally hot last year that it fueled an above-average hurricane season. The Atlantic Ocean is still startlingly hot, but now the looming La Niña is likely to stabilize the air above the sea — creating a foundation for more hurricanes. The Weather Company and Atmospheric G2 projected that the 2024 hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, would see 24 named storms compared to an average of 14. They projected six hurricanes will reach above Category 3 strength, compared to just three in a typical year. Researchers at Colorado State University expect 23 named storms. University of Pennsylvania scientists anticipate 33 named storms in the Atlantic this year, the highest count ever projected. Why ENSO cycles are becoming harder to predict The added difficulty in predicting how La Niña will play out is that people have heated up the planet. A “cool” La Niña year is now hotter than an El Niño year from 20 years ago. “It’s not the same climate regime that we forecasted the earlier [ENSO cycles] so it’s getting a bit harder to forecast,” Glantz said. How will future climate change in turn affect ENSO? NOAA illustrated the answer with a helpful albeit highly technical schematic (bear with me): Anna Eshelman/NOAA Climate change is likely to amplify the swings in the ENSO cycle. The swings between the cool and warm phases of the ENSO are likely to get stronger if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current pace. So many of the most densely populated parts of the world, like the Andean region in South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, are going to experience a more aggressive whiplash between wet and dry years, between calm and stormy summers, and between warmer and cooler winters. For scientists, the rest of 2024 is going to be an important case study in the impacts of climate change and natural variability, sorting out where they diverge, where they intersect, and where they lead to more disasters. The world will be a real-world laboratory, showcasing severe weather that could become more typical as average temperatures continue to rise. “It’s going to be a very interesting year,” McPhaden said. “We’ll have to wait and see and be ready for more extremes.”

Andrew Witty, chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, is set to appear before a congressional committee over the company’s handling of a hack that crippled much of the U.S. health-care system.

Parent coaching their son’s sports team is tired of him clowning around during practice.