Global Insights Local Impact
Retail drugstore chain CVS said it will close 25 of its in-store MinuteClinic locations in the Greater Los Angeles area by Feb. 25. A CVS spokesperson did not respond to questions about which locations will shut down. The company said in a statement that the decision to close the 25 MinuteClinics was to “help support
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Veteran Los Angeles Times journalist Hector Becerra has been named managing editor of the newspaper. Interim Executive Editor Terry Tang announced the appointment Tuesday, delivering on her promise to quickly install a second-in-command to stabilize a newsroom that has been rocked this month by significant layoffs, a one-day strike by journalists and several high-level departures.
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This weekend Alaska Airlines and United Airlines resumed flying some of their Boeing Max 9 planes, all of which were grounded after a door panel on a Max 9 blew out in midair Jan. 5. Although airlines, regulators and Boeing maintain that the planes are safe after a federally approved inspection and maintenance process, critics
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As Californians do their taxes for 2023, an estimated 70% could qualify for free help online to prepare and file their federal returns. But in the past, only a small percentage of them have taken advantage of these services. State and local officials have long blamed the lack of participation on two leading tax-preparation companies,
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It’s back to regular IRS deadlines for California taxpayers this year, but with a new tool for many low- and moderate-income households: a service that will prepare and file their tax returns online for free. Starting later this year, taxpayers in California, Arizona, Nevada and nine other states will have access to a new program
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Being stuck in traffic is a familiar problem for many Californians, but state officials want to harness the power of artificial intelligence to discover new solutions. The California Department of Transportation, teaming up with other state agencies, is asking technology companies by Jan. 25 to propose generative AI tools that could help California reduce traffic
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The landing gear was stowed, the plane was climbing to cruising altitude, and then a segment of the wall exploded out of the rear cabin of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Friday night, just 20 minutes after the plane took off from Oregon’s Portland International Airport airport en route to Ontario, Calif. No passengers were
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Months of strikes have brought about more than two dozen new labor agreements between hotel operators and their workers, yet tensions remain high on picket lines across Southern California. In incidents earlier this week, Unite Here Local 11, the union representing hospitality workers, alleges that people on one of its picket lines were struck by
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For decades, Disneyland has been hampered from expanding its Anaheim resort due to streets, highways and businesses that encircle the self-proclaimed “Happiest Place on Earth.” But Disneyland hopes to get around those limits with a plan to spend up to $2.5 billion to reimagine the resort with new attractions, hotels and shops within its current
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Wrestling impresario Vince McMahon has resigned as executive chairman of the board of TKO Group, the public company formed last year after Endeavor acquired World Wrestling Entertainment and merged it with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. His exit comes one day after a former WWE employee, Janel Grant, sued the company, McMahon and former head of
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Nikki Haley blocked the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act while she was governor of South Carolina. Her policies on abortion rights are execrable. Her home state has one of the nation’s worse records in the nation on maternal health — indeed, on health generally. Since Haley says she’s staying in the race
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Federal Aviation Administration officials have cleared the runway for Boeing’s 737 Max 9 to fly again, less than a month after a portion of an Alaska Airlines plane blew off midflight over Oregon. The FAA announced it was greenlighting an inspection and maintenance process for the 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft currently grounded, most
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It’s hard to think of a California company that carries more toxic baggage than Cadiz Inc. The Los Angeles firm has been trying for more than 20 years to advance a plan to siphon water from under the Mojave Desert and pump it to users throughout Southern California. It has long been stymied by environmental
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It used to be fairly easy to dismiss Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, as a clownish anti-vaccine quack posing a danger mostly to residents of his home state. That has become harder to do as time goes on, as Ladapo has moved from promoting useless treatments for COVID-19, such as the drugs hydroxychloroquine
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Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to agree on much these days. But despite the gridlock in Congress, both political parties have for years supported spending billions on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education. Their goals include reducing perceived shortages of STEM workers, boosting American innovation and competitiveness and diversifying this highly paid workforce. The
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Netflix added more than 13 million subscribers during the fourth quarter, the company said Tuesday, extending its lead in the streaming video business. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based streamer’s subscriber growth beat analysts’ estimates of nearly 8.7 million customer additions, according to polling by FactSet. It was the largest fourth-quarter growth in subscriber adds in the
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Nick Dunlap is the first winner of the American Express event on the PGA Tour who likely leaves home without an American Express card. The 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Alabama is an amateur golfer, so he couldn’t accept the $1.5-million prize earmarked for the winner of the tournament once known as the Bob
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Sunday was a tough day for those, like me, who get their entertainment jollies by watching losers try to redeem themselves. I’m not talking only about the Buffalo Bills, the only NFL team I care even two cents for, whose effort to erase their four consecutive Super Bowl losses (1990-1993) was defeated by the Kansas
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A couple in Pomona who were selling an iPad were held at gunpoint and attacked during a meetup with a potential buyer, a crime that experts say happens too often but can be avoided if online sellers take some common-sense steps to ensure a safer sales experience. Two teenagers who were accused of committing the
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Jose “Luis” Vasquez, a California musician who found fame with the post-punk project the Soft Moon, and John “Juan” Mendez, a popular Los Angeles DJ who performed as Silent Servant, were among three people found dead last week at a downtown Los Angeles loft in a suspected fentanyl overdose, authorities said Sunday. Vasquez, 44, performed
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Facing increased scrutiny over its social networks’ effects on teenage users, Meta announced Tuesday that teens on Facebook and Instagram will see less content related to self-harm and eating disorders. Meta already filters such content out of the feeds it recommends to users, such as Instagram’s Reels and Explore. But under a set of changes
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You walk into the office kitchen to heat up your lunch and are greeted by a mess. Your co-worker Bridget has left the communal area in disarray — again. You’re frustrated. Where do you go from here? Do you shame Bridget and make her feel bad? That might make you feel righteous in the moment,
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RIO VISTA, Calif. — The tech billionaires who for years secretly amassed land in the scrubby grasslands on the fringe of San Francisco Bay announced Wednesday that they will begin gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Solano County that would clear the way to build a city from scratch. The group, called California Forever, envisions
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Gen Z hasn’t crossed over into the metaverse just yet. Retail experts say these young shoppers have helped malls bounce back after the downturn brought on by the pandemic, in part because the digital space has turned Gen Z into a generation that expects instant gratification. The immediacy of touching, trying out and buying products
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Macy’s is closing five stores, including the location at Simi Valley Town Center, and laying off 3.5% of the department store chain’s workforce, according to a statement from a company spokesperson and media reports. About 2,350 jobs will be cut and the department store chain intends to rely more heavily on automation of its supply
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The owner of Vroman’s, a historic independent bookstore in Pasadena, is looking to sell both its locations in the city, along with Book Soup in West Hollywood. The bookstore, the oldest in Southern California, was founded in 1895 and has been under the same family’s ownership for more than a century. Its current owner, Joel
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I knew it was going to be bad. By the time I sat down to watch the thing, much of the internet was already furious that a “state-of-the-art-entertainment AI” called Dudesy had generated an hourlong comedy special in the style of George Carlin, without the consent of the late comic’s horrified family. But I wasn’t
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Those of us who diligently follow financial forecasts know that the go-to place for mapping out the course of the economy over the coming 12 months is Davos, Switzerland, the host city of the annual World Economic Forum every January. Rule of thumb: Listen closely to what the gathered business and political leaders predict, then
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Diddy has withdrawn his racial discrimination lawsuit against Diageo after accusing the spirits company of marginalizing his Cîroc vodka and DeLeón tequila brands. The embattled music mogul, whose once-celebrated career has hit rocky shoals since allegations of sexual assault were leveled against him last year, has resolved his ongoing dispute with the British beverage company.
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There was a time, I must admit, when the hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman was one of my Wall Street heroes. It started in December 2012. Ackman had decided to take a short position in the shares of the multilevel marketing firm Herbalife. Ackman justified his bet with a heroic 334-deck Power Point presentation laying
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SAN FRANCISCO — Far from the palm trees of Miami or Austin’s taco trucks, Catalin Voss has headquartered his literacy start-up between a cannabis club and pawn shop in the heart of the Mission District. Voss rents a nondescript office building in one of San Francisco’s most vibrant neighborhoods as a home base for Ello, a
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If you’ve spent any amount of time on TikTok or talking to your 12-year-old niece, you’ve probably heard of the Stanley cup by now. The 40 oz. insulated tumbler with a handle has led to long lines, fights and a crazy resale market. We’re only 11 days into the new year, and already some marketers
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Since her usual hazardous waste disposal site closed last year, Dashiel St. Damien has accumulated 20 pounds of batteries and a bag full of lightbulbs. St. Damien, 46, a designer who lives in Mount Washington, knows these items shouldn’t go into her usual curbside bins, but has struggled to find a new, convenient place to
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While expressing his regret that 500 workers would be laid off, the chief executive of the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch chided his staff in a memo for leaking the news to the media hours before the official announcement Wednesday. “I also want to acknowledge how disappointed I was yesterday that this information leaked,” CEO Dan
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The American legal system has a message for women concerned about their abortion rights: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your pharmacist is your friend. Thanks to a gaping loophole in federal healthcare regulations, some of our leading drug store chains turn over customers’ most sensitive private healthcare information to law enforcement agencies, even
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The new year has brought more progress in contract talks between Southern California hotels and the union that represents their workers. Unite Here Local 11 this week secured tentative agreements with four more properties in Los Angeles County. The union announced a deal with the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica on Monday. The union said
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The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s largest cargo complex, are bracing for a business surge created by problems elsewhere: the Suez Canal in Egypt — a sudden hot spot in a potentially widening Mideast conflict — and the Panama Canal, plagued by prolonged drought. The canals are two of the world’s
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This time in 2023, the world was in thrall to the rise of OpenAI’s dazzling chatbot. ChatGPT was metastasizing like a fungal infection, amassing tens of millions of users a month. Multibillion-dollar partnerships materialized, and investments poured in. Big Tech joined the party. AI image generators like Midjourney took flight. Just a year later, the
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A small uptick in the nationwide inflation rate last month was an unwelcome glitch for many consumers and for Washington policymakers, but it may be a more serious development for most of California. The December increase, at 3.4% over the price level a year earlier, could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to begin
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Arezu Aghaseyedjavadi signed up for her first Barry’s class in 2017, motivated to give the high-intensity workout a try after noticing how fit everyone seemed when she flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles for weekly work trips. She lost 50 pounds in the first year and got hooked. More than 1,500 classes later, the
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January is the month to sign up for stuff you’re probably not going to keep doing later. Like cooking class or hot yoga. It’s also the month for setting goals, especially at work, where goals often come with lunch and a side of office politics. Suffice to say January is not the month to be
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Articles asking us to feel sympathy for families barely scraping by on healthy six-figure incomes may be staples of the financial press, but it’s rare that they come packaged as real-world case studies attached to flesh-and-blood individuals. But that’s what happened just before Christmas, when law professor Steven Calabresi defended Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’
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Recording new voice-overs without speaking a word: For a busy voice actor, it might sound like a dream — unless that actor is worried about artificial intelligence being used to devalue her work and make hiring her unnecessary. But under a new deal with an artificial intelligence company, members of the Screen Actors Guild will
Read MoreFemale Heating and Gas Engineers Women are becoming more and more interested in pursuing careers within the trade industry but, for many of them, there are barriers that prevent them from taking the first step. Whether it’s myths, unconscious bias or simply sexism, there are plenty of reasons why female heating and gas engineers still
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The Queen Mary has for years been a landmark in the city of Long Beach, an iconic ocean liner serving as a majestic sentry at the port and a popular attraction for both tourists and locals. But the aging ship has in recent years become more of a white elephant, in need of millions of
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If you’re a fan of techno-hype, 2023 was the year for you. Believers felt themselves validated by seeing excitement and fear about AI chatbots reach previously untouched heights. Skeptics may have felt initially confounded by the rollout of driverless robotaxis in San Francisco and a few other cities, but ultimately validated when they were ordered
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These days, it looks like the bloom is coming off the rose for remote work: Many employers are talking tougher. New research shows employees are actually less productive when they work from home full-time. And, with the tight job market starting to slacken, some predict 2024 will be the year employers finally clamp down. But
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You may have heard during the last few days about the resignation by the president of a smallish university in New England. Pundits, politicians and alumni are currently locked in a debate over whether Claudine Gay’s decision to step down after only a months-long tenure as president of Harvard was due to accusations that she
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Unite Here Local 11 has reached a tentative agreement with a 10th hotel, marking continued momentum in the contract campaign it began earlier this year. The deal with the Beverly Wilshire was reached days after the union nailed down agreements with two other major Beverly Hills hotels, the Beverly Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria. It
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California energy officials have voted to extend the operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2030, extending the life span of the state’s last nuclear plant an additional five years. The California Public Utilities Commission approved a proposal to keep Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors online, overturning an earlier agreement to close the plant in
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Question: Is there anything more absurd than red state governors rejecting federal programs that directly benefit their constituents? Easy answer: Yes. It’s the explanations they give to make their actions appear to be sober, responsible fiscal decisions. The Republican governors of Iowa and Nebraska brought us the most recent examples of this phenomenon just before
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If 2023 was the year that AI finally broke into the mainstream, 2024 could be the year it gets fully enmeshed in our lives — or the year the bubble bursts. But whatever happens, the stage is set for another whirlwind 12 months, coming in the wake of Hollywood’s labor backlash against automation; the rise
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Did you quit your job during the Great Resignation? Are you quiet quitting? Being told to RTO? Coffee badging at the office (and then promptly leaving)? The Los Angeles Times is developing a story about the many viral words that have become popular to describe work, terms such as “Great Resignation,” “quiet quitting,” “RTO,” “polyworking”
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Celebrity real estate agent Mauricio Umansky will not face a civil trial for allegedly violating his duties as a broker in the sale of a prominent Malibu hilltop mansion that he flipped for nearly $70 million. Real estate investor Sam Hakim and his agent dropped their consolidated Superior Court lawsuits this month against Umansky, his
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Warehouses, trucking and other aspects of the logistics industry have taken over much of the real estate in the Inland Empire in recent years, and now we know the industry has been trying to dominate local government as well. The people of Southern California are at risk of being drowned out by a corporate “community
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While California lawmakers feel pressure to address concerns about crime, the murky and sometimes contradictory evidence of an increase in lawlessness has put legislators in a bind. Recent studies show that retail theft has increased in some of California’s big cities — with shoplifting rates jumping nearly 50% in San Francisco since 2019 — while
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Apple is pulling two of its most popular watch models from shelves this week. By Christmas Day, if a trade ruling stands, those watches will be illegal to import into the U.S. Online orders for the Series 9 and Ultra 2 models will end Thursday, and the watches will be cleared out of the retail
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Ignacio E. Lozano Jr. loved to tell the story about arriving in Los Angeles in 1948 from the University of Notre Dame with a journalism degree, taking a look at his family’s business — and immediately fearing it was doomed. His father, Ignacio E. Lozano Sr., was a pioneering publisher who founded a Spanish-language daily
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Ahead of statewide minimum wage increases for fast-food workers, hundreds of California Pizza Hut franchises announced cuts in their delivery services, laying off more than 1,100 drivers, according to federal and state filings. The Pizza Hut locations, run by two different franchise operators, reported the change to their business models for restaurants from Orange to
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Southern California’s luxury real estate market never sleeps. But this past year, it collectively caught its breath. Luxury sales slowed down in 2023 — a combination of soaring interest rates, a newly introduced “mansion tax” and an inevitable drop-off from a pandemic market when megamansions flipped like hotcakes. In 2022, there were 17 home sales
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Well, goodbye to all that. Now that 2023 is drawing to a close, and it’s time that we begin to look to the new year, why don’t we spend a minute clearing our closets and minds of all the tech we don’t need? The better to start fresh, and to steel ourselves for the AI-drenched
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Forecasting the future is difficult. But here’s an easy prediction: The anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. and globally is going to result in the deaths of more children. This grim portent comes to us courtesy of UNICEF, which is reporting that 30,601 confirmed cases of measles have been reported in Europe and Central Asia this
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It might be unusual to find Mickey Mouse and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” mentioned in the same breath. But you can chalk up their momentary fellowship to America’s copyright laws, under which both are entering the public domain on Jan. 1. That’s because both Mickey and Mellors, the Chatterley estate gamekeeper, made their first published appearance
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For travelers trying to reach their destinations during the storm-tossed holiday season last year, there was no problem identifying the Grinch who stole Christmas: It was Southwest Airlines. Southwest, it may be recalled, canceled or delayed more than 16,900 flights between Dec. 21 and Jan. 2, stranding more than 2 million passengers. The meltdown kept
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To repurpose an old joke: How do you create a $15-billion company? Answer: First, start with a $44-billion company … Yes, we’re talking about Elon Musk and the fate of Twitter-now-X, the social media platform he bought in October 2022 and spent the subsequent year turning into a hive of antisemitism, racism and all other
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Grocery company Ralphs illegally denied jobs to hundreds of people based on their criminal history, California’s Civil Rights Department alleges in a new lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is the first of its kind under California’s Fair Chance Act, which went into effect in 2018 and limits the use
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In the tech world, 2023 was a year of pure chaos. There was the artificial intelligence boom that breathed life into an industry in dire want of its next big thing, delivering a torrent of new startups, investment and hype. There was also the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the fraud conviction of crypto titan
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Unite Here Local 11 has made more progress in contract talks with hotels ahead of the holidays. The union said Friday it had secured tentative agreements with three downtown L.A. properties as well as a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. The agreements cover roughly 800 workers at the InterContinental, Hotel Indigo and E- Central
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Responding to consumer complaints about auto insurance coverage, the state insurance commissioner said Thursday that insurers could face penalties for creating unlawful barriers for California drivers. Ricardo Lara issued a bulletin to auto insurers, reminding them that they cannot change their policies’ terms and rates without formally filing for state review and approval. The bulletin
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Mortgage rates fell for the eighth consecutive week, giving cash-strapped home buyers some relief as the new year approaches. The average interest rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage clocked in at 6.67% for the week ended Dec. 20, down from 6.95% a week earlier, according to data released Thursday by mortgage giant Freddie Mac.
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Want to know how much your friends are worth? Meet Flip, the shopping app that will put a price tag on every single person in your phone’s contact list. Cajole one of them into signing up for the app, and you get cash — up to $130 per person — to spend on Flip. “The
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Kimmy Garris, who describes herself as a “fat solo traveler,” probably had no idea that her 30-second TikTok video was going to cause a sensation when she recorded herself in September politely asking a Southwest Airlines gate agent if she could avail herself of the airline’s “customer of size” policy. Her TikTok post went viral
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The 30-second video ad struck an ominous tone, urging Californians to tell their lawmakers to vote against legislation that would force Google, Facebook and other large platforms to pay news publishers. “It’s a dangerous precedent that will drive up costs for small businesses and make it easier for politicians to raise taxes in the future,”
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Season upon season, watermelons, carrots and corn have sprouted from Daniel Rudnick’s 255-acre farm along Interstate 5 in Buttonwillow, Calif. Now, the ground lies unplanted. In the next year, it will be cleared and graded to build a 4-million-square-foot warehouse complex. “Our plan all along was that we were going to leverage the value of
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As if high gas prices weren’t making life miserable enough, California drivers are being buffeted by higher auto insurance premiums — if they can find coverage at all. Frustrated by state regulations, a number of insurers have limited the new policies their agents can sell in California. Barbara Caudana, a personal line account manager for
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Unite Here Local 11 has reached tentative contract agreements with 10 more Southern California hotels covering hundreds of housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers, servers and front desk workers who have been pushing for higher pay and better benefits. Momentum is building to resolve the five-month-old strike that initially involved 60 hotels and more than 15,000 workers and
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