Barb Odanaka remembers her struggles as a new mom and how skateboarding helped her push past those tough days with a newborn, a way to mentally and physically have an outlet away from the dirty diapers.

“The reality is, I was having a hard time transitioning to motherhood,” said Odanaka, now 61, who grew up skateboarding in Newport Beach in the ’70s.

Back then, there were not many other female skateboarders rolling around. But more and more, females started showing up at skate parks, finding a community that has kept them connected through their shared passion.

Skateboard Moms and Sisters of Shred held its 20th annual Mother’s Day skate session on Sunday in Laguna Niguel, a gathering that also serves as a fundraiser benefiting Waymakers OC, a nonprofit that helps victims of human trafficking and abuse.

While many participants came from across Southern California, others came from as far as Arizona, Florida and Australia for the gathering – a reunion of sorts for the group.

Odanaka said she had nearly forgotten about her love for skateboarding as a kid, until a therapist helping her through her new mom struggles told her to think of something that made her happy.

Immediately, she thought of skateboarding.

Years had passed since she had ridden a board, but a birthday gift from her husband gave her the push she needed to get back out there skateboarding, she said. After rekindling her love with skating, she wrote the book “Skateboard Mom.”

Instead of having a book launch at a coffee shop or book store, she held a gathering at a local skate park 20 years ago, trying to find other skater moms to join.

“When the day came, we had 19 women, including an 80-year-old who got on her board,” Odanaka recalled. “It was really only going to be a one-time thing. But we got a lot of media coverage; the word started getting out.”

Skateboard Moms was officially born, holding regular skate sessions as the group grew. They’d have skateboarding road trips and slumber…

ARCADIA — Weighing in at 880 pounds, Musical Rhapsody is a tiny racehorse. Saturday at Santa Anita, this was an advantage.

It made it a little easier for jockey Mike Smith to thread the 5-year-old mare through a pack of rivals and rally from last in a field of seven to win the $100,000 Santa Barbara Stakes by the narrowest of margins.

“You can fit through smaller holes,” trainer Phil D’Amato said of the upside of having an undersized horse.

Musical Rhapsody took the 1 1/2-mile turf race by a head-bobbing nose over fellow Irish-bred Duvet Day and Juan Hernandez, and it was another 2 1/2 lengths back to third-place Vincero Grande and Diego Herrera.

Musical Rhapsody, who was the bettors’ favorite and paid $4, is the kind of mare who can be a rider’s and trainer’s favorite too.

“She’s not very big at all, but she’s tough and loves to run,” Smith said.

Four and a half lengths off the pace set by Illhaveanotherkiss and jockey Edwin Maldonado (who finished fifth) with a mile to go, Smith and Musical Rhapsody worked their way between rivals and into contention, angled out for a clear path turning into the homestretch, and dueled to the wire outside Duvet Day.

“I might have got her out a little too soon,” Smith admitted. “A quarter of a mile is a long way for her to be in front. She’ll run down anything, but you’ve got to time it right.”

Musical Rhapsody’s last-to-first score at the optional-claiming level last month was her first in six tries since owner Michael House bought the daughter of Holy Roman Empire in Ireland last year, and her win Saturday was her first at the stakes level in America.

“We’ve got her confidence going in the right direction,” D’Amato said.

D’Amato’s confidence is surging too during a successful stretch that includes stakes victories at Santa Anita on the past three weekends — and four of the past five weekends — and Santa Anita Derby winner Stronghold’s solid seventh-place finish in the Kentucky…

A South Gate man pleaded guilty Friday, May 10 to leading a drug trafficking ring that imported narcotics from Mexico and used modified BMWs with hidden compartments to distribute the drugs throughout the country.

Prosecutors said Joel Antonio Villegas, 35, was the orchestrator of the trafficking ring, and would pick up the drugs and arrange sales to customers or co-conspirators. He would order conspirators to purchase cars, including BMWs, and install hidden trap compartments in them to conceal and transport drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

He also orchestrated the cross-border caravans using couriers to bring narcotics into the country from Mexico, prosecutors said.

Villegas also ran a stash house that included materials for the manufacture and distribution of drugs, with packaging materials, pill presses, drug ledgers and money counters, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said that when law enforcement served a warrant at his home in September 2019, he set fire to paperwork inside the home and broke cellphones and other digital devices in an effort to destroy evidence.

Authorities searching his home found multiple firearms and $127,000 in cash and jewelry, including three Rolex watches and a gold necklace, all of which were purchased with drug proceeds, prosecutors said. An assortment of drugs were seized at the stash house in Downey.

Villegas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. He will be sentenced on Aug. 30.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ramishah Maruf | CNN

New York  — Apple faces plenty of challenges this year including regulatory scrutiny in Washington, sluggish sales in China and a competitive landscape in AI. Now, its leaders also have to contend with labor unrest.

Apple store workers in Towson, Maryland, made history in June 2022 when they voted to form the first union at one of the tech giant’s sleek US stores. Since 2023, the worker group outside of Baltimore has been in contract negotiations with Apple management. Now, workers are weighing a strike.

Saying management has yet to meet their core demands, the Maryland workers are holding a strike authorization vote on Saturday, one of the strongest labor actions taken against the Big Tech company yet. And it’s far from the only labor challenge Apple is battling in the US.

Employees in New Jersey are holding a union election this weekend. In addition, the National Labor Relations Board this week upheld a decision alleging Apple’s union-busting tactics in New York City. The company also has unfair labor practice complaints against it in front of labor judges right now (Apple denies these allegations).

The labor wave that has hit Apple retail stores echoes the mass organizing that began at other influential companies in the United States, such as Starbucks and Amazon. As Apple grew to become the world’s first $3 trillion company, a tight labor market coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic exposed labor conditions and inequalities front-facing workers in places such as stores and warehouses faced.

“It speaks to a growing frustration among workers and also a contagion in labor activity, which is when one group of workers stands up and inspires others,” Kate Bronfenbrenner, the Director of Labor Education Research at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said.

So far, workers at two Apple store locations – Towson, Maryland and Oklahoma City – have voted to unionize. But the union vote in New Jersey this…

A new family of COVID variants nicknamed “FLiRT” is spreading across the country, as vaccination rates nationwide remain concerningly low for some public health experts.

While symptoms and severity seem to be about the same as previous COVID strains, the new FLiRT variants appear to be more transmissible, said infectious disease expert Dr. Robert Murphy.

“A new, more contagious variant is out there,” said Murphy, executive director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Global Health and a professor of infectious diseases at the Feinberg School of Medicine. “COVID-19 is still with us, and compared to flu and RSV, COVID-19 can cause significant problems off-season.”

Murphy urged the public to get up to date on COVID shots, particularly individuals who are at higher risk for severe complications from the virus. While much of the population has some immunity from vaccination or previous COVID infections, Murphy noted that “with COVID-19, immunity wanes over time.”

One FLiRT variant, KP.2, is estimated to account for roughly a quarter of recent COVID cases, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from late April.

That means it has outpaced the previously most common strain, JN.1, which spurred much of the winter respiratory season’s spike in COVID cases and hospitalizations nationwide, coinciding with a spate of flu and RSV infections around the same time.

The JN.1 variant is estimated to account for about 22% of recent COVID cases across the country, according to CDC data from late April.

Another FLiRT variant, KP.1.1, comprises over 7% of COVID cases nationwide, the CDC data shows. The name “FLiRT” is an acronym using the technical names for the mutations that caused the family of variants.

Hannah Barbian, a virologist at the Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory at Rush University Medical Center, has been tracking various COVID variants in Chicago. She said her laboratory has detected the KP.2 variant in…

John T. Bennett | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is headed back to California to raise more campaign cash Friday and Saturday after he sent shockwaves around the globe with a potential landmark change to U.S. foreign policy.

Biden sat down with CNN anchor Erin Burnett Wednesday during a campaign stop in battleground Wisconsin. As he did during recent official White House and campaign events, he jabbed at Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and defended his economic record.

The president has joked that his staff dreads when he goes off-script or veers away from the prepared remarks on a teleprompter. And he has given fewer media interviews than his recent predecessors, including Trump.

But when he does, Biden often is more candid than when he is delivering remarks from behind the presidential lectern or even answering reporters’ shouted questions, which usually generate four- or five-word answers than can raise even more questions about his policy stances.

His CNN sit-down was no exception, as Biden delivered his most blunt warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet. Here are three takeaways.

‘Not supplying the weapons’

Biden told the “Outfront” anchor he made clear to Israeli leaders if they conduct military operations in “population centers” inside Gaza, he would withhold U.S.-made heavy bombs.

Though his top aides in recent weeks have declined to answer reporters’ questions about Israeli military operations inside the Palestinian enclave, he acknowledged on Wednesday that those American-manufactured bombs have been used in the Israeli Defense Forces’ deadly bombardment. According to a Hamas-run health agency, almost 35,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attack inside the Jewish state, which killed 1,400 people. Another 78,000 Palestinians have been wounded, according to the same agency.

“I made it clear that, if they go into Rafah —…

The Southern California News Group was well-represented among the finalists for the 2024 SoCal Journalism Awards.

The Los Angeles Press Club announced the finalists for the 66th annual awards on Thursday, May 9, and SCNG had 26 total finalists across 19 categories – including a possible journalist of the year.

Staff writer Beau Yarbrough, who writes for The Sun and SCNG’s other Inland Empire publications, was named a finalist for journalist of the year in the “print, circulation under 50,000” category.

To be eligible for journalist of the year, a candidate must also be a finalist in multiple other categories. Yarbrough is also a finalist in three other categories:

SCNG, which comprises 11 daily news publications and various community weeklies, also dominated the investigative category for newspapers with a circulation under 50,000.

A year after staff writer Scott Schwebke comprised 80% of the finalists in that category, SCNG once again had four of the five overall investigative reporting finalists: Besides Yarbrough, Schwebke, Clara Harter and Jason Henry are also finalists in that category.

Here are the rest of SCNG’s finalists for this year’s SoCal Journalism Awards:

All media print or online, in any outlet:

Photography:

Hard news in print, any outlet:

Newspapers with 50,000-plus circulation:

Newspapers with under 50,000 circulation:

• News feature: Teresa Liu, Daily Breeze, for “Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, IndyCar Series look to go green.”
• Personality profile: Kristy Hutchings, Long Beach Press-Telegram, for “A WWII bride, now a Seal Beach resident, recalls Queen Mary trip, other adventures.”
• Personality profile: Jo Murray, Long Beach Press-Telegram, “From King of the Beach to personal struggles, racing icon Al Unser Jr. strives to rise anew.”
• Investigative: Harter and Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News, for “Fentanyl addiction fuels underground shoplifting economy in LA’s MacArthur Park.”
• Investigative: Henry, Los Angeles Daily News,…

LOS ANGELES — More than 800 University of California faculty and staff on Thursday, May 9, called for the resignation of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block over the handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment and related violence that erupted on the Westwood campus, including an assault on the camp by masked assailants that was allowed to rage for hours before police intervened.

The faculty members all attached their names to an online petition that calls for the ouster of Block, as well as full amnesty for all students, staff and faculty who were involved in the encampment. The petition also calls on the university to fully disclose within 30 days all of its investments, and to divest from “all military weapons production companies and supporting systems.”

Faculty and staff members gathered on the UCLA campus Thursday to express their concerns and deliver the petition to Block and university administration. There was no immediate response from Block.

On Friday, the UCLA Academic Senate, which represents campus faculty, will hold an emergency meeting to consider a resolution of “no-confidence” and a formal censure of Block. Those resolutions both state that Block “failed to ensure the safety of our students and grievously mishandled the events of last week.”

The resolutions are similar to those taken up Wednesday by the Academic Senate at USC, which voted to formally censure USC President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman. That group tabled a no-confidence resolution.

The faculty actions are the latest fallout following last week’s dismantling of the massive encampment at UCLA’s Royce Quad. The police action resulted in 209 arrests. The removal of the encampment came roughly 24 hours after a group of masked assailants launched a violent attack on the protesters, setting off fireworks and deploying tear gas in a clash that protesters said resulted in dozens of injuries.

Complaints quickly arose following that attack, which observers said was allowed to…