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    California Educator Is Charged With Molesting 8 Children

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    David Braff was first accused of misconduct years ago but has since held a series of school jobs. The authorities are investigating the possibility of additional victims. A Los Angeles assistant principal was arrested on Friday and charged with molesting eight children between 2015 and 2019, while he was working as an elementary school counselor in Ventura County. The defendant, David Lane Braff Jr., 42, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., is accused of molesting children aged 6 to 10 in an office at McKevett Elementary School in the Santa Paula Unified School District, roughly 70 miles west of Los Angeles. The charges emerged out of a cold case sexual abuse unit, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said. He noted that officials at McKevett Elementary had reached out to authorities at the time of the alleged incidents.Nevertheless, Mr. Braff has held several jobs in public education since and has also volunteered in a number of programs for children.Mr. Nasarenko described an “extensive search for the possibility of other victims at other school sites and locations.” “This shakes the very foundation of the notion of a school site as a safe learning environment,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Los Angeles City Council Passes ‘Sanctuary’ Ordinance in Response to Trump

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      The swift action, two weeks after Donald J. Trump’s presidential win, signaled a sense of urgency from city leaders.The Los Angeles City Council passed a so-called sanctuary ordinance on Tuesday that would prohibit city resources from being used to carry out federal immigration enforcement, the first deportation-related move by a major U.S. city since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election two weeks ago.Though Los Angeles had already declared itself a “city of sanctuary” during Mr. Trump’s first term, it had done so only through a resolution and an executive directive rather than by establishing a new city ordinance. The ordinance passed on Tuesday would enshrine protections in city law and give them more legal weight, officials said.The unanimous vote came a week after Mayor Karen Bass called for “swift action” to protect immigrants in Los Angeles, and it required the expediting of a draft ordinance that was introduced last year. The ordinance will now go to Ms. Bass for her signature and would take effect 10 days after she signs it.The leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest school system, were also poised to enact their own immigrant protections later on Tuesday.The prompt actions by Los Angeles leaders signaled a sense of urgency to protect the city’s large immigrant population ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Trump, who has promised to pursue mass deportations of undocumented immigrants across the country.The ordinance would prohibit the use of city resources — including city workers and city property — to arrest or detain someone as part of a federal immigration enforcement effort. It would also bar city employees from asking about someone’s citizenship or immigration status. (The Los Angeles Police Department has had an order in place since 1979 that prohibits its officers from asking about immigration status or making arrests because of someone’s legal status.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Shifts Rightward on Crime in an Election Fueled by Frustration

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      Voters in the Democratic-run state overwhelmingly approved a measure to impose harsher sentences for crimes and were on their way to ousting two progressive district attorneys.California has shown no signs of going Republican anytime soon, but in Tuesday’s elections the reliably liberal state lurched to the right in ways that might surprise other Americans.Fed up with open-air drug use, “smash-and-grab” robberies and shampoo locked away in stores, California voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 36, that will impose harsher penalties for shoplifting and drug possession. Voters in Oakland and Los Angeles were on their way to ousting liberal district attorneys who had campaigned on social justice promises to reduce imprisonment and hold the police accountable. And statewide measures to raise the minimum wage, ban the forced labor of inmates and expand rent control, all backed by progressive groups and labor unions, were heading toward defeat.Amid a conservative shift nationally that included Donald J. Trump’s reclamation of the White House, voters in heavily Democratic California displayed a similar frustration, challenging the state’s identity as a reflexively liberal bastion.And Mr. Trump appears to have gained ground in California compared with four years ago, based on initial election returns, despite facing Vice President Kamala Harris in her home state. (She was still ahead by nearly 18 percentage points after a vote count update on Thursday, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in 2020 by 29 points.)The mood this year was “very negative about the direction of the country especially, but also the state,” said Mark Baldassare, who is a political scientist and the statewide survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California. “Lots of concerns about the direction of the economy, and worries about the cost of living and public safety.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LACMA Gala Photos: Charli XCX, Blake Lively and More Celebrities Turn Out

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      Blake Lively, Kaia Gerber and Kim Kardashian took pictures under the lights, posing against a backdrop of more than 200 restored street lamps from “Urban Light,” an installation by the artist Chris Burden that served as a stand-in for a red carpet.It was the 13th annual Art+Film gala, held Saturday night, which raised more than $6.4 million for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the Western United States.On one side, a sage green carpet contrasted with striking red and glass galleries designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. On the other, there was a concrete wall of the much-anticipated new LACMA building by the architect Peter Zumthor.And the guest list for the gala, sponsored by Gucci, felt as eclectic as the museum it benefited, as Hollywood fixtures rubbed shoulders with luminaries from the art world, who gathered to honor the filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and the artist Simone Leigh. (LACMA is currently co-presenting an exhibit of Ms. Leigh’s work with the California African American Museum.)This starry mix of creative worlds aligns with the museum director Michael Govan’s vision for LACMA. “The idea was to design it as a place of inspiration for creative people,” Mr. Govan said.The filmmaker Baz Luhrmann.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lil Durk Is Accused of Conspiring to Kill a Rival. What We Know About the Case.

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      The rapper Lil Durk was arrested at the airport in Miami this week after he had been booked on flights to three international destinations, federal prosecutors said.The Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk was arrested on a federal charge near Miami International Airport on Thursday over accusations that he conspired to kill a rap rival, resulting in the fatal shooting of another person.Lil Durk put out a bounty on the life of another rapper, identified only as T.B. by prosecutors, as retaliation for the 2020 killing of the rapper King Von, a member of the hip-hop collective Only the Family, which Lil Durk founded, according to the federal criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.An F.B.I. affidavit also says that Lil Durk had been booked on at least three international flights that were leaving on Thursday — to Italy, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates — in an attempt to flee the United States.Lil Durk, 32, whose legal name is Durk Banks, appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Friday. He remained in federal custody and was expected to be arraigned in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to prosecutors. He was charged with conspiracy to use interstate facilities to commit murder for hire resulting in death.The news of his arrest comes weeks before the scheduled release of his new album, “Deep Thoughts,” on Nov. 22. Earlier this year, he won a Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his song “All My Life,” featuring J. Cole.Representatives for Lil Durk had not responded to a request for comment.Here’s what we know about the case so far:Lil Durk is alleged to have co-conspirators.Lil Durk’s arrest comes on the heels of a recently unveiled federal indictment in Los Angeles charging five other men affiliated with Only the Family, or O.T.F., with the murder-for-hire plot, alleging that they conspired to “track, stalk, and attempt to kill” a rapper identified as T.B. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Archdiocese of Los Angeles Agrees to Pay $880 Million to Settle Sex Abuse Claims

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      The settlement is the highest single payout by an archdiocese, experts said, and brings Los Angeles’s cumulative payout in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest archdiocese, has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who say they were sexually abused as children. The settlement, which experts said was the highest single payout by an archdiocese, brings Los Angeles’s cumulative payout in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.The settlement was announced on Wednesday in a joint statement by lawyers for the plaintiffs and the archdiocese. “I am sorry for every one of these incidents, from the bottom of my heart,” Archbishop José H. Gomez said in a statement. “My hope is that this settlement will provide some measure of healing for what these men and women have suffered.”The agreement represents the near conclusion to decades of litigation against the archdiocese, with only a few suits remaining. In 2007, it reached a $660 million settlement in abuse lawsuits brought by 508 people who accused Catholic clergy and members of religious orders of abuse. Over the years, the archdiocese has sold off real estate, liquidated investments and taken out loans to cover the staggering costs of litigation.Archbishop Gomez said in a statement that the new settlement would be paid through “reserves, investments and loans, along with other archdiocesan assets and payments that will be made by religious orders and others named in the litigation.” He said that donations designated for parishes, schools and specific mission campaigns would not be used for the settlement.“It’s never going to be full justice when the harm is a child’s life,” said Michael Reck, a lawyer with Jeff Anderson & Associates who helped represent some of the plaintiffs. “But it’s a measure of justice and a measure of accountability that gives these survivors some sense of closure at least.”This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      Paul Lowe, Award-Winning British Photojournalist, Dies at 60

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      He was killed in a stabbing near Los Angeles, and his 19-year-old son was arrested, the authorities said. Mr. Lowe had earned acclaim for documenting the siege of Sarajevo and other conflicts.Paul Lowe, an award-winning British photojournalist who captured the horror of war during the fall of the former Yugoslavia in a career that spanned decades and continents, was killed in a stabbing near Los Angeles on Saturday. He was 60.The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office filed one count of murder against Mr. Lowe’s son, Emir Abadzic Lowe, 19, for the death, in the San Gabriel Mountains, the county’s Sheriff’s Department said in a statement on Tuesday. The county medical examiner said Mr. Lowe had died from a stab wound in the neck.Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital city in modern history.In one of Mr. Lowe’s images from Sarajevo, a young girl plays in the street next to a metal tank barrier.Paul Lowe/VII, via ReduxHis son Emir had long struggled with his mental health and was hospitalized on multiple occasions for psychosis over the past year, Amra Abadzic Lowe, Mr. Lowe’s wife of almost 30 years, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.Their son took a trip to the United States that was supposed to last days, but he had not returned after more than two months, she said. Mr. Lowe had traveled to California to try to persuade him to come home with him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tesla’s Self-Driving ‘Robotaxi’ to Enter the Spotlight

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      Elon Musk has said that the vehicle will add trillions to Tesla’s stock market value and that those who don’t believe him should sell their shares.Tesla on Thursday plans to unveil a product that Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, has said will add trillions of dollars to its stock market value and fuel its growth.The product is a prototype of a self-driving taxi. And it will be shown at an invitation-only, evening event at the Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles. Mr. Musk has promised that the cab, which he calls the Robotaxi, will be able to ferry passengers to any destination without human intervention, a feat that other companies have achieved in just a few places like Phoenix and San Francisco.Mr. Musk’s supporters and fans believe that the Robotaxi will open a lucrative line of business that will more than make up for Tesla’s recent struggles in the electric car market, where it has lost market share to more established carmakers. Mr. Musk has said people will be able to purchase Robotaxis for personal use and earn extra money by allowing the vehicles to ferry passengers, the automotive equivalent of listing a home on Airbnb.“An autonomous taxi platform will unlock a multitrillion-dollar market,” Tasha Keeney, director of investment analysis at ARK Invest, an asset management firm that owns shares in Tesla, said in a statement.But other analysts and autonomous driving experts are skeptical that Tesla can perfect the technology and make a profit from it anytime soon.A car capable of functioning as a self-driving taxi “is still several years away, and numerous technological hurdles, safety tests and regulatory approvals are still standing in the way,” Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tacita Dean Draws Her Way Into the Menil

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      In the artist’s first major U.S. museum survey, she bonds with Cy Twombly through works on paper, films and photographs.During a residency at the Menil Collection in Houston last February, the British artist and filmmaker Tacita Dean spent the night in the Cy Twombly Gallery.She wanted to be surrounded by Twombly’s work, having long felt connected to the so-called Blackboard artist, who died in 2011, and in particular to his collage-drawings and preoccupation with the passage of time.“He connects to the classical world in a way that is deeply emotive,” Dean said. “I’m interested in where your mind goes when you look at one of his works. It can go to memory, it can go to envy — you think, ‘God, that’s so perfect.’”Now Dean is bringing her own monumental blackboard drawings and her rarely shown drawings on paper, found postcards, and albumen photographs to the Menil, in a show that opens on Oct. 11. The exhibition, “Tacita Dean: Blind Folly,” is her first major museum survey in the United States.“The presence of Cy Twombly in Houston really ignited the show and the conversation,” said Michelle White, senior curator at the Menil, who organized the exhibition. “It just became such a lovely point of connection.”In a recent interview at her Los Angeles studio, Dean, 58, said a focus on her drawings “is quite unusual for me,” given that shows typically focus on her films. And the artist said it is meaningful to be presenting her work in a place where Twombly’s presence is felt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More