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      Intruder Breaks Into Los Angeles Mayor’s Residence

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      The Getty House was broken into early Sunday through a smashed window, the police said. Mayor Karen Bass said she and her family were safe. The Getty House in Los Angeles, the official residence of Mayor Karen Bass, was broken into early Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department said. The police took the intruder into custody, officials said. Details on the break-in were scant, but the police said on social media that the intruder had entered the Getty House after smashing a window around 6:40 a.m., while Ms. Bass and her family were inside. Ms. Bass’s office said in a statement that she and her family were safe and had not sustained any injuries.“The mayor is grateful to L.A.P.D. for responding and arresting the suspect,” Ms. Bass’s office said in a statement.The police did not identify the suspect and said that the investigation was ongoing. The suspect is currently being processed, and officials will then release more details, Tony Im, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said.The Getty House is in Windsor Square, a neighborhood in Central Los Angeles. The city, with a population of about four million, was struggling with a surge in homelessness and violent crime when Ms. Bass took office in December 2022, two years into the pandemic. But data show that rates of violent crime have gone down in the city more recently. According to the Los Angeles Police’s report on crime in 2023, homicides went down that year by 17 percent from the year before. There were slight upticks in some nonviolent crimes, however. Property crimes increased by about 3.5 percent, and motor vehicle thefts went up by 2 percent, compared with the previous year, the report said. The Los Angeles Police said they would not categorize the Getty House break-in until booking is completed. In her State of the City Address this month, Ms. Bass hailed the city’s progress in lowering crime rates and homelessness. “Over the last year, we have done big things together,“ Ms. Bass said. “Thousands more unhoused Angelenos came inside, and homicide and violent crime came down last year.” In September 2022, before she took office as mayor, Ms. Bass’s personal home in the city’s Baldwin Vista neighborhood was burglarized. Two thieves stole two handguns at the time. In recent years, several politicians have been targeted in break-ins and swatting attempts.One high-profile case involved Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco in October 2022, when she was speaker of the House. Ms. Pelosi was not there at the time, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, was assaulted by an intruder with a hammer. Mr. Pelosi sustained severe injuries, including a skull fracture. And last December, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she was swatted, or subjected to a hoax call, on Christmas Day. It was not the first time she had been targeted of swatting, she said. “This is like the 8th time,” she wrote on social media after the incident. More

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      In Los Angeles, the O.J. Simpson Case Defined a Turbulent Era

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      From the car chase to the verdict, the murder case became an inextricable part of Los Angeles history in the 1990s, and Angelenos to this day still ponder what happened.It would become an indelible memory for those who could not help but watch and watch and watch: a white Ford Bronco steadily traveling along the cleared freeways of Southern California, a trail of police cars not far behind.Its passenger, of course, was O.J. Simpson, and the two-hour chase on June 17, 1994, that interrupted regular programming transfixed a nation.“I watched it until it ended. I wasn’t getting off the TV. Who was getting off the TV on a chase like that?” said Richard Smith, 67, who gathered that day with his family to see it all unfold on television in their South Los Angeles apartment.The saga of Mr. Simpson, from the chase to the criminal trial to the aftermath, would be followed, debated and dissected closely by millions, etching itself into Los Angeles history and thrusting the city into what seemed the center of the universe.On Thursday, as news spread of Mr. Simpson’s death at 76 from cancer, many residents were forced to reminisce about events that felt distinctly personal, touching on issues of race and celebrity that had long hit close to home in Southern California. And the case had played out on their home turf only a handful of years after the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots.Mr. Simpson, at the time, was seen as someone who had transcended the tense and deadly relationship other Black Angelenos had with law enforcement. Soaring above his impoverished beginnings, he had carved out an international show business career and lived in the affluent enclave of Brentwood.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 Highway 1 Collapse Leaves 2,000 Tourists Stranded

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      Many stayed in temporary shelters, hotels and campgrounds overnight on Saturday, while some slept in their cars. A portion of scenic Highway 1 in the Big Sur area of California collapsed Saturday stranding about 2,000 motorists, mostly tourists, overnight.Officials with the California Department of Transportation said on Sunday that a section of the southbound highway located in the Central Coast, would remain closed to the public while crews worked on the affected areas. Large chunks of the road fell into the ocean. The highway, also known as the Pacific Coast Highway, features stretches of rocky cliffs, lush mountains, panoramic beaches and coastal redwood forests.There were no reported injuries. Caltrans, the agency, did not give an estimate of when it expected to fully reopen the highway. Officials did not say what led to the collapse, but torrential rain battered the area near Rocky Creek Bridge, which is about 17 miles south of Monterey. Kevin Drabinski, a spokesman for Caltrans, said the officials determined that the damage was severe enough to close the highway for motorists Saturday afternoon.“Caltrans became aware that we had lost portion of the southbound lane and that necessitated a full closure of Highway 1,” Mr. Drabinski 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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      Why Is Sean Combs the Subject of a Homeland Security Investigation?

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      The department has a division that often directs inquiries into sex trafficking allegations, like those cited in recent lawsuits against Mr. Combs.The raids of Sean Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and the Miami area this week raised a barrage of questions about the nature of the inquiry, which a federal official said was at least in part a human trafficking investigation.The government has said little about the basis for the search warrants, but the raids came after five civil lawsuits were filed against Mr. Combs in recent months that accused him of violating sex trafficking laws. In four of the suits women accused him of rape, and in one a man accused him of unwanted sexual contact. Mr. Combs, a hip-hop impresario known as Puff Daddy and Diddy who has been a high-profile figure in the music industry since the 1990s, has vehemently denied all of the allegations, calling them “sickening.” Officials have not publicly named him as a target of any prosecution.As the civil suits against Mr. Combs illustrate, the term human or sex trafficking has a broader meaning in the law than perhaps the more popularly understood image of organized crime and forced prostitution rings.“Traditionally you think of trafficking as a pimp who has a stable of victims and then is trafficking them in the traditional sense of the word, for money,” said Jim Cole, a former supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who oversaw human trafficking cases, “but there are lots of forms of trafficking.”The breadth of trafficking investigations has grown with the recent uptick in sexual abuse claims and the use of the internet by traffickers. Homeland Security Investigations often leads such criminal investigations, although the department is most commonly associated with immigration and transnational issues.In the current inquiry, federal investigators in New York have been interviewing potential witnesses about sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Combs for several months, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Some of the questions involved the solicitation and transportation of prostitutes, as well as any payments or promises associated with sex acts, the person 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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      RuPaul Is Sending a Rainbow Bus to Give Away Books Targeted by Bans

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      The star, whose show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has an international following, is one of the founders of a new online bookstore promoting underrepresented authors. The giveaways are part of its outreach.At a time of book bans and efforts by state legislatures to ban drag shows, the performer and television producer who is arguably the country’s most famous drag star, RuPaul, is the co-founder of a new online bookstore that will be sending a rainbow school bus from the West Coast to the South to distribute the very books targeted by those bans.He announced on Monday that he was one of three business partners behind the bookstore, Allstora, which will promote underrepresented authors and provide writers with a greater share of profits than other online booksellers do.RuPaul said that this sort of book website would fill an important gap, especially in “these strange days, we’re living in,” to support the ideas of people “who are willing to push the conversation forward.”In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in efforts to restrict access to books at libraries in the United States, and most of the challenged books are by or about L.G.B.T.Q. people or people of color, according to library and free speech organizations. Some libraries have received bomb threats, and others have faced closure over efforts to remove books. At the same time, states have tried to ban drag shows and restrict access to health care for transgender people.RuPaul with Eric Cervini, left, co-founder and chief executive of Allstora, and Adam Powell, co-founder and director of the Rainbow Book Bus.AllstoraEnter RuPaul. Drag has been in popular culture for decades, but his reality competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which is airing its sixteenth season and has more than a dozen international editions, has brought the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of drag performers to home audiences.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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      The Sunday Read: ‘How Tom Sandoval Became the Most Hated Man in America’

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      Adrienne Hurst and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyAt the end of a quiet, leafy street in the Valley in Los Angeles, the reality TV star Tom Sandoval has outfitted his home with landscaping lights that rotate in a spectrum of colors, mimicking the dance floor of a nightclub. The property is both his private residence and an occasional TV set for the Bravo reality show “Vanderpump Rules.” After a series of events that came to be known as “Scandoval,” paparazzi had been camped outside, but by the new year it was just one or two guys, and now they have mostly gone, too.“Scandoval” is the nickname for Sandoval’s affair with another cast member, which he had behind the backs of the show’s producers and his girlfriend of nine years. This wouldn’t be interesting or noteworthy except that in 2023, after being on the air for 10 seasons, “Vanderpump” was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding unstructured reality program, an honor that has never been bestowed on any of the network’s “Housewives” shows. It also became, by a key metric, the most-watched cable series in the advertiser-beloved demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds and brought in over 12.2 million viewers. This happened last spring, when Hollywood’s TV writers went on strike and cable TV was declared dead and our culture had already become so fractured that it was rare for anything — let alone an episode of television — to become a national event. And yet you probably heard about “Scandoval” even if you couldn’t care less about who these people are, exactly.As “Vanderpump” airs its 11th season, Tom Sandoval reflects on his new public persona.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan. More

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      Adam Schiff Is Suddenly a Democratic Front Runner in California

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      “I have to go get a photo of Adam!”A young woman in dark glasses, a tan trench coat and a lavender bucket hat darts into the street and runs after the white Porsche convertible in which Representative Adam Schiff and his wife are slowly being driven through Chinatown as part of the Lunar New Year’s parade in Los Angeles. Planting herself several feet in front of the car, the woman snaps some pics and then calls out to the passing House member, “Thank you for all that you do!”As she heads back toward her friends, I try to stop her, asking why she is a fan of Mr. Schiff, who is running for the Senate to succeed Dianne Feinstein, who died in office last September at age 90. The woman keeps moving but gushes, with a hint of perplexity suggesting I’m an idiot for having to ask: “Everybody loves him! My mother-in-law in Madison, Wisconsin, loves him! He’s done so much!”Jake Michaels for The New York TimesAnd with that, she melts back into the crowd, not bothering to elaborate on what it is that Mr. Schiff has done. Not that she needs to. Around his home state — and beyond — the 12-term Democrat has achieved bona fide celebrity status thanks to his emergence as a prime antagonist of Donald Trump.As the House member who spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, who played a key role in the Jan. 6 select committee and who has served as a top Trump critic on cable news, Mr. Schiff has been vilified across the MAGAverse. He has earned no fewer than three puerile nicknames from the former president: Pencil Neck, Liddle’ Adam Schiff and, my favorite, Shifty Schiff. More seriously, House Republicans booted him from the intelligence committee early last year and later censured him for his role in the Russia investigation, claiming he advanced politically motivated lies about Mr. Trump that endangered national security. All this, in turn, has made Mr. Schiff a hero to the anti-Trump masses.At multiple points along the parade route, in fact, people yell their gratitude and encouragement. “Keep it up!” urges Chris (first name only!), a tour guide visiting from Tampa, raising a fist in salute.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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      On Covering the Arts in California

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      A conversation with Robin Pogrebin, a Los Angeles-based arts writer for The New York Times.The Frieze Art Fair at Paramount Studios in 2019.Graham Walzer for The New York TimesThough New York is often thought of as the center of the art world, there’s plenty going on in California.The New York Times has been covering California’s ambitious museums, top-notch art schools and adventurous galleries for years. Some of my favorite recent articles discussed how the Los Angeles art scene is eclipsing the Bay Area’s, how old San Francisco theaters are rethinking the size of their seats and how San Diego is finally getting its answer to the Hollywood Bowl.Robin Pogrebin, a longtime arts writer for The Times, moved to Los Angeles from New York last fall to bolster the coverage, reporting on art, architecture, music, theater and cultural institutions in California.Just this week, she published an article on the Resnicks, an L.A. couple who have made big donations to cultural organizations but have come under scrutiny for their water use, and another on the increasing recognition of Asian artists at the Frieze Art Fair, which opens today in Santa Monica.I spoke to Robin about her impressions of the West Coast art scene. Here is our conversation, lightly edited:In such a big state, how do you think about what to focus on?I had always considered the West Coast an important part of our cultural coverage, given that many important museums and galleries are here and that Los Angeles has a long tradition of producing artists. Hollywood also has the potential to feed the theater and dance worlds, and classical music as well as opera have their own vibrant followings here.Now that I’m based here, I’m exploring, discovering, learning and responding to what strikes me as newsworthy or interesting. I am out for lunches and dinners every day with people who can help me understand the cultural ecosystem here, attending events almost every night in many different arts disciplines. I’m keeping track of potential trends worth noting and individual stories worth telling.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