Summary List PlacementMcDonald's Black franchisees filed a class action suit against the fast-food giant, following in the footsteps of former franchisees who allege the chain sent them on "financial suicide missions." On Thursday, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of current Black McDonald's franchisees in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division. Named plaintiffs are James Byrd, Jr. and Darrell Byrd, two brothers who own four McDonald's locations between them in Tennessee.  "Although the Byrds risk retaliation (and potentially any chance at saving their only remaining restaurants) in bringing forth this action, they cannot allow other Black McDonald's franchisees to be misled and injured by the same pipeline of discrimin...

Warning that COVID-19 has been linked to a host of potentially long-term health effects, Los Angeles County’s chief medical officer said today people shouldn’t be fooled into thinking the illness is a “simple disease” with minimal impacts on the bulk of its victims. “Any and all notions that COVID-19 is a relatively simple disease in which a small percentage of persons suffer severe consequences and the rest quickly recover must be dismissed,” Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser told reporters during an online media briefing. “This simply is not the case. What we are seeing is that this is an infection that affects health in many ways, including what appear to be many long-term health consequences.” Gunzenhauser walked through a litany of health issues that have been linked to the coronavirus, while

Las Virgenes Unified has become the first public school district in Los Angeles County to be granted waivers for some of its youngest learners to return to school. All nine of its elementary schools plan to welcome students in transitional kindergarten through the second grade back to campus for half-day sessions starting Nov. 9, the district announced this week. Twenty-nine schools in the county now have permission to bring its youngest learners back under a waiver program that the county Board of Supervisors approved late last month. So far, two-thirds of the approved schools are private schools. Of the 10 public schools that have received waivers, nine make up the Las Virgenes district. The 10th is Sycamore School, a charter school in Malibu, which also learned of its approval this week

A teenage boy was shot Oct. 29, 2020, in Morgan Park. | Sun-Times file The boy, 16, was shot in the back of the head about 4:35 p.m. on the sidewalk in the 1100 block of West 111th Place, Chicago police said. A teenage boy was critically wounded in a shooting Thursday in Morgan Park on the Far South Side. The boy, 16, was shot in the back of the head about 4:35 p.m. on the sidewalk in the 1100 block of West 111th Place, Chicago police said. He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was listed in critical condition, police said. No one is in custody as Area Two detectives investigate. Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides. ...read more Source:: Chicago Sun Times...

By Veronica Stracqualursi, Keith Allen and Caroline Kelly | CNN Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue will not attend the final debate with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff before Election Day, both campaigns confirmed, after the two traded barbs in unusually personal terms during their debate Wednesday night. Perdue will instead attend an event with President Donald Trump, his campaign announced, on the heels of a debate that saw Ossoff label Perdue a “crook” and Perdue accuse Ossoff of profiting off China. The stakes in the close race are high. Georgia has not one but two US Senate seats up for grabs, and some Republicans fear that Ossoff’s strong challenge in a reliably red state, coupled with a splintered GOP fight for current Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat, puts both seats at play as the p

SANTA ANITA LEADERS (Final standings) JOCKEYS / WINS Flavien Prat / 27 Juan Hernandez / 23 Abel Cedillo / 14 Umberto Rispoli / 14 Ricardo Gonzalez / 10 TRAINERS / WINS Bob Baffert / 11 Peter Miller / 11 Doug O’Neill / 10 Richard Baltas / 8 Philip D’Amato / 6 WEEKEND STAKES AT DEL MAR Saturday • $75,000 Kathryn Crosby Stakes, fillies and mares, 3-year-olds and up, 1 mile (turf) Sunday • $75,000 Let It Ride Stakes, 3-year-olds, 1 mile (turf) DOWN THE STRETCH • Santa Anita track superintendent Dennis Moore, 71, has been in the business for 48 years and has seen the difference in the way his sport is covered. It doesn’t mean he likes what he’s seen. “With social media, a horse can go down and within five minutes it’s all over the country,” he said. “But people report it, and there’s circumsta...

Alameda and San Mateo counties won millions of dollars for homeless housing Thursday, as Gov. Gavin Newsom doled out the last round of state funding through Project Homekey. Alameda County received more than $23 million for two projects totaling 165 units. Both sites will be used temporarily as interim housing for homeless residents, and then turned into permanent studio units by the fall of 2022. San Mateo County won more than $33 million for two projects that will provide 170 units of interim housing. County spokeswoman Michelle Durand said she couldn’t disclose further details about the projects Thursday, as negotiations to acquire the buildings weren’t complete. Funding also went to projects in Sacramento, West Sacramento, Marin County, Los Angeles County, Fresno and Tahoe. “Today, we

Bryan Washington. | Provided The new book by the author of the acclaimed story collecton ‘Lot’ follows the complex relationship between a Black day care teacher and a Japanese American chef. Bryan Washington’s new novel “Memorial” (Riverhead Books, $27) follows the complex relationship between Benson, a Black day care teacher, and Mike, a Japanese American chef. They live together in Texas, and, for all intents and purposes, they are in love. Lately, though, their relationship has felt strained. As issues with their families become more pressing, their lives together only grow more complicated. Mike’s mother arrives for a visit at the same time Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Japan. So he leaves Benson alone to live with his mother in their apartment and travels to be...

CBRE Group, the nation’s largest commercial real estate firm, has shifted its Los Angeles headquarters to Dallas. The move — which was more symbolic than impactful — will not involve a significant transfer of jobs. The international property firm has more than 100,000 employees and 530 offices worldwide. CBRE manages more than 6.8 billion square feet of real estate throughout the world. (File photo)Lew Horne, president of advisory services for the company’s Pacific Southwest region, said the move “formalizes how the company has been operating for the past eight years.” He didn’t elaborate on details of the move. “We have more than 5,000 employees in California and only an extremely small number of operations-related roles are expected to migrate over time to Dallas,” Horne said via email.

Summary List PlacementAmazon said on Thursday that it expects another $4 billion in COVID-related expenses this quarter. That's on top of the $7.5 billion it's already recorded as COVID-related costs this year, like buying face masks for its employees and building an in-house testing lab.  But Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky clarified during Thursday's earnings call that the $4 billion cost this quarter isn't entirely related to money spent on new initiatives — it also includes more arbitrary costs like "productivity drags" stemming from social distancing and longer breaks. "There's productivity drags for things like new hire ramps, social distancing, extended break periods — things that we can quantify and say, this is a change in our process that has hurt productivity," Olsavsky said. The i...

SANTA CLARA — If Jimmy Garoppolo can’t say anything nice about you, well, you must be truly rotten. It’s not his nature to publicly return fire at his critics, or to demean others, at least not off the field. Garoppolo sprayed compliments at each and every target that came his way Thursday. He even found something nice to say about the Seattle Seahawks’ league-worst defense, which he astutely does not want to rile up ahead of the 49ers’ game Sunday in Seattle. “There’s some soft spots. They make you work for it, though,” Garoppolo began. “There’s no gimmies against this type of defense. You have to earn it and work your way down the field. They’re very sound.” Disclaimer: the Seahawks (5-1) have allowed the most yards in NFL history through six games. Garoppolo is obviously progressing fro

By Ben Fox | Associated Press WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos planned a “Moms for Trump” rally in her home state of Michigan. The Department of Homeland Security’s top official was in Texas to celebrate completion of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency headed to North Carolina after visiting Georgia the day before. That was just Thursday. Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are logging extra miles as mostly unofficial campaign surrogates in crucial states in the final days before Tuesday’s election, blending politics and policy in ways that critics say skirt established norms and may even violate the law. It’s long been one of the benefits of incumbency that a president can enlist his Cabinet to promote administrat

Summary List PlacementNASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft successfully scooped up rocky space dust from the asteroid Bennu on Friday. But in a sense, it completed its task too well: Scientists quickly realized that the spacecraft's sample-collecting arm had gathered so much material that its valves wouldn't close. That was leading the dust to leak back into space. "Time is of the essence," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said. So this week, the mission team instructed Osiris-Rex to store its sample inside the designated return capsule ahead of schedule. On Thursday, NASA confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully done so.  "I am extremely happy with the sample that we've collected," Dante Lauretta, the Osiris-Rex mission lead, said in a...

CORCORAN — An internal review at the state prison known as the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility cleared a staffer who was allegedly warned of impending violence an hour before one inmate beat two others to death with a cane, targeting both victims because they were convicted of sex crimes against children. Jonathan Watson, 42, wrote a letter to this newspaper confessing to using another inmate’s cane to murder David Bobb, 48, and Graham De Luis-Conti, 62, just one week after being transferred to the prison in Corcoran last January. In his letter, Watson said he requested a transfer to a counselor and warned that violence would follow if his “urgent” request wasn’t heeded. An hour later, Watson beat one of the victims to death, he said in his letter. Watson was walking to anot...