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Go deeper: .. for a complete list of Oscar nominees.
Commute times are always a factor when you make plans as an Angeleno and Oscars weekend is no exception. The 96th Academy Awards will take place at the Dolby Theater on Sunday, but some street closures around Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue are already in effect.
6 a.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday:
10 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday:
Metro stops:
The following street and sidewalk closures will go into effect on the day off but additional restrictions might be in place depending on the discretion of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
12:01 a.m. Sunday through 6 a.m. Monday:
More street closures:
Where you can’t walk:
Limited access for pedestrians:
4 a.m. Sunday through 4 a.m. Monday
Additional street closures:
Where pedestrians can’t walk:
Local residents, business access and emergency vehicles only:
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The backstory: The matchup in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, where a Republican hasn’t won statewide since 2006, is a huge win for Schiff, who ran ads propping up Garvey in the hopes of avoiding a runoff between himself and another Democrat.
What’s next: The outcome of Tuesday’s race means that no matter who wins in November, California will not have a female representing the state in the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1992. The late Dianne Feinstein held the seat from her first election in 1992 until her death last fall. Her replacement, Laphonza Butler, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom but she chose not to run.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Los Angeles, who led the first impeachment inquiry of former President Donald Trump, will face Republican Steve Garvey, a former Los Angeles Dodgers player, in a general election runoff to decide who will represent California in the U.S. Senate, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
Schiff and the former first baseman Garvey managed to edge out Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter and Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee, both Democrats, and claim the top two spots.
California has a top-two primary system, in which all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same ballot and the top two vote-getters advance.
The matchup in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, where a Republican hasn’t won statewide since 2006, is a huge win for Schiff, who ran ads propping up Garvey in the hopes of avoiding a runoff between himself and another Democrat.
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The outcome of Tuesday’s race means that no matter who wins in November, California will not have a female representing the state in the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1992. The late Dianne Feinstein held the seat from her first election in 1992 until her death last fall. Her replacement, Laphonza Butler, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom but she chose not to run.
In a quirk of election timing, voters actually weighed in on two questions Tuesday: who should compete for the full six-year term that begins next January, and who should fill out the final months of Feinstein’s term after the November election.
In both cases, voters chose Garvey and Schiff.
Schiff, a longtime congressman and former federal prosecutor, ran as an establishment Democrat, with endorsements from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Barbara Boxer and most of the Democrats who represent California in Congress. Schiff made national headlines for leading the first impeachment inquiry into Trump and appeared to resonate with Democratic voters worried about a second Trump term.
Garvey, who played for the Dodgers and San Diego Padres from 1969 to 1987, has never run for office before. He often struggled to articulate policy positions during his short campaign, and lagged behind his Democratic opponents in fundraising. But he managed to consolidate the Republican and conservative vote in the final weeks before the primary and was likely aided by Schiff, who ran ads elevating the Republican in the hopes of avoiding a runoff against a fellow Democrat.
Porter, a three-term congresswoman from a swing district in Orange County, ran as an outsider looking to shake things up. She has called for a ban on stock trading among members of Congress and attacked Schiff for taking corporate political money in past races. But in a presidential primary with no real competition at the top of the ticket, she likely was hurt by lower-than-usual voter turnout and a lack of engagement among younger voters and voters of color, two of her key constituencies.
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Here are some quick links to get you to LAist’s live results for Super Tuesday:
What’s going on in the presidential race? Our colleagues at NPR are tracking the results nationwide.
California was one of 16 states and one territory that went to the polls on Super Tuesday. Here are some quick links to get you to LAist’s live results:
Get all our full results ▶
What’s going on in the presidential race? Our colleagues at NPR are tracking the results nationwide.
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What’s new: This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices.
Why now: “Today’s students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally,” says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test.
The SAT, a college admissions exam that for nearly a century was completed using paper and pencil, is now officially all-digital.
This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices. The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter reading passages and uses digital tools, like a highlighter, a graphing calculator and a bookmark to go back to skipped questions.
The revamped test, which ditches the paper and pencil, aims to make cheating harder and grading easier.
Students will still take the exam at a test center or at a high school.
“Today’s students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally,” says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test.
She says in focus groups the College Board conducted, students said they felt more confident and more natural taking tests on a digital device. “They were kind of telling us in so many words, ‘You’re a little behind us at this point, actually. Can you please catch up?’ ”
Throughout March and April, the College Board expects more than 1 million students to take the new digital SAT. Students can take the exam on Saturday test dates or during SAT School Days, where participating high schools offer the test to upperclassmen free of charge during the school day.
Stephany Perez, a high school junior from Houston, says the transition to online is “not that significant.”
“We’re so used to being on our laptops, like it’s something we do on the regular, in every class.”
Perez has been prepping for the online version in school, using test prep material from CollegeSpring, a nonprofit that partners with high school teachers.
She says she’s still nervous and anxious for the test, because she feels a lot of pressure to do well. “It’s a very important test,” she says. “It dictates what’s going to happen for your college life.”
She’s taking the test Tuesday morning at her high school using school laptops.
This isn’t the first time the College Board has administered a digital exam. International students took a digital-only SAT in 2023, and a digital-only PSAT was given to younger U.S. high school students last fall.
Students will take the digital exam on Bluebook, an app that was built in-house by the College Board. Schools were given time ahead of testing dates to download the app onto their devices. Internet access is key to start the test, though Rodriquez says it requires very little bandwidth during the test and is designed to autosave locally, so students won’t lose work or time if they lose their internet connection.
All this comes as the relevance of the SAT and ACT, another college entrance exam, is being called into question in the college admissions process. More than 1,800 U.S. colleges are not requiring a test score for students applying to enroll in fall 2025, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. But in recent weeks, some elite private colleges, including Brown University and Dartmouth College, have reinstated the test requirement, saying it provides helpful context for the admissions process.
Perez would be the first in her family to go to college in the U.S. She says, “I know a lot of schools say that they’re test optional,” but when she looked up colleges she was interested in, she found they still listed average SAT scores on their websites.
“So you do have to care,” she says, “because [colleges] might still be looking at them, even if they say they’re test optional.”
Even with many schools trying to de-emphasize the exams, Rodriquez, of the College Board, says the SAT can still be an important piece of a larger admissions puzzle.
“[The SAT] can give any student a way to show what they’ve learned in a standardized way, and that’s especially important when other parts of the college application, things like extracurricular activities and essays, are more easily influenced by parental wealth.”
The SAT and ACT are also still deeply ingrained in the American high school experience. Many states require one of the exams to graduate, and several states have contracts with the College Board to offer the test during the school day for free to their students.
Before this new digital format, the SAT had already gone through several changes. In 2014, the College Board revealed it would drop its penalty for wrong answers, make the essay portion optional and remove the obscure vocabulary section. And in early 2021, the organization announced it would discontinue the optional essay component of the SAT, as well as the subject tests in U.S. history, languages and math, among other topics.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit npr.org.
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The National Weather Service says rain will come Wednesday to the Southland, bringing mountain snow.
Happy Super Tuesday SoCal! The clock is ticking and if you haven’t cast your ballot yet, the good news is we have a last minute guide for you. Meanwhile, enjoy a warm and sunny day before more rain starts Wednesday through early Thursday.
Today’s highs will feel much like yesterday, only a couple of degrees warmer. Most of the Southland will see highs reach an average of 65 degrees, up to 67 degrees in Anaheim. Coachella Valley will reach 75 degrees while the high desert will see highs in the low to mid 60s, up to 64 degrees.
More rain is on it’s way. The National Weather Service says rain will come to the Southland Wednesday bringing mountain snow.
Current forecast models show there’s a chance of thunderstorms Wednesday evening and that snow could affect mountain passes such as Angeles Crest Highway, Lockwood Valley Road in Ventura, the Grapevine and the 5 Freeway corridor.
On this day in 1972, it was 100 degrees in Palm Springs.
After you’ve done your part for democracy, reward yourself with some good food.
Check out our full list of things to do this week.
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About the vote: Polls open here at 8 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Mail-in ballots can be turned into any voting center or collection box by 8 p.m. or postmarked by then. Ballots have until March 12 to arrive at a county elections office.
Find a vote center: LAVote.gov or OCVote.gov.
LA voters, if you’re short on time: 4 key races that pack the most punch.
Give me everything you got: Happily, we put a ton of work into our Voter Game Plan and we’re thrilled to hear from all the folks who say they’re making their most-informed vote ever thanks to LAist guides.
Keep reading… for more guides and where to find results after the polls close.
California is one of 16 states and one territory going to the polls today in what’s known as Super Tuesday. LAist is here to help.
About the vote: Polls open at 8 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Mail-in ballots can be turned into any voting center or collection box by 8 p.m. or postmarked by then. Ballots have until March 12 to arrive at a county elections office.
Find a vote center: LAVote.gov or OCVote.gov.
L.A. voters, if you’re short on time: 4 key races that pack the most punch.
If you’re baffled by the judges: We have tips for making your picks in L.A. County and Orange County
If you’re baffled by Central Committees: Really, who isn’t? These committees make party endorsements, which gives them quite a bit of influence. We asked some experts for advice.
More popular LAist voter guides: L.A. County district attorney | L.A. County supervisors | L.A. city council | LAUSD school board | our guide to other LA voter guides
If you care about these specific issues, start here:
Give me everything you got: Happily, we put a ton of work into our Voter Game Plan and we’re thrilled to hear from all the folks who say they’re making their most-informed vote ever thanks to LAist guides.
Where can I find results? LAist will have live results from L.A. County, where the first release of tallies is expected between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. Sign up for our post-election newsletter and we’ll let you know the outcomes and what it means for your life.
What’s going on in the presidential race? Our colleagues at NPR are tracking the results nationwide.
Have a question?
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Head to the Voter Game Plan homepage for the latest in election news.
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Why it matters: Many calls for transparency come from applicants and their families after they’ve been denied admission, even when the credentials are strong.
Why now: Many schools, including the University of California system, begin notifying students this month about whether they’re getting in.
It’s going to be fine: Applicants to selective schools mostly end up at good colleges. And here’s an even lesser known data point, one that undermines the argument that higher education is slowly closing its doors to qualified applicants: This Pew study found that most colleges and universities end up admitting “most of the people who apply to them.”
The prestigious University of California system begins to inform hundreds of thousands of applicants this month whether they’ve been admitted for the fall semester. Many other colleges have already done so. Some students’ dreams of college admission will be fulfilled, others shattered … and most students will find a campus to enroll in.
Yet this time of year is also the time when applicants and their families question the transparency of the college application process.
“I think [with] CSUs it’s pretty clear on the requirements: You meet a certain criteria and you should be able to get in,” said Geronimo, a 17-year-old senior at a Los Angeles high school. His mother asked that only his first name be used for fear that his applications may be affected.
He’s applied to eight campuses in both the UC and CSU systems. He’s worried about his UC applications. He took calculus last year and this year, and wants to major in mechanical engineering in college.
He wishes UC would have made it clear what activities and interests to include and whether writing about his math classes would have increased his chances of getting into the competitive major.
“I would say you do have a fair shot at getting in, it’s just that the vagueness is the scariest part,” he said.
At its most basic the college application process involves filling out a form online in which the applicant lists classes and grades. A college takes that information along with letters of recommendation, a list of activities the applicant has been a part of on campus and off, along with one or several essays describing their academic and personal interests. Some schools require standardized test scores but many others don’t, while some say it’s OK to submit them if a student thinks it will help their case. (That last group is what’s called “test optional.”)
While many colleges and universities list minimum grade requirements and classes that needed to be taken, admission is far from automatic because there are often way more applications than the number of open seats.
The importance or weight that admissions officers give each of those pieces of information and how they judge the information overall has earned the moniker of “the black box.” In other words, the application and its info goes in — out of sight of the applicant and most other people — and out comes a yes or no to admission.
“I think at this moment in time, it would be helpful for [colleges and universities] to be more transparent about what they are looking for above and beyond academic qualifications. That’s a big black box right now,” said Julie Posselt, executive director of USC’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice.
The center’s yearly conference in February attracted college admissions officials and scholars from different parts of the country, and included discussion of transparency.
“So much of the work that we do is sort of behind closed curtains,” said Maricela Martinez, vice president of enrollment at Occidental College, in L.A., during one panel discussion.
“I think that that is part of the problem and that is why we are where we are, which is that people don’t understand the complexity of the work we do,” she said.
Many people do not feel the way college applications are evaluated provides a fair shot.
“I almost get into tears thinking about [the college application] process for our older son, when it was happening to him, and how [disheartening] it was,” said Sherri Bradford, who helped her son last year apply to colleges and universities hoping to major in aerospace engineering.
Her son’s top choices were MIT and Caltech. She said the family believed he had more than a shot because he had a 4.3 grade point average, was student body president, was captain of the track team, and was part of the robotics club.
Bradford is a counselor at Santa Monica College and reviewed his application essays.
“He was denied admission to MIT, to Caltech, to UCLA, to Vanderbilt, to USC. It was getting to the point of being quite discouraging and scary for him,” she said.
Bradford and her family had many questions: What impact did the standardized test scores he submitted have at schools that didn’t require those scores? Does not having a hardship story hurt the application? And most important: Why was he turned down while others were admitted?
There are many other people who say the college application process is far from transparent and should be changed, including college admissions officials themselves.
Colleges tell applicants what their criteria for admission is but remain vague on what weight they’ll give the criteria and other information to admit an applicant.
“The complexity of the process involves a lot of moving parts,” said Kedra Ishop, vice president of enrollment at USC.
It involves several different factors, including:
Ishop said what’s difficult about the transparency conversation is that it usually starts with the applicant asking why they didn’t get in.
“There are a multitude of reasons, many of which may have nothing to do with your academic record, because many of the students that apply to us are highly qualified applicants. But we can only accept so many out of a very big applicant pool,” she said. Only about 9% of applicants to USC are admitted.
Hers and other universities do not reveal to each applicant the comments or other evaluations made on the applications.
“I don’t know that that answers the question of transparency that the families are looking for,” Ishop said.
Besides, she said, calls for transparency only involve the most selective colleges and universities — and that’s a small subset of higher education, albeit one that gets a lot of media attention. Yes, think Harvard, Caltech, UCLA, and the other usual suspects.
Something important to remember: Applicants to these selective schools usually end up at good colleges. And here’s an even lesser known data point, one that undermines the idea that higher education is slowly closing its doors to qualified applicants: This Pew study found that most colleges and universities end up admitting “most of the people who apply to them.”
Even if there’s no formula for a college application to be accepted, how to craft an application that will increase the odds of admission has become a multibillion dollar industry in the United States. The foundation of that industry is analyzing what colleges say they evaluate and the kinds of applicants they’ve admitted.
The University of California and California State University have different admissions criteria, corresponding to their different roles in the state’s public education system.
The University of California lists the following as some factors it may consider, and each campus has the right to “apply these factors differently”:
California State University lists the following as admissions criteria:
Families with children of different ages are in the position to do that too, for better and for worse.
“It would be helpful to know maybe some of those things that they do look for in terms of choosing students over another student. What is it that made them click the button? Yes, on a student, versus another student, saying no?” said Sherri Bradford, whose youngest son, a Los Angeles high school senior, is waiting to hear from colleges in the coming weeks.
She would like colleges to share evaluation comments on applications. It would have helped her family understand why her oldest son was turned down from his dream schools and would help her youngest, she said, prepare his application.
There is a silver lining to the grief her family went through last year. Her son was accepted to — and is now thriving — in his aerospace engineering major at UC Berkeley.
“And so now here we are, again, with me worrying about whether or not my child who has done so much in high school just like his brother, whether or not all of his hard work is going to pay off to get him into the top school that he wants to attend,” Bradford said.
But she has a message for families of applicants and their families: They will end up in a college that fits. And they should be proud of all the work the young adult did in high school.
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Why now: A federal judge blocked the merger in January because of concerns about monopolization. Both companies said despite their goal to unify and be a low-cost competitor to major airlines, the legal obstacles wouldn’t make the acquisition possible by their deadline of July 2024.
What’s next: JetBlue must pay Spirit $69 million as part of their termination agreement. Spirit Airlines lost about $184 million in the fourth quarter of this year, and said it would be focusing on turning a profit.
Spirit Airlines and JetBlue Airways are abandoning their plan to merge, the companies announced Monday.
A federal judge blocked the merger in January because of concerns about monopolization. Both companies said despite their goal to unify and be a low-cost competitor to major airlines, the legal obstacles wouldn’t make the acquisition possible by their deadline of July 2024.
“We are proud of the work we did with Spirit to lay out a vision to challenge the status quo, but given the hurdles to closing that remain, we decided together that both airlines’ interests are better served by moving forward independently,” JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty said. “We wish the very best going forward to the entire Spirit team.”
JetBlue must pay Spirit $69 million as part of their termination agreement. Spirit Airlines lost about $184 million in the fourth quarter of this year, and said it would be focusing on turning a profit.
“As we go forward, I am certain our fantastic Spirit team will continue delivering affordable fares and great experiences to our Guests,” Spirit CEO Ted Christie said.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit npr.org.
LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network.