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explores the weird and secret bits of SoCal that would excite even the most jaded Angelenos. He also covers mental health.On Saturday the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey will honor the 40th anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger as well as other pioneering missions.
The event will honor Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher ever selected to go to space as well as other pioneering women astronauts. McAuliffe and her six fellow crew members were lost when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a little over a minute after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.The free event will include hands-on activities – such as air rocket building –and a panel discussion with engineers who worked on the Challenger mission. A local retired teacher who was trained on the same curriculum that McAuliffe would have delivered from the shuttle will also give a talk about how she’s kept the legacy of the lost mission alive.The Astronaut Commemoration Day event will be at the Columbia Memorial Space Center at 12400 Columbia Way in Downey from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Southern California’s famous bald eagle couple may be closer to welcoming new eggs in their nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.“People are all kind of like nervous aunties and uncles,” Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media and website manager, told LAist. “So we just try to keep everybody calm.”Southern California’s famous bald eagle couple may be closer to welcoming new eggs in their nest overlooking Big Bear Lake."— bringing in fresh sticks and fluff furnishings to the top of the Jeffrey pine tree they’ve claimed as their home, according to the nonprofit. Fans are once again eagerly watching the eagles for signs of an incoming clutch, which refers to a group of eggs in each nesting attempt, usually laid three days apart. Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media and website manager, told LAist the Big Bear bald eagle fan community grew when the couple successfully raised two bald eagle chicks, “The building of the nest, the bonding, the flirting, the mating, the bickering, the moving the sticks around, defending against intruders, you know, that's all been new for a lot of people,” she said. “People are all kind of like nervous aunties and uncles,” she continued. “So we just try to keep everybody calm.” As always, Jackie and Shadow are in charge. Fans will have to wait and see what this season will bring, Voisard said.of the nesting season milestones, including a new daily record of at least 28 sticks delivered to the nest in November. The eagles’ previous single-day stick record was 25, according to the organization. Other milestones include Shadow dropping off the first fluff in December, and the first mating a few weeks later. “Pancaking” is a term Friends of Big Bear Valley uses to describe when the eagles lay flat in their nest bowl, before the eggs have arrived, for increasingly longer stretches of time.“That activity is a sign that we're getting closer to egg-laying,” Voisard said. “ doing a few things, she's making the shape and she's testing it out.” Jackie will likely also eat more fish from the nest so she has enough energy for the egg-laying process, Voisard said. Last January, the eagles brought two fish to the nest in the hours before the first egg was laid and three fish a day earlier, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley When eggs are imminent, she said Jackie will “pancake” on the nest for long periods of time before rousing and puffing up her feathers. Then, Jackie typically makes a high-pitched, whistling tea kettle noise as she has contractions, according to the organization. “She looks almost royal, because all of her feathers are out and it's just — I cry,” Voisard said with a laugh. “It's usually pretty amazing.”While there are signs of new life coming to the nest, every season is different for Jackie and Shadow, and Friends of Big Bear Valley is encouraging people to be patient. It was unseasonably warm in the area this past fall, and last season was the first time Jackie and Shadow successfully“I'm sure was a lot more work than with just one,” Sandy Steers, executive director of the organization, told LAist previously. “So I think that had something to do with them needing a longer break.” Voisard said while we can’t predict what’s going to happen this year, fans don’t have to watch in fear or let human emotions get in the way of enjoying the eagle experience. “We feel all of the feels with Jackie and Shadow … happiness, laughter, we get worried, we feel joy, we felt sorrow,” she said. “It's all OK, and Jackie and Shadow move forward, no matter what.”Los Angeles joins Minneapolis today for a walkout at some schools and workplaces to protest immigration enforcement operations. Both cities have seen protests following recent shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.Around a couple hundred people took part in the demonstration at La Placita Olvera, including a lot of students from local high schools. Protesters described feelings of anger toward ICE agents as well as wanting to represent family members and friends who felt too scared to join.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.With more than 31,000 registered nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other health professionals involved, Monday's strike has the potential to significantly disrupt Kaiser patients’ experiences, including the likely cancellation or rescheduling of some appointments and elective surgeries.The Jan. 26 strike date, set by the United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, follows a tumultuous month in which Kaiser officials at one point cut off negotiations entirely.A report from the union makes clear their position: Kaiser, sitting on $67 billion in reserves, can well afford to address glaring staffing shortages and close pay gaps that the union says were years in the making. This strike is open-ended, meaning its impacts could be felt for weeks or months.Hospital officials have acknowledged staffing issues during these negotiations, union reps say. But in their public communications, the organization has repeatedly hammered the union as being interested only in raises that Kaiser says are “out of step” with economic realities.from a union stuck in going-nowhere labor negotiations with health giant Kaiser Permanente makes clear the union’s position: Kaiser, sitting on $67 billion in reserves, can well afford to address glaring staffing shortages and close pay gaps that the union says were years in the making. Will the report move the needle in negotiations? Not likely. And that almost certainly means that a massive employee walkout against Kaiser, the second such job strike in four months, will go off as planned on Jan. 26. With more than 31,000 registered nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other health professionals involved, the strike has the potential to significantly disrupt Kaiser patients’ experiences, including the likely cancellation or rescheduling of some appointments and elective surgeries. A five-day strike last October prompted Kaiser to bring in 6,000 contract nurses and clinicians. This strike is open-ended, meaning its impacts could be felt for weeks or months. Nurses say they hate that idea for their patients — but it may be the only way to focus Kaiser’s attention on the chronic staffing issues that they say negatively affect those patients on a regular basis. “I see the end result of the poor staffing every single day,” said Zach Pritchett, an emergency room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles. “What I’m seeing in the ER are Kaiser members who can’t get appointments for months at a time with their own primary care physicians — so they wind up here.” Kaiser officials, meanwhile, have mostly waved off those concerns, saying in a prepared statement that union leaders “continue to talk about improving care, when this strike, and their actions over the past several months, are really all about higher wages.” It adds up to a toxic stalemate, nearly 10 months after the union delivered its first proposal for a new contract and almost four months after its previous contract expired. Patient care for some of California’s 9.5 million Kaiser members will almost certainly suffer as a result. The Jan. 26 strike date, set by the United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, follows a tumultuous month in which Kaiser officials at one point cut off negotiations entirely, claiming a UNAC/UHCP representative had threatened to release damaging information about the company unless a settlement was reached. “I certainly didn’t threaten Kaiser, and I made it clear in that meeting that I was not threatening them,” said union representative Joe Guzynski, referring to a December conference at which an independent mediator was also present. Instead, Guzynski said, he informed Kaiser that the union would be releasing much of the information publicly and offered to let company officials read it. They declined, he said. The union has now made the information public, in an 84-page document that notes Kaiser’s astounding profitability despite the organization’s claim to nonprofit status in several areas of its operation. In 2024, the report notes, Kaiser generated $12.9 billion in what the report calls profits, which Kaiser generally refers to as net revenue or net income. The profit or surplus for the first three quarters of 2025 was $7.9 billion, with fourth-quarter totals not yet known.as “one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans.” That designation applies strictly to its health insurance arm and the foundation that owns Kaiser’s hospitals. The company’s Permanente Medical Groups, the vast physician organizations that actually provide the care to patients, are for-profit ventures. Some union members work in Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and others in the individual clinics that comprise the for-profit medical groups, but their contract is negotiated with Kaiser as a whole. Kaiser’s reserves, estimated at $67 billion , are unrestricted. That means they can be used for any purpose. Nurses and other Kaiser employees say they’ve been pleading with Kaiser for years to use some of that money to beef up staffing, to little avail. In its report, UNAC/UHCP says its members filed nearly 14,000 complaints related to unsafe staffing levels in Southern California Kaiser facilities alone from November 2023 to November 2025. That includes instances in which the staffing is out of compliance with the union’s contractual agreed-upon levels. Kim Mullen, a union negotiator and a nurse who works primarily with stroke victims at Kaiser’s South Bay Medical Center near Long Beach, described what such staffing shortages look like. In her telemetry unit, she said, charge nurses often have to leave their posts in order to provide direct care for patients, meaning they are not doing their main job: running the overall shift, coordinating care and managing assignments. On a short-staffing day, Mullen said, she doesn’t have enough nurses and other professionals to cover the need, plain and simple. “There’s no extra set of hands,” she said. “You give it your all, put your whole heart and soul in it, and then at the end of the day you’re exhausted, beat up, and you know that you didn’t give the patients all the care that they needed. And that’s what sucks.”acknowledged staffing issues during these negotiations, union reps say. But in their public communications, the organization has repeatedly hammered the union as being interested only in raises that Kaiser says are “out of step” with economic realities. “Our focus remains on reaching agreements that recognize the vital contributions of our employees while ensuring excellent, affordable care,” the company said in an emailed statement that it attributed to Senior Vice President Camille Applin-Jones. Kaiser did not respond to a series of specific questions about the negotiations from Capital & Main. With regard to the union’s report, Kaiser’s statement said it “appears to be a collection of misrepresentations of facts across a broad range of issues, already published news stories, and information we have publicly reported.” The wage negotiation has been stuck for months, with Kaiser offering a 21.5% raise over four years and the union proposing 25%. Neither side has budged. Union officials say their members agreed to much smaller increases during their last contract, negotiated during and just after the COVID-19 pandemic, and are trying to recoup some of the buying power they lost. In October of 2025, UNAC/UHCP staged a five-day strike, and that did appear to prompt Kaiser to renew bargaining. For the most part, though, the medical behemoth has only erratically agreed to sit down. Union officials say that Kaiser showed up for negotiating sessions only seven days in November and five in December. Such stalling is a longstanding corporate negotiating tactic, meant to frustrate and wear down union members whose contracts have expired and who want new deals in order to get on with their lives. In this case, the union’s Guzynski says, Kaiser may have picked the wrong opponent. “I don’t think they know our members,” Guzynski said. “Our members understand and really feel these issues of staffing, when the employer has billions of dollars in reserves and says they can’t do anything to help them provide the patient care they want to provide.”Federal officials announced on Friday they arrested the head of a homelessness charity based in Hyde Park on allegations of wire fraud. According to officials, 42-year-old Alexander Soofer fraudulently obtained $23 million in public dollars meant to house and feed 600 homeless people. Soofer allegedly used at least $10 million of the money to buy homes, designer items and fund his kids’ private school educations. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.Soofer is the executive director of Abundant Blessings, which was founded in 2018 to “end homelessness,” according to a profile of the charityFive million dollars came directly from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and the remaining $17 million came from a downtown L.A. nonprofit, which according to the complaint, “received its funding from LAHSA.” Officials allege that among other things, Soofer used public funds to buy a $7 million home in Westwood, nearly half-a-million-dollar vacation home in Greece, $125,000 Range Rover and thousands in items from Hermes and Chanel.LAHSA and the L.A. City Controller’s Office investigated Soofer. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Friday that Soofer lied to the auditors from both organizations and provided them fake documents. LAHSA terminated its contracts with Abundant Blessings following its investigation and referred the case to the DA’s office, the federal complaint says. 🔎 Last Friday, our Fraud, Waste & Abuse Unit visited an Inside Safe location after getting a complaint. We observed that the service provider was providing Inside Safe residents with instant ramen for nearly every meal. Parallel to the federal case, Hochman announced his office has charged Soofer with 11 felony counts of conflict of interest, two felony counts of offering false evidence and five felony counts of forgery related to the money he received from LAHSA. If convicted on all state charges, Soofer faces more than 17 years in state prison and county jail.LAist has reached out to LAHSA for comment. When reached by phone Friday morning, someone named Naomi with the downtown L.A. nonprofit that provided funding to Abundant Blessings said “I don’t have information” about the case and abruptly hung up the phone. The City Controller’s office said there is a “significant lack of contractor oversight by City Departments,” which creates the opportunity for public funds to be misused. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in response to Friday's announcement that her administration has"zero tolerance for fraud" and called the allegations against Soofer"despicable."
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