Julie Su nomination should be pulled

• June 28, 2023

Four months after President Joe Biden nominated former California Labor Secretary Julie Su to serve as U.S. Labor Secretary, Su’s nomination remains stagnant in the U.S. Senate.

Despite Democratic control of the Senate, Su’s nomination remains on hold as at least three moderates in the Democratic caucus — Sens. Joe Manchin,D-West Virginia,  Jon Tester, D-Montana, and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona — are perceived as reluctant to support her.

Su carries considerable baggage from her time as California Labor Secretary. Most notably, it was Su who oversaw the Employment Development Department during COVID, which not only botched the handling of unemployment checks to those legitimately in need, but also managed to pay out tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments. This included payments to prisoners on California’s death row.

Su was also a backer of the horrific Assembly Bill 5 which gutted independent contracting in California. Trucking groups in particular have been pushing against Su’s nomination specifically because of the deleterious impact of AB 5 on their businesses.

“Su developed and oversaw the implementation of AB 5 in California, which remains the most disruptive worker classification policy to be enacted anywhere at the state or federal level,” warned Todd Spencer, president and CEO of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association in a letter to President Biden last week. “Rather than allowing Ms. Su’s nomination to languish in the Senate, we believe you must find a more suitable candidate to lead the department.”

Indeed, Julie Su should not be allowed to fail upward. No senator who respects hard-working Americans could possibly support Julie Su’s nomination as U.S. labor secretary.

We are hopeful that Manchin, Sinema and Tester oppose Su’s nomination. We can only wish Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla could do the same.

Su is not the first Californian to bomb at the national stage. Former Los Angeles Metro CEO Phil Washington withdrew from his nomination to head the Federal Aviation Administration. And who could forget Vice President Kamala Harris, now reported by NBC News as the least popular vice president they’ve ever recorded in public polling.

​ Orange County Register 

70 homes planned for Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre site

• June 28, 2023

Map of Los Olivos housing district in Irvine. (Courtesy: Irvine Co.)

Will new homes in Irvine be music to house hunters’ ears?

Irvine Co. is seeking city approval to build 70 homes on a 17.5-acre site that once was home to the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Yes, it’s a tiny home project by any measurement, but it’s being built atop a local landmark – the former site of one of the county’s top spots for outdoor music.

The land sits in the city’s southeastern corner near the Irvine Spectrum shopping center. The plan is a spin on the developer’s previous deal with Irvine to build 4,536 apartments in several areas. Part of that arrangement calls for Irvine Co. to build 600 apartments near the amphitheater site. This is development that nudges Irvine toward its state-approved goal of adding 23,600 homes by the end of this decade.

Now, if your Orange County history is foggy, we’re talking about the old Irvine Meadows entertainment venue that closed in 2016 after its 35-year lease with Irvine Co. expired. It was a place that hosted everything from pop stars to the symphony to country legends to new bands on the rise. The amphitheatre’s farewell concerts featured local rock star Gwen Stefani.

And outdoor music remains in Irvine, it just moved down the street. Acts now perform at the temporary FivePoint Amphitheatre, which opened in 2017 at the Great Park. The city is trying to find a permanent home for entertainment under the stars.

Gwen Stefani takes the stage for the final concert at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Irvine on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016. The amphitheater closed after 35 years of entertaining Orange County. Irvine Co. is seeking city approval to build 70 homes on the 17.5-acre site. (File photo by Ana Venegas, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Yet the tale of old Irvine Meadows isn’t just a musical one.

It was located in a place with an intriguing business history. This slice of the old Irvine Ranch, nearly a square mile in size, was once a curious sort of amusement district that has morphed into a community that may one day hold 4,400-plus housing units.

This land housed the amphitheater, that debuted in 1981. It once housed the Lion Country Safari animal park, which closed in 1984. It was also home to Wild Rivers water park, which shut in 2011, and reopened at Irvine’s Great Park last summer.

During the past decade, Irvine Co. has turned much of this property into the 1,700-unit Los Olivos low-rise apartment complex, the 1,700-unit Promenade mid-rise apartment complex, and 169 single-family houses in the Barcelona community.

The latest plans would see 70 homes for ownership created on the actual amphitheater space. The new construction could mirror Barcelona – modest, detached housing targeting young adults seeking to own a piece of Irvine.

Then across San Diego Creek from the new homes, the Promenade complex would get 600 more rental units, including roughly 100 with rents affordable to low-income residents.

So what’s next for the plans? Meandering through the city approval process means an approval will stretch well into 2024.

PS: It’d be cool if Irvine Co. put a musical spin on the 70-home project’s monicker and/or street names as a tip of the cap to its entertainment heritage. You know, like Woodwind Way or Staccato Street. How about Chorus Court or Lyrical Lane? Or Rock and Road?

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]

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​ Orange County Register 

Gunmen abduct 14 state police officers in the Mexican state of Chiapas

• June 28, 2023

By ÉDGAR H. CLEMENTE

MEXICO CITY — Armed men abducted 14 state police officers in southern Mexico on Tuesday, prompting a heavy deployment of federal and local forces, authorities said.

The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection in Chiapas state said in a statement the 14 officers were all men and an air and ground operation was underway to locate them.

An official with the state police force, who asked not to be quoted because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the agents were traveling to the capital of Chiapas in a personnel transport truck when they were intercepted by several trucks with gunmen.

The women in the vehicle were released while the men were taken away, the official said.

The abduction occurred on the highway between Ocozocoautla and Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Violence in the Mexican border region with Guatemala has escalated in recent months amid a territorial dispute between the Sinaloa Cartel – which has dominated the area – and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

During a tour of Chiapas on Friday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador minimized the violence in the area, saying that “in general there is peace, there is tranquility” in the state.

The day before the president’s visit, an official with the Attorney General’s Office was shot in Tuxtla Gutiérrez and her companion was killed. The official was seriously injured and was hospitalized.

In addition, on June 19, a confrontation between the military and presumed members of organized crime left an element of the National Guard and a civilian dead in Ocozocoautla, near where Tuesday’s kidnapping occurred.

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​ Orange County Register 

Everything you need to know about AI but were too afraid to ask

• June 28, 2023

 Business executives keep talking about it. Teachers are struggling with what to do about it. And artists like Drake seem angry about it.

Love it or hate it, everyone is paying attention to artificial intelligence right now. Almost overnight, a new crop of AI tools has found its way into products used by billions of people, changing the way we work, shop, create and communicate with each other.

AI advocates tout the technology’s potential to supercharge our productivity, creating a new era of better jobs, better education and better treatments for diseases. AI skeptics have raised concerns about the technology’s potential to disrupt jobs, mislead people and possibly bring about the end of humanity as we know it. Confusingly, some execs in Silicon Valley seem to hold both sets of views at once.

What’s clear, however, is that AI is not going away, but it is changing very fast. Here’s everything you need to know to keep up.

What is AI?

In the public consciousness, “artificial intelligence” may conjure up images of murderous machines eager to overtake humans, and capable of doing so. But in the tech industry, it’s a broad term that refers to different tools that are trained to perform a wide range of complex tasks that might previously have required some input from an actual person.

If you use the internet, then you almost certainly use services that rely on AI to sort data, filter content and make suggestions, among other tasks.

It’s the technology that allows Netflix to recommend movies and that helps remove spam, hate speech and other inappropriate content from your social media feeds. It helps power everything from autocorrect features and Google Translate to facial recognition services, the last of which uses AI that, in Microsoft’s words, “mimics a human capability to recognize human faces.”

AI can also be successful in developing techniques for solving a wide range of real world problems, such as adjusting traffic signals in real time to manage congestion issues or helping medical professionals analyze images to make a diagnosis. AI is also central to developing self-driving cars by processing tremendous amounts of visual data so the vehicles can understand their surroundings.

So why is everyone talking about AI now?

The short answer: ChatGPT.

For years, AI has largely operated in the background of services we use every day. That changed following the November launch of ChatGPT, a viral chatbot that put the power of AI front and center.

People have already used ChatGPT, a tool created by OpenAI, to draft lawsuits, write song lyrics and create research paper abstracts so good they’ve even fooled some scientists. The tool has even passed standardized exams. And ChatGPT has sparked an intense competition among tech companies to develop and deploy similar tools.

Microsoft and Google have each introduced features powered by generative AI, the technology underpinning ChatGPT, into their most widely used productivity tools. Meta, Amazon and Alibaba have said they’re working on generative AI tools, too. And numerous other businesses also want in on the action.

It’s rare to see a cutting-edge technology become so ubiquitous almost overnight. Now businesses, educators and lawmakers are all racing to adapt.

How exactly does generative AI work?

Generative AI enables tools to create written work, images and even audio in response to prompts from users.

To get those responses, several Big Tech companies have developed their own large language models trained on vast amounts of online data. The scope and purpose of these data sets can vary. For example, the version of ChatGPT that went public last year was only trained on data up until 2021 (it’s now more up to date).

These models work through a method called deep learning, which learns patterns and relationships between words, so it can make predictive responses and generate relevant outputs to user prompts.

How is generative AI different from AGI?

As impressive as some generative AI services may seem, they essentially just do pattern matching. These tools can mimic the writing of others or make predictions about what words might be relevant in their responses based on all the data they’ve previously been trained on.

AGI, on the other hand, promises something more ambitious — and scary.

AGI — short for artificial general intelligence — refers to technology that can perform intelligent tasks such as learning, reasoning and adapting to new situations in the way that humans do. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has teased the possibility of a superintelligent AGI that could go on to change the world or perhaps backfire and end humanity.

For the moment, however, AGI remains purely a hypothetical, so don’t worry too much about it.

How much of the AI gold rush is just hype?

Anytime there’s an excess of buzz around a technology, it’s good to be skeptical — and there is certainly a lot of that here. Investor fascination with AI has helped push Wall Street back into a bull market, despite lingering economic uncertainty.

Not all AI tools are equally useful and many companies will certainly tout AI features and strategies simply to tap into the current hype cycle. But even in just the past six months, AI has already shown potential to change how people do numerous everyday tasks.

One of the biggest selling points around AI chatbots, for example, is their ability to make people more productive. Earlier this year, some real estate agents told CNN that ChatGPT saved them hours of work not only by writing listings for homes for sale but also looking up the permitted uses for certain land and calculating what mortgage payments or the return on investment might be for a client, which typically involve formulas and mortgage calculators.

Artificial intelligence is also much broader than ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. Even if you think AI chatbots are annoying or might be a fad, the underlying technology will continue to power meaningful advances in products and services for years to come.

Will it steal my job?

The fear is AI will eliminate millions of jobs. The hope is it will help improve how millions do their jobs. The current reality is somewhere in between.

Companies will likely need new workers to help them implement and manage AI tools. Employment of data analysts and scientists, machine learning specialists and cybersecurity experts is forecast to grow 30% on average by 2027, according to one recent estimate from the World Economic Forum.

But the proliferation of AI will also likely put many roles at risk eventually. There could be 26 million fewer record-keeping and administrative jobs by 2027, the WEF predicted. Data entry clerks and executive secretaries are expected to see the steepest losses.

For now, there are clearly limits to how well AI can do the job of a human on its own. After media outlet CNET experimented with using AI to write articles, tech website Futurism uncovered factual errors and in some cases, plagiarism, in various pieces. Likewise, a lawyer in May made headlines for citing false court cases to a judge provided to him by ChatGPT. In an affidavit, the lawyer said he had never used ChatGPT as a legal research tool before and “was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”

Is AI dangerous?

Top AI executives have warned that AI could potentially bring about human extinction. But these same executives are also racing to deploy the technology into their products.

Some experts say that focusing on far-off doomsday scenarios may distract from the more immediate harms that AI can cause, such as spreading misinformation, perpetuating biases that exist in training data, and enabling discrimination.

For example, generative AI could be used to create deepfakes to spread propaganda during an election or enable a frightening new era of scams. Some AI models have also been criticized for what the industry calls “hallucinations,” or making up information.

Even before the rise of ChatGPT, there were concerns about AI acting as a gatekeeper that can determine who does and does not move forward in a hiring process, for example. AI-powered facial recognition systems have also resulted in some wrongful arrests, and research has shown these systems are drastically more prone to error when trying to match the faces of darker skinned people.

The more AI tools are incorporated into core parts of society, the more potential there is for unintended consequences.

Where does AI go from here?

Regulators in the United States and Europe are pushing for legislation to help put guardrails in place for AI, which could ultimately impact how the technology develops. But it’s unclear if lawmakers can keep pace with the rapid advances in AI.

Experts believe in the months ahead, generative AI will go on to create even more realistic images, videos, and audio that could further disrupt media, entertainment, tech and other industries. The technology will likely become increasingly conversational and personalized.

In March, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, the next-generation version of the technology that powers ChatGPT. According to the company and early tests, GPT-4 is able to provide more detailed and accurate written responses, pass academic tests with high marks and build a working website from a hand-drawn sketch. (Altman has previously said OpenAI is not yet training GPT-5.)

AI will almost certainly be infused into many more products and services in the coming months. That means we’ll all have to learn how to live with it.

As ChatGPT put it in response to a prompt from CNN, “AI has the potential to transform our lives … but it’s crucial for companies and individuals to be mindful of the accompanying risks and responsibly address concerns.”

The-CNN-Wire & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

​ Orange County Register 

As a lengthy legal battle ends, a Palestinian family braces for eviction from Jerusalem home

• June 28, 2023

By ISABEL DEBRE

JERUSALEM — Few places in Jerusalem speak of the larger conflict being waged over the city more than the apartment of 68-year-old Nora Ghaith-Sub Laban.

As the last remaining Palestinians in a building filled with Israeli settlers, the Ghaith-Sub Labans have battled Israeli attempts to evict them from their Old City home for over 45 years.

That labyrinthine legal battle ended earlier this year, when the Israeli Supreme Court struck down the family’s final motion for an appeal. Now, Israeli authorities have ordered the eviction of Nora and her husband Mustafa to take place by July 13. That includes one of the biggest holidays of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha, which began Tuesday night.

“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat,” Nora said from the apartment where she was born in 1955. From the outside, with its rough-hewed stones flattered by brilliant sunlight and its windows overlooking the golden Dome of the Rock, the 200-year-old home in the heart of the Muslim Quarter is a Jerusalem postcard. Inside, the paint has chipped and walls have peeled due to court orders barring the family from doing repairs.

In what she described as a campaign to make life so unbearable that she would simply leave, Nora said her Jewish neighbors spit and hurl stones and bottles at her. Israeli police turn up at her door, asking for IDs and demanding to know everyone who has passed in and out of her home.

“This is psychological war,” she said.

The Israeli police said the check-ins were “not meant to intimidate or harass but to gather the necessary information” ahead of the eviction.

The Ghaith-Sub Laban case is not a dispute over a single property, advocates say, but part of a wider effort by Israeli settlers, with government backing, to cement Jewish control over the contested city, especially the Old City, home to Jerusalem’s most important holy sites.

A similar dispute that could lead to evictions of Palestinian families in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah stirred tensions that built up to a 2021 war between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza that killed over 250 people.

The family’s struggle has sparked numerous protest rallies by Israeli left-wing activists, some of which have spiraled into scuffles with Israeli police who have arrested those waving Palestinian national flags.

“It’s more than just, ‘Oh, I have this problem with my neighbor downstairs.’ You are talking about a political and national conflict,” said Yonatan Mizrahi, the settlement watch director at Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that opposes settlements. “What happens in the Old City does not stay in the Old City.”

Captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed in a move not internationally recognized, east Jerusalem has long been a crucible in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Today, more than 220,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem, largely in built-up settlements that Israel considers neighborhoods of its capital. Most of east Jerusalem’s 350,000 Palestinian residents are crammed into overcrowded neighborhoods where there is little room to build.

Across the city’s eastern half, settler organizations and Jewish trusts are pursuing court battles against Palestinian families to clear the way for settlers.

An Israeli law passed after the annexation of east Jerusalem allows Jews to reclaim properties that were Jewish before the formation of the Israeli state in 1948. Jordan controlled the area between 1948 and the 1967 war.

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians, including 424 children, currently face eviction in east Jerusalem, the United Nations humanitarian office said.

During British rule over historic Palestine, before the war over Israel’s creation, the Ghaith-Sub Laban apartment was owned by a trust for Kollel Galicia, a group that collected funds in Eastern Europe for Jewish families in Jerusalem. Its legal representative, Eli Attal, declined to comment on the case, sending only an emoji with its mouth taped shut.

Arieh King, a settler leader and deputy mayor of Jerusalem, described the Ghaith-Sub Laban family as “squatters” and the case as a straightforward real estate dispute.

“It’s Jewish property and they want it back,” he said. “(The Ghaith-Sub Labans) don’t have any right to this property.”

There is no equivalent right in Israel for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s establishment to return to lost properties.

Nora’s case reflects the city’s volatile history. Hailing from the southern Palestinian city of Hebron, her parents moved to west Jerusalem in 1945, then to the Old City when the capital was divided in the 1948 war.

As residents of the same Muslim Quarter apartment for seven decades, Nora’s family gained the status of protected tenants, putting Israeli law on their side.

Nora shared with The Associated Press her Jordanian rental contract from 1953 that showed that she and Mustafa paid rent to a “General Custodian” for abandoned properties, first under Jordanian authorities and then under Israel after the 1967 war. She now pays rent — 200 Jordanian dinars, or $282 each year — to the lawyers of the Jewish trust.

The case has dragged on for decades, as the Israeli custodian and then the Kollel Galicia trust contested the family’s protected tenancy. Most recently, the Kollel Galicia endowment argued in 2019 that Nora’s absence from her house that year could clear the way for their eviction.

Nora said the house was empty at times in 2019 because she was hospitalized with a back injury and later recovered in the houses of her adult children, whom Israeli authorities had previously expelled from the Old City apartment.

Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the eviction order in late February, ending the saga that has subsumed almost her entire life and the lives of her five children. Two of her sons — Ahmad, a human rights researcher, and Rafat, a lawyer — have become full-time advocates for the case.

The Israeli police said that authorities “understand the emotions involved” but are “dedicated to upholding the rule of law” and enforcing the eviction.

Now in limbo, Nora feels her house has become a prison cell. Worried the settlers will seize on even a momentary absence to move in, she said she hasn’t stepped outside since May. Her windows — and their breath-taking view of the golden shrine — are covered with wire mesh to protect against her neighbors’ stones.

Last week, supporters and artists helped the family prepare their home for its future guests. They painted an olive tree in the living room with the words “We will remain,” written in its wild roots. There is a portrait of Nora, too, with her wire-rimmed glasses and careful smile.

“They don’t want peace, they want surrender,” she said.

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​ Orange County Register 

Riverside clinic operator is arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a patient

• June 28, 2023

RIVERSIDE — A physician and operator of a Riverside skin care clinic was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of sexually assaulting a patient.

Dr. Sam Sannoufi, 52, of Newport Beach was booked into the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside on suspicion of sexual battery and forcible digital penetration.

Sannoufi posted a $1 million bond and was released within a few hours.

According to Riverside Police Department Officer Ryan Railsback, a woman contacted the agency’s Sexual Assault-Child Abuse Unit earlier this month, alleging that she was assaulted by the suspect during a consultation at his business, Timeless Skincare Laser Clinic Primary Care at 6900 Brockton Ave.

The specific circumstances behind the alleged offense, and the victim’s identity, were not disclosed.

Railsback said SACA detectives gathered sufficient evidence to obtain an arrest warrant, and Sannoufi was summoned to the department’s Orange Street station, where he was taken into custody without incident.

“Investigators believe there may be other victims who have not yet come forward,” the police spokesman said.

Anyone with information was encouraged to contact SACA investigators at 951-353-7950.

Sannoufi has no documented prior misdemeanor or felony convictions in Riverside County.

According to the Medical Board of California, the suspect has been a licensed doctor in the state since March 2009. He is a graduate of the Ukrainian State Medical University in Kyiv and has no listed disciplinary actions, administrative citations or malpractice suits on file with regulators.

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​ Orange County Register 

Shohei Ohtani homers twice, pitches Angels to victory over White Sox

• June 28, 2023

ANAHEIM — As Shohei Ohtani continues to defy description, Angels fans spelled it out rather simply with a chant as he circled the bases for the second time on Tuesday night.

“M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!”

The Angel Stadium crowd of 33,637 on Japanese Heritage Night roared its appreciation for Ohtani on a night when he pitched into the seventh inning and hit two home runs in the Angels’ 4-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox.

“The performance today was incredible,” Manager Phil Nevin said.

Ohtani increased his major league-leading home run total to 28 with a 418-foot shot to right field in the first inning and a 404-foot drive to left-center in the seventh.

The latter came moments after he left the mound with a cracked fingernail, ending his night charged with one earned run in 6⅓ innings while striking out 10. Ohtani said he doesn’t know which day he’s starting next, but he doesn’t expect the fingernail will be an issue.

As the Angels (44-37) reached the midpoint of the season, Ohtani is hitting .304 with a major league-leading OPS of 1.040. He’s also leading the majors with 64 RBIs. He is on pace for 56 homers.

On the mound, he is 7-3 with a 3.02 ERA in 95⅓ innings, with 127 strikeouts.

Asked if he’s at his peak both as a pitcher and a hitter right now, Ohtani said through his interpreter: “Hitting-wise, I feel like it’s up there for sure right now.”

When Ohtani was the unanimous MVP in 2021, he hit 46 homers with a .965 OPS, and he had a 3.18 ERA. He heard the same “M-V-P” chants back then as he heard on Tuesday.

“It’s always a good feeling to hear that,” Ohtani said. “It gives me a lot of motivation to do better.”

Already voted to start the All-Star Game as the DH, Ohtani is putting the finishing touches on one of the best all-around months of his career.

He’s batting .383 with a 1.388 OPS this month, including 13 homers, all in his last 20 games.

“We’re seeing things every day that we’ve never seen before and you try not to take it for granted and I don’t think any of us do,” Nevin said. “I understand how special it is. But I also understand how special the person is to our room and what he’s bringing to us every day as well as the rest of his teammates.”

While Ohtani has been a productive hitter for the entire season, his pitching was not up to his normal level during a surprising slump in May. He’s reversed that trend over his last three starts, allowing four earned runs in 19⅓ innings, a 1.86 ERA. He struck out 31 and walked five.

One of the recent differences in his pitching is the way he’s mixed his pitches.

Ohtani again threw more fastballs (34) than sweepers (24) among his 102 pitches, continuing a trend over the span of his turnaround over the last three starts.

He’s thrown his fastball 43.3% of the time over his last three starts, after throwing it 27.0% of the time in his first 13 starts. He’s cut the sweeper from 40.1% to 21.1%.

“I think he’s done some things mechanically pitching-wise, that have helped him a little bit, whether it’s pitch-mixing and game-planning,” Nevin said. “I think that’s been a lot better, if you will.”

Ohtani put the Angels ahead in the first and then he cruised through the White Sox lineup without much trouble through the first six innings. He gave up a leadoff double in the second, but he stranded the runner at third when he struck out Yasmani Grandal and Jake Burger.

The Angels weren’t giving him much margin for error, adding just a single run on a David Fletcher groundout in the fourth.

They had a precarious 2-1 lead when Ohtani came to bat in the bottom of the seventh.

He then blasted his second homer, the first time in his career that he’s hit multiple homers in a game he pitched. The Angels added an insurance run on an RBI single from Mike Moustakas, playing his second game with the Angels.

Relievers Jacob Webb, Chris Devenski and Carlos Estévez handled the final eight outs after Ohtani was done.

Estévez gave up a run in the ninth, but he escaped a bases-loaded jam to set an Angels record by converting his 20th straight save opportunity to start the season.

By avoiding a ninth-inning disaster, Estévez was able to protect the victory and preserve Ohtani’s magical night.

“Every game somehow seems to get even crazier, watching him play,” catcher Chad Wallach said. “Watch him pitch like that and then go hit two homers. Somehow it still surprises you every time.”

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Shohei Ohtani’s night:
2 HR as a batter
10 Ks as a pitcher. pic.twitter.com/Bzm0Q3qvKF

— MLB (@MLB) June 28, 2023

SHOHEI OHTANI@Angels | #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/Hnr55DmIWo

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) June 28, 2023

Shohei Ohtani had everything working on the mound. pic.twitter.com/ZlznAPhkOU

— MLB (@MLB) June 28, 2023

A look at Ohtani’s 2 HR’s & 10 K’s tonight @Angels | #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/orasSKquSN

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) June 28, 2023

Fletch flashes the leather! @Angels | #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/iUavF13o1v

— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) June 28, 2023

​ Orange County Register 

A restored Mission San Gabriel casts a new light on Southern California Indigenous history

• June 28, 2023

After three years of closure and restoration, voices will once again echo in the halls of Mission San Gabriel starting Saturday, July 1.

Now, after the pandemic and a fire that nearly destroyed it, the historic mission will finally be reopened.

On Tuesday, June 27, Roman Catholic leaders, including L.A. Archbishop José Gomez, the local Gabrieleño/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians and other invited dignitaries came to the historic site to christen a restored landmark while unveiling its reimagined museum, designed to highlight local Indigenous voices and history.

“Thanks be to God!” proclaimed Rev. Parker Sandoval, the vice chancellor of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who was a leader in the restoration effort. “Today, three years later, the mission is fully restored and above all, the museum is now refreshed with a brand new exhibit.”

On July 10, 2020, a fire, which officials say was set by an arsonist, broke out in the mission’s choir loft, eventually spreading to damage the pulpit and altar. The blaze caused major damage to the roof, the interior, to artifacts and in the attic of a 250-year-old mission, the fourth of 21 missions Spaniards built in Alta California.

For a Roman Catholic Community that treasures the church, the restoration was a major moment in the history of a landmark that paved a path for the Roman Catholic Church in the region and in the United States.

But it was also a sobering moment, imbued with a complex and often troubling past.

The arrival of Spanish missionaries had a huge impact on the future of California. But it would also displace the area’s Native American inhabitants – a fact that Los Angeles Archdiocese sought to acknowledge, even as the mission opens to the public on the day that celebrates the sainthood of Junipero Serra, the controversial Spanish priest who established the landmark.

The mission museum’s new exhibit “Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, 1771-1900: Natives, Missionaries, and the Birth of Catholicism in Los Angeles,” provides a look into the mission’s long and complex history. The galleries include baptismal records, textiles, paintings and even audio recordings of 18th century music and letter readings.

A large portion of the museum, which also opens July 1, focuses on Native American culture and history in the Los Angeles area. This includes a new Wall of Names that was erected that lists more than 7,000 Native Americans who were baptized at the mission.

It is a part of their efforts to acknowledge the history of Native Americans previously excluded from such narratives. Built on Indigenous labor, Mission San Gabriel is now the burial site for 5,600 Native Americans, making it a place of religious observance and significance to local Native Americans.

“For me, everything here on these mission grounds is sacred, it’s important, because it reflects our culture, it reflects the teachings of our ancestors to us younger generations and for us to continue showing other generations coming after us so it could never become extinct,” said Chief Anthony Morales of the Gabrieleño/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians.

In the past, the mission and its museum had a focus on the history of the Franciscans and their ushering in of Catholicism into the L.A. area.

The new exhibit seeks to bridge the gap between past and present, providing a window into the lives of those affected by the mission, specifically the Indigenous people who were living in the region since long before colonization.

“It diversifies the story being told in the mission,” said exhibit curator Steven Hackel, the history professor at UC Riverside who secured several grants, including $25,000 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and $30,000 from the California Bishops Council to help cover costs for his team’s work on the museum. “It helps us understand that the Native community is still here and it teaches a whole new way of understanding the history of this mission.”

Hackel worked alongside a team of collaborators, including associate curator Yve Chavez, a Gabrieleno/Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians member and assistant professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma.

Morales lamented the history of his ancestors but also acknowledged just how important it is to show that history at this site.

“It wasn’t a good history between us and the founding of the mission system and the padres,” Morales said. “We were forced to learn, we were forced to build the missions… . But if we forget that portion of the history, then we’re erasing our ancestors.”

Today, at Mission San Gabriel, the church and local Native groups cooperate in the preservation and education of their intertwined past.

“They worship here,” said Sandoval. “This is their home. This is the place where their ancestors are buried. It’s important to them, and therefore it’s important for the church because half the Natives in Los Angeles are Catholic. They are our people, this is their land and we are very happy to celebrate their culture and their history here.”

After a service in the main chapel on Tuesday, visitors were led out to the courtyard in front of the museum’s entrance. There, members of the local Native American community sang songs of welcome and made music for their ancestors. The smell of incense filled the courtyard as they recited prayers and blessings for the restored mission.

Afterward, Archbishop José Gomez gave his blessing, sprinkling holy water throughout the museum before allowing visitors to enter the refurbished exhibition.

And Morales continued his reflection.

“People think we no longer exist. They think we’re extinct. But we’re not,” Morales said.

Related links

3 years after fire nearly destroyed it, Mission San Gabriel is ready to reopen
2 years after devastating fire, Mass returns to Mission San Gabriel
4-alarm fire destroys most of Mission San Gabriel

​ Orange County Register