Around Town: ‘Earth Day at the Bay’ to bring music and environmental exhibits to Newport Beach

An Earth Day event with live music, scavenger hunts and environmentally themed exhibits will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center at 2301 University Drive in Newport Beach.

The free “Earth Day at the Bay” event was organized by OC Parks and the Newport Bay Conservancy. Visitors are encouraged to bring bags of small, clean, hard plastic items so they can be recycled for art projects.

For more information, visit bit.ly/2It2oOG.

Huntington Beach park cleanup to honor Earth Day

A cleanup is set for 9 a.m. to noon Saturday in honor of Earth Day at Bartlett Park, 19882 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach.

For more information, visit bit.ly/2Irg1he.

‘Torqued’ brings modern muscle cars to OC Fair & Event Center

“Torqued,” a car show that highlights modern American muscle cars, will be held from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa.

Tickets are $15 in advance online and $20 the day of the show. Children 12 and younger get in free.

For tickets and more information, visit spocomusa.com/torqued.

Tickets on sale Saturday for O.C. fairgrounds shows

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday for several shows coming to the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa this summer.

The Damned and X with Reverend Horton Heat will perform July 6. Brothers Osborne and Chase Bryant will play July 25. The Fab Four will mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album with a performance Aug. 3, and America will perform with Poco and Firefall on Aug. 11.

The Motorhome Madness, Orange Crush and Damsels of Destruction demolition derbies will return to the Action Sports Arena from Aug. 7 to 11.

For tickets, visit ticketmaster.com.

#MeToo founder Tanara Burke to speak at Irvine Barclay Theater

Tanara Burke, the civil-rights activist who founded the #MeToo movement, will speak at the Irvine Barclay Theater on Monday.

Burke, currently senior director at Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, N.Y., will appear as part of UC Irvine’s Perspectives on Bias, Prejudice and Bigotry Lecture Series organized by the university’s Office of Inclusive Excellence. She will talk about the history of the campaign and its prospective future.

#MeToo surged into popular culture in late 2017 after actress Alyssa Milano encouraged Twitter followers to use the hashtag to tell stories of sexual harassment or assault in response to accusations of sexual abuse against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Newport-Mesa taking applications for Human Relations Task Force

Discussion at Wednesday’s first official meeting of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Human Relations Task Force focused on a “commitment to participate” form based on the suggestions of community members who attended an informational meeting in March.

All applicants will be accepted to the task force, provided they can consistently attend scheduled meetings.

OC Human Relations, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit that is helping facilitate the task force, requests that the forms, which are not mandatory to participate, be submitted by 3 p.m. May 1 to don@ochumanrelations.org or julie@ochumanrelations.org.

The form is on the Newport-Mesa website at nmusd.us. Officials said they collected 26 forms at Wednesday’s meeting.

The role of the task force and issues and concerns to be addressed will be discussed at the next meeting May 8 at the Sanborn building at the district headquarters, 2985 Bear St., Costa Mesa. There also will be a community workshop on bias on Wednesday at the district boardroom.

For more information, contact Kirk Bauermeister, district executive director of secondary education, at (714) 424-7516 or kbauermeister@nmusd.us.

UCI professor named fellow of Royal Society

Professor H. Kumar Wickramasinghe, the Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Irvine, was named a fellow of the Royal Society of London for his role in improving natural knowledge.

“I am thrilled and humbled to have been elected a fellow of the Royal Society, the oldest science academy in the world, which has elected to its fellowship most of the scientific giants of all time,” Wickramasinghe said in a statement.

Fellows of the Royal Society, founded in 1660, are appointed for life and include Issac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking. Wickramasinghe joins current fellows Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Francis Crick and Tim Berners-Lee.

He will be formally inducted at a ceremony in London on July 12.

UCI professor named fellow by American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Clare Yu, a professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine, has been selected as a fellow by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Yu, whose research focuses principally on biophysics, condensed-matter physics and quantum computing, joins more than 200 other people inducted for achievements in academia, business, government and public affairs.

“It is a great honor to have been elected a fellow by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” Yu said in a statement. “The research I’ve done at UCI would not have been possible without the wonderful collaborations I’ve had with a great group of students, postdocs and colleagues here.”

She will be formally inducted at a ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., in October.

Huntington Beach performance to include Baroque and modern music

The Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts will present “Fanfare,” an orchestral concert, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Huntington Beach High School Theatre, 1905 Main St.

Students will perform music ranging from Baroque to current. Performers will include the academy’s Festival Orchestra, Select Wind Ensemble, chamber ensembles of woodwinds, saxophones, brass, strings, percussion and keyboards and the winners of the APA Concerto Competition.

Tickets are $16 to $22 at hbapa.org/see.

Largest garden show in Southern California coming to Costa Mesa

The Southern California Spring Garden Show, the largest garden show in the region, will be held Thursday through April 28 at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

“At Home in the Garden” will feature displays, seminars, cooking classes and children’s activities from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and April 26, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. April 27 and 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. April 28 at 3333 Bear St.

For more information on the free event, visit southcoastplaza.com/gardenshow.

Nonprofits raise more than $75,000 for Giving Day

The Laguna Canyon Foundation and other environmental nonprofits partnered with the Orange County Community Foundation to raise more than $75,000 on April 10 to celebrate Giving Day.

About 200 donors provided the funds.

For more information, visit bit.ly/2XpqUUd.

UPDATES:

This article was originally published at 10:30 a.m. and was later updated with additional information.