Today’s Headlines: Video of the beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis officers to be released

Hello, it’s Friday, Jan. 27, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

Ex-Memphis officers charged with murder in the beating of Tyre Nichols. Five former police officers in Memphis, Tenn., were charged with second-degree murder Thursday in the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop, authorities said. The encounter occurred Jan. 7 and was captured on police body cameras.

The city of Memphis announced it would release video of the police encounter today after 4 p.m. Pacific time. Police departments including the LAPD were on notice as they prepared for demonstrations.

Half Moon Bay shooting suspect admits to killings. Amid a state investigation into workplace conditions at the San Mateo County farms where seven people were killed this week, the farmworker charged in the massacre said he had experienced “years of bullying” and working long hours before opening fire.

Chunli Zhao, 66, in a jailhouse interview with NBC Bay Area, admitted that he took a semiautomatic handgun and opened fire on his co-workers Monday. In the 15-minute interview, the alleged gunman also said he had been suffering from “some sort of mental illness” and was “not in his right mind” at the time of the shooting.

More about the recent shootings

• As Lunar New Year unfolded against the backdrop of tragedy in Monterey Park, the holiday’s red envelopes became a symbol of tension: how do we honor those killed in the mass shooting while also moving forward?

California Rep. Adam Schiff enters marquee Senate race. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a decades-long fixture in San Fernando Valley politics who rose to national prominence as a top Democratic foe to then-President Trump, announced that he is joining a contest for U.S. Senate that is quickly shaping up to be highly competitive.

His campaign injects new fundraising and political heft into the race for the Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat who has held that office for 30 years.

More politics

• Meet the Bay Area-born Justice Department attorney who will face off against House Republicans as they unleash a gantlet of congressional investigations into the Justice Department.
• Battles continue over who will lead the California Assembly as Democrats jockey for power.
• A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the enforcement of a weeks-old state law intended to halt the spread of lies and misinformation surrounding COVID-19.

Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting and the latest action in Sacramento.

Inside the crisis transforming the Southwest. The Colorado River begins as melting snow, trickling from forested peaks and coursing in streams that gather in the Rocky Mountains. Like arteries, its major tributaries eventually come together in a great river like no other.

Water diverted from the river has provided the foundation for life and the economy across seven states and northern Mexico.

But the region has for years depended too heavily on the river, taking more than its flows can support. And in recent years, the river’s water-generating heart in the Rocky Mountains has begun to fail.

An entire flooded California town was evacuated; they defied the order. During the storms, which ravaged most of California, the rain breached at least one levee along Miles Creek in Planada, causing the floodwaters to flow into a drainage canal and flood nearby streets, businesses and homes.

Planada is majority Latino and mostly made up of renters. Many of the people are also farmworkers and weren’t able to work for weeks during the relentless onslaught of rain. Some residents are behind on rent, facing eviction or living in moldy homes with nowhere else to go.

Most of Planada evacuated during the storms, but about 20% of the residents stayed behind.

CALIFORNIA

Civil rights groups file a lawsuit to block Newsom’s plan for treating people with mental illness. A coalition of disability and civil rights advocates is asking the California Supreme Court to block the rollout of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s far-reaching new plan to address severe mental illness by compelling treatment for thousands of people.

California to get a major boost in water supplies following January storms. Less than two months after the Department of Water Resources said it could give only 5% of requested supplies for 2023 to the 29 agencies that rely on the State Water Project, the department increased its allocation to 30%.

More Californians are dying at home. Is it another “new normal” for the COVID era? The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a surge in the proportion of Californians who are dying at home rather than in a hospital or nursing home, accelerating a slow but steady rise that dates back at least two decades.

NATION-WORLD

Can Rahul Gandhi and his 2,175-mile march save democracy in India? On many days close to 1,000 people are walking with Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress and heir to a once-dominant political dynasty, in an effort that has been christened the Unite India Rally, one of the most significant political campaigns leading up to the national election.

Biden extends deportation protection for Hong Kong residents. President Biden on Thursday signed off on a two-year extension of a program that protects Hong Kong residents in the U.S. from deportation, renewing the protection until January 2025.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

Why ‘The 1619 Project’ creator is ‘proud’ to have ‘enemies’ in Trump and DeSantis. When “The 1619 Project” was first released as a collection of essays, the ambitious reexamination of American history sparked difficult conversations — and backlash against New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. Now it arrives on screens as a Hulu docuseries.

Teen dramas’ track record on mental health is rough. So MTV adopted a new playbook. “Wolf Pack” addresses anxiety and is the first scripted series from MTV Entertainment Studios to incorporate recommendations from a new industry guide on portraying mental health issues.

Pedro Pascal, ‘The Last of Us’ star and self-proclaimed ‘daddy,’ will host ‘SNL.’ NBC announced that the actor will host the sketch-comedy series on Feb. 4. He will be joined by musical guest Coldplay, which will return for its seventh “SNL” appearance.

Walter Ulloa, media mogul and prolific art collector who elevated Latino communities, dies at 74. Ulloa passed away after sudden heart failure on Dec. 31. He’d been enjoying a quiet New Year’s Eve at home with his wife. He was 74 years old.

BUSINESS

Southwest’s holiday meltdown may be a sign of more air travel drama to come. As climate change continues to make once-extreme weather events more routine, and airlines pack more passengers onto planes to increase efficiency and lower prices, a single disruption can throw the whole system into chaos.

A study of U.S. oil refineries ranks Chevron El Segundo as the worst emitter of two water pollutants. A study of oil refineries nationwide ranked the Chevron El Segundo facility on Santa Monica Bay as the largest water polluter for nitrogen and selenium in 2021, compared with 80 other oil operations. The pollutants are legally discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

OPINION

If Kevin McCarthy is serious about protecting the economy, he’d raise the debt ceiling. Republicans are holding the economy hostage with a debt limit fight. Biden should be willing to work with the House GOP, but not at the expense of the nation’s economic health.

SPORTS

Kobe Bryant had a vision for Mamba Academy girls. Amalia Holguin is the final piece. You can’t teach confidence. But you can mold it. And more than four years after Holguin walked into her first Mamba Academy practice, the Sage Hill freshman’s mentor still motivates every day. In every drill. One more rep for him.

UC Irvine women’s soccer leads the charge to find a stem cell donor as their teammate fights cancer. The women’s soccer team helped register 97 potential donors during a recent UC Irvine men’s basketball game, explaining to fans that it would only take five minutes to potentially save a life.

YOUR WEEKEND

Chef-owner Evan Funke of Mother Wolf in Los Angeles with an Italian meat, mortadella, his favorite salumi.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

The ‘trendy’ Italian meat with 1,000 years of staying power. Rounds of sliced-thin, pink, white-speckled mortadella are popping up on sandwiches, on charcuterie plates and even in the occasional cocktail in Los Angeles. What’s behind its rising star power in L.A.’s food scene?

• Looking for more sandwiches? Times critic Bill Addison has put together a list of his favorites.

How to see and help L.A.’s tiny blue butterflies. LAX Dunes is an approximately 307-acre habitat sandwiched between the airport and the ocean. Within the southern two-thirds of these dunes lies a preserve, home to the largest population of the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

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Many new housing developments look the same. Does it matter? From Seattle to Denver to Nashville, new rental units are rising up. You know the kind: boxy, low-rise, maybe with retail space on the bottom. Critics worry this new wave of development is leading cities to lose their unique charms. But how much weight should aesthetics carry when the country faces a housing crisis? New York Times

The meme that defined a decade. Over the past 10 years, the “This Is Fine” dog has evolved from a joke into an indictment. It says so much, so economically. That elasticity has contributed to its persistence. The flame-licked dog, that avatar of learned helplessness, speaks not only to individual people — but also, it turns out, to the country. The Atlantic

How a prison-turned-pot-farm is helping those behind bars for cannabis crimes. Ocean Grown Extracts has turned a former prison in Coalinga into a pot farm where cannabis is grown, processed and packaged in what look like police evidence bags. In addition to a portion of sales going to the Last Prisoner Project, the Evidence brand helps raise awareness that there are people who are currently behind bars for nonviolent cannabis crimes. Los Angeles Times

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Laverne (Penny Marshall) and Shirley (Cindy Williams) win free shopping time in Season 4 of “Laverne & Shirley.”

(ABC Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images)

The first episode of ABC’s “Laverne & Shirley” aired 47 years ago. A spinoff of “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley” debuted in 1976 and soared to the top of the ratings. It ended up running for eight seasons. The series stood out for depicting the lives of working-class women.

“There were no blue-collar girls on television” when ‘Laverne & Shirley’ debuted,” executive producer Garry Marshall once said in an interview for the Archive of American Television. Viewers, he said, “were dying for somebody that didn’t look like Mary Tyler Moore or all the pretty girls on TV. They wanted somebody who looked like a regular person.

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