Today’s Headlines: Writers Guild of America stages Hollywood’s first strike in 15 years

Hello, it’s Tuesday, May 2, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

Hollywood writers strike over streaming pay after talks fail

A festering dispute over how writers are compensated in the streaming era came to a head Monday night, as leaders of the Writers Guild of America called on their members to stage Hollywood’s first strike in 15 years.

Thousands of WGA members were set to walk picket lines across Los Angeles, New York and other cities Tuesday after the union was unable to reach a last-minute accord with the major studios on a new three-year contract to replace one that expired Monday night.

The walkout, which could last for weeks or months, is expected to halt much of TV and film production nationwide and reverberate across Southern California, where prop houses, caterers, florists and others heavily depend on the entertainment economy. The previous writers strike in 2007 roiled the industry and lasted 100 days.

L.A. lead cleanup experiment unites science, art and social justice

For nearly a century, the now-shuttered Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Vernon dispersed lead and other toxins across neighborhoods home to predominantly Latino and low-income residents.

According to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, as many as 10,000 properties near the plant could have been affected by the pollution pouring out of Exide.

The Prospering Backyards project brings together scientists, artists, activists and community members to tackle the environmental disaster that has quietly festered for decades.

Mass shooting leaves four dead in the Mojave Desert

California was grappling with another mass shooting after three women and a man were killed Sunday evening in a remote area of the Mojave Desert, officials said.

Detectives were on the scene early Monday morning where the shooting took place in the western Mojave Desert about 50 miles east of Bakersfield, officials said.

The best fashion from this year’s Met Gala

An international array of trendsetting celebrities from the worlds of fashion, entertainment and business honored controversial fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld at the Met Gala in New York, heralding the May 5 opening of the exhibition “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

The Mexican Mafia, Blythe Street gang and murder in Panorama City

When Ezequiel Romo came home to Panorama City after 18 years in prison, he didn’t like what he saw. He told another veteran of his gang, Blythe Street, he was going to “clean out house.” Prosecutors said the 45-year-old made good on that promise.

Romo used Blythe Street to raise his own standing within the Mexican Mafia, the prison-based syndicate whose ranks he hoped to join, witnesses testified. He put members of his gang to work selling the Mexican Mafia’s drugs, collecting their debts and eliminating their enemies. Anyone who didn’t go along, prosecutors said, was eliminated.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

UCLA students Georgia Lavery Van Parijs, left, and Julianne Lempert stand for a portrait in the archways of Royce Hall on the Los Angeles campus. The friends have helped sponsor a bill in the state Legislature that would require all California colleges to offer transportation to the nearest sexual assault forensic exam after students are assaulted.

(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

CALIFORNIA

Cooler weather to bring rare May rain and snow into Southern California. Highs are expected to be in the mid-50s to 60s through Friday, “a far cry from what we had Saturday,” said Ryan Kittell, a weather service meteorologist in Oxnard.

Copenhagen mayor to California’s ‘Danish Capital’: Stop acting homophobic. Uproar over LGBTQ+ pride-themed banners in Solvang led to threats and a vicious debate. Even the mayor of Copenhagen stepped in.

‘Mom influencer’ who said a Latino couple tried to kidnap her kids was convicted of a false report. Katie Sorensen, 31, was convicted Thursday and she could face a sentence of up to six months in jail, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

‘She felt paralyzed’: L.A. woman sues Big Sur’s Esalen Institute for alleged use of video with N-word in class. Nicole Evans’ lawsuit seeks at least $1 million in damages, claiming the Esalen Institute violated her civil rights when an instructor played a video with racial slurs.

NATION-WORLD

Do indigenous people in Taiwan need names from China? Some say no. Indigenous Taiwanese want to abandon their Chinese names, giving rise to a politically charged debate amid rising cross-strait tensions.

Far from Russia, a pro-Moscow sliver of land tries to cling to its identity — and keep war at bay. Transnistria, often portrayed as little more than a Soviet time capsule, has become a popular destination among travel bloggers and adventure tourists. But beneath the Communist kitsch lies a real affinity with Russia among the region’s 300,000 or so people, which up to now has been to their advantage.

Man who lost his wife and son in Texas mass shooting tells their story. The house held 15 people in all, several of them friends who had been there to join Wilson Garcia’s wife on a church retreat. The gunman seemed intent on killing everyone, Garcia said.

Hospitals that denied emergency abortion broke the law, U.S. says. The findings are a warning to hospitals around the country as they struggle to reconcile dozens of new state laws that ban or severely restrict abortion with a federal mandate for doctors to provide abortions when a woman’s health is at risk.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

Andrea Riseborough flap prompts the most significant Oscar campaign rules change in decades. The film academy announced the new rules on Monday, following the controversy around Riseborough’s surprise nod for ‘To Leslie’ earlier this year.

Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were put on blast at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Soon after getting fired almost simultaneously by their respective cable TV networks, Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were the targets of many a joke at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner.

The 10 best things we saw at Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday concert. With more than 45 artists taking the stage to honor Willie, it’s hard to choose just 10 outstanding moments, but these stood out, musically and emotionally.

Ed Sheeran blasts music expert for ‘criminal’ testimony in the Marvin Gaye copyright trial. The British pop musician took the stand for a third time during the trial against him, this time offering a scathing review of the plaintiff’s music expert, Alexander Stewart.

BUSINESS

Musk said he’d never settle an unjust legal case against him. He just settled this one. Rather than persist in fighting a nearly three-year-old defamation lawsuit filed by college student Randeep Hothi, the pugnacious chief executive of Tesla cried uncle, settling for $10,000.

DeSantis board approves suing Disney in response to lawsuit. Members of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District voted unanimously to sue Disney in state court in the Orlando area, as well as defend itself in federal court in Tallahassee, where the entertainment company filed its lawsuit last Wednesday.

SPORTS

Lakers vs. Warriors: What scouts expect in playoff series. LeBron James and Stephen Curry have shared the court for four different NBA Finals, James and his Cavaliers winning once, and now they’ll do it again for the first time in the same conference. The series will hinge on more than its two most famous contributors.

Kentucky Derby storylines: Training death puts early pall over Churchill Downs. This year’s leadup to the Run for the Roses was especially painful, as one horse that had earned a starting spot broke down during training and was euthanized.

OPINION

Opinion: California wants more psychiatric detentions. That’s unlikely to improve anyone’s mental health. As psychiatric detentions increase, and officials clamor for more, it’s not at all clear that they help people more than they harm.

Column: Is God on the side of blasphemy laws? It’s wrong to disrespect the beliefs of others. But there should be no law in any country against doing so.

ONLY IN L.A.

Amy Solomon holds up cocktail glasses she purchased while shopping at an estate sale on Alcyona Drive in Los Angeles. Solomon runs a popular TikTok channel called Estatesalefreeks.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

In a city where top-charting musicians, renowned chefs, illustrious fashion designers and Hollywood stars live and eventually die, L.A. estate sales offer an insight into the lives of the rich and famous you wouldn’t otherwise get, but on a secondhand shopper’s budget.

Here’s how one L.A. resident finds true treasures at the best price.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces.

The assault was quick, brutal, risk-filled — and ultimately a massive success, the product of months of careful planning and years of intelligence gathering.

The Times wrote about the 40 minutes it took to capture and kill the Al Qaeda leader who, in October 2004, claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks.

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