LOS ANGELES — A 26-year-old Arleta man depicted along with his mother in selfie snapshots taken on a stolen Kindle reader tued the device in at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Station tonight and is facing possible misdemeanor charges, but his mother has been cleared of any involvement.

Michael Soto showed up at the station about 7 p.m., according to the LAPD. He was accompanied by his brother and tued in the Kindle and a smart phone that was also taken.

Police had earlier circulated images of Soto and his mother, hoping someone could help identify the two.

The Kindle was stolen about 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 9 from a Jack in the Box parking lot in the 16800 block of Vanowen Street, police said.

The theft occurred one day before Ash Wednesday, and in the photos, Soto’s smiling mother appeared to have ashes on her forehead.

The photos were uploaded a few days after the theft, “probably when the Kindle linked to the Inteet,” Detective Mark Pearce of the LAPD’s West Valley Detective Division said.

“Soto’s mother had no idea the Kindle had been stolen,” West Valley Division Capt. Paul Veon said. “It’s only fair that we say that for the sake of her reputation.”

When the photos were released, police did not identify them as suspects, but said they just wanted to identify the man and woman and encourage them to contact investigators and retu the device.

“I think there was a bit of family pressure to get Michael to retu the stolen items and fess up, if nothing else, to help clear his mom’s name,” Veon said. “Michael may have a bigger debt to pay to his mom than to society.”

The items were retued to their owner and police plan to file misdemeanor charges with the City Attoey’s Office, police said.

Soto was released pending charges. He could not be arrested without a warrant since the theft was a misdemeanor, police said.

The Kindle had been tracked to several San Feando Valley locations after it was taken, police said.

The owner began tracking the Kindle and the smart phone and was alerted when the pictures were taken and automatically uploaded to online, or cloud storage, Pearce said.

“This theft is unfortunately all too common,” Pearce said. “It was a crime of opportunity with items left on a front seat, inside an unlocked car, with the driver yards away, and gone only a few minutes.”

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NEW YORK — Harper Lee, the elusive novelist whose child’s-eye view of racial injustice in a small Southe town, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” became standard reading for millions of young people and an Oscar-wiing film, has died. She was 89.

HarperCollins spokeswoman Tina Andreadis confirmed the author’s death to The Associated Press on Friday.

• PHOTOS: ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ author Harper Lee dies at age 89

For most of her life, Lee divided her time between New York City, where she wrote the novel in the 1950s, and her hometown of Monroeville, which inspired the book’s fictional Maycomb.

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” published in 1960, is the story of a girl nicknamed Scout growing up in a Depression-era Southe town. A black man has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman, and Scout’s father, the resolute lawyer Atticus Finch, defends him despite threats and the sco of many.

The book quickly became a best-seller, won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a memorable movie in 1962, with Gregory Peck wiing an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus. As the civil rights movement grew, the novel inspired a generation of young lawyers, was assigned in high schools all over the country and was a popular choice for citywide, or nationwide, reading programs.

By 2015, its sales were reported by HarperCollins to be more than 40 million worldwide, making it one of the most widely read American novels of the 20th century. When the Library of Congress did a survey in 1991 on books that have affected people’s lives, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was second only to the Bible.

Lee herself became more mysterious as her book became more famous. At first, she dutifully promoted her work. She spoke frequently to the press, wrote about herself and gave speeches, once to a class of cadets at West Point.

But she began declining interviews in the late 1960s and, until late in her life, firmly avoided making any public comment at all about her novel or her career. Other than a few magazine pieces for Vogue and McCall’s in the 1960s and a review of a 19th-century Alabama history book in 1983, she published no other book until stuing the world in 2015 by permitting “Go Set a Watchman” to be released.

“Watchman” was written before “Mockingbird” but was set 20 years later, using the same location and many of the same characters. Readers and reviewers were disheartened to find an Atticus who seemed nothing like the hero of the earlier book. The man who defied the status quo in “Mockingbird” was now part of the mob in “Watchman,” denouncing the Supreme Court’s ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional and denouncing blacks as unfit to enjoy full equality.

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But despite unenthusiastic reviews and questions whether Lee was well enough to approve the publication, “Watchman” jumped to the top of best-seller lists within a day of its aouncement and remained there for months.

Much of Lee’s story is the story of “Mockingbird,” and how she responded to it. She wasn’t a bragger, like Norman Mailer, or a drinker, like William Faulkner, or a recluse or eccentric. By the accounts of friends and Monroeville townsfolk, she was a warm, vibrant and witty woman who enjoyed life, played golf, read voraciously and got about to plays and concerts. She just didn’t want to talk about it before an audience.

Claudia Durst Johnson, author of a book-length critical analysis of Lee’s novel, described her as preferring to guard her privacy “like others in an older generation, who didn’t go out and talk about themselves on Oprah or the Letterman show at the drop of a hat.” According to Johnson, Lee also complained that the news media invariably misquoted her.

Lee emerged more often over the past few years, although not always in ways she preferred. She was involved in numerous legal disputes over the rights to her book and denied she had cooperated with the biography “The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee,” by Marja Mills.

Other occasions were happier. She wrote a letter of thanks in 2001 when the Chicago Public Library chose “Mockingbird” for its first One Book, One Chicago program. In 2007, she agreed to attend a White House ceremony at which she received a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Around the same time, she wrote a rare published item — for O, The Oprah Magazine — about how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town, and remained one.

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books,” she wrote.

By 2014, she had given in to the digital age and allowed her novel to come out as an e-book, calling it “‘Mockingbird’ for a new generation.”

Bo in Monroeville, Alabama, Nelle Harper Lee was known to family and friends as Nelle (pronounced Nell) — the name of a relative, Ellen, spelled backward. Like Atticus Finch, her father was a lawyer and state legislator. One of her childhood friends was Truman Capote, who lived with relatives next door to the Lees for several years. (A book about Lee in 2006 and two films about Capote brought fresh attention to their friendship, including her contributions to Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” the classic “nonfiction novel” about the murder of a Kansas farm family.

Capote became the model for Scout’s creative, impish and loving friend Dill. In the novel, Dill is described as “a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.”

Lee’s friendship with Capote was evident later when she traveled frequently with him to Kansas, begiing in 1959, to help him do research for what became his own best-seller, “In Cold Blood.” He dedicated the book to her and his longtime companion, Jack Dunphy, but never acknowledged how vital a role she played in its creation.

Charles J. Shields, in the first book-length attempt at a biography of Lee, “Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,” showed how Lee helped Capote gain entrance to key figures in the murder investigation and provided keen observations and myriad notes that Capote wove into his book. (He also debunked a long-standing rumor that Capote had actually written much of “Mockingbird.”)

In the 2005 film “Capote,” Philip Seymour Hoffman won the best actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Capote struggling with his demons as he works on the book. Catherine Keener was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Lee. The next year, Sandra Bullock took the role of Lee in “Infamous,” with Toby Jones as Capote.

Lee said in the 1960s that she was working on a second novel, but over time it dropped from view and never reached a publisher.

Lee researched another book, a non-fiction account of a bizarre voodoo murder case in rural east Alabama, but abandoned the project in the 1980s.

Lee, who attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery as a freshman, transferred the next year to the University of Alabama, where she wrote and became editor of the campus literary magazine. After studying to be a lawyer like her father and older sister, Lee left the university before graduating, heading to New York to become a writer, as Capote already had done.

Lee worked as an airlines reservation clerk in New York City during the early 1950s, writing on the side. Finally, with a Christmas loan from friends, she quit to write full time, and the first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird” reached its publisher, J.B. Lippincott, in 1957.

The manuscript, according to the publishing house, arrived under the title “Atticus.” The title later became “To Kill a Mockingbird,” referring to an old saying that it was all right to kill a blue jay but a sin to kill a mockingbird, which gives the world its music.

Lee worked with the editor Tay Hohoff in bringing the book to its final form, a period when Lee was scrimping financially and dealing with the difficulties of rewriting.

“Though Miss Lee then had never published even an essay or a short story, this was clearly not the work of an amateur or tyro,” the editor wrote in an account published by Lippincott in 1967. “... She had leaed the essential part of her craft, with no so-called professional help, simply by working at it and working at it, endlessly.”

Capote, in a letter to an aunt in July 1959, said that a year earlier Lee “showed me as much of the book as she’d written, and I liked it very much. She has real talent.”

Her novel, while hugely popular, was not ranked many scholars in the same category as the work of other Southe authors such as Eudora Welty or Flaery O’Coor. Decades after its publication, little was written about it in scholarly jouals. Some critics has called the book naive and sentimental, whether dismissing the Ku Klux Klan as a minor nuisance in Maycomb or advocating change through personal persuasion rather than collective action. The novel was also considered patronizing for highlighting the bravery of a white man on behalf of blacks.

O’Coor, in an October 1960 letter, said, “I think I see what it really is — a child’s book. ... I think for a child’s book, it does all right.”

Parallels were drawn between Lee and Margaret Mitchell, another Southe woman whose only novel, “Gone With the Wind,” became a phenomenon and was made into a beloved movie. But Mitchell’s book romanticized the black-white divide; Lee’s work confronted it, although more gently than novels before and since.

Lee’s book features Scout’s often meandering recollection of the people — some eccentric, such as the reclusive Boo Radley — in rural Maycomb County, during the years when her brother Jem reaches adolescence and she enters school. Some critics said it relied at times on stereotypes, such as the mean, trashy whites making false charges against a virtuous black. But the tomboy Scout and the quietly courageous Atticus Finch drew praise as memorable, singular creations.

The book’s tension is built around the lynching atmosphere in Maycomb as the black man goes on trial, a scenario reminiscent of the Scottsboro Boys rape case of the same period. Scout, Dill and Jem, whose playful curiosity takes scary tus, witness the drama of an adult world with its own frightening lessons.

“Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct,” Lee wrote to an editor in the 1960s. “Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southeers.”

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COMPTON – A man was shot to death on a street in Compton, the sheriff’s department reported today.

The attack took place in the 14500 block of South Cai Avenue about 11 p.m. Thursday, said Deputy Trina Schrader.

The victim was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Schrader said. His name was withheld pending family notification.

The motive for the shooting was not known, and no information was available on the shooter. Anyone with information on the slaying was urged to call the sheriff’s homicide bureau at (323) 890-5500.

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Bacon Sakatani can’t help but laugh when he remembers reporting to Covina Park with only what he could carry 74 years ago.

“It just didn’t hit me at that time,” Sakatani said on a recent afteoon in his West Covina home. “I think I took a baseball glove.”

As a result of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, Sakatani, his family and more than 5,000 other men, women and children of Japanese descent were bused to the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona where they were detained for three months before being sent to an intement camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming for the remainder of World War II.

Sakatani was 12 years old at the time. As an adult, he came to understand what is considered one of the most serious injustices by the American govement.

Resting his chin in his hand, the 86-year-old shook his head.

“We accepted all this and we said we had to prove our loyalty,” Sakatani said almost in disbelief. “I don’t know. They really brainwashed us to think like that.”

Now, he and 26 other Pomona inteees and descendants are working with the Pomona Historical Society and the Los Angeles County Fair Association to erect a plaque at the fairgrounds to recognize the role it played during the war and the Japanese intement.

It was one of 13 temporary detention centers in Califoia used to confine Japanese-Americans until more permanent war relocation camps, such as those in Manzanar and Tule Lake, were built. In 1980, the centers were named state landmarks and while most now bear a memorial plaque acknowledging their significance, Pomona is one of only a few sites with no trace or mention of the war.

“A very important historic event occurred there, and it should be recorded and let the people know exactly just what happened there before it’s forgotten,” Sakatani said. “Probably most of the people in this area have no idea what occurred there.”

Dwight Richards, vice president of operations for the fairgrounds association, said the fair is open to creating some kind of a memorial. He plans to meet with Sakatani and representatives from the historical society next week to discuss a plan to make it happen.

“There’s nothing on grounds recognizing it,” Richards said. “It’s not something that we’re super proud of, but this was a different time and a different era, and the fairgrounds has a pretty rich history.”

At the fairgrounds, Sakatani, his mother and four brothers and sisters slept on canvas bags full of straw in a small wooden barrack. They were later joined by his father who had been taken away soon after the Dec. 7 attack at Pearl Harbor and sent to a little-known detention center in Tujunga for civilians classed as enemies of the United States.

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When Sakatani talks about their time in Pomona, he doesn’t use the word “live” to describe the daily routine inside the chain-linked fences and barbed wire.

“It was not normal living,” he said.

There was a mess hall where all inteees waited in an hour long line to be fed. They abided by a curfew and were subjected to a bed check.

Still, the inteees tried to create some semblance of a community.

They set up baseball teams and held a weekly talent show. A newspaper called Pomona Center News was circulated throughout the camp.

“We just made the best of it,” Sakatani said. It wasn’t until much later that he realized his freedom had been taken away.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, pausing for a moment. “We were the wrong race.”

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CLAREMONT >> House Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi shied away Thursday from picking her presidential candidate or weighing in on the vacancy for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, spoke candidly about what she characterized as a “strange election year” during Thursday’s event at Scripps College. The hour-long discussion is part of Scripps Presents, a first-year series bringing a mix of writers, artists, activists and politicians to the school.

“I think it would be important to have an array of people from which to choose,” Pelosi said about the vacancy on the high court. “But I really do think you won’t see one person named until after the weekend when Justice (Antonin) Scalia is laid to rest; may he rest in peace.”

Pelosi did take issue with Idea from Republicans who have called for delaying the replacement until the next president is elected.

“(Scalia) was a champion of the Constitution and the Constitution says ‘that the president of the United States shall propose a person to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.’ The current president,” she said.

Although she repeatedly praised Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Beie Sanders, D-Vermont, she also painted a scenario where candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be elected to the office.

“I think that Hillary Clinton, should she become president, when she walks into that Oval Office, will be better prepared with more experience and knowledge than the rest of them — her husband, George W. Bush and even our fabulous President Barack Obama — just by her experience. There’s no denying it,” Pelosi stated.

• Photos: House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi talks at Scripps College

Currently, the minority leader for the House of Representatives, Pelosi served as speaker of the house from 2007 to 2011, the first woman to do so in American history. When she entered Congress in 1987, Pelosi said there were only 12 female Democrats in office. Now they number 65.

“It’s not about one woman succeeding,” she told the audience. “(With) a reduced role of money in politics, we’ll have more women in politics. This is an absolute fact: When women succeed, America succeeds.”

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Pelosi, who for 28 years has represented San Francisco in Califoia’s 12th Congressional District, advised young women interested in politics to “be yourself. Be the authenticity of you.”

Outside the theater, a group of protesters was calling on Pelosi to end sanctuary cities. Upland resident Robin Hvidston said the group was there in the memory of San Francisco resident Kate Steinle, who was killed last year when she was struck by a bullet accidentally fired by a Mexican national and five-time deportee. Steinele’s death ignited a national debate on illegal immigration.

When a student asked about Steinle, Pelosi characterized her death as an “unfortunate incident” that speaks to the need for law enforcement agencies to communicate with each other, not a reason to undo the sanctuary cities movement.

“The idea was to give sanctuary, and it was not to be of any comfort to felons. It was about protecting families, and that is what we’re committed to doing,” she said.

Pelosi added that the concept of sanctuary cities was developed by faith communities who value immigration and want to keep families together.

Thursday’s event was refreshing for Claremont McKea College sophomores Felipe Afanador and Mohamad Batal. The duo said they were both pleased to hear Pelosi’s message, especially to Republicans in the audience: “Take back your party, it’s a great party.”

“I was glad that she talked about (women in politics), and focused on the substance part of it and electing someone on their resume, and their credentials and not playing identity politics,” said Afanador, 19, who is majoring in govement and economics.

“I think she had a broadside appeal and was really honest.”

For Batal, 20, who took notes during the talk, Pelosi’s message on immigration impacted him the most.

“When she said, ‘Immigrants make America more American,’ I just thought that was incredibly touching. I just hope there is increased effort and action in immigration reform. I do think it has the potential to be a bipartisan issue,” Batal said.

Unlike Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, who have issued ste criticism to women who don’t support Clinton, Pelosi’s departing words were more inclusive.

“There’s a special place in heaven for everyone who votes,” Pelosi said, a riff on Albright’s “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” said at a Clinton rally earlier this month.

Here are Pelosi’s take on various topics discussed at Thursday’s event:

• A female president: “I always thought we would have a woman president long before we had a woman in leadership (role) in the Congress.”

• Women in politics: “If I went to my colleagues and said, ‘Vote for Nancy because she’s a woman’ that would not have been helpful. It isn’t helpful.”

• Clinton’s candidacy: “The candidate that we do have for president happens to be one of the best-qualified people to run for president in a long time, and she happens to be a woman.”

• To the men in the audience: “It’s not that we think we’re better, it’s just that the beauty is in the mix. The diversity of opinion at the table makes such a difference in the quality of decision-making and validity of the solutions because people of different have weighed in.”

• Sanders’ impact: “Beie Sanders has done a service, in my view, by attracting the people. This is an attraction business, and so his message is simple: Wall Street, student loans and big money and politics… Is it do able? That’s a different discussion, but there’s just something really special to how he has attracted milleials. Let’s say Hilary may be the nominee, but without Beie, many of those people might not even be paying attention to the election.

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Apple Inc.’s refusal to cooperate with a magistrate’s order to provide a way into the work iPhone of San Beardino terrorist Syed Farook is sparking public protest — against the govement.

An inteet security group known as Fight for the Future is organizing nationwide protests, plaed for Tuesday, via a Facebook page. The group is eyeing Apple stores as the sites for their rallies.

The page lists several protests in the state of Califoia, with more events being added to the list daily.

All listed events are set to take place at 5:30 p.m. next Tuesday.

• Modesto Apple Store, 3401 Dale Road

• Palo Alto Apple Store, 340 University Ave.

• San Diego Apple Store, Fashion Valley, 7007 Friars Road

Event organizers plan to list more protest events as they are confirmed. So far, 687 people are signed up to attend one of the rallies.

Farook’s work iPhone was not with him during the attack on the Inland Regional Center or during the subsequent shootout with police hours later, according to published media reports.

The FBI wants Apple to supply highly specialized software it can load onto the county-owned smartphone to bypass a self-destruct feature, which erases the phone’s data after too many unsuccessful attempts to unlock it. The FBI wants to try different combinations in rapid sequence until it finds the right one without triggering the self-destruct feature.

“So far, Apple is vowing to fight this unlawful and reckless demand by the govement, but we need to show them that they’re not standing alone,” according to a statement from the event organizers on Facebook. “Join us at one of these important events to stand up for everyone’s safety.”

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A 27-year-old bartender from Palos Verdes Estates was charged Thursday with punching a New York Mets fan in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, knocking him unconscious and causing him to hit his head on the ground, authorities said.

Michael Rae Papayans, who also was arrested along with Backstreet Boy Nick Carter during a January fight in a Florida, bar, could face up to seven years in prison if convicted of the Dodger Stadium attack Oct. 9.

The confrontation in Lot L occurred shortly after the Mets beat the Dodgers 2-1 in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. According to prosecutors, Papayans’ mother allegedly confronted four Mets fans walking to their car. One man in the group was wearing Mets attire.

“The woman allegedly yelled epithets shortly before her son, Michael Rae Papayans, joined in a verbal dispute with the group,” the District Attoey’s Office said in a statement. “The dispute escalated when the son allegedly punched a 50-year-old male in the head, knocking him unconscious. As the victim fell to the ground, he hit his head on the pavement, causing him to sustain serious head injuries.”

Papayans’ mother then allegedly kicked the man in the back while he was on the ground.

Four days later, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck asked for the public’s help in finding the assailants.

“We believe it is a son and mother who are responsible for this assault,” he said.

An investigation by LAPD robbery-assault detectives led to Papayans, who was taken into custody Feb. 11. He was released on bail the following day. Prosecutors charged Papayans with one felony count of assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury with an allegation that he caused great bodily injury. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 11 in downtown Los Angeles. Prosecutors will ask a judge to set bail at $60,000.

The mother’s case was referred to the Los Angeles City Attoey’s Office for possible misdemeanor charges.

Calls to the Papayans residence on Paseo del Mar were not retued.

Papayans played baseball when he was a student at Rolling Hills Prep in San Pedro. According to social media posts, he appears to be engaged to Carter’s sister-in-law, Alexandra Kitt. He proposed to her on Christmas Day.

The January arrests of Carter and Papayans in Key West, Florida, stemmed from a fight that erupted at the Hog’s Breath Saloon. A police report said Papayans had blood on his hands, face and knees.

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According to the report, the two men entered the bar heavily intoxicated and a bartender refused to serve them. Carter and Papayans became agitated and aggressive toward the bartender, prompting bouncers to tell them to leave. Carter allegedly tried to choke a bouncer and Papayans struck a bouncer on the chin with his head, the police report said.

Papayans was captured on a police bodycam video saying, “I did not do anything. I was trying to get my friend to stop and they tackled me like they were f---ing Navy SEALs or something.” The video was posted on celebrity website TMZ.

The Oct. 9 attack was reminiscent of the March 31, 2011, assault of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow, who suffered permanent brain damage following an attack in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

Two men pleaded guilty to attacking Stow and were sentenced to state prison. The prosecutor on that case, Deputy District Attoey Michele Hanisee, was assigned to the Papayans case.

The Stowe attack raised questions about security at Dodger Stadium. Stow sued the team and was awarded $18 million.

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When Feride Buyuran moved to Long Beach in 2003, she expected to pursue a business career.

The Azerbaijan-bo cookbook author moved to Long Beach after a year in Los Angeles to attend Cal State Long Beach’s MBA program.

She graduated and worked in the business world — first for a trading company, then for a translation firm. But in 2007, she traded her business suits for an apron, and never looked back.

She said she wanted to bring Azerbaijani cuisine to the U.S. In 2008, the mother of two started azcookbook.com, a blog devoted to Azerbaijani cooking, while also working on a cookbook manuscript.

At the time, her younger child was just an infant.

“The second baby and the book were bo at the same time,” she said. “I was writing the book when he was taking a nap.”

Recreating her culture’s recipes was a labor of love for Buyuran, who is a self-taught chef. In Azerbaijan, she said, women live at home until they are married — and while they are at home, the home’s older generations do the cooking. It’s not until the women marry that the recipes get passed down.

Buyuran, whose husband is Turkish, lived out of the country. But she wanted to cook the kinds of foods she grew up eating in Baku.

“You come here and you really crave the homemade food,” she said.

So she called her mother and sister and asked them to help her lea the recipes. She also asked for recipes from her friends and relatives.

As a result, the recipes on her blog and in her cookbook, “Pomegranates & Saffron,” come from every region of the country.

“Some of the dishes, I had never tried in Azerbaijan,” she said.

Azerbaijan, located in the heart of the Caucasus, is bordered by Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia and Turkey, and the cuisine reflects its geographic location between Weste Asia and Easte Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union, and Russian influences are present — Azerbaijan has a take on borscht and a Russian-style potato dish called Capital Salad.

But the country, with its wide-ranging topography, is known for its abundance of vegetables and greens — a factor that influences “Pomegranates & Saffron,” which has many vegetable-forward recipes.

Buyuran published the book herself after being rejected by numerous cookbook publishers due to its narrow topic.

“It’s a leaing curve,” she said. “You are ruing the show completely.”

While Buyuran wrote and photographed the book herself, she had to coordinate with a hired editor, designer and printer, she said.

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“When you put so much heart and soul into it, you want to make sure it’s done correctly,” she said.

Her effort seems to have paid off. The first edition sold out completely, and her second edition — which was sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan — has recently won two awards for self-published authors: the Gourmand World Cookbook Award and Living Now Books for Better Living Award.

What’s more, her book is on the shelves in bookstores in Azerbaijan.

But Buyuran isn’t finished yet. She said she plans to write another cookbook — one that explores foods from Azerbaijan’s neighbors.

“I think the cuisines of those countries are absolutely amazing,” she said.

Jeifer Rice Epstein is an editor at Gazette Newspapers. She can be reached at [email protected].

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POMONA >> Although everything was on the table during Califoia State University Chancellor Tim White’s open forum Thursday at Cal Poly Pomona, what everyone most wanted to talk about was money — especially the looming threat of a faculty strike, whichtook the form of a protest outside the forum and questions within.

While not wanting to diminish “the pain of people who work two jobs, or three jobs, or whose parents work a second job to keep their kids in school,” White said the CSU system is operating with less money than before the Great Recession despite having more students.

“But you live within your means,” he said.

White’s visit to Cal Poly Pomona was his seventh to the campus since becoming chancellor in 2013.

“Two more visits and I fill up my punch card at Iovation Brew Works,” the school’s just-off-campus brewery, White joked to the several hundred faculty, staff and students at the student center auditorium.

University officials expected a contentious atmosphere going in, with the moderator cautioning those in attendance that they should be asking questions, “not making statements” to White.

Complaints about fees

Similar to visits he’s made at other campuses this year, White was presented with a “privatizer of the year” award by members of Students for a Quality Education, who “congratulated” White for the “further privatization of the CSU,” their way of describing the continually increasing costs of attending CSU.

White said he was baffled by the argument.

“Tuition has not gone up in five years,” he said.

The fees the students objected to — specifically for new dormitories and a new parking garage at the university, some of which that won’t be ready until after they graduate — were a necessary evil, according to White.

“We’re planting seeds” with expenses that will make the university better for future students, he said. “It’s part of being a democracy.”

The struggle for certain classes

Parent Adam Gordon identified himself as the father of a mechanical engineering student in his fourth year. His son, he said, has been trying to get one required class for three quarters — and there are four more required classes that follow it.

White acknowledged the problem.

“Wherever I’ve been, we’ve always faced bottlenecks,” White said.

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According to White, several years ago, CSU analyzed the classes that were causing the biggest problems systemwide to determine why there was higher-than-projected demand for them.

That analysis found that those classes had “extraordinary” numbers dropping the class, failing (and needing to retake the class) or withdrawing from the class, White said. They then looked at what was causing those problems in each of those cases and addressed the problem that way.

Although he acknowledged that there might still be more work to be done, White defended the length of time it takes students to graduate from CSU.

“The median time to degree is 4.7 years or less. That’s not terrible,” he said.

A strike looms

And then there’s the threat of a strike, which members of the Califoia Faculty Association voted to authorize in November. An association press release issued before the forum characterized White’s visit as a “dog and pony show.”

In the Bronco Student Center on Thursday, red-shirted faculty members protested outside the forum.

Psychology and sociology professor Boie Thoe said only being in a two-income family made working at Cal Poly Pomona possible.

“If I had to live on my own, I could not live on my salary,” she said.

Faculty members are pushing for a 5 percent raise.

“We know that the money exists,” Thoe said.

“We’ll leave the bargaining to the bargaining table,” White replied, drawing a derisive laugh from the back of the room, where fellow red-shirted protesters were lined up.

CSU does have money it’s not spending, White said — $1 billion in reserve — but that’s only two months of operating capital for the CSU, not the six months that Wall Street investors want the system to have on hand.

“Spending that down is irresponsible,” White said. “It’s not going to happen on my watch.”

And during the recession, there was a period when Sacramento stopped paying CSU salaries, White said. The reserve was used to fill in the gaps until things changed at the state level.

Although officials have so far held firm on the 2 percent raise they’ve offered the faculty, White said he is “committed to improving the salary of faculty and staff.”

“Have we done enough? No,” White concluded. “Are we moving in the right direction? I hope you’d agree.”

The chants of “strike, strike, strike” that came from the back of room in reply suggested that not everyone does.

- - , .

When Feride Buyuran moved to Long Beach in 2003, she expected to pursue a business career.

The Azerbaijan-bo cookbook author moved to Long Beach after a year in Los Angeles to attend Cal State Long Beach’s MBA program.

She graduated and worked in the business world — first for a trading company, then for a translation firm. But in 2007, she traded her business suits for an apron, and never looked back.

She said she wanted to bring Azerbaijani cuisine to the U.S. In 2008, the mother of two started azcookbook.com, a blog devoted to Azerbaijani cooking, while also working on a cookbook manuscript.

At the time, her younger child was just an infant.

“The second baby and the book were bo at the same time,” she said. “I was writing the book when he was taking a nap.”

Recreating her culture’s recipes was a labor of love for Buyuran, who is a self-taught chef. In Azerbaijan, she said, women live at home until they are married — and while they are at home, the home’s older generations do the cooking. It’s not until the women marry that the recipes get passed down.

Buyuran, whose husband is Turkish, lived out of the country. But she wanted to cook the kinds of foods she grew up eating in Baku.

“You come here and you really crave the homemade food,” she said.

So she called her mother and sister and asked them to help her lea the recipes. She also asked for recipes from her friends and relatives.

As a result, the recipes on her blog and in her cookbook, “Pomegranates & Saffron,” come from every region of the country.

“Some of the dishes, I had never tried in Azerbaijan,” she said.

Azerbaijan, located in the heart of the Caucasus, is bordered by Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia and Turkey, and the cuisine reflects its geographic location between Weste Asia and Easte Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union, and Russian influences are present — Azerbaijan has a take on borscht and a Russian-style potato dish called Capital Salad.

But the country, with its wide-ranging topography, is known for its abundance of vegetables and greens — a factor that influences “Pomegranates & Saffron,” which has many vegetable-forward recipes.

Buyuran published the book herself after being rejected by numerous cookbook publishers due to its narrow topic.

“It’s a leaing curve,” she said. “You are ruing the show completely.”

While Buyuran wrote and photographed the book herself, she had to coordinate with a hired editor, designer and printer, she said.

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“When you put so much heart and soul into it, you want to make sure it’s done correctly,” she said.

Her effort seems to have paid off. The first edition sold out completely, and her second edition — which was sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan — has recently won two awards for self-published authors: the Gourmand World Cookbook Award and Living Now Books for Better Living Award.

What’s more, her book is on the shelves in bookstores in Azerbaijan.

But Buyuran isn’t finished yet. She said she plans to write another cookbook — one that explores foods from Azerbaijan’s neighbors.

“I think the cuisines of those countries are absolutely amazing,” she said.

Jeifer Rice Epstein is an editor at Gazette Newspapers. She can be reached at [email protected].

- - , .

The three candidates hoping to represent Long Beach’s 2nd City Council district had a chance to show the differences between their respective political styles during a Wednesday night debate.

Three candidates – interior design company owner Joen Gaica, technology retail company owner Eric Gray and labor advocate Jeaine Pearce – are competing to represent a council district that includes Port of Long Beach, the Ocean Boulevard corridor, the East Village Arts District and coastal neighborhoods as far east as Redondo Avenue. The 2nd District includes some of Long Beach’s more prominent areas, and has the distinction of being the city’s only contest in this election cycle where an incumbent is not seeking reelection.

Press-Telegram Public Editor Rich Archbold moderated the debate, which took place at The Breakers building in downtown Long Beach. The candidates spent more than two hours answering questions on a range of current policy issues affecting Long Beach and, as requested by Archbold, the candidates’ managed to avoid acting like presidential candidates and showed that it is actually possible to be polite to one’s opponents during an election year.

Although the candidates’ responses showed several instances of broad agreement on issues such as taxes, the future of Long Beach Airport and doing more to help the homeless people who congregate in downtown Long Beach, the debate did provide each of three candidates a chance to show how their respective backgrounds and viewpoints may shape their approach to leadership.

Gaica, who owns Gaica Interiors, emphasized her experience as a business owner whose company survived the Great Recession and her involvement with the East Village Association, of which she is currently president.

“I’m hand-in-hand working with the residents of Long Beach and I have been for many years,” she said.

Gray, who owns ITO Solutions and is president of the Downtown Residential Council, portrayed himself as the candidate who would be best able to achieve cooperation between business and labor interests.

“I know what makes business corridors tick and I’m ruing because I’m passionate about the city of Long Beach and what it can become,” he said.

Pearce, who is an organizing director for Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, helped campaign for the 2012 ballot measure that set a minimum wage for large, non-union Long Beach hotels. She said her involvement in the labor movement does not necessarily mean that she will always take unions’ sides, but would be relevant to work inside City Hall.

“I am the only candidate that has policy experience,” she said.

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In several respects, the candidates voiced substantial agreement on some of the major issues facing Long Beach’s 2nd District and the city as a whole.

Gaica, Gray and Pearce all said they favored the council’s decision to put proposed sales tax increase on the June ballot, and when pressed to declare their personal views during the portion of the debate when audience members could ask questions, the three all said they support the tax proposal.

What’s more, the three contenders generally agreed on the likelihood that city govement’s employees may need to receive pay raises at the conclusion of current and near-future labor negotiations, that allowing inteational flights at Long Beach Airport may benefit the city as long as planes don’t exceed the noise limits set by city law (the 2nd District is home to several luxury hotels) and that Long Beach may be able to accommodate medical marijuana dispensaries, as long as caabis providers are not over-concentrated in any given neighborhoods.

For whatever it’s worth, all three candidates also acknowledged they tried marijuana during their younger days.

Labor-related issues led to some moments where the candidates clearly disagreed with each other. For example, Gray blamed labor unions for events that led to the Califoia Coastal Commission denying a proposal for a high-end hotel-condominium project in the district. Pearce said the parking issues stopped the project.

There was a also a small dispute as to whether candidates seeking labor unions’ endorsements must sign pledges to ea interviews. Gaica, who has no labor endorsements, said she has not signed any promises to labor or pro-business groups.

Whereas Gray said candidates do have to sign papers expressing views on labor-related matters in order to be considered for union support, he does not consider those kind of statements to be a pledge for any specific actions. Pearce, however, said she considers those statements to be pledges.

Long Beach’s Primary Election is scheduled for April 12. There are also competitive elections in the city’s 6th and 8th council districts.

- - , .

It may be good-bye for El Niño and hello to La Niña.

The once-predicted “Godzilla” storm of El Niño has thus far tued out to be a little lizard in terms of Southe Califoia rainfall, but weather experts on Thursday offered some encouragement to those pining for more wet stuff.

“We’re about in the sixth or seventh iing,” said Mark Jackson, a meteorologist in charge with NOAA’s National Weather Service in Oxnard, perhaps likening the weather to a low-scoring game where El Niño still has a chance to score some runs.

Jackson spoke to reporters at Aquarium of the Pacific, in the Ocean Science Center and next to the Aquarium’s NOAA “Science on a Sphere” rotating globe, which shows real-time ocean phenomena.

NOAA says El Niño, touted by meteorologists as the strongest on record along with the 1997-98 event, may already have peaked, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had an impact, or won’t douse Southe Califoia in the next couple of months.

Jackson said El Niño has hit Central and Northe Califoia hard this year, which is good, because Southe Califoia depends on so much water from up north. The Sierra snowpack is at about 94 percent of normal for this time of year, according to the Califoia Department of Water Resources. Jackson said reservoirs are filling back up.

“This has made some impact on the drought conditions,” he said.

El Niño remains strong, with continued warmth in the surface waters of the east-central tropical Pacific, but most indicators show the weather patte weakening and becoming neutral by late spring or early summer, and maybe shifting to La Niña in the fall, according to NOAA.

La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the easte equatorial Pacific, and tends to do just the opposite of El Niño in the United States, bringing wetter-than-average conditions across the Pacific Northwest and drier and warmer-than-typical conditions across the southe tier.

Jackson said with only a handful of El Niños on record in the last 65 years, forecasters are leaing about the weather patte as much as they are making predictions about its impact.

“This has not quite behaved as we expected it to,” he said.

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- - , .

Long Beach police will be on the lookout for drunken drivers Saturday.

Officers will be looking for signs of alcohol and drug impairment as well as checking drivers for proper licensing.

The Department’s Traffic Section is holding a DUI and driver’s license checkpoint from 7 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday at an undisclosed location in the East Division patrol area.

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- - , .

It took nearly four months, but a gas leak that has plagued the northe San Feando Valley has been killed.

Here’s how they did it.

Trouble viewing the graphic? View on Scribd.

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- - , .

The three candidates hoping to represent Long Beach’s 2nd City Council district had a chance to show the differences between their respective political styles during a Wednesday night debate.

Three candidates – interior design company owner Joen Gaica, technology retail company owner Eric Gray and labor advocate Jeaine Pearce – are competing to represent a council district that includes Port of Long Beach, the Ocean Boulevard corridor, the East Village Arts District and coastal neighborhoods as far east as Redondo Avenue. The 2nd District includes some of Long Beach’s more prominent areas, and has the distinction of being the city’s only contest in this election cycle where an incumbent is not seeking reelection.

Press-Telegram Public Editor Rich Archbold moderated the debate, which took place at The Breakers building in downtown Long Beach. The candidates spent more than two hours answering questions on a range of current policy issues affecting Long Beach and, as requested by Archbold, the candidates’ managed to avoid acting like presidential candidates and showed that it is actually possible to be polite to one’s opponents during an election year.

Although the candidates’ responses showed several instances of broad agreement on issues such as taxes, the future of Long Beach Airport and doing more to help the homeless people who congregate in downtown Long Beach, the debate did provide each of three candidates a chance to show how their respective backgrounds and viewpoints may shape their approach to leadership.

Gaica, who owns Gaica Interiors, emphasized her experience as a business owner whose company survived the Great Recession and her involvement with the East Village Association, of which she is currently president.

“I’m hand-in-hand working with the residents of Long Beach and I have been for many years,” she said.

Gray, who owns ITO Solutions and is president of the Downtown Residential Council, portrayed himself as the candidate who would be best able to achieve cooperation between business and labor interests.

“I know what makes business corridors tick and I’m ruing because I’m passionate about the city of Long Beach and what it can become,” he said.

Pearce, who is an organizing director for Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, helped campaign for the 2012 ballot measure that set a minimum wage for large, non-union Long Beach hotels. She said her involvement in the labor movement does not necessarily mean that she will always take unions’ sides, but would be relevant to work inside City Hall.

“I am the only candidate that has policy experience,” she said.

Advertisement

In several respects, the candidates voiced substantial agreement on some of the major issues facing Long Beach’s 2nd District and the city as a whole.

Gaica, Gray and Pearce all said they favored the council’s decision to put proposed sales tax increase on the June ballot, and when pressed to declare their personal views during the portion of the debate when audience members could ask questions, the three all said they support the tax proposal.

What’s more, the three contenders generally agreed on the likelihood that city govement’s employees may need to receive pay raises at the conclusion of current and near-future labor negotiations, that allowing inteational flights at Long Beach Airport may benefit the city as long as planes don’t exceed the noise limits set by city law (the 2nd District is home to several luxury hotels) and that Long Beach may be able to accommodate medical marijuana dispensaries, as long as caabis providers are not over-concentrated in any given neighborhoods.

For whatever it’s worth, all three candidates also acknowledged they tried marijuana during their younger days.

Labor-related issues led to some moments where the candidates clearly disagreed with each other. For example, Gray blamed labor unions for events that led to the Califoia Coastal Commission denying a proposal for a high-end hotel-condominium project in the district. Pearce said the parking issues stopped the project.

There was a also a small dispute as to whether candidates seeking labor unions’ endorsements must sign pledges to ea interviews. Gaica, who has no labor endorsements, said she has not signed any promises to labor or pro-business groups.

Whereas Gray said candidates do have to sign papers expressing views on labor-related matters in order to be considered for union support, he does not consider those kind of statements to be a pledge for any specific actions. Pearce, however, said she considers those statements to be pledges.

Long Beach’s Primary Election is scheduled for April 12. There are also competitive elections in the city’s 6th and 8th council districts.

- - , .

This is the time of year when owners and trainers of talented 3-year-old horses hold their breaths virtually 24/7. Their very existence revolves around these four-legged animals that bring such joy to our lives.

So after Nyquist had passed his first test as a 3-year-old earlier this week at Santa Anita — a 1 1/2-length victory over Exaggerator in the $200,000 Grade II San Vicente Stakes — trainer Doug O’Neill could exhale and relax a bit.

Relax, that is, until the colt’s next gallop or workout.

“I’m just so relieved,” O’Neill said in the wier’s circle. “I was so confident going in, but we’ve all been in racing long enough to know that goofy things happen. Just the simple thing of saddling one and the paddock experience. Things happen, but everything went great ... I’m so pumped, so happy and so proud of the whole team.”

On Thursday, O’Neill confirmed Nyquist will start next in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, setting up a possible showdown with Mohaymen, another unbeaten Kentucky Derby contender. The latter is scheduled to go in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream later this month as a prep for the Florida Derby.

Nyquist will bring a 6-0 record into the Florida Derby, another factor that could weigh on O’Neill’s mind. It’s never easy making decisions regarding an unbeaten thoroughbred. Just ask John Shirreffs, who tued the trick so magnificently with Zenyatta a few years back.

But O’Neill said he’s not feeling any pressure. At least not yet.

“It’s fun,” he said. “There’s a lot more pressure when they don’t win and you owe the feed guy a lot of money. That’s a lot of pressure. I’ve been there, and hopefully I won’t get back there soon.”

Nyquist’s victory in the San Vicente kept him atop our Kentucky Derby rankings, which remain unchanged from our initial Top Five last month:

1. Nyquist

Yes, there is conce whether the son of Uncle Mo can go the 1 1/4-mile Derby distance. But let’s face it, Califoia Chrome faced the same question marks in 2014 and did OK. His gentle, low-key demeanor should help as the distances increase, and he’s already proven he can ship and win.

Next start: Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, April 2.

2. Mohaymen

Much like Nyquist in the San Vicente, Mohaymen was stellar in his 2016 debut, accelerating nicely and pulling away from his rivals to win the Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 30. The Tapit colt is 4-0, but unlike Nyquist has yet to win a Grade I. He may get his chance April 2 versus Nyquist.

Next start: Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park, Feb. 27.

3. Mor Spirit

Bob Baffert’s main Derby contender figures to get better as the races get longer. Plus, the son of Eskendereya possesses tactical speed, which is a huge plus. “It’s nice to know I have a horse that’s not one-dimensional. He has speed if we want it, but he’s better (off the pace),” Baffert said.

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Next start: San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, March 12.

4. Airoforce

The son of Colonel John is somewhat of a mystery, seeing as though he’s never won over a fast dirt track. But he did beat Mor Spirit over a sloppy surface at Churchill Downs in the Kentucky Jockey Club on Nov. 28.

Next start: Risen Star Stakes at the Fair Grounds, Saturday.

5. Exaggerator

Trainer Keith Desormeaux was brimming with confidence before the San Vicente, but the son of Curlin couldn’t get past Nyquist in the stretch for the third consecutive time. Still, jockey Kent Desormeaux was pleased by the effort, saying, “You’d have to break the track record to win the race, so that’s telling for both horses.”

Next start: San Felipe Stakes

- - , .

A 27-year-old bartender from Palos Verdes Estates was charged Thursday with punching a New York Mets fan in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, knocking him unconscious and causing him to hit his head on the ground, authorities said.

Michael Rae Papayans, who also was arrested along with Backstreet Boy Nick Carter during a January fight in a Key West, Florida, bar, could face up to seven years in prison if convicted of the Dodger Stadium attack Oct. 9.

The confrontation in Lot L occurred shortly after the Mets beat the Dodgers 2-1 in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. According to prosecutors, Papayans’ mother allegedly confronted four Mets fans walking to their car. One man in the group was wearing Mets attire.

“The woman allegedly yelled epithets shortly before her son, Michael Rae Papayans, joined in a verbal dispute with the group,” the District Attoey’s Office said in a statement. “The dispute escalated when the son allegedly punched a 50-year-old male in the head, knocking him unconscious. As the victim fell to the ground, he hit his head on the pavement, causing him to sustain serious head injuries.”

Papayans’ mother allegedly then kicked the man in the back while he was on the ground.

Four days later, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck asked for the public’s help in finding the assailants.

“We believe it is a son and mother who are responsible for this assault,” he said.

An investigation by LAPD robbery-assault detectives led to Papayans, who was taken into custody Feb. 11. He was released on bail the following day. Prosecutors charged Papayans with one felony count of assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury with an allegation that he caused great bodily injury. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 11 in downtown Los Angeles. Prosecutors will ask a judge to set bail at $60,000.

The mother’s case was referred to the Los Angeles City Attoey’s Office for possible misdemeanor charges.

Calls to the Papayans residence on Paseo del Mar were not retued.

According to social media posts, Papayans appears to be engaged to Carter’s sister-in-law, Alexandra Kitt. He proposed to her on Christmas Day.

Carter and Papayans were arrested in January when a fight erupted at the Hogs Breath bar in Key West. A police report said Papayans had blood on his hands, face and knees.

According to the report, the two men entered the bar heavily intoxicated. One bartender refused to serve them.

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Carter and Papayans became agitated and aggressive toward the bartender, prompting bouncers to tell them to leave. Carter allegedly tried to choke a bouncer and Papayans struck a bouncer on the chin with his head, the police report said.

Papayans was captured on a police bodycam video saying, “I did not do anything. I was trying to get my friend to stop and they tackled me like they were f---ing Navy SEALs or something.” The video was posted on celebrity website TMZ.

Papayans played baseball when he was a student at Palos Verdes High School and Rolling Hills Prep in San Pedro.

The attack was reminiscent of the March 31, 2011, assault of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow, who suffered permanent brain damage following an attack in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

Two men pleaded guilty to attacking Stow and were sentenced to state prison. The prosecutor on that case, Deputy District Attoey Michele Hanisee, was assigned to the Papayans case.

The Stowe attack raised questions about security at Dodger Stadium. Stow sued the team and was awarded $18 million.

- - , .

In response to today’s aouncement that state officials have determined the leaking well in Aliso Canyon has been permanantly sealed, local, state and federal politicians expressed relief that the well is sealed, but cautioned there was more work to be done.

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, who represents a portion of Porter Ranch residents, said today in a statement that he is pleased the leaking natural gas well has been sealed, but said the development is not a victory.

• MAIN STORY: Well responsible for Porter Ranch gas leak officially ‘killed’

• LIVE COVERAGE: Latest news on the Porter Ranch gas leak aouncement and aftermath

• INTERACTIVE: Timeline of events involving the Porter Ranch gas leak

• RELATED: LAUSD chief on Porter Ranch gas leak ‘kill’: Plans begin for students’ retu

“We should not be declaring victory, as the Aliso Canyon facility and the negligence of Southe Califoia Gas Company continue to pose a threat to the community,” Sherman said in the statement released following the aouncement that state officials have confirmed a leaking well has been sealed,

“We now need tough new regulations regarding the other 114 wells in the Aliso Canyon facility. We need 24/7 monitoring of each well, shown on a website so the public can see for themselves. We need deep subsurface safety valves on every well,” he continued.

• VIDEO: LA Councilman Mitch Englander: More work to be done to make sure Porter Ranch is safe

With the aouncement that the well has been sealed, the clock has started for residents to retu home. Most residents who have relocated will have eight days and seven nights before SoCal Gas will no longer pay for relocation expenses. Residents who have entered into short-term leases, will be able to stay through the end of their leases.

Sherman, who lives in Porter Ranch, said there hasn’t been enough thorough indoor air testing.

“Residents should not have to retu home until the air at the facility, and in a representative sample of homes, has been certified safe by state authorities,” Sherman said.

• VIDEO: Den Chali plans to retu to her Porter Ranch home now that the gas leak has been permanently sealed

State Sen. Fran Pavely, D-Agoura Hills, echoed Sherman’s conce about the 114 other wells at the storage facility.

“While it is cause for relief, it does not lessen the critical importance of ensuring the safety of all 114 wells at the gas storage facility before any level of gas injections is allowed to resume,” Pavley said in a statement. “The more than 4,000 families at Porter Ranch who have been relocated to escape the noxious fumes deserve the highest possible level of assurance that the homes to which they will soon be retuing are safe, and that normalcy can retu to their community.”

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• VIDEO: Gas well is officially killed, says James Marshall of Califoia Department of Conservation

“It was definitely a relief for the entire community, although it’s by no means an end to this catastrophic disaster,” L.A. City Councilman Mitch Englander said in an interview following the news conference. “It’s the begiing of the next chapter and the next chapter is lengthy. There are several things that have to be done that need to be done.”

- - , .

It may be good-bye for El Niño and hello to La Niña.

The once-predicted “Godzilla” storm of El Niño has thus far tued out to be a little lizard in terms of Southe Califoia rainfall, but weather experts on Thursday offered some encouragement to those pining for more wet stuff.

“We’re about in the sixth or seventh iing,” said Mark Jackson, a meteorologist in charge with NOAA’s National Weather Service in Oxnard, perhaps likening the weather to a low-scoring game where El Niño still has a chance to score some runs.

Jackson spoke to reporters at Aquarium of the Pacific, in the Ocean Science Center and next to the Aquarium’s NOAA “Science on a Sphere” rotating globe, which shows real-time ocean phenomena.

NOAA says El Niño, touted by meteorologists as the strongest on record along with the 1997-98 event, may already have peaked, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t had an impact, or won’t douse Southe Califoia in the next couple of months.

Jackson said El Niño has hit Central and Northe Califoia hard this year, which is good, because Southe Califoia depends on so much water from up north. The Sierra snowpack is at about 94 percent of normal for this time of year, according to the Califoia Department of Water Resources. Jackson said reservoirs are filling back up.

“This has made some impact on the drought conditions,” he said.

El Niño remains strong, with continued warmth in the surface waters of the east-central tropical Pacific, but most indicators show the weather patte weakening and becoming neutral by late spring or early summer, and maybe shifting to La Niña in the fall, according to NOAA.

La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the easte equatorial Pacific, and tends to do just the opposite of El Niño in the United States, bringing wetter-than-average conditions across the Pacific Northwest and drier and warmer-than-typical conditions across the southe tier.

Jackson said with only a handful of El Niños on record in the last 65 years, forecasters are leaing about the weather patte as much as they are making predictions about its impact.

“This has not quite behaved as we expected it to,” he said.

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- - , .

The largest container ship ever to dock at a North American port sailed into the Port of Long Beach Thursday, where dockworkers will move about 12,500 cargo containers on and off the ship.

The CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin made its inaugural stop in Southe Califoia in December at the Port of Los Angeles. The two local ports are among the few that can handle such a large vessel.

The Pacific Container Terminal at the Port of Long Beach is able to handle these megaships, and soon, the Long Beach Container Terminal Middle Harbor will be able to handle even larger ships when it opens this spring, said Lori A Guzman, president of the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners. The new terminal will be fully complete by 2020.

A series of tours and media events aboard the ship are plaed for Friday.

The ship is scheduled to leave the local harbor on Feb. 24.

– Press-Telegram staff

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- - , .

The Clippers have traded Lance Stephenson and a future first-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for Jeff Green.

The deal, first reported by ESPN, gives the Clippers a forward to help fill the void left by Blake Griffin’s hand injury.

Stephenson, a 25-year-old 6-foot-5 shooting guard, was signed in the off-season for his tantalizing potential. His minutes, however, dwindled as the season progressed. Stephenson averaged 4.7 points and 2.5 rebounds in 43 games, though he did play 24 minutes on Feb. 10 — his highest playing time since Dec. 2 — and scored 12 points.

Green, 29, was in his second season with the Grizzlies after three years in each Oklahoma City and Boston.

The 6-9 forward is averaging 12.2 points and 4.5 rebounds, but in his past eight games averaged 19.9 points a game.

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- - , .

When Feride Buyuran moved to Long Beach in 2003, she expected to pursue a business career.

The Azerbaijan-bo cookbook author moved to Long Beach after a year in Los Angeles to attend Cal State Long Beach’s MBA program.

She graduated and worked in the business world — first for a trading company, then for a translation firm. But in 2007, she traded her business suits for an apron, and never looked back.

She said she wanted to bring Azerbaijani cuisine to the U.S. In 2008, the mother of two started azcookbook.com, a blog devoted to Azerbaijani cooking, while also working on a cookbook manuscript.

At the time, her younger child was just an infant.

“The second baby and the book were bo at the same time,” she said. “I was writing the book when he was taking a nap.”

Recreating her culture’s recipes was a labor of love for Buyuran, who is a self-taught chef. In Azerbaijan, she said, women live at home until they are married — and while they are at home, the home’s older generations do the cooking. It’s not until the women marry that the recipes get passed down.

Buyuran, whose husband is Turkish, lived out of the country. But she wanted to cook the kinds of foods she grew up eating in Baku.

“You come here and you really crave the homemade food,” she said.

So she called her mother and sister and asked them to help her lea the recipes. She also asked for recipes from her friends and relatives.

As a result, the recipes on her blog and in her cookbook, “Pomegranates & Saffron,” come from every region of the country.

“Some of the dishes, I had never tried in Azerbaijan,” she said.

Azerbaijan, located in the heart of the Caucasus, is bordered by Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia and Turkey, and the cuisine reflects its geographic location between Weste Asia and Easte Europe. It was part of the Soviet Union, and Russian influences are present — Azerbaijan has a take on borscht and a Russian-style potato dish called Capital Salad.

But the country, with its wide-ranging topography, is known for its abundance of vegetables and greens — a factor that influences “Pomegranates & Saffron,” which has many vegetable-forward recipes.

Buyuran published the book herself after being rejected by numerous cookbook publishers due to its narrow topic.

“It’s a leaing curve,” she said. “You are ruing the show completely.”

While Buyuran wrote and photographed the book herself, she had to coordinate with a hired editor, designer and printer, she said.

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“When you put so much heart and soul into it, you want to make sure it’s done correctly,” she said.

Her effort seems to have paid off. The first edition sold out completely, and her second edition — which was sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan — has recently won two awards for self-published authors: the Gourmand World Cookbook Award and Living Now Books for Better Living Award.

What’s more, her book is on the shelves in bookstores in Azerbaijan.

But Buyuran isn’t finished yet. She said she plans to write another cookbook — one that explores foods from Azerbaijan’s neighbors.

“I think the cuisines of those countries are absolutely amazing,” she said.

Jeifer Rice Epstein is an editor at Gazette Newspapers. She can be reached at [email protected].

- - , .

CORONA >> The FBI is raiding a home in Corona Thursday coected to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Beardino

FBI officials confirmed they served a search warrant at the Corona home in the 1700 block of Forum Way, which is believed to be that of Farook’s brother, Syed Raheel Farook.

“Federal agents executed a search warrant at a residence in Corona this moing to seek evidence in an ongoing investigation,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. “The affidavit in support of the warrant has been sealed by the court and we are, therefore, prohibited from Idea on the nature of the search.”

No arrests were made.

Agents could be seen going in and out of the home of US Navy veteran Syed Raheel Farook in the 1700 block of Forum Way in Corona, according to initial reports.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22 more when they opened fire at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 2. The two were killed later that day in a shootout with police.

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Officials aounced today -- Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016 -- that the leaking natural gas well near Porter Ranch has been permanently sealed.

Follow the story today with our team of reporters and photographers who are at today’s news conference and around the Porter Ranch area for reaction and analysis.

• On a mobile device? Go here for the live blog.

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The well is dead.

Official word the methane-spewing well -- otherwise known as Standard Sesnon 25 -- in Southe Califoia Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon storage facility above Porter Ranch is sealed came Thursday moing from the Califoia Department of Conservation’s Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources on the 118th day of the massive natural gas leak – called the largest in U.S. history.

The leak was discovered on Oct. 23 and 111 days later a crew from well-control experts Boots & Coots was able to stop it by pumping in mud and fluids via a relief well.

• Interactive: Timeline of events involving the Porter Ranch gas leak

Cement was then pumped into the bottom of SS-25 and DOGGR officials confirmed the kill after studying the results of five tests.

“After independently reviewing multiple tests on the leaking well — including temperature tests, noise tests and cement-bond test — we have confirmed that the Standard Sesnon 25 well at the Aliso Canyon Storage Field is no longer leaking and the well is sealed,” said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the Califoia Department of Conservation.

The DOC on Wednesday ordered that the gas company conduct a series of five tests on the 114 wells in the sandstone storage chamber before gas injection can resume.

Permanently plugging the well took 118 days. While leaking, it spewed an estimated 94,067 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, according the Califoia Air Resources Board.

The accident is being investigated by Frisco, Texas-based Blade Energy Partners. They have been on site since late January and have unfettered access to the well sites and all documents and material, including the ruptured well casing from which the gas was leaking.

But the fight over Aliso Canyon will not end with the well being plugged and taken out of service.

• Read More: Complete coverage of the Porter Ranch gas leak

The next battle will be over whether the storage facility should be closed and whether these kinds of installations should be regulated by the federal govement.

The activist group Save Porter Ranch has been demanding the field be shut down.

That might be a tough case to make.

But Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, and a Porter Ranch resident, said this week that might be problematic because it serves more that 21 million customers over a large area of Southe Califoia.

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As of Feb. 10 , there were 6,400 households that voluntarily fled the area living in temporary housing. Now, people who relocated from the area to stay in short-term quarters like hotels have eight days to retu home. Households that were placed in rental homes or apartments can stay there until their lease ends, the company has said.

SoCalGas was slow to get word of the leak out to residents, which outraged many.

In early December Los Angeles City Attoey Mike Feuer sued the city over the leak, one of many that were filed against the company. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, SoCalGas parent company San Diego-based Sempra Energy said as of Feb. 10 there had been 67 lawsuits lodged against the company.

And so far the monetary loss is huge.

• Interactive: How much methane gas has been released due to the Porter Ranch gas leak?

“The company’s total costs consisting of amounts paid and forecasted to be paid to address the leak and mitigate certain environmental and community impacts, including temporary relocation, drilling relief wells, attempts to stop or mitigate the emissions, and the value of lost gas are estimated to be between $250 million and $300 million,” Sempra said in the filing.

The company said that it has a $1 billion insurance policy to cover leak-related costs.

Shortly after the leak was discovered SoCalGas agreed to pay relocation expenses for residents who said they were suffering ill effects from the rotten egg odor of the compound mixed with the natural gas to give it its distinct smell as a safety measure.

The company reimbursed them up to $7,000 a month, putting families up in rental homes, apartments and hotels while they tried to stop the leak. It also installed air purification systems in resents’ homes, weather proofed them had them cleaned.

Sherman and Steve Knight, R-Antelope Valley, have now called for federal regulation of the natural gas storage business and more stringent rules for monitoring and inspecting storage fields like Aliso Canyon.

SS 25 was a “vintage well” that began drilling for oil in 1953. A safety valve at the bottom on the 8,600 foot deep well was removed in 1979 and never replaced.

The gas company has operated Aliso Canyon, the biggest storage west of the Mississippi River, since 1974.

It can hold 86 billion cubic feet of natural gas and contained about 77 billion cubic feet when the leak was discovered. The company was subsequently ordered to draw out as much gas as possible as fast as possible.

The Califoia Public Utilities Commission ordered the company to halt withdrawals in late January to preserve the integrity of the field. By that time it contained about 15 billion cubic feet of natural gas, the company said.

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At 10 this moing in Chatsworth, state and local officials, including the CEO of SoCalGas, are slated to make what appears to be a major aouncement regarding the Porter Ranch gas leak that had been spewing methane into the air since October 2015.

• LIVE VIDEO: As soon as the Porter Ranch gas leak press conference starts, see it here

The leak was stopped on Feb. 11, 2016, and officials have been saying they are close to declaring the formerly leaking gas well at the Aliso Canyon storage facility as permanently capped.

• If you are on a mobile device, see the live video here.

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LOS ANGELES — Powerful winds lashed the Southland today ahead of the departure of a fast-moving Pacific storm system.

• VIDEO: Rain falls in Simi Valley

The gusty south-to-southwest winds were forecast to persist into this moing, with 60-mile per hour gusts expected in the Antelope Valley and the mountains of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Forecasters waed that winds this strong could knock down trees and power lines, triggering power outages, and make driving difficult.

The rain, which began showing up yesterday afteoon, should clear out between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., said NWS meteorologist Andrew Rorke, adding that the system is projected to have generated between a half-inch and three quarters of an inch of rain by the time it moves on.

Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser waed beachgoers not to use the water near storm drains, creeks and rivers in order to avoid bacteria, debris and trash. The county’s rain advisory will be in effect until 5 p.m. Saturday.

A high wind waing reflecting forecaster expectation of gusts of at least 58 mph will be in effect until 10 a.m. today in the Antelope Valley and San Gabriel Mountains, where winds of 25-40 mph are expected, along with 65-mph gusts and, near ridge tops, 75 mph.

A less serious wind advisory will be in force, also until 10 a.m., in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreational area and the Santa Clarita Valley. Winds of between 15 and 30 mph accompanied by 45-mph gusts are expected in the two areas, with gusts reaching 50 mph in the Santa Monicas.

Also scheduled is a high surf advisory from 4 p.m. today until 4 p.m. Friday along the L.A. County coastline, where breakers of 6 to 8 feet are expected.

“Large waves and strong rip currents will increase the risk of ocean drowning. Sneaker waves can suddenly wash people off of beaches and rock jetties. Minor beach erosion is possible,” an NWS statement said.

Swimmers caught in a rip current are urged to swim parallel to shore until able to break free.

Additionally, a small craft advisory waing boaters of perilous conditions will be in effect from 3 p.m. today until 3 p.m. Saturday.

The NWS forecast highs of 51 in Big Bear; 57 on Mount Wilson and in Palmdale; 58 in Lancaster; 61 in Avalon; 64 in Torrance and Saugus; 65 in Long Beach and at LAX; 66 in San Pedro, Northridge, San Gabriel and Burbank; 67 in downtown L.A., Pasadena, Whittier, West Covina, Rancho Cucamonga, Van Nuys, Woodland Hills, Redlands and Ontario; and 68 in San Beardino.

Temperatures will be the same or slightly higher Friday, but under suy skies, then increase steadily -- still under suy skies -- reaching the mid 80s Monday and decreasing slightly Wednesday, according to NWS forecasters.

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WASHINGTON >> President Barack Obama will pay an historic visit to Cuba in the coming weeks, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, becoming the first president to set foot on the island in nearly nine decades.

The brief visit in mid-March will mark a watershed moment for relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a communist nation estranged from the U.S. for half a century until Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved to relaunch more than a year ago. Since then, the nations have reopened embassies in Washington and Havana and moved to restore commercial air travel, with a presidential visit seen as a key next step toward bridging the divide.

Obama’s stop in Cuba will part of a broader trip to Latin America that the president will take next month, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the trip hasn’t been officially aounced. The White House plaed to unveil Obama’s travel plans Thursday.

Though Obama had long been expected to visit Cuba in his final year, word of his travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba — including Republican presidential candidates.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father fled to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn’t visit while the Castro family remains in power. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an “anti-American communist dictatorship.”

“Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban govement remains as oppressive as ever,” Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama’s intention to visit, he added, “Probably not going to invite me.”

With less than a year left in office, Obama has been eager to make rapid progress on restoring economic and diplomatic ties to cement the rapprochement with Cuba that his administration started. Following secret negotiations between their govements, Obama and Castro aounced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties, and months later held the first face-to-face meeting between an American and Cuban president since 1958.

But Obama, facing steadfast opposition to normalized relations from Republicans and some Democrats, has been unable to deliver on the former Cold War foe’s biggest request: the lifting of the U.S. economic embargo. Opponents argue that repealing those sanctions would reward a govement still engaging in human rights abuses and stifling of democratic aspirations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Democrat bo in Cuba, called the visit “absolutely shameful.”

“For more than 50 years, Cubans have been fleeing the Castro regime,” said Lehtinen, the longest-serving Cuban-American in Congress. “Yet the country which grants them refuge — the United States — has now decided to quite literally embrace their oppressors.”

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Obama and supporters of the detente argue the decades-old embargo has failed to bring about desired change on the island 90 miles south of Florida. Still, while Obama has long expressed an interest in visiting Cuba, White House officials had said the visit wouldn’t occur unless and until the conditions were right.

“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody” — including political dissidents, Obama told Yahoo News in December. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

Officials didn’t immediately specify what had changed in the last few weeks to clear the way for the trip, first reported by ABC News. But on Tuesday, the two nations signed a deal restoring commercial air traffic as early as later this year, eliminating a key barrier to unfettered travel that isolated Cuban-Americans from their families for generations.

Hundreds of thousands more Americans are expected to visit Cuba per year under the deal, which cleared the way for the U.S. Department of Transportation to open bidding by American air carriers on as many as 110 flights a day. Currently, there are about one-fifth as many flights operating between the two countries — all charters.

For Obama, the diplomatic opening with Cuba reflects one of the crowning achievements of a foreign policy rooted in a belief that the U.S. should test opportunities to ease hostilities with its historical enemies. Last month, the Obama administration lifted economic sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, following a diplomatic deal that has raised hopes about warmer ties between the U.S. and Iran. Yet those achievements have been offset by deepening security challenges in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere as Obama nears the end of his term.

Not since President Calvin Coolidge went to Havana in January 1928 has a sitting U.S. president been to Havana, according to the State Department historian’s office. President Harry Truman visited the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay on the southeast end of the island in 1948, and former President Jimmy Carter has paid multiple visits to the island since leaving office.

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Gov. Jerry Brown aounced Wednesday he wants the state to spend $176.6 million to test and cleanup thousands of homes contaminated with lead near the closed Exide battery recycling plant in Veon.

The additional funds expands Brown’s previous commitment of spending an additional $7 million this year on the Exide cleanup.

“This Exide battery recycling facility has been a problem for a very long time,” Brown said in a news release. “With this funding plan, we’re opening a new chapter that will help protect the community and hold Exide responsible.”

Local and state lawmakers recently called for Brown to expand the amount of money allocated to the cleanup effort. Some cited the speedy action taken by the state in relation to the Porter Ranch gas leak.

Brown declared a state of emergency in Porter Ranch on Jan. 6, about two months after the leak was discovered.

“Our voices were heard,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said in a statement. Solis, whose district includes Veon, was among the lawmakers who called for more funding. “For too long we have seen two Americas: one in which affluent neighborhoods get immediate help and relief. The other America is made up of poor working-class families who silently suffer. Today’s aouncement from the goveor reconciles these two Americas. Today’s aouncement is a step in the right direction.”

State Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) agreed, saying the goveor’s action sends a message that the state values environmental faiess and equity.

“I think Porter Ranch actually put a spotlight on these kinds of issues,” Gomez said in an interview. “I think it put a spotlight on how different parts of the state are treated.”

He said the response to the Porter Ranch gas leak was likely more immediate because the symptoms of the gas leak were more apparent than the long-term illnesses associated with lead exposure.

“When you don’t see people getting sick right away, you don’t think they are actually ill,” Gomez said. “I think the acute illnesses people were experiencing in Porter Ranch were real. I think it put a focus once again on Exide and East Los Angeles.”

Exide, which declared bankruptcy, released contaminants into the air for decades. The state reports that the contaminants have reached a 1.7-mile radius surrounding the plant and have affected potentially 10,000 homes.

State Department of Toxic Substances Control Director Barbara Lee said in a conference call with reporters the proposed $176.6 million is the largest appropriation of funds towards a single cleanup effort.

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She said the department had been working with the goveor on the plan for months. She said it was unrelated to the gas leak near Porter Ranch that has spewed 94,067 metric tons of methane since Oct. 23 from the Aliso Canyon storage facility, according to the Califoia Air Resources Board.

“We’ve been working on this long before the issue around Porter Ranch came up and in fact, the department has not been involved in the Porter Ranch issue at all,” Lee said.

A Brown spokesman also said the Exide funding and response to Porter Ranch were unrelated.

“Both are serious and both merit strong action,” spokesman Evan Westrup said.

The $176.6 million will allow the state to test thousands of homes and remove lead-contaminated soil from 2,500 homes, schools, parks and day-care facilities, Lee said.

The money will also allow the DTSC to create tests to identify the agencies responsible for the contaminants, including Exide. The state will seek to recoup the cleanup expenses from responsible parties.

The state estimates the cost of cleaning one home is approximately $45,000.

Gomez called the $176.6 million a “down payment.” He said more money will be needed to clean the sites and to help families who have suffered negative health impacts.

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In the year since an explosion rocked the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, more questions than answers remain.

Chief among them: Is the company able to safely operate the plant? Do federal and state agencies have the capacity to regulate it? And can emergency responders protect the public from disaster?

The question also arises whether local residents are any safer today than they were 12 months ago.

South Bay Rep. Ted Lieu, among the harshest critics of ExxonMobil since the blast, is unsure of the answer to that question.

“It’s irresponsible that, one year later, ExxonMobil is still not answering questions from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, so I don’t know if we’re any safer,” the former Torrance councilman conceded. “They’re not just stalling. They’re refusing to answer nearly half of their subpoena requests.”

That’s the same figure the agency cited last month, and the lack of movement has prompted the federal govement to up the ante, said Vanessa Allen Sutherland, chairwoman of the agency’s board.

“The Department of Justice is preparing to enforce the CSB’s subpoenas,” she said via email Tuesday. “In order to thoroughly investigate the near-miss incident that occurred during the Feb. 18, 2015, explosion at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Torrance, the CSB requires ExxonMobil’s compliance with the outstanding subpoenas.”

Meanwhile, PBF Energy executive Jeffrey Dill, who heads up the company’s West Coast operations, said this week that its previously aounced acquisition of the refinery could close by May 1, but that’s contingent upon the successful completion of repairs by ExxonMobil so that the plant is fully operational.

ExxonMobil is scheduled to begin cranking up the refinery on March 15, a process that takes about 35 days, Dill said. In that time, the company also must demonstrate the refinery can perform for 15 consecutive days without problems.

“Both companies are focusing on making sure the repairs are done properly and the restart is done safely, and only when those two things happen will we be ready to move forward on closing the acquisition,” he said.

Dill also confirmed this week that the percentage of an additive designed to make highly toxic hydrofluoric acid safer in the event of an accidental release was quietly reduced more than 15 years ago.

City officials had previously admitted that a court order was modified to allow the reduction, but had declined to specify the precise amount.

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“Our understanding is the concentration of the additive is around 10 percent to 15 percent and that suppresses the hydrofluoric acid vapors between 60 percent and 90 percent,” he said. “We understand both lab and field testing confirmed that.”

That means a dangerous, ground-hugging toxic cloud would be significantly reduced in size.

But chemical industry experts have previously said the amount of additive would need to be considerably higher to achieve that sort of reduction in the size of the vapor cloud.

And Lieu and other critics have questioned just how much independent research has been done to verify those claims.

“That’s why we need a U.S. Chemical Safety Board study,” said Sally Hayati, a member of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance, a grass-roots group that formed in the wake of the explosion.

“The refining industry is getting away with making claims for this proprietary compound that nobody else has tested,” she added. “There’s been no vigorous peer review or independent testing.”

Federal and state regulators are increasingly conceed with those claims and are looking into potential alteatives for the acid.

In addition, Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, has authored a bill that would ban the acid’s use in the state, a development Dill described as “unfortunate.”

“If the Bonta bill passes, the refinery is not viable; it will close,” he said, adding there is no commercially viable alteative to the use of HF at the refinery.

Hayati countered that PBF is playing a “game of chicken” designed to frighten residents and workers about the possible loss of jobs and tax revenues.

“A year ago I didn’t realize it was as dangerous as it actually is,” she said of the acid. “I’ve realized that this stuff is far more dangerous than their public claims.”

Councilman Tim Goodrich is similarly skeptical about the claims made regarding HF. He said he would not have supported a reduction in the additive’s concentration from what was widely believed to be 30 percent to about 10 percent or so.

“It wouldn’t pass the smell test,” he said. “I feel like that kind of reduction undermines the original intent of the consent decree.

“I haven’t been happy with the ways things have transpired and the lack of transparency,” he added. “Overall, though, I think we’re in a better position than we were six to 12 months ago.”

That’s because the South Coast Air Quality Management District has agreed to study alteatives to HF, he said. The agency baed the chemical once before, but that was overtued on a technicality after the industry appealed to the courts.

Newly appointed Torrance Fire Chief Martin Sea similarly believes the department has improved its much-criticized emergency response protocols in the wake of the blast on several levels.

For instance, the city has instituted a new public alert system in case of an emergency and is in the process of transitioning to it. The city also is seeking to upgrade the refinery sirens that some residents have complained they are unable to hear.

In addition, refinery officials are being asked to provide improved and earlier notification of potential off-site consequences that an accidental release of HF could cause, for instance.

“We’ve leaed our lessons,” Sea said. “We’ve obviously had some incidents at the refinery, but it gave us the opportunity to ask those questions about what we can do to enhance our response.”

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