At least once a month for the last five or six years, Silvia Suarez Rojas has made sure to stop by Las Segovias restaurant in Huntington Park. It's the only Nicaraguan restaurant in Los Angeles County that she said truly reflects the flavors of her home country. To her, Las Segovias brings a piece of home to L.A., where she's resided for the past 10 years. It provides community and an opportunity for her to connect with the culture she misses. She has continued this tradition even amid the restrictions that have surfaced because of the coronavirus pandemic. Though she can't meet and talk ...

For Eduardo, early doses of pandemic reality hit him back on March 11: The NBA season was canceled, Tom Hanks got sick and the University of Southern California extended its remote learning plan. The coronavirus crisis was just catching fire -- fear was growing quickly around the United States as the number of reported cases passed 1,200. Two months later, Eduardo, 20, remembers the day he left the USC campus and boarded a train for home, anxiously keeping his distance from other passengers as it rolled south from Los Angeles to San Diego. ...

A few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, the University of Southern California’s University Park Campus is silent. Missing is the constant thump of skateboard wheels hitting cracks in the bricks that line Trousdale Parkway. Gone are the echoes of “fight on!” that ring when campus tour groups arrive at the Tommy Trojan statue. As the 2020 school year comes to an end, nearly everyone from the student body of 48,500 is already back home. Classes moved online in early March to limit the spread of the coronavirus, and only those employees vital to daily operations remain on campus. “It’s, oh my God, me and that girl are not gonna laugh about the ...

Four boroughs’ rejections of a proposal to replace Rikers Island with community jails represent setbacks to years of deliberations over what to do about the notoriously dangerous and overcrowded Rikers complex. Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to replace Rikers Island with smaller jails in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx, in part to move prisoners closer to their homes. But the plan is facing intense backlash from residents after community boards soundly rejected the city’s proposal. ...