The Brief

Compton resident Joan Smith, 91, can still recite the number to her childhood landline phone.

To this day, she remains a loyal landline customer and says she has no interest in learning how to operate a cell phone. Her kids have repeatedly offered to buy her one over the years to no avail.

“I tell them, 'Well, if you buy it, then you're gonna waste money because I'm not going to use it,'” Smith said. “I just want my landline. It's completely dependable.”

Without a landline, Smith says she would feel disconnected from the outside world. She pays about $40 a month for service through AT&T, one of the largest providers in the state.

AT&T plans and a call for comment

But the company is now asking for permission to phase out its copper-based landline network in California — a move advocates say could hurt some of the most vulnerable residents across the state, including older adults, people with disabilities and other groups affected by the digital divide.

The California Public Utilities Commission, the state regulator that will make the ultimate decision, has been asking for public comment. It held its final in-person and virtual public forum on the issue last week, drawing passionate objections from residents and advocates. You can still submit comments online, however.

Takeaways from thousands of comments

Many people were concerned about how losing a landline network would affect not only daily life, but in times of emergencies. (Note: we will be exploring its affect on public safety in an upcoming story).

As of Monday, about 5,800 people had submitted their thoughts. Here's a selection:

• Arlene Patton of West Covina said she’s “profoundly hard of hearing” and depends on her landline phone to caption phone calls.
  
• Humberto Camacho of L.A. said landlines are a necessity, not a convenience, because mobile phones are “often lost or stolen or out of power.”
  
• Paula Miller of L.A. said, “Not everyone is savvy for complicated cell phones and computers. Killing the landline will kill a community of individuals who rely on it.”
  
• Christina Wallerstein of Pasadena said cell service is neither available nor reliable for everyone. “I know this from personal experience. AT&T needs to maintain landlines for the general safety and wellbeing of all California residents,” she said.

Add your voice

What it means to be a "carrier of last resort"

AT&T says 5% of its customers, or 500,000 people, have traditional copper-based phone service.

The company has formally requested to be relieved of its “carrier of last resort” obligations in California, which require it to offer landline telephone service to anyone who requests it. Other providers could step in and offer landline service in those areas, but would not be legally required to do so.

If approved, according to its application, AT&T would only guarantee landline service to existing customers for six months. The company argues there are already alternative services in the vast majority of its service territory.

The case for keeping landlines

Regina Costa of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), which is working to keep landlines in California, says most of the “alternative services” AT&T points to are wireless carriers with service that fails in power outages, and AT&T admits that there are no other potential carriers of last resort in its service territory.

“What they really want to do is push customers onto wireless services,” she said. “Well, our response to that is they're not always reliable… and that is a very scary thing.”

AT&T says it operates landline networks in 21 states, 20 of which have granted it permission to transition from “outdated” copper technologies to “more modern services" like fiber and wireless, according to a spokesperson. The company said it’s not canceling landline service overnight, but that the process could take several years.

“We’re working with the remaining consumers who use traditional landline service to upgrade to newer technologies,” AT&T said in a statement.

What's next

The CPUC says the public comment form will remain open until the agency makes a final decision in the coming months.

It's also suspended the calendar on AT&T’s application until April 30 so that other parties have more time to put together proposals to take over its service obligations.

Two icons of Los Angeles are coming together in Alhambra for a food pop-up this weekend — each has carved a unique place in Asian America.

On one end you have Kogi, bringing its Korean-Mexican fusion kimchi taco and blackjack quesadilla — and its food truck — to the collab. On the other is Sam Woo, old-school purveyor of Cantonese taste lending its char siu and roast duck from its OG location on Valley between 5th and 6th.

Together, they represent two generations of immigrant entrepreneurship that reshaped how L.A. eats.

“The best way to do it would be to come together like Voltron, but be ourselves separately,” said Roy Choi, chef and founder of Kogi BBQ. “So don't do anything to your roast duck. Don't do anything to your char siu. Don't do anything to our blackjack quesadilla. Don't do anything to our taco.”

The mash-up features two items – roast duck kimchi taco, and char siu blackjack quesadilla. The best-of-both-worlds concept extends to where the food will be served.

“ My whole vision was for Kogi truck to be parked in front,” said Karen Cheung, daughter of Sam Woo’s original owner.

Kogi x Sam Woo

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Courtesy Kogi and Sam Woo

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From Chinatown to everywhere

Restaurants come and go, but Sam Woo has remained the byword for Cantonese barbeque in Los Angeles and beyond for more than four decades.

On Christmas Day 1979, new immigrant Peter Cheung opened a stand serving take-out roast duck, char siu and the likes in Chinatown, bringing the family craft from Hong Kong to L.A.

“At the time, it was just my dad, my brother, and me,” Cheung, 67, said in Cantonese. “We hired a cashier and a meat cutter, that was about it.”

Cheung also brought over the Chinese name from the family business back home. It means “three harmonies” – among earth, heaven, and man. The English name Sam Woo was chosen because it sounded like the Cantonese words.

Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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In the late 1970s, his clientele was mainly Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in the then-bustling enclave, with a small handful of customers coming in from Monterey Park.

Back then, he said, “All the restaurants were concentrated in Chinatown.”

As the Chinese-speaking diaspora expanded to the San Gabriel Valley, so too did Sam Woo. Cheung opened a Monterey Park location in 1981 (now closed) and the Alhambra outpost on Valley Boulevard in 1983.

Today, Cheung and his family own and operate four locations across the L.A. region — the oldest in Alhambra.

That little storefront served a loyal legion of eaters, including my family, who moved to Alhambra in the early 1990s — and a kid named Roy Choi.

Roy Choi, left, hands out food from his Kogi BBQ truck in Maywood in January 2024.

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Allen J. Schaben

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When Roy met Sam

Choi was hanging out in Alhambra and nearby 626 cities during high school and into college, at all-night Asian cafes and their parking lots where a subculture centered around modified Japanese cars took root.

“It was the cafes and the barbecue spots back in Alhambra that were early on in having a kind of a meeting ground for young Asian youth,” Choi said. “It might have been the birth of the AZN movement, you know what I'm saying?”

One place he always ate at was Sam Woo.

Strip mall signs in San Gabriel point to a majority Asian population in this part of Los Angeles.

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“One of the top five things to eat for me is roast duck or roast pork over rice with the sauce that drips down into it,” he said. “That's where I started really eating barbecue  — and this is before I was a chef.”

Forty-three years since it opened, the hole-in-the-wall in Alhambra has not been changed — inside or out. Karen remembers hanging out at the shop with her sisters growing up, filling small containers of sauces while their parents ran the operation.

“ When you walk into Alhambra, you feel like you are going back in time,” Karen said. “That's what people remember Sam Woo as, like the Mahjong clock, or the vintage menu that you do not ever see anymore. That's people's memories.”

Chef Roy Choi cooking inside Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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Courtesy Kogi BBQ

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Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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How the collab fell into place

Choi wrote about eating at Sam Woo among other culinary adventures in L.A. earlier this year for the Financial Times.

Karen, one of Peter’s four children, read the story – and fired off a DM.

“I was like, ‘We're so honored. Out of all the restaurants you could talk about, you mentioned Sam Woo,” Karen said. “‘Let's do a collab.’”

Six months of planning later, with hundreds of pounds of char siu ready to be cooked, the crossover is happening.

“The inspiration is how delicious their food is [and] the longevity of their restaurant,” Choi said, whose Kogi has redefined fusion cooking and the food truck experience for 19 years and counting.

“We wanna bring something really special to Alhambra," he said. "Just a moment that you could say, ‘I was there.’”

The U.S. is easing its restrictions on Iran's World Cup team, allowing the squad to travel into the country two days before its next match, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

The team will still be required to leave after Friday's match in Seattle, a department spokesperson said. A spokesperson for the Iran Football Federation confirmed that the team will leave its base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday for Seattle.

"This was planned on our end," Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA Task Force, told The Associated Press. "We were going to look at how the first two movements went, and if they went smoothly, we would extend the extra day in light of the longer travel time."

The policy change was first reported by NBC News and comes as officials from both countries negotiate over how to end the war in Iran.

Iran's squad has complained about the travel restrictions levied on the team, and the challenges it has faced since the outbreak of war. Iran in March sought to move its group-stage matches to Mexico, with which it has diplomatic ties. Its request to move its base camp from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana was granted two weeks before the team's arrival. Several team officials and members of the support staff have been barred from traveling into the U.S. with the team.

For the first two matches, near Los Angeles, the team was not permitted to travel until the day before. Iran coach Amir Ghalenoei repeatedly said that restriction disadvantaged the team, especially when it had less than 24 hours on the ground before its noon match Sunday.

"Right now we need recovery more than anything," Ghalenoei said through an interpreter after the 0-0 draw against Belgium. "The conditions have been extremely hard for us."

It's not uncommon for teams to travel a day before the match, and it's in line with FIFA regulations, which state that "each team shall travel from its team base camp to the match venue one day before matchday (MD‑1) and in exceptional cases on MD‑2, and shall return to their team base camp after the match (on MD/MD+1)."

But Iran had asked for more time to acclimate to host cities and recover after matches, especially for the 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) trip to Seattle. The team is scheduled to train on Thursday at the University of Washington.

"We don't ask for much. We just ask for the same procedure as for all the other 47 teams," Iran captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh said Sunday. "Hopefully we can bring everyone who is involved and help us with us."

The Iran team has also said it experienced difficulties entering and exiting the U.S. each time it made the 127-mile (204-kilometer) flight between Tijuana and Los Angeles. The typically short trip took five hours the day before its first match against New Zealand, team captain Mehdi Taremi said.

Hours before Sunday's match against Belgium, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News the Iranians had "tried to get somebody in yesterday" who had direct ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. In a statement, the soccer federation vociferously pushed back, calling the claim "an outright and undeniable lie."

Iran's players and coaches have mostly steered clear of outright commentary on the war. "We are here for football, not politics," Ghalenoei said Saturday. But the team hasn't shied from highlighting the victims of a deadly missile strike on an elementary school at the start of the war in the Middle East, likely launched by the U.S.

Players wore gold-colored pins with the number "168" on their jackets when they disembarked in Mexico on June 7, referencing the number of people killed in the attack, mostly young girls. They left a goodbye note in the locker room at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, after their match Sunday, calling for peace "among all nations" and with the hashtags #168 and #minab, the school's name.

At Iran's last training session Tuesday in Tijuana before departing for Seattle, four small flags had been stuck into the turf, each bearing the number 168.

It's unclear whether Iran's upcoming opponent, Egypt, will also be allowed to arrive in Seattle two days early. After its 3-1 victory against New Zealand in Vancouver Sunday, Egypt asked to fly directly to Seattle. FIFA denied that request, citing a lack of security resources to accommodate the last-minute demand. Egypt returned to its base camp in Spokane, Washington, a 45-minute flight from Seattle.

Egypt's national team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A crowd clad in green jerseys took over the street in Boyle Heights last Thursday to watch Mexico battle it out with South Korea in a World Cup showdown made for Los Angeles.

The block party on 1st Street at Mariachi Plaza watched Mexico win its second game of the tournament 1-0. But nearby, a fire that sparked at a massive frozen warehouse run by Lineage Logistics was in its second day of burning.

A week later, as Mexico prepares to play its third match against the Czech Republic Wednesday night, the fire's not fully out. Questions about air quality and public health in the communities closest to the warehouse remain. The disaster is complicating an otherwise jovial time in Boyle Heights, a predominantly Latino neighborhood that's gone all out for the World Cup.

"The community loves the World Cup," said Anthony Correa, who works at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory on Cesar Chavez Boulevard. "So it's really awkward to have this fire because everyone wants to be outside, the safest thing in the immediate area is to be inside."

Boyle Heights has hosted a World Cup watch parties to celebrate Mexico as it plays in the global tournament.

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Last week's block party seems to have avoided the worst of the smoke, despite taking place just a day after authorities issued a shelter-in-place order for the area around the warehouse. Alissa Walker, who writes the Torched newsletter about L.A.'s mega-events, attended and described a "fine" air quality index and no smoky smell.

"But on Friday, the shelter in place order was reissued," Walker wrote. "The ominous cloud was back."

The on-again, off-again smoke and bad air carried into this week. On Tuesday morning, Cesar Chavez and 1st Streets were quiet and hazy. Street vendors and storefronts were selling Mexico jerseys.

Outside Boyle Heights City Hall, residents lined up for assistance at tents set up by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado's office. That morning, Jurado had addressed the City Council, saying her constituents needed more information to determine what outdoor activities were safe. Experts say air quality indexes measure the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not what exact toxins are in them.

" They deserve to know what risks remain, and they deserve clear information they can understand and use to make decisions for themselves and their families," she said.

At Brooklyn Avenue Pizza in Boyle Heights, bartender Rodrigo Luna said the restaurant had been forced to close its outdoor area due to the smoke. The empty patio on the sidewalk was draped in national flags from around the world, but had no tables or chairs. Still, he said, there was a big crowd inside for the Mexico game last week.

Crowds packed a block party near Mariachi Plaza to watch Mexico defeat South Korea one day after the fire sparked.

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Luna lives in Boyle Heights, and says he's had itchy eyes and trouble breathing since the fire broke out.

" Hopefully they stop it pretty soon," he said from behind the bar.

Green jerseys have taken over some streets in Boyle Heights as Mexico plays in the 2026 World Cup.

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Libby Rainey

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Some groups including the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce, which organized last week's World Cup watch party, have expressed concern that the fire and the air quality issues it produces are disrupting small businesses in the neighborhood.

"Small businesses are struggling due to the Lineage fire, many of them are closing and they're worried about how they're going to pay their bills this month," said Rudy Espinoza, the president of the community organization Inclusive Action, in an Instagram video promoting a fund for those businesses and vendors who might be losing out during the fire.

At Casa Fina, a Mexican restaurant near Mariachi Plaza, just a few customers were seated for lunch on Tuesday.

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At Casa Fina, a Mexican restaurant near Mariachi Plaza, just a few customers were seated for lunch on Tuesday. Server Mario Mosqueda gestured to the empty tables.

" This day is very, very slow," he said.

He wasn't sure if the fire had anything to do with it, but said he hoped it would be a packed house for Mexico's match on Wednesday evening. When Mexico played South Korea, he said he netted the most in tips he'd made all year — nearly $600.

Mosqueda said he wasn't much of a soccer fan. But it's the World Cup. So he was wearing his Mexico jersey anyway, with a smile.