The Brief

It’s going to be hot this summer. And a new tool can help you figure out the risk that the temperature can pose to your health.

The California Communities Extreme Heat Scoring System — which the state is calling CalHeatScore — can tell you the level of heat-related health risk you face and point you to cooling resources in your area.

This pilot program ranks risk from extreme heat into four categories, from mild to severe. A ranking of “severe,” for example, could correspond with a higher temperature inland, as opposed to at the beach.

Why it was developed

In 2021, the California Department of Insurance recommended that the state create a heat warning system similar to those for hurricanes or tornadoes. The group later published a report that found that extreme heat events from 2013 to 2022 resulted in 5,000 hospitalizations and nearly 460 deaths. A 2022 state law required the development of the system.

Walker Wieland, who manages the project in the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, calls extreme heat a “silent killer.”

Heat “doesn't have these scenes of catastrophe like you see with wildfires or hurricanes,” he said.

But scientists say it is no less dangerous.

“ People still don't often see extreme heat as really risky, so we need to really reach out, especially to people who are going to be more vulnerable,” said David Eisenman, professor of medicine at UCLA and co-director of the Center for Healthy Climate Solutions.

He led the team that developed the statistical methods behind the heat score system.

CalHeatScore incorporates the number of emergency room visits for four heat-related illnesses: heat stroke, heat exhaustion, kidney failure and dehydration. Crunching that data, plus temperatures, is how the tool can issue public health warnings — going beyond anything a phone weather app can do, for example.

Heat scores are also broken out by ZIP code — an especially important distinction in Southern California, Eisenman explained.

“You can have, as in Los Angeles, one set of weather on one side of the county and all kinds of different weather 15 miles away,” Eisenman said.

The graph shows how health risk increases with temperature. The blue dots represent the number of heat-related hospital visits at a given temperature, which is charted along a baseline value and incremental increase on the Y-axis.

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California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

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Levels of risk 

CalHeatScore established a baseline of risk for heat-related illness, which is level zero. As risk rises, so does the heat score, from 1 to 4.

A four represents the highest level of risk on CalHeatScore's scale.

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California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

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Each day, you can check the ranking for your ZIP code, as well as the forecast for the following week. CalHeatScore also lists nearby cooling centers, where people can get a reprieve from heat waves.

The people who developed the tool also hope it can aid public health response.

“ We need to take those warnings and turn them into actions that people can take for themselves — as well as actions that responsible public officials can take for their communities,” Eisenman said.

For those who run hospitals, schools, or outdoor workplaces and warehouses, the tool provides a demographic breakdown of each area, including factors such as the number of outdoor workers and those who have insurance.

“ There's so many mediating factors between a person, a hot day, and whether or not that person becomes ill,” said V. Kelly Turner, associate director at UCLA’s Luskin Center who was involved in the creation of the tool.

California envisions the heat-scoring system being used by a wide range of people and institutions.

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California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

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Application and future uses 

CalHeatScore is still a pilot program.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, for example, relies on data from the National Weather Service and uses temperature cutoffs to guide public and employer advisories.

Wieland, Turner and Eisenman believe CalHeatScore can be incorporated into responses by public officials.

“CalHeatScore can be a  great planning tool to allocate resources or maybe could be a tool to trigger certain thresholds that are involved in the local emergency response and local planning,” Wieland said.

His team has begun outreach with local governments, including Los Angeles and San Mateo counties.

In the meantime, Wieland is building a mobile app that can send notifications. His team will host a webinar series and regional workshops to explain the tool.

CalHeatScore, though available for use this summer, is still in its early stages of product development.

Turner highlighted the long-term nature of the project.

“ It's a stepping stone to the future in which heat warnings aren't about the actual temperature threshold,” she said. “They're highly personalized — because exposure to heat and whether or not you get sick depends on factors that are more personal than universal.”

Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios. I'm not entirely sure how to square all this bad news with my own good news, which is that I saw more terrific new movies this year than I have any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.

1. Sirāt

The best new movie I saw this year is a breakthrough work from a gifted Spanish filmmaker named Oliver Laxe. It's a nail-biting survival thriller, set in the desert of southern Morocco during what feels like the end-times. It's a little Mad Max, a little Wages of Fear, and all in all, the most exhilarating and devastating two hours I experienced in a theater this year. Sirāt also features the year's best original score, composed by the electronic musician Kangding Ray.

2. One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson's much-loved, much-debated reimagining of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland is an exuberant mash-up of action-thriller and political satire. One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his best and funniest performances as an aging revolutionary drawn back into the field. He leads an ensemble that includes Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and the terrific discovery, Chase Infiniti.

3. Caught by the Tides

Caught by the Tides is an unclassifiable hybrid of fiction and nonfiction from the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Drawn from a mix of archival footage and newly shot material, it's a one-of-a-kind portrait of the myriad transformations that China has gone through over the past two decades.

4. Resurrection

Resurrection, another structurally bold Chinese title, is a bit like an Avatar movie for film buffs. Placing us in the head of a shapeshifting protagonist, the director, Bi Gan, takes us on a gorgeous, dreamlike odyssey through various cinema genres, from historical spy drama to vampire thriller.

5. My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow

My No. 5 movie is the year's best documentary: My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, from the director Julia Loktev. It's a sprawling yet intimate portrait of several Russian independent journalists in the harrowing months leading up to President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a portrait of anti-authoritarian resistance, it pairs nicely with my No. 6 movie.

6. The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is an emotionally rich, sneakily funny and continually surprising drama from the director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in 1977, it lays bare the personal cost of dissidence during Brazil's military dictatorship.

7. Sound of Falling

Although not a horror film, exactly, this German drama qualifies as the best and spookiest haunted-house movie I've seen this year. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling teases out the connections among four generations of girls and young women who have passed through the same remote farmhouse.

8. April

April, from the director Dea Kulumbegashvili, is a tough, bleak, but utterly hypnotic portrait of a skilled OB-GYN trying to provide health care for women in a conservative East Georgian village. It may be set far from the U.S., but the difficulties these women face would resonate in any setting.

9. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Directed by Rungano Nyoni, this Zambian film is a subtly mesmerizing drama about a death that takes place in a middle-class household, setting off a chain of dark revelations that threaten to tear a family apart.

10. It Was Just an Accident

It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a shattering moral thriller from the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. It centers on a group of former political prisoners who are given a rare chance at retribution. In the past, Panahi has been a prisoner in Iran himself, and earlier this month, the government sentenced the director in absentia to a year in prison. I hope that Panahi never sees the inside of a jail cell again, and that his movie is seen as far and wide as possible.
Copyright 2025 NPR

In the wake of the Eaton Fire, Altadena and Pasadena’s music community have really shown up to support fire survivors, especially fellow musicians who lost instruments and record collections.

That effort continues this weekend with a special donation concert at a Pasadena record store, with the aim of getting vinyl records back in the hands of survivors who lost their collections.

“You know, our name is Healing Force of the Universe, and I think that gives me a pretty clear direction… especially after the fires,” said Austin Manuel, founder of Pasadena record store, where Sunday’s show will be held.

The record donation effort is the brainchild of musician Brandon Jay, who founded the nonprofit Altadena Musicians after losing his home and almost all of his family’s instruments in the Eaton Fire. Through Altadena Musicians’s donation and registry platform, Jay said he and his partners have helped some 1,200 fire survivors get their music instruments back.

Brandon Jay.

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Robert Garrova

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LAist

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Now, that effort has fanned out to restoring vinyl record collections.

“All of that stuff evaporated for thousands of people,” Jay said. “Look at your own record collection and be like, ‘Wow, what if that whole thing disappeared?’”

You might know Jay from several bands over the years, including Lutefisk, a 1990s alt-rock band based in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, composed music for TV shows, including Orange is the New Black and Weeds.

Jay plans to play some holiday tunes at Sunday's record donation show (which LAist is the media sponsor), along with fellow musician Daniel Brummel of Sanglorians. Brummel, who was also a founding member of Pasadena’s indie-rock sensation Ozma, said he was grateful to Jay for his fire recovery work and to Manuel for making Healing Force available for shows like this.

Brummel, who came close to losing his own home in the Eaton Fire, recalled a show he played at Healing Force back in March.

Ryen Slegr (left) and Daniel Brummel perform with their band, Ozma, on the 2014 Weezer Cruise.

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Even Keel Imagery

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“The trauma of the fires was still really fresh,” Brummel said. After playing a cover of Rufus Wainwright’s “Going to a Town,” that night — which includes the lyrics “I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down” — Brummel said his neighbors in the audience told him the rendition hit them hard. “It felt really powerful. And without that space, it just wouldn’t have occurred.”

Details

Healing Force of the Universe Record Donation Show
Featuring: Quasar (aka Brandon Jay), Sanglorians (Daniel Brummel) and The Acrylic.
Sunday, Dec. 14; 2 to 5 p.m.
1200 E. Walnut St., Pasadena
Tickets are $15 or you can donate 5 or more records at the door. More info here.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."