The Brief

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on May 9, 2024

From dulce de leche and mazapán to cajeta and arroz con leche, you can get your caffeine fix with an Eastside twist at Cafe Niña.

Putting a spin on everyday coffee recipes, the spot on 4th Street in Boyle Heights draws people looking for their daily latte mixed with classic Mexican flavors.

Cafe Niña’s owner, Janet Cerda, is a Boyle Heights native who always dreamed about owning a business in the neighborhood that reflects its uniqueness.

“The reason why I started this business was because of my love for coffee,” said the 32-year-old. “When I was younger I felt coffee used to bring my family together.”

One day, she decided to just go for it. In February 2023, she quit her full-time job to launch her homefront business Cafe Niña, a Mexican-themed coffee cart.

Orders ready to go for customers.

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Carol Martinez

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Cerda recalls her first sip of coffee being from her grandmother Dolores “Lolita” Medina’s cup. Introduced to the world of all things café by her family matriarch, the bond between them is intertwined in every aspect of the business, from the name Cafe Niña to the “Lolita” latte.

“It’s the love inside the latte that brings it [business]. It’s just like when your abuelita makes food for you, you feel the love when you’re eating it. That’s what I think I’m putting into my drinks.” said Cerda.

Sign near the entrance of Cafe Niña on 4th Street.

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Carol Martinez

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Walking up to the house-front business, Cafe Niña welcomes you with Cerda ready to take your order. Customers can choose from a regular menu, with coffee house staples, or the specialty menu, full of ingredients that hold special memories for Cerda’s family.

“Those are my childhood treats that I used to have. For example, the galletas [Marias Gamesa cookies], those I used to have with coffee with my grandma. That’s why I named the latte after her, the ‘Lolita’ latte.” said Cerda.

“The ‘Arroz Con Leche’ [rice pudding] latte, that’s one of the desserts my grandma used to make as well. The mazapanes [marzipan candies], we used to eat them after school and buy them at the liquor store. That’s how I came up with all the flavors [on the menu]. I tried to mix them up with the coffee.” said Cerda.

She offered these blends to her friends to see what they thought at the beginning of her journey.

“I started sharing my drinks with them and then with my family. That's when they were like ‘You should just start something,'" said Cerda.

Janet Cerda, Cafe Niña’s owner, holding up a specialty coffee, the Mazapan Latte.

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Carol Martinez

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From pop-up shop to local favorite

Initially, Cerda was hesitant to start her business.

It took a year of convincing from her close friends and family, after which she took the first step by signing up for a local pop-up market to soft launch the business. She quickly bought all her equipment and got ready for the local 323 Market in East L.A.

A traditional Mexican doll placed in front of Cafe Niña’s set up. It’s a common figure throughout the business and is featured on the logo.

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Carol Martinez

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“It was a great hit, I got a lot of support and when I saw that I thought to myself, ‘You know what, I’m going to keep this going,’” Cerda said. “It’s bringing people together and that’s my main goal… I want to create community.”

Even in the first few weeks after opening when Cerda had only a few customers, she remained optimistic, always content that she at least made a few people happy.

Eventually, she believed, it would all work out.

Today, the 4th Street spot draws in everyone from local regulars to social media onlookers enticed by Cafe Niña’s unique flavors.

Now, with Instagram reels to TikTok posts, the popularity of the business has gone beyond local residents and has been featured everywhere from L.A. Taco to Univision’s Lo Que Somos Podcast and iHeartRadio.

But Cerda’s relationship with her customers and the community is what she values as a part of her business. Knowing that local customers prefer her business over big-name coffee chains, she says it’s not only about her business’s authenticity but also how her drinks are made.

Preparing a few ‘Dulce De Leche’ lattes on the coffee bar.

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Carol Martinez

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“I feel like there’s been a big change. In the beginning, I used to get one or two people a day and I didn’t give up. I was like ‘You know what? I have to be consistent because eventually there’s going to be five [customers]’ and now there’s fifty,” she said.

Adriana Valencia, 16, has supported Cafe Niña since its opening last year. She and her sisters can often be found in line for coffee. She said the uniqueness of selections is what keeps her coming back.

“Besides the environment, what makes her very different is that a lot of the traditional Mexican flavors are turned into drinks, and I think that’s really awesome to see because not a lot of coffee places do that. You see the traditional vanilla and caramel, but seeing ‘Lolita’, and ‘Arroz Con Leche’ [on the menu], it’s really nice to see our culture,” said Valencia, who usually orders a Mazapan latte with oat milk.

At a glance, the business still has the same grab-and-go nature from its first pop-up, but Cerda has been trying to keep clients in the neighborhood for longer to connect, chat and keep coming back. Cerda’s father even built a small patio area for customers to sit and enjoy their coffee.

Outdoor patio and seating area for customers.

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Carol Martinez

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For Cerda, coffee isn’t just something you drink to keep you up. It’s a cultural experience you can enjoy with other people, a gateway to meeting new people and a liquid adding substance (or “way to build on”) to your current relationships.

The space harbors a unique vibe for these conversations, with seasonal decorations, inspiring quotes, fresh flowers in bloom and chances to snap a pic for social media.

Samantha Chavez goes to Cafe Niña weekly. She says that what keeps her returning to this coffee cart is the unique home-front set up and her new favorite latte.

“I’ve never seen anyone sell coffee from their house and now it’s my favorite coffee spot to go to. Each [coffee] is handcrafted on the spot” said the 21-year-old whose favorite drink is the ‘Viva’ latte.

Entrance to Cafe Niña’s with Easter decorations.

On the weekends, Cerda offers pastries on her menu that she buys locally at the panaderia just a few minutes walk from Cafe Niña.

With a board dedicated to highlighting Boyle Heights small businesses posted alongside her cart, Cerda’s love for her community goes beyond serving specialty coffee, as she actively supports fellow Boyle Heights businesses.

Cafe Niña is located at 3264 E. 4th Street. Alternating menus can be found on the coffee shop’s social media pages including Facebook and Instagram.

Members of a University of Southern California program are developing an AI program meant to help law enforcement agencies improve their interactions with the communities they serve.

The Everyday Respect Project partnered with the Los Angeles Police Department to analyze body camera footage of 1,000 random traffic stops. Now, they are using what they have found to train an AI model to look through countless hours of videos for critical elements of good policing — respect and de-escalation.

Benjamin Graham is an associate professor of political science at USC and helps to manage the project, which is being conducted by a team of professors, students and members of the community.

 ”LAPD conducts, give or take, a thousand stops a day,” Graham told LAist. He said those stops lead to thousands upon thousands of hours of body camera footage.

In most cases, Graham said, the body camera videos are uploaded to the cloud and never seen. He said only an automated program could sort through this rich source of data, analyze it and reveal the stories it holds.

With AI able to look through this data, Graham said police and sheriffs departments across the country could identify officers who are best able to communicate respectfully during traffic stops to be given promotions or training positions. They also could find the best techniques for officers to bring down the temperature in high-stress situations.

Georgetown University, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas at Austin also are working with USC on the project.

What they’ve found so far

Graham told LAist researchers spoke with a wide range of community stakeholders, including community organizations that are critical of law enforcement and working police officers, to understand different perspectives of what separates a good traffic stop from a bad one.

They heard from thousands of Angelenos through surveys and interviews, reviewed LAPD training materials and rode along with officers on the streets. Graham said they focused on those diverse community perspectives throughout the project.

“ We have former law enforcement officers who are annotating this data,” he told LAist. “We have individuals who have been arrested before, and we have a lot of Angelenos from ... a range of ages, races, genders, professional backgrounds.”

Graham presented some of the Everyday Respect Project’s findings to the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners on Dec. 16.

He said researchers involved in the project analyzed 500 traffic stops in which LAPD officers conducted searches of the drivers they pulled over and another 500 stops in which there were no searches.

They found in cases when no search was conducted, some drivers were treated differently by officers based on their perceived race and wealth.

Researchers found that Black drivers were treated with more respect than Hispanic drivers. White drivers were pulled over least often, and the researchers did not find a significant difference between how white and non-white drivers were treated.

Of drivers who were stopped by police but weren’t searched, the researchers found those who were perceived as more wealthy also were treated with more respect by officers.

They did not find significant differences in how drivers were treated due to perceived race or wealth in stops in which searches were conducted.

Across all stops, the researchers found the more respect they perceived an officer showing to a driver they pulled over, the more legitimate the researchers would tend to rate the stop overall.

The LAPD has not responded to LAist’s request to comment on these findings.

Training AI to tell good traffic stops from bad

After analyzing and manually taking detailed notes on the first 1,000 traffic stops, Graham said the researchers are using what they’ve found to build an AI tool that can do the same thing — but is able to cover vastly more data and is accessible free of charge for any law enforcement agency.

To do this, Graham said team members use their notes as training data for the AI model.

By having humans label a number of things that happened or didn’t happen in videos of traffic stops, Graham told LAist, the AI model they are developing can learn to predict what humans will say about other videos.

“You're trying to train a model to do the same job that a human being does when it watches the video,” he said.

These notes include things like whether a search happened and at what time, whether officers explained the reason for the stop, if the driver complied with requests from the officer and any efforts by officers to de-escalate tense situations.

Graham said other companies have been working on AI tools to sell to departments, as well, but that the Everyday Respect Project is unique in its effort to build community perspectives into the program that will be fully open-source and open-science.

That means anyone can see exactly how the program works and the research behind it.

What could be coming next?

Graham said the Everyday Respect Project will be working through the winter and spring to improve the AI model and use it to analyze more LAPD bodycam videos. Then they will present their new findings to the police commissioners and release their AI model to the public.

It still is uncertain whether LAPD will use the Everyday Respect Project’s AI program once it is completed, but Captain Shannon White of LAPD’s Strategic Planning and Policies Division told the police commission Dec. 16 that the department looks forward to using the group’s research to spark “actionable change within the department.”

The LAPD has not responded to LAist’s questions about whether or how it will use the AI program once it is made available.

Graham told LAist other departments have shown interest in continuing to work with the Everyday Respect Project and the program in the future.

He said they may soon be working with the Rochester Police Department in New York on a trial to find the most effective de-escalation techniques for officers.

“ That's an incredible piece of learning that we can bring to improve policing, to improve officer safety, community safety, the whole nine yards,” Graham told LAist.

As of January, California is the first state in the country to partner with a nonprofit to develop, produce and sell its own insulin as a solution to the widespread unaffordability of the life-saving hormone that helps the body process or store blood sugar from food.

The nonprofit Civica will develop a CalRx Insulin Glargine pen – referred to as “biosimilar insulin,” meaning it references a U.S. Food & Drug Administration-approved product and has no “clinically meaningful differences from their reference product in terms of safety, purity, and potency.”

This CalRx pen can be substituted for Lantus and other branded insulin glargine, according to a spokesperson from the state’s Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI).

“California didn’t wait for the pharmaceutical industry to do the right thing — we took matters into our own hands,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an October news release about the CalRx insulin. “No Californian should ever have to ration insulin or go into debt to stay alive — and I won’t stop until health care costs are crushed for everyone.”

CalRx aims to be another competitor in the field by introducing a lower-cost alternative — and possibly put “pressure on other manufacturers to lower their prices as well.”

According to the state and Civica, the suggested retail price is:

• No more than $30 for a 10mL vial of insulin
• No more than $55 for a 5-pack of 3 mL pens

According to the HCAI spokesperson in an email to KQED, the “out-of-pocket cost may be lower, depending on insurance coverage.”

Advocates for people with diabetes see the production as a win.

“We look forward to the rollout of CalRx® insulin in January,” said Christine Fallabel, director of state government affairs at the American Diabetes Association, in an email to KQED. “Any meaningful step to improve insulin affordability and provide additional options is a win for people with diabetes.”

Fallabel also pointed to the recent passage of Senate Bill 40 — which prohibits high copayments for a month’s supply of insulin — as another state decision that helps with accessibility.

The initiative could provide major financial relief for nearly 3.5 million Californians who have been diagnosed with diabetes, a majority of whom have Type II diabetes – where the body cannot use insulin correctly. Type 1 is when the body produces little to no insulin.

Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes can impact energy levels and organ functions. Insulin shots – or, in some cases, diabetes pills – help with major body functions. The National Diabetes Statistics Report found that 38.4 million people have diabetes – almost 12% of the country’s population.

Read on to learn more about changes to the price of insulin in California, how prescriptions will work and where to find more resources.

What is the predicted price of CalRx Insulin?

Difficulty accessing affordable insulin — specifically buying it — in America is a well-documented and widespread issue due to a market dominated by three major companies.

Insulin is seven to 10 times more expensive in the United States compared to other countries, despite being affordable to produce, according to a 2023 article by the Yale School of Medicine. In fact, it explains that “the same vial of insulin that cost $21 in the U.S. in 1996 now costs upward of $250.”

What should I do if I am paying more than $55?

According to the HCAI spokesperson, “CalRx and Civica cannot mandate the final price to the consumer as this would conflict with antitrust and competition law.”

But the spokesperson stated in the email that Civica is planning to include a QR code on the side of the boxes, so consumers can report if they have paid more than $55 for the product.

“At which point Civica would contact the pharmacy for remediation,” the spokesperson said.

Where can I get CalRx insulin? Do I need a prescription?

You do not need to apply to access the new insulin, and there are no eligibility requirements. You do not need insurance.

“Broad wholesale distribution will allow any California pharmacy to order CalRx insulin glargine,” the state explained in the email. Mail-order pharmacy outreach is still ongoing.

People interested in the CalRx insulin can “ask their pharmacist or doctor if they can switch their prescription to CalRx insulin glargine,” continued the HCAI spokesperson. Since the CalRx insulin is interchangeable with other brand names, you would not need a new doctor’s prescription.

“Health plans will be responsible for communicating about CalRx insulin glargine with their provider and patient networks,” said HCAI.

Can people in other states access it?

According to the HCAI spokesperson, “Yes, Civica Rx’s glargine insulin will be available in other states under Civica Rx’s label.”

Where can I learn more information?

• CalRx website
• CalRx fact sheet
• American Diabetes Association’s Center for Information
• Insulin Basics for Diabetes
• Civica Insulin
• T1International

KQED’s April Dembosky contributed to this report.

The Department of Homeland Security is pausing the immigration applications from an additional 20 countries after an expansion of travel restrictions took effect Jan. 1.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, in a memo released Thursday, said it would pause the review of all pending applications for visas, green cards, citizenship or asylum from immigrants from the additional countries. The memo also outlines plans to re-review applications of immigrants from these countries as far back as 2021.

The list, which is composed mostly of countries in Africa, includes Angola, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Last month, the Trump administration expanded the list of countries with travel restrictions to the U.S. from 19 to 39, plus the Palestinian Authority. The move comes as the administration is bringing sharper scrutiny of those who have followed legal steps to seek permanent status in the U.S.

"USCIS remains dedicated to ensuring aliens from high-risk countries of concern who have entered the United States do not pose risks to national security or public safety," the memo states as rational for the pause and reviews. "To faithfully uphold United States immigration law, the flow of aliens from countries with high overstay rates, significant fraud, or both must stop."

There are some exceptions outlined in the memo, including athletes and members of their teams competing in the World Cup and 2026 Olympics, both hosted by the U.S. this year.

The administration first suggested it would expand the restrictions after the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.

Towards the end of 2025, DHS began taking steps to further pause and review these legal avenues of migration. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees processing of applications including for visas, naturalizations and asylum, announced it would re-review the status of everyone who had been admitted into the U.S. as a refugee under the Biden administration, essentially reopening those cases.

The agency also previously announced an indefinite pause in all processing of asylum applications while it works through its backlog.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Wildfire smoke is an emerging nationwide crisis for the United States. Supercharged by climate change, blazes are swelling into monsters that consume vast landscapes and entire towns.

A growing body of evidence reveals that these conflagrations are killing far more people than previously known, as smoke travels hundreds or even thousands of miles, aggravating conditions like asthma and heart disease. One study, for instance, estimated that last January’s infernos in Los Angeles didn’t kill 30 people, as the official tally reckons, but 440 or more once you factor in the smoke. Another recent study estimated that wildfire haze already kills 40,000 Americans a year, which could increase to 71,000 by 2050.

Two additional studies published last month paint an even grimmer picture of the crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere. The first finds that emissions of greenhouse gases and airborne particles from wildfires globally may be 70% higher than once believed. The second finds that Canada’s wildfires in 2023 significantly worsened childhood asthma across the border in Vermont. Taken together, they illustrate the desperate need to protect public health from the growing threat of wildfire smoke, like better monitoring of air quality with networks of sensors.

The emissions study isn’t an indictment of previous estimates, but a revision of them based on new data. Satellites have spied on wildfires for decades, though in a somewhat limited way — they break up the landscape into squares measuring 500 meters by 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet by 1,600 feet. If a wildfire doesn’t fully fill that space, it’s not counted. This new study increases that resolution to 20 meters by 20 meters (roughly 66 feet by 66 feet) in several key fire regions, meaning it can capture multitudes of smaller fires.

Individually, tinier blazes are not producing as much smoke as the massive conflagrations that are leveling cities in the American West. But “they add up, and add up big time,” said Guido van der Werf, a wildfire researcher at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and lead author of the paper. “They basically double the amount of burned area we have globally.”

With the 500-meter satellite data, the previous estimate was around 400 million hectares charred each year. Adding the small fires bumps that up to 800 million hectares, roughly the size of Australia. In some parts of the world, such as Europe and Southeast Asia, burned area triples or even quadruples with this improved resolution. While scientists used to think annual wildfire emissions were around 2 gigatons of carbon, or about a fifth of what humanity produces from burning fossil fuels, that’s now more like 3.4 gigatons with this new estimate.

The type of fire makes a huge difference in the emissions, too. A forest fire has a large amount of biomass to burn — brushes, grasses, trees, sometimes even part of the soil — and turn into carbon dioxide and methane and particulate matter, but a grass fire on a prairie has much less. Blazes also burn at dramatically different rates: Flames can race quickly through woodland, but carbon-rich ground known as peat can smolder for days or weeks. Peat fires are so persistent, in fact, that when they ignite in the Arctic, they can remain hidden as snow falls, then pop up again as temperatures rise and everything melts. Scientists call them zombie fires. “It really matters where you’re burning and also how intense the fire can become,” van der Werf said.

But why would a fire stay small, when we’ve seen in recent years just how massive and destructive these blazes can get? It’s partly due to fragmentation of the landscape: Roads can prevent them from spreading, and firefighters stop them from reaching cities. And in general, a long history of fire suppression means they’re often quickly extinguished. (Ironically, this has also helped create some monsters, because vegetation builds up across the landscape, ready to burn. This shakes up the natural order of things, in which low-intensity fires from lightning strikes have cleared dead brush, resetting an ecosystem for new growth — which is why Indigenous tribes have long done prescribed burns.) Farmers, too, burn their waste biomass and obviously prevent the flames from getting out of hand.

Whereas in remote areas, like boreal forests in the far north, lightning strikes typically ignite fires, the study found that populated regions produce a lot of smaller fires. In general, the more people dotting the landscape, the more sources of ignition: cigarette butts, electrical equipment producing sparks, even chains dragging from trucks.

Yes, these smaller fires are less destructive than the behemoths, but they can still be catastrophic in a more indirect way, by pouring smoke into populated areas. “Those small fires are not the ones that cause the most problems,” van der Werf said. “But of course they’re more frequent, close to places where people live, and that also has a health impact.”

Read Next Wildfire smoke could soon kill 71,000 Americans every yearMatt Simon
That is why the second study on asthma is so alarming. Researchers compared the extremely smoky year of 2023 in Vermont to 2022 and 2024, when skies were clearer. They were interested in PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter, from wildfire smoke pouring in from Quebec, Canada. “That can be especially challenging to dispel from lungs, and especially irritating to those airways,” said Anna Maassel, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study. “There is research that shows that exposure to wildfire smoke can have much longer-term impacts, including development of asthma, especially for early exposure as a child.”

This study, though, looked at the exacerbation of asthma symptoms in children already living with the condition. While pediatric asthma patients typically have fewer attacks in the summer because they’re not in school and constantly exposed to respiratory viruses and other indoor triggers, the data showed that their conditions were much less controlled during the summer of 2023 as huge wildfires burned. (Clinically, “asthma control” refers to milder symptoms like coughing and shortness of breath as well as severe problems like attacks. So during that summer, pediatric patients were reporting more symptoms.) At the same time, climate change is extending growing seasons, meaning plants produce more pollen, which also exacerbates that chronic disease. “All of those factors compound to really complicate what health care providers have previously understood to be a safe time of year for children with asthma,” Maassel said.

Researchers are also finding that as smoke travels through the atmosphere, it transforms. It tends to produce ozone, for instance, that irritates the lungs and triggers asthma. “There’s also the potential for increased formation of things like formaldehyde, which is also harmful to human health. It’s a hazardous air pollutant,” said Rebecca Hornbrook, who studies wildfire smoke at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, but wasn’t involved in either study, though a colleague was involved in the emissions one. (Last month, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle NCAR, which experts say could have catastrophic effects.)

As wildfires worsen, so too does the public health crisis of smoke, even in places that never had to deal with the haze before. Governments now have to work diligently to protect their people, like improving access to air purifiers, especially in schools. “This is no longer an isolated or geographically confined issue,” Maassel said. “It’s really spreading globally and to places that have never experienced it before.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/health/wildfire-smoke-is-a-national-crisis-and-its-worse-than-you-think/.