The Brief

Travel agent Yoshi Miyajima says his Torrance-based agency is gearing up to book trips and hotel rooms for Japanese baseball fans coming to Dodger Stadium.

“Even more people are interested now since two players are coming,” Miyajima said.

Miyajima is referencing the second blockbuster deal the Los Angeles Dodgers have made this month with a Japanese player. On Thursday night, news broke that ace pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto has reportedly signed a 12-year, $325 million contract — less than two weeks after two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani announced a record-breaking 10-year, $700 million deal.

The acquisition of Ohtani and Yamamoto brings the total number of Japanese-born players who have put on Dodger blue to 11, starting with Hideo Nomo in 1995 — or 12 if you count Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was born in Okinawa.

Miyajima said the recruitment of two of Japan’s most famous athletes is generating even more excitement abroad in the Dodgers. While his agency arranged trips to Anaheim for Japanese tourists to watch Ohtani play for his former team, the Los Angeles Angels, Miyajima said that the Dodgers are on another level.

He described the Dodgers as locked in a popularity contest with another iconic MLB franchise. The New York Yankees once boasted legends Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui on their roster.

“But right now, no Japanese pitchers on the Yankees,” Miyajima said.  

In Japan, pitchers tend to get more TV time and media attention, said Nicholas Watanabe, who teaches sports management at the University of South Carolina. He recalls watching MLB games during the Ichiro era while living in Japan, when sportscasts would dip into a game to see the star outfielder at-bat, then cut away to another game when he was done.

With two Japanese pitchers on the mound — for Ohtani, not until 2025 because of recent elbow surgery — the cameras will be fixed on the Dodgers.

Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, seen here at an Angels-Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium on July 7, 2023, will be teammates next year.

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“So a lot more people are going to be watching,” Watanabe said. “Of course, that means more brands, more businesses, advertisers all want to be part of that.”

The newcomers will debut with the Dodgers in Asia, when the team opens its 2024 regular season in Seoul against the San Diego Padres. When they return to L.A., there should be no shortage of Dodgers fans wearing Ohtani and Yamamoto jerseys in the stands.

Los Angeles-based enterprises beyond the Dodgers will benefit from the down-the-line impact of international interest in the team, said Alex Medina, spokesperson for the non-profit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Shohei Ohtani tries on his No. 17 Dodgers jersey. In the first 48 hours after the Ohtani jersey dropped online, sales surpassed those for Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

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“From the hotel operators, the restaurants around the stadiums, and those vendors who supply the stadiums with what they need, whether that’s the food, whether it's lighting vendors, this is going to have a great impact on our economy,’ Medina said.

Both of Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets have left the nest — but one of the famous Big Bear birds fell more than flew.

Luna, the younger eaglet, took its first flight away from their Jeffrey pine tree a little before 9:30 a.m. Monday as thousands of fans watched on the nest’s popular YouTube livestream. The livestream is run by the environmental nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley, which is also working to preserve acres of land in the area.

Luna left about a day after Sandy, the elder eaglet, toppled down the tree and out of view of the cameras.

Sandy did end up taking its first flight — which is called fledging — albeit in an unexpected way. Friends of Big Bear Valley said Sandy “fludged” before the eaglet was seen soaring to another area shortly after Sunday’s fall.

“Though it is up to Sandy and Luna, in the past, the eaglets have come back to the nest to eat, sleep or just hang out together,” the organization wrote on Facebook to its more than 1 million followers. “Stay tuned, this family affair isn’t over…”

Jackie and Shadow, Big Bear Valley’s resident bald eagle couple, have now successfully fledged six chicks together: Simba in 2019, Spirit in 2022, Sunny and Gizmo last year and Sandy and Luna this season.

Sandy and Luna lift off

The Big Bear bald eaglets have historically fledged when they’re around 13 weeks old, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. Sandy, which the nonprofit believes to be a female, and Luna, believed to be a male, are a little more than 12 weeks old.

The eaglets were preparing for the big leap in recent weeks by venturing further onto branches and stretching their wings in the wind to build up strength.

The duo were on an outer part of the tree Sunday morning when Luna tried to jump over its sibling, but the eaglet’s talons got tangled and Sandy fell to the branches below.

Sandy was spotted on Friends of Big Bear Valley’s security camera shortly after, flying away from the nest tree and to another area out of view.

“Sandy looked good in her flight, and she is likely relaxing from her unexpected adventure,” the nonprofit said on social media Sunday. “Jackie and Shadow will now follow her wherever she goes and make sure she is fed and taken care of.”

Luna had a more graceful strategy, flying to a nearby tree where Shadow was waiting. Friends of Big Bear Valley said fans "will likely see some family gatherings” once Sandy and Luna make their way around the habitat.

Last season’s eaglets, Sunny and Gizmo, fledged in early June and were last seen near the nest about three weeks later.

Access to the area around Jackie and Shadow's nest is restricted in Big Bear Valley on June 13, 2026.

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‘Grand adventures’ ahead

Jackie and Shadow are expected to continue caring for Sandy and Luna while they’re in Big Bear Valley. That includes finding food as the eaglets get better at flying, and eventually, hunting on their own.

Eaglets generally leave the area they were raised by fall of the year they hatched, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. Young eagles travel far and wide, with banded birds being tracked up to 2,000 miles away.

Once the birds reach maturity at around 5 years old, they look for their own mate and build a nest in a new territory.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Last week, Felipe Hernandez saw fewer customers than usual. The produce vendor had already lost some foot traffic in East L.A. due to the ongoing ICE raids and COVID before that, but after the Lineage warehouse fire blanketed the area in smoke, Hernandez felt like everyone disappeared all at once.

“I think this was worse [than COVID]. They all really went away just like that — but this time it was on a whole new level,” said Hernandez, who works afternoons at Ponciano Produce, his nephew’s produce truck.

Claudia Hernandez, owner of Mariscos El Manglar in East L.A., closed early on the first day of the fire because she couldn’t handle the amount of smoke blowing at her food truck, parked one mile away.

“With the raids, sales dropped by 60%,” said Hernandez. “And this week, because of the smoke, they’ve gone down by about 80%.”

The compounding effect of the ICE raids and now a week full of smoke due to the Lineage fire, has left small businesses in both Boyle Heights and East L.A. struggling more than ever. 

Many businesses were forced to close entirely due to the intensity of the smoke and others that did open served even fewer customers as people were forced to stay indoors or leave the area.

According to a report from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute nearly 13,600 jobs are located within the smoke advisory zone, 66% are held by Hispanic or Latino individuals.

The report notes that many small businesses in retail, accommodation, and food service closed or experienced a steep decline in clients.

Cristina Medrano works on a customer’s hair at Kassandra’s Salon in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, Calif. on June 26, 2026.

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Hair stylist Cristina Medrano fought back tears when thinking of the impacts ICE have had on her customers at Kassandra’s Salon and the greater Boyle Heights community.

“Our people are scared. All of us are, right? We go through a certain amount of stress regarding our people, it really is very difficult,” said Medrano. “Even though it doesn’t affect us directly, our people do go out but they go out afraid.”

After the fire Medrano was forced to cancel appointments due to customers’ concerns about the smoke. She says she never expected the fire to go on for as long as it did.

“It’s been more than we expected, a whole week like this. And there’s still more to come, just think of everything that’s in the air, what we’re breathing in. But we have to work. I mean, you can’t just sit around doing nothing, we have to keep going,” Medrano said.

On Wednesday, Inclusive Action, the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce and the Hustle & Heart Collective launched the Boyle Heights Fire Relief Fund for Small Businesses, targeting brick and mortar shops and street vendors in the four zip codes around the Lineage fire.

“Some businesses are still trying to come out of the hole that they were put in because of the ICE raids today,” said Rudy Espinoza, CEO of Inclusive Action. “So then you layer this new fire for the especially the small businesses on the east side and it’s just like another obstacle for them to get ahead and to take care of their families and to make payroll for their workers.”

Applications are not open yet but they are accepting donations via GoFundMe.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office is also working with the Emergency Management Department and the Boyle Heights Business Source Center to connect impacted businesses and street vendors to city resources,

After struggling with a loss of about 65% of their sales after the ICE raids, Tacos Los Arabes in Boyle Heights lost about 35% in sales during the week of the fire, according to Jonathan Villegas, one of the sons of the family-owned Tacos Los Arabes. 

“It was an unfortunate thing to happen but it’s in the past. We’re trying to move on and we don’t think it’s going to affect the future for now because it seems under control, but the raids are still in the back of people’s minds. They’re a little bit more ready to go out, but you still hear stories about people being raided” Villegas said.

Villegas said he appreciated when customers would wear N95 masks to support his business during the week despite the obstacles facing the community.

Israel's Cabinet unanimously approved a proposal on Sunday to designate violence against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as a genocide.

The step, which still needs approval in Parliament, reflects deteriorating ties between Israel and Turkey. Turkey has fiercely lobbied to prevent countries from officially recognizing the mass deaths of Armenians around 1915 as a genocide, even as Armenians have pushed for it.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

For years, Israel never officially broached the subject for fear of angering Turkey, but that relationship has soured over the past two decades, especially as the most recent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have dragged on.

"Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian Genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including a manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government," said Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who brought the decision to the government.

He noted that Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have previously described the violence against Armenians as a genocide. But it has never been formally recognized in a vote by Israel's Knesset.

"It is never too late to do the right thing," Saar said Sunday, calling it a "moral and historical duty."

He noted that 32 countries, including the United States, Syria and Lebanon, have also classified the violence as a genocide. It was not immediately known when Sunday's decision, approved unanimously by Israel's Cabinet, would go to the parliament for approval.

Turkey called Israel's move a "politically motivated" step meant to distract from the country's own actions against Palestinians.

"The Israeli government, which systematically persecutes the Palestinian people in full view of the world and is being tried at the International Court of Justice for genocide against the people of Gaza, aims to cover up its own crimes," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"This malicious attempt, which disregards legal and historical facts, reveals the predicament of Netanyahu and his accomplices, who have arrest warrants against them in connection with the investigation into crimes committed against Palestinians at the International Criminal Court," the statement added.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but relations soured during the rise of Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leading Israel to reconsider its position.

Israel has faced repeated accusations, including from the United Nations and Turkey, that its offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, denies the accusations.

Israel launched the war in response to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Gaza's Health Ministry, part of the Hamas government, says over 73,000 people have been killed, roughly half of them women and children. Israel says it does not target civilians and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Last week, a team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations accused Israel of deliberately shooting children in Gaza and repeated accusations that Israel has carried out a genocide. Israel called the report a "libelous sham."
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The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it.

The ruling is a loss for the Republican Party, which brought the case, ahead of this year's midterm elections.

Eighteen states and territories, including Mississippi, have such mail ballot grace periods. Most of the states are Democratic-led, including California, Illinois and New York. A dozen additional states have grace periods for ballots returning from overseas, like from military members.

The court's ruling was 5-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett authoring the opinion, joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's liberal wing of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

"[T]he election-day statutes require the electorate's choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi," Barrett wrote. "But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward."

Justice Samuel Alito authored the dissent, writing in part that the "majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity."

How the battle over grace periods ended up at the Supreme Court

These grace periods have historically provided voters time to get their absentee ballots to officials in case there are any issues with the Postal Service — as well as any other unforeseen issues, such as weather events.

But Republicans have been fighting these grace periods in recent years — an effort led by President Trump.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign filed legal challenges — including one against Mississippi's law — alleging that these grace periods violate the Constitution. They argued that Congress sets the end of an election, not states.

At the time, many of the lawsuits were dismissed by judges across the country, but the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Republicans, setting up the Supreme Court case.

Trump also signed an executive order last year — which was quickly blocked by lower courts — that required that all votes be received by Election Day during federal elections.

Many state officials, particularly in Democratic-run states with universal mail-in ballot programs, raised concerns about such a requirement.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement last year that more than 250,000 ballots that had been postmarked on time arrived after Election Day during the 2024 election.

"Had this rule been in effect," he said, "those voices would have been silenced, especially in rural areas where mail delivery can take longer."
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