The Brief

Los Angeles County announced new tools the public can use to participate in Board of Supervisors meetings, including a revamped comment process and real-time translation services in a variety of languages.

The changes are designed to make sure every member of the county’s diverse communities can have their voices heard, according to Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

“ This really is about breaking down barriers and ensuring that every voice in the county is heard,” Barger told LAist. “ Our goal is to make sure that everyone has the ability to weigh in and be a part of the discussion — whatever the issue is.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Translation services

People now have access to a free, AI-powered service during board meetings that can translate and interpret in real-time more than 70 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Armenian.

Here’s how to use the translation service if you attend a meeting in person:

• Scan a provided QR code with your phone, tablet or other device.
• Select the language option you’d like.
• Put on your headphones or earbuds to listen to real-time translation and transcription.

Here’s how to use the translation service if you’re watching the meeting online:

• Click here.
• Select your preferred language from the dropdown box, then “attend.”
• Watch the automatic translated captions, or unmute the speaker icon to listen to live-interpreted audio.

Similar AI services were available for news conferences during January’s wildfires, according to Barger’s office.

“By making this translation service available, we make L.A. County governance more transparent and accessible for all,” Edward Yen, the board’s executive officer, said in a statement.

How to participate in public comment

The county is using a new system — Cisco Webex — that Barger said is a more stable and flexible platform. People reported issues with the previous teleconference system, which Barger noted “crashed and burned” at a recent meeting. 

“ We've had people that have said that they were on the line ready to testify, and then they got dropped,” Barger said, adding that the service was also “very expensive.”

Barger said she thought the new system seem to run more smoothly during its first meeting Tuesday.

People can participate by phone or with a computer or other device on Webex.

Here’s how to use the online system:

• Register here before or during the board meeting
  
  • The form will ask for your name, contact information and the agenda item(s) you’d like to comment on.
  • If you register right before or during the meeting, a green “join webinar” button will pop up. Otherwise look for an email from “Webex” or “Board Executive Office” with the same green button (check your spam or junk folders too).
  • If the button doesn’t work, you can copy and paste the link from the email.

• Join the meeting to be placed in a “listening-only” queue, either through the Webex app or your internet browser
  
  • You’ll be asked to enter your full name and email.
  • If prompted, make sure your microphones and speakers are connected.
  • Stay on the screen if you get a “waiting to let you in” message from the host.

• When the agenda item(s) you want to comment on is called, use the “raise hand” feature to be moved into a “speaking” queue
  
  • You'll hear a beep, but wait to speak until you hear your name.
  • When your comment time runs out, you will be muted again and placed back into the “listening-only” queue.
  • Repeat process for each agenda item you want to comment on.

If your internet is slow or you prefer to use the phone, you can still call-in for public comment.

Here’s how to call if you register here before or during the board meeting:

• Open the confirmation email and find the “tap to join from a mobile device” section
  
  • Click the phone number and access code link for attendees to be automatically connected to the meeting.
• You can also call the number in the “join by phone” section
  
  • Enter the “Webinar number (access code)” listed under the “Join by webinar number” section, then press #.
  • Enter the Webinar password, then press # again.

Here’s how to call if you don’t register:

• Find the phone number, webinar number and the meeting password here or on the board agenda for the meeting
  
  • This information can change between meetings.
• Call the number starting at 9 a.m., enter the webinar number, then press #
• Enter the meeting password, then press # again
• You’ll be connected and placed into a “listening-only” queue
• When the item(s) you want to comment on is called, press *3
  
  • You will hear a  “you have raised your hand to ask a question” message, but wait to speak until the host calls on you.
  • You will hear “your line is unmuted,” your area code and the first three digits of your phone number when it is your turn.
  • When your comment time runs out, you will be muted again and placed back into the “listening-only” queue.
  • Repeat process for each agenda item you want to comment on.

After a member of the public expressed concerns Tuesday about access for visually impaired people, county officials said they’d also announce the call-in information verbally at the beginning of each meeting.

In general, make sure your microphone is unmuted when you want to speak, and try to find a relatively quiet place to participate. Officials ask that you stay on topic and only join the meeting once between the various platforms, meaning you shouldn’t call-in and have the Webex link open at the same time.

You can still submit written comments here, and attend the meetings in person at:

• Room 381-B, 500 West Temple St., Los Angeles

If you want to see the meetings without participating, you can watch them live here or on YouTube. The meetings are also aired on KLCS at 11 p.m. the following Wednesday.

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.

The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.

Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,

Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.

TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.

TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.

Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.

The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district.

Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.

The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.

“At a time when schools and communities are confronting profound educational challenges, three visionary leaders are demonstrating what meaningful change can look like,” the McGraw Center said.

With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since.

The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.

Last year, EdSource detailed an unusual drama program at Compton’s Dominguez High. Another EdSource article this year highlighted the inclusion of student-centered “calming corners” and learning stations in school renovations.

The McGraw prize, named after the CEO of the McGraw-Hill education publisher, has been awarded since 1988. Other recent California recipients have included Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County schools superintendent; Jody Lewen, president of Tamalpais College, who introduced academic programs at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Stanford University professor and researcher Roy Pea; and Sol Khan, creator of a worldwide free online education and tutoring platform.

The higher education prize went to Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university, and the lifelong learning prize was awarded to Michael Webber, a nationally recognized professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Inside three water tanks in a tucked-away room at the Aquarium of the Pacific, biologists are tasked with bringing back a population of frogs that once thrived across the state’s mountainous streams but has since reached the brink of extinction.

It’s a program that’s nearly closed out its fifth year with a major milestone: more than 1,000 frogs raised and released into the wild.

That’s more than five times as many mountain yellow-legged frogs — named for the lemon-hued streak along their hind legs — believed to be in the wild when last recorded in 2019, reduced to small pockets of wild streams in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. By the time the frog was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2002, fewer than 100 adults remained in Southern California. A count in 2020 put the number at about 188 in the wild, though biologists say that figure has almost certainly shifted since.

The species’ collapse is tied to a compounding list of threats: wildfire, mudslides, pesticides, fungal disease, habitat loss and the appetites of non-native trout, bullfrogs and crayfish. It’s a decline so severe that biologists consider the species among the rarest vertebrates on Earth.

Staff at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach are working to change that math, one tadpole at a time.

In the latest release, about 653 of the endangered frogs were returned to their native mountain habitat by staff from the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Los Angeles Zoo and the U.S. Geological Survey. Of those, 394 had been head-started at the aquarium — its largest release of the species yet, bringing its total to 1,032.

The frogs were bred at the Los Angeles Zoo’s breeding program, then transferred to Long Beach as tadpoles, where aquarium staff reared them through metamorphosis into froglets and frogs. The process typically takes one to two years, though the species can remain in its tadpole stage for up to five years, making a given frog’s age something of a mystery even to the people who raised it.

A tadpole chills by the rocks in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where it is being raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova.

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Long Beach Post

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Inside the aquarium, the water is engineered to mimic the mountains it’s standing in — kept near 60 degrees in summer, the temperature currently found in the streams the frogs call home, and cooled to around 52 degrees in winter, with reduced UV exposure to simulate the season’s shorter, dimmer days.

The aquarium’s involvement began in 2021, in the aftermath of the 2020 Bobcat Fire, which tore through the central San Gabriel Mountains and destroyed an estimated 95% of the frog’s remaining usable habitat.

“They had salvaged some tadpoles from the fire-impacted areas, and they ended up bringing a handful of them here,” said Erin Lundy, with the aquarium’s conservation team. “And then we also had some captive-bred ones from the L.A. Zoo that year, and that was our first group.”

Since then, the team has expanded to include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which help monitor populations and oversee releases.

Erin Lundy from the Aquarium of the Pacific looks into a tank at frogs as she gets them ready to be released into the local mountains Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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As the aquarium’s tadpole numbers have grown, some are now sent to the Santa Ana Zoo each October to continue growing until they’re ready for reintroduction. Frogs are carefully separated by genetics and population of origin, so each can be released back into its native range and preserve healthy genetic lines.

“I think that we have some responsibility to give the animals the best chance that they could possibly have,” Lundy said, “but this is certainly a species that without a good amount of human intervention would not exist to this day.”

Much of the aquarium’s work is now focused on an even more elusive threat than fire: chytrid fungus, a microscopic pathogen that attacks the keratin in amphibian skin, blocking the salt absorption frogs rely on and eventually causing cardiac arrest. It has driven amphibian populations to collapse worldwide, and mountain yellow-legged frogs appear especially vulnerable to it.

“Some amphibian species over time have developed a resistance to chytrid, and so part of the intention of growing so many animals is hoping to find what gene that is that introduces some chytrid resistance,” Lundy said. Researchers are testing whether frogs can be inoculated before release, or whether introducing different microbes to their skin might help them fend off the fungus on their own.

Tadpoles swim in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific as they are raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Lundy has now been on three of the aquarium’s release trips, watching frogs she has cared for — some for years — carried up into the mountains and set loose into the streams they were bred to repopulate. It is, she says, a strange kind of joy.

“It’s a little bittersweet because, oh no, I’ve been taking care of you for so long, but that is the point, so it feels a little bit like Christmas Day,” Lundy said.

Not every frog leaves the same way. Some, she said, shoot off into the current without so much as a pause. Others linger at the water’s edge beside her for a few minutes before finally disappearing beneath the surface.

“Almost feels like they’re saying goodbye,” she said.

Keno’s Restaurant in Anaheim Hills is a family-run business with a vintage feel — and a 15-pound burrito on the menu.

General Manager Shauna Reyes joined Austin Cross on AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news show, to talk about what customers can expect at the decades-old steakhouse that has a cafe twist.

About the owners

Vintage photos of Keno's, back when it first opened, and was a 24-hour restaurant.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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Keno's originally opened in 1972, gaining enough popularity to expand into a small chain of restaurants. Gus Cooper helped build and operate the Anaheim Hills location since its opening in 1980. The Anaheim Hills location eventually changed hands to Gus' nephew, Steve Cooper, in 1993. Steve Cooper and his family have been running Keno's ever since.

What it's like being a Keno's customer

Photo of Keno's lounge and steakhouse section.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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According to Reyes, the ambiance and customer connections are what set Keno's apart.

You can experience the cafe, with a bustling diner feel, or step into their steakhouse, which has a fireplace Reyes says was inspired by the Peppermill in Las Vegas.

Restaurant details

• Keno’s has a live event schedule that includes solo acoustic sets and a Frank Sinatra cover artist.
• In addition to the 15-pound burrito, you can also find a 32-ounce Tomahawk steak on the menu.

Menu items we tried

• The Lumberjack Breakfast
• Monte Cristo
• California Chicken Sandwich
• Tomahawk Steak
  

What should we try next?

What should we try next?