The Brief

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has reached a gruesome milestone: More than 10,000 people have died in Gaza in the four weeks since the conflict began.

On Monday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported more than 10,000 people killed — most of them women and children — in the besieged territory. In the West Bank, 155 people have been killed since Oct. 7, the health ministry says.

There have been more than 100 attacks on health care facilities according to several humanitarian groups, including the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.

The groups also reported 88 workers with UNRWA have been killed since Oct. 7, "the highest number of United Nations fatalities ever recorded in a single conflict."

This all started nearly one month ago, on Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked several communities in Israel, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping around 240 people.

Israeli forces launched an intense response that included a bombardment on Gaza from the air and ground invasion, with the ultimate goal of eliminating Hamas.

More than 340 Israeli soldiers have died since the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel said.

A man holds his baby Sunday in Jerusalem as he looks at posters of the men, women and children held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, during a vigil marking 30 days since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting.

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Humanitarian groups like the UNRWA continue to plead for the release of hostages and for each party to agree to a cease-fire.

"We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It's been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now," the aid groups said.

Intense military operations over the weekend

On Sunday, Israeli forces reached the coast of Gaza, splitting the besieged area in half and essentially cutting off the north from the south, Israel's military said.

"In the last 12 hours, the soldiers of the division struck around 50 targets, including combat zones, operational residences, outposts, military positions and underground infrastructure, and eliminated terrorists in close-quarter combat," the military said.

Phone, 4G cellular networks as well as internet services were cut off in Gaza for several hours. By Monday morning local time, the networks appeared to have been at least partially restored.

Israeli bombs hit refugee camps. One attack on the Maghazi refugee camp early Sunday killed at least 33 people and wounded dozens, health officials in the region said.

Civilians try to head south, but many roads impassable

The Rafah border crossing was reopened Monday for foreign passport holders whose names appeared on the approval list, according to a statement by the General Authority for Crossings and Borders, which is run by the Hamas government in Gaza.

Individuals whose names don't appear on the list will not be allowed to leave Gaza.
As fighting around Gaza City continues, many Palestinians are trying to head south as Israel's military continues to urge civilians to do.

On Sunday, for the second day in a row, Israel's military announced another window for civilians in the north of Gaza to travel south.

A day earlier, the military also allowed passage for a few hours, but people trying to flee found the roads impassable.

Israel has accused Hamas of firing on Israeli troops who were attempting to secure the route for civilian passage.

The United Nations estimates that of the roughly 300,000 people trapped in northern Gaza, only 2,000 were able to move south this weekend, according to monitors on the ground.

The ones that have managed to flee have mostly traveled by foot for miles — adults carrying babies or pushing wheelchairs with the elderly, and holding the hands of children lugging bags full of whatever belongings they could grab. Some waved white pieces of cloth to show they were civilians.

They walked by piles of rubble, looking exhausted, as shells exploded in the distance.

NPR spoke with a group traveling in Gaza who said they had to walk past dead bodies rotting in the street as bombs dropped in the distance. They declined to provide their names over security concerns.

Blinken continues Middle East tour, CIA director visits Israel

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken walks to board a plane after his meetings with Turkish counterparts, as he departs from Ankara Esenboga Airport in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken finished a busy weekend tour of the Middle East with a stop in Turkey Monday morning.

On Sunday, he made an unannounced visit to Iraq and met with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in Baghdad for more than an hour. Blinken also made trips to Israel and Jordan and had a sit-down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Blinken's stop in Turkey comes as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly criticized Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this weekend.

Blinken met with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to discuss, among other things, the war and the need to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, he told the media.

Despite this whirlwind visit, Blinken's efforts yielded little obvious progress on cease-fire talks or increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Blinken said he remained optimistic and told the media, "We're working on all of this almost every single minute."

CIA Director William Burns is reportedly visiting Israel Monday, as well.

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

We hope you’ve gotten used to the hot weather, because it’s going to be here for a while.

The National Weather Service has issued yet another heat advisory for much of Southern California, less than a week after other high-temperature warnings were lifted.

This week’s advisory will be in place from 10 a.m. Wednesday through Monday. Forecasters expect temperatures to climb steadily over the course of Wednesday and Thursday.

The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas in L.A., as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, will likely see highs ranging from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Areas closer to the coast, including downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange County, will hit the 90s. Beaches will hover mostly in the upper 70s.

Humidity will also add to the discomfort. Even though it’s decreasing slightly, it makes cooling down harder, especially at night.

People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are especially at risk from the heat and humidity, along with people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations.

Fire risk

Forecasters are warning that conditions are ripe for fires, driven by a combination of wind and dry vegetation.

Southern California hasn’t seen much rain recently, despite the humidity, leaving plants with little moisture and turning them into the perfect fuel.

“Even though the air feels kind of moist, we're in the time of season where it doesn't matter. The fuels are dry and they're ready to go,” said NWS meteorologist Ryan Kittell.

Kittel said people should take extra care with anything that could create a spark, and residents in fire-prone areas should remain aware of their surroundings in case a fire starts.

The fire risk is likely to be concentrated in a few specific areas that will experience higher winds than others, including parts of the 5 Freeway corridor in northern L.A. County, especially around the Grapevine, and in southern Santa Barbara County.

For most of the region, though, winds should stay fairly mild.

Dangerous beach conditions

Southern Californians also have to contend with some ocean-specific risks this week.

Forecasters expect dangerously large waves and strong rip currents to hit the coastline at a time when the heat may drive more people to the beach. The conditions are expected to persist through the weekend.

If you decide to head to the beach, it’s a good idea to ask a lifeguard for advice on the conditions before entering the water. It’s also recommended to swim only near occupied lifeguard stands, stay off of rock jetties and avoid turning your back to the waves.

South-facing stretches of coastline will bear the brunt of the swell, which is being driven by two tropical storms churning hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean.

“Those two systems generated the winds and the waves locally that are pushing towards us, and so that's creating elevated surf and some stronger currents than normal,” Kittel said.

The swell is not expected to cause significant coastal flooding as high tides remain relatively low.