The Brief

WASHINGTON — Americans can now renew their passports online, bypassing a cumbersome mail-in paper application process that often caused delays.

The State Department announced Wednesday that its online renewal system is now fully operational, after testing in pilot programs, and available to adult passport holders whose passport has expired within the past five years or will expire in the coming year. It is not available for the renewal of children's passports, for first-time passport applicants for renewal applicants who live outside the United States or for expedited applications.

"By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The department said it estimated that about 5 million Americans would be able to use this service a year. In 2023, it processed 24 million passports, about 40% of which were renewals.

After staffing shortages caused mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lengthy passport processing delays, the department ramped up hiring and introduced other technological improvements that have reduced wait times by about one-third over last year. It says most applications are now completed in far less than the advertised six weeks to eight weeks and the online renewal system is expected to further reduce that.

The system will allow renewal applicants to skip the current process, which requires them to print out and send paper applications, photos and a check by mail, and submit their documents, photo, and payment through a secure website, www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.

There will be no change to the existing passport processing fees, which are currently $130 for a regular renewal.

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing said the department hoped to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children's passports.

"This is not going to be the last thing that we do," she told reporters. "We want to see how this goes and then we'll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years."

Copyright 2024 NPR

Long Beach wants to hear from residents ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, when the city will host a total of 18 sporting events.

The 10-minute online survey, which is open through Sept. 30, asks respondents to give their general feelings about the arrival of the games, rank the lasting impact they want to see, provide concerns about attending and rank which free activities they would want to accompany the festivities.

You can take the survey here.

It’s the first step in a series of efforts for residents to provide feedback on everything from parking to the impact on local businesses, said Sean Devereaux, the city’s community engagement officer.

Long Beach just wrapped up a series of World Cup watch parties that city officials hope will be a road map for events surrounding the Olympic and Paralympic games.

From mid-June to mid-July, the city budgeted $800,000 to host 56 public watch parties and its annual Open Streets event during the international soccer tournament. About 50,000 people attended the city’s watch parties, city spokesperson Laath Martin wrote in an email.

The city will know the final amount spent for the events “in the coming days,” Martin wrote.

Most of the watch parties happened on Pine Avenue in downtown Long Beach, but for July’s knockout stage, they shifted to parks — with one event held in every city council district.

Ian McCall, owner of ISM Brewing on The Promenade, said the watch parties boosted sales at his business throughout the tournament.

For the most popular matches — aka, anytime Mexico and USA played — the brewery was “packed to the gills” with fans overflowing from the watch party on Pine Avenue.

On other match days, McCall said sales were still 15-20% higher than usual.

Restaurants and bars throughout Los Angeles also saw a similar boost from the games.

Data gathered from Long Beach’s online survey will help the city hone its approach for the Olympics and “ensure that the games are available to everyone in Long Beach in some capacity,” Devereaux said.

City staff also plan to host in-person meetings and events in various neighborhoods to get more tailored feedback, Devereaux said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

In Koreatown, a discarded chair or mattress can quickly snowball into a larger pile of trash and debris. 

It’s one reason Los Angeles is launching a dedicated cleanup crew to address the neighborhood’s persistent illegal dumping problem.

The Koreatown Youth and Community Center will operate the rapid response team, expected to launch in September, under a one-year contract with Council District 10. The three-person crew will remove bulky items such as furniture, appliances, electronic waste and other illegally dumped trash from the neighborhood.

The rapid response team will not participate in homeless encampment sweeps. If they encounter bulky items near an encampment, they will notify the city’s sanitation department, according to Pablo Cardoso, director of environmental services at the nonprofit KYCC.

Koreatown logged 17,429 illegal dumping service requests over the past year, according to an analysis of MyLA311 data by Crosstown.

Among the city’s 116 neighborhoods and districts, Koreatown ranked second in illegal dumping service requests, trailing only Van Nuys.

Koreatown’s high population density makes the neighborhood a priority for the targeted cleanup effort, according to officials.

“Given how densely populated Koreatown is, we are launching this targeted pilot program to enhance local maintenance efforts specifically for this community,” Council District 10 spokesperson Devyn Bakewell said.

The council office approached KYCC earlier this year about operating the program, Cardoso said. Officials did not immediately provide the full cost of the program.

Crew members will work eight-hour shifts Monday through Friday, focusing on major corridors bounded by Olympic Boulevard, Pico Boulevard, Western Avenue and Venice Boulevard. Council District 10 will direct crews to priority locations and respond to residents’ requests for service.

“I’m sure you’ve driven around Koreatown and seen bulky items just everywhere,” Cardoso said.

From April through December 2025, the neighborhood logged 12,640 illegal dumping service requests, according to the latest available MyLA311 data compiled by Crosstown. During that same period, the intersection of Fourth Street and New Hampshire Avenue received 206 reports — the highest total for any single location in the city.

Tam Phan, a Koreatown resident who has volunteered with No Harm KTLA since 2022, said her group regularly encounters illegally dumped furniture and other debris during its twice-monthly neighborhood cleanups.

Until recently, volunteers met at 6th Street and Kenmore Avenue. But after that area became noticeably cleaner, they moved to other parts of Koreatown, including around Wilshire Boulevard, Western Avenue and Vermont Avenue.

“We’ve noticed there are lots of stray trash, sometimes food waste that’s fermenting in the sun and lots of furniture that people leave outside their apartments that’s been there for quite a while,” Phan said.

Volunteers typically bring trash bags during cleanups, but recently started bringing large rolling bins to collect more waste. When they come across bulky items they can’t haul away, Phan said they report them through the city’s 311 system.

Once a pile of trash appears on the sidewalk in Koreatown, it’s common for more to follow, according to residents.

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Kristen Muller

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The LA Local

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Phan said she hopes the rapid response team will help address the problem.

“I think most people think it’s the norm to leave something out and the city will miraculously show up and clean it up,” she said. “As the weeks go by, we see the same item there.”

While KYCC’s litter abatement crews have occasionally removed bulky items, Cardoso said this will be the nonprofit’s first crew dedicated exclusively to that work.

“I think this is something that is absolutely needed,” he said. “There’s a lot of illegal dumping that goes on out there and this will be an asset to Koreatown.”

As part of the partnership, KYCC is recruiting local residents to staff the crew. Bakewell said local hiring was a priority to ensure the team is familiar with the community it will serve.

While the current contract runs for one year, Cardoso said KYCC hopes the pilot becomes a permanent resource for the neighborhood.

Tracking sharks off the California coast is a full-time job. One program that does that is on the brink of losing its funding, even as they want to help track sharks during the 2028 Summer Olympics.

The Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach recently announced a plea for private contributions to fund another year of research and data collection focused on keeping the public safe.

The plan leading up to the 2028 Summer Olympics is to create a tracking system specific enough to share real-time monitoring information with local lifeguards through state-of-the-art autonomous boat and drone technology.

“There are going to be Olympic events in Long Beach Harbor, down in San Clemente – there are white sharks in all those places,” said Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab, highlighting the importance of the tools not only for athletes, but for the public also visiting from all over the world.

“Lifeguards will be scrambling for monitoring data, and they won’t have it if we run out of money,” Lowe explained.

In 2019, the lab’s Shark Safety program began after it received nearly $4 million from the state to set up a research program to tag white sharks and use drones to monitor them from the air, while using new EDNA technology to measure their presence in the water.

“That money was scheduled to last 5 years; we made it last 6,” Lowe said. “Last year we tried to get state money back, but we were told ‘the budget’s too bad, we can’t fund you this year.’”

State Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach put in a request this year for $1.7 million in NOAA funding. “The funds requested for FY 2026–27 represents the immediate need to prevent program reductions as existing funding expires and to maintain continuity of operations,” said Strickland in his budget request. The lab’s annual operating budget is around $1 million, and the hope was that the extra funding could expand the program to Monterey Bay.

Since Strickland’s request was denied from this year’s budget, the lab’s funding is set to run out in September. Going a year without funding would be detrimental to the program’s support system, Lowe said. He says half of the budget goes toward the salaries and training of highly experienced and educated technicians, required to keep the program moving.

The lab monitors sharks up and down the California coastline.

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Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab

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Roughly $700,000 worth of equipment is set up in the ocean, monitoring around 260 white sharks from Morro Bay to San Diego. “That’s a lot of money in the water that we have to constantly maintain and download… but it provides huge amounts of data, and we share that data with everybody,” said Lowe.

Lowe is also worried about the potential crisis local beaches may face in the event of an incident such as a shark bite, as the public may be dissuaded from visiting a beach following an incident.

Lowe sees education as a crucial way to mitigate that risk and raise awareness. The Shark Lab created summer outreach programs led by undergraduate students that visit beaches along the coast, teaching beach safety surrounding marine life and risks like rip currents.

“We’ve teamed up with psychologists to look at people’s perceptions, and we’ve teamed up with an economist to look at what those costs really are,” Lowe explained.

“These are all projects with the goal of keeping both people and sharks safe,” Lowe said. “We just need help. We need financial help.”

This article was originally published by the Long Beach Post, an LAist partner newsroom.