Allyson Escobar

Becoming his witnesses: Reaching young adult Cathol...

Growing up half black and half Filipino, Asia Jackson was not always comfortable in her own skin.

Living carefree and car-free is what the Orange County Transportation Authority’s latest Measure M-funded project — called OC Streetcar — hopes to do for county residents, commuters and tourists.

Driving down Long Beach Boulevard, on the corner of Bixby Road, one cannot miss SteelCraft. The open-air style urban eatery, built entirely of repurposed shipping containers from the nearby Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, is both colorful and inviting. “The concept started with the desire to create a gathering space here in the Bixby Knolls community, over really good food. It seems like a simple idea, but we wanted to create it in a brick and mortar, which really fit the distinct, diverse culture of our city.”

"We need to have spaces that are safe for women — especially immigrants — to engage, where they're not being oppressed or judged. It's time for us to have either our own mosque, or to have a different configuration than the ones that exist," said Rabi'a Keeble, founder of the Qal'bu Maryam Women's Mosque in Berkeley, CA.

Costa Mesa photographer and business consultant Don Murray, 56, started taking landscape photos with his Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, hoping to push the boundaries of smartphone photography to mirror the high-quality, vibrant images of expensive digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras.

Labobatory in San Gabriel hopes to stand out among the threshold, with its custom craft boba and alcoholic drinks. “Boba has improved pretty significantly over the years, but there has yet to be true innovation … and that’s what I’m trying to do,” said 28-year-old Elton Keung, the owner and self-titled “BobaMaster” behind the new Labobatory in San Gabriel, CA.

For many families in the 1940s, having a family member with a developmental disorder — such as autism, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, and genetic and intellectual disabilities — often meant putting their loved ones in state hospitals and institutions. Parents were left with no other choice — especially without the proper resources, education, support groups and disability centers of today.

Sometimes, the greatest life experiences can happen in the littlest of towns. That’s what Leila Sansour, filmmaker of the 2014 documentary ‘Open Bethlehem,’ discovered about the past five years of creating and campaigning in her hometown of Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
While exploring the magnitude of the historic event over 2,000 years ago, Sansour’s film also intimately documents what’s happening in the little town of Bethlehem today.

In a twist of coincidence, Helen Wall has turned 100 the same year that her century plant has bloomed.

Attendees were invited to think about global solidarity and embracing full trust in God, who holds the world in his hands — aptly setting the theme for the Religious Ed Congress morning keynote given by Msgr. Raymond G. East, pastor of St. Teresa of Avila Parish in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Downtown Los Angeles was a place of celebration, farewells and well wishes, as religious, deacons and lay faithful from across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles gathered for an evening send-off Mass for Auxiliary Bishop Oscar A. Solis on Feb. 1.