Today’s Headlines: Mass shooting is limited by ‘heroic’ bar patrons

Hello, it’s Monday, Nov. 21, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

Patrons of a Colorado nightclub subdued a shooter

Authorities said a gunman who opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado on Saturday — killing five and injuring 25 — was subdued by patrons who hit him with his own gun.

The motive of the attacker who opened fire at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo., isn’t yet clear, but the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.

“At least two heroic people” confronted the gunman and stopped the shooting, said the city’s police chief. “We owe them a great debt of thanks.”

Also: Members of the LGBTQ community say Club Q was “the only place we felt safe.” Then a gunman opened fire.

‘We got really lucky’: How California escaped a destructive fire season in 2022

Despite months of warnings fueled by extreme heat and drought-desiccated conditions, California’s deadly fire season ended with remarkably little area burned, with just 362,403 acres scorched in 2022, compared with more than 2.5 million acres the year prior.

Standing in a field of dry, brown grass in Napa, Gov. Gavin Newsom and several state officials gathered to mark what they described as “the end of peak wildfire season” in most of California, attributing the year’s relatively small acreage to massive investments in forest health and resilience projects and an expansion of the state’s firefighting fleet.

But although the worst of the season may be behind us, experts noted that the remarkably reduced fire activity is probably less a factor of strategy than good fortune.

A year in, the Taliban has escalated its war against girls’ education in Afghanistan

Women and girls across Afghanistan are grappling with the Taliban’s hard-line vision for the country and its plan to turn back the clock not only on their education but also their very presence in public life.

The group claims it has no interest in restoring its 1990s regime, when girls were banned from school and almost all jobs, and endured corporal punishment for violations such as not wearing a burqa in public. Yet every few months, new decrees are issued on which careers women may have, how far they may travel without a male guardian and what they may wear outside the home. One edict said the most devout women wouldn’t leave the house at all, unless there’s need.

In a Hollywood stunner, Robert Iger will return to head Disney as Bob Chapek exits

Former longtime Disney chief Iger will return to lead the entertainment giant, the Disney board announced. The move comes four months after the board gave Chapek three more years atop the company, citing strong leadership during the pandemic.

Chapek’s leadership has come under scrutiny after a series of missteps, including a legal battle with star Scarlett Johansson and more recently a public spat with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which prompted the governor to target laws that favor Disney’s business in the state.

OUR MUST-READS FROM THE WEEKEND

For Black Angelenos, the election of Karen Bass brought joy in a divisive time. But they want results. For many Black residents across Los Angeles, Bass’ ceiling-shattering victory over billionaire businessman Rick Caruso was both awe-inspiring and cathartic. But while they are cheering her on, they will also be the first to hold her accountable.

NASA’s going back to the moon and must confront a familiar enemy: dust. If the space agency ever establishes a lunar base — a long-term project advanced Wednesday with the launch of Artemis I — it has to figure out how to deal with lunar dust. The fine, jagged, sharp-edged grains pose major problems for astronauts and human-made objects. At the Swamp Works research lab at Kennedy Space Center, researchers use tons of simulated moon dust to find solutions. Over the years, the team has experimented with ways to use lunar dust and gravel to build landing pads.

New clues in the Brink’s heist mystery? Video showed “suspicious” men at a jewelry show. Dozens of exhibitors were packing up jewelry worth tens of millions of dollars after the July 10 expo when a suspicious man in a windbreaker and surgical mask was spotted and escorted out. Other suspicious men were seen in and around the San Mateo County Event Center. The incident, and the appearance of other suspicious men in and around the event center that day, would take on increased significance just hours later when a Brink’s big rig transporting the wares of jewelers who’d participated in the show was burgled at a Grapevine truck stop.

CALIFORNIA

The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, transcribed and annotated by our experts. The bombshell recording has thrown L.A. politics into chaos. What was really being discussed? L.A. Times reporters and columnists pick it apart, line by line.

UC Berkeley and Stanford joined top law schools boycotting the U.S. News & World Report rankings. The schools say the ratings’ methodology penalizes schools that encourage public service and low costs. It was another blow to the influential ratings service after Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Georgetown also withdrew from participation.

This soccer-mad L.A. Latina has attended seven World Cups. Qatar will make it eight. Bertha Alicia Guzmán has spent a small fortune to go watch her beloved, eternally heartbreaking Mexico national team take part in soccer’s quadrennial showcase. Along the way she has made friends and collected memories from Brazil to Russia, South Africa to South Korea.

NATION-WORLD

Lawmakers urged action after a report of another Supreme Court leak. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said his panel was reviewing “serious allegations” that a former antiabortion leader knew in advance the outcome of a 2014 Supreme Court case involving healthcare coverage of contraception. The New York Times report followed the leak earlier this year of a draft opinion in the case in which the high court overturned Roe vs. Wade. That decision was written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is also the author of the majority opinion in the 2014 case at the center of the new report.

Despite pregnancy complications, abortions are being denied. Women with dangerous medical conditions are showing up in hospitals and doctors’ offices only to be denied the abortions that could help treat them. Some doctors in states with restrictive abortion laws say they’ve referred or suggested more patients go elsewhere than ever. Some women are facing harmful, potentially deadly delays.

As British voters cool on Brexit, the U.K. is softening its tone toward the European Union. The British government denied a report that it was seeking a “Swiss-style” relationship with the European Union that would remove many of the economic barriers erected by Brexit — even as it tried to improve ties with the bloc after years of acrimony.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

At 77, Neil Young is still a hippie at heart: “I feel a lot of hope.” With the release of his new Rick Rubin-produced album, “World Record,” Young talks the climate crisis, boycotting Spotify and the 50th anniversary of “Harvest.’’

Jay Leno is “handsome” and “happy” after suffering burns in a car fire, Tim Allen says. The comedian offered a positive update on Leno’s health after the former “Tonight Show” host suffered burn injuries in the fire at his Burbank garage.

“The Walking Dead” changed the course of the TV revolution. The series came to an end Sunday. Columnist Mary McNamara writes: “Though I, like many viewers, stopped watching several seasons ago (OK, pretty much when Glenn died), attention must be paid. ... ‘The Walking Dead’ is the last founding member of the 21 century’s television revolution. It leaves a popular culture and industry so different from the one it entered that it’s all but unrecognizable.”

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” extended its box-office reign in its second week of release. The film had $67 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates, while “She Said,” about the journalistic investigation into Harvey Weinstein, struggled in wide release.

BUSINESS

This former janitor is now a six-figure Etsy seller. How she does it. Helen Spallas has worn many hats. She was a private investigator, a janitor, a tax preparer, a paralegal. But she didn’t make six figures until she started selling on Etsy. Even though her shop is just 4 years old, it’s been among the top 1% of Etsy’s 7.7 million worldwide sellers. And, this year, she started a personal coaching business to help newbies navigate the massive craft site to make their stores stand out.

OPINION

Let’s ditch the label “people of color.” If Nury Martinez and the leaked City Council audio recordings have taught us anything in multicultural Los Angeles, writes columnist Sandy Banks, it’s that solidarity is an illusion.

How working remotely can bring workers closer together. Many organizations assume that because some parts of remote work — like interacting with colleagues — can feel harder to do remotely, return-to-office is the solution. But this isn’t borne out by the research, in large part because this just takes us back to a workplace model that wasn’t working.

SPORTS

News analysis: The World Cup kicked off with Ecuador blanking the host. Qatar became the first host country to lose a World Cup opener, writes The Times’ Kevin Baxter. But the night was about more than soccer. Qataris hope to prove the country is ready to become a major global player. The tournament, however, has been awash in controversy from the start, with intense criticism centered on the treatment of migrant workers, who toiled under appalling conditions building the stadiums and much of the World Cup infrastructure.

Matthew Stafford was evaluated for a concussion for the second time in three weeks. It seems unlikely the Rams will risk his health and play him next Sunday against the powerful Kansas City Chiefs. And, perhaps, the rest of the season. The Rams’ 27-20 loss to the Saints on Sunday put them on the brink of elimination from playoff contention.

Column: The bold title dream for Lincoln Riley and USC still can be a reality after the team’s win over UCLA. Unbelievably, after 11 games, Riley’s USC football team is in position to fulfill the wildest of expectations in the most extravagant of ways, writes Bill Plaschke. They can win a Pac-12 championship. They can win a national championship. Somewhat incredibly, actually living up to the histrionics surrounding the offseason hiring of Riley, they can make history.

ONLY IN L.A.

The Skating by the Sea rink in 2019.

(K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune)

We’ve found eight outdoor ice skating rinks around L.A. to help you glide into the holiday spirit. In a region where winter temperatures often rise above 80, we have no business being able to ice skate at will — but we can — writes The Times’ Christopher Reynolds. Even at the beach: Skating by the Sea is an ice rink at the Hotel del Coronado. From the rink, you can see the beach, the Pacific and the red-roofed hotel which goes back to the 1880s. Read more from our round-up.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Tourists stand at the edge of Skull Cave at the Lava Beds National Monument.

(Andrew Mariman / For The Times)

Ninety-seven years ago today, on Nov. 21, 1925, the Lava Beds National Monument opened. The Northern California site encompasses 46,000 acres just south of Tule Lake, The Times wrote in 2000, and includes hundreds of lava tubes, some filled with giant crystalline stalagmites.

“Lava Bed to Lure Autoists,” read a headline in the Dec. 20, 1925, Times. With the creation of the monument by executive order of President Coolidge, the report said, “this Golden State has another unique attraction to motoring tourists.” The beds “form a wonderland of fantastic and weird sights — underground rivers of ice, remarkable caves, crystal pools of cold water, relics and mute evidences of bloody warfare.”

At the lava beds, a band of Modocs, being forced from their historic homeland, held off an army that grew to 20 times their size for five months, from late 1872 to 1873.

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