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By Tomoki Chien
NEWSLETTER EDITOR

Good morning. Here are the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Fentanyl deaths soared 1,280% between 2016 and 2021 in LA County, a Department of Public Health report found. Black people died at disproportionately higher rates, which some experts have suggested could be tied to racial inequities in access to naloxone, an overdose reversal drug.

Emily Alpert Reyes and Rebecca Ellis / Los Angeles Times

2.

The University of California reached tentative agreements with a quarter of its 48,000 striking academic workers. Still, those workers are expected to stay on the picket line until the contract — which would make 7,000 of the postdoctoral students the highest paid in the country — is ratified possibly next week.

Nanette Asimov / San Francisco Chronicle

3.

LA police served several search warrants as they seek to determine who recorded the infamous leaked conversation in which city council members made racist remarks. In California, it’s illegal to record a conversation without the consent of all parties involved — a crime that can be prosecuted as either a felony or misdemeanor.

Richard Winton / Los Angeles Times

4.

USC students, many of them Chinese nationals, held a fiery rally on Tuesday night calling for an end to Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy while chanting “liberty or death.” The protest ran parallel to a nationwide uproar in China sparked by an apartment fire in Xinjiang that killed 10 — which some suspect turned deadly because residents were locked in their homes due to COVID lockdown controls.

Jonathan Martin / Annenberg Media

5.

Fourteen Northern California priests were accused of sexually abusing children in lawsuits this week. The suits came as the three-year window set by Assembly Bill 218 — which temporarily tossed the statute of limitations for victims of long-ago child sexual abuse — nears its close.

John Woolfolk / The Mercury News

You’re all caught up. Thanks for reading Morning, Trojan, and have a good day. Anna Hsu copy edited this newsletter.

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