USC ignored complaints of toxic chemicals in building

Good morning. It’s Friday, and we’d recommend checking out Annenberg Media’s interactive guide to the Festival of Books. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

USC ignored repeated complaints about the presence of toxic chemicals in the basement of a School of Cinematic Arts building — until a student was hospitalized for chemical inhalation. The smell was originally thought to stem from a gas leak, but was later determined to come from a bucket of drain cleaner fluid left unattended. Chemicals in that fluid are known to cause respiratory irritation.

Jennifer Nehrer / Daily Trojan

The LA Police Department suspended a bomb squad member who put too many fireworks in a containment vessel to be detonated, setting off a blast that tore apart a South LA neighborhood in 2021. An investigation found that the officer weighed the explosives “by hand,” mistaking 16.5 pounds for 42. The containment vessel’s capacity was 33 pounds.

Josh Cain / Los Angeles Daily News

California lawmakers voted to protect sexual assault survivors from retaliatory lawsuits in a bill that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill protects comments about sexual assault or harassment against defamation lawsuits so long as the allegations aren’t knowingly false or reckless, and was written in reaction to a 2017 case where a former state lawmaker sued a woman over her sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Sophie Austin / Associated Press

A federal judge refused to approve a settlement to a lawsuit that accused LA County and the city of LA of failing the homeless population. The judge questioned whether the county’s terms of the settlement — which would involve opening over 1,500 new beds in residential facilities for people with severe mental illnesses at risk of homelessness — are anything but the “bare minimum.”

Rebecca Ellis / Los Angeles Times

Two California men who spent 17 years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of attempted murder were declared innocent and will be awarded $140 for every day they spent in prison, or about $900,000. Dupree Glass and Juan Rayford were 17 and 18 respectively when they were accused of being involved in a Lancaster shooting that a gang member, who’s serving a life sentence in an unrelated case, would later confess to.

Christopher Weber / Associated Press

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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