Hannah Hagemann

The city councils of both Huntington Beach and Dana Point voted tonight to pursue legal action against the state of California to block Gov. Gavin Newsom's beach-closure order.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all beaches and state parks in Orange County to temporarily close on Thursday, after images in the news showed crowds gathering on beaches there and, according to Newsom, violating the state's physical distancing rules.

A California Police Chiefs Association memo sent Wednesday informed its members that Gov. Gavin Newsom will order all California beaches and state parks to close, effective Friday.

High temperatures drew large crowds to beaches along the California coastline over the weekend, and Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that photos of the packed shorelines show "what not to do."

That behavior could put the progress the state has made in battling the coronavirus pandemic in jeopardy, the governor warned at a news conference.

Coronavirus antibody tests have garnered attention from officials as a potential tool to evaluate people's immunity to the illness. But the majority of companies creating the tests have had little to no regulatory oversight, according to the chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.

Almost three months after LA basketball icon Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash, family members of four people who died in the crash are suing to hold the helicopter's owners liable in the deaths.

The two lawsuits, filed electronically on Sunday in Los Angeles Superior Court, allege that Island Express Helicopter, Inc., and its owner Island Express Holding Corp., were negligent and careless, behavior that was a "substantial factor" in the crash.

A federal judge in California on Monday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to "identify and track" every person in ICE detention at an elevated risk of complications from COVID-19 and to consider releasing those detainees, regardless of their legal status.

Risk factors identified by the court include pregnant women, people older than 55 and those with chronic health conditions.

As global cases of coronavirus top 2 million, and people across the world lose loved ones to the virus without being given the chance for final farewells, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said at a press conference Wednesday that instead of death toll numbers, he's thinking more about those lost moments.

"When you talk about where the numbers are going on this, what I'm really thinking about is all those people who aren't going to have a chance to say goodbye. "

A Pew Research Center survey conducted this month among 4,917 U.S. adults found that 27% of black people personally knew someone who was hospitalized with or died from COVID-19, compared to just 1 in 10 white and Hispanic people.

The results highlight how coronavirus is disproportionately affecting lower-income people of color.

Citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that all Americans wear face coverings in public, starting Tuesday Starbucks will require all employees to wear one at work.

Pope Francis was the sole celebrant at Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the commencement of Holy Week, and the service took place without a congregation, which the Vatican press office said was a historic first for the Roman Catholic Church.

Almost exactly 100 years ago, one-third of the world's population found itself infected in a deadly viral pandemic. It was the Spanish flu. Its death toll is unknown but is generally considerd to be more than 50 million.

"The death rate in 1918 was very high ... somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2%," Nancy Bristow, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., told NPR.

Some reseachers have estimated a death rate as high as 10 to 20%.

In recent weeks doctors and nurses have reported dire shortages of protective gear; on the Cape Cod peninsula in Massachusetts, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, hospital workers say they're being forced to reuse N-95 masks. In New York, the current epicenter of the U.S.

Commercial fishermen in the U.S. who have already faced challenges in recent years to make it in an increasingly globalized and regulated industry, are now struggling to find customers during the coronavirus crisis.

"This is totally unprecedented. This is the biggest crisis to hit the fishing industry ever, no question about that," Noah Oppenheim, executive director of The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations told NPR in a phone interview. The federation is a trade association representing commercial fishermen along the West Coast.