Heavenly Gospel from Los Angeles

A wildfire that was sparked in the hills north of Los Angeles has now reached neighborhoods. Firefighters are scrambling to contain the out-of-control blaze as dozens of homes have been destroyed.

Singer Rihanna was among the stars who descended on Los Angeles' fabled Hollywood Boulevard on Thursday night for the world premiere of "Queen & Slim," a thriller about a black couple on the run after they kill a white policeman in self-defense.

For most outsiders, Los Angeles is all about Hollywood, palm trees and sunny skies. But the huge metropolis that is home to nearly four million people is also the largest urban oil field in the country. Hundreds of active oil wells sit in densely populated and mostly low-income neighbourhoods of the county, butting up against schools, homes, parks, shopping malls or cemeteries.

Sam Mendes sees the young WWI soldiers in his latest film "1917", a one-shot extravaganza, as examples for today's Europeans and especially British people, at the Hollywood premiere of the movie.

The 26th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards concluded on Sunday, with top actors and directors taking home wins.

Rap mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs has called in the police after one of his Los Angeles homes was burgled.

Officially, there are no "standby" lines for Covid-19 vaccines in Los Angeles. But over the past few days, large crowds of mostly young people have shown up in front of vaccine centers across the city, including Kedren Health in South LA. The word has spread that at the end of each day, doctors have to find people to receive the last doses that would otherwise go to waste, once out of the fridge. An opportunity for vaccine chasers who cannot yet get their dose through "official" lines. Outside the hospital, Dr Jerry Abraham said: "There are times when the appointment line is down, and we have expiring doses of vaccine, and I refuse to let a drop go to waste. Nothing, no vaccine will ever be discarded if it is given to us at Kedren."

Universal Studios Hollywood reopens to impatient theme park fans in Los Angeles, after remaining closed for more than a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The education board for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second biggest in the US, votes that children aged 12 or over who attend public schools in the city will have to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by the start of next year. This is the first such requirement by a major education board in the US.

With its Terminator, Wizard of Oz and E.T. props on show, The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is set to receive its first visitors on September 30. Upon opening, the museum -- run by the Oscar-awarding Academy -- will be the largest film-dedicated museum in North America.

From Tom Hanks at Los Angeles' new film museum, via Bali, where we meet a young climate change activist, and Paris for the blockbuster exhibition of the year, Eve Jackson brings you the week's culture news.

Hundreds of truck drivers wait for dozens of ships to unload their containers in California as the White House announces that it will now work 24 hours a day in an attempt clear the backlog.