Today's top stories:
1. The man accused of starting a massive warehouse fire in Ontario remains behind bars after a judge denied his request for bail during a preliminary hearing earlier this week.
2. Two of California's largest courts are testing an AI tool that can do a lot of the same work as a legal assistant.
Right now, judges are mainly using this AI clerk for civil cases. But documents obtained by our partner…CalMatters…show …in the future, it could be used in criminal cases…where the stakes are much higher.
3. This week, the FBI served a search warrant at the GKN Aerospace plant in Orange County. That's the facility where a near-explosion triggered an evacuation of more than 50-thousand residents last month.
Now, a report from our partner, CalMatters, has found multiple facilities across the state also store the chemical that nearly caused that disaster.
4. California's first-in-the-nation fast food council…which can set standards on wages and guidelines for working conditions…has not met in over a year.
About 20-percent of California's fast food workers are immigrants…and this stall in the council's activity has coincided with a full year of immigration raids across the state.
