Candace Payne, I love you.

I’ve watched you laugh, and laugh, and laugh about 10 times so far today, and you make me cry along with you every time.

Thank you. It’s not often we get to experience someone else’s true, honest, unbridled joy—there’s not one thing that feels faked about Candace’s Facebook post.

Last time I checked, 76.9 million people had watched Candace’s viral video, now being called “happy Chewbacca” by many folks on the “Internet Webs.”

Seriously, this is the best gift I could have gotten today, and it is the type of thing that really feeds the soul and makes the fire burn a little bit brighter in that happy place we all have.

Viral videos have never really done anything for me. Many of them either feel rehearsed, or get a laugh through some form of cruelty, whether it’s some inexplicable injury or at the expense of someone’s looks, speech, disability, what have...

I doesn’t matter what you or I think about abortion. Women have the rule of law on their side and have since Roe v. Wade.

Yet it does matter what Donald Trump thinks.

He could very well be your (our, unfortunately) president if the planets align in his favor, and commonsense and decency drop off the face of his flat earth.

He could be the man who wins the ability to nominate an ultra conservative to any potential Supreme Court vacancy, fill open spots on federal appellate courts across the country, and ultimately seek to find a way to “punish” the women he so seems to detest on so many fronts.

Isn’t the very nature of abortion–the physical and psychological aftermath–punishment enough? Even the most pro-choice of women do not take it lightly. Regardless of abortion being a right or whether one believes it is right, it’s a decision that weighs heavily on the psyche, the body and...

For five years El Centro Regional Medical Center has been on shaky ground in its efforts to become earthquake-proof when two prior attempts to secure tens of millions of dollars to do the work stalled.

What’s more, that inability to move forward on funding the state-mandated seismic construction projects had impacts on affiliation talks with Scripps Health of San Diego and Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District, according to ECRMC officials.

But those hurdles, however, appear to be behind the hospital.

A third attempt at securing lending through revenue bonds for new construction to meet the state’s deadline five years from now has been approved, clearing the way for stepped-up affiliation efforts, according to hospital officials.

Last week the El Centro City Council convened as a special financing authority to sign off on seeking $50 million in bonds — $25 million in new construction...

A man who spent three days in a San Diego-area ICU with a brain bleed after he was beaten unconscious by James Paul Diaz Jr. said he warned prosecutors in 2014 that Diaz would eventually kill someone.

Diaz Jr. now stands accused of murder and attempted murder in a shooting rampage that took place through the streets of Banning on Saturday, Sept. 26, killing two people and injuring three.

Diaz Jr., 34, of Hemet, appeared in court briefly Thursday, but he did not enter a plea. His arraignment was postponed for the second day in a row, this time until the end of the month at the request of his newly appointed public defender.

He was charged Wednesday with 10 crimes, including two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Paul “Joey” Lesh, 66, and Benjamin Franklin “Benny” Johnson, 34, both of Banning. He is eligible for the death penalty, but the district attorney has not decided...

Each Wednesday in July, Brent Powell can be found relaxing in a comfy lawn chair under a shaded canopy, staking claim to the front row for that evening’s free concert.

More than 12 hours earlier – around 5 a.m. last week – Powell began to set up off the left side of the stage in Beaumont’s Stewart Park in anticipation of Martha Davis and the Motels, the third free concert in this year’s annual summer concert series.

It was around 2 p.m. Wednesday, and Powell was waiting for as many as 20 of his friends to show up, a loose band of locals and beyond who have met up through the concerts and have continued their camaraderie via a Facebook group aptly named the “Front Row Crew.”

The group is only a couple of years old, Powell said, but he has been a fixture, front and center, for at least eight years.

“It’s something that people look forward to every year,” said the longtime Beaumont...

(This story is a sidebar, or a related piece, to a story of senior hunger and food insecurity.)

Monica De Leon spends her 9-to-5 day at the Imperial Valley Food Bank signing up some of Imperial County’s neediest for CalFRESH, the state’s answer to food stamps.

Not senior citizens and the disabled, though, arguably some of the neediest and most vulnerable among us.

In her off hours, De Leon has become a vocal advocate for getting seniors CalFRESH, or at least adjusting state payments to get those on fixed incomes a bump in their finances.

“The reason I got into this is because I see a lot of seniors coming to me and saying, ‘I’m hungry. I only have enough to pay for my medicines or my rent. What am I supposed to do?’”

The growing population of seniors living in poverty — 18.8 percent of the 20,400 elder population in Imperial County as of 2012 — are barred from CalFRESH, even though...

Mariano Arquieta is diabetic. When he’s hungry, that can be a problem.

The disabled senior on a fixed income runs out of money by the third week of the month. With no money, comes no food; with no food, comes potentially dangerous blood sugar spikes.

“It goes up to 300 sometimes when I don’t eat,” said Arquieta, referring to life-threatening blood-sugar levels.

Arquieta hadn’t had a meal yet Thursday when he arrived at the monthly food distribution at Campesinos Unidos Inc. on the eastside of Brawley.

It wasn’t until around 2 in the afternoon when he finally received his bag of frozen diced carrots, a can of beef stew and various other items delivered in a box truck by the Imperial Valley Food Bank.

“I’m gonna go eat right now,” Arquieta said.

For seniors like Arquieta, not eating is a dicey proposition. Just a week earlier, during a similar distribution at Our Lady of Guadalupe...

Eric Brandt deals in the world of “boutique beef,” niche markets of custom cuts, specialized handling processes and animals that are raised and fed in different, more eco-friendly ways.

His company, One World Beef of Buena Park, which he owns with his wife, Tiffani, has made its name selling and marketing specialty American beef brands to domestic and international customers, while also helping import high-quality beef like Japanese wagyu to a more discerning American palate.

“I’ve always envisioned the beef industry much like the wine industry of 20 or 30 years ago — I feel that in today’s world, consumers want to know where their beef comes from,” said Brandt, also a managing partner of the family-owned Brandt Beef, one of those niche-market specialty brands his One World Beef represents.

Now, with the announcement this week that National Beef is selling its state-of-the-art Brawley...

Much of the furniture has been moved in. Staff has begun training. Doors were scheduled to open Thursday. But for now, the opening of Planned Parenthood’s new clinic is in limbo.

After weeks of back-and-forth between Planned Parenthood designers and El Centro city inspectors, the city attorney’s office informed Planned Parenthood this week that it would not receive its certificate of occupancy necessary to open its doors until some extensive issues are addressed, City Manager Ruben Duran said Thursday.

Following a fire inspection in March, it was found the building’s operation classification was incorrect, and requires what figures to be a costly fire-suppression system. Planned Parenthood officials see this as the red tape symbolic of the discrimination the organization has been facing of late.

This operational limbo could come with legal action against the city, Planned Parenthood...