Category Archives: California

Workers accuse Google of ‘tantrum’ after 50 fired over Israel contract protest

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Tech giant fired number of people who protested against $1.2bn Project Nimbus, which supports Israeli military and government

Google has been accused of throwing a “tantrum” after sacking more than 50 workers in response to a protest over the company’s military ties to the Israeli government – firings that have shone a light on a controversial project and long-simmering tensions between staff and management.

The workers were sacked following protests at Google offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, organized by No Tech for Apartheid – an alliance of Google and Amazon workers who have been protesting against a $1.2bn contract with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus that they claim will make it “easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land”.

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Columbia University calls for inquiry into leadership as student protests sweep 40 campuses

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Professors at Emory University arrested as campuses follow Columbia’s lead in demanding ceasefire and divestment

At least 40 pro-Palestine protest camps have arisen across US campuses following Columbia University’s example earlier this month, as the New York school’s senate called for an investigation into its leadership, the New York Times reported.

While many remain provocative though peaceful, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment by their institutions from companies with ties to Israel, hundreds of students and outside protesters have been arrested, and there have been some fierce clashes with police.

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Crews battle fire threatening longest wooden pier on US west coast

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Over 100 firefighters, 30 lifeguards and 32 police officers called to help as flames tore through restaurant at end of California pier

A historic southern California pier caught fire on Thursday, burning for several hours until firefighters battling the blaze from boats were able to extinguish the flames.

Flames tore through a restaurant at the end of the Oceanside Pier, the longest wooden pier on the US west coast, and heavily damaged the closed diner and a neighboring business.

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Harvey Weinstein: what does ruling mean for California rape conviction?

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Mogul’s lawyers say decision in New York will strengthen appeal in Los Angeles but victims confident guilty verdict will be upheld

Harvey Weinstein was already expected to spend the remainder of his life in prison for crimes in New York when a Los Angeles jury found him of guilty of rape and sexual assault in 2022 and he was sentenced to an additional 16 years.

But on Thursday New York’s top court overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for two sex crimes and found he should receive a new trial, and the California case has taken on even greater significance.

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USC cancels main commencement ceremony amid Gaza protests

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Move made after more than 90 demonstrators arrested on campus and university cancels pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s speech

The University of Southern California (USC) has canceled its main stage graduation ceremony, citing new safety measures as student protests over the Israel-Gaza war have surged on the campus.

USC is one of many campuses across the country that have become hubs for student demonstrations against the war, with hundreds of arrests nationwide as tensions escalate. Police arrested dozens of students and activists at USC this week on trespassing charges.

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Suit says California fertility clinic implanted destroyed embryos in patients

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Lawsuit claims that clinic staff mistakenly cleaned incubator with lethal solution, destroying embryos before implanting them

Several couples are suing a southern California fertility center over claims that the facility staff destroyed their embryos in a “toxic incubator” and later implanted these embryos into the women who sought their services. So far 11 couples have sued Tennessee-based Ovation Fertility’s Newport Beach office, with more lawsuits expected to come down the line.

Ovation clinic staff is alleged to have mistakenly cleaned an incubator that held the embryos of dozens of patients awaiting implementation with hydrogen peroxide instead of the usual sterile solution. The use of peroxide created a “toxic incubator” that killed the embryos that were then transferred into the plaintiffs between 18 January and 30 January, none of whom became pregnant.

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Relief as San Francisco public toilet finally opens – and not for $1.7m after all

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Bathroom in Noe Valley neighborhood, which became focus of ire for reported $1.7m cost, actually came in at about $200,000

San Francisco made international headlines in 2022 when news broke that a project to build a public restroom in a town square would cost $1.7m. This weekend the toilet affair finally came to an end as the city celebrated its newest lavatory.

Residents gathered for a toilet-themed party in the Noe Valley town square on Sunday that was designed to poke fun at the whole saga and celebrate the long-awaited bathroom, which ended up costing far less than the initial price tag.

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Daring, audacious – but who did it? LA $30m cash heist has it all except clues

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The robbery from a GardaWorld warehouse on Easter Sunday was like something from a movie – and police appear to be puzzled by how it went down

It was a Tinseltown heist that belonged in a movie.

A gang of audacious thieves struck at night, dodged security measures like ghosts in the night and disappeared with a staggering $30m in cash in a record-breaking robbery that played out for real on Los Angeles’s streets, not the fevered script of a thriller writer.

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California officers charged in killing of man held face-down for five minutes

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Three police officers charged with involuntary manslaughter in death of Mario Gonzalez, whom they held down on the ground

Three California police officers have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 killing of a man they restrained in a prone position for five minutes until he lost consciousness.

Pamela Price, Alameda county district attorney, announced the charges on Thursday, three years after the asphyxia death of Mario Gonzalez, 26. The officers, Eric McKinley, James Fisher and Cameron Leahy, face up to four years in prison.

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Los Angeles police officer who killed girl, 14, in department store will not face charges

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Officer shot and killed both a man who was attacking customers and Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was hiding in a dressing room

A Los Angeles police officer who fatally shot a 14-year-old girl inside a clothing store in 2021 will not face charges, the California attorney general announced on Wednesday.

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was shopping with her mother at a north Hollywood Burlington Coat Factory on 23 December 2021 when the LAPD entered to apprehend a man suspected of attacking customers in the store. When officer William Dorsey Jones Jr fired three rounds at the man, Valentina was in a nearby dressing room with her mother praying and was killed by Jones’s gunfire.

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California cracks down on farm region’s water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

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Region near Tulare Lake has been put on ‘probation’ as overpumping of water has caused faster sinking of ground

Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.

The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, which includes roughly 837-sq-miles in the rural San Joaquin valley, on “probation” in accordance with a sustainable groundwater use law passed a decade ago. Large water users will face fees and state oversight of their pumping.

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Backlash as USC cancels valedictorian’s speech over support for Palestine

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Asna Tabassum says university is ‘succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice’ after decision to scrap speech

The University of Southern California is facing intense backlash for the decision to cancel the valedictorian speech of a Muslim student at the commencement ceremony in May, a decision which the student has criticized as being silenced by anti-Palestinian hatred for her views on human rights.

In a missive to the USC community, the university’s provost, Andrew Guzman, wrote that the Los Angeles university took the unprecedented step of canceling Asna Tabassum’s planned speech because the “alarming tenor” of reactions to her selection as valedictorian – along with “the intensity of feelings” surrounding Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Gaza – had created “substantial risks relating to security”.

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California pilot and his dog survive plane crash after swimming to shore

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The Piper PA-32, a single engine plane, crashed off the coast across from Trump’s LA golf club in Ranchos Palos Verdes

A pilot and his dog survived a plane crash off the California coast, swimming to shore where they were met by authorities responding to the incident.

A 911 call came in on Sunday afternoon at 5.22pm about a plane crashing into the ocean off the coast across from the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, in Ranchos Palos Verdes, the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department said on Tuesday.

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Revealed: how companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps

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Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across the state – and unhoused people allege poor treatment

This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations with support from the Wayne Barrett Project

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California, Silicon Valley’s largest city. As jets roared overhead, garbage trucks and police squad cars encircled Ortega’s hand-built shelter. Heavy machinery operators stood by for the signal to bulldoze Ortega’s camp.

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Ex-US marine sentenced to nine years for California abortion clinic attack

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Chance Brannon firebombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022 and had plans to attack a power station and a Pride celebration

A former US marine was sentenced on Monday to nine years in prison for firebombing a southern California Planned Parenthood clinic in 2022, federal prosecutors said.

Chance Brannon, 24, pleaded guilty in November to four felony counts, including malicious destruction of property by fire as well as explosives and intentional damage to a reproductive health services facility.

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US federal women’s prison plagued by rampant staff sexual abuse to close

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Since 2021, eight employees of Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, charged with assaulting female prisoners

The US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) is closing a federal women’s prison in California that has been plagued by rampant staff sexual abuse of incarcerated residents.

Colette Peters, the BoP director, said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday that Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin was “not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility”.

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Google blocking links to California news outlets from search results

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Tech giant is protesting proposed law that would require large online platforms to pay ‘journalism usage fee’

Google has temporarily blocked links from local news outlets in California from appearing in search results in response to the advancement of a bill that would require tech companies to pay publications for links that articles share. The change applies only to some people using Google in California, though it is not clear how many.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) would require large online platforms to pay a “journalism usage fee” for linking to news sites based in the Golden state. The bill cleared the California assembly in 2023. To become law, it would need to pass in the Senate before being signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom.

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Stockton to pay $6m to settle lawsuit over man who died during arrest

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Shayne Sutherland, 29, died in California after being held face down, a year before a law banned maneuvers that lead to asphyxia

The city of Stockton, California, has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Shayne Sutherland, a 29-year-old who died after being held face down by police officers in 2020, for $6m, the family’s attorneys announced Thursday.

Sutherland’s mother, Karen Sutherland, said that nothing can replace her son, but that the settlement feels like an acknowledgement of responsibility from Stockton police, which she had been hoping for.

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Woman threw daughters, one who died, on to freeway after killing partner, say LA police

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Danielle Johnson reportedly tossed infant and nine-year-old out of moving SUV after killing Jaelen Chaney, and then died by suicide

An infant girl and her nine-year-old sister who were found on a busy Los Angeles-area freeway were thrown from a moving SUV, and investigators believe their mother was responsible and died by suicide after also killing her partner, authorities said Tuesday.

The eight-month-old was pronounced dead at the scene early on Monday, and the older girl was taken to the hospital for moderate injuries, according to law enforcement officials.

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US victim wrongly locked up for years vindicated as identity thief pleads guilty

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William Woods was sent to a mental institution because Matthew Keirans – who faces 32 years in prison – stole his name for decades

William Woods was homeless and living in Los Angeles when he learned that someone was racking up debt using his name.

But when he reported his concerns to the branch manager of a bank, he wound up spending nearly two years locked up, accused of identity theft himself. As he continued to insist he was Woods in a desperate effort to clear his name, he was even sent to a state mental hospital and drugged, court records show.

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