More than 15 million people under winter advisory while several areas in midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms
More than 15 million people are under a winter advisory as of Tuesday, as several areas in the midwest and Great Plains face intense snowstorms, Axios reported.
Storm warnings are in effect across a dozen states, including parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota.
Continue reading...Kevin de León, who has resisted resigning after the debacle, was involved in an altercation in which he appears to push an organizer
Kevin de León, the embattled Los Angeles city council member involved in a racism scandal that threw city hall into upheaval, is facing criticism again after video footage captured him in a physical fight with an activist.
De León, who has resisted calls to resign, made his first in-person appearance at a council meeting in nearly two months on Friday. Hours later he was involved in an altercation at a holiday toy giveaway in which video appeared to show him shoving a local organizer.
Continue reading...Grey wolves from Oregon may now be thriving in California, after vanishing more than a century ago
In a year of environmental ups and downs, a hopeful story of recovery is afoot in California. A grey wolf pack gave birth to eight pups this spring, it was recently confirmed, offering signs of a remarkable comeback after wolves were wiped out in the state more than a century ago.
The births in the Whaleback wolf pack, based in northern California’s Siskiyou county, happened in the spring but were only confirmed by California’s department of fish and wildlife in November. They may be a sign that wolves who entered the state from Oregon several years ago are thriving.
Continue reading...Strike of 48,000 is largest in history of US higher education as some workers protest at offices of high-level university administrators
Tens of thousands of academic workers throughout the University of California are currently on their fourth week of striking for a new union contract and the situation is intensifying amid the threat of arrests after direct actions by some strikers.
The strike of 48,000 academic workers, including graduate workers, academic researchers, postdoctoral scholars and teaching assistants, began on 14 November and is the largest in the history of higher education in the US.
Continue reading...Los Angeles’ resident big cat will have his health assessed after recent attacks on two chihuahuas and roaming too close to homes
Los Angeles’s most famous mountain lion, known as P22, will be captured and studied in order to assess his health following recent attacks on two small dogs and close encounters with people near the park he calls home.
Wildlife officials made the announcement on Thursday and said in a statement that, following the evaluation, California department of fish and wildlife veterinarians and National Park Service biologists will determine the best next steps for the animal while also prioritizing the safety of the surrounding communities.
Continue reading...The proposed class-action lawsuit alleges that after the takeover, 57% of women were laid off compared with 47% of men
Twitter has been hit with another lawsuit in the wake of Elon Musk’s mass layoffs, with the latest legal action accusing the company of disproportionately targeting female employees for cuts.
The proposed class action, which was was filed late on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, said that after Twitter was taken over by Musk, the world’s richest person, it laid off 57% of its female workers compared with 47% of men.
Continue reading...The ceremony will be a nod to the barriers broken by the two most powerful women in California politics and beyond
US vice-president Kamala Harris will swear in Karen Bass as Los Angeles mayor, marking the historic election of the first Black woman to lead the second largest city in the country.
The swearing-in ceremony on Sunday will bring together two elected leaders who have repeatedly broken barriers in California politics and beyond. In 2020, Harris became the first woman, first Black person and first Asian person to be US vice- president. In 2008, as a California state assemblymember, Bass became the first Black woman to serve as the speaker of any US state legislature; she was elected to represent Los Angeles in the US congress in 2010 and later became chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Continue reading...Lawyer known for representing Stormy Daniels also ordered to pay $7m on top of time he is already serving
The incarcerated lawyer Michael Avenatti was sentenced in southern California on Monday to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $7m in restitution after admitting he cheated four of his clients out of millions of dollars.
The sentence should run consecutively to the five-year prison term he is already serving for separate convictions in New York, the US district judge James V Selna said during a hearing in Santa Ana, California.
Continue reading...In a deal, James Howard Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder after he was accidentally released from custody
The man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole her French bulldogs in Los Angeles last year has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for the high profile robbery that saw the star offer a $500,000 reward for the return of her pets.
James Howard Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery of dog walker Ryan Fischer, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder, the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office said on Monday.
Continue reading...Security footage shows animal drag child across lawn and sidewalk before father intervenes
A coyote grabbed and injured a two-year old girl outside her Los Angeles home in a daytime attack before her father chased the animal off, her family said.
Home security video obtained by KTLA-TV showed the animal grab and drag the toddler across her lawn and sidewalk, seconds after her father took her out of a car seat, set her down and turned back inside the vehicle to gather her toys. They had just arrived home from preschool.
Continue reading...The nuclear-capable B-21 Raider is set to become a key component in US’s effort to match the Asian country’s military build-up
The Pentagon unveiled its first new strategic bomber in more than 30 years on Friday, a nuclear-capable bat-wing plane that will become a central component of the US effort to counter China’s military build-up when it enters service around 2027.
Almost every aspect of the B-21 Raider is classified, but in a tightly-controlled unveiling at the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, currently home of Lockheed-Martin’s legendary Skunk Works, the new strategic plane was briefly shown to the public.
Continue reading...Ray J Garcia is charged with abusing at least three female prisoners from 2019 to 2021 in prison areas out of view of cameras
First, the prison’s male warden would flatter the incarcerated women under his charge who attracted him, shower them with compliments and promise them early releases or transfers to lower-security facilities, according to authorities.
Eventually, he would allegedly take them to places in his lockup that he knew weren’t watched by surveillance cameras, force sex on them and take nude photos of them.
Continue reading...Investigation says personal information of nearly 200,000 people was released as officials didn’t understand their website
California’s department of justice mistakenly posted the names, addresses and birthdays of nearly 200,000 gun owners on the internet because officials didn’t follow policies or understand how to operate their website, according to an investigation released Wednesday.
The investigation, conducted by an outside law firm hired by the California department of justice, found that personal information for 192,000 people was downloaded 2,734 times by 507 unique IP addresses during a roughly 12-hour period in late June. All of those people had applied for a permit to carry a concealed gun.
Continue reading...The jury said they could not come to a consensus over the allegations after a month-long trial
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked at the trial of That ’70s Show actor Danny Masterson, who is charged with three rapes.
Los Angeles judge Charlaine F Olmedo had ordered the jurors to take Thanksgiving week off and keep deliberating after they told her on 18 November that they could not come to a consensus about the rape allegations after a month-long trial in which the Church of Scientology played a supporting role.
Continue reading...Six-week Los Angeles trial wrapping up after graphic testimony from four women accusing ex-producer of rape and sexual assault
Closing arguments began on Wednesday in the Los Angeles rape trial of Harvey Weinstein, following weeks of emotional testimony that saw multiple women take the stand, including the wife of California’s governor.
Marlene Martinez, a prosecutor in the case, began her final arguments with a photograph of Weinstein smirking at the camera, at the height of his power as a “titan of the film industry”. Seated in the courtroom, Weinstein, looking shrunken and pale as a corpse, stared at the photograph of himself on the screen.
Continue reading...The drying lake is fed by the Colorado River and the fiscal responsibility of its future is a flashpoint in water negotiations
The federal government said on Monday it will spend $250m over four years on environmental cleanup and restoration work around a drying southern California lake that is fed by the depleted Colorado River.
The future of the Salton Sea, and who is financially responsible for it, has been a key issue in discussions over how to prevent a crisis in the Colorado River. The lake was formed in 1905 when the river overflowed, creating a resort destination that slowly morphed into an environmental disaster as water levels receded, exposing residents to harmful dust and reducing wildlife habitat.
Continue reading...Suspect met teen online and ‘catfished’ her before killing three members of her family, according to officers
The suspect in a triple homicide in southern California who died in a shootout with police was a Virginia law enforcement officer who police believe drove across the country to meet a teenage girl before killing three members of her family.
Austin Lee Edwards, 28, also probably set fire to the family’s home in Riverside, California, on the day of the shooting on Friday before leaving with the girl, the Riverside police department said in a news release.
Continue reading...City’s board of supervisors to consider proposal involving remote-controlled devices
The San Francisco police department has proposed that it be allowed to use robots with “deadly force” while responding to incidents, according to a policy draft.
The document outlines how the department proposes to use its collection of robots, which number 17 in total although 12 are not operational.
Continue reading...Suit alleges university caused ‘acute stress reaction’ that led to goalie’s suicide
The family of Katie Meyer, a star soccer goalie for Stanford University who died by suicide in March, has sued the university for wrongful death.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday and reviewed by CNN, alleges that the university administrators’ actions caused her to “suffer an acute stress reaction that impulsively led to her suicide”.
Continue reading...Biden administration approved the conditional funding to keep Diablo Canyon facility online beyond it’s scheduled 2025 shutdown
California’s last nuclear plant could get a new lease on life after the Biden administration announced the approval of up to $1.1bn in conditional funding on Monday. The grant funds may offer a path to keeping the aging facility known as Diablo Canyon online beyond its scheduled shut down in 2025.
Tucked against picturesque bluffs along California’s central coast, the plant has faced a spate of controversies over the decades, for its impact on underwater ecosystems, the production of toxic waste and its proximity to earthquake fault lines. It’s planned closure by 2025 seemed an all-but-certain step in California’s ambitious journey toward a greener future.
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