Category Archives: California

California woman who admitted to stabbing wife had also killed husband

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Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi, who served a decade for killing her husband, pleaded guilty to murder of Rebecca Marodi, a fire captain who fought the Eaton blaze

A California woman this week admitted to killing her wife, a decorated fire captain who fought the deadly 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, by stabbing her – the same fate she previously delivered to her husband and had served a decade in prison for.

Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi, 54, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to second-degree murder after killing her wife, Rebecca “Becky” Marodi, 49, a California fire captain, at their home in February 2025, just a month after Becky, as she was known, battled the Eaton blaze that killed 19.

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ICE detainee reveals video of drinking water apparently contaminated with worm-like creatures

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‘Disturbing’ footage shared by California detainee surfaces amid wider complaints about conditions in ICE detention

Attorneys for a man detained in a California immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures.

The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, north-east of LA.

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Single shark bite led to death of woman off California coast, autopsy shows

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Erica Fox left Lovers Point near Monterey in December alongside group of swimmers but never made it back

A single, devastating shark bite was fatal for an ocean swimmer whose body was found on a California beach in December, a new autopsy report confirmed.

Erica Fox, 55, drowned after that shark bite broke her pelvis and severed a major artery, according to the findings of the autopsy, which were first reported on by California’s Monterey Herald newspaper.

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Gavin Newsom reveals personal income of $1.7m-$2m in tax return release

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California governor and wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, release 2022-2024 filings amid Trump investigation

Gavin Newsom and his wife made from $1.7m to $2m annually from 2022 through 2024, and paid about half a million a year in federal and state taxes, according to tax returns released by his office.

The California Democratic governor’s office released more than 700 pages of tax filings spanning four years for reporters to review, offering a window into Newsom’s finances as he prepares to leave office and considers a 2028 presidential bid. Newsom’s office did not release returns for 2025, because the couple filed for an extension and will complete those returns in October.

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Southern California suburb alarmed as ‘exceptionally rare’ cancer sickens multiple children

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Residents in Ladera Ranch in Orange county voice concerns after six children diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma

Concerns are growing in southern California over a cluster of “exceptionally rare” cancer cases that has sickened multiple children in a suburban community.

Families living in the Orange county neighborhood of Ladera Ranch, home to about 26,000 people, have reported that six children in the community were diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, Katrina Foley, the vice-chair of the county board of supervisors, said in a statement.

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San Francisco police find wreckage of boat that sank as body identified

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Tondra Madruga named as second victim in deadly capsizing as police continue search for two missing people

Police on Friday discovered the wreckage of a boat that sank this week in the San Francisco Bay after recovering the body of a missing person the day before.

The body was identified as Tondra Madruga, 58, also known as Tondra Miller, the San Francisco medical examiner said. She was one of three people missing after the Volare, a 49ft (15m) cabin cruiser, sank on Wednesday afternoon with 20 people onboard after being hit by a wave and capsizing. The group was on the boat to scatter the ashes of a loved one.

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Female US rower reflects on ‘surreal’ record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii

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Kelsey Pfendler, 32, says she hopes her solo 2,400-mile trek across the mid-Pacific inspires other women to take risks

A Grand Canyon river-rafting guide who recently became the first US woman to row solo from California to Hawaii – traveling in record time – says she hopes her accomplishment inspires other women to push their limits and take risks.

“It’s really motivating to think [that], maybe one day, I will get to see another woman work even harder to do what I did,” Kelsey Pfendler, 32, told ABC’s Good Morning America program on Monday, three days after completing the record-setting journey across the mid-Pacific. “And it would be so special to watch.”

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Gaza protests against two Democrats spark outcry and debate on tactics

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Incidents involving California state senator Scott Wiener and New York congressman Dan Goldman underscore Israel-Palestine conflict’s role in US elections

Two recent incidents involving US congressional candidates on opposite coasts have blown up into major controversies, underscoring how the Israel-Palestine conflict has transformed US elections – and illustrating how aggressive protest tactics can spark backlash that overshadows the issues activists meant to highlight.

Scott Wiener, a gay Jewish state senator and trans rights advocate who is currently the frontrunner in the race to replace the longtime representative Nancy Pelosi in California’s 11th district, said he felt forced to leave last week’s annual trans pride march in San Francisco after a group of people ran up to him at a local park where the event was taking place, surrounded him and screamed at him over his positions on Israel’s war on Gaza.

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Female US rower completes historic solo journey from California to Hawaii

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Kelsey Pfendler set out to become first US woman, youngest woman and fastest woman to solo over 2,400-mile journey

A Grand Canyon river-rafting guide who aimed to become the first US woman to row solo across the mid-Pacific has completed a record-breaking journey from California to Hawaii.

Hundreds of people gathered to cheer on Kelsey Pfendler as she pulled into a Honolulu harbor on Friday night on her 21ft rowboat, Lily, after nearly a month-and-a-half at sea, local media reported.

Guardian staff contributed

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Gavin Newsom urges a national ‘billionaires’ tax’ while fighting one in California

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California governor calls for national tax on super-wealthy and suggests the US should own a stake in AI companies

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called for a national “billionaires tax” on Friday as he fights a ballot measure targeting the ultra-wealthy in his home state.

Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, published his proposal the day after California officials certified a ballot proposal to levy a one-time 5% tax on residents worth more than $1bn. The proposal, called the California Billionaire Tax Act, was brought by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) and would fund the state’s healthcare, education and food assistance programs.

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Federal judge blocks Trump policy that allows immigration court arrests

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Judge vacates administrations policies, finding actions of ICE and another government arm ‘arbitrary and capricious’

A federal ⁠judge in California vacated the ⁠Trump administration’s ​nationwide policies expanding arrests at immigration courthouses and the duration for detaining noncitizens in short-term facilities, finding the actions of US Immigration ⁠and Customs Enforcement and another government arm “arbitrary and capricious”.

US district judge P Casey Pitts of the northern district of California on Tuesday vacated ICE’s ⁠policies that had rescinded previous strictures on arrests at immigration courthouses and allowed detainees to ​be held in short-term cells for up ‌to 72 hours. He ‌did the same for a similar policy undertaken by the US Department of Justice’s ‌executive office for immigration review that removed limits on courthouse arrests.

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Trump’s Department of Labor claims without data that states defrauded government

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Keith Sonderling, acting head of the agency, threatens to withhold administrative funds from states for first time in history

Keith Sonderling sent letters to 53 states and US territories demanding action to “combat waste, fraud, and abuse” within the unemployment insurance program, threatening to withhold administrative funds from states for the first time history.

“We are officially putting governors on notice,” said the acting US secretary of labor. “The American people will no longer tolerate the blatant waste, fraud, and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars – no state should allow it either. If states allow it, they will suffer the consequences. This department is no longer afraid to use every lever available to ensure taxpayer money is protected.”

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Los Angeles police fatally shoot pet dog of family celebrating Knicks win

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Video taken after the shooting shows a woman sobbing over the pet with nearly a dozen officers standing around

Police in California shot and killed a family’s pet dog wearing a New York Knicks jersey after they were called to a report of a screaming woman who turned out to be celebrating the basketball team’s championship win.

Video of the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting of the two-year-old doodle named Jameson, “the sweetest boy in the world”, according to the dog’s owner, received millions of views on TikTok on Tuesday.

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California’s tectonic systems at highest levels of stress in 1,000 years – study

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San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems in ‘critically loaded state’, increasing chance of ‘big one’ quake in future

Southern California’s San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems are at their highest levels of tectonic stress in 1,000 years in what scientists describe as a “critically loaded state”, according to a study published earlier this month.

“Our results show that stress levels on multiple fault segments are now at or above the highest values seen in the past millennium and that the region may be capable of a large through-going rupture involving both fault systems,” Liliane Burkhard, the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, said in a statement.

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Eight presumed dead after B-52 bomber crashes at California air force base

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B-52 crashed shortly after takeoff at Edwards air force base in southern California’s Mojave Desert, officials say

Eight people are presumed dead after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday morning at a US air force base in California’s Mojave Desert, officials said.

“An Air Force B-52 Stratofortress carrying eight people on a routine test mission crashed today shortly after take-off at 11:20 a.m,” Edwards air force base said in a statement Monday afternoon. “Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable. Emergency response personnel are on scene, and officials are working to account for all personnel.”

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Spencer Pratt concedes LA mayor race, but declares ‘war’ against advancing candidates

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In video, The Hills actor, who did not contest the outcome of the election, said his campaign to ‘save’ LA was just starting

Spencer Pratt appeared to concede the Los Angeles mayor’s race on Friday in a new video where he says “the campaign portion of my mission to save Los Angeles is coming to a close”, but declares “war” against the two candidates advancing to the city’s general election.

In the video posted on social media, Pratt notably did not contest the results of the election, despite Donald Trump’s repeated, but unfounded claims the race was “rigged”. Trump, who endorsed Pratt, called California’s elections “crooked”.

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Trial begins for man accused of sparking LA’s deadly Palisades fire

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Jonathan Rinderknecht is accused of starting the blaze that became Los Angeles’s deadliest and destructive wildfire

The trial of a 29-year-old charged with sparking a wildfire that went on to become the deadly Palisades inferno, the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history, is set to begin on Monday in a case that has gripped the city as Angelenos seek answers more than a year after the deadly fire.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, an occasional Uber driver, is accused of starting a small blaze on New Year’s Day 2025, later dubbed the Lachman fire. Although the Los Angeles fire department extinguished the fire on 2 January, it reignited five days later due to high winds and tinderbox conditions after burning undetected deep in the dry hillsides.

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Trump refuses to rule out using ‘anti-weaponization’ fund for Capitol rioters who attacked police

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US president says ‘I’d pay the kind of money they deserve’ amid questions over his administration establishing fund

Donald Trump declined on Sunday to definitively rule out compensating individuals who were charged with assaulting police officers when his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 toward the end of his first presidency.

Trump did that in an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, where he spoke in support of what his administration calls an “anti-weaponization” fund, arguing that people who entered the Capitol while Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 presidential election had been treated unfairly by prosecutors and should receive compensation.

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Stevie Nicks donates $3m to medical school to recognize her voice doctor

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Musician donates to USC to help create endowed chair to recognize Dr Joseph Sugerman, who treated her for years

Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks has given $3m to the University of Southern California’s medical school to recognize the physician who has helped care for her voice throughout much of her career.

The major donation supports the creation of an endowed chair in otolaryngology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine in honor of Dr Joseph Sugerman, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Beverly Hills who has treated the singer – along with other performers and patients – for many years.

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California’s conservative Huntington Beach could get a gay, Democratic congressman

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Robert Garcia became the lead contender in Tuesday’s primaries for congressional district 42 after redistricting

The conservative California community of Huntington Beach, known for banning the Pride flag from city property and fighting the state over pandemic and housing policy, could soon be represented by a gay, Democratic congressman.

Robert Garcia, an incumbent two-term Democratic LGBTQ+ congressman, immigrant and Donald Trump critic, is considered the leading contender in Tuesday’s primary race for the US House seat. Thanks to a successful restricting effort that redrew California’s voting maps to favor Democrats, Huntington Beach is now part of Garcia’s congressional district 42.

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