Category Archives: California

California proposes new funding to help low-income and out-of-state abortion seekers

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Governor Gavin Newsom wants $57m for organizations offering the procedure to the uninsured and for reproductive health outreach

California’s governor has announced a new reproductive health spending plan, dedicating an additional $57m to prepare for an influx of people from other states seeking abortions in California.

About $40m in Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget would fund grants for abortion providers offering care to low-income patients without health insurance. An additional $15m would go to help community-based organizations do sexual and reproductive health outreach and education.

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New Mexico wildfire rampages on as fresh blaze engulfs California mansions

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Challenging weather hampers firefighting in New Mexico, while in California, wealthy coastal enclave goes up in flames

Extreme fire conditions are continuing to fuel a massive wildfire in northern New Mexico, making it difficult for crews to contain the largest blaze in the US, which grew to nearly 260,000 acres acres on Thursday.

The continued destruction came as a smaller fire broke out in California, destroying more than 20 homes, many of them multimillion-dollar mansions, in the coastal community of Laguna Niguel.

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‘It’s just gorgeous’: rare deep-sea dragonfish spotted off California coast

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The torpedo-shaped, bronze-hued fish has been seen only four times in nearly thirty years of deep-sea research, scientists said

A rare deep-sea fish has been spotted off the coast of northern California, prompting excitement among marine biologists who have attempted to track down the elusive creature for decades.

The Bathophilus flemingi, also known as the highfin dragonfish, was captured on video by a team of researchers in Monterey Bay, California. Named after the mythical creature, the torpedo-shaped fish is a predator that roams the depths of the ocean.

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US to seize $63m Los Angeles mansion it claims was bought with bribe money

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The French Normandy-style estate was bought by Armenian ‘Super Minister’ Gagik Khachatryan with bribes paid by a businessman

The US government wants to seize a mega-mansion in an exclusive area of Los Angeles that it claims was bought with millions in bribe money linked to the former finance minister of Armenia and his sons.

The estate, located near the former Playboy mansion, was renovated in a French Normandy-style and boasts 11 bedrooms and 26 full or partial baths, and includes a pool, wine cellar, home theater and maids’ quarters, according to real estate listings.

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Vaquita porpoise could survive … but only if illegal fishing stops immediately

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DNA study finds rarest cetacean, only found in Gulf of California, has enough genetic diversity to recover – if gillnet ban is enforced


Scientists studying the DNA of the world’s smallest cetacean and rarest marine mammal, the vaquita porpoise, have made a surprising and bittersweet discovery.

With a tiny population of fewer than 10 individuals left, the mammal was assumed by conservationists to be at a similar risk of harmful mutations and inbreeding as other species with small gene pools.

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Democrats in states across US seek to offer legal refuge to trans youth

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Effort by state legislators follows California’s lead in responding to wave of Republican laws targeting transgender kids and families

Democratic lawmakers in more than a dozen states are following California’s lead in seeking to offer legal refuge to displaced transgender youth and their families.

The coordinated effort, which was announced on Tuesday by the LGBTQ Victory Institute and other advocates, comes in response to recent actions taken in conservative states. In Texas, for example, Gregg Abbott, the governor, has directed state agencies to consider placing trans children in foster care, though a judge has temporarily blocked such investigations. And multiple states have approved measures prohibiting gender-affirming healthcare treatments for trans youth.

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California tech titan’s Senate run has one target: Tesla’s self-driving software

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Dan O’Dowd has bankrolled his own campaign to take a swing at what he calls Elon Musk’s ‘amazingly terrible’ technology

Dan O’Dowd is hardly the first California tech titan to bankroll his own campaign for high political office. What makes him unusual is that he has no interest in winning the US Senate seat he is vying for, or even in challenging the other candidates competing in the 7 June primary.

O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur with a 40-year history of working on military, aerospace and other commercial contracts, is running, rather, out of frustration at his fellow tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, whom he accuses of endangering road safety with a driver assistance software package he’s put in his Tesla electric cars.

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Los Angeles mortuary owner left bodies to rot in ‘sad and shocking’ case

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Mark B Allen faces 22 counts of misdemeanor for mistreating remains of 11 people, including infants

A Los Angeles funeral home owner illegally left the remains of 11 people, including infants, in stages of decay and mummification and faces more than a decade in jail, prosecutors said Friday.

Authorities opened an investigation into the Mark B Allen Mortuary and Cremations Services Inc., after receiving complaints from families. The mortuary, owned by Mark B Allen, is now closed and phone numbers listed for the business were disconnected.

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Parched southern California takes unprecedented step of restricting outdoor watering

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The resolution will limit watering to just one day a week, affecting millions in Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties

Southern California officials declared a water shortage emergency Tuesday, and adopted new unprecedented restrictions on outdoor watering that will impact millions of people living in Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.

Metropolitan water district of southern California’s resolution will limit outdoor watering to just one day per week for district residents supplied by a stressed system of canals, pipelines, reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants called the State Water Project, which supplies water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

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California police detain three in baby kidnapping as grandma unloaded car

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Police say baby Brandon Cuellar, who has since been found, was taken from home at about 1pm on Monday

A 3-month-old baby who was kidnapped from his San Francisco Bay Area home was found Tuesday and three suspects were detained, police said.

The baby, Brandon Cuellar, was taken to a hospital as a precaution, the San Jose police department announced on Twitter, without saying where the boy was located.

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Woman rescued after surviving in a forest for six days on yogurt and snow

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Sheena Gullett was stranded in a broken down car after it became stuck in the snow in California and her friend went for help

A woman stranded for six days in a broken-down car in a remote northern California forest survived by rationing yogurt and eating snow, authorities said.

The ordeal of Sheena Gullett, 52, was detailed in a Facebook post by the Lassen county sheriff’s office. Gullett and friend Justin Lonich, 48, were driving to Little Valley, a small incorporated community, on dirt roads off Highway 44 on 14 April when their vehicle became stuck in snow. They spent the night in the vehicle and in the morning its battery was dead.

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Beat it: trucker convoy driven out after being egged by kids in California

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The people’s convoy had gathered outside lawmaker Buffy Wicks’s house to protest her support of an abortion rights bill

A convoy of trucks that had gathered outside a California lawmaker’s house over the weekend to protest her support of an abortion rights bill was forced to leave the area after crossing paths with a group of young people armed with eggs.

The people’s convoy, inspired by Canadian truckers who shut down roads to protest vaccine mandates, arrived in the Bay Area last week after weeks of demonstrations in Washington DC.

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California family discovers five bears hibernating in crawlspace under home

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Bear League describes how family in Lake Tahoe heard ‘odd snoring-like noises’ but dismissed them before eventual discovery

A California family spent the winter dismissing odd noises that sounded a little like snoring, only to discover that five bears had spent the cold season hibernating under their house.

The Bear League group, which works to preserve bear habitat and help bears in distress largely around the Lake Tahoe basin region in the state, recounted the family’s astonishing episode last week.

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‘Democracy will wither’: Barack Obama outlines perils of unregulated big tech in sweeping speech

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In a keynote address at Stanford University, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the tech landscape

Technology companies must be reined in to address the “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”, Barack Obama said Thursday, in a sweeping keynote speech on the perils of disinformation.

Speaking at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the technology landscape, which he said is “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses”.

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Sherri Papini pleads guilty to kidnapping hoax that led to massive search

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The California native pleads guilty to scheme that triggered three-week search before she resurfaced on Thanksgiving day in 2016

Sherri Papini, the California woman whose disappearance made national headlines and sparked a massive search before she reappeared on Thanksgiving day in 2016, pleaded guilty on Monday to faking her own kidnapping and lying to the FBI.

The 39-year-old from Redding, in the state’s far north, did not offer any explanation for the elaborate hoax or why she claimed two “Hispanic women” had kidnapped her at gunpoint and chained her to a pole for three weeks while depriving her of food, beating and branding her.

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Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $302m over pelvic mesh implant ads

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California court rules that company made misleading and potentially harmful statements in hundreds of thousands of ads

A California appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that Johnson & Johnson must pay penalties to the state for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh implants for women.

Johnson & Johnson had appealed in 2020 after superior court judge Eddie Sturgeon assessed the $344m in penalties against the US pharmaceutical company’s subsidiary, Ethicon.

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GSK to buy US cancer drug developer amid pressure from activist investor

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GlaxoSmithKline’s £1.5bn Sierra Oncology deal comes after pressure from Elliott to boost its pipeline

The UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline has agreed a £1.5bn deal to buy a US cancer treatment developer, Sierra Oncology, as it tries to fend off pressure from the activist shareholder Elliott Management.

The deal will give Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company access to California-based Sierra Oncology’s momelotinib, a drug being tested on anaemic patients with a type of bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis. GSK said the drug had “significant growth potential” and it expected sales to start next year, with one analyst predicting it could generate peak annual sales of about $1.7bn (£1.3bn).

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California jogger Sherri Papini admits faking her kidnapping in plea deal

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Papini will plead guilty to lying to authorities and mail fraud over 2016 incident that led to three-week search

Sherri Papini, the northern California woman charged last month with faking her kidnapping in 2016, accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors on Tuesday and acknowledged she had made up the story that prompted a frantic search and international headlines.

Her defense attorney William Portanova said his client would plead guilty to charges of lying to a federal officer and mail fraud.

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California university sues YouTubers who allegedly filmed disruptive pranks

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A judge also granted a restraining order to the pair accused of terrorizing students who ‘provoked extreme fear and anxiety’

A pair of YouTubers are facing a lawsuit and a restraining order after allegedly filming themselves disrupting classes at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles and uploading footage of the staged pranks online.

The University of Southern California sued Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai over the incidents, USC Annenberg Media reported last week. A judge granted a restraining order banning Kanevsky and Bai, who are not USC students, from campus after university attorneys said the pranks had terrorized “students to the point where they are running out of lecture halls for fear of their lives”.

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Family sues LA Angels after stray baseball fractured boy’s skull

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Bryson Galaz was six years old when ball hit his head, causing brain damage, during warmup at Angel Stadium in Anaheim

The family of a boy who suffered a fractured skull and brain damage after being hit with a baseball during the warmup for a Los Angeles Angels game has sued the Angels, claiming negligence on the team’s part.

In 2019, Bryson Galaz, who was then six years old, was walking with his father in the first row of Angel Stadium, where players were mingling with fans more than an hour and half prior to the game, the lawsuit said. Bryson was struck on the side of his head when Keynan Middleton, an Angels pitcher who was warming up on the field, threw a ball at a teammate who missed the catch.

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