Category Archives: California

‘I still feel it isn’t real’: Gold Rush town residents reckon with wildfire devastation

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As flames approached, Kimberly Price fled her beloved California hometown of Greenville. An hour later, most of it was gone

After weeks of fire, smoke and warnings, Kimberly Price and her beloved town had run out of time.

With wind driving the Dixie fire directly into Greenville, Price’s longtime partner, John Hunter, told her she needed to leave. Price, 58, had spent most of her life in the close-knit Sierra Nevada community. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving, but the flames were everywhere.

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There are no happy lockdowns but every lockdown is unhappy in its own way | Kirsten Tranter

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Competitive suffering shows itself as another face of the trauma we’re going through. But eventually there will be unpredictable moments of delight

It’s coming up on a year since the skies over San Francisco turned red because of smoke from wildfires in surrounding areas, an uncanny reminder of Sydney’s Black Summer of late 2019 and early 2020. Now there is different kind of grim echo, as Sydney goes further into lockdown in the grip of a new surge of coronavirus. Here in California we are cautiously taking off our masks and trying to remember how to talk to friends face to face.

Meanwhile, in a horrible reversal, I see my Sydney friends and family experiencing something like we did in March 2020, when the schools closed, the shelter-in-place order went into effect and there was no certainty about how long it would go on, and how bad it would get.

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Britney Spears’ father says ‘no grounds whatsoever’ for conservatorship removal

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Jamie Spears says in court filing he has faithfully served as conservator of daughter’s estate

Britney Spears’ father said in a court filing Friday that there are “no grounds whatsoever” for removing him from the conservatorship that controls her money and affairs – a day after the singer’s new lawyer had requested a hearing to suspend James Spears from the arrangement.

James Spears “has dutifully and faithfully served as the conservator of his daughter’s estate without any blemishes on his record,” his filing said.

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Eulogy for Greenville, my beautiful home town lost to wildfire | Margaret Elysia Garcia

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Every morning after moving here, I thought I must have done something right because I got to live in all this majesty. Then the Dixie fire took it away

My defiantly quirky, beautiful adopted hometown turned into a ghost town last night. There are so many things I could tell you about Greenville. There were over a thousand people and change, though the population sign still said 2,000.

We all have an opinion. About everything. We are a microcosm of America and often frustrated with each other. Greenville is filled with do-gooders, volunteers, retirees, hippies, bikers, and rednecks, ranchers, cowboys, and people who never felt like the town they were born in was quite the right fit for them. We were extended families and single moms and dads. We were drunks. We were sober. We tried not to be too judgmental lest someone judge us back. We were recent survivors of Paradise, too.

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‘It could feed the world’: amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization

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Indigenous women in North and Central America are coming together to share ancestral knowledge of amaranth, a plant booming in popularity as a health food

Just over 10 years ago, a small group of Indigenous Guatemalan farmers visited Beata Tsosie-Peña’s stucco home in northern New Mexico. In the arid heat, the visitors, mostly Maya Achì women from the forested Guatemalan town of Rabinal, showed Tsosie-Peña how to plant the offering they had brought with them: amaranth seeds.

Back then, Tsosie-Peña had just recently come interested in environmental justice amid frustration at the ecological challenges facing her native Santa Clara Pueblo – an Indigenous North American community just outside the New Mexico town of Española, which is downwind from the nuclear facilities that built the atomic bomb. Tsosie-Peña had begun studying permaculture and other Indigenous agricultural techniques. Today, she coordinates the environmental health and justice program at Tewa Women United, where she maintains a hillside public garden that’s home to the descendants of those first amaranth seeds she was given more than a decade ago.

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West Nile virus: another alarming side effect of US drought

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Stagnant water caused by dry weather gives mosquitoes – the insect that spreads the virus – free rein, leading to an increased risk for humans

​​For five days in the late summer of 2019, doctors battled to bring down John Hayden’s high fever.

Hayden’s sudden onset of symptoms, including high fever, had everyone stumped, said his daughter Anne Hayden, and his body seemed to fail to respond to any treatment. He succumbed to the inexplicable illness just after Labor Day, his family at his side.

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Wildfire tears through northern California gold rush town – video

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The fast-moving Dixie fire has continued to burn through northern California, leaving much of the gold rush town of Greenville in ashes. The three-week-old fire has burned more than 500 sq miles and destroyed dozens of homes. Greenville was previously damaged by a significant fire in 1881 but maintained some buildings that were more than a century old

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The California Gold Rush town consumed by wildfire – in pictures

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The northern California town of Greenville was devastated by the Dixie fire, currently the largest wildfire in the state. The town dates back to the Gold Rush era with buildings more than a century old. Firefighters did all they could against the flames but the fast-moving blaze left many structures in ashes

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‘A nightmare scenario’: how an anti-trans Instagram post led to violence in the streets

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Misinformation about Wi Spa, a Korean spa in Los Angeles, quickly spread around the world. Since then, trans women in LA have faced violence and online abuse

On 24 June, a woman claimed on Instagram that a Korean spa in Los Angeles had allowed a “man” to expose himself to women and girls in the women’s section.

The unsubstantiated allegations about Wi Spa in LA’s Koreatown neighborhood quickly spread from social media to rightwing forums to far-right news sites to Fox News, and were distorted by anti-transgender groups across multiple countries.

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Britney Spears asks for accountant to replace father as conservator

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  • Los Angeles court filing reveals singer’s request for Jason Rubin
  • Father Jamie Spears has been conservator for 13 years

An attorney for Britney Spears has asked that a new conservator be named to oversee the pop singer’s finances following recent testimony that she wanted her father ousted from the role, the New York Times reported on Monday.

In a Los Angeles court filing, lawyer Matthew Rosengart requested that accountant Jason Rubin be named the conservator of Spears’ estate, a post currently held by her father, Jamie Spears, the Times reported.

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Climate crisis ‘a hammer hitting us in the head’, says Oregon governor as wildfires rage

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California’s biggest fire destroys multiple homes while other blazes batter the American west

As California’s biggest wildfire destroyed multiple homes, flames racing through rugged terrain, and as numerous other blazes battered the American west, the governor of Oregon said the climate crisis was “like a hammer hitting us in the head”.

Related: ‘Smoke shading’ from other fires helps fight against Oregon Bootleg blaze

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‘There’s magic in misery’: ultramarathon runners cross Death Valley – in a drought

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A hundred athletes are picked each year for the 135-mile race. This time the climate was especially brutal

In the Badwater Basin at the bottom of California’s Death Valley, the air feels like a giant hair dryer and the pavement can melt the soles of your shoes.

Yet on Monday night, 100 of the world’s top endurance runners set off on what has become known as “the world’s toughest foot race”, carving 135 miles of terrain through one of the planet’s most extreme climates at the most intense time of year.

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Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to rape and sexual assault in LA trial

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The convicted rapist is serving a 23-year prison term in New York and now faces the possibility of another sentence in California

Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday to four counts of rape and seven other sexual assault counts.

The 69-year-old convicted rapist appeared in court in a wheelchair. He was wearing a brown jail jumpsuit and face mask. Attorney Mark Werksman entered the plea a day after Weinstein was extradited to California from New York, where he was serving a 23-year prison term.

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More than 80 wildfires rage across western US – video report

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The Bootleg fire in Oregon, now roughly the size of Los Angeles, is so intense that it has created its own weather system, causing winds that have further fanned its flames. It has been burning for two weeks and barely a third of its perimeter has been contained. The Dixie fire in California exploded in size to roughly 94 sq miles (243 sq km) on Tuesday, and is only 15% contained. It broke out on 13 July

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Killer dubbed the ‘Hollywood Ripper’ sentenced to death for double murder

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‘Death followed Michael Gargiulo everywhere he went’, says judge, in case which included the murder of the girlfriend of actor Ashton Kutcher

A man dubbed the “Hollywood Ripper” has been sentenced to death for the home-invasion murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third in a much-delayed case stretching back 20 years.

Victims’ family members wept as Los Angeles superior court Judge Larry Fidler handed down the sentence to 45-year-old Michael Thomas Gargiulo on Friday.

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Heat exhaustion, apocalyptic scenes: what it’s like fighting the US’s biggest wildfire

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I’m proud to take on devastating blazes. But sometimes I wonder if anyone else sees the scale of the crisis

I’m a firefighter currently battling the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon, the largest blaze right now in the US. As I write this, it’s already ripped through over 200,000 acres (312.5 sq miles).

I’m part of a crew that arrived last Thursday. We were one of the first on the scene, and several of us have already gotten heat exhaustion, one guy got fuel in his eye from a water pump and two of our division’s masticators (giant machinery that functions like a lawn mower but for an entire forest) burned up.

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Sixty wildfires rage across 10 US states – including blaze bigger than Portland

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Thousands have been forced to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming amid soaring temperatures and a drought

Nearly 60 wildfires were burning across 10 states in the parched American west on Tuesday, with the largest, in Oregon, consuming an area nearly twice the size of Portland.

The fires have torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires.

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‘It’s a tornado’: firefighter captures blaze engulfing California town – video

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A firefighter battling the rapidly growing Beckwourth Complex wildfire in California recorded dramatic conditions near the small town of Doyle that forced the crew to take shelter inside a vehicle as wind and flames roared outside. The largest wildfire to hit the state this year broke out over the weekend and has so far consumed more than 140 sq miles (362 sq km). The blazes are spreading as extreme temperatures continue to blast the American west

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American west stuck in cycle of ‘heat, drought and fire’, experts warn

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Wildfires in several states are burning with worrying ferocity across a tinder-dry landscape

As fires propagate throughout the US west on the heels of record heatwaves, experts are warning that the region is caught in a vicious feedback cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis.

Firefighters are battling blazes from Arizona to Washington state that are burning with a worrying ferocity, while officials say California is already set to outpace last year’s record-breaking fire season.

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Paratrooper whose parachute failed to open survives after crashing into house

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British soldier falls through roof of California house, crashing into the kitchen in a burst of insulation and roofing material

A British paratrooper whose parachute failed to open correctly sustained only “minor injuries” after a 15,000ft fall took him through the roof of a house in California, crashing into the kitchen in a burst of insulation and roofing material.

The soldier, who was not immediately named, jumped out of a plane during a High Altitude Low Opening (Halo) exercise, a technique used by special forces. He lost control as he approached the ground near Camp Roberts, in Atascadero.

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