Category Archives: California

Changing violence requires the same shift in understanding given to Aids

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Violence is a contagious and epidemic health problem and those exposed to it deserve treatment, compassion and care, writes Gary Slutkin

When the Aids epidemic first hit in the early 1980s, I was beginning my career in epidemiology at San Francisco general hospital. There was fear everywhere, especially in cities with large LGBT populations such as San Francisco. People didn’t understand what was happening and where Aids would strike next.

Today, Aids remains a major public health threat, but anxiety over the spread has largely abated. The thing that made the biggest difference in getting us here was the shift in how the world looks at people affected by Aids: from immoral people or bad people, to people with a contagious health problem who deserve to receive compassion and care.

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‘Like sending bees to war’: the deadly truth behind your almond-milk obsession

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Bees are essential to the functioning of America’s titanic almond industry – and billions are dying in the process

Dennis Arp was feeling optimistic last summer, which is unusual for a beekeeper these days.

Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.

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Harvey Weinstein hit with new charges in Los Angeles during New York trial

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Movie mogul charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another over two days in 2013

Los Angeles prosecutors have announced criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein on Monday, following the start of the disgraced movie mogul’s rape trial in New York.

Weinstein was charged with raping one woman and sexually assaulting another in separate incidents over a two-day period in 2013, officials said on Monday. The felony charges include forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery by restraint.

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Hikers find skeleton of Japanese American who left internment camp

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Remains found in October identified as Giichi Matsumura, who died in a freak snowstorm after he apparently stopped to paint

A skeleton found by hikers near California’s second-highest peak was identified on Friday as a Japanese American artist who left an internment camp to paint in the mountains in the last days of the second world war.

Related: Headless torso found in cave identified as murderer who escaped jail in 1916

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Black people in California are stopped far more often by police, major study proves

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Statistics, which come from largest-ever dataset compiled about US police stops, lend support to minority groups who have long complained about biased policing

Black people in California were stopped by police officers much more frequently than other racial groups in 2018, and police were more likely to use force against them, new statistics from eight large law enforcement agencies in the state reveal.

Twenty eight per cent of all persons stopped by Los Angeles police officers during the last six months of 2018 were black, while black people account for just 9% of the city’s population, the data shows. In San Francisco, the black population has shrunk over several decades to just 5% of the city’s total population, but 26% of all stops carried out by the SFPD from July through December of 2018 were of black people – marking the widest racial disparity in police stops of the eight reporting agencies.

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Hiker killed by huge falling redwood tree in California national park

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Authorities say a 28-year-old became pinned in a ‘very rare’ incident in Muir Woods, famed for its towering trees, on Christmas Eve

A huge redwood tree fell and killed a man visiting Muir Woods national monument park in California on Christmas Eve, authorities said on Thursday.

Subhradeep Dutta, 28, of Edina, Minnesota, died while walking on a marked dirt trail with two other people in the park north of San Francisco famous for its towering trees, according to the Marin county coroner’s office and a spokesman for the park.

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Trump condemned for trivializing homeless crisis in attack on Pelosi

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  • President’s tweets denounced as ‘vile and reprehensible’
  • Trump: speaker’s ‘filthy dirty’ district is worst for homelessness

Donald Trump has been condemned for “vile and reprehensible” tweets that trivialize America’s homelessness crisis in an attempt to rebuke the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the architect of his impeachment.

On Thursday the president, holed up at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida over Christmas, went on the offensive against Pelosi, whose home district includes San Francisco.

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2019: the photographs that defined America’s year – in pictures

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A look back at some of the biggest moments of the past year.

Warning: Some of the following images are graphic in nature and might be disturbing to some viewers.

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Democratic debate: Warren, Sanders, Biden and Yang face off in LA – live updates

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Candidates take the stage at Loyola Marymount University as impeachment dominates the headlines

The Guardian’s Lois Beckett is in Los Angeles and has been speaking with voters ahead of tonight’s debate. Here’s what they had to say about the respective candidates ….

.@stephenroelewis, 50, and his son Daniel Roe Lewis, 20, are here from the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. Daniel supports Sanders, for his strong environmental platform; and Yang, for his universal basic income plan. pic.twitter.com/ZH0kJileif

Two LA friends outside the debate, talking about Warren’s electability.

Warren is from the Midwest, Beatina says. “She has that Midwest nice thing.”

“Does she?” Christine asks, very skeptical. To her, Warren reads as very Northeast. pic.twitter.com/Tojd6w8Tci

Alayshia Barker-Vaughn, 18, is leaning towards Elizabeth Warren. She likes her outreach to voters of color, her focus on healthcare, the fact she’s a woman, and her “charisma.”

“Her charisma & how she engages with an audience is very unique.” pic.twitter.com/J6UlMDGc2w

The sixth Democratic debate is officially underway, and seven candidates will now face off the day after the impeachment of Donald Trump.

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Warren, Biden and other Democrats threaten to boycott debate amid labor feud

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  • Union plans to picket Loyola Marymount University venue
  • Warren calls for DNC to find solution in line with principles

All the Democratic presidential candidates slated to participate in next week’s debate have threatened to skip the event if an ongoing labor dispute forces them to cross picket lines on the university campus where the debate will be hosted.

A labor union says it will picket as Loyola Marymount University hosts Thursday’s sixth Democratic debate, and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders responded by tweeting they would not participate if that meant crossing it. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang followed suit.

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Lachlan Murdoch’s $150m Beverly Hillbillies mansion buy breaks record

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Son of Rupert Murdoch purchases house seen in credits of the TV show, setting new highest home price ever in California

A Los Angeles mansion built in the 1930s and seen in the credits for the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies has been sold for about $150m, the highest home price ever in California.

The buyer of the Chartwell estate is Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and co-chairman of publishing company News Corp, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.

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Gun violence is a health crisis. More policing isn’t the solution

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The unsung heroes of Oakland’s drastic reduction in gun violence are the communities themselves

There is a saying, made famous by the criminal justice reformers Glenn Martin and Piper Kerman, that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution, but are also furthest from the resources and power to address it.

No one is closer to the decades-long epidemic of violence in Oakland than those who have grown up around it, those who live daily with the specter of violence, whose sleep has been punctured by the sound of gunfire, whose lives are forever marked by the pain of loved ones lost. Now that Oakland homicides are finally on the decline, it is these people, and the organizations within which they work, who are the unsung heroes.

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California woman punched mountain lion in effort to save her dog

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Miniature schnauzer was killed and its owner suffered a minor cut in attack in Simi Valley

A southern California woman punched a mountain lion and tried to pry its jaws open to save her dog from an attack in her backyard, but the pet was killed, officials said.

The woman suffered a minor cut after the mountain lion attacked her miniature schnauzer on Thursday in the city of Simi Valley, the police Sgt Keith Eisenhour told KNBC-TV.

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Elon Musk: pedo guy insult was ‘not classy’ but not meant literally

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Billionaire entrepreneur admits he ‘would say very little at all if I just said sense’

When Elon Musk took the stand on Tuesday, the question was whether he defamed a British cave explorer by calling him a “pedo guy”, but at times it seemed the real issue was more fundamental – the fragility of male egos.

“This is a case about insults between two men,” said Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, in his opening statement to the jury in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles on the first day of the trial.

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Elon Musk defamation trial begins in case brought by British caver

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LA court to hear Vernon Unsworth’s lawsuit over comments after Thai cave rescue

It was a gripping tale of peril and prowess that captivated the world for more than two tense weeks in the summer of 2018. Twelve boys and their football coach were lost in a subterranean maze in the Tham Luong caves in Thailand. An international team of cave divers raced to rescue them before monsoon rains were due to flood the caves. The story was destined to be fodder for a Hollywood blockbuster – and that was before an eccentric billionaire got involved.

On Tuesday, a postscript to the feelgood tale of the Tham Luang cave rescue will play out in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles, California, as the trial begins in a defamation case brought by the British caver Vernon Unsworth against Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk.

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Brad Gobright, renowned US rock climber, dies after fall in Mexico

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The American was abseiling in El Potrero Chico near Monterrey when he plunged about 300m to his death

One of the world’s most renowned rock climbers, the American Brad Gobright, has died after falling off a mountain in Mexico.

The fall occurred on Wednesday on an almost sheer face known as El Sendero Luminoso on the El Toro mountain in the El Portrero Chico area near the northern city of Monterrey, civil defense officials said.

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‘Fire is medicine’: The tribes burning California forests to save them

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For millennia, native people have used flames to protect the land. The US government outlawed the process for a century before recognizing its value

When Rick O’Rourke walks with fire, the drip torch is an extension of his body. The mix of diesel and gasoline arcs up and out from the little wick at the end of the red metal can, landing on the ground as he takes bite after bite out of the dry vegetation in the shadow of the firs and oaks.

“Some people are like gunslingers and some people are like artists who paint with fire,” he says. “I’m a little bit of both.”

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Bernie Sanders’ message increasingly resonates with Latino voters

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As growing numbers of Latinos are voting, Sanders has gained their support in California simply by outworking the competition

It’s Friday night, and the moments before US Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is due to appear at Fresno City College feel more like a rock festival than a political rally.

Vendors hawk swag – hats with “Feel the Bern” and “Eat the Rich” slogans, T-shirts featuring the photo of the young Sanders being arrested at a protest – while an already raucous crowd nods to songs about revolution and wave signs reading: “Unidos con Bernie.”

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Santa Clarita: Students escorted out of Saugus high school after reports of active shooter – video

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At least two people have died and several more have been injured in a shooting at Saugus high school in Santa Clarita, California, on Thursday. Footage showed sheriff's deputies swarming the school and lines of students being escorted away

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