Gavin Newsom responds after Judge Roger Benitez compares AR-15s to Swiss army knives ‘good for both home and battle’
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, slammed a federal judge’s decision to overturn his state’s three-decade-old ban on assault rifles as “a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians”.
Related: America’s gun obsession is rooted in slavery | Carol Anderson
Continue reading...Departure marks one of the largest-scale abandonments of eggs ever at coastal site north of San Diego
About 3,000 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a drone crashed and scared off the birds, a newspaper reported Friday.
Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica ecological reserve in Huntington Beach in May and one of them went down in the wetlands, the Orange County Register said.
Continue reading...Rural northern California has been forceful in its pushback against masks, business restrictions and vaccine mandates
Rural northern California is seeing a troubling rise in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, an alarming trend that comes as residents and businesses continue to protest against safety measures and vaccinations – with one Mendocino cafe threatening to charge customers $5 for wearing a mask.
While the region makes up a small proportion of the state’s population, the growth in its caseload has been considerable, and comes at a time when the state overall is enjoying some of the lowest rates of Covid in the country. After largely avoiding the worst of the pandemic, a block of far northern California counties now leads the state with nearly 40 cases per 100,000 residents over the past week, according to statistics maintained by the Los Angeles Times. Tehama county ranked the highest in the LA Times case ratings with 139 cases per 100,000 residents. Meanwhile 10 of the 21 total Covid deaths in nearby Siskiyou county have occurred since the beginning of May.
Continue reading...Dixie Lewis, 19, was in a car that was travelling on State Route 89 in California when it crossed into the path of an oncoming truck
Dixie Lewis, the 19-year-old daughter of the writer Michael Lewis and former MTV correspondent Tabitha Soren, has been killed in a highway crash in northern California.
Lewis was a passenger in a car driven by her friend and former Berkeley High School classmate, Ross Schultz, 20, who also died in accident on Tuesday afternoon, according to her family and authorities.
Continue reading...Bounchan Keola and Kao Saelee were facing deportation to Laos after spending decades in prison for teenage convictions
California’s governor has issued pardons to two formerly incarcerated firefighters who had been threatened with deportation to Laos after spending most of their lives in the US.
Gavin Newsom on Friday announced the pardons for Bounchan Keola, 39, and Kao Saelee, 41, who were both sent to US immigration authorities last year after spending decades in prison for teenage convictions and had battled wildfires as incarcerated firefighters.
Continue reading...Officials say the guns Samuel James Cassidy used to kill nine of his coworkers at a California rail yard appear to be legal
A gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a rail yard in San Jose, California, had stockpiled weapons and ammunition at his home, including 12 guns and 22,000 rounds of ammunition, authorities said on Friday.
Investigators found the cache of weapons at the home of Samuel James Cassidy, the Santa Clara county sheriff’s office said in a news release. They also turned up multiple cans of gasoline and suspected molotov cocktails. Authorities have said that Cassidy set his house on fire using a timer or slow-burn device to coincide with his attack.
The guns he used to open fire on his co-workers appear to be legal, officials said. They have not said how he obtained them.
Continue reading...The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has spoken emotionally about the latest US mass killing, after an employee gunned down nine people at a San Jose rail yard and then killed himself as law enforcement arrived.
'There’s a numbness I imagine some of us are feeling about this. Because there’s a sameness to this,” he said. “It begs the damn question of what the hell is going on in the United States of America?'
It was the 15th mass killing in the nation this year, all of them shootings that have claimed at least four lives each for a total of 86 deaths, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University
Continue reading...Police say ‘multiple injuries and multiple fatalities’ and say suspect among dead after shooting at railyard in California city
Police reported multiple fatalities and injuries after gunfire erupted early on Wednesday morning at a light rail maintenance yard in San Jose, California.
A Santa Clara county sheriff’s spokesman, Deputy Russell Davis, said he could not specify the number of fatalities and injuries, but said that the suspect was confirmed to be among the dead.
Continue reading...While on a routine patrol, Greg Francek came across bone fragments from prehistoric animals that existed millions of years before humans
Imagine a California with volcanoes erupting to the east and Los Angeles buried under the Pacific Ocean. Giant camels, rhinoceros and four-tusked miniature elephants graze on a lush landscape, only to be preyed upon by bone-crushing dogs.
This is the prehistoric scene conjured up by a trove of new fossils discovered in California’s Sierra foothills – a hugely significant find, and one of the largest in the state’s history.
Continue reading...Loopholes surrounding these weapons make them untraceable – and a hot commodity in many vulnerable communities
When Brian Muhammad, a program manager at a gun violence prevention group in California, asked a 16-year-old boy in 2018 how young people were getting guns, he assumed the answer would be Nevada, the neighboring state with looser gun laws.
“Who would waste time going to Nevada when you can just get them in the mail and put it together?” the Stockton teen nonchalantly replied.
Continue reading...The national park is instituting a permitting system for overnight rock climbers. Many see it as inevitable as the sport gets more popular
For years, rock climbers Graham Ottley and Keith Bouma-Gregson dreamed of scaling the 2,800ft (853 meters) pillar of granite known as the Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite national park.
In early May the pair finally got their chance, making a climb that required spending two windy nights camped on tiny ledges with harnesses holding them to the rocks. But Ottley and Bouma-Gregson realize that soon it may not be as easy to enjoy Yosemite’s anything-goes climbing culture.
Continue reading...The driver of a Tesla car in a fatal crash that California highway authorities said may have been operating on autopilot posted social media videos of himself riding in the vehicle without his hands on the wheel or foot on the pedal.
The 5 May crash in Fontana, a city 50 miles east of Los Angeles, is also under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It is the 29th case involving a Tesla the federal agency has investigated.
Continue reading...The winner of a $26m California Lottery prize may have literally washed the chance of a fortune down the drain.
Related: Shelter releases 1,000 feral cats on to Chicago streets to combat rat crisis
Continue reading...Majority of counties now under emergency declaration as California faces extensive dry spell and dwindling water supply
California has expanded a drought emergency declaration to a large swath of the nation’s most populated state amid “acute water supply shortages” in northern and central parts of California.
The declaration, expanded by Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday, now includes 41 of 58 counties, covering 30% of California’s nearly 40 million people. The US drought monitor shows most of the state and the American west is in extensive drought just a few years after California emerged from a punishing multiyear dry spell.
Continue reading...More than 15 rare birds, whose population is at about 160 in the state, showed up at Cinda Mickol’s home – and they’ve made a mess
Giant California condors are rare – but not at Cinda Mickols’ home.
More than 15 condors, an endangered bird whose population hovers at around 160 in the state and under 500 in the US, have recently taken a liking to Mickol’s house in Tehachapi – and they’ve made quite a mess.
Continue reading...The US coast guard has ended its search for survivors after a boat capsized off the coast of San Diego, leaving three people dead and dozens injured.
Officials believe the boat, which had at least 30 people onboard, was being used to smuggle migrants into the US and the man who was captaining the vessel has been taken into custody.
Continue reading...Commercial beekeepers in the US say counterfeit honey from Asia is forcing down prices and pushing them to financial collapse
Imports of cheap, fake honey from Asia are pushing American beekeepers to financial collapse, according to a lawsuit.
Thousands of commercial beekeepers in the US have taken legal action against the country’s largest honey importers and packers for allegedly flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of counterfeit honey.
Continue reading...State officials will truck the young fish to the ocean, with the waterways they use to travel downstream historically low
California officials will truck more than 15 million young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the state’s Central Valley agricultural region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.
Officials announced the huge trucking operation on Wednesday, saying the effort is aimed at ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean”.
Continue reading...Singer rarely takes part in hearings but has asked to speak directly to court, lawyer says
Britney Spears will personally address the Los Angeles court dealing with her long-running conservatorship in June, a judge agreed on Tuesday.
Spears, 39, has been under a conservatorship since 2008 but rarely takes part in hearings. Her lawyer said on Tuesday that she had asked to speak to the court directly, but he did not say what matters she wished to raise.
Continue reading...They scored a UK No 1 single and the biggest-selling independent album ever. Thirty-seven years into their career, the California band ponder middle-aged sex – and being denied respect
“It’s very fashionable now to say, ‘When we were young, we didn’t fit in,’” says Dexter Holland, frontman for multi-platinum punk-rockers the Offspring, Zooming from the band’s plush Orange County recording studio. “But it really was true for us in high school, where everything was about looks, athleticism and popularity. I mean, look at us!”
Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, guitarist and Holland’s long-standing foil, leans in and taps his milk bottle-lensed specs. “And you should have seen me back when I had braces and headgear,” he grins.
Continue reading...