Testing delays thwart California COVID-19 trackers
Sac Bee's SOPHIA BOLLAG/TONY BIZJAK/ALEXANDRA YOON-HENDRICKS: "A surge in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of contact tracers has for weeks hampered Sacramento County’s efforts to contact and warn people exposed to coronavirus. Now, an additional hurdle is inhibiting the county’s contact tracing: testing slowdowns.
Delays to get test appointments and longer waiting periods while labs turn around results mean cases land on investigators’ desks long after a person should have been told to start quarantining.
In some cases, the county receives cases more than 14 days after a person was exposed, the period of time most people are thought to be infectious."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: See masks adorn faces all over the globe, from world leaders to pigeon feeders -- AP; Water park that refused to close despite pandemic will lose permit, CA officials say -- Sac Bee's BAILEY ALDRIDGE; Richer, whiter Bay Area cities got coronavirus testing quickly. Low-income areas didn't -- The Chronicle's CYNTHIA DIZIKES/JOAQUIN PALOMINO; Even with incomplete data, LA County records 1703 new cases and 10 related deaths -- LA Times's JOSEPH SERNA
\Outdoor religious gatherings draw warnings and rebukes from health officials
LA Times's ALEX WIGGLESWORTH/CINDY CHANG: "Along Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, electronic road signs were programmed to read: CANCELED SATURATE OC.
But the evangelical worship event took place on the sand near Lifeguard Tower 20 for the fourth Friday in a row, despite warnings that it was violating public health orders and permitting rules, officials said. Its organizers estimate as many as 1,800 people attended for nearly two hours of musical performances, baptisms and prayers.
Days earlier, minister and musician Sean Feucht urged his fellow Christians to join him under the Sundial Bridge in Redding for a night of worship."
By easing its bar exam score, will California produce more Black and Latino lawyers?
LA Times's MAURA DOLAN: "For more than three decades, California has clung to one of the nation’s toughest testing standards for law school students hoping to practice law in the most populous state in the country.
But this month, the California Supreme Court, which oversees the state bar, agreed to lower the passing score for the exam, a victory for law school deans who have long hoped the change would raise the number of Black and Latino people practicing law.
After holding virtual meetings with law school graduates and deans, the state’s highest court this month permanently lowered the passing score, allowed for law school graduates to work temporarily under supervision with provisional licenses during the pandemic and permitted graduates to take the bar exam remotely in early October."
This Bay Area company thought it might not survive. Then it started making coronavirus proteins
The Chronicle's J.D. MORRIS: "Want to find the coronavirus’ infamous spike protein that allows it to latch onto human cells?
Look no further than Atum, a 17-year-old Newark firm specialized in making synthetic genes and proteins.
Like other firms in the biotechnology-heavy Bay Area, Atum has rapidly refocused on the pandemic. It’s now playing a vital role supplying cellular pieces to researchers who use them to build coronavirus antibody tests, drugs and vaccine candidates."
READ MORE related to Economy: As $600-a-week benefit nears end, White House suggests short-term unemployment bill -- LA Times's LAURA KING
City Hall, Jail vandalized during Sacramento march. One person was arrested, police said
Sac Bee's VINCENT MOLESKI: "One woman was arrested Saturday night after protests in the streets of downtown Sacramento over police killings turned destructive.
Sacramento Police Department spokesman Officer Karl Chan said several reports of vandalism were made after a smaller group split off from a larger protest after a peaceful march through the city.
Around 7 p.m., protesters led a march from Cesar E. Chavez Plaza to the state Capitol in order to speak out against the killing of Black people in police custody. Since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, demonstrations have been a common sight in Sacramento, although the extent of vandalism seen Saturday came short of that in late May and early June, when many downtown businesses were broken into and cleaned out."
READ MORE related to Police, Protests & Public Safety: As Oakland picks up from Saturday night rampage, mayor condemns vandalism by 'agitators' -- The Chronicle's TATIANA SANCHEZ; Seven hurt, four arrested in scuffle between police and protesters in downtown LA -- LA Times's ALEX WIGGLESWORTH
Protesters stage 'farewell party' for UC's Janet Napolitano
The Chronicle's STAFF: "As the University of California prepares to welcome a new president next month, protesters staged a “farewell party” for Janet Napolitano, the outgoing UC President.
The event — “F— the UC: No Cops, No Firings, No Layoffs; A Farewell Party for Janet Napolitano” — consisted of about 60 students and workers on Saturday. The event began at a UC building in Oakland.
Michael Drake, until recently the president of Ohio State University, will take over from Napolitano in August, becoming UC’s first Black leader at a time of enormous uncertainty and financial challenges."
SF's Muni Metro to roll out big changes in August, but reopening carries risks
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN: "In San Francisco, a city where it’s difficult to move a bus stop without causing an uprising, the head of transportation has taken on a much greater challenge: He wants to reinvent the subway.
When Muni Metro restarts Aug. 22 after an unprecedented five-month shutdown, it will have modified rail routes and fewer trains running in the tunnels each hour. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency chief Jeffrey Tumlin hopes this leaner model will make the system more reliable. But he’s also operating under intense pressure from COVID-19, a fickle public and the stop-start uncertainty of the economy.
“It’s a really big change that we’re doing very quickly,” Tumlin said in an interview. “The sort of change that would normally take five years."
AP: "The late U.S. Rep. John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., for the final time Sunday as remembrances continue for the civil rights icon.
A crowd began gathering near the bridge that became a landmark in the fight for racial justice when Lewis and other civil rights marchers were beaten there 55 years ago on “Bloody Sunday,” a key event in the fight for voting rights for African Americans.
A horse-drawn hearse retraced the route through Selma from Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the 1965 march began. As the wagon approached the bridge, members of the crowd shouted, “Thank you, John Lewis!” and “Good trouble,” the phrase Lewis (D-Ga.) used to describe his tangles with white authorities during the civil rights movement."
Regis Philbin became TV's greatest host by being himself. And America approved
LA Times's ROBERT LLOYD: "What is a host? A person to welcome you in, to make you comfortable, to show you around and tell you what you need to know. To introduce you to other people you might find interesting. To take any space and make it a home.
Regis Philbin, who died Friday, a month before his 89th birthday, was a host. Maybe the greatest of all hosts, if only for the number and variety of shows he hosted: talk shows, game shows, parades, pageants. As has been widely noted, he holds the Guinness World Record for most hours spent on television, a record that will likely stand until the end of television itself.
But he was great too for his capacity to enjoy people — contrasting his ongoing struggle with things, gadgets and gizmos — at least as they came before him on a television stage. (As to “people,” in the collective, he might wonder, “What the hell is wrong with them?”) He could work himself into a lather in an instant and an instant later be laughing at himself and everything. As his life in media transitioned from daily presence to delightful surprise, he was finally just Regis, a magnet for love."
California's housing crisis was the state's most serious political issue before COVID-19
CalMatters's DAN WALTERS: "For the last half-century, the state government has attempted — without much success — to steer housing development in California via periodic calculation of local “needs.”
About once every eight years, the state Department of Housing and Community Development, using formulas based primarily on population growth, has told regional planning bodies or individual counties how much housing for various personal income levels they should be building. Local officials then divvy up shares to cities and the unincorporated areas of counties.
However the process historically contained no provisions for enforcement. To comply, the local communities only had to zone enough land for the goals, which tended to be modest."
Police corral crowds as movers leave US Consulate in China
AP: "Moving trucks and vehicles with diplomatic plates pulled out of a U.S. Consulate in southwest China on Sunday, as its impending closure over rising bilateral tensions drew a steady stream of onlookers for the second straight day.
People stopped to take selfies and photos, jamming a sidewalk busy with shoppers and families with strollers on a sunny day in the city of Chengdu. A little boy posed with a small Chinese flag before plainclothes police shooed him away as foreign media cameras zoomed in.
The capital of Sichuan province, along with Houston in Texas, has found itself in the limelight of international politics as China and the U.S. exchanged tit-for-tat orders last week to close each other’s consulates in the two heartland cities."