P-22, L.A. celebrity mountain lion, euthanized due to severe injuries
LA Times, LAURA J. NELSON/JAMES QUEALLY: "The mountain lion P-22, who lived in the heart of Los Angeles for more than a decade and became the face of an international campaign to save Southern California’s threatened pumas, was euthanized Saturday because of several long-term health concerns and injuries that likely stemmed from being hit by a car, officials said.
In a tearful news conference, wildlife biologists described multiple chronic illnesses that may have contributed to the mountain lion’s recent uncharacteristic behavior. The big cat of Griffith Park was “compassionately euthanized” at about 9 a.m., officials said.
“This really hurts, and I know that,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “It’s been an incredibly difficult several days. And for myself, I’ve felt the entire weight of the city of Los Angeles.”"
Bay Area hospitals are filling with COVID patients. Here’s how they’re faring
The Chronicle, CLAIRE HAO: "In March 2020, Dr. Jorge Bernett saw his first-ever COVID-19 patient, a young man from Contra Costa County on a ventilator. “He gestures for a piece of paper and pen, and he writes, ‘Am I going to live?’” recalled Bernett, an infectious diseases doctor with John Muir Health. The patient survived.
Nowadays, Bernett is much more confident in answering “yes.” Even as COVID cases rise in California and across the country, illness is on average less severe. Young, otherwise healthy patients with no immunity are a rare sight. Some treatments are no longer effective against the newest subvariants, but there is still a toolkit of other available therapeutics inconceivable just 2½ years ago."
Is the ‘tripledemic’ putting more masks on Bay Area faces? Here’s what our survey found
The Chronicle, MICHAEL CABANATUAN/SARAH RAVANI/CATHERINE HO: "There are so many reasons to wear a mask now — rising COVID-19 cases amid colder weather and holiday gatherings and shopping, a “tripledemic” that includes severe flu and respiratory syncytial virus outbreaks, and strong recommendations from public health officials.
But are Bay Area residents — most of them vaccinated and boosted and many who threw away their old masks months ago — returning to the practice of covering their faces in public indoor spaces?"
Column: Even if Kevin de León won’t resign, activists have a plan. ‘We’re never letting this go.’
LA Times, ERIKA D. SMITH: "On a recent afternoon, a small group of activists showed up outside Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León’s field office in El Sereno.
They chanted. They jeered. They milled about on the sidewalk for a while. They hoisted signs labeling him a racist and demanding that he resign — like right now. And then they left.
Another day, another protest. Another dashed hope."
News Analysis: Most dramatic World Cup final caps a unique and controversial tournament in Qatar
LA Times, KEVIN BAXTER: "A World Cup that opened with a beer ban ended with a champagne toast. A tournament that started with a call for cultural sensitivity finished with a cultural icon being celebrated.
The first World Cup held in the Middle East and the first played in a majority-Muslim country will someday be remembered for many things, but for now there’s no reason to look past Sunday’s epic final, which ended with Lionel Messi finally lifting the 14-inch solid gold World Cup trophy as fireworks exploded from the roof of a sold-out 89,000-seat stadium, lighting up the night sky.
It was the only prize Messi, widely considered the greatest player in soccer history, had never won. And when he came face to face with it for the first time after Argentina’s penalty-kick win over France, he paused to give it a gentle kiss."
Mayor Bass’ program to move homeless people indoors to launch Tuesday
LA Times, DAKOTA SMITH: "Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday will launch a city program to move people living in tents on streets into hotel and motel rooms, she said Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“Now it’s not going to address everybody, but it is going to address hopefully a significant number,” Bass told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd. “We’re going to put them in motels and hotels immediately.”
Bass said the “Inside Safe” program would get “people to move on their own” and wouldn’t involve “sweeps” — a pejorative word used by activists to describe the clearing of encampments by the city."
Biden administration plans to cut homelessness 25% by 2025
BANG*Mercury News, MARISA KENDALL: "As the Bay Area struggles with the ever-worsening crisis of people sleeping in tents and vehicles, the Biden administration has set an ambitious new goal to reduce homelessness by 25% in the next two years.
The plan, called “All In,” intends to build off the efforts that ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase housing and shelter capacity and get people off the streets. It lays out priorities including adding housing, moving people out of encampments and preventing more people from falling into homelessness, while also addressing the fact that people of color are disproportionately likely to be homeless.
There are an estimated 582,462 unhoused people in the United States, according to new data released Monday. That’s up 0.3% from 2020."
‘California needs to do a better job’: San Bernardino County will study seceding after voters’ OK
LA Times, NATHAN SOLIS: "There have been at least 220 attempts to break up California since the state was formed in 1850. None has succeeded.
Still, a slight majority of San Bernardino County voters say the idea is worth exploring.
A November ballot measure directing county officials to review how to secure more resources and funding — “up to and including secession from the State of California” — passed with 50.6% of the vote. County election officials certified the results Dec. 8."
Saving salmon: Chinook return to California’s far north — with a lot of human help
CALMatters, ALASTAIR BLAND: "Chinook salmon haven’t spawned in the McCloud River for more than 80 years. But last summer, thousands of juveniles were born in the waters of this remote tributary, miles upstream of Shasta Dam.
The young Chinook salmon — some now finger-sized smolts in mid-migration toward the Pacific Ocean — are part of a state and federal experiment that could help make the McCloud a salmon river once again.
Winter-run Chinook were federally listed as endangered in 1994, but recent years have been especially hard for the fish. Facing severe drought and warm river conditions, most winter-run salmon born naturally in the Sacramento River have perished over the past three years."
Bay Area under Spare the Air alert Monday, with wood fires banned
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "Air quality regulators have banned indoor and outdoor fires in the Bay Area on Monday, citing weather conditions likely to trap wood smoke pollution near the ground.
Burning wood, manufactured fire logs and other solid fuels including trash is prohibited under the ban issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District on Sunday. The Spare the Air Alert will run through the end of the day on Monday and could be extended if cloudy conditions continue to trap particulates."
‘Everything is full’: L.A. shelters turn away animals, residents complain
LA Times, MELISSA GOMEZ/DAKOTA SMITH: "Los Angeles’ city animal shelters have been under fire for months, with volunteers and rescue groups complaining that animals are being neglected and department officials admitting that they don’t have enough staff to run the six shelters.
The criticism heated up again last week, when members of the commission that oversees Animal Services pressed department officials to answer complaints about shelter staff turning away people seeking to surrender animals.
At a hearing Tuesday of the Board of Animal Services Commissioners, panel members asked the department to report back on city policy for taking in animals."
The Chronicle, GREGORY THOMAS: "Search-and-rescuers called it one of the most challenging cases they’ve ever worked in the Lake Tahoe area.
A 63-year-old man skiing the slopes at Alpine Meadows on Dec. 9 was reported missing after he failed to return home to his wife that evening. By the time she called 911, it was after dusk and a major storm was set to pummel the mountains with several feet of snow starting around sunrise. The missing man, who is from the Tahoe area, carried no cell phone and no water or provisions to survive a blizzard in the backcountry alone.
Authorities immediately enlisted the help of the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team, an all-volunteer group of dozens of winter wildland experts who train for these kinds of scenarios and are called on to retrieve people lost in the snow each year. The group formed 46 years ago under similar circumstances when two boys skiing at Northstar in a blizzard became lost out of bounds. The team has since conducted hundreds of searches in the icy alpine environment."
Dissension brews among striking UC union members over tentative agreement
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "A day after the University of California and union leaders representing 36,000 academic workers heralded a breakthrough agreement that could end a five-week strike, dueling narratives over the tentative pact emerged among graduate student supporters and opponents.
Rafael Jaime, president of one of the two United Auto Workers bargaining units involved in the negotiations, touted Friday’s agreement as a “historic” win that would reshape the lives of thousands of graduate student workers and inspire peers across the country to fight for better wages and working conditions. The pact, he said, would boost minimum wages by as much as 80% and enhance support for child care, healthcare for dependents and international students.
“This contract really does set a new standard for institutions of higher education,” Jaime said Saturday. “It’s a major step toward building a more equitable UC that is accessible to workers from all backgrounds.”"
During UC strike, professors take learning outside of the classroom
CALMatters, MEGAN TAGAMI: "For UC Riverside student Amanda Soto, the drive to campus is a two-and-a-half hour round trip. But the commute didn’t stop her from attending the picket line more than five times in the last month of the fall quarter to support thousands of University of California academic workers on strike.
Soto, a fourth-year ethnic studies major, said she would have attended the strike of her own accord. But she is also a student of Dylan Rodríguez — a professor of media and cultural studies at UCR who seized the strike as a teaching opportunity. Rodríguez encouraged his media studies class to visit him on the picket line, challenging students like Soto to consider how campus events tied into course themes of class and racial disparities.
“When being in solidarity with the strikers, we can also see the power structure that we see within a lot of the concepts and theories within the course,” Soto said.
Why California is among last states not screening children for dyslexia
EdSource, CAROLYN JONES: "Last year, California appeared ready to join 40 other states by mandating a screening tool for dyslexia — a learning disorder that affects 1 in 5 readers. The test would have flagged first graders who need extra help matching letters to sounds, connecting sounds to words, linking words in a sentence.
The stakes were high. In California, nearly 60% of third-graders are not reading at grade level, a crisis with potentially disastrous consequences. Research shows that students who aren’t proficient readers by third grade are more likely to miss school, more likely to be disciplined, more likely to drop out.
The bill died in the Assembly Education Committee before lawmakers even discussed it."
Elon Musk polls Twitter users about whether he should step down
AP, MATT O'BRIEN: "Elon Musk is asking users to decide if he should stay in charge of Twitter after acknowledging that he made a mistake Sunday in launching speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media platforms.
In yet another drastic policy change, Twitter announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.”
But the move generated so much immediate criticism, including from past defenders of Musk, that he promised not to make additional major policy changes without an online survey of users."
PG&E wildfire and catastrophe proposal may trigger higher monthly bills
BANG*Mercury News, GEORGE AVALOS: "Higher monthly bills might jolt PG&E customers due to the utility’s request that state regulators allow the company to collect more revenue for its spending linked to wildfires and catastrophes.
PG&E wants to recover costs that arose from its expenditures for the mitigation of wildfires and dealing with certain catastrophes, according to recent state and regulatory filings.
Oakland-based PG&E is attempting to recover $1.36 billion in costs, filings with the state Public Utilities Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show."
TSA finds record number of guns on passengers at airport checkpoints
AP, STAFF: "The federal agency tasked with screening passengers before they get on planes says officers this year have stopped a record number of guns brought by passengers attempting to go through airport security checkpoints.
The Transportation Security Administration said in a news release Friday that officers have stopped 6,301 firearms so far this year, and the agency is anticipating that number will rise to 6,600 by the end of the year. That’s nearly a 10% increase over last year, which was already a record, the agency said. Nearly 90% of the weapons caught so far were loaded, the agency said. The agency considers a weapon to be loaded if the passenger has access to both the gun and the ammunition.
In response, the agency said it is increasing the maximum civil penalty for firearms violations to $14,950. Passengers caught with a weapon also lose their TSA PreCheck status — a security program that allows passengers that go through prescreening to bypass some airport security measures like taking their shoes off — for at least five years, the agency said.
Judge warned in 2021 of shootout plans by Colorado Springs suspect
AP, JESSE BEDAYN/MATTHEW BROWN: "A judge dismissed a 2021 kidnapping case against the Colorado gay-nightclub shooting suspect even though she had previously raised concerns about the defendant stockpiling weapons and explosives and planning a shootout, court transcripts obtained by the Associated Press show.
Relatives, including the grandparents who claimed to have been kidnapped, had also told Judge Robin Chittum in August last year about Anderson Aldrich’s struggles with mental illness during a hearing at which the judge said Aldrich needed treatment or “it’s going to be so bad,” according to the documents obtained Friday.
Yet no mention was made during a hearing this July of the suspect’s violent behavior or the status of any mental health treatment."
Jan. 6 panel pushes Trump's prosecution in forceful finish
AP, MARY CLARE JALONICK: "The House Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its investigation of the violent 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, with lawmakers expected to cap one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory with an extraordinary recommendation: The Justice Department should consider criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
At a final meeting on Monday, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are poised to recommend criminal charges against Trump and potentially against associates and staff who helped him launch a multifaceted pressure campaign to try to overturn the 2020 election.
While a criminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump or others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start."
What to watch as Jan. 6 panel cites Trump’s ‘attempted coup’
AP, FARNOUSH AMIRI/HOPE YEN: "The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will make its final public presentation Monday about the unprecedented effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election he lost in 2020. The committee has called it an “attempted coup” that warrants criminal prosecution from the Justice Department.
That is expected to be the committee’s closing argument as it wraps up a year-and-a-half-long inquiry and prepares to release a final report detailing its findings about the insurrection in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans is set to dissolve at the end of the year.
Monday’s meeting will be the committee’s 11th public session since forming in July 2021. One of the first hearings, on June 9, was viewed by more than 20 million people."
As Biden mulls his future, a progressive group is urging ‘Don’t Run Joe’
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: "President Biden will take time over the holidays to decide whether to run for re-election. Meanwhile, there is already a campaign — with roots in California — that hopes he doesn’t. Its name isn’t exactly subtle: “Don’t Run Joe.”
Plot twist: It is run by people who voted for Biden two years ago against Donald Trump after backing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary."
Biden marks 50th anniversary of death of first wife, daughter
AP, COLLEEN LONG: "President Biden and his family held a private memorial service Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and their baby daughter.
Biden, who had just been elected to the Senate in November 1972, was not in the car when his wife, 30-year-old Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were broadsided by a tractor-trailer on Dec. 18 of that year as they went out to buy a Christmas tree. The couple’s two sons, Beau and Hunter, who were just about to turn 4 and 3 at the time, were also in the car and were seriously injured.
The tragedy almost prompted Biden, also age 30 when the accident happened, to give up his fledgling political career. But on the advice of other senators he stayed in office, commuting back and forth from Washington to Delaware. Biden’s raw openness around grief and his ability to empathize with fellow Americans who have experienced loss have become defining traits of his political career."