CNN, Wire Service: "The massive winter storm battering the US with plunging temperatures coast-to-coast has left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power and prompted more than a dozen governors to create emergency response plans ahead of Christmas weekend.
The storm — well on its way to becoming even stronger Friday — has delivered heavy snow and ice, making for grim road conditions with poor visibility and leaving some drivers stranded in unbearably frigid temperatures.
Travel is also being snarled, with hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations growing rapidly."
California’s Dungeness crab season will begin on New Year’s Eve
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "California officials will begin Dungeness crab season on Dec. 31, but only half as many traps as usual will be allowed along the Bay Area coast, as regulators struggle to balance the safety of endangered humpback whales and sea turtles with the economic needs of commercial fisheries.
“That would provide an opportunity for the commercial fishery to get out and fish,” said Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist with the department. While he and other officials are weighing the health of the crab industry, their primary concern is the federally protected sea creatures, Bartling said."
PG&E customers face higher bills in early 2023 as utility costs rise
BANG*Mercury News, GEORGE AVALOS: "PG&E residential customer bills are slated to rise in January 2023, an increase that the utility says may become even more pronounced this winter due to a head-spinning jump in natural gas prices.
The monthly bill for the typical residential ratepayer could jump 3% from the current levels, according to information provided to this news organization by PG&E.
Oakland-based PG&E sketched out the background for the increase in monthly bills in a filing with state regulators that is part of the utility’s annual “true-up” that enables PG&E to consolidate rate changes approved by the Public Utilities Commission during the course of the year."
Garcetti’s last order as mayor: Light up the Hollywood sign. Bass rescinded it
LA Times, DAKOTA SMITH/JULIA WICK: "It may have been the shortest-lived executive directive in Los Angeles City Hall history.
Mayor Eric Garcetti, on his last day in office, quietly signed an executive directive — a regal-sounding action that amounts to an order to city departments — for a program to light up the Hollywood sign.
The prospect of lighting the sign has been contentious for decades, and Garcetti’s order immediately caused an uproar in the hillside neighborhood near the sign."
Did the California exodus continue in 2022? Here’s latest population data
The Chronicle, YURI AVILA/YOOHYUN JUNG: "California’s population continues to dwindle.
The state’s population declined by 114,000 people from about 39,143,000 in 2021 to 39,029,000 in 2022, new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau show.
California’s 0.3% population decrease is actually slightly smaller than the 0.9% fall the state experienced from 2020 and 2021."
King tides higher than 7 feet are about to hit the Bay Area. Here’s a timeline of impacts
The Chronicle, MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "King tides, the splashy moniker for what are typically the highest tides of the year, are arriving in the Bay Area just in time for the holidays, washing up on the Embarcadero in San Francisco and other low-lying spots around the bay.
The tides arrive twice a year, around the summer and winter solstices, according to Annie Kohut Frankel of the California Coastal Commission. They are paired with the year’s lowest low tides, giving people the chance to see the highs and lows of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in a single day.
This official visit of the upcoming king tides, a nonscientific term coined in Australia, is Friday and Saturday, but an unusually high tide of 6.98 feet rolled through the Golden Gate Thursday morning — giving folks a chance to see waves lapping usually dry streets, bike paths and parking lots. A low tide of -1.49 feet at 4:39 p.m. Thursday will give people access to large tide pools and extensive mudflats."
Christmas fires banned in Bay Area as more Spare the Air days called
The Chronicle, KATE GALBRAITH: "Wood fires will be banned now through Christmas Day, after air quality regulators issued Spare the Air alerts for the Bay Area from Thursday through Sunday.
The concentration of fine particles in the air, such as those from burning wood, is projected to tip into the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” range for several parts of the region, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
“It is illegal for Bay Area residents & businesses to burn wood, manufactured fire logs or any other solid fuel, both indoors and outdoors,” the air district tweeted.""
This is the trash can that finally won San Francisco’s contest for a new receptacle
The Chronicle, ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH: "After spending nearly four years and $550,000 on an odyssey to custom design the city’s next trash can, San Francisco appears to have picked a new garbage receptacle.
On Thursday, city officials announced they’d selected the Slim Silhouette, which they touted as durable, tamper-resistant and easy to clean. The design was one of six trash receptacles publicly tested over the summer and one of three that was custom designed."
TikTok trend wipes out Ozempic supply, leaving people with diabetes dizzy, scared
Bloomberg, EMMA COURT: "For more than a month, Shane Anthony, a 57-year-old auto mechanic, hasn’t been able to get his diabetes medication.
Ozempic, an injection that keeps blood sugar levels in check for patients with Type 2 diabetes, has been in shortage for about four months, according to the database maintained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and is back ordered at Anthony’s Seattle pharmacy. Without the Novo Nordisk A/S-made prescription, he has suffered recurring dizzy spells while repairing cars. Alternative medications are either out of stock or not covered by his insurance.
While increased demand and supply chain delays have left multiple medicines including the antibiotic amoxicillin and Adderall in short supply, the reason for a lack of certain diabetes drugs is unusual: Doctors are prescribing them to non-diabetics who want to use them for weight loss."
Does a recent COVID infection make you ‘safe’ from reinfection over holidays?
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Dear Advice Team: My father, who is 75 years old, vaccinated and boosted, got COVID over the Thanksgiving holiday week after traveling to Las Vegas. As we go into two weeks of holiday activities, I’m wondering if he — and the other family members and friends who I know were infected during that period — are “safe” from getting COVID again during the December holidays? Are variants mutating so quickly now that people could be re-infected that quickly?
Welcome to Pandemic Problems, an advice column that aims to help Bay Area residents solve their pandemic and post-pandemic conundrums — personal, practical or professional. As COVID evolves into an endemic disease, we know readers are trying to navigate the “new normal.” Send your questions and issues to pandemicproblems@sfchronicle.com.
Today’s question is fielded by The Chronicle’s Kellie Hwang."
EdSource, JOHN FENSTERWALD/CAROLYN JONES: "Notwithstanding worries about a looming recession and misperceptions that schools are swimming in money, California voters approved 71 of 101 TK-12 and community college construction bond proposals last month. The 65 of 94 TK-12 and six of seven community college district ballot measures that won will generate $20 billion in renovations and new construction.
The overall passage of 71% is below the average approval rate of 80% since 2001, according to CaliforniaCityFinance.com. The voting margins also “seemed thinner this year,” said Jeff Becker, executive director of facilities for the Office of the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. He also chairs the Coalition for Adequate School Housing or CASH, the California lobby for school facilities.
With a number of districts just a few percentage points below or above the 55% threshold to pass a school bond, officials were kept in suspense for weeks, until the final votes were announced in early December."
L.A. students’ grades are rising, but test scores are falling. Why the big disconnect?
LA Times, PALOMA ESQUIVEL: "Claudia Chacon said her two children, who attend Fairfax High School, bring home good grades in math and English. But when she reviews their individual scores on California’s statewide tests, she wonders what they are learning. The standardized exams have shown her boys do not meet grade-level standards, making her worry their report cards mask their real achievement levels.
“It feels like they’re still struggling,” she said, concerned that her ninth- and 11th-grade sons aren’t being fully prepared for college.
Their situation is far from unique. After falling in the early semesters of the pandemic, by spring 2022 high school and middle school math and English grades in the Los Angeles Unified School District not only rebounded, but went up, according to an L.A. Times analysis. At the same time, math and English proficiency rates on the state’s standardized tests fell to their lowest levels in five years."
Jan. 6 report: Trump 'lit that fire' of Capitol insurrection
AP, STAFF: "The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserts that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
Trump “lit that fire,” the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, writes.
The 814-page report released late Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions in the weeks ahead of the attack and how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021."
Why Democrats released Trump’s tax returns
The Hill, TOBIAS BURNS: "After years of fighting for Donald Trump's tax returns, Democrats finally got a hold of them and released them to the public through two congressional reports published this week. But Democrats stress their decision was not about Trump himself but rather about oversight of the IRS and about the U.S. tax system more broadly - even though Trump was the first president since Watergate not to release his returns before assuming the presidency.
The report from the Democratic-led Ways and Means Committee found Trump wasn't audited during his first two years in office. His first audit as president came only right when the IRS was asked directly by Congress to produce Trump's tax returns.
That could be a violation of IRS policy, which states that "individual income tax returns for the President and Vice President will be subject to mandatory audit examination" and that they'll receive "normal pipeline processing" and be subject to "regular filing and retention procedures.