Newsom urges federal probe into soaring prices for natural gas in California, other Western states
LA Times, TERRY CASTLEMAN: "Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote a letter Monday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission urging it to investigate wholesale prices of natural gas in California and other Western states.
In the letter, addressed to FERC Chair Willie Phillips, Newsom cited a sharp rise since late November that has left Californians squeezed.
“These wholesale natural gas price increases were exacerbated by early cold weather in the Western states,” Newsom wrote, “but those known factors cannot explain the extent and longevity of the price spike.”"
Los Angeles firefighters to join rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria after massive quake
GRACE TOOHEY, LA Times: "Dozens of specially trained Los Angeles County firefighters are headed to Turkey and Syria to assist in search-and-rescue operations after Monday’s massive magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which devastated the region near the two countries’ border.
The crew of more than 80 members is one of two from the U.S. being sent to help in the aftermath of the quake. The other is from Fairfax County in Virginia.
The U.S. Agency for International Development deployed the two urban search-and-rescue teams to aid in the response to the destructive earthquake and its aftershocks, which included a 7.5 temblor. At least 4,000 have died, and thousands of buildings have toppled. The casualty count is only expected to grow as first responders continue to sort through wreckage at scenes of mass destruction that stretch miles beyond the quake’s epicenter in southeast Turkey."
You could sip a latte and smoke cannabis in the same cafe under proposed California law
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "Local California governments could allow cannabis businesses to serve food and nonalcoholic drinks and host live music performances under a bill introduced in the California Legislature.
The measure aims to allow for the kind of cannabis cafes that have become popular in Amsterdam. Assembly Member Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, who introduced the measure, said it could help pot shops struggling to compete with the illegal market attract new customers."
Poll finds plummeting support for national assault weapon ban
BANG*Mercury News, JOHN WOOLFOLK: "Despite outrage over a cycle of deadly mass shootings in California and other states, a new poll out Monday has found plummeting support for a national assault weapon ban, reflecting what even backers say may be growing pessimism over whether such a law would reduce violence.
President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom have called for a ban, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced a new ban bill last month, similar to one Congress allowed to expire after 10 years in 2004. California has banned the sale of assault weapons since 1989, but it is under legal challenge.
“While Biden has undertaken a new push to ban assault weapons, public views on the issue are now closely divided,” said Gary Langer of Langer Research Associates, which produced the survey for ABC News. Asked their opinion regarding the proposed legislation, 51% of respondents said they were opposed and 47% were in support."
Swimming Pools and Wildfires: the John Norwood Story (PODCAST)
Capitol Weekly, STAFF: "With nearly five decades of advocacy under his belt, there are only a handful of people who have lobbied in Sacramento longer than John Norwood. He entered the business in 1974, shortly after graduating from Sac State. To put that in context: Richard Nixon was president, Ronald Reagan was governor and Gavin Newsom was in elementary school. Future senator Alex Padilla was still in diapers.
A lawyer as well as a lobbyist, Norwood has earned a reputation as a hard worker and a straight shooter. In 1980, the California Journal called him, “one of the rising stars in the lobbying business;” Three decades later he was named the “Most Trustworthy” lobbyist in a Capitol Weekly poll of legislators and staff.
We asked John about the changes he’s seen, and the biggest challenges facing California. (Top of his list: Wildfires.) Plus, who had The Worst Week in California Politics."
Q&A: Paul Mason, Pacific Forest Trust
Capitol Weekly, AARON GILBREATH: "California’s increasingly catastrophic fire seasons have drawn the connection between healthy forests, healthy air, and climate change into sharp relief. Under Governor Newsom, California has made sweeping policy changes to petroleum production, green energy infrastructure, groundwater pumping, and the transition from fossil fuel vehicles to zero emission vehicles. As the role that wildfire plays in California’s climate change mitigation efforts has become impossible to ignore, the role that forest management plays in climate change has become an essential part of discussions around climate change policy.
I spoke with Paul Mason, Vice President, Policy and Incentives at Pacific Forest Trust, to hear what trends and changes he sees in land management, and for insight into how to think about the role and health of California’s forests in the age of climate change.
The Pacific Forest Trust focuses on private forests in California, Oregon, and Washington states. As an eclectic think-tank of policymakers, scientists, and forest managers, The Pacific Forest Trust focuses on creating new economic incentives that reward private forever for practicing sustainable forestry and for conserving their forelands. Governmental agencies and NGOs alike have recognized Pacific Forest Trust for their work. Mason is an expert in California forest policy who focuses on developing approaches and solutions to restoring the resilience of the region’s forests and watersheds in response to the increasing pressures placed on them from changing climate."
Why Southern California water restrictions remain despite so much rain
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH: "Call it water whiplash: As California recovers from one of its wettest months in recent history, the Colorado River is still dwindling toward dangerous lows.
As a result, Southern Californians aren’t sure whether to expect shortage or surplus in the year ahead. Though the state is snow-capped and soggy from a series of atmospheric river storms, the region remains under a drought emergency declaration from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. That includes mandatory water restrictions for about 6 million people in and around Los Angeles.
The early-season storms provided some drought relief, but most officials say it would be premature to loosen water restrictions. In fact, the severity of the crisis on the Colorado — and the federal mandate that California and six other states significantly reduce their use of water from that river — means more calls for conservation are likely in the months ahead, according to MWD General Manager Adel Hagekhalil."
Can bighorns, a bullet train and a huge solar farm coexist in the Mojave Desert?
LA Times, LOUIS SAHAGUN: "To most travelers on Interstate 15 between Barstow and Las Vegas, the Mojave Desert’s jagged Soda Mountains rise above a seemingly lifeless wasteland of hellish sand dunes, lava flows and vast flatlands.
But scientists say the scorched terrain just half a mile north of the Mojave National Preserve’s aptly named Devil’s Playground is a deceptively delicate and vital ecosystem rich in wildlife: tortoises, foxes, badgers, bobcats and bighorn sheep.
Now, proposals to build a high-speed electric rail linking Southern California to Las Vegas and revive a long-dead solar project in the area have triggered a clash with conservationists over how best to ensure that bighorn sheep populations do not become genetically isolated — or wind up as roadkill."
The Chronicle, KURTIS ALEXANDER: "In another sign that California’s drought is easing, San Francisco captured more than a year’s worth of water in just one month’s time.
The tremendous inflow to city reservoirs during the recent storms, mostly in and around Yosemite National Park, has lifted San Francisco’s total water storage to near capacity."
COVID in California: Mask mandate returns to 4 Marin County elementary schools
The Chronicle, RITA BEAMISH/AIDIN VAZIRI: "The conclusion of the U.S. national health emergency status, slated to end May 11, will be felt mostly in the delivery and cost of pandemic health care. For California school kids, the shifting pandemic outlook means the government will not require them to get a coronavirus shot to attend classes. By the end of the month, the Bay Area's largest county will have shut down its mass vaccination and testing sites, turning to the private health sector to pick up those services, in yet another sign of a new pandemic era.
Cancer screenings slow to recover from sharp pandemic dip, study finds
Rates of lung and breast cancer screenings in the U.S. were slow to recover following a sharp decrease in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. In the retrospective cohort study, University of Texas Medical Branch researchers assessed January 2017-April 2022 Medicare records — including mammography rates of more than 1.6 million women aged 50 to 74, and low-dose CT scan rates among more than 3.7 million men and women aged 55 to 79. Between March 2020 to April 2022, there were episodic drops in both scan rates, which coincided with increases in national COVID-19 infection rates...”"
He bombed the SAT but now heads the UC Board of Regents. A top priority: widening access
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "Rich Leib heads the University of California’s powerful Board of Regents. He has started companies, worked for leading state politicians and now runs a business consultancy.
But when he talks about his UC board priorities, he begins with a confession: As a Hamilton High School student in 1974, he bombed the SAT achievement tests, scoring in the bottom 2% for both math and English. He scored in the bottom 50% for the general SAT exam. With his 3.4 high-school GPA, UC Berkeley rejected his application.
He managed to get into UC Santa Barbara and went on to earn a master’s degree in public policy analysis from Claremont Graduate University and a law degree from Loyola Law School."
There’s hope AI companies could revive downtown S.F., but economists aren’t so sure
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "The buzz in recent weeks over leaps in artificial intelligence, or AI, technology has caused venture capitalists and marquee companies like Microsoft to pour billions of dollars into the trending industry. And with many of the most recognizable AI companies based in San Francisco, there are hopes that the rising industry could shift the city’s fortunes and revitalize not just its tech sector, but help fill empty downtown streets, offices, and shops with the next wave of tech workers whose spending could filter through the rest of the city’s economy.
But some economists aren’t so sure."
‘It’s never been like this’: Latest Bay Area crime wave is targeting $50,000 power tools
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "Bradley Marshall Jr. parked his Chevy pickup truck next to the job site on Linda Avenue, a tree-lined street in Piedmont where he had been hired to repair a leaky waste line.
Finding no one at the customer’s home, Marshall sat in the truck and waited, jotting estimates on a clipboard. Then he heard a tap on the passenger side window, and saw a figure in a ski mask. Turning to the driver’s side, he glimpsed the barrel of a semiautomatic handgun pointed right at his head.
“I put my hands up,” Marshall said, recalling his terror on that July day in 2021, a shudder catching in his throat. “I said, ‘just take everything.’”"
A Bay Area city with exorbitant parking fees — and more citations than people — tries ticket reform
BANG*Mercury News, KATIE LAUER: "Finding a parking ticket tucked beneath your windshield wipers can ruin almost anyone’s day.
But for low-income residents already struggling to make ends meet, that expensive piece of paper is more than just a financial slap on the wrist.
In an effort to help the city’s most financially vulnerable drivers navigate their way out of these debts, Berkeley officials voted last week to reform the exorbitant fees and fines that come along with parking tickets, permits and towing services across the city."
Biden expected to assail Silicon Valley Big Tech in State of the Union address
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN BARON: "President Joe Biden will reportedly attack Big Tech in his State of the Union address Tuesday in a bid to unite lawmakers in Washington concerned about the industry’s unprecedented influence and impact on all facets of American life.
Biden has already deployed fighting words against Silicon Valley, alleging in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that some major technology industry players “collect, share and exploit our most personal data, deepen extremism and polarization in our country, tilt our economy’s playing field, violate the civil rights of women and minorities, and even put our children at risk.”
The President identified priorities for his administration’s approach to major internet companies including Google, Twitter and Facebook: limiting collection and use of personal data, boosting their liability for content posted on their websites by third parties, and limiting their size and power through increased enforcement of antitrust laws. He also called in the op-ed for both major parties to create new legislation to protect privacy, prevent discrimination and promote competition."
Rescuers scramble in Turkey, Syria after quake kills 4,000
AP, MEHMET GUZEL/GHAITH ALSAYED/SUZAN FRASER: "Rescuers in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria searched through the frigid night into Tuesday, hoping to pull more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 4,000 people and toppled thousands of buildings across a wide region.
Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake and aftershocks would keep climbing as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
Survivors cried out for help from within mountains of debris as first responders contended with rain and snow. Seismic activity continued to rattle the region, including another jolt nearly as powerful as the initial quake. Workers carefully pulled away slabs of concrete and reached for bodies as desperate families waited for news of loved ones."
Deadly Turkey-Syria earthquakes: How to help in the Bay Area
BANG*Mercury News, AUSTIN TURNER: "Bay Area nonprofits sprang into action Monday in the wake of a devastating pair of powerful earthquakes that leveled buildings and killed thousands of people in Turkey and Syria, and left thousands more injured or missing.
Aid groups said the need for recovery and rebuilding funds will be enormous, and will require a unified worldwide effort. The death toll was expected to rise dramatically in the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude with an epicenter 20 miles from Turkey’s Gaziantep and a second temblor, measured at 7.5-magnitude, that struck about 60 miles away just hours later Sunday.
Bay Area and California residents can make an impact through these steps and organizations."