Advocates blame oil giants for climate change, call Chevron No. 1 culprit
The Chronicle's KURTIS ALEXANDER: "As scientists worry that climate change is stoking deadly hurricanes in the Atlantic and punishing wildfires in the West, a new study seeks to drive change by casting blame, connecting global warming to a roster of 90 companies topped by Bay Area-based Chevron."
"The products these companies generate — mostly oil, gas and coal — have caused half of the increase in global temperatures since the 1800s, according to the report published in the journal Climate Change. Some of the firms have been responsible for nearly 3 percent of the total carbon dioxide driving global warming, the report said, though they knew in some cases that their actions were harmful."
"The study is the latest piece of a broad effort to tie individual companies to climate change in a bid to pressure them and force reforms. It comes as scientists hone their ability to assign accountability for the cost of a warming planet, and as President Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, leads an administration that is stripping away rules designed to curb emissions of problematic greenhouse gases."
READ MORE related to Environment: Protest planned to save doctor who led Porter Ranch health study -- Daily News' SUSAN ABRAM
An odd tale of prisoners and redistricting
Capitol Weekly's PAUL MITCHELL: "Much of redistricting law is arcane and technical. But often what seems like a little detail can become a significant factor in how the lines will be drawn."
"Take, for example, prisoners."
"The U.S. Census counts prisoners just like any other part of the overall population. The Census captures people at their “usual residence,” meaning the place where they live and sleep most days. If they don’t have a usual residence, then they are counted based on where they are on April 1 of the census year. This could be a home, college dorm, shelter or prison."
READ MORE from Capitol Weekly: OP-ED: Balancing regulation with innovation -- KISH RAJAN
Saved by the peace and quiet at a growing number of California schools
EdSource's CAROLYN JONES: "Hoping to create calmer, more peaceful atmospheres on campus, schools around the state are turning off their bell systems and letting students figure out when class starts the old-fashioned way: by looking at a clock."
"The only places that have bells any more are prisons and schools,” said Chris Calderwood, assistant principal at Rancho Mirage High School near Palm Springs. “The bottom line is, every kid has a cell phone in their pocket. They know what time it is. Why not trust the kids to manage their own time?"
"Rancho Mirage High, which opened in 2013, has never used bells. In creating protocols for the new school when it opened, Calderwood and other administrators looked at a range of policies designed to teach life skills and improve campus culture. Dumping the bells was one of them."
After 15 die in hepatitis outbreak, San Diego begins sanitary washing
LA Times' PAUL SISSON: "Sanitary street washing will commence in downtown San Diego and will continue every other week to combat the city’s deadly hepatitis A outbreak, Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s office said Friday."
"The city responded to a letter sent by San Diego County Thursday, asking the city to move forward with a list of specific sanitation actions designed to help control the spread of the disease, which has killed 15 people and hospitalized nearly 300, many of them homeless and living on streets without adequate access to restrooms or showers."
"The county gave the city five business days to respond with a plan for remedying what it called a “fecally contaminated environment” downtown. The county will soon expand its efforts to other cities in the region, where the outbreak has now produced nearly 400 confirmed cases."
LA saw a big drop in homicides this summer, falling to levels seen in 1966
LA Times' KATE MATHER: "Two years ago, a particularly brutal August — the deadliest the city had seen in years — alarmed Los Angeles police."
"Hoping to slow the bloodshed, top officials at the Los Angeles Police Department retooled their crime-fighting strategies. They sent extra officers to the neighborhoods hit hardest, looking for guns and focusing on gang-inspired violence."
"This summer, those changes finally paid off, Chief Charlie Beck said Tuesday."
Justices allow Trump administration ban on refugees
AP: "The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policy on refugees."
"The justices on Tuesday agreed to an administration request to block a lower court ruling that would have eased the refugee ban and allowed up to 24,000 refugees to enter the country before the end of October."
Democrats pushing for vote on Dream Act as White House backs off demands to link it to border wall funding
LA Times' LISA MASCARO/BRIAN BENNETT: "Democrats are pushing for a vote on the Dream Act in a matter of weeks after President Trump told congressional leaders he wanted action on legislation to protect the young immigrants known as “Dreamers."
"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Democrats are trying to force a vote, using a procedural maneuver or at least provide a show of strength that leaves Republican leaders few options but to call one."
"The president asked them to bring it up," Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told a small group of reporters Tuesday in an interview at the Capitol. "We told him ... we will not rest until it’s passed, and we want to do it as soon as possible."
Kris Kobach watches his voter fraud statement get fact-checked. It didn't go well.
ThinkProgress' KIRA LERNER: "Several Democratic voting experts including New Hampshire’s secretary of state on Tuesday repudiated White House voting commission co-chair Kris Kobach’s claim that thousands of out-of-state voters in New Hampshire likely tipped the Senate race to Democrats. Kobach acknowledged he should have hedged his wording, but did not admit he was wrong."
"In a Breitbart column last week, Kobach claimed that he had definitive proof that more than 5,000 out-of-state voters cast fraudulent ballots in 2016, tipping the Senate and potentially presidential race to Democrats. During the second meeting of his voting commission in New Hampshire Tuesday, Kobach called his evidence “anecdotal” and said he’s not sure he used the right word when he wrote that it “appears” there was fraud."
"Maybe the right words were ‘does not appear,'” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, responded on Twitter."
Milo Yiannopoulos says he, Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter will speak at UC Berkeley
The Chronicle's NANETTE ASIMOV/JENNA LYONS: "Milo Yiannopoulos, the provocative right-wing showman whose visit to UC Berkeley in February prompted a riot that shut down the event, said Tuesday he’s coming back in two weeks with like-minded cohorts: author Ann Coulter and Stephen Bannon, former adviser to President Trump."
"Campus officials haven’t sanctioned the trio’s four-day event, planned by a student group and dubbed “Free Speech Week."
"Masked left-wing anarchists greeted Yiannopoulos in February, smashing windows, burning police equipment and forcing cancellation of the speech. Yiannopoulos told The Chronicle he wants to return because UC Berkeley “likes to make a big deal that it’s the home of free speech. But it’s certainly the opposite of that."
Resignation an ignoble end for Seattle mayor's career, resigns after fifth child sex abuse allegation
AP: "Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, beset over the past five months by sex abuse allegations, plans to resign Wednesday, bringing an ignoble end to a lengthy political career in which he championed gay rights and better pay for workers."
"His announcement Tuesday came after The Seattle Times reported that a fifth man — one of his cousins — had accused Murray of molesting him decades ago. Though he has vehemently denied all of the accusations against him, Murray, a Democrat, had already decided not to seek re-election."
"While the allegations against me are not true, it is important that my personal issues do not affect the ability of our city government to conduct the public's business," he said in a statement."
An exasperating hunt for gasoline in Florida as Hurricane Irma's evacuees scramble to come home
LA Times' EVAN HALPER: "The drive from Naples to Gainesville was 288 miles of gut-wrenching anxiety, and not because of destruction from the massive hurricane that tore through the day before."
"Along that entire stretch of Interstate 75 — four hours from far southwest Florida to nearly the top of the state — there was hardly a functioning gas pump to be found."
"Mile after mile, motorists were exiting the freeway on fumes and encountering the same sorry sight: empty gas pumps covered with yellow bags, or even worse, wrapped in the dreaded shrink wrap."
READ MORE related to Hurricane Season: Stars turn out to push for donations for hurricane relief -- AP; Irma's remnants hit Georgia and South Carolina as Florida struggles with cleanup -- LA Times' EVAN HALPER/LAURA KING
These migrant workers earn $350 a week in the fields. Now Irma has destroyed their homes.
LA Times' PATRICK J. MCDONNELL: "Petrona Nunez cradled her 2-year-old daughter, Jazabell, in her arms and surveyed the damage to her family trailer."
"The roof had caved in on the living room and bedroom. Debris was everywhere. Globs of pink insulation clung to furniture, walls and the floor, as did mud-like dollops of saturated roofing material."
"A broken mirror and shattered door lay atop her bed. A plastic sheet served as a temporary roof, creating a diaphanous glow amid the chaos inside."
With pizza and prose, Hillary Clinton plays to her crowd
LA Times' BARBARA DEMICK: "For somebody who often is reviled by political pundits (“Can Hillary Clinton Please Go Quietly Into the Night?” read a headline in Vanity Fair), the turnout Tuesday morning at a bookstore in Manhattan was a reminder that the vanquished White House hopeful still can command a rock-star following."
"And that the people who love her do so for herself — not just because of her husband or because she was not Donald Trump."
"The narrative that you always hear is that people voted for her because she wasn’t Trump, but they forget there are many people who love Hillary for herself,” said 27-year-old Catherina Messier, a recent graduate in theater studies from Brandeis University."
