Judge bars University of California from all use of SAT, ACT scores in admissions
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO/NANETTE ASIMOV: "The University of California, which has already stopped requiring applicants to take the SAT or ACT, must go further and prohibit campuses from allowing prospective students to submit their scores, a judge ruled Tuesday in a victory for students with disabilities.
The UC regents voted in May to drop the Scholastic Aptitude Test and American College Testing exam as admissions requirements, in response to complaints by low-income, minority and disabled students that the standardized tests were unfair to applicants who could not afford preparation classes and tutors, or whose first language was not English. The students sued in December.
But the regents allowed individual campuses to let students submit their SAT and ACT scores voluntarily in applications for 2021 and 2022, after which the university would no longer accept scores. So far, three campuses have declined — UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Irvine — but the other six have opted to allow voluntary submission of test scores."
READ MORE related to Education: School starts in 2 days -- and this Sacramento district still hasn't finalized it's learning plan -- Sac Bee's SAWSAN MORRAR; At Freedom Schools, empowering Black and Latino students is part of the lesson plan -- LA Times's FRANK ROJAS
California allows polluting power plants to keep running. Recent blackouts helped save them
Sac Bee's DALE KASLER: "Two weeks after California was hit with rolling blackouts, state regulators extended the lifespan of a fleet of gas-fired power plants Tuesday, saying the facilities are needed to maintain reliability of the electricity grid.
The State Water Resources Control Board voted 4-0 to allow nine generating units to operate up to three more years before they’re mothballed, overriding objections from environmentalists and some local officials complaining about air and water pollution.
The fate of the generators, housed at four plants on the Southern California oceanfront, have become a closely-watched issue in the debate over the environment and California’s energy future."
READ MORE related to Climate/Environment: California lawmakers approve ban on popular rat poison that can kill mountain lions -- Sac Bee's RYAN SABALOW; Scuffle over Point Reyes' elk population's water supply -- The Chronicle's NORA MISHANEC; Avian botulism kills 40,000 birds, threatens millions more in Klamath Refuge -- The Chronicle's TOM STIENSTRA
'Disastrous': 16 dead of COVID-19 at California nursing home w/ history of health lapses
Sac Bee's MICHAEL MCGOUGH: "As a nursing home in rural Northern California recovers from a severe coronavirus outbreak that killed more than a dozen residents and infected close to 90 people, questions have surfaced about the facility’s health and safety protocols — including an allegation that it went through with an ill-advised patient transfer not long after its first COVID-19 cases emerged.
At least 16 residents of Kit Carson Nursing and Rehab Center in Amador County have died of the virus, according to a state data dashboard tracking COVID-19 activity in licensed skilled nursing facilities. That ranks it among Northern California’s deadliest senior home outbreaks during the pandemic.
Kit Carson in an update to its website on Friday confirms only 11 virus deaths connected to its facility, which houses nearly 200 residents in the city of Jackson."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: After California COVID data errors, state hires company to build new coronavirus database -- Sac Bee's SOPHIA BOLLAG
Big Basin Redwoods park, heavily damaged by fire, will stay closed for at least a year
The Chronicle's J.D. MORRIS: "California’s oldest state park will stay closed for at least a year to protect the public as the state takes a cautious approach to reopening the beloved forested enclave that was badly burned in a recent wildfire.
Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains suffered extensive damage from the CZU Lightning Complex fires, and while many of its most majestic trees are expected to survive, the area is riddled with hazards that will take a long time to fix, said Chris Spohrer, a state parks district superintendent.
Spohrer made the comments after he helped lead Gov. Gavin Newsom, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Peter Gaynor and a host of state officials on a tour through the burned park. The public won’t be safe at Big Basin for the next 12 months or more, Spohrer said, partly because parks officials still need to figure out exactly which trees must be removed and which will remain. They hope that stress from high winds in the coming months will show them which trees are best positioned to survive."
Suspect's family sues over fatal Sacramento police shooting at apartments near Sac State
Sac Bee's SAM STANTON: "The brother of a gun-wielding man shot by Sacramento police at an apartment complex near Sacramento State in July filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the department late Monday alleging officers “executed” the man after he had been shot and was on the ground.
The suit was filed in federal court in Sacramento on behalf of Jimmy Southern, the brother of 22-year-old Jeremy Southern, a parolee at large who died after a confrontation with Sacramento police at The Crossings apartment complex in the 2900 block of Ramona Avenue.
“At the time of the incident he was on his way to visit his only biological sibling, his brother Jimmy Southern, when he suffered a mental health crisis,” the lawsuit says. “When Sacramento officers executed Jeremy, Jimmy lost the only family he had left in this world."
What went wrong in the Capitol when California Republicans stalled votes from quarantine
Sac Bee's SOPHIA BOLLAG/HANNAH WILEY: "Arguments between Republicans and Democrats in the California Senate ate up critical time in the last moments of a legislative session already interrupted three times by the coronavirus outbreak, ensuring several high profile bills on housing and police reform failed to get votes by the year’s deadline.
At one point, debate halted for 90 minutes in the Senate during a dispute over a Democratic attempt to limit the number of speakers on each bill.
Tensions boiled over, with fuming Republicans protesting the move remotely, quarantined after being exposed to a lawmaker who tested positive for the coronavirus.“So you’re just going to shut Republicans out of debate?” said Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore. “This is bull----.”"
Major housing, police bills died when squabbling lawmakers ran out of time
The Chronicle's DUSTIN GARDINER/ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Leaders at the California Capitol tried desperately this year to keep business on track and set lofty policy goals despite the interruptions of a global pandemic. But in the end, 2020 had the last word.
The California Legislature adjourned at 1:29 a.m. Tuesday, ending a session that was repeatedly thrown off course by the coronavirus. Many of the biggest policy issues died without final votes.
“We have endured something unparalleled in our history and we did it exceptionally well,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood (Los Angeles County), told his bleary-eyed colleagues at the end of the night."
Trump blows up compassionate image portrayed at RNC
LA Times's CHRIS MEGERIAN/NOAH BIERMAN/ELI STOKOLS: "Speaker after speaker at last week’s Republican National Convention painted a benign portrait of President Trump as compassionate, citing his call to a surgery patient and long-ago visit to a theme park, seeking to soften his image as racist and belligerent.
Trump has spent nearly every day since blowing up the kinder, gentler version.
He compared a cop who shot a Black man to a golfer who chokes and misses “a three-foot putt,” shared a fringe conspiracy theory that the nation’s protests are an organized coup against him, and described Black Lives Matter, a driving force in the movement for racial justice, as a “Marxist organization” that is “bad for Black people."
SF stands nearly alone as Bay Area salons reopen indoors
The Chronicle's RUSTY SIMMONS: "Instead of moving chairs outside to Polk Street, Gabe Sandejas walked to a protest at City Hall on Tuesday.
Sandejas wanted to get his voice heard: There was no way to operate his barbershop outdoors amid a homeless crisis and the 15th straight day of poor air quality from wildfire smoke.
“I’m in no position to open outside,” said the owner of Locals Barbershop in the Tenderloin. “I know we’re supposed to adapt right now, but now I’m not worrying only about COVID. I’m worrying about my clients dodging needles. I feel sick saying that.”
LA County weighs indoor reopening of hair salons and shopping malls
LA Times's COLLEEN SHALBY: "Los Angeles County officials are weighing whether to allow the reopening of indoor shopping centers, retail shops and hair salons in accordance with the state’s new guidelines, which permit counties — no matter their COVID-19 status — to reopen such businesses under certain conditions.
If county officials decide to lift the restrictions ahead of Labor Day weekend, the businesses would be allowed to operate at 25% capacity, as well as indoor modified operations at hair salons and barbershops.
Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer and the Board of Supervisors met Tuesday to discuss the new guidance, but no decision was made. Any change to the county’s guidelines will be announced Wednesday afternoon, according to the county’s Department of Public Health."
Trump's 'law and order': Ignoring facts as he plays to fears
The Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI: "President Trump kicked his crime-focused re-election strategy into overdrive Tuesday during a campaign stop in Kenosha, Wis., blaming “domestic terrorists” for the unrest that has ensued there after a police officer shot a Black man seven times in the back.
Trump never mentioned Jacob Blake, the man wounded last month, by name and abandoned plans to phone Blake’s family after they asked a lawyer to listen in to the call. Instead, Trump insisted that he would heal the nation’s racial divide through “law and order.”
“If you look at the Black community, they want the police to help them stop crime. The Hispanic community, they want police,” Trump said before he left for Wisconsin. “They don’t want crime. They don’t want to be mugged. They don’t want to have any problems, and it’s just a shame."
A Kennedy loses in Massachusetts and a storied dynasty fades
LA Times's JANET HOOK: "The 2020 political season has delivered a lot of curveballs, and here’s another: For the first time in U.S. history, a Kennedy has lost an election in Massachusetts.
Sen. Edward J. Markey’s ability to beat back a challenge from Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III in the state’s Democratic primary Tuesday was a tribute to the incumbent’s skill at organizing progressive activists behind him against a scion of a storied political family.
It was also a tribute to a broader political dynamic that reaches beyond Massachusetts and the Democratic Party: The loosening grip of family dynasties in American politics."
French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo reprints controversial Muhammad caricatures
AP: "The French satirical paper whose staff was decimated in a violent attack by Islamic extremists in 2015 is reprinting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad cited by the killers, declaring that “history cannot be rewritten nor erased.”
The announcement Tuesday came on the eve of the first trial for the January 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and, two days later, a kosher supermarket. The killings touched off a wave of violence claimed by the Islamic State group across Europe.
Seventeen people died — 12 of them at the editorial offices — along with all three attackers. Thirteen men and a woman accused of providing the attackers with weapons and logistics go on trial Wednesday."
