He set his house on fire then killed 9 co-workers. Gunman's rampage leaves San Jose reeling with pain
LA Times, RICHARD WINTON, MAURA DOLAN, HAYLEY SMITH and MARIA L. LA GANGA: "First, the gunman set his house on fire.
Then he drove to work Wednesday morning and shot nine co-workers to death in two separate buildings at a San Jose light rail yard, after possibly setting explosives.
As Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies ran on scene just moments after the first 911 calls came in, he apparently shot himself to death."
The nation is reopening. Mass shootings are accelerating
The Chronicle, MEGAN CASSIDY/KEVIN FAGAN: "With a hailstorm of bullets and eight victims dead, San Jose on Wednesday joined a fast-growing list of cities terrorized by mass shootings, a trend that has begun accelerating as the pandemic and shutdown orders come to an end.
The massacre at a light-rail facility near the city’s downtown area marked the nation’s fifth mass shooting in a year that hasn’t yet reached its halfway point, according to a data set by Mother Jones. This is compared with two mass shootings in all of 2020, a year defined by stay-home orders and, accordingly, few public gatherings.
At a rate of one per month, this year’s mass shootings are on pace to meet or exceed the number of incidents in recent years before the pandemic, where the data set reports 10 in 2019, 12 in 2018 and 11 in 2017."
Federal water cutoffs igniting rebellion in NorCal
Sac Bee, RYAN SABALOW: "In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland in Oregon and far Northern California.
Local farmer Grant Knoll was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S. marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago — and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to fight again.
This spring, he and another farmer, Dan Nielsen, bought the property next to the headgates in Klamath Falls, Ore. They erected a red and white tent surrounded by American flags and protest signs, and they’re holding regular gatherings. And they’re working with a group with close ties to anti-government activist Ammon Bundy."
Drought enters dangerous territory. What's ahead for fish, farms and cities
Sac Bee, DALE KASLER/RYAN SABALOW: "In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone from bad to terrible.
Sacramento residents have been asked to cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River are being told to reduce their consumption 20%.
Farmers across the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of massive fish kills on the Sacramento River.
Multimillionaire recall candidate John Cox owes consultants from failed gubernatorial bid
LA Times, SEEMA MEHTA: "Multimillionaire recall candidate John Cox’s prior gubernatorial campaign has been ordered by a judge to pay about $100,000 to a political consulting firm that produced television ads for his unsuccessful 2018 race — one of a string of unpaid bills detailed in a lawsuit and campaign filings.
Cox’s campaign has refused to pay, leading to a “debtor’s examination” hearing next month in San Diego over the financial status of that campaign committee, according to court records.
“California needs to know the real story about John Cox. To be honest with you, he’s not who he says he is,” said Jim Innocenzi, the founding partner of Sandler-Innocenzi, the Virginia-based GOP firm that an arbitrator and a judge have ruled is owed nearly $55,000 for ads it produced and about $43,000 in attorney’s costs, interest and other fees as of September 2019. These awards have grown by 6% interest since then, plus additional attorney’s fees as Innocenzi has tried to collect the money."
New California COVID relief could include checks, business grants, child savings accounts
LA Times, PATRICK MCGREEVY: "The California Legislature is weighing a raft of proposals to provide new financial help to residents who have suffered economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic, including rent relief, state stimulus checks and grants for small businesses and entrepreneurs wanting to start new ventures.
More than a dozen proposals were unveiled this month by Gov. Gavin Newsom as part of his California Comeback Plan, which he wants to finance with a portion of a historic tax revenue windfall as well as more than $25 billion in federal relief approved by Congress.
“This is a jumpstart for our local economies, and it’s how we’ll bring California roaring back,” Newsom said in announcing the new proposals."
Scary 'long haul' symptoms found in many COVID patients, Stanford researcheres say
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "More than 70% of COVID-19 patients studied report having at least one “long haul” symptom that lasts for months, including depression, shortness of breath and brain fog, a new Stanford analysis of dozens of research projects finds.
Most of the patients studied had suffered moderate to severe COVID cases and had been hospitalized before being hit with lingering problems, the Stanford review found in analyzing 45 research projects from around the world, one of the largest studies of its kind.
The research projects followed a total of 9,751 COVID patients for at least three months after their illness, 83% of whom had been hospitalized. Patients reported 84 different symptoms affecting seemingly every system in the body: cardiac, respiratory, neuromuscular, neurological, circulatory and immune, the researchers said in an analysis posted Wednesday in JAMA Network Open, an open access publication of the American Medical Association."
California's coronavirus positive test rate hits new low. What does that mean for reopening?
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "At the beginning of the year, California was hitting pandemic record after record in the midst of a terrible winter coronavirus surge.
Now, the state is setting records again, but in a much more reassuring direction.
According to state data, a new 7-day average coronavirus positive test rate of 0.8% was reported Monday. That was the lowest positive test rate on record for California."
Why the only member of Congress born in Central America sleeps with a gun by her bed
LA Times, TRACY WILKINSON/SARAH D WIRE: "She’s called the president of Honduras a narco. The president of El Salvador, she said, was a “narcissistic dictator.”
Norma Torres, the lone member of Congress from Central America, is not afraid to speak her mind — sometimes in surprising ways — about immigration, corruption and the land of her birth. Her blunt talk has drawn so much anger from one Central American leader and his followers that she sleeps with a 9-millimeter pistol at her side.
Torres, a Democrat from Pomona, brings a unique perspective on what drives people to flee their home countries."
Family, friends remember victims of VTA shooting
The Chronicle, LAUREN HERNANDEZ/LAUREN HEPLER/SHWANIKA NARAYAN/NANETTE ASIMOV: "The waiting was agonizing. When word finally came, it was worse.
Relatives and friends of people who work at a Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in San Jose where an employee killed nine people Wednesday gathered there, at a sheriff’s office and at a family assistance center, waiting to learn if their loved ones were among the dead.
Late Wednesday, the answers came from the Santa Clara County coroner’s office. It identified those slain in the morning shootings as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; Lars Kepler Lane, 63; and Alex Ward Fritch, 49."
Caltrans/high-speed rail would create hundreds of jobs in Newsom's budget
Sac Bee, ANDREW SHEELER: "Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is gearing up for a hiring spree in the state’s transportation departments, advancing plans to add hundreds of positions for highways, roads and high-speed rail.
He outlined the plans in the $268 billion budget proposal he submitted earlier this month. It’s moving forward with a deadline for the Legislature to pass a spending plan by June 15.
It includes some 600 new permanent positions for roads and rail."
Former Gov. Jerry Brown defends Calbright College
EdSource, ASHLEY A SMITH: "When former California Gov. Jerry Brown envisioned Calbright College barely five years ago, he saw California leading the country in virtual education by building an online-only community college that would target working adults seeking to improve their skills and move into better-paying jobs.
Today, just a year and a half since the embattled college opened its doors to students, Brown is its chief defender. He still sees the college as the public solution to predatory for-profit institutions that targeted adult and low-income workers in the state to pursue degrees and credentials, sometimes at the cost of excessive student loans.
“The concept of Calbright is more relevant than ever,” said Brown, 83 who retired in 2019 after ending a second stint as the state’s Democratic governor. “There’s more money now in higher education than ever before, so it’s not a money question. It’s the concept. Could the for-profit online colleges receive a public option? Could they face some competition from a public option, which Calbright represents? It’s a very attractive alternative for working people, not the fancy elites, but people who are struggling to improve their lot in life by upgrading their skills and doing so in a way that is affordable.”"
California Mamilitia founder boasted of insurrection activity
Sac Bee, HANNAH WILEY/JASON POHL: "Denise Aguilar, a vocal California vaccine critic and founder of a survivalist group known as Mamalitia, has said she wasn’t involved in the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, although she admits to being in Washington, D.C. that day.
But despite attempts to distance herself from the attempted coup, a since-deleted Instagram video shows Aguilar celebrating the deadly mob and suggesting she was among the rioters who roamed the Capitol grounds. She also called for similar take-overs in statehouses across the country.
“We stormed the Capitol. And patriots broke open the doors. They took back, we’re taking back our states. Really this is what it is,” Aguilar told her social media followers in the now-deleted video."
