World's largest sequoias wrapped in aluminum insulation as fire nears Giant Forest
The Chronicle, KURTIS ALEXANDER: "Last year, more than 10% of the world’s sequoia trees were wiped out by a single wildfire. Fire officials want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
On Thursday morning, as flames rushed toward the storied Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park, where fire was expected to hit the grove of some 2,000 big trees within 24 hours, crews were wrapping sequoias with aluminum insulation, digging protective lines around the titans and planning to light back burns to push away the approaching flames.
The Colony Fire, one of two blazes that make up the fast-moving 9,365-acre KNP Complex, was within a mile of Giant Forest, park officials said. The second blaze, the Paradise Fire to the south, was farther away, but also burning in the direction of the historical grove."
PG&E seeks to recover array of costs, higher monthly bills loom
GEORGE AVALOS, Mercury News: "PG&E customers face the forbidding prospect of higher monthly bills due to the utility’s requests for more revenue to ensure it can cope with an array of events including wildfires, coronavirus challenges and other catastrophes.
The combined effect of the two rate requests would cause the average monthly PG&E bill to jump past $200 a month for the typical customer who receives both electricity and gas services from the utility.
At present, the average bill for the typical customer who receives both electricity and gas services from PG&E is a shade under $200 a month."
Newsom gets state high court justice pick as Mariano-Florentino Cuellar resigns for think-tank job
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: 'California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a 2015 appointee of former Gov. Jerry Brown and one of the court’s more liberal members, is resigning to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Cuéllar, 49, announced his departure Thursday, two days after the voters rejected a recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will nominate his successor.
His resignation, effective Nov. 1, was first reported by the New York Times. He told the Times he hoped to bring a “fresh perspective” to the Carnegie think tank, whose previous president, William Burns, is now President Biden’s CIA director."
High-speed train to Las Vegas is hailed as an eco jackpot. But will it harm desert sheep?
LA Times, LOUIS SAHAGUN: "As daylight rose over the parched and jagged Soda Mountains recently, an emaciated-looking bighorn ewe and two gaunt lambs hoofed carefully over volcanic outcroppings as they searched hungrily for increasingly rare clumps of greenery.
In this Mojave Desert landscape, severe drought and record-breaking heat are challenging the survival of bighorn sheep and other species and forcing them to search ever more widely for food and water.
But conservationists fear that the ability of animals to roam could become dangerously restricted in the face of a proposed high-speed electric rail line connecting Southern California and Las Vegas."
With recall defeated, Newsom scores well in poll against 2022 rivals
LA Times, PHIL WILLON: "After overwhelmingly rejecting an effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom in Tuesday’s recall election, California voters appear ready to sign him up for a second term in 2022.
Newsom would easily beat any of the four top Republicans who were in the running to replace him, including the GOP candidate who fared best, conservative talk show host Larry Elder, according to a newly released UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
The poll found that 52% of registered voters said they would support Newsom in a head-to-head matchup with Elder, while 30% would back the Republican. The remainder said they were undecided."
Democrats gloat, Republicans ponder implications of recall results
The Chronicle, TAL KOPAN: "Democrats escaped an existential crisis in Tuesday’s recall election, with Gov. Gavin Newsom comfortably cruising to victory — as would be expected in the overwhelmingly blue state of California.
For Republicans, it wasn’t just losing that will cause self-reflection, but also who claimed the most support among Newsom’s would-be replacements: Conservative talk show host Larry Elder decisively lapped a field of moderate GOP contenders with more established political credentials.
Democrats started gloating before the sun had even risen in California on Wednesday that the outcome portends good things for their 2022 election prospects. But the reality is that it may reinforce just how strong the brand of former President Donald Trump remains in the Republican Party — even in a state like California."
After recall flop, struggling California GOP once again fighting over future
LA Times, MELANIE MASON and SEEMA MEHTA: "California Republicans thought they found a unifying rallying cry in the recall attempt against Gov. Gavin Newsom. Instead, the campaign exposed — and even worsened — some of the long-standing clashes between the establishment and grass-roots base, while leaving unsettled the question of how the party can stop its losing streak in the state.
The GOP can take comfort in knowing it made Newsom sweat far more than any Democrat has in the last decade of statewide races, at least until the polls closed and the governor easily prevailed.
The lopsided outcome underscores how the party’s daunting climb back to political relevance is made all the more difficult by the recall effort’s missed opportunities and internecine squabbles."
Recall was a 'distraction' from liberal priorities, advocates say. Now they want Newsom's help
Sacramento Bee, HANNAH WILEY: "Hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom crushed the effort to oust him from office, he said it was time to “get back to work.”
California’s left-leaning advocacy organizations are ready with a list of ideas. They want Newsom to refocus on health care, police accountability and climate change.
They waited to press the governor harder until the election was over, and now they say it’s time to regroup. Their organizations helped deliver him a victory, after all."
Federal appeals court says DAs in California can't seek to resume executions
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "District attorneys in California can’t go to federal court to propose or defend the state’s death penalty methods or to seek to resume executions once Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moratorium is lifted, a U.S. appeals court ruled Thursday.
The chief prosecutors in San Mateo, San Bernardino and Riverside counties sought in March to intervene in a long-running case over the constitutionality of California’s lethal injection procedures, a case that was put on hold when Newsom ordered a halt to executions in March 2019. The district attorneys accused Newsom, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his successor, Rob Bonta, of colluding with lawyers for Death Row inmates, and said they should be allowed to enter the case.
But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said execution methods are determined by the state and its officials, not the county district attorneys who seek and obtain death sentences."
NorCal woman charged in Jan. 6 insurrection faces sentencing after guilty plea
Sacramento Bee, SAM STANTON: "A Northern California woman who was one of the first defendants to plead guilty in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., in a case in which prosecutors are recommending no time in custody.
Valerie Elaine Ehrke, a home designer from Arbuckle who traveled to Washington last January to see then-President Donald Trump speak at a rally protesting the outcome of the November presidential election, pleaded guilty in June to a single misdemeanor count of parading, picketing or demonstrating in a government building.
Ehrke could have faced up to six months in custody and a $5,000 fine, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Birney filed a sentencing memo last week asking a judge to sentence her to three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and $500 in restitution."
Orinda man sentenced to 2 years in prison for bribery in SF City Hall corruption scandal
The Chronicle, MEGAN CASSIDY: "The former president of an Oakland construction management firm on Thursday was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a $127,000 fine for his role in what federal prosecutors described as a seven-year conspiracy to bribe former San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru.
The sentencing comes nearly four months after Alan Varela, 60, of Orinda, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit honest services wire fraud, becoming the latest to face prison time in connection to a far-reaching City Hall corruption scandal.
Prosecutors say Varela, the founder and then-president ProVen Management, helped funnel a “stream of benefits” to Nuru, including $20,000 in meals and a $40,000 tractor to use at his vacation ranch in Colusa County."
New data affirm it. LA County school safety policies are working as COVID rates continue decline
LA Times, MELISSA GOMEZ/RONG-GONG LIN II/LUKE MONEY: "The early weeks of fully opened Los Angeles County schools have coincided with declining pediatric coronavirus cases, the first indication campuses are generally operating safely without a troubling number of outbreaks.
Citing the low number of coronavirus outbreaks in schools, public health officials on Thursday announced that schools in L.A. County will no longer be automatically required to send unvaccinated students home to quarantine for at least seven days after their last contact with an individual who tests positive.
Over the last three weeks, coronavirus cases declined across all pediatric age groups by about 40%, according to L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer."
Two Bay Area school districts want to mandate student vaccines. Here's what families and experts think
The Chronicle, CATHERINE HO/RACHEL SWAN/MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "Proposals to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for tens of thousands of staff and students in two Bay Area school districts are drawing support from health experts and many families — though some parents and students expressed trepidation.
The school boards for the Oakland Unified and West Contra Costa Unified districts are slated to vote on the proposed mandates next week. If they’re approved, these two Bay Area districts would become the first in Northern California to adopt such requirements.
These votes come after school districts have shut some classrooms and quarantined students in the wake of the delta variant. While children rarely get seriously ill from COVID-19, the cases have disrupted learning just as teachers are trying to catch up students, many of whom were stuck in distance learning for more than a year."
;Newsom signs long-awaited bills to increase housing density in California
The Chronicle, ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Years of pitched legislative battles over single-family zoning and height limits ended Thursday with a long-awaited victory for advocates who have pushed California to embrace denser construction as a solution to its critical housing shortage.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills that promote what supporters call a “light density” approach, loosening zoning rules to make it easier to build out existing neighborhoods with small apartment buildings.
The changes could ultimately help add hundreds of thousands of housing units across the state — though that is still far short of the more than a million new homes that experts estimate California will need in coming years to make up for the affordability gap and to accommodate future growth."
How to spot and avoid online scams and fake listings when looking for a place to rent
Sacramento Bee, HANH TRUONG: "Shanti LoCelso was looking to move to Sacramento from Ventura County to be closer to her family. Like many searching for a new humble abode, LoCelso went online, combing through listings on Facebook, Zillow and Craigslist. But finding a legitimate listing was like looking for a diamond in a scam-filled mine.
“I took a break from looking at apartments,” LoCelso said, explaining that she is exhausted from her search.
In the almost eight months that the 44-year-old has been looking for an apartment, she has run into more than five fraudulent listings with individuals posing as property owners and real estate agents. She said she has lost around $300."
How UC Berkeley went from 13th to No. 1 on a college rankings list
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "The best college in America has been sitting quietly in the Bay Area, without that formal distinction, for 158 years.
But now UC Berkeley is officially the best, says Forbes magazine, which ranks colleges and placed the university in the No. 1 spot on its new list. UC Berkeley was the 13th best college in America in 2019, the last time the rankings came out.
A lot can change in two years."
DOJ is reviewing Trump-era policies on transgender inmates
AP, MICHAEL BALSAMO/MOHAMED IBRAHIM: "The U.S. Justice Department is reviewing its policies on housing transgender inmates in the federal prison system after protections for trans prisoners were rolled back in the Trump administration, the Associated Press has learned.
The federal Bureau of Prisons’ policies for trans inmates were thrust into the spotlight this week after a leader of an Illinois anti-government militia group — who identifies as transgender — was sentenced to 53 years in prison for masterminding the 2017 bombing of a Minnesota mosque.
Emily Claire Hari, who was charged, tried and convicted as Michael Hari, was sentenced Monday for the bombing of Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn. It will now be up to the Bureau of Prisons’ Transgender Executive Council — a group of psychology and correctional officials — to determine where to house Hari in a system of 122 federal prisons."
