California gets money for wildfire, drought as Congress temporarily funds govt again
Sac Bee, GILLIAN BRASSIL: "Congress passed a government funding bill in a down-to-the-wire vote on Thursday in the face of a looming shutdown.
The continuing resolution bill, a short-term spending resolution that will keep the government funded through early December, delegates $28.6 billion to disaster relief efforts, including for wildfire prevention and response and the consequences of drought.
Here’s some of what the bill addresses on wildfires and drought."
UC could add 20,000 seats for students by 2030 to meet surging enrollment demand
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "The University of California is seeking to add 20,000 seats for students by 2030, the equivalent of a new campus, to help meet surging demand for a UC education and college graduates to fill the state’s growing need for highly skilled employees.
UC Board of Regents Chair Cecilia Estolano, who has marked enrollment expansion as one of her top priorities, emphasized, along with UC President Michael V. Drake, that UC must grow without sacrificing its renowned quality in teaching and research and increase numbers of both undergraduates and graduate students, faculty and staff.
The system’s nine undergraduate campuses face a looming capacity crisis that could deprive as many as 144,000 qualified California students a seat at a four-year campus by the end of the decade."
READ MORE EDUCATION RELATED NEWS --- A secret USC payout had a catch: Images of ex-dean using drugs had to be given up -- The Chronicle, PAUL PRINGLE
More companies are requiring applicants to be vaccinated, and not just in California
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "In the wake of the delta variant’s spread, more companies are requiring job candidates to be vaccinated, but not as many as you might expect — and California isn’t leading the pack when it comes to the requirements, despite the state boasting the lowest coronavirus case rate in the nation.
A Sept. 24 snapshot of postings on the job site Indeed showed California came in 10th out of all 50 U.S. states that mentioned vaccine requirements. That amounted to 1.6% of statewide jobs as a seven-day moving average.
Washington state topped the list, with 3.16%, followed by Oregon at 2.45% and Arizona in third with 2.44%. Mississippi was at the bottom of the list with 0.38% of listing mentioning a requirement and four other states — Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — had too few job postings requiring vaccinations to put a number on it."
READ MORE VACCINE-RELATED NEWS -- Will Bay Area hospitals see problems from the health worker vaccine mandate? Here's what we know -- The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI
Most California health workers got vaccinated, but holdouts could be fired
LA Times, LAURA J. NELSON and CONNOR SHEETS: "California’s aggressive push to vaccinate millions of healthcare workers against COVID-19 appears to have been mostly successful, with many hospitals and other healthcare facilities reporting overwhelmingly high rates of inoculated employees by the Thursday deadline.
Thousands of workers remain unvaccinated, either in defiance of the state’s order or through approved exemptions for medical or religious reasons. But the number of holdouts seems to represent a small fraction of the Golden State’s approximately 2.4 million healthcare workers.
The holdouts nevertheless represent a significant test for employers and public health officials grappling with how to apply the state’s new requirements, including how to ensure compliance from a vast network of health facilities."
How COVID vaccination rates stack up against Newsom recall votes in each California county
The Chronicle, KATE GALBRAITH and DAN KOPF: "Politics and COVID-19 vaccination rates are strikingly correlated in the U.S., with redder states generally having lower vaccination rates than bluer ones.
That’s true within California, as evidenced by the connection between vaccination rates and the election this month — ultimately unsuccessful — to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Lassen County, for example, has the lowest vaccination rate in California, at just 24% of the total population with at least one dose. It also had the highest percentage of votes in favor of the recall, at 84.2%."
Sac Bee, WES VENTEICHER: "Police officers will have to be at least 21 years old in California starting next year under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Thursday.
In addition to setting a minimum age for officers, Assembly Bill 89 sets up a process under which some type of college education could be required for officers in as soon as four years.
The bill raises the minimum officer age from 18 beginning in January. The change keeps California in line with age requirements in other states, where minimums range from 18 to 21."
READ MORE POLICE-RELATED NEWS --- New California law restricts police use of rubber bullet, tear gas after 'horrifying stories' -- Sac Bee, ANDREW SHEELER; Former CHP officer who sued over anti-gay harassmentnwins $2.2M settlement -- Sac Bee, SAM STANTON; Newsom signs police accountability law to keep troubled cops out of law enforcement -- Sac Bee, HANNAH WILEY
Merck says its experimental pill cuts COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths by half
AP, MATTHEW PERRONE: "Pharmaceutical giant Merck said Friday that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use.
If cleared, Merck’s drug would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19, a potentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic. All COVID-19 therapies now authorized in the U.S. require an IV or injection.
Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed that patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill. The study tracked 775 adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were considered higher risk for severe disease because of underlying health problems such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease."
How a Black lawmaker from LA won a 'mammoth fight' to oust bad
LA Times, ANITA CHABRIA: "In 2019, Fouzia Almarou was speaking at a police reform rally at Rowley Park in Gardena when a man she didn’t know made her a promise she didn’t quite trust.
Gardena police had shot Almarou’s son, Kenneth Ross Jr., at the park a year earlier, and she was marking the one-year “angel-versary” of his death.
State Sen. Steven Bradford, who grew up in the neighborhood as part of the first Black family on his block, told the mourning mom that he was going to change California law in the name of her lost son. He would make sure that officers with questionable pasts couldn’t jump from one job to the next to avoid accountability."
Sacramento diocese updates list of priests accused of sex abuse with new allegations
Sac Bee, ROSALIO AHUMADA: "The Catholic Diocese of Sacramento has released an updated list of more than 40 clergy members accused of sexual abuse that includes six new allegations against five priests who were already on the list for other alleged abuse.
The five former priests of the diocese with new allegations are Gerardo Beltran Rico, William Feeser, Francisco Javier Garcia, William Hold and Uriel Ojeda, according to a news release from the diocese. The news release also is available online in Spanish.
The diocese initially released the list of accused clergy members in April 2019. Sex abuse victims and advocates at the time argued that releasing the list after a long delay put other potential victims at risk, ignored the current danger and fixated on past cases in which the statute of limitations had run out."
The other Squaw Valley: Will this California town shed its name too?
The Chronicle, GREGORY THOMAS: "When the famous Lake Tahoe ski resort formerly called Squaw Valley announced last year that it would change its company name to do away with the harmful epithet, its decision rippled across the global ski industry and generated headlines as far away as Europe.
It also stuck in the mind of Roman Rain Tree, a 39-year-old Native American financial auditor in Fresno whose indigenous family roots tie him to California’s original Squaw Valley, a rural ranching community in Fresno County, 200 miles south of the ski resort.
“They laid the precedent in the state, so I want to use that as a road map,” Rain Tree said."
Jimmy Carter, oldest-ever former president, quietly marks his 97th birthday
AP: "Jimmy Carter, the oldest former president in U.S. history, will quietly mark his 97th birthday at home in southwest Georgia on Friday, an aide said.
Slowed by age in recent years and keeping a low profile during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter does not plan on any public appearances, his press secretary, Deanna Congelio, said at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
Workers at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Ga., recorded greetings for the former president, and members of the public can sign an online birthday card at www.cartercenter.org."
