California gas prices near $5 average as Russia-Ukraine crisis persists: ‘It could get worse’
BRIANNA TAYLOR and DAVID LIGHTMAN, SacBee: "California gasoline prices hit another record Thursday and are inching toward $5 a gallon — a level that could persist for some time.
“California could stay near or above $5 a gallon for a few months. It could get worse than that if Russia further inflames the situation,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which monitors prices.
Sanctions by western nations against Russia because of its action in Ukraine are expected to drive up the price of oil."
Trucker convoy headed to Washington, D.C., to protest COVID mandates rolls out of California
NATHAN SOLIS, LA Times: "Several hundred people gathered Wednesday morning in the Mojave Desert to send off a group of truckers driving cross-country to protest COVID-19 mandates.
Supporters posed for selfies and gifted homemade cookies and other items to dozens of truck drivers who intend to travel to Washington, D.C. The convoy is similar to ones whose defiant blockades have shut down border crossings to the north as truckers rallied in Canada over the nation’s response to the pandemic.
Organizers with the group calling itself the People’s Convoy hoped to have 1,000 semi-truck drivers depart from Adelanto Stadium. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department estimated that 100 big rigs and 500 to 600 cars participated in the convoy in Adelanto."
California officials approve plan to crack down on microplastics polluting the ocean
JAMES RAINEY, LA Times: "California aims to sharply limit the spiraling scourge of microplastics in the ocean, while urging more study of this threat to fish, marine mammals and potentially to humans, under a plan a state panel approved Wednesday.
The Ocean Protection Council voted to make California the first state to adopt a comprehensive plan to rein in the pollution, recommending everything from banning plastic-laden cigarette filters and polystyrene drinking cups to the construction of more green zones to filter plastics from stormwater before it spills into the sea.
The proposals in the report are only advisory, with approval from other agencies and the Legislature required to put many of the reforms into place. But the signaling of resolve from council members – including Controller Betty Yee and the heads of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection agencies – puts California in the vanguard of a worldwide push on the issue."
Will Californians say ‘yes’ to sports betting? New poll finds voters split
LARA KORTE, SacBee: "Less than half of California voters support legalizing sports betting, and more than 1 in 5 say they’re undecided, according to a new poll released by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times.
Currently, 33 states allow wagering on college and professional sporting events including all those that border California. But voters must ratify an amendment to change the state constitution if they want to do it in the Golden State.
The underwhelming support from voters could spell trouble for the groups putting up tens of millions of dollars to legalize sports betting in California."
Feds’ Central Valley Project expects to send no water to California farms this year, little to cities
The Chronicle, KURTIS ALEXANDER: "After an extraordinarily dry start to the year, the federal government announced Wednesday that most farms in California will likely receive no water from the state’s biggest reservoirs in 2022, the latest fallout from drought and a blow to an agricultural industry already crippled by tight supplies. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will get just a fraction of the water they requested.
An impending third straight year of drought has left California’s federally managed reservoirs, including giant Shasta and Trinity lakes, soiled by cracked earth and “bathtub rings,” and standing as striking images of the state’s aridity. Many of the storage sites are at near-record lows for this point in the wet winter season, and officials at the Bureau of Reclamation say there’s just not enough water for everyone who needs it.
Most of the recipients of the bureau’s Central Valley Project are irrigation districts, whose farms have made California’s Central Valley the breadbasket of the nation, producing more than half of the nuts, fruits and vegetables in the United States. With no federal water deliveries expected for many of these districts, growers will have to turn to groundwater or storage, if they have it, or else forgo planting and production entirely."
COVID in California: CDC to unveil new metrics to assess virus risk
The Chronicle, RITA BEAMISH and AIDIN VAZIRI: "The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will change the way it assesses “community levels of disease” for COVID-19 as early as Friday, according to a source inside the agency who spoke with CNN.
The updated metrics will help many counties nationwide to move closer to lifting safety measures aimed at controlling the spread of the coronavirus, such as mask mandates. By the current standards, 97% of the counties in the U.S. are at substantial or high levels of virus transmission — tiers for which the agency recommends masking indoors.
The agency will move away from looking at case rates and positive test rates in determining virus risk, according to the source, and also incorporate hospitalizations, emergency room visits and deaths in each region."
Three members of L.A. family behind $18-million COVID-19 relief scam captured in Europe
GREGORY YEE and MICHAEL FINNEGAN, LA Times: "A Tarzana couple and a family member who operated a massive COVID-19 relief fraud ring have been captured in Montenegro after fleeing the United States, a law enforcement source confirmed to The Times on Wednesday.
Nicole Navas Oxman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, told The Times that federal authorities are seeking the extradition of Richard Ayvazyan; his wife, Marietta Terabelian; and his sister-in-law Tamara Dadyan.
Ayvazyan, 43, and Terabelian, 37, sliced off their electronic monitoring bracelets and vanished in August after they were convicted in June."
A journalist is suing Sausalito for $21 million, saying its police were racially motivated and violated press freedom laws
BOB EGELKO, Chronicle: "A photojournalist who was injured and had his equipment seized by police during a disturbance at a homeless encampment in Sausalito has sued the city and its officers for $21 million, saying the officers were racially motivated and violated state laws protecting freedom of the press.
Despite California’s “shield law” protecting journalists and other protective measures, “in too many instances, the police have swept up newsgatherers and photojournalists as part of arrests, typically made without probable cause, for purposes of quelling legitimate protest activity, along with the press’ coverage of it,” Jeremy Portje’s lawyers said in a suit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
They said Portje is still suffering physically, psychologically and financially from his encounter with Sausalito police on Nov. 30."
L.A. County bars, offices, gyms can drop mask rules with COVID vaccine verification
LA Times, LUKE MONEY/RONG-GONG LIN II: "Fully vaccinated individuals will soon be able to shed their masks indoors at Los Angeles County establishments that screen the inoculation status of visitors and patrons, health officials said Wednesday.
While not a complete easing, the revised rules — which take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday — represent a significant relaxation of the county’s universal indoor mask mandate, which has been in place since July. And depending on how many businesses elect to take advantage, the impact could be both widespread and widely apparent, especially in places like offices, gyms, restaurants, bars and hair salons.
However, it also may be short-lived. County health officials have expressed optimism that the region is mere weeks away from clearing the threshold they’ve set to fully repeal the requirement that fully vaccinated individuals must still mask up in many indoor public places. Doing so would align the county’s rules with those that are in place across the vast majority of California."
Want to be an S.F. school board member? Recall organizers ask the public to apply
The Chronicle, LAUREN HERNANDEZ: "Organizers of the effort to oust three San Francisco school board members are asking the public to apply to be on a list of “vetted candidates” who the group will present to Mayor London Breed for consideration as part of her upcoming appointments to the board.
Autumn Looijen, 44, and Siva Raj, 49, two parents co-leading the Recall S.F. School Board group said Wednesday that they want community members to have a voice in who will be considered for the San Francisco Board of Education.
In a one-page application, the group asks prospective candidates how they would approach a number of issues that Breed’s appointees are expected to face upon filling three seats held by Board President Gabriela López and board members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga — all of whom were recalled in a landslide special election last week. Moliga resigned shortly after the election."
A hated UC Berkeley building is coming down. So why are students upset about it?
The Chronicle, SAM WHITING: "Almost since the day Evans Hall opened at UC Berkeley in 1971, students have complained that it is unattractive on the outside, depressing on the inside and an obstruction to campus view on all sides.
But now that its demolition has been announced, some are starting to feel pangs of nostalgia over the 10-story building.
“Not many people like it, but this is my home,” said junior Hillary Sim, as she took the elevator to the building’s eighth floor, a ride notable for the mournful moan evoked by the elevator’s cables."
‘People are dying’: Fatal S.F. encampment fire provokes outcry over homelessness crisis
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES/SAM WHITING: "A deadly fire that broke out in a homeless encampment in Wednesday morning’s near-freezing temperatures under a freeway overpass in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood provoked outrage and dismay from residents and elected officials, who called the incident a tragic emblem of the city’s homelessness crisis.
The fire left one woman dead and three other people critically injured. Officials with the San Francisco Fire Department said it took around an hour to reach the four people trapped under the overpass.
City leaders said Wednesday the incident was yet another clarion call for action amid a rise in encampment fires. Supervisor Hillary Ronen, whose district recently experienced a fire that displaced nearly two dozen people, sharply criticized the city’s Fire Department for failing to confiscate materials that can start deadly, destructive fires."
Former Gilroy woman sentenced to 45 days for role in Jan. 6 riot
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "A former Gilroy woman who first encountered Donald Trump at the Pebble Beach golf course in 2006 — and entered the Capitol through a broken window at the end of his presidency 15 years later — was sentenced to 45 days in jail Wednesday for her role in the Jan. 6 riot.
Mariposa Castro pleaded guilty in November to taking part in an illegal demonstration in the Capitol. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of Washington, D.C., rejected her lawyer’s request for a probation sentence, without jail time, and also fined her $5,000. Prosecutors had sought a 60-day sentence.
Castro, also known as Imelda Costa, was born in Mexico and came to the United States at age 2. In 2006, she and her husband were golfing at Pebble Beach when they were nearly hit by an errant golf shot, then turned around and met the man who had struck the ball, a familiar face from reality television. Sometime after their brief, friendly conversation, Castro became an ardent fan and follower of the future president, her lawyer said in court filings."
Russia widens its attack on Ukraine: ‘We now have war in Europe’
LA Times, NABIH BULOS and HENRY CHU: "Russia pressed ahead with its assault on neighboring Ukraine on Thursday, with explosions resounding in cities across the country, airstrikes crippling its defenses and reports of troops crossing the border by land and sea.
Huge traffic snarls formed in Kyiv as residents tried to flee the Ukrainian capital. Video showed Russian armored vehicles advancing into mainland Ukraine from Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow illegally seized eight years ago. Ukrainian air-traffic controllers sealed off the country’s airspace “due to the high risk of aviation safety for civil aviation.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law in his embattled nation and encouraged his compatriots to take up arms. Meanwhile, the U.S. and the West prepared to impose punishing sanctions on Russia for an invasion that they had warned for weeks was coming but that Moscow had denied was planned."
