At least 5 shooters involved in downtown Sacramento shooting, which police called gang-related
ROSALIO AHUMADA and SAM STANTON, SacBee: “Sacramento police say that two groups of men began firing at each other in Sunday’s shooting downtown and that at least five shooters were involved in what authorities are now saying was a gang dispute that left six people dead and 12 wounded.
“Evidence in the case indicates that at least five shooters fired guns during the shooting, and that an exchange of gunfire took place between at least two groups of men,” police said in an announcement Wednesday. “As detectives continue to identify shooters and weapons involved, the number of identified shooters may grow beyond five.
“As detectives learn more about the shootings, it is increasingly clear that gang violence is at the center of this tragedy. While we cannot at this time elaborate on the precise gang affiliation of individuals involved, gangs & gang violence are inseparable from the events that drove these shootings.”
READ MORE about the Sacramento shooting: At least five shooters involved in Sacramento massacre, gang ties likely, police say -- RICHARD WINTON, JESSICA GARRISON, BRITTNY MEJIA, ANITA CHABRIA, LA Times; Mass shooting adds to downtown Sacramento’s COVID recovery challenges – ROLAND LI, Chronicle
Sacramento mayor wants Gavin Newsom to spend $3 billion on crime prevention in wake of shooting
LINDSAY HOLDEN, SacBee: “Sacramento’s mayor wants Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leadership to spend $3 billion to prevent crime — a call to action that comes in the wake of some of the worst violence in city history.
Mayor Darrell Steinberg on Wednesday pushed for the funding not far from the scene of a mass shooting that killed six people early Sunday.
Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, joined Steinberg and social justice advocates in urging financial support for victim services, re-entry programs, community organizations and mental health and addiction treatment.”
Supreme Court revives Trump rule stopping states, tribes from regulating oil pipelines
BOB EGELKO, Chronicle: A divided Supreme Court, without explanation, reinstated Trump administration rules Wednesday that stopped states and tribes from regulating or blocking pipelines and other federally authorized power projects that could pollute their waters. The court’s order was opposed by environmentalists and a group of states led by California.
The justices voted 5-4 to suspend a ruling issued last October, by U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco, that halted enforcement of the September 2020 regulations from President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. Those rules, now back in effect, prohibited state and tribal governments from using their water laws to regulate discharges from pipelines, mines and other energy production or transmission, regulations that have barred some projects altogether.
The federal government had authorized state regulation of energy-project water pollution in 1971, two years after a burst offshore oil well spilled 3 million gallons of crude oil into the waters off Santa Barbara, and an oil slick several months later caught fire on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. President Biden’s EPA is working on rules to expressly restore state and tribal authority, but they will not take effect until sometime next spring.”
Bills to aid community college adjuncts advance in California Assembly
THOMAS PEELE, EdSource: “Two bills designed to improve the working conditions of part-time community college professors were easily approved by the state Assembly Higher Education Committee on Tuesday, but questions remain as to whether they will become law.
Assembly Bill 1856, sponsored by Assemblymember Jose Medina, D-Riverside, the committee chair, would allow part-timers, generally called adjuncts, to teach up to 85% of a full-time teaching load in a single community college district. That would allow adjuncts more stability and could lessen the need for some to teach in multiple districts to cobble together a living. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed similar legislation Medina sponsored last year, citing cost concerns.
Assembly Bill 1752, sponsored by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, would create pay equity between part-time faculty and their full-time colleagues, who are paid at higher hourly rates and are compensated for work outside the classroom, such as class preparation and meeting with students. Adjuncts are generally paid only for time in the classroom and complain they often meet with students, grade papers and prepare lessons without pay.”
Newsom urged Californians to cut water use by 15%. In February they saved less than 1%
IAN JAMES, LAT: "Total water usage in California cities and towns decreased by just half a percent in February compared to the same month in 2020, a far cry from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal of reducing urban water use by 15%.
Figures released this week by the State Water Resources Control Board showed that even during a third year of drought, Californians have been slow to step up conservation efforts.
Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the water board, said it’s vital that Californians continue to make progress on conservation, “given not just this drought but the increasing aridity in the West” with climate change."
Vice president’s staffer, others test positive for the coronavirus after weekend gathering
LAT, NOAH BIERMAN: "Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, the second close contact of the vice president to become infected in less than a month.
Harris’ office did not announce test results for the vice president, but a statement from her press secretary, Kirsten Allen, said she was following official guidance and “plans to continue with her public schedule,” implying that she is not ill. Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, tested positive last month for the coronavirus.
Jamal Simmons, the vice president’s communication’s director, is one of several high-profile people in Washington who have tested positive for the virus after attending the Gridiron dinner Saturday night, a traditional white tie gathering of reporters and politicians that features light roasts and songs."
How might COVID vaccines change this year? FDA begins to lay out a roadmap
SFC, CATHERINE HO: "What will COVID-19 vaccines look like by year’s end? And in years after that?
Some of the nation’s most influential vaccine scientists tried to start answering those questions Wednesday when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee offered a potential road map for how current vaccines may be updated periodically to target variants of the coronavirus.
It’s not yet clear how and when vaccines could be updated — or whether they even need to be, considering that they’re still working well at reducing severe illness and deaths for those who have had booster shots. But the conversation marks a shift in the way federal health officials and leading vaccine scientists are thinking about U.S. and global vaccination strategy going forward."
Despite rising cases, free coronavirus testing is reduced in L.A. County
LAT, RONG-GONG LIN II, EMILY ALPERT REYES: "Despite an increase in coronavirus cases, the availability of free testing sites has been reduced due to the stalemate in Washington over approving new COVID-19 pandemic funding.
The federal government has stopped offering money to fund coronavirus tests for uninsured people. After hitting a March 22 deadline, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration is no longer accepting claims from health providers to get reimbursed for coronavirus testing under the program.
As a result, L.A. County has been forced to remove 25 community testing sites from the county’s website, “as those sites were no longer able to continue to commit to providing tests free of charge to individuals who lacked insurance coverage,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the county’s Department of Health Services director. There are still 200 testing sites listed on the county’s coronavirus testing website. To be on the county’s list, the sites need to be willing to provide tests for free to everyone who arrives, regardless of insurance status."
S.F. teachers are resigning in big numbers. The payroll fiasco likely isn’t helping
SFC, HEATHER KNIGHT: "For Rebecca Fedorko, a special education teacher at San Francisco’s Sutro Elementary, there’s nothing better than seeing the moment for a dyslexic or autistic child when her teaching clicks. Suddenly, after spending many hours with Fedorko, the students can turn the individual letter sounds into words. They can read.
But the joy and satisfaction she gets on the job don’t pay the bills. And in a school district that’s underpaid its teachers for years as the city’s cost-of-living soars, a Dilbert-like payroll debacle has left teachers even more shortchanged.
It’s one more pain point for a profession under intense pressure — and it’s contributing to an average of one teacher or classroom aide in San Francisco quitting each day. Resigning in the middle of the year is “extremely unusual,” but 20 to 30 teachers and aides are leaving every month, said Frank Lara, vice president of the local teachers’ union. School districts in other parts of the state and country are seeing far more midyear resignations than normal too due to pandemic burnout, but the payroll fiasco is an only-in-San-Francisco wrinkle potentially making the numbers here even worse."
UC and CSU deliver thousands of rejection letters. Arizona State wants to fill the void
LAT, TERESA WATANABE: "Kiana Tovar was all set to attend Sacramento State. Kara Smith had firm plans: enroll at Santa Monica College, then apply to transfer to UCLA. Israel Cortave had been accepted to UC Merced and UC Riverside, which both offer the computer science and engineering majors he wants to explore.
All three students are now attending college in California, mixing state-of-the-art online classes with small in-person gatherings. They’ve been able to forge friendships, stay on track with “success coaches” and learn about career opportunities from industry professionals. But the name inscribed at the entrance of the university they decided to attend is not a California public institution.
It’s ASU — Arizona State University. And its newest campus is in Los Angeles."
Why Cal Fire is about to hire hundreds of seasonal firefighters
SFC, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "Cal Fire plans to hire hundreds of seasonal firefighters next week in response to a dangerous confluence of weather conditions that are expected to increase fire dangers across Northern California in the coming days.
The heat wave that meteorologists have called a “weather roller coaster” was expected to heat up the Bay Area dramatically, a particularly concerning development atop of one of the driest ever starts to a calendar year.
The Bay Area saw temperatures reach 10-20 degrees above seasonal norms Wednesday, and by Thursday, the region could expect to see temperatures reaching up to 25 degrees above normal, said Cindy Palmer, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service."
This Bay Area city is the 'happiest' in the U.S. But how do you measure happiness?
SFC, KELLIE HWANG: "Fremont is the “happiest” big city in the country.
That’s according to a recent analysis by personal finance website WalletHub, which scrutinized a number of factors including positive mental health, physical well-being and job satisfaction to determine this year’s happiest cities.
A number of Bay Area cities also ranked high: San Francisco landed in third place and San Jose followed in fourth place, while Santa Rosa was in 14th and Oakland ranked 16th. WalletHub’s comparison included 182 of the largest cities, including 150 of the most populated in the U.S."
This Oakland department was created to reduce violent crime. Five years later, has it?
SFC, RACHEL SWAN: "From the beginning, the goal was as clear as it was formidable: Reduce homicides in Oakland by 80% in a span of three years and effect a major turnaround in a city that had long struggled to chip away at its murder rate.
But now, five years since its inception, Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention has barely begun to build its staff and infrastructure, and its success appears increasingly difficult to assess as violent crime in the city becomes a more intractable problem.
The department, created in 2017 in an effort to apply public health practices to reduce violent crime in Oakland, has been mired in a mix of crises, distractions, sclerotic bureaucracy and impractical benchmarks that have hobbled the agency from the beginning, according to some city leaders."
How a tech billionaire’s bid to uplift the poor became a windfall for the rich
LAT, EVAN HALPER: "The Buena Vista tasting room is not just another downtown Napa wine bar.
It is a conspicuously indulgent place, where epicureans can fill their glasses with cabernet and sink into the carefully restored mezzanine’s dark velvet lounges for a tasting of fine caviar and artisan chocolates resembling museum pieces.
One vibe this nook of luxury does not give off is that of a community in distress. Its neighbor in the ornate 1920s Italianate edifice known as the Gordon Building is an Anthropologie store."
Supreme Court revives Trump rule stopping states, tribes from regulating oil pipelines
SFC, BOB EGELKO: "A divided Supreme Court, without explanation, reinstated Trump administration rules Wednesday that stopped states and tribes from regulating or blocking pipelines and other federally authorized power projects that could pollute their waters. The court’s order was opposed by environmentalists and a group of states led by California.
The justices voted 5-4 to suspend a ruling issued last October, by U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco, that halted enforcement of the September 2020 regulations from President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. Those rules, now back in effect, prohibited state and tribal governments from using their water laws to regulate discharges from pipelines, mines and other energy production or transmission, regulations that have barred some projects altogether.
The federal government had authorized state regulation of energy-project water pollution in 1971, two years after a burst offshore oil well spilled 3 million gallons of crude oil into the waters off Santa Barbara, and an oil slick several months later caught fire on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. President Biden’s EPA is working on rules to expressly restore state and tribal authority, but they will not take effect until sometime next spring."
More sanctions hit Russia as Zelensky warns of new wartime hardships
LAT, PATRICK J. MCDONNELL, LAURA KING, KURTIS LEE: "Russian forces Wednesday carried out punishing strikes against key Ukrainian cities, brushing aside mounting world outrage over the execution-style killings of civilians even as Washington and its Western allies moved to impose sharp new sanctions against Moscow.
In suburbs around the capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian investigators Wednesday pressed ahead with the grim task of documenting evidence of war crimes in the form of mass graves and mutilated bodies as Ukrainian troops and mine clearers worked to defuse booby traps and explosives left behind by retreating Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of trying to cover up war crimes in other occupied areas, saying that Moscow is now aware that haphazard efforts in the Kyiv region had left an abundance of evidence behind."
