‘The threat is real’: Officials offer grim outlook for 2022 fire season
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH, ALEX WIGGLESWORTH: “Southern California is facing a potentially treacherous wildfire season this year, as climate change, drought and extreme heat conspire to bake vegetation and prime the landscape for burning, officials say.
Standing beneath the blazing sun at the start of a triple-digit heat wave, fire officials from various state, county and federal agencies gathered in Los Angeles on Thursday to warn residents about the current conditions and what the coming months may hold.
“We know the drought is here. We know the fuels are flammable. We know now, with water restrictions, the vegetation around our homes are becoming flammable,” said Dustin Gardner, chief of the Ventura County Fire Department. “So we know the threat is here, and we know the threat is real.””
PG&E says outages possible, Spare the Air alert issued as hot weather hits Bay Area
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: “With hot weather blasting into the Bay Area on Friday, officials are warning that the spike in temperatures could stress the power grid and diminish air quality, with electrical outages possible and a Spare the Air Alert in effect.
The heat could create an “all-hands -on-deck event,” PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian said, with crews positioned to respond to any power outages.
According to news reports, Sarkissian said the agency that manages the state’s power grid, the California Independent System Operator, could issue a Flex Alert urging residents to voluntarily cut their electricity consumption to avoid pushing the system past capacity.”
Will turning state offices into housing help solve Sacramento’s affordability crisis?
RYAN LILLIS and WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: "A block-long warehouse in downtown Sacramento could help solve the capital city’s housing affordability crisis.
The beige state-owned building at 805 R St. was recently granted to Mutual Housing, a nonprofit builder of affordable housing that has proposed tearing down the warehouse and constructing a five-story building with about 240 lofts. The units will be affordable to low-income residents “with a preference given to artists,” Mutual Housing CEO Roberto Jiménez said.
Five blocks east, a 58-unit affordable housing building is under construction at 13th and O streets on another lot identified as excess state property. And a cluster of parcels at 16th and N streets – site of Simon’s Bar & Cafe – was named an affordable housing “opportunity site” by the state."
Downtown S.F. on the brink: It’s worse than it looks
The Chronicle, NOAH ARROYO/JESSICA CHRISTIAN: “As with many cities, a stroll through downtown San Francisco on any business day reveals signs of renewed life.
Against the backdrop of shuttered, graffitied storefronts and other detritus left in COVID-19’s wake, including on this two-block stretch of Kearny Street, professionals can once again be seen en route to their now sparsely populated offices or the few cafes and restaurants that survived their absence, now eager for their precious patronage. Some new businesses have opened, and tourism has ticked up.
Don’t be fooled. The downtown area, the city’s primary economic driver, is teetering on the edge, facing challenges greater than previously known, new data shows. The wounds suffered by the economic core are deep, and city officials have yet to come up with a plan to make the fundamental changes that some economists and business leaders argue could make the area thrive again.”
Multimillion-dollar scandal at California’s Office of AIDS leads to third guilty plea
SAM STANTON, SacBee: "A third California Office of AIDS worker pleaded guilty Thursday in a $2.7 million fraud case that prosecutors say involved a scheme to siphon off cash from HIV programs for personal expenses, trips to Disneyland and lavish meals at pricey restaurants.
Yvonne Gaide, 60, of Orangevale, pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of wire fraud before U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley in Sacramento and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their ongoing investigation.
Gaide was charged last month with obtaining at least $472,717 in state funds in a scheme orchestrated with two former co-workers at the Office of AIDS who already have been sentenced to prison."
He was part of a ‘cabal’ that steered Anaheim City Hall. Now he has agreed to plead guilty
NATHAN FENNO, ADAM ELMAHREK and GABRIEL SAN ROMÁN, LA Times: "Todd Ament, the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, has agreed to a plea bargain in connection with a wide-ranging Orange County political corruption scandal.
According to a filing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Ament will plead guilty to submitting a false tax return, lying to a mortgage lender and two counts of wire fraud.
The agreement requires Ament to fully cooperate with the government — including testifying before grand juries and at trials — and pay almost $250,000 in back taxes."
San Francisco, Alameda counties report four more probable monkeypox cases
The Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: “San Francisco on Thursday reported three additional cases of probable monkeypox as Alameda County announced its first likely infection, bringing the Bay Area total to five cases amid a rapidly growing global outbreak.
The Alameda County case is in an individual who had close contact with someone who had earlier tested positive for the virus. In the San Francisco cases reported Thursday, one person had recently traveled within the U.S., but the other two did not.
“All three individuals are in isolation and in good health condition,” the San Francisco Department of Public Health said in a statement.”
‘Very unsettling:’ Sacramento jail mistakenly released convicted carjacker with life sentence
ROSALIO AHUMADA, SacBee: "A man convicted of carjacking and serving a sentence of life in prison was mistakenly released from the Sacramento County Main Jail on Wednesday night.
He was found and returned to custody more than 14 hours later in San Joaquin County. Investigators believe an error made by sheriff’s jail staff led to the release of Shaquille Lash, 28, who was not eligible for parole for another 13 years,
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Rodney Grassmann said Thursday. Lash on Wednesday was transferred from the California Correctional Institution in Kern County to appear in court Friday in Sacramento County to face state unemployment fraud charges."
California bureaucrats separated sheep from goats. It could cost this farmer his business
ANDREW SHEELER, SacBee: "The clock is ticking for Tim Arrowsmith and his goats.
Arrowsmith owns Blue Tent Farms in Red Bluff, home to more than 2,000 head of goats — goats whose brush grazing helps reduce wildfire risk across the state, including in Elk Grove and West Sacramento. He said in an interview with The Bee that he could be forced to sell his herd if the state doesn’t change its interpretation of a labor law requiring him to pay overtime to his seven goat herders.
They typically work eight hours a day but also live on the job and are on-call 24-7."
Jan. 6 attack on Capitol was the ‘culmination of an attempted coup,’ panel chairman says
LA Times, SARAH D. WIRE, ANUMITA KAUR: “Americans watching the first Jan. 6 select committee hearing Thursday night were jolted back to the horror of the Capitol attack in early 2021, with the panel deploying never-before-seen video of violence and graphic, emotional testimony from an officer wounded in the melee to place then-President Trump at the center of what House members called a conspiracy to overrule the will of voters.
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said at the hearing, which highlighted a 10-minute video montage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as well as recorded depositions of those closest to the former president.
The hearing included bombshell allegations that Cheney said the committee will corroborate during subsequent hearings to prove a coordinated effort to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in office.”
U.S. to lift COVID-19 test requirement for international air arrivals
AP, ZEKE MILLER: “The Biden administration is lifting its requirement that international air travelers to the U.S. take a COVID-19 test within a day before boarding their flights, easing one of the last remaining government mandates meant to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The mandate expires Sunday at 12:01 a.m. EDT, a senior administration official said, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that it’s no longer necessary. The official, speaking Friday on the condition of anonymity to preview the formal announcement, said that the agency would reevaluate the need for the testing requirement every 90 days and that it could be reinstated if a troubling new variant emerges.
The Biden administration put the testing requirement in place last year as it moved away from restrictions that banned nonessential travel from several dozen countries — most of Europe, China, Brazil, South Africa, India and Iran — and instead focused on classifying individuals by the risk they pose to others. It came in conjunction with a requirement that foreign, non-immigrant adults traveling to the United States need to be fully vaccinated, with only limited exceptions.”
What can be done about Paxlovid rebound for COVID patients? Here’s what Bay Area doctors are thinking
The Chronicle, CATHERINE HO: “Over the past several weeks, more and more people have been taking the COVID oral antiviral pill Paxlovid and reporting a phenomenon known as “viral rebound” — symptoms (and apparent infectiousness) coming back after completing the five-day course of pills.
It’s not clear how common this is, but doctors who prescribe Paxlovid say it appears to be happening more in the real world than it did in Pfizer’s clinical trials, which found that it occurred in 2% of participants who took the drug. But because reports of rebound are anecdotal and have not yet been analyzed in a large controlled study, it’s too soon to say what’s causing it or what a potential solution might be. Two small studies on rebound, which have not been peer-reviewed, suggest the issue is probably not drug resistance, but rather that a longer course of treatment may be needed.
Given Paxlovid’s growing usage — the federal government is allocating more than 400,000 courses each week to states, more than double the number from April — we checked in with three infectious disease doctors to see how they’re thinking about the drug that, just months ago, was hailed as a game changer. Here are their takeaways:”
Nonprofits are scrambling after S.F. Mayor Breed proposes slashing COVID assistance funding
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: “Dozens of nonprofits across San Francisco are asking Mayor London Breed and the city’s public health department to reconsider their abrupt cancellation of funding that has helped thousands of low-income residents cope with COVID-19 during the pandemic.
Breed’s $14 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1 eliminates $9.5 million in COVID assistance funding that flows to at least 25 nonprofits across the city, including the Mission Neighborhood Health Center, Excelsior Strong and the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness. The money has been part of the city’s much-publicized effort to provide an equitable response to COVID so that low-income residents, many of them people of color, could have similar access to testing, vaccination and COVID care as wealthier San Franciscans.
“What we’re advocating for is a six-month extension that will provide the time necessary to create a transition plan,” said Monique LeSarre, executive director of the Rafiki Coalition that tests hundreds of people a week for the coronavirus, vaccinates them, and provides food if they get the disease.”
Spending spree: Oversight scarce as billions in COVID aid poured into California schools
CALMatters, ROBERT LEWIS/JOE HONG: “When the pandemic closed schools in March 2020 – abruptly ending classes and stranding children and working parents – leaders in Washington and Sacramento scrambled to provide relief.
The result was a series of stimulus measures that allocated $33.5 billion in state and federal funds to California’s K-12 schools to address the devastation of the pandemic. It was a staggering amount of one-time funding for the state’s cash-strapped schools, equal to a third of all the money they got the year before the pandemic.
Imagine your boss giving you a check equal to four months of your salary and telling you to spend it quickly or risk giving it back. For schools, this was money for things like laptops, air filters and mental health counselors – money to help kids.”
‘An incalculable loss’ to economy: Foreign graduate students can’t afford to live in California
LA Times, PARTH M.N., LIAM DILLON: “When Sally Ireri moved to California from Nairobi, Kenya, five years ago, she didn’t expect life to be this difficult. Studying for a doctoral degree in mosquito genetics at UC Riverside, Ireri has had to borrow money and car rides from friends because she makes less than $30,000 a year from teaching.
She lives in a three-bedroom home with two roommates for $750 a month, a rent that’s well-below average for the region but still one that eats up a sizable portion of her paycheck. After she graduates, Ireri wants to remain in California to be at the forefront of research that could assist Kenyans in fighting mosquito-borne diseases.
But what she’ll need to pay every month to keep a roof over her head is holding her back.”
How an East Bay school turns into a community school under California's model
EdSource, ALI TADAYON: “For a Helms Middle School boy and his father, moving from a homeless shelter to their own apartment in the East Bay City of San Pablo turned the boy’s life around. It’s a transformation that wouldn’t have happened without the school’s community school staff who saw a problem and came up with a way to fix it.
In this case, staff was able to tap into fundraising money to help this family come up with rent money. And while it’s not something they face every day, solving a student’s problem through local partnerships is what being a community school is all about.
“I could see how happy he was, we were so connected with him,” said Principal Jessica Petrilli. “Every day I was amazed at how well he was doing.””
Targeting of Asian Americans mobilizes new generation of activists
The Chronicle, DEEPA FERNANDES: “The targeting of Asian Americans in acts of hate and violence increased dramatically with the onset of the pandemic.
San Francisco alone saw 60 reported hate crimes against Asians and Asian-owned businesses last year, representing a 567% increase between 2020 and 2021, according to police data. The campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin included ads from victims’ families arguing that the district attorney had failed to adequately address violence against Asians. Results show that more than two-thirds of voters in the Chinatown neighborhood supported the recall.
Nationwide, almost 11,000 anti-Asian bias incidents between the start of the pandemic and December 2021 were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks acts of hate, violence and bigotry against Asian Americans.”
U.S. inflation hit 8.6% last month, a new 40-year high
AP, CHRISTOPHER RUGABER: “The costs of gas, food and other necessities jumped in May, raising inflation to a new four-decade high and giving American households no respite from rising costs.
Consumer prices surged 8.6% last month from 12 months earlier, faster than April’s year-over-year surge of 8.3%, the Labor Department said Friday.
On a month-to-month basis, prices jumped 1% from April to May, a steep rise from the 0.3% increase from March to April. Much higher gas prices were to blame for most of that increase.”
Some L.A. homeless camps cleared as world leaders arrived for Summit of the Americas
LA Times, RUBEN VIVES, RACHEL URANGA, ALEJANDRA REYES-VELARDE: “As their Uber ride headed from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles late Thursday morning, Bella Reith and Paul Campo couldn’t help but notice the row of tents on sidewalks and freeway underpasses.
But when they arrived in South Park — a downtown neighborhood district dotted with luxury hotels, L.A. Live and restaurants — Reith, 29, said she realized the homeless people were gone.
That was due to the the Ninth Summit of the Americas taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, about a block away from where Reith and Campo stood.”
