Racist remarks in leaked audio of L.A. council members spark outrage, disgust
LA Times, STAFF: “Behind closed doors, Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez made openly racist remarks, derided some of her council colleagues and spoke in unusually crass terms about how the city should be carved up politically.
The conversation remained private for nearly a year, until a leaked recording reverberated explosively Sunday and turned the focus of a sprawling metropolis toward Los Angeles City Hall.
By Sunday evening, three of Martinez’s council colleagues had called for her to resign. The leak had quickly become a new and incendiary issue in the coming Nov. 8 election, with candidates — some of them endorsed by Martinez — having to stake out positions.”
What we know about the explosive leaked audio roiling L.A. City Hall and its origins
LA Times, JULIA WICK/DAVID ZAHNISER: “A leaked audio recording of three members of the Los Angeles City Council and a top county labor official punctuated by racist comments and derisive remarks about colleagues has rocked Los Angeles politics just a month before a key election.
The conversation includes Council President Nury Martinez, who is Latina, saying a white councilman handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and describing the child as like a “changuito,” or little monkey.”
Wealthy Bay Area residents fuel effort to defeat California’s ballot measure on electric cars. Here are the top donors
The Chronicle, DUSTIN GARDINER: “Despite the Bay Area’s eco-friendly reputation, donors from the region are bankrolling the campaign against Proposition 30, which would raise taxes on the wealthiest Californians to speed up the state’s transition to electric cars.
Opponents of the measure have raised more than $14 million so far. They include some of San Francisco and Silicon Valley’s most well-known billionaires, venture capitalists, CEOs and developers.”
State withdraws plans to limit internet and cell phone discount for low-income Californians
LIL KALISH, CalMatters: "Under the proposed rule, low-income California households who qualify for federal help to pay for phone service and internet access would have lost some or all of their California LifeLine monthly discounts.
The result: Instead of being able to stack three discounts, most California LifeLine users would have been limited to two, for a total of up to $39.25 in discounts a month.
The commission was scheduled to discuss and vote on the proposal at its meeting Thursday but officials removed it from the agenda without a written explanation. A commission spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.”
Sacramento looks to Mexico in campaign to lure Spanish-speaking tourists to capital
MATTHEW MIRANDA, SacBee: "As the number of Latinos in Sacramento continues to rise, an organization is hoping to target the demographic with the launch of a Spanish-language marketing campaign.
Sacramento’s tourism office is making a play to draw more Spanish-speaking visitors to the capital. The Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, also known as Visit Sacramento, recently added a Spanish-language section to its website.
The section, titled “Bienvenidos a Sacramento,” seeks to promote the city and be inclusive to the state’s growing multilingual population. Spanish is spoken at home by about 14% of the population in Sacramento County."
The suicide of a star athlete exposed deep problems at Stanford. Students say the university is still ‘turning a blind eye’
The Chronicle, DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA/MELISSA WEINTRAUB:”The death of Stanford University soccer captain Katie Meyer last spring provoked shock across the Bay Area and the nation.
She was the fourth Stanford student to die from suicide in just over a year, and in the aftermath, students railed against what they saw as chronic and systemic problems with mental health services at the university.
Officials acknowledged the need for more resources. They promised action.”
World War II ‘ghost’ boat found in Lake Shasta. How did it get there?
The Chronicle, MICHAEL CABANATUAN: “As the drought drags on and reservoirs are drawn down, all kinds of things are being discovered in the muck — human remains in Arizona’s Lake Mead, the remains of a ghost town in Utah and now a historic World War II era boat hauled out of the dried muck of Lake Shasta.
Shasta-Trinity Forest Service officials posted photos of what they call the “Ghost Boat” or a Higgins boat on social media and offered tales of the boat’s history but admit that they have no idea how it got to what used to be the bottom of the state’s largest drinking water reservoir.
According to a post on the forest’s Facebook page Sunday morning, the boat began to emerge from the lake last fall. When they pulled it from the mud, they discovered it had the markings “31-17,” an indication it had been assigned to the USS Monrovia, an attack transport ship that served as General George Patton’s headquarters during the invasion of Sicily.”
World War II-era boat revealed as drought continues to shrink Northern California lake
BRIANNA TAYLOR, SacBee: "A World War II-era boat has emerged at Shasta Lake, the latest historical reveal caused by the continuing drought in the Western United States.
Shasta-Trinity National Forest posted photos of the discovery Sunday morning on its Twitter page.
The marking “31-17” stamped on the side of the now rusted and deteriorated landing craft confirms that it was assigned to the attack transport USS Monrovia, the post stated."
Bay Area starts the week with seasonal weather, but a warm-up is on the way
The Chronicle, MICHELLE APON: “A slight warm-up and closer to seasonal average temperatures are on tap Monday for the Bay Area, turning warmer by the end of the work week.
High temperatures will vary depending on where you are on the Bay Area on Monday — the Columbus Day federal holiday, also observed as Indigenous Peoples Day in locations including San Francisco.
Areas along the coast will be cool with highs in the mid-60s, while interior spots will be approximately 25 degrees warmer, with highs in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees.”
Home buyers backing out of deals in droves in parts of U.S. Here's where Bay Area stands
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: “As the home buying market continues to cool nationwide, some parts of the U.S. are seeing high rates of people backing out of home purchases. But the Bay Area is not one of them.
According to a new report from real estate listings Redfin, the San Francisco metropolitan area had the second lowest percentage of deal cancellations at 4.2% in August out of the 50 most populous metro areas.
It was just behind Newark, N.J., at 2.7%.”
Newsom calls special session on gas rebate
CALMatters, ALEXEI KOSEFF: “Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to call a special legislative session in December to push for a tax on oil industry profits, the latest escalation in a feud over soaring gasoline prices that Newsom calls greedy and manipulative.
Newsom said today that he would convene the special session on Dec. 5, the same day that a new class of lawmakers is sworn in. The work will take place on a separate track from the regular session to focus attention on what Newsom said has become one of the most urgent priorities for Californians: an “inexplicable” gap between gas prices in California and the national average that has grown to a record $2.50 a gallon.
“This is just rank price-gouging,” Newsom told reporters following a speech in Sacramento, adding, “There’s nothing to justify it. Nothing. Not one thing.””
Harvey Weinstein to face accusers in L.A. trial, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom
LA Times, JAMES QUEALLY: “When Harvey Weinstein surrendered in 2018 to face charges of rape and sexual assault, he stood defiant, marching into a downtown Manhattan police precinct carrying a biography of a famed Hollywood figure who had become a pariah in the film industry.
The years since have left Weinstein, 70, a disgraced, debilitated shell of the pugnacious movie titan he once was. Now a convicted rapist, he is serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison and had to settle a multimillion-dollar civil suit filed by dozens of his accusers.
The production company that bore Weinstein’s name has ceased to exist and his body is failing. He spends most of his time in a wheelchair, and his attorneys have previously described him as “technically blind” and recently said his teeth are rotting.”
‘I don’t know how to do this.’ Anxiety about voting keeps some young Californians from polls
LA Times, PRISCELLA VEGA: “At 18, Luis Avila decided not to cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election.
It wasn’t because he thought it was unimportant. Instead, the thought of voting for the first time left him overwhelmed.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Avila recalled telling his older brother. “Like, it’s a huge step. I don’t want to make the wrong decision.””
What you need to know about voter fraud in California
CALMatters, SAMEEA KAMAL: “You’re hearing a lot more about election integrity — for a lot of reasons.
Since the 2020 election, the issue has been fueled by the “Big Lie” — the baseless claim still touted by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the election was stolen — and the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath.
Questioning election integrity has also become a political strategy: In the effort last year to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, Republican candidate Larry Elder said he was concerned about fraud and started a website to collect tips even before the votes were counted. “
Congenital syphilis rates soar across California as public health funding dwindles
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: “In the Central Valley, where two-thirds of the nation’s fruit and nuts are grown, the pastoral landscape masks entrenched racial and economic disparities. Life expectancy in Fresno County drops by 20 years depending on where you live, and it’s those who live in historically poor, redlined or rural neighborhoods who are most impacted by a resurgence of maternal and congenital syphilis.
“Are you familiar with syphilis?” Hou Vang, a county communicable disease specialist, asks a pregnant woman standing in the shade of a tree outside her home.
She lives with her parents in Reedley, California, a small town 30 minutes southeast of the city of Fresno, surrounded by neat rows of grapevines, orange groves and almond trees. “
How many people died in California’s record-breaking heat wave? The state can’t say
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH: “It was the worst California heat wave ever recorded in September — an epic grilling that disabled one of Twitter’s main data centers, pushed the power grid to its limit and triggered a succession of weather and safety alerts.
For 10 grueling days, meteorologists tracked record-setting temperatures as they boiled across the state — 116 degrees in Sacramento, 114 in Napa, 109 in Long Beach. But for all the data on soaring temperatures, there was little information on the heat wave’s human toll, or how many people had been sickened or even killed.
The state’s ongoing struggle to account for heat wave illnesses and deaths — despite promises to improve monitoring — has frustrated some public health experts who say the lack of timely information puts lives in jeopardy.”
California is a hotspot for catalytic converter theft. Will new laws make a difference?
CALMatters, GRACE GEDYE: “A beam of light glints beneath Isaac Agyeman’s 2009 Prius, parked outside his Temecula home early one August morning. One person is under the hatchback, another by its side and a third is stationed nearby. After a few mechanical roars and a quick scoot out from under the car, all three hurry away.
It was the second time Agyeman’s catalytic converter — which scrubs a car’s emissions to make them less toxic and contains precious metals — had been stolen. This time, he caught the whole thing on camera.
“I was upset. I was really frustrated,” he said. He filed a police report, sent them the footage and called his insurance company. On top of everything, it was his birthday.”
