Stranded Southwest fliers face days of waiting as anger, scrutiny over meltdown grow
LA Times, ALEXANDRA E. PETRI/NATHAN SOLIS/NOAH GOLDBERG/ANDREW J. CAMPA: "Travelers stranded by the meltdown at Southwest Airlines face days of waiting as the airline struggles to rebuild systems battered by holiday storms and faces growing anger and scrutiny from Congress and federal regulators about how the debacle happened.
Thousands remained stuck Tuesday, with many left with few other travel options and Southwest saying new flights might not be available for several days.
Airlines canceled more than 5,000 flights as of Tuesday evening, the majority of them — 2,672 flights — with Southwest Airlines, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware."
UC strike over, but questions remain over new contracts
SETH SANDRONSKY, Capitol Weekly: "The longest walkout in the history of U.S. higher education is over, but a critical question remains: Will the new contracts do enough to improve the living and working conditions that drove the academic workers to launch the 40-day strike?
On Dec. 23, 19,000 teaching assistants, graders, readers and tutors in United Auto Workers Local 2865, and 17,000 student researchers in Student Researchers United-UAW ratified new labor contracts with the University of California.
The vote tally for UAW 2865 was 11,386 to 7,097 in favor of the agreement. The SRU-UAW vote was 10,057 to 4,640 for ratification. According to the terms of each agreement, the strike is finished. UAW workers can return to their employment with gains in compensation, childcare subsidies and paid leaves, plus new protections against bullying and discrimination."
Atmospheric river is hitting Bay Area with heavy rain, winds — here’s how long it will last
LA Times, GERRY DIAZ: "Intense downpours, strong winds and localized flooding were at play Tuesday as a heavy rainstorm laid siege to the Bay Area. As the week progresses, storm impacts will be widespread across most of Northern California as the system taps into large reserves of atmospheric water vapor floating over the Golden State. This overarching moisture reservoir, commonly known as the Pineapple Express, will stay overhead and allow for this week’s first round of heavy rains to persist across the region into Wednesday morning.
Tuesday’s rainstorm was forecast to churn up powerful winds, resulting in the National Weather Service issuing wind advisories for most of the region. Some of the strongest gusts exceeded 60 mph at some of the highest peaks in the Bay Area, including Mount Diablo in the East Bay, Mount St. Helena in the North Bay and the Los Gatos weather station at 1800 feet in the South Bay.
Some of the strong winds trickled into the Peninsula and cities along San Francisco Bay, resulting in morning gusts ranging from 40 to 50 mph at San Francisco International Airport, 30 to 40 mph at Oakland International and a 55 mph gust at the Golden Gate Bridge weather station. The winds were driven by a large winter storm that tapped into the westerly winds and moisture off an atmospheric river. This river of moisture hovered at around a mile above the ground and acted as the main source of fuel for Tuesday’s storm."
National parks will be free on these five days in 2023
Mercury News, JOHN METCALFE: "Looking for a reason to get out into glorious nature in 2023? Here are five of them – five days when national parks in America open their gates free-of-entry to all.
The U.S. National Park Service offers “free entrance” days each year to celebrate holidays and milestones in the history of natural preservation, such as the anniversary of the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act. These freebies are valid for all national-park sites in the country – and there are more than 400 of them, including historic and recreation areas and California’s grandest parks, such as Yosemite and Joshua Tree.
The first free day arrives as early as Jan. 16, so mark your calendars and plan accordingly. Note that while entrance fees are waived on these occasions, some fees might still be in place for tours, camping and transportation. Always check the website of the park you plan to visit for the latest information and road and trail closures."
Gov. Gavin Newsom considering Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg for a judicial post
Sac Bee, MAYA MILLER: "Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg might soon become The Honorable Darrell Steinberg.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering Steinberg for a judicial post on the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento. Steinberg, who has served as the city’s mayor since 2016, still has two years remaining in his second term.
Steinberg’s office confirmed that he submitted an application for the judicial appointment and is currently undergoing evaluation, but they declined to provide further details about the timeline."
Supreme Court refuses to lift Trump-era rule at the southern border
LA Times, DAVID G. SAVAGE: "A divided Supreme Court refused Tuesday to lift the Trump-era rule that has turned away migrants at the border as a public health threat.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted an appeal from Arizona and 18 other Republican-led states that sought to keep Title 42 in place to prevent a new surge of migrants who seek to apply for asylum.
The court agreed to hear arguments in February from the GOP states, but its order said it did not “prevent” the Biden administration from taking steps to limit the disputed policy."
TikTokers capture man’s anti-Asian rant at California In-N-Out. ‘We are in danger’
Sac Bee, DON SWEENEY: "Friends Arine Kim and Elliot Ha didn’t know what to think at first when a man confronted them as they filmed a food review for TikTok at a California In-N-Out.
“You guys filming yourself eating? You’re weird homosexuals,” the man says off-camera in the Christmas Eve video shot inside the San Ramon hamburger restaurant.
At first, Kim and Ha try to laugh off the bizarre remark."
As fentanyl overdose deaths keep rising, efforts to reverse trend meet liability fears
LA Times, CONNOR SHEETS: "As fentanyl overdose deaths rise unabated, California is at the forefront of the fight to reverse the grim trend. But organizations that distribute overdose reversal drugs worry that their increasingly bold efforts to save lives could land them in legal trouble.
Some, such as an outdoor center in San Francisco that opened in January, have generated wide attention. The facility — which in addition to distributing naloxone to opioid users helped connect them with social services — drew criticism from residents who claimed it encouraged drug abuse by allowing people to use on site. It closed earlier this month.
Other pioneering approaches have stayed mostly out of the spotlight. In a handful of major cities from Oakland to Los Angeles, plans are underway to expand how the reversal drug is distributed: outfitting residential buildings that house large populations of opioid users with boxes of Narcan, the brand name of the widely used nasal spray version, in addition to making it available in schools, libraries and jails."
The cost of the pandemic on California: $1.3 trillion in GDP, economist estimates
EdSource, STAFF: "Noted economist Eric Hanushek has determined a dollar value in lost lifelong earnings and states’ economic growth as a result of the drop in learning during the pandemic. In California, it is huge, more than a trillion dollars, according to state by state data released on Tuesday.
Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, calculated that, depending on which state they live in, students will face a lifetime loss in earnings of 2% to 9%. The loss in states’ GDP from a workforce with lower skills will be 0.6% to 2.9% each year for the remainder of the century compared with pre-pandemic learning expectations.
Since the economic growth of a state is greatly tied to the quality of its labor force, the pandemic’s legacy will be a future workforce less prepared to contribute to economic growth, Hanushek wrote."
Court upholds Bay Area high school’s expulsion of student over racist messages and images
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "An Albany High School student went beyond the bounds of free speech when he created an online account with racist messages including images of nooses and lynching, and the school district was entitled to expel him, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
While the First Amendment protects speech, and even offensive speech, by public school students, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that it does not protect expression that is likely to disrupt classroom activities or interfere with the rights of other students “to be secure and to be let alone.” And that standard also applies to hateful off-campus speech that targets individual students on campus, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
A student named Cedric Epplecreated the Instagram account in the fall of 2016 and shared it with a group of friends. One of his posts in February 2017 showed a Black player on the girls’ basketball team standing next to the coach, also Black, with nooses drawn around both their necks and a caption “twinning is winning.” Another posting showed Epplearguing with a Black classmate, with a caption saying he was “on the edge of bringing my rope to school on Monday.” A posting of a Black student in class was captioned, “The gorilla image is nice today.” Others used racist words and included a drawing that appeared to show a slave being lynched, the court said."
Why is a Swedish billionaire buying up California’s video gaming empire?
LA Times, JAWEED KALEEM: "Like so many on-screen action heroes, she was elbowed aside when newer stars appeared and started grabbing more viewers with bigger weapons, better special effects and more elaborate adventures.
That’s when Lars Wingefors spied an opportunity and swooped in.
Earlier this year, the little-known Swedish billionaire bought the rights to British archaeologist Lara Croft and the vehicle that turned her into a household name. After debuting 26 years ago, “Tomb Raider” went on to become one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, spawning lucrative spinoffs and movies starring Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander, before faltering as bigger games and mobile apps appeared and gaming moved away from its core teenage male audience to young girls, college students and families."
San Francisco’s downtown office vacancy rate hits 27% — but a rebound might be ahead
Chronicle, JOHN KING: "Downtown San Francisco is likely to end the year with more than one of every four square feet of office space vacant, according to a real estate firm that charts leasing activity in the city.
The preliminary numbers compiled by analysts at the firm CBRE show a vacancy rate for 2022 of around 27%, compared to 19% in 2021. That’s nearly seven times the vacancy rate for 2019 of 4%, before the pandemic brought an end to San Francisco’s long run as one of the nation’s most coveted office markets."
S.F.’s real estate market could be quiet in 2023. But here are 8 things to watch for
The Chronicle, JK DINEEN: "In the world of San Francisco real estate, a lot of the 2023 action will be in City Hall rather than at job sites.
With most housing and commercial development on hold due to economic forces and San Francisco’s slow pandemic recovery, the focus will be on policy changes needed to get projects rolling again, as well as the rezoning needed to give the city a chance to meet its state-mandated housing goals of producing 82,000 units by 2031."
Tesla stopped reporting its Autopilot safety numbers online. Why?
LA Times, RUSS MITCHELL: "Like clockwork, Tesla reported Autopilot safety statistics, once every quarter, starting in 2018. Last year, those reports ceased.
Around the same time, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the nation’s top auto safety regulator, began demanding crash reports from automakers that sell so-called advanced driver assistance systems such as Autopilot. It began releasing those numbers in June. And those numbers don’t look good for Autopilot.
Tesla won’t say why it stopped reporting its safety statistics, which measure crash rates per miles driven. The company employs no media relations department. A tweet sent to Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk inviting his comments went unanswered."
Top 10 places in California to visit in 2023
LA Times, GREGORY THOMAS/DAVID FERRY: "We Californians are pretty confident we know our state: the regional quirks, the intrastate rivalries, the drama in Sacramento.
But the Golden State’s bounty runneth over: 482 towns and cities, 1,150 beach access points, 8,008 named mountains, 3,000 lakes, 12,000 hiking trails and 280 state parks. We’ve got more people than Canada, more landmass than Italy, more coastline than Costa Rica.
The point is, for every weekend you think there’s nothing to do, there’s a charming rural outpost, deserted beach or craggy peak begging to be explored."
