California AG Rob Bonta launching new team to probe possible wrongful convictions
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "As issues of crime and punishment become more politically heated in California, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the formation Friday of a unit in his office to examine claims of wrongful convictions throughout the state.
The new Post-Conviction Integrity Unit will “seek to remedy cases where there have been miscarriages of justice” in convictions or excessive sentencing, Bonta’s office said."
Abortion navigators get patients to California from out of state, including some who’ve never left home
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: "Heeva Ghane has been a surgical nurse with Planned Parenthood for a year, but since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in June, she has taken on a new role: helping people from other states get an abortion in California.
She is a “patient navigator.”"
Court overturns murder conviction, 129-year sentence because of new California law
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "A state appeals court on Friday overturned the murder conviction and 129-year sentence of a San Bernardino gang member because one of the prosecution’s key items of evidence was a rap video — evidence a new state law has substantially restricted because of its potential appeal to racial prejudice.
The law, the first of its kind in the nation, was approved unanimously by both legislative chambers and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September."
Assemblywoman Bonta recuses herself from overseeing husband’s California DOJ budget
Sacramento Bee, LINDSEY HOLDEN: "California Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, will recuse herself from subcommittee matters related to her husband’s Department of Justice budget after coming under fire for potential conflict of interest issues.
KCRA 3 first reported Mia Bonta, who chairs Assembly Budget Subcommittee 5 on Public Safety, would be overseeing Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office finances.
The assemblywoman on Sunday released a statement saying she would recuse herself from “Budget Subcommittee 5 matters directly pertaining to the Department of Justice, including budget change proposals, proposed trailer bills, and legislative budget proposals that pertain to the DOJ to ensure that the body may focus on the important work before us.”"
Did winter storms replenish California’s depleted groundwater supplies? Here’s what data shows
The Chronicle, JACK LEE: "Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created problems far beneath the Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily addressed.
Groundwater — found in underground layers containing sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and sustaining farms. During drought years, 60% of California’s annual water supply comes from groundwater. This water is not easily replenished, especially as many groundwater basins across the state are critically overdrafted."
L.A.’s new water war: Keeping supply from Mono Lake flowing as critics want it cut off
LA Times, LOUIS SAHAGUN: "With its haunting rock spires and salt-crusted shores, Mono Lake is a Hollywood vision of the apocalypse. To the city of Los Angeles, however, this Eastern Sierra basin represents the very source of L.A.'s prosperity — the right to free water.
For decades, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has relied on long-standing water rights to divert from the streams that feed this ancient lake as part of the city’s far-flung water empire. But in the face of global warming, drought and lawsuits from environmentalists, the DWP is now facing the previously unthinkable prospect of ending its diversions there.
In the coming months, the State Water Resources Control Board will decide whether Mono Lake’s declining water level — and the associated ecological impacts — constitute an emergency that outweighs L.A.'s right to divert up to 16,000 acre-feet of supplies each year."
Major power outage hits more than 50,000 customers in East Bay
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES/JD MORRIS: "Tens of thousands of customers lost power in the East Bay on Sunday afternoon in a widespread blackout that left drawbridges stuck half-open, snarled traffic and shut down Oakland International Airport for two hours, according to officials and online utility outage trackers.
The outage, which began at 1 p.m. and affected 53,000 customers at its peak, impacted a large portion East Oakland, as well as parts of Alameda and San Leandro, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s online power outage map and city officials. More than 8,500 homes and businesses were still without power at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night. PG&E’s online estimate said all electricity would be restored by 2:25 a.m. Monday."
Orange County man who bought luxury cars with COVID relief funds sentenced to prison
LA Times, KEVIN RECTOR: "An Orange County man who fraudulently obtained $5 million in pandemic relief loans and then spent the money on lavish vacations, luxury sports cars and his own personal expenses was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Mustafa Qadiri, 42, of Irvine, had obtained the funds by submitting loan applications to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress created in March 2020 to provide emergency aid to small businesses struggling to survive amid COVID-19 related shutdowns and other business interruptions.
The loans were designed to prevent employee layoffs, and recipients were authorized to use the funds on payroll, rent or mortgage payments or utilities, but not on personal expenses."
Do California's college students feel safe on campus?
EdSource, CALIFORNIA STUDENT JOURNALISM CORPS: "Members of the California Student Journalism Corps fanned out to ask students their thoughts about safety on their college campuses.
The question was left open to interpretation because “safety” could have a different meaning for each person; and while the Feb. 13 Michigan State University shooting had not yet happened when California students were interviewed, they were still reeling from January’s mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.
In addition, the issue of policing at colleges and universities remains a hot topic and focus area for organizations like Cops Off Campus, which has chapters at numerous California State University and University of California campuses."
She fled the war in Ukraine but failed to find a safe haven in S.F. middle school
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "Everything Yana, a 13-year-old Ukrainian refugee, knew about public schools in the United States was what she had seen on television or in the movies, often idyllic settings where teenage conflict and angst ironed itself out by the end.
She never imagined herself in those American classrooms."
‘A race against time’: U.S. tech layoffs put foreign workers on ticking clock
LA Times, KWASI GYAMFI ASIEDU/CINDY CARCAMO: "Sakshi Nanda has 28 days to find a new job.
Nanda is a foreign worker on an H-1B visa, and when a health technology company in Connecticut laid her off last month, a clock started ticking.
If she can’t adjust her visa status or find a new employer to sponsor her by March 19, she will have to abruptly pack up her settled life in the United States and return to New Delhi."
Silicon Valley tech layoffs: Why so many jobs were slashed, and who’s hiring amid fierce competition?
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN BARON: "A growing barrage of technology industry layoffs means slim pickings for job-seeking software engineers and other tech workers amid a fiercely competitive Bay Area job market that has tipped from bountiful to brutal.
Tech sector job postings have plummeted across the region. In the San Jose metropolitan area, including Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, listings for software-related positions have nose-dived 45% since just before the pandemic, and information technology postings have dropped 37%, according to data from employment marketplace company ZipRecruiter. In the metro area encompassing San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont, software job listings plunged 53% and IT postings dropped 28%.
“It’s a little overwhelming,” said San Jose software engineer Joy Serquiña, who lost her job at a startup in November and has been searching, along with hordes of others, for a new position. “It’s a constant grind. Applying is kind of like a full-time job.”"
The story of the Hunters Point crane’s giant arch — and its nuclear secret
The Chronicle, PETER HARTLAUB: "The Hunters Point crane has spent most of its life as one of the underrated landmarks of the Bay Area.
Visible from the East Bay, Peninsula and parts of San Francisco, the giant gantry crane measures 380 feet high with a red and white-striped arch at the top (greatly faded over time). It’s one of the most visible man-made structures in the Bay Area — arguably in third place behind Sutro Tower and the Bay Bridge."
About 3,900 San Francisco buildings are made in the same way as Turkish ones flattened in the earthquake
The Chronicle, CLAIRE HAO: "San Francisco has an estimated 3,900 buildings that have the same vulnerability as many of the structures in Turkey and Syria that collapsed during the recent 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
The buildings, which are mostly commercial but also include residential structures, are made of non-ductile concrete, said Brian Strong, who heads a city planning office that is developing a yet-to-be-finalized retrofit program to boost the safety of concrete buildings."
Early results show NIMBYs, YIMBYs both wrong on California HOME Act
BANG*Mercury News, KATIE LAUER: "Maybe mountain lion sanctuary exemptions and ultra-specific landscaping requirements weren’t necessary to keep Senate Bill 9 at bay after all, as both promises and fears of the “death of the single-family home” have failed to come to fruition.
A recent study from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that since taking effect in January 2022, the contentious state law has not fully materialized into the prime opportunity to expand California’s housing stock that housing advocates had hoped for—and that NIMBY neighborhoods feared.
SB 9—also known as the California HOME Act—allows property owners and developers to construct up to two housing units on parcels where only one home was previously allowed. They can also opt for a “lot split” of properties that are at least 2,400 square-feet, in order to build up to four units of housing on a plot."
More fallout from Laguna Honda scandal: Huge S.F. affordable housing project onsite delayed
The Chronicle, JD MORRIS: "As far as San Francisco housing projects go, the apartment complex proposed for a Laguna Honda Hospital parking lot seemed to have everything going in its favor.
The plan had community support: Neighbors who had helped kill a similar project proposed across the street were not lining up to oppose the more than 250 badly needed affordable homes for seniors that were being planned at the Laguna Honda site."
Bay Area homes selling below asking price for first time in 10 years
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "Looking to buy a home in the Bay Area? The odds of scoring a deal could be tipping in your favor.
For the first time in over a decade, homes in the region are selling, on average, for less than the asking prices, according to data from real estate brokerage Redfin.
The milestone reflects a slowdown in the Bay Area’s notoriously scorching housing market as rising mortgage rates squeeze out many would-be buyers and hammer prices. This week, the average rate on a typical 30-year home loan hit 6.3%, double the historic lows during most of the pandemic — when buyers rushed into the market in droves to take advantage of the cheaper mortgages. The higher rate is boosting monthly home payments, sometimes by thousands of dollars."
A Rook would keep Sacramento cops safe, police say. Approval reignites ‘militarization’ debate
Sacramento Bee, ARIANE LANGE/ROSALIO AHUMADA: "Law enforcement leaders evoked scenes of terror in their presentation to Sacramento’s City Council: A man who shot his girlfriend in the face, potentially hiding in the trees. An armed suspect, firing at his neighbors. To defuse violent incidents, Deputy Chief Norm Leong told elected leaders that the Police Department needed a military-style armored vehicle known as a Rook.
During the same Jan. 31 meeting, Leong said that the agency borrowed the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Rook 13 times since 2019, and used it 10 times. On those two occasions he described, Leong acknowledged the danger was hypothetical — the suspects were elsewhere."
Here’s the list of military equipment held by Sacramento police, county Sheriff’s Office
Sacramento Bee, ARIANE LANGE: "The Sacramento City Council recently voted to approve the Sacramento Police Department’s acquisition of a military-style armored vehicle, the Rook, and fueled public frustration over what critics call police militarization.
Because of Assembly Bill 481, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021, local law enforcement agencies must post their inventory of military weapons, ammunition, vehicles and tools. According to those records, the following pieces of equipment make up some of the arsenal in the capital region."
Marjorie Taylor Greene Made a ‘Fool of Herself’ in Briefing: Congressman
Newsweek, KHALEDA RAHMAN: "Rep. Steve Cohen has said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made a "fool of herself" during a recent classified briefing about what authorities said was a Chinese spy ballon.
Biden administration officials briefed House members behind closed doors days after the downing of the balloon off the Carolina coast on February 4. China has denied that the object was a surveillance balloon.
Three more objects were shot out of the skies above the U.S. and Canada in the days that followed, although President Joe Biden said these had no connection to China."
After a year of war, six Ukrainians share how their lives have changed
LA Times, LAURA KING: "Almost everyone in Ukraine can recall some vivid scrap of what they were feeling and doing last Feb. 24, the day Vladimir Putin’s army launched Europe’s biggest land war since 1945, seeking to subdue a country that the Russian president claims is not in fact a country.
In the early dark hours, as armored vehicles rumbled across the border and warplanes filled the skies, people were sleeping, bathing, making love, video-gaming, soothing a sick child. Later, as the invasion’s full scope sank in, there were frantic calls and messages to relatives and friends in harm’s way — a status that eventually came to include nearly every corner of Ukraine.
The cost of a year of warfare — the vast escalation of 2014 Russian-engineered conflict in the country’s east — has been staggering: tens of thousands of people dead or maimed, millions driven from their homes, urban landscapes disfigured, desolate mass graves unearthed, the global economy jolted along with Europe’s entire security architecture."
