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Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva running for Board of Supervisors

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is running for office again, this time setting his sights on the Board of Supervisors.Villanueva scheduled a news conference for Wednesday morning to formally announce his bid for the county’s 4th Supervisory District, a seat currently held by Janice Hahn.In an interview with KTTV Tuesday evening, Villanueva asserted that the current board has not served Angelenos well.“The county government is responsible for the health, safety and welfare of all the county residents, and in that regard, the board has failed miserably,” he told the television station. “Today, they’re so far to the left of center that no one can even recognize them. They do not represent the will of anyone much less the residents of the 4th district. So, we’re going to bring this back to the middle.” Alex Villanueva investigated by DA’s Office after fundraising video surfaces During his one and only term as sheriff, Villanueva frequently clashed with the Board of S...

Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to release a memoir next year

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

The California professor who testified that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had assaulted her while they were in high school has written a memoir. Christine Blasey's Ford's “One Way Back” is scheduled for publication next March.According to St. Martin's Press, she will share “riveting new details about the lead-up” to her testimony in 2018; “its overwhelming aftermath,” when she allegedly received death threats and was unable to live at her home; and “how people unknown to her around the world restored her faith in humanity.” Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University and the Stanford University School of Medicine, made headlines when she told the Senate Judiciary Committee about a party she and Kavanaugh attended in the early 1980s. She alleged that he cornered her in a bedroom, pinned her on a bed and tried to take off her clothes, while pressing his hand over her mouth. She fled after a friend of his jumped on the bed and knocked them over.Her emotional testimony left e...

$27 million settlement ends lawsuit over 13-year-old Californian student’s bullying death

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Days before the fourth anniversary of the fatal beating of a middle school boy by bullies, the Moreno Valley school district has agreed to a $27 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by the boy’s family.Diego Stolz, who was fatally beaten by two bullies at Landmark Middle School in Moreno Valley in 2019, is seen in a family photo. The Moreno Valley Unified School District has settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Stolz’s family for $27 million, which according to the family’s attorney, is the largest settlement for a bullying lawsuit in U.S. history. (Courtesy of Juana and Felipe Salcedo) The Moreno Valley Unified School District has agreed to the settlement with the family of former Landmark Middle School student Diego Stolz, 13, according to his family’s attorney.“The family will forever be heartbroken by the death of Diego but they hope this case brings about change in school districts across the country,” Manhattan Beach attorney Dave Ring, who represented Diego’s family, i...

Bay Area fall stage season off to a busy start — here’s what’s playing

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

It’s no secret that these are challenging times for theater companies in the Bay Area and across the country, with many troupes shutting down, cutting back or struggling to stay afloat.Still, there is an impressive array of shows to see in Bay Area theaters right now, from City Lights Theater Company’s world premiere of “Toxic,” a drama centering on survivors of a school shooting; and “Born With Teeth,” a play that finds Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe working together.Here’s a partial rundown of what else is playing on Bay Area stages.“Hadestown”: Anaïs Mitchell’s retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story began as a musical in Barre, Vermont, then became a concept album and then a musical again that finally landed, 13 years later, on Broadway in 2019. After winning eight Tony Awards and embarking on a successful national tour, “Hadestown” is on the road again and returns to the Bay Area for runs at the Or...

San Jose trail with BART connection gets thumbs up by City Council

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

A major part of a San Jose trail proposal decades in the making was given a unanimous thumbs up by councilmembers on Tuesday, allowing the city to take over the last chunk of land necessary to finish the project.The Five Wounds Trail will give pedestrians and cyclists the ability to travel north to south over a 2.17-mile paved pathway in the city’s Little Portugal neighborhood — with an expected completion date by 2031.Crucially, the route will offer a connection to the future Little Portugal BART station and access to both the Coyote Creek Trail to the south and the Lower Silver Creek Trail to the north.  Efforts to get the trail up and running started in the early 2000s.“San Jose has one of the best trail systems in the country,” said Bill Rankin, who has been a key supporter of the trail, during public comment on Tuesday. “The Five Wounds Trail is a critical connection in the city.”Councilmember Domingo Candelas, who was a member of one of the ...

‘It will get more critical’: San Diego County’s shrinking beaches

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Phil Diehl | The San Diego Union-TribuneSan Diego County’s beaches need costly, sustained replenishment efforts to remain the wide, sandy tourist attractions they have been for so long, a new regional study shows.Shorelines in south Oceanside, south Carlsbad, Leucadia and Coronado are shrinking fast, according to the 2023 “State of the Coast” report released Thursday by the San Diego Association of Governments.Only beaches bolstered by sand dredged from nearby lagoons, harbors and offshore deposits are maintaining their width or growing, says the report, presented Thursday at a meeting of SANDAG’s Shoreline Preservation Working Group.Most California beaches have never been the wide, sandy expanses seen in East Coast states such as Florida, some experts say. Most of the West Coast shore is steep, rocky and pounded by powerful waves, and the beach culture popularized by movies and advertising is largely a myth.“Beaches are the essence of California and pr...

Missed out on summer travel? Airline tickets will be cheaper in the fall

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

By Nathaniel Meyersohn | CNNNew York – Everyone you know traveled to Europe this summer, despite a jump in airfare.But don’t worry if you missed out — falling ticket prices could make fall the better time to fly.Prices for airfare early this autumn are much lower than fares over the summer, according to a report Tuesday from Hopper, a travel booking app. Airlines are scrambling to entice more customers to travel during the off-peak season, aiming to boost demand.Airfare to top international destinations will drop in the fall as well, with prices to Europe down 31% from summer peaks — nearly $330 off ticket prices.Domestic fares are down from last year and 2019, too.Airfare for domestic trips in September and October is averaging $211 a ticket. That’s down 29% from average prices for trips in June, July and August.Known as “shoulder season,” airfare typically drops in the fall as demand cools off after the busy summer months.Most Americans fit vacations into the peak summer mon...

Responders dig for bodies in Moroccan mountain villages

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

By SAM METZ and MOSA’AB ELSHAMY (Associated Press)IMI N’TALA, Morocco (AP) — The stench of death wafted through the village of Imi N’Tala high up in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, where last week’s catastrophic earthquake razed the hamlet’s mud-brick buildings and killed dozens of residents.Bulldozers and responders have been digging through the wreckage around the clock in the hopes of finding the eight to 10 corpses still underneath, even as an aftershock Wednesday evening rattled already frayed nerves.“The mountain was split in half and started falling. Houses were fully destroyed,” a local man, Ait Ougadir Al Houcine, said Tuesday as crews worked to recover bodies, including his sister’s. “Some people lost all their cattle. We have nothing but the clothes we’re wearing. Everything is gone.”The scene in Imi N’Tala, which is mainly home to herders and farmers and lost 96 people to Friday’s earthq...

Former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo taking on a new challenge

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

No, Sam Liccardo won’t be aiming to unseat Rep. Zoe Lofgren in 2024, but the former San Jose mayor has lined up a new job.Liccardo will join San Francisco-based Ground Floor Public Affairs as its senior advisor and counsel for California civic initiatives. In the role, Liccardo says he will continue to work on many of the issues he was passionate about while on the San Jose City Council as a councilmember and mayor for 16 years: homelessness and affordable housing, food insecurity, education and energy costs.“As mayor, you’re often dealing with the crisis of the moment — sometimes that’s 17 all at once,” Liccardo said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to work proactively on projects.”At Ground Floor, Liccardo said his job will involve working on policy strategy and public outreach as well as having conversations with a range of business, nonprofit and community leaders around the Bay Area about those issues and doing a lot of re...

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute app gets gamers to help explore the ocean

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

How well do you know your ocean creatures? Can you identify a sea anemone? How about a fanfin anglerfish, a sea gooseberry, a red spotted siphonophore, a flapjack octopus or a hagfish?Marine researchers have collected photos and video of ocean life for decades. But to get useful information from those thousands of terabytes of photos and videos, someone’s got to document what’s in every single one. In the past, expert scientists have carried that burden, spending long hours in dark rooms tagging turtles, tunas and tiger sharks one photo at a time.But now, the Moss Landing-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute is letting artificial intelligence — and gamers — take the reins. This summer, MBARI launched a beta version of its new game app, FathomVerse. The game drops users into an aquatic world with tasks and missions to complete. For example you might need to collect 16 squids. “As you’re navigating around in the ocean, you’re going to come up on different orbs, and as you fl...