Important Takeaways:
- A California utility shut off power in 12 counties in the northern part of the state as a major “diablo wind” — notorious in autumn for its hot, dry gusts — spiked the risk of power lines sparking a wildfire.
- About 13,000 customers woke up without electricity Friday after Pacific Gas and Electric shut off power.
- The “diablo wind” is forecast to cause sustained winds reaching 35 mph (56 kph) in many areas, with possible gusts topping 65 mph (104 kph) along mountaintops, according to the National Weather Service.
- The strong winds are expected to last through part of the weekend.
- A total of about 20,000 customers could lose power temporarily in the next couple of days, PG&E said in a statement Thursday.
- “This could end up being the most significant wind event for this year so far,” said meteorologist Brayden Murdock with the service’s Bay Area office. “We want to tell people to be cautious.”
- During a diablo wind, common in the fall, the air is so dry that relative humidity levels plunge, drying out vegetation and making it ready to burn.
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Important Takeaways:
- Newsom said “the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
- Google in an emailed statement Sunday thanked Newsom “for helping California continue to lead in building responsible AI tools” and said it looked forward to “working with the Governor’s responsible AI initiative and the federal government on creating appropriate safeguards and developing tools that help everyone.”
- OpenAI said in an emailed statement Sunday that the company appreciated Newsom’s “commitment to maintaining California’s role as a global leader in AI innovation, and look forward to working with him and state lawmakers in well-defined areas of public interest such as deepfakes, child safety, and AI literacy.”
- Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco who authored the bill in California’s Senate, said in a statement Sunday the veto represented a “missed opportunity for California to once again lead on innovative tech regulation — just as we did around data privacy and net neutrality — and we are all less safe as a result.”
- Nonprofit Accountable Tech in an emailed statement said “This veto will not ’empower innovation’ — it only further entrenches the status quo where Big Tech monopolies are allowed to rake in profits without regard for our safety, even as their AI tools are already threatening democracy, civil rights, and the environment with unknown potential for other catastrophic harms,” it added.
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Important Takeaways:
- A 20-year-old man tossed an explosive device into the California courthouse where he was about to be arraigned on a gun charge and the explosion left five people with minor injuries and shut down the court complex and other nearby city buildings, police said.
- The suspect ran away after the explosion and was captured as he tried to get into his vehicle parked nearby.
- The man, who is from Santa Maria, was wearing body armor underneath his jacket, according to Santa Barbara County undersheriff, Craig Bonner, and was booked on attempted murder and explosives charges.
- The suspect had been arrested last July for illegal gun possession and was to be arraigned on Wednesday. When he entered the courthouse and approached the screening station, he tossed a bag that then detonated.
- Bonner said three of the five victims suffered burns. All were treated and released from a hospital. None were court employees.
- Authorities evacuated a five-block radius of businesses, homes and a school after the explosion.
- The courthouse will be closed on Thursday as police complete their investigation
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Important Takeaways:
- A boy who was abducted from a California park in 1951 has been found alive and well on the East Coast thanks to DNA testing and the persistent efforts of his family.
- Luis Armando Albino was just 6 years old when he was kidnapped from the Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother, lured by a woman who promised to buy him candy.
- Instead, she “transported him out of state and eventually to the East Coast,” the Oakland Police Department (OPD) told NPR.
- State and federal authorities searched extensively for Albino in the wake of his disappearance, but couldn’t find him or his remains.
- All the while, his mother, Antonia Albino — who had moved the family from their native Puerto Rico just the year before — never gave up hope that he was alive.
- Alida Alequin, 63, knew she had a missing uncle because her family talked about it. Alequin decided to take an online DNA test in 2020 “just for fun,” as she told the Mercury News.
- FBI agents were eventually able to interview Albino and take a DNA sample.
- His statements and genetics confirmed what police call “the best possible outcome”: He was indeed the boy who’d been snatched from the park 73 years earlier.
- Details about Albino’s life on the East Coast are relatively scarce, and police say his case remains under investigation.
- He has some memory of the abduction and his cross-country trip, she added, but had never gotten answers from the adults in his life.
- Alequin said her uncle hugged her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Thank you for finding me.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Gas stoves may soon come with a tobacco-style health warning label in California
- Because a stove’s blue flame releases air pollution into your kitchen, California lawmakers have passed a bill that would require such warning labels on gas stoves for sale in stores and online. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign the bill into law.
- The legislation comes after a series of lawsuits was filed against stove manufacturers, claiming they should have warned customers about potential health risks.
- Environmental activists are encouraging people to switch to electric stoves, part of a broader campaign to cut climate pollution from buildings
- If Pellerin’s legislation becomes law, it will require a label on gas stoves for sale in stores and online that says, “Gas stoves can release nitrogen dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and other harmful pollutants into the air, which can be toxic to people and pets.” The label would also mention associated risks for breathing problems, suggest using a vent hood and say, “Young children, people with asthma, and people with heart or lung disease are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of combustion pollutants.”
- Similar bills were introduced in Illinois and New York, but unlike California’s version, lawmakers did not pass them out of the legislature.
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Important Takeaways:
- An earthquake centered in the Malibu area produced shaking Thursday morning in widespread parts of Southern California from the coast to inland communities.
- It was followed by aftershocks with magnitudes ranging from 1.8 to 3.4 with more aftershocks possible in the hours and days ahead.
- Centered just north of Malibu, shaking from the 7:28 a.m. quake at a depth of about seven miles was reported in Malibu, Hermosa Beach, La Mirada, Anaheim, Santa Monica, the Hollywood Hills and parts of the San Fernando Valley.
- Shaking is more likely to be felt from shallow earthquakes, which are those between 0 and about 40 miles deep.
- There were no immediate reports of injuries or significant damage.
- Southern California has felt shaking from several earthquakes in recent weeks, including a magnitude-5.2 quake located south of Bakersfield.
- “We are having earthquakes. None of them have been damaging. They’ve all been small,” said seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones. “This is a really good reminder that the quiet of the last couple of decades is not our long-term picture.”
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Important Takeaways:
- More than 100,000 people are under evacuation orders as several blazing wildfires continue to tear through parts of California.
- Apocalyptic scenes continue in San Bernardino County where the Line Fire has already caused 6,000 residents to flee.
- Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency after several days of triple-digit temperatures stoked the wildfire that burned so violently it created its own thunderstorm-like weather systems.
- As of Monday night, the Line Fire had charred more than 23,000 acres, with more than 36,000 structures under threat.
- Firefighters have been working in steep terrain and challenging conditions in temperatures above 100 degrees, limiting their ability to control the blaze.
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Important Takeaways:
- Residents in California experienced a swarm of five earthquakes within the last 48 hours.
- A 4.4-magnitude was felt in the north around Lake County on Saturday and two more struck the area the following evening, ranked as a 2.7 and 2.8-magnitude.
- Locals in southern California also reported two more quakes on Saturday, with the largest ranking a 3.9-magnitude.
- Northern California typically sees a spate of about 50 earthquakes per month, experienced two quakes this weekend, in addition to the two felt in the southern area of the state.
- ‘2024 has had more earthquakes than any year we’ve seen since 1988,’ Caltech geophysicist Dr Lucy Jones told reporters. ‘We should expect this to continue.’
- Experts believe a major quake in Southern California – usually defined as 7.0 and up – could kill at least 1,800, leave 50,000 injured and cause more than $200 billion in damage.
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Important Takeaways:
- California health officials are preparing for an uptick in valley fever cases and have issued a warning over the potentially deadly fungal infection after a surge of cases linked to a local music festival
- At least 19 people attending or working at the Lightning in a Bottle music festival have contracted valley fever, according to a statement from the California Department of Public Health.
- Eight of these have been hospitalized, the health department said, warning that additional cases may emerge among the more than 20,000 festival-goers who attended the outdoor event at Buena Vista Lake in Kern County between 22 and 27 May.
- Valley fever, also known as coccidioidomycosis or just “cocci” (pronounced “cock-see”), is a lung infection caused by breathing in the spores of a soil-dwelling fungus, Coccidioides, that lives in areas in the southwestern U.S. including Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Texas, as well as parts of Washington, Mexico and Central America.
- Activities like digging, gardening or construction that disturb soil and dust—as well as weather events like dust storms—increase the risk of disturbing and inhaling spores and of those infected, about 40% will develop symptoms of respiratory illness and pneumonia like fatigue, fever and a cough between one and three weeks after inhalation.
- While most people with valley fever recover on their own without the need for medication after several weeks or months of illness, a small number of people will develop serious or long-term lung problems, between 5% and 10% of cases, and in 1% of people the infection will spread from the lungs to other parts of the body including the skin, bones, joints and brain, which can be serious or even fatal if not treated with antifungal drugs.
- Fungal diseases kill 1.5 million each year, a death toll on par with major killers like tuberculosis and more than double that of threats like malaria, HIV and breast cancer.
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Important Takeaways:
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Tuesday in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes as severe land shift in the area is threatening the community and disrupting power lines.
- More than 200 homes in the city, around 30 miles south of Los Angeles, had their power cut Monday as a long-running ground shift close to them is threatening utility lines.
- “The city is located on four out of five sub-slides that comprise the Greater Portuguese Landslide Complex,” the governor’s office said. “Land movement at part of the Complex has significantly accelerated following severe storms in 2023 and 2024.”
- “This is unprecedented,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Council member Barbara Ferraro said Sunday. “No one knows really, in a way, what to do.”
- Southern California Edison cut off electricity Sunday to 140 homes in the Portuguese Bend community, an outage that it says is indefinite because the shifting ground threatens utility poles and raises the risk of fires in the city.
- Officials say the land there has been shifting slowly for decades, but the problem is worse than it used to be. “The movement has accelerated dramatically over the last 12 months, where some areas are moving up to 10 inches a week,” said City Council member David Bradley. “You can almost see the ground move.”
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