Good morning. It’s Tuesday, March 21.
- California man abducted in Niger is released after six years.
- Los Angeles schools to shut as workers call massive strike.
- And 15 beautiful hidden places to visit this spring.
Statewide
1.
Southern California braced for the main event on Tuesday of what appeared to be a dynamic late-season atmospheric river. Forecasters said the storm would steer mostly south of San Francisco, delivering rain totals as high as 6 inches, several feet of mountain snow, and wind gusts up to 80 mph. The NOAA said the corridor from Los Angeles to Tijuana faced a “moderate” risk of flooding on Tuesday before the storm subsides Wednesday. L.A. Times | CNN
See projected rainfall for:
2.
The Environmental Protection Agency intends to grant “waivers” allowing California to enforce new pollution limits aimed at phasing out sales of diesel-burning trucks, sources told reporter Anna Phillips. The rules, significantly tougher than federal standards, are expected to ripple across the nation as other states follow California’s lead. But the policies are not yet settled in California: Truck manufacturers are expected to fight them in court. Washington Post
3.
Turn down a dirt road off U.S. 395 in the Eastern Sierra and you’ll find a boardwalk laid across a sagebrush plain seemingly in the middle of nowhere. About 200 yards down the path, steam rises from a natural hot spring in the shape of a heart, surrounded in all directions by mountains. Thrillist included Wild Willy’s Hot Springs in a list of California’s 15 most beautiful hidden places to visit this spring.
Northern California
4.
Jeffery Woodke, a Humboldt County man who was abducted by militants in Niger, has been released after more than six years in captivity, officials said Monday. The circumstances of his release along with a French journalist were unclear, but officials said no ransom was paid. Woodke’s wife, Els, said he was in “great spirits.” Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was kidnapped from his home in Abalak, Niger, in October 2016 by suspected Islamic State militants who killed his guards and forced him at gunpoint into their truck. Washington Post | A.P.
5.
Since taking office in January, Alameda County’s new progressive district attorney, Pamela Price, has reopened eight cases involving law enforcement-involved deaths; directed staff to seek lower sentences and probation for many crimes; and endorsed a plea bargain in a murder case that surprised even the judge because of its leniency. “The speed with which she is moving to remake the office has delivered a shock to the system at a time when this city just marked a record third-straight year with more than 100 homicides, most of those carried out with guns,” the Washington Post wrote.
6.
A pair of youth brawls at a San Francisco mall last week so alarmed a member of the Board of Supervisors that she is calling for a hearing on the matter. Videos posted to social media showed the mayhem at the Stonestown Galleria shopping center, which included a group of attackers descending on an individual victim, stomping the person on the ground. Supervisor Myrna Melgar linked the problem of youth violence to the pandemic. “We know for a fact that they’re behind academically, and also behind socially,” she said. S.F. Chronicle
7.
Some quotes from a Wall Street Journal Q&A with Santa Rosa local and all-around good dude Guy Fieri:
- “I’d be a mayor. I mean, I am a mayor. I’m the mayor of Flavortown.”
- “I did a wedding for 100 gay couples in South Beach, and that was just one of the neatest things honestly, like the top 10 greatest things I’ve done in my career.”
- “I love to laugh at anything, everything. I laugh at myself. The world is hysterical. I think laughing is one of the healthiest things that you can do.”
Southern California
8.
As many as 65,000 school employees planned to walk off the job in Los Angeles on Tuesday, kicking off a three-day strike over stalled contract talks that will shutter classrooms for hundreds of thousands of students. The union representing LAUSD support workers — including bus drivers, teachers’ aides, food servers, and janitors — said they earn an average of $25,000 a year and are seeking a 30% raise. Teachers planned to join the strike in solidarity. Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho has accused labor leaders of refusing to negotiate. A.P. | L.A. Times
9.
Cal State Long Beach has decided to forgo the reading aloud of the names of graduates at its commencement ceremonies this year, declaring the ritual impractical for roughly 12,000 graduating seniors. Outraged, students have posted flyers around campus, reached out to media organizations, and collected 16,000 petition signatures denouncing the change. Marilyn Gaona, a first-generation college student, said her parents told her they would skip the event rather than “sit in the sun just to hear administration talk for three hours.” L.A. Times | Long Beach Press-Telegram
10.
Frank Croasdale moved to Austin, Texas, in 2021 but kept his physical-therapy practice in Redondo Beach, commuting there by plane a few times a month and administrating from home the rest of the time. Even with the cost of flights and rent for a studio apartment, he estimates he saves an extra $1,500 a month. The arrangement, he said, “is a win-win.” The Wall Street Journal wrote about “the math behind the new super commute.”
11.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
One of the artworks at the Coachella Valley art art biennial Desert X was targeted by graffiti vandals over the weekend, organizers said. The “Sleeping Figure” installation by the artist Matt Johnson, who created a jumble of 12 decommissioned shipping containers just off Interstate 10, has attracted broad attention on social media. “I kind of expected it,” he said of the vandalism. Palm Springs Desert Sun
The art critic Christopher Knight said “Sleeping Figure” is the most compelling entry of the biennial. Here’s a great a drone view.
Today I learned
12.
When conservationists captured all remaining California condors in a bid to save the dwindling species in the 1980s, they deloused the birds. The intervention was ultimately a success, lifting their population from just 27 wild birds to hundreds through captive breeding. But it also killed off all members of a species of louse that lived exclusively on California condors, unwittingly causing one extinction while averting another.
Colpocephalum californici, an avian chewing louse with a bulbous head and six hooked legs, lacked the charisma of its massive, apricot-and-black colored host. But scientists believe it caused the condor no harm, simply using the bird as a home and occasional feather meal. The only ethic that makes the condor more important than a louse, the science magazine SEED noted in 2018, relies on aesthetic value. Rob Dunn, a zoologist, told the magazine that may be reason enough to engage in conservation: “But if that’s what we’re doing, we need to fess up to it.”
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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