Good morning. It’s Thursday, April 4.
- Incoming storm expected to deliver low-elevation snow.
- Bob Iger prevails in bruising power struggle at Disney.
- And thieves make off with $30 million in cash in L.A.
Statewide
1.
Republicans accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of hypocrisy after pointing out that a Lake Tahoe cafe owned by his PlumpJack Group was recruiting workers for $16 an hour, below the state’s new fast-food minimum of $20. The cafe is not subject to the law, which applies only to national chains. A spokesman also noted that Newsom placed his businesses in a blind trust in 2018. Still, said California GOP spokeswoman Ellie Hockenbury, “it sends a pretty mixed message to businesses struggling to implement this disastrous new law when the governor’s own family-run business doesn’t feel compelled to follow it.” Mercury News | Sacramento Bee
2.
The National Weather Service warned that an “anomalously cold” storm would sweep into California Thursday and Friday, with the potential to deliver rare spring snow to coastal peaks. It also threatens to worsen road conditions along the Big Sur coast, where a Highway 1 collapse and rockslides have nearly severed access to the outside world. Emergency officials on Wednesday urged anyone unprepared for several days of isolation to evacuate immediately. Accuweather | SFGATE
3.
California is unleashing into the sky more sulfuryl fluoride — a pesticide 4,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat — than all other states combined, a study published Wednesday found. Researchers were initially puzzled by the finding. “On our sulfuryl fluoride map, only California lit up like a Christmas tree,” said Scot Miller, a Johns Hopkins environmental engineer. The primary culprit is a California rite of passage: the tent fumigation of homes for termites that thrive in the state’s warm climate. L.A. Times | Inside Climate News
4.
Environmentalists opened another battlefront over the extended life of California’s last nuclear plant. Friends of the Earth argued in a complaint filed Tuesday that the U.S. Energy Department relied on a flawed environmental analysis to approve $1.1 billion to keep the aging Diablo Canyon nuclear plant running until 2030, five years beyond its previously anticipated closure. A.P. | Courthouse News
- Patti Poppe, chief executive of PG&E, argued on Wednesday that the plant should stay open even longer. “Nuclear should be part of the future,” she told a forum at Stanford University. Bloomberg
Northern California
5.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The race for the second runoff spot in the race for a congressional seat in Silicon Valley ended in a tie. After weeks of ballot counting, Assemblymember Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian got precisely the same number of votes — 30,249 to 30,249 — an extraordinary outcome that means both are now expected to face the first-place finisher, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, in a three-way general election. Mercury News | KQED
6.
On Feb. 8, the Fresno Bee published an investigative report on the grueling and dangerous working conditions at a poultry plant in the San Joaquin Valley city of Sanger. Two weeks later, a police report has now revealed, a 19-year-old at the factory was crushed to death under the wheels of a heavy-duty truck. The report noted that most employees were in the country illegally and reluctant to cooperate for fear of retaliation. Fresno Bee
7.
When Adam Kedzorski leaves his apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, he dodges a gantlet of sidewalk poop on an almost daily basis. “It’s the first thought on my mind to watch where I’m stepping on that first step out the door,” he said. “It unfortunately never leaves my mind.” An analysis found that despite millions of dollars spent on public toilets, reports of poop on San Francisco’s streets are still rising. S.F. Chronicle
8.
A four-decade-old vision to create the nation’s longest rail trail in Northern California came into clearer focus Wednesday with the release of a draft master plan on the proposed route. The Great Redwood Trail would trace an abandoned rail corridor through forests and canyons for 300 miles from the San Francisco Bay Area to Humboldt Bay. “It’ll be absolutely transformative in the same way the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail are landmarks in outdoor recreation,” said Caryl Hart, chair of the Coastal Commission. S.F. Chronicle | Lost Coast Outpost
- See a map of the proposed trail.
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Southern California
9.
San Bernardino County deputies killed a 17-year-old boy who was armed with a knife and experiencing a mental health crisis, officials said on Wednesday. The teen had locked himself inside a bathroom in a home and threatened to harm himself when deputies kicked down the door and tried to arrest him. An officer was cut and a deputy fired. The death comes less than a month after San Bernardino County deputies fatally shot an autistic 15-year-old wielding a hoe. It also follows the recent release of 2022 video that showed deputies killing an abducted 15-year-old they were trying to rescue. Daily Breeze | L.A. Times
- See video of the latest shooting. 👉 YouTube
10.
Disney CEO Bob Iger has emerged victorious in a bitter fight for influence at the entertainment giant as the dissident shareholder Nelson Peltz lost his bid for two board seats. Disney said Wednesday that shareholders voted to elect its entire slate of board nominees, endorsing Iger’s turnaround plan for the company. Peltz’s hedge fund, Trian Partners, spent about $25 million on an offensive that argued Disney needs a fresh voice to hold management accountable. N.Y. Times | Wall Street Journal
11.
Thieves made off with $30 million in cash in an Easter Sunday burglary at a San Fernando Valley money-storage facility that has left authorities baffled. The money, among the largest cash sums ever stolen in the city, was taken from an unnamed facility in Sylmar where cash from businesses across the region is handled and stored, police said. Sources told the L.A. Times that the crew broke through the roof to gain access to a vault. It was unknown how they avoided the alarm system. L.A. Times | A.P.
California archive
12.
About a half-mile off the northwestern edge of San Francisco, a squat, bone-colored column appears to hover above the surf. Known as Mile Rocks Lighthouse, the structure marks a reef of barely visible black rocks a mile south of the bustling ship corridor into San Francisco Bay.
The construction of the unusual lighthouse became an imperative after Feb. 22, 1901, when the passenger steamship City of Rio de Janeiro smashed into the rocks in heavy fog, ripping open its underside and sinking within moments. The frigid waters swallowed 128 people in what became known as the “Titanic of the Golden Gate.”
The lighthouse rose a few years later, a harrowing achievement by crewmen who withstood relentless waves to level the 120-square-foot rock and erect more than 1,500 tons of steel and concrete. Keepers manned it for decades. Then in 1965, the Coast Guard automated the beacon and decapitated the graceful 85-foot tower in a cost-cutting measure that left little more than the foundation in place, horrifying preservationists. So it stands today, a haunting reminder of the treacherousness of the Golden Gate. SFGATE | Atlas Obscura
- See a cool drone-eye view of Mile Rocks Lighthouse. 👉 YouTube
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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