Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 9.
- A controversial plan to kill half a million owls.
- AI industry weighs risking copyright lawsuits for data.
- And one of the prettiest mini road trips in California.
Statewide
1.
In 2021, California passed a law granting the state the authority to decertify problem police officers, preventing them from bouncing from one department to the next. Since then, a new commission has opened proceedings against more than 200 current and former officers. But in many cases, the allegations are being kept secret. Some who helped advance the legislation are outraged. “You cannot have accountability without transparency,” said J Vasquez, a criminal justice reform advocate. S.F. Chronicle
2.
In March, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that California’s population had fallen to 38,965,000, down by 75,400 in a year — and 573,000 below a peak of 39.5 million in 2020. Columnist George Skelton on the cause: “The median cost of a California house was nearly $800,000 in November, more than double the $336,000 you’d pay in Texas, according to Redfin housing market data. In neighboring Arizona and Nevada, it was $435,000 and $479,000, respectively. These are destination states for departing Californians.” L.A. Times
- In few places is the affordability crisis more severe than San Diego. San Diego Magazine
3.
Over the past two years, the San Diego lender Axos Bank and its largest individual shareholder, California billionaire Don Hankey, have collectively extended more than $500 million in financing that has benefited Donald Trump, records showed. The money covered Trump’s debts as well as an eye-popping $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case. An Associated Press report suggested that Hankey may be getting something other than interest for his money.
Northern California
4.
In recent decades, invasive barred owls have muscled into California and the Pacific Northwest, crowding out endangered native spotted owls. So the government proposed a drastic solution: shooting down half a million barred owls. Mortified, a coalition of 82 animal welfare groups signed a letter last month calling the plan “colossally reckless.” Michael Paul Nelson, a professor of environmental ethics and philosophy, said it’s a quandary: “You’re either going to kill a bunch of individual living beings, or you’re going to let a species disappear. No matter what, harm is done.” The Guardian
5.
Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit filed by the family of an Apple engineer who died in a 2018 crash on a Silicon Valley freeway while using the carmaker’s driver-assistance software. In earlier trials, Tesla prevailed after juries attributed the accidents to driver error. For the latest case, Tesla planned to offer testimony that Walter Huang, who was 38 and is survived by a wife and two children, was playing a video game at the time of the crash. The settlement averts a trial four months before Tesla’s planned unveiling of a self-driving taxi. The terms were kept secret. N.Y. Times | A.P.
6.
After San Francisco officials reacted with horror to news that Oakland wanted to rename its airport San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, the Port of Oakland’s aviation director scoffed: “No one owns the title to the San Francisco Bay,” he said. Now lawyers may get involved. In a letter on Monday, San Francisco’s city attorney, David Chiu, warned Oakland to expect a court battle if it goes ahead with the change. The Port of Oakland responded by doubling down: If the name is approved, “the Port will take all appropriate measures to defend its right to use this accurate geographic identifier.” S.F. Chronicle | SF Standard
7.
The race to lead the artificial intelligence industry has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology — news stories, books, message board posts, Wikipedia articles, and photos. “To obtain that data,” the N.Y. Times wrote in an investigation, “tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law.”
8.
“It’s just magic.”
Ever wonder how stadiums transform overnight from basketball courts to concert venues with completely different flooring? It’s a slab-by-slab process involving forklifts and a crew of workers in constant motion. A videographer captured a great time-lapse of the assembling of the Golden State Warriors’ flooring at San Francisco’s Chase Center, collapsing an 8-hour job into 1 minute. S.F. Chronicle/YouTube
9.
Tracing a rugged stretch of coast just north of Eureka in Humboldt County is a narrow county road that belongs among the ranks of California’s great drives. Scenic Drive, winding 10 miles from Trinidad to Moonstone Beach, is admittedly sketchy, marred by cracks, potholes, and regular landslides. But the tableau of rocky bluffs, sea stacks, and verdant forest makes it “arguably the prettiest mini-road trip in Northern California,” wrote travel journalist Ashley Harrell. SFGATE
Southern California
10.
In 2019, a Los Angeles man named William Woods informed his bank that someone had accumulated $130,000 in debt under his identity. But Woods himself was accused of having stolen his own identity after the thief, a hospital administrator in Wisconsin named Matthew Keirans, provided phony documents to law enforcement. Woods spent more than a year in jail. Upon his release, Woods told Keirans’ employer that he is not who he says he is, which led a detective to get involved. The ruse unraveled with a DNA test. Last week, Keirans pleaded guilty. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Washington Post
11.
San Diego travelers enjoyed some of the rarest views of the eclipse on Monday: out the window of a plane 33,000 feet in the air. Alaska Airlines promoted two of its flights out of San Diego — one to Washington DC and the other to Boston — with routes that intersected the totality of the eclipse. When the moon blocked the sun, the DC-bound pilot made S-turns to give people on both sides of the aircraft a good view. “I’m almost at a loss for words,” said a Lakeside woman wearing a sun and moon pendant. S.D. Union-Tribune
- Photo essays of North America watching the total eclipse. 👉 N.Y. Times | Washington Post
12.
In the Coachella Valley, a gleaming world of 2,000 homes is being built on a square mile of desert at the corner of Frank Sinatra Drive and Bob Hope Drive. This is Cotino, a “Storyliving by Disney community,” where for $1 million you can live in a Disney home and enjoy Disney art classes, Disney dinners, a Disney clubhouse, and a Disney lake that is kept an unnatural shade of Avatar blue year-round. The architecture critic Oliver Wainwright wrote about “how Disney went from making flickering animations of a talking mouse to sprinkling its themed fairy dust over every aspect of our lives.” The Guardian
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