Good morning. It’s Thursday, Jan. 26.
- California sends its toxic waste to other states.
- Meta reinstates Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram.
- And a mesmerizing video of Mount Shasta’s alien clouds.
California shootings
1.
Farmworkers on Wednesday shared firsthand accounts of the Half Moon Bay shooting rampage that left seven people dead. Erlin Ortiz said she saw Chunli Zhao pull a gun from his knapsack while shouting in Mandarin at a fellow Chinese farmworker. Zhao shot the man as he covered his face with his arms, then opened fire on a second man nearby, she said. Ortiz got a look at Zhao’s face as he hopped on a forklift and rode off. “He was laughing,” she said. Mercury News
- Officials said each victim was specifically targeted. The deceased were identified as Zhishen Liu, 73; Aixiang Zhang, 74; Qizhong Cheng, 66; Jingzhi Lu, 64; Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50; Yetao Bing, 43; and José Romero Perez, said to be in his 30s. N.Y. Times | A.P.
2.
In the last year in California, three men Asian men of retirement age expressed their rage by spraying bullets at fellow Asians — at a church, a ballroom, and a mushroom farm. “Asian Americans across the country are grappling with a new reality. Someone who looks like their grandfather, who traveled a similar immigrant path, is suspe cted of committing a singularly American act — opening fire on a group of innocent people.” L.A. Times
3.
Officials investigating the Jan. 16 mass shooting in the San Joaquin Valley town of Goshen said it has the hallmarks of a Mexican drug cartel hit aimed at a single family. One victim, Eladio Parraz Jr., 52, was a documented gang member, police said. But four of the victims had no gang affiliation, including Alissa Parraz, 16, who was gunned down as she tried to flee with her baby, Nycholas, who was also killed. “These people were given clear directions to kill that entire family,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said. “That is what is unique here.” N.Y. Times
Statewide
4.
“You’re just shifting the burden.”
Since 2010, nearly half of California’s hazardous waste has been shipped out of the state, often to places with weaker environmental rules, an investigation found. In one case, California’s own hazardous waste watchdog dumped nearly 1,500 tons of toxic waste near the organic date farm of an Arizona tribal reservation, citing the cost-savings of skirting California environmental regulations. Critics say the practice is plainly hypocritical. CalMatters
5.
In a warning to clients this month, Goldman Sachs predicted that four American cities — San Diego, San Jose, Phoenix, and Austin — would see home prices plummet more than 25% this year amid skyrocketing interest rates. The forecast drew comparisons to the 2008 housing crash, when prices fell around 27% nationally. A survey last year found that the dizzying rise of housing costs in San Diego had made it the least affordable metropolitan area in the nation. CBS8 | Insider
6.
After the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June, California enacted a raft of new abortion rights laws and invited other states to follow its lead. Many now have:
- Minnesota lawmakers are pushing a bill that replicates California policies shielding patients and providers from legal peril.
- Massachusetts passed a law inspired by California to make abortion pills available on college campuses.
- And New York lawmakers voted Tuesday to put a constitutional amendment codifying abortion rights on the ballot, as California did last year. Politico
Northern California
7.
Two years after former President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended, parent company Meta said Wednesday that he would be allowed back on the platforms “in the coming weeks.” The Menlo Park company booted Trump a day after the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol, saying his posts risked more violence. But that danger had since receded, wrote Nick Clegg, a Meta executive. “The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.” Washington Post | Politico
8.
There is a wetsuit divide among the community of people who swim in the San Francisco Bay. Some swimmers call them “wuss suits.” Over the years, wetsuits have mysteriously vanished from the changing room at the South End Rowing Club, a 150-year-old home to many Bay swimmers. The anti-wetsuit culture once sparked a rebellion over perceived mistreatment of wetsuit wearers at the club. A chant rose up: “We’re here, we wear gear. Get used to it!” Wall Street Journal
9.
One theory is that the bizarre clouds of Mount Shasta are cloaking devices for alien spaceships. Scientists offer another explanation: the orb-like formations, known as lenticular clouds, develop atop the mountain as air ascends its slopes, cooling and causing water vapor to condense. The cloud evaporates on the downslope, giving it the appearance of a mushroom cap or stack of pancakes. They appear to be motionless, but they are actually perpetually reforming themselves, a fact brought to life in a time-lapse video captured Sunday by local photographer Robert Renick. YouTube
California Sun: The alien clouds of Mount Shasta.
Southern California
10.
A San Diego judge on Wednesday ordered a man to be tried for his wife’s murder even though her body was never found. Maya Millete, a 39-year-old mother of three, disappeared from the couple’s Chula Vista home in January 2021. The last call recorded on her phone was to a divorce attorney, police said. During a preliminary hearing, prosecutors provided evidence that her husband, Larry Millete, grew desperate to save their marriage, even purchasing magical spells online to bind her to him forever. BuzzFeed News | City News Service
11.
There’s a new form of contraband along the California-Mexico border: eggs. As egg prices have soared as a result of avian flu and inflation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents reported more than 2,000 encounters with people trying to bring eggs into the U.S. from Mexico between Nov. 1 and Jan. 17, an agency spokesman said. As of Jan. 20, the average price for a dozen eggs in California was $5.97. In Mexico: as little as $1.59. N.Y. Times
12.
An area of the Pacific briefly turned pink off San Diego last Friday. The anomaly was part of an experiment by researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who dumped 15 gallons of environmentally safe fluorescent dye into a coastal marsh. The goal was to reveal the mysteries of how fresh water interacts with the surf as it flows out to sea — but it also made for some fun photos. KPBS | NBC San Diego
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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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