Good morning. It’s Thursday, July 14.
- Truckers protest California gig law at key ports.
- Home values finally start to fall in the Bay Area.
- And a Harris’s hawk keeps BART’s pigeons in check.
Statewide
1.
The California gig worker law that aimed to force Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees also applied to the state’s 70,000 truck owner-operators. Many are furious about the change, which they say could cost them up to $20,000 in licenses, fees, and insurance to become compliant. On Wednesday, truckers held convoy protests over the law at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland, snarling traffic. Press Telegram | Bloomberg
2.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was in Washington on Wednesday and speculation about a potential presidential run was buzzing. The reporter Hannah Knowles asked Samantha Sears, a 33-year-old at an abortion rights protest, if President Biden should run again. “Nooooo!” she groaned. She liked Newsom, who has tapped into liberal anger over the direction of the country. But she had reservations. “He’s a cis, White, hetero man,” Sears said. Washington Post
3.
One way California is bolstering its ability to meet a surge in demand for abortions from out-of-state women: providing abortion pills on every University of California and California State University campus by Jan. 1. Currently, no Cal State campus offers the medication, and access at the UCs is varied. Researchers project that once the pills become widely available across the university systems, they will be used for roughly 6,200 medical abortions a year, easing demand at off-campus clinics. CalMatters
4.
Garrett Dickman, Yosemite’s forest ecologist, said the wildfire that grazed Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove may actually have done some good for the fabled grove of ancient sequoias. Prescribed burns that cleared highly flammable needles and downed branches over the last 50 years created a break that essentially halted the Washburn fire as it approached the grove. But it burned away an overgrown section that had not yet been treated, giving the sequoias even more protection, Dickman said. Wall Street Journal | A.P.
Northern California
5.
John Kevin Woodward, a tech CEO, was tried twice in the 1990s for the strangulation murder of his roommate’s girlfriend, Laurie Houts, in Mountain View. The first trial ended in a hung jury and the second was dismissed for lack of evidence. Woodward moved to the Netherlands. Now, more than 25 years later, prosecutors have charged him again, this time with evidence of Woodward’s DNA collected from the murder weapon: a rope. Officials believe Woodward, who is gay, was motivated by an “unrequited romantic attachment” to his roommate. Mercury News | Gizmodo
6.
Pigeons have been a major nuisance at the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, leaving droppings everywhere. To scare them off, transportation officials tried spikes, noisemakers, and owl statues. Nothing worked. Then in May they turned to Pac-Man, a 5-year-old Harris’s hawk that specializes in chasing pests for a local bird abatement service. Within a day, the pigeon population dropped by half. SFGATE
7.
People have been waiting in line for five hours to get the monkeypox vaccine in San Francisco as the infections characterized by red spots and blisters cluster among gay men. As of Thursday, the CDC had recorded 161 cases in California, 68 of those in San Francisco. Yet supplies of the vaccine are in severely short supply. San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said the response from Washington had been abysmal. “Gay and bisexual men are once again being failed by our federal government,” he said. SF Standard | S.F. Chronicle
8.
Bay Area home values have started to fall for the first time since the start of the pandemic. In a ranking of “fastest-cooling markets” by Redfin, California cities made up five of the top 10: San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, and San Francisco. But while buyers may have a little more leverage, Matt Kreamer, a data spokesperson for Zillow, said there was no danger of a slump. “There are huge numbers of people waiting to buy when they are able, and that demand isn’t going away,” he said. S.F. Chronicle | Redfin
Southern California
9.
UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang was investigated by police in a hit-and-run that took place on campus on May 16. Madden Westland, a 19-year-old student, told police he was skateboarding through a crosswalk when a car driven by Yang struck him and drove off without stopping. Yang refused to speak to investigators but denied involvement. Police ultimately recommended no charges, citing lack of evidence. “This was not a hit-and-run,” the university said in a statement. L.A. Times | KEYT
10.
Starbucks said this week it was permanently closing 16 stores around the country over safety concerns such as drug use and other “challenging incidents.” Six of the locations are in Los Angeles. Union leaders cast doubt on the company’s explanation. “It is simply not credible for the company to argue that this was not a response to the growing union movement spreading across the country,” Starbucks Workers United said in a statement. Washington Post | L.A. Times
11.
The New Yorker published a delightful Q&A with the Los Angeles divorce lawyer to the stars, Laura Wasser:
“There are plenty of women — men, too, but more women — that will sit there and go, I couldn’t possibly live on $250,000 a month. How am I going to do that? My kids need to fly private, they’ve never … And I can sit there and roll my eyes and be, like, Bitch, I’ve been working, clawing — but what’s the point? That’s their lifestyle, that’s their reality, my job is to get them that three a month so that they don’t have to ever fly first class and go through LAX, and their kids won’t — I apply the law to their situation.”
California archive
12.
In Northern California’s Shasta Cascade region, a rail line winds through the Upper Sacramento River canyon with a series of twirls and turns that seem inspired by rollercoasters. The highlight is the Cantara Loop, a nearly 360-degree pivot across the river that they used to depict on postcards. It’s gorgeous — surrounded by mountains and lush forest — but it’s also an accident waiting to happen.
It was on this day in 1991 that a clumsily loaded Southern Pacific train flipped off track at the Cantara Loop, dumping more than 19,000 gallons of toxic soil fumigant into the river. The spill was among the worst inland ecological disasters in California history, extinguishing life so thoroughly along 40 miles of river that even the trees by the shore died. The fallout from the disaster led to safety improvements, including a beefy new guardrail, and after some years the river returned to health. But the derailments never stopped. They are typically harmless, involving some spilled logs or empty railcars, as happened last August. But environmentalists say the close calls portend another disaster ahead. Mike Sabalow, a retired track foreman in Mount Shasta, once told Sacramento News & Review that accidents along the winding canyon are nowhere near as frequent as in the old days, when they could be monthly events. But to eliminate them altogether is wishful thinking. The “shit-happens factor,” he said, never goes away.
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See how scenic — and treacherous — the line is. 👉 YouTube
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