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Employers don’t have to protect workers’ families from COVID, California Supreme Court rules

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

A Bay Area woodworking employee caught COVID on the job and brought it home during the height of the pandemic. His wife contracted the illness and her symptoms were severe – at one point, she needed a respirator to breathe.But she cannot claim workers’ compensation injuries from the infection, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday, July 6 in answer to questions from a federal appellate court, because while doing so would be a moral good, that good is outweighed by the potential flood of litigation that would force businesses to close, tie up courts and send commercial insurance rates skyrocketing.“Recognizing a duty of care to nonemployees in this context would impose an intolerable burden on employers and society in contravention of public policy,” associate justice Carol Corrigan wrote in the ruling. “These and other policy considerations lead us to conclude that employers do not owe a tort-based duty to nonemployees to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”It was the second major...

Opinion: Ranching doesn’t have to destroy the Amazon rainforest

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

Can ranchers help rescue the Amazon?It’s an ecosystem like no other. One 19th century explorer called it “the last page of Genesis, yet to be written.” Brazil has been busy drafting that page ever since, sometimes to alarming results.A fifth of the rainforest has been cleared for farms, cattle grazing and ambitious development schemes such as highways and megadams, too often by lawless means and for only fleeting wealth. Unless the economy, governance and culture of the region undergo a fundamental reset, scientists fear, the entire biome may be on track for irreversible dieback.So it may sound paradoxical to suggest that beef cattle must be part of the Amazon solution. But that’s the only viable path forward.We already know a lot about what hasn’t worked. About 40% of Brazil’s 218 million head of cattle graze in the Amazon basin, often under precarious conditions. It takes one to two hectares of pasture on average to sustain a single head of cattle. Even then, prosperity fades quic...

3 California teens arrested in connection with slaying of Good Samaritan

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

Three teenagers were arrested Wednesday, July 5, on suspicion of murder in the 2022 killing of a pizza delivery driver who apparently tried to help an elderly man being assaulted in Stanton, authorities said.Anaheim residents Adrian Castaneda, 19, and Damian Ivan Mayorga, 18, as well as  Garden Grove resident Henry Diep Le, 19, are accused of fatally shooting Juan Cristalinas last June at the 7000 block of Lessue Avenue, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.Cristalinas, who was 49 and lived in Santa Ana, had been trying to help a 76-year-old man who was apparently being beaten by a group of men demanding money, the release said. The 76-year-old man was also shot but survived.Related ArticlesCrime and Public Safety | Man wrongfully convicted of 1983 California murder poised to get $3 million settlement Crime and Public Safety | Suspect wanted in fatal shooting of Oakland flower delivery person arrested in Chicago Crime and Publ...

3 crosses at predominantly Black and Latino California church set on fire; police investigating possible hate crime

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

Officials were working Thursday, July 6 to determine who set three crosses outside a church in Sylmar on fire early that morning in what local and federal law enforcement were treating as a possible hate crime.By the afternoon, arson investigators with the Los Angeles Fire Department were examining one of the crosses outside Sylmar Christian Fellowship Church at 13901 Polk Street.The investigators had taken the cross to cut a small sample from the charred wood. They wiped the same cross with a solution and took a sample from the residue.  And they took soil samples from around the base of the crosses — all in an effort to determine how they were set on fire.Nearby, Pierre Howard, the church’s pastor for the last 13 years, was adamant the crosses would stay, charred and damaged as they were.“(They) have been through something,” Howard said. “They got a story to tell.”Police and firefighters were called to the church at around 5 a.m. on Thursday. When they arrived, the crosses had cle...

California animal rescuers and advocates seek donations, volunteers to help sick sea lions

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

The largest toxic algae bloom ever recorded off Southern California’s coast is continuing to sicken sea lions and other marine mammals, and it’s unclear how much longer it will last, one marine mammal specialist said Thursday, July 6.More than 1,000 sea lions and dolphins have fallen ill and washed up along California’s coastline over the last several weeks.John Warner, chief executive of Marine Mammal Care Center Los Angeles, which operates an animal hospital in San Pedro, said the hospital typically admits about 20 animals this time of year, but the facility has been at maximum capacity, having treated about 120 creatures since the second week of June.In recent weeks, dozens of sea lions have fallen ill due to a significant algae bloom along the coast and a resting place has been designated for sick sea lions in Marina del Rey on Thursday, July 6, 2023. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park speaks at a press conference to address the rec...

Man wrongfully convicted of 1983 California murder poised to get $3 million settlement

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

A man who spent 37 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted for a 1983 murder and robbery in Long Beach is poised to receive a $3 million settlement from Los Angeles County.The county Claims Board recommended Monday that the Board of Supervisors settle a lawsuit filed by 62-year-old Samuel Bonner, whose conviction was overturned in 2019 due to prosecutorial misconduct.Andrew M. Stein, an attorney who represents Bonner, declined to discuss the pending settlement. Bonner, a truck driver who lives in California’s Central Valley, could not be reached for comment. He has been free since 2019, when Superior Court Judge Daniel Lowenthal ordered his release and would later declare him factually innocent.Bonner’s case began on Nov. 11, 1982, when he agreed to drive an acquaintance, Watson Allison, to Rose Park in Long Beach to meet with a man named Leonard Polk, according to court records.An undercover police officer followed Bonner’s gray Ford because it looked suspicious, he said,...

Review: ‘Lesson’ provides a spicy literary thriller

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated PressThe egos are as vast and thorny as the gardens on the lush estate of a prominent author in ” The Lesson,” an entertaining and erudite chamber piece about a master, a tutor and a family after loss.This is a story that, in different hands, could have easily turned maudlin or melodramatic, but director Alice Troughton, writer Alex MacKeith and composer Isobel Waller-Bridge opted instead for wry lightness within the construct of a slow-burn thriller. It’s as though “The Lesson,” and everyone involved, is winking at the audience through the serious material that lingers, intentionally, on the fine line between pretentious and provocative.Daryl McCormack, of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” and “Bad Sisters,” plays Liam Sommers, an aspiring writer who has accepted a job tutoring the son of world-famous author J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), who also happens to be his literary idol. But the film begins ...

Blow: Court’s affirmative action ruling enshrines racial imbalance

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

There is a recurrent theme in American history: the clawing back of hard-won progress. And the Supreme Court last week used the most specious of arguments to do so with affirmative action.In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that affirmative action — in this case, the use of race as a factor in university admissions — cannot stand because “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” But, of course, neither the court nor America itself has any desire to eliminate all of it. Reading that line was like having someone spit in my face.What the court was really signaling was that it intended to let racial imbalances born of both historical and current injustices be locked in and go unchecked.Affirmative action, however imperfect, is at least an acknowledgment of racialized imbalance and injury, and an attempt to lessen their effects.The court, with this decision, was washing its hands of racial discrimination that is not overt, conscious and codifi...

HGTV star Christina Hall’s former California house lists at $8 million

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

A renovated Newport Beach home previously owned by HGTV star Christina Hall is up for grabs at $7.995 million.The ask is 49% more than the $5.35 million county documents show the 39-year-old host of “Christina on the Coast” and “Christina in the Country” got in June 2021.With its metal roof and board-and-batten siding, this 4,804-square-foot, two-story house sits on over a half-acre lot with a resort-style backyard. Constructed in 1999 and updated by the current owner, it has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and an open-concept floor plan.The listing calls it a “perfect harmony of minimalist aesthetics and efficient space utilization.”RELATED: Peek inside ‘Flip or Flop’ star Christina El Moussa’s new $4.1 million California homeInside are all-white walls, wide-plank, white oak flooring, clerestory windows and a soaring vaulted ceiling with skylights. An oversized center island with seating outfits the gourmet kitchen that opens to the great room.Slide-away glass doors extend the living...

Basketball drama ‘Swagger’ drops season 2 on Apple TV+

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:58:45 GMT

(new Image()).src = "https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=9be9c680-c459-4acb-af21-654a2ccca384&cid=c2ffed0c-3624-46c0-b10f-97c976d290a3";cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "9be9c680-c459-4acb-af21-654a2ccca384",mediaId: "b8452759-8be3-42fb-a7bf-16830a130e45"}).render("747fe7306e64448398ba7e7faa6253b2"); });Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.” toggle audio on and off change volume download audio WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with the creators of 'Swagger' (Part 1) $(function () { $('.wtop-audio-container .fa-play').on('click', function(){ var audio_filename = $('div.wtop-audio-file').data("mp3-url"); ...