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California’s coast, its bluffs and wildlife star in Obi Kaufmann’s new book

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

The California coastline is a geologically sculpted masterpiece jagging and jutting for 1,100 head-turning miles. It starts with the Tortilla Wall poking into the sea at the U.S.-Mexico border and angles northwest to what some describe as California’s loneliest beach – a wild stretch of yellow grassy dunes, hard sand and chunks of driftwood at Pelican State Beach this side of Oregon.Don’t bother trying to define this heterogeneous seaboard through a single stretch of shore. It has been carved into disparate sections that speak to California’s richness.But the Bay Area is as good as any place to launch an exploration of the landscape and wildlife. The 100-mile strand from Santa Cruz to Point Reyes National Seashore has towering, forested mountains, plunging brittle bluffs and steep, chaparral-covered canyons brimming with wildlife. It has rickety piers, historic lighthouses and a marine sanctuary filled with elephant seals, sea lions and predatory white sharks.Atmospheric moisture cr...

Men’s basketball: Saint Mary’s Gaels picked to unseat Gonzaga atop WCC, but have sights set on big picture

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

Being picked over perennial favorite Gonzaga to win the West Coast Conference this season doesn’t elicit much reaction from the Saint Mary’s basketball team.“Sure, it’s cool,” senior forward Alex Ducas said. “But getting picked to win doesn’t guarantee you any wins. We really try to keep the outside noise to the outside.”Coach Randy Bennett, who passed 500 career victories with the Gaels last season, wasn’t surprised the league’s coaches gave his team the nod. Saint Mary’s returns three all-WCC players and Gonzaga lost four starters.What’s more meaningful to him is the experience his players have accumulated after reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament two years in a row for the first time in a decade.“They’ve seen what it looks like to play in the NCAA tournament two years in a row, win a game,” Bennett said. “All that stuff, I can’t explain how valuable that is for a coach. These guys have done what it takes and seen what it looks like when you get there.“They’re pretty ...

Los Gatos High teacher partners with Stanford in virtual reality study

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

Studying virtual realityLos Gatos High School social studies teacher David Homa is partnering with Stanford University’s Human Virtual Reality Design Lab on the use of virtual reality (VR) in schools.Homa, along with a Stanford professor and two graduate students, is collaborating with global organizations to learn how effective VR is in helping students develop empathy and long-term learning and retention. Students have begun to integrate VR into their class lessons.“The primary goal of this project is to see what value the use of VR in the classroom may have in helping students develop greater empathy for other people and places from around the world,” Homa said in a statement.In the coming months, Homa’s class will begin working with teachers and students from the Doha Debate Ambassador Program and the Global Schools Advocates Program. The students and teachers in these organizations will create their own content from their part of the world and share it with Los Gatos High Schoo...

Guaranteed Income: Can no-strings-attached payments help solve poverty in the Bay Area?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

More than a quarter of Santa Clara County families struggle to afford their basic needs. To lift thousands of them out of poverty, a new study recommends guaranteed monthly payments — with no strings attached.Payments of $500 to $2,000 would help as many as 45,000 low-income South Bay households gain financial stability, according to the report from Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a business and labor consortium.“Even a very small monthly granted basic income payment can make a huge difference in the lives of a certain segment of Silicon Valley’s population,” said Rachel Massaro, vice president and director of research at the think tank.Across the Bay Area, local governments and organizations have in recent years started or announced at least 20 “guaranteed income” pilot programs in hopes of alleviating the region’s staggering wealth disparity. That includes a Santa Clara County effort in 2020 that gave $1,000 monthly payments to 72 young adul...

Dogged determination gets San Jose pair to Agility World Championship

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

At age 72, San Jose resident Bob Daigle was the oldest person to make the U.S. team at the FCI Agility World Championship, held Oct. 4-8. His partner, on the other hand, is only about half that age in dog years.Daigle and his 5-year-old border collie Blew Bayou traveled to Liberec in the Czech Republic for the agility trials, where approximately 700 dogs from 55 countries competed by racing against a clock as they navigated obstacle courses.“The competition went fantastic,” says Daigle. “Blew Bayou and I had an awesome time.“The thing I enjoyed most about the trip was being in the presence of so many awesome agility competitors,” Daigle adds. “The people on the USA team are competitors and trainers I have looked up to for so many years. And now I was on their team, watching and learning from every move they did on the course. I loved it.”The United States team placed 14th at the world championship. Germany won the most gold medals this year, while Great Britain won the most medals o...

Latest line: A good week for Lateefah Simon, a bad week for Sam Bankman-Fried

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

Lateefah SimonSecuring a big boost in the crowded Democratic primary, BART board member and Cal State trustee wins Gov. Gavin Newsom’s endorsement to succeed Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who is running for Senate.    Sam Bankman-FriedThe Stanford-born former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, once worth $26 billion, is convicted of seven felony counts of fraud and conspiracy. He now faces 110 years in prison.   Remote workersEmployees who moved to other states during the pandemic are saving money on housing, but learning that many places don’t have California’s paid sick days, family leave or other guaranteed benefits. 

Rebuilding Paradise: Six projects to prevent a future tragedy, five years after the Camp Fire

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

Five years after California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire destroyed Paradise, the town’s leaders have launched three dozen projects to fortify this Northern California community about 180 miles northeast of San Francisco against future disasters.Click here to read more about how Paradise is rebuilding five years after the Camp Fire. Here is a look at six of them:An emergency notification system. Twenty-one sirens atop steel towers, disguised as Douglas fir trees, emit one minute of loud “Hi-Lo” warning sounds followed by evacuation instructions. The system can be controlled manually, over the internet or by satellite. Power is hard-wired underground, but each siren also has a solar panel. Many have cameras.Widened evacuation routes. One of the major corridors, Pentz Road, is getting a $73 million widening, with a new two-way left turn lane and bike path, which can double as an evacuation route. Skyway, another artery, will be widened to increase i...

They said it: Third time’s not the charm

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

“San Jose has wrapped her arms around me and I have done my best to do the same. While I have decided not to run for mayor of San Jose, I will continue to help move our city forward and help tackle the critical issues impacting our residents and community.”— Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, a former two-term San Jose councilwoman and vice mayor who lost a 2006 mayoral bid to Chuck Reed and last year’s mayoral race to Mayor Matt Mahan, on not challenging his re-election next year.

Judge to San Jose church: Turkey bags of weed, pile of cash not ‘sacrament’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

A San Jose church this week lost a lengthy legal battle after claiming police violated its religious rights by raiding its minister’s home and seizing 90 pounds of marijuana, nearly 1,200 cannabis vaping cartridges and more than $155,000.Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled Tuesday in federal court in Oakland that the Sacrament Collective Pentecostal Church, despite its foundational belief in cannabis as a holy sacrament, was still subject to state drugs laws. Hamilton threw out the lawsuit the church filed against Santa Cruz County a month after the 2019 search of the minister’s house in the Santa Cruz Mountains.The raid, according to authorities, turned up weed in the large plastic “turkey bags” used for baking the birds, plus the vaping cartridges, parts for vaping pens, 115 cannabis plants growing in a detached garage, a money-counting machine, and cash stashed in a laundry hamper, dresser, and a beer box in a hallway closet.The church’s lawyer argued in th...

Families of Israel hostages fear the world will forget. So they’re traveling to be living reminders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:33 GMT

PARIS (AP) — The photo of the white-haired woman in a golf cart, wrapped in a purple blanket and flanked by a gunman, was among the first to emerge of the hostages seized during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.But Yaffa Adar’s granddaughter is afraid that the world’s memory of that harrowing day – and the impetus to free some 240 people held by Hamas – is fading. So Adva Adar and her brother, like many other relatives of the hostages, have left Israel for what they hope will be a friendly reception in cities around the world.Paris, Atlanta and London. Chicago and Vienna. The island of Cyprus.They fear the alternative will be a collective amnesia, as memories of that day are replaced by news of Palestinian deaths in Gaza. Israeli social media is filled with images of the missing person flyers of the hostages being ripped down around the world.“It’s very scary thinking that it’s going to be old news that my grandmother will stay hostage,” Adva Adar said.IN AN INFORMATION VACUUM, FEA...