Tag Archives: California

Fire prompts evacuation order in Laguna Beach

Important Takeaways:

  • Emerald Fire: Laguna Beach blaze prompts evacuations, highway shutdown in California
  • Evacuation orders currently issued for residents in city south of Los Angeles
  • “The Laguna Beach Police Department has issued an IMMEDIATE EVACUATION ORDER for Irvine Cove and Emerald Bay and an EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for all of North Laguna (all residents North of Broadway) in Laguna Beach due to a nearby brush fire,” the city of Laguna Beach
  • The cause of the fire is not immediately clear.

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Tsunami warning for west coast

Matthew 16:2-3 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

Important Takeaways:

  • Tsunami Waves Over 4 Feet High Hit Pacific Coast after Major Eruption near Tonga
  • Waves between 1 and 4 feet were reported from Alaska to California
  • Two people were taken to the hospital after being swept into the water while fishing in California.
  • Some coastal areas in Japan were evacuated.
  • The tsunami was generated by an undersea volcano in the South Pacific.
  • “The arriving tsunami will come in pulses of surging water levels onto and off of the coast, similar to ‘high tide.’ Do not expect to identify these arriving pulses by large cresting waves/surf,” the NWS Bay Area office tweeted. “These water level surges can overwhelm and overtake people and pull them out to sea.”

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A financially broke state will now consider paying for your abortion

Rev 21:8 KJV “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Important Takeaways:

  • This State Plans to Become America’s Abortion Destination, Paying for Exponential Increase in Abortions
  • In a late December report, the council cited Guttmacher Institute statistics showing the number of out-of-state women driving to California for abortions could increase from 46,000 to 1.4 million – close to a 3,000% spike.
  • Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council, says “Gavin Newsom is actually talking about paying people, paying women with unplanned pregnancies to fly to the state of California, to pay for their hotel rooms, to cover all of their work-related expenses if they have to take unpaid time off so that they can come there and end the lives of their unborn children,” he said

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Severe weather has many looking for refuge

Important Takeaways:

  • Northwest weather forces many into shelters.
  • Severe weather sweeping parts of the U.S. brought frigid temperatures to the Pacific Northwest and heavy snow to mountains in Northern California and Nevada. 
  • The region continued to break daily cold records. The National Weather Service said the low was 17 degrees F in Seattle on Monday, breaking a record set in 1968.
  • Utilities reported about 5,000 customers without power Tuesday morning, mostly in southwestern Oregon. 
  • Officials with the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory on Monday said recent snowfall has smashed the snowiest December record of 179 inches, set in 1970. The record is now 193.7 inches as more snow is expected.
  • The storms that have been pummeling California and Nevada in recent days also brought rain and snow to Arizona. A record inch of rain in one day was reported at the airport in Phoenix.

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Secession – Is it really coming to that

Important Takeaways:

  • An American Secession? It’s Not That Far-Fetched
  • Texit. The new California republic. Polls in the U.S. show strong support for splitting the nation along blue-red lines.
  • A recent University of Virginia poll found that 52% of Donald Trump voters now “somewhat” favor Republican-controlled states “seceding from the union to form their own separate country,” while 41% of Joe Biden voters adopt the same stance about blue states.
  • Think of the Soviet Union, which splintered three decades ago. Czechoslovakia was created in October 1918, amid the ruins of the Hapsburg Empire, then in 1993 split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic
  • Norway was united with Denmark for four centuries, until in 1814 it was instead joined with Sweden.
    the Irish independence struggle that has played a bloody role in… history
  • Plainly, no secession in the U.S. is imminent. But such a development has become conceivable, as it certainly was not as recently as the turn of the millennium. Its cost, were it to come about, would be vastly higher not merely for the U.S. but for the entire Western world than any mere breakup of the U.K., or even of the European Union.

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California to require COVID-19 booster shots for healthcare workers

(Reuters) – California will require healthcare workers and workers in “high-risk congregate settings” to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster by Feb. 1, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday, as part of the state’s response to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The mandate follows a Sept. 30 mandate for the state’s healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated. Workers have been able to request an exemption for religious or medical reasons.

State employees who still have not received a booster must undergo testing for COVID-19 twice each week until Feb. 1, Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom, who disclosed the new mandate in a statement, was due to elaborate on the new requirement at a press conference later on Wednesday.

While California, the country’s most populous state, exceeds the national average for full vaccinations with 65.5%, it slightly lags the national average in booster shots at just under 30%, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The governor also announced that all public school students, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, will receive a rapid COVID-19 test as they head back to school from winter break.

The state also will expand operating hours for state-operated testing centers that have reached capacity, Newsom added.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Peter Szekely in New York)

U.S. grand jury accuses Amplify Energy of negligence in oil spill

(Reuters) -A federal grand jury has accused Amplify Energy Corp and two of its subsidiaries of illegally and negligently discharging oil during a pipeline break in California in October and failing to respond to alarms.

The Department of Justice said the indictment alleges that the companies, which own and operate the 17-mile (27 km) San Pedro Bay Pipeline, failed to properly respond to eight alarms over more than 13 hours on October 1-2.

The indictment also accuses Amplify and its Beta Operating Co LLC and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co subsidiaries of shutting and restarting the pipeline five times after the first five alarms were triggered, sending oil flowing through the damaged pipeline for more than three hours.

Amplify said it investigated the pipeline but it was then not known to the crew that the leak detection system was malfunctioning.

The detection system was “wrongly signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak could be detected by the platform personnel and where no leak was actually occurring,” it said in a statement.

The oil spill left fish dead, birds mired in petroleum and wetlands contaminated, in what local officials called an environmental catastrophe.

An estimated 25,000 gallons of crude oil were discharged from a point approximately 4.7 miles west of Huntington Beach from a crack in the 16-inch pipeline, the statement said.

An earlier report by the Associated Press showed how the spill was not investigated for nearly 10 hours.

(Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)

Groups push to make California a haven for abortion rights

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California must prepare for an influx of women seeking abortions in the liberal state if the U.S. Supreme Court ends the constitutional right to the procedure, dozens of women’s health and rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report by the Future of Abortion Council is aimed at positioning California as place where women from conservative states can get abortions. It comes as the Supreme Court considers overturning or weakening its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized the procedure nationwide.

Last week, the conservative-dominated court signaled a willingness to dramatically curtail abortion rights in America and possibly overturn Roe during oral arguments for a Mississippi case.

“It is imperative that California take the lead, live up to its proclamation as a ‘Reproductive Freedom State,’ and be ready to serve anyone who seeks abortion services,” Democrat Toni Atkins, president pro tem of the state Senate, wrote in a letter introducing the report.

The council made more than 40 recommendations, including a call for the state to fund programs to train additional abortion providers and legal protections for women from states where abortion becomes illegal.

Twenty-six states are certain or likely to ban abortions if the court limits or overturns Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies abortion rights.

More than 40 health care providers, women’s rights groups and Democratic politicians formed the council in September after the Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law that effectively bans abortion at about six weeks and allows people to sue doctors or others who have helped a woman end a pregnancy after fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

The Guttmacher Institute predicted in September that as many as 1.4 million women may drive in to California for abortion services if neighboring states outlaw or severely limit access to the procedure. That estimate doesn’t include women who might fly to the West Coast for abortions.

When the new Texas law took effect in September, Planned Parenthood clinics in California began treating two to three Texans per day, said Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for the clinics.

“We started to see an immediate impact on our health centers in California,” Richards said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and David Gregorio)

U.S. EPA allocates billions in water funding from infrastructure law to states

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released over $7 billion to state governments and tribes to upgrade drinking and waste water systems, the first allotment of clean water funds that was approved in the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law last month.

The installment is part of $44 billion in clean water funds that will be dispersed over five years through a federal-state partnership program. The Biden administration has touted the benefits for states that will flow from the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which President Joe Biden signed on Nov. 15 after months of congressional negotiations.

The $1 trillion in infrastructure spending features what the EPA describes as the “single-largest investment in U.S. water infrastructure ever.”

Over half of the $7.4 billion in state revolving funds (SRFs) that the agency will allocate to states for 2022 will be available as grants or principal forgiveness loans that are meant to make it easier for underserved urban and rural communities to access.

“Billions of dollars are about to start flowing to states and it is critical that EPA partners with states, Tribes, and territories to ensure the benefits of these investments are delivered in the most equitable way,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

He urged that the money be used to “correct longstanding environmental and economic injustices across America.”

EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox will soon issue national program guidance from the EPA’s Office of Water to help agencies best use the billions that will become available.

SRFs, which provide low-cost federal financing, have been used for decades by states to invest in their water infrastructure but many vulnerable and poor communities facing water challenges have not historically accessed their fair share of funds. Regan said he wants the new flow of money from the infrastructure bill will correct the disparities.

California, Texas and New York – the biggest states – will receive the largest share of SRF funds.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

First known U.S. Omicron case found in fully vaccinated overseas traveler

By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday identified its first known case of Omicron, discovered in a fully vaccinated patient who traveled to South Africa, as scientists continue to study the risks the new COVID variant could pose.

Public health officials said the infected person, who had mild symptoms, returned to the United States from South Africa on Nov. 22 and tested positive seven days later.

That patient was fully vaccinated but did not have a booster shot, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official, who briefed reporters at the White House.

The person is in self-quarantine and all of the patient’s close contacts have tested negative so far, he said.

Key questions remain about the new variant, which has rattled markets amid signs it may spread quickly and evade some of the defenses provided by vaccines. It has been found in two dozen countries, including Spain, Canada, Britain, Austria and Portugal.

Fauci said it could take two weeks or more to gain insight into how easily the variant spreads from person to person, how severe is the disease it causes and whether it can bypass the protections provided by vaccines currently available.

“We don’t have enough information right now,” said Fauci, who serves as an adviser to President Joe Biden, adding that the variant’s molecular profile “suggests that it might be more transmissible, and that it might elude some of the protection of vaccines, but we don’t know that now… We have to be prepared that there’s going to be a diminution in protection.”

For days, U.S. health officials have said the new variant -first detected in southern Africa and announced on Nov. 25 – was likely already in the United States as dozens of other countries also detected its presence.

“This new variant is a cause for concern but not a cause for panic,” Biden said on Wednesday before the Omicron case was announced. A spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said he the president had been briefed by his team on the first known case.

The United States has barred nearly all foreigners who have been in one of eight southern African countries. On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directed airlines to disclose names and other information of passengers who have been to those countries.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Ahmed Aboulenein and Nandita Bose in Washington, and Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Lisa Shumaker)