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Photos: Space shuttle toilet, UFO and Stealth fighter displays delight REACH Academy students

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

Tuesday was not a normal day at REACH Academy in East Oakland.In the school’s front office students chanted, “Faster, faster!” as a classmate was repeatedly spun upside-down on a Multiple Axis Simulator by Ivor Dawson of the Traveling Space Museum.“Had enough?” Dawson asked his dizzy victim.A Reach Academy student is spun by Ivor Dawson of the Traveling Space Museum in a multiple axis simulator during Space Day activities at the school in East Oakland, Calif., Tuesday, March 28, 2023, (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) Out in a drenched schoolyard, rain wasn’t the only thing falling from the sky.A UFO had landed.Fourth-graders crawled inside the 6-foot-diameter flying saucer looking for extraterrestrials. Across the schoolyard, third-graders explored a full-scale Lunar Roving Vehicle, pretending to be moon explorers.It was Space Day 2023 at REACH, and all 400 students of the K-5 school were budding scientists and astronauts.Reach Academy stude...

Even California’s Sonoran Desert is threatened by climate change

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

The same climate changes known to be reshaping mountain ecosystems in places like the Alps and Yosemite also are driving alarming new patterns in the Sonoran Desert near Palm Springs, according to the latest findings from a long-running study by UC Riverside.If temperatures continue to rise and droughts continue to become more severe, the study suggests that portions of the Sonoran and similar deserts someday could become barren, with little plant or animal life.“These ecosystems are incredibly fragile, actually,” said Tesa Madsen-Hepp, an ecology doctoral candidate at UCR and first author of the study. “They’re not super resilient, and they are reaching their limits.”The findings, which track changes measured over several decades, are surprising to some scientists who had assumed that deserts and other dryland ecosystems would be resilient to more extreme heat and prolonged drought. Instead, Madsen-Hepp said that unless we get greenhouse gas emissions under control, and stop or rev...

A tree brought down a 60-year-old pedestrian bridge in San Leandro during March storms

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

SAN LEANDRO — Repair work to a 60-year-old pedestrian bridge that collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree during a wind storm earlier this month will begin as soon as the debris is cleared from it.That process is only now just beginning, after a giant Eucalyptus tree crushed the structure during a March storm, one of several that felled thousands of trees and broke limbs across the Bay Area.“The first thing that needs to be done is to clear the area of the bridge damage itself, the concrete around it, other debris,” San Leandro Unified School District spokesperson Keziah Moss said. “We haven’t even started cleaning out what’s fallen because we keep getting bad weather.”The SLUSD and city of San Leandro announced earlier this week they will work together to repair the bridge, which connects Cary Drive with Haas Avenue. The bridge runs about 30 feet above the San Leandro Creek; without it, pedestrians are forced to walk a much further dist...

Gov. Newsom proclaims March 31 'César Chávez Day'

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

(KRON) -- Governor Gavin Newsom issued a proclamation declaring March 31, 2023 as "César Chávez Day" in the State of California. The iconic champion of workers' rights dropped out of 8th grade to work full-time laboring in California's agricultural fields. "Toiling in the fields from a young age, Chávez faced dismal working conditions, racism, abuse, and exploitation," Newsom wrote. In 1952, Chávez was living in east San Jose when he became a grassroots organizer for Latino civil rights and hosted lectures on racial and economic inequality.Chávez famously said, "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."In this March 7, 1979 photo, United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez joins striking Salinas Valley farmworkers during a large rally in Salinas, Calif. (AP Photo/ Paul Sakuma/ File)In 1962, Chávez and Dolores H...

Novato shelter-in-place lifted, road reopened

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

A shelter-in-place order issued by the Novato Police Department in response to police activity has been lifted, according to a tweet from the department. Earlier on Friday morning, Sunset Parkway was closed between Shon Drive and Midway Boulevard due to a police operation in the 700 block of Sunset Parkway, police said. VIDEO: Yelp review of Millbrae boba tea shop proves to be fake after customer caught sabotaging drink Residents in the 700 blocks of Sunset Parkway and Shevelin Road had been asked to remain indoors. The shelter-in-place has since been lifted and the operation has concluded, according to police."This is an isolated situation and there is no danger to the public or local schools," police said. Bay City News contributed to this report.

Forensic Re-Creations of Police Abuse Lead to Landmark Legal Settlements

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

In an unprecedented settlement, the city of Philadelphia has agreed to pay $9.25 million to 343 protesters who were injured by police violence during the 2020 protests for racial justice.The announcement comes on the heels of another landmark settlement, reached earlier this month by New York City and the New York Police Department, which allocated $7 million to more than 300 protesters who were arrested and beaten in 2020 at a demonstration in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx.The two settlements are both historic in their size and implications for future lawsuits against police violence. Crucially, both cases relied on forensic reconstructions of the events, using video footage and eyewitness accounts to craft detailed timelines of police abuses.As technology advances and video footage of protests abounds, it’s becoming easier for protesters to win class-action lawsuits and settlements against cities and their police departments. While few staunch critics of the crimi...

2nd sexual harassment complaint filed against DC mayor’s former chief of staff

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

Another D.C. employee has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against John Falcicchio, the mayor’s former chief of staff.D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said her office is investigating Falcicchio, who abruptly resigned earlier this month and now faces allegations from two city employees. Before he resigned, Falcicchio also served as the deputy mayor for planning and economic development.“Our client courageously came forward with her complaint because she wants justice for herself and other survivors,” Attorneys Debra Katz and Kayla Morin, who represent both women who’ve come forward, said in a statement. “She intends to work with the District’s investigators to ensure accountability and we ask that you respect her request for privacy at this time.”During a news conference about Falicicchio’s abrupt resignation, which came shortly before the first woman’s complaint went public March 20, Bowser declined to provide any specifics of all...

Final Four: FAU, San Diego St ready for mid-major semifinal

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

HOUSTON (AP) — March Madness is at its best when the underdogs stir things up.Loyola Chicago and Sister Jean. Butler’s consecutive title-game runs with a near-miss against Duke. Saint Peter’s ride a year ago.Cinderellas are alluring, even if they shred brackets.A massive March upheaval this season has created a rare sight: two mid-majors playing for a spot in the national championship.When Florida Atlantic faces San Diego State in the first of two national semifinal games Saturday night, it marks just the second time two mid-majors will meet in the Final Four since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.“I love to see it just because it’s an opportunity for those outside of the national spotlight to be on the big stage and show what they can do,” FAU coach Dusty May said.The second Final Four game Saturday night pits two familiar names. UConn is vying for its fifth national championship and Miami, though in its first Final Four, plays in the basketball-ri...

Verizon wins FAA technology deal worth up to $2.4 billion

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded Verizon Communications a contract potentially worth $2.4 billion to upgrade the agency’s technology systems.The FAA said Verizon will build a network that includes secure communications and administrative services. If the FAA exercises all options in the deal, the contract would run for 15 years and reach the full potential value, according to an agency spokeswoman.Verizon said it will build a network “to support all of the agency’s mission-critical applications” including air traffic management for more than 45,000 flights per day.The contract, disclosed Thursday, comes nearly three months after a critical alert system failed, temporarily halting departing flights across the country. The FAA blamed the outage on contractors who accidentally deleted files from a database and its backup.FAA officials have said they need to modernize the alert system and many other programs. Airline officials have supported the agency, ...

Factory explosion survivor, on fire, fell into chocolate vat

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:48 GMT

A woman pulled alive from the rubble of a Pennsylvania chocolate factory after an explosion that killed seven co-workers says her arm caught fire as flames engulfed the building — and then she fell through the floor into a vat of liquid chocolate.The dark liquid extinguished her blazing arm, but Patricia Borges wound up breaking her collarbone and both of her heels. She would spend the next nine hours screaming for help and waiting for rescue as firefighters battled the inferno and choppers thumped overhead at the R.M. Palmer Co. factory.“When I began to burn, I thought it was the end for me,” Borges, 50, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview from her hospital bed in West Reading, Pennsylvania, just minutes from the chocolate factory where she worked as a machine operator. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board planned to interview Borges on Friday.The March 24 blast at R.M. Palmer killed seven of Borges’s co-workers and injured 10. Federal, state ...