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First puma witnessed using new Highway 17 wildlife tunnel

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

SANTA CRUZ — Since the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County completed work on its wildlife tunnel at Laurel Curve in January, numerous animals have been spotted traveling under the roadway in the Santa Cruz Mountains to get to the other side of Highway 17.These have included critters as small as skunks and squirrels and as large as bobcats, deer, coyotes and foxes. However, earlier this month, the Land Trust was able to capture on camera one of the critters it has always wanted to see use the tunnel since its completion: a mountain lion.Video cameras installed by Pathways for Wildlife captured an uncollared male puma moving through the tunnel at 2:38 a.m. Nov. 28, and the footage was viewed by Land Trust staff earlier this month.Sarah Newkirk, Land Trust executive director, said it was a very exciting moment for the land conservation nonprofit, as it validated the reason to build it at Laurel Curve.“We had good reason to believe that it would work, and this actually is the proof that it ...

Santa Cruz County homeless deaths jump 33% in 2023

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

SANTA CRUZ — The past year proved to be the deadliest year on record for people living without housing in Santa Cruz County, officials shared Thursday.County of Santa Cruz Homeless Persons Health Project administrative analyst David Davis presents this year’s Report on Homeless Deaths during Thursday’s ceremony. (Shmuel Thaler – Santa Cruz Sentinel) The 122 known homeless deaths in 2023 marked a 33% increase over 2022’s tally, according to Santa Cruz County Homeless Persons Health Project analyst David Davis. Davis and others spoke Thursday morning to a crowd gathered for the 25th annual Santa Cruz County Homeless Memorial.Homeless people in Santa Cruz County died at more than nine times the rate of those who were housed, and, on average, 27 years earlier – by age 49, according to Davis. The memorial also recognized that another 43 people who were formerly homeless had died this year, with their average age at death jumping to 58, he said.“So, housing contributes years to our l...

Mom caught moving Elf on the Shelf, gets local cops involved to restore son’s spirit

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

After more than a decade of successful Elf on a Shelf shenanigans, this year registered the first epic fail for one Ohio family.Amanda Turinsky of Southgate said she really blew it.As tradition has it, the elf is placed on a shelf in various parts of the house each day leading up to Christmas with a little fun message to the children.The rule in this family tradition is that no adult can touch the elf or it will strip him of his Christmas powers and ruin the holiday.Southgate Officers Steven Trombley and Devin Brown helped restore the joy of Christmas for Knox Turinsky, 10. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Turinsky) Recently, the elf was sitting inside her 10-year-old son Knox’s bedroom.She and her 16-year-old son, who has already gone through his years of the tradition, had been sharing the job of moving the elf in the Christmas countdown.Related ArticlesEntertainment | ‘Iron Claw’ is great, misses a chance to point fingers Entertainment | Horos...

California’s push for rooftop solar panels plummets after rule change

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

By Michelle Ma and Tope Alake | BloombergCalifornia helped create the US solar industry, subsidizing rooftop panels at a time when the federal fight against climate change had barely begun. Now, it’s leading a sharp sales slowdown that’s threatening widespread adoption.Installers are slashing jobs. Bankruptcies are mounting. And it’s not just mom & pops feeling the pinch.Solar equipment-maker Enphase Energy Inc., long considered a bellwether for the sector, announced this week it would cut its workforce 10% and close two contract factories, with Chief Executive Officer Badri Kothandaraman citing California’s woes in a letter to staff.The shakeout follows a change in California regulations that scaled back the amount of money solar homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid — a shift that hit just as higher interest rates were making the systems more expensive.Research firm Ohm Analytics, which tracks the solar marketplace, found sales dropping 67% to 85% for t...

California raising minimum wage for 2 industries. Others could see pay hikes, too

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

By Levi Sumagaysay and Shreya Agrawal | CalMattersCalifornians in two industries are set to get new minimum wages just for them next year, and that could lead to pay bumps for other workers, too.Gov. Gavin Newsom this year signed two union-backed bills that will boost fast-food and health care workers’ minimum wages.California-based fast-food workers for chains with 60 or more locations around the nation will earn at least $20 an hour beginning in April, $4 higher than the overall state minimum wage of $16 that will be effective Jan. 1.In June, health care workers will earn a minimum of $18, $21 or $23 an hour, depending on what type of facility employs them and where they work.The industry-specific wage increases reflect a shift in unions’ strategies at the Capitol. After the Great Recession, labor groups led campaigns that resulted in then-Gov. Jerry Brown signing a law in 2016 that put California on a path to a $15 minimum wage. That law included inflation adjustments, which is w...

Weigh-ins, fingerprint-scanning and drug tests: Former USC players testify in labor case

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

LOS ANGELES — The sheer definition of control rested on the broad shoulders of one Brandon Outlaw, a man who had recorded all of two tackles across two uneventful seasons playing for USC and was now being tabbed to help determine the future of collegiate football.For two days, in a small hearing in West Los Angeles, a group of suits picked apart every finite detail of Outlaw’s experience playing football as a Trojan in 2021 and 2022. And slowly, Outlaw’s testimony began to build a record that peeled back the realities of what it means to be a USC football player: 50-60 hours a week of football-related activity, required weigh-ins and drug tests, fingerprint scanning to monitor mandatory team meals.He was the first witness of the first in-person hearing in this titanic case, the National Labor Relations Board’s crusade against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA arguing the classification of USC student-athletes as employees, a case that could pave the route to a salary cap and free agency ...

Barbie is in the Toy Hall of Fame, here’s how you can nominate others

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

Fun timeSince Christmas is Monday, we look at toys inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame and some of the most dangerous toys kids are getting these days.The National Toy Hall of Fame is part of the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The Hall of Fame accepts nominations from the public year-round, but to be inducted, the nominees must be approved by historians and educators with backgrounds in learning and play.Toys are rated in four categories, though they don’t have to rate highly in all categories to get in:Icon status: Toys that are widely recognized and respected.Longevity: Toys that are not a fad and have had popularity over several generations.Discovery: Toys that foster creativity and learning.Innovation: Toys that change the ways we play or have ground-breaking design.A list of each toy to be inducted is below.You can nominate a toy here.Help my campaignI nominated the beach ball for induction this month.Fun at the beach, pool or stadium, the beloved colorfu...

Opinion: Why I, a doctor constantly confronting death, love Christmas

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

Over many years as an oncologist, I have grown wary of anyone or anything that is too blithely cheery. Cancer remains too cruel a reaper, too wanton a destroyer, too brazen a thief of dreams for me to see almost anything with unbridled optimism. It’s as if I sense a coming catastrophe around every innocuous corner because cancer leaves no group untouched: the young and the old, the healthy and the ill, the fit and the faint.And perhaps that explains why I love Christmas.From popular depictions — whether secular or, too often, religious — one would believe that Christmas featured a blissful new mother cradling a dewy-eyed newborn, as if all the participants in the nativity came straight over from the greenroom, doffed their slippers and robes, and sat down for a perfectly manicured photo-shoot.But, of course, logic, history and the biblical record tell us nothing could be farther from the truth.Called from Nazareth to report for the census in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph wo...

Review: ‘All of Us Strangers’ is devastating and compelling

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated PressAndrew Scott plays a writer trying to write something about his dead parents in Andrew Haigh’s transcendent drama “All of Us Strangers.” His parents’ death is not recent – they died when he was 12. Not that one ever really gets over that kind of loss. But we meet Adam at a moment where he is not just thinking about them but visiting them in his childhood home, where they are preparing for Christmas. Just in case it wasn’t sad enough already.“All of Us Strangers” will probably make you cry. Maybe even weep. And while there are some twists along the way, it never feels emotionally manipulative or unearned. In fact, it’s a rather authentic and cathartic experience — a deeply felt journey of acceptance, love and forgiveness.The most calculated flex of the movie is actually just in casting Scott, also known as “the hot priest” from “Fleabag,” opposite Paul Mescal, “the hot guy ...

The top prize in Spain’s ‘El Gordo’ Christmas lottery goes to tickets with the number 88008

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:02 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Lucky holders of 20-euro tickets with the number 88008 will be celebrating Friday. They have each won 400,000 euros ($440,000), or some 325,000 euros after tax, in the top prize of Spain’s huge Christmas lottery.People across the country tuned into the television, radio and internet from early morning as children from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school begin singing out the prize-winning numbers in the lottery known as “EL Gordo” (the fat one).The immensely popular lottery will distribute a total of 2.6 billion euros in prizes this year, much of it in small winnings. Street and bar celebrations normally break out, with winners uncorking bottles of sparkling wine and singing and dancing. The event is televised nationally from Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house.Purchasing and sharing tickets, known in Spanish as “décimos” (tenths) in the run-up to Christmas is a major tradition among families, friends, co-workers and in bars and sports and social clubs.The winning numbers...