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Category: West Coast

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  • Barbara Lee, trailblazing former US Congress member, elected Oakland mayor

    Lee defeated a moderate backed by outside groups working to push the Bay Area’s progressive politics to the center

    Barbara Lee, a trailblazing former member of Congress, has been elected as the next mayor of Oakland, California, after fending off an insurgent challenge from the center at a critical moment for the Bay Area city.

    Lee defeated former the city council member Loren Taylor after nine rounds of ranked-choice voting gave her more than 52% of the vote to Taylor’s 47%, according to the Alameda county registrar of voters.

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  • Further delay as Menendez brothers seek freedom after decades in prison

    Brothers had hoped resentencing hearing would pave way for immediate release – but judge orders pause until May

    The Menendez brothers have spent years waiting for another day in court and a chance to prove that they should be freed after serving over three decades in prison for the 1989 slayings of their parents.

    This week it appeared their time was perhaps finally coming – a judge was set to review their request for a resentencing and determine whether they have been rehabilitated. Their attorney, Mark Geragos, planned to ask the Los Angeles county judge Michael Jesic to reduce Erik and Lyle Menendez’s charges to manslaughter, which would allow them to be released from prison immediately.

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  • California launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffs

    Governor says import tariffs are ‘wreaking chaos’ on the state’s families, businesses and economy

    California is asking a court to block Donald Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and threatening trade in a state with the world’s fifth-largest economy.

    The lawsuit, brought by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, challenges Trump’s invocation of emergency powers to unilaterally impose tariffs on imports, which have rattled stock markets and raised fears of recession.

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  • Bernie Sanders rally in LA draws thousands to protest Trump: ‘We can’t just let this happen’

    US Vermont senator’s tour with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes has been drawing record-breaking crowds since February

    The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders drew a record-breaking crowd at his rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, which included musical acts from Joan Baez and Neil Young, who encouraged the crowd to “take America back”.

    Sanders’s Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go from Here tour has been drawing massive crowds. Aided by the progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the team set the record in Tempe, Arizona, for biggest-ever political rally in that state three weeks ago. In Denver, Colorado, more than 34,000 people showed up – a career-high crowd for the 83-year-old Sanders. Saturday in Los Angeles saw another record: at least 36,000 people packed a downtown park.

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  • Inside the fight to save California’s dying sea lions from toxic algae: ‘We’re like 911 operators’

    The chance of the marine animal’s survival after domoic acid poisoning is 50-50, and this year, the outbreak has sickened hundreds

    It was just after 8am on Tuesday, a thick morning fog still clinging to the California coastline, and SeaWorld’s animal rescue team had already made their first save of the day: a hefty, sick-looking sea lion that had been waddling dangerously close to a four-lane highway in downtown San Diego.

    Now, in a private area of SeaWorld that few of the theme park’s thousands of daily visitors ever get to see, the rescue team was in full “triage” mode. Half a dozen staff members maneuvered the caged sea lion off the bed of a truck, and grabbed IV bags full of fluids and vitamins.

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  • Judge allows resentencing hearing for Menedez brothers to continue

    Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of parents’ murders at Beverly Hills home in 1989

    A judge has decided the resentencing hearings for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents, can continue despite a new Los Angeles district attorney opposing their release after 30 years behind bars.

    The brothers appeared in court over Zoom on Friday for the proceedings.

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  • Weezer bassist’s wife shot by LA police and booked for attempted murder

    Jillian Lauren treated for non-life-threatening wound after incident where officers searched for hit-and-run suspects

    Weezer bassist Scott Shriner’s wife was shot by police on Monday as officers searched for hit-and-run suspects in her Los Angeles neighborhood.

    Jillian Lauren, 51, was treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound at a local hospital after the incident, but later booked for attempted murder, according to Los Angeles police.

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  • LA-area soccer coach charged with murder of 13-year-old boy

    Lawyers accuse Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino of killing Oscar Omar Hernandez, and of assaulting two other teens

    A Los Angeles-area youth soccer coach was charged with the murder of a 13-year-old boy, as well as the assault of two other teenagers, during a court hearing Tuesday.

    Prosecutors accused Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, 43, of killing Oscar Omar Hernandez, whose body was found by the side of the road in Ventura county. Garcia Aquino was charged with murder with special circumstances during the commission or attempted commission of lewd acts with a child.

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  • Revealed: drug tests in California prisons yielded false positives, affecting thousands of people

    Records suggest Quest Diagnostics erroneously detected opiates. Lawyers say parole requests were jeopardized in the process

    Thousands of drug tests used by a major US diagnostic company in California prisons last year are suspected to have generated false positive results, an enormous error that has jeopardized the parole requests of some incarcerated people, according to civil rights lawyers and prison medical records.

    California prison officials have known about the issue for months, but have failed to clear people’s records or reverse the consequences people have faced from the tests.

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  • Chinese woman detained by US border patrol in Arizona dies by suicide

    Officials reportedly didn’t publicly acknowledge death until inquiries were made about woman, 52, who overstayed visa

    A woman being detained in Arizona by US border patrol for overstaying her visa has died by suicide, according to Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

    The woman, a 52-year-old Chinese national, had first been picked up in California after it had been determined that she had overstayed her B1/B2 visitor visa, Jayapal said in a statement. She was later sent to the Yuma station in Arizona where she stayed until her death on 29 March.

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