The weather pattern has been consistently active for Northern California and the entire West Coast for the last several weeks. So far, downtown Sacramento has measured over 6 inches of rain in the month of December, nearly double what’s normal for the month. In the Sierra, snowpack water content is more than 150% of normal for the date and the Central Sierra Snow Lab run by UC Berkeley set a December snowfall record with 193.7 inches of snow as of the 27th.
Here in Northern California, we’ve certainly felt the short-term impacts of all of the rain and snow from swampy yards and slow travel in the Valley to road closures lasting several days in the Sierra. Officials from the Department of Reclamation also released water from Folsom Lake late Monday night as water levels approached capacity for late December.
Given all of that, has there been a substantial change in California’s drought situation? The answer is “we’re getting there, but not there yet.”
While seeing Folsom Lake reach its capacity early in the season is encouraging, it’s important to remember the lake is relatively small and fills up quickly. Just a few months ago the lake level was at a record low.
A better bellwether for drought in this region is to look at Shasta and Oroville dams. As of Tuesday morning, the water level at Shasta was just 49% of normal for the date. Oroville, which has a cone-shaped bottom and can appear to fill quickly, is at 70%. Those numbers are certainly better than where they were at the end of summer, but in order to truly be clear of a drought, we need to see water levels rise closer to normal for the date.
Eventually, reservoirs will get some help from all of the water locked up in the Sierra snowpack. As of Tuesday morning, the North Sierra snowpack is at 145% of normal for the date. Those numbers are 166% and 167% of normal for the Central and South Sierra respectively. In a normal season, the snowpack will continue to grow through March. Right now the snowpack throughout the Sierra is about half of what we would hope to end up with by the end of the season with three months to go.
So in conclusion, we’ve seen a reduction in the severity of the drought in California but the weather pattern needs to stay consistently active throughout the winter to really get us over the hump and past this latest drought.
Even if children are at low risk for becoming seriously ill, medical experts caution that the coronavirus can on rare occasions lead to grave outcomes: 790 Americans under age 18 have died since the pandemic began.
And despite guarded optimism that the Omicron variant will be even less dangerous to children than its predecessors, experts acknowledge that it is still too early to know for sure.
“There are just so many caveats,” said Dr. Rick Malley, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, which has not yet seen an appreciable rise in admissions for Covid-19.
He said he was awaiting more telling data on the length of hospitalizations and on whether young patients are needing oxygen or intubation. “It’s premature to predict what’s going to happen with Omicron, because this virus has repeatedly surprised us,” Dr. Malley said.
But one thing is beyond dispute: Omicron’s uncanny ability to spread among human hosts, even those who have been fully vaccinated. At Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, nearly a quarter of all children admitted in recent days have been testing positive, up from 5 percent during the height of the Delta surge last summer. Omicron accounts for more than 90 percent of those infections, according to Dr. James Versalovic, the hospital’s chief pathologist.
But so far, he said, the crush of infections has not led to a big jump in the number of children who need to be hospitalized for Covid — about 50 in recent days, down from a peak of 65 a few months ago.
Although weary from having weathered three previous waves, Dr. Versalovic was somewhat hopeful that advancements in the treatment of seriously ill patients and an uptick in vaccinations would protect most children from dire outcomes.
“Sure I’m worried, but I’m also optimistic that we’re going to be able to blunt the impact of Omicron,” he said.
DENVER — Alfredo Cardenas went to his daughter’s tattoo shop Tuesday morning and lit a candle to remember her life. Alicia Cardenas, 44, was among the five people killed Monday night after a person opened fire in several locations in the Denver area.
“It’s a shock,” Cardenas told USA TODAY outside the Sol Tribe tattoo shop on Broadway.
Cardenas; Danny Schofield, 38; and Sarah Steck, 28, were among the five people killed by the shooter. Police did not release the identities of the other two fatal victims. The shooter, Lyndon James McLeod, 47, was also killed in a gunfight with police. Two others, including a police officer whose identity has not yet been released, were injured in the shootings, Denver and Lakewood police said at a joint press conference Tuesday.
The “very violent series of events” across multiple locations began in Denver on Monday evening and ended in nearby Lakewood, Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen at a press conference late Monday.
The victims at and near the tattoo shops were previously known to the shooter, police said Tuesday. McLeod also had previous interactions with the Hyatt hotel where he shot and killed Steck, who was a clerk there.
Surveillance video provided by a nearby business owner to USA TODAY and taken Monday night shows a dark-colored van pulling up outside Lucky 13 in Lakewood, one of five known shooting locations. A man who appeared to be carrying a firearm steps out of the van, leaving the door open and the engine apparently running and walks calmly into the tattoo shop. He walks out 10 seconds later, climbs into the van and drives away.
By Tuesday morning, there were few signs of the previous evening’s violence: a bullet hole in the window casing of an Xfinity store and boarded up windows at a nearby restaurant in Lakewood. A few businesses posted signs saying they were temporarily closed, and a stream of people crunched on an occasional piece of broken glass as they entered a yoga studio for a morning class.
At the tattoo shop in Denver, people began gathering Tuesday to mourn and leave flowers at a memorial. Alfredo Cardenas said his 12-year-old granddaughter was with her father and doesn’t yet understand what happened.
“She’s going need a lot of love and compassion,” he said.
At least two of the other shootings took place at or near tattoo shops, according to the addresses provided by police, including Lucky 13 in Lakewood. Jake Bray, 37, who works at Think Tank Tattoo, near Sol Tribe, said the community worries the shooter deliberately targeted tattoo shops.
“It’s scary to think,” said Bray, whose shop was closed Monday. “Everyone kind of knows everyone. It’s tragic. It’s hard. We consider our community a family.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that he was “deeply disturbed” by the violence.
“Tragedies like this, especially in the midst of the holidays, are deeply unsettling,” Polis said. “My administration is working with local law enforcement to understand what happened last evening and provide the needed support throughout the investigation.”
Here’s what we know:
How many people were hurt in the shooting spree?
Six people died, including the shooter, authorities said. Two people were injured, including a police officer.
Alicia Cardenas, one of the victims, was a tattooer, mural artist and cultural anthropologist, according to the Sol Tribe website. The website describes the shop owner as a “true Denver Native” and a “proud Indigenous artist.”
Dozens of people posted online tributes for Cardenas, describing her as a force of nature and a beloved pioneer in the world of tattooing. “She accepted everybody, especially those on the fringes,” her dad told USA TODAY.
Denver resident Patrick Anderson, 50, described Cardenas as a wise friend who hosted a Dia de Los Muertos ceremony every year. “She is one of the wisest and most caring individuals I have ever met,” Anderson told USA TODAY.
Schofield, another victim, was a tattoo artist and Colorado native, according to the Lucky 13 Tattoo and Piercing website. He had been tattooing for about 15 years, according to the site. He was also known as Dano Blair.
On Tuesday afternoon, Annie Bagford and her husband sipped Monster energy drinks outside the Lucky 13 tattoo parlor In Lakewood, tears rolling down their cheeks. Bagford said Schofield loved Monster, so they came to his shop to share one last drink, as a candle flickered in the afternoon sun.
Schofield leaves behind three young children, said Bagford, showing off her tattoos he’d crafted over the years. Bagford met Schofield through his sister in high school.
“I’m just so angry,” Bagford said.
“Danny never did wrong to anybody. He didn’t deserve to be shot. It makes no sense. It’s just just so unfair to his kids, to his family.”
Steck, who worked at the Hyatt, died from her injuries Tuesday in the hospital, police said.
“A terrible, heartbreaking and senseless act of gun violence stole the lives of several members of our community last night and injured others,” Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said in a statement. “I’m praying for those lives lost, the victims and their families.”
What happened in Denver?
The “killing spree” began just after 5 p.m. in Denver, Pazen said. At a first location, the attacker fatally shot two women and injured a man, he said. At a second shooting location, the assailant fatally shot a man.
There was gunfire at a third location, but no one was injured, Pazen said.
Pazen said officers identified a car associated with the shooter and exchanged gunfire with them at a fourth location. Pazen said the shooter disabled the police vehicle and fled to the nearby suburb of Lakewood.
What happened in Lakewood?
Lakewood police received a call of shots fired at a business just before 6 p.m., and the victim was pronounced dead, said police spokesman John Romero.
Lakewood agents identified the shooter’s car, but McLeod started shooting at the agents and left on foot, Romero said.
The attacker then threatened another business with a firearm before entering a Hyatt hotel and shooting the clerk, Steck, who was taken to a hospital, he said. She died Tuesday.
The attacker left, shooting a Lakewood police agent in the process. The Lakewood agent, awoman who was not identified, continued to fire at the suspect after being shot. She shot and killed McLeod, Romero said.
Who was the shooter?
Authorities have not announced McLeod’s motive, but said he had some connection to all of his victims.
Pazen also said McLeod was previously on police’s radar, with two investigations into incidents from mid-2020 and early 2021. Pazen said neither investigation resulted in criminal charges, and would not give further details about those incidents.
“This is not an unknown party to us,” Pazen said.
A tattoo industry connection to McLeod’s shooting rampage seems likely, with the owner of a tattoo studio operating from the site of a one-time McLeod business saying he purchased the place from Alicia Cardenas.
World Tattoo Studio owner Ian Lütz said he had never heard of McLeod before he was identified by police as the shooter. According to Colorado state business records, McLeod was the owner of Flat Black Ink, a Denver business that opened in 2005, was declared delinquent in 2017 and was listed as having a name change in 2018.
World Tattoo now operates at the same Denver address that was listed for Flat Black Ink.
“Yeah, I have no prior knowledge of really the history of the shop before my owning it. I know that Alicia owned it and it was sort of a secondary Sol Tribe,” Lütz told USA TODAY. “That’s about all I know about the history of it. I’ve had the shop for about four-and-a-half years now.”
How many mass shootings have there been in Colorado this year?
This was the 13th mass shooting in Colorado this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence nationally using a combination of police statistics and media reports.
The archive defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot, not including the shooter, at the same general time and location. In the U.S., there have been nearly 700 mass shootings in 2021, according to the archive.
Contributing: Bill Keveney and Celina Tebor, USA TODAY.
Citing the “astronomical” spread of the omicron variant and the potential risk the coronavirus poses to derail proceedings, the judge overseeing the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell wants the jury to deliberate later into the evening and without a holiday interruption.
As the jury began its fourth full day of deliberations Tuesday, Judge Alison Nathan expressed concern about the “high and escalating risk that jurors or trial participants may need to quarantine” if they contract the virus, “putting at risk our ability to complete this trial.”
On Monday, Nathan asked jurors to deliberate until 6 p.m. from that day forward. She offered to take back the request if any jurors found the extra hour to be a hardship, but said on Tuesday that none have so far.
“We are seeing an astronomical spike in the number of COVID-positive cases in New York City,” Nathan said. “We are very simply at a different place regarding the pandemic than we were only one week ago.”
In addition to the extra daily hour, the judge said she would ask jurors to deliberate without a break over the New Year’s holiday on Thursday and Friday.
“In light of the variant, my concern about the interruption of the trial, given the increasing daily risk of exposure to either a juror or trial participant requiring quarantine — it is time to think about having the jury make plans to deliberate until a verdict is reached,” Nathan said.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Maxwell’s attorneys asked the judge to clarify her response to the jury’s question late Monday regarding Maxwell’s alleged involvement in the transportation of one of her accusers, known as “Jane,” for which Maxwell is facing a count of Transportation of an Individual Under the Age of 17 with Intent to Engage in Illegal Sexual Activity.
“Under count four, if the defendant aided in the transportation of Jane’s return flight, but not the flight to New Mexico, where/if the intent was for Jane to engage in sexual activity, can she be found guilty under the second element?” the jury asked.
The charge is a violation of New York state law, and the defense — concerned that the jury could convict Maxwell based on something that happened in New Mexico — sent a letter to the judge asking for “additional instructions to correct apparent errors in the jury’s understanding” of the charge. Judge Nathan had referred the jury to her instructions, but the defense argued that was insufficient.
“They are looking at the instructions that they have been given thus far … and they are unclear,” defense attorney Christian Everdell said. “They are confused by those instructions.”
Prosecutors opposed the defense’s request for additional clarification.
“It was a correct legal instruction when the court referred the jury to it yesterday afternoon,” prosecutor Alison Moe said. “No relief is appropriate here.”
The judge agreed with the government and declined to tell the jury anything more.
“The proposal made by the defense is wrong,” Nathan said. “I continue to not know how to parse the jury’s question.”
Maxwell is the longtime associate of serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced millionaire who died by suicide in jail in 2019. She is facing charges related to the alleged abuse and trafficking of underage girls between 1994 and 2004, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In media news today, ‘The View’ gets mocked over a report the show is struggling to find a new Republican host, the Miami Beach mayor tells CNN that Gov. DeSantis has decided to ‘champion’ not taking the vaccine, and an MSNBC producer gets knocked for calling Chinese human rights abuses ‘alleged.’
During an interview with CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish K. Jha was asked whether the administration was missing a “critical window” for COVID testing heading into the new year.
“You saw President Biden yesterday acknowledging, pretty bluntly, that they need to do better when it comes to testing because we are seeing this nationwide shortage of those rapid at-home tests. It’s very difficult to just walk into a store and get one. And what we’re hearing from officials like Dr. Fauci is that they believe they’re gonna have this solved by mid-January, in a few weeks. But, how critical is the window that we’re missing right now for testing?” asked Collins.
“Oh I think it’s incredibly critical, and I cannot believe this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration dropped the ball on this,” Jha responded.
Jha said that the Biden administration appeared to be primarily focused on vaccinations throughout the year while “not paying a lot of attention” to the importance of testing. He added that while a focus on vaccines is “terrific,” the decision to largely ignore the infrastructure for testing has been “really costly” this holiday season.
A few CNN correspondents have recently criticized the president for his handling of the pandemic.
CNN reporter Phil Mattingly questioned last week whether the administration’s inability to adequately prepare for the latest variant with testing should be considered a “failure.”
“No, it’s not,” Biden responded. “Because COVID is spreading so rapidly if you notice. It just happened almost overnight just in the last month. And so, it’s not a failure, but an alarm bell went off. I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did.”
Biden again admitted to a lack of foresight on rapid tests in a call with several U.S. governors on Monday, saying, “It is not enough. It’s clearly not enough. If I had – we – had known, we would have gone harder, quicker, if we could have.”
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.
There have been 1,955,403 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in the state since the pandemic began, which includes an addition of 15,403 new cases reported Tuesday, along with a total of 28,780 deaths (including 60 deaths reported Tuesday).
The total number of hospitalizations because of the virus since the pandemic began is now 95,117 people. There were 444 hospitalizations reported in the last 24 hours.
The number of people vaccinated in the state so far is 6,960,596 or about 59.55% of the population. That number includes people who have gotten one or two shots so far. In the last 24 hours, 7,849 people received a shot in the state.
As more and more people are relying on at-home tests to find out if they have COVID, local health departments are providing ways to report a positive case on their websites. Find out more here.
White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that people should not expect the government to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine to fly domestically, hours after saying that such a requirement should be considered.
“Right now, I don’t think people should expect that we’re going to have a requirement in domestic flights for people to be vaccinated,” Fauci said on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” later adding: “I doubt if we’re going to see something like that in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
“If you’re making a requirement for vaccination for people to get on planes who are coming into the country, that’s understandable. You don’t want to bring more cases into the country,” he told MSNBC Monday morning. “If you’re talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane domestically, that is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider.”
In a sitdown with ABC News’ “This Week” that aired Sunday, Fauci said that a vaccination requirement for domestic travel “is just another level of getting people to have a mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated … anything that could get people more vaccinated would be welcome.”
Anthony Fauci also denied that there was any “conflict” within the White House COVID-19 response team over the issue of a travel vaccine mandate.Chen Mengtong/China News Service via Getty Images
When asked about his earlier statements by host Jim Acosta, Fauci responded: “What I said, Jim, was that everything that comes up as a possibility, we put it on the table and we consider it. That does not mean that it is going to be likely to happen … When I was asked that question, I gave an honest answer. It’s on the table, we consider it, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“Right now, I don’t see this being announced or happening in the reasonable future unless things change dramatically,” Fauci said later in the interview, before adding: “Right now, that’s not going to be done. But we never take anything off the table. We always keep things open for consideration.”
Fauci also denied that there was any “conflict” within the White House COVID-19 reponse team over the issue, telling Acosta: “It’s not a question of being in favor of it or not. I’m in favor of what we can do to keep the country safe. If the situation arises where that’s something that we think should be important to do, we’ll do it.”
The US is experiencing a spike in coronavirus cases propelled by the highly contagious Omicron variant, with more than half a million new infections reported Monday.
The surge in cases has led to thousands of flight cancellations and delays as airlines struggle to find replacements for staff who called out sick, leaving travelers stranded at airports across the country.
More than half a million new coronavirus cases were reported Monday, and the spike is disrupting the travel industry.AP Photo/Marta Lavandier
Valentina had been in the United States for about six months before her death, her parents said. The teen, who loved the color pink and had ordered a skateboard from Amazon to surprise her dad, had dreamed of becoming an engineer and building robots. Before she went shopping one last time, she told her father how excited she was to have passed her math and physics exams. She longed to become an American citizen and to one day enjoy a Los Angeles Lakers game with her father, to see basketball great LeBron James in person.
In media news today, ‘The View’ gets mocked over a report the show is struggling to find a new Republican host, the Miami Beach mayor tells CNN that Gov. DeSantis has decided to ‘champion’ not taking the vaccine, and an MSNBC producer gets knocked for calling Chinese human rights abuses ‘alleged.’
During an interview with CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish K. Jha was asked whether the administration was missing a “critical window” for COVID testing heading into the new year.
“You saw President Biden yesterday acknowledging, pretty bluntly, that they need to do better when it comes to testing because we are seeing this nationwide shortage of those rapid at-home tests. It’s very difficult to just walk into a store and get one. And what we’re hearing from officials like Dr. Fauci is that they believe they’re gonna have this solved by mid-January, in a few weeks. But, how critical is the window that we’re missing right now for testing?” asked Collins.
“Oh I think it’s incredibly critical, and I cannot believe this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration dropped the ball on this,” Jha responded.
Jha said that the Biden administration appeared to be primarily focused on vaccinations throughout the year while “not paying a lot of attention” to the importance of testing. He added that while a focus on vaccines is “terrific,” the decision to largely ignore the infrastructure for testing has been “really costly” this holiday season.
A few CNN correspondents have recently criticized the president for his handling of the pandemic.
CNN reporter Phil Mattingly questioned last week whether the administration’s inability to adequately prepare for the latest variant with testing should be considered a “failure.”
“No, it’s not,” Biden responded. “Because COVID is spreading so rapidly if you notice. It just happened almost overnight just in the last month. And so, it’s not a failure, but an alarm bell went off. I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was going to be as rapidly spreading as it did.”
Biden again admitted to a lack of foresight on rapid tests in a call with several U.S. governors on Monday, saying, “It is not enough. It’s clearly not enough. If I had – we – had known, we would have gone harder, quicker, if we could have.”
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.
New infections have risen to more than 200,000 per day — and the situation could get much worse.
Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health, has suggested daily infections could ultimately reach one million. In the United Kingdom, where COVID trends have often presaged those seen in the U.S., daily infections are now over 120,000 in a nation roughly one-fifth as populous.
Biden is desperate to avoid any public perception that he is failing to meet the challenge.
Speaking at a virtual meeting with governors Monday, the president said, “The bottom line is, we want to assure the American people we are prepared. We know what it takes.”
Right now, that involves the deployment of military health personnel to augment civilian staff, the movement of medical equipment into place to prepare for an omicron-led surge, and a promise to provide abundant at-home testing kits beginning next month.
But those moves come as public confidence in Biden’s capacity to handle the pandemic has slipped to some of the lowest levels of his presidency. An Economist/YouGov poll shortly before Christmas indicated that 47 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s performance on the pandemic compared to 42 percent who approve.
Early in his presidency, with mass vaccinations coming on-stream and near-euphoria that the end of COVID seemed to be in sight, Biden often scored 60 percent approval or higher on the pandemic.
There are also some question marks hanging over the specifics of the response to omicron.
The administration acknowledged just before Christmas that no contract had yet been signed for the 500 million tests Biden has promised will start to become available in January. The sight of long lines for tests on the streets of major cities undermines public confidence too.
Then there is the question of whether the administration should have been more proactive in readying for the arrival of new variants.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, Vice President Harris said: “We didn’t see delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see delta coming. We didn’t see omicron coming.”
In his Monday remarks, even as Biden reminded voters of the huge increase in the availability of home tests since he took office, he added: “It’s not enough, it’s clearly not enough. If we’d known, we would’ve gone harder, quicker.”
Some public health experts argue that it was obvious new variants would emerge, even if the particular features of each one could not be predicted.
A scenario in which infections keep soaring, tests are in short supply and disruptions to daily life multiply could be disastrous for the president. The population is already wearied by almost two years of the pandemic — a fractiousness that almost certainly plays into the president’s low approval ratings.
Still, there are rosier scenarios for Biden.
Cases in South Africa, where the omicron variant was first identified, have begun to fall sharply after a terrifying rise. A number of studies have shown that the severity of omicron, especially among the vaccinated, is significantly less than the original strain of COVID or the delta variant.
The current increase in cases in the United States has not been matched by a growing pace of hospitalizations. According to data from The New York Times, daily new cases have risen by 83 percent compared to two weeks ago, but hospitalizations by only eight percent and deaths by only three percent.
Those figures show just over 70,000 people hospitalized because of COVID in the United States as of December 26. During the worst days of the delta surge in late summer, the equivalent figure was north of 100,000.
In an absolute best-case scenario, omicron could burn itself out without overburdening the health care system, yet also bring the nation closer to herd immunity.
Such a scenario would boost the economy and the public mood — and Biden’s political fortunes.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Fauci added that the sheer number of infections could “override a real diminution in severity.”
Meanwhile, there are practical problems that are sure to add to voters’ displeasure. Flights over Christmas weekend were hugely disrupted as airlines struggled with high numbers of cabin crew and other staff calling out sick. Anecdotal reports suggest restaurants and other services are suffering similar staff shortages.
There are new questions about the period of time people infected with COVID-19 should have to quarantine, as well.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late Monday reduced the recommended quarantine time for people who test positive for COVID to five days from 10, so long as they are by then asymptomatic and continue to wear a mask for another five days.
Hutchinson said the White House COVID team had given “great support to the governors.” The Arkansas Republican also welcomed recent remarks from Biden “designed to depoliticize our COVID response,” adding, “I think that was helpful.”
But those warm words are far from typical in a polarized nation.
If omicron hits with even harder force, and the healthcare system starts creaking under the strain, the political fallout for Biden is sure to be severe.
State officials also vowed to hold police officers accountable for misconduct. In July, a new state law took effect that requires the state’s Department of Justice to investigate police shootings that result in the death of unarmed people and decide whether to prosecute the officers involved. The department is investigating last week’s shooting in accordance with that law, officials announced.
But many efforts at reforming law enforcement practices have fizzled as leaders in Los Angeles and across California have scrambled to address fears of rising violent crime and anxiety provoked by a wave of high-profile “flash mob” robberies at high-end stores.
This year, Mr. Garcetti and the City Council backed a modest increase in funding for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month unveiled a $350 million proposal to crack down on crime, with most of the money going to local law enforcement agencies. The same day, San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, declared a state of emergency aimed at cleaning up the “nasty streets” of the Tenderloin district, breaking with the liberal conventions that have shaped the city’s governance for decades.
Progressive activists in Los Angeles have described those declarations as a disheartening reversal.
“Nothing has changed,” said Albert Corado, whose sister was shot and killed by police officers during a standoff at a Trader Joe’s in 2018, an incident with grim parallels to the latest shooting in North Hollywood. “It’s all, ‘Spin the narrative and make it so the police don’t have to be held accountable.’”
Mr. Corado said he felt compelled to return home to Los Angeles from Minneapolis where he had been living when his sister, Melyda Corado, an assistant manager at the Trader Joe’s, was killed by a stray bullet as police exchanged gunfire with a man they had been pursuing.
Mr. Corado is now running for the Los Angeles City Council in hopes of working to dismantle the city’s police department, an agency that he said is too fundamentally flawed to be repaired.
LAKEWOOD, Colo. (CBS4) – Lakewood police say one of their officers was involved in a shooting in the Belmar shopping area on Monday night. Police officials say this crime spree started with deadly shootings in Denver.
“We have every reason to believe that several instances in Denver are connected, that happened before our incidents here in Lakewood,” said John Romero, spokesman for Lakewood Police.
In total, five people were killed, including the suspect.
LPD working an officer involved shooting in Belmar area. More info to come, including media staging area.
Lakewood police say they first received a call about shots fired at Colfax Ave. and Kipling St. at around 6 p.m. One person died at that scene. Police had a section of a parking lot in front of a liquor store, tattoo parlor and Thai restaurant taped off.
(credit: CBS)
Police officials say they gathered information about the suspect vehicle.
Officers found that suspect vehicle in the Belmar area, and when they tried to approach the suspect, they shot at officers who shot back at the suspect. The suspect was able to get away on foot.
(credit: CBS)
There was also heavy police presence at Alaska Drive and Vance Street. Police say the suspect committed “felony menacing” at one store while armed.
(credit: CBS)
Then the suspect went inside the Hyatt House hotel on Alaska Drive. The suspect allegedly shot one person inside the hotel, and that victim was taken to the hospital. Police don’t have information about that victim.
(credit: CBS)
Officers then confronted the suspect again outside of the hotel, and the suspect reportedly shot at them, hitting one officer. The officer is in surgery in unknown condition.
The suspect died at that scene. Lakewood police officials say they do not know if they died by officers’ gunfire.
One woman told CBS4’s Jeff Todd she was inside an Xfinity store when they heard shots.
“We were just in there, my husband and I. You could hear the popping outside. It was like one shot and then maybe five or six more and a couple more after that. Xfinity did an awesome job. They swooped us right inside. Got us in the back room and got the gates down. Fortunately we didn’t see too much,” she said.
She also told CBS4 two of the employees at the store were hit with shrapnel.
(credit: CBS)
Police placed several evidence markers at that intersection in front of the hotel.
Troopers assisting Lakewood in the Belmar area. Numerous businesses have customers and employees still inside. SWAT teams are clearing a very large area inch by inch. Stay inside and stay safe until area cleared by law enforcement. S1
Fox News correspondent David Spunt has the latest on the Oregon man who claims he used phrase in jest during Christmas Eve call on ‘Special Report’.
Fury over the Oregon father who concluded his family’s call with President Biden by saying “Let’s go, Brandon” is being mocked online, with critics pointing out there was little outrage when profane insults were aimed at former President Trump.
“OMG a guy was disrespectful to the president of the United States in one of the most euphemistic ways possible after four years of the entire legacy media celebrating pussyhats, middle fingers, and f*** yous directed at the president of the United States, everybody freak out,” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said on Twitter Monday.
Shapiro was referring to a viral Christmas Eve moment that saw Jared Schmeck, a 35-year-old father of four from Oregon, conclude his call with Biden by saying “Let’s go, Brandon,” a phrase that has become a stand-in for the more vulgar “F*** Joe Biden” chants that at one point were spreading across the country.
The moment caused immediate backlash for Schmeck, who said he has received threats since video of his conversation went viral. The incident was also not well-received by much of the media, with NBC News referring to the exchange as a “right-wing slur” while ABC News called it a “vulgar insult.”
The Atlantic senior editor Ron Brownstein took things a step further during a Friday appearance on CNN, saying that the exchange was “about insurrection.”
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden speak with the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., via teleconference in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, Friday, Dec. 24, 2021. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
“Look, it’s ungracious. It’s juvenile. It’s reprehensible by the father, but I don’t think it’s fundamentally about incivility. It’s about insurrection,” Brownstein said. “I don’t know the individual, but the whole Let’s Go Brandon kind of motif is a reflection of the view of two-thirds of the Republican base, driven by Trump’s claims, false claims, and the Big Lie, that Biden is an illegitimate president.”
But critics such as Shapiro pointed out there was much less outrage in cases where vulgar insults were directed at Trump, including when Virginia woman Juli Briskman was photographed flipping the then-president a middle finger as his motorcade passed her riding a bicycle in 2017.
Briskman was soon fired from her job with a government contractor after the photo went viral, prompting many to come to her defense.
Briskman used her newfound notoriety and sympathetic media coverage to launch a bid for and win a race to represent her area on the Loudoun County, Virginia Board of Supervisors in 2019, prompting even more kind news coverage.
“Take that, Mr. President: Woman who gave the finger to Trump’s car wins election,” read an NBC News headline after Briskman’s election victory.
Former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Conservative Commentator Stephen L. Miller also alluded to the differences in reaction between Schmeck’s comment to Biden and Briskman’s middle finger, reposting an image of the viral photo as debate of the Schmeck incident raged on Twitter.
“Trump was very easy to make fun of, and people should have made fun of him. It’s a wonderful thing that we have a country where we can get away with it,” Miller said in a subsequent tweet.
As the controversy rages, Schmeck said that he considered his use of the line a “joke” but has now been “attacked” for the exchange.
“And now I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech,” Schmeck told The Oregonian newspaper Saturday.
“He seems like he’s a cordial guy,” Schmeck continued, referring to the president. “There’s no animosity or anything like that. It was merely just an innocent jest to also express my God-given right to express my frustrations in a joking manner. … I love him just like I love any brother or sister.”
Stuck motorists are seen along Brunswick Road as heavy snow continues to fall early Monday, in Grass Valley, Calif.
Elias Funez/AP
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Stuck motorists are seen along Brunswick Road as heavy snow continues to fall early Monday, in Grass Valley, Calif.
Elias Funez/AP
Winter storms sweeping parts of the Western U.S. and the Pacific Northwest have brought heavy snow and record low temperatures in some areas — and there’s more to come.
A winter storm warning continues into Wednesday for parts of the border area of Northern California and Nevada.
“We’ve had quite a series of storms that have impacted the area, especially impacted the Sierra, where we’ve had some very heavy snow amounts. That’s impacted travel to an incredible degree,” National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Kurth told The Associated Press.
Snow showers blew in from the Gulf of Alaska and blanketed parts of Washington and Oregon, where state officials have declared an emergency. The Seattle area got up to 6 inches of snow. Weather shelters were opened in both Seattle and Portland.
The NWS said Seattle’s low of 20 degrees on Sunday broke the previous low for the day set in 1948. Bellingham, Wash., hit a low of 9 — three degrees below the 1971 record for the day.
Utilities in western Washington and Oregon reported about 5,000 customers without power Monday. Pacific Power reported early Tuesday that more than 2,000 customers in Oregon still had no electricity.
Meanwhile, Utah on Monday experienced a “snow squall” — what local ABC4 chief meteorologist Alana Brophy describes as “an intense short-lived burst of heavy snowfall that leads to a quick reduction in visibilities and is often accompanied by gusty winds.”
In Nevada, freezing temperatures and blinding snow snarled traffic and forced the closure of Sierra Nevada highway passes. An avalanche blocked the state road connecting Tahoe City to ski resorts in Olympic Valley. The conditions prompted Gov. Steve Sisolak to order nonessential state workers to stay home.
The Weather Channel reported that up to 9 feet of snow had fallen around Lake Tahoe.
Local television KHSL in Chico, Calif., reports that low pressure along the coast of Oregon would bring “colder temperatures, rain and snow” on Wednesday with snow “down to the valley floor in Tehama and Shasta Counties.”
“Snow levels are down into the 0 to 500′ range in the Northern Mountains and the northern end of the valley, while snow levels are down to around 1500′ in the foothills and Sierra,” the station reports.
People infected with the heavily mutated omicron variant of Covid-19 may have increased immune protection against delta, a new study says.
As a consequence, omicron could displace delta, according to the small study published by South African scientists this week.
The findings could have significant implications for nations such as the United States where omicron infections are rapidly increasing but the delta variant, which has caused an increase in hospitalizations, is still widespread.
“These results are consistent with Omicron displacing the Delta variant, since it can elicit immunity which neutralizes Delta making re-infection with Delta less likely,” the team of scientists, led by Khadija Khan at the Africa Health Research Institute, wrote in their findings.
If omicron displaces delta and proves more mild than past variants, “the incidence of Covid-19 severe disease would be reduced and the infection may shift to become less disruptive to individuals and society,” according to the scientists’ findings.
Omicron was first identified by South Africa and Botswana in November.
The study has not yet been peer reviewed. Researchers have been publishing their findings before they are evaluated by other experts in the field due to the urgent nature of the pandemic.
The study followed 13 people, 11 of whom had been infected with the omicron variant. Seven of the participants were vaccinated, including three people who received two doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine and four who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The antibody response of people infected with omicron appeared to increase protection against the delta variant more than fourfold two weeks after the participants enrolled in the study. Participants also showed a 14-fold increase in the ability of antibodies to block omicron reinfection.
However, the scientists cautioned that it is unclear whether increased protection is due to omicron-induced antibodies, vaccination or immunity from a previous infection. Vaccinated individuals demonstrated stronger protection.
In the United States, omicron represented 58% of sequenced Covid cases while delta represented 41% last week, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Deputy Minister of Health Care and Public Health of the Community, Antonio Zapatero, and the Director General of Public Health, Elena Andradas, in an appearance to update information on the epidemiological and care situation by coronavirus in the region, on 28 December, 2021 in Madrid, Spain. During his speech, they detailed that the Community of Madrid has performed 93,000 coronavirus tests in a single day last week. In addition, 50,000 more tests have been added in hospitals during the last five days. (Marta Fernandez Jara/Europa Press/Getty Images)
The Spanish capital of Madrid will be the only big city in Spain, and one of the few in Europe, to ring in the New Year with a large celebration.
Organizers in Madrid have capped celebrations in the Puerta del Sol square, in the city centre, at 7,000 people, roughly 60% of the crowd expected in 2019, before the pandemic hit. People in attendance will be required to wear face coverings and observe social distancing rules, the organizers said.
Madrid is the only one of Spain’s largest cities to carry on with its New Year’s Eve celebrations. Barcelona and Valencia have canceled their fireworks displays in a bid to get people to to stay at home.
Six regional governments in northern Spain have agreed to coordinate early closing hours for restaurants, bars and nightclubs.
The six regions —Aragon, Basque Country, Navarra, Asturias, Cantabria and La Rioja — have a lot of movement between them and authorities in each wanted similar closing hours, the Aragon health department press department said.
The restrictions are similar to those implemented last week in Catalonia — a region that includes the city of Barcelona, known for its busy nightlife — where authorities announced rules to close non-essential businesses by 1 a.m. They also imposed a curfew between 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. in towns with more than 10,000 residents where Covid-19 cases are high.
The measures combined put restrictions on nearly 14 million people, about 29% of Spain’s population.
The Spanish Health Ministry’s latest data, issued late Monday, shows an increase in the rate of Covid-19 infections, from 911 cases per 100,000 last Thursday to 1,206 cases per 100,000.
There were 214,619 new Covid-19 cases since last Thursday, and officials have said the Omicron variant is rapidly gaining in Spain.
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