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Hikers are losing their shoes in Colorado’s high country, requiring rescues

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Shoeless hikers have prompted three different rescues off of Quandry Peak in less than a week.Coloradans know that springtime in the Rockies means a little bit of everything: cold, sunshine, snow and warm temperatures. After a busy winter season,  Summit County Rescue Group has started responding to several calls they’ve never heard before.“I don’t think I have ever had to say to the public before that people are losing their shoes on Quandary Peak,” said Anna DeBattiste. “On Tuesday, we responded to a call for someone who had lost a shoe on Quandary, then found it, but was postholing up to her chest and didn’t have snow shoes. So we needed to rescue her. Then on Wednesday, we had a hiker who lost his shoe and never found it. So we needed to rescue him. Then on Thursday, we had a group of three–one of them lost a shoe and never found it, and we had to rescue them.”The spring temperature whiplash lately is partially to blame. SCRG sugge...

Authorities chase fleeing driver wanted for assaulting deputy

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Authorities are chasing a fleeing driver in the San Fernando Valley Monday morning. The driver is apparently wanted on suspicion of assaulting a Lancaster deputy, the California Highway Patrol said without elaborating. It is unclear where the chase began, but the driver was heading south on the 405 Freeway around 10:50 a.m. The driver got off the highway and was boxed in on the off-ramp, but quickly got back on the Freeway in Van Nuys. The driver had reached the Sepulveda Pass just before 11 a.m., aerial video from Sky5 showed. Check back for updates on this developing story.

San Jose: Former group home operator sentenced to one year in prison for foster care embezzlement scheme

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

SAN JOSE — The former owner of a company operating South Bay foster homes was sentenced to one year in prison Wednesday for embezzling as much as $2.5 million in donated funds intended for underprivileged children and failing to pay taxes, according to federal authorities.Redwood City resident Annie Corbett owned and operated Corbett Group Homes, Inc., which ran three foster-care homes in the San Jose area between 2011 and 2018, when the company ceased operations. Corbett was charged with wire fraud in October 2020 and plead guilty in September 2022.In her plea agreement, Corbett admitted to knowingly failing to pay employment taxes, withholding W2’s from the Internal Revenue Service and deceiving bookkeepers into thinking the taxes had been paid. According to the the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Corbett failed to pay more than $752,000 in employment taxes between 2014 and 2017.The Attorney’s Office said Corbett diverted funds intended ...

Jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal dies at 92; his laid-back style inspired generations of musicians

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Ahmad Jamal, whose measured, spare piano style was an inspiration to generations of jazz musicians, died Sunday at his home in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts. He was 92.The cause was prostate cancer, his daughter, Sumayah, said.In a career that would bring him a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, a lifetime achievement Grammy, and induction into France’s Order of Arts and Letters, Jamal made his mark with a stately approach that honored what he called the spaces in the music.That approach stood in marked contrast to the challengingly complex music known as bebop, which was sweeping the jazz world when Jamal began his career as a teenager in the mid-1940s. Bebop pianists, following the lead of Bud Powell, became known for their virtuosic flurries of notes. Jamal chose a different path, which proved equally influential.Critic Stanley Crouch wrote that bebop’s founding father, Charlie Parker, was the only musician “more important to the development of fresh form in jazz th...

Kate resents Meghan because she couldn’t see queen the day she died, book says

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle each have their reasons for not being on friendly terms with the other, but a new book says that Kate’s “resentment” of Meghan grew because she believes Prince Harry’s wife kept her from joining other senior royals in traveling to Balmoral, with the hope of seeing Queen Elizabeth II before she died in September 2022.As reported by the Daily Mail, author Robert Jobson writes in his new book, “Our King” that the Princess of Wales was asked to stay behind in Windsor on Sept. 8, 2022, so that Charles III would have a reason to ask Harry to keep Meghan away from Balmoral and from the queen’s deathbed. The implication from Jobson’s book is that Charles believed that other senior royals wouldn’t be comfortable with having Meghan around at that emotional time.Kate, the Princess of Wales, Prince William, Prince of Wales, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walk to meet members of the public at Winds...

How automatically registering people to vote at the DMV impacted voting in California

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

When Randall Avila paid a visit to his local Department of Motor Vehicles a couple of years ago to renew his driver’s license, he was presented with a question at the end of his transaction: “Are you a U.S. citizen?”Avila, the executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County, knew the question was for California’s Motor Voter program. Officially launched in 2018, the program automatically registers eligible Californians completing a driver’s license, state identification or change of address transaction through the DMV to vote, unless they choose to opt-out.“It’s a great program for voter registration,” Avila said. “But I think we have to see what it becomes in terms of actively getting people to cast a ballot.”The program has become the top method for Californians to register to vote for the first time or update an existing registration, according to a new analysis of voter registration and voting behavior in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 general elections from USC’s Center fo...

Fannie Mae’s secret ‘blacklist’ wreaks havoc for condo buyers and sellers

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Jeff and Melaina Brill will long remember February as the month they went through a complicated pregnancy and a hellish home sale at the same time.In the end, their new baby girl and their escrow both turned out fine.Their daughter, Aurora, was delivered by C-section on March 2. Three and a half hours later, they got a text saying the two-bedroom condo the family of five had outgrown had been sold as well.“(The sale) seemed like a shoo-in, and we were on the edge of celebrating when we started getting messages from the Realtor that there’s some kind of problem with the building,” Jeff Brill said. “My wife was already concerned about the pregnancy situation. Now we’re adding to the stress of ‘do we sell this place or not?’ ”Unbeknownst to the Brills, their real estate agent or their homeowners’ association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae had put their building, the Harbor Lofts condominiums in downtown Anaheim, on a secret list of condos ineligible for Fannie-backed mortgages.Related link...

Santa Clara Councilmember Anthony Becker defers plea in 49ers leak

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

Appearing in court on a felony perjury charge Monday, Santa Clara Councilmember Anthony Becker deferred his plea on an indictment accusing him of leaking a confidential grand jury report to the San Francisco 49ers last year and lying about it.Becker was indicted by a Santa Clara County criminal grand jury last week on the perjury charge and a misdemeanor charge for leaking the document to former 49ers spokesperson Rahul Chandhok and to reporters or editors at the Silicon Valley Voice.Becker, who was represented by a public defender this morning in Santa Clara County Superior Court, deferred his plea to seek outside counsel. He faces four years in county jail if convicted on the perjury charge.The councilmember’s $25,000 bench warrant was set aside by a judge and he will remain out of custody. His next court date is set for May 3.Becker waved his hand at reporters as he left the courthouse, declining comment.Last year’s Santa Clara County civil grand jury report, “Unsport...

E-40 won’t attend Game 2 of Warriors-Kings after controversial ejection: report

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

SACRAMENTO — Bay Area hip-hop legend E-40 reportedly won’t attend Game 2 of the Warriors’ playoff series with the Kings on Monday after his controversial ejection from Game 1.E-40, whose real name is Earl Tywone Stevens Sr., was kicked out after an incident he alleged was racially charged in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s loss.Several videos circulated on social media over the weekend showing E-40 talking to Golden 1 Center security before leaving his baseline seats. It was unclear from the footage what led up to the conversation and subsequent ejection. A league source with knowledge of the incident said arena security received several complaints that E-40 stood excessively, blocking the view of fans behind him, and he refused to comply with a warning.But the 55-year-old artist painted a much different story Sunday morning.E-40 released a statement, saying he had been “subjected to disrespectful heckling” during the game. The rapper “turned around and addressed one of the h...

In ‘The Covenant,’ Jake Gyllenhaal plays the ‘kind of American I want to be’

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:59:46 GMT

“Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” stays with you long after the last frame.It’s supposed to.Its star, Jake Gyllenhaal, says it’s just that kind of movie. The Oscar nominee is convinced that the R-rated “Covenant,” opening April 21 in area theaters, succeeds as both edge-of-the-seat entertainment and a potent parable about the core values — integrity, valor and a dogged desire to do the right thing — that are the essence of the American ideal.“It’s about being the kind of American I want to be,” said Gyllenhaal during a recent Zoom interview, in which he was joined by co-star Dar Salim. “That we have a goodness ingrained in us, and that we know what it takes to be a hero, sometimes begrudgingly.”In “Covenant”, the versatile Gyllenhaal — who’s starred in films ranging from 2005’s groundbreaking “Brokeback Mountain” to such box-office juggernauts as 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home” — once again fully flings himself into a meaty part.This time, he ...