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Brush fire breaks out in Newhall Pass

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

Fire crews battled a brush fire that broke out in Newhall Pass near Sylmar on Tuesday afternoon.The Victor Fire was burning near Sierra Highway and Needham Ranch Parkway surrounded by the 5 and 14 Freeways, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.The blaze ignited around 3:30 p.m. at around five acres and by 4 p.m., had grown to 10 acres. By 5 p.m., the flames expanded to around 50 acres. The fire is surrounded by "light, flashy fuels" and had the potential to grow to 100 acres, officials said. By 8 p.m., the fire's containment was around 20 percent.The flames were burning near a commercial building in a brush-filled area with heavy plumes of smoke seen covering the hills.The Victor Fire broke out in Sylmar near the Newhall Pass area on July 25, 2023. (KTLA)The Victor Fire broke out in Sylmar near the Newhall Pass area on July 25, 2023. (KTLA)The Victor Fire broke out in Sylmar near the Newhall Pass area on July 25, 2023. (KTLA)The Victor Fire broke out in Sylmar near th...

Attorney for ex-UC Davis student charged in stabbing deaths says he’s not mentally fit for trial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

BY JANIE HAR | Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO — The former college student charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two people and attempted murder of a third in a Northern California university town has not showered in the nearly three months he’s been in jail, goes days without eating and believes he will return to classes, his attorney said Tuesday.The remarks by Dan Hutchinson, a Yolo County deputy public defender, came during a proceeding to determine whether Carlos Dominguez is mentally competent to participate in a criminal trial over the stabbings that rocked the University of California, Davis, campus and surrounding community.Hutchinson said he will present evidence showing that Dominguez started showing outward signs of schizophrenia toward the end of his freshman year. Prosecutors said Dominguez is “toying with the system” and should face a criminal trial.Jurors will ultimately decide whether he is fit for trial. To be found mentally unfit, the defense must show that...

Top priority for 49ers’ offense: Unleash the McCaffrey-Deebo tandem in all its glory

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

SANTA CLARA — When the 49ers hold their first practice of training camp Wednesday, all eyes will be on quarterbacks Trey Lance and Sam Darnold as Brock Purdy takes a regularly scheduled day off.But the two players who will determine whether the 49ers can put an offense on the field that matches what looks to be a Super Bowl-caliber defense have nothing to do with their quarterbacks.If coach Kyle Shanahan can get Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel to the starting blocks and off to a two-pronged explosive start, the 49ers will have something no opponent can match.A year ago when the 49ers began training camp, Deebo Samuel was a “hold-in,” a non-practicing player who was confused about his place with the team. McCaffrey was preparing for his sixth season with the goal of proving he could rebound from injuries that derailed 2020 and 2021 for the Carolina Panthers.The trade which brought McCaffrey aboard starting in Week 7 was huge in large part because Samuel wasn...

Home sales at fraud-tied San Jose project stall, Fremont site advances

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

SAN JOSE — Two Bay Area condo projects, one in San Jose and the other in Fremont, that were both tangled in a massive Bay Area real estate fraud case, are experiencing greatly differing levels of success — and obstacles.Both the projects were developed by Silicon Sage Builders and its principal executive Sanjeev Acharya, whose Bay Area real estate empire crumbled in 2020.The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Acharya and Silicon Sage of fraud, claiming he swindled hundreds of unwitting investors out of more than $100 million. Silicon Sage’s properties have been shoved into court-ordered receivership.Savant at Irvington, a 93-unit condominium complex in Fremont at 42111 Osgood Road. The project was originally developed by Silicon Sage. (George Avalos / Bay Area News Group)A court-appointed receiver hopes sales of the condos in San Jose and Fremont will help raise cash to help investors recoup at least a small portion of the massive losses they suffered du...

Goldberg: The hunger fed by the “Barbie” and Taylor Swift phenomena

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

This summer’s two biggest entertainment phenomena, the movie “Barbie” and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, have a lot in common. Both feature conventionally gorgeous blond women who alternately revel in mainstream femininity and chafe at its limitations, enacting an ambivalence shared by many of their fans. Both, beneath their slick, exuberant pop surfaces, tell female coming-of-age stories marked by existential crises and bitter confrontations with sexism. (The third song on Swift’s set list is “The Man,” whose refrain is, “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ wondering if I’d get there quicker/ if I was a man.”) And both have become juggernauts.“Barbie” has just had the biggest opening weekend of any movie this summer, surpassing already high expectations to earn $162 million. More than just a movie, it’s become a major cultural event, with fans showing up in carefully curated outfits and then making TikToks of themselves crying, emotionally overcome. The film’s blunt feminism — its ...

Savannah Bananas hit home run in front of sellout crowd in San Jose: ‘Chaotic, in a good way’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

SAN JOSE — It was about the third inning — or maybe the fourth, it really doesn’t matter — that a little girl standing near third base threw a pie at her dad’s face and revealed the point of the whole thing.The most riveting competition taking place at Excite Ballpark on Tuesday night, when the trailblazing Savannah Bananas baseball team brought their sold-out, Harlem Globetrotter-like show to the 81-year-old ballpark in San Jose, actually has nothing to do with baseball.It’s all about the three-letter word: fun.Not just enjoy-a-ballgame-on-a-Tuesday-night fun. This is silly, boundaryless, highly unusual and deeply intoxicating fun that is being had by everyone from the twerking umpires to the do-si-doing concession stand workers, from the youngest kid in the stands to the oldest player on the field.“It’s the P.T. Barnum & Bailey circus and it’s an authentic baseball game at the same time,” said 76-year-old Bill Lee, a former MLB All-Star who is now part ...

Proposal to name cable car after Tony Bennett

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

(KRON) -- The Market Street Railway, a nonprofit, wants to name a cable car after the late Tony Bennett who died last week at the age of 96. Known for his song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” among others, Bennett left an imprint on people since his phrase, “To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars." Naked woman armed with gun on Bay Bridge targeted random victims: CHP “He has made cable cars famous all around the world and we have no doubt he has brought millions of people to SF from all around the world that might not have come,” said Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway president. Only three other cable cars are named after notable figures such as Friedel Klussmann, the woman who saved the cable car system, a conductor killed while working and San Francisco Giant Willie Mayes.  The Market Street Railway would like to see Bennett’s name on a California street car as it rides past his statue, the street named after him in Nob Hill and the Fairmont Hotel, wher...

Iran gives ‘detailed answers’ to UN inspectors over 2 sites where manmade uranium particles found

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran said Wednesday it gave new details to the United Nations about two sites near Tehran that inspectors say bore traces of manmade uranium, part of a wider probe as tensions remain high over the Islamic Republic’s advancing program.The comments by Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program, come as Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers remains in tatters and as Tehran enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Resolving questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency could see Iran avoid further censure as an October deadline approaches that would lift international restrictions on its ballistic missile program as well. Speaking after a Cabinet meeting, Eslami said Iran had sent “detailed answers” to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “If those answers are not accepted and there are any ambiguities or doubts, as we have always said, we will clarify and revise the documents,” Esla...

Before Oppenheimer: How DC became the unlikely birthplace of the atomic age

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

Years before Robert Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos lab that developed the first nuclear weapons, physicists in D.C. thrust the world into the atomic age — inside a narrow, zigzagging tunnel running underneath Chevy Chase.“Totally by coincidence,” said Shaun Hardy, a librarian at the Carnegie Institute of Science.In January of 1939, Danish-physicist Niels Bohr was in D.C. for a physics conference at George Washington University. He had just learned that nuclear chemists in Germany had recently done the impossible — split a uranium atom — and decided to spill the beans to notable physicist Enrico Fermi.“He and Fermi had the chance to talk privately at the meeting in person for the first time since those results were conducted,” Hardy said “And they agreed to announce the results to the gathered physicists there.”It just so happened the Carnegie Institute of Science in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of D.C. had just opened its Atomic Physics Observator...

Niger’s president says that some presidential guard members are trying to move against him

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:14 GMT

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Niger’s president said Wednesday that some members of the presidential guard tried to move against him and that the army will attack if they don’t back down.President Mohamed Bazoum’s official account tweeted that some in the presidential guard engaged in an “anti-Republican demonstration” and tried in vain to obtain the support of the other security forces. The tweet said the president and his family were doing well, but that the army and the national guard were ready to attack if those involved didn’t change their minds.Source