It’s Monday morning at 10 a.m., and I’m driving north up California’s famously stunning coastline toward the Thomas fire, the largest and most uncontrolled of five massive wildfires that have brought devastation to Southern California for the past week. I can see the enormous gloom ahead from 50 miles away ― brown smoke hovering over the southern edge of a fire that had consumed a staggering 230,000 acres so far.
I’m on my way to Ventura County, where the fire first began on Dec. 4 and from where it would eventually grow into the fifth largest in state history over the week that followed. Ventura is an iconic place, a once rugged beach town known for its citrus fruit farming and local surf spots, so often overshadowed by its big neighbor, Los Angeles.
By the time I got there, a grey haze had once again settled over the county, and smoke filled the air. To the east, a massive fire was rapidly spreading, producing a thick brown smoke cloud that reached all the way north, to Santa Barbara County. Firefighters and firetrucks peppered the landscape, racing toward the still active sections of the blaze while other rigs drove further up the coast. A pizza delivery driver wore a dust mask to keep some of the smoke out of his lungs as he carried on with his day.
From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt over the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump.
Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear.
In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr. Romney four years ago rebelled against his message and plan. “I personally am disgusted by it — I think it’s disgraceful,” said Lola Butler, 71, a retiree from Mandeville, La., who voted for Mr. Romney in 2012. “You’re telling me who to vote for and who not to vote for? Please.”
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A crowd cheered for Donald J. Trump to take the stage Friday during a campaign rally at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times
Apple is bracing itself for the fight of the century.
On Tuesday Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym of Federal District Court for the District of Central California ordered the tech company to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation hack into the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.
But Apple CEO Tim Cook announced in an open letter that he had zero intentions of complying with the order.
Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, carried out an attack on a holiday party for Farook’s colleagues on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 and injuring 22.
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Apple Shut Down FBI Request to Hack San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone
Hawaii and parts of California were on tsunami alert early Thursday after a huge 8.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of north Chile.
It prompted the U.S. Coastguard to urge the public in Hawaii to use “extreme caution” in waters around the main islands. People should prepare for “strong currents and surf throughout the main Hawaii Islands,” they said.
The tsunami was due to start in Hawaii at 3.11 a.m. local time (9.11 a.m. ET) and in California at 4.46 a.m. local time (7.46 a.m. ET), the National Tsunami Warning Center said.
Thousands of California inmates who have spent years in solitary confinement will move back into the general prison population as part of a lawsuit settlement with the state.
The settlement, announced Tuesday, ends the class-action suit brought on behalf of thousands of inmates who had filled the Pelican Bay State Prison isolation wing for alleged gang affiliation. Confinement in windowless, soundproof cells remains a possible punishment for prisoners who commit crimes behind bars, but it’s no longer a tool for indefinitely segregating rival gang members.
More than 500 prisoners had spent more than a decade locked in solitary at the time the lawsuit was filed in 2012, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the groups suing the state. Seventy-eight had been in the Security Housing Unit, or SHU, for more than 20 years.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Pro Football Hall of Famer and veteran sports journalist Frank Gifford has died in Connecticut, his family announced on Sunday. He was 84.
In a statement, his family said:
It is with the deepest sadness that we announce the sudden passing of our beloved husband, father and friend, Frank Gifford. Frank died suddenly this beautiful Sunday morning of natural causes at his Connecticut home. We rejoice in the extraordinary life he was privileged to live, and we feel grateful and blessed to have been loved by such an amazing human being. We ask that our privacy be respected at this difficult time and we thank you for your prayers.
Born in Santa Monica, California, in 1930, Gifford attended the University of Southern California on a football scholarship and went pro after being selected 11th overall in the first round of the 1952 draft.
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New York Giants halfback Frank Gifford during a workout September 1958 in New York. Rooney / AP, file
Air Force reserves have been drafted in to help thousands of firefighters battling a raging wildfire in California that jumped a highway which had served as a containment line.
Officials said that more than 9,000 firefighters were on the front lines fighting more than 21 active wildfires. Some crews were igniting controlled burns in a bid to contain the blazes.
Two giant C-130 Hercules planes from the Air Force Reserves joined more than a dozen other air tankers and helicopters on Monday battling the flames, according to NBC Bay Area.
An official at the California Labor Commission has taken an axe to Uber’s claim that its drivers are really independent operators and not employees of the tech company.
In an opinion filed in state court Tuesday — and posted here by TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook — Stephanie Barrett, a deputy labor commissioner, challenged the business model that now undergirds much of the transportation industry as well as the so-called sharing economy. In the case, an Uber driver named Barbara Ann Berwick argued the company owed her money for costs she incurred while driving customers around in the car she owned.
In a normal employment relationship, those costs are borne by the boss, not the worker. But Uber considers Berwick an independent contractor, an increasingly common arrangement that shifts certain business expenses onto those doing the work. By using independent contractors, Uber not only doesn’t have to buy SUVs and gasoline, it doesn’t have to worry about payroll taxes or workers’ compensation costs.
Lucia Morejon cannot escape the haunting memory she has of the final desperate words spoken to her by her teenage son after he was shot by police: “Mommy, Mommy, please come, please come.”
Hector Morejon, the youngest of five children, made that plea for help after he was shot by a Long Beach, California, police officer, who allegedly thought the 19-year-old was in possession of a firearm Thursday afternoon.
The teen, who Lucia Morejon’s attorney says was unarmed, directed the cries for help toward his mother when she saw him in an ambulance directly after the shooting.
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Hector Morejon, Unarmed Teen Shot, Killed By Police
A nonagenarian has started a new career as a valuable part of Silicon Valley’s tech world, bringing her years of wisdom to the industry.
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When Barbara Beskind was a child, she wanted to become an inventor. At 91 years old, she’s living that dream as a tech designer for IDEO, a firm in Palo Alto, California, according to Today.com. Beskind became an employee last year and has since been working primarily on projects that relate to aging.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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Hector Morejon, Unarmed Teen Shot, Killed By Police
James' World 2 