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State report says Santa Clara County lawyers overrode social worker decisions to remove children from unsafe homes

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

SAN JOSE – Santa Clara County’s top executive acknowledged Saturday that county agencies in charge of protecting children made mistakes in allowing a father with a history of drug abuse to care for his 3-month-old daughter Phoenix Castro, who died of a fentanyl and methamphetamine overdose in May.“The county dropped the ball,” County Executive James Williams said. “My opinion is that baby Phoenix shouldn’t have been in the care of the father – period.”Williams’ admission came during an hour-long interview as the Bay Area News Group pressed him on a newly-obtained, troubling state report that found the county’s legal office frequently overrode decisions by social workers to remove kids from unsafe homes.Williams, who until July served as the county’s lead counsel, disputed that claim, but said the county has shifted its philosophy as part of an effort to avoid splitting up families. He wouldn’t say whether that factored into the death of baby Phoenix.The report – released...

‘We have come so far’: Five years after historic Camp Fire, Paradise moves ahead with a goal to build a fireproof town

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

PARADISE — As Jen Goodlin tends the snapdragons and squash in her fertile garden, she is surrounded by a town that is a charred skeleton of its former self.It is also a blank slate, offering a fresh start to a young and energetic generation of newcomers — who vow to build a new Paradise, a smarter community that will never burn again.“We get to watch it transform,” said Goodlin, 41, who left the comfort of suburban Colorado Springs with her husband and four children to move back home to Paradise.“We have come so far,” she said. “And we still have so much to do.”When Jen Goodlin visited Paradise after the Camp Fire destroyed much of her childhood hometown, she was inspired to stay and help it rebuild. “You don’t notice the empty lots much. You just enjoy all the space and the views,” she said last month from her fertile garden behind the family’s new custom-built home. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) Five years ago, all seemed lost. On the morning of No...

49ers need stars to lead them out of losing streak after bye

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

No need to make this complicated. The 49ers are 5-3, which in past years wouldn’t be cause for alarm — except 2023 began with a 5-0 start.To get back on track in their quest for Super Bowl LVIII, the 49ers need only to look to the same players who ignited the fast start. Coach Kyle Shanahan and a number of players said after the third consecutive loss that the team had everything it needed to turn things around. Still, the 49ers went out the next day and made a trade for Washington defensive end Chase Young.Additionally, Deebo Samuel (hairline shoulder fracture) and Trent Williams (ankle), both injured three weeks ago, could be back next Sunday for the game at Jacksonville.“I’m ready to go,” Samuel said during his weekly appearance on the Kay Adams podcast.There is hope that Williams will be back at practice Wednesday. He was back within three weeks last season after a high ankle sprain deemed more serious than his current injury.Here’s a look at ...

Blinken meets Palestinian leader Abbas in surprise West Bank visit

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah during a surprise visit to the West Bank on Sunday, stepping up Washington’s Middle East diplomacy as the Israel-Hamas war escalates.They discussed efforts to restore calm and stability in the West Bank, including the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians and to hold those accountable responsible, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said after the meeting, the AP reported. There were no public comments from either participant.Abbas told Blinken that there should be an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and the delivery of aid into the Gaza Strip, according to Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian leader, Reuters reported.The call for a cease-fire echoed demands from Arab leaders in recent days. France on Sunday reiterated its urging that the hostilities in Gaza be immediately put to an end.In retaliation for ...

Fresh revelations contradict Joe Biden’s sweeping denials on Hunter

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

Of the many disputes that followed the leaking of Hunter Biden’s laptop contents, one of the thorniest has been the case of the April 2015 dinner at Cafe Milano.Emails from the cache suggested that Hunter Biden hosted a dinner in a private room at the Tony Washington restaurant that included both his father and an executive from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which had appointed Hunter Biden to its board. An email from the executive, dated immediately following the dinner, thanked Hunter Biden for the chance to meet his father.As the media litigated the controversy, the White House insisted, in increasingly forcefulterms, that no meeting between Biden and the executive had occurred.In October 2021, a year after the dinner became a matter of national controversy,a POLITICO article mentioning it prompted an email response from a White House spokesperson reiterating and extending denials that Biden had met the Ukrainian executive, Vadym Pozharskyi.While some statements from...

DA: East Boston man arrested on slew of drug charges, powder found near child’s crib

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

A 63-year-old East Boston man is facing criminal charges after police say they found an assortment of drugs in his home, officials said.Robert Ciampi, 63, was arraigned Thursday in East Boston Municipal Court on charges of trafficking in cocaine and fentanyl and possession of Class B, C, and D substances with intent to distribute after a search of his home uncovered 240 grams of fentanyl, 65 grams of cocaine, 13 grams of crack, and 15 pounds of marijuana, according to a statement issued by Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden.Ciampi was ordered held on $5,000 cash bail pending a Dec. 6 probable cause hearing.Officers executed a search warrant at 54 Orleans St. at 11 a.m. on Nov. 1 and found a variety of illegal drugs, including a plastic bag of tan powder that was found in a black chest next to a crib belonging to Ciampi’s 2-year-old child, according to police.In a statement, Hayden said, “Fentanyl is a death drug, plain and simple. The amount seized here—240 grams of fentan...

Humanoid robots are here, but they’re a little awkward. Do we really need them?

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

Building a robot that’s both human-like and useful is a decades-old engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction.While the latest artificial intelligence craze has sparked another wave of investments in the quest to build a humanoid, most of the current prototypes are clumsy and impractical, looking better in staged performances than in real life. That hasn’t stopped a handful of startups from keeping at it.“The intention is not to start from the beginning and say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make a robot look like a person,’” said Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. “We’re trying to make robots that can operate in human spaces.”Do we even need humanoids? Hurst makes a point of describing Agility’s warehouse robot Digit as human-centric, not humanoid, a distinction meant to emphasize what it does over what it’s trying to be.What it does, for now, is pick up tote bins and move them. Amazon announced in October it will beg...

Mississippi has a history of voter suppression. Many see signs of change as Black voters reengage

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A few years ago, Tiffany Wilburn just didn’t see the point in voting any longer.Her children didn’t have proper school books, health insurance was expensive and hard to get, police abuse continued against Black residents, and her city’s struggle to get clean drinking water seemed emblematic of her community always coming out on the short end of state decision-making.Combine that with Mississippi’s long history of voter suppression and she felt casting a ballot was simply a hopeless exercise.“It’s like you’re not being heard,” Wilburn said in her hometown of Jackson, the state capital. “You run to the polls, hoping and praying for change, and then you look around and nothing’s really happening. So you shut down.”Recent interviews with Black voters, voting rights groups, candidates and researchers show that the voter fatigue felt by Wilburn has been widely shared in a state where nearly 40% of the overall population is Black. This year, political dynamics have co...

Some houses are being built to stand up to hurricanes and sharply cut emissions, too

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle five years ago, it left boats, cars and trucks piled up to the windows of Bonny Paulson’s home in the tiny coastal community of Mexico Beach, Florida, even though the house rests on pillars 14 feet above the ground. But Paulson’s home, with a rounded shape that looks something like a ship, shrugged off Category 5 winds that might otherwise have collapsed it.“I wasn’t nervous at all,” Paulson said, recalling the warning to evacuate. Her house lost only a few shingles, with photos taken after the storm showing it standing whole amid the wreckage of almost all the surrounding homes.Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. Solar panels, for example, installed so snugly that high winds can’t get underneath them, mean clean power that can ...

Singapore’s prime minister plans to step down and hand over to his deputy before the 2025 election

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:00:14 GMT

SINGAPORE (AP) — Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Sunday he planned to bow out and hand over power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong, late next year, before the 2025 general election.Lee, 71, initially intended to retire before turning 70, but it was shelved because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has served as head of the long-ruling People’s Action Party, or PAP, and as prime minister since 2004. Last year, he named Wong, who is also finance minister, as his designated successor.“I have full confidence in Lawrence and his team and there’s no reason to delay their political transition. Therefore, I intend to hand over to DPM (Deputy Prime Minister) Lawrence before the next general election,” Lee said at a party conference.He said passing the baton to Wong before the national polls will allow the 50-year-old politician to win his own mandate and take the country forward. “If all goes well, I will hand over (to Wong) by PAP’s 70th birthday next year” in November 2024...