GENEVA, SWTIZERLAND – A former student at a small religious school that offers nursing courses in Oakland, California has shot and killed six students at the school, reports the Los Angeles Times. He was arrested at a nearby shopping centre.
He also wounded three others at Oikos University.
GARDEN CITY, CALIFORNIA – The Crystal Cathedral church, famous for its hugely popular “Hour of Power” broadcasts, has been involved for months in an acrimonious dispute between the family of founder Robert Schuller and the rest of the international board. Saturday 10 March he and his wife Arvella resigned, saying that the situation had become untenable. The couple, who have filed for bankruptcy, said in a statement that they could not continue on the board “in an adversarial and negative atmosphere especially since it now seems that it will not be ending any time soon”.
The Kansas City Star notes that “sorting through competing financial claims has delayed $12.5 million in payments to some church creditors and could threaten the church’s ability to continue its ministries, including the ‘Hour of Power’ broadcasts. The Schullers’ resignation marks the end of an era. For the first time, no family member is serving on the board of the church that Robert Schuller founded 42 years ago.”
Their daughter and her husband are disputing, with the Schuller couple, the claims, copyright issues and accusations that they have continued to receive money from church funds while the legal arguments ensue. Three members of the family were kicked out of church affairs in the past week, reports Los Angeles CBS News.
US would like to set in stone Internet privacy laws to live by
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US government Wednesday 23 February unveiled the seven principles of Internet privacy that it would like to see written into American law, to “protect consumers’ personal data, provide businesses with better guidance . . . and ensure that the internet remains a strong platform,” Secretary of Commerce John Bryson said, in announcing a new Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
The seven are:
- Individual consumer control over what types of data is collected
- Transparency regarding how data is used
- Respect by companies for the context in which data is provided
- Secure handling of data
- The ability for consumers to see and ensure the accuracy of data
- Reasonable limits on the amount of data that companies try to collect and retain
- Accountability from companies that collect consumer data.
Ad Age notes that the new rules are accompanied by a statement from the Digital Advertising Alliance that it will support a push for a do-not-track option for web browsers.
Wired reports that “leaders in the mobile space”, including Apple and Google, have signed an agreement with the State of California that will give app users greater privacy protection.
Links to other sites: CNN, with full text of the bill, PC World
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – California’s efforts to extend its planned high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Anaheim won’t have funding from the federal government in 2013, but the High Speed Rail Authority in the state says this won’t have an immediate impact, since the programme assumes no federal funding in 2012. The $8 billion cut from the 2012 federal budget 18 November by a congressional committee is just the first slice of a $61 billion package for California that is part of President Obama’s plans for a national bullet train line, reports KQED in California.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The thin line between personal freedom in the form of public nudity and public health concerns over such touchy issues as bare bums on restaurant chairs may soon lead to tougher legislation in that city of baring-it-all comfortably, San Francisco. The Los Angeles Times notes that a debate is underway in California over acceptable behaviour since a city official introduced “a measure to put limits on nudity and provide posterior protection for public seating”.
The San Francisco Chronicle sees the new legislation as one more effort to make the city appear “kooky” because it is so limited in scope. “Why? If these guys were opening a trench coat and exposing themselves to bystanders in a supermarket parking lot we’d call them creeps. But if they sit on public chairs and expose themselves to bystanders, they’re defenders of free speech. Here’s some free speech – when moms and dads walk their kids to school, they don’t want to see you naked. This isn’t a civil rights issue, it’s just obnoxious.”
The newspaper points out that even Berkeley and Marin have anti-nudity laws.
ABC7 news report
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Governor Jerry Brown in California, USA, says his state’s coffers badly need the expected $320 million that a new tax on Internet sales will bring in, but his critics say the move will do more harm than good. The number of those critics appears to be growing in the week since Amazon announced that as a result of the new law it will stop paying what it calls “marketing affiliates”, some 25,000 of them, commission for referrals they make to click-through customers.
Links to other sites: Reuters, Telecom TV
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The line for people applying for lifeguard jobs in Newport Beach, California in the US is about to get a lot longer, with news of how much some are paid revealed by a city budget report.
A group of 13 senior lifeguards receives in the area of $100,000 a year, with two being paid more than $200,000 each. But the lifeguards in question, who train some 200 seasonal guards a year, say their salaries are on a par with those of senior fire department managers, for similar work, reports AP in the Globe & Mail.
The salary information came out as the city looks for ways to reduce the cost of its pension plan.
Newport’s Orange County Register, which has been tracking the international interest in its pay scale, points out that it is not alone, and that Huntington Beach, down the road, pays just as much.
“Dozens” of people who attended a conference at the California branch of the Playboy organization came down with respiratory and other health problems in early February, the Los Angeles Times has reported. The illness has now been linked to a lesser form of Legionnaires Disease that is probably caused by water vapour.
Hot tubs at the Playboy Mansion, or more likely, a fog machine that was used at a party for the conference, appear to be the culprit, since “legionnellosis” is due to a bacteria that grows in warm water.
Nut and fruit grove farmers in California, USA, are the latest group to protest a planned high-speed train that will cut through the centre of the state, 200km from Madera to Bakersfield. Farm groups say they are in the dark about the details of planned lines, but they are worried about new proposals that would splice century-old family farms with complex irrigation systems. Earlier proposals would have used existing lines but the town of Hanford in particular, famous for its 123-year-old rail history, which it has turned into a tourist commodity, resisted. The rail authority says environmental studies will look closely at the impact on farms.
The rail authority is rushing to push through its plans in order to obtain federal credit to start construction. New federal funding is available because other states returned funds for high speed rail lines.
Public transport and California residents have not been close friends over the years, with the car as king in the western USA, but the state has been trying to shift this with its plans for a network of bullet train lines. The flat Central Valley is the starting point, in part because it would cost less to build there. Joblessness in the Central Valley region is well above that in the rest of the state and the new line would create jobs, especially in construction, plus link the agricultural area south of Fresno to other regions, with an expected positive impact on the depressed regional economy.
Links to other sites: CNBC, Los Angeles Times
(CNN amateur video) Six people died at the scene and two more in hospital, after a night-time off-road race crash in the Mojave desert in southern California. The 200-mile race was run at night to avoid the desert heat east of Los Angeles in the Lucerne Valley area of San Bernardino County. Spectators are warned to stay well back and the course is barricaded in places where excitement is bound to occur, such as jumps, but the crowd can be difficult to control, say observers, but opinions are mixed about the safety of such races.
Link to CNN
Video
A California woman, Melissa Huckaby, has entered a guilty plea to first degree murder with special circumstances of kidnapping in a case that gripped not just the state but the US in 2009. As a result of her plea bargain other charges that would have brought the death penalty have been dropped.
Huckaby, a mother, kidnapped an 8-year-old girl from the trailer park where the two lived, then murdered her, but the details of how and when it happened have not been released. The child’s body was found a week later in a suitcase that Huckaby had told a reporter belonged to her. Some of the other charges against Huckaby that were dropped involved two other cases and sexual crimes.
US criminologists say it is extremely rare for a woman acting alone, who is a mother, to commit crimes involving kidnapping, sexual abuse and murder.
Links to other sites: Silicon Valley Mercury News, AP/Yahoo News,
Film director’s request to remain outside the US turned down by California court
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Film director Roman Polanski’s request to stay in Switzerland while his 30-year-old court case is concluded was turned down by a California appeals court Thursday, without the court issuing an opinion. He fled the US before he was sentenced in 1978 on a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse. He was arrested at Zurich airport in September 2009 after the US made a new extradition request.
Switzerland must now decide if it will extradite him, but if he is sentenced to less than six months he is unlikely to be extradited, the justice ministry in Bern noted in March.
Links to other sites: Los Angeles Times, swissinfo
Arvinis welcomes American wines for the wine fair’s 15th year
Wine fair offers easy way to discover Swiss wines
Napa Valley, California vineyards, October 2009 (click to view larger)
Morges, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Morges is offering a fine pair of anniversary bouquets starting Wednesday 14 April. The first tulips are opening at the lakeside park which is home to the annual Tulip Festival, and the popular wine fair Arvinis opens its doors. This is the 40th anniversary of the Tulip Festival, which runs from 2 April to 16 May, and the 15th anniversary of Arvinis, which is the largest wine fair in the Lake Geneva region. It offers visitors some 2,500 wines to sample during its six-day run.
Arvinis serves as a harbinger of spring, with wine villages throughout the country holding their open houses in the weeks that follow. The guest of honour for 2010 is the California Wine Institute.
At least one person has died and others are trapped in Mexicali, a US-Mexico border town, following a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey. The tremors shook buildings in Los Angeles and as far away as Las Vegas and Phoenix. Hundreds of people fled the beach at Tijuana, Mexico, although no tsunami warning was sounded, reports NPR.
Links to other sites: Los Angeles Times, NPR
A man who says he was only carrying honey is still in custody at an airport in California, USA, that was shut down when his bags tested positive for explosives. Police in Bakersfield say he is cooperating and they are still trying to understand what set off the machines and caused the screeners who opened the bottles to complain of nausea and a strong chemical smell. In a separate incident, flights were delayed and a terminal evacuated in Minneapolis/St Paul after a sniffer dog detected possible explosives.
(Video, AP) An extraordinary high-definition video of the world’s deepest submarine volcano shows an underwater eruption sending volcanic lava to the ocean floor and creating an environment that is more acidic than battery acid. The film was presented at a conference in San Francisco Thursday by the US National Science Foundation and the NOAA. The film was made near Samoa when scientists headed for the area where they’d spotted volcanic activity, then sent a submersible named Jason down to 1,300 metres under the surface to film the fireworks.
Links to other sites: AP/Daily Breeze, BBC, NOAA News with the video in QuickTime
AP interview with video in background
BMW Oracle left California 15 December for Valencia, Spain
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Alinghi sailing team is preparing to defend its World Cup title in the chilly winter waters of Valencia, Spain in 2010, following a decision Tuesday 15 December by a panel of New York Supreme Court judges to uphold an earlier decision. A judge ruled 30 October against the choice by Société Nautique de Genève’s of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates for the next America’s Cup. The four-judge panel also upheld an earlier decision to exclude rudders from the measurement of the load waterline length of the race yacht.
Alinghi will face BMW Oracle in February 2010 in Valencia. The BMW team, based in San Francisco, left California Tuesday for Valencia, to start preparing for the race.
Background, GenevaLunch
Links to other sites: Alinghi, BMW Oracle
The AltaRock Energy project in California, north of San Francisco, to drill deep into the Earth’s bedrock and use the heat released as a renewable energy source, was abandoned Friday 11 December. The project has been seen as a key part of the Obama administration’s efforts to find alternative energy supplies. The move comes just a day after Switzerland’s geothermal project in Basel was shut down permanently, following earthquakes at the site in 2006 and early 2007.
Links to other sites: Alta Rock, New York Times
Wildfires north of Los Angeles, California doubled in area to almost 350 sq km and firefighters fought the fires in tinder-dry conditions and very high temperatures. In La Crescenta, a suburb on the northern edge of Los Angeles and south of the Angeles National Forest where the blaze started last 26 August 53 houses were destroyed. Over 2,600 firefighters are battling the flames which threaten the top of Mount Wilson, an important communications hub and site of an observatory. CNN, Reuters
Update 18 August 12:10 Zurich, Switzerland and Los Angeles, California, USA (GenevaLunch) - John McCarthy of Pasadena, California last week became the fourth American citizen to turn himself into the US Justice Department as a client who had a secret offshore UBS bank account, set up to hide his real identity and to defraud the IRS tax authorities. His name was one of those in the group of clients whose account information was given by UBS to the IRS in February 2009. The details of the case where he is expected to plead guilty when he appears in court 14 September were published by the US Department of Justice’s California division.
According to the press release “McCarthy admitted that, with the assistance of UBS representatives and his Swiss lawyer, he directed the investment activities and transfers of funds into and out of the COGS UBS Swiss bank account, as well as from other UBS Swiss accounts he controlled.
Violent crime, including murder, rape, and armed robbery, is down sharply in most major US cities, the BBC reports. New York and Los Angeles are set to report crime rates later this year that were last seen in the 1960s. A combination of better police work, greater cooperation between law enforcement agencies, and improved technology has made cities like Washington DC, Boston and San Francisco safer, according to the British broadcast media. But some cities are still plagued by crime. Detroit, Michigan, once a major manufacturing centre, its population grown poorer over the years, was named most dangerous to live in by Forbes magazine. Other cities whose crime rates appear to be increasing, such as Stockton, California, may be on shipment routes for drugs from Mexico.
Crime statistics for the US are gathered annually by the FBI and published in the autumn, but the numbers as well as their use by private companies that rate cities is contentious. In June 2009 the FBI reported that preliminary crime figures for 2008 show a 2.5 percent drop in violent crimes nationwide compared to 2007 and a 1.6 percent drop in property crimes. in The US Conference of Mayors in 2007 began to work with the FBI and the US Justice Department to improve reporting and use of the statistics.
The number of families that cannot afford to claim and bury or cremate their own people is growing, the Los Angeles county in California says. The number of people whose cremation was paid for by taxpayers rose 36 percent in 2008, over 2007, from 525 to 712. Los Angeles Times
The largest state budget in the US and the world’s eighth largest economy, that of California, has been saved in a last-ditch effort compromise between Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger and state legislators: the $26.3 billion deficit will be closed by deep spending cuts of $15.5 billion, but taxes will not be raised. The state began its fiscal year 1 July 2009 without an approved budget and the threat of having to write IOUs to pay its bills. Los Angeles Times, Reuters
Dongfang Greg Chung, 73, a former Rockwell and Boeing engineer, has been found guilty in a court in Los Angeles, California in the US of spying for China. According to CNN he has been convicted of “charges of conspiracy to commit economic espionage; six counts of economic espionage to benefit a foreign country; one count of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China; and one count of making false statements to the FBI.” He risks up to $1 million in fines and several years in prison; sentencing is set for November. Chung is accused of stealing thousands of documents related to the United States space program and the Delta IV shuttle.
The controller for the state of California in the US has said he will have to issue IOUs to pay the state’s bills starting 2 July if legislators cannot agree on urgent measures to reduce the state’s crippling deficit of $24 billion. Reuters
California legislators in the US were battling to keep the state from defaulting on its debts, unable to pay its bills, and from slashing many programmes. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $16 billion in cuts in order to close a $24b deficit. Democratic legislators have proposed tax increases, spurned by Republicans. The Obama administration has refused to bail the state out for fear of sending a wrong signal to other states in difficulties. California is the world’s eighth-largest economy, and has been particularly hurt by the downturn. Its revenues are heavily dependent on income taxes. Reuters, WP, Bloomberg
US President Barack Obama is scheduled to announce Tuesday 19 May stricter federal mileage standards that will require a 30 percent reduction in auto emissions by 2016. “The national policy will mimic California’s” standards, which carmakers have been fighting in the courts reports the Los Angeles Times.
The new rules are the result of an agreement reached by the federal government, California and the auto industry. California is currently scheduled to implement its standards this year, which has prompted car industry lawsuits, but under the agreement it will delay until 2012 while the new federal standard would apply countrywide by 2016. In exchange for the delay in California, carmakers have agreed to drop their suits, says the newspaper. Reuters and background, Detroit News
The African First Ladies Health Summit in Los Angeles, California USA brought together 15 spouses of African heads of state. The women joined together with health care policy experts and aid organizations to address issues such as: HIV/AIDS, maternal/child health, and girls’ education. The summit was jointly organized by US Doctors for Africa (USDFA) and African Synergy Against AIDS and Suffering. AllAfrica
Phil Spector, music producer, was found guilty of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 in Spector’s California home, by a jury Monday 13 April. Spector, 69, faces a sentence of 18 yrs to life imprisonment, but his defense team plans to appeal. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler declined Spector’s request to remain free on bail pending sentencing. CNN
Gertrude Baines celebrated her 115th birthday Monday 7 April at Western Convalescent Hospital in California, USA. Baines became the oldest living person in the world when a Portugese Woman, 115 yrs old, died 2 January, according to the Gerontology Research Group, which validates claims of extreme old age. Baines had many well-wishers including the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and US President Barack Obama. Los Angeles Times (Ed. note: recent claims in Kazakhstan that a woman is 130 years old are being checked but have not been validated)
