Thursday Morning News Roundup

California legislators introduced a new bill that would forever ban offshore drilling in West Coast waters.

Announced Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, introduced the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, which would prohibit any oil or gas exploration, development or production in federally owned parts of the outer Continental Shelf near California, Oregon and Washington.

If passed, the law would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a 1953 law that defines all submerged lands 3 nautical miles offshore to be under federal jurisdiction and therefore makes the U.S. responsible for both granting mineral extraction leases and setting regulations.

No matter which side of the aisle a senior is on, there’s a good chance they’ll benefit from legislation Congress passed in 2022 that went into effect this month.

David Certner, the legislative counsel and legal policy director for the American Association for Retired People, said it was a good year for seniors. He cited legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which included capped out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs and reductions in health insurance premiums.

Even though much of the process wasn’t politically bipartisan, Certner said opinion polls show consistent, cross-party support for issues like cheaper prescription drugs and more pension flexibility.

The California coast is home to many beloved animals, from elephant seals to humpback whales, but one particular creature — the sea otter — has been largely missing from the coast for more than 100 years and now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has asked Congress to look at the feasibility of reintroducing the playful member of the weasel family back to its shores.

Sea otters disappeared from the state’s coast due to the fur trade and even faced extinction, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). They once thrived across the north Pacific Rim, from Japan to Baja California, but by 1911, due to hunting, only a few “small, disjunct populations” existed.

The FWS has concluded that bringing sea otters back to the California coast is “feasible” and is working on taking the next steps toward that goal.

But not everyone is excited at the prospect of bringing back the littoral critters. The West Coast commercial fish industry, which relies heavily on the very shellfish and other denizens of the deep on which the otters feed, believes that sea otters could cause “big problems” for Oregon and California fisheries and they are “not confident” that their concerns are being taken seriously.

One man died and two other people were hospitalized on Wednesday after a head-on crash in Guerneville, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The wreck was reported about 10:45 a.m. on River Road near Bonita Avenue, where a Chevrolet Blazer S-10 and a GMC Canyon collided, CHP Officer David Derutte said.

The GMC had been headed westbound on River Road at an unsafe speed, approaching a Chevrolet traveling eastbound.

For unknown reasons, the GMC veered sharply to the left and crashed into the Chevrolet, Derutte said.

The Chevrolet’s driver, whose name was not released, died at the scene.

A 39-year-old Guerneville man driving the GMC sustained minor injuries, and his right front passenger, a 43-year-old Guerneville man, suffered major injuries.

Police released video of man who allegedly tried to kidnap a woman and threatened to sexually assault her on Tuesday evening near the University of California, Berkeley.

The woman, in her 20s, had just crossed the street from the campus at the intersection of Hearst and Euclid avenues about 5 p.m. when the man approached her from behind, Berkeley police said.

Police said the suspect grabbed the woman by the arm, near the Lower Hearst parking structure, and threatened to sexually assault her.

The woman was able to get away and ran to a nearby cafe. The suspect followed her, but the cafe’s employees blocked him and called police.

The suspect then walked back to the campus before officers arrived.

Video of the suspect can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5IQtudws88 .

One person died after an unofficially inhabited public housing building caught fire in the Potrero Hill neighborhood on Wednesday, according to fire officials.

The San Francisco Fire Department said it first responded to reports of a fire on the third floor of 708 Missouri St. shortly before noon.

Fire Captain Jonathan Baxter said three people were rescued by bystanders, who did not have injuries. Rescue crews also located an adult in the building, who later died on the scene.

“San Francisco Fire was confronted with multiple challenges combating this fire,” said Baxter in a video on Twitter. “This area is very steep with hills, very narrow streets, and lots of overhead wires.”

Fire officials said the cause and origin of the fire is still under investigation.

A suspected shoplifter’s mistake was leaving his stolen getaway car running in a no-parking zone at Alameda South Shore Center, where police were waiting when he dashed from a store with a security guard on his heels Tuesday morning.

An Alameda officer had noticed the car about 10:15 a.m., blocking a ADA ramp at the shopping center, according to a post on the police department’s Facebook account.

The car was idling, and as the officer inspected it, she found it had been reported stolen by BART police.

The officer then heard yelling coming from a store and saw a security guard chasing a man with two baskets full of items. The man didn’t notice the officer and threw items into the car, but as he tried to get into the driver’s seat, officers stopped him, police said.

The 60-year-old suspect, an Oakland resident, was arrested on suspicion of crimes that include theft, possession of a stolen vehicle, and a probation violation.

“Google is committed to competing fair and square,” according to the Mountain View company’s code of conduct.

According to a massive 149-page antitrust complaint filed against Google by the U.S Department of Justice, Google has utterly failed to live up to that commitment.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Virginia, the DOJ alleges that Google “has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.”

The complaint concludes that “Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.”

The government seeks not only damages and injunctive relief, but asks the court to order the divestiture of the companies that Google acquired on its path to monopolize several separate markets within the digital advertising industry in the United States.

Several connecting ramps between Interstate Highway 5 and state Highway 4 in Stockton will be closed overnight at various times this week to allow crews to perform maintenance inspections of bridges, according to Caltrans.

The closures include the following:

-Full closure of the southbound I-5 connector ramp to eastbound Highway 4 from 10 p.m. Wednesday to 4 a.m. Thursday;

-Full closures of the Fremont Street on- and off-ramps on southbound I-5 from 9 p.m. Wednesday to 4 a.m. Thursday;

-Closure of the right three lanes of southbound I-5 from Buena Vista undercrossing to Highway 4 from 9 p.m. Wednesday to 4 a.m. Thursday;

-Full closure of the eastbound and westbound connector ramps from Highway 4 to northbound I-5 from 9 p.m. Thursday to 4 a.m. Friday;

– Closure of the right three lanes of northbound I-5 from Highway 4 to Pershing Avenue from 9 p.m. Thursday to 4 a.m. Friday; and

-Full closure of the Pershing Avenue off-ramp from northbound I-5 from 9 p.m. Thursday to 4 a.m. Friday.

-Full on-ramp closure from Center Street to westbound Highway 4 from 9 p.m. Thursday to 4 a.m. Friday.

The driver of a car involved in a collision on eastbound Interstate 80 late Wednesday in Richmond was then struck by car in the westbound lanes, according to a California Highway Patrol officer.

Initial investigation indicates a Mercedes was traveling at an unsafe speed when it rear-ended a Honda in the eastbound lanes and overturned, according to the CHP.

Investigators are not yet certain how the driver of the Mercedes — who died at the scene — wound up in the westbound lanes where he was struck by a Nissan.

Officers responded to reports just before 10:30 p.m. of a collision involving multiple vehicles on the eastbound highway at the off-ramp of the high-occupancy vehicle lane at East Richmond Parkway.

Police in Santa Rosa arrested a suspect in a stabbing reported Tuesday night outside a grocery store.

Police arrested Kimberlei Bernard, 44, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon following an investigation of a stabbing reported at 11:46 p.m. at a Safeway in the 1700 block of Marlow Road, according to a news release from the Santa Rosa Police Department.

Emergency responders included police and fire department crews, as well as paramedics. Upon arrival, they found a man bleeding from a stab wound to his upper torso and who was inside the front doors of the market.

The National Weather Service forecast for the greater San Francisco Bay Area calls for sunny skies Thursday. Daytime highs are expected in the low to mid 60s with overnight lows in most areas in the low to mid 40s, while dipping into the upper 30s in the interior valleys of the North Bay and East Bay.

A weak cold front is expected to pass over the region Sunday into Monday morning, along with some light rain with minimal accumulations. Behind the front will be colder air that will make for chilly morning temperatures early next week.

Copyright © 2023 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright © 2023 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.