Daily Republic: Monday, March 6, 2023

Second Ohio derailment raises ire in Congress on rail safety

BloomBerg

WASHINGTON —

A second freight train derailment in Ohio within a month is giving new impetus for rail safety legislation in Con gress, as Democrats and Republicans prepare to grill Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw when he testifies to a Senate committee Thursday.

“The big railroads have weakened safety rules or resisted safety rules for years,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “But you’d think a disaster that happened in East Palestine would have gotten their attention.”

Saturday’s train derailment happened outside Springfield, Ohio – about 180 miles west of East Palestine, where a derailment last month spilled toxic chemicals into the rural community along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

Are state’s new housing laws fixing affordability crisis? A7

Talking to children who left Russia about the war B6

TriBune ConTenT AgenCy

WASHINGTON —

President Joe Biden would “never even discuss” taking a mental competency test suggested by Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley for politicians older than 75, first lady Jill Biden said. Her comments to CNN come in the context of Biden’s expected bid for a second term, which would make him 82 at his inauguration if he won reelection. In previously released interview excerpts, the first lady said she’s “all for” her husband running in 2024 and pointed to his recent trip to Ukraine that included a nine-hour train ride from Poland.

“Ridiculous,” Jill Biden said when asked about Haley’s proposal and whether the president would consider taking such a test. “We would never even discuss some-

Initial reports indicate that there were no hazardous materials spilled in the Springfield incident, and officials quickly lifted a shelter-in-place order. But Brown said he wants to know if there were any residual contaminants left in the 20 mostly empty train cars that went off track.

“The railroad’s got a lot of questions they’ve got to answer and they

See Rail, Page A8

thing like that.”

Haley, 51, who is running against her former boss, ex-President Donald Trump, 76, proposed a mandatory mental competency test for politicians over the age of 75 in February. Another contender expected to enter the GOP fray is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s 44.

Biden, the oldest person to serve as U.S. president, has said he intends to run in 2024 but hasn’t announced a decision. His wife is understood to be his closest confidante within the White House. Biden has cited his family or a surprise development, such as a health crisis, as potential deterrents to another run.

Biden has faced questions and Republican attacks based on his age in the buildup to 2024. “It’s legitimate for people to

See Biden, Page A8

TriBune ConTenT AgenCy

SAN JOSE — A gallon of milk,

a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a pound of chicken: That may be all the groceries some Californians can buy each month with their CalFresh benefits now that emergency federal pandemic funds that boosted food benefits have ended.

The severance comes at a time when Californians are already reeling from inflation and the high cost of groceries, leaving local food bank leaders in fear of a “food cliff” as demand soars and their budgets tighten.

The federal food program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, received boosts throughout the pandemic as Amer-

icans faced furloughs and layoffs and dipped into their savings. But that emergency aid has come to an end, and eligible households will lose at least $95 a month in benefits, with some seeing their benefits dip to as low as $23 a month. Benefits are determined by income and household size.

Nationally, food prices increased by 13.1% between July 2021 and July 2022, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. It estimates that inflation has cut the value of SNAP increases by 76% since 2019.

For one San Jose single mother, the end of the added emergency benefits – which will have its final payout this month – brings worry, stress and a feeling of powerless-

ness. Her monthly grocery bill had been around $300 – typically what she was receiving in CalFresh benefits with the emergency allotments. Now, her CalFresh benefits are dropping to $38.

Adrianne, 42, who asked to be identified only by her first name, said she recently went back to school, and the emergency allotments during the pandemic have been a lifeline for her and her 7-year-old daughter. She plans to stock up with the final benefits payout but is concerned about whether she’ll be able to rely on a food bank.

“Being a full-time student, taking 15 credits every semester and being a single mom, I really don’t know if I have the time to make it to pick up free food,” she said. “I’m going to have to figure

See Food, Page A8

Russia is getting around sanctions to secure supply of key chips for war

BloomBerg

Russia looks to be successfully working around European Union and Group of Seven sanctions to secure crucial s emiconductors and other technologies for its war in Ukraine, according to a senior European diplomat.

Russian imports in general have largely returned to their pre-war 2020 levels and analysis of trade data suggests that advanced chips and integrated circuits made in the EU and other allied nations are being

shipped to Russia through third countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan, the diplomat said, pointing to those private assessments.

EU and G-7 countries have introduced multiple rounds of sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine a year ago in an effort to degrade the Russian war machine and undermine its economy.

The data suggest that the real effect in some areas is so far falling short of what officials might have hoped for.

“Just signing up to new

sanctions is not enough,” said Daniel Tannebaum, global anti-financial crime practice leader at con-

sulting company Oliver Wyman. “Governments now need enforcement

Jill Biden says testing president’s mental fitness ‘ridiculous’

Angerer/ Getty Images/TNS Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, in a September 2022 file photo. Brown is the lead sponsor of a rail safety bill.

Jingles, taglines, slogans and a bonus quiz

While there are a few companies these days that produce some taglines and jingles, they pale in comparison to the ones of yesteryear. The old-school ones not only evoke memories of yesteryear, they also make you remember the product.

Now I am just using the old taglines and slogans as writing prompts today but just for fun, you are free to guess which one it is and the answers are at the end. If you ain’t in the mood for my foolishness, feel free to skip the column completely and just do the quiz, it won’t bother me at all.

1. It’s Not Nice to Fool

Mother Nature.

It may not be nice to fool

Mother Nature, but how come she gets a free pass to fool around with us? I mean, I had just started whistling “Good Day Sunshine,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “Walking on Sunshine” thinking the rain was behind us and finally washed my filthy Jeep. The next day it not only rained, it hailed. Oh hail no. Make up your mind. Plus it has been c-c-c-c-c-cc-cold. Well, it’s California cold. My youngest brother Scott, who lives in Saskatchewan where it has been in the low teens Fahrenheit, ain’t tryin’ to hear me complain about the cold. Whatevs. You deal with what you have to deal with. I’m just blasting the heat even though my PG&E bill is as high as Snoop Dogg.

2. Reach Out And Touch Someone.

I’m not really a hugger. Let me dial that in more accurately: I’m not averse to hugging, I’m just not a first hugger with

anyone with whom I’m not completely sure are my hugging friend. The thing is, I sometimes can’t tell.

I remember running into a friend at the library who I hadn’t seen in years and I hugged her, and I immediately realized we were not hugging friends. I have not made that mistake again. I know that people have valid reasons for not wanting to be hugged, which can include many things up to and including my sometimes off-putting homemade cologne made from distilled garbanzo beans and Cholula hot sauce.

The pandemic put that kybosh on hugging, which was helpful, but now it’s making a comeback. I’m thinking of just asking people if they prefer hugging or non-hugging, like how the movie theater ushers used to ask you if you wanted smoking or non-smoking.

3. Don’t Leave Home Without It.

For most of my life I did not have a cellphone and yet now if I happen to leave the house without my phone, I will hightail it back there to get it.

Last week, I tried an experiment to see what my reaction would be to actually being out and about without my phone. At first I felt a vague sense of panic, marked by raised heartbeat, perspiration and an overwhelming sense of dread. What hysterical meme was I not seeing? Did someone like or comment on one of my columns? Whose phone call or text had I missed?

But after a considerable amount of time, all that went away, I settled down, adjusted and was calm, serene and con-

fident. It turns out I don’t have to be constantly connected to a digital device like the way the Na’vi in “Avatar” got plugged into nature with their organic USB cords.

It was a revelation. An incredibly exhilarating fourand-half-minute revelation.

4. It’s The Real Thing.

Many years ago I experimented with marijuana. Now, a lot of people use the word experimented to try to dress up the actual situation they were engaged in. It usually involved smoking phat doobies then watching “Fritz the Cat” while listening to Led Zeppelin playing backward and trying to pioneer the fried-chicken-icecream-pizza-burger.

That was not my experience.

I had a laboratory (which I pronounced luh-bore-uh-tory because it sounded more official), wore a crisp white lab coat and followed the scientific method. I made careful notes about the outcomes of my experimental use and how it lined up with the hypothesis I had posited beforehand.

Oh, and I meticulously tracked my giggles.

Anyway, things being what they were in those pre-legal weed days, my supply wasn’t always the best quality and I once got some that was the male plant. Without going into a botany lesson, basically the female weed plant is what you want as it has much more THC, which is what produces the high. Cheech and Chong could have smoked as much of that impotent weed I had as they would at a Blind Melon Chitlin’ concert and been as sober as a judge. I stashed the useless weed in our garage and forgot about it. Years later my mom was cleaning it out and found it. I still remember what she said: “Look at this! Marijuana! The real thing!” I thought, “Uh, no it’s not” and hoped she couldn’t read my thought balloon.

5. How Do You Spell Relief?

Well, I sometimes spell it AC/DC. Let me explain. Since I gave up coffee over three and a half years ago, to pump myself up in the morning I often listen to loud rock music in the shower and also when getting dressed. Truth be told, I did the same thing when I did drank

coffee, but whatever.

Anyway, last week I was listening to the 1976 AC/DC album “High Voltage,” which has a song called “The Jack” on it. It’s a 12-bar blues-rock song and while on the surface it’s talking about playing cards, like many tunes by the Australian group, it’s full of double entendres.

After I was dressed, my wife Beth walked up and put her arms around me and we started to sway together to the music. It was a nice spontaneous loving morning moment. I then broke the romantic spell when I said, “You know we’re slow dancing to a song about gonorrhea, right?”

Answers: 1. Chiffon Margarine 2. Bell System 3. American Express 4. Coca-Cola 5. Rolaids.

5 correct: You’re awesome and it’s also probably time to schedule your colonoscopy.

4-3 correct: You are forgiven for forgetting some.

2-1 correct: It may be past nap time.

0 correct: Why are you even reading this? Go back to TikTok.

Oh, and if you skipped my whole column and just did the quiz, I lied about it not bothering me. You stink.

Fairfield freelance humor columnist and accidental local historian Tony Wade writes two weekly columns: “ The Last Laugh” on Mondays and “Back in the Day” on Fridays. Wade is also the author of The History Press books “Growing Up In Fairfield, California” and “Lost Restaurants of Fairfield, California” and hosts the Channel 26 government access TV show “Local Legends.” He doesn’t really think you stink if you skipped the column. But don’t do it again.

A 10-year-old wrote a score; musicians around the world are performing it

The WashingTon PosT

Olive Wallace didn’t want to do her homework, so she practiced the violin in her Pennsylvania home.

The 10-year-old aimed to create a medieval-style melody, but when she played it after elementary school last month, Olive thought her rendition sounded terrible. She left her handwritten score on the counter when she went to sleep.

Olive’s mother, Mimi, found the sheet music and wondered how the song would sound. The next morning, she posted a video on TikTok that showed the score, which she asked other users to perform.

Musicians across the world have since brought Olive’s composition to life –a result that has shocked but elated Olive and Mimi.

“I really didn’t think it was going to be what it became,” Mimi, 42, told

The Washington Post.

“I was hoping to get like 500,000 views.”

“Well,” Olive added, “you got 6 million.”

Olive’s mom and dad can casually play cello and guitar, respectively, but Olive didn’t explore music until the fourth grade. She joined her friends in the orchestra in 2021 at her school in West Grove, Pa.

At first, Olive felt she wasn’t skilled and wanted to quit. But she stuck with the violin and later learned to write sheet music and play the clarinet. She also joined the school choir. Olive enjoyed listening to soundtracks from her favorite movies and TV shows, including “Stranger Things,” “The Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter.”

Olive had also started a blog and recorded podcasts about a fantasy world she’s designing that includes “elps,” creatures that preceded mankind. Olive aspired to create music

that would fit the spirit of her fantasy world - a tune that switched between dramatic and calm tones.

She wrote the notes with pencil on a sheet of paper in her room, which she said took about a halfhour. Without telling Olive, Mimi published a video with the score Feb. 16.

“So my 10-yearold daughter wrote this,” Mimi, a thirdgrade teacher, said in a 10-second video. “Could somebody play this? I need to know; I need to know if

the error occurred. Corrections will be printed here.

it’s any good or if it makes any sense.”

Within a few hours, Mimi said the TikTok had received about a million views, and musicians had already started playing the score. Mimi informed Olive about the video, which upset the fifth-grader, who feared her sheet music appeared unprofessional. But when Olive watched a pianist play her music, she was in awe.

In the following days, musicians played the score on a violin, clarinet, guitar, harp, trumpet, flute, saxophone, cello and viola. Olive named the song “For Greatness We Bring.” She had imagined the melody slower than most people played it, but she said a string orchestra performed it perfectly.

The conductor of that orchestra, Christopher T. F. Hanson, said he saw Mimi’s TikTok on his recommended video feed while he was attending a

music conference in Bellevue, Wash. Hanson was conducting a music reading session there Feb. 16, and he thought performing Olive’s notes would be fun and inspiring for young musicians.

Hanson said he transcribed the melody and modified the score for the orchestra’s instruments. With little practice, about 50 musicians in a hotel ballroom performed the piece for nearly two minutes, and Hanson posted the TikTok the following day.

Hanson, the director of music education at Seattle Pacific University, said he hopes to release the song on streaming services and donate its proceeds to music educators.

“I saw it as such a beautiful example of how the 21st century can utilize technology and social media to connect people,” Hanson said. “Because she scrawled some notes on a page, because I can

read music and I have access to a community that makes music, we’ve now connected with literally millions of people.”

Olive also attracted attention at school, where she said classmates requested her autograph. Mimi’s original video has received about 6.2 million views.

In addition to the composition she wrote for the violin, Olive said she wants to compose her song for the cello and viola. Mimi recently bought sheet music paper for Olive, who now wants to play the violin professionally.

Olive also loves drawing and animating, so she and Mimi recently brainstormed an idea: Olive could animate and produce music for videos.

“Oh my gosh, that would be amazing for your ‘elps,’” Mimi said. “I like that. We might’ve just planted that seed.”

Tony Wade The last laugh

Mimi Wallace courtesy photo Olive Wallace and her mother, Mimi, helped a musical score go viral on TikTok.

Spring Forward Art & Demo Days returns this weekend

SUISUN VALLEY —

The Fairfield-Suisun City Visual Arts Association’s 2nd Annual Spring Forward Art & Demo Days will take place this weekend.

Participating artists will display acrylic, oil, watercolor paintings, black and white and color photography, mixed media artwork, jewelry and items created with fused glass.

For the Demo Days, the public is invited to participate in several interactive art demonstrations. Each demonstration can be up to one hour long and may be held one or both days of the event. Some of the artists may charge a small fee for the interactive demonstrations to cover their costs.

Demo Days participants can either create art on canvas, learn how to create digital art or create greeting cards.

The Spring Forward Art & Demo Days will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Village 360, 4949 Suisun Valley Road, in rural Fairfield. The event coincides with Daylight Saving Time weekend. Food will be available to order from the Landing Restaurant and wine will be available from Backroads Vines Winery.

For more information or to register, visit www.fsvaa.art/fsvaa-artfestivals or call Dennis Ariza at 707-688-8889.

Slew of government meetings populate week’s calendar

FAIRFIELD — A slew of government meetings are on the calendar this week. They are all open to the public. Some meetings are both in-person and online. Check the website for each agency for more information.

The meetings include:

n Suisun-Solano Water Authority Board Executive Committee, 9 a.m. Monday, Suisun City Hall council chamber, 701 Civic Center Blvd. Info: http:// ca-sid.civicplus.com/ agendacenter.

n Solano County Board of Supervisors, 9 a.m. Tuesday, County Government Center, 675 Texas St., Fairfield. Info: www. solanocounty.com/depts/ bos/meetings/videos.asp.

n Travis School District Governing Board, 5 p.m. Tuesday closed session, 5:30 p.m. open session, Travis Education Center, 2775 De Ronde Drive, Fairfield. Info: https://simbli. eboardsolutions.com/ sb_meetings/sb_meeting listing.aspx?S=36030187

n Fairfield City Council, 6 p.m. Tuesday, City Council chamber, 1000 Webster St. Info: www.fairfield.ca.gov/ government/city-council/ city-council-meetings.

n Rio Vista City

Helping

Solano author answers questions on new book

DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — Laura Kendall, author of “My Prosthetic Life,” will be signing books at the

The book-signing will occur from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Fairfield Civic Center Library, In celebration of Women’s History Month and 2023’s theme of “Women Who Tell Our Stories,” Kendall will participate in a questionand-answer discussion.

“My Prosthetic Life” details Kendall’s physical and emotional struggles with a birth defect and subsequent journey to self-love, acceptance and healing.

For more information, go to https:// solanolibrary.com.

Tahoe snowstorm forces ski resorts to close Sunday

Council, 6 p.m. Tuesday, City Council chamber, City Hall, 1 Main St. Info: www.riovistacity.com/ citycouncil.

n Suisun City Council, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, City Council chamber, 701 Civic Center Blvd. Info: www. suisun.com/government/ city-council.

n Rio Vista Planning Commission, 6 p.m. Wednesday, 701 Civic Center Blvd. Info: www.riovistacity. com/citycouncil/page/ meeting-agenda-attach ments-minutes-video.

n So lano County Board of Education, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Solano County Office of Education, 5100 Business Center Drive, Fairfield. Info: www.solanocoe.net.

n Solano Transportation Authority Board, 6 p.m. Wednesday, STA Board Room chamber, 423 Main St., Suisun City. Info: www.sta.ca.gov.

n Solano County Civil Service Commission, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, County Government Center, 675 Texas St., Fairfield. Info: www. solanocounty.com/depts/ bos/meetings/videos.asp.

n So lano County Airport Land Use Commission, 7 p.m. Thursday, 675 Texas St., Fairfield. Info: solanocounty.com/depts/ rm/boardscommissions/

solano_county_airport_ land_use_commission/ agendas.asp.

Solano Museum prepares for inaugural Emerald Railway Fest

SUISUN CITY — The Western Railway Museum is planning its inaugural Emerald Railway Fest to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in style.

People are invited to hop aboard one of the museum’s historic vintage locomotives and travel across the lush green Solano County country-

side. Guests will enjoy a day of live entertainment and activities for the whole family, accompanied by the best food and brews Solano County has to offer.

Be sure to come dressed in your St. Patty’s Day best, and prepare for a rollicking good time on the rails.

Trains are scheduled to depart at 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Organizers have put a call out to vendors to help support the inaugural event. Those who seek information about food and entertainment vendor options are asked to contact Katrina Gomez at katrina. gomez@wrm.org.

The Western Railway Museum is located at 5848 Highway 12 in rural Suisun City between Suisun City and Rio Vista. For tickets or for more information, visit https://www.wrm.org/ events and select Emerald Railway Festival.

Adolph Spencer Almquist

Adolph “Gus” Almquist, 97, retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, on February 19, 2023, heroically and peacefully “slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” navigating his proverbial final flight from Fairfield, California, hands steady on the controls and blue eyes fixed on an uncharted horizon, surrounded by adoring family.

Gus was born in autumn of 1925 to parents Gustaf Almquist and Augusta Ingeborg, both Swedish immigrants. A wild and independent “Yooper” from Upper Peninsula Michigan, the youngest child was raised on a large farm with brothers Clarence, Len, and Kip, and sister Evelyn. The family raised cows, chickens, and pigs, and collected wood from a forested section of the farm. Gus recounted a moment of awe at 10 years old, looking out at the cedars under fresh snowfall, thinking, “I’ll remember this all my life.

When Gus was age two, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh piloted the Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, winning the Ortieg Prize to become the first man to fly solo non-stop from New York to Paris, instantly receiving worldwide adulation with steady and inspiring news coverage throughout Gus’s formative years. He developed a deep passion for the aviator that defined the dreams of Gus’s youth and foreshadowed his destiny.

During the depression, his older siblings moved to Brooklyn, where brother Len, equally inspired by Lindbergh, learned to fly. In 1938, a twelve-year-old Gus finished the first eight grades in a oneroom schoolhouse, skipping two grades. The farm was sold, and the family moved to Brooklyn, arriving on a Friday evening. The next morning, Len took Gus up for his first airplane flight! In 1941, Len joined the Canadian Royal Air Force and in 1942 Gus began flying lessons, soloing at age 17 on December 17, just four days after news that Len’s plane was missing during a WWII night mission off the coast of Holland. For Gus, flight was an escape from gravity— the exhilarating feeling of freedom born of intense concentration.

After earning a bachelor ’s degree in civil engineering through the GI Bill, Gus began his Air Force career as a Flight Instructor, applying an unconventional teaching style of encouragement that instilled leadership capabilities in his trainees. Then followed a combat tour in the Korean War (narrowly surviving his last flight mission under fire) and a prestigious assignment serving in the Strategic Air Command during the Cold War, flying B-47 Stratojets that carried two nuclear bombs intended for specific Russian targets in the event of a war. Ironically, in later years, visiting Russia remained on his bucket list.

Although that joy of flying never left, his diverse career and aptitude for computer technology led to fulfillment serving on the ground. He quickly rose to Branch Chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) supporting the highly classified Satellite Reconnaissance System out of Arlington Virginia during the Kennedy administration, including handling incoming satellite imagery during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. His last assignment was as Division Chief with the Pacific Air Force Command in Hawaii during the

tRibune content agency

At least three ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area are closed Sunday because of the heavy snow and dangerous driving conditions caused by a winter storm that struck Northern California this weekend.

As of 7:45 a.m. Sunday, operators at Heavenly Ski Resort, Homewood Mountain Resort and Sugar Bowl Resort said they decided to close out of caution and for the safety of their guests and employees.

The winter storm created hazardous conditions in the Sierra Nevada on Saturday, forcing the closure of several highways, including Interstate 80 over Donner Summit.

The National Weather Service warned residents of another strong

storm that could bring “multiple feet of snow with major impacts” Sunday into Monday, meteorologists wrote in a forecast discussion. A winter storm warning is in effect through 10 a.m. Monday for the Sierra Nevada, Coastal Range and Northern Mountains, the weather service said. An avalanche warning was in effect for the central Sierra through 7 a.m. Monday.

In the Bay Area, the forecast called for another round of scattered showers and below normal temperatures Sunday after thunderstorms, hail and strong winds struck the region overnight, the weather service said. More rain is forecast through Tuesday night, with conditions easing Wednesday morning.

Vietnam War, where he was promoted to Lt. Colonel.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1969, he leveraged his DIA connections for MacDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company working with the proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Later, drawing on his computer expertise, Gus automated the Alameda County’s library system and, in a final career, engaged his engineering mind at Contra Costa Public Works Department, creating innovative solutions for flooding and representing the agency at public hearings, always appreciating democracy in action.

In 1950, Gus met Dorothy “Dottie” Sikes on a blind date in San Antonio, Texas. Transferred two hundred miles away, he courted her weekly by airplane and they enchanted each other into 67 years of devoted marriage. They parented four free-spirited daughters, creating permanent close-knit family bonds forged, in part, by frequent relocations to bases throughout the United States, including Hawaii. After Dorothy was paralyzed by a stroke in 1957, changing their world overnight, Gus was devoted to tender and steadfast caregiving for the remainder of her remarkable life. These two, each showing extraordinary character in response to challenge, modeled enduring and resilient love something their daughters will carry forward always.

Blessed with an inquisitive intellect, Gus enjoyed countless hours reading and sharing ideas—relevant to each person’s interests —about current events, health, politics, science, music, philosophy, photography, and biographies of world leaders. His life experience was the foundation of captivating stories told with expressive delivery!

In 1951, Gus fell in love with photography and the Rolleiflex camera. He recognized the contemplation required to take meaningful photographs and printed lively portraits and bucolic landscapes to give as gifts. In recent years, always in step with current technolog y, Gus favored his iPhone 11 for photography and, over his 96th year, inventively engineered a hand-held device that comfortably steadied his hand.

Until his last breath, Gus sustained a life filled with connections to loved ones near and far, sharing impassioned discourse, asking about their lives. Dynamic, purposeful, and quietly caring, he never stopped learning, inspiring others, and being surprised by life’s wonders. His compass never failed.

Gus and the family are grateful for advancements in health care that sustained excellent quality of life into his late ninth decade, and the phenomenal Fairfield doctors who cared for him. We greatly appreciate the compassionate Sutter Health Hospice and Medical Aid in Dying care teams that guided his last weeks, and California’s End of Life Option Act sanctioning his decision to die with dignity

Gus is survived by his four daughters Marty (Larry), Suzun (Richard), Ellie (Randy), and Karen (Wendy); three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; nephews Bill, Len, and Dean; niece Sheryl, and many lifelong friends. He is preceded in death by his wife Dorothy, his parents and siblings, and nephew Len Almquist.

Gus will be interred during a private family ceremony at Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland, California.

To honor Gus’s memory, keep reaching out in love — to everyone.

Susan Hiland/Daily Republic file (2022)

Mike Miller shows off his paintings during last year’s Spring Forward Art and Demo Day at Village 360 in Suisun Valley.

Courtesy photo Author Laura Kendall is the author of “My Prosthetic Life.”

Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic file (2022)

Water spurts from the fountain in front of the Solano County Government Center, June 23, 2022.

Columns&Games

Dear Annie: I find it incredible that so many people want to push their views on children who do not belong to their family and then pass judgment on their parents. There have been numerous scientific studies proving that children become smarter and more confident when they play by themselves or with other children without adults’ helicoptering interference. Adults do not exist to be toys or full-time entertainers for our children. We raise them, feed them, clothe them and nurse them through medical illness, which are all things that require a large amount of attention and love.

No one has any idea what a person does on their cellphone. They could be arranging much needed medical care, working to pay the bills, communicating with school, or simply reading the news or an ebook. When I was a child, my nose was stuck in a book 75% of my free time. The rest of my time was spent jumping rope, playing marbles and getting into antics with the neighborhood kids. My mother drew during most of her free time and read the rest of the time.

There was never an expectation for her to give me her undivided attention. She was an adult, with adult concerns,

ARIES (March 21-April 19).

Life will be like a swing today with momentum that takes you back and forth, but only within a limited range of motion. And though you move forward only to be brought back to where you started, at least you get the rush of experiencing your own vigor.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20).

You’re not afraid to take action, but you’re mindful of the other players. You’ll follow protocol to be sure you don’t disrespect anyone. The task is not worth doing if it hurts feelings along the way. You make a point to lift others.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21).

Are there winners and losers?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s all how you frame it. These games will rely entirely on perspective. You’ll feel at liberty to look at things in a number of ways and find the perspective that most empowers you.

CANCER (June 22-July 22).

The more you value yourself, the more others will value you. You’ll spend money on making yourself feel better. Investing in yourself will be a way of paying respect and showing gratitude for the physical vehicle of your body and mind.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22).

You have been blocking a chaotic element out of your life. Through the years, you learned

Daily Cryptoquotes

that included taking care of me in ways that were far more important than entertaining me. I hope you can gently remind the next person who complains about parents on smartphones of this.

I would be happy to forward published academic medical articles upon request. Thank you. —

Doctor Who Knows

Dear Doctor: Thank you for your letter. You are correct that criticism of other people’s parenting is widespread and unfortunate. Helicopter parenting is a big problem as well, and kids do best when given appropriate age independence.

Seeing a parent on a smartphone while ignoring their children is easy to complain about, but, as you say, what if they are on the phone to pay bills or make a doctor’s appointment for the child? On the other hand, scrolling down social media posts endlessly while ignoring one’s child is never good. Perhaps a balance is what is called for.

Dear Annie: To the woman who wrote to you about the heartache of Valentine’s Day each year, as the day she lost her precious baby, I am so sorry for their loss. A similar thing happened to me with my last baby. A relative who meant well asked me soon after he passed if she could

Today’s birthday

In even the busiest and most fulfilled life, there is a constant craving. It will give you high energy and drive you forward to new adventures. You’ll earn your way into being in position of options, which you will narrow down quickly by sticking to your values and standards.

to do this so automatically you no longer realize it’s a choice, but something will happen today to help you appreciate how you’ve learned to manage life’s realities.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).

The stressors in your life will come to bear on your ability to resist temptation. The best way to stick to your plans for yourself is to reduce your stress through exercise or meditation.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23).

Replenish your energy with time in the sun. Fresh air and the warm light on your skin will be crucial to your well-being. Tonight, you’ll be as effective as you are organized.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). You look forward to spending time with a certain someone. These small interactions are

put my son’s “birthday” on the family calendar. I said no, because that’s also his death day, and we didn’t want it to be a sad reminder each year and become a hard day for us. It could have been very difficult for us to move forward. But we choose to celebrate that day each year instead as his “Angel Day.” He was the youngest of six children, who didn’t understand why their baby brother didn’t come home with Mommy from the hospital. We chose to tell our children that he was so perfect that he was called back to heaven to be an angel. They never were sad or questioned this answer but accepted that he was needed as an angel. Almost two decades later, they never have forgotten this special date. Each year on that day, we celebrate his life by eating angel food cake for dessert and having happy thoughts of our little angel! I recommend this to anyone dealing with this same grief. I hope this helps Valentine’s parents. It helped my whole family! — Valentine Baby

Dear Valentine Baby: What a beautiful tradition to honor your baby. Thank you so much for sharing and helping others who might be in similar situations.

Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@ creators.com.

part of an important pattern. You sense correctly that there’s a mutual value gleaned in the exchange.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21). Things cannot improve while staying the same. The status quo will be disrupted, and this is part of the process. You will drop your resistance to life’s flow. You’ll move fluidly, adjusting to new people and environments.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19). You can still accomplish your most serious work while in a playful state. You’ll be around people who bring out a fun side of you and make you feel sharper and more alive.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20Feb. 18). Your feelings are valid. Maybe you are not having the emotion you would prefer, but it’s not like you get to choose. The feelings come up and then they dissipate. Good or bad, they are fleeting. There is nothing to be afraid of.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). There is too much to know in this world for one person to have it all figured out. You’re eager to learn and up for challenge. The old saying applies: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

Write Holiday Mathis at HolidayMathis.com.

Word Sleuth

Crossword by Phillip Alder

Bridge

contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

In bridge, we must be careful to retain our potent cards until the most efficacious moment to extract the maximum benefit from them – as in today’s deal. How should South plan the play in six spades against a diamond lead?

The original declarer tried dummy’s queen at trick one, but East won with the king and returned the diamond 10. Now declarer couldn’t make his slam whether he tried the heart finesse or attempted to set up a long heart for a discard.

TREAT THY KEY CARDS CAREFULLY INDEED

What do you do with a book when you have finished reading it? Do you lend it to a friend? Do you put it out for recycling? Or do you slot it alphabetically into your bookshelf? John Milton had a great respect for them: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do

Note the difference if declarer plays dummy’s diamond deuce at trick one. A nervous East might win with the king, making declarer’s life easy. However, let’s suppose he wins with the eight. Unable to return a diamond, East switches to a club, which South takes with his ace. Declarer cashes the spade ace and heart king, plays a heart to dummy’s ace and ruffs a heart high in hand. A spade to dummy’s king permits another high heart ruff. Declarer draws West’s last trump, plays a diamond to dummy’s ace and discards his club loser on the established heart jack.

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

3/6/23

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 grid contains the digits 1 through 9, with no repeats. That means that no number is repeated in any row, column or box. Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com

Difficulty level: BRONZE

Solution to 3/4/23:

Hold your judgments on parental phone use; you don’t know what they’re doing

Horoscopes by Holiday Mathis

Annie Lane Dear Annie

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Trixie Mattel, Nelly and Diplo to host Stagecoach Late Night in Palomino

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ANAHEIM — Stagecoach County Music Festival fans will be able to keep the party going once the headliners Luke Bryan, Kane Brown and Chris Stapleton finish riling up the crowd on the Mane Stage at the 15th annual concert event happening April 28-30 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio.

Festival producers have announced the lineup for Late Night in Palomino shows happening after-hours on the Palomino Stage. Drag queen, pop star and TV personality Trixie Mattel, who also happens to own

the pink paradise Trixie Motel just a few miles from the festival grounds, will lead the festivities on Friday night.

Rapper Nelly, who crossed over into the country genre by collaborating with acts such as Tim McGraw, Kane Brown and Florida Georgia Line, is taking over on Saturday. DJ Diplo, the first artist to perform the after-hours event back in 2019, will officially close out Stagecoach 2023 with his set on Sunday evening.

Joining Bryan on Friday will be Jon Pardi, Riley Green, ZZ Top, Elle King, Breland, Melissa Etheridge and more.

Pickles Brian Crane

Zits Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Pearls Before Swine Stephan Pastis

Candorville Darrin Bell

Baby Blues Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott

Baldo Hector Cantú

Transparency on local ballot measures faces new threat

During every California election cycle, dozens of ballot measures to raise taxes or issue bonds appear on local ballots.

Long-standing state law requires that the ballot include a statement, no longer than 75 words, summarizing what each measure would do. For many years, sponsors would use their 75 words to extol the virtues of their measures, often concealing their true financial impacts.

In 2015, a Republican assemblyman from Big Bear, Jay Obernolte, carried a bill aimed at making the ballot summaries less slanted and more factual, and thenGov. Jerry Brown signed it. Assembly Bill 809 required tax increase measures, including bonds, proposed via initiative to tell voters how much money they would raise (if approved) and how long the new taxes would remain in effect.

Two years later, Obernolte introduced Assembly Bill 195, which extended the disclosure requirement to tax and bond measures proposed by cities, counties, school districts and other local entities. It also added another requirement, that the 75-word explanation of measures be a “true and impartial synopsis” of the proposal “in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

The latter was clearly aimed at stopping ballot measure sponsors from using the 75-word summaries to campaign for their passage, and Brown embraced that reform by signing AB 195.

Not surprisingly, local government officials and their allies didn’t like it, fearing that having to explain the financial consequences of their proposals and abstain from language advocating their passage would make voters less likely to vote “yes” in the adjacent boxes. They complained that meeting all of the requirements in 75 words was impossible and found an ally in Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco.

Just before the Legislature adjourned its 2019 session, Wiener used the so-called gutand-amend maneuver to propose legislation that would repeal much of what Obernolte, who is now a congressman, had wrought. It would have allowed sponsors of tax and bond measures to skip including financial impacts in the 75-word statements and, instead, essentially allow them to tell voters, “See voter guide for tax rate information.”

While voter guides are useful for engaged voters, it’s fair to say that many, if not most, don’t read them. They instead rely on the ballot language itself when making their decisions. Wiener won legislative approval of Senate Bill 268, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, declaring accurately, “I am concerned that this bill as crafted will reduce transparency for local tax and bond measures.”

We’re now poised to do it all over again because Wiener is back with an almost identical measure, Senate Bill 532, claiming it would “improve voter transparency into the financial implications of ballot measures.”

However, it would have the opposite effect, as Newsom concluded.

Obernolte’s requirements are “well intentioned,” Wiener said in a statement, but “present massive – and at times insurmountable – challenges to transit agencies, school districts, cities, counties, hospitals, libraries, and other public entities that are legally required to rely on ballot measures to raise critical funds, especially for infrastructure projects.”

The 75-word requirements are particularly difficult for complex, multitiered tax and bond proposals, Wiener said, leaving “little to no room to explain how the new taxes or bonds will actually be spent to benefit the local community.”

Clearly, Wiener wants to make it easier to pass tax and bond measures by allowing their sponsors to once again use the 75-word summary for advocacy, rather than a “true and impartial synopsis.”

They should make their case in campaigns, not use the ballot itself for propaganda.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

Is Fox news or propaganda?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green just announced that “We need a national divorce . . . We are done.” Oh, good! Now, Lady Q-Anon, take your broken oath of office and resign from Congress. Shocking, crazy Marjorie is only the last of so many crazy people saying and doing shocking, crazy things during the last half-dozen years that you might wonder, “What’s happening?”

The rise of thugs like the Proud Boys, violent attempts to take over the government, hundreds of thousands dying unnecessarily of Covid, people supporting Vladimir Putin in his Nazi-like, barbaric invasion –what’s happening?

It’s almost all the work of Fox News and its many imitators. And now we know – Fox did it all knowing better but wanted the money. It was all about the Benjamins.

Democratic America suspected, but it didn’t know. Do you really, really believe Republicans can’t get Covid? That Jan. 6 was just a normal day? They reported falsehoods to keep their market share. Truth would be bad for viewer loyalty.

What Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit has shown us is truly historic and irrefutable.

Irrefutable like Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican assistants who told us how Trump was knee-deep into planning the Jan. 6 Capitol takeover attempt. Irrefutable when you hear Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson all confess they knew that Sidney Powell was reporting ballotstealing baloney.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Irrefutable when you hear Rupert Murdock, head of Fox News, report he also knew about the lies and “I could have [stopped them], but I didn’t.” Murdoch defended allowing Mike Lindell of My Pillow to pontificate about his finding evidence of ballot theft as just an advertisement for pillows, saying, “It’s not about Red or Blue . . . it’s green.” Not news, but propaganda for profits.

Or listen to Suzanne Scott, head of Fox News Media, when she spoke to Murdoch the day before the Capitol riot. Should they tell viewers that election denialism was false? “Privately, they [Hannity, et al.] are all there [knowing that denialism is wrong], but we have to be careful . . . about pissing off the viewers,” she said.

There you have it; angry viewers ran Fox. Fox had long radicalized its viewers. Now Fox rode on the back of the tiger and couldn’t get off.

Unreal.

Were there consequences to these lies? Oh, yes. There were direct consequences of this particular lie, but also for so many other crazy, false Fox promotions that have hurt the nation. We always wondered if these news anchors really believed all the garbage they promoted.

Now we know: No.

Consequence: Conservative rage. Americans tearing each other apart. Talk of a “national divorce.” A violent attempted takeover of the national government, a state governor almost kidnapped and killed, election denial hysterics, Covid denial, the normalization of Jan. 6 where conservatives won’t even look at the evidence of the Trump actions to overturn constitu-

tional processes, election workers threatened so severely that many have moved or resigned, armed men patrolling polling places in 2022 to prevent more cheating that didn’t happen. Consequences. I know conservatives in Fairfield who don’t believe that N-95 masking and keeping social distance makes any difference, and some that don’t believe in vaccinations – as if Republicans don’t get the deadly Covid disease. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died from that lie.

Now children aren’t getting vaccinated and they’re contracting measles. But the lies keep viewers angrily locked in and profits flowing. Yes, huge consequences.

Fox vociferously promoted “the Russia hoax,” ignoring the evidence that Russia helped Trump win in 2016. It never admitted that Robert Mueller found 10 instances when Trump probably obstructed justice. Trump obstructed justice to cover up evidence that even though there was no “collusion,” or “conspiracy,” there was lots of help from Russia.

Russia placed millions of ads on Facebook and Twitter. It hacked the Democratic Party campaign headquarters and gave the steal to WikiLeaks. Fox viewers still don’t know it.

Consequence: A new age of 1950s McCarthyism, only it’s not communists who are betraying America this time, it’s American Democrats. Another lie.

Fox lied and lied. Now there’s proof.

Jack Batson is a former member of the Fairfield City Council. Reach him by email at jsbatson@prodigy.net.

Fair winds, following seas to President Carter

Jimmy Carter was a Navy nuclear officer, a Georgia governor and the 39th president of the United States of America; high accomplishments for a small rural town peanut farmer.

Carter studied engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and was accepted at the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated in the top 10% of his class in 1946. He served on submarines for five years and worked with Adm. Hyman G. Rickover developing the nuclear submarine program.

When Canada’s Chalk River nuclear reactor had a partial meltdown, which ruptured the reactor and flooded the facility with radioactive water, Carter and his team were sent to clean the site. The three-man teams were lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals for radioactive cleanup as that was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the high levels of radiation present. For six months after the radioactive exposure, Carter passed radioactivity in his urine and feces.

Carter resigned his commission when his father died. He was elected for two terms as state senator and was elected governor of Georgia in 1970. As governor, he reorganized the state government to reduce the number of personnel to increase efficiency and reduce costs and improved the weak educational system of the state.

Carter became the president of the United States in 1977 and introduced a broad list of programs for administrative, economic and social reform.

However, the Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate did not support his programs and significantly limited success during his presidency. President Carter established the Department of Energy, the Department of Education and created the Superfund to clean up abandoned toxic waste dumps. Carter’s greatest successes for long-term benefit to the nation were to promote the Airline Deregulation Act to increase competition in the airline industry; the Staggers Rail Act, which deregulated the national railroad industry, and the Motor Carrier Act benefiting both workers and customers.

Carter convinced Congress in 1977 to abolish all federal criminal penalties for the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

His greatest challenges were an oil crisis, high inflation, low growth, Soviet strategic gains, and the Iran hostage crisis, which he was unsuccessful in resolving.

Jimmy Carter inherited a troubled economy. His presidency had the highest GDP growth since Lyndon B. Johnson but had the highest inflation rate and the third-highest unemployment rate during the same period.

Carter’s greatest accomplishments were in foreign affairs where he obtained treaties to transfer the Panama Canal to Panama; shepherded the Camp David Accord which established peace between Israel and Egypt: established full diplomatic relations with China; and signed a

new bilateral Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia. The Nobel Peace Prize 2002 was awarded to Jimmy Carter “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance Democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

After Carter’s presidency, he established the Carter Presidential Center, which provided badly needed health care to the world, including 60 million treatments for preventable blindness and essentially wiped out Guinea Worm Disease, which affected 3.5 million people per year. He worked with Habitat for Humanity building homes for the poor. Jimmy Carter became a prolific author, writing two books on the Middle East, a book on the Revolutionary War, and three books on the lessons of aging.

Kai Bird in “The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” states, “No modern president worked harder at the job and few achieved more than Carter.” He was the epitome of service before self and a committed Christian. It informed his daily walk and governance. Jimmy Carter deserves credit and respect, and we wish him fair winds and following seas.

Roger Oberbeck is a Navy veteran , electrical engineer, guided missile systems field engineer, Navy nuclear engineer, author and biotech senior validation engineer. He is a member of The Right Stuff Committee and can be reached at roger oberbeck@yahoo.com.

Dan Walters

Jack Batson

Roger Oberbeck

Fentanyl

crisis: Fury grows over Bay Area school districts that still aren’t ready to save an overdosing student

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As state and local officials voice growing concern about the fentanyl crisis – and the U.S. attorney general says the Justice Department is focusing “enormous urgency” on the deadly drug –high schools in nearly a dozen Bay Area districts are still not prepared to save an overdosing student, according to a survey by the Bay Area News Group.

The news organization found 36% of the 33 districts that responded said they have yet to train teachers and staff to recognize the signs of fentanyl overdoses.

About 27% have not made the lifesaving drug Narcan readily available in schools, even after Bay Area educators and school nurses have used the nasal spray to revive students at least four times this school year.

But there also was encouraging news: Many schools have stepped up their preparedness in recent months, the survey showed. At least nine districts have followed through after this news organization conducted an earlier survey in December, and have now trained their staffs and are stocking up on Narcan. In one of those districts, the Milpitas Unified school board president prodded the district’s superintendent in an email – “Where are we on fentanyl?”–after reading stories by the Bay Area News Group about schools taking action to save overdosing students.

Chris Norwood, the board president, recognizes that his district, like most, is still dealing with widespread learning loss from COVID school closures and other chronic issues around poverty that can consume teachers’ and administrators’ time.

“We’re dealing with those things,” Norwood said, “but before you even get to that, you’re talking about kids dying.”

Fentanyl was behind a staggering one in five California youth deaths in 2021, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis published in October. That month, San Jose’s Overfelt High principal Vito Chiala and his safety team found themselves saving an overdosing teen in the school conference room. Only two days later, a school social worker who had just been trained used Narcan to revive a student at Oak Grove High in San Jose. And in January, a week after returning from winter break, a school nurse at Acalanes High School in Lafayette used Narcan to save a 17-yearold girl overdosing in a school bathroom.

One of the most unnerving things about fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin, is that teens often don’t know they are consuming it. It is being laced into less lethal drugs that young people can buy online, such as illicit painkillers and stimulants.

Last week, testifying before Congress, Attorney General Merrick Garland blamed Mexican drug cartels for fueling the epidemic and acknowledged current efforts are failing to stop it.

That’s why schools are under pressure to respond.

In 2021, 77 Bay Area youth ages 15 to 19 were rushed to emergency rooms after acute opioid poisonings, according to

data from the California Department of Public Health. A staggering number of those visits, 34, were in Santa Clara County.

But notably, San Jose Unified is the only school district in Santa Clara County that has not signed up for the county’s Narcan training program or begun providing school staff with a supply of the lifesaving drug. One county official, fed up after months of pushing the district to take action, is now expressing her fury publicly.

“It’s amazing. They are the biggest and largest school district in San Jose, and they are absolutely refusing to have Narcan on campuses,” said Mira Parwiz, director of Addiction Medicine Services at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and one of the leaders of the county’s overdose prevention program that’s helping train schools. “They just say, ‘Oh, we just don’t have time for this.’ … What they are waiting for is for a student to die.”

San Jose Unified spokesperson Jennifer Maddox shot back, saying that “obviously we are not waiting for a student to die.” She said most, but not all, of the middle and high schools in the district have campus police officers who are equipped with Narcan. Those officers are on campus “most of the time,” she said. The district has also trained nurses on how to spot the signs of an opioid overdose but has not trained them to use Narcan.

The San Jose high schools that have used Narcan to save students were in East Side Union High School District.

Three other districts – Pleasanton Unified, Fremont Unified and South San Francisco Unified – responded to the Bay Area News Group’s latest survey that they do not plan to acquire their own stock of Narcan or train their staffs on how to use it within the next two months.

Like San Jose Unified, Pleasanton and Fremont say they rely on school resource officers to carry Narcan. Fremont will provide training for school principals next month. Pleasanton’s school nurses have been trained to identify signs of fentanyl overdoses, but are not armed with Narcan, said the district’s communications officer Patrick Gannon. In the meantime, the district is distributing information to students about the dangers of the opioid as part of a broader campaign to address students’ “negative choices.”

Many districts are now taking a more aggressive approach.

Oakland Unified School District recently trained all its nursing staff on how to administer Narcan and is in the process of getting additional staff trained, according to the district’s spokesperson John Sasaki.

In Milpitas, at least 40 staff members have now been trained, including health clerks, district nurses, high school and middle school administrators, and 16 staff members at Calaveras Hills High. In a presentation to the school board Tuesday, student services manager Jillian Valdez said that dozens of Narcan doses were sent this past week to high schools and middle schools, along with eight doses to each elementary school. Presentations to families on fentanyl awareness start this week.

State has nearly 100 new housing laws; are they fixing the affordability crisis?

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Facing a massive affordable-housing crisis pushing Californians out of their hometowns and some onto the street, state legislators passed law after law to boost housing production. Now, Sacramento is asking itself the million-dollar question: Is it working?

The answer: not as quickly as anyone hoped.

Nearly 100 housing bills have been signed into law since 2016 as legislators, in the midst of intense pushback from some growth-resistant city officials and residents, made supercharging the state’s housing supply a top priority. Despite that monumental effort, housing production has remained relatively stagnant, according to data tracked by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

The disappointing results, laid bare during a recent joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly’s housing committees, point to holes that still need to be fixed before the state can build its way out of the crisis – such as high costs and a significant lack of funding. At the same time, lawmakers are hopeful the volume will improve, insisting some of this new legislation just needs more time before it will fully bear fruit.

“We’re coming up short,” Ben Metcalf, managing director of the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said during the hearing. “But I think it’s important to say it’s also early.”

The number of homes permitted across California has increased 16% since 2018 – the year the landmark Senate Bill 35 began forcing cities to approve and expedite certain projects that include affordable units. That’s hardly impressive, considering just 132,811 homes were permitted in 2021 – less than half of what state officials say California needs every year to achieve its target 2.5 million new homes by the end of the decade. And with interest rates and construction costs rising, it’s getting even harder to build.

But while the new housing laws have been slow to boost overall production, they’ve already made a noticeable difference when it comes to affordable homes and small in-law units known as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.

“We’re already seeing some of the results,” Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Demo-

crat who chairs the Senate Housing Committee, said at the hearing. “It’s not as quickly as we want, but it’s gradually moving in the right direction.”

Permits for low-income and very-low-income units nearly doubled to 20,245 between 2018 and 2021, while permits for higher-priced units increased by just 5%. Many of the state’s new housing laws either don’t apply or aren’t as useful when it comes to market-rate units.

And while low-income units are crucial, they make up a small fraction of the state’s overall housing production. Experts agree they can’t fix the crisis by themselves.

But for affordable housing developers, the new laws have made a world of difference. Elected officials, housing advocates and developers gathered in Mountain View on Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking of La Avenida Apartments – a 100-unit building for low-income residents. The project took advantage of SB 35, which allowed the developers to skip public hearings and dodge certain lawsuits that could delay or even kill the project. That saved them two or three years, estimated Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, which is building the project. And time is money, as delays mean higher interest payments on building loans.

“You can’t overstate how huge that is for affordable housing,” Mandolini said.

SB 35 is perhaps the most well-known of a series of recent housing

bills that do everything from streamline the permitting process for certain projects, to require cities to plan for more housing, to allow multifamily developments in single-family neighborhoods.

Legislators also have passed bills that make it easier to add small backyard or garage units to homes in single-family neighborhoods. As a result, the number of such accessory dwelling units permitted in California has increased by nearly 130% to 20,193 units between 2018 and 2021.

But the flurry of new legislation has yet to accomplish for most housing what it has done for ADUs and affordable dwellings. SB 35, for example, can be used to create market-rate housing, but it rarely is, according to research from the Terner Center.

Steve Eggert, founder of development company Anton DevCo, told lawmakers that’s because SB 35’s labor rules for market-rate projects require developers to pay wages that aren’t feasible.

Wiener, who wrote SB 35, is attempting to address that this year with a new bill – SB 423 –that would change those labor requirements. It also would permanently extend SB 35’s streamlining provisions, which are set to sunset in 2025.

The biggest problem, which came up again and again during the recent legislative hearing, is that housing is too expensive to build, and there isn’t enough funding to subsidize low-income projects. It’s costing Eggert’s team

$429 per square foot to build a 200-unit project in Santa Cruz – compared to $256 per square foot for a similar project in Colorado, he said. Meanwhile, affordable housing developers have to fight for the limited supply of state and federal funding that allows them to charge reduced rents.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, vowed to find ongoing funding for affordable housing – whether through taxes, bonds, or something else. There’s also some enthusiasm building this year for turning nonresidential sites into housing, Metcalf said. Wiener’s SB 4 would make it easier for religious institutions to build homes on their properties. Assemblymember Matt Haney’s AB 1532 would make it easier to turn office buildings into apartments and condos.

In the meantime, legislators are asking for patience as new state laws ramp up. “I think the challenge is we’ve done a lot of stuff, we’re not going to see the ROI on it for a little bit longer,” Wicks said in an interview, using an acronym that stands for return on investment. “And if you’re a voter, you’re paying high housing costs today. You’re driving by homeless encampments today. You want to see change now.”

Bay Area newlyweds say Hawaii tour boat abandoned them in the ocean

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

A Bay Area couple on their honeymoon are suing a Hawaii tour company for allegedly abandoning them in the open ocean during a snorkeling tour.

Elizabeth Webster and Alexander Burckle say that Sail Maui owes them damages for negligence and emotional distress. According to their lawsuit, they are Alameda County residents and Stanford graduates who both work as chemists.

The couple were honeymooning in Maui in September 2021 when the alleged incident occurred.

According to the suit filed in the US District Court for the District of Hawaii, they booked a Lanai coast tour with Sail Maui. The tour, which included 44 passengers, set off for a snorkeling destination

off what was once Club Lanai, a resort only accessible via boat.

Webster and Burckle allege that the boat’s captain and crew failed to describe the boundaries of where they should be snorkeling or when snorkelers should return to the boat. After about an hour in the water, the couple say the boat began sailing away from them. They say they waved their arms in a distress signal, but the boat continued to leave them behind in the increasingly rough, choppy water.

A Sail Maui lifeguard “finished corralling what she erroneously thought was the last passenger back onboard the Vessel, and the crew prepared to depart for the next dive site,” the lawsuit alleges. “One passenger later reported to the Coast Guard that when she

returned to the Vessel, she reported to a crew member that Plaintiffs were still out in the water further out then where she had been, but the crew member assured her Plaintiffs were already accounted for.”

For about 30 minutes, the couple claim they tried swimming toward the boat. By then, they say the surf was up to 8 feet high.

“Plaintiffs were beginning to panic and were struggling to swim in the ocean conditions,” the lawsuit reads. “They feared that drowning was imminent. Plaintiffs realized the Vessel had left them and was not coming back for them, and they decided that their only option for survival at that point was to return to shore.”

Although they were “extremely fearful and nervous,” they say they

began swimming toward the Club Lanai shore. At 1 p.m., they made it safely to shore, where Webster allegedly wrote out “HELP” and “SOS” in the sand. About 10 minutes later, a pair of good Samaritans came by in their truck and gave the couple water and their cell phone to call for help.

The lawsuit claims a Coast Guard investigation into the incident found that the “vessel master negligently performed duties with regard to operating the vessel because he did not uphold the company safety procedures.”

Webster and Burckle are seeking a jury trial to pursue $5 million in damages. The case has been assigned to Judge J. Michael Seabright.

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group

Eden Housing President Linda Mandolini, right, and Mountain View Vice Mayor, Pat Showalter, participate in the groudbreaking ceremony for the affordable housing project, La Avenida Apartments, in Mountain View, Friday.

out something.”

Hundreds of thousands of Bay Area families may face similar challenges. In December 2022, roughly 256,000 households were receiving CalFresh benefits in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, according to the California Department of Social Services. Across California, that number was nearly 3 million.

In Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, the more than 93,000 households receiving CalFresh benefits will lose approximately $16 million per month, according to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley – one of the largest food banks in the country.

As families lose the much-needed emergency benefits, food banks are bracing for an influx in demand. Throughout the pandemic, they broadened their reach as a social safety net as more people sought help – many for the first time. At the beginning of the pandemic, four in 10 people visiting food banks across the country were doing so for the first time, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.

Second Harvest of Silicon Valley – which serves residents in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties – doubled the number of people they fed when the pandemic hit, from about 250,000 clients a month to 500,000.

The nonprofit currently provides food for 460,000 people on average each month – an 80% increase from before the pandemic.

In fall 2021, adults 65 and older had a higher poverty rate, 16.3%, than children and adults between 18 and 64, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. In previous years, child poverty has been the highest.

Latinos are also disproportionately impacted by poverty in California, though the rate has fallen since 2019. In 2021, they made up 45.7% of impoverished Californians, but 39.7% of the state’s population.

Second Harvest CEO Leslie Bacho said many of the federal financial resources that helped them meet the need have disappeared. At the same time, donations fell, and their food costs climbed 30%.

That’s already led the agency to make some difficult decisions. Second Harvest typically gave out a gallon of milk to clients at food distributions. But at the beginning of the year, they reduced it to a half-gallon.

“The hard reality is we have limited resources, and the numbers are not adding up, so we’re having to take a really hard look at that,” Bacho said.

Stephanie Garcia, 39, a single mother of a 6-year-old in San Jose, saw just how limited those

resources were on Friday morning when she went to the Mayfair Community Center to pick up food being distributed by Second Harvest. While she said she was grateful for what she did get – a couple of canned goods and some frozen vegetables – she left without eggs, milk or any fresh fruits and vegetables.

“This morning, [my daughter] says, ‘mommy, you’re Superwoman, and I’m your Supergirl,” Garcia said. “It felt great, and it was a little bit of a tug on the heartstrings. But Superwoman couldn’t come home with eggs and milk.”

With strained resources, Garcia has resorted to swapping food with family and friends who might have obtained different items at other food distribution sites.

East Bay food banks are grappling with similar issues. Liz Gomez, chief impact officer for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, is kept up at night thinking about whether it will have enough resources once the emergency funds end.

“For this to happen when inflation is high and food prices are through the roof, it’s really going to be devastating,” she said. “It’s going to be devastating not just for the families and people who need assistance, but also the food banks who are here to provide emergency assistance to people who need services. And it’s also going to be an impact on our local economy.”

Caroline Danielson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said programs like CalFresh typically aren’t meant to cover a family’s entire monthly food bill. But in past recessions, the federal government has stepped in with additional funds to lessen the impact on the economy. Those benefits, however, aren’t meant to last forever, and the end will be a “shock to family budgets.”

“In our poverty work, we showed that CalFresh had twice the impact in 2021 as it did in 2019 in reducing poverty,” Danielson said. “Some of that benefit will go away and it won’t have quite the same poverty effect that it did in 2021.”

Without additional funds for food, a few hundred thousand Californians could be plunged back below the poverty level, she said.

Bacho would like the government to increase the benefits and adjust them for the local cost of living.

“We cannot end hunger by food banks just distributing more food,” she said. “It’s going to take some real system change to make that possible.”

Paul Manafort agrees to pay $3.15 million to settle with Justice Department

The WashingTon PosT

Paul J. Manafort, a longtime fixture in Republican politics who briefly managed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed to pay $3.15 million to settle a civil case brought by the Justice Department last year over foreign bank accounts that he did not declare to United States officials, according to his lawyer and court documents.

Jeffrey Neiman, a lawyer for Manafort, confirmed the settlement in a brief telephone interview on Sunday and said his client “is happy to have this chapter of his life behind him.”

The settlement was announced in paperwork dated Feb. 22 and filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida where Manafort resides. It was reported Saturday by the Florida Bulldog, a nonprofit website. Details about how and when Manafort is required to pay that settlement were not disclosed in the court paperwork, and his lawyer declined to provide that information.

The settlement would end a civil suit the Justice Department filed in April 2022 seeking to force Manafort to pay millions of dollars in fines and interest “for his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts.” The complaint alleged that Manafort failed to file in 2013 and 2014 a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (known as FBAR), as required by any U.S. citizen whose

Rail

From Page One

really haven’t done it very well yet,” he said.

Brown is the lead sponsor of a rail safety bill that would require more disclosure of hazardous materials traversing states, inspections of wheel bearings and mandate minimum crew sizes. And it would increase penalties for violations.

Brown’s bill has cosponsors from across

Chips

From Page One

mechanisms.”

Shipments from China to Russia have also surged as Beijing plays an increasingly important role in supplying Moscow, the diplomat added, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. Those countries outside the EU haven’t sanctioned Russia themselves, but most have repeatedly denied they are helping the Kremlin.

The EU has sanctioned nearly 1,500 individuals, restricted exports on hundreds of goods and technologies, and targeted many of Moscow’s key revenue sources.

accounts abroad exceed $10,000.

According to the Justice Department, Manafort earned income from consulting work in Ukraine and deposited the money in several overseas accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United Kingdom.

Some of those accounts listed Manafort as “an authorized signer or beneficial owner of the account,” according to the complaint. It also said many of the accounts were held in shell companies opened on Manafort’s behalf.

Manafort briefly managed Trump’s campaign in 2016 before he was ousted from that role amid questions about his consulting work in Ukraine, for which he earned millions.

He was convicted by a jury of using foreign accounts to hide the proceeds of his Ukrainian consulting, and he pleaded guilty to money laundering and obstruction. The Justice Department indicted him in 2017 as part of the investigation by

the political spectrum, including Republicans J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri as well as Democrats Bob Casey and John Fetterman of neighboring Pennsylvania.

Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, who represents the area around Saturday’s derailment, added his own frustration with the rail industry, calling the spate of Ohio derailments –now four in the last five months – “outrageous.”

“What we’ve seen, you know, recently with the

biting hard and contributing to sustained economic recession in Russia,” Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said in Bulgaria recently. “But their effectiveness also depends on how well they are enforced.”

On the surface of things, sanctions appear to be effective. Russia’s economy has contracted and many of its banks and companies remain cut off from international financial and trading systems. There is also evidence that the restrictions on European and U.S. technologies have weakened key Russian industries and hampered their ability to innovate in the future.

special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign.

At one point, Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison but was released early in 2020 as a result of health concerns during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump pardoned Manafort on Dec. 23, 2020, shortly before leaving office.

Though Trump had pardoned Manafort for financial crimes covering this period, the Justice Department complaint argued that he still owed the Treasury Department money, saying he violated laws requiring him to declare foreign bank accounts he controlled.

Neiman, Manafort’s lawyer, had previously downplayed the matter, describing his client’s actions as “simply failing to file a tax form,” claiming the lawsuit was filed “simply to embarrass Mr. Manafort.”

Manafort has worked for many presidents over the decades including Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. After his standing in Republican circles faded, he made millions advising political candidates in other countries, particularly Ukraine.

In 2019, amid concerns that Trump might pardon his former adviser, the Manhattan district attorney’s office obtained a grand jury indictment against Manafort on fraud charges that echoed the federal case. A New York state judge threw out that case, saying it violated state laws against double jeopardy.

risk to communities is unacceptable,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And the fact that we’re having derailment after derailment shows really the lack of investment, the disinvestment, in our infrastructure, and that needs to change.”

Still, some ideological rifts were apparent. Brown blamed the derailments in part on stock buybacks, CEO pay and workforce reductions – issues unlikely to get agreement from Republicans.

Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from

and Central Asia helped make up the shortfall. Meanwhile, shipments of high-tech components to those countries from the allied nations surged by a similar amount.

The same sort of patterns are apparent across hundreds of product categories, but it is especially acute when it comes to advanced chips and integrated circuits that can be used for military purposes, the diplomat said.

With Russia’s war in Ukraine now into its second year, the EU and its allies are increasingly focused on tightening any loopholes and preventing successive rounds of sanctions they’ve introduced from being circumvented.

West Virginia, said opposition to pipelines had put more stress on the rail system. “Pipelines would help alleviate a lot of this problem with the oil that we need in our country,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

And Vance told Fox News on Friday that attempts to blame President Donald Trump’s administration – which killed a train braking rule designed to prevent incidents like the one in East Palestine – “complete partisan hackery.”

enforcement regime has opened a debate over where the share of responsibilities between Brussels and Europe’s capitals should lie when it comes to policing measures, officials and diplomats say.

“It would of course be more convenient for everybody if there was one EU level institution in charge,” Toms Platacis, the acting director of the Latvian Financial Intelligence Unit, said in an interview.

Latvia has criminalized sanctions violations, while other EU countries have not, so violators can “look for other countries where evading sanctions carries less potential penalty,” he said.

From Page One

raise issues about my age,” he said in an ABC News interview in February.

“It’s totally legitimate to do that. And, the only thing I can say is ‘watch me.’”

The president’s doctor said Biden is “healthy” and “vigorous” following a routine physical on Feb. 16. On Friday, the White House said Biden had a cancerous skin lesion removed from his chest during the annual checkup, requiring no further treatment.

But some officials worry that the bloc still lacks an effective apparatus to enforce those measures and lags the U.S. With a longer history of sanctioning foreign powers, the U.S. has a centralized agency, more efficient procedures for gathering information as well as stringent legislation and the tools to enforce the rules at home and abroad.

In the EU, enforcement is a patchwork effort that mostly falls to member states.

While the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, monitors implementation and provides guidance, national authorities are responsible for identifying breaches and imposing penalties. And that means the results are inconsistent.

Ultimately, it’s about political will, said one EU official involved in the process, and national officials can come under pressure when it comes to taking tough action against their own companies.

“Our sanctions are

But information collected by the Genevabased Trade Data Monitor indicates that some sanctioned goods – particularly advanced semiconductors – are being diverted to Russia via third countries, many of which abruptly changed their trading habits following Russia’s invasion.

In some cases, the exports to Russia of technologies that could be used for military purposes in Ukraine have gone from effectively zero to millions of dollars.

Kazakhstan provides a key example.

In 2022 the Central Asian nation exported $3.7 million worth of advanced semiconductors to Russia, up from a mere $12,000 worth the year before the war started.

Russia was buying an average of $163 million worth of advanced chips and integrated circuits from the EU, the U.S., Japan and the U.K. each year between 2017 and 2021. In 2022, that slumped to about $60 million.

The data show Turkey, Serbia, the UAE and a half-dozen other economies in Eastern Europe

But tracking shipments isn’t a straightforward process. Buyers sometimes use complex corporate vehicles and distribution models to obscure the final destination of their goods. Incomplete paperwork can add to the opacity, as well as so-called transshipment points, where goods are moved between vehicles or rerouted.

On Thursday, the Biden administration released a compliance note aimed at cracking down on intermediaries used to evade sanctions and export controls on Russia. The notice names China, Armenia, Turkey and Uzbekistan as locations that may be used to illegally redirect restricted items to Russia.

The G-7 recently announced a new mechanism to bolster enforcement and the EU has also introduced several tools in its recent packages to go after those aiding Russia. But EU countries have so far been shy about using some of those tools and going after potential breaches at home, at least publicly. Discussions on toughening up the EU’s

In implementing successive rounds of sanctions, EU nations have been careful to limit the impact on their own bottom line and the wider global economy. That has at times led to often tortuous discussions between member states over exemptions and reporting requirements.

With every round of sanctions we take a step forward with new measures and one step back with new exemptions, one senior European minister said. Some member states are less enthusiastic about enforcement and are not doing enough, the minister added.

“Enforcement of export sanctions is not trivial,” said Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “Every government wants all other countries to enforce them but prefers to be lenient vis-a-vis its own firms. The experience with export restrictions during the Cold War shows this clearly. Thus, leaving enforcement of sanctions to national governments may not always work perfectly.”

Bill O’Leary/Washington Post file (2017)

Paul Manafort, former campaign manager to Donald Trump, outside U.S. District Court in Washington in 2017.

Vanden boys sink Whitney at buzzer, earn berth in NorCal finals

M ATT Miller MMILLER@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — Sterling McClanahan helped deliver a magical moment for the Vanden High School boys basketball team when his putback shot at the buzzer Saturday night helped the Vikings edge out visiting Whitney of Rocklin 56-55 in the CIF Division II Northern California Regional Finals at James L. Boyd Gymnasium.

Vanden had multiple shots after Tyler Thompson’s original drive to the

basket in the final seconds. McClanahan buried the game-winner and the No. 5 seed Vikings will return to the NorCal finals for the first time since losing the title game in 2017.

The Vikings will host San Joaquin Memorial of Fresno at 7 p.m Tuesday.

The No. 6 Panthers defeated No. 7 Weston Ranch 68-59 Saturday.

Tuesday’s winner will play the Southern California champion at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. No. 3 Orange Lutheran plays No. 9 Pacific Chris-

tian of Newport Beach in the Southern California final Tuesday night.

Vanden last won a Northern California title in 1990 when the Vikings defeated Tamalpais 64-58 in Division IV.

“It was crazy,” Vanden head coach Micheal Holloway said of Saturday’s game. “I didn’t even know how much time was left. We got four offensive rebounds before we put it back in. We wanted to go early with 10 seconds left and give ourselves a chance at the rim.”

Vanden improved

to 25-10 overall. Elijah Lewis led the Vikings with 16 points. McClanahan and Jayden Robinson had 12 points apiece. Thompson added eight.

The game was tight throughout. Whitney had the early 13-11 lead after the first quarter. The Vikings led 30-26 at halftime, 45-40 after three quarters and the final one-point, 56-55 edge, at the buzzer.

Holloway said Lewis had a huge game and made some big midrange baskets when the offense was “a little still.” McClanahan

MLB’s changes have already made the game better

ron Cook PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

MLB just can’t win. A lot of younger fans complained about the slow pace of games and said they lasted too long. MLB responded by putting in a pitch clock this spring to speed things up. Now, older fans are saying they hate the changes and that they loved the slow pace because it allowed them to relax between pitches and talk with their friends and check out their phones.

What is MLB to do?

I have some advice:

Don’t even think about

turning back. The pitch clock is good. So is the elimination of shifts. The changes will lead to quicker games and more action. You are doing the right thing. Don’t listen to the angry old fools.

As for those old-timers?

Get over it. Give the changes a chance.

You’ll end up liking them. They are going to make the game better in the long run.

And one more thing:

I probably don’t have to point out that I’m a really old fan of baseball.

The early results of the pitch clock in spring training have been terrific. The Athletic reported there were 113 violations in the first 65 games, an average of 1.74 per game. The average time of the games was 2:39, down from 3:01 last spring. That is a significant decrease. Fans are getting the same amount of action but saving 22 minutes each game to do something else with their life.

Actually, fans are getting more action – at least better action – with the shifts being eliminated. ESPN reported

also came up with some big plays down the stretch that included the gamewinner, he said.

Foul trouble also caused the Vikings to go with a smaller lineup at times late. Whitney presented some challenges with more physicality than anticipated and strength in the “paint.”

“We’re not sure if this is the most talented team we’ve had, but they won’t give up,” Holloway said. “They play hard together and they don’t implode. Even at the timeout with us down 1, they didn’t waver.

They knew what needed to be done. This team really pays attention at the key moments.”

Holloway has never taken a Vanden team to the state championship and he knows what is on the line Tuesday. He is counting on a loud crowd to help get the Vikings over the top against a very talented San Joaquin Memorial (23-9).

“It’s going to be surreal,” he said. “We hope our home crowd shows up and gives us a big lift and helps push us over the hump.”

Curry returns but Warriors fall to Lakers

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

LOS ANGELES

Stephen Curry reminded the Warriors what they were missing Sunday afternoon.

But his 19-point fourth quarter wasn’t enough to help the Warriors overcome the Los Angeles Lakers, who snapped Golden State’s five-game win streak with a 113-105 loss.

The Lakers were without LeBron James, who’s sidelined indefinitely with a right foot injury. Anthony Davis gave the Warriors trouble all afternoon, recording 39 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

It took some time for Curry to find his groove after he missed the last month with a leg injury. Curry had an eight-point surge in the second quarter after missing his first three buckets,

but he saved his best for last. Curry went off in the fourth for 19 of his teamhigh 27 points.

The Warriors erased a double figure deficit for the fifth consecutive game on Sunday. After falling into an early 20-point hole in the first quarter, Golden State pulled within one by the half.

The Warriors tied the Lakers twice in the second half but never took a lead.

Draymond Green left the first quarter to get an X-ray on his left hand. The scan came back negative and Green eventually returned to the game at the tailend of the opening quarter wearing a pad on his injured hand. Green later ditched the white wrap and finished the game with 15 points, nine

batting average was .272 in the early spring games, up from .259 at the same point last year. Runs per game were 11.9, up from 10.6. Stolen bases also should increase significantly this season because pitchers are allowed to throw over to first base only twice during any at-bat. If they do it a third time, they had better get the baserunner out or it’s a balk. Combine that with bigger bases that shrink the distance between first base and second base.

It’s no wonder Oneil

Former A’s great Giambi favors team’s move

to Las Vegas

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

LAS VEGAS – The debate about the future home of the Oakland Athletics was on full display Saturday as the A’s lost, 10-9, to the Cincinnati Reds in the first game of Big League Weekend at Las Vegas Ballpark.

available for comment.

The A’s are looking to build a new ballpark to replace their current home, RingCentral Coliseum, which has been deemed inadequate by Major League Baseball and the A’s.

Sharks

recall two defensemen; could one play in his first NHL game in nearly two years?

AgenCy

Tribune ConTenT

The San Jose Sharks have recalled defensemen Nikolai Knyzhov and Nick Cicek from the Barracuda for their three-game road trip, which begins Monday against the Winnipeg Jets.

The Sharks finished Saturday’s game against the Washington Capitals with just five defensemen after Radim Simek left with an undisclosed injury after two periods. In what was just his third game back after he missed two months with a concussion, Simek, 30, played just 8:20 in what became an 8-3 Sharks loss to the Capitals.

Simek, who has aver-

aged 14:29 of ice time in 34 games this season, did not travel with the Sharks to Winnipeg on Sunday.

Knyzhov’s recall opens

the door for him to play in his first NHL game in close to two years. Knyzhov’s last game with the Sharks came May 12, 2021, at

the end of the pandemicshortened season, as he’s been hampered by multiple injuries and setbacks.

Knyzhov, 24, had surgery to repair a torn right Achilles tendon in August and after a painstaking rehabilitation, joined the Barracuda in late January. He played 12 AHL games but did not have a point.

“His play is getting better,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said Friday of Knyzhov. “He’s such a good kid, but he’s hard on himself. No matter who you are, if you take 18 months from competitive hockey, you’re not going to step back in

A current player, pitcher Paul Blackburn, said he’d prefer that the team remain in Oakland after its current lease expires after next season. But former A’s great Jason Giambi, a longtime Las Vegas resident, said he’s excited about the possibility of the A’s relocating here.

A’s owner John Fisher was at Saturday’s game, which drew an announced crowd of 8,805, but was not made

The team is working with the city of Oakland on a $12 billion Howard Terminal proposal that would include a 35,000seat ballpark. They also are looking at three ballpark sites in Las Vegas, where they could relocate to build a $1 billion, retractable roof stadium.

A’s manager Mark Kotsay said the relocation talk doesn’t impact the team, and that wherever they end up the team will go on nonetheless.

Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group file (2021) San Jose Sharks’ Nikolai Knyzhov (71) waits for a face-off against the St. Louis Blues in the third period at the SAP Center in San Jose, March 20, 2021.

Steph Chambers/Getty Images/TNS file

A pitch clock counts down as Jay Groome (55) of the San Diego Padres prepares to deliver a pitch to the Seattle Mariners’ Eugenio Suarez (28) during a spring training game at Peoria Stadium, in Peoria, Arizona, Feb. 24, 2023.

This black and white bean chili makes the most of leftovers

A nn M Aloney

THE WASHINGTON POST

What are the benefits of cooking at home on a regular basis? We all know that you can save money if you shop thoughtfully and have better control over what goes into your food. But the reason I am most grateful that I got comfortable in the kitchen at an early age is that it has provided me with the security of knowing I can feed myself in a thrifty, tasty way.

That’s because one of the side benefits of cooking regularly is that you get more at ease with making food on the fly. After preparing recipe after recipe, you can look in the pantry, scan the refrigerator and see that this plus this plus this could equal something mighty good.

That’s how this Black and White Bean Chicken Chili was born.

I first made it when I had chili on the brain. I’d read through many of the recipes in actor Brian Baumgartner’s “Seriously Good Chili Cookbook” and talked with the actor made famous by the sitcom, “The Office,” before writing about and testing his “Chili” and another recipe in the book, “Chili Pasta Casserole.”

A couple of weeks later, I roasted a chicken, which we enjoyed, but the next day I won-

dered what I could make with the leftovers that would make the chicken seem like a whole other dish. In the pantry, I spied cannellini and black beans.

From reading so many chili recipes, I knew I could get good flavor from a blend of smoked paprika, ground cumin and chili powder, which I had on hand. With the leftover chicken, an onion, some garlic and pickled jalapeños, I had this hot bowl of chili on the table in about 40 minutes.

We ate it with what we had on hand: pickled jalapeños on top and a few charred corn tortillas. It was a thrifty and nourishing meal that was also satisfying and delicious. To create this recipe, I remade it, measuring each ingredient and subbing the pickled jalapeños for fresh. I also gussied it up a bit more by topping it with fresh avocado slices, cilantro leaves, pico de gallo and crunchy corn chips.

I decided it was a keeper, and so I’m sharing it with you.

If you’ve ever learned to knit a sweater, play an instrument or mastered a sport, you’ve already experienced what it’s like to go from stumbling and apprehensive to confident and at ease with a new skill. It’s that way with cooking. I still have a lot to learn and I can always get better, but it has become almost second nature to me.

BLACK AND WHITE BEAN CHICKEN CHILI

40 minutes

4 servings

To make this dish vegan, switch to vegetable broth and substitute pressed, cubed tofu for the chicken. Or, simply add more beans in place of the chicken. If using beans cooked at home, use a total of 3 cups of beans. Storage: Refrigerate for up to 4 days or freeze for up to 3 months.

Notes: Don’t have any leftover chicken? To poach the chicken in a multicooker, add ½ cup of lightly salted chicken broth or water, a couple of bay leaves, if you like, and the chicken. Lock the lid in place, set the pressure release knob to sealing, select PRESSURE at the high setting, and set the cook time to 15 minutes.

Once the cooking cycle is finished, press CANCEL and release the pressure manually by moving the pressure-release handle to venting, covering your hand with a towel or oven mitt. Never put your hands or face near the vent when releasing steam. The temperature of the meat should read at least 165 degrees when checked with a thermometer in the thickest part of the chicken.

To poach the chicken on the stovetop, cut the chicken parts in half or thirds crosswise, depending on how large the pieces are. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the chicken, 1 cup lightly salted water and a couple of bay leaves, if desired. Stir once or twice and slowly bring to barely a simmer – do not let the water come to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, partially cover and

gently cook for about 15 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer reads 165 degrees when inserted into the thickest part of the chicken.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large white or yellow onion (12 ounces), chopped

2 jalapeños, stemmed, seeded and chopped

2 large cloves garlic, chopped

1 ½ teaspoons smoked paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon chili powder

¼ teaspoon fine salt, plus more as needed

2 cups no-salt-added chicken broth, plus more as needed

One (15-ounce) can no-saltadded white cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 pound boneless chicken breasts or thighs, cooked and shredded (see NOTES)

One (15-ounce) can no-saltadded black beans, drained and rinsed

Avocado slices, pico de gallo or salsa, fresh or pickled jalapeño slices, fresh cilantro, and/or tortilla chips, for serving (optional)

In a medium pot over mediumhigh heat, heat the olive oil until it shimmers. Add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until they are translucent and starting to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the jalapeños and cook, stirring, until softened, another 2 minutes, then add the garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 more minute.

Add the paprika, cumin, chili powder and salt, stir to combine, and cook for 1 more minute. Don’t

be concerned if the vegetables start to stick a bit, but adjust the heat if they begin to burn.

Add the broth and stir, scraping up any brown bits. Add half of the white beans, stir and bring to a simmer, so that there are bubbles around the edge of the pot. Cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.

Use an immersion (stick) blender to puree the mixture until smooth.

(You also can puree the mixture in a heatproof blender: To prevent splatters, be careful to not fill it more than halfway, remove the center ring from the lid, and hold a kitchen towel over the opening as you blend.)

Return the pot to medium heat, add the chicken and the remaining white beans and the black beans, and stir to combine. Simmer for about 3 minutes; then taste, adding more salt to taste and more broth to thin if desired.

Ladle the chili into bowls and serve hot with your choice of toppings, such as avocado slices, pico de gallo or salsa, fresh or pickled jalapeño slices, fresh cilantro leaves, and/or tortilla chips.

Nutrition information per serving (1 ½ cups): Calories: 407;

Total Fat: 15 g; Saturated Fat: 3 g; Cholesterol: 74 mg; Sodium: 715 mg; Carbohydrates: 34 g;

Dietary Fiber: 10 g; Sugar: 4 g;

Protein: 34 g

This analysis is an estimate based on available ingredients and this preparation. It should not substitute for a dietitian’s or nutritionist’s advice.

Hooked on salmon, fried rice and veggies stir fry

It’s Lent. Which means many are going to be eating a lot of fish, thanks to Friday night fish fries.

If you’d rather avoid the crowds and prepare seafood at home, consider a quick and easy stir fry.

Simple and satisfying, this colorful rice dish stars salmon, a heart-healthy fish you don’t often find at church fish fires. It includes lots of fresh, crunchy veggies to make it more healthful.

One reason this dish works so well, besides being dairyand gluten-free, is because it’s customizable: If you don’t like salmon, substitute

1 pound peeled and deveined medium shrimp. The same with the veggies – use whatever’s languishing in your crisper – and garlic, which some (me) can’t get enough of and others steer clear of to

avoid heartburn and bad breath.

Don’t worry about using day-old rice.

It actually crisps up better than freshly made rice because the dry grains remain separate and absorb more seasoning. I made the dish with brown rice since it’s more nutritious, and removed the skin from the fish.

SALMON FRIED RICE

1 pound skinless salmon, cut into bite-sized chunks

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 tablespoons grapeseed or canola oil, divided

2 large eggs, whisked

½ cup thinly sliced green onion

2 medium carrots, finely chopped (about ½ cup)

1 cup broccoli florets, cut into small pieces

½ red bell pepper, cut into small pieces

1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups cold cooked white or brown rice

Toasted sesame seeds or Everything Bagel seasoning, for garnish

Handful of chopped cilantro, for garnish Pickled ginger, for serving Gluten-free soy sauce or tamari, for serving

If salmon is refrigerated, remove it from fridge 15 minutes prior to cooking. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a wok or deep saute pan over mediumhigh heat. When oil is hot, add cubed salmon and let it brown on opposite sides until opaque or flaky, 4-5 minutes. Don’t overcrowd the pan; you may need to cook fish in batches.

When salmon is done, transfer to a plate. Remove pan from heat and wipe out with a paper towel, removing any burnt bits.

Place the pan back over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons of remaining oil. When fish is hot, stir in eggs. When eggs are finished cooking,

about 1 minute, transfer to a plate.

Keeping the pan over medium or medium-high heat, add green onion, carrots, snow peas and red pepper, and cook for about 1 minute, until vegetables are crisp-tender. Add garlic and stirfry another 30 seconds, until fragrant.

Add 1 tablespoon of oil to pan and then the cooked rice, stirring constantly to combine the veggies and garlic with the rice.

When rice is hot, add eggs back to pan and break them up with a spatula to combine with the rice. Remove the pan from heat, and gently fold in the salmon. Transfer fried rice to a platter or individual plates and garnish with toasted sesame seeds and chopped cilantro. Serve with pickled ginger and tamari or soy sauce.

Serves 3 to 4.

Adapted from “For the Love of Seafood: 100 Flawless, Flavorful Recipes That Anyone Can Cook” by Karista Bennett (Countryman Press, $35)

Scott Suchman/The Washington Post photos

Serve black and white bean chili as is or top with fresh avocado slices, cilantro leaves, pico de gallo and crunchy corn chips.

Gretchen McKay Gretchen’s table

Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS Leftover rice paired with cooked salmon and chopped veggies means a healthful dinner in a flash.

was flabbergasted’

Canceled job offers, once rare, are on the rise

TIPS FOR BOUNCING BACK FROM A RESCINDED JOB OFFER

Getting a job offer rescinded can be devastating. Suddenly, you lose the vision you had for your near future as well as the promise of financial stability. And you’re forced to get back into the job market. Here are some tips from career experts and people who have had job offers revoked on how to get through this time.

NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK

“Let everybody know you’re looking for a job, definitely do a lot more informational interviews, apply, get involved in your professional organization, volunteer . . . and move forward knowing that what seems to be a negative may turn out to be a positive,” said Lori Shreve Blake, senior director for career engagement at the USC career center.

ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

“Look for companies that are wiling to talk very openly about their talent strategy, how they’re thinking about bringing people in and how they can build confidence that this isn’t going to happen for this job,” said Jamie Kohn, research director in the Gartner HR practice.

DON’T BE SHY ABOUT ASKING FOR MONEY OR OTHER HELP

Companies will sometimes make a one-time payment to candidates who got their offers rescinded as a goodwill gesture. You can also ask about covering relocation costs. If payment is not an option, you can ask for advice on navigating the job market.

“What I’m thankful for with my company is that even though they had to rescind the offer, they were very kind about it and empathetic about the situation,” said Alana Klopstein, who had a job offer rescinded last year. “Not just severing the ties and moving on but also wanting people like me who have had those offers rescinded to have you as a resource, if needed.”

TALK TO MULTIPLE COMPANIES, EVEN TOWARD THE LATTER STAGES OF YOUR JOB SEARCH

“If you can continue having conversations and be clear that you are in the late stages of a hiring process with other organizations, companies can decide whether they want to continue talking with you or not,” Kohn said. “Accepting multiple offers, however, would look very bad.”

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND TAKE A BREAK, IF YOU CAN

“It’s going to be difficult, but it’s important to give yourself grace, take time to really step back and take care of yourself and just get back into it later,” Klopstein said.

LOOK FOR SIDE HUSTLES IN THE MEANTIME

After a successful summer internship at a mortgage tech company, Alana Klopstein was thrilled to get a job offer.

She signed the contract in January 2022, giving her peace of mind during her final year at UC San Diego. Then in June, three months before her start date, she got an email from the company. The market downturn had forced the firm to make difficult decisions, it read. Her offer was being rescinded.

“It was really devastating,” said Klopstein, 22, who lives in San Diego. “I had a vision of what my life would look like, what kind of adjustments I would have to make to transition into the working world after doing so many years of school, and that just wasn’t a thing anymore.”

As tech companies and other firms lay off workers by the thousands, some are also revoking job offers – sometimes just days before the start date and long after would-be employees relocated or restructured their lives. Rescinding of offers is not as widespread as layoffs, but the practice could grow if the economy heads into a recession.

“If the economy is where people think it’s going to be and we’re in the middle of a meaningful recession, I would expect you’ll see an impact to graduating college students and business school graduates,” said Dan Kaplan, senior client partner at Korn Ferry, a management consulting firm.

Companies typically rescind offers when “a shock hits the system,” such as the 2000 dot-com implosion, the market jitters after 9/11 or the 2008 recession, he said. More recently, companies rescinded offers at the beginning of the pandemic when there was widespread uncertainty about the future.

Today, months-long fears of a recession, combined with upheavals in industries such as crypto, financial services and tech, resulted in this latest round of rescinded offers affecting mostly entry-level and midcareer positions.

“You saw all of this surge of opportunity, surge of activity, there was this expectation we were going to see all this growth,” Jamie Kohn, research director in consulting firm Gartner’s HR practice, said of companies’ hiring practices as the pandemic eased.

“With the market being slow to pick back up, companies are not seeing that growth on the horizon. They’re starting to think maybe it’s going to be a couple more years before they get to the place that they thought they would be by now,” Kohn said.

Zening Zhao, 24, had interned at tech companies but started hearing rumors of layoffs or hiring freezes as he got closer to graduation. Working in finance seemed more stable, so he accepted a

job as a Python software developer at a trading company in Chicago.

After graduating in December from the University of Washington, Zhao packed up his life in Seattle, relocated and signed a lease for a new apartment. Five days before his start date, he got a call from his employer telling him his offer was rescinded because of reductions in company expenses.

“I felt desperate at that moment,” Zhao said. “I’ve prepared everything for the job. It’s the darkest day of my life so far.”

Although the trading company paid $10,000 of Zhao’s relocation costs, the high rent in Chicago forced him to leave the city, move back to Seattle and stay with a friend. He’s now facing a tough job market flooded with out-ofwork engineers – after submitting more than 100 job applications, he got only a few responses.

The experience has made him more wary of the finality of job offers. And that level of skepticism could bode ill for companies later on, said Kohn of Gartner. Job candidates are now saying they don’t trust companies to be honest with them during the hiring process, she said, and they’re more likely to entertain other job offers after they’ve already accepted.

“Things like layoffs and rescinded offers just amplify the way that trust is broken,” Kohn said.

Spurning candidates with little regard for future relationships could also affect companies’ recruiting. Good talent talks to other good talent, and such actions can give firms a black eye. Assisting wouldbe hires in landing new gigs, on the other hand, is a goodwill gesture that can leave candidates with a positive impression.

After interviewing with two companies, Evan Patterson got job offers that were then rescinded in the same week. But the founders of both start-ups said they would pass on his resume and share his content with their networks in hopes of helping him find another gig. Those connections are now helping him in his current job search.

“They were just being decent human beings in response, and that was more than I could ask for,” said Patterson, 28, who lives in Chicago and does community and business-to-business influencer marketing for software startups. “I even told them in two, three, four years, things might change, tap me on the shoulder.”

Meta paid Noor Abdellatif six weeks’ worth of salary when the social media giant rescinded her job offer last spring for a remote recruiter position. Although she was crushed that the job didn’t work out, the payment gave her a higher opinion of the company.

“They knew people were depending their lives on that and it just, my respect honestly grew more . . . toward Meta for doing this,” said Abdellatif, 32, from Severn, Md. “That was something unheard of.”

By September, she got a new job as

a recruiter for an engineering firm. The annual salary is $20,000 less than she would have made at Meta, but her new employer has never laid off workers during economic downturns in its 30-year history, she said.

“That was my main goal – stability over a high pay,” Abdellatif said.

The number of rescinded offers today is “nowhere near the levels we’ve seen before,” said Kaplan of Korn Ferry, because companies typically have other options to tap before they withdraw offers, such as reducing bonuses or layoffs.

“You spend so much time and energy to bring people into your company, the worst thing you can do is to go back to them and take it back,” he said. “Companies really try to avoid them.”

But when they happen, it’s crucial to reach out to your networks, whether that’s LinkedIn, an alumni association or an industry-specific group.

Isa Goldberg got hundreds of supportive comments and messages from connections on LinkedIn after she posted about her experience of having a healthcare consultant job offer rescinded just six days before her start date.

“I was just flabbergasted,” Goldberg, 27, who lives in Brooklyn, said of the rescinding. “I just took kind of an hour to cry, have an emotional moment, come to the ground and realize what was going on.”

The company offered to pay her $5,000 or let her stay in the job applicant pool until January, when it would potentially have a job open. She tried to negotiate for a higher payment but was unsuccessful.

Goldberg ended up breaking her lease in New York City, moving in with family to save money and looking for a new opportunity. She found one in three weeks, thanks to a referral from a college friend.

“It’s definitely a shock when you think you’re on the diving board of your career, and you jump off and you end up with a shallower bottom than you hoped,” Goldberg said.

But, she said, “the benefit of having a strong, supportive network outweighs the momentary upset that getting a rescinded offer causes. Let people help you immediately.”

Klopstein, from San Diego, is still looking for a job in software engineering. It’s been a grueling last few months, with interviews that went nowhere, radio silence after submitting applications and emails saying companies are no longer hiring.

She’s considering getting a part-time job outside of tech just to tide herself over until she can find something. But she’s trying to stay optimistic.

“It’s definitely a difficult market,” Klopstein said. “Luckily I’ve had some friends find stuff, and it gives me hope that there’s something waiting for me in the near future.”

‘I

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

Dreamstime/TNS

Rescinding of job offers is not as widespread as layoffs, but the practice could grow if the economy heads into a recession.

CBS brings back 1994 ‘True Lies’ in modern spy drama form

Rodney Ho THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

In 1994, Arnold Schwarzenegger at the peak of his box office power landed the third most popular movie of the year with “True Lies,” an entertaining blend of action, comedy, drama and romance produced by James Cameron.

It seemed ripe to become a franchise, like a twist on James Bond. Yet it never happened. Cameron got wrapped up producing a little film called “Titanic.” Then 9/11 soured

Cameron on a “True Lies 2,” and Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. By the 2010s, the original movie was but a distant memory.

Only now, nearly three decades later, CBS has managed to take the “True Lies” conceit and turn it into a weekly spy procedural with Cameron as an executive producer and Schwarzenegger nowhere in sight. (The legendary action star, by the way, is doing his own Netflix series, “FUBAR.”)

The role of Harry Tasker, a super spy for Omega Sector, has been given to Steve Howey (”Reba,” ”Shameless”), who does not remotely resemble or sound like Schwarzenegger. (Then again, who does?).

Instead, Howey’s Harry is tall and lithe, possessing a far more down-to-earth, family man persona than Schwarzenegger could muster.

His wife Helen, who was played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the original film, is now portrayed by Ginger Gonzaga (“She-Hulk”). Helen is raising two teens while working as a linguistics professor and is a bit bored with her marriage.

Harry’s spy cover for 17 years has been a computer equipment salesman for the insurance industry. But in the first episode, she suspects his evasions are a cover for an affair. When confronted, he spontaneously takes her on a surprise trip to Paris that also happens to be a workrelated job trying to stop illegal arms dealers.

Unfortunately, said bad guys find him at a fancy restaurant while he’s having a dinner date with Helen.

“Helen!” he said, interrupting a serious marital discussion. “There are men here! They’re coming for us.”

Helen is annoyed: “Oh, OK. Are they single? Can they talk about their emotions. Is this a joke?”

Then he breaks into fight mode. She uses martial arts skills she picked up from exercise videos and yoga classes to help fend off the terrorists.

Harry’s cover is blown. The betrayal is serious. But he isn’t cheating on his wife per se.

Daily Cryptoquotes

On TV

‘True Lies’

7 p.m. Wednesdays CBS – Streaming on Paramount+

His justification is he’s saving the world and had no choice but to hide it from her. And she buys it.

“I think she finds it kind of sexy that her boring computer salesman husband is an international super spy,” Howey said. “That’s the unspoken dialogue of the show.”

Plus, lucky for Harry, Helen has plenty of spy-friendly skills. She knows multiple languages, be it French, Swahili or Russian. She has yoga and martial arts skills. She isn’t fazed by much. So his bosses hire her as well.

Gonzaga, who has an improv background, worked hard “to insert quirks for Helen, anything to make it not generic. I’m glad they allowed me to do it. It keeps everything fresh.”

“She’s a comedic assassin,” Howey said. “She made me laugh every day. We broke a lot during shooting which is a lot of fun for us. Everyone else hated us. There was such a time crunch.”

One of the funnier side characters is Mrs. Myers (Deneen Tyler), a seemingly boring catloving neighbor who watches their clueless kids while they’re killing trained assassins. The joke? She is a trained assassin herself. But she takes tracking their daughter’s possible boyfriends with the same seriousness as tracking down a terrorist with a chemical bomb.

The show is helmed by Matt Nix, who created USA’s lighthearted action comedy series “Burn Notice.”

Nix loved the over-the-top nature of the 1994 movie and said he knew how challenging it would be to replicate that on a broadcast TV series budget.

“It’s hard for me to get a horse on an elevator,” Nix said. “If you happen to know a hotel in Atlanta that will allow me to

put a horse in an elevator, get back to me!”

On top of that, “True Lies” has to be in a different city every episode. In Episode 2, while Harry is in a motorcycle chase, the streets of downtown Atlanta are used as Madrid. In Episode 3, the spies are standing on a rooftop supposedly in Zurich, but the Hilton Atlanta is clearly in the background.

Nix, who worked in Atlanta on the short-run USA drama “Complications” in 2015, said he’s amazed how quickly sites that he knew about before are now condos: “You’re going to get TV producers starting a campaign: ‘Keep warehouses empty! Stop redeveloping train yards!’ We need them!”

He said it helps that a lot of his crew came from a previous CBS show “MacGyver,” which shot in Atlanta from 2016 to 2021 and also featured its cast putting out fires all over the world. “Our location scout knows what places could double for Berlin in Atlanta,” he said. “Before the show started, he took me around showing me Eastern Europe, Spain, Mexico. That’s Morocco. Of course, Morocco in Atlanta is half a block. You have to write to that.”

Nix said the toughest part of doing “True Lies” is balancing the various genre elements. “You can come up with the greatest spy story but it also needs to be romantic and fun and relevant to the relationship of Harry and Helen,” he said. “You can create a fun, sweet and engaging romantic story but it also needs to involve nuclear weapons being stopped in Qatar. You have to hit this trifecta of action, comedy and romance.” And an acting job like this is not for the faint of heart. Howey said he insisted on doing many of his own stunts, firing his own weapons and jumping in and out of vehicles. As a result, he pulled a quadricep and hurt his back. But the worst happened during the season finale: he broke his left ring finger, snapping it all the way back to the knuckle.

Word Sleuth

Crossword by Phillip Alder

Bridge

and West had an automatic diamond lead. Declarer correctly ducked East’s king at trick one and won the second diamond trick with the ace. When South ran the heart queen, East took the trick and returned his last diamond. Declarer won with the queen and turned his attention to the clubs. He cashed the ace and finessed the jack, losing to East’s queen. Back came the spade nine.

Is it correct to play the king or the jack?

Clearly the diamonds were initially 5-3; otherwise, East would have led his last diamond and the defenders taken their five tricks: two diamonds and one from each of the other three suits. Given that South knew West was holding two diamond winners, he put up the spade king. If West had the ace, declarer was down for sure. He made the play that maximized his chance of keeping West off the lead.

KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE TARGET

During the card play, both sides should keep their eyes firmly on the number of tricks needed for success. Suppose the contract is three notrump. The declarer should numerate to nine tricks, while the defenders should be foraging for five.

The auction was straightforward,

When the spade king won the trick, declarer cashed his club and heart winners, ending with an overtrick.

True, if West had the spade ace, and East the queen, going up with the spade king (instead of finessing the jack) would have resulted in down three instead of down two, but that extra 50 points would have been nothing when compared to the lost game bonus if East held the spade ace.

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Sudoku by Wayne Gould

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3/7/23 KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE TARGET

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 grid contains the digits 1 through 9, with no repeats. That means that no number is repeated in any row, column or box. Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com

During the card play, both sides should keep their eyes firmly on the number of tricks needed for success. Suppose the contract is three notrump. The declarer should numerate to

© 2023

Difficulty level: SILVER

Yesterday’s solution:

Alan Markfield/CBS/TNS

Steve Howey, left, and Ginger Gonzaga in “True Lies.”

Baby Blues Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott

Zits Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Candorville Darrin Bell

Baldo Hector Cantú and Carlos Castellanos

Pearls Before Swine Stephan Pastis

‘Scream VI’ sees survivors fighting a new enemy

SuSan Hiland SHILAND@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — The sequel to “Scream 3” is coming to theaters this week. The lucky survivors leave town and set up a new life only to find a new killer is aiming for them.

Also in theaters is a sci-fi film about a crashed pilot who finds himself far into the Earth’s past and must find his way home.

In another film, Woody Harrelson plays an unwilling coach for a team of Special Olympics team.

Opening nationwide are:

“65,” in which pilot Mills (Adam Driver) crashes on an unknown planet and quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth . . . 65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive. The film is rated PG-13.

“Champions,” in which a stubborn and hotheaded minor league basketball coach (Woody Harrelson) is sentenced to community service and forced to coach a Special Olympics team. The film is rated PG-13.

“Scream VI,” in which the four survivors of the latest Ghostface killings leave Woodsboro behind and start a new life in New York City only to be attacked by a new killer in the Big Apple. The film is rated R.

Opening in limited release are:

“Future TX,” in which a couple of tweens get their first cellphones. In a strange incident, the phones ring at the same time with a message from a mystery man with the caller display of Future TX, saying he needs their help to save the future. The film is not rated.

“Southern Gospel,” in which Samuel Allen, a 1960s rock star, finds himself in jail after struggling with years of anger and blame toward organized religion that has led

him down a road of rebellion. In a moment of divine intervention, the judge dismisses drug charges against him under the pretense that Samuel speaks to local schools and churches about the dangers of drugs. Given a second chance, he follows in his father’s footsteps to become a preacher, overcoming the influence of a powerful church leader with a personal vendetta against his family. The film is rated PG-13.

“The Magic Flute,” in which Tim has been dreaming his whole life about attending the Mozart All Boys Music School, but already his first days there confront him with a hostile headmaster, the stresses of a first love and serious doubts about the authenticity of his singing voice. When he discovers a mystical gateway in the school’s library, he is pulled into the fantastic cosmos of Mozart’s opera, “The Magic Flute,” where imagination has no limits and the Queen of the Night reigns. The film is not rated.

“Unwelcome,” in which a couple escape their urban nightmare to the tranquility of rural Ireland only to hear stories of mysterious beings who live in the gnarled, ancient wood at the foot of their new garden. As warned by their new neighbors, in Irish lore the Redcaps will come when called to help souls in dire need of rescue, but it’s crucial to remember there is always a dear price to pay for their aid. The film is rated R.

For information on Edwards Cinemas in Fairfield, visit www. regmovies.com/ theatres/regal-edwardsfairfield-imax. For Vacaville showtimes, visit www.brendentheatres.com. For Vallejo showtimes, check www. cinemark.com/theatres/ ca-vallejo. More

about upcoming films is available at

Brian Crane

Talking to children who left Russia about war in Ukraine

The WashingTon PosT

YEREVAN, Armenia —

After last year’s invasion of Ukraine, academic freedom was among the first casualties. In wartime Russia, schoolchildren are now required to attend compulsory ‘patriotism’ classes, teachers face jail time for expressing antiwar opinions in their classrooms and, in some kindergartens, there have even been weapons demonstrations.

But outside the country, in Russia’s emigre communities – swelled by the hundreds of thousands who fled in response to the invasion or to avoid military conscription –newly established Russian schools are grappling with a different challenge: how to talk to children about the war, which has displaced their families but also spurred a wave of anti-Russian sentiment.

Vladislav Povyshev, a history teacher from Siberia, said he left Russia after it became clear he would not be able to teach in the way he wanted. “I understood that, especially with my subjects of history and social sciences, it would be difficult to get around these new, sharp corners in Russia,” Povyshev, 32, said in an interview in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, where he now works at the Liberated School, which was set up to serve recently arrived young Russian immigrant families.

Povyshev said that his students – overwhelmed by the move and missing home – ask a lot of difficult questions that he cannot always answer. “They want to know why we ended up here, at this point, from a historical and political perspective,” he said.

Povyshev has noticed that his students – all of whom grew up using the internet – often under-

stand and see things more clearly than adults, “for better or worse.”

“They are well aware of the consequences that await Russia after the war, and they are aware of the reasons for Russia’s failures at the present stage,” he said, adding that there have been instances of children breaking down in tears in class, or struggling with anxiety. They want to know the causes of the war and its historical origins but are also deeply concerned for the future.

“They want to know how it will end, what happens to both sides after a war,” he said, “how future generations of Russians can improve the situation in Russia and relations with Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

Like other teachers, Povyshev is navigating different ways to respond without overstepping his duty as an educator.

In his classes, he gives his pupils the space to express their opinions and encourages them to find counterarguments or parallels in history and international law. Debates in his classes have touched on many issues including

the history of RussianUkrainian relations, the collapse of empires and the notion of collective responsibility.

“The main thing is that we do not impose our own opinions and we do not suppress others’ voices,” Povyshev said. “It is always a conversation, always a dialogue. The students always have the opportunity to ask absolutely any question.”

The Liberated School’s ethos is markedly different than that of traditional schools in Russia where, even before the war, the curriculum was rigid and slanted, and rote learning the norm.

Pupils at the Liberated School. are encouraged to think critically, debate and freely express their opinions. Creativity is celebrated. And teachers tend to prepare their own lesson materials, diverging from standard Russian textbooks.

“It is like night and day” said geography teacher Polina Primak, 27, while shepherding a class to the playground for recess. “We try to make learning as close as possible to

how we would have liked to have been taught when we were at school.”

Elena Chegodaeva, the school’s director, had just quit her job as a teacher a week before the war started, wanting a break from education. After she fled Russia last spring, she said she was given a renewed sense of purpose. She started out teaching 40 children in an apartment. She has since enrolled nearly 200 children and has relocated the school to a multistory building in downtown Yerevan, which is being renovated to create more, badly needed classrooms.

“We definitely have a kinder atmosphere than in most schools in Russia” Chegodaeva said. “We certainly will not have a portrait of Putin hanging on the wall. And we will not bend to anyone. We will not be told who are the good guys, who are the bad ones, who we should support and so on.”

Despite the school’s liberal values – and its predominantly antiwarminded community – there appears to still be some nervousness around overtly

political discussions and what several teachers referred to as “spreading propaganda.”

Chegodaeva said that while the school is physically outside of Russia’s borders, many employees and families still have links to life inside the country, and therefore potential repercussions.

According to OVD-Info, a watchdog group, there is rising backlash in Russia against minors for violating draconian wartime censorship laws. Schoolchildren who challenge their teachers or express antiwar opinions are publicly berated or ostracized. Sometimes the police are called. At least 19 teachers who expressed antiwar views have been fired, the group said.

If students ask Chegodaeva about her opinions, she shares them, she said, but she does not “make speeches” in the classroom. Not all the parents at the school share the same political views. Some support Putin and, even, the war.

“Children should make their own decisions. They should decide themselves how they relate to a political situation or a religious belief,” Chegodaeva said. “This topic is also very complex and very personal for many people. We have children here whose relatives live or lived in Ukraine, and this is extremely difficult for them.”

Povyshev said the school’s role was to liberate children’s’ minds.

“Our task is to educate, to create a person who can think openly and rationally, who can consider different points of view,” he said. “A freethinking person must come to conclusions on their own.”

Many of the teachers and parents interviewed were reluctant to directly address difficult questions

about the war; especially, alleged war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, and Russians’ collective responsibility for starting – or stopping – the war. The children seemed more preoccupied with their own homesickness than the war.

Each family makes different choices about how much to share with their children about the war.

Yulia Anfilatova, 35, said she vividly remembers the conversation she had with her 4-yearold daughter after the invasion began.

“She was very frightened. I explained to her that the war is not taking place here in Russia, but that on the contrary – our country is attacking another state that is not so far from us” Anfilatova said. “I said that there is no direct threat to us, but that other people, who are not guilty of anything, are dying and their cities are being destroyed.”

Anfilatova said she thought it was important to explain what was happening honestly and to make it clear that Russia was responsible – for the war and for the family’s need to flee.

“I told her it was unacceptable, and that I didn’t want our family to be a participant in this,” she said.

Anfilatova fled Moscow with her husband, Victor Tsatryan, 37, and their five children last spring. She said that her friends and fellow parents were having similar, difficult conversations.

“Everyone that I know is speaking frankly and is not creating any illusions: They discuss this situation on an equal footing with their children, without attempts to hide anything,” she said.

Tako Robakidze/The Washington Post

Children play at a playground in front of the Liberated School in Yerevan, Armenia, during recess, Feb. 2.

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Section1.05EachbidproposalshallconformtotherequirementsoftheContractDocuments.Thebiddocumentsmaybeobtainedatbidder’sexpensefromSignatureReprographics,(916)454-0800orelectronicallyathttps:/signaturerepro.com.

Section1.06NobidwillbeconsideredunlessitisaccompaniedbyCashier'sCheck,CertifiedCheckorBidBondfromasuretyauthorizedtodobusinessinCaliforniafortenpercent(10%)ofthetotalamountoftheCombinedBaseBidAmount,includingadditiveAlternateBids,madepaya bletotheDistrict.Theabove-mentionedcheckorbidbondshall begivenasaguaranteethattheBiddershall,ifselectedbytheDistrict,executetheContracts,inconformancewiththeContractDocuments.Formoreinformation,refertoSection002000,Article1,Section1.06.

Section1.07Bidsshallnotexpireforaperiodof90daysafterthedatesetforthebid opening.Withinten(10)daysafternotificationoftheDistrict’sNoticeofIntenttoAward theContracts,t hesuccessfulBidderwillberequiredtofurnishaLaborandMaterialBond andaFaithfulPerformanceBondforeachContract.Forfurtherinformation,refertoSections006113.13and006113.16.

Section1.08TheDistrictisanequalopportunityemployer.RefertoGeneralConditions Section007000,Article7,Section7.10.TheDistrictencouragestheparticipationof DVBEbusinesses.RefertoSpecialProvisionsSection008000.

TheDistricthassetanoverallgoalfor thisProjectthatBiddersobtainaminimumof3% oftheirbidamountinparticipationbycertifiedDisabledVeteranBusinessEnterprises (“DVBE”).Theparticipationmaybethroughworkorsupplyofmaterials.IfaBidderisunabletoobtainthefull3%participationbyoneormoreDVBEs,thenthebidmaybefound responsiveonlyifitestablishes“goodfaithefforts”tomeetthegoal.Therequirementsfor goodfaitheffortsaresetforthinSpecialProvisionsSection008000,Article4andtheattachmentsthereto.

Section1.09ThesuccessfulBiddershallberequiredtopayitsworkersonthisProjecta sumnotlessthanthegeneralprevailingrate(applicableattimeofbidadvertisement date)ofperdiemwagesandnotlessthanthegeneralprevailingrateforholidayand overtimeworkforworkofasimilarcharacterinthelocalityinwhichtheProjectisperformed,asprovidedunderCaliforniaLaborCodeSections1726-1861.CopiesoftheprevailingrateofperdiemwagesareonfileattheVacavilleUnifiedSchoolDistrict,401Nut TreeRoad,Vacaville,CA95687,andshallbemadeavailabletoanyinterestedparty uponrequest.Theymayalsobeobtainedontheinternetat http://www.dir.ca.gov/OPRL/DPreWageDetermination.htmRefertoGeneralConditions Section007000,Article7.TheProjectissubjecttocompliancemonitoringandenforcementbytheDepartmentofIndustrialRelations.

Section1.10The governingboardoftheDistrictreservestherighttorejectanyandall proposalsandtowaiveanyirregularityinanyproposalsreceived.

Section1.11AttherequestandexpenseofthesuccessfulBidder,eligiblesecuritiesshall beacceptedinlieuofretentionpaymentstoinsureperformanceundertheContract,pursuanttoCaliforniaPublicContractCodeSection22300.RefertoExhibitHandGeneral ConditionsSection007000,Article12,Section12.05.Saidsecuritiesshallbedeposited priortothesubmissionofthesuccessfulBidder’sfirstprogresspaymentapplication.

Section1.12ThesuccessfulBiddershallhaveatleastonesupervisingtechnicianoncall intheeventthattheexistingfirealarm,securityclocks,intercom,telephoneanddatasys-

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Toallheirs,beneficiaries,creditors,contingentcreditors,andpersonswhomay otherwisebeinterestedinthewillorestate,orboth,of: Victor P. Ramos APetitionforProbatehasbeenfiledby: Carlos Raposo intheSuperiorCourtofCalifornia,County of: Solano ThePetitionforProbaterequeststhat: Maria F. Correia beappointedaspersonalrepresentative toadmini stertheestateofthedecedent. ThepetitionrequestauthoritytoadministertheestateundertheIndependentAdministrationofEstatesAct.(Thisauthority willallowthepersonalrepresentativeto takemanyactionswithoutobtainingcourt approval.Beforetakingcertainveryimportantactions,however,thepersonal representativewillberequiredtogivenoticetointerestedpersonsunlessthey havewaivednoticeorconsentedtothe proposedaction.)Theindependentadministrationauthoritywillbegrantedunless aninterestedpersonfilesanobjectionto thepetitionandshowsgoodcausewhy thecourtshouldnotgranttheauthority.

A hearing on the petition will be held in this court as follows:

DATE: APRIL 19, 2023; TIME: 9:00 am; DEPT.: 22 SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SOLANO Old Solano Courthouse 580 Texas Street Fairfield, CA 94533

If you object tothegrantingofthepetition,youshouldappearatthehearingand stateyourobjectionsorfilewrittenobjectionswiththecourtbeforethehearing. Yourappearancemaybeinpersonorby yourattorney. If you are a creditor or a contingent creditor of the decedent, youmustfileyourclaimwiththecourtand mailacopytothepersonalrepresentative appointedbythecourtwithinthe later of either(1) four months fromthedateof firstissuanceofletterstoageneralpersonalrepres entative,asdefinedinsection58(b)oftheCaliforniaProbateCode, or(2) 60 days fromthedateofmailingor personaldeliverytoyouofanoticeunder section9052oftheCaliforniaProbate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court.Ifyouareapersoninterestedinthe estate,youmayfilewiththecourtaRequestforSpecialNotice(formDE-154)of thefilingofaninventoryandappraisalof estateassetsorofanypetitionoraccount asprovidedinProbateCodesection

T.S.No.102618-CAAPN:0152-072-040NOTICEOFTRUSTEE’SSALEIMPORTANT NOTICETOPROPERTYOWNER:YOUAREINDEFAULTUNDERADEEDOF TRUST,DATED12/5/2006.UNLESSYOUTAKEACTIONTOPROTECTYOURPROPERTY,ITMAYBESOLDATAPUBLICSALE.IFYOUNEEDANEXPLANATIONOF THENATUREOFTHEPROCEEDINGAGAINSTYOU,YOUSHOULDCONTACTA LAWYEROn3/29/2023at9:30AM,CLEARRECONCORP,asdulyappointedtrustee underandpursuanttoDeedofTrustrecorded12/20/2006asInstrumentNo 200600160870ofOfficialRecordsintheofficeoftheCountyRecorderofSolanoCounty StateofCALIFORNIAexecutedby:PEGGYJBRADFORDTRUSTEEOFTHEBRADFORDFAMILYTRUSTDATED12/04/2003,PEGGYJBRADFORDWILLSELLATPUBLICAUCTIONTOHIGHESTBIDDERFORCASH,CASHIER’SCHECKDRAWNONA STATEORNATIONALBANK,ACHECKDRAWNBYASTATEORFEDERALCREDIT UNION,ORACHECKDRAWNBYASTATEORFEDERALSAVINGSANDLOANASSOCIATION,SAVINGSASSOCIATION,ORSAVINGSBANKSPECIFIEDINSECTION 5102OFTHEFINANCIALCODEANDAUTHORIZEDTODOBUSINESSINTHIS STATE;OUTSIDEOFSANTACLARASTREETENTRANCETOTHECITYHALL555 SANTACLARASTREET,VALLEJO,CA94590allright,titleandinterestconveyedto andnowheldbyitundersaidDeedofTrustinthepropertysituatedinsaidCountyand Statedescribedas:MOREFULLYDESCRIBEDONSAIDDEEDOFTRUSTThestreet addressandothercommondesignation,ifany,oftherealpropertydescribedaboveis purportedtobe:1918JACOBSCT,FAIRFIELD,CA94534TheundersignedTrusteedisclaimsanyliabilityforanyincorrectnessofthestreetaddressandothercommondesignation,ifany,shownherein.Saidsalewillbeheld,butwithoutcovenantorwarranty,expressorimplied,regardingtitle,possession,condition,orencumbrances,includingfees chargesandexpensesoftheTrusteeandofthetrustscreatedbysaidDeedofTrust,to paytheremainingprincipalsumsofthenote(s)securedbysaidDeedofTrust.Thetotal amountoftheunpaidbalanceoftheobligationsecuredbythepropertytobesoldand reasonableestimatedcosts,expensesandadvancesatthetimeoftheinitialpublication oftheNoticeofSaleis:$26,742.84IftheTrusteeisunabletoconveytitleforanyreason thesuccessfulbidder'ssoleandexclusiveremedyshallbethereturnofmoniespaidto theTrustee,andthesuccessfulbiddershallhavenofurtherrecourse.ThebeneficiaryundersaidDeedofTrustheretoforeexecutedanddeliveredtotheundersignedawritten DeclarationofDefaultandDemandforSale,andawrittenNoticeofDefaultandElection toSell.TheundersignedoritspredecessorcausedsaidNoticeofDefaultandElectionto Selltoberecordedinthecountywheretherealpropertyislocated.NOTICETOPOTENTIALBIDDERS:Ifyouareconsideringbiddingonthispropertylien,youshouldunderstandthattherearerisksinvolvedinbiddingatatrusteeauction.Youwillbebiddingona lien,notonthepropertyitself.Placingthehighestbidatatrusteeauctiondoesnotautomaticallyentitleyoutofreeandclearownershipoftheproperty.Youshouldalsobe awarethatthelienbeingauctionedoffmaybeajuniorlien.Ifyouarethehighestbidder attheauction,youareormayberesponsibleforpayingoffallliensseniortothelienbeingauctionedoff,beforeyoucanreceivecleartitletotheproperty.Youareencouraged toinvestigatetheexistence,priority,andsizeofoutstandingliensthatmayexistonthis propertybycontactingthecountyrecorder'sofficeoratitleinsurancecompany,eitherof whichmaychargeyouafeeforthisinformation.Ifyouconsulteitheroftheseresources youshouldbeawarethatthesamelendermayholdmorethanonemortgageordeedof trustontheproperty.NOTICETOPROPERTYOWNER:Thesaledateshownonthisnoticeofsalemaybepostponedoneormoretimesbythemortgagee,beneficiary,trustee oracourt,pursuanttoSection2924goftheCaliforniaCivilCode.Thelawrequiresthat informationabouttrusteesalepostponementsbemadeavailabletoyouandtothepublic asacourtesytothosenotpresentatthesale.Ifyouwishtolearnwhetheryoursaledate hasbeenpostponed,and,ifapplicable,therescheduledtimeanddateforthesaleofthis property,youmaycall(844)477-7869orvisitthisInternetWebsiteWWW.STOXPOSTING.COM,usingthefilenumberassignedtothiscase102618-CA.Informationabout postponementsthatareveryshortindurationorthatoccurcloseintimetothescheduled salemaynotimmediatelybereflectedinth etelephoneinformationorontheInternetWeb site.Thebestwaytoverifypostponementinformationistoattendthescheduledsale NOTICETOTENANT:EffectiveJanuary1,2021,youmayhavearighttopurchasethis propertyafterthetrusteeauctionpursuanttoSection2924moftheCaliforniaCivilCode Ifyouarean“eligibletenantbuyer,”youcanpurchasethepropertyifyoumatchthelast andhighestbidplacedatthetrusteeauction.Ifyouarean“eligiblebidder,”youmaybe abletopurchasethepropertyifyouexceedthelastandhighestbidplacedatthetrustee auction.Therearethreestepstoexercisingthisrightofpurchase.First,48hoursafterthe dateofthetrusteesale,youcancall(855)313-3319,orvisitthisinternetwebsite www.clearreconcorp.com,using thefilenumberassignedtothiscase102618-CAtofind thedateonwhichthetrustee’ssalewasheld,theamountofthelastandhighestbid,and theaddressofthetrustee.Second,youmustsendawrittennoticeofintenttoplaceabid sothatthetrusteereceivesitnomorethan15daysafterthetrustee’ssale.Third,you mustsubmitabidsothatthetrusteereceivesitnomorethan45daysafterthetrustee’s sale.Ifyouthinkyoumayqualifyasan“eligibletenantbuyer”or“eligiblebidder,”you shouldconsidercontactinganattorneyorappropriaterealestateprofessionalimmediatelyforadviceregardingthispotentialrighttopurchase.FORSALESINFORMATION : (844)477-7869CLEARRECONCORP8880RioSanDiegoDrive,Suite725SanDiego California92108 DR#00061514 Published:March6,13,20,2023

“I GOT MY OWN YARD!”

Ericsson

wins IndyCar’s Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Marcus Ericsson used a late pass to win Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, withstanding a crash-filled IndyCar Series season opener that featured two cars going airborne, one driver being hospitalized and the two top contenders wrecking each other out with 29 laps to go while battling for the lead. The drama was somewhat expected on a humid day thanks to a record

Rules

From Page B1

Cruz has set a goal of being a 30-30 man this season – 30 home runs and 30 steals – and even talked of 40-40. That doesn’t sound nearly as outrageous as it would have last season.

What isn’t there to like about the changes?

I have not heard much grumbling from the players. The one bit of controversy hap-

W’s

From Page B1

rebounds and three assists in 31 minutes.

The Warriors are inching closer to full strength. Andre Iguodala

Sharks

From Page B1

and be the same player you were. I think he probably in his head thought it would be a quick turn-

A’s

From Page B1

“That’s not something that we look toward,” Kotsay said. “Right now we’re in Oakland. That’s where we play our home games until something changes. In my mind we’re still on parallel paths on being in Oakland or in Vegas.”

Blackburn, an All-Star last season for the A’s, said there’s no doubt the team needs a new ballpark, and he said he selfishly hopes that ends up happening in Oakland.

“Personally, I grew up in the Bay Area in Oakland, and the A’s have been there my whole life,” he said. “It’s a thing where it would be kind of nice to see the A’s stay in Oakland.”

But Giambi, who was interacting with A’s players during batting practice before the game, said the A’s moving to Las Vegas would be a home run.

“It would be amazing,” he said.

Giambi said despite Las Vegas’ ever-growing pro sports portfolio, there

CALENDAR

27-car field. It took all of four turns for the downside of so many entries to appear.

Felix Rosenqvist nicked the outside wall near Turn 3, then got loose. As others checked up behind him, a chain reaction collected five other cars, including Devlin DeFrancesco’s No. 29 Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport Honda. DeFrancesco said he saw the No. 55 Chevrolet of rookie Benjamin Pedersen speeding toward him and thought, “Yeah, this is going to be a big one.”

pened on the first day of spring training during the Atlanta-Boston game. The Braves had the bases loaded with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 6-6 game when Cal Conley, at the plate with a 3-2 count, was given a third strike because he wasn’t set in the batter’s box within 8 seconds left on the pitch clock. Conley couldn’t believe it. Fans couldn’t believe it.

There was some initial outrage on social media:

Can you imagine Aaron Judge being called

made his fourth appearance of the season – and first since Jan. 13. – after missing two months of action due to lingering hip soreness. The Warriors are now just waiting for the return of Andrew Wiggins, who’s been away from the team for nearly three weeks now because

around where he would just find his game right away, but it’s taken him a little while.

“We watch him, we see the improvement for each game.”

Cicek, a Winnipeg native, has played in

is more than enough fan support to go around.

“They’re dying to support it,” Giambi said of baseball fans in Las Vegas. “You have so many transplants, but I think people want to have a home team. We’ve turned into a legitimately big city. We’re starting to become like L.A. We can support all these teams. I don’t see any of them going away any time soon.”

The A’s have been researching a move from the Bay Area to Las Vegas for the better part of two years. Team brass, including Fisher and team president Dave Kaval, have made several trips to Southern Nevada during that time.

A’s executives have met with resort owners, land owners, politicians and tourism officials to figure out what it would take to move to the area and construct a $1 billion, retractable roof stadium.

Although the A’s ballpark happenings have grabbed headlines in Las Vegas and the Bay Area, the team isn’t distracted by the ongoing situation, Blackburn said.

It was. The impact was so hard that it sent DeFrancesco airborne and spun him around 180 degrees before landing. He was unharmed, but another driver involved, four-time Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves, limped away from a wreck that sparked a 19-minute red flag. X-rays to his right leg were negative.

That was only the first time a car flew through the air. The second time was on lap 42, after Rinus VeeKay went into the tires

out because of a pitchclock violation in the ninth inning of a regularseason game?

Or worse:

Can you imagine a World Series game being decided on a pitchclock violation?

No, I can’t.

Not even in my wildest imagination.

We’re talking about world-class athletes –smart athletes – who will realize their success and the success of their team will be on the line. Hitters will adjust to the clock. Pitchers will adjust to

of an undisclosed family matter. Gary Payton II is also rehabbing from a core injury.

The 34-31 Warriors remain in fifth place in the Western Conference standings. They’re two games behind the fourth-place Phoenix Suns and only a half

16 games for the Sharks this season, most recently on Feb. 20 at home against Seattle. The 22-year-old has four assists with the Sharks and has averaged 14:25 in ice time per game.

The Sharks finish the trip with games against

“It’s been something that’s been in talks for the last four or five years,” Blackburn said. “So it’s nothing we sit around and talk about in the locker room. . . . If sometime down the road relocation happens or a new stadium happens, it is what it is. It’s going to be the same mentality for us.”

Blackburn, who played for the Aviators in 2019 and 2021, said the fan support in Las Vegas for baseball is great and said he thinks that will carry over if the A’s land in the city.

“Every game I felt was packed out and people were into the game,” Blackburn said of his days with the Aviators. “I felt like they knew what was going on. I like that. I like when fans are involved in the game and they are excited for action.”

The A’s are down to three sites in serious contention for a Las Vegas ballpark – the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on the north Strip; the Tropicana on the south Strip; and the Rio, located just west of the Strip on Flamingo Road.

Aviators season ticketholder and lifelong A’s fan Tyler Polk said he would prefer the Rio, but any-

in turn 9 and was hit by Jack Harvey. When Jupiter native Kyle Kirkwood slammed into Harvey, his No. 27 Andretti Autosport Honda took off flying over Harvey’s car. The nose of Kirkwood’s car smacked the asphalt, but Kirkwood was (eventually) able to drive it back to his pit stall and remain in the race.

Harvey was taken to a local hospital for further evaluation in what IndyCar said was “out of an abundance of caution.” He was in stable condition.

being allowed to step off the mound only twice during an at-bat, whether it be to throw to first base or shake off their catcher or merely to clear their heads.

Fans also will adjust.

Even older fans like me.

I’m not sure shorter games will hook younger fans because baseball is, by nature, a slow-paced game. But MLB had to try. These rule changes are a start.

Sometimes, changes can be good. I applaud MLB.

game ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are clinging to the final playoff spot.

The Warriors will look to rebound from this loss on Tuesday when they place the Oklahoma City Thunder.

the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday and the St. Louis Blues on Thursday. The Sharks are 1-7-1 in their last nine games and enter Monday with the third-worst record in the NHL at 18-33-12.

where would work for him, as long as they end up in Las Vegas.

“If it’s on the Strip, it’s going to be a sellout every game, unlike Oakland,” Polk said.

That would be the case because of the appetite for Major League Baseball in Las Vegas and the influx of fans of opposing teams, Polk said, much like what has happened with the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium.

Blackburn said it would be a different vibe paying baseball on the Strip as opposed to a suburb like Summerlin, where Las Vegas ballpark is located.

“Just because there’s a lot more people down there on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “I don’t think it would be different as far as fans are. There’s probably a lot of fans here that would make the drive down there to the Strip.”

The fans who turned up Saturday in Las Vegas left Kotsay impressed.

“The fans were great,” Kotsay said. “They were loud. They came out. I think it was a sellout. It’s exciting to play in front of people that had a lot of energy.”

Monday’s TV sports

Netherlands, FS1, 8 p.m.

Basketball College Men

Northeast Conference, Teams TBD, ESPN2, 4 p.m.

Horizon League, Teams TBD, ESPN, 4 p.m.

WCC Tournament, Teams TBD, ESPN, 6 p.m.

Summit League, Teams TBA, ESPN2, 6 p.m.

Big Sky Tournament, Teams TBA, ESPN2, 8 p.m.

NBA

Philadelphia at Minnesota, TNT, 4:30 p.m.

Memphis at L.A. Lakers, TNT, 7 p.m.

Oklahoma City at Golden State, NBCSBA (Fairfield and Suisun CIty), 5 p.m.

Soccer Champions League

Chelsea vs. Dortmund, 5, 13, Noon.

CONCACAF

Viollete vs. Austin FC, FS1, 3 p.m.

Giants’ next reclamation project: Career revivals up and down the roster

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

If the San Francisco Giants want to have any shot at the playoffs this season, they’re going to have to lead the league in rebounding.

Not the basketball kind of rebounding, but the kind that involves bouncing back from a lousy season, an injury, age-related decline, or some combo plate.

Let’s put it this way: If every player on the Giants’ roster has a season comparable to his 2022 performance, this team is doomed.

That’s not to say that the Giants aren’t capable of a return to top form by a dozen or more players. When it comes to fixing broken toys, no organization is more confident in what it can do. With advanced analytics, progressive training and a deep, new-agey coaching staff, the Giants believe they are at or near the top of baseball in maximizing player potential.

Example: Brandon Crawford. Two years ago, at age 34, Crawford had his best season. He opened his mind to what the new coaching/training crew had to offer, he listened and worked and believed, and he became a new man, a walking advertisement for What the Giants Can Do For You.

Then last season his batting average fell from .298 to .231, his homer output from 24 to 9, his stolen bases from 11 to one.

What did that show?

That Father Time is undefeated? I’m not sure. But it cast at least some doubt on the Giants’ miracle-working ability.

The Giants probably didn’t want to build a roster so heavy with down-and-outers hoping to bounce back. They tried to get Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa, both at the tops of their games. But they whiffed, and the key guys they did pick up mostly fit the category of needing a career revival. Most of the holdovers fit the same profile.

Scanning the roster, I come up with four position players and three starting pitchers who, if they simply do what they did last season, plus normal improvement

for the younger players, they will be productive big-leaguers.

The four position players are Joc Pederson, David Villar, Thairo Estrada and J.D. Davis. No reason to think Pederson at 31 can’t match his 23 homers and .874 OPS. Estrada seems ready, he hit .260 with 14 homers in his first full season in the bigs, and he’s 27. Villar, big question mark, but he crushed Triple-A last season, and in 26 bigleague games batted .291.

Of the seven starters, I’ve got Logan Webb and Ross Stripling coming off effective seasons. Alex Cobb is fine, also. His W-L fell off from 8-3 to 7-8, but his other numbers were solid. The other four will be expected to step up, get healthy, and be better than last season.

The big offseason signings, Mitch Haniger and Michael Conforto, are both fix-it projects. Haniger had 39 homers and 100 RBIs two seasons ago, but he missed most of 2022 with Covid and a bad ankle, and he’ll turn 32 this month. Can he be what he was two years ago? That’s the question being asked of many Giants.

Conforto needs a trip to the past. He hit 88 homers over three seasons, ‘17-’19, but fell way off in ‘21 and was out all last season with shoulder surgery.

Most in need of bounce-back? I would go with Mike Yastrzemski and LaMonte Wade Jr.

Young Yaz had a big dip last season, batted .214 and his homers fell from 25 to 17, and RBIs from 71 to 57. That’s a bad look for a guy now 32. The Giants are counting on his glove and bat, 2021-level.

Wade fell off the table last season. Chalk it up to a banged up knee that threw his batting mechanics completely out of whack. He believes he is healthy now, and that he and the staff have his swing back to its former lethal level, but we’ll see. The Giants need Late Night LaMonte, not late-swinging LaMonte.

Wilmer Flores, maybe the team’s steadiest and most dependable guy, declined ominously last season, and he’s 31.