Daily Republic: Monday, May 22, 2023

still fighting to complete her

Feinstein insists she’ll finish her

term, but what happens if that changes?

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

ANAHEIM — Despite continued – and mount ing – questions about her health, Sen. Dianne Fein stein‘s office recently said she plans to finish out her term in the U.S. Senate.

But recent revelations about complications she’s suffered from her shingles diagnosis, including a brain inflammation –coupled with an exchange she had with reporters in the U.S. Capitol in which she appeared to be confused about her absence – have only underscored the possibility that those plans could, at some point, change.

At 89 years old, Feinstein is the oldest sitting U.S. senator, a trailblazer for women in politics who is back in Washington, D.C., working with a “lighter schedule” after a monthslong absence.

Her office said Thursday that she plans to finish out her term, which ends

on Jan. 3, 2025. Should that change in the next 600 or so days, it would be up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a replacement –an unenviable task amid a Senate race well underway and with promises already made. “It’s an absolute no-win situation for Newsom, one of his own making,” said

See Term, Page A7

Biden, McCarthy to meet Monday,

as staff debt-limit talks resume

bloomberg news

Debt-limit negotiators will resume discussions in Washington ahead of a meeting on Monday between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as time grows short to avert a U.S. default.

The Republican leader said he and the president had a “productive” call Sunday, shifting back to a more optimistic outlook on talks that have whipsawed between progress and breakdown for days.

Negotiators for the two sides plan to resume talks 6 p.m. on Sunday, according to a statement from the White House.

McCarthy stressed in comments to reporters at the U.S. Capitol that the two sides don’t have an agreement as the country

nears a catastrophic default that could come as soon as June 1. “Time is of the essence,” the speaker said. But he added that he was more hopeful of a deal after talking with Biden about solutions to bridge their differences.

The president called McCarthy from Air Force One on his way back from an international summit in Japan.

Investors are girding for more volatility in markets this week as the two sides grapple for a deal.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier Sunday that the chances the U.S. can pay all its bills by mid-June are “quite low.” Yellen underscored the urgency of the situa-

See Debt, Page A7

The fight to find Pearl Pinson

A my m Aginnis-Honey AMAGINNIS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

VALLEJO — For seven years, Rose Pinson Rodriguez has held out hope her sister will be found.

Pearl Pinson was kidnapped May 25, 2016, on her way to school.

A day later, the suspected kidnapper, Fernando Castro of Vallejo, was killed in a shootout with police. Pearl was not found.

Their biological mother died last year not knowing the fate of her daughter, who was 15 at the time.

“She always wanted to know where Pearl was,” Rodriguez said. “She’s up there searching for my sister.”

Almost three years ago, three weeks after giving birth to her son, Andres Gabriel, her fiancé, Gabriel Mendoza, was killed. Mendoza, 24, was in the passenger seat of a

friend’s car when someone opened fire on Broadway Street in Vallejo.

A suspect has not been arrested.

“It feels like it’s been too long and too short,” Rodriguez said, reflecting on her sister’s kidnap ping. “It’s hard to describe how I feel sometimes. In the last seven years there have times I heard her voice. I have tons of pic tures of her.”

A friend recently painted another.

In December 2022, Rodriguez got a message about a potential sighting of her younger sister. It wasn’t Pearl, she said.

She feels her sister and fiancé are in the cold case files. Rodriguez opts not to connect with detectives on the cases. Doing so brings back the heartbreak, as she is always

bloomberg news

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested his country was losing control of Bakhmut after months of fierce fighting but downplayed Russian claims it now fully occupied the eastern city.

“Today our people are performing an important task – they are in the Bakhmut, Zelenskyy said in Japan where he had

met with leaders from the Group of Seven nations and other invited guests. “I will not share the points where. Bakhmut is not covered by the Russian Federation, there must not be multiple interpretations.”

Russia claimed overnight that the Wagner mercenary group had taken Bakhmut, with the Defense Ministry saying in a statement that the forces “completed the lib-

eration of the city.” Asked earlier by a reporter during a meeting on Sunday with President Joe Biden if Bakhmut was still in Ukrainian hands, Zelenskyy said: “I think no.” But his spokesman Serhiy Nykyforov later said journalists misunderstood the comment.

The to and fro reflects the confusion that has reigned over Bakhmut for months, with frequent claims by both sides

that the other was losing ground. Either way, the city is now in ruins.

“But for today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing,” Zelenskyy said earlier on Sunday, referring to the devastation the fighting has caused. The only thing left, he said, is “a lot of dead Russians.” Pictures he saw in Hiroshima of the devastation caused by the atomic

photo

undated photo provided by

Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office shows Pearl Pinson, who has been missing since May 2016.

On the one hand and on the other hand

Ialways liked the scenes in the movie adaptation of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” where the main character, Tevye the milkman, would ponder something and then ponder an alternate, saying “on the other hand.” In the movie he evidently was an octopus because he had lots of other hands, but I only have two.

On the one hand, there is something to be said for hearing musical artists just use their natural, unadulterated human voices to sing live in concert without backing tracks or lip syncing. On the other hand, in the 1980s I experienced Ozzy Osbourne and David Lee Roth “singing” live in concert without backing tracks or lip syncing.

On the one hand, believing that a good story is a good story regardless of the genre and because I wrote a column about her recently, I started reading former Fairfielder Rosemary Rogers’ bestselling historical romance novel, “Sweet Savage Love.” On the other hand, it ain’t the kind of book I read in public unless I want to get slapped with yet another Man Card suspension.

On the one hand, I am

ecstatic because as of May 17 I have been following Bright Line Eating for four years now and have been maintaining a 140- to 150-pound weight loss.

On the other hand, I am sad that my decision to take control of my health has truly hurt a Vacaville business I will call the Big and Tall and Overpriced Store that can’t seem to take the hint that we are done, so I think I’ll have to send them a “Dear John” letter.

On the one hand, I like diversity and inclusion and celebrate that “Sesame Street” recently added their first Filipino character, TJ. On the other hand, “Peanuts” characters Peppermint Patty and Marcie have been in the closet for over 50 years.

On the one hand, I liked that last point about the Peanuts characters even though I was hesitant to include it because people have written long diatribes about if they are gay or not. On the other hand, uh, they are fictional characters.

On the one hand, having the defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors get unceremoniously bounced from this year’s playoffs at the hands of my 17-time NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers was deli-

cious. On the other hand … there is no other hand. Both of my hands high five each other on this one.

On the one hand, I am aware that mere possessions cannot bring you true happiness or inner fulfillment. On the other hand, Waterfront Comics owner John Harter suggested I get a copy of the graphic novel “The Illustrated Al: The Songs of Weird Al Yankovic” that has his song lyrics with awesome artwork that is reminiscent of old Mad Magazines, and it has taken me pretty darn close.

On the one hand, I am so happy that my wife Beth got her second hip replaced last week

at Kaiser Vacaville and will soon be giving Jaime Sommers a run for her money. On the other hand, her doctor rejected my request that he also implant a device that I could make her do my bidding using my remote control and become a true Master of Puppets like the Metallica album.

On the one hand, choosing to become a whole foods-plant strong eater in February 2020 was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I feel better than I ever have in my life. On the other hand, I can still wholeheartedly celebrate the 70th anniversary of Joe’s Buffet and the 60th anniversary

An AI may be your next therapist; will it actually help

In the past few years, 10,000 to 20,000 apps have stampeded into the mental health space, offering to “disrupt” traditional therapy. With the frenzy around AI innovations like ChatGPT, the claim that chatbots can provide mental health care is on the horizon.

The numbers explain why: Pandemic stresses led to millions more Americans seeking treatment. At the same time, there has long been a shortage of mental health professionals in the United States; more than half of all counties lack psychiatrists. Given the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurers offer parity between mental and physical health coverage, there is a gaping chasm between demand and supply.

For entrepreneurs, that presents a market bonanza. At the South by Southwest conference in March, where health startups dis-

CORRECTION POLICY

played their products, there was a near-religious conviction that AI could rebuild health care, offering apps and machines that could diagnose and treat all kinds of illnesses, replacing doctors and nurses.

Unfortunately, in the mental health space, evidence of effectiveness is lacking. Few of the many apps on the market have independent outcomes research showing they help; most haven’t been scrutinized at all by the FDA. Though marketed to treat conditions such as anxiety, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, and depression, or to predict suicidal tendencies, many warn users (in small print) that they are “not intended to be medical, behavioral health or other healthcare service” or “not an FDA cleared product.”

There are good reasons to be cautious in the face of this marketing juggernaut.

Decades ago, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

It is the Daily Republic’s policy to correct errors in reporting. If you notice an error, please call the Daily Republic at 425-4646 during business hours weekdays and ask to speak to the editor in charge of the section where the error occurred. Corrections will be printed here.

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and considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, predicted AI would never make a good therapist, though it could be made to sound like one.

In fact, his original AI program, created in the 1960s, was a psychotherapist named ELIZA, which used word and pattern recognition combined with natural language programming to sound like a therapist:

Woman: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.ELIZA: Your boyfriend made you come here?Woman: He says I’m depressed much of the time.ELIZA: I am sorry to hear that you are depressed.Woman: It’s true. I am unhappy.ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

Though hailed as an AI triumph, ELIZA’s “success” terrified Weizenbaum, whom I once interviewed. He said students would interact with the machine as if Eliza were an actual therapist,

when what he’d created was “a party trick,” he said.

He foresaw the evolution of far more sophisticated programs like ChatGPT. But “the experiences a computer might gain under such circumstances are not human experiences,” he told me. “The computer will not, for example, experience loneliness in any sense that we understand it.”

The same goes for anxiety or ecstasy, emotions so neurologically complex that scientists have not been able pinpoint their neural origins. Can a chatbot achieve transference, the empathic flow between patient and doctor that is central to many types of therapy?

“The core tenet of medicine is that it’s a relationship between human and human — and AI can’t love,” said Bon Ku, director of the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University and a pioneer in medical innovation. “I have a human therapist, and that will never be

replaced by AI.”

of Dave’s Giant Hamburgers this year even though I no longer eat their historic fare.

On the one hand, I have to sometimes stop and remember just how incredible it is to have literally hundreds of movies at my fingertips to watch whenever I want to. On the other hand, after searching for something to watch I more often than not settle on something I have seen so many times I know the dialogue better than the characters in the movie.

On the one hand, as an adult I now know that a lot of the things my mom told me – like if I kept making a certain face it would freeze that way – are just not true. On the other hand, I always keep a pair of clean Emergency Underwear in my car in case I’m in an accident. 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,” “Lost Restaurants of Fairfield, California,” the upcoming book Armijo High School: Fairfield, California” and hosts the Channel 26 government access TV show “Local Legends.”

Ku said he’d like to see AI used instead to reduce practitioners’ tasks like record-keeping and data entry to “free up more time for humans to connect.”

While some mental health apps may ultimately prove worthy, there is evidence that some can do harm. One researcher noted that some users faulted these apps for their “scripted nature and lack of adaptability beyond textbook cases of mild anxiety and depression.”

It may prove tempting for insurers to offer up apps and chatbots to meet the mental health parity requirement. After all, that would be a cheap and simple solution, compared with the difficulty of offering a panel of human therapists, especially since many take no insurance because they consider insurers’ payments too low.

Perhaps seeing the flood of AI hitting the market, the Department of Labor announced last year it was ramping up efforts to

ensure better insurer compliance with the mental health parity requirement. The FDA likewise said late last year it “intends to exercise enforcement discretion” over a range of mental health apps, which it will vet as medical devices. So far, not one has been approved. And only a very few have gotten the agency’s breakthrough device designation, which fast-tracks reviews and studies on devices that show potential.

These apps mostly offer what therapists call structured therapy – in which patients have specific problems and the app can respond with a workbook-like approach. For example, Woebot combines exercises for mindfulness and self-care (with answers written by teams of therapists) for postpartum depression. Wysa, another app that has received a breakthrough device designation, delivers cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

Apple will let you teach your iPhone to speak in your voice

thE Washington Post

Starting later this year, you’ll be able to type out a friendly greeting or your coffee order on an iPhone and hear your own voice – or something like it – speak it aloud.

It won’t require any additional apps or accounts, either; just a free software update from Apple.

To people who have full use of their voice, this tool –a feature the company calls Personal Voice – may not seem like much more than a clever curiosity. But for those who can no longer speak with the clarity or confidence they once did, tools like this could help them interact with the world, and the people in it, a little more easily.

Personal Voice is one of a handful of new assistive features that will arrive on Apple devices like iPhones, iPads and Mac computers “later this year,” the company said. Apple wouldn’t elaborate on exactly when users could expect to try these tools for themselves, but the company often highlights features like these before they appear in new versions of its iOS, iPadOS, and macOS software, which historically launch

in the fall.

To help you keep these new accessibility features straight - and to help flag ones you may want to use yourself - here’s our brief guide to the tools coming to an Apple device near you.

Live Speech

How it works: Once enabled, you’ll be able to type out messages and remarks on an iPhone, iPad or Mac computer for the device to read out loud. And if there are certain sentences or phrases you find yourself relying on frequently, you can save these as shortcuts to play aloud with a tap.

Unless you create a Personal Voice model - which we’ll get to in a moment - you’ll hear Siri’s voice reading your words. This tool doesn’t just help when in-person conversations unfold - it also feeds that spoken audio into phone and FaceTime calls.

Personal Voice

How it works: To make those Live Speech messages sound like you, you’ll have to create a Personal Voice model. While we haven’t gotten to try the feature for ourselves,

the company claims an iPhone or iPad can create a sound-alike voice after providing 15 minutes of spoken samples – in this case, a set of randomly chosen voice prompts.

Once that’s done, you can expect a bit of a wait –your device will chew on those samples overnight, after which you’ll be able to type out messages and hear them played back in

your voice.

There’s just one more thing to keep in mind:

When you build a Personal Voice model, it lives on whatever device you created it on by default. That means you’ll have to go through the training process again on any other device you want to use that model on unless you give explicit permission for it to be shared across devices.

Tony Wade

The last laugh

Memorial Day set at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery

FAIRFIELD — Col.

Derek M. Salmi, commander of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, will be the keynote speaker at Saturday’s Memorial Day commemoration at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery.

The event honors “the legacy of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation,” William T. Pickard III, the cemetery director, said in a statement.

The Band of the Golden West, the cemetery Honor Guard and Dixon Mayor Steve Bird also are scheduled to participate. The ceremony is set to begin at 9 a.m.

Flags will be placed on the gravesites of all veterans buried at the cemetery, and will remain in place until June 3.

The public is welcome and is encouraged to bring their own water.

The cemetery is located at 5810 Midway Road near Dixon.

Government meetings

on

week’s calendar

FAIRFIELD — A handful of government meetings will be held this week. They are all open to the public.

The meetings will include:

n Suisun-Solano Water Authority Board of Directors, 6 p.m. Monday, 701 Civic Center Blvd. Info: http://ca-sid. civicplus.com.

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

n Vacaville City Council, 6 p.m. Tuesday, council chamber, 650 Merchant St. Info: ci.vacaville.ca.us.

n Suisun City Parks and Recreation, 6 p.m. Wednesday, 701 Civic Center Blvd. Info: www. suisun.com/parksrecreation-commission.

Fiesta Days celebrates all weekend

VACAVILLE — Fiesta Days brings back traditional weeklong fun for the whole family.

The annual event has celebrated the city’s Spanish and Western heritage since 1957.

The parade, carnival, live musical offerings and contests will all be back this year. There will be the traditional jalapeño eating contest, vendors, Kid Zone and pageant activities.

This years theme is “Helping Hands.”

Opening this year’s event will be the carnival at 5 p.m. Thursday along with Fiesta Garden, food, beverages and music at Andrews Park. At 6 p.m., music will be provided by Journey’s Edge at the CreekWalk.

The Fiesta Garden and carnival will open again at 5 p.m. Friday, along with the Family Fun Zone. At

6 p.m., California Cowboys will be playing on the stage.

The traditional pancake breakfast will take place at 7 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, 101 West St., Vacaville. Advance ticket prices are $7 adults, $5 seniors, $4 children ages 4-10. Tickets at the door will be an additional $1. For more information, call 707-330-6552.

The parade will begin at 10 a.m. on Main Street.

A full day of activities is planned Saturday with a car show at noon on East Main Street. At 3:15 p.m., Pub Kats will be playing at CreekWalk. The Great Wide Open, a tribute band to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, takes the stage at 6:15 p.m.

A Traditional Mass in the Park is planned for Sunday at the Main Stage with the Rev. Berg. Afterward, a Mariachi band will perform from noon to 1 p.m.

The Diaper Derby registration starts at roughly 9:30 a.m., the event begins at 10 a.m. The traditional races are open to tiny athletes 7 months to 4 years old.

Same day entry is

Bay Area-to-Hawaii plane crashes off Half Moon Bay, killing 2

tRibune content agency

A small twin-engine plane crashed into Half Moon Bay on Saturday, killing its two occupants, who were headed from the Bay Area to Hawaii.

The flight departed from the Santa Rosa airport and was bound for Honolulu. It impacted on the Pacific Ocean about 40 miles off the coast around 2 p.m. The Federal Aviation Administration said both occupants of the Viking Air DHC-

6-400 Twin Otter were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that it is investigating the crash.

Preliminary flight data posted on publicly available flight trackers shows the plane appeared to turn back toward the California coast before ultimately crashing into the ocean. Although it is not common for small planes to attempt crossing the Pacific to Hawaii, it is possible, usually with modifications like an auxiliary fuel tank.

In 1997, the National Transportation Safety Board investigated a De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter crash on an Oakland-to- Honolulu flight. The pilot, who was delivering the plane to its owner in Hawaii on what’s called a “ferry flight,” realized he didn’t have enough fuel to make it. He tried to divert to Hilo but ended up ditching in the Pacific Ocean. He was able to land on the water, and Coast Guard rescuers picked him up before the aircraft sank.

Vaca council to discuss possible ordinance giving homebuyers access to enrollment at neighborhood schools

Daily Republic Staff DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

VACAVILLE — The Vacaville City Council will discuss a possible or policy ordinance requiring Realtors or anyone selling a home to provide a onepage information sheet indicating the current enrollment at neighborhood schools.

At the March 28 city council meeting, Councilman Mike Silva asked for the discussion during the “Reports of City Council” phase of the meeting.

“It was further noted that the purpose of this policy/ordinance would be to provide new homebuyers with details about local schools while attempting to hold real estate agents accountable for proper disclosure of such details,” the agenda reads.

The city’s policy for requests under Reports of City Council can be

placed on a future agenda for discussion only. If the majority supports the request, the item may be on a future agenda.

“While there are not many recent examples of this type of agenda request, historically, the practice was understood to be that staff would not do any significant work on the item such as research, staff reports with recommendations, meeting with affected groups, or preparing resolutions or ordinances until directed to do so by a majority of the council,” the agenda reads.

“If and when an item would be brought back on a future agenda, the councilmember who agendized it would take the lead in discussing the item and seeking a majority of support for follow-up action from staff.”

Initially, Silva’s request focused on the proposal for a new process that would

require Realtors or anyone selling a home to produce a document with school enrollment details for new homebuyers. There was additional discussion from other members of the council as well as staff, which resulted in more discussion topics on this subject.

Given the multiple elements of this subject that were raised, staff is recommending that Silva introduce the topic along with his objectives for this item with the council to determine if there is a consensus to be reached on any next steps. The strategic plan goal is listed as to maintain effective and efficient services.

The council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 650 Merchant St.

The complete agenda can be found at https:// www.ci.vacaville. ca.us/government/ agendas-and-minutes.

villa, and Alerta Maxima.

Speaking of music filling the air, registration for the Idol Singing Contest will begin at 12:30 p.m. The contest is open to ages 8 and up. There will be cash prizes and a chance to be a star on stage.

The Jalapeño and Onion Contest will begin at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The event winds down on Monday with the carnival at noon and music by the Shuffle Band, also playing at noon. Go to www.vaca villefiestadays.org for more information or call the Fiesta Days office at 707-448-4613.

school and high school students in Solano. The camps provide an opportunity for students to learn leadership and STEM concepts through a fun and exciting roboticsbased curriculum.

$15 (cash only). There are five age divisions for boys and girls: Crawlers (7 to 11 months), Shrimps (12 to 18 months), Tippy Toes (19 to 24 months), Rugrats (25 to 36 months) and Youngsters (37 to 48 months).

E ntertainment for Sunday will include Reventon Latino from 1 to 3 p.m. More music will fill the air throughout the day with the sounds of DSAS3, Banda La Va Octava Mara-

Deadline for Girls Robotics camps is Monday

This is the last week to register for the Summer Girls in Robotics Leadership camps. The Solano County Office of Education is offering free five-day Girls In Robotics Leadership camps, which are held in partnership with UC Davis Computing-Science, Technology, Engineering and Math for middle

Lieutenant Colonel Bruce L. Sooy, US AF (Ret.)

Lieutenant Colonel Bruce L. Sooy, USAF (Ret.), one of the last of “The Greatest Generation” and a 65year resident of Vacaville, passed away May 13, 2023 at the age of 106.

Bruce was born April 8, 1917 in Greenbank, NJ. His parents died in the flu epidemic of 1918. He was adopted and raised by his maternal grandparents, Mark and Estella Sooy. As a young boy he worked in his grandfather ’s garage, picked cranberries, and cut fire lines in the Pine Barrens for the Civilian Conser vation Corps. After turning 18, he went to work for the Wicaco Machine Company as a machinist. In 1939, Bruce enlisted as a private in the Army Air Corps where he became a crew chief on a B-17 bomber and later a line chief in charge of 7 other crew chiefs.

In 1942, after being encouraged by several pilots in his unit, Bruce took and passed the Aviation Cadet Exam. One of his training bases was in Phoenix, AZ. While on a bus, returning to the base, he gave up his seat to a pretty brunette telephone operator named Evelyn Keyes. Evelyn would become the love of his life. Their love affair would last 67 years, ending with Evelyn’s death in 2013.

After completing pilot training, Bruce was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. and assigned to Gowan Field, in Boise, ID. There he trained as a co-pilot on a B-17. Shortly before graduation, he was asked to stay at Gowan Field and train his own crew flying the faster B-24 Liberator. Once this training was complete Bruce was assigned as an aircraft commander and he and his crew were sent overseas to Wendling, England in August 1943.

Bruce and his crew started flying operational missions in October 1943 and by March 1944 they had completed 22 of their required 25 missions. Their 23rd mission was to Friedrichshafen, Germany on March 18. After they dropped their bombs, they were attacked by scores of Luft-

John Sullivan

John Michael Sullivan of Rancho Murieta, CA passed away on Sunday, May 7, 2023, at the age of 72.

John was born on September 15, 1950, in Fairfield, CA to Charles and Susanna Sullivan. He graduated in 1968 from Armijo High School where he excelled in both academics and sports, serving as the varsity basketball team’s starting guard during his junior and senior years, and leading the golf team to three league championships. His senior year he was also the Delta League’s shotput champion and when he wasn’t engaged in track, golf or basketball, he played the bass drum in the school’s marching band.

He went on to attend Chico State University, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. During his four years there, he was a member of the Chico State golf and basketball teams as well as a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon. In 1970, he won the Green Valley Country Club Championship. Following graduation, John married Carol Anderson and in 1978 they moved to Rancho Murieta, among the first homeowners in the newly developed community. Four years later, they welcomed their daughter Erin. John has remained an active resident, community leader and developer in Rancho Murieta for more than 40 years.

An avid golfer for most of his life, John was a fixture of the Rancho Murieta Country Club and golf community, and often atop many tournament leader boards.

Growing up in close proximity to Napa Valley, John had a passion for and deep understanding of viticulture. Over the years, John would grow his love for winemaking into business ventures opening two wineries, Winterbook and Oakville Estates, located along Napa’s Silverado Trail.

Most recently, John partnered with his daughter and extended family in the development of Angel Wing Winery located near Rancho Murie-

At the end of the week, students will showcase their video projects and coding skills. The high school camps include the Arduino-based curriculum. Applications must be submitted online by Monday at https://www. solanocoe.net/girlcamp. For more information, contact SCOE’s director of Innovative Programs and Student Success, Lilibeth Pinpin, at lpinpin@solano coe.net or 707-399-4439.

Camp dates and schedules are:

Middle school: n June 20-23, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Solano Community College, Vacaville campus n June 26-30, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Solano Community College, Fairfield campus

n July 10-14, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Solano Community College, Vallejo campus

High school: n July 10-14, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Solano Community College, Vallejo campus

waffe fighters resulting in the loss of 16 of the 24 Liberators in his flight element including Bruce’s bomber, “Pink Lady”. All ten crew members bailed out safely, were captured and spent the next 13 months as prisoners of war.

After his release from prison camp and return to the United States, Bruce and Evelyn were married. Bruce became a test pilot at both Wright-Patterson AFB, OH and Muroc Dry Lake Testing Facility (now Edwards AFB), CA. He was stationed at Eglin AFB, FL and ser ved consecutive two-year tours at Wiesbaden AFB, Germany and Burtonwood AFB, England before receiving his last assignment at Travis AFB where he ser ved in several capacities including commander of the 1501st Field Maintenance Squadron before retiring in November of 1960. Throughout his military career, he flew more than 19 different types of military aircraft, he subsequently went back to work for the Air Force for another 19 years, retiring in 1979 as the Deputy Director of Logistic Plans for the 22nd Air Force.

Bruce and Evelyn enjoyed their retirement traveling the United States in their trailer and country western dancing even after Evelyn was diagnosed with Alzheimer ’s Disease.

Bruce is preceded in death by his wife Evelyn and his son-in-law, Dr. Albert Mitchell. He is survived by his three children, Mark (Debbie) of Gardnerville, Nevada, Yvonne Mitchell of Fairfield and Carol Passantino (Sal) of North Bend, WA. He also leaves behind a grandson, Sal Passantino, Jr., step-grandson Brian Mitchell and step-granddaughters Kristina McClellin and Maria Mitchell and four step-great-grandchildren.

A viewing will be held Tuesday, May 23 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Vaca Hills Chapel, 524 Elmira Rd., Vacaville, CA with a funeral service with full military honors on Wednesday, May 24 at 10:15 a.m. at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery, 5810 Midway Rd., Dixon, CA. A reception will follow and the location will be announced. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations be made in Bruce’s name to the Tunnels to Towers Foundation (T2T.ORG), 2361 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island, NY 10306.

Funeral arrangements by Vaca Hills Chapel Funeral Home.

ta. John was always generous with the wines he produced, famously signing and dating gifted bottles to mark special holidays and occasions. John’s career in finance and business development spanned five decades and included Chief Financial Officer of Pacific Coast Building Products, and, mostly recently, Manager and Partner for numerous ventures throughout the Sacramento region. His love for the community of Rancho Murieta was evidenced by decades of leadership around its development, growth, and prosperity

Most recently, John led the investment and development of the Murieta Inn and Spa, Rancho Murieta Marketplace, as well as new housing developments throughout the community. No one was more optimistic and excited about the future of the Rancho Murieta community than John.

He is survived by daughter Erin P. Sullivan of Sacramento, CA, sister Katie Lemos of Roseville, CA, brother Charles Sullivan (Carolyn) of Davis, CA, granddaughter Hannah Laird, nieces Mari Bradford, Michelle Lehman, nephew Matthew Lemos, former wife Carol Anderson Ward, and many additional family members, friends, and colleagues. He is preceded in death by his mother and father, brother-in-law Richard Lemos, and niece Chessa Sullivan.

John will be remembered for his larger-thanlife laugh, intellect, quick wit, memory and recall of exact numbers and details, thoughtful political discussions, and loyalty to family, friends, and his beloved community of Rancho Murieta

A private burial will take place at St. Vincent De Paul (St. Mary’s) Cemetery in Rancho Murieta, with a Celebration of Life at the Rancho Murieta Country Club on May 19, 2023, at 6 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in honor of John to the Rancho Murieta Country Club Junior Golf Program, West Coast Equine Foundation, or Youth on Course Golf Program.

Checks may be addressed to: Junior Golf Program Rancho Murieta Country Club 7000 Alameda Drive Rancho Murieta, CA 95683

AIR FORCE VETERAN

Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic file (2022)

Robert Konvalin of Elk Grove places a flag in front of a tombstone following a Memorial Day Ceremony at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon, May 28, 2022.

Realtime deepfakes are a dangerous new threat

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

You’ve probably seen deepfake videos on the internet that inject facsimiles of famous people into odd or funny situations – for example, a fake Tom Cruise doing “industrial cleanup,” or in a truly meta effort, an artificial Morgan Freeman hyping “the era of synthetic reality.”

Now imagine receiving a phone call from someone who sounds exactly like your child, pleading for emergency help. Same technology, but no one’s laughing.

Cybersecurity experts say deepfake technology has advanced to the point where it can be used in real time, enabling fraudsters to replicate someone’s voice, image and movements in a call or virtual meeting. The technology is also widely available and relatively easy to use, they say. And it’s getting better all the time.

“Thanks to AI tools that create ‘synthetic media’ or otherwise generate content, a growing percentage of what we’re looking at is not authentic, and it’s getting more difficult to tell the difference,” the Federal Trade Commission warned.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF

simple steps to protect yourself and your loved ones from the new type of con.

The term deepfake is shorthand for a simulation powered by deep learning technology –artificial intelligence that ingests oceans of data to try to replicate something human, such as having a conversation (e.g., ChatGPT) or creating an illustration (e.g., Dall-E). Gardner said it’s still an expensive and time-consuming proposition to develop these tools, but using them is comparatively quick and easy.

Yisroel Mirsky, an AI researcher and deepfake expert at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, said the technology has advanced to the point where it’s possible to do a deepfake video

was asking for a loan so she could meet the man in Canada. But in a third window, you could see a man was actually saying the words that were coming out of the woman’s mouth in a woman’s voice – she was a deepfake, and he was a scammer.

This technique is known as reenactment, Mirsky and Wenke Lee of the Georgia Institute of Technology said in a paper published in 2020. It also can be used to “perform acts of defamation, cause discredibility, spread misinformation and tamper with evidence,” they wrote. Another approach is replacement, where the target’s face or body is placed on someone else, as in revenge porn videos.

Fraudsters can copy a recording of someone’s voice that’s been posted online, then use the captured audio to impersonate a victim’s loved one; one 23-year-old man is accused of swindling grandparents in Newfoundland out of $200,000 in just three days by using this technique.

But how, exactly, fraudsters are using the tools remains a bit of a mystery, Gardner said. That’s because we only know what they’ve been caught doing.

done a video chat for 10 or 20 minutes with their supposed suitor, “and it absolutely was the person that they sent me in the photo.”

She added, “The victims did say, ‘The head did kind of look weird on the body, so it looked a little off.’” But it’s not unusual for people to ignore red flags, she said. “They want to believe that the video is real, so they’ll overlook minor discrepencies.”

(Victims of romance scams in the United States reported $1.3 billion in losses last year.)

Real-time deepfakes represent a dangerous new threat to businesses too. A lot of companies are training employees to recognize phishing attacks by strangers, Mirsky said, but no one’s really preparing for calls from deepfakes with the cloned voice of a colleague or a boss.

eyebrows that don’t fit the face or hair in the wrong spot, and skin that doesn’t match their age. If the person is wearing glasses, check whether the reflection they give is realistic, the network says – “deepfakes often fail to fully represent the natural physics of lighting.”

She also urges people to give these simple tests: Ask the other person in the video call to turn their head around and to put a hand in front of their face. Those maneuvers can be revealing, she said, because deepfakes often haven’t been trained to do them realistically.

Still, she admitted, “we’re just playing defense.” The fraudsters are “always going to kind of be ahead of us,” weeding out the glitches that reveal the con, she said. “It’s infuriating.”

Researchers say the technology for real-time deepfakes has been around for the better part of a decade. What’s new is the range of tools available to make them.

“We know we’re not prepared as a society” for this threat, said Andrew Gardner, vice president of research, innovation and AI at Gen. In particular, he said, there’s nowhere to go if you’re confronted with a potential deepfake scam and you need immediate help verifying it.

Real-time deepfakes have been used to scare grandparents into sending money to simulated relatives, win jobs at tech companies in a bid to gain inside information, influence voters, and siphon money from lonely men and women. Fraudsters can copy a recording of someone’s voice that’s been posted online, then use the captured audio to impersonate a victim’s loved one; one 23-year-old man is accused of swindling grandparents in Newfoundland out of $200,000 in just three days by using this technique.

Tools to weed out this latest generation of deepfakes are emerging too, but they’re not always effective and may not be accessible to you. That’s why experts advise taking a few

from a single photo of a person, and a “decent” clone of a voice from only three or four seconds of audio. But Gardner said the tools widely available to make deepfakes lag behind the state of the art; they require about five minutes of audio and one to two hours of video.

Regardless, thanks to sites like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, there’s plenty of images and audio for fraudsters to find.

Mirsky said it’s easy to imagine an attacker looking on Facebook to identify a potential target’s children, calling the son to record enough audio to clone his voice, then using a deepfake of the son to beg the target for money to get out of a jam of some kind.

The technology is becoming so efficient, he said, you can clone a face or a voice with a basic gaming computer. And the software is “really point and click,” he said, easily available online and configurable with some basic programming.

To illustrate how effective real-time deepfakes can be, the LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Government Group shared a video that David Maimon, a criminology professor at Georgia State University, grabbed from the dark web of an apparent catfishing scam in progress. It showed an online chat between an older man and a young woman who

Haywood Talcove, chief executive of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Government Group, said the new technology can circumvent some of the security techniques that companies have been deploying in lieu of passwords. For example, he pointed to California’s two-step online identification process, which has users upload two things: a picture of their driver’s license or ID card, then a freshly snapped selfie. Fraudsters can buy a fake California ID online for a few dollars, then use deepfake software to generate a matching face for the selfie. “It’s a hot knife through butter,” he said. Similarly, Talcove said that financial companies need to stop using voice-identification tools to unlock accounts. “I’d be nervous if [at] my bank, my voice were my password,” he said. “Just using voice alone, it doesn’t work anymore.” The same goes for facial recognition, he said, adding that the technology was at the end of its useful life as a way to control access.

The Cybercrime Support Network, a nonprofit that helps individuals and businesses victimized online, often works with targets of romance scams, and it urges people to do video chats with their suitors to try to weed out scammers. Ally Armeson, the network’s program director, said that just two or three years ago, they could tell clients to look for easy-to-spot glitches, like frozen images. But in recent weeks, she said, the network has been contacted by scam victims who said they’d

“People will confuse familiarity with authenticity,” he said. “And as a result, people are going to fall for these attacks.”

How to protect yourself

Talcove offered a simple and hard-to-beat way to guard against deepfakes that impersonate a family member: Have a secret code word that every family member knows, but that criminals wouldn’t guess. If someone claiming to be your daughter, grandson or nephew calls, Talcove said, asking for the code word can separate real loved ones from fake ones.

“Every family now needs a code word,” he said.

Pick something simple and easily memorable that doesn’t need to be written down (and isn’t posted on Facebook or Ins-

Have a secret code word that every family member knows, but that criminals wouldn’t guess. If someone claiming to be your daughter, grandson or nephew calls asking for the code word can separate real loved ones from fake ones.

tagram), he said, then drill it into your family’s memory. “You need to make sure they know and practice, practice, practice,” Talcove said.

Gardner also advocated for code words. “I think preparation goes a long way” in defending against deepfake scams, he said.

Armeson said her network still tells people to look for certain clues on video calls, including their supposed paramour blinking too much or too little, having

Ultimately, she said, the most reliable way to smoke out deepfakes may be to insist on an in-person meeting. “We have to be really analog about it. We can’t just rely on technology.”

There are software tools that automatically look for AI-generated glitches and patterns in an effort to separate legitimate audio and video from fake. But Mirsky said “this potentially is a losing game” because as technology improves, the telltale signs that used to betray the fakes will go away.

Mirsky and his team at Ben-Gurion University have developed a different approach, called D-CAPTCHA, which is operates on the same principle that some websites use to stop bots from submitting forms online. A D-CAPTCHA system poses a test that’s designed to flummox current real-time deepfakes – for example, asking callers to hum, laugh, sing or just clear their throat.

The system, which has yet to be commercialized, could take the form of a waiting room to authenticate guests attending sensitive virtual meetings or an app that verifies suspect callers.

In fact, Mirsky said, “we can develop apps that can try to catch these suspicious calls and vet them before they’re connected.”

Gardner offered one other, hopeful note. The experiences people are having now with AI and apps like ChatGPT, he said, have made people quicker to question what is real and what is fake, and to look more critically at what they’re seeing.

“The fact that people are having these AI conversations one-on-one on their own is, I think, helping,” he said.

Channel 4/DDP/Zuma Press/TNS file (2020)

An actress plays the role of Queen Elizabeth in Channel 4’s deepfake video spoofing the monarch’s traditional Christmas Day address to the nation, Dec. 26, 2020.

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Santana says of new documentary, ‘This Carlos guy, he’s all right’

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

The documentary “Carlos” is under development. The feature-length project is all about Carlos Santana.

The rock legend has seen the film. A song sprung to mind. But not one of his own.

“When I first saw it, I started singing that Ringo (Starr) song, ‘Theeeeyr’e gonna put me in the movies,’” Santana sang, taking from the Beatles’ cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally.” “… All I have to do is be natural. So I told myself, ‘Whatever you do, don’t cry in your own movie, man.’”

The “Carlos” doc premieres June 17 at a Tribeca Film Festival event at Beacon Theatre in New York. The project is backed by rock stars of the film industry, Sony

Pictures Classics and Emmy-winning director Rudy Valdez (“The Sentence,” “We Are: The Brooklyn Saints”).

The film charts Santana’s rise as a teenage guitar virtuoso playing on the streets of the Bay Area, through his breakthrough Woodstock performance to his rise as a 10-time Grammy winner. A release date for the documentary has not yet been set.

The Las Vegas resident headliner, and also resident, conveys a spiritual, world view that has been inherent his entire life. His House of Blues set list has been propelled by long jams that knit his greatest hits (“Black Magic Woman,” “Soul Sacrifice” “Oye Como Va” and “Smooth” in the mix) along with some unexpected covers.

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

What’s the best boxed cake mix?

WE TESTED 10 AND FOUND A WINNER

Emily HEil

THE WASHINGTON POST

Nothing says “celebration” quite like a frosted cake. Slathered with icing, pipedon lettering, or sugar roses (or all of those, because why not? – it’s a party!), a cake is the most festive way to say “happy birthday!” or maybe just “happy Tuesday!”

Americans eat a lot of cake from boxes – 214 million were sold last year, according to the research firm NielsenIQ. And yellow cake is far and away the most popular flavor, with chocolate at second. Many of us just grab the first box we spy at the grocery store, since it’s impossible from the packaging to know which is going to give us the best results. So to determine the mix we should seek out and those to leave behind, we set out to test the field.

To figure out which brands readers are most likely to encounter, we culled a list of the top-selling brands of prepared cake, cupcake and pie mixes from the Chicago-based market research firm IRI (its numbers came from grocery, drug, massmarket, convenience, military, and select club and dollar retailers, and covered the year that ended in January.). We bought yellow cake mix from the brands that offered it to get a total of 10 boxed mixes (private-label brands were No. 5 on the list, so we picked up a few popular grocery-store brands).

For each, we baked the 9-by-13 version, strictly adhering to the directions on each box (for the few that didn’t offer such instructions, we made 9-inch rounds, as directed). Things got off to a not-so-sweet start when the first few cakes came out surprisingly dark brown and leathery. We swapped the nonstick pans we’d been using for standard aluminum ones, and started over – but let this be a lesson about the difference bakeware can make! Only one of these major brands specifies a lower baking temperature for nonstick.

Our eight brave volunteers tasted all 10 samples in a side-byside, blind test (that is, they didn’t know which brands were which), awarding each up to a maximum score of 10, taking into account appearance, flavor and texture. We gave each panelist a bowl of vanilla buttercream frosting to spread on top, to get the most accurate read on how each cake would perform in the wild.

And something really interesting (and unprecedented for us!) happened: There was a tie for the No. 1 slot. Now, we’ve had ties in previous taste tests, but only for runner-up positions, never for the winner. We really wanted to

give our readers a clear overall recommendation, so we took the rare step of conducting a runoff contest (insert election joke here). For this round, we pitted the top two cakes against one another and assembled a fresh panel of five tasters. This process almost resulted in another tie – and if it had, we probably would have just thrown in our floury dish towel and declared the two brands to be co-champions. But the winning cake mix beat the runner-up by a single point. So we have a winner, and also a very solid contender. (That bonus round explains the disparity in scoring; the top two on the list had a potential additional 50 points to pick up in the final battle.)

That’s enough about the methodology – like many an attendee of an office party, you’re probably just here for the cake. And so, without further ado, here’s how those boxes stacked up:

10. Krusteaz Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix

Score: 17

The bottom two scorers in this taste test happen to be the two gluten-free mixes of the bunch. The Krusteaz sample in particular got dinged for an unappealingly pale hue, which several people likened to banana bread. Its worse-than-dense texture was labeled “firm,” “mealy,” with “no give.” “It’s a brick,” one taster concluded. “Dry, mealy and tough at the same time,” said another. (Price: $4.58 / 18 ounces at Walmart)

9. Birch Benders Cupcake & Cake Mix

Keto Classic Yellow

Score: 22

Another gluten-free brand, another wanly colored cake. This one reminded four tasters of cornbread, and that wasn’t a good thing. Unlike the Krusteaz, the Birch Benders didn’t suffer from being too dry, but that didn’t mean tasters liked it, either. “Is it underbaked?” one wondered. “Wet?” asked another. One deemed it “almost flavorless,” while several pegged it as some kind of healthier formula. “Is this an everythingfree recipe?” one asked. (Price: $8.99/ 10.9 ounces at Giant)

8. Jiffy Golden Yellow Cake Mix

Score: 34

Several tasters appreciated the uniform, finely crumbed, “spongy sponge” texture. But you can’t get by on looks alone, and the flavor fell far short. “This tastes like pressed wood chips,”

said one unimpressed taster. “Not much taste,” said another. And not that this is something the tasters knew (remember, it was a blind test), but this one had the most streamlined preparation of the bunch: The box called for just egg and water, as opposed to most of the rest that also required the addition of oil or butter or milk. But its old-school packaging and sizing meant that one package resulted in either an 8 – or 9 – inch round or an 8-inch square, as opposed to most of the rest, which produce a convenient sheet-pan size. (Price: $1.19/ 9 ounces at Publix)

7. King Arthur Golden Yellow Cake & Cupcake Mix

Score: 36

From the company that makes products beloved by many a home baker, this mix was the most labor-intensive of the bunch (it called for adding butter, oil, eggs and milk, unlike the other mixes, which typically called for only two of those). Several tasters deemed it to be the thickest of the samples, with a tight crumb and a dense interior. Some found that unappealing (“I had to put effort in getting my fork through it!” “Too dense, too dry”), but a couple noted that those qualities might be stabilizing assets in a stacked layer cake. And the brand’s boast that it contains no artificial colors or flavors translated to our tasters as a bland, “modest” hint of vanilla. (Price: $7.49/ 40 ounces at BJ’s Wholesale Club)

6. 365 (Whole Foods)

Classic Yellow Cake Mix

Score: 37

Our panel found that the Whole Foods’ house-brand mix produced a decidedly middleof-the-road confection. Reviews were the equivalent of yawns.

“Inoffensive,” remarked one. Many liked its “glossy” brown top but otherwise found little to single out about this humdrum slice. (Price: $3.29/ 16 ounces at

Whole Foods)

5. Trader Joe’s Yellow Cake & Baking Mix

Score: 41

Products from the quirky grocery chain often end up attaining cult status, but alas, TJ’s cake mix does not seem destined to rise to that pantheon. Several testers noted that it fell flat – literally. “Sadly short,” said one. “I can’t imagine how unimpressive a finished cake would be.” (Price: $2.99/ 16 ounces at Trader Joe’s)

4. Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow Cake Mix

Score: 44

America’s uncontested topselling brand didn’t wind up being our favorite. But it had some things going for it: Our testers noted it was one of the loftiest entrants (“You could make a tall layer cake with this,” one surmised). And it clearly struck some nostalgic notes. “Would definitely eat and feel like a kid again,” another said. But one detected a “slight metallic” note, and another said it was more redolent of generically sweet “birthday cake” than natural vanilla. (Price: $2.39/ 15.2 ounces at Giant)

3. Pillsbury Moist Supreme Yellow

Score: 58

You wouldn’t go wrong with this popular mix, which pleased our panel for its familiar vibe and “moist” consistency. But it didn’t wow most of our panel.

“Basic yellow cake,” said one. “Standard ‘yellow’ flavor,” said another. But it had its fans: One taster declared it her runaway favorite (“I feel the sugar high coming on, just give me a piñata to hit!”), and even took the remainder of her sample with her for a snack later. (Price: $2.89 / 15.25 ounces at Safeway)

2. Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Score: 100 (61 in first round, 39 in runoff)

Several tasters praised the pleasantly “fluffy” consistency and eye-catching butter-yellow hue of this one. “Nice and plush,” said another. And it contained just the right amount of sugar, our panel agreed: “Good cake flavor but not so sweet it hurts,” in the words of one fan. “Tastes like childhood birthday parties,” said one. Another suggested it might be the one cake in the taste test that she could credibly pass off as homemade (we won’t tell!). The Duncan Hines cake tied for first in our initial tasting, and so it went mano a mano with the other top pick. But in the final round, some detected just the slightest aftertaste (“A little eggy?” one wondered) and found it a touch more subtly flavored than the ultimate winner. For many people, though, this might just be the best option, since –unlike our winner – it’s available at most grocery stores. (Price: $1.69/ 15.25 ounces at Food Lion)

1. Great Value (Walmart) Deluxe Moist Yellow Cake Mix

Score: 101 (61 in first round, 40 in runoff)

Need to whip up a birthday cake in a hurry? According to our panel, Walmart’s house brand is your best bet for a dessert that will please a crowd with a sunshiny color, pronounced vanilla flavor and a not-too-dense, nottoo-airy consistency that the even pickiest Goldilocks would want to invite to her party. (And not for nothing – it’s the cheapest option we tested.)

“Would absolutely serve this,” said one discerning entertainer. Another noted that it had a smooth surface, optimal for icing. “Delish!” cried one taster.

“What more could a girl want?”

(Price: 89 cents/ 15.25 ounces at Walmart)

Rey Lopez/The Washington Post photos

These are some of the top-selling brands of prepared cake mixes.

Samples from boxed cake mixes, from left: Great Value, Krusteaz, Pillsbury, Birch Benders, Trader Joe’s, 365 (Whole Foods brand), King Arthur, Betty Crocker, Jiffy and Duncan Hines.

tion, telling NBC that there are tax payments expected then that are substantial and “getting to that date is the problem.”

The current standoff over the debt ceiling has the potential to put more strain on the U.S. economy, which is already vulnerable to a recession after a series of interestrate hikes by the Federal Reserve, according to Bloomberg Economics. A U.S. default would risk triggering a market selloff, a surge in borrowing costs and a blow to the global economy. A temporary walkout from the debt-limit talks by Republican negotiators sent stocks down on Friday.

Biden told reporters in Japan Sunday before his departure that he proposed to cut spending and that the onus is now on Republicans to shift their demands. The president insisted he wouldn’t agree to a deal that protects tax breaks for the wealthy and the fossil-fuel and pharmaceutical industries while cutting health-care and education funding.

“Now it’s time for the other side to move from their extreme positions because much of what they’ve already proposed is simply, quite frankly, unacceptable,” Biden said.

Republicans have lowered their demands on spending caps from 10 years to six years, according to two people familiar with the talks, but the White House still wants the deal to last two years.

One of the people said the GOP is still seeking a large increase to defense spending next year, something that would deepen cuts to social services. Democrats have demanded that defense, which is about half of all federal discretionary spending, not be fenced off from cuts.

McCarthy and his spokesman didn’t reply when asked about the GOP spending cap offer.

Representative Garret Graves, one of the Republican negotiators, told reporters Sunday the GOP will insist on a multi-year spending limit and such a cap is a “foundational” focus of the talks. Energy permitting changes are “irrelevant” without a deal on caps, he said.

Graves said the two sides already have “made a lot of progress” in their discussions but had “a setback” on Saturday.

Asked about the possibility of a short-term extension to avoid a debt default, McCarthy dismissed the idea.

told there is no new evidence.

Rodriguez maintains contact with some her sister’s friends, some of whom are in college.

“A lot of them are still in the Vallejo area and I run into some of them,” she said. Some show up every May 25 to remember Pearl. Family and friends will gather at 6 p.m. Thursday at 1000 Lewis Ave. in Vallejo. Those attend ing are asked to bring only white balloons.

William Pinson, the father of Pearl and Rodriguez, has joined the effort to keep his daugh ter’s story in the limelight, often posting news on social media.

Rodriguez stays in touch with Midsi Sanchez, who was kid napped Aug. 10, 2000, in Vallejo.

Two days after the abduc tion, her kidnapper, Curtis Dean Anderson, left her alone in the car and forgot to take the keys.

Sanchez made her move. She quickly grabbed the keys, unlocked the padlock he had put on her and climbed out of the car window and was able to flag down a truck driver, who then called for help.

Rodriguez married earlier this year, and hopes one day to have a daughter she will name Pearl.

“The Pearl Pinson case remains an open investigation for the Sheriff’s Office. We have not had any new, significant leads in this case recently. Our office continues its commitment to bring closure to the family,” Jackson Harris Jr., of the Solano County Sheriff’s Office, said.

For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/ groups/609286249234813.

Term

From

Dan Schnur, a former campaign consultant who teaches political messaging at UC Berkeley and USC.

It wasn’t too long ago that Newsom had another Senate seat to fill: Kamala Harris’ when she became the vice president.

The governor tapped Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, to fill the role in 2021, making him the first Latino to represent California in the Senate.

Shortly thereafter, Newsom was asked if he would commit to appointing a Black woman to replace Feinstein if she were to leave her seat prematurely.

He said yes.

That commitment was a “game-changer,” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national organization that supports women of color in politics.

“There’s no expectation on our end that he would not fulfill that promise, particularly if you look at the significance of this decision nationally, how important it is,” Allison said. “It would complicate his legacy not to fulfill his promise.”

For now, Newsom doesn’t have to worry about such a decision and the ramifications of his choice to replace Feinstein. But from selecting a “caretaker” to essentially tipping his hand amid an ongoing campaign, here’s a look at what options he eventually could face.

The big three

At first glance, there

From

bomb attack on the city in 1945 reminded him of the state of Bakhmut, he said.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar also signaled that fighting there continued.

While the Russians may control the city proper, Russian forces failed to surround the Bakhmut and lost part of the high ground they had con-

are three major Democrats who have made it certain they’d like to take over for Feinstein: Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam Schiff of Burbank.

But picking one of the trio would essentially be an endorsement in an open election, and Newsom has said he doesn’t like to get involved in “Dem-onDem” races.

Lee would, however, fulfill that 2021 promise to appoint a Black woman – a move that wouldn’t come without some conundrums, especially since Newsom is widely considered to be mulling a presidential bid, even if that campaign is still a few years out.

Should Lee, 76, be his choice, it’s safe to assume she runs for reelection in 2024, setting her up in a better position to win as the incumbent.

“Schiff and Porter have some very powerful supporters with long memories,” said Schnur. “Offending a Schiff supporter in Nancy Pelosi or a Porter backer like Elizabeth Warren doesn’t do him much good.” And neither would angering the Black community if he snubbed Lee, Schnur said.

There’s also the Southern California ripple effect a Lee appointment would make. It’s entirely possible Schiff, 62, or Porter, 49, could decide to forgo a 2024 Senate race and vie for reelection to their respective congressional seats instead, throwing wrenches in already contentious and crowded races for their seats.

The caretakers

Another politically

trolled on the outskirts.

Ukrainian troops also maintain control over some industrial facilities.

“The advance of our troops in the suburbs along the flanks, which is still ongoing, makes it very difficult for the enemy to stay in Bakhmut,” she said in on Telegram. “Our troops have partially encircled the city, which gives us the opportunity to destroy the enemy. ”

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin also said in a video posted Saturday to his Telegram

treacherous route for Newsom would be to appoint a “caretaker” for the seat – someone who could fill the position until California voters choose a new senator in 2024.

“If I were advising him, it would be to pick a caretaker, a qualified caretaker, and someone who is not interested in the open seat,” said Stephen Stambough, a Cal State Fullerton political science professor who specializes in political behavior and elections.

“Senate offices have a lot of really skilled, experienced staff members,” he said. “A caretaker retaining the same staff – or a significant portion – would be the easiest transition, and then California voters would have to weigh a decision.”

There is certainly a bevy of names floating around of who Newsom could or should choose, including former Gov. Jerry Brown, who once made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate, or former San Francisco Mayor and longtime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a staunch defender of Feinstein’s career and legacy, even of late.

And of course, there’s Pelosi, a longtime friend of Feinstein who has rebuffed calls for her to resign from office. That relationship was further highlighted in recent days when Politico reported Pelosi’s daughter is part of Feinstein’s caretaking entourage back in the Capitol, leading a spokesperson for the former speaker to reject speculation Pelosi could be attempting to influence Feinstein’s decisions about her future.

These three options

channel that his forces would withdraw from Bakhmut on May 25 “for rest and retraining” and hand over operations to the Russian military. “We completely took the whole city, from house to house,” he said in the video.

While the Bakhmut news cast a shadow over Zelenskyy’s unscheduled appearance this weekend in Hiroshima, he did receive some good news as the U.S. and other allies sought to shore up Ukraine in anticipation of a major counteroffensive.

aren’t much younger than Feinstein, who will turn 90 next month – Willie Brown recently turned 89, Jerry Brown is 85 and Pelosi is 83. Any of the three would become the second-oldest member of the Senate behind Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, 89.

“There is no shortage of village elders who he could give the seat to as a career capper,” Schnur said. “That would allow him to preserve his neutrality in the Senate race, but it would almost certainly infuriate many African American leaders.”

Newsom could appoint a Black woman, such as San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell or Rep. Maxine Waters. Supporters of Waters, who is 84, could see an appointment as a tribute to her political service whereas for Breed, 48, it could be another stepping stone in a career path already following Feinstein’s.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Controller Malia Cohen are also options – and ones with a twist. Newsom could appoint either of the state officeholders to head to Washington for a short time while putting placeholders in their seats for them to return to. For Weber, that might be a bit trickier since she oversees California’s elections, Schnur noted, but at 74 years old, it’s entirely possible she could use a Senate position to bookend her own political career.

But to Allison, who is heavily involved in California politics, this idea of a “placeholder” is only a “half-commitment” to supporting Black female leadership.

Biden said in Hiroshima after speaking to Zelenskyy, that he was convinced the counteroffensive would proceed.

The U.S. president paved the way for F-16 fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine by allowing Ukrainian pilots to train on the aircraft, a move that Washington previously resisted but was urged by European allies.

Biden also announced more military aid including ammunition, artillery and armored vehicles. The package amounts to

“With everything that’s at stake – voting rights, abortion rights, climate, it goes on and on – I would hope that the governor would not prioritize political neutrality over someone who knows D.C., has experience representing us Californians and who we trust to get the job done from day one,” Allison said. “That requires not doing something in half-measure, not this temporary thing, but to support Barbara Lee, to position her to represent us and to win reelection.”

“Anything less than that would be less than a full commitment to making sure that we have representation in the Senate.”

The outlier

If there’s one constant about politics, it’s the unpredictability.

And while most experts believe this is a long shot, there is still the notion that Newsom could appoint none other than himself, using that position to launch a bid for the presidency.

“The next three years look like they’re going to be pretty nasty for him,” Schnur said. “The state has an immense budget deficit, there are continuing housing and homelessness and education crises. Maybe the Senate turns out to be a better way for him to get to the White House.”

“It would be a really risky thing to do,” Schnur said, pointing to the chance he’d lose the support of Black voters if he went back on that 2021 promise. “But the one thing we know about Gavin Newsom is that he’s very ambitious.”

$375 million, according to the Defense Department. Zelenskyy gave the US assurances that the jets wouldn’t be used to attack Russian territory, Biden said.

G-7 nations also widened existing export bans to Russia, with the U.S. placing dozens more individuals and companies on its entities list in an effort to stop Moscow from getting key inputs for its war machine.

Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic file (2018)

Family and friends gather to honor Pearl Pinson on the two-year anniversary of her kidnapping in Vallejo, May 25, 2018.

Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic file

LEFT: Flowers commemorate Pearl Pinson in 2020. Pinson was last seen at this Interstate 780 overpass in 2016 before disappearing.

RIGHT: Rose Pinson holds a print of her sister, Pearl, in Vallejo, Wednesday.

Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic

Jabin Botsford/Washington Post

From left, Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Charles E. Schumer with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), May 17.

‘Granny flats’ play surprising role in easing California’s housing woes

The WashingTon PosT LOS ANGELES —

When Heather Millstone moved from New York to Los Angeles and started house-hunting, she had one major goal: A home with a yard big enough to build another, smaller house so she could rent out one of the properties to supplement her income.

A few blocks away, Lali Grewal and his wife, Anne Marie, made a similar calculation when they moved to the city last summer. They’re now living in a tiny but cozy home behind a bigger house they’re fixing up to rent out. Millstone and the Grewals are part of a trend that’s busting out all over the state, and – somewhat to the surprise of policymakers – has potential to play a significant role in addressing California’s housing crisis: the accessory dwelling unit.

Multifamily properties are incredibly difficult to build in the state’s major cities for reasons including lack of space, environmental laws and neighborhood opposition. But build an ADU – a small detached house with its own utilities and entryway – and practically no one bats an eye. Multiplied thousands of times over, as has been occurring in recent years, and the structures begin to look like an important, if only partial, solution to the state’s affordable housing needs.

“The ability to be able to remove barriers and support the creation of ADUs has been a very important strategy in our ability to expand the supply of housing,” said Lourdes Castro Ramírez, California’s secretary of Business, Consumer Services and Housing. “I’ve been very pleased to see how communities have embraced this approach, and I think that folks have been able to recognize the

social, economic and community benefits of ADUs.”

The numbers tell the tale: More than 23,000 ADU permits were issued in California last year, compared with fewer than 5,000 in 2017 – which was around when ADU permitting began to take off thanks to legislative and regulatory changes in the state. The state now requires faster permit approval by localities, and establishes that cities must allow ADUs of at least 850 square feet – though many are much bigger. A number of other bills are being debated in Sacramento, including one by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D) that would allow property owners to sell their ADUs separately from their main houses.

Los Angeles dwarfed other cities last year in ADU permitting, issuing 7,160 in 2022, compared with 662 in San Diego, the city with the next-highest total of ADUs. By comparison, just 1,387 permits were issued in L.A. last year for single-family homes. The number of ADU permits issued in L.A. was second only to the 13,400 permits issued for multiunit structures. California isn’t the only state where ADUs are taking off. Oregon has embraced them as well, as have some cities in Montana, and Washington state recently passed a law making them easier to build. In all, some 40 laws have been introduced throughout the country addressing ADUs in one form or another, although some are as simple as providing for a study of the issue, according to Salim Furth, director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. ADUs offer multiple benefits, supporters say: They tend to rent at relatively low prices, and they can be dropped into neigh-

borhoods that are already densely populated but that are desirable because of their proximity to jobs, public transportation, schools or other amenities. Although local ordinances in L.A. and elsewhere aim to prevent their use as short-term AirBnBtype rentals, owners can use them for extra rental income, or to house friends, family or even their own grandmothers – harkening back to the original “granny flat” moniker.

Experts note that even if an ADU is occupied by someone’s grandmother, that’s a home left available elsewhere, while at the same time keeping extended families together.

“The speed at which ADUs have been able to scale across the state has been really surprising,” said David Garcia, policy director for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California at Berkeley. “It shows a pent-up demand from homeowners to want to do more with their land,” Garcia said, adding that “because of California’s affordability crisis a lot of Californians are personally connected with someone experiencing housing insecurity,” leading some homeowners to want to do something to help.

Largely due to lack of supply, the cost to rent or buy property in California

has become prohibitive for many residents, with the median rental cost in the state 41 percent higher than in the rest of the country, according to real estate site Zillow. Home prices are more than twice the national average. Homelessness is at crisis levels, and in recent years California has begun to see residents flee to Texas, Florida or other lowercost states.

The desire to make a personal contribution to lessen L.A.’s housing woes is a key motivator for the Grewals. Lali Grewal has grown so invested in the success of ADUs that he started his own company to help clients build and finance construction of them.

“The way people build wealth in America is by real estate,” Grewal said. “The whole idea was to create more housing – especially in poor neighborhoods.”

The cost to build an ADU can hover around $300,000, so financing can emerge as a barrier for many homeowners, especially since banks have little experience dealing with loans for these relatively new types of structure. A $100 million state program that made grants up to $40,000 to help people with the planning phase alone was exhausted within months, and with California experiencing

a budget deficit no additional state assistance is expected, at least for now.

Nevertheless, a study from the NYU Furman Center found that ADUs are being built not in the wealthiest neighborhoods, but more often in low- to middle-income areas, and often in places with relatively good access to jobs.

“That suggests that it’s not rich people looking to build pool houses or workfrom-home offices,” said Christopher Elmendorf, an author of the study at the UC Davis school of law. “That’s consistent with the theory that this is a viable form of development in places that you may not” otherwise be able to easily build.

Millstone and the Grewals live near Dodger Stadium in a neighborhood tucked between the Interstate 5 on one side and the L.A. River on the other. It’s official name is Elysian Valley, although it’s usually referred to as Frogtown. The area has largely escaped gentrification in recent years, although a couple of cafes have sprung up to serve the bicyclists who ride along the L.A. River.

For Millstone, making her ADU feel like part of the community was key.

Small touches, such as tiling, harken back to the area’s Latino roots, while native California plants and materials are showcased. Although the ADU occupies a relatively small footprint of 650 square feet, high ceilings and carved concrete breeze blocks give it a roomy look and allow for airflow. She shares the space with her two little dogs, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

Millstone hasn’t yet rented out the main house on her property, partly because her father stayed there while he was ill, and she’s now planning to let neighbors stay there at a reduced rent while they do

some construction of their own. But she estimates that when she does put it on the market for full rental value she can easily pull in around $5,000 per month.

The ADU is separated from the main house by a small driveway and some bushes, making it feel like a separate residence. “It’s ideal,” Millstone said.

ADUs may eventually bring major change to this neighborhood, however. Developers have recently descended, snapping up properties for around $800,000 and selling them for twice that price – but only after adding an ADU.

“It’s creating a lot of value, especially in the Frogtown area. A lot of families are moving in so they figure ‘let’s find another source of income,’” said developer Jesse Zamora, as he surveyed a property in the neighborhood that he’s preparing to put on the market for $1.6 million. “I think it’s great. I think we need the housing.”

Longtime residents note, however, that acquiring an ADU as a rental property is not something to be done lightly.

Grove Pashley built a 1,200-square-foot ADU –the maximum size set by the state - around five years ago, just as the current ADU wave was starting to pick up. His property abuts the river and he has chickens and ducks sharing space with native plants.

Pashley said that his ADU has worked out great – he’s had two tenants in the last four years, and said he’s cut them a break on rent because he’s sympathetic to renters and the high prices in L.A. But he’s cognizant of the responsibility he took on and hopes others will be, too.

“I see properties throughout Frogtown with ADUs,” Pashley said. “It’s a commitment to go this route because you’re now a neighbor and a landlord.”

Alisha Jucevic/The Washington Post

Lali Grewal outside his accessory dwelling unit in the Elysian Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Rookies make impact as Giants’ homestand ends on positive note

ribune ConTenT AgenCy

SAN FRANCISCO — Patrick Bailey had an unforgettable first weekend in Major League Baseball.

Bailey hit his first career bigleague home run and later added another RBI on a sacrifice bunt as part of a two-run sixth inning as the Giants earned a 7-5 win over the Miami Marlins on Sunday to end a strong week-long homestand with a 5-1 record.

J.D. Davis also homered, a two-run shot to left in the third inning, and later added a double to left to lead off the sixth. He scored on a Mitch Haniger single, as the Giants took a 5-4 lead over Marlins starter and former Oakland Athletic Jesús Luzardo.

Casey Schmitt had an RBI single in the eighth inning and now has hit safely in 10 of 12 games since he

was selected from Triple-A Sacramento on May 9.

Thairo Estrada also had an RBI and relievers John Brebbia, Ryan Walker, Jakob Junis and Camilo Doval threw a combined 4 2/3 innings for the Giants, who improved to 15-11 at home and 11-8 this month.

Doval picked up his 12th save.

Walker, selected by the Giants on Friday, made his MLB debut in the sixth inning and allowed three hits but no runs in one-plus inning of work. He got the win. San Francisco now begins a seven-game road trip, starting with a three-game set with the American League-leading Minnesota Twins.

One day after he recorded his first big league base hit, Bailey on Sunday connected on his first big league home run. Bailey, making his second career MLB start, pounded a belt-high fast-

ball from Luzardo in the bottom of the second inning as the Giants tied their game with the Marlins 1-1. Bailey, a switch hitter batting from the right side, had seen four four-seam fastballs from Luzardo in the at-bat before he took the fifth one 423 feet over the left field wall. Per StatCast, the exit velocity was measured at 107.4 mph.

Saturday, Bailey singled in the eighth inning for his first big league hit, one of three hits the Giants had in what became a 1-0 Marlins win. He made his MLB debut on Friday, catching the final three innings of San Francisco’s 4-3 victory over Miami. Giants right-hander Alex Wood still hasn’t thrown five or more innings in any of his six starts this season, as he was pulled after 4 1/3 innings. Wood was charged with four earned runs as he allowed six hits and collected five strikeouts.

Brittney Griner is still fighting to complete her comeback

Well, I am here, as Ms. Griner requested of us. All of us, I may add. Fans, press, patrons and phonies – the entirety, included. Come, now. Don’t make that noise. There’s plenty of room for us in the cold corners of the Crypt.

And anywhere would be a welkin, let Brittney Griner tell it. Anywhere but where she’s been.

It had been some 500 odd days since any of

us had seen Griner suit up in uniform, lumber down the hardwood that turned her from a nobody to a supernova and dazzle spectators with a simple flick of the wrist. But in those 500 days or so, Griner’s been to hell and back. Crawled and clawed her way out of the Katabasis to embark, from the city of stars no less, on her own hero’s journey. She was no Odysseus, I assure you. Though, standing across from me, with barely 200 people traipsing around the

Crypt, I could’ve sworn I saw a god with the flicker of the underworld’s blue embers, still trying to figure out how her new normal worked.

There was a time when Griner’s name was the most feared on the planet when it came to hoops. It’s easy to forget with all of the ceremony behind bringing Griner home from the Russian prison that detained her for 10 months. She set high school records for blocks and dunks as a senior. She was sent to counseling in college to

learn how to control her anger after taking pride in breaking a girl’s nose on the court. I remember that Griner from Baylor: a punishing center bigger than anyone in the game in college or the pros, who dunked mercilessly and pushed and shoved her way to being the most dominant force in women’s hoops in a generation. She won a national championship, was named the national player of the year and eventually became the

Will Madison Bumgarner make a comeback?

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

Madison Bumgarner, the forgotten man. Four years removed from the San Francisco Giants and four weeks removed from the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bumgarner is out of sight and out of mind, a cruel reminder that sticking in the big leagues is hard.

Even for a 33-yearold three-time World Series champion who once was on top of the baseball world.

Last we saw of the decorated pitcher, he was having all kinds of command and velocity issues as batters were reaching base at an alarmingly high level.

His five-year commitment to the Diamondbacks ended

early in Year 4 because of awful numbers in four starts – 0-3 record, 10.26 ERA, 25 hits, 15 walks, 16 2/3 innings –a disturbing and ongoing trend that carried over from 2022.

We’ve heard hardly a peep on Bumgarner, who’s still owed $36 million from the Diamondbacks but could sign with any other club for the prorated league minimum. Nevertheless, no reports or rumors have emerged about teams expressing interest.

“I haven’t heard anything,” a National League scout said. “His name never comes up anymore, so that’s probably a sign.”

It would seem the Rangers would take a chance on Bumgarner. Nobody knows his value

to a playoff team more than Bruce Bochy, who’s in his first year managing Texas, currently atop the American League West, thanks largely to a rebuilt pitching staff. And Brian Sabean has a voice with the Yankees in his first year as an adviser to general manager Brian Cashman.

If it’s not the Rangers or Yankees, it could be another team that knows Bumgarner’s historic postseason history – highlighted by his 0.25 World Series ERA, lowest of any pitcher in history with at least 25 innings – and would be willing to give him an opportunity to resurrect his career.

Third baseman Evan Longoria, who was Bumgarner’s teammate for two seasons in San

Francisco and joined the Diamondbacks this season, had a long conversation with Bumgarner and hinted we haven’t heard the last of the fourtime All-Star.

“I won’t tell you what all that we talked about, but I will say that I’ve been around him enough to know he’s not a quitter by any means,” Longoria said. “There’s some part of me that says he’s going to address some of the things he needs to address, get back right and give it another go.

“That’s just me talking. That has nothing to do with what he said. Just from the mentality of that guy, he’s a competitor. He’s not a quitter. So I think if we do see him

Giants’

on Webb

manager provides health update

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

SAN FRANCISCO —

Logan Webb remained in some discomfort

Sunday, Giants manager

Gabe Kapler said, one day after the righthander was removed from his start with lower back tightness.

Webb threw 91 pitches over six innings before he was taken out as a precaution from Saturday’s game against the Miami Marlins. Webb had thrown at least seven innings in his previous three starts before Saturday but felt some tightness as he faced Marlins hitter Garrett Cooper in the top of the sixth and was taken out by Kapler as a precaution.

Webb struck out Cooper with a slider for his seventh strikeout of the game, ending the inning and concluding his day.

“He’s a little sore today,” Kapler said Sunday morning before the Giants faced the Marlins in the series finale at Oracle Park. “We’re still checking

him out and we want to see what the next steps are, but nothing new beyond that.”

Kapler said it’s possible Webb could get an MRI, but nothing had been scheduled in that regard as of Sunday morning.

Webb, who led MLB with 65 innings pitched this season prior to Sunday’s games, said Saturday he didn’t think the ailment was anything serious.

Webb got the nodecision Saturday as his record this year remained at 3-5 with a 2.91 ERA. He lost his first four starts of the season but has a 1.74 ERA over his past six.

ROTATION NONUPDATE: Kapler said before the game he wasn’t ready to announce his rotation for the Giants’ series with the Minnesota Twins that starts Monday in Minneapolis. The series starts a seven-game road trip for the Giants, who also face Milwaukee from Thursday to Sunday.

Koepka puts Augusta agony behind him with US PGA Championship win

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

ROCHESTER, N.Y. —

Six weeks after feeling he "choked" in the final round of the Masters, Brooks Koepka held his nerve to overcome a spirited challenge from Viktor Hovland to win the US PGA Championship at Oak Hill.

Koepka carded a closing 67 to finish nine under par and claim his third US PGA title, his fifth major overall and the first for a player on the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League.

Hovland traded blows with Koepka until a costly double bogey on the 16th, but a birdie on the 18th deservedly gave the Norwegian a share of second place with Scottie Scheffler on seven under.

Koepka took a oneshot lead over Hovland and Corey Conners into the final round, having enjoyed double

that advantage following 54 holes of the Masters in April.

The 33-year-old carded a closing 75 at Augusta National to finish second to Jon Rahm and felt he had choked under pressure, but exorcised those demons at the first opportunity.

The former world number one made a flying start with a hattrick of birdies from the second and was momentarily four shots clear before Hovland matched his birdie on the fourth.

Hovland also birdied the fifth to close the gap and was within a single stroke when Koepka pushed his drive on the sixth into Allen's Creek and was unable to save par.

Koepka doubled his lead with a birdie on the 10th, only to then see his approach to the next plug

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images/TNS

Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury during action against the Los Angeles Sparks at Crypto.com Arena, Friday.

Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group

San Francisco Giants’ Ryan Walker (74) throws against the Miami Marlins in the sixth inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Sunday.

Columns&Games

Socializing at the seafood counter

Dear Annie: I suspect my son may be gay. He is a gorgeous, smart, successful young man in his mid-20s, who has really never shown interest in girls. I am perfectly fine with him being gay, and I hope he would realize that.

I wish he would just tell me if that was the case. I’m really not sure if he is because he seems very masculine. But so did Rock Hudson. I would love your gay readers’ opinions. Do they wish their parents would have brought up the subject or just let them come out when they were ready? Is there a good way to ease into the topic? I would hate for him to feel the need to hide it from me for whatever reason. Maybe I’ve said stupid gay remarks in the past? (“Oh, that’s so gay,” or whatever.) I might have, but I can’t remember specifically. I am very ashamed of myself if I did. Is that the reason he feels he can’t open up to me? Or maybe I’m just totally wrong about everything? Is it normal for a man in his mid-20s to show no interest in girls and not be gay? I feel like I have a lot to learn! — Loving Mom

Dear Loving Mom:

As more people have come out of the closet as gay, you should know that you are not alone in asking these questions. I welcome my readers to write in with suggestions for this mother and answers to her questions. Dear Annie: I own a seafood retail business, and we have a customer every Sunday who is hearing impaired and a little slow at the same time. She is very nice and spends a good amount of money every week. Our issue is that we are very busy on Sundays with long lines, and she will take up 15 to 20 minutes of one of my worker’s time while other people are in line behind her.

After she finally chooses what she wants, she will then stand and start talking about other topics. We have tried asking the next customer in line what we can help them with, but she will still stand there and continue to talk while being in the way. We don’t want to hurt her feelings, but other customers behind her get agitated waiting for her and don’t understand that she is a little slow.

Our employees have tried

Horoscopes by Holiday Mathis

ARIES (March 21-April 19).

There’s someone you make daily sacrifices for. You are not always on the receiving end of such generosity, which is why you deeply appreciate today’s gestures, small but affirming that you are loved.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20).

Each relationship has its own music. When one person changes tone, it is natural for the other person to either remain the same and bear the tension of dissonance or adjust in harmony. Either way, a new song is formed.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21).

You don’t have to move to a different country to have a totally fresh experience in your dayto-day. A small change will start a transformation. Today sees you standing where you haven’t been before or talking to someone you didn’t know.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). Social situations look intimidating from the outside, but it’s a totally different experience once you settle in. You’ll find allies, and you’ll also discover that people are more friendly than first impressions suggest.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). You are especially clever and creative today and will come up with novel solutions. They feel obvious to you, but no one else would think to explore the paths you are so naturally drawn to.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).

You get tired, but keep going. Some new wells of energy and purpose will then be released. You didn’t think this would be

Today’s birthday

You fall in love with a process and with your own brilliant solutions. You move through a problem with such grace, it turns into a dance, a discovery, and a path to riches of the spirit and bank account alike. More highlights: a debt repaid, the beginning of an exciting relationship and a lovable addition to your family. Leo and Sagittarius adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 9, 30, 21, 29 and 16.

easy, so you’ll be ready for the level of work that’s coming.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Everyone has a basic need to belong, which includes being seen, heard and acknowledged. With other needs covered, the need to be recognized will be a primary driver of the action.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21).

Your water-sign nature is supercharged today and will bring a wave of fun, a spritz of playfulness and a splash of drama to your day. Who do you most want to influence? Focus there because your charisma is on 10.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21). Is there really a difference between stubbornness and tenacity? Note: Just because someone seems to resist or be annoyed by your persistence doesn’t mean it’s not working.

telling her that they have to help the next customer, but that doesn’t work either. Any suggestions on how to possibly rectify the situation? — Confused on What to Do

Dear Confused: This is a tough one. Since this happens every week, you have time to experiment and come up with a game plan. For starters, you might think about assigning one employee to come around from behind the counter and gently lead her away from the line. The employee can have a short conversation, make her feel special and thank her for buying the seafood.

If that doesn’t work, you might consider having a coffee with her and explaining the problem from your perspective, all the while telling her how much you like her and appreciate her business. She is lonely and will look to you as a friend, and, hopefully, be more sensitive of the other customers. Another approach would be to put up balloons and a welcome sign one week, letting her know how important she is, and giving you permission to be firm in moving her out of the other customers’ way. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@ creators.com.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19). It will be a challenge to relate to some of the difficult people around you. Rest assured, there’s a way to process their strange opinions, odd views and weird ways of doing things so that you’re not too inconvenienced or annoyed.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20Feb. 18). You lean into your better instincts for the sake of social ease. “Better” doesn’t always mean more truthful, but it usually means kinder. You’d rather err on the side of helping everyone feel respected.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Other people’s thought processes are a mystery, though sometimes you feel you know. You want to know what someone is thinking, but asking directly won’t be the way to find out. Indirect questions and rapport-building will bring about more honesty.

CELEBRITY PROFILES:

Ginnifer Goodwin stars in the Fox comedy “Pivoting” about three friends upending their lives to find happiness. Goodwin is a charming Gemini born when the moon and Neptune were in Sagittarius, the sign of daring risk and thrilling adventure. Goodwin is particularly suited to roles that stretch her reality into different worlds. Whether it’s a Shakespearean setting, religious life in a plural marriage or a magical fairytale world, Goodwin is game to explore. Write Holiday Mathis at HolidayMathis.com.

Crossword

Bridge

by Phillip Alder

tions are cut, and when this happens, it is often fatal to your efforts to defeat or make the contract.

In today’s auction, South’s jump to four spades was a splinter bid, showing a singleton (or void) in spades and slam interest.

DON’T PLAY ON YOUR OWN

In “Camino Real,” Tennessee Williams wrote, “When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.” In a bridge context, you are alone if you cannot reach your partner’s hand, whether you are a defender or the declarer. We say that your communica-

West started with his two top spades. Without pausing for thought, South ruffed the second, drew trumps and played diamonds from the top. However, when West discarded on the second round, declarer skidded to a halt. With no trumps left in his hand, he was isolated, alone. In desperation, South cashed the diamond queen before taking a heart finesse, but East won with the king and returned a spade. West took the last trick with the heart 10: down one. That would have been the right line in six clubs, but not in five. If only South had analyzed the play at trick one, he would have noticed his tenuous communications. After ruffing the second spade, trumps should be drawn, ending in the dummy. Then a low diamond is led and, even if East discards, declarer finesses his nine (or 10). Whatever happens now, there are 11 guaranteed tricks, and with this distribution, South brings home an overtrick. All of dummy’s heart losers disappear on South’s diamond winners, and declarer ruffs a heart on the board!

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

5/22/23

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 5/20/22:

Annie Lane

Dear Annie

War and peace

It is time to talk about war and peace, possible events that could change us more than any we have been routinely discussing. The American-led world order is being challenged by both Russia and China.

What’s the American world order?

Word War II almost literally destroyed every major nation in the world: China, Japan, the USSR, Britain, France and Italy. But the USA emerged stronger – immensely stronger. It commanded two huge navies, two huge armies that were still increasing in size (the Soviet army was tapped out), a huge air force with atomic bombs and the world’s best aircraft. Our homeland hadn’t really been touched.

It was an historic moment.

The world was at the feet of the USA.

And we stepped up to international responsibilities for the first time. We rejected George Washington’s advice to stand clear of entangling alliances and realized what we had too dimly seen after World War I. If the world was to have peace, the USA was the only nation to lead it.

Batson

We had two goals. One, no more wars. Disputes would be handled as in a court of laws. So the UN was formed and we agreed to host the headquarters.

Second, we insisted on peaceful trade. No more tariff wars and scrambles for colonies causing wars. Low tariffs would allow each country to offer what it produced best and to import everything else.

The dollar would be the basic currency of exchange. It was the only currency worth anything.

Lower tariffs on Germany and Japan allowed them to recover from war quickly – at our expense.

“America First” was discredited. Conservatives around the world were suspicious but everyone saw that the next war could be the last war for all. So the world lined up behind America’s hopeful vision of a “liberal world order.”

Today, I think it’s safe to say that America has lost this vision, at least our conservatives have. George W. Bush provocatively ended weapons treaties with Russia and pushed the eastward expansion of NATO, both for unclear reasons. Then he invaded Iraq claiming preemption, a howler that claimed that Iraq was about to attack us with weapons of mass destruction.

Russia and China both checked out of America’s liberal order. The so-called inspirational world leader ignores the laws when it wants to, just like anyone else, they stated. They returned to nationalism.

So Russia brazenly invaded Georgia, the Crimea, and then Ukraine, just like Putin wanted to.

China brazenly took over four islands in the South China Sea, violating international law. It lowered the value of its currency to gain competitive trade advantage, breaking the World Trade Organization’s rules and stole perhaps a trillion dollars of U.S. industrial and military secrets. When President Obama visited they didn’t roll out a red carpet.

Now we face possible war with both. What should we do?

Under President Trump strange, even incoherent policies emerged. Trump fairly worshiped Putin as one who demonstrated “strength.” Trump insulted Ukraine. At first chumming up with Xi of China and ignoring his provocations, he turned on him when Covid-19 threatened to harm our economy, bringing frighteningly cold relations.

President Biden followed Trump’s policies with China for unclear reasons but supported Ukraine, returning to the world leadership role against Russia. China, convinced of American decline, continued to threaten Taiwan and insisted that he, Xi, would bring Taiwan into China before he retired. He provoked all his neighbors – India, Australia, Taiwan and Japan – while ignoring the liberal UN Declaration of Human Rights. He began his barbaric forced Sinification of his Chinese Muslim Uyghur people and then he forcibly took over Hong Kong, ignoring treaty terms.

Finally Biden reacted, stating that the U.S. would protect Taiwan militarily.

We are now toe-to-toe with two adversaries who have signed a friendship treaty. This is perhaps more dangerous that most Americans realize. Five years ago, we ran 12 computer exercises posing a war with China. We lost all 12. And China has gotten more powerful since that time.

More on this later.

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

One could call it the “big squeeze.”

It’s the ever-increasing conflict between the state government’s current and projected tax revenues, which are drifting downwards, and the demands for billions of additional dollars for vital services, such as health care, homelessness and mass transit.

In January, when Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his initial budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year that begins July 1, he projected a $22.5 billion deficit – just a few months after boasting the state had a $97 billion surplus. This month, in a revised budget, he said the deficit had grown to $31.5 billion.

As worrisome as those numbers appear, they might be a best case scenario, according to the Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek.

“Based on our assessment, there is a roughly two-thirds chance revenues will come in below May Revision estimates,” Petek said. “As such, while we consider the May revision revenues plausible, adopting them would present considerable downside risk.”

Moreover, Petek said that using the Newsom administration’s own projections and assumptions, “the budget condition would worsen in future years” with annual operating deficits of around $15 billion in the following two years, and hinted that the real shortfalls in the final years of Newsom’s governorship could be larger.

These estimates of a chronic and perhaps widening gap between income and outgo also assume that the state’s economy won’t be clobbered by recession.

Many economists believe that the Federal Reserve System’s increasing interest rates, meant to slow the economy and battle inflation, could trigger a recession within the next year. If it occurred, Newsom’s budget says, “revenues could decrease by $40 billion in 2023-24 alone, largely driven by losses in personal income tax,” adding that “revenue declines relative to the May Revision forecast could reach an additional $100 billion through 2026-27.”

While the state has amassed more than $30 billion in reserves to cushion the impact of recession, an even moderate economic downturn would quickly consume them, drowning the budget in red ink as the Great Recession did.

To summarize: California’s budget faces several years, at least, of budget difficulty. But the demand side of the fiscal ledger is not shrinking.

After the January budget was released, advocates for programs, particularly health care and social services, cranked up pressure on legislators to protect their slices of the pie. That pressure is even more intense with the May revision’s deficit increase.

They have been joined by three other major stakeholders seeking multi-billion-dollar increases in

state aid: hospitals, transit systems and cities on the front lines of the state’s worst-in-the-nation homelessness crisis.

Hospital and transit system officials say they have been unable to fully recover from the impacts of COVD-19 on their patronage and finances and may be forced to shut down or at least reduce services. Mayors of the state’s largest cities say they need an additional $2 billion per year to maintain ongoing efforts to house those on the streets.

None of the three fared well in the May revision. Newsom offered just a $150 million loan fund to hospitals, didn’t include any extra money for local homelessness efforts, and only said he would be willing to discuss transit’s self-proclaimed “fiscal cliff.”

There’s little question that advocates for existing and new state financing would prefer that Newsom and the Legislature tap into reserves and/or raise taxes to satisfy their demands. In fact, the state Senate’s budget framework proposes a hike in corporate income taxes, although Newsom has rejected it. Were California’s budget squeeze to continue or grow tighter, as seems likely, the remainder of Newsom’s governorship would be dominated by the difficult task of resolving it. CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

My wife and I discussed finances with our grandchildren as they got older. We were the children of Depression Era and World War II, people who understood the old saying: “the value of a dollar.” Up until the early 1960s anyone could go into any bank in America with a Silver Certificate (so-called Blue Note 1878-1964) and exchange the note for real money with intrinsic value – a silver dollar.

The notes and silver coins were recalled by President Johnson. He also put the Social Security Trust Fund on budget in 1968, enabling its use in intergovernmental funds transfers. Our government was approximately $315 billion on debt then, now we’re $31 trillion in debt. Our politicians say they never took a dime from the Fund. Yet somehow the fund is owed $2.7 trillion. Where did it go? Isn’t government accounting great; don’t you wish you could do this with your checkbook too?

We are told the government will run out of money on or about June 1. I’m no financial genius but if we’re $31-plus trillion in debt, doesn’t this mean we’ve been bankrupt a long time? I remember discussions with my father about money and how to use or not it. The most important rule was number one “don’t spend what you don’t have.” Fools have overseen the government budget, just as in 2008, risking

default by breaking rule No.

1. We took in $4.90 trillion in revenue in 2022, overspent by $1.38 trillion.

JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, arguably the “money man” on Wall Street, spoke the unthinkable becoming thinkable, U.S. default. Regardless of what you, I, Treasury Secretary Yellen or Federal Reserve Chairman Powell has to say, real money people pay attention when Dimon speaks. On May 12 he said: “there is potential for widespread panic if politicians don’t get their act together and strike a debt deal.” Will they?

Panic affects more than American investors and savers. It threatens world stock markets, the dollar’s world reserve currency status, contracts, collateral, etc., all the mechanism of trade and global banking. Dimon was there during 2008’s U.S. financial crisis and near default. In a recent interview with Bloomberg he said: “he has put together a War Room at JPMorgan planning for contingencies around default ... his team can meet up to three times a day if politicians in Washington continue to drag their feet on negotiations … he doesn’t anticipate the country will default but the clock is running … Markets will get volatile, maybe the stock market will go down, the Treasury Bond market will have its own problems.”

Dimon saw an opportunity

recently and bought up the assets of the failed First Republic Bank. He noted things should never happen this way as any tumult in America impacts markets worldwide. As far as the banking crisis goes: “It’s time for regulators to put an end to the chaos – but he is predicting policymakers will carry the wrong lessons moving forward.”

Today, we have more compliance officers than loan officers in banks. People have been educated to believe more government regulations is the answer to problems. Unfortunately, we have forgotten President Reagan’s scary admonition: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Dimon wisely said: “Regulations, if you overdo them, can create more problems than they solve.” Bank executives have culpability here but “regulators should be looking in the mirror too,” the principle of interference in our work and personal lives is on full display with the “Administrative State” here in California and nationally. We need relief from the destructive deficit spending of more than a generation. We need the line-item veto, balanced budgets and cuts in pre-programed spending. Balance the damn checkbook Joe!

Jim McCully is a former chairman of the Solano County Republican Central Committee and former regional vice chairman of the California Republican Party.

CALMATTERS COMMENTARY

Jack

Crossword

‘Why does this movie exist?’

Ford explains reprising ‘Indiana Jones’ at 80

Los A ngeLes Times

CANNES, France — Harrison Ford is not an “80 is the new 40” kind of guy. He’s very aware that he is old, and he has no problem with everyone else being aware of it as well. In fact, his decision to dust off the ol’ fedora and resurrect his most famous character in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was not an attempt to defy age, but to explore it.

“I wanted to round out the story,” he told journalists the day after “Dial of Destiny” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. “To see this man who depended so much on his youth, the vigor of youth, I wanted to see him feel the weight of life. I wanted to see him require reinvention, and support,” he added, motioning to Phoebe WallerBridge, who plays Indy’s fearless god-daughter. “I wanted him to have a relationship that wasn’t a flirty kind of relationship, that was a deep relationship.”

“I saw ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ when I was 17,” said director James Mangold. “It’s one of the reasons I’m a movie director. Harrison is an actor, always looking for what he’s going to play. He was looking for ‘Why does this movie exist?’ beyond all the business reasons for it to exist.”

“I cannot have been better served,” Ford said. “With the script, with the kind of actors that we have been lucky enough to get, the passion and skill that Jim brought to it – everything has come together to support me in my old age.

It was a highly populated news conference; in addi-

Daily Cryptoquotes

Here’s how to work it:

tion to six of the film’s actors and Mangold, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and husband/collaborator Frank Marshall fielded questions from a crowd that had risked a literal stampede to get in.

Mangold came out strongly in support of the writers’ strike, noting that although “no movie happens without a great script and no great script happens without a writer, writers, because they are first in the process, are often first to be forgotten.” Waller-Bridge rhapsodized her new role as action hero: “I loved the fighting, more than I can possibly describe,” she said. “I loved the stunts and the action, I was surprised at how freeing it was as an actor to just throw yourself into something.”

Not surprisingly, though, most of the questions were for Ford. His love of, and need to, work quickly became the leitmotif of the event.

“Actors are not happy when they aren’t working and they can’t work unless someone asks them to,” he said when asked about destiny and luck. “I had to wait for luck to come along, but before that, I had the opportunity to learn a bit of craft. Because luck will not save the day. There’s a craft skill involved in what we do… the pain that we feel when we disappoint, the joy that we feel when we’re adequate, successful – you’re in the process of recreating your own history.”

Whether his history will include another Indiana Jones movie, well, “Isn’t it obvious?” he said, grimacing. “I need to sit down and rest a little bit.”

Co-star Mads Mikkelsen quickly took issue with that.

“The first time we had a night shoot, we wrapped at 5 a.m. We all wanted to go to bed because we were exhausted and Harrison picks up his bicycle and goes for a 50-kilometer ride. We were like ‘Come on Harrison, what are we supposed to do?’ So I think there’s a few more Indys in there.”

By turns emotional and wisecracking, Ford appeared to be the only person in the room who didn’t consider Harrison Ford a cinematic icon. At one point, an Australian journalist (you gotta love the Australians) informed him that she thought he was still very hot, especially in the film’s shirtless scene, before asking him what he did to stay fit. Oh, and can he actually ride a horse?

“Let me tell you, I can ride a horse,” he said emphatically. “If it will let me.”

As for the other, Ford first took issue with the bike story, calling it “partial truth” – before leaning toward the microphone to say in a dramatic whisper: “I’ve been blessed with this body. Thank you for noticing.”

He is happy with the scenes that include, for flashback purposes, a younger iteration of Indy – “I know that is my face because Lucasfilm has every frame of every film we’ve ever made together. But it’s just a trick if it doesn’t serve the story, and I’m very happy with it.”

“But,” he said, pausing for effect. “I don’t look back and wish I was that guy because I don’t want to be that guy. I’m very happy with age. I loved being young but I could be dead and I’m still working.”

Word Sleuth

Bridge

by Phillip Alder

As South is in no-trump, he starts by counting his top tricks. Here he has four: two spades, one heart and one club. That means he requires five more winners. The diamond suit will provide four of them, and the fifth has to come from the clubs. Which minor should he lead at trick two? To answer that question, he should consider how he might go down. The only risk is that East gains the lead early and pushes a spade through declarer’s king-jack. If West holds the queen with length plus another entry, South might lose five tricks before winning nine.

He must strain to keep East off the lead. He should lead the club queen at trick two. If East covers with the king, South wins with his ace and shifts to diamonds. His nine tricks will be ready to run.

PICK THE RIGHT SUIT TO PLAY ON FIRST

How often have you read that when the dummy is tabled, you should pause and take stock? Countless times, I’m sure – but does your partner always heed the advice? Now, no doubt, he will take time to consider his line of play in today’s three-no-trump contract. West leads a low spade to dummy’s singleton ace.

Here, West wins with the club king, but he cannot hurt declarer. Whatever West returns, declarer wins the trick and attacks diamonds. If partner didn’t handle this contract correctly, don’t criticize him too harshly. When the deal was played in an expert tournament in 1954, every declarer but one led a diamond at trick two, suffering defeat. The sole successful South led the heart nine at trick two, which worked as East held a heart honor!

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

Bridge

5/23/23

PICK THE RIGHT SUIT

TO PLAY ON FIRST

Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com

How often have you read that when the dummy is tabled, you should pause and take stock? Countless times, I’m sure – but does your partner always heed the advice?

Now, no doubt, he will take time to

Difficulty level:

Yesterday’s solution:

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Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images

Harrison Ford smiles during a press conference for the film “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, Friday.

Brian Crane

Zits Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Baby Blues Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott

Candorville Darrin Bell

Pearls Before Swine Stephan Pastis

Baldo Hector Cantú and Carlos Castellanos

Part Two of “The Voice’s” Season 23 finale showcases the end of a showstopping season of competition for the hopeful, budding singers.

‘The Little Mermaid’ searches for adventure

SuSan Hiland SHILAND@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — Disney’s “Little Mermaid” comes to the big screen in a live-action remake of the famous story of a mermaid who wants grand adventures but ends up with more than she bargained for after making a deal with an evil sea witch.

Also coming to local cinemas is a film about the socio-economic differences between families and what it really means to be a family, and a film about a Russian mobster who is forced to confront his past with the help of his estranged father.

Opening nationwide are:

“About My Father,” in which Sebastian (Sebastian Maniscalco) is encouraged by his fiancée (Leslie Bibb) to bring his immigrant, hairdresser father, Salvo (Robert De Niro), to a weekend get-together with her super-rich and exceedingly eccentric family (Kim Cattrall, Anders Holm, Brett Dier, David Rasche). It turns into a weekend no one saw coming. The film is rated PG-13.

“The Little Mermaid,” in which Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure, longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea and, while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land. But nothing comes free and Arial’s adventurous heart leads somewhere she never imagined. The film is rated PG.

“The Machine,” in which Bert (Bert Kreischer) faces a family crisis as his estranged father (Mark Hamill) arrives, quickly followed by the ghost of his boozesoaked past: a murderous mobster (Iva Babić) hellbent on kidnapping Bert and taking him back to the motherland to atone for his crimes. Bert and his father retrace the steps of his younger self (Jimmy Tatro) in the midst of a war between a sociopathic crime family while they attempt to find common ground. The film

is rated R.

Opening in limited release are:

“Close To Vermeer,” a documentary that goes behind the scenes of the largest Vermeer exhibition ever mounted, now on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Suzanne Raes’ film follows curators, conservators, collectors and experts in their joint mission to shine a new light on the elusive Dutch master. This fascinating documentary reveals everything from the quiet diplomacy required to get the Vermeers to the Netherlands and the new technical knowledge gained by scanning the paintings layer by layer, to the shocking news that one work may not be by Vermeer after all. In the process, we discover how Vermeer was able to depict reality so differently from his contemporaries. The film is not rated.

“MobKing,” in which a loyal crime family confidant, after returning home from a lengthy prison sentence, quickly realizes that he and his family are the targets of the organization that he remained devoted to all of his life. In order to save his family, he must choose whether to run or fight back. This film is not rated.

“The Hole in the Fence,” a film based on true events about boys from a prestigious private school who receive physical, moral and religious training to turn them into tomorrow’s elite in a prestigious Mexican summer camp. The discovery of a hole in the fence sets in motion a chain of disturbing events as the boys devolve into a “Lord of the Flies”like mob mentality that creates and spreads hysteria in this profoundly disturbing coming-ofage drama that unravels like a horror movie while drawing on actual events. The film is not rated.

“The Wrath of Becky,” in which Becky, who has been living off the grid for two years, finds herself going toe-to-toe against Darryl, the leader of a fascist organization, on the eve of an organized attack. The film is rated

come back, it’ll be because he feels he can be competitive and effective again.”

Clearly, Bumgarner needs to change a few things first. As we’re told over and over, baseball is a game of adjustments, and some people are more stubborn than others.

Like it or not, Bumgarner needs to embrace the modern game if he wants to succeed again and have a chance to walk away on his own terms.

That means he can’t get ticked off every time a hitter Hollywoods his way out of the box and on the basepaths. He needs to listen to pitching coaches who share analytic data

Griner

From Page B1

No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft. She was an unmistakable phenom. But one controversy attached itself to her as much as success.

Coincidentally, it was isolation in Russia while playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg that made Griner mature. She craved the cold summers across the world, not only for the paycheck but for what it did for her mentally. Years later, divorced from Russia in the past and present, here was a different Griner. A woman returned to American soil a hero, shown to the world as a symbol. Both of the perils of basketball and its unheralded reach.

Ninety minutes before tipoff, teenage Black girls bobbed and weaved their way down into the Crypt. In the middle of the arena were rows of folks in black shirts, patiently waiting for Griner to rise. She sat along the visitor’s sideline, her 6-foot-9 frame squished into the shiny pleather. A thin, gold rope chain was sprinkled between her Phoenix Mercury warmups. She turned her head to the right, only a crown tattooed under her ear was visible to the roundabout. She barely said anything that far away from tipoff.

As she stood from the benches, the small gathering swooned. The way these kids were actin’, it was like they saw Lazarus return from behind the rock. It wasn’t as magical of a moment for Griner. She was still shaking off the rust. She’d barely felt a basketball while caged in a labor camp. Her fans wanted to see what was locked away from the American imagination. Griner just wanted to hit a shot.

She moved toward a corner of the Crypt and got loose, attempting to warm up as she would any other night. Her elbows looked stiff, and she could barely push the ball from her fingers. The white and orange on the WNBA ball flew from her hands

that would give him an edge over hitters. He must be open to a repertoire tweak or a mechanical tweak, especially if it leads to better control.

Perhaps it would help if Bumgarner did enhanced weight work to increase his velocity and durability. He has thrown 2,699 innings in his pro career (majors, minors, postseason), and arm fatigue could have been a factor. No doubt this rest is doing him good.

Bumgarner might not be too far off. The NL scout saw him early last season and noted, “He actually looked good back then. The cutter and fastball had life.”

A friend of Bumgarner told me the lefty is open to a comeback and would be willing to make adjustments on several fronts but pointed out what has

and concocted a wretched sorbet of ineptitude. She was dangerously out of rhythm, a death sentence for a pro hooper. The clanks jangled the heavens. Sometimes two in a row. Other times: five.

“Aghhhhhhh!!!,”

Griner groaned out by the 3-point line. She hoisted another heave, contorting her arc into a raggedy spiral of a thing.

Clankkkkk. “Nooo!!!” she shook her head.

She tried again.

Left hook.

Clankkkkkkk. It still wasn’t there.

Everything in her game still seemed intact, as fluid as she was almost two years ago when she was competing for an MVP trophy. The spin move? Golden, as slippery as 10 years ago at Baylor. The athleticism? Dominant, she got around that side of the floor with ease. But like any savant of the sport, she was a perfectionist. The bricks were haunting her. She wanted to play 40 minutes a night, if she could. And by the All-Star break, she wasn’t only determined to do that, but to return to the MVP form she left.

So, naturally, Griner yelled at a duo of ball girls to get the hell out of her way. She told an assistant she wasn’t done yet and burst to the strong side of the court for another round of jump shots.

She went on to free throws. And when those weren’t enough, out came the dunks.

She took off from the baseline, her hulking silhouette hurtling toward the rim. She hung there for a millisecond longer than usual, and when returned to the ground with us mortals, a funny occurrence happened. She looked down and grasped at her hands. Griner grimaced, just a bit. Enough for her to notice. Her face stiffened. Even the rim was humbling her, now. All that time away, it looked like she forgot what it felt like to fly.

She fled the court, behind cheers from her fans and signs illustrating the historic evening. But back she ran, all the way toward the locker room, behind a few ropes of Secret Service and

made him such a fierce competitor is his raw onfield emotions, which don’t simply go away.

“For as much as you want to say about Madison, sometimes the way he acted on the mound, he’s a little bit gruff, it’s just his personality,” Longoria said. “I wouldn’t take anybody else. That guy standing out there is as competitive as anybody in this game and wants to win as bad as anybody that I ever played behind.

“If and when he gives it another go, it’ll be because he feels ready and he wants to. He’s committed to it.”

Around the majors

n We know now Farhan Zaidi made the right call by not re-signing Bumgarner to a long-term deal, but what will history say of the Giants not signing Aaron Judge or Carlos Correa?

machine guns manned by the local infantryman. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, appeared from the other side of a large door with a smile on her face.

“Is that sweat?!” Cherelle asked.

“Of course,” Griner said, with a knowing smile.

Behind another set of doors was a special guest for the evening: Vice President Kamala Harris. The vice president flew in to celebrate the evening with Griner. After a few minutes of conversation, and Harris’ address to the Mercury locker room, she left her chambers next to the L.A. Kings’ insignia, with Commissioner Cathy Engleberg in tow, sporting a smile that could halt lava. In fact, upon seeing the dignitary, somebody’s mama shouted, “Oh, my God, it’s Kamala Harris!” only for Harris to spin around in one motion, smile wider and shrug her shoulders, imitating Michael Jordan in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals. “That’s right!” she said, with glee. “It’s meeee!” Next to her was some white guy named Doug who feverishly pointed out, to anyone who’d listen, that he was here to support his “hometown Sparks” while showing off his – seemingly brand new – jersey.

As Griner stepped back out to the court, the lower bowels of the arena were full. Ten thousand, give or take, showed up to give her a hero’s welcome. When Griner’s name was announced, she looked toward the rafters in disbelief. Cherelle could be seen wiping away a few tears from below her sunglasses. As much as Griner wanted to just put on her hard hat and head into work, she took a few seconds for herself to hear the crowd. To hear the teenagers in Section 210 who were crying because of who they saw on the floor; to hug the luminaries courtside who couldn’t bear to miss the moment she came back to us through basketball.

Griner said, that night, that the wave hit her, despite her steely disposition. For a few moments, she felt a lot older sitting on that bench.

“It was a flow of emo-

Check back in five years. For now, Correa is barely hitting .200 with a careerlow OPS while Judge is on his way to another huge year, though he is missing time with a hip strain.

n We might see Bumgarner pitch again, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever see him swing a bat again, unfortunately. The three hardest-hit balls by pitchers since 2015 (the Statcast era) were off the bat off Shohei Ohtani: 115.2 mph, 114.7, 114.6, and for old-time’s sake, here are the next two hardest hit: 112.5 and 112.1, both by Bumgarner in the same game.

n One of our favorite batters, Miami’s Luis Arraez, had a 12-game hit streak during which his average slipped from .425 to .408. Definition of Champagne problems.

tions,” she said. “I didn’t get to experience that for a while.” She tried to go back to who she was: the anonymous, rough uniquity of women’s basketball. “I’m at work,” she said. “I’ve got a job to do. I can’t get caught up in the moment.” A few minutes after the Mercury won the tip, Griner ran down the floor and erased a shot from a Sparks player off the glass like a giant shooing a gnat. Griner swatted another not too long after that, jawing at a player and reminding them what had to be earned in the trenches of the paint. With all the fervor about getting Griner back, it was almost like some of us forgot whom we were inviting into the fold.

But, right then and there, it was clear. BG was back, and it almost looked like she never left.

After the game, Griner limped into the press room to listen to the end of Diana Taurasi’s spiel. There she was, the star of the show, shoeless, feet as pale as they are massive, crouched on the balls of her toes, snacking on a slice of cheese pizza. She pondered what would be the first thing she’d say to the press after her first regular-season game since her detention.

And, well, what would she say? What could she?

Griner tried to smile as Taurasi talked, going back and forth from her brain to the pizza, double dutching between normalcy and spectacle. She shuffled onto the dais and sat there, alone, the fluorescent beams of the basement blasting off her forehead. Griner stared straight ahead. A blank stare betwixt her ears. She scored 18 points in 25 minutes. Had six rebounds and four blocks. But love, no matter how holy or unrequited, couldn’t replace her hunger.

Plus, ya know, the Mercury lost by 23.

So, what’s the verdict after the first day back on the job?

Griner mugged us before offering up an optimistic answer.

“Not good enough,” she grumbled.

CALENDAR

Monday’s TV sports

Baseball MLB

• San Francisco vs. Minnesota, FS1, NBCSBA, 4:40 p.m.

• Oakland vs. Seattle, NBCSCA, 6:40 p.m.

Basketball

NBA Playoffs

• West Finals, L.A. Lakers vs. Denver, ESPN, 5:30 p.m.

Hockey

NHL Playoffs

• East Finals, Florida vs. Carolina, TNT, 5 p.m.

Soccer

EPL

• Newcastle vs. Leicester, USA, Noon.

Tuesday’s TV sports

Baseball

MLB

• L.A. Dodgers vs. Atlanta, TBS, 4:20 p.m.

• San Francisco vs. Minnesota, NBCSBA, 4:40 p.m.

• Oakland vs. Seattle, NBCSCA, 6:40 p.m.

Basketball

NBA Playoffs

• East Finals, Miami vs. Boston, TNT, 5:30 p.m.

Hockey

NHL Playoffs

• West Finals, Vegas vs. Dallas, ESPN, 5 p.m.

Webb

From Page B1

The Giants are just 7-13 away from home this season as they have a 4.72 team ERA on the road, well above the 3.92 ERA they carried through 25 home games before Sunday.

The Giants’ starting rotation hasn’t won a game since May 11 when Alex Cobb threw 7 1/3 scoreless innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks, leading to a 6-2 victory for San Francisco.

The Twins, per the team’s website, are starting Bailey Ober on Monday, Sonny Gray on Tuesday and Joe Ryan on Wednesday. The three right-handers are a combined 13-1 this season as Minnesota entered Sunday in first place in the American

PGA

From Page B1

in a greenside bunker.

After blasting out to 12 feet, Koepka saw his par attempt lip out and although he bounced back immediately to birdie the 12th, he could not shake off a resolute Hovland.

The 25-year-old, who was in contention for the third consecutive major, took advantage of the par-five 13th to keep the pressure firmly on and both men birdied the short 14th to effectively turn it into a two-horse race.

However, in a carbon copy of what happened to Conners in round three, Hovland drilled his second shot into the face of a fairway bunker on the 16th to run up a double bogey.

Koepka's birdie gave him a four-shot lead and he could afford to bogey the 17th and par the last to complete an impressive victory.

Scheffler had got within two of the lead thanks to birdies on the 10th, 13th and 14th, but had to wait until the 18th to pick up another shot and complete a superb 65.

World number one Rahm, commentating for CBS following a closing 71 which left him seven over par, had been full of praise for Koepka after his blistering start.

"He is a player that, when he gets in contention, is like a shark in the water," Rahm said.

"He smells blood, especially on these types of courses. It suits his

League Central, owning a 3 1/2 game lead over the Detroit Tigers.

LINEUP SHUFFLE: Wilmer Flores replaced Thairo Estrada at the top of the Giants’ lineup Sunday. Estrada has batted first in 12 games this season but was having much more success hitting second, hitting .343 with a .848 OPS. As the leadoff hitter, Estrada was hitting .216 with a .665 OPS.

It’s the third time this season Flores will be hitting lead-off, as he’ll face Marlins lefty Jesús Luzardo. In April, Flores went 3-for-4 with a run scored in a game Luzardo started in what became a 4-3 Giants loss.

“I just wanted to shake it up a little bit at the top,” Kapler said. “I don’t think it’s a secret we’ve had our struggles with lefthanded starting pitching so far this season.”

mentality of being even keel, plodding along and taking opportunities when they come.

"He came out aggressive and I don't think people realise how dangerous some of these hole locations are. To be that precise (on the second) to give yourself three feet straight up the hill is incredible."

Open champion Cameron Smith recorded the joint lowest round of the week to date with a closing 65 and insisted no one should be surprised that he and fellow LIV players like Koepka were able to compete at the highest level.

"I gave up on that narrative about six months ago," Smith said with a smile.

"I think there's been a few guys that have been trying to kick it along a little bit.

"We're still out there. We haven't forgot how to play golf. We're all great golfers out there, and we know what we can do, and I think that's what we're trying to do."

Rory McIlroy began the day five shots behind Koepka and made the ideal start with a birdie from tap-in distance on the first, but bogeyed two of the next three holes and eventually signed for a third straight 69.

McIlroy at least had the best seat in the house for an extraordinary performance from playing partner Michael Block, the 46-year-old club professional making a hole-in-one on the 15th in a closing 71 that secured a place in the field at Valhalla next year.