Daily Republic: Monday, June 19, 2023

Blinken has ‘candid’ talks with China’s Qin in Beijing

BloomBerg News

Secretary of State

Antony Blinken had “candid” talks with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing, the two countries said, as both looked to project a positive but cautious tone about a visit that’s meant to bring some semblance of normalcy back to a strained relationship. Discussions between the delegations led by Blinken and Foreign Minister Qin Ganglasted 7 1/2 hours – much longer than planned, officials said. In a further signal that the two saw the meeting as a path to closer ties, Qin accepted Blinken’s invitation to visit Washington at “a mutually suitable time,” the State Department said.

“The Secretary emphasized the importance of diplomacy and maintaining open channels of communication across the full range of issues to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation,” a U.S. readout of the meeting said. “The Secretary raised a number of issues of concern,” it said,

without identifying them.

The U.S. described the talks as “candid, substantive, and constructive.” State-run China Central Television used similar phrasing, calling them “candid, deep and constructive.”

Blinken’s previous attempt to visit China in February was scrapped at the last minute when the U.S. revealed an alleged Chinese spy balloon was floating over American territory – an incident that led China to accuse the U.S. of “hysteria.” In its own description of the conversations, CCTV said it hoped the U.S. could “deal with accidents in a sober, professional and rational manner.”

The main goal of Blinken’s trip will be to try to reestablish seniorlevel communications channels with Chinese counterparts, including between their militaries, to manage the intense competition between the countries, according to U.S. officials. They have sought to set expectations low, saying there would be no breakthroughs.

See Blinken, Page A7

Economist concerned with the length of economic slowdown

Daily r ePuBlic staff

DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — There is a lot of conversation, debate and political discourse about whether the country is heading toward a recession – maybe another great recession – but at least one economist said that is not what Solano County should focus on in the coming years.

“Are we on the precipice of a recession? Are we on the precipice of a deep recession? Or are we going to skirt a recession? The answer is don’t be so worried about the declaration of a recession; be more worried about the length of an economic slowdown,” Robert Eyler told the Solano County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

He is the owner of Economic Forensics and Analytics and a professor at California State Uni-

Barr condemns Trump’s action as ‘absurd,’ ‘wacky’

washiNgtoN Post

Former attorney general William P. Barr on Sunday compared his former boss, Donald Trump, to a “defiant, 9-year-old kid” and continued his condemnation of the actions described in Trump’s recently unsealed federal indictment.

Speaking to CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Barr, a Republican, pushed back on a number of his party’s talking points in excusing the former president’s alleged actions.

“The legal theory by which he gets to take battle plans and sensitive national security information as his personal papers is absurd,”

Barr said. “It’s just as wacky as the legal doctrine they came up with for, you know, having the vice president unilaterally determine who won the election.”

Barr said that Trump did some good things as president but that he does not believe Trump should continue to be the Republican standard-bearer.

“He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests,” Barr said. “This is a perfect example of that.”

Barr, who drifted away from Trump after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, resigned from Trump’s

See Barr, Page A7

versity, Sonoma.

The comment was part of the 17th Solano County Index of Economic and Community Progress report, which focused largely on finding a balance in the post-Covid, inflation-pressured economy. Eyler has been a central part of creating the index for the past 11 years.

“Inflation continues to be a burden” said Eyler, adding that it will likely be felt through 2025. However, he said the government’s investment during the pandemic eased some of the pain.

There were, of course, the common and recurring themes of Solano’s advantage of sitting between the major markets of San Francisco and Sacramento with adequate and improving transportation routes.

Housing prices are affordable when looking outside the county borders, but the prices are making

if very difficult to move into home ownership. One of the keys, Eyler said, is to make sure there is a mix of housing types for the various levels of the workforce, from the top end executive to the declining number of farmworkers.

And the county is losing population, mostly younger, and that brings a host of new challenges, Eyler said.

One of the primary concerns is that loss in population may be a significant reason why job growth in the county has flattened out since the robust growth prior to the Covid pandemic.

Eyler said the county is at about 97.5% of the number of local jobs as existed in January 2020.

“We saw the recovery pattern of the number of workers in California really slowing down in the

Latest effort to break away from state brewing in El Dorado County

grace toohey LOS ANGELES TIMES

It’s a decades-old pursuit that’s been attempted, thus far, unsuccessfully – but a group of El Dorado County residents are hoping to finally get their shot at breaking free from California.

The new effort to separate from one of the largest states in the U.S. is brewing in one of its smallest counties. Located east of Sacramento, El Dorado County is home to fewer than 200,000 residents but includes such pic-

turesque spots as south Lake Tahoe.

“We all knew that our problem was representation, living in Northern California,” said Sharon Durst, who is garnering support for El Dorado County to become its own state. “We don’t have a voice. We don’t have one representative – state or federal government – that lives in the border of El Dorado County.”

Durst, 84, recently formed the Republic of El Dorado State group, which is working to collect signatures of support for their movement to see the

county secede from California – ideally, without the approval of elected leaders in Sacramento.

Durst’s is an unusual plan for a campaign that’s become almost cyclical over the years, with different factions and regions pursuing sovereignty – but one that law experts say doesn’t include the necessary legal footing to succeed.

There have been more than 200 recorded attempts over the years to either break off from California or simply break up the Golden State, including recent ones

by more conservative or rural regions. Officials in San Bernardino County – the largest county by geographic size – are studying the idea of seceding after voters requested the review last year; in 2018, a ballot measure – later deemed unconstitutional – was aimed at splitting California into three states; and other groups over the years have tried to divide the state into two parts or break off a section of Northern California.

That last effort, which

See Break, Page A7

Long-time skeptic of the air fryer becomes a big fan B2

Wyndham Clark wins the U.S. Open championship B1

Aaron Rosenblatt/Daily Republic

Construction crew members work on a site near Cordelia Road in Fairfield, Friday.

Bill O’Leary/Washington Post

William P. Barr, attorney general under President Donald Trump, has criticized his former boss’s handling of classified documents.

It is Made-Up Mailbag time!

It is time once again for my Made-Up Mailbag where I pretend to answer letters from readers when actually I just make them up. Now, you might think that just making things up out of whole cloth is a lot easier than writing about something more substantive and you would be absolutely correct.

nnn

Dear Tony, I remember you writing some time ago that you were not that great of a gardener. Have you had better luck recently?

Keep growing,

Perry Winkel

Dear Perry,

First, I never said that I was not that great of a gardener. That would be a woeful understatement. That would be like saying I am not too fond of the Denver Broncos. No, I remain an epically horrible gardener. However, I have had success with something I found at Winco a few weeks ago. They are microgreens. After just a couple of days these incredibly nutrient-rich greens have already sprouted and are growing in my windowsill. Now I would love to think that I have turned a corner in my green thumb skills, but the truth is they came in a kit that was so easy that several high-functioning chimpanzees have excelled at growing them.

nnn

Hi Tony,

I know that you are a constant reader. What books are you devouring lately?

Ichabod Reid

Hi Ichabod, I usually read several books at once. I mean, not literally

at the same time like I’m the Fairfield Rain Man, I will read several pages of one, bookmark it and do the same with a couple of others. Right now I am slowly making my way through former Fairfielder Rosemary Rogers’ New York Times Bestselling first book “Sweet Savage Love.” It’s the first historical romance novel I’ve ever read and I really like it. I had a stupid bias against such books which was contempt prior to investigation as a good story is a good story. Just keep it under your hat so I don’t get another Man Card suspension.

I’m also reading Sherree Brose’s book “Under the Stardust.” I met her at the Local Author Showcase in May. Her book is trippy and a real slow burner.

Finally, I’m reading “Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation” by Ammon Shea which justifies, through some exhaustive research, why stuck up grammarians are frequently wrong about the English rules they try to foist on others. It often has me laughing out loud and I have to stop and share parts of it with my wife. After reading it I now ain’t gonna shy away from using incorrect words irregardless of what anyone says.

nnn

Hello Mr. Wade, You’re a big pop culture junkie, right? What kind of things do you have in your man cavern?

Curious, Doobie Skew

Hello Doobie, Absolutely. I have a number of figurines and other stuff that include, but is not limited to: Black Panther, Superman, Batman, a Borg, Pokey (but not Gumby), one of the guys from

Devo, Taz, a Matchbox replica of the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine, an Iron Maiden mascot Eddie FunkoPop, an Ewok and a Woody from “Toy Story” Pez dispensers and an R2D2 screwdriver. One little figurine that prob ably has the most sentimental value to me is one that doesn’t really have a name. I guess Birdman could kind of be his name because he used to have wings. He used to have a right arm and a right leg as well, but they both are long gone. I have had him since January 2, 1989 when I worked at Lucky Food Center on North Texas Street (now the Super La Favorita Meat Market). I was whining all day about having to work on my birthday and no one getting me anything to my good buddy there Tami Hall (later Tami Santos). She then presented me with the probably $1 Birdman toy she had bought from the meager toy section Lucky had accompanied by a huge “Happy Birthday!” and we laughed and it brightened my day. I have had it ever since and I now never underestimate the power of something small making someone’s day.

nnn

Dear Tony Wade,

I know Beth had her other hip replaced in May--how is her recovery coming along?

With Hope, Connie Serned

Hi Connie, Well, let’s just say that Beth is not quite moonwalking yet. The doctor discovered there is a crack in her femur so the bone doesn’t usually fuse to the metal pin the way it should. So today we are at Kaiser where she will have another surgery to fix it. I offered to just try it myself at home because I was pretty sure I could find a YouTube DIY video, but she preferred, you know, actual doctors.

nnn

Good morning Tony!

I am so excited about your new book coming out August 7th all about the history of Armijo High School! Are you planning any events?

Indy Ann Royal

Good morning Indy Ann!

Why yes, how fortuitous that you would ask this question completely unprompted by me! As it happens I will be kicking off the whole shebang at a Pre-Publication Party at Joe’s Buffet on Saturday, July 29, from 11:30 to 3:30. Come get a signed copy or copies, have lunch and hang out!

I will be at the Fairfield Barnes & Noble on Saturday, August 12, from 1 to 4 pm. Then the following weekend I will be at the Fairfield Tomato & Vine Festival both days. I have other events as well and I just found out I was selected to speak at the Solano County Library Foundation annual Author’s Luncheon on Sunday, November 5th.

nnn

Dear Tony,

How are you going to celebrate Juneteenth?

Gloria Freeman

Dear Gloria,

Well, by the time you read this the second annual Fairfield Juneteenth, where I will be selling my books with other approved vendors, will be over and I hope it went well. As for today, I thought about starting a tradition like I have with Memorial Day of watching a relevant movie, but I decided to make it more personal.

In 2010 I received a family genealogy and it starts with my great-great-grandparents who had been slaves. Their names were Ned and, no kidding, Anarchy Wade. I plan to raise old glory in the morning, read my family’s genealogy, be grateful for the progress that we have made as a country while being mindful of the long road that we still have to go and pray.

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.”

Thanks to Netflix, this tiny Swiss town has more visitors than locals

BloomBerg

The small fishing village of Iseltwald, Switzerland, is home to just about 400 people. Located on the southern shore of Lake Brienz, it’s long been quiet and uneventful, rarely visited by outsiders - until a popular South Korean TV show put it on the map for global travelers, practically overnight.

Since September 2022, Iseltwald has been hosting massive numbers of Asian tourists, mostly from South Korea and Southeast Asia. The volume of day-trippers has become so intense - sometimes outnumbering locals - that the village launched a double-decker bus service this month to ferry them to the scenic spots they come to see.

That’s thanks to the popular K-drama “Crash Landing on You,” which

Nielsen Korea ranks as South Korea’s fourth-mostviewed TV show in history. After it debuted in 2019, a steady international rollout on Netflix snowballed the show’s audience. The show’s narrative is set in North Korea, where production was not possible; instead, many scenes were shot in Switzerland. A particularly pivotal scene takes place at Lake Brienz, whose stunning turquoise waters, flanked by mountains, are now etched in viewers’ minds.

That scene - a crescendo in the main characters’ relationship that features actor Hyun-bin playing the piano on a pier - has driven such intense tourism that Google Maps now calls it “Crash Landing on You filming location.” It’s become such an icon of romance that visitors use it as a backdrop for proposals,

weddings, and engagement photos. Lake Lungern, a 40-minute drive east from Lake Brienz where part of another episode in the series was shot, has also experienced an influx of South Korean tourists.

Getting to either spot takes commitment. Since Lake Brienz is more easily accessible, it’s gotten the lion’s share of attention. Visitors typically fly to Zurich and take a 140minute train to Interlaken Ost, then ride a bus for 25 minutes to Iseltwald.

(Bern Airport is closer but much smaller - and would still require rides on trains and buses.)

On a recent midweek visit, the bus between Interlaken and Iseltwald is filled with Asian tourists toting selfie sticks and tripods. On arrival, each must now pay 5 Swiss francs ($5.50) to go to the edge of the

pier to take pictures; the charge was imposed in May in hopes of curbing overtourism. All proceeds go directly to the municipality of Interlaken to help cover infrastructure costs related to the influx of visitors, such as garbage disposal, toilets and signage.

Most visitors (including this writer) stay for only an hour or two. Unlike the huge gains in tourism across Croatia that stemmed from zeal for “Game of Thrones,” or the spike in overnight stays at British countryside estates after the big run of “Downton Abbey,” TV tourism here stands to disrupt a pristine place and tiny community without bringing much economic benefit. With only a few modest hotels and restaurants in the village, few are cashing in meaningfully, though the family-owned Hotel Chalet Du Lac has enjoyed rising

reservations from Asian guests in recent months. (Though the show’s streaming run ended early in 2020, the pandemic delayed the fans’ response.)

“I came to Switzerland 10 years ago, but at that time I didn’t know anything about Iseltwald,” says Young-ah Lee, 30, visiting from South Korea. “I found out about it through ‘Crash Landing on You,’ and I’m glad I got to come here because it’s such a beautiful place to visit.”

Ramya Mamidi, 22, an Indian American from Philadelphia, came with her sister to photograph the location. “You could really see the beauty of Switzerland in the show. I think that’s something they did really well,” she says.

Even these visiting fans see the risks of introducing tourism on this scale to such a small destination. On her visit, Lee

expresses conflicting feelings: “I think it’s great that the show increased exposure to this place that otherwise wouldn’t have had that many visitors, but I could also see how it could be bad for the residents who live here, because of the increase of noise and disturbance.”

Some elderly locals sit on a bench within earshot of chattering tourists. Asked about the influx, one of the women frowns and says in her limited English: “Too much.”

“Local people can feel a little overwhelmed by the situation, especially by this lake,” adds Markus Berger, head of corporate communications at Switzerland Tourism. “It’s a small village, who normally have this beautiful place to themselves, and all of a sudden you have hundreds of tourists every day.”

Atlantic hits record-breaking temperatures through month

Bill K earney SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Things are supposed to warm up in June, but not this much – especially the waters off the East Atlantic, where many hurricanes form.

Recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data shows that sea-surface temperatures globally are well above normal for this time of year – last month had the warmest May ocean temperatures since 1850, when record keeping began, registering 1.53 degrees higher than normal.

What matters most to Floridians is the water temperature off the west coast of Africa. The sea surface temperature there is as much as 3.5 degrees hotter than the norm. That energy can act as an accelerant to this summer’s hurricane season, sending hurricanes toward the U.S. earlier than expected.

When meteorologist and hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy, of the University of Miami, got a look at the data, he took to Twitter and wrote, “Tropical Atlantic water temperature is fast-forwarding by about 2.5 months. … The ocean is primed for action, already.”

Just how hot is the ocean? Globally, the mean June sea surface temperature between 1982 and 2011 hovered around 68.3 degrees. This year is 69.6.

In the North Atlantic, where hurricanes that affect Florida often form, the mid-June mean temperature between 1982 and 2011 was 71 degrees. This year the mid-June water temperatures are 73.1 degrees. On average, the region’s water doesn’t get that hot until after July Fourth.

McNoldy said the sharpest increase at the moment is in the far Eastern Atlantic, just off Africa, where, in the heart of hurricane season in August and September, we look for hurricanes to form. “That’s the part that’s really anomalously warm right now,” he said. “So it could give a bit of a kick-start to that part of the season.”

“It can have the effect of letting the deep tropical part of the [hurricane] season start sooner than normal,” McNoldy said. “Usually at this time of year, we don’t look to waves coming off of Africa for activity. We look to the Gulf of Mexico.”

“The sea-surface temperature can be a limitation for storms in the first part of the season. There are plenty of areas in the Atlantic that are not quite warm enough, usually, to sustain a hurricane. If you nudge those up by as much as they’re getting nudged up, all of a sudden those places are OK for hurricanes.”

Why is this happening?

Experts say the anomaly is too distinct to merely blame on climate change — there have to be other factors involved. But climate change has altered the baseline water temper-

atures by about 2 degrees since the early 1900s, so anomalies now become new records.

On top of the general climate shift, McNoldy said one major factor in June’s startling water temperatures off Africa is what’s called the Azores High, a big, semi-permanent subtropical high-pressure system that usually sits off the Azores, west of Spain.

It has shifted significantly to the southwest.

Lately it’s been much weaker than normal, and about two weeks ago, it displaced to the southwest, closer to the Caribbean than to the Azores.

That has two effects that cause the eastern Atlantic to get hot. One, the east-to-west trade winds weaken, which allows the sea surface to be calm and heat more quickly.

Secondly, the plumes of Saharan dust that normally stream off Africa and across the tropics at this time of year dissipate. That allows more direct sunlight to heat the ocean. “That’s just not happening now,” says McNoldy. As a result, the waters off the horn of Africa’s west coast are thermally ahead of schedule.

The Gulf of Mexico is extremely hot right now as well. On June 9, ribbons of thousands of dead fish

washed ashore southwest of Houston due to what officials said was a deadly combination of high water temperatures and windless conditions, resulting in low oxygen in the water.

Will trend continue?

If the warming anomalies were to taper off as the summer continues it would relate to the Azores high returning to its normal position, McNoldy said. “We don’t know if these big anomalies will be in place in the heart of hurricane season.” It’s conceivable that temperatures could taper back to normal by the end of July.

“Will it be warming anomalously at the same rate? Probably not,” McNoldy said. “This is pretty extreme. The ocean can’t just keep getting hotter and hotter — it reaches disequilibrium with the air … there’s an air-sea exchange if the ocean gets too hot.”

Even if we get back down to normal, we’ll still have a warm peak season, says McNoldy.

The El Niño effect

The National Hurricane Center has called for a “normal” hurricane season with a likelihood of five to nine hurricanes this year, while factoring in both a warmer-thannormal Atlantic, and an El Niño weather system. An El Niño occurs when east-west trade winds over the Pacific Ocean weaken, allowing warm water to stack up off the west coast of South America. They happen every three to five years.

They also affect weather in the Atlantic, and can alter hurricanes. “All other things being equal, an El Niño can hinder Atlantic hurricanes through wind shear,” McNoldy said.

Biden set to announce $600 million in climate projects during Palo Alto visit

will mccartHy BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

President Joe Biden is set to announce a $600 million investment in projects aimed at combatting climate change during a visit to Palo Alto on Monday.

State, local, and environmental justice leaders will join the president in touring the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve, a coastal wetland in Palo Alto that plays a key role in protecting shoreline communities. Biden is expected to highlight the wetland to emphasize the urgency of climate action in coastal communities across the nation.

Criticism grows for GOP pledge about nominee

BloomBerg news

Republican presidential contender Chris Christie said the Republican National Committee’s requirement for candidates to support the eventual 2024 nominee is a “useless idea,” adding to criticism following the indictments of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.

“It’s only the era of Donald Trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge,” the former New Jersey governor said in on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “So I think it’s a bad idea.”

The RNC will require presidential candidates to pledge support to the party’s nominee, whoever that may be, if they want to take the stage at the first primary debate in August. Meanwhile, Trump’s legal woes are growing after he became the first former U.S. president to be indicted on federal charges, even as polls suggest Republican voters still favor him over other candidates.

Christie, who backed Trump in 2016, has propelled his 2024 campaign by criticizing the former president. Despite the

pledge requirement, he says he plans to take the debate stage this year in an effort to prevent Trump from taking office.

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has called on the RNC to back off the pledge for a nominee convicted of “espionage or a serious felony.” Hutchinson’s campaign team met was rebuffed in a meeting with RNC officials, Politico reported. He and voters at large wouldn’t support a candidate in a presidential election “who is under indictment, that is potentially convicted at that time,” Hutchinson said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“But we’re going to make that debate stage, and Donald Trump will not be the nominee of the party and I’m sure that’s how those who participate in it will view that,” he said.

The first Republican presidential primary debate is set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. Under rules announced by the national committee on June 2, participation criteria include a “signed pledge agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.”

Mary A. Tor iello

During the visit, Biden is also expected to preview his administration’s latest actions to help communities adapt to a changing climate and increasingly extreme weather.

“The funding will support innovative coastal resilience and adaptation solutions, such as building natural infrastructure, planning and preparing for community-led relocation, and protecting public access to coastal natural resources, that protect communities and ecosystems from sea level rise, tidal flooding hurricanes, storm surge, among other severe climate impacts,” the administration said in a statement. In the past month, millions of

Americans have faced the effects of wildfire smoke and record-breaking heat waves, likely intensified by climate change. In the Bay Area, coastal communities face serious challenges from climate changerelated issues like sea level rise, tidal flooding, and storm surges.

Biden is expected to discuss his administration’s efforts to tackle those problems, such as creating clean energy jobs, building climate resilience, and making investments to better protect the country’s power grid from extreme weather events. That agenda is part of what Biden’s team refers to as the “most ambitious climate agenda in American history.

Dixon Railroad Days on track for Saturday

susan Hiland

SHILAND@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

DIXON — Learn all about how railroads helped make Dixon what it is today at the inaugural Dixon Railroad Days on Saturday.

Downtown Dixon will become a hub for everything trains, as model railroaders will bring their train sets for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy food, crafts, history lessons and Western re-enactments for a day full of educational family fun.

The event will be from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free.

For more information, visit DowntownDixonCA.com.

Relay for Life changes venue

VACAVILLE

annual Relay for Life event in Vacaville will be held at Creekwalk, starting at 6 p.m. in downtown Vacaville.

So far the cancer fundraiser has raised $84,148 of the goal of $100K.

Government meetings

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

They include:

n Fairfield Suisun Sewer District Executive Committee, 4:30 p.m.

Monday, 1010 Chadbourne Road, executive conference room, Fairfield. Info: fssd.com.

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

n Rio Vista City Council, 6 p.m. Tuesday, City Council Chamber, City Hall, One Main St. Info: www.riovistacity. com/citycouncil

n Travis Unified School District Governing Board, 5 p.m. Tuesday for closed session and 5:30 p.m. for open session, Travis Education Center, 2775 De Ronde Drive, Fairfield. Info: https://simbli.eboarcom/SB_Meetings/SB_ MeetingListing. aspx?S=36030187

n Vacaville Planning Commission, 6 p.m.

Tuesday, Vacaville City Hall Council Chamber, 650 Merchant St., Vacaville. Info: www. ci.vacaville.ca.us.

n Solano Irrigation District, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Lake Berryessa Room, 810 Vaca Valley Parkway, Vacaville. Info: sidwater. org/AgendaCenter.

n Solano Community College Governing Board 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Solano Community College Administration Building, Denis Honeychurch Board Room 626, 4000 Suisun Valley Road, Fairfield. Info: www. solano.edu/governing_ board/meetings.php.

n Fairfield-Suisun School District, 6 p.m.

Thursday, first floor board room at the Central Office, 2490 Hilborn Road, Fairfield. Info: https://go. boarddocs.com/ca/fsusd/ Board.nsf/Public

Mar y A. Toriello, age 107 of Fairfield passed into the arms of Jesus on June 10, 2023. Mar y was born in Joliet, IL and grew up in Chicago. She was the beloved wife of the late Palmer Toriello and the late Anthony Zielinski Jr She is sur vived by her two children Roger (JoAnn) Zielinski of Fairfield and Donna (Raymond) Kosirog of Westport, IL; and her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and many dear friends. Mar y will be truly missed and will be forever in our mind.

A visitation will be held on Thursday, June 29, 2023 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Br yan-Braker Funeral Home, 1850 West Texas Street Fairfield, CA 94533, followed by a catholic prayer ser vice at 11:00 a.m. Int erment will be at Fairmont Me morial Park immediately following the ser vice.

V irg in ia Crowell

Virginia Marie (Messer) Crowell passed away April 15, 2023 in Fairfield after a battle with heart disease. Virginia (Ginny), born in Fairfield in 1948, was a 1966 graduate of Armijo High School. She is sur vived by her husband of 55 years, Chuck , three children, Karen, Jennifer and Chad (Heidi Sordelli Crowell), seven grandchildren and one great grandchild. Her mother, Yolanda Messer currently resides in Fairfield and she was predeceased by her father, Earl Messer in 1981.

After marr ying Chuck in 1968, Ginny left Fairfield to follow her husband and support his 30 year career in the US Navy She and her family resided in numerous areas around the countr y during their marriage, settling in Vacaville in 1995.

Ginny enjoyed preparing income taxes for H & R Block around the countr y for thirty years, but loved being a mother and grandmother most of all. She will be sorely missed by her sur viving family

Mar ian Marti n

Marian Martin — mom, aunt, grandma, and friend to so many — died on March 17, 2023, at the age of 91.

Marian gave her all is ever ything she did. She was a faithful, loving, and dedicated wife and mother ; an indispensable worker ; and a fierce and loyal friend.

Marian attended UC Berkeley and was a member of Mensa. She was American Business Women’s A ssociation 1968 Woman of the Year and longtime member of Fairfield Women in Action.

Marian loved the Arts and was a season ticket holder of Sacramento Music Circus for many years. She loved the holidays and decorating was her passion. Christmas was her favorite and she relished celebrating with family and friends. Marian threw the best parties. She was “The Hostess with the Mostest”.

Marian is sur vived by her children Loren (Sandy) Rhodes, David Rhodes, Kimberly Roy; grandchildren Jeff Wood, Michael (Gabi) Wood, Zandria (Sara) Roy-Combs; great-grandchildren James Bouligny and Jezzica Bouligny; nephew Ke vin (Laura) Elvrum and family; nieces Linda (Rich) Elvrum, Linda Vest, Tracy

Ve st ; b rother Dale (Caroline) Elvrum; sist er Marlee (De an)

Flem ing; and loving friend Mar y Ellen Stiert

Marian was predeceased by husband Elmer (Bud) Car y and son Dennis Wood.

Celebration of life to be held Sunday, June 25, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. at 1019 Suffolk Way in Fairfield (home of Tracy Vest).

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating in Marian’s name to: Broadway Sacramento, 1510 J St Ste 200, Sacramento, CA. 95814.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/TNS

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a town-hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, June 6.

Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel/TNS file (2022) Lifeguard John Canfield looks out at the empty beach as storm clouds roll in in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Columns&Games

Avoiding ‘Unsocial Media’

Dear Annie: The reports of teens being bullied and committing suicide are distressing. Bullying is not a new problem, but it’s a different world these days because of social media, which I call “unsocial” media.

My oldest grandson is now 35 and has a fantastic life. My youngest grandson, “Joe,” will graduate from high school this year. The “unsocial” media makes a tremendous difference. With the oldest grandson, when he was bullied, the police got involved when the school was ineffective. That made the difference, especially in calling off the bullies before it was too late.

With Joe, after the family had enough bullying, they went to the school and he was given special privileges for protection for the school year. He is more confident about safe and unsafe places and does not have this now. He has a small group of friends he contacts directly. He is transported to and from school by family and stays off the “unsocial” media. If there is anything about him

ARIES (March 21-April 19).

You’ve known for a while what needs to be done, and now it’s time to just do it. There’s something to drop, rearrange, label differently or reassign. Get it done, then open your arms.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20).

Solidarity between people is among your favorite things to bear witness to. Your strong egalitarianism will have you doing what you can to ensure everyone is respected and treated equally.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21).

Some enjoy a good argument and regard it as intellectual sparring. These types may even argue against points they agree with just to make it interesting. The mood will be light, your wits sharp, and communication will go well.

CANCER (June 22-July 22).

Though social norms and conventions shape everyone, it’s hard to see exactly how until you get away from what you’re used to. Today offers a break from the usual interactions, and the chance to glimpse your scene from a distance.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22).

Since people perceive you through the lens of their individual experiences, there’s no way to totally know or control their view of you. But your knowledge of human nature gets you as close as possible to making a desired impact.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22).

You have a skill that many others have, but you put it all together in a way that’s totally unique. You’ll embody the following definition of enter-

Daily Cryptoquotes

on it, he doesn’t see it. Anyone who would be influenced by it wouldn’t be a friend. The bullies are shown to be what they are. Media only has the power you give it. He spends his time studying, which is a positive. He will graduate with honors soon and looks forward to college with mature people and hopes the bullies mature also.

The internet is there forever, apparently, and will follow the bullies, not the victim. The past can resurface, especially on the political scene, and can cost the bullies dearly. –

Proud Grandma

Dear Proud Grandma: Your grandson certainly sounds like a brave young man. I am printing your letter because you highlight some very important points. Bullying is extremely serious and needs to be taken as such. By getting your grandson the necessary help, you might have saved his life.

Dear Annie: Below are some suggestions for people who would like to help out homeless cats and dogs:

Today’s birthday

Advice givers are a dime a dozen, but advice takers are rare, especially ones as exceptional and industrious as you. You’ll be a star student and create impressive results. More highlights: Paradoxically, a loving commitment makes you feel freer. A short trip activates your spirit of adventure and leads to more travel. Your network expands. Virgo and Scorpio adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 1, 4, 33, 27 and 17.

tainment: “the spectacle of someone doing something the beholder could not do.” –Quentin Crisp

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23).

There will be puzzles hiding in plain sight and invitations to muse, laugh and discover. Most people will miss the opportunity because it’s not in their phone. You have to be looking up with curiosity to catch it.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21).

You may find yourself investing a lot of energy into looking like the good stuff comes to you easily, naturally and for free. It’s a counterintuitive risk that feels foolish – and a smart ruse that pays off.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22Dec. 21). Everyone likes the wild card – a versatile treat you’re happy to get dealt because it plugs into any hand you want to play. You’re the

n Donate money.

n Donate your time.

n Donate food, canned or dry.

n Donate litter.

n Donate so the shelter can afford to spay and neuter.

n Have your children, the neighborhood kids or the class at school hold a fundraiser and donate the money. Hold a bake sale, candy sale or car wash, or just bring in all your pennies. Every little bit helps. In doing this, you will be making the next generation aware of the problem. Maybe they can help prevent this problem in the future.

It’s a good idea to call the shelter and ask how you can help or what they need. Rags? Toys? Scratching posts? Food or litter? Climbing posts? – Concerned Animal Lover Dear Concerned Animal Lover: All great suggestions to help with a very serious problem. Sign me an animal lover as well. Let’s all be kind to each other and all living beings. Thank you!

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

wild card now, and people will be happy to see you walk in the door.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22Jan. 19). You’ll think forward and prepare for many possible outcomes, but there will still be uncontrollable, unpredictable aspects to the plan. Living with uncertainty is a kind of art form, and you’re the artist that makes it beautiful.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20Feb. 18). Life is messy. People react differently to the muddle. They become upset or ignore it, complain or accept it, and more. You see the mess and go for your broom. If you can’t fix it, you can at least improve it.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Savor what life has to offer. Creativity, reflection and simple pleasure all take time. If forced to happen within strict time limits, they might not. Today, the muses want to stretch. Can you throw out the clock?

CELEBRITY PROFILES: Macklemore has returned after a six-year hiatus from music and the multi-hyphenate artist has much to say. Does he identify with his Gemini-ness? He even named an album after it. The hitmaker is among several rappers born under the sign of communication. The bright energy and rapid-fire wit of the twins is expressed eloquently in the poetic pop music style. The artist’s many collaborations speak to Gemini’s sociability.

Write Holiday Mathis at HolidayMathis.com.

Word Sleuth

Crossword by Phillip Alder

Bridge

wondering what I have been missing my whole life!

To make three no-trump in today’s deal requires declarer not to plunge straight in. West leads the spade king. How should South send his battalions into battle?

North’s three-club cue-bid showed at least game-invitational strength with diamond support. South decided to play in the nine-trick game. (Note that five diamonds should fail.)

The impetuous declarer thinks that as West is marked with a lot of black cards, he must be short in diamonds. So, South will take the first or second spade and play a diamond to dummy’s king. When East discards, suddenly declarer can do no better than cash out for down three.

BEFORE YOU PLUNGE, PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

Honore de Balzac, who was a French novelist, wrote, “This coffee plunges into the stomach ... the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.”

My number one dislike in the food category is coffee -- but now I am

This deal would trip up many players, even those who drink coffee before playing. However, it cannot cost anything to play off the heart winners first. If West follows throughout, play East for the long diamonds. Here, though, West discards on the second heart. Then, if West were void in diamonds, he would have 12 black cards and would have bid more than once in the auction.

It would be clear to start diamonds with declarer’s ace and, here, get home with one spade, three hearts and five diamonds.

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

6/19/23

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

by

Difficulty level: BRONZE

Solution for 6/17/23:

Horoscopes by Holiday Mathis

Annie Lane Dear Annie

Technician’s have over 150 years combined repair and diagnostic experience We treat your vehicle like it is ours. There is no job too big or small, we invite them all.

Give us a call to schedule an appointment or just stop by we always have coffee brewed and popcorn popped. We look forward to meeting you and providing you with excellent customer ser vice

Carrie Fisher’s final film ‘Wonderwell’ finally hitting theaters

7 years after her death

Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

Carrie Fisher fans haven’t seen the last of the “Star Wars” icon, whose last film ‘Wonderwell’ is heading to theaters nearly a decade after her sudden death.

Vlad Marsavin’s fantasy flick, which the late “Postcards from the Edge” author finished filming just weeks before her 2016 death, will hit theaters in North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland next week, Deadline reports.

“The journey we have taken as filmmakers with this movie, has been as perilous as that of the movie itself,” Marsavin told the outlet Wednesday. “From filming to screen it has taken us seven years.”

The film, which costars Rita Ora, was not just plagued by the “huge shock” of Fisher’s “very emotional” passing, but the budget-busting visual effects and the coronavirus pandemic.

“Now is the perfect time to share [Fisher’s] magical on screen moments as Hazel,” said Marsavin, who confirmed the project will be dedicated to the beloved late multi-hyphenate.

“Carrie was full of energy during filming and even celebrated her 60th birthday with us in Italy where we shot the movie,” recalled Marsavin.

Best known for starring as Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, Fisher died at age 60 in December 2016, following a heart attack.

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

Workers want to stay remote, prompting an office real estate crisis

The WashingTon PosT

SAN FRANCISCO —

The owners of the fourthtallest office tower here – one of whom is Donald Trump – want more time to pay back their loans.

The 52-story carnelian building, 555 California Street, is about 93 percent leased. But many tenantswhich include banks like Morgan Stanley and firms like Kirkland & Ellis - will be up for renewal soon in a city where workers have been slow to return to the office. Co-owners Vornado Realty Trust and the Trump Organization have requested more time to pay back the $1.2 billion loan used to purchase the building, according to loan servicer documents.

Like other commercial landlords and lenders in downtowns across the country, 555 California is staring down a major pandemic downturn in the commercial real estate market. Economists warn the situation could portend disaster, risking parts of the banking system, too.

“It’s scary,” said a finance worker based out of 555 California, regarding plummeting office building valuations in the area. In the more than 20 years she has worked in the building, the woman –who spoke on the condition of anonymity because her employer doesn’t allow staff to comment publicly – said she has never seen it so empty.

Since the pandemic, employers – particularly in major cities - have been struggling to get their workers to return to the office, while others have given up and allowed workers to go fully remote. That trend is finally starting to catch up with the owners of office buildings in the form of rising vacancy rates and declining property values.

Earlier this month, real estate data provider Trepp reported that an estimated $270 billion in commercial bank loans are coming due in 2023 – and warned of the potential for defaults. Office delinquencies spiked in May, signaling a “tipping point,” according to Manus Clancy, senior managing director at Trepp.

Asked about commercial real estate concerns in a television appearance on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said she thinks banks are “broadly preparing for some restructuring and difficulties going ahead.”

In San Francisco, the poster child for the crises facing downtowns, the owner of a Hilton hotel in Union Square blamed vacant offices and a slow return to work for its decision to stop paying its $725 million loan last week. The property, the largest hotel in the city, will be returned to JPMorgan Chase, which bought the Bay Area’s failed First Republic Bank last month.

And on Monday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Westfield stopped paying the mortgage on its downtown San Francisco mall and plans to hand the property back to lenders. The news follows Nordstrom’s decision to move out of the once-popular mall just blocks from Union Square.

“If office and retail owners are having trouble generating rental income because people just aren’t going into the office and shopping, then it increases the odds that they aren’t going to be able to pay back those loans in a timely way,” said Mark

Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

“That means losses will start to mount on those loans. And because the banking and financial system more broadly is already struggling with lots of other problems . . . there’s going to be more banking failures.”

Despite the public debate over return-tooffice mandates at major companies, experts say office occupancy will never return to the levels experienced before 2020. In February, workplace data company Kastle Systems estimated that half of workers in the United States had returned, but that figure has stagnated since.

That means, in cities around the country, companies facing economic head winds such as inflation and high interest rates don’t need to be paying for the same amount of space.

Amazon has pulled back on developing major real estate projects – including its second headquarters known as HQ2 - in Virginia and Tennessee. Google pressed pause on plans to build an 80-acre campus in San Jose – the heart of Silicon Valley.

Comcast, one of the biggest employers in Philadelphia, is pulling out of some office buildings there. Brookfield, a major office building landlord in Los Angeles, has defaulted on more than $1 billion of commercial real estate loans in recent months, according to Bloomberg.

And in D.C., where real estate firm CBRE reports office vacancy has continued to increase to about 20 percent, some landlords struggling to find tenants are feeling “desperate.”

Brookfield spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh Hayes said in a statement that there is still demand for the landlord’s top-tier office space. “While the pandemic has posed challenges to traditional office in certain U.S. markets, this represents a very small percentage of our portfolio,” she said.

“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees,” said Amazon vice president of global real estate and facilities John Schoettler. As Amazon embraces hybrid work, Schoettler said the company is committed to its projects in Virginia, and is evaluating plans in Nashville as it continues “learning how these new habits may impact our office footprint.”

Regarding Google’s San Jose campus, spokesman Ryan Lamont said, “As we’ve stated, we’re working to ensure our real estate investments match the future needs of our hybrid workforce, our business and our communities,” adding that the company is still committed to the city.

Comcast said it is subleasing the building in Philadelphia to bring employees together in a Comcast-owned space. The company relies on in-person collaboration, added spokesman John Demming said.

(Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Still, many experts say the worst can still be avoided. The issues have been known for a while, giving lenders plenty of time to consider what to do.

Banks can always renegotiate the terms of their loans to landlords. The

owners of 555 California Street have requested an extension on their loan, according to their loan servicer’s March 9 note, as permitted via a commonly used clause in their con tract. It’s part of a financial strategy cheekily called “extend and pretend,” which allows lenders to spread out the conse quences of defaulted loans over a number of years.

Vornado and the Trump Organization’s loan servicer, Midland Loan Services, declined to comment. The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. Although cities themselves could be in trouble because of property taxes and budget shortfalls, the financial system as a whole is more protected, said Brookings Institution fellow Tracy Hadden Loh, who researches real estate and cities.

“It’s in no one’s interest to have them all fall into foreclosure at once, because that could destabilize the banking system,” she said. “So banks will take what they can get in terms of payment and work through this. Everyone is going to be doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening.” Few cities have

attracted as much attention over ongoing distress as San Francisco.

Rachel Leamy, who has run three shoeshine stands here called the Shoeshine Guild for more than 20 years, said she’s been through many booms and busts - including the tech bubble of the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis.

But now, “it’s a damn ghost town,” said Leamy, who shines shoes on the ground-level concourse of 555 California Street.

Typically, it’s a pretty stable business. “People need shoe shines when they’re flush, or if they need a pick-me-up, or if they’re looking for work,” she said.

The reported seller, Mitsubishi’s MUFG Americas group, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did SKS Partners, the group that bought the building, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

Stalwarts of the downtown retail scene including Old Navy and Cole Hardware are closing their doors. And even businesses that opened flagship storefronts after the pandemic subsided, such as high-end furniture store Coco Republic, have announced closures.

San Francisco is uniquely vulnerable given the large percentage of the population that works in tech or other industries well-suited to remote work and a long-festering homelessness issue the city has failed to resolve. Banking failures have recently put an additional unwanted spotlight on the city, where offices downtown still bear the name of the recently distressed Silicon Valley and First Republic banks.

Jay Bechtel acquired real estate for Google for 20 years before leaving the company in March. He said he’s worried about San Francisco’s ability to attract workers back and what the consequences of that could be.

“If you have a building that is not fully occupied, rents are either dropping or nonexistent because it’s empty and you have no demand. That’s not a good combination if you’re a landlord,” he said.

“Clearly that will reduce the building’s valuewho’s going to want to buy a building with vacancy and low rents?”

In hopes of avoiding a domino-effect financial crisis, Bechtel said he hopes lenders will be willing to renegotiate with landlords rather than take over the buildings. “Most of them aren’t set up to be landlords or real estate owners - they’re banks or insurance companies,” he said.

If commercial landlords are forced to hand over the keys to their lenders, “you’re going to have a lot of distressed sales,” Bechtel said. “They’re going to be selling for cents on the dollar because . . . that’s not their core business. So, hopefully the lenders will understand the situation that their landlords are in and rework their terms.”

She said she’s doing maybe half the business she was before the pandemic, and her family is still relying on food stamps to get by.

“I always wondered what would make this business obsolete,” she said.

In the city’s financial district, many restaurants and stores are shuttered and boarded over, as office vacancies hover around 30 percent, according to CBRE. Last month, just down the block from 555 California Street, the office tower at 350 California reportedly sold for $60 million - an 80% decrease from the price it sold for just four years ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.

San Francisco still has a number of top-tier office buildings - think big windows, natural light, green space and fancy amenities - that are attracting tenants, said Robert Sammons, a researcher for commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. But it also has a substantial number of “obsolete” buildings - think fluorescent lights, cubicles and no air conditioning - that he thinks will probably have to be torn down.

“Prior to the pandemic, we had the lowest vacancy rate of any city in the country,” Sammons said. The rate was 6 percent, according to data from the city of San Francisco.

“The market was incredibly tight across the board,” he said. “But now the workplace has shifted, and it’s shifted more than likely permanently.”

Marlena Sloss/The Washington Post photos

A worker enters a construction site last month at the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco.

The 350 California Street building. Like many highend office buildings, it is suffering from many workers’ reluctance to return to the office.

Wendell Peters, manager at Maison Nico, helps customer Jacqueline Hu last month at the restaurant and patisserie in San Francisco.

1 killed, at least 22 injured in shooting at Illinois strip mall

ChiCago Tribune

In the tiny town of Cool in El Dorado County, residents are worried their community will be threatened by wildfires if more than 100 campsites are built in the adjacent Auburn State Recreation Area.

Break

From Page One

became known as the state of Jefferson movement, was one Durst found herself drawn to in 2015, joining the fight for 21 Northern California counties to separate from the state.

When that didn’t work, Durst said she was ready to give up and simply enjoy her retirement – until she hatched her latest idea. She believes there’s a way to use the U.S. Constitution and California history to directly appeal to Congress for El Dorado County’s secession – bypassing lawmakers in Sacramento who have routinely shut down such efforts.

“We think we have grounds to stand on the fact that El Dorado was actually a county before California was a state,” Durst said. In a dissertation-like defense of her position, Durst details why she believes El Dorado County deserves to be its own state.

“It is impossible to believe that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence would be of a mind to hold a people hostage to an oppressive state any more than an oppressive King,” Durst wrote in the piece, which was posted on Substack last month.

purview of Congress as “other property.”

That reasoning, though, lacks legal standing, said Jon Michaels, a University of California, Los Angeles law professor who focuses on constitutional law. He pointed out that being a county before statehood – which is the case for much of the East Coast and many other regions –doesn’t alter the legitimacy of the state.

Changing any state’s boundaries, per the Constitution, requires the approval of Congress and the state Legislature, no matter the grievances, Michaels said.

“It’s kind of one of these things that’s like cathartic, maybe a symbolic thing,” Michaels said, “but there’s really nothing that could ever happen with this.”

But Durst said the group’s effort has already gained more support than she expected, especially so quickly. She first presented the plan in a May 24 meeting at a community hall, and it was picked up in the Mountain Democrat.

One person was killed and at least 22 injured in a mass shooting near Willowbrook in south east DuPage County early Sunday morning, authorities said. Fire officials received calls reporting gunshot victims around 12:30 a.m. and responded to the strip mall at Route 83 and Hon eysuckle Rose Lane where a “really large” gathering had occurred, said Steve Vogel, a Tri-State Fire Protection District bat talion chief.

The gathering began as a Juneteenth celebration, according to the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office.

The fire department transported 10 people to local hospitals. One of those 10 people died and another was in critical condition, Vogel said.

Another seven people transported themselves to the hospital, Vogel said.

Later Sunday, DuPage County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Robert Carroll confirmed 22 people had been shot and one killed.

People had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, Carroll said. The holiday marks the day the last enslaved Black people were freed in Texas after the end of the Civil War.

The shooting took place 2 miles outside Willowbrook’s jurisdiction, the village’s police department wrote on Facebook.

At the Hinsdale Lake Terrace Apartments just north of the strip mall, residents said they heard the gunshots late last night. A sliding door of one of the units facing the mall lot was shattered and taped off.

and scraped their knees. She said one went to the hospital for stitches.

“It was just a mess,” Carlton said. “We saw all these people running.”

“nothing ever this bad.”

“I had to stop by and see because my niece told me this morning and I was just like, ‘This can’t be happening,’” Dunski said. “You know, so many hurt, you know, the devastation. I’ve never seen this neighborhood look like this.”

Kembley Carlton, who lives at the apartment complex, said she heard gunshots in the mall parking lot for the last few days, and she didn’t see the police respond. There had been a block party the past few nights with people recording video, Carlton said.

Carlton said she’s noticed in the past five years that gun violence in the area has gotten more frequent.

“We have never had this problem before,” she said. “Now it’s bad over here. They’re just shooting and don’t care.”

Jennifer Dunski has family that lives in the area and said her niece’s friend died in the shooting.

In a statement released, U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, D-Downers Grove, whose district borders the site of the shooting, said he was “heartbroken” by the shooting.

Barr

From Page One

Instead of focusing on the section in the U.S. Constitution that requires congressional and state legislature approval to change any state’s borders, Durst claims that as a designated county before joining California in 1850, El Dorado County could be considered under the Cabinet in December 2020 amid disagreements with the president over whether to accept the election results.

Barr also said on CBS that he believes Trump is vulnerable in the Jan. 6 case. Special counsel Jack Smith and his team are also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and whether he is criminally culpable for aspects of the Jan. 6 attack.

Last weekend, Barr told Fox News’s Shannon Bream that Trump’s federal indictment “came about because of reckless conduct of the president.”

“I think the government acted responsibly,” Barr said on Fox. “They gave him every opportunity to return those documents. They acted with restraint. They were very deferential to him and they were very patient.”

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R), Trump’s loudest critic among Republi-

“It spread like wildfire, much to my surprise,” Durst said. She said she and a small team started collecting signatures Thursday, with a goal of getting at least 60% of El Dorado County’s registered voters — about 80,000 people — a threshold that will decide if they can move forward with presenting their plan to Congress.

“I have always thought that California was too big and too diverse to be one state,” Durst said. “I’m so excited and thrilled by what has happened ... and we just (got) set up.”

can presidential hopefuls, also appearing on Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” described Trump’s conduct as “indefensible.”

“We would not be here if Donald Trump had simply returned the documents the dozens of times the government asked him to return them, the times that the grand jury served a subpoena for them,” Christie said.

While Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) compared Trump’s case to the ongoing investigation of President Biden, who also had documents in private offices before returning them to authorities, Turner allowed in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump kept his documents for a longer period of time.

Trump is accused of keeping documents even after receiving requests from the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department to return them. Biden’s lawyers have said that they have cooperated with authorities at every step of the investigation.

The parking lot of the strip mall was littered with abandoned shoes, broken cups and ripped clothing on Sunday morning. At the center of the lot, a pickup truck sat with a Pan-African American flag draped over the back. Police tape surrounded the area.

Carlton said her 23-year-old daughter, who was at the scene of the shooting, ran home as soon as she heard gunshots and scraped her arm from falling. Carlton said three friends who were there fell while running

Economic

From Page One

summer (of 2022). Part of that is because of the increase in interest rates and the continuous rate of inflation, increasing wages and increasing the prospects of growth,” Eyler said. “But for businesses, we saw hiring slow down. You also saw layoffs.”

Eyler did note there appears to be some good news on the agriculture front, but inflation could be skewing some of the numbers. The next couple of years is going to be critical.

So while not all the answers are in regarding agriculture’s sustainability and profitability, Solano County’s diversity is a security net on the topic as a whole. And the impacts of the drought also are still coming to light.

“But we have to be very careful about thinking farmers are out of the

Blinken

From Page One

Blinken has more meetings set for Monday, including with Wang Yi, the Communist Party’s top foreign affairs official. One sign that China considers his visit a success will be if he’s granted a meeting with President Xi Jinping. No such meeting was on the schedule as of Sunday night, but it could be added at the last minute.

The most senior U.S. official to visit China in five years, Blinken is making his trip at a tumultuous time, with the two sides sparring over everything from human rights and technology to trade and weapons sales to Taiwan. Qin said Taiwan is “the core of the core interests” of China and “the biggest problem” and “the most prominent risk” in China-U.S. ties.

But there were also signs of progress on tangible matters on Sunday. Both sides said they’d discussed increasing flights

“I’m used to the neighborhood being kind of crazy, but this is a whole new level of crazy and it’s heartbreaking,” Dunski said.

She said there have been isolated incidents of violence in the area but

woods,” Eyler said. Supervisor Mitch Mashburn also noted the looming uncertainties surrounding the Delta – specifically what the county views as a tunnel project that will devastate Solano –and water rights issues that add to list of questions without answers.

Attend almost any event at which Solano County’s economic future is being discussed, inevitably Solano Community College is spotlighted as a significant piece of that vision.

It provides the flexibility of moving students toward higher education – at a time fewer local high school graduates are qualifying for the University of California and California State University admission despite higher graduation rates – and toward the job market, with the added flexibility of adjusting coursework to fit the everchanging employment needs.

In addition to offering a successful baccalaureate program in biomanufacturing, students can

“We live in a tragic reality where you cannot go to school, go to the grocery store, go to your place of worship, or celebrate holidays like the Fourth of July or Juneteenth without fear of being shot,” Casten said. “Change is needed – we cannot allow this to be the status quo.”

emerge with certification in nearly three dozen disciplines, including 14 trades and personal services careers – including aircraft maintenance; four health paths,; four in the categories of Science, Technology and Math – including multiple computer-based options; two in protective services such as fire and law enforcement training; four in the humanities; three in business; and one in arts: theatre design.

Eyler said the county needs to focus on that link between Solano College and workforce development as a way of retaining existing companies and attracting new ones. He said it is all about developing the workforce with the skills needed moving forward.

“What workers are here? How do we teach our kids? How do we transition kids from high school into jobs? How do we use Solano College more as a training center for specific employers?” Eyler said.

Some of the meetings have taken place in public, including when Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao visited the U.S. But other meetings have been out of the limelight. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently met with his counterpart for a low-key meeting in Vienna, while CIA Director Bill Burns made a secret trip to Beijing last month to discuss intelligence issues.

between the two countries. Many of those flights were scrapped during the coronavirus pandemic.

Blinken and Qin didn’t just read talking points to one another, one senior official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The official described the conversation as substantive, with extensive back-and-forth. The primary goal of the trip was to help establish communications channel at the minister and subminister levels, so the U.S. and China don’t always operate from a position

of distrust, and the discussions today helped accomplish that, the official said.

Blinken’s visit is part of a renewed flurry of high-level U.S.-China engagement that has gradually picked up momentum after the balloon incident derailed an attempt by Biden and Xi – who met late last year in Bali, Indonesia –to establish a steadier path for bilateral relations.

Biden said Saturday he’s “hoping that over the next several months I’ll be meeting Xi again.”

The U.S. and Chinese militaries recently had two dangerous confrontations between naval vessels and jets in the region, which the Pentagon characterized as “unnecessarily aggressive” and “dangerous.” Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu– who is sanctioned by the U.S. government in relation to Russian arms purchases – also recently rejected a meeting with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin when the two men attended a defense forum in Singapore this month.

Leah Millis/POOL/AFP via Getty Images/TNS

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, walks with China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang ahead of a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Sunday.

Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Police investigate the scene where approximately 16 people were shot, one fatally, in a parking lot outside BCD Liquors in Willowbrook, Illinois, in the early hours Sunday.

LA Latinos welcome 42 migrants bused from Texas

M ariana Duran

LOS ANGELES TIMES

A month and a half ago, Miguel Ángel got off a bus in Los Angeles. He had been detained in an immigration center since January, after Border Patrol officers caught him and the four other people he was traveling with in the Sonoran Desert.

When Miguel Ángel was released from the center in late April, he said he was moved around various cities in Arizona and Central California, before he was given a bus ticket for L.A.

“Getting here was a surprise. I thought I would have been deported,” said Miguel Ángel, who is living in a shelter downtown and whom The Times is identifying only by his first name because of his undocumented status. “I just got here … and I already found a job, so I’m happy. I already cashed my check and sent a part to my family.”

On Wednesday, a bus of 42 migrants sent from Texas arrived in downtown Los Angeles. Some of those aboard were from Guatemala, Miguel Ángel’s home country. Others came from Venezuela, Honduras and China. Couples and families spent 23 hours on a foodless journey that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said would provide “much needed relief to Texas’ border communities.”

Miguel Ángel said he struggled to understand why the 42 migrants were bused to L.A. However, he said he was glad that other migrants had made their way to Los Angeles, which recently advanced a “sanctuary city” ordinance.

“It’s important that other people can have opportunities and stay here,” Miguel Ángel said. “Back in our country, the situation is very precarious. Everyone knows it. People even die while

coming here. Some drop dead in the desert, others are kidnapped in Mexico, others are mistreated by the coyotes. Many things happen until you get here.”

Many Latino Angelenos have been paying close attention to the clash over immigration policy that pits California against conservative states. Since last year, Abbott and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have bused or flown thousands of migrants to liberal cities across the country. Republican officials say the actions were necessitated by the failures of Biden administration border policies. But Democrats and activists say they are political stunts and have raised alarm over a potential lack of informed consent from some of the transported migrants.

“It’s sad,” said Guatemalan street food vendor Roselia Guarchaj, who was

making tortillas in a corner stand on MacArthur Park. “Because some people were thinking something else. It’s not fair.”

Although little still is known about what the 42 migrants understood about their sponsor or their final destination when they boarded the bus, they all carried phone numbers of people they knew in California, said JorgeMario Cabrera, director of communications for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. The phone numbers allowed organizers to reunite the migrants with their families and friends in San Diego, San Francisco and the L.A. area by their second night in the state, he said.

“We don’t exactly know [if they wanted to come] or not. Nobody has told us that they don’t want to be here yet,” Cabrera said. “What

we’re trying to investigate is when and where they have their court appointments to decide if they should stay here or go somewhere else, or if we can change the locality of their case.”

Olvera Street vendor Mayra Garcia said she heard about the news of the latest bus of migrants Thursday morning while she was getting ready for work. She expressed sympathy toward the migrants, who she said “came here for a better life.”

“All the states should be working together. I don’t know how things are in Texas, but I’ve heard there’s a lot of racism towards Hispanic people, and I think [Abbott] should have accepted part of the people there instead of just saying, ‘I’m going to wash my hands, get on the bus and let other people deal with them,’” Garcia

said. “What I am grateful for is that the other states haven’t said they don’t want migrants there, and that they’re accepting and helping them, which is also what’s happening in California.”

Although she thinks that Texas and Florida were not handling their immigration crises properly, Hortencia Galván also sees a contradiction in the quick actions that government officials have taken to support the bused migrants. In her view, undocumented workers who already are living in the city deserve the same level of attention and support from local officials.

“We all need the same opportunities,” said Galván, who lives a block from the church where the migrants were received on the first night. “I work at a restaurant and there’s many people who don’t

have papers. I see that many of them have spent 20 to 30 years here and they can’t fix them.”

Guatemala native Virgilia, who requested to be referred to by only her first name because she has an upcoming appointment regarding the status of her visa, said she thought that the 42 migrants finding transport to L.A. was “a miracle.”

“That’s what I’m telling people. It’s a blessing.” After hearing about the bused migrants, Notary Lesly Chavez said she decided to donate clothes she’d collected for other causes to the new arrivals. On Thursday, she drove to the Chinatown church where many of the migrants had spent the previous night. By the time she got there, though, they had all left.

Westlake resident Mary Diaz said she felt that the city had plenty of space to spare so long as the migrants were “good people.”

“What happened in Miami was ugly because they got migrants out of there who didn’t know where they were going to be sent,” Diaz said. “Does it affect us? I don’t think so, the sun shines for everyone.”

Cabrera said that Angelenos had responded to the situation “in a beautiful way,” extending welcomes and donation offers to the migrants. “As an immigrant, I feel the pain of our community. They’re brothers and sisters that come looking for a better future, that look for a place that welcomes them,” Cabrera said. “Texas doesn’t want them, so we need to act humanely and treat these people with respect and dignity. I think Los Angeles demonstrated that drama and scandal aren’t necessary to be able to help people who need it.”

Raul Roa/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Miguel Angel Nicolas, a Guatemalan native, tells his story of how he recently arrived in Los Angeles after four months in Customs and Border Protection custody at various locations from Arizona to California, at McArthur

Park in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 5. Nicolas has two sons in Los Angeles, so he was happy to be released here. Nicolas is living at a shelter in downtown Los Angeles while working evenings.

Giants earn convincing sweep of Dodgers

evaN webecK BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

LOS ANGELES —

The big, scary Dodgers don’t seem so menacing now, do they?

With a 7-3 win Sunday afternoon, the Giants completed a three-game sweep here at Dodger Stadium for the first time in more than a decade and only the sixth time since the teams moved west in 1958. Outscoring their archrivals 29-8 over the course of the weekend, their most runs

ever in a three-game series here, it couldn’t have come in much more convincing fashion.

In three games, the Giants seemed to vanquish any leftover demons from a season ago, when they went 1-8 here and lost 14 times to the Dodgers. Logan Webb earned the win Sunday, overcoming an outing in which he didn’t have his best stuff or command to limit Los Angeles to two runs over seven innings, but it required the work of

Camilo Doval, who entered with one out in the ninth after Scott Alexander loaded the bases.

It had been more than a decade since the Giants’ last swept a series of at least three games at Dodger Stadium. The winning pitchers that series, Aug. 20-22, 2012, were Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. A rookie Brandon Crawfordstarted only one of the games, entering as a defensive replacement in the other two.

The long-due sweep of their bitter rivals made for a sweet ending to one of the best road trips in franchise history.

Breaking out the brooms in back-to-back series in St. Louis then Los Angeles, the Giants completed only the fifth perfect road trip of at least six games in franchise history. They have won nine in a row away from Oracle Park and 11 of their 15 games overall since the calendar turned to June.

Climbing seven games

Dunleavy’s first test as Warriors general manager is NBA Draft

m adeliNe K eNNey

BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

Warriors owner Joe Lacob refrained from commenting on the state of his team’s roster on the day Bob Myers, his trusted team president and general manager, decided it was time to step away.

“The truth is, we have a lot of work to do,” Lacob said May 30.

With the NBA Draft looming this week and free agency opening shortly thereafter, the time has come for the Warriors to start answering some questions about how they plan to approach this pivotal offseason. They

painted a clearer picture of who would be the one calling the shots Thursday, announcing last week that Mike Dunleavy Jr. would be the team’s new general manager.

Dunleavy is scheduled to meet with reporters for an introductory news conference Monday at Chase Center, during which he should share his vision for the next few months.

But Dunleavy’s appointment is only the first of what should be many moves for the Warriors this summer as they attempt to retool their already-costly roster as the new collective-bargaining agreement makes that task more difficult for

high-spending teams.

Lacob previously made it clear that his aspirations for the team will remain sky-high.

“We are going to win no matter what. I don’t care what the rules are. We are going to figure out a way to do it,” Lacob said last month. “That’s what good organizations do. They figure out a way to win the game. And our goal is to win games and to win championships.”

A big chunk of that pressure falls on the shoulders of Dunleavy, the longtime target for fan displeasure after the former No. 3 overall pick was unable to break the Warriors’ streak of futil-

over .500, the Giants overtook the Dodgers for second place in the NL West. The last time their record was this far above water was June 23 of last season, about a month before they visited Dodger Stadium and were swept over four games out of the All-Star break, the start of a seven-game losing streak that sank their season.

Look at how far they have come.

It wasn’t the Giants’ bullpen that imploded Friday night, but the

Dodgers. Down to three healthy starters, San Francisco used eight pitchers to navigate Friday night’s 11-inning win, then needed only five to cover the remaining 18 innings, getting excellent work from Alex Wood and Tristan Beck on Saturday before Webb gave them seven solid innings Sunday. It wasn’t the Giants who made costly defensive miscues over the course of the series, but the Dodgers.

Wyndham Clark, pride of Colorado, wins US Open

Kyle NewmaN THE DENVER POST

Wyndham Clark made Colorado golf history Sunday by winning the U.S. Open in dramatic fashion.

Clark outlasted tour superstar Rory McIlroy at Los Angeles Country Club and won by a stroke with a three-foot par putt on the 18th hole. The victory makes the Denver-born Clark the first Colorado native to win the U.S. Open.

I’ve visualized winning (a major) championship. I just feel like it was my time.”

ity as a player. Dunleavy the GM will have plenty of help from within the Warriors’ front office. Kirk Lacob, Joe’s eldest son who has been the executive VP of basketball operations since 2019, seems likely to take over Myers’ role as team president at some point and has been around for seven years. Nick U’Ren and Johnnie West, both directors of basketball operations, have been around for some time, too, and Shaun Livingston is currently the director of player affairs and engagement.

It’s also beneficial,

Was gambling a deciding factor in A’s decision to move to Las Vegas?

ShomiK muK herjee BAY AREA NEWS GROUP

Why are the A’s so eager to ditch Oakland for Las Vegas, a much smaller media market that increasingly is becoming crowded with other professional sports teams?

The team and its representatives would argue that the ambitious $1.5 billion ballpark plan — for which Nevada lawmakers last week committed $380 million in public money – justifies itself because of all the tourism that would be generated by baseball games.

But another factor looms over the decision by Oakland’s last major sports team to abandon

California: the legalized gambling industry, and the rapid embrace of it in U.S. sports, including by

Major League Baseball.

It might help explain why the A’s slunk away from what city leaders

say was a competitive development deal at Oakland’s waterfront, where the team eventually could have constructed not just a stadium but also thousands of housing units, plus office and commercial space.

Or why the team is comfortable building a 30,000-seat stadium that instantly would become the MLB’s smallest: the right size to also attract live concert acts too popular for the nearby 18,000-seat hockey arena but not big enough to fill the 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium that houses the Raiders.

“The legalization of

The Valor Christian graduate is the third Colorado high school graduate to win the Open, joining former University of Colorado standouts Steve Jones (the Yuma High graduate won in ‘96) and Hale Irwin (Boulder High, three-time U.S. Open champion). Jones was born in New Mexico and Irwin was born in Missouri.

“I’ve worked so hard and I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long,” Clark said in a television interview immediately after winning. “There’s been so many times

Clark’s performance continued a breakout season, as the 29-yearold earned his first career PGA tournament win in May’s Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Golf Course in Charlotte, N.C. That triumph was the first PGA Tour win by a Colorado-born golfer since Jonathan Kaye won the Buick Classic in 2003, according to the Colorado Golf Association.

Six weeks later, Clark is a major champion after carding a 70 on Sunday, good for 10-under par overall while McIlroy was second at 9-under. Clark, making his sixth major start with his previous best finish being tied for 75th, came into the tournament as the 32nd-ranked player in the world. But he withstood pushes from McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler (7-under).

Clark had 14 Top 10 finishes prior to his

See Clark, Page B8

Messi’s jersey will be hot commodity when it’s available

michelle K aufmaN

MIAMI HERALD

MIAMI — Lionel

Messi’s No. 10 Inter Miami jersey is about to become one of the most sought-after shirts in sports history. Factories in Vietnam, Norway, Italy and Miamisburg, Ohio, (yes, Miamisburg) are bracing for the onslaught of orders.

From the moment the Argentine soccer icon announced on June 7 his plans to join Miami’s MLS franchise, a company called Embelix Team Sports doubled its staff and began working around the clock at those four locations to add Messi’s name and number to whatever Inter Miami pink and black Adidas jerseys it could get its hands on.

Embelix is the official licensed sponsor for jersey names and numbers for MLS, the English Premier League and Spain’s LaLiga. It

produces and applies the heat transfers used to add names and numbers to shirts and provide team crests and sponsor badges.

“We’re preparing capacity, making sure we’re staffed with extra personnel and shifts because these presses will be running 24 hours a day nonstop for the next few weeks, at least,” said Matt Witterstaetter, commercial director for Embelix, a division of the $9 billion Avery Dennison company. “Our job is to keep up with the demand of the Messi jerseys. We’ve already started some operations running products ahead of time, even prior to signing, knowing once we get the OK from MLS, we’ll start shipping that day.”

Embelix has been working closely with Adidas and MLS to plan the rollout of the

Monday, June 19, 2023

SECTION B Matt Miller . Sports Editor . 707.427.6995

Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group file (2019)

Stephen Curry walks past the Golden State Warriors logo at center court while playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the Chase Center in San Francisco, Oct. 5, 2019. Many changes could be ahead for the team in 2023-24.

Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A’s fan April Kenton of Tracy wears a festive hat during the “Reverse Boycott”at the Coliseum in Oakland, Tuesday.

See Giants, Page B8

I was an air fryer skeptic Here’s why I can’t stop using it

A Aron HutcHerson THE WASHINGTON POST

Kitchen storage is a precious commodity. It’s one of my top concerns when considering adding a gadget or appliance to my arsenal, along with utility and price. For instance, I don’t own a toaster (I don’t eat toast that often, and there are other ways to prepare it when I do), nor have I invested in a pressure cooker or multicooker (I like being able to take a peek at my food while it’s cooking).

So when the air fryer entered the market and started gaining traction, I was skeptical. After all, “it’s just a small convection oven!” I proclaimed. And the hordes of devotees shouting from the rooftops how much they loved it and telling others, “You have to get an air fryer!” felt like a cult, which only made me resist it more.

We have Fred van der Weij to thank for the invention of the air fryer; the Dutch inventor was on a quest for crispy french fries without much oil or hassle. “The first attempt was rustic, nothing more than a box of pale wood with a metal cooking bowl that he handcrafted himself around 2006,” food writer Cynthia Greenlee wrote for The Washington Post. He later patented his technology and pitched it to electronics maker Philips, which introduced it to the public in 2010. Much of the initial marketing, I remember, focused on fat - how the air fryer needed little to no additional fat to cook up crisp foods - which shoved the appliance into the diet fad section of my brain and closed the door behind it. But a pandemic sales boom, caused by masses of people needing to learn how to cook for themselves, made the appliance harder to ignore.

Thanks to the prodding of readers and the internet at large asking for more air fryer recipes - and accepting that the new appliance is here to stayI finally caved to the pressure and bought one for myself at the end of 2022.

And now, dear reader, after months of experimenting and developing recipes, I am ready to eat my words and admit that I, too, am an air fryer fan.

While it is “just a small convection oven,” size matters. Its reduced size makes it more efficient at cooking compared with the convection function of a regular oven. This means browner, crisper food in a shorter amount of time. Speaking my love language, people raved about how good air fryer chicken wings are, and now I don’t know if I will ever make them another way.

With the air fryer, I can also quickly revive leftovers to almost the same texture as when they were freshly made; use it as the toaster I refuse to purchase; and cook crispy, golden tater tots and other frozen prepared foods in a matter of minutes. (My air fryer has gotten lots of use after nights out on the town.)

Its small capacity makes it more energy-efficient than standard-size ovens when cooking meals for only one or two.

And as we enter summer in the Northern Hemisphere, air fryers - and countertop appliances in general - won’t heat up your kitchen as much as a standard oven. Now I’m freer to roast vegetables and make hand pies all year round.

If you, too, are new to the world of air frying or are looking for more helpful ideas, here are some rules and tips I’ve learned along the way to get the most out of the appliance. And check out my recipes for Air Fry Brussels Sprouts

With Honey-Lemon Vinaigrette, Air Fryer Old Bay Chicken Wings and Air Fryer Apple Hand Pies.

1. Do not use nonstick cooking spray

Consider this your regular reminder that you should not use aerosol cans of cooking spray on nonstick cookware, which includes air fryer baskets. “Manufacturers warn

that cooking oil spray can not only burn but also leave a sticky residue that can affect the release of food from the pan,” my colleague Becky Krystal wrote. However, spray bottles filled with oil are okay to use.

2. Preheating is not always necessary

As I’ve mentioned before, you do not always need to preheat your oven. One of the main reasons I skip this step with my regular-size oven is that it can take 20 to 30 minutes, which can feel like forever when preheating stands between me and dinner. The air fryer takes only a few minutes to preheat, plus the model I own doesn’t start the timer until it reaches the set temperature, so I typically just do it anyway. But if you decide to put food in the air fryer right away, it may take a few minutes longer for items to cook.

3. Cook food in a single layer, in batches

The air fryer is all aboutwell - air. Meaning, you need to allow for good airflow to create all the browning and crisping the appliance was designed for. As such, you don’t want to crowd the food in the basket too much, leaving space for the air to circulate. Depending on the size of your air fryer and the quantity of food you wish to cook, you may need to air fry in batches to achieve the best results.

4. Move the food for even cooking

While convection is more efficient than a standard oven, it’s still a good idea to shake or flip most items for more even cooking as the heat source is coming from above. I typically do this once about halfway through the cooking time. There’s no need to turn off the machine, as it automatically stops as soon as you pull out the basket and will restart when it’s returned.

5. Not all air fryers are created equal

In addition to size, strength among models can vary. Even in testing recipes at home and at the office, I noticed that the model at the office produced slightly browner food than the one at home. As such, you may need to adjust time or temperature from published recipes to achieve your desired results.

AIR FRYER BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH HONEYLEMON VINAIGRETTE

Total time: 25 minutes

4 servings (makes about 4 cups) Brussels sprouts get beautifully browned and crisp when cooked in the air fryer. Here, they are simply seasoned and can be served as is, or you can drizzle the vegetables with a honey-lemon vinaigrette to make them truly shine.

Note: This recipe was tested in a Cosori 5.8-quart air fryer. Depending on the appliance you use, you may need to adjust the cooking

time and/or temperature to achieve the desired results.

Storage: Refrigerate leftover for up to 4 days.

Substitutions: To make this vegan, use agave syrup instead of honey in the vinaigrette.

n For the Brussels sprouts

1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved (quartered if large)

1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon fine salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

n For the honey-lemon vinaigrette

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from about 1 lemon)

2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil

1/8 teaspoon fine salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Make the Brussels sprouts: Set the air fryer to 400 degrees and preheat for about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, toss the Brussels sprouts, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder until evenly coated. Add the vegetables to the air fryer in an even layer and cook for 15 minutes, or until the Brussels sprouts are browned and crisp, shaking the basket halfway through. Transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Make the honey-lemon vinaigrette: While the Brussels sprouts cook, in a small bowl, whisk together the honey, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper until combined. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the Brussels sprouts and serve.

Nutrition: 173 Calories Per serving (1 cup): 20g Carbohydrates, 0mg Cholesterol, 11g Fat, 4g Fiber, 4g Protein, 2g Saturated Fat, 398mg Sodium, 11g

Sugar

AIR FRYER OLD BAY

CHICKEN WINGS

Total time: 30 minutes

2 servings (makes about 10 pieces)

These air fryer chicken wings are easy, quick and irresistible. Borrowing a technique for crispy ovenbaked Lemon Pepper Chicken Wings, the pieces are tossed with baking powder for enhanced browning and crisping. Old Bay, the seasoning blend founded in Baltimore and designed for seafood, lends its distinct flavor profile that includes celery salt, pepper, paprika and warming spices. The chicken wings are great as written below, or you could use this

recipe as a blueprint to season them with your own spice blend and/or toss them with your favorite wing sauce.

Note: This recipe was tested in a Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-quart air fryer and a Cosori 5.8-quart air fryer. Depending on the appliance you use, you may need to adjust the cooking time and/or temperature to achieve the desired results.

Storage: Refrigerate leftovers for up to 3 days.

1 pound chicken wings (drumettes and flats)

2 teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning

1 teaspoon baking powder

Blue cheese or ranch dressing, for serving Set the air fryer to 400 degrees and preheat for about 5 minutes.

Place the wings in a large bowl and pat dry. In a small bowl, whisk together the Old Bay Seasoning and baking powder to combine. Sprinkle the wings with the mixture and toss until evenly coated.

Once the fryer is ready, add the wings to the basket in a single layer evenly spaced out. Cook in batches if necessary; the wings can touch, but don’t overcrowd them. Close the basket and air fry for 25 minutes, turning the wings halfway through. Transfer to a shallow bowl or platter, and serve with blue cheese or ranch dressing for dipping.

Nutrition: 303 Calories Per serving (5 wings): 1g Carbohydrates, 105mg

Cholesterol, 22g Fat, 0g Fiber, 25g

Protein, 6g Saturated Fat, 841mg

Sodium, 0g Sugar

AIR FRYER APPLE HAND PIES

Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes, plus 30 minutes cooling time

12 servings (makes 12 hand pies)

Deep-frying pies made with homemade dough produces the tastiest results when it comes to hand pies, but an air fryer and store-bought pie dough make it so much easier to make them at home. These have a simple cinnamon-scented apple filling, and it’s important to let it cool before assembling the pies.

Note: This recipe was tested in a Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-quart air fryer and a Cosori 5.8-quart air fryer. Depending on the appliance you use, you may need to adjust the cooking time and/or temperature to achieve the desired results.

Make ahead: The uncooked hand pies can be placed on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment, frozen until solid, transferred to a zip-top freezer bag or other airtight container, and stored in the freezer for up to 3 months.

To air-fry from frozen, add 2 to 3 minutes to the listed cooking time.

Storage: Cool completely, then place in an airtight container and store at room temperature for up to 2 days or refrigerate for up to 1 week.

1/4 cup (55 grams) packed light brown sugar

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon fine salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 medium Granny Smith apples (12 to 14 ounces total), peeled, cored and diced

1 package refirgerated pie crust or 1 homemade pie crust recipe (enough for a double-crust pie)

1 large egg, beaten Demerara or turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

In a small bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, granulated sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt until combined; set aside.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter until foamy. Add the apples and cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the sugar mixture, stir to combine and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid thickens and coats the apples, about 7 minutes. Remove from the heat, transfer to a bowl and let cool for at least 30 minutes.

Lightly dust your work surface and rolling pin with flour. Roll out each pie crust to about a 12-inchwide circle, rotating and flipping and dusting with more flour as needed to prevent it from sticking.

Using a 4-inch biscuit cutter (or a 4-inch-wide plate or bowl and a paring knife), cut out 12 (4-inch) circles. (You may need to gather and re-roll the scraps.)

For each hand pie, add about 1 tablespoon of the apple mixture to the center of each circle, brush half the border with the egg, then fold the pastry over the top, seal in a half moon and crimp the edges with a fork. Transfer to a baking sheet and repeat with the remaining pie crust and filling. (If freezing some or all of the hand pies for later, line the baking sheet with parchment paper and freeze them at this point.)

Set the air fryer to 350 degrees and preheat for about 5 minutes. Brush the tops of the hand pies with the egg wash, sprinkle with demerara or turbinado sugar, and cut two small vents in the top of each.

Working in batches, add pies to the basket so that there is at least 1 inch of space between them and air fry for about 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer to a platter, carefully wipe out the basket if there are any spills, and repeat with the remaining hand pies. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition: 178 Calories Per serving (1 hand pie): 21g Carbohydrates, 41mg Cholesterol, 10g Fat, 1g Fiber, 2g Protein, 6g Saturated Fat, 82mg Sodium, 10g Sugar

Scott Suchman/The Washington Post photos

Air Fryer Apple Hand Pies.

Air Fryer Chicken Wings.

Workplace angst helping ‘job killer’ bills survive in state Legislature

In the 27 years of the California Chamber of Commerce’s “job killer” project, it has followed a fairly predictable pattern. The chamber would annually designate several dozen legislative bills that business and employer groups considered to be particularly onerous – usually the highest priority measures of labor unions, environmental groups, consumer advocates and personal injury attorneys.

One-by-one, most of the targeted bills would fall by the wayside and only a few, if any, would reach the governor’s desk and be signed into law. Overall, the chamber and its allied business groups have achieved about a 90% kill ratio.

This pattern continued even after Gavin Newsom, arguably the most liberal governor in California history, took office in 2019. In the first four years of his governorship, the chamber tagged 94 bills as “job killers.” Just eight of them landed on Newsom’s desk and he signed six.

So far, 17 bills have made this year’s list –an unusually small number – and more than half have already faltered, mostly failing to clear committees.

One has reached Newsom and been signed, but it’s a faint shadow of its original thrust. Newsom wanted to either tax or penalize oil companies for what he characterized as price-gouging, but settled for giving the California Energy Commission the power to investigate gas prices, set allowable profit margins and levy fines on those which exceed them.

There are two tax increases on the chamber list, one imposing a wealth tax and another increasing corporate income taxes. Both, however, are nonstarters.

The unusual aspect of this year’s “job killer” battle is that the eight bills still viable, having cleared their first legislative houses, all relate to one topic – wages and workplace conditions – and are sponsored by unions or personal-injury attorneys.

They are the political manifestation of what has become a very contentious labor relations atmosphere this year, not only in California but across the nation, due to high inflation and an overall shortage of workers.

In the main, the employment bills’ sponsors contend they are needed to bring more equity to workers while the chamber and other opponents say they will raise costs and thus reduce the financial ability of employers to expand payrolls.

The eight, in brief:

n Assembly Bill 524, which would outlaw discrimination against a personal caregiver in employment, similar to the protection granted to persons on the basis of gender, age and other personal characteristics;

n Assembly Bill 647, which would enhance the job protections of grocery industry workers who are displaced by mergers, sparked by the pending merger of the Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains;

CALMATTERS COMMENTARY ON THE LEFT THE RIGHT STUFF

n Senate Bill 365, which would make arbitration of employment disputes, which employers generally favor, less viable by allowing lawsuits to continue while employers seek judicial approval of arbitration proceedings;

n Senate Bill 399, which would prohibit employers from disciplining any worker who refuses to listen to employer presentations on political or religious issues;

n Senate Bill 525, which would increase minimum wages in the health care industry to $21 an hour in 2024 and then $25 in 2025, with cost-of-living increases thereafter;

n Senate Bill 616, which would increase the amount of paid sick leave employers must offer from a minimum of three days a year to seven days;

n Senate Bill 627, which would require retail and service chains, such as restaurants, to use seniority when deciding which workers to retain or transfer when closing outlets;

n Senate Bill 723, which would make permanent a temporary law passed during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect return rights of workers in the hospitality industry who are laid off.

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.

Something extraordinary happened four weeks ago in Washington.

Yes, there were headlines but the actual day’s celebrations were rather muted. Many will soon forget.

But the USA turned another welcome corner.

There were two main heroes: Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy. Both were masterful.

It turns out – surprise – that good old politics lives in Washington. I thought it had died out. But the “regular order” that John McCain had wistfully called for after his last vote in the Senate (to save ObamaCare) might be returning after decades of absence.

The radically conservative Freedom Caucus in the House – about 50 members – was apparently willing to default on our debts, igniting untold damage on the U.S. and the world, and disaster into the future. The rest of the Republican caucus had shown almost no sign that they would stray from the same Trumpian path.

The Republicans staged this final gunfight in pursuit of the ancient Republican mantra, “the government is too big,” “taxes are too high,” “we have a spending problem, not a taxing problem,” and recently a religious tone, “the government is evil.”

“Deficits must go,” a weaponized truism, now will be heard less. Exposed as hogwash is the GOP’s fanaticism over deficits. Silent proof of this is, first, the Trump tax cut, made

without a peep of GOP protest.

Now, the $20 billion cut to the IRS that is meant to stop tax cheating, a source of untouched revenue to help fix the deficit.

The GOP also tacitly accepted Big Government, the government created by the New Deal and the Great Society. They accepted keeping Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid off the table. (What made them think that those programs were unpopular, anyway?)

McCarthy, whose speeches were as fiery as any, who hugged Margery Taylor Greene exclaiming, “I won’t leave this woman,” turned out to be co-opting that human megaphone rather than isolating her. And it worked: Greene voted for McCarthy’s minimal compromise. Jim Jordan, one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus, voted for it. McCarthy was including radicals in order to make a deal. He was making an historic move for the history books and, yes, his reputation, but he knew we couldn’t default. He bent with the wind in order to tack. I was astonished.

Also astonishing was the president’s performance. Forty-six years of political experience showed. First, he pounded the table proclaiming that he wouldn’t negotiate over the debt ceiling with McCarthy. But then negotiate he did. He gave McCarthy the win McCarthy needed to take back to his caucus, “I forced Biden to the table!” It was a feast for the GOP Freedom jackals.

The cost to Joe? Just crow, that’s all. He obeyed the old adage, “You can get a lot done around here if you don’t want to take the credit.” Ego is not Joe’s bag. He just wanted results – a deal.

And he gave up almost nothing substantial. Amazing.

McCarthy might be removed by the Freedom Caucus now that they understand that they were betrayed. But he showed that there’s many Republicans who are tired of the grandstanding by fire-eaters. They want results, too. They came to Washington to get things done. They’ll compromise.

Is this a crack in the wall of Hell No; a return to normalcy? Maybe. (Trump was shouting for default.)

Joe Biden is turning out to be extraordinary. He swore that he would turn down the volume. He has.

He swore that he would work across the aisle and seek compromise. Amazingly, he has.

He has flexed like a good politician, not preached like President Obama.

As a result, he has an impressive list of legislative victories, despite a deeply divided congress.

The CARES Act snapped us out of recession. The Deficit Reduction Act allowed us to fight climate change in a real way. The Chips and Science Act has restored American high-tech manufacturing. The Infrastructure Act is modernizing infrastructure everywhere for ten years, even in red states. And all this in a sharply divided congress.

We might be watching a great president.

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

Ienjoy history, as it frequently tells us who we really are if we pay attention. Ironically, history is often told in ways to please the powerful; as in, “history is written by the winners” at the expense of objective truth. If the powerful chose to alter or erase something inconvenient they did. This is particularly true in politics. Fortunately, it is hard to argue with verifiable evidence, but they still try.

History, like faith, depends on what you believe. Who told the story?

Is the source credible? Can one’s view, or memory of history, be supported by evidence? In the last several decades much has changed in society yet much remained the same. I like to look at what I call “Verifiable Break Points” (VBP) where something happened altering the trajectory of events creating history. America’s overarching VBP was our 1776 Declaration of Independence listed in last week’s column. Those 26 specific grievances against the powerful British Empire helped create and launch America on a remarkable experiment as a self-governing Republic. The next VBP resulted in the creation of our Constitution.

So long as our original documents are kept safe from the powermongers in our society we shall always have proof of the original intent of our founders. Our Constitution is not perfect. However, we absolutely know the undeniable intent was to guarantee citizen’s freedom binding strongly

the authority of our national government to specific enumerated powers. How do we know? The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not designated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people.” Why is this so important?

Because the founder’s genius was in understanding both tyranny and knowing human nature, they provided a clear check on Federal power, something we need much more of now. Also, they anticipated the need for change as provided in Article five whereby citizens could amend the Constitution through either our Congress or by a Constitutional Convention. We’ve used the Congress to amend it 17 times since 1791.

In 232 years, much has changed, some small some profound. Our Civil War was a major VBP where we necessarily stopped a great moral wrong, Slavery, at huge human and financial cost. However, in doing so, we changed the relationship of the states to the Federal government whereby the federal government went from being “These United States” to “The United States” from plural to singular, subtle but monumental. The time frame between 1865-1937 was when the Supreme Court asserted the Supremacy of Federal authority while embracing the concept of “Dual Federalism” which is essentially a narrow interpretation of Congresses Commercial

Clause authority construing the Tenth Amendments as imposing strict limits on federal power whereby the federal and state governments occupied mainly distinct, non-overlapping zones of constitutional authority. This resulted in the infamous “Jim Crow” segregation laws being, in effect, beyond federal power to strike down.

Another major VBP was President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 election. He introduced his “New Deal” program as the nation responded to the Great Depression. His actions both by Executive Orders and Congressional legislation effectively ended “Dual Federalism” when his broad sweeping controversial “New Deal: policies were declared constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1937.

Another concept called “New Federalism” began in the 1970s and continues, returning more power and revenue to state government to resolve social issues, providing broad discretion in how programs are implemented. Yet all government is far too large and intrusive in every public and private aspect of our lives imaginable.

Our important debates are not about policy but basic societal values. We are polarized. We need to constructively engage, live within our means, embrace common sense solutions and vote in 2024.

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

Dan Walters

Jim McCully

Jack Batson

TV shows from around the globe to stream right now

RobeRt LLoyd

ANGELES TIMES

LOS

Travel broadens the mind, not because you have seen the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum in the metaphorical flesh, but because it teaches us that our view of the world is limited, informed – or deformed – by the rites, customs and mythologies of wherever it is we’re born, and the cultural assumptions we grow up to regard as “normal.” And while there’s no substitute for being there, this is nevertheless a lesson you can learn from your own American couch, through the offices of imported television.

One incidental benefit of the streaming wars – produced by the hunger for content, niche programming and platforms, and the big streamers’ global presence – is that programs from around the world have become available here as never before, and in such profusion that you can fill your queue with interesting programs from now until New Year’s and never hear a word of English. Many foreign-language shows are available dubbed, but the sound of a tongue is as fundamental to a culture as the taste of its food. Imagine going to Italy or Egypt and every voice you hear is dubbed in English. (Of course that app will be available soon, sadly.)

These are series that, for the most part, were made for their respective native audiences; they offer an inside, not a tourist, view, and so take you places tourists don’t go. This isn’t a “best” list – “Borgen” is not on it – just a collection of things I like, shows I found fun, funny, surprising, enlightening, exciting or beautiful, or that opened a window onto a new world. Each will free you for a while from American ways of thinking.

Argentina

“El Encargado” (Hulu). In this splendidly rendered dark comedy of social and economic class, Guillermo Francella plays Eliseo, the manager of a luxury condominium in Buenos Aires, who in 30 years has come to identify the building as his own, and the tenants, upon whom he spies, as what must be managed. He’s a man not averse to kickbacks, or surreptitiously renting out a flat when its owners go on vacation, but he takes pride in his work. Suddenly faced with a plan to build a pool on the terrace that will eliminate his living quarters, and his job, Eliseo quietly goes to war.

Italy

“My Brilliant Friend” (HBO) / “The Lying Life of Adults” (HBO). Two series from the works of Elena Ferrante. The first, which has so far adapted three of her

Daily Cryptoquotes

Here’s how to work it:

“Neapolitan” novels, is an intimate epic that follows its protagonists – the impulsive, original Lila (Ludovica Nasti as a child, Gaia Girace as an adolescent) and more circumspect Lenù (Elisa Del Genio, younger; Margherita Mazzucco, older) – as they grow together and apart from 6 to 66, women in a world ruled by childish men. Set in the 1990s, “The Lying Life of Adults,” finds teenager Giovanna (Giordana Marengo), exploring the loud working-class roots of her quiet middle-class life; getting to know her demonized Aunt Vittoria (Valeria Golino); and figuring things out as various factions try to claim her.

Egypt

“Paranormal” (Netflix). A hangdog professor (Ahmed Amin) finds his rational worldview shaken in this series, set in 1979, that elegantly mixes horror with the lightest wash of comedy – it’s dark and scary, but never ponderous. Genre tropes – haunted house, a mummy’s curse, ghostly presences and barely glimpsed beasties – are served on a bed of family matters and self-reflection. With Aya Samaha as the fiancee the doctor would surely make miserable and Razane Jammal as an undeclared old flame (red hair sells the metaphor) back in his life, and by his side.

France “Call My Agent” (Netflix) / “Standing Up” (Netflix). Two from Fanny Herrero. “Call My Agent” revolves around a Parisian talent agency, disrupted by the death of its founder. The agents and their assistants collide in a sort of multi-thread screwball workplace comedy, spiced with famous actors, including Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, Monica Bellucci and Francophone American Sigourney Weaver, as themselves. The terrifically sweet “Standing Up” is set in the comedy clubs of

the city’s less chic quarters, its characters struggling to make a name for themselves, with a cast that trends young and ethnically diverse. (Actual French comics make appearances, but you’re unlikely to recognize them.).

Germany

“Dark” (Netflix). There’s a wormhole in the caves below the nuclear plant in the fictional forest town of Winden, Germany. A missing child sets off this time-spanning, time-traveling, mind-bending multifamily drama, long on Teutonic sorrow and shades of gray. Moody, mysterious.

Iceland

“Ordinary People” (MHz Choice). Hit comedy dry as hardfiskur. Harried mother of two Júlíana (Júlíana Sara Gunnarsdóttir) – three if you count husband Tómas (Halldór Halldórsson) – finds herself the host of a comic talk show when she stumbles into a presentation by best friend, lodger and struggling actress Vala (Vala Kristin Eiriksdottir), demoted to costume-wearing sidekick. Tension, lies and kayaks ensue.

India

“Guilty Minds” (Prime Video). First-rate, character-rich, lively legal drama, in Hindi and English, often in the same sentence. Varun Mitra and Shriya Pilgaonkar play lawyers and old friends who sometimes find themselves on opposite sides of a case; she works on the side of the underdog, he’s part of a large firm that serves the powerful. Big issues – sexual harassment in the film business, corporate water theft, what lawyers should and shouldn’t do – are raised without melodrama.

“The Office” (Hulu). An Indian adaptation of the American adaptation of the U.K. series. You will recognize old friends, plots and jokes – but even as we are all the same, we are not all the same.

Word Sleuth

Crossword by Phillip Alder

Bridge

today’s deal -- concentrate. (You are probably eating breakfast, so you do not need to fear hunger.) Taken in isolation, how would you play the diamond suit for two tricks? Then, how would you play as declarer in four spades? West starts with his three top hearts, East playing high-low and discarding the club nine.

Some Norths would have jumped to three spades, showing four trumps and a weak hand, but with 4-3-3-3 distribution and 10 losers, two spades seems sufficient. Still, if you would compete to three spades over your opponents’ three hearts anyway, then do it now to maximize the inconvenience you cause them.

You can afford one diamond loser, but not two. In isolation, you would play first to the nine, then (if that lost to the 10 or jack) to the queen. As you can see, that does not work here. Instead, execute an elimination and endplay.

IN ISOLATION AND IN COMBINATION

Arnold Palmer said, “Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.”

That reminds me of when I played bridge for money during my last year at college. The main difference was that I disliked the fate of my next meal being in the uncertain hands of my partner!

Here are two questions about

After ruffing the third heart, play a club to the ace, ruff a club high, cross to the dummy with a trump, ruff the remaining club and go back to the board with a spade. Now play a diamond to your nine. It loses, but West is trapped. If he leads a diamond, it is into your ace-queen tenace. If he exits with a heart, he concedes a ruff-and-sluff.

COPYRIGHT: 2023, UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE

Sudoku by Wayne Gould

Bridge

6/20/23

ISOLATION AND IN COMBINATION

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

Arnold Palmer said, “Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.”

That reminds me of when I played bridge for money during my last year at college. The main difference was that I

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Difficulty level: SILVER

Yesterday’s solution:

© 2023

Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix/TNS

From left, Giordana Marengo, Rossella Gamba and Antonio Corvino in “The Lying Life of Adults.”

Go to the movies for the laughs this weekend

SuSan Hiland SHILAND@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

FAIRFIELD — Love and romance is the matter of the heart and can’t be forced. In theaters this weekend is a comedy about parents who think they know best what there young son needs - a woman.

But they all find out that relationships take more than cash and wishes.

Also in theaters is a film about pie-eyed stargazers who attend a convention to introduce children and parents to the idea of space, only things go very wrong and they all find themselves stuck at camp.

Opening nationwide are:

“Asteroid City,” in this star-studded comedy a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition) is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events. This movie is rated PG-13.

“No Hard Feelings,” in this film, Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers an intriguing job listing, wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to “date” their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, before he leaves for college. To her surprise, Maddie soon discovers the awkward Percy is no sure thing. This film is rated R.

Opening in limited release are:

“Mad Heidi,” in this film, set in a dystopian Switzerland, Heidi (Alice Lucy) lives a pure and simple life in the Swiss Alps. Grandfather Alpöhi (David Schofield) does his best to protect Heidi, but her desire for freedom soon lands her in trouble with the fascist evil cheese tyrant (Casper Van Dien). When pushed too far the innocent Heidi transforms into a kick-ass warrior who sets out to liberate her country from the heinous cheese fascists. This film is not rated.

“Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend Of Midnight Cowboy,” this film looks at the creators of Midnight Cowboy, one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. The 1969 film became the

only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. This film is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece. This film not rated.

“God is a Bullet,” in this film, Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin. This film is not rated.

“Heightened,” in this movie, after a mental breakdown, social-anxiety- and OCD-riddled Nora (Sara Friedman) returns to Maine to live with her emotionally distant parents (Sarah Clarke and Xander Berkeley). While she undergoes court-ordered psychiatric treatment, Nora’s world is further upended when she is assigned to volunteer at a local state park. Her awkward assignment actually shows promise when her anxiety subsides in the company of her new supervisor, Dusty (Dave Register), who is dealing with crippling issues of his own. Maybe Nora and Dusty can help each other overcome the obstacles their socially complicated world presents to them. This film is not rated.

“I’ll Show You Mine,” in this film, an author who has made a career by examining her own trauma sits down to interview her beguiling pansexual nephew Nick, whose liberated approach to libido, gender and personal boundaries both captivates and unsettles her. Over the course of a wine-soaked weekend, Priya and Nick find themselves in an increasingly tangled web of intrigue and morality. This film is rated

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 and Carlos Castellanos

to the following businesses for suppor ting literacy in Solano County by being a sponsor in the Daily Republic’s “Newspapers In Education” program. NIE provides sponsored newspapers for teachers in Solano County to use as an educational resource in the classroom.

Anderson & Associates, CPA’s Downtown Theater Foundation for the Ar ts

Jelly Belly Candy Company

Jim Stever Realty - Stever & Associates

Law Office of Elizabeth Anderson Medic Ambulance Ser vice

Meyer Corporation

Michael J. McMurry CPA

Napa Solano Medical Society

Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3

Salvation Army - Suisun City, KROC Center

Vogelpohl Real Estate Consulting & Sales

Yin McDonald’s

State Farm Insurance - Gar y Falati

Network Independent Mor tgage Broker Upscale Boutique

CALENDAR

Monday’s TV sports

Baseball College World Series

• Tennessee vs. Stanford, ESPN, 11 a.m.

• LSU vs. Wake Forest, ESPN, 4 p.m.

MLB

• San Diego vs. San Francisco, NBCSBA, 6:45 p.m.

Soccer

UEFA Euro

• France vs. Greece, FS1, 11:45 a.m.

Tuesday’s TV sports

Baseball College World Series

• Teams TBA, ESPN, 11 a.m.

• TeamsTBA, ESPN, 4 p.m.

MLB

• Atlanta vs. Philadelphia, TBS, 3:40 p.m.

• Oakland vs. Cleveland, NBCSCA, 4:10 p.m.

• San Diego vs. San Francisco, NBCSBA, 6:45 p.m.

• L.A. Dodgers vs. L.A. Angels, TBS, 7:07 p.m.

Soccer UEFA Euro

• Iceland vs. Portugal, FS1, 11:45 a.m.

Warriors

From Page B1

according to Steve Kerr, that Dunleavy has been around the team since 2018 and has established trust.

“Mike’s been a really strong presence here for a few years now,” Kerr said in a phone interview. “The coach-GM relationship is huge.”

Kerr would know. He served three seasons as the Phoenix Suns’ general manager before later joining the Warriors as the head coach. Kerr also formed a tight bond with Myers over the years.

So how does Kerr feel about Dunleavy taking over?

“I’m really excited to work with Mike,” Kerr said. “There’s a lot of trust and over the last three years, we’ve had a lot of work together and that matters. So we have a foundation that’s built already, we trust each other and we’re going to work really well together.”

Dunleavy and his team will have to take a hard look at the roster and make a plan for where to go from here. Their first major test will be the NBA Draft, where they hold the No. 19 pick.

Other questions facing the Warriors are whether they can retain Draymond Greenand find ways to capitalize on Stephen Curry’s prime by bolstering their roster, despite having little flexibility.

The Warriors are handicapped in their current financial situation. If Green exercises his $27.6 million player option for next season – a decision he has to make by June 29 – the Warriors will be projected to dish out more than $205 million in salaries alone. That’s well

Giants

From Page B1

On Sunday, Crawford was able to advance to second on a single to left field that snuck under the glove of David Peralta, then scored from third when Freddie Freeman muffed a potential inning-ending double-play ball.

The Giants, who seemed so bereft of homegrown talent in contrast to the Dodgers just a season ago, got contributions Casey Schmitt, Luis Matos, Patrick Bailey and, of course, Webb, who were all drafted or signed as international amateurs and developed by San Francisco’s farm system.

After making his majorleague debut Wednesday in St. Louis, Matos was unfazed by the bright lights and big stage of Dodger Stadium. The 21-year-old worked five walks in the first two games, made a sensational catch in center

Messi

From Page B1

shirts as soon as Messi signs a contract with the league, which is expected to happen by early July.

Adidas is not only the uniform supplier for the league, but also a longtime sponsor of Messi’s.

The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner and defending World Cup champion has been a global ambassador for Adidas since 2006. Over the years, he has become the face of the brand’s soccer division.

In 2017, Messi signed a lifetime shoe contract with Adidas that is estimated to be worth $1 billion. He makes $25 million annually from his endorsement deal with the company, and the proposed deal to join MLS this summer includes a revenue sharing agreement with Adidas based on league growth he

Clark

above the tax line, and with a repeater penalty also in play, Golden State could be paying a whopping $250 million in luxury tax, according to The Athletic.

Along with swallowing a hefty fee, the Warriors have few roster-building resources to get better. As of now, they can only sign players to minimum contracts. Cost-cutting measures seem inevitable at this point unless they plan to run it back with a team that won only 44 games last season and saw a second-round playoff exit one year after winning it all.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Warriors could try to trade up in Thursday’s draft to get a player more ready to contribute at the NBA level. That would, however, require giving up a young, talented player such as Jonathan Kuminga or Jordan Poole. The Warriors could also explore a trade for an established veteran to improve the team in the immediate term.

Kerr has some changes coming to his staff, too. He’s in the market for a new director of player development after Jama Mahlalela, praised for his work with Andrew Wiggins and others, decided to return home to Toronto and take a lead assistant job with the Raptors.

Kerr said the search to find a replacement is in its infancy after Mahlalela’s departure “came up relatively quickly”, and the team will look at outside candidates.

field Saturday, then contributed a two-RBI double Sunday as part of a four-run sixth inning that knocked Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin from the game and blew the score wide open.

Facing mounting injuries to their pitching staff – Alex Cobb hitting the injured list Sunday, following John Brebbia on Saturday – the Giants find themselves at a crucial crossroads: Can they sustain this pace and hold on to a wild card spot (they currently own a 1.5-game lead on the second spot), or even overtake the D-backs for the division?

At this point last season, the Giants owned the exact same record: 39-32. All to say, there’s a lot of baseball left to be played. If the Giants proved nothing else this weekend, it should at least be entertaining.

generates, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

“In the case of Messi, all the retailers around the world will be jockeying for jerseys,” Witterstaetter said. “Adidas has to commit to that supply chain and decide what goes where. As you can imagine, the interest level in South America is massive. They’re asking, ‘How many jerseys are we going to get?’ They’re ready to place orders.”

David Beckham, a coowner of Inter Miami, sold 300,000 LA Galaxy jerseys per season during his five-and-a-half years after joining that club in 2007. Messi is expected to sell far more. His Paris Saint-Germain shirt was the world’s top-selling jersey last year with 1.2 million sold for a total of $139 million. His No. 10 Argentina shirt sold out worldwide midway through the 2022 World Cup. “I can’t share numbers

that Adidas has shared with us,” Witterstaetter said. “They’re still trying to understand what the total impact will be. There are roughly 100,000 garments in the market today that we can go and provide kits for, and they could be introduced to the market as soon as he signs. But the number after that is what Adidas is really trying to understand. What are they going to have to produce, where is it going to be distributed?

“We’re preparing Asia, Europe and U.S. sites to produce on demand once we get those figures. We already have retailers and distributors giving us their forecasts of what they want to sell, but that ties back to how many shirts will be made available.”

Embelix experienced a huge boost in business when Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United in 2021, but all indications are the Messi move

to Miami will eclipse that. The company has been getting ready for the potential move for quite some time.

“We are in close contact with MLS and there have been rumors of this maybe happening, so we’ve been in conversations,” Witterstaetter said. “Certainly, we can’t act on anything until we know. We can’t put jerseys on the market or even send them to distributors until post-signing.

“But since the announcement, we’ve had multiple calls per day with MLS as far as coordination, preparation, updates of what’s coming. There’s a lot of activity now with the league, with us and I’m sure with all their partners. MLS wants to make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

Adidas also jumped on the Messi news almost immediately.

From Page B1

victory at Quail Hallow. But Clark finally broke through and played with confidence in closing out that four-shot victory, shooting four rounds in the 60s. He showed that same mettle down the stretch Sunday in Los Angeles.

With the victory, Clark netted $3.6 million of the $20 million purse.

After starting fast (three birdies in the first six holes), Clark weathered bogeys on the 8th, 15th and 16th to win the championship. McIlroy didn’t fade, but Clark minimized the damage when he did get into trouble. Clark parred the final two holes to secure the win.

“I felt at ease and I just kept saying, ‘I can do this, I can do this,’” Clark said of his play down the stretch.

Clark’s professional emergence has come

A’s

From Page B1

sports gambling, including over the internet, is probably going to be the single biggest change to the business side of sports that happened in our lifetimes,” said Stanford University sports economist Roger Noll in an interview. “You can easily increase by 50-to-100 percent the profitability of owning a sports team. It’s that big.”

The legalized online sports betting industry has exploded since the Supreme Court struck down a federal gambling ban in 2018, but it remains illegal in California, where voters last fall rejected two ballot measures competing for control of the industry.

And despite worries of corruption or widespread addiction, U.S. sports leagues suddenly are going out of their way to make gambling as accessible as possible. Some stadium owners are building on-site betting lounges for sportsbooks to directly reach fans.

At a minimum, the A’s

later than most, but he was a proven winner at the amateur level and overcame the loss of his mom to breast cancer in college. He won a pair of Class 4A state titles

would be next door to a gambling site in Las Vegas. Bally’s Corporation, which owns the lot, plans to tear down the Tropicana hotel and build a new hotelcasino to neighbor the proposed 9-acre ballpark.

In interviews, economists suggested that the A’s move may be less about Vegas’ lure as a growing sports town – or even Oakland’s perceived flaws – than California’s long delay in embracing online betting, especially in the wake of the most recent election results.

The team’s relocation hopes have the backing of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who has offered to waive relocation fees (about $300 million) and, last week, suggested to reporters that Oakland civic leaders had not made enough efforts to keep the team in town.

“That’s just flat-out BS,” said Councilmember Dan Kalb in an interview, citing the city’s willingness to put up at least $300 million in grant dollars, according to reports, toward off-site infrastructure to support the project. “We bent over backwards to be

at Valor Christian, then at Oregon he captured 2017 Pac-12 championship held at Boulder Country Club. Prior to Oregon, Clark started his career at Oklahoma State, where

very accommodating to the things they asked for.”

A’s ownership has not spoken publicly about the relocation plan since it secured the necessary votes from Nevada lawmakers. But team-hired analyst Jeremy Aguero, in interviews, is adamant that sports gambling was not part of the discussion when he joined the the project –after previously working on the Raiders’ relocation –to help figure out how the A’s financing plan could work within Nevada laws.

“The fact is that in southern Nevada we have 40 million visitors every year, and we believe about 400,000 of them will attend games,” Aguero said, noting, as stadium proponents often do, the numerous community benefits that the A’s promised to secure a deal.

But skeptics last week at the Legislature, as well as sports economists around the country, have questioned whether stadiums alone can ever be enough of a draw to be worth investing hundreds of millions.

Instead, the opportunities for franchises to cash

he won conference player of the year – a feat he matched with the Ducks. “I felt like my mom was watching over me today,” Clark said on the TV broadcast.

in on gambling are endless, with those betting on sports much more likely than the average fan to buy tickets or watch livestreams of games, a senior MLB official told the Sports Business Journal last year. Franchises are widely expected to begin selling broadcasting rights that center around gambling — livestreams cluttered with the latest odds for betting incentives from online giants like FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM. Sports teams, meanwhile, have arrived in droves to Sin City, the nation’s epicenter of gambling. In just the past few years, Vegas received the Raiders, Stanley Cupchampion Golden Knights and WNBA champ Aces, with an NBA franchise anticipated in the coming years.

“Vegas was always seen as a risky thing,” said Nicholas Irwin, a professor of sports economics at UNLV, in a recent interview. “But as sports gambling has become more widespread, it’s made the leagues much more comfortable with the idea of being located here.”

Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times/TNS

Wyndham Clark chips onto the sixth green from the rough during the final round the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, Sunday.