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California child welfare agencies under fire for pocketing foster kids’ Social Security survivor benefits

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

By JEANNE KUANG | CalMattersIn December 2019, a month after her son’s death, Patricia Baca contacted the federal government to provide for her surviving grandchildren.The twins, just 3 at the time, had lived a difficult first few years of life. San Diego County had removed them from their parents’ custody that year due to allegations of drug and alcohol abuse and domestic violence in the home, Baca said. The brother and sister were in foster care with Baca when their father died in an accident.Hoping to secure the children a future nest egg, Baca filed for them to receive survivor’s benefits from the Social Security Administration for children whose parents have died.But it was the twins’ legal parent at the time — the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency — that stepped in to receive their money. For the next two years, the county put their survivors’ benefits into its own coffers. Records show it was an effort to pay itself back for having issued monthly checks to Baca...

Giants Fantasy Baseball Camp: Oracle Park, me and my bum knee — and a fantasy (un)fulfilled

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

Hobbling toward San Francisco’s Oracle Park, something told me this would be a humbling assignment.On this brisk November morning, I was scheduled to rendezvous with a courier at the Juan Marichal statue just outside the ballpark, head through stadium security and sign liability waiver forms. You know, in case something happened.We weren’t about to parachute out of an airplane above China Basin. No, this was the sort of paperwork you fill out when — like me — you are a washed-up junior college ballplayer participating in the San Francisco Giants’ fall fantasy camp.It’s a program that invites fans to spend two days on the diamond at Oracle Park — or a week on the field, if you go to the fantasy camp held in Scottsdale, Arizona, each January — living out their childhood dreams with coaching from the likes of former Giants pitcher Bill Laskey and former Oakland A’s and Giants lefty Vida Blue.It had been a decade-plus since I last stepped between the chalk lines ...

FasTrak sure stirs up drivers’ strong emotions: Roadshow

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

Q: I don’t have sympathy for those who ignore their FasTrak bills. Though toll scanners can’t be 100 percent correct, I think the issue of inaccurate scans and fees is overblown. I think many drivers believe they can ignore tolls with impunity. I was glad to read that this is not the case, that at vehicle registration time, the piper needs to be paid.I also believe the system design is flawed. The idea that all drivers will do the right thing, and will always stay aware of the fees they are accumulating, is a fantasy. It has put untold bridge toll collectors out of work. There should always be at least one option to pay your toll to a person.Also, it has turned what used to be lanes for 2 or more drivers into toll roads requiring 3 passengers and a FasTrak device (which may have been left in the family’s other car that morning) to avoid the toll.I really detest those variable toll amounts. Of course there will be those who challenge whether they entered the toll lane at a different ...

Reese Witherspoon’s divorce sparks a ‘nefarious’ narrative

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

Reese Witherspoon reportedly never saw herself getting another divorce, but a media narrative that’s emerged over the past week says she shouldn’t be surprised that her second marriage didn’t work out.According to the tale being spun by the celebrity press, Witherspoon’s nearly 12-year marriage to Jim Toth couldn’t accommodate her success and suggests that she might have been busy putting her career ahead of her marriage.“It’s a tale as old as time: Her success drove them apart,” Juliet Litman said while co-hosting The Ringer Dish podcast Monday. “It’s a nefarious narrative. … It’s very frustrating, because it takes away what she’s accomplished.”The couple announced their divorce on March 24, and Witherspoon formally filed the paperwork on Monday in Davidson County, Tennessee, near their home in Nashville, Vanity Fair said. The actor and producer cited “irreconcilable differences” and said she and Toth would share custody of their 10-year-old son Tennessee. The document also s...

Landmark ruling or wishful thinking? City of Alameda claims it is no longer bound by county mandates

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

When the Alameda Superior Court ruled that the county’s Covid-19 eviction moratorium did not apply in a housing dispute between a tenant and the city of Alameda, even the judge overseeing the case didn’t expect it to have larger ramifications.So it came as quite a surprise when city officials claimed Friday that the “landmark ruling” resolved a so-called “long-standing ambiguity” about the amount of power California counties have over the cities within their boundaries.Alameda contends the ruling has now set a precedent for whether counties can regulate incorporated cities during times of emergency. If its interpretation is correct — which has yet to be tested by further lawsuits — cities in Alameda County would have broad power to ignore ordinances set by the county – from mask mandates and curfews to eviction moratoriums.“When there’s a set of local laws, whether it’s curfews or emergency response, there is one set of laws that applies to you, not two,” sai...

Lottery-fueled Castellano Family Foundation ending operations

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

The Castellano Family Foundation — created out of a record-setting California Lottery jackpot — is ending its operations in June after 22 years of elevating Silicon Valley’s Latino community through millions of dollars in grants.Carmela Castellano-Garcia, the foundation’s president and daughter of its founders, said the organization has been winding down its work internally for more than a decade since she and her siblings joined the board.“We looked at the horizon of what we had in the foundation, and we were able to put a plan together of what the next 10 years could look like,” she said Tuesday. “We wanted to see what we could do in that time to influence philanthropy and encourage the Latinx community.”The San Jose-based foundation’s impact has been significant, starting with more than $7.5 million in grants to a diverse portfolio of organizations large and small that focused on arts and culture, education and leadership, inc...

When Finland Matters More Than Donald Trump

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, left, shakes hands after handing over his nation’s accession document to United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tuesday, April 4, 2023.Photo: Johanna Geron/APDonald Trump’s arraignment in New York on Tuesday was only the second most important news story of the day. In Brussels, Finland abandoned its nonaligned status and officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, redrawing the map of Europe and bolstering the West’s front-line defense against Vladimir Putin. Finland’s accession into NATO was Tuesday’s most significant and historic event — by far.It would never have happened if Trump were still in the Oval Office, rather than sitting in a Manhattan courtroom facing felony charges in a tawdry case involving a porn star and the National Enquirer.Trump has committed many crimes; in addition to those of which he was accused in New Yor...

Photos show stone-faced Trump navigate historic arraignment

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump turned his head toward photographers as he sat, stone-faced with shoulders rounded, at the defense table in a downtown Manhattan courtroom. “Not guilty,” he said in a firm voice during a historic appearance before a judge. Trump became the first U.S. president — former or current — to be charged with a crime. Prosecutors state in a 34-count felony indictment that Trump conspired to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election through hush money payments to two women, including a porn performer, who said they had sexual encounters with him. In addition, charging documents say a payoff went to a doorman who claimed to have a story about an out-of-wedlock child allegedly fathered by Trump. Earlier Tuesday, Trump struck a defiant pose, raising a clenched fist as he exited Trump Tower for the short ride from midtown to lower Manhattan. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie. Television news helicopters followed his motorcade’...

Former Springboks rugby coach Ian McIntosh dies at 84

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Ian McIntosh, who coached South Africa’s rugby team through the country’s transition from apartheid to multi-party democracy, died Wednesday, SA Rugby said. He was 84.McIntosh was the coach of the Springboks from 1993-94 and also held the distinction of being the only man to coach South Africa’s national 15-man and sevens teams. He was the sevens coach in 2003.He died Wednesday in a hospital near the east coast city of Durban after battling cancer, SA Rugby said.Durban was central to McIntosh’s legacy after he took the city’s Sharks team, then known as Natal, to its first Currie Cup title in 1990 and made them a force in South African rugby when they had previously been little more than an underdog.He won three more titles with the Sharks in 1992, 1995 and 1996 and also led them to the final in the first season of the southern hemisphere’s Super 12 competition.McIntosh, who was nicknamed “Mac” and sometimes “Master,”...

Tornado strikes Missouri amid severe weather threat in US

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:28:57 GMT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A tornado struck Missouri on Wednesday morning, causing an unknown number of injuries, as severe thunderstorms packing the threat of more hail and tornadoes were forecast across parts of the Midwest and South.The storms threatened a region that includes portions of the country still reeling from deadly weekend weather. The Storm Prediction Center said up to 40 million people from Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit to Memphis, Tennessee, were at risk for storms later Wednesday, with the greatest threat from lower Michigan, across the middle to lower Ohio River valley and into the mid-South.Storms were moving Wednesday morning across the Ozarks in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, prompting tornado warnings. The National Weather Service said a tornado struck in Bollinger County in southeastern Missouri on Wednesday morning, causing an unknown number of injuries.“A tornado definitely touched down, there is damage to homes, we know that, there have been people...