BERKELEY, Calif. (KRON) -- A peregrine falcon born at UC Berkeley was found dead near the university's business school, Cal reported on Thursday. "Lindsay" was one of two falcons that hatched on the campus bell tower in early May.
Lindsay's body was found by a university staffer and was taken to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology to be identified. About half of all peregrine falcons die before reaching one year of age, according to the university.
“During their first year of life, they need to learn to hunt, defend themselves and navigate through a dangerous world,” said Sean Peterson, an environmental researcher with Cal Falcons.
There is a red-shouldered hawk's nest near where Lindsey was found, and the university believes she was attacked by a hawk. “It’s not unreasonable (that this is how Lindsay died),” said Mary Malec, a member of Cal Falcons. “If she got too close, the hawks might have gotten defensive and injured her purposefully.”
In April, Lindsay's father Grinnell was found dead on a Berkeley roadway, believed to be hit by a car. Grinnell's longtime partner Annie found a new mate a day after Grinnell's death.
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Lindsay has 14 siblings, at least two of which have made their homes in other Bay Area locations, the school said. Larry, born in 2018, lives on Alcatraz Island, and Sequoia, born in 2020, resides in San Jose.
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (KRON) -- The Marin County Sheriff's Office is asking for the public's help in finding two suspects who are accused of robbing a 7-Eleven in San Rafael and stealing a car. The crime was reported at 1:18 a.m. on Tuesday morning at 292 North San Pedro Road, MCSO said.
Deputies determined two suspects entered the store and demanded cash from the store clerk and car keys from a customer. The customer told police that both suspects were armed.
The customer refused to give up his keys because his three children were in the car, police said. One suspect snatched the keys anyway but later gave them back to the customer.
After receiving cash from the clerk, the suspects approached another customer who had just driven to the store. The suspects took that customer's keys, forced a passenger out of the vehicle, and drove towards China Camp State Park.
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The victim's vehicle was found parked in the 800 block of Vendola Drive, but deputies were not able to locate the suspects. Anyone who recognizes the suspects from the photos above is asked to contact MCSO Detective Zebb at 415-473-7265 or j_zebb@marinsheriff.org.
SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) -- A car stop led authorities to recover two pounds of marijuana and stolen IDs, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office announced Wednesday in a Facebook post. The ID cards were stolen in a recent auto burglary in Cupertino.
Three juvenile suspects were criminally cited to their parents for possession of marijuana for sales and possession of stolen property, authorities said. An adult male inside the suspect vehicle was arrested and booked into San Jose Main Jail for the same charges.
(Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office)
(Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office)
The unidentified man was also charged with providing false identification and an active warrant, the post said. The man was also on county probation.
The stolen IDs were successfully returned to their owners.
CONCORD (BCN) - The Concord City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved spending up to $789,187 for 65 license plate-reading cameras and accompanying software around the city, with the information gathered from the cameras controlled by the police department.
Most East Bay law enforcement departments already use similar systems, and the council made obtaining one a "tier 2 priority" back in April.
Flock Safety's Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) System that analyzes vehicle license plates, state affiliation, and vehicle attributes such as color, type, make and objects (roof rack, bumper stickers, etc.) based on image analytics, not car registration data.
According to a staff report for Tuesday's meeting, the cameras run off solar and the technology allows for identification despite partial, missing, temporary or covered plates, and cameras can be installed almost anywhere.
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The city wants the system to create a citywide ALPR system and add significant investigative options to help solve and deter crime.
The city's contract is for 24 months and can be renewed for another 24 months. The system will be ready for use in three to six months.
SAN ANTONIO (Border Report) -- The ambassadors to the United States and Mexico on Wednesday both threw their full support behind an ambitious and costly environmental conservation project on the South Texas border, saying it will save the Rio Grande and improve border security.
During the opening day of the U.S.-Mexico Border Environmental Forum XXVI, held in San Antonio, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar and Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Esteban Moctezuma urged private investors, municipalities and federal officials from both countries to get behind a binational river park project that is being developed on the Rio Grande between the cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
And they said it should be a model for development along the U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas.
"These types of projects that are typified by Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, and the leadership of those two communities with the help of the City of San Antonio, are projects that should be imagined, envisioned and planned up and down the 2,000-mile border," Salazar said in response to a question from Border Report during a news conference after his presentation.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar, left, and Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Esteban Moctezuma, center, touted the binational river park project in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas, on Aug. 24, 2022, during the U.S.-Mexico Border Environmental Forum in San Antonio. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
Both were keynote speakers at the forum, hosted by the North American Development Bank (NADBank), where the theme of the two-day conference is “Creating a Greener and More Prosperous Border.”
Nuevo León Gov. Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in San Antonio, signed an agreement with NADBank Managing Director Calixto Mateos Hanel for a technical assistance grant totaling $500,000 by both entities to study water conservation and resiliency methods in the northern Mexican border state. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
Both ambassadors touted the need for more binational agreements that promote trade, a cleaner border and more opportunities for investments
"We have to see the border as a region," Moctezuma said. "The different pressures we have on the border can be an opportunity to create a secure border investing in it. Investing in infrastructure. Investing in environment. Investing in people."
That request turned into real money during a lunchtime speech a few hours later when Nuevo León Gov. Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda signed an agreement with NADBank Managing Director Calixto Mateos Hanel for a technical assistance grant to study water conservation and resiliency methods in the northern Mexican border state.
García pledged $250,000 from his northern Mexican border state to match the $250,000 that NADBank has promised for studies to identify diversification and other water sources for the border region.
"I'm glad that the border has been raised to a level where Washington, Mexico and others see us with value," Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz said as he spoke about the particulars of the river park project.
The agreement signed Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, between the government of Nuevo León, Mexico, and NADBank is in Spanish. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
"I think we’ve gotten there. Ambassador Moctezuma said you really can’t create something without imagining it. Well, we have imagined it. We have a vision and we’re beginning to create that there at the border and it begins with the river," Saenz said.
Phase I, or Project Uno, of the proposed binational river park, includes the cleanup of carrizo cane and other invasive species along the banks of the Rio Grande in Laredo, Texas. On the Mexican side, officials are investing $72 million to clean up a sewage plant that is spewing toxins into the river, which is the sole source of drinking water for 6 million residents in South Texas.
But the project, called "ambitious" by almost every speaker on Wednesday, could total $500 million and take a decade or longer to complete. It could rival San Antonio's Riverwalk in terms of infrastructure and would create development opportunities and commerce between the nations in areas that Salazar said have been "neglected."
An aerial view of an architectural schematic of what the proposed binational river park could look like between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. (Rendering courtesy of Overland Partners Architects in collaboration with Able City)
"We’ve developed a plan," Saenz told the audience filled with investors, bankers and well-tied developers from both nations. "But it lacks money and locals can only provide so much because this is a very ambitious program."
Salazar said cleaning up the river banks will also improve border security, as well as help ecological sustainability.
"Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are an example of that where they now have a plan to create a 10-kilometer binational river project on both sides of the river that will address first of all security because you’ll be able to secure that area. Second of all, development because you’ll be able to create development on both sides of the border. And third, environmental because right now the invasive species that inhabit that part of the river are essentially sucking up and drying up a lot of the water," Salazar told Border Report.
Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022 in San Antonio challenged the Biden administration to fund a "virtual wall" by helping to fund the Binational River Project between the two nations. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report)
Saenz called the project the equivalent of a "virtual wall" and he challenged President Joe Biden's administration to come up with funding.
"This project not only restores the ecology," Saenz said. "It also secures the border through a virtual wall, which is basically removing these invasive species, and more openness for our authorities to detect and come to the aid of the border that is also provided in this plan that we have."
Rick Archer, chief architect for the project, from the San Antonio firm of Overland Partners Inc., said a working group that is promoting the project just returned from a trip to Mexico City on Sunday where they met with several officials from the cabinet of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
They also met with environmental groups, non-governmental organizations and municipalities, and Archer told Border Report they got a "wonderful reception" from Mexican officials and government leaders.
"They share a general enthusiasm for the project," Archer said. "We are creating a conservation theme that's done together -- juntos," Archer said.
"It's the first of its kind and is a symbol of how other border cities can be," he said.
Some in the audience of 200 agreed.
Coleen Clementson of San Diego said she'd like to see this developed on the West Coast.
"I would hope us to become what we're seeing with the two Laredos," Coleen Clementson, deputy CEO for the San Diego Association of Governments, told forum participants during a later session.
GENEVA (AP) — The number of monkeypox cases reported globally dropped by 21% in the last week, reversing a month-long trend of rising infections and a possible signal the outbreak in Europe may be starting to decline, according to a World Health Organization report issued Thursday.
The U.N. health agency reported 5,907 new weekly cases and said two countries, Iran and Indonesia, reported their first cases. To date, more than 45,000 cases have been reported in 98 countries since late April.
Cases in the Americas accounted for 60% of cases in the past month, WHO said, while cases in Europe comprised about 38%. It said infections in the Americas showed “a continuing steep rise.”
In early July, just weeks before the agency declared the international spread of the disease to be a global emergency, WHO’s Europe director said countries in the region were responsible for 90% of all laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox.
British health authorities said last week after seeing a decline in the number of new cases getting reported daily that there were “early signs” the country’s monkeypox outbreak was slowing.
The U.K.’s Health Security Agency downgraded the country’s monkeypox outbreak last month, saying there was no evidence the once rare disease was spreading beyond men who were gay, bisexual or had sex with other men.
Since monkeypox outbreaks in Europe and North America were identified in May, WHO and other health agencies have noted that its spread was almost exclusively in men who have sex with men.
Monkeypox has been endemic in parts of Africa for decades and experts suspect the outbreaks in Europe and North America were triggered after the disease started spreading via sex at two raves in Spain and Belgium.
WHO’s latest report said 98% of cases are in men and of those who reported sexual orientation, 96% are in men who have sex with men.
“Of all reported types of transmission, a sexual encounter was reported most commonly,” WHO said. “The majority of cases were likely exposed in a party with sexual contacts,” the agency said.
Among the monkeypox cases in which the HIV status of patients was known, 45% were infected with HIV.
WHO has recommended that men at high risk of the disease temporarily consider reducing their number of sex partners or refrain from group or anonymous sex.
Monkeypox typically requires skin-to-skin or skin-to-mouth contact with an infected patient’s lesions to spread. People can also become infected through contact with the clothing or bedsheets of someone who has monkeypox lesions.
With globally limited vaccine supplies, authorities in the U.S., Europe and the U.K. have all begun rationing doses to stretch supplies by up to five times.
WHO has advised countries that have vaccines to prioritize immunization for those at high risk of the disease, including gay and bisexual men with multiple sex partners, and for health workers, laboratory staff and outbreak responders.
While Africa has reported the most suspected deaths from monkeypox, the continent has no vaccine supplies apart from a very small stock being tested in a research study in Congo.
“As we know, the situation with monkeypox vaccine access is very topical, but there are not enough doses of vaccines," Nigeria Center for Disease Control Director-General Ifedayo Adetifa said this week. Potentially, a lot more doses will become available, but because of challenges with manufacturing factories and unexpected uptick in monkeypox cases, the vaccine may actually not be available until 2023.”
White House Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice confirmed June 30 of this year was the cutoff date during a Wednesday briefing that discussed the new relief initiative.
The Biden administration will cancel $10,000 per borrower for Americans who make less than $125,000 a year, while recipients of the Pell Grant with the same income cap are eligible for $20,000 in relief.
Meanwhile, the student loan payment pause will end Dec. 31, ending a freeze that lasted roughly two years.
The move was long awaited by Democrats and activists who say canceling the debt will help ease the cost of living for the more than 44 million Americans who owe a combined $1.7 trillion in debt.
The Department of Education has information available about the debt relief posted on studentaid.gov.
For now, borrowers are instructed to sign up for email updates on when the applications for the debt relief are officially open.
