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Top 10 favorite small and big cities in the U.S., according to CN Traveler

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

For the last 36 years, Conde Nast Traveler has invited its readers to vote for their favorite destinations and travel experiences around the world, from the best cruise lines to top resorts and favorite cities. This year, some 526,518 people voted for their faves — and we’re adding some of their picks to our own “where to go in 2024” list.Among other things, readers were wowed by charming small cities across the South, from Charleston in South Carolina to Savannah, Georgia — and St. Augustine in Florida, a town settled in 1565, decades before any pilgrims popped up at Plymouth Rock. It’s the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the U.S. and home to forts, castles and Gilded Age landmarks. The Southwest is represented on the list by Santa Fe and Sedona. And back East, Annapolis and its Chesapeake Bay seafood get a shout out, too.Florida’s historic St. Augustine — and its scenic Bridge of Lions — was recently singled...

Real-time map: Where it’s raining in the Bay Area

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

The rain that arrived in the Bay Area before dawn Wednesday is expected to continue into the evening, the National Weather Service said.Related ArticlesWeather | Bay Area rainfall chart: 48-hour totals exceed 4 inches Weather | More rain coming to Bay Area ahead of the holiday but today may be its grand finale Weather | PG&E restores power to more than 18,000 customers in San Jose Weather | Palo Alto power outage affects thousands; faulty transformer thought to be the cause Weather | Steady, light rain ahead on Tuesday before intense showers return Wednesday morning A dry and sunny weekend is expected.The updating radar map above shows areas of precipitation in green, with greater intensities indicated by yellow and orange.Updates on road closures and chain controls in the Sierra Nevada can be found on CalTrans’ website or mobile app or by calling (800) 427-7623.

High school girls soccer rankings Dec. 20, 2023: Bay Area News Group Top 20

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

Bay Area News Group Top 15(Mercury News & East Bay Times)(Records through Monday)No. 1 ST. FRANCIS (3-0-1)Previous ranking: 1Since last ranking: Beat Santa Cruz 6-0, tied Los Altos 1-1, beat Burlingame 2-1, Woodside 1-0Up next: Jan. 4 at Sacred Heart Cathedral, 3:15 p.m. No. 2 SAN RAMON VALLEY (7-0)Previous ranking: 5Since last ranking: Beat Wilcox 8-0, Castro Valley 3-0, Livermore 6-0, St. Mary’s 1-0, Windsor 4-0, Montgomery 3-1, Lincoln-Stockon 5-0Up next: Jan. 9 at Dougherty Valley, 6:30 p.m.No. 3 ARCHBISHOP MITTY (6-0)Previous ranking: 6Since last ranking: Beat Salinas 7-0, Sequoia 1-0, Tamalpais 8-0, Maria Carrillo 3-1, St. Mary’s-Stockton 4-0, Monte Vista 3-0Up next: Jan. 4 at St. Ignatius, 3:15 p.m. No. 4 MONTE VISTA (4-1-1)Previous ranking: 8Since last ranking: Beat Tamalpais 1-0, Campolindo 6-3, Berkeley 1-0, tied Whitney 2-2, beat Windsor 7-0, lost to Archbishop Mitty 3-0.Up next:Jan. 9 at Carondelet, 6:30 p.m.No. 5 BERKELEY (5-1-1)Previous ranking: 14Since last rankin...

Arrest warrant issued for mother of slain 2-month-old San Jose boy

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

Authorities issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for the mother of a 2-month-old San Jose boy who died in April after having been repeatedly hit in the head, while being left severely malnourished and dehydrated.San Jose police are seeking Yvyi Yan, 29, on suspicion of murder in the April 4 death of her son, Charles Zheng. His death was declared a homicide this month after the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office finalized a report showing the infant suffered from “combined effects of blunt force injuries of head, severe malnourishment and dehydration,” according to the boy’s death certificate.Yan also is suspected of assault on a child with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death, a felony, court records show.Investigators suspect Yan was the only person to have cared for the infant from March 23 until April 4 — a nearly two-week stretch that ended with Yan texting the boy’s father a request to buy cold medicine for the chi...

Community opposition shuts down Santa Rita Jail expansion project indefinitely

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

A contentious plan to build a new mental health facility at the Santa Rita Jail has been tabled indefinitely, prompting celebration from community advocates who successfully lobbied against the project and sending Alameda County back to the drawing board.The expansion would have added more than 40,000 square feet to the Dublin jail complex — already one of the largest in the nation — by constructing a new stand-alone building for mental health services. The building was to contain treatment rooms as well as offices for Alameda County’s department of Behavioral Health.Related ArticlesCrime and Public Safety | Alameda County to pay $7 million, reform jail training after settlement with family of Maurice Monk The county estimated construction costs at $81 million, with about $26 million coming from county taxpayers.The state of mental health services at the jail has been under scrutiny for years. The vast majority of those incarcerated in the 3,489-capacity ...

Large AI dataset has over 1,000 child abuse images, Stanford researchers Find

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

By Davey Alba and Rachel Metz | BloombergA massive public dataset used to build popular artificial intelligence image generators contains at least 1,008 instances of child sexual abuse material, a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found.LAION-5B, which contains more than 5 billion images and related captions from the internet, may also include thousands of additional pieces of suspected child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, according to the report. The inclusion of CSAM in the dataset could enable AI products built on this data — including image generation tools like Stable Diffusion — to create new, and potentially realistic, child abuse content, the report warned.The rise of increasingly powerful AI tools has raised alarms in part because these services are built with troves of online data — including public datasets such as LAION-5B — that can contain copyrighted or harmful content. AI image generators, in particular, rely on datasets that include pairs of images ...

Stolen San Jose statue will cost up to $100,000 to replace. Where will the money come from?

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

A statue stolen out of a San Jose park and then recovered at a scrapyard earlier this year will cost the city up to $100,000 to replace — but no money currently exists to remake it, city officials say.The likeness of 1600s-era Indian ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj riding a horse, installed over two decades ago as a symbol of friendship between the sister cities of San Jose and Pune, the ninth-most-populous city in India, was swiped from Guadalupe River Park in January. The statue, sawed off at the hooves, was then found days later by this news organization, sitting next to a Coke machine at a metal scrapyard that has had multiple run-ins with law enforcement for years.A police investigation never found a culprit. The statue is believed to be made of iron and worth up to $800 as scrap metal. It is currently in the city’s custody.San Jose officials said the sister-city program gets very little funding and cannot cover the cost of remaking the monument, which included a ...

'Dying To Stay Here': The plight of black people in Silicon Valley

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

(BCN) -- A local economist startled by the staggering disparities pushing African Americans to the margins in Santa Clara County is launching a video and podcast project hoping to bring more attention to the issue.Chuck Cantrell's "Dying to Stay Here" video was formally released at CreaTV studios in San Jose earlier this month. The roughly nine-minute film overviews racist societal structures and business cycles that disproportionately punish African Americans in the expensive Silicon Valley, making it harder to live in the region."Marginalized people are the canaries in an economic coal mine. African Americans are singing a song," Cantrell told San Jose Spotlight.Cantrell, an African American economist and San Jose planning commissioner, evaluated 18 different sets of public data focused on health, employment, infant mortality, school populations, wealth gaps and unhoused populations, among other areas."It's publicly available data, I didn't do anything people can't go and discover...

Climate commission report sets guidelines for aggressive state action

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

As Maryland officials put the finishing touches on a plan for how the state should hit its aggressive goals for combating climate change, an adjacent report from a longstanding advisory body offers some clues on what the final recommendations might include.The annual report of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change, which guides the work of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), was released last week, and it’s an expansive document with a range of short-, middle- and long-term strategies.The commission has existed in one form or another for 15 years, but as the state intensifies its efforts to fight climate change and fine-tunes its legislative and regulatory arsenals, the commission has seen its stature and political influence elevated. Its work may be even more consequential under the administration of Gov. Wes Moore (D), who has vowed to make the state a national leader in climate policy.“There’s an agenda that these recommendations are leading to,” said Kim Coble,...

Rite Aid banned from using facial recognition technology in stores for five years

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 10:01:06 GMT

Rite Aid has been banned from using facial recognition technology for five years over allegations that its surveillance system was used incorrectly to identify potential shoplifters, especially Black, Latino, Asian or female shoppers.The settlement with the Federal Trade Commission addresses charges that the struggling drugstore chain didn’t do enough to prevent harm to its customers and implement “reasonable procedures,” the government agency said.Rite Aid said late Tuesday that it disagrees with the allegations, but that it’s glad it reached an agreement to resolve the issue. It noted in a prepared statement that any agreement will have to be approved in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.Rite Aid announced last fall that it was closing more than 150 stores as it makes its way through a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.Rite Aid Corp., based in Philadelphia, has more than 2,000 locations. The company has struggled financially for years and also faces financial risk from lawsuits ov...