Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan Inc. plan to build a new pipeline system and reverse the flow on some existing conduits to haul gasoline and other fuels to California, Arizona and Nevada.
As California’s in-state refining capacity dwindles, the regional market is becoming increasingly reliant on imported fuels, especially gasoline. The pipeline project hatched by Phillips 66 and Kinder will carry fuels from as far away as the Midwest to augment supplies sent by refiners in Washington State and Asia.
The project, slated for completion around 2029, would be the first pipeline system to deliver motor fuels into California, a state long considered an island disconnected from the major refining hubs of the Gulf Coast and Midwest.
The investment comes amid a wave of California refinery closures or conversions — including the imminent shutdown of Phillips 66’s Los Angeles-area plant — that threaten to squeeze motorists with shrinking fuel supplies and higher pump prices. Consumers in some neighboring states also are expected to feel the impacts.
Phillips 66 and Kinder announced Monday what is known as an open season on their proposed Western Gateway Pipeline, during which bids are solicited from shippers that would reserve space on the conduit for moving fuels. The bidding window will close on Dec. 19, Phillips 66 wrote in the statement.
The Western Gateway project would involve building a new line between Borger, Texas, where Phillips 66 operates a refinery, and Phoenix. Meanwhile, the flow on Kinder’s existing California-to-Arizona pipe known as SFPP will be reversed so more fuel can flow to the Golden State.
Phillips 66 also plans to reverse the flow on the Gold Pipeline that carries supplies from Texas to the St. Louis region so Midwest fuel can move west. The refiner operates fuel-making plants along the Gold Pipeline route including in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the St. Louis suburb of Wood River, Illinois.
Kinder has eyed similar projects in the past, proposing in 2013 the Freedom Pipeline that would have carried oil from West Texas to California. But that proposal was ultimately shelved after receiving anemic interest from potential shippers.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
South Bay tech company Bill.com and East Bay energy giant Chevron have revealed plans for new rounds of job cuts that are poised to displace well over 100 workers in the Bay Area, filings with the state government show.
The layoffs are a reminder that job cuts in the tech industry have yet to run their course, as a wide range of tech companies continue to reveal their plans to trim staffing levels in the region.
Bill.com logo on the tech company’s office building at 6220 America Center Drive in north San Jose. (Google Maps)
Chevron, which has moved its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston in another example of the corporate exodus from California to Texas, revealed prior layoffs that erased 600 jobs in the Bay Area.
According to WARN notices the companies sent to the state Employment Development Department, the layoffs include:
— Bill is cutting 84 jobs in North San Jose at the company’s headquarters complex. These layoffs are expected to take effect on Dec. 15, the WARN letter to the EDD shows.
— Chevron is eliminating 100 jobs in San Ramon, an East Bay city where the energy giant had once based its headquarters, according to the WARN letter. These most recent cutbacks are due to occur on Oct. 23. Chevron is also cutting 75 jobs in the Kern County city of Bakersfield.
Bill and Chevron both stated that the layoffs would be permanent.
“We are providing severance pay, medical continuation coverage, access to education and training resources, and outplacement assistance,” Henry Perea, Chevron’s manager of state government affairs, wrote in the WARN letter to the EDD.
OAKLAND — Retired NFL star Doug Martin spent his final moments alive Saturday morning wandering in the dark through the backyards and banging on the front doors of his neighbors’ houses in the Oakland hills, sources told the Bay Area News Group.
Martin’s subsequent death — after what police described as a “brief struggle” with officers inside one of those homes — sent shockwaves through the city, stunning those who recalled the former All-Pro running back’s quick burst on the football turf and easygoing temperament off of it.
Two days later, questions mounted about the Oakland Police Department’s actions before dawn Saturday, along with the factors that appeared to lead Martin inside his neighbor’s home and the exact circumstances around his death in police custody.
“It’s tragic, it’s really tragic,” said his neighbor, Lynne Belmont, 74.
Multiple people called 911 around 4:15 a.m. Saturday, as Martin went door-to-door on the 11000 block of Ettrick Street, sources said. He had been staying in a longtime family home on that block, which sits atop an Oakland hills neighborhood near the Oakland Zoo.
Police initially received a call about a person breaking into a home on that street, which a source said had been occupied at the time. They “simultaneously” received notice that a person believed to be a burglar was having “a medical emergency,” according to a statement released Sunday by the Oakland Police Department.
A “brief struggle” ensued when officers contacted the suspected burglar inside a house and tried to detain him, police said. Martin then became unresponsive after being taken into custody, according to Oakland police.
Oakland police did not respond to multiple requests by this news organization for further details. City and police officials have yet to release police radio and dispatch recordings from the encounter, which were recently encrypted and shielded from the public’s ear.
The police department also has yet to announce how many officers have been placed on paid administrative leave, as is customary following an in-custody death.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Doug Martin (22) runs during the second half of an NFL football game against the New York Jets, in Tampa, Fla. Two-time Pro Bowl running back Doug Martin has been released by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, who may look for a replacement in free agency.(AP Photo/Jason Behnken, File)
In a statement issued Monday evening, Martin’s family said his parents “were actively seeking medical assistance for him and had contacted local authorities for support” before his encounter with police. They added that Martin “battled mental health challenges that profoundly impacted his personal and professional life,” and that he fled his home that night after “feeling overwhelmed and disoriented.”
“Ultimately, mental illness proved to be the one opponent from which Doug could not run,” said the family’s statement, which was released by Athletes First. The firm represented Martin when he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012.”
On Monday, Mayor Barbara Lee issued a statement mourning Martin’s death and noting she had reached out to Martin’s family. Lee hailed him as “an Oaklander who had a distinguished NFL career,” adding that “our condolences are with his family and loved ones.” The family has requested privacy.
Martin did not seem much involved in Oakland’s professional sports community, a tight-knit social circle that includes former big-league athletes and coaches. Several long-timers contacted for this story had not been aware that Martin had even resided in Oakland.
On his journey from high school stardom in Stockton to NFL fame, however, Martin was as memorable a running back as the coaches who crossed paths with him could remember.
“He was the kind of guy who really just absorbed everything you tried to teach him,” said Earnest Byner, a former NFL all-pro who was Martin’s running back coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “He could do anything you asked him to do.”
It was the kind of inner confidence that made the relatively undersized, 5-foot 9-inch tall player — nicknamed “Muscle Hamster” — eager to take on more physically taxing assignments, such as blocking heftier linebackers.
But Martin truly shone with the ball in his hand, coaches said, zipping downfield with a springy first step. A decorated college career at Boise State — where he logged 3,400 yards and 43 touchdowns — led him to be the Buccaneers’ first-round draft selection in 2012.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Doug Martin (22) walks off the field after a staggeringly successful day against the Oakland Raiders in an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012 at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif. Martin rushed for 251 yards and four touchdowns, as the Buccaneers won, 42-32. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)
Martin had been known around the college campus for his bounding social energy. He rode a remote-controlled electric skateboard to classes, forged close locker-room friendships and even embraced the popularity of “Teach Me How to Dougie,” a hit song with a signature dance move that shared his name.
“He was just having fun playing ball,” said Keith Bhonapha, the college’s running-back coach at the time. “He really felt at home there.”
Martin’s NFL draft-day party at his relatives’ house in the Oakland hills was uniquely festive, recalled Tony Franks, his high school coach in Stockton. Television trucks lined the street and dozens of people cheered when the St. Mary’s High School star received a call from the Buccaneers at the end of the first round.
Martin’s running style was prototypical for the time — “powerful, compact, explosive,” he said, yet nimble enough to “change direction on a dime.”
“He had such natural strength, leg strength, body strength,” Franks said. “The force he could create by accelerating was just tremendous.”
In the NFL, though, Martin faced adversity. After a breakout rookie season, he suffered a torn labrum that sidelined him for much of his follow-up campaign. Still, he notched two All-Pro teams in a career that lasted seven seasons, rushing for over 5,300 yards and two touchdowns before retiring in 2018.
Martin was suspended four games in 2016 for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy after testing positive for a banned substance. In a statement at the time, Martin said he initially considered appealing the penalty but had decided instead to seek treatment.
“My shortcomings,” he said of his off-the-field life, “have taught me both that I cannot win these personal battles alone and that there is no shame in asking for help.”
Bhonapha, an Oakland native who played football at Skyline High School, visited Martin sometime during the Tampa Bay years. Over a steak dinner, the coach recalled, Martin spoke sentimentally about his Boise State years, reminiscing about the familiarity and friendships that came before the realities of adulthood.
“The amount of calls I’ve gotten from teammates since this weekend asking what happened … guys who were really close with him said they hadn’t talked to him in a couple years,” Bhonapha said.
But even amid the shock of Martin’s untimely passing, those who witnessed the Stockton kid’s rise to the sport’s top ranks recalled the determination that had brought him there.
“He had probably gone through being doubted because of his size at one point,” Byner said. “But he never doubted what he could do — and we didn’t, either.”
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at smukherjee@bayareanewsgroup.com.
About 260 sexual abuse lawsuits were paused when the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa filed for bankruptcy in 2023. That has been a frustration for survivors who want the actions of their abusers, and the failings of the powerful institution that obscured the crimes, dragged into the daylight.
Now, it looks like a few of those survivors may have their days in court.
The judge in the bankruptcy, Charles Novack of the Northern District of California, recently put a small set of lawsuits on the path to trial, where they are expected to set a baseline for the diocese’s potential financial liability.
It’s an important step, those involved say, in pushing insurance companies to enter into a global settlement with the diocese and the dozens of people who say they were harmed by predatory church figures. And it could offer a rare chance for claimants to speak openly of their abuse in a courtroom, and to gather additional information through the legal discovery process.
When cases are “quieted” by bankruptcy, said Dan McNevin, who is on the board of directors of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, it means “the public won’t have a clear read on who enabled the abuse, who covered it up and whether those people are still in power and behaving in that fashion.”
When McNevin was molested in the Oakland Diocese, he said, the bishop there told him his abuser, the Rev. James Clark, had no prior record. After he sued, McNevin found out Clark had in fact been convicted of a sex crime before moving into his parish.
“His file was sanitized. There was no record of his probation,” McNevin said. “We got the information by deposing the former chancellor of the diocese. So discovery is really important.”
Little has been revealed publicly about the cases Novack is allowing to proceed.
Should any of the plaintiffs win those lawsuits, it’s likely funds recovered in judgment would be held in trust, said Jennifer Stein, an attorney with Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Los Angeles-based firm that has represented thousands of victims of predatory priests. That money would be distributed later among qualifying survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese, which oversees 42 parishes reaching from American Canyon in Napa County to Crescent City near the Oregon border, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023. Like Catholic dioceses across the U.S., the local jurisdiction said it was facing an existential threat from a massive wave of sex abuse suits.
Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat
Mike Tarvid filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese after harboring a secret for nearly 50 years involving his abuse at the hands of North Coast priest Gary Timmons. Photo taken in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2022. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter/The Press Democrat
Father John Crews, the former executive director of the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma Valley, was among 39 names released in 2019 by the Santa Rosa Diocese, listing those who committed child sexual abuse or were credibly accused of such crimes. Hanna Boys Center is a co-defendant in dozens of lawsuits against the Santa Rosa Diocese. Crews resigned in 2013, when he was first accused of child sex abuse by the widow of a man who had been assaulted at a Sebastopol church. He was last known to be in South Carolina. (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat)
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Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
By that time, the Santa Rosa Diocese had been served with about 160 claims of sexual abuse under a 2019 state law that opened a three-year window for survivors 40 and older to file personal injury cases for past child sex abuse cases.
By August 2023, the diocese had paid out at least $35 million in settlements, dating back to the 1990s, at the onset of a painful worldwide reckoning with sexual abuse by clergy within the Catholic church.
In January 2019, the diocese released a list of 39 of its priests and bishops who committed sexual abuse and misconduct, or had been credibly accused of doing so, between the 1960s and the 2010s.
The efforts of survivors are now moving along two tracks. There is Novack’s courtroom, the setting for one of 17 bankruptcy cases nationwide involving Catholic dioceses, including six in California — Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento among them. Another 20 dioceses have emerged from bankruptcy since 2005.
And there’s Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding 5108, or JCCP 5108, which consolidates hundreds of lawsuits against multiple Catholic dioceses in Northern California. That proceeding is being administered in Alameda County Superior Court.
The decision by religious leaders to file for bankruptcy demonstrates the strength of the abuse cases, according to Stein. “They would not be taking such expensive, egregious measures if there weren’t fear of liability,” she said.
Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa, leader of the diocese since 2011, acknowledges the gravity of the threat.
“It’s absolutely no secret that sexual abuse lawsuits, even in the secular world, bring huge judgments in a court of law,” Vasa said. “So there’s no doubt in the case of the church they be equally large if not larger. But it’s beyond our scope to generate the money to pay for those. Regardless of whether it’s a $1 million judgment or a $2 million judgment, we don’t have the resources in a million years is to pay for those.”
Long list of co-defendants
A bankruptcy court exhibit filed in April offers detail on sites connected to the alleged abuse in the Santa Rosa Diocese.
The largest share of complaints, 60 in all, name Hanna Boys Center, the 80-year-old residential school and service campus for at-risk youth that has sought to remake itself with a retooled mission even as new suits piled up alleging long-ago abuse.
But the list of diocesan sites is long and varied.
Camp St. Michael, an outdoor ministry in Mendocino County that ceased operation in 2011, is named in 25 claims. The diocesan cathedral, St. Eugene’s in Santa Rosa, is named in 13. Nine are tied to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church in Eureka, nine to St. Rose of Lima church in Santa Rosa, seven to St. Apollinaris in Napa and six to Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa.
In all, 27 diocese sites are represented.
The exhibit laying out that information pertains to a subset of 207 cases that include co-defendants. The state court is currently weighing a request to allow those suits to proceed against the co-defendants, even if they are paused against the diocese. The church is fighting the effort, arguing that because co-defendants such as Hanna Boys Center and Cardinal Newman are covered by the same insurance policies as the diocese, any legal fees or settlements they end up paying will only further deplete the money potentially available for the wider pool of survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese estimates the sexual abuse cases levied against it would average $2 million each in monetary demands — liability that could surpass half a billion dollars if the church were to lose all the cases. In its bankruptcy petition, the diocese reported unidentified assets valued between $10 million and $50 million.
To get a more accurate read on liability, it is common in litigation spanning multiple districts for the court to select one or more cases to proceed to trial. Novack signaled his approval in the bankruptcy, and the diocese worked with a committee of unsecured creditors in the case — made up of sex abuse survivors — to identify a handful of representative cases.
“The committee wanted several cases released for trial to kind of set a benchmark — what are these cases worth in a real trial?” Vasa said. “Just to say to the insurers, ‘If these go to trial, there may be a huge judgment.’”
Insurers called out
Insurance companies are a major player in these bankruptcy proceedings. Some of the other parties believe they are an impediment.
The insurers have been “woefully deficient in fulfilling contractual promises” to pay claims, said attorney Rick Simons, who serves as a liaison for the hundreds of sex abuse cases that make up JCCP 5108, the consolidated civil action.
“They sold these policies in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’60s, some into the 2000s, for $25,000, $35,000 and $55,000 apiece,” Simons said of the insurers. “Now they owe, nationally, billions and billions of dollars in claims. They don’t care about rules and laws. They just want to keep saying no so they can negotiate a lump sum that’s like 8 cents on the dollar.”
Just over a year ago, the creditors committee petitioned for a two-hour court conference allowing survivors to read personal statements. “This proceeding is likely the only opportunity that Survivors in Santa Rosa will have to seek acknowledgement and justice for the decades of isolation and pain they endured,” the committee argued.
The church supported the motion. At least five insurance companies opposed it — Lloyd’s of London, Pacific Indemnity, Pacific Employers Insurance, Century Indemnity and Westchester Fire Insurance, the latter four all under the umbrella of Pacific. Novack granted the petition over their objections, and survivors were allowed to read statements during a private conference on Feb. 6.
Meanwhile, committee members have joined the diocese and its insurers in several rounds of court-approved mediation. Vasa insists all parties, including the church, are working hard to reach an agreement everyone can live with.
“It’s kind of a dance,” the bishop said. “What is a reasonable number that the committee will accept, so that survivors will see they’ve done their due diligence? We can never compensate for all the harm done. But we can manifest care and concern, and demonstrate that we are not trying to stand in the way of what is just.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A planned five-day strike by thousands of registered nurses and other Kaiser Permanente health care workers in California, Hawaii and Oregon ended on Sunday, union leaders and the health care system said.
California-based Kaiser Permanente said it welcomed back about 30,000 employees who participated in the strike, which began Tuesday and ended Sunday morning. Its statement said its facilities were “staffed by physicians, experienced managers and trained staff, along with nearly 6,000 contracted nurses, clinicians and others who worked with us during the strike.”
Plans call for bargaining to resume this week, with a focus on “economic issues,” the statement said. While unions also raised staffing and other concerns, “wages are the reason for the strike and the primary issue in negotiations,” the statement said.
The United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, which represents registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse midwives and other health care professionals in California and Hawaii, said in a statement that more than 500 hospitals and clinics were impacted by the strike. It said the strike sent a message that “patient care and safe staffing must come first.”
It announced plans to resume bargaining later this month.
Sarina Roher, president of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, in a statement said Kaiser Permanente “cannot fix its staffing and access crisis without competitive wages that retain and recruit the skilled professionals our patients depend on.”
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.6 million members at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals, largely in western U.S. states.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The leader of a labor union in Southern California who was arrested while protesting an immigration raid earlier this year will have his felony obstruction charge reduced to a misdemeanor, court records show.
David Huerta had been charged with obstruction, resistance or opposition to a federal officer — a class A felony, according to a Friday filing by Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in federal court.
However, prosecutors filed a proposed order Saturday seeking dismissal without prejudice of the original felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer.
The Associated Press sent an email Saturday seeking comment from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Huerta is president of the Service Employees International Union California. He was arrested June 6 while protesting outside a business in Los Angeles where federal agents were investigating suspected immigration violations.
A crowd of people gathered outside yelling at the officers. Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in an earlier federal court filing.
An officer told Huerta to leave, then put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle, the agent wrote. Huerta pushed back and the officer pushed Huerta to the ground and arrested him, according to the filing.
Huerta’s union represents hundreds of thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers across California. His arrest became a rallying cry for immigrant advocates across the country as they called for his release and an end to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Abbe David Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, Huerta’s attorneys, said in a statement that they will seek “the speediest trial” to vindicate him.
“In the four months that have passed since David’s arrest. it has become even clearer there were no grounds for charging him and certainly none for the way he was treated,” they wrote. “This case is not a good-faith pursuit of justice but a bald act of retaliation, designed to silence dissent and punish opposition. It reflects the Trump Administration’s continued weaponization of prosecutorial power against its perceived opponents.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Nurse Rod Salaysay works with all kinds of instruments in the hospital: a thermometer, a stethoscope and sometimes his guitar and ukulele.
In the recovery unit of UC San Diego Health, Salaysay helps patients manage pain after surgery. Along with medications, he offers tunes on request and sometimes sings. His repertoire ranges from folk songs in English and Spanish to Minuet in G Major and movie favorites like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Patients often smile or nod along. Salaysay even sees changes in their vital signs like lower heart rate and blood pressure, and some may request fewer painkillers.
“There’s often a cycle of worry, pain, anxiety in a hospital,” he said, “but you can help break that cycle with music.”
Salaysay is a one-man band, but he’s not alone. Over the past two decades, live performances and recorded music have flowed into hospitals and doctors’ offices as research grows on how songs can help ease pain.
Scientists explore how music affects pain perception
The healing power of song may sound intuitive given music’s deep roots in human culture. But the science of whether and how music dulls acute and chronic pain — technically called music-induced analgesia — is just catching up.
No one suggests that a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain. But several recent studies, including in the journals Pain and Scientific Reports, have suggested that listening to music can either reduce the perception of pain or enhance a person’s ability to tolerate it.
What seems to matter most is that patients — or their families — choose the music selections themselves and listen intently, not just as background noise.
How music can affect pain levels
“Pain is a really complex experience,” said Adam Hanley, a psychologist at Florida State University. “It’s created by a physical sensation, and by our thoughts about that sensation and emotional reaction to it.”
Two people with the same condition or injury may feel vastly different levels of acute or chronic pain. Or the same person might experience pain differently from one day to the next.
Acute pain is felt when pain receptors in a specific part of the body — like a hand touching a hot stove — send signals to the brain, which processes the short-term pain. Chronic pain usually involves long-term structural or other changes to the brain, which heighten overall sensitivity to pain signals. Researchers are still investigating how this occurs.
“Pain is interpreted and translated by the brain,” which may ratchet the signal up or down, said Dr. Gilbert Chandler, a specialist in chronic spinal pain at the Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic.
Researchers know music can draw attention away from pain, lessening the sensation. But studies also suggest that listening to preferred music helps dull pain more than listening to podcasts.
“Music is a distractor. It draws your focus away from the pain. But it’s doing more than that,” said Caroline Palmer, a psychologist at McGill University who studies music and pain.
Scientists are still tracing the various neural pathways at work, said Palmer.
“We know that almost all of the brain becomes active when we engage in music,” said Kate Richards Geller, a registered music therapist in Los Angeles. “That changes the perception and experience of pain — and the isolation and anxiety of pain.”
Music genres and active listening
The idea of using recorded music to lessen pain associated with dental surgery began in the late 19th century before local anesthetics were available. Today researchers are studying what conditions make music most effective.
Researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands conducted a study on 548 participants to see how listening to five genres of music — classical, rock, pop, urban and electronic — extended their ability to withstand acute pain, as measured by exposure to very cold temperatures.
All music helped, but there was no single winning genre.
“The more people listened to a favorite genre, the more they could endure pain,” said co-author Dr. Emy van der Valk Bouman. “A lot of people thought that classical music would help them more. Actually, we are finding more evidence that what’s best is just the music you like.”
The exact reasons are still unclear, but it may be because familiar songs activate more memories and emotions, she said.
The simple act of choosing is itself powerful, said Claire Howlin, director of the Music and Health Psychology Lab at Trinity College Dublin, who co-authored a study that suggested allowing patients to select songs improved their pain tolerance.
“It’s one thing that people can have control over if they have a chronic condition — it gives them agency,” she said.
Active, focused listening also seems to matter.
Hanley, the Florida State psychologist, co-authored a preliminary study suggesting daily attentive listening might reduce chronic pain.
“Music has a way of lighting up different parts of the brain,” he said, “so you’re giving people this positive emotional bump that takes their mind away from the pain.”
It’s a simple prescription with no side effects, some doctors now say.
Cecily Gardner, a jazz singer in Culver City, California, said she used music to help get through a serious illness and has sung to friends battling pain.
“Music reduces stress, fosters community,” she said, “and just transports you to a better place.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — As Democrats dig in for a lengthening government shutdown, former Vice President Kamala Harris is cheering them on as she travels the country touting her presidential campaign memoir amid speculation about another White House run.
The Democratic 2024 nominee told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that she remains in contact with Democrats on Capitol Hill, encouraging them to maintain their demands that President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional majority address looming spikes in Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums.
“The Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. They are in charge, and they are responsible for the shutdown,” she said.
Democrats, she said, “are doing the right thing by standing up for working people and not allowing the Republicans to carry a tax cut for the wealthiest people in our country on the backs of working people in America.”
It was just one example of Harris using her book tour to urge Democrats to lead a consistent, aggressive resistance to Trump while at the same time recommitting to reaching working- and middle-class voters who supported the Republican or stayed home last November.
Over the course of the day, Harris sat down for an hourlong conversation with five Black college students, spoke to the AP and held two book discussions in Alabama‘s largest city. Paid ticketholders filled downtown Birmingham’s Alabama Theatre, where Harris discussed her campaign, the Democratic Party and the course of the nation with radio host Charlamagne tha God.
Through it all, Harris projected the aura of party elder and future candidate. She expressed concern for the country’s direction and outright incredulity over many of Trump’s actions. When VIP ticketholders told her in a photo line how disappointed they had been by her loss, she played it forward.
“We’ve got work to do,” she said repeatedly. “Keep fighting.”
On stage and to the AP, she praised her party’s “deep and wide bench” and even called for lowering the nation’s voting age to 16 to bring more young people into the political process.
Harris signals she’s not done
Harris, 60, maintained she has made no decision about her own political future. But she made clear that running again in 2028 is still on the table and that she sees herself as a player in the party and a voice in the national discourse.
“I am a leader of the party,” she told the AP. “I take seriously that responsibility and duty that I feel” as the previous nominee. That “includes traveling the country talking and mostly listening with folks,” she said, and “getting folks ready to fight in the midterms” in 2026.
Harris aides confirmed she will help Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia with virtual events, fundraising appeals and robocalls. She also recently headlined a fundraiser for North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper, a former governor and Harris’ longtime friend.
Later this month, she plans to campaign for California’s “Yes on Prop 50,” the ballot measure that would allow a Democratic-led redraw of the state’s congressional districts to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other Republican-controlled states.
Authenticity will be key for Democratic candidates
Harris, who was unusually blunt in her book “107 Days” about her opinions on a range of political figures, was more circumspect Friday when asked to assess other leading Democrats.
“We have to get away from this idea of ‘Who is the one?’ There are many ways that I think will be effective when people are authentic unto themselves,” she said when asked about her fellow Californian, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and his recent social media mockery of Trump.
She named U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Brittany Petterson, D-Colo., but did not elaborate. “Every voice and every perspective” can resonate with certain voters, she said.
Harris rejected conventional political wisdom that she lost in part because of Republicans’ sustained attacks on cultural and social issues, especially transgender issues. She said economics, notably inflation, was the bigger factor.
“There are a fair number of people who voted for Donald Trump because they believed what he said, which is that he was going to bring down prices,” she told the AP. “Sadly, he lied to them.”
Economic arguments matter most
With prices still high and wealth gaps growing, Harris said, “We’ve got to do a better job of dealing with the immediate needs of the American people.”
She praised the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments but said household-level policies such as child tax credits, family leave and first-time homebuyer credits should have come before a sweeping infrastructure program and the CHIPS semiconductor manufacturing law.
Even with a sharper economic message, Harris acknowledged structural challenges for Democrats: the proliferation of false information and what she described as conservatives’ assault on democracy.
She rejected the idea of “low-information voters,” saying the problem is actually an abundance of misinformation and disinformation that makes it harder to reach many voters. She said Democrats must penetrate those silos rather than presume anyone is a lost cause.
“They deserve to be heard,” she said.
Backsliding on civil rights
Onstage, Harris described a “reversal” of the Civil Rights Movement. She lamented that the Supreme Court could eliminate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects political district boundaries drawn to ensure minority communities can elect candidates of their choice.
Without that law, nonwhite representation –- especially Black representation in the South –- could diminish considerably, from Congress to local school boards and municipal councils.
“How can we say at this moment in time that the Voting Rights Act and Section 2 has no purpose?” Harris said to the AP.
The issue carried special resonance given the venue. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 after Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leaders marched from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. A later Supreme Court case out of Mobile led Congress to clarify its intent with Section 2 of the law. And it was a Shelby County, Alabama, case that the Supreme Court used in 2013 to gut the law’s requirement that the U.S. Justice Department approve election procedures in local jurisdictions with a demonstrated history of discrimination.
Besides the pending Supreme Court case, Harris said she has followed Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, along with statements from top Trump adviser Stephen Miller and other Republicans suggesting the U.S. owes its identity to white European settlers.
“Just looking at it in terms of their words, they’re race baiting, they’re scapegoating,” she said. But she stopped short of saying the administration is being driven by a white nationalist ideology: “I can’t pretend to know what is in their head.”
Harris said Friday that she never doubted former President Joe Biden’s ability to serve, even when he ended his reelection bid because of concerns about his age. That’s different, she explained, than discussions about whether the 82-year-old could have served another term.
“He and I have been playing phone tag actually in the last couple of days,” Harris told the AP when asked whether she still talks to Biden, who is undergoing prostate cancer treatment. “I’d invite everyone to say a prayer if that’s what you do for his well-being and health right now.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Sir David Attenborough broke Dick Van Dyke’s record for oldest Daytime Emmy winner on Friday, taking the trophy for daytime personality, non-daily as host of Netflix’s “Secret Lives of Orangutans.”
Attenborough, who is 99, wasn’t on hand. The Brit’s career as a writer, host and narrator spans eight decades.
Van Dyke was 98 when he won as guest performer in a daytime drama series for “Days of Our Lives” in 2024. He is the oldest actor to win a Daytime Emmy.
Jonathan Jackson of “General Hospital” and first-time nominee Susan Walters of “The Young and the Restless” won supporting acting honors.
Jackson accepted the trophy for playing Lucky Spencer, a role he originated in 1993 and has played on and off ever since.
The ABC show also claimed trophies for Alley Mills as guest performer in a daytime drama and its writing team.
It was Mills’ second career win for playing Heather Webber. The 74-year-old, who first won in 2023, is best known as the mom on “The Wonder Years.”
“We’re living in really dark times right now. Everything’s crazy,” Mills told the audience at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. “We just got to keep our spirits high.”
Walters plays Diane Jenkins on CBS’ “Y&R,” which she has appeared in during three different stints.
“I’m so happy that I won so I can thank my husband of 40 years,” she said, singling out Linden Ashby, who has appeared on the same show.
“The Young and the Restless” brought a leading 19 nominations into the 52nd annual show. It is just one of three shows nominated for best daytime drama, along with “General Hospital” and “Days of Our Lives.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ChatGPT will be able to have kinkier conversations after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the artificial intelligence company will soon allow its chatbot to engage in “erotica for verified adults.”
OpenAI won’t be the first to try to profit from sexualized AI. Sexual content was a top draw for AI tools almost as soon as the boom in AI-generated imagery and words erupted in 2022.
But the companies that were early to embrace mature AI also encountered legal and societal minefields and harmful abuse as a growing number of people have turned to the technology for companionship or titillation.
Will a sexier ChatGPT be different? After three years of largely banning mature content, Altman said Wednesday that his company is “not the elected moral police of the world” and ready to allow “more user freedom for adults” at the same time as it sets new limits for teens.
“In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here,” Altman wrote on social media platform X, whose owner, Elon Musk, has also introduced an animated AI character that flirts with paid subscribers.
For now, unlike Musk’s Grok chatbot, paid subscriptions to ChatGPT are mostly pitched for professional use. But letting the chatbot become a friend or romantic partner could be another way for the world’s most valuable startup, which is losing more money than it makes, to turn a profit that could justify its $500 billion valuation.
“They’re not really earning much through subscriptions so having erotic content will bring them quick money,” said Zilan Qian, a fellow at Oxford University’s China Policy Lab who has studied the popularity of dating-based chatbots in the U.S. and China.
There are already about 29 million active users of AI chatbots designed specifically for romantic or sexual bonding, and that’s not counting people who use conventional chatbots in that way, according to research published by Qian earlier this month.
It also doesn’t include users of Character.AI, which is fighting a lawsuit that alleges a chatbot modeled after “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen formed a sexually abusive relationship with a 14-year-old boy and pushed him to kill himself. OpenAI is facing a lawsuit from the family of a 16-year-old ChatGPT user who died by suicide in April.
Qian said she worries about the toll on real-world relationships when mainstream chatbots, already prone to sycophancy, are primed for 24-hour availability serving sexually explicit content.
“ChatGPT has voice chat versions. I would expect that in the future, if they were to go down this way — voice, text, visual — it’s all there,” she said.
Humans who fall in love with human-like machines have long been a literary cautionary tale, from popular science fiction of the last century to the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion, obsessed with a woman he sculpted from ivory. Creating such a machine would seem like an unusual detour for OpenAI, founded a decade ago as a nonprofit dedicated to safely building better-than-human AI.
Altman said on a podcast in August that OpenAI has tried to resist the temptation to introduce products that could “juice growth or revenue” but be “very misaligned” with its long-term mission. Asked for a specific example, he gave one: “Well, we haven’t put a sexbot avatar in ChatGPT yet.”
Idaho-based startup Civitai, a platform for AI-generated art, learned the hard way that making money off mature AI won’t be an easy path.
“When we launched the site, it was an intentional choice to allow mature content,” said Justin Maier, the company’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview last year.
Backed by the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has also invested in OpenAI, the Idaho startup was one of several that tried to capitalize on the sudden popularity of tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney that enabled people to type a description and conjure up almost any kind of image. Part of Stable Diffusion’s initial popularity was the ease with which it could generate a new kind of synthetic and highly customized pornography.
“What we had seen was that there was a lot of interest in mature content,” Maier said. Training these AI systems, known as models, on “mature themes actually made it so that these models were more capable of human anatomy and resulted in actually better models,” he said.
“We didn’t want to prevent the kind of growth that actually increased everything for the entire community, whether you were interested in mature content or Pixar,” Maier said. “So we allowed it early on and have always kind of had this battle of making it so that we can keep things filtered and safe, if that’s not what you’re interested in. We wanted to ultimately give the control to the user to decide what they would see on the site and what their experience would be.”
That also invited abuse. Civitai last year implemented new measures to detect and remove sexual images depicting children, but it remained a hub for AI-generated pornography, including fake images of celebrities. Confronting increasing pressure, including from payment processors and a new law against nonconsensual images signed by President Donald Trump, Civitai earlier this year blocked users from creating deepfake images of real people. Engagement dropped.
Another company that hasn’t shied away from mature content is Baltimore-based Nomi, though its founder and CEO Alex Cardinell said its companion chatbots are “strictly” for users over 18 and were never marketed to kids. They are also not designed for sex, though Cardinell said in an interview earlier this year that people who build platonic relationships with their chatbot might find it veering into a romantic one.
“It’s kind of very user-dependent for where they’re kind of missing the human gap in their life. And I think that’s different for everyone,” he said.
He declined to guess how many Nomi users are having erotic conversations with the chatbot, comparing it to real-life partners who might do “mature content things” for some part of their lives but “all sorts of other stuff together as well.”
“We’re not monitoring user conversations like that,” Cardinell said.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Big crowds of protesters are expected Saturday in thousands of places around the U.S. in opposition to what some are characterizing as increasingly authoritarian practices by President Donald Trump.
Some conservative politicians have condemned the protests as “Hate America” rallies, while others say that it represents a “patriotic” fight for First Amendment rights.
Here is what to expect on Saturday.
Organizers aim to boost political engagement
Ezra Levin, a leading organizer of Saturday’s protests, said the demonstrations are a response to what he called Trump’s “crackdown on First Amendment rights.”
He said those steps cumulatively represented a direct threat to constitutionally protected rights.
Protests are planned for more than 2,500 locations nationwide — from the country’s largest city, New York, to small unincorporated, rural communities like East Glacier Ridge, Montana, with roughly 300 residents.
Organizers will consider the day a success, Levin said, if people are galvanized to become more politically involved on an ongoing basis.
Mostly peaceful protest in June
The last “No Kings” protest took place on June 14 in thousands of cities and towns across the country, in large part to protest a military parade in Washington that marked the Army’s 250th anniversary and coincided with Trump’s birthday. “No Kings” organizers at the time called the parade “coronation” that was symbolic of what they characterized as Trump’s growing authoritarian overreach.
Confrontations were isolated and the protests were largely peaceful.
Police in Los Angeles, where protests over federal immigration enforcement raids erupted the week prior and sparked demonstrations across the country, used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out protesters after the formal event ended. Officers in Portland also fired tear gas and projectiles to disperse a crowd that protested in front of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building well into the evening.
Four months later, no one has been charged. Experts have said state gun laws may shield both the shooter and the man who brandished a rifle but didn’t fire shots.
Jamie Carter, an organizer of Saturday’s rally, said Utah activists considered not participating in this round of “No Kings” demonstrations, but “we also felt that we really had to get back out there.”
Organizers are not affiliated with the groups who put on the June demonstration that turned deadly. Safety volunteers will be present but unarmed, and all have received de-escalation training, said Carter, of Salt Lake Indivisible. Attendees have been asked not to bring weapons.
“We really want this to be a very uplifting, happy event of people coming together in a community to kind of try to erase and replace some of the bad memories,” she said.
Trump’s crackdown against protests, especially in Democratic cities, has intensified since the June marches. He has since sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tenn. His efforts to deploy troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have stalled in federal court.
Organizers in Chicago are expecting tens of thousands of demonstrators at a popular Lake Michigan park, followed by a downtown march.
Federal immigration agents have arrested more than 1,000 people in Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, with increasingly aggressive tactics since September. Protests have been frequent and well attended in recent weeks, and have boiled over in intense clashes outside a suburban federal immigration processing center.
“People are angrier. It feels so much more immediate,” said Denise Poloyac with Indivisible Chicago. “They’re very concerned about what’s happening in Chicago and around the country.”
The “No Kings” organizers have led numerous virtual safety trainings leading up to the protests with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is listed as an official partner on the “No Kings” website.
The trainings informed viewers about their rights during protests — such as whether you are required to carry ID or if wearing a mask is allowed (both vary according to each state) — and emphasized de-escalation techniques for encounters with law enforcement.
Each official protest has a safety plan, which includes designated medics and emergency meeting spots.
Mixed response from elected officials
The protests have already drawn swift condemnation from some of the country’s top politicians, with House Speaker Mike Johnson dubbing the event the “Hate America rally” at a news conference on Wednesday.
Some state leaders, like Texas‘ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, have decided to activate the National Guard ahead of the protests.
“Texas will deter criminal mischief and work with local law enforcement to arrest anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property,” Abbott said in a statement.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a more optimistic tone, saying he hopes Californians turn out in large numbers and remain peaceful. He said Trump “hopes there is disruption, there’s some violence” that he can exploit.
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Juan A. Lozano in Houston, Texas; Terry Chea in San Francisco; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The father of a Marine who was arrested by immigration authorities when visiting his pregnant daughter at Camp Pendleton has a criminal record that includes charges of domestic violence and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
Esteban Rios was deported to Mexico in 1999, removed from the United States again in 2005 and ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2020 after entering the country illegally a third time, the department said.
The statement was the first detailed account that Homeland Security provided since the Marine, Steve Rios, said last week that his father was detained after visiting the Southern California military base, released with ankle monitors and detained again when reporting days later to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, as ordered.
Homeland Security initially did not provide details when asked several times by The Associated Press on Tuesday for information on any criminal record Esteban Rios had, saying only that “criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.” The department said it had no other information to release.
On Thursday — one day after AP published a story on Esteban Rios, and two days after it sought details from the department — DHS released the detailed account of his criminal record. The department also accused the AP of having “deliberately obscured the facts,” despite the agency having not provided AP with the information it accused the news organization of obscuring.
Steve Rios of Oceanside, California, told San Diego station KNSD that his parents inspired him to enlist in the Marines. He said they came to the U.S. from Mexico more than 30 years ago and have washed cars and cleaned houses for his whole life.
“It was just making them proud, right? I’ve seen all the struggles they’ve gone through,” Steve Rios told the station. “The least I could do, right, and serve this country and try to, you know, put some time in.”
Steve Rios said he and his parents were picking up his younger sister and her husband, who is also a Marine, at Pendleton on Sept. 28, as they have done that every weekend for the past few months while she is expecting her first child. After stopping at the gate, ICE officials arrived to detain both parents, later releasing them with ankle monitors. He said his father was deported Oct. 10.
The Rios family told the station the parents had no criminal record, had pending green card applications sponsored by Steve and authorization to work.
In response to inquiries from AP, Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, issued a statement Tuesday that read, “Under President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law — including domestic violence and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
The statement did not say anything about Esteban Rios, including whether he was arrested or charged with any crime or if he had any immigration history.
When AP followed up to ask if Esteban Rios and his wife had criminal histories, Luis Alani, a communications strategist at ICE, wrote, “By statute, ICE has no information on these aliens. To clarify, there is no information we can release.”
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The city appeared to have reached the final stage of awarding a three-year, $27 million deal to a new security company on several occasions this year. But the deliberations have gone nowhere, and now Oakland is starting over from scratch.
It may take three months or longer for a new contract to be prepared, officials estimated, leaving the city to continue paying the incumbent company, ABC Security, on a month-to-month basis.
The current arrangement has now persisted for over a year, and in total the company has been paid over $30 million since it first signed with Oakland in 2018, including several contract extensions and pay increases during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is a reflection of the city’s struggles to leave behind the remnants of last year’s corruption scandal, laying bare the messy politics around city contracts and the millions of public dollars given to private vendors that win them.
On two occasions in recent months, the Oakland City Council has had the opportunity to leave ABC behind and award the contract to Allied Universal, the world’s largest private security provider.
Both times, it has stopped short. Elected leaders have openly advocated for an immigrant-owned local business, Marina Security Services, to receive the contract instead — despite Marina finishing behind Allied in the city’s bidding process.
“The council typically tries to be friendly to local vendors, while staff tends to look at it in more of a dispassionate way,” said Dan Lindheim, a former Oakland city administrator. “The sets of criteria they are using is different; sometimes they’re contradictory.”
ABC Security Service guard Sabira Hussein screens visitors at City Hall in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
ABC Security, the existing contract holder, is not mentioned in the federal criminal indictments filed by prosecutors this year against ex-Mayor Sheng Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones and the father-and-son business duo of David and Andy Duong, whose family has the city’s recycling contract.
But the company’s owner, Ana Chretien, is a close ally and business associate of Mario Juarez, who this news organization has previously reported to be a co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to bribe the former mayor.
ABC received its latest contract extension in September 2024, a decision that nearly required then-Mayor Thao to cast a tie-breaking vote, though the council ultimately reached a unanimous decision to stick with the company. According to The Oaklandside, Juarez and another person named in federal subpoenas had lobbied on behalf of ABC Security when it seemed the company might not get its contract renewed in 2022.
Juarez, who was never charged by the feds, has long been a fierce advocate for Chretien’s company. Last month, he distributed notices to local news media on behalf of the Oakland Latino Business Association and Committee. These notices cite lawsuits alleging unfair labor practices that have been filed against the companies that finished first and second place in Oakland’s most recent contract bid process: Allied Universal and Marina Security Services.
Chretien did not respond to questions about her current association with Juarez, with whom she swapped ownership of several commercial properties when the two represented the same real-estate company
At least on the legal front, the notices are on to something: workers have filed in court for unpaid wages against both Allied, and Marina, whose owner is politically-connected.
But to the extent that there’s negativity at City Hall around the two companies, it hardly needs to be generated by outside critics.
At a meeting last month, Councilmember Ken Houston, a vocal fan of Marina, alluded to a report by The Oaklandside that a subsidiary of Allied was contracted to provide transportation to armed detention officers with the Department of Homeland Security.
Oakland city council member district seven Ken Houston speaks during the 2025 Inauguration Ceremony held at Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
This would seem to run afoul of a 2019 city policy that forbids public deals with companies contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for services at “detention facilities.”
The council had already rejected Allied once before, months earlier, over settlements — including back wages — that the company has had to pay out to current and former employees. Allied officials did not respond to an interview request.
City staff, including Transportation Director Josh Rowan, made clear at the time that their own process found Allied as the strongest bidder. But the new ICE question appeared to lead officials to relent — and now Oakland will start from scratch.
Marina, meanwhile, has its own share of ups and downs. Its owner, Sam Tadesse, has repeatedly alleged bias by city staff who ranked the company second place in its bid process.
He similarly raised issues with the Peralta Community College District’s own search this year for a security contractor, which ended with the school system ditching Marina for another provider after Tadesse’s company placed third in that bidding process.
Tadesse, a prolific donor in local political races, said Thursday he will wait to see the city’s next request-for-proposals before deciding whether to pursue the contract once more.
“We are confident that we can once again demonstrate we are deserving and capable of exceeding the City’s security needs,” he said in a statement to this news organization, adding that he is “hopeful” the city runs a “fair and effective process.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Two Californians diagnosed with mpox may be the first U.S. cases resulting from the local spread of a different version of the virus, health officials said.
The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services this week confirmed the first case through testing at a state lab. Los Angeles County health officials on Thursday reported a second, similar case.
Officials say the risk to the public is low.
These are not the U.S. first cases of what is known as clade I mpox. But all six previous cases were among international travelers who were believed to have been infected abroad.
Both infected people in California were hospitalized, and they are now recovering at home. Officials declined to give other details.
Long Beach is located in Los Angeles County but has its own city health department. Investigators there say they have not found a close contact who traveled abroad, nor have they confirmed additional cases. A few of the person’s close contacts have been given a vaccine, said Nora Balanji, the Long Beach department’s communicable disease coordinator.
“We don’t have any proof that there has been ongoing community transmission,” she said. “It’s something we’re looking into. That’s something we’re concerned about.”
Mpox — also known as monkeypox — is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that is in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa.
Milder symptoms can include fever, chills and body aches. In more serious cases, people can develop lesions on the face, hands, chest and genitals.
One version of the virus — called clade II — was the source of an international health crisis in 2022, when infections escalated in dozens of countries, mostly among men who have sex with men. At one point, the U.S. was averaging close to 500 cases per day.
The infections were rarely fatal, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks. Those outbreaks waned later that year, thanks in part to the Jynneos vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic.
The other version — known as clade I — likewise can spread through sex, but also through other forms of contact. In Africa it has infected a broader range of people, including children.
A newer form of the clade I virus has been widely transmitted in eastern and central Africa. The World Health Organization declared the situation a public health emergency, but last month it said the problem had waned enough that it was no longer an international emergency.
Still, “it’s concerning if this virus has come here and now is starting to be transmitted from person to person,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
The case report comes amid a federal government shutdown and the layoffs of hundreds of employees at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the agency that usually would be involved in responding.
Balanji said a few CDC experts have been available to talk to her department about the situation. But Schaffner noted that “the longer the shutdown, the more impaired public health responses are to any outbreaks.”
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson referred questions to local health officials.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said his administration would look to San Francisco as the next target of his federal crime crackdown, which has been mostly directed at Democrat-run cities.
“I’m going to be strongly recommending at the request of government officials, which is always nice, that you start looking at San Francisco,” Trump said during a White House event on Wednesday, joined by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I think we can make San Francisco — there’s one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Now it’s a mess, and we have great support in San Francisco.”
Trump has moved to deploy US troops and federal law enforcement officials to major cities to target crime and counter demonstrations against his deportations of undocumented migrants even in the face of legal challenges. Trump has deployed National Guard personnel to Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Memphis, Chicago and Portland, claiming that Democratic state and local officials have failed to protect citizens and allowed violence to spiral out of control.
Critics have accused Trump of exaggerating the threat and in Washington cast the deployments as a public relations exercise in a city where violent crime has fallen from post-pandemic highs. The Portland and Chicago deployments are currently facing legal challenges, but Trump has repeatedly floated expanding his efforts. The Los Angeles deployment was ruled unconstitutional earlier this year by a judge.
Trump on Wednesday at the White House also announced the results of Operation Summer Heat, an effort he said was carried out in major cities to arrest violent criminals.
“Over the past few months, FBI officers in all 50 states made crushing violent crime a top enforcement priority. That’s what they did, rounding up and arresting thousands of the most violent and dangerous criminals,” Trump said.
The president said that the effort was carried out “in many cities that people didn’t know about. We kept it a little quiet, and it had a big impact.”
According to Trump, the FBI arrested over 8,000 violent criminals during the operation in major cities, including 725 individuals wanted for violent crimes against children and murderers.
–With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
Trump’s new immigration tactics follow years of the military recruiting from immigrant communities to fill out its ranks and touting the immigration benefits for enlistees’ families.
Along with possible protection from deportation, enlisting in the military meant often meant deference in your family’s immigration cases and a better shot at a green card.
Those benefits were used by the armed forces to recruit more people, and, as of last year, an estimated 40,000 people were serving in the military without citizenship.
Under President Joe Biden, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement considered your and your immediate family’s military service as a “significant mitigating factor” when making immigration decisions, such as removal from the country.
The idea was to boost recruitment and maintain morale, fearing that it could take a hit if a service member’s family was deported.
What did the Trump administration change?
The administration issued a memo in February doing away with the older approach.
It said that immigration authorities “will no longer exempt” categories of people that had been afforded more grace in the past.
That included families of service members or veterans, said Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.
Do certain crimes void the protections?
They can, but Stock said there’s no explicit list of convictions that would make someone ineligible for protections and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can waive factoring in criminal convictions in making an immigration decision.
Have other military members’ families been detained?
Will this impact recruitment to the U.S. Armed Forces?
The military has struggled in the past to meet recruitment numbers.
That’s partly because there aren’t enough U.S. citizens without immigrant family members to meet the need, said Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the military police, U.S. Army Reserve, who taught law at West Point during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The immigration benefits for a recruit and their family were key to expanding the military’s ranks, said Stock, and recruitment would suffer without them.
The Marine Corps told The Associated Press last month that recruiters have been told that they “are not the proper authority” to “imply that Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”
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When the corroded pipeline burst in 2015, inky crude spread along the Southern California coast, becoming the state’s worst oil spill in decades.
More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, polluting a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.
Plains All American Pipeline in 2022 agreed to a $230 million settlement with fishers and coastal property owners without admitting liability. Federal inspectors found that the Houston-based company failed to quickly detect the rupture and responded too slowly. It faced an uphill battle to build a new pipeline.
Three decades-old drilling platforms were subsequently shuttered, but another Texas-based fossil fuel company supported by the Trump administration purchased the operation and is intent on pumping oil through the pipeline again.
Sable Offshore Corp., headquartered in Houston, is facing a slew of legal challenges but is determined to restart production, even if that means confining it to federal waters, where state regulators have virtually no say. California controls the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore. The platforms are 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) offshore.
The Trump administration has hailed Sable’s plans as the kind of project the president wants to increase U.S. energy production as the federal government removes regulatory barriers. President Donald Trump has directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to undo his predecessor’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts.
Environmentalist sue to stop the project
“This project risks another environmental disaster in California at a time when demand for oil is going down and the climate crisis is escalating,” said Alex Katz, executive director of Environmental Defense Center, the Santa Barbara group formed in response to a massive spill in 1969.
The environmental organization is among several suing Sable.
“Our concern is that there is no way to make this pipeline safe and that this company has proven that it cannot be trusted to operate safely, responsibly or even legally,” he said.
Actor and activist Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who lives in the area, has implored officials to stop Sable, saying at a March protest: “I can smell a rat. And this project is a rat.”
The California Coastal Commission fined Sable a record $18 million for ignoring cease-and-desist orders over repair work it says was done without permits. Sable said it has permits from the previous owner, Exxon Mobil, and sued the commission while work continued on the pipeline. In June, a state judge ordered it to stop while the case proceeds through the court. The commission and Sable are due back in court Wednesday.
“This fly-by-night oil company has repeatedly abused the public’s trust, racking up millions of dollars in fines and causing environmental damage along the treasured Gaviota Coast,” a state park south of Santa Barbara, said Joshua Smith, the commission’s spokesman.
Sable keeps moving forward
So far, Sable is undeterred.
The California Attorney General’s office sued Sable this month, saying it illegally discharged waste into waterways, and disregarded state law requiring permits before work along the pipeline route that crosses sensitive wildlife habitat.
“Sable placed profits over environmental protection in its rush to get oil on the market,” the agency said in its lawsuit.
Last month, the Santa Barbara District Attorney filed felony criminal charges against Sable, also accusing it of polluting waterways and harming wildlife.
Sable said it has fully cooperated with local and state agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and called the district attorney’s allegation “inflammatory and extremely misleading.” It said a biologist and state fire marshal officials oversaw the work, and no wildlife was harmed.
The company is seeking $347 million for the delays, and says if the state blocks it from restarting the onshore pipeline system, it will use a floating facility that would keep its entire operation in federal waters and use tankers to transport the oil to markets outside California. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, the company updated its plan to include the option.
Fulfilling the president’s energy promise
The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in July it was working with Sable to bring a second rig online.
“President Trump made it clear that American energy should come from American resources,” the agency’s deputy director Kenny Stevens said in a statement then, heralding the “comeback story for Pacific production.”
The agency said there are an estimated 190 million barrels (6 billion gallons) of recoverable oil reserves in the area, nearly 80% of residual Pacific reserves. It noted advancements in preventing and preparing for oil spills and said the failed pipeline has been rigorously tested.
“Continuous monitoring and improved technology significantly reduce the risk of a similar incident occurring in the future,” the agency said.
CEO says project could lower gas prices
On May 19 — the 10th anniversary of the disaster — CEO Jim Flores announced that Sable “is proud to have safely and responsibly achieved first production at the Santa Ynez Unit” — which includes three rigs in federal waters, offshore and onshore pipelines, and the Las Flores Canyon Processing Facility.
State officials countered that the company had only conducted testing and not commercial production. Sable’s stock price dropped and some investors sued, alleging they were misled.
Sable purchased the Santa Ynez Unit from Exxon Mobil in 2024 for nearly $650 million primarily with a loan from Exxon. Exxon sold the shuttered operation after losing a court battle in 2023 to truck the crude through central California while the pipeline system was rebuilt or repaired.
Flores said well tests at the Platform Harmony rig indicate there is much oil to be extracted and that it will relieve California’s gas prices — among the nation’s highest — by stabilizing supplies.
“Sable is very concerned about the crumbling energy complex in California,” Flores said in a statement to The Associated Press. “With the exit of two refineries last year and more shuttering soon, California’s economy cannot survive without the strong energy infrastructure it enjoyed for the last 150 years.”
California has been reducing the state’s production of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy for years. The movement has been spearheaded partly by Santa Barbara County, where elected officials voted in May to begin taking steps to phase out onshore oil and gas operations.
Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers went on strike Tuesday to demand better wages and staffing from the California-based health care giant.
Organizers say the five-day strike across 500 medical centers and offices in California, Hawaii and Oregon is the largest in the 50-year history of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals. The strike could grow to include 46,000 people.
Those on strike, including pharmacists, midwives and rehab therapists, say wages have not kept pace with inflation and there is not enough staffing to keep up with patient demand.
They are asking for a 25% wage increase over four years to make up for wages they say are at least 7% behind their peers.
Kaiser Permanente has countered with a 21.5% increase over four years. The company says that represented employees earn, on average, 16% more than their peers, and it would have to charge customers more to meet strikers’ pay demand.
The company said health clinics and hospitals will remain open during the strike, with some in-person appointments shifted to virtual appointments, and some elective surgeries and procedures being rescheduled.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.6 million members at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals in largely western U.S. states. It is based in Oakland, California.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Nvidia Corp.’s nearest rival in AI processors, said Oracle Corp. will deploy a large batch of its forthcoming MI450 chips next year.
Oracle will put 50,000 of the semiconductors in data center computers starting in the third quarter of 2026, according to a statement Tuesday. The systems will contain AMD processors and networking components.
The announcement is the latest in a frenzy of commitments by big tech and AI companies to build more computing infrastructure. They’re all racing to meet demand for AI services that they say is skyrocketing.
It’s also another endorsement of AMD technology. The Santa Clara, California-based company is working to become a credible alternative to Nvidia, the dominant provider of AI processors.
Like its much larger rival, AMD offers so-called AI accelerators — based on graphics processing units — as well as general-purpose processors and some networking chips. It’s now trying to up its game further and match Nvidia’s ability to provide data center owners with complete computers.
In the second quarter, AMD shipped about 100,000 AI processors, according to research firm IDC. Nvidia delivered 1.5 million in the same period.
Oracle and AMD didn’t specify when they expect to complete the installation, but they see it expanding in 2027 “and beyond.” The companies also didn’t say how much of AMD’s total supply would be claimed by Oracle.
The Oracle announcement follows an AMD deal with OpenAI, the AI startup that has clinched computing agreements with a number of chipmakers. In that longer-term partnership, OpenAI is slated to buy 6 gigawatts’ worth of computers featuring AMD accelerators over multiple years.
On Monday, OpenAI also announced an agreement with chipmaker Broadcom Inc. That deal is meant to add 10 gigawatts of capacity.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some homes were ordered evacuated in wildfire-scarred Los Angeles neighborhoods as Southern California was hit by a rare October storm that was expected to pummel the region with heavy rain, high winds and possible mudslides.
“We’re very concerned about the weather,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a news conference Monday night, explaining that strike teams, rescue teams and helicopters were all ready to respond.
The evacuations covered about 115 homes mostly in Pacific Palisades and Mandeville Canyon, both struck by a massive inferno in January that killed more than 30 people in all and destroyed over 17,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles County. Wildfires can leave hillsides without vegetation to hold soil in place, making it easier for the terrain to loosen during storms.
Bass and other officials warned residents across the region to remain alert and stay indoors. The worst was expected to begin early Tuesday and carry through the afternoon, and more than 16,000 had already lost power as of Monday night, according to PowerOutage.us.
The storm could result in up to 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) of rain in some areas, according to the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office, which described it as a “rare and very potent storm system.”
Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, said the storm could even bring a couple of tornadoes, and one major challenge is its unpredictability.
“The nature of this system is such that we cannot be certain about exactly when and where these impacts will strike, the exact details until right before they occur at the earliest,” he said.
Teams from the Los Angeles Fire Department had started patrolling the area Monday night and a section of state Route 27, beginning at the Pacific Coast Highway, was closed in preparation for the storm, the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, said on social media.
The weather service also warned of high winds that could knock down trees and power lines.
To the north, up to 3 feet (1 meter) of mountain snow was predicted for parts of the Sierra Nevadas.
Heavy rain had already started falling Monday evening across much of Northern California, bringing some urban flooding around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gladstones Restaurant, located along the Pacific Coast Highway, said it was closing on Tuesday in anticipation of the heavy rains. The Pacific Palisades establishment is located at an intersection that has experienced heavy debris flow during past rains.
In February, torrential rains unleashed debris flows and mudslides in several neighborhoods torched by the January fires. In the community of Sierra Madre, near the site of the Eaton Fire, water, debris and boulders rushed down the mountain, trapping cars in the mud and damaging several home garages. A portion of the Pacific Coast Highway by Pacific Palisades was submerged in at least 3 feet of sludge, and a swift debris flow swept a Los Angeles Fire Department vehicle into the ocean.
Concerns about post-fire debris flows have been especially high since 2018, when the town of Montecito, up the coast from Los Angeles, was ravaged by mudslides after a downpour hit mountain slopes burned bare by a huge blaze. Hundreds of homes were damaged and 23 people died.
Elsewhere in the U.S., Typhoon Halong brought hurricane-force winds and ravaging storm surges and floodwaters that swept some homes away in Alaska over the weekend. One person was dead and two were missing in western Alaska on Monday, while more than 50 people had been rescued — some plucked from rooftops.
Officials warned of a long road to recovery and a need for continued support for the hardest-hit communities with winter just around the corner.
In Tempe, Arizona, a microburst and thunderstorm on Monday dropped about a half-inch of rain within 10 minutes, the National Weather Service said. The storm caused significant damage, including uprooting trees that toppled onto vehicles and buildings, and dropping them on streets and sidewalks. A business complex had its roof torn off, and thousands of homes lost power.
Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer contributed from Juneau, Alaska.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
