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California’s push for rooftop solar panels plummets after rule change

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

By Michelle Ma and Tope Alake | BloombergCalifornia helped create the US solar industry, subsidizing rooftop panels at a time when the federal fight against climate change had barely begun. Now, it’s leading a sharp sales slowdown that’s threatening widespread adoption.Installers are slashing jobs. Bankruptcies are mounting. And it’s not just mom & pops feeling the pinch.Solar equipment-maker Enphase Energy Inc., long considered a bellwether for the sector, announced this week it would cut its workforce 10% and close two contract factories, with Chief Executive Officer Badri Kothandaraman citing California’s woes in a letter to staff.The shakeout follows a change in California regulations that scaled back the amount of money solar homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid — a shift that hit just as higher interest rates were making the systems more expensive.Research firm Ohm Analytics, which tracks the solar marketplace, found sales dropping 67% to 85% for t...

California raising minimum wage for 2 industries. Others could see pay hikes, too

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

By Levi Sumagaysay and Shreya Agrawal | CalMattersCalifornians in two industries are set to get new minimum wages just for them next year, and that could lead to pay bumps for other workers, too.Gov. Gavin Newsom this year signed two union-backed bills that will boost fast-food and health care workers’ minimum wages.California-based fast-food workers for chains with 60 or more locations around the nation will earn at least $20 an hour beginning in April, $4 higher than the overall state minimum wage of $16 that will be effective Jan. 1.In June, health care workers will earn a minimum of $18, $21 or $23 an hour, depending on what type of facility employs them and where they work.The industry-specific wage increases reflect a shift in unions’ strategies at the Capitol. After the Great Recession, labor groups led campaigns that resulted in then-Gov. Jerry Brown signing a law in 2016 that put California on a path to a $15 minimum wage. That law included inflation adjustments, which is w...

Weigh-ins, fingerprint-scanning and drug tests: Former USC players testify in labor case

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

LOS ANGELES — The sheer definition of control rested on the broad shoulders of one Brandon Outlaw, a man who had recorded all of two tackles across two uneventful seasons playing for USC and was now being tabbed to help determine the future of collegiate football.For two days, in a small hearing in West Los Angeles, a group of suits picked apart every finite detail of Outlaw’s experience playing football as a Trojan in 2021 and 2022. And slowly, Outlaw’s testimony began to build a record that peeled back the realities of what it means to be a USC football player: 50-60 hours a week of football-related activity, required weigh-ins and drug tests, fingerprint scanning to monitor mandatory team meals.He was the first witness of the first in-person hearing in this titanic case, the National Labor Relations Board’s crusade against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA arguing the classification of USC student-athletes as employees, a case that could pave the route to a salary cap and free agency ...

Barbie is in the Toy Hall of Fame, here’s how you can nominate others

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

Fun timeSince Christmas is Monday, we look at toys inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame and some of the most dangerous toys kids are getting these days.The National Toy Hall of Fame is part of the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. The Hall of Fame accepts nominations from the public year-round, but to be inducted, the nominees must be approved by historians and educators with backgrounds in learning and play.Toys are rated in four categories, though they don’t have to rate highly in all categories to get in:Icon status: Toys that are widely recognized and respected.Longevity: Toys that are not a fad and have had popularity over several generations.Discovery: Toys that foster creativity and learning.Innovation: Toys that change the ways we play or have ground-breaking design.A list of each toy to be inducted is below.You can nominate a toy here.Help my campaignI nominated the beach ball for induction this month.Fun at the beach, pool or stadium, the beloved colorfu...

Opinion: Why I, a doctor constantly confronting death, love Christmas

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

Over many years as an oncologist, I have grown wary of anyone or anything that is too blithely cheery. Cancer remains too cruel a reaper, too wanton a destroyer, too brazen a thief of dreams for me to see almost anything with unbridled optimism. It’s as if I sense a coming catastrophe around every innocuous corner because cancer leaves no group untouched: the young and the old, the healthy and the ill, the fit and the faint.And perhaps that explains why I love Christmas.From popular depictions — whether secular or, too often, religious — one would believe that Christmas featured a blissful new mother cradling a dewy-eyed newborn, as if all the participants in the nativity came straight over from the greenroom, doffed their slippers and robes, and sat down for a perfectly manicured photo-shoot.But, of course, logic, history and the biblical record tell us nothing could be farther from the truth.Called from Nazareth to report for the census in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph wo...

Review: ‘All of Us Strangers’ is devastating and compelling

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated PressAndrew Scott plays a writer trying to write something about his dead parents in Andrew Haigh’s transcendent drama “All of Us Strangers.” His parents’ death is not recent – they died when he was 12. Not that one ever really gets over that kind of loss. But we meet Adam at a moment where he is not just thinking about them but visiting them in his childhood home, where they are preparing for Christmas. Just in case it wasn’t sad enough already.“All of Us Strangers” will probably make you cry. Maybe even weep. And while there are some twists along the way, it never feels emotionally manipulative or unearned. In fact, it’s a rather authentic and cathartic experience — a deeply felt journey of acceptance, love and forgiveness.The most calculated flex of the movie is actually just in casting Scott, also known as “the hot priest” from “Fleabag,” opposite Paul Mescal, “the hot guy ...

The top prize in Spain’s ‘El Gordo’ Christmas lottery goes to tickets with the number 88008

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Lucky holders of 20-euro tickets with the number 88008 will be celebrating Friday. They have each won 400,000 euros ($440,000), or some 325,000 euros after tax, in the top prize of Spain’s huge Christmas lottery.People across the country tuned into the television, radio and internet from early morning as children from Madrid’s San Ildefonso school begin singing out the prize-winning numbers in the lottery known as “EL Gordo” (the fat one).The immensely popular lottery will distribute a total of 2.6 billion euros in prizes this year, much of it in small winnings. Street and bar celebrations normally break out, with winners uncorking bottles of sparkling wine and singing and dancing. The event is televised nationally from Madrid’s Teatro Real opera house.Purchasing and sharing tickets, known in Spanish as “décimos” (tenths) in the run-up to Christmas is a major tradition among families, friends, co-workers and in bars and sports and social clubs.The winning numbers...

1 dead after car found in Potomac River, police say

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

Officials search for any more victims from a submerged car in the Potomac River. (Courtesy DC Fire and EMS) Officials search for any more victims from a submerged car in the Potomac River. (Courtesy DC Fire and EMS) A man is dead after a vehicle was found in the Potomac River early Thursday morning, according to U.S. Park Police.The federal agency said officers arrived at Ohio Drive SW in the area of the Memorial Bridge at about 12 a.m., after a car was found in the Potomac River. D.C. police and DC Fire and EMS helped locate the vehicle, and divers from both departments worked together to rescue a man in the car.The fire department posted on X at 12:48 a.m. that the man found in the submerged vehicle was in criti...

A storm brings strong winds to northern Europe, killing 2 people and disrupting transport

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — A storm brought heavy rain and strong winds across northern Europe overnight and into Friday, bringing down trees and prompting warnings of flooding on the North Sea coast. A woman in Belgium was fatally injured by a falling Christmas tree, while another tree killed a person in the Netherlands. The 20-meter (65-foot) Christmas tree collapsed onto three people at a busy market in Oudenaarde in western Belgium late Thursday, killing a 63-year-old woman and injuring two other people. The Christmas market was immediately canceled.A woman who was struck by a falling tree on Thursday in the eastern Dutch town of Wilp later died of her injuries, her employer said.Pre-Christmas rail travelers in parts of Germany faced disruption. National railway operator Deutsche Bahn said Friday there were cancellations on routes from Hamburg and Hannover to Frankfurt and Munich, while long-distance services from Hamburg northward to Kiel and Flensburg weren’t running, among other disr...

Live updates | UN says 500,000+ starving in Gaza. EU ‘deeply shocked’ over food insecurity risk

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:37 GMT

The United Nations says more than a half-million people are starving in Gaza because not enough food has entered the besieged territory as Israel keeps up its blistering campaign of airstrikes and ground operations.Palestinian officials said Friday that the death toll has now exceeded 20,000 — around 1% of the territory’s prewar population.The Health Ministry in Gaza does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking about 240 hostages. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into shelters and tent camps as winter descends, raising fears about the spread of disease. The U.N. Security Council has again delayed a vote on a new resolution to halt the fighting in some way, which would allow for an increase in humanitarian aid deliveries. Currently: — At least 5 US-funded proje...