State Controller Betty T. Yee has published the 2021 self-reported payroll data for University of California institutions and California Community College districts on the Government Compensation in California website.
The data cover more than 404,000 positions and approximately $23.94 billion in total wages.
Users of the site can view compensation levels on maps and search by region; narrow results by name of the entity or by job title; and export raw data or custom reports.
All 11 UC institutions — including 10 campuses and the Office of the President — voluntarily filed compliant reports with the State Controller’s Office (SCO). UC data cover 299,448 employees and more than $19.19 billion in total wages.
Forty-four CCC districts voluntarily filed compliant reports with SCO. CCC data published cover 104,856 employees and more than $4.74 billion in total wages.
Fourteen CCC districts did not file a report with SCO, while another 14 filed reports that were not compliant.
Among those districts which did not file are the two districts serving Lake County: the Mendocino-Lake Community College District and the Yuba Community College District.
California law requires cities, counties, and special districts to annually report compensation data to the State Controller.
The state controller also maintains and publishes state and CSU salary data. No such statutory requirement exists for UC, CCCs, superior courts, fairs and expositions, First 5 commissions, or K-12 education providers; their reporting is voluntary.
Since the website launched in 2010, it has registered more than 14 million pageviews. The site contains pay and benefit information on more than two million government jobs in California, as reported annually by each entity.
As the chief fiscal officer of California, Controller Yee is responsible for accountability and disbursement of the state’s financial resources. The controller has independent auditing authority over government agencies that spend state funds. She is a member of numerous financing authorities, and fiscal and financial oversight entities including the Franchise Tax Board. She also serves on the boards for the nation’s two largest public pension funds.
The California Highway Patrol will implement a yearlong federal grant to help save lives and reduce the risk associated with riding a motorcycle.
The goal of the Get Educated and Ride Safe, or GEARS, V grant is to decrease the number of motorcycle-involved crashes and victims through education and enforcement efforts across California through Sept. 30, 2023.
From Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, there were 7,078 motorcycle-involved crashes resulting in 354 deaths and 6,400 injuries within CHP jurisdiction, an increase of 3% over the previous 12 months.
“Motorcycle riders are statistically more likely to be injured or killed when involved in a crash,” said CHP Commissioner Amanda Ray. “In an effort to ensure every motorist reaches their destination safely, the CHP will continue to use enforcement and nonenforcement strategies, including education and community engagement, to target the leading causes of traffic deaths.”
During the grant period, the CHP will participate in traffic safety education efforts, such as “May is Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.”
These campaigns will promote the use of U.S. Department of Transportation-compliant helmets for all riders and raise driver awareness of sharing the road with motorcyclists.
The CHP will also increase enforcement in areas with a high number of motorcycle-involved crashes, which resulted from speed, improper turns, and driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The mission of the CHP is to provide the highest level of safety, service and security.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — Information and training on safety and health will be available at a special event next weekend.
The ninth annual Heroes of Health & Safety Fair will be held on Saturday, Oct. 15.
It will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lake County Fairgrounds, 401 Martin St. in Lakeport.
Admission is free.
The event includes interactive demonstrations for the entire family, including “jaws-of-life” extractions, medical Helicopters, rescue vehicles and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
There also will be information on boating and car seat safety, and how to administer naloxone in cases of overdose.
Free medical and dental services will be offered, from flu shots to health screenings, A1C blood glucose testing, fluoride dental screenings and trauma education.
There will be free giveaways, including bikes and helmets for children, and naloxone kids.
Organizers ask families to schedule their flu vaccine appointments at the event by visiting www.myturn.ca.gov. Last year they administered an estimated 300 flu vaccines.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has several more kittens now ready to be adopted.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.
The following cats at the shelter have been cleared for adoption.
‘Mom’
“Mom” is a 2-year-old female domestic shorthair cat with an orange and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 3, ID No. LCAC-A-4080.
‘Mama’
“Mama” is a 2-year-old domestic shorthair cat with an all-black coat.
She is in cat room kennel No. 7, ID No. LCAC-A-3884.
Female domestic shorthair
This 2-year-old female domestic shorthair cat has a gray tabby coat.
“She is an adult cat with some playful kitten tendencies when toys are brought out. She has a sweet little meow and likes to have playful chats with you,” shelter staff said.
She is in cat room kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-3661.
Male domestic shorthair
This 3-year-old male domestic shorthair cat has an orange tabby coat.
“This guy can be shy at first, but once he knows that you are all about the pets, he will roll right over and start his purr machine. He has a unique curly tail which he flicks around when curious,” shelter staff said.
He is in cat room kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-4021.
Male domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old male domestic shorthair kitten has a white coat and blue eyes.
He is in cat room kennel No. 36A, ID No. LCAC-A-4081.
Male domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old male domestic shorthair kitten has a light orange coat.
He is in cat room kennel No. 36B, ID No. LCAC-A-4082.
Male domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old male domestic shorthair kitten has an orange coat.
He is in cat room kennel No. 36C, ID No. LCAC-A-4083.
Male domestic longhair cat
This 1-year-old male domestic longhair cat has a black and white coat.
“This guy had a hard start, but has a lot of love to give once he warms up to you,” shelter staff said.
Staff said he also loves brushing and shows his appreciation with purring and head bumps.
He is in kennel No. 107, ID No. LCAC-A-4023.
Female domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old female domestic shorthair kitten has a white coat with orange markings.
She is in kennel No. 129a, ID No. LCAC-A-4084.
Female domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old female domestic shorthair kitten has a gray coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 129b, ID No. LCAC-A-4085.
Female domestic shorthair kitten
This 2-month-old female domestic shorthair kitten has a tortoiseshell coat.
She is in kennel No. 129c, ID No. LCAC-A-4086.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Oil and gas prices skyrocketed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022, creating a global energy crisis similar to the oil crisis of the 1970s. While some countries used the price shock to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal, others have responded by expanding the production of fossil fuels.
A new study appearing this week in the journal Science identifies the political factors that allow some countries to take the lead in adopting cleaner sources of energy while others lag behind. The findings offer important lessons as many governments around the world race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit the devastating impacts of climate change.
“We are really interested in understanding how national differences mediate the responses of countries to the same kind of energy challenge,” said study lead author Jonas Meckling, an associate professor of energy and environmental policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “We found that the political institutions of countries shape how much they can absorb costly policies of all kinds, including costly energy policies.”
By analyzing how different countries responded to the current energy crisis and to the oil crisis of the 1970s, the study reveals how the structure of political institutions can help or hinder the shift to clean energy. Meckling carried out the analysis in collaboration with study co-authors Phillip Y. Lipscy of the University of Toronto, Jared J. Finnegan of University College London, and Florence Metz of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands.
Because policies that promote the transition to cleaner energy technologies are often costly in the short-term, they can garner significant political pushback from constituents, including consumers and corporations. The analysis found that the countries that were most successful at pioneering cleaner energy technologies had political institutions that helped absorb some of this pushback — either by insulating policymakers from political opposition or by compensating consumers and corporations for the extra costs associated with adopting new technologies.
For example, Meckling said, many countries in continental and northern Europe have created institutions that allow policymakers to insulate themselves from pushback by voters or lobbyists or to pay off constituencies impacted by the transition. As a result, many of these countries have been more successful at absorbing the costs associated with transitioning to a clean energy system, such as investing in greater wind capacity or upgrading transmission grids.
Meanwhile, countries that lack such institutions, such as the U.S., Australia and Canada, often follow market-driven transitions, waiting for the price of new technologies to drop before adopting them.
“We can expect that countries that can pursue the insulation or compensation path will be early public investors in these very costly technologies that we need for decarbonization, such as hydrogen fuel cells and carbon removal technologies,” Meckling said. “But once these new technologies become cost competitive in the market, then countries like the U.S. can respond relatively rapidly because they are so sensitive to price signals.”
One way to help insulate policymakers from political pushback is to hand over regulatory power to independent agencies that are less subject to the demands of voters or lobbyists. The California Air Resources Board (CARB), a relatively autonomous agency that has been tasked with implementing many of California’s climate goals, is a prime example of such an institution. Thanks in part to CARB, California is often considered a global leader in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, despite being a state within the U.S.
Germany, another global climate leader, is instead using compensation to achieve its ambitious climate goals. For example, the Coal Compromise brought together disparate groups — including environmentalists, coal executives, trade unions and leaders from coal mining regions — to agree on a plan to phase out coal by the year 2038. To achieve this goal, the country will provide economic support to workers and regional economies that are dependent on coal, while bolstering the job market in other industries.
“We want to show that it's not just resource endowments that shape how countries respond to energy crises, it's also politics,” Meckling said.
The U.S., as a whole, does not have strong institutions in place to absorb political opposition to costly energy policies. However, Meckling said that policymakers can still drive the energy transition forward by leveraging the leadership of states like California by focusing on policies that have more dispersed costs and less political opposition — such as support for energy research and development — and by clearing the way for the market to adopt new technologies once the cost has gone done.
“Countries like the U.S. that do not have these institutions should at least focus on removing barriers once these clean technologies become cost competitive,” Meckling said. “What they can do is reduce the cost for market actors.”
Kara Manke writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
As I opened a recent email from my local grocery store chain advertising Hispanic Heritage Month – it runs from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 each year – I was surprised to see it highlighting recipes from four distinct regions: Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America.
The advertisement rightly noted that while corn and beans have framed much of what in the United States is considered “Hispanic” foods, Latin America has a much greater diversity of foods. Its cuisine, which began long before the Spanish or other colonizers came to the Americas, continues to flourish.
While many of us Latine – an alternative term for Latinos or Latinx that I prefer – embrace our European heritage, we also embrace our Indigenous and African heritage.
In recent decades, many Latin American nations have officially recognized their Indigenous and Afro-descendent populations as distinct groups with unique histories, cultures, foods and languages.
Countries across the Americas, including the United States, have revised their census questions to better understand their populations, enabling them to create more inclusive policies that actually address people’s needs – and to recognize the too-often hidden achievements of these groups.
Census changes in Latin America
Some Latin American countries, such as Peru, have counted their Indigenous population for over a century. But with the exception of Brazil and Cuba, Latin American countries generally excluded race on their national census, allowing economic and social inequalities to flourish undocumented.
Uruguay, a small and prosperous South American country, long portrayed itself as white and European despite being home to Afro-Uruguayans descended from enslaved Africans. In 1996, under pressure from Afro-descendent activists, it added race to its national household survey. That census had census workers identify the respondents’ race and found the country to be 6% Afro-descended and revealed stunning racial disparities in education, income and employment. When in 2006 Uruguayan census-takers began asking residents to state their own racial identity, the Afro-descended population jumped to 10%. This data shift had important implications when Uruguay implemented race-based affirmative action a few years later.
In Mexico, where Indigenous identity had previously been linked only to speakers of one of the country’s 68 Indigenous languages, the census was changed in 2020 to ask if respondents self-identified as Indigenous or belonged to a community that identified as Indigenous. The result was an increase of 7.1 million people to 23.2 million who identified as Indigenous. The same change targeting the Afro-Mexican population identified a previously unrecognized population of 2.5 million.
‘Some other race’
The U.S. added a question about Hispanic descent to the 1970 census long form, and to the short form in 1980. The question asked, “Is this person of Hispanic/Spanish descent?” If the answer was Yes, these were following options: Mexican or Mexican-American or Chicano; Puerto Rican; Cuban; Other Spanish/Hispanic.
In subsequent decades, small changes were made such, as including the word “Latino” and allowing those who choose “other” in the national origin category to write in a response, with suggestions of “Argentinian, Colombian, Dominican, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.” In 2020, the census allowed respondents to identify as “multiracial.”
The U.S. Census Bureau argues that its categories now adequately capture the heritage of the 62.6 million Hispanics that flourish in the U.S. “because all detailed Hispanic origin groups are included in the newly combined code list.”
In fact, however, if your heritage stems from one of the hundreds of Indigenous or Afro-descended groups in Latin America, these identities remain outside of the way the U.S. captures race among the Hispanic populations. That may explain why, according to the Census Bureau “the vast majority (94%) of responses to the race question that are classified as Some Other Race are from people of Hispanic or Latino origin.”
Overgeneralized and under-recognized
When the fixed categories of a census erase the diversity of a population, the gross miscalculations that result may harm a country’s ability to appropriately respond to the needs of its people.
For example, the overgeneralizing of U.S. Hispanics hurts the quality of American education and health care when these institutions assume that Latin American heritage communities speak Spanish. In addition to Indigenous languages, Latino Afro-descendant populations may not speak Spanish but rather may speak French or Haitian Creole, Portuguese or an Indigenous language. If they are from the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua, they may speak an English Creole.
These language differences reflect unique cultures and histories that relate to how people engage with doctors, teachers, politicians and much more.
Failing to recognize the diversity of Hispanics also creates frequent election surprises in the U.S. For example, pollsters got the Latino vote all wrong in 2020 by lumping together 32 million people with diverse political opinions and national origins as “Latino.” Democrats arguably made the same mistake in 2018.
In overgeneralizing Hispanics, the U.S may also overlook – to its own detriment – the knowledge and experience of a culturally unique people who bring with them alternative understandings of the world, some of which I’ve studied as an anthropologist focused on food security, migration and health in Latin America. These include agricultural practices that can aid American farmers in responding to the global climate crisis and Mesoamerican strategies for health based on communal care and traditional remedies.
A growing community with more to offer
Despite its limitations, U.S. census data clearly shows that the Hispanic population continues to grow. While the overall U.S. population increased 7% between 2010 and 2020, the Hispanic population expanded by 23%. Today, 1 in every 5 people in the U.S. identifies with Hispanic or Latino heritage.
This growth is particularly notable in the South – in states like Georgia and North Carolina – and in rural areas. The Hispanic population has become a demographic lifeline for parts of small-town America that experienced significant population loss in the late 20th century.
Rebuilding cities, stabilizing rural counties, expanding local economies – these are among the group contributions made by the community of Americans celebrated each year during Hispanic Heritage Month.
The better we understand the nuances of this large population, the better we will understand who we are as a nation – and benefit more fully from our diversity.
BERKELEY — Mass extinctions litter the history of life on Earth, with about a dozen known in addition to the five largest ones — the last of which, at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, killed off the dinosaurs and 70% of all life on Earth.
A new study, led by scientists at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, concludes that most of these mass extinctions had one thing in common: They occurred after mega-eruptions that spewed volcanic lava and toxic gases for hundreds of thousands of years, and some for as long as a million years.
The analysis linking mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history with major eruptions, characterized by lava and gas spilling from perhaps dozens of volcanoes and long fissure vents, confirms what many geologists have suspected for years.
The most well-known mass extinction, referred to as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction, was famously tied to a comet or asteroid impact in the Caribbean, but geologists have since found that the impact was preceded by a long period of eruptions in India that left behind flood basalts known today as the Deccan Traps.
Massive amounts of sulfur dioxide emitted during the long-term eruption would have cooled the planet and caused the massive die-off seen in the fossil record.
“It's been obvious to me for some time that there is this correlation between mass extinctions and flood basalt episodes,” said study co-author Paul Renne, professor-in-residence of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center. “But nobody has approached it in the way that’s done in this work, which is to look at the actual rates at which the eruptions happened, which is presumably related to the rate at which climate modifying gases are injected into the atmosphere. And from the analysis, it looks like the rates really matter, especially for the really big ones.”
In fact, he said, there seems to be a threshold “beyond which you're going to get a mass extinction and below which you might get some minor climate perturbations, but not something that extinguishes half of all life on the planet.”
One implication of the study is that the K-Pg extinction was predestined by the Deccan Traps eruptions. The bolide impact was simply the coup de grâce.
“Our results indicate that in all likelihood there would have been a mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary of some significant magnitude, regardless of whether there was an impact or not, which can be shown more quantitatively now,” Renne said. “The fact that there was an impact undoubtedly made things worse.”
The impact of repeated eruptions over millennia
The new study, publishedin the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that four of the five biggest mass extinctions over the past 540 million years — the so-called Phanerozoic Eon — and a handful of other smaller, but still planet-wide, mass extinctions correlate with major lava events that produced large igneous provinces. Known meteor impacts do not correlate with the timeline of mass extinctions.
In the study, a “large” igneous province is one containing at least 100,000 cubic kilometers of magma. For context, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington involved less than 1 cubic kilometer of magma.
The researchers said that most of the volcanoes represented in the study erupted about a million times more lava than Mount St. Helens did.
The Deccan Traps, for example — traps is an Indian word for steps, because of the step-like structure of overlapping lava flows — erupted over a period of 1 million years and spewed lava flows for distances of at least 500 kilometers, in some places nearly 2 kilometers thick.
“The large, step-like areas of igneous rock from these big volcanic eruptions seem to line up in time with mass extinctions and other significant climactic and environmental events,” said the study’s lead author, Theodore Green, an undergraduate at Dartmouth College who conducted the research as part of the Senior Fellowship program. He now is a graduate student at Princeton University.
The researchers compared the best available estimates of flood basalt eruptions with periods of drastic species die-offs in the geological record. To prove that the correlation was more than chance, they examined whether the eruptions would line up just as well with a randomly generated pattern and repeated the exercise with 100 million such patterns. They determined that the chance that the correlation between eruptions and extinctions was merely random was one in 100.
“While it is difficult to determine if a particular volcanic outburst caused one particular mass extinction, our results make it hard to ignore the role of volcanism in extinction,” said Brenhin Keller, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth and senior author of the paper. Keller was a postdoctoral fellow with Renne between 2016 and 2019.
Flood basalt eruptions aren't common in the geologic record, said Green. The last one of comparable, but significantly smaller, scale happened about 16 million years ago in the Pacific Northwest, producing what’s known as the Columbia River Basalt Province. According to Renne, the eruptions are accompanied by massive releases of carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere, as well as sulfur dioxide, which cools the atmosphere. Recent evidence indicates that the cooling that leads to a mass extinction is often preceded by warming because the CO2 is emitted first because of its lower solubility in magma than in sulfur.
Renne noted that improved dates for flood basalt events were key to providing better estimates of the rate of eruptions, which enabled the study.
“The punch line is that our ability to draw these kinds of quantitative conclusions have been limited by the availability of high precision geochronology data,” Renne said. “So, this is a poster child for the importance of geochronology.”
Note: Some of this text comes from a press release distributed by Dartmouth’s Office of Communications.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has several dogs, including puppies, waiting for new homes.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of border collie, German shepherd, husky, Labrador retriever, pit bull and Rottweiler.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Male border collie
This 2-year-old male border collie has a black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-3995.
Labrador retriever mix
This 2-year-old female Labrador retriever mix has a short black coat.
She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-3994.
Male husky
This 3-year-old male husky has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-4014.
Male pit mix puppy
This 2-month-old male pit bull terrier mix puppy has a short gray and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 23c, ID No. LCAC-A-4118.
Female pit mix puppy
This 2-month-old female pit bull terrier mix puppy has a short white coat.
He is in kennel No. 24c, ID No. LCAC-A-4122.
Male German shepherd
This 2-year-old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
Shelter staff called him a “handsome sweet dude who is motivated by treats and does well walking on a leash.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-3870.
German shepherd mix
This 7-month-old female German shepherd mix has a black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-4011.
Female husky
This 1-year-old female husky has a cream and black coat.
She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-3893.
German shepherd mix
This 7-month-old male German shepherd mix pup has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-4012.
German shepherd-husky
This 1-year-old male German shepherd-husky mix has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-4079.
Rottweiler mix
This 4-year-old female Rottweiler has a short black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-4013.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — More new dogs have joined Clearlake Animal Control’s group of adoptable canines.
The City of Clearlake Animal Association also is seeking fosters for the animals waiting to be adopted.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to inquire about adoptions and schedule a visit to the shelter.
Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
The following dogs are available for adoption. New additions are at the top.
‘Aoki’
“Aoki” is a male Siberian husky mix with a white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50905477.
‘Baby’
“Baby” is a female American pit bull mix with a white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50933640.
‘Eros’
“Eros” is a male Rottweiler mix with a short black and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50754504.
‘Goliath’
“Goliah” is a male Rottweiler mix with a short black and tan coat.
He is dog No. 50754509.
‘Little Boy’
“Little Boy” is a male American pit bull terrier mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50075256.
‘Maya’
“Maya” is a female German shepherd with a black and tan coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50428151.
‘Zeda’
“Zeda” is a female Labrador retriever mix.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 51108916.
‘Andy’
“Andy” is a male American pit bull mix with a short gray and white coat.
He is dog No. 48995415.
‘Babs’
“Babs” is a female Labrador retriever mix with a short black coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49505856.
‘Bear’
“Bear” is a male Labrador retriever-American pit bull mix with a short charcoal and fawn coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 48443153.
‘Big Phil’
“Big Phil” is a 13-year-old male American pit bull terrier mix with a blue coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49951647.
‘Buster’
“Buster” is a male pit bull mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50762164.
‘Foxie’
“Foxie” is a female German shepherd with a red, black and white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49702845.
‘Hakuna’
“Hakuna” is a male shepherd mix with a tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50176912.
‘Hondo’
“Hondo” is a male Alaskan husky mix with a buff coat.
He has been neutered.
He’s dog No. 50227693.
‘Keilani’
“Keilani” is a 3-year-old female German shepherd mix with a black and tan coat.
She has been spayed and she is house trained.
She is dog No. 50427566.
‘Luciano’
“Luciano” is a male Siberian husky mix with a short black and white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50596272.
‘Mamba’
“Mamba” is a male Siberian husky mix with a gray and cream-colored coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49520569.
‘Matata’
“Matata” is male shepherd mix with a tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50176912.
‘Mikey’
“Mikey” is a male German shepherd mix with a short brown and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 51012855.
‘Sadie’
“Sadie” is a female German shepherd mix with a black and tan coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49802563.
‘Snowball’
“Snowball is a 1 and a half year old male American Staffordshire terrier mix with a short white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49159168.
‘Terry’
“Terry” is a handsome male shepherd mix with a short brindle coat.
He gets along with other dogs, including small ones, and enjoys toys. He also likes water, playing fetch and keep away.
Staff said he is now getting some training to help him build confidence.
He is dog No. 48443693.
‘Willie’
“Willie” is a male German shepherd mix with a black and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50596003.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The community is invited to join Mother-Wise and Hospice Services of Lake County in an evening of remembrance as they participate in the global Wave of Light on Saturday, Oct. 15.
The evening is set aside to remember all babies lost to miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death.
Pregnancy and childbirth are usually joyous, happy and busy times. But when things don’t go as hoped or planned, when the unthinkable happens, families are left with the unimaginable devastation and profound grief that surrounds the loss of a baby.
In 1988 when President Ronald Reagan designated October as national Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, he noted that, “When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them.”
This is still true, despite the fact that October was set aside to “recognize the loss so many parents experience across the U.S. and around the world.”
Oct. 15 was chosen as a day of remembrance throughout the world.
Since 2003, the global Wave of Light has served as an opportunity for bereaved parents, family and friends to commemorate their babies by lighting a candle at 7 p.m. in their local time zone and leaving it burning for at least one hour.
The result is a continuous “wave of light” spanning the globe for a 24-hour period in remembrance of all loved and longed for babies gone too soon.
Mother-Wise supports Lake County’s expecting and new moms through all transitions that accompany motherhood, including loss, with weekly topic-oriented groups, individualized supportive services, and community resources.
The organization has participated in this special day of remembrance to coincide with similar events worldwide since 2014.
Whether you have endured a loss yourself, or love someone who has, whether this loss was recent or long ago, all are welcome to join in the event.
Participants will meet at Library Park, located at 200 Park St. in Lakeport, and the event will take place from 6 to 8 p.m.
Light refreshments will be offered, as well as community speakers, and remembrance activities. Candles will be provided and lit at 7 p.m.
For any questions, or to RSVP, please contact Mother-Wise at 707-349-1210.
Observations from the spacecraft’s pass of the moon provided the first close-up in over two decades of this ocean world, resulting in remarkable imagery and unique science.
The highest-resolution photo NASA’s Juno mission has ever taken of a specific portion of Jupiter’s moon Europa reveals a detailed view of a puzzling region of the moon’s heavily fractured icy crust.
The image covers about 93 miles by 125 miles of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a network of fine grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevated features in the ice).
Near the upper right of the image, as well as just to the right and below center, are dark stains possibly linked to something from below erupting onto the surface.
Below center and to the right is a surface feature that recalls a musical quarter note, measuring 42 miles north-south by 23 miles east-west.
The white dots in the image are signatures of penetrating high-energy particles from the severe radiation environment around the moon.
Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit, or SRU – a star camera used to orient the spacecraft – obtained the black-and-white image during the spacecraft’s flyby of Europa on Sept. 29, 2022, at a distance of about 256 miles.
With a resolution that ranges from 840 to 1,115 feet per pixel, the image was captured as Juno raced past at about 15 miles per second over a part of the surface that was in nighttime, dimly lit by “Jupiter shine” — sunlight reflecting off Jupiter’s cloud tops.
Designed for lowlight conditions, the SRU has also proven itself a valuable science tool, discovering shallow lightning in Jupiter’s atmosphere, imaging Jupiter’s enigmatic ring system, and now providing a glimpse of some of Europa’s most fascinating geologic formations.
“This image is unlocking an incredible level of detail in a region not previously imaged at such resolution and under such revealing illumination conditions,” said Heidi Becker, the lead co-investigator for the SRU. “The team’s use of a star-tracker camera for science is a great example of Juno’s groundbreaking capabilities. These features are so intriguing. Understanding how they formed – and how they connect to Europa’s history — informs us about internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”
It won’t just be Juno’s SRU scientists who will be busy analyzing data in the coming weeks. During Juno’s 45th orbit around Jupiter, all of the spacecraft’s science instruments were collecting data both during the Europa flyby and then again as Juno flew over Jupiter’s poles a short 7 ½ hours later.
“Juno started out completely focused on Jupiter. The team is really excited that during our extended mission, we expanded our investigation to include three of the four Galilean satellites and Jupiter’s rings,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “With this flyby of Europa, Juno has now seen close-ups of two of the most interesting moons of Jupiter, and their ice shell crusts look very different from each other. In 2023, Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, will join the club.” Juno sailed by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede – the solar system’s largest moon – in June 2021.
Europa is the solar system’s sixth-largest moon with about 90% the equatorial diameter of Earth’s moon. Scientists are confident a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about the potential habitability of the ocean.
In the early 2030s, the NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will arrive and strive to answer these questions about Europa’s habitability. The data from the Juno flyby provides a preview of what that mission will reveal.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
Marriage confers important rights and obligations on spouses. One of the rights is that of the surviving spouse’s rights in the deceased spouse’s estate.
In California, couples prior to marriage and during marriage can agree that the surviving spouse waive certain inheritance rights in a deceased spouse’s estate (Probate Code sections 141-147).
Upon divorce, a surviving ex-spouse is presumed by California law to have predeceased the former spouse for purposes of inheritance rights.
A waiver in advance of a spouse’s death of surviving spouse’s rights in the deceased spouse’s estate could be agreed-upon by married persons who are dissolving their marriage or who are in (or going into) second marriages and want to protect their own children’s inheritances.
Section 141 of the Probate Code states ten different ten important rights in the deceased spouse’s estate that a surviving spouse may waive, either in whole or in part.
Such spousal rights include the important right to inherit as an heir by intestate succession (if the deceased spouse had no will); the right to inherit as a beneficiary under the deceased spouse’s will executed before the waiver; the right to reside in a probate homestead; the right to a Family allowance for the surviving spouse to live; the right to take the statutory share of an omitted spouse when the deceased spouse’s will does not acknowledge the surviving spouse; and the right to be appointed as the personal representative of the decedent’s estate.
To be valid the waiver must be in writing and be signed by the surviving spouse. The waiver can either be created by an express waiver of “all rights” (such as in a pre or post marital agreement) or by a complete property settlement entered into after or in anticipation of separation or dissolution or annulment of marriage (section 145 Probate Code).
In Brendon Welch, et. al., v. Freeman H. Welch (Second Appellate District, B311507) the court enforced a waiver in marital property agreement that was reached in a mediation conference within a dissolution court proceeding.
Before the court ordered distribution of the property, the family court lost its jurisdiction when the wife died. However, the probate court found that because there was a complete settlement in anticipation of dissolution of marriage the spousal waiver in the agreement was enforceable.
A signed waiver is enforceable against the surviving spouse if the surviving spouse both received fair and reasonable disclosure of the property and financial obligations of the deceased spouse (unless waived after advice of the surviving spouse’s independent counsel) and the surviving spouse was represented by independent counsel. This is to be completely fair to the surviving spouse.
An otherwise unenforceable waiver may sometimes still be enforceable at the discretion of a court. That is, if the court finds that the waiver was fair and reasonable to the surviving spouse’s rights at the time it was signed. Or, if the court finds that the surviving spouse knew (or reasonably should have known) about the property and financial obligations of the deceased spouse; provided, however, that the deceased spouse did not violate his or her spousal duty of the utmost fair dealing with the surviving spouse.
Still, a court in exercising its discretion whether to enforce a waiver, under the exception, must also consider all relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the original signing of the waiver and determine if it would be unconscionable at time of its enforcement.
If it would now be unconscionable at time of enforcement then the court has the following options: Not to the enforce the waiver; not to enforce the unconscionable part of the surviving spouse’s waiver; or partially not enforce the unconscionable part and so avoid the unconscionable result.
The foregoing discussion shows how estate planning and family law intersect at the planning crossroads regarding the surviving spouse’s rights in the deceased spouse’s estate.
The foregoing discussion is not legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney if engaged in such planning.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.