California

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- New COVID-19 cases have more than doubled from 3,052 to 6,509 in the past 24 hours in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of California and the country, local public health authorities said Wednesday.

"This steep increase, one of the steepest rises we have ever seen over the course of the pandemic, reflects the increased circulation of Omicron and the associated rapid acceleration of transmission associated with this variant," said the Los Angeles County Public Health Department in a news release.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is poised for a surge in new coronavirus infections as a far more contagious version of the disease spreads among holiday parties and family gatherings forced indoors by a series of winter storms.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — The jury that will weigh 11 charges of fraud and conspiracy against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes finally got the case Friday afternoon after a three-month trial that captivated Silicon Valley.

The hand-off came after lawyers for the opposing sides wrapped up a second day of painstaking final arguments to sum up their respective interpretations of the evidence submitted to the jury. That included the testimony of 32 witnesses — including Holmes herself — and more than 900 exhibits.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Houston-based oil company and two subsidiaries were indicted Wednesday for a crude spill that fouled Southern California waters and beaches in October, an event prosecutors say was caused in part by failing to properly act when alarms repeatedly alerted workers to a pipeline rupture.

Amplify Energy Corp. and its companies that operate several oil rigs and a pipeline off Long Beach were charged by a federal grand jury with a single misdemeanor count of illegally discharging oil.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Navy will hold a hearing Monday to determine whether there is enough evidence to order a court martial for a San Diego-based sailor charged with setting the fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard in the summer of 2020.

Ryan Sawyer Mays, a junior sailor, was charged with aggravated arson and the willful hazarding of a vessel in a case that marked the maritime branch’s worst warship blaze outside of combat in recent memory.

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) — Banana peels, chicken bones and leftover veggies won’t have a place in California trashcans under the nation’s largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program that’s set to take effect in January.

The effort is designed to keep landfills in the most populous U.S. state clear of food waste that damages the atmosphere as it decays. When food scraps and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling by two of its judges and upheld California’s ban on high-capacity magazines Tuesday in a split decision that may be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The statute outlaws no weapon, but only limits the size of the magazine that may be used with firearms,” the court said in the 7-4 ruling.

(AP) --- Newly named Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has emerged from behind the scenes to take over one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile and politically volatile jobs.

But his prior lack of name recognition coupled with a solid technical background appears to be what some big company backers were looking for to lead Twitter out of its current morass.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.

The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie “Armageddon.”

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Biotechnology entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, a former billionaire accused of engineering a massive medical scam, expressed some remorse while on the witness stand Tuesday, but denied trying to conceal that her company’s blood-testing methods weren’t working as she had promised.