LA HABRA, Calif. (AP) — Experts say a bigger earthquake along the lesser-known fault that gave Southern California a moderate shake could do more damage to the region than the long-dreaded "Big One" from the more famous San Andreas Fault.

The Puente Hills thrust fault, which brought Friday night's magnitude-5.1 quake centered in La Habra and well over 100 aftershocks by Sunday, stretches from northern Orange County under downtown Los Angeles into Hollywood — a heavily populated swath of the Los Angeles area.

A magnitude-7.5 earthquake along that fault could prove more catastrophic than one along the San Andreas, which runs along the outskirts of metropolitan Southern California, seismologists said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that such a quake along the Puente Hills fault could kill 3,000 to 18,000 people and cause up to $250 billion in damage. In contrast, a larger magnitude 8 quake along the San Andreas would cause an estimated 1,800 deaths.


http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/7-5-quake-on-California-fault-could-be-disastrous-5361210.php

The federal investigation that snared state Sen. Leland Yee and 25 others in a wide-ranging racketeering and corruption case was triggered by the 2006 slaying of San Francisco businessman and tong leader Allen Leung.

Leung - who at the time was the head of the San Francisco-based Ghee Kung Tong or Chinese freemasons - was gunned down by a masked intruder at his Jackson Street import-export business as his wife looked on.

As one of their first acts in trying to solve the murder, San Francisco police and the FBI staked out the swearing-in of Leung's successor, Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, according to the 137-page affidavit made public following Yee's arrest Wednesday. Chow was a local Chinatown mobster who three years earlier had been released from federal prison after snitching out his former crime boss.

Leung had told police before his death that Chow had been trying to extort $100,000 from him and that he feared for his life, law enforcement sources tell us....

Chow appeared to drive the point home himself when he marched through Chinatown in Leung's funeral parade dressed in white - rather than the usual mournful black.

As far back as 1977, police say, Chow was big enough to be the intended victim of gang warfare when five men opened fire on the legendary Golden Dragon restaurant, killing five and injuring 11 others in what was then the city's worst-ever massacre.


http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Yee-case-started-in-2006-after-killing-of-5360255.php

For the benefit of people outside San Francisco, Leland Yee was a local politician who got his start on the San Francisco School Board and moved his way up to the State Senate, running this year for Sec. of State. Throughout his careen he championed many causes dear to our hearts. And because of that, many people closed their eyes to the many warning signs about the guy, like walking out of a Honolulu store with a bottle of suntan lotion down his pants, or how he was stopped by police while taking "walks" through streets well know was "strolls" for hookers while championing laws against human trafficking. But we kept looking away because the alleged offenses were minor and charges were never pressed against him. And now he is being charged with attempting to sell guns supplied from Mindanao, a hotbed of terrorist activity in the Philippines.

Those of us who DID pay attention to Yee's activities are not at all surprised. I don't know if this habit of looking the other way is unique to the SF progressive movement or a flaw common with politics in general, but it's got to stop. I thought we learned our lesson a long time ago with Jim Jones.

DALY CITY (KPIX 5) — A Daly City dentist was among the 26 people indicted in a corruption scandal involving State Sen. Leland Yee. Dr. Wilson Lim is accused of setting up an arms deal that involved militants in the Philippines.

According to the complaint, Yee identified him to an undercover FBI agent as the source of the illegal weapons he wanted.

“Gun smuggling? That’s a big thing,” said Fernando Austria, a patient.
According to the FBI, the 60-year-old dentist met with Yee and the undercover agent on March 11th at a restaurant in San Francisco. That’s where they allegedly began setting up a $2 million arms deal for M16′s and shoulder launched weapons.


http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/03/29/daly-city-dentist-accused-of-arms-trafficking-in-scandal-involving-leland-yee/

WASHINGTON -- Republicans in the House of Representatives say it's just too late to pass legislation restoring unemployment benefits to the 2 million workers who've missed out since December.

The Senate advanced a bill reauthorizing the benefits in a procedural vote on Thursday, setting up passage as soon as next week. Then the ball would be in House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) court.

Boehner has voiced opposition to the bill. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees unemployment insurance, elaborated Thursday on Boehner's recent argument that the Senate measure would be "unworkable" even if Congress approved it -- so lawmakers shouldn't bother.

While Congress has reauthorized federal benefits after allowing them to lapse before, the House GOP argument goes, it hasn't reauthorized them after allowing them to lapse for this long. In 2010, congressional dithering caused the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to lapse for almost two months. The Democrat-controlled House had passed a benefits bill, but GOP filibusters tied it up the Senate.

"Given that both the House and Senate were officially on record supporting an extension BEFORE the program expired, States and recipients had a strong signal that an extension would eventually be reached," Ways and Means Republicans said in a press release Thursday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/27/unemployment-extension-_n_5043679.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

CNN initially sought to rent a real 777 airplane for its coverage, but found it impossible. Individual airlines were also reluctant to make their simulators available. So CNN arranged time with the company uFly, from Mississauga, Ontario, near the Toronto airport, which has a simulator that is the same model of the plane lost in Asia.

Savidge, who had been vacationing in Australia when the plane went missing on March 8, was sent to Canada for one day on March 14 and returned home for the weekend. The response to his reports was so positive, CNN sent him back on March 17, and he's been there since. Other media organizations have sought to use the simulator but CNN blocks them by keeping it booked (the company won't say how much this is costing).

Instead of creating graphics, Savidge said it's valuable to show what instruments like the transponder that are talked about in news reports actually look like and where they are located in relation to a pilot.

Mostly, they use the machine to simulate what might happen under certain scenarios. This week, he asked Casado off-air to show what might happen to a 777 if it ran out of fuel. It proved horrific: lights flashed, alarms sounded, the nose pointed skyward while gravity pulled the plane down. It fell backward toward the ocean.


http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cnns-savidge-not-ready-bust-out-cockpit

Yee was one of 26 people caught up in a five-year federal investigation that targeted Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, a Chinatown gangster who had claimed to have left a life of crime behind, officials said. Investigators made the investigation public Wednesday after Yee, Chow and others were arrested and several locations from Sacramento to San Francisco were raided.

Yee - whose alleged crimes contradict his public image as an advocate for gun control, open government and limiting youths' exposure to violent video games - is out on $500,000 bail and has not commented on the charges. DeMeester says Yee plans to plead not guilty.

Investigators say Yee took bribes from undercover agents in exchange for political favors to pay off a $70,000 debt from an unsuccessful run for San Francisco mayor in 2011 and to raise money for his secretary of state campaign, which he abandoned a day after the allegations were made public.

Yee had raised $800,000 for the state race and, according to recent campaign finance filings, has spent all but $134,000, which he can now use for his legal defense. Despite withdrawing, Yee's name will remain on the ballot for the June 3 primary.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Senate-suspends-Calif-state-Sen-Leland-Yee-2-5357627.php

Partly as a result of these wind bursts, ocean buoys and satellites have detected the movement of unusually warm ocean waters from the western Pacific to the east. Ocean surface currents, which normally move westward across the Pacific basin, have reversed as well. El Niño forecasters have taken this as a further sign of a developing El Niño, and these conditions were a key reason why an El Niño Watch was issued on March 6.

Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, said conditions are changing rapidly in the Pacific, going from 50/50 odds of an El Niño, to a setup that eerily resembles the circumstances that preceded the monster El Niño of ‘97-'98.

“It’s something we haven’t really seen since the '97 El Niño,” Blake said of the westerly wind bursts and ocean observations. Instead of having trade winds blowing from the east at five to 10 mph, some locations in the western Pacific have had winds from the west blowing at up to 30 miles per hour, Blake says. This is important because it has ripple effects on the sea and below the sea surface.

“[It’s] not that we can’t step away from it, but with each passing day [an El Niño event is] becoming more likely,” Blake told Mashable.

Paul Roundy, a meteorology professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York, said that the westerly wind bursts have been extremely strong compared to historical records. Two of these events in particular, Roundy says, “were of similar amplitude to the events that preceded the 1997 El Niño.”

http://mashable.com/2014/03/19/intense-el-nino-maybe/

The Republican-eat-Republican battle over Tesla mirrors another clean energy fight playing out nationwide. Conservatives aligned with large utility companies are squaring off with the solar power industry and libertarian-leaning Republicans over rules to allow homeowners with solar panels to sell excess power back to the grid, a policy known as net metering, which is allowed in more than 40 states. Some utility companies, however, worry the practice will disrupt their business model as more and more homes go solar. That fight has been particularly vicious in Arizona, where the son of conservative icon Barry Goldwater has led the pro-solar charge on free market arguments.

"In a lot of ways, [clean energy] is an existential crisis" for Republicans, said Marita Mirzatuny, a Texas-based energy analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund. Some "are fighting on behalf of old entrenched regulations, which seems counterintuitive," because at the same time "there's a lot of money and momentum moving into the clean tech realm."

With Tesla's battery factory on the line, the stakes are now higher than ever, and Arizona is poised to become the first state of the four in line for the factory to clear its regulatory hurdles.

"For Texas to lose out because of regulation like that is the ultimate irony," Mirzatuny said.



http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/03/gop-lawmakers-scramble-green-energy-cash

I was talking to some friends from Detroit not long ago when I brought up the topic of Tesla, and to my surprise, my friends (who are active in Detroit area Democratic politics) turned their thumbs down to a Bay Area company that I happy to be very proud of. Their response was that, if people want an electric or hybrid car, they should buy a union-built model from one of the "Big 3". I didn't want to start an argument, so I dropped the subject but it left me with a lot to think about. Yes, Tesla is currently, non-union, but it is also very new. Should we, as a country and a party, be in the business of hurting NEW ventures because they do not start off as UAW from day 1? Or do some people (like some Detroit-area Congressmen) just want to find any excuse they can to any squash competition to major regional employers?

I'm not sorry to say I believe in Tesla. Do I want the UAW there? YES! But let's not kill a promising new business before it all has a chance to play out.