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      A Man Missing for 10 Days in a California Forest Is Found Alive

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      Lukas McClish said he lost 30 pounds in 10 days but was rescued without any major injuries.On the morning of June 11, Lukas McClish stopped by the home of a friend who told him about a granite outcropping in the nearby woods that piqued his interest, so Mr. McClish set out on his own, shirtless, to explore the scenery.Mr. McClish, 34, of Boulder Creek, Calif., would not be seen or heard from for nine nights and 10 days. His disappearance into California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park would prompt a search that involved about 300 people, emergency personnel from several agencies and ended with help from a dog.Mr. McClish, a hiker who does landscaping in forests that have been razed by wildfires, appeared to have been swallowed by the woods.“I was just so astounded by being lost,” he said in a telephone interview.The area where Mr. McClish was lost had been hard-hit by the C.Z.U. Lightning Complex fire in 2020 and “looks completely different from all of the other terrain,” he said.“That’s one thing that I didn’t take into consideration — when the fire comes through like that and decimates it, it turns into the desert, and you’re unable to find your bearings,” he said.Typical markers to gain a sense of direction, like deer trails or hiking paths, were gone. But Mr. McClish, an experienced backpacker who has traversed other rugged regions of the United States, took it as an opportunity to explore a part of his backyard that he was unfamiliar with.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California school board president who led conservative culture war loses recall vote

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      Voters in Temecula, California, have ousted the local school board president who thrust the political body to the forefront of rightwing culture wars seeking to eliminate discussions of race and gender identity from the classroom.Joseph Komrosky on Thursday lost a recall vote with 51% of voters favoring his removal.Temecula – a predominantly white city of 100,000 residents – was a hotbed of the culture wars that conservative Americans have mounted in an attempt to censure how schools teach racism, gender and American history.In June of 2023, Komrosky presided over the Temecula school board’s banning of critical race theory – which examines how racism was embedded into American law – as well as attempts to purge elementary school textbooks of any reference to Harvey Milk, the openly gay politician from San Francisco who supported LGBTQ+ rights before his 1978 assassination.Komrosky first joined the board in November 2022. Since then, the school board has forced out the district superintendent and passed a parent notification policy requiring schools to tell parents if students go by a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.Komrosky has called critical race theory a “racist ideology” that uses “division and hate as an instructional framework in our schools”. Komrosky and fellow school board members then voted to reject California’s social studies curriculum over its inclusion of references to Milk, whom Komrosky described as a “pedophile”.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, threatened to impose a $1.5m fine on the district for not adopting the curriculum, though Komrosky and the school board vowed to find a way to circumvent doing so while adhering to state mandates. The board also initiated another controversial vote to limit what flags can be displayed on school grounds.The unflattering public attention drawn by the controversies Komrosky’s actions ignited incited the recall election against him.The recall vote was conducted on 4 June with final results released on Thursday. Among 9,722 ballots tallied, 4,963 supported the recall. The recall election turned out 45.1% of registered voters in Temecula.Komrosky told the LA Times he is inclined to run for the school board again given his slim margin of defeat in the recall.“Given the narrow margin, I will likely run again in the November 2024 general election,” Komrosky said. “If not, it has been an honor to serve the Temecula community, and I am proud to have fulfilled all of my campaign promises as an elected official.“My commitment to protecting the innocence of our children remains unwavering.” More

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      The Culture Wars Came to a California Suburb. A Leader Has Been Ousted.

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      Voters recalled a Southern California school board president after his conservative majority approved policies on critical race theory and transgender issues.From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How This Year’s Fire Season Could Pan Out

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      More than two dozen wildfires have ignited in California this week, and experts warn of an extreme season ahead.A burning landscape in Lebec, caused by the Post fire.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThere’s no doubt about it: The 2024 wildfire season in California has begun.Propelled by dry and windy weather, more than two dozen fires have erupted across the state in the past week, including the two biggest blazes of the year so far — the Post fire northwest of Los Angeles and the Sites fire in Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento, which had grown to more than 19,000 acres as of Wednesday evening and was only 10 percent contained.“We have entered fire season unambiguously,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at U.C.L.A., said in an online briefing. “I think we’re going to see a greatly increased level of fire activity this year, compared to the last two years.”After two rainy winters in a row, there is more grass and vegetation than usual available to burn, Swain said. And though the land isn’t unusually parched yet, he said, it’s likely to become dangerously dry in the next few months, setting the stage for extreme and difficult-to-control fires.(Fire season is looking worrisome elsewhere in the West as well. Two wildfires in southern New Mexico were burning out of control Wednesday evening, scorching more than 23,000 acres and prompting the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.)In California, 2022 and 2023 were mild fire years, for a welcome change. Wildland fires burned roughly 325,000 acres and damaged 70 buildings across the state in 2023; two years earlier, the acreage figure was nearly eight times as high — more than 2.5 million in all — and 3,500 structures were damaged.California was lucky last year, with an exceptionally wet winter followed by an unusually cool summer. Then the remnants of Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on Southern California in August that it effectively ended the fire season when it ordinarily would be peaking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Remembering Willie Mays as Both Untouchable and Human

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      Mays, who died on Tuesday at 93, had been perfect for so long that the shock of seeing baseball get the best of him was the shock of seeing a god become mortal.At the end, the Say Hey Kid looked nothing like the extraordinary force who had been at the center of the American imagination for much of the 20th century.The Kid — Willie Mays — struggled at the plate and stumbled on the basepaths. A line drive arced his way, easily catchable for Mays during most of his career. But he fell. Another outfield mistake caused the game to be tied in the ninth inning.He was a creaky-kneed 42 years old on that October afternoon, Game 2 of the 1973 World Series — Mays’s New York Mets in Oakland facing the A’s. On the grandest stage, the ravages of time had settled upon the game’s most gilded star.That he would redeem himself at the plate three innings later is often forgotten. The unthinkable had happened. Mays had not only failed, he had appeared lost, clumsy and out of sorts.The shock of seeing him that way would linger long past his playing days as a warning: Don’t be like Willie Mays, sticking around too long, stumbling in center field, a shadow of his former self. Such became the axiom, uttered in so many words by everyone from politicians to business leaders to commentators weighing in on great athletes who yearn to play into their twilight.Quit before it is too late.In retirement, Mays, who died on Tuesday at 93, did his best to ignore the game that would be his last. But there is another way to view its echoes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angela Bofill, R&B Hitmaker With a Silky Voice, Dies at 70

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      Starting in the late 1970s, she scored multiple hit singles, including “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and “I Try,” but multiple strokes in the 2000s ended her career.Angela Bofill, a New York-bred singer whose sultry alto propelled a string of R&B hits in the late 1970s and early ’80s before strokes derailed her career in the 2000s, died on Thursday in Vallejo, Calif. She was 70.Her death, at the home of her daughter, Shauna Bofill Vincent, was announced in a social media post by her manager, Rich Engel. He did not specify a cause.With a silky blend of Latin, jazz, adult-contemporary and soul, Ms. Bofill is best remembered for jazzy love songs like “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and funk-inflected pop numbers like “Something About You.” Armed with a three-and-a-half-octave range, her voice was “as cool as sherbet, creamy, delicately colored, mildly flavored,” as Ariel Swartley wrote in Rolling Stone magazine in 1979.Starting in 1978, Ms. Bofill logged six albums in the Top 40 of the Billboard R&B charts, with five of them crossing over to the Top 100 of the pop charts. She also scored seven Top 40 R&B singles, including “Angel of the Night,” (1979) and “Too Tough” (1983).Angela Tomasa Bofill was born on May 2, 1954, in New York City to a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father and grew up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, in Manhattan and in the West Bronx. She started writing songs as a child.By her teens, she was already showing off her vocal chops in a duo with her sister Sandra and a group called the Puerto Rican Supremes, and also as a member of the prestigious All-City Chorus, a group composed of top high-school singers in the city’s five boroughs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California May Ban Legacy Admissions at Universities

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      The State Assembly passed a bill banning colleges from considering family ties to donors or alumni in admissions decisions.Occidental College has already dropped legacy admissions.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressCalifornia could become the fourth state to ban legacy admissions preferences at universities under a bill making its way through the State Legislature.Many selective colleges have historically given to the children or grandchildren of alumni — who are much more likely to be white and wealthy than other applicants — an advantage in the admissions process. But the practice, never particularly popular with the public, has come under scrutiny since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year against affirmative action policies at colleges and universities.After the court’s decision, some schools — including Occidental College, Carnegie Mellon and Wesleyan University — decided to stop giving preference to legacy applicants.Now, California lawmakers are considering AB 1780, a bill that would prohibit universities in the state from giving preferential treatment to applicants because of their family ties to donors or alumni.With affirmative action banned in higher education, “it makes complete sense to now ensure that we don’t look at someone’s wealth or lineage with the university to decide whether to admit them,” Phil Ting, a Bay Area Democrat who is the bill’s author, told me. The bill “doesn’t ban admitting donors’ or alumni children,” he added. “It just ensures that there’s no preferential treatment.”Colorado and Virginia recently passed laws banning legacy admissions at public institutions of higher education. Maryland has done so at both public and private institutions. California’s public colleges and universities already give no preference to legacy candidates; the new bill would ban the practice at private institutions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrat Khanna: Biden is ‘running out of time’ with young voters over Gaza war

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      Progressive California Democrat Ro Khanna warned Sunday that Joe Biden is running out of time to win over young voters opposed to his administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict and that he will not attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress next month.In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Representative Khanna said the erosion of support that the US president is seeing among young voters is a “challenge for our party” and the Democrats could be “running out of time” to restore support with “more people dying” in the conflict.“We have to remember the humanitarian stakes,” he said. “Young people want the war to end. But what young people want is a vision, and the president started that with a ceasefire. I hope he can go further. He should call for two states. He should say in his second term, he’s going to convene a peace conference in the Middle East, recognize a Palestinian state without Hamas, work with Egypt, Saudi Arabia on it.”Khanna said he was “not going to sit in a one-way lecture” from the Israeli prime minister during his address to a joint session of Congress, scheduled for 24 July, but “if he wants to come to speak to members of Congress about how to end the war and release hostages, I would be fine doing that.”Khanna echoed congressional colleague Jim Clyburn, who last week said he would also not attend and cited the feud between Netanyahu and Barack Obama over Palestinian statehood and the US pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran.“How he treated President Obama, he should not expect reciprocity,” Khanna said, adding that Netanyahu should be treated with “decorum” by the legislative body. “We’re not going to make a big deal about it,” he added.Khanna called on Biden to put more pressure on Netanyahu regarding a UN-endorsed ceasefire proposal, which is supported by the US and the Arab league.“Benny Ganz is saying prioritize the hostage deal and the peace,” Khanna said, referring to the Israel’s national unity chair Benny Gantz who resigned from Netanyahu’s coalition government. “Netanyahu is saying they want to destroy … all of Hamas, and I don’t think that’s achievable”.Khanna’s comments come as political divisions between progressive and centrist Democrats over Israel and Gaza are being exposed by a key congressional race in the New York suburbs that pits Bernie Sanders-supported progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman against George Latimer, a centrist who was endorsed by Hillary Clinton last week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe contest between the two Democrat candidates in New York’s 16th district may turn on differing positions on the Israeli action on Gaza, which Sanders has called “ethnic cleansing” and Bowman a “genocide”. Clinton has said US pro-Palestinian protesters “don’t know very much” about the Middle East and that a full ceasefire would “perpetuate the cycle of violence”. More