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Bay Area realty agents frustrated after cyber attack hobbles MLS

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

Marin real estate agents are scrambling after an essential online tool used to connect home buyers to sellers was hacked.The service remained down Friday ahead of a weekend of open houses during a crucial time of year.The ransomware cyber-attack Wednesday left Multiple Listing Service, a property information and cooperative data service, down across the country. The outage left new property listings and open houses unsearchable, and certain data unavailable.Megan Pomponio, a real estate agent with Compass Real Estate based in Kentfield, said the MLS outage limited the information available, postponing listings and delaying communication between agents and brokers.“I have no idea what’s going on or how long it will take,” she said Friday.While she did not have any listings planned over the weekend, she said she was unable to see the status of current listings or any private remarks, such as where keys were located — information that is critical to open houses.In an email sent to subs...

150th Anniversary: The San Francisco cable cars, history in motion

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

150 years ago this month, the first cable car made its way down a San Francisco street with its inventor, Andrew Hallidie, at the controls.Andrew Hallidie returned to San Francisco in 1857, where he set up a factory to manufacture wire rope. In addition to aerial tramways, his rope was used to build suspension bridges across creeks and rivers throughout northern California.In the 1860s, Hallide saw horses struggling to climb the city’s streets, especially in the rain. He took out a patent for an “Endless Wire Ropeway” and implemented it for San Francisco. Hillidie’s company began operations in September 1873. Soon, other companies had lines. The cable cars lasted through the 1906 earthquake and fire, an effort to rid the city of them in 1947 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1964.Today’s fleetThe San Francisco Municipal Railway maintains the current fleet of 40 cars. Not all are in service at the same time.The cable cars travel on steel tracks set above a channel enclosing ...

August is peak mosquito season, and California’s in a fight against disease some carry

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

Bugged outWe all love to spend the summer months outside, but the warmest months also bring out more bugs, some of which may carry nasty diseases.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 200 types of mosquitoes live in the continental United States and U.S. territories and about 12 types spread germs that can make people sick.In California, there are approximately 50 kinds of mosquitoes with about six that carry harmful diseases such as West Nile virus, Zika, dengue and yellow fever viruses. Some infect horses, birds and house pets.You can open a PDF from the California Department of Health that lists the dangerous mosquitoes in California here.Some studies claim mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal and estimates say they kill 700,000 people a year, with most in Sub-Saharan Africa.How they find usBody odors, exhaled breath and body heat all alert mosquitoes to a person’s presence. The bugs pick up scents through olfactory neurons on their antennae—the...

Attorney General Rob Bonta ‘deeply disturbed’ by Murrieta Valley schools’ transgender policy

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has criticized the Murrieta Valley school board’s decision Thursday night, Aug. 10, to approve the notifying of parents if their student is transgender.“I am deeply disturbed to learn another school district has put at risk the safety and privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students by adopting a forced outing policy,” Bonta said in the Friday, Aug. 11, statement.“My office remains committed to ensuring school policies do not target or seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities,” he said in the statement. “California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights.”The Murrieta Valley Unified School District board’s decision came less than a month after the Chino Valley Unified School District board adopted its policy to notify parents of transgender students. Murrieta trustees’ vote comes one week after Bonta announced an investigation into potential legal violations caused by Chino Valley’s po...

‘We leave now’: California man recounts harrowing escape from Maui wildfire

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

Adam Probolsky and his wife and kids jumped into a rental car packed with luggage cinched by bungee cords as towering flames grew closer to their picturesque Maui resort. It was Wednesday morning, Aug. 9. They had one goal —  to get off the island.The day before, high winds knocked out power at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa. Then, as night fell, the massive wildfire spread.“We could hear explosions in the distance, and every single one was a really sad case,” said Probolsky, 49, a public policy researcher from Irvine, in a phone interview from Honolulu on Thursday. “Those are propane tanks. When you heard that, you knew somebody lost a part of their life.”Probolsky and his wife Desiree, his mother-in-law Lupe, and daughters Isabela, 9, and Olivia, 10. had arrived at the resort just north of Lahaina on Sunday.As the fire grew closer Tuesday, the hotel began to run out of food and basics, including toilet paper and batteries. When the resort finally lost internet service, Prob...

Sea lions return to ocean as toxic bloom that sickened California marine mammals fades

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

As marine mammal care centers along the Southern California coast come up for air after two months of trying to rescue sea lions and dolphins sickened by a toxic algae bloom, their leaders warn the environmental and public safety emergency was a wake-up call for greater collaboration between nonprofits and local municipalities.“What made this so bad, beyond the sick and dying animals, was that it was a public safety issue,” said John Warner, CEO of the Marine Mammal Care Center Los Angeles. “You had animals popping out of the water in front of thousands of people while seizing and giving birth. It was horrifying and really dangerous.”Sea lions that became ill from toxic algae bloom around at LA beaches in early and mid June have now recovered thanks to care at the Marine Mammal Center Los Angeles in San Pedro. Today two of the sea lion were released back to the ocean in Marina del Rey on Thursday, August 10, 2023. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)Sea lions that became ...

Dear Abby: I was annoyed to discover why our friends picked this restaurant

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

DEAR ABBY: In lieu of a regular “pizza night,” some good friends invited my wife and me to join them at a high-end restaurant. We agreed. We had a good dinner and an enjoyable evening.Related ArticlesAdvice | Dear Abby: I had to get rid of my beautiful furnishings because of guests’ stupid comments Advice | Dear Abby: She’s trying to one-up me by being the fun aunt Advice | Dear Abby: I’m 20, he’s 46 and married, and my family isn’t being supportive Advice | Dear Abby: I feel bad about it, but I had to squash my husband’s dream Advice | Dear Abby: We’re nervous about telling our kids this family secret When our separate checks arrived, our friends paid theirs with a gift card. Ours was a whopper, and the reason they wanted to eat there became quite obvious. I was annoyed because I felt our friends should have applied their gift card to the entire bill...

Exercising on little sleep could be bad for your brain, new study says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

You could lose that boost of energy and mental clarity you get after a workout — if you don’t get enough sleep. But that’s just the beginning.Turns out not getting enough sleep, coupled with exercise, could actually be bad for your brain.That’s according to the findings from a new longitudinal UK study published in a journal called The Lancet. Over a 10-year period, some 9,000 participants were surveyed by scientists every two years.“The study shows sleeping less than six hours consistently cuts cognitive benefits of exercise,” said Dr. Keisha Sullivan, a sleep medicine physician with Kaiser Permanente in Largo, Maryland.Furthermore, Sullivan noted that the study shows there was less cognitive decline over a 10-year period among those people who did not exercise, but got an adequate amount of sleep (between six and eight hours).“Cognitive function would include remembering things, staying quick on your feet, learning new skills,” Sullivan explained, adding that tho...

England captain Harry Kane leaves Tottenham for Bayern Munich in search for trophies

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

England captain Harry Kane completed his move to Bayern Munich from Tottenham on Saturday in soccer’s biggest transfer of the summer as the striker goes in search of the first major trophies in his career.The transfer fee for Kane could hit more than 100 million pounds ($110 million), which breaks the Bundesliga transfer record and is a huge sum for a player who would have been out of contract next year.“It’s not a goodbye because you never know how things pan out in the future,” Kane, who has been at Tottenham since 2004, said in a video message, “but it’s a thank you and I’ll see you soon.”Kane, who has signed a four-year deal, flew to Munich on Friday to undergo a medical examination and is set to be presented to fans at the German Super Cup on Saturday, when Bayern plays Leipzig.Kane leaves Tottenham after 19 years at the club, where he became the second highest-scoring player in Premier League history — with 213 goals, 47 behind Alan Shearer — but never won a trophy with ...

England captain Harry Kane leaves Tottenham and signs with German champion Bayern Munich

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 13:19:22 GMT

MUNICH (AP) — England captain Harry Kane leaves Tottenham and signs with German champion Bayern Munich.Source