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SANTA CRUZ — Hundreds of UC Santa Cruz students gathered at Quarry Plaza on the university’s campus around noon Tuesday and swiftly set up a Palestine solidarity encampment similar to those that have formed on college campuses across the state and the country. “The community really showed up,” said Dax Costello, media liaison with the student encampment. “We saw yesterday that the community doesn’t think in the same way that the administration does and that the community here is deeply affected by what is happening to people in Gaza.” According to the Associated Press, in recent weeks, more th ..read more

This is part of a series of South Florida Sun Sentinel articles exploring maternal health care. It is 2 a.m. when Brianca Spence slips behind the wheel of her car. The drive to the nearest hospital can stretch as long as an hour, and feel like an eternity when she’s rushing to guide an expecting mother through childbirth. As labor unfolds, Spence will translate the harsh demands of a nurse on duty into calming guidance. She will encourage the woman to ask for pain medication when she needs it or suggest a position change to speed up labor. And, when the mother eventually returns home with a ne ..read more

By John T. Bennett, CQ-Roll Call WASHINGTON — Protests on college campuses related to the Israel-Hamas war and humanitarian crisis inside Gaza that turned violent this week handed President Joe Biden a political headache and former President Donald Trump a new attack line. The unrest showed the risks of being the incumbent and allowed Trump to — once again — push his hardline views as disrupter in chief. Biden and his campaign aides have mostly dismissed criticism from Arab American groups for months over his “ironclad” backing of Israel. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been ..read more

Seema Mehta | Los Angeles Times (TNS) LOS ANGELES — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign was once viewed as a quixotic quest by a scion of a storied political family — an environmental warrior who sullied his family’s name most recently by aligning himself with a political party founded by a segregationist to get on the November ballot in California. But a combination of voter apathy about President Biden and former President Trump, the two main parties’ presumptive nominees, and the Kennedy campaign’s successful targeting of ballot qualification rules across the nation has prompted g ..read more

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times In the analog days of the 1970s, long before hackers, trolls and edgelords, an audiocassette company came up with an advertising slogan that posed a trick question: “Is it live or is it Memorex?” The message toyed with reality, suggesting there was no difference in sound quality between a live performance and music recorded on tape. Fast forward to our age of metaverse lies and deceptions, and one might ask similar questions about what’s real and what’s not: Is President Joe Biden on a robocall telling Democrats to not vote ..read more

If California’s population is well off its peak, and developers keep on building housing, why does the cost of living in the Golden State remain lofty? My trusty spreadsheet looked at fresh demographic figures from the state Department of Finance to find any hints of solving this housing riddle. Start with the basics: California had 38.2 million residents living in households last year – that’s down 375,800 since 2020, or a 0.9% loss. In the same timeframe, California’s housing stock grew to 14.8 million residences – a 432,700 improvement since 2020, or 3% growth. How did that translate to fo ..read more

By Ryan Pearson, Julie Watson, Christopher L. Keller and Carolyn Thompson | Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — A police officer who was involved in clearing protesters from a Columbia University administration building earlier this week fired his gun inside the hall, a spokesperson for District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed Thursday. No one was injured, according to spokesperson Doug Cohen, who said there were other officers but no students in the immediate vicinity. He said Bragg’s office is conducting a review. He did not provide additional details on the incident, which was first ..read more

By Brian Witte | Associated Press ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland plans to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in just over four years at an estimated cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, a state transportation official said Thursday. The state plans to build a new span by fall of 2028, said David Broughton, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Transportation. He said the cost estimate is preliminary, and detailed engineering specifics have not been confirmed. As salvage efforts continue, authorities also announced late Wednesday they had recovered the body of a fifth person who was ..read more

By Michael R. Sisak, Philip Marcelo, Eric Tucker and Jake Offenhartz | Associated Press NEW YORK — Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president. A visibly irritated Trump leaned forward at the defense table, and jurors appeared riveted as prosecutors played the September 2016 recording that attorney Michael Cohen secretly made of himself briefing his celebrity client on a plan to buy Karen McDougal’s st ..read more