Video: Steve Fryer and Dan Albano predict the winners of Week 9’s top football games

• October 18, 2023

OCVarsity’s Dan Albano and Steve Fryer get together for their weekly Gridiron Show to discuss the top high school football games in Orange County this week.

This is Week 9 of the season, and they discuss the matchups and make predictions for: Mater Dei-Orange Lutheran, Santa Margarita-Servite, Troy-Sonora, El Modena-El Dorado and Corona del Mar-Newport Harbor.

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Forest Service taking applications for permanent seasonal jobs

• October 18, 2023

Looking to earn some money while basking in the great outdoors?

The USDA Forest Service has your number.

The federal agency is accepting applications for permanent seasonal jobs between Thursday, Oct. 19 and Nov. 22. There are hundreds of entry-level forestry-technician and forestry-aid positions available across the U.S., including 307 openings in California.

The Forest Service manages more than 193 million acres of forest and grasslands, and the jobs are as diverse as the landscapes it manages. Forestry aids and technicians work in a variety of natural resource and recreation functions and can help reduce the threat of wildfires while improving habitats for wildlife, decreasing the spread of invasive plant species and enhancing visitor experiences.

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Permanent seasonal positions offer a six-months-on, six-months-off schedule, but that can be increased to full-time work, based on unit needs and funding.

Eligible applicants must be U.S. citizens or nationals who are at least 18 years old. For more information, visit www.fs.usda.gov/working-with-us/careers/recruitment-events/permanent-seasonal-forestry-careers.

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Drones soon will start dropping prescriptions on doorsteps, literally

• October 18, 2023

By Tom Murphy and Haleluya Hadero | The Associated Press

Amazon will soon make prescription drugs fall from the sky when the e-commerce giant becomes the latest company to test drone deliveries for medications.

The company said Wednesday that customers in College Station, Texas, can now get prescriptions delivered by a drone within an hour of placing their order.

Also see: Amazon tests humanoid robot in warehouse automation push

The drone, programmed to fly from a delivery center with a secure pharmacy, will travel to the customer’s address, descend to a height of about four meters — or 13 feet — and drop a padded package.

Amazon says customers will be able to choose from more than 500 medications, a list that includes common treatments for conditions like the flu or pneumonia, but not controlled substances.

The company’s Prime Air division began testing drone deliveries of common household items last December in College Station and Lockeford in San Joaquin County.

Amazon spokesperson Jessica Bardoulas said the company has made thousands of deliveries since launching the service and is expanding it to include prescriptions based in part on customer requests.

Later on Wednesday, Amazon announced it will also launch drone delivery at a third U.S. location and cities in Italy and the United Kingdom by the end of next year. The company said it will disclose the exact locations in the coming months.

Amazon Prime already delivers some medications from the company’s pharmacy inside of two days. But pharmacy Vice President John Love said that doesn’t help someone with an acute illness like the flu.

“What we’re trying to do is figure out how can we bend the curve on speed,” he said.

Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Vin Gupta says the U.S. health care system generally struggles with diagnosing and treating patients quickly for acute illnesses, something that was apparent throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Narrowing the window between diagnosis and treating makes many treatments more effective, he said.

Amazon is not the first company to explore prescription deliveries by drone. The drugstore chain CVS Health worked with UPS to test deliveries in 2019 in North Carolina but that program has ended, a CVS spokesman said.

Intermountain Health started providing drone deliveries of prescriptions in 2021 in the Salt Lake City area and has been expanding the program, according to Daniel Duersch, supply chain director for the health care system. Intermountain is partnering with the logistics company Zipline to use drones that drop packages by parachute.

Companies seeking to use drones for commercial purposes have faced hurdles from regulators who want to make sure things are operating safely. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had predicted a decade ago that drones would be making deliveries by 2018. Even now, the e-commerce giant is only using the technology in a small number of markets.

Lisa Ellman, the executive director of the Commercial Drone Alliance, an industry group that counts Amazon as one of its members, said to date, regulatory approvals have been limited to specific geographic areas and “in terms of their scope and usefulness to companies.”

That said, she noted regulators have also been issuing more approvals. Last month, the FAA gave the OK for Zipline and UPS to fly longer-range drones.

Walmart has also been working to expand its own drone deliveries.

Also on Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a new drone called MK30 that, by the end of next year, will replace the drones it currently uses to deliver packages. The company says the new drone flies further, is smaller and quieter, and also has enhanced delivery capabilities.

Amazon has said its drones will fly as high as 120 meters, or nearly 400 feet, before slowly descending when they reach the customer’s home. The drone will check to make sure the delivery zone is clear of pets, children or any other obstructions before dropping the package on a delivery marker.

Amazon has been growing its presence in health care for a few years now.

Aside from adding a pharmacy, it also spent nearly $4 billion to buy primary care provider One Medical. In August, the company added video telemedicine visits in all 50 states.

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Amazon tests humanoid robot in warehouse automation push

• October 18, 2023

By Matt Day | Bloomberg

Amazon.com says it’s testing two new technologies to increase automation in its warehouses, including a trial of a humanoid robot.

The humanoid robot, called Digit, is bipedal and can squat, bend and grasp items using clasps that imitate hands, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It’s built by Agility Robotics and will initially be used to help employees consolidate totes that have been emptied of items. Amazon invested in Agility Robotics last year.

Also see: Will AI take your job? A new report says Californians are at high risk

The retailer, which is the second-largest US employer behind Walmart Inc., has deployed robots in its warehouses for more than a decade, mainly to move inventory to waiting employees. That system, which starts with humans stuffing inventory items into mesh shelving, is undergoing a transformation to container-based storage, which more easily allows robotic arms and other automated technology to sort and pick items, Bloomberg has reported.

In addition to Digit, Amazon is testing a technology called Sequoia, which will identify and sort inventory into containers for employees, who will then pick the items customers have ordered, the company said. Remaining products are then consolidated in bins by a robotic arm called Sparrow, which the company revealed last year. The system is in use at an Amazon warehouse in Houston, the company said in a statement.

Also see: Amazon hiring 16,000 in Southern California

Amazon, which has emphasized quick delivery to fend off challenges from e-commerce rivals, said the Sequoia system reduces the time it takes a warehouse to process an order by as much as 25%. This will also move the process in warehouses closer to an assembly line from the traditional warehouse model of employees searching for items and taking them off shelves.

Company executives have said they aim to use automation in part to free employees from repetitive tasks that can lead to injuries. Amazon is under fire from Washington state and federal regulators for injury rates that exceed industry averages.

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EPA declares leaded plane fuel a public health threat, paving way for limits

• October 18, 2023

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy | Bloomberg

The Biden administration on Wednesday declared emissions from airplanes running on leaded aviation fuel a threat to public health — a first step toward stamping out a major source of metal pollution linked to developmental delays, kidney disease and other health concerns.

The so-called endangerment finding from the Environmental Protection Agency zeroes in on leaded aviation fuel used primarily in small piston-engine aircraft, where the metal provides octane critical for performance.

Also see: Long Beach pursues plan to reduce leaded fuel at airport

Lead isn’t in the jet fuel used by commercial aircraft, and for decades it’s been banned from gasoline used in cars and trucks. As a result, lead emissions in the air have shrunk 99% since 1980, leaving the roughly 220,000 aging, small planes that rely on aviation gasoline containing the metal as the dominant source of that pollution.

“Exposure to lead can cause irreversible and life-long health effects in children,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a news release. The agency’s declaration allows the administration to “propose new standards to protect all communities from the serious threat of lead pollution from aircraft,” Regan said.

The EPA finding doesn’t itself ban or restrict the use, sale or availability of leaded aviation fuel. However, it does trigger a legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to propose standards addressing lead emissions from the affected aircraft engines. And the Federal Aviation Administration can move separately to impose requirements addressing fuels and additives that can limit lead emissions. The agencies will announce timelines for those regulatory moves “as soon as possible,” the EPA said Wednesday.

Also see: Over FAA’s objection, Santa Clara County’s airports will switch to unleaded gas for small planes

Any new standards could have an outsize impact in Alaska, Colorado, Florida and other states where piston-engine aircraft are more prevalent.

Environmental advocates first petitioned the federal government to issue its endangerment finding nearly two decades ago.

Supporters say new limits are key to protecting the health of residents near airports where they fly after a 2021 study documented 20% higher blood lead levels in thousands of children living near one such facility in Santa Clara County.

There is no known safe amount of lead exposure, with just a small amount in blood tied to impaired cognitive ability, putting children at particular risk.

​ Orange County Register 

Girl on way to school struck by hit-and-run driver in Santa Ana

• October 18, 2023

A 12-year-old girl was struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking to school in Santa Ana on Wednesday, Oct. 18, leaving her fighting for her life at a hospital while police searched for the suspect.

The girl was hit about 8 a.m. at Newhope Street and McFadden Avenue while walking to Fitz Intermediate Language Academy, Santa Ana police Officer Natalie Garcia said.

The girl was taken to a hospital in critical condition and undergoing surgery.

Police have a Ring doorbell photo of the suspect vehicle, a blue, newer-model Honda that is lowered and has black-tinted windows, black rims and a black bumper, Garcia said.

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These Americans, undeterred by war, are moving to Israel. ‘We are stronger together’

• October 18, 2023

As the war rages in Israel, prompting many people to evacuate, some Americans instead are packing their bags to move to the Holy Land.

Akiva Goldberger, 24, of Hollywood, plans to catch a one-way flight Wednesday from Miami to Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s main international airport. The Princeton University graduate plans to find a job in electrical and computer engineering in Tel Aviv. Wednesday’s departure had been scheduled long ago, and he said he won’t be derailed.

“I planned my whole life around it,” Goldberger said. “This isn’t a deterrent in any sort of way. Especially in difficult times like this, you see the Jewish community band together and stand united. We need to all show our support for each other. This is definitely a way of doing that.”

When he gets on that plane, along with a couple from Miami, they’ll be the latest to make aliyah — a Hebrew word meaning to “go up” and describes the act of moving to Israel from the Diaspora.

Goldberger is leaving with a group called Nefesh B’Nfesh, co-founded by a rabbi while he was living in Boca Raton more than 20 years ago. He’s among the Americans who are either moving this week, or made new plans for aliyah since the turmoil started last week.

Goldberger is mindful about the safety precautions when he arrives in Israel. He’ll be staying with his sister in Jerusalem, until he finds a job and gets his own apartment. Goldberger’s sister has an assigned safe room, which is a bomb shelter, and he knows where it is if he has to use it. “Everyone knows where they need to be if the sirens goes off,” he said.

He said he’s more worried about the soldiers being called to the front lines in an expected ground invasion of Gaza to both find the hostages and destroy Hamas. “Seeing them (the soldiers), the risk of me being injured in Jerusalem is so low it doesn’t register for me.”

Helping people migrate

The Boca Raton rabbi, Joshua Fass, was motivated to not just move to Israel, but to start the organization after his 14-year-old cousin was killed in Israel in 2001 while he waited for a school bus and so he decided at the time he would “stand in his stead.”

Since then, the organization says it has aided more than 75,000 Jewish people migrate from the United States and Canada. The organization helps olim (what immigrants who make aliyah are known as) find jobs and housing. There are classes for those seeking career changes, and more ongoing hand-holding for English speakers to deal with the nuances of daily life, such as navigating school for children, and real estate purchases.

The Israeli government also assists with free health insurance for a year, and grants as part of an “absorption basket” to help with relocation costs. That starts at $4,500 for a single person, and goes up depending on family size.

In addition to the three people flying out of Miami, there are two more people flying out of Los Angeles on Wednesday. And 20 people from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio and Michigan are leaving out of Newark, also Wednesday, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh.

The 25 olim leaving America on Wednesday range in age from 19 to 79.

Seeking to leave Israel

Amid the conflict, the State Department has said about 20,000 U.S. citizens have requested help getting out of Israel. There are about another 400 to 600 Americans in Gaza, according to published reports.

Even with Nefesh B’Nefesh, many older empty nesters and retirees told the agency their plans would have to be postponed after the latest spat of violence, which is spiraling into a war, said Marc Rosenberg, the vice president of Diaspora Partnerships, speaking by cellphone from Jerusalem.

But also since the events have unfolded more than a week ago, another 60 Jewish Americans have signed up to start their aliyah process, Rosenberg said. “It’s a gesture, it’s a statement. ‘I’m connected,’ and that’s remarkable,” Rosenberg said.

Some South Floridians who already were living in Israel have decided to stay there to volunteer. “I don’t just want to leave and go back to America,” Marci Hartman, 24, who grew up in Boynton Beach, told WPBF-Ch. 25. “I don’t want to do that, because this is where I belong. These are my people, and I don’t want to leave my people.”

Facing attacks

Hamas fired rockets from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, a holiday called Simchat Torah, while also breaching what was supposed to be a security fence and invading Jewish neighborhoods and an outdoor music festival. Families were shot to death, burned alive, and an estimated 200 people kidnapped over the border into Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The attacks, dredging up historical memories of European pogroms, was the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In Israel, more than 1,400 people were killed. (Israel has responded with airstrikes in Gaza that, according to Palestinian health authorities, have killed at least at least 2,778 people as of Tuesday afternoon.)

Rosenberg said immigrants are still going to Israel from around the world for ideological reasons. The current situation is temporary, he said. Others are going for the religious connection.

“Israel is the only Jewish country in the world. A rough spot is not going to change that,” he said. Rosenberg said it won’t be easy.

Jewish immigrants from the West have the same challenges: “Hebrew is a tough language, it’s hot here, we’re in a desert, and we have terrorists near us. People who are moving here know those things, it’s not that they think they are moving to Boca Raton.

“It’s part of the reality, and they plan accordingly.”

Relocating to his new home

After Goldberger’s plans to rent an apartment fell apart, he’ll be bunking with his sister, who made aliyah long ago and who now lives in Jerusalem. Goldberger wants to be there, find someplace where he’d be useful to help, volunteer his time, until things settle down and he can find a job in tech.

Goldberger’s bags are being packed, only two of them for now. He is figuring out what goes with him when he gets on a one-way flight Wednesday, and he’s thinking it will be mostly his clothes.

“I haven’t decided which mementos come in these bags, that might be a game-time decision,” he said.

Goldberger’s mom supports his decision.

“He doesn’t want to be deterred, his commitment is to be there,” said Dr. Sharon Sholiton Goldberger, a pediatrician and an assistant dean at Nova Southeastern University. “He doesn’t want to be deterred, certainly not from a terrorist organization, from making his dream come true.”

While this war disrupts his dreams of immediately entering the world of high-tech, “life isn’t perfect and he very much feels like he needs to be contributing,” his mother said. “I’m proud of him.”

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at [email protected]. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, at @LisaHuriash

​ Orange County Register 

Hulu’s new LGBTQ+ ghost-hunting show investigates haunted US landmarks

• October 18, 2023

Abigail Gruskin | Baltimore Sun (TNS)

When Baltimore native Juju Bae finally submitted an application to star in a new ghost-hunting docuseries on Hulu, after weeks of mulling over the casting call, she took an extra step: She consulted her dead relatives.

“I was like, ‘Ancestors’ — because I talk to my ancestors all the time, I talk to dead people all the time — I was like, ‘Ancestors, if this is for me, make it easy,’” said Bae, a 31-year-old spiritualist born in Beechfield, who now lives near Patterson Park and works as a psychic.

A few minutes after her plea to those who have crossed over into a different realm, someone from the show’s casting team called Bae to express interest in having her audition, she said.

“Living for the Dead,” Hulu’s new series narrated by actor Kristen Stewart, who also served as an executive producer of the show, puts an LGBTQ+ spin on the supernatural and follows five queer ghost hunters as they investigate haunted landmarks across the country. Bae joined the cast as the team’s resident “witch” and spiritual healer, leading seances and communicating with the deceased in the eight-episode show premiering Wednesday.

“It started as a bit of a hypothetical silly pipe dream and now I am so proud to have shepherded something that is as moving and meaningful as it is truly a gay old time,” Stewart said in a statement announcing the docuseries. “Our cast makes me laugh and cry and they had the courage and heart to take us places I wouldn’t go by myself.”

Traveling together in an RV, Bae, ghost hunter Alex LeMay, tarot card reader Ken Boggle, psychic Logan Taylor and paranormal researcher Roz Hernandez visit attractions, including a clown-themed motel in Nevada, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky and a former funeral home in Ohio.

During overnight stays in the spooky destinations, taped on hand-held video cameras and by a professional film crew, there’s plenty of supposedly paranormal activity. People representing the haunted locales report being grabbed and scratched by ghosts, in addition to experiencing other eerie sensations.

There’s also no shortage of screaming — and laughing — from the show’s living personalities, as they use ghost-detecting technology and spiritual intuition to communicate with the dead.

“We all were able to play on each other’s strengths,” Bae said, noting that the team approached ghost-hunting “with a more open heart … not trying to bother or pester the spirits, or irritate the spirits.”

Stewart, who teamed up with the creators of “Queer Eye” to craft the show, checked in frequently via FaceTime and text when she wasn’t on set and helped the cast feel more comfortable in front of the camera during their two months of filming earlier this year, Bae said.

Bae was a naturally inclined singer, dancer and performer growing up, said her mother, Liz Mack, who lives in Baltimore County. “She was quiet, but she was adventurous.”

Bae attended Catholic schools, graduating from the now-closed Seton Keough High School in 2010, and though she had “a belief in God, in higher power,” Mack, 58, said of her daughter, “there were things that she questioned” about the way organized religion operated.

Over the past three or four years, Bae leaned deeper into her spirituality and began identifying as a witch, she said, after talking with others who claimed the identity.

Those suspected of being witches have historically been persecuted and misunderstood — and it’s a term that still carries a lot of baggage, Bae said — but for her, “being a witch … is just being connected to what is happening around you, and realizing and owning the power that you have within your circumstances, and the power to manipulate some of those circumstances around you.”

From Baltimore, she meets with clients virtually to offer psychic readings, during which she delivers messages from the dead “for clarity and often peace and healing.” Her practice is “rooted in Black American and also African spirituality,” Bae said, and nearly all of her clients are Black.

Doing readings at local events, Bae is “very compassionate and really genuine with people, and really just trying to connect with them,” Mack said.

But it’s not easy work.

“As a queer person and also as, like, a self-proclaimed witch, you constantly are coming out,” Bae, who is bisexual, says in the third episode of “Living for the Dead,” seated with her castmates around a table as she leads a seance in a haunted Arizona mansion.

The Hulu show brings a bigger spotlight to LGBTQ+ ghost hunters — and emphasizes the compassion that they bring to the job.

“The dead, just like queer folks, just like a lot of different communities, can easily be cast away or disregarded,” Bae said. “We have a certain outlook on what it means to be ostracized, but also what it means to be celebrated.”

With the show’s premiere, she wants to inspire others — especially those who look like her — to get in touch with their spiritual side.

For supernatural enthusiasts looking to try their own hand at ghost-hunting in Baltimore, Bae recommended paying serious attention to the stories told about spooky places.

“There’s so much spiritual activity, especially in Baltimore, this is such a haunted place,” in part because the city is so old and has such a rich history, she said.

“Baltimore has a very intimate relationship with death, and when you grow up in a place that has that kind of intimacy, you start to think about and are often in communication with what it means to die.”

Bae encourages skepticism, but said it’s not a reason to skip the new Hulu show.

“It’s funny, it’s filled with heart and it’s about so much more,” she said, than ghost-sensing gadgets and creepy encounters with the dead.

©2023 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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