3 people on plane missing near San Clemente Island are identified

• May 12, 2023

The Phoenix Air Learjet with three people aboard that went missing Wednesday near San Clemente Island was on a U.S. Navy training exercise, according to their employer.

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search Thursday. Officials said they had searched 334 square miles and found a debris field but no signs of any survivors after the plane went missing Wednesday morning about a mile southwest of San Clemente Island.

Watchstanders at the Coast Guard’s Joint Harbor Operations Center in San Diego received the initial report of a downed aircraft at 7:53 a.m. Wednesday from Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility San Diego, reporting an aircraft emergency aboard the plane.

“The entire Phoenix Air Family grieves over this loss of our friends and fellow employees,” Phoenix Air Group, Inc. of Cartersville, Georgia said in a statement.

The company identified the employees as Eric Tatman, Spencer Geerlings and Shane Garner.

Phoenix Air Group said the missing plane was one of two Learjets participating in the U.S. Navy training exercise. The other jet landed safely.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations aircraft and the USS San Diego diverted after hearing the emergency broadcast and began searching the area, the Coast Guard reported.

Also, an MH-60 Jayhawk aircrew from Coast Guard Sector San Diego and the crew aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Robert Ward, a 154-foot Fast Response Cutter homeported in Los Angeles/Long Beach, were launched and led the search.

Additionally, a U.S. Air Force C-130, multiple U.S. Air Force land and surface assets from 68th Rescue Squadron, and a U.S. Navy MH-60 Romeo helicopter from Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron were launched and assisted in the search.

The area near San Clemente Island where the aircraft was reported down is considered part of Los Angeles County, and is south of Catalina Island.

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​ Orange County Register 

CIF-SS softball playoffs: Updated schedule for Saturday’s semifinals

• May 12, 2023

Updated schedule for the CIF Southern Section softball semifinals Saturday, May 13.

CIF-SS SOFTBALL PLAYOFFS

SATURDAY’S GAMES

SEMIFINALS

DIVISION 2

Grand Terrace at Tesoro, 3:15 p.m.

DIVISION 3

Kennedy at Capistrano Valley, 1 p.m.

Corona Santiago at El Toro, 3:15 p.m.

DIVISION 4

Burbank Burroughs at Fullerton, 3:15 p.m.

Foothill at Santa Fe, 3:15 p.m.

DIVISION 5

Santa Paula at Irvine, 10 a.m.

Liberty at Northwood, 1 p.m.

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​ Orange County Register 

Trump sexual assault verdict a rare moment of accountability

• May 12, 2023

By Maryclare Dale | Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — Cassandra Nuñez and her grandmother cast their first ballots in a U.S. presidential election in 2016. She was a first-year college student; her grandmother, a newly minted citizen. They both hoped to elect the first woman president over a man who bragged about grabbing and kissing women at will.

But Donald Trump became president, and it would be nearly seven years before a Trump accuser could press her claims at trial. This week, jurors in a New York civil case said they believed that Trump sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room in the 1990s — making him the first U.S. president found liable by a jury in a sexual battery case. The panel awarded her $5 million in damages.

“It’s a victorious moment, but why did the people of the United States let this happen?” said Nuñez, now 25, of Los Angeles, noting the number of sexual misconduct accusations against Trump during the campaign and since his election. “It’s kind of late.”

The verdict — a rare moment of accountability for a former president and powerful men like him — comes as women across the U.S. ponder the cultural landscape amid sweeping threats to their hard-won progress, including Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, the Supreme Court’s repeal of abortion rights last year and the uneven success of the #MeToo movement.

Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA, called it an ambiguous time for women.

“It’s very hard to feel at this moment that the accounting, the reckoning that we need has yet happened,” she said. “I feel this is a small step in the right direction.”

Some may find “yet another day contemplating the behavior of Donald Trump just feels like a colossal waste of attention,” Williams said. But she believes it’s important to address “the everyday abuses of power that have real consequences for victims.”

With a string of investigations swirling around Trump, the sex-abuse case — a civil verdict, with no criminal prosecution possible — hit only so hard across a news-weary America. Nuñez followed the trial and discussed it with a few colleagues at her public relations job. For others, the news barely hit their radar, if they were aware of the decision at all, even as Trump campaigns for the presidency again.

“Trump’s long list of scandals makes any single moment seem less surprising,” said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “What might certainly derail other candidates or elected officials meets an eye roll among many Trump detractors — and only further mobilizes Trump supporters around the idea that this is a ‘witch hunt’ against him.”

Carroll this week savored the outcome of the lawsuit she filed the day New York, like some other states, opened a one-year window for adults to file suit over old sexual assault claims. Advocates say it can take years for victims like the 79-year-old advice columnist to move past their sense of shame and go public. But it’s often too late, as it was for her, to pursue criminal charges.

Trump dismissed the accusation as a way to boost sales of Carroll’s 2019 book, “What Do We Need Men For?”

But Carroll, in the wake of the verdict, said the case was never about money. She said she only hoped to clear her name, one the jury — in awarding nearly $3 million for defamation — agreed Trump had sullied.

Trump, in hours of deposition questioning, denied he knew Carroll despite photographic evidence, and he denigrated her as “not my type.” He also mused that celebrities had gotten away with sexually abusing women for centuries, “unfortunately, or fortunately.”

Trump doubled down on his insulting, often misogynistic rhetoric about women in a CNN Republican town hall Wednesday evening, mockingly calling Carroll a “wack job” in a comment that drew glee from the New Hampshire audience.

The day after his inauguration in January 2017, millions of people around the world took part in a Women’s March to protest his rise to power. Many sported bright pink hats that were the brainchild of the Pussyhat Project — a cat-eared design meant as a wry clapback to Trump’s infamous comments on women’s genitals.

“The Women’s March demonstrated that we are watching,” Williams said. “But in terms of the scope of sexualized violence, a $5 million fine to somebody who commands immense resources and will certainly not show that this does any material harm to him, there’s a grotesque imbalance with this outcome.”

Los Angeles screenwriter Krista Suh, who helped launch the Pussyhat Project, is not sure Tuesday’s verdict strikes a death knell for Trump’s political career.

“He’s very good at skirting the truth, and I’m just not sure this verdict pins him down, but it definitely helps,” the 35-year-old said.

The crowd at the Women’s March in Washington included an anonymous observer from Toronto: Andrea Constand, whose sexual abuse claims against actor Bill Cosby would soon go to trial.

In the years that followed, she would see Cosby convicted, sent to prison and then released when his conviction was overturned on appeal. Amid that setback, and the inability of victims like Carroll to pursue criminal cases, she believes the civil court process can alone be effective. Constand had received $3.4 million from Cosby in a civil settlement in 2006, long before the criminal case was reopened, and she used the money to rebuild her life and career.

“If that’s what it takes to get justice and you have no other option, then it is about the money, because the money helps you heal and move forward and accomplish things that you haven’t been able to accomplish because you’ve been gripped by your trauma,” she said.

Despite the jury’s view that Trump is a sexual offender, millions of women would likely still vote for him given the chance in 2024, to maintain the country’s social, economic or racial order, Williams said. More than half of white women voted for Trump in 2020.

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“There are people that like Trump’s brand of masculinity. They like the bravado, they like the confidence, they like a certain type of patriotism, they like the performance of a certain kind of virility,” Williams said. “So when these episodes of sexual misconduct come out, I think people are willing to give it a pass.”

For Nuñez, Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was “a double whammy” given his behavior. His presidency, and later the #MeToo movement, spanned her time in college at Loyola Marymount University. She sees progress in small victories, like when her workplace required sexual misconduct training.

“These beginnings give me hope that one day when I have my own children,” she said, “leaders will be held accountable for all their actions, and all types of violence against women will not be tolerated.”

​ Orange County Register 

Angels RBI league teaches fourth-graders core values by playing baseball

• May 3, 2023

Integrity, commitment, determination and persistence are a few of the nine core values that fourth-grade students at Garden Grove’s Iva Meairs Elementary School will be learning over the next seven weeks — but not in the classroom.

They will learn them playing baseball as part of the Angels RBI League on the Go program.

Angels RBI League President Dave Smith will be instructing the fourth-graders once a week on the basics of baseball and softball.

“We teach them life skills and character development and have some fun playing baseball,” Smith said. “Jackie Robinson had nine core values and those values are the pillars of our program.

“If it is integrity, play with integrity. If you didn’t catch the ball it’s OK. Just say you didn’t catch the ball. You’ll catch the next one,” Smith said. “If it’s persistence, if you swing the bat and don’t hit the ball every time that’s OK. Most players don’t hit the ball every time. Be persistent, and you’ll hit the ball and have fun.”

On the first day of the program, each student received a free Angels glove, jersey, tote bag and baseball cap.

“The beautiful thing about this program is it’s free,” Smith said. “Some of them will be introduced to the game for the first time, and (it will be) the first time they held a baseball. We don’t want it to be scary for them, so we’re going to do some fun things.”

When asked what she liked best about the program, 10-year-old Jade Fernandez said it was catching the ball and throwing it. “My favorite part is when we got in a circle and threw the ball in the air and whoever dropped it had to sit down.”

At the end of the first day’s lesson, students packed their new gear into their bags then received fist-bumps from Smith as they headed back to their classroom.

“It was fun,” Anna Loung, 10, said. “I got good at throwing and catching the ball.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Judge must reconsider effort to block Catholic diocese libel suit, appellate court rules

• May 3, 2023

A trial court must reconsider its denial of a motion to block a libel suit stemming from an email allegedly containing a false insinuation that Diocese of Orange Bishop Kevin Vann used Orange Catholic Foundation funds to cover legal expenses for clergy accused of child sex abuse, a state appellate court has ruled.

Suzanne Nunn, former interim executive director of the foundation, sent the email to 47 Catholic leaders throughout the country after Vann unilaterally terminated her and the organization’s board of directors in June 2020.

In the three-page email that bore the subject line, “You can’t make this stuff up,” Nunn asked a series of rhetorical questions regarding her firing and that of the board.

“Is this considered a hostile take-over to distribute funds the diocese needs to cover debt? Lawsuits?”  she asked, according to the appellate court. “Is this an overstep of authority? Is this the result of fatigue from the economic impact of the COVID crisis in addition to other financial stress? No one knows, it certainly was not shared or discussed prior to the removal of the foundation board.”

The foundation’s former board members reported Vann to the Holy See for allegedly acting beyond his authority and violating state and church law.

Vann and the diocese’s chief financial officer, Elizabeth Jensen, sued Nunn for libel and emotional distress, alleging the email implied they had committed a crime and engaged in unethical activities.

Nowhere does the email state that the bishop and Jensen planned to use Orange Catholic Foundation funds to litigate sexual abuse claims, according to the appellate court.

Vann and Jensen allege Nunn sent the email to repair her damaged reputation and increase potential job prospects with other Catholic institutions. They demanded that Nunn issue a retraction, but she did not respond.

Nunn filed a motion to strike the libel suit under California’s Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or anti-SLAPP, statute.

The statute, enacted by the state legislature in 1992, aims to protect defendants from meritless lawsuits that arise from protected activities such as the right to petition and engage in free speech.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Frederick P. Horn denied Nunn’s anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the libel suit after finding the complaint did not arise from protected activity.

Court disagrees with trial judge

Last week, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal disagreed with that ruling.

Nunn’s email addressed several issues impacting the public, including Vann’s alleged attempt to access millions of dollars in donations despite donor agreements restricting the use of those funds as well as his purported “take over” of the Orange Catholic Foundation’s board of directors, the court concluded.

Neither Nunn nor her attorney could be reached for comment. Vann declined to discuss the appellate decision.

“However, the well-developed factual record speaks for itself, and Bishop Vann looks forward to receiving the trial court’s decision in the near future,” Jarryd Gonzales, a spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, said Tuesday.

Jensen’s attorney, Andrew Prout, also declined to comment.

The nonprofit Orange Catholic Foundation was established in 2000 to support the philanthropic and charitable goals of Orange County’s Catholic community. It manages millions of dollars in charitable gifts, grants, donations, endowments and bequests, and uses funds to support Catholic charities, ministries, parishes and schools.

Many of the foundation’s donors earmark contributions for specific purposes and funds are distributed in accordance with each donor’s desire.

“Orange Catholic Foundation exists in large part to support the diocese in fulfilling its mission, which includes helping the needy,” the court said, adding it is fully independent of the diocese and is governed by an autonomous board of directors.

Vann, as the foundation’s sole member, has the authority to remove any board member who fails to act in accordance with the organization’s bylaws.

Diocese asks foundation for funds

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage In March 2020, forcing the shutdown of Catholic schools and worship services and prompting a drop in tuition payments and collections, Jensen asked the foundation to provide $12 million to offset a working capital deficit at the diocese, according to the court.

“Nunn declined the request and explained that Orange Catholic Foundation did not have any undesignated funds,” the court said. “According to Nunn, Jensen replied that Orange Catholic Foundation had buckets of money.”

Three days after the request, Jensen purportedly sent a letter to the foundation’s chairman asking for about $2.6 million from endowment funds to cover the financial needs of parishes and schools in light of the “unprecedented times.”

The foundation declined the diocese’s request for funds, but in April 2020 agreed to allocate $1.5 million to support churches and schools most impacted by the pandemic shutdown, said the court.

Two months later, Vann held a Zoom meeting with the Orange County Foundation’s executive committee. However, what transpired during the meeting is in dispute, the court said.

The bishop claimed that he expressed disappointment in delays in the search for a permanent executive director and the lack of progress in establishing a strategic plan for the foundation.

However, Nunn alleges Vann told the executive committee she was a liar, had caused irreparable damage by refusing to invade endowment funds and demanded that she be fired.

Board fired without warning

On June 19, 2020, Vann fired the foundation’s entire board without notice and then appointed a new board, which terminated Nunn’s contract and appointed a new interim executive director. The new board also began efforts to hire a permanent executive director.

The appellate court has remanded Nunn’s anti-SLAPP motion to Orange County Superior Court.

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County scores and player stats for Tuesday, May 2

• May 3, 2023

Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

Scores and stats from Orange County games on Tuesday, May 2

Click here for details about sending your team’s scores and stats to the Register.

TUESDAY’S SCORES

SOFTBALL

CIF-SS PLAYOFFS

Wild-Card Round

DIVISION 1

Pacifica 4, Bonita 1

Pac: Nally (W, CG 1R 11K). Ma’ae 3-3, HR, 3RBI. Bragg, 3B, R.

Other D1 scores

Mission Viejo 7, Camarillo 1

Chino Hills 3, Villa Park 0

DIVISION 3

La Canada 10, Beckman 3

Kennedy 8, Crescenta Valley 4

Fountain Valley 17, Sonora 6

DIVISION 6

Monrovia 8, Savanna 0

GIRLS LACROSSE

CIF-SS PLAYOFFS

Round 1

DIVISION 1

Marlborough 16, Santa Margarita 8

​ Orange County Register 

Mortgage fees to rise for buyers with high credit scores, fall for those with lower scores

• May 3, 2023

Heads up, homebuyers! Big changes have arrived in the way mortgage fees are calculated, and they could offer a windfall — or an unexpected surcharge — for your next home purchase.

Starting Monday, some fees will rise for homebuyers with higher credit scores, while buyers with lower scores will see a fee reduction.

The move is part of a broader effort by the federal government to “increase support for borrowers historically underserved by the housing finance market.” That includes people of color who have long faced discrimination in homebuying. Still, borrowers with lower credit scores will, for the most part, still pay much larger fees than those with higher scores.

Felicia Mares, a real estate agent in Oakland, said the change is a net positive. She said many of her clients with lower credit scores struggle to pay the steep closing costs that come with the Bay Area’s exorbitant real estate market.

“If anything, this is just an overdue balancing act for making it a little more affordable for those who need the help the most,” Mares said.

Many factors beyond credit scores go into determining closing costs, which can make up between 3% and 6% of a home loan. The updated fees are just one of those costs, and lenders can structure home loans in different ways to balance out the higher charges.

Even so, real estate experts say many buyers will feel the impact of the increases in one way or another. And they are coming at the same time that typical mortgage rates have risen to more than 6% over the past eight months, spiking monthly payments.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be passed on more to the consumer, which kind of sucks because everybody’s getting squeezed at the moment,” said Brett Nicoletti, a mortgage loan officer with Academy Mortgage in Los Gatos.

The updated fees — meant to offset the risk of borrowers going into default — will apply only to mortgages backed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The quasi-governmental entities buy and sell the majority of home loans in the U.S. Their “conforming loans” generally come with lower interest rates than those not backed by the two entities.

How much could mortgage fees shift?

A buyer who makes a 20% down payment with a credit score of 660 — considered a “fair” score — would see their fee dip from 2.75% to 1.875%, for example. For a $1 million home loan, the change provides a $8,750 discount, reducing a fee of $27,500 to $18,750.

Another buyer, also making a 20% down payment, who has a credit score of 740 — considered a “very good” score — would see their fee climb from 0.5% to 0.875%. For a $1 million home loan, the fee would increase by $3,750 to $8,750.

The more money a buyer puts down, the lower the fee. A buyer with a 660 credit score making a 30% down payment, for instance, would see the fee drop to 0.75%. With a 40% down payment, they wouldn’t pay a fee at all.

To reduce the higher charges for some buyers, lenders can raise the mortgage rates they offer and cover some of the upfront costs themselves. But that still increases the overall cost of a loan. “You have to take into consideration how much leeway lenders have in eating some of that,” Nicoletti said.

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In Washington D.C., some lawmakers are pushing back on the change. In a letter to the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Republican Reps. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Warren Davidson of Ohio demanded the agency reverse the new rules — which they argued “amount to a tax on all creditworthy … homebuyers to subsidize borrowers with riskier loans.” They threatened legislation to repeal them.

In response, agency Director Sandra Thompson denied the move is a subsidy. She said the agency is instead aiming to “more accurately align pricing with the expected financial performance and risks of the underlying loans.”

Whatever ultimately comes of the brewing fight, maintaining good credit will still give buyers a leg up on owning a home.

“The fact remains true that the better your credit is, the better your rate is going to be,” Mares said.

​ Orange County Register 

Anaheim ‘hospitality worker bill of rights’ heads to city leaders

• May 3, 2023

A union seeking higher wages and workplace protections for Anaheim hotel and event center workers is ready to place a “hospitality worker bill of rights” ordinance before the city council for a vote.

The city’s mostly non-union hospitality workers gathered more than 26,000 valid signatures for the UNITE HERE Local 11-led initiative — far more than the 16,643 that were needed. The city council is tentatively scheduled to consider the measure on May 16.

The council will have the option of adopting the ordinance, sending it back for economic review or denying it. If it opts to deny the ordinance, the measure will be placed before voters as a ballot initiative.

SEE MORE: Hotel workers to rally for higher pay, better working conditions

Los Angeles, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Glendale and West Hollywood have adopted similar hospitality ordinances in recent years, while Irvine became the first Orange County city to do so in 2022.

If passed by the City Council, the ordinance would provide:

Panic buttons with a security guard on call, mandatory training and security protocols to protect hotel housekeepers from sexual assault and threatening conduct by guests and others
Fair pay when housekeepers are assigned heavy workloads and a prohibition on mandatory overtime after 10 hours
A $25 minimum wage for hotel housekeepers and other hotel and event center workers with an annual increase in wage to reflect the cost of living
Protections ensuring workers are retained when new owners or operators take over

The push to adopt the ordinance comes as workers across the hospitality sector say they have been forced to perform increasingly burdensome workloads without fair pay as business returns to pre-pandemic levels.

RELATED: Long Beach hotel workers hail $4-an-hour pay hike in new contract

At the same time, the hotel industry’s profits are soaring as pricing for hotel rooms exceeds the rate of inflation, the union said, and the industry’s revenue per room has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

Inflation’s sting

Unite Here Local 11 represents a small portion of the city’s hospitality workers and many of the non-unionized employees are hurting, union co-President Ada Briceno said.

“Many of them are couch surfing or living in their cars,” she said. “They are one paycheck away from homelessness. They are really getting squeezed right now.”

SEE MORE: Janitors say they’re understaffed, overworked at Irvine Co.-owned properties

Unionized hospitality workers who feel their existing benefits are superior can have their labor contract supersede the ordinance, the union said.

If the law is approved by Anaheim’s city Council, hospitality workers who make beds, cook meals, serve coffee, wash dishes and cater to the thousands of guests who travel to Anaheim’s tourist attractions such as Disneyland and the Honda Center could afford to live in the city where they work, Briceno said.

Irayda Torrez, who has worked as a housekeeper at the Hilton Anaheim hotel for 33 years, applauded the measure.

“I want Anaheim to know that all hotel workers have the right to protections and fair pay for heavy workloads,” Torrez said in a statement. “Housekeepers want to feel respected by having fair pay for our hard work and a wage that accounts for the rising cost of living.”

Related links

Disney security workers getting $8 an hour raise in new contract
Long Beach hotel workers hail $4-an-hour pay hike in new contract
Grocery workers rally in opposition of Kroger/Albertsons ‘mega-merger’
Healthcare workers holding rallies statewide to protest low staffing
Papa John’s workers picket after sudden store closure, layoffs

​ Orange County Register