After previously indicating he might veto the measure, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law Wednesday that will make it easier for agricultural laborers to join unions, a hard-fought win for the United Farm Workers. The signature came after union members and their supporters made a 335-mile pilgrimage from Delano, Calif., to Sacramento and then camped out in front of the state Capitol for weeks as dignitaries visited — a vivid and theatrical display of political heft. Adding to the pressure, President Biden took the unusual step of inserting himself into state politics, releasing a statement over Labor Day weekend urging Newsom to enact the law, known as Assembly Bill 2183. Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) also joined the chorus. Finally, Newsom got on board. “California’s farmworkers are the lifeblood of our state, and they have the fundamental right to unionize and advocate for themselves in the workplace,” he said in a statement announcing his signature. “California is proud to stand with the next generation of leaders carrying on this movement.” In response, the UFW tweeted out of a photo of farmworkers and supporters marching up the San Joaquin Valley in the hot sun alongside Highway 99. “Gov. Newsom has signed AB 2183,” the tweet read. “Sí, se puede.” The new law expands voting options for farmworkers by allowing them to vote by mail or drop off a ballot card at the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Farmworkers can also receive assistance filling out their ballots. Previously, secret ballot elections were held at a polling place designated by the board.

The rapper who achieved enormous success in the 90s was visiting a friend late Wednesday afternoon when he passed away. Coolio's longtime manager, Jarez, says Coolio went to the bathroom at his friend's house, but when he didn't come out after a while ... the friend kept calling for him, and eventually went in and found Coolio laying on the floor.

The Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins tribute featured a host of special guests but for some reason they also felt the need to bring out Dave Chappelle.

A teen girl killed when her fugitive father was involved in a shootout with police is believed to have participated in shooting at deputies.

Mandatory, extensive overtime hurts workers, and OSHA may be able to regulate it

Bloomberg first reported on data hosted on Dune Analytics that showed trading volume for NFTs has gone from $17 billion to just $466 million from January to September this year. That’s a precipitous 97% drop in just nine months. The data was collected from NFT trading platforms including OpenSea, NFTX, LarvaLabs, LooksRare, SuperRare, Rarible, and Foundation... This news makes many companies’ belated attempts to cash in on the NFT craze now seem even more ludicrous. The thing is, more companies are trying to implement NFTs onto their platforms by simply not calling them NFTs. Starbucks recently talked about its own NFT platform but called them “stamps.” Reddit announced “collectible avatars” in July, but company execs have been loath to even use any reference to NFTs in any of its promotional material.

After the USS Bonhomme Richard fire, investigators found missing fire hoses, a broken sprinkler system and other systemic failures. The Navy is still accusing a sailor of arson, against the advice of a military judge. On the morning of July 12, 2020, the first orange flickers of destruction took hold in the bowels of the hulking USS Bonhomme Richard as it sat moored at a San Diego naval base. Unimpeded, the fire gathered force, surging upward, conquering one level of the 844-foot ship and then the next, while the crew — the ship’s critical firefighting force — fled to the pier. There, the captain and his sailors stood by as the Bonhomme Richard burned, in cruel irony of its motto “I have not yet begun to fight.” Not until the San Diego fire department went aboard did anyone spray water on the fire — nearly two hours after it had started. By then it was too late. Gas cylinders were exploding and shooting through the air, and firefighters didn’t have a map or even a sailor to guide them through the smoky maze of the ship. A firefighter’s warning that a compartment was “about to blast” forced firefighters off the Bonhomme Richard just minutes before an explosion so powerful it was heard 13 miles away and hurled debris onto a nearby destroyer. That afternoon, the flames, hot enough to warp steel beams, danced along the flight deck and engulfed the ship’s outer structure. As the inferno raged, it melted the inside of the 300-ton control center on top of the ship, spewing molten aluminum onto the decks below. Before nightfall, the Bonhomme Richard was a salvage heap. Sailors later watched as the forward mast, where the American flag flies while the ship is at sea, collapsed.

Gawker: If Netflix asked, would you have played Dahmer? JP: No, I don’t think so. I don’t know what’s to be learned from Jeffrey Dahmer in 2022. I think the money should be given to people who want to build a world with a little imagination, and not just make the same Jeffrey Dahmer story over and over again.

Years before people in Jackson were recently left without running water for several days, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves claimed to have helped block money to fund water system repairs in the capital city. Reeves, a Republican, blames Jackson’s water crisis on mismanagement at the city level. The city’s latest water troubles are far from its first, and they have stemmed from decaying infrastructure beyond one water treatment plant. The EPA said 300 boil water notices have been issued over the past two years in the city. As Reeves climbed Mississippi’s political ladder, he cited his opposition to financially helping the capital as evidence of his fiscal conservatism. Jackson-area lawmakers say the troubled water system is one example of Jackson’s status as a political punching bag for Republican officials, who control the Legislature and the state Bond Commission.

Nearly half of the planet’s bird species are in decline, according to a definitive report that paints the grimmest picture yet of the destruction of avian life. The State of the World’s Birds report, which is released every four years by BirdLife International, shows that the expansion and intensification of agriculture is putting pressure on 73% of species. Logging, invasive species, exploitation of natural resources and climate breakdown are the other main threats. Globally, 49% of bird species are declining, one in eight are threatened with extinction and at least 187 species are confirmed or suspected to have gone extinct since 1500. Most of these have been endemic species living on islands, although there is an increase in birds now going extinct on larger land masses, particularly in tropical regions. In Ethiopia, for example, the conversion of grassland to farmland has caused an 80% decrease in endemic Liben larks since 2007. Just 6% of bird species globally are increasing.

Not just the academics, but industrial AI needs a deep re-think, argues LeCun. The self-driving car crowd, startups such as Wayve, have been "a little too optimistic," he says, by thinking they could "throw data at" large neural networks "and you can learn pretty much anything."

Students at over 90 public schools are protesting the governor’s proposal to roll back transgender rights.

The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.

A Fontana man accused of shooting his wife and allegedly kidnapping his 15-year-old daughter, leading to an Amber Alert, has been shot in Hesperia, officials said Tuesday. Anthony Graziano, the suspect who has been on the run since Monday morning, was fatally shot during the incident. The shootout was preceded by a pursuit after authorities came in contact with Graziano earlier Tuesday upon receiving a tip that the suspect's vehicle had been seen. After a pursuit and shooting, the California Highway Patrol canceled the Amber Alert for 15-year-old Savannah Graziano, the suspect's daughter. Video from the scene reveals a barrage of gunfire on the 15 Freeway near Main Street in Hesperia, where the shootout occurred. Graziano's white truck was riddled with bullet holes.

In windowless cells in the former death row ward. In the coming days, Louisiana officials will incarcerate about two dozen children inside the old death row of Louisiana State Penitentiary, also called Angola, a massive maximum security prison for adult men that was once notorious for its violence. Children as young as 10 with a history of assault may be transferred from their current juvenile correctional facilities to the former death row, where they will sleep in windowless cells with floor-to-ceiling metal bars that lock them in. The conditions are more punitive than those at the state’s high-security juvenile facilities, where kids normally sleep in dorms. The Office of Juvenile Justice will house the children at Angola temporarily while finishing construction on another place to detain them. Several Louisiana law clinics and the ACLU sued to try to stop the transfers, arguing that keeping children at the adult prison—even temporarily—was unconstitutional and psychologically harmful, and that it might increase their risk of suicide. Though the kids will be housed separately from the adult men, the facility “is going to scream ‘prison’” to them, Vincent Schiraldi, a juvenile justice expert for the plaintiffs and the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, told the court. But on Friday, Chief District Judge Shelly Dick reluctantly signed off on the plan, stating that incarcerating kids at Angola would potentially be “traumatizing” for them, but that government officials had nowhere better to keep the kids, who pose security risks. “The prospect of putting a teenager to bed at night in a locked cell behind razor wire surrounded by swamps at Angola is disturbing,” the judge wrote. But “the threat of harm these youngsters present to themselves, and others, is intolerable.”

Gadsden County religious leaders are demanding a local commissioner and Gov. Ron DeSantis "come forward" to address allegations that the commissioner resigned last Friday after a photo surfaced purportedly showing him wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood at what could have been a Halloween party years earlier. Jeffery Moore, a Havana resident and former Department of Revenue employee, was appointed by DeSantis in late July and abruptly resigned from the post in Florida’s only predominantly Black county after the photo began circulating in the local community. Moore, the only Republican on the five-member board, also ended his campaign for the District 2 race, which was to be decided in the Nov. 8 general election. In a short letter to the Governor's Office, Moore did not explain exactly why he opted to resign. "Please accept this notification of my resignation, effective this date of Sept. 23, 2022, from the Gadsden County Board of County Commissioners," Moore wrote. "Thank you for the opportunity to have served in the position, however for personal reasons I am no longer able to continue." Moore did not respond to questions about his resignation, the photo or the KKK outfit. In an email to the Tallahassee Democrat, he said he was "in the middle of hurricane preparations" and would be in contact on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

Players in mobile games trigger downloads of shows no one may be hearing for more than seconds

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had weeks ago warned Germany about possible attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, German magazine Spiegel said on Tuesday, after gas leaks in Russia pipelines to Germany were reported. The German government received the CIA tip in summer, Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources, adding that Berlin assumes a targeted attack on Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

The 23-year-old suspect burned the cross in front of his Black neighbors because of their race, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

At least two more minors made pregnant by sexual assault were forced to leave Ohio to avoid having their rapists’ babies.