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Students live in tents, do homework under flashlights, and deal without textbooks months after California’s massive Camp fire
The Camp fire was the deadliest and most destructive in the history of California. It destroyed 153,000 acres and killed 85 people.
Months later, Northern California students are struggling to press ahead without basics like a roof over their head, internet access, or even textbooks.
Take the town of Paradise. The fire crippled its educational infrastructure, destroying three campuses, scattering students across Northern California. Since November, teachers have taught classes in an airport, a mall, and a LensCrafters as other districts struggled to absorb displaced students.
Brianna Sacks spent time with these students, and you should read her report on what they are dealing with.
One put it this way: “Staying in school is the hardest thing to do now.”
More than 300 LA college students and staff are being quarantined because of a measles outbreak
Two universities in Los Angeles are quarantining hundreds of students and faculty who can't prove that they've been vaccinated against measles.
Both University of California, Los Angeles and California State University took the steps after verifying that an infected person had been on each campus.
The virus can remain in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person has left the room, making crowded classrooms, dormitories, and hallways prime targets for the disease to quickly spread.
Locating and quarantining potentially at-risk students and staff is difficult. Health officials have to find those who might have been in the infected space and verify if they've been vaccinated.
SNAPSHOTS
A Coast Guard lieutenant accused of planning a terrorist attack won’t be charged with terrorism. Lt. Christopher Hasson, 50, was accused of plotting a white supremacist terror attack “on a scale rarely seen in this country.” A judge said that since prosecutors did not bring terrorism charges, Hasson is eligible for bail.
“Anna Delvey” AKA the Soho Scammer has been found guilty of multiple fraud charges. The woman — whose real name is Anna Sorokin — posed for nearly a year as a Manhattan socialite and managed to con trendsetters, businesses, and even banks. Stories of her schemes were published in Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.
A 5-year-old allegedly killed by his parents was forced to stay in a cold shower and beaten, police say. Authorities said Andrew “AJ” Freund’s parents, JoAnn Cunningham and Andrew Freund Sr., buried his body in a shallow grave and claimed he had disappeared.
Rami Malek is playing the villain in the Daniel Craig’s last James Bond movie. Killing Eve creator and writer and Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge is serving as one of the film's screenwriters. In other words, I’m...excited for this one?
Taylor Swift unveiled a new song and music video after teasing fans for weeks. After dropping clue after clue, Swift finally dropped the new song, “Me!”, featuring Brandon Urie of Panic! At The Disco. It’s a banger.
Why Hollywood desperately needs Avengers: Endgame
At this point, it’s basically impossible for you not to know that the final installment of Marvel’s Avengers comes out today. You don’t have to be a box office analyst to predict that Endgame is going to make roughly one bazillion dollars.
The thing is, the movie is coming out in the middle of a broader calamity for Hollywood: the steepest decline in domestic box office revenues in nearly a decade.
As of this week, the domestic box office has dropped a shocking 16.4% from the same point in 2018. It’s the steepest year-on-year decline since 2011.
Read Adam Vary’s analysis on how the industry is counting on Endgame to reverse the trend.
Since you can’t get Endgame tickets, read these essays instead
Fixer Upper Is Over, But Waco’s Transformation Is Just Beginning. Chip and Joanna Gaines, the stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper, helped transform Waco, a sleepy Texas town, into a tourist mecca. Read Anne Helen Petersen’s piece on why that transformation comes at a price. From the piece: “As a white, middle-class woman, it’s difficult to shake the feeling, walking from shop to shop, of being haunted by the physical manifestation of a targeted Instagram ad.”
Why The Jonas Brothers’ Comeback Is Working. The last thing I expected to be talking about in 2019 is the Jonas Brothers. Yet here we are, and they’re the first boy band to reach no.1 in two decades. What? Pier Dominguez wrote about why the comeback worked: “the Jonas Brothers are finally succeeding at selling themselves to a willing audience — perhaps one that never left them, but simply grew up too.”
It’s Starting To Look Like God Won’t Save Us From Global Warming. About four years ago, Pope Francis called on the world to end manmade global warming. Cut to now, and a mass religious movement fighting to cut emissions hasn’t manifested. Dan Vergano wrote about why the “greening” of religion is seeming less and less likely.