- U.S.Bloomberg
Two Million Californians Go Dark and the Heat Is Just Beginning
(Bloomberg) -- As many as two million Californians were plunged into darkness over the course of four hours late Friday in the first rolling blackouts to hit the state since the 2001 energy crisis.And that was only Day One. A relentless heat wave is expected to blanket California through the middle of next week, sending temperatures soaring past 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in some parts. People blasting their air conditioners and fans to keep cool are straining the region’s power system and raising the specter of a repeat of Friday’s sudden and largely unannounced outages.It started at about 6:30 p.m. local time on Friday, when California’s grid operator determined through a complex calculation that the state’s power reserves had fallen below a critical threshold and called a Stage 3 grid emergency, which triggers what it describes as “load interruption.” The last time such a declaration was made during the 2000 and 2001 electricity crisis, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses took turns being plunged into darkness, power prices surged to a record and the state’s largest utility was forced into bankruptcy.“We had an energy shortfall,” Anne Gonzales, a spokeswoman for grid manager California Independent System Operator, said in a phone interview late Friday. The agency put the call out to the state’s utilities to cut demand by about 1,000 megawatts. That’s enough to power about 750,000 homes, by California ISO’s estimates, affecting well over 2 million people based on the average household size.The heat and the blackouts are hitting at an especially vulnerable time for the region with the pandemic forcing people to remain at home. They’re also coming less than a year after utilities in the region deliberately cut off power to millions of customers in an effort to prevent their power lines from igniting wildfires amid unusually strong winds -- another consequence of increasingly extreme weather brought on in part by climate change.Widespread HeatRegions around the world have been grappling with extreme heat in recent weeks. What was forecast as one of the worst heat waves in more than a century gripped parts of Europe in August. The eastern U.S. is just emerging from July temperatures that were expected to topple daily records in Manhattan and Boston dating to the 19th century. But few, if any, have had to resort to the rotating outages that California orchestrated late Friday.The bulk of the shutoffs came from PG&E Corp. The state’s biggest utility said it expected as many as 250,000 customers to be shut off in rolling outages, with power to be fully restored by 11 p.m. “Unfortunately, because of the emergency nature of this, we weren’t able to notify customers in advance,” Jeff Smith, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview. The outages occurred for 60 to 90 minutes on a rotating basis through the utility’s Northern and Central California service territory, he said.Edison International’s Southern California Edison utility began shutting off customers shortly before 7 p.m., with about 132,000 powerless as of 7:45 p.m. “It’s happening pretty fast,” said spokesman David Song. Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric utility said shutoffs were “widespread” across its territory in San Diego and southern Orange counties.Temperatures climbed to a record in parts of the Bay Area on Friday, according to the National Weather Service, with San Francisco reaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit and San Jose at 103.California won’t see a respite from the high temperatures until later next week, based on National Weather Service forecasts. The weather agency had posted excessive heat warnings for much of California from Friday through Wednesday.Electricity prices have already hit two-year highs as weather forecasters called for extreme temperatures. Spot power prices surged past $1,000 a megawatt-hour across California on Friday evening. Natural gas prices in Southern California more than doubled on the increased need for the fuel for power production, according to report from BloombergNEF.Grid operators will continue to monitor the situation throughout the weekend and into next week, Gonzales said. The odds of rolling outages on Saturday and Sunday might prove lower as demand is typically weaker outside of work hours. Asked whether the California ISO will need to call for additional power shutoffs, she said: “We don’t expect one, but we are prepared for one.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- PoliticsThe Wrap
Maher: Trump, Confused by Kamala Harris, ‘Didn’t Know What Country to Tell Her To Go Back To’
On the latest episode of “Real Time” on HBO, host Bill Maher had nothing but nice things to say about Kamala Harris in his first monologue since she became Joe Biden’s running mate. But he did have something negative to say about Donald Trump’s response to Harris joining the Democratic ticket.“The Democratic ticket got set this week. Kamala Harris is going to be Joe Biden’s vice president. I think that’s very exciting, very historic. A Black Asian-American woman whose mother is from Indian and whose father is from Jamaica. Trump is so confused, he didn’t know where to tell her to go back to,” Maher quipped just moments into the episode.“But I’m excited. I think she’s gonna be great. I think she’s great. I think she is ready to wake Joe Biden from a nap on day one.Also Read: Lawrence Wilkerson Walks Bill Maher Through Worst Case Scenarios if Trump Loses This Fall“But of course, you know, no sooner had they announced that name, you know — they didn’t get to the ‘Harris’ and the Republicans pounced. Trump was attacking. ‘She’s nasty, disrespectful phony.’ Geez, can she get in the door? Could you let mommy put her purse down?”And Maher being Maher, he had to find someway to slip a weed joke in there.“But it’s exciting and it’s historic. A daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. Or what we stoners call Indica,” he said, before wrapping up the thread with a zinger directed at the subject of leftist inclusivity.Also Read: Thomas Chatterton Williams Compares Cancel Culture Fight to Civil Rights Struggle on Maher“Ticks a lot of a lot of boxes for the left wing of the party. A woman who’s half black and half Asian. Not a lesbian, but she says she’s willing to learn.”He of course threw out jokes about other things during his monologue — it wasn’t all Kamala Harris chatter. He had plenty of coronavirus and Trump jokes to make as well.“I tell ya, America, we are just a loser country. I mean, we got more cases than anybody. We’re just giving up on trying to control it. Now for America it’s just like something you want to kind of live with, like school shootings or homelessness or drugstores that have the condoms locked behind the glass case,” he quipped.Also Read: Seth Meyers: Republicans Are 'Whiniest Little Babies in the World' About Kamala Harris (Video)“Well the president this week was commenting on the Spanish Flu. he’s quite a history buff, the president. And he said that in 1917, there was a great pandemic which was probably which probably ended the Second World War. OK, I don’t even know where to start with that. It wasn’t the Second World War, it’s the First World War. It didn’t end it, but OK, fine. This weekend actually is an anniversary of World War II. It’s the 75th anniversary of VJ-Day, which Trump got interested in in for about a half a second because he thought somebody said VaJJ.”And naturally, Maher had to call attention to when Trump tweeted angrily at him this week over Maher’s fake eulogy for Trump that he delivered at the end of last week’s “Real Time.”“Well, last week I gave him a eulogy, in good fun. I was not mean — too much. But I think everybody benefits from hearing a eulogy in their own lifetime. That was my point. He did not see it that way,” Maher said.“He wrote on Twitter, he said, ‘I watched Bill Maher this week for the first time in a long time.’ It’s always either accidentally watching me or watching me for the first time in a long time and then oh boy, did he level at it. He said, ‘Bill Maher, totally shot, looks terrible, exhausted, gaunt and weak.’ Perhaps, but in my own defense, earlier that day I had to walk down a ramp. Anyone would look bad.”And, finally, he got to those executive orders Trump signed that may or may not actually be all that helpful to struggling Americans.“The president had a big week in the Oval Office. He made a big show of signing some executive orders to halt evictions, which we’re gonna have to do, and to boost unemployment pay. Of course, these executive orders will have exactly as much effect in the real world as that time he redirected a hurricane with Sharpie,” Maher said.“So, don’t worry. If you’re out of work or about to lose your apartment, imaginary help is on the way, folks.”Read original story Maher: Trump, Confused by Kamala Harris, ‘Didn’t Know What Country to Tell Her To Go Back To’ At TheWrap
- SportsYahoo Sports
Cowboys' DeMarcus Lawrence says pregnant wife made call to not opt out
After speculation that he wouldn't play, DeMarcus Lawrence said that his wife made the call to not opt out.
- CelebrityInside Edition CBS
Video Robin Williams’ Widow Says the Actor Changed While Filming ‘Night at the Museum’
A new documentary tells the story of renowned comedian Robin Williams' final months as he struggled with undiagnosed Lewy Body Dementia before taking his own life. "Robin's Wish," directed by Tyler Norwood, features commentary from his widow, Susan, and others who worked with him. Susan said her husband knew something was terribly wrong and battled to get answers right up until his death, even while he kept making movies. She said Robin was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s before his suicide.
- HealthEat This, Not That!
Dr. Fauci Just Warned of This 'Very Disturbing' COVID Symptom
Fever or chills, dry cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, loss of sense of smell and taste. These are just a few of the scary symptoms that people infected with COVID-19 are reporting. Usually it takes a few weeks—or even more than a month—for these manifestations of the highly infectious virus to subside. Most people do get better. However, there are some people who are battling symptoms of the virus log after the infection subsides, a phenomenon that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, deems "very disturbing." He's Concerned for 'Long-Haulers'During an Instagram interview with actor and UT Austin Professor Matthew McConaughe on Thursday, the NIH Director expressed his concern about what the group of people the medical world has come to describe as "long haulers." "We're starting to see more and more people who apparently recover from the actual viral part of it, and then weeks later, they feel weak, they feel tired, they feel sluggish, they feel short of breath," Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, explained. Read all 98 Symptoms Coronavirus Patients Say They've Had right here."It's a chronic projection forward of symptoms, even though the virus is gone, and we think that's probably an immunological effect."RELATED: The CDC Just Announced You Shouldn't Wear These MasksHe admitted that although health experts are researching the phenomenon and learning more about it every week, they are still puzzled why some people are left with these puzzling symptoms, while others make a complete recovery. "It's very disturbing, because if this is true for a lot of people, then just recovering from this may not be OK." The CDC Confirms His WorriesIn late July, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report confirming that thirty-five percent of coronavirus sufferers surveyed by the agency were still experiencing its wrath two to three weeks after testing positive for the virus. An interesting aspect of their study is that they only surveyed individuals with the virus who hadn't been admitted into a hospital, signifying a seemingly milder infection. Additionally, those who reported lingering symptoms weren't just older people. 26% of those between the ages of 18 to 34 and 32% of those 35 to 49 reported longer term symptoms. "COVID-19 can result in prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults," the report's authors wrote. Until a vaccine is widely available, do everything you can to prevent getting—and spreading—COVID-19: Wear a face mask, get tested if you think you have coronavirus, avoid crowds (and bars, and house parties), practice social distancing, only run essential errands, wash your hands regularly, disinfect frequently touched surfaces, and to get through this pandemic at your healthiest, don't miss these 37 Places You're Most Likely to Catch Coronavirus.
- EntertainmentINSIDER
The actor who played Stanley in 'The Office' shared screenshots of racist messages he received on Instagram
Leslie David Baker, who played Stanley in "The Office," received racist messages on Instagram in response to his idea of a comedy spin-off.
- LifestyleIn The Know
Former McDonald's employee reveals alleged 'secrets' she learned at work: 'Will never eat there again'
If you’ve had a tough job before, you know how relieving it can be when you can finally walk away and talk about it.
