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The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) exists to improve regional air quality. I recently joined its Governing Board, eager to support the cause. Following my first meeting, though, I am deeply concerned, not only for my Orange County constituents, but also for all residents of the four-county SCAQMD service area. The SCAQMD is considering two rules that are far-reaching in scope and expense but will seemingly do little to clean the air. If implemented, these rules would impose ruinous expenses on already stretched residents and businesses, potentially cause people to lose housing, and strain an already stretched electricity grid. SCAQMD intends to adopt two rules on all homeowners, multi-family residents, and businesses – more than 17 million people in all. The goal: eliminate natural gas appliances. Proposed Amended Rules 1111 and 1121 require homeowners, landlords, and businesses to replace furnaces and water heaters with costly new “zero-emission” electrical units. Fortunately, anyone potentially affected by the rules has time to weigh in. As proposed under Rule 1121, if your water heater breaks after January 1, 2027, the government will force you to replace it with an electric model. These contraptions are prohibitively expensive, would require major home or business electrical upgrades, and likely impose lengthy permit wait times. Likewise, Rule 1111 targets natural gas furnaces – if your furnace fails in 2028 or beyond, you must replace it with electric technology. The cost to implement these rules? We’re talking potentially tens of thousands of dollars per unit for every homeowner, landlord, and business forced to make these purchases. The overall cost to implement the rules is at least $20.4 billion throughout the entire SCAQMD “Service” area. While staff promises that “costs will come down over time,” that won’t help consumers today or tomorrow. These rules make life in Southern California even more unaffordable. And make no mistake: You will be forced to comply. The old technology – the water heaters and furnaces you are using today – will be illegal to purchase or install. Only the wealthiest of Southern California residents can afford such extravagance. Don’t even think about buying replacement units in other states and importing them. You will not be allowed to get a permit to install non-complying appliances, nor can you sell a property containing unpermitted units. You will have to comply. For new construction, these rules would take effect in 2026, further elevating construction costs and housing prices, thereby putting homeownership even more out of reach for many Southern Californians. But the story takes a darker turn. The new zero-emission water heaters and furnaces require a substantial increase in electricity usage, further challenging California’s already stressed electric grid. We know how vulnerable, erratic, and costly our power supply is. Water heaters and furnaces aren’t luxury items – they are essential. With millions of new electric devices pulling power from the grid, we risk even more frequent brownouts or outages. How much will this cost? Surprisingly, SCAQMD has yet to provide an accurate and comprehensive assessment of the rules’ overall cost. Despite lacking this important information, and whether the marginal costs of whatever cleaner air might result is worth the cost, the rules move forward towards final adoption. Here are examples of the impact in the real world. The owner of one 500-unit apartment complex in my district, built in 2008, expects the compliance cost to be a staggering $19 million – over $37,000 per unit! Landlords will, by necessity, have to pass along as much of these costs as possible to their tenants. For older properties, the numbers are worse. A 300-unit apartment building in Newport Beach, built in the 1970s, faces compliance costs of $24 million, or over $72,000 per unit. The expenses for individual homeowners will likely be similarly eye-watering. Housing affordability is already in crisis. Adding these steep, unexpected costs will make it even more difficult for families to afford a place to live, for young people to enter the housing market, and for builders to create much-needed affordable housing units. Related Articles Commentary | Reparations return to the California Legislature Commentary | 50 years of economic policy killed American Dreams Commentary | Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons could address some real injustices Commentary | Michael Huemer: Confronting progressive myths Commentary | Newsom’s ‘Trump-proof’ plan raises more questions than answers for Black Californians I support efforts to improve the region’s air quality, but question whether these rules accomplish that goal at anything close to a reasonable cost. The elimination of natural gas water heaters and furnaces promises miniscule regional air quality benefits while imposing maximum consumer pain and taxing an already over-extended electricity grid. I joined in the SCAQMD board vote to delay action on these proposed rules until February 2025 – hopefully to make the public aware of these rules. You can make your voice heard so as to better inform staff and SCAQMD decision makers of the public’s position at: ClerkOfBoard@aqmd.gov . Increased housing is among the region’s top priorities; Rules 1111 and 1121 run counter to this priority. They achieve minimal air quality improvements, are prohibitively expensive and ignore the region’s energy challenges. I look forward to seeing staff’s final reports and recommendations after public input on these rules, before the final vote. Donald P. Wagner is Chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors and a member of the Governing Board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.Significant milestones in life and career of Jimmy Carterfortune rat 。

In a surprising turn of events, Bapusaheb Pathare of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) clinched a victory over Sunil Tingre in the Vadgaon Sheri assembly constituency in Pune city on Saturday. Pathare, who was lagging behind until the 15th round of vote counting, managed to win the seat by a margin of 4,710 votes. This election outcome comes after Tingre, the incumbent MLA, faced allegations earlier this year related to shielding a minor involved in a deadly accident. Facing criticism from NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar, Tingre was previously successful in defeating BJP's Jagdish Mulik in 2019. (With inputs from agencies.)Alexander: Is diminished USC-UCLA game another reminder of what we’ve lost?Saints QB situation remains cloudy as matchup with Washington nears

CLEVELAND — Alyssa Nakken, the first woman to coach in a Major League Baseball game, is leaving the San Francisco Giants to join the Cleveland Guardians. Nakken made history in 2022 when she took over as first-base coach following an ejection. A former college softball star at Sacramento State, Nakken joined the Giants in 2014 and was promoted to a spot on manager Gabe Kapler's staff in 2020, becoming the majors' first full-time female coach. Nakken has been hired as an assistant director within player development for the Guardians, who won the AL Central last season under first-year manager Stephen Vogt — the AL Manager of the Year. With Cleveland, the 34-year-old Nakken will work with former Giants coaches Craig Albernaz and Kai Correa. Her exact duties are still being determined. "We thank Alyssa Nakken for her incredible contributions to the San Francisco Giants and for trailblazing a path for women in sports,” the Giants said in a statement on Friday. "Her leadership, dedication, and passion for the game have inspired countless individuals, and her impact has been truly transformative for the Giants organization and the baseball community. “As she embarks on this exciting new chapter in her career, we have no doubt that she’ll continue to inspire and achieve great things. We wish her and her family nothing but the best.” Nakken is the second on-field female coach hired by the Guardians. In 2023, the club brought in Amanda Kamekona as their hitting development coach for their year-round training academy in Goodyear, Arizona. Last season, she was an assistant hitting coach at Double-A Akron. Kamekona was twice a third-team All-American at UCLA after transferring from Cal State Fullerton.

D usk had fallen when Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, Syria’s new ruler, pulled up to the entrance of the apartment building where he grew up in southwest Damascus. Earlier that day, his troops had entered Syria’s capital in triumph, sweeping all before them, liberating prisoners from their dungeons and taking over government ministries. But Jolani had a more personal mission: he wanted to go home. He went up to the tenth floor in the lift, along with four armed guards, and rang the doorbell. His arrival came as something of a shock to Dr Ahmed Suleiman, a mechanical engineer, and his wife, the flat’s current occupants. However, according to the building’s caretaker, Amer, who witnessed the scene, Jolani was very polite. “Would you mind vacating this apartment?” he asked. “You see, my parents have fond memories of this place and would like to move back.”In a surprising turn of events, Bapusaheb Pathare of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) clinched a victory over Sunil Tingre in the Vadgaon Sheri assembly constituency in Pune city on Saturday. Pathare, who was lagging behind until the 15th round of vote counting, managed to win the seat by a margin of 4,710 votes. This election outcome comes after Tingre, the incumbent MLA, faced allegations earlier this year related to shielding a minor involved in a deadly accident. Facing criticism from NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar, Tingre was previously successful in defeating BJP's Jagdish Mulik in 2019. (With inputs from agencies.)

It did not require much in ’s to run into trouble with the secret police – and it always ended badly. Mohammed Ismail al-Daher’s only crime was having the same name as a suspect wanted by the Palestine Branch, one of the most feared intelligence units in Assad’s entire security apparatus. It did not seem to matter what he did, what records he kept to prove he was not that Ismail al-Daher, whoever he was, that he was merely a humble mechanic from Raqqa. Eventually, he knew he would be stopped, either at a checkpoint or by a passing patrol, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint and taken into custody. Then the torture would begin, first the beatings and later the cigarette burns that still cover much of his body. It happened four times in as many years, most recently in May, and it normally took months for him to convince his tormentors that they had the wrong man. It certainly did not help that Raqqa, in eastern Syria, was for three years the city that Islamic State, or Isis, chose to make the capital of its self-declared caliphate. But, as Mr Daher points out, he fled to Damascus in order to get away from Isis – only to find out that life in government-held Syria was just as terrifying. Those days are in the past – forever, Mr Daher hopes. On Wednesday evening, he and his friends were celebrating the end of the Assad years at the storied Kamal al-Safi coffee house, a century-old establishment in the Mezzeh district of the Syrian capital. He often came here to while away the hours, perhaps over a game of cards or backgammon, and smoke a water pipe. Never in the past, however, would conversation have turned to politics, certainly not if it contained even the merest whiff of criticism towards the regime. “If you were foolish to have that kind of conversation, that would be a surefire way of ensuring that no one ever saw you again,” he said with a rueful laugh. “The only time you could criticise Assad was in your dreams when you were asleep.” Things could not be more different now. Damascus has the feel of a liberated city. Even three days after Assad’s overthrow, residents of the city were hooting their horns, waving the revolution flag and rejoicing in the streets. Over the 24 years he ruled the country, Assad made it very clear that Syria was very much his family’s fiefdom. His likeness or that of his , adorned posters, billboards and statues the breadth of the country, a reminder that his power was absolute. How little time it has taken, as is so often the case when a strongman is overthrown, for that power to prove ephemeral. The posters are gone, the statues toppled, the billboards ripped and blowing in the wind as though mocking the . His army, too, has dissolved. The checkpoints where soldiers would supplement their £8-a-month salary by shaking down passing motorists lie abandoned. Here and there, though in far fewer numbers, the fighters of the new regime, footsoldiers of the Islamist (HTS) faction, stood guard. Dressed in casual fatigues and clutching kalashnikovs, they waved motorists past with cheerful grins on Wednesday, a conscious effort to show how different to the old guard they are and perhaps, also, that they represented the smiling face of political Islam How long that remains the case remains to be seen. HTS is a former al-Qaeda affiliate. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had ties not just to al-Qaeda but to Isis as well and has a $10 million bounty on his head in the United States. Since 2017, however, both Mr Jolani and his movement have sought to present themselves as moderate reformers, still Islamic in outlook, but tolerant and inclusive of others. When the euphoria that always follows the overthrow of a dictator passes, HTS’s true self – moderate or otherwise – will become clearer. But for the moment, many Syrians are simply revelling in the unfamiliar joy of freedom after half a century of stultifying Assad rule. “We feel like people who, having been trapped underground, suddenly come to the surface and are able to breathe fresh air,” said Ahmad al Matar, a bookseller. For the moment at least, “après Assad, le dèluge” predictions of immediate disaster are yet to come to pass. HTS has maintained discipline in its ranks and order on the streets, roadsweepers are back at work and, despite the suffering Assad’s opponents suffered over the 13-year uprising, there is little evidence of retribution, misleading claims on social media notwithstanding. Fighters are keen to point out that their main aim is not to force an unwanted ideology on others but to restore hope after decades of darkness. “I joined HTS four years ago primarily because since leaving school I have been unable to get a job,” said Mahmoud Hilal, a bearded 32-year-old fighter standing on a highway scattered with military uniforms discarded by Assad’s fleeing army. “My ambition is to be an electrical engineer and I came to the conclusion that until Assad was gone I would have no chance of realising it.” Amid the euphoria and optimism, however, there is also a great deal of grief and trauma. All day on Wednesday, families trudged up the hill to , 16 miles north of Damascus, desperate to find out what happened to loved ones who vanished over the civil war, never to be seen again. Sednayah was Syria’s most notorious place of incarceration until its inmates, some of them too weak to walk, were sprung from their cells over the weekend. Torture was carried out on an industrial scale here, according to rights groups. So many were executed it was known to Syrians simply as “the slaughterhouse”. Thousands of people have visited in recent days, trawling through its dank corridors strewn with the paper records of inmates, shrinking away from the nooses hanging from ceilings in some cells and lighting their way through the darkness with their mobile phones. It soon became clear that there was virtually no hope of finding answers. Mirvat Alsahli was there to look for her son Tareq, who disappeared in the middle of his university exams in 2015 when he was 20. Eventually she tracked him down to Sednaya in 2018 and was allowed to visit him twice, although she was never permitted to ask why he had been arrested. “There were always two guards standing right behind him when I visited,” she said. “Then I went back a third time, and a soldier said, ‘He is dead’. He gave me no other information. I hope it is not true but I just want to find out what happened.” But her search was in vain and she left, weeping, supported by her equally distraught daughter. Sitting on the grass outside the prison, Mazhuda Hiban told of a similarly futile search for her husband and three sons who were dragged away from their home in Homs in 2011 as she watched with her youngest son, Khaled, who was then four. What they had done or where they were taken, she never found out. For the past seven years she and Khaled, now 17 and holding few memories of either his father or his brothers, have visited every prison in the country hoping for clues. Her return to Sednaya was a last desperate attempt to solve the mystery. “It feels hopeless,” she said. “My only hope is that Assad and his family go through just a little bit of what my family has gone through over the past 13 years.”(The Center Square) – The University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents has recommended a number of new and revised policies for its institutions, such as a commitment to institutional neutrality, the prohibiting of DEI tactics, and a mandatory education in America’s founding documents. The University System of Georgia (USG) is made up of Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities as well as Georgia Archives and the Georgia Public Library Service. “USG institutions shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission,” the board’s proposed revisions read . “Ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, including diversity statements,” will be banned from admissions processes and decisions, employment processes and decisions, and institution orientation and training for both students and employees. “No applicant for admission shall be asked to or required to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about political beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles, as a condition for admission,” the new policy states. Additionally, USG will hire based on a person’s qualifications and ability. “The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.” Beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, the school’s civic instruction will require students to study founding American documents among other things. USG students will learn from the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, as well as the Georgia Constitution and Bill of Rights. When reached for comment, the Board of Regents told The Center Square that “these proposed updates strengthen USG’s academic communities.” The recommended policies allow a campus environment “where people have the freedom to share their thoughts and learn from one another through objective scholarship and inquiry,” and “reflect an unyielding obligation to protect freedom, provide quality higher education and promote student success,” the board said. The board told The Center Square that it proposed strengthening “the requirements for civics instruction” with the inclusion of “foundational primary sources” because of higher education’s duty to students. Colleges and universities “must prepare [students] to be contributing members of society and to understand the ideals of freedom and democracy that make America so exceptional,” the board said. As for ditching DEI, the board explained that “equal opportunity and decisions based on merit are fundamental values of USG.” “The proposed revisions among other things would make clear that student admissions and employee hiring should be based on a person’s qualifications, not his or her beliefs,” the board said. The Board of Regents also said it wants to “ensure [its] institutions remain neutral on social and political issues while modeling what it looks like to promote viewpoint diversity, create campus cultures where students and faculty engage in civil discourse, and the open exchange of ideas is the norm.” USG’s Board of Regents recently urged the NCAA to ban transgender-identifying men from participating in women’s sports, in line with the NAIA rules, The Center Square previously reported .