A series of late-season winter storms have filled reservoirs, increased snowpack and left forecasters anticipating a late start to California's wildfire season.While the odds are also leaning toward a milder-than-normal fire season overall, that outlook could change by July, said Jonathan O'Brien, a meteorologist with the National Interagency Fire Center.“It's too early to say at this point what the peak season months will look like,” said O'Brien, who works in predictive services for the NIFC Center in Riverside.Currently, predictive services are forecasting below-normal significant fire activity in Southern California in May and June, and normal activity in Northern California.The rainy…
Author: ricardofrancois
The primaries are over and California has made one certain decision: For the first time in 30 years, the Golden State will not send a woman to the Senate. Welcome to Women's History Month 2024, where progress even in California seems like finding tampons in a public bathroom, then realizing they're the non-poop kind. For those who aren't happily following the election results, it looks like either Adam Schiff or Steve Garvey will be joining Alex Padilla as our representatives in the upper house of Congress. No hatred for any of them. Clearly, gender shouldn't be the deciding factor in…
Scanning QR codes with a mobile payment app has become the most popular way to pay in mainland China.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBEIJING — Foreign visitors to China can now spend up to $2,000 a year using the Alipay mobile app without having to register their identities, the company operating the app said Friday.This is four times more than the previous limit of $500, a move that will affect international tourists the most. The number of foreign travelers to China fell after the country temporarily imposed strict border controls during the pandemic.The transaction cap reflects Beijing's push this year…
Washington – The State of the Union address is one of the permanent fixtures of the presidency, a forum that always favors the speaker in a one-way conversation with millions of Americans.Most speeches are immediately dissected, and forgotten almost just as quickly. But this is a very unusual year, as President Biden needs to prove not only that his policies guarantee a second term, but that he has the personal capacity at 81 to do the job.He laid out clear lines for the campaign ahead, criticizing former President Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection and going after the Supreme Court,…
Stay informed with free updatesSimply subscribe to myFT Digest of EU trades – delivered straight to your inbox.This article is an on-site version of our Europe Express newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent directly to your inbox every weekday and Saturday morningGood morning. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is visiting Cyprus today to announce a sea aid corridor for Gaza in cooperation with the United States. Today, my colleagues outline demands to scale back the EU's climate ambitions abroad, and our correspondent in Athens explains why private universities are the subject of so much debate…
Asking for a salary increase is not easy, especially for women.More than half of women around the world have never asked for a raise before, according to a 2024 study by job listings site Indeed. Of the 43% who asked, three out of four received a salary increase.Additionally, 61% of women globally believe they “need to work harder for recognition than their male counterparts,” according to the poll of more than 14,500 women in 11 countries.According to research by Indeed, here's the percentage of women who asked for a raise in each country surveyed:There is one Asian country that stands…
Apple released VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday with the most notable feature being improved user personas. Specifically, the new update improves the appearance of hair and makeup, the representation of the neck and mouth, and the rendering of eyes for EyeSight, allowing others to see your eyes when you're wearing the headset. In addition, users can now also set up their character without holding the device through Settings > Personality and choosing the “Hands-Free Capture” mode after the initial setup steps. The new version of VisionOS also introduces mobile device management (MDM) for enterprises to manage their devices. This allows administrators…
Janine Chamberlain's return from maternity leave to her job as UK country manager at LinkedIn in February was very different from her experience after giving birth to her son 13 years ago. She says her new, flexible, hybrid work schedule — spending some time in the office and doing some work remotely — means “I can spend time with my daughter before I get to the office,” while her partner takes care of the baby later. But her son was born before working from home became an established norm amid the pandemic, so “it's been very difficult to set boundaries…
Few places can rival Piraeus, the port of Athens, in terms of history. However, within months of stepping down from Greek football club Olympiacos, Lina Soloko has moved to another historic European city. Soloko, a former national youth volleyball player who specialized in sports law at university, was appointed CEO of Roma last April and moved with her young family to the Eternal City.Speaking at the football club's Trigoria training center hours before February's Europa League match against Dutch side Feyenoord, the 40-year-old spoke of her rise to one of the most important positions in European football.Greek-born Soloko is not…
Stephanie Droz, president of Japan's Nikko Asset Management, has never participated in karaoke.One of the very few women at the top of global asset management, and the only foreign leader of a leading financial services firm in Japan, Droz long ago decided to do things differently. This included avoiding the boozy, late-night client meetings that abounded in the industry then and are still an important part of it today.“I remember when I had my first child,” she says, looking out at Tokyo from her office on the 42nd floor.“She was just a baby, and I was still breastfeeding her, and…