Listed here are the morning’s high tales on Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Joe Villarreal spent his second day at Northwest Metrology honing a brand new ability: calibrating torque wrenches. The corporate’s Bakersfield headquarters is full of stress gauges, weights, and different specialised instruments — all designed to make sure that the whole lot from defibrillators to scales for weighing plane work with out fail.
“We have now an in depth consumer listing,” stated proprietor Wayne Moule, who has been serving hospitals, refineries and aerospace corporations for many years.
Moule has a tough time discovering workers who’re match for the painstaking work. “Individuals are available, give us resumes that look nice,” Moule stated, “however they simply don’t have the work ethic. They don’t care in regards to the accuracy. They are saying they calibrate a bit of kit, and so they don’t. After which I discover out about it from a buyer.”
The work is very technical, requiring as much as three years of coaching and the power to learn and observe 2-inch-thick manuals with detailed directions for utilizing each bit of kit. “Have you learnt how arduous it’s to get someone to learn a handbook?” Moule stated.
However the job was match for Villarreal, a 55-year-old father of three who spent 30 years working within the oil and fuel business. Within the early days of his profession, he labored gritty, hands-on jobs in Bakersfield’s scorching sizzling oil fields, checking gear for leaks. Later, he switched to the executive facet, understanding of the solar. In his ultimate job as an engineering technician, Villarreal utilized for brand spanking new drilling permits, stored information and filed studies. He was laid off final 12 months.
Villarreal landed his new job at Northwest Metrology in Might by a state program designed to mitigate the affect on oil and fuel staff as California transitions away from fossil fuels. This system related Villarreal with three case managers who invited him to weekly “job hubs” that featured displays from employers trying to rent. With no expertise in calibration, he was reluctant to use for the job however determined, “I ought to at the very least go discuss to them ’trigger it don’t harm.”
California’s aim to realize internet zero emissions by 2045 has accelerated the decline of the oil and fuel business, which employs an estimated 94,000 individuals in high-paying, typically unionized jobs with advantages. Since 2020, the closure or conversion of six refineries has eradicated roughly 2,000 jobs, dislodging extremely expert staff from decades-long careers spent extracting and refining crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet gas, asphalt and petrochemicals.
The Displaced Oil and Fuel Staff Fund is California’s most tangible effort to assist staff transition to comparable jobs in different industries. The $30 million fund, created by a state legislation in 2022, supplies grants to native workforce improvement boards, unions, and different teams in essentially the most affected areas of the state: Kern, Contra Costa and Los Angeles counties. State information point out the fund has helped greater than 630 staff transition to new careers. And that may very well be an undercount, as grant recipients say they’ve helped nearer to a thousand staff like Villarreal get coaching and discover new jobs.
Even with its successes, proponents of this system say it’s falling brief. They’re urging the state to increase it past the present finish date in 2027 and supply new advantages, together with wage substitute throughout transitions, faculty credit for on-the-job expertise and at the very least two years of monetary help throughout apprenticeships.
Jury awards household tens of millions following silicosis loss of life
A Los Angeles County jury has awarded a $47 million greenback verdict to the household of a stoneworker who died of silicosis.
Lots of of stonecutters are suing producers and distributors of synthetic stone, the countertop materials linked to silicosis, an aggressive and incurable lung illness. Wilmer Ruben Martinez Paredes was solely 41 when he died, leaving three children and a spouse. In 2023, she sued a bunch of corporations, together with synthetic stone distributor Dal-Tiles, and main producers like Cambria, Caesarstone and Cosentino.
Her legal professional James Nevin says that is the third U.S. verdict to this point in favor of staff. “A really younger household was left with out their husband, father, and there’s nothing that may make up for that. However you already know this verdict offers them some measure of justice.”
This comes as a invoice from California Republican Congressman Tom McClintock is advancing in Washington DC. It might prohibit these sorts of lawsuits.
The lethal and damaging Eaton Fireplace was attributable to Southern California Edison gear, in accordance with two studies launched Tuesday by the L.A. County Fireplace Division. The dedication is in keeping with theories shared by the utility itself a number of months after the fireplace ignited in January final 12 months.
The L.A. County Fireplace Division’s arson unit, with help from the state’s Cal Fireplace, was tasked with main the investigation into the reason for the fireplace over the past 18 months. Investigators finally decided that arcing electrical traces close to an Edison transmission tower in Eaton Canyon “ejected sizzling metallic particles” that fell into dry vegetation on the tower’s base. Twelve seconds later, what turned the Eaton Fireplace ignited.
An Edison spokesperson stated the corporate is “at present reviewing” the report, however declined to share if it deliberate to dispute the findings. “ We have now taken the potential function within the begin of the fireplace very severely from the start,” stated spokesperson Scott Johnson. “ As we’ve beforehand stated, Southern California Edison believes it’s doubtless that its gear was related to the ignition of the Eaton Fireplace.”
At the least 19 individuals died and near 10,000 properties and companies had been destroyed within the hearth that started Jan. 7, 2025, and wasn’t totally contained till Jan. 31.
A federal decide on Tuesday held the Division of Homeland Safety in contempt for allegedly slow-rolling an order to create digital copies of communications from private cell telephones utilized by immigration brokers throughout operations within the Los Angeles space final 12 months.
U.S. District Choose Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong within the Central District of California beforehand ordered the federal authorities in January to expedite imaging the non-public cell telephones of greater than 800 brokers concerned in controversial immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025. Choose Frimpong imposed a advantageous of $500 per day on the federal authorities till it complies with the order to show over telephones as a part of discovery and reimburse plaintiffs’ attorneys for the authorized prices of getting the information.
Attorneys for DHS admitted in courtroom in June that the company had not supplied the information. They instructed the decide they had been processing the federal government units at a price of three telephones each two weeks, which plaintiffs famous would take practically 4 years to finish. Attorneys representing immigrants caught up in Operation At Giant — the title given to the Trump administration’s Los Angeles immigration crackdown final 12 months — argue the telephones could include proof of a sample of racial profiling by federal brokers.
