To attract patrons, the Los Angeles County Library turned to some of the most familiar faces on earth: Hello Kitty and her friends.
The bet seemed to be paying off Friday, as thousands of adults flocked to local branches to snag library cards featuring the adorable anthropomorphic gang on launch day.
The county’s library director, Skye Patrick, told The Times Thursday evening that they were bracing for “complete mayhem.”
A library spokesperson said they were still tallying the number of card sign-ups, but at least 4,400 had been issued as of Friday afternoon.
One of them went to Mar Vista resident Sisa Salazar.
“I thought it was super cute,” the 22-year-old said as she waited in line at the Marina del Rey branch Friday afternoon.
The florist used to frequent the library in high school, checking out books and watching shows. But she lost her card in recent years.
So when she came across the special Hello Kitty-themed card on Instagram, she took the opportunity to get a replacement.
Shortly after 2 p.m. Friday, the line for Hello Kitty library cards at the Marina del Rey branch stretched out the door.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
The Marina del Rey library remained busy throughout the afternoon, with a steady line of more than 50 people stretching out the door. Across town, dozens of people lined up outside the South Whittier Library before its 10 a.m. opening, hoping to be among the first to snag the card.
The West Hollywood, Carson, West Covina, La Mirada, Marina del Rey and Alondra branches ran out of cards on the first day, library spokesperson Jessica Lee wrote in an email. She noted the cards can still be found at other locations and roving bookmobiles.
In addition to Hello Kitty, the card depicts several other recognizable characters produced by the Japanese company Sanrio: My Melody, Kuromi, Pompompurin, Keroppi, Cinnamoroll, Chococat and Pochacco.
Many people in line in Marina del Rey chatted about their favorite Sanrio characters and exchanged childhood memories.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach, 43, already has an L.A. County Library card, which she often uses to read e-books on the Libby app.
Playa del Rey resident Rebecca Leach said she wanted to get the Hello Kitty library card because she grew up with the character and finds it nostalgic.
(Iris Kwok / Los Angeles Times)
But for the registered nurse, who dons a Hello Kitty badge reel at work, nostalgia was part of the card’s appeal. She has fond childhood memories of playing with a color-changing Hello Kitty plush toy. Leach visited several branches Friday before finding a manageable line in Marina del Rey.
“I think it’s great that they’re promoting the library more and doing outreach,” said Jolyne Jimenez, 51, a library assistant at the Santa Monica Public Library and fan of My Melody.
She spent her day off at the Marina del Rey library waiting for the card. (The Santa Monica Public Library is independent of the L.A. County Library system.)
Limited-edition library cards aren’t new in L.A. County. Previous popular designs have included cards commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment and the FIFA World Cup, Patrick said.
“What is uncommon is this amount of buzz,” Patrick said, adding that she hoped the heavy interest in the card would translate to increased awareness of the library’s offerings — not just books and e-books, but streaming content, household tools, musical instruments and podcast equipment.
The Hello Kitty card is available through Oct. 18, Patrick said. The library has permission to use Sanrio’s characters for one month for free and plans to restock the cards before the collaboration period ends.
WHEN there’s a chill in the air but you still fancy a trip to the seaside, you have to visit this one destination – it’s the warmest in the UK and HAS the least rain.
Not to mention it has some incredible beaches and the world’s biggest Wetherspoons – so it’s the perfect place for a break on the coast this September.
Kent is the warmest spot along the UK coastline in autumn – you can head to BroadstairsCredit: AlamyOr visit Margate which is also home to the world’s largest WetherspoonsCredit: Alamy
Away Resorts has found the best UK seaside spots by analysing average daytime temperature, sea water temperature, rainfall and in top spot, is Kent.
Kate Watts from Away Resorts said: “September can be a brilliant time to enjoy everything the UK has to offer.”
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She continued: “Our research highlights that you don’t need to go abroad to catch the last of the sun.
“From the Kent Coast to the Isle of Wight, Pembrokeshire to Cornwall, there are plenty of destinations around the UK where Brits can make the most of the coast before autumn arrives.”
Thanks to it being the warmest destination with temperatures of 19C and only 11 days of rain – Kent is the best place to visit in autumn.
And luckily, there are plenty of coastal spots within the county to choose from.
If you’re after a traditional seaside experience, head to Broadstairs.
It has seven sandy beaches and bays including Viking Bay – lots have traditional beach huts and stripy deck chairs.
One must-do is to pop into Morelli’s Gelato, a retro ice cream parlour, for some mega sweet treats – it first opened in 1932.
As for what else you can do there, Deputy Travel Editor Kara Godfrey who hails from Kent tells us her favourite spots in Broadstairs.
Away Resorts has found the warmest spots along the UK coastlineCredit: Away Resorts
She said: “Bar Ingo is my favourite restaurant in Kent, offering Basque small plates with some of the friendliest staff (and in this year’s OpenTable Top 100), and I can never leave Arrowsmiths without picking up a few gifts for myself.
“You can also explore its history via Charles Dickens, exploring his home and namesake pub after he spent some time there.
“But come for Viking Bay, a rare sandy beach in Kent, with some fish and chips from The Mermaid or even a surf lesson or two and embrace the seaside town life.
“Make sure to stay at Smith’s Townhouse – having only opened last year, its one of the coolest in town without the price tag (with some of the best coffee in town too).”
Ramsgate is where you’ll find a soft sandy beach backed by the world’s biggest Wetherspoons.
Called the Victoria Pavilion, arguably the best views are up the top on the enormous rooftop terrace which looks over the coast.
The Old Neptune is right on the beach front in WhitstableCredit: AlamyDon’t miss the Folkestone Mermaid by the beach frontCredit: Alamy
Whitstable is another popular seaside town where you’ll find oyster shops, posh charity shops and art galleries.
One of the most beautiful beach pubs is there, called The Old Neptune; punters love it as they can enjoy a pint right on the sand.
Margate has been nicknamed Shoreditch on Sea thanks to its fancy wine bars, cafes and fine dining restaurants.
Or if you want a bit of nostalgia, head into the Dreamland theme park that visitors say is like ‘stepping back in time’ thanks to its vintage fairground rides.
Don’t miss Folkestone either which was voted Time Out’s best UK place to visit last year.
It has trendy shops and coffee spots on its brightly coloured high street and heading down to the beach don’t miss the Folkestone Mermaid – like they have in Copenhagen.
In La Palma Park Stadium in Anaheim, a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion, 7,500 students and parents skipped school or work and gathered to learn about communist plans to take over the United States.
“Right now, we have a 50-50 chance of defeating the communist threat,” Herbert Philbrick, a former FBI agent, told the crowd on March 8, 1961. “Each day our chances grow less.”
Walter Knott, of berry-farm fame, sponsored the five-day “Christian Anti-Communist School” to help Orange County see the world that he saw, one where big government and liberalism led to Soviet domination.
The message stuck. Within the decade, Orange County would have 38 chapters of the conspiracy-minded, ultra-right-wing John Birch Society, which called Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower a “communist tool.” Knott and actor John Wayne were members, as was the county’s congressman.
The rightward mobilization during the suburban explosion of the 1960s gave Orange County a national reputation for hard-line conservatism with a crackpot edge — “nut country,” in the words of Fortune magazine.
The county’s deep pockets funded right-wing candidates and movements throughout the nation. At home it spawned popular but ultimately doomed measures such as the Briggs Initiative in 1978 to ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools, and Proposition 187 in 1994, which would have denied public services to immigrants in the country illegally.
The Republican Party reached its peak in the Reagan era and has been slowly losing its membership edge since 1990, as the diversity of Los Angeles and the world at large started to bleed through the so-called Orange Curtain.
Source: California Secretary of State
(Priya Krishnakumar / Los Angeles Times)
Registered Republicans today outnumber Democrats by only 2 percentage points, down from 22% at the peak, with a large contingent of self-declared independents positioned to swing elections either way. The GOP has a chance of losing four congressional seats in the county in Tuesday’s midterm election. If so, it would be the first time since the 1930s that Orange County would be without Republican representation in the House.
A GOP loss of even one or two seats would be significant, not as a turning point so much as a powerful sign of change — hastened by dislike for President Trump — in this one-time heart of American conservatism.
Source: Political Data, Inc.
(Priya Krishnakumar / Los Angeles Times)
::
Orange County seceded from its northwestern neighbor, Los Angeles, in 1889, led by fiercely independent ranchers, sheepherders, beekeepers, citrus growers and crop farmers who had bristled under the control of a rich city 30 miles up the rail line.
The county then was a constellation of small farm and dairy towns in the north and scattered resort towns along the coast. In the south, the basin tapered off into a narrowing valley between the Santa Ana Mountains and the coastal San Joaquin Hills, where sheep and cattle ranches had thrived since California was part of Spain and Mexico.
Americans had taken over the ranchos in the late 19th century after a devastating drought left many old landowners of Spanish ancestry, the Californios, broke.
Lewis Moulton was one of the Yankee migrants. He came from Boston in 1874 and grazed sheep on the open range from Oceanside to Long Beach. Family lore has it that natural gas seeps were so rich in some spots that, as he camped, he would light them to cook his breakfast.
After two decades of renting land, he and a Basque shepherd, John Pierre Daguerre, had enough money to buy Rancho Niguel, which they eventually expanded to 22,000 acres. It was rugged, isolated country, good mostly for grazing. The cheapest land was the steep part near the coast, between what would become Laguna Beach and Dana Point — about $15 an acre. Today, small fractions of an acre go for double-digit millions.
In the second half of the 20th century, these backwater ranchers and farmers, the Moulton family, the O’Neills, Floods, Irvines, Segerstroms, would physically and culturally shape Orange County into the suburban giant it is today.
But there was always an underclass that made their dreams work.
Tenant farmers — often with roots in Mexico, the Basque country or in California before the American conquest — rented spots on these ranches to graze and grow barley. Others toiled as hands for the landowners.
In the north, they lived in segregated barrios in Santa Ana, Westminster, Anaheim and Garden Grove — where their children attended separate “Mexican schools” until a federal appeals court ruled them unconstitutional in 1947. In the south, they made up smaller communities in El Toro and San Juan Capistrano.
Stephen Rios stands in the doorway of the adobe house in San Juan Capistrano built by his family in 1794.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
“My tata got killed right there by the train when he was 93 years old,” Stephen Rios said of his grandfather, an American Indian named Mochanai, as he sat in his front garden across from the Mission San Juan Capistrano. “He was a vaquero, a well-known horse trainer.”
Rios’ family worked for the Moultons and O’Neills and lived in the adobe house built in 1794 for their ancestor Feliciano Rios, who came to California as a Spanish soldier and married an American Indian woman.
Rios, an attorney, inherited the home from his father and lives there today. His son’s bedroom has the ceiling boards that the famed bandito Joaquin Murrieta, a family friend known as the Robin Hood of El Dorado, would lift to hide in the attic in the 1850s. A flat-screen TV sits below them now.
The American Indian, Californio and Mexican residents of their dirt street — the oldest neighborhood in California — were conservative. “They loved their families, their church,” he said. “They loved their pieces of land. They were strong, religious independent people.”
Republicans reigned during the rural era. The land barons did not want labor organizers anywhere near their field hands.
When orange pickers walked out of the orchards in 1936, the strikers were arrested and beaten by police and mobs. The Times reported “old vigilante days were revived in the orchards of Orange County yesterday as one man lay near death and scores nursed injuries.”
Changes in Orange County’s 948 square miles — physical, demographic and political — have always rolled from north to south. While the Rios family was still living in the cowboy era, World War II brought rapid transformation to the northern part of the county.
The military needed more West Coast bases to fight the Japanese, and the open space between Long Beach and San Diego was perfect. The government built bases in Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Santa Ana and El Toro.
Defense contractors and other big manufacturers followed: Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell, Ford Aeronutronic, Boeing, American Electronics, Beckman Instruments.
The farmers and ranchers became developers, or sold their land to other builders, creating vast tracts of homes across the northern end of the county from Huntington Beach to Fullerton. In this era of big cars and backyard barbecues, houses turned inward. Garages replaced porches and picture windows; neighborhoods were quiet.
The newcomers, many from the South and Midwest or white-flighters from Los Angeles, converged at church.
::
At its core, Orange County held a tension between Midwestern traditionalism and California’s drive for reinvention.
The midcentury suburbs in the north were libertarian-leaning enclaves, yet living on Washington defense spending, and listening to a sunny California-bred gospel of self-empowerment and prosperity.
An Iowan named Robert Schuller put out a newspaper ad in 1955, “Come as you are … In the family car!”
He preached from the roof of the snack bar at the Orange Drive-in theater, not about fire and brimstone, but about “possibility thinking” with catchphrases like “Turn your scars into stars.”
Robert Schuller, who delivered a new type of self-healing Gospel to the country, at the new Crystal Cathedral in 1980.
(Tony Barnard / Los Angeles Times)
Schuller’s congregation boomed, becoming one of the nation’s first megachurches. His “Hour of Power” television sermon beamed across the country. In 1980, he built a glass church longer than a football field, the Crystal Cathedral.
Orange County birthed hugely influential ministries that mixed God with conservative politics: Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel, Greg Laurie’s Harvest Crusade, Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.
“The megachurches reinforced and marinated the conservatism coming out of the defense plants,” said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University.
Orange County’s open space and space-age technology, coupled with fervent entrepreneurship and an-edge-of-the-continent mentality, let tinkerers and visionaries experiment with minimal regulation.
This was a suburban county that, like no other, reached deep into popular culture.
Knott’s Berry Farm was the nation’s first theme park. Disneyland became one of the world’s biggest destinations. The ministries reached millions. South Coast Plaza shopping mall would draw more people from around the world than Disneyland. The Irvine ranch grew into the largest planned city in America. Leisure World became the first retirement community.
Leisure World resident Jerry Wyss enjoys the pool in 1999.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
In new coastal towns such as Dana Point and San Clemente, Hobie Alter, Gordon “Grubby” Clark and John Severson (living next door to Orange County native Richard Nixon in his “Western White House”) helped create a whole new culture around an ancient Polynesian sport that would become a multibillion-dollar surf industry.
In Laguna Beach, Tom Morey, a Douglas Aircraft composites engineer, invented the bodyboard. In Anaheim, the Van Doren brothers opened the first Vans store.
And the likes of Knott and Anaheim’s Carl Karcher, the founder of Carl’s Jr., would help give America a new brand of conservatism, with their friend John Wayne in Newport Beach to embody it.
With the Cold War at its peak in the 1960s, families in Orange County, so many of them in the military or defense industry, heeded their call.
“At living room bridge clubs, at backyard barbecues, and at kitchen coffee klatches, the middle-class men and women of Orange County ‘awakened’ to what they perceived as the threats of communism and liberalism,” wrote Lisa McGirr, a professor of history at Harvard, in “Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.” “They became the cutting edge of the conservative movement in the 1960s.”
“The lack of a large organized working class and the near absence of racial minorities made it likely that Orange County’s political rainbow would consist of relatively few colors.”
The quiet homogeneity of the walled and gated communities allowed politicians to exploit fears of the outsider — whether they be African Americans from Los Angeles, immigrants from Mexico, or gays, Muslims and Koreans.
“The anti-minority stuff accelerated political careers here,” said Smoller, the political scientist. “We have a history of sending some real oddballs to Congress.”
An early one was Rep. James Utt, who in 1963 warned about the United Nations training “a large contingent of barefooted Africans” in Georgia to take over the country.
Cementing this conservatism: its daily newspaper, the Register, and its libertarian owner Raymond C. Hoiles. He had once waged war against a measure to improve mental health care in Alaska because he said it was a communist plot to brainwash Americans in concentration camps.
In 1964, Pat Donnelly, a young aerospace engineer working at McDonnell Douglas, bought a small home in Buena Park for $18,500. His neighbor’s first admonition to him: They must help ensure no blacks, Mexicans or Catholics moved in.
Donnelly was a Catholic, and even worse, a union-card-carrying Democrat who once played guitar and banjo in a touring folk band. He and his wife had two girls and joined the St. Pius V Church on Orangethorpe Avenue and started a choir. With his own slice of suburbia, he became more concerned about taxes and grew more conservative.
“I didn’t like some of the stuff I was seeing in the cities, the drugs and crime. It seemed like people were abusing welfare. I was paying for that.”
He switched parties and never looked back.
After Orange County’s favorite candidate Barry Goldwater lost to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Republican rainmakers turned their attention to Reagan’s run for governor. His first political fundraiser was at a home in Anaheim, and the county would nurture his ambitions the rest of his career.
By the 1970s, developers had reached deep into south Orange County. The Irvine Co. had wound down its cattle operations and was parceling out its 185 square miles of land. Some 1,500 acres near Newport Beach would become UC Irvine. The company developed a master plan for a city to grow around the university, which would incorporate in 1971.
The Moultons sold their land soon after to developers who would build Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo. In their yards, homeowners would find rattlesnakes that wandered out of the wild canyons and steep hillsides between subdivisions.
To the east and south, the O’Neills’ vast scrubby land would give way to even newer, posher cities such as Rancho Santa Margarita, Ladera Ranch and the community of Coto de Caza — the setting for the “Real Housewives of Orange County.”
With all this construction, Stephen Rios’ 225-year-old adobe home is hemmed in by suburbia.
The “Los Rios District” is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is highly sought-after real estate for its quaint atmosphere.
Most of the old Californio families sold and moved on.
“Everyone else wants to live here now,” Rios said.
Jared Mathis, left, and Scott T. Barnes stand off the trail in the Aliso and Wood Canyon Wilderness looking over the 22,000 acres that their great-grandparents bought in the 1890s.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
Lewis Moulton’s great-grandson, Jared Mathis, came back from a job back east to Laguna Hills to manage the family’s remaining holdings. A few years ago, he took his dad — who moved away in the 1970s — for a drive to look at the old ranch where he grew up.
But his father couldn’t get his bearings. All the landmarks were gone, the hills terraced, new trees and houses blocked once wide views. “They say they moved more dirt building Aliso Viejo than they did digging the Panama Canal,” Mathis said.
Mathis drove his father to the ridgeline of Laguna Beach. From there, you could see the whole ranch area, smell the laurel sumac in Aliso Canyon, glimpse some old corrals in the distance, get a grip of the topography. The white striations of terraced neighborhoods faded in the haze. The twin peaks of Modjeska and Santiago, called Old Saddleback, framed the view, as they did in most of the county, one thing that never changed.
“He could see where they had the old roundups,” he said. “That was a powerful image for him.”
As development moved south, the older, northern parts of the county lost some of their luster. The affluent white Republicans drifted to the shinier places depicted in shows such as “The O.C.”
The explosion in South County home construction created thousands of jobs. “The people building all of those houses were Latino,” said Smoller, the political science professor. Like the old tenant farmers, they helped families such as the Irvines realize their dreams.
Thousands of other Latinos would follow to work in service jobs in these wealthy new areas.
The humming economy overall and good schools also lured professional and middle-class Latinos to the northern neighborhoods that Anglos were leaving in their migration south.
In Santa Ana in the 1970s, the population of Latinos went from 40,000 to 90,000. Today, Latinos account for 78% of Santa Ana’s population. Northwest Orange County looks a lot like Southeast L.A. County. La Habra is 57% Latino; Anaheim, 52%; Buena Park, 40%; Garden Grove, 37%.
The other big factor that brought demographic change was seeded 53 years ago, when the federal government removed racist quotas on immigrants from Asia, and Greater Los Angeles became a major destination for Koreans and Chinese.
In 1975, after Saigon fell, 50,000 South Vietnamese landed in nearby Camp Pendleton, and conservative Orange County stepped up to take the anti-communist refugees.
The Register called on churches and citizens to sponsor these newcomers. They were put up in apartments in neglected parts of Westminster and Garden Grove still surrounded by bean fields.
Soon the fields and dilapidated commercial strips gave way to bustling places such as Saigon Market and Hoa Binh Market, ushering in a wave of new Vietnamese businesses that would revitalize the area.
Frank Jao started off in America selling Kirby vacuum cleaners in Whittier. Within a year, he moved to Garden Grove, became a real estate agent, then developer, first building a shopping mall in Westminster with the help of Chinese investors.
So many Vietnamese storefronts were opening in Westminster, changing its look so rapidly, that more than 100 residents signed a petition calling for the city to stop issuing business licenses. It was an ugly time.
“Anyone driving on Bolsa would more than occasionally be confronted by drivers who rolled down their windows and asked us to roll down ours, and they’d give us the middle finger,” recalled Jao, now 70. “When we’d go to work in the morning, we’d find the windows shot out by BB guns.”
His buildings became the core of Little Saigon, notably its landmark Asian Garden Mall. His company built $400 million worth of shopping centers and apartment buildings throughout Orange County and beyond.
Upscale Chinese families took to Irvine. Many had left China because of the lack of opportunities for their children to attend college, and this master-planned community, built around UC Irvine, was a huge draw, as it was to moderately affluent Koreans, Iranians and Latinos. Irvine is nearly 40% Asian now.
Koreans had begun trickling in from Los Angeles during the 1980s, seeking better schools. The 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which many Korean store owners lost their businesses, sped up the flow. They often stuck close together, moving into specific neighborhoods in Garden Grove, Fullerton and Buena Park.
The Asian influx has also contributed to the reordering of politics in once reliably Republican Orange County.
As a whole, Asian Americans are more likely to register as “no party preference” and vote based on specific issues, not party, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science and public policy at UC Riverside. They leaned Republican during the Reagan era and well into the 1990s while subsequent generations moved to the left.
“About one-third of Asian Americans voted for Clinton in 1992,” Ramakrishnan said, “but two-thirds voted for Obama in 2008.”
He said in the last five years strong GOP outreach to the community in Orange County — and encouragement of Asian Americans to run for office — has brought many back to the party. But Ramakrishnan said too many factors are at play to say how they will vote on Tuesday. An example: They don’t like Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, but Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Koreans like his confrontational stance toward China.
In Buena Park, Pat Donnelly, still a Republican, met a Korean American estate attorney named Sunny Park — a Democrat — at his Lion’s Club. He came to realize she had values he admired: honesty, a family focus, strong work ethic. Now he’s campaigning for her as she runs for City Council.
Park had followed her aging Korean clients from Los Angeles, moving into the affluent and increasingly Korean Bellehurst neighborhood. When she knocks on doors, many white people have offered support. But some have grumbled “No Koreans” and shut the door in her face.
A couple weeks ago, she started seeing campaign signs that said “No Sunny Park, Carpetbagger.”
She says the message that sends the Korean community is that she — and by extension they — are not from here and they shouldn’t try to take part in politics.
The political dynamic in Orange County is not so much a rising blue tide, but an ebbing red one. Since 1999, registered Democrats rose by less than 2 percentage points to 33.6%, while Republicans have fallen 14 points to 35.6% of voters. The wave is of independent voters who increased in numbers nearly as much as the Republicans fell.
A majority of Latinos vote Democrat, and growth in their community has buoyed the party. While they tend to be more socially conservative, they favor more lenient immigration policies, social programs that help the poor, strong unions and high minimum wages.
Historically, turnout has not matched their share of the population, but some Republican strategists fear Trump’s derogatory comments about Mexican and Central American immigrants might motivate them this year.
In 1996, the anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding Proposition 187 helped end the ultra-right Orange County Republican Bob Dornan’s political career, and put Democrat Loretta Sanchez in Congress.
Just like the development, the diversity and Democratic edge are pushing south in this county of 3.2 million people.
In 2002, Democrats outnumbered Republicans only in Santa Ana, Buena Park and Stanton. Now they do in 11 cities reaching down to Irvine.
In Laguna Niguel, Candy Antone, 47, said Democrats such as her essentially lived in the closet until recently. She would go quiet when a Republican friend or neighbor would go on a political rant. “You just had to bite your lip,” she said.
But Trump is repelling even many Republicans here. “Democrats are coming out of the woodwork,” Antone said. “People we’ve known for years, we’re just finding out they’re Democrats.”
A relentless Yorkshire bowling performance put a significant dent in Somerset’s County Championship title challenge, the hosts consigning the pre-game Division One leaders to a hammer blow defeat at Headingley.
Somerset – chasing 287 – started day four on 73-3, quickly slipped to 79-6 and were later bowled out for 101 just before 12:00 BST to lose by 185 runs.
A third defeat of the season, and a second against Yorkshire, means that Warwickshire now lead Division One by 11 points from second-placed Somerset, who have never won this title. Nottinghamshire will also be in the mix come next week’s final round even if they lose against Sussex later on Friday.
For the mid-table White Rose, they claimed their fifth win in 13 games and backed up May’s success at Taunton. New ball seamers Ben Coad and Ben Cliff starred today, Coad finishing with four wickets and Cliff three.
Outstanding Cliff ended with career best match figures of 11-105, the 13th best match analysis in his county’s first-class history.
Cliff and Coad struck in the space of five balls inside the day’s opening half an hour, putting Yorkshire on course for a 19-point haul to Somerset’s three.
They removed not out batters Tom Lammonby and Tom Abell as Somerset lost two wickets for the addition of only three runs – 76-5.
Lammonby was squared up and caught behind off Cliff for 32 before Abell looped a catch up to backward point off the shoulder of the bat against Coad.
And when Coad struck again almost three overs later, at the end of the 39th, Somerset were in significant trouble, with James Rew caught at second slip on the drive.
Yorkshire came into day four knowing they had the edge, but one wicket they were desperate for was that of Craig Overton, who had broken their hearts back in July here with a stunning 79 not out off 30 balls in the Vitality Blast quarter-final.
Cliff got him caught behind pushing forwards in the 42nd over for five, also trapping Lewis Gregory lbw three balls later.
At 88-8, it was all but game over under an overcast Headingley sky but not quite matching the gloomy Somerset outlook.
The Overton and Gregory wickets were Cliff’s 10th and 11th in the match following his eight in the first innings.
Like Overton, Migael Pretorius had scored a first-innings fifty. But George Hill had him caught behind, leaving Somerset at 92-9.
Matthew Revis then wrapped things up by yorking Jake Ball, with day four lasting only 82 minutes in all.
Somerset face Surrey at the Cooper Associates County Ground, Taunton in the final round of fixtures, which starts on Thursday, while Yorkshire can continue to play the role of spoilers when they travel to face Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge.
California and other Democratic-led states and localities filed a pair of lawsuits Monday challenging new Trump administration rules giving immigration officials more power to deny green cards to applicants whose families have relied on public assistance programs in the past.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office is helping lead the states’ challenge, said the rule changes seek to “rewrite more than 100 years of law” by making even brief use of public benefits in years past grounds for the federal government to deny a person’s application for legal permanent residency in the future — which he said was clearly illegal and would push tremendous costs onto states, counties and cities.
“No family should have to choose between accessing healthcare and nutrition assistance today — or protecting their pathway to a green card tomorrow,” Bonta said. “We’re going to court on behalf of the millions of immigrants who call this state home — and we will fight to get this unlawful rule undone.”
San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu, whose office is helping lead a separate challenge from Democratic-led cities and counties, said in a statement that the new Trump administration policies are “a blatant attempt to sow fear and confusion in our immigrant communities and coerce people into withdrawing from critical government services” — which he also said would shift millions in costs to local governments.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which promulgated the new rules, said the lawsuits were proof that immigrants are unlawfully tapping into benefits programs intended for U.S. citizens.
“Sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” the spokesperson said. “This is the ideological contortion required by left-wing leaders to justify their defrauding of the American taxpayer at the hands of illegal criminals.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
President Trump won office on a promise to rein in illegal immigration. Since taking office, his administration has launched a mass crackdown that has targeted both undocumented and documented immigrants. It has done so in part by targeting federal and state programs that offer immigrant assistance — which Trump has derided as diverting resources away from U.S. citizens.
In their lawsuit, the states acknowledge that federal law enacted by Congress in 1882 allows the U.S. to deny noncitizens entry to the country if they would be a “public charge,” or someone who is unable to support themselves and must rely on the government for assistance.
However, the states argue that Congress, the courts and federal government agencies have for “over 140 years” understood the term “public charge” to mean a person “who has become, or is likely to become, primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence” — not someone who has ever taken public assistance of any kind in the past, even in the short term.
And yet, the new policy promulgated by Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services gives immigration officers “unprecedented, sweeping new discretion to deny admission” to families that have tapped any number of public assistance programs for which both Congress and individual states have chosen to make them eligible, the states wrote.
The lawsuit, joined by Bonta, the attorneys general of 19 other states and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania, was filed in federal court in New York.
A separate lawsuit was filed in the same court by San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California, as well as New York City, Chicago, and Seattle and surrounding King County, Wash.
In a morning news conference, Bonta said the Trump administration’s new rules target families in unprecedented ways.
As one example, he said the new rules would potentially allow immigration officials to deny permanent residency to immigrant parents based on their U.S. citizen children accessing public benefits that they are clearly entitled to under the law.
As another, he said the new rules could penalize immigrant families for accessing basic, preventative healthcare that actually helps control the broader public cost of illness to localities and states.
Chiu said federal limits on residency for those who would be a “public charge” have in the past been applied in a “narrow and consistent way,” focusing on certain cash assistance and long-term medical needs. The new rules, he said, make “almost any” kind of government assistance grounds for residency denial.
The states’ lawsuit — California’s 92nd against the current Trump administration — revises a policy battle that began during Trump’s first administration, when it attempted in 2019 to implement similar policies, was sued by California, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, and lost.
The Biden administration later dropped the plans to change the rules.
Tony LoPresti, county counsel for Santa Clara County — which has per capita one of the largest foreign-born populations in the country — said that it was “déjà vu all over again.” and that the Trump administration will lose again because the new “public charge” policy is “outright illegal.”
It “bullies our community members into dropping health insurance, bypassing food assistance and turning their back on critical services out of fear” and constitutes “a wealth test for residents who are lawfully seeking status,” LoPresti said.
Los Angeles County launched a probe into Farmers Insurance Company’s handling of claims by policyholders impacted by last year’s devastating Eaton and Palisades wildfires, after a growing number of residents complained of delays, denials and underpayments.
In a letter sent to Farmers on Wednesday, the county’s lawyers said if the company is engaging in any unlawful or unfair business practices, it must immediately stop.
“Eaton Fire survivors did everything right—responsibly paying their premiums year after year—but when disaster hit, Farmers left them with a contaminated home and refused to pay for testing and cleanup,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, in a statement.
“My constituents shouldn’t have to walk back into homes with lead and asbestos because an insurance company won’t pay for the test that would prove it’s there,” she added.
Farmers disputed the county’s claims.
“As always, we operate in accordance with applicable laws and regulations,” the insurer said in a Thursday statement. “We do not believe the inquiry accurately characterizes our actions or practices and will cooperate through the appropriate process.”
“Serving our customers during difficult times is at the heart of what we do, which is why each claim is reviewed individually, taking into account the specific circumstances of the loss and the coverage provided under the policy,” the company said. “We remain focused on handling claims with care, consistency and attention to each customer’s unique situation.”
County officials said that at a recent meeting with Eaton fire survivors, those with Farmers policies said the insurer had been slow or resistant to pay for toxin testing by qualified industrial hygienists, forcing residents to pay for it themselves.
The testing revealed that many homes were contaminated with unsafe levels of lead, asbestos, chromium, and other toxic substances, the county said.
The residents also told the county that Farmers has refused to pay for adequate remediation of the contaminants and declined to cover ongoing living expenses.
“After paying millions of dollars in premiums, policyholders deserve the benefits and support they paid for,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades. “Families whose homes survived the Palisades and Eaton Fires but remain damaged or contaminated should not be forced to choose between returning to an unsafe home and financial devastation.”
The new investigation comes after the county filed a lawsuit against State Farm on Aug. 31 for its handling of Eaton and Palisades fire claims. The county claims State Farm engaged in illegal and deceptive business practices that kept victims from receiving what they were entitled to under their policies. State Farm denied the county’s claims.
Jim McGuinness is to remain Donegal senior football manager for the 2027 season.
It will be his fourth year at the helm during his second stint in charge of the Ulster county.
Meanwhile Mickey McCann will continue to manage the county’s senior hurlers for a further two years, having been in the role since 2018.
Donegal GAA confirmed the news on social media on Monday evening.
“Following a meeting of the County Committee, Donegal confirm the appointment of Michael McCann as Senior Hurling Manager for a two year term and Jim McGuinness as Senior Football manager for a one year term,” it read.
During his second term in charge, McGuinness has helped guide Donegal to back-to-back Ulster titles in 2024 and 2025 and an All-Ireland final appearance in 2025.
The 53-year-old led Donegal to a Football League Division One final success over Kerry in March this year but the county’s championship season was a disappointing one.
They were defeated by Down in the quarter-finals of the Ulster SFC and went down to Dublin after extra-time in Round 3 of the All-Ireland series.
McGuinness, who led Donegal to the All-Ireland in 2012 in his first spell as manager, initially returned on a three-year-deal with an option of a fourth.
Good vibes weren’t invented in Marin County. But reading “Morning in Marin,” David Perlis’ history of the place and its outsize cultural influence for much of the 20th century, you get the sense it served as America’s leading countercultural way station.
Book Review
Morning in Marin
By David Perlis Heyday Books: 384 pages, $35
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Hosts of spiritual-minded sorts called it home: Alan Watts popularized Zen Buddhism in the ’60s, alongside poets Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth. Francis Ford Coppola decamped there to write his script for “The Godfather,” and it’s where his compatriot George Lucas conjured up the “Star Wars” universe. (The cuddly Ewoks in “Return of the Jedi” were named after the region’s Miwok tribe.) Jack Kerouac sought enlightenment there; his compatriot Neal Cassady was imprisoned there, in San Quentin. It was the Grateful Dead’s retreat, Robin Williams’ launchpad, and the solid ground upon which Philip K. Dick questioned reality.
Why all these people, in this place, at that time? Perlis, an artist, radio host and Marin native, doesn’t strive for sociological or demographic explanations. His strategy is to sinuously move from moment to moment, artist to artist, as if in one continuous tracking shot, pausing only for a moment to catch some of the interesting characters he spots along the way. Over there, film critic Pauline Kael; and there, poet and sitcom star Suzanne Somers; and look, there’s bar-band singer Hugh Cregg, who’ll eventually use the stage name Huey Lewis.
Author David Perlis
(Jordan Blackman)
Still, Perlis breaks the flow just enough to offer a few reasons why the region became America’s affluent bohemia. It is, of course, gobstoppingly gorgeous, with Mount Tamalpais, Stinson Beach, Point Reyes and Bolinas practically designed to be edenic retreats. (Fairfax, he writes, is “ribboned with waterfalls, tufted with moss.”) Its isolation made it a counterculture haven for those looking to avoid San Francisco’s bustle: Gay poet Elsa Gidlow made her home there in the 1940s, among the first of many misfit pioneers. Wreckage from the 1906 earthquake was used to build the first “arks,” houseboats in Sausalito, providing a quirky infrastructure. Add some slow-growth initiatives, and you get artsy scrimping arrivistes; add LSD, legal until 1966, and you have a party.
So by the late ’60s, Marin had become a haven for a particular type: creative, interested in Eastern spirituality and profoundly disinterested in social convention (not to mention conspicuously white). Perlis’ portrait of the county at the height of the decade suggests a region that had escaped — or at least refused to look at — the worst of America’s turmoil. “Despite atomic bombs, rampant racism, political violence, and the war in Vietnam and Marin, there is hope, a sincere, emphatic belief, in an imminent inner revolution,” he writes. “When Zen, acid, or whatever your trip is, opens enough minds that people can outgrow this absurd, unwinnable conflict with nature and themselves.”
Perlis writes that with a slight smirk — of course nobody outgrew the conflict. Sure, a lot of people made a mint on the dream of transcendence: The Grateful Dead became a premier touring act, Lucas taught the country the ways of the Force and Sausalito’s Record Plant became the studio of choice for Sly Stone, Fleetwood Mac and more. But in the process, Marin became a kind of parody of itself, satirized by the writer Cyra McFadden in her 1977 novel, “The Serial.” In a world of what Perlis calls “swimmable wealth,” enlightenment sure looked a lot like narcissism in caftans. “I have no idea how I manage to do it,” Dick muses about his productivity at one point, prompting Perlis to bluntly break into the narrative: “I do. Drugs.”
Perlis could have gone further than that. One of the peculiarities of the Marin cultural scene, at least in Perlis’ reckoning, is that it hardly seems like a scene at all. Otis Redding and Frank Herbert and Linda Ronstadt and Anne Lamott and Shel Silverstein and Van Morrison all had little in common and interacted even less; if Marin was an incubator, it’s one where every egg hatched a different, brand-new species. Communal activity seemed relegated to the checkout aisles where locals kibbitzed over “The Serial,” or druggy extravaganzas that would in time claim Dick and various Dead members and associates as victims.
The irony, as the region stumbled into the ’80s, is that between its wealth and carefully cultivated isolation, Marin came to exemplify the ethos of conformist America: every man for himself. The actor Peter Coyote resisted: “When a Buddhist is thinking about shooting out traffic lights, it’s time to leave,” he quips. Others dug in: Huey Lewis and the News climbed the charts with a song titled “Hip to Be Square,” though to his credit, he explains to Perlis that it was meant to be a song about the difficulty of reconciling affluence and bohemian values. The man knows where he lives.
Perlis’ book isn’t a dismissal of Marin’s cultural moment, or even really a critique of it: His story is more something to be wondered at, like fog rolling over Mount Tamalpais. And Perlis’ storytelling skills make it seem like good fun as he pingpongs from artist to artist, each somehow inventing a meaningful, or at least recognizable, cultural touchstone. Marin gave us New Age music and Pablo Cruise; it also gave us Jim Carroll’s indelible punk classic, “People Who Died.” But one of the things to wonder at amid the good vibes is whether a different, more coherent, more sober scene would have been more meaningful, more enduring.
A regular contributor to The Times, Athitakis is a writer in Arizona and the author of “The New Midwest.”
Gov. George Deukmejian named on Monday Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kenneth R. Yegan to join the state 2nd District Court of Appeal, fulfilling the judge’s longtime dream of becoming an appeals court justice.
If a judicial review panel confirms Yegan’s nomination to the court’s 6th Division on Dec. 27, he will replace Justice Richard W. Abbe, who retired Nov. 28 after eight years on the three-member court.
“If I get confirmed on the 27th, I’ll take the oath right on the spot and hope to report to work the next day,” said Yegan, 43, of Westlake.
The review panel, composed of Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Lucas, Atty. Gen. John K. Van De Kamp and presiding 2nd District Court of Appeal Justice Lester Roth, is scheduled to meet next week in Los Angeles to discuss Yegan’s qualifications.
If confirmed, he will consider appeals cases from Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties with Justices Steven J. Stone and Arthur Gilbert, who have served on the 6th Division bench since it was established in 1982.
“Without even thinking about it, I’m really ecstatic about the appointment,” said Gilbert, who has reviewed Yegan’s Superior Court opinions on appeal and worked with him when Yegan served as a temporary appeals justice in the summer of 1986.
“I think he’s as good as you can get. He’s just first-rate,” Gilbert said. “He supports his point of view with well-reasoned statements of decision on the Superior Court, and he did the same thing when he was here.”
Stone said Yegan has a reputation for being able to handle all levels of appeals work, from doing legal research to writing the final draft of opinions.
“I have a lot of respect for Ken and I think that he will work very well with us,” Stone said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Yegan said that Deukmejian called him Friday to offer him the seat. He said the governor swore him to secrecy until Monday, but gave him permission to tell his family.
“My wife was home with my oldest daughter and she was screaming, and my daughter was screaming,” Yegan said. “After they calmed down a little bit she asked me if I could pick up my youngest daughter from ballet and asked if I could go to the store and pick up some things. . . .and that’s when I knew things hadn’t changed.”
The focus of Judge Yegan’s work has not changed much from his first days in law. He said he has been fascinated by appeals work ever since law school.
“I took all the courses I could in law school in appellate practice,” Yegan said. “It’s intellectually challenging and it’s very stimulating to figure out where the facts meet the law and. . . .which is the better-reasoned opinion.”
Yegan graduated in 1972 from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and began work as a deputy in the Ventura County public defender’s office, handling trials and appellate cases.
Beginning in 1975 he worked as a senior attorney in the appeals court’s 5th Division in Los Angeles, researching cases and helping justices write opinions. In January, 1983, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed him to the Ventura County Municipal Court.
Deukmejian elevated him to the Superior Court in July 1986, where he tried criminal, civil and cases appealed from Municipal Court.
In recent months, Yegan said, letters urging his nomination have flowed into the governor’s office from County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, Sheriff John V. Gillespie, three Supreme Court justices and a variety of appeals court justices, trial court judges and lawyers.
Abbe said of Yegan’s appointment: “His work when he was. . . .here was excellent. He was knowledgeable, he was able to evaluate cases quickly and accurately and make sensible decisions.”
SACRAMENTO — In a show of defiance to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, California lawmakers on Monday voted to ban federal immigration agents from being hired for many local and state government jobs and to outlaw electric-shock gloves similar to those that may be distributed to federal officers.
The two bills were among a slate of legislation approved by the Democratic-led state Legislature to thwart certain tactics and tools used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, such as arresting people who appear at courthouses for scheduled immigration hearings.
“We have the fourth largest economy in the world because of our immigrant and undocumented community, and they’re being penalized and targeted by the Trump administration,” said Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles). “This package of immigrant bills that we’ve sent [to the governor] is trying to say that we are here to defend you.”
Gonzalez is the author of a bill to prohibit agents and contractors involved in immigration enforcement from being employed in the future by the state, cities, counties, school districts and other public entities. It was supported by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and called the “Get the Feds Out” Act, or “GTFO.”
It would allow an exception for officers who are accepted to a police agency and take the state’s basic police training course, but notes that “suitability shall be determined on a case-by-case basis.”
State Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, said the state “expects its public employees to be moral” and to defend the state and U.S. constitutions.
“Anyone who is participating in the raids have shown that they do not live up to the bar that Californians deserve from their public servants. This bill says that individuals who participated in immigration enforcement activities will be disqualified from holding state, county or local public employment in California” except in certain circumstances, she said.
A separate bill by Assemblymember Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles) would block police and other law enforcement officers from taking second jobs or working as contractors on federal immigration enforcement.
“If you sign up to protect and serve our communities during the day with a local law enforcement agency, you cannot moonlight with ICE,” Bryan said.
During a June hearing, state Sen. Kelly Seyarto (R-Murrieta) said the bill was “based on anger at an issue” that “a lot of people disagree on,” which Republican lawmakers commonly cited when debating the immigration-related bills.
“It opens up this can of worms of interpretations that are sometimes not based on reality,” he said.
State and federal law enforcement officers will be banned from using electric-shock gloves until 2030, and the state Department of Justice will be required to study their safety, under a bill passed Monday night. The last-minute legislation was introduced last week after a report that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security planned to purchase the gloves for use in immigration enforcement.
The bill “draws a clear line,” said state Sen. Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley): “Public safety technology must be proven safe and accountable before it’s deployed, not after someone is killed or seriously injured.”
Republicans opposed the bill, arguing the gloves could be a safer way to subdue suspects than firearms.
“If electric shock is a better alternative than actually shooting someone, I don’t think we should take it off the table,” said state Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach). “Law enforcement deserves the tools they need to keep us safe.”
Lawmakers on Friday approved legislation to ban federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing masks in the state. The measure, Senate Bill 1004, was introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to fix an earlier law that was struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge.
Other bills would prohibit arrests of people traveling to or from court, as federal agents have arrested people who show up for immigration hearings; impose a 25% tax on income earned by companies operating immigration detention centers; and allow individuals to file lawsuits against federal agents over alleged civil rights violations such as excessive force, unlawful home searches and interfering with the right to protest.
Critics argued that some bills might not stand up to legal challenges.
“This seems to fit the general pattern that California will bend over backwards to protect people who are in the country illegally, even if it means putting the public at risk,” said Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates for strict immigration limits.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto bills approved by the Legislature.
Los Angeles County announced Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against State Farm General after hundreds of victims of last year’s devastating wildfires complained that their claims had been delayed, denied or underpaid.
The lawsuit alleges that State Farm engaged in illegal and deceptive business practices that kept victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires from receiving what they were entitled to under their policies.
County officials said their investigation into the complaints found unreasonable delays in processing claims, as well as “systematic underpayments.”
Officials said they also found that State Farm had illegally suppressed smoke damage claims.
“Survivors are just asking for what’s right,” L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, said at a Monday news conference.
Bob Devereux, a State Farm spokesman, said in a statement that the company would respond to the lawsuit through the legal process.
“State Farm General strongly disagrees with Los Angeles County’s characterization of our wildfire claims response,” he said.
Devereux said that State Farm has so far paid more than $6.2 billion on claims related to the two wildfires, including about $1 billion for smoke-related damage. About 78% of the claims have been closed, he said.
“We continue working directly with customers whose claims remain open and evaluating each claim based on the facts of the loss and the coverage provided by the customer’s policy,” he said.
“Our focus remains on helping customers recover,” he said.
Wildfire victims praised county officials for the lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. County Superior Court.
Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, said at the news conference that, in the months after the fires, it became apparent in talking to victims that those with State Farm policies were not getting the benefits they had paid for.
She said for those families, insurance had become “a barrier to recovery” rather than a safety net.
“Nineteen months after the fires, families are still suffering,” she said.
The county’s investigation included looking at complaints that Chen’s group and others had collected, as well as hundreds of other documents from State Farm policyholders.
County officials said that State Farm “failed to substantially comply” with their requests for documents and information during their investigation.
With more than 2.8 million residential and commercial policies, State Farm is California’s largest private insurer.
The county’s lawsuit includes dozens of complaints of L.A. County fire victims.
“After six decades of paying thousands a year for insurance, we expect them to honor their agreement,” said one family.
Many families say the insurer refused to test their homes for toxins left by smoke.
The lawsuit claims that State Farm “drastically lowballed” estimates of financial losses for destroyed or partially damaged homes.
“They offered us $11,000 to remediate our five-bedroom house,” complained one family. ”That’s only 13% of the actual cost.”
According to the California Department of Insurance, 11,300 State Farm policyholders filed homeowner claims arising from last year’s L.A. County fires.
The lawsuit asks the court to require State Farm to pay full restitution to policyholders, as well as civil penalties for violating state law.
I THINK it’s fair to say it seems like summer is on the way out and autumn is on the way in.
But there is no need to stress as one UK county ideal for staycations is home to an abundance of spots that are great even in the rain.
Devon has some towns that are great for rainy days where you can see live glassblowing or explore museumsCredit: AlamySo here is a round up of the best spots to visitCredit: Alamy
Having grown up in Devon, I know the county really well and yes, while there are a load of sandy beaches and picturesque coastal walks, there are also loads of towns and attractions that make the ideal day when the weather isn’t great.
So with autumn looming and the return of threatening dark skies, here are my top towns in Devon that are perfect for exploring in the rain:
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Totnes
In Totnes, you can explore lots of independent shops as well as a museumCredit: Alamy
One spot you need to explore in Devon is Totnes – often dubbed the hippie capital of the UK.
Once upon a time it even used to have its own pound note.
You won’t see any big branded chains here and that’s the best thing – instead the high street is full of independent boutiques with locally crafted gifts, antique and vintage shops, treasure trove charity shops and cosy coffee spots.
Yes – to get to each you’ll need to walk outside, but even in the wind and the rain the high street remains sheltered.
At the top of the town make sure to dive into Hairy Barista and grab a cuppa and something to eat – everything here is handmade and delicious.
If the rain isn’t giving up, then head to Totnes Museum to discover local history – it costs just £2.50 per person.
Or cosy up in Totnes Cinema, which is less commercial and more intimate than your local Vue with classic films, exposed brick walls and vintage seating.
If the weather isn’t too bad and you happen to be in the town on a Friday or Saturday, make sure to head to the market where you will find an abundance of antique gems and tasty food stalls.
Exeter
Exeter has a grand Gothic Cathedral with a massive vaulted ceilingCredit: Getty
While technically not a town, the city of Exeter is a great spot for exploring in poor weather.
Right by Exeter Central Train Station, you can head to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) for free.
Inside, you’ll find extensive displays of exotic animals including birds and insects as well as artefacts dating back 2,000 years.
This impressive Gothic Cathedral dates back to 1050 AD and has the longest uninterrupted stone-vaulted ceiling in the world.
Having visited several times, I can easily say it is one of the most impressive buildings I’ve seen – even compared to more famous churches in Europe.
Tickets to the Cathedral cost £12.50 per adult and is free for those under 18-years-old visiting with family (you can also get half price entry on Sundays throughout September).
If you prefer to shop, head off the high street to Princess Hay Shopping Centre, which is conveniently covered.
Here you’ll find brand names including Apple, Superdry, Oliver Bonas, Hollister and HMV.
If you want something a little more active, head just outside the city to Exeter Quay where you will find The Quay Climbing Centre for indoor climbing and bouldering.
Dartmouth
You could head on a steam train through the countryside to or from DartmouthCredit: Getty
Despite being a coastal town, there is still loads to do in Dartmouth when the weather turns bad.
The journey heads between Paignton and Kingswear, where you’ll then hop off onto a ferry across to Dartmouth and you can either go one way or go on a return trip.
You could even do the Round Robin experience which begins by hopping on a bus from Paignton to Totnes, where you’ll then get on a 90-minute cruise to Dartmouth, then grab the ferry to Kingswear, where you will then board the steam train back to Paignton.
Ticket prices vary depending on the experience you choose.
When in Kingswear, make sure to visit Greenway Mansion – Agatha Christie’s holiday home.
Managed by the National Trust, the Georgian House has 1950s interiors with first editions of Christie’s novels as well as objects that inspired some of her stories – tickets cost from £18 per adult and £9 per child.
And in Dartmouth itself, there are plenty of cosy cafes and shops to explore, as well as the town’s museum.
Bovey Tracey
In Bovey Tracey, you can head to the House of Marbles which is completely free to enterCredit: Gwen and James Anderson
It acts as the gateway to the House of Marbles – a unique attraction where you can explore glass-blowing studios, interactive marble runs and historic games.
There are even giant marble runs that head along the walls – including Snooki 2000, which is one of the largest marble runs in the UK.
Visitors can press different buttons to get marbles to travel along the runs.
The attraction also has a heap of antique games and toys, as well as vintage fairground attractions to try out like distorted mirrors.
What makes the attraction even better is that it is completely free to visit.
SACRAMENTO — The California state Legislature voted Sunday to amend a 2019 law that extended the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims but was blamed for draining the coffers of municipalities and school districts.
Since the law was enacted, L.A. County has agreed to pay more than $5 billion to settle more than 12,000 claims stemming from alleged sexual abuse committed by government employees in foster homes and juvenile halls.
The bill passed by the Legislature on Sunday requires victims older than 40 to provide evidence that the public entity was aware of the misconduct that resulted in the assault and failed to take reasonable steps to avoid it.
It also states that attorneys who file fraudulent sex abuse lawsuits can be fined $25,000 per violation. The Times reported last year on nine plaintiffs who said they were paid to sue the county over sex abuse, some of whom said they were told to fabricate their claims.
Consumer attorneys, counties and victims rights groups jostled over the elements of the proposed bill over the last few months.
Lawmakers stopped short of capping payouts in the bill, a change sought by some local governments and school districts.
The legislation follows multiple attempts to change the law in recent years. Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) tried last year to increase the burden of proof for sex abuse cases, but pulled the bill after outrage from victims rights groups.
Some of the groups blasted the bill on Sunday night, arguing it would shield rapists and deny justice to survivors.
Speaking on the floor of the state Senate, Laird said that he tried to balance the needs of all parties.
The bill now goes to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration.
