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Protesters have camped at the foot of Mauna Kea, a dormant 14,000-foot volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii for a week now, blocking the access road and demanding the halt to construction of a $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope. Mauna Kea is one of the best places on the planet, and certainly the best in the northern hemisphere for astronomical research. The shape of the volcano and its distance from urban light sources create unrivaled conditions for viewing outer space. At...

Twitter shows agents arriving to serve search warrants on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. There has been no comment from the Los Angeles City Attorney, and the Court has sealed the file on what the Federal Bureau of Investigations is seeking. One theory is that rate increases have been more than allowed by law. This seems unlikely, since laws limiting rate increases would not properly be the subject of a Federal investigation. The LADWP has been criticized for...

Move over FIFA, Wimbledon, Basketball, American Football and the rest. The biggest sporting event in the world, which took place over the weekend, is none of these, but actually a Cricket match between India and Pakistan! And it's happening during the preliminary rounds of the Cricket World Cup in Manchester, United Kingdom on Sunday. And it beats all the rest! The FIFA World Cup Final last year between France and Croatia had roughly 1.5 billion viewers. Yet this standard,...

A bill proposed by Santa Monica's State Senator Ben Allen would repeal Article 34 of the California State Constitution. On June 4, Allen's bill was approved unanimously by the California State Senate's Housing Committee. It will now move to the State Senate floor. If approved there, the proposal to change the State Constitution will be put to the voters on the 2020 ballot. Article 34 was passed in 1950 as Proposition 10. The legislation requires a local ballot referendum to...

Hong Kong (dpa) - Hong Kong's largest protest in decades ended with clashes late Sunday as hundreds of protesters attempted to break through police barricades to enter government headquarters. Police used tear gas and batons on protesters, many of whom wore surgical masks and came from the pro-independence student groups. The clashes lasted around 30 minutes until around 12:20 am (16:20 GMT Sunday), the South China Morning Post reported, but stand-offs between police and...

Washington (dpa) – Mexico and the United States on Wednesday failed to reach an immediate agreement to prevent Washington from imposing a 5-per-cent tariff on all Mexican imports, but will resume talks on Thursday, both sides said. US President Donald Trump tweeted that there was progress during the talks at the White House, "but not nearly enough." Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the US had shown a will to bring the two sides' positions closer and that he r...

Editor: This is intended as a response to your article about the City's recent resolution on climate change and its commitment to spend up to $800 million to combat it. As noted in the City's press release by Constance Farrell, most of the money goes to other projects that have a positive impact on other priorities. The largest share of spending is to wean Santa Monica off of imported water through a combination of expanded water treatment, storm water capture and storage, con...

Los Angeles (dpa) - Pop princess Taylor Swift criticized President Donald Trump while calling on her senator to support a law that would protect Americans from gender or sexual orientation-based discrimination. In a letter shared with Swift's over 270 million followers across her social media platforms, the pop superstar called on Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander to support the Equality Act. "For American citizens to be denied jobs or housing based on who they love or how...

Hong Kong (dpa) - Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown with a candlelight vigil on Tuesday. The vigil featured songs, speeches and video montages of the weeks-long democracy protest which came to a bloody end on June 3-4, 1989. Many of those attending the vigil said they remembered watching televised news broadcasts of the Tiananmen protests as children or students. Angie Yuen told dpa she was 9 years old when...

London (dpa) - US President Donald Trump and his family enjoyed a royal banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at London's Buckingham Palace late Monday, ahead of large protests against his three-day visit expected on Tuesday. "The Queen and the entire royal family have been fantastic," Trump tweeted after meeting the British monarch and most senior royals during a formal welcome ceremony and a private lunch at the palace earlier in the day. Prince Charles, the Queen's eldest so...

Washington (dpa) - Markets were rattled on Friday as President Donald Trump restarted the North American side of the global trade war, just as China announced retaliatory tariffs against the United States and created a blacklist of foreign entities. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong closed down, as did major European indices, with the German Dax recording the first monthly loss this year. Trade tensions have been coming on top of a wider sign of a slowdown in the world economy. Key...

Update: Response by Santa Monica City Manager Rick Cole to this article: https://www.smobserved.com/story/2019/05/31/news/response-by-sm-city-manager-rick-cole-to-criticism-of-climate-change-resolution/4001.html Almost without fanfare or notice, the City of Santa Monica has voted to spend $800 Million over ten years to reduce its carbon foot print. This is $8,000 per resident, or about 3 times the City's annual budget. It's more money than it would take to build an aircraft...

Buenos Aires (dpa) - Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old businessman, was sworn in on Saturday as the new president of El Salvador. The conservative politician is the youngest head of state in the history of the Central American country. Bukele promised in his swearing-in address that he would fight against "every barrier, against every wall" in order to achieve a transformation in the country plagued by violence and corruption. "I will rule for the 7 million Salvadorans in the...

Washington (dpa) - President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a 5-per-cent tariff on all goods imported from Mexico to pressure the country into stopping illegal immigrants from entering the US. In a statement, Trump said Mexico's "passive cooperation" with the flow of illegal immigration was an "emergency and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States." The tariff will be imposed on June 10 and be raised to 10 per cent on July 1 "if the...

Mexico City/Washington (dpa) – Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on Friday said a summit will take place in Washington on Wednesday to "solve the dispute" between the two countries after US President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports. "There is willingness to hold a dialogue. We will be firm and we will defend the dignity of Mexico," Ebrard said in a tweet, adding that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will attend the meeting. Trump on Thursday a...

Thirty years ago on June 4, the Chinese army opened fire on student protesters in Tiananmen Square. The government has attempted to erase the "incident" from history, but victims and some perpetrators are keeping the memory alive. Beijing/Taipei (dpa) – Fang Zheng recalls the students' withdrawal from Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the morning of June 4, 1989, as peaceful. A few thousand students had sat overnight around the Monument to the People's Heroes, in the square, f...

Washington (dpa) - US President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed he was defending Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden when he repeated remarks by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un calling him a "low IQ individual." "I was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil. Kim Jong Un called him a 'low IQ idiot,' and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer 'low IQ individual.' Who could possibly be upset with that?"...

Washington (dpa) - A powerful House Democrat said Wednesday special counsel Robert Mueller might be finished with his investigation but Congress is not, as several prominent party members called for impeachment proceedings to begin against the president. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said Democrats would continue to probe President Donald Trump's actions because it is Congress' responsibility to respond to his "crimes." Nadler made the comments after Mueller broke his...

London (dpa) - Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party looked set to triumph in European Parliament elections, partial results showed late Sunday, while Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party and the main opposition party Labour suffered heavy losses. The veteran Eurosceptic's party rode a wave of public dissatisfaction and anger about the current state of Brexit to get 31.7 per cent of votes, securing 28 of Britain's 73 seats in the European Parliament, according to EU...

London (dpa) - A contender to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday vowed not to serve under early favourite Boris Johnson and to oppose any attempt to take Britain out of the European Union without a withdrawal deal. International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, one of a dozen candidates to replace May as leader of the ruling Conservative party, said he "could not serve with Boris Johnson." Stewart told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he spoke to Johnson...

Brussels (dpa) - Early numbers suggest more citizens are heading to the polls across the European Union on Sunday than in the last election in 2014. More than 400 million citizens are eligible to elect the 751 members of the European Parliament, in what is being described as the world's biggest trans-national election. Sunday is last and biggest day of the four-day election across the bloc, with 21 of the EU's 28 member states voting. In past cycles, however, turnout has...

Madrid (dpa) - Spain's former king Juan Carlos has announced that he will be withdrawing from public life this coming Sunday, five years after his retirement. In a letter to his son, King Felipe VI, that was published by the Spanish royal family on Monday, the 81-year-old former monarch says that from June 2 he will no longer be available for representative duties. "I think the time has come to open a new page in my life and withdraw completely from public life," the former...

Brussels (dpa) - Official European Parliament election results early Monday confirmed losses for the main political groups on the centre-left and centre-right, while boosting the liberals and Greens. Those totals, based on partial results, mean the two biggest blocs fall short of their traditional combined majority. Still, their party-list candidates insisted their groups were the best placed to form majorities in the new parliament. "There is no stable majority without the...

London (dpa) - British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday announced that she will step down as leader of her Conservative Party on June 7, accepting that she failed to broker a deal for Britain to leave the European Union. "It is and will always remain a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit," an emotional May said outside Downing Street. It had been the "honour" of her life to serve as prime minister for nearly three years, she added. "[I...

Washington (dpa) - The United States approved the deployment of 1,500 military personnel to the Middle East on Friday, in a move meant to counter Iran as tensions continued to escalate between the two countries. The troop movement include a Patriot anti-missile battalion, a fighter aircraft squadron and surveillance aircraft, in addition to other units. This is a "prudent defensive measure and intended to reduce the possibility of future hostilities," Acting Defense Secretary...