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A widespread power outage in the Santa Barbara area caused a major telecommunications disruption and forced the rescheduling of a planned SpaceX launch Tuesday afternoon. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, a regional outage in Santa Barbara disrupted communications of the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control center, which manages air traffic over the Pacific Ocean. A spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management confirmed to KTLA that 911 services were also affected throughout the entire county. The disruption came as SpaceX planned to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in north-western Santa Barbara County, but the...

Authorities in Santa Barbara County are preparing for this year’s Deltopia, a weekend-long unsanctioned street party notorious for arrests, citations and hospitalizations. The massive beachfront party takes place this coming weekend in Isla Vista, a community located immediately adjacent to the UC Santa Barbara campus. The party, which has taken many forms since its inception, has made national headlines as thousands of college-aged adults descend on the small community and fill all available space on Del Playa Drive. While no party has reached the chaos of the 2014 event that ended in violent riots, Deltopia usually results in several arrests...

Joe Biden wasted no time heading to one of his favorite destinations after Donald Trump's inauguration and it looks like he could be settling there for his retirement. Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States in Washington, D.C., the former president and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, flew to warmer and more inviting surroundings. Departing from Joint Base Andrews, the couple set their sights on California's picturesque Santa Ynez Valley. Curious residents gathered at the Santa Barbara Airport on Monday hoping to catch a glimpse of the Bidens' arrival. A 'no-fly notice'...

Yinpiao Zhou, a Chinese citizen, was arrested Monday and accused of using a drone to photograph the Vandenberg Space Force Base outside Santa Barbara, Calif. Zhou, 39, was charged with failure to register an aircraft not providing transportation and a violation of national defense airspace, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a release. He was arrested at San Francisco International Airport prior to boarding a China-bound flight. Vandenberg’s detection system spotted the drone on Nov. 30. The aircraft flew for nearly an hour, traveled to an altitude of about a mile above ground level...

Two people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from an explosion at the Santa Maria Courthouse in California, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office. One person of interest -- an adult male -- was detained, Santa Barbara County Sheriff public information officer Raquel Zick wrote on social media. Authorities believe the explosion was the result of an "intentionally set improvised explosive device," Zick said.

Look at the contrast between how Secret Service treats people near Jill Biden versus how they treated a gunman wandering around a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Joe and Jill Biden took a taxpayer-funded weeklong vacation in Santa Ynez, California last week. Secret Service agents violently pushed peasants out of the way so Jill Biden could go on a shopping spree on Friday afternoon. Jill Biden made a ‘surprise visit’ in Los Olivos and bystanders with cameras were roughly cleared out. One woman was violently pushed away. “Out of the roadway! Move now! Go!” one member of Jill Biden’s security...

The University of California Santa Barbara’s MultiCultural Center (MCC) was recently photographed adorned with anti-Zionist signs, including targeted threats against a Jewish student leader. “In case we aren’t clear, let’s spell it out,” read an MCC Instagram caption from earlier this week alongside a photo of the center’s entrance doors, which featured a sign saying “Zionists not welcome,” as seen on a story related by We Are Tov and Community News on Instagram. The Instagram update also shows additional posters in the MCC, such as “When people are occupied, Resistance is justified,” “Zionists get 0 bitches,” and “Zionists are not...

A white woman captured on video making racist statements — which sparked a large protest in Santa Barbara over the weekend — has apologized for her “inappropriate remarks,” saying they were the result of a lapse in judgement. exp-player-logo Watch More Two videos posted to Instagram show the Saturday confrontation between the woman, identified as Jeanne Umana, and a Latino construction worker, identified as Luis Cervantes. In one video, Umana is shown inside a house at an active construction site in Santa Barbara. She is approached by Cervantes and told that the house is on private property and that she...

Here's an absolutely wild story out of the state of Alabama. In 1997, a headless body was discovered in the woods of Marshall County, Alabama along the Little Cotaco Creek near Union Springs. The headless man appeared to have been decapitated with a saw, as well as having his hands and feet removed as well, making him impossible to identify at the time. In addition, the man's heart and spleen were also removed with "surgical precision" according to authorities. But now, 26 years later, the man has been identified as Jefferey Douglas Kimzy of Santa Barbara, California. Now the question...

Wanna get away? With federal and congressional investigations hanging over his head, first son Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen escaped Los Angeles by spending the weekend at a $50 million vineyard owned by medical device company executive Joe Kiani — a major donor to Democrats and Biden. Hunter, Melissa and their Secret Service protectors arrived at Kiani Preserve, about three hours north of LA in the heart of Santa Barbara wine country, in a four-car motorcade Friday evening — one week after the 53-year-old returned to the US from accompanying his father and aunt on a state visit...

Five months after filing a lawsuit against the Goleta Water District in Santa Barbara, attorneys have secured a six-figure award in favor of five plaintiffs resulting from the utility’s restrictive COVID-19 employee vaccine mandate. “This was fairly early on that they offered this judgment that the plaintiffs were the prevailing parties, which means they did not want to litigate this case clearly and go to discovery,” said Mariah Gondeiro, an Advocates for Faith & Freedom lawyer. “I believe that we can use it in other cases as a precedent.” Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a nonprofit law firm, filed their...

For the Central Coast town of Solvang, its signature will always be its faux-traditional Danish village, built in the 1940s. It now stands today as a mile-long cartoon backdrop of gift shops and Danish Renaissance-style buildings. But beneath the surface of the town’s kitschy appeal, a new generation of world-class chefs, barkeeps and merchants is making steady gains to revitalize Solvang. Yet they’re discovering that changing a beloved place’s carefully orchestrated image — transforming Solvang from a spot to roll in on a tour bus and grab a mini Danish flag into a true destination — is a heady task....

The Santa Barbara City Council has given restaurant Chick-fil-A 90 days to fix its traffic problems on State Street or face the possibility of being declared a public nuisance. Why? A local woman who “never liked Chick-fil-A,” not because of their product, but “for their social positions,” found a reason to cancel them.Independent.com reported: What spurred Hobbs to local action, however, was watching the upper State Street restaurant’s overcrowded drive-thru line spill constantly and precariously into the road, a public safety issue that has persisted for the better part of the decade, unabated, with no apparent consequences for either the...

Larry Elder is scheduled to make a campaign appearance tomorrow (8 Sept 21) at 3:30 PM at the Santa Barbara Courthouse, Sunken Garden. All YES voters are invited.

The owner of a Santa Barbara surf school stabbed his 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son to death at a Mexican hotel and then left their mutilated bodies and headed for home, according to police. Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, trying to cross back into California from Tijuana, Mexico, after his wife, Abby, reported him and their children missing... Mexican officials tracked the three to the City Express Hotel in Rosarito on Saturday and video footage shows them leaving early Monday morning. Coleman returned alone later that morning and...

Approximately 3,000 mail-in ballots counted in the Nov. 3 election were supposedly cast by UCSB students residing in a voting precinct that, along with other dorm buildings, includes the Francisco Torres/Santa Catalina Residence Hall at 6850 El Colegio Road in Goleta. Problem: Due to COVID-19, the Torres Building, which normally accommodates 1,300 students, was empty and locked down through most of 2020, as were all other UCSB dorms. This means no students/voters were residing inside the Torres Building (nor any of the other dorms) during the election season.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral program in second language acquisition recently held a virtual lecture on “Undoing White Supremacy in the Language Disciplines.” Professor Mary Bucholtz from the University of California-Santa Barbara spoke as a guest at the virtual lecture. Bucholtz identified herself as being “racist” because she is “a White American.”

The only remaining location of a historic breakfast chain in Santa Barbara is changing its name after thousands of people petitioned against its use of a racial epithet. The owners of Sambo's on W. Cabrillo Blvd. haven't decided on a new name yet, but agreed that it was time for the 63-year-old restaurant to take action amid nationwide protests against police brutality and widespread racism. On Thursday, staff began to temporarily cover the bubble-lettered sign with symbols demonstrating peace and love. "Our family has looked into our hearts and realize that we must be sensitive when others whom we respect...

Deputies shot and killed a man suspected of fatally stabbing a woman at the California home of "Tarzan" actor Ron Ely, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office said. The sheriff's office received a call about a family dispute at the actor's home in Hope Ranch, California, on Tuesday night, Lt. Erik Raney told CNN. When deputies arrived, they found an elderly woman dead from apparent stab wounds, Raney said. The victim's husband, whose speech was impeded because of a medical condition, said that another family member was involved in the stabbing, Raney said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Katy Perry, her collaborators and her record label must pay more than $2.78 million because the pop star’s 2013 hit “Dark Horse” copied a 2009 Christian rap song, a federal jury decided Thursday. It was an underdog victory for rapper Marcus Gray, a relatively obscure artist once known as Flame, whose 5-year-old lawsuit survived constant court challenges and a trial against top-flight attorneys for Perry and the five other music-industry heavyweights who wrote her song. The amount fell well short of the nearly $20 million sought by attorneys for Gray and the two co-writers of “Joyful...