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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The number of cases on Friday was an increase of nine over the previous day.
California’s first COVID-19 death was reported earlier this week in Placer County. Officials there said the person who died was elderly, with underlying health conditions. That was just one of Placer County’s two COVID-19 cases.
Of the 69 COVID-19 cases reported Friday in California, the California Department of Public Health said 24 are cases of positive tests related to federal repatriation flights.
Of the other 45 cases, 22 are travel-related, 12 are person-to-person, nine are community transmission and two are under investigation, CDPH said.
There are more than 9,900 people who returned to the U.S. through San Francisco and Los Angeles airports who are self-monitoring. CDPH said 49 health jurisdictions are involved in self-monitoring.
CDPH’s state laboratory in Richmond and 14 other public health department laboratories now have tests for the virus that causes COVID-19.
The governor this week declared a state of emergency and announced that 24 million more Californians are now eligible for free medically necessary COVID-19 testing.
Health officials continue to urge Californians to use a variety of precautions, including handwashing, avoiding touching eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands, avoiding close contact with people who are sick, and staying away from work, school or other people if you become sick with respiratory symptoms like fever and cough.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Daylight Saving Time begins at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 8.
At that time, clocks will “spring forward” one hour as California goes from Pacific Standard Time to Pacific Daylight Time.
Daylight Saving Time continues in California despite the fact that in 2018 a majority of voters supported a proposition to end it.
Both the California Legislature and Congress must take action before the practice – in effect since 1966 – can be changed, and so far legislative efforts have stalled.
In the meantime, fire and emergency officials urge people to use Daylight Saving Time as a reminder to change batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors as well as in NOAA weather radios.
Daylight Saving Time this year will end on Sunday, Nov. 1.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE PROGRAM
NASA’s next Mars rover has a new name – Perseverance.
Alexander Mather, a 13-year-old student from Virginia, submitted the winning name and explains why he chose the name of NASA’s next robotic scientist to visit the Red Planet.
The name was announced Thursday by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, during a celebration at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia.
Zurbuchen was at the school to congratulate seventh-grader Alexander Mather, who submitted the winning entry to the agency’s "Name the Rover" essay contest, which received 28,000 entries from K-12 students from every U.S. state and territory.
"Alex’s entry captured the spirit of exploration,” said Zurbuchen. “Like every exploration mission before, our rover is going to face challenges, and it’s going to make amazing discoveries. It’s already surmounted many obstacles to get us to the point where we are today – processing for launch. Alex and his classmates are the Artemis Generation, and they’re going to be taking the next steps into space that lead to Mars. That inspiring work will always require perseverance. We can’t wait to see that nameplate on Mars.”
Perseverance is the latest in a long line of Red Planet rovers to be named by school-age children, from Sojourner in 1997 to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on Mars in 2004, to Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. In each case, the name was selected following a nationwide contest.
The contest that resulted in Alex's winning entry of Perseverance began Aug. 28, 2019. Nearly 4,700 volunteer judges – educators, professionals and space enthusiasts from around the country – reviewed submissions to help narrow the pool down to 155 semifinalists.
Once that group was whittled down to nine finalists, the public had five days to weigh in on their favorites, logging more than 770,000 votes online, with the results submitted to NASA for consideration.
The nine finalists also talked with a panel of experts, including Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division; NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins; rover driver Nick Wiltsie at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California; and Clara Ma, who, as a sixth-grade student in 2009, named Curiosity.
Up until two years ago, Mather was more interested in video games than space. That all changed in the summer of 2018 when he visited Space Camp in Alabama.
From his first glimpse of a Saturn V – the rocket that launched the Apollo astronauts to the Moon half a century ago – Mather became a bona fide space enthusiast, checking NASA.gov daily, consuming astronaut autobiographies and even 3D-printing flyable model rockets.
When the call went out for students to propose a name for NASA's new Mars rover, Mather knew he wanted to contribute.
"This was a chance to help the agency that put humans on the Moon and will soon do it again," said Mather. "This Mars rover will help pave the way for human presence there and I wanted to try and help in any way I could. Refusal of the challenge was not an option."
Along with forever being associated with the mission, Mather will also receive an invitation to travel with his family to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to witness the rover begin its journey when it launches this summer.
While Mather has received NASA’s grand prize in this competition, NASA also is acknowledging the valuable contributions of the semifinalists whose entries were among the top ones considered.
"They came so far, and their expressive submissions helped make this naming contest the biggest and best in NASA history," said Glaze, who also attended the event Thursday. "So, we decided to send them a little farther – 314 million miles farther. All 155 semifinalists’ proposed rover names and essays have been stenciled onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair and will be flown to Mars aboard the rover.”
NASA's Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing just under 2,300 pounds (1,043 kilograms). Managed for the agency by JPL, the rover’s astrobiology mission includes searching for signs of past microbial life.
It also will characterize the planet's climate and geology, and collect samples of Martian rocks and dust for a future Mars Sample Return mission to Earth, while paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
"When word went out during the naming event here at JPL, I took a moment to look around the auditorium,” said John McNamee, project manager of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL. “I saw all these dedicated men and women who for years have invested the full measure of their intellect and stamina into the most technologically advanced rover mission in history – and I saw a lot of smiling faces and high-fives. Perseverance? You bet, that is a worthy name that we can be proud of as the first leg of a sample return campaign.”
Perseverance currently is undergoing final assembly and checkout at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It’s targeted to land on Mars’ Jezero Crater a little after 3:40 p.m. EST (12:40 p.m. PST) Feb. 18, 2021.
The rover naming contest partnership was part of a Space Act Agreement in educational and public outreach efforts between NASA, Battelle of Columbus, Ohio, and Future Engineers of Burbank, California. Amazon Web Services is an additional prize provider for the Mars 2020 naming contest and will provide Alex and his family a trip to see the launch.
Mars 2020 is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis program.
For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ .
Follow the Perseverance Mars rover’s official accounts and get answers to your questions about the mission at https://twitter.com/NASAPersevere and https://facebook.com/NASAPersevere .
For more about NASA's Moon to Mars plans, visit https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars .
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
On Thursday, the CHP’s Clear Lake Area office issued a brief update on its continuing investigation into the homicide of 41-year-old Patrick Michael Weber.
Weber was found dead in the driver’s seat of his sprinter van in the area of Highway 20 and Walker Ridge Road east of Clearlake Oaks on the morning of Feb. 21, 2019.
The CHP said its officers responded to the area of Highway 20 at milepost marker 41 on a reported fatal traffic collision.
A passing motorist reported seeing the van crashed off the south edge of the highway. The CHP said the van had been traveling eastbound when it went off the road.
The CHP said Weber had been in the vehicle when it crashed because he had seat belt marks on his body.
“As the investigation progressed, the officers on the scene became suspicious of the circumstances surrounding the collision and requested CHP’s investigation unit respond,” the CHP said in its Thursday update.
On the same day as Weber was found, an autopsy – conducted as soon as possible at the request of the CHP – concluded that Weber had died of a gunshot wound, leading to investigators’ determination that Weber’s death was a homicide.
Investigating officers found a large amount of marijuana in the van. The California Department of Cannabis Control told the CHP that Weber was not legally licensed to transport marijuana.
In a February 2019 interview, Weber’s wife told Lake County News that he was involved in the cannabis industry. He had gone on a trim run through Northern California, leaving a few days before.
The CHP said an in-depth investigation into Weber’s murder has ensued, spanning California and into nearby states.
In June, the CHP released surveillance pictures of a person of interest they wanted to talk to, as Lake County News has reported. Investigators have not disclosed if they spoke to the man.
The CHP said its investigators continue to actively and aggressively investigate Weber’s homicide as additional information and leads are developed.
The agency also thanked the public as well as the numerous allied law enforcement agencies throughout California for the assistance they have provided during the investigation.
Anyone with information about the case should contact the CHP’s Ukiah Communications Center at 707-467-4000, 24 hours a day.
Email Elizabeth Larson at