Santa Barbara County News and Events

Nedra Talley Ross, last surviving Ronette, dies at 80

Kraig Pakulski 0 19 Article rating: No rating

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN

(CNN) — Nedra Talley Ross, the last surviving member of the 1960s girl band The Ronettes, has died. She was 80 years old.

The singer, who joined forces with her cousins Ronnie Spector and Estelle Bennett to form the musical trio, passed away on Sunday morning, according to her daughter.

Writing on Facebook on Sunday night, Nedra K. Ross said: “At approximately 8:30 this morning our mother Nedra Talley Ross went home to be with the Lord. She was safe in her own bed at home with her family close, knowing she was loved. Thank you Lord.”

Meanwhile a post on the band’s official Facebook account also shared the news: “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Nedra Talley Ross’ passing. She was a light to those who knew and loved her.”

“As a founding member of The Ronettes, along with her beloved cousins Ronnie and Estelle, Nedra’s voice, style and spirit helped define a sound that would change music. Her contribution to the group’s story and their defining influence will live forever.”

“Rest peacefully dear Nedra. Thanks for the magic.”

Born in New York City on January 27, 1946, Ross formed the band — originally known as Ronnie and the Relatives and later the Darling Sisters — with sisters Spector and Bennett in 1959. Ross and Bennett started by singing back up, while Spector took the lead.

They only became famous in 1963 after signing with music producer Phil Spector, creator of the 1960s’ “Wall of Sound” style. “Be My Baby,” their first single with Spector, was a massive hit. Among their other hits were: “Baby I Love You,” “Walking in the Rain” and “Do I Love You?”

They also enjoyed huge success in the UK and were billed alongside the likes of the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds. They also opened for the Beatles on their final US tour in 1966.

The group broke up in 1967. Soon after, Ronnie wed Phil Spector, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. They divorced in 1974.

The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, two years before Bennett’s death. Spector died in 2022.

Inducting them that night was Rolling Stone Keith Richards. Recalling his first encounter with the trio in 1964, he said: “They touched my heart right there and then and they touch it still.”

In their acceptance speech that night, Ross spoke of the “dream” she and her cousins had starting out in their teens.

“We had a dream, but with a dream you need to have people behind you with your dream. For us, my mom knocked on doors when people didn’t want to hire and put under contract three young pretty girls that they said were going to change their minds down the road. I thank you for that — God knows what you’ve done.”

She went on to thank Jesus for saving her life through open heart surgery, as well as others, including her husband, Scott Ross, and their four children.

“Show business is a thing that can be great, but it can be bad, too,” she said. “For us, we had a family that gave us a core to help stabilize us in a very difficult crazy world. It was a fun time. I thank God.”

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Brandon Griggs contributed to this report.

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Supreme Court to debate whether police may seek sweeping cellphone location data in investigations

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By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — When an investigation into a Virginia bank robbery went cold a few years back, local police turned to Google.

Authorities served the tech giant with a “geofence warrant,” which required the company to parse location data on millions of people to find a handful whose cellphones pegged them within 300 meters of the bank at the time of the robbery.

With the data in hand, police solved their case. They also triggered a constitutional challenge that is now before the Supreme Court.

The justices will debate Monday whether the sweeping warrants, which are directed at tech companies rather than individual suspects, are consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches.

At a time when Americans store vast amounts of data online, the court’s decision could make it easier for law enforcement to solve crimes but also expose troves of personal information to authorities.

“It’s huge,” said William McGeveran, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School and an expert in data privacy law. “The issues involved apply to any of the digital technology that is tracking your location, which is a lot of things.”

In Virginia, police say Okello Chatrie passed a note urging a bank teller in 2019 to “hand over all the cash” and demanded “at least 100k and nobody will get hurt and your family will be set free.” Initially, police were unable to identify a suspect, but officers noticed on security cameras that the suspect was using his phone before the robbery. That’s when they sought the location data from Google.

After police identified Chatrie, authorities executed federal search warrants and found “robbery-style demand notes” in his bedroom, nearly $100,000 in cash and a 9 mm pistol. Police say Chatrie confessed to the robbery and was ultimately sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

Chatrie entered a conditional guilty plea but reserved the right to appeal over the geofence warrant. The Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him, holding that the warrant didn’t constitute a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. After all, the court reasoned that when people allow tech companies to collect data they generally do so voluntarily. It is an argument that the Justice Department, which is defending the warrants, relies on heavily.

Chatrie “took no steps to protect his location from disclosure, such as pausing the Location History feature he had enabled or adjusting, deactivating, or forgoing his cellphone during his crime,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court.

But Chatrie’s attorneys argue that the logic doesn’t apply to his case, in part because of a 2018 Supreme Court precedent. In that case, Carpenter v. US, a divided court ruled that law enforcement generally needs to establish probable cause before accessing cellphone tower data to identify the movements of suspects. If authorities need a warrant to get cellphone tower data, Chatrie’s attorneys said, then surely they also must obtain one to get data that is far more reliable.

The location data at issue in Chatrie’s case can identify a person’s location within 3 meters every two minutes.

“The technology may be novel, but the constitutional problem it presents is not,” Chatrie’s lawyer, Adam Unikowsky, told the Supreme Court. “The Fourth Amendment was born of the Founders’ revulsion for general warrants and writs of assistance — instruments that allowed the government to search first and develop suspicions later.”

In the Carpenter decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, was in the majority with the then-four-justice liberal wing. Three current conservat

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are about to face off in court. Is an impartial jury even possible?

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By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — A group of regular people who might not even know much about artificial intelligence could soon determine OpenAI’s future.

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its leaders, including CEO Sam Altman, heads to court Monday. Some of the biggest names in tech are expected to testify about whether executives deceived Musk and betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit mission when it evolved to include a for-profit arm.

The trial comes at a precarious time for OpenAI, with a blockbuster IPO on the horizon and frenzied competition among rivals. OpenAI’s IPO ambitions may fall apart if Musk wins the case. Altman and OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman could lose their positions – clearing an easier path for Musk’s AI company, xAI, to get ahead.

“This is a tech soap opera that all investors will be watching as Musk vs Altman enters the MMA ring,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an email. “We believe there will be a lot of dirt and slings thrown around in court between Musk and Altman, and that is not a good thing for anyone involved, but Musk has made this personal.”

But in a case involving the richest man in the world, the company that’s become synonymous with AI and major tech players and CEOs, finding impartial jurors will be a challenge.

How will the jury be chosen?

Musk and Altman aren’t just CEOs, they’re celebrities. Many possible jurors, especially from Silicon Valley, “will just have really strong opinions about these two titans of tech and AI,” jury consultant Alan Tuerkheimer told CNN.

But that alone isn’t a problem, said Professor Elizabeth Lippy, director of trial advocacy at Temple University law school.

“The law doesn’t require jurors who have never heard of Elon Musk or AI,” she said. “It requires jurors who can put aside what they’ve heard and decide the case based only on the evidence presented in court.”

The judge is calling a much larger pool of candidates during Monday’s jury selection, about three times larger than typical for a civil case, Tuerkheimer noted.

The judge and attorneys will try and “flesh out” how potential jurors feel not just about the bold face names, but also AI in general, Tuerkheimer said.

The jurors will only determine liability on an advisory basis for Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide any remedies herself.

What is Musk alleging?

Musk cofounded and helped fund OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, giving what he says amounted to around $44 million in its first few years. But he split from the company in 2018 after an acrimonious power struggle. (Musk went on to later found his own AI company xAI.)

After Musk left, OpenAI needed to raise more cash. A for-profit subsidiary was established in 2019, which was converted into a public benefit corporation overseen by the nonprofit foundation in 2025. The attorneys general in California and Delaware approved the shift last year.

Musk claims that shift betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit mission to develop safe open-source AI technology for the public good, not private gain. He claims the company profited wrongfully from his contributions in a breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment.

Microsoft, which Musk named as a co-defendant in the case, is accused of aiding and abetting OpenAI’s breach of charitable trust.

“Musk and the non-profit’s namesake objective were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices,” Musk’s original com

Giant fossil fuel companies made about $12,000 in the time it took you to read this headline

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By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — Six of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies are on track to make almost $3,000 in profits every single second this year, according to a new report, as households across the world grapple with soaring energy prices and inflation, which are driving a cost-of-living crisis.

Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and TotalEnergies will make $2,967 a second in profits in 2026, an analysis from the non-profit Oxfam International has found. It marks an increase of nearly $37 million a day compared to their 2025 profits.

The total projected fossil fuel profits for 2026 for all six companies stand at approximately $94 billion, the analysis found.

Oil and gas companies’ profits are soaring as the Iran conflict continues. Iran’s heavy restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for the oil and gas industry, have caused global oil prices to soar. Oil prices were pushed to an average of more than $100 a barrel in March.

“Fossil fuel corporations profit from geopolitical instability and subsequently inequality, as these disruptions lead to higher prices and higher profits,” said Mariana Paoli, the climate policy lead at Oxfam International.

The global ripples have been significant. While oil and gas companies make huge profits, people across the world are struggling with high costs of living, including soaring energy bills and punishing prices at the gas pumps.

Gas is averaging $4 a gallon in the United States, piling more pressure onto Americans already struggling with high grocery prices and housing costs.

Asian countries, many of which rely heavily on oil transported through the Strait of Hormuz, are among those hardest hit. Some governments have ordered people to work from home and are trialling four-day work weeks to cut fuel consumption, gas stations are rationing fuel and some hospitals are running out of supplies.

Fuel shortages have also affected sub-Saharan African countries, leading some to ration fuel.

The past few years of global conflict, including Russia’s war on Ukraine, have proved lucrative for oil and gas companies. Major fossil fuel companies made nearly half a trillion in profits in the four years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to an analysis by non-profit Global Witness in February.

An analysis by Rystad Energy and the Guardian this month found the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies made more than $30 million an hour — $8,333 a second — in the first month of the Iran war.

Oil companies’ bumper profits, however, are not being channelled into a transition to clean energy and away from planet-heating oil and gas. Instead, many companies have scaled back climate commitments.

BP has slashed planned investment in renewable energy and increased oil and gas spending, Shell has watered down its 2030 targets to cut climat

Un brote de tormentas severas de varios días se intensifica hacia un peligroso punto máximo este lunes

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Por Briana Waxman, meteoróloga de CNN

Partes del Medio Oeste de Estados Unidos, incluida gran parte de Illinois, podrían enfrentar este lunes la amenaza de tornados violentos, de categoría EF3 o superior, mientras un brote de tiempo severo de varios días entra en lo que podría ser su fase más peligrosa hasta ahora.

Vientos dañinos generalizados, granizo grande y tornados también amenazan a casi 40 millones de personas en una zona más amplia que se extiende desde el valle del Mississippi hasta el valle bajo del río Ohio este lunes.

La amenaza llega después de días de tiempo severo que ya han trazado un camino destructivo por partes de las llanuras y el sur, con más de 50 reportes de tornados desde el jueves. Entre ellos se incluyen un tornado violento, con una calificación preliminar de EF-4, en Enid, Oklahoma; tornados mortales en el norte de Texas; y múltiples advertencias de tornado de “Situación Particularmente Peligrosa” el domingo por la noche.

Este lunes está vigente un riesgo de nivel 3 de 5 por tormentas eléctricas severas desde partes del valle medio del Mississippi hasta el valle bajo del río Ohio, incluyendo casi todo Illinois y zonas de Missouri, el oeste de Indiana, el oeste de Kentucky y el noroeste de Tennessee.

Algunas de estas mismas áreas ya han sido golpeadas por tormentas severas en los últimos días. Elste lunes podría traer una primera ronda de superceldas seguida de una segunda ronda que podría organizarse en una línea de turbonada más tarde en el día.

Las superceldas de este lunes podrían ser capaces de producir algunos tornados potencialmente violentos, de categoría EF-3 o superior, y granizo de hasta el tamaño de una pelota de béisbol o más grande. A medida que las tormentas evolucionen durante la noche, la línea podría generar vientos dañinos generalizados, aunque las circulaciones incrustadas podrían seguir representando un riesgo de tornados.

El corredor desde el centro y sur de Missouri hasta el centro de Illinois podría ofrecer el entorno más favorable para las tormentas más fuertes, aunque la ubicación precisa del mayor potencial de tornados podría depender en parte de cómo las tormentas eléctricas matutinas modifiquen la atmósfera antes de la ronda de la tarde.

El sistema severo se desplaza hacia el este este martes, con un riesgo algo menor, pero aún significativo, de nivel 2 de 5 por tormentas eléctricas severas desde las llanuras del sur, pasando por el Mid-South, hasta el valle bajo del río Ohio.

Un tornado violento arrasó Enid, Oklahoma, la noche del jueves, lo que provocó una rara emergencia por tornado y causó daños de categoría EF-4 en partes de la ciudad, con algunas zonas arrasadas.

El tornado de Enid, con vientos estimados entre 273 km/h y 281 km/h, fue el más fuerte en Estados Unidos desde junio de 2025. Al menos 10 personas resultaron heridas y unas 40 viviendas sufrieron daños, aunque las autoridades dijeron que no se reportaron muertes.

Tornados mortales golpearon el norte de Texas el sábado, incluido un tornado de categoría EF-2 cerca de Runaway Bay, a unos 128 km al noroeste de Dallas. Al menos dos personas murieron y viviendas e infraestructura resultaron dañadas, lo que desplazó a decenas de residentes y aumentó el saldo del brote de tiempo severo de varios días.

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Con información de los meteorólogos Mary Gilb

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