SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Chief Operating Officer Dori Villalon joined your Morning News to introduce the adorable and sweetest puppy, Sweet Pea.

Sweet Pea is one of 3 from a litter, alongside Rhubarb and Radish who are two months old. The Santa Barbara campus welcomed 8 new transfer animals this week and 60 animals waiting for their new homes. While Sweet Pea has already been adopted, Rhubarb is awaiting his lucky day to find his furever home right on the Central Coast.

If adopting a dog is not on the forecast, adopting a kitten is definitely in the 7-day forecast! There are 20 orphaned kittens who are ready to "meow" their way to your heart, whether it be adoption or fosterting.

Upcoming events for Santa Barbara Humane include the Fiesta Dog Parade and Costume Contest taking place May 16th at 11 a.m. at 800 State Street, where dogs showing off their best strut will be in hope of getting adopted!

Sunday, May 17th , Santa Maria Paws in the Plaza will take place, an event focusing on animals.

The Latest Breaking News, Weather Alerts, Sports and More Anytime On Our Mobile Apps. Keep Up With the Latest Articles by Signing Up for the News Channel 3-12 Newsletter.

The post Santa Barbara Humane Shows Off Sweet Pea On Your Morning News! appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Hannah Keyser, CNN

New York (CNN) — Before hiring a manager for his mid-market franchise, a general manager and five other team stakeholders sat in a room with a whiteboard to brainstorm what they believed to be the attributes of a championship skipper. The last manager had been fired at the end of a disappointing season and they needed a fresh voice.

They ended up with more than 40 characteristics written on the board, narrowed the list to the five they felt were the most important for exactly where they were in the competitive cycle, and interviewed only candidates they believed to be strong in at least four of the five. The man they hired won Manager of the Year, led the team to the playoffs multiple times – and was fired just months after the team had picked up his option.

He was replaced the following season with someone who had also been fired from his last job for the disappointing performance of a different club.

“Like general managers,” the former GM, who now works in a different front office, told CNN Sports recently, “managers are hired to be fired.”

And yet he – along with seven other executives and coaches CNN spoke to for this story, all of whom were all granted anonymity to speak candidly – does not believe that is a manager’s highest and best use. The people who hire and ultimately fire managers, and the coaches who spend six-plus months in the daily grind of the dugout with them, believe managers matter for a multitude of reasons.

In fact, that same former GM mused that the modern manager is actually spread too thin.

“They matter a tremendous amount,” said another former GM who now works for a different team. “But I don’t know if they matter a tremendous amount in the way that people think that they matter.”

The 2026 baseball season has already given two primary examples of managers losing their jobs for reasons that may or may not have actually been their fault – or reasonable.

The Red Sox were in last place when they fired manager Alex Cora and nearly all of his staff in a stunning Saturday night bloodletting that came just hours after a blowout victory. After several disappointing seasons, Boston was off to a sloppy, sluggish start. And yet, it was only 27 games into the season.

The aggregate response – after the initial wave of sheer shock – seemed to be that Cora didn’t deserve to be fired because he is an obviously brilliant World Series-winning manager and also because modern managers don’t have enough authority to meaningfully impact the record. And yet, how could both of those things be true?

When the Phillies fired Rob Thomson just a few days later, the reaction seemed to be that he similarly didn’t deserve such a fate – in this case because the team had made the playoffs in every season since he’d taken over the helm amid another mid-season firing in 2022 – but also that, indeed, part of a manager’s job is to lose their job.

When a team with high expectations underperforms at a point in the season when there is little opportunity to shake up the roster, the manager gets fired. But is it a ritual sacrifice necessary to appease the angry fanbase or because a new voice can meaningfully tap into latent talent?

In both situations, there are nuances that contextualize the apparent paradox of the response (a power struggle in Boston, a concern of complacency in Philadelphia). But the question at the heart of the paradox extends beyond any one hiring or firing: How much does the modern MLB manager matter?

From the epicenter to the ultimate glue guy

Decades of increased emphasis on statistics and ballooning front offices has brought baseball to a point where savvy commentators know better than to ascribe total strategic responsibility to the manager. It’s the nerds in khakis and quarter-zips, not the guy dressed unnecessarily in full uniform, cal

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN

New York (CNN) — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has a net worth estimated at roughly $200 billion, was recently asked about California’s wealth tax proposal that has some billionaires riled up.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I never once thought about it.”

Many billionaires are frustrated over blue states’ and cities’ attempts to raise taxes on the superrich. Silicon Valley titans Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel are spending millions to fight California’s proposal. Financier Ken Griffin called Mayor Zohran Mamdani using Griffin’s Manhattan penthouse as the backdrop for his video proposing a pied-à-terre tax “shameful.” Steven Roth, CEO of real estate giant Vornado, compared calls to tax the rich to a racial epithet.

But Huang represents a segment of the superrich who are telling their fellow billionaires to get over it. Paying taxes is a “way of giving back,” he said. He joked that the money should go to fix a specific pothole on Route 101.

Tom Steyer has also staked his campaign for governor in California on raising taxes for people like himself: “I’m the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires.”

Billionaires are not a monolith, and their split reveals both political and generational fault lines. It also reflects differences in their views of government.

Some older billionaires, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have long supported taxes on the superrich as a civic responsibility. Many younger, libertarian-leaning tech entrepreneurs doubt government’s ability to solve problems and believe they can allocate their money more effectively.

Many wealthy individuals have felt personally attacked by government actions throughout American history, but this moment feels different, said Kimberly Phillips-Fein, a historian of capitalism and New York City at Columbia University.

“Griffin, Roth and others perceive the tax as a symbol of political antagonism toward the rich,” she said. They want their contributions recognized and respected, and taxing the rich “feels to them like an unbearable personal insult” that questions their “moral virtue.”

But wealth taxes or taxes on luxury second homes wouldn’t fundamentally restructure America’s tax code at the top.

In reality, the tax system targets workers with the highest salaries— often different than the people with the most wealth. The wealthiest people in America pay lower taxes than the full population: The 25 top billionaires’ wealth rose by $401 billion from 2014 to 2018, but they paid a federal income tax rate of just 3.4%, ProPublica found.

Progressive states such as Washington, Massachusetts and now California are attempting to raise taxes on the ultrawealthy to reduce income inequality and concentrated economic and political power at the top.

However, it’s risky for individual states to overhaul their tax systems because people can leave or start businesses in lower-tax states. Wealth taxes have also been notoriously hard to administer — art, real estate and intentionally complex business partnerships are difficult to value. Wealthy people have also devised tax avoidance strategies.

“We’re living in a world that heavily burdens income earners, salaried people paying a lot of taxes. The wealthiest are given a free ride,” said Ray Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School and the author of “The Second Estate: How the Tax

By Emma Tucker, Caroll Alvarado, CNN

(CNN) — A livestreamer known for posting videos with racist content online is set to appear in court Friday on charges including attempted murder after a shooting outside a Tennessee courthouse.

Dalton Eatherly, who goes by “Chud the Builder” online, was taken into custody after a confrontation with another man, who authorities have not named, escalated into a shooting outside the Montgomery County Courthouse in Clarksville on Wednesday, the Tennessee District Attorney General’s Office said.

Both men were shot and taken to nearby hospitals where they were in stable condition, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said, later adding that “two adult males” were detained by deputies.

It’s not clear how many firearms were involved, how the shooting unfolded or what led up to it.

Eatherly, 28, faces additional charges including employing a firearm during dangerous felony, aggravated assault, and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, the sheriff’s office said.

He was being held at the Montgomery County jail without bond and is expected to appear for an arraignment and bond hearing at 9 a.m. local time Friday, according to the office of District Attorney General Robert Nash. CNN is working to determine if Eatherly has legal representation.

Eatherly’s track record on social media reveals a history of posting videos of him using racial slurs toward Black people and other minorities, including at least one instance of using force against a Black person. The streamer often refers to Black people as chimps in his online videos.

After the incident on Wednesday, Eatherly livestreamed himself speaking to first responders. He recounted walking past a group of people who Eatherly said were “laughing” and “pointing at me.” Eatherly said he was told to walk away by one unidentified man in the group, who then approached Eatherly, saying, “I have PTSD.”

“He said, ‘You start saying all that chimp out s**t to me and ‘imma hit you,’ and he hit me, he started whaling on me, even after I had to defend myself by shooting him,” Eatherly said in the video.

While officials did not provide a description of the victim, a witness who said she saw the other man being loaded into the ambulance described him as Black to the Associated Press.

Previous arrest tied to restaurant incident

His previous arrest came after another incident on Saturday, when Eatherly was kicked out of a restaurant in Nashville and later arrested and charged with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to an affidavit.

Prosecutors in that case described him as a livestreamer who “filmed content, including racially charged content” on social media, an affidavit said.

Eatherly had been asked by restaurant staff not to livestream or be disruptive inside the establishment but did so anyway, the affidavit says. When he was told to stop live streaming, Eatherly became “disruptive and started making racial statements, yelling, screaming” and causing a scene, the affidavit said.

He then refused to pay for his meal costing $371.55 after allegedly stating: “I’m not paying if you are kicking me out,” the affidavit said.

Eatherly was taken into custody a few hours later. He initially pulled his arm away when officers tried to place him in handcuffs but was then arrested without further incident, the affidavit said. He was later granted release on a $5,000 bond, according to a judge’s order.

A hearing was scheduled at the Montgomery County Courthouse Wednesday morning – where the shooting happened – in a civil case between Eatherly and Midland Credit Management Inc., court records showed, but it’s unclear whether he appeared for the hearing. He allegedly owed a debt of

Por Betsy Klein, Simone McCarthy y Kristen Holmes, CNN

El presidente Donald Trump partió de Beijing el viernes por la tarde, hora local, sin señales inmediatas de que Estados Unidos y China hayan resuelto los espinosos desafíos que lastran su tensa relación, pero con una relación estabilizada con el líder chino Xi Jinping, al menos por ahora.

Los líderes abordaron diversos temas, desde Irán y Taiwán hasta el comercio, durante dos días que incluyeron intensas reuniones bilaterales. También se observaron claras muestras de diplomacia blanda, lo que marcó el primer encuentro en Beijing entre los dos rivales históricos en casi una década.

Desde su última visita en 2017, Trump ha redefinido el papel de Washington en el mundo, mientras que Xi ha reforzado su poder a nivel nacional e impulsado la transformación tecnológica de China.

“Hemos resuelto muchos problemas que otros no habrían podido solucionar, y la relación es muy sólida”, declaró Trump al inicio de la conversación bilateral el viernes, sin ofrecer detalles concretos sobre los problemas en cuestión.

Dado el deterioro de las relaciones en los últimos años, el hecho de que ambos líderes se expresaran con cordialidad y coincidieran en la importancia de sus lazos evidencia un giro hacia la estabilización en un momento en que un mundo convulso busca desesperadamente la calma geopolítica.

La guerra entre Estados Unidos e Israel e Irán planeó sobre la cumbre relámpago. Surgieron interrogantes sobre qué tipo de apoyo, si lo hubiera, estaría dispuesto a brindar Xi entre bastidores para ayudar a poner fin al conflicto que se prolonga desde hace meses y que ha sumido a la economía global en la incertidumbre sin un final claro.

Los detalles de los amplios acuerdos comerciales que Trump prometió antes del viaje siguen sin estar claros, con grandes declaraciones del presidente y algunos altos funcionarios, pero sin anuncios sustanciales confirmados por parte de China.

Y en medio de la preocupación de expertos y analistas de que Xi llegaba a la reunión con ventaja, el líder chino hizo gala de su postura sobre el tema de Taiwán.

Pero la visita también brindó la oportunidad de redefinir el tono de la tensa relación entre Estados Unidos y China. Xi extendió una alfombra roja, tanto literal como figurada, que cautivó y deleitó a su invitado, demostrando una cálida conexión.

“Creo que pasará a la historia como un momento muy importante. Y quizás, más que nada, un gran momento de respeto”, reflexionó Trump durante una entrevista con Fox News.

Antes de las conversaciones, había grandes expectativas de que el presidente estadounidense pudiera presionar a su homólogo chino para que ayudara a resolver el conflicto con Irán.

China es un socio diplomático cercano de Irán y el principal comprador de su petróleo, y se ha posicionado como defensor de la paz durante toda la guerra. El tema formó parte de las más de dos horas de conversaciones entre los dos líderes el jueves, pero Trump se marchó sin una señal clara de Beijing de que estuviera dispuesto a presionar a Teherán para que accediera a las demandas estadounidenses.

En cambio, los comentarios de ambas partes hasta el momento sugieren que la cumbre no ha tenido un impacto significativo.

Trump declaró a Fox News que Xi ofreció su ayuda para resolver el conflicto y se comprometió a no proporcionar equipo militar a Irán. El secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, en una entrevista aparte con NBC News el jueves, afirmó que Estados Unidos no solicitó la ayuda de China para resolver el conflicto.

Un comunicado emitido por la Casa Blanca también indicó que ambos países acordaron que el estrecho de Ormuz debe permanecer abierto y que Irán nunca podrá poseer un arma nuclear.

Asimismo, señaló que Xi “dejó clara la oposición de China a la militarización del Estrecho y a cualquier intento de cobrar un peaje por su uso