The North Natomas Aquatic Complex is set to host some of the nation's fastest swimmers as they compete in a three-day series of races. 

Dart Swimming, one of the USA Swimming top 50 club teams, is hosting the 2026 TYR Pro Swim Series in Sacramento from May 20- 23, 2026.

The TYR Pro Swim Series is featuring Olympic gold medalists Torri Huske and Ryan Murphy, who are expected to compete. Sacramento’s own Luca Urlando, the 2025 World Champion, will also compete.

COO and lead age group coach of Dart Swimming, Jamie Kiarie, said the meet is recognition of Dart’s reputation within USA Swimming and a chance to grow the sport locally. 

“It's really cool for us to be able to bring some of the best swimmers to this area, but then also let our local swimmers get to compete against them,” Kiarie said. “Our local swimmers get to watch some of the best swimmers in the country.”

Kiarie said the athletes competing will win a cash prize if they finish in the top three. The event will feature signature races — breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly and freestyle.

“The best time to come is during finals, which start at 5 o'clock on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening,” she said. “It's very rare that the Sacramento area gets this kind of swimming here, so it's exciting to watch, and it's fun too.”

Tickets for the swim meet are available to purchase online. Fans can also purchase the opportunity to meet the athletes and have them sign autographs.

Dart Swimming is a USA club team in the Sacramento area with two main sites: one in Davis and one in Natomas. The group offers competitive swimming for kids ages 6 and up and has at least 400 kids participating each year, according to Kiarie. 

The North Natomas Aquatic Complex opened in 2022 and is operated by the City of Sacramento Youth, Parks, and Community Enrichment. The complex has a 50-yard Olympic-sized pool for competition, a 25-yard warm-up pool, and a recreation pool.

The North Natomas Aquatics Complex Olympic sized pool .Photo courtesy of Youth, Parks, and Community Enrichment

Sjon Swanson, the recreation manager for the City of Sacramento’s Youth, Park, and Community Enrichment, highlighted the collaboration between the city and Dart Swimming to bring this magnitude of an event to the city.

He said the group hosts several high-level meetings and trains year-round at the facility.

“Dart Swimming is one of our groups that we work with and collaborate quite well with, they rent a significant amount of pool time from us, primarily out at the North Natomas Aquatics Complex,” he said. “It's been a great partnership, and they're great to work with.”

Director of the Youth, Parks, & Community Enrichment, Jackie Beecham, said in a press release that the aquatic complex was designed to serve the community and host major events, such as the swim series.

“Facilities like this give residents great places to play and stay active and help Sacramento shine as a destination for major competitions that bring energy, pride, and visitors to our city,” Beecham said.

If you can’t purchase tickets to the event, it will be available to view through the USA Swimming Network, with the finals expected to be televised on Peacock.

Michelle Reynolds drives for Uber in Sacramento, and she’s lived in Sacramento for 11 years. Two years ago, she got her electric vehicle. 

“The only kind of downside would maybe be long distance road trips if it’s hard to find a charger, but I haven’t experienced a lot of that recently,” Reynolds said. “I think I’d only go electric from here on out.”

Reynolds said she averages between 300 to 500 miles a day, and her car’s range is about 280 miles. She owns a gas car as well, but she rarely uses it. 

“It’s so cheap when I charge at home,” Reynolds said. “It’s fractional for what I pay in the gas vehicle.”

Interest in electric vehicles is on the rise, according to car shopping site Edmunds. According to AAA, the average gallon of gas in Sacramento has risen to $6.10, compared to $5.05 a year ago. 

Peter Mackin is the president of SacEV, a Sacramento-based electric vehicle enthusiast group. He said that in the early days of electric vehicles, before cars like the Tesla Roadster came out in 2008, if you wanted an electric car you had to be a little more DIY.

“You had to take a gas car and rip out all the drivetrain and put in batteries and an electric motor and controllers and stuff and do it yourself,” Mackin said. “Our mission has evolved quite a bit since the beginning.” 

These days, SacEV focuses on educating and advocating for the use of electric vehicles in Sacramento. Mackin said that if you can charge at home, you can save over $1700 a year driving electric. 

“Even if you have to run an extension cord out of the garage and plug your car in that way, EV is a no-brainer,” Mackin said. “If you have to rely on public charging, it gets a little trickier.”

Victor Mendoza lives in the Bay Area, but drives his electric car to Sacramento three days a week for work. He doesn’t have a charger at home, and said that it can be difficult to navigate.

“I think time, unfortunately, is not on your side, especially if you’re busy. For me, it does require me to plan out my charges as opposed to just being at home,” Mendoza said as he was waiting to charge his car at an Electrify America charging station in the parking lot of a Target. “When I’m out here in Sacramento, though, there’s a lot of charging stations that I could use, so it’s pretty convenient in that sense.”

Charging electric vehicles takes more time than pumping gas. At public direct current fast chargers, charging an electric car to 80% can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the model of car and its range, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Most electric vehicles come with a charger that can be plugged into any standard AC wall outlet. However, these chargers, usually referred to as level 1 chargers, can take a while to charge your car, averaging between 40 and 50 hours to fully charge a battery.  

The faster level 2 home chargers, which many EV owners use, can fully charge a car between 4 to 10 hours.

Mendoza said that he’s had his electric car for nine months. When trying to get a level 2 home charger, which requires a higher voltage plug than a standard wall outlet, he ran into some issues.

“I found out after the fact that I have to do some more work because I have an older house, which did have to factor into the timing it would take to install something at home,” Mendoza said.

After getting the correct wiring installed in your home, level 2 chargers can be another cost for vehicles that are on average $5,000 - $6,000 more than their gas counterparts when purchased new. However, in Sacramento, SMUD can help cover that cost.

SMUD’s Charge@Home program can offer up to $600 of incentives to help cover costs of installing level 2 chargers. Louie Dias, a Product Services Coordinator at SMUD and an EV owner himself, said that using the level 2 chargers is the ideal way to charge.

“It’s honestly just as easy as plugging in your cell phone at night,” Dias said. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s full, it’s ready to go and to take on everything that we’re going to need it for throughout the day.”

SMUD also offers lower energy rates to EV owners and free of charge EV advisors to any SMUD customer considering switching to an electric vehicle.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in Southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy Fire was reported Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

By Tuesday morning, it had consumed more than two square miles (five square kilometers) of dry brush and destroyed at least one home, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.

The flames were initially pushed by gusts that topped 30 mph (48 kph), but firefighters were aided by calmer winds overnight, said department spokesperson Andrew Dowd.

“We've made a lot of progress against this fire with those improved weather conditions," Dowd said. Crews hoped to make further progress before winds increased again, he said.

The fire was 5% contained. The cause is under investigation.

Evacuation orders and warnings were still in place for several neighborhoods in Simi Valley, a city of more than 125,000 people that was shrouded in smoke as aircraft made water drops.

Meanwhile, firefighters were battling a 23-square-mile (59-square-kilometer) blaze on Santa Rosa Island, off the Southern California coast. The fire destroyed a cabin and an equipment shed and forced the evacuation of 11 National Park Service employees.

There was no containment as of Tuesday morning.

Santa Rosa, a popular destination for camping and hiking, is home to island foxes, spotted skunks and elephant seals.

By JAIMIE DING, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — One of the three people killed by two teen shooters at a San Diego mosque was a beloved security guard who acted quickly to prevent more deaths, authorities and community members said.

Amin Abdullah was a security guard who greeted everyone that arrived at the Islamic Center of San Diego with a smile and the traditional Muslim greeting in Arabic of as-salamu alaikum or “peace be upon you,” according to Mahmood Ahmadi, a longtime attendee of the mosque.

Authorities have not released the names of the three victims. But family friend Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq identified Abdullah, saying he had spoken with one of Abdullah's sons as the family began to make funeral plans.

“He wanted to defend the innocent so he decided to become a security guard,” Farooq said.

Abdullah had worked at the mosque for more than a decade. He was there nearly every single day and was dedicated to his wife and nine kids, Farooq said.

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said a mosque security guard, without naming Abdullah, “played a pivotal role” in preventing the attack from being more deadly.

“It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” the chief said Monday. “Undoubtedly he saved lives today.”

The Islamic Center of San Diego is one of the largest mosques in San Diego and attracts thousands of people from across the region during major holidays. In addition to having prayer five times a day, it also provides dinners and breakfasts during the Ramadan fasting period, hosts a school for Arabic and Islamic studies, and has a store inside.

Abdullah was raised Christian and described in a 2019 YouTube video his journey discovering the Islamic faith after graduating high school.

“My mother saw a change in me,” he said. “I'm starting to help out around the house, being more respectful, I got a job.”

Farooq said he met Abdullah shortly after he became a Muslim in the 1990s. Most recently, they had gone on a pilgrimage trip to Mecca together. Abdullah always had a positive attitude, even when he fell sick during the trip, Farooq said.

“Even when he was feeling ill, he was just a very light-hearted, genuine person, always smiling, always taking care of others,” Farooq said.

Josie-Ana Edenshaw still recalls meeting Abdullah her first time visiting the mosque. She was stressed and couldn't figure out where to park, when he waved her down to help.

Edenshaw said the community was heartbroken by Abdullah's death. In a WhatsApp group of congregants, a teacher who was at the school during the shooting described how Abdullah called in “active shooter” on his walkie-talkie when he saw the shooters, warning the staff members and teachers inside. The teacher was not available for an interview.

“Every single day those kids had that amazing security guard that protected them,” Edenshaw said. “That’s something that’s going to impact them every single day for the rest of their life.”

Abbos Rakhmatov, who has attended the mosque for three years, was shaken after being there in the morning just before the shooting happened. He said Abdullah took his duties seriously, always walking around and checking the grounds.

“He was the model for everyone of us,” said Rakhmatov. “Always smiling, always caring about our community.”

Bay Area drone delivery company Zipline hopes to one day fly your burrito — and all kinds of consumer goods — right to your front porch. 

It’s already doing so in Dallas and elsewhere across the country. 

But before it can expand, Zipline’s aircraft are flying thousands of test missions above a vast Yolo County ranch near Esparto, where the Stone family has run cattle for half a century and the drones aren’t the only innovation. 

On a recent tour of the Yolo Land & Cattle Company, co-owner Casey Stone stops to gaze at Zipline’s test site. He calls it “the space center,” a hub of activity almost hidden by the ranch’s fog-cloaked foothills about 40 miles west of Sacramento. 

Dozens of white drones with flashing green and red lights take to the sky. They’re hovering over the middle of his 7,500-acre property.

Two-story tall drone docking towers wait for their return. Zipline engineers monitor their flight from the ground below. 

Stone describes the scene this way: “My analogy is when you see ‘Close Encounters [of the Third Kind]’, where they’re climbing around the mountain and they see the extraterrestrial space station there — that’s kind of what it is.” 

They might look surreal, but Zipline’s drones aren’t something out of a movie. Instead, they’re on the cutting-edge of consumer goods transportation. The company, based in South San Francisco, is in competition with tech behemoths like Amazon and Google to dominate the future of air deliveries.

A game changer for delivery

In Yolo County, Zipline’s drones operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, flying hundreds of feet above the Stone family’s green pastures and rolling hills east of Lake Berryessa.

Brothers Scott (left) and Casey Stone own and manage the 7,500-acre cattle ranch in Yolo County where Zipline tests its drone deliveries.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

Zipline’s Mike Rigby is in charge of the drone testing. 

His company believes its technology will be a game changer — one that takes millions of delivery cars and trucks off the road and replaces them with faster, cleaner electric-powered aircraft.

“As our CEO famously likes to say, ‘You don’t need a 4,000 pound vehicle to chauffeur your burrito to yah,’” Rigby says. “We can do that a lot more economically and efficiently through this aircraft.” 

Zipline drones carry up to eight pounds of goods. The company can fit everything from medicine to groceries to gardening supplies inside the six-foot-long aircraft.

But rather than touching down outside your home or office, the drones themselves stay high above. Rigby, as if he’s reading from a sci-fi script, explains what happens next: “And then the zip has a small little droid unit that comes out of the belly of the aircraft on a tether. It has its own propulsion system, as well. So, it’s kind of a sub-aircraft.”

That “droid unit” has your delivery inside. The goal is to gently drop your order from Chipotle, Crumbl Cookies or Wal-Mart — all Zipline partners — at the desired location. Maybe even the back of your pickup. 

Zipline drones make their deliveries by lowering down a ‘droid unit’ from the belly of the aircraft. Chris Nichols/CapRadio

But to get their deliveries just right, Zipline needs wide open testing sites. For that reason, it partners with three ranches altogether including one in Half Moon Bay and a cold weather testing site in Wyoming.

Driving in Scott Stone’s ATV up and down the Yolo County ranch’s dirt roads and open pastures, you can see why his property makes the perfect venue. 

“So this place was started back in 1976 with my dad and his partner,” he says, noting this is the company’s 50th year in operation. 

Scott and his brother Casey Stone manage the ranch. It’s dotted with majestic oaks and black angus cattle. 

“We raise cows and have babies every year,” Scott Stone says. “In October we wean the calves and then turn them back out into the mountains and the winter pasture ranches.” 

The Stone family’s commercial cattle operation produces grass-fed natural Angus beef.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

But the bucolic property is far more than just a place to raise livestock.

It’s served as a backdrop for films and TV ads. The ranch makes money off its compost production. They have a carbon sink and a real estate business. 

Scott Stone says traditional ag companies need to get creative to survive. 

That’s why the Stone family embraced Zipline when it approached them a decade ago, Stone says. Notably, the livestock don’t seem to mind the constant drone testing.

“We’ve never had any issues with any cows A) being struck by the drones or B) being bothered by them,” Scott Stone adds.

The Yolo Land & Cattle Company started in 1976. Brothers Scott (left) and Casey Stone manage the ranch near Esparto.Chris Nichols/CapRadio

Scott Stone says his family also admires Zipline's values. They were impressed with how the company got its start more than a decade ago delivering medicine to remote villages in Africa. 

He says they wanted to be part of what’s next for Zipline while ensuring his family could keep its traditional ranching operation alive by diversifying its revenue streams.

“There are so many benefits of what these folks are doing out here on so many levels,” Scott Stone says of Zipline. “It’s working hand-in-hand with agriculture. It’s not to the detriment of agriculture. It’s not to the detriment of the ranch. It’s to the benefit of mankind.” 

While Zipline perfects its deliveries across the country, the Stone ranch will be home to even more aircraft. The Yolo County planning commission last fall gave the green light for expanded testing on the property.

By Ricardo Cano, EdSource

Higher education leaders were cautiously optimistic in January when Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a proposed budget that included a combined $716.3 million in new base funding for the University of California and California State University. Their sentiment remained largely unchanged Thursday, as Newsom’s revised budget maintained the proposed funding for universities. 

UC and CSU officials breathed a sigh of relief because it wasn’t a given that the funding earmarked in the governor’s January budget would remain intact in his May revision. The state’s university systems do not receive the minimum funding guarantees that TK-12 schools and community colleges get under California’s Proposition 98, and must compete with other dueling priorities covered in the rest of the state budget.

Newsom’s updated budget appropriates $350.6 million in new base funds for UC and $365.7 million for CSU, meaning UC would receive $5.3 billion from the state’s general fund and CSU would get $5.6 billion.

Those funds represent a 5% annual budget increase that had been promised by the state to UC and CSU under a five-year compact agreement. In exchange for the state funding boost, the two university systems must work to raise graduation rates and enroll more in-state residents. 

Newsom’s May proposal would still defer paying out $129.7 million for UC and $143.8 million for CSU until next year. The deferred funds represent a 3% base increase for both systems.

Still, the investments in the state budget would aid California’s public universities as they face intense scrutiny from the Trump administration, which has sought to investigate the institutions and withhold millions of dollars in public research grants.

“The UC funding included in the May revision will help ensure that the university remains affordable and accessible to California students,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement. “As the University of California faces ongoing federal funding uncertainty and increasing operational and labor costs, state funding for UC is more important than ever.”

California’s community college system, meanwhile, would receive a $197.7 million increase from the state’s Prop. 98 general fund, reflecting a 4.31% cost-of-living adjustment for TK-12 schools and community colleges.

“Gov. Newsom’s May Revise reflects strong confidence in the California Community Colleges and the critical role we play in California’s economic future,” Chancellor Sonya Christian said in a statement.