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California Today

California Today: Introducing Our New Correspondent

Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

We’re starting off the week with some news of our own. Here’s a note from Marc Lacey, The Times’s National editor, and Julie Bloom, a deputy National editor who oversees California Today.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve selected the next correspondent for California Today. Jill Cowan, who has reported up and down the Golden State, will be joining us in November.

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With Jill Cowan at its helm, California Today will bring more attention to important issues like climate change, immigration and technology.

A U.C. Berkeley graduate, Jill has worked at The Bakersfield Californian, The Los Angeles Times and The Daily Pilot. She joins us from The Dallas Morning News, where she covers the economy of a state second only to California in gross domestic product. A member of the Asian American Journalists Association, she is now on a fellowship in Japan, where her mother was born.

A bit about Jill, in her own words:

“I tweeted from protests on the U.C. Berkeley campus when I was in college. I spent a Thanksgiving night at a Walmart parking lot in Bakersfield for the Black Friday rush. I tracked down family members walking the rocky banks of the Kern River looking for a corrections officer that had disappeared in the rapids, and I checked on Legoland during the wildfires that ripped through San Diego County in 2014. I wrote about the boycott of a Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade. When an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at SFO, I spent the day camped out at San Francisco General Hospital — not yet named for Mark Zuckerberg.

“But none of that explains why I love the Golden State.

“Nominally, I’m a Giants fan, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been as content as I used to be on the bleachers at Sam Lynn Ballpark, sweat pouring down my back as I watched the (now-defunct) Bakersfield Blaze play against a backdrop of the setting sun.

“Food-wise, I’ve spent much of my adult life in failed pursuit of a salad that approaches the majesty and baffling affordability of the ones I could get at Cafe Intermezzo in Berkeley.

“Jonathan Gold was right about Bakersfield’s dining scene. But my favorite place in the world is King’s Hawaiian Bakery in Torrance, where my grandparents used to take us for breakfast whenever we’d visit. Ask to sit by the tropical fish tank.”

Jill’s turf on California Today will be broad. Expect to see her weighing in on issues large and small, in communities large and small across a state that fascinates our readers. With Jill at its helm, California Today will bring even more attention to important issues like climate change, immigration and technology, and to big stories, from natural disasters to politics. She will no doubt share a meal or two with Tejal Rao, The Times’s new California restaurant critic.

In just two years, California Today has become a must read in the morning for hundreds of thousands of subscribers, with its roundup of news and lively reported features. It builds on the work of the dozens of journalists we have around the state and is part of a broader focus on California by The New York Times.

Please join us in welcoming Jill and send her ideas and suggestions for California Today at Catoday@nytimes.com.

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

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Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this month.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

• Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault, committed to testifying before a Senate panel on Thursday. Senator Dianne Feinstein requested “an immediate postponement” of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination after a New Yorker article on Sunday on a new allegation of sexual impropriety. [The New York Times]

• Judge Kavanaugh’s 1982 calendars don’t show a party matching Dr. Blasey’s account, his team said. He plans to give them to the Senate. [The New York Times]

• Dr. Blasey moved 3,000 miles from the affluent Maryland suburbs to reinvent her life. Suddenly, Northern California didn’t seem far enough. [The Washington Post]

• State election officials are starting a new effort to fight false information, focusing on social media. But the move comes with thorny legal and political questions. [NPR]

• Can the next governor fix California’s problems? That depends on Palo Alto — and its taxes. [The Los Angeles Times]

• Gov. Jerry Brown ordered an audit of the Department of Motor Vehicles after controversy over long wait times, aging technology and improper voter registration. [The Sacramento Bee]

• Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, denied allegations of political bias in search results after a report in The Wall Street Journal about an internal email thread. [The New York Times]

• The Markup, a news site, will investigate big tech — with $20 million in funding from the Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. [The New York Times]

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Jimmy Garoppolo appeared to injure his knee toward the end of the fourth quarter in the San Francisco 49ers’ game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.Credit...Ed Zurga/Associated Press

• The San Francisco 49ers are fearing the worst after Jimmy Garoppolo, the team’s emerging star quarterback, injured his knee in Sunday’s game. [The New York Times]

• The Golden State Warriors may be favored to win their third straight championship, but they face more than fans realize. Steve Kerr spoke with Phil Jackson about surviving success. [The California Sunday Magazine]

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Representative Duncan Hunter arrived at federal court in San Diego earlier this month.Credit...Mike Blake/Reuters

• Representative Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret, who were indicted on multiple corruption charges, have a status hearing in San Diego on Monday.

Tens of thousands of people will descend on San Francisco for Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual customer conference, which runs Tuesday through Friday.

• The Catalina Film Festival kicks off Wednesday.

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Nite Yun with members of her staff in the kitchen of Nyum Bai in Oakland.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

Nite Yun, 36, still doesn’t know how her parents met — nor does she have any memories of the refugee camp in Thailand where she was born.

Her main point of access to her family’s history was what she ate in Stockton, where her parents eventually settled after fleeing the violence of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And now Ms. Yun has drawn on her childhood in Stockton to open Nyum Bai in Oakland, where it has attracted national attention.

“These are the dishes that my mom would cook from her memory,” Ms. Yun said of her menu. “These are the ways the Khmer still have recipes.”

Read the full story here.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

Inyoung Kang contributed reporting.

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