February 13, 2026
February 13, 2026
2/12/26 — The Northeast Neighbors, a grassroots neighborhood organization representing residents in Santa Monica's northeast area, has voted to forgo the City's annual Neighborhood Organization Grant for 2026. In a letter dated September 9, 2025, to the City Council and City Manager, the group's board, chaired by Tricia Crane, cited the new grant requirements as overly restrictive and incompatible with its mission to serve as an independent voice for the community. The...
SANTA MONICA, CA - Local pet owners will soon need to find a new spot for their furry friends' supplies, as Unleashed by Petco, located near the intersection of 15th Street and Wilshire Boulevard, is set to close its doors on March 2, 2026. According to a sign posted in the store's door, the location at 1402 Wilshire Blvd. is wrapping up operations at the beginning of March. The notice directs customers to the nearby full-service Petco store at 2910 Wilshire Blvd. for...
London, 11 February 2026 – With just three months until voters head to the polls in crucial local, Scottish, and Welsh elections on 7 May, immigration policy has emerged as the single most pressing issue for much of the British public, overshadowing even the economy in many surveys and posing a major headache for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government. Recent polling paints a stark picture of widespread unease. A Gallup survey released this week shows the United...
Santa Monica, CA – February 10, 2026 – Social media posts from local residents and observers indicate a possible power outage affecting parts of Santa Monica, particularly in the 90403 ZIP code area near Montana Avenue, at about 11:30 am on February 10th. Power was restored at 12:19 am on February 11th. Additional user reports on X described witnessing a transformer blow near Montana Avenue and 10th Street as storm conditions intensified, which could have triggered...
San Francisco, February 11, 2026 - In a move that has sent ripples through the artificial intelligence community, Mrinank Sharma, the head of Anthropic's Safeguards Research Team, announced his resignation on February 9, 2026, citing profound concerns about the state of the world and the challenges of aligning powerful technology with core human values. Sharma, who joined Anthropic in 2023 shortly after completing his PhD in Statistical Machine Learning at the University of...
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Dear Apple News Team, I am writing as the representative/owner/editor of the Santa Monica Observer (www.smobserved.com) (www.smobserved.com), a local news publication covering Santa Monica, California, and surrounding areas with a focus on community issues, local government, events, and conservative-leaning perspectives. Our website has been excluded from Apple News for some time, and we have been unable to have our content featured or distributed through the platform. We...
February 6, 2026 -- Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has strongly denied allegations that she intervened to soften or alter key sections of an official after-action report on the devastating January 2025 Palisades Fire, which claimed multiple lives and destroyed thousands of structures across the Westside. A Los Angeles Times investigation published February 4 cited sources familiar with the mayor's office who claimed Bass flagged early drafts of the report as potentially...
The Catalina Island Conservancy's plan to remove all mule deer from Santa Catalina Island has moved forward with state approval, marking a significant - and highly controversial - step in the nonprofit's long-term effort to restore the island's native ecosystem. In late January 2026, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) approved the Conservancy's Restoration Management Permit (RMP), a comprehensive document that authorizes the complete eradication of the...
