A British band kicking off its West Coast tour in San Francisco this week hit a bump in the road when a gunman robbed the members’ tour van at a Vallejo gas station.

But as consummate professionals, the group said itwill continue its tour.

“Just been robbed at gun point 10 minutes into the US tour,” the band, Sports Team, wrote in an Instagram post. “Man runs in saying some guys are smashing into a van. Ran out to try to stop it and find masked guys ransacking the van.”

The post-bunk band is set to release a new album in February and has tour stops in San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland later this month. The band played the first show of its tour in San Francisco on Monday and made the drive to its next gig in Sacramento. But the members stopped first at a Vallejo gas station Starbucks on Tuesday, where the tour gods were not smiling down on them.

One of the masked men pulled out a gun when the band members tried to stop the robbery, according to the band’s post, which included a video of the episode. In the video, taken around 9 a.m., a group of masked individuals pull items out of the band’s white tour van. Someone screams for the band members to seek refuge inside the Starbucks.

When the band called police to report the robbery they were told to “submit an online report,” according to the band’s post. The members are originally from Cambridge, England.

“Lost a lot of personal gear, but they didn’t get the instruments so driving on to Sacramento to play tonight,” the band wrote. “They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about motorways. In all seriousness pretty shocking how resigned everyone seemed to be to it. ‘It happens’. 9am at some petrol station Starbucks. Wild.”

The Vallejo Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The indie band, which was nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2020, is set to play in Los Angeles on Dec. 11 at El Cid and in Palm Springs on Dec. 15.

Democrats claimed the final congressional seat in the 2024 election cycle Tuesday as Merced Democrat Adam Gray ousted Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte in a photo-finish race in California’s Central Valley.

California’s 13th Congressional District was the final outstanding race for the U.S. House of Representatives, and had the closest margin in the country. Gray was ahead by 187 votes when Duarte conceded Tuesday evening.

After trailing in the first three weeks of vote-counting, Gray took the lead on Nov. 26 as mail ballots tilted in his favor.

Gray, 47, said in a prepared statement Tuesday that he was honored to be elected and thanked the volunteers, voters, donors, campaign staff and family members who had helped him win.

“This district is ready for independent and accountable leadership that always puts the Valley’s people ahead of partisan politics,” Gray said.

Gray said he would work to build bipartisan relationships and deliver “clean water, better educational opportunities, stronger infrastructure and more good-paying jobs.”

Duarte conceded Tuesday night, a campaign spokesman said.

“That’s how it goes,” Duarte told the Turlock Journal on Tuesday. “I’m a citizen legislator, and I didn’t plan on being in Congress forever. But whenever I think I can make a difference, I’ll consider public service in different forms, including running for Congress again.”

Republicans will retain a thin majority in the House of Representatives next year. With Gray’s victory, Republicans will hold 220 seats — barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber — and Democrats will hold 215.

The GOP will have an even narrower majority for parts of January. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) resigned from the House last month. Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida has been tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor and is expected to step down, as is Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York if she is confirmed as United Nations ambassador.

The 13th Congressional District was one of a half-dozen seats in California seen as pivotal in the fight for control of Congress, and was one of three in the state that Democrats flipped from Republican control.

In Orange County, Democrat Derek Tran ousted Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, and in northern Los Angeles County, Democrat George Whitesides beat Republican Rep. Mike Garcia. Democrats also held onto a seat being vacated by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), with state Sen. Dave Min beating Republican Scott Baugh.

Republicans fared better in the Central Valley’s other swing district, where Rep. David Valadao defeated Democrat Rudy Salas by almost 7 points. Salas on Tuesday filed to run for Congress again in 2026.

The GOP also held a seat in Riverside County, where voters reelected longtime Republican Rep. Ken Calvert over Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor.

The rural 13th Congressional District stretches from Coalinga to Modesto, encompassing Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

The district appears blue on paper, with 42% of registered voters affiliated with the Democratic Party, compared with 29% registered as Republicans and 22% registered with no party preference.

But the Central Valley is more purple than the deep-blue districts that surround the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and conservative Democrats in the area often cross party lines to elect Republicans.

The 2024 campaign was a rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Gray by 564 votes, the second-closest margin in the country.

This year, Duarte campaigned on lowering gas prices and the cost of living. Duarte, whose family owns a large farm in the San Joaquin Valley, pitched himself to voters as a moderate Republican, saying he had bucked his party on abortion and immigration, instead sticking to middle-of-the-road policy proposals.

Gray cast himself as a “radical centrist,” pointing to his decade in the state Assembly as proof that he could work across party lines. In August, he told The Times that he chose to run against Duarte again because he thought the incumbent and Republicans had accomplished little in Congress to help everyday Americans.

Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) in southern California are still exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs) even though legislation was passed to drastically reduce the presence of these poisons across the state.

This is according to the short communication “Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) from Southern California are Exposed to Anticoagulant Rodenticides Despite Recent Bans,” recently published in the Journal of Raptor Research.

The harmful nature of these rodenticides is what led to their ban in California. If they persist, this could spell trouble for additional non-target wildlife species, including those with an endangered status like the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia).

Anticoagulant rodenticides cause system failure in animals by interfering with the synthesis of vitamin K-dependent coagulation factors in the liver. This is true for rats as well as raptors. Of the non-target wildlife species that encounter ARs, raptors are disproportionately harmed because toxins accumulate as they move up the food web, reaching their highest levels in top predators.

In southern California there are three especially vulnerable raptor species for which this is of immediate concern: the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), White-tailed Kite (Elanus leucurus), and the well-known scavenging California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the latter of which already faces constant health risk from residual lead shot fragments inside carcasses on the landscape.

Turkey Vultures possess a suite of characteristics that make them uniquely representative of poison accumulation in their environments. They are more widely distributed than many of their raptor cousins, including the California Condor. They also cruise over large swaths of land encompassing many different habitats and consume a wide variety of prey items. These qualities make them important sentinels in the world of raptor toxicology. The field focused on identifying primary toxicants threatening raptor populations.

To investigate the prevalence of vulture exposure to eight different types of rodenticides, a team of researchers led by Drs. Peter Bloom, Miguel D. Saggese, and Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati trapped 27 Turkey Vultures in southern California near Anaheim between 2016 and 2021. The birds were fitted with wing-tags and their blood was sampled. All birds were subsequently released back into the wild.

Each was tested for first-generation ARs and second-generation ARs, the latter of which is thought to be more toxic than the former due to its higher strength and slower metabolic breakdown. The results showed that 11% of the vultures tested showed evidence of AR exposure. Although 27 birds is a small sample size, these findings suggest that if vultures are being exposed, other raptors probably are too.

“The presence of rodenticides in the blood of a few individuals is just the tip of the iceberg and demonstrates that these compounds are still out there. Even a small percentage of exposed wildlife should be considered a loss,” says Saggese, a faculty member at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences.

The researchers recommend future studies focused on comparative analysis of both liver and blood samples from Turkey Vultures because liver, while difficult to collect, provides a more accurate and timely snapshot of AR exposure. Rehabilitation centers care for many birds that eventually succumb to their afflictions, providing a potential source for ground truthing this methodology.

Furthermore, the team emphasizes the importance of continuing to monitor AR exposure in Californian Turkey Vultures and keeping an eye on the adherence of pest control companies to the active legislature regarding rodenticide use.