In California: Good news for Joshua trees, bad news for Lady Gaga and vaccines for teachers

But first, in an only-in-L.A. kind of story, Lady Gaga’s dog walker was shot and two of the pop star’s French bulldogs — Koji and Gustav — were stolen Wednesday night in Hollywood. 

The L.A. Times reported that a suspect armed with a semiautomatic handgun shot the dogwalker around 9:40 p.m., according to police. The gunman fled the scene in a white vehicle, and the victim was transported to a local hospital. The singer is offering a $500,000 reward for their return, “no questions asked,” TMZ reported. 

In California brings you top Golden State stories and commentary from across the USA TODAY Network and beyond. Get it free, straight to your inbox. I'm Julie Makinen, California editor for the USA Today Network, bringing you Thursday's headlines.​​​

Another day, another vaccine plan

California released a new plan Thursday outlining how the state will allocate vaccines to education workers as Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to push to reopen more schools to in-person instruction. 

The Democratic governor announced last week that at least 10% of the state's vaccines would go to education workers starting in March, which translates to roughly 75,000 dedicated doses a week. 

On Thursday, his office released an overview showing how those vaccines would be distributed. Each week, the state will provide 75,000 doses to county offices of education for distribution. Teachers and other education workers will get single-use codes to make expedited appointments online.

If that many vaccines do come through, it could be a matter of weeks for California's 320,000 K-12 public school teachers to be inoculated.

Retroactive unemployment benefits coming your way?

Some Californians could see thousands of dollars in retroactive federal unemployment benefits under a plan announced by the U.S. Department of Labor to expand eligibility for people whose jobs were affected by the pandemic, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Federal officials said Thursday three groups of people would be eligible for payments under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, created last year to cover lost wages for people who were knocked out of work by the pandemic and weren’t eligible for regular state unemployment benefits.

The categories of workers who will see payments because of the shift:

1. Workers who stopped receiving regular unemployment benefits after refusing to work a job without sufficient protections against the virus
2. Those laid off or who saw their hours reduced because of the pandemic
3. Some school employees whose paychecks have been slashed and aren’t guaranteed while schools remain shuttered.

Joshua trees can be legally protected in California, court rules

A Fresno County Superior Court judge has ruled that the western Joshua tree, the iconic Mojave Desert yucca, will retain the legal protections it received when it was approved as a candidate species for listing under the California Endangered Species Act.

The California Construction and Industrial Materials Association, known as CalCIMA, led a coalition in an October petition opposing the California Fish and Game Commission's decision to advance the gangly plant species through the listing process. The groups asked for a stay — a type of legal pause — on the plant's protections and argued that insufficient evidence had been provided to prove that Joshua trees were truly in danger.

The species' case for listing under the act — after it was denied federal protection — is important because it represents the first instance in which climate change has successfully been cited as the primary threat to a plant's or animal's survival.  

14-, 15-year-olds can't be charged as adults, court holds

In other court news, the California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 2018 law barring an Oxnard teen from being prosecuted as an adult for two murders he's accused of committing at 15. In the 7-0 opinion, the court struck down arguments from the Ventura County District Attorney's Office challenging the constitutionality of the law known as Senate Bill 1391. The law passed by the Legislature in September 2018 made it so teens aged 14 and 15 could no longer be criminally prosecuted as adults. Read more on the case at the Ventura County Star.

On the road again

Caltrans is estimating it can reopen Highway 1 — and reconnect Southern California with Big Sur and points beyond — by early summer, the L.A. Times reported. The highway closed Jan. 28 after a 150-foot section at Rat Creek was washed out by heavy rains that caused debris flow at the creek in Monterey County. In a release Thursday, Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin said, “We’re focused on restoring travel on this section by early summer.” The repair cost is estimated at $11.5 million, involving “the manipulation of tens of thousands of cubic yards of material.”

If you were on the Southern California coast the other day near Dana Point, you might have seen about 300 dolphins that were speeding along and leaping into the air. Check out the video of the "dolphin stampede" at USA Today.

In California is a roundup of news from across USA Today network newsrooms. Also contributing: Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, L.A. Times.

Julie Makinen is California editor for the USA Today Network. Follow her on Twitter at @Julie_Makinen