Just before 1:30 p.m., Sunnyvale officers arrived at PNG Jewelers at 791 E. El Camino Real to respond to a reported burglary in progress, according to a press release sent Thursday from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety. There, around 20 people had broken glass cases with hammers and other tools and fled with jewelry.

The suspects had left the scene in multiple vehicles before officers arrived, authorities said. Officers were able to locate two of the fleeing vehicles; after unsuccessfully attempting vehicle stops, they pursued the cars. The vehicles left Sunnyvale and drove to the Peninsula.

Police lost sight of the first vehicle and discontinued that chase. Suspects discarded some stolen jewelry from the second fleeing vehicle while still moving, authorities said. Officers also discontinued the second chase after losing sight of the car.

The second vehicle was later located by another police agency. The five suspects abandoned the car on Highway 101 near Whipple Avenue, fleeing on foot across the freeway and into an industrial area. Police took four of the fleeing suspects into custody near Industrial Road and Brittan Avenue in San Carlos, and the fifth suspect was located nearby by a police dog.

Police said that some of the stolen jewelry was recovered, but the total value of the stolen jewelry was unknown. No one was injured during the robbery, authorities added.

The five arrested suspects were booked into Santa Clara County Jail on charges of armed robbery, burglary, resisting arrest, felony vehicle evasion, conspiracy to commit a crime, possession of burglary tools, vandalism and outstanding warrants, police said.

The incident remains under investigation, authorities added, including exploring whether this incident is related to another jewelry store robbery in Sunnyvale in May.

The council voted on the measure after presentations by city employees and researchers from the experiment that had garnered national attention for its plan to shoot microscopic droplets of salt water into the sky to determine whether they can become more reflective to block excess heat from the sun to the Earth’s surface.

Some at the meeting expressed consternation that the city had not been made aware of the experiment before it began and voiced concerns about its possible health impacts.

The city manager advised the council to allow the experiment to continue with the addition of new limits, including using air-quality monitors and allowing work only at certain times of the day.

At the meeting, Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft expressed her disappointment that she learned about the experiment by reading the news and criticized what she saw as a lack of transparency.

“Was it intentional? Was it an oversight?” Ezzy Ashcraft said. “It just wasn’t the best way to get started.”

“There are so many different competing considerations we need to take into effect, and I don’t feel that you’ve made your case,” Ezzy Ashcraft said after representatives from the city and experiment presented. “I don’t have a huge burning desire to be on the cutting edge of everything.”

Ezzy Ashcraft said in an interview Wednesday with Bay Area News Group that the process may have gone differently if the researchers had come to the city before beginning the experiment to get approval and address any concerns.

“The experiment was shrouded in secrecy, then it turns out it was in a controversial field,” she said. Supporters of the experiment “made it more of an uphill climb for themselves.”

The mayor emphasized that Alameda supports climate change research, especially as an island, but pointed to testimonies from scientists at the meeting expressing concern that geoengineering projects could have unintended consequences across the globe.

“We take climate change and sea level rise very seriously,” she said, “but we are also very mindful of unintended consequences.”

The Marine Cloud Brightening Project began tests in April with fanfare and presentations of the experiment to curious reporters. Researchers from the University of Washington set up on the upper deck of the USS Hornet, a former World War II-era aircraft carrier now docked in Alameda as a museum, to take advantage of the Bay Area’s often-cloudy skies.

The Alameda City Council asked the researchers to pause the experiment in early May on the grounds that it was a violation of the Hornet’s lease with the city, which only allows for museum operations.

The city then commissioned an independent health and safety review of the experiment that found no measurable health risk to local residents or wildlife when it was released last week.

Researchers from the project reiterated the safety of the cloud-brightening experiment, pointing to the results of both Alameda’s independent review and their own safety review. The research into these aerosol effects is “increasingly critical to improving tools for planning and responding to climate change to better protect people and ecosystems,” according to a joint statement from Sarah Doherty, the program’s director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Program, principal investigator Rob Wood and Kelly Wanser, executive director of SilverLining, an organization helping to find and test potential climate solutions like the cloud project.

“We are disappointed by the decision from the City of Alameda,” they said in the statement. “While we are already exploring alternative paths forward for the CAARE research, we urge the City of Alameda to reconsider today’s decision.

“The opportunity to undertake this research in a fully open and transparent way at a site like the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum is unparalleled in its potential to increase access and equitable engagement for all people, and especially for Indigenous Peoples and other vulnerable and underserved communities,” Doherty, Wood and Wanser added.

The USS Hornet museum plans to follow up with the city to see if there is a potential path forward, Russell Moore, the museum’s director of events and outreach, said in a statement.

“We are disappointed in the city’s decision,” Moore said. “The city’s own safety report concluded that the study being proposed by the University of Washington was completely safe.”

The Hornet is slated to lose the $100,000 in income it was estimated to receive as part of the partnership with the experiment in addition to the cost of cancelled rentals and other costs, according to the city manager’s recommendation.

“The lost revenue will be a burden on us, but we will do our best to manage,” Moore said. “The museum does not receive any federal, state or local funding, so we depend on programs such as this as well as visitors and donors.”

The City Council heard public comment from both supporters and dissidents at the meeting. Some expressed concerns over the project’s transparency or the consequences of marine-cloud brightening.

“While this is a local decision, it has far-reaching consequences,” Gary Hughes, the Americas program coordinator for BiofuelWatch, said in a public comment at the meeting, urging the City Council to not allow the experiment to continue because of climate change’s increasing effect on the planet. “There are global climate justice dynamics at stake.”

Other speakers expressed support for the project’s goal of combating climate change.

“This is our collective future that we are fighting for, and climate change is complex,” said Arianna Rehak, a local citizen, at the meeting. “I don’t know the science, but what I do know is this study is about better understanding it. … This is not about deployment, this is research to see if we should deploy.”

As shareholders and company officials gathered to discuss financial results for the oil and gas giant, chants from the crowd rang out: “Chevron, Chevron, you can’t hide! Blood for oil is a crime!”

Wassim Haj, a member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, said the aim of the protest was to “demand an end to Chevron’s complicity in the ongoing war in Gaza.” Haj said the protesters demanded that Chevron completely withdraw from their holdings in and around Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and encouraged consumers to boycott Chevron until a full divestment was reached.

“We see here the ties between resource extraction from here all the way to the Bay Area that has negative impacts on our country, on the Middle East, about the environment in a moment of acute climate crisis that is only getting worse and these these massive spikes in violence against people, indigenous people in the Middle East, particularly in this case, the Palestinians in Gaza,” Haj said.

The protesters argued that Chevron supplies Israel with light and power that enable attacks in Gaza due to the company’s co-ownership and operation of deep-water gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Reuters reported last year that the energy corporation retains 25% ownership in the Tamar gas field and operates and produces form the Tamar, Dalit and Leviathan gas fields, located off the coast of Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. In February, The Times of Israel reported that the fossil fuel giant intended to invest $24 million into producing natural gas from the Tamar gas field.

“Chevron has a considerable profit, motive and stake in offshore drilling in Gaza. A significant majority of Israel’s energy is powered by stolen oil that Chevron is actually the main provider of,” Haj said.

The protesters chanted to a beat performed by 10 drummers, most of whom were wearing keffiyehs draped over their shoulders or tied around their heads. Some walked in circles, holding signs that read “Chevron out of Palestine” colored similarly to the Palestinian flag’s red, black and green design. A banner in front of them read, “Chevron stop fueling genocide in Gaza.”

Six protesters sat in front of an entrance to the building — some tied together by small chains — next to two large oil drums with signs saying “Chevron out of Palestine” plastered on them. A few members of the Thousand Grandmas, a climate justice organization, sat along the edges of the group.

“The grandmothers have tended to stand up when it’s scary for others to stand up because in some ways, we feel we have less to lose than others,” said Nancy Feinstein, a member of the Thousand Grandmas.

Shelley Seola, another member of the Thousand Grandmas, said Chevron was complicit in polluting both the air and water in the U.S., and in the destruction of life of Palestinians. She pointed out the Chevron’s hand in the injustice, saying Israel cut off fuel and electricity for the people in Gaza, while Chevron was supplying 70% of Israel’s energy needs.

“I would like the genocide to end. I would like there to be peace. I would like everyone to be able to breathe clean air, have fresh water,” Seola said. “Not just here, but around the world and certainly in Palestine.”

During the protest, a shareholder attending the meeting noted that the CEO had acknowledged the protesters’ presence. According to an account shared with the Bay Area News Group, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in the meeting that the company is deeply concerned with war and tension in the Middle East, but their goal is to safely deliver natural gas to Israel and Jordan — for which operations in the area have increased recently. The annual meeting was available for viewing online, but some shareholders attended in-person.

“Chevron respects the rights of people to express their views peacefully and lawfully, and we expect a similar level of respect for our employees,” a Chevron spokesperson wrote in an email to Bay Area News Group.

The protest ended around 9 a.m.

Matt Leonard, a member of Oil and Gas Action Network and Chevron Out of Palestine, criticized Wirth’s response to their protest.

“They are talking out of both sides of their mouth. They claim concern for the communities they operate in while using those atrocities as a way to profit,” Leonard said.

Leonard is part of the the global Boycott Chevron campaign, which is led by the Boycott Divestment Sanctions committee. He said the group has collectively sent 10,000 emails to the CEO, and said the CEO’s response shows that they are making an impact.

Haj, who is Lebanese, said that both wars and resource extraction play a role in militarizing many homelands and creates negative environmental effects, brutalizing the people who live there.

“The shareholders are just very calmly, very normally meeting amidst one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 21st century with the complicity in their back pocket,” Haj said.

The results of the study were released just weeks after Alameda officials asked the researchers from the University of Washington to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the Hornet’s lease with the city, citing concerns over safety. The Alameda City Council will vote on whether to allow the experiment to continue at a meeting on June 4.

The Marine Cloud Brightening Project began tests on the upper deck of the USS Hornet in April, shooting plumes of microscopic drops of salt water into the atmosphere to measure whether they make clouds more reflective, which would send more of the Sun’s heat back into space .

The experiment was first tested in the lab before moving to the USS Hornet, a former World War II-era aircraft carrier perpetually docked in Alameda as a museum.  The Hornet – ideally located on the often-cloudy San Francisco Bay – will let researchers see whether the theory works in real atmospheric conditions.

The city’s study, conducted by environmental consulting company Terraphase Engineering, found that the microscopic aerosols emitted by the experiment do not generate a “measurable health risk to the surrounding community,” according to the recommendation. The saltwater sprayed by the experiment is similar to seawater, which is one of the largest sources of naturally occurring aerosols in the environment.

Terraphase outlined three conditions that the city could require to better define the scope of the experiment, according to the recommendation, including the use of air matter monitors in the localized area of the study and the creation of an air monitoring plan to be approved by the city.

“We aim to support any arrangements the city deems relevant, and look forward to working with them on these considerations at next week’s meeting,” Dr. Sarah Doherty, program director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, wrote to Bay Area News Group.

The city commissioned a second evaluation from a “biological consultant” to investigate effects of the experiment on California least terns, an endangered bird species. That study found that the work poses no risk to them or any other local sensitive bird species, according to the recommendation.

“Alameda has a high standard of care for its people and the local environment, and we appreciate the findings of their experts that the CAARE studies do not pose any hazards,” Doherty wrote. “This supports our own evaluation that this is a safe, publicly accessible way to further research on aerosols in the atmosphere, to support environmental goals and to promote education and equity in science.”

If allowed to continue, the researchers plan to conduct the spraying tests three times a morning, four days per week, according to the recommendation. The tests would be conducted before the museum opens to the public, and any demonstrations of the equipment as part of the corresponding educational exhibit would use plain water in place of salt water.

If the Hornet museum is not allowed to continue the educational sprays of the equipment, it would lose the estimated $100,000 in income it was estimated to receive as part of the partnership, according to the report.

The City Council will discuss a new lease with the Hornet this summer to “ensure this situation does not occur again,” according to the recommendation.

The three suspects conducted their work under the name of a fake contracting business called Statewide Roofing and Siding, according to a press release from the San Mateo Police Department. They used a counterfeit contracting license and overcharged victims for construction work that was never finished, police said.

Several of the victims reported recalling the suspects as having Irish or British accents, police said.

On May 7, police received a report from one victim who believed the contractors he hired to fix his mother’s roof were scamming him. The victim hired the suspects after a free roof inspection discovered what they said was damage that required minor repairs. The suspects continued to add services and charges until finally suggesting that the entire roof required replacing, police said.

San Mateo police began investigating the fraudulent business in November 2023 and arrested the three suspects — aged 22, 39 and 40 — on May 8.

The three men, all residents of Herndon, Va., were arrested on suspicion of theft from an elder adult, obtaining money through false pretenses, use of a fraudulent contractor’s license and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Authorities said they discovered that the business also operated under the name Teco Roofing and Masonry and that the suspects used fake names. San Mateo police worked with other county law enforcement agencies to find additional victims.

Police asked any additional victims who had work done to their homes by Statewide Roofing and Siding or Teco Roofing and Masonry to contact the department at 650-522-7650 and ask for Officer Luke Thornburg.

The city asked the Hornet’s administrators and the University of Washington to stop the experiment, stating it was in violation of the Hornet’s lease with the city and was taking place without the city’s knowledge, officials announced in a Facebook post May 4. The experiment is not allowed under the ship’s museum operations outlined in its lease, Jennifer Ott, Alameda’s city manager, wrote in a letter to the Hornet which was shared with Bay Area News Group by the city.

The city has contracted biological and hazardous material consultants to independently investigate the environmental safety and health of the experiment, officials said in the post, adding that “there is no indication that the spray from the previous experiments presented a threat to human health or the environment.”

The program stopped its experiments prior to Alameda’s public announcement, according to a statement released by Dr. Rob Wood, principal investigator and Dr. Sarah Doherty, program director. The scientists added that the city was informed of the study’s corresponding educational exhibit in advance but asked for a closer review of the study after news articles released details in April.

“This type of review was not unexpected given that the approach in undertaking the studies and engaging with the public on the USS Hornet … is something new,” Wood and Doherty wrote. “We are happy to support their review and it has been a highly constructive process so far.”

The Marine Cloud Brightening Project aims to test whether ejecting plumes of microscopic droplets of salt water into the clouds will make them more reflective, helping to counteract warming climates by sending heat back up into the sky instead of allowing it down to the ground. Based out of the University of Washington, the program partnered with the U.S.S. Hornet, a World War II-era aircraft carrier-turned museum which is perpetually docked on the coast of Alameda, to conduct experiments on its top deck.

The team of scientists and engineers developed the spray technology and nozzle designs over the course of several years in the lab and launched the next phase of the study — testing whether the theory works in actual atmospheric conditions — in April. Scientists had planned to test the technology over the course of several months and measure its effectiveness with computer models.

Before beginning tests on the Hornet, the program went through an expert assessment of requirements and “found that the study does not exceed established regulatory or permitting thresholds,” Wood and Doherty wrote. The plumes of salt water “operate well below established thresholds for environmental or human health impact for emissions.”

A comment on the city’s Facebook post from the USS Hornet’s account read in part: “We believed that our existing permits and lease covered these activities when we started. As we now know, there was a gap in communication and understanding of the scope of the project and we are committed to working with the City to meet all of their needs regarding this effort.”

The findings will be presented to the Alameda City Council in June and will be shared with the public, according to the post.

“We continue to appreciate our engagement with the community on the nature of this type of research study, which is not designed to impact clouds, the environment or climate,” Wood and Doherty wrote.

A team of atmospheric scientists from the University of Washington has teamed up with Silicon Valley-based SRI, an independent nonprofit research facility, and SilverLining, a nonprofit focused on near-term climate risks, to study whether adding plumes of salt water to a cloud will make it more reflective and stop excess heat from reaching the Earth’s surface.

Cloud brightening is an idea first proposed by British scientist John Latham in 1990. Now after years of discussion and experiments, the University of Washington’s privately funded attempt to put Latham’s idea to the test is ready for trials outside of a lab.

The Marine Cloud Brightening Program has taken up residence on the USS Hornet, where scientists will spend the next several months testing equipment and creating computer models to find out if their lab results can be replicated in real atmospheric conditions. At the program’s official launch on Wednesday, scientists from around the world gathered to discuss the new technology and see the testing setup.

“This project is a really unique collaboration,” said Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, during the program’s launch event.

The Hornet, an 80-year-old aircraft carrier turned museum, was chosen as the home for the tests. Wanser said she was “blown away by the combination of science, history, engineering [and] human innovation” at the ship.

The Hornet was built during World War II and went on to fight through the Cold War and Vietnam War, said the Hornet’s marketing manager Russell Moore. Its final mission was retrieving the astronauts from the Apollo 11 and 12 missions after they landed in the Pacific Ocean. The Hornet was decommissioned following the Apollo mission, and was scheduled to be scrapped. Instead, the ship was given a second life as a museum, and now serving as the home for this experiment is a new chapter in its storied history.

Scientists at the University of Washington have already gone through about 70 iterations of the technology in the laboratory, said Dr. Rob Wood, principle investigator and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington. Now, they are using the experiment on the Hornet to move to the next step of research: testing the sea salt plumes in real clouds.

After being launched from nozzles in a spinning, fan-like machine, the spray of salt water—in which the droplets are broken down into tiny molecules only 1/1000th the width of a human hair — diffuses through the air and into the clouds, where it replicates the reflective effect of natural aerosols. Scientists theorize that with this increased reflectivity, clouds can block excess heat from making it to Earth’s surface and contributing to global warming.

Wood explained there are a number of questions about the real-world effectiveness of the technology that they are attempting to answer with this experiment.

“Even if we could make the particles go into the clouds, how much do they brighten the clouds?” he said. “Can we even make the particles that we think are sufficient to brighten the clouds?”

“Every few minutes is different,” Wood said of the weather and wind conditions. “It’s moving everything around, and that will hopefully dilute the plume so that the particles are further apart and they don’t really interact with each other.”

The project launch also included a screening of a Ted Talk by Dr. Sarah Doherty, the project’s program director, where she explained the science behind the experiment.

“This is not a solution to the climate crisis,” she said. “However, marine cloud brightening might be a way of treating the main symptom of the problem, which is too much heat in the atmosphere and ocean.”

Wood acknowledged that there are some people who question whether there will be unintended consequences of implementing cloud brightening, and added that there are already studies at other universities studying potential consequences, such as those on marine ecosystems.

“It’s a big effort beyond this small part of it that we’re doing,” Wood said. “It’s always going to be a comparison, ultimately, with what would happen if we didn’t do anything — if we just left climate change unchecked.”