An influence outage on Saturday night silenced a classic rock concert on the Toyota Pavilion in Concord, featuring headliners Styx and Foreigner, in front of an audience of about 9,500 people before they might really rock out.

The outage was reported to Pacific Gas & Electric at 6:39 p.m. According to PG&E, greater than 1,500 people in the world are affected by the outage. Several areas in Concord and North Clayton were affected, including quite a few areas around Kirker Pass Road, Concord Boulevard and Bailey Road.

PG&E estimates power will likely be restored by 4:45 a.m. Sunday. The explanation for the outage remains to be under investigation.

The show was scheduled to start at 6:45 p.m. with a gap number by John Waite, but was stopped before anyone could proceed. At 8:00 p.m., the concert was canceled, with no word on whether the concert could be rescheduled or if concertgoers would get their a refund. With no power or public address system, word spread very slowly across the venue.

Aaron Hawkins, manager of the venue, announced the interruption to the audience amid some boos. He explained that the unique intention had been to placed on the show anyway.

“We'll get through this as long as we can. Let's all keep our fingers crossed. Please be patient,” Hawkins said.

Dan Yorke of Walnut Creek said he got here to benefit from the music he grew up with.

Given the timing of the outage, Yorke was not optimistic that the issue could possibly be fixed quickly. He said PG&E could have “a skeleton crew” working to resolve the issue.

Jim Service of Pleasant Hill, who attended the concert along with his wife Michelle, said he wondered why they hadn't been higher prepared for a possible power outage.

“You would think that a venue like this would have backup generators for something like this,” Service said.

Following a warning from state regulators, the Concord City Council this week reversed its decision to effectively block a public housing project that council members said would concentrate an excessive amount of public housing in town's downtown area.

Last month, the council rejected the project developer's request to simply accept as much as $90 million in state financing, putting the planned 183-unit complex in jeopardy. Council members as an alternative encouraged Idaho-based Pacific West Communities to develop the complex primarily as market-rate housing, which might not receive subsidies.

A couple of weeks later, nonetheless, the state housing authority wrote to the East Bay suburb, explaining that by halting the project, the council can have violated fair housing regulations and town's state-mandated obligation to approve reasonably priced housing. The authority reminded local officials that it has the authority to implement state housing laws, as evidenced by a series of lawsuits it has recently filed against Southern California cities, including Huntington Beach, Anaheim and Fullerton.

State regulators have sent similar warning letters to other Bay Area cities, particularly Woodside, which attempted to avoid a recently enacted state housing law by declaring the suburb of super-rich Silicon Valley settlers a mountain lion sanctuary.

At a transient special meeting on Monday – the deadline for Pacific West to get approval for the financing – the council reversed course and voted unanimously for the subsidies. While council members needed to approve the state tax-exempt bonds that give developers access to low-interest construction loans, the financing is free for town.

Mayor Edi Birsan said in an interview that the voting change decision had nothing to do with the state's letter and insisted that town had the authority to reject the funding.

“I was not in the least afraid of a legal dispute,” Birsan said, stressing that he was speaking just for himself and never for other council members.

Birsan described the council's initial move to dam the subsidies as a part of a negotiation with the developer to “secure things that we needed to get confirmed in writing.” Birsan said his biggest concern was that Pacific West would go to the council again and ask for more taxpayer-funded financing, however the developer convinced him that wasn't needed. He wouldn’t say why other council members modified their minds.

City Councilman Dominic Aliano, whose district includes the proposed project at 1650 Ashbury Dr. near the Concord BART station, didn’t immediately reply to questions on the explanations for his vote change.

Before initially rejecting the funding, Aliano and other council members argued that approving more public housing in the realm risked depriving the neighborhood of a healthy mixture of residents of all backgrounds. As a part of their reasoning, council members pointed to the state's recent efforts to force cities to plan more cost-effective housing in wealthier neighborhoods — an argument that apparently didn’t persuade state regulators.

Unlike the previous meeting, council members voted to approve the funding on Monday without much discussion.

Plans for the Ashbury project call for housing that might be reasonably priced for households earning between 30 and 70 percent of the standard annual income within the East Bay, or between $46,700 and $108,990 for a family of 4. These households would typically spend about 30 percent of their income on rent.

The city council's change of heart comes at a time when the state is requiring Concord to approve greater than 5,000 latest housing units citywide, greater than half of which can be reasonably priced for low- and middle-income residents.

The city can be planning an enormous, decades-long redevelopment project at the previous Concord Naval Weapons Station that might create greater than 12,200 homes, including hundreds of reasonably priced units. The long-delayed project has went through three developers amid a mess of labor disputes, power games and allegations of backroom deals.

A housekeeper at a Concord nursing home who was allegedly banned from speaking her native Spanish at work will receive damages as a part of a settlement together with her employer, in keeping with a federal labor regulator.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which announced the settlement, said it investigated and located evidence that Pennsylvania-based Healthcare Services Group had implemented an “English-only” policy in violation of federal civil rights law.

Following this result, the corporate, which operates in 48 states, negotiated with the housekeeper to comply with pay her damages, the commission announced on Wednesday. The amount of the damages and the name of the worker weren’t disclosed.

Employers can impose restrictions on the languages ​​spoken by their employees whether it is vital to conduct business safely or efficiently, but not for discriminatory reasons, says Rosa Salazar, acting director of the agency's Oakland office.

“Customer relationships and customer preferences do not justify discriminatory actions,” Salazar said, adding that the settlement requires the corporate to coach its workforce in California “to recognize and prevent this form of national origin discrimination.”

The company didn’t reply to questions on allegations of an English-only workplace policy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday decided unanimously against a person who desires to trademark the offensive phrase “Trump too small.”

Government officials said the slogan “Trump too small” could proceed for use but wouldn’t be protected as a trademark because Trump didn’t consent to its use. In fact, T-shirts with the slogan “Trump too small” can already be purchased online.

Elster's lawyers had argued that the choice violated his right to free speech, and a federal appeals court agreed.

At the hearing, presiding judge John Roberts said that if Elster won, there could be a race for the trademark rights under the motto “Trump also this, Trump also that”.

Although all nine justices agreed to reject Elster's First Amendment claim, they used different reasoning that spanned 53 pages of their opinions.

Twice up to now six years, judges have struck down provisions of federal law that prohibited trademark rights after they were considered scandalous or immoral in a single case and derogatory in the opposite.

Elster's case involved one other measure that will reject a trademark application if it included a reputation, portrait or signature “that identifies a specific living person” unless that person had given their “written consent.”

The sentence at issue within the case refers to an exchange that Trump had through the 2016 presidential campaign with Senator Marco Rubio, who was also running for the Republican presidential nomination on the time.

Rubio began the verbal sparring when he told supporters at a rally that Trump all the time calls him “little Marco,” but that Trump – who’s himself 6-foot-3 – has disproportionately small hands. “Have you seen his hands? … And you know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said. “You can't trust them.”

Trump then made this remark in a televised debate on March 3, 2016.

“Look at those hands. Are those small hands? And he meant my hands – if they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you that,” he said.

It is considered one of several cases before the court related to former President Donald Trump, including major cases related to the violent attack on the Capitol in 2021. Earlier this term, the court set standards for when public officials will be sued for blocking critics from their social media accounts. Those cases also related to Trump.