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Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, December 30, 2025…
- Thousands of old and rare recordings – some that date back a full century, are now available for the public to enjoy online. That’s thanks to a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and record company Dust-to-Digital.
- Mountain lions, foxes, hawks and dozens of other species are dying at an alarming rate from rat poison.
- Fort Bragg is about three hours north of San Francisco, and during droughts, the former timber town faces severe water shortages. And they’re not alone. Nearby communities have had to restrict water in lean years, even while these coastal cities sit next to the biggest body of water in the world.
Thousands Of Rare American Recordings — Some 100 Years Old — Go Online For All To Enjoy
Thousands of rare American songs spanning jazz, blues and gospel — some more than a century old — are now available for the public to enjoy online. That’s thanks to a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation, which digitized the recordings from rare and aging vinyl collections.
It’s work Dust-to-Digital founder Lance Ledbetter has done since the late 1990s, going into private collections so the recordings can be accessible to all. Ledbetter remembered the first time he got to visit the 30,000-strong record collection of the late Joe Bussard in his Frederick, Maryland, basement. “It was just one great recording after another. And he was getting excited and we were getting excited. And it was fantastic,” Ledbetter recalled…