Trabuco Canyon, CA– Effective December 26, the Trabuco Canyon Post Office located at 30595 Trabuco Canyon Rd, Trabuco Canyon, CA 92678 is resuming all operations.
The Post Office was temporarily closed due to inclement weather and limited road access.
The Trabuco Canyon Post Office is open at its regular retail schedule Monday- Friday 9:00 a.m. -1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
The safety of our customers and employees is our top priority. We appreciate our customers’ patience during this temporary closure.
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government is warning of multiple scams circulating leading up to the holidays.
Since Dec. 4, the province has put out two public advisories warning the public of scammers trying to obtain personal information.
The first scam involves a text message appearing to be from MyGovNL and instructs the recipient to click a link to a fake website where they will be prompted to provide personal information.
Mike Goosney, the minister responsible for the Office of the Chief Information Officer, said the government would never ask someone for information by clicking on a link.
“It can grab the information from your personal data [and] oftentimes it’ll link into your financial accounts or to get passwords,” he told CBC Radio’s Newfoundland Morning.
“And then it’s basically an open book for hackers to be able [to] do the harm, which is a lot of times financial.”
He says the text can appear legitimate and once scammers receive personal information, it can allow them to access financial accounts.
“It’s just so disheartening to think that someone could work all their life and with the click of a button, someone could take it away from them,” Goosney said.
The province says if someone receives a scam text message, they should forward it to 7726 to alert their cellular provider.
They should then delete the message, block the number and report it to local law enforcement and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501.
The second scam the province is warning of is a telephone call claiming to be on the behalf of Premier Tony Wakeham, asking for personal information in exchange for a senior’s bonus.
Mike Goosney, minister responsible for the Office of the Chief Information Officer, says the government is working to track text and phone call scams. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
Goosney says the scammers are looking to prey on seniors’ vulnerability
“It is very much alarming if you don’t feel it’s something or if you do feel it’s something that’s too good to be true, to delete right away. And you know, let authorities know.”
If anyone receives such a phone call, the province is asking them to immediately hang up without providing any information, and then report it to the RNC or RCMP.
Reports to the RNC can be made online or by calling 709-729-8000, and reports to the RCMP can be made by contacting the local detachment or calling 1-800-709-7267.
Goosney says the government is working to track these scams, and that they are working on providing more education about scams to the public.
Download ourfree CBC News appto sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for ourdaily headlines newsletter here. Clickhere to visit our landing page.
Boxing Day sales have seen a muted start as shoppers continued to shun bricks-and-mortar stores in favour of online.
By 3pm, visits to UK high streets were down 1.5% on 2024, while shopping centres saw a 0.6% fall, according to data from MRI Software.
MRI’s footfall data showed retail parks saw 6.7% more people visiting compared with last year, but the rise has so far not been big enough to see an overall or significant bump in visitors.
Barclays expects shoppers to spend £3.6bn in the sales, down from the £4.6bn they forecast for the sales in 2024, with fewer people planning to bargain hunt than last year. The amount spent online is also predicted to fall.
Although people are still going out shopping, the figures indicate the Boxing Day sales are not the big event they once were.
The Barclays consumer spend report suggests those who plan to shop have upped their budgets by £17 compared with last year, but overall people are forecast to spend less this year than last year on Boxing Day sales.
Karen Johnson, head of retail at Barclays, said shoppers have been cost-conscious through the year and that behaviour is likely to extend into the Boxing Day sales.
‘Subdued atmosphere’
But one shopper from Glasgow said she preferred the more subdued Boxing Day atmosphere.
“Everybody’s taking it at their own pace, it’s a more enjoyable experience shopping on Boxing Day, I think,” she told the BBC.
Although the festive period is an opportunity for many retailers to make up for quiet periods of the year, several major brands closed their stores on Boxing Day, including Next, John Lewis, Poundland, Wickes and Iceland.
Another shopper in Glasgow said that he comes out every year only because it was his family’s tradition.
“It’s definitely a lot quieter than usual,” he noticed, “though Lush did have a big, massive queue this year.”
Diane Wehrle, chief executive of Rendle Intelligence and Insights, said 2025 had been a challenging year for many people.
“In the run up to Christmas, consumers have really pulled back on spending because they were very nervous, particularly pre-Budget in November,” she told the BBC.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announced in her last budget up to £26bn in tax rises in 2029-30, which will bring the UK’s tax take to an all-time high of 38% of national income in 2030-31, according to the OBR.
It means a further squeeze on household budgets as inflation – the rate at which prices rise – remains stubbornly high, though it has fallen from peaks seen in recent years.
For employers, higher minimum wage costs and National Insurance contributions announced last year mean they’re footing higher costs in an economy with sluggish growth.
Separate festive spending data from Visa showed that in the run-up to Christmas, spending was only marginally up overall, with spending on electronics up 8.4% compared with the same period last year.
Official retail spending data from the Office for National Statistics for November also indicated many shoppers resisted the lure of Black Friday discounts and the start of Christmas sales campaigns.
But Ms Wehrle said the extension of pre-Christmas discounting and boom in online shopping meant Boxing Day sales “have really become less important” over the last few years.
Northern Canada has been gripped by an intense and prolonged cold spell, with temperatures hovering between -20C and -40C for weeks. On Tuesday, Braeburn in the Yukon recorded -55.7C, its coldest December temperature since 1975.
Meanwhile, Mayo and Dawson endured 16 consecutive nights below -40C, with Mayo plunging to -50.4C on Monday. Whitehorse also recorded 10 nights when temperatures dropped below -30C.
The deep freeze spread farther south over the festive period. On Christmas Day, overnight temperatures in Edmonton fell below -28C, while Boxing Day was expected to bring lows of at least -20C across many regions, including Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec.
The severe cold is forecast to persist into the new year. Officials have warned that the Yukon could face electricity outages in the coming days, as the territory’s power grid comes under strain from record-high energy demand.
The prolonged chill has been caused by the polar vortex remaining anchored over Canada for much of December, allowing bitter Arctic air to spill south. Next week, the cold air mass is expected to retreat north gradually, enabling milder Pacific air to move across the US and into parts of southern Canada.
In stark contrast, parts of the US experienced their warmest Christmas Day on record as temperatures soared about 15-30C above the seasonal average. In many areas, conditions felt more typical of April or May than late December.
Several states set Christmas Day temperature records. In Oklahoma, Oklahoma City hit 25C on Tuesday, surpassing the previous peak of 22C set in 1982. Cities including Austin and Dallas, in Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, were also among those that recorded temperatures above 25C.
Above-average warmth is expected to continue through Boxing Day and the days ahead, with unseasonable heat forecast to sweep into the south-eastern states later in the week.
The warmth has been fuelled by a strong upper-level ridge extending from the desert south-west towards the north and east, creating a heat-dome effect. This pattern establishes a broad area of high pressure across much of the continent, trapping warm air near the surface. As air sinks through the atmosphere, it compresses and heats further, allowing unusually warm temperatures to build.
A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows.
The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg.
Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, has again proved to be one of biggest winners as the AI gold-rush has pushed US stock markets to record highs.
Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% year-on-year to $645bn. The tycoon, whose business interests include xAI, an artificial intelligence company, became the first person to have a net-worth of more than $500bn in October this year. He could become the world’s first trillionaire if he hits targets set by Tesla, the electric car company he runs.
Musk sits ahead of Google co-founder Larry Page and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in the overall rankings of the world’s wealthiest billionaires. Page is estimated to be worth $270bn, and Bezos $255bn.
The growing concentration of wealth among an ultra elite has fuelled debate about how best to rebalance economies, with some calling for more effective wealth taxes.
The chief executive of the chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, was also one of the biggest gainers. The value of his investments, equity and other assets rose $41.8bn, taking his personal fortune to $159bn. This puts him ninth in the overall Bloomberg Billionaire Index, and eighth among the top 10 US tech billionaires, according to a separate report from the Financial Times.
Huang sold nearly $1bn worth of shares this year, cashing in on Nvidia’s soaring stock price. Its relatively advanced computer chips are a critical component in building the more powerful processing capability required by AI. It became the world’s first $5tn company in October, larger than the economic output of some of the world’s biggest economies, such as Japan or India.
List of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest billionaires
The wealth of Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, swelled by around $102bn and $92bn respectively, as investors bet on the company’s AI progress, including its own in-house efforts to build new chips, known as a Tensor Processing Unit.
Such has been the surge in AI investments in recent years that the Bank of England has warned of a “sudden correction” in global markets if investor confidence proves misplaced.
“On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence,” top policymakers at the central bank said in October.
This means that stock markets are “particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic”, they said.
While technology is the dominant industry among gainers in the billionaire rankings, there are other familiar names, too. Bernard Arnault, the French chair of the LVMH luxury goods company, which makes the likes of Louis Vuitton bags and Dom Perignon champagne, saw his wealth rise by $28.5bn over the past year. The 76-year-old controls around half of LVMH and analysts have turned more positive on the stock in recent months, with strong spending by wealthy North American consumers.
The Spaniard Amancio Ortega, who holds 59% of Inditex, the parent company of the high street clothing retailer Zara, and seven other brands, was among the biggest gainers, adding $34.3bn to his fortune, which sits at $136bn. This was boosted by a record dividend of €3.1bn from the retail group.
Quick Guide
Contact us about this story
Show
The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods.
Secure Messaging in the Guardian app
The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said.
If you don’t already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select ‘Secure Messaging’.
SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post
If you can safely use the Tor network without being observed or monitored, you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform.
Finally, our guide at theguardian.com/tips lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each.
He says the regulars over the years have become lifelong friends − more like family.
Club Paihia spokesman and committed timeshare owner Bill O’Meara. Image / Supplied
Timeshare, or “holiday ownership”, is a concept where several people own rights to a holiday property, as opposed to the property itself.
The number of owners depended on the timeshare model, with the most common being 52 owners per unit, where each owner got one week of use a year.
The number of owners was then multiplied by the number of apartments available, so, for example, a 50-room resort could have up to 52 owners a unit, resulting in a total of 2600 owners.
O’Meara says the timeshare concept came from the US and arrived in New Zealand in the early 1980s.
Owners paid an up-front purchase price for a unit title that could be tens of thousands of dollars for a new one, or a couple of thousand for something older, plus annual levies to cover maintenance fees.
Purchasers were given a certificate of title. In New Zealand, owners had legal protection under the Unit Titles Act.
O’Meara says securing your week could come down to “drawing straws”, but booking systems were professionally run under a “classification” system, much like any hotel or resort.
Back when he bought their timeshare, it was a better option than an annual overseas holiday.
“There was no way that I could have a holiday at an international holiday destination for the same money.”
He wouldn’t say what he and his wife paid for their timeshare, only that they weren’t among those who forked out up to $30,000 in the early 1980s (about $107,000 today) for a timeshare off the plans.
True believer
O’Meara is a firm believer in the merits of the timeshare concept. He holds an active role in the industry association for the timeshares in New Zealand as a member of the New Zealand Holiday Ownership Council (formerly the New Zealand Timeshare Owners Association).
He is also on the body corporate of Club Paihia, which oversees the running of the resort.
For O’Meara and his family, the merits of owning a timeshare include the “enforced getaway” to a favoured spot, in New Zealand and even overseas.
He says there’s a global network of about 500 timeshare resorts offering an exchange system, helmed by companies offering a professional management service.
The sun might be setting on the concept of timeshare holiday accommodation, once popular among the now-boomer generation. Photo / 123rf
In New Zealand, many timeshares were managed by Australian firm Classic Holidays, which bought New Zealand‐based Monad Pacific Management Limited in 2023.
Monad managed 13 timeshare resorts across New Zealand, with about 13,000 member families under management.
The acquisition made Classic Holidays the largest timeshare management company in Australia and New Zealand.
O’Meara says owners can swap their week for another timeshare somewhere else in the world through one of the exchange companies.
“As a family, we’ve been to Hawaii every year. We would take two weeks on the Gold Coast and school holidays in the middle of winter.
“We’d get the cheapest airfare we could find to get into Coolangatta, hire a rental car from a fellow who gave us a really good deal and got to know us really well and off we go.”
O’Meara says it does, however, take a lot of planning.
“You’ve got to be on your game.”
He says little can beat a relaxing luncheon boat ride with friends to one of many bays out from Paihia, or a slow jetski ride to one of many inlets, or a kayak trip to Haruru Falls.
“We’d go up on the tide and when the tide turned, we’d come back again.”
Tide has turned
However, the tide that brought in the wave of investors in the 1980s now appears to have also turned.
In 2023, media reported there were fewer than 20 such resorts left in New Zealand.
The decision in 2025 to wind up the Bishop Selwyn timeshare resort in Paihia was one of five in as many years handled by one law firm alone.
In July, the High Court cancelled the unit plan that covered all unit titles at the Bishop Selwyn, and that freed up the entire complex to be sold.
The High Court has cancelled the unit plan that covered all unit titles at the Bishop Selwyn Resort in Paihia, and that freed up the entire complex to be sold. Image/Supplied
It followed an application to the court by the resort’s body corporate to allow its sale.
The decision wasn’t unanimous, but the majority of owners were in favour.
A survey in 2023 of the 263 unit owners showed 59.7% agreed to a wind-up of the scheme and sale of the property.
At a meeting the following year, 83% voted in favour of a motion to cancel the unit plan, although not all owners could be found.
Justice Jason McHerron said in his judgment that many owners had formed the view that the annual costs of keeping their timeshare weeks did not provide sufficient value, or they no longer had a need for their timeshare holiday accommodation.
Levies are typically in the $800-$1000 range and are paid to the body corporate to cover maintenance and any development.
Justice McHerron said about 17% of the survey respondents last stayed at the Bishop Selwyn two or three years ago and 24% at least four years ago.
He said unit owners looking to sell their interests had found there was no market for timeshare leases and where sales did happen, the vendor was unlikely to receive much, if anything.
He was satisfied it was an appropriate case for the court to exercise its discretion to make orders authorising the cancellation of the unit plan, which was approved to allow sale of the whole property.
It was envisaged a share of the proceeds would be allocated to each owner according to their respective interests in the unit plan.
Justice McHerron said a registered valuer would determine this on a percentage basis for each unit and would then be used to calculate the distribution of the sales proceeds after the costs of the sale have been paid.
The Bishop Selwyn Resort on almost 2500sq m of land in downtown Paihia had an insurance value of $20 million and was listed for sale in June 2025 for $5.6m.
Agent Ross Robertson, who recently retired, was handling it as his swansong, one-off project.
He told NZME in late October he had fielded a decent amount of interest so far, with 18-20 parties wanting to look at it.
Gone ‘out of fashion’
A partner in a Hawke’s Bay law firm, Jonathan Norman, who specialises in the timeshare field, says the dynamic of ownership is fascinating.
“For the people who do use the properties, they absolutely love them. They talk about how their family might have holidayed there for 40 years, that they had the most amazing times and want their children to have the same experience.”
Hawke’s Bay lawyer Jonathan Norman is a partner in law firm Sainsbury Logan & Williams and specialises in winding up timeshare units. Image/Supplied
Norman says there’s still a market for timeshares in some areas of the country, but the concept has largely gone out of fashion as the boomers who led the charge begin to fade out.
He says the biggest issue is most owners no longer use them, but are still paying their levies every year and getting very little back.
O’Meara says timeshares have also been at the mercy of increasing competition in the holiday accommodation sector, with the arrival of Airbnb and Bookabach.
Airlines had also become “more aggressive” through there simply being more of them, and the associated travel package deals that have flooded the market.
But many have simply done their time.
“Their life has changed. They bought in when they were 40 and they’re in their 70s now or coming up 80, and some of them are in their 90s.”
Betty is 86 and trying to sell a timeshare unit the family bought beside Lake Taupō in the early 1980s.
She’s one of several owners to have listed their timeshare at the Lakeside Villas Resort. She says it’s time to bid farewell to a place they loved and enjoyed and which her family isn’t keen to take on.
“I’m getting too old for it now. I don’t want to travel,” she says.
Betty and her late husband were drawn to the idea of timeshare ownership in the early 1980s by the promise of an annual holiday at a place they didn’t have to maintain.
It’s right on the lakefront, with walkways nearby and not far from town. Owners also have a swimming pool, spa pool, tennis court, mini golf, squash court, pool table and table tennis at the resort.
“We could just walk in and have a week in Taupō, which we quite enjoyed.”
Betty and her husband also took advantage of the international exchanges to timeshares around the world.
“We went overseas to England and Canada and Australia and I thought that was marvellous.”
Norman says the sale on a timeshare can often come down to a vendor paying the buyer’s legal costs.
“So, you know, it’s pretty grim for people. They’ve paid all the levies and that’s the best they can get out of it.”
Betty is offering the lease plus one fixed week and one floating week at the studio unit at Lakeside Villas Resort for a total of $600.
The annual $545 levy is paid, but will renew in 2026 when the body corporate sets the fees for the year.
“I shouldn’t imagine it’ll be much more,” Betty says.
When she spoke with NZME in October, she’d had interest from one person, but refused their $50 offer.
“I would virtually be giving it to them and they get a holiday this year.”
Norman says a lot of them are now on fixed incomes and worried about passing it down to their children because a timeshare lease does form part of your estate.
Thomas Attwood is among those to have inherited a timeshare at the Bishop Selwyn and the headaches he says came with it.
The Bishop Selwyn Resort in downtown Paihia had an insurance value of $20m and was listed for sale in June 2025 for $5.6m. There is a good market for these properties as either motels or other types of accommodation, lawyers and agents say.
“The timeshare was our dad’s and when he passed away it was sort of handed over to us.”
Attwood remembers his parents used it regularly “in the early days when all the timeshare was in vogue”.
They initially owned one in Taupō, but that was wound up, so they transferred ownership to one in Tūrangi, but that, too, was wound up.
Attwood says they owned a timeshare at Bishop Selwyn for about 15 years and used it yearly for a family holiday break.
But, it’s an added burden he doesn’t need.
“Dad was retired, so managing all this side stuff was no problem for him.”
That includes the expert organisation it takes to book an extra time at a timeshare outside the allocated week.
“He’d be on the website like a hawk. He was used to the mechanisms and the way the timeshare stuff worked, but for families inheriting it’s kind of, ‘Oh yeah we look on the thing [website] but it’s all been booked out’.
“I think you probably have to be like my dad and know how to work the timeshare system, so it does end up kind of being a burden,” Attwood says.
He compares timeshare ownership to what it’s probably like owning a villa or unit in a retirement home.
“You know you’re looked after and all that sort of stuff and you can live with other elderly people and go to the golf course or the bowling green, but you’re still paying maybe $150 a week [in levies] on something you might have paid thousands for up front.”
Different legal structures surround retirement home ownership, such as freehold, leasehold or a licence to occupy.
Entry costs are typical, which may include a deferred management fee and monthly fees for maintenance, insurance and communal services.
Norman says while there are challenges to selling a timeshare unit, where the market lies is in the bricks and mortar.
“There is a good market for these properties as either motels or other types of accommodation.
“They’ve generally been really well maintained and kept to a pretty good standard, albeit dated as products of the 80s and 90s.”
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
Irwin said many farmers in the Corn Belt have been surviving on a series of ad hoc payment programs from the federal government. Next year, producers are slated to receive billions in funding from disaster relief and economic aid programs – including a $12 billion bailout package announced earlier this month that aims to offset losses from low crop prices and the trade war.
Irwin said those payments could push farmers in Illinois toward a small profit instead of a hefty loss.
But, ad hoc payments only go so far, Cowley said.
“It’s not necessarily going to help the fundamentals of, you know, what do we do with the supply of the products that we grow?” Cowley said. “And what does that mean for prices that farmers are going to be paid on the market?”
New year, same trade questions
Economists say that trade uncertainty will continue to be a challenge as farmers make decisions for their operations this year.
Irwin is watching the U.S. relationship with China, the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans, and the weather in South America through the first quarter of 2026.
Earlier this year, China boycotted U.S. soybean purchases for months to retaliate against the Trump administration’s tariffs. The country later agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in 2025, and 25 million metric tons for the next three years – which is closer to what the country typically buys from the U.S.
But after the first Trump administration’s trade war, China further diversified where it sourced soybeans, namely from South America. Irwin said Brazil is now the dominant soybean producer in the world.
“I think what people are probably as worried about as anything on the trade front is, how much permanent damage has this done in our trade relationship with China?” Irwin said. “Is this just going to be a repeat of the last 2017, 2018, when we permanently gave up market share to South America, principally Brazil?”
While the Trump administration has announced trade agreements with countries like Japan, Irwin said some of the details are still unclear.
“Maybe there will be some nice boosts in our agricultural exports coming out of these trade agreements. But we have to see more specifics and get down to that before we’ll really know for sure,” he said.
This is happening as tariffs themselves are in question. Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering their future in a lawsuit.
For Luis Ribera, economic professor at Texas A&M University, trade in 2026 is hard to predict because it’s heavily political. He said markets don’t know how to react to tariff unpredictability.
“In my world, that’s the big question – is this the new normal? Is tariffs going to be a tool to negotiate with other countries? And looks like that’s the way it’s going to be,” Ribera said.
As other countries retaliate against U.S. tariffs and find other places to source products, some American farmers are putting harvested crops in silos. Ribera said that means farmers have to pay for storage, and they don’t know when crops can be moved.
He said the current market leaves few options for crop growers.
“Producers, they don’t have an alternative or say, ’OK, you know, soybean prices are low, well, we’re going to produce more corn, or we’re going to go into cotton, or we’re going to go into a different type of rotation crops just to take advantage of prices,” Ribera said. “I mean, all across the board commodity prices are low.”
Another coastal charity swim in Dorset was cancelled because of concerns about water conditions on Thursday.
The Weymouth and Portland Lions Club took the decision to end its Christmas Day Harbour Swim after the first of 10 scheduled swims.
“This was not an easy decision, but it was the right one in the interests of safety for all participants, water support teams, and spectators,” it said in a statement.
“We are grateful that both swimmers and spectators supported this decision.
“Despite the cancellation, many spectators continued to donate generously into the collection buckets, for which we are extremely thankful.”
Getty Images
