ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

Armstrong and company made their living by: creating false loan applications to be submitted by “straw buyers” who were each paid $10,000; fabricating documents like W-2 forms and bank statements; securing the mortgages using 100% financing to avoid making a down payment; inflating the price of the real estate by $100,000 or more; and having the fake investors default on the loans and kick back the proceeds to them.   read more

Manning’s announced selection to be an honorary grand marshal of the June 29-30 event was “a mistake and never should have happened,” Pride Board President Lisa Williams wrote in a prepared statement. Apparently, a rogue group of 15 former parade grand marshals, known collectively as the SF Pride Electoral College, voted to extend him the invitation.   read more

One year after attorneys general in 49 states settled for with the big banks $25 billion over questionable foreclosure practices, it doesn’t appear much has changed, according to a joint investigation by NBC Bay Area and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Twenty-five percent of the 184,000 Bay Area mortgages were in default status for more than three years, about three times as long as the state average. They were mostly serviced by ReconTrust.   read more

Debates still rage over: the prospect that newspapers are dinosaurs on the verge of extinction; whether paywalls are destroying journalism; the impact of the Internet on news gathering; the ability of newspapers to innovate; the relative success of various paywall ventures; and the future of paid online subscriptions. But unless you subscribe to an online newspaper, you probably won’t read about the controversy from them.   read more

The state has suffered 680 wildfires this year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). That’s 200 more than average. Record-low rainfall across California has reduced mountain snowpack levels to 52% of normal and left the state parched.   read more

One of the four programs that make up the effort offers mortgage principal reduction up to $100,000 for qualified participants, but only 1,000 homeowners have been able to take part since its debut in February 2011. The entire initiative has spent just one-sixth of the available funds: $245 million on assistance and another $45 million on administrative costs.   read more

A battery-recycling plant in an industrial section of Los Angeles County, operating under a temporary permit for 17 years, was temporarily shut down by the state after reports of arsenic contamination in the vicinity, probably from corroded pipelines, put 110,000 people in the area at increased risk of cancer.   read more

A survey by the California Healthcare Foundation found that health insurance premiums have increased five times as fast as inflation where businesses offer insurance, while the number of employers who offer coverage has declined from 71% in 2002 to 60% last year. Premiums in California rose 169.7% since 2002, while inflation in the state increased 31.5%.   read more

The scientific papers warned of “fluidelastic instability” from the front-back motion, the problem said to plague the San Onofre reactors. “What’s the purpose of doing the research if not to come up with information so that it doesn’t happen in the field?” Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer on nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz asked the U-T.   read more

Residents in the suburbs north of Los Angeles have been fighting for decades to identify and clean up toxic and radioactive materials at the former Santa Susana Field Lab. The Ventura County Star reported last week that state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) cleanup manager Mark Malinowski told a group of 100 nearby residents that soil decontamination might be done by 2017, but groundwater would take “a lot longer . . . decades, possibly centuries to complete.”   read more

In addition to local pot enthusiasts, buyers for large dispensaries like Harborside Health Center in the Bay Area show up to shop, according to a reporter for Modern Farmer. The professionals rub shoulders with “aging grandmas with short gray hair and faded North Face fleece.” Rows of booths stuffed with produce like Pineapple Thai, Super Mango and Blue Dream belie the fact that growers and sellers risk arrest, incarceration and heavy fines for their activities.   read more

“States are required to make timely loans or grants using all available drinking water funds to eligible water systems for necessary projects, and California has failed to meet this standard,” the EPA wrote. As of October 2012, California had not allocated $455 million available to it, the largest untouched amount by any state participating in the program.   read more

If you think that you are safe from freeway air pollution because you live more than 1,000 feet from the source, think again. A new study published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, based on information gathered by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and UCLA, extends the danger zone to more than a mile away.   read more

Tarla Makaeff’s lawsuit, filed two years ago in U.S. District Court in San Diego, contends that the school uses high-pressure tactics and false representation to convince students to enroll in expensive classes that resemble infomercials more than seminars. Makaeff paid thousands of dollars for classes and was told that her first real estate transactions would recoup all her money and more. So she figured that was money in the bank and paid another $35,000 for the “Gold Program.”   read more

A ruling by the court in favor of the truckers could put a serious crimp in plans for expansion at the container port, which is the largest in the nation. The port undertook the Clean Air Action Plan in 2006 and the Clean Truck Program (pdf) in 2008 in response to criticism from environmentalists and community activists who opposed expansion of the port unless something was done about the miserable air generated by trucks coming, going and, most insidiously, idling on nearby streets.   read more

Officials estimate that upgrade costs could run between $60,000 and $130,000 per building, but owners will be able to pass the costs along to tenants via rent increases over 20 years—even those protected by the city’s rent control law. Tenants with incomes below $78,000 a year can apply for a hardship exemption to lessen the blow and a separate ordinance is being considered to automatically exempt single parents on welfare and senior citizens on permanent disability.   read more