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

The so-called Tier 3 standards, which could be in place by the end of the year, would cut the sulfur content of gasoline in the U.S. by two-thirds by 2017. Although the sulfur, itself, does not present a public health hazard, its presence in gasoline messes up catalytic converters that control tailpipe emissions, contributing to smog and soot.   read more

Although Chemical Waste Management (CWM) didn’t think enough of the 72 hazardous waste spills at its Kettleman City landfill to report them, the state was more impressed. The dump has been the subject of intense criticism by residents and environmental groups who are trying to block the oft-fined company from obtaining expansion permits, and pressuring the company to drop the expansion plans.   read more

Tsunamis have always posed a credible threat to California, but delivered little destruction over the past 150 years compared to other natural disasters like earthquakes or fire. However, a report just released by the U.S. Geological Survey says 267,347 residents are sitting in a 20-county tsunami zone that is “likely to experience” the kind of devastation suffered by Samoa in 2009, Chile in 2010 and Japan in 2011.   read more

More than 35 donors pledged $1.2 million to the cause, but Riverside this week revoked its $100,000 reward because the terms of its offer had not been met. Riverside had offered to pay anyone with information that led to the arrest and conviction of Dorner, who killed himself February 12 in a Big Bear cabin while surrounded by police. Riverside contends that Dorner had neither been arrested nor convicted, so no payout was due.   read more

Officials say the use of the tag-based FasTrak electronic toll system will save money, with estimates varying from $8 million to more than $19 million over the next eight years. Drivers, including visitors, will have the option of having their license plates photographed and then pay online or by mail. “I think what it is, sometimes we are the first, if not the only smile they get in the morning,” toll collector Jackie Dean told The New York Times. “And that’s for a lot of people.”   read more

Driven by the nation’s hunt for alternative fuels, California farmers are about to reintroduce a once-abandoned crop, sugar beets, as part of a pilot program for producing ethanol in a biofuel refinery by 2016. Nowadays, when you grow sugar beets, you get a bonus: genetically-modified (GMO) crops from seeds made by biofuel giant Monsanto.   read more

Senate Bill 467 would require the authorities to obtain search warrants before demanding that service providers turn over emails. The bill would also apply to messages and profiles stored on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Currently, emails that have been saved on a server for more than 180 days or have already been opened by the recipient are fair game.   read more

While tech companies clamor for more high-skilled immigration and Americans bemoan the poor job done educating our youth, California community colleges are shutting out hundreds of thousands of applicants every year for lack of funding. A report from the Public Policy Institute of California outlines the effects of $1.5 billion in budget cuts between fiscal years 2007-08 and 2011-12, a decline of 24%.   read more

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Friday that 149 airport towers, 11 in California, would begin closing next month. The sequester, which slices most agency budgets in the federal government, is forcing the FAA to cut $637 million by September 30. That is mostly being accomplished by periodic furloughs of its 47,000-person workforce and closure of towers at small airports.   read more

For the second year in a row, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) has introduced legislation to impose state control on a chaotic medical marijuana scene. The understaffed, overburdened state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) would oversee a newly-created Division of Medical Cannabis Regulation and Enforcement, rather than have a standalone department run the operation.   read more

A survey of facilities belonging to the state’s largest HMO by the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) found a number of factors that made it impossible to gauge how well services were being delivered. The report, released this month, is a follow-up to a preliminary report in August 2012 that listed a series of deficiencies the department wanted addressed.   read more

Employment has edged up 1.7% to 81.1% for men 25 to 54 the past two years, while women have seen a 0.8% decline to 64.5%. Women make up more than two-thirds of the 300,000 drop in community college enrollment since 2007-08 and have seen their options limited by steep reductions in state support of child care and preschool.   read more

Success! Solo drivers in Los Angeles who can afford to pay extra for access to carpool lanes have seen their speeds increase 10 mph, while those less fortunate are going between 3.6 and 8 mph slower. The 11 miles of High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes were activated last November and a second 14-mile stretch on the I-10 Freeway heading east from downtown opened February 23. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Harbor Freeway HOT lanes have already brought in $3.2 million.   read more

Weaver was running for the Associated Student, Inc. (ASI) job, a position that pays $8,000 a year, along with four friends who were seeking other paying positions. The Huntington Beach native installed key logging software on a number of campus computers, obtaining 745 student IDs and passwords, 480 of which he used to cast votes electronically.   read more

The city of Bell corruption trial staggered to a close Thursday after the judge exclaimed that “all hell has broken loose” and declared a mistrial on the remaining 42 counts. The bizarre end to the case was marked by a flurry of last-minute notes between jurors and Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy.   read more

Days before a critical hearing on federal oversight of California prisons, Judge Lawrence Karlton wants to know why the state’s expert witnesses were given a “secret” tour of facilities in apparent contravention of his previous order not to do that. Testimony from four state mental health experts about prison conditions was given after they visited facilities where they spoke to inmates in 2011, all without the knowledge of the plaintiffs bringing suit to compel better inmate care.   read more