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 U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 11-0 that being accused of a felony, although not charged or convicted of any crime, was sufficient reason for law enforcement to force someone to surrender their bodily fluids and that California’s law gave them the power. Data is shared with local and federal authorities, including the FBI, which operates a database with more than 10 million names.   read more

Black boxes record critical data that is used to operate, repair and maintain a vehicle. The information can also be used to track and analyze the behavior of drivers and passengers in real time. Senate Bill 994, introduced Tuesday, would require a manufacturer to give a vehicle owner access to the vehicle's data and the ability to transmit the information to a third party.   read more

Randall Lawrence found the penny among his father’s belongings after his death in 1980. For 33 years he never realized its value until he met coin dealer Michael McConnell. McConnell told Lawrence that the penny was part of a rare batch made of aluminum, instead of the traditional copper, and could be worth $250,000. The two men agreed to auction it off. But the Treasury Department contends it isn’t his to sell, claiming it's government property and should be returned.   read more

Despite assurances from Occidental Petroleum that it has no intention of using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on 200 wells it wants to develop, the Carson City Council in Los Angeles County voted unanimously to ban new oil and gas drilling for 45 days while it studies a longer moratorium. The Carson vote comes just two days after a 4.4-earthquake jolted Los Angeles and a report (pdf) came out linking quakes to fracking.   read more

Less than two weeks after the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center wrote USCIS on behalf of the California resident, the agency reversed itself. The center cited a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that a person can declare themself a conscientous objector for secular reasons. Attorneys for the center made virtually the same argument to CIS last June in Texas on behalf of British atheist Margaret Doughty. That denial of rights was also quickly reversed.   read more

The researchers re-created the hot dry conditions in the laboratory, broke out the electron microscope and high-speed cameras, and then found that by striking a rock with titanium, they could produce sparks of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit that burn for more than second. “The common denominator was each golfer used a titanium club, and hit the ball just out of bounds next to dry vegetation where the ground was extremely rocky,” Captain Steve Concialdi said.   read more

Last week, CBS San Francisco was tipped off to a 100-car train loaded with crude sitting in a Richmond rail yard and asked commission Senior Fuels Specialist Gordon Schremp about it. “At this point we don’t have any of those facilities operating in California,” he said, just moments before the reporter showed him footage of the train. Afterward, he said, “It’s certainly a recent change that you know, we haven’t been made aware of that.”   read more

The complaints were reportedly made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) last August, relayed to the FAA in November, passed along to Nevada’s Clark County Department of Aviation in January and sent to NRG Energy and Bright Source Energy, co-owners and operators of the plant, last week.   read more

Pronouncing the public “at risk,” the auditor noted that the bureau inspected only a fraction of the required number of institutions and then took way too long to finish the ones they did. The auditor found 1,100 license applications that were awaiting a bureau decision, some for as long as three years. On average, the bureau took three times as long as the statutory 60-day limit to process the 3,200 applications it did look at during a three-year period ending in 2012-13.   read more

The Center for Biological Diversity's “On Shaky Ground: Fracking, Acidizing and Increased Earthquake Risk in California” says that of the state's 1,553 active wastewater injection wells used in the processes 6% are within one mile of a known fault, 23% are within five miles and 54% are within 10 miles. Much of the drilling in high-risk zones is located near heavily-populated areas.   read more

California's $410-million-share of the settlement, engineered by attorneys general in 49 states and the District of Columbia with five national banks, was designated for counseling and assistance to homeowners whose homes were threatened by foreclosures. Instead, the governor and Legislature used the money to pay down the state's huge budget deficit.   read more

Last week, City Attorney Mike Feuer announced that his office had closed more than 100 pot shops that weren't in compliance with the new law, which limits the number of dispensaries by various means. He said more than 300 people had been prosecuted; fines and probation were handed out, but no jail terms. Meanwhile, the city's finance department reported that 300 more dispensaries had taken out business licenses since Prop. D took effect, although they would not be legal businesses.   read more

State Auditor Elaine Howle’s report said EDD failed to participate in an expanded Federal Offset Program that helps collect overpayments by intercepting federal tax refunds and other payments and directing them to the state. Although the U.S. Department of Labor program has been successfully used by 31 other states, EDD determined that it could not make the computer modifications necessary to participate, the report said.   read more

The billionaire chose to stay anonymous, at least for now, because “he wants to keep the next of kin working hard,” according to Dovi Frances, president of Santa Barbara-based S.G. LLC. The guessing game over the billionaire's identity is complicated by the proliferation of mega-wealthy Californians. There are 111 billionaires in the state, according to Forbes, and about a third of them are in tech.   read more

Preservationists greeted the announcement that the tree would be whacked with horrific disbelief and rallied enough community and national support to win a short reprieve.The nearly 70-year-old, 52-foot-tall redwood is a genetic oddity. It carries two separate sets of DNA and is even rarer than the normal albino redwoods that number around 230 worldwide. The tree is a unique grouping of green leaves with white, albino sections of leaves mixed in.   read more

A Los Angeles Times story highlighted criticism of the department’s relationship with the developer, who has worked for three decades to put 20,000 homes and 60,000 people along the environmentally sensitive Santa Clara River, just days before another lawsuit was filed to halt the project. A common complaint has been the close nature of relationships between developers and government agencies that oversee them.   read more