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 attack occurred nearly a year ago, in September, was detected in October, was verified in May and made public last week. The FBI has reportedly been on the case for nine months. UCLA Health spokesman Tod Tamberg took a shot at explaining to CNN Money the delay in notifying the public: “The process of addressing the technological issues surrounding this incident and the logistics of identifying and notifying the potentially affected individuals was time-consuming.”   read more

Five drones were spotted at the North Fire in Southern California that jumped the I-15 in the Cajon Pass and roasted dozens of vehicles on its way through. Three of the drones quickly split but the presence of the other two forced the U.S. Forest Service to ground their water-dropping planes for 25 minutes.   read more

One-fifth of the 11,000 wells tested turned up high levels of man-made and naturally occurring contaminants that are especially troublesome when not treated at relatively small venues. The researchers said they studied data from 99% of the state’s public water systems. Around 8.9% of Californians rely on groundwater to drink, but nine out of 10 public water systems use it to some extent.   read more

It's the fourth time in a year that state officials have said mean things to Aetna about price hikes, but none of it means anything. Last November, 59% of the voting public refused to grant the insurance commissioner the power to do more than rail about high health insurance rates, when they soundly defeated Proposition 45.   read more

The audit covered two years, 2011-12 and 2012-13, and found that 72 of the city’s 79 accounting controls were inadequate. That sounds kind of dry and bookkeeperish. But the upshot is the city did things that make budgeting a challenge. For instance, they counted $9.3 million in property taxes in 2011-12 when the real number was $23.3 million and they reported $9.2 million in sales tax when the real number was $13.2 million.   read more

A hefty 9.2% of drivers were seen using their cellphones for some form of yapping or tapping, compared to 6.6% in 2014. It hadn’t been that high since 2012, when 10.8% showed off their multi-tasking skills. Phone-to-ear increased 55%, from 1.1% to 1.7%. Talking on a hand-held device increased from 0.7% to 1.0%, manipulating a hand-held device climbed from 2.2% to 3.3% and talking with a headset or Bluetooth jumped from 2.5% to 3.3%.   read more

The company was required to tell the PUC stuff like how many UberX users sought and received rides (by zip code), how much the rides cost and whether there were any accidents. The PUC wanted a spreadsheet listing the work hours for every driver and a list of who committed any company violations or were suspended. The Uber subsidiary in charge of delivering that information, Raiser-CA, did not provide what the commission wanted.   read more

The court did not pass judgment on whether the California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer who pulled over 76-year-old stroke victim Harrison Orr and gave him a hard time about his physical condition was responding to the pressure of a ticket quota. But jurors in June took a dim view of the circumstances leading up to Orr’s eventual beat down in Sacramento in 2013 and awarded the Citrus Heights man $125,000.   read more

Nine years after a federal court took control of health care at all of California’s prisons because of deplorable conditions, Folsom State Prison has been provisionally returned to the state. Another 10 prisons are expected to be inspected by September but there is no timetable for clearance. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson has indicated he will end federal receivership once all 34 prisons are approved and remain up to par for a year.   read more

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson responded to a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Bloomberg News and unsealed two videos Tuesday taken from cameras mounted on police cars at the scene. The judge denied a plea from Gardena to stay his order until they could appeal the decision, but the city asked for, and received, and emergency order from U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Alex Kozinski to reseal the videos. It was too late.   read more

The DEA said early indications were that the two growing operations were financed by Canadian Jerry Montour, an entrepreneur who sells “hundreds of millions of dollars” of tobacco products a year. They say he has a lengthy rap sheet. Law enforcement moved in after Wendy Del Rosa sent a letter in June to the U.S. Department of Justice complaining that the actions of her brother, Phillip Del Rosa, were illegal and not authorized by the tribe. But the authorities were already on alert.   read more

California’s Department of Justice has a backlog problem and might have trouble meeting its December 2016 deadline for confiscating weapons from people banned from gun ownership because of mental health issues. The State Auditor thinks 2022 might be a more realistic time frame considering the slow pace, and thinks things would have gone more smoothly if department officials had executed more than one of the eight recommendations she made in 2013.   read more

“What is causing the overall balance number to be lower is the loss of rent-controlled units,” Don Falk, chief executive officer of the nonprofit developer Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., told the San Francisco Examiner. San Francisco has lost nearly as many affordable housing units as it has built since 2005. They established 6,559 units while developers took 5,470 off the market.   read more

A new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research says 24.8% of adult Californians were obese in 2011-12, compared to 19.3% in 2001. For the math challenged, that is nearly a 30% increase in 10 years. Adults of normal weight declined from 43% to 38.6%.   read more

Museum-goers with headphones could hear stories of misery from homeowners who tried to renegotiate loans with bankers as their home values plunged underwater and their jobs disappeared along with their futures. For the younger, more physically-engaged crowd, an interactive exhibit would allow individuals to “compete with former professional robo-signers of foreclosure affidavits to see who could review and sign more mortgage documents (without reading anything, of course) in less than a minute.”   read more

The judge told the State Water Resources Control Board that it should pause and reflect upon its decision to send letters of curtailment to thousands of older water rights holders without benefit of a hearing. Judge Chang said the letters amounted to issuing un-appealable orders and taking someone’s property without constitutional due process of law.   read more