While most everyone on Wall Street is probably aware that the federal government essentially tolled the death knell for the giant for-profit company last month when it put a hold on the loans and grants that are its life blood, Corinthian won’t have to post warnings about it on its websites. The judge rejected the state's request for a court order requiring the company to post some sort of warning to its 81,300 students on 107 campuses that the company is having financial problems.   read more

California law doesn’t provide for a total recount of ballots paid for by the state. Instead, a challenger can select those precincts he wants reviewed and pays according to the size of his selection. As speaker, Pérez amassed a hefty campaign chest, and could end up paying $3 million to have votes recounted in selected districts among 15 counties that favored him.   read more

Despite fierce opposition from mental health advocates, San Francisco leaders have approved a policy by which a judge can be petitioned to order mandatory treatment for the mentally ill. The policy change came as a result of the approval of a 12-year-old statute, Laura’s Law. The law was named after teenager Laura Wilcox, who was murdered in 2001 by a psychiatric patient. Nevada County, where Wilcox was murdered, was the first to adopt the program. Orange County has since signed on.   read more

Bryan Stow will get around $15 million from the Dodgers, who got tagged with all his medical bills and lost earnings, and 25% of the liability. But the jury exonerated the team’s owner and declined to blame the victim. The two men who beat Stow senseless and are in prison for assault shared in the liability but probably don’t have any money.   read more

The City Council voted unanimously to amend their medical marijuana ordinance to require that dispensaries give 2% of their weed to very low-income residents and the homeless without charge. And it can’t be skunk weed. The council also expanded the number of dispensaries in the city from three to four and authorized the Planning Commission to consider what expanding to six licensed dispensaries would entail.   read more

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced last week that the 3,500-acre Shiloh IV Wind Project near Rio Vista in Solano County is set to receive a five-year permit that will let it kill five golden or bald eagles without getting slapped down. In exchange, the project owners agreed to take mitigation measures to lessen the chance of that happening.   read more

The FBI was using the prisoner Brown in a sting and smuggled a cellphone to him using a corrupt deputy. When deputies found the phone, they began moving Brown around to avoid having to log him into the system while they questioned him and figured out their next move. One of the next moves was for two of the accused to show up at an FBI agent’s home and tell her they were getting a warrant for her arrest.   read more

Around 18 months ago, the California Military Department indicated that it wanted direct control of the museum’s resources and said the donations belonged to the state. The foundation disagreed and the Military Department cut off their money and sued them in Sacramento County Superior Court in September. The state claims it owns 90% of the artifacts.   read more

“The message is very clear: Women who are pregnant should take special care to avoid contact with agricultural chemicals whenever possible,” the study’s lead author, Janie F. Shelton, said in a prepared statement. That certainly might be one message. Shelton suggested another to the Times: "Instead of putting the onus entirely on women thinking of getting pregnant, I think the public should consider that regulators require this kind of testing.”   read more

MonkeyParking drivers can use a smartphone app to auction off their parking space starting at $5 with default options up to $20. “Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work—and Monkey Parking is not one of them,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement. He warned that $300 fines would be issued to motorists who violate San Francisco’s ordinance prohibiting companies or individuals from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking.   read more

The lawsuit comes just one week after the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior issued an administrative cease and desist order telling both sides to the dispute to put their guns down after “the security force of one faction had barricaded the entrance to the Casino and that armed agents of the other faction covered the perimeter of the Casino property.”   read more

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Thursday that the law was vague and unclear about what behavior it was prohibiting. Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that the law “criminalizes innocent behavior” and cited the example of plaintiff Chris Taylor, a homeless man who slept at a shelter (and could prove it) but was arrested for sitting in his car during a rain storm.   read more

An official state report released this week confirms news stories from a year ago that doctors in California prisons sterilized more than 140 female inmates over an eight-year period, many without proper approval for what probably amounted to an extreme form of birth control. The California State Auditor found that 39 of the patients underwent the surgical procedure, known as bilateral tubal ligation, from fiscal year 2005-2006 to 2012-13 and held both state and federal authorities accountable.   read more

The Chronicle study found 4,798 properties listed on Airbnb in San Francisco. They included some shared and private rooms and at least one tree house. But almost two-thirds involved an entire house or apartment. One hundred and sixty properties appeared to be rented full-time. Around 86% of the 3,785 hosts were only involved with one property. But 513 hosts operated two or three. Connotate didn’t find the big illegal hotels it found in New York City through Airbnb.   read more

Specifically, the auditor found the commission took an average of 46 days to start an investigation and 238 days to complete it. CPUC investigators failed to conduct a site visit or used flawed investigative techniques in 17 of the 40 instances reviewed by the auditor and took an average of five months to hand out the 13 citations it eventually deemed appropriate.   read more

California argued that identifying the sponsor of legislation is important to protect the integrity of elections and promote an informed electorate. Judge O’Scannlain thought that was nonsense. If voters really cared about who was sponsoring legislation “they need only make a trip” to the city clerk’s office and look it up, he wrote.   read more