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

Nunchucks, also known as nunchakus, are illegal in California. Only martial arts participants and law enforcement personnel are allowed to wield the weapon made famous by movie star Bruce Lee. They were pretty popular in the 1980s among police agencies, but fell out of favor about the time the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) got sued for using them on anti-abortion protesters in 1991.   read more

Stockton farmer Dino Cortopassi, who opposes the tunnel plan, paid $4 million in the effort, but says it was aimed at a much broader subject of bond indebtedness. The law already requires voters to sign off on general-obligation bonds for public works projects, which are linked to taxpayer dollars in the general fund. The initiative would extend that to big-ticket revenue bonds, which rely on independent funding, like bridge tolls.   read more

The Medical Board of California rejected a petition from Consumers Union to make doctors on probation give patients the same information they must provide to hospitals and insurance companies. But the board will think about it. First, they want a task force to investigate some of the issues raised. In the meantime, patients can find out about a doctor’s status by visiting the medical board’s website.   read more

A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury awarded the one-time highly-paid, 65-year-old curmudgeon $7.1 million after he sued his former employer for giving him a hard time following what was thought to be a mini-stroke on the job. Simers claimed age and disability discrimination and asked for $12.1 million after lowering his original $18-million bid.   read more

Prop. F would have limited short-term home and apartment rentals to 75 days a year, and require all the owners to register with the city and pay hotel taxes. The law would have empowered private citizens to sue violators living within 100 feet of them. Airbnb, and short-term rental outfits like it, have been blamed for a host of urban ills, including rising prices and fewer available rental units..   read more

The DMHC fines were a result of its five-month survey, ending in May 2014, of how well Blue Shield and Anthem were serving the public. The Blue Shield survey found 18% of the 1,360 doctors called weren’t at the number listed by the insurance company and 8.8% said they weren’t really part of the Covered California network. The Anthem survey found 12.5% of the 3,272 doctors called weren’t at the number listed and 12.8% denied they were in the network.   read more

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) warned consumers not to eat Dungeness and Rock crab caught between the Oregon border and Santa Barbara because of potentially deadly levels of the neurotoxin domoic acid. The toxin accumulates in seafood when it encounters a “bloom” of the single-celled plant Pseudo-nitzschia. The largest algal bloom in more than a decade has been lurking off the coast for months.   read more

The illegally robo-signed sworn documents this time around were used as a basis for suing the 125,000 people plus another 30,000 lawsuits filed by third-parties. “Chase also made systematic calculation errors regarding the amounts owed, and sold ‘zombie debts’ to third-party debt-collectors that included accounts that were inaccurate, settled, discharged in bankruptcy, not owed, or otherwise not collectable,” the AG’s office said. Chase agreed not to do that anymore.   read more

NMFS spokesman Garwin Yip told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We think it is temperature-related.” Since the salmon return after three years, a third bad year in a row in 2016 could spell extinction for them in California. Chinook, a mainstay of California’s $1.4-billion salmon fishing industry, vie for water with agricultural interests upstream.   read more

It was the second Chapter 11 filing in six years for the company, which immediately became the subject of speculation that a bidding war was brewing between Tribune Publishing, which owns the Los Angeles Times, and a group headed by Freedom Newspapers’ current chief operating officer, former casino executive Rich Mirman.   read more

“This lack of understanding of the subsidy is a striking finding,” Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said. He contrasted it to the fact that 16% of a random sample―in a survey (pdf) of 2,200 California legal residents between 18 and 64―didn’t realize they will be penalized if they don’t sign up.   read more

The Los Angeles Times crunched numbers from 2006 to 2014 and found that innocent bystanders were injured twice as often in LAPD pursuits than the state average. One out of every 10 chases bagged an unfortunate soul in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those chases also resulted in the bystander's death more often than in any other locales.   read more

The new plan is significantly different from a proposed master plan in 2011 for the 387-acre property that retained the 21 existing “enhanced sharing agreements” with private Brentwood School, Sodexho Marriott Laundry Services and others. The plan calls for building 700 transitional housing units and 900 permanent units. A 200-bed inpatient hospital, the “New Bed Care Tower,” would be constructed by 2020.   read more

Charles Ornstein at ProPublica, using documents from the California Board of Pharmacy and the Delaware secretary of state’s office, described how the mail-order pharmacy Philidor Rx Prescriptions “used a backdoor approach” to circumvent the board and continued to deliver Valeant’s drugs to the state. The board accused the company in 2014 of making “false statements” about who owned and operated the company.   read more

At least three California cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland—have allegedly blocked the smartphone app Fixed, which offers users a decent chance of beating a parking ticket. It launched in February 2014 and has reportedly gotten 10,000 tickets tossed. Fixed co-founder David Hegarty told TechCrunch, “Over 50% of tickets have an issue or error that makes them invalid.”   read more

Associated Press reported over the weekend that already-shuttered plants, like the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station between San Diego and Los Angeles, have been dipping into funds for decommissioning facilities in the future, with the government's blessing, to pay for storing on site the spent fuel the feds failed to take off their hands as promised.   read more