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

FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller told the Sacramento Bee the feds were “seeking evidence in relation to alleged criminal activity” at the 99-bed facility. No one was arrested and “patients were not removed or even disturbed,” but the FBI did take some documents. The Bee ran a series of stories last year on the center's owner, Shlomo Rechnitz of Los Angeles, cataloguing a litany of negligence and abuse at other facilities operated by his Brius Healthcare Services.   read more

Judge Darling could have recommended a fine of $41.8 million, but based her lower assessment on a number of mitigating factors. For one, “SCE understands the problem and is acting to reduce or eliminate it.” The “problem” is Edison holding private conversations about public matters with CPUC officials and not reporting it, as required by law.   read more

Folks, with exceptions for law enforcement, museum collections, gunsmiths, entertainment productions and others, are not allowed to possess the high-capacity gun magazines within L.A. city limits. People who have the magazines must surrender them by November 18 and those who get caught violating the law a year after passage will be subject to misdemeanor prosecution.   read more

In making its announcement last week that it was reining in “excessive rates and egregious fees,” the FCC acknowledged that it had been a long time coming. The commission mentioned in passing that it was a petition from Martha Wright in 2003, asking for relief from the high costs of talking to her grandson in prison, that spurred them to action.   read more

FEMA wants folks to insure now because, unlike other types of insurance, there is a 30-day delay before coverage becomes effective and El Niño is expected to arrive this winter. Standard homeowner insurance policies don’t cover floods and insurance companies are loath to offer it to customers, so the federal government took responsibility in 1968.   read more

A new study says there is no need to worry about whether 414 U.S. cities will lose at least 50% of their populated area to rising seas from climate change in the future. Their fate is already sealed. The only questions are how many cities will join them (could be as high as 1,544) and when. Eight California cities are among 44 cities with populations above 100,000 that are locked in to having at least 25% of their populated areas eventually underwater under certain conditions.   read more

Tesla Model S drivers, most of whom are in California, got a software update for their cars a few weeks ago, giving them access to some cool features—Autosteer, Auto Lane Change and Autopark—and some of them have been posting their unregulated highway beta testing on YouTube. Tesla has been installing the hardware for its new features for awhile, but didn’t push the software out until October 14.   read more

Millennium is one of the largest urine drug testing companies in the world and it got there, in part, by testing senior citizens' urine for “angel dust” after they have been prescribed opioid pain medication. Seniors rarely test positive for the hallucinogenic phencyclidine hydrochloride. No one will be accused of a committing a crime and Millennium will still be allowed to bill Medicare for services.   read more

The first ad brought to the public’s attention was suspected, at first, to be a ham-handed hoax meant to cast Airbnb in a poor light. That was not the case. It read: “Dear Public Library System, We hope you use some of the $12 million . . . to keep the library open later. . . . Love, Airbnb.”   read more

Media Matters included Drum in its roundup of critics of the article, but started its critique by citing the 2014 National Climate Assessment that projected 74% more wildfires in California because of climate change. Other scientific studies and a survey of fire experts are mentioned, but the lengthy piece ends with eight separate complaints about the Times story’s first expert, Roger Pielke.   read more

The researchers drew their conclusion after studying the 5.1 quake in nearby La Habra on March 28, 2014. They predict an L.A. shaker of between magnitude 5 and 6.3. They used airborne radar data to measure surface deformations in the Earth's crust after the quake and concluded that pent up energy is going to be released soon.   read more

Southern California Edison (SCE) characterizes new documents released this week as records of “procedural” contacts between the utility and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) administrative law judge who signed off on the controversial $4.7-billion San Onofre nuclear plant settlement. Critics call them smoking guns that establish improper behavior by Judge Melanie M. Darling.   read more

Around 400 California prisoners, out of 125,000, are being treated for gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person's psychological identity is the opposite of their biological sex.Many of them are receiving hormone therapy. Not all of them will automatically qualify for gender reassignment surgery.   read more

On Tuesday, the federal courts weighed in for the first time. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, for the Northern District of California, using rather unambiguous language, told the feds to back off. Breyer removed the permanent injunction he had placed on the state’s first licensed medical marijuana dispensary, Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM), in 2011.   read more

Wyatt had made his controversial defense of the school district in a civil suit brought by attorneys for the girl after her teacher, Elkis Hermida, was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sentenced to three years in prison in 2011 for the five-month affair.   read more

It was the first time in 30 years that Pelamis platurus, a descendant from Asian cobras and Australian tiger snakes, made an appearance in California. They ride warm currents in the Pacific and Indian oceans, in tropical climates, and last showed up during El Niño conditions similar to the present. “There’s probably a lot of them swimming off the coast of Southern California right now,” according to herpetologist Greg Pauly.   read more