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

It wasn’t until years later that lawyers for the Innocence Project took up the case and questions were raised about the evidence. Files were discovered that indicated evidence pointing to other perps had been suppressed. Ventura County prosecutors subsequently got involved and new DNA testing from the crime scene implicated an unknown man, not Michael Hanline.   read more

California took its first enforcement action against a giant telecom for doing that when it penalized AT&T $23.8 million for nine years of illegal dumping by its 235 state facilities. The company admitted no wrongdoing but will pay the civil penalty and $28 million over five years for “enhanced environmental compliance measures.” “Enhanced” compliance does not include actually cleaning up any of the mess, which is scattered up and down the state.   read more

Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group, published a study it did of 555 charter schools, nearly half of the 1,300 in the state, and found 168 of them had an explicit parent work quota. The group suspects that the actual number is higher, but information from many of the schools was incomplete. “Such policies discriminate against poor families, single-parent families, non-traditional households and working parents,” the report says.   read more

Leondra Reid Kruger, 38, is a U.S. deputy assistant attorney general who would be the only African-American on the court and the youngest justice ever if confirmed. The South Pasadena native has worked in the U.S. Department of Justice since 2007 and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court 12 times. Like Jerry Brown's two other high court selections since becoming governor in 2010, Kruger has never been a jurist.   read more

PUC critics and PG&E both derided last week’s e-mail decision, albeit for opposite reasons. Critics said the decision did little, if nothing, to address the overly cozy relationship between the regulator and the utility, which they say led to shoddy practices and the San Bruno blast. PG&E said “sanctions were unwarranted” and the PUC may have overstepped its legal authority.   read more

Mark Berndt, who is in his 60s, was accused of blindfolding the mostly Hispanic students and feeding them semen in spoons and baked into cookies. A CVS photo processor saw pictures he had taken of his exploits and called the authorities. The district shut down the school and shipped all the students to other elementaries while it sorted things out.   read more

The SEC warned of “the potential for fraud in microcap companies purportedly involved in Ebola prevention, testing, or treatment, noting that scam artists often exploit the latest crisis in the news cycle to lure investors into supposedly promising investment opportunities.” After Immunotech announced it was working on an Ebola drug in an October 21 newsletter, its daily average of 223,000 traded shares jumped to 28 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.   read more

The university receives about $460 million less today than it did in 2008, before the recession. Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for President Janet Napolitano, said the university could avoid the first year’s tuition hike if the state gave it another $100 million. Governor Brown has suggested that, instead of asking for more money, UC should reduce expenses by handing out three-year undergraduate degrees, expand online classes and realign its campuses to specialize more.   read more

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) blames Southern California Edison (SCE) for approving the design of new steam generators that ended up destroying the usefulness of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was blamed for the faulty design. On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) weighed these factors before deciding customers, not stockholders, should cover most of the debacle’s cost.   read more

He is being charged under provisions of Proposition 21, passed by voters in 2000. The law allows the authorities to prosecute gang members who profit from crimes of other gang members, even if they aren’t directly involved. Duncan’s record sales were said to get a boost from the gang’s activities.   read more

A couple of surveys by the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) found what patients have been complaining about for more than a year, journalists have been writing about and advocacy groups have been suing over. Insurance companies are not accurately telling customers and potential customers what doctors and hospitals are available to them.   read more

The court agreed with the U.S. District Court that registered sex offenders regain their rights after completing probation or parole and that the law chilled those rights in at least three ways. “(1) it does not make clear what sex offenders are required to report; (2) it provides insufficient safeguards preventing the public release of the information sex offenders do report; and (3) the 24-hour reporting requirement is onerous and overbroad.”   read more

It could be worse, and will be, if the state doesn’t change the way it collects the fines and fees, according to a report by the independent state Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). Lack of incentive is only part of the problem. The collections programs are pretty lame. Paperwork on how much is collected and distributed is “incomplete and inconsistent.” Delinquent collections are miscalculated, collection practices are unevaluated and data on outstanding debt is sketchy.   read more

The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction to stop California from dropping people from Medi-Cal until a better system can be put in place to ensure that beneficiaries have been properly informed. DHCS official Rene Mollow told Kaiser Health News the agency knows the form is in need of improvement, but for now, “We do have remedies in place where people can come back into coverage” after they lose their insurance.   read more

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued: “Defendants baldly assert that if the labor pool for their garage, garbage and city park crews is reduced, then ‘CDCR would be forced to draw-down its fire camp population to fill these vital MSF positions.’ That is a red herring; Defendants would not be ‘forced’ to do anything. They could hire public employees to perform tasks like garbage collection, garage work and recycling.” The court seemed to agree.   read more

Using DNA sequencing and other analyses of potential pathogens, the scientists settled on a likely prospect and testing of the virus provided quick and disgusting confirmation. Researchers found the virus all over the place: in sick starfish, healthy starfish, 20 varieties of starfish, seawater, sediment, sea urchins and 70-year-old museum specimens. That raises a number of questions, including: why now?   read more