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

“What is sad,” he said, “is that when this case is done Albany will have destroyed a rare and admirable community of people society calls homeless. On the Bulb they had homes! Now many of them will be back on the street. I’m glad we got some of them bit of compensation. That’s more than they usually get when kicked out of town. But the fact that they’re getting kicked out of town is the problem. And that struggle isn’t over.”   read more

Experimental freeway toll lanes in Los Angeles, known as “Lexus lanes” in some circles, aren't speeding traffic up for very many drivers and are slowing down others, but generating millions of dollars in revenue. That was good enough for the county's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board of directors to declare the one-year pilot program a success last week and give their unanimous blessing to an extension beyond the scheduled January 1, 2015, expiration.   read more

TMZ publicized a tape it received of the married Sterling, who is white, telling his much younger bi-racial girlfriend on April 9 that she shouldn't be “broadcasting that you're associating with black people” although it was OK for her to sleep with them. Although Sterling hasn't had anything to say about the revelation, numerous people have identified his voice and that of his girlfriend, V. Stiviano.   read more

After a year and a half of secret, limited excavations by archaeologists, developers in Marin County are paving over an extraordinary 4,500-year-old American Indian site said to hold an unexamined treasure trove of more than a million artifacts. As per agreement with the tribe, which by law pretty much has the last say on how the remains are examined and disposed of, there was no DNA testing and objects were reburied at an undisclosed place onsite.   read more

An oil pumping facility in a Los Angeles residential neighborhood that sickened residents for years and “horrified” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) when she toured the area just before its closure last November might resume operations when it completes $700,000 worth of upgrades. Allenco voluntarily closed after being hit with a series of citations for violating the federal Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.   read more

Two years of fine-tuning the CalEnviroScreen interactive map from the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) have proven what most everyone in the area, if not the state, already knew: It sucks to be in Fresno, environmentally speaking, of course. The original breakdown of areas by zip code missed pockets of devastation that were balanced out by less-afflicted neighbors. 2.0 fixes that and refocuses attention on Fresno, where eight of the state's 10 worst tracts are.   read more

An estimated 1.6 million Americans were victimized in 2012 and around 60% of thefts in San Francisco and 75% in Oakland involved mobile devices. S.F. District Attorney George Gascón told the San Francisco Chronicle, “With their no vote, 17 members of the Senate chose to protect billion dollar industry profits over the safety of the constituents they were elected to serve.”   read more

As the November midterm elections draw near, the conventional wisdom assumes that voters rarely stray from their party affiliations, but that independents are fair game. Considering that most elections are decided by single-digit margins, it stands to reason that those 21.6% of voters who venture forth without party allegiance are the key to victory. That is almost certainly not the case.   read more

“The system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,” L.A. County sheriff’s Sgt. Doug Iketani told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which publicized the endeavor in partnership with KQED. “A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so in order to mitigate any of those kinds of complaints, we basically kept it pretty hush-hush.”   read more

“As we were discussing the best approach to take, Mr. Curtis began a tirade of insulting and threatening social media posts about our organization,” Press Club President Juliet Williams, an Associated Press reporter, said in a statement. “Upon receiving a phone call from our program director, Mr. Curtis became belligerent and rude, making a conversation impossible. Our decision was clear, given our intent to hold a civil and informative discussion on the issues in the race.”   read more

She was appointed to a four-year term to the State Bar Court in December 2000 by the Senate Rules Committee, which was chaired by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton. The independent court, the only one of its kind in the country, hears cases about attorneys who have been accused of professional misconduct. The Supreme Court appointed her presiding judge of the court in 2006. She was reappointed to the court in 2012.   read more

Admissions (pdf) of foreign students are up 18% since last year and 51% since 2012-2013. Out-of-state admissions are up 9% since last year and 25% since 2012-13. California students are pretty much flat-lined. Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said when the dust settles, he expects 100 more non-Californians to be admitted than last year. They will be worth an extra $2.2 million in school revenue.   read more

The Sacramento Bee reported last week that 75 growers met with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last March and three-quarters of them said they had significant damage. Bee keepers indicated they thought the problem could very well be related to a practice by farmers of “tank mixing” multiple pesticides, including a couple of new ones: tolfenpyrad and cyantraniliprole. Suspicions were also raised about the spraying of insecticides during the day while bees were foraging.   read more

Dr. Robert Pedowitz came to UCLA to head its orthopedic surgery department in 2009, stepped down as chair in 2010 after complaining about conflicts of interest and industry payments to its doctors, resigned in 2011, filed a whistleblower-retaliation lawsuit against the school in 2012 and settled for $10 million on Tuesday. The school admitted no wrong.   read more

Preservationists and city officials in Berkeley were aghast when first told that the 1914 Second Renaissance Revival-style post office was toast and a month-long protest outside the building in 2012 got the public's attention. It was one of three California post offices on a current list of 15 for sale, including a 1941 “Spanish Eclectic and Spanish Colonial Revival” building in Burlingame and a 1932 building in Palo Alto.   read more

He survived temperatures that theoretically could have reached 80 below zero, but were probably closer to minus 50. There was not enough oxygen to sustain consciousness. Most people die under those circumstances. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says only 25 out of 105 known stowaways since 1947 have survived that kind of trip.   read more