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

Doctors at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach were shocked early last year to find out abortion was being banned at their facility despite assurances to the contrary they had been given for months leading up to a merger with St. Joseph's Health Services, a Catholic provider. The state attorney general reviewed the agreement it had approved 10 months earlier and re-approved it with a few modifications.   read more

A state labor board decision that seven short-haul truck drivers are entitled to $2.2 million because they were improperly classified as contractors was the latest in a string of victories by workers locked in years-long disputes over their status. Labor groups say 49,000 port truck drivers are misclassified nationwide.   read more

When 168,500 Los Angeles County healthcare patients began to be notified that their personal data had been stolen February 5, County Assistant Auditor-Controller Robert Campbell told the Los Angeles Times, “I'm not aware of another breach of this significance ever having occurred.” Now, he is. County officials doubled the number of victims on Thursday, adding 170,200 more to the list.   read more

United Kingdom-based Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of d-CON, sued the state Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) earlier this week after it formally announced the rat killer and “all second-generation anticoagulant rodenticide (SGAR) products” must come off the shelves by July 1. The new regulation limits acquisition of those products to certified professionals.   read more

Even team mascots are paid better—much better—than cheerleaders: $23,000 a year. And the cheerleaders are required to pay for their travel and team-mandated cosmetics. The Raiderettes are also subject to fines for various infractions, such as wearing unapproved underwear or having the wrong shade of fake tan.   read more

Investigators found more than 118 of Lowe's' stores were “routinely and systematically” tossing “pesticides, aerosols, paint and colorants, solvents, adhesives, batteries, mercury-containing fluorescent bulbs, electronic waste and other toxic, ignitable and corrosive materials” into landfills. The practice had been going on for six and a half years. At some stores, items like batteries and fluorescent bulbs that were turned in for recycling got tossed in the trash.   read more

The Los Angeles city attorney has told Realm of Caring it does not fit under the city’s year-old medical marijuana ordinance and must close. The group, cited last August for its cannabis treatment of child epilepsy by Gupta in a laudatory CNN documentary, has an outpost in the city. Most alleged dispensaries in the city are being shut down under Proposition D for various reasons, most prominently being they had to have been around since 2006. Realm of Caring is new.   read more

Eighty-year-old heart-attack patient Maria de Jesus Arroyo might not have been dead when Dr. John J. Posay III made the pronouncement at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles on July 26, 2010, but she was definitely deceased after being locked in the icy cold morgue for a few days. Lawyers for Arroyo's family didn't know that when they sued the hospital over very obvious facial injuries suffered by the woman.   read more

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) on 12 counts involving safety violations that led to the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, which killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood in the Bay Area. No executives were initially named in the indictment. Although the penalties amount to only $6 million, a conviction could result in government oversight of prescribed remedies.   read more

After the driest year on record and a short burst of precipitation, dozens of surveyors fanned out across the mountains, stuck their poles in the snow and brought a small measure of relief to trailing media and interested onlookers who strived to regard their glass as half-filled. It could have been worse. January measurements were at 20%. An April reading hasn’t been this low since 1988, when snows were at 29%.   read more

Okun and her husband were stopped at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Yuma County in January 2011 on their way to a gem show. Although she had a California medical marijuana card, which Arizona honors, the authorities confiscated three-quarters of an ounce of pot, some hashish and paraphernalia. Sheriff Leon Wilmot refused to return her pot.   read more

The raises are not very large. However, the class-action suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of the 1,600 judges and 1,800 beneficiaries, retirees and survivors maintains that California law obliges the state to grant the same pay raise to them as it gives to other state workers. That was 0.97% in fiscal year 2008-09, 0.22% in 2009-10 and 0.21% in 2010-11. Instead, their salaries were frozen.   read more

Mangano’s study discovered that infant mortality rates and cancer incidence in areas around Diablo Canyon have increased dramatically. He wrote, “San Luis Obispo County has changed from a relatively low-cancer to a high-cancer county” since the plant opened in the 1980s. It rose from 0.4% below the state average to 6.9% above, the highest rate among 20 Southern California counties. Melanoma soared in the county, cancer mortality for all ages rose from 5.1% below the state average to 1.4% above.   read more

A study by the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) found that the 450,000 welfare recipients in 2012, whose average benefit is around $510 a month, pay a total of $19 million annually for ATM fees and charges and another $6.7 million for money orders, check cashing and other services. The average user is only paying around $5 a month, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot. But many of the recipients pay nothing and many pay a lot more.   read more

The disease, nearly eradicated in North America, is surging throughout the state. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) reported last Friday that 49 confirmed cases have been recorded in the state this year compared to four last year. Twenty-one cases have been confirmed in OC, its worst outbreak in decades. Around 16,000 kids entered kindergarten in the state this year without being vaccinated because of their parents personal beliefs, 15% more than the year before.   read more

The judges said it wasn’t their place to open up that can of worms. They acknowledged that government officials concealing “their communications on public issues by sending and receiving them on their private devices from private accounts is a serious concern; but such conduct is for our lawmakers to deter with appropriate legislation.”   read more