Supporters of the ban cite health hazards from the fires’ fine-particulate pollutants, as well as an unsightly beach scene from excessive smoke and trash associated with the pits. Opponents characterize the Newport Beach effort as a class conflict between wealthy residents at the shore and the people attending the fire rings, who are generally regarded to be of a lower socio-economic status.   read more

The price, reportedly $625 million, would be a pittance for the brothers, who are each worth $34 billion. And their willingness to buy the entire group of eight regional newspapers, which also includes the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and the Orlando Sentinel, is considered a distinct advantage.   read more

An NBC Bay Area report says Yosemite has more drug busts (20) per 100,000 visitors than any other national park in the country. That’s four times the rate of busts at Yellowstone, nearly seven times the Grand Canyon and 10 times Joshua Tree. Apparently, almost no one (1 in 100,000) gets busted in Death Valley.   read more

The state has suffered 680 wildfires this year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). That’s 200 more than average. Record-low rainfall across California has reduced mountain snowpack levels to 52% of normal and left the state parched.   read more

A battery-recycling plant in an industrial section of Los Angeles County, operating under a temporary permit for 17 years, was temporarily shut down by the state after reports of arsenic contamination in the vicinity, probably from corroded pipelines, put 110,000 people in the area at increased risk of cancer.   read more

Residents in the suburbs north of Los Angeles have been fighting for decades to identify and clean up toxic and radioactive materials at the former Santa Susana Field Lab. The Ventura County Star reported last week that state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) cleanup manager Mark Malinowski told a group of 100 nearby residents that soil decontamination might be done by 2017, but groundwater would take “a lot longer . . . decades, possibly centuries to complete.”   read more

San Francisco officials approved hundreds of new taxi permits this week for drivers working in the city, but this response to longstanding complaints about the dearth of cabbies outside of downtown may pale in comparison to the recent game-changing introduction of Internet app-driven ride-sharing services to the area. Hailing a cab with a smartphone app is much faster than waiting for a cab service to dispatch someone from its fleet.   read more

Six years after agitators began complaining that large electronic billboards scattered around Los Angeles were a blight on neighborhoods, a threat to public health, a distraction to motorists and illegally approved by the city―and four months after a judge ruled they had to be turned off―77 brightly lit billboards went dark.   read more

Unhappy with claims by the U.S. Navy that radiation levels on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay are suitable for expanded civilian development of the former naval base, journalists at The Bay Citizen gathered their own soil samples and had them analyzed by an independent laboratory. The results showed levels of radiation up to three times higher than what the Navy had claimed.   read more

An analysis by the public-interest group Prison Law Office indicated that nearly half of security-based lockdowns in California prisons between 2010 and 2012 were aimed at specific racial or ethnic groups. And then there are those pesky signs above cell doors in a number of prisons―color-coded white for whites, red for Southern Hispanic, Green for Northern Hispanic, blue for blacks and yellow for Other, who are mostly Asian.   read more

State lawmakers in California, unhappy at the Boy Scouts of America’s prohibition against gay membership, are considering legislation that would remove the organization’s tax-exempt status if it doesn’t change its ways. Although state Senate Bill 323 is most certainly aimed at the Boy Scouts and their ban on gays, the legislation names 22 youth groups that “shall not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or religious affiliation.”   read more

The lawmakers want better coordination between board investigators and prosecutors, adoption of uniform physician substance abuse standards, adherence to legislation ordering greater oversight of surgical clinics, the filling of 18 vacant enforcement positions, and more effective use of interim suspension orders against “dangerous doctors.” They cited stories from the Los Angeles Times that detailed the board’s failure to hold physicians accountable for excessive prescribing of drugs.   read more

Last month, a Fresno County Superior Court three-judge panel upheld a court commissioner who ruled that Spriggs violated California Vehicle Code 23123 when he looked at his iPhone’s GPS map while driving. Spriggs, representing himself in court, argued that the law, which became operative in July 2011, applied only to texting and talking on the phone, not looking at maps.   read more

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), an independent federal agency established to prevent chemical accidents, blamed the state’s “patchwork system” of oil industry regulation for contributing to the Chevron refinery fire in Richmond last August that sent more than 15,000 people to the hospital with respiratory problems. But the board is only an investigative agency with no power to assess fines or compel agencies and the industry to change their practices.   read more

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones inked a one-year, $88,000 contract with Consumer Watchdog, an insurance industry critic, to review requests for rate increases. The industry was apoplectic. “Any review of health plan rates should be conducted by independent, impartial consumer groups that do not have political conflicts of interest and financial motivations,” Patrick Johnston, president of the insurance trade group California Assn. of Health Plans, told the Los Angeles Times.   read more

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) might have successfully infiltrated a group of SmartMeter critics in the Bay Area if the executive in charge of the controversial program didn’t do a dumb thing. But when SmartMeter Director William Devereaux tried to infiltrate the group in 2010 by offering to join its discussion group online using the pseudonym “Ralph,” his real name was listed on the email next to his fake one.   read more