Responding to what seemed to be a death blow two weeks ago when the U.S. Department of Education froze payment of the student grant and loan money that has been its life blood, Santa Ana-based Corinthian announced last week that it had reached a deal with the agency for an “orderly transition for its 107 campuses and online programs.” How orderly remains to be seen.   read more

While the biggest decisions will be made at the federal level, the state has a special interest in the merger of Comcast and Time Warner and some potential avenues of legal involvement. The deal is not a foregone conclusion but it’s been a long time since Washington cared much about mega-mergers and monopolies. For those who believe they see the writing on the wall, the five stages of grief have already begun and are at varying levels of progression.   read more

The 125 or so protesters who showed up Tuesday displayed signs with all the usual vitriol one comes to expect at passionate gatherings of this sort. A lot of threats, screaming, shaking fists and chants of “USA, USA.” This was not the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, so the protesters weren’t all packing heat. But it was hard to tell who they hated more, illegals or Obama. That might become clearer later in the week when more buses are expected to arrive, perhaps as early as Friday, July 4.   read more

One place where California’s polluting companies do good deeds and get cap-and-trade credit is El Dorado, Arkansas, home to the nation’s largest incinerator of chlorofluorocarbons. But on May 13, the EPA ordered Clean Harbors to pay a $581,236 penalty for “improperly identifying and disposing of hazardous waste, improper storage of hazardous waste, and failure to comply with air emissions standards” in El Dorado.   read more

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, seemed to acknowledge for the first time that new technology was leading the court to move past long-established precedents and deal directly with issues of privacy that have morphed dramatically from even a decade ago. In response to the government’s argument that searching a cellphone was no different than searching a wallet, Roberts wrote: “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”   read more

The Chicago Tribune referred to the “bungled” San Francisco effort in its story announcing the decision Tuesday and the San Francisco Chronicle lamented the end of the “long and thorny saga.” The 93,000-square-foot-museum would have cost $250 million to build and house Lucas' $1-billion collection of American art and Hollywood memorabilia.   read more

The government announced that it is freezing for 21 days the federal student loans and grants that are the company’s lifeblood, providing it with $1.4 billion a year in corporate revenue. Corinthian, which is the parent company of Everest Institute, Everest College, WyoTech and Heald brands, quickly announced that its survival was in doubt.   read more

Tracks would run within half a mile of 135,000 people in Sacramento and 25,000 people in Davis. No new safety or emergency response measures are in place, the NRDC report said, and the aging “soda cans on wheels” are not built to handle the particularly volatile crude being fracked out of the ground in America’s rejuvenated oil fields and shipped to refiners.   read more

The last of the report’s 12 recommendations suggests that state agencies get timely and complete data so they can evaluate and regulate oil by rail. They don’t get that now. First responders in cities and counties get even less. And the public gets nothing. The report doesn't suggest the state order the railroads to provide info to the public or otherwise compel them. It just asks them to do better.   read more

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled two years ago that the 3-year-old realignment plan did not absolve the state from monitoring and protecting its former inmates who were now sent to county jails for parole violations instead of being returned to prison. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision that the state was obligated to track the 2,000 or so disabled inmates in its custody and inform counties when they are headed their way.   read more

The breach was in March and was just a small part of a much larger release of 7 million records from AmEx, Visa, MasterCard and Discover customers nationwide blamed on Ukraine Anonymous. Three months later, only American Express has begun the notification process. The data release was accompanied by some bragging and a threat from Ukraine Anonymous,   read more

The California Fish and Game Commission voted 3-1 Wednesday to grant the gray wolf protected status under the California Endangered Species Act, despite opposition from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. Ranchers and others have argued vehemently against reintroducing the wolf to California, where the iconic Western predator once roamed in large numbers. The animal has been largely absent from the state since 1924.   read more

Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley stopped short of admitting any wrongdoing, just as the 224-bed Beverly Hospital in Montebello did in January when it agreed to pay $250,000 in civil penalties and legal fees to make the issue go away. Dumping homeless patients is a widespread practice, crosses state lines and is not always discouraged by the courts.   read more

The group wants the agency to treat salmonella the way it treats e.coli. It took a deadly e.coli outbreak in the 1990s, linked to Jack-in-the-Box ground meat, for the government to order that it be eradicated in the food plants and recalled if it showed up on people’s plates. Salmonella, on the other hand, is tolerated as an annoyance that can be avoided if food is properly prepared and cooked in the kitchen.   read more

For those who are keeping count during the nation’s yearlong bout of multi-drug-resistant salmonella poisoning linked to Foster Farms, 574 people in 27 states and Puerto Rico have been sickened since March 1, 2013, and 50 new cases have been reported in the last two months. Most of the sick people (77%) are in California.   read more

The 102-page complaint, filed in Orange County Superior Court, accuses Actavis, Endo Health Solutions Inc., Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries' Cephalon Inc. of peddling drugs using marketing claims not “supported by science and medical experience.” The result is a nation of addicts.   read more