Another 650 sea lion pups have washed up on the shores of California between San Diego and Ventura County in the last two months, emaciated and dehydrated, continuing a pattern of devastation from early last year. A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) all but eliminates disease as a cause of the problem that saw another 1,600 pups stranded on beaches between January and April last year.   read more

The list of schools includes Occidental College, the Butte-Glen Community College District, University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley. It also includes elite schools from across the country, including Harvard College, Dartmouth College, Princeton University and the University of Chicago.   read more

In other words, the state won't do anything for now about BigAg pumping up, and plumping up, animals with antibiotics for financial gain regardless of medical need or the threat to the humans who eat their products. Antibiotics could only have been used to treat already-sick animals. Mullin said his bill lacked the necessary votes to pass its first hurdle in the Assembly's Agriculture Committee.   read more

California was the first state, in 2009, to enact a menu nutrition labeling law but may not necessarily be the first state to implement one. Then again, maybe California's law doesn't really exist at all. It depends on who you talk to. The bone of contention is apparently a conflict with federal law. But sort of, in a complimentary way.   read more

It's official. California is now 100% covered by “moderate to exceptional” drought, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). What is still unofficial, but suspected by a growing number of scientists, is that the drought is linked to global warming. “We found a good link and the link is becoming stronger and stronger,” researcher Simon Wang told AP reporter Seth Borenstein.   read more

Californians for Population Stability (CAPS) has been trying to save the Earth by attacking immigration and multiculturalism since 1986, so it's not surprising that the group has embraced Earth Day today with particular zeal. The Santa Barbara-based nonprofit CAPS has been running an ad on television for a week in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego blaming immigrants for the state's water shortage, traffic congestion, air pollution and general environmental degradation.   read more

The judge called her 2005 exclusion an “inexcusable error” and noted, “At long last, the government has conceded that plaintiff poses no threat to air safety or national security and should never have been placed on on the no-fly list.” But Alsup said he read the classified information cited by the government and “if accurate, warranted denial of the visa.” However, Ibrahim and her lawyers can't see it because of the “state secrets privilege.”   read more

A new book by journalist Jo Becker reveals that Cooper learned his stepdaughter Ashley was gay as the legal fight careened through state and federal courts on its way to Washington. That apparently didn't stop him from arguing, “It is reasonable to be very concerned that redefining marriage . . . as a genderless institution, could well lead, over time, to harms to that institution and to the interests that society has always has always used that institution to address.”   read more

The dirty little secret of Covered California (CC) is that those using the state's version of Obamacare, presumably to receive a premium subsidy, have far fewer physician and hospital choices than those who deal directly with an insurance provider. In other words, someone whose doctors or hospital are in the regular Blue Shield of California network may very well not be able to find them in the Blue Shield CC exchange network. Sometimes they might find just one.   read more

It's been two months since lawyers refiled a lawsuit on behalf of U.S. sailors who claim they were made sick during a rescue mission to Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, and so far this one hasn't been tossed by the judge. Seventy-nine sailors aboard the San Diego-based USS Ronald Reagan filed a $1 billion federal class-action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) for injuries they sustained when the aircraft carrier rushed to assist survivors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.   read more

Paul Mitchell and Michael Vargas, two political operatives who have started a website and a campaign, “AIPrl Fooled,” to inform AIP members that they probably registered with the group by mistake, thinking they were declaring as Independents. “People just assume they see the word 'independent' and they say, 'That's right, I'm independent,' then click the box on American Independent Party,” Vargas told KPCC.   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

Three months after Phillips 66 announced its intention to bring crude oil to its Santa Maria Refinery via train from up north, Bay Area communities in the presumed path of the rail highway have shaken their fists and thrown down the gauntlet. Whether there is anything they can actually do to stop convoys of 80 train cars or more rattling through the city and countryside, carrying dangerous crude oil from the Bakken Fields of North Dakota and tar sands of Alberta, Canada, remains to be seen.   read more

The 2009 Safe Storage Law mandated that handguns must be kept in locked containers or have an approved trigger lock installed when not being carried, even within private homes. A second ordinance upheld by the court barred the sale of hollow-point bullets within city limits, but did not prohibit the ownership or use of such ammunition.   read more

Less than two weeks after the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center wrote USCIS on behalf of the California resident, the agency reversed itself. The center cited a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that a person can declare themself a conscientous objector for secular reasons. Attorneys for the center made virtually the same argument to CIS last June in Texas on behalf of British atheist Margaret Doughty. That denial of rights was also quickly reversed.   read more

The complaints were reportedly made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) last August, relayed to the FAA in November, passed along to Nevada’s Clark County Department of Aviation in January and sent to NRG Energy and Bright Source Energy, co-owners and operators of the plant, last week.   read more