press-news

The sound of applause has scarcely died down in the Capitol after last week’s vote to significantly expand Califoia’s requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proponents who steered the groundbreaking legislation are still basking in the afterglow of an effort that—after seeming on the brink of defeat—deftly mustered unexpected support and reaffirmed the state’s inteational leadership on climate change. But such is the unsentimentality of politics: Someone has to pop the pretty balloons and sweep up the confetti. For all that was achieved by the passage of SB 32—extending the original 2006 law and setting a new target of reducing statewide emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels b...

STINSON BEACH >> The sleek, flapping salmon that fishermen hauled aboard the rolling Salty Lady charter boat near the Golden Gate Bridge were the survivors of the survivors. After five years of drought, the native Chinook salmon that the men were reeling in this past week were there only because state and federal agencies have stepped in to do much of the salmon-raising that Califoia’s overtapped rivers once did. Most of the fish were bo at the agencies’ hatcheries and carried in trucks for release downstream. As the men watched and waited for one of their fishing poles to dip sharply, Victor Gonella, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, remembered his childhood in the 195...

DEKLE BEACH, Fla. >> Tropical Storm Hermine was intensifying Saturday as it moved slowly up the Atlantic Coast with heavy rains, wind and storm surges making a mess of the holiday. Hermine (her-MEEN) already caused 2 deaths, damaged homes and businesses and left hundreds of thousands without electricity from Florida to Virginia. “This is not a beach weekend for anyone in the Mid-Atlantic to the northeast,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. At 2 p.m. Saturday, Hermine was centered 90 miles east of Duck, North Carolina, with top sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph), moving east at 10 mph (17 kph). Tropical Storm Waings were in effect as fa...

Thousands of Califoia’s foster care kids may be overdrugged with psychotropic medications, often without medical follow-up or a legally required approval from a judge or parent, according to a stinging report by the Califoia State Auditor. “The state and counties have failed to adequately oversee the prescribing of these medications,” wrote auditor Elaine M. Howle. The long-awaited report, released in August by State Auditor Elaine Howle, mirrors many findings of Bay Area News Group’s investigative series “Drugging Our Kids.” Those stories, which appeared in Southe Califoia News Group publications, including this one, highlighted how only 10 percent of the state’s 1,280 highest prescribers w...

A group of students at Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead have created a stir for displaying Confederate flags, staked into the beds of their pickup trucks, in the school parking lot. On Friday, two Ford pickups, parked side-by-side, sat parked in the school parking lot, one Confederate flag and one American flag displayed in the bed of each truck. The black pickup also sported stickers from Patriot Alliance, an online retailer of clothing, National Rifle Association, and Donald Trump campaign signs. Also on Friday, Ruing Springs resident Jeifer Celise-Reyes, whose daughter began her freshman year at the high school last month, said she sent emails to school board president Cind...

The “Beach Pantry,” stocked with caed beans, soups, grape juice and other goods, is a new resource at Cal State Long Beach for students who find themselves unable to cover the combined costs of study and meals. The pantry has been open since the Aug. 22 begiing of the campus’ fall term. Cal State Long Beach’s student govement, with help from a Lakewood charity called Food Finders, created the stash of nonperishable foods for students enduring short- or long-term difficulties. Food insecurity is actually a fairly widespread problem on Cal State University campuses; university officials reported in February that some 23 percent of students within the Cal State system experience food insecurity...

TARZANA >> Los Angeles police responded to Chris Brown’s residence in Tarzana Tuesday and later served a search warrant on the home as the singer took to social media to deny any wrongdoing and to condemn police. At a news conference Tuesday afteoon, LAPD Lt. Chris Ramirez said police were serving a search warrant on the home, and an unknown number of people were exiting the residence. The house is located in a posh, hillside neighborhood of one-and two-story homes that are nearly all protected by locked iron gates. A call initially came at 3:11 a.m. from the 5000 block of Corbin Avenue, police said earlier. “It came out as a female requesting help,” Officer Drake Madison of LAPD’s Me...

LOS ANGELES >> Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein visited the Black Lives Matter encampment outside Los Angeles City Hall today where she said she agreed with the group’s demand that Mayor Eric Garcetti fire police Chief Charlie Beck. Stein pointed to the firing of police chiefs in other cities and said she came to Los Angeles City Hall today to “support the community that’s demanding justice by asking the police chief to step down.” “We need him to be replaced by someone who doesn’t simply dismiss death after death as being within police policy and refusing to even file charges,” Stein said. Beck in January did recommend that District Attoey Jackie Lacey file criminal char...

SAN FRANCISCO >> Califoia’s $64 billion high-speed rail plan lacks reliable funding sources and is in danger of ending up with only one line that doesn’t coect to San Francisco or Los Angeles, members of a Congressional panel said Monday during a hearing. Proceeds from a state environment program that is supposed to help fund the project were far below expectations and private funding for the train has yet to materialize, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Califoia Republican, said. “Where is the money going to come from,” LaMalfa asked Dan Richard, chairman of the rail authority’s board. Richard said private firms have expressed interest in the system but want to see the first leg up and ruing. Th...

School starts Wednesday in most of Long Beach and it’ll likely be a hot day. Unbearably hot? Depends what you can bear. While we type this, the forecast is for a high of 86 degrees. We can, theoretically, bear that, coming from hardy pioneer stock. But we won’t. We will wake up in our air-conditioned home, make a mad sprint to our air-conditioned car and drive to our air-conditioned office. Hours later, we will do the whole thing in reverse. We don’t live in an average temperature. It’s 72 degrees all the time in our little world. Meanwhile, more than half the students in Long Beach in the K-12 grades will be sitting in classrooms without air conditioning, not made any cooler by 25-30 sweat...

EXPOSITION PARK >> There were big crowds once again for the final day of the 13th aual FYF Fest at Exposition Park to see more than 20 acts close out the eclectic festival. The vibe at the Sunday concert was relatively relaxed and chill with the day headlined by LCD Soundsystem, the electronic dance rock collective who reunited to play the festival circuit. Also on the bill for the last day was 68-year-old Grace Jones, Blood Orange, which consists of singer-guitarists Dev Hynes, and young hip hop acts Rae Sremmurd and Young Thug. While Saturday’s event saw long lines both inside the event grounds and to get into the main gate, on Sunday the line to get into Exposition Park ran a littl...

The concept of a “four-year university,” at least at Cal State University campuses, has long been something of a polite fiction for many students. The reality is, a majority of students still need at least six years of schooling to attain an undergraduate degree, and it’s something educators across the CSU system are being pressured to change. The CSU system has seen some improvement in graduation rates in recent years; during the 1980s and early 1990s, fewer than 10 percent of first-time freshman managed to graduate within four years. Just 19 percent of Cal State freshman who entered college in 2011 managed to ea a degree in four years, while 57 percent of those who started in 2009 graduate...

Between 1999 and 2013, Califoia’s Academic Performance Index boiled everything about the state’s K-12 public schools down to a single number between 200 and 1000. That’s going away in a new, more nuanced system that’s now under construction. In the old model, the desirability of neighborhoods or even whole communities in large part hinged on their API score. Careers were made or lost based on how far a school or district was from the magic 800 target number. And under the federal No Child Left Behind law, failure to steadily increase an API score — even an already high one — could mean dire trouble for a school or district. But the API was only based on the results of standardized tests tak...

A tank exploded Friday at the Tesoro refinery in Wilmington, spewing hazardous sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide vapors into the community and causing massive gridlock along nearby roads. Refinery officials said the lid of the tank was somehow breached at about 1 p.m., causing a chemical explosion that set the tank’s insulation on fire, said county fire and Tesoro officials. The refinery along South Alameda Street, which borders densely populated neighborhoods in Carson and Long Beach, alerted the community to “shelter in place” while an investigation took place. A fire in the sulphur tank was quickly extinguished. “There is a visible steam plume over the unit, which responders are workin...

Organizers behind the inaugural Music Tastes Good festival pledged that they will try to solve potential problems relating to parking and business owners’ abilities to serve their customers while the event takes place over the course of three late September days in the East Village area of Long Beach. “No one is going to be blocked out of their home or business,” event organizer Josh Fischel said Thursday moing, during the first of two plaed meetings between festival plaers and conceed members of the public. Materials handed out during the meeting reported that Music Tastes Good plaers will foot the parking bills for anyone who loses access to a paid parking space while street closures are ...

GORMAN — A search continued outside Califoia today for a couple wanted in coection with the shooting death of a Fresno mother as Los Angeles Sheriff’s detectives work to determine the motive for her slaying and the subsequent kidnapping of her children. The three children of 26-year-old Kimberly Harvill, whose body was found two weeks ago in unincorporated Lebec in Ke County, were found safe Wednesday in a motel outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the care of a good Samaritan who notified local law enforcement, said Deputy Kimberly Alexander of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Information Bureau. Their alleged kidnappers, Harvill’s 22-year-old sister, Brittany Humphrey, and her friend, 27-y...

More than a year after the Califoia Coastal Commission halted the demolition of three waterfalls at Trump National Golf Club, the club was given a go-ahead this week by commission staff to move forward with restoration work. The initial infraction stemmed from demolition work at three man-made waterfalls at Trump National. The club had received a building permit from the city of Rancho Palos Verdes in April 2015, but didn’t get approval from the Coastal Commission for construction work inside the coastal zone. Parts of the course are home to protected bird species, including the Califoia gnatcatcher, which nests exclusively in the coastal sage scrub along a limited range of the Califoia coa...

Los Angeles, San Feando Valley, Santa Monica area American Cinematheque at the Aero: Jerry Lewis Movies: “The Nutty Professor” (1963) and “The Ladies Man” (1961), 7:30 p.m. Aug. 26; “The King of Comedy” (1982) and “Fuy Bones” (1995), 7:30 p.m. Aug. 27; “Artists and Models” (1955) and “Hollywood or Bust” (1956), 7:30 p.m. Aug. 28. “My Inteship in Canada” (2015), 7:30 p.m. Aug. 29. Most tickets $11; $9 seniors and students. 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. 323-466-3456. www.americancinematheque.com Beverly Cinema: “The Knack...and How to Get It” (1965), 7:30, with “Petulia” (1968), 9:25 p.m. Aug. 26-27. “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (2004), 11:59 p.m. Aug. 26. Kiddie Matinee: “Safety Last!” (1923), 2 p...

We’ve all gotten them. Like an unwanted plague, those aoying robocalls always seem to come just as we’re sitting down to dier or getting ready to watch a football game. The messages are varied but most have one thing in common: They’re trying to sell us something. Some robocalls are looking to steal our personal information Some implore us to buy solar panels or donate money to a political candidate, while others ask us to support a local charity or take a ride-share survey. And it gets worse. Some of these automated calls offer fraudulent credit card services or questionable auto warranty protection. In many cases, they’re simply trying to steal our personal information. They’re increasing...

Julie Jeffs had taken a 6 a.m. flight from Michigan last week and arrived late in the moing to LAX, where she expected to spend a long day hunkering down at the Tom Bradley Inteational Terminal before hopping on an 11:30 p.m. red eye to Fiji. But the airline ticket counter wouldn’t be open until 7 p.m., so Jeffs was unable to get a boarding pass and clear security, denying her access to the extensive variety of gourmet restaurants near the gates at the newly revamped terminal at Los Angeles Inteational Airport. So she began looking for a sit-down restaurant, lugging around a 50-pound suitcase so she could have a decent meal and a cold glass of beer. It was a long search. There are just two ...