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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...

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...

Seven southe Los Angeles County cities are suing Metro over its proposed half-cent sales tax increase on the Nov. 8 ballot, arguing the language is misleading and the agency didn’t specify most of the transportation projects it would fund. The ballot description takes a kitchen-sink approach, saying Measure M is needed “to improve freeway traffic flow/safety; repair potholes/sidewalks; repave local streets; earthquake retrofit bridges; synchronize signals; keep senior/disabled/student fares affordable; expand rail/subway/bus systems/ improve jobs/school/airport coections; and create jobs ...” But it doesn’t mention that the vast majority of transportation improvements won’t touch the southe...

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...

May 2014: The Teachers Association of Long Beach distributed surveys to its members to determine how many classrooms in Long Beach Unified experience stifling heat. TALB received 200 responses from teachers with mixed results. September 2014: The district asked schools to curtail physical activity and canceled all nonleague and league competition for two days. Additionally, Long Beach Unified communicated with parents about “hot weather precautions, including the need to stay hydrated.” Parents, meanwhile, attend a school board meeting, pleading with the district to do something about the lack of air conditioning in older buildings across the district, which they say creates an unhealthy lea...

In Long Beach, school isn’t cool. That’s generally speaking. It’s cool at about 40 percent of the 87 school buildings in the Long Beach Unified School District that are lucky, or mode, enough to have air-conditioned classrooms. It’s no sweat for students at, say, Chavez Elementary School, built in 2002, or Powell K-8 School, built in 2000, or Signal Hill’s Nelson Middle School built four years ago, or McBride High School, built in 2013. But when students retu to class Wednesday at schools built during the two biggest boom eras in Long Beach history — 27 schools were constructed in the two years following the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake, and 25 opened between 1950 and 1959 to serve the then-ne...

EXPOSITION PARK >> Kendrick Lamar celebrated a homecoming of sorts at the FYF Fest on Saturday, headlining the main stage just a few miles north of his hometown of Compton and, over the course of a terrifically compelling set, underscoring his standing as one of the top rappers in the game today. Lamar, alone on stage for most of his performance, his band positioned in the wings, offered all the things for which the 29-year-old hip-hop artist has been rightly celebrated during his rapid ascent in the past two or three years. Passionate poetry both personal and political that flows smoothly from the mic. A deep understanding of the soul and jazz and funk that predates hip-hop and inspir...

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...

GORMAN >> Authorities are seeking a man and woman suspected of killing a woman, kidnapping her three small children and leaving the state, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. Arrest warrants have been issued for Joshua Robertson, 27, and Brittany Humphrey, 22, the sheriff’s department said in a statement Tuesday night. They are suspected of killing Kimberly Harvill, whose body was discovered Sunday in brush along a remote road in northe LA County in the unincorporated Lebec area near Interstate 5. Authorities believe the suspects also kidnapped Harvill’s three children, 2-year-old Josly Watkins, 3-year-old Brayden Watkins and 5-year-old Rylee Watkins. They say the couple...

SAN FRANCISCO >> Califoia’s latest carbon auction brought disappointing results Tuesday as litigation and lagging support by lawmakers weigh down the state’s landmark programs combating climate change. State officials said only 34u2009percent of the available carbon pollution credits were sold in the latest auction under the program, which requires companies that emit climate-changing gases to buy the pollution permits. It was a slight rebound from this spring, when investors bought just 10u2009percent of the pollution credits offered, signaling a rocky period for the state’s overall campaign against climate-changing pollution from fossil fuels. The cap-and-trade program is a keystone...

DEL MAR >> Remember when some were calling Califoia Chrome a weak Kentucky Derby wier in 2014? Some in Louisville cringed the day he won the country’s most famous horse race. He wasn’t a mile and a quarter horse, they claimed beforehand. Wonder what those same folks are saying today after Califoia Chrome toyed with arguably the toughest Pacific Classic field in the Del Mar race’s 26 ruings Saturday, demolishing a field that included three-time Eclipse Award wier Beholder and the highly respected Dortmund. Final tally? Califoia Chrome by five lengths under a perfect ride by Victor Espinoza, who guided the 5-year-old son of Lucky Pulpit to a gate-to-wire victory through fractions of 23....

A transgender man who was denied a haircut at a Long Beach barber shop reached a settlement with the business, with management agreeing not to discriminate against patrons based on gender. Rose Trevis’ Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, filed March 29 against Hawleywood’s Barber Shop, alleged discrimination based on gender and gender identity. In a settlement reached Tuesday, the business also agreed to pay an unspecified amount to Trevis as well as to her lawyers, compensating them for their work in the case. According to the lawsuit, Hawleywood’s website describes the shop as a “men’s sanctuary” and includes the statement, “You all know how distracting a woman can be and who wants a stra...

If it seems like toxic algae blooms are appearing almost everywhere across Califoia this summer, that’s because they are. “We’re getting blooms in areas that we’ve not seen them before or not known to have been there before,” said Beverley Anderson-Abbs, an environmental scientist for the State Water Resources Control Board’s Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program. A new interactive map on the Califoia Water Quality Monitoring Council’s website shows the more than 30 lakes and rivers across the state where blooms of cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, have developed. In some cases, the blooms are producing dangerous toxins that sicken people and animals, prompting no-swimmin...

Don’t let French toast bacon bombs or deep-fried Oreos or adorable pig races fool you: Califoia’s county fairs are very big businesses, run with a startling variety of managerial prowess. Southe Califoia News Group examined data for 70 fairs, including those across Southe Califoia, and found that they hauled in a total of $363.2 million in 2014, the latest year statewide information is available. But fully half of the fairs examined – 35 – operated in the red, spending more money than they took in. “Fairs that are losing money should reconfigure the mix of attractions to offer the young generation, since their interests can be very different from their parents’ interests,” said Raymond Sfei...

A nonprofit known for training people to give great speeches has clammed up about efforts to move its worldwide headquarters out of Southe Califoia. The silence from Toastmasters Inteational executives no doubt stems from an opposition campaign launched by a proud Torrance member who decries the group’s lack of transparency. With 179 employees and 345,000 members in 15,900 clubs in 142 countries, Toastmasters will hold a vote this week at its Inteational Convention in Washington, D.C., on a proposal to move to Denver from Rancho Santa Margarita, where the organization’s home base has been since 1990. A two-thirds vote is required for approval. The Toastmasters board recommended in 2015 on i...

Everyone knows home prices are high in Southe Califoia. It’s a reality that has prevented many people from owning a home, and it has become a challenge for businesses seeking to attract out-of-state talent and for companies looking to move their operations here. Recent figures from price tracker CoreLogic show the region’s median price for June was $464,000, up 5 percent from $442,000 a year earlier. Median prices are significantly higher in some local cities, including Beverly Hills (nearly $2.9 million), Manhattan Beach ($2.5 million) and San Marino ($2.3 million). But there’s another level of ultra-pricey homes in Southe Califoia that is simply off the charts. These homes have astronomic...

LOWER LAKE, Calif. — A wind-whipped wildfire roared through a Northe Califoia town threatened by a devastating blaze a year ago, wiping out more than 100 homes and businesses and forcing thousands of people to flee, authorities said Monday. The fire seemed calm Sunday before gusts kicked up the flames that tore through neighborhoods in Lower Lake, a rural town about 90 miles north of San Francisco, officials said. No one was injured, but it reached Main Street and bued the post office, a winery, an antiques store, a historic firehouse and the Habitat for Humanity office. “This fire roared through the city like a wave of water — it was a wave of fire that came through here,” said Lt. Doug Pi...

Everyone knows home prices are high in Southe Califoia. It’s a reality that has prevented many people from owning a home, and it has become a challenge for businesses seeking to attract out-of-state talent and for companies looking to move their operations here. Recent figures from price tracker CoreLogic show the region’s median price for June was $464,000, up 5 percent from $442,000 a year earlier. Median prices are significantly higher in some local cities, including Beverly Hills (nearly $2.9 million), Manhattan Beach ($2.5 million) and San Marino ($2.3 million). But there’s another level of ultra-pricey homes in Southe Califoia that is simply off the charts. These homes have astronomic...