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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...

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....

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...

The Bay Area, home of your Zuckerbergs and Steyers and some of the country’s most expensive ZIP codes, seems like a logical answer. Over the past decade, what other part of Califoia has minted as many members of the “1 percent” as Silicon Valley? But according to research from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of Califoia, income inequality in the Bay Area has worsened only marginally, at least when compared to other parts of the state. In 2007, Bay Area households at the top 10 percent of incomes made about 10.6 times what Bay Area households at the bottom 10 percent of incomes brought home. By 2014, they made about 11.6 times as much. While that 10 percent increase in the income gap...

As Southe Califoia continues to struggle through this summer’s unrelenting smog, a study released Wednesday gives a stark reminder of why air quality matters. Researchers believe hundreds of people die each year because of Southe Califoia’s poor air quality. Pollution levels routinely exceed the levels deemed safe by health professionals. In the report, the Long Beach and South Bay areas are included in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale category, where about 1,341 people are estimated to die each year because of bad air. That makes the L.A. area’s air quality the deadliest in the nation. The Riverside-San Beardino-Ontario metropolitan area was second worst, with about 808 people estimated...

Peter Navarro, a professor of economics and public policy at UCu2009Irvine’s business school, is emerging as one of the most visible advocates of Donald Trump’s economic platform. “My role is to make sure the analysis is rock solid, the facts are rock solid,” said Navarro, 67, who is the only economist from academia on the 13-member advisory team aounced by the Trump campaign last week. The group includes several real estate executives, private equity and hedge-fund managers, a Texas banking tycoon, a billionaire oil company magnate and a former Reagan administration deputy assistant treasury secretary. “Whatever they need, I analyze the economic data,” Navarro added in an interview Monday....

CHINO >> Torbjo Correll stepped into the lobby of Southe Califoia Edison’s aircraft operations — but he’d rather be in the air. “It’s boring being on the ground,” said the director of the little-known aircraft division for the electric utility company. As SCE’s chief pilot, his earthly home base is a 46,000-square-foot building, which includes a hanger and maintenance facility, tucked away on the southwest end of Chinou2009Airport. “If the grid is dead, (aircraft operations) have to support that when it breaks,” says Correll, who goes by “TC,” in his Swedish accent. He oversees training and regulations for his flight division, which operates a fleet of EC135s, AS350 B3s, and a B205 A1...

Gov. Jerry Brown has taken the national stage to tout Califoia’s fight against global warming, telling cheering throngs at the Democratic National Convention that the state has “the toughest climate laws in the country.” Yet inside the state Capitol, the fate of the policy’s centerpiece — legislation to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions — is in peril. One ominous sign: Brown on Thursday opened a fundraising committee, taking the first step toward putting an environmental initiative on the 2018 ballot in case the bill fails in the Legislature. Failure was already a looming threat, with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon saying earlier in the week that “it’s not imperative” the bill cl...