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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...

Rishi Sharma is hoping local veterans will help him with his mission to interview combat veterans of World War II. The 18-year-old Aguora Hills resident has completed more than 100 interviews and is shifting his attention to the Inland Empire. The recent high school graduate has decided to defer his college education so that he can conduct daily interviews. “When I first started, I was an armchair historian about WWII. I knew more than the average person, but delving into this, there’s an amazing amount of raw information,” he said. “After each interview, the picture becomes slightly more clearer of what they faced.” Through his nonprofit, Heroes of the Second World War, Sharma is conductin...

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...

ATWATER >> A crash that nearly sliced a bus in half on a central Califoia highway killed four people, not the initial report of five, a local sheriff said Wednesday. Merced County Sheriff Ve Wake, who also serves as coroner, gave the new total after canvassing hospitals and checking with coroner’s officials in a neighboring county. He said he knew of no deaths among those taken to hospitals. Shortly after Tuesday’s crash, a Califoia Highway Patrol officer at the scene said five people died. The dead include a married couple from Mexico who were traveling to visit a daughter in Pasco, Washington, and a man from Avalon, Califoia, whose spouse was hospitalized, Wake said. A fourth victim...

A lot of dirt has been moving around this week at a pair of Long Beach middle schools. Grading for new all-weather athletic fields was under way at Perry Lindsey Middle School, 5075 Daisy Ave., and Jessie Nelson Academy Middle School, 1951 Cherry Ave., in Signal Hill. Dump trucks were at both sites this week hauling dirt away in preparation for storm-drain installation, according to Les Leahy, Business Services Administrator at the Long Beach Unified School District. The fields, funded by Measure K, are expected to be finished by Oct. 1. Advertisement Let's block ads! بخوانید...

The Space on Pacific won’t be quite like any other theater in downtown San Pedro. For starters, it’s going to house a spaceship. In a warehouse next door, web shows on all things UFOs, the supeatural and the metaphysical will be streamed to tens of thousands of viewers around the world. And on Aug. 19, hip-hop mogul Damon Dash will debut the feature-length film he co-produced with Kanye West, “Too Honorable,” in the venue’s intimate 78-seat theater. The 1920s-era department store tued theater and soundstage at 624 S. Pacific Ave. — formerly the San Pedro Theatre Club — will have a soft opening Thursday for the First Thursday Artwalk with two $12 performances by magician Paul Davids. ‘Consci...

Firefighters and lawmakers have been droning on about the need for drone pilots to steer clear when aircraft splash bubble-gum-colored fire retardant or clear water on wildfires. But the message doesn’t seem to be getting through. Stray drones continue to pop up repeatedly around the state when firefighting aircraft are making drops, forcing them to abort missions. And it happened again last week close to home. A firefighting helicopter was prevented from dousing a small brush fire buing along the 134u2009Freeway in the Eagleu2009Rock area of Losu2009Angeles. Photos on social media showed a small white drone flying just beneath a helicopter. Ultimately, water drops proved uecessary. Losu200...

Among the most highly paid blue-collar workers in the United States, West Coast dockworkers will decide next month whether to enter labor talks three years before their contract expires. The unusual push for early negotiations comes amid pressure from manufactures, retailers and other local, regional and national groups dependent on the ports to move everything from flat-screen TVs from China to Central Califoia grain for export as consumer demand for fast, cheap products continues. Delegates representing 20,000 Inteational Longshore and Warehouse Union workers at 29 ports will meet at district headquarters in San Francisco from Aug. 10-12 to discuss whether to extend their current five-year...

Surf instructor Richard Dagampat tried to wa two students, both from North Dakota, that the ocean off Doheny State Beach was too warm for wetsuits. But they insisted and wore the thick neoprene anyway -- until they couldn’t stand it. “After about 20 minutes of paddling, they said ‘Can we take them off? We are buing up’,” Dagampat said. The water isn’t that hot every day, but after two summers of sometimes strange El Nino-fueled conditions, the ocean off Southe Califoia this summer remains warmer than normal. This week, ocean temperatures off San Clemente reached the mid 70s, about 10 degrees higher than what is normal for early July. Typically, ocean temperatures peak in August and September...

Surf instructor Richard Dagampat tried to wa two students, both from North Dakota, that the ocean off Doheny State Beach was too warm for wetsuits. But they insisted and wore the thick neoprene anyway -- until they couldn’t stand it. “After about 20 minutes of paddling, they said ‘Can we take them off? We are buing up’,” Dagampat said. The water isn’t that hot every day, but after two summers of sometimes strange El Nino-fueled conditions, the ocean off Southe Califoia this summer remains warmer than normal. This week, ocean temperatures off San Clemente reached the mid 70s, about 10 degrees higher than what is normal for early July. Typically, ocean temperatures peak in August and September...

Thousands of trees across Southe Califoia are dying because of an invasive beetle for which there is no remedy. The polyphagous shot hole borer is attacking hundreds of tree species and can reproduce in 41 of them, including some of the trees most favored by gardeners, city landscape designers and universities, such as maples, elders, cottonwoods and oaks. The first infections were discovered in 2003 in the Whittier Narrows in L.A. County, and the beetle was implicated for the mass deaths of box elder trees in Long Beach in 2010. Long Beach parks officials say the pest continues to be a conce, noting it has spread from the Box Elder trees to sycamores. Kelly Parkins, a grounds maintenance s...

Protracted policy questions. Big-money battles. Contradictory proposals that are difficult to disce. It’s shaping up to be an all-too-typical fall election, once again confronting Califoia voters with an unwieldy ballot. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After polls confirmed that Califoia voters were frustrated by ballot overload, lawmakers two years ago made changes aimed at pre-empting at least some initiatives from landing on the ballot and improving those that do. One change gave the Legislature extra time to hold hearings to try to compromise with interest groups pitching complex issues. “We’re taking an important step to modeize and strengthen direct democracy,” Gov. Jerry Brown said a...

SAN DIEGO >> The original series of “Star Trek” didn’t even finish out its original five-year mission, getting the axe after three seasons. But syndication made those three years of boldly going where no one had gone before into a cult favorite, leading to an animated television series, movies and additional televisions series. Since the series first debuted in 1966, its vision of a future where war and greed have been abolished and all humans -- and many other species -- live in harmony in a technological utopia has influenced countless people around the world. That 50-year legacy was celebrated Saturday at Comic-Con Inteational in a panel and subsequent press conference, featuring “S...

The Port of Long Beach plans to put a pricetag on the environmental damage it causes the community, a figure some residents say isn’t hardly high enough to cover the true cost. The body overseeing the port will vote Monday to pay $46.4 million to a compensation fund used to help residents deal with pollution and other environmental impacts created by the nation’s second busiest seaport. Lori A Guzman, president of the Harbor Commission, called it an example of the port’s “longstanding and long-term commitment to the environment and the community.” Mitigation grants are nothing unusual at the ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach, the single largest source of pollution in Southe Califoia. But w...

Here be monsters —though they are awfully cute. There be monsters — and you gotta catch ’em all! Suddenly everywhere be monsters, and if your friends and family, neighbors or complete strangers are walking around with eyes fixed on their phones, talking to themselves about lures and gyms and battles, well, blame it on the monsters, the Pokémon monsters of Pokémon Go. We’ll assume you know the basics of Pokémon, given that the Japanese video game franchise has been around for two decades now. But if you’ve not discovered Pokémon Go since its release on Wednesday, we’ll explain. In this “augmented reality” game, players download a free app onto phones or tablets and go out into the real world...

Water suppliers are loosening water-use restrictions and reporting they’ll have enough water to meet demand for three years. But is that a good idea in the midst of an ongoing drought? Although the end of the state’s mandated water conservation targets is intended to give agencies more flexibility, some experts worry customers are being sent the message it’s no longer vital to conserve. Water officials expect people to keep conserving after suppliers were allowed to set their own water conservation goals for the rest of the year. Felicia Marcus, who heads the State Water Resources Control Board, said Friday that the savings might be somewhat lower now that the state is no longer in such “ex...

The newly formed Providence St. Joseph Health, which on Friday became the nation’s third-largest nonprofit health system, aounced a $100 million mental health initiative on Tuesday. The Institute for Mental Health and Wellness will serve residents in the seven states where Irvine-based St. Joseph Health and Renton, Wash.-based Providence Health and Services own a combined 50 hospitals. When the state Attoey General’s Office signed off on the merger last month, it included a condition that the new entity invest $30 million in mental health services for Califoians. Providence St. Joseph Health decided to increase the funding and create a systemwide foundation that will focus on research, preve...

WASHINGTON — A diverse Republican band of Donald Trump haters, conservatives and other rebels have set their sights on derailing the billionaire’s march to their party’s presidential nomination. They’re seeking new supporters, spending money on TV ads, hiring staff and even setting up office space near the Cleveland arena where the party gathers later this month for its national convention. Despite their ongoing effort, Trump is moving steadily toward nailing down the nomination. Here’s why it will be hard for the dissidents to prevail: THE ESTABLISHMENT While many top Republicans have criticized Trump and aounced they won’t go to Cleveland, the party hierarchy has largely been lining up be...

RIVERSIDE >> UC Riverside’s Entomology Museum director and a Midweste partner re-discovered a parasitic wasp species that hadn’t been detected for more than a century. That was tricky, considering the Oobius depressus wasp measured 1.2 mm — barely visible to the human eye and identified only with help from a powerful microscope. Before their find, only five specimens — collected in 1914 in Morristown, Ill. — were known to exist. Those sit in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But they’d long ago been separated from their heads, which were mounted on slides and later lost. So identification was tough, even for specialists. “They’ve never been seen ag...

Southe Califoia’s air pollution regulators unveiled an air cleanup plan Thursday that essentially calls for the region to buy its way out of the worst smog problem in the nation. The draft plan from the Southu2009Coast Airu2009Quality Management District relies on cash incentives of about $1u2009billion a year for the next decade and beyond for the region to transition to zero or near-zero polluting vehicles, buildings and industries, said Wayne Nastri, the air district’s acting executive officer. About half of the money would come from the federal govement and thus require congressional approval, Nastri said. The air district also expects funds from the state. The money would go toward inc...