Gov. Gavin Newsom at the State of the State Address in January. (Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald)Gov. Gavin Newsom has rebuked California’s stem cell agency about its conduct of the election of a new chairperson for the $12 billion enterprise, a process that has been disrupted with the withdrawal of one candidate and the addition of a new one.
A harvester in a drought-stricken field of northern California. (Photo: TFoxFoto, via Shutterstock)Planted in spring, farmers drain their fields in August, and they drive big, loud harvesters into them in September, gently separating the rice stalks from the grain, and blowing the harvest into bankout wagons that they tow beside them. On average, each acre produces 8,000 pounds of rice, which is a greater yield than most of the world’s rice growing regions. But this September, 300,000 of California’s 550,000 acres of rice lay barren—over half the state’s rice crop.
Equity and safety are top priorities for Lee Ann Eager, the chair of the California Transportation Commission. The low-profile Eager — few have even heard her name — holds a critical position in state government. As CTC chair, the Fresno native heads the agency that figures out how best to spend money on the state’s mammoth highway and transit systems.
Andrea Fernandez and her son Jakob, who suffers from 'bubble boy' disease. (Photo: Courtesy of Fernandez family)Nearly three years after a British firm abandoned a successful therapy for the life-threatening “bubble baby” disease, children will again be treated in a clinical trial backed with millions of dollars from the state of California. “It’s the best Christmas gift ever,” said the mother of an afflicted child, Andrea Fernandez.
Directions to the local polling site in San Francisco. (Photo: Kevin McGovern, via Shutterstock)Much of the coverage of the recent midterm election has been about the surprise outcome – one in which the Republicans have taken a small majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democrats retained control of the U.S. Senate. However, this was the story that polling was telling us — if we were willing to listen.
Students and academic workers walk a picket line at UC Davis. (Photo: David KnAs final exams neared in the 10-campus University of California system, United Auto Workers Local 5810 representing postdoctoral scholars and academic researchers announced that it reached a tentative five-year agreement with the University amid a strike that began on Nov. 14. This bargaining unit with 12,000 of the 48,000 striking UC workers will vote to ratify the tentative new contract to run through Sept. 30, 2027.
Environmentalist Heidi Sanborn.(Photo: Screen capture via YouTube, from California insider)California recently approved three sweeping environmental laws: SB 54, SB 343, and AB 1201. Hopefully, this game-changing legislation will shape national policy about recycling, composting, plastic pollution, and human health. We have many people to thank for the recent measures to reduce plastic pollution and increase plastic recycling, but we citizens rarely know who. Heidi Sanborn is one of those people.
Strikers and their allies at a Nov. 16 rally on the campus of UC Davis. (Photo: David Kn, via Shutterstock)About 48,000 academic union workers at the University of California are in the second week of a strike at UC’s 10 campuses, from San Diego north to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They walked off their jobs on Nov. 14 amid complaints of unfair labor practices, an action that closed some classrooms and research labs.
A photo illustration of bacteria as seen through a research microscope. (Photo: Per Bengtsson, via Shutterstock)California has another election coming up this fall, but it is not your usual political campaign free-for-all. Instead, it involves the leadership of the $12 billion state stem cell agency, which is trying mightily to develop “miraculous” treatments and cures for diseases that afflict — according to its backers — half of the families in California.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks before the Democratic national summer meeting in San Francisco, 2019. (Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald, via Shutterstock)As Sala Burton lay dying in a hospital bed in 1987, she picked her successor to represent San Francisco in the U.S. House of Representatives. “I saw her gritting her teeth, you know, in pain,” her brother-in law, John Burton, recalled in an Open California oral history. “And she says… I want you, talking to us, to support Nancy for my seat.”