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The State Water Project comprises 700 miles of tunnels, pipelines, aqueducts and siphons that transport water from California’s north to its more arid south, serving 26 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland along the way. It’s a huge project with a lot of infrastructure, and it’s most of what DWR does. But more than 60 years later, there is a move under way to take control of the project out of the hands of DWR and place it in an independent commission.
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Can law enforcement be trusted to fairly review law enforcement-involved shootings? Some state senators think not, citing the example of San Joaquin County, which saw two forensic pathologists resign after claiming that Sheriff Steve Moore pressured them to change their findings in officer-involved deaths. The pathologists claimed the sheriff pressured them to classify the deaths as accidents.
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With California voters turning increasingly to the mail box to cast their ballots, five counties have set up an expanded vote-by-mail system for this year’s elections. Sacramento, Madera, Napa, Nevada and San Mateo are swapping out more than 500 neighborhood polling places and replacing them with nearly 80 high-tech “vote centers.”
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FairWarning: Farmers in California, the nation’s top agricultural state, are applying near-record levels of pesticides despite the rising popularity of organic produce and concerns about the health of farmworkers and rural schoolchildren. The latest figures, released in April by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation and covering 2016, show that 209 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients were used in agriculture.
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What’s in a name? When it comes to social media, maybe a lot more than you think. There is a move in the Capitol to force social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook to identify “bots,” those robot-like, automated accounts that move through the internet and interact with real people — and each other.
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After 30 years in office, Orange County Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher is facing his toughest re-election. Rohrabacher, 70, is being challenged by more than a dozen people in the June primary, including his former ally, Republican Scott Baugh.
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It began with a married pair of Democratic staffers in Congress, outraged at the success of the hard-right Tea Party. That vocal GOP off-shoot showed that a disciplined minority could leverage policy, woo voters and bend the party leadership. So Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, stunned by Donald Trump’s electoral victory, founded a group called Indivisible, which 17 months later has developed into a loose-knit national movement.
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Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar never imagined that the city’s action to exempt itself from California’s controversial sanctuary law would spark a movement. But that’s what has happened. Following a March vote by the city council, at least six counties and numerous other cities across the state — all with strong Republican registration — have announced opposition to Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act.
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As the judge climbed the watchtower stairs in Pelican Bay prison, he heard muffled gunshots below. When he reached the top, he looked into the prison yard and saw bodies lying in the dirt. One was his law clerk, spreadeagled on the ground in his suit, alongside dozens of inmates. Guards stood over them, guns aimed. “My clerk was thinking he’s gonna die and this is his last day on earth,” Judge Thelton Henderson recalled.
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The California stem cell agency this week boosted the number of its clinical trials to 48 — an investment of $553 million — with the hope of producing its first widely available stem cell therapy and staving off its own demise. In a 14-minute, telephonic meeting Thursday, directors of the agency ratified three new awards totalling $32 million and adding to the trials. The applications had been approved earlier behind closed doors by the agency’s out-of-state reviewers.
The California Aqueduct, part of the State Water Project, flows by an almond orchard in the Central Valley. (Photo: Alabn, via Shutterstock)
