Pallbearers carry a coffin into a church for services. Photo: Krysja, via Shutterstock)COVID 19 is not only overwhelming California’s hospitals, it’s overwhelming cemeteries and funeral homes as well. Funeral directors across the state are being forced to tell grieving families that they have no more room and cannot serve them.
Hospital medical staff checking a patient's records. (Photo: Stokkete, via Shutterstock)OPINION: It’s never a good idea when insurers cut costs by interfering in the decision-making process between patients and their doctor. But during a national pandemic, it’s a particularly bad idea. I am thinking specifically of an insurance strategy called step therapy.
Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s top health official, is in the hot seat as the COVID-19 pandemic exacts its rising toll. With over 10 million residents, the county is by far California’s largest, and it has the most confirmed coronavirus cases.
A woman struggling with the aftermath of rape and violence. (Image: DoiDam 10, via Shutterstock)Of all the state’s residents, California’s 265,000 female farm workers are among the most vulnerable when it comes to sexual assault and rape. Farm worker survivors of sexual assault and those who are there to help them, California’s rape crisis centers, face many obstacles: survivors’ lack of English proficiency, immigration status, nature of employment, fear of employer retaliation, and distrust of authorities.
(Photo: jeffkubes, via Shutterstock)On the last day of 2015, Berta Orellana picked up her seven-year-old grandson from daycare in a brand new Toyota and headed on a road trip with the boy and two of her children, planning to spend the holiday in Las Vegas with her daughter who lived there.Orellana, then a 51-year-old delivery driver for Amazon, left the minivan she used for work at home in Northridge, California.
An aerial view of housing density in a Los Angeles suburb. (Photo: trekandshoot, via Shutterstock)ANALYSIS: A new presidential panel aimed at easing the affordable housing crisis is top heavy with business and developer interests, and does little to get at the roots of the problem. President Trump’s executive order created the “White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing” in June.
Brian K. Landsberg, a professor emeritus at the McGeorge School of Law where he has been teaching since 1986, served during the 1960s as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he went to court to protect the voting rights of African Americans in Alabama. His work included the historic case that recognized the right to march from Selma to Montgomery to protest racial discrimination in voter registration.
Lab supervisor Marilyn Mitchell pulls samples during tests for Valley Fever at the Community Medical Center lab in Fresno. (Photo: Fresno Bee/Craig Kohlruss, 2014, via AP)The first sign that Rob Purdie had valley fever was when he woke up one day with what felt like a hangover but he hadn’t taken a drink. He had a splitting headache that was so bad that he had to stay in dark room with the blinds drawn and his sunglasses on. He was eventually diagnosed with coccidioidomycosis meningitis, the most severe form of valley fever.
Talc from a container spilled across a table. (Photo: MIA Studio)A California jury has rejected claims that Johnson & Johnson and its talc supplier were responsible for the deadly cancer of a woman who blamed her illness on breathing asbestos fibers from contaminated body powders. On a 9-3 vote, the jury Thursday in Pasadena absolved J&J of negligence in the sale of Johnson’s Baby Powder and another talc product, Shower to Shower.
They’re called Veterans Treatment Courts, a little-known part of the judicial system that deals specifically with military veterans crippled by stress, drugs and the memories of war. The specialized courts can be found around the country. But only 12 of California’s 58 counties have this service for veterans.