Posts Tagged: Golden State

News

Bonta bill would bar “geofence” warrants

Flat vector illustration created from paper cut elements, hand drawn doodles and textures depicting mass surveillance and thin line between privacy and security concept.

This led Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, to introduce Assembly Bill 793, which seeks to bar tech companies from complying with new, controversial keyword search warrants that law enforcement agencies can use to reveal the sensitive online search results and/or geocoded locations of computer and smartphone users.

News

Big Tech battles impending CA web design law

In 1986, when California voters approved Proposition 65, they effectively enacted a nationwide law, whether they intended to or not. The ballot measure, known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, requires all businesses, including product manufacturers, to warn Californians about any significant exposures to chemicals that could cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm.

News

UC’s academic union workers in week two of strike

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.

News

Stem cell: $137 million buys more clinical trials, shared labs, research

A laboratory scientist uses a pipette to manipulate stem cells. (Photo: Vshivkova, via Sutterstock)

It was a $137 million day for the Golden State’s stem cell agency — no small event even for an enterprise that is backed by billions. The scientific scope covered by the $137 million was impressive. It ranged from bolstering the vaunted Alpha Clinic Network initiated around the state by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), as the agency is legally known, to raising the number of CIRM’s clinical trials to 83. 

News

Lawmakers eye the push for pay equity, transparency

A restaurant worker prepares to take orders. (Photo: SaiArLawKa2, via Shutterstock)

A broad coalition is lobbying California lawmakers to pass a bill called the Pay Transparency for Pay Equity Act., which would require the phased-in publication of pay data for private employers with 250 or more workers.

News

Sacramento’s homeless measure a statewide template?

A homeless man sits on a bench just steps from the state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: christianthiel.net, via Shutterstock)

Three days after a deadly mass shooting downtown, the Sacramento City Council voted 7-2 to place a homeless measure on the November ballot. If voters approve the Emergency Homeless Shelter and Enforcement Act of 2022, could it be a statewide template?

News

Amid policy and pandemic, will California employment rebound?

A worker inspects planks at a California timber yard. (Photo: sirtravelalot, via Shutterrstock)

The year 2021 was a long year battling COVID-19. As coronavirus restrictions ease under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s SMARTER Plan in 2022, we turn to the Golden State’s labor market. Is it on track to rebound to its pre-pandemic shape? Here are the employment numbers, then and now.

News

Stem cell agency: Following the money — and its performance

A research scientist examines a capsule with a DNA double helix. (Photo: Dan Race, via Shutterstock)

One year ago this month, a $5.5 billion wave washed over California’s ambitious stem cell agency and left it refreshed and renewed for another decade or so of searching for “miraculous” treatments for a host of deadly, incurable afflictions. It is now on a pace to hand out $38,000 an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  That would amount to $519 million in awards between this time last year and the end of the agency’s current fiscal year in June.

Opinion

Heroes: Organ donors giving the gift of life

Surgeons at work performing an organ transplant procedure. (Photo: David Tadevosian, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: With over 100,000 Americans waiting for a lifesaving transplant, and about 20% of them living in the Golden State, it’s critical for us to remember the importance of Donate Life Month, which takes place nationally every April. It’s a symbolic time to recognize the miracle of life that organ donors give to recipients and encourage all Americans to consider registering to be possible donors.

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