High school students taking a test. (Photo: LStockStudio, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Twenty-four states will use the SAT and/or ACT this school year for state assessments and accountability. California students deserve the same opportunity to take these assessments for free at their schools and reap the benefit of increased access to higher education.
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.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrest an undocumented immigrant in California. (Photo: ICE, 2017)Two California counties profit from a loophole in the “sanctuary state” law, while most others have canceled their ICE contracts under public pressure or let them expire. When California’s sanctuary state law, Senate Bill 54, was approved, the public assumed that local law enforcement would be prevented from cooperating with ICE agents except when dealing with people “convicted of a serious or violent felony,” such as murder, rape, child abuse or battery.
A pharmacist checks his stock in a California drug store. (Photo: Tyler Olson, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Drugstore robberies are a symptom of a larger trend in the retail space where pharmacists are forced to work alone for hours on end, juggling telephones, cash registers, and security duties in addition to dispensing medicine.
View of downtown San Diego and central rail yards. (Photo: welcomia, via Shutterstock)ANALYSIS: Something that isn’t too surprising for legislators or Gov. Brown as California continues to be on the forefront of environmental policies: A major survey shows strong majority (62 percent) of Californians believe air pollution is a problem in their part of California. Two-thirds (66 percent) believe the effects of global warming have already begun, while 58 percent believe it is a serious threat to California’s economy and quality of life.
A derelict vessel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. (Photo: Mitch Goode)They lie washed up on the side of levees, they sit silently moored in the quiet sloughs of the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, sometimes drifting aimlessly down the middle of the waterways. There are hundreds of these abandoned recreational watercraft and commercial vessels in the Delta; some of them have been slowly wasting away for 60 years or more. Many pose a danger to navigation and the environment.
Sen. Wadie Deddeh in 2015. (Image: Screen capture, via YouTube., from Baitna Project testimony.There are five people alive today who each served more than a quarter-century in the California State Legislature. Four of the five served as the leader of a house during their time in Sacramento. The last member of the quarter-century club is 97-year-old Wadie Deddeh, who moved to the United States in his late 20s, rose to power as chair of the Revenue and Taxation committee, and retired from the Legislature in 1993.
View of downtown San Diego and central rail yards. (Photo: welcomia, via Shutterstock)The rampant hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego is highlighting the city’s significant homeless problem. More than half of the 444 people with confirmed cases as of Sept. 14 are homeless, county health officials reported earlier this month. The officials say the highly contagious liver infection was spread through person-to-person contact. San Diego has more than 9,100 homeless people, which amounts to the fourth largest homeless population in the country.
Gov. Brown speaks at a San Diego employer forum. (Photo: Adriana Heldiz, Voice of San Diego) In the nearly seven years he’s been governor, Jerry Brown’s been frank about why he’s supported bold criminal justice reform, like Prop. 57, the 2016 ballot measure that, among other things, offers sentence credits to inmates who take advantage of rehabilitative programming. “I helped screw things up, but I helped unscrew things,” he said Friday at a forum put on by the California Prison Industry Authority, the state agency that provides work assignments and job training for state prisoners.
Photo illustration of a nest egg. (Photo: Hidesy, via Shutterstock)If you don’t give city employees a pension, what happens? San Diegans voted five years ago this month to switch all new city hires, except police, from pensions to 401(k)-style individual investment plans, becoming one of the first big cities to take the plunge.