California has already distributed its entire abortion pill stockpile ahead of Supreme Court ruling
The Chronicle's SOPHIA BOLLAG: "California has distributed all of the abortion pills it stockpiled last year after a Texas judge’s ruling threatened availability nationwide of one of the two pills used in most abortions.
California stockpiled 250,000 pills of misoprostol as a precaution in case the judge’s ruling caused a shortage of abortion drugs. The Supreme Court put that ruling on hold, and the shortage of abortion pills California officials feared never materialized. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Tuesday."
READ MORE -- Abortion pill usage surged post-Roe. These numbers show the dramatic rise -- LAT's JENNY JARVIE
California farmers could save a lot of water — but their profits would suffer
CALMatters's RACHEL BECKER: "California farmers could save massive amounts of water if they planted less thirsty — but also less lucrative — crops such as grains and hay instead of almonds and alfalfa, according to new research by scientists who used remote sensing and artificial intelligence.
Such a seismic shift in the nation’s most productive agricultural state could cut consumption by roughly 93%, researchers with UC Santa Barbara and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Monday."
Yes, beavers can help stop wildfires. And more places in California are embracing them
LAT's ALEX WIGGLESWORTH: "A vast burn scar unfolds in drone footage of a landscape seared by massive wildfires north of Lake Tahoe. But amid the expanses of torched trees and gray soil, an unburnt island of lush green emerges.
The patch of greenery was painstakingly engineered. A creek had been dammed, creating ponds that slowed the flow of water so the surrounding earth had more time to sop it up. A weblike system of canals helped spread that moisture through the floodplain. Trees that had been encroaching on the wetlands were felled."
Poll finds support for LGBTQ rights dips — while more Americans than ever are identifying as queer
The Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY: "More adults are identifying as LGBTQ now than at any time in U.S. history, even as support for the community is tapering off, according to two national surveys released this month.
A Gallup poll found that more than a fifth of Generation Z adults identify as LGBTQ, while nearly 8% of all U.S. adults identify as something other than heterosexual or cisgender."
California extends student financial aid deadline
CALMatters's MIKHAIL ZINSHTEYN: "Students seeking state financial aid now have an extra month to beat a California deadline — after lawmakers fast-tracked their response to a federal glitch that blocked thousands of current and aspiring undergraduates from completing the federal application necessary to get that state aid. The problem particularly affected students who are citizens but whose parents are not.
Assembly Bill 1887 cleared the Assembly unanimously last Tuesday and sailed through the Senate without opposition last Thursday — just before the Legislature began a weeklong recess."
Bill would expand nursing bachelor’s degrees to California community colleges"ccs
EdSource's ASHLEY A. SMITH: "Community college leaders will once again attempt to offer bachelor
’s degrees in nursing, renewing a fight with the state’s universities over whether expanding to the two-year sector eases California’s nurses shortage or increases competition.
The bill, authored by state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, would allow 15 yet-to-be-selected community college districts that already provide associate degrees in nursing to offer bachelor’s degrees in the field.
CCSF chancellor’s term could be extended following flawed vote on his ouster
The Chronicle's NANETTE ASIMOV: "A bungled late-night vote to fire the fiscally prudent chancellor of City College of San Francisco could result in his staying beyond the end of his contract in June, as the school faces state scrutiny over its financial stability, the Chronicle has learned.
Questions about the fate of Chancellor David Martin arose in recent days after an anonymous tipster alerted some college officials that a vote by the Board of Trustees to let Martin’s contract lapse, taken after midnight on Jan. 25, was mislabeled as a union negotiation conference instead of an employee dismissal."
A Chronicle reporter went undercover in high school. Everyone is still weighing the fallout
The Chronicle's PETER HARTLAUB: "San Francisco Chronicle reporter Shann Nix probably should have been on her honeymoon in September 1992 when she took on an assignment she would still be thinking about decades later.
Nix, then 26, changed her home answering machine (“You have reached the Hinkle family residence”), instructed her new husband to act like her father if he answered the phone and then went undercover for a month, posing as a student at George Washington High School in San Francisco."
Where is the nation’s lowest job growth? Look no further than rural California
LAT's TERRY CASTLEMAN: "Amid a population slowdown and housing crisis, California can add another distinction to its list of woes: lackluster job growth.
From September 2022 to September 2023, the number of employed people grew just .15%, the lowest figure of any state, according to a Times analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
Adults with autism faced ‘torture’ at this L.A. group home. Their moms want justice
LAT's REBECCA ELLIS: "The two caregivers edged toward the staff bathroom as the sounds of slaps and screams ricocheted across the ranch-style home.
The evening of Aug. 25, 2023, had already been an exceptionally trying one for staff at Elwyn-Mayall, a four-person home in Northridge for adults with developmental disabilities. Jude Cabanete, one of the home’s residents with autism, had spread feces across his mattress and vomited on the floor, according to staff reports from that night. The caregivers had hosed down the sheets. Cabanete seemed to want to get clean, too."
Crime in Oakland has been rising. These charts show how trends vary by neighborhood
The Chronicle's DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA: "Crime in Oakland was up for the third year in a row in 2023, as the city struggles to get a handle on public safety post-pandemic. But trends at the city level don’t tell the whole story. A Chronicle analysis of crime data shows that certain crimes are rising in some neighborhoods far more than others. And in some cases, they are even staying relatively flat.
Rising crime has put public safety at the center of Oakland politics. Last week, the city appointed a new police chief, but it is also facing a lawsuit from its previous one. Alameda County’s progressive district attorney, who prosecutes cases in Oakland, faces a possible recall election."
Why was 2023 such a deadly year in Los Angeles County jails? It depends on whom you ask
LAT's KERI BLAKINGER: "It was well after dark, but Tawana Hunter lingered in the hospital parking lot, watching the minutes tick by on her phone. As midnight drew closer, she ran through all the things she wished had been different.
She wished her father had been in better health. She wished he hadn’t gotten arrested. She wished he hadn’t spent the last few months of his life in jail. And she wished that, right now, he wasn’t dying alone, handcuffed to a hospital bed."
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ L.A., Miami homes raided in sex-trafficking inquiry, sources say
LAT's RICHARD WINTON: "Homeland Security agents conducted searches of Holmby Hills and Miami mansions owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs on Monday as part of a federal inquiry into sex trafficking allegations involving the hip-hop and liquor mogul, law enforcement sources said.
The 17,000-square-foot mansion where Combs debuted his last album a year ago was flooded with Homeland Security Investigations agents, who served a search warrant and gathered evidence on behalf of an investigation being run by the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the inquiry.