California Enacts Nation’s Strictest Data Privacy Law

- In a move that will have broad ramifications for any company that does business in the US, the California legislature has passed the nation’s strongest data privacy law.

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which takes full effect in 2020, will limit how big companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, among others, collect and use personal data. It mimics the effects of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect May 25 and resulted in a flood of email notifications to consumer inboxes.

Companies will be required to disclose the types of data they collect about consumers and with whom they share that information, and let consumers opt-out of having their data sold. If a consumer opts-out of having data sold, they cannot be treated differently under the new law. Any data collected must be stringently secured or fines will result.

California has long been a leader in privacy protections, and the new law is expected to serve as a template for other state legislatures in the US. The bill passed the legislature unanimously and was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Anticipating the effects of the GDPR and the possibility of other countries and states enacting strict new laws, many larger companies have already been pro-actively preparing enhanced consumer privacy tools and regulations.

Radical plan to split California into three states earns spot on November ballot

latimes.com - California’s 168-year run as a single entity, hugging the continent’s edge for hundreds of miles and sprawling east across mountains and desert, could come to an end next year — as a controversial plan to split the Golden State into three new jurisdictions qualified Tuesday for the Nov. 6 ballot.

If a majority of voters who cast ballots agree, a long and contentious process would begin for three separate states to take the place of California, with one primarily centered around Los Angeles and the other two divvying up the counties to the north and south. Completion of the radical plan — far from certain, given its many hurdles at judicial, state and federal levels — would make history.

It would be the first division of an existing U.S. state since the creation of West Virginia in 1863.

“Three states will get us better infrastructure, better education and lower taxes,” Tim Draper, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist who sponsored the ballot measure, said in an email to The Times last summer when he formally submitted the proposal. “States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens.”

In the initiative’s introductory passage, Draper argues that “vast parts of California are poorly served by a representative government dominated by a large number of elected representatives from a small part of our state, both geographically and economically.”

The proposal aims to invoke Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the provision guiding how an existing state can be divided into new states. Draper’s plan calls for three new entities — Northern California, California and Southern California — which would roughly divide the population of the existing state into thirds.

California's economy is now the 5th-biggest in the world, and has overtaken the United Kingdom

- California's economy is so large, and has grown so quickly, that it is now the fifth-biggest in the world all by itself, according to US government data.

Figures released on Friday by the US Department of Commerce put California's effective GDP from 2017 at around $2.747 trillion. It said the state's economy grew by 3.4% in the past year.

That growth puts it ahead of the United Kingdom, which has a GDP of $2.625 trillion, according to data published last month by the International Monetary Fund.

According to the Associated Press, California's boom has been especially pronounced because of its thriving tech, entertainment and agricultural industries.

The difference is even more stark in light of the respective economies' populations: Britain has around 66 million inhabitants, compared to California's 40 million.

The United Kingdom has experienced sluggish growth in the past year and many consider its future economic prospects in peril because of its impending exit from the European Union, characterised by fraught negotiations.

It also highlighted currency fluctuations which helped increase the US dollar figure for California's economy at the expense of Britain's.

California ordered to add cancer warning to coffee, but the science doesn’t hold up

washingtonpost.com - Storm clouds are brewing in California’s coffee cups. Companies across the state will have to add a cancer-warning label to coffee, a judge ruled this week, because the drink contains a chemical called acrylamide.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle sided with a nonprofit organization in a case against Starbucks, Peets and dozens of other coffee chains, saying that businesses that sold coffee were in violation of a state regulation called Proposition 65. Prop 65 requires businesses with at least 10 employees to disclose any carcinogens and toxic chemicals in their products.

The lawsuit, filed by an organization called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, cites the presence of acrylamide in coffee. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, describes acrylamide as a human neurotoxin and a “group 2A probable carcinogen.”

With those classifications, the chemical certainly does not sound like something people want floating in their morning pick-me-up. But experts said coffee drinkers should not change their habits on the basis of the new ruling.

“The name, ‘acrylamide,’ it makes it sound scary,” said Michelle Francl, a chemist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. But, she pointed out, a liquid labeled “oxidane” sounds ominous, even though that’s a fancy term for water.

Rodents fed massive amounts of acrylamide do develop cancer. This is an “acceptable and appropriate” way to determine a carcinogenic effect, said J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer. But anything — including water and oxygen — can be unsafe at the wrong dosage. Those lab rats and mice were dosed at rates 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than what humans consume in food, according to the American Cancer Society.

Links between cancer and acrylamide in humans are weak or need to be replicated in additional studies, said Timothy Rebbeck, a professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Lichtenfeld agreed. “There are no well-done human studies that answer the question definitively,” he said. What research there is indicates that the human body does not absorb the chemical at the same rate as rodents do, and we also metabolize it differently.

“From a practical standpoint would we recommend people stop drinking coffee as a result of the judge’s decision? No,” Lichtenfeld said. “That’s not what the science shows us.”

'New California' campaign aims to separate rural counties from coastal cities

sfgate.com: Two men frustrated with what they call an "ungovernable" California have launched a new campaign to divide the rural areas of the state from its coastal cities.

Founders of the "New California" movement, Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed, write on the campaign's website that California is "a failed state" and that "citizens of California are living under a tyrannical form of government that does not follow the California and U.S. Constitutions."

The campaign cites high taxes, and a decline in housing, health care, prisons, state parks, education, and "business climate," among other things, in both high-density and rural areas as reasons for a division.

"There's something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed," Preston told CBS Sacramento.

Unlike other, similar campaigns, this is not a secession; rather, proponents of New California want to create a brand new economy with a new constitution. 

California wildfire becomes largest on record in the state

Reuters - A sprawling Southern California wildfire that has been burning through rugged, drought-parched coastal terrain since Dec. 4 has become the largest on record in the state, state fire officials said on Friday.

The so-called Thomas fire has blazed through 273,400 acres (110,641 hectares), surpassing the previous record of the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego County that scorched 273,246 acres and killed 15 people, they said.

The Thomas fire was 65 percent contained as of Friday evening and the natural spread of the blaze had been virtually halted days ago by fire crew, they said.

Incremental increases in burned acreage detected by daily aerial surveys since then have been largely due to controlled-burning operations conducted by firefighters to clear swaths of vegetation between the smoldering edges of the fire zone and populated areas.

The fire has destroyed over 1,000 structures as it has scorched coastal mountains, foothills and canyons across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties northwest of Los Angeles, officials said.

On Thursday, authorities canceled the last evacuation notices still in effect for Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

One fatality directly related to the fire has been reported, a firefighter who succumbed to burns and smoke inhalation in the line of duty last Thursday.

Teacher Investigated for Allegedly Contaminating Students' Flutes With Bodily Fluids

California..

*contains strong language

nbclosangeles.com - Federal officials are investigating flutes, possibly contaminated by bodily fluids, that were given to students from school districts all across Southern California as part of an investigation of an individual accused of inappropriate sexual conduct.

Several school districts alerted parents on Friday the California Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service launched an investigation and to turn in the flutes to authorities.

The flutes are colourfully decorated and painted by students all over Southern California through a programme called "Flutes Across the World."

Federal investigators want to test all the flutes, which they believe may be contaminated by semen, from the programme's music teacher.

"You have to read in between the lines -- and most likely it's not sweat," said Nate, a concerned parent whose child goes to Courreges Elementary School in Fountain Valley.

Nate went to the police station Friday night to turn in his child's flute.

"It's disgusting, it's unreal, you can't even really fathom it," said another parent, who wished to not be named.

Notifications went out to parents in school districts in Fullerton, Newport-Mesa, Chatsworth and the Inland Empire.

The teacher has not been named due to the pending investigation.

An education source close to the investigation confirmed to NBC4 the teacher was arrested.

Related: Woman turns discarded vagina skin into j*welry

Drunk School Principle Defecates in Front of Students During Pledge of Allegiance

California man sues after lottery officials refuse to pay $5M prize because underage son bought ticket

via fox25boston.com - A man is suing the California Lottery Commission, claiming officials refused to pay a $5 million prize because his underage son purchased the ticket.

Ward Thomas sent his 16-year-old son into a Mobil gas station in Long Beach to exchange winning scratcher tickets for more tickets in October, the Los Angeles Times reported. The store employee did not ask the teen for ID, the suit alleges.

The son handed the tickets to his father, who discovered that evening that one of the tickets was a big winner. Thomas validated that the ticket was a $5 million winner at a 7-11 store and at a California Lottery district office, the suit claims.

But the lottery commission never made a payout to Thomas. The suit alleges that the lottery commission withheld the prize money because his underage son bought the ticket. One has to be at least 18 to participate in the state's lottery. The lottery commission reviews all jackpot winning tickets, including reviewing security footage from the purchase point. The state and lottery commission are accused of failure to discharge a mandatory duty.

Thomas also names the gas station as a defendant, claiming there were no signs stating that one had to be 18 to purchase lottery tickets, even if they were purchasing on behalf of someone else who was of age. The gas station is accused of breach of express and implied contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and negligence, according to lawsuit documents.

Thomas is seeking more than $50,000 in general damages.

California: Waiter fired after asking Latinas for 'proof of residency' at upscale Huntington Beach eatery

STRENGTH!

LATimes - Brenda Carrillo wasn’t sure she’d heard the waiter right.

She and a friend had just been seated and were waiting for two others on the outdoor patio of Saint Marc, an upscale eatery in Huntington Beach, when he posed the question.

“Can I see your proof of residency?” the waiter asked.

Her friend repeated the question in disbelief, Carrillo recalled, and the waiter replied, “I need to make sure you’re from here before I serve you.”

The two women sat in stunned silence. “It was kind of hard to process because we’ve never experienced this,” said Carrillo, 23, who lives in Santa Ana and works for an organization that provides social services to families and youth.

Moments later, Carrillo’s sister, Diana, and another friend joined them and were asked the same question. The four women spoke to the manager, who apologized and offered to re-seat them, but they declined and left.

At first the friends thought the waiter might be joking. “But he didn’t have a smile,” said Diana Carrillo, 24, who works for a mortgage broker company. “There was no indication that he was trying to make a joke or even possibly flirt with us.”

Diana Carrillo said the encounter left all of them shaken. “I’ve never felt so judged in my life…. It sends a chill through your entire body.

Hours later, still seething, Diana decided to post about their encounter on Facebook and Yelp. Within hours, more than a dozen people had responded to her post on Facebook and left negative reviews on Yelp.

After Diana’s posts, restaurant management reached out to her to apologize. Statements on Facebook and Instagram, which have since been deleted, said the waiter had been fired and that “this type of behavior… will not be tolerated.”

In a separate statement sent to The Times, restaurant management said the waiter’s actions were “in no way…representative” of the restaurant’s employees or management. “We have always celebrated being part of the diverse Huntington Beach community, which means valuing all guests and treating every individual with respect,” the statement read.

Kent Bearden, senior director of operations for Saint Marc, said the restaurant had never encountered similar problems with the waiter, who he said was “not a new hire.”

When Diana Carrillo told her mother about the incident, she said, “My mom lost it.”

“I was angry. I was sad,” Guillermina Carrillo said by phone Saturday. “It’s unacceptable. It’s something that shouldn’t have happened, not anywhere, not to nobody.”

Carrillo, 52, came to the United States from Mexico more than 30 years ago. She’s been a citizen for nearly two decades, juggling two jobs while raising her four daughters alone.

She works as a security guard at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where she’s been employed for more than 20 years, and has a second job pressing clothing at a manufacturer for an upscale women’s clothing brand. She says she works more than 12 hours a day, six days a week.

“I raised my kids and taught them how to work, how to be a good person…. I’ve been working hard all these years,” the elder Carrillo said, before choking up and excusing herself.

Brenda describes herself and her sister as “light-skinned Latinas” and knows they don’t encounter as much racism as others in their community. “For it to happen to us, it was kind of an eye-opener,” she said. “It just makes me think, when I go to the store, do people think less of me?”

She says she isn’t so worried about herself or her sister, who were born and raised in California.

“I’m more afraid for others in my community, people who are immigrants. If this were to happen to them, I’m sure they would be too afraid to speak out for themselves,” Brenda said.

Meanwhile, Bearden, of Saint Marc, said the restaurant offered to host Brenda Carrillo and her friends as “VIP guests” this weekend and to donate 10% of the weekend’s sales to a nonprofit of their choice. (ontinueReading

California raises smoking age to 21, tightens vaping rules

SacramentoBee

(May 4 2016)  - Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday enacted California’s most significant new tobacco regulations in decades, signing laws that will place tight restrictions on use of the increasingly popular e-cigarette and make California the second state to raise its smoking age to 21.

Brown signed five closely watched bills, which will also expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and on school properties. California now joins jurisdictions like Hawaii, New York City and San Francisco that have bumped the tobacco-buying age to 21 in an effort to block young people’s route to obtaining tobacco.

But Brown vetoed one measure that would have allowed cities and counties to impose local taxes on tobacco products.

“Although California has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation,” he wrote in his veto message, “I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot.”

For public health advocates, Brown’s embrace marked a rare victory in a statehouse where tobacco interests often stub out anti-smoking bills.

“I am in a great mood this evening,” said Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Azusa, who authored the bill raising the smoking age. “It’s been decades since we’ve actually done anything to reduce tobacco use.”

He said his measure would save lives and health care costs by removing easy access during the teenage years when most smokers take up the habit.

“It puts the stake in the ground and reaffirms that California is the leader,” he said. “What I hope from this is that the rest of the country follows.”

The political focus for the coalition pushing the bills, which included health groups and organized labor, now shifts to winning a $2-a-pack tax through a November ballot initiative.

Brown’s signature dealt a rebuke to the burgeoning electronic cigarette industry. While soaring adolescent vaping rates have public health officials worried about a new wave of addiction, e-cigarette advocates call their product a safer alternative to tobacco that can help smokers quit.
 Read more: HERE

California fast-food workers shift focus from minimum wage to unionizing

THE HORROR!

(latimes) - As fast-food and other low-wage workers rally Thursday across the country for a $15 minimum wage, the Fight for $15 campaign in California will be shifting its focus to another goal: unionizing.

Thousands of Los Angeles area workers from the service and homecare industries are expected to strike Thursday as part of Fight for $15 rallies in 320 U.S. cities and 40 countries, according to the Service Employees International Union, which has backed the campaign.

Those workers will march to a rally at a McDonald's in the Arts District around noon.

"The demand from the original strikes in 2012 was $15 and a union," said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the SEIU. "Underpaid workers in California are now on a path to $15, but we think the way we can make these jobs good jobs ... is through a union."

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill last week to gradually increase the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. That same day, New York passed similar legislation to raise its hourly minimum to $15.

Deal reached to boost California's minimum wage to $15, avoiding ballot box battle

(latimes) - Lawmakers and labor unions have struck a tentative deal to raise the statewide minimum wage to $10.50 an hour next year and then gradually to $15, averting a costly political campaign this fall and possibly putting California at the forefront of a national movement.

The deal was confirmed Saturday afternoon by sources close to the negotiations who would speak only on condition of anonymity until Gov. Jerry Brown makes a formal announcement as early as Monday.

The minimum wage compromise ends a long debate between the Democratic governor and some of the state's most powerful labor unions. For Brown, it's political pragmatism; numerous statewide polls have suggested voters would approve a minimum wage proposal — perhaps even a more sweeping version — if given the chance.

According to a document obtained by The Times, the negotiated deal would boost California's statewide minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on Jan. 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increases through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply, delaying their workers receiving a $15 hourly wage until 2023.

Future statewide minimum wage increases would be linked to inflation, but a governor would have the power to temporarily block some of the initial increases in the event of an economic downturn.

6-Year-Old Girl Taken From Longtime California Foster Family for Being 1/64 Native American

(nbcnews) A 6-year-old girl was removed from the California home of the foster family she has lived with for four years because she has a tiny sliver of Native American heritage — despite resistance from her foster parents and their tens of thousands of supporters.

Rusty and Summer Page of Santa Clarita, California, have long fought to gain custody of Lexi, 6, who is 1.56 percent Choctaw Native American. That figure means that Lexi's home placement is dictated by the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. 

That law "seeks to keep American Indian children with American Indian families," according to its own language.

The child's birth parents struggled with substance abuse, according to court documents. Her father, who had a criminal history, never lived on a Choctaw reservation and didn't have any social, political, or cultural ties to the tribe, according to the court documents. But officials determined that Lexi is 1/64th Choctaw based on his ancestry. (Full Story)

Should Daylight Saving Time be ended? California State lawmaker says yes

- A lawmaker is proposing that California do away with Daylight Saving Time, ending the practice that has had people springing ahead and falling back since state voters approved the practice 67 years ago.

San Jose Assemblyman Kansen Chu said he heard from constituents that the twice-a-year time change is disruptive, especially for elderly residents.

“I heard some complaints last year from some of the senior citizens (in my district) and their care providers who say this one-hour difference really impacted their lives,” Chu told the Sacramento Bee.

Chu also said that evidence suggests that the time change is related to more workplace accidents and that it also does not decrease energy consumption.

So he has introduced Assembly Bill 2496 which would end the practice in the state. You can read his proposal here.

Chu is not the only one who wants to end the dreaded (?) practice that confuses body clocks and aggravates parents trying to get their little ones out of bed an hour early every spring.

More than 81,500 people have sent petitions to Congress via the website End Daylight Saving Timedemanding an end to the time switch.

“This proposal will simplify scheduling, travel, and commerce. And by ending semi-annual clock tampering, it will also allow people to get more sleep, be better adjusted to their daily routine, avoid missed appointments resulting from failure to reset clocks, and, most importantly, save lives,” the website says.

“Please stop the messing with our schedules. It’s an antiquated practice that only aggravates people. As it is Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and America Samoa do not participate in this practice.” Read the rest HERE

California: Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupts in violence; 3 are stabbed and 13 arrested

"Diversity is our strength"

(LATimes) -Three people were stabbed and 13 others arrested when a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupted in violence Saturday, police said.

A small group of people representing the Klan had announced that it would hold a rally at Pearson Park at 1:30 p.m., police said. By 11 a.m., several dozen protesters showed up at the park to confront the Klan.

About an hour later, several men in black garb with Confederate flag patches arrived and were escorted by police around the edge of the park.

Violence erupted and some of the protesters could be seen kicking a man whose shirt read "Grand Dragon." At some point, a protester collapsed on the ground bleeding, crying that he had been stabbed.

California: San Bernardino shooting: At least 14 people killed

false flag...

San Bernardino, California (CNN)The hunt for one to three suspects was taking place near a San Bernardino, California, center for people with developmental disabilities, where at least 14 people were killed Wednesday, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told reporters.

Fourteen other people were wounded in the shooting, Burguan said.

SWAT teams and the bomb squad were working to clear the buildings where the shootings took place.

• The suspects were armed with long guns, Burguan told reporters. "These were people that came prepared. ... They were armed with long guns, not hand guns," he told reporters. Most of the victims were "centrally located in one area of the facility," Burguan said. Police didn't exchange gunfire with the shooters, he added.

• The shootings were in the conference center at the Inland Regional Center, the center's executive director, Lavinia Johnson, told CNN. She believes the county's Department of Public Health was having a holiday party there. Johnson said the fire alarm went off in her building, and people began to evacuate but then the order came to stay in place. Later police came and took people out of their offices.

Halloween Costumes Set on Fire Inside San Leandro California Walmart

(nbcbayarea.com) - Someone sprayed a rack of Halloween costumes with lighter fluid and set them on fire inside a Bay Area Walmart store on Tuesday afternoon, police said, forcing the store to close and customers to evacuate while authorities investigated.

The suspect took the lighter fluid from a store shelf before using it to douse the Halloween section before starting the fire, police said. Frightened witnesses called 911.
The suspect, a 40-year-old man police believe is from Oakland, was arrested on suspicion of arson after the fire was set inside the store at about 1:30 p.m., San Leandro police Lt. Robert McManus said.

Store security managed to apprehend the suspect before police arrived, Lt. McManus said.

The store, at 15555 Hesperian Blvd., has since been closed while San Leandro police and Alameda County firefighters investigate. According to McManus, there is still a strong odor from the fire at the store.

“We are still reviewing surveillance video from the store, interviewing witnesses and evaluating evidence, hoping to piece this incident together,” Lt. McManus said. “Although we don’t know how many customers and employees were in the store when the fire started, we do know that it was a very dangerous situation that placed others in danger." (Full Story)

* * * *

Related: Walmart's biggest owners lose $14.7B in a day!

Wal-Mart Tumbles Most in 15 Years After Predicting Profit Slump

California: LAPD to have electric vehicles – From Tesla Motors Inc?

(thenextdigit.com) - In what can be considered a great push for electric and hybrid vehicles in Los Angeles, LA’s mayor has decided to lease more electric vehicles for city departments. According to a Los Angeles Times report, the district has decided to lease 160 battery EV automobiles, which would make Los Angeles, the city with the largest EV fleet in the whole country.

“When we laid out our sustainable city plan… we promised that 50% of new city fleet vehicles purchased each year would be EV by 2017”, LA’s Mayor Garcetti said at a news conference Friday outside the LAPD headquarters. “Our goal is to one day go from gas-powered to battery electric in our squad cars. And if we do that, the impact could be national in scale,” he added.

LAPD has already deployed 23 electric scooters as well as three electric motorcycles. The new announcement by LA’s mayor may inspire other states’ departments also as electric vehicles use zero gas, making them environmentally friendly as well as saving tax payers’ money for other work.

DWP General Manager Marcie Edwards, “EVs make environmental and economic sense for the city of Los Angeles, and LADWP is pleased to support the mayor’s goal to have EVs become the majority of our fleet.”

During the event, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said, “I think that today, this announcement, will trickle across the nation as a challenge to other cities, other police departments, other fire departments to look at what you’re doing and to take a step that makes a change for the positive”. Beck marked it as a great day for the city and police department.

All this is part of the plan of Mayor Eric Garcetti to make Los Angeles a sustainable city. According to the plan, 50% of small city cars will become fully electric by 2017. The aim is to have an 80% electric fleet in 10 years.