The California Report, KQED Public Radio

• Mudslide Fears in Southern California

  It's expected to rain again today in Southern California, and that's bad news for people in already saturated areas of Los Angeles County. Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders last night for more than 500 homes in mudslide-prone areas.
  

• State to Deploy Greenhouse Gas "Sniffers"

  California is about to become the first state to have its own network of devices to sniff out greenhouse gases. The technology brings a new degree of precision to air quality testing.
  

• Nursing Education, Part Two: Private For-Profit Schools

  California's once unparalleled higher education system is on the ropes, and more and more students are turning to private for-profit schools for degrees and career training. This second part of our look at nursing education examines a market-based approach to training.
  

Oakland Tribune

• East Bay dancer returns to the stage more than three months after attack

  Three months ago, one of the principal dancers of the Diablo Ballet lay unconscious and near death on a Concord street after a savage beating. On Monday, Eddie Stegge, once the company's "resident firecracker," began dancing again.

• Ahoy! Replica trader ship docks in Jack London Square

  The Hawaiian Chieftain, a ship replicating those used by 19th century traders, landed in Jack London Square on Tuesday to launch almost two weeks of tours, sailings and classes.

• Deputies surround home of Castro Valley teen suspected of firing shots

  CASTRO VALLEY — Alameda County sheriff's deputies have surrounded the Castro Valley home of a 17-year-old boy who is believed to have fired a gun at his neighbors this morning, a sheriff's sergeant said.

SacBee -- Bee State News

• Bay Area is ground zero for California effort to legalize pot

  
  In a growing room at Oaksterdam, Richard Lee displays pot plants nearly ready to be harvested for a patient with a medical prescription.

  SAN FRANCISCO – It's almost a cliché these days that this city and its sister to the east, Oakland, stand as the primary incubators of some of California's infamously wacky but later transformational social and political ideas.

  From the Silicon Valley to Oakland and Berkeley to the Napa Valley – if it was at first weird, untested, illegal and/or controversial, it probably got its start right here.

  Now a small but determined coalition of Bay Area activists and politicos are on a mission to have California be the first state in the union to fully legalize, regulate and tax the use of marijuana – and they're approaching that goal from several different angles.

  The groups began their quest by building on the foundation that the 1996 approval of Proposition 215 provided.

  The statewide initiative, which made California the first state in the nation to legalize medicinal marijuana, broke down many long-held views on the drug – especially in its compassionate use for cancer patients and other chronic disease sufferers.

  San Francisco and Oakland were among the first to see medical pot dispensaries pop up.

  A whole section of Oakland's downtown has willingly taken on the nickname "Oaksterdam" (a play on the name of the capital city of the Netherlands, where pot use has been legal since the early 1970s) because of its array of dispensaries and marijuana-related products and services.

  City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said a political sea change on the issue of marijuana in California began in early 2009, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that federal drug officers no longer would target the operators or customers of legitimate medical pot dispensaries.

  Then an April 2009 Field Poll showed that 56 percent of Californians now support full legalization, regulation and taxation of the drug.

  "That decision plus the Field Poll has had a dramatic impact on how we look at pot in California these days," said Kaplan, who believes full legalization and regulation of marijuana is just a matter of time. State and local governments, she notes, can use the new tax revenues that pot legalization would bring.

  In Oakland's case, the city already collects money from legal medicinal pot businesses located there as a result of the passage of Measure J last summer. The measure placed a special tax of $18 per $1,000 of sales on medical pot dispensaries in the city. In the process, Oakland became the first city in the nation to assess a tax on marijuana.

  Now Kaplan wants to take it to next level. "It's time we take the criminal element out of the pot business," she said. "By having local government license and regulate these grow houses, the criminal element and the irresponsible operators can be removed from the equation, which will make our cities safer."

  Richard Lee, president of Oaksterdam University – a vocational school for future marijuana industry entrepreneurs – likens the current environment to the 1920s and early 1930s, when the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ensured that alcohol was available only through illegal and underground "speakeasy" drinking clubs.

  It wasn't until December 1933 that ratification of the 21st Amendment made alcohol consumption legal again.

  "Alcohol prohibition ended slowly," said Lee, who owns several other pot-related businesses in the Oaksterdam district.

  Bay Area residents, in particular, are more sympathetic to legalizing pot than Californians in other parts of the state. More than 70 percent of the area's registered voters supported the idea in last year's Field Poll, more than any other region of the state.

  "Maybe it harkens back to … the Summer of Love and the hippies" in 1967, Lee said.

  Whatever the reason, it wasn't by mistake that Lee chose Oakland and San Francisco to be headquarters cities for his Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 initiative effort.

  Proponents recently filed an estimated 693,800 petition signatures to qualify the measure for the statewide ballot in the November election. To qualify, the measure needs 433,971 valid voter signatures, officials said.

  If approved by the electorate, the cannabis tax measure would make limited private possession and cultivation of pot legal for those 21 and older. It also would allow local governments to permit, regulate and tax marijuana growing operations within their jurisdictions. Lee says the measure could generate billions in new tax revenue for the state in its first year.

  "We think Californians are now ready to legalize marijuana in a controlled, safe manner, which will bring whole new streams to revenue to Sacramento and to our local governments," Lee said.

  The more permissive atmosphere helped Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, pass a pot legalization bill out of the Assembly Public Safety Committee recently.

  If the Bay Area is ground zero for the effort to fully legalize pot, many other California communities are still struggling with issues surrounding the use of medical marijuana.

  One recent example occurred Jan. 26, when the Los Angeles City Council voted to shut down an estimated 80 percent of that city's 1,000 medical pot dispensaries.

  Corey Cook, a University of San Francisco political science professor, said 2010 indeed may be the year that California legalizes pot and that Bay Area politicos and activists likely will be at the forefront of the effort. But he warned that political trends popular in San Francisco and the East Bay don't always sell well in more rural parts of the state.

  "If this gets painted as a Haight-Ashbury vs. the rest of California thing, there's likely to be a backlash," Cook said. "On the other hand if it's promoted as a way to help a severely deficit-plagued state pay for schools and parks, then there's a chance it will succeed.

  "I'm going to be watching this one with great interest."

  "We think Californians are now ready to legalize marijuana in a controlled, safe manner which will bring whole new streams to revenue to Sacramento and to our local governments." RICHARD LEE, president of Oaksterdam University in OaklandINTERACTIVE MAP

  See where Sacramento medical marijuana dispensaries are located. Find the map on our Data Center page, under "Health and Medicine." sacbee.com/datacenter

  
  MANNY CRISOSTOMO mcrisostomo@sacbee.com Richard Lee, president of Oaksterdam University – a marijuana-growing vocational school in Oakland – is leading efforts to put a measure on California's November ballot to legalize pot. Supporters have filed about 693,800 petition signatures with election officials; 433,971 valid signatures are needed to qualify the measure.

  
  MANNY CRISOSTOMO mcrisostomo@sacbee.com Oaksterdam University President Richard Lee, 47, studies photos of graduates from the Oakland school, which teaches pot cultivation.

• CSU to fund 8,100 extra classes for fall

  California State University announced today that it will add 8,100 more classes to the fall schedule at its 23 campuses across the state.

  The announcement comes as students have been complaining that budget cuts have made it hard for them to get courses they need to graduate on time.

  CSU is using $50.9 million in one-time money from federal stimulus funds to pay for retaining lecturers and adding courses, according to a university news release.

  "Hopefully, this will help to alleviate some of the shortages in classes, and students will be able to make faster progress toward their degree," Chancellor Charles B. Reed said in a statement.

• Housing crunch has human toll

  
  Ethelda Lopez stands in front of the Merced County home she lost to foreclosure this month. Lopez said she's suffered from the stress.

  MERCED – Two weeks ago, a retired telephone company worker named Ethelda Lopez watched as her dream retirement home was auctioned off on the lawn outside a county courthouse in downtown Merced.

  "When I heard my address, it was so disheartening," she said. For six months, she had made hundreds of calls to her mortgage company, federal officials, local political leaders – begging them all for lower payments or more time. No one paid heed.

  Wracked with depression and anxiety, she was too ashamed to tell her friends that she was losing her stucco-and-stone ranch home in the Atwater countryside.

  "I couldn't stop crying myself to sleep," said Lopez, 51. "When I started to try to tell my story, it would just come out as crying. I was too embarrassed, too depressed to go out anymore. … I would never wish this on anyone."

  Lopez's story is one of two dozen gathered by the Merced Sun-Star in a four-week investigation of the psychological and other health problems wreaked by the local foreclosure crisis. Over and over, residents caught up in that crisis – homeowners, renters, even Realtors – report they are suffering from stress or depression and are sometimes too ashamed to reach out for help.

  This is the hidden human fallout of foreclosure. It is going largely untreated, even as Merced County braces for more state cuts in mental health services.

  Thousands of new homes like Lopez's sprouted from farmland countywide in the past five years. Merced was gearing up for a bright new future as a college hub. Optimistic developers dreamed of throngs of buyers paying $300,000 and more so that they could raise their children in neat stucco homes in tranquil cul-de-sacs.

  But the dream crumbled.

  Merced County ranked first in California for foreclosure filings in 2009, and sixth among counties nationwide, the national firm RealtyTrac reported two weeks ago. One in seven homes in this county of 250,000 people has been foreclosed on since September 2006, according to Foreclosure Radar, a California reporting service.

  The drama plays out on the courthouse lawn like clockwork, Monday through Friday, at 12:30 and 3 p.m., when Realtors and investors bid for foreclosed homes like Lopez's.

  What the statistics don't show is the human toll. Debt-wracked residents are suffering from anxiety, sleeplessness and depression.

  "We're seeing more people coming for crisis services, people who have never been in the system before," said Theresa Schoettler, who manages Merced County's inpatient psychiatric unit and walk-in clinic. "There's a lot more alcohol abuse."

  Many more feel so much shame about their financial and emotional distress that they shut themselves off, too fearful to ask for help, mental health workers report. Entire families suffer as stress radiates from debt-plagued parents to their frightened children, they say.

  "The trickle-down of this is big. Kids have stomachaches. They don't want to go to school," said Elizabeth Morrison, clinical director of behavioral health at Golden Valley Health Centers, a network of 25 nonprofit community clinics and eight dental sites serving the Merced area.

  School leaders are concerned, too. In the Merced Union High School District, which covers students in all of Merced, Atwater and Livingston, 613 students, or 7 percent, reported this year that they were "doubled-up" with another family in a single-family home.

  The same economic downturn tied to the real estate crisis is savaging the California state budget, provoking massive cuts in mental health care. Merced County government has seen its number of mental health clinicians cut to 24 from 33. Each outpatient nurse's caseload has increased by 125 cases due to staff cuts last September. Yet a key piece of the department's budget was cut in half last year in Sacramento.

San Jose Mercury News

• Kettleman City birth defect rate not abnormal, health officials say

  FRESNO — State health officials said Tuesday they found nothing unusual about the rate of birth defects among infants in a San Joaquin Valley farm town located next to the largest toxic waste dump in the West.

• Evacuations underway for Los Angeles-area foothills

  LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE — Homeowners in mud-ravaged foothill towns north of Los Angeles packed their cars and fled today as evacuation orders took hold and a new winter storm approached.

• Los Angeles police: Arrest made in killings of anti-gang worker

  LOS ANGELES — A suspect was arrested today in the killing of a well-known anti-gang counselor who was shot to death when he confronted a tagger writing graffiti in Los Angeles, police said.

Los Angeles Times

• Former shot-caller is now spilling gang's secrets

  Showing no emotion, a former leader of the Avenues clique testifies about murder, extortion and drug deals. Ailing and in custody, he is vilified by his family, which once terrified a neighborhood.
  
  Pancho Real was at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church with his wife and daughter one Sunday in October 2006 when his cellphone rang.

  
  

  
  

• Jackson's physician charged with involuntary manslaughter

  Dr. Conrad Murray, a cardiologist hired to care for Jackson during the pop star's comeback attempt last year, pleads not guilty in a courtroom packed with international media and the singer's family.
  
  Los Angeles prosecutors filed a long-anticipated involuntary manslaughter charge against Michael Jackson's personal physician Monday as the coroner's office made public a report concluding that the care the singer received in the final hours of his life violated accepted medical standards.

  
  

  
  

• Villaraigosa sets sights on City Council's pet projects funds

  To plug a shortfall, he's seeking to borrow $40 million from accounts that are used for neighborhood initiatives. But some of the funds can't easily be touched, council aides say.
  
  Members of the Los Angeles City Council have more than a dozen accounts squirreled away that they dip into for pet projects. They have set aside money for security cameras around MacArthur Park, artistic bike racks in Hollywood and a program that sends city workers to pluck abandoned shopping carts off the streets of the San Fernando Valley, to name just a few.

  
  

  
  

San Diego Union-Tribune

• State Route 15 reopens in both directions

  State Route 15 was shut down in both directions at state Route 94 for more than an hour Tuesday after a man threatened to jump from an overpass.

• Another storm blusters its way through county

  A winter storm rolled over the San Diego region today, delivering blustery showers and bringing a good chance of heavy mountain snow.

• Water use rises in January in San Diego

  Overall water use rose 1.5 percent citywide in January, compared to the same month last year, and commercial users are to blame, San Diego officials said today.

Fresno Bee

• Product Recalls: Discovery Kids lamps

  The following recall has been announced: Read comments

• Ex-hospital CFO pleads guilty in homeless scam

  An ex-hospital chief financial officer has agreed to plead guilty to paying illegal kickbacks for patients recruited from the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. Read comments

• Court OKs blanket strip-search policy at jails

  A federal appeals court says San Francisco jail guards did not violate inmates' constitutional rights when strip-searching them without reason to believe they had weapons or contraband. Read comments

KPCC, Southern California Public Radio

• United Way issues report on LA County's last decade

  In the last decade, the high school graduation rate in Los Angeles County has remained flat at 60 percent. Many of the county?s families still live in poverty, and affordable housing remains out of reach for growing numbers of people. A new report from the United Way calls the picture of Los Angeles "A Tale of Two Cities: One Future." (Audio: Elise Buik, president and chief executive of United Way of Greater Los Angeles, described how the economic recession played a part in the study?s conclusions.)

• Immigration activists concerned about anti-Latino sentiment at Tea Party Convention

  This weekend?s Tea Party Convention in Nashville featured a speech by former Congressman Tom Tancredo. He suggested President Obama was elected by folks who couldn?t spell ?vote? or say it in English. Immigration activists say they're watching the growth of the Tea Party movement closely.

• Democrats to introduce anti-trust legislation aimed at health insurance companies

  Comprehensive health care reform legislation has stalled in Congress. The House and Senate each passed versions, but they haven?t been able to reconcile the two bills. Now that Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown has been sworn in, Senate Democrats no longer have a fillibuster-proof majority.

KPBS, San Diego Public Radio

• Living Downtown

  Close to 35,000 residents now call downtown San Diego home. We'll explore the benefits and challenges of living in an urban setting.

• Legacy On The Land

  Audrey and Frank Peterman were unfamiliar with the National Park Service. As the result of their eventful 12,000 mile cross-country trip through 40 states, they are now considered 'expert' environmentalists on the public lands system. Audrey Peterman joins us in studio to discuss her book, "Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care."

• Saving American Journalism

  An assessment of the problems facing American journalism and proposals for addressing them are the subjects of "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," a report out of Columbia University by Professor Michael Schudson and Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post.