California

Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners -- holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear. Technically, it's not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers' annual tax bills won't change.

California on Wednesday became the biggest issuer so far of a new type of municipal bond that has caused investors to rethink the muni market overall -- in a way that is driving down bond interest rates. Robust investor demand allowed Treasurer Bill Lockyer to boost the size of a planned $4-billion bond offering to $6.85 billion. Proceeds from the securities will finance voter-approved infrastructure projects. Included in the deal were $5.

Government bureaucrats want your water softener. The Culligan Man is fighting back. The company behind the renowned "Hey Culligan Man!" advertising campaign of the 1950s has launched a political and public relations offensive to kill a bill targeting its signature product. That proposal would allow regulators to ban conventional water softeners that discharge salt into municipal sewer lines.

Utility regulators have approved $350 million in rebates to encourage Californians to install water-heating systems powered by solar energy. The state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday established the California Solar Initiative Thermal Program, which will be funded using $250 million to replace natural-gas-powered water heaters, with $25 million set aside for low-income customers. An additional $100.8 million will be used to swap out water heaters powered by electricity. The rebates could reduce the cost of a solar water heater by 15% to 25%, industry experts said.

The line forms even before the doors open at FixNation in Sun Valley. The trappers come, five days a week, back seats and trunks loaded with feral cats. Inside is a highly organized production line: On an average day, about 80 cats will be neutered and sterilized, then released 24 hours later into the neighborhoods they came from. This largely volunteer effort seeks to control a problem that vexes cities everywhere: how to manage homeless, free-roaming cats -- thought to number at least 1 million in Los Angeles -- while trying to avoid euthanizing them.

Proponents of an initiative to make California the first state to legalize marijuana have collected about 693,800 signatures, virtually guaranteeing that the measure will appear on a crowded November ballot. "This is a historic first step toward ending cannabis prohibition," said Richard Lee, the measure's main backer. Advocates, trailed by television cameras and photographers, dropped off petitions with elections officials in the state's largest counties, including Los Angeles, where organizers said 143,105 voters signed.

As California lawmakers struggle with a budget gap that has now grown to $26.3 billion, one of the hottest topics for many taxpayers is the cost to the state of illegal immigrants. The question of whether taxpayers should provide services to illegal residents became a major political issue in California's last deep recession, culminating in the ballot fight over Proposition 187 in 1994.

California prison officials, facing severe overcrowding and a financial crisis, have been granting early releases to inmates serving time for parole violations. State officials said the dozens of prisoners set free from the California Institution for Men in Chino and from lockups in San Diego and Shasta counties had 60 days or less left on their terms, or had been accused of violations and were awaiting hearings. The releases were approved by the state parole board.

Tens of thousands of Californians out of work for more than a year soon will be getting an extra 20 weeks of unemployment insurance checks, thanks to the federal economic stimulus program. The Legislature approved the extended benefits Thursday, and processing of them is expected to get underway as early as today after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs legislation authorizing the state to receive more than $3 billion from Washington.

California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September. The order cited Gov.

Jerry Brown, the once and possibly future governor of California, is the only high-profile Democrat hoping to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and has long been the front-runner in voter surveys. Yet nine months before election day, Brown's bid to win his old job back remains in an "exploratory" phase. And some Democrats wish their candidate had heeded his own joking promises to declare his intentions "when the snows fall in the Sierras." Brown, 71, adapted that phrase from another former governor, his father, Pat Brown, but remained silent when white powder began piling high in the mountains late last year.

For the first time, voting districts for California's Legislature will not be drawn behind closed doors in the backrooms of the state Capitol. Instead, a first-in-the-nation citizen commission will do the job, and thousands of everyday Californians are jostling to serve on the panel. But hopes of taking politics out of the process are fading. Ethnic groups charge that the pool of applicants is too white and too male to reflect the state's diversity. Others are raising questions about $1.3 million in taxpayer money being spent on a public relations contract to woo minority applicants.

Steve Poizner's allegation that Meg Whitman used attempted bribery and extortion in an effort to push him out of the gubernatorial race was merely an attention-grabbing stunt by a desperate dark horse, many contend. Hopefully, they're right. Because if Poizner was sincerely angry and really does believe -- as he wrote state and federal prosecutors -- that the Whitman camp deserves criminal investigation, this is scary. It calls into question the state insurance commissioner's ability to govern the nation's most populous, most diverse and arguably most troubled state.

Rodney Alcala sat before an Orange County jury Tuesday and took the panel through a long-ago murder case, trying his utmost to sound like a polished defense attorney. But he's hardly that. The shaggy-haired man has been locked up for 30 years, and he's back in court facing the death penalty for the third time in the killing of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach. Now, though, Alcala is charged not only in Samsoe's death but also in the rape and murder of four Los Angeles County women.

May 3, 2009 1st day of the rest of my life Dearest Fauntel: Your call was an answer to my prayer. I have been thinking of you everyday lately & many times over the years and regretting leaving you under the conditions at the time. -- Bob Harrod She sits alone on a sofa in the living room of his home, the curls of her short blond hair teased and sprayed in place. A 60-year-old diamond in a platinum setting is on her right ring finger.

A raccoon somehow slipped out of its cage at a Bakersfield zoo and attacked a man and his 8-year-old daughter, gnawing into the man's finger and clawing his legs in what he described as a bloody wrestling match that lasted several minutes. Ian Smith, an unemployed 30-year-old medical supply salesman and competitive kick boxer, received about 20 rabies shots around his gashes and puncture wounds after Sunday's encounter. The raccoon, which was euthanized, proved not to be rabid, sparing Smith further injections.

The giant Rio Tinto Borax mine in Boron locked out about 540 hourly workers Sunday after the employee union refused to ratify a new labor contract. The lockout began at 7 a.m. as miners showed up outside the gates and were told they couldn't come in. Replacements were brought in to do their jobs. "It's obviously a drastic measure and I am well aware of the fact that this has very real consequences to our employees. It's not a bully tactic, but it's our only real alternative," said Dean Gehring, general manager of the mine.

Mary J. Kight, already the first woman general in the California National Guard, will become the group's first female leader Tuesday. She will also be the first African American woman at the helm of any national guard in the country. Kight, 59, a Republican who lives in Sacramento, recognizes that for some, these are important firsts. "It depends on who is looking at me," she said. "If it's important to them, then you know, I acknowledge that it is also important. But . . . I am doing my job. I am doing what I am asked to do."

Eleven storm drains empty into Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach, and its only outlet to the sea -- a 900-foot underground culvert -- is choked with mussels, clams, sand and barnacles. So it's no surprise that one of Southern California's only lagoons -- shallow saltwater bodies sheltered from the ocean -- is among the dirtiest around. Last year, Colorado Lagoon was ranked as the state's fourth most-polluted beach in Heal the Bay's "Beach Bummers" list. Yet the Y-shaped basin is one of the most popular swimming spots in the city, packed with sunbathers and swimmers on hot summer afternoons.

A proposed law would require new homes, larger developments and some redevelopments in Los Angeles to capture and reuse runoff generated in rainstorms. The ordinance approved in January by the Department of Public Works would require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100% of runoff generated in a 3/4 -inch rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution mitigation fee that would help fund off-site, low-impact public developments. The fairly new approach to managing storm water and urban runoff is designed to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization by controlling runoff at its source with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of treatment facilities.