Daily Report: All

Brad Camembert/Shutterstock Lance Armstrong in 2011 

Cyclist Lance Armstrong’s recent fall from grace has been portrayed in books and news accounts as a thriller featuring teammate betrayals, motorcycle drug couriers and secret blood transfusions.

But as the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency prepares to release an evidence dossier detailing its reasons for stripping the cycling star of seven Tour de France titles, the most compelling evidence might be found in dry data drawn from tests of Armstrong’s blood chemistry, a world-renowned doping expert says.

Michael Ashenden, an Australian scientist who helped create a test for the blood-doping substance EPO, told California Watch that an analysis of blood samples drawn in 2009, contained in an earlier court filing, suggests that Armstrong was recklessly using banned doping methods in an effort to win the Tour de France one more time. He finished third that year.

The tipoff, Ashenden said in an interview and follow-up email, is found in three weeks’ worth of telltale readings in Armstrong’s so-called “biological passport,” a log of blood...

Neon Tommy/Flickr Gov. Jerry Brown 

In the week following Gov. Jerry Brown's deadline for passing or vetoing hundreds of bills, those affected are examining successes and defeats that touch on cancer care, emergency rooms, prescribing, elder care and compensation to victims of corporate fraud.

Those celebrating include a group of elder advocates who sought more autonomy for the state’s elder care ombudsman. Another group of patients was disappointed, though, seeing Brown veto a bill that would have lowered the price of pills that fight cancer, bringing them in line with the cost of IV infusion treatments.

One of the bills that Brown vetoed would have changed payments related to emergency room care. The bill stemmed from a Feb. 24 legislative hearing that focused on emergency room and billing practices of Prime Healthcare. Critics have claimed the hospital chain is inflating costs through its emergency room and billing practices...

Steven Depolo/Flickr Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a chemical used in plastics, such as in the lining of food cans. 

A new UC San Diego study suggests that the byproducts of a chemical used in plastic found in the lining of cans may disrupt human hormone function more than the chemical itself.

The study, published today in PLOS ONE, may help explain why the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, has been tied to many health problems even though the chemical doesn’t have a strong effect on cells in a Petri dish.

“We have a candidate chemical that is doing the nasty stuff, or the endocrine disruption," said study co-author and UCSD structural biologist Michael E. Baker. "We know that BPA exposure causes a lot of endocrine problems, but if you’re analyzing BPA in urine, you may not be analyzing the chemical that’s really doing the endocrine disruption...

Jason Henry for The Bay Citizen A large outdoor recreation facility, built in San Francisco’s Juvenile Justice Center in 2006, has sat largely unused. 

Boys and girls confined in San Francisco’s juvenile hall might rather be elsewhere, but most aren’t in a hurry to go outside.

That is according to an anonymous survey of detainees at the city’s Juvenile Justice Center, where almost two-thirds of the young offenders said they don’t like outdoor recreation.

Of the survey’s 53 respondents, only 10 said they participated in outdoor exercise every day. When they did participate, nearly a third reported spending less than an hour outside.

The survey comes after months of debate between the San Francisco Youth Commission – which conducted the poll – and the Department of Juvenile Probation over whether detainees get enough fresh air, sunlight and exercise to satisfy state regulations. By law, detainees are entitled to one hour of outdoor “large-muscle” exercise each day.

“It’s pretty clear that young people are not getting their hour a day outdoors,” commission director Mario Yedidia said after reviewing the survey results. “The culture of the institution seems like it’s not really...

DC Central Kitchen/Flickr

Arguing that he did not want to "erode the independence and flexibility" of charter schools, Gov. Jerry Brown last weekend vetoed legislation that would have required charters to provide low-income students free or reduced-price meals.

Brown's veto message [PDF] of AB 1594, authored by Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-Alhambra, pits student nutrition against charter school autonomy – issues that supporters said should not be at odds.

"I respect the governor's concern that charter schools thrive, but I believe that it's not necessary to choose between meals for children and good policies for charter schools. We can do both," Eng said in a statement to California Watch. 

Supporters of the legislation, which included food banks, teachers unions, the California School Boards Association and California School Employees Association, said nutritious, affordable meals were integral to students' well-being and academic performance...

The nation’s vast network of anti-terrorism “fusion centers” for law enforcement have produced shoddy, untimely and often useless intelligence reports that have done little to keep the U.S. safer, a scathing U.S. Senate report concludes.

The 141-page report, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, parent organization of California Watch, identified problems with nearly every significant aspect of the Department of Homeland Security’s more than 70 fusion centers, which were designed for law enforcement to coordinate their intelligence gathering.

The report marks one of the most blistering indictments to date of the Department of Homeland Security’s domestic intelligence operation. The department, investigators conclude, “has not attempted to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the value federal taxpayers have received for that investment.”

Fusion centers were created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as the best way to get local, state and federal officials to share terrorism-related information, speak with each other and “connect the dots” of terrorist plots before they happened...

Courtesy of Creative Commons Henry W. Coe State Park 

Donors in the South Bay, angry over state mismanagement of park funds, are demanding the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars they gave to keep Northern California’s largest state park operating.

The Coe Park Preservation Fund, based in Scotts Valley, donated $279,000 earlier this year to prevent the closure of rugged, 87,000-acre Henry W. Coe State Park, about 30 miles south of San Jose. 

“We’re going to ask for the return of the $279,000 back to the Coe Park Preservation Fund,” said Dan McCranie, treasurer of the group’s board. 

If the money is returned, the group plans to offer refunds to its donors.

The state, however, says it has no obligation to refund the money. “As it stands, there is no legal mechanism to actually return the money,” said Richard Stapler, spokesman for the state Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

But in an email, Stapler wrote that the agency does not rule out the possibility of a compromise. “We are very eager to speak with the Coe...

Noah Berger/For The Bay Citizen Ardian Totolaku smokes outside his condo in San Rafael. He opposes the city's proposal to ban smoking inside multi-family residences and on downtown streets. 

Ardian Totolaku, an unemployed restaurant worker, believes in his God-given right to smoke cigarettes. He likes to smoke while he is hanging out on the streets of downtown San Rafael and in the comfort of his three-bedroom condo on a tree-lined street not far from Highway 101.

Soon, however, the 44-year-old Albanian immigrant might be prohibited from smoking in either place. The San Rafael City Council will decide today whether to ban smoking in more than 40 percent of the city’s private residences or while sitting or standing on any sidewalk downtown.

“It's not right,” Totolaku said as he lingered outside the Fourth Street Starbucks on a recent afternoon. He took a last drag from his cigarette and added: “The government is going too far. Humans die because the Lord decides when it is time to go, not because of smoking.”

But the City Council is not waiting for divine intervention. The proposed ordinance would prohibit smoking tobacco or marijuana in any multi-family residential unit, condominium or apartment – more than 10,000 of the...

VAOIG / Time.com A glimpse at the paper claims in the VA's Winston-Salem, N.C., office 

Veterans across the nation are waiting an average of 260 days for a decision on a war-related disability claim – three days longer than last week and 80 days longer than in mid-2011, according to data recently released by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

More than 815,000 veterans across the nation are waiting for a response from the VA this week.

An analysis by the Center for Investigative Reporting, parent organization of California Watch and The Bay Citizen, shows that in the last year, average wait times around the country slowly increased to more than a year for veterans in the nation’s most sluggish offices – Los Angeles; Waco, Texas; and Chicago among them.

The new numbers show some slow but measurable progress: The backlog at 42 of the offices shrank, while it grew at 16 other offices by as much as 2 percent, according to CIR’s interactive map...