"LOS ANGELES — This auto-obsessed city — a place where people love their cars almost as much as they hate the traffic — has embarked on the biggest expansion of its mass transit system in decades, an effort to change the way people navigate its sprawling and clogged streets and freeways."

"State health investigators have ruled out a toxic waste dump as the cause of severe birth defects including heart problems and facial deformities in the impoverished Central California farming community of Kettleman City, according to a draft report released Monday."

"High levels of perchlorate were found in the Mojave Desert city's water supply. Residents have been flocking to grocery stores to buy water, and the school district is prepared to provide students with bottled water when classes resume Monday."

"In the aftermath of a deadly gas explosion in San Bruno this year, a Sacramento school district is considering the unthinkable: Closing a school in the middle of the school year and transferring all its students to another campus or campuses."

Low-income residents of small towns in California's San Joaquin Valley, often Latinos, suffer from unhealthful drinking water caused by the valley's booming agriculture. Now some activists are fighting back.

"Until recently, Prop. 26, which would require the Legislature and local governments to use a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority to pass fees on businesses, had been overshadowed by other measures."

"[California] State officials have reached an agreement that will provide an estimated $188 million over 10 years to restore habitat for imperiled fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta."

A small earthquake in a part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are where quakes aren't expected raises concerns about flooding from future levee failures.

California voters, evenly split in September on a controversial ballot initiative to suspend the state's global warming law, now oppose it 48% to 37%, according to a new poll.