California Watch

For three years, a small hospital east of Los Angeles has billed Medicare for the costs of confronting what appears to be a cardiac crisis of unprecedented dimension.

The California Department of Public Health has dismissed findings against Prime Healthcare over its documentation of bloodstream infections, but said it has not ruled out fraud as a possible explanation for high rates of the condition.

Even if state officials can scrape together the billions of dollars needed to fund California's ambitious high-speed rail plans, lawsuits from local cities and opposition groups still could delay, divert or derail the project altogether.

For nearly 70 years, the McCloud River in Northern California has been deprived of the chinook salmon spawning runs for which it was once known.

When built, California's 800-mile bullet train project may include more than 140 miles of elevated structures – viaducts, some 60 feet in the air.

Under pressure from the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the plastics industry, schools officials in California edited a new environmental curriculum to include positive messages about plastic shopping bags, interviews and documents show.

It's been four months since tsunami waves generated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan ravaged the harbor in Northern California's Crescent City, destroying pilings and sinking 16 boats after ripping them from their docks.

Amid ongoing debate in Washington about a corporate tax overhaul, some of the largest companies in California are paying well below the required income tax.

The state has made it virtually impossible for school districts to access a pot of money set aside for urgent seismic repairs on more than 7,500 school buildings that have been listed for nearly a decade as potentially unsafe, records and interviews show.

Nearly 300 inspectors have been cited by the state for work-related deficiencies. But at least two-thirds were allowed to keep monitoring school construction jobs, a review of state performance ratings shows.

The state office in charge of enforcing strict earthquake standards for public schools has been closely intertwined with the construction industry it regulates, records and interviews show.

State regulators have routinely failed to enforce California's landmark earthquake safety law for public schools, allowing children and teachers to occupy buildings with structural flaws and potential safety hazards reported during construction.

On the night of Aug. 7, 2007, after he hit his historic 756th home run into the bleachers at AT&T Park, Giants outfielder Barry Bonds tried to dismiss the growing suspicion that he had broken sports' most hallowed record by using steroids.

Redding, where the Valley meets Cascade foothills, and Victorville, in the Mojave Desert, have little in common but an unusual statistic: In each city, a hospital has reported alarming rates of a Third World nutritional disorder among its Medicare patients.