New fronts constantly open in California’s political guerrilla war between state and local officials over housing. The Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have issued a steady stream of laws and regulations aimed at forcing the state’s nearly 500 cities to embrace housing development, particularly apartments for low-income families. Communities that shun such housing, saying it degrades the bucolic ambience of their neighborhoods, respond by dragging their feet, challenging the state’s authority in court or fashioning new barriers. The state counters with threats to cut off funds for public work ..read more

By JANIE HAR | Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO — A wealthy Silicon Valley-backed campaign to build a green city for up to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area has submitted what it says are enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November election. The campaign submitted more than 20,000 signatures but would need only about 13,000 valid ones to qualify for the ballot. If verified by Solano County’s elections office, voters will decide in the fall whether to allow urban development on land currently zoned for agriculture. The land-use change would be necessary for the develop ..read more

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST | Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from a CBD hemp oil maker fighting a lawsuit from a truck driver who says he got fired after using a product falsely advertised as being free from marijuana’s active ingredient. Douglas Horn says he took the product to help with chronic shoulder and back pain he had after a serious accident. The company said it contained CBD, a generally legal compound that is widely sold as a dietary supplement and included in personal-care products, but not THC, which gives marijuana its high, Horn said in ..read more

California posted its first population increase since the pandemic struck – a gain that was driven geographically from the south. The California Department of Finance counted 67,100 more residents in the past year to 39.13 million as of Jan. 1. State demographers connected the growth, the first increase since 2019, to legal foreign immigration and “natural” growth – births vs. deaths. California’s population dropped by an average 196,000 residents per year in 2020 to 2022. In the 2010s, California added on average 240,000 residents per year. When you ponder the 2023 reversal by county, you se ..read more

By Tom Krisher | The Associated Press In the not-too-distant future, automatic emergency braking will have to come standard on all new passenger vehicles in the United States, a requirement the government says will save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of injuries every year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration unveiled the final version of the new regulation on Monday, calling it the most significant safety rule in the past two decades. It’s designed to prevent many rear-end and pedestrian collisions and reduce the roughly 40,000 traffic deaths that happen each year. “We ..read more

By Kimberly Palmer | NerdWallet Sometimes, climbing out of a money rut starts with a pep talk — to yourself. “I like affirmations and speaking out loud,” says Giovanna Gonzalez, a financial educator and author of “Cultura & Cash.” Her favorite affirmations are statements like, “I am not a reflection of my money mistakes,” “I can improve my financial situation,” and “My finances are within my control.” If you find yourself repeating frustrating money patterns, such as overspending or struggling to pay off debt, that kind of attitude shift can help get you on a different path, Gonzalez says ..read more

US home-price gains accelerated in February, extending a streak of increases that has pushed many would-be buyers to the sidelines. Prices nationally climbed 6.4% from a year earlier, an S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index shows. That’s larger than the 6% annual gain in January. Purchasing a home is more expensive than ever in many areas of the country after run-ups in both prices and mortgage rates over the past couple of years. While new listings have ticked up recently, giving buyers more choices, inventory is still stuck well below historic levels, so competition remains intense. “Followi ..read more

By Fiona Rutherford, Jaewon Kang and John Tozzi | Bloomberg Walmart is abandoning its plan to build out a network of low-cost health clinics due to escalating costs and reimbursement challenges. The retailer said Tuesday that it will close all 51 health centers that it had opened in five states (Georgia, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois and Texas) and shutter its telehealth business. The clinics, conveniently located next to a Walmart Supercenter, were designed to give customers easier access to care by providing a range of health services all under one roof. The company launched the initiative in ..read more

Sarah Zheng and Josh Xiao | Bloomberg News (TNS) The U.S. push to ban TikTok marks a new phase in its approach to data security that could eventually impact everything from electric vehicles to health care, reshaping trade relations between the world’s biggest economies. President Joe Biden last week signed legislation barring Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd’s ownership of TikTok, a move aimed at preventing Beijing from accessing troves of data that the video sharing app collects from its 170 million American users. The law takes a page out of China’s playbook, viewing the potential misuse of dat ..read more

”Survey says” looks at various rankings and scorecards judging geographic locations while noting these grades are best seen as a mix of artful interpretation and data. Buzz: Californians are increasingly worried about the economy, with their collective optimism falling to nearly a two-year low. Source: My trusty spreadsheet analyzed the Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence indexes for the state, which are based on regular polling of shoppers. We also peeked at the national results and optimism scores for two California economic rivals: Texas and Florida. Topline California’s co ..read more