East Los Angeles Gazette

A start up called Holacode is on a mission to give deportees and returnees coding skills to help them land good-paying jobs as engineers. Holacode is five month long coding bootcamp located in Mexico City and funded by Mexican angel investors. Holacode is modeled after Hack Reactor, which is a San Francisco coding school. The students also learn soft skills, like job interviewing.... http://eastlagazette.net//start-up-helps-deportees-and-re/ #Holacode #Coding #Deportees #Returnees

According to a state audit, Compton officials overpaid themselves, charged questionable trips on city-issued credit cards and failed to safeguard taxpayer money, which resulted in a staffer stealing millions of dollars over several years. Due to the city of Compton’s weak financial oversight and overspending, the city’s general fund surplus of $22.4 million a decade ago turned into a deficit of $42.7 million just three years later. In 2014, officials adopted a plan to repay the debt, but the deficit still increased by $6.4 million the following year. Compton received failing marks in 71 out of the 79 measures assessing internal accounting and administrative controls. http://eastlagazette.net//state-audit-finds-that-compton-/ #Compton #StateAudit #Finances #TaxpayerMoney

In late February, the City Council of Malibu decided to ban its roughly 65 restaurants and food vendors from offering or selling plastic straws, stirrers, and utensils to customers. Businesses in Malibu have until June 1 to swap out the plastic items for ones made of paper, wood or bamboo. Diners are also being encouraged to use reusable straws and cutlery made of metal or glass.Malibu’s next ban may be on plastic lids. http://eastlagazette.net//malibus-battle-versus-plastic-c/ #Malibu #Plastic #Ban #Environment

A study from Stanford University shows that the extreme weather that brought record floods and damaging wildfires to the United States in the past year is just the beginning of what’s to come. According to the study, global warming has led to increasingly harsh spells of heat and drought as well as rain and snow being up to five times as likely to occur globally in the future. The study can offer a chance for cities and nations to prepare for the climatic turmoil. http://eastlagazette.net//stanford-professor-finds-that-t/ #Study #StanfordUniversity #Weather

In January, the Los Angeles Police Department released the results of a new demographic analysis that reveals which groups of Los Angeles residents are most likely to end up the victims of a violent death in the city. According to the results, young men from minority, low-income neighborhoods suffer disproportionately from the impacts of deadly violence, which homicide detectives have known all too well. Over 90 percent of homicide victims in Los Angeles were black or Latino last year. Most of those homicide victims were poor and lacked college degrees. http://eastlagazette.net//lapd-demographic-analysis-revea/ #LAPD #LA #Homicides #Victims

The Califonria State Legislature will be taking up come key legislative measures in the coming days: Should California farmworkers have the right to vote on their ownlabor contract? Additionally, if the farmworkers are abandoned by a union, do farmworkers deserve the right to vote for new representation? If an election is deemed tainted, do farmworkers have a right to a new vote? ... Jerry Brown California Senate Democrats CA Senate Republican Caucus California Assembly Republicans California Assembly Democrats #labor #working #AssemblyLaborandEmployment

In February, state water regulators met to consider making the water wasting rules that were in effect during the last drought, such as carrying fines of up to $500 per violation, permanent. Members of the State Water Resources Control Board and representatives of several cities and water agencies indicated general support for the proposal when they met in February, but no final vote was made. Gov. Brown has endorsed making the rules a permanent part of California law, even when the state is not in a drought. http://eastlagazette.net//state-officials-considering-500/ #Drought #Fines #Water

Interesting fact - Not only does each banana store a variety of vitamins and minerals, but also water. Vitamin B6 - 0.5 mg Manganese - 0.3 mg Vitamin C - 9 mg... Potassium - 450 mg Dietary Fiber - 3g Protein - 1 g Magnesium - 34 mg Folate - 25.0 mcg Riboflavin - 0.1 mg Niacin - 0.8 mg Vitamin A - 81 IU Iron - 0.3 mg California California Agriculture journal California Women for Agriculture California Department of Food and Agriculture BANANAS California Farm Bureau Federation Western Growers Davis Farmers Market Farm to Fork Capital of America

Near the old Long Beach City Hall there is a new City Hall being constructed that is part of a nearly $900 million makeover of the area. The old city hall high rise building was built in 1976 and is the centerpiece of an obsolete civic center that the city is trying to invigorate. The makeover of the area will introduce apartments, stores, restaurants and possibly a hotel. The project also happens to be the largest public-private development of its kind on the West Coast, which is expected to serve as a model for other cities in the nation. http://eastlagazette.net//long-beach-civic-center-is-gett/ #DowntownLongBeach #CivicCenter #Renovation

Some possible good news for the city of Hawthorne, UPS has ordered more Boeing 747s and Hawthorne happens to be the site of Boeing’s fuselage plant. This order also means that Boeing Co.’s famed 747 airplanes will get a slightly longer lease on life in the cargo transport industry. In February, UPS ordered 14 Boeing 747-8 cargo jets to handle the accelerating demand for its air transport services. http://eastlagazette.net//ups-ordered-more-boeing-747s-wh/ #Hawthrone #Boeing #UPS

In February, a bright orange machine that looks like a parking meter was installed in Grand Park to help collect donations for homeless outreach. The homeless population has been increasing dramatically in Los Angeles and the donation meter in Grand Park is one of six meters installed across downtown Los Angeles. The meters will collect donations that will support the City County Community program, which brings outreach workers into the streets to help homeless people. The d...onation meters were donated by the IPS Group and the machines accept spare change as well as credit card donations. The six meters will also generate money through sponsorships that cost $3,500 annually. http://eastlagazette.net//los-angeles-grand-park-got-a-ne/ #DonationMeters #GrandPark #DTLA

Last month, the Los Angeles International Airport began a three-week test to see if facial recognition technology could help speed up the check in process. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) installed two new gates at the Tom Bradley International Terminal that required passengers to run their passports and their boarding passes over a scanner before they could proceed. The technology used at the new gates confirms that the names on the passports match the names on the boarding passes. A camera installed in the gates snaps a photo of the traveler and uses facial matching algorithms to compare it to the image that is pulled from the microchip embedded in newer passports. http://eastlagazette.net//lax-testing-facial-recognition-/ #LAX #FacialRecognition #TSA #Technology

Los Angeles has been faced with several lawsuits over bicycle crashes due to damaged streets. The city paid out over $19 million last year to cyclists and their families for injuries and deaths on local streets. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of city records, the amount is nearly four times higher than any other year during the last decade. Apparently, fixing the most damaged streets is so costly that the city has instead focused on preventing salvageable roads fro...m sliding into disrepair. The crash that led to the largest payout of the past year, a $7.5-million settlement with the 62-year-old cyclist who became a quadriplegic, happened in a bike lane that was installed on a broken roadway that was left in poor shape despite repeated complaints. According to a consultant who studied the city’s street infrastructure programs for the city, Los Angeles suffers from a lack of coordination and undoing and redoing of work as a result. http://eastlagazette.net//los-angeles-has-been-facing-inc/ #Street #Repair #Lawsuit #Bicycle #Bike

A year ago, Governor Jerry Brown lifted California’s drought emergency status after a wet winter that ended a historic 2013-2017 drought, and the state eventually ended his 25 percent mandatory conservation order. Now, as the state plunges back into a drought, the overall water use has been climbing in Southern California, which has state and regional water managers considering permanently reinstating some watering bans and conservation programs. Water use in Southern Califor...nia increased 3 percent in December, compared to the same month in 2013 before mandatory conservation. Apparently, many of the greatest offenders that are using too much water are from well-off communities that are more worried about keeping their lawns alive than conserving water. According to the state water board, the average residential user in one Malibu water district used 255 gallons a day, which is three times the U.S. average of 83 gallons per person per day. Residents of lower-income communities, who usually have less lawn, contribute a lot when it comes to water conservation. For example, residents of East Los Angeles used an average of 42 gallons a day and people in Huntington Park used just 34 gallons a day, according to water officials. http://eastlagazette.net//californians-water-use-is-climb/ #Water #Drought #Conservation