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Health worker strike set at SM-UCLA Medical Center

MID CITY — Patient care workers at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center will join thousands of others at UC hospitals across the state in a two-day strike to protest what they say are unsafe staffing levels while administrators rake in fat-cat salaries and pensions. Members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees union will walk off the job between 4 a.m. Tuesday until 4 a.m. Thursday at both the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and the Ronald Reagan [...]
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Featured News
New state standards may cut advanced math course

SMMUSD HDQTRS — A proposed shift in the progression of math classes at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District could eliminate the highest level course taught in the district, which some parents feel put students at a disadvantage when applying to top-tier universities. The class, Calculus DE, focuses on multivariate calculus, a class not often taught until students go to college. To take it in high school, a student must have taken algebra in seventh grade, a year earlier than [...]
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Education Featured News Public
To cash in or let it ride?

It seems to me that a lot of people that buy and sell stocks are a lot like the people that go to the racetrack. When you are at the track you are investing — some call it betting — on a short-term result, which horse comes in first in the next few minutes. Of course you do your research. How did this jockey (the CEO) do in the past? How did the horse (the enterprise) perform recently? How is [...]
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After The Bell Columns Opinion
Remembering those who sacrificed so much

As we close in on Memorial Day, the time America has set aside to honor the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom, a controversy rages. Politicians are using yet another tragedy to once again try to make political hay for their party. The Republican Party is aghast that on-duty diplomats were killed in Benghazi. The Democrats are fighting back by saying that attacks on our embassies have occurred under both parties’ control of the White [...]
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Columns Opinion What's the Point?
Letter: Demise of Downtown

Editor: To the City Council, commissioners and city staff, Winston Churchill simply described “civilization” as the subordination of the ruling class to the will of the people. In this regard, the development agreement process has been more like a game of monopoly than one of environmental and urban planning for the benefit of the community. What’s been proposed and supported to date is going in the wrong direction. (Will it take rallies and bonfires of the 1960s free speech movement [...]
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Letters Opinion
Calling for rain

Dear EarthTalk: Could it really be true that we are in the midst of the worst drought in the United States since the 1930s? — Deborah Lynn, Needham, Mass. Indeed we are embroiled in what many consider the worst drought in the U.S. since the “Dust Bowl” days of the 1930s that rendered some 50 million acres of farmland barely usable. Back then, drought conditions combined with poor soil management practices to force some 2.5 million Americans away from [...]
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Columns Earth Talk Opinion
Curtains for the Civic

The future of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was debated at a community meeting held at the Main Library last Monday. The late 1950s era, multi-purpose facility has been operating in the red for years. City officials plan to mothball it on June 30 then decide whether to renovate or demolish it The auditorium was a major show place when it opened in 1958. It hosted the Academy Awards from 1961 through 1968 and was a major regional concert and [...]
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Columns Featured My Write Opinion
Road advisories

Expo Light Rail Line Project Note the following activities: 1. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and 17th streets: Expect westbound and eastbound lane closures during day time hours. Expect reduction of travel lanes during the non-peak day at Ninth Street at Colorado and 10th Street at Colorado. 2. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets: Night time (9 p.m.-6 a.m.) Colorado Avenue closure, through Thursday. 3. Olympic Boulevard between 20th Street and Cloverfield Boulevard: Westbound and eastbound lane closures during non-peak [...]
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Featured News Transportation
Letter: Why so large?

Editor: I’m a 34-year Santa Monica resident. Does the Miramar really need to expand its size to over 500,000 square feet to make a profit or achieve its goals as a business? To put that into context for everyone, that’s about the size of Santa Monica Place, on a much smaller land parcel. We haven’t seen a plan that proposes a lower density that’s in keeping with the LUCE and the current version of the Downtown Specific Plan — without [...]
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Letters Opinion
Q-Line: Cash from overseas

The Santa Monica Convention & Visitors Bureau held its fourth annual Travel and Tourism Summit last week during which they released figures that showed tourists and the hotels they stay in pumped $1.5 billion into the local economy in 2012. Of that, $48.4 million went directly into City Hall’s General Fund, which supports basic city services. This week, Q-Line asked: A handful of hotels are being planned for Downtown, but some residents are working to put a stop [...]
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Opinion Qline
PCH safety study finds 90 areas of concern

MALIBU — There are over 90 existing conditions targeted as potential safety concerns along Pacific Coast Highway that the city of Malibu should address, according to a months-long, $375,000 engineering study of Malibu’s 27 miles of PCH. While some of the possible safety issues were “pervasive,” meaning they occur along the entire corridor of PCH in Malibu, other problems were location-specific. Areas of particular concern included the intersections of Las Flores Canyon Road, the Malibu Pier and Paradise Cove Road, [...]
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Featured News Transportation
Congressman can’t stomach 405 delay

DOWNTOWN Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) fired off a letter Friday to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood asking him to investigate delays in the construction of the Interstate-405 Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project. The project, which had previously been scheduled to be completed by spring 2013, won’t be finished until fall 2014, according to reports. “I am asking Secretary LaHood to investigate the delays and do everything in his power to speed completion of the project,” Waxman said. The $317 million [...]
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Briefs Featured News
8-year term for Bulger girlfriend upheld

BOSTON — The longtime girlfriend of reputed gangster James “Whitey” Bulger lost her bid to reduce the eight-year prison sentence she received for helping Bulger during his 16 years as a fugitive. A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that it found no basis to change the sentence that Catherine Greig received after she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud and conspiracy to commit identity fraud. The panel included retired [...]
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Crime Featured News
Tinga offers bold flavors in a familiar place

It probably came as a surprise to many locals when Renee’s Courtyard Cafe closed its doors for good a couple of months back. But then again Santa Monica’s landscape is undergoing some serious transformations. With the exception of Chez Jay, it seems like no place is safe from new development or trendier competition. Renee’s did sadly seem antiquated when pitted against some of the hot new bars and restaurants hitting the Santa Monica scene. And one eatery that exemplifies this [...]
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Featured Food Life Tour de Feast
Treating processed food like Big Tobacco

Are food companies to blame for the rise in obesity in America by creating specially formulated junk food that is addictive? According to the Feb. 20 article in the New York Times, food companies are being compared to tobacco companies. They are advertising and marketing to children, they hire food scientists and psychologists to formulate a more physically and psychologically addictive food and they target the poor and uneducated. The last statement I have a moral issue with; food companies [...]
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Featured Food The Better Option
Head in the sand

Editor: The Torrance, Calif. man’s rebuke (“Obama gets a free pass,” Letters to the Editor, May 15) to Jack Neworth’s column “Bush painted U.S. into corner,” May 3, Laughing Matters, is an example of someone whose head has been stuck in the sand and can’t — or won’t — see the obvious. Mr. Neworth’s column simply pointed out the deficiencies in the Bush administration. I should think it would be obvious to everyone. It is appalling that the barrages of [...]
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Letters Opinion