CALIFORNIA

A California judge has ruled to allow a group of lawyers with connections to Oakland City Hall to represent alleged Nortenos gang members who are facing a city lawsuit that seeks to prevent them from hanging out in the city's Fruitvale neighborhood.

The state of California has agreed to settle a predatory lending lawsuit which it has filed against two former Countrywide Financial Corp. executives for $6.5 million.

Arianna Huffington launched the news site in 2005 more as a commentary outlet and an alternative to other conservative news sites by inviting Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to blog. Now with the takeover by AOL, Huffington will become the boss of AOL group's editorial content.

According to her it was lent to her.

Oakland officials have been warned by federal authorities not to allow large-scale marijuana farms in the city as it violates U.S. laws and could lead to a crackdown on the growers and their backers.

The Peace Corps has released its 2011 rankings of universities and colleges in the United States, in terms of volunteers from these institutions who live and work in foreign countries around the world.

Chris Mihm, former Los Angeles Laker, has listed his home in the professional-sports-star enclave Manhattan Beach, California, for sale at $2.099 million.

Free internet porn is not illegal and is not competing with other premium websites, who charge a bomb to have access to premium sites, according to a California Appeals Court, which has dismissed a case against one free site, Redtube.com, as an unfair attack on free speech.

The youngest son of imprisoned Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling has been found dead in his apartment in Santa Ana, Calif., according several media sources.

Calling AT&T's billing system a rigged gas pump, the a court filing says that AT&T systematically overstates its users data transactions.

Applications for jobless benefits in the U.S. fell more than expected for the week ended Jan. 29, following a sharp increase in the previous week.

The A|X Armani Exchange Spring 2011 advertising campaign, Style Festival is regarded as an adventure of sound and style, evoking the independence and free-spirited world of music that speaks directly to the A|X Generation.

Actor Corbin Bernsen has purchased a 75-year-old tudor-style house in Valley Village with his wife, actress and interior designer Amanda Pays.

Police have taken into custody a school employee in connection with a shooting that seriously wounded an adult this morning at an elementary school in Placerville, California.

The search company unveils a new tablet focused operating system and a browser-based version of the Android market place.

Toyota Motor Co (7203.T) said on Tuesday that it had offered buyout packages in a bid to reduce the management staff at its U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance, California.

Sixty-nine per cent of investors say Facebook is overvalued after Goldman Sachs invested $450 million in a deal that valued the company at $50 billion, according to the quarterly poll of 1,000 Bloomberg customers who are investors, traders or analysts.

NASA's Kepler space observatory has discovered more than 1,000 possible new planets outside the solar system, marking a watershed in the search for habitable alien planets.

NASA said its Near-Earth Object WISE mission has discovered 20 comets and more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs).

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) backs California student's right to freedom of speech after Mesa Verde High suspended him for calling teacher fat on Facebook.

Gap Inc will name its top outlet executive Art Peck as the new head of Gap North America as it looks to speed up a flagging turnaround at the apparel brand, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.