ORANGE COUNTY REJECTS MAPPING DANGEROUS DOGS: SANTA ANA (AP) — Orange County has rejected a proposal to create an online map pinpointing dangerous dogs in more than a dozen cities.
The Orange County Register says the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday against the proposed website, while agreeing to revise an ordinance that will rank dangerous dogs on a three-tiered system.
Animal Care Services director Ryan Drabek says a dog that attacks another animal or a person will be quarantined while investigators determine the factors that went into the attack and evaluate the dog's punishment.
Drabek will have the power to automatically euthanize a dog after its owner has gone through a court hearing and the dog is determined to be on level three.
Supervisors said they voted against the online map because they were concerned about stigmatizing residents.
RICHMOND MAN CONVICTED IN GANG RAPE OF LESBIAN: MARTINEZ (AP) — A 36-year-old man has been convicted of orchestrating the gang rape of a Northern California woman who was targeted in part because she is a lesbian.
The Contra Costa Times reported Wednesday that jurors deliberated for about eight hours before finding Richmond resident Humberto Salvador guilty of rape in concert, kidnapping and other charges.
The jury's verdicts included hate crime enhancements because of the role the victim's sexual orientation played in the attack on a Richmond street five years ago.
The victim, now 33, testified earlier this month that during the assault Salvador kept asking if she liked men.
She also said that he encouraged two teenagers who were with him to rape her as well before they left her naked and bleeding in the carport of an abandoned building.
TONSIL SURGERY PATIENT TO REMAIN ON LIFE SUPPORT: OAKLAND (AP) — A Northern California hospital has agreed to keep on life support a 13-year-old girl declared brain-dead after having surgery to remove her tonsils.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports officials at Oakland Children's Hospital agreed Tuesday not to remove Jahi McMath's ventilator after the girl's family served a cease-and-desist order demanding she be kept breathing.
Tests have measured no brain activity.
The hospital said Sunday it would conduct an investigation after the girl went into cardiac arrest and died, before being brought back by hospital staff.
Doctors said the surgery would help with Jahi's sleep apnea, but there were complications during her recovery last week and blood poured out of her nose.
The newspaper says the next steps remain unclear, and privacy laws leave the hospital unable to comment on the case.
5 FIRMS SEEK BIDS FOR NEXT HIGH-SPEED RAIL SECTION: SACRAMENTO (AP) — California's High-Speed Rail Authority says five construction teams have submitted qualifications that could allow them to bid on the second, 60-mile phase of the rail project.
Rail Authority CEO Jeff Morales announced the applications Wednesday from five U.S.-based consortiums. If their qualifications are approved, the firms could bid to perform engineering and construction work on the leg between Fresno and Bakersfield.
The contract is expected to be worth $1.5 billion to $2 billion, depending on the bids.
The bullet train project has hit a series of legal and regulatory setbacks in recent weeks, but officials say they hope to break ground in early 2014.
Among the potential bidders released Wednesday is Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons, which won the nearly $1 billion design-build contract for the first 28-mile leg of the project.
HEALTH EXCHANGE FIXING MAILED ELIGIBILITY NOTICES: SACRAMENTO (AP) — The agency that runs California's health insurance exchange is scrambling to correct a technical problem that left blank spaces in eligibility notices mailed to nearly 114,000 households, leading to consumer confusion just days ahead of the application deadline.
A Covered California spokeswoman said Wednesday that the botched notices were mailed between Nov. 22 and Dec. 7. They went to people who had signed up under the state's rollout of the federal Affordable Care Act and were deemed eligible for coverage.
In some cases, the notices said the applicant was eligible for coverage but not eligible for something else that was unspecified, with only a blank space at the end of the sentence.
The forms also omitted tax credit amounts and whether the person was eligible for Medicaid.
