“Google’s nine-figure tax break package to bring a computer center to Lenoir is raising questions about the role commissioned consultants play in pumping up the packages. Lawmakers, some of whom voted for legislation that benefited Google, plan to investigate whether companies should disclose the fees they pay the consultants and whether they should register with the state, like paid lobbyists. Google’s lead negotiator in landing tax breaks that could be worth up to $260 million over 30 years has been a commission-based consultant on similar deals in the past… Google said tax break negotiations were handled in-house, by Rhett Weiss, a lawyer. Weiss is the founder of DEALTEK, a California-based company that specializes in development, expansion and location strategies. The company still exists, and Weiss is listed as the chief executive. But he said Monday in an interview with the Observer that he is a salaried employee of Google.”

“The FBI launched an investigation Wednesday after a hacker broke into the website of a Southern California organization of Islamic religious leaders, leaving an expletive-laced message against Muslims. The person attacked the website of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California late Tuesday, said the group’s executive director, Shakeel Syed. The Anaheim-based group is a coalition of imams and religious leaders from 75 mosques. Syed said the site was shut down but is expected to be in operation today. ‘It was very nasty graffiti. It’s another incident and proof that Islamophobia is alive and healthy,’ Syed said.”

“According to a Wall Street Journal report, a set of media giants that includes News Corp., Viacom, Sony, NBC Universal, Time Warner, and Disney are accusing Google of being in cahoots with DVD pirates by virtue of the AdSense relationship with two sites whose owners stand accused of inducing others to infringe copyright. Brandon Drury and Luke Sample ran EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com, both AdSense partners, from 2003 to 2005, offering a repackaged BitTorrent client and access to a P2P search system. According to the Journal, documents in a related civil suit show that when AdSense noticed high traffic to the sites, it assigned an account representative, who helpfully suggested the site owners buy search engine advertising on queries such as “bootleg movie download,” “pirated” and “download harry potter movie.” Google was paid more than $800,000 for the ads. The Journal reports that Google execs huddled with studio reps on a conference call Friday to reiterate their policy against ads promoting piracy and promise additional steps, including removing certain ads, creating a list of approved advertisers and stopping the sale of piratey-sounding keywords.”

“Facing a backlash from scholars worldwide, UC Irvine says it will drop a lawsuit against the widow and children of professor and philosopher Jacques Derrida, the acclaimed founder of the intellectual movement called deconstruction… Derrida, a Frenchman who taught part time at UCI from 1986 to 2003, developed an influential and bewildering intellectual discipline that questions the notion of absolute truth. In November, UCI sued Derrida’s estate in federal court, saying his family had refused to relinquish manuscripts and correspondence that Derrida promised in writing to donate to the university.”

“As much as Apple wants to focus on its future with a new name and gadgets introduced Tuesday at Macworld, federal investigators are unlikely to overlook its past stock-option practices… legal experts say Apple’s revelations last month about documents from a board meeting that never occurred, Chief Executive Steve Jobs’ fame and the departure of two key executives make this a case regulators must review carefully. ‘It’s not an advantage to be prominent in an SEC investigation — in fact, it’s a disadvantage,” said Richard M. Phillips, a senior partner for K&L Gates in San Francisco’. “

The California Association of Realtors is suing Blue Shield of California, claiming the health insurance provider canceled its members’ coverage without proper cause. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, stems from a dispute that arose in December, when Blue Shield sent the association a letter notifying that it would not renew coverage for about 5,500 realtors and their families – about 8,000 people – after the association’s current contract with the health insurer expires May 31. Blue Shield’s reason for this action was because the number of members signed up for coverage had fallen below a set threshold required under their contract with the association. The association also filed an injunction seeking to stop Blue Shield from dropping coverage for its members. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for next month.

“State Attorney General Jerry Brown’s invitation to major automakers to try to resolve a pair of dueling lawsuits over vehicle emissions and global warming got a cold shoulder from the companies. Their response, in a letter to Brown: We’d be happy to talk about dismissing the state’s damage suit against us, but don’t bother bringing up our suit to overturn California’s global-warming law… Brown was undaunted. ‘I’m very pleased that they are willing to engage in conversation,’ he said today. ‘I’d be prepared to talk with the lawyers about their lawsuits along with ours. I still intend to meet with the CEOs. I don’t think they will wish to refrain from having an honest dialogue, because the issue is too important.’ “

The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs, “helped broker a film director’s employment contract with Pixar that included a large stock options grant that had a particularly beneficial date… The Wall Street Journal said the grant was part of a 2001 contract between Pixar and John Lasseter, and carried the lowest share price of the previous year on a date more than three months before the signing of the contract. Jobs, who was at the time chairman and CEO of Pixar, signed on behalf of the company. The Journal said it’s not clear whether Jobs had a role in choosing the prior grant date, one of several awarded by the Emeryville-based company at yearly lows.”

The Los Angeles Times has reported that 24 year old blogger Josh Wolf, who has been in jail for 171 days, is now the longest incarcerated Journalist in U.S. History. Wolf defied a federal grand jury’s order in July to hand over raw footage of anarchists clashing with police in San Francisco. While he claimed 1st amendment protection, a Judge found him in contempt of court and ordered him to the federal detention facility in Dublin, California. A police officer was injured in the anti-globalization protest that Wolf filmed in July 2005, and outgoing U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan’s office was investigating whether protesters tried to set fire to a police car. A statement attributed to Wolf recently was posted on his blog: “If the U.S. attorney can compel journalists to testify about what they’ve learned through their work and to force them to turn over their unpublished materials, then not only will the public be unable to trust reporters, but journalists themselves will become de facto deputies and investigators”.

Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have largely taken over the production and distribution of crystal methamphetamine in California, according to a report in the Arizona Republic. “As the raw materials become harder to get, small-time cooks are being put out of business. The Mexican cartels have rushed to fill the demand with California-based superlabs, which can produce more than 10 pounds of meth a day” the report said, “less sophisticated cooks are usually caught when neighbors notice chemical smells or suspicious people hanging around at odd hours. But the Mexican cartels have built their superlabs shacks in remote areas of California’s Central Valley”. The cartels’ labs in Mexico and California now produce about 80 percent of the meth in the United States, according to a November report by the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center.

“The number of Los Angeles County jail inmates identified as suspected illegal immigrants nearly doubled in the past year, according to a report in today’s Los Angeles Times. The sharp increase in potential deportees- from 3,050 in 2005 to 5,829 last year, is believed to be the result of more screening, rather than an increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the jails. “The benefit is these people who are committing crimes aren’t being released onto our streets to commit more crimes. They are being removed from the United States,” said Jim Hayes, director of the Los Angeles field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“A San Gabriel Valley bank has found itself the focus of unwanted attention after an international manhunt was launched for one of its Taiwanese owners following the collapse of several of his family’s Asian holdings… For more than a month Taiwan authorities have been attempting to arrest Wang, founder of the Rebar Group, and his wife, Chin Shih-ying. They fled Taiwan in late December as news broke of the failure of several companies, including the Chinese Bank in Taipei. Prosecutors in Taipei issued warrants on Jan, 15 for the pair on charges of embezzlement, insider trading and fraud.”

“California Attorney General Jerry Brown said Thursday he will move ahead with a lawsuit that accuses the six largest American and Japanese automakers of damaging the environment by producing vehicles that contribute to global warming. ‘We think we have a solid case, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously’, said Brown, who had expressed ambivalence about the suit when he campaigned for attorney general last year. ‘The ultimate objective is … to prevent the catastrophic consequences of this global warming problem.’ At the same time, Brown offered to meet with the automakers — Chrysler Motors Corp., General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America Inc., American Honda Motor Co. and Nissan North America Inc. — to discuss ways to resolve the lawsuit and address climate change.”

“The former Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s campaign did not commit a crime when it downloaded an audio file of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saying Cubans and Puerto Ricans are feisty because of their mixed black and Latino blood, the state police said Friday. The campaign of former state Treasurer Phil Angelides said it obtained the file from a public portion of the Republican governor’s Web site, but Schwarzenegger’s staff said the audio files were obtained without authorization from a password-protected area and asked the Police to investigate. The California Highway Patrol concluded in a report released Friday that the administration itself put the recording on a Web site devoted to Schwarzenegger’s speeches, and that a password was not necessary to access the file. Cathy Calfo, who was Angelides’ campaign manager, said in an e-mail statement that the investigation ‘confirms what we stated from the outset: The governor’s taped remarks were publicly available on a publicly funded state Web site.’ She called the CHP investigation ‘phony’ and said it was launched ‘to intimidate.’ “

The Placer County Sheriff’s Department, with assistance from the U.S. Secret Service have arrested a Sacramento and Orange County resident- Tien Nguyen and charged him with operating a sophisticated international identity theft ring. The stolen information was supplied by criminals in Romania who used pop-up ads and “phishing” to acquire sensitive information such as passwords and credit card details. Nguyen then allegedly used computer software and a card reader to “upload” the victim’s identifying information to various magnetic strip cards that could be used for purchases. Authorities believe that Nguyen supplied Stefani Ruland and six others with stolen personal information, which they used to fraudulently obtain Wal-Mart credit cards. They then purchased more than $400,000 in merchandise and gift cards from Wal-Mart stores around the State. All but one of the suspects have pleaded guilty to charges and Nguyen is being held at the Placer County Jail on $1 million bail.

“The California Department of Justice concealed tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts with lobbyists, consultants, legal firms _ even couriers and parking garages _ in violation of its own confidentiality rules, an Associated Press investigation has found. An internal agency review.. found information on scores of contracts, many of them no-bid contracts, was erroneously labeled ‘confidential’ and omitted from computerized state records, shielding the agreements from public view”

Apple Computer has been ordered by the Santa Clara County court to pay $700,000 to bloggers it charged with violating California’s trade secrets law. The company had claimed that bloggers weren’t real journalists and thus were not entitled to First Amendment rights. An Appeals Court strongly sided with the journalists and the court has now ordered Apple to pay for all costs associated with their defense, including an 2.2 times multiplier assessed as a penalty.