The most powerful voices in the state's recent $11 billion water talks might have been two water districts – one speaking for half the state's population and the other for just 600 San Joaquin Valley farmers.

Furious over fee increases and emotionally charged by the arrests of 53 fellow students, a few hundred UC Davis students demanded action – and accountability – Friday from administrators and the campus police chief.

An anti-tax recall movement against Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, has failed to gather enough valid signatures to go to the ballot, the California secretary of state's office announced Friday.

University of California Berkeley students protesting a 32 percent increase in student fees have barricaded themselves in part of a campus building.

Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Thursday ordered the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to quit interfering with health care benefits for federal judicial employees just because they are married to a person of the same sex.

Pay for California's top elected officials will be slashed by 18 percent next month, one year earlier than expected, to abide by an opinion issued Thursday from Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina must be sharing speechwriters, maybe someone from their tech pasts.

LOS ANGELES – The governing board of the University of California approved a $2,500 student fee increase Thursday after two days of tense campus protests across the state.

When Mac Taylor, the Legislature's chief budget adviser, declared this week that the state budget enacted just four months ago is already billions of dollars upside down, no one in the Capitol should have been surprised.

California teamed with Sacramento County officials Thursday to launch a first-in-the-state multi-agency task force to investigate fraud in In-Home Supportive Services.

Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully today unveiled a new multi-agency task force to investigate fraud in In-Home Supportive Services and serve as a potential model for other California counties to follow.

SACRAMENTO -- Pay for California's top elected officials will be slashed by 18% next month, one year earlier than expected, to abide by an opinion Thursday from Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Sacramento real estate developer and philanthropist Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis appears headed for confirmation as the next ambassador to the Republic of Hungary after winning strong backing from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

CalPERS' president, promising to clean up an influence-peddling scandal at the big pension fund, raised the prospect Wednesday of publicly reprimanding board members and employees who violate ethical standards.

Amid rowdy protests, a committee of the University of California regents voted to raise student fees by 32 percent in two steps over the next year, bringing the annual cost of a UC education above $10,000 not including room, board or books.

California once again will look under sofa cushions and scour every sector of state government to find another $20.7 billion to balance its budget over the next 19 months.

A judge ruled Wednesday an assistant federal public defender's spouse must be compensated for health care benefits withheld since July 2008 because the couple are gay.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, is planning to bring the lower house back into session next month to vote on legislation she hopes will allow California schools to compete for a piece of $4.3 billion in federal “Race to the Top” stimulus funds.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, with friends Franz Hoermann and Peter Urdl, visits his former home in Thal, Austria, on Wednesday.

More grim news for state workers: California's general fund faces a $21 billion deficit through the middle of 2011. The red ink could flow for years, according to a forecast by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

Two California prison system inmates have died from possible H1N1-related complications, officials said Wednesday.

Winning strong backing from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sacramento real estate developer and philanthropist Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis promised today to focus on economic and energy issues if she's confirmed as President Barack Obama's ambassador to the Republic of Hungary.

A trove of some 6,500 letters to and from renowned California conservationist John Muir is now available on the Internet.

California faces annual budget deficits of $20 billion even while assuming state employees would receive no salary increases through 2014-15, according to a forecast issued today by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

A panel of University of California regents has approved a plan to raise student fees 32 percent over the next year, bringing annual cost of a UC education to more than $10,000 - not including room, board and books.

A big chunk of the money that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger collected last year to finance a redistricting ballot measure came from a Florida man now being accused of running a massive Ponzi-style fraud in Florida.

Sylvia Zedlar's left leg was nearly severed when a car struck her in south Sacramento County in 2002. Now, because of state budget cuts, she is among about 9,000 frail and mostly elderly Californians who must pay, on average, $200 to $250 more each month for care.

Despite revenue projections that are holding relatively firm, California faces a $21 billion state budget shortfall over the next year and half, according to sources who have been briefed on a projection from the Legislature's budget analyst.

The holiday season begins at the Capitol with the precarious arrival of the official state Christmas tree Tuesday on the west lawn.