Los Angeles Times: Multiple Fires Erupt As Heat Wave Descends On Southern California 
Several wildfires ignited across Southern California on Tuesday — including one that torched several buildings in Riverside County — highlighting the dangerous conditions the region faces during this week’s heat wave. (Gupta, 7/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Residents Furious After Refinery Spews Dust On Homes — Again
Anger and frustration mounted in Martinez on Tuesday after the local refinery belched up dust that settled on the ground in nearby neighborhoods — the second such incident in eight months. The material, released around 8:30 a.m. by the Martinez Refinery Company, was petroleum coke dust, a black powder that resembles soot, according to regional officials. (Neelakandan, 7/11)

East Bay Times: Martinez Oil Refinery At Odds With City Over Safety Releases ‘Coke Dust’ That Settles On Neighborhoods
According to health officials, the company reported Tuesday’s discharge through the county’s Community Warning System and identified the material as coke dust, a byproduct of the refining process. It was classified as a Level 1 release that was not expected to pose serious health concerns for the community. “I’m cautiously optimistic that it will stay at a Level 1,” said Martinez Mayor Brianne Zorn. Zorn recently told the community that the refinery, a subsidiary of PBF Energy, would need to reestablish trust with local leadership and the city’s residents after the last release. (Hurd and McCarthy, 7/11)

The Oaklandside: Oakland Coal Battle Goes To Trial
The developer behind a controversial coal terminal claims over $148 million in lost profits. Oakland says residents’ health and safety are at risk. (Wolfe, 7/11)

The Bakersfield Californian: Adventist Launches Fundraising Effort For NICU Remote Monitoring System 
Adventist Health Bakersfield is kicking off a fundraising campaign to pay for a remote monitoring system allowing family members to keep an eye on patients in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. (7/11)

Fresno Bee: Fresno City College To Offer Dental Hygiene Bachelor’s Degree 
Fresno City College will join the small – but growing – pool of California community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees, starting in fall 2024. The program will be in dental hygiene, a subject in which the school has offered an associate’s degree for over 40 years, said the college’s dean of allied health, Lorraine Smith, in an interview Thursday. (Morano, 7/12)

Vacaville Reporter: Alleged Scams Cost California Doctor, Pain Clinics $11.4 Million In Settlement
A California physician and his medical practice, which once operated 29 pain clinics statewide, have agreed to pay nearly $11.4 million to resolve allegations of false claims being submitted to federal and state health insurance programs for medically unnecessary procedures and care, a U.S. Attorney in Sacramento said Tuesday. (Bammer, 7/12)

The Bakersfield Californian: Reimagined Hope House: One Possible Answer To A Difficult Problem 
Close to 100 people braved the heat Tuesday to celebrate the grand opening of a new partnership between The Open Door Network and Kern Family Health Care in Old Town Kern. (Mayer, 7/11)

The Wall Street Journal: CVS Caremark Delays Block Customers From Their Prescriptions 
Patients whose drug benefits are covered by CVS’s Caremark business couldn’t get their prescriptions processed for many hours starting Monday morning, leaving some stranded without medications. The CVS Health unit, which is the biggest U.S. drug-benefit manager and handles the prescriptions of millions of Americans, said in a letter sent to pharmacists Monday that it was experiencing an “unexpected system slowdown.” (Mathews, 7/11)

Reuters: Exclusive: Most Patients Using Weight-Loss Drugs Like Wegovy Stop Within A Year, Data Show 
Only about one-third of patients prescribed a popular weight-loss drug like Novo Nordisk’s (NOVOb.CO) Wegovy were still taking it a year later, while total healthcare costs for the group rose sharply, according to an analysis of U.S. pharmacy claims shared with Reuters. The annual cost of overall care for patients prior to taking Wegovy or a similar drug was $12,371, on average, according to the analysis. The full-year cost after starting the medication jumped by 59% to $19,657, on average. (Terhune, 7/11)

CIDRAP: Senate Hearing Highlights Superbug Threats, Solutions 
A panel of experts in infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and drug development today urged US lawmakers to support legislation that could help revitalize the antibiotic development pipeline. At a hearing held by a subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, the experts spoke about the rising threat AMR poses to public health and modern medicine and the role that infection prevention, antibiotic stewardship, diagnostics, and a bolstered infectious disease workforce can play in addressing the problem. (Dall, 7/11)

Sacramento Bee: Homeless Advocates Protest Sacramento Courthouse Clearing
The Sacramento Homeless Union is accusing the presiding judge of Sacramento Superior Court of violating the California Code of Judicial Ethics after he sent a letter last month urging the mayor to clear homeless encampments from the sidewalks near the downtown courthouse. “The release of this letter has had the consequence, whether intended or not, of increasing this climate of fear, this kind of mentality that is all out to get rid of the homeless one way or another,” said Anthony Prince, the attorney representing the homeless union at a Tuesday news conference . “We’re worried as to whether a homeless person can get justice in this courthouse.” (Scullion, 7/11)

VC Star: Oxnard Program To Shelter Homeless From Rain, Cold
Oxnard’s homeless population could be getting some relief from the rain and low temperatures by the end of the year. (Varela, 7/11)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Will Craft New Renter Protections 
It’s a familiar scene in Los Angeles County courtrooms: A landlord shows up to an eviction proceeding with an attorney well versed in housing law. Their tenant shows up alone, with eviction filings full of legal jargon they do not understand. L.A. County supervisors vowed Tuesday to shift the power dynamic, tapping their attorneys to draft an ordinance that would provide certain tenants in unincorporated parts of the county with lawyers during eviction proceedings. The board unanimously approved a motion that gives county staff 10 months to write an ordinance guaranteeing that these at-risk tenants have an attorney helping them navigate the labyrinth of local landlord-tenant law. (Ellis, 7/11)

Times Of San Diego: Local Dermatologist, Son Sentenced For Hoarding N95 Masks, Price Gouging During Pandemic 
A University City dermatologist and her son who hoarded hundreds of thousands of N95 masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and resold them at a high markup were sentenced Tuesday to probation. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mona Zohdi Mofid, 51, bought more than 375,000 N95 respirator masks from medical supply companies between May of 2020 and January of 2021. Her son, 21-year-old Adam Zohdi Mofid, resold the masks for — on average — 300% to 400% of their purchase price, according to prosecutors. (Ireland, 7/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Companies Owe Employees Work-From-Home Costs During COVID Shutdown, Court Rules
After Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his stay-at-home order in March 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, some companies said they wouldn’t compensate employees for work expenses at home because they were just following the state’s orders. But on Tuesday, in a case involving several thousand IBM employees in San Francisco, a state appeals court said the companies would have to pay. (Egelko, 7/11)

CBS News: Deer Spread COVID To Humans Multiple Times, New Research Suggests
Americans have transmitted COVID-19 to wild deer hundreds of times, an analysis of thousands of samples collected from the animals suggests, and people have also caught and spread mutated variants from deer at least three times. The analysis published Monday stems from the first year of a multiyear federal effort to study the virus as it has spread into American wildlife, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS. (Tin, 7/11)

Science: Politicians, Scientists Spar Over Alleged NIH Cover-Up Using COVID-19 Origin Paper 
Two scientists who are coauthors of a 3-year-old article on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic faced down Republican lawmakers today in what might be the most in-depth discussion ever of a scientific paper in the halls of the U.S. Congress. At a House subcommittee hearing, the Republicans asserted that top officials at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) prompted the researchers to write the paper to try and “kill” the theory that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. (Cohen, 7/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Do Accused Fentanyl Dealers Qualify For Public Defenders? S.F. Official Seeks Review After Chronicle Investigation
A San Francisco legislator is asking City Hall to review how officials ensure suspected fentanyl dealers cannot afford a lawyer — and are therefore entitled to taxpayer-funded public defenders — after a Chronicle investigation reported some are reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. (Morris, 7/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. D.A. Brooke Jenkins Weighs In On Her First Year In Office
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins took office last year amid a sea of acrimony after helping to unseat her controversial predecessor, Chesa Boudin. As Jenkins hits the one-year mark in office, the tension has not eased. Jenkins says she’s taken steps to address San Francisco’s open-air drug dealing and gone after repeat offenders, while attempting to convince San Franciscans that her office can deter crime by making criminals second-guess doing business in the city. (Barned-Smith and Moench, 7/11)

NBC News: Black Men Are At An Increased Risk For Melanoma, Study Finds
Black men are at a higher risk of death from melanoma than other racial groups, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD). Across 205,125 cases of male patients diagnosed with cutaneous invasive melanoma from 2004 to 2018 tracked by the National Cancer Database, the five-year survival rate was the lowest for Black men at 51.7%. The rate of survival was the highest for white men, at 75.1%, compared to the other racial groups in the study. (Bellamy, 7/11)

USA Today: Racism Has 'Huge' Implications For Childhood Obesity, Study Finds
Racism contributes to childhood obesity, according to a new study that found children as young as 9 were more likely to meet the definition of obesity if they faced racism a year earlier. While the link between racism and obesity has long been assumed, this was a clear confirmation in young children, said co-author Adolfo Cuevas, an expert on racism and health at the NYU School of Global Public Health. (Weintraub, 7/11)

AP: California Man Paralyzed From Run-In With Police Gets $20 Million Settlement 
A Northern California man who was left paralyzed after he was slammed to the ground during a traffic stop won a $20 million settlement, one of the largest in the state’s history, officials announced Tuesday. Gregory Gross, an Army veteran who lives in Yuba City, sued the police department in 2022 after police officers used “pain compliance” techniques and expressed disbelief when he repeatedly cried out, “I can’t feel my legs.” Police officers also dismissed Gross when he said, “I can’t breathe,” while being held facedown on the lawn outside a hospital, video released by Gross’s lawyers shows. (Nguyen, 7/11)

Bay Area News Group: Elizabeth Holmes' Prison Sentence Reduced By Almost 2 Years
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is now scheduled to get out of prison nearly two years earlier than her original sentence mandated, according to an update from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Holmes, 39, surrendered herself for imprisonment May 30, to start serving a sentence of 11 years and three months. But her updated release date is December 29, 2032, just over the 9½ years that federal prison rules say she must remain locked up at a minimum. (Baron, 7/11)

Reuters: VP Kamala Harris Unveils Proposed Rule Change To Cut US Childcare Costs
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced new steps to lower the cost of childcare for American families with a proposal that would cap co-payments under a block grant program that serves 1.5 million children and their families each month. "This is a critical issue for almost every family in our country," Harris told reporters. "Low-income families often spend one-third, one-third of their yearly income on childcare, more than they spend on their rent or mortgage." (7/11)

Roll Call: HHS Proposes Expanding Nondiscrimination Protections 
The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed expanding nondiscrimination protections related to sexual orientation and gender identity to some federal grant programs providing human services. While most of the Department of Health and Human Services's purview covers health care, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health, those health programs and services, said Melanie Fontes Rainer, the director of HHS' Office of Civil Rights, are covered under a provision of the 2010 health law preventing discrimination based on factors like sex, race and national origin. The new rule would focus on human services, such as some of the HHS programs covered by the Administration for Children and Families including Head Start and services provided to homeless individuals, refugees and those experiencing substance use or mental health disorders. (Raman, 7/11)