Governor signs rail bill to get it on ballot -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised not to sign any bills until lawmakers reach a budget deal, reversed his position Tuesday and signed a measure for a statewide bullet train system that he strongly supports.

Dan Walters: Capitol's budget battle is going nowhere fast -- So where is the Capitol's struggle with a long-overdue, deficit-ridden state budget headed? Nowhere - fast.

CCPOA donates $577,000 to Perata committee -- The state correctional officers union has contributed $577,000 to a political committee controlled by state Sen. Don Perata, with most of the cash sent over in the final weeks of the current legislative session.

Citibank settles with state, to repay millions -- Citibank will refund millions of dollars to credit card customers and pay $3.5 million to the state of California to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of stealing funds from some of its customers who had died, gone bankrupt or fallen behind in their payments.

Manchester executive is troubled by boycott -- officials at the Manchester Financial Group have argued for weeks that a boycott by gay rights and union groups hasn't hurt business at its two San Diego hotels, the Manchester Grand Hyatt and The Grand Del Mar. But a top company official, in an e-mail obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune, painted a different picture, saying the boycott could have dire consequences for hotel owner Doug Manchester that could cost him millions of dollars in lost business.

Gay Activists Target Businesses -- When William Bolthouse, a California philanthropist, donated $100,000 in March to support a proposition to ban gay marriage in California, calls and emails poured in -- not to Mr. Bolthouse, but to the corporate offices of a company that bears his name -- even though he sold it three years earlier.

Latino stuck his neck out to get Democrat outreach funds -- When the clock strikes midnight Thursday after Barack Obama makes his acceptance speech, Sacramento superdelegate Steven Ybarra will lose his seat on the Democratic National Committee. Ybarra, a Sacramento City College professor and veteran Latino activist, got voted off the select Democratic panel after a brash publicity stunt - offering to sell his vote to Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton for a $20 million party pledge to compete for Latino votes.

Surging Latino growth has country looking to California schools -- Latinos make up nearly half of California's K-12 public school students, and their numbers are surging across the country, underscoring a growing challenge for educators who are looking to the Golden State for ways to adapt to the changing face of America's classrooms.

Jerry Brown gets tough on medical pot clubs -- California Attorney General Jerry Brown has ordered a crackdown on medical pot clubs that are selling the drug for big profits. The move puts the state a bit more in line with the feds in dealing with the explosion of questionable marijuana dispensaries since the passage of Proposition 215 more than a decade ago.

State seeks to block Medi-Cal payment ruling -- State health officials have asked a federal judge to suspend her order requiring them to restore 10 percent cuts in Medi-Cal payments to doctors, dentists and pharmacists, saying the ruling was unclear and legally flawed and would be prohibitively expensive for California taxpayers.

Nurse assistant works hard to pay her SEIU dues -- Alba had a smile on her face last week when I arrived at the Los Angeles nursing home where she hustles through long, hard shifts night after night. Hard to believe she'd be in high spirits after changing the diaper of an elderly woman, but she had one thing going for her: She hadn't yet heard about the financial shenanigans of her union president.