Women catapult into power roles, thanks to lawmakers

Arlene Martinez | USA TODAY

The number of women serving on the boards of publicly traded companies in the Golden State soars ... because a new law requires it. And did you know tornados aren't as rare here as you might think?

It's Arlene Martínez, here to help kick off your week with the day's must-read stories.

But first, keep the cannabis off the bus and don't forget about your REAL ID: Those and other new-to-2020 Golden State traffic laws.

In California is a roundup of stories from newsrooms across the USA TODAY Network and beyond. Sign up for M-F delivery here!

90% of Calif. public companies now have women directors

Starting this week, California law will require the all-male boards of publicly traded companies headquartered in the state to add at least one woman or eventually face fines. More than 90% have done it, as companies rushed in recent months to add one: Between October and December, two dozen women joined their ranks.

But as of Thursday, 25 company boards still were all male, according to Clemson University Assistant Professors Daniel Greene and Vincent Intintoli and University of Arizona Professor Kathleen Kahle, who have been tracking the issue.

Other states are considering legislation similar to California's, which by 2021 ups the number of female director requirements to two on a board of five or three on a board of six.

At least two lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the law have been filed. They argue women are headed toward parity on their own and don't need the help. Still, over 300 of the top 3,000 largest U.S.-traded stocks still have no women director representation.

Who won't be in compliance: The list includes San Jose-based A10 Networks Inc., whose board members received between $197,000 and $348,000 in compensation in 2018. San Carlos-based Allakos, which paid its board members packages ranging from $228,000 to $420,000 in 2018, also is very sorry it won't be able to add a woman by Jan. 1 but the company is "very committed to diversity."

See more compensation:

25 companies that pay their board of directors a shocking amount.

Immigration, the census and the drug problem bigger than opioids

“I’m here essentially to say goodbye to my mom,” Gibram Cruz, an Army intelligence officer who took a few days off last week to say goodbye to his mother. She entered the country without documentation and is scheduled to be deported from San Diego to Mexico on Thursday.

As an interpreter for migrants who speak Mayan languages, Oswaldo Vidal Martín plays a vital role in the Bay Area: translating their cases for asylum. In-person court interpretation for such languages is rare, and the results of not having one can be devastating.

School workers across California, as "trusted messengers," are preparing to play a major role in the 2020 Census to ensure hard-to-reach populations are counted.

It isn't opioids devastating this northern California community. It's meth and alcohol.

California as a 'tornado capital'

Remember that tornado that seemed so out of place last week for SoCal? Turns out, they're not as unusual as one might think. In fact, the Golden State hosts on average of six twisters per year.

“California is actually the tornado capital of the country west of the Continental Divide,” said Bill Patzert, a retired climatologist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “People tend to think of California weather as benign and boring, but we can have some spectacular storms.”

The National Weather Service defines a tornado as a violently rotating column of air that touches the ground, and the U.S. tops the globe when it comes to the number of them. They can be super strong or fairly weak, like the one in Ventura County on Christmas night, which was rated as an EF0 — the lowest level on the Enhanced Fujita Scale that’s used to gauge twisters.

What else we're talking about

He said the iconic Queen Mary in Long Beach "has never been in worse condition." A few months later, the ship's 25-year inspector lost his contract with the city.

SoCal's Trafficgate: It's never too soon to revisit that time Highway 101 became the only available north-south corridor, turning a 40-minute commute into 4.25 hours.

A Visalia girl, age 6, decided to put what she'd learned from her investigator grandpa into action on Christmas Eve. St. Nick had other plans.

Painted utility boxes are a popular way for California cities to provide a bit of pop to an otherwise mundane necessity. But what happens when, without warning, the art is blocked by ginormous battery packs?

California, we love you but we can't live in you

His pay at a San Jose manufacturing facility tripled over the last decade. His housing costs in that time nearly quadrupled. This look inside California is a bleak picture of income inequality, an impossible housing market and getting comfortable (or not) with natural disasters.

“What’s happening in California right now is a warning shot to the rest of the country,” Jim Newton, a journalist, historian and lecturer on public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the New York Times. “It’s a warning about income inequality and suburban sprawl, and how those intersect with quality of life and climate change.”

Residents aren't all willing to work through the problems with the state — they're breaking up with it. While more than 158,000 people moved to California over the 12-month period that ended July 1, more than 197,000 people left. It was the state's slowest recorded growth rate since 1900.

In San Francisco, where $1 million can buy you a shack, state flight is particularly acute.

One last thing: I'd love to hear what I can do to make this more relevant for you, what you'd like to see or who you'd like to meet in the new year. I'm all ears.

In California is a roundup of news compiled from across USA TODAY Network newsrooms. Also contributing: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, Associated Press, Long Beach Post.