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California Republicans are gathering at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Sacramento this weekend for their biannual state party convention, an occasion for activists to celebrate the modest electoral gains their party made in the midterm election and to plot its future.

State Republicans are coming off a fall election in which they denied Democrats another two years of supermajority status in the Legislature. But GOP candidates failed to win any of the eight statewide offices, and the party faltered in every targeted congressional race, ultimately losing a seat.

Last week, UCLA Medical Center notified 179 patients that it had potentially exposed them to a fearsome "superbug," and urged them to get tested.

The hospital accidentally infected seven people in procedures involving specialized endoscopes, called duodenoscopes, that proved difficult to thoroughly clean. Two of the people died.

On Sunday, February 15, a pre-opening Open House at Anam Cara invited guests to visit and tour the progress of the tiny, six-bed hospice—two at full price (comparable to board and care homes in the area), two at an adjusted rate and two community beds free of charge—that will accommodate terminal patients (up to a two-month prognosis) and their families.

A California congressman wants answers from the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of superbug infections at a local hospital now linked to contaminated medical scopes.

John Allen, a gastroenterologist and the clinical chief of digestive diseases at Yale School of Medicine, said he witnessed the bacterial infections from the same type of intestinal medical scopes in Minnesota back in 1987, according to CNN.

Dr. John Allen, a gastroenterologist, had to morph into a detective when 10 of his patients came down with the exact same type of rare bacterial infection. Alarmed and mystified, he and his colleagues rushed to find the source of the highly lethal superbug.

The culprit, it turned out, was in his own office: a device called a duodenoscope used to check out tiny ducts in the intestinal tract.

The pseudomonas bacteria had somehow evaded the standard cleaning process, and it infected one patient after another.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, called Monday for a congressional hearing on the potentially deadly "superbug" outbreaks that have been linked to contaminated medical scopes and caused at least seven infections, and two deaths, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

At UCLA, health officials have notified 179 patients who underwent endoscopic procedures using duodenoscopes at the hospital between October and January that they may have been exposed to the bacteria known as CRE.