Cervical cancer in the U.S. has been declining for the past 50 years, and with recent advancements in prevention and screening, doctors imagine the cancer could be eradicated from America’s population within your lifetime. It’s a lofty ambition with a major caveat: It is almost entirely dependent upon the participation of the nation’s underserved women.

As the state’s fiscal watchdog, California State Controller Betty Yee has a finger on the pulse of what is now the world’s sixth largest economy. But her influence reaches far beyond just paying the State’s bills. We sat down with her recently to talk about taxes, climate change and why she is compelled to address issues like human trafficking.

In October 2007, 60-year-old Francisco “Willie” Lopez was doing what he had done almost every morning for 30 years. He pedaled along County Road 99 from Woodland to his job in the finance department at UC Davis. A car hit and killed him on that country road before he made it to his desk.

In a way, not much has changed.

At the Golden 1 Center, Sacramento Kings fans continue to wave cowbells at games, having long since embraced the once-insulting apparatus. The grub still costs a pretty penny. The team remains perpetually in a building year.

Nearly 70 percent of California’s high school foster youth dropped out last year. Of the 10 percent that make it to higher education, just 3 percent are likely to graduate.

A new page on a new calendar is always a time of optimism. The pages are blank and I wonder what I will have written on them by the time the year has run its course. But right now, I’d like to slow down and appreciate the year we just enjoyed.

For nearly 50 years California boasted the nation’s largest, most successful water system. Water flowed through the Gov. Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct to San Joaquin Valley farms and southern California homes.

California rang in the new year with a newly legal product: cannabis.

In the unqualified realm of science fiction and fantasy, there have been genuine smart gadgets. Take, for example, Bobbi Anderson’s typewriter in Stephen King’s “The Tommyknockers,” which, when alien-enhanced, is able to tap Anderson’s thoughts into pages.

Direct democracy can be an exhausting business.