President Obama heads to San Francisco for fundraising events; Glendale is criticized for nixing Spanish and Korean-language ballots; What Angelenos in 1988 got right and wrong about LA life in 2013; Student veterans look for a place of their own; The best and worst baseball movies of all time, and much more.
Obama heads to San Francisco for fundraising events
Late this afternoon, President Obama will arrive in San Francisco where he will attend a fundraiser at a private residence.
The Washington Post reports that the President's first event is a $5,000 per-person cocktail reception at the home of philanthropist and environmentalist Tom Steyer. His host is hoping not only to raise money for the Democratic party, but also to refocus the political conversation on climate change.
Later, according to Bloomberg, Obama will make an appearance at a $32,400 per-person dinner event at the home of Ann and Gordon Getty. All proceeds will reportedly go to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The Next Mission: Student veterans and a space of their own
It's much easier for student vets to navigate college life if their school has a centralized center coordinating all of the services available for veterans on campus. But not all schools have these centers. Jeff Severns Guntzel, senior reporter for the Public Insight Network has the story.
RELATED: See other stories and reporting from The Next Mission series
Glendale criticized for nixing Spanish- and Korean-language sample ballots
The race for L.A. mayor is grabbing most of the headlines, but Tuesday's elections in Glendale stand to play a pivotal role in the city's master-plan for development.
The city is undergoing major growth as demonstrated by the Americana mixed-use development. There is also controversy around the decision to limit languages on ballots to English and Armenian this year.
With more is Brittany Levine, a reporter who's been covering the elections for the Glendale News-Press.
What Angelenos in 1988 got right and wrong in predicting LA life in 2013
Trying to predict what life will be like in the future is tricky business. Looking back at predictions of the past is always fun. Sometimes they get pretty close, but usually, spectacularly wrong.
Still, humans just can't seem to resist looking into the crystal ball.
25 years ago today, the Los Angeles Times magazine published a special edition focused on life in the faraway year of 2013. In a lot of ways, it was surprisingly on target, though they didn't predict that the LA Times magazine would cease to exist.
Writer Dashiell Bennett dug up the old issue, and published a kind of scorecard for the Atlantic.
Sports Roundup: Rutgers controversy, Final Four, Kevin Ware and more
Now it's time to take the ball and run through the world of sports with our 1-2 punch, Andy and Brian Kamenetzky, they've covered sports here in L.A. for over a decade with the Times and ESPN.
Is 'Game of Thrones' piracy record a 'compliment' to HBO?
The third season of Game of Thrones has set an all-time record for piracy. According to the file-sharing site TorrentFreak, the first episode of the new season had been downloaded more than a million times within just two days of airing on HBO.
HBO's president of programming has said he sees piracy as a "compliment of sorts," but the company is taking the issue very seriously. Brian Steinberg, senior editor at Variety, joins the show with more.
AP Stylebook: 'Illegal immigrant' no longer 'legal' for news media
According to the Associated Press, the term illegal immigrant is no longer, well, legal. At least not for newsmedia. The AP, considered to be the guide for many news organizations, is dropping the word altogether.
That term has long been controversial in the political debate over immigration and in the media that cover it. Here to discuss this change is KPCC's Multi-American blogger Leslie Berestein-Rojas.
Drone industry boosters pilot controversial local growth plan
This story is reported by David Wagner of The Fronteras Desk.
When it comes to the controversial unmanned aircraft known as drones, business is booming. That could mean scores of new jobs for San Diego, but privacy defenders say courting the drone industry could cost us our civil liberties.
Imagining swarms of drones hovering over most of Southern California makes a lot of residents uneasy, but that's exactly what Sean Barr of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation hopes to see.
Barr has been working with a coalition of local defense industry advocates to brand San Diego as the drone capital of the world. To ensure that drone makers put down stakes in San Diego, Barr and his allies are trying to convince the FAA to base a lucrative drone test site here. The range they're envisioning would be expansive.
"It extends from the China Lake Edwards Air Force Base area West to the ocean, South to the Mexican border, and East to the Arizona border," said Barr, Vice President of Economic Development for the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.
When people like Dave Patterson of San Diego Veterans for Peace hear about Barr's plans, they don't picture a new economic golden age. They foresee an Orwellian police state.
Considering the proposed test site, Patterson wondered, "If they're gonna fly 10,000 drones around Southern California, what are they going to do with all that surveillance information?"
Bearing these concerns in mind, Barr and his allies remain focused on securing jobs for San Diego. Similar drone industry development efforts have been hatched in Nevada. And in Oklahoma, North Dakota, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts ... the FAA has received more than 50 test range proposals since February.
But Barr thinks San Diego can beat the competition. He estimates that about 7,000 local jobs are already dedicated to drones. San Diego also boasts ideal weather for year-round flight testing and a large military presence. With law enforcement, scientists, and farmers all coveting this technology, Barr thinks San Diego's drone economy is poised to double within this decade, saying, "There is an opportunity for it to grow significantly."
Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., also sees that opportunity. His district relies on jobs tied to two of the world's biggest drone developers — Northrop Grumman and General Atomics. "Everybody is going to be looking to you to see what's the next thing," Hunter told a crowd of Northrop Grumman employees during a recent visit to the company's Rancho Bernardo facilities.
David Loy, legal director for the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, is certainly looking out for the next thing in drone technology. But he's troubled by what he's seeing. He argues that drones aren't properly regulated yet, threatening our privacy, civil liberties, and even our lives.
"We have very serious concerns about the government targeting American citizens for killing far from the battlefield without any form of due process at all," Loy said.
Loy could be alluding to a 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a suspected al-Qaeda recruiter who also happened to be an American citizen. The ACLU cautions that these targeted killings, reportedly responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths in the Middle East, set a dangerous precedent.
Even local drone industry boosters like Hunter worry about this technology, saying that lawmakers urgently need to discuss the legal limits of drone use.
"Part of being American is being able to do what you want to do without people looking at you or questioning you," he said. "Yes, it's going to be good for jobs. It could be steps forward in the way we handle wildfires and the way we have police chases. But the downsides when it comes to privacy are fairly great."
San Diego Veterans for Peace have been protesting outside a General Atomics facility in Poway every week for the past seven months. "Our fourth and fifth amendment rights are going to go up in a cloud of drones, if we're not careful," warned Patterson.
Despite these concerns, Barr's economic development coalition says drone jobs are coming to the U.S. no matter what, and San Diego should be the region to reap the economic rewards. Loy, however, thinks that focusing on where drones are made is beside the point. "Wherever the drones are manufactured," he said, "the issue is how are they being used."
The best and worst baseball movies of all time
Can you sense it? The smell of hotdogs and pop-corn on the breeze, people unpacking their giant foam fingers: major league baseball is back. All this week, we're bringing you different looks at the state of america's past time.
Today we're going to talk baseball movies with TV writer, comedian and film expert Mark Jordan Legan.
BEST
Bull Durham
Moneyball
Bang The Drum Slowly
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Bad News Bears
Eight Men Out
A League Of Their Own
The Natural
Field Of Dreams
Pride of the Yankees
Major League
?
WORST
Ed, 1996
The Babe Ruth Story, 1948
Obama announces new brain-mapping initiative
One of the greatest mysteries of science is right inside your skull: The human brain. Yesterday President Obama announced an initiative to help map our minds.
The President has pledged to put $100 million toward developing a map that would do for the brain what the human genome project did for DNA. Here to talk the new "Brain Initiative" is Dr. William Newsome of Stanford University.
Why counting komodo dragons is dangerous business
Komodo dragons are the largest species of lizards, and they've been known to grow up to ten feet long and weigh almost 200 pounds. If you saw the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, you know they can be formidable predators.
Their strong jaws and venomous bite make it easy for then to take down evil henchmen, or their preferred prey, water buffalo. But it also makes counting these reptiles a rather dangerous endeavor.
Professor Tim Jessop of the University of Melbourne studies komodos.