How police officers are held accountable after shooting the unarmed, CA Air Resources Board does not accept EPA's vehicle emissions standards rollback, LA eagles lose a nest.
LA Sheriff's watchdog is reviewing deputy shooting investigations after KPCC reports
CA Air Resources Board disputes EPA vehicle emissions rollback
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week it's rolling back vehicle emissions standards. Fuel efficient vehicles are a key component of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming, and they're a key component of California's efforts to meet its own emissions goals. Air Resources Board communications director Stanley Young explains California's response to the EPA's vehicle emissions decision.
How the EPA announcement will affect California
Right now, it doesn't affect us at all because we're going to stick to the standards that were agreed upon by California, the federal government and the auto makers back in 2012. From our perspective, those standards hold. We and the federal government both spent more than two years taking a very close look at whether those standards were appropriate and feasible. After exhaustive examination and 2,000 pages of detailed analysis, we came to the conclusion last year that those standards are appropriate and feasible and in fact will cost a lot less than we originally thought, and the Obama administration came to exactly the same conclusion.
How California can continue to enforce its clean car rules
Under the Clean Air Act, California has the authority to set stricter standards than federal regulations. We got a waiver to enforce those regulations, so we have the ability to continue with those standards and enforce them through 2025.
Can the U.S. government rescind California's waiver
In the 50 years that we've been operating under the Clean Air Act, we've had more than 100 waivers. Not a single one has ever been revoked, and there is some serious legal consideration as to how that would actually happen. We act on our part when the EPA takes an action on their part. We're not looking for a fight. We weren't looking to have a face off here, but it depends on what course of action the EPA takes and then we will address that as needed.
12 states follow California's stricter vehicle emissions standards
Those 12 states constitute more than 1/3 of new car sales in the nation, and about 110 million people. We are a constituency that are committed to these standards because they protect public health.
Why fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicles are important in California
In California, we are under a law here to meet targets to reduce our greenhouse gases and because the transportation sector in California is the largest source of climate changing gases, that's where we have to look to get to the most reductions. These standards help reduce burning fossil fuels, so that helps us on our way to achieving our climate goals.
ARB Chief Mary Nichols says the EPA decision was politically motivated and lacked documentation to back up its decision
We didn't see any evidence, data, science or fact in this call to revise the standards. We spent two years and thousands of pages of analyses in demonstrating those standards were feasible. In the document the EPA produced, it mostly just parrots claims by the industry that the standards are too hard to meet, but there's nothing yet to definitively demonstrate that is actually the case.
State plans to vigorously defend the existing clean vehicle standards
Our game plan is to ensure that we're able to defend California's ability to have those vehicle standards in place, the same standards we all agreed to, so whatever will fulfill that primary goal is where we're going to be moving.
Police say YouTube shooter had a dispute with the company
The 39-year-old woman who opened fire on YouTube's California headquarters Tuesday had a long-running dispute with YouTube, according to law enforcement officials.
Nasim Aghdam, who used the name Nasime Sabz online, had decried YouTube's policies, saying the web site was trying to "suppress" content creators. Her father, Ismail Aghdam, told the Bay Area News Group that she "hated" the company.
Mark Bergen is a technology reporter with Bloomberg. He said Aghdam's frustrations with YouTube appear to be tied to the site's policies of not allowing ads on certain videos, a process called 'de-monetizing.'
Bergen said these de-monetization policies have changed in the last year because advertisers complained about their ads running before videos with offensive content. Some advertisers even suspended their ads on YouTube, so the company responded by becoming more restrictive about which videos could have ads.
YouTube did not have many policies moderating content when the site began, but as the site grew, it began to see a need for some restrictions, Bergen said.
YouTube is now massive... They didn't put a lot of these policies in place over the years. Now they're scrambling to come up with policies that can appease both the advertisers and the video creators, which is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
Some content creators were upset by the new ad policies because they were seeing less ad revenue, and others felt YouTube was not transparent enough about their policy changes, Bergen said, but YouTube has said only a small number of creators have seen large dips in revenue, and they're trying to improve transparency.
Tiger roars: Golf's prodigal son is now a Masters favorite
Tiger Woods has had a challenging nine years: a messy, very public and costly divorce after admitting to numerous extramarital affairs, a couple of back surgeries. Add a DUI arrest, and, for a time, it looked like one of the most accomplished and successful athletes of all time had washed up in his early 40s.
But today, here are the headlines when you Google Tiger Woods:
USA TODAY: Tiger Woods is back and he's a favorite at the Masters, nothing short of a miracle
LA TIMES: Tiger Woods isn't done. He could win the Masters. Are you kidding me?
In fact with the Masters starting this week, ESPN asked Tiger Woods how he's feeling:
https://youtu.be/v0z_frmAKBI?t=1m38s
Could it be that Woods is now the favorite to win? The Kamenetzky brothers say it all depends on who you ask:
"First of all, Tiger is among the favorites," Andy Kamenetzky says. "I would not say he is not considered the favorite."
He continues:
It depends on where you go. You can find places that will list him as the favorite and Vegas is a very large entity. Golf Digest currently has him as the third-best shot to win on Sunday. Bovada, a leading sports gambling website, also has him at third, tied with Justin Rose. CBS Sports has him at fifth, and you can find odds makers or a golf writer who will predict Tiger coming out on top. He's playing better than he has in years. It's the closest he's looked to Tiger Woods in quite some time, but you're also talking about a very small sample size of basically two tournaments that he's finished second and fifth that's really built the collective confidence...
LA's only bald eagle chick missing after nest topples
L.A.'s only known pair of American Bald Eagles made their home in the Angeles National Forest along Highway 39 in the San Gabriel Canyon, just two years ago.
Now their nest has been found upside down.
Unfortunately, there was an eagle chick in the nest at the time of the collapse. The eaglet is assumed to be too young to fly, and while it hasn't been found, if the baby eagle survived falling to the forest floor, it's going to face some pretty tough circumstances.
The parents could still continue to care for it, although their ability to protect a chick on the ground is very limited.
While some feared foul play was to blame, forest biologists like Nathan Sill with the National Forest Service said it's a sad but common enough occurrence in nature.
The nest was built atop a tall tree, and the branches holding the nest simply broke.
The main support branch of the nest was rather small for the size of the nest.... Ultimately, it wasn't built in the notch of several branches, which could have provided more structural support.
Bald eagles are sizable birds of prey so they usually construct fairly big nests to rear their young. But they don't stop there. Eagles build add-on's, you might call them, increasing the weight of the nest, sometimes up to hundreds of pounds.
Imagine if you built a roof on top of your house every year. Eventually the foundation is going to give.
The adult eagles are still hanging around, but it's too early to say where they'll take up residence next. They could decide to leave the Angeles National Forest, or they could settle in the very same tree. Either way, it's late in the nesting season, so they'll probably start again next year.
And though the presumed loss of the little eagle is sad news indeed, biologists like Nathan Sill can put the natural world into perspective for us.
It's unfortunate this has happened, but it is part of nature and they move on.... We need to be cognizant that these are natural systems and these kind of events happen and we need to come to grips with that.
There's good news too. It's been a slow recovery, but the American Bald Eagle has come a long way since being placed on the endangered species list in 1967. Use of the insecticide, DDT, was common before it was banned for causing environmental damage, and the American Bald Eagle was one of the casualties.
Today, the bald eagle is no longer considered endangered, but its population is small. Southern California has become home to more than a dozen eagles in recent years, settling and raising eaglets in the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests, and on Catalina and the Channel Islands.
It's a real good indication that the species is continuing to expand and recover.
As L.A. mourns its eagle chick, we can take comfort that the species is making a comeback. Here's a livestream of the nest in San Bernardino:
Even though they won't admit it, New Yorkers secretly love LA
L.A. love.
It's that feeling you get when you're watching the sunset from Griffith Observatory. Or when you're driving down Santa Monica Boulevard, just cruising beneath those towering SoCal palm trees.
Now the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board is spreading that L.A. love to our friends on the East Coast. If you're traveling through New York City, you're likely to see some L.A. love billboards highlighting some of the best things our city has to offer.
"Our billboards are...all the diverse places and all the diverse faces of Los Angeles," explained John Boudouvas, vice president of brand marketing for the L.A. Tourism and Convention Board. "And it's a way to show everybody how they can experience all the wonderful things in Los Angeles. "
The bilboards feature landmarks in the city, including Griffith Park, Runyon Canyon and the Venice canals. The reason for these particular spots? Focus groups. They shed a lot of light on how New Yorkers feel about the City of Angels.
"New Yorkers are drawn to L.A.," Boudouvas said. "They want to come here to enjoy the weather. They want to come here because they know there's this sort of creative landscape here that they can kind of be part of. And they know that they can kind of be open here and be who they want to be."
So. After all these years...is the East Coast-West Coast rivalry finally fading?
"We don't really look at it as a rivalry. We look at it more as this shared love of food and culture and fashion and creativity and innovation," Boudouvas said. "It kind of unites New Yorkers and Angelenos. So whether there's a rivalry there or not, we look at it as, we know New Yorkers really love to come experience L.A., and there are so many similarities between what they love to see and do, so that's kind of how we approach it."
Seems hard to believe considering things like this exist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8_mwyqbbXQ
But even though it might be secretly, New Yorkers really love us. Boudouvas said that New Yorkers are a key market for SoCal. It's our number two market in visitation, after San Francisco. We rake in over two million visitors every year from the Empire State.
So, armed with this campaign and the knowledge from these focus groups, he's confident in convincing skeptical New Yorkers to come to L.A.
"Just give us 72 hours in Los Angeles," he said, "and we guarantee you will fall in love with the city."