The latest on the earthquakes that hit Ecuador and Japan. The NBA has approved logos on uniforms, but will it be a distraction?
Why two massive earthquakes in a week doesn't indicate a trend
The people of Ecuador are digging out today from the strongest earthquake there in decades.
The 7.8 magnitude quake has killed at least 350 and has left thousands homeless.
This following two other powerful quakes which hit south-western Japan last week. A quarter of a million people have now been told to leave their homes as tremors there continue.
For more on all this seismic activity, Take Two's Alex Cohen sat down with Mark Simons, professor of geophysics at Caltech's Seismology Laboratory.
Simons says that while it's tragic that two huge quakes happened with such close timing, that doesn't necessarily mean that seismic activity is ramping up world wide.
To hear the full conversation, click the blue play button above
Supreme Court hears challenge to Obama's immigration action
Two years ago, President Obama tried to fix what he called a "broken" immigration system: he offered amnesty to five million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
The deal granted temporary legal status and work permits for some, put a stop to deportation orders for others and more.
Today, that executive action faces a direct challenge in the U.S Supreme Court.
For a refresher on what's at stake, and what might happen, Take Two chats with Niels Frenzen, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at USC.
US v. Texas: Immigrant advocates hold hope as immigration hearings begin before the Supreme Court
As oral arguments for President Obama's executive order on immigration are heard before the Supreme Court today, millions of people living in the US undocumented are holding on to hope that the justices will rule to uphold the president's actions.
Giselle Gasca is a senior at Fresno State and a community organizer for Mi Familia Vota, a Latino advocacy group. She arrived in the US with her parents at age 10, and was shielded from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2012.
Her parents however, are living in the US undocumented, but would be eligible for deferment under DAPA -- Defered Action for Parents of Americans -- and that is what's being challenged in the Supreme Court.
Gasca spoke to A Martinez about how her life and the lives of her parents could dramatically change, depending on the court's decision.
According to Gasca, her parents live in fear just as she did before she was a DACA beneficiary. Gasca says:
“It’s kinda like being in this big prison where you can’t really do very much, but you’re just doing enough to get through and survive.”
On The Lot: Multiple Jungle Book modernizations, texting at the movies
On this week's "On The Lot" with
:
- A big win at the box office for Disney's modernized version of "The Jungle Book"
- How the Warner Bros. film adaptation of the book could fare in 2018
- An Aretha Franklin biopic on the way from "Straight Outta Compton" producer
- AMC Theaters reverses its plan to allow theatergoers to text
To hear the full interview, click the blue player above.
Amazon challenges Netflix with monthly Prime subscription
Want to watch Transparent, Bosch and Catastrophe, but don't want to pay the annual Amazon Prime membership fee?
Well, now you can. Today the online retailer launched a new monthly-subscription option for its streaming video content.
It's a new pricing model designed to step up competition with streaming leaders Netflix and Hulu.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- , Digital Editor for Variety
How corporate logos on jerseys will affect the NBA
NBA team jerseys will have a new look next season - corporate logos.
The two and a half inch patches will have a spot on game day uniforms.
Some fans want to preserve the purity of the team shirt.
For the league, those little logos could generate 100 million dollars a year. Even over the course of the three-year pilot period, that's a lot of extra cash.
However, some teams such as the Houston Rockets have come out against this, saying they are not not in favor of revenue sharing.
For more, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Paul Lukas, authority and researcher on sports jerseys with Uni-Watch.
To hear the full conversation, click the blue play button above
City releases list of LA apartments that need earthquake retrofitting. What happens next?
The earthquakes that have recently hit Japan and Ecuador are a potent reminder that preparing for seismic activity can mean the difference between life and death.
It's always good to stock up on emergency supplies, but it's also important to make sure the structures we're living in are safe.
To that end, the city of Los Angeles has released a list of 13,500 apartments and condominiums classified as "soft-story" structures that need to be retrofitted to withstand a large quake. Soft-story buildings are those that generally have large openings in the first-floor walls—such as garages, tuck-under parking or even large windows—making the first floor likely to collapse under the weight of the stories above during an earthquake, said Marissa Aho, chief resilience officer in Mayor Garcetti's office.
Most of the buildings on the list were built in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and a number of the soft-story buildings were damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Aho said.
- Click here to find out if your building is on the list.
The process of identifying the soft-story buildings began in 2014, when Mayor Garcetti partnered with Lucy Jones, former seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, to convene a seismic safety task force that, after more than 100 meetings, produced a report called "Resilience by Design" in December 2014.
"This report focused on increasing the city's resilience in three particularly vulnerable areas: strengthening our buildings, fortifying our water systems and enhancing reliable telecommunications," Aho said. "The soft-story retrofits were one of the 17 recommendations in the report."
The buildings on the retrofit list were identified by the city's Department of Building and Safety engineers, who began with a building-records review that identified approximately 30,000 buildings requiring a closer look, Aho said. "Through various verification methods, including aerial mapping and site inspections, the number of buildings was narrowed down to the 13,500 that have been identified," she said.
In almost all cases, building owners received notices in March and an invitation to a seismic-retrofit resource fair, which more than 2,000 attended on April 7, Aho said.
"The actual orders will begin being mailed out in tiered batches beginning in a few weeks," Aho said. "The first buildings that will have orders mailed out are those with 16 units or more, then buildings with three or more stories but fewer than 16 units. And finally, buildings with two stories and fewer than 16 units."
Building owners will have two years after the initial order is received to submit their retrofit plans and a structural analysis to the Department of Building and Safety. They will have 3-1/2 years after the original order was received to obtain all necessary permits, and seven years to comply with the required retrofit.
Building owners are required to notify tenants that their buildings are slated for the retrofit work, Aho said, but in most cases the tenants will be able to continue to living in their units as the work is done.
While the retrofit costs will vary by structure, estimates are that the work will cost about $5,000 per unit in each building, Aho said.
While building owners will have seven years to complete the retrofits, once their plans and permits are approved the actual work should take only a few months, Aho said. Owners of more than 100 buildings have already started the process, she said.
Once the retrofit work is complete, building owners can apply to the city's Housing and Community Investment Department for a temporary monthly rent surcharge of 50 percent of the cost of the work, capped at $38 per month per unit, Aho said.
"Approximately 99 percent or so of the soft-story buildings fall under the city's rent-stabilization ordinance," Aho said, "and so part of this measure is definitely to preserve the existing affordable housing that we have today, recognizing that we all play a role in helping to make sure the city is safer and stronger."
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
UC Berkeley student taken off Southwest flight after speaking Arabic
UC Berkeley student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi was ordered off a Southwest flight earlier this month, shortly after he made a phone call waiting for takeoff.
He was speaking to his uncle in Arabic, and signed off with the customary greeting, “inshallah.”
Makhzoomi ended the call, but shortly after he was taken off the plane and questioned, first by an airline employee, then again by law enforcement.
The way Makhzoomi was treated is deeply disturbing to many Muslims.
For more, Take Two spoke to Zahra Billoo, executive director for the San Francisco Bay offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Her organization has been in close contact with Makhzoomi.
What can you tell us about Khairuldeen Makhzoomi?
“He moved here as an Iraqi refugee, he is a student at UC Berkeley; he is deeply involved in student and community organizations. He was actually on his way home from a UN-related luncheon and unfortunately had this happen.”
Mr. Makhzoomi ends the conversation with “inshallah.” What do you know about what happened next?
So inshallah is like, “God willing,” and what I’ve said to people is — you know — I’ll say to my mom when I get off the phone, ‘yes mom, yes mom, yes mom,’ right? So he’s saying to his uncle, ‘inshallah, inshallah,’ and he’s ending the conversation. It’s a cordial, excited conversation. He notices that this woman is talking to the flight staff. He doesn’t realize immediately that it would be about him, and then they approach him. They ask him to come off the plane.”
Let’s say you’re on a plane and you’re concerned. You hear someone speaking Arabic … you don’t know what the context is, and there are going to be people who feel the sense of fear. What can be done to make sure that you don’t wind up in a situation where — as it sounds — an innocent man is getting detained?
“I think it’s really important, one, that our fellow passengers not engage in profiling or racist behavior. Just because someone is speaking in a language that I do not understand doesn’t mean that they’re a threat to me … and that needs to become normalized. That kind of racism doesn’t make us any safer.”
It’s somewhat reminiscent, Zahra, of what many African-American men and women have been told, especially in terms of police officers. “Just keep your head down …” Do you feel that right now there is a similar thread among [Muslim-American men to just] keep your head down at all costs? And what toll does that take?
“I’ve heard that a lot. We’ve had the conversation among women of like if you don’t wear a headscarf, are you safer? As a Muslim male, can you pass? Do not talk Arabic in public. I don’t think that that’s the case with Mr. Makhzoomi. We are really proud of how courageous he’s been. He’s keeping his head up and speaking to local and national media about what happened.”
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
'Gutsy Girl' aims to inspire daring attitudes in young girls
Author Caroline Paul wasn't always daring, but she eventually grew to be gutsy.
Her new book, "The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure," shares her personal thrills, and hopes to inspire new ones for today's girls.
Paul joined host Alex Cohen.
Caroline Paul and "Gutsy Girl" illustrator Wendy McNaughto will be at Vroman's in Pasadena at 7 p.m. Monday. Click here for more information.
Interview Highlights
How Caroline Paul wasn't actually born with nerves of steel:
"I'm actually an identical twin, and so my sister was super outgoing as a kid. And in all our family pictures, we could tell us apart because she was the one with her arms flailing and her mouth open, and I was the one wide-eyed, like a marmot. And so I was a really shy kid, and I was scared of lots of things, you know, like big kids and being called on in school and anything under the bed after dark."
How she overcame her fears:
"The first was one that I did not give credit to, of course, because it was my mom, and we don't really notice what our parents do for us when we're kids. But very recently — in fact when I was writing an op-ed for The New York Times about the subject of girls and bravery, she said, 'You know, I was raised by a really fearful mom, and she didn't let us do anything. And when I was 21, I went on a ski trip, and it was revelatory how fun it was to be outside with friends.' And she told me, 'I wanted you kids to have that kind of life.' So what I realized was my mom encouraged both me, my twin sister and my younger brother to do a lot of things, to try a lot of things."
How she tames her fears:
"I think fear is a normal reaction to a lot of situations, like being 70 stories up on the Golden Gate Bridge." (Which she actually did, and warns that it is, in fact, illegal.) "It's like climbing a skyscraper and being at the 70th story. So, fear is important because it's obviously a good tool. And I'm not against fear, I'm pro-bravery, and that's what I really try to say throughout the book. So fear is just one of the emotions that we need in our tool box, but it shouldn't be the overwhelming one. And I really see that women and girls use it as the overwhelming one and as an excuse not to do things. And that's such a shame because there's so much to learn by getting outside your comfort zone. And so, I talk about this a lot, how in a situation where you're uncomfortable because you're outside your comfort zone, and you will feel a little fear, it's really important to put that fear in its proper place."
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
Seattle's Rockford Peaches are in a (little) league of their own
The baseball season has been going for a couple of weeks, and not just in the major leagues.
In Washington state, the West Seattle Little League season has also gotten underway.
Of course while every parent in the area loves watching their kids go out and play on the weekend, one team has gotten a lot of attention recently.
Coach Sean Eley has assembled his league's first-ever all-girl coach-pitch team, the Rockford Peaches.
Yep just like the team in the movie A League of Their Own.
Coach Eley joined Take Two's A Martinez to explain why he put the team together and why he's enjoyed coaching them.