Valley Fever outbreak plagues inmates in Central California prisons; Will Mark Sanford's run for Congress be marred by past transgressions?; Tijuana, San Diego make bid for first binational Olympics; Rep. John Carter on the House's upcoming immigration bill; New science standards hard sell at cash-strapped Sylmar High School (Photos); 'A Short History of Nuclear Folly' and the lasting effects of the nuclear arms race, plus much more.
Valley Fever outbreak plagues inmates in Central California prisons
There's a disease that's killed more than 60 inmates over the past seven years: Valley Fever.
Valley Fever is a fungal infection that's been cropping up at two prisons in Central California. On Monday, the federal official in charge of medical care in state prisons prisons ordered thousands of high-risk inmates out of these facilities because of the airborne disease.
For more on this we're joined now by Don Specter, head of the Prison Law Office, a non-profit public interest law firm.
Rep. John Carter on the House's upcoming immigration bill
Congress is on recess this week, leaving behind an unfinished bill on immigration reform. Both the Senate and the House have been working on legislation, the Senate's Gang of 8 released their version earlier this month.
A similar bipartisan group of eight is working on their own immigration reform proposal in the House. Last week, we with spoke with one member of this group, Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra.
Today, we're joined by one of his Republican counterparts, Congressman John Carter. He chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security and represents the 31st District of Texas.
Tijuana, San Diego make bid for first binational Olympics
Last week, the cities of San Diego and Tijuana submitted a joint proposal to the US Olympic committee to host the 2024 summer games together. The Olympics have never been hosted by two different countries at the same time, and it would certainly present some logistical challenges.
"They'd obviously face the same challenges that any city that wants to host an Olympics may face...Then there are the actual particular challenges of trying to host a binational Olympics, the biggest of those being what to do about the border," said Adrian Florido, reporter at the Fronteras Desk in San Diego. "Anyone who has visited Tijuana knows that it takes hours to cross back into San Diego. You can just imagine the disaster that would be if an athlete missed an event because he or she was stuck at the border in Tijuana and couldn't get to San Diego."
The US Olympic Committee sent letters to 35 cities with invitations to apply for the chance to host the 2024 Olympics. San Diego was one of the cities chosen, and Mayor Bob Filner responded that he'd like to include Tijuana in the bid for host city. It's just one part of Filner's push to improved cooperation and relations with Tijuana.
"The two cities don't really pay a lot of attention to each other, even though they are right next to each other separated just by the border," said Florido. "The effort here is to get leaders of both sides to cooperate when they're thinking about regional challenges that really affect both cities, so things like long border wait times, about things like water quality that is often diminished because pollution leaks onto the other side and affects the waterways that both cities depend on."
Over the weekend, Filner said that he'd like Mitt Romney to lead the binational effort if the cities are chosen to host the Olympics. Romney successfully led the organizing committee for the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, and he owns a home in San Diego, where he has spent a lot of time since the end of his presidential election campaign.
The bid is still in the very preliminary stages, and there's a chance San Diego won't be chosen for the 2024 Games, but the idea has definitely been stirring criticism online.
"Alot of people are skeptical and critical of even the idea, because they say San Diego has a hard time putting on Comic-Con, how would it even deal with the Olympics?" said Florido. "A lot of people say the process of filing a binational proposal for the Olympics would actually be a really good exercise in cooperation by leaders on both sides of the border and envisioning a way to make San Diego and Tijuana a more seamless region, despite the border that runs through them."
New science standards hard sell at cash-strapped Sylmar High School (Photos)
Earlier this month, 26 states — including California — released new K-12 science standards. The ambitious plan hopes to reinvent science education across the country and transform students into 21st century thinkers.
It's the first attempt at federal science standards since the mid-'90s, but making the shift will cost millions in training and technology upgrades, and traditional textbooks won't do the job.
KPCC's Mary Plummer visited Sylmar High School in the northeast San Fernando Valley to find out how prepared science teachers are for the change.
'A Short History of Nuclear Folly' and the lasting effects of the nuclear arms race
Though Russia and the U.S. are working together when it comes to investigating the bombing suspects in Boston – their relationship wasn't always so amicable. Even today we have our problems.
Back in the 1980s there was always the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction. Many people probably remember a time when, as schoolchildren, they were trained to hide under their wooden desks during nuclear blast drills. Had a blast actually happened they'd essentially be hiding under kindling, but that's beside the point.
Before the threat of World War III, however, countries at the forefront of the nuclear arms race had to test these new weapons of mass destruction. The United States in particular tested weapons across the West, and radiation is still found in places like Nevada and Utah today. They treated Earth as their own nuclear testing playground, but that process could have a nasty effect on the environment.
In Rudolph Herzog's new book, "A Short History of Nuclear Folly: Mad Scientists, Dithering Nazis, Lost Nukes and Catastrophic Cover-ups," he traces the history of the nuclear race and what effects it has on the world today.
Interview Highlights:
How nuclear testing may have affected the cast of a John Wayne film:
"It's called "The Conquerer." Basically John Wayne plays Genghis Khan…As a set, they decided to go to Utah, which has a beautiful canyon there, Snow Canyon, and a year before in neighboring Nevada there was a huge explosion at the test site there. It was one of the dirtiest of all time in the sense that there was a huge amount of fall out, which drifted towards Utah and settled in Snow Canyon. That was really hot in the sense of radiation, and they knew there was radiation, they worked there for months galloping around on horse, doing stunts, breathing in radioactive dust. After they finished shooting, they moved 60 tons of radioactive sand to the studios in Hollywood to do the closeups. In 1980, someone looked back and counted and of the 220 [people in the] cast, something like 96 had developed cancer and 46 had died of it, including John Wayne himself, Susan Hayward, who was the female lead, and Dick Powell who was the director. Some of these people were heavy smokers, but it's way above the statistical average and some people argue that there's a connection.
"There was as strange appendix to this whole story in the sense that Howard Hughes was the producer, he lived in Las Vegas and was this eccentric billionaire, and he must have been quite freaked out by this. He was living close to the testing site, Las Vegas is not that far away. He fought a relentless campaign talking to Ronald Regan to move the tests from Nevada to Alaska, and they actually explode some huge bombs in the '60s and '70s in Alaska, which is a very unknown thing. Some of the biggest were exploded in Alaska, not Nevada or the Pacific."
On how irresponsible nuclear has testing been around the world:
"It's been very irresponsible in the sense that these places are declared uninhabited when they're not. The Soviets did that in Semipalatinsk Kazakstan, there are people living there. There are people living there, the British did that in Australia, they exploded several weapons in the the Maralingua testing range, which is in the desert. You have aborigines and nomadic people roaming around and there was only one single person in charge of getting them out of the area, but we're talking about a huge area, like the state of New York. There's just one person to get them away, and some people got into alarms way and they perished. In that sense, there was not limit to irresponsibility."
On his reaction to some of his more outrageous discoveries?
"There was a thing called Project Plowshare, which was an idea to use nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes, like excavating harbors. He wanted to blast a second Panama Canals with 200 hydrogen bombs...a lot of money was put into feasibility studies…"
On whether there were good intentions behind these plans:
"Sometimes the intent was very good. Like for instance, pacemakers, when they were first made the batteries were very weak and had to constantly be exchanged. So someone had the idea to use plutonium batteries, which will last you way beyond your life time. They actually implanted dozens of these in America and the Soviet Union, and Germany. That's all fine, it's not dangerous for the user, because the plutonium is in a casing and it's a type of radiation that can't get out. The only problem is what happens when these people die? In America there are these records and they know who these people are, but the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore and there are dozens of people around with plutonium in their chests and we don't know who they are. They're dying and they'll be cremated or buried and the plutonium will get into the environment."
How difficult is it for terrorist groups to create a bomb and use them?:
"It is difficult, you need the nuclear material. Theft is problematic, too, because these weapons need maintenance. The problem is that these groups could be given weapons or they could acquire weapons by overthrowing a state. Some of these states [Iran, North Korea] are possibly quite unstable. What would we do then? Then they've got even the way to deliver these weapons. So it could be very messy."
On what he learned through his research:
"Well, there's no limit to human imagination and irresponsibility. They did pretty much anything you could imagine with this technology, short of an all-out war. They acted quite irresponsibly, building a reactor in Kinshasa in the Congo, and that thing feel apart, using forces for experiments. Generally mishandling weapons. Some went down with submarines. In one case a bomber went down in the Carolinas, and one of the hydrogens fell into a swamp. The secondary stage of the hydrogen bomb that actually does fusion was never recovered. These kinds of things happened and if you have a big nuclear arsenal like that, mistakes happen. Will we learn from history? I'm a bit naive hopefully in thinking that we can actually learn from history."
Tuesday Reviewsday: Shuggie Otis, Religious Souls, Charles Bradley
Now it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. Here to talk about what's new in the music world is Oliver Wang from Soul-Sides.com. Today we're going with some new soul and R&B tunes. Who's this?
Artist: Shuggie Otis
Album:Inspiration Information
Release Date: April 16, reissue of October 1974 release
Song: "Inspiration Information," "Island Letter"
Artist: Religious Souls
Album: Good God! Apocryphal Hymns
Song: "Sinner Man," "Let Us Pray"
Artist: Charles Bradley
Album: Victim of Love
Release Date: April 2, 2013
Song: "Victim of Love," "Love Bug Blues"
Twitter and Comedy Central team up for online comedy fest
All this week, you can get free comedy shows on Twitter. Comedy Central is hosting the online ComedyFest — hashtag #comedyfest — a five-day tweet-filled festival featuring more than 60 comedians. One of them is LA writer/comedian Jake Fogelnest and he joins us now.
Athletes who are out, well before they're pro
NBA player Jason Collins shook the sports world yesterday as the first active player in a men's professional sports league. Waves of support came throughout the country.
Proud of @
. Don't suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant)
Proud of @jasoncollins34. Don't suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others #courage #support #mambaarmystandup #BYOU
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) April 29, 2013
I'm proud to call Jason Collins a friend. wjcf.co/154piCi
— Bill Clinton (@billclinton)
I'm proud to call Jason Collins a friend. http://t.co/4gbxjV1z7o
— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) April 29, 2013
But while Jason Collins may be making headlines, there's another star athlete from southern California whose coming out you may not have heard about: Jack Davis.
He's an 18-year-old senior at the Palisades Charter High School, and he's one of the many student athletes who's out, well before any professional sports star came forward.
"Wow, we've been waiting for this for a long time," Davis says, "but then I have to remember that I'm 18, and other people have been waiting for this for a lifetime."
Athletes like Davis may even have more of an impact than Collins, because they have been making themselves role models in their own communities for years.
Jason Collins's coming out could be a big win for Nike
Jason Collins's coming out was exciting for Jack Davis, but it's also exciting for Nike. The LGBT community's buying power is reportedly worth almost $800 million.
Nike sponsors Collins, and last June, the company held its first ever LGBT sports summit. That means this news could be a slam dunk for Nike.
Joining us for more is ESPN commentator LZ Granderson.
Committee recommends that Sacramento Kings stay put
Sacramento might be keeping their Kings after all. A few months ago, California's state capital was on the verge of losing their lone big league professional sports team to the Pacific Northwest. Their owners, the Maloofs, had agreed to sell the basketball team to investors from Seattle.
Yesterday, a group of NBA owners rejected their proposed relocation but the game isn't over just yet. With more is Dale Kasler who has been reporting on this story for the Sacramento Bee.
Native American payday loans under scrutiny by federal agency
Another line of business which doesn't smell quite right to federal officials: Native American payday loans. A growing number of Indian nations have been getting into the business, known for quick cash and high interest rates.
They claim it's a great way to raise money for local reservations, but the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worries tribes may be taking advantage of their sovereign status.
Here with more is David Lazarus, business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
The risky business of pension advances
If you're short on cash, convert tomorrow's pensions checks into cold cash today might sound like the perfect solution. That's the promise a few companies in California and elsewhere are making to retirees, but it's not all it's talked up to be.
For more on these pension advances, we're joined by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, reporter for the New York Times who's investigating this story.
Will Mark Sanford's run for Congress be marred by past transgressions?
In some places, "hiking in the Appalachians" has become a euphemism for having an extra-marital affair, thanks to South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who used that as an explanation for his six-day disappearance back in 2009.
He was actually in Argentina, engaged in an extra-marital affair. But that was four years ago, and now Sanford is back in politics, running as a Republican in a special election for an open Congressional seat in South Carolina.
His opponent is Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, but the race has mostly revolved around whether Mark Sanford could convince voters he's moved past his mistakes.
So far, the results have been mixed. Robert Oldendick, a long time South Carolina political observer, and a political science professor at the University of South Carolina, joins the show to give us a sense of how people in the state are feeling about Sanford.
The details in the Sanford case may be new, but we've seen this before: A politician, usually a man, has an affair. Things go public, the politician is disgraced. Fast-forward a little, and that politician often comes back.
These days, image rehabilitation is a pretty good business to be in, since there never seems to be a shortage of public figures getting themselves in trouble. Lance Ignon with the crisis management firm, Sitrick and Company, knows all about image rehabilitation. He joins the show to fill us in on what Sanford has to do to convince voters he's a changed man.
Accreditation review at community college puts local economy at risk
A number of community colleges in California have been so battered by budget cuts, and frankly, mismanagement, they're at risk of losing their accreditation. It's a big deal for the communities in which these colleges operate often tightly tied to the local economy.
Reporter Alice Daniel has this story about College of the Sequoias in the Central Valley city of Visalia.