Conservative activists are gathering in the nation's capitol to talk immigration reform. Then, why has deferred action slowed since its start in August? Does an 'immortal' jellyfish hold the key to everlasting life? Plus, new 110 toll lanes causing confusion for some drivers, and comedian Steve Mazan talks about his 'Dying To Do Letterman.'
Conservative activists meet in DC to talk immigration reform
Today more than 250 conservative activists are meeting in Washington, D.C. for a bipartisan national strategy session held by the National Immigration Forum. Among them is evangelical leader Richard Land, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Richard Land joins us now from the studios of NPR in Washington DC.
Why momentum for deferred action has slowed since September
Think back to August: the weather was hot, the presidential race was in full swing and the Obama Administration rolled out something called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The program offers temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country before their 16th birthday. On August 15, the day it became available, people came out in droves, some even camping over night to sign up.
Applications for the program peaked in September, but have since slowed and no one knows exactly why.
Here to offer some theories is KPCC's Multi-American immigration reporter and blogger Leslie Berestein Rojas.
Does the immortal jellyfish hold the key to everlasting life?
Humans have long been obsessed with the idea of immortality, but forget about super fruits with antioxidants or a magic Fountain of Youth. Consider instead, the humble jellyfish.
A recent New York Times story headlined "Can A Jellyfish Unlock The Secret Of Immortality?" has shed light on a species of jellyfish known as "The Benjamin Button of the animal kingdom." Turritopsis dohrnii, or the immortal jellyfish, has the unique ability to regenerate itself.
Scientists studying the creature noticed that it "refused to die," and appeared to reverse in age until it reached its earliest stage of development. Then the jellyfish would emerge again and start the cycle all over again.
Pat Krug, a marine biologist at Cal State L.A. joins the show to explain more about how the jellyfish cheats death and whether or not it could prove the key to life ever after.
Interview Highlights:
Technically speaking, is this creature really a jellyfish?
It's a cousin of the animal that you picture when you think of jellyfish, but the actual jelly stage is much shorter than what you think when you think of an actual jellyfish.”
Can you explain what ‘jelly stage’ means in terms of the life cycle?
"When you think of a jellyfish you picture a pulsing bell with the tentacles, this is the adult stage in the life cycle of that animal. But there are other stages. The medusa, or the swimming jelly stage is the adult stage that gets to have sex, and then embryo develops into tiny swimming larvae that goes to the bottom, glues itself to a rock, and grows up into a polyp. It’s like a miniature sea anemone, like what Nemo and his dad lived in. These tiny little polyps don’t get to have sex, but they can clone themselves. So it develops a little stack of pancakes and each pancake will pop off and swim away and that is the jelly stage.”
Is the “Benjamin Button” analogy of reversing its age an accurate depiction for this jellyfish species?
"It doesn't really go in reverse like Benjamin Button, it more skips ahead. Normally an adult jellyfish has reproduced a few times, is getting on in years, it starts to starve or the water gets too hot, it has done its part and dies. In this species, when the jelly gets really stressed out, it collapses to the bottom and melts. But instead of dying it reorganizes its tissues and forms a new little polyp. Its almost like it skips its having sex part and goes straight to the next bit in the life cycle and then becomes a new polyp.”
Is this anything like a lizard and its ability to shed its tail and grow a new one?
"A lot of animals have these incredible powers of regeneration, but I can’t think of another animal that is capable of melting itself down and starting over again, not just regrow another body part, but completely reform itself and start anew. It means that the cells of this animal are able to basically un train themselves to do a particular, job, muscle cell, nerve cell, skin cell, and go back to being a stem cell. They then can reorganize themselves and form a whole different body, and then resume their life.”
Do you think that research on this jellyfish will actually yield anything that can be helpful to scientists in terms of human medicine?
"Whenever you have an animal that is capable of doing something unique it has a potential to give us some really novel insights into basic processes. Biochemical engineers in the past few years have made some huge progress in learning how to take an adult cell from a human and deprogram it so it can become like an adult stem cell and then have the flexibility to become like the cells around it are. The advantage there is lets say you have a damaged spinal chord, well if you can un-specialize some of a person’s cells and inject them into that spinal chord they can pick up hints from the cells around them and develop into new nerve cells and hopefully be able to repair the damage. That’s sort of the hope of working with adult stem cells. And it sidesteps the complications of working with embryonic stem cells. Learning how to take adult cells and get them back to the early stage where they can develop into anything is a significant goal of what we want to be able to achieve. Its something that this humble little jelly has as a built in feature of its life cycle. Things get gross around it, it melts down and rebuilds itself from scratch. So I think there is definitely the potential that we could learn some basic things that we could better apply to our own technology for human medicine.”
Metro, highway police to crack down on scofflaws on 110 toll roads
Confused about how to use the new ExpressLanes on the 110 Harbor Freeway?
Now is a good time to get up to speed.
Next week, Metro plans to start issuing fines to motorists who misuse ExpressLanes on the 11-mile stretch of the 110 between downtown and Gardena.
Since Metro opened carpool lanes on Nov. 10 to solo drivers willing to pay a toll, the agency has issued more than 12,000 citations.
"I don't get it," said Rubia Serrano, a gas station manager from Compton. "That same day we got the ticket, we were three people in the car."
What Serrano didn't realize is that while carpoolers ride in the ExpressLanes for free, they need to first register for the program.
The device is available online or in person at Metro locations and stores like Albertsons.
Drivers have to put down a $40 dollar to open an account, and low-income drivers are eligible for a discount.
If you’ve received a citation in the mail – don’t panic. Metro is asking motorists to pay the tolls they owe and to open an account with the agency. That gets you a transponder that carpoolers and solo drivers alike need to display in their dashboard if they want to use the ExpressLanes.
But beginning Dec. 10, you could face fines if you drive in an ExpressLane without a transponder.
Metro gives you five days to pay tolls you skipped. Miss that deadline and you get dinged with a $25 penalty. Miss that deadline and get another $30 fine.
You could also get penalized for not using the transponder correctly. Drivers must manually switch the transponder from “1,” meaning a solo driver, or “2” or “3” for carpool. That setting determines whether or not you have to pay a toll.
If the California Highway Patrol catches motorists traveling without a transponder or trying to get out of paying tolls, fine can go up to $400.
How will they know? Sgt. Terry Liu said that officers will be reading pole lights that flash a certain color when motors drive by the freeway’s sensors. For instance, a white light means that the transponder was set to carpool.
“If an officer comes up next to your vehicle and notices there’s only one person in the vehicle, you’re in violation,” Liu said. “That’s when the officer would take enforcement action.”
The opening of the 110 ExpressLanes is a year-long demonstration project, part of a $290 million traffic project largely funded by federal grant money. It includes the addition of nearly 60 buses to Metro's fleet. Also, carpool lanes on Route 10 will be converted into ExpressLanes in late January, or early February.
Despite all the confusion on the 110, the new lanes already have a lot of fans. Drivers like Melanie Barr, a nurse from Carson, expect to shave significant time off their commutes.
"It usually takes me about an hour from Carson to get to Koreatown," said Barr. "Hopefully this will cut it down by like 10, 15 minutes."
She's one of 60,000 people who've opened Express accounts in the last several weeks. Metro expects about 100,000 people will sign onto the program.
People who study traffic for a living are following the 110 project closely.
"We experts have been advocating for this in the order of 50 years. The idea of using pricing to manage congestion" said Genevieve Giuliano, director of the National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research at the University of Southern California.
"If we succeed in increasing the number of people being served in the corridors,” Giuliano said, “then we will have demonstrated that travelers are better off. If the lanes stays empty, it's going to be a problem."
There has been extensive media coverage about these new lanes. The public got the message during 400 community meetings held by Metro to explain how the lanes would work. For months, electronic signs along the 110 warned drivers the new lanes were coming.
But paying to drive on the freeway is a foreign concept to many Southern Californians
"Wow. That's far out. I didn't know anything about that," said Brian Duncan, a Pasadena resident. "Driving on a freeway, it's supposed to be a free experience, you know?"
Metro may seem like its facing an uphill battle to educate drivers, but spokesman Rick Jager says it'll just take some getting used to.
"This is brand new for LA, we've never tried anything like this," said Jager. "So this is going to be a learning curve."
Metro expects it will take time for drivers to get up to speed.
Rick Jager says traffic may get worse on the 110 before it gets better.
"We figure probably two, three months into it, we will start noticing some relief in the mixed-flow lanes as people get more used to the idea that they can jump into those ExpressLanes for a toll," Jager said.
Immigrants, minorities especially vulnerable to bankruptcy scams
Software systems engineer Ajamu Azibo seems to have it all. He's young and healthy, with a great job at UCLA, a happy marriage, and dreams of owning a house someday.
But during a coffee break on campus he recalled the day, five months ago, when everything seemed to fall apart. He'd been waiting for a call to hear whether he qualified for a new car loan.
"I was sitting at work; I got a phone call from my car company, from the loan. And they asked me if I planned on going forward with the bankruptcy that I'd filed on June 22nd. This was completely out of the blue, I hadn't gone to the court to file, so I had no idea what they were talking about," Azibo said.
He rushed to the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles and asked whether someone had filed for bankruptcy under his name. A clerk handed him a folder with documents containing signatures that were not his.
The report listed that he was single and that he owned a Honda Accord, a property in San Diego and another in Carson. None of that was true. He discussed this with one of the agents at the bankruptcy court-and soon they realized that someone else had filed for him. Unfortunately, the court told him, his case is typical.
Maureen Tighe is a federal bankruptcy court judge for the Central District of California.
"We had a lot of people coming to court saying 'there's been a bankruptcy filed on my name, and I've never authorized the bankruptcy filing. And once you got talking to the person, they usually had some sort of a foreclosure problem. And they had consulted one of these outfits that do loan modifications, or foreclosure rescue," Tighe says.
Azibo hadn't sought a loan modification, or a foreclosure. But he remembers meeting four years ago with a friend of a friend, a man who identified himself as a lawyer. This person suggested that Azibo could solve his money problems by filing for bankruptcy. Without thinking twice about it, he gave the man his name and Social Security number, and the rest is history. No one knows if this same man is responsible for Azibo's bogus bankruptcy filing.
Since the summer, Azibo has become the victim of yet another scam: a bankruptcy hijacking. That's when a third party fraudulently files for a loan, or property, on behalf of someone's bankruptcy case without his or her knowledge. Turns out that somebody dumped eight different properties facing foreclosure on Azibo's open bankruptcy case. That further complicated his financial record.
Magdalena Reyes Bordeaux calls Azibo's case a prime example of how creative some notarios, or fake lawyers, have become. They prey on people's fear or mistrust of the legal system, worries about the expense of hiring a qualified lawyer, and sometimes, cultural and language differences.
Reyes Bordeaux is representing Azibo's case. She's a senior attorney with Public Counsel, a pro-bono law office that handles debtor's assistance programs.
"I think for many individuals, they are intimidated by the legal system generally, and there's a lot of advertising out there by notaries…It's only compounded by the fact that a lot of these individuals are friends, maybe friends of family, and so they trust them sometimes more than they trust the legal system."
Reyes Bordeaux says hard economic times have hurt many immigrants, Latinos, and African Americans. They're more likely than others to hire notarios, who advertise their services on Spanish TV or rely on word of mouth to solicit clients.
These unscrupulous bankruptcy petition preparers charge between 200 and 12-hundred dollars for a bankruptcy filing. Many of them fail to fulfill their duties in a timely fashion. They offer questionable legal advice without the benefit of legal training.
These days, Ajamu Azibo is working to get his bankruptcy expunged, so it doesn't remain on his record. He must check his credit report every three months, he says.
"I just look at the potential downsides to all of this, and it's a complete nightmare. I think all I can do at this point is sort of move forward, the best that I can, and take care of things and be as responsible as I can be. I know now that I will never be as trusting as I was in the past-but it is alarming.”
The prospects of catching those responsible for his fake bankruptcy filing are very slim, Azibo says. He realizes that thousands of notarios operate in the Southland, and that many people are too willing to accept their bad financial advice.
New Music Tuesday: Holiday tunes from 'Twas The Night Before Hanukkah'
Hanukkah begins this weekend, and if you are looking for some holiday listening that goes beyond the Dreidel Song, you're in luck.
Josh Kun, one of the founders of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, has released a new two-CD collection called "Twas The Night Before Hanukkah," an eclectic collection of songs about the Festival of Lights and Christmas songs, written and sung by Jewish performers.
“We started this because we thought that the world needed the ultimate musical history of Hanukkah. So we wanted to do a kind of Hanukkah record that was an anthology of Hanukkah songs," said Kun. "A couple things happened, we realized there weren’t as many Hanukkah songs as we thought there were, the ones there were weren’t so amazing, but then we realized that the most Jewish of all Hanukkah songs are actually Christmas songs."
There are, however, a pretty good number of Hanukkah songs, without including the Adam Sandler one.
Rock of Ages
“The lyrics for this song are fairly old. The Hebrew version is really the main Hanukkah song in terms of a traditional Hanukkah song for the candle lighting. This was one of the first songs in the United States to enter in to the America Hanukkah pop cannon. We have the original 1938 version on the compilation…but also a version of it in Hebrew that is more of a disco-funk from the 1970’s."
Hanukkah quiz
“Its like Jewish musical ad-libs. It’s from a children’s record on the Menorah label part of post war Hanukkah records that were part of the growing musical archive of American Jews in the suburbs. Jews were figuring out post World War two their relationship to religion and identity. So a lot of Hanukkah records in the 1950s had an instructional tone, how to teach your kids what Hanukkah is all about. And it is really a minor holiday so one of the stories the CD tells is how it was sort of built up and imagined to be much bigger than it actually is and these records are a big part of that.”
Hanukkah Dance
“One of many that Woody wrote, in part in collaboration with his mother in-law the Yiddish poet. He was very active in Brooklyn being influence by the Jewish folk scene. It is a good reminder of the folk scene in both preserving and changing the sounds of American Jewish identity.”
The second disc is a compilation of Christmas songs by Jewish composers and singers.
The Christmas Song
“It’s almost a parody of the secularization of Christmas, you know chestnuts, Jack Frost, Yule tide, all this stuff that has nothing to do with Jesus and this is what you see in all these pop songs… this is what they do, these songs “de-Christ” Christmas all the way back to ‘White Christmas’ which is kind of the Godfather of Christmas songs written by Jews.”
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
“This is a very famous Jewish cantor who became even more famous as an opera singer, doing this song, on a compilation of Christmas songs put out by the Good Year tire company as a promotional sale, like a quarter of the singers on their are Jewish. Good Year did about 10 of these compilations, and that just goes to show the relationship between the Holiday as a secular event but also a consumer event.”
El Dia De La Navidad
“Larry Harlow, one of the giants of New York salsa music, was someone who was central to the shaping of the New York salsa sound. This is from a Latin rock opera that he spear headed that is kind of a salsa version of the ‘Who’s Tommy.’ This is about the Tommy figure that is being ridiculed on Christmas day. And Larry Harlow is a Jew from Brooklyn. This is not officially a Jewish Christmas song but this is as close as he got to doing a Jewish Christmas tune."
Fighting between rebels and pro-Assad forces intensifies in Damascus, Syria
In Syria, fighting between the rebels and pro-Assad forces has intensified all over the capital of Damascus. And there are more signs the Syrian regime of President Bahsar al-Assad has its back against the wall.
For more we turn to Patrick McDonnell, the Middle East correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.
Journalist Lara Setrakian's quest to cover 'Syria Deeply'
The civil war in Syria has consumed reporter Lara Setrakian. Until a few months ago, She was living in Dubai, and reporting on the Middle East for ABC News.
But chasing so many stories in so many countries wasn't enough, she wanted to focus on one story and go deep. So she's founded a web site and it's called Syria Deeply.
Comedian Steve Mazan on comedy, cancer and 'Dying To Do Letterman'
Comedian Steve Mazan joins the show to talk about his new documentary "Dying to do Letterman." The film chronicles his five-year-journey of trying to perform on "The Late Show with David Letterman" after being diagnosed with cancer.
'Gay conversion' therapy rulings conflict in district courts
Opponents of a new California law that bans gay conversion therapy for minors won a round in federal court Monday. But on Tuesday in a different district court, the plaintiffs of a similar case were denied their injunction.
U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb sided with plaintiffs Monday by issuing a preliminary injunction that temporarily exempts only the three plaintiffs from the ban. They argued that SB 1172, which restricts efforts by licensed health professionals to change people's sexual orientation, violated First Amendment and parental rights.
The preliminary injunction allows the three plaintiffs to continue their practice until after a full trial.
Conversely, on Tuesday in a different district court, Judge Kimberly J. Mueller denied a preliminary injunction against the law in a ruling in the Pickup v. Brown case.
"[Shubb] found that there is a likelihood that there would be a First Amendment violation as applied to their forms of psychoanalysis," said David Cruz, law professor at USC. "He rejected the idea that this could be or should be analyzed as a professional regulation relying on what [Mueller] characterized as dictum in a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."
Mueller looked at the law differently, ruling that it was open to professional regulation by the state as allowed by the Supreme Court.
"She read the statute in accordance with the way the defense read it, the state government read it, to say: You can mention it, you're not being forbidden from referring them to an unlicensed person to practice these conversion efforts…you can give them literature, but you cannot engage in efforts to change them," said Cruz.
Conflicting rulings in similar cases are not unheard of. Plaintiffs are free to file their own suits, they're not automatically consolidated, and they're also assigned judges at random.
"Here we have 74-year-old Judge Shubb, granting the opinion, he had been appointed by President George Bush, and 55-year-old Mueller, appointed by President Obama, denying the injunction in the other case," said Cruz.
If either party was to file an appeal, the 9th Circuit Court would likely group them together and make one ruling, the professor said. Both judges left the law largely intact and it is still slated to take effect January 1st, with an exception for the three plaintiffs in the Shubb ruling.
Need to hitch a ride? There's an app for that
Smartphone applications designed for drivers, ride-sharers, and taxi seekers are starting to come into their own, but they're creating a lot of controversy.
Here to tell us about this fairly new class of transportation apps is Samatha Murphy, a tech writer for Mashable.com