Today is the deadline to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, we'll take a look at how people are faring with the exchange website. Then, we'll take a look back to some of the biggest stories of the year. Plus, we hear from a Hollywood music composer, we get our roundup of the week;s box office news and we hear from artist Jay Shells about bringing his Rap Quotes project to Los Angeles.
ACA Deadline: Have you signed up for health insurance?
Today is the deadline to sign up for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, if you want coverage to kick in on January 1.
The deadline was already moved once because of problems with the federal government's website, and there are some exceptions that allow you more time to sign up. For more we're joined by KPCC's health care correspondent Stephanie O'Neill.
Baldwin Hills shoppers sign up for health insurance at mall kiosk
Last minute Christmas shoppers headed to the Baldwin Hills mall may notice a new kiosk offering something besides cell phone accessories and sunglasses. Covered California has set up shop at the mall and are helping people sign up before the December 23 deadline.
Reporter's Notebook: ‘What part of sacred don’t you understand?’
American Indian religions are uniquely tied to the land, and for many there is no separation between spirit and nature.
But as industries like mining or tourism push further into undeveloped areas, they can run into conflicts with tribes, who sometimes see their sacred land as more valuable than economic development. From the Changing America Desk in Flagstaff, Laurel Morales reports.
Historically Chinese insurer adjusts to life in multicultural marketplace
More than 150,000 Californians have signed up for Covered California so far, mostly with big-name statewide insurers such as Kaiser and Anthem Blue Cross.
In San Francisco, the smallest insurer on the exchange has also gotten a lot of interest. The Chinese Community Health Plan is a local HMO which — until now — has catered almost exclusively to Chinese Americans.
As Valerie Hamilton explains for the California Report, that raises some questions about what an ethnic community health plan should be in a multi-ethnic state.
2013 Review: A look back at the year's biggest environment stories
Southern California environmental headlines in 2013 were dominated by David-and-Goliath style battles among regulators, polluters, and communities where toxic contamination’s a problem.
The terms of that tension were spelled out clearly in the public hearings around the Southern California International Gateway, or SCIG. It’s a transfer yard that the BNSF railway intends to build near the 710 freeway, where cargo carried by short-haul trucks would make its way onto rail cars for distribution throughout the U.S.
BNSF says the project will create thousands of new jobs, and a total investment in the region of up to half a billion dollars. Harbor Commissioners for the Port of Los Angeles and other city leaders touted these benefits as they supported the analysis BNSF offers for the project throughout the last several years.
Still, when the Los Angeles city council approved the SCIG project in May, it heard from an unusual person during public comment: Barry Wallerstein, the executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
“I want to emphasize that the AQMD has in its entire history never appeared before any body to oppose a project until today,” Wallerstein told the assembled council. “With SCIG, truck trips to the project site will double, and the trains will operate as close as 20 feet from homes. All in a community already impacted by port pollution. Tens of thousands of low income residents, numerous schools, and one of the nation’s largest homeless veterans shelters in the entire country.”
Wallerstein, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others remain skeptical that SCIG will provide environmental and economic benefits. And now Los Angeles is in court, defending SCIG against criticisms from community groups, environmental activists, and the City of Long Beach.
Low-income and vulnerable communities found their voices throughout 2013. In October, at an electric town hall meeting at Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights, the subject was Exide: one of two lead-battery recycling facilities west of the Mississippi. But the targets of the public’s ire were the regulators and public officials.
“These citizens voted for you, not Exide. We voted for you,” said Hector Alvarado. “No more excuses. Close the plant down now.
The Vernon-based battery recycler remains active while air regulators impose new operating conditions. But tests done around Exide by the Department of Toxic Substances Control reveal ongoing risks to people and the Los Angeles River from that operation.
Public frustration about toxic pollution may gain the attention of regulators and elected officials, but solutions to the problems can remain elusive.
In the city of Carson, in what's called the Carousel neighborhood, there's legacy pollution from before the city's establishment. A cleanup supervised by the regional water board is complicated and at times unmanageable. Many residents of the Carousel neighborhood want a buyout.
The mayor of Carson, Jim Dear, lent his voice to that cause in July.
“Put the money up if it's a hundred million dollars, if it's more than that. Put the money up to buy every property in the Carousel tract. Make the people whole. Then once you own the property, you can clean the property. Then you can sell it for another use.”
So far, Shell’s not buying that argument. The company continues to work to clean up the neighborhood to regulators’ standards instead of buying out the whole Carson Carousel neighborhood.
But where enough evidence satisfies regulators and public officials, a response that can also satisfy the community is possible. People living in the University Park neighborhood of LA complained about nosebleeds and bad smells when Allenco activated an oil pumping operation near them. After federal officials fell ill while touring the area, the company agreed to shut down while an investigation continues.
"It really saddens me that regulatory agencies that are supposed to be professionals, that we're supposed to trust, didn't do their job,” a woman named Angelica Romero told KPCC in November. “It took us fighting and staying up late and making phone calls to get you guys to come out at this strength."
Community organizing against urban industrial pollution has risen this year – and most of those fights will continue well into 2014.
A look back at the Santa Monica shooting with victim Debra Fine
On June 7th of this year, Debra Fine was driving back from a voice lesson in Santa Monica. She was preparing to send an audition tape to the NBC singing competition "The Voice."
Traffic seemed gridlocked because President Obama was in town, so Debra decided to take side streets off Pico Boulevard back home. It was on one of those side streets that she came across a man, dressed in kevlar vest, pointing a semi-automatic rifle at a woman in a car and demanding that she pull over to the side of the road.
When Debra yelled at him, he pointed the weapon at her and opened fire, hitting her six times. She would later learn that the alleged shooter had killed both his father and brother, and would go on to kill three more on Santa Monica College's campus before being shot and killed by police.
RELATED: Santa Monica shooting: Debra Fine tells her story of surviving being shot by John Zawahri
Debra spoke with KPCC reporter Brian Watt back in June and we wanted to check in with her as we remember 2013.
Fire department to implement new policies for mass shootings
Los Angeles fire officials are implementing a dramatic overhaul in how rescuers respond to mass shootings. The change comes after the June shooting at Santa Monica City College, and less than two months after a gunman with a high powered rifle shot and killed a security guard during a rampage at LAX.
Staff writer Robert Lopez wrote about the new policies in today's Los Angeles Times. He joins the show with more.
On The Lot: Academy membership, 'Blackfish', Technicolor and more
Time for On the Lot, our weekly summary of news from the movie business with LA Times reporter Rebecca Keegan.
There's been a lot of talk this awards season about how diverse this years crop of awards bait movies are. We've got a number of black actors and filmmakers with "Twelve Years a Slave," and we've got a Mexican director, Alfonso Cuarón, for "Gravity." But that’s the nominees. The LA Times has taken a look at the people voting, the actual members of the Academy.
How does membership work? How do you get invited to become a member? What will it take to make the Academy more diverse?
On the shortlist for likely nominations in the documentary category is the film "Blackfish," about the troubling conditions for killer whales in places like Sea World. It made a big splash at Sundance last year and was shown on CNN. There's been this huge backlash against Sea World growing for the past year, and now Sea World has actually responded. What did they do?
More casualties in the march to digital technology. The new Technicolor film lab in Glendale is closing.
The next installment of the "Fast and Furious" series. The seventh film has been announced for an April 2015 release. How will they be handling the death of star Paul Walker?
Odd Hollywood Jobs: Music composer
Christmas is typically one of the biggest periods for movie premieres. One of this holiday season's film is the film "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", a story of an introverted and shy New Yorker who has an active fantasy life.
But did you ever wonder what goes into making a story of this kind? And how other elements besides the visual ones play a part? In our occasional series Hollywood Jobs we take a look at the role music plays.
Take Two recently sat down with Theodore Shapiro, the music composer for "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", who talked about how he first approaches a new project.
Interview Highlights:
On how he comes up with ideas for film music:
"I try to work in two ways. First is I try to think conceptually as much as possible and really boil the concept down and just let my imagination go where it wants to go, but every film is different. Sometimes you're brought in at the end. Ideally, you're brought in at the beginning. For example, in the case of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", I actually started working on it before they finished shooting the film, then [Ben] Stiller brought me to New York where he was editing to look at some scenes and one of them really ended up being the foundation for the whole score. Sometimes, even with limited information you're able to tap into something that unlocks the key for the score."
Oh how he works:
"It's really a process and sometimes you don't know where you're going in the beginning. I think that with Ben, he is so disciplined about returning to the theme and staying focused on what the kernel of the movie is. It was just a thing where we kept bringing it back to what the core ideas of the score were and it just started getting more and more cohesive as we went on."
On the first step of creating a score:
"I'm in my studio, I'm creating an electronic mockup of what the score is going to sound like and at this point in time, those mockups are pretty realistic. Realistic enough that you could put them into, for example, a preview screening of the movie and they are sonically good enough that they can fool most audience members. So that's really nice. At this point, we are able to really have a good sense of what the music is going to be in its final form."
On how tricky is it to compose music for a film with varying moods:
"It's delicate and especially in a movie like this, which has a lot of scenes that are very realistic and then the daydreams have a very different kind of approach. With this daydream, for example, the music is supposed to evoke this. I think Ben always thought about it as a Portuguese mountain climber, so I needed to somehow come up with Portuguese mountain climbing music."
On composing the live music:
"That happens at the very end and before you get to that stage, you need to show the director and the director has to give notes and it would not be prudent, particularly, to start out by being on the scoring stage with 90 musicians so this is a great tool for allowing for a creative collaborative process and you can explore what the scene is as you go over a long stretch of time."
His favorite part of the job:
"In the beginning of the process after I've landed on something that the director is excited about and I'm excited about, I just know I'm headed in a good direction and then the end, where you have been living with samples for months and however good the samples get, the live orchestra is just so much better. It has a depth and it has a soul that just provides the movie something that is really magical so it's kind of a thrill to get to stand up there in front of musicians and share that experience and communicate with them and craft the music to be what you want it to be."
A look back at the US economy's gains and losses in 2013
Looking back to 2013, it seems like the U.S. economy was doing OK, but that doesn't necessarily mean you felt optimistic.
Joining us once again is our roundtable of economic experts.
For the big picture view is Christopher Thornberg, principal with Beacon Economics.
Raphael Bostic has insight on housing and real estate. He's a professor of public policy at USC and a former assistant secretary at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For personal finance we have Delia Fernandez, a certified financial planner and president of Fernandez Financial Advisory from Los Alamitos.
Washoku: Japan's traditional cuisine wins cultural heritage status
Earlier this month, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, granted special cultural status to something called Washoku.
Washoku refers to traditional Japanese cuisine, which often features seasonal ingredients. This is only the second time UNESCO has granted this special status to a national cuisine. Japanese officials were quite pleased with the designation.
The Prime Minister said he hoped it would keep future generations eating Washoku foods in an era where Western cuisine and fast food have infiltrated Japan. Atsuko Kanai, vice president of the Mutual Trading Company, talked about Washoku on Take Two.
Food writer Sonoko Sakai teaches Angelenos how to make soba noodles
One of the oldest foods of Washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine, is the soba noodle.
Dried versions of the thin, paper-bag brown noodles can be bought in Japanese markets or restaurants here in Los Angeles, but according to one aficionado, the stuff you get here isn't really soba. If they're not made and served immediately, they're cheap knockoffs that miss the nuanced flavors.
Food writer Sonoko Sakai grew up in Japan, California and Mexico. She's always been enchanted with soba and decided to teach classes on making the traditional favorite here in Southern California. Reporter Sasa Woodruff caught up with her at one of those classes.
How to make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world
What's your favorite type of chocolate chip cookie?
Crunchy or chewy? Maybe with a little salt? Dark chocolate or milk?
For J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats, it's all about the crispy edges and soft, chewy caramel center.
The only problem is that he's struggled for years to find the perfect cookie. So he embarked on a quest to bake the perfect chocolate chip delight... and after baking more than 1500 cookies - and packing a fridge to the brim with different tests - he's found one of his favorites and he's learned an awful lot along the way.
Kenji joins us on the show, but you can check out his recipe for the perfect cookie here. He's also answering questions about how to make the best cookie for you (all crunchy OR all chewy, you decide) in the comments section.
The technology behind the Adidas Brazuca World Cup soccer ball
It's round, it's fast and it hit the world stage this month with a bang.
The Brazuca, a new soccer ball designed by Adidas, was released this month ahead of next year's World Cup in Brazil. The term Brazuca was chosen by Brazilians to capture the spirit of Brazilian style and culture.
Designers say it's the latest in sports technology, and unlike the traditionally-stitched soccer ball, the Brazuca features six interlocking panels with a surface covered in thousands of small bumps, called pimples, that create maximum grip and speed.
For more we're joined by Dr. Rabi Mehta, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and an expert in aerodynamics who has been analyzing the new Brazuca.
Artist Jay Shells brings his Rap Quotes project to Los Angeles
UPDATE Dec. 30, 2013:
Artist Jay Shells just revealed images of all 45 Rap Quotes signs he posted around Los Angeles. There's also a video of him traveling around the city posting them. Check it out!
EARLIER:
Jason Shelowitz — also known as Jay Shells — is the New York-based artist behind the Rap Quotes project.
For the past year, Shells has been traversing New York City, posting red and white street signs with location-specific rap quotes, in an effort to make people aware of hip hop's influence on the cities in which we live.
His work has primarily been seen in New York, but he came through Los Angeles in mid-December and posted 45 of his signs throughout the city. We talk with him about his project and what brought him out to LA.
Interview Highlights:
Can you explain the genesis of this project?
"This particular project started out of just a pure love for hip-hop music, that I've been listening to my whole life. I just had the idea while I was home working on a painting listening to music, and a line from a Big L song called out 139 Lennox Ave... I thought wow there's got to be a lot of other lyrics like this that mention specific locations. It would be neat to start a whole project where I try to document all of them. It kind of took off from there."
You've been doing this only in New York. What brought you out to LA?
"I knew after the first batch of signs went up based on people's response that I was going to have to bring it to other cities. People were asking for it. It just made sense. I got some lyrics sent to me from Philadelphia, so I thought that would be the next one, but then I had a trip planned to come out to California to be with my wife's family for the month of December, so then I just decided that LA would be the next one. And also just as far as my musical references go, I think I listen to hip-hop coming out of LA before anywhere else. It was kind of, New York first, obviously, but then listening to NWA and Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. That was the next big hit of music that I was into, so it kind of made more sense anyway, from a concept standpoint that I go to LA second."
Have you ever gotten in trouble for posting the signs?
"I got a cease and desist letter from New York City's Dept. of Transportation, but it wasn't even for this project, it was for a different project of mine where I was using the same vehicle for the messaging, which was signs. The thing about that project, about this project, in both NY and LA is that as soon as it's made public where these signs are, by the nature of the project, it's immediately clear where they are, if the lyric is 'On 3rd and La Cienega,' then that's where the sign is, so people go and they take them.
"People are collecting them taking them, so to really get into any sort of trouble, knock on wood I don't want to get in any trouble, but it would probably have to be while I was putting them up and I really haven't yet been caught doing that, and because they disappear so quickly it's really not doing anyone any harm and it's not causing any extra work for the City, so I think for the time being they're looking the other way and it's ephemeral."
Do you ever plan on replacing the ones that were stolen?
"I can't spend the sort of money it takes to keep putting them up, I get them up the first time, make sure to document them really well. I'd like to kind of become a hub of all of these references to site specific lyrics, so that ultimately, you can go to these places and know that they're kind of landmarks in hip-hop history, so it's kind of just neat to go to those places for fans of the music, for people, it's just kind of a big shoutout to the MCs that wrote these lyrics, like, "Hey I'm listening, I'm paying attention to what you're saying."
Is there an area in LA that was represented more than another?
"I don't really know LA very well to begin with, I've only been there a handful of times, so it was surprising for me to see how many signs were in Hollywood, for example. You think Dr. Dre's always Compton, Compton, Compton, so I just thought I was going to be spending all the time in Compton when really there were only five or so there. I put up 45 in total all over LA. We went as far south as Long Beach, as far east as Compton, as far west as Venice beach and as far north as Hollywood. They were really spread out in between and almost every neighborhood has something in it."