Today on the show, we'll start with Metrolink's new collision avoidance system. Then, how will Gov. Jerry Brown spend $687.4 million on drought relief? Plus, aggressive Academy Award campaigns push for Oscar votes, MillerCoors releases new beer marketed toward Millenials, Egypt's Oscar-nominated 'The Square' tells the story of unfinished revolution and much more.
Metrolink to unveil new collision avoidance system
Today the Southern California passenger rail system Metrolink said it will install new safety measures on its trains. It's partly in response to a deadly crash in 2008 where a Metrolink train collided head-on with a freight train near Chatsworth, killing 25 people.
Investigators found that the Metrolink train's engineer was fault because he was distracted at the time by texting. This new system is designed to monitor trains and, if necessary, correct human error.
Joseph Szabo, head of the Federal Rail Administration, joins us to explain more about the new technology.
How will Gov. Brown's planned $687.4 million bring drought relief?
Governor Jerry Brown wants to spend $687.4 million on drought relief.
RELATED: Gov. Brown proposes $687 million for California drought relief
Yesterday, the governor announced a plan which includes funding to improve conservation, clean up drinking water and make irrigation systems more efficient. The money would also go to providing emergency drinking water to those in need and emergency food and housing for those out of work because of the drought.
For more on this, we go to Lester Snow Executive Director of the California Water Foundation
Facebook acquires WhatsApp for $19 billion
Facebook is paying $19 billion in cash and stock for a company that employs just 55 people.
RELATED: Facebook buying messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world, attracting more than a million new users daily. Here to tell us what's up with WhatsApp is Take Two regular Devindra Hardawar, National Mobile Editor for VentureBeat.
LED lights will change the way LA looks on the big screen
When filmmakers capture the city of LA at night, it's always had a certain look and feel. It might be dark, intimate, or moody, like in these stills from classic movies set in Los Angeles:
(Clockwise from top left: Collateral, Heat, Chinatown, LA Confidential)
But a change has been slowly underway by the city, converting many of its outdated streetlights into new LED bulbs. While that has a positive impact on the environment and on energy savings, it also affects the way the city itself looks on film. Hollywood will never be the same.
Dave Kendricken, author at the blog, No Film School, explains the science behind the new lights and how this will impact how you see the city on the big screen.
UCLA, USC students band together after racist fliers hit campuses
Asian-American organizations at both UCLA and USC have received racist fliers over the past few weeks. The LAPD has opened an investigation and students from both campuses joined forces last night for some frank talk.
Egypt's Oscar-nominated 'The Square' tells the story of unfinished revolution
In January 2011, thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets of Cairo, calling for the ouster of long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak. People converged in the center of the city known as Tahrir Square.
That city center became a focal point for the revolution. It's now at the center of an Oscar-nominated feature documentary called, "The Square."
Filmmakers spent more than two years recording the volatile events and created what has become the first Egyptian movie to be nominated for an Academy Award. Director Jehane Noujaim and producer Karim Amer joins the show to talk about the project.
Interview Highlights:
The story opens with Ahmed, a young man who is one of the many caught up in the excitements of the events of 2011. Tell us about him:
Jehane Noujaim: "Ahmed is an incredible person. I met him on the square, all of us met in the square, the entire team met in the square. Didn't know each other beforehand and he was the son of somebody who sold vegetables, a woman who was illiterate. He went down to the square like many Egyptians, searching for an opportunity, searching for change, a hand in his future. And he's really the street poet. He gathers people around him, debates the future of Egypt and is incredibly charismatic and the wonderful person that led us through this story."
Karim Amer: "He's really an unbelievable person. I think what happened to him, like so many young Egyptians like him, Mubarak's biggest crime, the dictator who was running Egypt for 30 years, was not genocide per se, but it was the death of hope for generations of Egyptians. Like many Egyptians, Ahmed felt that he was trapped in a story with no hope, where there was no future and what happened in that Square was the reversal, was for the first time in Egypt, the land of the pharaohs, the pyramid was flipped upside down and people felt that they could be the authors of the future and I think that was the voice that roared in that Square and the voice that Ahmed and other like him are unwilling to give up, that sense of authorship for the future."
Along with Ahmed, the film follows a number of Egyptians as these events develop. One of them a young woman named Aida. Who is she?
JN: "She's the one person that I did know from before, because she has been part of the protest movements for a long time. I met her when I was making a previous film about the street protests in Egypt, about three women fighting for change called "Egypt We're Watching You." She's a young filmmaker, absolutely unwilling to compromise on her principles. She as well is a very strong woman fighting for change in Egypt and she allowed us to follow.
"She like other characters gave us their trust, their lives and is a very beautiful person. She is very dear to my heart as is everybody that you follow. You follow people because you fall in love with them, you fall in love with their dreams. And they entrust you to give a platform for those dreams and especially in this time in Egypt, which is a very dark and divisive time, it's so important that those dreams be remembered and we have been written by young people across Egypt saying that this film and the people in this film have given them hope again for the future."
How did you wind up choosing this group? I can imagine there probably were lots of stories you could have chosen.
JN: "What these people share is very principled, they stick to their beliefs, and they're refusing to compromise on those principles. Even though they are from very different backgrounds, they're struggling for very basic human rights and social justice. The film gods were really in our side. I mean, we were all sleeping next to each other in tents, we all met each other in the square, and we showed them that you rely, that you get access to characters because they grow to trust you. And the reason why they trusted us is because we were sleeping next to them. We were tear gassed, jailed, I was jailed three times, ran after by police."
KA: "It's very hard to make a film when the director keeps getting arrested. Jehane would often be the only women filming or the only woman sometimes in this craziness of the street battles we were engrossed in, but as she said, we were very much a part of this movement. I mean, this was our story as well. So we weren't just visiting, catching the headline and leaving and I think that gave us trust. And also it's important to show diversity of people like you know, we had Khalid, who's one of the main characters, was the lead actor in "The Kite Runner" and is a Hollywood actor, and he puts his entire career on hold to stand in that square.
I mean, he could be anywhere, he doesn't need to be standing there, but he is there day in and day out because he realizes that what's happening right now is a founding period, it's the building of a new nation, the building of a new social contract and that there's a paradigm shift happening around the world. The successes and failures of these squares is interconnected because anytime we allow for infractions on human rights and civil liberties, we're tearing at that fundamental thread of humanity that holds us together."
There's a moment when the mood shifts in the film? Can you tell us about that?
KA: "It was the beginning of the realization that there's the fairytale story of change and there's the real story of change. The fairytale story of change is that in 18 days, people can come down, remove a dictator and democracy happens happily ever after. And I think the real story of change that we all kind of were exposed to is that change is a difficult ongoing process and we have to kind of move away from this story that we're stuck in of changes' greatest hits, where we want to see Martin Luther King say "I have a dream" and we want to see Gandhi liberating India and we want to see the end of Apartheid."
JN: "You don't see the lonely times. You don't see the time when Martin Luther King, Gandhi and these people felt alone and nobody supported them. It was important to show that so people really understand what it takes. So of the most incredible responses we have received have been from people who have been involved in the civil rights movement in this country, who have said to us, "While we were fighting, while we were marching, it felt like everything was going at a snail's pace and nothing was changing while we were in the middle of it." And it's only by hindsight, by looking back that we realize how much we were actually able to do."
Eventually you had to stop filming even though the story was ongoing. How did you decide it was time to stop?
JN: "We could be filming this story forever, but we wanted to release it, we wanted to release it quickly because we had the ability to change the conversation on the ground now and release it wildly and release it in Egypt and around the world. But we came to an end, where we did, because this is where our characters' journey had completed a full arch, where they had come to the place where they said, "There's no leader, this knight in shinning armor that's going to come down from the Heavens and save us." It's about having a active citizenry that keeps pushing. Rights are never given to you, they are always taken and people decided, our characters said, "It's about holding government accountable."
State of Affairs: Drought, high-speed rail, film tax credits and more
It's Thursday and that means it's time for State of Affairs, our look at politics and government throughout California. To help us with that we're joined in studio by KPCC political reporters Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze.
First up: water politics. As we heard last hour, California is on tap to spend close to $700 million to free up water supplies. The plan unveiled by Jerry Brown yesterday includes funding to clean up drinking water, improve conservation and make irrigation systems more efficient. Jerry Brown has been faring so well as Governor lately. Might the drought be his undoing?
This issue is of course a concern locally. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti been addressing the issue:
"Governors and mayors, we don't have the luxury of debating the issue. I think its clear human beings have had an impact on creating the problem. But we have to solve it now. We are dealing with that in Los Angeles because we've done some common sense things out here to conserve water, change out our landscaping, strengthen our building codes."
Garcetti will be heading to Mexico City soon. But he's not the only one headed to Mexico. Attorney General Kamala Harris announced a trip of her own. What do we know about this?
Governor Brown's high-speed rail project hit another bump on the tracks with his Lt. Governor disembarking, so to speak — what some have described as a train wreck. What has Gavin Newsom had to say and what effect will this have?
The global fashion retailer Gap Inc. said yesterday it plans to raise the minimum wage for its U.S. employees to $9 an hour this year and $10 an hour by 2015. Now the L.A. City Council is considering imposing a higher minimum wage for hotel workers.
For the first time, the Los Angeles Police Department is in charge of security at City Hall and officers there are taking a fresh look at just how safe and secure the building is for politicians and the general public. What sorts of changes are they talking about at City Hall?
Seems like there is a real sea change afoot when it comes to Californians leaving Congress. Who's the latest politician to say "that's all folks"?
Big budget films and TV productions may soon have more incentive to stay in Los Angeles.
There could be an initiative on the November ballot that would split California into six states. Who's behind this and does it have any chance at all?
MillerCoors releases Fortune beer to attract younger crowd
When it comes to Millenials and their drinking habits, the cocktail is king. This is not good for beer makers.
In an attempt to reach this highly coveted demographic, brewing giant MillerCoors is introducing a new kind of suds, called Fortune. It has a higher alcohol content, comes in a black bottle, and its makers suggest serving it in a whiskey glass, instead of a pint.
But that still leaves the big question of what will that mean for its success? Will young people take a sip? With more is Eric Shepard, he's the Executive Editor of the trade publication Beer Marketers Insights.
Glendale City Council approves affordable housing project for artists
Developers in Glendale got the go-ahead Tuesday to build an affordable housing complex in the city's Arts District.
What's unique is this 70-unit building will give preference to households in creative industries, think filmmakers, artists and designers. Sounds like a much-needed project, but some people in the community and on the Glendale City Council think the housing should go to seniors.
Brittany Levine of the L.A. Times has been covering this story and joins the show with more.
2 plead guilty in beating of Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium
Earlier today two men charged in the attack on Giants Fan Bryan Stow pleaded guilty in a Los Angeles Courtroom.
RELATED: 2 plead guilty in beating of Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium; sentenced to prison
Stow was brutally beaten in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium in 2011 on opening day. The attack left him brain damaged and his recovery has been incredibly expensive. For more on today's plea, we turn to KPCC's Rina Palta who was the courtroom today.
'Dallas Buyers Club' screenwriter talks film's Oscar nominations
The "Dallas Buyers Club" has become a surprise success this awards season. Starring Matthew McConaughey, it was shot in less than a month, with no lights and a fraction of the budget of most of its competitors in the Best Picture field.
It tells the true story of Ron Woodroof, a hard-living rodeo cowboy with HIV who becomes an unlikely hero during the early years of the epidemic. Through his "Dallas Buyers Club," Woodroof smuggles and distributes unapproved drugs to help AIDS patients to the consternation of the FDA and medical establishment.
The film has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including one for its screenwriter, Craig Borten who joins us to talk about the film.