A new CA bill proposes the strict tracking of all bullets and shotgun shells sold in the state. Plus, a judge rules that names in the LA archdiocese sex abuse files should be public. Then, 'Awesome Tapes From Africa' blog transports obscure tunes beyond Africa's borders, the Mars500 experiment is over...How did the six volunteers fare during 500 days of solitude? Plus much more.
Proposed California bill would track all bullets and shells sold in state
California assembly woman Nancy Skinner wants the state to track every bullet and shotgun shell sold in the state. She introduced AB-48 yesterday in Oakland and gun rights advocates are calling it an overblown reaction.
Adam Winkler a law professor at UCLA and author of the book, "Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America," joins the show to fill us in on what this bill would mean for gunowners.
Judge rules names in church sex abuse files should be public
The Archdiocese was set to release as a huge cache of internal church documents as part of a settlement reached more than five years ago, but an L.A. County Superior Court judge has put a kink in the plan.
Yesterday, she reversed a ruling by a mediator, and said that names of church officials and employees should not be redacted before the documents are released.
L.A. Times reporter Victoria Kim has been covering this story and joins us now.
How the Mars500 volunteers fared during their simulated journey to the Red Planet
In the movie "Alien," astronauts like Ripley traveled through space in deep sleep chambers. But in real life, there's no short cut for traveling to distant planets.
To find out what that kind of trip would be like, six men volunteered to step into tight quarters, lock the doors and spend more than 500 days pretending to fly to Mars. Scientists tracked their every move, from sleep patterns to exercise habits.
Now the results of that study are now being published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. David Dinges, who co-authored a paper on the experiment, joins the show to tell us about how the six brave "guinea pigs" fared in the experiment.
Campanile and other local restaurants hope for rebirth at LAX
If you’ve flown American Airlines out of LAX's Terminal 4, then you may have wolfed down a meal at Chili’s. Staffers says the airport Chili’s – with its cheesesteak sandwiches, combo Fajitas and baby back ribs – is the most popular of its U.S. franchises.
But in a few months, Chili’s won’t be in Terminal 4. Neither will Burger King. And eventually, the old Starbucks will go away.
Chili’s will soon be replaced by Campanile. It's one of 15 local eateries that will be opening in the Bradley Terminal and Terminal 4. It will be a rebirth of sorts for the historic LA restaurant known for its prime rib and sautéed halibut. Last October, Campanile closed the doors at its home of more than 20 years, on La Brea Avenue near Hancock Park.
RELATED: Campanile regulars reminisce as restaurant prepares for move
Renowned chef Mark Peel owns the business. He says he started planning to relocate to LAX more than two years ago. Peel says first the epicenter for food moved away from his location on La Brea, and then hard times hit.
“Business softened up during the recession," he says. "There are certain standards we maintain, and we can’t maintain them if we’re not making money, so it became essential that we try something else.”
Peel looks forward to a turnaround at LAX, even though his new place will be only a quarter the size of his old one.
“Campanile is projected to do $8 million a year (at LAX). I want to beat that," Peel says. His goal is to make $10 million a year.
Kimberly Ritter-Martinez is an economist with the LA Economic Development Corporation. She believes that more travelers are looking for higher quality food at the airport – and local options.
“Los Angeles did a very good job of developing the L.A. brand," she says. "So bringing in local businesses, [these] are very attractive offerings.”
Airport authorities say that’s why they sought out iconic Southland businesses such as Campanile, Real Food Daily, La Provence and Cole’s. They’re among the six opening in Terminal 4. Nine more are coming to the Bradley Terminal.
Officials say all of the incoming restaurants are working to keep their prices at the same level as if they were operating outside of the airport.
Peel says that some of the staff from the restaurants that are closing will end up working at Campanile and other new establishments.
“They’ve rotated people off jobs, kept them on the payroll, partnered with Trade Tech downtown," he says. Those workers have entered a 9-week cooking school taught by L.A. Trade Tech instructors to put them in line for jobs at the new restaurants.
In the meantime, Peel is preparing for Campanile’s grand opening at LAX, sizing up his space, researching ingredients, and working up a list of suppliers.
He’s focused on reaching that annual $10 million dollar goal.
“Think about it as $30,000 a day – this is seven days a week and its going to be open 16 hours a day if not a little bit more," he says. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s absolutely doable.”
Construction begins this month. The plan is to have the new Campanile and the other new restaurants at LAX up and running by May.
Bluefin tuna sells for $1.76 million in Japan
At a large annual auction last weekend, a single 489-pound bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million dollars. That's a whale of a price for a single fish. Conservationists say the demand and rising price for bluefin tuna is decimating the fish's numbers around the world. Here with more on the plight of the bluefin tuna is Richard Ellis, author of the book "Tuna: A Love Story."
Interview Highlights:
Why did this fish sell for such a huge amount of money?
"It has to do with a particular sushi restaurant spending that much money purely for publicity purposes. It has nothing to do with anything about eating the fish and ultimately a price like that turns out to be very bad for the tuna populations of the world. It's sort of for prestige, it's like buying a $40 million Picasso or a $100 million house in Beverly Hills. The difference is you don't have to kill anything to buy a Picasso or a $100 million house…You have to kill a fish to do this and that's unfortunate."
How did Bluefin Tuna get so popular?
"It became popular after the second World War when refrigeration and refrigeration ships were introduced into Japan. Prior to that you couldn't do anything with a fish, you could pickle it, you could smoke it, and you could dry it but you couldn't save then in any way. When refrigeration was introduced, they would catch tuna by the tens of thousands, stow them down in the hold under ice, then bring them back and store them in refrigerators. It was the Japanese shortly after the war that in Japan that sushi restaurants became popular all over the world."
How did Bluefin Tuna get so popular?
"There's something called ICAT (International Convention of Atlantic Tuna) convention and it is supposed to pass rules and quotas for how much tuna various countries are allowed to catch, but the problem with it is no one pays attention to those rules because they're not enforceable. Nobody has an armed fleet that's patrolling the ocean's of the world saying that's too much tuna on your boat we have to arrest you,' so they go beyond their quotas, they catch as much as they want and they sell it all to Japan. As they do this and as the prices go up in Japan, they fish more intensively because you can make more money. There is no set rate and this million-dollar fish is most unusual, the previous record of last year was $767,000. The price will go up next year will buy a fish for $2.5 million."
What can consumers do?
"You could tell your sushi chef that it's awful to eat bluefin tuna and you'd rather eat fluke, you'd rather eat octopus, you'd rather eat yellowfin tuna…If enough people were to tell that chef he wouldn't order bluefin tuna because no one would eat it. Aside from that here's very little else one can do…In many cases what is advertised as bluefin tuna isn't, it's yellowfin tuna."
What about farm-raising bluefin tuna?
"It would be a viable answer if it worked. I was in South Australia a couple of years ago looking at the attempt to farm bluefin tuna…A company would catch large tuna, keep them in pens in a special climate controlled building…trying to replicate the area where wild tuna spawned and they got the tuna to mate and spawn, and they raised them up to about a foot long and they all died. To the best of my knowledge…they have not succeeded, so the pressure is still on wild caught tuna."
Lone Gray Wolf from Oregon finds new home in the Golden State
A few days after Christmas, the state of California got an unusual visitor — A large gray wolf.
It crossed into Northern California from Oregon, traveling more than 800 miles from his pack. It’s the first known wild wolf in California since one was sighted and killed in 1924.
RELATED: Click here to track the lone Gray Wolf
'Awesome Tapes' blog transports obscure cassettes beyond Africa's borders
It's Tuesday, that day of the week when new records drop. Of course these days those new releases are usually CDs or digital downloads — they're seldom vinyl records or tapes.
But there is one place where the cassette tape is still king: Africa.
Blogger Brian Shimkovitz created the blog Awesome Tapes From Africa as a way to bring to light the wealth of cassette-based music from Africa into the mainstream. By digitizing hundreds of obscure, never-before-heard tapes and posting them on his blog, he's bringing music some of us here in the U.S. may never have heard otherwise.
Shimkovitz joins the show to tell us about why he started this project, what attracted him to these obscure tapes and what he hopes the blog will do to
Should Hispanic be considered a race for the 2020 Census?
The U.S. Census is taken every 10 years, and there is one yes or no question everyone is asked: Is this person of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?
Then the next question asks your race. Among the boxes for you to check are white, black, American Indian, subcategories like Chinese or Japanese if you're Asian, and more if you're Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Then finally there's "other."
But when you choose "other," then the Census assigns you one of those other races based on where you live. They'll look at your neighbors and assume your racial background is similar.
That's a good illustration of the problem the Census had in 2010.
The good news is that for the next go around in 2020, the government may change the way it asks the question. In order to get a more accurate picture of who's who, they may combine the first and second question on race and ethnicity into one mega question about a person's "background."
It's confusing, but there are big incentives to get the numbers right, because the Census is used to determine Congressional representation and federal funding, among other things.
Mark Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, joins the show to explain how the initiative to change the question is based on the confusion by Latinos and Hispanics who mark their race as "other."
Why Nicaragua has been safe amid Central American drug violence
A number of Central American countries have been besieged by violent crime. Honduras, for example, now has the highest murder rate in the world, with 82 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Guatemala and El Salvador are not far behind.
But just to the south, in Nicaragua, it's a different story.
Here to explain why is Roberto Cajina, security analyst at the Inter American Dialogue.
The ramifications of a technologically enhanced military
The President has tapped Chuck Hagel to be his next defense secretary. The former Republican senator will have plenty of challenges to face, including how far to go with what's known as military human enhancements.
These enhancements include everything from robotic implants to drugs and gene therapy, which can make soldiers stronger and faster, but also include great inherent risks.
Maxwell Mehlman is a professor of law and mediciane at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, he's also one of the authors of a new study on some of these risks.
Supreme Court rules against environmentalists in LA water runoff lawsuit
The Supreme Court has unanimously sided with Los Angeles-area governments that are fighting a lawsuit over pollution from urban storm water runoff.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court in a narrow ruling issued Tuesday that the 9th Circuit wrongly ruled for environmentalists in a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Flood Control District.
At issue is who is responsible for billions of gallons of polluted water that flow into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers, and eventually the Pacific Ocean, after heavy rainfalls.
When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the dispute, it did so on a narrow question: does the flow of water out of a concrete channel within a river rank as a “discharge of a pollutant”?
In an unusual twist, when it came time to argue the case, everybody agreed that the answer to that question, decided in an earlier Supreme Court case, is no, you’re not discharging pollution if you’re just sending it around within the same water system.
Environmentalists, who wanted to preserve the 9th Circuit’s ruling holding the county responsible for pollution, argued that in misunderstanding where the monitoring stations in the storm system are, the appellate panel may have gotten some facts wrong, but was right on the law.
“The county has managed to game the system in a way that has allowed the pollution of our waterways to go unaddressed for many years,” said Liz Crosson, Executive Director of L.A. Waterkeeper. "The county is the largest source of stormwater pollution to local waterways, and today it has escaped accountability, but only temporarily.”
Lawyers for the county’s flood control district pushed for the lower court’s decision to be overturned.
“This was a short but important opinion for the District, reinforcing that it was fulfilling its obligations under the Clean Water Act,” said Timothy Coates, a lawyer with Greines Martin Stein & Richland who argued the case for the flood control district.
The court’s ruling sends the 5-year-old dispute back to the 9th Circuit for another hearing. But the specific set of rules the NRDC and LA Waterkeeper sued local governments to enforce, known as the MS4 permit, has been replaced since the dispute began.
Last month the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board approved a new permit, which includes more monitoring stations for pollution.
In addition, the Flood Control District has proposed to tax parcels of land in Los Angeles County based on size and impermeability. Officials say the revenue yielded by the tax would pay for green infrastructure runoff controls that would capture and treat rainfall as close to where it falls as possible.
While environmental groups were initially supportive of low-impact development rules, they say they remain wary about how well the program will work.
“The county owes it to residents and visitors alike to step up and control this pollution by utilizing the range of green infrastructure solutions that are available today,” said the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Steve Fleischli.
Next Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider whether to ask property owners to vote on the proposed stormwater parcel tax. If the plan’s approved, the county will count ballots later this spring.
California must move forward with No Child Left Behind
This year marks the 11th anniversary of the No Child Left Behind program. California applied for a waiver to have some of the requirements relaxed but was denied.
KPCC's education reporter Adolfo Guzman Lopez explains how California schools will move forward in complying with the program.
Former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee subject of new Frontline doc
One of the most pivotal players to appear on the education scene since No Child Left Behind took effect is Michelle Rhee. The former third-grade teacher was tapped to head the Washington D.C. school system in 2007.
Rhee went on to become both one of the most admired and reviled names in public education.
Tonight, PBS airs a documentary about her career, titled "The Education of Michelle Rhee.
Education reporter and director John Merrow joins us from NPR in New York to talk about his film.