How will deadly Spanish train crash affect high-speed rail plans in CA?; Law enforcement biker clubs causing trouble of their own; How does Google's Chromecast compare to competitors?; Despite need, no plans to add veterans health centers colleges; Could a beetle cause a world without avocados?; 'The End of Night' sheds light on the importance of natural darkness, plus much more.
How will deadly Spanish train crash affect high-speed rail plans in CA?
Close to 80 people were killed after a train in northern Spain flew off the rails and crashed into a security wall. The eight-carriage train was going well beyond the 50-mile per hour speed limit.
RELATED: Spain: 'Scene from hell' at site of train crash (VIDEO)
It was the world's third major rail accident this month, with other fatal accidents in France and Canada. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the plan to build a high-speed rail in California is going nowhere fast.
Opponents are trying to throw up roadblocks through a number of channels. With more on what this means for the project is Tim Sheehan, who reports on transportation for the Fresno Bee.
Congress votes against curbing NSA surveillance authority
An effort to curb the amount of phone surveillance by the NSA failed in Congress yesterday. That's despite the initial public outcry that happened when the program was first revealed.
The 217-205 vote was also the first real test of political sentiment for the NSA's activities. For more we're joined by Phil Ewing, defense editor at POLITICO
Law enforcement biker clubs causing trouble of their own
There's a new type of biker gang on the scene. They drive Harley Davidsons, and go by names like the Iron Brotherhood, the Blue Knights or the Reapers.
They're not quite the rowdy band of outlaws and ex-cons that you might think of, though. Quite the contrary, as many of these gangs consist of law enforcement officers.
These clubs have recently come into the spotlight as one such group was involved in a bar brawl in Prescott, Arizona. That same group also might have a rising conflict with the famous Hell's Angels.
Zusha Elinson wrote about this trend for the Wall Street Journal, and joins the show to discuss his findings.
Despite need, no plans to add veterans health centers colleges
Many veterans sign up for the military with the hope of using the GI Bill afterwards to pay for college. But combat injuries like PTSD and brain trauma can make it hard for them to transition from the battlefield to the classroom.
One California community college program offers simple yet elegant support for veterans on campus. Aaron Glantz with the Center for Investigative Reporting has the story.
As a community college classmate brushed off the significance of civilian war casualties, Daniel Acree, a machine gunner in the Iraq War, felt a searing pain, his body filling with rage.
In Iraq, Acree had watched powerlessly as a 5-year-old boy died in a rocket-propelled grenade attack. That was all he could think of as the professor turned to him for perspective.
With “all the different memories coming back, I just couldn’t go on,” said Acree, 29. “I just couldn’t be there anymore.”
With a glance at his professor, Acree walked out of class. But because he was at City College of San Francisco, he didn’t have to go far to find help.
Within minutes, Acree was talking with a therapist at the on-campus clinic run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “He just listened, had me talk it out, calmed me down,” Acree said. “I don’t know what I would have done. I was in panic mode.”
When it opened in 2010, the VA clinic at City College of San Francisco was touted as a model for the future – the first health care offered by the agency on a college campus. The staff includes a social worker and a psychiatrist who can help veterans find jobs and make appointments for other types of care at the main VA.
But three years later, there is no plan for a widespread national rollout. Although nearly 1 million veterans used the GI Bill to go to college last year, the VA says its health care system so far has served 6,000 on fewer than three dozen campuses.
The initiative remains in the pilot stage, with a $2.8 million annual budget. Funds go only to schools where both the local VA and a college administrator express interest, not necessarily to those with the greatest needs. At nearly all schools with the largest veteran populations, the VA is providing no health services.
For example, the VA does not provide health care at Florida State College at Jacksonville, home to nearly 2,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, or at any college or university in Southern California. But it does at Finger Lakes Community College in upstate New York, which has 122 such veterans on campus.
Among 150 college campuses educating the largest numbers of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the clinic at City College remains one of four nationwide, according to a survey by The Center for Investigative Reporting.
The VA’s own studies have found many veterans struggle to adjust to academic life. The transition can be particularly hard for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
One study, published in 2011 in the American Journal of Health Behavior, found that 11 percent of student veterans with PTSD had gotten in a fight within the past year, while 48 percent had engaged in binge drinking during the previous two weeks.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have begun to wonder whether the agency is doing enough to back up its $10 billion annual commitment to veterans’ education with programs to help them graduate. In May, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office issued a report saying the VA “lacks a plan” for ensuring that veterans succeed on campus.
Colleges, the GAO said, “are generally building their own on-campus support services and resources for veterans without any guidance or assistance from VA.”
In an interview, Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, who requested the audit with Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., said the VA has “already had a long time” to craft a national support system for veterans who attend school with taxpayer support.
“We have had a decade of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that, we had returning veterans from the Gulf War and before that, Vietnam,” Braley said.
The VA says it is still trying to figure out a way to track the 974 students who have visited the City College clinic to see if they are more likely to graduate than those without access to on-campus services.
Although Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki has trumpeted the success of City College’s effort in a series of speeches, the initiative’s national director, Kai Chitaphong, said the agency does not have a plan for a systematic national rollout of services on campus because it is still gathering data on what works and what doesn’t. He did not say how long that would take.
The idea for creating the veterans center at City College started with the campus, not the VA. In an era of state and local budget cuts, campus officials, including the chancellor and football coach, raised private donations — most in the form of labor and materials from local trade unions — to build the clinic and a social lounge for veterans next door.
They went to the VA in San Francisco and asked whether the agency would consider opening a clinic.
“We wanted to make the transition from military to college a friendly one,” said football coach George Rush, standing in front of the lounge, with its three couches, 10 computers, refrigerator and big-screen TV. Rush was inspired by his father, a member of the U.S. Navy Reserve activated the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. His partner in the effort, then-Chancellor Don Griffin, is a psychologist who formerly practiced at the VA clinic in Martinez.
Veterans needed “a place that was their home, their place and their spot,” Rush said, a place “where veterans could talk to veterans, could communicate at the same level, share the common experience that wasn't available at other clubs and services.”
Before the center opened, the only physical indication that there were veterans at City College was a desk where a bureaucrat processed GI Bill paperwork.
The Veterans Resource Center has made City College a destination for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans across the region.
“This is a special place to me, and that’s hard to get,” said Aundray Rogers, an Iraq War veteran and president of the City College of San Francisco Veterans Alliance. The campus now has 1,300 veterans – twice as many as when Rogers started school in 2009, according to the school.
Every weekday, Rogers drives past six other community colleges on his way to San Francisco from Vallejo. City College may be fighting to keep its accreditation, but Rogers says it is the only place where he can get counseling for the flashbacks that still plague him occasionally during class.
On most afternoons, Rogers can be found in the lounge next door, laughing and backslapping with other veterans. It’s a big change from when he first arrived at City College in 2009, depressed and isolated, scanning other students’ backpacks in search of a military rucksack or insignia – someone, anyone who had shared his wartime experience.
For his part, Acree says the services available at City College have helped him make a personal transformation. When he returned from Iraq in 2004, he slept in a crouching position and reacted defensively when people approached. Once, he punched his father in the face. A job working trade shows with the Teamsters union provided money but, he said, did nothing for his soul.
He thought regularly about re-enlisting so he could go back to Iraq, where life was more “normal.” Seeking camaraderie, he re-upped in the reserves.
Now, after two years in a supportive community at City College, he is planning to transfer to UC Berkeley.
Every college should have a place for veterans to go, he said, “because who knows what one of these veterans might do. They might not get the help they need in time.”
KQED producer Monica Lam, contributed to this report. This story was edited by Amy Pyle. It was copy edited by Nikki Frick and Christine Lee.
Sequestration hits Indian Country's mental health services
Sequestration cuts are starting to be felt all around the country and Indian reservations are being hit particularly hard. Centuries old treaties tie them to federal funds for things like health care, education and housing, but time and time again those funds are cut.
Mental health services are most vulnerable, and suicide rates in Indian country are nearly four times the national average.
From the Fronteras Desk, Laurel Morales reports.
Facebook financially surges despite negative perception
Facebook and the stock market have had a tenuous relationship ever since the company's IPO tanked upon public release in May 2012. The stock has improved since then, but the company was still believed to be doing average at best over the past year.
That was until yesterday, when Facebook released their second quarter earnings and promptly saw their stock go up 25 percent.
CNET executive editor Paul Sloan joins the show to explain how Facebook's public perception that it's slipping is actually far from the truth.
How does Google's Chromecast compare to competitors?
Google's second quarter earnings might not have been great, but the release of some new products could help boost the company's third quarter profits. Those products include a new tablet, an update to their android operating system and a little device called Chromecast designed to change the way you watch TV.
Google recently debuted Chromecast, a device that lets you beam content directly from a device like a phone, tablet or laptop to your television. For $35, it essentially makes any newer TV into a smart TV.
You have to have a tablet or some sort of device, because that's what tells the device to play the video. For example, if you start a Youtube or Netflix video on your iPad, you will be able to send it to Chromecast and it will show up on your TV.
If you don't have use a smartphone or tablet, opting for a regular computer instead, you can also send that video directly to the TV as long as you're using the Chrome browser.
Google isn't the first company to come up with this idea. For instance, there's a product called Plair, which basically does the exact same thing but costs about $60 more than Chromecast.
Of course, we can't forget about the streaming boxes from big companies like Apple and Roku, but those are a little different. When you play videos through the Apple TV or Roku, you're stuck in their little app world that you have to navigate with a remote.
Chromecast turns your TV into a smart TV without forcing you to navigate through a whole dedicated system. You can simply use your tablet or phone or laptop to control what you watch on your TV. The idea is that it gives you more freedom to watch what you want, compared to being limited to what Apple or Roku offers on their own systems.
Also, Chromecast is a bargain. Its $35 is significantly less than the $99 Apple TV, and beats the $50 cost of the Roku streaming box.
Google is expecting to sell a lot of these devices, but it won't have a huge financial impact on the company, according to Ross Rubin Prinicple Analyst with Reticle Research. More likely, the device is a big move to embed Google into your living room and into your life.
Google has already tried to create their own TV ecosystem with Google TV, and it's been largely a failure. The advantage comes when users buy items through Google Play, the company's online store where you can buy movies, TV shows and music.
The company is hoping that if you purhcase products through apps on the Google tablet or Android phone, then you will also decide to stream it through their platform.
But this is not quite an Apple TV-killer yet. Currently, Google has only licensed Netflix, YouTube and Google Play to allow their apps to play through your TV. So if you're playing a TV show through the Hulu app on your iPad, you can't send it to your TV yet until more licensing agreements are worked out.
Apple and Roku both have content providers including Hulu and Amazon on their devices, so they have a much bigger library for you to choose from. That said, if you're using Google's Chrome browser, you can broadcast any video from your computer to your TV. That's the workaround for right now.
Chromecast is a great device if you don't have a streaming system setup already, and it's cheap enough that some people might give it a go just to see what it's all about.
State Of Affairs: Immigration, special elections and more
Time for State of Affairs, our look at politics throughout California with KPCC's political reporters Frank Stoltze and Alice Walton.
Immigration has been a major issue for our elected officials at the federal level, but now there are some concerns from California's Republicans that the party's reaction to immigration could hurt their chances with the state's Latino voters. A new poll looks at how immigration reform could impact House races in 2014.
There were two special elections this week. The first was in the Los Angeles City Council's Sixth District and there was actually a major upset. Why was it such a surprise to see Nury Martinez finish first in Tuesday's election?
In Pomona, there was an election for the state Assembly. Ontario Mayor Paul Leon and Pomona City Councilman Freddie Rodriguez will face one another in a September runoff and this could have serious implications for the Democrats' supermajority in the Assembly.
The tiny city of Vernon was back in the news this week. It's former city manager Bruce Malkenhorst is famous for having the top pension in California, a half million dollars a year. But now CalPERS says it is cutting that annual amount to $115,000.
Finally, the Los Angeles City Council approved a development yesterday that will redefine the skyline of Hollywood. There's been a lot of talk about the science behind this project, but what about the political science of the vote?
USPS awaits reforms in order to cut costs
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night is supposed to stop the post office, but what about losing $25 million a day?
The US Postal Service is hemorrhaging money while it waits for Congress to come up with postal reforms, and this week a House committee chaired by California congressman Darrell Issa is looking for ways to cut costs at the financially troubled organization.
Among the changes on the table are ending Saturday mail delivery and no longer having postal carriers bring mail to citizens' doors. For a better look on how the service could change, Don Soifer, executive director of the Consumer Postal Council, joins the show.
'The End of Night' sheds light on the importance of natural darkness
Across the United States, true, natural darkness is actually endangered. It no longer exists east of the Mississippi, and can only be found in small pockets throughout the Western states.
For more on nocturnal America, we're joined by Paul Bogard, author of the book "The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light."
Could a beetle cause a world without avocados?
Guacamole is a favorite here in California, where the state is known for its flourishing avocado trees. There is a worldwide threat to chips and dip now, as a deadly fungus threatens avocado trees both in California and around the world.
That fungus is spread by the ambrosia beetle, and Matthew Kasson, a post-doctoral research in forest pathology at Virginia Tech, joins the show with more.
Picture This: Father and son team Estevan and Eriberto Oriol
On this week’s Picture This, Take Two’s semi-regular conversations with photographers, we talk to a father and son duo, Estevan and Eriberto Oriol. They recently had a combined exhibit entitled, “Like Father, Like Son.”
RELATED: See pictures by Estevan and Eriberto Oriol at KPCC's AudioVision
Estevan is a former club bouncer and tour manager for groups like the House of Pain and Cypress Hill. Now he's a photographer, shooting celebrities like actors Dennis hopper and Danny Trejo. His father, Eriberto, has been photographing scenes of Southern California for years.
The pair join Take Two to talk about how they got into photography and what it's like working together.
Dinner Party Download: 'Snack Toys', the ages of maximum happiness and Esperanto
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download podcast and radio show.
On tap this week:
'Snack Toys' Adjust For Shorter Attention Spans
School-age children are increasingly playing in short bursts of time between organized activities‹whether on the sidelines of a sibling's soccer game or at home, between piano lessons and homework. And while many parents default to their smartphone or another electronic device as
a quick diversion, toy companies are working hard to maintain their market by refreshing traditional games and playthings to be shorter-playing, more portable and faster to clean up.
Happiness Peaks At Ages 23 And 69
Research shows that satisfaction peaks at 23 and 69, while those in their mid-fifties feel the most regret. Happiness also tails off after age 75, while those in their mid-20s overestimate their future prospects by an estimated 10 percent.
This Week In History: The Invention of Esperanto
The world's most-spoken auxiliary language was invented in 1887 as a way to ease communication between those without a common language. Last year, it was added as a 64th language to Google Translate.