The Trump administration cracks down on sanctuary cities, a new study on CTE has troubling findings, how the LA county registrar is prepping for potential hackers.
Sessions' new policy on sanctuary cities could face legal challenges, expert says
Despite recent questions about the relationship between President Trump and his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, an announcement from the Department of Justice yesterday makes one thing clear: Sessions is still working on issues that are red meat for Trump supporters.
Yesterday, Sessions issued a warning to so-called "sanctuary cities." The DOJ now says that local law enforcement could lose out on federal grant money if they fail to comply with federal immigration laws.
To meet the Department of Justice's terms, local law enforcement must give immigration authorities access to jails. Also, they must give federal officials 48 hours of notice before releasing certain undocumented inmates.
The new mandate targets the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant: a federally administered grant provided to departments for a variety of criminal justice initiatives.
But Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law School, says the policy is virtually identical to an executive order signed by President Trump in January that made similar threats to so-called sanctuary-cities.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
The road to self-driving cars in LA
We all know the robots are coming. They’re coming for our jobs and, like it or not, they’re coming for our cars. The question is: When, exactly, will they be here?
“It is happening faster than you know it," says Jack Weast, head of the automated driving group for computer chip maker, Intel, whose data systems will be used in pretty much every self-driving car once they get to market. That will be "before the end of the decade," he says.
But not all at once. What type of autonomous vehicle shows up, and where, will vary by task.
"Low speed shuttles within college campuses, industrial parks, closed communities going 25 mph or less with no drivers, that’s closer than one would think," says Malcolm Dougherty, director of the California Department of Transportation.
What that means locally is that self-driving vehicles are likely to show up first on college campuses like UCLA and USC, both of which the city of LA recently designated as proving grounds for self-driving cars.
Parts of an autonomous future are already here, at least in pieces. Do you have a car with adaptive cruise control? How about automated emergency braking or lane-keep assistance? Those are the building blocks for cars that will kick humans out of the driver’s seat around the time we’re electing our next president.
What's the rush? Safety.
“If my car is talking to your car, you and I are much less likely to run into each other when we approach an intersection," Dougherty says. "If my car is talking to the signal, I’m also less likely to run a red light by accident… so there’s a lot of technology than can help protect us from ourselves.”
About 40,000 Americans die each year in traffic crashes -- 3,500 of which are in California, 260 in LA.
“How many of those people should come from your family?" Dougherty asks.
It's a rhetorical question. In an ideal world, no one, which is why California is not only advocating for self-driving cars but spending a big chunk of money to tweak the state’s infrastructure and invest in so-called intelligent transportation systems like two-way traffic signals and ramp meters that communicate directly with cars.
It's working on making roads easier for self-driving cars to navigate -- doing things like removing those jarring botts dots that separate lanes, and replacing them with thicker painted lines that are easier for self driving cars to read.
"I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that autonomous technology is coming, and cities can be future guiding and we can get ready for it and develop a vision for it, or it can just happen to us,” says Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
She's determined to figure out how autonomous technology will work in the real world, by inviting companies to test their cars here. She's not exactly sure what the city will learn from these tests, but she's positive LA’s infrastructure will have to change.
“One of the potential outcomes if we move to a world where you’re getting a shared vehicle in an autonomous taxi is ... that we maybe don’t need as much land for parking.”
Right now, LA county has 200 square miles of parking, which could be transformed into parks, schools and housing.
Then there's curb space -- always at a premium in LA. Technology will allow the city to change street parking zones on the fly. And make some money.
“If you want to use a bus stop red zone," Reynolds says, "maybe there’s a pathway for you to pay for that if you are a private transit provider."
Like Lyft, which predicts the majority of its rides will be done in autonomous cars within five years.
As long as nothing catastrophic happens between now and then.
“There’s definitely a double standard, that we expect the machine to do things we wouldn’t expect of ourselves," says Todd Benoff, an LA-based automotive liability attorney with the Alston & Bird law firm. “We hold them to a much higher standard than we hold ourselves.”
How much higher of a standard? That's just one of many open questions as we inch closer to a self-driving future.
“Can a 10-year-old get behind an autonomous vehicle?” asks the California DOT's Malcolm Dougherty. "If I’m out drinking, can I get behind an AV if I’m not driving? These are a lot of questions that need to be answered.”
But when they are, Intel’s Jack Weast predicts our reaction to cars that drive themselves will be a lot like how we once thought about the internet, or smart phones.
"We'll all be surprised at how quickly we get comfortable with the technology and … have a tough time imagining how we ever got along without it.”
For medical professionals struggling with addiction, shame is one of the biggest hurdles to recovery
The dismissal and pending investigation of Carmen Puliafito came following a report in the Los Angeles Times detailing a pattern of illegal drug use on the USC campus.
While the details in Puliafito's case are pretty pretty singular, the former dean of the USC Keck School of Medicine is not the only medical professional to use drugs illegally.
People in the health care field are no more or less likely to experience drug addiction than the rest of us, estimated to be between 8%-13% of the US population. But that doesn't mean the circumstances are the same for health care workers as it is for everyone else. For example, they're likely to have access to addictive substances, and due to their training, can be better at concealing their drug use.
But according to Carrie Kappel, the Associate Director of the Health Care Professionals Program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, the most unique obstacle for people in the medical field-- shame.
"Often health care providers with a substance use disorder are extremely hard on themselves," said Kappel in an interview with Take Two host A Martinez. "Harder than other people are."
To hear the rest of Kappel's interview with Take Two, click the blue button on the media player above.
New study demonstrates risk of CTE
A dramatic study of the brains of deceased NFL players found all but one had CTE, the degenerative disease associated with repeated blows to the head.
Out of the 111 brains studied, 110 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is known to cause memory loss, depression, and dementia.
Take Two spoke with Doctor Daniel Daneshavar, who is part of the team at Boston University that did the research.
"I think that the days are gone where we can pretend that this is not a major issue among professional athletes and individuals with high exposure to repetitive brain trauma."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Sports Roundup: Brain injury study gives football community pause
The doctors who conducted a study on the brains of over a hundred former NFL players found CTEs – the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head injuries – in all but one case.
For this installment of K2 Sports, Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Brian Kamenetzky about how the NFL should respond and how to process the potential dangers of football as parents.
To hear the full interview, click on the media player above.
Worried about vote hackers? Hackers are here to help
Are you worried that the next time you vote, some person out there...or country...might hack your ballot?
Help is on the way from hackers. Really.
People who run elections in LA County will be headed to Las Vegas this week for the hacker conference DefCon.
Hackers will conduct mock attacks on voting systems and voter databases, while computer specialists for the county will try to stop them.
"We're still talking every day about the 2016 elections," says Dean Logan, LA County Registrar-Recorder, "and the possibilities that people tried to access voter registration records and that there's an interest in trying to mess with voting equipment."
Logan hopes his team walks away with strategies on how to protect databases and technology in a way that makes them less susceptible to intrusion.
It comes at a time when his department is also testing out various systems as part of a $15 million dollar update to the voting process.
"This will help us kick the tires and look at what manufacturers and consultants are doing," he says.