Today, we'll hear about an Iraqi translator who's adjusting to his new life in the U.S. Plus, California raisin farmers get their day in the high court against the USDA, U.S. attorneys general meet with their Mexican counterpart to discuss drug and human trafficking, and much more.
US attorneys general meet with Mexican counterpart on drug issue
Yesterday, Mexico's new Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam met with the attorneys general of five western U.S. states. At issue: tackling the drug and human trafficking that flows between the two countries.
For a look at the whether this cooperation will stem the tide of crime and violence, we're joined by Ioan Grillo, a journalist based in Mexico City and the author of , "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency."
Raisin farmers get their day in court against long-standing USDA regulations
Today the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case about...raisins.
Horne v. USDA pits California raisin farmers against the Department of Agriculture. The decision could have widespread implications for property rights and government compensation.
The case already has libertarians, business leaders and environmentalists taking sides.
For more on this case we're joined by Karl Manheim, professor of Constitutional Law at Loyola Law School.
Iraq War 10 years later: Former Iraqi translator makes a new life in Glendale
When Tariq Abu Khumra gets lonely, which happens a lot, sometimes he turns to soft Arabic music to try and feel more at home.
His apartment in Glendale is about 7,600 miles away from his home town of Baghdad.
He's here because, after working with two units of the U.S. military as a translator, it's too dangerous for him to stay in Iraq.
Iraqis angry at his work with the U.S. military marked his car window with a red "X." He survived a car chase.
He was lucky. Among the victims of the war are hundreds of Iraqi translators who died as a result of their work with the U.S. military.
Fearing for his life, Abu Khumra applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to come to the U.S. The process took nearly two years.
RELATED: The Iraq War: Southern California looks back after a decade
"Without doing all of this, I would have been somewhere in the basement of some house in Iraq or just might be killed somewhere," he said, flipping through a massive stack of visa paperwork he keeps in a drawer in his apartment.
Congress originally authorized 25,000 Special Immigrant Visas for Iraqis who worked for the U.S. military. But so far only 22 percent of the visas have been distributed, according to the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project.
A long line of Iraqi translators continue to wait for their paperwork to be processed. The project estimates the average wait time for eligible Iraqis and Afghanis is about two years.
“People underestimate just how much these interpreters are on the line of battle,” said Katherine Reisner, National Policy Director for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. "They’re doing this all for a country they’ve never seen."
For Abu Khumra, life in Southern California means no longer having to fear for his safety. Unlike his life in Iraq, there are no military check points, and his apartment has one lock to bolt instead of three. But when he hears a noise in the middle of the night, Abu Khumra still he has to remind himself where he is — Glendale, not Baghdad.
Harder than they imagined
He's safe. But he's also alone. And, like many immigrants, he's found life in America harder than he imagined.
His one bedroom apartment is modest. In it, he keeps photos from home, his guitar, his Xbox and his most prized possession: An American flag covered with signatures from the troops he accompanied into the streets of Baghdad. He hung it over his bed.
One signature reads, "Tariq, thank you so much for all your dedication and hard work, good luck, Major Smiley." Another: "Tariq best wishes and thanks, Col. Janice King."
Abu Khumra landed a job within a month of arriving in Southern California last summer. But it didn’t pay much and, after a disagreement with his boss, he had to quit.
Now he spends several nights a week taking computer programming classes at New Horizons in Burbank.
His counselor, Jose Gonzalez, said one complication is his college education. Abu Khumra has two bachelors' degrees — from schools in Iraq.
"Because [employers] don't recognize other countries' degrees, they won't know how to validate," Gonzalez said. "How can they get transcripts? How can they break down and give details of exactly what they learned? So I think that’s the obstacle."
Abu Khumra wants to work at Google or find a similar high-paying job. In Iraq, he worked for Microsoft after his job with the U.S. military ended.
"I try to work as hard as I can, but it really gets me exhausted sometimes. I’m getting a lot of white hair," he said with a laugh.
So far, none of his other family members have been able to secure visas to move to the U.S. He worries that his family is still in danger because of his work for the U.S. military. He doesn't know when he'll be able to see them again.
He speaks with his relatives over Skype at least three times a week. They discuss car bombings and other firefights in their Baghdad neighborhood. All of this leaves Abu Khumra with a lot of guilt.
"It’s very difficult to have somebody behind," he said. "I wish nothing was going to happen to them but ... you never know."
'Fire And Forget:' Vets share stories from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
The great mass of U.S. troops that once fought in Iraq are now gone, and the military is winding down an almost 12-year engagement in Afghanistan. But as the nation moves past those two very difficult wars, many veterans are still dealing with the wounds, both physical and psychological.
Some are doing what warriors have always done, writing about their experiences.
Matt Gallagher is a former Army captain who served 15 months in Iraq. He's one of the 15 men and women whose lives were affected by war and who contributed to the new book, "Fire and Forget, Short Stories from the Long War."
Republicans push to roll back realignment, expand prisons
Republican state lawmakers are pushing more than a dozen bills to roll back realignment in California. The law, enacted in 2011 to comply with a court order to reduce overcrowding in state prisons, sends certain low-level felons to county jails instead of state prison. But many Republicans claim that realignment is wreaking havoc on the streets. KPCC's Julie Small reports.
At a Capitol press conference Tuesday, Diana Muñoz pushed her daughter’s wheelchair into view of a half-dozen TV cameras.
Last year, Brandy Arreola’s ex-boyfriend beat her into a coma. San Joaquin County sheriffs released him just two days into his 100-day jail sentence for violating parole because they needed to free up space in the crowded jail.
“This wouldn’t have happened to her if he’d still been behind bars,” said Muñoz, who urged lawmakers to repeal a California law that sends low-level felons to county jails instead of state prison.
The legislature enacted realignment in 2011 to comply with a court order to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. Before California enacted the law, Arreola’s attacker would have been returned to state prison for up to a year for violating parole.
Now, parole violators go to local jails for a maximum of 180 days. But overcrowding in those facilities means some are getting off with less time, or no time at all.
Assembly Minority leader Connie Conway (R-Tulare) called the situation a mess.
“Now, you have local government stuck with prisoners and the inability to handle them in a way that’s appropriate,” she said. “And many of them are being turned loose.”
The changes Republicans propose would result in thousands more state prisoners each year. The changes would send some parole violators back to state prison, including sex offenders who cut off GPS monitoring devices and any felon caught illegally purchasing or possessing guns.
Republicans also want felons convicted of sentences longer than three years sent to state lockups and to limit county liability for overcrowding caused by realignment. That’s to deal with a growing number of inmates starting to sue local jails for lack of medical and mental health care.
Attorney Don Spector filed the most recent complaint on Monday for inmates in Riverside County.
“They’ve been complaining about injuries that they haven’t been receiving care for a long time,” Spector said.
Spector is with the Prison Law Office, the firm that sued to cap California’s prison population because overcrowding prevented inmates from getting adequate medical and mental health care. He says “realignment” just shifted the state's problems to county jails.
Republican lawmakers said California should have stuck to a multi-billion, bi-partisan plan to expand the prisons. They admitted their bills offer only a partial fix for realignment. They’d like to see the Governor call a special session to reform the law — or scrap it altogether.
Sports Roundup: Miami Heat's hot streak, March Madness and more
It's time to get a get a little exercise and take a run through the world of sports with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky. They've covered the Los Angeles sports scene for over a decade for the Times and ESPN.
Public radio shows face off in KPCC's March Madness bracket
Update: Voting in Rounds 1, 2 and 3 are over. Round 4 began Monday, April 1; you can still vote here.
Previously: Inspired by March Madness, KPCC has launched its own bracket, the public radio bracket. It’s your chance to cheer on and vote for your favorite public radio show, from national shows like All Things Considered and This American Life to KPCC’s own, including AirTalk, Take Two and Off-Ramp.
Our first round of voting, with 32 of the best shows in public radio, closes at 5 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday, March 20.
Round 2, with the public radio sweet 16, commences Thursday, March 21, with voting closing on Sunday, March 24.
The elite 8 will start Monday, March 25, with voting open until Sunday, March 31. Your final four begins Monday, April 1, and comes to a close Thursday, April 4.
Finally, the championship voting begins April 5 before coming to a close on Sunday, April 8. The results of the championship bout will be announced April 9.
KPCC's web producer Mike Roe is the man behind this idea, and he joins the show to tell us more.
Ancient tectonic plate discovered under California and Baja Mexico
A tectonic plate that disappeared millions of years ago has turned up in Central California and Mexico.
New research from Brown University found that part of the Baja region of Mexico and part of central California near the Sierra Nevada mountains sit upon slabs of this long-lost plate. It's a big breakthrough in how we think about California's 100-million-year-old geology.
Under California: An ancient tectonic plate
Sean Gulick, a geophysicist from the University of Texas at Austin, gives Take Two a little lesson in plate tectonics.
Who gets credit for crime drop during Villaraigosa's tenure?
As part of our look this week at the legacy of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, we turn our attention to public safety. The crime rate hit historic lows during his tenure, but how much credit should go to the two-term mayor? KPCC’s Frank Stoltze reports.
RELATED: Click here for the full web story
Fukushima radiation helps scientists track journey of bluefun tuna
Well, it's not often that we talk about radioactive contamination being a good thing, but in the case of the blue fin tuna, it may actually be a life-saver. Scientists are using trace amounts of radiation found in fish from the waters near the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan to track their movements across the Pacific.
They hope that studying migratory patterns will help fine tune conservation efforts to protect this dwindling species.
Daniel Madigan, Ph.D candidate at Stanford University and the author of the study joins the show with more.
Strange gelatinous sea creatures wash up on Washington coast
Fisherman in Washington state are spotting an odd creature washing up on their shores.
It's a translucent glob known as a salp, jelly-fish like creatures about the size of a deflated balloon. Sometimes they swim on their own, sometimes they swim in a chain formation, and they've been known to show up in very large numbers.
Last year off the coast of California, there were so many salps that they clogged pipes and shut down the Diablo canyon nuclear power plant.
Marine biologist Pat Krug joins the show to tell us more about these mysterious creatures.
Can good grammar get you further in the work world?
Could good grammar get you farther in the work world? Or is it "further"?
The website Grammarly recently completed an informal study of the LinkedIn profiles of 100 people in the consumer products industry, and found that those with fewer grammatical errors had a higher level of professional achievement:
"Professionals with one to four promotions over their 10-year careers made 45 percent more grammar errors than those with six to nine promotions in the same time frame."
That may be because a better handling of the English language indicates a higher attention to detail, increased critical thinking skills and more.
"As you advance at work, you tend to do less actual work and a lot more management, and that requires effective, clear communication," said The Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty on Take Two. "It makes a lot of sense that the people who write well and speak well and present themselves well in other ways are more likely to advance."
Though the importance of having perfect grammar varies depending on the industry, many younger people these days tend to forget that having even a slight error on a cover letter or resume can mean a lost opportunity.
"So many 20-year-olds communicate by text message even at work, but if you have an outward facing position, if you're interacting with customers, I think it's essential that you have good communication skills and good writing skills," said Fogarty. "If you're communicating through email or through chat when you contact a customer service representative and you're looking for help, you're going to have a lot more confidence in that person's ability to help you and in the company who has hired them if that person is using proper English."
Even those with a good grasp of English grammar can fall victim to mistakes in important business correspondence.
"There are a lot of commonly confused words, like 'your' and 'you're,' 'its' and 'it's,'" said Fogarty. "I believe most people just make those errors out of carelessness, but if you aren't sure about the difference, definitely look those up."
Another common mistake is mixing up the use of further and farther. Farther describes physical distance, and further describes a metaphorical distance. The best way to remember this distinction is simply that "farther" has the word "far" in it.
Another common misconception is that it is never grammatically correct to end a sentence with a preposition.
"You won't find a modern grammarian who thinks that it's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. It's sort of an archaic myth that has persisted for decades," said Fogarty. "The only problem is there are a lot of people out there who still think it's wrong. So I do recommend that if you're writing a cover letter for a job, that you don't end a sentence with a preposition, but because there's no need to take that risk and be perceived as having a mistake."
Heralded California winemaker James Barrett dies at 86
On March 14, the California wine industry lost one of its earliest pioneers, James Barrett. He was 86.
Barrett was the winemaker whose chardonnay beat the French in a 1976 tasting that put California wines on the scene in Europe. The story of Barrett's achievement was told in the 2008 movie "Bottle Shock." Barrett was portrayed by Bill Pullman in the film:
The Napa Valley region was still pretty rustic back in 1972 when Barrett gave up his Los Angeles law practice to refurbish the century-old estate at Chateau Montelena. These days, that winning 1973 chardonnay fetches upwards of $10,000 at auction. There's even a bottle preserved for posterity at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
Barrett's fabled winery will stay in the family under the stewardship of his son, Bo.