Obama urges Congress to stop increase in student loan rates; Barbara Boxer on how to curb sexual assault in the military; Who should provide education to juvenile prisoners with special-needs?; Ex-Chivas USA coaches file racial discrimination suit; UC Irvine violinist makes beautiful music with a $5 million Stradivarius; Alexander Skarsgard goes rogue in 'The East'
Obama urges Congress to stop increase in student loan rates
President Obama is expected to address the nation about the topic of student loans. Interest rates on government-backed college loans are set to double July 1, unless Congress agrees on a fix before then.
President Obama has threatened to veto a House-passed bill that would let the cost of student loans go up and down with the market.
Who should provide education to juvenile prisoners with special needs?
Young people inevitably lose a lot of freedoms when they go to prison, yet they usually retain the right to an education. For inmates with learning disabilities, however, things are a bit more complicated.
California and federal laws are somewhat unclear when it comes to determining who should be responsible for providing that education. Education reporter Joanna Lin has been looking into this topic for the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Friday Flashback: Eric Holder, immigration reform and more
It's time for the Friday Flashback, where we look back and discuss the week's biggest topics with the journalists that cover them. This week, we brought Reed Wilson from the National Journal and Heidi Moore from the Guardian.
On tap this week:
This episode in the trials of Eric Holder began a couple of weeks ago, when we learned the Justice Department had secretly obtained phone records of AP reporters.
Yesterday, the Attorney General and other officials from the Dept. of Justice invited the Washington press corps and news executives to a meeting. It was supposed to explain some new policies about how and when the government will go after reporters. A lot of news organizations declined, however, because the meeting was supposed to be "off the record."
A number of news organizations did attend, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They report that the Justice Department seems pretty serious about putting some new measures in place. Enough damage control to at least get the press off Eric Holder's back?
The words most often associated with Eric Holder seem to be, "lightening rod." I think a lot of people were surprised when he didn't stand down after the President was re-elected. Republicans have been after him for years. Now he has the press mad at him, and even Democrats are questioning his judgment. What is it about Eric Holder that puts him in the center of so many storms?
Also this week, news that President Obama has settled on a former Bush official, James Comey to be the new head of the FBI. Is this a good move or just a sort of politically expedient one? Which leads us to David Petraeus, the former general, and former CIA chief who cashed in big time this week. Heidi Moore explains.
There were a couple of developments in the immigration reform debate, including a study that shows immigrants pay more into programs like Social Security than they take out. Also, a group of religious evangelicals announced a campaign to support reform, but even in the face of popular support, the Republican-controlled House can't be counted on to deliver. What's the temperature on this right now, and how is the House speaker, John Boehner going to play this?
Meanwhile, there's that pesky economy. We've been hearing some good news, especially from the housing market. Here in Los Angeles, there are some neighborhoods where the market has gone bubbly. All those familiar scenes from the past: initial offers above asking price, bidding wars. This is playing out in other markets as well. Did we learn nothing?
Has this sense that the recovery is picking up steam, along with a big drop in the size of the deficit, taken away any urgency for the Congress and the administration to address some ongoing problems?
UC Irvine violinist makes beautiful music with a $5 million Stradivarius
Iryna Krechkovsky, a concert violinist in residence at UC Irvine, is now in possession of one of the most of the expensive instruments in the world.
For the next three years, Krechkovsky will be playing the 324-year-old Baumgartner Stradivarius violin, estimated to be worth $5 million. So what makes such an old (and expensive) violin sound different?
"These instruments are so responsive, you’re able to achieve a really nuanced sound," said Krechkovsky on Take Two. "The sound is unlike anything else. Even though this one is 324 years old, modern science still hasn’t been able to really crack the code why the Stradivarius violins are so rare and what makes them sound as good as they do."
Listen to Iryna Krechkovsky playing a sample from Bach’s G Minor Sonata for Solo Violin:
The violin is one of 17 rare instruments loaned out every three years by the Canada Council for the Arts. Krechkovsky was among a number of top Canadian musicians who competed for a chance to play the rare instrument.
The competition asked musicians to submit an audition CD with three contrasting pieces recorded from a live concert. The finalists chosen then traveled to Toronto to compete live and then sit for an interview. The finalists are ranked and each gets to choose the rare and precious instrument they want to play.
By contract, Krechkovsky is not allowed to play any other instrument.
"The reason Canada Council created this competition is so that these instruments are heard. They need to be played, so it’s a good rule," said Krechkovsky. "You treat it just like any other instrument, but you have to be careful. I don’t use it playing outside, but just take good care of it. It’s in a case when I'm not playing. The rule for instruments is that if you’re comfortable temperature-wise, your instrument is comfortable as well."
Krechkovsky was born in Ukraine and began playing violin at age 6.
'Songs in the Key of Los Angeles' brings lost sheet music to life
There's no shortage of songs about the city, from Randy Newman's classic tribute to a punk anthem by X. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Southern California has served as inspiration to songwriters for centuries, as evidenced in the new book called "Songs in the Key of LA." The anthology features sheet music found in the Southern California Sheet Music Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.
Author and USC professor Josh Kun, along with a team of students, combed through more than 50,000 individual pieces and songbooks of sheet music. They didn't quite know what they were looking for, but Kun says they quickly noticed an interesting and exciting pattern.
"We started noticing right away that there was song after song after song that had something to do with Los Angeles or southern California," said Kun on Take Two. "I think that for all of us, what became exciting was realizing that assembling a collection was not going to be enough. We wanted to create this collection, but then figure out what stories could be told out of it. How could we bring these older pieces of music into the conversation, into the present, in ways that matter?"
Kun joins Take Two to tell us about the evolution of the project and how they chose which songs to include in the book.
Interview Highlights:
Josh Kun on the song "Home In Pasadena":
"Home in Pasadena was written by the great Harry Warren in 1923. Warren was one of the first songwriters of the Tin Pan Alley era to really zero in on the motion picture industry as a market. That recording is from 1924 with Billy Murray and Ed Smalle. What's great about it is it's about right here, and on the first edition sheet music for it, Pasadena is illustrated as if it's on the beach.
"It's very interesting the way Pasadena became folded into a larger southern California/LA mythic map. It's a song that actually starts with lyrics about taking the train west to Los Angeles. A lot of the sheet music in the collection has ties to the birth of the railroad and bringing people here as tourists or, hopefully, bringing them from the Midwest to live and stay in little beautiful, rose-covered cottages."
On "California, Here I Come" by Al Jolson
"This is a song that I always associated as a California state song. On the sheet music cover, it's got the oranges, there's a little hint of the missions and, of course, Jolson. Although he had spent some time in San Francisco, he became very much associated with LA, specifically Hollywood. The musical 'Bambo' that the song that the song had originally appeared in had a very successful Los Angeles run. This was actually written in 1921 and recorded by Jolson in 1924. As time went on, this song had really become 'Southern California, Here I Come.'"
On the imagery found in the California songs:
"In general, stylistically, you've got Art Nouveau pieces, there's pieces that flirt with modernism, there are pieces that remind me quite a bit of the arts and crafts movement, and a lot of them that look like sheet music versions of orange crate art."
On the realism of that imagery:
"A lot of these pieces, not all of them, but the majority speak to this mythic, touristic booster notion of anglo-California. A kind of tourist, arcadian dream of Los Angeles that's not unique to sheet music. This has been part of the advertising and boosting of California, specifically of Los Angeles from the very start.
"As time goes on, these images continue up through the 20's and 30's into the 1940's when the population of Los Angeles was actively changing, and the long histories of Mexican, African-American and Asian-American Los Angeles are not present on these covers. If you look at them all together, the covers become their own cover-up. They start to replace the reality of social and cultural life in Los Angeles with a profitable, mythic dream version of it."
RELATED: View the full collections of sheet music covers
Barbara Boxer on how to curb sexual assault in the military
Sexual assault is a growing problem in the US military. The Dept. of Defense estimates that more than 26,000 incidents of sexual assault occurred in the military last year. However, only about thirteen percent of these incidents were reported and a mere 238 cases wound up with convictions.
The Senate Armed Services committee is holding a hearing next week to address the issue, including considering legislation to shift responsibility for prosecuting these crimes toward from senior commanders to trained military prosecutors.
Senator Barbara Boxer is here in Los Angeles to talk about legislation she believes will better address this situation.
Ex-Chivas USA coaches file racial discrimination suit
It usually means things aren't going well for a team when it has a mediocre record, their fan turnout drops off, they've fired their manager, and they're being sued for racial discrimination. That's the current state of affairs for Chivas USA, a Major League Soccer club based here in Los Angeles.
A pair of former academy soccer coaches for Chivas USA, Daniel Calichman and Theothoros Chronopoulos, have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the team, claiming they were fired because they are not Latino and don't speak Spanish.
Nick Green, soccer blogger and columnist for the L.A Newspaper Group, joins the show to explain.
Foraging for food right in your own backyard
Instead of rushing off to the market, have you ever thought about the food growing all around you? Producer Meghan McCarty set out on a foraging expedition to find out which edible plants (and creatures) may be found right in our backyards.
Mugwort, hemlock and deadly nightshade sound like the ingredients for one of Harry Potter’s spells, but they’re actually all plants that grow wild right here in Southern California.
“Southern California is loaded with edible plants at every time of the year. So it’s like a real playground for flavors,” said Pascal Baudard, an expert at seeking out those flavors.
He’s a professional forager — he actually makes a living at it — collecting wild ingredients for L.A. chefs like Ludo Lefebvre and Michael Voltaggio. He also guides occasional classes on foraging in the L.A. area.
Baudard is no survivalist chomping on dried out twigs and berries. He’s actually quite the gourmet. He‘s teamed up with his partner, chef Mia Wasilevich, to put together a sophisticated menu of dishes to showcase the edibles we find while out collecting.
But before we eat, we’ve got to work up an appetite. So we head down the trail to look for food. We barely travel 100 feet before Baudard is off in the bushes, plucking off leaves and bending the boughs of trees to inspect their bounty.
“Those are wild cherries, and how do I find out if it is wild cherries? I’m gonna take the leaves and smell it. If it smells like almond, I know there is cyanide in the leaves.”
It seems every plant we pass has some culinary application, from white sage to elderflowers, to the storied deadly nightshade, which incidentally is not all that deadly
“It tastes like wild tomato … once it turns black,” says Baudard. “Like this, completely green it is poisonous … what do I do with it? I make spaghetti sauce”
It’s not just plants you can forage a meal from. Baudard clues us in on a special ingredient that is usually unwelcome at the dinner table: Ants.
“Did you know that we have 240 different species of ants? Some of them have floral quality to them some of them taste like lemon,” said Baudard.
But before you head for the hills and start stuffing your face with every insect and shrub you see, you should beware that nature can also be cruel.
“This is poison hemlock the most deadly plant in California,” said Baudard. “How much will kill you? A mouthful will kill you, maybe half a mouthful.”
After that sobering lesson it’s time to wind our way back to the picnic table for lunch, where Wasilevich has prepared quite a spread.
“So what we have today we have some little empanadas, or hand pies, that I made with some wild spinach, and a little bit of onion and garlic,” said Wasilevich. “Then we have some little roasted potatoes that we use our foothills spice blend. Over there is a watercress gazpacho and it has habanero salt. It’s survival food, fancy survival food.”
'The Drunken Botanist' and the plants behind your favorite drinks
If you've ever wondered what's in your stiff drink, author Amy Stewart may have an answer for you. In her new book, "The Drunken Botanist," Stewart writes about the fruits, flowers and herbs that go into our favorite alcoholic drinks.
Alexander Skarsgard goes rogue in 'The East'
One of America's biggest heartthrobs today is a 6-foot-4-inch, blonde, blue-eyed actor from Sweden. Alexander Skarsgard plays a villainous vampire in the HBO series "True Blood," and starting today, you can see him take on a very different role in the new film "The East."
Skarsgard plays the charismatic leader of The East, a mysterious collective of anarchists who plot elaborate attacks they call jams. These jams are intended to give corporations who lie, cheat and pollute a taste of their own medicine.
For example, at a party thrown by the manufacturer of an anti-malarial drug known to make its users seriously ill, The East doses the champagne with large amounts of the medication. In this scene, Skarsgard's character Benji goes undercover as a member of high society named Edward.
Skarsgard joins the show to talk about his very first role in film, and what it was like to play an anarchist in "The East."
Anna Badkhen and the Afghan village where 'The World is a Carpet'
For journalist Anna Badkhen, Afghanistan a country that's often on her mind. She been traveling there repeatedly since the war began in 2001.
In particular, Badkhen spent time in the western Afghanistan village of Oqa, a village so small, it doesn't appear on any map. In her new book, "The World Is A Carpet," she describes the village, known for its beautiful carpets, and how people there are affected by the ongoing war.
Enter of a chance to win a copy of "The World Is A Carpet"! Head over to our Facebook page to enter. We'll chose a winner at random at 5 pm Monday. Winner will be announced on Facebook on Tuesday, June 4.