Wildfires play a crucial role in seed dispersal; Immigration reform takes back seat to conflict in Syria; Juarez police investigate possible female vengeance killer targeting bus drivers; Head Start program for migrant farmworkers facing changes in growing season; Wayne Kramer brings music to inmates with Jail Guitar Doors USA program; The cross-border drug war through the lens of Hollywood, plus much more.
Wildfires play a crucial role in forest plant diversity
Most people think of fires as being bad, but few consider the good things that can come from them.
For instance, fires can help clear out old debris, stimulate seed germination and encourage new plant growth.
"We have plants in the area…that have seeds that are stored in the soil for long periods of time, essentially waiting for the heat of fire or effects of charcoal and that kind of thing and rain, water to stimulate them to germinate," said Carl Skinner, U.S. Forest Service ecologist who's been doing work in the Stanislaus-Tuoloumne Experimental Forest. "We would expect that you would get a lot of that kind of germination, especially in more severe parts of the fire."
The experimental forest is used by scientists to study the ecology of different kinds of forests. The information they glean is then used to help the U.S. Forest Service to better manage these natural areas. They can also help scientists understand what happens to plant life when a wildfire like the Rim Fire ravages a forest.
"A fire will affect biodiversity in many ways, it can cause a change back to an earlier successional stage…so you end up with a whole suite of vegetation that wasn't there before," said Skinner. "[It can] bring back diversity that has been lost because the density of forests."
But while natural wildfires can have beneficial side effects, when they're as large and intense as the Rim Fire, the negative effects outweigh the positive.
"I don't think of it as a silver lining, because the pattern left by this fire is probably way outside the bounds of what would have been something a natural fire in the past would have done," said Skinner. "What we'll probably end up with are very large areas of high severity that will be difficult for regeneration of the trees again. If that happens then it will probably revert to shrub fields, unless there is some kind of management or something to try and reestablish the forest"
Immigration reform takes back seat to conflict in Syria
When Congress left for August recess, immigration reform was a front burner issue. The Senate had approved a sweeping bill that established a path to citizenship for millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally.
The House was deliberating, but immigrant advocates were optimistic that legislation would pass this year.
What a difference a month makes. The prospect of American involvement in Syria's civil war and a looming budget battle have taken center stage. That's got proponents of immigration reform drawing up contingency plans.
Leslie Berestein Rojas covers immigration for KPCC. She joins the show with more.
Head Start program for migrant farmworkers facing changes in growing season
Labor Day's come and gone and everyone's back in school. Except for pre-schoolers attending a Migrant Head start program in Oxnard. For those kids, the school year has just ended.
KPCC's Deepa Fernandes has more on this unique program that caters to the children of farm workers
Friday Flashback: Syria, job numbers, Yahoo! and more
Making the case for — and against — a strike against Syria. Employment is in the doldrums, but car sales? Hot, hot, hot!
These are just a few of the topics for this week's Friday Flashback, our weekly analysis of big stories in the news. We're joined, as usual, by Jim Rainey of the LA Times and by Nancy Cook of National Journal.
Of course, Syria continues to dominate the news. The President has asked Congress to approve a military strike that will punish the regime for its use of chemical weapons.
Lawmakers are split. There's support and opposition on either side of the aisle, and it seems like the President needs to convince the public this is a good idea. Let's start with the Congress. Is there any rhyme or reason to who is supporting military action and who is against it?
One long and loud voice for military intervention is Arizona Senator John McCain, who has been taking heat in his district. What's it going to take to get this through both the Senate and the House?
The President will make an address on Tuesday to lay out his case for military action. He spoke earlier today with reporters at the G-20 summit in St. Petersberg where he mentioned the international community's responsibility.
Let's talk about the reaction of Americans. Obviously, the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is playing into this, but there wasn't a groundswell of opposition to our action in Libya. How do you explain the lack of support for action against the Syrian government, even when no one is really disputing the evidence they used chemical weapons against their own people?
How would you say the White House has done in making their case so far?
Moving on from Syria, we got the Labor Department's monthly job figures today, and they are not so encouraging: 169,000 new jobs, more people dropping out of the labor force. It seems like the so-called recovery just can't get enough steam to begin replacing the millions of jobs lost in the recession.
Anything specific in the jobs report that makes you either more, or less optimistic about the outlook for the months ahead?
One bright spot in the economy, at least for the moment, is the auto industry. It's come back from the dead, and the big three automakers are posting record sales and record earnings. They're making better cars, and actually making money selling them.
What's behind the demand though? Is it just that so many of us drove our old cars into the ground, we pretty much have to get a new one?
Meanwhile, over in the tech world, a few blunders. Including a rare stumble by the fair-haired savior of Yahoo, Melissa Mayer. She personally worked on a redesign of the Yahoo logo, and the response to the design wasn't so great.
We have to have a deep and philosophical discussion about another story. John McCain, caught on camera playing poker on his iPhone during a Senate hearing on Syria. It lit up Twitter, and all the late night comedy shows took their shots. McCain himself made light of it in a tweet, but really, Texas Hold 'Em on the Senate floor?
LGBT service members still fighting for benefits
When the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last June, that was supposed to clear the way for same-sex married couples to obtain federal benefits. But LGBT service members are still fighting that battle.
The Texas National Guard and Louisiana National Guard are refusing to accept any application from same-sex couples trying to claim benefits, despite a Pentagon directive to do so.
Meanwhile the Mississippi National Guard says it's limiting the requests it receives to only service members who apply for benefits from federally-owned offices, not state-owned ones. They say it's because same-sex marriage isn't legal in those states.
This is just the latest barrier for LGBT service members and veterans seeking benefits: in addition, a little-known law called Title 38 only extended VA benefits to spouses in opposite-sex marriages.
When the Supreme Court ruled against DOMA last June, other regulations on the books like Title 38 were left unaffected. It needed a separate challenge, and just last week a federal judge ruled in favor of a lesbian couple in Pasadena seeking benefits.
A few days ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Justice Department will no longer defend Title 38, clearing the way for other LGBT veterans to pass on spousal benefits.
To tell us more about the struggles that gay and lesbian services have had in trying to obtain benefits is Jeremy Johnson, board co-chair for SPARTA, an organization for the LGBT military community.
Wayne Kramer brings music to inmates with Jail Guitar Doors USA program
Tonight, guitarist Wayne Kramer of the legendary rock band MC5, will join Billy Bragg at the Ford Theater to present an all-star line up including Jackson Browne, Tom Morello of Rage against the Machine and Dave and Phil Alvin of the Blasters.
The concert is a fundraiser for a group called Jail Guitar Doors USA which brings musical instruments to inmates to help with their rehabilitation. It's a project that's near and dear to Wayne Kramer's heart. When he was a young man, he spent two years in a federal prison for attempting to sell cocaine to undercover agents.
For more on the Jail Guitar Doors program and tonight's festivities, we're joined in studio by Wayne Kramer.
What happens now that California's prison hunger strike is over?
Yesterday, a two month long hunger strike finally came to an end, but prison authorities still face plenty of challenges.
The health of the inmates involved in the strike is still uncertain and the state still has the difficult task of reducing prison overcrowding. With more on all this we're joined once again by LA Times reporter Paige St. John.
How accurate are film and TV depictions of solitary confinement?
When you hear stories about solitary housing units, or the SHU, in prison, what do you picture?
A small, grungy cell, where prisoners are fed disgusting looking loafs of food and attempt conversations with other inmates in solitary through a small vent in the wall?
The hit NetFlix show "Orange Is The New Black" is based on the memoir of a woman named Piper who spent 15 months in federal prison for her involvement in an international drug smuggling operation. But just how accurate of a prison portrayal is it?
That's something Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post has been looking into. He joins the show to explain.
Juarez police investigate female vengeance killer targeting bus drivers
The Mexican border city of Juarez has become infamous as a place overrun by drug violence, where gruesome murders are an almost daily occurrence. However, two killings last week have captured headlines around the world.
A woman reportedly in a blonde wig or with dyed hair boarded two city buses, pulled out a pistol and shot the drivers dead. Local media outlets later received an email, claiming responsibility for the murders and proclaiming the author to be "Diana: The Hunter of Bus Drivers."
"You think because we are women we are weak, and maybe we are. But only to a certain point. ... We can longer remain quiet over these acts that fill us with rage. And so, I am an instrument who will take vengeance."
The above quote is just a small excerpt of the email, which went on to explain that the killings were retaliation for the victimization of hundreds of women who have been sexually abused or murdered in the city.
So how did Juarez become such a hotbed for violence against women?
New York Times reporter Damian Cave tells Take Two that beginning in the 1990s, Juarez became a boomtown of factory work, with many of the jobs being filled by women. Killings and disappearances began to occur, and the situation was exacerbated when drug cartels began to take hold of the area.
"A couple years ago it really peaked," said Cave, who has reported on about the women of Juarez for the New York Times. "Women became just another disposable item in a city of a lot of disposable items…bodies were piling up by the hundreds."
To get to work at the factories, a network of buses running all hours of the day and night pick up workers from their neighborhoods and bus them to work. Many of the women missing or found murdered were believed to have been last seen either on or getting on one of these buses.
It is unclear whether drivers of these buses have had a major role in the disappearances, but Cave says that there is speculation that there have been networks of people recruiting women for prostitution. Some of these women may have been picked up by these networks and killed for a variety of reasons.
"Bus drivers have been suspected in playing a role," said Cave. "The idea is that these women are disposable and nobody with catch them. Impunity in Mexico is just so bad, that very few people get punished for this sort of thing."
The Mexican government set up a task force focusing specifically on violence against women, but collecting evidence has been difficult. Often the evidence is old and connecting the dots between a victim and a suspect is nearly impossible.
"There's this saying in Mexico that from the bowl to the mouth the soup falls," said Cave. "Whenever I ask people why there aren't more convictions, 'we don't really know' is often the response I get. Somewhere along the way something fell through the cracks, so as a result most of the people who are believed to be responsible for this get away with it and are never punished."
Police are still investigating whether "Diana" is acting alone or if the murders were part of a larger network. The BBC reports that undercover police in Juarez are riding buses and performing weapons searches hoping to catch "Diana" in the act.
The cross-border drug war through the lens of Hollywood
It's obvious that the ongoing drug war makes for good drama. It has inspired Hollywood for years, and lately a recent surge of TV shows like "Breaking Bad," "Weeds" and "The Bridge."
These shows are trying to do something new, by showing the complexity of the conflict, with bad guys on both sides of the border. From the Fronteras Desk in Flagstaff, Laurel Morales has this report.
Battle to reform nurse practitioner rules will continue, vows author of SB 491
Now to the raft of bills being reviewed by the state legislature. One bill that would have allowed California's nurse practitioners to work independently of doctors was recently defeated.
KPCC's Stephanie O'Neill says the senator behind the legislation isn't giving up.
Taco recipes from the 1920s highlight the dish's long history in LA
If L.A. had an official food, it would probably be the taco. You can find every manner of this tasty folded treat everywhere from fine dining restaurants to the corner of the Home Depot parking lot.
It turns out the taco has a long and storied history here in the city of Angels. The taco fanatics over at the L.A. Taco blog have unearthed some of the earliest recipes for this dish ever published in L.A.
Using Google's Ngram viewer — an app that can scan thousands of digitized books for keyword — Alex Blazedale of L.A. Taco Blog came across an interesting taco recipe from 1922. It sounds quite a bit different from the tacos we know today:
Put the tortillas in boiling lard and put in tomatoes mashed with onion and bits of garlic, cheese, cooked pork meat, alligator pear, salt and strips of peeled chiles. Roll and cover with a clean tortilla, hold together with a toothpick and fry in very little lard, in fact, just enough not to burn. To eat, take off the first tortilla -- Carlota L. Algara
Angelenos might know the alligator pear by its more modern name, the avocado.
"It sounds kind of strange, but not as strange when you figure that the word avocado comes from an Aztec word for testicle," said Blazedale.
The oldest known L.A.-specific taco recipe is by Bertha Haffner-Ginger in 1914, cited by Gustavo Arrellano of the OC Weekly and author of the book, "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America."
She describes a taco as, "made by putting chopped cooked beef and chili sauce in a tortilla made of meal and flour; folded, edges sealed together with egg; fried in deep fat, chile sauce served over it."
Think you can recreate these recipes on your own? Give it a shot and post a pic on our Facebook page!
Old Time California-Spanish-Mexican Dishes: Recipes of Famous Pioneer Spanish Settlers
'Hell Baby' marks 'Reno 911' creators' directorial debut
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant have written quite a few movies together, such as "Night at the Museum," "The Pacifier" and "Herbie Fully Loaded."
They're also the creators and stars of the Comedy Central cop comedy, "Reno 9-1-1."
Their latest venture is a horror spoof called "Hell Baby," starring Rob Cordry and Leslie Bibb. The two play a couple buy a run down house in New Orleans and try to fix it up in time for the arrival of their expected twins.
Turns out the house doesn't just need a new coat of paint, it's in need of an exorcism. "Hell Baby" marks Lennon and Garant's directorial debut. The pair joins Take Two to talk about how they met, collaborating on numerous projects and what it's like to co-direct a film.