How do investigators pinpoint the cause of a massive wildfire?; What role do life insurance payouts play in military suicides?; Illegal crossings increasingly deadly along south Texas border; Construction begins on cross-border bridge connecting Tijuana Airport with the US; 'Raising My Rainbow' highlights the challenges of raising a gender-creative child, plus much more.
Russia calls for Syria to hand over chemical weapons
Earlier today the Russian Foreign Minister said he would press Syrian authorities to place its chemical weapons under international control. This presumably to help the country avoid military intervention from the U.S.
To understand what this means and how it could affect the debate over Syria in this country, we are joined by Daniel Serwer, professor with John's Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
House members have returned from summer recess, and the White House hopes they'll be more willing to hear evidence about chemical weapons now that they're back inside the Beltway.
That's what National Journal's Shane Goldmacher is writing about today, and he joins us now from the Capitol.
What role do life insurance payouts play in military suicides?
Last year, 352 active duty service members took their own lives, a number more than double the number a decade ago. Some are starting to wonder if life insurance payouts have anything to do with this up-tick in suicides.
Reporter Alan Zarembo wrote about this for the L.A. Times and he joins me now.
How do investigators pinpoint the cause of a massive wildfire?
It's been four weeks since the Rim Fire began burning near Yosemite. So far, it's consumed nearly 400 square miles, making it the third largest fire in California history.
A hunter's illegal campfire allegedly started the blaze, but how did investigators figure that out?
For answers, we reached out to Paul Steensland, a retired fire investigations specialist who spent more than 20 years with the U.S. Forest Service.
Construction begins on cross-border bridge connecting Tijuana Airport with the US
Imagine being able to walk across the U.S.-Mexico border in just a few minutes.
That's the idea behind a plan moving forward at the Tijuana International Airport. Developers there are building a bridge that will span all the way from the terminal to the border crossing at Otay Mesa. Construction on the project began last week.
Though it would save travelers time, it would not allow anyone to get around border control, says Sandra Dibble, reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune.
"The San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings have become increasingly congested, even for pedestrians," said Dibble. "The waits can be hours."
Both Mexican and American developers are working on this airport project, which is located right up against the U.S. border fence — separated only by a busy street that runs parallel to the fence.
It's a 525-foot bridge that would be limited to airline passengers who are willing to pay a toll.
"What we're talking about is a privately-operated border crossing," says Dibble, "Just basically a bridge that runs directly from the Tijuana airport to a building in the United States that would include facilities for U.S. customs and border protection inspectors."
There are many who support this idea, but Tijuana's mayor is not the project's biggest fan.
"He's had a long-running dispute with the Mexican developers who are the people who operate the Tijuana airport," says Dibble. "They haven't been paying property taxes to the city, and he has been saying, 'Well, until you do, I'm not going to give you a construction permit.'"
Dibble added that some people think the bridge would discourage people from stopping in Tijuana, taking business away from local businesses there.
Both the U.S. and Mexican federal governments are in support of this project.
"The U.S. government has given it a presidential permit, which is a basic permit you need to establish a border crossing," Dibble said. "So, that was huge given that this is privately funded."
For now, as construction remains limited to the perimeters of the airport, the next couple of months are unknown, Dibble said.
But, if everything goes as planned, the bridge could be completed as soon as 2014.
Web article by Nuran Alteir.
Illegal crossings increasingly deadly along south Texas border
A costly game of cat and mouse unfolds nightly along the banks of the Rio Grande in south Texas. The number of immigrants crossing illegally there has doubled in the last four years, making it now the busiest section along the southwest border.
As a result the number of migrant deaths is also rising. From the Fronteras Desk, Mónica Ortiz Uribe reports on the challenges of patrolling the south Texas border.
On The Lot: Oscar buzz from the Toronto Film Festival
Time now for On the Lot, our weekly look at the business of Hollywood, with Rebecca Keegan of the Los Angeles Times.
Much of Hollywood is either in Toronto this week, or focused on it. The annual film festival there has become a launchpad for Oscar nominations.
The film "The Fifth Estate," opened the festival, and it's about one the more controversial figures of our time, Julian Assange. How does Assange fare in this movie?
There's already been a documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, but it wasn't so favorable.
It's difficult to make a thriller when most of the action takes place on computer screens. How does the film try to make all this cyber-sleuthing interesting?
There are other films that are getting some good word of mouth in Toronto, including one about Nelson Mandela, and another about slavery in the U.S., "12 Years A Slave."
Then there's "Blue Is The Warmest Color," a sort of lesbian coming-of-age drama. But the producers probably wish the cast and crew hadn't shown up in Toronto. Sounds like things got more than a little nasty between the actors and the director.
Blue is the Warmest Color Trailer 2013 (with English Subtitles) from Mia Kiddo on Vimeo.
There's also a story about a very interesting Saudi Arabian woman who's made what sounds like a fairly radical feminist film. Especially since it was shot in a country where women can't even drive.
He died a decade ago, but there's now a charity auction of items from Bob Hope's estate.
Odd Hollywood Jobs: Inside the life of a looper
Now for the latest installment of our series "Odd Hollywood Jobs."
Today we take a look at the job of a looper, the nickname given to voice over actors who help flesh out scenes in film and television.
For example, fans of the CBS show "Under the Dome" may recall a scene in a recent episode where a grief stricken man shoots his neighbor. Soon after, two of the show's main characters, a guy named Dale, and a sheriff named Linda show up.
In addition to the voices of Dale and Linda, there were other voices in the background, little murmurs. If you really listen carefully, you can hear someone say "I just wanna make sure he's okay."
That voice and those other murmurs were recorded by loopers.
On a recent afternoon on the Warner Brothers lot, three loopers, Dave Michie, Peggy Flood and Dave Randolph, take their spots in front of a microphone and a large screen. They take turns picking out who will voice which characters. The loopers review the raw tape of the scene a few times, and then they do their thing.
Those lines eventually get mixed into the sound so that the scene seems more realistic. Without them, you'd see a big crowd of people, but hear only the main actors.
So what does it take to do this sort of thing for a living?
To find out, we sat down with one of these loopers, a guy named Dave Mickey whose credits include "No Country for Old Men," "Lions for Lambs," and last year's Oscar winning film "Lincoln."
Mickey says he was an aspiring actor, waiting tables and doing a lot of improv, when he met a woman named Barbara Harris, who manages an outfit called the Looping Group. One day, Harris called Mickey to his very first looping audition.
"it was nervewrackingly fun at first, because you're sitting there, the director can be there, the pressure's on, producer's there and you're watching somebody's mouth and you need to match that mouth." said Mickey. "Then after a while it kept coming, so I kept it rolling."
Mickey's process begins with research, depending on what his next project is. For example, when we was preparing to loop for the film "Lincoln," he studied the dialogue of that time to make sure his accent and the words he used fit with the era.
Once he has the time period and location understood, it's all about making sure his dialogue matches the extra's voice.
"More importantly its watching the screen and then you start reading their lips, so that way when I'm up I can already be ahead of the game and try to match the lips quickly so we can move on to the next cue," said Mickey.
It's easy to see how it can be tough work crafting dialogue on the fly and trying to get it to time just right with the action seen fleetingly onscreen.
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The AFL-CIO convention and the state of labor unions
Today, the AFL-CIO is in the midst of a four day convention in Los Angeles. The tag line for the event: "Dream. Innovate. Act."
The need to innovate and act is great these days, as the number of card-carrying union members has been on the decline for some time now. For more, we turn to Chris Tilly, the director of UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
Investigation reveals fatal neglect in San Diego assisted living facilities
A six-month investigation by the San Diego Union Tribune and the California Health Care Foundation pieced together some sobering information about the care of senior citizens.
State regulatory records indicate that hundreds of seniors in San Diego County have suffered injuries and illness due to poor care at assisted living facilities. Since 2008, at least 27 seniors have died because of the neglect.
For more on this, we're joined by Deborah Schoch, senior writer for the CHCF Center for Health Reporting.
Controversial 'megaload' passes through protected lands in Idaho, Montana
Last month, a 322-ton shipment snaked its way though Idaho and Montana. Hauled by truck longer than a 747, this so-called "megaload" was carrying equipment to be used at a Canadian oil refinery.
Because of its size, the shipment couldn't be transported via interstate. Instead, the truck traveled on a road which passes through environmentally sensitive lands and tribal areas.
Rocky Barker, energy and environment reporter for the Idaho Statesman, joins the show with more.
LA's public parkways could become mini-urban farms (poll)
Los Angeles is considering a move that would allow residents to grow fruits and vegetables in front of their homes — on that narrow strip of grass between sidewalks and the road. As KPCC's Hayley Fox reports, some residents just couldn't wait for the city's approval.
Can LAPD anticipate crime with 'predictive policing'?
In an age of big data, California police departments are getting in on the action. In Los Angeles, the LAPD now uses software for what it calls "predictive policing," which aims to anticipate where crimes are likely to happen before they happen. From the California Report, Aaron Mendelson has the story.
Outside the LAPD’s Foothill Division station, at the northern edge of Los Angeles, police Sgt. Tom Gahry sits in his black-and-white patrol car. He’s shuffling through a stack of maps with bright red squares drawn on them
“These squares,” Gahry explains, pointing to one of the printouts, “according to the computer system, there’s a high probability that a crime will occur within one of those squares.”
Gahry is one of the officers using predictive policing software called PredPol. It takes crime data, runs it through an algorithm, and then generates these maps. The maps tell police where crimes might happen –- before they take place. Police can spend extra time in the areas at risk for crime, the thinking goes, and prevent those crimes from ever occurring. The LAPD says predictive policing has helped reduce crime here in the Foothill Division.
This predictive policing software’s journey started seven years ago, at UCLA. There, academics and police officers began using math to study crime. One of the postdocs on the project, mathematician George Mohler, discovered an equation that transformed the work.
Mohler, who now teaches at Santa Clara University, realized that, mathematically, earthquakes and crime work in a similar way. Mathematical models for predicting earthquake aftershocks could be applied to predict the “after-crimes” of an initial incident.
According to Mohler’s model, one crime sets off a wave of crimes in an area. The equation draws in details from police reports, such as times, locations and types of crimes that already have happened.
Mohler explains, “The idea would be, after that initial report gets filed, then the model says ‘Hey! There’s a risk of after-crimes, or aftershocks.’ And then the police go into that area and they prevent those second and third crimes from occurring.”
The model seeks to predict burglaries, car break-ins and stolen cars. Mohler carefully points out that his algorithm predicts property crimes –- but it doesn’t predict who will commit them. Not like in the movie “Minority Report,” he says, where people are arrested before they ever commit a crime.
After the UCLA team (formally known as the University of California Mathematical and Statistical Modeling of Crime Project) developed this formula, they went to the LAPD. And in November 2011, they started testing the algorithm, out in the real world.
The team worked closely with Sean Malinowski, an LAPD captain. Malinowski, who has a doctorate in public administration, called Mohler’s discovery “a huge moment for us.”
His Foothill Division implemented the algorithm during a six-month trial period, and Malinowski says that it was effective: “In burglary, we had a 25 percent decrease in crime, versus the six months prior. When you think about it, that’s over 100 people that were not burglarized.”
He says he’s excited about the software, and his division continues to use it on every shift. But predictive policing raises potential issues.
Andrew Ferguson teaches law at the University of the District of Columbia, and says that “there’s an accountability problem, there’s a transparency problem and there is a recognition that because all the information is controlled by the police and the police department, it’s very difficult and very unlikely that they will give up that information.”
So, if police are collecting bad data, or if predictive policing isn’t effective, the public may not discover that until much later, if at all. It’s also unclear if spotting a person in a predictive box can contribute to reasonable suspicion, as required by the Fourth Amendment. Ferguson says the courts will have to decide that.
Back at the LAPD’s Foothill Division, Gahry drives around to some of the predictive boxes. His cruiser passes auto body shops and Mexican grocery stores. This police division has a fraught history: The officers who beat Rodney King in 1991 were from this division.
Today, the LAPD says there’s lots of police work to do here, including keeping tabs on 18 separate gangs. Gahry says predictive policing is part of that. It’s not perfect, and at one of the boxes he and I end up looking at an empty lot, full of horses.
Gahry explains that predictive policing changes how police work. “It’s very difficult when you tell the officer, ‘You need to go in this box right here and spend some time in this box.’ And you’re there and you look around and there’s just, there’s nothing.”
Gahry says that it’s his job to tell officers, “‘You’re there to prevent crime. You’re not necessarily there to arrest somebody. You’re there to prevent the crime.’”
And the academic team says its algorithm is doing just that. Its company, PredPol, has raised more than $1 million in funding, and a handful of police departments around the state, including Santa Cruz, Alhambra and Richmond, currently use PredPol. It is also in use in Seattle and in Kent, England.
In San Francisco, police plan to implement PredPol by the end of 2014. And they’re looking at a new feature -- one that predicts gun violence, in addition to property crime.
Note: This production is part of the STEM Story Project, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.
Scientists discover massive volcano under the Pacific Ocean
If you've ever flown from California to Japan, you may have flown over the largest volcano on earth.
You wouldn't have seen it though, because it's deep under water. It's called Tamu Massif and it's comparable to Olympus Mons on Mars, one of the biggest volcanos that we know about in our solar system.
Up until recently no one had any idea that Massif was a giant volcano, and now that raises the question of how we could miss something so enormous.
William Sager a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Houston has the answers. He recently published a paper about Massif in the journal Nature.
'Raising My Rainbow' highlights the challenges of raising a gender-creative child
When Orange County mom Lori Duron found out she was pregnant with her second boy, she was a bit disappointed. She had dreamed of having a girl to dress up and play dolls with.
Turns out her dream came true in a very different way.
Despite being a boy, her son C.J. loves princesses, the color pink, and Barbies.
"We say that his life is marked by 'Before Barbie' and 'After Barbie,'" says Duron. "That's really the day he came alive and he found a toy that spoke to him."
Duron writes about what it's like living with and raising a gender-creative child in a blog and a new book called Raising My Rainbow.
"I wasn't uncomfortable with a boy playing with a Barbie because my brother had played with Barbies," she says, "I was afraid of what other people might think and what other people might say."
But then she realized she was disappointed with herself.
"As a person that's not the kind of person I want to be and that's not how I want to mother my children: worried about what other people might think," said Duron.
Duron wrote this book as both a way to tell her family's story, but also to offer advice for people who might interact with a kid just like her son.
"Try to understand what it's like to be C.J. everyday," says Duron. "Sometimes people can't tell whether CJ is a girl or a boy. If you can't tell whether someone is a girl or a boy, then just treat them like a person."
Do you have your own personal story to share? Post it in the comments below. And read an excerpt of Raising My Rainbow, by Lori Duron