Less water in Hoover Dam means less power coming from the Dam's generating units. ; Credit: Dawn Danby/via Flickr

Monday's fat stack of news also includes some views about what to do about drought and Western water supplies.

The New York Times has published six answers to the questions "What are the best ways to share the water? And how can we ensure it lasts for the foreseeable future?" Pat Mulroy, former general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, weighs in, as do several other think tankers:

[N]ew energy and fuel production options have become more water intensive. Unconventional oil and gas production methods such as hydraulic fracturing have significant implications for local and regional water quality and quantity. Bioenergy consumes water at various stages of production (including irrigation for crops) and also has impacts on water quality and quantity...We should be pursuing cleaner energy and streamlined approaches to conserving water in order to truly safeguard our water supply. (Newsha Ajami/Stanford University)

An incredible 40 percent of the water consumed by Americans goes into meat and dairy production. Livestock must drink water and there is some water use at the farm, but most of this water is for the producing animal feed...Is this a wise allocation of the limited supply of freshwater in America? (Arjen Hoekstra/University of Twente, Netherlands)

• Closer to home, the Sacramento Bee has an ongoing series about drought solutions. Mariposa County resident Tom DeVries, who lives in forestland at 4,000 feet, offers his take:

Trees take water; a big one can draw 100 gallons a day out of the ground. All that junk forest in California is sucking up water that should be filling my spring and well and flowing downhill toward the rest of you. (Sac Bee)

• You know who else has good ideas about how to conserve water in drought? Australians. (KQED)
• Jay Lund from UC Davis modeled a "mega-drought" with his team and found that the economic consequences of a big drought event could be mostly managed through smarter water conservation policies. (California Water Blog)
• Falling water levels at Lake Mead are lowering Hoover Dam's energy production. Generating units have recently been "derated," meaning that they're expected to have a lower capacity for producing electricity now that there's less water to turn turbines. (EE News)
• Jason Dearen and Garance Burke report on "senior rights holders," and how poorly California accounts for water use by people who have rights dating back before 1914 at anytime, and how much that matters now during the drought. (AP)
• You're gonna see a lot of these stories all week: it's a terrible year for setting off fireworks. I bet rural fire chiefs have their teeth on edge already. (Merced Sun-Star)
• And we'll finish up in Southern California. In the first of a duo of Dana Bartholomew stories, the Daily News reports on Turf Terminators, a company that offers to leverage the recently-raised turf removal incentive and swap out homeowners' lawns for less thirsty landscapes...essentially for free, since the company's premise is that it can do the work for the price of the rebate. (Daily News)
• In the second, Bartholomew profiles a Studio City water-conservation demonstration at homes along Rhodes Avenue. (Daily News)
• And a UCLA project examining water use and conservation potential in territory served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power suggests that we're not pricing water well enough to encourage conservation. Authors of a policy brief with the California Center for Sustainable Communities say dual metering, for inside and outside, would also improve conservation. (Imperial Valley News)

How has your community been affected by the drought? Share your story with a photo on Twitter or Instagram. Tag it #mydrought. For more details on our photo project, click here.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

File: Western monarch butterfly in Huntington Beach; Credit: Courtesy of Huntington Beach Tree Society

A group of conservation organizations teamed up with a leading monarch butterfly scientist on Tuesday to petition for protection of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.

The monarch butterfly is one of the most iconic butterfly species in the country. But according to conservation group the Xerces Society, the monarch butterfly population is in trouble.

“Many scientists estimate that there are about 33 million monarchs. And just for comparison, in the past, researchers have estimated more than 1 billion monarchs,” said Sarina Jepsen, who directs the Endangered Species Program for the Xerces Society.

That’s a decline of about 90 percent in just fewer than 20 years, Jepsen said.

The main culprit in the monarch’s decline is the weed killer Roundup, Jepsen said. Most monarch caterpillars breed in the Midwest, and feed off of milkweed. While Roundup doesn’t kill genetically modified crops like soy and corn, it does kill milkweed.

“So, milkweed growing in a large agricultural landscape has largely disappeared in the last decade-and-a-half to two decades,” said Jepsen.

Other contributing factors include climate change and a general loss of habitat, Jepsen said. California’s drought might also play a role.

“There’s a real strong relationship between drought severity and the number of monarchs that we see in the winter on the California coast,” said Jepsen. “In years when droughts are worse, there are fewer monarchs.”

Thousands of the butterflies gather on California’s coast each winter. Spots locally includeLeo Carrillo Beach in Malibu and Doheny Beach in Dana Point, though the Xerces Society has observed a large decline in the butterflies at these locations in the last several decades.

More on the drought’s effect on the monarch population will be known around Thanksgiving, when a group of so-called "citizen scientists" with the Xerces Society perform an annual count of the monarchs.

Along with the Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food and Safety and leading monarch butterfly scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed the petition.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to decide whether to go forward with a further review to potentially classify the monarch butterfly as threatened or endangered. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

On Broad Beach in Malibu, high tide not only wets sand but also retaining walls and broken down rock revetments. What happens next in homeowners' efforts to get sand trucked in here will go to the State Lands Commission - and the next Controller likely will weigh in on the problem. ; Credit: Molly Peterson/KPCC

The most common question I’ve been asked about the statewide Controller race this election year is the same question I get every four years. “Wait, we have one?”

The inevitable follow-up question: “What does this person do?” Down-ballot races in California’s state election can seem like a tedious part of a the voting process. Most of us just don't take the time to research them. In 2010, the last time we elected statewide executives, 435,308 of those people who voted for Governor just didn’t bother to vote for anybody in the Controller race. 

But in addition to being the chief fiscal officer of the 8th-largest economy in the world, the Controller sits on something like 80 state commissions and boards. And if you’re interested in California’s environment, a biggie there is the State Lands Commission.

The State Lands Commission oversees roughly 4 million acres of submerged land and tidelands, holding them in trust for the public. Right now it's looking at policy alternatives to respond to sea level rise. It manage the state's offshore oil-drilling leases. It even gets authority over historical shipwrecks! 

Three issues coming before to the Lands Commission mean the Controller matters:  

• Coastal Access and Martin’s Beach: At the end of September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law requiring the State Lands Commission to negotiate with Vinod Khlosa, a private property owner who famously shut down coastal access over his land this year. The commission has all of next year to negotiate with Khlosa. If no deal is reached, it can use eminent domain authority to force public access – something that would represent a big break in historical practice, because that authority hasn’t ever been used in the 76 years that the commission has existed.
• Malibu’s Broad Beach has been rapidly eroding under pressure of waves and storms worsened by climate change, and very rich homeowners there have been seeking to add sand in front of their houses to combat the risk of damage to very expensive properties. Earlier this year, those homeowners successfully completed an application to the State Lands Commission, and the commission was expected to decide on it in October. The decision’s been put over till after the election.
• Fracking: Offshore oil made news late last year and earlier this year when some operators didn’t report that they were using drilling and production techniques collectively referred to as hydraulic fracturing. The news prompted the EPA to require chemical disclosures for drilling operations it oversees.  The state agencies that should be overseeing these issues – the Coastal Commission and the Lands Commission – are considering their next moves too.

Positions on these issues don’t really come up when it comes to the Controller race, though both Betty Yee and Ashley Swearengin have gone on the record to say they’re against fracking. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

With the release of the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, Microsoft introduced a new security feature called Tamper Protection that protects security settings for Windows Defender antivirus from being disabled by malware or third-party programs. [...]

Ron Struthers of Struthers' Resource Stock Report details the value proposition of Bam Bam Resources and its flagship prospect.

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Peter Epstein of Epstein Research looks into the Gross Overriding Royalty that just changed hands on the company's flagship Red Hill project, and discusses what it means for the firm.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and CDC Director Robert Redfield will appear before a Senate committee on May 12.; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will join Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and other administration representatives in testifying before a Senate committee on May 12.

The announcement comes as members of President Trump's coronavirus task force are being asked to limit their appearances on Capitol Hill despite ongoing calls from lawmakers for more oversight into the administration's coronavirus response. Last week, the Trump administration blocked Fauci from appearing before a House committee on the subject of spending on coronavirus testing.

President Trump told reporters Tuesday that he doesn't want the officials appearing before House Democrats.

"The House is a setup," Trump said. "The House is a bunch of Trump haters."

White House officials gave a less adversarial explanation when justifying the decision to limit task force testimony in a memo to top congressional aides.

"For primary response departments, including HHS, DHS, and State, in order to preserve department-wide resources, no more than one COVID-related hearing should be agreed to with the department's primary House and Senate authorizing committee and appropriations subcommittee in the month of May, for a total of no more than four COVID-related hearings department-wide," the memo stated.

Congressional Democrats are demanding greater oversight over the roughly $3 trillion that has already been approved for the coronavirus response. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has launched a new select committee to conduct the oversight, but Republicans have so far refused to name members to the panel despite the plan to make the panel bipartisan.

The Senate hearing was announced shortly after the administration sent the memo to Capitol Hill banning committee appearances from task force members during May unless approved by the White House chief of staff.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Judd Deere said the decision to block Fauci from the House committee appearance was intended to allow him to focus on his primary task of overseeing the coronavirus response.

"While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings," Deere said. "We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time."

Fauci, Redfield, HHS Assistant Secretary Brett Giroir and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to discuss "safely getting back to work and back to school" when they appear before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — or HELP — Committee next Tuesday.

Senate Democrats, including Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the HELP committee, have called for the administration to provide greater transparency and a nationwide plan for testing. So far their demands have not received a response.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

"Deepfakes" are digitally altered images that make incidents appear real when they are not. Such altered files could have broad implications for politics.; Credit: /Marcus Marritt for NPR

Sophisticated fake media hasn't emerged as a factor in the disinformation wars in the ways once feared — and two specialists say it may have missed its moment.

Deceptive video and audio recordings, often nicknamed "deepfakes," have been the subject of sustained attention by legislators and technologists, but so far have not been employed to decisive effect, said two panelists at a video conference convened on Wednesday by NATO.

One speaker borrowed Sherlock Holmes' reasoning about the significance of something that didn't happen.

"We've already passed the stage at which they would have been most effective," said Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with the Conflict Studies Research Centre in the United Kingdom. "They're the dog that never barked."

The perils of deepfakes in political interference have been discussed too often and many people have become too familiar with them, Giles said during the online discussion, hosted by NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Following all the reports and revelations about election interference in the West since 2016, citizens know too much to be hoodwinked in the way a fake video might once have fooled large numbers of people, he argued: "They no longer have the power to shock."

Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, agreed that deepfakes haven't proven as dangerous as once feared, although for different reasons.

Hwang argued that users of "active measures" (efforts to sow misinformation and influence public opinion) can be much more effective with cheaper, simpler and just as devious types of fakes — mis-captioning a photo or turning it into a meme, for example.

Influence specialists working for Russia and other governments also imitate Americans on Facebook, for another example, worming their way into real Americans' political activities to amplify disagreements or, in some cases, try to persuade people not to vote.

Other researchers have suggested this work continues on social networks and has become more difficult to detect.

Defense is stronger than attack

Hwang also observed that the more deepfakes are made, the better machine learning becomes at detecting them.

A very sophisticated, real-looking fake video might still be effective in a political context, he acknowledged — and at a cost to create of around $10,000, it would be easily within the means of a government's active measures specialists.

But the risks of attempting a major disruption with such a video may outweigh an adversary's desire to use one. People may be too media literate, as Giles argued, and the technology to detect a fake may mean it can be deflated too swiftly to have an effect, as Hwang said.

"I tend to be skeptical these will have a large-scale impact over time," he said.

One technology boss told NPR in an interview last year that years' worth of work on corporate fraud protection systems has given an edge to detecting fake media.

"This is not a static field. Obviously, on our end we've performed all sorts of great advances over this year in advancing our technology, but these synthetic voices are advancing at a rapid pace," said Brett Beranek, head of security business for the technology firm Nuance. "So we need to keep up."

Beranek described how systems developed to detect telephone fraudsters could be applied to verify the speech in a fake clip of video or audio.

Corporate clients that rely on telephone voice systems must be wary about people attempting to pose as others with artificial or disguised voices. Beranek's company sells a product that helps to detect them and that countermeasure also works well in detecting fake audio or video.

Machines using neural networks can detect known types of synthetic voices. Nuance also says it can analyze a recording of a real known voice — say, that of a politician — and then contrast its characteristics against a suspicious recording.

Although the world of cybersecurity is often described as one in which attackers generally have an edge over defenders, Beranek said he thought the inverse was true in terms of this kind of fraud detection.

"For the technology today, the defense side is significantly ahead of the attack side," he said.

Shaping the battlefield

Hwang and Giles acknowledged in the NATO video conference that deepfakes likely will proliferate and become lower in cost to create, perhaps becoming simple enough to make with a smartphone app.

One prospective response is the creation of more of what Hwang called "radioactive data" — material earmarked in advance so that it might make a fake easier to detect.

If images of a political figure were so tagged beforehand, they could be spotted quickly if they were incorporated by computers into a deceptive video.

Also, the sheer popularity of new fakes, if that is what happens, might make them less valuable as a disinformation weapon. More people could become more familiar with them, as well as being detectable by automated systems — plus they may also have no popular medium on which to spread.

Big social media platforms already have declared affirmatively that they'll take down deceptive fakes, Hwang observed. That might make it more difficult for a scenario in which a politically charged fake video went viral just before Election Day.

"Although it might get easier and easier to create deepfakes, a lot of the places where they might spread most effectively, your Facebooks and Twitters of the world, are getting a lot more aggressive about taking them down," Hwang said.

That won't stop them, but it might mean they'll be relegated to sites with too few users to have a major effect, he said.

"They'll percolate in these more shady areas."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

We started our new schedule for "AirTalk" this week. With the expansion of "Brand & Martinez" to two hours, we're now on from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday's Film Week on AirTalk moves into the noon hour.

I’ve been asked many times in the past couple of days how I feel about the shift. My answer is that it’s working out great for our “AirTalk” team.  We still get in at 8 each morning, but now have three hours to prepare our timeliest topics. It also puts us into the noon hour, where we have the chance to connect with folks heading to lunch. 

I know it’s not all good for some listeners, who might have a harder time listening an hour later. There are also, undoubtedly, fans of “The World” who would’ve rather had it stay at noon instead of moving to 2 p.m. I hope you’ll give us a chance in the new slot and that you find the new lineup still fits your schedule. 

If it doesn’t, remember that you can hear all of our local programs online, at the time of your choosing, at www.kpcc.org.

As for the irreplaceable Patt Morrison, she’ll continue to provide her talents to KPCC listeners with regular features and interviews throughout our day. Though I know many fans of Patt are very sad to see her daily program end, I think Patt’s high-profile segments will be a terrific boost to all the other shows where they’ll be heard.

This will make Patt a presence everywhere on our schedule, including “AirTalk,” which is pretty exciting.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

When "Offramp" host John Rabe's father, Bill, created the list at Lake Superior State University in Michigan he likely didn't know it would thrive nearly 40 years later.  As language evolves there should never be a shortage of words and phrases we want to "kick to the curb."

This morning on "AirTalk," I asked listeners to pick the ones they "hate on."  We got some good ones, including my overused "unpack," as in "let's unpack that idea."  Falling into word patterns can happen so subtly that we don't even know it until someone points it out.

My nomination for the list -- "it is what it is."   What are yours?

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Director Michael Apted (L) with Larry Mantle in the AirTalk studio.

This past Wednesday on "AirTalk," film director Michael Apted came in to talk with us about his eighth documentary in the series that's followed the lives of 13 people, beginning in 1964 when the kids were seven.  They've shared their stories with Apted every seven years, and he's clearly invested a lot of emotion into this project.

"56 Up" is wonderful for how it shows the mid-life evolution of the participants.  Apted includes scenes from earlier interviews, so that we see what aspects of today's 56-year-olds were present in childhood and what turns their lives have made over these years. 

"56 Up" is showing at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, and Apted will be doing Q-and-A at some of the screenings.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

After the San Francisco 49ers beat the Atlanta Falcons for the right to go to the Super Bowl, I tweeted my appreciation of a California team going to the game.  If no local team is in the running (or exists), I'm always glad to root for a Bay Area team that makes it.

My tweet got responses from some Southern Californians who have no interest in supporting a San Francisco team, especially given the Giants' World Series championship.  It goes without saying that many Dodger fans are loathe to support the Giants, under any circumstances. 

Given the historic bad blood between the teams, that's no surprise, but I think it runs even deeper.  The divide between Northern and Southern California is about more than sports, or even water rights.  It's rooted in distinct cultural differences between the two.

However, California has evolved to the point where the bigger cultural divide now might be between coastal and inland regions.  Rural Northern Californians typically dislike San Francisco far more than Angelenos do.  Similarly, inland Southern California residents often see Los Angeles as the prohibitively expensive home of two-hour traffic jams.

Until the Inland Empire or the San Joaquin Valley get major league teams, we won't see that rivalry playing out at a stadium near you.   In the meantime, I'm cheering on the Niners, and my state, on February 3rd.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Life is already hard enough, but with teen daughters—  of which I have two, ages 15 and 16 -- well, let's just say that, what with everything going on these days, my mind is a bit addled. And my latest TV obsession isn't exactly helping.

"I have such a sense of dystopia," I complained to my friend Carol. 

She replied: "Maybe you should stop binge-watching The Handmaid's Tale!

It's true.  I've watched so many hours of The Handmaid's Tale, I've started to involuntarily greet people with, "Blessed be the day," "Blessed be!"  If that's not  familiar to you, you're probably not aware that in the oppressive futuristic society depicted here—?   Fertile young women are farmed out to "commanders" and forced to have sex with them between their wives' legs, in order to birth mutant babies. . .

I'm old enough to remember "Happy Days."  Do you remember the sitcom "Happy Days"?  What was it about?  Days. . . that were Happy!  Teens hanging around the jukebox!  With poodle skirts!  The Fonz!  Having shenanigans! 

So I resolve to turn off the news—  Except for the headlines that actually leap out of the radio—  And maul you, like a wolverine—   Ever seen that?  Anyway—

I also take a break from The Handmaid's Tale—  I turn instead to the comedy Grace and Frankie, with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin!  I embrace their comforting presences like the stylish pashmina throw either might wear—  If The Cheese Nun was still on?  I would binge-watch that!  Very reassuring.  The Cheese and the Nun.

But then I start getting emails -- the Concerned Parent E-Blasts I don't recall ever signing up for, a la—?  "Does your teen get enough sleep?"  No.  "Is your teen ready for the SAT?"  No. "Does your teen eat too much sugar and waste a lot of time?"  Yes.   Apparently that's abnormal behavior and there's medication for that.  Good to know!

 Well—  The truly alarming news is that—  Often unbeknownst to their parents— All of our teens are secretly watching this new TV series called "13 Reasons Why."  As in, 13 reasons why this teenage girl commits suicide.  She leaves behind the reasons in a box of tapes.  One reason is rape.  Shown on screen. 

It's a long way from Happy Days.

As a responsible parent, I need to talk to my daughters. . . about this show.

 Next week: A Visit with Dr. Mom.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Life is stressful enough.  And now—?  I've been getting all these alarming missives from parenting organizations about the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why."  As in, 13 reasons why this teenaged girl commits suicide—  Which is depicted on screen, as is a rape!  Yikes!  Apparently all teens are secretly streaming it, so we parents need to open up the conversation.

But then I'm thinking: What if my two teen daughters are the only teens not watching it?  And then my raising the topic would be—what do you call it?  A trigger?  It's so confusing these days!  College campuses are full of "safe spaces"—  But middle schoolers can stream suicide shows!

And my younger daughter?  She's already fluttery, like a leaf.  Sample text—and I can't convey how terrifying these words look on one's phone: "Mom.  Mom.  Mom.  Please!  I'm so scared.  I don't know what to do!  Help me!"  Situation?  She was in the bathroom at Starbucks and the toilet wouldn't flush.  Fortunately Dr. Mom was right outside the door.

So with this one, driving home from school, I just ask, with an odd vague heartiness: "So. . . What movies or TV shows are all the kids watching these days?"

"All the kids?" she says.  "What are you talking about?  What kids?"

"You kids!" I say.  "You!  You and your peeps!"

"What?" she says.  "Nothing."  She goes on instead to describe her traumatic field trip.  Instead of studying tide pools at a nice quiet museum, her class went to the actual beach!  She slipped on a rock and all these kids from the Medical Magnet too-eagerly stormed her with gauze and bandages! 

Okay.  I'll let that fragile kid be.  Now it's on to my older, more sophisticated daughter.  The one with the nose ring—at least it's fake.  I ask her bluntly: "So, what's the deal with this '13 Reasons Why' show?"

 She groans.  "I already read the book back in sixth grade."
 

"In sixth grade?" I exclaim.

Apparently at her old middle school, everyone was reading books about teen suicide—  Which appears to have been an actual cottage industry, possibly it's own Young Adult genre.  Sheesh!  What happened to Nancy Drew?

She says she did watch the show but stopped during the rape scene, which was a bit much.  In fact, now, on social media, the show's premise had surfaced as a joke meme.  As in, "I asked to borrow a pencil.  You said you didn't have one."  Ominous pause.  "It's one of the 13 Reasons Why." Ba-dum-bum.

In the end, Dr. Mom felt a bit out of her league.  I guess I'll just have to trust that the teens are going to be fine.  And to be on hand to flush the toilet.}
 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

There are still a couple dozen tickets left for one of the most interestingly-cast performances of H.G. Wells, Orson Welles and Howard Koch's "War of the Worlds." On Saturday, Jan. 17,  generations of Star Trek actors will take on the world's most famous radio show.

The cast — directed by Jim Fall — features: René Auberjonois (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”), Michael Dorn (“Star Trek: TNG”), Dean Haglund (“The X-Files”), Walter Koenig ("Star Trek"), Linda Park ("Star Trek: Enterprise"), Jason Ritter (“The Event”), Tim Russ (“Star Trek: Voyager”), Armin Shimerman (“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”) and Wil Wheaton, playing... Orson Welles.

The performance is a fundraiser for Sci-Fest LA, the new annual science fiction play festival, so tickets aren't cheap — but they're scarce, and this looks like a memorable night.

KPCC and "Off-Ramp" celebrated the 75th anniversary of the broadcast last year by distributing the original 1938 performance, and a new documentary, internationally... introduced by George Takei, another original Trek actor you might have heard of.

War of the Worlds: Sat., Jan. 17,  8 PM; The Acme Theatre, 135 North La Brea Ave. LA CA 90036

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

New entrance at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. ; Credit: Tim Street-Porter/The Huntington

For years, I’d feared the worst. Behind that intrusive belt of chain link and green canvas fence, with all the hidden noise of power digging machines, smashing jackhammers and growling tractors going on behind it, and heaps of dirt piled high, I dreaded that something terrible was going on in the dark, hidden heart of our dear old Huntington.

We were promised a new visitor center, a new store, a new cafe and restaurant. I imagined the Disney-fied worst: Henry Huntington’s Roller Coaster Red Car Ride; Pinky’s Pinkberry Parlor. The Blue Boy Fashion Center. Maybe even a giant Rem Koolhaas-LACMA style amoeba of purple reinforced concrete sprawling all over the lawns between the library and the old gallery.

My fears were groundless. The $68 million (not much more than the Getty paid for its new Manet) 52,000 square foot Education and Visitor Center addition is in perfect harmony with the early 20th Century original library and art gallery, perhaps more so than some previous increments, such as the nearby and blankly imposing Munger Research Center. 

The addition is named after outgoing Huntington chief Steven S. Koblik, who engineered much of the funding and planning for the facility. He’s got something to be proud of in his retirement: a new garden-centered segment of new facilities that founder, pioneer transit tycoon Henry Huntington, would probably have enthused over.

(The Huntington Store at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Photo: Tim Porter-Street/The Huntington)

With its mighty $400 million endowment and the muscular fundraising power that enticed squillionaire Charlie Munger to donate hugely to this project (not to mention that research center), the venerable Huntington institution could have easily erected something expensively and grandiloquently modern.  

But its directorate and patrons seem to understand an important fact about the place: Most visitors don’t go there to be dazzled. We go there to be enthralled, even comforted by the century-old institution’s enduring and deeply reassuring ambiance that we are privileged to inhabit during our visits to its galleries of great art, its acreage of exquisite gardens and Arcadian vistas.

The Huntington possesses what designer Sheryl Barton, who co-created the new landscaping with the Huntington’s Jim Folsom, spoke of at the opening press conference as “the choreography of experience.”

That experience includes the new California-Mediterranean groves and gardens and the low-lying new structure that includes an expanded store, new classrooms, courts, cafes and an auditorium. With its simple, Tuscan-columned loggias and red-tiled roofs (and, oh, yes, even that showy glass dome on the Rose Hills Foundation Garden Court), it all effortlessly blends into the traditional whole.

Although the Huntington doesn’t seem to be planning on a new influx of visitors, it’s hard to see this new, more user-friendly front office isn’t going to attract more people to its San Marino location than the current 600,000 per year.

Particularly considering how regional museum attendance in general has boomed over recent decades. Will this abate the quiet private experience many of us Huntington fans have shared and treasured over the years?

(The Huntington will be installing this Alexander Calder sculpture, the  Jerusalem Stabile, this spring. Here, it's seen at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Calder Foundation; gift of the Philip & Muriel Berman Foundation to the Calder Foundation. Copyright © 2015 Calder Foundation /Artists Rights Society (ARS) Used with permission of The Huntington)

Probably. But there will also be important new things to see — like  Alexander Calder’s 12-by-20-foot Jerusalem Stabile, which beckons you into the new addition, and two powerful, newly acquired murals by the great 20th Century California artists Millard Sheets and Doyle Lane. Plus a new and glorious vista from the cafe’s terrace over to the original old Huntington villa — now gallery — where all this began, over a century ago.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police and lifeguards patrol as people walk on the beach south of Newport Pier on May 3, 2020 in Newport Beach, California. ; Credit: Michael Heiman/Getty Images

After the cities of San Clemente and Laguna Beach were given the OK by state officials on Monday to reopen beaches with limited conditions, the California Natural Resources Agency gave Dana Point, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach the green light on Tuesday after approving the plans they submitted for safe reopening.

The plans vary as far as when the beach can be used, but the common thread through each is that leisure activities like sunbathing or large gatherings of people would not be allowed, and that beachgoers will be required to remain active while on the sand. 

The news comes as Orange County Supervisors voted 3-2 on Tuesday to submit a plan to submit to Sacramento that would create a set of uniform rules for reopening beaches countywide. Supervisor Lisa Bartlett spearheaded the proposal, which received pushback from Supervisors Don Wagner and Michelle Steel who argue that after being singled out by Governor Gavin Newsom last week when he ordered a “hard close” on all state and local beaches in Orange County, taking issue with the idea of the county bowing to pressure from the state.

Today on AirTalk, we’ll check back in with Supervisor Bartlett, who joined us Monday on AirTalk, to find out more about the specifics of the county’s plan to reopen its beaches.

Guest:

Lisa Bartlett, Orange County Supervisor representing the Fifth County District, which encompasses South County cities like Aliso Viejo, San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Dana Point and more; she tweets @OCSupBartlett

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Several countries around the world are emitting less carbon due to the pandemic slowdown, but the climate will continue to warm.; Credit: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images

With the dramatic reduction in car traffic and commercial flights, carbon emissions have been falling around the globe. If the slowdown continues, some are estimating the world could see the largest drop in emissions in the last century.

Still, overall greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are still going up and the decline will likely be smaller than what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

So far, the effects are just starting to appear. In China, the first country to lock down, greenhouse gas emissions dropped an estimated 25% in February as factories and industrial producers slowed output. That decreased coal burning, which has come back slowly since then.

"A month or two of shelter in place will drop carbon dioxide emissions a few percent here or there, but it won't change the year substantially unless we stay like this for some time," says Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University.

The declines are still too small to be read by greenhouse gas observatories around the world, like the one on top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, given the natural changes in atmosphere this time of year. Because much of the Earth's land mass is in the northern hemisphere, plants and forests there cause carbon levels to fluctuate as they bloom in the spring, drawing carbon dioxide from the air.

If countries continue shelter-at-home orders, emissions declines could be greater. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates U.S. emissions from gas and energy use could drop more than 7% this year, similar to a 2009 decline during the financial crisis.

Worldwide, early estimates put global emissions dropping around 4%. Still, that's less than the 7.6% the U.N. says is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To achieve those cuts, scientists say more fundamental changes are needed, like switching to renewable energy.

"This isn't the way we want to reduce our fossil fuel emissions," says Jackson. "We don't want tens of millions of people being out of work as a path to decarbonizing our economy. We need systemic change in our energy infrastructure and new green technologies."

Still, Jackson says the recent changes are providing useful insights.

"It's as if a third of the cars on the road were suddenly electric, running on clean electricity and the air pollution is plummeting," says Jackson. "It's really a remarkable experiment and it shows the benefits of clean energy."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Screengrab from video on XY Lee's YouTube channel.; Credit: via YouTube

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Asian Garden Mall in Westminster, where voters will make a choice about whether to recall city leaders.; Credit: Dorian Merina/KPCC

Voters in Westminster will decide this spring whether to recall its mayor and two city councilmembers. The Orange County Registrar of Voters has signed off on petitions for a recall election.  

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Albert Rad, a mobile phone wholesaler who fled religious persecution in Iran decades ago, said that he fully backs President Trump's decision to assassinate Iran's top military commander. ; Credit: Josie Huang/LAist

Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian population outside of Iran. The killing of top Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani is generating some strong emotions here. KPPC’s Josie Huang reports from Persian Square in Westwood. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Homeless advocates erected a line of tents outside the Echo Park office of City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell Feb. 12, 2020 to pressure him into meeting with them.; Credit:

Members of several groups of homeless advocates from across Los Angeles converged on a homeless encampment at the north end of   Echo Park Lake on Feb. 12 to protest the routine weekly litter collection.

A cleanup crew assisted by park rangers and city police officers did a once-through the campsite for miscellaneous trash, followed closely by a chanting and critical crowd of protesters.

The homeless advocates had erected extra tents that morning in protest of what they consider invasive cleanups. They also were trying to get City Councilman Mitchell O'Farrell to agree to meet with them as a group, same as he has met with other local organizations of homeowners and residents.

O'Farrell's spokesman Tony Aranga had insisted staffers were willing to meet with individuals to address their housing and other support needs.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Courtesy Randy Newman

Read the full article at LAist

A spike in texts and calls to crisis hotlines reflects Americans' growing anxiety about the coronavirus and its impact on their lives.; Credit: Richard Bailey/Getty Images

Normally, Laura Mayer helps the most acutely suicidal callers find the nearest hospital emergency room. But in a pandemic, that has become a crisis counselor's advice of last resort.

"It's a difficult decision because we do know that by sending them into an overburdened health care system, they may or may not get the treatment that they need," says Mayer, who is director of PRS CrisisLink in Oakton, Va., which also takes calls for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. "The resources may or may not be there, and we're exposing them to the illness."

So instead, counselors are devoting more time to each caller, offering ad hoc therapy and coaxing them to talk through their pain. These days, that pain often has many sources: lost jobs, severed relationships and sick family.

"The type of call and the seriousness of the call is very different this year than it was in previous years," Mayer says. "There's environmental issues, internal issues, family issues. ... It's never one thing."

America's crisis centers and hotlines are themselves in crisis. As people grapple with fear, loneliness and grief, on a grand scale, those stresses are showing up at crisis hotlines. Not only are the needs greater, but their clients' problems are more acute and complex and offer a window into the emotional struggles Americans face.

Across the board, hotlines of all kinds are reporting increases in volume.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration saw a fivefold increase at its National Helpline in March. The Crisis Text Line says its volumes are up 40% in the pandemic, to about 100,000 conversations a month.

Volunteer counselors and good Samaritans are responding by lining up to help.

But Mayer says the heaviness takes its toll. Those offering this kind of support end up needing support themselves.

"This illness is starting to impact each of our crisis workers and counselors themselves personally," she says. "So everyone is kind of a client right now, and that's been really challenging."

Nancy Lublin, CEO and co-founder of the Crisis Text Line, says she is bracing for sustained need. "This echo of the physical virus, the mental health echo, we fear it's going to last a very long time and that the intensity will remain," she says.

Over the last two months, the focal point of the emotional pain has shifted, she says. Initially, the spike in traffic was over anxiety about the virus itself. That shifted to complaints of isolation. Now, texters talk of depression and grief.

"So we've doubled the number of conversations that are about grief, and there the top two words that we see are 'grandma' and 'grandpa,' " she says.

And it's no longer just young people texting. Adults are complaining of loneliness, sexual abuse and eating disorders.

"As the quarantines go on and continue, we're seeing it's the people over the age of 35 who are increasing at a higher percentage of our volume," Lublin says. "For the first time, we're seeing people over the age of 60 texting us."

Texting is an ideal medium, she says, for those stuck at home with no personal space: "You don't have to find a quiet space where no one else can hear you."

And for some, that might be the only form of escape. The text line has seen a 74% increase in references to domestic violence. "We see words like 'trapped' [and] 'hurt,' " says Lublin.

Many shelters have shut down, and some of those in-person centers, including the Salvation Army in Philadelphia, now rely on their own hotlines instead.

Arielle Curry, director of the Salvation Army's anti-human trafficking program, says many of her clients can't afford cell phones and have lost touch; those who remain in contact are in dire straits, searching for a shorter supply of money or drugs, and are often suicidal. Curry says addressing those acute emotional needs by phone is frustrating; sometimes she doesn't even know where they are and can't send help to intervene.

"You can't ... comfort someone and look them in their eyes and support them face-to-face," she says. That makes it hard, Curry says, not to feel helpless and hopeless herself.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Among those protesting stay-at-home orders this week at the California Capitol in Sacramento were activists who oppose governments requiring vaccinations for school children.; Credit: Katie Orr/KQED

Protests over stay-at-home orders because of COVID-19 have become more common around the country. In California, a surprising group is behind some of them: those who oppose mandatory vaccinations.

On Thursday, a mash-up of people mingled on the sidewalk in front of California's state Capitol in Sacramento. There were Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and waving American flags. There were Christians, singing along to religious rock songs and raising their hands in prayer. The event's MC. urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to tune into their event.

"Everybody up at the Capitol, tell Gavin Newsom [to tune in to] 107.9 FM, if he wants to hear what we have to say," the MC told the crowd over loudspeakers. "It could be kind of good for him!"

There were also mothers with their children at the rally. Many people were not wearing face masks or observing social distancing protocols.

They'd all come out to protest California's stay-at-home order, put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19. This week's event was built around the National Day of Prayer, and featured pastors and sermons. But it was organized by a group called Freedom Angels, which was originally formed to fight mandatory vaccine laws in the state.

At the beginning of the rally, the group's founders took the stage, including Denise Aguilar.

"Hello everybody, my name is Denise, I'm one of the founders of Freedom Angels," Aguilar said to a cheering crowd. "Thank you guys for being out here to let Gov. Newsom know we're not going away! We've said this for years!"

The group has become a fixture at the Capitol ever since California passed a law requiring school students to be vaccinated and a second law tightening restrictions on medical exemptions for those vaccines. But another Freedom Angels founder, Stefanie Fetzer, said they're not a single-issue group. She said these events are about promoting personal freedom.

"I think what we're seeing now is the predictive modeling that they came out with in the beginning didn't hold true. We aren't seeing the numbers that they predicted," Fetzer said. "And instead of backing off of the shutdown and the restrictive measures that Gov. Newsom implemented, he seems to be doubling down."

Attention-seeking strategy

Public health advocates point out that the reason those early predictions didn't come true is that aggressive social distancing measures — including stay-at-home orders — worked. Democratic state Senator Richard Pan, who authored California's vaccine laws, believes this anti-vaccine group is aligning with others protesting the stay-at-home order as a way to promote their cause. After all, Pan said, a vaccine would eventually allow the economy to reopen.

"They have staged these protests to basically find a way to get media attention for themselves. They fund raise off of their activities as well," Pan said. "So, frankly, many of the anti-vaxxers who are involved in this are really there for their own interests."

It's common for anti-vaccine groups to latch onto other controversial issues, according to epidemiologist and vaccine educator René Najera. For instance, he points to abortion.

"They try to say that there are aborted fetal cells in vaccines — which there are not — to try to get the anti-abortion people on their side," he said. "And then they flip it around and say, also, 'My body, my choice.'"

Najera said those tactics can have dangerous outcomes, including making people think twice about getting vaccines. In fact, he said, in 2019 the World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy, or people's reluctance to consider vaccination, as one of the world's top 10 public health challenges.

"And we saw the effects of that," Najera said. "We saw a rise of measles in the United States to the point where the elimination status of the United States for measles was in jeopardy."

Najera is confident vaccine opponents aren't going away. He says, if anything, the rise of social media has made it easier for them to spread their message. What he finds most frustrating is that these anti-vaccines protesters aren't just making choices that affect their own families. Najera says choosing not to vaccinate their children and joining other large protests to spread their message puts the health of everyone at risk.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Janice Chang for NPR

The high school senior sitting across from Franciene Sabens was in tears over the abrupt amputation of her social life and turmoil at home. Because of the coronavirus, there will be no prom, no traditional send-off or ceremony for the graduates of Carbondale Community High School in Carbondale, Ill. And Sabens, one of the school's counselors, could not give the girl the one thing Sabens' gut told her the teen needed most.

"I want to hug them all, but I really wanted to hug that one," Sabens remembers.

Instead of a desk between counselor and student, there were miles of Internet cable and a computer screen. No hug. No private office. This is Sabens' new normal.

"Zoom is just not gonna ever bridge that gap," she says. "That one was pretty rough."

The job of the school counselor has evolved over the years, from academic guide to something deeper: the adult in a school tasked with fostering students' social and emotional growth, a mental health first responder and a confidant for kids, especially teens, who often need a closed door and a sympathetic ear. But the closure of nearly all U.S. schools has forced counselors like Sabens to reimagine how they can do their jobs. And the stakes have never been higher.

Why students need counselors now more than ever

Between closed schools, social isolation, food scarcity and parental unemployment, the coronavirus pandemic has so destabilized kids' support systems that the result, counselors say, is genuinely traumatic.

Sarah Kirk, an elementary school counselor in Tulsa, Okla., is especially worried about her students who were already at-risk, whose families "really struggle day to day in their homes with how they're going to pay the next bill and how they're going to get food on the table. Being home for this extended period of time is definitely a trauma for them."

For so many children, Kirk says, "school is their safe place. They look forward to coming. They don't want to leave when the day is over. And to take that away from them, I do worry about the traumatic experience that will cause for many of our students."

Counselors say part of the trauma comes from students being isolated from each other.

"In a middle school, that social piece is so important," says Laura Ross, a middle school counselor in Lawrenceville, Ga. Yes, they do a lot of connecting via social media, and that's still happening, "but that face-to-face and being with their friends... they're missing that."

Students are also experiencing a kind of grief "over what they've lost," Sabens says, especially seniors. "Losing out on the end of their senior years — something that they've dreamed about their whole life... has really been overwhelming for them. So there have been a lot of tears. There have been a lot of questions... 'What did we ever do to deserve this?'"

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Instead, Sabens says, she tries to let students know "that it's OK to not be OK. I mean, most of the world is not OK right now... It's OK to grieve about what you're losing because it is tragic."

Brian Coleman, a high school counselor in Chicago, says trauma is nothing new to many of his students, but he hopes awareness of the potentially traumatic effects of school closures means "trauma-informed care is going to really, really explode in ideally healthy, meaningful ways."

That means school leaders should right now be planning for the future, asking how they can best support students when they come back to school, Ross says, "making sure that we're prepared to deal with some of those feelings that are going to increase — of anxiousness, of grief, of that disconnect that they had for so long."

Broken connections

Not only are many students grieving and struggling with new trauma, it's also harder now for school counselors to help them. That's because counselors have lost one of the most powerful tools they had before schools closed: access. Before, counselors could speak to entire classrooms about bullying and how to manage their feelings, plus they enjoyed office space where students could drop in for a quick visit or schedule a tough conversation.

"I think about my eighth graders," says Laura Ross in Lawrenceville. "My office is in their hallway. I mean, they just stop by to say hello. They stop by when they're upset, just to come in and talk and, you know, figure out their feelings."

But all of that has changed. Today, a face-to-face video meeting is the closest a counselor can get to the old ideal. Before that can happen, though, Sabens says she has to find her students.

"Email, email, email, email — lots of emails," she says, calling it her "primary mode of communication with the students."

Connecting is even more complicated for elementary school counselors whose students generally don't have cell phones or email addresses. In Tulsa, Sarah Kirk says this inability to speak directly with children is "exactly what keeps me up at night."

So far, Kirk has mostly been in contact with parents and caregivers. "That's whose [phone] number I have... But it's really up to the parent if they want to hand the phone over [to the student]." She worries that, if a child is not OK at home and needs help, she won't know.

Kirk's focus on these calls has also shifted away from academics toward "the basic needs of our kids... making sure they have enough food. We're making sure they're safe."

Evelyn Ramirez, a first-year middle school counselor in rural Redwood Valley, Calif., agrees: "Our main priority right now is just to check the welfare of each student."

Ramirez, a first-generation Mexican-American, says online learning can put additional strain on immigrant and low-income families. "I feel for the students whose parents don't know English or don't really know how to help their students."

"It's no longer private"

NPR spoke with counselors across the country, from California to Georgia, Oklahoma to Ohio, and nearly all said they worry about even the best-case scenario — when they're able to connect with a student face-to-face using video chat technology. Their fear: privacy.

At school, "we have some sort of office space... where students can feel like they're having a private conversation with counselors," says Coleman in Chicago. "Now we're asking them to be vulnerable in some capacity at home. And for so many students, home is a space where they're triggered or they don't feel comfortable sharing ... because it's no longer private."

Yes, the student's bedroom door may be closed, says Ramirez in Redwood Valley, but "at any given point, someone can walk in or, you know, mom's down in the living room. She can probably hear [our] conversation." And that might keep students from really opening up about things like basic stress or even abuse.

The same holds true for many elementary school counselors.

"We do small group counseling for kids [who] are adjusting to a variety of changes, and there's an element of confidentiality that's built into that group," says Marie Weller, an elementary school counselor in Delaware, Ohio. "So I can't do a group online. I can't use Canvas or Zoom or Google Hangouts for a group because I can't get the confidentiality. So [I'm] trying to figure out, how can I check in?"

Getting creative

In Lawrenceville, Laura Ross admits: These have been trying times. But there's also a surprising upside, she says. The distance from students has forced her to get creative about how she uses technology to build a bridge back to them.

Before the outbreak, Ross helped create an after-school club for students who identify as LGBTQ+. When school closed, Ross set up a Google Classroom and asked if the club's members wanted to continue to meet virtually. "They definitely did. And the reactions were just a relief that they were still going to have the support of that club... the place that they could truly be themselves."

Ross says they even meet at the same time each week, just on Zoom.

On her last day in the office, before Ohio closed its schools, Marie Weller remembers starting to leave — then hesitating beside the childlike puppets she sometimes uses in her classroom counseling presentations. "Huh," she thought. "Maybe I'll be able to use these."

Weller and her fellow elementary school counselors say one important part of their job is making sure all students have the social-emotional skills and coping strategies they'll need to navigate a complex world. How can they do that now, from home?

Weller improvised.

She set up a smartphone camera in her house, surrounded by those puppets — a kind of surrogate classroom audience — and set about recording mini counseling lessons from her kitchen. Instead of the chime she normally uses to begin a lesson, she rings a mixing bowl with a red spatula. To teach kids about how and why they should filter what they say, leaving hurtful thoughts unspoken, she opens the coffee maker to show them how a real, paper filter works.

Weller does her own editing and even got permission from folk music favorites The Irish Rovers to use their song "What's Cooking In The Kitchen" as her opening theme. The resulting videos are brief, rich and charming, with lines like, "Your brain's amygdala acts like a guard dog."

And in Tulsa, Sarah Kirk is doing something similar, posting videos where she's sitting on the floor of her house, surrounded by colorful pennants and stuffed animals. Her dog, Crew, a cuddly 80-pound sheepadoodle (nearly as big as Kirk), even makes a camera-blocking cameo.

In her first episode, Kirk read a story meant to reassure children she can no longer hug. It's about how we all have an invisible string that connects us, even when we're far apart.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

On Monday, California State University, Fullerton announced it was planning to begin the fall 2020 semester online, making it one of the first colleges to disclose contingency plans for prolonged coronavirus disruptions.

"Our plan is to enter [the fall] virtually," said Pamella Oliver, the schools provost, at a virtual town hall. "Of course that could change depending on the situation, depending on what happens with COVID-19. But at this point that's what we're thinking."

The public institution in Southern California also said it hopes to resume in-person learning when it's safe to do so.

Oliver asked faculty to start planning for fall virtual classes now, citing the pain felt this spring when the university was forced to transition to online classes. "Having to jump quickly, without having in-depth plans," she said, "added to the difficulty."

Colleges and universities moved spring classes online, and many also closed campuses in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Schools are now grappling with how long the disruptions will last, and what the fall semester will look like, but many have been hesitant to announce their fall plans publicly.

College enrollment was already on a downward trend before the pandemic, making it a competitive field for college recruiters — every student they sign up counts. The big question is: Will students still enroll if college is all online? And will colleges that were already in dire financial straits survive the outbreak?

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Dani Pendergast for NPR

Friday, March 13, was the last time Alexandra Sullivan saw her fellow yearbook staffers in person.

"We were trying to get as many pictures of people as possible 'cause we knew we wouldn't be able to take any more," Sullivan, 18, says.

Like most U.S. public school students, Sullivan is learning from home now. And much like her lessons, her work on the yearbook continues.

Sullivan is the yearbook profiles editor at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. She's one of 10 seniors who were also on staff two years ago, when a gunman opened fire at their school. Back then, she and her classmates had to adapt to an unimaginable tragedy. Now, they have to adapt again – this time, to the pandemic.

"This book has to get done and we'll do whatever we have to do to finish it," she says, "which is exactly how we approached the '18 book."

Senior Caitlynn Tibbetts, the yearbook's co-editor-in-chief, was also on staff when the shooting happened. She says there's a collective grief among seniors over what their class — which has already lost so much — is losing now. They won't be able to dance together at prom, or walk across the stage at graduation.

"This class especially has gotten screwed over so much through the past four years," Tibbetts, 18, says. "The last two months were supposed to be the best, and they were supposed to make up for everything that we've been through. And it's really hard on us to kind of just watch it all disappear."

Amid all the uncertainty, she says, one thing is clear: The yearbook must get done, and it must get to students.

High school yearbooks are like time capsules. They record theater productions, which teams went to state finals, who was voted most likely to succeed.

And when a news event makes history – leaving a mark on students and society – it's the yearbook's job to document it. At Stoneman Douglas, that's meant changing plans just weeks before the yearbook is due.

Yearbook advisor Sarah Lerner says, "Having done one under unthinkable circumstances before, I hate to say that we're kind of, you know, used to it, but, for the seniors on staff, we are."

Two years ago, after the shooting, the yearbook staff pivoted to include remembrances of the victims. Tibbetts and Sullivan stepped up to help write them, and anything else that was needed at the last minute, while other yearbook staffers took time to attend funerals.

This year, they're making room for two new spreads about the pandemic.

"One of them is more of a factual-based one, how it's affected our community, including businesses," Tibbetts explains. "The other spread is focused on the effect it's had on us personally, both with online schooling and especially with seniors."

Logistically, putting the yearbook together and writing the new sections has been a challenge. Unlike 2018, they can't be in the same room with each other to finish the design.

"We have to social distance and our parents wouldn't let us go out," Tibbetts says.

They mainly rely on a group chat with everyone on the staff. "It can get hectic," Tibbetts says, "especially when it's all happening at like 12 a.m."

Lerner and her students missed the original deadline to finish the book, on April 6. But the printer, Walsworth, says the company is being flexible with Stoneman Douglas and other yearbook staffs across the country. Lerner says she's aiming to get the book in by the end of April.

Once the printed copies come back, more than 1,200 books will somehow have to be distributed to students. Lerner has some ideas for how to do that safely.

However, there's one important yearbook tradition they may not be able to save.

"We may not actually get to sign books this year," Lerner says. And that's been hard to accept.

"As a teacher, I really like to get my students to sign my book, you know, and I like to sign theirs and I like to see the kids carrying them around at school."

Lerner says she's sad that might not happen this year. But at least this time, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School aren't on their own.

"Unlike the 2018 books, this situation is not unique to us," she says. "So there's comfort in knowing that all staffs are going through the same issue. It's not just us."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, seen on March 27, has released new rules for sexual assault complaints on college campuses.; Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

New federal regulations on how schools – from kindergarten all the way through college — must respond to cases of sexual assault and harassment are drawing swift and mixed reactions.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced what she called historic changes Wednesday to Obama-era guidelines that she said will make the process fairer and better protect accused students. While some welcome the changes to Title IX as long overdue, survivors' advocates are panning the new rules as a throwback to the days when sexual assault was seldom reported or punished, and schools are protesting they can't possibly implement them by summer, as required.

Among the most significant changes are new regulations aimed at beefing up protections for accused college students, by mandating live hearings by adjudicators who are neither the Title IX coordinator nor the investigator, and real-time cross examination of each student by the other student's lawyer or representative.

"Cross examination is an important part of ensuring truth is found," said DeVos, adding that "our rule is very sensitive to not requiring students to face each other. In fact it specifically prohibits that. But it's an important part of ensuring that justice is ultimately served."

Under the new regulations, students also have a right to appeal, and schools are allowed to raise the evidentiary standard from "a preponderance of the evidence" to "clear and convincing," making it harder to find a student responsible for misconduct.

Also, the definition of sexual harassment narrows, so only that which is "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive" warrants investigation. On the other hand, dating violence and stalking would now be added to the kinds of offenses that schools must respond to.

Devos' proposed regulations, released last fall, would have given schools no responsibility to deal with off-campus incidents. But after a torrent of criticism, the final rules clarify that schools must respond to off-campus incidents that are in places or during events that the school is involved with. So, for example, frat houses would be covered, but a private off-campus apartment, would not. And a school would be obligated to respond to an alleged incident during a school field trip but not a private house party.

Cynthia Garrett, co-president of Families Advocating for Campus Equality, a group that advocates for the accused, welcomes the changes as long overdue.

"Anybody who's accused of something so vile [as sexual assault] has to have the opportunity to defend themselves," she says. "I think that in order to ruin someone's life [by expelling them from school] there has to be a process like this. It shouldn't be easy."

An accused student who asked to be identified as John Doe, as he was in his court cases, agrees that the new regulations are "very encouraging." He sued his school for suspending him after a hearing that he says denied him due process, by forcing him to defend himself without his attorney, and not allowing him to question his accuser. Later, after a federal court ruling in his favor, he reached a settlement with his school that wiped his record clean. But that was after nearly five years of what he describes as torment.

"People don't realize what these hearings used to look like," he says. "They can't just be a horse and pony show where they go through the motions and the school comes to a predetermined outcome."

Survivor advocates, however, say the new regulations will have a chilling effect on reporting, as alleged victims may view it as futile to file a formal complaint, or too retraumatizing, for example, to be subject to cross-examination. "This is extremely worrisome," says Sage Carson, manager of the survivor advocacy group Know Your IX. The new regulations "make it clear to me that DeVos cares more about schools and [accused students] than she does about survivors," says Carson.

The off-campus exclusion is also a sticking point. "We know that a majority of violence does not happen in libraries or in on-campus housing," says Carson.

She says she was assaulted in an off-campus apartment years ago, and was allowed to file a formal Title IX complaint back then. But if the rules then were like what DeVos is announcing now, Carson would not have had the option. "I would absolutely have dropped out of school," she says.

Doe, however, who was accused of an alleged assault during a private weekend jaunt hundreds of miles away from school during summer break, says the new rules prevent that kind of "overreach." His accuser wasn't a student at his college anymore. He says, "I just don't think that's reasonable."

Schools meantime, have objections of their own, first and foremost being forced to play the role of virtual trial courts to adjudicate intensely complex cases.

"We are not set up to do that," says Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a trade association representing 2,000 public and private colleges and universities. "We do not have the legal authority to do that. We don't have the social legitimacy to do that. We want to teach students. We don't want to run courts."

Schools also object to the timing, requiring the changes to be implemented by August 14th, even though schools are already overwhelmed with managing their sudden switch to online learning because of COVID-19.

"This is madness," says Hartle. "This is an extraordinarily complicated piece of work that they have spent more than three years developing. It's a mistake to now turn to colleges and universities and say, put it in place in 100 days. It's simply not going to work very well."

Smaller schools, especially, Hartle says, "are just overwhelmed. They don't know how or where to begin" to implement these changes.

Anticipating the objections, DeVos insisted that "civil rights really can't wait. And students cases continue to be decided now." She suggested that this may actually be the best time for schools to make the changes since there are no students on campus.

Hartle says schools will continue pressing for the Department of Education to allow schools more time. Meantime, several legal challenges are in the works, so a temporary stay is also a possibility. That would give schools a reprieve while those cases wind their way through the courts.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: smartboy10/Getty Images

A for-profit college received millions of dollars from the federal government to help low-income students whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus outbreak, but that same school, Florida Career College (FCC), is also accused of defrauding students.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of students in April calls FCC "a sham" and alleges that, long before the pandemic, the college was targeting economically vulnerable people of color. The plaintiffs say the vocational school enticed them with false promises of career training and job placement — but spent little on instruction while charging exorbitant prices and pushing students into loans they cannot repay.

The lawsuit comes as thousands of colleges across the country are receiving federal emergency relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Through the CARES Act, FCC has been allotted $17 million. The law requires that at least half of that money goes directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of it.

Experts say the complaint against FCC raises serious concerns about the college's ability to safeguard taxpayer dollars, as well as its ability to serve its own students.

In a statement to NPR, Florida Career College General Counsel Aaron Mortensen says: "This lawsuit is baseless legally and factually. Though we cannot comment because the matter is in litigation, we will aggressively fight these false allegations."

Equipment was "at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent"

Plaintiff Kareem Britt was working as a cook when he noticed a Facebook ad for FCC.

"Are you tired of working minimum wage jobs? Eating ramen noodles?" the ad asked. "Are you ready to step up to steak? HVAC degrees make $16 to $23/hr."

An FCC representative told Britt that a degree could change his life and that the school would help him land a job. He qualified for a $6,000 federal Pell Grant and an FCC "scholarship loan" for $3,000. Britt decided to enroll in the HVAC training program.

After classes began, though, Britt says equipment necessary to learn the trade was in short supply. "Tools, machinery, and other learning devices were at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent," according to the complaint.

When it came time for the school to help Britt find a job, he says, FCC found him just two, two-week placements, and he failed to find HVAC work on his own. Making matters worse, once he'd finished school, Britt learned that he had also taken on federal loans worth $9,500, which he must now pay back as a hotel cook, the same kind of job he'd held before enrolling.

Reverse redlining

The complaint alleges that Florida Career College, along with its parent company, specifically targets economically vulnerable people of color.

"They are recruiting at majority Black high schools," says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs. "They are putting up billboards in towns where the population is mostly Black. And they're doing a lot of advertising on social media where you can choose to target your ad essentially by race."

Stephen Stewart is Jamaican and says he was drawn to an FCC ad on Instagram. He decided to visit campus, and says one word captures his experience: "pressure."

Like Britt, Stewart was considering FCC's HVAC program. After his tour, when a representative told him the program would cost more than $20,000, Stewart balked. He remembers the representative pushed, telling him: "'I know so many students that have went here... I'm talking about people with five, six kids in a worse situation than you're in.'" Stewart was 20 at the time and childless. "'You're telling me that they can go through this, make their payments and pay off their tuition, and you can't?'"

Stewart enrolled in FCC's HVAC program after being promised that, within a year, the school would find him a job in his field.

The complaint takes aim at these recruiting practices. It alleges that FCC is selling the promise of a career and financial success to cash-strapped communities of color where college feels out of reach, "discriminating against students on the basis of race by inducing them to purchase a worthless product by taking on debt they cannot repay."

According to Education Department data, 85% of FCC's students are people of color.

This practice of discriminating by targeting students of color has a name: Reverse redlining — a reference to the historical practice of excluding African-American families from home ownership and denying them access to services. Reverse redlining is illegal, and it's what sets this suit apart from previous legal battles over alleged predatory practices by for-profit colleges.

"In a weekly memo to my board last Friday, I said, 'So the new angle of attack against our sector is that we are predatory to minority communities,'" says Steve Gunderson, head of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an organization that serves as the national voice for career education schools like FCC.

"We have always celebrated the fact that approximately 45 to 50% of the students in our schools are African American and Hispanic," he says. "We're proud of that."

"Classes were a scam"

Long before the federal government granted FCC $17 million in pandemic relief, the school was already largely government-dependent. According to federal data, the lion's share of FCC's revenue — 86% — comes from federal financial aid funds, namely Pell Grants and student loans.

At the same time, federal data also suggest that the college fails to prepare many students for their chosen professions. Under an Obama-era rule known as "gainful employment," schools could lose access to federal aid if graduates don't earn enough income to repay their student debts. According to the complaint, 16 of the 17 FCC programs evaluated under the gainful employment rule failed that metric, meaning graduates weren't able to repay their loans. (The gainful employment rule was repealed in 2019.)

The median annual earnings of FCC graduates who ultimately found employment ranged from $8,983 to $32,871, according to the suit, which helps explain why, according to the most recent federal data, just 23% of FCC students have been able to pay down any of their loans' original balance within three years of leaving.

"Classes were a scam, a waste of time," says Stephen Stewart. The equipment was "limited" and "outdated," he says, and the instructor admitted to the class that he had little experience with HVAC. Stewart's worst day, though, came near the end of his nine-month program when he visited the career services department to ask when they'd help him find a job as they had promised.

Stewart says he was given a list of possible HVAC companies and told, "'You gotta get your job.'" So he did, with no help. But Stewart says it was clear that FCC hadn't given him the skills he needed to keep up in the job, let alone succeed, and he ultimately left. Today, Stewart is $15,000 in debt and says he feels "shattered" by the whole experience.

"The thing that upsets me the most about this is how much it preys upon people's hopes and dreams," says Ben Miller, who studies higher education accountability at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "You know, you have a lot of folks who want to make a better life for themselves. They have maybe one shot at college, and you rip them off and basically ruin it."

But Gunderson takes a very different view, as head of the national association for postsecondary career colleges.

"[This lawsuit] is so frustrating, because this is nothing more than an organized national effort to destroy the reputation of the [career college] sector," he says.

Gunderson insists that career colleges, including FCC, have been held to unrealistic standards. He points to the gainful employment rule, which he says measured students' incomes relatively soon after graduation. "You've got to go into the five- or 10-year mark before most of these occupations have what you and I would call our respectable salaries."

But federal data also show that, even 10 years after enrolling in FCC, more than half of its students still didn't earn more than the typical high school graduate.

Gunderson says this lawsuit is just the latest salvo in a decade-long fight to discredit for-profit, career colleges — a fight he calls "monotonous and disappointing."

"Even if you're doing a terrible job"

The law requires that at least half of the $17 million FCC is receiving through the CARES Act must go directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of those funds. In a letter, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said institutions have "significant discretion" on how to award the assistance to students.

"We stand ready to deliver these funds," said Fardad Fateri, the head of FCC and its parent company, International Education Corporation, in a press release. "It is important we get these grants into the hands of our students right away, so they can better deal with this crisis."

FCC's $17 million is a small piece of the more than $14 billion lawmakers set aside in the CARES Act to help colleges and vulnerable students during the coronavirus pandemic. But Ben Miller says, in Congress' haste to help schools that serve low-income students, lawmakers are giving money to many schools with questionable records like FCC's.

"When there's no consideration of quality or outcomes, it's potentially a big award, even if you're doing a terrible job," Miller says.

Meanwhile DeVos has also championed separate policies that have made it easier for schools like FCC to continue to enroll students and receive federal student aid even as their graduates struggle. In 2019, DeVos repealed the Obama-era gainful employment rule that would have denied low-performing schools access to federal student aid.

Under the Trump administration, the Education Department has also changed the College Scorecard, a website meant to help prospective students compare colleges by price and performance. The department has removed easy access to schools' loan repayment rates. In 2018, it also removed another important metric: How the earnings of a school's graduates compared to the earnings of high school grads.

"Rather than highlighting institutions that show the best employment and loan repayment outcomes for students, this administration has made a concerted effort to hide this information from students with no explanation as to why," says Michael Itzkowitz, who was director of the College Scorecard during the Obama administration. "What's become more transparent is their willingness to prioritize certain institutions — namely for-profits — even if those aren't the best options for students choosing to pursue a postsecondary education."

The Education Department did not respond in time to requests for comment.

When students filed suit against the now-defunct for-profit Corinthian Colleges, claiming, like Britt and Stewart, that their schools had made promises about job placement and future earnings that they simply did not keep, DeVos revised another rule, known as "borrower defense," to make it more difficult for defrauded borrowers to get their money back. But the revision was so strict that 10 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats in March to rebuke the education secretary and reverse her decision.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

From brights the other day to mutes today. You could call this color palette "blush and sand," which sounds like the title of a romance novel with a Valentino lookalike on the cover!

This is exactly the kind of sweater I used to tease my grandmother about wearing, the elaborately beaded 1950s cardigans that you saw on everyone from Babe Paley to Lucille Ball to … your grandmother. 

Of course, now I wish I had more of them! The best are the silk-lined cashmere or merino wool ones made in what was, for more than 150 years, the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The work of Hong Kong tailors is legendary, and now all the 1950s and early 1960s pieces are enjoying a tremendous vogue.

In this case the colors – bronze, blush and sand – are hushed, which lets the beading look more pronounced. The sleeveless top is a silk jersey criss-crossed with stitched bands of darker silk chiffon. King’s X? And then the skirt is bias-cut chiffon in very quiet hues. If designers gave quirky names to prints the way cosmetics makers do to lipstick and cheek color, we could call this one, "Shhh! This is a library!’"

So I’m glad that the shoes get paroled to holler. The nude patent color is ladylike, not loud, which is why I’m surprised but gratified that it’s hung around for a couple of seasons now. It’s a very versatile hue, even if it’s not making it as Pantone's color of the year.

No, the troublemaker part of this ensemble is the jeweled heels. Paul Simon sang of diamonds on the soles of one’s shoes; these are big dazzling rhinestones on the heels of mine. They gleam, they coruscate, they twinkle, they flash – amid all these well-behaved quiet colors, they send out a wink and a message that "I’m really a lively girl at heart, and at my feet."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Sean‘s pick this week is spider_plot by Moses. Contents Custom Charts Using the Custom Chart Comments Custom Charts My pick this week is also spider_plot which Jiro picked a few months... read more >>

Sean‘s pick this week is spider_plot by Moses. Last week, we looked at the custom chart I created.  This week, we’ll look at authoring it. Contents Authoring the Custom Chart Full... read more >>

Today’s post is by Owen Paul, who is a Student Ambassador Technical Program Specialis. He himself was a student ambassador before joining MathWorks, and he was featured in the Community... read more >>

New research has shed light on the factors needed to successfully implement pilot projects designed to reduce the dumping of unwanted fish by fishermen. The analysis of 15 European projects highlights the importance of involving the fishing industry in developing and implementing pilot projects.

Although a total of 1.3 per cent of global marine areas is currently within Marine Protection Areas (MPAs), this is far from the Convention of Biodiversity's (CBD) 10 per cent target. Significant progress has been made over the last few years, but a new report suggests there is room for improvement as MPA coverage is very uneven and not all eco-regions and habitats are represented. The report makes several recommendations for maximising the effects of MPAs.

A new study has investigated the impacts of human activity on Antarctic Marine and Coastal. Alongside local effects of fishing, pollution and invasive alien species, global climate change is causing sea temperature rises and ocean acidification. Action is therefore needed at all levels to address these impacts.

A new study of pollutants in Mediterranean coastal waters assesses the risks posed by difficult-to-detect chemicals present at low concentrations. Coastal monitoring programmes may be required to control discharges of some of these pollutants, which, at current levels, could be harmful to sensitive marine creatures.

The lack of clear international regulations is putting ???animal forests??? at risk, a recent analysis concludes. The research examined threats to these important seafloor habitats, and suggests that collective responsibility and coherent ecosystem-based management are needed to prevent their loss.