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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1499927

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is known for its caves, but there’s a lot more to the national park – which is celebrating its centennial this year.

Despite its name, there is only one Carlsbad Cavern, but there are many other caves in the park. There’s also plenty to see above ground, including the park’s famous bats, brilliant night sky and the rugged beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert.

“The combination of the desert ecosystem, being so kind of harsh and fragile with hot temperatures and stabby plants, and then the fragile nature of the cave ecosystem beneath your feet is a really neat contrast,” said Anthony Mazzucco, a park guide and acting supervisory park ranger at Carlsbad Caverns. “The bats being like a link between the cave and the desert kind of brings it all full circle. It's a really powerful lesson in the way our ecosystems work and relate to each other.”

Here’s what visitors should know about Carlsbad Caverns, the latest national park in USA TODAY’s yearlong series. The Bat Flight Amphitheater is perfectly situated so visitors can see bats exiting Carlsbad Cavern's Natural Entrance from a safe distance. How many caves are in Carlsbad Caverns?

There are at least 120 known caves in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The only one currently open to the general public is Carlsbad Cavern. Mazzucco explained most caves are off limits to both visitors and park staff not only for their safety but to protect the cave ecosystems.

“Those areas of the self-guided routes in Carlsbad Cavern, and to an extent even the guided tour areas, have all been kind of sacrificed in a way,” he said. “The infrastructure and the lighting and the trail system create an element of permanent damage to the cave. (It) is great because you can allow people to see it up close and personal and learn about it in a safe manner, but some caves, that’s just not possible to do it in.”

Cavers can sometimes get recreational permits for other caves in the park, but that program is on hold, as are interpretative tours of Slaughter Canyon Cave. The only ranger-led tour currently available is the King’s Palace Tour of Carlsbad Cavern. Fragile soda straw stalactites and columns fill Doll's Theater in Carlsbad Cavern's Big Room. What’s so special about Carlsbad Cavern?

Carlsbad Cavern is full of mesmerizing rock formations that visitors can explore at their own pace.

The park notes late humorist Will Rogers once likened it to “the Grand Canyon with a roof over it,” adding “it’s got all the cathedrals of the world in it, with half of ’em hanging upside down.” Do you have to make a reservation for Carlsbad Caverns?

Reservations are required to enter the cavern itself. They must be made in advance at Recreation.gov or by calling 877-444-6777.

Reservations cost $1 per person, regardless of age. A $15 cavern entrance fee is also required for visitors ages 16 and up. Cave entry is free for guests age 15 and under, but they still need a $1 reservation.

“Anything on the surface, no reservation and no entry fee is needed into the park,” Mazzucco said. “So any surface hiking trails or watching the Bat Flight Program we do in the summertime evenings or any astronomy dark sky programs or just star-watching on their own, wildlife viewing, if the park has any special presentations or looking around the visitor center exhibit hall or doing any shopping in the bookstore, all of that is free.”

Visitors should note a number of surface hiking trails and Walnut Canyon Desert Drive are currently closed, due to flood damage. The latest conditions and closures can be found on the park’s website. Snow lightly covers Slaughter Canyon at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. What months are the bats at Carlsbad Caverns?

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is home to 17 bat species.

“The colony that we're famous for is referred to as Brazilian freetailed bats,” Mazzucco said. The migratory bats spend the summer roosting in Carlsbad Cavern, arriving as early as April and staying until September or October. “By the fall, whenever the weather gets a little colder, there's no insects around to eat, the bats will migrate south to Mexico or further south in Central America.”

Weather permitting, each night during the summer, rangers host a free Bat Flight Program talk at the park’s Bat Flight Amphitheater, where visitors can watch hundreds of thousands of bats take flight from the cavern’s Natural Entrance. The third Saturday of each July, the park hosts a whole bat celebration.

“Every day we like to celebrate our flying mammal friends but for Dawn of the Bats is kind of a day focus on that education,” Mazzucco said. “We typically have these ranger talks in the evening to watch the bats exit the cave every night. For Dawn of the Bats, we kind of reverse it and some of our staff will get up pretty early and invite the public to join right around sunrise for a chance to watch or mainly listen to the baths return to the cavern.” Other activities are held throughout the day. Visitors can watch hundreds of thousands of bats take flight each summer night at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. How long does it take to walk through Carlsbad Cavern?

Exploring Carlsbad Cavern can take as little as 45 minutes to upwards of two-and-half hours, depending on if visitors walk the steep path down from the cave’s Natural Entrance or take an elevator to the relatively flat Big Room.

“For being such an extreme environment, it's fairly accessible, all things considered,” Mazzucco noted. “If folks have any of their own mobility devices, you know, wheelchair, electric scooter, one of those kinds of knee carts if they have a leg injury, things like that, A-OK to go down the elevator and explore most of the Big Room. We just kind of prohibit those devices on the main corridor section because of the steep switchbacking trail, to prevent any safety issue.”

There are more than 60 switchbacks on the Natural Entrance Trail, which he said descends 750 feet or the equivalent of three-quarters of the height of the Empire State Building. Visitors who use wheelchairs can access Carlsbad Cavern's Big Room by elevator.

National parks for every body:How to make the outdoors more accessible to people with disabilities Is Carlsbad Caverns the biggest cave in the US?

The Big Room is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, but Carlsbad Cavern is not the biggest cave.

Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the longest known cave system in the whole world. What is the closest city to Carlsbad Caverns?

Carlsbad Caverns is 20 miles away from Carlsbad, New Mexico and 145 miles away from El Paso, Texas. El Paso International Airport is the nearest major airport. A caver looks out across Carlsbad Caverns National Park at night. How close are White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns?

The national parks are less than three and a half hours apart by car.

Carlsbad Caverns is actually closer to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. They are just over 30 minutes away from each other. Who are the Indigenous people of Carlsbad Caverns?

According to the park, prehistoric Native peoples lived in the Guadalupe Mountains between 12,000 to 14,000 years ago and Mescalero Apache arrived in the area in around 1400.

Mazzucco said while there is so far no known evidence of these early residents going far into the dark zone of Carlsbad Cavern, they did leave some pictographs and rock art near the Natural Entrance of the cavern.“Folks hiking down the main corridor, they kind of walk past that area, and keen observers can notice them,” he said. “There are lots (more) within the park, mostly in hard to reach backcountry areas that have some specific closures.” More than 60 switchbacks takes visitors down Natural Entrance Trail, which is not advised for visitors with heart or respiratory conditions.

During the Formula E qualifying round in Portland, Oregon, today, the DS Penske team was fined €25,000 after it surreptitiously installed an RFID scanner at the entrance to the pit, which the FIA stewards said could collect data from other race cars and give them an advantage. The team’s racers, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Éric Vergne, were also hit with a pit lane start penalty for today’s race — meaning they will have to wait at the end of the pit lane until all of the other cars have driven past before entering the race.

The FIA Stewards explanation for the penalty was provided to The Verge via email:

The Stewards were advised by the Technical Delegate that the competitor had installed RFID scanning equipment in the pit lane entry this morning that was able to collect live data from all cars. Firstly, it is forbidden in general for competitors to install or place any equipment in the pit lane. Secondly, the collection of data by this method gives the competitor a lot of information, which is a huge and unfair advantage. Taking all the circumstances together, the Stewards feel that the given penalty is appropriate.

RFID chips have been used in Formula E tires for the entirety of the still-young motorsport, primarily to track the condition of tires, including temperature and tire pressure, and encourage their efficient use, according to a 2014 article in Tyrepress.

For the 2023 season, Formula E has switched to a new “Gen 3” car design and a new tire manufacturer, going from Michelins to the Hankook iON. A Motorsport.com report from off-season testing discussed how much of a challenge that presented for the teams and a possible reason why attempting to glean data from the entire field was something Penske would even try.

For the 2022-2023 season, the series picked up a sponsorship from Hankook tires, which a report in Motorsport indicated presented challenges for the drivers, who had been used to the same Michelin tires for the previous 8 seasons.

This week, I went to the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, Colorado, where more than 11,000 scientists, artists, investors, and uncategorizable members of the psychedelic community gathered to both celebrate and scrutinize as the “walls of prohibition start to crumble,” in the words of Bia Labate, executive director of the Chacruna Institute. It’s likely the biggest psychedelics conference in history.

“Welcome to the psychedelic ‘20s,” cheered Rick Doblin, founder of the conference’s host, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, at the welcome address — while sporting an all-white suit that may as well have been plucked from Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicler Tom Wolfe’s closet.

The psychedelic hype bubble is already concerning many in the community, so let’s not exaggerate the scale: Well over half a million people attended the recent parade celebrating the Denver Nuggets NBA finals victory over the Miami Heat. Comparatively, psychedelia remains relatively niche. But a sampling of 11,000 people from the psychedelic community punches above its weight in creating a palpable, colorful, and ever-surprising atmosphere. During Doblin’s opening address, a sort of collective effervescence buzzed through the auditorium. For many in the room, an above-ground psychedelic gathering of this size and stature was decades in the making. “I’m not tripping — culture is tipping,” said Doblin. Psychedelic culture is back, but it looks a little different

It’s tempting to write about all the oddities that come along with a mass congregation of psychedelic-curious folks. And there were plenty: attendees wearing sparkling dragon outfits; a ukulele band stationed in the main hallway attracting a rotating cast of passers-by into a sort of ecstatic but strangely relaxing dance; a “Deep Space” exhibit room — a neon-lit warehouse, really — with tea ceremonies and real-time painting. Outside the convention center, hundreds of people sat upon the patches of turf in every sort of posture you can imagine, with circles of police officers dotting the perimeter.

But the real story that strikes me is the sanity of it all. The conference logistics ran relatively smoothly. Audience members were mostly well-behaved. I haven’t been offered illicit substances even once (the press badge around my neck may have something to do with that). In part, that makes sense for a conference where the three-day tickets start at $805. For all the talk of inclusion, that’s a steep price of entry that surely screened out some of the fun. Nevertheless, this cross-section of psychedelia might optimistically suggest a synthesis between the bacchanalia of the ’60s and the straight-laced, bureaucratic vibe familiar to today’s conference culture.

During that ’60s era, psychedelia and government stood at odds. At Wednesday’s opening ceremony, Doblin was followed by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, as well as current Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who voiced his support for pardoning all criminal convictions related to psychedelic drugs.

Next was Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Promising results from clinical trials are recruiting governmental allies across the aisle, something the hippies lacked. Psychedelics are still illegal at the federal level, but that’s not stopping states from passing legislation that ranges from decriminalizing the cultivation, possession, and sharing of psychedelic substances, to regulated access at certified clinics for anyone over the age of 21.

Spread across the long halls of the Colorado Convention Center, sessions were grouped into one of 11 different categories, ranging from science and business to society and community. I bopped into a crowded room where Hamilton Morris (the journalist and chemist behind Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia) chronicled 90 years of tryptamine chemistry. The handful of psychedelic drugs we’re familiar with today — which have already caused such a ruckus — hardly scratch the surface of the thousands of psychedelic compounds chemists are discovering. Earlier this year, Jason Wallach, a pharmacologist at St. John’s University, filed for a patent on 218 novel psychedelic drugs, which he hopes will help fill out the inventory of mental health treatment options. (At a later session on AI-assisted drug discovery, Michael Cunningham, a research scientist at Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, said that the number of potential small molecules yet to be discovered vastly outnumbers the quantity of stars in the observable universe).

In the afternoon, I moseyed over to hear Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and a leading researcher in the psychedelic science realm. At the moment of my entrance, he was describing how brain activity grows more “entropic” on psychedelics. You might recognize entropy as what the second law of thermodynamics tells us the universe is tending toward: disorder. In terms of the brain, you can think of it as the unpredictability of electrical activity.

Entropy is also a fitting theme for the conference at large, which otherwise resists being packaged into a tidy narrative. Everything from the outfits to the art installations is spiced with unpredictability. Even the weather, which delivered a quick bout of hail Thursday night, was surprising. In the brain, heightened entropy can help shake up harmful patterns of thought and behavior. As a culture, psychedelia — at its best — can serve a similar function: shaking up settled patterns, inviting opportunities for new ways of organizing ourselves, our institutions, and maybe even our academic conferences.

Balancing the chemistry and neuroscience, the keynote stage featured speakers like football star Aaron Rodgers and the rapper/artist Jaden Smith (like psychedelics, he’s a little difficult to place). Asked about his first psychedelic experience, Smith shared that he did literally hug a tree, and in that moment, thought: “Oh, wow, there’s a lot going on inside of here.” Does psychedelic experience have broader political implications?

High-entropy psychedelic states that shake up settled patterns, alone, do not offer reliable pathways to making anything better. That’s why psychedelics are now often paired with therapy, which provides a structured experience to guide one toward beneficial outcomes. Is it possible to structure the cultural impact of psychedelics so that, this time around, it doesn’t plummet into moral panic and prohibition as it did in the ’60s?

The metaphor often deployed here is integration. For individuals taking psychedelics through clinical or legalized adult-use formats, a session with a therapist usually follows the day after the trip to integrate the experience. Across a number of panel discussions, participants have suggested that integrating psychedelic experience at the cultural scale requires wholesale systemic change.

Often, this sort of thing is usually followed by a few vague critiques of capitalism or the profit motive. “Don’t forget,” said Jamie Wheal, a writer and co-founder of the Flow Genome Project, “the set and setting of the psychedelic renaissance is free-market capitalism.”

Quibbles over the imprecision of calling the present economic paradigm free-market capitalism aside, the political implications of psychedelics are a rich and unsettled area of debate. “Our minds shape our social structures, and our social structures shape our minds,” said Justin Rosenstein, co-founder of Asana, during a talk titled “Rebuilding society in the light of mystical insight.”

There was no disagreement in the crowd when it comes to ending the prohibition on psychedelic drugs (though how that should be done is another story). The political interests of psychedelic discourse, though, tend toward far larger spheres. “If we’re going to have a conversation about drug policy endgame, the endgame is complete social transformation,” said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. What does that mean in practice?

The hippies also held a famously antagonistic view toward prevailing economic structures. But their engagement with policy discourse wasn’t up to the task of achieving meaningful change.

If the conference was any indication, this new iteration of psychedelic culture is more willing to speak the language of decision-making institutions (another source of polarized debate). There is a new dose of prudence in the air. Panelists discussed the absolute importance of informed consent, the slim-but-real risks of psychosis (particularly for those with a family history), and the value of clinical research. A keynote conversation between Michael Pollan and Bob Jesse (a behind-the-scenes driver of the movement for decades) was titled “Tempering psychedelics,” in which Pollan reflected on the virtues of opening conversations around psychedelics with their risks. But if psychedelic culture is an unpredictable force of entropy, you never know what turns it may take next.

Diabetes cases are likely to skyrocket over the next few decades, new research out this week has found. The study estimates that more than a billion people worldwide will be living with the chronic condition by 2050—roughly double the amount of cases seen today. The prevalence of diabetes is expected to be especially high in parts of Africa and the Middle East, but dozens of countries could experience substantial increases.

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In the simplest terms, diabetes is defined as having chronically high levels of blood sugar. This usually happens due to a breakdown in our production of or response to insulin, a hormone that helps move sugar from the bloodstream to our cells. People with type 1 diabetes, for instance, have an overzealous immune system that attacks the cells responsible for making insulin. And those with type 2 diabetes develop a resistance to insulin’s effects and can eventually stop producing it altogether.

Thanks to medications and better blood sugar monitoring, diabetes is no longer the death sentence it once was. But it can still lead to serious complications like nerve damage and chronic kidney disease, especially if not managed probably. It also often raises the odds of many other health conditions, including heart attacks, stroke, and dementia. And according to the authors of a study published Thursday in the Lancet, the burden of diabetes will only go up from here.

The research comes from scientists at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. To come up with their predictions, the team used the latest data from the Global Burden of Diseases study, a long-running research project also managed by the IHME that tries to track the prevalence of and harm caused by many health conditions and illnesses.

Based on the GBD data, there were about 529 million people living with diabetes worldwide in 2021. After adjusting for age, the current global prevalence was around 6.1%. But by 2050, 1.31 billion people will have some form of diabetes, the authors found. The highest age-standardized prevalence rate for a large region is projected to be in North Africa and the Middle East, at 16.8%, but nearly half of the world’s over 200 countries and territories will have rates higher than 10%.

“The rapid rate at which diabetes is growing is not only alarming but also challenging for every health system in the world, especially given how the disease also increases the risk for ischemic heart disease and stroke,” said lead author Liane Ong, a lead research scientist at the IHME, in a statement released by the organization.

Over 95% of these cases are expected to be type 2 diabetes. And the single most significant risk factor associated with type 2 was high body mass index. But the authors note that many other important factors, including low levels of exercise, poor diet, and a person’s genetics, can influence the risk of developing diabetes and the potential harm or death it can cause. So preventing or managing diabetes cases now and in the future will require widespread improvements in our environment and availability of health care, the authors say.

“Some people might be quick to focus on one or a few risk factors, but that approach doesn’t take into account the conditions in which people are born and live that create disparities worldwide,” said study author Lauryn Stafford, a research fellow at IHME. “Those inequities ultimately impact people’s access to screening and treatment and the availability of health services. That’s precisely why we need a more complete picture of how diabetes has been impacting populations at a granular level.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1457835

Days before a federal court was set to consider whether to hold Los Angeles County in contempt for failing to fix problems inside the Inmate Reception Center, U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson has approved a settlement agreement under which local leaders are promising to make broad changes to improve jail conditions.

In addition to permanently setting limits on how long detainees can be held in the reception center and how long they can be handcuffed to benches, the settlement also includes provisions designed to help lower the jail population by diverting hundreds of people into mental health treatment. The hope is that, with fewer people in jail, conditions there will improve.

“This is a watershed moment for the ACLU’s jail and prison decarceration movement,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU National Prison Project, said in a news release. “This is the first time in the country a jurisdiction that we or other advocates have sued agreed that the cornerstone to addressing abysmal jail conditions and overcrowding is to reduce the number of people coming to jail in the first place.”

In an emailed statement Thursday afternoon, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department also lauded the agreement.

The county echoed that sentiment in an emailed statement, praising the “hard work of multiple departments” to “swiftly and efficiently” put in place the broad changes that made the settlement possible.

“This work continues to be a top priority,” the county added.

The agreement is the latest development in a lawsuit first filed in the 1970s targeting persistently poor conditions in the Los Angeles jails. Since that time, the county has never been able to fully comply with court orders to fix the problems behind bars.

In September, after years of legal wrangling, the ACLU filed a motion raising concerns about deteriorating conditions at the Inmate Reception Center. New detainees in the downtown L.A. facility — most of whom had not yet been convicted of a crime — were reportedly forced to defecate on the floor and in food containers, were handcuffed to benches for days at a time and were routinely denied needed medications for mental illnesses.

In response, Pregerson signed a preliminary injunction ordering certain changes to address those problems. Specifically, the county was banned from keeping anyone in the reception center for more than 24 hours or chaining people to benches for more than four hours. The injunction also forbade keeping people in holding cells or cages for more than 12 hours at a time and required everyone to be held in sanitary conditions.

But in February, the ACLU filed a 27-page motion alleging that the county had flouted the court’s order by tethering inmates to benches and gurneys for hours at a time, locking people in cells covered with trash and feces and leaving them to sleep on crowded intake center floors with nothing but plastic bags to keep warm.

“We are treated like animals,” one inmate wrote in a court filing at the time. “People shouldn’t live like this.”

The civil rights organization asked Pregerson to sanction the county and levy fines for any future violations of court orders. The judge was expected to decide whether he would do that following a contempt hearing scheduled for next week.

Then, late last week, the county and the ACLU announced that they’d come to an agreement. On Thursday, Pregerson finalized it with a signature, negating the need for a hearing and bringing an end to the ACLU’s request to hold the county in contempt.

Though both parties lauded it as a step forward, the settlement order does not end the overall lawsuit. Instead, it makes permanent some of the time limits and required conditions outlined in the preliminary injunction ordered last year.

Under the new agreement, the county also agreed to continue a number of other corrective steps that had begun in recent months, such as creating a “robust” cleaning schedule, hiring new janitorial crews, improving mental health staffing levels and creating a new tracking system to make sure no one stays in cages or chained to benches for longer than allowed.

But the piece of the order most celebrated by inmate advocates was the creation of new alternatives to incarceration, including more than 500 noncarceral beds for people found incompetent to stand trial and nearly 1,700 for other people with mental illness.

In a statement Thursday, Michelle Parris, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s California office, explained the importance of that move.

“A key piece of this agreement is building out more than 2,000 beds to divert currently incarcerated people into community-based mental health treatment, something community members have demanded for years,” she said. “While it should not have required litigation to see movement, this settlement is an opportunity for the county to finally build the robust, decentralized system of care Los Angeles needs.”

As officials work toward bringing those beds online, the county will have to provide quarterly reports to the court detailing progress toward compliance with Thursday’s order.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1456230

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1456223

California is partnering with Mexico to help find professional boxers owed pensions from a little-known state retirement plan, with two dozen former fighters located in recent weeks and pledges to identify more.

The efforts follow a Times investigation that found most boxers owed benefits from the California Professional Boxers’ Pension Plan were unaware that the 40-year-old program existed or had little information about how to apply.

The California State Athletic Commission, which administers the pension plan, said it estimates that at least a quarter of the 200 boxers currently owed benefits had a last known address in Mexico.

Officials with the Consulate General of Mexico in San Diego and Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they are helping California locate boxers using identity documents filed in Mexico and abroad to ensure those entitled to money receive it. The World Boxing Council, which is in Mexico City, is also working with the athletic commission to find boxers who are owed pensions. So far, the groups have helped the commission find 23 boxers, four of whom have since been paid.

Among those is retired Mexican featherweight José Refugio “Cuco” Rojas, who unknowingly has been owed nearly $17,000 in benefits dating back almost two decades.

Rojas, 67, said he was unaware California had a pension when he boxed between 1976 and 1990, logging a 35-17-1 record that included many fights in the state. Rojas said he was grateful for the unexpected money.

“A lot of us do need it,” Rojas said.

At a recent news briefing, officials said Mexican boxers who fought in California may be owed a portion of the $2.5 million in pension benefits.

“It’s a titanic task, but we are all doing what we can,” Mauricio Sulaimán, president of the World Boxing Council, said through a translator. “Even by word of mouth we’ve been able to reach out to some.”

The boxers’ pension plan, which is funded through a ticket fee, was created in 1982 to provide a “modicum of financial security” to retired fighters, according to the state statute. To date, the plan has paid 240 retired fighters a pension, with most of those within the last decade. The average pension is a one-time $17,000 payment.

The Times’ investigation identified many boxers, including some from Mexico, who are currently living throughout California and did not know the state owed them thousands from their careers in the ring. Roughly 200 boxers could have claimed a pension last year, but only 12 of them did, according to a Times analysis of commission records.

“We want former boxers who are due a pension to have that check in their hand,” said Vernon Williams, vice chair of the athletic commission. “They fought for it and earned it. These former fighters dedicated countless years to the sport of boxing, showcasing their passion and their talent while entertaining fans and inspiring future boxers.”

California’s boxer’s pension is the only state-administered retirement plan of its kind.

The plan offers pensions to any professional boxer, regardless of residency, who logged at least 75 scheduled rounds in the state with no more than a three-year break. At age 50, a boxer can claim their pension, which is determined by how many rounds they fought and the size of their purses. Boxers can also claim their pensions early for medical or educational purposes, and families of fighters who have died are eligible for the benefits on their behalf.

Critics said that for too long the commission failed to develop an adequate system to inform boxers about their benefits despite years of complaints from lawmakers and state auditors.

“They never made any effort to contact me or send me information,” said Hector Lizarraga, 56, a retired featherweight from Mexico who moved to the United States as a teenager. Lizarraga received his $39,000 pension last month.

Part of the issue, retirement experts told The Times, is that the athletic commission waited until a boxer turned 50 before attempting to contact them for the first time about their pensions. By then, the vast majority of addresses the commission had on file were no longer current.

After The Times’ reporting, the athletic commission said it will begin sending annual statements much earlier — when a boxer first meets eligibility requirements — and that it has brought in state investigators to search for fighters with unclaimed money.

“It’s a shame their communication has been so poor,” said retired Bakersfield lightweight Gonzalo Montellano, 65, who first learned from The Times in February that he is owed a $20,000 lump sum boxing pension.

Montellano said the commission recently told him he can expect to receive his pension next month.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1446022

The Supreme Court on Thursday dashed the hopes of the Navajo Nation for more running water.

The justices threw out a 9th Circuit Court ruling that held an 1868 treaty confining Navajos to their reservation came with an implied promise that they would have access to water.

The Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico is the nation’s largest, the justices said, and it is desperately short of running water.

But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for a 5-4 majority, said the 19th century treaties that established the reservation “did not require the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the tribe.”

He said the tribes should look to Congress, not the courts.

“Allocating water in arid regions of the American West is often a zero-sum situation,” he wrote. “And the zero-sum reality of water in the West underscores that courts should stay in their proper constitutional lane.... It’s not the judiciary’s role to update the law.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast a key vote for the majority, while Justice Neil M. Gorsuch dissented with the court’s three liberals.

The cases are Arizona vs. Navajo Nation and Dept. of Interior vs. Navajo Nation.

Looming over the cases was the drought-stricken Colorado River and the need to reduce the volume of water taken from the river by California, Arizona and Nevada.

Writing in dissent, Gorsuch said the Navajos were merely seeking to have their water rights seriously considered.

“Today, the Navajo Reservation has become ‘the largest Indian reservation in the United States,’ with over 17 million acres, and over 300,000 members,” he wrote. “Its western boundary runs alongside a vast stretch of the Colorado River. Yet even today, water remains a precious resource. Members of the Navajo Nation use around 7 gallons of water per day for all of their household needs — less than one-tenth the amount the average American household uses. In some parts of the reservation, as much as 91% of Navajo households lack access to water. That deficit owes in part to the fact that no one has ever assessed what water rights the Navajo possess.”

Washington attorney Shay Dvoretsky, representing the Navajo Nation in a losing cause, had argued the court did not need to consider the Colorado River at this stage of the case. “The Nation asks only that the United States, as trustee, assess its people’s needs and develop a plan to meet them,” he argued.

For more than a decade, the Navajo Nation has been fighting its water rights claims in federal court. It won a preliminary victory in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2021, which said it had a claim for breach of trust, noting that the 1868 treaty referred to agriculture.

“The Nation’s right to farm reservation lands ... gives rise to an implied right to the water necessary to do so,” the appeals court said. However, it stopped short of deciding whether this included “rights to the mainstream of the Colorado River or any other specific water sources.”

But last fall, the Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from both the Interior Department and Arizona that sought to toss out the 9th Circuit’s decision.

U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued the 1868 treaty said nothing about water and established no specific duties for the government related to water. Moreover, the Navajo Nation has been given water rights from two tributaries of the Colorado River, including San Juan River in Utah, she said.

Lawyers for Arizona, joined by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the high court’s decrees have allocated the waters from the lower Colorado River, and it is too late for lawsuits that seek new rights to the same water.

Full Artical won't fit.

How do you create a convincing span of nature over one of the state’s busiest freeway corridors so wildlife like L.A.’s famous, ill-fated cougar, P-22, can cross unscathed?

First you build a nursery and collect a million hyperlocal seeds.

This is not hyperbole. After Katherine Pakradouni was hired in January 2022 to grow the plants for the upcoming Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills, she spent much of the year combing the hills within five miles of the crossing, collecting — yes — more than a million seeds from native plants.

Before she went collecting, she had to build a special nursery near the north side of the crossing, where she and her team are planting those seeds to grow trays and trays of the native flora that will fill the crossing when the concrete superstructure is completed late next year.

Those girders are scheduled to be installed over several weeks, starting this fall, between midnight and 5 a.m. The freeway will never be closed completely, Rock said. Using precast girders means the span can be constructed first on one side of the freeway and then the other, so traffic can be diverted in the wee hours to other lanes.

Once the drainage system is completed and the soil is brought in, planting can begin. The $92-million project — split 50/50 between public money and donations to the National Wildlife Federation and its Save LA Cougars fund, including $26 million from Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation, its largest contributor — is scheduled for completion at the end of 2025.

When Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other so-called “sanctuary cities,” they might have envisioned they were exporting the same chaos as border states have experienced as they grapple with a historic number of migrants. They wanted leaders in these cities to admit they were wrong about their immigrant-friendly policies.

Earlier this month, Abbott sent migrants on a bus to Los Angeles. And DeSantis has admitted he dispatched migrants on two chartered flights to Sacramento a few days earlier, luring them with false promises of housing, shelter and legal help.

But Abbott and DeSantis are mistaken if they think they are teaching cities with sanctuary polices any lessons with their inhumane political stunts or causing their leaders to rethink their commitment to not treating migrants as criminals.

Those governors and their political allies also seem to be confused about what it means when cities have sanctuary policies. Though policies vary, providing sanctuary means not turning migrants over to federal immigration authorities simply for being in the country illegally. It means treating them like humans in need rather than pawns.

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That’s what leaders in Los Angeles, Sacramento and other “sanctuary cities” did as buses and planes dumped dozens of tired and often confused migrants on their doorsteps in recent months. They rallied attention and resources, while religious and other nonprofit organizations stepped up to welcome the migrants with shelter, food and clothes. In some instances, these migrants have even found temporary jobs, illustrating the need for their labor.

Abbott and DeSantis may also not realize that sanctuary policies were designed to help law enforcement keep communities safe. Sanctuary policies were developed because police in many cities such as Los Angeles were frustrated because undocumented immigrants were not reporting crimes or stepping forward as witnesses for fear of deportation.

Critics say these sanctuary cities have laws and policies that shield criminals and obstruct federal immigration policies. But cities with sanctuary policies have lower than average crime rates, higher household incomes and lower poverty rates, according to various studies.

Local authorities did not refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, as critics claim. They simply limited the role of local law enforcement in immigration cases, for example, by not using local police to do immigration checks or by not holding an undocumented immigrant in custody for a few extra days to serve federal authorities’ schedules.

Los Angeles is in the midst of transitioning from a “city of sanctuary” to “sanctuary city.” The difference is more than just semantics. The former designation is little more than a statement by city leaders in 2017 that they opposed then-President Trump’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies, which included separating young children from their parents. Some of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents years later. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to strengthen the policy by banning city personnel or resources from being used for immigration enforcement.

It’s true that the transports of migrants by the Texas and Florida governors have been inconvenient to cities such as Washington and New York, which have had to scramble to find housing and other resources. But they haven’t done a thing to undermine the foundation on which sanctuary policies were built.

This year, Angelenos were invited to start discarding potato peels, chicken bones and other food scraps in the green yard waste curbside bin rather than the trash can.

But it’s not exactly optional. A state law passed in 2016 requires every city and community in California to divert 75% of organic waste from landfills and to recover and redistribute 20% of edible food before it can be thrown away by 2025. Those that don’t comply can be fined up to $10,000 starting next year. Even individual households and businesses can be fined for noncompliance.

It’s a heavy lift, so to speak. Food scraps, food-soiled paper products, lawn clippings, tree trimmings and other organics typically make up about half of the 41 million tons of waste California sends to the dump each year. Or at least they did before the law went into full effect this year, though it’s not clear how much is being diverted quite yet. When organic waste rots it produces methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas that traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Composting is an important tool to fight global warming.

California has already missed the law’s first deadline to divert 50% by 2020. Worse, the amount of organic material going to the landfill increased between 2014, which is the starting point to calculate reductions, and 2020. Now it is looking like the state will blow the 2025 deadline as well.

That is at least part of the reason the bipartisan Little Hoover Commission has called for the 2016 law, Senate Bill 1383, to be temporarily paused. In a report released earlier this month, the commission, which is composed of members of the public and legislators, wrote that “significant changes are needed if the state is to meet its target of reducing the amount of organic material going into landfills. We believe the state should reaffirm its goal, while reconsidering its method.”

There’s nothing wrong with reaffirming the state’s organic recycling goal. And if the method of implementation can be improved upon, we’re all for it. But stopping the organics recycling law now after cities and private industry have invested so much time and money into compliance would be a huge mistake. If California is lagging in carrying out this crucial climate change policy, the response should be to try harder, not to give up.

Happily, that’s the position of CalRecycle, the state agency overseeing and guiding local governments’ compliance with the law. CalRecycle Director Rachel Machi Wagoner said pausing the law would send a terrible message to the waste industry that has been investing in building new facilities, such as those to do large-scale organic composting, and to local governments that have been setting up recycling and food recovery programs to meet the 2025 deadline.

Besides, she says it is too soon to say whether the 2025 deadline will be met. Cities and communities have made significant improvements this year to catch up after being stalled by the pandemic. “We have made so much progress in the last 18 months, and that is not reflected in their review,” Wagoner said of the commission report. For example San Diego, the state’s second-largest city, was behind in implementation but now expects to roll out curbside organics collection to all residents by August, she said.

The report makes clear that the commission’s intention is to help the state reach its organics recycling goal, and many of its recommendations to improve compliance — such as increasing public education and providing extra consideration for rural counties — are welcome. The suggestion that California become a model of waste management that other countries can follow is certainly right on.

State regulators should embrace the commission’s ideas for improvement — and forge full speed ahead to reach the 2025 goal.