This piece has significant animated content. Access is free, but you must register to use the gift link

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 ot

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

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

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 cl

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 mean

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 trap

California’s two biggest reservoirs are all but full after reaching perilously low levels late last year.

Lake Shasta, at 96% full, and Lake Oroville, at 100%, had fallen to around 25% to 30% of their capacity before the state’s historically wet winter rejuvenated them.

Statewide, reservoirs are at 85% of total capacity, well above their 30-year average of 73% for the month of June. With the Sierra Nevada snowpack still above three times its normal level for mid-June, they are expected to fill up even more as the snow melts.

The before-and-after images below from NASA show Lake Shasta on Nov. 18, 2022, when the lake stood at just 31% of capacity, and again on May 29, 2023, when it was 98% full.

California’s biggest reservoir had not been so full in more than four years, according to California Department of Water Resources data. A “bathtub ring” around the lake showing how far the water lline had fallen was clearly visible in November, but it had vanished by May.

Lake Oroville, in

Public policy and common perception have long tied the road to homelessness with mental illness and drug addiction.

But a new study out Tuesday — the largest and most comprehensive investigation of California’s homeless population in decades — found another cause is propelling much of the crisis on our streets: the precarious poverty of the working poor, especially Black and brown seniors.

“These are old people losing housing,” Dr. Margot Kushel told me. She’s the lead investigator on the study from UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, done at the request of state health officials.

“They basically were ticking along very poor, and sometime after the age of 50 something happened,” Kushel said. That something — divorce, a loved one dying, an illness, even a cutback in hours on the job — sparked a downward spiral and their lives “just blew up,” as Kushel puts it.

Kushel and her team found that nearly half of single adults living on our streets are over the age of 50. An

Welcome to Lemmy Everybody!

Hey y'all. How's it going?