By Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times

For many people, working out and alcohol are closely linked. Sports teams and training partners celebrate victories, bemoan defeats or mark the end of training sessions with a beer or three. Beer, in fact, provides a substantial portion of some exercisers’ fluid intake after workouts.

But whether exercise encourages people to drink and, likewise, whether drinking encourages people to exercise has been in dispute.

Now two new studies suggest that exercise may well influence when and how much people drink. Drinking may even affect whether people exercise, and, the findings suggest, the interplay between exercise and alcohol could be a good thing.

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The El Dorado County Public Defender’s Office is putting on a Clean Slate Clinic on Jan. 18.

Anyone who was convicted of a misdemeanor or felony in El Dorado County more than one year ago that resulted in jail time, alternative sentencing, or probation may be eligible to file a petition for an expungement.

The clinic will be from 9am-4pm in Placerville.

For more information on eligibility, go online.

·       UNR journalism students created the Nevada Department of Transportation’s new logo.

·       Lake Tahoe Golf Course in Meyers has been recertified as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary golf course.

·       Bill Jensen, one time president of Northstar and Sierra ski resorts, is now CEO of Telluride in Colorado.

·       South Tahoe High grad Todd Moss has been promoted from captain to battalion chief at Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District.

·       Yosemite National Park has closed Tioga Road for the season.

By Paul Nelson, KTVN-TV

Many believe the sky is the limit for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology, including in Northern Nevada, where drones are being tested.

Warren Rapp is the Business Director of Nevada Advanced Autonomous Systems Innovative Center. He says using UAVs in search and rescue missions would be a huge step for law enforcement agencies.

“It’s a great way that you can, whatever weather condition, just about, take small-sized drones with thermal cameras or regular cameras and start searching for somebody almost immediately,” Rapp said.

Along with cameras, Rapp says drones can be equipped with radios or phones that can be dropped off to lost people, once they are found. That would help communication during the rescue operation, until help arrives. If someone is stranded in Lake Tahoe or Pyramid Lake, a UAV could even drop off a flotation device for that person.

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There was no reportable action from today’s emergency South Lake Tahoe City Council meeting.

They were meeting Dec. 11 to discuss the suit filed by fellow Councilwoman JoAnn Conner regarding her censure and ban from talking to city staff.

Mayor Wendy David after the nearly three-hour meeting told Lake Tahoe News, “There was not reportable action taken. We were discussing one potential case and we have not been served that case.”

City Manager Nancy Kerry was at times in the locked room with the four other council members as well as City Attorney Tom Watson.

Kerry and the city have been named in the court filings. Outside counsel will need to be hired to represent both, and it could be different people. The city will be responsible for paying for Kerry’s attorney.

Watson cannot represent the city or Kerry because he will likely be a witness to both parties.

Once the city and Kerry are served there is bound to be another special meeting to decide how to proceed.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Robert Rodriguez, Fresno Bee

Farmers are no strangers to struggle or drought. But this four-year drought is different than others, they say. It’s more widespread, touching nearly everyone who turns on the tap or starts an irrigation pump.

This past summer, wells dried up and farmland sat idle. The drought also came to mean that life on the farm has likely changed forever.

“In the early years when we went through a drought, we tended to say that this too shall pass,” said Richard Waycott, president of the Almond Board of California in Modesto. “But there is a different consciousness now. People are looking at the future very differently.”

Farmers talk of a new reality – one in which droughts are more of the rule than the exception, and water availability, both above and below ground, becomes less certain.

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The Holiday in History open house is Dec. 19 from 11am-7:30pm.

From 11am-5pm children will be able to call the North Pole.

There will be tours of the 1930s-era log cabin.

Music begins at 5pm, along with the lighting of the Christmas tree and menorah.

The museum is at 3058 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe.

By Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News

Backed by a conservative legal group, a San Jose couple has taken their six-year feud with Lake Tahoe regional planners to federal court, arguing that a policy keeping them from building a house for their elderly mothers on vacant property is unconstitutional.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, Ray and Teresa Burns allege that the government is violating protections against improper taking of property by denying them permits to build the South Lake Tahoe home.

The couple purchased the property in foreclosure in 2009, two years after a house on that land burned down in the 2007 Angora forest fire. The lawsuit, crafted by the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that a house had been on that same property for 30 years prior to the fire, and that the property is surrounded by other homes and businesses.

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By J.D. Morris, Las Vegas Sun

Congressional lawmakers took another intense look Wednesday at a controversial bill that would ban online gaming, including in Nevada and the other two states where it is already legal.

The bill was discussed in a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing that focused largely on the legal and law enforcement aspects of gambling on the Internet. Arguments from the ban’s proponents included that online gaming could not be confidently controlled and was too vulnerable to criminal activity, while ban opponents countered that legal online gambling websites are robustly regulated and actually steer Americans away from shady illegal sites.

The ban legislation, which has been introduced in both chambers of Congress, would roll back a 2011 Department of Justice opinion that paved the way for Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware to implement some form of legal online gaming.

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Publisher’s note: This letter was sent to the Placer County Board of Supervisors this week and is reprinted with permission.

To the Placer County Board of Supervisors,

We are local businesses and nonprofit organizations writing to encourage responsible decision-making for Squaw Valley and the Tahoe-Truckee region.

Each of us shares a deep commitment to the natural resources, recreational opportunities, local businesses, and visitor experience that define life in North Lake Tahoe.

Those values, however, are at risk.

KSL Capital Partners is proposing development in Squaw Valley of a size, scale, and scope North Lake Tahoe has never seen.

Their application to Placer County asks for entitlements to develop more than 1,500 bedrooms and the equivalent of four city blocks of 100-foot tall buildings − as well as a 90,000 square foot indoor amusement park with fake rivers, waterslides, an arcade, indoor skydiving, and more.

All told, the project is so big, it would take 25 years to complete.

Squaw Valley is not an island; it’s an integral part of the greater North Lake Tahoe community, economy, culture, and environment.  And any development approved for Squaw Valley would impact the entire region:

• KSL’s proposal would have unacceptable impacts on our natural resources, including Squaw Creek, Granite Chief Wilderness, our starry night sky, and even the clarity of Lake Tahoe itself.
• Proposed development seeks to funnel visitors indoors− to an indoor water park designed to “compete with the Lake”, instead of celebrating and respecting the region’s greatest asset: the great outdoors.
• Local businesses, many of which already struggle to survive slow winters and ongoing drought, would be eclipsed by 300,000 square feet of new commercial development.
• And the famed Tahoe visitor experience would diminish under the weight of new highrises and the estimated 8,000 new daily car trips they would add to our region’s roads each summer Sunday.

Our opposition to KSL’s proposal is echoed by hundreds of comment letters submitted to Placer County in response to the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report. Of the 338 comment letters submitted by local jurisdictions, regulatory agencies, private organizations, and individual citizens, nearly all − 97 percent − expressed either outright opposition to KSL’s proposal, pointed out flaws in the environmental analysis, or both.

Those letters represent a widespread understanding of what’s at stake here in North Lake Tahoe and, also, a deep commitment to securing a better outcome.

We do not oppose all development. But the question before us is: do we want this development? Our answer is no.

We urge the Placer County Board of Supervisors to reject KSL’s proposed development and, instead, encourage landowners and the community to work together to create a blueprint that makes sense for Squaw, Tahoe, and beyond.

Sincerely,

Tom Mooers, Sierra Watch and 42 other entities