·       Truckee is having a free paint drop day on Oct. 17 from 9am-1pm at the airport.

·       Barton Health’s smoking cessation class start date has changed to Oct. 14 and will end a week later. It is from 5-6:30pm at 1111 Emerald Bay Road, South Lake Tahoe. Cost is $30.

·       The Food Bank of El Dorado County is in need of volunteers Sept. 23 from 9:30-11:30am to help with the South Lake Tahoe mobile food pantry. For more info, call 530.621.9950 or email volunteer@foodbankedc.org.

·      El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office is encouraging people to register for emergency notifications online. The CodeRED notification system will only be used by public safety officials during emergencies to disseminate critical information to the citizens of El Dorado County.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, represents the California side of Lake Tahoe. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Mike DeBonis, Washington Post

A challenge from hard-line conservatives in the House Republican caucus has Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, wondering how he might pass a bill to fund the government ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline.

But one of those conservatives said Wednesday that he’s had enough of the shutdown talk and resigned his membership in a prominent hard-liner group, calling their tactics “counterproductive.”

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, told the leader of the House Freedom Caucus, which formed in January as a home for about three dozen of the most conservative Republican members, that he had “fervently hoped that it would provide responsible and effective leadership to advance conservative principles in the House of Representatives.”

McClintock cited several points of frustration over instances where Freedom Caucus members broke with GOP leadership on tactics, if not ideology: a late February standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security, May votes on advancing fast-track trade authority, and last week’s handling of a resolution disapproving of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Read the whole story

By Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

The other day, my teenage daughter and I were idly browsing real estate porn, a monument to American inequality: a private island in the Bahamas selling for $17.9 million; a 900-acre retreat in Washington State for $11 million; and an 83-acre estate in Colorado for a cool $100 million.

Then we snapped out of the covetousness, for we had just been enjoying a vacation on even more exclusive property, so valuable that no hedge fund manager could ever afford to buy or rent it.

We had been hiking day after day past pristine mountain lakes, serenaded by the babble of snow-fed streams, greeted by vivid wildflowers in alpine meadows. And it’s all my land!

Of course, it’s also your land. It’s our extraordinary national inheritance, one of the greatest gifts of our ancestors — our public lands.

My daughter and I were backpacking a 210-mile stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail in central California, from Donner Pass to Yosemite. The cost? It was all free.

Read the whole story

Two people were found dead Sept. 16 in a Truckee hotel room.

Officers are calling the deaths suspicious, but are not saying why.

“There is no reason to believe anyone else is involved and there is no threat to public safety,” officers said in a statement.

The two people were found about 2:45pm in a room at Richard’s Motel on Donner Pass Road near Donner Lake.

Detectives are working to identify the subjects. The cause of death is pending an autopsy.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Christopher Elliott, USA Today

First, there was a $25 “check-in” fee when she arrived, which, though disclosed in the fine print of her contract, was unexpected. And then there was a mandatory $200 “cleaning” fee for her unit after she checked out. Neither was part of the original price.Rhonda Moret’s vacation rental in Park City, Utah, came with a few surprises.

To add insult to injury, a construction crew in a nearby unit woke her at 7am, on her first morning at the mountain resort.

Don’t look now, but vacation rental companies are piling on the fees, many of them pure junk. Among the most common: booking fees, change fees, cleaning fees, hot tub fees, parking fees, reservation fees and — everyone’s favorite — amorphous “convenience” fees.

Read the whole story

Two people have died in the Butte Fire burning in Calaveras County.

Coroner Kevin Raggio said Mark McCloud, 66, who refused to evacuate, died outside his home.

Cadaver dogs located another adult male in the burn area. His name has not been released pending notification of family.

This is the third civilian fire related death this month. Barbara McWilliams, 72, died in the Valley Fire in Lake County.

The Associated Press is reporting that 69-year-old Leonard Neft, who works for the San Jose Mercury News and lives in Middletown, has been reported missing by his family. His burned-out car was discovered on a route he would have used to escape, AP said. He lived near where McWilliams did.

“We have reports of several others that may have perished in the fire,” Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin told the Associated Press during a tour of the disaster zone with state emergency officials.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Winners of the inaugural WordWave One-Act Play Contest include new and seasoned playwrights whose work will be performed for the first time in staged readings at the Boathouse Theatre on Oct. 10.

Two winners took the prize: “Compromising Positions,” by Michelle Benson, and “Woman Running Late in a Dress,” by Dallas Woodburn, with an honorable mention going to “Man’s Best Friend” by Rod McFadden.

The WordWave playwriting committee fielded 193 submissions.

The writers will collaborate with the directors and an audience Q& A will be at the end of the performance.

Benson, from Murfreesboro, Tenn., is a recent undergrad from Middle Tennessee State University and this is her first award. Woodburn is a fiction writer, playwright and teacher whose plays have been produced in California and in New York City as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Competition. McFadden has received awards in national playwriting competitions.

Tickets are $10 and may be purchased online, or the night of the performances. The event starts at 7:30pm.

WordWave is a three-day festival from Oct. 9-11 at the Tallac Historic Site on the South Shore. This free event will feature oral storytelling, author readings, vendors, panels on craft, a maker’s station and a novel writing camp for kids. Ticketed events include a steampunk ball, workshops, agent sessions and even a hike. The entire schedule is online.

By Associated Press

Think wagering $20 to win $1 million by picking a winning combination of NFL players for a fantasy team on Sunday is gambling? The league says it isn’t.

So do fast-growing daily fantasy sports companies like DraftKings and FanDuel that offer the games and advertise with the long gambling-averse pro football organization.

But as the lucrative NFL betting season ramps up and advertisements from DraftKings and FanDuel are as hard to miss as an extra point, Las Vegas casinos and sports books are feeling like they’re on the wrong end of a double standard. Traditional sports betting is barred outside a handful of states, but daily fantasy sports are allowed in most of the United States.

Seizing on the disparity, traditional casino operators and sports books are calling for traditional sports betting to be given the same respect. “Let’s just call it what it is. Americans love to bet on sports,” said Joe Asher, chief executive of sports book William Hill’s U.S. operations. “They both drive interest in the games and they both should be legal and taxed and regulated.”

The fantasy industry says it’s already legal and has no interest in being regulated if it comes with a “gambling” label. Even the traditional casino companies and regulators have eschewed the word “gambling” until recently, opting for the more antiseptic “gaming” instead to describe what they do.

Daily fantasy sports and their defenders point to a 2006 law, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which carved out an exemption for “fantasy sports” well before the concept of daily games, versus week-long or season-long, were contemplated. Before the rise of daily fantasy sports, the exception was mostly used by season-long fantasy operators like Yahoo and CBS Sports.

“Thanks to fantasy sports being specifically excluded from laws affecting online sports betting, FanDuel is not illegal in any way. Trust us, our lawyers drive very nice cars so that we can keep it that way,” FanDuel says on its website as its short answer for the frequently asked question, “Is FanDuel Legal?”

FanDuel’s long answer is more complicated, noting it doesn’t operate in several states where its legality is not as clear.

Some regulators and legal analysts have been skeptical of that reasoning because of state laws governing gambling. That has left casinos on the sideline, wanting to get involved or support fantasy sports but unwilling to invest or risk billions in revenues that come with highly-regulated casino-resorts. New Jersey regulators even gave the go-ahead to licensed casinos to operate their own daily fantasy sports games two years ago, but no one has done it.

“The exception doesn’t necessarily get (fantasy sports companies) to where they say it does,” said A.G. Burnett, Nevada’s top gambling regulator, who is working with the state’s attorney general to weigh the industry’s legality.

The federal law applies to processing payments for online gambling to curb online sports betting and, to that end, allows fantasy sports companies to process transactions. But Burnett said it doesn’t pre-empt other laws.

“If a state says fantasy sports is illegal … the fantasy companies cannot use (the act) as a get out of jail card because it quite simply doesn’t apply,” he said.

So far, there have been no prosecutions challenging the sites’ abilities to legally operate.

FanDuel and DraftKings responded in a joint statement Saturday affirming their belief that they don’t offer “gambling.”

“We are speaking with gaming industry representatives to educate them on the fantasy sports industry as our products are games of skill; fundamentally separate from, and not competitive with casinos and gaming businesses,” the statement said.

John McManus, general counsel for MGM Resorts International, said the company that owns several casinos on the Las Vegas Strip has a similar position on fantasy sports as it does with all forms of gambling.

“It is not in the interests of consumers that established gaming companies, which are fully licensed and regulated, are the only market participants that cannot engage in the business,” he said.

No one wants daily fantasy to be shut down akin to prohibition or the likes of Internet poker several years ago, said Daniel Wallach, a gambling and sports attorney based in Florida.

“This is something that everybody partakes in,” said Wallach, a sports betting panelist at the upcoming Global Gaming Expo convention in Las Vegas, the top yearly casino industry conference. “It would not be a popular thing to prosecute.”

Traditional gambling companies, though, don’t want to risk lucrative gambling licenses by dipping their toes in the fantasy pool, Wallach said.

The debate about “gambling” versus “gaming” often centers on chance versus skill.

“It’s more skill than luck,” said Peter Schoenke, chairman of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and founder of Rotowire.com, a fantasy sports news website. “You win by making good decisions about players. You have to do a whole bunch of work to play the game, let alone win.”

The NFL has agreed. “Daily fantasy is considered a game of skill and not gambling,” said Brian McCarthy, an NFL spokesman.

“What we’re doing is a game of skill, too,” said Johnny Avello, the longtime sports book director at the Wynn Las Vegas. “So why not just legalize it all,” he said.

By Associated Press

A black bear that wandered onto a Lake Tahoe high school campus and prompted a precautionary lockdown for two hours today is the same one that was captured with her cub in Carson City three days ago and released in the mountains 30 miles away.

The lockdown at Incline High School was lifted shortly after 11am Sept. 16 when state wildlife officials shot the mother bear with a tranquilizer dart after she climbed a tree outside the school on the lake’s north shore.

Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy says they intend to place the bear in a two-chamber trap baited with food in hopes of luring the cub back to its mother.

Healy says the bears won’t be killed because they’ve not posed any threat to anyone. He says wildlife biologists hope to release both of them to the wild again in the next day or so.

A South Lake Tahoe woman this week pleaded no contest to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing injury.

Olga Nayeli Pena-Arce

Olga Nayeli Pena-Arce, 21, was driving her 2000 Saturn sedan west on Pioneer Trail on Nov. 24, 2014, at a high rate of speed, lost control of the vehicle, and slammed into a retaining wall. The impact killed Aimee Campos, 21, of South Lake Tahoe and injured the other passenger.

Investigators found Pena-Arce had a blood alcohol level of more than 0.08, and that she was driving in excess of 75 mph in the 35 mph zone.

She will return to El Dorado County Superior Court on Nov. 13 for sentencing. She faces a possible state prison sentence up to 12 years, eight months.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report