Lake Tahoe News likes to reward our subscribers. T-shirts are going to Ken McNutt of South Lake Tahoe, Les Wright of South Lake Tahoe, Ty Robben of Twain Harte, Toogee Sielsch of South Lake Tahoe, and Jeff and Nancy Doak of Las Vegas.

They were the first to respond to a little contest we had this week.

Here is why they subscribe to Lake Tahoe’s only daily news source:

• Ken McNutt: “You are always there – fast – with the local news; always a fresh look.”

• Les Wright: “The best local news in Tahoe. And the comments are entertaining.”

• Ty Robben: “I subscribe to LTN to get the latest original and independent news from the South Lake Tahoe area and I enjoy the reader comments too.”

• Toogee Sielsch: “I am an ardent supporter of and a subscriber to Lake Tahoe News. Lake Tahoe News is the only news publication in the basin that updates its pages multiple times day and night. It not only keeps me up-to-date on what is going on in our community of South Lake Tahoe and the whole Tahoe basin, but provides stories that range from the surrounding regions of California and Nevada to national stories. I also enjoy reading and occasionally contributing to the comment sections on the stories. I’ve even had the opportunity to contribute stories and pictures to Lake Tahoe News. Some may consider me a wee bit OCD, but I check LTN.net at least 15 to 20 times a day. I truly believe that Kae Reed and Lake Tahoe News is an integral part of our community.

• Jeff & Nancy Doak: “We subscribe to Lake Tahoe News so we know what is going on when we are not up there. We are in Tahoe for six months and Las Vegas for six months. It keeps us up to date.”

You, too, may be a subscriber. All you have to do is fill out this paid subscriber form. Subscriptions like this allow LTN to continue to bring news to you on a daily basis. And subscribers are eligible for various contests – like the T-shirt giveaway.

South Lake Tahoe has sand bags available at no cost year-round. The sand lot is located at 1160 Rufus Allen Blvd., next to Campground by the Lake.

To pick up bags, proceed through the gate and drive to the back of the lot. At the back of the lot is a large sand mound, shovels and bags. Residents fill their own bags, with a 10 bag limit.

Access to sand bags is available during normal business hours, Monday-Friday 7:30am-4pm.

For more information, call 530.542.6030.

By Kathryn Reed

MEYERS – Help is possibly on its way for the Tahoe Paradise Resort Improvement District.

The board that runs this park on the South Shore agreed on a 4-1 vote Feb. 5 to enter a memorandum of understanding with El Dorado County for the government to assist with administrative responsibilities. Judy Clot voted no.

Now the Board of Supervisors must OK the deal.

“We are at a critical mass point where we need help,” Sue Novasel said. She is chair of the TPRID board and the county supervisor representing this area. Novasel said she believes this route is necessary to “ensure our park is viable and that we will be able to do more.”

This South Shore park, which turns 50 in July, in many ways functions like it is a newbie and other ways like a relic of a bygone era. No one knows where the bylaws are, documents are stored in 11 boxes – nothing is digital, the lone employee who lives on site hasn’t been held accountable for the hours he works and now resists having to do so, election of board members doesn’t exist and there is no plan to make this area self-sustaining.

Tahoe Paradise Resort Improvement District has no plans to fix the tennis court nearest the entrance. Photo/LTN file

The MOU is designed to help resolve some of these issues. Instead of the park district starting from scratch, it will rely on the county’s experience with some basic practices like making sure all types of contracts are sound and dealing with the employee when it comes to work assignments and an annual review.

A bigger issue is to have county officials do an assessment of the park’s resources. This will help the park figure out what can and should be the focus going forward.

The plan is for the county to act in an advisory role for the next year. Ultimately it is up to the TPRID board to do what it wants.

Some of the nearly 20 people who attended the meeting worried if TPRID is giving up too much control to the county, as well as if the county’s attorney would have a conflict of interest if she were to give advice to the board because it might not be her employer’s best interest.

It was reiterated that the TPRID board has the ultimate say and that if needs firm legal advice, that will mean hiring an outside attorney if need be.

TPRID has a nearly $130,000 grant that has largely been spent on siding and landscape issues. The goal was to install a more permanent rest room, but ultimately the proposal did not meet Tahoe Regional Planning Agency requirements.

A contingency of the grant is that projects must be completed by a certain date in order to be reimbursed for costs or the money goes away. Creative paperwork allowed for the tennis court improvements that were made a couple years ago to suffice for the current deadline.

But the one court that is still unplayable because of the cracks is destined to remain that way for quite a while because a spring runs underneath it that makes continued replacement fiscally irresponsible.

What might happen with that plot of land in the future has not been determined.

The district is working on a master plan, with the goal to bring it to the public at a workshop in the coming months. No date has been set.

This board has been dysfunctional in the past, but played nice Thursday night. Board member Lorraine Anderson resigned effective at the end of the meeting. It will be up to the board to replace her.

—–

Notes:

• Future board meetings – Feb. 19, March 26 and April 30. The next meeting is at 6pm at Lake Valley Fire Protection District off Highway 89.

• Events committee to meet Feb. 17 at 6pm at Lake Valley Fire.

• A presentation about the budget is expected at the next board meeting.

By Phil Zuckerman, Los Angeles Times

More children are “growing up godless” than at any other time in our nation’s history. They are the offspring of an expanding secular population that includes a relatively new and burgeoning category of Americans called the “Nones,” so nicknamed because they identified themselves as believing in “nothing in particular” in a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center.

The number of American children raised without religion has grown significantly since the 1950s, when fewer than 4 percent of Americans reported growing up in a nonreligious household, according to several recent national studies. That figure entered the double digits when a 2012 study showed that 11 percent of people born after 1970 said they had been raised in secular homes. This may help explain why 23 percent of adults in the U.S. claim to have no religion, and more than 30 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say the same.

So how does the raising of upstanding, moral children work without prayers at mealtimes and morality lessons at Sunday school? Quite well, it seems.

Far from being dysfunctional, nihilistic and rudderless without the security and rectitude of religion, secular households provide a sound and solid foundation for children, according to Vern Bengston, a USC professor of gerontology and sociology.

Read the whole story

By Justin Worland, Time

For years, breast cancer has been the leading cause of cancer death among women in developed countries, but according to a report on the incidence of cancer worldwide from the American Cancer Society, lung cancer now surpasses it.

A combination of early breast cancer detection efforts and the lingering effects of the tobacco epidemic drove the shift, says lead report author Lindsey Torre, an American Cancer Society researcher. The study, which was published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and used data from 2012, reported that lung cancer killed 209,000 women in developed countries in 2012, while 197,000 women died of breast cancer.

The report emphasized the growing incidence of cancer in the developing world. Lung cancer was the leading killer of men in developing countries and breast cancer the leading cause of death for women.

Read the whole story

• Rumors about Heavenly Mountain Resort stopping snowmaking are false. This is what Sally Gunter with the resort told Lake Tahoe News, “We remain committed to continuing to do whatever it takes to provide the best possible experience for our guests. We’ve been taking advantage of cold temperatures at every opportunity to make snow and hope to open additional terrain very soon, perhaps with the help of this storm that’s forecasted to hit this weekend. After the storm this weekend, we’ll evaluate the mountain conditions, as the overall conditions could change, and see what the needs are to help us finish out the season strong.”

• Old Brockway golf course at Kings Beach is open.

• CaliParks is California’s first park finder application covering every park in the state. This first version is accessible through any browser on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop at CaliParks.org

• On March 14 at 1pm, Mark Jensen will share the history of the Dangberg Home Ranch, part of Nevada’s beginnings, and how the Dangbergs helped shape Carson Valley’s future. This free event is at the South Lake Tahoe Library, 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

By Travis J. Tritten, Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.

Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.

Brian Williams

The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.

“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

Williams told his Nightly News audience that the erroneous claim was part of a “bungled attempt” to thank soldiers who helped protect him in Iraq in 2003. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. “I want to apologize.”

Read the whole story

By Jennifer Ehmann

Recently, measles made headlines after an outbreak linked to exposure at Disneyland in mid-December. Washoe County has reported two suspected cases and more than 100 cases, mostly in California, have been confirmed.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus and more cases are likely to emerge. Fourteen states have been affected and previous statistics from the California Alert Health Network showed 86 percent of past measles cases are patients who have not been vaccinated or the vaccination status is unknown.

Jennifer Ehmann

In two years, cases of the measles in the United States have increased. Vaccination can help prevent the spread of the illness and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a two-dose series has been found to be 97 percent effective.

Measles is not a new disease. A Persian doctor wrote the first description in the 9th century, but the disease may date back to Roman times. Before 1963, when a vaccine became available, most children had the disease by age 15. Prior to the use of the measles vaccine, the CDC estimates 500 deaths, 48,000 hospitalizations, and 4,000 cases of encephalitis (infection of the brain) occurred in the United States annually.

Without the vaccine, nearly 90 percent of people who come into contact with an infected person get the measles. Measles spreads through respiratory droplets in the air, such as coughing and sneezing, and touching contaminated surfaces. Some reports note the virus can survive for up to two hours on surfaces.

Symptoms include a fever (often quite high), runny nose, cough, red eyes, and a sore throat followed by a distinctive rash on the whole body. The flat and sometimes bumpy rash may appear three to five days after the other symptoms, starting on the head and spreading down the rest of the body. People are contagious up to four days before they show signs or symptoms and until four days after the rash appears.

The measles has no specific treatment. Complications include diarrhea, ear infections, and pneumonia. Encephalitis, an infection that causes a swelling of the brain, is a more serious problem that can leave the person with deafness, seizures, mental retardation, or death. Another complication is Subacute Sclerosing PanEncephalitis (SSPE), which is a progressive, fatal infection of the nervous system that occurs seven to ten years after having the illness. Pregnant women can have severe complications that can affect them and their unborn child.

In 2000, measles was considered eradicated from the United States largely through immunization efforts. Immunization is achieved with the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine or MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella) vaccine. A young child usually gets the vaccine between the first 12 and15 months and a second dose between 4 and 6 years old. Travel outside the country may prompt earlier vaccination between 6 to 11 months old for younger children at risk. The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that mild side effects may occur from the vaccine, but a severe reaction is very rare.

If you are unsure of your or your child’s vaccination status or have concerns regarding your child having the illness, contact your pediatrician. The Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics also have valuable, updated information.

Jennifer Ehmann is a pediatrician at the Barton Community Health Center. She may be reached at 530.543.5623.

By Ed Koch, Las Vegas Sun

Stan Irwin may have had his roots in old-time Vaudeville, but after he got to Las Vegas in 1946 he became renowned for being a forward-thinking entertainment innovator, decades ahead of his time.

When Las Vegas was firmly the domain of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Irwin, working closely with fellow Sahara Hotel executive Herb McDonald, brought The Beatles to town for two historic concerts at the old Las Vegas Convention Center.

In the late 1960s when Elvis Presley’s career was on the downswing, Irwin offered Presley’s manager Col. Tom Parker $75,000 a week for the King to perform at the Sahara. Parker refused the offer but several years later Elvis became a Vegas legend with record-setting attendance marks at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Irwin, who booked Johnny Carson into the Sahara in 1964, produced the first two years of the “Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” After leaving Las Vegas in the late 1970s for Hollywood, Irwin served as manager of entertainer Pearl Bailey.

During his long gaming entertainment career, Irwin also held the title of vice president and executive producer for the Sahara Lake Tahoe, the Mint Hotel and the Thunderbird Hotel when they were Del Webb properties.

Read the whole story

Rutted soil and vegetation damage from a snowmobile near the Mt. Rose Highway. Photo/U.S. Forest Service

Snowmobilers riding on dirt are causing problems on U.S. Forest Service land.

The feds are telling snowmobilers to avoid bare dirt and patchy snow, and to not ride across streams or over small trees or brush. Doing so creates ruts in the soil and crushes vegetation.

“We are asking snowmobilers for voluntary cooperation in moving their activities to suitable locations,” LTBMU acting Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais said in a statement. “Riding snowmobiles on too little snow not only causes resource damage, but can damage the machine as well.”

Causing resource damage can result in a citation punishable by a fine of $5,000 or more and/or six months in jail.

Tahoe Sierra Snowmobiling Club is supporting the USFS in its efforts.

Information on areas where snowmobiles are allowed is available in the online.