Trent Getty

Trent Getty, 23, of the Carson Valley has been arrested in the death of his 2-month-old child.

The cause of death is pending an autopsy. The child was taken off life support Jan. 10 at 12:48pm.

Getty had been wanted on a $1 million warrant. He was located at the Greyhound depot in Sacramento on Saturday.

Getty had reportedly left the child at Carson Valley Medical Center on Jan. 7 and then was wanted when the injuries to the child did not match what he had told medical personnel.

He is awaiting extradition back to Douglas County.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

Electronic cigarettes should be subject to the same taxes, marketing restrictions and limitations on public use as traditional tobacco products, according to new guidance from cancer experts.

In a joint policy statement issued Thursday, the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society for Clinical Oncology acknowledged that e-cigarettes may improve public health by taking market share away from combustible tobacco products and helping smokers quit. But until the benefits are proved, the statement said, regulators shouldn’t distinguish between the two kinds of products.

The U.S. surgeon general’s office estimates that smoking-related conditions such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease result in 484,000 premature deaths each year. If present trends continue, 5.6 million children alive today will wind up dying as a result of smoking.

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OR-7, which briefly called California home, is no longer a lone wolf. Photo/Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

By Jeff Barnard, AP

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Oregon’s famous wandering wolf, OR-7, is now officially the leader of his own pack.

State and federal wildlife agencies said Wednesday they have designated OR-7, his mate and their pups the Rogue Pack, for their location in the Rogue River drainage in the Cascades east of Medford.

It’s the first pack in western Oregon and the ninth in the state since wolves from Idaho started swimming the Snake River in the 1990s.

As a youngster, OR-7 left his pack in northeastern Oregon in September 2011 in search of a mate. He traveled thousands of miles across Oregon and back and forth into Northern California before finding a mate last winter in the southern Cascades on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

The GPS collar that tracked his travels is still working, but biologists hope to replace it this spring.

Efforts to trap OR-7, his mate or one of the pups to put a tracking collar on them were not successful last fall, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist John Stephenson. They hope to have better luck this May, when the pack dens up for more pups.

Even if the GPS tracking collar fails, a separate unit on the collar that emits a radio signal that can be tracked by a directional antenna should continue working, Stephenson said.

Oregon could consider lifting state Endangered Species Act protections for wolves this year if biologists confirm that four or more packs produced pups that survived through the end of the year. The earliest a proposal could go before the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is April, said spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy. Delisting would not mean an end to protections for wolves, but would give ranchers more options for dealing with wolves that attack livestock.

OR-7 has continued to stay out of trouble as far as livestock are concerned.

Oregon’s management plan calls for protections to continue for the Rogue Pack until there are four packs in western Oregon producing pups for three years running. Federal Endangered Species Act protection also remains in force in western Oregon and California.

By Kathryn Reed

Anyone who knew Steve Jobs is likely to say he was a difficult man with a tremendous vision who barely knew the word no.

It takes that kind of individual to bring the type of products to the market that Apple is responsible for. As he liked to say, he didn’t believe in market studies because people don’t now what they want or need. His goal was to create things people hadn’t thought of. He did that with computers, phones and tablets. He revolutionized the music industry with the iPod.

“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson is an honest look at one of technology’s leaders. It came out in 2011, the same year Jobs died.

While Jobs is credited with much of Apple’s success – and at times its failures – the people who did the heavy lifting are also credited in the 630-page hardback.

But the book is about Jobs, not just Apple Computers.

Isaacson started it years before Jobs died. He had access to Jobs, his inner circle, his competitors and his family. Jobs and his wife were adamant that a truthful portrayal of this tech tycoon be written.

We’ll never know what Jobs would have thought of it. He probably would have found flaws. He was good at that – as is pointed out multiple times in the book.

Some books I just don’t want to end. With this one it partly had to do with knowing there won’t be a sequel – knowing the book would end with Jobs’ death from cancer.

While much has been written about Jobs, this is a comprehensive look at the man who in many ways is still the face of Apple. Even people who aren’t Apple advocates are likely to find this book intriguing because it’s a great biography about one of this generation’s iconic figures.

Registration is open for the 2015 Reno/Tahoe Senior Winter Games, which run Feb. 2-14.

Registration is $20 (there is an additional $10 per-sport fee) and includes a Senior Games T-shirt, water bottle, carry bag, and ticket to the Valentine’s Day Dinner and Dance. For a schedule of events, and information on how to register, go online.

Reno/Tahoe Senior Winter Games is organized by the Reno’s Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department and is for athletes 50 and older. The deadline to register is Jan. 23.

Senior Games includes more than a dozen sports and activities, such as ski/snowboard downhill racing, cross country skiing/snowshoeing, and hockey slapshot/ice skating for outdoor enthusiasts. There’s also pickleball, table tennis, bowling, archery, and Texas hold’em poker. New this year is the cribbage tournament.

For more information, call 775.657.460.

After nearly 10 months of work, Caltrans has finished construction of a bridge on Highway 50 over Sly Park Road.

Work on the $15.1 million bridge replacement project, which began in April, included demolishing the old bridge in two phases and replacing it with a single span and precast and prestressed concrete girders. Traffic on Highway 50 was reduced to one lane in each direction during most of the construction.

New sidewalks, curb and gutter, and ramps have been added to Sly Park Road as part of the project, and sight distance has been improved for motorists on Sly Park Road because of increased horizontal clearance. The stone wall design was selected to blend in with the community of Pollock Pines.

The previous bridge was built in 1964 and was approaching the end of its service life because of corrosion.

By Amanda MacMillan, Outdoor

Ah, the middle-age-man belly. You can try to run it off, but cardio alone won’t be nearly as successful at battling the bulge as combining cardio with strength training, says a study published in the journal Obesity.

As we get older, our bodies tend to lose muscle mass and hold onto fat, says Rania Mekary, the study’s lead author. So while cardio may still help you lose weight, some of that weight loss may come from muscle rather than from the fat accumulating around your midsection.

Strength training, on the other hand — either with free weights, machines, or resistance bands — builds lean muscle while also helping to burn fat. In Mekary’s study, men over 40 who added 20 minutes of weight training to their daily routines had less of an increase in age-related abdominal fat over the next 12 years than men who added 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity.

“You have to do a lot more cardio to cover the benefits of just a little bit of weight training,” she says. In fact, study participants who lifted daily all fared about the same, belly fat–wise, regardless of whether or not they got the recommended 25 minutes per day of aerobic exercise as well.

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By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE – Government won’t solve climate change. And people won’t do anything to change the course of events without a monetary incentive. It is a global crisis. And the solution needs to be implemented worldwide.

Those are the thoughts and concerns of James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

He gave the keynote address Jan. 8 during the 17th annual Operation Sierra Storm at Harveys. Once a year meteorologists from around the country gather at Lake Tahoe to talk science, trends and news.

“The bottom line is science tells us we have to phase out fossil fuel emissions and leave what’s remaining in the ground,” Hansen said. “There is a tremendous amount of fossil fuel in the ground. We can’t afford to put it into the air without guaranteeing our children inherit a situation that is out of their control.”

He is dead-set against fracking.

Hansen has been working to stem the effects of climate change since the 1980s. In 2006, Time magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people on Earth.

James Hansen talks about climate change Jan. 8 in Stateline. Photo/Denise Haerr

Not one to mince words, Hansen told Gov. Jerry Brown in person that California’s cap and trade policy is nothing more than a tax that will do little to resolve the larger issue.

With word coming out this week that 2014 was the hottest year on record in the world, Hansen said 2015 is headed to be another record breaker. The U.S., by contrast, was one of the coolest places on Earth. But the United States only represents 1½ percent of the planet’s surface.

“If you add CO2 to the atmosphere, it’s like putting a blanket on the planet,” Hansen explained.

Instead of the heat radiating to space, most of the energy goes into the ocean. This then creates an energy imbalance on Earth. The energy into the ocean each year is the equivalent of the energy from 400,000 Hiroshima bombs a day. That energy contributes to the warming ocean, the loss of Artic ice and the rising seashore water that threatens cities.

Climate change is affecting plant and animal species – some of which are threatened with extinction – like the Eastern monarch butterfly. Some of the stressors on flora and fauna are also the result of herbicides. Agricultural practices – including how the soil is tilled – could be changed to help reduce carbons released into the air.

Getting China onboard to get away from coal will help, Hansen said, as he talked about that major polluter building nuclear plants.

“The only way to solve the problem is to put an across the board fee on carbon. The only way it will work is if the money goes to the public. That would stimulate people to avoid carbon emissions,” Hansen said.

He predicts 70 percent of people would get a dividend back, while 30 percent would have more out of pocket costs with a carbon fee. Hansen said this is a “golden opportunity” with the oil prices so low to implement such a fee.

“If we start adding a carbon fee, it will depress the use of fossil fuels,” Hansen said. “It would rapidly decrease the addiction to fossil fuels.”

By L.V. Anderson, Slate

It’s hard to know how to respond to the horrific murders of much of the staff of Charlie Hebdo earlier this week. For the past few days, social media has seen an outpouring of grief and condolences, of cartoon tributes to the controversial magazine, of the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag.

But if you felt like you wanted to do something to take a stand against terrorism instead of just emoting on Twitter, some commentators had a suggestion: Subscribe to Charlie Hebdo.

These reactions echoed a sentiment widely shared last month, after theaters began backing out of plans to screen “The Interview” in light of threats from the group that hacked Sony.

“I probably wasn’t even going to see ‘The Interview’ until theaters started pulling it, but now I will drive as far as necessary to watch it,” tweeted one typical would-be moviegoer, expressing a view that grew in popularity after Sony (temporarily) suspended plans to release the film.

The impulse to support a piece of media that has provoked violence (or threats of violence) is understandable. If you want to stand up for free speech, buying a movie ticket or newspaper that you normally wouldn’t buy seems like a simple, concrete way to take a stand against censorship. Subscribing to Charlie Hebdo might also feel like a satisfying way of thwarting the terrorists and those who share their goal of suppressing the magazine’s influence.

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A Douglas County man accused of abusing his 2-month-old child is wanted by sheriff’s deputies.

Deputies were summoned to Carson Valley Medical Center the afternoon of Jan. 7 because the father, 23-year-old Trent Getty, brought his unresponsive infant there.

Trent Getty

“Investigators developed information that the infant had suffered substantial injuries which appear to be the result of traumatic abuse and are inconsistent with the initial statement given by the father regarding how the injury occurred,” deputies said in a press release.

The condition of the child has not been disclosed.

A $1 million warrant has been issued for Getty’s arrest.

He is 6-feet-1-inch, 170 pounds, short-cropped red hair, green eyes, and has numerous facial tattoos.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Getty is asked to call 775.782.5126.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report