·      Tahoe National Forest updated its road closures related to winter storm damage. Further details and maps of the closures are available .

·       Saxophonist Frank Benvenuto will be playing Mondays from 9pm-midnight at The Loft in South Lake Tahoe.

·       Blues guitarist Mike Schermer will be putting on a clinic at the Tahoe Truckee School of Music on July 20. For more info, go online

·      Carson Valley Inn is having a Blues, Brews & BBQ to celebrate its 33 birthday on Aug. 5. Click here for details.

·      The Douglas County Public Library is hosting two Mug Cake baking events as part of the adult summer reading program. The Minden Library baking event is July 20 at 5:30pm. The Zephyr Cove event is July 21 at 4pm. For more info, call 775.782.9841.

Crowds at Edgewood Tahoe on July 13 are in search of autographs. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE – It was hard to walk 10 feet Thursday at the American Century Championship and not see a Steph Curry article of clothing on someone or some Warriors emblem.

He is back at the celebrity golf tournament at Edgewood Tahoe. Also returning is his dad, Dell, who beat him last year.

“I see the lake is at a very, very healthy level. And so whoever loses between me and him has to take a polar plunge into the lake before we head back to the Bay (Area) after Sunday’s round. So I hope that’s not me,” Curry said a press conference on July 13.

The actual tournament is Friday-Sunday. Players will tee off starting at 7:50am; most in trios.

Quarterback Alex Smith with his daughter. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Alex Smith, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, was carrying his daughter around after he was done playing. One fan yelled, “San Francisco is regretting it.” To which Smith smiled and said, “Thanks.”

“Kaepernick is a joke,” the fan followed up.

The Forty-Niners promoted Colin Kaepernick over Smith when Smith got injured in 2012. Kaepernick no longer has a team to play for and Smith is still tossing touchdowns for Kansas City.

Arizona Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson stops to sign a fan’s program. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Waiting to board the bus back to the hotel, former 49er wide receiver Jerry Rice gave a high five to the little Smith.

At the putting green was former running back Marshall Faulk. He didn’t want anything to do with the fans. “He only signs when he wants to,” one spectator said.

Autograph signing really does vary from celebrity to celebrity, with most signing at least a few articles of clothing or programs.

By Sam Stanton, Sacramento Bee

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected efforts by Sierra Pacific Industries to back out of a $100 million settlement over the massive Moonlight Fire that it claims was based on fraud and deception by government prosecutors in Sacramento.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that claims by Sierra Pacific that it was the victim of a “trail of fraud” by government prosecutors seeking a huge payday from a deep-pocketed defendant did “not constitute fraud on the court” as the company had claimed.

The decision comes after years of intensely bitter fighting by Sierra Pacific, the state’s largest private landowner, over a settlement agreement the timber giant entered into in 2012.

Read the whole story

Whittell High School standout student athlete Nic Buccholz was honored July 12 at the American Century Championship with the 8th annual Gene Upshaw scholarship.

Buccholz, a five-sport athlete, graduated this year with a 4.09 grade point average. He plans to study biology at UNR in the fall, complete the pre-med course of study and continue to medical school. During his high school career, Buccholz played football, basketball, baseball, golf, and soccer.

Upshaw was an Oakland Raider, NFL Hall of Famer and executive director of the NFL Players Association.

Buccholz was selected for exemplifying Upshaw’s defining characteristics of leadership, community service, athletic and academic excellence. The $5,000 college scholarship is funded equally by NBC Sports and Edgewood Companies.

By Wes Siler, Outside

It’s summer. Like every other summer, we humans enter the woods and are shocked to find that bears live there. Forewarned should be forearmed. Simply by carrying a can of bear spray with you when you go into the woods and following other commonsense advice, you will never need to fear bears again.

In the past 10 years, there have been 28 fatal bear attacks in the United States. This year there have already been two.

There are a few points I’m trying to make: 1) Bear attacks are exceptionally rare—more people in the United States are killed annually by bees than by bears. 2) Guns aren’t a great defense against the animals. 3) In the highly unlikely event that you are attacked by a bear, bear spray is so effective that your overall odds of being injured, let alone killed, are less likely than winning the lottery.

Read the whole story

Tahoe Art League’s 11th annual Artist Studio Tour will be  July 28, 29, 30 and Au. 4, 5 and 6. 

This year 49 local artists will be showing and selling their inspired creations at 24 studios located all around the South Shore.

The free, self-guided tour will include works of fine art including oil, watercolor, and acrylic paintings, jewelry, ceramics, metal and other sculptures and more. 

It’s an opportunity to meet the artists and catch some of them in the act as they work on their latest creative endeavors.

For more info, go online.

Forget the masterpiece, celebrate the disasterpiece.

The Douglas County Public Library is hosting two bad art events for adults as part of the adult summer reading program.  The Zephyr Cove Library will have a Bad Art Night on July 26 at 5pm. The Minden Library Bad Art program will be July 29 at 10am. 

Each participant will create a work of bad art, and all participants will vote on the “best” bad art piece.  The artist with the best of the worst will receive a trophy and a prize.  All “art” supplies will be provided.

The Minden Library is located at 1625 Library Lane. The Zephyr Cove Library is located at 233 Warrior Way. 

Homicide investigators with the El Dorado County Cold Case Task Force are trying to solve the nearly 4-year-old murder of Manpreet Singh at the USA gas station on Highway 50 and Lodi Avenue in South Lake Tahoe.

Singh, 27, was gunned down Aug. 6, 2013, while working at the station.

Video surveillance taken at 10:40pm showed a lone gunman walking from Palmira Avenue behind the business.

The District Attorney’s Office has released this video.

Anyone with information is asked to call 530.621.4590.

The Tahoe Keys Property Owners Association is stepping up efforts to educate more local business about water quality.

In an effort to reach out and educate business that provide services in the

Tahoe Keys is hosting a lunch and learn on July 18 from noon-1pm to educate businesses that provide services to this South Lake Tahoe development. It will be at the pavilion common are.

The event will focus on educating landscaping, rental and hot tub companies on the rules and regulations in place in the Keys that protect the waterways and help their customers avoid fees for infractions.

For more information contact Greg Hoover at ghoover@tahoekeyspoa.org.

By Kathryn Reed

El Dorado County Superior Court is about to be down three judges.

Steve Bailey this week made it known he would be resigning effective Aug. 31. Jim Wagoner is retiring effective Sept. 1. Nelson Brooks left earlier this year.

Steve Bailey

The biggest surprise is the departure of Bailey, whose six-year term doesn’t expire until 2020.

He has made it well known that he plans to run for attorney general in 2018, and has even filed the requisite paperwork. He had also filed paperwork with the state to retain his current job just in case he were to lose the AG post.

Conventional wisdom is that it is easier to win an elected position while holding one – not being out of office for a year and having resigned midterm.

Bailey has had his share of controversies since first being elected to the bench in 2008. In this time he has been working out of the South Lake Tahoe courthouse.

His in-laws are well entrenched in the state’s Republican Party, and he brought some of that political fervor to the job – a job that is not supposed to be partisan. His wife, Kathleen, is executive director of the El Dorado County Bar Association. Bailey’s brother-in-law is Ron Briggs, the former county supervisor who sued the county for back pay after being termed out and who is running for recorder-clerk in 2018. His father in-law is John Briggs, the former state senator who is famous for the 1978 proposition called the Briggs Initiative that had it passed, would have meant all employees in California’s education system who are gay or lesbian and their supporters would have been fired.

The family has been embroiled in the Placerville courthouse saga.

Bailey was the supervising judge for the 2012-13 civil grand jury. That body had to be disbanded before a report was written; a first in county history. While he claimed it was because of lack of volunteers, the truth is jurors wanted to investigate people who Bailey and his family had ties to.

If Bailey were under investigation now for conduct involving his job, it may not be a public record. A deal could be worked out for him to step down from the bench and the matter could go away. This would allow him to campaign without another public ding on his record, but might also keep him out of the lucrative visiting judges’ pool.

Don’t expect to see Bailey much in the next six weeks. He has vacation time he can use.

Bailey chose not to talk to Lake Tahoe News.

Bailey faces stiff competition next year from current Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who was appointed to the position in December by Gov. Jerry Brown to fill the seat vacated by Kamala Harris when she was elected to the Senate.

As for the other judges:

·      Brooks was first appointed to the bench by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009, and was elected a year later to a six-year term. He was re-elected in a bitter battle in June 2016. However, he never worked after suffering a cardiovascular event in August 2016. He was officially off the bench in March. The term expires in 2022.

·      Wagoner was first elected in 2002. His term expires in 2020.

·      The remaining judges are Suzanne Kingsbury, Kenneth Melikian, Vicki Ashworth, Dylan Sullivan and Curt Stracener.

It will be up to Gov. Jerry Brown to fill the vacancies. If that doesn’t happen, then when the term expires it will be anyone’s race. Brown’s office did not respond to an inquiry from LTN.

For now, the court will continue to use the Assigned Judges Program through the Judicial Council. These are visiting retired judges.