By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Each year, Americans throw out 66 billion pounds of food — organic material wasting away at the bottom of a landfill.

While successful programs recycle tons of aluminum cans, glass, plastic, cardboard, and newspaper and help account for 63 percent of waste diverted from landfills in California, you can’t say the same about table scraps. With no widespread re-use and few programs, food waste has emerged as one of the biggest categories of refuse filling up the nation’s landfills, making up 18 percent of the trash buried in California landfills, according to state records.

Aside from the social issues of Americans wasting billions of pounds of food every year, there’s an environmental problem. Organic material decomposing in landfills creates methane, which can leak into the atmosphere. Methane is 87 times more potent in terms of warming the Earth than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, scientists point out.

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Low water level is forcing the closure of Sand Harbor boat ramp.

Officials said the closure will prevent boats from being damaged during launching and also protect the end of launch lanes from harm.

The parking lot will remain open for non-motorized, carry-in boat access.

The closure starts Aug. 5 at 6am.

By Daryl Loo and Keith Naughton, Bloomberg

Caesars Entertainment Corp. surged as much as 11 percent after agreeing over the weekend to sell casino-style online games unit Playtika Ltd. for $4.4 billion to Chinese investors led by Shanghai Giant Network Technology Co.

The sale could give Caesars, the Las Vegas-based casino operator, more cash to help reach a settlement with bondholders of its largest division, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2015. Caesars acquired Playtika in 2011 via a separate unit, the Caesars Interactive Entertainment arm, which remains the owner of the World Series of Poker and real-money online gaming businesses.

Caesars is the parent company company of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and Harveys at Stateline.

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The women dominated the courts at Zephyr Cove Tennis Club during the 33rd annual Tahoe Tennis Classic.

Donna Rockwood of South Lake Tahoe, Christy Wurster of Placerville and Holly Tretten of Reno were the big winners, all three winning twice.

Rockwood took home the women’s 7.0 title with partner Becky Darrow of Zephyr Cove and won the 7.0 mixed with husband Craig Rockwood. This is the second consecutive year Rockwood has won the women’s division.

Rockwood and Darrow were the No. 1 seeds in the four-day tournament that started July 28. They overcame the No. 3 seeded duo of Liz Bissell of El Dorado Hills and Lorraine Segala of Stateline 6-0, 7-6.

The Rockwoods were the No. 1 seed in mixed. They beat the No. 2 team of Carolyn Wright of Zephyr Cove and Rich Sheldrew of Minden 6-2, 6-3.

Wurster teamed with Sara Catania (Incline Village) to take home the women’s 8.0 trophy. They defeated Patty Yamano (Henderson) and Shelley Ware (Fort Bragg) 7-6, 6-2. Yamano and Ware met for the first time at this tournament.

Wurster then paired with Mark Silva (Shingle Springs) to win the 8.0 mixed. They were beating Jim Billicki (Rancho Mirage) and Lorraine Daniel (Rancho Mirage) 6-3, 6-4 when the Southern California duo had to retire.

Tretten and her mom, Carol, were out for some revenge this year after being runner-ups in the 9.0 category in 2015. They came from a set down this year to beat fellow Reno residents Jeanette Berry and Laura Pierce 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

In the mixed 10.0 division Tretten teamed with South Lake Tahoe’s Ryan Johnston to outlast Kim Iliffe (Mill Valley) and John Wlcek (South Lake Tahoe) 6-2, 6-3.

Other Tahoe Tennis Classic winners were:

·       Men’s 50 doubles: Chris Long (Reno) and Tren Nolan (Reno) beat Richard Johnson (Ballwin, Mo.) and Ted Yukawa (Palm Desert) 6-4, 6-4.

·       Men’s 65 doubles: Dan Bohannon (Orange) and Mark Peterson (Truckee) beat Ross Rittiman (Zephyr Cove) and Hersh Herschman (Zephyr Cove) 6-2, 6-1.

·       Men’s 7.0: Thor Spargo (Fair Oaks) and Murray Yoffee (Gardnerville) beat Kent McCarthy (Rancho Mirage) and Ryan Solberg (Truckee) because of a default.

·       Men’s 8.0: Randall Osterhues (Reno) and Steve Reid (Reno) beat Denis Diehl (Reno) and Jim Kumpel (Reno) 3-6, 6-4, 7-5.

·       Men’s 10.0: Tony Matkulak (Reno) and Kevin Strawn (Reno) beat Johnston and Mohamed Irfan Lakdawala (San Francisco) 6-4, 6-4.

·       Women’s 10.0: Iliffe and Keri Mills (Davis) beat Penne Burgess (Carson City) and Serena Quarelli (Sonoma) when they had to retire because of an injury. The score at that time was 6-1, 2-1.

For the second year in a row a record was established for the number of doubles teams who played – 124, which was three more than a year ago. The 184 players – ranging in age from 12 to 81 – came from nine states to play in 12 divisions.

At the end of four days, more than 150 matches had been played.

The four-day tournament is sponsored by the nonprofit Zephyr Cove Tennis Club Foundation.

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy News Service

Who made the United States into a refuge for secretive shell companies?

Dean Heller

Look toward Congress to find politicians who helped turn Nevada into a major home for shell companies, which can be used to evade taxes and hide illegal assets from around the world.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., now a member of the Senate Finance Committee, was a strong advocate while Nevada’s secretary of state for a 2001 state law that broadened legal protections for shell companies, allowing owners to remain secret.

The change made incorporating a company easier than getting a library card and helped spur the registration of thousands of shell companies in Nevada.

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Bob Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude, will give a talk at Sierra Nevada College on Sept. 1.

Emmons is a professor of psychology at the UCDavis, and the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. He is also the author of the books “Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity” and “Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier”.

Research on the science of gratitude continues to accelerate rapidly. However, questions still remain: What are the functions of gratitude in the economy of human social behavior? What mechanisms are involved in the expression and detection of gratitude? Experiments and recent neuroimaging studies offer important clues as to why gratitude matters, how it works, and how we can collectively capitalize on its promise and potential.

The program will begin at 6pm, with refreshments and no-host bar from 5-6pm at 291 Country Club Drive in Incline Village. Seating is open at 5:30pm to those who preregistered, open seating starts at 5:50pm. Cost is $5.

·       Here are the El Dorado-Tahoe and Sierra roadwork schedules from Caltrans for this week.

·       After more than 6½ years of service, K9 Thor has retired from the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department.

·       The California Department of Motor Vehicles is celebrating its 10-year partnership with Donate Life California in helping to register more than 13.2 million organ, eye, and tissue donors.

·       Jim Nichols, former Douglas County manager, has been hired to be city manager of Des Moines, Iowa.

·       Fred Block, professor in the UC Davis department of sociology, will give a talk titled Innovation in the United States: Myths and Realities on Sept. 15 starting at 5:30pm at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. Cost is $5.

By Mark Glover, Sacramento Bee

Luxury home sales in the North Lake Tahoe and Truckee areas took off in the first half of 2016, more than doubling numbers reported in the first six months of 2015, according to the regional office of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.

Multiple Listing Service data showed 131 single-family homes and condo-town houses selling for $1 million or more in the January-June period, up from 65 in the first half of 2015. Most of those, 117, were single-family houses.

The biggest increase in this year’s single-family house sales came in the $1 million to $2,499,999 segment, with 79 transactions, up 114 percent from 37 sales a year ago.

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By Kathryn Reed

Tweaking ordinances will be the order of the day for the South Lake Tahoe City Council on Aug. 2

The second readings of the vacation home rental, massage and taxi ordinances are on the agenda.

The changes passed unanimously at the first reading last month, with Councilman Tom Davis recusing himself from the VHR discussion because of his affiliation with the Tahoe Keys rental agency.

After getting an earful from owners of multifamily dwellings who are using some or all of the units as vacation rentals, the city back-pedaled with its desire to ban them. Instead, the council will allow the existing units to carry on indefinitely assuming they meet the criteria.

What changes is that no new multifamily parcels may join the vacation home rental market.

Changes to the massage ordinance came about because people suspect some of the $35/hour establishments have hired people who are not licensed to do the work.

While Police Chief Brian Uhler says there is evidence of human trafficking at these places, no proof has been provided by the department.

Massage therapists will have to fill out an application with the police department. All therapists already had to have a city business license, so now there is redundancy and more paperwork for all involved. Uhler told Lake Tahoe News there is not an additional fee for this application process. However, the staff report from the July 19 meeting says, “The city will recoup the costs of licensing through license application fees.”

Therapists must also be licensed through the state. The state mandates therapists have 500 hours of training.

The initial proposal was to give people several months to comply. But after some discussion, including input from massage therapists, that idea was abandoned.

“Either they have a license or they don’t,” Davis said. “This will bring about the legitimacy we are looking for.”

When it came to the taxi ordinance the goal was to put that industry on a level field with the likes of Uber and Lyft. The problem is the city can’t regulate those ride share businesses because it is the state Public Utilities Commission that has that obligation.

The only way the city can regulate the ride share drivers is by demanding they have a business license.

The council opted to relax rules pertaining to taxis in town as a way to make the work environment fairer.

The city will no longer:

·      Inspect all cabs on an annual basis;

·      Manage the operator license process;

·      Conduct background checks on drivers.

These services brought in $17,000 to city coffers.

By Paul Barrett, Bloomberg Businessweek 

How typical of an American is Khizr Khan, the man who stole the show on the last night of the Democratic National Convention? Answer: pretty typical.

U.S. Muslims are much more mainstream than many Americans might think. Khan brought down the house in Philadelphia when he told the story of his son’s heroic war death in Iraq and excoriated Donald Trump for spreading religious intolerance.

Khan’s son, Army Captain Humayun Khan, died in 2004 as a result of a car bomb explosion near Baquba, Iraq. Capt. Khan was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Earlier, he got his college degree from the University of Virginia, where he enrolled in the ROTC program.

The Khans embody the material and educational success of the roughly 3 million American Muslims who make up about 1 percent of the overall population.

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