By Lydia O’Connor, Huffington Post

The Washington Redskins have come under fire for their name. Photo/Keith Allison

California became the first state to ban public schools from using “Redskins” as a team name, nickname or mascot on Sunday in a move applauded by Native American activists.

Signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, the California Racial Mascots Act outlaws schools’ use of the slur effective Jan. 1, 2017.

Oneida Indian Nation Representative Ray Halbritter and National Congress of American Indians Executive Director Jackie Pata, who lead the advocacy group Change the Mascot, praised the action.

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By Jeremy B. White, Sacramento Bee

Heather Maloney thinks of herself as an environmentalist but, as a working mother, doesn’t have the time to create a backyard compost heap. The little bucket for food waste that Napa’s recycling authority sent her offers a more convenient way to keep her leftovers from lining a landfill.

“You’re already scraping plates and rinsing them off to put in the dishwasher, so it’s a pretty easy system,” Maloney said, standing in her kitchen. “It’s definitely cut down on our trash.”

Barbara Barstad is less enthusiastic. She gave up after being repulsed by the bugs and odor, two of the top three reasons Napa residents offered for declining to participate (the third came from people accustomed to putting food scraps in the garbage disposal).

“It just made a big mess,” said Barstad, 76.

Those reactions can be expected to echo across California. Napa County, and a few select jurisdictions such as San Francisco, are incubating a policy that will take hold statewide in the next decade.

In a little-heralded move with potentially sweeping implications, the California Air Resources Board last month announced a push to halt disposal of nearly all organic waste by 2025. The shift would likely require building new processing facilities, prod cities and counties to develop ways to collect it, and add an extra trash-sorting step before Californians drag bins to the curb.

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By Thomas M. Kostigen, USA Today

Extreme weather is prompting school systems to think outside the box to figure out alternatives for students losing too many days in the classroom due to calamities from blizzards to heat waves to floods and more.

But the solution to make up for lost days is sparking anger among some parents. Upset parents in Jefferson County, Ala., say they see no reason for a new requirement that students learn remotely for two “eDays” this school year.

The eDays have been scheduled in advance for Oct. 9 and March 18 to allow “learning to continue without utilizing makeup days, and provides an option for learning when we have extreme weather, flu epidemics, or other unforeseen events,” according to a school newsletter.

Parents say the requirement puts an undue burden on them to stay home with their children those days, potentially missing work.

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By Bill Lindelof, Sacramento Bee

A CHP helicopter crew and rescue personnel with mountain climbing experience had to be called upon the get three young people from Sacramento off a rocky Sierra Nevada outcropping.

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office got a cell phone call for help in the early morning hours Saturday from the three stranded hikers. They were on a ledge in the Desolation Wilderness and could not safely go up or down.

All three were cold but did not have major injuries.

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The plane split apart after hitting trees before landing next to a house on Tionontati Street in El Dorado County on Oct. 10. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

The pilot of the plane that crashed Saturday in Lake Tahoe is believed to be the owner of the aircraft, according to a Lake Tahoe Airport official. The FAA registry lists the plane as being owned by Conrad Yu from Oakley.

People who saw the occupants get into the plane just after 5:30pm Oct. 10 said only a man and woman were on board. The Beech 35 Bonanza crashed into a neighborhood moments after takeoff . Debris was scattered about the back yard of the house that was partially damaged after the plane erupted in flames.

The bodies were recovered Sunday from the crash site on Tionontati Street, which is on the outskirts of South Lake Tahoe. The names of the victims have not been released.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board both were on scene Sunday, with the NTSB taking the lead. NTSB investigators expect to be in town for several days.

“We are gathering the facts. We will be looking at where the aircraft came to rest, we will look at the engines and then they will be moved to a secure location,” Terry Williams with the NTSB told Lake Tahoe News. “We do a thorough investigation into the cause and factors that may have led to it.” The NTSB often takes more than a year to release reports on plane crashes.

An issue at this elevation is density altitude. On warm days the lift, thrust, and engine performance of a plane can be compromised. Wind may also have been a factor on Saturday.

“There is someone at the airport who witnessed the whole event. They heard problems,” Lake Tahoe Airport Manager Sherry Miller told Lake Tahoe News. She said the person watched the plane take off and go into the trees. “It could be that it didn’t sound right or it could sound like not enough power. I’m not sure which one it was.”

She said the pilot did not purchase fuel at the airport.

An El Dorado County sheriff’s sergeant on Saturday told LTN the pilot landed at the airport, stayed around a bit and then took off on the fatal flight.

The South Lake Tahoe airport does not have a staffed tower. According to Miller, it would not have made a difference if it were operational.

“Air traffic controllers don’t make decisions for pilots,” Miller said. “They do not give instructions to pilots in how to operate their aircraft.”

She added that this includes not telling a pilot which way to bank to avoid a neighborhood.

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

At a laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, a big rig spins its wheels on massive rollers as a metal tube funnels its exhaust into an array of air quality sensors. Engineers track the roaring truck’s emissions from a bank of computer screens.

The brand-new diesel truck is among the cleanest on the road, the engineers at the California Air Resources Board testing lab say. Even so, its 550-horsepower engine spews out more than 20 times the smog-forming nitrogen oxides of a typical gasoline-powered car — and that won’t be good enough for the state to meet stricter federal smog limits adopted this month.

Cutting ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog, to federal health standards while meeting state targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions will require a radical transformation of California’s transportation sector over the next two decades, air quality officials and experts say.

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South Lake Tahoe police are looking for a man who threatened a woman Saturday morning with an alleged gun.

The woman told officers a man approached her about 9:40am Oct. 10 near Park and Cedar avenues, telling her to go with him or he would shoot her. The suspect told the woman he had a gun and appeared to be holding an object concealed in his sweat shirt pocket, according to police.

She ran for safety and the suspect left before officers arrived.

The suspect is described as a Caucasian or light skinned Hispanic male in his mid-20s, about 5-feet-6, medium build, spoke clear English, has a scar or injury near his right eye, was wearing black wire-framed glasses (not sunglasses), a grey hooded sweat shirt with the hood over his head and dark pants. And he was possibly riding a white bicycle.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Ray Hagar, Reno Gazette-Journal

Democrats were shocked with the election results in 2014 when they lost the majority in the Nevada Assembly for the first time in nearly two decades.

Now they are developing their strategy to take back the majority and the power that comes with it in the 2016 general election. Democrats hope to stop the first back-to-back Republican majorities in the lower house since the 1969 and 1971 sessions.

Democrats also hope to regain the majority in the state Senate after the Republicans’ 2014 trifecta: Winning the governor’s office and majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

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By Gus Thomson, Auburn Journal

The American River in the canyon below Auburn was taking on an unfamiliar shade of mud on Wednesday.

While the north fork was keeping its clear blue hues, the middle fork was running murky – and mixing with the clearer water at the confluence to create a chocolate-brown flow under the Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge and on to Folsom Lake.

Blame the 2014 King Fire, a Placer County Water Agency official said.

The fire scorched 97,000 acres of mountainous terrain, much of it in the American River and Rubicon River watershed. The water from that area eventually moves into the middle fork American River and down past Auburn.

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The Truckee Donner Public Utility District joined efforts to help restore power to the Geysers geothermal power plant near Middletown and repair an electric distribution line destroyed by the Valley Fire.

TDPUD responded to an emergency request for help issued by the Northern California Power Agency, which owns a geothermal power plant in the area.

The Valley Fire, started on Sept. 12, swept through Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties, engulfing more than 76,000 acres and destroying nearly 2,000 buildings, leaving many residents homeless in its wake. The fire knocked out power poles, effluent pipeline, steam field pipes, conduits and control circuitry, pump stations, fiber optic lines and more, according to NCPA.

TDPUD has mutual-aid agreements with many utilities.

A TDPUD crew of five employees and equipment, along with numerous other utilities from around the state, aided NCPA in recovery efforts. The Truckee crew — working with other crews from Healdsburg, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Lodi, Roseville, Redding, and Alameda — helped repair a 21KV distribution power line and rebuilding more than 50 power poles to restore electricity.