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Life and the Earth have always evolved together. When it opens on June 8, 2019, the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils — Deep Time […]

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A large The Actor statue is placed on stage during 21st Annual SAG Awards Behind The Scenes At The Shrine Auditorium Jan. 23, 2015 in Los Angeles.; Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Click here for KPCC's Awards Tracker

This Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards aren't as high profile as the Academy Awards, or even the Golden Globes, but they serve as one of the best predictors of who's going to take home a gold statue come Oscar night. Here's why.

Who votes for the SAG Awards?

SAG Award nominees are chosen by a committee of about 2,100 of the guild's members, according to awards news site Gold Derby. Then, all of the 111,228 members of the Guild have the chance to vote for their picks.

Meanwhile, the acting nominees for the Academy Awards are chosen by the 1,100 members in the Academy's actors branch, before being voted on by the Academy's full 5,700 members. Those actors are all part of SAG, so you're likely to see a strong correlation most years between the awards, particularly in the acting category.

How often do the SAG Awards predict the Oscar winners?

The SAG Awards have proven to be the best Oscar predictor in the acting category of any other major awards season prize since they began in 1995, both in nominations and winners. Of the 20 nominations and four winners from each shows, the overlap between the SAG Awards (aka "the Actors") and the Academy Awards in the last few years:

• 2009: 18 nominations; 3 winners
• 2010: 19 nominations; all 4 winners
• 2011: 17 nominations; all 4 winners
• 2012: 16 nominations; 3 winners
• 2013: 15 nominations; 3 winners
• 2014: 14 nominations; all 4 winners

This year, 17 nominees crossed over between the awards shows, with the Oscars matching up on all five nominations for best supporting actor and four of the five nominations in the other three acting categories.

Where have the SAG Awards differed from the Oscars?

SAG voters have lined up with the Academy on Best Actor 16 out of 20 times. The last time they differed from the Oscars was 2003, when Johnny Depp won at the SAG Awards for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" before Sean Penn took the statue home at the Oscars for "Mystic River."

For Best Actress, SAG last split from Oscar in 2011, going with Viola Davis for "The Help" over eventual Oscar winner Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady." They've matched up 14 out of 20 years.

In the supporting categories, the SAG Awards haven't fared as well. They went 12 for 20 in Best Supporting Actor, and 13 for 20 in Best Supporting Actress. That one also has an asterisk — one of those was a tie, so if you don't count that one, they're also only 12 for 20.

What does this all mean for the Oscars?

The SAG Awards remain the ones to watch when it comes to the acting awards — though their Best Ensemble category, the SAG Awards version of Best Picture, doesn't have a particularly strong correlation to the Oscars Best Picture winner. (For that, you'll want to watch for the Producers Guild Awards.)

We're tracking awards season and what experts are predicting; see KPCC's Awards Tracker below or click here to see the full page. You can watch the Screen Actors Guild Awards this Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern on both TBS and TNT.

Disclosure: Mike Roe, along with other members of KPCC's staff, are members of the Screen Actors Guild as part of their employment with KPCC.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Assistive products and technologies – such as wheelchairs, upper-limb prostheses, and hearing and speech devices – hold promise for partially or fully mitigating the effects of impairments and enabling people with disabilities to work, but in some cases environmental and personal factors create additional barriers to employment, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

National Academy of Sciences President Emeritus Frank Press — distinguished geophysicist, science adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and National Medal of Science recipient — died on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 95.

File: Western monarch butterfly in Huntington Beach; Credit: Courtesy of Huntington Beach Tree Society

A group of conservation organizations teamed up with a leading monarch butterfly scientist on Tuesday to petition for protection of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.

The monarch butterfly is one of the most iconic butterfly species in the country. But according to conservation group the Xerces Society, the monarch butterfly population is in trouble.

“Many scientists estimate that there are about 33 million monarchs. And just for comparison, in the past, researchers have estimated more than 1 billion monarchs,” said Sarina Jepsen, who directs the Endangered Species Program for the Xerces Society.

That’s a decline of about 90 percent in just fewer than 20 years, Jepsen said.

The main culprit in the monarch’s decline is the weed killer Roundup, Jepsen said. Most monarch caterpillars breed in the Midwest, and feed off of milkweed. While Roundup doesn’t kill genetically modified crops like soy and corn, it does kill milkweed.

“So, milkweed growing in a large agricultural landscape has largely disappeared in the last decade-and-a-half to two decades,” said Jepsen.

Other contributing factors include climate change and a general loss of habitat, Jepsen said. California’s drought might also play a role.

“There’s a real strong relationship between drought severity and the number of monarchs that we see in the winter on the California coast,” said Jepsen. “In years when droughts are worse, there are fewer monarchs.”

Thousands of the butterflies gather on California’s coast each winter. Spots locally includeLeo Carrillo Beach in Malibu and Doheny Beach in Dana Point, though the Xerces Society has observed a large decline in the butterflies at these locations in the last several decades.

More on the drought’s effect on the monarch population will be known around Thanksgiving, when a group of so-called "citizen scientists" with the Xerces Society perform an annual count of the monarchs.

Along with the Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food and Safety and leading monarch butterfly scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed the petition.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to decide whether to go forward with a further review to potentially classify the monarch butterfly as threatened or endangered. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Hachette Book Group employees in New York City, during a Thursday walkout protesting their company's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir.; Credit: Kendra Barkoff Lamy/Twitter

On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees of the publishing imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown staged a walkout to protest Grand Central's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, next month.

Both imprints are owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), the same house that published journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. The walkout comes after Farrow announced on Tuesday that he felt he could no longer work with HBG after the Allen acquisition.

Farrow is Allen's son with actress Mia Farrow; his sister, Dylan Farrow, has accused Allen of having sexually abused her as a child. Allen has long denied her allegations.

In his statement, Farrow wrote in part that HBG "concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse."

Dylan Farrow also released a statement on Monday evening, in which she said in part: "Hachette's publishing of Woody Allen's memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. ... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Employees at both HBG's New York and Boston offices participated in the Thursday walkout. Many also sent out an auto-reply email that read in part: "We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault." Those include Little, Brown executive editor Vanessa Mobley, who was the editor of Catch and Kill.

In a statement sent to NPR Thursday afternoon, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch said: "We respect and understand the perspective of our employees who have decided to express their concern over the publication of this book. We will engage our staff in a fuller discussion about this at the earliest opportunity."

NPR reached out for comment to Allen's agent, who did not respond as of publication time.

The New York Post reported that HBG employees approached the company's human resources department on Thursday afternoon to complain about the planned publication of Allen's book. A Hachette employee told NPR that HBG's CEO, Michael Pietch, attempted to hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue, but the employees walked out before the meeting was held.

Farrow's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told NPR on Thursday, "I feel moved almost to tears by the walkout. It was such a brave gesture to management who, in my opinion, made such a misguided decision." Signing Allen, she said, was "a betrayal of Ronan, of the women in his book, of the issues in the book and of the staff of this publisher." She added that Farrow is "grateful for the support of his colleagues at Little, Brown."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Allen had tried to sell the memoir to several major publishing houses, "only to be met with indifference or hard passes"; one source told NPR on Thursday afternoon that the title had been considered "radioactive" in the publishing world.

Farrow also said in his Tuesday statement that HBG had not fact-checked Allen's memoir, nor did it contact Dylan Farrow for any response. "It also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here. ... I've also told Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can't work with in good conscience."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Uber and Lyft drivers with Rideshare Drivers United and the
 Transport Workers Union of America conduct a ‘caravan protest’ outside the California Labor Commissioner’s office amidst the coronavirus pandemic on April 16, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. ; Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

California sued ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft on Tuesday, alleging they misclassified their drivers as independent contractors under the state’s new labor law.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco announced the lawsuit Tuesday. The labor law, known as AB5 and considered the nation’s strictest test, took effect Jan. 1 and makes it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees who are entitled to minimum wage and benefits such as workers compensation.

California represents Uber and Lyft’s largest source of revenue. The companies, as well as Doordash, are funding a ballot initiative campaign to exclude their drivers from the law while giving new benefits such as health care coverage. The initiative is likely to qualify for the November ballot.

We dive into the suit and California’s saga with ride hailing companies. Plus, if you’re a driver, what do you think of Becerra’s claim? Would you prefer to be treated as an employee? And if you’ve been driving for a while, has the pandemic changed your outlook on Uber and Lyft’s treatment of its drivers? Call us at 866-893-5722. 

With files from the Associated Press.

Guests:

Josh Eidelson, labor reporter for Bloomberg News; based in the Bay Area; tweets @josheidelson

Mike Feuer, City Attorney of Los Angeles

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Audrey Hepburn I am not, but every once in a while, a girl’s gotta go for the gamine look, right? The ankle-length or capri trousers, the ‘50s pink and black color scheme. This is not the ‘’Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Audrey Hepburn, but the 1957 “Funny Face” Audrey, the intellectual beatnik girl who agrees to do a photo modeling shoot for Fred Astaire in exchange for a trip to Paris, where she can to worship at the feet of her “empathicalism” guru, Professor Flostre, who turns out to be just another “mec” on the make.
 
Of course I had to sneak in some commentary in this ensemble: the shirt in sweetheart-pink with stylized black silhouettes of classic runway shapes over the years …  and the shoes, with the pink-and-black face of a sassy manga girl. This one I like. Some of the sex-bomb manga girl illustrations look more like teen boy fantasy porn versions of those classic Keane portraits of solemn-faced, big-eyed children.
 
If you think Meryl Streep was a tough cookie in “The Devil Wears Prada,” check out the original: Kay Thompson and her star turn as the glamorous, tyrannical fashion mag editor in “Funny Face”! [Why do the handbags carried by women in the movies always look empty? Par for the fantasy, I suppose.

The only woman who comes close to achieving the empty handbag is the Queen, who, if rumor is believed, carries only a handkerchief and lipstick and eyeglasses in hers, maybe one or two other items, and on Sunday some money for the church collection plate. I’m convinced she keeps it handy mostly as a prop. Poor lady: it’s always a sedate British-made Launer handbag and she orders four new ones a year. Maybe at least in her imagination she goes online and buys a Stephen Sprouse Louis Vuitton neon graffiti bag, just for the heck of it.]
 
The Harry Potter cast did a little bit about the Queen’s handbag for her 80th birthday:

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Vehicles sit in a near empty parking lot outside the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa, on May 1.; Credit: Charlie Neibergall/AP

A meat-packing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, where a coronavirus outbreak exploded a few weeks ago, resumed operations on Thursday after a two-week closure.

The reopening of Tyson Foods' largest U.S. pork plant came the same day that health officials in Black Hawk County, where the plant is located, announced that 1,031 of the plant's estimated 2,800 employees have tested positive for the virus. That's higher than previous estimates by state officials.

Tony Thompson, sheriff of Black Hawk County, was among the public officials who called for the Waterloo facility to shut down temporarily. His call to close the plant came after he first toured the facility on April 10.

Thompson says that when he toured the plant then, he "fully expected" to see barriers, masks and other personal protective equipment in place. That wasn't the case.

"What I saw when we went into that plant was an absolute free-for-all," he says. "Some people were wearing bandannas. Some people were wearing surgical masks. .... Most people weren't wearing anything. People working on the line were working elbow to elbow, sometimes reaching over each other, processing the meat that was coming down the line.

"There was absolutely no opportunity for social distancing," he says. "We left the plant thinking, 'oh, my gosh, we've got a huge problem here.'"

Health officials say 90% of the cases of coronavirus in the county are linked to the Tyson facility.

During the closure, Tyson installed clear plastic mats to divide workstations and hand sanitizing stations. The plant has also instituted temperature checks and provides workers with surgical masks when they arrive and when they leave.

After touring the facility last week, Thompson is in cautious support of the reopening, saying he feels "reserved encouragement" after seeing the new safety measures.

If, however, the outbreak continues at this facility, Thompson says he would support a second shutdown.

Thompson's primary focus is on the safety and security of the roughly 131,000 citizens of Black Hawk County — and he says he feels especially responsible for the Tyson workers.

"We like our bacon, but we don't want to think about how it's actually done. When you got a carcass hanging there, bleeding on the floor, you don't want to think about that ... a byproduct of that is the people that actually do that work," he says.

"Unfortunately, these are oftentimes marginalized citizens because they are refugees, because they don't speak English, because they do a job that not many people want to do," he continues. "So there's something inherent there that was not right that I hope that they have corrected. And I'll hold my breath and pray that that is true. If it's not, we'll back up, regroup and go at this again."

Listen to the full interview with NPR's Ailsa Chang at the audio link above.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

This project, along with two other new projects, increases the company's order backlog by 65%.

To solve the problem of food waste we need to radically rethink how our food is produced and consumed, researchers argue in a recent study. They propose a new framework that considers how to reduce wastage throughout the supply chain. Preventing excess levels of food production and consumption in the first place is its most important step.

Reducing forest fire risk within a tight budget can be successfully achieved, according to researchers. The study simulated the economic and fire risk effects of five management plans and found that a combination of removing low level trees and selective positioning of woodland produced the most economic and least destructive results

Two ‘best practice’ case studies of brownfield regeneration in Germany and the UK have been analysed by researchers. Liverpool's and Cologne's two flagship waterfront developments were chosen in order to provide insights for other redevelopment projects. The assessment demonstrates that, if correctly managed, brownfield sites can help stimulate economic development in poor areas.

A tool to calculate the risk of food and waterborne diseases under current or future climate change conditions has been presented in a recent study. Free to use, the online tool can help guide climate change adaptation, such as improvements to water management, by estimating the likelihood of contracting four diseases under a range of environmental conditions.

Increasing temperatures and rising ocean acidification could reduce the health and survival of young sharks, new research has shown. Bamboo shark embryos incubated under ocean temperatures and acidity predicted for 2100 showed survival rates of 80% compared to 100% survival under present-day conditions. Once hatched, survival measured at 30 days was only 44% for those under predicted climate change conditions, again compared to 100% for those experiencing current temperature and acidity.

Experts and members of coastal communities possess both differences and similarities in how they perceive the risks associated with changes in sea level. A new study, based on interviews with both, has found that future communication about the risks should focus on specific adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are used increasingly often in innovative technologies, causing these elements to enter the natural environment. They can be sourced via deep-sea mining, raising concerns about marine exposure to mining processes and waste products. This study examined how two REEs, lanthanum and yttrium, affected and stressed marine ecosystems, using young marine mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) as indicators of water quality. The researchers determine a parameter known as the ‘predicted no effect concentration’ (PNEC) for La and Y — the maximum environmental level of each of the two elements at which no effect is seen on the most sensitive organisms and which is, therefore, deemed safe for the environment.

Over 2500 tons of the air pollutants nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) were released by cruise ships across the five busiest Greek cruise ports during 2013, a new study found. The researchers also examined the costs of the potential health impacts of this pollution, finding they could be as high as 24.3 million Euros.

If the three-term Texas governor follows the same game plan as others in his party, he may be able to become the Tea Party's choice for president.

New study finds most of the breast milk sold on the Internet is contaminated with bacteria.

Protesters celebrate in North Dakota as the Army halts the Dakota Access pipeline, but many of them still aren't leaving.

Vipp, the venerable purveyor of high-end trash bins, gets into the prefab vacation home business.

After studying under Ansel Adams, Rob Decker is creating posters of all the national parks with a nod to the WPA posters of the 1930s and '40s.

Sprint customers can get instant credit on their phone bills by recycling old phones at local stores.

You have until Aug. 28 to get your lifetime National Park Service senior pass at the lower rate of $10.

Anecdotal social media posts suggest that the Marvel blockbuster 'Black Panther' is spurring folks to adopt black cats.

The vision of an energy-efficient super grid that allows powers companies to communicate real-time may be possible through Google-Spectrum Bridge partnership.

After years of debilitating pain, I thought the situation was hopeless, but it wasn't.

City Food Tours has a delicious new walking tour dedicated to showcasing local foods.

Concern about the safety of many wall coverings has led to a revival in milk-based paints.

The boy who eats lunch alone in the school office everyday because no one will sit with him now has more than 1.2 million likes on his Facebook birthday page.

The German giant is embracing electrification, and new electric cars from Audi and Porsche point the way.

In addition to providing a quick way to read your friends' updates, the app will include content will come from well-known publications and 'emerging voices.'

The Texas governor has a clear environmental platform — whether you like it or not is a different story.