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CLEARLAKE, Calif. – A local business is once again stepping up to help those in need during the holiday season.
Foods Etc IGA reported that it has completed a donation of 800 bags of groceries to supplement the North Coast Opportunities (NCO) distribution of 800 boxes of food.
Foods Etc IGA has provided its warehouse for the food distribution for more than 10 years.
The store started supplementing the food distribution four years ago when funds became scarce and the need within the community continued to increase.
“Part of the hometown spirit is to give back to our community,” said Dennis Darling, Foods Etc owner. “During the last four years, our partnership with NCO has allowed us to make a difference to thousands of households in Clearlake.”
Foods Etc IGA distributes a bag of groceries that contains cereal, flour, vegetables, beans and bread.
“Thank you to Gary Calistro, Laurence Kincaid and the rest of the team at C&S Wholesale Grocers for their support,” Darling said. “The C&S Wholesale Grocery company shares our same values of being the community center. We are both proud to be part of our community and happy that we are able to give back.”
Foods Etc. IGA is well-known throughout Lake County for offering not only an exceptional shopping experience but also giving back to the community.
It is a frequent sponsor of local community organization activities and a primary supporter of many local food drives.
LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The service of a search warrant by the Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force has resulted in one arrest and the seizure of 230 pounds of processed marijuana.
Detectives arrested Melissa Cowart Pope, 58, of Lower Lake following the search warrant service, according to Lt. Steve Brooks.
On Wednesday, Dec. 11, narcotics detectives secured a search warrant for Pope, her home and vehicle. This past Wednesday, at approximately 10:30 a.m., detectives served the warrant at Pope’s residence, which is located in the 16000 block of Big Bear Road in Lower Lake, Brooks said.
Brooks said the search warrant was related to interstate marijuana trafficking to Florida.
Brooks said that over the past two years, detectives in St. Petersburg, Fla., have been investigating Melissa Pope and her husband Barry Pope.
The St. Petersburg detectives learned that Melissa Pope was shipping marijuana and marijuana-related food products to her husband in Florida through the United States Postal Service. Brooks said the detectives in Florida had intercepted several packages containing marijuana and subsequently arrested Barry Pope.
When the Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force entered the residence, Melissa Pope was located and detained without incident, Brooks said.
During a search of the residence detectives located approximately 230 pounds of processed marijuana, which was seized. Brooks said the marijuana was located inside several large plastic containers.
He said detectives also located and seized two loaded firearms, shipping containers and a digital scale.
Evidence located during the search confirmed Melissa Pope was still actively trafficking marijuana out of California for profit, Brooks said.
Melissa Pope was arrested for cultivating marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and being armed in the commission of a felony. She was transported to the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility and booked. She later posted bail and was released, according to jail records.
The Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force can be reached through its anonymous tip line at 707-263-3663.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – A vehicle stop conducted Thursday night by a sheriff’s patrol deputy has resulted in one arrest and the seizure of 22.5 grams of methamphetamine.
Arrested following the stop was 40-year-old Antonio Flores Castellanos of Lakeport, according to Lt. Steve Brooks of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
At 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, a patrol deputy was traveling northbound on Highway 29 near Lakeport Boulevard when he noticed a GMC pickup traveling in front of him travel over the fog line and then veer back toward the center of the roadway on three occasions within about 400 yards, Brooks said.
Brooks said the deputy also noticed that one of the vehicle's brake lights was not working. The deputy conducted an enforcement stop in the area of Highway 29 and 11th Street in Lakeport.
The deputy contacted the driver, who was identified as Castellanos. Brooks said the deputy explained the reason for the enforcement stop and asked Castellanos if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Castellanos told the deputy that he was coming down from methamphetamine and was very tired.
A K9 unit responded to the location and deployed his partner to conduct a sniff of the exterior of the vehicle, Brooks said. As the canine approached the driver’s side door, she produced a positive alert, indicating there was the odor of a controlled substance present.
During the search deputies located a hidden compartment inside the vehicle. Inside the hidden compartment were four plastic bags, each containing a white crystalline substance determined to be methamphetamine, Brooks said.
Brooks said Castellanos told deputies he had only owned the pickup for about four months and was unaware of the hidden compartment or the methamphetamine which was located inside of it.
Deputies also located $2,766, which Castellanos claimed he had won at a casino, Brooks said.
Castellanos was arrested for possession of a controlled substance for sale, transportation of a controlled substance, use of a false compartment and being under the influence of a controlled substance, Brooks said.
Brooks said Castellanos was transported to the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility and booked. The cash was seized pending asset forfeiture proceedings.
Castellanos remained in custody on Friday night, with his bail set at $500,000, according to jail records.
The Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force can be reached through its anonymous tip line at 707-263-3663.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered water vapor erupting from the frigid surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, in one or more localized plumes near its south pole.
Europa is already thought to harbor a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, making the moon one of the main targets in the search for habitable worlds away from Earth.
This new finding is the first observational evidence of water vapour being ejected off the moon's surface.
“The discovery that water vapor is ejected near the south pole strengthens Europa's position as the top candidate for potential habitability,” said lead author Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “However, we do not know yet if these plumes are connected to subsurface liquid water or not.”
The Hubble findings were published in the Dec. 12 online issue of Science Express.
The Hubble discovery makes Europa only the second moon in the Solar System known to have water vapour plumes.
In 2005, plumes of water vapor and dust were detected by NASA's Cassini orbiter spewing off the surface of the Saturnian moon Enceladus.
The Europa plumes were discovered by Hubble observations in December 2012. The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) detected faint ultraviolet light from an aurora at the moon's south pole.
This aurora is driven by Jupiter's intense magnetic field, which causes particles to reach such high speeds that they can split the water molecules in the plume when they hit them, resulting in oxygen and hydrogen ions which leave their telltale imprint in the colors of the aurora.
So far, only water vapor has been detected – unlike the plumes on Enceladus, which also contain ice and dust particles.
“We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission,” said co-lead author and principal investigator of the Hubble observing campaign Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne, Germany. “Only after a particular camera on the Hubble Space Telescope had been repaired on the last servicing mission by the Space Shuttle did we gain the sensitivity to really search for these plumes.”
Roth suggests long cracks on Europa's surface, known as linea, might be venting water vapor into space. Similar fissures have been photographed near Enceladus's south pole by the Cassini spacecraft. It is unknown how deep inside Europa's crust the source of the water may be. Roth asks, “Do the vents extend down to a subsurface ocean or are the ejecta simply from warmed ice caused by friction stresses near the surface?”
Also like Enceladus, the Hubble team found that the intensity of the plumes varies with Europa's orbital position.
Active geysers have only been seen when the moon is furthest from Jupiter. But the researchers could not detect any sign of venting when Europa is closer to Jupiter.
One explanation is that the long fractures in the ice crust experience more stress as gravitational tidal forces push and pull on the moon and so open vents at larger distances from Jupiter. The vents are narrowed or closed when at closest approach to the gas giant planet.
Team member Kurt Retherford, also of the Southwest Research Institute, points out that “the plume variability supports a key prediction that we should see this kind of tidal effect if there is a subsurface ocean on Europa.”
Future space probe missions to Europa could confirm that the exact locations and sizes of vents and determine whether they connect to liquid subsurface reservoirs.
It is important news for missions such as ESA's Jupiter Icy moons Explorer, a mission planned for launch in 2022, and which aims to explore both Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
COBB, Calif. – A 3.3-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Cobb area on Friday afternoon.
The quake occurred at 3:34 p.m. Friday, according to the US Geological Survey.
It was centered five miles west northwest of Cobb and 13 miles southwest of Clearlake at a depth of 1.5 miles, the survey said.
The survey received shake reports from Kelseyville, Lakeport and Geyserville.
A 3.4-magnitude quake occurred on Dec. 5 near The Geysers geothermal steamfield on Cobb, as Lake County News has reported.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
A report released this week by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) finds the nation’s ability to prevent and control infectious disease outbreaks are hampered by outdated systems and limited resources.
“The Outbreaks: Protecting Americans from Infectious Diseases” report finds that a majority of states (34) score 5 or lower out of 10 key indicators of policies and capabilities to protect against infectious disease threats.
Three states tied for the lowest score, achieving two out of 10 possible indicators – Georgia, Nebraska and New Jersey. California received 6 out of 10.
New Hampshire scored the highest, with 8 out of 10.
“From antibiotic-resistant superbugs to Salmonella to the seasonal flu, infectious diseases disrupt lives and communities,” said Jeffrey Levi, PhD, executive director of TFAH. “Fighting these diseases requires constant vigilance. The bad news is that we found major gaps in the country’s ability to prevent, control and treat outbreaks, leaving Americans at an unacceptable level of unnecessary risk.”
Some key findings include:
- One-third of states do not require health care facilities to report health care-associated infections (HAI). Approximately one out of every 20 hospitalized patients will contract a HAI.
- Only one-quarter of states vaccinated at-least half of their population against the seasonal flu. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends all Americans ages 6 months and older get vaccinated. Twenty percent of Americans get the flu each year.
- Only two states (Connecticut and Delaware) and Washington, D.C. meet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) goal of vaccinating at least 90 percent of preschoolers (19- to 35-month olds) against the whooping cough.
- Fewer than half of states require human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations, education for parents about the vaccine or funding for vaccinations. CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend the vaccination for both males and females at 11 or 12 years of age.
- One-third of states do not cover routine HIV screening under their Medicaid program. More than 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS, and almost one in five do not know they are infected.
- Just over half of public health laboratories did not test their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans either through a drill or real event last year.
- Two-thirds of states decreased funding for public health from Fiscal Year (FY) 2011-12 to FY 2012-13.
The report’s indicators are developed in consultation with leading public health experts based on data from publicly available sources or information provided by public officials.
“Many infectious disease threats keep me up at night – from the emergence of a new deadly disease, such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), to the prospect of bioterrorism, to antibiotic resistant infections, to the worsening of mosquito-borne illnesses being driven by changes in the climate,” said Tom Inglesby, MD, chief executive officer and director of the UPMC Center for Health Security.
“Outbreaks” provides a series of recommendations that address many of the major gaps in infectious disease control and prevention, including:
- Strengthening fundamental capabilities – maintaining an expert workforce and giving them state-of-the-art tools required to conduct investigations to quickly detect, control and treat disease outbreaks;
- Countering antibiotic resistance and prioritizing research and development of medical countermeasures should be top health and national security priorities;
- Increasing the number of Americans receiving recommended vaccinations and routine screenings for particular diseases, since these are the safest and most effective ways to reduce infectious diseases in the United States;
- Modernizing disease surveillance and ensuring public health laboratories have the equipment and capacity to not only test for routine problems like foodborne illnesses but also for new and large-scale threats like bioterrorism or a pandemic;
- Supporting policies and incentives to reduce the number of healthcare-associated infections, ensuring Americans can receive safe care;
- Improving global coordination to prevent and contain emerging new illnesses like MERS while maintaining defenses against “old-school” threats like malaria and tuberculosis;
- Shoring up the nation’s public health preparedness capabilities to respond to major disease outbreaks or acts of bioterrorism to ensure new threats can be rapidly identified and contained; and
- Countering complacency around HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C (HBV and HCV) and tuberculosis – including countering an alarming rise in new HIV infections among young gay men, and screening millions of Baby Boomers who may be infected with HCV and do not know they are at risk for developing serious liver disease as they age.
Score summary:
For the state-by-state scoring, states received one point for achieving an indicator or zero points if they did not achieve the indicator.
Zero is the lowest possible overall score, 10 is the highest.
The data for the indicators are from publicly available sources or were provided from public officials.
– 8 out of 10: New Hampshire.
– 7 out of 10: Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.
– 6 out of 10: California, Colorado, D.C., Hawaii, Maryland, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
– 5 out of 10: Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.
– 4 out of 10: Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah and West Virginia.
– 3 out of 10: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming.
– 2 out of 10: Georgia, Nebraska and New Jersey.
The report and state-by-state materials are available on TFAH’s Web site, www.healthyamericans.org .