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Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS

Published: 11 April 2020

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Easter Bunny is coming to town.

On Easter Sunday, the Lakeport Police Department, the city of Lakeport and the Lakeport Public Works Department will be assisting the Easter Bunny and Lakeport Rotary for a special visit to the city.

From noon to 2 p.m. Sunday, community members can drive by and wave at the Easter Bunny and two of his Rotary helpers – who will be masked and practicing social distancing – at Library Park, located across from City Hall at 225 Park St.

This is drive by only; people must not stop and get out of their vehicles. There can't be any stopping or congregating in the park.

Please enter on First Street and exit on Third Street so that everyone gets a good chance to blow the Easter Bunny a kiss.

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Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS

Published: 11 April 2020

Gov. Gavin Newsom has outlined steps California is taking to protect the residents and employees of the more than 1,224 skilled nursing facilities and 7,461 residential care facilities across the state.

Building on the state’s early action to protect these facilities, California has trained and is deploying 600 nurses to support compliance with COVID-19 guidance, and state staff is calling nursing homes across the state daily to provide support.

"Protecting California’s most vulnerable residents and the employees is a top priority – not only to protect public health but because it’s the right thing to do,” said Gov. Newsom. “Older Californians and those who are medically fragile are at higher risk of becoming seriously ill due to COVID-19, which is why we took early action to restrict visitors to these facilities. Now we are providing even more support for these facilities, their residents, and staff who serve them.”

Recognizing the threat to these medically fragile individuals, the state last month restricted visitors to these facilities except for end-of-life and other rare circumstances.

Before COVID-19 had spread widely in the community in California, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Social Services issued guidance and offered trainings on infection control. And the departments jointly deployed strike teams of infection control specialists to counties, nursing homes and residential care facilities for the elderly to provide one-on-one technical support and expertise.

The governor also announced on Friday that the USNS Mercy will be taking non-COVID-19 patients to help decompress skilled nursing facilities in the Los Angeles area.

To further protect vulnerable Californians, California is:

– Retraining 600 nurses to support facility compliance with COVID-19 guidance and to assist facilities with positive cases;
– Working to decompress facilities to help slow the potential spread of COVID-19 in these facilities and create facilities specifically for positive patients;
– Reaching out proactively to each skilled nursing facility on a daily basis to assess their specific needs and identify and address any challenges early on;
– Prioritizing testing for patients discharged from a hospital to a skilled nursing facility to ensure patients who test positive are transferred to a facility that can safely provide care to the residents and also protect COVID-19 negative residents. California will also prioritize the testing of symptomatic residents and potentially exposed residents to ensure they are immediately isolated;
– Prioritizing personal protective equipment to facilities with COVID-19 positive staff or residents and facilities that are at increased risk to COVID-19;
– Providing stipends to certified nurse assistants, licensed vocational nurses and other critical staff at nursing homes to make sure their needs are met. A previously announced Facebook donation of up to $25 million available to provide $500 stipends to up to 50,000 nursing home workers;
– Offering no-cost or low-cost hotel rooms for workers who have had possible exposure to COVID-19 or test positive for COVID-19 and do not need to be hospitalized; and
– Ensuring that families of nursing home residents are informed and educated on COVID-19 safety protections for their loved ones.

Visit www.covid19.ca.gov for critical steps Californians can take to stay healthy, and resources available to those impacted by the outbreak.

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Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

Published: 11 April 2020

As NASA marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission – which has become known as “a successful failure” that saw the safe return of its crew in spite of a catastrophic explosion – the agency is sharing a variety of resources, recognizing the triumph of the mission control team and the astronauts, and looking at how those lessons learned can be applied to its lunar Artemis program.

“Our goal 50 years ago was to save our valiant crew after sending them around the Moon and return them safely to Earth,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Our goal now is to return to the Moon to stay, in a sustainable way. We are working hard to ensure that we don’t need to respond to this kind of emergency in Artemis, but to be ready to respond to any problems we don’t anticipate.”

The crew of Apollo 13 consisted of Commander James (Jim) Lovell Jr., Command Module Pilot John Swigert Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise Jr. Their Saturn V rocket launched at 2:13 p.m. EST on April 11,1970, from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The command module was named Odyssey, and the lunar module was named Aquarius.

While en route to the Moon on April 13, an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured.

The lunar landing and moonwalks, which would have been executed by Lovell and Haise, were aborted as a dedicated team of flight controllers and engineering experts in the Apollo Mission Control Center devoted their efforts to developing a plan to shelter the crew in the lunar module as a “lifeboat” and retain sufficient resources to bring the spacecraft and its crew back home safely.

Splashdown occurred in the Pacific Ocean at 1:07 p.m. April 17, after a flight that lasted five days, 22 hours and 54 minutes.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, no NASA in-person activities are planned or sponsored to mark the Apollo 13 anniversary.

However, a wealth of new content and programming, historic documents, still and video imagery are available online, including previously unreleased conversations between the crew of Apollo 13 and the recently restored Apollo Mission Control Center in Houston.

This dialogue includes the now-famous exchange between Lovell and mission control during which Lovell utters the phrase, “Houston, we've had a problem.”

Among the resources NASA is making available are:

Apollo 13 on NASA TV

NASA TV is commemorating the anniversary with multiple videos and interviews, anchored by an original special program, “Apollo 13: Home Safe,” premiering on NASA Television and all of the agency’s streaming and social media platforms.

The 30-minute program features an interview with Lovell, a conversation with Haise and Flight Directors Gene Kranz and Glynn Lunney, and engineer Hank Rotter, in the restored Apollo mission control room mixed with archival footage from the mission.

In addition, NASA TV will air replays of historic mission footage and “pop-up” mission factoids at the exact times the events happened 50 years ago.

Apollo 13 on social media

Social media followers are invited to ask questions about Apollo 13 using the hashtag #AskNASA. Experts will provide answers to as many questions as possible on social media and some will be answered in NASA TV’s upcoming #AskNASA episode about the mission.

The NASA Headquarters Photo Team will share historical images from the photo archives using the @NASAHQPhoto Twitter account, leading up to the splashdown anniversary on Friday, April 17.

The @NASA Instagram account will feature part one and two of an “Apollo 13 by the Numbers” story, a visual recap of the mission as told by the NASA History Office.

On Monday, April 13, the NASA Tumblr page will tell the story about the mission using compelling images and multimedia.

The NASA History Facebook account and @NASAHistory Twitter account also have special content planned during the week of the anniversary.






Apollo 13 Views of the Moon in 4K

This video, from the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, uses data gathered from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft to recreate some of the stunning views of the Moon the Apollo 13 astronauts saw on their perilous journey around the farside of the Moon.

These visualizations, in 4K resolution, depict many different views of the lunar surface, starting with earthset and sunrise and concluding with the time Apollo 13 reestablished radio contact with mission control.

Houston, We Have A Podcast

Listen as Lovell and Haise remember the fateful mission from their perspective 50 years later and reflect on the highlights of their expansive careers and share wisdom gained from their famous mission on its 50th anniversary.

“Houston, We Have A Podcast” is the official podcast of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, in Houston.

Apollo 13 In Real Time

This searchable Apollo 13 website is a NASA-funded project designed by NASA contractor Ben Feist that provides viewers with access to all of the photographs, film, transcripts and audio from the mission. Visitors can replay the mission in real time or scroll through to find highlights.

The site includes more than 17,000 hours of audio recorded from the various positions at mission control. It also includes video from NASA press conferences as they occurred, as well as newly audio-synched, previously silent, mission control footage.

Most of the Apollo 13 flight control team audiotapes were digitized in cooperation with the University of Texas, Dallas. Five additional tapes were found with the help of the National Archives and were digitized earlier this year by NASA.

Apollo 13 in-flight video recordings

These TV transmissions are film recordings of television transmissions, or kinescopes, transferred onto broadcast videotape, then converted to digital files and posted to Johnson’s Internet Archive collection.

Apollo 13 imagery collections

NASA makes imagery available in many formats and resolutions, and NASA’s Image and Video Library contains many items related to Apollo 13. Apollo 13 images also are available on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, a volunteer-created site managed by NASA’s History Office.

As NASA marks the anniversary of Apollo 13, the agency is progressing with its Artemis program, which will send the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024, and establish sustainable exploration with its commercial and international partners by 2028. What we learn during sustained operations on the Moon will prepare us for the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.

Learn more about Artemis and NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach at https://www.nasa.gov/moontomars .