Free Republic

There is growing evidence that birds flying in the vicinity of a solar thermal power project in California’s Mojave Desert are being injured and even killed either by the solar heat that’s focused with mirrors on its three energy-collecting towers, or by colliding with the mirrors themselves. Yet a task force set up to investigate the problem at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) has brushed aside several recommendations by the forensics laboratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), according to the minutes of a meeting on the subject obtained by the Los Angeles public television station...

Starting Jan. 1, KCET-TV Channel 28 is severing its relationship with PBS to become the nation's largest independent public TV station. Los Angeles' flagship PBS channel will begin airing local programs, BBC repeats, news and documentaries made elsewhere, as KOCE-TV Channel 50 in Orange County carries most of the PBS shows for Southern California. If major cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., can sustain a PBS player, why not Los Angeles?

HOLLYWOOD -- Anyone watching Fox's new primetime sudser "The OC" would think Orange County is chock-a-block with fabulous beach houses, big cars and beautiful young people. But it's also the only county in the country that is on the verge of having to sell off its cash-strapped public broadcasting station to the highest bidder. It may not be the last. There are some 350 public service broadcast licenses scattered around the country, and it's arguable that joint operations in larger markets where there are signal and audience overlap might be a wise course for some of these perennially penny-pinched outlets....