Joe Biden’s brother says the president is ‘very open-minded’ about psychedelics for medical treatment

• June 30, 2023

By AAMER MADHANI and JESSE BEDAYN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s youngest brother said in a radio interview Wednesday that the president has been “very open-minded” in conversations the two have had about the benefits of psychedelics as a form of medical treatment.

Frank Biden made the comments during a call into The Michael Smerconish Program on SiriusXM. The host had just interviewed a Wall Street Journal reporter who recently wrote about powerful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and employees who believe the use of psychedelics and similar substances can help lead to business breakthroughs.

“He is very open-minded,” Frank Biden said when asked by Smerconish about conversations he’s had with the president on the topic. “Put it that way. I don’t want to speak, I’m talking brother-to-brother. Brother-to-brother,” the younger Biden said. “The question is, is the world, is the U.S. ready for this? My opinion is that we are on the cusp of a consciousness that needs to be brought about to solve a lot of the problems in and around addiction, but as importantly, to make us aware of the fact that we’re all one people and we’ve got to come together.”

Frank Biden added that he had “done a great deal of research” on the issue “because I’m a recovering alcoholic for many, many years.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED: Aaron Rodgers says ayahuasca with teammates, astrology helped form strong bonds: “It is radically life-changing”

Some researchers believe psilocybin, the compound in psychedelic mushrooms, changes the way the brain organizes itself and can help users overcome things like depression, alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder. A drug that’s related to the anesthetic ketamine was cleared by the FDA to help people with hard-to-treat depression.

But medical experts caution that more research is needed on the drugs’ efficacy and the extent of the risks of psychedelics, which can cause hallucinations.

The American Psychiatric Association has not endorsed the use of psychedelics in treatment, noting the Food and Drug Administration has yet to offer a final determination. The FDA designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” in 2018, a label that’s designed to speed the development and review of drugs to treat a serious condition. MDMA, also known as ecstasy, also has that designation for PTSD treatment.

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The FDA last week released draft guidance for researchers designing clinical trials testing psychedelic drugs as potential treatments for a variety of medical conditions. The Biden administration has also provided to the National Institutes of Health and other agencies funding for dozens of projects studying psychedelic drugs with potential benefit for mental and behavioral health.

Earlier this year, Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize the adult use of psilocybin. Colorado’s voters last year voted to decriminalize psilocybin.

Republican strongholds, including Utah and Missouri, have or are considering commissioning studies into the drugs, partly inspired by veterans’ who have used psilocybin to help with PTSD.

Former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry spoke at a conference last week in Colorado about helping get a bill passed in the Texas legislature in 2021 to fund a study of psilocybin for veterans. He doesn’t support recreational use.

In Congress, similar veteran-focused proposals brought progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida into an unlikely alignment.

​ Orange County Register 

How much opioid settlement money is your county getting and will it help?

• June 30, 2023

“It took away the pain — all the pain,” said a doctor who fell victim to the charms of Oxycontin. “In the brain, in the heart, in the body. That’s what we’re up against.”

Every day in California, 20 people die of opioid-related overdoses, and many thousands more wrestle with the ravages of addiction. After years of legal wrangling, the companies that made and distributed the first waves of these super-addictive drugs — aggressively pushing doctors to prescribe them and insisting they weren’t addictive — are doing a financial penance that’s washing into most every neighborhood in America.

California and its counties will get about $3.5 billion over the next decade-plus from opioid settlements, according to the Attorney General’s office. The first waves of that money are arriving, and the lion’s share of it is in the control of local governments — primarily your county board of supervisors, but also cities.

To date, California’s state and local governments are owed $425 million from various opioid settlement funds, with $59.5 million for Los Angeles County and its cities, $22.7 million for Orange County and its cities, $17.7 million for Riverside County and its cities, and $12.7 million for San Bernardino County and its cities, according to data from Brown Greer, court-appointed funds administrator, and published by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Hundreds of millions more will funnel to California governments over the next several years. This money is meant to ameliorate harm. Will it, can it, actually make a difference?

“Policymakers, community leaders, and all those affected, want to avoid the outcomes of the tobacco litigation, in which only 2.6% of litigation payouts actually went to smoking prevention and cessation programs,” said a blueprint for wise settlement spending compiled by experts from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Stanford, RAND Corporation and others.

“State and local policymakers will, in many cases, have considerable discretion over how these lawsuit dollars will be spent in their communities — and they will need to weigh important trade-offs and make evidence-informed decisions to ensure the funds are well-spent.”

The money won’t come close to covering the $1 trillion in public and private costs of the opioid crisis, wrote Rebecca Lee Haffajee and Bradley D. Stein of RAND. But the infusion of dollars could quickly save lives and mitigate lifelong harms.

“It matters how this money is earmarked for use,” they wrote. “Settlement money should be spent in three areas that research shows will substantially reduce deaths and improve lives: preventing overdoses and other harms to those using opioids, providing evidence-based addiction treatment, and offering services for mothers and children affected by the crisis.”

Transparency is vital as these funds make their way into the world, said Stein, director of the NIH-funded RAND-USC Schaeffer Opioid Policy Center and senior physician policy researcher at RAND. But getting specifics from local governments is still very much a work in progress.

Destination: Still largely unclear

In giant Los Angeles County, which gets the biggest slice of the pie in Southern California, a county team is working on the final details of a multi-year spending plan that will be presented to the Board of Supervisors “as soon as possible,” officials said.

Officials are working with community-based service providers — who are on the ground and understand the most critical needs — to shape L.A. County’s plan, and the public will get to weigh in soon when it goes to the Board of Supervisors for approval. Expect to see proposals for harm reduction and overdose prevention programs, as well as recovery housing and youth education.

San Bernardino County is working on a plan. So is Riverside County, focusing on training, enhancing data collection, prevention, treatment, recovery efforts and a public education campaign. It’s expected to go to the Board of Supervisors this summer.

Costa Mesa hasn’t decided where to spend the money yet. Neither has the city of San Bernardino.

Annastasia Rose Beal of Harm Reduction Circle hands out Narcan and supplies in Santa Ana in April.(Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Santa Ana plans to use the money for homeless-related services, to buy naloxone and train first responders. The Riverside city council will debate the same options in late August, and will also consider using the cash to fund new positions like substance use disorder counselor, social worker and/or behavioral health clinician.

More than a dozen cities’ shares are so small they’re forwarding it to the County of Orange. The County of Orange has launched a data dashboard tracking “Orange County Drug and Alcohol Misuse and Mortality trends” to better target services where they’re needed, to be funded with settlement funds, and plans to provide medication-assisted treatment to folks in jail, greater support for pregnant women and families, buy Narcan and fentanyl test strips and launch a public education campaign.

Newport Beach, though, is forging ahead. It plans to use $396,000 to make naloxone — the drug that can reverse overdoses and essentially bring people back from the dead — more readily available beyond police and firefighters, including training workers at bars, restaurants, hotels, gas stations and other common places people might overdose.

“We will also be developing a public outreach campaign aimed at educating the public on the availability of Narcan, how to use it, and encouraging people to use it when in doubt (no downside if a person isn’t overdosing),” said John Pope, spokesman for Newport Beach, by email.

“Our thought is that most people understand the risks at this point, so we won’t be repeating the ‘one pill can kill’ type messaging. Instead, we want to make Narcan distribution more of a public health resource, similar to having first aid kids handy and knowing the basics of how to use it.”

Newport Beach has an internal working group that will keep tabs on the program and make adjustments. “One thing we’ll learn is how much Narcan to buy, how much gets used, and how we plan for that,” Pope said. “There’s an expiration date attached so we don’t want to buy less than we need, but also don’t want to buy a whole lot more. I could see some of the training components living past the grant, like the school presentations.”

Blueprints for wise spending

The opioid settlement agreements have taken pains to be specific about how the money can be spent, and how it will be reported, in an effort to not repeat past mistakes.

File photo.

Back in 1998, state governments reached an enormous, 25-year, $246 billion deal with the nation’s largest tobacco companies. It was to be penance for lies about the lethal effects of smoking and fund anti-tobacco programs. But what happened has been the source of debate, discouragement and disappointment, said Harvard University’s Allan M. Brandt in the Harvard Gazette.

“The $246 billion was used to fill budget gaps, build roads, and for other purposes; only very rarely was it used for any form of public health, let alone reducing tobacco use, treating those who were addicted, and protecting kids from becoming smokers,” he said. “It’s become a notorious example of collecting a lot of funds through litigation, but not getting those funds to those who most need or deserve them. I think a lot of people have watched the emergence of the opioid litigation with the tobacco settlement cloud hanging over the proceedings.”

To dispel that cloud, experts have been working for years on blueprints for wise spending.

RAND says that distributing naloxone, detecting fentanyl, providing sterile syringes and connecting people to adequate housing are the quickest routes to immediately and effectively reduce overdose rates.

Experts at Johns Hopkins offer five basic principles:

• Spend money to save lives (not fill budget holes);

• Use evidence to guide spending (fund treatment that offers medication to curb opioid abuse — not simply AA-style 12-step programs so ubiquitous in California);

• Invest in youth prevention (not simply school campaigns warning about drug danger, but real support for families struggling with addiction, as those kids are most at risk);

• Focus on racial equity;

• And develop a fair and transparent process for deciding where to spend the money (“guided by public health leaders with the active engagement of people and families with lived experience, clinicians, as well as other key groups.”)

Taken under advisement

With all that in mind, California’s Department of Health Care Services has issued a 17-page “allowable expenditures” bulletin to guide local governments as they wrestle with spending decisions right now.

Settlement money should be spent on “creating new or expanded substance use disorder treatment infrastructure,” interventions to prevent addiction in vulnerable youth, diverting people from the justice system to effective treatment, buying naloxone and addressing the needs of communities of color. And there’s an emphasis on medication-assisted treatment, still rejected by 41% of California’s licensed and certified treatment centers.

Josh Page holds a picture of his friend Timmy Solomon who died of an apparent drug overdose Sept. 2 at age 31. Solomon’s struggle was depicted in SCNG’s Rehab Riviera coverage. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

It’s still very early, but RAND’s Stein is cautiously optimistic.

“Overall, my sense is that, with the guardrails the states and others have set up, we’ll be able to avoid some of the worst things we saw in the tobacco settlement,” he said.

“We want to see the money flowing toward what works. Harm reduction. Treatment with medication. We know there’s a solid evidence base there, and that’s good.

“Where you see some concerns is in communities where funds go to treatment facilities that provide no medication treatment at all. While it isn’t going to work for everyone, it should certainly be an option.”

The singular focus on overdose deaths — overlooking those who use and remain very much alive and struggling — dearly needs attention, he said. “We have much poorer data on the range of harms that aren’t fatal overdoses. That heavily impact families and children.”

Transparency and inclusion are concerns of Susan G. Sherman of Johns Hopkins.

“Every context and community is different and is going to have different needs. But one thing that’s vital no matter where you are is: Who do you have in the process? Who is helping draw up these plans? Officials? People actively using? Family members?” she said. “You’re cutting yourself off at the knees when you’re not including a whole range of people. It’s often easier to have family members rather than people who are using, but the services serve them and they know what their needs are. That also provides meaning, and we know that having meaning in their lives allows them to make different choices.”

The public will get input when plans go to boards and city councils for approval, officials said. It’s a rare opportunity.

“For a generation or more, the U.S. has made little investment in building the capacity of the substance use disorder treatment system,” a coalition of experts said. “That system ….has not been subject to the requirements of modern health care, including the critical need to promote evidence-based treatment. As a result, a range of practices have been allowed to co-exist, leaving to chance whether consumers receive treatments that work or treatments that may be ineffective or even harmful.

“Abatement funds from opioid-related litigation offer an opportunity for a significant resetting of how we will deliver care for opioid use disorder in the future. …Thus, promoting ‘what works’ is of critical import.”

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Staff writer Laylan Connelly contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

AVP professional beach volleyball returns to Hermosa Beach July 7

• June 30, 2023

The Association of Volleyball Professionals is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year with tournaments across the country — including a return to LA County’s beach cities beginning next week.

The AVP’s Hermosa Beach tournament will begin Friday, July 7, while the one in Manhattan Beach is set for August.

There will be 16 women’s and men’s teams competing for titles and a $125,000 purse from July 7 to 9, with that tournament taking place next to the Hermosa Beach Pier. The future of the sport — the AVP Juniors — will also compete next week, with that competition beginning a few days before the professionals get underway.

In the 2022 tournament, Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner were victorious in the men’s bracket, defeating Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander. Sarah Sponcil and Terese Cannon took home the women’s title last year, but are not competing in this year’s tournament, according to the AVP.

The defending champs have new partners this year, with Schalk now competing with Tri Bourne and Brunner with Trevor Crabb.

While the Manhattan Beach AVP is known as the “granddaddy” of beach volleyball tournaments, the first AVP tournament took place in Hermosa Beach in 1984, according to avp.com. The first women’s tournament in Hermosa Beach was in 1993.

The AVP Juniors National Championships, from Wednesday, July 5, to July 9, in Hermosa Beach, “involves hundreds of teams flying in from around the country that have been competing all spring and early summer to be crowned junior champion,” said AVP CEO Al Lau.

The juniors event includes boys and girls divisions, featuring players from 12 to 18 years old.

Along with USA Volleyball, the AVP hosts a U.S. Beach Club Championship, which also features youth volleyball players and takes place in Hermosa Beach from July 9 to 11.

“When you look at next weekend in Hermosa,” Lau said, “it’s not only the AVP pros, people aspiring to go to the Olympics next year in Paris, there’s (also) that element of the next generation represented.”

The AVP action on the sand will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day.

All main draw matches on Stadium Court will stream live on ESPN+ and all matches played on Courts 1 and 2 will be available live on the Bally Live app, according to an AVP press release.

Live coverage of the women’s and men’s finals of the Hermosa Beach Open is scheduled for Sunday, July 9, starting at 1 p.m. on ESPNU.

Admission to the AVP is free, but Club AVP and courtside boxes have limited availability.

​ Orange County Register 

Judge denies two emergency requests related to Huntington Beach air show settlement

• June 30, 2023

A state judge on Friday, June 30, denied two emergency requests related to Huntington Beach’s near $5 million settlement with the operator of its annual air show over cancelling a day because of an oil spill – one sought to prevent the city from paying out the settlement and the other to require the city to release a full copy of the agreement.

City Attorney Michael Gates said Friday that Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Strickroth denied both emergency requests. A full hearing for the two cases is scheduled for July 17 before Judge Martha Gooding.

The settlement between the city and Pacific Airshow LLC was announced in May, with the city agreeing to pay the air show operator nearly $5 million. Huntington Beach could pay $2 million more if the city recovers additional money through its lawsuit against Amplify Energy Corp., the company that owns the pipeline that leaked in 2021, forcing the cancellation of the last day of the air show. 

Gates said he was happy with Friday’s outcome.

“I think Judge Strickroth got it right. There’s absolutely no urgency on any of this,” Gates said.

Former Huntington Beach Mayor Connie Boardman and former Planning Commissioner Mark Bixby filed the lawsuit to block the settlement. Huntington Beach resident and former City Council candidate Gina Clayton-Tarvin filed a separate lawsuit to get a copy of the air show settlement that Gates has refused to release.

“His dismissal of the demands by Clayton-Tarvin, Boardman and Bixby speaks to the merits of their claims. If their claims were compelling, the judge’s ruling might have been different,” Gates said.

The city has already budgeted the first settlement payment of $1.9 million that could be sent as early as July 1, Gates said. According to a summary of the settlement agreement, Pacific Airshow LLC must be paid that first installment by the end of July. If a judge rules against the city, Gates said any payment made could be retrieved.

Boardman and Bixby’s attorney Lee Fink said Friday that he remains hopeful going into the hearing on July 17 because the judge did not throw out their case.

“So the fact he’s put it over is a telltale sign that our application is good,” Fink said. 

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First day of Pacific Airshow brings high-flying action above Huntington Beach
Here’s what it looks like to fly with the planes in the Pacific Airshow
Major oil spill closes OC beaches, kills wildlife in Huntington Beach
A year later, the Huntington Beach oil spill still is being felt

​ Orange County Register 

Heat, storms bring a tumultuous start to summer

• June 30, 2023

By Tom Davies | Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — People in the central U.S. headed into the July Fourth weekend facing smoky haze, high temperatures and dealing with the aftermath of powerful derecho winds that caused widespread damage and left hundreds of thousands of residents without power.

Utility crews were scrambling Friday to restore electricity after a storm system moved across Illinois and Indiana on Thursday packing winds that sometimes reached more than 70 miles (112 kilometers).

The storm damaged trees and buildings in the central parts of both states from the Mississippi River to the Indianapolis area. Utility companies faced the challenge of trying to replace electrical lines entangled in downed trees ahead of more expected thunderstorms and temperatures climbing to around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

“We’re seeing a large number of broken poles, trees and powerlines, spans of wire down,” said Angeline Protogere, a spokeswoman for Duke Energy in Indiana.

Some communities in central Illinois and western Indiana declared disaster emergencies to limit traffic on roads for utility and cleanup crews to work. Utility companies reported that more than 250,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Friday morning.

The National Weather Service said the storm was a derecho, which is often described as an inland hurricane because of its line of strong winds stretching for hundreds of miles.

“We had damage all the way from northeast Kansas, all the way down into Kentucky and across Indiana,” said John Bumgardner, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Illinois.

In the South, a dangerous heat wave that has been blamed for the deaths of at least 14 people was expected to last into the weekend in some areas. Forecasters warned that heat indexes could rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) and an excessive heat warning remained in place Friday for parts of Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.

In Memphis, Tennessee, city and county officials said relief efforts were focused on those who still had no power and air conditioning after strong storms Sunday that knocked down trees and power lines. About 10,000 homes and businesses still had no power on Friday morning, according to the local utility, Memphis Light, Gas and Water.

“To all of those customers, I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I know how difficult it can be in the absence of a utility and a commodity that you rely on for your daily life to help you cook, clean, and stay cool,” said Doug McGowen, the utility’s president and CEO, during a news conference Thursday.

The storm in the Midwest did help clear the region’s air of smoke from Canadian wildfires that had prompted warnings for people to stay inside. The Environmental Protection Agency had listed many cities, including Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, Ohio, as having “very unhealthy air” earlier in the week.

The EPA warned Friday that parts of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut could experience “unhealthy” air conditions because of the wildfires in Quebec and northern Ontario.

“The primary concern is high concentrations of fine particle air pollution that is unhealthy, especially for sensitive groups such as people with respiratory disease, the elderly, or people with compromised health,” the agency said.

The Midwest might only have a brief respite from the Canadian smoke as another storm is poised to move through the region Sunday, meteorologist Bumgardner said.

“Behind that our winds will probably switch back to northerly, which theoretically could bring a little more smoke into the area,” Bumgardner said. “But that’s tough to predict more than a day or two out.”

Airline travelers did get some relief Friday, with none of the weather-induced restrictions imposed earlier this week on planes landing and taking off at major airports in the Northeast.

Still, by midday on the East Coast more than 2,000 flights had been delayed and more than 300 others canceled — more than 200 of those on United Airlines, according to FlightAware.

If the trends hold up, United will have the most cancellations of any U.S. airline for a seventh straight day.

Associated Press writers David Koenig in Dallas, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J. contributed.

​ Orange County Register 

Los Alamitos is the 11th Orange County city to allow July 4 fireworks sale, use

• June 30, 2023

Los Alamitos residents can set off their own Fourth of July fireworks at home for the first time in 37 years.

This year, Los Alamitos is joining the 10 other Orange County cities that have been allowing the sale and use of legal “safe and sane” fireworks.

Two stands selling the fireworks are being allowed, one in the Vons parking lot at 11322 Los Alamitos Blvd., and the other shopping center at 4141 Katella Ave. They will open on Saturday, July 1, and sell through Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Safe and sane fireworks must carry the California Fire Marshall seal.

Anaheim booths are the first in the county to start sales, which kicked off Wednesday in that city. Most of the cities allow sales from July 1 to 4, a few start on June 30 each year. Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Santa Ana, Stanton, Villa Park and Westminster all allow fireworks sales.

Lisa Clemons, right, hands a bag of fireworks to a customer at the fireworks stand for the Anaheim Amateur Figure Skating Association at 420 N. Euclid in Anaheim on Thursday, June 29, 2023. Anaheim residents may purchase the approved fireworks from June 28 to July 4 at 16 stands throughout Anaheim. Fireworks are banned for the Anaheim Hills area east of the 55 freeway and southeast of the 91 freeway. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Los Alamitos hosts a free annual fireworks show with Seal Beach at the Joint Forces Training Base, which is attended by 7,500 to 10,000 people each year, City Manager Chet Simmons said.

Now in its 36th year, the event has been moved to July 3 – gates open at 4 p.m. and the fireworks are at 9 – to allow the military personnel the opportunity to celebrate Independence Day with their families. So in December, the City Council approved the use and sale of fireworks so Los Alamitos residents could light their own on July 4.

For more, see: Where you can see July 4 fireworks in Orange County

Another driving force in the discussion to legalize fireworks was the city’s proximity to other communities that allow their use, meaning residents were purchasing them elsewhere and bringing them home, Councilmember Shelley Hasselbrink said.

“And it’s not going to stop illegal fireworks at all,” she said.

After discussing with major fireworks distributors and other cities with fireworks booths, Los Alamitos leaders decided that their city of about 11,700 people could accommodate two booths, Simmons said.

The booths will be operated by the Los Alamitos Community Foundation to raise money for three main projects: a Police Department canine program, an adaptive recreation program and an urban forest program. Hasselbrink, who is also the foundation’s treasurer, said a police dog could help the officers tackle drug sales and the adaptive recreation program could help children with disabilities.

She estimated that each booth could make about $20,000 in profit.

Volunteers from four or five other nonprofits have also been trained to help operate the booths.

As the council was discussing reversing the ban on fireworks, concerns were raised about their effects on pets. The city has posted firework safety tips on its website and social media.

“Safe and sane isn’t going to add to pets’ distress,” Hasselbrink said, noting how loud the night already is with the illegal fireworks people have been using. “They’re already distressed.”

Hasselbrink has never sold fireworks before and said she is looking forward to her shift in one of the booths on Saturday. Through the fireworks sales, she said she’ll be getting to share the fond memories from her childhood of the Fourth of July. There are kids in Los Alamitos who have never held a sparkler, she said.

All cities in Orange County prohibit the use of fireworks without the state seal and many have hefty fines for those caught using illegal fireworks.

Los Alamitos and most cities also restrict the use of the safe and sane fireworks to the Fourth of July; Santa Ana and Stanton also their use starting Saturday and Costa Mesa on Sunday. In Anaheim, fireworks of any kind are prohibited in in the hilly eastern side of Anaheim where wildfires are a risk. The ban runs east of the 55 and east and southeast of the 91 freeway.

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​ Orange County Register 

Prado Dam patriotic mural to be lit up for July 4th

• June 30, 2023

It’s time to shine for the Prado Dam’s newly restored patriotic mural.

The iconic 76,800-square-foot mural near Corona, revived with the help of $100,000 in community donations and dedicated in early June, will be illuminated for one night only on Tuesday, July 4, in celebration of Independence Day, Riverside County officials announced Thursday, June 29.

Originally created in 1976 by 30 Corona High School students to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial, the mural has the phrase “200 Years of Freedom” in red paint, along with “1776-1976” painted in red, white and blue to resemble the American flag. A blue liberty bell is in between.

“After celebrating the collaborative effort to restore the mural to its original glory, we wanted to take another step and honor all those who made it possible,” Jason Uhley, general manager and chief engineer of the county’s Flood Control and Water Conservation District, said in a news release.

The illuminated mural will be visible from the 91 and 71 freeways.

Related links

Patriotic mural restored on Prado Dam near Corona
Watch this patriotic mural at the Prado Dam go from old to new again
Repainting of patriotic mural on Corona-area Prado Dam begins
Prado Dam patriotic mural near Corona loses legal protection, but could be repainted

​ Orange County Register 

Gregg Berhalter’s return as USMNT coach set for September

• June 30, 2023

Gregg Berhalter’s second tenure as U.S. men’s national soccer coach officially begins after the current CONCACAF Gold Cup.

The first competitions for Berhalter will come in September with a pair of international friendlies against Asian Confederation nations Uzbekistan (Sept. 9) and Oman (Sept. 12).

This will be the first time the U.S. has ever faced either nation.

“We are very intentional and committed to presenting different challenges to our team during the next three years as we continue to develop the program,” Berhalter said in a statement. “Uzbekistan and Oman are first-time opponents for us and both are preparing for the AFC Asian Cup, so we expect them to be good tests.”

The game against Uzbekistan will take place at CITYPARK in St. Louis (2:30 p.m., TNT). The meeting against Oman will be played at Allianz Field in Minnesota (5:30 p.m., TNT).

The matches will fall on a FIFA international fixture date, meaning all players will be available for selection.

In October, USMNT will face Germany (Oct. 14) in Connecticut and Ghana (Oct. 17) in Tennessee.

Berhalter, whose contract had expired at the end of 2022 after the FIFA World Cup, where he led the U.S. to the Round of 16, was initially replaced by assistant and interim coach Anthony Hudson amid controversy and allegations of blackmail.

The parents of Gio Reyna, upset with their son’s treatment and lack of playing time at the World Cup, notified the U.S. Soccer Federation of Berhalter allegedly assaulting the woman who later became his wife in 1991. An ensuing independent investigation by U.S. Soccer cleared Berhalter to be rehired as USMNT head coach June 16.

B.J. Callaghan is currently serving as interim coach through the CONCACAF Gold Cup, taking over after stepped down a month ago. Callaghan also led the USMNT to the CONCACAF Nations League win.

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​ Orange County Register