Corey Jackson: California has a mental health crisis, it’s time for Sacramento to take action

• May 13, 2023

The mental health crisis in California must be addressed. Families are being torn apart, with loved ones lost to addiction, self-harming and other mental health-related tragedies. According to research conducted by Let’s Get Healthy California, suicides are now the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults ages 15-24 in California. Enough is enough.

Nearly 1 in 7 California adults’ experiences a mental illness. But a recent survey by the California Health Care Foundation found close to two-thirds of adults with a mental illness and two-thirds of adolescents with major depressive episodes did not get treatment. Why is this? This can be fueled by a combination of factors, including the lack of access to quality care, a shortage of mental health professionals and systemic barriers that prevent people of color from receiving the help they need. Individuals struggling with mental health issues also face stigma, discrimination, and shame, which often exacerbates their conditions and make it even more difficult for them to seek help.

Despite the clear need for increased mental health services, California’s mental health system is underfunded and understaffed. This shortage is particularly acute in rural areas, where access to mental health services is even more limited. We must ensure that mental health services are accessible to all, regardless of income or ZIP code. We must break down the barriers that prevent individuals from accessing quality care and support.

This crisis impacts everyone, regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status. Yet, marginalized communities are disproportionately affected. African American and Latino Californians are less likely to receive mental health treatment, despite being more likely to experience trauma and stress. This is unacceptable.

We need a comprehensive strategy that includes prevention, early intervention, and treatment. We need to educate our communities about mental health, reduce stigma, and provide culturally competent care. We need to train more mental health professionals and support them with fair compensation and resources.

As chair of the Select Committee on California’s Mental Health Crisis, I plan to aggressively tackle this issue. That is why I have introduced two bills focused on increasing access to mental health services in low-income communities. The first bill, Assembly Bill 1451, provides funding for counties to establish in-patient and out-patient mental health urgent care units in communities with at least 70% free or reduced lunch communities. This bill also funds community health worker programs to provide mental health services to those who need it most.

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The second bill, Assembly Bill 1450, would require K-12 schools, county office of education and charter school to conduct universal screenings for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and mental health conditions of all students. AB 1450 also requires schools to employ or contract with at least one mental health clinician, and at least one case manager to conduct these critical and lifesaving screenings. Lastly, this bill will require the mental health clinician who conducts a screenings to develop, and provide an action plan based upon findings from the screening. We know when ACEs and mental health conditions are caught early, outcomes can be improved.

These bills are just the beginning. We need to come together as a state to demand action on mental health. The mental health crisis in California is a complex problem that will require a comprehensive, coordinated response. But the stakes are too high to ignore. I urge you to join me in this fight for mental health justice in California.

Corey Jackson represents Assembly District 60.

​ Orange County Register 

Aquinas baseball gets boost from its bats in playoff win over Ocean View

• May 13, 2023

SAN BERNARDINO >> Hits found holes and the Aquinas baseball team made more of its own luck.

Nate Christman tripled, homered and had three RBIs as Aquinas totaled 11 hits in a 7-2 win over Ocean View on Friday in a CIF Southern Section Division 2 quarterfinal playoff game.

“Today we got a lot more guys on base and in scoring position and it makes for a much more successful day for us,” Aquinas coach Mike Carpentier said.

Christman went 3 for 4 with a run, and Gavin Egan and Josh Torres both had pinch-hit two-run singles as Aquinas (25-4) won its 11th consecutive game.

“It’s not just me, it’s the guys coming off the bench, too,” Christman said. “For those guys to go 2 for 2 with four RBIs is big.”

The Falcons host Crespi in a semifinal round playoff game Tuesday.

“There’s still lots to do. The last two years we’ve gotten to the semifinals and haven’t gotten the job done, so we’re looking to do differently this time,” Christman said.

Spencer Johnson was knocked around for six earned runs on nine hits in the loss for Ocean View (20-11), which was making its second section quarterfinal appearance since 2019.

“I thought we hit some balls on the screws, right at guys, and (Aquinas) found the bleeders, so the luck went their way and in a playoff games that’s everything,” Ocean View coach Tanner VanMaanen said.

Ocean View had outscored opponents 20-1 in the first two playoff rounds but managed just five hits against Aquinas while striking out seven times and leaving five runners on base.

A University of Oregon commit, Christman slammed a two-run home run to straightaway center field in the second inning for an early lead.

“It was a 1-1 changeup and he just didn’t execute,” Christman said. “It kind of hung. It was identical to his fastball, just slower speed, so I was able to recognize that and put a good swing on it.”

Torres came up with a two-run single in the fourth to double the lead, a hit that proved decisive in the first ever matchup between the two programs.

Mulivai Levu blasted a two-run home run in the fifth to cut the lead in half and chase Aquinas starter Cody Kiemele, but reliever Owen Egan entered and kept Ocean View from inflicting further damage.

“We didn’t feel overmatched, but you’re in a CIF game and you need to make luck happen,” VanMaanen said.

Gavin Egan smoked a two-run double into the right-center field gap to extend the lead in the bottom of the fifth, and Christman tripled off the wall to drive in Owen Egan in the sixth.

Owen Egan allowed just one hit and struck out three of the final four batters he faced to earn the save.

Mason Greenhouse went 2 for 2 with two runs, and Eric Bitonti had a double among his two hits and also scored a run for Aquinas, which defeated Capistrano Valley Christian 3-2 in 12 innings in a second-round game Tuesday.

“We’ve been battle-tested and we’re ready for games like this,” Carpentier said. “After we won the last game it was already like we’d won the championship because it was so grueling.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Swanson: Anthony Davis, Lakers block out noise, thwart Warriors

• May 13, 2023

LOS ANGELES — Oh, sure.

The resurgent, Western Conference finals-bound Lakers would have you believe they’re operating in a soundproof booth, that none of what Coach Darvin Ham characterized as “useless” and “irrelevant” noise is capable of reaching them.

They’ll tell you they’re focused, locked in, that even if another playoff game is on TV, it’s on mute. That they’re not hearing any of it. None. Too busy turning the tide of what was a lost season into something else entirely – a wild success story.

Definitely don’t care, they’ll say, about whatever is coming out of pundits’ mouths – even, or maybe especially, when they’re joking and expressing incredulity about Anthony Davis having to leave Game 5 after being hit in the head: “I’d be damned if I wasn’t laughing,” Stephen A. Smith said on ESPN the day after.

All that said, if you’re a Lakers fan, you hoped the Lakers weren’t actually tuning it out. You hoped that they – and Davis especially – heard every last disrespectful utterance.

Felt every inane insinuation insisting the NBA champion that was averaging 21.5 points, 13.5 rebounds and 3.5 blocked shots on a bad foot was somehow on the squishy side.

You hoped that he’d take it upon himself to use Game 6 of the Lakers’ best-of-seven second-round series against Golden State – the 122-101 victory a deciding blow against the team that won four of the previous eight NBA titles – to stifle any and all negative chatter so that no one has to hear it.

Though, again, to hear the Lakers tell it, it’s their inner voices that do the motivating: “You know,” Ham said, “if (Davis) felt like he had a subpar performance, he beats himself up a lot, and I just try to subside that part of him a little bit.”

That’s what’s struck Ham about his season with Davis: “Overall, just how much he loves the game. How much he cares.”

And no, Davis wasn’t concussed and so, yes, he played Friday night, on the Crypto.com Arena court 2½ hours before tipoff, taking care of his business. He was greeted, per ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, by Golden State’s Gary Patyton II: “C’mon, just take the night off, bro,” before Davis went through his warmup routine.

The Warriors wished!

From the jump – which he won – Davis was a dutiful deterrent to would-be drivers, including heading off Golden State scoring sensation Steph Curry on his forays forward.

And Davis was a vacuum on the glass, sucking up 10 of his 20 rebounds in his first 10 minutes of play. He finished the first quarter with a near double-double, adding nine points in an 11-minute span during which the Lakers outscored Golden State by 13 points.

And here’s the thing: All the while, the 30-year-old big man was playing within himself. Hardly a rabid bulldog with a bone to pick, more a man embodying a sailplane, gliding over all those peaks and valleys below.

And though Davis’ statistical production dipped in his nine second-quarter minutes, it was a stretch in which the Lakers outscored Golden State by six points and that he capped with a rousing block of a Donte DiVincenzo shot. And his swat set up Austin Reaves’ roof-raising, buzzer-beating 54-footer to push the Lakers’ halftime advantage to 56-46.

It wasn’t until the third quarter that the temperature really rose, when Davis dunked a lob from LeBron, spun around, swiped the inbound pass and drew a shooting foul – and then he let loose a scream.

As he stalked down the court emotions bubbled behind him too: Dennis Schroder was assessed a technical foul – a disqualifying second – for jawing from the other side of the ball being pushed into his face by Draymond Green, who drew his first technical.

And Davis kept working, staying on the court beside James – who scored 10 of his 30 points in the period – for all 12 minutes of the third. They kept the core of the four-time world champion Warriors at arm’s length, 14 points off the pace with only the final quarter left between the Lakers and a Western Conference finals berth against the top-seeded Denver Nuggets.

Will Davis’ 39 minutes, 17 points and those 20 rebounds, two blocks and two steals in Friday’s closeout victory over the defending champions be enough to shush those detractors?

Actually, who cares?

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​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: These Lakers shouldn’t be considered underdogs

• May 13, 2023

LOS ANGELES — The Lakers belong here.

They are entitled to no longer be considered a No. 7 seed. They might still be underdogs in the national consciousness, and their successes in the first two rounds of the NBA playoffs might be considered upsets, but those who would do so need to look beyond the 43-victory regular season and consider the twists and turns of this strange journey, and how they’ve helped transform this team.

When the Western Conference finals begin Tuesday night in Denver, this will be a fair fight. Yes, the Nuggets are the No. 1 seed, and they have Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, home-court advantage and a healthy belief that this is their year.

But how do you consider any LeBron James team that makes it to this point of the season an underdog? The Lakers themselves believe, and the journey has given them reason to. Vanquishing the young, energetic Memphis Grizzlies, and then dethroning the proud champion Golden State Warriors in the first two rounds of the playoffs has fed that belief.

“I think the seeding thing is just a number,” said Lakers guard Austin Reaves, one of the heroes of Friday night’s series-clinching 122-101 victory over the Warriors. “When you have guys like Bron, A.D. (Anthony Davis) that’s won championships, even Tristan (Thompson) that’s been through the fire with LeBron and all those championships (in Cleveland), you always feel like you have a chance.

“And especially with the roster that we have, the talent that we have. Like, you seen Game 4 when Lonnie (Walker IV) went out and put on a clinic, and three games before that he wasn’t playing. So when you have talent like that, our whole thing before the playoffs was (to) get in. Like if we get in, you know, we really think in a seven-game series that we would be tough to beat. And I think that that’s been proven these first two series.”

What’s the bigger achievement? The major roster renovation General Manager Rob Pelinka performed at midseason? Or the bond that the new guys and the holdovers have developed in just three months?

“Rob Pelinka can tell you right up, I didn’t expect this,” D’Angelo Russell said. “I didn’t think this. So I’d be wrong, I’d be lying to tell you I did. But once we got out there, you could just tell guys liked each other. Guys wanted to play for each other. And it was just contagious. Everybody wanted to win. Everybody wanted to just get the job done every night. And you looked up, we had a chance and we ran with that.

“He got snubbed for that GM award that he was supposed to get,” Russell added.

Sacramento’s Monte McNair was named the NBA’s Executive of the Year last week, not surprisingly given the emergence of the Kings. But the Lakers’ dramatic improvement over the last two months of the regular season should have had enough impact for him to finish higher than 11th in the voting of league executives. Pelinka got one third-place vote and that was it.

But it’s like the point Coach Darvin Ham made the other night when other awards snubs were mentioned. Would you rather have a regular season award, or would you rather have a legitimate shot at a ring?

“Bunch of guys that were selfless,” Russell said of the trades that brought Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and Mo Bamba as well as himself. “Nobody expected or wanted anything. We worked for it all. And we had a touch, just a tad bit of chemistry in there, too. … When you have the right chemistry with guys it makes it that easy to go out every night and just play for each other.”

These players are prepared for this environment. Being a Laker and a member of LeBron’s team, and the attention and environment that comes with that helps. The intense focus needed to dig out of the hole the Lakers themselves created, or at least those who were on the roster earlier in the season … that helps, too.

“The month previous (to the playoffs), that whole buildup was basically playoff basketball for us,” Reaves said. “I can’t speak for the other teams, but we were in must-win situations for a long time. And to kind of be locked in like that before this – I mean, this is different just because you play the same team at most seven times. But to have that attention to detail, the focus that we had to have for the last month of the regular season, I think can be a big benefit for us because like I said, we were so locked in for so long.”

It does start with the leader. Whether or not LeBron was pacing himself at points during the Warriors series, he laid it all out there in Game 6: 30 points, nine rebounds, nine assists, two steals, one blocked shot and a couple of no-look passes that brought back memories of Magic Johnson orchestrating a previous generation’s fast break.

“They (the other players) expect nothing but greatness from him,” Ham said. “… It’s about the work he’s put in and where he’s placed himself, not just in his league today, but amongst the greats.”

LeBron’s been here often enough before that the expectations are baked in. So when asked if there was a possibility the Lakers were playing with house money at this point, he shot that down.

“Nah,” he said. “We’re trying to win every hand.”

This is no underdog. This is a team that’s going for the franchise’s 18th NBA championship.

It belongs here. And it very well could stay to the end.

[email protected]

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​ Orange County Register 

Journalist Hodding Carter III dies; during Iran hostage crisis, he was State Department spokesman

• May 12, 2023

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist who updated Americans on the Iran hostage crisis as U.S. State Department spokesman and won awards for his televised documentaries, has died. He was 88.

His daughter, Catherine Carter Sullivan, confirmed that he died Thursday in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Before moving to Washington in 1977, Carter was editor and publisher of his family’s newspaper, the Delta Democrat-Times, in Greenville, Mississippi.

Carter had been co-chair of the Loyalist Democrats, a racially diverse group that won a credentials fight at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, unseating the all-white delegation by Mississippi’s governor, John Bell Williams.

Carter’s campaign work in 1976 for Jimmy Carter, no relation, helped secure him a job as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. It was in this role that he was seen on television news during the 444 days that Iran held 52 Americans hostage.

When Ronald Reagan was elected to the White House in 1980, Carter returned to journalism as president of MainStreet, a television production company specializing in public affairs programs that earned him four national Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award for documentaries.

Carter appeared as a panelist, moderator or news anchor at ABC, BBC, NBC, CNN and PBS. He also wrote op-ed columns for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He served twice on the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Kenneth Taylor, left, former Canadian ambassador to Iran, talks with Hodding Carter III, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs, at an event in New York in 1980.

Carter later was named the John S. Knight Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland. In 1998 he became president of the John S. Knight and James L. Knight Foundation, based in Miami.

After leaving the foundation, he began teaching leadership and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006. He wrote two books, “The Reagan Years” and “The South Strikes Back.”

Carter, an ex-Marine who exercised regularly, underwent surgery in 2012 to have a pacemaker installed to help control an irregular heart rhythm.

Progressive politics ran in his family. William Hodding Carter III was born April 7, 1935, in New Orleans, to William Hodding Carter Jr. and Betty Werlein Carter. They moved to Greenville, Mississippi, recruited by a group of community leaders to start a weekly newspaper that evolved into the Delta Democrat-Times.

His father’s editorials about social and economic intolerance earned him a national reputation and undying enmity and threats from white supremacists. He also won the Pulitzer Prize, in 1946, for a series of editorials critical of U.S. treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

His mother, from a prominent New Orleans family, was a feature writer and editor who recalled sitting at home with a shotgun across her lap after receiving threats from the Ku Klux Klan.

Carter was the oldest of three sons. His brother Philip Dutarte Carter, reported for Newsweek and served as publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times and Vieux Carré Courier as well as financier of Gambit, a New Orleans weekly. Another brother, Thomas Hennen Carter, killed himself playing Russian roulette.

Hodding Carter III attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire before graduating from Greenville High School in 1953. He graduated from Princeton University in 1953 and married Margaret Ainsworth Wolfe. They had four children before divorcing in 1978.

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Carter later married Patricia M. Derian, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who sought to transform U.S. foreign policy as President Carter’s assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs.

After she died in 2016, Carter married again, in November 2019, to journalist and author Patricia Ann O’Brien after the two connected during a reunion at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

​ Orange County Register 

United pilots picket for higher pay ahead of summer season

• May 12, 2023

By David Koenig | Associated Press

DALLAS — Just ahead of what could be a record-breaking summer travel season, pilots from one of the nation’s biggest airlines marched in picket lines at major airports on Friday as they push for higher pay.

The United Airlines pilots have been working without a raise for more than four years while negotiating with airline management over a new contract.

The pilots are unlikely to strike anytime soon, however. Federal law makes it very difficult for unions to conduct strikes in the airline industry, and the last walkout at a U.S. carrier was more than a decade ago.

The coast-to-coast protests by United pilots come on the heels of overwhelming strike-authorization votes by pilots at American Airlines and Southwest Airlines. United pilots could be the next to vote, according to union officials.

Pilots at all three carriers are looking to match or beat the deal that Delta Air Lines reached with its pilots earlier this year, which raised pay rates by 34% over four years.

United has proposed to match the Delta increase, but that might not be enough for a deal.

“We still have a long ways to go to resolve some of the issues at the table,” said Garth Thompson, chair of the United wing of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Thompson said discussion about wages has been held up while the two sides negotiate over scheduling, including the union’s wish to limit United’s ability to make pilots work on their days off.United spokesman Joshua Freed said, “We’re continuing to work with the Air Line Pilots Association on the industry-leading deal we have put on the table for our world-class pilots.”

Even if the unions and companies fail to reach agreements quickly, strikes are unlikely in the next few months — when millions of Americans hope to fly over summer vacation. Under U.S. law, airline and railroad workers can’t legally strike, and companies can’t lock them out, until federal mediators determine that further negotiations are pointless.

The National Mediation Board rarely declares a dead end to bargaining, and even if it does, there is a no-strikes “cooling-off” period during which the White House and Congress can block a walkout. That’s what President Bill Clinton did minutes after pilots began striking against American in 1997. In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill that Congress passed to impose contract terms on freight railroad workers, ending a strike threat.

The last strike at a U.S. carrier occurred at Spirit Airlines in 2010.

Over the years, airline workers have conducted job actions that fell short of a strike but disrupted flights anyway. A federal judge fined the American Airlines pilots’ union $45 million for a 1999 sickout that crippled the airline’s operations, although the amount was later reduced.

Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University, said Congress would not permit an airline strike because of the economic harm it would cause, but unhappy pilots could still cause disruptions in other ways.

“They always have ‘work to rule.’ They could say, ‘We’re not working any overtime,’” Wheaton said. “I don’t anticipate the pilots trying to screw up travel for everybody intentionally, but bargaining is about leverage and power … having the ability to do that can be a negotiating tactic.”

Airlines are vulnerable to work-to-rule protests because they depend on finding pilots and flight attendants to pick up extra shifts during peak travel periods.

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Regardless of the legal hurdles to a walkout, unions believe that strike votes give them leverage during bargaining, and they have become more common. A shortage of pilots is also putting those unions in particularly strong bargaining position.

United has roughly 14,000 pilots, and the union expects at least 2,000 will picket Friday at 10 airports from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles. The union is also distributing leaflets that highlight the pilots’ desire for better work-life balance in their scheduling but make no mention of pay.

​ Orange County Register 

Larry Magid: Google unveils new devices while focusing on AI

• May 12, 2023

As I entered Shoreline Amphitheater on Wednesday, I thought I was attending Google IO – the company’s annual developers conference. But after listening to CEO Sundar Pichai and several other Google executives speak about new products and services, the event felt like it should be renamed Google AI.

Indeed, the first 75 minutes of the two-hour event was focused on how artificial intelligence and specifically generative AI (GAI), is not only the main ingredient of Google Bard, the company’s new conversational, AI chat service, but soon integrated into all its services including search, photos, maps and Google docs.  But even the device part of the event focused largely on AI, which is central to the new hardware products they unveiled at the event. Google announced a $499 Pixel 7A phone, a Pixel Tablet starting at $499 and the $1,799 Pixel Fold, the company’s first foldable smart phone.

Good position to compete

While it’s hard to predict how any company or product will do when it comes to a new paradigm shift like GAI, Google is in a good position to compete because it’s already the No. 1 search engine, and as Google executives emphasized during the event, search is a great starting point for AI queries. Google is in the process of retooling search to not only give links but to enhance them with short articles, called AI Snapshots, that it creates on the fly to answer user questions, including questions users pose in conversational language. In a presentation, Google Vice President of Engineering Cathy Edwards demonstrated how a parent could ask Google to recommend a national park for a vacation with kids and a dog and get written answer in addition to search results and planning resources for the vacation.

Google also announced that Bard is now available for anyone to try at bard.google.com, without having to join a waiting list.

Maps and photos

Google Maps is getting AI-generated routing such as generating a video preview of a bike ride before you hop on the bike. Google is also adding AI photo editing to Google photos, making it very easy to move objects or people within a picture or turn a cloudy day into a sunny one. Google is already offering its Magic Eraser tool on Pixel phones that enables you to easily remove objects from a picture without affecting what’s behind them. This AI photo editing is great, but it will make it a lot easier to create “deep fakes” by doctoring pictures. Google also showed off ways that you can use AI to describe what you want to see in a picture and have it generated automatically as a drawing or as what looks like a photograph. I wonder if it could create a picture of me shaking hands with Albert Einstein or George Washington but fear that it could be used to create a fake photo that could defame someone.

Thinking about what could go wrong

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Speaking of fear, lots of people, including Google executives, worry about the negative aspects of AI.  In a blog post, Google’s Vice President of Technology and Society James Manyika said that “AI must be both bold and responsible” in ways that “maximizes the positive benefits to society while addressing the challenges.” He acknowledged a “natural tension between the two,” adding “we believe it’s possible — and in fact critical — to embrace that tension productively.  At least they’re thinking about what could go wrong. I wonder if Henry Ford put much thought into the possible unintended consequences of mass produced automobiles when he was building the Model T back in 1908.

Phones and tablet

Google introduced three new hardware products including the $499 Pixel 7A, which Google loaned me ahead of the event. It’s hard to get excited over any new phone, but if you’re in the market, this is an affordable way to get a water-resistant Android phone with a very good camera, a sleek design, wireless charging and a fast processor. It’s a tiny bit smaller and slightly less powerful than the Pixel 7 but it’s $100 cheaper, and based on a couple of days testing, it feels and performs like a premium phone.

Google also announced an 11-inch tablet starting at $499 with 128 GB of storage or $599 with 256 GB. It has the same high-speed Google Tensor G2 processor as Pixel phones and runs on Android, so it has a very similar interface to Android phones as well as the same AI technology built into the latest versions of Android. Anyone who preorders the phone now gets a free dock, which is both a high quality speaker and charger, turning the tablet into a very useful home smart display while it’s docked while making it very easy to remove it from the dock to use as a portable tablet.

Members of the media view the new Google Pixel Fold phone during the Google I/O annual developers conference at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 10, 2023. (Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The most interesting, albeit most expensive, new product is its $1,795 Pixel Fold.  Folded, it has a 5.8-inch screen, not that different from typical smartphones. But when you unfold it you get a 7.6-inch display, which is just a bit smaller than the 8.3-inch display on the Apple iPad mini. Having a tablet-sized screen is not only better for watching video but makes it easier to multitask with side-by-side display. You can even take a selfie using the higher quality rear camera by folding over the phone and using one screen to frame your shot while taking the picture. One clever application that Google demonstrated is using the phone to translate. The person you’re talking with can read the text in their language on the outer screen while you read it in your language on the other screen.

I’ll have more to report when I have a chance to test the foldable phone, but as far as I can tell, the only major downside is the price. The Fold is $800 more than the combined cost of the Google Tablet and the Google 7A phone, which, for most people, is probably a better investment.

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Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely, a non-profit internet safety organization that has received support from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other technology companies.

​ Orange County Register 

How to find unclaimed money: 5 free ways to track down your lost or forgotten assets

• May 12, 2023

James Royal | (TNS) Bankrate

Are you on the hunt for money that may have been misplaced or left entirely forgotten? You or a relative may have money left in an old bank account, a 401(k) from an old employer or even a hidden cache of money in an IRA, annuity or pension. This scenario can happen if a relative dies and the heirs don’t successfully locate all accounts. Often, the unclaimed money ends up being sent to a state office.

Surprisingly, 1 in 10 Americans has unclaimed property, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA). More than $4 billion is returned to owners each year, the organization says.

Here’s how you can find unclaimed money and where to look for it — all for free!

What is unclaimed money?

Unclaimed money is money that oftentimes has simply been forgotten about, in one way or another, and tends to wind up being held at a state agency until it is rightfully claimed. Accounts may be considered unclaimed or abandoned in as short as a year — called the dormancy period — if they’ve been unused or the institution has been unable to contact the account owner.

After the dormancy period and efforts to find the rightful owner have been made, the institution can declare it unclaimed and send the money to state agencies in charge of unclaimed money. As part of this process, the institution has to include any identifying information it has.

Financial accounts can often be forgotten about, especially during the inheritance process. If all a decedent’s accounts are not listed during the process of estate planning, it can be very easy for an heir to overlook an account. The account may then sit dormant for years, if not decades, accumulating interest, dividends or capital gains.

Many types of unclaimed accounts exist, including:

—Retirement accounts, such as 401(k), 403(b) and IRAs

—Insurance accounts or annuities

—Unpaid wages

—Pensions from former employers

—FHA-insurance refunds

—Tax refunds

—Forgotten savings bonds

—Accounts from bank or credit union failures

Unclaimed money can also take other forms, so if you know there’s money out there with your name on it (or you’re working on behalf of a relative), you’ll need to contact the right agency.

Where to find unclaimed money

The kind of unclaimed money may affect the type of database you need to search in or the state agency you need to contact.

“Unfortunately, this is a state-by-state issue,” says Warren Ward, CFP, founder of WWA Planning and Investments in Columbus, Indiana. “I know of no national database.”

So for many types of unclaimed money or property, you’ll need to search your state’s records.

“In Indiana you can visit indianaunclaimed.gov, a site maintained by the attorney general’s office,” says Ward. “It’s actually something we do every year for our clients, but it’s very easy to do for an individual if they care.”

Ward cautions about treasure hunters contacting you out of the blue and offering to find lost money for you.

“The claiming process is now automated, but we still hear of people ‘cruising’ the database for large amounts of money and trying to get people to pay them to ‘locate’ the funds,” he says.

So if someone contacts you about finding unclaimed money, it may be a tip-off that you have funds out there somewhere. That means you should initiate a search yourself. You can conduct a search for free at any of the state websites and needn’t pay anyone to find money for you.

5 free ways to find unclaimed money

If you think you have unclaimed money or that a relative does, one of the best steps is running through old financial statements to see if you can find evidence of it. That could be useful if the relative has passed on and you don’t know where to begin. If you discover an account such as a 401(k) or IRA, you can contact the plan’s administrator and go from there.

But many times, the process is more complicated. Here are the places to go next.

1. Check NAUPA’s website

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators runs a website that can help you get organized and search for unclaimed property. It links you to your own state’s agency for unclaimed money, tells you things to watch out for and offers a bird’s eye view of the area.

2. Go to your own state agency’s website

If you know you’re not likely to have unclaimed money in another state, just head straight to your own state’s site and start digging. It’s worth reiterating: While some third-party websites may say that you have to pay, your state’s official website is free to use. So use that one.

3. Check out MissingMoney.com

If you’ve lived in multiple states and think you might have unclaimed money in more than one, you may find MissingMoney.com valuable. The site can run multiple searches at the same time, a useful feature if you’ve lived around the U.S. or even if you’ve had accounts in other states.

The site is free to use and is sponsored by NAUPA.

4. Search for money from a former employer

You have at least a couple ways to track down money from a former employer:

—If you think you’re owed back wages, you can turn to the Department of Labor’s database and see if it’s holding your cash. The department holds unpaid wages for up to three years.

—If you’re searching for unclaimed pensions because a company went out of business or ended a defined benefit plan, you can turn to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.’s website. More than 80,000 people have earned a pension but haven’t claimed it, the organization says.

5. Find accounts from failed banks

You have a couple options if your bank failed and you have yet to claim your money:

—You can find unclaimed money from banks that have failed at this Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. website.

—If your unclaimed money was held at a failed credit union, you can track it down at this National Credit Union Administration website.

Bottom line

It’s important to know that there are free resources available for finding unclaimed money, and they’re managed by each state. So turn to these resources before even considering working with a third-party site that’s looking to charge you for their services.

©2023 Bankrate online. Visit Bankrate online at bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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