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If you are having trouble reading this email, [read the online version](. [News Daily Logo]( [California and Carmakers Reach Clean Vehicle Agreement, Rebuking Trump Administration]( [two snails]( California Gov. Gavin Newsom and top air regulators on Thursday announced an agreement with four major automakers on tailpipe emissions to ramp up fuel efficiency standards over time and encourage investment in electric vehicles. The deal between the automakers — Ford, Honda, BMW of North America and Volkswagen Group of America — and the California Air Resources Board is a rebuke of the Trump Administration, which is preparing to loosen emission standards for small cars and trucks, one of the key steps in his effort to roll back climate policy. "Few issues are more pressing than climate change, a global threat that endangers our lives and livelihoods," Newsom said in a statement. "I now call on the rest of the auto industry to join us, and for the Trump administration to adopt this pragmatic compromise instead of pursuing its regressive rule change. It's the right thing for our economy, our people and our planet." The agreement continues to move manufacturers' fleets toward greater efficiency, though on a slower track than California had intended. State regulations originally pushed for a fleet wide average fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump administration has since sought to freeze the standard at current levels, just under 37 miles per gallon. Under the terms of the new deal, the four companies agree to achieve a fleet wide average fuel efficiency of 50 miles per gallon by 2026. Photo: Traffic backs up on an exit from Highway 101 on May 1, 2018, in Larkspur. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) [Newsom 'Sees Progress' in Visit to Chevron Oil Spill Site Where Nearly 1 Million Gallons of Fluid Have Leaked from the Ground]( [two snails]( Gov. Gavin Newsom says he is encouraged by Chevron's efforts to clean up what has turned into California's largest oil spill in decades. At least 974,400 gallons of fluid have leaked from the ground at an oil field in Kern County, near the town of McKittrick about 35 miles west of Bakersfield, over the last couple of months. About one-third is oil and the other two-thirds water. "I'm seeing progress," Newsom said on a visit to the Cymric oil field, where the oil and water are contained in a dry desert creekbed. The leaks are known as surface expressions, which can be caused by injecting steam into the ground. Chevron uses steam injection to extract oil in the Cymric field. The steam softens the thick crude so it can flow more readily. It is a different process from fracking, which breaks up underground layers of rock. Still, Newsom told reporters the state would ask Chevron to turn over data so regulators can investigate the cause of the spill. "The lesson learned here is we've got to be aggressive on monitoring," Newsom said. The company said efforts to confirm the source of the original leak and shut it down unleashed higher flows in the weeks after the initial release was discovered. The company also increased its production of oil from wells in the area. Both actions are intended to relieve underground pressure that may be forcing the mix of oil and water to the surface. Photo: Newsom is briefed by Billy Lacobie, of Chevron (center) and Cameron Campbell of the state Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) on Wednesday, while touring the Chevron oil field near Bakersfield. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Pool) [Justice Ginsburg: 'I Am Very Much Alive']( NPR reports: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview Tuesday that she does not favor proposals put forth by some Democratic presidential candidates who have advocated changing the number of Supreme Court justices if the Democrats win the presidency. Ginsburg, who got herself in trouble criticizing candidate Donald Trump in 2016, this time was critical not of any particular Democratic contender, but of their proposals to offset President Trump's two conservative appointments to the court. "Nine seems to be a good number. It's been that way for a long time," she said, adding, "I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court." Several Democratic candidates have indicated an openness, if they were to win the presidency, to adding to the number of justices on the Supreme Court to reduce the power of the current conservative majority. Some would also like to enact term limits for Supreme Court justices. The term-limits proposal doesn't worry Ginsburg because she sees it as unrealistic, a given that the Constitution specifies life terms for federal judges and because, as she puts it, "Our Constitution is powerfully hard to amend." Ginsburg's iconic status with women, in particular, and her leadership of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court mean any health news involving the tiny, 86-year-old justice can cause something of a panic in certain quarters. She has had three major bouts with cancer over the past 20 years. undergoing surgery late last year for lung cancer. Ginsburg is not oblivious to health concerns, but she waves away worries about her future. "There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months," she recalled. "That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I," she added with a smile, "am very much alive." Photo: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sits for a portrait in the Lawyer's Lounge at the Supreme Court of the United States. (Shuran Huang/NPR) [Holy Guacamole! Avocados Are Pricey and It's the Pits]( NPR reports: There's a simple explanation for expensive avocados, says David Magaña, a senior horticulture analyst in Fresno, Calif., with RaboResearch: "We have the highest or the strongest demand for avocados in the U.S., probably ever." Magaña analyzes wholesale prices from Mexico, which supplies most of the United States' avocados. He says 24-pound cartons of midsize avocados from Michoacán are selling for $66 each. That's 91% more expensive than they were a year ago. And prices were even higher earlier this month. Magaña says fruit and vegetable production is always subject to weather conditions. This year, production of California avocados was way down. "Remember that last year we had a heat wave in California late in July, August?" he asks. "That impacted blooming. It started later than normal, and yields were lower this year." He says Mexican farmers had to take up the slack for California, so they sent their best. But now they're running out. As a result, some LA taquerias have been selling guacamole without avocados -- without disclosing this to customers, reports Javier Cabral, the new editor in chief of the alternative news outlet L.A. Taco. "The secret ingredient that I'm sure, you know, no taqueria would ever be 100% proud to admit is Mexican summer tender, little squash," he said. "The Mexican variety is light in color, almost the color of a nice buttery avocado. ... It's scary how much this fake guacamole tastes like the real guacamole." [Orange County Reaches Settlement in Homeless Lawsuits]( Orange County agreed Tuesday to a settlement over its treatment of homeless people in the county's north and central regions, 18 months after being sued for civil rights violations. The class-action suit, filed in late January 2018 by a coalition of homeless advocates, accused the county of violating the rights of hundreds of homeless people who were forcibly removed from encampments along the Santa Ana riverbed. It alleged that the county — along with the cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Orange — was forcing people to move "without a plan for housing or shelter." A second suit, filed in February 2018, alleged that the county's existing housing programs for the homeless didn't adequately accommodate people with disabilities, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Since then, the two sides have worked toward an agreement under the watch of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter. [Do You Speak Mam? Growth of Oakland's Guatemalan Community Sparks Interest in Indigenous Language]( A few adults at an Oakland community college practiced how to say "good afternoon" in Mam, a Mayan language spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala. After teacher Henry Sales, a native Mam speaker, wrote "Qal te tiy" on a white board, students took turns repeating the words slowly after him: "Qaaaal te tiy." Learning even a few words in Mam has already helped Mirtha Ninayahuar break the ice with children at a Sunday preschool where she volunteers. Most of her students speak only Mam, she said. "I want them to hear me speak Mam so they see that I'm trying hard to learn a different language because that's what they are doing," said Ninayahuar, a retired utility worker. "And even the parents, too. If I greet them in Mam, they smile and I think they feel that I care more about them." Oakland's Mam population is estimated at several thousand and growing, as an exodus of Guatemalan migrants fleeing violence and crushing poverty continues to head north. They are joining relatives and friends — from San Juan Atitan, Todos Santos, Santiago Chimaltenango and other rural Guatemalan towns — and meeting on the streets of East Oakland, say several Mam residents. As a result, the number of students who speak the language in Oakland schools has skyrocketed. And some government agencies and nonprofit organizations have hired Mam speakers to better interact with the community. [What Two Central Valley Sisters With a Rare Heart Condition Taught Doctors About Our Genes]( [two snails]( Early in February of 2008, just days after she was born, Tatiana Legkiy lay in a cardiac intensive care unit, her tiny body hooked up to a respirator. After crying for two hours, she was now briefly quiet, the tube in her throat helping her breathe but also preventing her from making any sound. Tatiana's heart was failing. A cardiologist, tipped off by a pediatrician who heard something strange in a routine checkup, had examined her earlier that day and grown worried. He sent Tatiana to a nearby hospital in Modesto, California, where she remained for only an hour before being whisked eighty miles west by ambulance to the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. Tatiana's parents arrived at the hospital shortly afterwards. At the time, Lana and Andrey Legkiy lived in Manteca, a city in California's Central Valley. Andrey worked at an animal supply company; Lana stayed home and took care of their four-year-old daughter, Anna. Weekends found the family outside together, camping or fishing in the Delta where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers flow into the ocean. Even before Tatiana's birth, the Legkiys knew medical hardship well. A year earlier Lana had suffered a miscarriage, losing an unborn child, a boy, in her third trimester. At the time, physicians had ascribed his cause of death to pulmonary hypoplasia, or incomplete development of the lungs. Given that medical history, when Tatiana arrived at Benioff in critical condition, the doctors requested slides from the unborn child's autopsy. This time, taking a closer look at small samples of heart tissue, they noted the true cause of death -- an extremely rare heart condition known as left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC), in which the heart muscle remains immature and cannot pump blood normally. Visually, physicians identify LVNC by the fingerlike protrusions of muscle extending from the wall of the heart into the left ventricle, which supplies the body with oxygen-rich blood. An echocardiogram of Tatiana's heart showed these same characteristics. Gently, the physicians told Tatiana's parents that there would be no surgery, but only because LVNC has no cure. And yet she survived. Here's [how](. Photo: Tatiana and Anna Legkiy in 2019. (Lana Legkiy) [New Life for Death Penalty]( [two snails]( KQED cartoonist Mark Fiore: U.S. Attorney General William Barr is [reviving]( the federal death penalty and ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule five executions. The federal government hasn't carried out an execution in 16 years. The nation's zeal for executions is not what it once was, and the Obama administration came close to issuing a moratorium. And as we all know, if it was something President Obama did — President Trump and his administration like to do the opposite. Today's KQED News Daily was produced by Miranda Leitsinger in San Francisco. Got ideas, stories, comments? Email me: mleitsinger@kqed.org [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( [Donate]( [Manage Subscription]( | [Privacy Policy]( KQED 2601 Mariposa St. San Francisco, CA 94110 Copyright © July 25, 2019 [KQED](. All Rights Reserved.