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If you are having trouble reading this email, [read the online version](. [News Daily Logo]( [Town at Center of Kern County Oil Spill: 'You Don't Really Think a Lot About It']( [two snails]( Great read (and terrific photos): As Dave Noerr drove his truck through the Cymric Oil Field, sun gleamed on hundreds of oil pumping units plunging into the ground and pulling back up again in slow motion. Workers drove white pickup trucks on roads owned by the different petroleum companies operating here in California's oil country while large pipes snaking through the desert hillsides hills carried oil and water to processing facilities. Here in Kern County — an hour's drive west of Bakersfield — over one million gallons of a mixture of oil and water has seeped from a well that Chevron says it was attempting to reseal months ago. Noerr, the mayor of nearby Taft and an oil man himself, pointed in the direction of the spill. "Due north, all up in those valleys, it's up in there," Noerr said Tuesday, motioning toward a location hidden in a sea of oil machinery and sage brush. Six miles down the road is McKittrick, population 115. The town has one school, a fire department, a small cluster of dusty houses and mobile homes connected by a partially paved road, and several businesses — including a mini-mart and Mike and Annie's McKittrick Hotel, Penny Bar and Cafe, the local lunch spot for oil workers at lunchtime. Sabrina Ballou, who works at the cafe, toasted bread and poured gravy over biscuits in the kitchen. When asked if she had heard about the oil spill, Ballou replied over the sizzle of hamburger meat on the grill: "I've heard about it, haven't seen it. They've got it handled. It's what they do around here. Nothing new for us." Oil pumping units and Chevron's McKittrick headquarters can be seen from the playground at McKittrick Elementary School. The school's logo displays a yellow, cartoon oil tower. "Even if the kids were here, it's not something that we would be concerned about," said Barry Koerner, superintendent of McKittrick Elementary School, as he cleaned out his office in preparation for the new school year. "Out here, you don't really think a lot about it. A lot of people, I think, picture it like Hawaii with a magma flow," Koerner said, chuckling. "And it's not like that. It's not like it's going to come overtake the school." Read more [here](. Photo: Downtown McKittrick. The town of 115 people is about six miles south of where more than 1 million gallons of a mixture of oil and water has seeped from a well that Chevron says it was trying to reseal months ago. (Alex Hall/KQED) [Peru Has Been Arresting Its Former Presidents. One's Been Hiding in the Bay Area for Years]( [two snails]( A former Peruvian president is facing extradition from San Francisco to answer to corruption charges in his home country. Former President Alejandro Toledo has a long history in the Bay Area, where he has been hiding from criminal charges in Peru since early 2017. He is currently detained in federal custody in San Francisco as he faces an extradition process that could go on for months. The case is front-page news in Peru but barely a blip in the Bay Area. Peruvian officials issued an arrest warrant for Toledo in February 2017, when he was accused of taking kickbacks from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that admitted to paying multimillion-dollar bribes to secure contracts throughout Latin America. The scandal has already landed two former presidents of Peru in jail, including one who resigned as a result of the charges. Another ex-president committed suicide earlier this year as the police were coming to arrest him. Other high-level politicians are also facing criminal charges or are expected to be charged. Meanwhile, Toledo had been hiding from Peruvian prosecutors in Menlo Park. The 73-year-old former president, who resettled in the Bay Area after losing a 2016 re-election bid, simply opted to not return to Peru and even tried to flee to Israel, where his wife is a citizen, without success. His links to Northern California go back half a century. Find out [what they are](. Photo: Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo speaks during a press conference in Lima on Nov. 10, 2010. (Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images) [San Francisco Aims to Find and Fill Vacant Housing Units in Bid to Ease Homelessness]( Roughly 50 San Francisco corporations and organizations, including tech giants Airbnb and Google, and the San Francisco Giants, announced their involvement in an ambitious new effort to alleviate the city's intractable homeless crisis. The "All In" campaign, which officially launched Thursday during a rally at Duboce Park, aims to mobilize a broad coalition of community members to develop immediate housing solutions for the city's chronically homeless population. The coalition said its primary objective was to secure 1,100 housing units in all 11 supervisorial districts of the city for homeless people to move into. Unlike a number of other recent efforts in the city to house the homeless, this initiative won't focus on building affordable units. Instead, it seeks to identify and fill existing apartments that are vacant. "There are vacant units in buildings throughout San Francisco," said Daniel Lurie, CEO of Tipping Point Community, the nonprofit behind the new campaign. "We need to talk to every landlord. If you have a unit available, make it available for those that have housing vouchers, that have the ability to pay." [Lawsuit: California Should Open Its Presidential Primary to Independents]( CalMatters reports: The way California holds its presidential primary violates the constitutional rights of political independents and misuses taxpayer dollars to "benefit wholly private political parties," a nonpartisan election group argues in a lawsuit it filed against the state this week. A filing by the Independent Voter Project argues that Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who administers elections, is ignoring a state constitutional requirement to hold an "open" presidential primary, in which anyone — regardless of political party — can participate. Currently, each political party decides who gets to vote in its primary, forcing political independents who want to participate to jump through additional administrative hoops, or to join a party outright. "The State of California can't create a process that includes some voters and excludes others," said Chad Peace, the Independent Voter Project's legal counsel. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's Office declined to comment. In the past, the Democratic Party has allowed political independents without a party preference to cast a vote in its primary — but those voting by mail have been forced to request the ballot ahead of time. That rule isn't likely to change in 2020. [Dialysis Firm Cancels $524,600.17 Medical Bill After Journalists Investigate]( NPR reports: Fresenius, one of the two largest dialysis providers in the U.S., has agreed to waive a $524,600.17 bill for a man who received 14 weeks of dialysis at a clinic in Montana. NPR, Kaiser Health News, and CBS This Morning told Sovereign Valentine's story this week, as part of the "Bill of the Month" series, a crowdsourced investigation that seeks to understand the exorbitant health care bills faced by ordinary Americans. On Thursday, a representative from Fresenius told Sovereign's wife, Dr. Jessica Valentine, that the company would waive their unpaid bill. Instead, they will be treated as in-network patients, and Fresenius will seek to negotiate with their insurer a rate higher than what the insurer has already paid. The Valentines are responsible only for their $5,000 deductible, which Sovereign, who goes by "Sov," has already hit for the year. That leaves them with $0 left to pay on their in-network deductible. "It's a huge relief," Sov said. "It allows me to put more energy back into just taking care of my health and not having stress hormones raging." Sov said he hopes his experience will shed light on the problem of balance billing and help other patients in similar situations. A 50-year-old personal trainer, Sov was diagnosed with kidney failure in January and sent for dialysis at a Fresenius clinic 70 miles from his home in rural Plains, Mont. A few days later, Sov and Jessica learned that the clinic was out-of-network and that they would be required to pay whatever their insurer didn't cover. The Valentines initially could not find an in-network option, and Sov needed dialysis three times a week to survive. After he underwent 14 weeks of dialysis with Fresenius, the couple received a bill for $540,841.90. Their insurer, Allegiance, paid $16,241.73, about twice what Medicare would have paid. Fresenius billed the couple the unpaid balance of $524,600.17 — an amount that is more than the typical cost of a kidney transplant. [16 Camp Pendleton Marines Arrested in Migrant Smuggling Investigation]( AP reports: Sixteen Marines were arrested Thursday for allegedly helping smuggle migrants into the U.S. In a dramatic move aimed at sending a message, authorities made the arrests as the Marines gathered in formation with their battalion. None of the 16 Marines were involved in helping enforce border security, the Marine Corps said in a news release. They are accused of crimes ranging from migrant smuggling to drug-related offenses. Officials could not immediately be reached for additional details. The arrests came weeks after two Marines were arrested by a Border Patrol agent on suspicion of transporting three Mexicans on the promise of money after they crossed illegally into the United States. [Rightnowish: Don Tamaki on Japanese Internment and 'Then They Came For Me']( [two snails]( The exhibition, Then They Came For Me, not only shows images from the mass roundup and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, but also acknowledges the connection to the current day as the United States keeps thousands of people immigrating to the U.S. in facilities best described as concentration camps. One of the people who sees that connection quite clearly is civil rights lawyer Don Tamaki, who guided me around the exhibition. His family lived through internment in the early 40s; he told how his father's degree from UC Berkeley was mailed to a horse stable at the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, where the family had been forced to live. Years later, informed by his family's experience, Tamaki used his education to bring light to the wrongdoings of the U.S. government. He was a part of the team to reopen the landmark Supreme Court case Korematsu v. the United States, and to help Fred Korematsu win exoneration for refusing to be interred due to his race. As Tamaki and I walked and talked among the exhibition's photos — the majority taken by Dorothea Lange — he pointed out their mostly Northern Californian locales. Tamaki noted how the Japanese Americans in the photos wore their "Sunday best," in an attempt to look like the dignified Americans they were. And he made it clear that while the events happened 75 years ago, it is still chillingly relevant to this day. Photo: Don Tamaki. (Pendarvis Harshaw/KQED) [How the Bay Area's Sudanese Community Mobilized for the Revolution]( [two snails]( "Harrowing" doesn't come close to describing the scene in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum last month. After Omar al-Bashir's 30-year rule came to an end in April following four months of protest, reigning security forces slaughtered and raped dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators, dumpling their bodies into the Nile on June 3. Because the government ordered an internet blackout on the day of the massacre, the world may not have heard about it without the efforts of Sudanese expats around the world. Gleaning whatever updates they could from family members with landlines and VPNs, they flooded Instagram and Facebook with information, organized marches and called on their elected officials to speak out. "Not only in the U.S., but in Australia, New Zealand, Iceland — wherever there's a Sudanese person, there was activism to support the revolution," says Fremont organizer Gamila Abdelhalim, who credits the Sudanese diaspora for drumming up international pressure that led to a recent power-sharing agreement between the country's military and civilian leaders. With reports of paramilitary forces killing protesters as recently as last week, the fight for justice is far from over. Much like the on-the-ground efforts in Sudan, it's everyday people rather than career organizers who helm the ongoing protest movement in the Bay Area. Abdelhalim, by day a daycare and preschool owner and an immigration consultant, is the founder of a traditional Sudanese dance troupe called Shabbal, the members of which sprang into action alongside her. This Sunday, July 28, she facilitates an art bazaar and volleyball tournament at Lake Merritt to raise money for the Ahfad Trauma Center in Omdurman, Sudan, which has been treating survivors of the massacre. "Seeing my own parents and Gamila, my aunt, being so passionate brings me back to the reason they came here," says Lina Salam, a recent UC Santa Cruz grad and Abdelhalim's niece. "No one wants to leave their country, but they had to leave in a time of political and economic turmoil." Photo: shah noor hussein [A Very Bay Area Summertime]( [two snails]( KQED cartoonist Mark Fiore: We're headed for a weekend heat wave, with inland highs in the 100s forecast. But this being the Bay Area, there will be a big difference between the valleys and the coast. The National Weather Service is warning about the heat ... and about the cold. It's those hot inland temperatures that will suck in the fog and drop coastal temperatures to downright chilly. Tell me, how do you beat the heat? 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 26, 2019 [KQED](. All Rights Reserved.