All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

John Blackstone is a CBS News correspondent.

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At the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care center the cub called Li'l Smokey is recovering from the second-degree burns he suffered on all four paws in a Northern California wildfire last month. Every couple of days the Wildlife Care staff remove protective booties from his paws, unwrap the bandages and change the dressing. His paws are healing well.

Li’l Smokey has had a lot of help from humans. He almost certainly would have died if he had not been found and captured by Adam Deem, a firefighter.

Still, the little bear doesn’t much like people and that makes the people taking care of him quite happy. When bears and humans get too friendly it can often end badly … for the bear ...

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John Blackstone is a CBS News correspondent.

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“You should have been here yesterday.”

As a TV news reporter, I have heard that too many times.

It goes like this: We learn of something interesting happening and head off with a camera crew ready to record it all on video. But when we get to the location we hear the dreaded phrase: “You should have been here yesterday.”

So often, whatever it is that we want to take pictures of seems to take a break just as we arrive.

I was a little concerned when we headed down the California coast to do a story on elephant seals behaving badly. Elephant seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds, so when they behave badly it can be a big story … particularly if what they’re doing is wandering onto a busy state highway.

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A little riddle for all you holiday travelers: How is a gas tank like a coffee cup?

For a hint, check out this post's headline. For the answer, click the monitor at left and John Blackstone will explain in today's First Look.

John Blackstone is a CBS News correspondent based in San Francisco.

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It was with just a little anxiety that I sat down within easy striking distance of the jaws and claws of a 320 pound black bear in a parking lot in Reno, Nevada. The bear was sleeping off the sedative that had been used to get him out of a tree behind a burger stand in downtown Reno.

Carl Lackey, the Nevada Department of Wildlife’s chief bear biologist, had shot the bear with the sedative. Lackey is having his busiest year ever for problem bears. He has been called out to capture more than seventy bears this year that have wandered into places they shouldn’t be as they search for food. A western drought has made nuts and berries scarce.

The big bear we were sitting beside had probably come out of the mountains to the west. Lackey figured it had looked down from the dry forest and spotted Reno, looking like an oasis…and decided to gamble on finding a good meal there. The bear seemed to hit the jackpot in the garbage by the burger stand.

Lackey’s goal now is to make this bear think that was a very bad idea, indeed. The next day, when the bear was well awake and Lackey could check that it was healthy, he drove it in a cage back up to the mountains. When the cage door opened and the bear started to run Lackey let loose his two fearless Karelian bear dogs. He shouted and fired rubber bullets at the fleeing bear. He hopes the bear will now think twice before the next time he heads into the city.

But Lackey’s research over ten years now has revealed quite a number of bears that have become urban bears...

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John Blackstone is a CBS News correspondent based in San Francisco.

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Every time I drive from San Francisco to Sacramento it seems another farmer’s field has been turned into a subdivision. Around Sacramento new homes now sprout where crops once grew.

Much of this development is on land protected from flooding by levees that may not be strong enough to do the job they are expected to do. There’s a lot of water here. This is where two of California’s great rivers, the American and the Sacramento, meet. In the springtime, when the snow melts in the Sierra the rivers can run dangerously high.

When there were just farms here it didn’t matter all that much if it flooded from time to time. But now a flood would be a disaster for thousands of people and millions of dollars worth of property.

The city of West Sacramento is one of the fast-growing suburbs that is most at risk if there is a levee failure. The citizens of West Sacramento recently voted to increase taxes to raise some of the money needed to fix the levees.

But the city is also taking a controversial route to raising money for levee repairs: it is encouraging more development on land that could flood if the levees fail. The new development will generate fees and assessments that can be used to pay for levee repairs. But that new development will also put more people and property at risk.

It’s a “Catch 22” situation that bothers Jeffrey Mount, a geologist at the University of California, Davis. For years he has questioned the wisdom of increasing development on floodplains where a levee failure will mean catastrophe.

“There are only two kinds of levees,” Mount says. “Those that have failed and those that will fail.”

John Blackstone is a CBS News correspondent based in San Francisco.

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It’s an experience many parents can relate to these days: their kids are so proficient on the internet it is hard for a parent to keep up. So imagine Ted Lempert’s predicament. He’s president of Children Now, an organization that among other things tries to protect kids from being exposed to too much advertising. But he admits that when it comes to the internet his ten year old daughter, Caroline, is often way ahead of him.

When we sat down with Caroline she gave us a tour of popular internet sites that are loaded with what are now known as “advergames” -- games that are part advertisement. Since the games are often quite involved and interesting kids can spend a long time playing them -- all the while being exposed to advertising...

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The world is watching the story unfolding up on Mt. Hood, and waiting for word on the missing climbers.

Correspondent John Blackstone talks about the ongoing search in today's First Look.

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