San Diego

SD County Officials 3/21 COVID-19 Update

San Diego County officials on Saturday, March 21 re-emphasized California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new coronavirus message a day after he issued a statewide “stay home” order to stop the spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. “The message is very clear,” County Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten, M.D., M.P.H., said. “All Californians are being asked to stay at home if you do…


SD-based USS Boxer hosts first ship virus

After discovering a sailor with coronavirus, the U.S. Navy crowded dozens of sailors in one room. On the USS Boxer, where the Navy discovered its first case of coronavirus on a ship, a sailor says his superiors called a meeting that crammed more than 80 senior enlisted sailors and officers together. It wasn’t a surprise when the U.S. Navy announced Sunday that the fast-spreading coronavirus…


Coronavirus Escondido, SD schools update

(Editor’s Note: We will be updating coronavirus information on a regular basis starting today, March 16, 2020. This is not intended as a comprehensive source, but aims to highlight resources and news of interest to the community.) San Diego County schools closed, student meals continue The kids, hopefully, will be — apologies to The Who — alright, but they’ll be doing it at home for…


ACLU to ICE: Get Coronavirus act together

Today, Wednesday, March 11, the ACLU Foundation of California sent letters to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detention center officials urging them to develop a comprehensive emergency plan for the prevention and management of potential Coronavirus (or COVID-19) cases at its detention centers. In the letters, the ACLU asks for written responses from ICE and other detention center officials that explain how they…


San Diego police stop black people at a rate 219 percent higher than white people

“They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.” These are the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.” The book follows the story of three Black Southerners and their journey escaping racial violence — a sharecropper’s wife who left Mississippi in the 1930s for Chicago, an agricultural worker who left…



International Women’s Day, anyone?

Today, March 8 is International Women’s Day. Honored throughout the world, free and otherwise — it used to be a staple for communist celebration in th Soviet union and Bloc — it generally gets short thrift in the United States. Said to commemorate an 1857 strike by women workers in New York, the effort to set aside a day to celebrate women’s achievements and assess…


Ammar rocks 50th, March 3 election results

Ammar Campa-Najjar led the way in 50th Congressional District and top county results Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar advanced to the run-off in the race to fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter in California’s 50th District. Campa-Najjar will likely face former Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who’s attempting a congressional comeback, and beat out former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio in the all-party primary held on…


Coastal wetlands protect property, study says

In coastal communities prone to hurricanes and tropical storms, people typically turn to engineered solutions for protection: levees, sea walls and the like. But a natural buffer in the form of wetlands may be the more cost-effective solution, according to new research from the University of California San Diego. In the most comprehensive study of its sort to date, UC San Diego economists show that…


Baby Weedy Seadragons breeding anyone?

For the first time ever, Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego has bred and successfully hatched two rare Weedy Seadragons. This is a first for Birch Aquarium, now one of the few aquariums in the world to hatch this unusual fish. The inch-long babies display the characteristic camouflaging appendages of the elaborate adult Weedy Seadragons in miniature, and have already had…