For months, residents of a suburban Encinitas neighborhood have clashed with the hemp farm next door, blaming the farm for the nausea, dizziness and respiratory problems that they say have bothered them since October. Bob Echter, owner of Fox Point Farms which is home to the hemp operation, and Josh Schneider, CEO of Cultivaris Hemp which has been operating the hemp farm on Echter’s property,…
Nearly three months after San Diego County’s most destructive fire of 2020 burned down her Lawson Valley home, 78-year-old Eileen Menzies spends her days sifting through the rubble she has yet to completely clear from her property. A neighbor whose new hemp farm was nearly destroyed is meeting with lawmakers in hopes of improving agricultural insurance in fire-prone areas. And two miles across the hills…
A surge in coronavirus cases has spread across most of California — and Imperial County, among the hardest hit early in the pandemic, is no exception. After seeing improvements over the late summer, the county’s positivity rate for COVID-19 cases has more than doubled in the past month, and its two hospitals are nearing caseloads not seen since July. “We were hit hard and late…
HiCaliber Horse Rescue, which has faced animal cruelty and fraud allegations for months, is being evicted from its Valley Center ranch and sued for more than $4 million. Brenda Markstein filed the lawsuit in Vista Superior Court on Nov. 26, alleging damage to the property, breach of contract and negligence. The suit names HiCaliber and its founders, Michelle Knuttila and Romney Snyder. The Brenda Markstein…
New data show more than 23,800 students were homeless last year in San Diego County — a record high and a 4.7 percent increase over the previous year. But a county Office of Education official acknowledges the homeless student count could be wrong. It all depends on who does the counting and how they interpret federal guidelines for calculating who is homeless. At stake is…
AMERICA’S WALL Decades-long struggle to secure U.S.-Mexico border By Jean Guerrero | KPBS and Leonardo Castañeda | inewsource By agreement, The Grapevine publishes investigative, in-depth data-driven journalism from independent non-profit inewsource based at San Diego State University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. For more from inewsource, visit http://inewsource.org/about/. Ely Ortiz, founder of Aguilas Del Desierto, poses for a portrait on Aug. 26, 2017, at the base…
In the past 12 months, San Diego County’s congressional delegation and the people who work for them have taken 17 trips paid for by nonprofits, think tanks and private companies. In all, $37,525 was spent on travel to places that include England, Austria, Azerbaijan, New York and Seattle. The privately funded travel is legal. Congress members and their staff just have to file a disclosure…
President Donald Trump’s staff is proposing to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency that has funded art performance, research and accessibility since its formation in 1965, according to a recent report in The Hill. To understand how that decision would affect San Diego, inewsource dug into NEA grant data and spoke with local arts leaders. Here’s what we found: In terms of general operating…
High school, 1997, was off to a great start for Mark Gagarin.He had been bullied some in middle school, but he was determined that his time at Poway High was going to be different. “I met this awesome girl, I was playing baseball. I had a lot of friends around me,” he said. He was hanging out with the cool kids, the ones who hung…