San Diego News Fix

Facebook removed, then republished, then again removed the 22,000-member Defend East County group from its social media site Saturday.The group’s founder and administrator Justin Haskins announced in a post to a separate Facebook group Saturday morning that the group was gone. However, by 7 p.m. the group was back. By 8:00 p.m., the group again disappeared from the site and remains so as of Monday morning. Neither Facebook nor Haskins responded to requests for comment Saturday.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/story/2020-10-31/controversial-group-defend-east-county-removed-by-facebook

San Diego Union-Tribune archivist Merrie Monteagudo discusses several local ghost stories. Episode from 2019.

In the final episode of our election series, hear the latest on early voting and how the U-T plans on covering the election.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/2020-election-dashboard-san-diego

State and local public health authorities have been very clear that trick-or-treating is strongly discouraged this year due to the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic.Parents who are asking whether the candy will be safe if they let their kids go trick-or-treating this year, then, are asking the wrong question. The proper focus, Knight and Rohwer say, is the face, not the candy bowl.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-10-30/people-not-candy-seen-as-the-biggest-risk-for-trick-or-treaters-this-year

La Jolla residents are calling for the removal of two La Jolla Parks & Beaches Association board members following comments they made about social justice-themed chalk drawings during a September meeting.The drawings were created during “Chalk Up” events on the Fay Avenue Bike Path this summer. The events, which started in July, were organized by a group of parents who said they wanted to their children to have an outlet to express themselves about the Black Lives Matter social justice movement through art.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/story/2020-10-28/black-lives-matter-chalk-art-sparks-controversy-within-la-jolla-parks-board-members-vow-to-work-for-inclusivity

North County Transit District plans to install fences along miles of railroad track in three coastal cities by the end of this year, an idea many residents, especially in Del Mar, have fought for years.The transit district, in a report released this month, said the 6-foot-tall, chain-link fence will be placed in the areas where people most frequently trespass on the track right-of-way, resulting in death or injury, damage to the railroad system and delays in service.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/story/2020-10-18/residents-fight-plan-to-fence-coastal-railroad-tracks

They are perhaps the most distinctive features of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station — the pair of containment domes from Units 2 and 3, rising nearly 200 feet above the ground on the northern edge of San Diego County that every motorist sees on the drive along Interstate 5.But in about six years, the twin domes will be gone — obliterated — provided the schedule holds true for dismantling the now-shuttered plant, known as SONGS

That urgent desire for a sense of safety and a return to normalcy has fueled an unprecedented search for a vaccine against the worst pandemic humanity has faced in a century.CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, two of the vaccine developers furthest along in that search, have said they could request emergency-use authorization for their COVID-19 vaccines by late November and December, respectively, depending on results from trials that have enrolled tens of thousands of volunteers (including San Diegans).On Wednesday, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar said there could be enough doses of a COVID-19 vaccine for those most vulnerable to the disease by the end of 2020, with enough vaccine for all Americans by early April.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-10-25/were-getting-closer-to-having-a-covid-19-vaccine-hold-onto-that-maskAlso: https://go.sandiegouniontribune.com/trials-of-the-century/p/1

On the latest special election episode, Daniel Wheaton and Micheal Smolens discuss key races in the city of San Diego: mayor, city council, Measures B and E. Visit our election dashboard: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/2020-election-dashboard-san-diego

Nearly 10,000 students returned to class in person this week at Vista Unified School District as campuses reopened after more than a half-year of remote learning. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/vista/story/2020-10-22/with-face-masks-and-hepa-filters-vista-students-return-to-school

Tensions build as theme parks, from Disneyland to Legoland, push to reopen after being closed seven months because of the coronavirus pandemicRead more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-10-21/california-theme-parks-push-back-against-new-state-guidelines-suggesting-that-legal-action-is-possible

Frustrated with the state of COVID-19 restrictions in California, parents have taken to bringing their children to sporting tournaments in Arizona That state has a more lax approach to such gatherings. Citing comparatively low transmission rates among athletes and at outdoor gatherings, many San Diego parents have decided to let their children play.California is also losing much-needed revenue from letting these games slip out of state, something that league leaders hope will make the state reconsider the rules. Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/story/2020-10-19/youth-sports-economic-impact-california-shutdowns-coronavirus-arizona-baseball-soccer-surf-cup

The freeway-adjacent, mostly industrial town is what supporters of a November initiative, Measure E, view as a classic fixer-upper, meaning with ample investment it could be transformed into a community where people want to live and recreate. Yet the area’s proximity to the water is a quality that makes it attractive to would-be investors while simultaneously inhibiting their interest. That’s because the Midway District, either accidentally or intentionally depending on who you ask, finds itself in San Diego’s coastal zone, subject to a 30-foot building height limit.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer began meeting with the former owners of the high rise at 101 Ash Street in 2014, a full year before Sempra Energy vacated the property, according to a new cache of emails released by the city under the California Public Records Act.The communications also show the building’s previous owners, Sandor Shapery and Douglas Manchester, enjoyed access to the mayor and his senior aides, allowing them to market their building to city officials.“Does the shortened 25-year lease option improve the look of the proposal?” Shapery representative Richard Ledford wrote to Faulconer’s then chief of staff, Stephen Puetz, in July 2014. “May we set that second meeting with the mayor on this issue?”Taken together, the 80-plus pages of emails show more clearly how the city came to enter what is now considered one of the worst land deals in the history of San Diego governance.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2020-10-19/newly-released-emails-show-faulconer-top-aides-overruled-

On this special election episode of San Diego News Fix, we break down key Congressional races, the County Board of Supervisors and a housing measure in Santee.Visit our elections dashboard: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/2020-election-dashboard-san-diego

ImmunityBio, an El Segundo-based biotech firm headed by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, said Thursday it had received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin preliminary testing of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/story/2020-10-15/soon-shiong-phase-1-trial-coronavirus-vaccine

Starting this school year San Diego Unified will eliminate non-academic factors, such as student behavior, from academic grades, following a unanimous vote by the school board Tuesday to overhaul the district’s grading practices.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2020-10-15/san-diego-unified-changes-grading-protocols-to-be-more-equitable

California’s 50th District Congressional Candidates, Darrell Issa and Ammar Campa-Najjar, stirred controversy after virtual Q&A sessions with the local Defend East County Facebook group.Their appearances Friday on the group’s Facebook Live sessions have drawn criticism from some activists and experts who study extremism.Appearing alongside the East County group’s founder, Justin Haskins, Issa seemed to promote citizen groups taking up arms to “defend their communities,” days after a thwarted plot by self-styled militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and weeks after a counterprotester in Kenosha, Wis., shot and killed two people and wounded a third.Read the story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2020-10-13/50th-candidates-appear-with-group-that-trafficked-in-racism-and-conspiracies-issa-promotes-taking-up-arms

Watching, yes. Interfering, no.President Donald Trump’s repeated calls to his supporters to monitor election polling places for fraud have raised questions about what is allowed, and what isn’t, as San Diego County residents begin casting their ballots for the Nov. 3 election.Observers, as they are known in California, have long been part of elections here. Usually they are campaign insiders or political-party volunteers, and they rarely draw public attention as they quietly watch what goes on in polling places or at the Registrar of Voters, where ballots are processed and tabulated.

For Central American migrants fleeing gang violence, winning protection in the United States can be particularly difficultRead the story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-10-11/us-asylum-system-gang-violence-hondurasThe rest of the series: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/returnedPrevious episodes: Returned Part II: Who gets asylum? | Kate Morrissey https://art19.com/admin/series/eda62611-1093-4bef-a541-36a48c7289b5/content/episodes/e9541525-b629-4b2a-9d4f-05c5276907a8Returned Part 1: What it takes to make a case under the US asylum system https://art19.com/admin/series/eda62611-1093-4bef-a541-36a48c7289b5/content/episodes/a2fb8dc5-8590-4c6c-89c0-2fd0f6fe9a67