San Diego News Fix

A smell of death drapes over the unfinished two-story house on Calle Loma Alta on Tijuana’s eastern side. Neighbors report sometimes hearing screams coming from the abandoned property.Inside, the floor is littered with empty Coca-Cola bottles and dozens of children’s toys and grade school notebooks. Clothes are piled everywhere. Partially burnt mattresses cover the door frames to several rooms.In one, wooden planks are nailed to the floor with heavy chains piled on top. Stacks of different size stones are nearby with chains also attached to the rocks. A boulder, twice the size of a basketball, is marked with chiseled incisions.Spray-painted in red in the corner are the words “Te Amo.” I love you. Two Virgin de Guadalupe plaques are propped against the wall above the television set, illuminated by a working light bulb.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2020-09-13/parents-dig-for-hours-but-are-unable-to-find-the-buried-remains-missing-teenager

North County school districts are moving toward reopening campuses, with phased plans for in-person instruction that focus on the youngest and most vulnerable students first.Vista, Poway and Oceanside have announced plans for opening campuses to small groups of students this month, including special education students, English learners, and others who need additional help or receive specialized instruction.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/story/2020-09-13/north-county-schools-to-start-phased-reopening

Union-Tribune reporter Gary Robbins talks about COVID-19 at SDSU and whether the more than 500 cases there will put us back to Tier 1. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-09-10/covid-cases-increase-at-sdsu-countywide

San Diego’s controversial Smart Streetlight cameras will be shut off, drawing applause from social justice activists, but removing police access to a tool they say helps solve violent crimes.Mayor Kevin Faulconer on Wednesday ordered that the more than 3,000 cameras installed on streetlights throughout San Diego be turned off until the city crafts an ordinance to govern surveillance technology.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2020-09-09/mayor-orders-san-diegos-smart-streetlights-turned-off-until-surveillance-ordinance-in-place

With Election Day two months away, a poll released Tuesday shows the race for the 50th Congressional District is anyone’s game, with Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar in a statistical tie in the traditionally Republican stronghold.A San Diego Union-Tribune/10 News poll of 508 likely voters conducted by SurveyUSA shows Issa, a former congressman, leading with 46 percent, slightly ahead of business owner and San Diego State University lecturer Campa-Najjar, who polled at 45 percent.“The contest between Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar is anyone’s guess, with way too many variables in play to begin to handicap the winner,” SurveyUSA pollsters wrote.About 9 percent of voters said they remain undecided in the poll conducted Friday through Monday. It has a margin of error of 5.4 percentage points.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2020-09-08/50th-district-contest-is-anyones-guess-with-issa-and-campa-najjar-in-a-statistical-dead-heat-per-n

While skies were overcast and temperature cooler in East County Tuesday morning, officials warned that a wildfire that has scorched more than 17,000 acres and destroyed nearly a dozen homes and 25 other structures is not letting up and is expected to flare up again tonight.“I want to be very clear in my message,” said Cal Fire San Diego Chief Tony Mecham at a news conference at Viejas Casino and Resort. “We have a sleeping giant in the backcountry.”The National Weather Service has issued a red flag fire weather warning for most of San Diego County through 8 p.m. Wednesday.Santa Ana winds blowing up to 50 miles an hour were expected to hit around 8 p.m. — pushing the fire from east to the west — and Mecham and other officials warned residents to be prepared.

With an intense heat wave bearing down across California throughout the Labor Day weekend, the state’s grid operator has issued a Flex Alert calling on electricity consumers to voluntarily conserve energy so that the demand for power does not outstrip supply.The Flex Alert will be in place statewide from Saturday through Monday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. each day.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/story/2020-09-03/californias-grid-operator-orders-a-flex-alert-ahead-of-labor-day-heat-wave

The executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments, the county’s leading transportation and planning agency, approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance payments to former employees without telling the board of directors, a new audit has found.Hasan Ikhrata, who took over as SANDAG’s top executive in December 2018, also allowed an employee to redeem unused sick time for more than $110,000, even though the unidentified worker was not entitled to the money, auditors said.And another payment — made while the compensation and compliance audit was under way — authorized a $60,000 severance to a senior official after the official voluntarily resigned.“The material findings disclosed within the report were a result of significant weaknesses in SANDAG’s governance and system of internal controls,” independent performance auditor Mary Khoshmashrab wrote to board chairman and Poway Mayor Steve Vaus last week.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2020-09-02/intern

Councilwoman Barbara Bry and Assemblyman Todd Gloria have nearly even support among likely voters in their runoff to become San Diego’s next mayor, according to a San Diego Union-Tribune/10News SurveyUSA poll released Tuesday.Bry, who finished 66,000 votes behind fellow Democrat Gloria in the March primary, leads Gloria 37 percent to 34 percent. But her lead is within the poll’s 5.3 percent margin of error, and 29 percent are undecided.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2020-09-01/new-polls-shows-bry-with-slim-lead-over-gloria-in-san-diego

Despite cries from some to go faster and others to go slower, Dr. Wilma Wooten largely stuck with the state’s new rules announced Friday allowing a wide range of businesses to resume varying levels of indoor activity.There were a few new public health orders announced Monday, including one that all businesses now reopening keep logs with names and phone numbers of everyone they serve to make it easier to track people down quickly if a COVID-19 outbreak is detected.Overall, Wooten’s take on the now-underway move back indoors seemed to be: Now it’s up to you.Continuing to meet the state’s requirements for fewer and fewer local cases, she said, will come down to whether the community can collectively hew to long-standing facial covering, hand-washing and distancing requirements even as they begin to move more freely.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-08-31/indoor-businesses-reopen-across-the-county-but-some-say-new-rules-too-restrictive

Hundreds of San Diegans have received a COVID-19 treatment that arms those battling the disease with the defenses of past survivors — though it’s still not clear how well it works.What is clear is that more people will likely get the treatment, known as convalescent patient plasma, which the Food and Drug Administration authorized on Aug. 23 as an emergency treatment for COVID-19.Scientists and doctors in San Diego County and nationwide have good reason to believe that plasma therapy is safe. And with about 6 million COVID-19 cases and 180,000 deaths in the United States, the need for new COVID-19 treatments could not be more painfully clear.Read the story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/story/2020-08-30/hundreds-of-san-diegans-with-covid-19-have-already-been-treated-with-plasma-but-does-it-workTrack the outbreak: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/tracking-coronavirus-cases-san-diego-county

Working families in San Diego are bracing for distance learning at K-12 schools to start next week. With the pandemic still raging, most students in the region will be logging on rather than sitting in classrooms. That means many parents will now have to juggle their jobs with overseeing their children’s studies. Reporter Phillip Molnar recently reached out to local economists to find out whether this could result in many people dropping out of the workforce.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that the state has contracted with a diagnostics company to conduct up to 150,000 more COVID-19 tests a day.Under the contract, the state will build a testing laboratory and provide some testing equipment, such as supplies to collect and transport specimens, according to Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly.The company, PerkinElmer, will process and report back test results within 48 hours, but the company will not collect the actual nasal swabs. That will happen at state testing sites.Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer, welcomed the deal, set to begin in eight to 10 weeks

Northbound border lanes into San Ysidro were nearly empty Tuesday morning after nightmarish 10-hour traffic jams clogged Tijuana’s streets and freeways Sunday through Monday.Customs and Border Protection increased its enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions on non-essential travel over the weekend, which snarled traffic citywide.Essential workers, such as health care and food service employees, are allowed to cross daily into the U.S. for work, whereas people who want to visit family or shop have been asked to refrain from crossing the border.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2020-08-25/border-crackdown-travelhttps://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2020-08-24/border-traffic-coronavirushttps://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2020-08-16/baja-coronavirus-hospitals*** Subscribe to our flash briefinghttps://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/podcasts/morning-headlines

Years after a criminal conspiracy was discovered by the Union-Tribune, former Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife Margaret, are now felons.Margaret’s sentence is 3 years probation with 8 months of home arrest, for being part of a scheme that mis-spent a quarter million dollars of campaign finance funds on everything from Italian vacations to oral surgery.

The second part in series that takes a deep dive into the U.S. asylum system to help readers understand what the system was meant to do, how it previously functioned and what it has become. Immigration reporter Kate Morrissey discusses the project.The series: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/returnedThe simulation: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-08-23/asylum-system-interactive-experience***Subscribe to our daily morning news briefing: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/podcasts/morning-headlines

The San Diego Union-Tribune partnered with the National Conflict Resolution Center to hold a discussion on race and equity.It’s part of the NCRC's “A Path Forward” series, and it featured three voices that have been driving the conversation following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests.The panel includes: Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How to be an Antiracist". Robin DiAngelo, author of "White Fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism", and Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who came to prominence following his coverage of Ferguson, Mo. for the Washington Post.

Home prices in San Diego hit an all-time high last month. The median price tag for a home in July: $634,000. That’s a whopping 9 percent jump over this time last year. That trend extends across much of Southern California, as homes for sale have all but evaporated from the market. Some people were hoping the pandemic would be a good time to invest. As it turns out, homeowners aren't selling. But will it last? Or is this just a COVID-induced housing bubble.

Over the past decade, North County restaurant owners Roddy and Aaron Browning have looked upon Yelp, the high-profile crowd-sourced reviews platform, as something of a necessary evil. A diner's positive 5-star review will make their day, but a negative 1- or 2-star review will ruin their week. But since the pandemic began in March, the Brownings and many other local restaurateurs say recent bad reviews on Yelp — many of them for county-ordered safety and service requirements beyond their control — are making the struggle to survive even harder. Some owners' classy, clever and angry written responses to recent low-starred reviews have gone viral. Meanwhile, Yelp says it has stepped up efforts to remove unfair reviews and it is encouraging its diner-members to show compassion for restaurant owners before they push the publish button.

As expected, state officials announced that they removed San Diego County from the state’s COVID-19 watchlist Tuesday, a move that was telegraphed one day earlier by local leaders.The action, which came as local doctors were adjusting to new testing guidance from the county, starts a 14-day countdown during which the region must avoid crossing any of six thresholds that, if they persisted for three days in a row, would land the region back on the list.Provided San Diego’s daily COVID-19 numbers remain below state-set maximums for two weeks, K-12 schools would be able to resume in-person instruction at the discretion of local school boards.Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/health/story/2020-08-18/san-diego-removed-from-state-covid-watch-listFollow our COVID-19 tracker: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/tracking-coronavirus-cases-san-diego-county