By Brittany Hook / Scripps – UCSD / April 25, 2024
In the spring of 2020, a historic red tide event occurred in waters off Southern California. Driven by a bloom of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedra, this event brought nighttime displays of bioluminescence to beaches along the coast, from Baja California to Santa Barbara. While the bloom gained international attention for its stunning visual displays, it also had significant negative impacts, including mass mortality among fish and other marine organisms.
Marine scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other organizations seized the opportunity to study the unprecedented event and its impacts on marine life, both in the wild and in aquariums. In a recent study, this multi-institutional team of 34 researchers identified deteriorating water quality — notably prolonged low oxygen conditions — as a significant factor in the mass mortality event. Their findings were published in the journal Elementa, and featured in a special issue focused on the 2020 red tide.
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By Chas Smith / Beach Grit / April 24, 2024
A San Diego lifeguard is back home after nearly losing his life while surfing Nicaragua. Todd Rice, 23, was in the Central American country enjoying a fine pulse of swell when a panga ran him over deeply cutting his leg. The hit nearly caused Rice to lose consciousness but he mustered the internal fortitude to fashion a tourniquet from his leash and control the bleeding until help arrived.
“I came to terms that for one, at that point, I might die. So I said my goodbyes to the gentleman that was holding my head and told him to say certain things to my family. And then secondary, if I live, I’ve already come to terms that I might lose my leg,” Rice told Fox 5 news.
When his fellow lifeguards heard about the accident, they immediately sprang into action, coordinating with U.S. Embassy in Managua. “Seeing it bring together the service, and we’re there to facilitate and remind everyone within the service and the community that we are a family,” Hailey Westwood, president of the San Diego Lifeguard Association, declared.
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by Ernie McCray
The war between Israelis and Palestinians is affecting Arab and Jewish students in our schools, requiring educators to tend to the learning and emotional needs of both groups of young people.
But many Arab students claim that they aren’t getting the amount of attention that their Jewish counterparts are receiving.
These students took part in a focus group as part of a study conducted by a doctoral student who is from the local Arab American community.
Students say they’re feeling alone, unheard, extremely uncomfortable with the way the armed conflict in Gaza is discussed on their campuses. According to them, the conversations are mainly centered on what’s happening to Israelis, and their counter arguments to what they consider to be misinformation, are mostly denounced.
Many of them feel as though they’re a default “enemy,” being constantly bullied by racist jokes about what they wear or the truths they hold to, leaving them without hope that their people will ever be represented in the curriculum in positive ways.
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By Braden Cartwright / Daily Post -Palo Alto / April 24, 2024
Cities that are against state housing mandates have won their lawsuit against the state of California that challenged a controversial law allowing four homes on properties where only one home had been allowed before. The ruling means that Senate Bill 9 has been invalidated in charter cities, including Palo Alto, according to the lawyer who won the lawsuit.
“This is a monumental victory for all charter cities in California,” said attorney Pam Lee, who represented five Southern California cities against the state and Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Charter cities have their own local constitution, or charter. California has 121 charter cities, including Palo Alto, San Mateo, Redwood City and Mountain View.
The rest of the cities are “general law” cities, which operate under the general laws of the state. The SB9 ruling doesn’t apply to general law cities.
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by MacKenzie Elmer / Voice of San Diego / April 22, 2024
The ongoing war between public power proponents and San Diego Gas & Electric looked more like a battle between the municipalization advocates and union labor Thursday [April 18].
Each team’s respective poster-bearing players – with signs that read either “fire SG&E” or “municipalization is union busting” — took turns encumbering the live feed webcast of the City Council Rules Committee’s public comment period. But almost no one from a labor union spoke in favor of the proposed government takeover of the energy grid. Proponents had hoped the City Council would consider putting up a ballot measure and spare them the burden of collecting signatures.
Nate Fairman, who represents electrical workers of IBEW Local Union 465, which holds a contract with SDG&E, told the City Council to reject the ballot measure, calling it a “direct threat” on union jobs.
Dorrie Bruggemann, campaign manager for Power San Diego, argued their proposal is pro-union and that state law requires new public utilities honor the union contracts of their previous private employer. But it wasn’t enough.
It was clear the lack of union support was the death knell for public power this round.
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By Ryan Fonseca / Los Angeles Times / April 24, 2024
[Please see original for links]
‘Managing mode, not solutions mode’
San Diego’s mayor created a department in 2021 to find solutions to the homelessness crisis, signaling a new direction. It hasn’t made things better.
The city’s homelessness count increased 35% from 2022 to 2023. Nearly half of the unsheltered people counted were considered chronically homeless.
Homeless deaths increased about 135% over five years, up to at least 624 last year, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s office.
For every 10 people who find housing in San Diego, 13 people become homeless for the first time, says a 2022 report by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness.
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