OB Rag

By Sarah Mosko / Times of San Diego / May 3, 2024

Many residents of Orange and San Diego counties were relieved when the nuclear power plant at San Onofre was permanently shut down in 2013. This naïve thinking, that the plant posed risks to people and property only while the reactors were operational,

From UC Neighbors for Responsible Growth, aka UC PEEPS

Disappointing but not surprising, the San Diego Planning Commission passed the University Community Plan Update 4-0 last Thursday, May 31, with two members absent, despite extensive opposition, the absence of a final Program EIR, a rushed approval process, and hearing three major land use proposals all on the same day.

The Commissioners chose to ignore the many strong points made about the flaws and consequences of the Plan Update,

From Gianni Buonomo Vintners / June 2, 2024

It’s bittersweet to say good bye to the community that got in on the ground floor to support us. Few gave us much chance to survive on the beer soaked Avenue called Newport. Thanks to you we not only survived, but we flourished.

Good bye Ocean Beach. Thank you very much.

Over the next six weeks Gianni Buonomo Vintners will be moving from the place we’ve called home for the past nine years.

The lease on our building is up for renewal on July 31. The landlord is raising rent 20%. That kind of increase is too great for a small, community based winery to manage.

By Miranda Ceja / Patch San Diego / June 2, 2024

Despite fears of sharks swimming close to California beaches, shark experts say the apex predators of the ocean are unlikely to bite. Still, it has happened.

Last year, a total of 2 people were injured — and one man died — in unprovoked attacks in the waters off California, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark File, a scientific database of global shark attacks.

There were 36 shark attacks in U.S. waters last year, more than half of the 69 bites reported worldwide. More recently, a Southern California beach was shut down during a busy Memorial Day weekend after an “aggressive” shark knocked a surfer from his board.

By Phil Diehl / Del Mar Times / June 3, 2024

Nurdles are everywhere. Never heard of them? They are the raw form of plastic resin that’s melted and molded into everything from soda bottles to clothing fabrics, from food packaging to artificial Christmas trees.

However, two local environmental groups say a frightening amount of the pellets skip the useful product stage and are turning up on San Diego County beaches and in its lagoons, part of the rising tide of worldwide plastic pollution.

Nurdles are tiny, petroleum-based lumps about the size and shape of a lentil.

By Cooper Gegan/ The Inertia / June 3, 2024

A newly published study has identified a fungus living in the sea that can break down plastic. The marine microbe, called Parengyodontium album was found on plastic debris floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. When scientists later isolated the fungus in a laboratory, they found it was capable of breaking down the plastic polyethylene after it had first been exposed to UV radiation from sunlight.

The discovery was made by marine microbiologists

Our friends at the Peninsula News have been following the story about replacement trees for all the dead Palms at NTC Park. Here’s their latest

A local birria specialist opened its second restaurant in the Midway District. Mike’s Red Tacos threw its doors open at 3365 Rosecrans Street Suite D. The eatery was born out of owner Mike Touma’s passion for birria; a native San Diegan, Touma went on a personal eating quest on both sides of the border in preparation to launch his birria-focused food truck back in 2021.

A Clairemont area storefront followed in 2022, and now Mike and his wife Leona just unveiled their new 2,100-square-foot Rosecrans Street restaurant in the Loma Square shopping center.

UPDATE: the body was found at the bottom of the stairs on Ladera Street.According to Times of San Diego, a person was found dead shortly before 10 a.m., today, Monday in the 700 block of Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

Three people were temporarily displaced after an apartment caught fire in the Ocean Beach neighborhood Sunday, June 2. Fire crews responded to the scene at 4835 Orchard Avenue after a 911 call came in reporting a structure fire around 6:40 a.m.

Residents of the complex were seen gathered outside the building as firefighters assessed the situation.

Battalion Chief Mark Reece said, “Crews arrived to find smoke and fire from the first floor of a two-story apartment complex. Crews attacked the fire, containing it to just one room but they also — during this fire attack — discovered a possible grow facility, a marijuana grow, in the room.”

KPBS/ June 3, 2024

A rolling strike by unionized academic workers upset about the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian protests at various campuses will spread to three more campuses this week, including UC San Diego Monday, June 3.

According United Auto Workers Local 4811, workers will hit the picket lines Monday morning at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, with UC Irvine workers joining the lines Wednesday.

From Mexico News Daily

[Edited slighted at beginning for clarification. Article originally published Sept. 2023]

Claudia Sheinbaum, the new President of Mexico, was the former Mexico City mayor (2018-23), who will also represent the Labor Party and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico, will face off against the Broad Front for Mexico’s Xóchitl Gálvez at the June 2, 2024 election. Senator Gálvez was officially designated as the three-party opposition alliance’s “coordinator” just over a week ago.

Sheinbaum – a physicist and environmental scientist who was environment minister in Mexico City when Andrés Manuel López Obrador was mayor in the early 2000s – recently spoke with Expansión Política, the politics site of the Expansión news organization, and expressed views on a range of issues she will face if elected as Mexico’s first female president next June.