EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

by ECM | April 23, 2023 9:48 pm

April  23, 2023  (San Diego) — East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media.  This week’s round-up stories include:

LOCAL

• MTS Board to Decide Who Will Lead Agency Through Crisis[1] (Voice of San Diego)
• Check your frozen strawberries: Hep A outbreak linked to fruit sold in San Diego stores[2] (KPBS)
• Migrants say they’re held between walls: Several charge Border Patrol agents have kept them for days without food, blankets[3] (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Retired Marine General: Duncan Hunter in Fallujah Was ‘Very Cocky,’ ‘Reckless’[4]  (Times of San Diego)
• Santee to begin issuing citations mid-May to those starting fires by the river in an effort to reduce encampments[5] (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• 72 hours: Inside San Diego County’s mental health crisis[6]  (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Feds charge ‘El Chapo’ sons with massive fentanyl operation that leads to the San Diego border[7]  San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Barona raising awareness: ‘It’s called a genocide’[8] (East County Cailfornian)
• Car crashes into El Cajon apartment building, residents evacuated[9] (10 News)

STATE

• LA County Reports First Cases Of New COVID-19 Strain[10] (Patch.com)
• California lawmakers want to know why billions in spending isn’t reducing homelessness[11] (KPBS)
• CSU student assistants say they can’t make ends meet. Now they’ll file for their own union [12] (Sacramento Bee)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click  “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

MTS Board to Decide Who Will Lead Agency Through Crisis[1] (Voice of San DIegio)

The board for the Metropolitan Transit System this week will choose its new chair, who will lead the agency during its response to allegations of sexual harassment, assault and wrongful termination by a former staffer against former chair Nathan Fletcher. San Diego Councilman Stephen Whitburn, as the vice chair…has been acting chair. But the board needs to choose a permanent chair through its formal process. At last week’s executive committee, three candidates for the seat emerged: Whitburn, La Mesa Councilwoman Patricia Dillard, and El Cajon Councilman Steve Goble.

Check your frozen strawberries: Hep A outbreak linked to fruit sold in San Diego stores[2] (KPBS)

Frozen strawberries tied to a hepatitis A outbreak has sickened at least seven people. Some of the potentially contaminated berries were sold in San Diego

Migrants say they’re held between walls: Several charge Border Patrol agents have kept them for days without food, blankets[3] (San Diego Union-Tribune)

When a 33-year-old man from Afghanistan who had worked for the U.S. Army as a translator crossed onto U.S. soil from Tijuana, he thought he’d finally made it to a place where he would be safe. Instead, Obaidullah found himself trapped with more than 100 other asylum seekers in what has become an open-air holding cell between the two layers of border wall.  He said U.S. Border Patrol agents required them to wait there in custody with no shelter, no food and minimal water, the latest in what has become a pattern for the San Diego sector.

Retired Marine General: Duncan Hunter in Fallujah Was ‘Very Cocky,’ ‘Reckless’[4]  (Times of San Diego)

In March 2004, four Blackwater contractors were killed in Fallujah[13], Iraq. Charred American corpses were hung from a bridge across the Euphrates River. Commanding the response of the 1st Marine Regiment was Col. John Toolan[14]. One of his lieutenants was Duncan Duane Hunter, son of Rep. Duncan Lee Hunter[15], chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. But Hunter’s service in the First Battle of Fallujah[16], or Operation Vigilant Resolve, has come under scrutiny in the NPR podcast series “Taking Cover.”[17]

Santee to begin issuing citations mid-May to those starting fires by the river in an effort to reduce encampments[5] (San Diego Union-Tribune)

The city is currently trying to get the word out that enforcement is coming ahead of the next fire season

72 hours: Inside San Diego County’s mental health crisis[6]  (San Diego Union-Tribune)

For three days, reporters followed patients, police, clinicians, dispatchers and those struggling for help to create a minute-by-minute account of an overwhelmed system.

Feds charge ‘El Chapo’ sons with massive fentanyl operation that leads to the San Diego border[7]  San Diego Union-Tribune)

U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman: San Diego prosecutors proud to take part in delivering “most crushing blow to Sinaloa cartel since El Chapo’s conviction”

Barona raising awareness: ‘It’s called a genocide’[8] (East County Cailfornian)

April is Genocide Awareness Month, and the Barona Band of Mission Indians is educating and advocating the history of Native Americans locally and nationwide…

Car crashes into El Cajon apartment building, residents evacuated[9] (10 News)

Temporary evacuations were ordered late Tuesday night after a car crashed into the side of an apartment building in El Cajon. The car slammed into the structure on 360 East Bradley Ave. at around 10:50 p.m., according to authorities at the scene.

STATE

LA County Reports First Cases Of New COVID-19 Strain[10] (Patch.com)

LA County has identified the first local cases of a newly emerging strain of COVID-19, the public health director said.

California lawmakers want to know why billions in spending isn’t reducing homelessness[11] (KPBS)

a bipartisan group of California legislators is trying to get to the bottom of by calling for a first-of-its kind, large-scale audit of the state’s homelessness spending. / The state has stepped up its involvement and investment…allocating $20.6 billion toward housing and homelessness since 2018-19…. But despite the influx of cash, during that time, the number of unhoused people in the state has increased by nearly a third — to more than 170,000 as of last year.

CSU student assistants say they can’t make ends meet. Now they’ll file for their own union [12] (Sacramento Bee)

Student assistants at California State University, backed by the California State University Employees Union, will file petitions Monday to form what they say would be the largest union of undergraduate student workers in the country. 

 

 

 

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