| Residents of Woodland Hills fight a plan to build 398 homes in a canyon with wildfire risks – Daily News |
| A proposal to build 398 homes on the northern section of the Woodland Hills Country Club is drawing pushback from nearby residents, who say the steep canyon site faces wildfire risks and has limited evacuation routes. Residents say it’s the wrong place for a fast-tracked project that would bypass public hearings and a full environmental review.
Arrimus Capital, a real estate firm that owns the Woodland Hills Country Club, is seeking approvals to redevelop about 20 acres of the golf course under AB 2011, a state law that streamlines certain mixed income and affordable housing projects by removing public hearings, environmental reviews and discretionary city approvals. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-12-05 |
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| San Diego’s new Border Patrol chief says agents will work more in county’s interior – San Diego Union-Tribune |
| With illegal border crossings at their lowest in decades, the public can expect to see more Border Patrol agents stepping up their presence within the interior of the region, the new chief of the agency’s San Diego sector said Friday.
Justin De La Torre takes the reins of the sector where he began his own career. It’s a border that looks very different now.
Last month, the number of migrant encounters along the San Diego sector was 960, which is a 93% decrease compared to October 2024. At that time, much of the border agents’ work involved processing people arriving at the border, many of whom were seeking asylum.
With this reduction in numbers as a result of the Trump administration’s policies to crack down on illegal immigration, agents can more proactively patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as farther north into San Diego County communities, he said Friday in a meeting with reporters.
Community groups that closely monitor immigration enforcement operations throughout the county said this week that they have noticed an increased presence of Border Patrol agents working with federal immigration agents in the neighborhoods. [Article] |
| by , San Diego Union-Tribune. 2025-12-05 |
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| Search the data: All 478 people who died in Southern California jails in the past 6 years – Daily News |
| In the past six years, 478 people have died under the care of the Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino County jails.
To better understand that figure, the Southern California News Group compiled a searchable database tracking every death, including the causes of death for nearly all of the inmates. The findings formed the basis of a two-part series, “Death Behind Bars,” that explored who was dying, why and what each county is doing to prevent more deaths.
The review found that while deaths were on a decline in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Los Angeles County had reversed course from its six-year low in 2024 and shot to near record highs this year. Despite reforms, all four of the counties remain at, or in some cases, well above, 20-year averages. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-12-05 |
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| How a San Diego politician is fighting to save the Tijuana River |
| Hours after a November storm, the Tijuana River flooded a grove of trees in Imperial Beach, gushed through a row of calverts and exploded into mounds of fetid foam.
This is ground zero for the contaminated river, which sickens thousands of people in southern San Diego County.
“The Tijuana River is one of, if not the most polluted, river in the entire United States,” said San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, who viewed the overflowing river wearing black rain boots and a hot pink respirator mask. “The river is carrying dangerous chemicals, pollutants, pathogens and toxic gases that are impacting South San Diego communities.” [Article] |
| by , CalMatters. 2025-12-05 |
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| L.A. woman's death reveals why America's pedestrian safety plan failed - Washington Post |
| LOS ANGELES — As the sun set over the Pacific Ocean one Sunday this past spring, Cecilia Milbourne returned from a walk on the beach with her dog, Gucci. To reach her parked Tesla, she had to cross a road that city officials have known for years poses a danger to people on foot.
Eight years ago, as part of a national initiative to stem traffic deaths called Vision Zero, the city shrank the number of lanes on the road, Vista Del Mar, and several connecting streets in the shoreside community just south of Venice. But they restored it to four lanes after an uproar by drivers — among them Octavio Girbau, who railed against a city official in a 2017 Facebook post stating he was stuck on one of those intersecting roads “in the traffic hell you created.” [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| Phone outage at Humboldt County jail rectified after call-in campaign |
| Outages to phone and commissary services at the Humboldt County jail prompted a phone campaign from local harm reduction advocates this week. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said that, as of Friday morning, outages have been rectified.
On Thursday, the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction asked residents to call the sheriff’s office to demand that “the Humboldt County Correctional Facility fix broken no-contact visitation phones and commissary kiosks,” saying that “community members who are incarcerated need to be treated with dignity, and have access to their basic needs, especially communication with loved ones.”
“For months, inmates have been unable to communicate with loved ones during in-person visits without yelling through plexiglass,” the HACHR said in a social media post. “On top of that, the commissary ordering kiosk has been broken. This means our friends inside are forced to jump through hoops and pay costly phone and tablet rental fees to obtain their basic needs through commissary.” [Article] |
| by , Eureka Times-Standard. 2025-12-05 |
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| The American Dream Is Now Month to Month | Voice of San Diego |
| I am 43 years old. I have been working in my current field for 16 years, almost to the day. And I have a master’s degree in journalism – which I am not divulging to brag. If anything, feel welcome to make fun of me for it.
To complete this list of vital working statistics, I can also add that I make a decent bit more than the median income for people over the age of 25 in San Diego, which is about $57,000. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| How Batteries Got Cheaper and Made the Electric Grid More Reliable - The New York Times |
| Lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from cellphones to cars, are increasingly saving electric grids around the world.
Batteries as large as shipping containers are being connected to power lines and installed beside solar panels and wind turbines. They soak up power when it’s plentiful and cheap and release it when electricity use soars, helping reduce the need for expensive power plants and lines.
American researchers invented the lithium-ion battery in the 1970s and later showed that the devices could help the electric grid. But for a long time batteries made little headway because grid managers and utility executives dismissed them as expensive and risky.
One of the first breakthroughs came about 15 years ago when engineers at a U.S. energy company installed one of the first lithium-ion batteries tied to a grid in a desert nearly 9,000 feet above sea level in Chile. Challenging conventional notions of how the electricity system should be run, that team helped prove that batteries could help make electric grids more stable and reliable.
The concept of storing energy was not new. Thomas Edison developed alkaline nickel-iron batteries largely for industry and early electric vehicles. Various companies tried other technologies like sodium sulfur, which have not gained much traction. And some utilities have long pumped water uphill so that later it could be sent back down to generate electricity.
But those systems were relatively limited. The kinds of lithium batteries installed in the Atacama Desert in 2009, by comparison, are now being used around the world. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| Data Center impact: Zero-risk role to power | News | ivpressonline.com |
| A major data center developer is proposing a novel, no-risk partnership with the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) to temporarily power a massive artificial intelligence campus, framing it as a critical bridge to unlock billions in local investment while protecting the public utility. [Article] |
| by , Imperial Valley Press. 2025-12-05 |
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| Death behind bars: Who’s dying in Southern California county jails — and why – Daily News |
| Every five days, on average, someone dies in the jails of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino or Riverside counties.
Broken bodies, broken minds and substance abuse are at the root of most of the nearly 500 deaths since 2020. Homicides behind bars get more attention but are rare compared to suicides, drug overdoses and death by natural causes.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has called his jails the largest mental health institution in the nation, estimating that roughly 50% of the inmates are struggling with psychological problems. Other counties in the region concur with that estimate for their jail populations.
As one civil rights attorney said: “You’re dealing with a population that is physically sick, mentally ill and addicted, and they need help, a lot of help.”
The examples are plentiful. And painful. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-12-05 |
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| County Could Tap Reserves to Retroactively Cover Bonuses | Voice of San Diego |
| County officials are proposing to dip into rainy-day funds to pay for millions of dollars in bonuses for county employees. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| Pregnant Black women detail delayed care, maternal health gaps | AP News |
| Two pregnant Black women nearly 1,000 miles apart were ready to do what many do every day: welcome new bundles of joy, and just before the start of the holiday season. Instead, the health of both women and their babies was put at risk after hospital staff did not immediately provide the needed care.
One woman was discharged and delivered her baby on the side of an Indiana highway, while the other nearly gave birth in a Texas hospital’s emergency waiting room. Both women survived, but are still reeling from ordeals that have drawn national attention — in part, because they were captured on video and shared on social media. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| San Diego County ADU sales OK'd in key vote, despite rural concerns |
| San Diego County is one step closer to joining other California communities in letting ADUs be sold as condos.
The latest move to loosen rules governing accessory dwelling units in the county’s unincorporated areas got a warm reception Friday from county planning commissioners, who voted unanimously to let property owners sell detached ADUs under a new state law.
The law, Assembly Bill 1033, allows jurisdictions to opt into permitting such sales. Cities like San Diego, San Jose and Santa Cruz now allow ADU condo sales.
The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote in March on whether to include the measure in an update of the county’s ADU ordinance. If they support it, San Diego County would become the second county in California, after San Francisco, to opt into an ADU sales program under the 2023 law.
County staff had originally recommended that only detached ADUs be eligible for conversion into condos and eventual sale, citing the potential for more ADU sales to disrupt typical development patterns in rural areas. [Article] |
| by , San Diego Union-Tribune. 2025-12-05 |
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| The far-reaching implications of accurate Alzheimer’s tests – San Diego Union-Tribune |
| In an era with less political and cultural division — and less tech-driven diversion — the stunning advances in medicine seen in recent years would get far more attention.
The rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020 is one of many examples of how artificial intelligence has been a massive game-changer. AI-powered diagnostic algorithms analyze X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and all sorts of other medical data with a degree of nuance and level of accuracy that’s beyond humans. Breakthroughs appear near that could improve treatment of and/or help prevent diseases such as diabetes, several types of cancer, heart disease, glaucoma and macular degeneration. A single treatment with gene therapy, astonishingly, now can cure hemophilia B. “Living with this disease for 57 years, and then my life changes in 30 minutes,” said Curt Krouse, the first patient to receive the treatment at Penn Medicine’s Blood Disorders Center. “It’s hard to believe.”
But these developments also have the potential to create extraordinary moral and ethical issues. Consider the rapid advances in the ability to detect Alzheimer’s risks. San Diego’s own Eric Topol, the cardiologist who founded and directs the Scripps Research Translational Institute, wrote in April about the excitement in health and scientific circles over “the breakthrough blood test for Alzheimer’s disease” — one that the Mayo Clinic concluded was “over 90% accurate” in gauging the preconditions of future cognitive decline. The test — which was approved by the FDA in May — is likely to keep getting more accurate. [Article] |
| by , San Diego Union-Tribune. 2025-12-05 |
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| Fewer People Are Sleeping on Santa Ana Streets, City Officials Say |
| Santa Ana officials say nearly 100 less people are sleeping on the city’s streets this year compared to 2024 – a development they largely attribute to key social investments like transitional housing, reuniting people with families or drug and mental health treatment programs. [Article] |
| by , Voice of OC. 2025-12-05 |
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| Newsom, seeking federal funds for L.A. wildfire recovery, is denied meeting with key Trump officials - Los Angeles Times |
| WASHINGTON — Gov. Gavin Newsom kept a low profile as he swung through the nation’s capital this week, holding meetings with a handful of lawmakers Friday on Capitol Hill as he renewed calls for billions in federal recovery aid following the Los Angeles fires.
For a governor who has spent recent weeks in the spotlight — trailed by cameras at the U.N. climate summit in Brazil last month and featured at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday — the muted Washington stop stood out. As he moved between offices on Friday, the halls were quiet, with many lawmakers already en route home for the weekend.
The governor’s office disclosed little before his trip about Newsom’s schedule in Washington, saying afterward that he met with five lawmakers, including three who serve on the Senate and House Appropriations committees, as well as Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).
Newsom told The Times that the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied his request for a meeting, a setback that underscored the political friction with the Trump administration surrounding California’s $33.9-billion appeal for long-term disaster funding nearly a year after the devastating Los Angeles fires ignited.
The governor said his visit was meant to make “the universal case for support for recovery,” not just for California, but for other states that were hit with disasters, such as Texas and North Carolina.
“We’re getting to the point where we need to see action, and so that’s why we’re stepping up our efforts,” Newsom said as he left a meeting with Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), a tenured member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Newsom noted that the funding is vital for fire victims. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-12-05 |
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| Political leaders urge San Diegans to oppose Trump's offshore drilling plan |
| San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner Thursday evening used a community meeting in Encinitas to urge the public to take a stand against the Trump administration’s plans to expand offshore drilling. [Article] |
| by , Times of San Diego. 2025-12-05 |
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| Barger Provides Open Letter Regarding Briggs and Foothill Proposed Project - Crescenta Valley Weekly |
| Thank you to everyone who participated in the Nov. 6 community meeting on the proposed La Crescenta Apartments Project at Foothill Boulevard and Briggs Avenue. I deeply value your feedback and clearly heard your concerns.
In response, I have formally communicated the community’s concerns to the project developer, Abode Communities. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| Sacramento Report: The Diablo's in the Details | Voice of San Diego |
| The California Coastal Commission is deciding next week how long Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear power plant, can keep operating. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-12-05 |
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| In Altadena, the first of 15 developer-built homes lists for $1.9M – Pasadena Star News |
| On an upsloping cul-de-sac across from Charles Farnsworth Park in Altadena, crews are only finishing touches away from completing a new construction home that hit the market early this week for under $1.9 million.
Distinguished by a white facade with black trim, this 2,125-square-foot modern farmhouse-style residence at 3245 Arrowhead Court is the first of 15 single-story homes by San Diego-based New Point Communities, a real estate development and building firm, with sales led by Compass.
Construction began in August, and the developer expects to finish the first home for move in by February.
New Pointe’s entry into Altadena comes as the unincorporated town is in various stages of recovery from the destruction caused by the Eaton fire. [Article] |
| by , Pasadena Star News. 2025-12-05 |
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