A heart attack could do it. A lightning strike. Or a line drive smack to the chest.
The causes of cardiac arrest outside a hospital vary, but one thing is always true: A victim is almost certainly going to die. Only CPR and an electric shock have much chance of bringing him or her back to life. And even then the chances of survival are slim.
Around the world, paramedics follow international guidelines about how to do CPR. But the city of San Diego is an exception: Its paramedics and firemen perform CPR in a slightly different way. We examine the debate.
A former chief lifeguard says the city is playing with lives, but San Diego’s medical director contends that the qualms are “much ado about nothing.”
In the world of education, a story looks at the seemingly growing troops of temporary teachers: “While many teachers are relieved to find jobs at all, labor leaders are worried that the phenomenon could mean a less stable, less empowered workforce that can be dismissed more easily.”
How unstable are the positions? Check out what happened to a Torrey Pines temp teacher who got the heave-ho after four years on the job.
If you need a break from hard news, take a look at our photo essay titled “Up On The Roof: A Survey Of Solitude.” Photographer Sam Hodgson went up high to get a bird’s-eye view of downtown San Diego and reveals the spaces that surrounds us all, even in the most crowded of places.
Elsewhere in the local news world, the U-T runs a story about the San Diego City Council that could have been headlined “Money May Influence Politics.”
Yes, that ranks up there on the holy-cow meter with “Celebrity Enters Rehab” and “Sun Rises in East.” Still, the story does look at the influence of money at City Hall through the prism of new rules that require more disclosure about what lobbyists are up to.
The councilmembers in question deny any wrongdoing and “each of them notes taking money from both sides of the issues.”
The U-T also looks at the controversial grants that county supervisors dole out to community groups: “The donations raise questions about potential conflicts of interest between elected officials and individual recipients.”
For more about this issue, check our own coverage, which recently explored where the grant money goes.
Finally, the NCT looks at driver’s-license checkpoints in Escondido, a flashpoint for activists who say Latinos are being targeted by city cops. A newspaper analysis says “half of all checkpoints happened in Latino areas, which make up only about five square miles of the city’s 36 square miles,” but the story notes that the full picture is “complex.”
— RANDY DOTINGA
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