The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
People across the neighborhood of Linda Vista are staying off the streets: Kids walk home alone without their parents, the local community’s health class is virtually empty and even the butcher at the grocery store’s meat counter says sales are down.
What’s going on? Fear. As our story explains, undocumented immigrants are hiding indoors because rumors of checkpoints and patrolling immigration have run amok.
Some of the rumors aren’t true, but there is something behind their concern: there’s been a string of federal arrests in Linda Vista, and residents say there hasn’t been this much scrutiny on their neighborhood in years.
In other news:
- It’s good to be old. Well, at least if that means you’ve worked in the same place a long time and have union seniority protection. Case in point: The San Diego school district, where no permanent teachers appear in danger of being laid off.
Not so for probationary teachers: hundreds may be on the chopping block. The school board will vote today on whether to warn them that their jobs are in jeopardy.
We also take a look at high schools in the South Bay, which are trying to take advantage of a loophole to keep more new (and cheaper) teachers in classrooms instead of basing cutbacks entirely on seniority.
By the way, our education reporter Emily Alpert has a new feather in her cap. She’s just been recognized in a national journalism contest. And this is only the latest in a string of awards for Alpert.
- We check the facts on local drug hotspots, fewer firefighters and UCSD’s black student enrollment in the latest edition of Fact Check TV.
- The colorful man who owns the property that may become home to a downtown football stadium sits down for an interview on camera and raises an issue we haven’t heard before about the land and what’s supposed to be built there.
- Car washes are $10. A wax job is $40. But if you’d like to appreciate a local car detailer’s commitment to memorializing heroes through hundreds of sports figurines, you needn’t pay a thing. The Photo of the Day has more.
Elsewhere:
- “After brazen weekend attacks on U.S. officials in northern Mexico that killed three people, authorities are warning against unnecessary travel south of the border, a call that some Mexican officials say is hurting their economy,” the NCT reports. Local colleges will post the warnings on their websites, just in time for spring break.
- Experts say John Albert Gardner III is likely to ask to have his murder trial moved outside of San Diego County. (U-T)
- Toyota sounds mighty skeptical of the claims of the local man who says his Prius wouldn’t stop for 30 miles. (U-T)
- Also in the U-T: “A political stalemate that has left the San Diego Ethics Commission without a fresh crop of appointees is threatening to neuter the oversight panel indefinitely.
- The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about an almost-forgotten movie star who’s been “suffering in silents” of late: Her name was Norma Talmadge, and she was “perhaps the biggest female star of the silent era.” Now, her films are becoming more available on DVD.
As we told you last summer, the Talmadges (Norma and her two sisters) gave their family name to a San Diego neighborhood, then called the “Movie Girls Subdivision.” Their first names (Constance, Norma and Natalie) still adorn streets there.
- Finally, the U-T has a story about the continuing search for extraterrestrial life. It quotes a Scripps Research Institute scientist as saying “there’s no scientific definition of life on Earth.”
This, of course, is awesome. The next time someone tells me I have no life, I can reply with a snappy comeback: “Hey, just try and prove it scientifically! Got you there, Mom!”