San Diego News Fix

San Diego scientist who led an expedition into dangerous waters off Chile collected tissue samples that could prove the existence of a graceful new species of killer whale, ending decades of mystery.
Robert Pitman of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SFSC) in La Jolla gathered the samples in January from three of the animals, which some researchers believe are the largest scientifically unidentified animals on Earth.
The samples will be brought to SFSC so scientists can genetically determine if the rarely seen whales, known as Type D, are different from other orcas.
The Type D are also believed to be smaller than other types of killer whales, although that fact has yet to be confirmed.
Read the full story: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-killer-whales-20190306-story.html
In other news: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-sdge-ev-credit-20190307-story.html

The affidavits filed by federal agents to secure search warrants for San Diego jeweler Leo Hamel and others have been sealed by a judge, along with any inventory of what was seized earlier this month. But court records show that Hamel and his former wife stored many firearms at their Jamul estate.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-hamel-gun-collection-20190226-story.html

After two years working and living in Germany, Carrie and Scott Packard were itching to move back into their four-bed, two-bath Carlsbad home. They just couldn’t wait.
But they had to.
Their tenants, a young professional couple, had trashed the house. Dogs had ripped carpeting and urinated on floors. Garbage was strewn inside and outside. The yard had gone to seed. Although the tenants had signed a lease and passed a credit check, their payments were late, then partial and then, for the last six months, nonexistent.
Worse, they were still living in the Packards’ home and entitled to stay there, unless the Packards could get a court judgment against them.
“We didn’t actually have the legal right to our own home,” Carrie Packard said. “If we moved in, they could sue us for unlawful eviction.”
Squatters made headlines earlier this year, when it was reported that an unauthorized person had quietly moved into a vacant Poway home that was in foreclosure. The story captured attention in large part because the house had been owned by the family of Tony Gwynn, the late Padres outfielder and Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.
Yet people live in homes without the owner’s permission all the time. Happens so often, one courtroom in the San Diego Superior Court — Department 60 — is devoted almost exclusively to these cases.
“We deal with true squatters at a crazy rate,” said Rachael Callahan, a lawyer and owner of San Diego Evictions, a law firm that specializes in representing landlords. “Department 60 will have a morning calendar and an afternoon calendar with 30 to 60 cases, and that’s daily.”
Some cases are settled in the hallway outside the courtroom, often with a quick exchange lawyers have dubbed “cash for keys.” Carrie Packard’s lawyer, for instance, suggested she write a $1,500 check to ensure her tenants’ departure.
“I’m not going to pay them,” she said. “They owe me money.”
The whole process rankled Packard. “There’s no other crime where you could steal this amount of money from people,” she said, “and just walk away.”
Read the full story: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/sd-me-squatters-living-high-life-20190303-story.html
In other news: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/real-estate/sd-fi-rent-increases-20190305-story.html

California for the first time released a list of its lowest-performing 8 percent of public schools in the state, but some experts are skeptical that education leaders will use this new information and related funding to effectively improve those schools.
The state’s list includes 58 San Diego County schools, including 14 district schools and 5 charter schools within the San Diego Unified School District.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sd-me-worst-performing-schools-20190204-story.html

Municipalities throughout the country, including in the San Diego region, are trying to salvage their recycling programs in the wake of China’s ban on certain plastics and papers.
Officials have urged residents to fill their blue bins with only locally approved materials as city contractors scramble to find new markets and meet tightening standards for the purity of recyclable waste.
While most cities have so far been able to endure the rising cost of recycling, linked to falling commodity prices for mixed paper and plastics, some small towns have gone so far as to dramatically scale back or completely shut down their operations — dumping otherwise reusable materials into landfills.
This story: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-recycling-revenues-fall-20190317-story.html
In other news: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/la-me-super-bloom-poppy-fields-lake-elsinore-20190317-story.html