San Diego County Has Among The Highest Rates Of ICE Community Arrests And More Local News

Speaker 1: 00:00 Good morning. It's April 18th I'm Deb Welsh and you're listening to San Diego news matters. A new Syracuse University report shows that San Diego County has one of the highest rates of community arrest by immigration and customs enforcement in the country. KPBS border reporter Gene Guerrero as the story community arrests are those that involve ice agents detaining people at their homes work or while traveling rather than in jails when police contact ice if detainees don't have papers [inaudible] if the American Friends Service Committee says the agency is no longer prioritizing criminals, Speaker 2: 00:37 it goes again, the rhetoric that we hear coming out of the White House that those who are being detained or ms 13 gang members and are the worst of the worst. Speaker 1: 00:47 This study found that for fiscal year 2017 through may of last year, more than 2000 community arrests were made in San Diego County by ice making it the fourth highest in the US in terms of numbers and third highest in terms of rate. The highest for both was Dekalb county in Georgia. Jean grew KPBS news. Imperial Valley water managers are suing to stop the recently approved drought plan for the Colorado River Kpv as reporter Eric Anderson as details, Speaker 3: 01:20 the imperial irrigation district is asking a superior court judge to suspend the deal until there's been an analysis of the environmental impact on the salt and sea. The seven state drought plan was adopted without [inaudible] participation. Even though the water agency has rights to 21% of the river's water. President Donald Trump signed the congressionally approved deal on Tuesday. I is. Tina Shield says the agreement does not protect the salt and sea. Speaker 4: 01:48 You certainly can't advocate for a smaller but sustainable sea and only talk about the smaller part, not the sustainable part. Speaker 3: 01:54 The lawsuit challenges the Los Angeles Water Agency's ability to enter the drought DL on behalf of the state without a review of the environmental impacts on the salt and sea. Eric Anderson. KPBS News Sacramento Speaker 1: 02:09 is the latest California location to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products with the passage of a new ordinance by the city council on Tuesday as capital public radio's Randall wide explains the local level action proceeds efforts for a statewide ban in the legislature Speaker 5: 02:26 starting January 1st it will be illegal to sell flavored tobacco products within Sacramento. City limits for Democratic senators are hoping a similar band will get passed statewide. Jim Knox with the American Cancer Society says his organization supports the statewide effort. The surge in the use of these cigarettes has all butter race, decades of progress in reducing tobacco use among teens. The CDC is calling this a public health epidemic and it really requires immediate action. Ryan Henry is with California fuels and convenience representing small retail outlets that sell flavored tobacco products. He says a band based on geography doesn't work in today's modern world. Speaker 6: 03:07 Uh, the Internet is kind of a sole source problem for the proliferation and access without age verification of these east cigarettes and vape products. Speaker 5: 03:16 The bill for a statewide ban has already passed the Senate Health Committee and is scheduled to be heard by the appropriations committee on Monday in Sacramento. I'm Randall white. Speaker 1: 03:26 On Wednesday, the metropolitan transit system unveiled its newest trolley car. KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman says this is the fifth time mts as updated it's trolleys. Speaker 7: 03:37 MTS says the new cars are all about improving the rider experience. Inside there are wider aisles that will allow wheelchairs, strollers, and bikes to move through more easily. MTS CEO Paul j Blonsky says there are also vinyl seats instead of cloth ones. Speaker 8: 03:52 Easier to clean, easier to see if there's some kind of spill or stain, you know, on the seat. Um, you know, we, we've listened to our customers, uh, you know, you see people when they go up, they rubbed a seat to see if it's wet or anything because you can't see with cloth. With this, you can see right away, Speaker 7: 04:09 mts is in the process of swapping out cloth seats for vinyl and all of its trolleys. 45 of these new cars have been ordered and mts will slowly phase them in. The first three hit the rails this weekend and you can expect to see them on the tracks for around 30 years. Matt Hoffman, K PBS news. Speaker 1: 04:26 Every year millions of human research subjects help create breakthroughs in medicine and exchange. The researchers are expected to follow ethical guidelines meant to protect those patients. I knew source investigative reporter Brad Racino found that wasn't the case with a renowned UC San Diego. I doctor who for years put patients in harm's way. Speaker 6: 04:49 Today I'm going to tell you a story of a repair and regeneration of our body. Speaker 9: 04:55 Doctor Kang Zang is the chief of Ige genetics at Uc San Diego where he also has a lab named after him. He receives millions of dollars in federal grants and presents his research at symposiums around the world. Speaker 6: 05:09 I'm an eye doctor. I want to cure blindness, Speaker 9: 05:11 but the U s food and Drug Administration inspected zangs research in 2016 and found several violations in a drug trial that had been going on for years. Zang enrolled people he shouldn't have in his medical trial, failed to document what happened to 25 units of an experimental drug and kept poor records on his patients. He also didn't provide a plan to the FDA to protect his human research subjects going forward like he was supposed to. Speaker 10: 05:38 The problem's identified during the inspection were significant and certainly undermined the protection of human subjects in the trial. Speaker 9: 05:47 Michael Corona is a former associate director at the U S Office for Human Research Protections, one of many federal agencies that protects human research subjects. He's now at public citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit. Caroma zeroed in on one FDA finding that half of the patients in Zang study shouldn't have been enrolled in the first place. That's a big problem. He said because the drug's Ang was testing could potentially lead to serious side effects for the volunteers like cataracts or blindness. Speaker 10: 06:17 How much scientific standpoint and from an ethical human subject protection standpoint not complying with the enrollment criteria is a big deal. Speaker 9: 06:25 [inaudible] I study was eventually shut down. Then you see us d came out with an audit of its own, which looked into more of sayings research. It found violations everywhere. It looked. Zang and his staff failed to get proper consent from all patients. Didn't report problems to Ucla Research Oversight Board lost documents, kept inaccurate records wrongly built patients and didn't complete the training required to work with human embryonic stem cells. In one study, Zang staff tested patients blood for HIV and aids without telling them against federal policy. Speaker 4: 07:02 Lucky her. Speaker 9: 07:09 Amy Caruso Brown is an assistant professor of bioethics at New York's upstate medical university. She's also a member of an institutional review board, a safety committee that approves and overseas projects like Zangs, Brown, red, the Ucs d audit, and said, Speaker 4: 07:26 I have not seen this number of issues in in the five years that I've been on an IRB. Basically, Speaker 9: 07:32 we reached out to Zang and other officials that you CSD for interviews in response, send a statement that said the university had quote implemented a Comprehensive Management Plan to address these issues and quote, UC SD also said it's suspended. Sang definitely from serving as a primary researcher overseeing human research studies at the school, but that means he can still apply for federal grants, publish in medical journals, and train the next generation of scientists you CSD later told, I knew source zangs research had undergone multiple audits since 2012 which prompted his suspension in 2017 when asked if that meant the university had known about zangs violations for five years before taking action or UC SD spokeswoman would not comment further for KPBS. I'm I knew source investigative reporter Brad Racino. Speaker 1: 08:27 John's story is the latest and I knew sources, risky research investigation and was reported by Brad Racino and Jill Costa Lotto. To learn more about flaws in the system meant to protect patients. Go to, I knew source.org/risky research I knew source is an independently funded nonprofit partner of KPBS. A team of plant scientist at the Salk institute believe that harnessing the power of plants could have a dramatic impact on climate change. Plans capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their roots. But what if you could engineer a plant the store to even more CO2 generous donors behind ted talks, the audacious project are giving the Salk $35 million to make it a reality as part of the KPV as climate change desk. Mark Sauer spoke with bio chemists, Joe Noel and geneticists, Julie Law, both members of salts plant biology team for the harnessing plant initiative. Here's that interview Speaker 11: 09:29 professor law. What's sulks harnessing plants initiative? Speaker 12: 09:32 So the harnessing plants initiative at Salk is based on harnessing the natural ability of plants to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. And what we'd like to do is generate plants that can draw down a significant portion of the excess co two that's put into the atmosphere based on human activity. And so while this is a clearly an audacious project, the basic idea of is very easy to understand. So we want to use the fact that plants during the process of photosynthesis takes the o two from the atmosphere and generate plant biomass. And then the idea would be to generate plants that take that CO2 and generate deeper, more robust root systems. They contain molecules that are resistant to degradation. So in a year over year basis, we would be essentially locking more carbon from the atmosphere into the soil. Speaker 11: 10:17 All right. And professor know, why does this work? How does this work? Tell us about the process. So it's an interesting idea that you know, for a number of years people have been thinking about engineering approaches to reducing the carbon dioxide that's already in our atmosphere. But the answer was actually staring us right in the face. It's all around us. It was plants. So this really interesting process called photosynthesis that is the basis of their entire food chain, which is what plants do. They actually use. Carbon dioxide is a fertilizer and they convert it into a whole host of really wonderful natural chemicals and professional. How many plants are, what will it take to achieve the project goal of reducing co two by 20 to 46%? It's pretty ambitious goal. It's a very ambitious goal. Um, and we're focusing really at this moment on crops. So the major food crops that are used worldwide that allows us to gain the acreage that we need to actually combat the, the issue of co two in the atmosphere. Speaker 11: 11:13 And right now we're looking at about eight plants that are grown on about half of the global acreage used to form a plants. All right. And Professor Nolo, what are the key challenges that you see as you head into this project? I think that one is actually um, more outside of our wheelhouse, which is in policy and interacting with governments, NGOs and seed companies for acceptance of these crops. And that's where I, where you know, the scientific community is a global village. We really have to interact with a lot of other partners in this. This is not solely a salt salt program. What we really hope to do is to do the science that can demonstrate the feasibility and the scalability of the project to a level of detail that we are able to convince others to partner with us. To really expand this in an, in a global sense. And you've got to work a professor law with politics and politicians. I mean that plays into this department of Agriculture is huge as an enormous budget here in the United States. We have a similar agencies in every country around the world. At some point you're going to have to make that leap and into the political world on this, I imagine. Speaker 12: 12:18 Yeah. I mean it's something that we've been thinking about us as Joel mentioned. It's not something that's normally within our wheelhouse. So we're trying to start to engage with, um, with the people involved in all aspects of, of policy. Um, as well as, um, um, agriculture in on top of the, of the science. And we're hoping to kind of engage early and often so that as we're rolling things out, we're doing the best that we can to make it the easiest transition from, from the, you know, from the biology in the lab out into the real world. And we're hopeful that beyond having a social benefit of, of drawing down more co two than if we're successful in generating these plants, they may also have economic benefits. For example, the increase soil carbon should help with fertility, um, of a fertility of the soil and having increased soil health and also has the potential to make the plants more resistant to extreme weather like droughts and flooding. So on top of having a, you know, a social benefit, we were hopeful that it will also have an economic benefit will, which will help with some of these, um, um, aspects of the project that kind of go beyond the, the, the science. Speaker 11: 13:21 I've been speaking with Salk institute professors, Joe Nowell and Julie Law, both members of the Salk plant biology team. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: 13:29 Thanks for listening to KPBS is San Diego news matters podcast. For more local stories, go to kpbs.org.