A Record Deployment Means A Tough Time For Navy Families And More Local News

January 16, 2020 at 3:00 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:19 Speaker 1: 00:24 Speaker 3: 00:37 Speaker 1: 00:38 Speaker 4: 00:48 Speaker 5: 01:02 Speaker 4: 01:13 Speaker 1: 01:28 Speaker 4: 01:40 Speaker 2: 01:52 Speaker 4: 02:04 Speaker 1: 02:29 Speaker 4: 02:41 Speaker 1: 03:25 Speaker 6: 03:40 Speaker 7: 03:54 Speaker 6: 04:09 Speaker 1: 04:23 Speaker 4: 05:02 Speaker 1: 05:13 Speaker 4: 05:41 Speaker 1: 06:48 Speaker 8: 07:13 Speaker 1: 07:24 Speaker 8: 07:49 Speaker 9: 09:11 Speaker 8: 09:12 Speaker 8: 10:09 Speaker 8: 11:39 It's Thursday, January 16th I'm Priya Shree there and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPBS coming up. San Diego, mayor Kevin Faulkner delivers his sixth and final state of the city address and the USS Abraham Lincoln is heading for its new home port of San Diego. After a deployment that got extended, we're basically the ones that have to tell the families, Hey, like it's unfortunate your sailors not coming home. That and more San Diego news stories coming up just after the break. [inaudible] San Diego mayor Kevin Faulkner gave his final state of the city address one stay night. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says, the mayor is gearing up for a busy last year in office. Faulkner is not backing down from his law and order approach to combating homelessness. He spent part of his speech decrying state laws that lowered criminal penalties for drug use, saying they've contributed to California's homelessness crisis. These laws are letting people slowly kill themselves right in front of our eyes. These are cries for help and folks are not going to change without consequences for their actions. Connor says he'll lead a statewide voter initiative related to homelessness. Though he didn't give any details. He's also continuing his push to stimulate home building and plans to bring a slate of housing initiatives to the city council. Later this year, Andrew Bowen KPBS news, the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way to San Diego KPBS military reporter Steve Walsh says it will break the record for the longest deployment by a U S carrier. Since the Vietnam war, the Lincoln left Norfolk April 1st the delay has been tough on families who had to decide when to move across country, says Gina Swain who's married to a sailor on board. The Lincoln end works with Lincoln families. We're basically the ones that have to tell the families, Hey, like it's unfortunate your sailors not coming home and it is hard to deal with that, that you just moved cross country to come home and be with your sailor. Complicating their move. The Navy's stipend for housing compensates for pricey San Diego, but families normally don't receive that money until their carrier. Actually, docs in San Diego command had to change the rules. Thursday. The Lincoln will break its own record for the longest deployment by a us carrier since the Vietnam war. It will arrive in San Diego sometime in the next two weeks. Steve Walsh KPBS news, a California law in effect this month provides added protections for millions of renters across the state cap radios. Chris Nichols has more on a new website that supporters launched to explain those protections. The new law is one of California's strongest renter protection measures in decades. It caps rent increases at 5% plus inflation each year and it makes it harder for landlords to evict tenants, but it doesn't apply to all renters. That's why supporters created tenant protections.org the website includes an eligibility test where renters can enter basic information to find out whether they're covered by the law. It also has a downloadable letter tenants can use to defend their rights in disputes with landlords. The site also provides connections to legal aid services. Nearly half of the state, 17 million renters are expected to benefit from the new protections in Sacramento. I'm Chris Nichols residents of the Broadway Heights neighborhood gathered to celebrate Martin Luther King jr his birthday. Wednesday KPBS education reporter Joe Hong spoke with community leaders about what younger generations can learn from the civil rights leader with the reenactment of his most famous speech community leaders and students gathered to celebrate the 91st birthday of Martin Luther King jr Booker Sanders senior is on the community council for Broadway Heights. He said the speech rings true even today, so we want it to be able to bring that to the student so that they can better understand why there are so many Americans of color who ascribed to the freedom that Dr. King so richly spoke of. Mark Luther King jr was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15th, 1929 the celebration continues on Saturday with the annual parade on Harbor drive and the all people celebration on Monday in Balboa park, Joe Hong K PBS news, a San Diego paleontologist has discovered an entirely new species of dinosaur from a fossil found in China a decade ago. KPBS science and technology reporter Shalina chit Lani spoke to the scientist about this 120 million year old creature. It's described in a study published in the journal, the anatomical record. This new species is called Wu Longo high insists a reference to the Chinese word for dancing dragon. The name describes how graceful the fossil looks as San Diego natural history museum paleontologist Ashley post, he says, this dinosaur with its small cat sized body long goonie tail and lots of feathers could help explain how birds developed. This was a period it was much warmer than today, but cooler than the rest of the time of the dinosaurs and so that's really interesting to think about how the origin of feathers might have been related to these changes in temperature. Pals looked at cross sections of the dinosaurs bones to confirm it's in fact a new species. He says the rate of fossil discoveries has increased in the last five years. Thanks to more advanced technology and greater search efforts. Worldwide. Shalina, Celani K PBS news, a Salvador and asylum seeker has filed a lawsuit against the government. She says she suffered a miscarriage. While in custody at a private detention facility and OTI Mesa KPBS reporter max Revlon Adler has more Rubia Morales entered ice custody on Christmas day 2017 she was already pregnant and says that her treatment while in custody, which included a cold cell, non-nutritious foods and a lack of medical care led to her miscarriage. She was being held at the core civic detention center in OTI when on January 10th after more than two weeks in custody, she began to cramp and bleed. According to the court filing. She was told by a medical professional on site that the bleeding was normal and that she could buy sanitary pads for a dollar a piece to deal with the bleeding. On January 15th Mirella's collapsed while waiting in a meal line in custody and was rushed to the hospital where she learned she had suffered a miscarriage. Joy Bertrand is Miralis lawyer. If we're going to make the deliberate choice to hold pregnant women in immigration detention, we collectively have to be ready to give them the care that they're going to need and the Otay Mesa facility by design does not have that care. In a statement. Core civic told KPBS that it cannot comment on the pending litigation, but that it provides three nutritious meals a day to detainees max with Linda Adler KPBS news, the city of San Diego will temporarily waive permit fees for property owners who want to fix their damage. Sidewalks mirror, Kevin Faulkner announced that the approximately $2,000 fee will be waived in 90 days for the rest of 2020 residents will still need to apply for a permit. Councilman Mark Kersey, the chair of city councils active transportation and infrastructure committee says the city has been wasting a lot of money paying out lawsuits, settlements. This is a citywide problem. This isn't every council district. It's in every neighborhood. Uh, and some of the older parts of town. We've got original sidewalks that have been there for a hundred years and they're busted up. Kersey has proposed a plan for the city to spend $10 million in the next 10 years to fix damage. Sidewalks. Few species are equipped to handle a hot and dry climate better than the desert tortoise. This ancient creature and habits, some of the harshest areas of the American Southwest, but with climate change making their home hotter and drier. How are they coping to find out Kay UNCs. Luke Runyon took a hike in the Mojave desert. The number one rule to remember when looking for desert tortoise's always watch where you're walking or you'll end up with a chunk of Choi, a cactus lodged in your shin and have to pull out its spines one by one who is really stuck in there. And rule number two have Todd sq as your guide who after a couple decades studying desert fauna is able to laugh off a cactus attack. There's a sheath that stays in yet and that makes it really itching. Burn sq is a researcher cologists with the us geological survey and a tortoise expert. We're hiking through a study area South of Las Vegas on the Nevada, California border tortoises are listed under the endangered species act and a place like this is meant to give researchers insight into the best ways to help their populations rebound. All the tortoises are tagged with transmitters. [inaudible] colleague Felicia Chen holds a metal antenna in the air to find one tucked away in a borough until we can dial in that frequency on this receiver and I hear it beeping [inaudible] this is how tortoise's spend most of their lives. A couple feet under the desert floor. They come out whenever it rains to drink and in the spring and fall to eat and mate, each borough is marked with a rock and a number because these are prominent study plots. They all have an address. This is like 56 79 tortoise lane, something like that. The threats to tortoise's are many as says, this stretch of prime habitat is also home to huge solar farms, a railroad, the interstate highway between Vegas and Los Angeles and a few casino resorts. It's very useful for humans as well as it is for the wildlife and to edit it, it has created some uh, conflict in the conservation and development world where there's people who've had to come together and make agreements on what are we going to allow in these areas. That's the short term challenge for tortoise's. Figuring out how to keep them from being displaced and their habitat fractured. One strategy is to simply relocate tortoises to make room for massive solar arrays and other development. But climate change presents an existential threat for the longterm. So, um, if we have hotter temperatures and less rainfall, first of all, they're not going to get a drink. As often. Tortoises have evolved to withstand water scarcity. Sq says, but even they have a breaking point in the last decade nearby Las Vegas set new records for hot and dry weather and climate models have shown the likelihood of so-called mega droughts to increase in the coming decades. If we just have long droughts, we're going to start seeing populations blink out in one Valley or another. Another climate change related problem comes from how tortoise's reproduce. Their sex is assigned based on the incubation temperature of their eggs. Too hot or too cold. And you can have a whole set of baby tortoises come out as all male or all female. What do you got after more than a mile of wandering, we come to a borough with a radio tagged tortoise inside sq. Pulls out a small mirror to direct sunlight into the hole. So I can see back there, easily a meter, Chen and sq. Move aside some brush so we can get a better look. You can see the entire Thomas can you see it? And he's pretty tucked in there. Sq says this tortoise likely came out after the last rainfall, 10 days before it was the first rain in more than a hundred days. Once you start to learn about them and you see how harsh it is out here in the desert, uh, your appreciation just keeps growing, I think because sq says you get to see what they're up against. I'm Luke Runyon in the Mojave desert.

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The USS Abraham Lincoln is heading for its new home port of San Diego and the ship’s families, who have already arrived, are eager to settle down with their sailors. Plus, the City of San Diego waves a $2,000 permit fee to encourage homeowners to help the city fix its cracked sidewalks. And San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer delivers his sixth and final State of the City address.