Rainstorm expected through this weekend in San Diego County
Good Morning, I’m Lawrence K. Jackson, it’s FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH
>>>> [SIGNIFICANT RAIN IS HEADING TO THE COUNTY]More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines…########
YESTERDAY THE SAN DIEGO CITY COUNCIL’S PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE VOTED TO CONTINUE USING AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE READERS
CBS 8 REPORTS THAT THIS COMES AFTER THE CITY’S PRIVACY ADVISORY BOARD VOTED TO RECOMMEND THEY BE TAKEN DOWN
THOSE AGAINST THE LICENSE PLACE READERS CONSIDER IT A FORM OF MASS SURVEILLANCE THAT DOES NOT HAVE PROPER COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT AND SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE
SUPPORTERS SAY AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE READERS HAVE BEEN INVALUABLE AND HAVE AIDED IN SOLVING A VARIETY OF CRIMES
THE ISSUE NOW GOES TO THE FULL CITY COUNCIL FOR A VOTE IN DECEMBER
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YOUR SAN DIEGO PADRES BALL CLUB IS POTENTIALLY UP FOR SALE
YESTERDAY IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT THE FAMILY OF LATE PADRES OWNER PETER SEIDLER (SIGH’D-LER) IS QUOTE “EVALUATING OUR FUTURE WITH THE PADRES, INCLUDING A POTENTIAL SALE OF THE FRANCHISE.”
THEY ADDED THAT THEY WILL UNDERTAKE THIS PROCESS IN A WAY THAT HONORS SEIDLER’S LEGACY AND LOVE FOR THE PADRES
SEIDLER WAS PART OF A GROUP THAT PURCHASED THE PADRES FOR 8 HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS BACK IN 20-12
HE BECAME THE PRIMARY OWNER IN NOVEMBER 2020 AFTER BUYING OUT ONE OF THE GROUP MEMBERS
THE PADRES HAVE MADE THE POSTSEASON FOUR TIMES IN THE PAST SIX YEARS, WINNING AT LEAST 90 GAMES IN EACH OF THEIR LAST TWO SEASONS
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SAN DIEGO COUNTY IS EXPECTED TO GET A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF RAIN
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAYS TO EXPECT HEAVY PRECIPITATION AND POSSIBLE THUNDERSTORMS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING
BY SUNDAY AN INCH OF RAIN IS PROJECTED IN OUR DESERT COMMUNITIES, 1.5 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN ALONG THE COAST AND INLAND VALLEYS, AND UP TO 5 INCHES IN THE MOUNTAINS
From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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THE RAIN COMING OUR WAY IS … CREATING A RISK OF FLOODING.
REPORTER ALEXANDER NGUYEN TELLS US … THE COUNTY PUBLIC WORKS CREW SAYS THEY’RE READY FOR THE STORM.
STORMPREP 1(an) TRT: 0:37 SOQ
“Teams are ready and prepared”
Connie Tabor is with the county’s public works department.
She says the crew has been working hard to clear storm drains and inlets in anticipation of this storm.
“We conduct tree trimmings as well as keeping the roads clear of debris.”
She says the team has been working 10 to 12-hour days prepping for this storm … including putting fiber rolls and sandbags along streets prone to flooding.
The county is also keeping an eye on recently burnt areas because heavy rain could cause debris flows and damage homes.
Several fire stations in the unincorporated areas are providing free sandbags.
AN/KPBS
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A GALLUP POLL EARLIER THIS YEAR FOUND THAT ONLY ABOUT A THIRD OF AMERICANS ARE HAPPY WITH THE WAY DEMOCRACY IS WORKING IN THIS COUNTRY.
MEANWHILE, OTHER SURVEYS FOUND BETWEEN 30 TO 41 PERCENT OF AMERICANS WERE OPEN TO SOME FORM OF AUTHORITARIANISM.
PRESIDENT TRUMP HIMSELF HAS SUGGESTED AMERICANS MIGHT LIKE A DICTATOR. AGAINST THIS BACKDROP, AMITA SHARMA SPOKE WITH ANCHOR DEBBIE CRUZ ABOUT THE HARMS PEOPLE FACE WHEN LIVING UNDER AN AUTOCRACY.
AUTOCRACY (AS) (4:21) "Thank you" (FEATURE)
Q. Amita, we typically think of people living under dictatorships as powerless to choose their own leaders and having few or no civil liberties - freedom of speech, religion and equality. But it’s more than that, right?
Yes, I interviewed a man, who wished to remain anonymous, because of his job. He’s a local university professor. He grew up in Saudi Arabia. When he went there as a kid with his family, the Saudi government confiscated their passports. They couldn’t come and go without notifying the government first. And the government’s hospitality could be revoked at any time. This professor also lived in the former Soviet Union before it fell apart. By then, he was an adult and really homed in on the lack of alternatives to political leadership, which also applies to current day Russia. If you don’t like the politicians you have, there’s no real option or opposition to replace them. Also, the professor said people had to reconcile within themselves what they knew to be true and the government’s version of the truth which dictated how they had to act in public just to get on with their daily lives. San Diego Mesa College political scientist Carl Luna calls that a typical tradeoff in autocracies: obedience for protection.
Carl Luna/San Diego Mesa College Political Scientist[00:10:41.00] As long as you played by the rules of the system you're under, didn't push, didn't ask questions, you'd be left alone to a degree. But anybody could be thrown under the bus by anybody else if they had to rat somebody else out to the state. Authoritarian states leave you poor, leave you without choice. And leave you with a shorter lifespan on average.
Q. You spoke to a second man who grew up in an autocracy. What’s his story?
He grew up in Iran. He works at a local university and also didn’t want his name used for fear of retaliation. He said in Iran, people are reluctant to call the police to report a crime because it is fraught. At any time, the situation could flip and you could be interrogated as a wrongdoer. Iran is a theocracy. He said people there lead double lives if they don’t agree with the government. Those people have to pretend to be religious and pretend to share the beliefs of their government in school or in front of anyone who they don’t know or trust. If they don’t want to fast during the month of Ramadan, they have to sneak around to eat. And then they, for the most part, can be themselves in the privacy of their homes in front of family and friends. Luna says living this kind of duality takes a psychological toll and clashes with basic human questions.
[00:12:44] “What is my identity? Who am I? It's the fundamental question we all have to answer. And authoritarian states demand that no matter what, you must be loyal to the state, ignore what your eyes see and simply do what they say. But that means when you're on your own, you've got to deal with these realities. It makes one schizophrenic, stressed out. One of our biggest freedoms is the freedom to not care what the state thinks, to simply do what we want.”
Q. Amita, how strong is American democracy today?
I posed that very question to UC San Diego political scientist Barbara Walter. And she says the United States is in a high-risk zone of partial democracy, partial autocracy, also known as anocracy.
Barbara Walter/UCSD Political Scientist 02:28:13 “Since Donald Trump has come back to the White House, our democracy has declined faster than it ever has in America's history. And everybody would agree that we are no longer in the same category as a healthy democracy like Denmark, or Canada or Australia. We are in this middle zone no matter how you measure our health.”
A final note. The United States is not the only country struggling with democracy. Democracy Without Borders reported this year that for the first time in 20 years, autocracies outnumber democracies around the world. The proportion of people living in a democratic country is at its lowest in 50 years.
Amita, thank you.
Thank you.
TAG: THAT WAS KPBS'S AMITA SHARMA WITH KPBS ANCHOR DEBBIE CRUZ
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PEOPLE WITH DARKER SKIN OFTEN DON’T GET DIAGNOSED WITH SKIN CANCER UNTIL IT’S MORE ADVANCED.
HEALTH REPORTER HEIDI DE MARCO SAYS RESEARCHERS AT UC SAN DIEGO ARE EXPLORING HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MIGHT HELP CATCH CANCERS MORE EQUITABLY.
AITOOL 1 trt :54 soq
–Skin cancer is highly treatable, if it’s caught early. But spotting it can be tricky. And for people with darker skin, that sometimes means a later diagnosis.
Kelly Frazer is a genome researcher at UC San Diego.
KELLY FRAZER
The AI model can say this person has a very high chance of having skin cancer, pull them in for a full-body scan.
They say the model was tested on people whose skin cancer status was already known. It predicted skin cancer with almost 90 percent accuracy across different ethnicities.
KELLY FRAZER
I think the more of these models that come out, the more it will become apparent that how to incorporate AI into the clinic.
Frazer says the goal isn’t to replace a doctor's screening, but to give them predictive tools to catch cancer sooner.
Heidi de Marco, KPBS News.
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THE SOUTH BAY UNION SCHOOL BOARD APPROVED A MAP THIS WEEK THAT CHANGES WHERE SOME STUDENTS MAY GO TO SCHOOL.
EDUCATION REPORTER KATIE ANASTAS SAYS IT COMES AS THE DISTRICT PREPARES TO CLOSE A SCHOOL DUE TO DECLINING ENROLLMENT.
SOUTHBAYMAP1 0:53 SOQ
Central Elementary School will close at the end of the school year. Next year, its 300 students will go to either Bayside, Emory, Mendoza or Oneonta Elementary Schools.
District leaders say the schools getting additional students won’t need to add classrooms or other facilities next year.
That’s because enrollment will still be far below their peaks in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s.
SALDANA
We still need to look deeper at the root causes of the declining enrollment.
Rose Saldana teaches at Imperial Beach Charter School. She says the district needs to figure out how to keep local students in its schools.
SALDANA
We are also hemorrhaging students to other districts, and we're also losing students to private schools and other charters and other options.
The district plans to close two more schools by 2031. Those schools haven’t been chosen yet, but administrators have proposed Sunnyslope and Berry. Katie Anastas, KPBS News.
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IMAGINE GETTING IN A TAXI WITH NO ONE BEHIND THE WHEEL… ROBOTAXIS ARE COMING TO SAN DIEGO NEXT YEAR.
REPORTER JACOB AERE SAYS THE UPCOMING SERVICE IS GETTING MIXED REACTIONS FROM LOCALS.
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WAYMO 1 (ja) :56
The new driverless rideshare vehicles come courtesy of Waymo.
The company is already in five cities across the U.S... including Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Sometime next year, they’ll bring a fleet of about a dozen driverless robotaxies to the city.
While the announcement brings excitement for some … it’s not such good news for others … Mikaiil (ME-kay-elle) Hussein is executive director of United Taxi Workers of San Diego. They represent over 400 members.
“Driverless cars – you know what that means. That means the regular human beings they will lose their business, that's what that means.”
Waymo says they're “expanding to San Diego to provide safer, more accessible transportation options that complement the city's existing infrastructure.” They plan to start providing rides in the downtown core area.
Waymo has not yet announced a specific time service will launch in 2026. JA KPBS News.
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AS WE DO EACH AND EVERY FRIDAY FOR YOU AND YOURS,
HERE ARE SOME WEEKEND EVENT IDEAS
WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO DO THIS WEEKEND BRING AN UMBRELLA WITH YOU AND PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY AS RAIN IS IN THE FORECAST
HAPPENING TODAY, SAN DIEGO’S NBA G-LEAGUE TEAM THE SAN DIEGO CLIPPERS HAVE THEIR HOME OPENER
THEY PLAY AT FRONTWAVE ARENA AND THE FIRST 2 THOUSAND FANS WILL BE GIVEN A LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRT
THAT KICKS OFF AT 7:30 TONIGHT AND TICKETS START AT AROUND 20 BUCKS
SATURDAY SEES THE REOPENING OF SAN DIEGO’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTER IN ESCONDIDO
THE MUSEUM REOPENS WITH A FREE OPEN HOUSE FEATURING A LECTURE AND A NEW EXHIBIT
IT ALL TAKES PLACE FROM 10 AM UNTIL 2 PM
AND SUNDAY IS FOR GOAT LOVERS
LOVERS OF THE ANIMAL CAN PICNIC ALONGSIDE THEM WHILE PARK RANGERS WILL SHARE FACTS ABOUT THEIR CARE AND RANCH LIFE
THAT KICKS OFF AT NOON AT THE LOS PENASQUITOS (PENN-UH-SKITOS) RANCH HOUSE
WHATEVER YOU DO, ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!
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That’s it for the podcast today. This podcast is edited by Brooke Ruth. And hosted and produced by me, Lawrence K. Jackson. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.
