The San Diego Union-Tribune

A bandwagoner’s guide to the San Diego State basketball team

SAN DIEGO — There are 363 Division I men’s college basketball teams, and San Diego State is one of the four still dancing through the NCAA Tournament. For the first time in program history, the Aztecs have reached the Final Four. The team will play Florida Atlantic University in the tournament’s first semifinal game in Houston on Saturday at 3:09 p.m. PDT. The winner of that game will face the winner of the next game between University of Miami and University of Connecticut in the national championship on April 3. If you haven’t been following the team all season, no worries. Here is an Aztecs...

San Diego State shocks top-seeded Alabama, 71-64, to advance to Elite Eight

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It is the KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville, with an exclamation point. San Diego State is going to the Elite Eight. Exclamation point. The Aztecs have gone where no basketball team has gone before, beating No. 1 overall seed Alabama, 71-64, on Friday night to advance one game from the Final Four — against Creighton or Princeton — and the sport’s hallowed land. Other firsts: The first time the Aztecs have defeated a higher seeded or ranked team in the NCAA Tournament after failing in their last nine attempts. And the first time a Mountain West team has gone past the Swee...

San Diego is preparing to enforce its long-awaited foam ban. Who might get a reprieve?

SAN DIEGO — With enforcement of San Diego's new ban on polystyrene foam food trays, pool toys and more scheduled to take effect April 1, city officials are scrambling to coach affected businesses, clarify the complex regulations and consider emergency waiver requests. Such requests include one from a coalition of local grocery stores asking for a two-year reprieve for raw meat foam packaging. The coalition says complying with the new law would sharply raise local meat prices and reduce availability. The long-awaited ban, which was delayed three years by litigation from restaurants and containe...

Navy renames a former San Diego-based ship after slave and sailor Robert Smalls

The U.S. guided-missile cruiser Chancellorsville, which was homeported in San Diego for many years, has been renamed Robert Smalls, honoring a Civil War-era maritime pilot who commandeered a Confederate ship in 1862 and turned it over to the Union forces. Smalls was born a slave and went on to become a mariner, a businessman, a publisher and a congressman who represented South Carolina, the state where he was born. The Navy decided to change the cruiser's name because it was named after the Battle of Chancellorsville, a Confederate Civil War victory. The name change was made possible by a cong...

Romanian citizen detained by ICE agents dies at Otay Mesa Detention Center

A Romanian citizen died Sunday in federal custody in Otay Mesa, less than two weeks after he was detained near the border, officials said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detained Cristian Dumitrascu, 50, on Feb. 22 near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, the agency said Monday in a news release. He was handed over to ICE custody March 1 and held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. Marcus Johnson, a spokesperson for ICE, declined to comment Monday on the investigation or the reason Dumitrascu was detained. An autopsy will determine his cause of death, officials said. The Department of Hom...

San Diego Roman Catholic diocese facing yet another lawsuit — now from its own insurance company

SAN DIEGO — The insurance carrier for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed a lawsuit Friday contending that because the diocese violated the terms of its insurance policies, the company should not have to pay out any money to settle claims from hundreds of people alleging they were victims of sexual abuse by clergy over the past several decades. The lawsuit was filed in San Diego federal court by Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America, the insurance provider for San Diego and other Catholic dioceses. The company wants a judge to order that it has no duty to "defend or indemnify" th...

ICE detainees allege retaliation after speaking out about medical conditions at California detention center

SAN DIEGO — Weeks after writing an op-ed for the Union-Tribune about his experience in immigration custody, Erik Mercado, a detainee at Otay Mesa Detention Center, was suddenly moved to a different facility in the middle of the night. He and a couple dozen detainees were sent with shackles on their waists and legs on a bus to Nevada, Mercado said. He said they weren't able to use the bathroom during the entire trip. On the way, all he could think about was that now he wouldn't be able to get the medical treatment he was supposed to have for a newly diagnosed liver condition, he said. His mind ...

Tijuana sewage isn't only in Imperial Beach waves. It's in the air. And San Diegans are breathing it

SAN DIEGO — Sewage pollution spilling over the border from Tijuana into the San Diego region not only threatens the health of surfers and swimmers but potentially those simply breathing the air. That's according to a study from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography published Thursday in the journal Environmental Sciences & Technology, which found sewage-linked bacteria in sea-spray aerosols at Imperial Beach. "Once pollutants become airborne that just means so many more people can be exposed to those pollutants," said Kim Prather, principal investigator on the study and director o...

The nation's largest federal law enforcement agency has new use-of-force rules. How much will change?

SAN DIEGO — Last year, in an effort to fulfill his campaign promises of bold criminal justice reform, President Joe Biden issued an executive order he said would increase accountability for federal law enforcement agencies. While many local police and sheriffs' departments across the country had already reckoned with the social justice protests of 2020 by enacting modest policy enhancements, the nation's largest law enforcement agency, Customs and Border Protection, and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, had gone unchanged. This month, DHS finally made its move. The depart...

Can California's legal cannabis industry survive while illegal competitors still operate?

California voters' 2016 decision tolegalize the recreational use of cannabis was mostly driven by the idea that whether or not to use the drug should be a choice left up to adults — not be dictated by laws written in an era in which "reefer madness" was seen as a societal scourge. But it was also sold in part as a smart way to create a large new revenue stream for local and state governments. While Gavin Newsom, then lieutenant governor and now governor, made this argument as one of the leading voices for the Proposition 64 campaign, he also offered some notes of caution. In a May 2018 intervi...

San Diego County sheriff rejects stricter rules for housing transgender people in jails

SAN DIEGO — San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez won’t implement a recommendation to tighten rules for booking transgender people into county jails that coincide with their gender. The Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, or CLERB, recommended last year that the current policy be revised “to mandate that an arrestee shall be taken to a facility that coincides with the arrestees’ gender identity.” But in a letter released late Thursday, sheriff’s officials said they would not be changing the policy because no change is needed. “The department believes CLERB’s desired outcome, properly boo...

San Diego Catholic diocese ponders bankruptcy with sex-abuse lawsuits pending

SAN DIEGO — The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego is warning it may have to file bankruptcy in the future because of the potential fallout from hundreds of pending lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by clergy over the last 75 years. The warning comes nearly 15 years to the day since the diocese last sought the sanctuary of the bankruptcy code, filing for Chapter 11 reorganization in the face of 144 claims of sexual abuse by clergy. The bankruptcy was dismissed eight months later, after the diocese reached a settlement with the victims for $198 million. Now the diocese might have to go down the s...

Newsom wants the feds to investigate California's high natural gas prices

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday jumped into the debate over the spike in natural gas prices affecting millions of California utility customers, calling on federal regulators to look at whether gouging or market manipulation is at work. And on the local level, a few dozen protesters vented their frustrations in front the headquarters of San Diego Gas & Electric while a coalition of environmental, political and consumer groups called on the San Diego City Council to hold hearings into why SDG&E's natural gas prices soared to record highs in January. The state's investor-owned utilities have pointed ...

TikTok influencer left a $1K tip. Now, this San Diego taco vendor is busier than ever

A week ago, Teodoro Jimenez would bring in about $400 on a good day selling tacos from his pop-up tent on South 43rd Street in San Diego's Shelltown neighborhood near National City. That changed after his business, Blue Fire Bliss, went viral on TikTok this week, and now he's busier than ever. There's no shortage of places to get tacos and carne asada fries in San Diego, but many people came to this one because of a TikTok made by Jesús Morales, a social media influencer who lives in the neighborhood. In the TikTok, Morales offers to pay for any tacos Jimenez sells within the hour — which amo...

Retired Navy captain sentenced to prison for taking 'Fat Leonard' bribes valued at $91K

SAN DIEGO — By the time David Williams Haas was 10 years old, he'd decided to join the Navy thanks to the mentorship of a family friend, who he knew simply as "Uncle Arleigh." It was not until Haas' time at the Naval Academy that he came to fully understand the accomplishments of Adm. Arleigh Burke, a World War II veteran who served the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations as chief of naval operations and was just the fourth American to have a naval vessel named after him while still alive. For more than two decades, Haas charted an upward career path similar to that of his mentor, facing co...