City Lights
As gun battles go in Mexico, it was nothing special. At 11:00 p.m., Friday, October 28, Mexican military authorities and the local municipal police cornered a group of sicarios, or gunmen, in a house located …
The bank’s loans to Smith associates vastly exceeded bank regulators’ limits on insider transactions. The United States Comptroller of the Currency said the bank’s muddle of Smith-related transactions was “self-dealing run riot.”
On a hot Friday evening in late August, Jennifer Bernal and Jamila DeCarli sit at the kitchen table in their 998-square-foot home on the rim of Fox Canyon in City Heights. Their two small dogs …
The income gap between San Diego’s very richest and everybody else is widening, but still, inequality here remains less scary than it is in the nation as a whole. That may partially explain why Occupy …
‘When I heard that Qaddafi was killed,” says Abdul, who’s from Lebanon and doesn’t want his real name used, “I had to laugh because not too long ago he was calling his people cowards, rats. …
"The honeymoon might be over,” acknowledged Dr. Edward Brand, interim superintendent for Sweetwater Union High School District. Knee-deep in scandal, the Sweetwater school board on June 21 fired Superintendent Jesus Gandara. On June 22, Brand …
Beware nontraded real estate investment trusts. That advice was issued early this month by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the nongovernmental regulator of securities firms. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) pool money from many investors, …
Some residents refer to it as the Sleeping Giant. An eight-inch-diameter Navy pipeline, carrying diesel and jet fuel from Point Loma to Miramar, lies beneath San Diego streets and canyons. Each year, 323 million gallons …
Late last month, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said long-term unemployment is a “national crisis.” And it’s urgent that government give more help to the ailing housing industry. San Diego’s unemployment and housing problems are …
Chris Manning normally went surfboard fishing in the early morning with the other regulars — Roy and Vicky, Steve, Russell, and the other Roy. But with the ocean as flat as a lake and the …
Fumbling European banks may drag the whole world into another slough, but a couple of them have done the right things responding to adversity. A trader at UBS (once known as Union Bank of Switzerland) …
Two San Diego authors have recently written books. One tsk-tsks risk-taking and the other celebrates it. Yet you can agree with both premises. La Jolla’s Alfred Rappaport, professor emeritus at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, …
"Look. Look! They took our money! Ten thousand dollars, from some. They came in with their shotguns raised. ‘Down on the ground!’ They cuffed me, hands behind my back, threw me on my face on …
On September 1, two hundred labor union members assembled at the Vista office of Congressman Darrell Issa to promote the idea of a transaction tax — a tiny assessment on sales of stocks, bonds, currencies, …
"Teachers have an analogy for all the testing that we are required to do,” says Melanie Morton, a Sweetwater Union High School District teacher. “You don’t lose weight if you just keep stepping on the …
The woman on the other end of the phone is in tears. “I was just praying to God when you called,” she says. “That He’ll help us with what happened to our daughter. We are …