Cloaked in secrecy by Girard's claim of "attorney-client privilege," none of the specific terms of the concessions regarding the Padres' Qualcomm lease were made public by the council.

San Diegan John Moores, who stepped down last month as chairman of the board of Peregrine Systems, the Del Mar Heights-based software outfit he controls, will soon be departing many of the other corporate boards …

How much does it cost state taxpayers to lure administrators to UCSD's La Jolla hilltop campus by the sea? Plenty. Latest example is Edward W. Holmes, new vice-chancellor of health sciences and dean of the …

SDG&E workers may be taking the brunt of local anger over utility-rate hikes, but executives of Sempra Energy, the outfit that owns SDG&E, are raking in big bucks. According to public disclosures, the Sempra chairman …

For years, rumors have swirled around the question of whether Copley Press, Inc., intends to sell off its newspaper empire, including San Diego's own Union-Tribune, to Chicago-based Tribune Company or another big media conglomerate. Elderly …

U.S. District Court judge John S. Rhoades, who last year sealed the criminal files of wealthy Metabolife honcho Michael Ellis and his partner Michael Blevins, is back on the hot seat, this time as a …

The date was September 27, 1991, and Dr. Stephen Gould, a La Jolla psychiatrist in private practice, wrote a memo regarding an unpaid assignment he had been given by the University of California San Diego …

The University of California has made public a list of travel expenses run up by members of its governing Board of Regents, which includes a trio of wealthy San Diegans. The document says one of …

The deal to build a downtown ballpark may have hit some snags, but that isn't getting in the way of Padres executives. Seen lingering at the door to downtown's posh Rainwater's steakhouse during last Friday's …

The former director of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe has quit his job as head of the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk amid reports he executed a secret settlement agreement with the …

One of last year's big controversies at the San Diego Unified School District was the demotion of 13 principals and two vice principals, who promptly turned around and sued the district, claiming their civil rights …

"If the Padres can get a stadium, why can't we? I've never thought for a minute that we couldn't get something done, honestly. I've always thought we would be able to get one." This statement …

What's up with those huge new Union-Tribune billboards on Qualcomm Stadium facing the interchange of I-15 and I-8? They popped up mysteriously several weeks ago and have stadium neighbors buzzing. City Manager Michael Uberuaga didn't …

Citizen watchdog Mel Shapiro has won yet another court battle in his never-ending crusade to pry open the obscure machinations of local government to public scrutiny. The latest victory came last week, after Shapiro and …

When it was announced two weeks ago that John Moores had pledged $20 million toward construction of a $75 million cancer-research center at the University of California San Diego, Los Angeles Times reporter Tony Perry …

The intrigue surrounding the relationship between city councilwoman Valerie Stallings and the Padres grew last week with the release of telephone records from Stallings's office in response to a California Public Records Act request. According …

The former minister of Solana Beach Presbyterian Church has been put on trial by the national Presbyterian Church for allegedly committing "sexual abuse" and "misuse of his office and position" in connection with his involvement …

Democratic state senator Steve Peace has been fighting hard for Western Water, formerly Yuba Natural Resources, the company once run by ex-felon Dick Silberman, one-time husband of San Diego mayor Susan Golding. Before Silberman went …

A Kansas City charter school operated by San Diego-based School Futures Research Foundation, which is backed by South Bay billionaire John Walton, has flunked a state-university audit and may be forced to close unless it …

Who really owns the Padres? A limited partnership registered in Delaware, San Diego city officials say. In response to a recent request for public records about the team, Deputy City Manager Bruce Herring said the …

Once again the Pulitzer Prize recipients have been announced, and once again the San Diego Union-Tribune has been shut out. Though the San Diego Evening Tribune won two of the coveted journalistic awards before it …

When it comes to her personal investing habits, San Diego mayor Susan Golding used to be mired in the so-called "old economy" of chewing gum (William Wrigley Jr., Inc.) and ready-made dessert cakes (Sara Lee). …

It's not easy to take on the likes of San Diego Unified School superintendent Alan Bersin. Subject of endless rounds of favorable coverage in the Union-Tribune and the darling of its editorial board, son-in-law of …

The day Neon Systems, a Houston-based software maker, went public on March 5, 1999, its price shot from $15 to almost $27 a share, according to news accounts. And San Diego City Councilwoman Valerie Stallings …

With narco-related violence raging in Tijuana and beginning to cross over into San Diego, a big real estate project along the Mexican border -- complete with conference center, hotel, swimming pool, and a shopping center …

The Brooklyn native with ties to the mob (busted here two years ago by U.S. Marshals as he attempted to flee from his posh Pacific Beach hideout) has been convicted of attempted murder and obstruction …

That burgeoning scandal in the office of District Attorney Paul Pfingst is threatening to suck in some big names from the San Diego establishment, among them attorney and University of California regent John Davies. According …

The catfish was dropped off at the Reader's front desk. Two business cards, one imprinted with "Larry Lucchino" and the other with "John Moores" came in the package. The FBI was contacted, and they took a report.

San Diego's Luce, Forward, Hamilton and Scripps, the venerable downtown law firm, is being sued for slander and libel in a Los Angeles court by none other than Mattel, Inc., the maker of Barbie dolls. …

San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell has had her hands full lately, what with trying to decide the fate of all the lawsuits and motions that have piled up in the matter of John …

When Robert Carr Dynes was named chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, in April 1996, he was said to be a man of humble origins. Born in Canada in 1942, the physicist who …

A former death-row inmate who beat an 18-year-old murder rap and ended up living as a born-again Christian in his mother's 19-foot trailer at the Mt. Helix View Estates trailer park in El Cajon has …

A San Diego herbal medicine company has apologized to baseball's Mark McGwire and agreed to pay the Cardinal slugger $75,000 for unauthorized use of his name and photograph in a flyer promoting the company's pain-relieving …

Union-Tribune editor-in-chief Herb Klein has been advised by San Diego city clerk Chuck Abdelnour that he may have to register as a lobbyist. Klein, whose behind-the-scenes lobbying of city councilmembers on behalf of the taxpayer-financed …

KPBS, the radio and television station operation owned by the state university system and funded in part by California and federal taxpayers, is stonewalling public requests for information about its big private contributors. The KPBS …

To its fans, the world of professional baseball is a dreamland where grown-ups can live out their childhood fantasies, tracking batting averages and swapping stories about heroic home runs. Behind the curtain is a more …

The sister of Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris has filed suit against the San Diego Chargers, alleging that the team fired her "as a result of racial discrimination and harassment," a San Diego …

Did San Diego utility giant Sempra Corp. pay $410,000 in bribes to a Mexican company in order to expedite construction of a natural gas pipeline it wanted to build from San Diego to Rosarito? So …

La Jolla's Neal Blue, who with brother Linden owns General Atomics, the big defense contractor on Torrey Pines Mesa, is ruffling the bucolic atmosphere of scenic Telluride, Colorado. Blue's San Miguel Valley Corp., which owns …

Yet another Navy SEAL impostor has been unmasked, and this time the case is going before a judge. Raymond E. Aucker, 46, a former school superintendent in Panther Valley, Pennsylvania, was charged last week in …

An affiliate of the controversial San Diego-based diet-drug company Metabolife -- already California's sixth-largest donor of soft money to national political campaigns -- has written a $25,000 check to a committee set up to benefit …

As San Diego's homicide rate soars, police department critics are zeroing in on the department's abysmal "clearance" percentage -- the rate at which murders are solved. According to FBI statistics, the 1998 national clearance rate …

Three years ago in a letter to the San Diego City Council and city attorney dated December 24, 1996, Bruce Henderson warned that the council had made a grave mistake in May 1995 when it …

San Diego-based Sempra Energy is in big trouble with New Jersey utility regulators. Energy America, a joint-venture between Sempra and Direct Energy Marketing Ltd. off Calgary, Canada, has been accused by the New Jersey Division …

Padres slugger Tony Gwynn is shooting it out in court with Seltzer, Caplan, Wilkins and McMahon, one of the town's most well-connected law firms. According to a legal malpractice claim Gwynn and wife Alicia filed …

If any artist could be considered rough and tough enough to take on San Diego's city hall, it's probably big, bad Chris Burden. The famed L.A. performance artist and sculptor first made his name back …

Could Democratic congressman Bob Filner be brought down by a Playboy centerfold? Apparently, state Republicans thought so. No, not that way. The plan, however implausible, was to import ex-Playmate Patricia McClain, a 43-year-old legal secretary …

Maybe it's a perverse kind of destiny, but there's just no way around it: the demise of the historic Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, seems inextricably linked to San Diego. Way back on December 17, …

You enter the spa through oversized oak doors and immediately see sun stream down on a naked old man as he climbs out of a sunken Jacuzzi tub in the center of a brightly lit …

Hope, it seems, springs eternal in the minds of Oscar Goodman, the attorney-to-the-mob turned mayor of Las Vegas, and Padres owner John Moores. Goodman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last Friday that he and Moores …