While the board of the San Diego Unified Port Commission considers whether to get into the lodging business by financing and constructing a big new hotel on the site of downtown's Campbell shipyard on San …

The widow of murdered UCSD researcher Tsunao Saito has filed another round of libel suits against Japanese publications she says defamed her by running false reports suggesting she might have had a role in her …

Well-heeled San Diegans continue to give generously to their political causes of choice in the months leading up to election year 2000. The Union-Tribune's David Copley has given $1000 to Congressman Brian Bilbray. Downtown steakhouse …

A plan to build executive jets at a plant beside the runway at Montgomery Field has been scrubbed because, sponsors claim, neighbors didn't like it. But city sources say that the real reason the deal …

Padres owner John Moores is delivering on his million-dollar fundraising promise to Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley by getting some of San Diego's most well-wired business types to open up their checkbooks for the ex-basketball …

Mayor Susan Golding loves to hate Scott Barnett. Not that Barnett, the 37-year-old executive director of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, hasn't backed some of the mayor's biggest pet projects. Last year, Barnett even …

City councilman Juan Vargas is pulling out the stops in his effort to get elected to the state assembly seat now held by soon-to-be-termed-out Denise Ducheny. To raise funds for the effort, Vargas is putting …

City-planning commissioner Geralda "Gerri" Stryker last year cochaired the "Yes on C" ballot campaign that convinced voters to approve the downtown stadium deal. Two weeks ago, after three out of seven planning commissioners disqualified themselves …

Back in September 1996, the city attorney's office announced formation of a "Public Integrity Unit" to clean up local government. "The Public Integrity Unit will serve a valuable function, and not only in handling election …

San Diego has become an overbuilt theme park, a hollowed-out pleasure dome noisy with professional sports teams and the brouhaha of drug- and booze-fed street festivals generated for tourists, conventioneers, and high-tech moguls. Unemployment is …

The Union-Tribune has been scooped once again in its coverage of Padres owner John Moores's attempts to expand his sports empire away from San Diego. Last month, the U-T waited three weeks to report, without …

"Mike's father and mother took me in and fed and clothed and sheltered me when I was 16," Blevins wrote. “They provided me with the only family environment I have ever known in my life.”

Ex-city councilman Mike Schaefer is off and running again. The convicted wife-beater who was once sent to jail in Los Angeles for being a slumlord has traversed the country over the past decade, campaigning for …

San Diego city councilwoman Christine Kehoe, who just missed knocking off Congressman Brian Bilbray last year, is off to a big fundraising lead in next year's race for the 76th District state assembly seat. As …

Papers in Los Angeles and Orange County are full of news that Padres owner John Moores is scouting about for a new stadium in Anaheim. Not for the Padres, but for a National Football League …

A San Diego company specializing in scattering cremation ashes at sea says business is up since the Kennedy family deposited the cremated remains of John F. Kennedy, Jr. last month off Martha's Vineyard. Anya and …

Some get it from big Los Angeles, Orange County, and New York developers. Some get it from professional sports moguls, trash haulers, and union bosses. Still others get it from lawyers, judges, and lobbyists. A …

Ex-congressman Bob Wilson, who died last week of Alzheimer's, was a controversial figure who made national headlines during the Watergate scandal and played a major role in the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) Co. affair …

Padres owner John Moores has shown up high on the list of big-money donors to Democratic governor Gray Davis, who earlier this year named Moores to a highly coveted spot on the University of California's …

An engineer at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command on Pacific Highway has discovered that Russian hackers have penetrated a sensitive computer network at the top-secret Navy intelligence center, according to a report in …

In the wake of the Grand Jury vs. Susan Golding dust-up, some local politicos are going after the Grand Jury in a big way. Steve Peace, a Democratic state senator from Chula Vista, is promising …

Golding, who was gearing up to run for mayor, played down stories that she was a regular visitor to the prison. She was quoted saying she was "disappointed with her husband and visits him infrequently.”

She's not exactly a household name, but she's a plaintiff's lawyer with a good if low-profile pedigree. Constance H. Shaner practices law out of the offices of Ravreby, Shaner & Gibson in Carlsbad. Records show …

There doesn't seem to be any doubt about where Union-Tribune owner Helen Copley stands on the county grand jury's investigation into Mayor Susan Golding and the money-trading scandal surrounding last year's campaign to build a …

With the downtown baseball stadium all tied up in knots, what's the next big municipal controversy to hit San Diego? Insiders say its charter reform. According to several reports, a group of self-appointed civic leaders, …

It has an extravagant name, and it turns out it carries a very big price tag. It's the "North Embarcadero Visionary Plan." Approved by the San Diego City Council last December, the plan has been …

Next Monday is the date set by a state appeals court for oral arguments on activist Jerry Mailhot's lawsuit to set aside last November's vote on the downtown Padre baseball stadium and John Moores's mega …

San Diego City Attorney Casey Gwinn has blown a huge loophole in the city's new lobbyist reporting law, allowing the legion of influence peddlers, who often ply their trade by buying food, booze, and gifts …

Back in February, while gas prices were soaring and radio talk-show host Roger Hedgecock was railing against big oil, a group of San Diego city councilmembers and their aides traveled to Long Beach for a …

Has the tide turned against the plan to build a baseball stadium downtown? Although approved by voters last November in a so-called "advisory" election, cracks have begun to appear, most of them due to blatant …

Disclosure of the pending divorce between Peter Jensen and Princess Ubol Ratana, the eldest daughter of Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej, is causing tongues to wag and students of local business fiascos to dust off their …

Buster's Beach House, a new restaurant in Seaport Village, started its first week of business on a downer: a B rating from the county health department was displayed discreetly in the front window, partially hidden …

Word around San Diego's city hall has it that the city council will almost certainly pick the so-called ballpark site for a new central library. Why? According to sources both in and out of local …

A city-subsidized plan to build executive jets at Montgomery Field may end up costing local taxpayers a bundle in lost revenue. Century Aerospace, a tiny Albuquerque-based outfit that has yet to build an airplane, is …

"He was memorizing The Preppy Handbook. And telling people to have cracked crab for their eighth-grade birthday parties. And trying to be Sebastian White from Brideshead Revisited. Just insane kind of grandiosity at such a young age."

It had to come someday: the cancellation of Silk Stalkings, the trashy sexy-girls-and-hunky-detectives series that was the pride of San Diego's taxpayer-funded motion picture bureau and ran for eight years on the USA cable network. …

Noted Point Loma artist Robert Irwin, 70, suffered a minor catastrophe last week when one of his famed acrylic sculptures was shattered after it mysteriously fell from a wall at the Denver Art Museum. "We're …

Stoorza, Ziegaus & Metzger, that politically well-wired downtown public relations and lobbying shop, is expanding its empire once again. This time, the Republican-based firm that has handled clients such as the Union-Tribune, Susan Golding, Pete …

It's not getting much ink in San Diego, but last week's "Inside the Beltway" column of the Washington Times had this spicy local tidbit: "A stork tells Inside the Beltway that Shelia Lawrence, the petite, …

Popular online-auction company e-Bay is currently offering a made-in-Tijuana, $50 black-velvet painting of Monica Lewinsky. "I am auctioning off this Black Velvet Painting of Monica S. Lewinsky," says the pitch from the Los Angeles seller …

Wasn't that ponytailed Gateway Computer billionaire Ted Waitt, currently La Jolla's most famous resident, seen loading the family aboard his executive jet parked at Lindbergh Field's private terminal last Friday night? He pulled up to …

Contra Costa County library officials were all set to hire political consultant Fred Register to run their campaign for voter approval of a new library tax, but that was before the defeat of San Diego's …

Proposition L, the quarter-percent increase in the sales tax that would have been earmarked for libraries, is dead and buried. And for the county's business, political, and newspaper establishment -- which until Prop L had …

Just in time for what would have been Dr. Seuss's 95th birthday last week came the latest controversy over his widow Audrey's marketing of the late child author's image and work. During his life, Seuss, …

When John Simpson, a 53-year-old vacationing music teacher from Birmingham, England, was found strangled to death last month in his room at La Mesa's Rodeway Inn, the Union-Tribune was most circumspect. The paper's plea for …

José Castrillón Henao was said to have cut a dashing figure on the streets of downtown San Diego. Partial to expensive Armani suits and accompanied by a flashy girlfriend, the Colombian native — who said …

Now the story can be told. More than ten years ago, Ed Legace, boys' swim and water-polo coach at Grossmont Union School High School District's El Capitan High School, abruptly quit his job for what …

The San Diego City Council is getting ready to fire up its heavy-spending machine again. On March 15, the council is quietly planning to sell another $327.5 million worth of sewer bonds, on top of …

California senator Steve Peace, who says he's thinking of running for mayor of San Diego, has just introduced a bill to allow what many think is a questionable way for cities to run up more …

E-mail may have arrived at the San Diego City Council, but that hasn't improved the clarity of the messages some councilmembers are sending with it. Example number one: the fuss over bumper stickers on city-owned …