DHS Head Says Metering Doesn’t Lead To Illegal Entries But Others Disagree And More Local News

July 19, 2019 at 2:25 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:31 Speaker 3: 00:33 Speaker 4: 00:59 Speaker 3: 01:13 Speaker 4: 01:17 Speaker 5: 01:49 Speaker 4: 01:56 Speaker 3: 02:13 Speaker 6: 02:28 Speaker 7: 02:49 Speaker 6: 02:57 Speaker 3: 03:16 Speaker 4: 03:34 Speaker 6: 04:25 Speaker 4: 04:33 Speaker 3: 04:46 Speaker 4: 05:01 Speaker 3: 05:43 Speaker 4: 05:52 Speaker 3: 06:30 Speaker 4: 06:40 Speaker 3: 06:52 Speaker 8: 07:02 Speaker 9: 07:31 Speaker 4: 07:45 Speaker 3: 07:55 Speaker 8: 08:11 Speaker 10: 08:17 Speaker 8: 09:03 Speaker 10: 09:24 Speaker 8: 09:44 Speaker 10: 10:00 Speaker 8: 10:21 Speaker 10: 10:26 Speaker 11: 10:42 Speaker 10: 10:53 Speaker 11: 11:03 Speaker 10: 11:22 Speaker 11: 11:39 Speaker 10: 11:50 Speaker 8: 11:54 Speaker 1: 11:59 Speaker 8: 12:16 Speaker 3: 12:23 Speaker 11: 12:50 Speaker 8: 13:04 Speaker 11: 13:12 Speaker 12: 13:23 Speaker 11: 13:28 Speaker 8: 13:34 Speaker 11: 13:43 Speaker 13: 14:51 Speaker 11: 15:06 Speaker 8: 15:32 Speaker 11: 15:48 Speaker 3: 17:04 It's Friday, July 19th I'm Deb Welsh and you're listening to San Diego news matters from KPBS coming up. Homeland Security policies may have led asylum seekers to cross the border illegally and San Diego researchers look to the ocean's role in climate change with science. It's helpful to try to find solutions for this problem that's continuously causing this planet. Obviously to warm that more San Diego new stories right after the break. [inaudible] thank you for joining us for San Diego News Matters. I'm Deb Welsh. For weeks, the flow of asylum seekers being allowed into the u s at the Santa Seadrill port of entry for processing was reduced to a nearest standstill. The Department of Homeland Security is now giving conflicting messages. Whether this slow down has led to asylum seekers trying to enter the U s illegally. KPBS reporter Max Riverland Adler as details testifying in front of Congress on Thursday Acting Department of Homeland Security. Secretary Kevin MCE Leanin said the metering system, which limits the processing of asylum seekers at ports of entry didn't cause people to try to cross illegally. Did it exacerbate the policies or not, sir? No. But a September report from DHS, his own inspector general said, the two year old metering policy does in fact lead to a rise in the number of illegal entries in Tijuana. Thursday morning, 12 people were allowed into the u s for processing, but almost 30 people's names were called who weren't present. Girlene Joseph works with Haitian and African asylum seekers in Tijuana. She says, many of those people are making the decision to no longer wait and instead crossed the border through a hot desert or a raging river. People are trying to find a novel way for company United States, and now they are putting their lives in danger. As you can see, a border patrol spokesperson told KPBS that no one is being denied the opportunity to seek asylum, but that DHS does manage the queues of asylum seekers. What that management looks like is still unclear. Max Waveland, Adler, k PBS news. Two horses died Thursday morning after colliding at the del Mar race track. KPBS reporter Matt Hoffman says this comes after track. Officials said racing would be much safer than at Santa Nita track in Los Angeles where 30 horses died. Horses were warming up when they had what del Mar racing officials are calling a freak collision. They say a two year old horse bucked off a jockey then made a u turn and ran head on into a three year old horse del Mar thoroughbred clubs. CEO Joe Harper says protocol was followed during morning workouts, and this is simply an accident. Horses run into each other, tracks on the farm out in the wilderness. Uh, this is just one of those, thankfully very rare, unfortunate accidents. The California horse racing board says a preliminary examination. So the horses next, we're broken after the collision. A full investigation is underway. Animal rights groups like p to say, if racing can't be done without horses dying than it shouldn't be done at all. These are the first that's in del Mar. Since opening day on Wednesday, Matt Hoffman, k PBS news in San Isidro. Thursday, a special gathering to remember a nightmare in San Diego history. On July 18th, 1984 a gunman walked into a McDonald's in San Isidro and opened fire KPBS reporter John Carroll talk to one San Diego who was there that day. It was a hot Wednesday. Late in the afternoon when some lives in the mcdonalds on San Ysidro boulevard would be swept away. Others forever changed when a man walked in and opened fire. When it was all over 21 people from eight months to 74 years old were dead. 19 wounded. The 77 minute long incident ended after a San Diego police sniper fired, one shot hitting the gunman in the chest, killing him on the spot. Southwestern colleges higher education center now sits where the McDonald's once was in front of the building. A plaque anchors a monument featuring 21 hexagonal pillars, one for every one of the victims who were killed. San Diego fire battalion chief David Connor was there that day after someone told he and his crew that people had been shot at the McDonald's, they headed to the scene. They knew it was very serious. Within seconds of pulling up the gunfire towards the fire engine began. Uh, there were skipping bullets under the fire engine. Um, he hit the fire engine several times. Connor is now nearing retirement, so he says he had to be here on this anniversary 35 years after. What at that time was the worst mass shooting in American history. John Carroll KPBS News, California Governor Gavin Newsom says state agencies met a deadline to train supervisors and sexual harassment prevention as required by law by Capitol public radio. Scott Rod says a number of departments are made out of compliance. In May, our investigation found dozens of state agencies failed to provide sexual harassment training to supervisors. In recent years. The governor's office said it wanted all state agencies to provide this training. By July, a spokesperson for Newsome says they reached this goal, but only at the 11 highest agencies that answered directly to the governor. The governor's office previously said the dozens of departments underneath those agencies also needed to comply with the training laws. But now the spokesperson says they don't need to meet the July deadline. Some departments failed to train hundreds of supervisors in sexual harassment prevention in recent years. Starting next year, all employees, not just supervisors, will have to receive the training. Scott Rod cap radio news. An effort to cap rent increases in California is still alive at the state capitol. Capitol public radio is Randall white has more back November voters soundly defeated prop 10 which would have opened the door for to expand or enact rent control in the wake of that defeat and facing a housing crisis. San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu introduced a bill that brings the issue right back into consideration. It would limit annual rent increases to no more than 10% and would only apply to properties over 10 years old. It's a similar formula to one adopted in Oregon earlier this year on yes, Wianno is with the alliance of Californians for community empowerment. A group that strongly supports the bill. She says it's needed to protect against unfair evictions. You know, there are double digit increases in homelessness across the entire state and thousands of families that are living just one run increase away from displacement. The California apartment association is in staunch opposition to the plan saying the mere threat of rent control is already affecting investments in housing in Sacramento. I'm Randall white downtown San Diego's network of protected bike lanes tripled in size this week. KPBS metro reporter Andrew Board says it's just in time for comic con. The streets and sidewalks downtown are packed, but along sixth avenue and Beach Street cyclists and scooter riders have a route that's free and clear. The bike lanes are separated from traffic with barriers and a line of parked cars. Last winter the city put in protected bike lanes on j street as well. Sapphire Nova is visiting comicon from Phoenix in a sporty Supergirl costume. She's been riding electric scooters around town and is glad the new protected lands exist. It feels really nice to have a place for ourselves in our own separate lane. Then you don't have to ride through traffic and you feel like you've got your own space and then you don't have to deal with pedestrians too. So it, it really does feel nice to have safety. It is a lot of fun too. Beach Street, j street and sixth avenue or just phase one. A larger network of protected bike lanes is supposed to be complete in 2021 Andrew Bowen KPBS News, San Diego researchers are literally making waves as they work to understand the ocean's role in the planet's climate. KPBS environment. Reporter Eric Anderson says the ocean modulates climate, but pollution and microbes affect how the system works. Scripps Institution of oceanography researchers are looking at climate change now. They're doing it inside this lab. Let me show you this. Long glass shoot allows researchers to bring the ocean into the lab by replicating waves, which out in the environment influence the atmosphere and the planet's climate. Yeah, so this is a paddle that we have been using to generate the wave. Christopher Lee is the managing director of the scripts based Center for Aerosol impacts on chemistry of the environment machine he's standing beside is pushing ocean water down a long, narrow channel. That action creates a steady flow of waves, which roll toward a manufactured in clock. The incline and artificial beach forces the waves to break and crash pushing particles and gases into the air. That instrument just across on the other side of the channel best your instrument from Colorado State University, they're investigating the ice nucleating property of the spare cells basically meaning how CSG Ursel being emitted and their sampling from right here are forming ice nucleus which have a climate property impact as well. Lee says ice nucleuses are rare but when they do get created they tend to encourage rainfall. Understanding them could help researchers better understand whether all kinds of scientific instruments are clustered near the wave break though research teams are working to understand as much as possible about what's happening in that Waterfield shoot. We have continuous measurements of the temperature, dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, and of course chlorophyll was kind of monitors the bio mass of these phytoplankton bloom that we are in using here in this channel. Adding microbes to the mix is a major change from the first run of experiments which wrapped up last summer. That project aimed to isolate and measured. Just see spray in particles. This run will allow atmospheric chemist can pray there to account for many more influences including algae blooms, pollution and weather. We're building another channel which will be here in about a year that we'll have wins and great there. Who's guiding the research at the facility is explaining to a group of high school students or why this project has such far reaching implications. She says the ocean has some of the most significant impacts on the global climate and researchers just don't understand exactly what's going on. The largest uncertainty in all climate change is the interaction between that spray in the particles and how they form clouds. That's the thing. We understand the least in the climate system. The wave machine allows researchers to figure out processes that they would otherwise have. No way to understand. [inaudible] says that broadens the reach and the impact of the work. We would just understand how the ocean as a whole influences the chemistry of our atmosphere. It's controlling that chemistry. It's interacting through reactions that some people have never even studied. We're looking at sort of how humans and Mother Nature, just their chemical reactions are completely changing. It's over the oceans over three quarters of the surface of the earth. The knowledge gained over the next five years could help improve computer models that predict the planet's climate. Most climate models currently don't account for the ocean's influence and sharing that scientific pursuit with high school students, plants the seeds for the future. It's, this is not research that's in any textbook that they read, right, and so they can come see what scientists get to do. They can come see the passion of the people that are working in that room trying to solve these problems. Hello, Niamh was part of the science camp touring the lab. She, the science is being worked on here is an important baseline to document a changing climate. It's not something that people are making up and with science it's helpful to try to find solutions for this problem that's continuously causing this planet, obviously to warm and it's going to be affecting my generation as well as the rest of us for the rest of our lives. Niamh says the push for understanding is encouraging. Eric Anderson. KPBS news, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography lab is holding an open house at 1:00 PM on Saturday. The public is invited. The 50th anniversary of the first Apollo mission to the moon is Saturday and that has many people reflecting on the marvel of human space flight. KPBS science and technology reporter Shelina Celani says some of the science to make long range missions happen is coming from labs right here in San Diego. Scientists at UC San Diego gear up for a daily procedure placing petri dishes filled with tiny brains into a refrigerator. Biologist Dr Alison Motrey and his team are developing these organoids for a voyage. It's the first time where uh, [inaudible] derived from the stem cells we'd be sending, we'd be sent to space. Yeah. These organoids and others from researchers around the country are destined for the International Space Station scheduled for departure the day after the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions to the moon. Your ankle hurts Lambeth Raga Twain crying quality. We copy you on the ground, right. And just as NASA is doing, Motrey is thinking about longterm human space flight. We're going to have a human's colonizing other planets so we need to understand better what's the impact of microgravity on human neuro development motor. He says these globs of tissue mimic genetically and architecturally in actual brain. They were made in space conditions and will be kept in a mini lab to control their environment. The only difference he says will be gravity or lack thereof motor. He says he's hoping to see how gravity impacts the cells. For example, he says there could be accelerated aging but stem cells aren't new to space and there have already been studies on the human body and brains in other ways though I have not come back to my earth height yet. I grew two feet am I? My brother is three foot six and now I can like rub his head. That's retired astronauts. Scott Kelly making a joke as he talks to a crowd at the NASA headquarters in May, 2016 but actually so I stretched an inch and a half and there was this talk that I grew two inches of which I just stretch. Kelly and his twin brother Mark Kelly are a part of the NASA twin study. Well, Scott Kelly spent nearly a year in space. His brothers stayed on earth. NASA has been studying them to see how space conditions impact the human body. Kelly says at one point, I kinda had flu like symptoms for a few days. Had I not been in space for a year and I knew what this was, I would have gone to the emergency room and uh, said, hey, you know, I'm really, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm not feeling that great. But that's why we do this. I mean, we need to learn these things. If we're going to go to Mars and Kelly says there's a lot we need to learn. Some of that research is coming from UC San Diego. You CSD physiologist, Alan Hargins vacuums out all the air from an exercise machine while another health sciences researcher, Brenda Ronna is strapped into it. This type of device he says, could help astronauts maintain blood balance by sucking fluids to their feet. When people do things in space, it takes a long time for them to do it as compared to on earth. Part of that is because of the loss of our gravity, but we think the other part is maybe to altered blood flow to the brain. Hargens and Rondo both worked on the NASA twin study. NASA revealed some initial findings in April showing for example, changes in Kelly's gut bacteria. Ronna says, researchers are now looking at urine and blood samples to see impacts on Kelly at the molecular level. But she says there are still some limitations to these findings when studying a whole person and not the tissue organs on a plate study. They're really important for NASA. They provide a way to kind of hone in on the specific environment of space and what that does to the organ itself. Though organs don't work in isolation. She says. So it's important for us to do both studies and you know, at the cellular level, at the tissue level, at the organ level, at the whole organism level, um, and put all that information together. That's why she says, scientific research coming from places like UC San Diego and nationally can help NASA get closer to a major goal, a safe human expedition to Mars it. That'd be great. I made it. I would love for that to happen in my lifetime because I love to go and visit Mars. Shelina Celani KPBS news. Thanks for listening to San Diego News matters. For more KPBS podcasts, go to k pbs.org/podcasts.

By KPBS Public Media

Ways To Subscribe

The Department of Homeland Security is giving conflicting messages whether its own policies has led asylum-seekers to cross the border illegally. Plus, San Ysidro remembers the victims of a shooting massacre at a McDonald’s 35 years on and the Del Mar Racetrack mourns the loss of two horses after a ‘freak collision.’ Also ahead on today’s podcast: learn how San Diego scientists are using wave machines for climate research.