Tijuana's tech boom
Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Tuesday, April 18th >>>>
Tijuana’s tech industry is booming…
More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….
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A Hepatitis A outbreak tied to strawberries has sickened at least seven people..
Some of the potentially contaminated berries were sold at two Costco business centers and Trader Joes and ALDI stores here in San Diego County.
Dr. William Tseng from Kaiser San Diego says hep A commonly spreads through fecal matter.. He says if someone is exposed and becomes infected they might start seeing symptoms a few weeks later..
STRAWBERRIES 2A :15
Sudden abdominal pain nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, then four days after that you start to notice your urine gets really really dark plus your stool gets really pale -- if you see that you’ve got to go to the doctor to get it tested out (:15)
County Health officials have been tracking a small uptick in Hep A cases since January.. but they say none are connected to the outbreak involving frozen strawberries.
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Inclement weather shelters in the city of San Diego will continue to open so that people who are homeless can keep warm during cold and wet weather.
That’s because the city extended the season for the shelters through April 30th.
SO FAR, the shelters have been activated a record number of times THIS SEASON, COMPARED TO PREVIOUS YEARS because of the extreme weather .
Father Joe’s operates one of the inclement weather shelters for the city.
FROM NOVEMBER 1st TO MARCH 31st, FATHER JOE’S says it PROVIDED OVER 3 thousand 7-HUNDRED OVERNIGHT BEDS.
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The city of San Diego is doing an inventory of its trees starting today.
They’ll use the info to decide where to plant more trees — a key element of the city’s Climate Action Plan.
Increasing the city’s urban forest will contribute to more livable communities, have positive mental health impacts, and cool the air.
Urban neighborhoods with mature trees can be up to 11 degrees cooler in the summer than neighborhoods without trees.
San Diego residents can request a free tree through the Free Tree SD program.
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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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2wayTECH recorded
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SAN DIEGO MAYOR TODD GLORIA RELEASED HIS BUDGET FOR THE CITY ON FRIDAY. REPORTER KITTY ALVARADO SPOKE WITH THE INDEPENDENT BUDGET ANALYST WHO WILL BE TAKING A CLOSER LOOK OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS
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TAKE BUDGET FOLO 1:00 SOQ
When Mayor Todd Gloria released his $5.12 billion budget for fiscal year 2024, he said it reflects the city’s top priorities: solving homelessness, upgrading critical infrastructure, improving services and keeping the city safe. He also said it was balanced and conservative …
It’s consistent with past budgets
That’s Charles Modica the city’s independent budget analyst … his job is to make sure that the budget allocates enough money towards the right things … like homelessness … some have already said it’s not enough …
we’ll be going through the budget and talking with folks who actually provide those services in the city and out of the city to make sure that the amounts that are added are reasonable and sufficient
… but already he sees an area of concern, that’s because some of the money it relies on to pay for some of the services are one time sources of income
so next year we’ll need to either growing city revenues or potentially cutting ongoing costs
Kitty Alvarado KPBS News
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Coming up....a profile of the first tenured Black Professor at SDSU. We’ll have that story and more, just after the break.
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THE CITY OF LA MESA IS DEVELOPING A PLAN TO IMPROVE PARKS AND RECREATION. REPORTER KATIE HYSON LOOKED INTO THE UNDERTAKING.
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LAMESAREC 1 :53
The parks plan hasn’t been updated in more than a decade, and the city has become more diverse.
Community services director Sue Richardson says they made sure the participants reflected the city’s changing demographics when they surveyed residents.
SOT :06 Trails and open space and areas to have passive family gatherings was really the highest on the list.
The city has 14 parks, but Richardson says there are many neighborhoods that don’t have a park within a 15-minute walk.
Mejgan Afshan (MEZH-GON AF-SHAN) grew up going to La Mesa’s parks and now works on local equity issues.
SOT :08 We're growing very rapidly. And so the concern, I think, is making sure that everybody is accessing these resources.
Residents can voice their opinions at public workshops this Thursday and next Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m.
Katie Hyson, KPBS News
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Last month San Diego State renamed its East Commons mall in honor of Charles Bell. He was a mathematician and the first tenured African American faculty member at SDSU. Sci-tech reporter Thomas Fudge has more on this black pioneer in the world of academics.
BELL (tf) x:xx soq.
(B-roll of ribbon cutting)
On March 27th San Diego State’s East commons became the Charles B. Bell Pavillion. Charles Bell died in 2010 but his widow and three of his kids were there to cut the ribbon.
((You’ll see B-roll of Tonika at beginning of dedication B-roll file))
Tonika Green was also there. She was the university's first Charles Bell Scholar. And is now an associate vice president at SDSU.
4567 2-10-21 “He was a pioneer. He was a trailblazer. He was someone who contributed to mathematics in strong and creative ways. Cut to 2-08-36 So people might wonder who he is but now that it’s institutionalized. And on a building. It gives people the power now to find out who he was and the impact he had on campus.”
Charles Bell was born in New Orleans in 1928. And he quickly got started learning and loving mathematics. How quickly? He enrolled in Xavier University, a historically black college at age 14. He earned his Masters degree from Notre Dame by age 19. He didn’t get his doctorate until he was 24. But Bell’s daughter, Karen Bell Shirley, said his doctorate was delayed by two years due to an unexpected conflict.
Karen Bell Shirley / Charles Bell’s Daughter
Karen Shirley Bell 1:47 “A man in, I think it was Germany, had written his thesis on the exact same topic. And because the topics had to be unique and this man preceded my father by a couple of months, they couldn’t give my father his PhD and he had to go back to the starting board.”
Charles Bell was the author of 40 academic papers, many of them focused on statistics. His son, CB Bell, along with his sister, said their dad was demanding of them as kids.
CB Bell / Charles Bell’s Son
CB Bell 5:05 “When I was in high school, he enrolled me in a summer class in Geology at the University of New Orleans. And that was from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, five days a week. And then my sister and I and my best friend took calculus from him from 5 to 8, five nights a week all summer.”
Bell’s career was constantly on the move. He left SDSU after six years to teach at Tulane University and the University of Michigan just to name two. (He taught mathematics overseas, from Germany to Kenya, always insisting his kids learn the local language.) He taught math overseas at many institutions, including the University of Madrid and Göttingen University in Germany. He insisted his four kids learn the local language, wherever they lived, and, as CB put it, he threw them in local schools and expected them to cope. Bell returned to San Diego State in 1981 and retired there eleven years later.
CB adds that one ever-present home furnishing, no matter where they lived, was a chalkboard.
CB BELL 5:34
“So everywhere we lived I think my mom was the one who went out and procured the chalkboards, and we would usually get two of them. Just like in a school and sometimes he’d be teaching us stuff and sometimes he’d be in there just rattling off what looked like some sort of mad genius formulas.”
Charles Bell’s career was remarkable, especially due to racial discrimination. He went to Notre Dame because they wouldn’t admit a black graduate student at LSU in the late forties. Even though Notre Dame admitted him, CB says his father could not live in the dorms because he was black.
CB says his father’s mathematical thinking allowed him to disregard racism in a way, because it made no sense. He says it helped that Charles Bell was always the smartest person in the room.
CB BELL 4:70 “For him it was, ‘You do the stuff and you get the reward.’ You give the proof and you have the proof. You can’t decide that we don’t like it because you’re black. That’s not part of the thing. I think that just never entered his mind.”
But Karen Bell said despite this, her father was aware of Race and taught his children black history lessons, using his own books that told the story of black luminaries.
Karen Bell Shirley 4:04
“He always told me, you know, no one will ever teach you this, so I’m going to teach you. We came from people who have made a big huge contribution to this country, to the world. And you need to know that.”
Bell Pavilion B-roll
The Charles B. Bell Pavilion on a weekday is a plaza filled with students talking on their phones, rolling by on skateboards and walking to the food court. Brandon Gamble, director of the Black Resource Center at San Diego State, says Charles Bell is part of a tradition.
BRANDON GAMBLE / SDSU BLACK RESOURCE CENTER DIRECTOR
4565 1-58-04
People can come to the campus here at San Diego State and take a black excellence tour and learn about Harold Brown, who was an outstanding basketball player but more importantly was the first black administrator here on campus. Or hear about Shirley Webber, who is our current Secretary of state but she was also a professor in the Africana Studies department.”
And he says Charles Bell is a big part of that story. SOQ.
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That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
