EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

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East County News Service

December 20, 2016 (San Diego's East County) -- East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media. This week’s top “Roundup” headlines include:

LOCAL

STATE

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

Report: San Diego County Population Tops 3.3 Million (KPBS)

San Diego County's population topped 3.3 million for the first time in July, the state Department of Finance reported Monday.

El Cajon officials play three wise men for homeless kids (San Diego Union-Tribune)

…Adorned in robes and crowns, the wise men in real life were El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis and St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral Deacon Keith Esshaki, who had come to the East County Transitional Living Center’s annual Christmas party in El Cajon.

Snakebite cure could live in Mission Trails Regional Park (10 News)

Rattlesnakes are a year-round threat to San Diegans and their pets, but new information reveals that a super-cure could be ripe for discovery right in San Diego's Mission Trails Park.

Rally in El Cajon held to protest police silence on Olango shooting (San Diego Union-Tribune)

More than two months have passed since Alfred Olango was shot and killed by an El Cajon police officer, and a local group with national ties continues to seek dialogue with the chief and mayor. 

Rep. Duncan Hunter repays campaign with loan brokered by long-ago murderer (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Alpine, turned to a long-time acquaintance of his father and congressional predecessor, Duncan L. Hunter, to arrange the loan he used to repay his campaign for nearly $49,000 in questionable expenditures. The broker has had a decades-long career after shooting to death a business partner who was having an affair with his wife in the 1970s. Hunter was unaware of that history…

SANDAG Admits to Overestimating What It’d Collect from Tax Hike (Voice of San Diego)

SANDAG staff members conceded Friday that to finish all the transportation projects promised in a 2004 sales tax extension, the agency will need to find as much as $17.5 billion from federal and state sources. No elected officials at the meeting said a word about the potential multibillion-dollar shortfall and any resulting impact on the communities they represent.

State bar exam tough for local law school grads (Reader)

Graduates of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, taking the 2016 California Bar exam for the first time, were tied for second worst in the state, according to the publication Above the Law. Only 31 percent of Jefferson grads passed the bar exam, half the overall state average of 62 percent.

Another hack shuts ex-reporter’s political website (Times of San Diego)

A week after declaring victory over hackers, former Union-Tribune reporter Joe Gandelman said his political website was down for four hours … under what he called an “absolutely brutal attack.”  His web-hosting service, Synthesis, said: “We have also identified that themoderatevoice.com was under a brute-force attack with 8,962 attempts to obtain access to your website’s dashboard….”

STATE

What does the new federal water bill mean for California? For one, a big win for farmers (Sac Bee)

Congress has passed a water bill that bitterly divided California’s two Democratic senators, and it now awaits the president’s signature, which seems to be in some doubt.

Cut back on natural gas use at home, SoCalGas says in advisory (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Still pinched from the shutdown at the Aliso Canyon storage facility, Southern California Gas has issued an advisory asking customers to immediately reduce their natural gas use to help lower the risk of possible gas and electricity shortages. “We are asking all Southern Californians to conserve...

Bill could raise age of restrictions on new California drivers (San Jose Mercury News)

A new bill aims to reduce teen driving accidents by extending driver restrictions to new drivers 21 and under.


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