By Miriam Raftery

Photo: Ramadi mosque in 2004, U.S. Marine Corps

April 19, 2015 (San Diego)--The battle between Islamic State extremists, or ISIS, is intensifying in the Middle East. Here are the latest developments.

By Miriam Raftery

April 17, 2015 (El Cajon) --  Recently, Citizens Oversight founder Ray Lutz challenged the city of El Cajon’s allocation of community development block grant funds to the East County Transitional Living Center for programs that benefit homeless people seeking to get off the streets. In a complaint sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Lutz argued that the program was illegal due to church-state separation requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

East County News Service

April 18, 2015 (Sacramento)—First came craft beer, a booming business in California. Could craft cannabis be next?

By Miriam Raftery

April 15, 2015 (San Diego) – An effort to remove a statue of Father Junipero Serra from the U.S. Capitol and replace it with a statue of Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut, cleared a major legislative hurdle on Monday.

By Miriam Raftery

Photos:  East County residents celebrated Blackwater halting plans to build a training camp in Potrero in 2008.

April 15, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) – Many in East County recall the successful battle wagered by rural residents here to halt a Blackwater paramilitary training camp from being built in Potrero.   Just months before Blackwater announced plans to cancel the Potrero project in 2008, news broke that Blackwater guards had been accused of massacring innocent civilians in Iraq’s Nisour Square on September 16, 2007.

ECM investigation identifies photo purported to be training camp dates back to 2009

By Miriam Raftery

April 15, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) – For the second time in recent months, an apparently false claim about ISIS terrorists at our border made by Judicial Watch has been making the rounds, primarily on blogs and right-wing media sites.  But fact checkers at ABC news, Media Matters and Snopes.com say the latest rumor is likely false.

Moreover, an East County Magazine online search found the photo claimed as a terrorist camp in 2015 is actually an AFP/Getty Image of Anapra taken by photographer Jorge Uzon. It was published in 2009 in VQR, a literary journal, in an article about a smuggler in Anapra, including an anecdote in which his father mistakenly thinks men seeking to be smuggled into America are Al Qaeda terrorists. View the 2009 story and photo here (2^nd large image, with green structure).

The same photo appears in the latest story by Judicial Watch, a conservative group.Their story published April 14^th, 2015 claims that ISIS terrorists have set up a training camp just over the Texas border near El Paso in Anapra or Juarez, Mexico. The article claims its sources are a Mexican army officer and a Mexican federal police inspector, and that documents purportedly from ISIS were found in Anapra.  It further claimed that ISIS terrorists are being smuggled across the border.

By Miriam Raftery

April 10, 2015 (San Diego)—It wasn’t your usual suspect chase for Sheriff’s deputies. 

On Wednesday, a baby seal wandered away from the shoreline and up five blocks to Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach. School staff called the Sheriff's Department and the seal pup was 'detained' without incident in the back of the patrol car.

April 10, 2015 (San Diego's East County) - The County of San Diego, Department of Environmental Health (DEH) has issued a Boil Water Order and Public Notification for the Rancho Santa Teresa Mutual Water Company located at 25056 Rancho Santa Teresa Drive, Ramona, CA 92065 effective immediately.  The water system serves 37 residential connections.

By Miriam Raftery

April 9, 2015 (Manzanita Reservation)—For the past 18 years, Leroy Joseph Elliott has served as Chairman of the Manzanita Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.  A respected leader and elder in the Native American community who led efforts to revive cultural traditions, Chairman Elliott passed away on March 18, 2015.

Born on April 18, 1943 to John Elliott and Adelina Aswayo at the Soboda Indian Hospital in Riverside County, Elliott was raised on the Manzanita Indian reservation in East County and attended Mountain Empire High School.  He served as a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service and as Assistant Fire Chief of the Campo Reservation Fire Department.    

According to California Indian Education, Elliott was the last fluent speaker of the Kumeyaay language at Manzanita.  He dedicated himself to preserving and teaching the Kumeyaay language to his people, advocating for continuance of the language, traditions, cultures and beliefs.   He led efforts to revive bird songs, traditions passed down through thousands of years of Kumeyaay history, preserving them for future generations.

Ambulance responses in our region raise alarms:  Part IV in a series

By Miriam Raftery

April 6, 2015 (San Diego’s East County)—San Diego County’s contract with its new ambulance provider for East County, Mercy,  requires that response times be less than 30 minutes 90% of the time in rural areas and 10 minutes in urban areas.  That’s too long if you’ve had a heart attack or other major trauma. 

When we inquired about response times, County staff advised us that in 2014, the County Fire Authority (ie Cal Fire) had a better response time than the requirement, averaging just over 10 minutes, while the former ambulance provider, AMR, average about 14 minutes. (Read more)

East County News Service

April 8, 2015 (San Diego)—Federal income taxes are due on April 15^th. But millions of taxpayers trying to get questions answered from the Internal Revenue Service are finding frustration instead.

Bomber was "radicalized"watching videos by a San Diego imam

By Miriam Raftery

April 8, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) --A jury has found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts related to the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. Tsarnev could face the death penalty for the crimes, which killed three and wounded 264 other victims, the Boston Globe reports.

East County News Service

April 4, 2015 (San Diego) – Super-skinny models will no longer be strutting the fashion runways in Paris. On Friday, France, a leader in the fashion industry, passed a new law that bans anorexic models. The measure also imposes fines and prison time for fashion houses or agents who employ underweight models.

By Miriam Raftery

April 3, 2015 (El Cajon) – In response to reports of multiple sexual harassment  and sexual misconduct claims against the El Cajon Police department through the years, we asked City Manager Doug Williford how many women are on the police force, including management. We also asked what policies have been put in place that aim to prevent sexual harassment.

Williford sent our request to Jim Lynch, director of human resources for the City of El Cajon. Lynch provided this response:

East County News Service

Photo courtesy ECM news partner 10 News

April 3, 2015 (Spring Valley) – A fire in Spring Valley destroyed two homes early Friday morning, displacing 10 residents.