Of late, San Diego is having rotten luck with pro football.

Not even two years since the NFL team’s relocation from Mission Valley was complete, the new San Diego Fleet got grounded Tuesday when the Alliance of American Football suspended league operations.

The Fleet led the eight-team league in merchandise sales and was third in attendance.

But the trend continued of American football leagues imploding or withering, not long after their launch.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/story/2019-04-02/san-diego-fleet-allliance-american-football-folding-nfl-nflpa

With President Donald Trump visiting Calexico on Friday, both sides of the border brace for a possible shutdown.

The new performing arts center, also known as The Conrad, caps an ambitious and unprecedented effort to build a permanent home for the La Jolla Music Society and, in the process, reinvent the 51-year-old arts organization

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/story/2019-03-31/la-jolla-music-societys-conrad-prebys-performing-arts-center-opens-with-a-splash-and-an-82-million-price-tag

Alongside auto wrecking yards and shipping centers off state Route 905, a pop-up world has emerged with some of the strangest creatures to swim in six inches of water.

Here aquatic plants grow next to cacti, and animals that have waited for decades in the dust come to life. In this Otay Mesa preserve are some of San Diego’s vernal pools, fleeting water bodies that appear and vanish over the course of a season.

They don’t fill up every year; just in wet ones, when San Diego’s ubiquitous hard-pan soil turns shallow depressions into temporary holding ponds. This season, rainfall is 36 percent above average, and the Otay Mesa site is a water world of ephemeral pools.

With them come a host of rare and endangered species: San Diego and Riverside fairy shrimp, spadefoot toads, and numerous plants that occur only in or near San Diego. Pacific tree frogs, small crustaceans, dragonfly larvae and beetles also dwell in these miniature ecosystems.

For most of the past decade, officials in San Diego have witnessed a remarkable development — the steady decrease in crime in the city, down to levels as low as they have been in more than a generation.

The city consistently logs the lowest murder and crime numbers among all large cities in the country. And in 2017, San Diego reached another milestone: It had the lowest violent crime rate among the country’s 10 largest cities, making it by one measure the safest big city in the country.

From San Ysidro to Pacific Beach and north to Rancho Bernardo, it is clear that violent crime is down overall in San Diego.

But not everywhere.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/story/2019-03-28/crime-counts-as-crime-falls-to-record-lows-some-neighborhoods-are-left-behind

Embattled El Cajon City Councilman Ben Kalasho has resigned.

Kalasho has been plagued by a litany of legal problems, from constituents suing him in federal court for blocking them posting comments on Kalasho’s official Facebook page in violation of free speech, to his fellow City Council members suing him for using city resources as part of his re-election campaign in violation of state law.

In a March 25 letter to City Manager Graham Mitchell, Kalasho said he was resigning immediately.

“Although my time on the council has been educational, I felt I was constantly battling my colleagues on agenda items and the general direction that my colleagues wanted for the city,” Kalasho wrote.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/story/2019-03-26/el-cajon-city-councilman-ben-kalasho-resigns

Deep in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, there is no wall.

The only boundary between the U.S. and Mexico is a section of barbed wire fence in a pastoral valley. And miles and miles of treacherous terrain.

It’s a territory criss-crossed with steep trails that disappear into tunnels of thick brush, a place looped by violently rutted roads that Border Patrol agents negotiate daily.

Land such as this is not a likely candidate for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall.”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/sd-me-virtual-wall-201903-story.html

It’s the end of an era at the San Diego Zoo as the last two giant pandas will soon leave for China.

In an announcement Monday, zoo officials said the pandas, Bai Yun, 28 — a fixture at the zoo for 23 years — and her son, Xiao Liwu, 6, must leave San Diego because a multi-year agreement with the Chinese to keep them here has ended. Zoo officials say sending the pandas back was always planned for April and was not prompted by any sudden request from the Chinese government.

The iconic black and white bamboo eaters have had a consistent presence at the zoo since 1996. The last day pandas can be viewed by the public is expected to be April 27.

With their impending departure, it is unknown if or when new pandas might inhabit the zoo again. Zoo officials are unable to say whether the wait is a matter of months or years.

“We have high hopes for pandas returning but I don’t know that we have any set date when they might return,” said Shawn Dixon, chief operating officer for the San Diego Zoo.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/tourism/sd-sdi-fi-zoo-pandas-20190325-story.html

The San Diego-Coronado Bridge, the 200-foot-tall span over the San Diego Bay, has spectacular views and a sad history. Since it opened 50 years ago, the bridge has been the site of more than 400 suicides.

To prevent such tragedies, 4-inch metal bird spikes were installed were installed on the outside walls. 24 hours after the installation, three people took their lives there.

These recent tragedies underscore the need to reconsider whether this beautiful bridge, a local landmark, can be prevented from becoming a beacon to the self-destructive.

When allegations of a massive college admissions corruption scandal broke wide open last week, richly detailed court documents conspicuously left out one important detail: the identity of the unnamed coach at the University of San Diego accused of accepting bribes.

Speculation ended Wednesday with the identification of Lamont Smith, the head coach of the Toreros men’s basketball team for nearly three seasons from 2015 to 2018.

The news helps complete one more piece of an elaborate puzzle in a case that spans elite schools across the country and a network of wealthy families, athletic departments and the college admissions industry, although many questions remain.

www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sd-sp-usd-college-bribes-lamont-smith-basketball-coach-20190320-story.html

In other news: www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sd-me-beiser-board-resign-20190320-story.html