By Arturo Castañares
Editor-at-Large
The process to fill a vacancy on a local City Council has revealed an interconnected web of financial relationships between powerful political figures involved in steering the selection process.
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<p>The husband of a woman missing for more than two years was ordered this week to stand trial for her murder even though there is no trace of her body.</p>
<p>Larry Millete, whose wife, May "Maya" Millete disappeared during the night of January 7, 2021, had been arrested and charged with her murder that prosecutors allege happened because she was seeking a divorce from him.</p>
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<p>A locally based private airplane with three people on board made an emergency landing on a Carlsbad beach early Thursday morning.</p>
<p>The airplane, a single-engine Piper-PA28R-200 Arrow registered to Christopher J. Sluka of San Diego, departed Montgomery Field Airport at 7:31 am and landed on the beach at approximately 7:44 am. All three people on the airplane survived with no major injuries.</p>
<p>It is not clear if the owner was the pilot at the time.</p>
<h6>Pictured: Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, SD Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, County Supervisor Chair Nora Vargas, SANDAG CEO Hasan Ikhrata</h6>
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<p><span><span><span>After a New York Republican congressional candidate won his campaign based on lies and exaggerations about his background, national news outlets began examining how the candidate’s opponent and local media failed to alert voters before the election, even though one local conservative newspaper did cover him and reluctantly endorsed his Democratic opponent, but the coverage was ignored by larger media outlets.</span></span></span></p>
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<p>The three-term elected City Attorney of Chula Vista is seeking to become the new appointed City Attorney in the Bay Area city of Santa Clara.</p>
<p>Glen Googins, 59, who has served as Chula Vista’s first elected City Attorney since 2010, was at the end of his third term last year and expected he would leave office last month, but he has remained in office because of the unusual situation of the election of his successor.</p>
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<p>The Biden Administration has been stopped by the US Supreme Court from ending a three-year-old policy to quickly deport undocumented immigrants as an emergency measure related to the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>The Trump-era policy, referred to generically as Title 42, was put in place by then-Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as a way to limit immigration during the pandemic. Since then, over 2.5 million people have been deported under the guidelines allowed under Title 42.</p>
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<p><span><span><span>The November election delivered two surprising results in Chula Vista: a candidate who died two months before the election still won the City Attorney's race, and the biggest spender in the City’s history lost his campaign for Mayor despite having major endorsements and multiple times the resources than his opponent.</span></span></span></p>
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<p><span><span><span>Tijuana prosecutors won convictions against two cartel hitmen who committed and videotaped the murder of a local photojournalist earlier this year.</span></span></span></p>