Menu SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A conservative group sent a letter to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors claiming the county’s sanctuary jurisdiction violates federal law. The nonprofit America First Legal penned the letter to Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Nora Vargas about the protections the county offers immigrants. America First Legal specifically pointed to the resolution the board passed earlier in December, which tries to override the exception in state law that allows local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE when an undocumented in its custody was convicted of a higher level misdemeanor or felony.
Supervisor Vargas sent the following statement to ABC 10News Friday evening: “San Diego County has always been a place where communities are valued, not divided. As County Chairwoman, I have made it a priority to lead a local government that promotes unity, equity, and justice for all while upholding the law. The newly adopted Board policy, developed with careful legal review to ensure full compliance with federal law, reflects these values. We will not allow local resources to be used for actions that separate families, harm community trust, or divert critical resources from addressing our most pressing challenges. Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and our County will not be a tool for policies that hurt our residents.” ABC 10News has obtained a copy of the letter America First Legal sent to the county. The group sent a similar letter to areas it designated as “sanctuary jurisdictions” across the country, including Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago and many others. You can read it below: AFL Sanctuary City Letters … by Pat Mueller
The pandemic-era pilot shortage was great for pilot wages. Airlines used government subsidies to pay pilots to retire early and weren’t bringing in new ones. Those receiving payroll support program funds to stay connected to the airline were paid at some carriers (like American) to stay home rather than remain current. That’s all working itself out, but new contracts locked in higher rates of pay. This pilot admits that to earn over $527,000 flying a Boeing 737 he had to “fly more than average.” However it’s not that uncommon. Sun Country Airlines reported that one of their pilots earned $750,000. Under the FAA’s current flight and duty limitations (14 CFR Part 117) a pilot is limited to:
100 Hours in 672 Consecutive Hours (28 Days)
1,000 Hours in Any 365 Consecutive Calendar Days
Other limits also apply, depending on whether the crew is augmented and on the start time of the duty period. However, for a standard unaugmented (two-pilot) domestic operation, pilots generally cannot exceed 8 or 9 hours of scheduled flight time per duty period, based on the starting time of the duty day. Right now is a good time to be a pilot – but it may not last! Some airlines like JetBlue and Spirit have found themselves with too many pilots. Longer term the bigger risk is automation. Airbus is making great progress on single pilot operations. heir Autonomous Taxi, Take-off, and Landing (ATTOL) program demonstrated full cockpit automation with an Airbus A350. Their Dragonfly project aims to extend this under emergency conditions. Vertical takeoff and landing developers plan for operations without any pilots, in some cases from the start and for others as a longer-range plan. Pilot unions maintain there need to be at least two pilots in the cockpit. There’s still institutional ennui over the reduction in cockpit crew that brought us down from three and from four, and they can’t fully give up the idea that there should be more. At one time you might have a captain, first officer, flight engineer, navigator and radio operator on a flight, though cockpits were downsized to three by the early 1960s. Eastern Airlines flight engineers went on strike in response to new aircraft which no longer supported a need for their employment. These unions will fight against continued loss in jobs, and very few would push the button today to go from two to one human in the cockpit. But the technology will arrive that will make travel much safer replacing a human at least as co-pilot. And at that point pilot unions will be clearly lobbying against safety. It surely won’t be long. 13 Comments Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel – a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the “World’s Top Travel Experts” by Conde’ Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary » More articles by Gary Leff » Your use of language is somewhat curious. Why does the pilot in your story have to ‘admit’ to earning his salary? That makes it sounds like you think he is doing something wrong or needs to be embarrassed. Good for him earning what he’s earning. You could use the word ‘confirmed’ or something else that is not judgemental. Good. Hopefully it pops. These airlines need to be smaller, leaner and better run. No government subsidies ever. Karl John May, Spot on with your observation. I’ve read this column enough to realize the ~ wording ~ would be much different if the article had focused on Flight Attendants. Seems the author has a problem with, by far, the most important pulse(s) in the aircraft. I am strongly opposed to reducing from 2 to 1 pilot. Pilots have a great responsibility and pay,but consider this a pilot is only responsible for the duration of his or her flight than walks away….an aviation mechanic though who releases that same aircraft as airworthy every day has their name and whatever work he/she completes on that aircraft entered into the permanent record for that aircraft which stays with that aircraft until it’s retired….and can be held accountable at anytime for their work….another consideration is that when a mechanic airworthiness releases an aircraft that release and responsibility stays with that aircraft for multiple flights and days….he/she is responsible for many flights and many more lives than just one or two flights that a pilot may fly in a day….just something to consider next time you think of salaries and who has the greater responsibility… 30 June 1956: UA2 DC-7 LAX-MDW collided with TW2 L-1049 LAX-MKC about a mile west of Cape Solitude over the heart of the Grand Canyon While numerous other mid-air collisions took place at the dawn of the jet age, it was this incident which catalyzed the beltway to do away with the CAA and create the FAA which took over all US airspace in 1957. The first wave of technology improvements in airspace control took 20 years to complete, but that fundamental architecture is where we are today. In a software context we are at v1.7 but have never undergone a full complete re-architecture of the entire system. But horrific hull-loss of all souls on board continued to occur. Tenerife was the catalyst for a 2nd major revolution in commercial aviation: CRM At first this acronym stood for Cockpit Resource Management and it now stands for Crew Resource Management. It became a global standard with part-121 equivalent carriers worldwide by the early 90s and it is no coincidence that major hull-loss all-souls events have become very rare (knock on wood) since then. CRM fills the gap between what the 1957 architecture is able to do today, and the volume and complexity of the airspace and airfields in 2024. It may be possible to undertake a “warp” jump from 1957 to 2030 “Starlink” precise GPS+AGL vector real-time computed airspace utilization. But until such time that that is 100% real, tested and burned-in, removing humans from the cockpit is simply not reality. Software may be able to operate 100% of an airliner’s systems, but the airspace control system is analog 1957. Until that changes, I will not fly without humans up front. Admit is a curious choice of word Several of my pilot buddies from my USAF days now fly for DL. And let me preface the following by saying I fully realize the following numbers sound ludicrous, that said I’ve had multiple DL pilot buds that have assured me they’re true. Here goes: there a few DET A350 captains that made over $1M in 2018, keep in mind this was SIX years ago.. Obviously this wasn’t the rank and file but rather guys that flew much more than the average A350 captain, i.e. they aggressively picked up open time etc. This article is written by an ignorant person obviously. No matter what and how much the technology advances, there will always be two souls in the cockpit at all times! At least in your lifetime… Useless, ignorant article! Pilot admits making $527K a year? Like he is doing something wrong! How much do you make? For many, the money you make from what you are doing is outrageously elevated. After all, you don’t need much skills to do what you are doing. I am sure, you cannot say the same thing about being a commercial airline pilot. Maybe being a pilot was your childhood dream that never came to fruition. Jealous, a little? And your daily union bashing is getting tiresome… Unless forming a union is banned by law (well, never say never. The upcoming administration may very well do so!), unions will exist and some will do good, some won’t…. “Safer”? You have no idea what you’re talking about, and you clearly don’t fly. Pilot makes $500K? No issue, sounds about right when 50 years ago neighbors who were pilots made $200K+. Stiff training requirements, lots of nights away from home in dinky hotels, just to be near airport for next day’s flight, pretty high level of responsibility for safety of passengers, including many flights myself. I want them focused on keeping my flight safe and smooth, not worried about being late on the mortgage. My objection is CEO & MBA’d executive staff making multiple $M’s, while stiffing hardworking stewards(esses) and mechanics. Well, FWIT. If you had ever been in the cockpit of any jet, you would realize that both Airbus, and especially Boeing make shit aircraft that will never be safe in a real emergency. Someone has to fly the plane and communicate while the colleague pulls breakers, troubleshoots, runs checklists, etc. Sure, an airliner will fly fine with one pilot on a beautiful day with a ‘perfectly’ designed aircraft. But when the orange sh*t hits the fan blade is when the pilot earns his pay. Check your penis envy at the Boarding Area. My signature has been on many logbooks over the years I was in the airline business. Ask any passenger who was on the miracle on the Hudson flight if they would rather have only 1 pilot. Or the survivors of United 232. FLY NAVY!!! Airplanes with people or valuable cargo on board are unlikely to go to one pilot for the same reason they’re unlikely to go to one engine, generator, or hydraulic system. And the 2nd pilot is much cheaper than the 2nd engine. Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked *
Here’s a link to our Advertiser Disclosure Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel — a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the “World’s Top Travel Experts” by Conde’ Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
One of Utah’s indigenous languages — Navajo — has faced a precipitous decline in recent decades. In 1980, 93% of Navajos spoke their native language. Thirty years later, that number had dipped to 51%. By 2030, the percentage of fluent speakers across the Navajo Nation could be as low as 10%. On a macro-level, any Navajo language loss marks a cultural and linguistic emergency. But the loss is also felt on individual levels. There remain members of the Navajo Nation who speak only their ancestral tongue — and, with each decade, there are fewer people inside their own community with whom they can communicate. It’s a crisis that Weber State University radiography student Kendra Ellison is witnessing firsthand. While completing clinical hours at the Northern Navajo Medical Center in Shiprock, New Mexico, Ellison watched when non-English-speaking elders from her tribe arrived at the medical center seeking essential care. Their faces often betrayed apprehension and fear, even during routine procedures such as X-rays and scans. Simple directions from nurses and technicians such as “Can you please lay flat?” or “Can you hold your breath?” often prompted confusion. “There was a lack of Navajo translators whenever we would try to find someone to explain, in specific terms, something like a fluoroscopy procedure,” said Ellison, an Army veteran and Navajo Nation member. “There was clearly a barrier that needed to be overcome.” And the need for Navajo language skills is just as vital outside of the clinics. Many elderly people live in remote corners of the vast Navajo Nation stretching across Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. During a medical emergency such as a heart attack or stroke, paramedics and EMTs are often the first to engage with patients. Again, medical-specific Navajo language resources can make a critical difference in delivering lifesaving care, said Ellison. Such language skills can also improve medical care across the region in disciplines such as physical therapy and home health care. When Ellison recently attended a gathering for aspiring indigenous female entrepreneurs called Project DreamCatcher, the Navajo elders and their language translation needs was still weighing heavy in her heart and mind. She soon learned that elderly medical patients from other tribes were facing challenges similar to what she was witnessing in Shiprock. Blending an impulse to serve her community with her newly acquired business start-up skills, Ellison decided to create an app or some other sort of electronic audio glossary language platform that would allow heath care workers without Navajo language skills to better communicate with their elderly non-English-speaking patients. Ellison’s ideas and determination to serve others were fueled by supportive Weber State professors who embraced her vision. “I shared what I was doing with my professors and they loved it,” she said. Founding a business takes time, sweat, innovation, validation … and then more time and sweat. Ellison’s plans to develop technology to better utilize medical care for Navajo elders is still, she said, “in the beginning phases.” It’s a daunting task. Given its unique grammar, syntax and tonal pronunciation, Navajo is a challenging language to learn and speak. It’s especially difficult to translate into English and other languages. Many are familiar with the story of the Navajo Code Talkers — a group of U.S. Marines who used their native Navajo language skills to transmit secret messages during World War II. The language’s complexities made it impossible for the enemy to decipher. But as a person of faith, Ellison is confident her efforts to help her people are being guided by divine power. She is determined to succeed. “(God) has put these different passions in me — and whenever it’s the right time to jump, I’m going to jump,” she said. Jace Norton is the founder of Maya Bridge, a Utah company that specializes in providing language interpretation services for rare Mayan languages. In recent years, Maya Bridge has expanded to provide translation services for other hard-to-find languages — including indigenous languages spoken in the United States. Norton recently learned of Ellison and her intention to deliver Navajo language interpretation resources to health care workers. “I called Kendra, we talked — and I could tell she had a good head on her shoulders and that we shared the same thinking about wanting to help and give back to others,” he told the Deseret News. Soon, a burgeoning business partnership was in place, with Ellison’s vision leading the project’s initiative. “We’re going to help Kendra start her own company that we will own a part of as well — and then we can work together to go after different funding opportunities,” said Norton. “We’re ecstatic to be working directly with Kendra,” he added, “to create something together that will help with this specific (health care) issue — and that can even grow and help with a lot of other different things.” For now, Ellison is a woman wearing many hats: student, health care professional, business founder. She plans to continue her education at Weber State by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computed tomography, even while developing her Navajo language project with Maya Bridge. Besides improving health care to her community’s grandmothers and grandfathers, Ellison appreciates the cross-generational power found in sharing and preserving her ancestral language. If Ellson and other young people from her tribe can protect and pass along their Navajo language skills, then, she asks, who knows what amazing things can come about?”
‘The pandemic clock is ticking,’ one scientist said. ‘We just don’t know what time it is.’ ‘The pandemic clock is ticking,’ one scientist said. ‘We just don’t know what time it is.’ ‘The pandemic clock is ticking,’ one scientist said. ‘We just don’t know what time it is.’ The U.S. hasn’t learned lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic that it could use to mitigate the threat of pathogens like H5N1 bird flu that keep showing signs of their own pandemic potential, health experts told CNN Friday. Related video above: First severe bird flu case in the US reported “We kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal-to-human standpoint,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, said on “CNN Newsroom” with Pamela Brown. Birx called for much wider-spread testing of farm workers who make up the majority of identified cases in the U.S., noting the country is heading into an even higher-risk period as seasonal flu begins to circulate. That raises the possibility a person could get infected with both seasonal flu and H5N1, and the viruses could swap gene segments, Birx said, giving the bird flu virus more tools to better infect humans, a phenomenon known as reassortment. A spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pushed back on Friday, telling CNN in a statement that the “comments about avian flu (H5N1) testing are out of date, misleading and inaccurate.” “Despite data indicating that asymptomatic infections are rare, CDC changed its recommendations back in November to widen the testing net to include testing asymptomatic people with high-risk exposure to avian flu, and during the summer, it instructed hospitals to continue subtyping flu viruses as part of the nationwide monitoring effort, instead of the normal ramping down of surveillance at the end of flu season,” the spokesperson said. “The result: more than 70,000 specimens have been tested, looking for novel flu viruses; more than 10,000 people exposed to avian flu have been monitored for symptoms, and 540 people have been tested specifically for H5N1,” the spokesperson continued. “Additionally, CDC partnerships with commercial labs mean that H5N1 tests are now available to doctor’s offices around the country, significantly increasing testing capacity.” The CDC added it has a seasonal flu vaccination campaign underway for farm workers in states with infected herds to help protect them from seasonal flu and to reduce the chance of reassortment with the H5N1 virus. The agency has also said there’s currently no human-to-human spread of H5N1. But risks continue to emerge that the virus could evolve to more easily infect people. The CDC reported Thursday that a genetic analysis of samples from the patient in Louisiana recently hospitalized with the country’s first severe case of H5N1 show the virus likely mutated in the patient to become potentially more transmissible to humans, but there’s no evidence the virus has been passed to anyone else. The patient was likely infected after having contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock, the CDC said earlier this month. In its Thursday analysis, the agency said the mutations it identified in samples taken during the patient’s hospitalization weren’t found in the birds, suggesting they aren’t in the virus widely circulating in wildlife. The mutations, similar to ones observed in a hospitalized patient in British Columbia, Canada, may make it easier for the virus to bind to cell receptors in humans’ upper respiratory tracts, the CDC said. “The changes observed were likely generated by replication of this virus in the patient with advanced disease rather than primarily transmitted at the time of infection,” the agency said. “Although concerning, and a reminder that A(H5N1) viruses can develop changes during the clinical course of a human infection, these changes would be more concerning if found in animal hosts or in early stages of infection … when these changes might be more likely to facilitate spread to close contacts.” The CDC emphasized the risk to the general public has not changed and remains low, but said the detection of the genetic mutations “underscores the importance of ongoing genomic surveillance in people and animals, containment of avian influenza A(H5) outbreaks in dairy cattle and poultry, and prevention measures among people with exposure to infected animals or environments.” The analysis found no changes associated with markers that might mean antiviral drugs wouldn’t work as well against the virus, the CDC added, and noted the samples are closely related to strains that could be used to make vaccines, if needed. The sequences also didn’t show changes in genes associated with adaptation to mammals, the CDC found. The patient was infected with a strain known as D1.1 that’s closely related to viruses circulating in wild birds and poultry in the U.S.; another strain known as B3.13 has been spreading widely in dairy cows and hasn’t been found to cause severe disease in humans in the U.S. “While this sounds like good news, the H5N1 situation remains grim,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, posted on Bluesky on Thursday. “There has been an explosion of human cases,” she said. “We don’t know what combination of mutations would lead to a pandemic H5N1 virus … but the more humans are infected, the more chances a pandemic virus will emerge.” The CDC has confirmed 65 cases of H5N1 bird flu in humans in 2024. Of those, 39 were associated with dairy herds and 23 with poultry farms and culling operations. For two cases, the source of exposure is unknown. The severe case in Louisiana is the only one associated with backyard flocks. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, noted the CDC said the mutations “may” enable the virus to bind better to cell receptors in humans’ upper respiratory tracts, not that they clearly do. “I’d like to see clear evidence … that it binds well,” Offit told CNN Friday. “That hasn’t happened yet.” “And more importantly,” Offit added, “there’s not the clinical relevance that you see human-to-human spread.” The spread among animals like cows, though, has some health experts on high alert. Since the virus was first found in cattle in March, outbreaks have been detected in herds in 16 states. This month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began a national milk testing program to track the spread of the virus through dairy cattle, and the agency has thus far brought on 13 states that account for almost half of the country’s dairy production. The program requires that raw milk samples be collected before the pasteurization process and shared with USDA for testing. Government agencies say pasteurization inactivates the virus, making pasteurized milk safe to drink. The Food and Drug Administration and other health agencies warn consumers not to drink raw milk, not just because of the risk of H5N1 but also E. coli, salmonella and listeria. That the H5N1 virus has already spread so rapidly among cattle, though, suggests “the USDA has basically dropped the ball, big-time,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, in an interview with CNN Friday. “I think it was out of fear to protect the industry. And they thought it was going to burn out, and it didn’t.” Osterholm also said the US and others around the world should have done more to examine lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, and to accelerate work improving flu vaccines. And, he noted, “You’ve got the new administration coming and saying they’re going to do in infectious diseases [research] for the next eight years,” referring to comments made by President Trump’s nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Osterholm said his risk assessment for H5N1 hasn’t changed as a result of the Louisiana findings this week, but that he’s always concerned about the threat pathogens like the bird flu virus pose. “The pandemic clock is ticking,” Osterholm said. “We just don’t know what time it is.” Hearst Television participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.
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