Orange County-based Freedom Communications, publisher of the Orange County Register plus 32 other dailies and 77 weeklies, will file for bankruptcy this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. A spokesman for the company said it is "continuing to work with lenders to resolve balance sheet issues." The company was ...

Heywood Sanders, professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the ranking national authority on convention centers, has read the draft report by the mayor's task force purportedly studying convention center expansion, and concludes is it full of dubious statements based on distorted statistics. He says that the ...

In today's Voice of San Diego, Steve Johnson, flack for the convention center, calls Heywood Sanders, professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, "a whack job." In my blog item yesterday (Aug. 28), and in today's (Aug. 29) Voice, Sanders is quoted saying that the draft of the ...

Heywood Sanders, professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio, and generally considered the ranking expert on convention centers, says he has been "misrepresented" in the San Diego Convention Center Task Force's annual report that has just been issued. Sanders has consistently stated that convention centers are vastly overbuilt and draining ...

Mark Bishop of Rancho Santa Fe has stepped down from the board of Koenigsegg Group AB, a tiny upscale Swedish automaker that plans to buy Saab from General Motors, according to the Associated Press. It has been rumored for two weeks that Bishop would be out. He was to have ...

The leading indicators of the San Diego economy published by University of San Diego economist Alan Gin, rose slightly in July from June -- to 101.7 from 101.6. The indicators have now risen for five consecutive months, but the gain has not been impressive. The number was 100.7 in March. ...

Diann Shipione, the whistle blower who exposed San Diego's pension fraud, yesterday warned the Governmental Accounting Standards Board that, "As a result of [accounting] fuzziness and imprecision, we now have many large systems that are essentially insolvent." Her testimony was reported in this morning's (Aug. 27) New York Times. "I ...

A new study of shopping coupons by Scarborough Research finds that Sunday newspapers are still the dominant distributors with 51% of the market, followed by in-store coupons at 35% and mailed coupons at 31%. Coming on fast are virtual coupons in the form of text messages and emails, according to ...

Borrego Ranch Resort & Spa of Borrego Springs, formerly called La Casa del Zorro Desert Resort and owned by Copley Press, is back on the market again, and draining funds. Copley, which had owned it since 1960, put it on the market in December of 2007, and it was bought ...

San Diego home prices rose 1.6% from May to June, according to Case-Shiller home price indices published this morning (Aug. 25) by Standard & Poor's. The May/June increase was four times the 0.4% rise of April/May. Local prices, however, are still down 16% from a year ago and down 41.6% ...

Charlotte Russe, the San Diego-based young women's clothing retailer, has agreed to be purchased at a premium of 27% over Friday's closing price. An affiliate of Advent International private equity firm will pay $17.50 a share, or about $380 million in cash with rights to buy preferred shares. The tender ...

Richard LaChina (also spelled La China and Lachina), called "a serial Ponzi schemer and career impostor" in a civil suit filed in late 2007, on July 30 filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy. The civil suit filed by irate investors is now on hold according to Scott Dreher, one of ...

The San Diego County unemployment rate rose to 10.3% in July from a revised 10.2% in June. That's up from last year's 6.3% and above the 9.7% national rate, but below California's 12.1% rate, according to the state Employment Development Department. There are head-scratching anomalies in the data. For example, ...

The Public Utilities Commission today (Aug. 20) issued a temporary restraining order enjoining San Diego Gas & Electric from implementing its emergency power shut-off plan for the backcountry until the commission issues its decision on the contrroversial question Sept. 10. There has been concern that the utility, a division of ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission today (Aug. 20) obtained a federal court order halting an alleged securities fraud orchestrated by Mohit A. Khanna of San Diego. Khanna claims to have raised $70 million from 300 investors through MAK 1 Enterprises Group, LLC. Investors were told that their money would go ...

In 2004, the Central Intelligence Agency hired outside contractors from the private mercenary firm Blackwater to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, the New York Times reveals in a story dated this evening (Aug. 19). The Times's sources are current and former U.S. government officials. The CIA spent ...

Elizabeth Ramos and her husband Louis Williams of Chula Vista today (Aug. 19) pleaded guilty in federal court to paying between $200,000 and $400,000 in cash to an official of the San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) so their company, Technical Logistics Corp., could get government contracts. ...

Beginning tomorrow, San Diego water and sewer rate payers will be getting statements in their bills from Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN). The inserts will be put in with bills three times a year for five years, according to Michael Shames, head of UCAN. The initial inserts will be pitches ...

The day after the axe fell at the U-T last Wednesday, the new management had meetings with employees. Among many things, the management said it will continue to print the paper at the Mission Valley headquarters. There had been speculation that it would try to sell the building at some ...

As expected, the Union-Tribune dropped some employees today (Wednesday). Supposedly, 20 people lost their jobs on the editorial side of the beleaguered paper. The company refused to discuss specific layoffs. According to internal sources, here are some who were severed today: Bob Kittle, editorial page editor, a darling and tool ...