New mayor still unknown as ballot counts continue

Almost two weeks after Election Day, the winner of the San Diego mayoral race remains unknown, with 50,000 ballots remaining to be counted and legal challenges standing in the way of final election results.

In a closely split three-way race, ballots backing a write-in candidate have maintained a tiny lead — less than half of 1 percent, or fewer than 2,000 votes, as of noon on Nov. 14 — over current Mayor Dick Murphy, a Republican candidate seeking re-election.

Most of the write-in ballots are expected to back San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye, who announced her candidacy in what was supposed to be a runoff election between Murphy and Republican challenger county Supervisor Ron Roberts.

Though all precincts have been counted, there are still 50,000 more absentee and provisional ballots remaining to be counted, according to the office of the San Diego Registrar of Voters.

In addition, several lawsuits have challenged Frye’s candidacy, pointing to discrepancies in the San Diego city charter and the municipal code. Though one permits write-in candidates in general elections, the other does not.

The lawsuits, filed by third-party challengers, are “desperate tactics to thwart the will of the voters of San Diego,” Frye stated in a campaign release, calling on Murphy and Roberts to “denounce this last-minute effort to derail the will of the voters and speak up for democracy.”

Water board approves power plant permit

After nearly three years of conflict, environmental groups and Duke Energy’s South Bay Power Plant have reached a compromise on a new permit for the operation.

Earlier in November, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a renewed permit for the facility — the original, issued in 1996, expired in 2001.

The new permit represents a “dramatic improvement,” according to Gabriel Solmer, staff attorney for the environmental group San Diego Bay Keeper. It sets more stringent discharge limits for certain particulates, provides more effective regulation of thermal discharges and addresses strategies to reduce the impact on local fish populations, Solmer said.

The plant, which has operated in the area for more than 40 years, predates many modern environmental regulations and has been criticized by a coalition of environmental groups, including Bay Keeper, Sierra Club and the Audubon Society. Specifically, the groups targeted the facility’s aged cooling system, which they argued effectively sterilized up to 601 million gallons of bay water each day, killing wildlife.

Sony, Ford to hold Talent Drive on college campuses

Sony Pictures Digital and the Ford Motor Company will search for college students with the best delivery of famous movie and television lines on Nov. 15 on Library Walk. The event is part of a 16-city college tour known as the “Talent Drive.”

Winners from each college campus will be flown to Los Angeles for a tour of Sony Pictures Studio, a red-carpet Hollywood premiere and an appearance in the Ford Focus “Talent Drive” short film, which will be posted on the tour’s Web site.

Video game company donates to campus Game Lab

Sammy Studios, a Carlsbad-based video game company, has donated $290,000 to UCSD’s Experimental Game Lab at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts.

The lab, created to explore new forms of art and expand capacity of technologies in the fields of computer gaming and scientific visualization, “brings a dedicated video game curriculum to a nationally ranked digital media arts program,” Sammy Studios President and CEO John Rowe said.

In addition, Sammy Studios will give the lab free use of its game engine, which incorporates graphics, physics and online technologies that are among the most widely used in the industry, according to a university statement. The engine will be incorporated into new artistic programs involving graduate and undergraduate students from the university’s Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts program, the fastest growing major on campus.

Faculty to meet UK Parliament at conference

University of California faculty, staff, alumni and students will meet with members of the British Parliament at an event designed to discuss the nature and importance of relationships between research institutions in the two countries. The event, scheduled for Nov. 18, will be held at the House of Commons in London.

The dialogue will set the stage for collaborative research, according to UC Berkeley professor James Vernon, who directs the university’s Center for British Studies.

By the end of the year, more than 3,500 UC students will have attended UK institutions and more than 2,000 British students will have studied at the UC campuses in the last decade, according to a university statement.