Thesky-high cost of livingin San Diego has forced some local workers to rent home across the border in dirt-cheap Tijuana while commuting between the two cities.
Amy McEfee, who’s employed as a warehouse stock clerk in San Diego, used to pay $1,200 a month for a room in a house with four roommates in the Southern California city.
Now, she pays just $400 for a one-bedroom apartment in the Mexican border town — commuting each day back into the US for work.
The 40-something stock clerk says the transition has made her less anxious.
The 40-something clerk said the transition has made her less anxious.
“When I was living in San Diego, it was a constant,” she said. “I was always worried about my car breaking down. I was worried about having gas to get to work.”
Vered Familiar, who works as a shipyard safety technician in San Diego, used to fork over $2,100 for a one-bedroom apartment in the city.
Vered Familiar, who works as a shipyard safety technician in San Diego, used to fork over $2,100 for a one-bedroom apartment in the city.
Now, she pays just $550 for a five-bedroom spread in Tijuana.
“I was trying not to get in debt,” said Familiar, 27, who grew up in Tijuana and moved back this year. “I was trying to live in the bare minimum and I couldn’t do it.”
Now, she pays just $550 for a five-bedroom spread in Tijuana.
Zachary Gabriel, a manufacturing technician, said he starts his commute at 2 a.m. each workday so he can avoid the long lines at the border to make it to work in San Diego by 6 a.m.
He said he had no choice but to make the move to Tijuana.
“This is survival for me. I am the sole provider for my wife and my children at a minimum,” the 35-year-old said. “I have nobody to lean back on.”
Despite low rents in Tijuana, the surrounding state of Baja California is under a level 3 travel advisory from the State Department.
The median rent in San Diego is $3,100 per month, with prices topping out at $7,500 in tony enclaves like Jolla. It ranked as the ninth-most expensive city in the country last year.
Meanwhile, Californians in general pay top dollar to live in the Golden State — making it the most expensive for cost of living in the US, according to US News & World Report.
Despite low rents in Tijuana, the surrounding state of Baja California is under a level 3 travel advisory from the State Department, which advises travelers to reconsider traveling there due to threats “terrorism, crime, and kidnapping.”
Tijuana itself is known for having one of the highest murder rates in the world, recording 1,807 homicides in 2024. San Diego recorded just 71 homicides the same year.
The deaths or disappearances of 11 top US scientists and researchers is a matter of urgent national importance, a member of the House Oversight Committee insisted Friday.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said his office had already been eyeing some of the “too coincidental” disappearances a year before President Trump told reporters Thursday that he had ordered an investigation.
The lawmaker argued the fate of the scientists is almost “certainly” linked to the access some had to classified aerospace, defense and UFO information — and may involve bad actors from China, Russia or Iran.
Amy Eskridge died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her Alabama home in 2022.Facebook / Amy Eskridge
“This is a rallying call to pay attention to this issue and make sure that our nation’s top scientists are safe and secure,” Burlison told “Fox & Friends.”
“This is too coincidental, and so we have to be investigating this. We need to have our nation’s top investigators, the FBI and every agency looking into this matter.”
Some of the scientists, Burlison noted, “literally just disappeared” without a trace — including Air Force Maj. Gen. William “Neil” McCasland, who vanished in February after Burlison said he tried to contact him twice about his research into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) — government-speak for UFOs.
Investigators claimed McCasland had experienced “mental fog” before disappearing from his home in Albuquerque, NM.
The retired general had worked in top positions pertaining to space research and acquisition, with his name even appearing in the WikiLeaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, with former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge claiming to have conversed with him about UAPs.
In many cases, the congressman continued, these scientists “felt some form of threat” and “left all of their devices at home” before they dropped out of sight.
“This is not normal,” Burlison said on Fox. “These are some of the most advanced scientists, researchers in our nation, some of the most important people for national security efforts. And they all just mysteriously disappeared.”
Eskridge reportedly may be linked to other US scientists who have vanished or died in recent years.Facebook / Amy Eskridge
Burlison’s call for “bipartisan support” for a federal probe into the concerning cases comes after another scientist’s mysterious death came under scrutiny Thursday, NewsNation reported.
Amy Eskridge, 34, who was involved in extensive research into anti-gravity technology, UFOs and extraterrestrial life, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at her home in Huntsville, Ala. in 2022, according to the Daily Mail.
Her death was ruled a suicide and no public information was released.
Before her death, Eskridge had launched a research company, “The Institute for Exotic Science” in order to create a “public-facing persona to disclose anti-gravity technology.”
A group of scientists have either mysteriously died or gone missing in the past three years.
She chillingly said that she had started the company because “if you stick your neck out in private… they will bury you, they will burn down your house while you’re sleeping in your bed and it won’t even make the news.”
Eskridge revealed in a 2020 interview that she had plans to disclose information about UFOs and extraterrestrials to the public — and was receiving threats as a result.
“I need to disclose soon, man. I need to publish soon because it’s like escalating. It’s getting more and more aggressive,” she said.
“This has been going on for like four or five years, and over the past 12 months, it’s been escalating, like more aggressive, more invasive digging through my underwear drawer and sexual threats.”
Retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, has been missing since February.Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office
Eskridge partnered with retired British intelligence officer Franc Milburn to investigate the alleged harassment, according to the Daily Mail.
Milburn, who submitted his findings to Congress in 2023, concluded that Eskridge did not kill herself and at one point was attacked by a “directed energy weapon” that burned her body with microwaves.
The other missing or dead scientists include:
Melissa Casias, who had a security clearance at Los Alamos National Laboratory and vanished last June
Anthony Chavez, a retired Los Alamos National Laboratory worker who went missing last May
Jason Thomas, who led Novartis’ chemical biology team and was found dead this past March
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Frank Maiwald who died in 2024
While widespread theories about the researchers and their fate have spread online, officials have not identified any connection between those deaths and disappearances.
Trumpannounced Thursdaythat his administration would provide the public with answers in the next few days.
“The White House is actively working with all relevant agencies and the FBI to holistically review all of the cases together and identify any potential commonalities that may exist,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X Friday.
“No stone will be unturned in this effort, and the White House will provide updates when we have them.”
A National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) spokesperson told the Post it “is aware of reports related to employees of our labs, plants, and sites and is looking into the matter.”
After a recentstreak of buyoutsby some of Big Pharma's serial acquirers, Belgium's UCB is getting in on the action with a Friday acquisition potentially worth more than $1 billion.
Building on its established foothold in epilepsy, UCB has agreed to purchase cell therapy biotech Neurona Therapeutics and its lead candidate NRTX-1001.
The drug, a neuronal cell therapy, is currently being tested in phase I/II clinical trials for drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), UCB said in the April 17 release announcing the deal.
To acquire Neurona, UCB is parting ways with $650 million in cash and pledging up to $500 million in potential future milestones. The companies expect the deal to close by the end of this quarter.
The agreement fulfills several ambitions for UCB. Besides bolstering the company's decades-long position in epilepsy, the Neurona acquisition "marks a strategic expansion into regenerative medicine and advanced therapies," the company said in the release, and also shows its "commitment to inorganic growth."
As for NRTX-1001, the pluripotent stem cell treatment is given as a single dose into the brain and is designed to introduce cells that produce gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This approach is intended to "repair and rebalance the overactive neural networks" in patients with mTLE, potentially reducing seizures, according to UCB.
"We believe this therapy has the potential to provide durable targeted repair of the nervous system following a single dose and could represent a major step forward for people living with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy," UCB's chief executive, Jean-Christophe Tellier, said in a statement.
The acquisition draws some similarities to UCB's agreement in 2022 to purchase epilepsy drugmaker Zogenix for up to $1.9 billion, getting its hands on blockbuster hopeful Fintepla in the process. Last year, that drug generated 427 million euros in sales, and it's nearing a potential label expansion into a third epileptic disorder after a positive trial readout.
Biopharma has seen a surge in M&A activity as of late. The second half of March alone logged roughly $30 billion in deal activity, and the action has flowed into April with recent acquisitions from Neurocrine and Eli Lilly.
