S&P Gives County's Investment Pool Highest Rating

1. San Diego County's investment pool, which manages funds for nearly 100 agencies in the region, received the highest credit ratings from Standard & Poor's for the 11th consecutive year, Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister announced Wednesday. The credit rating by S&P was AAAf, with a volatility rating of S1, McAllister said. The S1 rating means the pool has a low sensitivity to changing market conditions.

2. A man who fell to his death from a multi-story parking structure in front of horrified attendees at a social justice rally at Civic Center Plaza was awaiting trial for a traffic accident that killed a Caltrans worker at a road-work site near El Centro, a prosecutor said Wednesday. Kyle Wyborn Pearson, 42, plunged off the eighth floor of the building about 3:15 p.m. Monday, said Jeffrey Brooker of the Imperial County District Attorney's Office. Pearson, a San Diego resident, died on the walkway where he landed, near Downtown Johnny Brown's restaurant.

3. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies announced Wednesday that a $4.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund its new Neuroscience Core Center, in which researchers will lay the foundation for new ways to treat congenital brain defects and neurological diseases.
Dennis O'Leary, a professor of molecular neurobiology at Salk who will serve as
director of the center, said it "will provide unique services of great use to many of the institute's investigators, and will help expand our understanding of a range of neurological disorders"