Here's todays sports news...

The Denver Biz Times is reporting that Denver-based MediaNews Group -- the owner of the Alameda Newspaper Group (which includes the Oakland Tribune) and the Contra Costa Times, will be reducing staff in its NoCal operations....

--One person is dead after a Caltrain hit a car in Palo Alto this afternoon. [CBS 5, Merc News.] --The Lauryn Hill show sucked. [The Chron, All Shook Down, the Inside Bay Area Buzz blog.] --What's Berkeley going to do after this Supreme Court ruling? [The Trib.] --Blogging from the iPhone line in Walnut Creek. [Contra Costa Times.] --A fight over a local grad student's blog post about racial and class divisions on MySpace and......

--Who owns the new East Bay Express? [the EBX's 92510] --Oh, now Newsom's all for foot patrols. [KCBS.] --The Bike Coalition and Ross Mirkarimi want lights at Fell and Masonic. [Examiner.] --Wanna pay someone to wait in line for you for an Apple iPhone? [Chron. More Chron iPhone madness here.] --Quit trying to recall people. [Beyond Chron.] --Sim art! (Picture a big green diamond over our head as our Fun bar zooms up.) [All......

And the Bay Area dominates your reality TV scene YET AGAIN!!! Danville's own Evan O'Dorney, sponsored by the proud-as-punch Contra Costa Times, wins this year's spelling bee on the word "serrefine," which is not a brand of drinking water but rather, is a small set of forceps used for clamping blood vessels. O'Dorney is home-schooled (but affiliated with a local charter school, and takes classes at various local community colleges), came in fifth in the......

--It's too darn hot. (SFist expresses no opinion about whether to pitch the woo with your baby tonight.) --Who's got the crappiest computer repair services in the area? CompUSA and Fry's. --SFist Elaine's column launches in Fog City Journal! [NSFW] --Inside the Google kitchen (where they only cook local). --Beth Spotswood admires Gavin Newsom's golf pants. --A Contra Costa Times reporter competing at the fried asparagus eating contest in Stockton. Here's the video. --and......

So what's going on with this whole newspaper lawsuit and injunction thingy we mentioned earlier? Well, sit right back, grab a beer, and listen up because this is super-exciting stuff. ...

You know what hasn't been done yet? Barry Bonds' contract. In fact, while everyone is saying it's a done deal, it's not quite done, meaning that the i's haven't been dotted and the t's haven't been crossed and Barry Lamar's John Henry has not yet been put on a piece of paper. ...

--Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, who voted to stop global warming, drives a gas-guzzler. --Houses selling at (gasp!) below asking. --Chris Daly quits blogging on his own site to blog on someone else's. --Playoff tickets for the A's went on sale. Let's hope they can close the deal soon! --Computerizing SF traffic. --Rob Black wants to know why Chris Daly put Newsom's budget request on hold. --Newsom has a MUNI plan, doo-dah, doo-dah. --Giant turtles!......

The Contra Costa Times is reporting today that Warriors assistant coach Mario Elie will be not be back for the 2006-2007 season. Though Elie's status has not been confirmed by either Elie or the Warriors, the writing is all over the disappoint-smeared toilet stall wall that is the Warriors recent history of personnel management.

Besides the homicide rate, Oakland residents' quality of life continues to be impaired by wasteful immigrants flocking to the shores of Lake Merritt - the Canada geese, also causing trouble in Richmond, as reported recently by the East Bay Express. The Lake Merritt geese population produces an estimated ton of fecal matter a day. The geese have also been sighted exhibiting aggressive pedestrian behavior not unlike that of Oakland's human residents, known for holding up......

This week, our 49ers finally got some production from running back Kevan Barlow. What we got was a fourth round draft pick in a trade with the New York Jets, and a bunch of grief out of Barlow's mouth as he left San Francisco for the East Coast. ...

SFist Sarah L. tells us the latest in the East Bay! First, the quick and dirty: the Oakland Tribune reports: one dead, two injured, 3 alarm fire at a 6 story residential hotel in downtown Oakland early Friday morning . In the Berkeley Daily Planet, a new book alleges Oakland Mayor and Attorney General candidate, Jerry Brown, took money from the mob back in his gubernatorial days. Jerry's opponent, Chuck Poochigian (we're waiting on the......

Tiiiiimber! Commuters blamelessly trying to get to the Golden Gate Bridge got stuck in a whole lotta mess this morning, as a lumber truck misjudged how fast it was going and spilled its load on that sharp turn up the northbound 101 9th Street and Mission/Van Ness exit. No one was hurt, but the entire highway was blocked, and cars parked below were damaged from the falling logs. Traffic on 101 backed up all the way to Monster Park, and the highway was reopened about four hours later. In other traffic news, this time in the East Bay, last night, the connecting ramp between 580 and 80 was closed for about two hours to deal with a fatal crash, where an SUV crashed into the center divider and caught on fire. And finally -- wanna buy a parking place? They're going for around $85,000-$125,000, which could buy you a two-bedroom house in Birmingham, Alabama. Invest now -- if Daly's 2-spaces for 3-units legislation survives a veto threat, they're going to only go up in value. (But make sure they're not located underneath the northbound 101 Mission/Van Ness Street exit -- tiiiiimber!) Picture by Karl Mondon, off sfgate from the Contra Costa Times...

First, a little politics. Nancy Pelosi calls for the declassification of her memo to the administration regarding secret surveillance of American citizens. Ann Harrison has an exhaustive first-person account on the recent medical marijuana dispensary raids. Executive Editor Chris Lopez softens the "Wiretap Scandal" headline at the Contra Costa Times. And Dan Gillmore is going non-profit and creating a Center for Citizen Journalism along with Cal Berkeley and Harvard, causing some to ask whither......

Who says stoners aren't productive and ambitious? At one point yesterday there were three posts in a row about the medical marihoonie: A jailed dispensary owner writes from a Fresno jail where three fellow advocates are also locked up, Charles "Eddy" Lepp stands trial this morning and faces four life sentences for growing cannibis and Mountain View looks to be the first town in Santa Clara county with a dispensary ordinance on the books.......

Chris Lopez over at the Contra Costa Times pointed out that NASA Astronaut Stephen Robinson is from nearby Moraga, and is currently on the Discovery waiting for the weather to clear so that they can land the ship. As a Mission Specialist, it was his job to make any repairs to the ship in space before attempting reentry. But he also has a side gig: Space DJ. That's right, Stephen was an early morning......

Every year it rules -- the Scripps Howard spelling bee. Is it that whiff of old world middle school mores? Is it the adorable freaked out word-geek kids, too young and frightened to disguise their feelings on stage? "Can I get a definition, please?" The rad ESPN "Under Pressure" ad? The snotty-voiced lady commentator? ("It's the schwa -- it gets you every time.") Naw. It's the bell! Today was the 78th Spelling Bee championship, broadcast live on ESPN, and dang it if we didn't watch the whole darn thing. Love it. Love it every year. Your obligatory Northern California angle? Aliya Deri, an 8th grade speller from Pleasanton who was sponsored by the Chron came in second (went out on "trouvaille" in the 19th round, like a champ). And the Contra Costa Times' sponsoree, home-schooled Evan O'Dorney from Danville, made it to the eighth round (going out on "athyriosis"). Our other favorite thing about the spelling bee? News articles laboriously attempting to use the championship word in the title. And yes, we love Spellbound too (which we saw first at the 2002 SF DocFest). Just for the marimba music alone! ...

Warren Beatty gave the commencement speech to the University of California class of 2005, wearing academic robes and going after Governor Schwarzenegger in what may be an opening salvo in Beatty's rumored campaign. Current front runners in the race for the Democratic nomination include State Treasurer Phil Angelides and fellow Hollywood millionaire Rob Reiner, after Attorney General Bill Lockyer threw in the towel. Schwarzenegger has seen his approval ratings drop to around 50% after......

No, not really. But seriously, some biblical type stuff seems to be happening in California. First, it was a load of shrimp -- that's right, shrimp -- that made landfall in a suburb of San Diego at the end of last month. SFist would like to think this has to be one of the tastier signs of the coming apocalypse (okay, really, it was probably a wind spout that picked them up from the......

We always thought there was something disingenuous about the conservative letters they published in the Chron! The Contra Costa Times discovered that an enterprising Republican named Kyle Vallone had written at least 200 fake letters to various Northern California newspapers, and gotten at least 20 or so published. Vallone would use fake names, various phone numbers, and free email accounts to write the pieces and then when the fact-checkers came, disguise his voice on the phone. "I'm very good at accents," he said, and noted he was particularly proud of the identity "Batswala Dala." Vallone specialized in conservative letters, noting that he'd gotten seven letters against Barbara Boxer published, but had also written on a range of topics, like recalling Gray Davis and boosting missile defense. Interestingly, Vallone had also been busted (under his own name) for plagiarizing a letter he'd gotten published from the WSJ. Read the article, it's pretty entertaining! This reminds us of that smart kid summer camp class that got 20-some letters published in the New York Times (only without the smart kids). And who can forget the Bay Area's original fake letter-writing crank, Lazlo Toth? (a.k.a. Don Novello/Father Guido Sarducci). And Wonkette on Vallone. ...

We’ve often thought of Craiglist as being many things- place to buy furniture, place to look for apartments, and a place to try and find casual sex, but there’s one thing we never considered it to be- killer of newspapers. According to a report by consulting agency Classified Agency, Craigslist is taking away at least $50 to $65 million dollars in job ad losses alone from Bay Area newspapers. That’s a lot of money and......