• San Rafael police solved the 60-year-old unsolved murder of Marjorie Rudolph, the wife of a prominent banker, using advanced DNA analysis. Police believe cigarette butts collected at the crime scene belonged to the now-deceased Laurel James Switzer who was originally considered a suspect, but evidence was inconclusive at the time. [KPIX]
• The three leading candidates running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, including San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, State Senator Scott Wiener, and former congressional aide Saikat Chakrabarti, are scheduled to debate Tuesday night at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in Hayes Valley. [KQED]
• Authorities found severely decomposed human remains in the pickup truck of 40-year-old Aldama Refugio Jr. of San Jose, who was reported missing earlier this year. [Chronicle]

National:

• American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad, and authorities arrested one suspect but are still trying to locate Kittleson and the other suspects. [Associated Press]
• A federal lawsuit was thrown out of court Tuesday claiming that sanctuary laws passed by Colorado and the city of Denver interfere with immigration enforcement. [Associated Press]
• The US Army called off its investigation surrounding the pilots of two Army helicopters that hovered near Kid Rock’s home Saturday, which the musician confusingly used as a way to stir things up with California Governor Gavin Newsom on social media. [CNN]

Video of the Day:

A group of outspoken Oakland seniors took to the streets and joined the “No Kings” protest Saturday.

Image: Leanne Maxwell

Sami Hamdi, a British Muslim journalist and political commentator currently visiting the US on a speaking tour for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was detained by immigration authorities at San Francisco International Airport Sunday morning.

As KRON4 reports, Hamdi spoke at the annual gala for the Sacramento chapter of CAIR Saturday and was on his way to speak at the CAIR Florida gala Sunday when he was detained at SFO and his visa revoked, according to Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin on X.

CAIR confirmed the arrest in a post on X, stating it was “in response to [Hamdi’s] vocal criticism of the Israeli government.” The post also states that Hamdi is still in custody and has not yet been deported, adding that CAIR’s attorneys and partners are working to free him.  

As the Chronicle reports, far-right activist and “proud Islamophobe,” Laura Loomer, boasted about having Hamdi detained “over his documented support for Islamic terrorism” and “demanded that federal authorities inside the Trump administration treat Hamdi as the major National security threat that he is.”

In a statement, the Washington DC chapter of CAIR called the arrest an injustice, demanding Hamdi’s immediate release. “Abducting a prominent British Muslim journalist and political commentator on a speaking tour in the United States because he dared to criticize the Israeli government’s genocide is a blatant affront to free speech,” said the statement. “Our attorneys and partners are working to address this injustice. We call on ICE to immediately account for and release Mr. Hamdi, whose only ‘crime’ is criticizing a foreign government that committed genocide.”

“Our nation must stop abducting critics of the Israeli government at the behest of unhinged Israel First bigots. This is an Israel First policy, not an America First policy, and it must end,” the statement concluded.

Per KRON4, Hamdi is the editor-in-chief at current affairs magazine, The International Interest, which focuses on the politics of the Middle East, Far East Asia, and the United Kingdom.

Image: Sami Hamdi/X

During a recent talk in Walnut Creek, acclaimed journalist Lisa Ling revisited the 2009 capture of her sister Laura and fellow journalist Euna Lee in North Korea while working for SF-based Current TV. Ling says North Korea planned it from the start.

As Contra Costa Youth Journalism reports, Ling — who grew up in nearby Carmichael — shared new insight during a recent speaking engagement at Lesher Center for the Arts’ Hofmann Theatre in Walnut Creek into what she described as a political trap set by the North Korean regime. Ling, who emphasized that her sister’s team never intended to cross the border, said they were misled by a fixer working secretly with the North Korean government.

As SFist reported at the time, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporting on the plight of refugees along the China–North Korea border for Current TV, which was based in San Francisco and co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, were detained by North Korean soldiers and held for five months.

According to Ling, her sister’s team had hired a fixer to guide them to the frozen Tumen River — a known escape route for North Korean defectors, but the fixer was secretly working with the North Korean government to lure high-profile targets across the border. “So we now know that the fixer Laura’s team had hired was receiving money from the North Korean government to bring high-value targets into North Korea,” she said. “And because Laura’s team was working for former Vice President Al Gore’s company, you couldn’t get a bigger target, right?”

Ling said the team was filming near the river when the guide quietly led them across the border and whistled. When soldiers began rushing toward them, they ran back into China. “They ran all the way back into China and were safely ensconced on Chinese soil,” Ling said. “[But] North Korean soldiers violently grabbed them and dragged them back into North Korea.”

She added that the regime used their detention to orchestrate a photo-op with former President Bill Clinton, implying the entire operation had been engineered to secure political leverage on the global stage.

“Now, many people often ask, ‘Why did it have to be President Clinton of  all people’? The answer came down to one simple reason,” Ling said.  “The reclusive leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il at the time, had always just wanted to meet him.”

Image: Lisa Ling (left) and Laura Ling (right); Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Previous Laura Ling and Euna Lee coverage

A group of seasoned Bay Area journalists has launched Coyote Media Collective, a worker-owned newsroom inspired by alt-weeklies, aiming to revive independent local reporting with deep stories, sharp opinions, and creative multimedia across the region.

Founded this year by 11 veteran reporters, podcasters, photographers, and editors, the collective includes contributors to national publications such as The Guardian, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, NPR, Pitchfork, and ProPublica, "as well as pretty much every local publication in the Bay Area:" Amir Aziz, Nuala Bishari, Alan Chazaro, Reo Eveleth, Estefany Gonzalez, Rahawa Haile, Soleil Ho, Daniel Lavery, Cecilia Lei, Emma Silvers and Supriya Yelimeli.

As KQED reports, the group was formed out of frustration with the limitations of corporate media with the goal of prioritizing editorial freedom and local relevance.

The project quickly gained public support after it was announced in early June — raising over 75% of its $80,000 launch goal within two days and now targeting $150,000 to support fair pay and consistent output. All content will be free to read, with optional memberships offering perks and expanded access.

Coyote’s coverage will span the Bay Area, focusing on investigative reporting, arts and culture, experimental formats, and pointed commentary. Planned features include a Craigslist-style “Meet Cute Market” and a Bay Area events calendar. The name references the trickster of Pomo mythology, the adaptable local animal, and COYOTE, the 1970s sex workers’ rights group.

The launch comes amid a national shift toward worker-owned media as an alternative to ad-driven, billionaire-backed, or algorithm-focused newsrooms. Drawing inspiration from the alt-weekly tradition, Coyote’s founders aim to bring a mix of rigor and irreverence to local journalism. The site is expected to launch later this summer.

Image: Coyote Media Collective on Facebook

A Stanford student who was covering the occupation of the university president's office by pro-Palestinian protesters last year for the campus newspaper when he was arrested alongside those protesters has been cleared of wrongdoing, at least by the school.

Student journalist Dilan Gohill, a freshman reporter for the Stanford Daily, faced criminal prosecution last year at the behest of Stanford University President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, due to his presence in Seller's office during a student protest and occupation that took place there in June 2024.

13 students were arrested after the office was vandalized, including fake blood that was splashed on the president's desk. Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies handled the arrest, and despite his wearing a press badge and saying he was only there to observe and report, Gohill was among the arrestees.

Throughout last year, Saller and Martinez maintained that Gohill was culpable. "We believe that the Daily reporter who was arrested inside the building acted in violation of the law and University policies and fully support having him be criminally prosecuted," they said in an earlier statement.

Gohill's case caught the attention of free-press advocates and alumni alike, and the Columbia Journalism Review covered the case last month.

"My job on June 5th was to keep our community informed, updated, and aware–and I did just that," Gohill said in a statement. "Independent student journalism is crucial and my arrest as a first-year student journalist and Stanford’s subsequent response threatens the values that the institution claims to uphold."

Gohill's work covering multiple student protests through the school year earned him a prize from the university at the end of the school year, which was a $9,600 grant for him to take a summer internship at the Los Angeles Times.

By the fall, while his disciplinary case was still ongoing, Gohill was allowed to resume classes. But as his attorney and spokesperson Max Szabo says in a release, campus police had confiscated Gohill's laptop, camera, class notes, and more, and he had to take two classes "incomplete" last spring as a result, also turning in two final papers without his laptop or class notes. Those belongings still have not been returned to him.

On Wednesday, Stanford cleared Gohill of any disciplinary action, as the Chronicle was first to report. And Szabo says this was a surprise to Gohill, as the university had not reached out to him yet.

Still, the criminal case remains in the hands of the Santa Clara County DA's office, and Stanford has not renegged on its position regarding those charges. Still, no charges have been filed against any of the protesters.

"Stanford correctly declined to pursue disciplinary charges against Dilan, so naturally we’re shocked that the University is standing by their absurd statement calling for his criminal prosecution," Szabo said in a statement. "Declining to pursue lesser disciplinary charges while advocating for criminal charges is not only inconsistent, it suggests Stanford University is more interested in publicly hanging a journalist who reported something they didn’t like than they are in reaching the correct outcome."

As the Columbia Journalism Review noted, 46 students were arrested for a similar campus building occupation at Columbia last spring, but Manhattan prosecutors dropped the charges against them less than two months later.

Previously: Protesters Take Over Office of Stanford President, 13 Arrested

Photo: Robert Gareth

Now for some insider-baseball humor. David Chon, founder of Spot.Us, devised this spot.on (haHA) graphic showing how journalists view each other. Having penned many an article in our boxer briefs, as well as experimenting chemically with other men, we must say that this is shockingly accurate. (A few testy and sensitive commenters of his, however, disagree. Oy.)

Side note: if you eat at Credo Restaurant all week, a portion of the revenue will go to Spot.Us. For those not in the know, Spot.Us is a nonprofit project to help pioneer “community powered reporting," which helps gather funds to "commission journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics." Also, Credo is really, really good. So, you know, two birds, one stone.

Buck was in Egypt doing a project on Egyptian bloggers who tend to be, according to The Mercury News "mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers." When photographing a demonstration, Buck and his translator, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree were both arrested. Buck sent the message "ARRESTED" from his cell phone to his Twitter network and had messages from his friends in Egypt and America working to find Buck and work on his release.

Buck was released last week, although Maree remains imprisoned. A petition for his release is circling the web. Buck plans on having a protest outside the Egyptian consulate at 10 a.m. on Friday.

Finally, a useful reason to have a Twitter. We finally succumbed to Twitter recently and haven't used it for anything more than letting everyone know when we're watching "Family Guy." Gah.

Weep no more, my lady.

After handing over an apology to the sobbing mother of a Chinese journalist that they helped imprison, Yahoo now must hand over an undisclosed amount to the scribes. Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao, the latter a former journalist at Contemporary Business News, will receive a hefty, unknown amount from Yahoo, Inc. The Chinese journalists sued Yahoo, blaming them for their imprisonment and torture by Chinese government officials.

"According to the suit, the other journalist, Wang Xiaoning, was arrested in 2002 after Yahoo HK gave police information linking him to his anonymous e-mails and other political writings he posted online," says the Chronicle.

Aaaand, in related news, this might be the perfect time for you to switch over that e-mail account to Gmail. What? We're just saying is all.

Do you believe your own hype?
No, but I believe my own hyphy. Seriously, though, I don't hype things I don't believe in. If I'm publicizing something I don't like, you'll be able to tell. For example, I'll say, "please write a story about this movie but if you don't want to I understand because, well, it sucks." Ok, I don't do that so much. But, luckily, a large part of my job is to make sure a movie gets reviewed, and if it's a bad review, so be it. I screen it for the critics, but I can't, and am not expected to, influence their opinion.

The easiest type of person/thing to promote is?
Something that's original. Not another snoozer documentary about a topic that 15 other docs have covered. If it's a concept that is easy to understand, that helps too. Most journalists tune out after 5 seconds so you've got to be able to condense the concept you are pitching into a quick, graspable, blurb. Something like "Colma: The Musical" is an easy one. Journalists, local ones, at least, "got" it as soon as they heard the title. It's weird, it's whacky, and it's original so we were able to get some good press on it.

Beloved Jennine from The Coveted writes here about how this year’s San Francisco Fashion Week denied her and other bloggers precious invitations to cover the event or (worse) any of its VIP, open-bar parties. Enough to drop your coke bullet into the toilet, right?!

Anyway, this isn’t all that astounding seeing as how SF Fashion Week is notorious for being a tad behind the times (New York City all but begs such bloggers as the Fug Girls and The Satorialist to attend its fashion-week shows), and doesn’t include more unconventional, forward-thinking, and other-side-of-Market-Street designers and guests. (They have improved over the past couple of years, but marginally so.)

In response to Jennine, SF Fashion Week PR director Dana Berry admits that "we have to limit what we can give out and must reserve them for accredited members of the journalism community, buyers and stylists." Makes perfect sense. And while that raises the exhausting and tireless argument of just how much overlap there is between journalists and bloggers, it should be noted that the many people interested in or working in style in SF (we are, after all, a major metropolitan area in California, inundated with the gays) don't just read SF Mag or 7x7. In SFFW's attempt to (understandably) come off as exclusive, it's also ignoring the fact that we're, well, San Francisco, rumored to be a computer savvy kinda place.

Image: San Jose Mercury News