Local:

  • The March Madness college basketball tournament got underway at around 9 am Thursday morning, and your Bay Area rooting interest is the mighty St. Mary’s Gaels of Orinda, who are playing Vanderbilt Friday at 12:15 pm. Meanwhile Cal-Berkeley is in the women’s bracket, which will otherwise feature phenoms Paige Bueckers of UConn and JuJu Watkins of USC, plus a few standouts who will be Golden State Valkyries in a few months. [NBC Sports]
  • After Tuesday’s federal child sex abuse indictment of SF’s right-wing Twitter troll Ricci Wynne, prosecutors say they’ve unearthed video of Wynne sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, and recording it. “Evidence recently identified by investigators shows (Wynne) not only sexually abused children, but further video recorded many of his sexual acts with them,” Assistant US Attorney Eric Cheng said in a court filing. [Bay Area News Group]
  • The Too Short-produced Oakland movie Freaky Tales starring Pedro Pascal had its premiere in Oakland at the Grand Lake Theater. The movie has its nationwide release in two weeks, on April 4. [KTVU]

National:

  • President Trump signed an executive order to abolish the Department of Education Thursday, and we’ll see if Congressional Democrats even have the stones to fight this. [NBC News]
  • The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is forcing Tesla to recall 46,000 Cybertrucks because their panels attached with adhesives (adhesives?) tend to fall off onto the road. [SFGate]
  • 21-year-old The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey revealed they’ve been diagnosed with autism, and it was a crew member of the show that noticed the signs that led to this diagnosis. [Variety]

Video:

  • Now that the Great Highway just went car-free, the Western Neighborhoods Project has this fascinating eight-minute mini-documentary on the 160-plus-year history of the thoroughfare, which has long been no stranger to controversy. In fact, it used to be a privately-owned road called “God’s Great Highway,” and people would burn down its tollhouses because they were mad about having to pay fare.

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist