SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Netflix Shuts Down Service In Russia A dead body was found near the Harrison Street off-ramp from the Bay Bridge on Sunday, a 61-year-old woman was killed in a hit-and-run on International Blvd. in Oakland, and Netflix and TikTok are shutting down in Russia.
Business & Tech Apple Says It Has 'Paused' Product Sales In Russia, But Resellers Are Still At It Apple has "paused" the sale of its products in Russia in protest of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Apple Pay has been disabled or "limited" in the country as well.
SF News Five Gold Ingots From China, Looted From an 18th Century French Shipwreck, Returned to French Government Via SF The Department of Homeland Security just returned a trove of artifacts deemed to be the property of the French government, and five gold ingots that were likely smuggled to the U.S. decades ago and which landed in a Bay Area auction house, were among them.
SF News SF Unified Backtracks, Says Masks Will Be Optional at Many City Schools Starting March 12 Just four days after suggesting it would be extending the mask mandate for San Francisco students beyond the state's recommended date, San Francisco Unified School District announced Friday that the masks will, in fact, be optional starting March 12 at middle and high schools.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink New Restaurant In Scala's Bistro Space at Union Square Will Be French, Led By Roland Passot's Left Bank Team The longtime home of Scala's Bistro at the hotel formerly known as the Sir Francis Drake will be reborn shortly as a French brasserie from the Left Bank Brasserie team, possibly called Left Bank.
SF News Gas Prices Jump Above $5/Gal In the Bay Area For the First Time Ever It has happened. Russia's war on Ukraine has pushed gas prices north of $5 for much of the Bay Area and California. And for people who are suddenly commuting back to work... maybe this will bolster BART ridership?
SF News Friday Morning Constitutional: Enormous Boulders Fall, Block Highway 50 Two people were shot in the Fillmore District Thursday night, "cabin-sized" boulders fell and blocked Highway 50 in both directions near South Lake Tahoe, and Apple sets a return-to-the-office date of April 11 with everyone expected three days per week by May 23.
SF News Sherri Papini, the NorCal Woman at Center of Bizarre 2016 'Gone Girl' Kidnapping, Arrested By Feds For Making It All Up It's been over five years since a 34-year-old mother of two suddenly disappeared while on a morning jog near her Redding-area home and then turned up, bruised and "branded," by the side of a road 22 days later. The story always seemed fishy, and it was, the feds say!
SF News [Update] Man Dies In Stabbing Near Mission and 14th Streets; Another Dies In SoMa Stabbing San Francisco police are investigating a homicide that occurred Wednesday night in the Mission District.
SF News UC Berkeley Loses Court Fight, Will Have to Cap Enrollment at 2020 Level The University of California just lost one of its appeals to the state Supreme Court, which means it will have to withhold around 5,000 acceptance letters that it was intending to send out to incoming first-year students in the next few weeks.
SF News Newsom Proposes 'Care Court' to Compel Mentally Ill Into Treatment Governor Gavin Newsom, who as mayor of San Francisco over a decade ago championed a controversial policy for the city's poor dubbed Care Not Cash, is now proposing a new solution for the problem of untreated mental illness in the streets of California cities.
SF News Thursday Morning What's Up: Thunderstorms, Hail, and Rain Thunder and lightning have come with the current weather system blanketing the Bay Area, SFPD Chief Bill Scott apologized again about the rape-kit DNA scandal, and the victim in Tuesday's Monte Rio homicide was the suspect's father.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Asking Rents Tick Up, SF Apartment Listings Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels An Oakland suspect in an allegedly stolen van died in a fire following a police helicopter pursuit, a former UFC champ is charged with attempted murder in the South Bay, and asking rents continue to tick up in SF as the number of apartment listings returns to pre-pandemic levels.
Business & Tech Google Tells Workers It's Back-to-the-Office Time Starting April 4 There have been some false alarms and variant-related surprises in the past, but it could be that Spring 2022 will usher in a new late-pandemic phase of workers grudgingly returning to cubicles and conference rooms in SF and Silicon Valley.
Arts & Entertainment Berkeley Falcon Watchers In Delighted Shock as Annie the Peregrine Falcon Returns to Campanile The Berkeley falcon soap opera takes another twist! After a mysterious and totally uncharacteristic absence of over a week, Annie the peregrine falcon is back and getting ready to breed with Grinnell once again.
SF News New Study: COVID Can Infect Men's Genitals, Cause Infertility and Erectile Dysfunction It's been some months since Nicki Minaj and others amplified the falsehood that COVID vaccines made men's testicles swell up. And now some researchers have found that the COVID-19 virus gets into the penis, prostate, and testicles.
SF News Theranos Exec Sunny Balwani's Fraud Trial Kicks Off Just In Time for Hulu's Elizabeth Holmes Series 'The Dropout' Hulu's new series about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos disaster, The Dropout, premieres Thursday. And then next week, Holmes's former lover and business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, heads to trial.
SF News Humpday Headlines: SF School Board Approves 300 Layoffs The SF school board voted to lay off 300 district staffers to close a budget gap, a homicide suspect was arrested in Sonoma County following a tense day in Monte Rio, and SF Mayor London Breed is pressing the school district to lift its mask mandate along with the state.
SF Politics Key Takeaways From Chesa Boudin's New York Times Interview Embattled SF District Attorney, who would like not to be embattled much longer, once again defended himself in the national press, more or less stoically, in a new interview with the New York Times.
SF News Jury Enters Deliberations In SFPD Brutality Trial; Prosecution Argues Officers Didn't See Victim 'As Human' Deliberations began Tuesday in the historic trial of SFPD Officer Terrance Stangel, who is charged with excessive use of force in a 2019 beating of a domestic violence suspect who was subsequently not charged with any crime.
SF News 13.5-Mile Tunnel Drives Up Cost Estimate For Bay Area High-Speed Rail Link The price tag for California's beleaguered high-speed rail project just went up again, and with inflation and construction costs rising we can expect it to just continue rising until the construction is actually all underway.
Business & Tech State Grants First Permits to Waymo and Cruise For Paid Self-Driving Taxi Service The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted its first, semi-full permits to Alphabet-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise to provide autonomous-vehicle taxi service to paid passengers.
SF News Tuesday Morning Topline: Deadline For Baseball Talks Extended Sen. Alex Padilla announced he tested positive for COVID-19, UC Berkeley lost its patent case over CRISPR technology, and the deadline for bargaining between Major League Baseball and its players' association has been extended until 5 p.m. today.
SF News Day Around the Bay: SF Unified Says the Masks Stay On A top official in SF's teachers' union has caused a Twitter outcry after he amplified comments blaming the US for the Ukraine invasion, that Scott Peterson juror admitted to writing to Peterson in prison, and SF Unified wants kids to keep their masks on despite the state's changes.
Arts & Entertainment Female in Berkeley Falcon Pair Goes Missing, Is Likely Injured or Dead Ugh! The drama seemed to have passed and all was back to normal for the bonded pair of peregrine falcons who have been mating and residing atop the UC Berkeley Campanile. But no!
