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OAKLAND, Calif. - The man charged in the death of the baker behind Oakland's Angel Cakes has been sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter and robbery. Ishmael Burch, 20, of San Francisco, was initially charged by the Alameda County District Attorney's Office with murder in this case. He accepted a plea deal and was sentenced on Friday.

Are the riots truly over? It might be too soon to tell, but if this week's citizen-led efforts have indeed quelled the unrest, it hasn't necessarily bolstered public confidence in Sir Keir Starmer's ability to prevent future incidents. Critics argue that the Prime Minister has already alienated many by "choosing sides." At a time when the country needs unity, the leader who took a knee in 2020, even after the Black Lives Matter protests turned violent, has instead created division. Some accuse him of "hiding behind" the notion that the unrest is solely the work of far-right extremists, rather than...

President Biden offered a blunt explanation this week about why he got out of the 2024 presidential race. “Although it’s a great honor to be a president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I — most important thing you can do. And that is — we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” Biden said during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, which is set to air Sunday. “When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president,” Biden added. “I can’t even say how old I am –...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said her city is working to make the Summer Olympic games car-free when they’re held in her city in 2028. “We’re already working to create jobs by expanding our public transportation system in order for us to have a no-car Games,” she said in a Saturday release. “And that’s a feat for Los Angeles, as we’ve always been in love with our cars. We’re working to ensure that we can build a greener Los Angeles.”

[Catholic Caucus] Synodality and the continued and deceptive use of “People of God”There is an air of play-acting at real theology and of a cynical insouciance toward the actual truth of the Council, a mendaciousness that is the product of a set of foreordained conclusions in search of an argument.Larry Chapp Chapp's Schtick, Columns, Features 58 PrintA program for a Mass opening the synod process in the Diocese of Camden, N.J., is seen at St. Agnes Church of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Blackwood, N.J., Oct. 17, 2021. (CNS photo/Dave Hernandez, Catholic Star Herald) Johathan Liedl, a reporter with...

Retired Minnesota National Guard Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Behrends slammed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate on the 2024 ticket, Saturday on “Fox and Friends Weekend” for misleading voters about his military service. Walz’s claims about his military service and the timing of his 2005 retirement have come under fire since Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate Tuesday. The Harris-Walz campaign website has since corrected its original language calling Walz a “retired command sergeant major” to saying he “served as a commend sergeant major.” Behrends ripped into Walz for being an “unforgivable coward”...

The ‘Eagleton Affair’ may not come immediately to mind, except to those who either were old enough to vote in 1972 or are true students of history and politics. Thomas Eagleton was then a 42-year-old senator from Missouri who became George McGovern’s fifth or sixth choice for the VP slot after McGovern had secured the nomination. The more preferred choices had already said no to McGovern, probably the furthest Left candidate ever to run for the Presidency at that time. When so many say no, there is usually a good reason for doing so. McGovern was that reason. Eagleton lasted...

A FEW GOOD WORDS The accuracy of lie detector tests has never been completely decided upon. Although it is inadmissible as evidence in court, even the proponents of lie detector testing agree that it is not always accurate. Among the first lie detectors, considered by some to be the most accurate, was the donkey's tail! That's right, in ancient India, a suspect would be escorted to a darkened room. Only three would be present: the accused, the interrogator, and a donkey. The person being questioned was told that the donkey would bray if his responses were not truthful, and...

[Catholic Caucus] The Strange Chapel of Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Pope's Ambassador to ParisPaix Liturgique continues to place us all in its debt, even while its websites in various languages remain unaccountably defunct. The following letter 1080 of August 8, 2024, was sent in French to email subscribers, and now we bring it to you here in English. - PAKPrayer card illustrated by RupnikPraying Every Day in Front of Mosaics Created by Top-Ranking Abuser Rupnik Is Strange for a Nuncio Who Is Supposed to Fight AbuseFew people know it, but there are only two places in France where there are...

SpaceX launched 21 Starlink satellites into orbit from a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday morning in clear skies from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, one day after the mission was scrubbed because of poor booster recovery conditions. The 230-foot rocket lifted off at 8:50 a.m. from pad 40. It was Space X's 52nd launch this year from Florida. Eight minutes later, the booster landed on Read the Instructions offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. That was the 21st time the booster landed on the drone ship and the 88th overall on the droneship. About an hour after liftoff, the satellites went into...

Jordan Chiles has been stripped of the Olympic bronze medal she won in the women's floor final after a bombshell ruling from the Court of Arbitration of Sport on Saturday. The 23-year-old US gymnast came third in the event, behind gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and silver medalist and fellow teammate Simone Biles. But this was only after Chiles' score of 13.666, which had initially placed her fifth, was bumped up by 0.1 following an appeal from her coach. The change to her score meant that Romania's Ana Barbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea were pushed down to fourth...

SAN RAMON, Calif. (KGO) -- A 72-year-old former Bay Area Home Depot employee is suing the retailer for age discrimination and wrongful termination after she was fired for failing to stop $5,000 worth of fraudulent transactions. The incident happened at the San Ramon Home Depot three months after a loss prevention officer was shot and killed at a Pleasanton Home Depot while trying to stop a theft attempt. Carleen Acevedo was fired from Home Depot last July for "creating a security or loss prevention risk" according to her termination letter. She says she felt scared and intimidated by the person...

Former President Trump is setting off alarms among critics as he pushes the claim that Vice President Harris’s ascent to become the Democratic nominee is somehow unconstitutional, with some warning he could be laying the groundwork to contest an electoral defeat as he did in 2020. Trump has repeatedly sought to cast Harris replacing President Biden as the Democratic nominee as nefarious, likening it to a “coup” and in recent days claiming it may be unconstitutional because she was not atop the ballot in the primary process. Biden and other Democrats, as well as some Republican Trump critics, have suggested...

We had to chuckle at the liberal commentariat’s portrayal of Tim Walz as a political balance to Kamala Harris. Have they examined his record as Minnesota Governor? On taxes and spending, he has sought to outdo California progressives and is making Illinois look like a model of fiscal discipline. Ms. Harris is slipstreaming behind the Biden Administration policies and refusing to lay out her own policy agenda. This makes Mr. Walz’s record as Governor over the last six years all the more revealing as a window on the duo’s plans for the country. Minnesota has long boasted the highest taxes...

Apti Alaudinov, the commander of the Chechen Akhmat unit fighting for Russia, said in a video on Aug. 8 that Ukrainian forces had advanced around 10 kilometers into Kursk Oblast as of Aug. 7 in a rare admission. "The situation is not irreversible, nothing supernatural happened... Yes, our people died, that's a fact. The enemy has entered several settlements," said Alaudinov, a close ally of Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov and an official at the Russian Defense Ministry, in a video published by the Russian independent outlet Agentstvo. Alaudinov became the first Russian commander to acknowledge losses since Ukraine launched a...

VP Kamala Harris' presidential running-mate Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz last year signed into law a string of progressive bills across an array of policy issues. As Harris narrowed her choice for a running mate, Walz emerged as the favorite of their Democratic Party's progressive wing, due in part to his legislative record. Harris officially announced Walz on Tuesday as her pick for vice president, and the pair appeared at a rally in Philadelphia that evening at which Harris touted Walz’s credentials. Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, said Harris “bent the knee to the far left...

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach faced more questions about the gender eligibility controversy involving two boxers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics in what was his final press conference before the Games conclude this weekend. Bach, who was first elected in 2013, did not sway from the IOC's stance on the eligibility concerns surrounding boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan when speaking to the media Friday.

According to a recent Politico article, on July 22nd they began receiving leaked documents from the account of a “senior official” within the Trump campaign. [Datapoint – That is a total of 19 days ago] The Trump campaign said the documents were “hacked” likely as an outcome of a foreign actor, intending to influence the 2024 election. Actually, that’s a pretty smart move by the Trump campaign. I’ll explain why.

The Washington Examiner reported that Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, maintained close ties and even donated money to an organization headed by an antisemitic Muslim Imam. According to the report, Walz maintained close friendship ties with Imam Assad Zaman, who heads the "American-Islamic Association in Minnesota." In recent years, Imam Zaman used his Facebook page to share official Hamas press releases, shared posts from antisemitic blog sites, and in 2015 even shared a link to the propaganda film, "The Greatest Story Never Told," which praises Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and was released in 2013. As Governor of Minnesota, Walz...