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Gorgeous, spacious three-bedroom homes in the $300,000-range. Quiet streets where kids could safely ride their bicycles. Not way out in the boonies, but in Oakland -- just a few minutes from BART, the Coliseum and the airport. Arcadia Park, a planned development built by Pulte Homes in 2010, seemed like a dream come true for working people who didn't earn six-figure salaries and were priced out of most Oakland neighborhoods. There was just one catch: It was in Deep East Oakland, a high-crime area designated by Oakland police as a "hot spot" and Border Brothers gang territory. Yet at those...

WASHINGTON -- A judge has been holding secret hearings in the case of the man convicted in the 2001 killing of Chandra Levy, the latest twist in a high-profile murder that went unsolved for years and captivated the public because of the intern's romantic relationship with a California congressman. The meetings, held sporadically behind closed doors at the courthouse over the last several weeks, raise questions about what comes next in a criminal case that appeared resolved by the 2010 conviction of Ingmar Guandique. The illegal immigrant from El Salvador is now serving a 60-year prison sentence in Levy's death,...

A woman walking her dog at 3 p.m. Friday stumbled upon Larry Lovette lying on the sidewalk near Dimond Park. He had been shot to death. Just one half-hour before that, a 22-year-old man had been fatally shot in the Fruitvale district. At 4:15 p.m., Eddiebo Rodriguez was shot several times while driving on West Street in West Oakland. Whoever killed him shot up some nearby homes in the process. Thankfully, no one else was injured. Then at 8:20 p.m., police found 17-year-old Ken Harbin shot to death on Hillside Avenue in East Oakland. The carnage Friday took the insanity...

OAKLAND -- On the night before disgraced Oakland police Officer Frank Vazquez disappeared in November 2000, he called attorney Michael Rains in a rage. In a profanity-laced tirade, Vazquez said he feared his fate as one of the four Oakland cops caught up in the infamous police brutality case known as the Riders. "They're not going to give us a fair trial," Rains remembers Vazquez screaming into the phone. "I'm not going to rot in prison." Twelve years later, Vazquez is still on the run, an enduring symbol of Oakland's decadelong failure to fix a Police Department ripped apart by...

Former Albany Middle School teacher and coach James Izumizaki exchanged thousands of flirtatious text messages, photos and videos with an underage student while committing lewd and lascivious acts, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. The popular 28-year-old teacher, who killed himself days after his Sept. 26 arrest, open-mouth kissed the student on multiple occasions on the Albany Middle School campus while fondling the victim over clothes, a detective reported in previously secret court affidavits unsealed at the request of this newspaper. That suspected abuse was just the start of "extremely severe" allegations that have not been publicly released, said attorney...

SANTA CLARA -- Alex Smith got right to the point Thursday. "It sucks," he said. "I don't know what else to say." Speaking for the first time since 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh confirmed Colin Kaepernick's "hot hand" would start at quarterback Sunday at St. Louis, the demoted Smith appeared agitated over once again losing a job that's repeatedly been swiped from his grasp since he was drafted first overall in 2005. "I feel the only thing I did to lose my job was get a concussion," said Smith, who sustained that brain trauma Nov. 11 during the second quarter of...

Political polling guru Nate Silver is so confident in his statistical models that he just offered to bet MSNBC's Joe Scarborough $1,000 that Barack Obama will win re-election. Scarborough, you may recall, criticized Silver's math earlier this week, saying that "Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue ... they're jokes." He was specifically talking about Silver's FiveThirtyEight website, which shows Mitt Romney with just a 1-in-4 chance of becoming president. RELATED: FiveThirtyEight Says Obama Is in Command ... For Now Silver has spent the week firing back, criticizing political pundits...

SAN LEANDRO -- After two Hayward teens allegedly strangled a Castro Valley woman in her home last week, they went to lunch, saw some friends and returned later to set a fire and cover their tracks, police said Friday. Christian Birdsall, 16, and Cody Nicosia, 18, were arrested Thursday and charged as adults in the Oct. 17 slaying of Barbara Latiolais in her Castro Valley home, said Alameda County Sheriff's Office Sgt. J.D. Nelson. The slaying is "the kind of case nightmares are made of," Nelson said. "There's some absolute evil out there, and these two are evil for doing...

GENEVA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life on Monday after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) sanctions against the American. The long-awaited decision has left cycling facing its "greatest crisis" according to UCI president Pat McQuaid and has destroyed Armstrong's last hope of clearing his name. "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. Lance Armstrong deserves to be forgotten in cycling," McQuaid told a news conference as he outlined how cycling, long battered by doping problems for decades, would have to...

The East Bay is home to a new — and growing — group of sex workers who are educated, empowered, and open about what they do for a living. But Prop 35 would force them back underground. Jolene Parton is a ho. She's also a Berkeley native, a comic-book fanatic, a Dolly Parton aficionado (hence the name, which is fake), an NPR listener, and a big fan of Vietnamese food. She wears big round glasses rimmed in translucent pink plastic, and, in her ears, jade-green plugs. She's redheaded and rosy-skinned and pretty in the kind of way that would be...

Officially, Jose "Pepe" Marti was listed as trainer for the Postal Service cycling team. But those on the team knew him as "The Courier." One day while chatting with Tyler Hamilton, Pepe told the Postal Service surrogate that he had to drive to Nice, France, to make a delivery. That night, at the Villa d'Este Restaurant in Nice, Pepe arrived to a late dinner that included Lance Armstrong and his then-wife, Kristin, as well as Betsy Andreu, wife of Postal rider Frankie Andreu. According to Betsy, the reason given for the late dinner was because Pepe was there to deliver...

ALBANY -- A middle-school teacher who had been accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a former student was found dead of an apparent suicide Monday morning, authorities said. James Izumizaki, 28, an Albany resident, was found between 10 and 10:30 a.m. in his car on Via Alamitos in San Lorenzo, according to Sgt. J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. A family member who lives nearby found Izumizaki, he said. The death is being treated as a suicide, Nelson said. He would not disclose the manner of Izumizaki's death, but said that a gun was not involved. Izumizaki,...

OAKLAND -- The four men and eight women picked to sit on a jury that will decide the fate of accused murderer Giselle Esteban won't have to decide if the San Diego native killed her one time best friend Michelle Le, they'll just have to decide why, opening statements in this salacious trial revealed Monday. For the first time since Esteban, 27, was arrested and charged with killing Le, 26, in what a prosecutor described as a jealousy-driven but calculated attack, Esteban's defense attorney revealed the strategy that will be used in hopes of keeping her client from spending the...

Former presidential contender and billionaire Ross Perot is worried that America is a sitting duck for an unnamed foreign invader. In an interview for his new autobiography, Perot said the nation's weak economy has left us open for a hostile takeover—and neither presidential candidate is the man to save the country. Citing an impending fiscal cliff, Perot warned of disaster. "If we are that weak, just think of who wants to come here first and take us over," the former CEO of info-tech company Perot Systems told USA Today on Monday. "The last thing I ever want to see is...

Arnold Schwarzenegger admits that not only did he cheat on Maria Shriver with the family's housekeeper while the two were married, but he also cheated when they were dating and living together — and this time the other woman was none other than Brigitte Nielsen! In his new memoir, Total Recall, which hits shelves Monday, the action star and former California governor confirms that he and the actress had a "hot affair," according to the Associated Press. Schwarzenegger reportedly describes the relationship as a "fling," and says it helped him realize that he wanted to marry Shriver.

OAKLAND -- The Oakland school board on Thursday night unanimously approved an agreement with the Office for Civil Rights to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions of its African-American students. Parents, community organizers, district staff members and other leaders spoke passionately about the need to pass -- and to fully realize -- the plan, and to involve students, families and teachers in the push for change. "We're here today to ante up and reclaim our children," said Chris Chatmon, director of the district's African American Male Achievement initiative. Chatmon said the resolution will give the system the sense of urgency...

More than 330,000 Californians fell below the poverty line in 2011, bringing the ranks of California's poor to more than 6.1 million, according to statistics being released Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau. The statewide poverty rate hit 16.6 percent in 2011, up by .8 percent from the year before. A family of two adults and two children counts as poor if its combined income is less than $22,811. Among big metropolitan areas, the nation's second-worst poverty rate was in the Fresno area, where 25.8 percent of the population live below the poverty line. The sixth-lowest poverty rate nationwide and...

Nearly four months after becoming the poster mom for "attachment parenting" by breast-feeding her 3-year-old son on the cover of Time magazine, Jamie Lynne Grumet said the fallout left her "really, really sad" but now excited about the second chance to deliver her message. "I definitely don't agree with the [Time] cover and don't agree with the article," she said. READ MORE: Time Cover Shows 3-Year-Old Breast-Feeding "Our intentions were to help relieve the stigma attached to breast-feeding past infancy," Grumet, 26, said. "The photo I saw wasn't one that we were trying to pose for." To set the record...

"We need help!" " ... We are afraid for our lives." This SOS to the Oakland Police Department came from a terrified resident of the Lower Bottoms in West Oakland. I am not identifying him or any of the other residents who I interviewed for their safety. A woman who lives four blocks away and her housemates were forced to flee their home after she found a duffle bag with guns and masks in it buried in her backyard and turned it over to the police. The people it belonged to demanded that she give them $800 or they would...

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Christopher Lacy, just days into his new job as a senior software engineer, was on his way to a Sunnyvale client on Sept. 4, the day he shot and killed a California Highway Patrol officer without warning, investigators and a company official said Wednesday. The 36-year-old programmer had long worked remotely for various Silicon Valley companies, but was hired at Mountain View-based Mindsource Inc. a week and two days before the shooting, said Gabriel Meza, Mindsource's vice president of human resources. As a senior software engineer, Lacy was tasked with development of Java, a computer programming language....