Free Republic

Lake Merritt is one of Oakland’s loveliest spots, especially during the evening golden hour when the “Necklace of Lights”comes to life around the lake. But over the last few weeks, the 126 ornate lampposts that anchor the lake’s signature circle of lights have been the target of vandalism. The city believes thieves are toppling and stealing the almost century-old lampposts and ripping out the wires from the boxes at the bases. It’s a local chapter of a story happening around the country as valuable metals inside the lampposts are harvested for later resale. Jean Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Oakland...

From the November 2021 issue of Car and Driver. What's blasting from your car speakers, and more important, how does it sound? For sound-system engineers at the audio-equipment manufacturer Bose, a playlist is more than tracks that slap. To test stereos, they need songs representing a variety of sounds and recording techniques to make sure new systems can re-create a song with the depth of the original recording. To have a common reference point, Bose engineers all over the globe share a master playlist. "Every system engineer knows these tracks inside and out," says Mark Armitage, head of the acoustical-engineering...

Earthquake

The California company working to start a deluxe overnight passenger train between San Francisco and Los Angeles says it has signed a “landmark memorandum” with Union Pacific Railroad. It’s not a final contract, but Dreamstar Lines of Newport Beach said the memorandum of understanding “formaliz[es] the parties’ negotiations toward a comprehensive final agreement” and “identifies the fundamental terms for Dreamstar to operate its trains” on UP’s Coast Line via Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and San Jose. Dreamstar wants to start the service in summer 2025. Union Pacific owns most of the 470-mile route. To complete the link between San...

For years now, Oakland has been battling an onslaught of burned, stripped and abandoned vehicles that have made certain parts of the city feel like a scene from a John Carpenter sci-fi epic — and new data presented at an Oakland Public Works and Transportation Committee meeting on March 12 indicates that this pervasive issue is only getting worse. The city received more than 11,000 requests to clear out abandoned vehicles from June 1 to Nov. 30, 2023, which was a “staggering increase,” according to Michael Ford, parking and mobility manager at Oakland’s Department of Transportation, who spoke during the...

California voters have narrowly approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide ballot measure, Proposition 1, which authorizes $6.4 billion in bonds to fund treatment and housing for homeless people with a mental illness or substance-use disorder. Preliminary election results from the California Secretary of State’s website on Thursday showed that 50.2% of voters chose to approve the measure, while 49.8% voted to reject it. That represents a difference of about 29,000 votes in a race where more than 7 million people turned in a ballot. The razor thin results defied predictions made before the state’s March 5 primary election that the measure...

Despite its reputation for gastronomy, France has become an American fast-food mecca. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 1,300 fast-food restaurants opened in the country, and over the past decade, sales increased by 61%. McDonald’s has the biggest stronghold because of its first-mover advantage. But Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, KFC and Five Guys are expanding their reach. New players like Popeyes and Krispy Kreme moved in for the first time in early 2024 as French consumers continue to seek affordable and convenient food options.

CNN - CVS and Walgreens said they’ve received certification to dispense mifepristone, a pill that’s part of a regimen for medication abortion, and will start making the medicine available in a limited number of states where it’s legal. CVS told CNN that it’ll begin filling prescriptions for mifepristone in Massachusetts and Rhode Island “in the weeks ahead” and plans to expand to more states, “where allowed by law, on a rolling basis.” Walgreens told CNN that it expects to start dispensing mifepristone within a week, “consistent with federal and state laws,” and is beginning in “select locations” in New York,...

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases out of Texas and Florida that could force major social media platforms to carry posts from Donald Trump or others who lie about elections being stolen or obliquely encourage election-related violence. A ruling in favor of these states would turn the First Amendment upside down and create the conditions for undermining American democracy. If there wasn’t so much else swirling around our elections and democracy right now, this case would be commanding everyone’s attention. Moody v. NetChoice LLC and NetChoice LLC v. Paxton arise out of the...

A proposal by phone and internet service provider, AT&T, to end landline service for most Californians is drawing backlash.

Oakland - A popular store in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood was broken into early Tuesday by burglars who rammed a pickup truck into the doors, the fourth such incident in recent months. "I wish we could do something about it, but we cannot," said co-owner David Shrestha. Surveillance video shows a pickup truck repeatedly backing into the store on College Avenue near Lawton Avenue at about 3:50 a.m. Tuesday. Several intruders then rummage inside, stealing liquor, cigarettes, two cash registers and a safe. "You can't even tell me right now how I'm feeling. I'm really, really mad," said Shrestha, who believes...

This article originally appeared on KCRA.com. SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — When Monica Laso planned a skiing trip with her friends to Heavenly Ski Resort, she never imagined she would spend 15 hours overnight hanging in the sky on a gondola. The hours felt long as Laso said she was fighting the cold by rubbing her hands and feet. Thursday was her first time at the Lake Tahoe area resort. She spent most of the day snowboarding. Towards the end of the day, she fell behind her friends since they are more experienced than her. Laso said since it was...

With the presidential primary season now underway, the season of political campaign ads is also in full swing. On Sunday, some football fans in Pennsylvania watching the NFL playoff game between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers will see a minute-long ad attacking Donald Trump as he seeks a third Republican nomination for president. Made by VoteVets, a progressive political action committee that advocates for veterans and military families, the ad criticizes Trump for past comments where he disparaged veterans and soldiers. The ad includes quotes attributed to Trump where he called fallen soldiers “losers” and “suckers.” The...

Oakland’s only In-N-Out will serve its last double-double on March 24 after more than 18 years in operation at 8300 Oakport Street, the burger restaurant’s chief operating officer Denny Warnick confirmed with SFGATE in an emailed statement Sunday. Warnick described the store as “busy and profitable” for the company, and drive-thru lines during the dinner rush often stretched all the way out into neighboring parking lots. However, he cited “ongoing issues with crime” as the reason for the closure. “Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our Customers and Associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft,...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now a cattle rancher, and he appears to be — in true billionaire fashion — taking it to the most opulent extreme possible. The tech executive owns $170 million of land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where he’s building a $100 million humongous, prepper-style compound. On Tuesday, in a Facebook post, Zuckerberg revealed more of his plans for the property: He will raise a herd of cattle on a homegrown, incredibly expensive diet. “My goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world,” the Facebook founder wrote. Then, he dropped...

Americans and Swiss citizens have some of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, but their gun cultures differ wildly. One country has seen over 500 mass shootings in 2023 alone, while the other has had less than a handful over the past twenty years. To understand why there’s such a stark difference between these two countries’ gun cultures, we traveled to Switzerland to see how each of these cultures started, and where they began to part ways.

San Francisco stores have quietly disabled self-checkout recently, indicating a trend in “defensive retailing” that may soon spread across the city. While innovative measures to prevent theft at Bay Area retailers have been well documented this year, the changes to self-checkout are a more recent development. The Safeway at 1335 Webster St. in the Fillmore District closed down its self-checkout area a few months ago, an employee confirmed to SFGATE. Target on San Francisco’s Mission Street also has closed its self-checkout kiosks, rotating the screens backward to make them unusable to customers, SFGATE confirmed. While Safeway and Target did not...

A meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas found webcam footage showing the northern lights, aka aurora borealis, appearing over southern Nevada early Friday morning. Matthew Woods knew to check webcams for the aurora borealis Friday morning because National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center had forecast a strong geomagnetic storm would occur. He spotted the aurora, which appear as pillars of light traveling across the sky, in footage captured by a Bureau of Land Management camera on Angel Peak at nearly 9,000 feet. The mountain is 30 miles from the Strip, as the crow...

A Bay Area photographer captured an unusual photo of San Francisco this week that reveals the amount of surveillance hovering over the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Ian Servin used his Sony A7 III mirrorless digital camera with a basic 50mm lens to document the swirling light trails from the numerous surveillance aircraft over APEC and the city. The composite is a stack of 150 images shot with 30-second exposure that he took from his apartment in Oakland. He then used Photoshop for the layering, applying the "lighter color" blending mode to create the final image. ”In terms of how many...

A 5-year-old boy died after being stabbed by his twin brother during a fight Wednesday near Santa Cruz, officials said. Deputies from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office arrived on a report of a stabbing at the 200 block of Tucker Road, in an unincorporated area in Scotts Valley near Highway 17. Officers on the scene discovered that a 5-year-old had stabbed his brother with a “small kitchen knife,” the sheriff’s office said in a Thursday statement. When law enforcement arrived, they said they learned the twins had been fighting, “as siblings sometimes do,” the sheriff’s department said in the...