The murder trial of an alleged San Francisco gang member accused of shooting another man after unsuccessfully trying to steal his jeweled necklace got underway Thursday morning with the prosecutor telling jurors the crime fit the suspect’s “business plan.”
Prosecutor Michael Swart told a San Francisco Superior Court jury during opening statements Thursday that accused murderer Charles Heard, 25, “specializes in certain types of armed robberies” and was known to target “men who wear large, ostentatious, expensive pieces of jewelry.”
Read More
A San Mateo County Superior Court judge on Friday will decide whether to unseal a search warrant affidavit in connection with a next-generation iPhone prototype found at a Redwood City bar in March.
A joint police task force served the search warrant at the Fremont home of a technology blog editor who had purchased the iPhone, disassembled the phone and posted details of it on the blog, gizmodo.com.
Read More
WHAT: Less than two weeks after being allowed to remain on Mojave Desert federal land through a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a 7-foot-tall cross honoring Americans who died in war was stolen by unknown thieves.
HOW AND WHY: The thieves cut the metal bolts attaching the religious symbol to a rock. Their possible motives could range from reselling scrap metal to objections about the cross being there.
Read More
Your Tuesday front-page story went a bit too far by implying there is any chance for a year-round arrival of cruise ships to boost The City’s tourist revenues. The phenomenon of cruise ships arriving this week is only a semiannual rite of passage, and unfortunately it is short term.
Much like migrating whales, these beautiful ships are just passing us by. It is spring, and the ships are migrating from their Southern California home ports north to Seattle. Every year, Mexican cruises become Alaskan cruises, and vice versa in the autumn.
Read More
Important government documents are often shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests because of an exemption in the law that allows federal departments and agencies to withhold materials created before the issuance of an official policy. It’s known as the “internal deliberative process” exemption, and it enables officials to withhold virtually all memoranda, e-mails, studies or other documents created by agency employees or contractors as part of the policymaking process.
Read More
A 24-year-old former Daly City police officer faces up to two years in jail for allegedly pointing his gun at a friend’s stomach and putting a knife to another friend’s throat while roughhousing.
Nicholas Skourtis is charged with one count of assault with a firearm, one count of brandishing a firearm, one count of assault with a knife and one count of brandishing a knife, all misdemeanors, for the two separate incidents, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Wednesday.
Read More
German business software maker SAP AG has agreed to buy Sybase Inc. in a $5.8 billion deal that ratchets up SAP's rivalry with database leader Oracle Corp.
The all-cash deal intensifies the battle between SAP and Oracle to run more of the programs that corporations use to manage their data. Oracle, the world's leading database maker in a market where Sybase is a small player, has been on a buying binge in an attempt to take business in other areas from SAP.
Read More
San Francisco prosecutors declined to file murder charges Tuesday against an 18-year-old man arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of another teen on Friday night.
Ilya Yurchenkov, 18, of San Francisco, was fatally shot at about 11:30 p.m. Friday in the 2400 block of Geary Boulevard near Lyon Street, police said.
Desmond Wroten, also of San Francisco, was arrested shortly after the killing, police said. Prosecutors have two court days to file charges after an arrest.
Read More
Troy Brouwer and Kris Versteeg scored 36 seconds apart early in the second period, and the Chicago Blackhawks eliminated the Vancouver Canucks in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals for the second straight year with a 5-1 win on Tuesday night.
Dave Bolland scored on a short-handed breakaway with 45 seconds left in the second, and Patrick Kane and Dustin Byfuglien added breakaway goals 35 seconds apart in the third to send Chicago back to the Western Conference finals.
Read More
At last the world has demonstrators the American left can applaud — not people like those tea party types.
Now, we have had those Greek demonstrators who instead want to keep a welfare state going, who are absolutely astonished at a four-year austerity program entailing wage cuts for public workers, pension freezes and eventually — five years down the road — an increase from 61 to 63 to qualify for old-age benefits.
Read More
Year after year, as an increasingly toxic ultrapartisanship cripples the state government’s capability to make constructive decisions, The Examiner has warned that California cannot continue being a world-class economic leader under such dysfunctional conditions. But perhaps the most ominous timetable seen yet has just been made public, and it spells out how the advantages that made the Bay Area a powerhouse of entrepreneurial innovation are being directly attacked by Sacramento’s ineffectuality.
Read More
An attacker hacked seven children and one teacher to death Wednesday and wounded 20 other people in a rampage at a kindergarten in northwest China, the latest in a string of savage assaults at the country's schools.
The slayings occurred despite a countrywide boost in security at schools, with gates and security cameras ordered installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
Read More
Who’s in town
Jakob Dylan appears with his band, Three Legs, to promote his solo album “Women & Country.” [8 p.m., Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness Ave., S.F.]
Music
N'Dambi: The soul and R&B artist performs. [8 p.m., Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore St., S.F.]
Read More
San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Carlos Garcia will make his final recommendation regarding teacher layoffs to the school board at Tuesday’s meeting.
On March 15, the district sent 701 layoff notices to staff members due to state budget cuts, the superintendent’s office said. The board has until Saturday to rescind some of those layoffs, and Garcia will recommend that half of them be retracted.
Read More
San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday passed legislation denouncing a new Arizona law that requires police to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally and calling for a boycott of the state and businesses based there.
The resolution says the law “will inevitably lead to racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety, and creates a wedge between law enforcement and ethnic communities.”
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/people/rob-nagle?page=76
