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Historic downtown San Jose office building may become housing highrise

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

SAN JOSE — The iconic Bank of Italy office tower in downtown San Jose may gain a new mission as a housing highrise, a conversion being discussed with the forbidding backdrop of an office market that continues to wobble.The concept of converting the high-profile tower to residential units could be a winner for the property, considering the shortage of housing in the Bay Area and the post-coronavirus ailments that now afflict the office market in this region.The principal owners of the landmark building have held discussions at San Jose City Hall regarding the potential concept, according to several sources, including some who have direct knowledge of the plans to convert the structure.The building is owned by an alliance of local development firm Urban Community and Westbank, a top-notch developer with a global reach. Bay Area real estate entrepreneurs Gary Dillabough and Jeff Arrillaga head up Urban Community.Dillabough, Arrillaga and Westbank declined to comment or couldnR...

‘I really do apologize’: Oakland resident gets 12 years for killing man in 2019 bar shooting

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

OAKLAND — A city resident who had been charged with killing one man and wounding another in a 2019 shooting outside a bar in Old Oakland has been sentenced to 12 years in state prison through a plea deal, court records show.Before he was sentenced, 26-year-old Deontre Brown penned a letter saying “I really do apologize” to family members of the man he killed, who decried the plea agreement as too lenient. Brown pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for the prison sentence, and prosecutors dropped murder and assault charges against him. He was formally sentenced on May 5.The victim, 42-year-old Cassius Stroman, of San Francisco, was shot and killed around 7:45 p.m. on March 10, 2019 in a parking lot in the 800 block of Washington Street, near the Liege Spirits Lounge. Witnesses testified that Stroman got into an altercation with several other patrons at the bar, after he asked a woman for her phone number and was rebuffed.Both prosecutors and the ...

14th-century Ghanian celebration of freedom comes to life in new East Bay show

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

Every year, the Anlo-Ewe people of coastal Ghana reenact the foundational story of their exodus, a flight from servitude to freedom.Known as Hogbetsotso, the ritual recounts via music and dance how their ancestors in the 14th century fled the walled city of Notsie (in present day Togo) and made their way west to the Volta region.“It’s a story you grow up with,” said CK Ladzekpo, the Ghanaian choreographer, percussionist, composer and longtime director of UC Berkeley’s African music program.Hailing from an illustrious family of artists and cultural practitioners, Ladzekpo also been a creative force at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, which is where he’s premiering “Hogbetsotso — Day of Crossing Over,” June 10 and 11. Distilling the Anlo-Ewe rituals he absorbed as a youth, the production was made possible due to a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission in Folk and Traditional Arts.Thinking back on the elaborate celebration, Ladzekpo has come to see that the primary m...

Disneyland gets jaw-dropping Groot robot ready for Guardians of the Galaxy dance party

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

A top-secret project that has been under wraps for years could soon be revealed in Avengers Campus as Walt Disney Imagineering inches closer to pushing a jaw-dropping Groot robot out into Disney California Adventure to take part in a Guardians of the Galaxy dance party.Disneyland is conducting play tests of technology from the Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development team for select theme park visitors who are shown a short presentation of the Groot audio-animatronic character.Imagineering’s Project Kiwi version of the Young Groot audio-animatronic may be coming to Avengers Campus this summer, according to MiceChat.The Marvel superhero on the team of intergalactic mercenaries in the “Guardian of the Galaxy” films is a gentle, kind and childlike extraterrestrial tree-like creature who says only one thing: “I am Groot.”The most logical place to test out robot Groot: Next to the Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout in DCA’s Avengers Campus. The behind-the-scenes play ...

‘Ten years of stolen life can’t simply be brushed off’: After overturned Oakland murder convictions and charges against detective, two men sue OPD

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

OAKLAND — Two Bay Area men who spent years behind bars for faulty murder convictions are suing the Oakland Police Department and a detective who admitted he paid a key witness after previously denying she’d received financial assistance, court records show.The lawsuit, filed Thursday by Giovante Douglas and Cartier Hunter, accuses Oakland police Detective Phong Tran of obtaining convictions against both men by paying off a witness and committing “clear perjury” to cover it up. The suit says both men spent close to a decade in jail and prison, until their convictions were quietly overturned by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 2022.Tran was charged in April with multiple felony charges, including perjury and bribery. The criminal complaint alleges Tran lied under oath when he denied making payments to Aisha Weber, the woman who would testify she witnessed the 2011 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Charles Butler Jr., and implicated both men by...

San Mateo catfisher who posed as 15-year-old girl sentenced to prison

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

(KRON) -- A catfisher who posed as a 15-year-old girl to lure pre-teen boys over social media was sentenced to serve four years in state prison. A San Mateo County judge ordered Wai Kit Ching, 32, of San Mateo, to immediately report to prison following Wednesday's sentencing hearing. Ching was living in San Mateo when he created fake social media profiles posing as a teenage girl, according to prosecutors. Between 2019 and 2020, Ching "enticed five different male victims aged 12-14 to send him videos of them masturbating. His Instagram account and home computer revealed a large amount of child pornography," prosecutors wrote. Detectives with the San Mateo Police Department seized Ching's computers and discovered that several boys had been victimized. Catfishing is a type of online romance scam in which a person pretends to be someone else using fake photos and personas. "Romance scams occur when a criminal adopts a fake online identity to gain a victim’s affection and trust," t...

Bay Area real estate value is fastest dropping in the nation, report says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- Real estate values across much of the Bay Area are the fastest dropping in the nation, according to a recent report from RealEstateAgents.com. The report, released late last month, identified the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward market and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market as the no. 1 and no. 2 fastest dropping markets in the country in terms of real estate values over the past year. More trouble for downtown SF as owner of Hilton, Parc 55 cease payments on hotel properties The study compared median home prices for single-family homes between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2022.The SF-Oakland-Hayward market saw a 6.10% decrease in value, with median home sale prices dropping from $1,310,000 in Q4 of 2021 to $1,230,000 in Q4 of 2022, the report said. The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market saw a 5.8% decline over the same time period, with media prices going from $1,675,000 to $1,577,000.The report cites people leaving the SF Bay Ar...

Funded by Dark Money, Chris Rufo’s Nonprofit Stokes the Far Right’s Culture War

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

In the trailer for one of Christopher Rufo’s early documentaries, a shot of a rural villager driving a donkey cart cuts to scenes of a downtown Chinese cityscape, then a baseball diamond. “Two cultures in Western China are in deep conflict. Living in complete segregation, can they put aside their differences in the name of baseball?” the narrator asks. “Diamond in the Dunes,” a PBS documentary Rufo directed in 2009, serves as a reminder of the radical transformation the young filmmaker turned far-right activist has undergone in the past several years. Long gone are the days when Rufo championed the coming together of Uyghurs and ethnic Chinese in a campy multiculturalist tribute to America’s favorite pastime. Today, Rufo is credited as the main architect of conservatives’ weaponization of critical race theory, using his skills as a director and investigative researcher to stoke panic in the GOP base, while simultaneously using critical race theory as a catalyst to introdu...

Smoke from wildfires, a fact of life in the West, catch outdoor workers off guard in the East

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The hazardous haze from Canada’s wildfires is taking its toll on people whose jobs have forced them outdoors along the U.S. East Coast even as a dystopian orange hue led to the cancelation of sports events, school field trips and Broadway plays. Delivery workers, construction workers, railroad and airport employees, farm laborers on the West Coast have become all too familiar with the hazards that come with massive wildfires. Yet in the East a sun jaundiced by smoke is so novel, many workers had no idea what was happening. Some, unprepared for the effects of smoke inhalation, left their jobs midday unable to carry on as the air quality worsened. Most, however, pushed through in the hopes that the skies would clear. They haven’t. A laggardly weather system has settled over the region and the smoky blanket billowing from wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia continued Thursday, and may persist into the weekend.New York City Public Schools announced Thursday t...

Mentally ill or deliberate killer? Trial starts for man charged with killing Massachusetts officer

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:26:30 GMT

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — The prosecutor in the murder trial of a man charged with killing a Massachusetts police officer and an innocent bystander nearly five years ago told jurors in opening statements on Thursday that the suspect acted with deliberation when he used the officer’s own gun to shoot him multiple times.The defense, however, described a defendant who has spent years struggling with mental illness made worse by frequent marijuana use, who wasn’t taking his medications, and who in the days before the killings was having a dispute with his longtime on-and-off girlfriend.Emanuel Lopes, 25, faces 11 charges, including two counts of murder, in connection with the killings of Weymouth police Sgt. Michael Chesna, 42, a veteran and married father of two, and bystander Vera Adams, a 77-year-old widow, on July 15, 2018. He has pleaded not guilty.“We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lopes shot and killed Sgt. Michael Chesna, shot and killed Vera Adams, and shot at...