You can always count on San Francisco for intense drama.
A San Francisco man put up a serious fight against police yesterday evening, hoping the cops would kill him in his elaborate plan to commit suicide. According to police, it all started when the suspect banged on his neighbor's door, then punched her in the face when she opened it.
The building manager tried to intervene, but the suspect assaulted him, too. The drama spilled out onto the building's third floor, where the suspect kicked the manager several times. When another person intervened on this attack, the building manager ran off, but the suspect followed him into the street, where he hit him several times with a belt, police said.
The suspect then came back to the apartment only to stir up more trouble.
A San Francisco federal grand jury has charged five people and several companies -- some located in the Bay Area -- with espionage and selling American trade secrets to help companies in China quickly flourish.
According to the indictment, China decided that it wanted to develop chloride-route titanium dioxide (TiO2) production capabilities, without investing the time and research. TiO2 is a commercially valuable white pigment used to color paint, plastics, and paper. To quickly pave the way for this development, companies controlled by China conspired to illegally obtain the TiO2 technology that had already been developed by the U.S.-based E.I.du Pont de Nemours & Company, also known as DuPont.
The companies used their employees, who obtained the TiO2 trade secrets and then allegedly sold trade secrets to the Pangang Group to help it develop large-scale chloride-route TiO2 production in China, including 10,000 planned factories.
In exchange, the companies and their employees received in excess of $20 million, according to the indictment.
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi regained the right to see his 2-year-old son in family court today, overcoming a protective order that a judge had issued after domestic-violence charges were filed against him last month.
According to an agreement between Mirkarimi and his wife and alleged abuse victim, Eliana Lopez, Mirkarimi will be able to see his son without supervision for two hours daily and up to six hours on the weekend. Mirkarimi said he planned to see the boy, Theo, today.
"I can't tell you how excited and gratified I am. This has been a tortuous process," Mirkarimi said on the steps of the civil courthouse on McAllister Street today, appearing to choke back tears before a throng of reporters. Holding aloft a small toy fire engine he said he planned to give to Theo, Mirkarimi added, "I'm just so hungry to see my son. I'm going to gobble him up."
When it comes to food, a hungry man isn't much different than a hungry lion.
A 50-year-old man was taken into custody yesterday morning after he barricaded himself inside his Bayview apartment threatening to harm himself over a piece of chicken.
According to Sgt. Daryl Fong, the man became perturbed, believing that someone in his apartment complex had eaten his chicken. The man armed himself with knives and proceeded to walk throughout the complex, looking for the person who "ate his chicken."
"He just got mad over his chicken," Fong said.
If all goes well and the paperwork is signed, The Bay Citizen newsroom will be handed over to the Center of Investigative Reporting within 30 days as part of an overall merger to bolster the Bay Area's in-depth news coverage.
While a merger is supposed to bring out the best of both organizations, combining money, sources, and technology, it also means combining staff, which is exactly what has The Bay Citizen newsroom feeling out of sorts over this pending merger. Already, the online paper -- which launched in 2009 -- has had trouble finding its place in the media world, not to mention, it's been a revolving door of leadership; its current editor-in-chief Steve Fainaru is stepping down tomorrow.
Needless to say, sources inside the newsroom tell us that the imminent change and "shit communication" between higher-ups and the staff has them feeling a bit "freaked out" by what's coming down the pike.
After reading the good -- no, great! -- news yesterday morning that a federal appeals court ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional, same-sex couples and supporters flooded the LGBT Center on Market and Octavia to celebrate the court's decision that "Prop. 8 serves no purpose."
Take a look at these happy faces:
But these facts remain: A tourist from Washington, D.C., Dionette Cherney, is dead; Ang knowingly broke the law, and ultimately that act killed her. In my mind, he needs to do some time if for no reason than to send the message that breaking the law and killing people in San Francisco is not to be tolerated, whether you do it with a bicycle, car, or bus.
