The San Diego Padres suffered yet another public beating today, when Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum threw his second career no-hitter in AT&T Park.
It was, in fact, a replay of past trauma for the beleagured San Diego team. Lincecum threw his first no-hit game against the Padres in Petco Park last July, with 148 pitches as opposed to today's 113 -- which pretty much caused the Internet to explode. Fellow Giant Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter against the Padres in 2009.
Today's victory caused work stoppages throughout San Francisco, as baseball fans drifted away from their cubicles to crowd around tiny office televisions. The final pitch -- resulting in a 4-0 win for the Giants -- induced resounding cheers.
A Bay Area website that hosted escorting and massage ads and allowed clients to leave reviews has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A statement posted on MyRedbook's homepage by the FBI, Department of Justice, and Internal Revenue Service states:
This domain name is subject to both civil and criminal forfeiture. This seizure is based on probable cause to believe that this domain name was involved in money laundering derived from racketeering based on prostitution in violation of state and federal law.
Peter Lee, a spokesperson for the FBI, confirmed that arrest warrants were served today at multiple locations in the South Bay this morning.
Moms and Dads will always tell you they'd never trade parenthood for anything. Not even an awesome blue Trek mountain bike.
Of course, Alexis Preel would be delighted to have both his baby and his bike. The San Francisco father is desperate to find his mountain bike that was either stolen or lost (depending on how you read this) last week in the city's upper Market neighborhood.
Preel says he had just gotten home and, in a rush to let his son's baby sitter off duty for the night, left his bike on the sidewalk in front of his house.
Remember the bad old days of the Muni "sickout"? In a city with the institutional memory of an Etch-A-Sketch, it seems like an eternity ago. But, on June 2, some 700 Muni drivers, evidently driven to illness by what they characterize as an F.U. contract offered by management, came down simultaneously with a Monday Muni Malady and called in sick.
The result was transit hell. But the drivers who considered themselves healthy enough to show up to work received an unanticipated slice of heaven: A windfall of 12 hours worth of pay for completing their regular runs.
Around 1,100 drivers are due to receive this reward. Eventually.
Cops can no longer scour through the cell phones of people they arrest, absent a warrant or special circumstances, the Supreme Court ruled today.
Meaning: your phone now has the same Fourth Amendment protections as your house.
That's a huge victory for privacy buffs and civil libertarians, who've long argued that a phone isn't just a vessel through which we communicate -- it's also a vast cache of information, capable of storing "bookshelves worth of photo albums, and substantial medical and financial information," as lawyers for the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out in a friend-of-the-court brief.
Historically, cops have used those troves to connect the dots between suspects, and link them to other crimes. Law enforcement agencies also have special arrangements with AT&T and other carriers that allow them to collect phone records in bulk, to help prosecute drug cases.
See also: Law enforcement's secret partnership with phone companies.
Police were putting out fires again last night after three more small blazes were set to garbage and other building debris in three different neighborhoods, including the Mission, SoMa, and the Tenderloin.
Officer Gordon Shyy says police are looking into whether these three fires are the work of San Francisco's newest pyromaniac who's been setting fire to newspaper racks, garbage cans, and construction materials in the city's SoMa District over the last week. Eight fires have been set since Friday, according to police.
Yesterday, authorities released still images and a video of a possible suspect who was caught on camera inside a building.
RT @CBSSF A high-speed car chase ends in a fiery crash killing 2 in #SF. http://t.co/G5HY7tBb3B pic.twitter.com/UWeXrgc9lV
— CBS Sacramento (@CBSSacramento) June 25, 2014When traveling, it's wise to learn as much as one can about the local culture, which means identifying -- and ingesting -- the local stimulant.
Travelers to South America may encounter a tea made to help one acclimate to high altitudes that also makes you feel sharper than a razorblade. That'd be coca tea, brewed from the same leaves processed to make cocaine. In the Horn of Africa and Arabia, and in places where people from Somali or Yemen find themselves, the custom is chewing the leaves of a tree called khat, which induces an amphetamine-like euphoric high that leads to lots and lots of talking, mostly.
What a scourge. Beginning Tuesday, khat is now illegal in the U.K., and was years decades nonexistent in the U.S. But 10 years after the last bust, it's now free-flowing in the United States and particularly in California, according to VICE, though not exactly easy to find.
