Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

Related searches: city of oakland, city and county of san francisco, california crime news, takeover robbery in san francisco, oakland eatery, restaurant news If anyone needs a sign that the economy is not what it used to be, they got one today. According to SFGate.com , a San Francisco restaurant experienced an Oakland-style robbery. Chaya Brasserie on 132 The Embarcadero was robbed by seven people, all men (no description), and all with knifes. They tied up the two people who were there at 12:15 in the morning today, Wednesday, and took money out of the cash register. This is a robbery that, in the past, as little as three years ago, would have happened in Oakland. In fact it did. In April of 2006 Grand Avenue between Lake Park (where the Grand Lake Theater is) and Mandana Avenue was haunted by a robber who first hit Smity's bar, then Bangkok Palace Restaurant. In the c ase of Bangkok Palace, one of the employees, 29-year-old Sonethavy Phomsouvandara, was shot ins...

Mariah Carey, the sultry-voiced singer and actress who performed so well in Precious , in town for a concert at the Oracle Arena Friday night, took time to thank Oakland on Twitter. This is Mariah Carey's tweet : I had so much fun last night! Thank you again Oakland! In Vegas now Baby! Come see me @ Haze @ Aria later..its about 13 hours ago via web The Oakland Tribune called the concert "flawless" and "diva-licious". That's a new one: Diva-licious. A YouTuber at the concert captured this video of Mariah Carey performing H.A.T.E.U and Hero: Stay tuned.

Related searches: UC Berkeley, student day of action, UC Regents, Cal Berkeley, Berkeley riots Very late on a Thursday night that saw Cal Basketball get to one win from the Pac-10 Title, Berkeley saw a riot: people - some students, others not - battled Berkeley police on Telegraph Avenue, not far from Haas Pavilion. According to The Daily Californian , the late night melee started as an occupation of Durant Hall as prelude to the March 4th statewide "Day of Action" and it became a fight with Berkeley and BART Police that included an estimated 200 people, burning trash cans, throwing glass jugs of wine, and damaging a retail establishment. The video below captures the scene at the point where the police formed a wall along Telegraph Avenue blocking access to the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenue. In the video, the woman was talking about how police punched her in the nose, when they just quickly arrested her as she was talking: UPDATE: ABC News vi...

Related searches: City of Oakland, Oakland, parking enforcement, car traffic, bay area parking laws, parking and racism, classism, oakland budget, california politics, oakland blogs, east oakland The latest news in the City of Oakland Parking Issue comes from an San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate report that the City of Oakland deliberately avoided issuing tickets in the Broadway Terrace and Montclair areas of Oakland, after the discovery of a July 24th memo written by City of Oakland Parking Supervisor Ronald Abernathy, Why some are surprised is a laugher to this blogger, especially since this space has been devoted to explaining that the City of Oakland was working to balance its budget on the backs of Oakland's poor, and that tickets have been issued at odd hours of the early morning. Moreover, Oakland has also worked to order new parking meters , even though the cost to obtain them is greater than the revenue return. Wake up! When will some learn that classism and raci...

The Haight Ashbury, a place in San Francisco known historically for freedom and "free love" is to get surveillance cameras because of an increase in crime, if the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association (HAIA) gets its way. According to a discussion on "The Wall", a place where San Francisco political news is regularly posted, HAIA President Ted Loewenberg made that announcement this month (February) and posted it on the organization's website . The basic message on the page reads as follows: On Wednesday, 17 February, 2010, HAIA announced the Street Safety Program, designed to help increase the public safety by increasing the presence of security systems cameras at Upper Haight merchant's storefronts. To reduce the cost to our merchants, HAIA will pay each of the first 10 merchants in the Upper Haight who respond, $100 toward the cost of a security camera / Digital Video Recorder (DVR) system. Having as many as 20 surveillance cameras watching day and...

CVS Caremark Corp is a large national corporation which operated over 7,000 US drugstores under the name CVS Pharmacy. CVS Caremar Corp, or "CVS", or "CVS Pharmacy" for this blog post, has been the focus of lawsuits by state attorney generals in Connecticut and in New York for selling expired products, according to the Boston Globe. In California, CVS Caremark was the focus of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who in June of 2009, negotiated a $975,000 settlement of a civil lawsuit with CVS Pharmacy along with an agreement to give $2 coupons to anyone who found expired products on their shelves, and designates a toll-free number to call to report such items. Now, there's a charge from a reliable source that CVS (formerly Long’s Drug stores in California) as well as Krogers, Ralphs, and other major chain stores are selling ‘diverted’ or grey market products that may counterfeited. In some cases, the claim is the California consumer is even getting ...

The matter of the unallocated $175 million in American Red Cross Haiti donations focused on earlier, finally received attention via the American Red Cross' own blog, which this blogger happened to visit Tuesday. The post, written by Gloria Huang , reads as follows: Recently, we’ve been seeing some confusion from readers and bloggers online about the allocation of funds for Haiti relief. We would like to clarify how our Haiti relief funds are being used and how we are planning for their allocation in the future. In just over a month, the American Red Cross has already spent or allocated $80 million of the $276 million donated to meet the most urgent needs of Haiti’s earthquake survivors. The $80 million allocated so far has gone towards immediate relief for Haitians – 69% for food and water, 20% for shelter, and 11% for health and family services. The remaining $196 million will be spent as the Red Cross continues to focus on finding communities and populations in need in H...