Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

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...

The 2010 Political Season has no shortage of news, and that's true in Oakland, CA. Tonight, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums gives his State of The City address. And the behind-the-scenes-buzz is the rumor (not as of this writing denied) that Oakland Councilmember Nadel's not meeting with Oakland District Four City Council candidate Libby Schaaf. First, some important news. The City of Oakland has redesigned its website! The Beta-stage Oaklandnet.com is up and operational. That deserves a cheer and not of the Bronx kind. The City of Oakland website had become a visual and navigational mess. The new design, while it still needs a ton of help in the social network area, is a massive improvement over the old 20th Century model, and an example of what Oakland can do when it gets its act together. Bravo! Second, Mayor Ron Dellums. The good Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is set to give his 2010 State of The City Speech tonight at 5:30 PM at Oakland City Hall. The good news is th...

On the matter of the American Red Cross and the $175 million in unallocated Haiti donations, this update: there's still no word from the American Red Cross on how the $175 million in donations was handled. Initial attempts to gain an answer have been ignored as of this writing. Meanwhile, the issue is gaining attention. This blogger was on a Fairfield, Iowa radio broadcast last Friday and more radio talk shows have expressed unsolicited interested in the matter of the American Red Cross and the $175 million in unallocated Haiti donations. For background, it's simple: the American Red Cross reported it collected $225 million in donations over the first month of the Haiti Relief Effort. But of that, $80 million was spent or earmarked for Haiti. The American Red Cross does not explain what happened to $225 million minus $80 million, or $175 million? On Friday, I was on KRUU, "The Voice of Fairfield" in Fairfield, Iowa, on James Moore's Planet Erstwild...

The YouTube video channel Zennie62 has reached 12 million video views and 200,000 channel views as of Saturday, February 20th, and continuing a pattern of rapid growth that started in 2009 and has continued through 2010. Zennie62 on YouTube also has over 4,000 subscribers. The YouTube video channel Zennie62 consists over 800 videos covering everything from politics to news, sports, tech, and entertainment and celebrity gossip. Zennie62 on YouTube is connected to the blog Zennie62.com, also at Zennie2005.blogspot.com. The Zennie62 blog is the center publication of a network of 100 blogs ran by Zennie62.com, of which this blogger, Zennie Abraham, is the executive producer. The idea of Zennie62 is to bring "pure form video blogging" to the viewer. It's the simple practice of talking to the audience through a camcorder to tell a story or share a point of view, or as part of an interview with someone else. As video-blogging does not call for an elaborate set ...

Tiger Woods' speech of Friday has drawn a lot of reactions. In a video, this blogger asked viewers to give their opinion of Tiger Woods speech. While many wrote their perspectives in the comments sections, Steve Saldivar took the time to make a video-blog . Steve Saldivar says Woods could have been more honest: More people can make video blogs, like Steve Saldivar did. This, rather than just comments, is the future of media. It's also more fun. And here's the original video of my view on Tiger Woods speech: ..as well as the ongoing poll" create text & photo polls on pollsb.com