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Bay Area News Group names Sarah Dussault as senior editor

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

As a 9-year-old girl, Sarah Dussault spent summer breaks running around The Mercury News newsroom where her father, a features copy editor, would hand her plastic cylinders stuffed with marked-up news pages to send with a whoosh into pneumatic tubes to the building’s type shop.“It was just the coolest thing in the world,” she said.Now, three decades later, Dussault, 45, has been named Senior Editor of the Bay Area News Group, overseeing the newsrooms of The Mercury News and East Bay Times.Bay Area News Group Senior Editor Sarah Dussault on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023, in the newsroom of The Mercury News in downtown San Jose, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) She replaces Bert Robinson, a relentless First Amendment advocate who started his journalism career as an intern at The Mercury News 40 years ago and led the news group to a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is moving to Florida to be close to family.For Dussault (pronounced Doo-sew) to earn the top job, ”it’s absolutely surreal,”...

Prep volleyball roundup: Archbishop Mitty, Burlingame, Silver Creek, Berkeley among the winners

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

No. 2 Archbishop Mitty 3, No. 3 St. Ignatius 0Archbishop Mitty rebounded from a four-game losing streak, including back-to-back losses to No. 1 St. Francis, by sweeping No. 3 St. Ignatius 13-25, 9-25, 24-26 in West Catholic Athletic League play on Tuesday night.On senior night, the Monarchs honored Jillian Pascual, Amiya Kuchibhotla, Katelyn Cook and Annabella Rando. The Monarchs improved to 19-4 and 5-2 in the WCAL.  St. Ignatius junior Carol Manu had 10 kills, and Sophia Lucas and Gianna Halteh each head five kills. Senior Logan Stern had five digs. St. Ignatius had entered the game on a four-match winning streak which included a victory over Redwood-Larkspur. No. 9 Burlingame 3, Sequoia 0Burlingame swept it’s third consecutive league opponent in the PAL Bay Division on Tuesday, improving to 7-1 in the division and staying within a game of 8-0 Menlo-Atherton. Burlingame beat Sequoia 25-17, 25-8, 25-20. Burlingame coach Hannah Korslund said Ava Scatena had 11 kills with no errors, ...

49ers’ defense seeks to prove greatness vs. Cowboys’ high-flying offense

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

SANTA CLARA — The 49ers had no intention of chasing goodness on defense in 2023.Aside from a sixth Super Bowl championship, the 49ers defensively aspire to be great. And while the defense has been an upper-echelon unit that has held up its end in a 4-0 start, stepping it up in that area would go a long way toward keeping the 49ers on track with the Dallas Cowboys in town Sunday night.“We know how good we are,” cornerback Deommodore Lenoir said Wednesday. “But we know what we’re trying to get to.”Depending on how things shake out, the 49ers may well need to be great on defense to beat Dallas. It’s not lost on the 49ers that the Cowboys are giving up the NFL’s fewest points per game at 10.3, with the 49ers tied for third at 14.5. Or that Dallas is also ranked No. 2 in terms of yards allowed with the 49ers at No. 5.The Cowboys lead the NFL with nine takeaways. The 49ers have five. Dallas has 14 sacks to nine for the 49ers.The defenses don...

Editorial: California’s shameful delays probing police killings of unarmed civilians

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

Another troubling deadly shooting by Bay Area police. Another promise by California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate. And, if history is an indicator, another case that his office will take years to resolve.This time the shooting is in Martinez. Video shows officers firing at a car as it drives away. One man, Tommy Wilson Jr., 22, was critically injured but is recovering. He had been shot twice in the back. His brother, Tahmon Wilson, 20, is dead. He had been shot in the back of the head.It’s hard to understand how firing into a moving vehicle as suspects are trying to flee can be justified. It’s hard to understand how it’s OK for an officer to shoot someone from behind. That’s why an independent investigation is so badly needed.Hours after the killings, Bonta announced that his office would conduct a probe as required by state law. The law stems from legislation that Bonta, when he was an assemblymember, and more than 40 other legislators introduced just three weeks ...

Hobby Lobby arts and crafts retailer seals deal for big San Jose store

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

SAN JOSE — Hobby Lobby has sealed a deal to lease a big chunk of store space in San Jose, a rental agreement that hints at some green shoots of economic hope in a forbidding landscape for Bay Area retail.The arts and crafts retailer has successfully capped off a wide-ranging hunt for a new location by leasing space within Almaden Plaza, a high-profile shop and restaurant complex in south San Jose.Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby has leased 62,000 square feet of “improved retail space” within Almaden Plaza, which is located at 5353 Almaden Expressway in San Jose, documents on file with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office show.It wasn’t clear which specific space in Almaden Plaza that Hobby Lobby leased. Some big sites in the shopping center could be promising possibilities, however.Related ArticlesReal Estate | Global biotech firm buys big San Jose building Real Estate | Google preps new “visitor experience” in Mount...

Bay Area woman raises the curtain on the father she didn’t know, founder of Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

Meighan Leibert and her younger brother once were fixtures at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.They weren’t actors, stagehands, directors or set designers. They were the young children of Michael Leibert, the UC Berkeley graduate student who founded the East Bay’s first resident professional theater in 1968, two years after she was born, that grew from a small storefront neighborhood company into a celebrated Tony award-winning institution known for staging innovative and edgy new work.“Growing up, we were there all the time when we were with our dad. We were in the theater, we were a part of it,” says Leibert.All of that went away when her father died at age 44 of alcoholism when she was just 17. But much more than that disappeared years before his death in 1984, which the longtime San Rafael resident details in her memoir, “The Man I Didn’t Know.”Leibert’s parents divorced when she was just 5 years old and her father disappeared from her life. Researching and writing her book was a way ...

Dead gray whale washed ashore at Seacliff State Beach

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

APTOS — A dead 1-year-old gray whale washed ashore at Seacliff State Beach this week and local experts are fighting the tumbling tide to try to better understand what may have happened to the sea creature.California State Parks spokesperson Gabe McKenna said reports of a whale washed up on the beach almost directly in line with the famous S.S. Palo Alto, or Cement Ship, came in around 5 p.m. Monday. With help from officials at the UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab Marine Mammal Stranding Network, skin and blubber samples were collected from the whale, which was estimated to be about 22-24 feet long.However, when researchers came back down to the beach early Tuesday, the rising tide had taken the carcass back out to sea where it was pulled southward toward Rio Del Mar. As of Wednesday morning, the whale was still rolling in the surfline at Rio Del Mar near where waves were breaking, according to McKenna.“It’s not common, but it’s definitely not unprecedented,” said McKenna. A dead 36-foo...

Backlog of deaths weighs down Santa Cruz County coroner’s unit

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

SANTA CRUZ — As countywide efforts to increase the availability of overdose remedies ramp up, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Unit has been weighed down by a growing backlog of deaths, many related to drug overdoses.The coroner’s unit saw a 3,150% increase in fentanyl overdose-related deaths in a four-year period, a startling statistic reported to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday when the Sheriff’s Office came seeking authorization to hire a new coroner’s investigator to assist the chief forensic pathologist.“The fentanyl crisis, we read about it day in and day out and it’s hit home,” Supervisor Bruce McPherson said before voting with the board to approve the new hire as a consent agenda item. “This is a catastrophe and we need to address it as quickly as we can, with the cooperative effort through every law enforcement agency that we have.”As opioid overdoses have skyrocketed, affecting the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Unit, countywide efforts t...

SNAP recipients expected to get boosted benefits from DC funding

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

District residents who receive government assistance to buy groceries will see a boost in benefits after the D.C. Council said it expects to spend $40 million in excess revenue in 2024 to help low-income families.D.C. will boost SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits by 10% between January and September of 2024 to help the city’s more than 145,000 recipients feed their families.At-Large Council member Christina Henderson spearheaded the proposed legislation — Give SNAP A Raise — and brought it before the Council in 2022. The bill became law in March and will go into effect next year.The boost is temporary but it will add another $20 million in direct cash assistance to workers who were unable to qualify for federal unemployment and were not given federal pandemic aid.“The question then is: Are we going to be able to find permanent funding to be able to maintain this increase in perpetuity?” Henderson told WTOP.She noted that the good news came as...

With bond-yields near 2-decade high, Wall Street’s strong 2023 starts to deflate

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:31:32 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Treasury yields surged in September and sapped the energy from a strong stock market as investors came to terms with the likelihood that interest rates will remain high well into 2024.The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences rates for mortgages and other loans, jumped past 4.50% in September and continues rising. It is at its highest level in nearly two decades. The yield on the 2-year Treasury, which tracks expectations for the Fed’s interest rate policy, jumped above 5.00% in September and also continues edging higher.“Once again, the move in rates has proven to be too much too fast for equity markets to handle,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial, in a note to investors.High bond yields make it less likely that investors will invest in riskier stocks, especially pricey technology companies. The early autumn slump in bond prices that jolted yields higher tripped up what had been a solid recovery for the S&P 500 and other...