OH NOT AGAIN: California Gym Teacher Corine Audiat Busted for ‘Unlawful Oral Copulation’ with Boy from her High School
Posted: December 4, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Education, U.S. News | Tags: Chief of police, child molestation, Computer, Contra Costa Times, KPIX-TV, Oral sex, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle, Sexual Misconduct Leave a commentHer rap includes charges of contacting a minor for sex, sending harmful material to a minor with sexual intent and misdemeanor child molestation.
Tobias Salinger reports: A married 32-year-old California gym teacher and swim coach had sex with a boy who goes to her East Bay area high school, police said.
“This is an unfortunate situation that we are sure has generated anxiety and many questions within our community.”
Washington High School teacher Corine (Cory) Audiat was charged Wednesday with six felony sex crimes, including unlawful sex and oral copulation with a minor, according to Fremont police. School officials placed her on unpaid leave and said she would never teach in the district again.
Audiat and the teen carried on months of private conversations this year that became more and more inappropriate until they had sex, investigators said. Police arrested her on Thanksgiving.
“This case is a very unfortunate situation for our community,” Fremont police said in a statement. They asked members of the public to assist in keeping the victim’s identity confidential and to contact investigators with any information they may know about the case.

Officials at Washington High School in Fremont, Calif., said Audiat would never work at the school or in the district again. (CBS SF BAY AREA)
Police said they had received a tip the day before Thanksgiving about Audiat’s affair with the boy. Detectives said they quickly tracked the messages between her and the teen starting earlier this year and arrested her the following day.
Both police and Fremont Unified School District Superintendent Jim Morris said investigators do not believe there were any other victims, KPIX-TV reported. Washington High administrators notified parents of Audiat’s arrest in a letter Thursday promising to make counseling available. Read the rest of this entry »
Journalists Hail Castro’s Achievements, ‘George Washington,’ ‘Folk Hero to Most of Us’
Posted: November 26, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Andrea Mitchell, CNN, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Fulgencio Batista, Little Havana, Miami, MSNBC, President of Cuba, Raúl Castro, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco Chronicle Leave a comment
“Castro ‘was considered, even to this day, the George Washington of his country among those who remain in Cuba’.”
Along a similar theme, in an ABC Special Report during Nightline, Jim Avila maintained that “even Castro’s critics praised his advances in health care and in education.”
In a relatively tough report on Castro’s abuses, CNN’s Martin Savidge, in a pre-recorded bio piece, highlighted how “many saw positives, education and health care for all, racial integration.”
[More, media’s worst from the MRC archive as collected by Rich Noyes: “Fidel’s Flatterers: The U.S. Media’s Decades of Cheering Castro’s Communism”]
A meandering Brian Williams popped up by phone on MSNBC to ruminate and recalled how in his last visit to Cuba, in 2015: “You see the medicine system they are very proud of.”
ABC’s Avila went so far as to tout how Castro “was considered, even to this day, the George Washington of his country among those who remain in Cuba.”
Reminiscing about his high school years, via phone on MSNBC, Chris Matthews asserted that Castro was Read the rest of this entry »
Rock in the Suburbs: Why Punk Moved Out of the City and Into the Cul-De-Sac
Posted: October 7, 2016 Filed under: Art & Culture, Economics, Entertainment, History | Tags: Epitaph Records, K Records, Kill Rock Stars, LoBot, Melbourne, Music, Olympia Washington, punk, Punk rock, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Rosa, Seattle, the Dead Kennedys, The Guardian, The Know, The Smell Leave a commentWith unaffordable Progressive Disneyland hell-hole cities like San Francisco’s predictable cost-of-living increases and perverse real estate inflation driving out all but the wealthy and well-connected, the bright lights don’t beckon young punks like they used to.
Shows like that are increasingly common in Santa Rosa, and it has a lot to do with the prohibitive cost-of-living in nearby San Francisco. “I had every intention of moving down to the city,” said Ian O’Connor, 23, who organized the gig.
[Read the full story here, at The Guardian]
“But when the time came, it was too expensive.” Instead, in the last three years, he has booked dozens of all-ages gigs in Santa Rosa, mostly at unofficial venues: detached garages, living rooms, lobbies of sympathetic businesses. The scene thrives on the participation of people like him, area natives in their early 20s who, not so many years ago, would’ve likely moved an hour south to Oakland or San Francisco.
O’Connor stressed that though Santa Rosa is relatively affordable, the local punk scene faces challenges that cities with established reputations lack. “If you’re in the big city, you can sort of just jump into the stream,” he explained. “If you’re in a small town, you have to get down on your hands and knees and dig a ditch so that the water can run.”
“I had every intention of moving down to the city. But when the time came, it was too expensive.”
— Ian O’Connor
One hallmark of punk’s inception in the Bay Area and throughout the Pacific northwest was the notion of cities as places of possibility, so hollowed out by eroding tax bases and selective civic neglect that they seemed “deserted and forgotten”, as music journalist Jon Savage wrote of his 1978 trip to report on San Francisco punk bands such as Crime and the Dead Kennedys. “It was there to be remapped.”
But with the same cities stricken by intensifying affordability crises – premiums on space that make somewhere to live, let alone rehearse and perform, available to a dwindling few – they don’t beckon young punks like they used to. And though reports of music scenes’ deaths tend to overstate, news of shuttering venues (see eulogies for The Smell, The Know, and LoBot) deters some of the intrepid transplants needed for invigoration. Dissipating metropolitan allure, however, helps account for the strength of scenes in outlying towns.
“The people who before just came to the shows are now setting them up. It’s been pretty astounding in terms of genuine participation…We could move and struggle somewhere else, but I think there’s a lot of people who’d like to see Santa Rosa become something like Olympia.”
— Ben Wright
In Santa Rosa, Acrylics are at the center of things. The five-piece, which recently announced a forthcoming record on leading west coast punk label Iron Lung, boasts a lashing and cantankerous sound, with staccato turnarounds and nervy guitar leads. They share members with a constellation of groups, including tightly wound punk outfit Fussy; sturdy hardcore units Rut and Service; and the dynamic noise-rock band OVVN.
“People in Olympia don’t think moving to a bigger city would be daunting – just dumb. Why pay five times the rent?”
“The people who before just came to the shows are now setting them up,” said Ben Wright, 24, who recorded recent releases by most of the aforementioned groups and plays guitar in Acrylics. “It’s been pretty astounding in terms of genuine participation… We could move and struggle somewhere else, but I think there’s a lot of people who’d like to see Santa Rosa become something like Olympia.”
Scott Young, 28, grew up in the Pacific northwest and moved to Olympia, Washington, in 2006. Until recently, he played bass in Gag, a winkingly scabrous hardcore band that’s lately influenced the genre significantly. Corey Rose Evans, 23, moved to Olympia from the Bay Area in 2010 to attend Evergreen State College and eventually joined both Vexx, a raucous foursome composed of inventive, tactile instrumentalists and a mightily expressive singer; and G.L.O.S.S. (“Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit”), a blistering and bold hardcore outfit that foregrounds transgender issues and skewers reformist politics. The scene is decidedly autonomous, centered around small labels and self-organized gigs. Read the rest of this entry »
Recovery Efforts in Napa Continue after a Magnitude 6.0 Earthquake
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, U.S. News | Tags: American Canyon California, California, Earthquake, Napa, Napa California, Napa County California, Northern California, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, United States Geological Survey 1 CommentRecovery efforts in #Napa continue after a magnitude 6.0 #earthquake caused serious damage and injuries. Latest @ 11 pic.twitter.com/xD8T0h1GJo
— Robert Holguin (@ABC7Robert) August 25, 2014
Historic Downtown Napa Bore the Brunt of the Blow Struck by a Magnitude 6.0 Earthquake
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: American Canyon California, California, Napa, Napa California, Napa County California, Northern California, San Francisco Bay Area, United States Geological Survey 1 CommentHistoric downtown #Napa bore the brunt of the blow struck by a magnitude 6.0 #earthquake #mapit pic.twitter.com/xbZnqbfuut
— Robert Holguin (@ABC7Robert) August 24, 2014
Wine Bottle Body Count Mounts at Silver Oak Winery North of Napa in Wake of Quake
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Food & Drink, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: American Canyon California, Earthquake, Napa, Napa Cellars, Napa County California, San Francisco Bay Area, Silver Oak Cellars, United States Geological Survey 1 CommentSpill the Wine: Some of the damage done at Silver Oak Winery north of #Napa in wake of major #earthquake #mapit pic.twitter.com/kY4RskWDJK
— Robert Holguin (@ABC7Robert) August 24, 2014
Napa Resident Describes Earthquake Destruction
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, U.S. News | Tags: California, Fire chief, KABC, Mobile home, Napa, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, world 2 Comments
The quake caused six significant fires and destroyed four mobile homes, Napa Division Fire Chief Darren Drake said. Firefighting efforts were complicated by broken water mains.
“Unfortunately, the earthquake knocked out several water mains, and when the fire department arrived, they had no water pressure. We do have two swimming pools in the community and they were able to safen water out of the pool into their truck and come back several times to fight the fire behind my house,” the unidentified resident said… (more)
Northern California Wine Country Rocked by Magnitude 6.0 Earthquake
Posted: August 24, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, U.S. News | Tags: American Canyon California, Associated Press, California, Napa, Napa County California, San Francisco Bay Area, Sonoma County California, United States Geological Survey 1 CommentA magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit northern California’s San Francisco Bay area Sunday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Leslie Gordon of the USGS says the tremor struck just before 3:30 a.m. Sunday about 10 miles northwest of American Canyon, which is about 6 miles southwest of Napa. The USGS says it’s the largest tremor to shake the Bay Area since the 1989 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta quake, which reportedly led to 63 deaths.
“There’s fires, debris all over the streets, everywhere.”
Three people were seriously injured and nearly 90 patients have been treated at one hospital.
The city of Napa said in a statement Sunday that two adults and one child have critical injuries and Queen of the Valley hospital in Napa has treated 87 people. Hospital spokesman Vanessa DeGier says most patients have cuts, bumps, bruises. Read the rest of this entry »
The New War On Single Family Homes
Posted: November 26, 2013 Filed under: Reading Room, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Association of Bay Area Governments, Bay Area, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Obama administration, Randal O'Toole, San Francisco Bay Area, Single-family detached home, United States 2 CommentsDo Single-Family Homes Threaten the Planet?
Randal O’Toole and Damien M. Schiff report: A plan to squeeze most residents of the San Francisco Bay Area into multifamily housing offers a test case of whether land-use bureaucracies nationwide, encouraged by the Obama administration, should be allowed to transform American lifestyles under the pretext of combating climate change.
Currently, 56 percent of households in the nine-county Bay Area live in single-family homes. That number would drop to 48 percent by 2030, under a high-density development blueprint called Plan Bay Area, recently enacted by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
“Decreeing radical lifestyle changes for average Americans is expensive, intrusive and ineffective.”
Plan Bay Area has already drawn several legal challenges, and the debate could spread nationwide if, as may happen, it becomes a model for regulators in other parts of the country.
Owning a single-family home has long been part of the American dream, but Plan Bay Area embraces a dramatically different vision of the ideal community: crowded rows of high-rises and mass-transit platforms.
[VIDEO] Rewind: Batkid saves San Francisco
Posted: November 16, 2013 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Batman, Damsel in distress, Gotham City, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Recreation, Riddler, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area Leave a commentToo good not to share again…
Feelgood story of the day – Hot Air
Breaking: Riddler Arrested! Batkid Miles Scott Saves San Francisco’s Gotham City in Epic Display of Crime-Fighting Bravery
Posted: November 15, 2013 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere | Tags: Batkid, Batman, Gotham City, Miles Scott, Penguin, Riddler, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, YouTube Leave a comment[See Full Coverage of the Batkid at CBS]
San Francisco has transformed into Gotham City today to help make a 5-year-old boy’s Make-A-Wish dream come true.
Miles loves superheroes, none more so than Batman. Much like Batman battles villains, Miles has been fighting his own battle with leukemia since he was just a year old. Miles is now in remission and he is getting his chance to be Batkid for a day with the help of Make-A-Wish of the Greater Bay Area, city of San Francisco and hundreds of well-wishers.
“This wish has meant closure for our family and an end to over three years of putting toxic drugs in our son’s body” Miles’ mom Natalie said.
Miles’ day will start with ABC7 News anchor Ama Daetz alerting BatKid that there’s trouble in Gotham City. Miles will spend the day battling some of Gotham’s most notorious criminals before receiving a special thank you from Mayor Ed Lee. Ama sat down with Miles Scott and his family ahead of the big day.
Make-A-Wish is inviting the public to participate in the day’s events by joining Miles to cheer him on as a flashmob warns Batkid that the Penguin has kidnapped Lou Seal and when he is presented the key to the city at City Hall.