By Kate Bennett, CNN

(CNN) — In her hotel suite at the Intercontinental in San Francisco last weekend, Jill Biden spontaneously scraped a prepared fundraising pitch she was set to give later that day.

There was something else on her mind — Biden had awoken that morning to the news in Ukraine, growing ever more concerning as Russia escalated its attacks against civilians. She reached for a pencil, grabbed a pad of paper and started to write down her thoughts, according to two people familiar with Biden’s activities.

The words she wrote down later ended up in a speech to benefactors at a private home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood that was raw with the uncertainty of the moment.

“We don’t know where it’s going to go. We just don’t know. And we’re all just holding our breath, aren’t we? That something, some answer will come so that we don’t get into this world war. It’s unbelievable, right? To think that that could happen in our lifetime,” she said, the paper in front of her dabbled with handwritten margin notes and cross-throughs. “I just have to turn on the TV every morning and pray that Zelensky is still alive.”

A White House official tells CNN Biden has yet to initiate one-on-one contact with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska due to deep security concerns but would not confirm whether any communication had already occurred from Zelenska to Biden.

CNN has reached out to the East Wing for comment on this story.

In Biden’s San Francisco remarks at the private event, she expressed her concern for the people of Ukraine, and for her husband as he balances incoming information, decisions and negotiations.

“The phone just never stops ringing, all through the night,” she said of the wee hours in the White House Executive Residence. “And Joe is up, trying to help solve this crisis.”

Biden has the only 24/7 perspective on how the situation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion is affecting President Joe Biden. Unlike their predecessors, the first couple share a bedroom in the White House, and when there is a so-called “3 am phone call,” the first lady is up, too.

“Her biggest role is being his sounding board,” said another person with knowledge of the Bidens’ relationship, and his reliance on her advice and counsel.

The couple talk every morning, no matter where they are, often by telephone. The calls, the person said, can last several minutes and no topic is off-limits. Married for more than 40 years, those familiar with the first couple confirm to CNN that Joe Biden does not like to be apart from his wife for more than two consecutive nights; a three- or four-night stretch is sometimes unavoidable, but not preferable.

When she has to be away, the first lady is often serving as the President’s emotional emissary, as she was in San Francisco, attending the memorial service of Richard Blum, longtime friend of the Bidens and husband to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. However, on a three-day domestic trip this week, which took the first lady to Arizona, Nevada and Kentucky, Biden made a pivot to political and policy messenger, reiterating the themes of the President’s State of the Union address.

She talked up the American Rescue Plan, childcare, education, job training and the cancer Moonshot. But Ukraine crept in.

Near Reno, Nevada, while touring a community college, Biden said during her remarks that she had constant concern for the people of Ukraine.

“This has just been so shocking to all of us,” Biden said, before shifting back to her hype-woman role for her husband. “In the face of uncertainty, he is unshakable, and I hope you saw that in the State of the Union and when he was on yesterday when he was talking about the oil embargo.”

But by Wednesday night, at her last stop of the trip at Fort Campbell — the Army base in Kentucky that is home to the 101st Airborne — Biden had almost entirely given up the pretext she should, or could, talk to the assembled military and their families about anything other than the war waging in Ukraine.

The first lady had tackled on the Fort Campbell stop as the finale of her trip at the last minute, after realizing many of the troops the President was planning to send to Poland, shoring up an eastern NATO ally, could come from this base. Many of the people she was speaking to at the barbeque event — which attempted a festive mood, offering mac ‘n cheese, pulled pork and chicken, green beans and salad — had recently seen off loved ones for a deployment no one yet knows how long want last.

“You’re doing the hard stuff. Sure, they’re doing the hard stuff … but you’re keeping it all together for your loved one,” Biden said. “You didn’t have time to say that long goodbye.”

She also vocalized her distaste the Russian President.

“We are holding Putin accountable for his war through diplomacy with crippling sanctions. We are providing Ukraine with economic, humanitarian, and security assistance. And the Screaming Eagles are there in Europe, standing with our allies and welcoming Ukrainian refugees,” she said, using the nickname and motto for the base’s airborne division. “When you want it done, ask the 101!”

Biden’s emotional and political pleas for support for her husband’s policies and decisions as world watches in horror at the bloody invasion are just another curveball in her tenure as first lady. One year in and Biden has had to deal with almost unprecedented catastrophe: a global pandemic, a country divided over vaccine and mask mandates, economic decline and the slow trudge back to fiscal and functioning normalcy.

And now, was.

“There are moments when we suddenly realize that history is being written in front of us — when we can almost feel ourselves cross the line that will divide our world into ‘before’ and ‘after,’” said Biden at Fort Campbell. “This is one of those moments.”

The CNN Wire
& © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

The post ‘Cellphone simply by no means stops ringing:’ Jill Biden offers San Francisco viewers perception into husband’s dealing with of Ukraine appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Feb 23, 2022

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Andrew Kennelly/Getty Images

Traffic on the Bay Bridge was brought to a halt Tuesday night after a rogue firework display, launched from the upper deck, lit up the sky.

someone just set fireworks off on the bay bridge pic.twitter.com/4VTNMrq2xF

— Jay (@chicitysports) February 23, 2022

California Highway Patrol said in a statement that 10 to 15 cars stopped in the westbound lane near Treasure Island at around 7:45 pm The drivers got out of their vehicles and lit the fireworks before moving on after a few minutes. Fireworks are illegal in San Francisco and Oakland. CHP reported that 911 calls flooded emergency dispatch operators during the stunt.

The elaborate display was caught and shared across social media by onlookers and drivers on the bridge caught in the brief gridlock.

Bay Bridge Delay: tonight people on the bay bridge being blocked while others are shooting fireworks just right now? SMH #bayareafirefighter @KTVU pic.twitter.com/Sfi5e2C0gn

— Bay Area Firefighter (@bayareafire343) February 23, 2022

Some users, and those stuck in traffic, voiced their surprise and frustration, while others celebrated the chaos. “No idea why there were fireworks from the bay bridge, just happy they happened,” Twitter user Ryan Gross wrote. “Life is so damn good, keep it coming!”

No idea why there were fireworks from the bay bridge, just happy they happened.

Life is so damn good, keep it coming! pic.twitter.com/7s3ylaTDfW

— Ryan Gross (@r2gross) February 23, 2022

It’s not yet known who set off the fireworks, and no arrests were made. This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

SFGATE Deputy Managing Editor Andrew Chamings was formerly Senior Editor at The Bold Italic and has written for The Atlantic, Vice and McSweeney’s.

The post Unlawful firework show stops visitors on the San Francisco Bay Bridge appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Work on the $ 100 million repair of the Millennium Tower has halted as engineers scramble to discover why the building suddenly plummeted an inch in just a few weeks since construction began, the NBC Bay Area investigative unit has learned.

The “Rundumpfahl-Upgrade” project – paid for as part of a settlement to a massive legal dispute over the listed concrete high-rise – is intended to support the foundation along the Missions and Fremont streets to prevent further settlement on the northwest corner.

After years of planning, in May the crews began drilling the first dozen of the three-foot-wide holes – each lined with steel sleeves – at a depth of about 30 meters. According to the plan, the crews would next sink up to 52 two-foot wide concrete piles through these steel sleeves an additional 30 feet into the bedrock.

A new bedrock-supported foundation shelf would then be attached to the old submerged foundation, which was a 10-foot concrete mat supported by 950 piles not attached to the rock.

There are more problems with San Francisco’s upscale and troubled Millennium Tower. The construction project to stabilize the sinking and crooked skyscraper was suddenly stopped this week. Investigative reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken, who followed the saga from the beginning, has more.

When foundation work began in May, the tower was sloped a little more than 17 inches at the top – with a subsidence rate that, according to engineers, seemed to have slowed over time.

But shortly after drilling began to drill the first dozen of the 36-inch-wide tubing for the piles along Fremont St., monitoring data received from the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit in June showed apparent acceleration in both Sinking of the tower as well as when tilting to the west.

As of mid-August, data shows the foundation has sunk a full inch deeper since work began, resulting in a slope of up to five inches more at the top, resulting in a 22-inch slope towards Fremont and Mission .

In light of the latest data, the Millennium Tower Association informed local residents late Monday that further pile installation would be put on hold amid “an increased subsidence rate” as a total of 39 piles are pinned as part of the 52 piles.

The association informed residents that the planning team had decided to stop further stake installation on Mission Street out of “an excess of caution” as this “serves to better understand the cause and how to deal with it”.

“The building has not suffered any material damage,” the association assured residents, “and it will remain absolutely safe.”

The designers billed the fix not only as a stabilization of the tower but also as a partial straightening over time. The association says engineers in the meantime are looking for ways to mitigate the new settlement before work resumes. Doug Elmets, spokesman for the association, had no further comment on Tuesday beyond the letter to local residents on Monday.

David Williams, an Oakland-based structural engineer who specializes in foundations and bridges, said the latest dip and dip data was “worrying.”

“The trend is very worrying, the fact that they have reactivated the settlements,” he said, adding that the problem emerged so briefly after the crews had drilled only halfway to the bedrock.

“It is very risky to play around with something as complex as the foundation of this structure and not understand what is happening.”

Describing the project’s temporary halt, he added that if not stopped, the settlement threatens to inflict “undue damage” on the structure over time.

The post New Tilting Stops $100 Million Repair of San Francisco’s Millennium Tower – NBC Bay Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

By David M. Greenwald

San Francisco, CA – In a comprehensive proposal for a directive, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office last week tabled a proposal for a directive to the Department of Police Accountability (DPA) aimed at ending racist traffic controls in San Francisco.

Churches across the country have sought to change the way policing works in the year since George Floyd was assassinated. So far, the city of Berkeley has taken one of the more far-reaching measures to prevent police from conducting low-level traffic controls, which are often purportedly. The San Francisco proposal would go one step further.

Low-level traffic controls are “often preferred,” the guidelines say, and “are used to harass black drivers and pedestrians.

“Almost every motorist or pedestrian, if observed long enough, will commit a minor traffic violation, ”the directive says. “A traffic control can then be a way for officers to examine the driver or passengers for evidence of otherwise unobtrusive criminal activity.”

And yet stops like this, ostensible stops, are perfectly legal and “sanctioned for more than 25 years” by the 1996 Supreme Court decision, Defense against the United States.

However, research has shown that while these types of traffic controls, while annoying and disruptive to colored communities, are largely ineffective in detecting actual crimes and can lead to escalation, violence and even police murders.

“Sandra Bland, Daunte Wright, Rayshard Wright, Philando Castile, Walter Scott and Sam Dubose should all still be alive. All were killed by the police because ordinary traffic controls that do not involve criminal offenses, ”wrote the public defender’s office.

From 2015 to 2019, there were at least 135 unnamed black men and women killed by police during such stops.

However, the data shows: “While traffic stops can be fatal for black men and women, traffic stops for civil servants are rarely fatal. A recent comprehensive study found that one officer died for each 6.5 million traffic controls, which undermines the accepted narrative that traffic controls are inherently dangerous for officers. “

Meanwhile, “low-level traffic surveillance is doing little to reduce crime in general. Studies show that police violations and offenses have hardly any verifiable effects on the reduction of crime, but bring considerable disadvantages with them. “

Frank Baumgartner, who studies police and police tactics, describes such traffic controls as “a strategy with a needle in a haystack” for the detection of crime and thus becomes “an unbelievable waste of effort”.

A recent study from Nashville in collaboration with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab (SCPL) came to a similar conclusion. That report found that while a disproportionate number of blacks were stopped at proactive traffic stops in Nashville, such stops rarely resulted in arrests or the recovery of drugs and weapons.

“Of 1,000 immovable violations, just over two percent (or 21) resulted in arrest or recovery of drugs or other contraband. Another 61 stops (6.1 percent) resulted in a non-drug charge, ”the SCPL report said.

The report concluded that as there are no benefits, all social costs should be avoided altogether.

The San Francisco Policy Document argues that “All in all, there is little logical connection between improving public safety and enforcing some low traffic laws. “

The SF report concludes: “Pretext stops harm relationships with communities, waste resources and, far too often, lead those already fearful of law enforcement to flee, leading to unnecessary violence or violence. The purported stops may lead to further investigations unrelated to the traffic stop – such as issues related to probation or probation status – that disproportionately affect color communities and have been banned in other local jurisdictions. “

What traffic controls do well, however, is “to smuggle people of color into the criminal justice system”.

You write, “Research shows that purported stops play an oversized role in ensuring that “driving while black” remains an unfortunate reality in the United States and increases the opportunities for racial profiling. “

In addition, “the failure of the court to convict it contributes to decisions like Words. Even with control of location, time of day, and other factors, blacks are still stopped and searched more often than whites in the same area because officials’visible clues to determine the likelihood of a crime. . . which lead to too much focus on young men of color. ‘”

San Francisco reflects the state and nation in overwhelming color communities through traffic controls.

The data on how blacks are affected is revealing:

• Blacks make up less than 5% of the population of San Francisco, but they account for 29% of all stops and 40% of all searches.
• In the first three months of 2020 prior to the on-site placement, SFPD officials stopped black San Franciscans at 5 times the frequency of white San Franciscans and searched them at 12 times the frequency of white San Franciscans.
• The Bayview district, which also has a high concentration of black residents, had the highest percentage of stops that resulted in searches.
• Blacks were searched 50% more often than whites because of “officer safety”.

In order to “minimize the disproportionate damage and communities of violence from color experiences due to the way SFPD officers enforce traffic laws,” there are three main suggestions.

First, eliminating the “quality of the hitchhiking”.

“Quality of the car” stops “focusing on what a car looks like and not on the behavior of the driver and is misdirected.” They find that the costs are “heavy” because cars are due to unpaid tickets, expired registrations and huge accrued fines to be towed away.

“The financial burden hits black households that are victims of a“ quality of the car ”stop,” they note.

Their solution is to ban searches and custodial arrests for license plate violations, registration processes that are less than six months old, broken taillights, tinted windows, and items hanging from rearview mirrors.

Second, they call for the abolition of low-level enforcement of jaywalking and similar violations, which research shows “excessive police violations like jaywalking have little demonstrable impact on reducing crime but instead have significant, overlooked drawbacks.”

They write, “Jaywalking and other common traffic violations are common among all racial / ethnic groups but can be used as a tool to interrogate, harass, or search an incarcerated person.”

They ask the police to “cease attitudes and arrests for” jaywalking “and other similar minor offenses, unless there are other apparent criminal activities likely to cause an officer to be arrested.”

Finally, they call for an end to “gratuitous searches at traffic controls”.

Unsubstantiated searches are “essentially random searches (at best) and are only marginally effective when compared to other readily available and less intrusive investigative tactics.”

Empirical data show that “searches for consent are largely ineffective”. They also “disproportionately affect blacks and browns. In 2019, before much of the city closed due to the pandemic, SFPD officials carried out more baseless searches of blacks and browns than whites.

They demand the abolition of the use of requests for consent in traffic controls.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

The post Public Defender Workplace Proposes New Pointers for Police Stops in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

He’s back! James Corden took his popular LATE LATE SHOW feature “Crosswalk the Musical” across the pond this week, where his show will be aired from London, England. Appropriately enough, the theater company produced a production of MARY POPPINS and recruited the acting talents of Sir Ben Kingsley in the role of Bert the chimney sweep. Corden himself donned the legendary nanny costume to take on the title role. The clip will air on the LATE LATE SHOW on CBS tonight (12:37 PM – 1:37 PM, ET / PT). BWW will bring you a video as soon as it becomes available. For now, however, take a look at these first pictures from the filming!

Each week, James Corden invites audiences to join in the fun, while Emmy Award-winning THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH James Corden features a mix of celebrity guests, musical performances, games, and sketching. Corden differentiates his show by taking a behind-the-scenes look at the green space, bringing out all of his guests at once, and imparting his musical and acting talents to various sketches.

In addition, band leader Reggie Watts and the house band Corden provide original, improvised music throughout the show. Since Corden took over the helm in March 2015, the show has quickly become known for generating lively viral videos like Carpool Karaoke.

Photo: Craig SugdenCBS

The post Images: First Look – James Corden Stops Visitors for ‘Crosswalk the Musical: MARY POPPINS’ appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.