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Broncos WR Brandon Johnson, like Tim Patrick, knows the fight undrafted players face — and now may be asked to fill Patrick’s large shoes

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

On the first day after Tim Patrick was lost for the season to a torn left Achilles tendon, the first player who got a chance to replace him in practice has some background similarities.That’s Brandon Johnson who, like Patrick, was an unheralded, undrafted free agent.Patrick in 2017 didn’t hear his name called out of Utah and bounced around in training camps before landing with the Broncos.He spent his first year on and off Denver’s practice squad before carving a role for himself on special teams and in the receiving rotation in his second season.Johnson impressed during training camp a year ago as an undrafted free agent out of Central Florida and likely would have made the initial 53-man roster had he not sustained a high-ankle sprain in Denver’s preseason finale. He was waived, then brought back later in the season. Johnson appeared in seven games (one start) and caught six balls during his rookie season.Now he’s turning heads again in training camp and appears to be in the mix t...

Colorado Republican Party files lawsuits against Secretary of State Jena Griswold, seeking to close primaries

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

As part of its chairman’s desire to close its primaries to all but registered Republican voters, the Colorado Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State Jena Griswold in federal court Monday, seeking to invalidate a ballot measure passed by voters in 2016.The suit, filed on behalf of the party by the attorney who represented Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss, is the latest effort by some Colorado Republicans to push back against Proposition 108, which allows unaffiliated voters to participate in parties’ primary elections and help select general election candidates. The suit alleges that the ballot measure “harms (the party) and its members by infringing upon their rights of free speech and association.”A similar suit, filed by a handful of Colorado Republican officials, was dismissed by a federal judge shortly after it was filed in 2022. The same attorney, John Eastman, represented those officials in that case, too. This latest e...

2 LAFD firefighters credited with saving man’s life 

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

The Los Angeles Fire Department is recognizing two firefighters who bravely saved a man’s life in 2021. LAFD Engine 52 was dispatched to reports of a man threatening to jump off a bridge on September 27, 2021, on Sunset Boulevard, the fire department said - a situation that was "not uncommon" for the area.“The crew found no patient at the initial location but widened the search and found one man on the wrong side of the protective barrier of an overpass at Western Avenue and the 101 Freeway,” LAFD said. After finding the man, Engineer Andrew Kelly and Firefighter Nathan Vonderharr jumped into action and quickly reached over the railing to grab the man’s torso and arms, pulled him back over the railing, and pulled him safely to the ground.  Residents of private community in Sunland growing frustrated with visitors to nearby wash Firefighters stayed on the scene to ensure that the man was not able to get up and try to jump again. They provided him with a medical assessmen...

A 'Gravy-themed' rollercoaster is coming to this theme park next year

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

A theme park in the Midwest is adding a new attraction next year that will have you saying "Good Gravy," and also, "Why?"Holiday World, which is located in Santa Claus, Indiana, announced a new attraction this week: a family coaster called Good Gravy, which is themed after the beloved broth-based condiment. The new attraction will open to the public in May 2024 at the theme park, which is divided into four sections, each celebrating a specific holiday. The Good Gravy rollercoaster will call the Thanksgiving portion of the park its home.Riders on "Good Gravy" will board a gravy boat train to embark on their thrilling journey. (Holiday World)According to a release from the park, the coaster is a family boomerang, the first of its kind to open in North America. Guests will board a train shaped like a gravy boat, be pulled backwards uphill and then be sent flying forwards through the station hitting a maximum speed of 37 mph, before flying up a 77-foot tall spike and repeating the journ...

ID Cafe is bringing fast-casual south Indian food to Pleasanton and beyond

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

Think Chipotle or Panera, but make it dosas and idlis. That’s the kind of household name that Hayward neighbors and friends Sriram Arun and Prasad Komala are hoping to achieve for southern Indian cuisine with their growing restaurant chain ID Cafe.The co-founders opened their third East Bay restaurant at Pleasanton’s Stoneridge Mall in mid-July. The first location opened in Newark in 2021 and the second launched in April in Antioch. They’re hoping to open two more spots in the South Bay in the coming months, according to Arun.The backstory: Arun and Komala were two friends working in tech and missing the food from their home country. Both grew up in India – Arun is from Chennai and Komala is from Hyderabad – and struggled to find a local chain that offered consistent, authentic Indian food.“You don’t have Panera or Starbucks or Chipotle or even a Sweetgreens for Indian food,” he says. “We found a gap there.”In particular, they were craving not just the curries and stews often availa...

Elon Musk, self-described ‘free speech absolutist,’ sues nonprofit over its speech

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

Elon Musk, owner of the company formerly called Twitter and an avowed crusader for free speech, this week followed through on a threat and sued a nonprofit over its statements criticizing his firm, now called X.The lawsuit targets allegations by the Center for Countering Digital Hate that hate speech spiked at X in the week after Musk bought it in October, with users tweeting tens of thousands of anti-Black, anti-trans, anti-gay and antisemitic slurs, increases of 23% to 300% over 2022 averages. The lawsuit accused the nonprofit of “a scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform.”The nonprofit used “flawed methodology” by focusing only on the number of tweets and retweets of the slurs and not on how many times they were viewed, X’s lawsuit filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleged.During the week after Musk’s takeover, he claimed in a tweet, “we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decl...

Classic animated films get the spotlight in new Berkeley series

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

The animated film rarely gets the credit it deserves.Consider this. Since Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991 landed a best picture Oscar nomination — the first ever animated film in that category — only two other animated films have managed to squeeze into that prestigious contest. Both came came from the creative team at Pixar: 2009’s “Up” and 2010’s “Toy Story 3.”Instead a kvetching, let’s focus on some of the animated films that deserve to be bathed in artistic praise, especially since more than a few of them are part of “The Art of Animation: Storytelling in the Digital Age,” an upcoming series at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.The August program celebrating high-quality animation and storytelling includes three free outdoor screenings and seven inside the Barbro Osher Theater. As an added bonus the co-authors of “Making the Cut at Pixar: The Art of Editing Animation”– Berkeley-based indie filmmaker Bill Kinder and New York-based au...

Couple watching grandchildren targeted in Oakland home invasion robbery

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

OAKLAND — A couple watching their grandchildren were targeted Monday afternoon by robbers who broke into their Leona Heights district home, authorities said.The residents, an 80-year-old man and his 69-year-old wife, were not injured.Neither were the children, who authorities said are a 2-year-old and an infant.Authorities said two men, both armed with guns, broke into the house on Leona Street about 1:30 p.m. Monday and confronted the couple. The neighborhood is above the Highway 13 and Interstate 580 connection and below Merritt College.The suspects spent at least an hour in the home searching for valuables before finally leaving with a gun and some ammunition, authorities said.Detailed descriptions of the robbers were not available.Police and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering up to $5,000 in reward money in Monday’s robbery for information leading to the arrests of the suspects. Anyone with information may call investigators at 510-238-3326 or Crime Stoppers at 5...

Biotech firm settles with family over cells for research

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

By Lea Skene and Sarah Brumfield | Associated PressBALTIMORE — More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company that they accused of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system.Tissue taken from the Black woman’s tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.Despite that incalculable impact, the Lacks family had never been compensated.Lacks’ cells were harvested in 1951, when it was not illegal to so without a patient’s permission. But lawyers for her family argued that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Walt...

Tech firms ax hundreds of East Bay, Peninsula jobs, layoff pace eases

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:00:28 GMT

LIVERMORE — Tech companies have chopped hundreds more jobs in the Bay Area, affecting East Bay and Peninsula workers, but some hopeful signs suggest the pace of the cutbacks has eased.Thermo Fisher Scientific and Jabil have revealed plans to each chop more than 100 jobs, according to official filings with state officials.Together the companies have disclosed their decision to eliminate a combined 215 jobs, WARN notices filed with the state Employment Development Department show.Jabil has decided to ax 113 jobs in Livermore and Fremont.Thermo Fisher Scientific is cutting 102 workers in Pleasanton and South San Francisco.During 2022 and so far in 2023, tech companies have revealed plans to cut slightly more than 26,500 jobs in the Bay Area, according to this news organization’s analysis of the official WARN notices received by the state EDD.