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The difference between Serra and SoCal champ Mater Dei and why the Bay Area team’s state title chances are slim

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

In the Bay Area the past two high school football seasons, nobody has scaled the heights of San Mateo powerhouse Serra. The Padres were great in 2022. They’re even better in 2023.They’ve beaten De La Salle and Folsom. They’ve overpowered their West Catholic Athletic League rivals. They’ve breezed through the section playoffs with hardly a hair strand out of place.But even for a team as dominant as Serra, one in which second-half running clocks spared eight of its 12 opponents further despair, there is one more level on the ladder. Another team waiting to do to Serra what Serra has done to others in its ascent to the top of Northern California.Southern Section champion Mater Dei-Santa Ana is bigger and stronger than Serra. Its resume is more impressive. Its list of college prospects is stunning.When the teams meet on Saturday night for the California Interscholastic Federation Open Division state championship at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Mater Dei can seemingly pick its sc...

Analysis: The US shoplifting scourge is a lot of hype with little evidence

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

Analysis by Allison Morrow, CNNNew York  — There’s been much handwringing over the scourge of shoplifting in America since 2020. To hear some retailers and politicians tell it, retail crime is out of control across the country.The trouble with that story is, it’s not accurate.To be clear, theft is happening, as it always has, in stores and on the streets. But the narrative that shoplifting has exploded since the start of the pandemic is unfounded.In reality, retail crime has not meaningfully gone up nationwide in the past few years, and it has even gone down in many places.A study released last month, drawing on police data, found that shoplifting reports were 16% higher in the first half of 2023 compared with 2019. But, critically, if you exclude New York City’s stats, the number of shoplifting incidents fell 7%, or about 2,550 fewer than in 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice, which conducted the study.Overall, the study found, shoplifting generally followed the sam...

7 amazing Bay Area things to do this weekend, Dec. 8-10

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

Whether this weekend is all about celebrating the holidays, or avoiding them, we have some great ideas for fun stuff to do — from yummy cookies you can make at home to holiday shows to a bizarro movie with the lovable Emma Stone.And, as always, be sure to double check event and venue websites for any last-minute changes in health guidelines. Meanwhile, if you’d like to have this Weekender lineup delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning for free, just sign up at www.mercurynews.com/newsletters or www.eastbaytimes.com/newsletters.1 SEE & HEAR: Great shows are all overWhether you’re in the mood for a holiday classic production like a “Nutcracker” or “A Christmas Carol,” or a great blues concert, there are a ton of live shows — and one wacky film festival — to catch this weekend.These gingerbread cookies are found in the new cookbook “Bake Your Heat Out: Foolproof Recipes to Level Up Your Home Baking” by Dan Langan. (Courtesy Rik...

In a season of adversity, De La Salle finds a way to play for a state championship

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

De La Salle’s road to another state championship game has been challenging, on and off the field.The Spartans opened the season with back-to-back losses to Orange Lutheran and Serra, managing 14 points in the defeats. They nearly lost to a North Coast Section opponent for the first time in 32 years when San Ramon Valley took the Concord powerhouse to overtime in October.A week after the SRV game, coach Justin Alumbaugh broke the news to the team that longtime defensive line coach Steve Jacoby had stunningly died the previous evening.Alumbaugh let the players decide whether to play that night against El Cerrito, which they elected to do.De La Salle beat El Cerrito and everyone else in its path on the way to a 31st consecutive NCS championship and a 41-0 rout last week of Clovis North in a NorCal regional, securing its spot in the 1-AA state title game on Friday night against Mission Viejo at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.After months of trying to find the keys to its stor...

Kurtenbach: The post-Eagles letdown is real for the 49ers. It can’t carry into Sunday’s game with the Seahawks

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

SANTA CLARA — There’s a strange mood around the 49ers’ facility following Sunday’s win against the Eagles.Maybe it’s the rain, but the general buzz that usually permeates the grounds has calmed. There’s a pensiveness in the building.It’s as if everyone is asking “What now?”That’s understandable, right? The 49ers circled last Sunday’s game with the Eagles when the NFL schedule was released. Amid so many other goals, the 49ers prioritized beating Philadelphia in Philly.Then they did it — emphatically.The Germans probably have a big, compound, crazy-sounding word for the feeling after the glee of achieving a long-sought goal fades.Here in the good ol’ USA, we call it a letdown.And in the NFL, that feeling usually proceeds something the Germans don’t have a word for:A trap game.But that, of course, raises another question:Is it still a trap game if everyone sees it coming?Oh, and here’s another question: Is it...

Share the Spirit: Tri-Valley nonprofit helps pets change lives

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

When Deysi Gonzalez found a funny-looking German shepherd with short, stumpy legs in her neighborhood park in May, she didn’t expect he would help turn her life around.A mother of three, Gonzalez felt like her life had become a cycle of cleaning and cooking. She spent most of her time at her apartment in Pleasanton. The purpose she had felt in her youth seemed to have faded away, and she realized she was falling into a deep depression.“Sometimes I didn’t want to get up from bed in the morning,” Gonzalez said. “I felt so useless.”That day at the park in May, Gonzalez realized the friendly dog was alone. Eventually, the pup followed Gonzalez home, where she fed him a bowl of food — then two, then four. Gonzalez contacted Animal Control to see if the dog was microchipped and put up posters around town, searching for the dog’s owners. Eventually, it became clear that the dog, who the family began calling Max, didn’t have one.Deysi Gonzalez’s dogs Max and Millie, from right, wait f...

Mysterious virus wipes out rabbits at East Bay petting zoo

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

Last month, a Dutch rabbit at the Tilden Park Little Farm started acting strangely. It had lost its appetite, lying in its hutch, head hanging, refusing to move. When staff at the free education farm in Berkeley examined the animal, they saw one of its eyes had swollen immensely.Jenna Cassel, a naturalist at the park, was disturbed. Animals get sick, sure, but this was unusual. She took the rabbit to a veterinarian and was shocked by the diagnosis.The rabbit had contracted myxomatosis (mix-a-mitt-oh-sis), a viral illness endemic to a narrow strip of the U.S. ranging from Oregon down the California Coast to Baja. Although relatively harmless to wild brush rabbits, the illness is highly contagious and has a 99% mortality rate for domesticated species. Suddenly, it was threatening the beloved rabbits of the farm.“I asked a ton of questions because I had no idea what was happening,” Cassel said. “They said it’s very contagious. Very deadly.”Related ArticlesEnvironment | ...

Wish Book: Where does all the surplus stuff from tech companies go? To schools, thanks to RAFT

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

In classrooms around the Bay Area, old Adobe Acrobat DVDs, rubber bands and straws are leading rich second lives.The donated materials, delivered to schools by the nonprofit RAFT and assembled by small hands, become playful science projects: tiny race cars that start and stop, climb and crash — proof of the power of physics.“It’s a wonderful lab experience that comes to us, already put together,” said Gilbert Rodriquez, principal of Mt. Pleasant Elementary School in east San Jose, where giddy fifth-graders circled a table and then sprawled across a classroom floor to test their rolling creations.For nearly 30 years, the Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT) has been helping teachers transform the classroom learning experience by offering interactive education, buttressing a traditional curriculum.“Hands on, minds on,” said Nimisha Khanduja, director of RAFT’s learning programs. “Lessons aren’t one-dimensional. They’re three-dimensional. That’s much more engaging.”But with pa...

Two dead and one injured in San Pablo head-on crash

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

(KRON) – A head on crash in San Pablo resulted in the deaths of two people and critically injured one person, the San Pablo Police Department announced Thursday. The Contra Costa Fire Department was dispatched to El Portal Drive near Glenlock Street for a head-on crash at 12:42 a.m. on Dec. 6. Sonoma County supervisors pass anti-sideshow ordinance A car traveling eastbound on El Portal Drive towards Glenlock Street veered into the westbound direction of El Portal and struck another motorist head on. According to police, the adult male passenger of the car that veered died on the scene. An adult female passenger was taken to the hospital where she was pronounced deceased, police say. The single male passenger of the car traveling westbound was taken to the hospital in critical condition, police said. According to police, drugs and alcohol were not immediately seen near the crash but are being looked at as possible factors.

Not just potato anymore: Frying wide variety of latkes for Hanukkah 2023

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:12 GMT

The smell of onion-laced potato latkes frying is unmistakable, and it’s about to permeate homes in the D.C. area.Thursday marks the first of eight nights of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights. Families and friends will gather for meals that include traditional food, like doughnuts. In Hebrew, it’s sufganiyot.Fried foods, including latkes and doughnuts, celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah. After the Maccabee tribe recaptured ancient Jerusalem, the lamp in the temple appeared to have only enough oil to burn for one night. Instead, it stayed alight for eight days.While the traditional potato latke has been a Jewish family staple, usually served with sour cream or applesauce, latkes have branched out, with dozens of internationally-flavored versions with recipes compiled in the online magazine, “Hey Alma.”Starting with close cousins, like sweet potato latkes, options include spinach latkes, broccoli stem latkes, cheese latkes, and those made of beets.Japanese-...