Happy Straight Pride, everyone! San Francisco's rowdiest annual footrace, Bay to Breakers, whose second line of revelers might number as many as 80,000, will either make or break your Sunday — but you know better than to try to tour the city in a car on Sunday morning, right?
The route begins on Howard, following that street from Steuart to 9th, then down Hayes from Market to Divisadero, on Fell from Divisadero to the Golden Gate Park, and in the park, follows JFK Drive all the way to the Pacific.
That all means a number of street closures as roadways become raceways/pissoirs. These are those that will be closed off:
Howard from the Embarcadero to Beale
Steuart from Mission to its southern end
Spear from Mission to Folsom
Main from Mission to Folsom
Beale from Mission to Folsom
Fremont from Mission to Folsom
1st from Mission to Folsom
2nd from Mission to Folsom
New Montgomery from Mission to Howard
Howard from Beale to 3rd
Howard from 3rd to 9th
9th from Howard to Market
Hayes from Market to Divisadero
Steiner from Grove to Hayes
Divisadero from Grove to Oak
Baker from Oak to Fell
Fell From Divisadero to Stanyan
47th from Fulton to JFK
La Play from Cabrillo to Fulton
Fulton, eastbound, from the Great Highway to 48th
Fulton, westbound, from 46th to the Great Highway
Lincoln, eastbound, from the Great Highway to La Playa
Lincoln, westbound,from 48th to the Great Highway
Cabrillo from 46th to La Playa
Balboa from 46th to the Great Highway
Point Lobos From 48th/El Camino Del Mar to to the Great Highway
JFK from Stanyan to the Great Highway
Bernice Rodgesr from JFK to MLK
MLK from Bernice Rodgers to Lincoln
Transverse from MLK to Crossover
30th from Fulton to JFK
36th from Fulton to JFK
Chain of Lakes from Fulton to Lincoln
MLK from Chain of Lakes to Sunset
47th from Fulton to JFK
Great Highway from Sloat to JFK
Great Highway from JFK to Balboa
Also closed will be the Ocean Beach North and main parking lots as well as the Balboa Parking lot.
While you can expect added service to and from the race via the 5X, 5R and NX, more likely are crowded buses or routes that aren't running. A full list of Muni closures is here.
Rendering of the Chicago museum design by MAD Architects
Sporting a futuristic new design, the George Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art may actually end up back in the Bay Area after all. Following years of trying to get approval to build the museum in the Presidio — which would house Lucas's collection of movie and Star Wars memorabilia as well as illustrations and graphic art — a plan that was ultimately shot down by the Presidio Trust in 2013, Lucas decided to relocate his efforts to Chicago's waterfront instead. Similar to his experience with the Presidio, open space advocate challenged the museum plan there, and Lucas has spent two years with the museum mired in that mess. Meanwhile, Oakland was trying to woo him back here to build the museum there, and the Chronicle now reports that Mayor Ed Lee has met with Lucas to discuss putt the museum on the western end of Treasure Island, with views of the city.
The original plan for the museum on what's now the Sports Basement site next to Crissy Field was met with opposition from the Presidio Trust for several reasons, not the least of which being they didn't think much of the Beaux Arts/Spanish revival design.
For the Chicago plan, Lucas hired Beijing-based MAD Architects who came up with a far cooler design for the museum kind of reminiscent of a circus tent. It's unclear whether that design will just be adapted for the Treasure Island site or if they'll be starting from scratch.
According to the Chron's Matier and Ross, Lucas's museum even has the early support of frequent foe of the mayor Aaron Peskin, who says the project could be "the special, secret sauce" that could make the Treasure Island redevelopment plan work.
Apparently it's likely Lucas will be considering several options in the months ahead, including possibly putting the museum — which is, after all, movie-related — in Los Angeles.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway on Monday revealed a new stake in Apple, in a bet that the stock's price could rebound after iPhone sales fell for the first time.
Berkshire held 9.81 million Apple shares worth $1.07 billion as of March 31, according to a regulatory filing detailing most stock holdings of Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate.
It is unclear whether the Apple investment was made by Buffett or by one of his portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who each invest about $9 billion.
Buffett typically makes Berkshire's multibillion-dollar investments, while Combs and Weschler make smaller wagers.
The investment deepens Berkshire's commitment to the technology sector, which Buffett has largely shunned apart from a big stake in International Business Machines Corp, which grew slightly in the first quarter.
Apple last month reported its first quarterly decline in revenue in 13 years as an increasingly saturated market hurt iPhone sales.
Chief Executive Tim Cook is looking to develop other technologies, and last week unveiled a $1 billion investment in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing.
Shares of Apple have fallen by nearly one-third since April 2015. They were up $2.13, or 2.4 percent, at $92.65 in Monday morning trading, likely because of Berkshire's imprimatur.
"The stock is stunningly cheap, and it has a massive pile of cash," said Steve Wallman, founder of Wallman Investment Counsel in Middleton, Wisconsin, who has owned Berkshire since 1982 and Apple since 2003. "Apple is not getting credit for research and development it is doing behind the scenes, which will eventually show up in new products."
An Apple spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Britain's top spy agency has joined Twitter, and naturally James Bond was one of the first accounts it followed.
The Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ, joined Twitter(TWTR, Tech30) on Monday with a verified account and a simple tweet saying, "Hello, world."
The initial tweet included a link to a statement saying the agency's move into social media was an attempt to be "more accessible and to help the public understand more about our work."
GCHQ has been selective about who it chooses to follow. In addition to tracking the official James Bond account -- @007 -- it is also following tweets from various British government departments, news agencies and royal accounts.
The new Twitter page quickly attracted 12,000 followers.
GCHQ joined Twitter with a verified account on Monday.
GCHQ works in partnership with the Secret Intelligence Service, called MI6, and the Security Service, called MI5.
Many people confuse the roles of the GCHQ, MI6 and MI5, so here's the low down:
- MI6 specializes in foreign intelligence, and it's where the fictional James Bond character works.
- MI5 protects national security and guards against threats from terrorism, espionage and sabotage.
- GCHQ is essentially an eavesdropping agency that monitors for cyber threats and gathers intelligence to protect the country. It's considered the British equivalent to the National Security Agency, aka the NSA, and is considered more secretive than MI6 and MI5.
America's CIA, which joined Twitter back in 2014, was quick to welcome its spying brethren onto social media, saying "Welcome to Twitter @GCHQ!"
Though spying agencies are publicly embracing Twitter, the social media platform is not necessarily returning the love.
Earlier this month, Twitter cut off U.S. intelligence agencies from a data feed powered by the company Dataminr, which provides real-time information about events around the world produced by Twitter users.
Twitter said it was a longstanding company policy to deny data for government surveillance.
The U.K. government has recently been working to hire 1,900 more spies to combat ISIS and other terrorist organizations.
Along with its hiring spree, it also said it would double the amount it invests to protect Britain against cyber attacks. The GCHQ was allocated £1.9 billion ($2.7 billion) in extra funding over five years to establish the country's first dedicated cyber-force.
CNNMoney (London) First published May 16, 2016: 10:40 AM ET
Vanessa Low finished sixth in the T42 long jump at London 2012
World long jump T42 champion Vanessa Low has had her running blades returned after they were stolen at the Desert Challenge Games.
The German, 25, had appealed on Twitter for their return after they had been taken during the IPC Athletics Grand Prix event in Arizona on Saturday.
But on Sunday, she tweeted: "UPDATE: My legs got returned this morning!! Thank you for all you love and compassion!"
Low is scheduled to compete in this summer's Paralympics in Rio.
The Oklahoma-based athlete still won her event with a 4.65m jump - 14cms off her own world record which she recorded while winning gold at the 2015 World Championships in Doha.
Low had gone on Twitter on Saturday to plead for the return of her running blades.
FORT MITCHELL, Ky. — Hillary Clinton already has an assignment for her husband, Bill Clinton, if they return to the White House next year. The former president, Mrs. Clinton told voters on Sunday, will be “in charge of revitalizing the economy.”
“Because, you know, he knows how to do it,” she said. “Especially in places like coal country and inner-cities and other parts of our country that have really been left out.”
Mrs. Clinton mentioned her idea for her husband while speaking at a rally outside a home in northern Kentucky. Earlier this month, she said she had told Mr. Clinton that he would need to “come out of retirement” to help put people back to work.
Mrs. Clinton spent Sunday campaigning in Kentucky ahead of its Democratic primary on Tuesday. At the rally here, she cited the economic success of her husband’s presidency while outlining her own plans. She also emphasized her commitment to supporting workers in the coal industry, which has a major presence in Kentucky, just as it does in West Virginia, where Mrs. Clinton lost the primary last week to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
She alienated some voters when she said in March, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” She made the comment while talking about renewable energy, adding that coal miners should not be overlooked. But the sound bite has haunted her, and when she visited coal country in West Virginia this month, protesters chanted, “Go home!”
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton emphasized her desire to help coal miners.
“We can’t and we must not walk away from them,” she said. “I feel such a sense of obligation.”
Seeking Robert Levinson, the C.I.A. Consultant Who Vanished
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Joseph F. O’Brien, who worked with Robert A. Levinson at the F.B.I., at his home in Lido Beach, N.Y., with a dossier of information about Mr. Levinson’s disappearance.CreditKathy Kmonicek for The New York Times
In early March, a small group of private investigators, including two former F.B.I.agents, gathered for a meal at Old Tbilisi Garden, a restaurant in Greenwich Village that specializes in Georgian food.
It was a somber occasion. Two months earlier, the United States and Iran had exchanged prisoners, including several Americans held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Another American, Robert A. Levinson, long missing in Iran and a friend of those present, was not part of the deal. Mr. Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent who became a private investigator, also had another life: as a consultant for the C.I.A.
In March 2007, Mr. Levinson, then 59, disappeared on Kish Island, in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran, while trying to recruit a fugitive American-born assassin as a C.I.A. source inside Iran. He was last seen alive in 2010 in a hostage video pleading for help and in photographs wearing a Guantánamo-style jumpsuit. The images did not disclose who was holding him. It is not known whether Mr. Levinson, who was eager to expand his role at the C.I.A. and who apparently decided on his own to go to Iran, is still alive.
The event at Old Tbilisi was held to observe the ninth anniversary of his disappearance. Former colleagues toasted him and traded stories. Mr. Levinson, like those present, had spent his career in a shadow land, one where spies, agents and private eyes persuade informants to spill secrets in exchange for money or a deal. It is a risky game that can pay off big or that can go very wrong, as Mr. Levinson’s trip to Iran did.
The two former F.B.I. agents at the dinner, Joseph F. O’Brien and Andris Kurins, were familiar with that terrain. Mr. O’Brien had spearheaded the F.B.I.’s investigation in the mid-1980s of Paul Castellano, the reputed head of the Gambino crime family who was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street.
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Old Tbilisi Garden, a Greenwich Village restaurant where Mr. Levinson’s friends gathered in March to commemorate the ninth anniversary of his disappearance.CreditMorgan Ione Yeager for The New York Times
After Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, the former agents had tried to help the F.B.I. find their missing friend. Mr. O’Brien recruited a former Iranian army general to go to Tehran to seek out information. But as with other investigators who knew Mr. Levinson, their offers were rebuffed by the F.B.I.
“I was told, Why don’t you mind your business?” recalled Mr. Kurins, who worked with Mr. O’Brien on the Castellano case.
Mr. Levinson and his wife, Christine, lived for years in Coral Springs, Fla., and raised their seven children there, but he was a New Yorker in every other way. He grew up on Long Island, attended City College, met his future wife at a quintessential Manhattan singles bar, T.G.I. Friday’s, and worked in New York on celebrated cases both as an F.B.I. agent and as a private investigator.
Before his disappearance, Mr. Levinson also frequently came to New York to meet with clients or to try to hustle up new assignments. James Mintz, who heads a private investigation firm, said Mr. Levinson came by his Manhattan office not long before he vanished to see if he had any cases involving criminals trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes, an area in which he specialized. Mr. Levinson also worked for a major corporate investigation firm, SafirRosetti, whose clients included The New York Times.
PhotoMr. Levinson, known to his friends as Bob, liked to swap information with journalists interested in espionage and intrigue. Some of his tips paid off; others were wild goose chases. Brian Ross, the chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, who knew Mr. Levinson for decades, said he turned up at ABC headquarters before his disappearance with what sounded like a major scoop.
Mr. Levinson told him his sources had located a major Qaeda operative in Venezuela and were observing the man going into a local mosque twice a day. ABC News dispatched an employee to Venezuela, where he rented a room at a hotel across the street from the mosque and waited for the terrorist to appear.
“We spent a week there staking it out,” Mr. Ross said not long ago. “Nothing happened.”
Mr. Levinson told his children that he knew from the age of 8 that he wanted to be an F.B.I. agent. His epiphany came, he said, while watching a movie called “The House on 92nd Street,” a low-budget thriller about a college student who goes undercover for the F.B.I. during World War II to break up a Nazi spy ring.
As a teenager, Mr. Levinson liked to hang out with friends in the attic of his family’s home in New Hyde Park acting out courtroom dramas. For dialogue, they used transcripts from real trials typed up by his mother, who was a part-time court stenographer.
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Mr. Levinson, left, receiving the New York Office Agent of the Year Award from James Murphy in 1983. Mr. O’Brien, who shared the award with Mr. Levinson, was at right.CreditKathy Kmonicek for The New York Times
From the start of his career, Mr. Levinson saw himself as a collector of informants, someone skilled in extracting information from people eager to catch a break from the law or in need of a favor, like a United States visa. By the late 1970s, he had his dream job, working in the F.B.I.’s New York office, helping to coordinate intelligence about the Mafia gathered by agents in the metropolitan area.
Mr. O’Brien, who also wanted to investigate the mob, knew he had found his mentor when he first met with Mr. Levinson. His office, Mr. O’Brien recalled, was lined with photos of gangsters and charts showing the hierarchies of New York’s major crime families. “He was a master, and he taught me a lot,” Mr. O’Brien said.
In 1983, the two men shared an F.B.I. achievement award, and not long afterward Mr. O’Brien arrested Mr. Castellano. But Mr. Levinson’s F.B.I. career nearly ended over his handling of an informant in another big Mafia case — one that would eventually involve President Reagan’s secretary of labor, Raymond J. Donovan.
His source was a onetime schoolteacher named Michael Orlando, who had turned to robbery. When faced with the prospect of more jail time, he agreed to cooperate with the F.B.I. as a paid informant on another local crime family, the Genoveses.
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Mr. Levinson’s family at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in February 2009.CreditManuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
Mr. Levinson believed that Mr. Orlando was critical to building a sweeping case that would result in indictments against politicians, labor leaders and police officers. But some bureau officials suspected that the F.B.I. agent had fallen into the classic informant’s trap, with Mr. Orlando feeding him tidbits of information while using his protected status to carry out crimes. One member of the Genovese family was even heard on an F.B.I. wiretap discussing how Mr. Orlando had become a contract killer.
Mr. Levinson and other agents fought to keep using Mr. Orlando. But when F.B.I. supervisors decided to arrest him and end the investigation, a bitter dispute broke out inside the F.B.I. that cost Mr. Levinson his position in New York and led to his decision to move to Florida.
There, he became an expert in the F.B.I.’s Miami office on Colombian drug cartels and Russian organized crime. After his retirement in 1998, he took a familiar path, followed by many former agents, into the private sector, working for corporate investigation firms and setting up his own one-man shop.
The private investigator who arranged the March dinner in New York said she had attended a luncheon many years ago with Mr. Levinson and a C.I.A. analyst who specialized in Russian organized crime. That C.I.A. analyst would help get Mr. Levinson his work with the spy agency.
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Christine Levinson, right, and her son Daniel in a car leaving Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport in December 2007. They were seeking information about Mr. Levinson.CreditVahid Salemi/Associated Press
When Mr. Levinson vanished, theories spread among his friends about what had happened to him. Some of them thought that Russian gangsters had grabbed him. Others believed that cigarette smugglers had killed him. Still others sensed that the man he went to Iran to meet, Dawud Salahuddin (or Teddy Belfield, as he was once known), had lured him into a trap.
Investigators like Mr. Kurins said they did not believe the story that the American government had put out to explain why Mr. Levinson was in Iran — that he had gone there to track counterfeit cigarettes. “It was impossible that he would go to Kish Island on a cigarette case,” Mr. Kurins said.
Several months after Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, another of his acquaintances in New York, John Moscow, a lawyer, checked his email and found what appeared to be a clue. Mr. Moscow, a former top prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, was one of several people copied on an email in which Mr. Levinson, or someone pretending to be him, pleaded for help from American officials.
Mr. Moscow said he had turned the email over to the F.B.I., adding that he had never heard back from bureau officials. “They told me they would handle it,” he said.
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The Maryam Hotel on Kish Island, off Iran’s southern coast, where Mr. Levinson was planning to meet a contact when he disappeared in 2007.CreditMaryam Hotel website, via Associated Press
F.B.I. officials told Mr. Levinson’s family that they thought the email was a fake. But three years later, when an email arrived containing a video showing him as a hostage, it seemed that the bureau may have made a critical mistake. The 2007 email received by Mr. Moscow and the 2010 message with the video were sent from Gmail accounts bearing nearly identical names, according to a new book about Mr. Levinson and the search for him.
A spokeswoman for the F.B.I., Lindsay Ram, declined to comment.
Over time, the F.B.I. employed an unusual cast of characters to search for Mr. Levinson, including a billionaire Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Mr. O’Brien decided to take action.
He first tried to hire a researcher in Tehran to search through newspapers and public records for any mention of Mr. Levinson. That approach never got off the ground. In 2009, two F.B.I. agents based in Washington called and said they wanted to see him.
Mr. O’Brien said he met the agents at the Gracie Mews Diner on the Upper East Side. The men initially stood by the government’s explanation for Mr. Levinson’s presence in Iran. But when Mr. O’Brien pressed his visitors, they began to open up to him.
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An image of Mr. Levinson released in 2010, provided by his family.CreditAgence France-Presse/Levinson family
The F.B.I. agents told him there was infighting at the C.I.A. about how to react publicly and privately to Mr. Levinson’s disappearance. “This was going to embarrass the C.I.A.,” he said, “and these agents didn’t feel like the agency was telling them the truth.”
The agents also told him, he added, that the National Security Council was considering issuing an official protest accusing Iran of holding Mr. Levinson as a hostage, a step the Obama administration never took. Ms. Ram, the F.B.I. spokeswoman, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the security council, Dew Tiantawach.
In 2012, however, Mr. O’Brien saw an opening. Earlier, he had urged one of his neighbors at his weekend place in the Poconos, a former Iranian army general, to ask about Mr. Levinson during a trip home. The man had reported back that his best friend there, a well-connected Iranian general, had been afraid to talk. But Mr. O’Brien was soon able to use a tactic familiar to Mr. Levinson: turning a source’s misfortune to his favor.
When Mr. O’Brien visited his Iranian-American friend to wish him a happy Father’s Day, he found the man distraught because the F.B.I. had just arrested his son on fraud charges. Sensing a deal, Mr. O’Brien offered to seek a reduced sentence for his son from the Justice Department if he went back to Iran and told his former colleague there that he needed information about Mr. Levinson to save his child.
The man agreed and went back to Iran, where he awaited a green light, telling him a deal had been struck. But he never got that signal, because Mr. O’Brien said that everyone he contacted at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. threw up a roadblock.
“We have tried to make deals, and they have not produced anything credible,” one F.B.I. official told him, he said.
When Mr. Levinson’s friends left Old Tbilisi Garden, it was with a sense of sadness and regret. Many of his former colleagues and acquaintances remain angry with the way federal officials have handled his case.
For nearly a year, the C.I.A. misled the F.B.I. and Congress about its relationship to him and let Mr. Levinson’s family twist in the wind. Today, the White House still refuses to directly confront Tehran about the missing investigator, even though many experts say they believe that elements within Iran’s sprawling intelligence apparatus were involved in his capture and detention.
The Obama administration has said it is committed to finding Mr. Levinson. Mr. O’Brien said that he and Mr. Kurins planned to dedicate the follow-up to their 1991 best seller about the Paul Castellano case, “Boss of Bosses,” to Mr. Levinson’s wife and their children. (Both Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Kurins resigned from the F.B.I. amid controversy over that book.) But Mr. O’Brien will never accept the fact, he said, that the American government did not insist upon Mr. Levinson’s return — or at least information about his fate — as part of the prisoner exchange early this year.
“I don’t know what these other people were doing over there,” he remarked. “But they weren’t patriots working for their government.”
