Major Quake Rattles Bay Area

The 6.0 M near the Bay Area this morning was the largest quake to hit that area since the Loma Prieta earthquake almost 25 years ago.— USGS (@USGS) August 24, 2014

UPDATE: At least 70 people were injured by this morning's earthquake in California. Damage reports are coming in. http://t.co/Ow5OxhnoCD— NBCWashington (@nbcwashington) August 24, 2014

#California hit by biggest #earthquake in 25 years http://t.co/LLNADmxaz7 pic.twitter.com/zagQqcdB6X— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 24, 2014

UPDATE: Via the San Francisco Chronicle:

There was widespread damage in downtown Napa, with bricks, concrete chunks and broken glass littering the street and debris landing on parked cars. The Old County Courthouse was among the buildings that sustained damage. Emergency workers usually stationed there were moved to the sheriff's office. There was a report of some buckling on an off-ramp from westbound Highway 37 to Highway 29 at Sonoma Boulevard. As a result, Highway 37 between Fairgrounds Drive and Highway 29 was closed as Caltrans crews assessed the damage. Some buildings in downtown Vallejo also sustained damage. Some power lines were down in western Contra Costa County, but Bay Area bridges appeared to be fine, according to the California Highway Patrol. There were widespread reports of power outages, gas leaks and flooding in the North Bay, with at least 15,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers without power in Vallejo, Napa, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa and Sonoma. Police reminded motorists to stop at darkened intersections. Scientists said the quake was 6.7 miles deep and may have hit on the West Napa Fault. It was the largest in the Bay Area since the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta quake killed 62 people on Oct. 17, 1989.

400+ Year Sentence For Leader In "Targeted" Gang Rape Of Lesbian

Via the San Francisco Chronicle:

The ringleader of a 2008 gang rape of a Richmond woman who was allegedly targeted because she is a lesbian and then taunted was sentenced to more than 400 years to life in prison. Humberto Salvador, 36, of Richmond was found guilty in December of rape in concert, forcible oral copulation in concert, kidnapping for sexual purposes and kidnapping for the purpose of carjacking. At a hearing Friday, Judge Susanne Fenstermacher sentenced Salvador to 411 years to life. The victim wasn't in court, but prosecutor Melissa Smith read a statement by her partner. "She has lost the will to live," the statement read. "Although she is alive, they killed her inside."

The three other perpetrators pleaded guilty. Their sentences: 13 years, 24 years, 31 years.

Bay Area Health Officials Create Fake Grindr Profiles To Promote Safer Sex

Health officials from San Mateo County have created fake Grindr profiles in a campaign to promote safer sex among the hook-up app's users. Via the Bay Area Reporter:

Darryl Lampkin, prevention supervisor for the STD/HIV program at the county's health department, said last week that the efforts have enabled staff to reach far more people than they had been able to in the county, which is just south of San Francisco but includes no physical venues such as gay bars or community centers where outreach can be focused. Lampkin, who spoke Thursday, March 13 to members of San Francisco's HIV Prevention Planning Council, added that staffers don't initiate contact with others on the site and the profiles contain minimal information. Instead, they respond when someone expresses interest in the profile. Questioned about ethics of the program, Lampkin asked if it's more unethical to "ignore" the application's potential as an outreach tool or "to give them information about HIV and STDs and save them from suffering." "We're not deceiving people," he said. "We also know other people have a profile up that's not them," and there have been "very few" negative reactions.

The paper has criticized the program in an editorial:

It's skirting the line between deception and forthrightness. We're not sure how we would feel if we were using an app like Grindr and suddenly were told the person we contacted was a health worker who wanted us to get tested. But we know that in this social media age, all bets are off in terms of knowing who you're actually communicating with. [snip] But Lampkin, who is gay, can't say – as he did – that the county isn't deceiving people. Using altered stock photos and creating fake profiles is deception, no matter how effective the program is. San Francisco health officials told us that they have no plans to operate a similar program and that's a good thing.

AIDS Group Launches Mailer Campaign Against Bid To Authorize PrEP Pill

The controversial AIDS Healthcare Foundation has launched a publicity campaign in opposition to classifying Truvada as a daily preventive (PrEP) for HIV infection. Last week a large coalition of AIDS groups issued a call for the FDA to make the change. Via AHF press release:

“It appears that Gilead is trying to ram expanded use of Truvada as an HIV prevention pill through the FDA approval process—despite serious concerns about the drug’s safety and effectiveness,” said Michael Weinstein, AHF President. “Employees and the public should know that the multi-billion dollar profit Gilead is currently making on Truvada as an HIV treatment medication is not enough for them—Gilead now has its eyes on the billions of dollars that can be made by selling HIV drugs to people who don’t even have the disease. We see this is an act of desperation to protect Gilead’s unsustainably high profits from Truvada, which will go off patent in the next few years. Gilead knows it doesn’t have the pipeline to replace this blockbuster AIDS treatment, so it’s doing everything it can to squeeze out more profit—even if that means putting healthy people at risk.”

The AHF's campaign includes sending the above postcard to about 50,000 homes in the Bay Area region that is home to Gilead's headquarters. The same image will appear as a "sticky-note" on copies of the San Jose Mercury-Tribune.

San Francisco Underbears

JMG reader Robbie sends us his video from this weekend's Walter Van Beirendonck fashion show in Berkeley. This is the underwear portion, the regular fashion is here. Keep an eye out for writer and newly-minted underwear model Michael McAllister, who blogs at Dogpoet.

Parents Sue To End Anti-Bullying Course

Two parents are suing the Alameda County school district in California because they don't want kids to be taught that it's wrong to beat up gay kids.

Kerry Cook and Serena Dietrich filed a suit Feb. 18 in Alameda County Superior Court that seeks to nullify the school board's Dec. 8 vote to readopt Lesson 9 for Alameda's elementary schools until a replacement curriculum is approved and to adopt a Links to Literature guide. Cook and Dietrich's attorney, Peter Hagberg, wrote that the district added the Links guide at the last minute and that it didn't have readoption of Lesson 9 on the agenda for the Dec. 8 meeting. He also said the guide was not available when he went to the district's office to view it. Hagberg wrote the district a Jan. 4 letter asking them to rescind the vote, the suit says. He also told school board members at their Feb. 9 meeting that he intended to sue if they did not do so. Hagberg did not return a call seeking comment.

Lesson 9 is a once a year 45-minute presentation that suggests respect for all students. THAT is what they are suing about.

CA: Alameda County Pulls Anti-Bullying Program Under Threats From Christianists

Score one for the Christianists that endorse the beating and taunting of LGBT students.

The school board blinked. Under the duress of a lawsuit and threats of recall, the Alameda Board of Education has voted to phase out an elementary school curriculum it adopted in May to prevent anti-gay bullying. The so-called Lesson 9, which had become an opposition centerpiece in a national anti-gay marriage campaign, will be replaced by a more generic anti-bullying message. But the board's action Tuesday night did little to ease the tension between gay parents, who want their children protected, and parents who who think elementary school is too early to talk to students about gay people.

Earlier this year a group of Christian families sued Alameda County over the right to keep their children out of school whenever anti-gay bullying was to be discussed. After the court ruled against them, they launched a recall petition against the members of the school board. The above decision is the result of their campaign.

Crack Delays Bay Bridge Reopening

Shortly after the Bay Bridge was closed on Friday for seismic retrofitting, workers noticed that a crack had developed on a beam of the eastern span. Repairs may delay the bridge's reopening today and pose a logistical nightmare for commuters.

The parts needed to make the fix were manufactured overnight by Stinger Welding Inc. in Coolidge, Ariz. Weighing about 18,000 pounds, they landed at Oakland International Airport aboard a chartered plane Sunday afternoon. They were rushed to the bridge aboard a flatbed truck with a California Highway Patrol escort. Caltrans engineer Mike Forner said a 10-person crew will need 18 to 24 hours to attach the saddles, then another four to six hours to properly set the tension on the tie-rods. But the estimate is just that, he cautioned, and the work will bump the project close to the 5 a.m. Tuesday deadline when officials had hoped to reopen the bridge. There are no guarantees, Ney said, that the work will be done in time for the first post-Labor Day commute. As a result, Bay Area transit and highway officials have been told to prepare for at least one more weekday with the Bay Bridge out of commission.

Caltrans says it was lucky that the crack was noticed when the bridge was already closed with hundreds of repair workers at hand.

UPDATE: The bridge has reopened.

Four Arrests In SF Rape Case

Four arrests have been made in the case of the Bay Area lesbian who was gang-raped last month.

Two men and two teens have been arrested on suspicion of gang-raping a woman last month in the San Francisco Bay area while allegedly taunting her for being a lesbian, police said Thursday. Officers arrested Humberto Hernandez Salvador at his Richmond home Wednesday night, Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said. The 31-year-old is being held without bail on gang rape, kidnapping and carjacking charges.

Police on Wednesday also arrested a 15-year-old Richmond boy and a 16-year-old Hercules boy, who were being held at a juvenile detention center on similar charges. Their names were not released. Josue Gonzalez, 21, turned himself in Thursday after police announced they were searching for him. He was wanted on charges of gang rape, kidnapping and carjacking. Gagan said Gonzalez asked for an attorney when he turned himself in but said nothing about his alleged role in the attack. "We feel that while these four suspects were at large, a large cross-section of our population felt unsafe," Gagan said. "Now that the fourth one is behind bars, we can all breathe a sigh of relief."

Police would not detail each person's alleged involvement. Tips from local residents led to the arrests. Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked on Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The alleged attackers made comments indicating they knew she was a lesbian, police said.

The case will be prosecuted as a hate crime.

MacArthur Parking

Bay Area commuters have a big mess to contend with after a section of the MacArthur Maze collapsed yesterday due to a tanker fire which melted the steel supports. The MacArthur Maze is a confusing knot of superhighways that join together at the Oakland end of the Bay Bridge and has probably caused more emergency last-minute lane changes than Miami's Golden Glades interchange, and that's saying something. Public transit is free in the Bay Area today and the governator has declared a state of emergency, enabling agencies such as BART and the ferry services to be refunded by the state. Oy, the hundreds of hours I wasted stuck in the MacArthur Maze. And that was just coming back from Steamworks!