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Catch up on Bay Area news today, including NCAA March Madness excitement in San Francisco, a tragic freeway pile-up, and legal action to protect migrant children’s rights.
Here is our daily news roundup, produced by human reporters and edited for audio by ChatGPT, for the 12 hours from 4:00 AM Thursday 3/27 to 4:00 PM Thursday 3/27:
Good afternoon and welcome to our Thursday Afternoon News Roundup, bringing you today’s top stories from across the region.
March Madness continues in San Francisco today with Chase Center hosting two exciting Sweet Sixteen games in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship tournament. At 4:39 this afternoon, top-seeded University of Florida will face number 4 seed University of Maryland in the West region. That matchup will be followed at 7:09 p.m. by number 3 seed Texas Tech taking on number 10 Arkansas. The winners of today’s games will meet Saturday at Chase Center in the Elite Eight, with that victor advancing to next week’s Final Four. This marks only the second time Chase Center, home of the Golden State Warriors and soon-to-debut Golden State Valkyries, has hosted NCAA tournament games since 2022. Prior to that, San Francisco hadn’t hosted tournament games since 1939 at the California Coliseum on Treasure Island.
In legal news, eleven nonprofit organizations have filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco seeking to preserve funding for legal representation of unaccompanied migrant children. The plaintiffs, including groups from Berkeley and East Palo Alto, claim they received sudden cancellation orders last Friday from the U.S. Department of the Interior, directing them to immediately stop representing these children in immigration cases. They’re asking the court for a temporary restraining order to continue their work while the lawsuit proceeds. Unaccompanied children are foreign-born minors who arrive in the United States without parents or caregivers, often after being separated from family during migration, trafficked, or fleeing their home countries alone. The nationwide network of 89 legal services organizations was actively representing 26,000 children when the cancellation orders arrived.
Meanwhile, a new bill in Congress aims to fund research on how wildfire smoke affects grapevines and wine production. The Smoke Exposure Research Act, announced by Senator Alex Padilla, would allocate 32.5 million dollars for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to collaborate with universities in California, Oregon, and Washington. These three states, which contain approximately 669,000 acres of vineyards, have all experienced major wildfires in recent years, often during fall harvest when grapes are ready to be picked. The bipartisan legislation is co-sponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Representatives Mike Thompson and Doug LaMalfa of California.
Tragedy struck early this morning on Interstate 80 in Contra Costa County, where at least one person died in a multi-vehicle collision. According to the California Highway Patrol, officers responded around 3:50 a.m. to the crash on eastbound lanes near the Carquinez Bridge and Pomono Street off-ramp in Crockett. The pile-up involved at least four vehicles, including a big-rig. A coroner was called to the scene approximately an hour after the crash, which shut down eastbound lanes of the freeway west of the Carquinez Bridge.
In other traffic-related news, a 37-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run charges following a fatal collision in Brisbane earlier this week. Prosecutors say Hector Delatorre-Jiminez caused the crash that killed 59-year-old Rosa Baez early Monday morning. According to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, Baez was driving to work in her Honda with a green light to make a left turn when Delatorre-Jiminez allegedly ran a red light in a Chevrolet Tahoe, striking her vehicle and pushing it into a light pole. His vehicle then hit a second car, injuring that driver.
Prosecutors allege Delatorre-Jiminez fled the scene to his workplace in Atherton, where he was later located and allegedly admitted to his involvement. Baez’s family has established a GoFundMe page for funeral expenses, which had raised 1,700 dollars as of midday Thursday.
That’s all for our Thursday afternoon news roundup. Thank you for joining us, and we’ll see you next time.
Here is our original human-produced daily news roundup for the 12 hours from 4:00 AM Thursday 3/27 to 4:00 PM Thursday 3/27:
San Francisco is hosting two games at Chase Center on Thursday in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship tournament.
At 4:39 p.m., University of Florida, which is the No. 1 seed in the West region of the tournament’s bracket, plays No. 4 University of Maryland. That game will be followed at 7:09 p.m. by a matchup between No. 3 seed Texas Tech University and No. 10 University of Arkansas.
The winners of those games, which are part of the Sweet Sixteen round of the tournament, will then play Saturday at Chase Center in an Elite Eight matchup to decide the winner of the West region that will then move on to the Final Four next week.
This is the second time that Chase Center — home of the Golden State Warriors National Basketball Association team and the soon-to-debut Golden State Valkyries team in the Women’s National Basketball Association — is hosting NCAA men’s tournament games after previously hosting in 2022.
Before that, San Francisco had not hosted games from the tournament since 1939 when the city hosted games at the California Coliseum on Treasure Island.
Eleven nonprofit legal services organizations, including one in Berkeley and another in East Palo Alto, filed a lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco seeking to preserve funding for the legal representation of children in immigration matters.
The plaintiffs allege that last Friday, “without warning,” they received “cancellation orders” from the U.S. Department of the Interior ordering them to immediately stop work representing “unaccompanied children” in immigration cases. They asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order that would rescind the cancellations until the court can hold a full hearing on the lawsuit.
Unaccompanied children are foreign-born minors who arrived in the United States without parents or caregivers, often under tragic circumstances.
The plaintiffs say in their complaint that the most common reasons they are unaccompanied is “because they were separated from their parents on their way to the United States, because they were trafficked to the United States, because they were separated from their families by immigration authorities after entering the United States, or because they fled their home countries without their parents.”
The representation of unaccompanied children is contracted to a network of 89 legal services organizations in 159 offices around the country. The plaintiffs ask the court to block the cancellations, noting that on the date of cancellation, the plaintiffs and others in the network were actively representing 26,000 children.
A new bill in Congress proposes to use federal funds to research the impacts of wildfire smoke exposure on grapevines and vineyards, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said when the bill was introduced earlier this month.
The Smoke Exposure Research Act requests $32.5 million to fund the U.S. Department of Agriculture to work with University of California, Davis, Oregon State University and Washington State University to research the effects of smoke exposure on viticulture and winemaking practices.
All three universities are in the country’s largest winegrowing states. The three states combined have approximately 669,000 acres of planted vineyards, according to the USDA and Oregon Wine Board.
The proposed Smoke Exposure Research Act is co-sponsored by Padilla, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale.
California, Oregon and Washington have all experienced major wildfires in recent years, often during the fall, when vineyards are flush with grapes ready to harvest.
At least one died in a pile-up on eastbound Interstate Highway 80 in Contra Costa County early Thursday morning, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The CHP said that around 3:50 a.m., patrol officers were alerted to a multi-vehicle collision on I-80’s eastbound lanes near the Carquinez Bridge and the eastbound Pomono Street off-ramp in the unincorporated town of Crockett.
Patrol officers said at least four vehicles were involved in the collision, including a big-rig.
According to the CHP, a coroner was called nearly an hour after the crash, which shut down eastbound lanes of the freeway west of the Carquinez Bridge.
A 37-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to vehicular manslaughter, hit-and-run and other charges for a collision that killed a woman in Brisbane earlier this week, prosecutors said Thursday.
Hector Delatorre-Jiminez is accused of causing a collision that killed 59-year-old Lodi resident Rosa Baez early Monday morning, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
Shortly before 5:15 a.m., Baez was driving to work in a blue Honda on Bayshore Boulevard at the intersection with Van Waters and Rodgers Road and had a green light to make a left turn when Delatorre-Jiminez allegedly ran through a red light in a Chevrolet Tahoe and struck Baez’s vehicle, pushing it into a light pole, prosecutors said.
Delatorre-Jiminez’s vehicle then struck a second vehicle, injuring its driver. Baez was taken to a hospital and died there, while the victim in the second vehicle is expected to survive.
Prosecutors said Delatorre-Jiminez allegedly ran from the collision scene and went to his workplace in Atherton, but the crash was caught on surveillance video and investigators eventually determined he was the driver. Officers went to his workplace, where he allegedly admitted to what he had done.
The family of Baez has created a GoFundMe site to raise money for funeral expenses. The GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/HelpRosasFamily had raised $1,700 as of midday Thursday.