Last October, Emmanuel Pourmand, 22, and Joseph Inocencio, 19, were racing down Branham Lane in one of the frequent drag races that plague that quiet stretch of road. Pourmand lost control of his vehicle and hit a Volkswagen driven by Alyson Snow, 20, killing her instantly. On Friday, a judge sentenced Pourmand to the maximum nine years in prison, while Inocencio received six years and eight months.
Articles by Silicon Valley Newsroom
SJPD Chief Rob Davis will be retiring at the end of September, and the city is shifting into high gear to find a replacement for him. It will be no easy task. The department is faced with tough budget cuts, which may not affect performance yet, but certainly affect the morale of its officers, who have seen salaries, benefits, and even positions slashed year after year.
Facing a $19 billion budget deficit, the state has sent notices to 40,000 California businesses who have failed to file their tax returns for 2008. It is an effort to begin to close the tax gap between taxes owed and taxes paid. This comes to $6.5 billion dollars, or about one-third of the current deficit.
Travellers passing through Mineta Airport’s Terminal A will hardly notice anything different. Employees of Continental, United, JetBlue, and US Airways feel differently. For the past five months, since the terminal was renovated, they have complained that the office area often smells like a sewer.
San Jose wants to annex Cambrian 36, an unincorporated bit of land just 103 acres in size, jutting into San Jose along the border with Campbell. The courts want the city to annex it too, and have ordered City Hall to annex various unincorporated areas around the county.
San Jose police officer Edgar Ramirez was looking for the last suspect in a violent robbery that had just taken place in a Blossom Hill Check ‘N’ Go store. Then nature called. Ramirez asked some construction workers where he could relieve himself and was directed to a restroom in a vacant apartment. But something just wasn’t right there, so as he entered, Ramirez pulled out his gun.
Intel has announced that it will be purchasing McAfee, the antivirus software and computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara. The purchase is still pending shareholder approval, regulatory clearances and other customary conditions.
Finally, there’s some agreement on California’s $45 billion high speed rail project. On Thursday, the State Senate voted in support of AB619, which should hit Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk no later than next week. The new law states that companies seeking to win a contract with the state over the construction of the new rail line must disclose whether, 65 years ago, they were involved in any way with the transportation of Jews and others to Nazi concentration or death camps.
In 2009, San Jose decided that one of the best ways to become energy independent was to be the first city in the U.S. to generate its electricity through an organics-to-energy biogas facility. This vision will come a step closer when the city receives a $1.9 million grant from the California Energy Commission to construct a biomethane production demonstration project.
Two San Jose men appeared in court yesterday over ownership of an 840 lb. monster emerald found in the emerald forests of the Amazon. The enormous, 180,000 carat rock was first found in Brazil in 2001. At the time, a mining expert from San Jose named Ken Conetto allegedly made an agreement with the actual miners that proceeds from the sale of the rock would be split between them. He says they shook on it, and that was that.
