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Modi wants to make India a chipmaking superpower. Can he?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

NEW DELHI — In his office in New Delhi, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Indian minister of electronics and information technology, keeps a 12-inch disc of silicon semiconductor on the wall, gleaming like a platinum record beside a portrait of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its circuits, measured in nanometers and invisible to the human eye, may be the most sophisticated objects ever made. It vies with oil as one of the most valuable traded goods on earth.According to India’s government, the microprocessor chips that power all things digital will soon be fully made in India. It’s an ambition as unlikely as it is bold, and speaks volumes about Modi’s belief that he can propel India into the top tier of advanced technology manufacturing.In July, a legion of fawning foreign businesspeople lined up onstage behind Modi in his home state of Gujarat. About $10 billion in subsidies are at stake, ready to fund 50% or even 70% of any company’s outlay. Anil Agarwal, the chair of Vedanta, a British m...

Education reform takes backseat to safety concerns, big outside spending in Denver school board race

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

At first glance, the traditional battle lines appeared to have been drawn in this year’s Denver school board race: reformers vs. candidates backed by the teachers union.But while the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Families Action, a deep-pocketed political group with charter school ties, each endorsed their own slate of candidates, the messaging this election cycle has not centered around school choice, charter schools or Denver Public Schools’ reform-era practice of closing and restarting low-performing schools.Instead, the emergence of another persistently vocal group — parents — is driving conversations around the race for three seats on the Board of Education.RELATED: Colorado voter guide: Stories, explainers and endorsements for the 2023 electionParents have rallied since the March shooting inside East High School, forming two groups — Resign DPS Board and the Parents Safety Advocacy Group, or P-SAG — that some election observers said are wil...

How big is Bay Area boom in India-born residents? Together, they’d rank as the region’s fourth-largest city

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

Earlier this year, in an epic shift, India became the world’s most populous country.And over the last decade, a similar transformation has been playing out in the Bay Area: Residents born in India now represent the largest immigrant group in the region’s two biggest counties, Santa Clara and Alameda. While the change, driven by federal immigration policy and Silicon Valley’s search for high-tech talent, has been playing out for years, new census estimates illustrate just how dramatic the India-born population has grown.About 250,000 immigrants from India call the two counties home. That’s enough people combined to rank as the Bay Area’s fourth largest city.The impact of the influx is showing up in simple and symbolic ways, especially along the southern end of San Francisco Bay, from Sunnyvale down to Milpitas, over to Fremont and back up to Dublin. In 2022, in a handful of ZIP codes, more than 1 in 5 residents were born in India.Bollywood by Amit and Hiren performs...

Branham survives furious Silver Creek rally, clinches spot in CCS playoffs

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

SAN JOSE — Branham turned in another robust offensive performance Friday in a 35-28 win over Silver Creek to clinch no worse than a share of the Blossom Valley Athletic League Santa Teresa-Valley Division title.The 35 points scored against Silver Creek was the fewest Branham has scored in any of its seven wins. The Bruins (7-2, 4-0) are averaging 44 points per game on the season, 51.7 points per game in their seven victories.It’s a testament to our commitment to our philosophy year-round,” Branham coach Stephen Johnson said. “Offensive coordinator Tommy McMahon does a great job of developing quarterbacks. He was the quarterback here in 2012 and just like me got into coaching right out of high school. We’ve really grown up in this program together, starting in our early 20s, late teens.”Branham’s Elias Antillon (2) runs for yardage during the 2nd half of the Branham at Silver Creek BVAL football game at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, C...

49ers-Bengals preview: Keys to an unprecedented 12th straight home win

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

SANTA CLARA – It’s 49ers alumni weekend, drawing over 100 ex-players and former owner Eddie DeBartolo to Levi’s Stadium. They better hope Sunday’s game against the Bengals goes better than last year’s reunion.The 49ers, before the likes of Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and Jim Harbaugh, got pummeled 44-23 by the Kansas City Chiefs in that Oct. 23, 2022 dud.Levi’s Stadium has hosted only 49ers’ victories since then.If the 49ers (5-2) can beat the Bengals (3-3), it will be the 12th consecutive home win, including playoffs, which would be their longest such stretch in team history, from Kezar Stadium to Candlestick Park to their 10-year-old home atop a former Great America parking lot.This current 11-win spree matches those from 1996-97 and 1998-99. Technically, and perhaps more impressively, the 49ers did win 19 consecutive regular-season games between 1996-99, but an NFC Championship Game loss to Green Bay in January 1998 broke up that overall string.OK, enough about victory vibes.Did we ...

CRISPR gene editing could kill HIV. But is it a cure?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

In a provocative first step toward an elusive end to a devastating disease that has claimed 40 million lives, three patients have received CRISPR gene-editing therapies in an effort to eradicate HIV from their bodies.The results — whether the men are cured or not after the one-time intravenous infusions this year — have not yet been disclosed by the San Francisco biotech company that created the technology based on Nobel Prize-winning research by UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna.But the potential treatment, called EBT-101, is safe and caused no major side effects, Excision BioTherapeutics reported at a meeting in Brussels this week.Six more men will be treated, perhaps some at UC San Francisco, with higher doses. Participating in the research program is potentially risky: Participants stop their protective anti-HIV drugs for 12 weeks after gene-editing treatment to see if the virus is gone. Data will be presented at a medical conference next year, according to the company.“...

Borenstein: Can Bay Area leaders meet the moment before it’s too late?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

Population growth. Transit ridership. Office demand. Property tax revenues. The coronavirus pandemic upended the Bay Area economy — and many of the changes are likely to be permanent.The question now is whether our local elected leaders can meet the moment. Whether they can pivot to plan for a future that will be radically different than previously assumed.I hope they can. I’m fearful they won’t.Revised population forecasts and office work patterns drive this seismic shift. The region has planned based on expectations of a rapidly increasing number of residents. But suddenly those numbers have reversed course, and state forecasts show that the Bay Area won’t return to its pre-pandemic population until midway through the next decade.Meanwhile, after getting a taste during the lockdown, white-collar workers have embraced working from home, either full-time or on a hybrid schedule. Many employers have also championed the idea, recognizing that they want to keep their treasured wo...

St. Francis rushing attack too much for Riordan in crucial WCAL showdown

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

St. Francis leaned upon its reliable ground game to slip past Archbishop Riordan 27-20 and win a game that established the Lancers as the second-best team in the West Catholic Athletic League. “Kingston Keanaaina ran it really well, and our O-line blocked it well up front,” St. Francis coach Greg Calcagno told the Bay Area News Group on Friday night. “We went to a jumbo set up front, and we ran some wildcat and threw different stuff for St. Francis.”Keanaaina rushed for 133 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries as St. Francis defeated Riordan for the 14th consecutive meeting. The Crusaders were also coming off a 53-7 loss to Serra last Saturday. After Riordan sophomore quarterback Mike Mitchell Jr. rushed for a six-yard touchdown in the first quarter, Keanaaina answered with a 10-yard rush to tie the game at 7-7.With around three minutes left in the second quarter, Mitchell threw a 40-yard pass to Cynai Thomas to give Riordan a 14-7 advantage. Mitchell completed 19 of 27 passes f...

Liccardo: PG&E must curb wasteful spending before receiving rate hike

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

At least 51.2 million reasons should compel the California Public Utilities Commission to carefully scrutinize PG&E’s demand for an 18% rate hike next week.The $51.2 million in compensation garnered by PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made her the highest paid CEO of any for-profit utility in the United States in 2021, weeks before customers learned of double-digit rate increases — and the company still lost more than $88 million in net income.It’s a symptom of a much larger disease at PG&E — and indeed, in the CPUC’s regulatory oversight. Residential rates have already doubled since 2006 and nearly tripled for low-income customers, according to The Utility Reform Network. The proposed $39-per-month rate hike the commission will consider on Thursday will further burden struggling residents and small businesses.The company responds that higher rates will fund long-overdue infrastructure improvements to mitigate the risk of wildfires and gas explosions. PG&E pits our c...

Elias: California’s denser housing ‘solutions’ are failing badly

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:59:00 GMT

Rarely has California seen so concerted and unified a campaign by its elected officials as the drive for housing density conducted by Gov. Gavin Newsom and allied state legislators over the past five years.Related ArticlesLocal News | Elias: Butler does California Democrats a big favor in U.S. Senate race Local News | Elias: Science only seems to justify Newsom’s policies when convenient Local News | Elias: California bills to cut prison population unlikely to stop All along, as legislators passed law after law easing the path to development of high-rise apartments and condominiums, there have been three major goals: One is to ease a housing shortage, another is to drive down the price of housing and a third is to somehow ease the obdurate problem of homelessness.In the eyes of state officials, these things are linked. By creating new housing and easing the existing shortage, real estate prices and rents were supposed to come dow...