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      David DePape Convicted in Attack of Nancy Pelosi’s Husband

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      In 2022, David DePape broke into Ms. Pelosi’s San Francisco home and eventually beat her husband with a hammer.David DePape was convicted on Friday of five charges, brought by the state of California, for breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home in 2022 and beating her husband with a hammer.The verdict in the state trial concluded a case that had raised fears of politically motivated violence in a divided America and reflected some of the darkest currents in the country’s politics. In the years leading up to the attack, Mr. DePape was submerged in online conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon and the virulent rhetoric that right-wing figures had for years embraced against their opponents, including Ms. Pelosi.The convictions by a state jury in a San Francisco courtroom followed Mr. DePape’s convictions in federal court last year that resulted in a 30-year sentence. On Friday, he was found guilty of first-degree burglary; false imprisonment of an elder; threatening the family of a public official; kidnapping for ransom that resulted in bodily harm; and dissuading a witness by force or threat.Mr. DePape, 44, now faces a life sentence without parole in state prison, to be completed after he serves his federal term.Over the course of the two trials, he and his lawyers never contested the evidence against him. In interviews with police shortly after the incident in October 2022, he admitted to breaking into Ms. Pelosi’s house and attacking her husband, Paul Pelosi. He did the same in an interview from jail with a local television station and on the witness stand in his federal trial.His lawyer in the state case, Adam Lipson of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told the jury in his closing statement on Tuesday that the group should find Mr. DePape guilty of some of the charges. But Mr. Lipson tried to convince jurors that the prosecution had not proved other charges beyond a reasonable doubt. He disputed, in particular, that Mr. DePape was guilty of kidnapping Mr. Pelosi because he did not tie up his victim or attempt to extract a ransom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Museum Revolution Gains Momentum

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      Faced with dwindling attendance and changing demographics, museum directors are shifting their approach, with an eye toward “radical hospitality.”When Melissa Chiu began her tenure as the director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden 10 years ago, she had a stray thought about the institution’s location, on the National Mall, and its appearance, a doughnut-shaped concrete structure by the architect Gordon Bunshaft with a certain resemblance to a spaceship.“Maybe some of our visitors thought it was the Air and Space Museum,” she said of the popular institution next door, which, like the Hirshhorn, is part of the Smithsonian and which was getting more than six million visitors a year at the time. “So, OK,” she said, “that’s not a bad thing.”Chiu — who is appearing this week at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Venice with the artist and writer John Akomfrah to discuss how artists and museums can work together to address social, political and ecological issues — did not wait around for confusion to boost attendance at her museum. (The annual conference was founded by The New York Times, and is convened by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by Times journalists.)Melissa Chiu, the director of the Hirshhorn, in front of Torkwase Dyson’s “Bird and Lava #04” at the museum. Her mantra for the museum? “Radical accessibility.”Lexey Swall for The New York TimesThe number of people visiting the Hirshhorn has increased dramatically since she started in 2014, when the museum received 552,000 visitors. In 2018 and 2019 that figure was up more than 50 percent, and even in the post-lockdown phase of the pandemic, a time when many museums have faced a slump in visitors, the numbers are still well above that decade-old baseline.The issue of attendance has been a focus of museums large and small across the country lately, as tourism has shifted, interest on the part of younger people has waned in some places and regional demographics have changed. Museums have taken various steps to manage the challenge: featuring newer and sometimes lesser-known artists, catering more to local audiences, and adding technological enhancements to attract nontraditional visitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Close Examination of the Most Infamous Public Toilet in America

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      On a recent sunny Sunday, residents of San Francisco’s Noe Valley gathered to celebrate the opening of a toilet. But not just any toilet. This was the nation’s most infamous public toilet.In 2022, my colleague Heather Knight, then at The San Francisco Chronicle, noticed the projected price tag on the commode: $1.7 million, which Assemblyman Matt Haney had secured from the state. This was business as usual in San Francisco. Other public toilets had cost about the same. Local officials were planning a celebration. But Knight’s article set off a furor. Gov. Gavin Newsom clawed back the money. The party was canceled. Haney denounced the project he had made possible: “The cost is insane. The process is insane. The amount of time it takes is insane.” He wanted answers.Phil Ginsburg, the general manager of San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department, responded with a letter that is a masterpiece of coiled bureaucratic fury. He told Haney that the department had been “pleasantly surprised” by the “unexpected allocation” of $1.7 million for the Noe bathroom. “Until now,” Ginsburg wrote, “we have not received any questions from you on the estimate.”But Ginsburg was happy to walk Haney through the numbers and describe how Haney, as a former member of San Francisco’s powerful Board of Supervisors and a current member of the State Legislature, bore responsibility for them. “As you will see, the process is indeed long and expensive,” he noted. “It is also the result of many years of political choices and exacerbated by skyrocketing costs.”There’s the planning and design phase, which requires bringing the design for the public toilet to “community engagement stakeholders” and refining it based on their feedback. That typically takes three to six months. Then the Public Works Department can solicit bids from outside contractors. That takes six months. Construction takes four to six months more, depending on whether a prefab toilet is used or one is constructed on site. The toilet also needed approval from the Department of Public Works, the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection, the Arts Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Mayor’s Office on Disability and PG&E, the local electric utility.“I share your frustration and concern over the length and costs associated with public construction processes,” Ginsburg wrote. “As an elected official, I hope you will advocate for policy changes at the state and local level to make it easier to move small projects like this one.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      San Francisco Mayor Gives Panda Diplomacy a Try

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      In a city still struggling to recover from the pandemic, Mayor London Breed hopes giant pandas will lift the spirits — and the economy — of San Francisco.Facing a tough re-election fight in San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has already proposed building a soccer stadium in place of an underused mall, adding a college to the hollowed-out downtown and filling the city’s quiet streets with lively night markets.But now, Ms. Breed has a new idea to reverse the city’s post-pandemic woes: giant pandas.She returned Sunday from China wheeling a luggage cart through San Francisco International Airport with stuffed toy pandas brimming from the tops of her bags. Her biggest coup overseas was securing an agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association to have pandas take up residence at the San Francisco Zoo for the first time. “Everyone is truly excited about pandas,” Ms. Breed said at the airport. “It represents so much joy.”The arrival of the black-and-white superstars could be an economic boon for a city hit hard by the pandemic.They could also give Ms. Breed a personal boost as she tries to shore up support among the frustrated electorate in San Francisco. Voters, particularly those of Asian descent who make up about 37 percent of the population, have told pollsters that they do not approve of the job the mayor is doing, and Ms. Breed and her challengers are fighting hard to win them over.Securing the pandas would also be a marked contrast from last year, when two adult pandas and their 3-year-old cub were moved out of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and flown back to China aboard a FedEx Boeing 777 called the Panda Express.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Highway 1 Collapse Leaves 2,000 Tourists Stranded

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      Many stayed in temporary shelters, hotels and campgrounds overnight on Saturday, while some slept in their cars. A portion of scenic Highway 1 in the Big Sur area of California collapsed Saturday stranding about 2,000 motorists, mostly tourists, overnight.Officials with the California Department of Transportation said on Sunday that a section of the southbound highway located in the Central Coast, would remain closed to the public while crews worked on the affected areas. Large chunks of the road fell into the ocean. The highway, also known as the Pacific Coast Highway, features stretches of rocky cliffs, lush mountains, panoramic beaches and coastal redwood forests.There were no reported injuries. Caltrans, the agency, did not give an estimate of when it expected to fully reopen the highway. Officials did not say what led to the collapse, but torrential rain battered the area near Rocky Creek Bridge, which is about 17 miles south of Monterey. Kevin Drabinski, a spokesman for Caltrans, said the officials determined that the damage was severe enough to close the highway for motorists Saturday afternoon.“Caltrans became aware that we had lost portion of the southbound lane and that necessitated a full closure of Highway 1,” Mr. Drabinski said. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside Amira Yahyaoui’s Claims about Mos, a Student Aid Start-Up

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      Amira Yahyaoui, a human rights activist, promoted the success of her student aid start-up, Mos. Some of her statements do not add up, according to internal data and people familiar with the company.As a Tunisian human rights activist in the 2000s, Amira Yahyaoui staged protests and blogged about government corruption. In interviews, she described being beaten by police. When she was 18, she said, she was kidnapped from the street, dropped off at the Algerian border and placed in exile for several years.Ms. Yahyaoui’s compelling background helped her stand out among entrepreneurs when she moved in 2018 to San Francisco, where she founded a student aid start-up called Mos. The app hit the top of Apple’s App Store and Ms. Yahyaoui raised $56 million from high-profile investors, including Sequoia Capital, John Doerr and Steph Curry, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. Mos was valued at $400 million.In podcasts, TV interviews and other media, Ms. Yahyaoui, 39, frequently discussed Mos’s success.Among other things, she said the start-up had helped 400,000 students get financial aid. But internal company data viewed by The New York Times showed that as of early last year, only about 30,000 customers had paid for Mos’s student aid services. The rest of the 400,000 users included anyone who had signed up for a free account and may have gotten an email about applying for student aid, two people familiar with the situation said.After Mos expanded into online banking in September 2021, Ms. Yahyaoui told publications such as TechCrunch that the company had more than 100,000 bank accounts. But those accounts had very small amounts of money in them, according to the internal data. Less than 10 percent of Mos’s roughly 153,000 bank users had put their own money into their accounts, the data showed.Some employees tried to speak up about Ms. Yahyaoui’s claims, said Emi Tabb, who worked at Mos in operations and had roles such as head of financial aid before resigning in late 2022. But Ms. Yahyaoui dismissed and sometimes disparaged employees who tried pushing back against her public comments, five people who witnessed the incidents said.“She created a culture of fear,” Mx. Tabb said.Mos is among a class of tech start-ups that rose during the fast money era of the late 2010s and early in the pandemic, when young companies landed millions of dollars in funding with little more than promises. Now as the money has dried up and many tech start-ups grapple with a downturn, investors are pickier, customers are warier of bold claims and employees are more suspicious of founder pronouncements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      United Airlines Flight Missing an External Panel Lands Safely

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      No one realized that the panel from the plane, a Boeing 737-800, was missing until it had landed safely, the airline said.A United Airlines flight that took off on Friday morning from San Francisco International Airport landed in Oregon missing an external panel, the Federal Aviation Administration said.The panel was found to be missing after the plane, a Boeing 737-800, landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport in Oregon and parked at a gate, United Airlines said in a statement. It was unclear when or how the panel went missing.According to the airline, there was no indication of any damage to the plane during the flight, and the aircraft did not declare an emergency on its way to the Medford airport.“We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service,” the airline said. “We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.”The plane was carrying 139 passengers and a crew of six, according to United Airlines. No injuries were reported.The plane has been in service for more than 25 years, and it was from a previous generation of 737 aircraft, according to Airfleets.net, a website that tracks aircraft information. The airport briefly paused operations to inspect the runway, and resumed flights after no debris was found on the airfield, Amber Judd, the director of the Medford airport, said in an email.Boeing referred questions about the flight to United Airlines. The F.A.A. said it planned to investigate the episode.The discovery of the missing panel on Friday came as Boeing has faced heavy scrutiny in recent weeks after a door-sized section blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines flight in January just minutes after it had taken off from Portland, Ore. There were no major injuries during the flight, but the frightening episode, which was recorded on video, prompted government officials to look into quality control at Boeing.After the January flight, the F.A.A. began a six-week audit of Boeing, which found “multiple instances” in which the plane maker had failed to follow through with quality-control requirements.Since then, there have been a number of issues with flights on Boeing aircraft.On March 8, a United Airlines flight that had landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston rolled into the grass as the plane, a Boeing 737, exited onto the taxiway, according to the F.A.A.In February, a Madrid-bound American Airlines flight, a Boeing 777, diverted to Boston Logan International Airport with a cracked windshield shortly after it had departed from Kennedy International Airport in New York. More

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      Levi’s Wants You to Rethink Your Denim Shopping

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      In the Levi’s store on Market Street in San Francisco, the denim maker’s newly extended collection is on full display. Its mannequins are dressed head to toe in its trademark denim. Black denim overalls are paired with a light-blue long-sleeve denim blouse, complemented by a denim cap. Another dons a denim cross-body bag. A wall of blue jean jackets gives shoppers the option to feel like a hippie, rancher or rock star — depending on which they choose.“It isn’t just walls and walls of jeans,” Michelle Gass said as she scanned the store this month, days after becoming the chief executive of Levi Strauss & Company. The assortment of tops, which Levi’s has been producing at a faster rate than it has in the past, was equal to the store’s inventory of jeans.That day, Ms. Gass’s outfit also served as an example of what the company was going for. She had swapped out her signature black leather jacket that was her go-to look during her time as Kohl’s chief executive for a dark-wash Levi’s trucker jacket and a ’90s-inspired midi denim skirt to match.Ms. Gass, 55, wants to make Levi’s not only a brand you think of when you want jeans, but also a place you go to first when shopping for shirts, jumpsuits and puffer jackets. Her goal is to get customers back more often — since people usually buy tops more frequently than bottoms — and to bring them to Levi’s stores, its website and its mobile app.“When you’re building stores, when you’re creating an e-commerce site, the consumer wants to explore and shop more than just for a pair of jeans,” Ms. Gass said.“It isn’t just walls and walls of jeans,” Michelle Gass, chief executive of Levi’s, said of the company’s store in San Francisco.Marissa Leshnov for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More