Important government documents are often shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests because of an exemption in the law that allows federal departments and agencies to withhold materials created before the issuance of an official policy. It’s known as the “internal deliberative process” exemption, and it enables officials to withhold virtually all memoranda, e-mails, studies or other documents created by agency employees or contractors as part of the policymaking process.
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A 24-year-old former Daly City police officer faces up to two years in jail for allegedly pointing his gun at a friend’s stomach and putting a knife to another friend’s throat while roughhousing.
Nicholas Skourtis is charged with one count of assault with a firearm, one count of brandishing a firearm, one count of assault with a knife and one count of brandishing a knife, all misdemeanors, for the two separate incidents, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Wednesday.
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German business software maker SAP AG has agreed to buy Sybase Inc. in a $5.8 billion deal that ratchets up SAP's rivalry with database leader Oracle Corp.
The all-cash deal intensifies the battle between SAP and Oracle to run more of the programs that corporations use to manage their data. Oracle, the world's leading database maker in a market where Sybase is a small player, has been on a buying binge in an attempt to take business in other areas from SAP.
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San Francisco prosecutors declined to file murder charges Tuesday against an 18-year-old man arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of another teen on Friday night.
Ilya Yurchenkov, 18, of San Francisco, was fatally shot at about 11:30 p.m. Friday in the 2400 block of Geary Boulevard near Lyon Street, police said.
Desmond Wroten, also of San Francisco, was arrested shortly after the killing, police said. Prosecutors have two court days to file charges after an arrest.
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Troy Brouwer and Kris Versteeg scored 36 seconds apart early in the second period, and the Chicago Blackhawks eliminated the Vancouver Canucks in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals for the second straight year with a 5-1 win on Tuesday night.
Dave Bolland scored on a short-handed breakaway with 45 seconds left in the second, and Patrick Kane and Dustin Byfuglien added breakaway goals 35 seconds apart in the third to send Chicago back to the Western Conference finals.
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At last the world has demonstrators the American left can applaud — not people like those tea party types.
Now, we have had those Greek demonstrators who instead want to keep a welfare state going, who are absolutely astonished at a four-year austerity program entailing wage cuts for public workers, pension freezes and eventually — five years down the road — an increase from 61 to 63 to qualify for old-age benefits.
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Year after year, as an increasingly toxic ultrapartisanship cripples the state government’s capability to make constructive decisions, The Examiner has warned that California cannot continue being a world-class economic leader under such dysfunctional conditions. But perhaps the most ominous timetable seen yet has just been made public, and it spells out how the advantages that made the Bay Area a powerhouse of entrepreneurial innovation are being directly attacked by Sacramento’s ineffectuality.
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An attacker hacked seven children and one teacher to death Wednesday and wounded 20 other people in a rampage at a kindergarten in northwest China, the latest in a string of savage assaults at the country's schools.
The slayings occurred despite a countrywide boost in security at schools, with gates and security cameras ordered installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
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Who’s in town
Jakob Dylan appears with his band, Three Legs, to promote his solo album “Women & Country.” [8 p.m., Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness Ave., S.F.]
Music
N'Dambi: The soul and R&B artist performs. [8 p.m., Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore St., S.F.]
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San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Carlos Garcia will make his final recommendation regarding teacher layoffs to the school board at Tuesday’s meeting.
On March 15, the district sent 701 layoff notices to staff members due to state budget cuts, the superintendent’s office said. The board has until Saturday to rescind some of those layoffs, and Garcia will recommend that half of them be retracted.
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San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday passed legislation denouncing a new Arizona law that requires police to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally and calling for a boycott of the state and businesses based there.
The resolution says the law “will inevitably lead to racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety, and creates a wedge between law enforcement and ethnic communities.”
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As a founding member and past chair of the Lake Merced Task Force, I’d like to commend the SFPUC for its Watershed Master Plan. This thorough, fair-minded document raises the question of whether it makes long-term sense to continue the open shooting of guns in a city park.
What is not widely known is that the people of San Francisco subsidize this use. The shooting club members do not begin to pay for its real value. Their lease lets them rent public land back to the public to fund a private activity.
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A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was assaulted Tuesday as furious protesters interrupted his university lecture about the limits of free speech.
Lars Vilks told The Associated Press a man leaped from the front row and head-butted him as he was delivering his lecture at Uppsala University, breaking Vilks' glasses but leaving him uninjured.
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Tiger Woods' longtime swing coach resigned Monday night, leaving the world's No. 1 player without one of his top advisors as he tries to rebuild his game.
Hank Haney said in a statement to the Golf Channel that he enjoyed working with Woods but he thinks it's time for him to step aside as his coach.
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An envelope containing a suspicious white powder was found at the Social Security Administration office in Redwood City Monday afternoon, prompting a three-hour hazardous materials investigation, a Redwood City fire battalion chief said.
Firefighters responded to the building at 601 Allerton St. at about 3:35 p.m. and evacuated occupants as they worked to determine whether the chemical posed a threat, Battalion Chief Geoffrey Balton said.
Investigators concluded there were no dangerous chemicals present and cleared the scene by about 6:40 p.m., Balton said.
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