San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday gave final approval of an ordinance that will require that city residents be hired for municipal construction projects.The legislation will require 20 percent local hiring in the first year, increasing by 5 percent each year to 50 percent in the seventh year. The measure had drawn concern from some contractors and building trade unions. Read More

When Mike Viola performs, live — as he will at Café Du Nord this week — and on disc, you can hear the heart he wears on his sleeve, and its true and irresistible pulse.The 44-year-old Viola (pronounced with a hard “i”) has been a go-to singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist for a variety of other artists, some of them actors with musical aspirations. Read More

When a natural-gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, it split right up the seam of a weld that, according to Pacific Gas & Electric documents, did not exist. The existence of a weld on the pipeline is significant since in some cases, federal regulations require pipelines with seams to be more stringently monitored. Read More

The man who made off with $1.5 million worth of casino chips — in attention-getting denominations of $100 to $25,000 — from the posh Bellagio in Las Vegas might be staring at colorful but worthless loot. “If you can’t cash them, they’re not worth anything,” said David Schwartz, the director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Schwartz said they could be hard to redeem in an era of anti-terrorism currency-exchange laws. Read More