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Mike Aldax

Push to limit smoking rekindled

Cindy Chew/The Examiner
A San Francisco lawmaker is reigniting stalled legislation that would further limit where smokers can light up in The City, hoping amendments to the bill will convince businesses that it won’t be a drag. The controversial legislation — first introduced by Supervisor Chris Daly last year and now being pushed by Supervisor Eric Mar — would forbid smoking in a slew of new settings, adding to existing bans in bars, restaurants, parks, transit stops and taxicabs. Read More

Newsom Tracker: Can the dust settle?

Mayor Gavin Newsom continues to lay low while the media picks apart every last angle of his departure from the 2010 California governor’s race. Newsom has yet to publicly appear since he announced Friday that he will no longer seek the state’s top post. Today, he has no public events or City Hall meetings scheduled, according to the Mayor’s Office. Read More

New lease for Mexican Museum

The Mexican Museum will not be homeless this Christmas. The museum’s collection of 12,000 objects, including paintings, sculptures and folk art, is currently in storage at Fort Mason and awaiting a new home in the culturally-rich Yerba Buena district in downtown San Francisco. That new location, however, likely won’t be ready until after 2014. Keeping the museum’s pieces at Fort Mason until it has a new home hasn’t been easy. Lease negotiations have been contentious. Read More

Swine flu vaccines in short supply — again

The City has used up most of the 28,000 injectable doses of H1N1 vaccine it received from the federal government last week and there is no clear indication as to when more will arrive, the Department of Public Health said. State officials told the DPH that more swine flu doses will be shipped out “in the next week to 10 days,” DPH spokeswoman Eileen Shields said. But those doses will be in the form of the nasal spray – aka FluMist – and not the injectable kind, she said. Read More

Talks in hotel impasse resume Monday

Talks between San Francisco’s major hotels and the union representing 9,000 workers resume today, one week after union members voted to authorize a strike as negotiations turned sour. A labor walkout, which the union says could happen within weeks if talks do not progress, could deal a financial blow to the hotels as well as The City’s coffers, which receives a 14 percent tax on each hotel room. A hotel strike in 2004 cost The City an estimated $100 million. Read More

Newsom abandons 2010 governor's race

Mayor Gavin Newsom has dropped out of the 2010 governor’s race. Newsom, 42, bowed out Friday after struggling to match the millions of dollars that his expected Democratic primary opponent, state Attorney General Jerry Brown, had raised. Newsom also trailed Brown in the polls even though Brown, a former governor and former Oakland mayor, has yet to declare his candidacy. Brown announced an exploratory committee for the post in September. Read More

Oil spill smaller than 2007 incident

An oil tanker Friday morning spilled “less than a few thousand gallons” of fuel into the Bay, rather than the 100-gallon figure reported by officials earlier in the morning, Mayor Gavin Newsom said. The spill, which has produced a 1-mile-long sheen on the Bay, was reported at 6:48 a.m. from a vessel anchored at Anchorage Nine, located about 2.5 miles southeast of the Bay Bridge, the U.S. Coast Guard said. A Panamanian-flagged tanker, named Dubai Star, was reportedly fueling up when one of its fuel lines ruptured, the Coast Guard said. Read More

Newsom Tracker: Nothing scheduled

Mayor Gavin Newsom has no public appearances today or meetings at City Hall – at least not according to his calendar. For Halloween Saturday, the busy bees supporting Newsom’s gubernatorial run will be working the phones at campaign headquarters, according to his schedule. Read More

Clinics begin offering H1N1 vaccinations

The lines were long but not unbearable this afternoon at city clinics offering swine flu vaccinations to at-risk San Franciscans. The Department of Public Health opened nine vaccination clinics citywide after receiving the largest shipment of swine flu doses to date this week. Read More

Newsom endorses Prop. D

Just days before the November election, Mayor Gavin Newsom has thrown his support behind Proposition D. The proposition would create an exception to a law banning new billboards and other general advertising signs citywide, allowing property owners to erect them solely on Market Street between Fifth and Seventh streets. Read More

Date of Mirant plant closure unchanged

Despite their persistent pleas to shut down the Mirant power plant in Potrero Hill in its entirety in 2010, residents and city officials who have been battling to close the heavily-polluting facility will have to remain patient, state regulators said this afternoon. Read More

Newsom Tracker: Quiet day?

After vetoing sanctuary city legislation and trumping successes of his homelessness initiatives Wednesday, Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to be having a much quieter day today. The mayor has no public appearances scheduled, the Mayor’s Office said. His gubernatorial campaign calendar also shows no events today. Stay tuned, of course. Newsom is known to abruptly spring into action.   Read More

Community event starts in Bayview Friday

The second installment of the Arts in Storefronts pilot program starts Friday in the Bayview district, city officials said. Vacated storefronts will morph from failed businesses into art exhibits. The work of San Francisco-based artists will be on display. The idea is billed by city officials as a creative way to inject vibrancy into neighborhoods hit hard by the downward economy. The project is a citywide effort, having kicked off last Friday in the Mid-Market and Tenderloin districts. Read More

Stem cell research grants bring millions to Bay Area

Bay Area researchers were awarded a significant portion of the $250 million in grants announced by the state’s stem cell institute. Researchers at the UC San Francisco, were members of teams that received nearly $20 million to discover how to implant insulin-producing cells in diabetes patients, and $19.2 million to develop a treatment for brain tumors. Stanford University researchers were on teams that received $20 million to treat stroke using implanted stem cells and $20 million for leukemia therapy, among other funding.   Read More

City’s homeless programs touted

Cindy Chew/The Examiner
An estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people are homeless on any given night in San Francisco, according to officials with Project Homeless Connect, which was launched by Mayor Gavin Newsom. But the program, and others he’s championed, has resulted in 10,000 people leaving San Francisco’s streets and shelters since 2004, he said. Read More
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