Delayed vaccines for the swine flu may arrive in The City next week, although it’s more likely the shipment to fight off the potentially deadly virus will arrive weeks later. The fear is that stalled shipments will leave the high-risk population in The City vulnerable to the extremely contagious H1N1 virus just as flu season begins to gain steam. The federal government is supplying free vaccine doses to municipalities in an effort to combat potential infections and hospitalizations. Read More

Composting bins are rolling into place, as the law that mandates proper refuse sorting in The City begins this week. Starting Wednesday, residents who fail to properly sort their trash will face fines. The rules are part of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to boost The City’s recycling rate beyond 72 percent.The ordinance is the first in the country to make composting mandatory. The Board of Supervisors approved the law in June, despite concerns that inspectors would aggressively penalize residents. Read More

The money has run out — again — for a long-running plan to turn blighted alleyways in Chinatown and surrounding neighborhoods into pedestrian-oriented pathways. An 11-year-old proposal to renovate 31 of the neighborhood’s 41 alleys has hit yet another funding snag since work began in 2000, said the Rev. Norman Fong of the Chinatown Community Development Center, which commissioned a study during the mid-1990s to identify which of the neighborhood’s narrow passageways needed a serious sprucing up. Like all else, the economy is to blame, Fong said. Read More

The murder trial for former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle will be moved out of Alameda County due to the massive amount of publicity the case has received, a judge ruled today. Mehserle, 27, who is charged with murder for the shooting death of unarmed passenger Oscar Grant III, 22, at the Fruitvale station in Oakland early New Year's Day, is “a real lightning rod for the community,” according to a consultant for Mehserle’s defense team. Read More