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San Francisco will abandon its Martin Luther King Jr. Day march this year, the first time in more than two decades that the city's tribute to the slain civil rights leader will not include the kind of demonstration that defined him.

San Francisco will abandon its Martin Luther King Jr. Day march this year, the first time in more than two decades that the city's tribute to the slain civil rights leader will not include the kind of demonstration that defined him. The thousands of people who usually march up Third Street from public transit stations and then up Market Street to rally at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium instead will be bused to the noon gathering Monday. Putting participants on Muni was billed as a nod to the late Rosa Parks, who became famous for refusing to give up her...

(01-09) 16:55 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- About 100 people were evacuated today and traffic on two busy San Francisco thoroughfares was rerouted after a Starbucks employee found a homemade bomb in a restroom. The employee found what appeared to be a "suspicious device" inside the unisex bathroom at the Starbucks at Van Ness Avenue and Bush Street around 1:15 p.m. and called police, Sgt. Neville Gittens said. Gittens would not describe the device or its size other than to say it "would have caused damage if it exploded.'' Don Henschke, sales manager at Ellis Brooks Auto Center across the street...

Bomb diffused at a San Francisco Starbucks Bay City News Service http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/13586398.htm A bomb left inside a Starbucks bathroom was diffused by the San Francisco police explosives ordinance unit this afternoon, according to Sgt. Neville Gittens. The improvised explosive device, or IED, was diffused by at around 2 p.m., Gittens said. Police responded to a call about a suspicious device in the coffee house located at Van Ness Avenue and Bush Street at around 1:15 p.m. Gittens said he could not comment on the size or type of device found or on its potential explosive capacity. A police investigation is...

Almost half of San Francisco's public schools are "severely resegregated," and the picture could grow worse due to inertia and political stalemates, according to a new report issued by a state-appointed monitor. The city's school district, once one of the most integrated urban districts in the country, now is on a reverse slide, with 50 of its 119 schools severely resegregated, the report says. That number is up from 30 four years ago. Schools fit into the resegregated category if any one racial group makes up 60 percent or more of any one grade level. Many of the 50 schools...

Like a lingering, nasty winter cold, Willie Brown is one politician the Golden State just can't seem to shake. To remove the notorious former California State Assembly speaker from power, it took a constitutional rewrite that imposed legislative term limits. And after Democrats lost control of the chamber to the GOP in 1995, voters were dumbfounded when Brown outfoxed them, manipulating two Republican surrogates Manchurian-style to retain power. When those limits finally prevented Willie from any additional time in Sacramento, he promptly ran for mayor of San Francisco, serving two terms from 1996 to 2004. Even as many Californians saw...

When Cpl. Michael Montemayor dashed into enemy fire to pull a fellow Marine from a stinking canal in the southern Iraq city of Nasiriya in March 2003, he wasn't exactly thinking of becoming the Marine Corps poster boy. "I was just doing my job," the 30-year-old San Jose native, who was later promoted to sergeant and has since left the Corps, said Friday. "My mission was to get my Marines home." Nevertheless, posters bearing Montemayor's image -- billboards, actually -- will be going up in about 20 locations around the Bay Area, beginning this week. They will bear his name...

San Francisco will delay enforcement of a voter-approved ban on gun and ammunition sales until March 1 while a judge considers a National Rifle Association lawsuit challenging the measure, City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced Wednesday. The city was scheduled to enforce the ban Jan. 1, but Herrera said his office agreed to push implementation back by two months. In exchange, the NRA agreed not to seek an immediate restraining order blocking Proposition H, the Nov. 8 ballot measure that includes the prohibition on gun sales. The NRA, joined by other advocacy groups and individual gun owners, plans to file suit...

The Bay Area, heavy with technical and business management jobs, leads the nation in wages, with workers in the region earning 17 percent more than the national average, the U.S. Labor Department reported Wednesday. The 10-county region -- which is also one of the most expensive places in the country to live -- has scored No. 1 in each of the studies conducted by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics since its inception in 1988.

San Francisco, California (PRWEB) December 28, 2005 -- Following news that Al Gore and wife Tipper have purchased a multimillion dollar condo at the new St. Regis highrise in San Francisco, well-heeled home buyers throughout the city are clamoring to join the neighborhood. "Ever since people learned that Al and Tipper Gore were moving into the St. Regis, I've had three times as many inquiries about the place," says Damion Matthews, a realtor specializing in San Francisco's luxury condo market. "There's something about living near a person so powerful and important that really excites folks," he says. "A client of...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The city of San Francisco reached agreement with the National Rifle Association on Wednesday to temporarily delay enforcing part of a voter-approved handgun ban. Voters on Nov. 8 approved banning the sale and possession of handguns in the city. Residents still must get rid of their weapons by April 1. But the NRA and city agreed to delay from Jan. 1 to March 1 the deadline for banning the sale of handguns in the city. In exchange for the postponement, the NRA agreed to abandon its bid for a temporary restraining order and instead have the...

Following news that Al Gore and wife Tipper have purchased a multimillion dollar condo at the new St. Regis highrise in San Francisco, well-heeled home buyers throughout the city are clamoring to join the neighborhood. "Ever since people learned that Al and Tipper Gore were moving into the St. Regis, I've had three times as many inquiries about the place," says Damion Matthews, a realtor specializing in San Francisco's luxury condo market. "There's something about living near a person so powerful and important that really excites folks," he says. "A client of mine just moved into the swanky Four Seasons...

11250 Waples Mill Road    ·Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683www.NRAILA.org San Francisco Backs Off-- For Now Thursday, December 22, 2005 Bowing to pressure from NRA and law-abiding firearm owners, the City of San Francisco has agreed to postpone enforcement of the provision of Prop H that bans the sale or transfer of any firearm or ammunition until March 1, 2006.  The handgun possession ban provision of Prop H does not goes into effect until April 1, 2006.  Residents of San Francisco have until then to get their guns out of the city or turn them in to police without compensation.In the interim,...

SAN FRANCISCO, December 22, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Archbishop George Hugh Niederauer, soon to be installed as the new Archbishop of San Francisco, has told a local news outlet that he is opposed to the Vatican’s prohibition of homosexuals in seminaries. “Some who are seriously mistaken have named sexual orientation as the cause of the recent scandal regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests,” Niederauer said Monday in an interview with the Intermountain Catholic News. Niederauer referred to the “sexual orientation” of homosexual men, what the Vatican document on ordaining homosexual men called “deep seated homosexual tendencies” as merely “a...

San Francisco's incoming Catholic archbishop, George Niederauer, has spoken boldly in support of gay priests and has praised gay parishioners, leaders of gay Catholic organizations said Thursday. Many in the church hierarchy have blamed the international clergy sex abuse scandal on gay priests, and the Vatican's recent instruction on gays in the priesthood stated new rules on gay clergy were "made more urgent by the current situation." Niederauer disputed those ideas in an interview with his diocesan newspaper in Utah. "Some who are seriously mistaken have named sexual orientation as the cause of the recent scandal regarding the sexual abuse...

Is talk radio really just an entertainment medium, or do listeners expect bona fide activism from air personalities? In the past, I'd always believed it was about appealing to a segment of the radio audience and primarily reflecting that group's political viewpoints. It's now clear, however, that faced with an increasing number of new media choices, talk radio listeners want quite a lot more. Simply being entertaining, timely and compelling isn't enough: led by the blogosphere, there's a sense that if the Internet can hold Dan Rather accountable, why can't talk radio? Blogs have raised the bar and hosts are...

The newspaper's problems are being watched closely in the battle between one and new media. SAN FRANCISCO — When Jeffrey Zalles needed a new cashier for his coin laundry in the South of Market district, his help-wanted ad in the San Francisco Chronicle brought just four responses. So Zalles posted a notice on Craigslist, a San Francisco-based network of websites that specialize in classified advertising. His cyber-ad drew 400 applicants. Zalles found his cashier and hasn't relied on the Chronicle since, advertising instead on the Internet and the city's array of free papers. The venerable Chronicle is struggling, and defections...

{This is a follow-up to a string posted yesterday about Officer Andrew Cohen, the San Francisco policeman who has been suspended for making allegedly racist videos. There is more to this story than meets the eye, to say the least.)In other San Francisco news: For those not in the area, the San Franciso media is in a frenzy over a concocted scandal about a series of satirical videos made by a SF policeman as part of a morale-boosting program. The videos are described as being "racist," "offensive to women," "insensitive" and so on, but it's all a bunch of LLLies....

IF ANYONE should be suspended because of the brouhaha surrounding videos shot by members of the San Francisco Police Department, it is Chief Heather Fong. Her job is to run a solid department that fights crime, which means she has to punish rogue officers who hurt law-abiding citizens, but also stand up for street cops who endure a lot of abuse as they strive to make this city a safe place. Instead, she showed up with Mayor Gavin Newsom for a press conference Wednesday and supported the mayor's call for as many as four whole investigations -- by the SFPD,...

SAN FRANCISCO - A police officer who produced videos parodying life on the force was suspended Thursday after the mayor and police chief blasted the vignettes as racist, sexist and homophobic. Officer Andrew Cohen, 39, said he was suspended for posting inappropriate and unauthorized pictures about the department on the Internet. "I don't know what's going on," Cohen told The Associated Press. "I've never been in trouble before." Cohen is one of about 20 officers expected to be disciplined for video clips that Police Chief Heather Fong called "egregious, shameful and despicable." The skits featured uniformed and plainclothes officers making...