A 25-year-old man was shot to death inside a cafe in broad daylight.
Police were called to the 900 block of Polk at Geary Boulevard at about 424 p.m. after there were reports of a shooting. The man, who has not yet been identified, died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak.
The shooter fled the scene.
Leave it to Americans to try to cure alcoholism with a pill.
Our cover story this week dissected how the San Francisco police department teamed up with truTV's "Bait Car" to film a car theft sting here in San Francisco. Some of the people caught in the sting told SF Weekly they're flirting with the idea of suing the police or the TV network.
Well, they're certainly not alone. In an interesting case filed in federal court in Southern California this week, Deidria Nicholson of La Mesa is suing the San Diego Police Department for allegedly inviting three TV crews along while searching her apartment and car. Nicholson alleges the cops violated her fourth amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
A judge ruled that Lucasfilm Ltd., the Marin-based film company that was found guilty of firing Julie Gilman Veronese for being pregnant, should pay $1.3 million in attorney fees, according Veronese's lawyers.
Angela Alioto, the former city supervisor who is representing Veronese in the case, said Thursday that she was "delighted" by the news, even if it was less than the $1.5 million they had requested.
"It's amazing," Alioto said. "These cases are extremely hard to fight and when you have a George Lucas with seven law firms on the other side, it was an absolutely horrendous year fighting that case."
A group of San Francisco middle school students ate a tablet of rat poison that they found on a filing cabinet inside a classroom at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.
Mindy Talmadge, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Fire Department, said the incident happened at about noon today. One of the students saw a small, blue tablet on a filing cabinet. She thought it looked like candy so she sniffed it and took a bite, Talmadge said.
Other students watching this decided they also wanted to try a bite of the "candy."
*Update, Jan. 19: It turns out the actual contribution rate is currently slated at $423 million. See here for an explanation.
Remember all that hard stuff Mayor Ed Lee has to do? Deal with unraveling labor agreements, balance a creaking budget, and scrub hair gel stains off of low-hanging lighting fixtures and the tops of chairs? Well, he'll have to do it with upwards of $26 million less than he thought he would.
On Tuesday, the city's independent actuaries set the employer contribution rate to the pension system at an eye-popping 18.1 percent of payroll. The city this year contributed 13.6 percent, and earlier projections had anticipated a 17 percent contribution in fiscal 2012.
Here's what that means: The city will siphon $433 million out of the general fund and into workers' pensions. That's a $109 million jump in one year, and a $26.3 million spike over even the worst predictions we could find. Remember that pension and benefits crisis SF Weekly wrote about? Turns out it wasn't a joke!
A 23-year-old computer hacker in the Sacramento Valley burg of Citrus Heights has pleaded guilty to seven felony charges stemming from an ingenious scheme to hack into women's email accounts -- with the help of information available on Facebook -- and gain access to their nude photos.
In a ploy that one victim called "virtual rape," George Samuel Bronk used womens' Facebook pages to find answers to their email account security questions. (These are the prompts you get when you forget your password asking about your pet's name, or the town you were born in.)
Once Bronk had fooled the email service providers into letting him access an account, he changed the password, locking out its rightful owner.
Sen.Leland Yee is making another attempt to make the ski slopes safer in California.
The San Francisco Democrat, who is making a bid for San Francisco mayor, wants to force kids to wear a helmet when they ski and snowboard. Yee has reintroduced his bill that failed last year after then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed companion legislation, essentially killing Yee's safety bill.
Yee claims that half of of all skiing deaths are directly caused by head injuries -- and
helmets can reduce that as well as the possibility of brain trauma by as much as 29
percent.
It was only yesterday that Alex Clemens and Jonathan Klein went live with their scholarship fund in memory of Arizona shooting victim, Gabe Zimmerman, and already they have raised more than $4,000.
The two San Francisco residents don't have any connection with Zimmerman other than they share his alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. Zimmerman, who was an aide to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, (D-Arizona), was shot to death on Saturday after accused gunman Jared Loughner fired a round of shots, killing six and wounding many others.
Giffords, who was shot in the head, remains in critical condition.
Clemens said he and Klein were inspired by Zimmerman's contributions to public service. So, the two contacted Zimmerman's brother, and got permission to start a scholarship fund at UC Santa Cruz in Zimmerman's name.
