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The article focuses on Nancy Pelosi's decision to run for another two-year term in November, despite expectations of retirement, and her endorsement by The San Francisco Chronicle, which raised concerns about her potential lack of policy innovation at this stage in her career.

The article offers information on the city of San Francisco, California banning the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags by supermarkets, drug stores and retail stores. according to Environmental Protection Agency, the production of paper bags creates more air and water pollution as compared to plastic bags. It was also found that fewer plastic bags have been recycled in comparison with paper bags. It is estimated that annual global usage of plastic bags ranges from about 100 billion to 1 trillion.

Three years ago, San Francisco was the first city in the country to ban the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag, but it was quickly followed by Palo Alto and Oakland. These cities, and the Bay Area generally, were at the forefront of the movement to keep single-use, filmy carry-out bags out of landfills, out of the bay and out of the innards of marine mammals. But now cities are reconsidering, in part because of lawsuits filed by opponents, but also because too many shoppers in San Francisco and Palo Alto simply shifted their carry-out purchases to paper sacks, which have environmental costs of their own. Plastic bags are still a target, but the bulls-eye is now widening to cover paper bags, too. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In San Francisco, a city that has banned plastic shopping bags, there is a new target: paper. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi introduced legislation intended to encourage customers to use their own bags to reduce the number of bags provided at checkout. The ordinance, if passed, would require retailers to offer a 10-cent rebate to customers who use reusable sacks. If the stores fail to comply, they could face fines of $100 to $500. Mr. Mirkarimi said the legislation would help save a chunk of the 14 million trees chopped down each year to make paper bags. The ordinance would affect some 135 large grocery stores and pharmacies within city limits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports on the order of a federal appeals court to let the government sell or return writings and other personal items that belong to terrorist Theodore J. Kaczynski in San Francisco, California.

Reports that Hearst Corporation has sold `The San Francisco Examiner' newspaper to Ted Fang, owner of a local newspaper in San Francisco, California. Significance of Fang's purchasing deal with Hearst; Competitors of `The San Francisco Chronicle' newspaper; Information on the private lawsuit filed against `The San Francisco Examiner.' INSET: Sold: The Wellspring of William Randolph Hearst's Empire.

DESPITE the expense and the occasional back strain, Mary Burnham, a public relations consultant in San Francisco, felt good about the decision she made a few years ago to buy milk -- organic, of course -- only in heavy, reusable glass bottles. For the sake of the environment, she dutifully lugged them back and forth from the grocery store every week. Cutting out disposable paper cartons, she reasoned, meant saving trees and reducing waste. Or not. A friend, also a committed environmentalist, recently started questioning her good deed. ''His argument was that paper cartons are compostable and lightweight and use less energy and water than the heavy bottles, which must be transported back to a plant to be cleaned and reused,'' she said. ''I have no idea which is better, or how to find out.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our dining room windows and front porch face directly into an eyesore apartment across a small courtyard. We look at torn, roll-down curtains with mold and water damage, and a broken window that's been repaired by shoving a sofa cushion into the gap and securing it with duct tape. Would it be rude to write a letter to the tenant offering to pay for repairs and new curtains? Maybe including a check and nice note? Gabriel, San Francisco [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EIGHT years ago, Tamara Monosoff came up with an invention that she was sure mothers like herself would appreciate: a device that prevents children from unspooling toilet paper from the roll. But she had no idea how to transform the concept into a marketable product. When she turned to the Internet, ''There was nothing -- no road maps, no anything,'' recalls Ms. Monosoff, who lives near San Francisco and was education director for the President's Commission on White House Fellowships for President Bill Clinton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barry Bonds will not face a new trial on charges of lying to a federal grand jury about his use of steroids and human growth hormone, according to papers filed Wednesday in federal court. In a brief statement, the United States Attorney's Office in San Francisco said it would drop the remaining three perjury charges on which jurors failed to reach a verdict during Bonds's trial last spring. The judge had declared a mistrial on those counts, and prosecutors had spent more than four months mulling whether to retry him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A California man is suing the Hilton Hotels Corporation for charging him 75 cents for a copy of the USA Today newspaper that he did not request, according to a complaint filed last week in federal court in San Francisco. The man, Rodney Harmon of Sacramento County, spent the night of March 28 in the Hilton Garden Inn Sonoma County Airport. When he left his room the next morning, he saw a copy of USA Today on the floor in front of his door, the familiar, bright blue logo peering up at him. But Mr. Harmon, 55, was not interested. He stepped over the paper and walked away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No bigger than a standard sheet of paper, Picasso's ''Tete de Femme (Head of a Woman)'' is hardly one of his largest works, but that apparently made it all the easier for a thief to steal it from a gallery in San Francisco on Tuesday. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the work, a 1965 pencil drawing measuring 10 5/8 inches by 8 1/4 inches, was taken from the Weinstein Gallery in the city's Union Square neighborhood; the robbery was reported to the police at 11:41 a.m. and the work was being offered by the gallery for more than $200,000. The police told The Chronicle that witnesses described the thief as a white man, 6 feet tall and 30 to 35 years old, dressed in a dark jacket and dark pants, wearing dark glasses and loafers with no socks. He was said to have left in a waiting taxi cab after taking the drawing. Rowland Weinstein, the gallery's president who returned from a European honeymoon on Tuesday, told The Chronicle that while the stolen Picasso may be difficult for a thief to sell, he remained concerned for its safety. ''My greatest fear,'' he said, ''is that, with all this attention on it, the person will realize it's unsellable and will dispose of it in a less-than-proper manner.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco banned the use of city money to buy bottled water for municipal employees. For the mayor, it was a point of principle: the local tap water, direct from Yosemite National Park, is among the best anywhere, and in a town where even plastic bags are regulated, water delivered in plastic dispensers appeared to be an unseemly use of resources. Nearly every city department and agency duly kicked the habit, with one exception: the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DAY after day in January, the rain poured down on the California coast without pause or pity -- some of the worst storms to hit the state in a decade. High winds took out power lines and overturned SUVs. Garbage washed up on beaches. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their mudslide-threatened homes. And on one particular Tuesday afternoon, in the Mission District of San Francisco, the heavens focused their fury on a visiting father from Brooklyn -- i.e., me -- who, so self-absorbed he was blind to the calamities around him, had decided to walk home from the supermarket with his 13-month-old daughter, Sasha, in her stroller. Only six and a half blocks, I thought. No need to use my weeklong bus and cable car pass ($26). But within a block, the downpour had rolled off my waterproof jacket and soaked my jeans through. On the next block, a homeless woman joined us, complaining that ''it's a terrible thing when you have to steal cupcakes to eat.'' True enough, but I was too stressed to commiserate. And on the third block, the inevitable happened. The paper grocery bag hanging over the back of Sasha's stroller disintegrated in the rain, spilling a week's worth of organic groceries -- a dense honeydew melon, supple young broccoli, tiny cremini mushrooms -- across the flooded sidewalk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Supreme Court on Wednesday effectively eliminated the possibility that any part of the trial of a constitutional challenge to a ban on same-sex marriage now under way in San Francisco would be broadcast before it concludes. Saying lower-court judges in California had acted with unseemly and probably unlawful haste in pushing through new rules to allow broadcasting, the court extended a temporary stay issued Monday until it considers whether to hear an appeal of the issue based on papers yet to be filed. The court instructed the parties to act promptly, but the process will almost certainly take longer than the trial. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

-- rockers, politicos, Internet moguls -- playing for an audience with more than its share of affluent, literate people, on a stage rich in history, eccentricity and natural beauty. It sounds like a journalist's dream, a great market for a news organization. Yet extinction threatens The San Francisco Chronicle, the leading local news source. The Hearst Corporation says the newspaper lost about $1 million a week last year, and it must either sell the paper, close it or lay off a large part of its already diminished staff. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LAST year, San Francisco banned nonbiodegradable plastic bags in its large grocery stores and pharmacies. Soon, Oakland and Los Angeles followed. Now, Westport has joined their ranks, becoming the only town in Connecticut to ban most plastic shopping bags. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on a low competition for the next mayoral elections in San Francisco, California and how current mayor Gavin Newsom is the only known candidate for the elections. It has been evaluated that the election fee act as a barrier to file formal papers. According to politicians, Newsom is popular among people for his wrong actions. His supporters believe that his accomplishments are more than justify for his second term as mayor.

The article reports that the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, California voted in favor of an ordinance that will ban non-biodegradable plastic bags in grocery stores and pharmacies in the city. City supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said that the ordinance will move standard plastic bags from supermarkets and pharmacies with annual sales of over $2 million. Another city supervisor Ed Jew, who cast the only vote against the ordinance, said that he feared the cost of degradable bags.

Reports on the joint operating agreement between the two San Francisco (Calif.) newspapers, `San Francisco Examiner' and `San Francisco Chronicle.' Possibility that the split could lead to the death of the weaker paper, the `Examiner'; History of the relationship between the two newspapers; Possibility that the two newspapers could survive.

Reports on the sale of office items used by the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee in San Francisco, California.