We don’t know the exact number of coyotes in the Bay Area. There’s no rigorous program to track them. But Campbell estimates there are “dozens” of coyotes in the city today — probably not more than 100.

“There’s no way to truly know the population, just like how we would not be able to say how many raccoons live in the city. We pick up close to 30 dead coyotes each year,” Campbell said, noting they are mostly hit by cars.

To help understand coyote behavior, animal control started collecting phone and email reports of coyote sightings in 2006 and via an online form in 2017. “These community-curated data sets that have all this information about people’s experiences are really special,” Wilkinson said.

The data helps researchers like Wilkinson get a sense of coyote sighting trends and what’s happening on the ground with the coyotes and their behavior and ecology.

When do dog conflicts increase?

Coyote pupping season typically runs from March until September. It’s the time when female coyotes are getting ready to give birth to their pups and when their pups are born. Coyote parents are more protective of their homes or denning areas.

In early summer, coyote parents are more active and protective of their pups as their young ones venture out of their dens.

“We get a lot of reports during denning and pupping season where coyotes will follow people with dogs, usually medium to large dogs, arch their back, show their teeth, basically they do their best to look menacing — all behaviors that are saying ‘go away,’” Campbell said.

Coyotes exhibit these protective behaviors towards canines, according to the Presidio website. Places like the Presidio, where many of our coyotes roam, typically close sections of trails near a den area to dog walking during pupping season.

Campbell said the coyotes will “escort” or follow dogs away from their dens until they feel the dog is no longer a threat. “People walking their dogs often mistake this protective behavior for aggression,” Campbell said.

An unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns between 2020 and 2022 was an increase in coyote conflicts, which could be due to the animals having more space for themselves, with less human interaction, Wilkinson said.

What is normal coyote behavior? What should I do if a coyote approaches me (and my dog)?

We should remember that coyotes are timid animals with a natural fear of humans.

Although they tend to be most active in the evenings and early mornings, they can move around throughout the day.

Urban coyotes don’t have many large predators and have not learned to view humans as hunting predators.

If you find yourself within 50 feet of a coyote, and it approaches you or does not move away, animal control officials recommend that you make yourself appear big, yell, wave your arms, maintain eye contact with them and practice other hazing techniques.

Campbell emphasizes that small dogs should be picked up and all dogs should be on leashes, no matter what size. Coyotes look at small dogs as prey — like rabbits or squirrels — and can snatch them if an opportunity presents itself. All the small dogs taken by coyotes in San Francisco have been off-leash.

“We can’t stress enough how important it is to keep dogs on leash for their safety,” she said.

Campbell advises people to haze persistent coyotes or try to frighten them into leaving. Shaking a can full of pennies, popping an umbrella or opening a plastic garbage bag — things that make a loud noise — will usually convince a coyote to move along.

But this doesn’t work near dens. Coyotes protecting dens will not be affected by hazing. “Their pups are too important to them,” Campbell said.

Always look out for signs posted about coyote activity in the city. They could be indicators that dens are nearby. The best thing to do, Campbell said, is avoid these areas in the first place. But if you encounter a coyote or are being “escorted” away from a coyote’s den, you should slowly walk away and not run.

What can we do to make coexisting with coyotes easier?

Feeding coyotes is illegal and can have trickle-down effects that influence coyote behavior, Wilkinson said. If city coyotes become too aggressive, then officials with animal control might have to remove them.

“The wildcard in all of this is intentional feeding,” Campbell said. Coyotes can lose their natural wariness of humans when people feed them, and they may begin to approach unsuspecting folks looking for an easy handout. They will return to neighborhoods with an easy food source and walk up to others to see if anyone else is willing to give them dinner.

“It’s frustrating for our agency, the wildlife experts we work with, and the people living in neighborhoods where their neighbors just keep feeding and attracting coyotes,” animal control’s Campbell said.

Campbell and Wilkinson encourage us to contribute coyote sighting reports in the Bay Area.

They also recommend educating yourself and your neighbors about how to appropriately haze, what circumstances you should and shouldn’t do so, and what’s normal and not normal coyote behavior.

“Do a little due diligence because it’s a team sport to get to a place of coexistence with our urban wildlife,” Wilkinson said.

Studies like the one Wilkinson is leading help researchers understand how to work with community members to tailor outreach to people’s needs. “In the end, it’s the folks that are experiencing these challenges or interactions on the ground that are the ones that are going to be the first responders to creating coexistence with these animals,” Wilkinson said.

Here’s where you can report your coyote sightings in San Francisco. And here’s another form to report sightings in the East Bay and Marin.

San Francisco residents can call animal control at 415-554-9400 for immediate assistance with animal-related emergencies, like a coyote acting strangely, or to report an injured, ill or dead coyote.

The post How Can I Shield My Canine From San Francisco Coyotes? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is once again venturing into the country’s culture wars, enacting legislation that GOP lawmakers say would protect gas stoves from overzealous state regulators.

A bill passed on Tuesday would ban the use of federal funds to regulate gas ranges as a hazardous product, while a separate bill due for a vote on Wednesday would block an Energy Department rule setting stricter energy efficiency standards for cooktops and ovens.

Both bills were due for passage last week, but implementation was delayed after House Conservatives staged a mini-revolt in retaliation for Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership on a measure to raise the debt ceiling. Led by outspoken members of the House Freedom Caucus, 11 Republicans broke with their party in an otherwise routine procedural vote that rattled the House schedule for a full week.

McCarthy appeared to settle the dispute late Monday after promising more meetings with GOP holdouts and seeking to cut future federal spending.

With the impasse resolved, Republican lawmakers refocused on gas stoves and bureaucratic rules that Republicans call classic government transgression.

“For the hard-working Americans who will be affected, this is no small concern,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. “The last thing they need is for the Biden administration’s Green New Deal regulatory assault to reach their kitchen appliances.”

The bill to classify gas stoves as dangerous was passed by a vote of 248-180.

The White House said President Joe Biden opposed both GOP bills because they blocked “common sense efforts to help Americans reduce their energy bills.” Neither bill is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Dozens of Democrat-controlled cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, California, have voted to ban the use of gas stoves in new buildings in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve indoor air quality. New York State passed legislation last month banning natural gas stoves and ovens in most new buildings.

Fears of a national ban grew after a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission said in January that “every option is on the table” when it comes to regulating gas stoves, which are associated with poor indoor air quality and health concerns such as asthma to be connected. The remark sparked images across the internet of the government lugging four-burner cooktops out of homes, while social media users and GOP lawmakers vowed to defend the popular appliances.

The debate flared up again after the Department of Energy proposed a rule that would require the use of more efficient designs and technologies for both gas and electric ranges and cooktops.

According to an analysis by the Department of Energy, the Department of Energy rule, which is yet to be finalized, could ban about half of the gas stove models currently sold in the United States by 2027. The rule would only apply to new appliance sales and would not affect cookers already in homes or businesses.

House Energy and Trade Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, called the US Department of Energy’s plan “just the latest in a long line of power grabs by the far left and the Biden administration.”

The rule is “not about public safety. It’s about telling the American people that the federal government knows best and will decide what kind of car they can drive, how they can heat their home, and how they can now cook food for their families,” said McMorris Rodgers.

Forcing Americans to switch to more expensive alternatives to natural gas would increase costs while disproportionately harming the poor and low-income families, she said.

Democrats called these concerns exaggerated.

“This is nothing more than a conspiracy theory invented to embroil Congress in culture wars that shed more excitement than light on the issues facing our nation,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pennsylvania.

“Contrary to the heated rhetoric of our colleagues on the other side, the federal government has not proposed removing devices from American homes,” Scanlon said. The Department of Energy’s proposed rule would save consumers up to $1.7 billion and reduce emissions harmful to children’s health, she added.

The bill, which blocks regulation of unsafe gas stoves, jeopardizes the government’s ability to identify and regulate appliances with design flaws that could lead to injury or death, Scanlon said, noting that the consumer safety panel recently recalled gas stove models consumers are at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

An Energy Department spokeswoman said the proposed rule was “intended to do nothing more than increase energy efficiency and encourage innovation without sacrificing the reliability and performance that Americans have come to expect.”

The White House said the government has “made it clear that it does not support any attempt to ban the use of gas stoves.”

Getting rid of the energy efficiency rule would “deprive the American people of the savings they have with more efficient new appliances on the market if they choose to replace an existing appliance,” the White House said in a statement while it supported the other bill agreed. would undermine the science-based decision making of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”

The post Republican-controlled Home takes up payments to guard fuel stoves appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

• By Marianna Spring
• BBC Disinformation and social media correspondent

59 minutes ago

Image caption,

Marianna Spring goes to San Francisco, home of Twitter, to find answers for users

Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk.

Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users backs up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk’s leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.

Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I’ve spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.

The former head of content design says everyone on her team – which created safety measures such as nudge buttons – has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me “nobody’s taking care” of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is “on fire”.

Twitter has not replied to the BBC’s request for comment.

My investigation also reveals:

• Concerns that child sexual exploitation is on the rise on Twitter and not being sufficiently raised with law enforcement
• Targeted harassment campaigns aimed at curbing freedom of expression, and foreign influence operations – once removed daily from Twitter – are going “undetected”, according to a recent employee.
• Exclusive data showing how misogynistic online hate targeting me is on the rise since the takeover, and that there has been a 69% increase in new accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.
• Rape survivors have been targeted by accounts that have become more active since the takeover, with indications they’ve been reinstated or newly created.

Abuse on Twitter is nothing new for me – I’m a reporter who shares my coverage of disinformation, conspiracies and hate there. But throughout most of last year I noticed it steadily lessening across all of the social media sites. And then in November I realised it had got worse on Twitter again.

It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.

All of the social media sites have been under pressure to tackle online hate and harmful content – but they say they’re taking measures to deal with it. Measures that no longer seem to be top of the agenda at Twitter.

In San Francisco, the home of Twitter’s headquarters, I set out to look for answers. What better place to get them than from an engineer – responsible for the computer code that makes Twitter work. Because he’s still working there, he’s asked us to conceal his identity, so we’re calling him Sam.

“For someone on the inside, it’s like a building where all the pieces are on fire,” he revealed.

“When you look at it from the outside the façade looks fine, but I can see that nothing is working. All the plumbing is broken, all the faucets, everything.

He says the chaos has been created by the huge disruption in staffing. At least half of Twitter’s workforce have been sacked or chosen to leave since Musk bought it. Now people from other teams are having to shift their focus, he says.

“A totally new person, without the expertise, is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people,” says Sam. “That leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong.”

He says previous features still exist but those who designed and maintained them have left – he thinks they are now left unmanned.

“There are so many things broken and there’s nobody taking care of it, that you see this inconsistent behaviour,” he tells me.

The level of disarray, in his view, is because Mr Musk doesn’t trust Twitter employees. He describes him bringing in engineers from his other company – electric car manufacturer Tesla – and asking them to evaluate engineers’ code over just a few days before deciding who to sack. Code like that would take “months” to understand, he tells me.

He believes this lack of trust is betrayed by the level of security Mr Musk surrounds himself with.

“Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards – very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie-[style] bodyguards. Even when [he goes] to the restroom,” he tells me.

He thinks for Mr Musk it’s about money. He says cleaning and catering staff were all sacked – and that Mr Musk even tried to sell the office plants to employees.

Lisa Jennings Young, Twitter’s former head of content design, was one of the people who specialised in introducing features designed to protect users from hate. Twitter was a hotbed for trolling long before Mr Musk took over, but she says her team had made good headway at limiting this. Internal Twitter research, seen by the BBC, appears to back this up.

Image caption,

Lisa Jennings Young, former head of content design, says her entire team was cut

“It was not at all perfect. But we were trying, and we were making things better all the time,” she says. It is the first time she’s publicly spoken of her experience since she left after Mr Musk’s takeover.

Ms Jennings Young’s team worked on several new features including safety mode, which can automatically block abusive accounts. They also designed labels applied to misleading tweets, and something called the “harmful reply nudge”. The “nudge” alerts users before they send a tweet in which AI technology has detected trigger words or harmful language.

Twitter’s own research, seen by the BBC, appears to show the “nudge” and other safety tools being effective.

“Overall 60% of users deleted or edited their reply when given a chance through the nudge,” she says. “But what was more interesting, is that after we nudged people once, they composed 11% fewer harmful replies in the future.”

These safety features were being implemented around the time my abuse on Twitter seemed to reduce, according to data collated by the University of Sheffield and International Center for Journalists. It’s impossible to directly correlate the two, but given what the evidence tells us about the efficacy of these measures, it’s possible to draw a link.

But after Mr Musk took over the social media company in late October 2022, Lisa’s entire team was laid off, and she herself chose to leave in late November. I asked Ms Jennings Young what happened to features like the harmful reply nudge.

“There’s no-one there to work on that at this time,” she told me. She has no idea what has happened to the projects she was doing.

So we tried an experiment.

She suggested a tweet that she would have expected to trigger a nudge. “Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump off the Golden Gate bridge and die.” I shared it on a private profile in response to one of her tweets, but to Ms Jennings Young’s surprise, no nudge was sent. Another tweet with offensive language we shared was picked up – but Lisa says the nudge should have picked up a message wishing death on a user, not just swear words. As Sam had predicted, it didn’t seem to be working as it was designed to.

During this investigation, I’ve had messages from many people who’ve told me how the hate they receive on Twitter has been increasing since Mr Musk took over – sharing examples of racism, antisemitism and misogyny.

Ellie Wilson, who lives in Glasgow, was raped while at university and began posting about that experience on social media last summer. At the time, she received a supportive response on Twitter.

Image caption,

Rape survivor Ellie Wilson says she has noticed a recent surge in hateful messages

But when she tweeted about her attacker in January after he was sentenced, she was subject to a wave of hateful messages. She received abusive and misogynistic replies – with some even telling her she deserved to be raped.

“[What] I find most difficult [is] the people that say that I wasn’t raped or that this didn’t happen and that I’m lying. It’s sort of like a secondary trauma,” Ms Wilson told me.

Her Twitter following was smaller before the takeover, but when I looked into accounts targeting her with hate this time around, I noticed the trolls’ profiles had become more active since the takeover, suggesting they’d been suspended previously and recently reinstated.

Some of the accounts had even been set up around the time of Mr Musk’s takeover. They appeared to be dedicated to sending out hate, without profile pictures or identifying features. Several follow and interact with content from popular accounts that have been accused of promoting misogyny and hate – reinstated on Twitter after Musk decided to restore thousands of suspended accounts, including that of controversial influencer Andrew Tate.

“By allowing those people a platform, you’re empowering them. And you’re saying, ‘This is OK, you can do that.'”

Several of the accounts also targeted other rape survivors she’s in contact with.

Andrew Tate did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

New research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a UK think tank that investigates disinformation and hate – echoes what I’ve uncovered about the troll accounts targeting Ellie.

It shows that tens of thousands of new accounts have been created since Mr Musk took over, which then immediately followed known abusive and misogynistic profiles – 69% higher than before he was in charge.

The research suggests these abusive networks are now growing – and that Mr Musk’s takeover has created a “permissive environment” for the creation and use of these kinds of accounts.

Mr Musk’s key priorities since the takeover – according to his tweets – are to make the social media company profitable and to champion freedom of expression.

In December 2022, he released internal documents called the “Twitter Files” to explain why he believed the company hadn’t been fairly applying its moderation and suspension policies under the old leadership.

But those who have been on the inside, feel like Mr Musk has used this to de-prioritise protecting users from harm altogether. Even the dangerous content he’s lobbied against, including Child Sexual Abuse and networks of so-called bot accounts deliberately designed to mislead, isn’t being tackled as it was before, they say.

It is not just individual trolls that Twitter has previously tried to guard against, but also so-called “influence operations” – state-sanctioned campaigns seeking to undermine democracy and target dissidents and journalists.

Ray Serrato worked in a team that specialised in tackling these operations. He left in November because he felt there wasn’t a clear vision to protect users under the new leadership. He says his team would identify suspicious activity like this “daily”. Now his team has been “decimated” and exists in a “minimised capacity”.

Image caption,

Ray Serrato, who specialised in tackling state-sponsored disinformation, says his team was “decimated”

“Twitter might have been the refuge where journalists would go out and have their voice be heard and be critical of the government. But I’m not sure that’s going to be the case anymore.”

“There are a number of key experts that are no longer in that team that would have covered special regions, or threat actors, from Russia to China,” he tells me.

Another insider, who we’re calling Rory, is also very concerned about that drain of expertise – and how it appears to be undermining a Musk priority, preventing paedophiles using Twitter to groom victims and share links to abuse. Rory was employed until very recently as part of a team tackling child sexual exploitation [CSE].

His team would identify accounts sharing abusive content about children, escalating the worst to law enforcement. Before the takeover such content was a huge problem, he says – and he already feared they were understaffed.

“Every day you would be able to identify that sort of material,” he says.

But his team was cut soon after the acquisition, he says, from 20 people to around six or seven. In his view that’s too few to keep on top of the workload.

Rory says – before he left – neither Mr Musk nor any other member of the new management made contact with him and his old team, who between them had years of experience in this area.

“You can’t take over a company and suddenly believe you have knowledge… to deal with [Child Sexual Exploitation] without having the experts in place,” he says.

Twitter says it removed 400,000 accounts in one month alone to help “make Twitter safer”. But Rory is worried there are now fewer people with the knowledge to effectively escalate concerns about this content with law enforcement.

“You can by all means suspend hundreds of thousands of accounts in a month. But if the reporting of that content [to law enforcement] has dropped, then it doesn’t really mean anything, and most of the users who had their accounts suspended would just set up a new account anyway.”

He adds that offending users can then just set up new accounts, at a time when suspended profiles are being welcomed back to Twitter.

I wanted to ask Elon Musk about the takeover, his vision for Twitter and how he thinks it is playing out in reality. I tried to contact him via email, tweets and even a Twitter “poll”. This wasn’t a real poll but Mr Musk has used these votes to make decisions about Twitter’s future, and I was hoping it might catch his attention. More than 40,000 users voted and 89% said Mr Musk should do an interview with me. I had no response.

Twitter and Mr Musk are yet to respond to the points raised in the BBC Panorama investigation. I’m told all of Twitter’s communications team have either resigned or been sacked. Twitter’s policies, available online, say that “defending and respecting the user’s voice” remains one of its “core values”.

The post Twitter can’t shield you from trolls any extra, insiders say appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Every weekend along Marina Green I see tourists on foot or on rental bikes as they cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Lately, however, I’ve seen more of them on car-free weekends at the Presidio, on Slow Lake Street, on the JFK Promenade, and out on the Great Highway.

You’re already setting out to explore San Francisco on your own, and we should make it a more enjoyable, safer, and easier experience by creating a safer road network.

A new People’s Slow Streets plan, supported by dozens of organizations, is urging the city to start building that network. The plan aims to connect all neighborhoods via safe, intuitive and pleasant slow roads by 2024.

This web of interconnected routes would be perfect for allowing tourists to explore our neighborhoods and helping residents more easily access all of their day-to-day amenities, such as parks and grocery stores.

That’s why the upcoming December 6 meeting of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors to discuss the future of Slow Streets is so important. Please speak out not only for the children, the elderly, and everyone who is now using these safe havens — but also for the many visitors to San Francisco who would prefer not to compound our local traffic problems by walking down safe corridors who have to explore it.

I’ve spoken to a few of these visitors, and they’re always excited to explore the area beyond the usual tourist attractions without having to worry about parking hassles. Seniors love the way rental e-bikes flatter our city’s famous hills, but visitors don’t always know the best or safest route. Sometimes even an up-to-date “recommended route” leads you into bad traffic situations.

What if they could follow safer, clearly marked circular routes throughout the city, each of which makes a great day trip with places to have coffee, lunch, sightseeing or shop along the way?

The key word is “safer”.

Despite the city’s much-vaunted Vision Zero commitments, there have been at least 30 road fatalities so far in 2022, most of which involved people not in motor vehicles. As documented in a recent Walk San Francisco report, car speeds on many of the city’s streets put pedestrians and cyclists at great risk. Speed ​​limits on the two- and three-lane roads surveyed by Walk San Francisco averaged more than 34 miles per hour, leading to more serious injuries and fatalities in a collision with a cyclist or pedestrian.

A person is about 70% more likely to be killed when struck by a vehicle traveling at 30 mph compared to 25 mph. At 40 mph, about 75% of pedestrians struck by cars suffer one life-threatening injury or death. If we’re welcoming tourists to branch further into the city, they need to feel (and deserve to) feel safer.

We don’t need another study to prove the local popularity of such streets. The landslide vote for car-free JFK Drive and against reopening the Great Highway for full-time cars shows this. But it’s not just about locals.

A safer road network could be a key factor in reviving San Francisco’s tourism industry. A network of connected streets across the city, where pedestrians and cyclists are truly prioritized as street users and cars are restricted to local transit only a few blocks, could be a magnet for visitors. Many of these areas in European cities – once congested by car traffic – are now very popular with tourists. And San Francisco’s compactness, diversity of neighborhoods, and scenic beauty make it the perfect candidate to show that it can be done in the US too.

Imagine a series of intersecting circular paths demarcated by a wide, colour-coded sidewalk – as easy to follow as airport pavement markings. These loops begin at current major tourist areas and some or all of them intersect at the JFK Boardwalk and are linked to allow tourists to safely and easily explore many areas of the city by bike. Imagine a rainbow paved loop leading through the Castro, or a golden loop leading to Golden Gate Park.

It doesn’t have to be expensive: paint on the road and some effective traffic diversions. Instead of the small, inadequate, hard-to-see bike route signage we have now, riders could just follow the colored pavement.

We have a unique opportunity to expand San Francisco’s tourist base at a time when other sectors are faltering. Globally, the cycle tourism market is expected to grow significantly in the near future. The research forecasts a 14.78% compound annual growth rate in the bicycle touring market between 2021 and 2030. Sales of e-bikes in the US surpassed sales of electric cars last year.

In the European Union, a €3 billion fund aims to capitalize on the growth of cycle tourism by developing safe cycling infrastructure.

It always takes visionary leadership to think differently and change the status quo. With political will and foresight, San Francisco could create a city-wide network of safer bike and walking routes, creating a whole new tourist attraction.

Ruth E. Malone is Professor Emeritus of Nursing and Health Policy at UCSF and a car-free e-bike senior.

The post If San Francisco leaders care about tourism, they are going to shield Sluggish Streets appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The archbishop of San Francisco said Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is Catholic, can no longer receive the sacrament of communion because she has declined to back down from her push for abortion access.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone wrote in a public post Friday that his “many requests” have not been accepted to speak with Pelosi, who is from San Francisco, since she vowed to keep Roe v. calf. The archbishop said he communicated to Pelosi on April 7 that, she should not publicly repudiate her “advocacy for abortion ‘rights” or refrain from referring to her faith in public, he would have no choice but to deny her communion. The archbishop’s reprimand is the latest development in political and religious debate as some leaders in the Catholic Church speak out against Catholic politicians who support abortion.

The archbishop referred to the Catholic Church’s Cannon 915, which says that, “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” The Chatecism of the Catholic Church is against abortion.

“As you have not publicly repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come,” the archbishop wrote. “Therefore, in light of my responsibility as the Archbishop of San Francisco to be ‘concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care’ … by means of this communication I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.”

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks in front of the steps to the House of Representatives with congressional members to speak on the Roe v. Wade issue May 13, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The archbishop simplified his position in a follow-up tweet: “After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” he wrote.

The archbishop’s public post comes as the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade sparked renewed attention over the abortion debate, and a flurry of proposed laws both from those who support and oppose abortion.

But Pelosi isn’t the first politician to be reprimanded by those in the Catholic Church over abortion — bishops have debated whether President Biden, who is also Catholic, should receive communion as well. Pope Francis last year said he has never denied anyone communion, and encouraged Catholic leaders to avoid aligning themselves with politics.

Ultimately, in November 2021, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to approve a document that fell short of refusing communion to Mr. Biden or others who advocate for widespread abortion access.

Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report

The Battle Over Abortion

More More Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, DC

The post Archbishop of San Francisco says Pelosi cannot obtain communion over efforts to guard abortion rights appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

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February 24, 2022, 21:00 GMT

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The post Defend Helpful Private Knowledge by Transferring to Librem AweSIM appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

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Your secure phone plan that gives you peace of mind besides unlimited data, talk time, text within US.

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Moving my personal number over to AweSIM means my cellular data is now private and protected.”

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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, February 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Designed for those concerned about the security of their private information, Purism recently upgraded Librem AweSIM, a prepaid cellular service that puts user privacy first. With the Librem AweSIM, users’ personal information is never sold, disclosed, or even seen by the big telecom carriers. Launched in Oct 2020, subscribers can now port their existing phone numbers to their secure alternative.

Chief Security Officer, Kyle Rankin says “Moving my personal number over to AweSIM means my cellular data is now private and protected. Earlier, I was locked in Google’s ecosystem, including a Google Fi cellular plan. I wanted to replace that plan to protect my Privacy for a long time, but I discovered that the alternatives also tracked and sold customer data. With AweSIM and added security features of the Librem 5, my phone has become a privacy haven.”

Cybersecurity and privacy protection are important concerns for both consumers and businesses. For far too long, the telecommunication technology industry has used products and services that control the users and their data. Purism, is a Social Purpose Corporation (SPC) based in the United States, is fully invested in creating secure digital ecosystem. For the past 8 years, it has focused on designing security-first services and products that people will find convenient to use.

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Unlimited talk and text within the USA
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Librem AweSIM card can be ordered with Librem 5 or Librem 5 USA phone, or be used as a standalone prepaid cellular service to use in other unlocked phones.

Activate now: https://puri.sm/products/librem-awesim

Yavnika Khanna
Purism Spc
pr@puri.sm
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You just read:

News Provided By

February 24, 2022, 21:00 GMT

A Presswire’s priority is source transparency. We do not allow opaque clients, and our editors try to be careful about weeding out false and misleading content. As a user, if you see something we have missed, please do bring it to our attention. Your help is welcome. A Presswire, Everyone’s Internet News Presswire, tries to define some of the boundaries that are reasonable in today’s world. Please see our Editorial Guidelines for more information.

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The post Shield Helpful Private Knowledge by Shifting to Librem AweSIM appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Ukraine’s 41 and a half million people are well aware of the military buildup along its eastern border with Russia. The threat is a big concern for San Francisco’s JustAnswer. One-third of its workforce — 252 people — live in Ukraine.

“A lot of our engineering, a lot of our critical functions are done there,” said CEO Andy Kurtzig. “So it’s very scary, and even more scary on a personal level because these are all our friends.”

We connected with Nadya Semen, JustAnswer’s country manager based in Lviv near the border with Poland. She believes Russia has already initiated cyberattacks.

If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

“We are experiencing a set of cyberattacks on different websites and banking system and some governmental websites were down. So it’s weird,” she said.

She has an 18-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. Their safety has already been threatened.

“Two times during class for weeks, I had to pick up my kid from school because someone called that there is a bomb in the school,” she said.

JustAnswer has developed its own action plan. It puts the current threat level at moderate to high because of some military activities. As the threat rises to high and to realized threat, that will initiate more action to protect its workers.

RELATED: Biden says US has reason to believe Russia ‘intends to attack’ Ukraine: ‘I’m convinced’

“We are moving people from the east to the west as we speak and give them time of and putting them up in hotels and then actively helping them move across the country from the more dangerous parts of Ukraine,” CEO Kurtzig said.

Stress levels are rising. School children are drilled about evacuating to shelters, which frightened Nadya’s daughter.

VIDEO: Bay Area Ukrainians worried about Russian invasion, many praying for peace

“She was stressed by that, so she was asking me, ‘When are we supposed to expect the real worst to come here? So why are Russians doing this? Why people are starting to worry? I really can be killed now?'”

Andy Kurtzig and his family lived in Ukraine for six months in 2019, prior to the Russian threat. The people and the culture of Ukraine captivated them.

“We love them,” he said. “We’ve been working with them for a long time, and we’re committed to them.”

As part of that commitment, Kurtzig said he has made arrangements to be able to pay them from Poland, even with cryptocurrency if necessary. He is also supplying them with satellite phones and alternatives if the internet or electricity is lost.

Copyright © 2022 KGO-TV. All rights reserved.

The post San Francisco CEO works to guard tons of of staff in Ukraine amid risk of Russia assault appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

450 O’Farrell: Housing Excludes Kids

Chinatown and Tenderloin Group Housing Ban Needed For Kids

On February 10 the San Francisco Planning Commission considers legislation to ban new group housing in the Tenderloin and Chinatown. Group housing requires no private kitchens or bedrooms, and does not serve either community’s acute shortage of housing for families with children.

The Planning Department backs the measure. It comes at a pivotal time.

Both neighborhoods face threats from developers eager to build a type of housing that fails to meet community needs. Two recent group housing projects proposed for the Tenderloin (468 Turk and 450 O’Farrell) exposed the rising risk that the neighborhood’s scarce number of potential housing sites will be denied to families with kids.

Many families live in overcrowded units. They desperately need the larger homes that the historic construction of both Chinatown and the Tenderloin failed to provide.

Urgent Need For Kid-Friendly Homes

450 O’Farrell was alarming because the group housing replaced a community-backed market rate family housing project approved in December 2018. Many saw the sudden shift to an anti-kids housing model as a developer money grab that betrayed the neighborhood’s urgent family housing needs (“group housing” currently lacks full private kitchens and has no bedrooms).

The new 450 O’Farrell developer is already building two large group housing projects in the Tenderloin—unless stopped, the Marin developer will acquire site after site for group housing because that’s all they build.

Fortunately, the Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 in favor of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s appeal of the 450 O’Farrell conditional use. The Board’s unanimous rejection speaks volumes. It’s a bad project.

Yet the battle to preserve the site for kid-friendly housing is not over. Sonja Trauss’ YIMBY Law has sued the Board and THC over this project. Some Yimbys are publicly attacking D6 Supervisor Haney for opposing the anti-kids housing proposal, believing that they know better than Tenderloin residents what the community needs.

Haney has gotten more heat for voting with his constituents and as part of an unanimous 11-0 Board vote against 450 O’Farrell than on any vote during his entire tenure— sad how some so-called housing “advocates” ignore the housing needs of those living in the Tenderloin.

Group housing may pose an even greater risk in Chinatown. It needs housing for kids but its a prime market for housing designed to serve single adults working downtown. Banning group housing in Chinatown will encourage group housing in downtown and other neighborhoods where such housing serves a need; the ban is a win-win for San Francisco.

The Chinatown-Tenderloin Connection

The Tenderloin-Chinatown connection goes back over 40 years. Both are dominated by SRO hotels.

These two neighborhoods led efforts to pass the city’s historic 1981 Residential Hotel Conversion Ordinance (ie the HCO). The struggles over SROs in the early 80’s is how I got to know the housing attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, a man named Ed Lee. CCDC joined tenderloin groups in passing a strengthened HCO in 1990; the measure effectively saved SRO hotels citywide.

At THC I used to hear regularly from Chinatown and North Beach tenants about problems. After I notified CCDC founder and longtime leader Gordon Chin about problems at the Tower and Swiss American Hotels in North Beach, CCDC soon bought both properties.

That’s the type of connection the Tenderloin and Chinatown have long had. And it got stronger when Tenderloin activists pushed CCDC to come to the Tenderloin.

This happened in 1983 when developer Art Evans asked the North of Market Planning Coalition which nonprofit he should partner with for proposed family housing at 201 Turk (long the Yellow Cab Garage). We all said CCDC (TNDC was not doing development then). 201 Turk became a model for the type of kid-friendly affordable housing the Tenderloin and Chinatown both need. Nonprofits in both neighborhoods have long prioritized building new family housing—all while also acquiring affordable historic SRO hotels

A Pro-Housing Measure

Some believe that San Francisco’s housing shortage is so extreme that anything built is better than nothing. But that’s wrong. When the Tenderloin and Chinatown have ample housing for single adults and an acute shortage of housing for families with kids, using scarce land for housing that bans the latter is destructive.

That’s why activists in Chinatown and the Tenderloin urged Supervisor Aaron Peskin to sponsor a group housing ban for both neighborhoods. He and staffer Sunny Angulo have worked closely with residents in both neighborhoods in drafting the legislation and moving it forward. We want to get the ban in place before future group housing is proposed.

The San Francisco Democratic Party has endorsed the legislation. Special thanks to Peter Gallota for leading the effort to get the resolution of support approved.

The Planning Commission should approve the measure on February 10. And Board passage should follow.

This group housing ban will shift potential projects to neighborhoods where it is actually needed. And by using space in the Tenderloin and Chinatown for housing families with kids rather than single adults, the ban expands the number of people who will be housed in both neighborhoods.

Expanding kid-friendly housing in both neighborhoods via a group housing ban is the “pro-housing” position.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

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