News
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With ‘Die-In,’ UCSF Medical Students Urge Doctors to Fight Racism

12.11.2014
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By Jeremy Raff, KQED News Fix
The din of excited chatter grew as the crush of UC San Francisco medical students put on their white coats and distributed picket signs saying “black lives matter” Wednesday, instructing one another to tag their tweets and Instagram photos #WhiteCoats4BlackLives. But at 10 minutes past noon, when the group lay down in unison in front of the medical school’s library on Parnassus Avenue, it was eerily silent. Many students closed their eyes. Some held hands. Passers-by stopped to watch, and police officers lingered in the background.

News
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S.F. Chorus Frogs Nearly Disappeared. People Helped Them Return. Then Frogs Got Noisy.

12.10.2014
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By Carmen Taylor, Bay Nature
The classic “ribbit” that Hollywood used for decades for nighttime frog noises comes from a diminutive, 2-inch West Coast native called the Pacific chorus frog. If you are in San Francisco and want to hear them, though, you are mostly restricted to the movies these days: The city’s expansion in the 20th century filled in the vernal pools of the Mission District where the frogs once thrived, pushing the frogs to the brink of disappearance from the city. Chorus frogs are not a species of particular concern elsewhere. There will be no federal effort to restore them and protect their habitat in San Francisco. But as late as the 1900s, they were common there, and for Nature in the City, that is reason enough to try to bring them back.

News
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Thoughts on Homelessness From San Francisco Civic Leaders

12.10.2014
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Part of a special report on homelessness and mental health in San Francisco, in the fall 2014 print edition. Stories rolling out online throughout the fall.
San Francisco has struggled for more than 10 years to solve the problem of chronicl homelessness. » Read more

News
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Guidelines Proposed on How BART Police Should Interact With Transgender People

12.09.2014
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By Bryan Goebel, KQED News Fix
A BART police advisory board is considering a new policy that would establish a directive for how the department’s 200 officers should interact with transgender people. The proposed policy, hailed as a great first step by transgender advocates, was to be considered Monday by BART’s Citizen Review Board, which makes recommendations to Police Chief Kenton Rainey. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 
 

City Hall

Schizophrenia Diagnosis Puts People First in Line for Benefits

12.09.2014
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Part of a special report on homelessness and mental health in San Francisco, in the fall 2014 print edition. Stories rolling out online throughout the fall.
People whose mental illnesses have made them homeless have a hard time getting the disability benefits they are owed, in part because they may lack the mental organization to advocate for themselves and navigate the complexity of the system. » Read more

News
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California’s Drought: Is It Global Warming?

12.08.2014
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By Craig Miller, KQED Science/KQED News Fix
Federal climate scientists say that California’s drought, now in its fourth year, is not likely the product of human-induced global warming. A new report, based on seven models that ran 160 “reenactments” of the last three years, concludes that “perhaps about two-thirds of the precipitation deficits” of the last three years have been the product of various convergent factors, including “a randomness of the atmosphere,” says Marty Hoerling, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Earth System Research Laboratory and one of the study’s co-authors. Read the complete story at KQED Science/KQED News Fix. 

Health
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How Homelessness Can Compromise Mental Health

12.08.2014
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Part of a special report on homelessness and mental health in San Francisco, in the fall 2014 print edition. Stories rolling out online throughout the fall.

Update 12/9/2014: For more on this topic, listen to KALW-FM’s talk show “Your Call” from Dec. » Read more

News
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Some Bay Area Immigrants Suffer Fallout of Ebola Epidemic

12.04.2014
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By Andrew Stelzer, KQED News Fix
Two days before Thanksgiving, a hair-braiding salon in Berkeley is packed. But stylist Emma Kouassi says that has not been the case recently. “Since they started talking about Ebola a lot in the media,” she says, her business has dropped off. She attributes that to one fact: She’s from the West African nation of Ivory Coast. Because of the Ebola epidemic that has struck elsewhere in that region, Kouassi says, her African roots have become an issue for some customers.

News
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Youth Shelter in San Francisco’s NoPa Becomes 24-Hour Operation

12.03.2014
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By Katrina Schwartz, KQED News Fix
Homelessness is still a big problem in San Francisco. At last count in January 2013, there were 7,350 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in San Francisco, including about 914 youths. Anyone who lives in or visits the city sees panhandlers downtown, destitute people in doorways and young people hanging out on Haight Street or in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. There are many organizations working hard to provide services to the homeless, but finding places for shelters or halfway homes is a constant struggle in a city as dense and expensive as San Francisco. Larkin Street Youth Services is one of the many nonprofit service providers working on homelessness in San Francisco.