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49ers-Bengals preview: Keys to an unprecedented 12th straight home win

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

SANTA CLARA – It’s 49ers alumni weekend, drawing over 100 ex-players and former owner Eddie DeBartolo to Levi’s Stadium. They better hope Sunday’s game against the Bengals goes better than last year’s reunion.The 49ers, before the likes of Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and Jim Harbaugh, got pummeled 44-23 by the Kansas City Chiefs in that Oct. 23, 2022 dud.Levi’s Stadium has hosted only 49ers’ victories since then.If the 49ers (5-2) can beat the Bengals (3-3), it will be the 12th consecutive home win, including playoffs, which would be their longest such stretch in team history, from Kezar Stadium to Candlestick Park to their 10-year-old home atop a former Great America parking lot.This current 11-win spree matches those from 1996-97 and 1998-99. Technically, and perhaps more impressively, the 49ers did win 19 consecutive regular-season games between 1996-99, but an NFC Championship Game loss to Green Bay in January 1998 broke up that overall string.OK, enough about victory vibes.Did we ...

CRISPR gene editing could kill HIV. But is it a cure?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

In a provocative first step toward an elusive end to a devastating disease that has claimed 40 million lives, three patients have received CRISPR gene-editing therapies in an effort to eradicate HIV from their bodies.The results — whether the men are cured or not after the one-time intravenous infusions this year — have not yet been disclosed by the San Francisco biotech company that created the technology based on Nobel Prize-winning research by UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna.But the potential treatment, called EBT-101, is safe and caused no major side effects, Excision BioTherapeutics reported at a meeting in Brussels this week.Six more men will be treated, perhaps some at UC San Francisco, with higher doses. Participating in the research program is potentially risky: Participants stop their protective anti-HIV drugs for 12 weeks after gene-editing treatment to see if the virus is gone. Data will be presented at a medical conference next year, according to the company.“...

Borenstein: Can Bay Area leaders meet the moment before it’s too late?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

Population growth. Transit ridership. Office demand. Property tax revenues. The coronavirus pandemic upended the Bay Area economy — and many of the changes are likely to be permanent.The question now is whether our local elected leaders can meet the moment. Whether they can pivot to plan for a future that will be radically different than previously assumed.I hope they can. I’m fearful they won’t.Revised population forecasts and office work patterns drive this seismic shift. The region has planned based on expectations of a rapidly increasing number of residents. But suddenly those numbers have reversed course, and state forecasts show that the Bay Area won’t return to its pre-pandemic population until midway through the next decade.Meanwhile, after getting a taste during the lockdown, white-collar workers have embraced working from home, either full-time or on a hybrid schedule. Many employers have also championed the idea, recognizing that they want to keep their treasured wo...

St. Francis rushing attack too much for Riordan in crucial WCAL showdown

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

St. Francis leaned upon its reliable ground game to slip past Archbishop Riordan 27-20 and win a game that established the Lancers as the second-best team in the West Catholic Athletic League. “Kingston Keanaaina ran it really well, and our O-line blocked it well up front,” St. Francis coach Greg Calcagno told the Bay Area News Group on Friday night. “We went to a jumbo set up front, and we ran some wildcat and threw different stuff for St. Francis.”Keanaaina rushed for 133 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries as St. Francis defeated Riordan for the 14th consecutive meeting. The Crusaders were also coming off a 53-7 loss to Serra last Saturday. After Riordan sophomore quarterback Mike Mitchell Jr. rushed for a six-yard touchdown in the first quarter, Keanaaina answered with a 10-yard rush to tie the game at 7-7.With around three minutes left in the second quarter, Mitchell threw a 40-yard pass to Cynai Thomas to give Riordan a 14-7 advantage. Mitchell completed 19 of 27 passes f...

Liccardo: PG&E must curb wasteful spending before receiving rate hike

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

At least 51.2 million reasons should compel the California Public Utilities Commission to carefully scrutinize PG&E’s demand for an 18% rate hike next week.The $51.2 million in compensation garnered by PG&E CEO Patti Poppe made her the highest paid CEO of any for-profit utility in the United States in 2021, weeks before customers learned of double-digit rate increases — and the company still lost more than $88 million in net income.It’s a symptom of a much larger disease at PG&E — and indeed, in the CPUC’s regulatory oversight. Residential rates have already doubled since 2006 and nearly tripled for low-income customers, according to The Utility Reform Network. The proposed $39-per-month rate hike the commission will consider on Thursday will further burden struggling residents and small businesses.The company responds that higher rates will fund long-overdue infrastructure improvements to mitigate the risk of wildfires and gas explosions. PG&E pits our c...

Elias: California’s denser housing ‘solutions’ are failing badly

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

Rarely has California seen so concerted and unified a campaign by its elected officials as the drive for housing density conducted by Gov. Gavin Newsom and allied state legislators over the past five years.Related ArticlesLocal News | Elias: Butler does California Democrats a big favor in U.S. Senate race Local News | Elias: Science only seems to justify Newsom’s policies when convenient Local News | Elias: California bills to cut prison population unlikely to stop All along, as legislators passed law after law easing the path to development of high-rise apartments and condominiums, there have been three major goals: One is to ease a housing shortage, another is to drive down the price of housing and a third is to somehow ease the obdurate problem of homelessness.In the eyes of state officials, these things are linked. By creating new housing and easing the existing shortage, real estate prices and rents were supposed to come dow...

Pope’s big meeting on women and the future of the church wraps up — with some final jabs

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis’ monthlong meeting on the future of the Catholic Church was wrapping up Saturday with voting on a final document on the role of women and how the church can better respond to the needs of the faithful today.Organizers and participants alike have tried to temper expectations for any big changes to emerge, especially on hot-button doctrinal issues such as the church’s views on homosexuality. They have insisted that the mere process of forcing bishops to sit down at round tables to listen to ordinary Catholics for a month was the important novelty of the gathering.But there was no denying that Francis’ big Synod on Synodality, as the meeting is called, and the two-year canvassing of rank-and-file Catholics that preceded it, has indeed generated expectations.Progressives have hoped the gathering would send a message that the church would be more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and offer women more leadership roles in a hierarchy where they are barred from ord...

Kazakhstan confirms nationalization of ArcelorMittal subsidiary after mine fire kills at least 32

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Kazakhstan confirmed the nationalization of ArcelorMittal Temirtau which operates the country’s largest steel plants and several coal and ore mines following a coal mine fire that killed on Saturday, according to emergency services, at least 32 workers while another 14 remained unaccounted for.Some 252 people were working at the Kostenko coal mine in the Karaganda region at the time of the blaze, the site’s operating company, ArcelorMittal Temirtau, confirmed in a statement. It said the fire was believed to have been caused by a pocket of methane gas.The fire is the latest in a string of workplace deaths at sites operated by ArcelorMittal Temirtau. In August, four miners were killed after a fire erupted at the same mine, while five people died following a methane leak at another site in November 2022.The company confirmed Saturday that it was finalizing a deal with the Kazakh government to nationalize the firm amid growing discontent from officials.Prime Minister Alikh...

West Virginia forward Akok Akok hospitalized, stable after collapsing on court during exhibition

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia forward Akok Akok was hospitalized in stable condition after collapsing on the court during an exhibition game on Friday night.Akok suffered a medical emergency early in the second half of the game with George Mason, West Virginia’s athletic department said in a statement.Medical personnel attended to Akok for several minutes before he was removed from the court on a stretcher. He was taken to a hospital for further observation. “I got good news. He’s stable, and he’s responsive,” West Virginia interim coach Josh Eilert said at his postgame news conference. “He wanted to make sure he congratulated his teammates, and he’s in a good place right now. They’re probably going to be holding him overnight to do a lot of testing, but I never thought I’d have to deal with a situation like that. It’s heartbreaking, but I’m glad he’s still here with us.”The exhibition game for charity eventually resumed.Eilert said he talked with George Mason c...

Syphilis and other STDs are on the rise. States lost millions of dollars to fight and treat them

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:50:42 GMT

State and local health departments across the U.S found out in June they’d be losing the final two years of a $1 billion investment to strengthen the ranks of people who track and try to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — especially the rapid increase of syphilis cases. The fallout was quick: Nevada, which saw a 44 percentage-point jump in congenital syphilis from 2021 to 2022, was supposed to get more than $10 million to bolster its STD program budget. Instead, the state’s STD prevention budget went down by more than 75%, reducing its capacity to respond to syphilis, according to Dawn Cribb at the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health. Several states told The Associated Press that the biggest impact from having the program canceled in the national debt ceiling deal is that they’re struggling to expand their disease intervention specialist workforce. These people do contact tracing and outreach, and are a key piece of trying to stop the spread of syphilis, which...