BART trains could begin running in Santa Clara County before Christmas 2016 -- nearly 18 months ahead of the projected 2018 timeline. Using the promise of millions in incentives for construction companies to finish early, project director Mark Massman said it was very likely "that by the end of 2016 we should be ready to roll the trains."

For nearly three years, thousands of patients at Kaiser Foundation Hospital South San Francisco received vaccines and medications that had been improperly refrigerated, potentially compromising the medicines' potency, according to a California Department of Health investigation. The investigation linked the error to the deaths of two patients.

...The SFMTA, which manages Muni, recently adjusted its budget deficit for this fiscal year — which ends on June 30 — from $23 million to $28 million. Based on new figures compiled last month, the agency’s expenditures — $818.6 million — are forecast to far outpace its projected revenue of $790.8 million.

California Pacific Medical Center, including its St. Luke's campus, is San Francisco's most profitable hospital, yet it spends proportionately far less on care for poor residents than other private nonprofit hospitals in the city, according to a new report.

Although San Francisco’s sit-lie law has been used only sparingly against the problematic vagrants who were its intended target, the regulation is now the latest police enforcement tool for dealing with the sidewalk dwellers of the Occupy SF movement.

A state prison investigation is looking into the cause of Wednesday's riot at California State Prison, Sacramento. Correctional officers used pepper spray and rubber projectiles and fired seven rifle rounds to quell the melee involving 150 maximum-security inmates about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday

Federal prosecutors want home run king Barry Bonds to spend the next few seasons in prison. In court papers filed late Thursday, government lawyers urged a federal judge to sentence Bonds to 15 months in prison for his conviction of obstructing justice by providing evasive testimony to a federal grand jury probing the Balco steroids scandal in December 2003. Prosecutors called Bonds' denials of ever using performance enhancing drugs "patently false."

The Warriors met Wednesday with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Giants CEO Larry Baer to discuss the feasibility of erecting a new, state-of-the-art arena near AT&T Park that would open before the 2017-18 season.

The scam involving a card-reading device slipped inside a grocery chain's self-checkout terminals has ballooned to include nearly 140 Petaluma residents among more than 500 victims across the Bay Area who filed fraud reports with police and Lucky Supermarket staff. U.S. Secret Service agents with expertise in financial fraud are now taking the lead in the investigation into what appeared to be a widespread scheme involving the surreptitious installation of a device that transmits financial data over wireless networks.