The end is nigh for San Jose State's guaranteed admission for South Bay applicants. Packed with students it can't afford, the university is preparing to end its promise to admit all qualified high-school graduates from Santa Clara County. Instead, the school would give preference -- but not a guarantee -- to those students.

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi is scheduled to appear in San Francisco Superior Court Monday for sentencing in connection with an alleged domestic violence incident involving his wife. Mirkarimi, 50, pleaded guilty on March 12 to one count of misdemeanor false imprisonment. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop three other charges stemming from a Dec. 31 incident in which he allegedly grabbed his wife's arm during an argument.

...The San Mateo Union High School District and San Mateo-Foster City elementary district are engaged in a building and renovation frenzy fueled by voter-approved bonds. Similar activity is occurring throughout the county and elsewhere around the Bay Area, as districts seek to make their schools safe, technologically up-to-date and more energy-efficient.

For [one] Glenn County couple, the South Bay is a small island amid a sea of hostility toward their TS Gun Shows. Bay Area counties from Alameda and Marin to San Mateo have enacted laws that forbid the sale or possession of guns on government property, effectively banning gun shows at some of the best spots to hold them. The Nordykes believe those laws are unconstitutional -- and on Monday, a federal appeals court will once again take up their 12-year quest to strike down the regulations.

Because of "scarce rainfall" and warm weather that has toasted ranch pastures, Marin County officials are on the verge of approving an emergency resolution asserting that county farmers face drought conditions.

San Francisco civic leaders are bickering over new subsidies for affordable housing in the most expensive city for renters in the United States. Mayor Edwin M. Lee, who made affordable housing a key issue in his election campaign last fall, convened a series of meetings beginning in January to devise a plan for replacing tens of millions of dollars in housing subsidies that the city lost when Gov. Jerry Brown dissolved redevelopment agencies across the state last year.

Recent sightings of a gray whale and her infant calf swimming near Alcatraz and Sausalito in San Francisco Bay illuminated a likely repercussion of melting polar ice, scientists said.