OAKLAND – Bay Area residents may have to resist stoking the embers of crackling firewood during cold winter nights if a draft regulation promoted by air quality regulators bans burning wood to reduce harmful smoke emissions.

Aiming to comply with the EPA’s requirement to reduce particulate matter by half, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing to limit wood burning indoors and outdoors on an estimated 20-30 winter nights when the air is stagnant and pollution exceeds federal standards. Continue reading →

>OAKLAND – Abortion rights advocates glimpsed a hint of victory last week when Oakland’s Public Safety Committee agreed to send the city council an ordinance that would create medical safety zones around abortion clinics in order to protect patients from protesters.

The proposed ordinance establishes an eight-foot buffer, or “bubble” zone, around any person seeking access to a reproductive health care facility, their friends and family, escorts, clinic staff, and their vehicles, within a 100-foot radius from the front door of clinics. Protesters may not approach any person without their consent “for the purpose of counseling, harassing, or interfering” or of “injuring or intimidating such person or vehicle occupant in connection with seeking reproductive health services.”
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