By CAROLYN JONES, San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO - Chalk up another casualty of the digital revolution: the blue corner mailbox.

Because of steeply declining use, the U.S. Postal Service has removed more than 60 percent of the blue boxes, once as common on the American streetscape as lampposts and ice cream trucks.

SAN FRANCISCO - Cemetery crews can finish installing a Jonestown memorial despite emotional pleas from a rival survivors' group that the memorial not include the name of Jim Jones, a judge ruled late Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO - Ohlone Indians are begging state authorities to halt the plan by the city of Vallejo, Calif., to build bathrooms atop an American Indian burial ground.

OAKLAND, Calif. - The seemingly unending tragedy of Jonestown intensified last week when a group of victims' families ramped up their fight to stop a planned memorial that would include Jim Jones' name among the massacre victims.

The limelight has faded, but for Eddie and Bernie, the bananas shine brighter than ever.

The movie-star chimps bid farewell to Hollywood and have moved to the Oakland (Calif.) Zoo, where they will spend their retirement swinging from ropes, picking dirt from each other's hair, dragging their knuckles and otherwise monkeying around.

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Guapo's freedom ended one chilly morning on the grounds of a prison yard surrounded by snow-capped mountains and shrubby plateaus.

An Oakland, Calif., cafe owner tried a revolutionary promotion recently, and it didn't involve fat-free croissants or half-price lattes.

Sal Bednarz, who opened Actual Cafe six weeks ago, asked customers to leave their laptops at home and actually speak to each other.

The bull was wedged against the fence, pointed the wrong direction, grunting and thrashing wildly. All 2,000 surly, sweaty, stubborn pounds of him.
"Git out of there, boy!" shouted the bull's caretaker, rancher Page Baldwin, swatting his hat at the snorting beast.

Berkeley's City Council will delve into national policy again next week when it votes whether to demand the United States charge Berkeley resident and former Bush adviser John Yoo with war crimes.
Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the memos offering legal justification for torture while he worked for the White House from 2001 to 2003.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- City leaders in Berkeley, Calif. are expected to make a major leap forward Tuesday by becoming the first in the-nation to allow homeowners to pay for solar energy systems through their property taxes.