Southwest Airlines, the cattle-car service of affordable air transportation, resumed flights this morning after yesterday's maintenance SNAFU grounded "approximately 4 percent" on Tuesday night. It seems that many of their airplanes failed to have safety checks last year, which resulted in yesterday's Southwest Airlines schedule meltdown and a drop in their stock price. But today, Thursday, "the majority of the planes removed from service have been returned" spokeswoman Christi Day tells CBS 5. Yesterday's......

Yesterday we mentioned the delightful work trip/vacation San Francisco supervisor Bevan Dufty and city treasurer Jose Cisneros took to Australia for Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras. Trannyshack founder Heklina was there, too. And many readers fretted about whether or not city tax dollars went to pay for this trip down under -- an excursion, it should be mentioned, that will reportedly bring in much-needed tourist dollars to SF. Anyway, according to Dufty's office: No San......

Billion-dollar expansion work at Mineta San Jose International Airport came to a halt this morning after a 28-year-old construction worker's arms were severed below his elbows in an accident. Yikes. According to NBC 11, "the 28-year-old construction worker somehow became entangled in the equipment that drives long posts into the ground with quick movements, the San Jose Mercury News reported." It appears that the accident involved pile driving work for "a new roadway just......

A standoff is underway right now in Oakland. The fuzz claims that a robbery suspect is holed up inside studio apartment, near 32nd and Telegraph Avenue. Due to the nail-biting action, police have closed Telegraph Avenue between 30th and 34th....

A grown man died during a street race in Oakland last night at around 9:30 p.m.. The unidentified 42-year-old -- that's right, 42-year-old -- was racing his 2005 Nissan "west on the 7100 block of Doolittle Drive, near Oakland International Airport" before losing control of his vehicle. He then slammed head-on into a non-compete Hyundai, which sent the 57-year-old driver of the former car to the hospital with serious injuries. Oh, and Ms. Lagos......

Hey, remember angry Sarah Nome, the lady who refused to move out of the Kaiser hospital in Marin for over a year, and ran up a $1.4 million bill? Well, Kaiser's 1) gotten ownership of her house in San Anselmo and 2) will be auctioning it off to pay off her tab. Kaiser was awarded the house after Nome was put in the care of the state (after her daughter refused to take her in),......

Marines returning home from Iraq were beaten to death with puppies and aborted fetuses by Oakland Airport officials on 9/27. At least that's how some conservative blogs and other outlets have spun it, more or less. (Because the Oakland Airport has nothing better to do than come up with ineffective political statements.) In fact, it was just a tarmac/security-check issue preventing them from entering the passenger terminal for a cinematic "meet and greet" with......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

-- 19-year-old lad from Felton -- a fascinating, frightening place -- calls cops after his weed gets pinched. Which he was trying to sell in downtown Santa Cruz. And doesn't get arrested. [Chron] -- Same-sex marriage bill OK'd, ready to be TKO'd by Arnold. [Chron] -- Obama in SF! [Examiner, via BCN] -- Boom! Bomb threat forces Southwest Airlines jet back to Oakland Airport. [CBS5] -- Hsu caught, in hospital after falling down on...train......

Well, it won't be destroyed so much as it will be sent into space. And then vaporized, or zapped, or something. Anyway, someone sporting a Chewbacca outfit handed over Luke Skywalker's original lightsaber prop to NASA representatives at the Oakland Airport today. Apparently it's all a part of Star Wars' 30th anniversary celebration -- this kind of fanfare will happen every five years, folks, so get used to it now -- and "NASA has......

Airport news! This morning, SFO crews found a dead body lodged in the wheel well of the nose of a United plane coming in from Shanghai. It might have been a stowaway. A woman was arraigned in Denver yesterday, after getting arrested on Monday for beating her kids on a Frontier Air flight that took off from SFO. Witnesses report that she seemed intoxicated on the flight, was yelling and hitting the kids, and......

Just some random news items on the wire: There was a three-alarm fire at Thurgood Marshall Alternative High in the Bayview this afternoon. School's out for the summer, so there weren't any students around, and the authorities think the fire was started by roofers working with tar. Some unscreened yutz snuck into Terminal 1 (the non-Southwest one) at Oakland Airport this morning, necessitating a two-hour search of the entire place as TSA tried in vain......

--A day of physical activity! Bikers set off for LA for the AIDS ride, and those not content just to bike did the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. --Barack Obama was in town. --Santa Clara would like to have the Niners, but it'll be expensive. --Airport news: there was an emergency landing in Oakland, and a guy with measles came through SFO. --Who should run for mayor against Gavin Newsom? --They redesigned the Chron Sunday Magazine.......

J.D. Power and Associates, the well-regarded surveyor of customer satisfaction rankings and similar, has conducted its 2007 North American Airport Satisfaction Index Study. Guess which U.S. airport ranked the lowest in the large airport (those with 30 million passengers+/annum) category? Yeah, it's San Francisco International. ...

In artist Paul Madonna's weekly comic series All Over Coffee, San Francisco architecture—and coffee—seem to be the main characters. Beautifully technical drawings of SF scenes, combined with disembodied voices that almost feel like the city's collective consciousness, give an ethereal quality to the pieces. You can catch All Over Coffee every Sunday in the Pink section of the Chronicle, and it's archived online as well. Paul also updates his web site every Monday with a new free cartoon. This month, there are several ways you can get to know Paul and his work a little better. • Tonight from 7 to 10 pm at 312 Valencia @ 14th street, there is a Book Release Party for Paul's collection of past to present work from All Over Coffee. You can also buy the book at a discounted price from City Lights Books. ...

An Alaska airlines plane has been evacuated at the Oakland Airport for suspicion of an explosive device on board. It's probably nothing as it's usually nothing but it's still kind of exciting. ...

As anyone who has done a lot of traveling knows, there are two types of airlines-- there is JetBlue and there is everybody else. Oh, JetBlue, why do we love you? Is it because of actual comfortable seats and actual comfortable space? Direct TV? Low prices? Or because there's no real first class so flying never gives you visions of proletarian revolution? People who start flying JetBlue get a little religious about the airline, praising the company to the heavens and vowing to never fly another airline again. The main problem with JetBlue, though, is that they don't go to a lot of airports. Here, you could get them at Oakland but not at SFO. But not for any longer-- JetBlue will now be serving SFO. And we are stoked. ...

We hope you weren't coming or going from Oakland Airport today as there was a bit of a security scare there today after somebody ran through the security checkpoints. As a result, the entire airport had to be cleared as they looked for the guy responsible. ...

-Watch out for those government benefit programs. -York disses Ronnie Lott and Joe Montana with his Santa Clara announcement. You wouldn't want to see Ronnie Lott angry. ...

--Love the San Jose public library -- just don't love the San Jose public library. --An Angelides aide says they found the "hot blooded Latino" audio clip on a publicly-accessible website. Also, former Steve Westly manager Garry South seems to be calling Matier and Ross a lot. --The City of Oakland accidentally turned down a historic garden by Lake Merritt, and now has to make it into condos. --Water fountain pressure is low at Oakland......

Saturday: It's POMO 2006, which means all sorts of Filipino stage performances at YBCA. Our POMO pick is "Bronze Lit: FilipinoAmerican Voices in Literature", at 2 p.m. today, in which writers including Jaime Jacinto, Jason Bayani, Jason Perez, Jean Vengua, Leny Strobel, Marianne Villanueva and Barbara Jane Reyes read from their works. And it's free! Sunday: If you haven't already, go see Awesome; I F**kin' Shot That! at The Bridge. Never mind the mixed......

For once, a BART delay not caused by "switching problems" at Millbrae -- those of you trying to cross the Bay this morning probably heard the repeated announcements about "police activity" at the West Oakland station, and the subsequent crawling-rate of the trains as a result. (We had a weekly with us through the stop-and-go, so tomorrow's We Read The Weeklies will be unusually thorough as a result.) Turns out someone shouted out at the......

As a fan of Point Break, Sugar and Spice, and Killing Zoe, we've wondered about the innate practicality of robbing a bank in a mask. "Your peripheral vision must suffer" we'd muse "and it's gotta get hot in there! What a stupid idea." Apparently, it's less stupid than we thought, as clown-masked gunmen successfully robbed a South San Francisco bank this morning. Thieves entered the 211 Airport Blvd branch of the First National Bank......

A passenger at Mineta San Jose International Airport was taken off the plane by authorities for being a possible terrorist threat. SFist Truthmaker was at the airport at the time and reports that pretty much the entire airport was shut down, causing his houseguests to miss their flight. And the reason for all the hullabaloo? Apparently, the passenger who had "been acting suspiciously" wrote the words "suicide bomber" in his journal. It is not reported......

Seriously, people. We recall being in the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport a few years ago, when a rather snappy gentleman uttered the above phrase ("Stand to the right, walk to the left, honey") as he flounced by some heads-up-their-asses tourists that wouldn't let him by on those Jetson-style moving walkways. One of the funniest things we ever saw. But, oh, if only we could only invoke the spirit of that snappy gentleman for......

Once again, we're on the scene, at one of the biggest protests against Arnold Schwarzenegger's policies since his administration began after the recall. Everyone who's anyone is out in force to protest his crackdowns on unions and his liberal, and self-serving, definition of "self-interests." We're trying to liveblog the event, as we'd like to show that a million-dollar news van is no longer a match for a punk with a PowerBook and iStumbler. The......

San Francisco's favorite but least read Q&A columnist, the Essefficist, pours sweet sweet Irish Coffee in your ear. Or lies....

. . .or 'The Trimethyldioxypurist Takes a Trip.' It sure is hard to review a San Francisco-based coffee joint when you're not in San Francisco. Although we did find one fantastic coffee house in D.C. (that we would encourage anyone visiting our nation's capital to visit), being elsewhere just underscores that our fair city has among the best, if not the very best, caffeine options around. Too bad it doesn't translate to our airports.......

Looking for an uber-cheap way to protect your smallish digital devices (oh, we're sure your digital devices are huge, don't worry)? Try a condom! Pictured here protecting an iRiver from an unexpected splash of, uh, liquid, we're sure it could make your iPod safe from all sorts of effluvia, too. Photo from Gizmodo (the permalink isn't working for some reason), idea via MisticRiver. Apple bowed to complaints that their Mac Mini add-ons were overpriced,......

We decided to take a day trip on the Muni. And now that we have our wireless card, we decided to warbus the city. Live blog updates after the jump. Ever since we found out 94110 is the most saturated WiFi zip, we had to see how the other neighborhoods fared. We know it's geeky, and we know you love it. We're rolling with a 12" G4 PowerBook and an Airport Extreme. We've also got......