• Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced today that its treatment for mildly to moderately symptomatic COVID patients, a monoclonal antibody treatment, has proven to drastically reduce virus levels. In the study, only 1.7 percent of patients who received the drug needed hospitalization, compared to 6 percent who received a placebo. [New York Times]
• A five-alarm blaze burnt a large building in Oakland's Chinatown today, severely damaging Rang Dong restaurant and possibly other businesses. The building occupies the majority of the 700 block of Webster Street. [Chronicle]
• Twenty-year-old Finnegan Elder of San Francisco, the man accused in the killing of an Italian police officer in a drug deal gone wrong last year, read a statement in a Rome courtroom on Wednesday. Elder apologized to the policeman's family, and said, "I wish I could go back in time to change things and avoid this terrible tragedy, but I can't." The trial, which began in February, was halted by the pandemic in March and resumed this summer. [ABC 7]
• The 3,000-seat North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara has racked up $112,000 in fines from the county for illegally holding services indoors, and will now move them outdoors. [ABC 7]
• A "major medical emergency" was causing BART trains to skip MacArthur Station in Oakland Wednesday afternoon. [SFGate]
• There is still some question about what the white powder was in the vehicle on the Golden Gate Bridge that reportedly led to multiple first-responders and a tow-truck driver being hospitalized for presumed fentanyl exposure on Sunday. [Examiner]
• The Nike Store at Union Square is downsizing by half, putting the rest of its space up for lease. [Hoodline]
• It's not too late to fill out the Census in SF if you haven't already! [Mission Local]
• There's been one death reported and one person reported missing after Hurricane Sally came ashore in Alabama. [WKRG]

Photo: Alberto Medrano