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Daily News Roundup for May 18th, 2015

LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group
Henry Coletto of the Friends of the Cañada de los Osos, instructs hunters to aim for the head of a pig during his pig-hunting presentation at the wild pig-hunting clinic offered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife."

Here's what's happening in the Bay Area, as curated by KALW news:

McDonald’s on Haight Street is a magnet for homeless youth, drugs // SF Chronicle

"Half a dozen young people sat on the sidewalk in front of the McDonald’s on Haight Street on Wednesday and one of them, 30-year-old Chris Redinger of Minnesota, packed a bowl with marijuana.

He said there’s one reason he hangs out there: “Location, location, location.” The restaurant is the closest place to Golden Gate Park, he said. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to change that and has threatened to sue McDonald’s Corp. for allowing drug dealing and other illegal activity at its restaurant. It’s a new approach to tackling the open drug use and sales that have persisted for decades despite attempts to clean up the area."

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As Google deploys new robot cars on city streets, DMV scrambles to finish self-driving rulebook// Mercury News

"MOUNTAIN VIEW -- After a year of testing its bubble-shaped driverless cars on the empty roads of a shuttered Central Valley military base, Google is about to deploy its fleet on the busy streets of Silicon Valley.

For now, the cars must have safety drivers ready to grab the wheel or hit the brakes if something goes wrong. But self-driving software could soon move from test cars to consumer vehicles as the California Department of Motor Vehicles puts finishing touches this month on new operational rules for autonomous cars, making it the first government in the world to create a detailed handbook for robots on the road."

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How A Dying Pit Bull Got A Beautiful Home For The End Of His Life// Huffington Post

"Canela the pit bull was found as a stray, then wound up at a San Francisco-area shelter with a gigantic, raw-looking, inoperable tumor on his rear, earlier this year.

He was neutered and microchipped, and seemed well-socialized, but attempts to find the dog's owners went nowhere.

Canela was going to be euthanized at the shelter, because he was so uncomfortable and not much else could be done.

Two doctors -- Maria Steelman and Maria Rivero -- had another idea. They decided to give this dying dog a comfortable, love-filled home for however many days, or weeks, he had left.

And they'd like more dogs like Canela to get the same, through a foster hospice program called the Rainbow Bridge Fund."

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Pigs gone wild: Silicon Valley engineers take aim at learning how to hunt// Mercury News

"GILROY -- Max Zhang grew up in the overcrowded city of Beijing, playing video games for fun and getting little experience in the great outdoors. He's a 37-year-old Silicon Valley software engineer now -- and he's setting out to change all that.

He's learning how to hunt wild pigs.

Zhang is part of a new generation of would-be hunters who crowded into a barn in the rolling hills east of Gilroy on Saturday to learn how to shoot, kill, track and butcher the animals -- which have become destructive pests in almost every county in the state."

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California transgender inmates fight for medical care// Mercury News

"From inside California's Mule Creek State Prison, convicted murderer Michelle-LaelNorsworthy is one of a growing number of transgender inmates around the country pushing a new civil rights fight.

The 51-year-old Norsworthy, serving a 17-years-to-life term for shooting a drug dealer to death in a Fullerton bar in 1987, has turned to the federal courts to force the California prison system to provide sex reassignment surgery to complete her decades-long transformation into a woman."

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Survival Secrets: Why Women Age More Resiliently Than Men // New America Media

"...Resilience, it turns out, is one of the keys to successful aging: Over and over again, Scharlach’s research has shown that women generally retain far more resilience as they age than men. 

Biological difference and genetic inheritance clearly play important roles in our health as we age, but resilience, an admittedly fuzzy concept, can also affect our biological response to stress, and therefore to both cardio illness and cognitive failure. Where does resilience come from?"