A.M. Splash: SF Dumps Apple Products; Driving Increases on Spare-the-Air Days; Calif. Docs Unready for Medicaid Expansion

With rare exceptions, San Francisco's 50 city departments will no longer be able to buy Apple laptops, desktop computers or monitors after the Cupertino tech giant pulled out of an international green electronics certification program last month with little explanation, city officials said. Apple's decision has also raised complications for other institutional purchasers, including the University of California system.

No matter the season, when officials declare the public health alert with the catchy name, they urge commuters to ditch their single-occupancy cars and board public transportation. Thanks to a pollutant-trapping heat wave, Thursday will mark the third consecutive Spare the Air alert... But, based on public-transit ridership and traffic numbers gathered from transportation agencies, it's tough to tell if many other commuters are heeding the campaign's call.

An obscure oversight board that shocked Silicon Valley by pulling $30 million in tax funds from the San Francisco 49ers stadium project to give to schools upped the ante Wednesday by hiring an attorney to defend its decision in court. The taxpayer-funded lawyer, at $275 an hour, will try to fight off a lawsuit the Niners filed to appeal the funding swap. A judge may decide later this month whether the redevelopment funds should go to the Santa Clara stadium or local schools.

As California gears up for a major expansion of Medi-Cal under national health reform, such compensation is leading to a critical concern: Will enough physicians be willing to see the influx of new patients? Many doctors now refuse to accept Medi-Cal patients or sharply limit the number they see because of what they describe as extremely low reimbursement rates. As a result, patients report difficulty getting timely care, a problem the expansion could worsen.

The City Council voted to close two massage parlors Tuesday night whose female employees were giving their male customers much, much more than back rubs, investigators say. Tuesday night's action brings the number of Berkeley massage parlors ordered closed on allegations of prostitution to 12 in the past 18 months, said Gregory Daniel, code enforcement supervisor for the city. More closures are expected.

Suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi requested Wednesday that four people be subpoenaed to testify in his official misconduct proceedings in an effort to try to show that Mayor Ed Lee twice lied on the witness stand as Lee seeks to remove him from office.

Will Lynch, acquitted in the beating of a priest he says raped him as a child, won't face a second trial, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office announced Wednesday. The decision by District Attorney Jeff Rosen brings to a close a case that drew national attention over its mix of the issue of clerical sex abuse and its impact on the victims.

Facebook is ending the week the way it started it: by buying a mobile start-up. This time, it’s customer loyalty service Tagtile, and while it didn’t disclose a price, I’m guessing it’s far less than $1 billion. Facebook confirmed that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of San Francisco-based Tagtile, which will continue to serve its existing customers but is not taking on any new clients.

Some of chip colossus Intel's biggest customers and partners are exploring a competing microprocessor design, signaling the start of a much-anticipated tech donnybrook that analysts say could trigger a dramatic shift in the computer industry... Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which account for a third of the Santa Clara giant's sales, are considering using chips in some devices based on British firm ARM's energy-efficient design. Intel's longtime collaborator Microsoft just announced it will sell an ARM tablet. And some analysts believe Apple -- which already uses the British-designed chips in its iPhone, iPod and iPad -- also may use them in its laptops, which now run on Intel circuits.

Culinary legend Marion Cunningham died Wednesday morning in Walnut Creek after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. The author of more than a half-dozen best-selling cookbooks, including the revised "Fannie Farmer Cookbook," was 90 years old.