San Francisco city leaders, after losing a key round in court against the cell phone industry, have agreed to revoke an ordinance that would have been the first in the United States to require retailers to warn consumers about potentially dangerous radiation levels. 

In a move watched by other U.S. states and cities considering similar measures, the city Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association by accepting a permanent injunction against the right-to-know cell phone ordinance. 

The group had alleged the law violated its free-speech rights, and the settlement marked a victory for the industry as the Federal Communications Commission considers a reassessment of safe radiation exposure limits adopted in 1996. 

"This is just a terrible blow to public health," Ellen Marks, an advocate for the measure, said outside the supervisors' chambers. She said her husband suffers from a brain tumor on the same side of his head to which he most often held his mobile phone. 

The industry association has asserted the San Francisco ordinance, if put into effect, would mislead consumers about the relative risks posed by cell phones, contrary to the FCC's determination that all wireless phones legally sold in the Unites States are safe. 

The group's members include some of the nation's largest cell phone carriers and manufacturers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Samsung and Apple. 

Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria said a federal appeals court decision last year upholding a preliminary injunction against the measure signaled that trying to win the case at trial would be a long shot. If the city lost, a judge could have awarded the industry group as much as $500,000 in attorneys' fees, he said. 

The 2011 ordinance mandated warnings that cellular phones, including smartphone devices, emit potentially cancer-causing radiation. The statute, which a judge blocked before it took effect, also would have required retailers of the devices to post notices stating that World Health Organization cancer experts have deemed mobile phones "possibly carcinogenic." 

Supervisor David Campos reluctantly supported the settlement. "I think the legal reality is that if we don't approve the settlement, we're talking about having to pay $500,000 in legal fees," he said. 

Chhabria said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling had left San Francisco in the position of having to prove that scientists concurred about the hazards of cell phones and that the FCC no longer believes they are safe. 

Despite mounting evidence the phones may cause brain tumors, scientists disagree and are hesitant to draw conclusions. 

Dr. Gabriel Zada, a neurosurgery professor at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, found in a 2012 study that the age-adjusted incidence of malignant tumors in the parts of the brain closest to where people hold their phones rose significantly from 1992 and 2006 in California. But Zada told Reuters he could not draw any conclusions about the dangers of cell phones from his findings. 

The Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization, had pushed for San Francisco's right-to-know law. 

"If the nation's experience with tobacco taught us anything, it is that it is dangerous to wait until there is scientific consensus about a potential health threat before providing consumers with information on how they can protect themselves," said Renee Sharp, the group's research director. 

Mobile phones are tested to ensure their emissions fall within FCC limits considered safe. The limits, however, fail to reflect the latest research or actual conditions under which mobile phones are used, liked being held in a pocket directly against the body while talking through an earpiece, according to a Government Accountability Office report. 

The FCC last month agreed to consider revising its 17-year-old guidelines. 

Talk about a couple of iHeroes.

No one is happy to have their Apple products stolen. But when 3 or 4 iPads started going missing at a time from St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, principal Patrick Ruff took it personally – and wound up chasing the alleged thief across campus in a hot-footed pursuit.

“My adrenaline was going,” said Ruff, 43, of the chase that crisscrossed a campus sports field on Thursday. “The students realized I was chasing someone, it was kind of like a movie. It was something else, a crazy event.”

Ruff said the whole caper started when iPads started disappearing several at a time. The school’s dean of students conducted an investigation, Ruff said. Armed with a description obtained from students of the suspected perpetrator, administrators stopped Gabriel Ruiz Vega, 27, on campus Thursday.

“I asked him why he was on campus and his answers weren’t making sense,” Bill Gotch, the dean of students, told NBC Bay Area.

“When we said we were going to call the police, he took off,” Ruff said. “He threw his bag out because it was slowing him down while I was running after him.”

Ruff, who said he exercises regularly, kept up as the man fled, pulling him down as he tried to clamber over an 8-foot fence.

“I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and they keep me fit,” Ruff said.

Police said they recovered seven iPads and a wallet from Vega’s bag, NBC Bay Area reported.

Students applauded as police took the man away, Ruff said.

But one person wasn’t impressed by her husband’s newfound hero status.

“My wife was not happy. When I got home she asked, 'Why are you doing that? You might get hurt!'” said Ruff. “She was just worried, but I’m sure she would have done the same. I didn’t even think about it at the moment. I believe other people would have done the same.”

On Friday night, the students dressed up as super heroes for their school dance. Principal Patrick Ruff's face was glued to a mock-up of Superman.

Police officers in San Francisco are scouring the city for a semi-automatic assault rifle stolen from a police vehicle over the weekend, authorities said.

Unidentified suspects smashed one of the unmarked car's windows and stole an AR-15 rifle while officers worked nearby, Officer Albie Esparza told NBC News.

The high-powered weapon is distributed to trained police officers so that it is at hand for rapid deployment during high-risk events, Esparza said.

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"No resource is being spared to recover this weapon," Esparza said.

Police do not know how the suspects determined the unmarked vehicle belonged to the police department.

The AR-15 assault rifle was the weapon used in last year's movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.

The search resumed on Monday for two adults and two children who called for help on their sinking sailboat about 65 miles off Monterey on Sunday.

A Coast Guard helicopter took off about 6:45 a.m. to look again for the four, including two children under 8, who reported their sailboat was sinking about 4:20 p.m. Sunday, according to Coast Guard Lt. Heather Lampert. She added that the boaters said their 29-foot sailboat was taking on water and their electronics were failing, and their boat may be called the Charmblow.

The four were originally thought to have gone missing off Half Moon Bay and are believed to be traveling south based on the flow of the current, Coast Guard officials said.

An hour later, the group reported that they were abandoning their boat. They didn't have life rafts so they were trying to make one out of a cooler and life preserver ring, Lampert said. It's unknown if they had life jackets.

The Coast Guard then lost radio contact with the group.

The National Weather Service had issued an advisory throughout the weekend warning boaters of strong winds and rough seas around the Bay Area.

Mariners "operating smaller vessels should avoid navigating in these conditions," the advisory said.

A search overnight, which included crews from the California Air National Guard, and Coast Guardsmen aboard a 210-foot cutter, yielded no results.

The Coast Guard is asking anyone with any information regarding the incident to notify the Coast Guard immediately at 415-399-3547.

  NBC Bay Area's Bob Redell contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:12 AM EST

Some residents who live around Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, Calif., say they are scared. Others say they’re not worried at all.

Depending on whom you talk to, the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings of higher than expected levels of TCE in the air and in the groundwater near the Mountain View property is either a cause for big concern or no big deal.

But one thing is certain. Everyone is talking about the new test results from the EPA showing a presence of toxic chemicals in the air and in the groundwater in and around the Middlefield, Ellis, Whisman (or M-E-W) Superfund site.

According to the EPA, the underground Superfund site include a wide variety of toxic chemicals including PCE and vinyl chloride, chemicals left over from the budding semi-conductor industry that got its start in the buildings along Middlefield and Whisman Roads and Ellis Street.

The chemical of most concern and most quantity in the toxic underground plume is a chemical called trichloroethylene, known as TCE. It's a cleaning solvent once commonly used by the military and the budding semi-conducting industry 30 years ago.

The EPA says that TCE is a toxic solvent that causes cancer in people and heart deformities in unborn babies. According to EPA experts the toxic plume has been lurking underground for decades ever since nascent semi-conductor companies apparently dumped or allowed TCE and other chemicals to leak into the ground.

According to EPA officials the United States military also used TCE to clean airplanes and vehicles during that same time period.

The plume extends from under the runway at Moffett Field a mile and a half south and west under Highway 101 and past Middlefield Road. To the north it goes to Whisman Road and south to just past Ellis Street.

The plume of mostly TCE is believed by EPA investigators to be about a half-mile wide at its widest point.

After NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit began asking questions in April 2012 about possible health effects of the TCE plumes, the Cancer Prevention Institute of California (CPIC) opened its own probe.

After exhaustive research and analysis of three decades worth of health data, California’s state cancer registry announced that it found a higher than expected number of people living in neighborhood surrounding the M-E-W Superfund site who had contracted a group of cancers the registry’s scientists call non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The higher than expected incidence of these cancers occurred during the years 1996 to 2005.

NBC Bay Area

Now the EPA admits that until recently it had somehow missed some “hot spots” of higher than acceptable levels of TCE in groundwater and in the air in several homes and more than 20 commercial buildings in the area. Two of the hotspots were found by EPA investigators along Evandale Avenue outside the original plume area.

That concerns some residents who live on that road. Residents like Theresa Larrieu, who has lived in a home along Evandale with her family for a quarter century. Larrieu said that the family always knew the M-E-W Superfund was nearby but figured it didn’t directly affect them since it wasn’t right next door. The Superfund site was far enough away, Larrieu thought, to be present but not an impact on her family’s health or life. Now, with these new EPA test results, the TCE plumes appears to actually be right next door and it may even be under Larrieu’s home. The EPA has conducted air, water and soil tests in and around the home but the results have not come back as of this writing.

Larrieu says she's worried and is holding her breath waiting on the results of those air and water sample tests the EPA took from her home. “Scared. Nervous. Worried. Very worried,” Larrieu said when asked to describe her emotions. “(There’s) way more suspense than I need in my life.”

“Your first thought is your health, is this affecting us is this affecting other neighbors that I know had health issues,” said Larrieu.

The EPA shares Larrieu’s concerns and M-E-W Superfund Site manager Alana Lee emphasizes they are working hard to address and clean up the mess. “We cleaned up over 5 1/4 billion gallons of contaminated water and over 110,000 pounds of toxic contaminant,” said Lee.

But Lee also said that the EPA also missed these hot spots of TCE both in groundwater and in the air inside some buildings along Evandale Avenue including two homes outside the original plume area.

“The concentration (found there) is very high,” said Lee, “A very high concentration.”

How high?

According to documents from test results, the highest TCE levels that the EPA measured in ground water in the area reached 130,000 parts per billion. The EPA considers anything over 5 parts per billion unsafe.

In the commercial buildings nearby, including two now occupied by Google, EPA tests found TCE in the air at levels 26 times higher than the level considered by the EPA to be acceptable and safe.

“Once we found these concentrations, which were a surprise, we took immediate action,” said Lee.

EPA

Bruce Panchal’s home is one of the two houses located on Evandale where the EPA found high levels of TCE. The companies responsible for the toxic chemical cleanup installed a series of four pipes in and around his home to ventilate the toxic TCE fumes leeching from the ground away from the house’s interior to the outside.

Even so Panchal said he’s not worried. “They found a high concentration and with the system it pumps out all the fumes so it safe,” said Panchal.

Panchal and his family have lived in his home along Evandale for 45 years. He said he worked for the budding semi-conductor businesses that got their start in his neighborhood. He even said he handled the chemicals now in question and dumped them in the ground back then.

Despite the new contraptions now pumping air away from the inside of his house, he says he isn’t worried about his or his family’s health. “I’m living proof that they have an issue with the fumes but it is not death defying or a detriment to your health,” said Panchal.

EPA officials said they also found high levels of TCE in more than twenty different commercial buildings between Whisman Road and Ellis Street. Included among those buildings are two new office complexes for Google employees where, the EPA says, renovations and construction allowed higher than expected levels of TCE to leech from the ground through the buildings’ concrete slabs and into the air inside.

It is in some of these buildings where EPA investigators found levels of TCE vapors in the interior air that were as much as 26 times higher than acceptable safe levels with air conditioning systems off.

The EPA says it has systems in place in and around those buildings to keep vapors outside.

Google tells us they take this matter seriously and they’ve already taken measures to ensure that the buildings and the work area is safe.

Theresa Larrieu worries that it may be too late to keep her family from feeling the health effects of this toxic plume. She wonders how long they may have been exposed to these vapors and chemicals that went undetected until recently.

“It is scary,” said Larrieu. “I’m very scared. I have children. I have grandchildren.”

Larrieu also remains concerned that not even the EPA can say how long the fumes have been leeching into the neighborhood or how long she and her family have unknowingly been exposed.

When we asked the EPA if they knew exactly how long have these newly discovered TCE hot spots had been there the EPA’s Superfund Site manager Alana Lee said, “We don’t know.”

When we asked whether the toxic chemicals migrate underground or traveled down Evandale Avenue or whether those chemicals had been lurking there underground along with the rest of the toxic plume for decades, Lee had the same answer. “We don’t know.”

The EPA said it will take decades more to clean up this toxic mess.

Carlos and Barbara Landeros only wanted a little Valentine's Day romance.

So last Thursday, the Vallejo, Calif., couple decided to drive to San Francisco for a swanky romantic dinner. And of course no romantic outing would be complete without a pre-dinner trip to the Golden Gate Bridge.

But as soon as they pulled into Vista Point, Barbara spotted a black camera bag without an owner in sight.

With tourists running to and fro, she stood guard over the bag in hopes the owner would soon return.

"We wait about 45 minutes before we picked up the bag," said Barbara Landeros at her Vallejo home. "Because we didn't know who it belongs to."

With no one returning for the bag, Barbara eventually decided to take a peek inside. At first she saw a camera lens, then credit cards, then an envelope of cash -- lots of cash.

"I got nervous at first, it could be drug money," she said. "I was scared."

They finally decided the thing to do was take the bag to San Francisco's Hall Of Justice to turn it in to the police.

"He said, 'Good for you guys,'" she recalled of the policeman who took the report. "'I'm proud of you.'"

It turns out that wad of cash inside the bag was no small sum.

It totaled $11,060.42. Police used the credit cards to trace the bag to a visiting Chinese tourist called Mark in San Francisco.

Mark, who didn't want his last name used, said he was excited to get the call from police. "When the officer give me everything, and he said, 'happy Valentine's Day,'" said Mark who was in the last day of vacation before returning to China.

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He said he was carrying the cash for several families who were traveling together, and that he forgot the bag after posing for family photos on the bridge.

He said the bag’s finders were “very, very kind in heart."

Mark said he tried to call the Landeros family to thank them, but had the wrong phone number.

So he piled his family into a rental car and drove out to their Vallejo home to thank them personally. Only they weren't home.

He said he finally reached them by phone and was able to thank them. He also put a check in the mail with a reward.

It seems Mark's Valentine's Day ended a lot better than the couple's. After spending hours making a police report, they hit rush hour traffic heading back to Vallejo. Valentine's Day dinner ended up being a snack at McDonald's next to the police station.

Still, Barbara said she believes in karma, and was happy not to invoke any of the negative kind. And she figured she and Carlos at least got a few photos and a story out of their day.

"So my heart is rested now because the people got their money and their bag," she said.

Published at 5:09 a.m. ET: One of the best-known child kidnapping cases in the country is back in the news.

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr held a news conference Wednesday to announce they now have a "person of interest" in the 1984 disappearance of 10-year-old Kevin Collins. He was last seen walking home from a basketball game and has not been since. His face was one of the earliest to be put on the back of milk cartons across the country in the search for missing children.

"This case is a case that haunts the San Francisco Police Department," Suhr said.

Suhr identified the man as Dan Therrien, who lived in a home just a couple of blocks from where Kevin was last seen in 1984, near the corner of Masonic Avenue and Page Street in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Therrien died in 2008.

Complicating matters, Therrien went by at least five aliases. Police said he used the name Wayne Jackson at the time of Kevin's disappearance.

San Francisco Police

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr held a news conference Wednesday to announce a "person of interest" -- Dan Therrien, shown in 1982 -- in the 1984 kidnapping of 10-year-old Kevin Collins.

Police stopped short of calling him a suspect, and instead said he was a "person of interest." Suhr also asked for the public's help in coming up with any information that might be relevant to the case.

At the conference, police said that detectives realize this is a long shot, but they're just hoping someone will remember him.

Investigators looking at the case recently realized Therrien had a lengthy criminal past in both California and Canada, including a felony for a lewd act on a child. They didn't know that at the time because he had used other names. Police said that in 1981 he had served six months in jail after pleading guilty to a felony charge of a lewd act on a child. The victim was 7 years old.

The Canadian case was also previously unknown: He was arrested in 1973 on suspicion of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys.

In the Canadian case Therrien -- whom police also identified Wednesday as Wayne Jackson -- went on the lam and was never arrested. Police didn't release where it happened in Canada or any other details.

More news from NBCBayArea.com

Therrien was eyed by police at the time of Kevin's kidnapping, according to sources, and he had consented to a search at the time. But he was never formally arrested or named a suspect in Kevin's disappearance.

Kevin's story captured national attention. He was last seen was on his way home from a basketball practice at St. Agnes School in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. He was talking to a man with blond hair and a large black dog, waiting for a bus at the corner of Oak Street and Masonic Avenue. Normally his older brother would have been with him, but that day his brother was home sick.

Police said Therrien matched the general description of that man and had a black dog at the time.

Last month, San Francisco police searched the home where Therrien lived in 1984 and removed several bones that were located under concrete in the garage. But those bones turned out to be from a small animal.

Cold-case investigators said last week that they realized recently that cadaver dogs were never used when the home was searched in the 1980s.

On Tuesday night, the the lead cold-case investigator visited the home of Kevin's mother. Investigators spent a couple of hours with the boy's family and left without comment. They said they showed the family photos of Therrien at the time Kevin went missing to see if they family might have known him.

Kevin Collins would have been 39 years old on Jan. 24.

"What we're looking for now is anybody that saw this guy in 1984, anybody that talked to this guy back in 1984, anybody that talked to somebody that talked to this guy back in 1984," Suhr said. "We would love to find the whereabouts of that little boy."

Anyone with information on this matter can contact the SFPD Major Crimes Unit at (415) 553-1145. Information can be given anonymously at (415) 575-4444.

Aliases:

• Raymond William Stewart – DOB: 1947
• Kelley Lee Dawson – DOB: 1947
• Wayne Jackson (name he gave police in 1984) – DOB: 1954
• Kelley Sean Stewart – DOB: 1949
• Dan Leonard Therrien (name he died under) – DOB: 1956

Elated fans in Baltimore and disappointed fans in San Francisco spilled into the streets of both cities after a tight finish in Super Bowl XLVII. Scattered violence was reported in both places.

In San Francisco, people threw bottles at police officers in the Mission District after the 49ers lost to the Ravens, police told NBCBayArea.com. At least 25 people were arrested, mostly for being drunk.

News helicopter footage in Baltimore showed jubilant fans pouring out of bars and restaurants after the Ravens won 34-31. In the Federal Hill neighborhood, people pulled a street sign out of the ground and smashed the windshield of a news van, NBC affiliate WBAL reported.

WBAL video also showed a fan doing chin-ups on a metal bar attached to a utility pole, losing his grip and tumbling onto a lower street sign.

The celebration in Baltimore appeared mostly peaceful, if rowdy. Police told NBC News they knew of no major Super Bowl-related problems.

AP

Baltimore Ravens fans celebrate in the streets in downtown Baltimore after their team won the NFL football Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 3, 2013.

The flare-ups in San Francisco were a far cry from October, when the hometown Giants won the World Series and vandals set fires, broke windows and torched a city bus.

This time, Mayor Ed Lee worked with police, fire officials and bar owners to prevent a repeat. He asked bars not to serve hard alcohol and to cut customers off when they got too drunk, NBCBayArea.com reported.

“It’s nowhere compared to the Giants,” Officer Carlos Manfredi said.

Super Bowl violence was not limited to the two cities with stakes in the game. In Miami Gardens, the Miami suburb where the Dolphins play, a man was gunned down in a front yard outside a Super Bowl party, NBCMiami.com reported.

In New Orleans, where the game was played, fans swarmed onto Bourbon Street, but the celebration there also appeared peaceful. On the night before the game, a pickpocket grabbed seven Super Bowl tickets from the back pocket of a man leaving Harrah's casino,NBC affiliate WDSU reported. Police were reviewing surveillance video.

RELATED: Ravens hold off 49er surge, overcome power outage to win Super Bowl