(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Days of rain in the San Francisco Bay area are causing real concern for many home owners whose houses are built on steep hillsides or who are at the bottom of the slopes. Many San Francisco hills are becoming waterlogged and increasingly unstable.

The San Francisco Chronicle says in one suburban area, police and safety experts are keeping close tabs on one hillside where three units of a 96-unit apartment complex are threatened with being hit by an avalanche of shale and mud. The buildings are in the Crocker Amazon neighborhood. The publication says the three units have been evacuated as a precaution.

The owners of the complex called in their own geologic experts and ordered the evacuations before people could even take action.

The scene is very reminiscent of one several years ago when days of unending rain turned San Francisco soil to something akin to liquid Jello.

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(MEMPHIS) -- Despite of the diverse ethnic makeup of the city of Memphis, the Commercial Appeal says a new survey of the workforce shows that many black tradesman find it difficult to get construction licenses. The paper says its private research shows that in each of the city's top three-dozen blue collar licensing categories, whites predominate.

As an example, the paper says that of the nearly 430 master electricians licensed in Memphis and Shelby county, only 25 are black.

The most disturbing aspect of the paper's findings is that overall black applicants passed the necessary tests at nearly the same rate as those of other races. The bottom line may be that minority applicants do well when they go through the process of seeking certification, but a surprising number decide not to pursue their goals.

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(HONOLULU) -- It was just what the sprawling Honolulu International Airport did not need Sunday afternoon ... the evacuation of the entire facility for security reasons. For more than two hours travelers and vendors were kept out while police checked for the possible presence of a gun.

The Honolulu Advertiser is reporting that a screener at one checkpoint saw what he thought was a handgun in one bag being checked. He alerted his supervisor, but only after three minutes had passed. By the time proper officials arrived the bag had passed through the checkpoint and could not be located.

Because the delay between the time that employee saw what he thought was a gun and full notification of his superiors took place, the employee and his supervisors have been put on leave while the incident is investigated.

One expert tells the publication it's possible that a computer-generated test image -- sometimes put into the system at random to check the alertness of those watching monitors -- might have been what the employee saw and the "wasted" time was the result of his uncertainty over whether the image was real or not.

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(HOUSTON) -- New statistics show that homicides in Houston jumped sharply this year. The upsurge, according to the Chronicle, signals and end to what had been a slow decline in that crime over the past decade in the city. In the numbers, compiled in the final hours of the year, 263 homicides were on the police blotters. In 2000, Houston police recorded 230 killings.

Meanwhile, Houston's far-flung Harris County suburbs did not register the same downturn until this year. The homicide toll in that area has swung widely recently, from 103 in 1991 to a low of only 42 in 1999.

One of the year's most-publicized multiple murders was and incident in which a mother -- being treated for postpartum depression -- stands accused of drowning five or her children. The killings garnered international media coverage.