Morning Splash: SF Pride, Amtrak Crash, Dodger Bankruptcy, Busch Wins at Infineon

The 41st San Francisco Pride Parade was so tame and orderly, one would think it had finally settled down and, well, gotten married. Thousands who attended Sunday's parade and its related festivities cheered recent leaps in gay rights, including Friday's legalization of same-sex marriage in New York. Love and hope - not scandal or struggle - were the themes of the day.

The trucking company involved in a devastating big-rig collision with an Amtrak passenger train was cited for 17 maintenance violations in 24 months, an online check of safety records showed Sunday...Six people were declared dead after a driver working for John Davis Trucking hit his brakes, then skidded 320 feet before slamming into Amtrak's California Zephyr at 11:25 a.m. Friday at a crossing in a remote area of Nevada east of Reno.

California should find out today whether its law banning anyone under 18 from buying or renting violent video games passes the U.S. Constitution test. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling Monday in its final day of this session. This law has spent six years caught up in the courts. It was passed in 2005. State Senator Leland Yee authored the bill and has scheduled a news conference for this morning to react to the decision. He says he is cautiously optimistic the justices will "help protect our children from the harmful effects of ultra violent video games."

With less than a week left to balance Oakland's budget, the City Council released a series of proposals aimed at filling a crippling $58 million deficit, which threatens to shut down libraries and cut the police force to historically low numbers. Whether or not they can make the July 1 deadline depends on how long it takes the city and labor unions to meet each other half way. The prospects of a compromise appear more promising than a month ago. But to complicate matters, the City Council submitted three proposals Friday afternoon, instead of one as is conventional.

Oakland can begin enforcement of a civil court injunction against five alleged members of the Norteños gang, a judge ruled Friday, giving police the power to arrest the five if they violate a series of rules designed to curb gang activity. In a surprisingly brief six-page opinion that took Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman more than a month to draft, the judge simply ruled that the city had presented enough evidence to prove that the five men named in the first phase of the injunction were gang members.

It's crunch week in Sacramento, with Democratic lawmakers clenching their jaws in an effort to reach a budget agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown. Why just Democrats? Because everyone has pretty much concluded that Republicans aren't going to provide the votes needed to extend tax hikes that expire Friday, the centerpiece of Brown's budget.

One year after Santa Clara County set a national precedent for restricting its juvenile hall to offenders ages 13 and older, the county supervisor who championed the policy is furious over the monthlong jailing of a 12-year-old boy...The policy was adopted by the Board of Supervisors in May 2010 as a result of Mercury News stories on several troubling detentions in recent years. One case involved three siblings in foster care -- ages 10, 11 and 12 -- who spent five days locked up. Another involved a mentally ill boy who arrived shortly after his 11th birthday and spent almost two years in San Jose's juvenile hall.

In 2008, (AT&T) dropped a plan amid opposition to upgrade service by installing hundreds of utility boxes around The City. Now, the firm has returned with a modified plan, but once again the proposal is facing opposition and a Board of Supervisors vote has been repeatedly postponed. San Francisco Beautiful is fighting AT&T over a plan to install 726 4-foot-high utility boxes around town. A showdown at the Board of Supervisors over the project occurred in April, but a decision was postponed amid threats of lawsuits. A vote was scheduled for May, but that too was postponed. And Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors is again scheduled to make a decision.

Marin residents will be on their own in the first day or two after a natural disaster because most county public safety workers don't live here and won't be able to offer immediate help, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury warned. In the final report of its term, the grand jury reminded Marin residents that only 33 percent of first responders are on duty at any one time, and that "70 percent to 80 percent of first responders live outside of Marin, some as far away as Kern, Butte, Sutter and Nevada counties."

Embattled Dodgers owner Frank McCourt took the dramatic step of filing his franchise for bankruptcy Monday, setting up a showdown with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. Mr. McCourt filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in Delaware in a last ditch effort to save his team from being seized by Major League Baseball, which took over day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles club in April amid concerns over team finances and security at Dodger Stadium.

Supervisors Jane Kim and Scott Wiener want to tweak the planning code to make way for (a) new locally owned business, which wouldn’t otherwise be allowed because past problems with the area’s drinking culture prompted restrictions on new liquor licenses. The proposed Mission Bowling Club is not the only 10-pin bastion of blue-collar culture wanting to locate in San Francisco, which has managed to hold onto only two such establishments over the years... Adding to what’s becoming a bowling mini-renaissance in The City, Lucky Strike Lanes — offering a high-class bowling experience — is on its way to opening a location in the South of Market area at a defunct Borders bookstore. Plus, the New York owners of Brooklyn Bowl, which puts on a rock show complement to bowling, said they also are considering a foray into San Francisco.

Now international travelers -- and those who want to be able to use their iPhone domestically on T-Mobile's cheaper but slower network -- don't have to tweak their devices. Earlier this month, Apple (AAPL) announced it would sell unlocked iPhone 4s that are untethered to carrier contracts in the United States. While they are much more expensive than iPhones subsidized by AT&T or Verizon -- a 16 gigabyte iPhone with a contract costs $199, whereas an unlocked version goes for $649 -- the unlocked iPhones can save regular international travelers a lot of money. And they no longer have to play the cat-and-mouse game with the Cupertino company, which negated unauthorized iPhone unlocks with software updates, forcing owners to wait for a new hacking software to come out.

...WIC provides a variety of food staples each month to low-income and working-class pregnant or breast-feeding women, infants and children younger than 5 who are not meeting certain nutritional guidelines. It started in 1972 when the federal government recognized that low-income women and children were suffering from malnutrition and to supplement food stamps. Today, (Ayman) Sulaiman leads the largest co-op of WIC specialty stores in Northern California, with 45 stores under the Baby Nutritional Care name and double that number helping smaller neighborhood WIC markets that were struggling with marketing, operations and inventory.

Kurt Busch got an ominous pronouncement from his crew chief, Steve Addington, during Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350: “We’ve made our bed. We’ll have to sleep in it.” Busch settled in for a surprisingly comfy cruise to the finish, and looked happy and refreshed after winning at Infineon Raceway for his first Sprint Cup victory on a road course, and his first win of any kind in 39 races.