Morning Splash: Judge Gives Oakland Till Jan on Police Reforms; Nurses' Strike; Sonoma Student Faces Probation in Texting-While-Driving Death

Judge Thelton Henderson on Thursday gave the city until January to make reforms required in a settlement to a police corruption lawsuit but stopped short of following through on a threat to put the Oakland Police Department under federal control. Attorney Jim Chanin, one of two lawyers who filed the police misconduct suit arising from the Riders misconduct case, said the pressure is still clearly high.

Registered nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley chanted and picketed outside the hospital Thursday, joining as many as 23,000 nurses striking at 34 hospital in Northern and Central California. The one-day walkout affected two of the largest hospital chains in California - Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente - as well as Children's Hospital Oakland. The strike is expected to end today at Kaiser hospitals, but officials at Sutter and Children's said they would not let nurses return to work until Tuesday, when contracts to hire replacement nurses during the strike ends.

Tensions between police officers and demonstrators fluctuated throughout the course of a [UCB] campus protest Thursday, culminating in a violent scuffle when one man was carried from Tolman Hall by his arms and legs.

A San Mateo County judge ruled Thursday that a group of lawsuits against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. over the San Bruno natural gas explosion will go to trial next year and serve as a model for resolving dozens of others filed by plaintiffs who were injured or lost homes, possessions or loved ones.

Hewlett-Packard's board on Thursday named Meg Whitman the company's new CEO, replacing Léo Apotheker just 11 months after he was given the job, and sought to reassure the world that the storied Silicon Valley company could regain its way after a series of controversies and missteps in recent years. "Getting a company back on track doesn't happen overnight," Whitman said in an interview with this newspaper on the day she became HP's fourth CEO in six years, emphasizing she has made a long-term commitment to HP. "I'm here to do the job."

California Rep. Darrell Issa opened a new front Thursday in the GOP attack on renewable energy subsidies following the bankruptcy of Fremont solar manufacturer Solyndra, accusing the Obama administration of waging a "war on carbon-based energy" and exaggerating claims of new "green jobs."

The projected rise in sea levels over the coming decades due to climate change has prompted officials with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to express concern that locating a second campus at Alameda Point could make it vulnerable to flooding. Alameda officials, however, say they are confident the site they offer will be safe. The cities of Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, as well as Golden Gate Fields -- which spans Berkeley and Albany -- are all under consideration for the new campus.

Scientists at UC Berkeley have designed a way to decode, then re-create, human perception -- a breakthrough that someday could be used to reproduce dreams, fantasies, memories and the other images from inside our heads....It's not mind reading -- yet. The images look like the work of Vincent Van Gogh, or even Jackson Pollock, on a bad day. But they are recognizable enough to be spooky...

A Sonoma State University student who was texting behind the wheel of her car when she struck and killed a 2-year-old girl and seriously injured the girl's mother pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter Thursday with the understanding she would receive probation, rather than jail time.

...Zagat co-founder Tim Zagat stands by the restaurant bible’s ranking of Bay Area diners as the worst tippers in the country’s 45 Zagat-rated areas. “The pattern is not just San Francisco, but the West Coast for years has been the lowest tippers,” Zagat said.