A.M. Splash: Nurses' Strike Underway; Oakland Names Independent Investigator of Occupy Handling; Occupy Berkeley Camp Thins Out

Several thousand registered nurses are striking today at nine Bay Area hospitals. The one-day walkout comes after union negotiations with the Sutter Health parent company failed to resolve disagreements over proposed concessions. The strike started at 7 a.m. and is set to end 24 hours later on Friday morning.

Oakland leaders tapped a former Baltimore police commissioner Wednesday to head the investigation into the Police Department's handling of the Occupy protests. Thomas Frazier, who was Baltimore's top cop from 1994 to 1999 and before that a deputy chief in San Jose, said he hoped to issue his first report within 90 days

Under the threat of eviction, protestors at Occupy Berkeley took down about 40 tents in Civic Center Park Wednesday night, preparing for the raid that never came. As a 10 pm deadline to stop camping in the park loomed, many activists were packing up their gear and loading it up on trucks. Some had stashed their possessions in a safe place, but had returned to the park to confront the police if they showed up. Soon, only about 29 out of about 70 tents remained.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said Wednesday that the city probably would be unable to stop future Occupy demonstrations from shutting down the Port of Oakland and that attempting to do so would require at least 500 police officers, which the city would deploy if the port paid the $1.5 million cost.

...Documents recently released by OPD, coupled with news reports of the Campbell shooting, indicate that the department appears to have systematically assigned cops with histories of using deadly force to deal with Occupy Oakland protests.

The board of Yahoo is considering a sale of the bulk of the company's valuable holdings in Alibaba of China and Yahoo Japan back to their majority owners in a complicated transaction that values the stakes at about $17 billion, according to people briefed on the matter.

A sexual harassment complaint filed against the Golden State Warriors and a star player comes on the heels of another lawsuit that alleges the NBA is steeped in a culture that treats women unfairly, and could do more to protect all of its employees - not just the ones who play on the court.

HTC, Asia's second-biggest maker of smart phones, can tweak the technology in its handsets to avoid a U.S. trade agency ban. Dealing with the threat from Apple's and Samsung Electronics' new devices may prove tougher.