A.M. Splash: N-Judah to Shut Down For 9 Days; SJ Council Leaves Minimum Wage Hike to Voters; Raul Castro's Daughter in SF

For nine days beginning Friday night, Muni's busiest line - the N-Judah - will shut down while a well-worn stretch of rail is replaced. The Metro line's nearly 40,000 daily passengers, already accustomed to crowded commutes, will have to pack onto buses or find another way to get downtown and back...To make things even more challenging, the rail work will also force the J-Church, which hauls about 14,000 riders each weekday, to curtail its route at Church and Market streets, where passengers can transfer at Church Street station to other Metro lines running in the subway.

...It's yet to be seen whether this particular production will be a feel-good story, as the Warriors and city officials pledge, or a heartbreaker like so many previous efforts to develop the 13-acre patch of crumbling concrete and pilings just south of the Bay Bridge. Lack of money and frustrations with the politics of San Francisco have sunk at least five previous efforts, some with major players behind them like Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, who backed out of a plan this year to build on the piers as part of the America's Cup sailing race deal.

Despite pressure by low-income workers and their supporters to adopt a $10 minimum wage ordinance, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday night agreed to let voters decide the thorny issue in the fall, giving residents and business owners more time to weigh in. Mayor Chuck Reed said the proposed ordinance needs a full airing before it goes on the Nov. 6 ballot.

California's public schools could see as much as a month of classroom time slashed from the calendar if voters reject a plan to raise taxes in November. Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed giving school districts the option of cutting up to 15 days from the school year if voters reject his proposed income and sales tax initiative.

Just days before Facebook went public, some big investors grew nervous about the company’s prospects. After publicly warning about challenges in mobile advertising, Facebook executives held conference calls to update their banks’ analysts on the business. Analysts at Morgan Stanley and other firms soon started advising clients to dial back their expectations. One prospective buyer was told that second-quarter revenue could be 5 percent lower than the bank’s earlier estimates.

Council members never made it to a vote Tuesday on a proposal to ban Occupy Oakland's weapons of choice from protests -- cutting the meeting short when Occupiers repeatedly disrupted a critic. The ordinance, proposed by City Attorney Barbara Parker, would allow police to arrest people for carrying numerous items at protests, including shields, clubs, hammers, paint projectiles and fire accelerant that agitators have used against police or to deface property during prior Occupy protests.

By the time they reach middle school, more than half of the African American males in Oakland show signs they'll miss high school graduation day, with suspensions and chronic absenteeism topping the list of common characteristics among them, according to a study released Tuesday.

Roughly 75 percent of all the land in the Bay Area is either permanently protected in parks or open space, or at low risk of development because it is zoned for farming or other rural uses. But 322,000 acres -- an area 12 times the size of the city of San Francisco -- remains threatened by development over the next three decades, with hot spots in eastern Contra Costa County and around Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Livermore and Vacaville, according to a new report out Tuesday from the Greenbelt Alliance, an open space preservation group.

In accusations that are rocking the staid venture capital world, a female partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has filed a lawsuit accusing Silicon Valley's premier firm of sexual discrimination and retaliation. Ellen Pao, a Harvard-educated partner on Kleiner's digital team who has been with the firm since 2005, charged that she was pressured to have sex with one partner, propositioned by another and then punished when she complained to top management.

Anticipation over a multiday San Francisco visit by the niece of Fidel Castro has thrust The City into U.S. presidential election politics while stirring up some classic fears of communist infiltration. Sexologist and gay rights activist Mariela Castro — the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro — was granted an exception to strict international travel restrictions by U.S. officials and obtained a visa for her trip. She plans to participate in panels on LGBT issues in health and culture at San Francisco General Hospital and the downtown Marriott Marquis, where the Latin American Studies Association is holding a conference. Castro is not expected to grant interviews during her visit, but she will also appear at the LGBT Center on Market Street tonight for a discussion slated to include audience questions.