A.M. Splash: Oakland Council Approves Army Base Deal; Evidence Ruled Out in SF Sheriff Case; Google and Apple 'Spy Planes' Criticized

More than a decade after the military's departure, Oakland's former army base looks to have a new lease on life as a logistics and warehousing center projected to deliver thousands of jobs for city residents. The City Council overwhelmingly approved the $1 billion army base deal Tuesday, just beating a state-imposed deadline for the project to keep a $242 million grant.

Hearings into whether suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi will be permanently removed from office crept forward Tuesday night as commissioners narrowed the scope of admissible evidence, striking significant portions of the statement by a key prosecution witness.

Google and Apple are attracting renewed scrutiny of their practices due to privacy concerns -- this time for flying "military-grade spy planes" over major U.S. cities as they race to shore up their rival 3D mapping services.

A highly invasive form of brown kelp native to Japan has spread throughout the San Francisco waterfront since it was discovered three years ago and could threaten native species and ecosystems if money and resources aren't put into stopping its spread, researchers say.

Cars have already been pushed off stretches of Market Street downtown, but they could be banned altogether under a revitalization plan being designed by a collection of city agencies.

When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art goes dark for nearly three years after it breaks ground in June 2013 for an expansion that promises to cost more than $300 million, art venues around the Bay Area and California will keep highlights of SFMOMA's collections in view.

On Friday, the day after Armistead Maupin gets a big civic thank you for all he's done for San Francisco, he's leaving. It's step one of his move to Santa Fe, N.M.

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, announced Tuesday night he is the lead backer of a new $402 million venture capital fund that will make big bets on solving some of the world's most intractable problems, from diseases to resource scarcity.

Under pressure from law enforcement lobbyists and private industry, a California lawmaker has abandoned his effort to restrict how personal information on the whereabouts of drivers generated from high-tech license-plate scanners can be collected and stored in a database.

Teams of law enforcement officers served search warrants Tuesday on seven scrap-metal recycling yards in Contra Costa County, hunting for loot from a crime wave that has plagued transit agencies, utilities and businesses around the Bay Area.