A.M. Splash: South Bay Has Best U.S. Job Growth; UC Davis Report Excused Pepper Sprayer; SF Gangs Spill Blood

Santa Clara County is the nation's strongest job market, measured by the region's employment gains over the most recent 12 months, federal officials reported Wednesday... During the year that ended in June, the South Bay posted a 3.8 percent increase in its job totals, the Labor Department reported. The next strongest job markets nationwide were the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region, which rose 3.6 percent, and the Houston-Sugarland region, which reported a 3.3 percent increase... The East Bay reported a 1.3 percent increase in payroll job growth during the one-year period.

The internal affairs investigation into last November's pepper-spraying controversy at UC Davis concluded that Lt. John Pike acted reasonably, with a subsequent review concluding he should have faced demotion or a suspension at worst, according to documents obtained by The Bee. Despite those recommendations, Pike was fired Tuesday after UC Davis Police Chief Matthew Carmichael rejected the findings and wrote in a letter to Pike that "the needs of the department do not justify your continued employment," according to the documents... Video images of Pike calmly shaking his canister of pepper spray and unleashing it on students have been viewed millions of times on the Internet.

The explosion of gang violence in and around San Francisco's Visitacion Valley this summer - it has claimed seven lives and has the southeastern neighborhood on edge - stems not from feuding between rival factions, but from an internecine war that is tearing the gangs apart, the city's police chief said Wednesday. The fighting has pushed the city's homicide count for the year to 45, just five fewer than the total for all of 2011.

California may never see "hundreds of millions" in Facebook-related tax dollars necessary to balance the state budget as investors spurn the social media giant, the state's top fiscal analyst warned Wednesday.

In a trial between two Bay Area titans, Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) won a major victory potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars Wednesday after a judge ruled that Oracle(ORCL) ignored a "clear and unambiguous" deal by abruptly announcing it would stop making new software for an HP server.

Faced with rising crime and a shrinking force, Oakland's embattled police department is speeding ahead with a plan to scale back its community policing program to free up more officers to fight violent crime. The department on Saturday began reassigning problem-solving community police officers to crime reduction teams enabling the department to put more resources in higher-crime parts of the city.

Richmond's shoreline, one of the longest of any city in the Bay Area, will be a little greener and a little more accessible after two agencies voted to make major improvements along the formerly industrial waterfront. The Richmond City Council and East Bay Regional Park District board agreed to spend a total of about $1.6 million on Bay Trail extensions, parks and wetlands restoration. With the Bay Trail improvements, bicyclists, hikers and other trail users will be able to travel a continuous, dedicated path from Albany to Point Pinole.

A referendum to block construction of a pricey waterfront condominium project along the Embarcadero has qualified for the ballot, the first time in 20 years that San Francisco voters will have a chance to reverse a decision by the Board of Supervisors.

The University of Southern California and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday announced a partnership to establish a think tank that will seek bipartisan solutions to environmental problems, economic policy, political reform and other public policy issues.

A second appeal was filed Monday in the hopes of overturning a zoning administrator's July 11 decision to grant the embattled fast-food chain a series of permits for a location at 1962 El Camino Real. Unlike the first appeal, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy's opposition to same-sex marriage didn't factor into the latest effort, said Bruce England, who submitted the paperwork on behalf of a group of sustainability-minded people who live and work in Mountain View.