A.M. Splash: Bay to Breakers Loses Sponsor; SF Has Big Plans for Mission Bay; BCDC Embraces New Mission; 'Flipped' Learning Catches On

Zazzle has dropped out as the main sponsor of Bay to Breakers, leaving organizers less than four months to find a primary financial backer for the boozy, nudity-dotted footrace. The website for customized T-shirts and novelties withdrew after failing to reach terms with race organizers for a third year of sponsorship. The Redwood City company was Bay to Breakers' third sponsor in 10 years, and its exit has left organizers scrambling to line up a replacement before the 102nd running of the race May 19.

San Francisco's vision for the South of Market area near AT&T Park and Mission Bay involves more than just taking a wrecking ball to the stub end of Interstate 280, though that image has drawn much attention in a city known for demolishing freeways. The plan - still more of an idea backed by a handful of studies - would continue the transformation of a once-gritty area by creating a new neighborhood full of residences, offices, shops and restaurants, hotels, and entertainment establishments. But opening the area to development would mean major changes to the city's transportation system and could affect plans for high-speed rail and for extending and electrifying Caltrain.

Leadership changes in regional agencies rarely attract attention, so it wasn't a big story last year when new people stepped into the top two posts at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. But this is an era when the commission's original reason for being - to keep vast portions of San Francisco Bay from being filled by subdivisions and land-hungry local governments - is less of a threat than the rising sea levels that almost certainly lie ahead. This ecological shift demands a response, said the commission's new chairman and executive director, and it could place the 48-year-old agency back in the public spotlight.

When Timmy Nguyen comes to his pre-calculus class, he's already learned the day's lesson -- he watched it on a short online video prepared by his teacher for homework. So without a lecture to listen to, he and his classmates at Segerstrom Fundamental High School spend class time doing practice problems in small groups, taking quizzes, explaining the concept to other students, reciting equation formulas in a loud chorus, and making their own videos while teacher Crystal Kirch buzzes from desk to desk to help pupils who are having trouble.

A hearing is scheduled Monday to determine where a man accused of fatally shooting seven people at Oakland's Oikos University in April 2012 will be sent after he was ruled incompetent to stand trial earlier this month. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Carrie Panetta suspended legal proceedings on Jan. 7 against One Goh, 44, after finding him incompetent to stand trial.

Art Saludares got nabbed shortly after he walked down a hallway after lunch in the hospital cafeteria. "Was that you I saw walking without a mask?" asked a good-natured, but serious, email from Suzanne Cistulli, director of infection prevention and control at San Jose's O'Connor Hospital. Many Bay Area hospitals are vigorously enforcing a new mandate that health care workers throughout Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties get a flu shot or don a mask during the flu season.

State Sen. Michael Rubio says he first wondered if something were wrong with California's environmental review law during his days as a Kern County supervisor, when he saw it used to slow wind and solar projects he considered green by their very nature. Now, just more than two years into his Senate term representing a large swath of the southern Central Valley, he is taking on fellow Democrats on the issue, moving to rewrite the California Environmental Quality Act, one of the most complicated and controversial policy issues under the dome.