Morning Digest: 9 Stories You Should Know About Today

Students at UC Berkeley plan to walk out of classes and rally Monday to protest planned tuition hikes, organizers said. The day of action at the Berkeley campus comes after fee increases approved last week by the UC Board of Regents. Protesters have camped out since Nov. 19 at UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall to protest the increases, which could hike fees by up to 28 percent by 2019, with annual increases of 5 percent. No arrests have been made, and classes at Wheeler Hall have not been affected, Lt. Marc DeCoulode said on Monday. Full story

If the University of California hikes its fees, defying the governor's tuition freeze, students won't be the only ones footing the bill. Taxpayers would likely end up paying an extra $45 million next year alone, and at least $250 million more annually by 2019 -- for their share of the rising costs. As tuition soars, so does taxpayer-funded financial aid, becoming a larger -- though often-overlooked -- piece of the UC funding picture. Each time the state cut the university's budget during the Great Recession, UC hiked tuition, and the state, in turn, gave ever-greater sums of tuition grants to help low-income students pay for their UC educations. UC itself last year granted students $775 million out of its own funds. Full story

Mineta San Jose International Airport suffered a security breach Sunday morning when an unauthorized man snuck onto the tarmac and then commandeered a maintenance vehicle in the parking lot, police said. Miguel Zaragoza, 39, was booked into county jail Sunday and charged with trespassing and possession of a stolen vehicle, Sgt. Heather Randol of the San Jose Police Department said. Atlantic Aviation employees spotted Zaragoza about 10:15 a.m. near their ramp and escorted him to the lobby to wait for police. Full story

The hot national debate over crude oil train safety has taken an unusual twist in the Bay Area city of Benicia, where a blunt-talking mayor’s right to free speech is being pitted against an oil company’s right to a fair public hearing. This summer, amid tense public debate over a Valero Refining Co. proposal to bring crude oil on trains to its Benicia plant, Mayor Elizabeth Patterson revealed that the city attorney had privately advised her that her frequent public comments about oil transport safety could be seen as bias against the Valero project. Full story

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Friday likened President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration to President Franklin Roosevelt’s action to put Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who as a child was forced to live in such a camp, issued a statement Monday taking the presidential aspirant to task. Full story

The recipe for San Francisco’s famously delicious tap water is, gulp, about to change. Most city spigots, which, since the 1930s, have gushed water from Yosemite’s pristine Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, will start delivering the Sierra supply blended with a splash of local groundwater — by many measures, a far inferior source. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission recently began digging in and around Golden Gate Park in hopes of drawing underground flows into the mix within the next two years. The move is designed to increase and diversify the city’s water reserves as California faces its worst drought in a generation. Full story

Using FBI arrest records, USA TODAY found nearly 1,600 places where the disparity in arrest rates is more pronounced than in Ferguson, Missouri. Full story

Rep. Mark Takano, a former high school teacher, took a red pen to a letter about immigration reform some of his Republican colleagues were circulating. The Riverside Democrat “graded” the two-page unsigned letter, giving it an F and asking the writers to “see me after votes,” posting a copy on his Tumblr page. He was okay with the first sentence, “Our immigration system is broken and in need of serious reform,” saying it was a “strong thesis." Full story

... To compare dogs and Hummers, I figured that driving the typical 12,000 miles a year in a Hummer would burn around 800 gallons. At 125,000 British thermal units per gallon, that’s 100 million Btus a year. Then, I assumed a stupendously extravagant dog diet of a pound of beef--the most energy-intensive meat--per day. Full story