10 Stories You Should Know About Today: Friday, Jan. 23

If you see the new safety barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge as a ticket to drive faster than ever, then a different sort of ticket might be in your future. The California Highway Patrol announced Thursday that it is stepping up enforcement of speed limits on the Waldo Grade in Marin as well as at the bridge and toll plaza. The reason is that in the days since the more secure movable median barrier was installed, the average speed of drivers on the approach from the north has jumped even though the speed limit was lowered from 55 to 45 miles per hour. Full story

In a potentially major threat to UberX, Lyft and Sidecar, the California Department of Motor Vehicles said drivers for the services must obtain commercial license plates. “Any passenger vehicle used or maintained for the transportation of persons for hire, compensation or profit is a commercial vehicle,” the DMV wrote in an advisory dated Jan. 5. “Even occasional use of a vehicle in this manner requires the vehicle to be registered commercially.” Full story

State health officials report 59 confirmed cases of measles in nine counties. The patients range in age from 7 months to 70 years. The California Department of Public Health has linked 42 of these cases to people who visited Disneyland or Disney’s California Adventure Park. Initially, cases were linked to people who visited the parks in mid-December, but there are more confirmed cases who visited the parks in January while infectious.The outbreak has spread beyond California with seven cases in Utah, Washington, Colorado and Oregon. Mexico has also confirmed a case. Vaccination status is known for 34 of the California patients. Full story

After spirited debate over how to improve student athletes' classroom performance, the University of California regents on Thursday blocked a proposed new policy that would have linked coaches' compensation to their teams' grades and graduation rates. Several regents, including Gov. Jerry Brown, said they thought the plan's academic standards were too low and would have little impact because all but one of the more than 120 UC varsity teams already meet them. Other regents said they were worried that UC would lose important athletes to other schools if the requirements were set too high and that some low-income and minority students could lose an avenue to professional sports careers. Full story

With record or near-record high temperatures in the 70s forecast for the weekend, people will be headed to shorelines, picnic grounds and sidewalk cafes instead of ski slopes. It's the latest stage of the unseasonably warm and dry weather hovering around as California enters its fourth year of drought. Full story

Uber’s new study on its rapidly growing U.S. driver workforce, as commissioned and presented by Uber, had an overarching theme: drivers love Uber for its work flexibility, and a huge number of drivers are choosing to work for Uber – its driver workforce quadrupled in the last year. ...Among all those numbers, Uber’s growth statistics jumped out. The service currently has 162,000 active U.S. drivers (those who gave at least four rides in a month), which is quadruple the amount it had one year ago. And of those 162,000 drivers, 40,000 gave their first ride in December 2014, indicating that one in four Uber drivers is new to the service. Full story

Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement packed a BART board of directors meeting Thursday, demanding the transit agency drop charges and possible fines against 14 protesters arrested after shutting down the West Oakland station in November. Thursday's show of support was the latest public action targeting BART's handling of the Nov. 28 protest, and follows a petition calling for BART to drop criminal charges against protesters. On Nov. 28, the group now known as the "Black Friday 14" chained themselves to a train on the West Oakland station platform, delaying transbay service for about three hours. Full story

The fire that stemmed from a corroded pipe at Chevron's Richmond refinery in August 2012 resulted from regulatory shortcomings and a flawed safety culture within the company and was compounded by an inadequate emergency response by company crews, according to a final draft report released Thursday by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. The CSB, a federal investigatory body that has released numerous reports on the fire over the last two years, will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. on Jan. 28 in the Richmond City Council chamber. Full story

California’s biggest trees are doing a disappearing act, and researchers say the disturbing pattern may be strongly driven by climate change. A study published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the state’s big trees -- those measuring more than 2 feet in diameter -- have declined by more than 50 percent since the 1930s across 46,332 square miles of the state's forests. Full story

The $300,000 of world-class wine whisked away from a Yountville restaurant last month has been found — in a private cellar in North Carolina — but who took it remains a mystery. Stolen in a Christmas Day heist from world-renowned French Laundry, the 76 bottles of mainly rare French wine ended up in Greensboro, Napa County Sheriff’s Capt. Doug Pike said. All but a couple of the bottles have been recovered. Full story