Morning Splash: SF Student Deportation Delayed; OPD Shooting Victim Was Holding Scale; Dead Jellyfish Litter Ocean Beach

A City College student facing deportation will stay in the United States at least one more day, according to his immigration attorney.

Shing Ma “Steve” Li will not be deported today following a request from U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Sin Yen Ling, Li’s attorney, confirmed that the 20-year-old college student would not be put on a flight back to Peru, as Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials had originally said would happen.

“That could change tomorrow, though,” Ling said. “I’ve gotten word he will not be put on a flight [today]. [The deportation is] delayed, not terminated.”

• Pelosi intervenes to help student facing deportation (Contra Costa Times)
• KQED News report

The “shiny object” police officers said they saw Derrick Jones holding as he ran before he was fatally shot Monday night was an electronic scale, police said Friday.

Police also said a small amount of marijuana was found in one of Jones’ pockets.

The unarmed 37-year-old, a father and barbershop owner, was fatally shot by two officers after a brief foot chase. The officers were trying to detain him after a report of a domestic dispute. A woman who told police she was Jones’ girlfriend said he had beaten, choked and threatened her at the barbershop. Jones was on parole, police said.

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is in dire financial straits and could be forced into bankruptcy if it can’t work out a new deal with its lender by Friday, according to knowledgeable sources.

Our sources say the troubles started in 2005 when the museum’s directors, hoping to hedge against rising interest rates, restructured $120 million worth of loans to try to save millions of dollars.

But now rates have hit rock bottom, and their lender, JPMorgan Chase, says it plans to close the Asian Art’s line of credit as of Friday – in which case, the museum would lose $20 million that it put up in collateral.

A group of San Francisco Unified School District administrators, including an associate superintendent, engaged in a long-running scheme to funnel district money into their personal bank accounts via nonprofit community organizations, according to internal documents.

The administrators worked out of the Student Support Services Department, which partners with community organizations to provide thousands of San Francisco students with health education, substance abuse counseling, violence prevention, after-school activities and other services.

San Francisco officials have been unable to identify any other cities or ports that are competing to host the next America’s Cup, despite an expensive and high-profile campaign to attract the sailing regatta to the Bay Area.

“We can’t find any other bidders,” said San Francisco Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, whose office plans to release a report Monday analyzing the city’s proposed bid to host the next race. “That doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.”

An absence of other potential hosts suggests that San Francisco is a near certainty to host the next Cup, which officials say could attract up to 500,000 people a day to the city’s shorelines. But it also raises questions about an effort to secure the event by trading away valuable public assets, including prime waterfront development rights.

(The North Oakland) gang injunction…functions like a restraining order against 17 individuals whom the police have identified as members of the North Side Oakland gang. The court-ordered measure imposes a 10 p.m. curfew and bars activities like interacting in public with others on the list, carrying a gun or recruiting members. Named members who violate the injunction face steep fines or jail time.

In the six months since the injunction was put in place, shootings and killings within the 100-block “safety zone” have doubled over the corresponding period a year ago.

Between June and October 2009, the safety zone was the site of one killing and 11 shootings. This year, the area has had two killings and 22 shootings. While the police point to an overall drop in violent crime citywide, shootings this year increased about 13 percent.

WHEN ARLENE MILLER of Novato voted for a quarter-cent sales tax increase in November 2008 for a Marin-to-Sonoma rail line, she envisioned hopping on the train and heading north to visit her grandchildren, or south to Larkspur to board a ferry into San Francisco to catch a play.

But two years later, the planned Cloverdale-to-Larkspur, 70-mile train system is unraveling; Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit agency finances have nosedived along with the economy. Sales tax revenue dropped as people spent less money.

Now, the initial system will only cover half the route — about 35 miles — from Railroad Square in Santa Rosa to the Civic Center in San Rafael. The segment will include a bike and pedestrian pathway. The rest of the system could be built by 2018, but only if another $290 million is found.

Ocean Beach shimmered more than usual this weekend.

Not from the natural beauty of sand, surf and sea, but from a great slick of dead jellyfish that mysteriously washed ashore near Pacheco Street.

More than 10,000 of the gooey invertebrates, each about the size of a dinner plate, drifted onto the beach Friday evening. By Sunday, they had attracted hordes of the curious, the repulsed and the fascinated.

Several of Google’s top executives will receive significant salary increases next year, the company disclosed Friday in a regulatory filing, coming on the heels of its decision to award raises to its roughly 23,000 employees.

Google said in its filing that base salaries will rise to $650,000 in 2011, from $500,000 this year for Patrick Pichette, the chief financial officer; Nikesh Arora, president of global sales; Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research; and Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management.

The 30 percent pay increases for top executives outstrips the 10 percent raises being awarded to rank-and-file employees. In an e-mail sent to employees earlier this week, CEO Eric Schmidt said they would get the 10 percent raise in addition to a holiday bonus. “We want to make sure that you feel rewarded for your hard work,” he wrote.

Meet Charles T. Munger Jr., a Stanford University physicist and the son of Warren Buffett’s billionaire investment partner. Munger just poured $12.6 million of his inherited wealth — or 10 percent of his net worth — into redistricting reform, a less-than-glamorous cause that nonetheless packs the seismic power of the Big One when it comes to California politics.

Munger’s multimillion-dollar contribution amounts to more than Cisco Systems, tobacco giant Philip Morris, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Chevron spent on the election combined. And it paid off in a landslide — much to his gratification — with 61 percent voter support for Proposition 20, the measure he backed.