Morning Splash: Controversy Over Death From Replacement Nurse's Error; Pipe Failure Data Kept Secret; Hikers Lived in 'World of Lies'; SF Nude-In

The 66-year-old woman who died at a hospital after receiving care from a temporary replacement nurse was identified by the coroner's office Sunday as Oakland resident Judith Ming. Ming's death reverberated both inside Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and out Sunday. Nursing union leaders painted her as the victim of a staff lockout that prompted the hospital to cut corners by hiring replacement nurses who weren't up to par. Hospital administrators, on the other hand, said the death was an "extraordinarily rare" but extremely serious tragedy, promising cooperation with multiple investigations and asking that the death not be used for political means in the two parties' ongoing contract battle.

The type of plastic pipe that caused a natural gas explosion and fire in a Cupertino condominium last month has long been considered a potential threat to the public, but federal pipeline regulators have allowed companies to keep it in the ground and secretly gather limited information about its failings, a Chronicle investigation shows.

Cash-strapped Oakland has spent nearly $1 million and counting on outside lawyers to defend the city's decision to fire former City Administrator Deborah Edgerly and her top assistant, Cheryl Thompson.

UC Berkeley student senators voted Sunday to condemn discriminatory behavior on campus - even if done in satire - in response to a Republican student group's plans for an "Increase Diversity Bake Sale," with pastries labeled according to race and gender.

President Barack Obama collected $3.5 million to $5.5 million at back-to-back fundraisers Sunday evening in Silicon Valley's toniest cities, on the eve of a town hall meeting on his American Jobs Act plan at the business networking site LinkedIn.

Two Americans who were convicted of spying in Iran and spent more than two years in prison after what they said was an innocent hike in northern Iraq described hearing the screams of other prisoners, hunger strikes to demand better conditions, and living in "a world of lies and false hope" in their first public statements after returning to the United States.

Perhaps it should not be a surprise that San Francisco does not have a law against being naked in public, nor that a small, unselfconscious segment of the city’s residents regularly exercise that right. That tiny minority was joined this weekend in the autumn fog and cold by unclothed sympathizers at a “Nude-In.”

With eBay and Craigslist entrenched in a scorching legal feud last year, a Delaware judge observed that eBay's "curious" decision to partner with the San Francisco online classified ad power back in 2004 was "an opportunity to learn the 'secret sauce' of Craigslist's success." Now the question of whether eBay illegally used Craigslist's corporate recipe to establish an online competitor is at the center of a federal grand jury investigation into the San Jose-based auction giant, puzzling some experts who wonder why the government is intervening in a civil case between quarreling Internet companies.

Illegal tobacco sales to minors in California have dropped to a record low, but certain types of stores continue to break the law at higher rates, according to state health officials. Only 5.6 percent of retail outlets sold tobacco to minors in the 2011 Youth Tobacco Purchase Survey, the lowest rate in the 16-year history of the survey, officials said. When the survey started in 1995, teens were able to buy tobacco products in 37 percent of purchase attempts.

...According to new figures from the FBI, among 461 city police departments in California, Belvedere had the lowest violent crime rate last year: zero. Belvedere, population 2,050, was the only city of at least 2,000 people to report no violent crimes in 2010 according to the data, which is based on reports from local police agencies.