A.M. Splash: Plan Would Bring High-Speed Rail Earlier to Bay Area; Occupy Oakland; Mirkarimi's Wife to Testify; AIDS Memorial Quilt Returns to SF

...The Chronicle has learned that officials with Bay Area transportation agencies are in negotiations with each other, and with the California High-Speed Rail Authority, to craft an agreement that would fund an advanced train-control system, electrify the rails on the Peninsula and eliminate some of the rail crossings - perhaps as soon as 2016, five to 10 years earlier than previous estimates.

After years of service cuts, San Jose residents appear to be warming to the idea of new taxes, according to a recent poll commissioned by the city. But the poll also shows residents still strongly favor curbs on employee compensation to help solve the city's budget woes, as well as selling one of the city's three golf courses.

Following a peaceful Occupy Oakland anti-police brutality protest Saturday night, two people were arrested after allegedly kicking and struggling with officers, police said. The arrests came after a group of about 20 protesters, who were among the estimated 75 that had marched through downtown and West Oakland, surrounded a California Highway Patrol officer around 11 p.m. The officer was checking a person for drunken driving when the crowd started angrily shouting, police said. But tensions eased after other officers arrived at 14th and Clay streets.

After repeatedly denouncing the misdemeanor domestic violence charges against her husband in public and refusing to talk to investigators, San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's wife now intends to testify at his upcoming trial, her attorney says.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the subject of a free exhibit that opened Sunday in the Castro. There are 312 panels of the quilt that will be shown at five locations in the coming week. It is the largest showing of the quilt in San Francisco since the NAMES Project Foundation closed its original Market Street location in 1999 and relocated to Atlanta.

For the first time in two decades, California's newly drawn congressional districts could play a big role in deciding which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, needing 25 more seats to take the House back from Republicans, has singled out eight California seats -- many of them made more attractive by recent redistricting -- as "red to blue" targets this year. At stake is whether San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi gets another turn with the speaker's gavel, which she held from 2007 to 2011.