Local Headlines Around the Web: UC Proposing Another Tuition Hike; Lucasfilm Looks at Affordable Housing Development for Grady Ranch

The University of California will need to charge students at least 6 percent more for tuition next fall - an extra $732 - to stave off more layoffs and program closures, say UC leaders who will ask the regents next week to consider raising the price in July.

The Marin Community Foundation, backed by Lucasfilm, will study options for developing affordable housing at Grady Ranch. Foundation CEO Thomas Peters said the foundation will bring in affordable housing developers to review numerous land use, geologic, watershed, traffic and related studies completed by Lucasfilm, which aborted plans for a huge film studio after neighbors complained about a project obscured from view but not far from their backyards.

...[In] San Francisco's overheated rental market...well-compensated tech workers are flocking to desirable neighborhoods, driving up prices and locking out those who aren't big earners. The chichi areas, which also are closest to convenient transit, are hardest to break into. And the competition is spilling over into the East Bay.

A federal judge said Oracle can't seek $1 billion in damages from Google for infringing on copyrights when it developed Android software running on more than 300 million mobile devices because a jury couldn't agree on whether it was "fair use."

The amount of plastic in the ocean area known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has increased a hundredfold since the early 1970s, according to a new study, and the alarming findings could pressure California and other coastal states to do more to reduce plastic trash. "We were really surprised. It is a very large increase," said Miriam Goldstein, a Ph.D. graduate student in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and lead author of the study.

...Los Gatos resident Bettina Inclán, who coordinates Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee, revealed at a video conference Tuesday that she wasn't sure about the former Massachusetts governor's approach to immigration. "As a candidate, to my understanding, he is still deciding what his position on immigration is, so I can't talk about what his proposal is going to be," she said in response to questions. Inclán later retracted her statement, saying on Twitter, "I misspoke, Romney's position on immigration is clear," but by then Democrats had capitalized on the gaffe.