A.M. Splash: PG&E Hearing Delayed; Feds Warn of Chinese Firms in Silicon Valley; Chevron Funds Richmond Candidates; SpaceX Rocket Launched

A San Mateo legislator is crying foul over a last-minute motion filed by the California Public Utilities Commission to suspend hearings over PG&E's penalties and pipeline upgrade costs in the wake of the infamous 2010 San Bruno explosion. State regulators and the energy giant, however, say they merely want to put the hearings on hold for a month so they can focus on finishing concurrent settlement negotiations also related to the gas pipeline blast that destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood, killing eight people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.

Doing business with two Chinese telecommunications-equipment makers -- including one with a growing Silicon Valley office -- could pose a security threat to the U.S. because of the firms' apparent ties to the Chinese government, a Congressional report warned Monday. "Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems," according to the report by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Chevron Corp. has put $1.2 million into a campaign committee backing three candidates for City Council. A California Form 460 submitted to the City Clerk on Friday shows the energy giant's contribution to a committee called "Moving Forward." The committee is described in the form as a "coalition of labor unions, small business, public safety and firefighters associations," but all of the $1.2 million donated to the committee this year has come from Chevron, which operates a major refinery in the city.

The rocket that lofted SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule to orbit Sunday night (Oct. 7) experienced a minor glitch during the successful launch, company officials say. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly in one of its nine first-stage engines 79 seconds into the flight, which kicked off the first-ever bona fide private cargo mission to the International Space Station. The engine apparently lost pressure suddenly, at which point the Falcon 9 issued an engine shutdown command, officials said. "We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it," SpaceX officials said in an update released Monday (Oct. 7). "Our review indicates that the fairing that protects the engine from aerodynamic loads ruptured due to the engine pressure release, and that none of Falcon 9’s other eight engines were impacted by this event."

There are some 30 invitations going out to an event that the recipients most definitely do not want to attend. Those on probation or parole won't have a choice. The others on the list -- which consists of all men -- will be approached by church and other community leaders and strong-armed into coming for their own good. How many will actually show up depends upon how many authorities can locate. All of the men have been identified by law enforcement as members of the 14 most dangerous groups and gangs that authorities say are responsible for many of the shootings and homicides that have ravaged East Oakland.

A protest at City Hall that surprised both the Police Department and top city officials caused more than $12,000 in damage to public buildings and thousands more to private businesses, city officials said Monday. A day after about 200 protesters roamed downtown streets with no consequences, smashing windows of businesses and city offices, city officials were still trying to explain why no one was arrested and why police were unprepared.

Ryan Andresen, the Moraga Boy Scout who has received a flood of support online after his recent dismissal from the Boy Scouts following his admission he is gay, is scheduled to appear Thursday on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," according to the show's website. Andresen, who turned 18 on Monday, had completed all the requirements for his Eagle Scout award -- the highest honor in Boy Scouting -- when he came out as gay.

On a visit to pick up California votes and cash, President Obama said in San Francisco on Monday night that "I very much intend to win this election" and implored supporters to redouble their efforts because "we're only going to do it if everybody is almost obsessive for the next 29 days." It was a provocative statement on the day when he started to see blowback in the polls from his widely panned debate performance last week.

The Board of Supervisors finally hearing the official misconduct charges for suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi sounds like a cause for celebration. Finally, everyone gets some closure on this long, strange soap opera. Don't bet on it.

McAfee security division is planning to lay off a "small percentage" of its workforce of about 7,100 employees, a company spokesman said Monday. McAfee spokesman Ian Bain said he could not provide more information about the planned job cuts, which the world's No. 2 maker of anti-virus software disclosed in response to an inquiry from Reuters.