San Francisco residents evacuated due to gas leak
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has capped a leaking gas pipeline that was punctured by a crew of contractors working in a San Francisco neighborhood on Monday morning.
PG&E spokesman Joe Molica says firefighters and utility crews were on scene about 20 minutes after the 2-inch plastic distribution line was struck at 8:05am.
Residents of multiple San Francisco apartment buildings near the intersection of 26th Avenue and Geary Boulevard were evacuated and neighbors were asked to close their windows and doors after gas started leaking.
Low-flying helicopter measuring radiation levels
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A low-flying helicopter is measuring naturally occurring background radiation levels in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The testing is part of a federal research project and it begins Monday over about 69 square miles of San Francisco, Oakland and Pacifica.
The will fly a grid pattern at about 300 feet.
The survey is expected to take five days.
The information will be used to improve the way federal, state and local governments measure radiation levels.
CA high court tosses death penalty
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Supreme Court has tossed out the death penalty of a man convicted of killing two San Jose jewelers more than 25 years ago.
The high court on Monday said Santa Clara County prosecutors failed to disclose credible information that Miguel Angel Bacigalupo carried out the 1983 murders of brothers Orestes Guerrero and Jose Luis Guerrero under threats from the Colombian mafia.
The court also reasoned had prosecutors done so, the jury in Bacigalupo's trial in 1985 may have been more sympathetic and recommended a sentence of life in prison.
Prosecutors argued Bacigalupo killed the brothers during a robbery.
Bacigalupo's first-degree murder conviction remains intact. The Santa Clara County District Attorney must now decide whether to hold a new penalty-phase trial or convert Bacigalupo's sentence to life without parole.
Ex-Oakland police chief to lead Baltimore police
BALTIMORE (AP) — Anthony W. Batts - the former police chief of Long Beach and Oakland - has been selected as the new police commissioner in Baltimore, the mayor's office said Monday.
Batts served as police chief in Long Beach, where he spent most of his career, from 2002 to 2007. He more recently led Oakland's police department but resigned last fall after just two years on the job, citing frustration about having limited control over decision-making. He has since been a lecturer and researcher for the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government's Program in Criminal Justice.
As chief, he clashed with the Oakland mayor over control of the department. He complained in his resignation letter last October that, "I found myself with limited control, but full accountability." His resignation came soon after a federal judge said Oakland city officials had failed to comply with many of the reforms the department had agreed to in 2003 in settling a police corruption lawsuit.
