Frustrated and "in disbelief" by what he called the slow pace of reform, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered Oakland's top cop to notify an expert overseeing the Police Department about anything that could affect a federal consent decree, including promoting or disciplining officers and changing policies or tactics.

Some community and environmental groups had objected to parts of the event's environmental impact report, and race organizers responded to those concerns. The Board of Supervisors then unanimously certified the report. The board also approved Supervisor David Chiu's proposal that long-term development projects on the waterfront, as outlined in the city's agreement to host the Cup, undergo additional environmental review. "This deal is not yet done," Chiu said.

Gov. Jerry Brown's plan for a ballot initiative that would raise tens of billions of dollars by temporarily increasing the sales tax and the income tax on wealthy Californians has the support of more than two-thirds of likely voters in the state, according to a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

A day after elections officials verified a stadium opposition group's petition to put the project back on the ballot, the Santa Clara City Council on Tuesday night voted 5-2 to reject the referendum...Opponents and city leaders are deadlocked in heated disagreement over whether it is legal to ask voters a second time to decide the project's fate, leaving both sides to concede the argument is destined for court.

He's got a bombastic personality and occasionally he can be a bit of tyrant," Ross Mirkarimi's lawyer says of the San Francisco sheriff. "But he is no abuser." That was defense attorney Robert Waggener's reaction Tuesday to the latest domestic violence bombshell to fall on his client - the police report that an ex-girlfriend of Mirkarimi filed against him over the weekend, alleging he bruised her arm in a fight more than three years ago.

Democratic legislative leaders sued Controller John Chiang on Tuesday to have the courts determine whether the state's cash manager abused his authority by cutting off their paychecks in last year's budget fight.

As Oakland leaders slashed their way to $28 million in proposed budget cuts, several leading cultural organizations are angry that they're getting cut, while others go untouched...Fairyland, along with the Oakland Zoo and the Hacienda Peralta Historical Park are slated to lose 40 percent of their city subsidies under a budget cutting proposal that goes before the City Council on Wednesday. But city subsidies are proposed to remain untouched for the Chabot Space and Science Center and the Asian Cultural Center. Those groups last year entered into two-year contracts with the city that would have been difficult to modify, officials said.

...On Tuesday, Mayor Ed Lee [introduced] a formal request to channel $1 million in city funds to replenish the small business loan fund that has helped Saafara and 26 other budding San Francisco companies.

The county's biggest rank-and-file union got a round of support Tuesday from Marin County pension critics, who said workers face layoffs because supervisors have failed to rein in ballooning pension costs for a few hundred top executives at Civic Center.

...The 10-campus UC system boosted its "admission-by-exception" numbers by 60 percent in its current freshman class, compared to 2010 admissions, enrolling about 780 in 2011. More out-of-state and international students, some of whom were unable to take required high-school classes, accounted for some of the overall increase, admissions officers said. "A student who's missing (a required) course may still be stronger than another student," said Kate Jeffery, the UC system's interim undergraduate-admissions director.