Tuition grants for about 20,000 needy graduate students at California State University are rescued - for now - thanks to a pair of panicked students in San Francisco who gathered thousands of signatures online and mobilized an army of support.

The UC Davis police chief who led the department during its controversial pepper spraying of campus protesters will resign Thursday, university officials confirmed. Annette Spicuzza, who was criticized in an independent report on the incident as leading a department that is "very dysfunctional," has led the 54-officer force for nearly seven years. UC Davis officials expect to have an announcement about her successor before the end of the week, spokesman Barry Shiller said Wednesday.

Yacht racing safety rules will not be immediately changed following the deaths of five people last weekend at the Farallon Islands, according to the group that oversees sailboat races around San Francisco Bay.

Oikos University will resume classes Monday, three weeks after a gunman killed seven people there. Most classes will be held in the same Oakland building where police say former nursing student One L. Goh, 43, killed six former classmates and a receptionist. But nursing students likely will be spared the additional trauma of returning to the scene of the massacre, said the school's president, Jongin Kim.

A nonprofit helping to feed the seriously ill and those living with HIV/AIDS will make some major cuts in the coming months to bridge a financial gap that organization leaders say will not affect service. Project Open Hand — which provides home-delivered meals and groceries, and nutrition counseling to people living with HIV/AIDS — announced a reduction in its operating budget to curb escalating costs. The organization is estimating a $728,000 deficit in a $9.8 million budget.

(H)undreds of millions of dollars in voter-approved bond funds have been spent to reinforce levees that corral and shape today's Delta. For the first time, the state is on the verge of meeting a federal mandate to protect an area that is a key source of water for 23 million Californians and about 2 million acres of farmland. But is it enough?

In 2003, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors refused to give Airis Holdings a $258 million contract to build a new cargo terminal at San Francisco International Airport. The supervisors were concerned that the deal constituted a political payoff to a friend of then-Mayor Willie Brown.