In one of the worst episodes of sustained violence this year, seven people have been killed since Friday in Oakland. Even as FBI statistics show a marked drop in violent crime nationwide, Oakland has maintained a surprisingly high level of violent crime. Further, police believe the seven killings were unrelated, strengthening the impression of a city in the grip of a widespread and dispersed pattern of brutality.

Mayor Ed Lee wants the San Francisco Ethics Commission to reject the request by suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi in his official misconduct hearing to issue subpoenas for four witnesses that the defense hopes can back its claims that the mayor committed perjury.

Four former recruiters for the Academy of Art University in San Francisco are accusing the private art school of defrauding the government out of millions of dollars in financial aid by using illegal tactics to get students to apply.

It looked like a Black Friday shopping scene: people tapping at their smart phones and staring into space on lines that snaked around the lobby of an Oakland medical cannabis dispensary marked for death by federal prosecutors...Prosecutors announced Wednesday that they are moving to seize the industrial building that for six years has been home to Harborside Health Center, the nation's largest and most profitable medical cannabis dispensary.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the nation's top antiterrorism, energy and nuclear weapons research facilities, became the focus of an East Bay congressional race this week when former Rep. Ellen Tauscher called her longtime House colleague Pete Stark "hostile" to the facility - and endorsed his challenger.

After leading a successful $2.3 million signature-gathering campaign to place a referendum challenging California's newly drawn Senate districts before voters, proponents have decided not to seek its passage. Proposition 40 will remain on the November ballot, but sponsors will not raise funds or campaign for the referendum, said Dave Gilliard, a GOP strategist who led the drive that placed the Republican-backed measure before voters.

In a remarkable Silicon Valley rags-to-riches-to-rags saga, the onetime social media darling Digg was sold Thursday for a reported $500,000, an embarrassingly paltry sum given that Internet rock star Kevin Rose's company had raised a total of $45 million in venture funding and was once valued at more than four times that amount. Digg's fall was spectacular in both its steep pitch and cultural resonance, serving up a sobering reminder that a valley superstar can turn into a shadow of itself in a relative heartbeat.