According to the New York Times, The seven companies that received the most bailout assistance will be required to slash the salaries of their 25 best-paid executives by an average of 90 percent from last year.

The plan, which will be announced by the Treasury Department in the coming days, applies to Citigroup, Bank of America, the American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the two automakers’ financial divisions. For the 25 most well-paid executives, the total compensation – including bonuses – will drop, on average, by 50 percent.

And at all of the companies, any executive seeking more than $25,000 in perks — country club memberships, private planes, limousines or company issued cars, among other things — will have to apply to the government for permission.
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As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the bones of a tiny, two-pound dinosaur called Fruitadens are being assembled by scientists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. It is the smallest dinosaur ever discovered in North America.

The 28-inch-long dinosaur was discovered more than 30 years ago in Fruita, Colorado by Cal State Long Beach dinosaur hunters. The museum has stored them ever since.

Fruitadens lived over 150 million years ago and was most probably omnivorous. The first details of the dinosaur’s life and evolution will premier this week in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A UC Berkeley bomb squad was called over the weekend to remove a grenade found buried in a Novato resident’s backyard.

Novato police were contacted shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday by the resident who found the grenade while digging in his backyard.

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Novato police Lt. John McCarthy said the bomb squad removed the grenade to a remote area, where it was rendered safe.

“As soon as he found it he called for help,” he said. “God knows how long it had been there.”

McCarthy said it was not clear how old the device was or how it ended up in that residential area. The homeowner had lived at the property for the past decade, he said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement today the Barack Obama administration is ordering authorities not to arrest or charge any medical marijuana users and suppliers who conform to state laws.

During his campaign, President Obama pledged to stop the raids on clinics and numerous arrests, which were rather frequent in California before and after the president’s inauguration.

The new guidelines released by the U.S. Justice Department clarify the position of the Obama administration and reverse the feds’ prior stance on the issue.

Federal agents will continue to prosecute people whose claims of compliance with state and local law are “inconsistent” with the context of those laws, according to Holder and Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, who issued a three-page memorandum outlining the new guidelines.

“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” Holder said in a statement accompanying the new guidelines.

The guidelines also said the Justice Department reserves the right to file charges in other circumstances.

“Of course, no state can authorize violations of federal law, and the list of factors above is not intended to describe exhaustively when a federal prosecution may be warranted,” guidelines said.

Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, said the new guidelines are a step toward a national policy on medical marijuana because they will allow states to enforce their own laws without federal interference.

“This is a huge victory for medical-marijuana patients,” Sherer said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “This indicates that President Obama intends to keep his promise and represents a significant departure from the policies of the Bush administration.”

Popular Science named UC Berkeley professor Ting Xu as one of their “Brilliant 10” ranking of young researchers in the world.

Xu, 35, developed a technique of building up polymers from the molecule level on up. Xu’s work would completely alter data storage devices. The information from hundreds of DVDs could eventually be stored on a chip the size of a quarter.

More recently, Xu is using her nano-scale construction technique to make solar cells the thickness of a pieces of paper. These cells would be much more efficient than current devices.

Also on Popular Science’s list is UC Santa Cruz anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy, 33, for his study of the effect of food on human evolution. He showed that potatoes and other starchy vegetables were important for fueling a larger brain. He used evidence from early human teeth and the modern human DNA that controls saliva.

Other scientists who made the list include Virginia Tech engineering professor Dennis Hong made for his study of robotics. Thirty-three-year-old Carlos Guestrin of Carnegie Mellon University created an algorithm which could be widely used to stop waterborne disease or design self-adjusting chairs.

The families of three UC Berkeley alums being held in Iran sent a 2,500-signature petition to that nation’s UN representative on Thursday asking for their immediate release.

Josh Fattal, 27, Shane Bauer, 27 and Sarah Shourd, 31 have been imprisoned for the past 11 weeks for crossing into Iranian territory. The three were vacationing in Iraqi Kurdistan and hiking in the Zagros Mountains at the time, according to the families of the hikers.

The three had been held without contact from any outsiders until Sept. 29a when they were visited by Swiss ambassadors. The ambassadors reported that the three were in good health.
On Sept. 22, Democratic senators introduced a resolution pressing the Iranian government to allow access to the Swiss. The Unites States does not have any direct diplomatic relations with Iran, and has been relying on the Swiss as a go-between.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sept. 18 that the three alumni deserved to be punished. The Iranian government claims they were found in an area known for illegal smuggling, not hiking.

President Barack Obama reportedly raised $3 million at the Westin St. Frances Hotel in San Francisco last night for the Democratic National Committee while crowds of protesters massed outside.

Many of the protestors felt Obama’s policies so far have not been liberal enough for a president from the Democratic party. Decisions to bail out banks in the financial crisis aftermath and the increase of troops in Afghanistan are controversial for the more left-leaning of his supporters.

Obama’s motorcade came in through a side entrance away from the crowds. He addressed their discontent by asking his supporters to be patient as his administration fulfills its campaign promises.

The president ended his first visit to the Bay Area with no public appearances as he took off in Air Force One this morning from San Francisco International Airport.
The $3 million sum amounts to around 20 percent of the total funds the DNC has at its disposal right now. The Republican National Committee leads the Democrats by a wide margin with the $15 – 20 million they have on hand.

Just meeting the midnight deadline Sunday night, Governor Schwarzenegger worked through a pile of about 7o0 bills, signing at least 230 bills and vetoing at least 221.

A spokesman for Schwarzenegger said the governor did not follow through with his threat of a mass veto on legislation because of the success of the state’s water system discussions.

In his mass bill review, Schwarzenegger signed into law a variety of legislation such as bills allowing Santa Clara to build the proposed 49ers stadium, the killing of birds at airports to protect public safety, the increased penalty for dogfight spectators, the creation of a five-year pilot in counties, including Alameda County, in which an ignition interlock device would be installed on vehicles owned by first-time drunk drivers.

Measures the governor vetoed included several concerning the state’s public education system, such as the bill which would have prohibited California State University (CSU) executives from getting raises or bonuses in years when state funding is cut and the bill which would have made auxiliary organizations at UC and CSU, along with community colleges, come under the state’s public records law.

Harvey Milk Day, a statewide day to honor the San Francisco gay rights advocate, is now official after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the proposed bill this morning.

The bill marks May 22, Milk’s birthday, as the day the state honors Milk and encourages schools to conduct exercises in remembrance of Milk’s efforts. According to state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, the bill does not require schools to teach children about Milk and will not have a financial impact on the state.

In Sept. 2008, Schwarzenegger vetoed similar legislation saying Milk should be honored on a local level rather than statewide.

Schwarzenegger did not offer a statement this morning about why he decided to sign the bill this time, but Leno said a lot has happened since last year’s veto.

“In the past year, we’ve seen an Academy Award-winning Hollywood film, the president of the United States posthumously bestowed the highest civilian honor in the land – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – on him, and the governor and first lady announced plans to induct him into the California Hall of Fame,” Leno said in the interview.

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympic Games, ousting bids from Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid said the International Olympic Committee.

“It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country,” said Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.

Despite political lobbying by President Obama and the full support of the White House, Chicago was booted in the first round, before Tokyo, which had the lowest public backing in polls.
Former IOC member Kai Holm attributed the early cut to Obama’s rather brief appearance in Copenhagen, where the vote was held. Citing his visit as “too business-like” and saying that some IOC members may have seen it as a lack of respect, Holm said Obama’s actions could have set the U.S. back.

And the setbacks don’t just apply to the city’s defeat in favor of Rio—Chicago lost an estimated $100 million in the bidding process, said Robert Livingstone, an expert in Olympic selection procedures.

While Madrid made it to the last round, entreaties by the former IOC president of over two decades, Juan Antonio Samaranch, fell on deaf ears. The 89-year-old Samaranch tried to appeal to voters saying, “I am very near the end of my time,” but it wasn’t enough to sway results.

The announcement is a big win for Rio. Now they just have to come up with the capital—$2.82 billion for the games themselves, $11.1 billion for transportation, energy and security and another $200 million in upgrades.

“I think a lot of people look at the Olympics, and they try to justify it by how much money it adds to the economy,” Livingstone said. “(But) if you’re in this to make money and improve your economy, you’re in it for the wrong reasons.”

Via-CNN Money, Time and MSNBC

- Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato

A daily roundup of the biggest headlines in Bay Area and national news.