California can finally stop issuing IOUs on Sept. 4 and end a “shameful chapter in the state’s history,” state Controller John Chiang said Thursday. Chiang made the announcement after spending more than two weeks analyzing a budget deal signed July 28 by…

The company operating the container ship that struck the Bay Bridge in November 2007 and spilled more than 53,000 gallons of oil into the bay pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of water pollution and falsifying documents and agreed to pay $10 million in fines…

Oakland homicide investigators have joined in the case of a 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy whose foster father reported him missing Monday, police said today. Six investigators joined officers from the Oakland police missing-persons unit in canvassing…

To mark the Civil War’s centennial 50 years ago, some whites donned Confederate uniforms or hoop skirts and paraded to sentimental notions of the Old South, partly in answer to the civil rights struggle exploding around them. Blacks quietly met apart to…

The mother of an infant found dead in an Oakland home was detained early today for questioning, police said. The 25-year-old woman, whom The Chronicle is not naming because she has not been arrested, was found at an undisclosed location at about 1:40 a.m. Her…

Contract talks between BART management and the union representing train operators and station agents broke down Wednesday night, setting the stage for a possible strike. Management declared an impasse when the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 rejected…

A wildfire that has grown to at least 1,000 acres has forced the evacuation of about 600 residents in the Bonny Doon area of Santa Cruz County, authorities said today. Some 250 structures are threatened by the blaze, dubbed the Lockheed Fire, said Dinah…

The shuttle-bus driver accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend and her friend at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toll plaza was in jail today in Martinez after being arrested in Placer County. Nathaniel Burris, 46, is being held without bail at Contra Costa…

San Francisco’s dirty power plant on the eastern waterfront would shut down by end of next year, under a legal agreement announced today between Mirant Corp. and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. The site’s bayside smokestack can be seen for miles, churning out a…

A new state report tries to tackle one of the touchiest issues in California’s effort to expand renewable power, suggesting possible routes for new transmission lines to carry electricity from wind farms and solar plants. Power lines often generate intense…