Top of the morning’s news
- Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions that have taken place since then, the LA Times reports.
- How a small cadre of insiders got rich off the LinkedIn IPO. NYT
- Al Jazeera finds a home, and quite an audience on KCET Los Angeles, the former public television powerhouse that has struggled since leaving PBS. Media Decoder
- Santa Clara’s city council is using some of the money starting to flow into the 49ers stadium project to give themselves a 10 percent pay raise. Mercury News
- Venture capitalist and San Francisco mayoral hopeful Joanna Rees missed 24 of 37 elections since 1992, according to an Examiner analysis of the candidates’ voting records.
- The Contra Costa Times runs down the potentially dramatic shifts afoot in the East Bay as the result of redistricting.
- Mitt Romney will spend three days campaigning in California this week and a new Field Poll shows him to be the frontrunner among state Republicans, with 25 percent support. Chronicle
- The Daily Beast writes about the crumbling esteem with which John Edwards is held in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
- A three-day search for missing and feared dead nursing student Michelle Le ended Sunday in Hayward but her father said the family would persist in efforts to find her. KTVU 2
- A great white shark sighting off Stinson Beach prompted the National Park Service to restrict water access through Thursday. Marin IJ
- Muni’s board is expected to approve Nathaniel Ford’s $384,000 severance package when it meets tomorrow. Examiner
- Those three peregrine falcon chicks that hatched beneath the Dumbarton Bridge perished in a storm. Chronicle
- Police arrested a man suspected in a Fairfield car bombing last month after an 8-hour standoff. Chronicle
- Three boaters were rescued off the Alameda shoreline by the Coast Guard but this time at least Alameda Fire Department sent rescuers into the water. Contra Costa Times
- Cal lost its College World Series opener 4-1 to Virginia. BANG
- The AP profiles the troubled Central Valley oil field town of Maricopa, which a county grand jury is seeking to dismantle even as it approaches its 100th birthday.
- The A’s beat the Giants 2-1 to sweep the three-game Bay Bridge series in Oakland. Mercury News
