Wet weekend ahead, Japanese diplomat stationed to San Francisco admits to beating his wife, Marin hospital fined for leaving gauze in surgery patient, more.
- Lots of rain today, the first official day of winter, and through the weekend. Mercury News
- For the first time Muni will run a reduced-service schedule for the entire week surrounding Christmas. Examiner
- A Japanese diplomat pleaded no contest to two counts of beating his wife while living in San Francisco and San Bruno in a plea deal to limit his jail time to a year. Chronicle
- Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael was fined $50,000 by the state for failing to remove gauze from a patient after surgery. Marin IJ
- The Obama administration announced plans to expand two Northern California marine sanctuaries, a move that would permanently ban oil drilling along more than 50 miles of the Sonoma and Mendocino coastline. Mercury News
- Eleven current and former Bay Area mayors signed a letter that calls on President Obama to push reforms strengthening federal gun trafficking laws and requiring criminal background checks for every gun sale. Hayward Daily Review
- Mercury News provides a backgrounder on the efforts of Harborside Health Center, the nation’s largest medical pot dispensary, to fight the federal government’s efforts to shut it down.
- Facebook is testing a service to charge users $1 to guarantee that messages to non-friends arrive in the users’ inboxes. AP
