By KEVIN FAGAN, San Francisco Chronicle

Organized labor and the Occupy movement have been like passengers on the same bus, yelling the same things out the windows. So far, nobody has leaped for the driver's seat.

But as summer turns to winter, and the crowds have dwindled to the hardest-core believers, there just may come a time when the two movements will grab the wheel together.

Danny Guo came marching home two years ago as a corporal from the U.S. Marine Corps, thinking the country he served would be a land of instant job opportunity.

He was a radio operator. Plenty of work in that field, he thought.

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal magistrate has ordered the FBI to turn over the blackened remnants of a bomb that injured two environmental activists more than 20 years ago -- evidence one of the activists hopes will finally solve the mystery of who planted the device.

It's terse. It's polished. There's crime.

It's never been published -- until now.

Fifty years after Dashiell Hammett's death, a national mystery magazine is about to publish a long-lost story by the father of the hard-boiled-detective novel, and fans are giddy with excitement.

SAN FRANCISCO - John Toomey is discovering he's the world's second-most-famous Santa Claus.

Over the weekend, he was sacked from his 20-year job as the Union Square Macy's Kriss Kringle -- he says it was after an older couple complained about a mildly risque bit of humor on his part. Now, the man known as "Santa John" is in the news from here to London and fielding job offers.

SAN FRANCISCO - Santa Claus has been canned from Macy's, and he's anything but jolly about it.

His fans aren't happy, either. And there are many.

John Toomey, known for 20 years at the Union Square Macy's in San Francisco as "Santa John," was told Saturday he'll have to take his "ho, ho, hos" elsewhere because an adult couple complained about a joke he cracked.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - If Californians want a glimpse of how the landscape might look should a November ballot initiative to legalize marijuana pass, they could turn north.

They would see complication. And a cautionary lesson. And maybe hope for those who want pot smoking legitimized.

Warring family factions of the Korbel Champagne Cellars winery empire have settled their steamy dispute in court -- with an emphatic flourish. The agreement ends a three-year sex scandal

JAMESTOWN, Calif. - She traveled 1,800 miles to find it. She knew it was there. And by cracky, in just one morning of panning the creek bed, Janet Gilray had a handful of gold flecks in her hand.

"Woo-hoo!" she screamed. "Gas money!"

There's a 160-year-old reason California is called the Golden State, and people like Gilray are making that reason fresh again.

It's a long way to Yale University from the roomy ranch house at the end of a dirt road where Annie Le grew up.

Snuggled beneath thick oak trees about 2,000 feet above sea level in the Sierra foothills, the home where Le lived with her aunt, uncle and a brother is a 15-mile drive along twisting, mostly paved roads from the 1860s Pony Express stop of El Dorado, population 1,583.