An African American firefighter filed a lawsuit against the city of Berkeley and the California Occupational Health and Safety Administration (CALOSHA) for racial and disability discrimination on Tuesday, claiming that the two entities had prevented him from fighting fires due to safety rules that discriminate against black workers. 

In November 1998, CALOSHA adopted regulations that forbid employees with any facial hair from wearing the tight-fitting respirators firefighters are required to use at a fire scene. Harry Vernon, a 47-year old Berkeley firefighter, says these rules discriminate against the many African Americans who, like him, suffer from a medical condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae that gives them facial skin infections if they shave. 

In a statement made public on Monday, the plaintiff’s attorneys accused CALOSHA of being discriminatory by preventing any person with facial hair “from even taking the mask seal test.” They also blamed Berkeley for complying with state regulations that cause racial discrimination against African Americans and people suffering from the facial skin condition. 

“The law requires an employer to step up and stop discrimination that occurs in a workplace,” said attorney Lawrence D. Murray, during a phone conversation Thursday. “(Berkeley) has admitted that this law is discriminatory against blacks and has refused to sue CALOSHA to stop it.” 

The city attorney’s office immediately reacted to the suit, filing a statement specifying that the city administration is required by law to follow CALOSHA’s regulations. “Although the city of Berkeley is sympathetic to and has advocated to CALOSHA the cause espoused by Berkeley’s firefighters...the city of Berkeley has no choice but to follow the state law,” the statement read. 

Vernon, who has been working for Berkeley’s fire department for 24 years, said he was removed from his position as an active firefighter and placed in a 40-hour a week administrative job in October 1999, after he protested against the city’s implementation of the new respiratory protection policy. 

“Because I had visible facial hair I was said to have failed the test without even participating in the procedure,” said Vernon, who wears his beard cropped short. “It was a known fact that I had passed the same procedures in the past, and I have since passed that same test to prove to CALOSHA that I could pass it with a beard.” 

In addition to losing his original job Vernon said he has been subjected to a hostile work environment. The hostility was expressed through letters threatening to force him out of the fire department.  

Furthermore, “They have not paid me according to the pay scale for the work that I was doing,” he said. “I have been cast as a trouble maker.”  

The stress Vernon was put under, he said, led him to spend some time in a hospital and to stop working for 11 months.  

To CALOSHA, however, this legal action has little to do with discrimination. 

“We don’t see this as a discrimination issue, this is purely a safety and health issue.” said Dean Fryer, the institution’s spokesperson, adding that the state shouldn’t be charged for implementing regulations coming form above. “The lawsuit is filed against California, but California is following regulations that are federal,” he said. 

Fryer also said that CALOSHA could not accept Berkeley’s request for an exception to the rule, or a “permanent variance,” because the city had not proved it has found an alternative method that would guarantee the firefighter’s safety. CALOSHA, he added, is now waiting for the results of some testing the city is doing in conjunction with the University of California as part of an application for an experimental variance that would allow employees with a stubble to safely use a mask. 

According to Carroll Wills, communications director of the California Professional Firefighters, Vernon is the only firefighter in the state to have initiated legal action of this kind.  

However, similar cases have been reported in other states. Last May for instance, six firefighters from Washington, D.C. filed a federal lawsuit against the fire department. Their purpose is to obtain a court order that would allow them to keep the beard and long hair they wear for religious reasons despite safety policies. 

And in California, Vernon says he is not alone. “There are others that are suffering,” said Vernon. “But they are suffering in silence.” 

Friday, July 6

Disability Awareness and Outreach Committee 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building 

2180 Milvia Street 

Maple Room (Third Floor north) 

Agenda includes guidelines for accessibility of special events 

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, Ireland and the Politics of Culture, Joycean Border-Crossings, and Joyce and Frank Zappa. $15 - $25.  

642-2754 

James Joyce Conference  

Closing Banquet 

6 - 11 p.m. 

UC Faculty Club 

UC Berkeley Campus 

Joycean entertainment and dancing. Reservations required, call 415-392-1137. 

Homage to Chiapas 

7 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Avenue 

Bill Weinberg, author of “Homage to Chiapas.” 548-2220 

Saturday, July 7

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit sailing and windsurfing cooperative, give free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 548-3333 

Sunday, July 8

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit sailing and windsurfing cooperative, give free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute  

Open House 

3 - 5 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Free introduction to Tibetan Buddhist culture, including: Prayer wheel and meditation garden tour, Tibetan yoga demonstration, information on Tibetan art project, class and program counseling and a talk on “Relaxation and Meditation.” Followed at 6 p.m. by “Mind and Mental Events.” Free.  

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Sylvia Gretchen on “Mind and Mental Events.” Free. 

843-6812 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th  

Opening day for the new, family-oriented West Berkeley Market. 

Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 654-6346 

Monday, July 9

Draft Environmental  

Impact Report for UC Berkeley Northeast Quadrant project 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

105 North Gate Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Northeast Quadrant Science and Safety Projects, which will replace old, seismically poor research facilities with modern, safe structures. 642-7720 

Tuesday, July 10

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Wednesday, July 11

What’s Cooking? 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Fun experiments you can do in your own kitchen. Museum admission $3 - $7. 642-5132 

“Global Banquet”  

7:30 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Part of the Anti-Globalization series. Tonight a presentation of “Global Banquet,” a look at farmers both local and in developing countries trying to survive in the global economy. Discussion led by Anuradha Mittal. Small donation requested. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Thursday, July 12

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week East Bay Science and Arts Middle School evoke the sounds of Trinidadian Carnival with a steel drum performance. 

Hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Slide Presentation. 

Twenty years in the making, the 150-mile Tahoe Rim Trail is now complete. Tahoe Rim Trail Association board member Trena Bristol joins TRT through-hikers Steve Andersen and Art Presser for a slide presentation on great day hikes and backpacking trips on the TRT. Free. 527-4140 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Remediation of Under  

Prescribing Pain Medication 

5:30 - 7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1902 Hearst Avenue 

A public hearing on AB 487, Remediation of Under Prescribing Pain Medication, with Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, medical experts, and patients. 

540-3660 

art.SITES SPAIN 

7:30 p.m. 

Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore 

1385 Shattuck Avenue 

Sidra Stitch, author of “art.SITES SPAIN: Contemporary Art and Architecture Handbook,” will present a slide show and talk on the most recent trends in art and architecture in Spain. Free. 

843-3533 

Friday, July 13

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women; The Arts,  

Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Free.  

Call 549-2970 

— compiled by Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $4 adults; $6 children age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under. Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648  

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “Within the Human Brain,” ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning experiments. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 p.m. $7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4. 642-5132 

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

Berkeley Opera “Carmen” by Georges Bizet, Jonathan Khuner conducting, July 13 through July 22. Final production of the season. Russell Blackwood directs the opera which is sung in a new English adaptation by David Scott Marley. Special Family Matinee: “How an Opera is Put Together,” July 8, 2 p.m. $10 general; $5 children under 14. $30 general; $25 seniors; $15 youths and handicapped; $10 student rush. Friday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; July 14, 2 p.m.; July 22, 7 p.m. Julian Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (925) 798-1300, (510) 841-1903 or www.berkeleyopera.com 

Jupiter “Post Junk Trio” July 7: 8 p.m. “Beatdown with DJs Delon, Yamu, & ADD1” July 12, 19, 26: 8 p.m. Chilled-out downtempo beats and cutting-edge visual displays. “Ben Krames & Candlelight Dub” July 6: 8 p.m., “Salvation Air Force” July 11: 8 p.m., Sizzling “hard-acid-free-groove jazz” Enjoy beers and beats under the stars. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK (843-7625) 

Freight & Salvage July 7:Ferron $18.50; July 8: Ambuya Beauler Dyoko, Zimbabwean thumb piano (mbira) music $16.50; July 12: Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, Renegade Country $16.50; July 13: Jeremy Cohen's Violinjazz Vintage string swing $16.50; July 14: Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott, American roots music $18.50; July 15: Carol McComb, Sterling originals $17.50 Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 or 762-BASS or www.thefreight.org 

Ashkenaz July 7: 9:30 p.m., Kotoja, Dance lesson with Comfort at 9 p.m. Afro-beat. $11; July 10: 9 p.m., Anoush, The Kolevs, Balkan music with an 8 p.m. dance lesson by Steve Kotansky. $10; July 11: 9 p.m., Mz. Daa and Blues Alley, West Coast swing and blues with an 8 p.m. dance lesson by Nick and Shanna. $8; July 12: 9 p.m., Boubacar Traore, Delta blues, Mali-style with this string master. $12; July 13: 9:30 p.m., Tamazgha, Middle Eastern. $10; July 14: 9:30 p.m., Paul Pena, Zulu Exiles, Tuvan throat singing and township jive. $12.1317 San Pablo Ave 525-5099 www.ashkenaz.com 

924 Gilman St. July 13: Special Duties, Oppressed Logic, Violent Society, Zero Bullsh*t, Born Dead; July 14: Lonely Kings, Onetime Angels, Stay Gold, Thought Riot, Youth Gone Wild; July 15, 5 p.m.: Bobbyteens, Los Rabbis, Finky Binks, Off Balance, $5. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Rose Street House of Music July 13: 8 p.m. “Doria Roberts & Making Waves” Featuring special guest slam poet Aya de Leon. $8-20 donation. No one turned away for lack of funds. 

Live Oaks Concerts Berkeley Art Center, July 15: David Cheng, Marvin Sanders, Ari Hsu; July 27: Monica Norcia, Amy Likar, Jim Meredith. All shows at 7:30 unless otherwise noted Admission $10 (BACA members $8, students and seniors $9, children under 12 free) 

The Starry Plough Pub July 7: Faun Fables, Majesty's Monkey $6; July 12: The Clumsy Lovers, Mad Hannan, $6; July 13: Drums and Tuba, Mega Mousse, $7; July 14: Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons, The John Shipe Band $7 Sunday and Wednesday, 8 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9:45 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 3101 Shattuck Ave. 841-2082. 

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046 

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822 

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

Films 

Pacific Film Archive, Family Classics Film Festival July 8 through Aug. 26.  

July 8: “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”; July 15: “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”; July 29: “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”; $4. Sundays, 3 p.m. New PFA Theatre, 2575 Bancroft Way 642-1412 

Exhibits 

“Watershed 2001” Through July 14, Wednesday - Sunday Noon - 5 p.m. Exhibition of painting, drawing, sculpture and installation that explore images and issues about our watershed. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

Rachel Davis and Benicia Gantner Works on Paper Through July 14, Tues. - Sat., 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Watercolors by Davis, mixed-media by Gantner. Opening reception June 13, 6 - 8 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth St. 527-1214 www.traywick.com 

Constitutional Shift Through July 13, Tuesdays - Fridays, noon - 5 p.m. Permanence and personal journey link Hee Jae Suh, Ursula Neubauer and Marci Tackett. Korean-born Suh explores an inner psychological world with a dramatic series of self-portraits. Neubauer explores self-portraiture as a travel map of identity with multiple points of view. Tackett explores Antarctica’s other-worldly landscape in a series of stunning digital photographs. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977 

“The Trip to Here: Paintings and Ghosts by Marty Brooks” Through July 31, Tues. - Sun. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m. View Brooks’ first California show at Bison Brewing Company 2598 Telegraph Ave. 841-7734  

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541 

“Musee des Hommages,” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” July 12 - August 18, Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Reception July 12 from 6 - 8 p.m. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through August 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541 

Images of Portugal Paintings by Sofia Berto Villas-Boas of her native land. Open after 5 p.m. Voulez-Vous 2930 College Ave. (at Elmwood) 

“Queens of Ethiopia: Intuitive Inspirations,” the exceptional art of Esete-Miriam A. Menkir. Through July 11. Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Ave. 548-9286 ext. 307 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 - 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

Readings 

Cody’s 7:30 p.m. July 9: Sheila Kohler reads “Children of Pithiviers”. Kohler is also the author of “Cracks”. $2 donation; July 10: 7:30 p.m. Mandy Aftel talks about her book, “Essence and Alchemy”. $2 donation; July 12: 7:30 p.m., Carol Muske-Dukes reads “Life After Death”; July 14: 7:30 p.m., Alexander Cockburn and John Strausbaugh discuss Cockburn’s book “Five Days That Shook the World” and Strausbaugh’s “Rock ‘Til You Drop” ; July 15: 7:30 p.m., Jimmy Santiago Baca discusses “A Place to Stand”; July 16: 7:30 p.m., “Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex” A panel discussion. Organizers and participants in the 1998 Berkeley conference Critical Resistance produced a special issue of the journal Social Justice, about the prison industrial complex.  

$2 donation. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Cody’s 1730 Fourth St. July 12: 7 p.m., Debra Levi Holtz, “Of Unknown Origin”; July 13: 7 p.m., Joe Di Prisco reading “Confessions of Brother Eli”  

$2 donation. 559-9500 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Berkeley City Club Tours 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. The fourth Sunday of every month, Noon - 4 p.m. $2 848-7800  

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Dance 

Jupiter “Strictly Tango” July 10: 8 p.m. Dale Meyer heads up this ensemble as they perform original compositions and dance-style tangos. www.jupiterbeer.com or call the hotline: THE-ROCK (843-7625)

Camps 

City of Berkeley Summer Fun Camps 

Through August 17 

Summer Fun Camps for children feature sports, games, arts and crafts and special events. Events and trips will be planned in and out of the Berkeley area. Supervised play and activities held Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for kids 5-12 years of age. Before and after care will be available at additional cost. Fees on a sliding scale. 

Sites: Frances Albrier, Southwest Berkeley – 644-8515; James Kenney, West Berkeley – 644-8511; Live Oak Park, North Berkeley – 644-8513; Willard Club House, Southeast Berkeley – 644-8517; MLK Youth Services Center, South Berkeley – 644-6226. 

Police Activities League Adventure Camp 

Through July 6 

Camp for graduating 4th and 5th graders only. Activities include rock climbing, nature hikes and whitewater rafting. $100, limited scholarships available. Call 845-7193 for more information. 

P.A.L. Adventure Camp 2 

July 9-27 

Camp for ages 11-17. Three-week camp teaches bicycle basics. Learn care and maintenance, changing flat tires, fixing the chain and cables. Daily rides designed to increase endurance for a final three-day, 122-mile ride to Coloma and a two-day rafting trip. $180, limited scholarships available. Call 845-7193 for more information. 

P.A.L. Adventure Camp 3 

August 6-24 

Camp for ages 11-17. Three week camp will provide skills for overnight and wilderness camping. First two weeks include instruction on cooking, first aid, cleanup and low impact camping. Rafting, ropes course and daily hikes. Week three is five days in a California wilderness area using newly-learned skills. $180, limited scholarships available. Call 845-7193 for more information. 

Berkeley Tennis Club Kids  

Camp 

Sessions begin July 9, July 23, August 6 

These camps are designed for the beginner to low advanced player aged 7-14. Each session is two weeks long. The first week emphasizes proper stroke and footwork techniques, conditioning and game play. The second week concentrates on competition on both an individual and team level. Students will be divided according to ability, so they progress at their own pace. Student-intructor ratio of 6/1. Clinics are 9 a.m. to noon. $250 for B.T.C. members, $300 for non-members. Call 841-9023 for information. 

Sports 

City youth baseball 

Summer baseball program for boys and girls ages 5-15. The focus is on developing skills, sportsmanship and enjoyment rather than competitiveness. Leagues are structured to address both skill level and age group. Players are assigned to teams on a city-wide basis. Beginner teams (5-6 years) meet weekdays from noon to 2 p.m. All other teams meet from 3:30 to 7 p.m. weekdays or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. All players must participate. Playoffs and awards will follow the regular season in older leagues. Fees: $34 ages 5-8 ($70 non-resident), $40 ages 9-15($86 non-resident). For info call 981-5153. 

City adult softball 

City leagues available for men, women and co-rec. Three levels of competition. Games played weekday evenings, Saturday afternoons and evenings. 10 games plus playoffs. $561 per team. Call 981-5150 for more information. 

Tennis lessons 

Three sessions throughout summer. 

Youth and adult lessons available for beginner, advanced beginner and intermediate. 10 one-hour lessons. $45 for youth ages 8-15, $65 for adults. Call 981-5150 for more information. 

Twilight basketball 

July 13-August 25 

The City of Berkeley Twilight Basketball Program is an educational sports program which offers youths aged 11-18 the opportunity to play in the competitive league and be exposed to educational workshops. Subjects include tobacco prevention, HIV/STD prevention, domestic violence prevention, academic improvement and youth violence prevention. All participants must attend a one-hour workshop before each game in order to play. Free, players recieve a jersey. Ten game season with playoffs at MLK Youth Services Center. For more information call Ginsi Bryant at 644-6226. 

City adult basketball 

Summer league 

Open, competitive city league with games on Monday and Wednesday evenings at the MLK Youth Services Center. All games officicated by certified referees. Awards for top three teams. Teams already formed for summer, but some have openings. Interested players should show up and talk to coaches about playing. 

Programs 

City-Wide Playground  

Programs 

Through August 17 

Free supervised activities include arts and crafts, games, sports, special event days and local trips. Program hours are noon to 5 p.m. Proof of Berkeley residency required at registration. 

Sites: All Play Together – 981-5150; Rosa Parks – 981-5150; Malcolm X School – 644-6226. 

Summer Teen Program 

Through August 27 

Events include adventure trips, swimming, sports, games, cooking, educational workshops and special local events. Call your local center for details, registration and costs. Sliding scale. 

Sites: Frances Albrier, Southwest Berkeley – 644-8515; James Kenney, West Berkeley – 644-8511; Live Oak Park, North Berkeley – 644-8513; Willard Park Club House, Southeast Berkeley – 644-8517; MLK Youth Services Center, South Berkeley – 644-6226. 

P.A.L. Adventures in Sailing 

Overnight sailing tour the San Francisco Bay. Visit the Bay Model, Angel Island, Treasure Island and Sausalito. Voyage dates: July 13-14 and 28-29, August 9-10, 16-17 and 23-24. $20 per voyage. Call 845-7193 for more information. 

Adult Tennis Workshops 

Sessions begin July 9 and July 23. 

These four-day sessions at the Berkeley Tennis Club are designed to five adults a chance to improve their game in just one concentrated week. Two levels offered – NTPR rating between 4.0-4.5 and 3.5-below. Both sessions will have a doubles strategy emphasis. $110 per session. Call 841-9023 for more details. 

P.A.L. Fishing Trips 

July 26, August 20, August 30 

Hands Extended will be having three fishing outings this summer for kids ages 7-15. The first one is at San Pablo Dam. Transportation, food and rods, reels and bait will be provided. Registration is required. Deadline to register is 07/12/01. Please call 845-3161. 

To submit information for the Berkeley Daily Planet Summer Sports Calendar, please e-mail information to sports@berkeleydailyplanet.net or send to Sports, 2076 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704.

On a misty Tuesday morning 12 teens made their way slowly up the winding roads of the Berkeley Hills. With a left on Prospect Street, up past Memorial Stadium, a right onto Panoramic Way, and a turn somewhat resembling a backwards G to somehow remain on Panoramic, the 12 students trudged on with great determination.  

Finally they made a left onto Mosswood Road and ascended the towering Arden Steps to enter the home of Sarah Robinson. 

The dozen teenagers embarked upon this journey not to find some wild party, to eat up all of some poor woman’s food or to start any kind of trouble; they were gathered in Robinson’s home to learn to serve the community. 

Berkeley Youth Energy Services (Berkeley YES) trained its second set of teen home energy retrofitters on June 26. The group now is poised to pair off and perform free energy retrofits on Berkeley homes throughout the summer. They will install Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, weather stripping and low-flow water devices. They will also clean refrigerator coils and adjust water heater temperatures. 

The program is the brainchild of Rising Sun Energy Center Owner Hal Aronson, or, as he is known to the students: “Solar Man.” He came up with the idea for the program while he was working at Berkeley High teaching students about solar power and energy conservation and he was, as he said, “quote-unquote hit with the energy crisis.” 

“I think most young people don’t get enough opportunities to help others the way this program lets them,” said Aronson, “but when they do get the opportunity, they like it and they want to do it more.” 

Berkeley YES began in April when Aronson made presentations to Berkeley High students in Common Ground, the small learning community devoted to environmental studies.  

At that time the students were asked to work without pay and only to serve the poor, elderly and disabled. But over the summer, thanks to program sponsors, the students will be paid to perform the free retrofits on any house in Berkeley. 

“I got involved in the spring because I knew it was a good cause,” said 2001 Berkeley High graduate Hong Nguyen, a teen retrofitter in the program. “I liked helping the elders and I like learning about energy conservation.” 

Berkeley YES is run by Aronson, Youth Coordinator Emily Gjeltema, Project Managers Robinson, Jessica Blinn, Juile Belknap and various volunteer supervisors. While all these people are involved in the program in very different ways and have very different responsibilities, they are all participating for the same reason.  

“Throughout the spring we were all looking forward to expanding our client base in the summer,” said Gjeltema, “because it’s good for the city and it’s good for every resident in Berkeley to conserve energy in their homes.” 

During the summer the majority of Berkeley YES’ clientele will be reached through leafleting by the students and through word-of-mouth advertising. In the spring it was much the same, only since they were ministering to a more specific client-base, they were also able to receive other help.  

The Community Energy Services Corporation, another Berkeley non-profit, produced a list of elderly and low-income residents who said they would be interested in having free improvements made to their homes. 

“The CESC gave us a list of all the people who they thought we might be able to serve back in February, and we have done retrofits on the homes of almost all the people who responded to a flier we sent out in March,” said Gjeltema.” 

Most people involved seemed to think that Tuesday’s training was a great success and all of the students seemed prepared for the retrofits they would perform later that day, later that week, and for the rest of the summer. Supervisor Rob Shapera taught the students how to perform all the tasks they would need to know about for a retrofit: how to check for air-leakage by looking for light on the borders of a locked door and how to remove old and install new weather stripping. He taught the students how to install low-flow faucets and shower heads, how to clean refrigerator coils and he made sure they all knew how to screw in a light bulb. 

“I wanted to do something practical and concrete in the community to help people deal with the increasing costs of energy,” said Shapera. “I’m glad I can teach these kids how to make simple home energy improvements, both on their own homes and on the homes that they visit through this program.” 

Roxanne Seraphin, who will be a senior at Berkeley Alternative High School in September, was a newcomer in the summer. She performed her first retrofit on her own home on June 27 with her partner Cassidy, under the supervision of experienced retrofitters Nguyen, and 2001 Berkeley High graduate Russell Andrews. 

“I think the training went well,” said Seraphin, “I learned a lot and I feel very confident about doing the retrofits.” 

At the Seraphin home the group installed three sets of weather-stripping, cleaned and installed some CFL’s then moved on to their next appointment. 

Suzanne Seraphin, Roxanne’s mother, was pleased with the changes. “I think It went really well, it has really made a difference in my home; the temperature is a lot nicer and it’s way less drafty than before,” she said. “They did a great a job and I would definitely recommend this service to anyone.” 

According to Aronson, Oakland is prepared to start a similar program in its schools this year if Berkeley’s summer program proves successful. 

“What’s amazing about this program is the balance of activism and education,” said Belknap.  

“This is a really vital seed project right now because once people find out about it being a free service that will make electricity bills go down, there is going to be a lot of interest all over.” 

For more information about Berkeley YES or to schedule a retrofit for your home call 644-6227 or send e-mail to BerkeleyYES@yahoo.com. 

Daily Planet intern Kenyatte Davis covers Berkeley teens. Teens or their sponsors can suggest stories at news@berkeleydailyplanet.net.

Berkeley Police Sergeant Eric Gustafson isn’t worried yet. 

But he sure is busy. 

Gustafson is the man charged with pulling in enough new recruits to replace the officers the Berkeley Police Department expects to lose to retirement this year and next year. 

The department is already understaffed, with just 195 of the 204 positions filled that were in the 2000-2001 budget.  

And the department’s annual retirement rate has been on the rise for the last couple of years, as many of the officers who joined the force during the late ’60s and early ’70s – busy years for a department charged with keeping the peace in a city whose very name was synonymous with civil unrest – are now reaching retirement age. 

According to the estimates Gustafson was able to pull together Thursday, nine officers retired last year, compared to just five in 1999.  

This rate could accelerate still more if the Berkeley Police Association succeeds in its negotiations for a new retirement policy this summer. Under the new policy, a number of senior officers would become eligible to receive the maximum retirement pay: 85 percent of their current salary. This could leave them little incentive to stay on the force, Gustafson said – particularly for those who’ve already put in 30 years.  

With the policy in place, Gustafson estimates that the department could lose 15 officers to retirement by then end of this year, and similar numbers the following year. 

To try to keep up with this rate of attrition, the Berkeley Police Department has given its recruitment efforts a boost. A special Recruitment Committee has been meeting for the last six months, brainstorming new ways to get the word out to would-be candidates. 

For the first time, the department has begun advertising its job openings as far away as Sacramento and San Jose.  

It’s listed on trendy Web sites like Hotjobs.com, and translated its pitch into Spanish and Vietnamese for advertisements in prominent ethnic newspapers. 

For the first time this year the Police Department had a recruitment booth and the city’s Cinco de Mayo festival at Civic Center Park. 

Other plans in the offing include giving officers more paid released time so they can visit colleges with good criminal justice programs and sing the virtues of the Berkeley Police Department.  

But in the face of fierce competition for a limited pool of officer candidates in the Bay Area, and around the nation, all these efforts have barely managed to maintain recruitment numbers, let along increase them, Gustafson said. 

“Everybody else is in the same boat we are, and we’re all fishing in the same pond,” Gustafson said. 

He still holds out hope, however, for the department’s efforts to recruit people who haven’t necessarily been on the track to becoming police officers. Ads in the San Jose Mercury News, the paper of record for Silicon Valley, look promising, Gustafson said.. 

“It’s a calculated roll of the dice,” he said. With the recent battering of the technology sector “there are a lot of people out of a job,” Gustafson said.  

“So let’s throw our net over there.” 

Berkeley Police Department has long gone out of its way to recruit people from fields that may not seem to be directly related to police work. 

“Some of our best officers come from backgrounds in English, sociology or psychology,” Gustafson said. “They’re often better prepared in a lot of ways” for police work, he added. 

The Berkeley Police Department has a fair share of officers who were once teachers, Gustafson said, explaining the skills needed for the two professions overlap in more ways than many might think. Both teachers and police need to be able to communicate well, give instruction, and maintain order, Gustafson said. 

Furthermore, Gustafson said, whereas a starting teacher in the Bay Area might make between $35,000 and $45,000 a year, the starting salary for a Berkeley police officer is $57,000. 

Still, Gustafson said it’s difficult for the department to come up with a strategy for recruiting high numbers of new officers overnight, particularly given the sheer complexity of the process for becoming a new police officer – a process that can take anywhere from three months to a year to complete. 

The written test – which includes sections on writing, logic and some basic math – isn’t so hard. More than 90 percent of candidates pass this test. And the physical test – running the obstacle course - is nothing that the average person can’t handle, Gustafson said. 

It’s the thorough background check where many would-be candidates are eliminated, Gustafson said, for things such as recent drug use, or a pattern of questionable behavior. 

“We aren’t looking for perfect people,” Gustafson said. “We’re looking for people who, if they’ve made mistakes in their lives, they’ve learned from them.” 

Of the 60 to 90 people who take the Berkeley Police Department’s written test, which is offered three or four times a year, somewhere between five and 10 might be approved for hire, Gustafson said. Of these, another 15 to 20 percent might be lost in the course of trying to complete the required 23 week police academy program. 

Gustafson said the Berkeley Police Department is doing everything it can to make the process smooth and swift for desirable candidates, however. 

“We’re moving on applicants before the dust has settled on the testing process,” he said. 

Finally, asked whether the loss of Berkeley’s most veteran police officers could have a negative impact on the force, Gustafson was ambivalent. 

“We’ve been so fortunate with the level of ability, education and maturity of our young people,” he said. “But you can’t replace a person with 30 years experience with someone with no experience and expect the department to be in the same position.” 

For more information about how to become a Berkeley police officer call 981-5977 and to apply, call the city Personnel Department at 981-6888. 

The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, has assembled a delegation to attend the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in South Africa – the nation where what is perhaps the most important battle against racism in recent history, the fight against apartheid, was fought and won. 

The 12-person delegation is made up, ethnically, of eight African Americans, two Native Americans, a Jewish American and an Irish American; professionally, of seven lawyers, two professors, two healthcare professionals and a student. 

The conference has been long in the making – the U.N. General Assembly decided to have it in 1997. It will take place in Durban, South Africa from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7. 

Ann Fagan Ginger, a lawyer and executive director of the Meiklejohn Institute, said she believes the conference is something people should know about, particularly since the U.N. treaties that will be discussed there are binding for all U.S. citizens.  

“The U.S. government has actually ratified three treaties on human rights, and most people don’t even know we did it,” Ginger said. “When you ratify (a treaty), it becomes part of basic U.S. law. It applies to the city of Berkeley.” 

The Meiklejohn Institute assists lawyers and activists in the usage of U.S. and U.N. law, though many organizations, even the ACLU, often fail to refer to U.N. law, Ginger said. 

Carole Kennerly, a health professional and former Berkeley City Council member, considers Berkeley’s continued engagement with issues of race, like those the conference will address, of great importance.  

“We have a history that is thoroughly engaged. We’re often on the cutting edge of these issues,” she said, “and it’s important that it remains that way.” 

Since it is composed of U.S. citizens, the Meiklejohn delegation is concerned about one issue in particular: the United State’s compliance with the treaties it has ratified. 

Each country that ratifies a U.N. treaty is required to report back to the U.N. periodically about how well it has complied. In October 1994, the United States ratified a treaty calling for the “Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” and according to Ginger, it has been late in filing its progress reports. It issued its first report last year, though the treaty mandated it be completed by 1995. 

According to a U.S. State Department spokesperson, the binding date by which reporting must occur is five years after ratification, so the government was not “really late” with its report on the treaty.  

“These are legally-obligating treaties,” said the spokesperson, who asked for anonymity, “and we try to take them seriously, as we should.”  

But the alleged tardiness is only part of Ginger’s concern.  

“The first report (to the U.N.) can be federal, but after that, they’ve got to say what’s happening at the city, county and state level,” she said. “And the U.S. hasn’t done that.” 

According to Ginger, the government is obligated to publicize the content of these treaties and promote adherence to them across the country.  

“It’s required, and that’s our big message,” Ginger said. “We’re going to put on a workshop in Durban emphasizing that these (treaties) apply at the city and county level. 

There are some distinctions between U.S. law and U.N. law, Ginger admitted. A citizen cannot file a lawsuit based solely on treaty stipulations. But since the U.N.’s human rights treaties usually articulate more specifically what the Bill of Rights states in general, they usually find solid ground in U.S. law. 

Kennerly considers the Durban conference a place where the U.S. government will be called on to fulfill its treaty commitments. 

“The U.S. has to demonstrate its own willingness to conform to these international standards,” Kennerly said, “or withstand a lot of pressure from countries around the world.” 

For Ginger, the conference has the potential to be something unprecedented. 

“This is the first time in the history of the world that the richest and most powerful countries had to answer to an international body for racial discrimination in its country,” Ginger said. “Now, that’s pretty impressive. Nobody pays attention (to U.N. treaties), but that’s the reality.” 

San Pablo Avenue post office closes for 3 months 

Beginning Monday, the post office at 2111 San Pablo Ave. will be closed for remodeling for about three months. 

Post office patrons will continue to get the post office box, will call and “no response” mail from a trailer in the yard at the station.  

“I am very sorry for any inconvenience this might cause you, but the end result will allow us to provide much better service,” says Postmaster George Banks in a written statement. 

Power outage affects 6,600 PG&E customers 

Some 1,600 PG&E customers lost their electricity Thursday morning, when a car hit a power pole at 2:20 a.m. at Lexington and Fairmont avenues in El Cerrito.  

As crews were repairing the outage, other circuits became affected, according to PG&E spokesperson Staci Homrig, adding another 5,000 households, from Richmond to Berkeley, to those already without power.  

Everyone’s power was back on by about 8 a.m., Homrig said. 

Mediation Awareness Week can help many 

Community Mediation Awareness Week is the week of July 16 in Berkeley. 

“Community mediation is the cornerstone of conflict resolution and violence prevention within our local communities,” Tami Graham, case manager at Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service said in a press statement.  

“Mediation is a process that brings people together to resolve their differences in a safe, neutral space.”  

Community mediation is offered free or at a minimum cost.  

All volunteer mediators in the Bay Area have been trained in accordance with the Dispute Resolution Programs Act.  

For more information contact Tami Graham at 428-1811 or e-mail tami@bdrs.org.

SACRAMENTO — The state Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a measure that would expand a civil rights law protecting transsexuals from job and housing discrimination. 

The bill passed 4-2 Tuesday and is expected to be passed by the full Senate and signed by Gov. Gray Davis. It extends the Fair Employment and Housing Act to cover those who have undergone sex-change operations, those who are changing from one gender to another and men and women who act or dress in ways “different from that traditionally associated with a person’s sex at birth.” 

“We are all created differently but all, I hope, equally,” said Assemblyman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, who wrote the measure. 

The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association were two businesses opposed to the legislation, because of undefined terms such as “perception,” “identity,” “appearance” and “behavior.” 

“These are things that are very hard to measure,” said Willie Washington, a lobbyist with the association. “They are very hard to do objectively. We have no way of knowing what employees are thinking.” 

Goldberg has agreed to define who is responsible for notifying employers about gender status and the possibility for discrimination. 

“You can’t have someone say they are being discriminated against who never informed the employer,” Goldberg said. 

Conservative groups have labeled the legislation “the year’s most dangerous” bill, but employment lawyers say women are being harassed, demoted or fired for acting too masculine or too “aggressive” toward their male bosses. The bill would cover those women from discrimination. 

The bill would deal with the issue in much the same way is dealt with in anti-discrimination legislation. Employers don’t automatically know someone’s religion, so workers must inform their bosses when they need time to pray or what holy days they cannot work. 

About two dozen cities and states, including Rhode Island, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. have a variety of civil rights protections in place for those who do not match traditional gender traits. 

On the Net: 

http://www.assembly.ca.gov/defaulttext.asp

LOS ANGELES — As the number of charter schools grows nationwide, school districts should make sure they are held to the same standards as other public schools, the nation’s largest teachers’ union said Thursday. 

On the second day of its national convention, the National Education Association adopted a new policy on charter schools, its first major statement on the subject since the schools began proliferating in the mid-1990s. 

NEA President Bob Chase said the policy simply clarifies the union’s position, including its opposition to granting charters to for-profit companies. 

Publicly funded but independently managed, charter schools generally operate under fewer regulations than traditional public schools, promising in their charters, or operating agreements, that student performance will improve. 

About 2,100 charter schools operate in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Most are run by parent groups, nonprofit organizations or for-profit education companies. 

About 518,000 of the nation’s 45 million school-aged children attended charter schools last spring, many in urban school districts. 

While many charter schools have been successful, Chase said, “They have been implemented poorly in some instances.” 

Among the recommendations, the proposed policy said charter schools should: 

• hire state-certified or licensed teachers; 

• have adequate startup and construction funds without relying heavily on tax revenue; 

• be subject to student assessment similar to other public schools; 

• allow teachers to keep their collective bargaining rights, such as allowances for breaks and lunch hours without work duties. 

Chris Braunlich, vice president of the Washington-based Center for Education Reform, said such requirements – especially forcing charter schools to hire only certified teachers – could inhibit innovation. 

“What they’re in essence saying is that you can have charter schools, but they’re charter schools in name only,” he said. “It’s sort of like saying, ’We favor the concept of airplanes, but we don’t want them to have wings.”’ 

Eddie Davis, a North Carolina high school teacher who chaired the NEA charter school committee, said the union was trying to balance innovation and accountability. 

“To have a school where you just grab a bunch of people because they happen to be smart and to say, ‘Well, we’ll give our children over to you,’ might not be quite as responsible as we want people to be,” he said. 

On the Net: 

NEA: http://www.nea.org 

CER: http://www.edreform.com

LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered a company to stop large shipments of radioactive materials because of concerns the packages could break open in an accident. 

The action was sparked by complaints by French officials that JL Shepherd & Associates of San Fernando had shipped an irradiator that had not been packaged in a way that conformed with U.S. regulations. 

A follow-up inspection of the Los Angeles-area company in late May left NRC officials without “the requisite assurance that (Shepherd’s) current operations can be conducted ... in compliance with the commission’s requirements,” the order, issued Tuesday and effective immediately, read in part. 

“This is a significant action,” said Tim Kobetz, a project manager with the NRC.  

“When we issue an order it’s because we certainly have a concern in this area and there is the potential the public’s safety and health could be impacted.” 

Federal officials discovered the company had altered the design of the packaging that houses one of its irradiators, a medical device used to irradiate blood, without gaining government approval. 

The device contains 18,000 curies of cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material.  

If the substance breached the protective packaging that shields it – including a double-walled steel cylinder – it could cause serious injuries or death. 

No one was exposed to radiation because of the improperly packaged irradiator, federal officials said. 

The NRC identified a similar issue with how Shepherd packaged its products in 1999, but was later assured by the company it had fixed the problem in accordance with federal regulations, Kobetz said. 

The company declined to comment on the action. 

“This matter is between JL Shepherd and the NRC and there is no comment,” said a woman who answered a company phone but refused to identify herself. 

The device was shipped from California to New York and then on to the United Kingdom last summer. French officials refused to admit the irradiator when they discovered its housing design varied from that approved by the U.S. government. 

The irradiator was later shipped back to California. 

Without federal approval, JL Shepherd & Associates cannot ship large radioactive sources in certain packages, but will be able to ship some smaller quantities. 

The company now has 20 days to answer the order, either consenting to it or explaining why it should not have been issued.  

It may also request a formal hearing on the matter. 

On the Net: 

http://www.nrc.gov/ 

http://www.jlshepherd.com/

SACRAMENTO — Three pit bulls attacked a 43-year-old Sacramento woman as she was walking down the street, tearing an artery in her leg, before a construction worker and a sheriff’s deputy stepped in to save her, police said. 

“There’s a good chance she would have died without their help,” said Sacramento Police Sgt. Daniel Hahn. 

Debra Scott was taken by ambulance Tuesday to UC Davis Medical Center, where she remained in fair condition Thursday morning. She had been in danger of bleeding to death as a result of a torn artery in her right leg. 

Despite the help of the construction worker, whose name was not released, the pit bulls continued to attack Scott until sheriff’s Deputy Alex McCamy passed by while on patrol, police said. The deputy fired two or three shots, killing one dog and scaring off the other two. 

Angel Dreyden, who lives down the street from where the attack took place, said she went outside after she heard the shots. “I saw the (woman), her right leg and stomach looked really bad.” 

Officials said they cannot pinpoint who owns the dogs, but Hahn said an animal control officer tracked the bulls that fled to a yard in the 4500 hundred block of 12th Avenue. 

The dog’s ownership remained under investigation, Hahn said. The dogs wore thick collars but had no tags.

The wife of Rep. Gary Condit was questioned by law enforcement officers Thursday in the disappearance of former federal intern Chandra Levy, according to the congressman’s lawyer. 

Carolyn Condit and the investigators met in the Washington area, said a statement from the congressman’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell. 

The statement did not reveal anything that was said and indicated that Condit, D-Calif., will continue his public silence about Levy, whom he has described as a “great person and a good friend.” 

“The congressman hopes and believes that the caring public will not confuse his well-founded reasons for not fueling a misguided media frenzy with his continued willingness to speak with those professionals who are working day and night to find Chandra Levy,” the statement said. 

It also said Condit will “resist efforts by the media to dissect and mischaracterize his and his family’s private lives.” 

“Unlike some, Congressman Condit remains singularly focused on what is the central mission at this time – locating Chandra Levy,” Lowell said, reading the statement. 

Levy, 24, of Modesto, Calif., was last seen April 30 at a Washington health club. Her internship at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had ended and she was planning to return home to attend her graduation ceremony at the University of Southern California. 

Condit’s office has denied a romantic relationship between Levy and the 53-year-old married congressman, who has represented her hometown since 1989. Levy’s mother has said her daughter told her she was seeing Condit. 

Law enforcement officials have given no indication why they wanted to question Mrs. Condit other than their repeated statements that they wanted to talk to anyone who might shed light on the case. Mrs. Condit was on a rare trip to Washington during the time when Levy disappeared, according to Mike Lynch, Condit’s chief of staff. 

Police Chief Charles Ramsey said in a news conference Thursday that officers have interviewed 100 people about Levy. Police also have used cadaver-sniffing dogs to search some area landfills, he said. 

“The good news is we haven’t found anything that indicates she’s met with foul play. The bad news is that we haven’t found anything at all, period,” Ramsey said. 

“As time goes on, the possibility of suicide becomes more and more remote, only because you think you would find the remains.” 

A search of her apartment found nothing missing but her keys. Police have no evidence of a crime, no suggestion that Levy ran off, no similarities between Levy’s case and those of other missing persons, Ramsey said. 

“We’ve not been able to find any links and believe me, we have looked,” he said. 

The police chief talked carefully about Condit. Police have interviewed him twice and will do so a third time if necessary, Ramsey said, though they have said repeatedly he is not a suspect in Levy’s disappearance. 

Ramsey played down the relevance to the Levy investigation of allegations by flight attendant Anne Marie Smith that she had a 10-month affair with Condit. “It’s a heck of a leap. We’re not the sex police here. We’re trying to investigate a missing person,” Ramsey said. 

Condit’s private life “only matters to me if it relates to the Chandra Levy case,” he said. Although police have questioned Condit’s neighbors in his Washington condominium, they have not searched his apartment. 

Condit canceled appearances at three Independence Day parades in his central California district, telling organizers he didn’t want to be a distraction. 

CONDIT’S STATEMENT 

Text of a statement issued Thursday by Rep. Gary Condit’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, concerning the disappearance of Chandra Levy, 24, of Modesto, Calif.: 

For weeks, Congressman Condit has stated that he would assist the police in their efforts to locate Chandra Levy. 

Today, the Congressman’s wife, Carolyn, met with law enforcement officials to provide whatever information she could. To expedite this, Congressman Condit accompanied Mrs. Condit to the Washington area in order to facilitate her meeting with investigators and consequently was unable to participate in traditional 4th of July events in Modesto. 

Even prior to Mrs. Condit’s interview, Congressman Condit had given two substantial interviews to the police and directed his staff to provide information that may be requested of them. 

In light of the ongoing and central importance of the police investigation, Congressman Condit has issued statements to the press only when doing so would not interfere with the work of law enforcement authorities.  

It is clear from a review of other similar cases that broad and detailed dissemination of confidential police interviews can seriously compromise police investigations.  

With Chandra Levy’s whereabouts unknown, this is not a risk that Congressman Condit, or anyone else, should be willing to take. 

The media’s intense interest in Ms. Levy’s disappearance is completely understandable. Consequently, I have asked Marina Ein, someone I know from the communications world, to assist me with media inquiries. As the fierce competition to fill pages, airtime and Web sites threatens to spin this story out of control, Congressman Condit has resisted and will continue to resist efforts by the media to dissect and mischaracterize his and his family’s private lives.  

Unlike some, Congressman Condit remains singularly focused on what is and remains the central mission at this time – locating Chandra Levy.  

Congressman Condit hopes and prays for Chandra Levy’s safe return.  

It is his belief that the media can play an important role in helping this investigation reach a positive conclusion. It is also his belief that the media risks losing its focus with what has been a recent and seemingly unbounded effort to expose highly personal and private Condit family matters. None of these matters pertain to Ms. Levy’s disappearance or the ability of law enforcement to determine what has happened to her. To all of you, I ask that you return your focus to that priority. 

In summary, Congressman Condit has twice met with the police, followed up with the police by telephone, and reached out to meet and speak with Chandra Levy’s family. In addition, Congressman Condit’s wife has herself met with the police. 

The police have stated that Congressman Condit is not a suspect, that he has been cooperative and that his meetings with them have been productive. These are their words. 

The Congressman hopes and believes that the caring public will not confuse his well-founded reasons for not fueling a misguided media frenzy, with his, Mrs. Condit’s, and his staff’s continued willingness to speak with those professionals who are working day and night to find Chandra Levy. 

On the Net: 

Condit’s site: http://www.house.gov/gcondit 

Nearly 5 million Pacific Gas and Electric Co. ratepayers could lose out on billions in power price refunds if they are not represented as a committee in its bankruptcy case, an attorney with the U.S. Trustee told a federal bankruptcy judge Thursday. 

It is the second time in the bankruptcy proceeding that U.S. Trustee Linda Ekstrom Stanley, whose role is to appoint creditor committees in cases, has taken the unusual step of trying to create a separate committee of ratepayers. 

“It’s very difficult to get a judge to change his mind, but I think we have sufficient grounds,” Stanley said. 

PG&E and the official creditors committee disagreed with appointing a ratepayers committee, saying there’s simply no legal authority for it. 

Such a committee would give ratepayers legal standing and the ability to voice opinions on how the billions PG&E owes more than 50,000 creditors should be doled out. It would also be able to vote on the final reorganization of the company, which could affect power service and rates in the future. 

At issue is whether ratepayers are in fact creditors. Patricia Cutler, an attorney with the office of the U.S. Trustee argued they are because they possibly stand to lose money refunded from power bought before PG&E filed for bankruptcy April 6. 

When state power regulators hiked rates in May, they said ratepayers would receive refunds if state and federal investigations could prove that out-of-state power companies overcharged California utilities for electricity. 

Not having residential customers represented could also prompt creditors who do have a voice to look at ratepayers as a source of cash to help the utility pay its debts, Cutler said. 

“Unlike other creditors, ratepayers will not look first at ratepayers as a source of payment,” Cutler told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali. 

Jim Lopes, an attorney for PG&E, said the creditors committee could not raise electric rates even if they wanted to, citing Montali’s recent decision to not challenge the rate-setting authority of the state Public Utilities Commission. 

Lopes said several companies serving on the creditors committee are also ratepayers, naming several small alternative power plants known as qualifying facilities. 

“You could have 40 committees in this case ... and I don’t think that would be appropriate,” he said, adding that if more groups are involved, it would take longer for the utility to pay them. 

In May, Montali agreed with PG&E and ruled that the ratepayer groups did not have a legal right to join other creditor committees in participating in the Chapter 11 case. 

Ongoing negotiations in Washington between power companies and the state could result in as much as $8.9 billion in refunds for power sold into California that has been deemed overpriced by Gov. Gray Davis. 

Without a committee to represent all ratepayers, Stanley is concerned they could be barred from filing claims for that money or for other grievances against PG&E after a September cutoff. 

Montali has not decided whether to allow the ratepayers committee, but should rule July 10. Stanley said she will consider appealing the case in U.S. district court if Montali rules against the committee. 

On the Net: 

http://www.canb.uscourts.gov

The Swedes have a way of taking over derivative forms and making them their own, a point made by authors Barbara and Rene Stoeltie in “Country Houses of Sweden.” 

Most famously, the ornate architecture and furnishings that originated from the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV in France were reinterpreted by Sweden’s king and his craftsmen. 

“This quintessentially Swedish furniture borrowed its original outlines from France; corrected and revised by Gustavus III, the great king-arbiter of good taste, it carries the beautiful name of ’gustaviansk,’ Gustavian,” write the authors. 

Their book profiles several great country houses as exemplars of the style, such as Svartjo castle on Lake Malaren and Gustav’s Haga pavilion in Uppland. 

But it also looks at homes being revised and lived in now, as well as those which belonged to some of the country’s artists. The most famous of these is the Lilla Hyttnas farm in Dalecarlia owned and colorfully embellished by painter Carl Larsson and his wife Karin, a textile specialist, in a mix of country, Gustavian, and arts and crafts styles. 

Also note: 

• In a nod to the less-is-more trend in shelter, architect Dale Mulfinger and writer Susan E. Davis consider “The Cabin” (Taunton Press, $34.95 hardcover, September). Often a weekend or vacation retreat, this humble house can offer comfort and style while staying in tune with its surroundings. 

• Some fresh looks in traditional fabrics are on show in Ann Grafton’s “Interior Transformations” (Little, Brown/Bulfinch Press, $45 hardcover). Grafton, creative director of the Colefax Group of fabric firms, displays schemes that are bold and clear without being artsy or avant garde. 

• Another salvo in the campaign to move away from oversized houses is “Small House, Big Style” (Meredith Books/Better Homes and Gardens, $34.95 hardcover), with Paula Marshall, editor. She cites examples of houses built from scratch, such as a 650-square-foot tapering house fitted onto a small triangular plot in Del Mar, Calif., and many existing small houses, built before the McMansion era, that were remodeled from the inside to open up space. 

• If you’ve got pets at home, the vision of redecorating is governed by what all those little paws and claws might do to the final picture. So, consider “Animal House Style” (Little, Brown/Bulfinch Press, $35 hardcover, September), by Julia Szabo. She offers advice about choosing furnishings that will thrive and survive, letting both you and your animal companions feel at home. 

• Converting the garage and leaving the car somewhere else always has been an obvious way of gaining living and work space. Kira Obolensky, in “Garage” (Taunton Press, $32 hardcover, October), points out that many a successful enterprise started in garage workshops or offices — Walt Disney or Henry Ford, for example. (Ford’s space originally was a coal shed, transformed into a garage as the birthplace of his horseless carriage.) And of course, the garage has often become the “mother-in-law apartment.” Obolensky looks at the history and the possibilities. 

• Home spaces turned into work spaces is the newest old thing, with the proliferation of home offices. In “At Work At Home” (Taunton Press, $29.95 hardcover, October), architect Neal Zimmerman frames dozens of ideas for stylish and ingenious conversions of the spare spot to work center. He notes that while many home workplaces do double-duty as family or guest rooms, more and more of his clients are opting for dedicated facilities reserved for work. 

- Country isn’t what it used to be. The simplicity and re-use of furnishings survive from more rustic days, but today’s versions — often weekend retreats for city people — are far more sophisticated interpretations. Some of them are profiled in “New Country Style” (Meredith Books/Country Home, $39.95 hardcover), edited by Vicki Ingham. 

- If all the decorating advice you’ve been given seem to fit like a straitjacket, forget it, urges Christy Ferer in “Breaking the Rules” (Simon & Schuster, $40 hardcover). Some of the rooms she shows in her book show complete and sometimes daffy abandon, such as a period kitchen decorated in candy colors, complete with contrasting water pipes, or an antique secretary pressed into service as a dressing table and linen closet. 

WASHINGTON — Two-thirds of Americans – both adults and teenagers – say they support the legal drinking age of 21, says an Associated Press poll. Teen-agers support the law even though teen drinking remains widespread. 

Even more people – three-fourths of both teens and adults – say they think laws on the drinking age should be enforced more vigorously, according to the poll conducted for the AP by ICR of Media, Pa. 

The enthusiasm among teens for strict enforcement is not as unusual as it may seem, said Ralph Hingson, a researcher on alcohol and youth at Boston University’s School of Public Health. 

“In a given year, the majority of high school seniors drink, but only a small proportion are drinking heavily,” Hingson said. “On balance, they are supportive of legislation that will reduce the risks to themselves. Teens recognize the seriousness of drinking and driving.” 

After dropping significantly in the 1980s, when the legal drinking age was raised to 21 in all 50 states, the level of teen drinking has settled in at a rate many consider too high and a continuing health hazard. 

School officials and drug abuse experts are now looking for ways to regain momentum against a problem associated with 2,273 traffic fatalities among people 15 to 20 in 1999, the most recent statistics available. 

Fake IDs and underage drinking have been in the news since the 19-year-old twin daughters of President Bush, Jenna and Barbara, had a brush with the law. The sisters were cited by police after their visit May 29 to a Mexican restaurant in Austin. Two weeks earlier, Jenna Bush had pleaded no contest to underage drinking and was ordered to receive alcohol counseling and perform community service. 

The average age that teens start drinking dropped from about 18 in the mid 1960s to about 16 in the late 1990s, research suggests. Those who start drinking younger are more likely to become alcohol dependent. 

“We need to re-evaluate what we’re doing and do something different now,” said Mark Weber, a spokesman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Options include tougher enforcement, community education and promotions to tell students drinking is less rampant than they might think. 

In a 1999 survey, about half of all high school students said they had consumed alcohol in the past month. Drinking levels grow higher for older teens. 

The legal drinking age had reached 21 nationwide by 1988 – spurred by a 1984 federal law that tied federal highway dollars to compliance by the states with that drinking age. 

Research suggests the amount of teen drinking dropped by about 13 percent after states raised the drinking age. The number of alcohol-related traffic deaths of those between 15 and 20 dropped by almost half in the decade after the drinking age was changed, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. 

“It’s clear that the move in the age to 21 is the most successful effort that we’ve had in the last couple of decades to reduce drinking and alcohol,” said University of Minnesota researcher Alexander Wagenaar. 

Dwight Heath, an anthropologist at Brown University in Providence, R.I., counters that Europeans are right to expose people to drinking at a younger age and demystify alcohol so that it causes fewer problems than in this country. 

Both adults and teens in the poll thought penalties such as losing a driver’s license would have the most influence on persuading teens not to drink, according to the poll. The survey of 1,008 adults and 514 teens was taken June 6-10. It had error margins of plus or minus 3 percentage points for adults and 4 percentage points for teens. 

Both students and school officials say teen drinking remains very popular in high school. 

“Most of them have easy access to alcohol in their homes, their friends’ homes and fake IDs,” said Ted Feinberg, a school psychologist. 

For Mara Conheim, a 20-year-old student at the University of Maryland, “freshman year was all about finding a fake ID.” Another Maryland student, 21-year-old Brent Robbins, said older students often lend IDs to younger classmates. Gary Paleva, director of the college’s office of judicial programs, says the college does all it can to prohibit drinking, but “sometimes parents have lost control before students get here.” 

“Drinking is caused more by peer pressure,” said Detroit high school teacher Cassandra Jerrido. “I don’t see any of our efforts working.” 

On the Net: 

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — http://www.nhtsa.gov 

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — http://www.niaaa.nih.gov 

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration – http://www.samhsa.gov

WASHINGTON — President Bush named veteran prosecutor Robert Mueller to take over the FBI and begin repairing the nation’s premier law enforcement agency after embarrassments ranging from bungled Oklahoma City bombing documents to the discovery of an FBI spy. 

Mueller has previously won top-level appointments from Bush’s father and from President Clinton, but both Republicans and Democrats suggested there will be pointed questioning at confirmation hearings. 

If confirmed by the Senate, Mueller, a 56-year-old Republican and decorated Vietnam veteran, will fill a 10-year term as the ninth man to direct the FBI. 

Louis Freeh retired last month, two years before his term would have expired. 

Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had championed Mueller as a trusted team player, interrupted his vacation in Missouri to attend Thursday’s Rose Garden ceremony where Bush charged Mueller with assuring the nation that the FBI is “independent of politics and uncompromising in its mission.” 

“The FBI has a great tradition that Mr. Mueller must now affirm and some important challenges he must confront,” the president said. 

The most immediate challenge will be winning over senators fed up with what they see as the FBI’s we-know-best attitude and with its headline-making mishaps: the botched investigation of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee; the mishandling of evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing trial that forced the postponement of Timothy McVeigh’s execution, and the discovery in February that veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen had been spying for the Russians for more than 15 years. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Mueller inherits an FBI “beleaguered by a series of high-profile mistakes and by a culture that too often does not recognize and correct its errors.” 

Added Leahy: “I will be interested in hearing Mr. Mueller’s views, his willingness to acknowledge and correct the bureau’s problems and his ability to meet these challenges head on.” 

Another committee member, Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa, said he wants a personal meeting with Mueller to see if he is equipped to overhaul the agency’s “management culture with an air about it that the FBI can do no wrong” and to restore public confidence in federal law enforcement. 

FBI Deputy Director Tom Pickard, who was named acting director on June 22, will continue in that post until Mueller is confirmed. 

Bush settled on Mueller (pronounced MULL-er) last Friday, some three or four weeks after interviewing him in the Oval Office, said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. 

Mueller had long been the front-runner for the job but subsequent to his interview, Bush ordered aides to take one last look at other candidates. He wanted, aides said, a director capable of reining in the independent streak that the FBI had taken on under Freeh, who had a bitter and distrusting relationship with the Clinton administration. 

Asked about the kind of relationship Bush wanted to establish between his Justice Department and any reshaped FBI, Fleischer told reporters: “It’s not a question of deference; it’s a question of judgment. The president believes that under Bob Mueller, the FBI will be headed by a man with sound judgment based on matters of law and justice – and not politics.” 

Mueller, a former acting deputy attorney general at Justice, won Ashcroft’s support by aiding in the transition from the Clinton administration from January until May, when he resumed his job as U.S. attorney in San Francisco – the appointment he was given by Clinton. 

Under the first President Bush, Mueller served as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, where he supervised the prosecutions of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and mobster John Gotti and headed the investigations of the BCCI banking scandal and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. 

FBI watchers said Mueller’s task now will be to change the bureau’s culture and opening it to greater scrutiny by outside and internal watchdogs. 

“People who are going to be sitting in judgment of his nomination will want to hear that,” said Michael Bromwich, former Justice Department inspector general. 

Steve Colgate, another former Justice Department official, credited Mueller with a no-nonsense — and successful — approach to turning around troubled organizations. He cited Mueller’s work as chief of the homicide division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and as U.S. attorney in San Francisco, where he replaced a number of prosecutors and reorganized the office. 

“You have someone who has a clear record of moving into an organization that is troubled and analyze the situation, make recommendations and carry them out,” said Colgate. 

WASHINGTON — Researchers have found serious abnormalities in cloned mice, a finding that strengthens the belief of many scientists that the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep should not be used on humans. 

The findings are based on the use of embryonic stem cells in cloning and come as the Bush administration considers whether to allow federal funds for non-cloning stem cell research. The research appears Friday in the journal Science. 

“This study confirms the suspicions of many of us that cloning of humans would be really dangerous,” said Rudolf Jaenisch, senior author of the study and a researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

David Humpherys, first author of the study, said that many of the mice cloned in the experiment appeared to be normal, including having normal genes, but there was evidence that during embryonic and fetal development the genes did not work properly. 

“It is quite likely that just the animals that are most nearly normal make it to birth (in cloning), but our study shows that doesn’t mean they are completely normal,” said Humpherys. “There may be changes in gene expression that could affect them later in life.” 

In cloned humans, Jaenisch said the gene expression flaws could affect personality, intelligence and other human attributes. 

Humpherys said there was no evidence that the genes in the cloned animals were altered, but that the way in which the genes made proteins was flawed and unstable. In effect, the researchers found that even though the biological blueprint was intact in the cloned animals, the way that the blueprint was read and interpreted was flawed. This could result in abnormal tissues and organs, they said. 

Humpherys and Jaenisch said that a number of scientists doing cloning experiments with mice, pigs, sheep and cattle have reported that even apparently normal animals develop disorders later in life. Jaenisch said that extreme obesity has developed in many cloned animals, including Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. 

Dr. David A. Prentice, an Indiana State University professor of life sciences, said the MIT-Whitehead study shows the hazards of the current cloning technology. 

“Development is a finely orchestrated ballet of cells forming tissues and organs at the right place and time,” said Prentice. “It takes only one going awry at the wrong time and place to have a seriously flawed individual.” 

In the study, the researchers made the mouse clones using embryonic stem cells, the primordial cells known to be able to form virtually any tissue in the body. The DNA from the cells was removed and inserted into a mouse egg that had been stripped of its DNA. The resulting embryos were then implanted in mother mice and allowed to grow to birth. 

The researchers monitored the expression, or action, of genes that play a role in embryo and fetal development. They found that the genes, even from nearly identical stem cells, worked differently. In fact, said Humpherys, stem cells are unstable in gene expression even in the laboratory dish. 

This instability raises the possibility that using stem cells to treat health disorders may not work as well as some scientists have suggested, said Dr. Joann A. Boughman, vice president  

of the American Society  

of Human Genetics. 

“When we grow (embryonic stem) cells for a curative situation, we will need to precisely control the process,” she said. “This paper shows that we’ve got a very long way to go to fully understand this whole process.” 

Some researchers have suggested that embryonic stem cells could be cloned from a patient and used to grow cells that could be used to restore that patient’s ailing heart or liver or other organs. 

Jaenisch said that it is unlikely that genetic instability would block the curative use of embryonic stem cells. He said in developing cells for therapeutic use, researchers would harvest and inject into patients only those cells that are normal. 

During cloning, he said, no such selection is possible because an embryo must use the DNA provided and cannot select only that which is perfect. 

Regulations that would permit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research has been delayed by President Bush who ordered a review of the whole issue. Some in Congress oppose embryonic stem cell research because obtaining the cells involves the death of a human embryo. Many scientists, however, believe that embryonic stem cell research could relieve suffering for millions of patients with a variety of disorders. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Science: http://www.eurekalert.org 

Cloning: http://genomics.phrma.org/cloning.html 

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, citing continued strong demand in such key sectors as autos and housing, predicted on Thursday that a $40 billion flood of tax rebate checks this summer will give the economy a needed boost that should carry into next year. 

Meeting with reporters prior to weekend talks in Rome on the global economy, O’Neill’s assessment of the U.S. economy was more upbeat than many private economists, who are still worried that the country is in danger of falling into a recession. 

O’Neill said while some industries, notably telecommunications and computers, were experiencing significant weakness, he “took comfort” from the fact that housing sales and auto sales have remained strong, despite the overall slowdown. “We have real strength in our economy and we are bouncing around in narrow positive territory,” O’Neill told reporters at a Treasury news conference. 

He said growth should be aided further in the next 2.5 months as the government begins mailing out $40 billion in tax refund checks, the first wave of the $1.35 trillion tax legislation passed by Congress earlier this year. 

He said this infusion of cash into consumers’ pockets “will give us a bounce and that bounce will carry forward into next year.” 

“I am confident that the U.S. economy will move to a higher growth rate later this year,” O’Neill said. “We are thus doing our part to contribute to strong and stable growth worldwide.” 

O’Neill will deliver an assessment of the U.S. economy’s prospects when he meets on Saturday for discussions with finance ministers from the world’s seven richest industrial countries – the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada. O’Neill will also hold private discussions with Russian economic officials in preparation for a trip he and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans will make to Russia later this month at the request of Bush, who is looking for ways to increase economic ties between the two nations. 

While some administration officials have expressed concerns that Europe and Japan must do their part to boost their own lagging economies to support the U.S. recovery, O’Neill sidestepped any direct criticism of other nations. 

He did say he hoped that Japanese Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokowa will be able to discuss a timetable for which his government plans to implement an ambitious economic reform program aimed at lifting the world’s second largest economy out of a decade of weak growth. 

Speaking of both Japan and Europe, O’Neill said, “Europe and Japan are very big and important and they can play a locomotive role and it would be helpful for them to play a locomotive role” in restoring global growth prospects. 

O’Neill, who last week termed “off-the-wall” the European Union’s adverse review of $43 billion merger between General Electric and Honeywell International, was more circumspect in his comments on Thursday, saying that U.S. regulators focus more on the consumer impact of potential mergers, while Europeans worry more about the impact on other competitors. 

He said he did not believe the EU rejection of the merger would be a part of the formal discussions among finance ministers on Saturday but could be part of “gossipy chit chat” over lunch. 

O’Neill said that the administration’s push to overhaul the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank would be a major topic of discussion, saying he believed from earlier discussions that “most of the ministers are like-minded, directionally at least.” 

Efforts to crack down on money laundering and tax cheating will also be on the agenda for the finance meeting, which will be used to prepare the economic part of the agenda for this year’s economic summit which President Bush will attend in Genoa, Italy, on July 20-22. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Treasury Department: http://www.ustreas.gov/ 

NEW YORK — Stocks fell Thursday as profit warnings from Federated Department Stores and British telecom firm Marconi reminded investors how badly business is suffering here and abroad. 

The warnings added to the market’s dread over second-quarter earnings results, which companies begin issuing this month. Profit warnings from chip maker Advanced Micro Devices and data storage company EMC Corp. after the market closed added to the chances that Wall Street will endure additional pressure on Friday. 

“No one is in a hurry to buy. Earnings warnings continue to surface at a fast and furious pace,” said Alan Ackerman, executive vice president of Fahnestock & Co. 

“Retail sales are due to be reported next week, so this has set up a very high level of anxiety,” Ackerman said. “With Federated numbers as they are, it appears shoppers are doing more browsing than buying, not just on Wall Street.” 

He added that the market is worried that consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s economy, will continue to shrink. On the positive side, however, retailing and other consumer stocks could soon trend higher as federal income tax rebate checks begin hitting mailboxes this month. 

The technology and telecommunications sectors came under pressure from Marconi, which announced Wednesday it was halving its earnings forecasts for 2001, and will cut 4,000 jobs. Marconi shares on the Nasdaq plunged $3.68 to $3.35, a 52 percent drop. 

Other telecom shares fell, including equipment makers Alcatel, down $3.54 at $17.46, and JDS Uniphase, declining $1.06 to $11.61. 

Still, analysts said investors shouldn’t be too alarmed by Marconi’s news, calling it nothing new in the struggling telecom sector. 

“Who could be surprised today with a telecom provider announcing they are not go to meet expectations. You would have to have your head in the sand if you thought we were out of the woods there,” said Jon Brorson, head of equities at Northern Trust in Chicago. 

The market also focused on WorldCom after it lowered earnings projections for fiscal year 2002, but raised revenue forecasts based on the restructuring efforts of operations in Brazil. WorldCom slipped 19 cents to $14.28. 

Advanced Micro Devices announced after the market closed that it expects to earn 3 cents to 5 cents a share for the second quarter, below the 27 cents a share previously expected. Trading of AMD, which blamed weak demand and competitive pressure that drove down prices, fell $4.64, or 16 percent, to $24 in after-hours trading, adding to a drop of $1.12 to $28.64 in the regular session. 

AMD’s big competitor, Intel, traded lower in sympathy. Intel fell $1.20 in extended session after dropping 62 cents to $29.84 in regular dealings on the Nasdaq. 

Meanwhile, EMC said it expected to earn 4 cents to 6 cents per share for the second quarter, well short of the 17-cent consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call.  

Shares of EMC fell $4.74, or 16 percent, to $25.29 in extended trading, compounding a 5 percent, or $1.59, decline in the regular session, when it closed at $30.03. 

The warnings are the latest in a stockpile preceding the second-quarter earnings reports that companies will start releasing this month. 

Although Wall Street has been expecting the most recent quarter to be quite weak, the market has been rattled by the extent to which companies have suffered. Since late May, investors have heard more than 600 warnings, many of which reduced already lowered forecasts, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. 

Investors are still holding out hope that business will improve in the second half after the benefits of six interest rate cuts have begun to take hold. 

Wall Street’s losses on Thursday were spread across market sectors. Only three of the Dow’s 30 stocks finished higher. 

Honeywell rose $1.59 to $36.50. New CEO Lawrence A. Bossidy, said late Tuesday the company — whose merger with General Electric is effectively dead — will remain independent until he can “stabilize” the operation, which could take a year. 

The other gains came from SBC Communications, which advanced 68 cents to $41.30, and Alcoa, rising 53 cents to $40.78. 

A Labor Department report also reminded investors of the weak economy. The government said the number of Americans filing new claims for state unemployment insurance rose last week after falling for three weeks in a row. The jump provided fresh evidence that the struggling economy continues to take a toll on workers. 

However, Brorson, of Northern Trust, also cautioned against “reading too much” into Thursday’s weakness, which was exagerrated by lighter-than-normal trading in a holiday week in which many traders were not around. The market was closed Wednesday for the Independence Day holiday. 

Declining issues outnumbered advancers slightly more than 8 to 7 on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated volume came to 1.09 billion shares, compared with 732.63 million shares on Tuesday when the market was open for just half the day. 

The Russell 2000, which measures the performance of smaller company stocks, index fell 4.10 to 492.73. 

Overseas markets were lower Thursday. Japan’s Nikkei stock average closed down 0.2 percent. In Europe, Germany’s DAX index fell 0.3 percent, France’s CAC-40 lost 1.0 percent, and Britain’s FT-SE 100 declined 0.9 percent. 

——— 

On the Net: 

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com 

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com 

Families from all over the East Bay joined Berkeley residents for a daylong Fourth of July celebration at the Marina Wednesday.  

The alcohol-free event, which organizers predicted would attract from 5, 000 to 6,000 people during the day and as many as 60,000 for the evening’s fireworks, offered a variety of activities, many of which were designed for children.  

Some of the festivities took place in the sailing club parking lot, where a few dozen organizations and food vendors set up their booths. Across the street, organizers had erected a stage on a lawn, where Professor Gizmo, a colorful one-man band, kicked off the event playing accordion, cymbals and harmonica simultaneously thanks to a peculiar multi-task instrument. A group of belly dancers followed, and the program would later include Oakland blues artist Birdlegg and Latin music. 

The rest of the activities took place near the Shorebird Nature Center, where dozens of people laid out blankets, set up chairs and fired up barbecue grills on the picnic area. A Berkeley Police Department booth took fingerprints that children could take home with them, which would help police if the child was ever reported missing. A group of musicians formed a “community drumming circle” and there was space for Frisbee, football, and volleyball. Kids who felt more creative could become carpenters for a few hours, building and painting wooden structures at Adventure Playground.  

Little in this fifth daytime Fourth of July event at the Marina evoked the historic significance of the national holiday. A clown dressed in the colors of the American flag, and the stage decorations were the only indicators this was a patriotic celebration. At the beginning of the afternoon, event promoter Lisa Bullwinkel, said a statement would be read from Sen. Barbara Boxer talking about what the Fourth of July means for the community, but more than anything the celebration was a family friendly event, an opportunity for people to relax and have fun. 

And to many people indeed, that is what the Fourth of July is all about. 

When asked what this holiday means to him, Jimmy Fuentes, a Mexican American who lived his whole life in Berkeley and attends the Marina celebration with his wife and two children every year, answered: “En verdad, fiesta...It’s just to take the family out and enjoy the sun.” 

To Scott Kellstedt, father of two, the Fourth of July means the same. “It means summer,” he said, before adding that it had not always been that way for him. A native of New England, Kellstedt sees a difference between the way the national holiday is celebrated in his home state and in California. 

“The Fourth of July in New England is much more patriotic, much more giving that feeling of how important that event is in our history. Here in California it just seems like a summer holiday.”  

Kellstedt said when he was a kid, he would put a copy of the Declaration of Independence on his bike, ride to the Fourth of July parade, and salute when soldiers went by. 

Bullwinkel said part of the reason for the local lack of patriotism could be that, in Berkeley, people enjoy much more freedom than residents of other areas, and therefore give less weight to the original meaning of Independence Day. “ (The Fourth of July) is about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. “In Berkeley, we make sure that we have all these rights in a big way, so some people think that celebrating the Fourth of July in Berkeley is a little patriotic and hokey.” 

However, even in the liberal Bay Area, there are still people who demonstrate their attachment to the value of the nation’s history. Cookie and Cote Reese, a couple of musicians from El Cerrito, stuck out of the crowd. Dressed in colorful Fourth of July costumes, they came to the Marina attracted by the program, but that was not their only motivation to celebrate. 

“It’s independence day, it’s the moment when this country was formed and became an entity,” said Cookie Reese. “The country is the way it is because of that break with the colonial power. We’re very aware of that.” 

Thursday, July 5

Public Works Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Discussion and possible action regarding adoption of a new street-sweeping policy. 

Housing Advisory Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis St. 

The Rental Housing Safety Program will be among the items under discussion. 

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week Capoeira Arts Cafe and company, Brazilian extravaganza. 

LGBT Catholics Group  

7:30 p.m. 

Newman Hall  

2700 Dwight Way (at College)  

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This meetings discussions will center on “What do we/can we expect from the Church?”  

654-5486 

Berkeley Metaphysical  

Toastmasters Club  

6:15 - 7:30 p.m.  

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month.  

Call 869-2547 

Bear Safety 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Learn how to travel in bear country without mishap. Wilderness guide Ken Hanley will discuss the characteristics of black bears and grizzlies for anyone venturing into their territories. Free. 

527-4140 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Dubliners, Ulysses, Marginal Feelings in Joyce, and Joyce and Anarchy. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 642-2754  

Community Environmental  

Advisory Commission 

7 p.m. 

2118 Milvia Street 

First floor conference room 

Among agenda items, a follow up on arsenic in playgrounds and the California Environmental Quality Act and Skate Park tank enforcement. 

705-8150 or 644-6915 (TDD) 

Friday, July 6

Disability Awareness and  

Outreach Committee 

1 - 3 p.m. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building 

2180 Milvia Street 

Maple Room (Third Floor north) 

Agenda includes guidelines for accessibility of special events 

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women: The Arts,  

Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Taught by Helen Rippier Wheeler, this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Today, view the 1939 movie “The Women.” Free.  

Call 549-2970 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, Ireland and the Politics of Culture, Joycean Border-Crossings, and Joyce and Frank Zappa. $15 - $25.  

642-2754 

James Joyce Conference  

Closing Banquet 

6 - 11 p.m. 

UC Faculty Club 

UC Berkeley Campus 

Joycean entertainment and dancing. Reservations required, call 415-392-1137. 

Homage to Chiapas 

7 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Avenue 

Bill Weinberg, author of “Homage to Chiapas.” 

548-2220 

Saturday, July 7

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club gives free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult. www.cal-sailing.org  

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 548-3333 

Sunday, July 8

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club gives free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute Open House 

3 - 5 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Free introduction to Tibetan Buddhist culture, including: Prayer wheel and meditation garden tour, Tibetan yoga demonstration, information on Tibetan art project, class and program counseling and a talk on “Relaxation and Meditation.” Followed at 6 p.m. by “Mind and Mental Events.” Free.  

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Sylvia Gretchen on “Mind and Mental Events.” Free. 843-6812 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th  

Opening day for the new, family-oriented West Berkeley Market. 

Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 654-6346 

— compiled by Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole 

Waving the flag no simple matter for Asian Americans 

By Ling-Chi Wang 

Pacific News Service 

In May, Oregon Congressman David Wu – the nation’s first and only Asian American member of the House of Representatives – was invited to the U.S. Department of Energy to deliver a speech to Asian Americans in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. 

But he was stopped at the door by a security guard who asked – several times, the Congressman says – if he was an American. Wu offered his identity card showing he was a member of Congress. The guards still denied him entry. 

Eventually, a supervisor intervened and Wu and an aid were allowed to enter the building so that he could give his talk about Asian American community progress during the last 200 years. 

The Energy Department claims the question is asked of everyone entering, but Wu’s colleague, Congressman Michael E. Capuano, passed the door the next day by simply checking a box on a form. 

For most Chinese Americans, this was another illustration of how pervasive racial profiling has become, and how paranoid our government is in its dealing with any Chinese Americans. 

An outraged S.B. Woo, key founder of the 80/20 Initiative, a Chinese American political action committee, urged every Chinese American to buy an American flag and hang it out the window or display it in the front yard on July 4. 

S.B. Woo is a former lieutenant governor of Delaware and a professor of atomic and molecular physics. His deep admiration for American democracy gave him a vision of many thousands of Chinese homes festooned with American flags sending out the message that “we too are Americans.” 

But no sea of flags can uproot America’s deep racism against Chinese Americans. Professor Woo fails to recognize this. He should know that citizenship and loyalty don’t involve flag-waving or pledges of allegiance. They come from the exercise of our rights under the U.S. constitution. 

Flag-waving has particular significance for older Chinese Americans because, during the 1950s and 1960s, they were compelled to raise the flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan) on every ceremonial occasion to prove their loyalty to the U.S. Why? Because flying the ROC flag also signified their hatred of Taiwan and America’s then-number-one enemy, “Red China.” 

No amount of American flag raising will prevent what happened to Congressman David Wu – who may well wear an American flag pinned on his lapel, and has lots of flags in his offices in Washington, D.C. and in Portland. 

Only courageous actions, not words – definitely not flag-flying – will get us anywhere. Silence and meaningless gestures mean acceptance of second-class citizenship. 

Accused Los Alamos scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee also has an American flag in his home. That did not protect him from being subjected to judicial lynching instigated by the government and to nine months of cruel and unusual punishment. 

Nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires any American to raise a flag in order to establish citizenship or prove loyalty. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has steadfastly overturned the conviction of any American who burned the American flag as an act of protest. Burning of the American flag is an act of desecration and presumably, disloyalty, yet the court sees it as a legitimate expression of commitment to the Bill of Rights and patriotism. 

I am not advocating flag-burning, but I do not think people should hang their American flags on July 4. Both are legitimate exercises of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution. 

PNS Contributor Prof. Ling-Chi Wang is Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley. 

Oxford Street opponents of Beth El should have purchased property 

Editor: 

Regarding the letter “Good deeds” (7/3), the author must be laboring under the old prejudicial conundrum that all Jews are obscenely wealthy and their temples are lined with gold.  

I am not a member of temple Beth El, but I know many of their congregants and they are elderly and on fixed incomes. The younger members are struggling financially to provide their children with a good education.  

To ask the Temple to sell its newly acquired property to the City of Berkeley for $1 is ridiculous!  

The Temple must have already spent a small fortune to purchase the land and to do studies, drawings and engineering to protect the ecology of the land and to try to satisfy their new neighbors.  

On the other hand I have noticed hundreds of signs saying “Save Codornices Creek” and they are in front of typically expensive Berkeley hills homes. If each of these concerned home owners were to ante up a few hundred or more dollars, they could have easily purchased this choice property and kept the Temple “out of my backyard...any place but not in my backyard!”  

A. Broudy  

Berkeley

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648  

Lawrence Hall of Science “Science in Toyland,” through Sept. 9. Exhibit uses toys to demonstrate scientific principles and to help develop children's thinking processes. “Space Weather,” through Sept. 2. Learn about solar cycles, space weather, the cause of the Aurorae and recent discoveries made by leading astronomers. This interactive exhibit lets visitors access near real-time data from the Sun and space, view interactive videos and find out about a variety of solar activities. “Within the Human Brain,” ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning experiments. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 p.m. $7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4. 642-5132 

Berkeley Opera “Carmen” by Georges Bizet, Jonathan Khuner conducting, July 13 through July 22. Final production of the season. Russell Blackwood directs the opera which is sung in a new English adaptation by David Scott Marley. Special Family Matinee: “How an Opera is Put Together,” July 8, 2 p.m. $10 general; $5 children under 14. $30 general; $25 seniors; $15 youths and handicapped; $10 student rush. Friday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; July 14, 2 p.m.; July 22, 7 p.m. Julian Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave., Berkeley. (925) 798-1300, (510) 841-1903 or www.berkeleyopera.com 

Albatross Pub Music at 9 p.m. unless noted otherwise. July 5: Keni “El Lebrijano.” 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473  

Jupiter “Post Junk Trio” July 7: 8 p.m. “Beatdown with DJs Delon, Yamu, & ADD1” July 12, 19, 26: 8 p.m. Chilled-out downtempo beats and cutting-edge visual displays. “Ben Krames & Candlelight Dub” July 6: 8 p.m., “Salvation Air Force” July 11: 8 p.m., Sizzling “hard-acid-free-groove jazz” Enjoy beers and beats under the stars. www.jupiterbeer.com; or call the hotline: THE-ROCK (843-7625) 

Freight & Salvage July 6 and 7:Ferron $18.50; July 8: Ambuya Beauler Dyoko, Zimbabwean thumb piano (mbira) music $16.50; July 12: Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, Renegade Country $16.50; July 13: Jeremy Cohen's Violinjazz Vintage string swing $16.50; July 14: Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott, American roots music $18.50; July 15: Carol McComb, Sterling originals $17.50 Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 1111 Addison St. 548-1761 or 762-BASS or www.thefreight.org 

Ashkenaz July 6: 9:30 p.m., Ras Midas, Junior Jazz, Native Elements,Reggae. $11; July 7: 9:30 p.m., Kotoja, Dance lesson with Comfort at 9 p.m. Afro-beat. $11; July 10: 9 p.m., Anoush, The Kolevs, Balkan music with an 8 p.m. dance lesson by Steve Kotansky. $10; July 11: 9 p.m., Mz. Daa and Blues Alley, West Coast swing and blues with an 8 p.m. dance lesson by Nick and Shanna. $8; July 12: 9 p.m., Boubacar Traore, Delta blues, Mali-style with this string master. $12; July 13: 9:30 p.m., Tamazgha, Middle Eastern. $10; July 14: 9:30 p.m., Paul Pena, Zulu Exiles, Tuvan throat singing and township jive. $12.1317 San Pablo Ave 525-5099 www.ashkenaz.com 

924 Gilman St. July 7: The Stitches, Real Mackenzies, The Briefs, The Eddie Haskells, The Spits; July 13: Special Duties, Oppressed Logic, Violent Society, Zero Bullsh*t, Born Dead; July 14: Lonely Kings, Onetime Angels, Stay Gold, Thought Riot, Youth Gone Wild; July 15, 5 p.m.: Bobbyteens, Los Rabbis, Finky Binks, Off Balance, $5. Music at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

Rose Street House of Music July 13: 8 p.m. “Doria Roberts & Making Waves” Featuring special guest slam poet Aya de Leon. $8-20 donation. No one turned away for lack of funds. 

Live Oaks Concerts Berkeley Art Center, July 15: David Cheng, Marvin Sanders, Ari Hsu; July 27: Monica Norcia, Amy Likar, Jim Meredith. All shows at 7:30 unless otherwise noted Admission $10 (BACA members $8, students and seniors $9, children under 12 free) 

The Starry Plough Pub July 6: Deke Dickerson and The Eccofonics $8; July 7: Faun Fables, Majesty's Monkey $6; July 12: The Clumsy Lovers, Mad Hannan, $6; July 13: Drums and Tuba, Mega Mousse, $7; July 14: Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons, The John Shipe Band $7 

Sunday and Wednesday, 8 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9:45 p.m. unless otherwise noted. 3101 Shattuck Ave. 841-2082. 

Theater 

“Do You Hear What I Am Seeing?” July 5: 7:30 p.m. One man show by David Norris, a two-hour sampling of Joyce’s works with Norris’ insights. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” $10. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300 

“Passionate Words Passionate Moves” July 5: 8 p.m. Latin American dance and storytelling in Spanish. 

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046 

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822 

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

Exhibits 

“Watershed 2001” Through July 14, Wednesday - Sunday Noon - 5 p.m. Exhibition of painting, drawing, sculpture and installation that explore images and issues about our watershed. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

Rachel Davis and Benicia Gantner Works on Paper Through July 14, Tues. - Sat., 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Watercolors by Davis, mixed-media by Gantner. Opening reception June 13, 6 - 8 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth St. 527-1214 www.traywick.com 

Constitutional Shift Through July 13, Tuesdays - Fridays, noon - 5 p.m. Permanence and personal journey link Hee Jae Suh, Ursula Neubauer and Marci Tackett. Korean-born Suh explores an inner psychological world with a dramatic series of self-portraits. Neubauer explores self-portraiture as a travel map of identity with multiple points of view. Tackett explores Antarctica’s other-worldly landscape in a series of stunning digital photographs. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977 

“The Trip to Here: Paintings and Ghosts by Marty Brooks” Through July 31, Tues. - Sun. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m. View Brooks’ first California show at Bison Brewing Company 2598 Telegraph Ave. 841-7734  

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541 

“Musee des Hommages,” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” July 12 - August 18, Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Reception July 12 from 6 - 8 p.m. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through August 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541 

Images of Portugal Paintings by Sofia Berto Villas-Boas of her native land. Open after 5 p.m. Voulez-Vous 2930 College Ave. (at Elmwood) 

“Queens of Ethiopia: Intuitive Inspirations,” the exceptional art of Esete-Miriam A. Menkir. Through July 11. Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Ave. 548-9286 ext. 307 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 - 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

Readings 

Cody’s 7:30 p.m. July 9: Sheila Kohler reads “Children of Pithiviers”. Kohler is also the author of “Cracks”. $2 donation; July 10: 7:30 p.m. Mandy Aftel talks about her book, “Essence and Alchemy”. $2 donation; July 12: 7:30 p.m., Carol Muske-Dukes reads “Life After Death”; July 14: 7:30 p.m., Alexander Cockburn and John Strausbaugh discuss Cockburn’s book “Five Days That Shook the World” and Strausbaugh’s “Rock ‘Til You Drop” ; July 15: 7:30 p.m., Jimmy Santiago Baca discusses “A Place to Stand”; July 16: 7:30 p.m., “Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex” A panel discussion. Organizers and participants in the 1998 Berkeley conference Critical Resistance produced a special issue of the journal Social Justice, about the prison industrial complex.  

$2 donation. 2454 Telegraph Ave. 845-0837 

Cody’s 1730 Fourth St. July 12: 7 p.m., Debra Levi Holtz, “Of Unknown Origin”; July 13: 7 p.m., Joe Di Prisco reading “Confessions of Brother Eli”  

$2 donation. 559-9500 

Weekly Poetry Nitro Mondays 6:30 p.m. sign up, 7 - 9 p.m. reading. Performing poets in a dinner atmosphere. June 25: Featuring Steve Arntsen; July 2: Featured artist April Ipock. Cafe de la Paz 1600 Shattuck Ave. 843-0662 

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Berkeley City Club Tours 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. The fourth Sunday of every month, Noon - 4 p.m. $2 848-7800  

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

Dance 

Jupiter “Strictly Tango” July 10: 8 p.m. Dale Meyer heads up this ensemble as they perform original compositions and dance-style tangos. www.jupiterbeer.com or call the hotline: THE-ROCK (843-7625)

The Board of Education will consider a resolution to investigate the use of biodiesel fuel for its school buses tonight, at the last regular meeting before the board’s one month summer recess. 

Biodiesel fuel is made from vegetable oil and the recycled oil of deep fryers, like the kind McDonald’s uses for its French fries.  

Studies by the EPA have found that vehicles using biodiesel fuel emit up to 80 percent less pollution into the atmosphere than vehicles burning petroleum-based fuel. 

Berkeley’s 10 recycling trucks already run on 100 percent biodiesel fuel.  

School buses in Phoenix, Ariz., and Medford, N.J., have shifted to the fuel as well. 

The resolution on the school board’s agenda tonight calls for school district staff to report back to the board by October on the possible benefits of a shift to biodiesel fuel, and any financial implications. 

Also at tonight’s meeting, the board could vote to approve staff recommendations that call for a public hearing to be held in September to reexamine the district’s 2001-2002 budget.  

Citizen members of a board advisory committee are calling for the hearing, arguing that the district’s budget information was so disorganized in the days leading up to the budget’s passage that there may well be pools of money that were not properly accounted for. 

District staff argue in their recommendation to the board they will have all their final budget information in place by September, enabling them to give the board and the public a clear picture of any extra funds that may have become available.  

The hearing would give the public a chance to weigh in on how extra funds ought to be spent. 

A number of board members are on record saying they would move first to fund teaching positions cut from the high school this spring if funds become available. 

Other ideas floated by board members for where unexpected funds ought to be directed next year include: to increase the district’s custodial budget; to add one administrative position at Berkeley High; to restore two middle school safety officers who were terminated as part of this spring’s budget cuts; and to fund the creation of an Emergency Disaster Plan.

No self-respecting James Joyce scholar would fail to be in Dublin on June 16, 2004; but this year, anyway, Berkeley is the place to be. 

Joyce, the Irish novelist who probably changed the face of literature more than any other person this century, has something of  

a following.  

By setting his master-work, “Ulysses,” on June 16th, 1904 - an un-newsworthy day in Dublin when most everything happens in the minds of those you meet - Joyce revealed the everyday as epic poetry.  

As a result, the day’s a holiday. Called Bloomsday (after the protagonist of “Ulysses,” Leopold Bloom), it’s the day all the Joyceans will see the road rise up to meet them on their way to Dublin in 2004 for the centennial celebration and accompanying literary conference.  

But this year the Joyce conference, called “Extreme Joyce/ Reading on the Edge,” is in Berkeley. 

“We have people here from Uruguay, Germany, Spain, France, England, Ireland and all over the states. This conference occurs every year,” said UC Berkeley English professor, John Bishop, one of the conference organizers. “Every odd numbered year in North America, every even year in Europe, and it floats from city to city.  

“Last year it was in London, year before in Charleston, S.C., year before that in Rome, Bishop said. “So this is Berkeley’s turn to play host to all the people who play host to us.”  

The conference is taking place at UC Berkeley’s Clark Kerr campus throughout the week, and Tuesday night the program brought a number of performers to the Krutch Theater from the Bay Area and far beyond.  

Interwoven with some Irish singers performing the traditional ballads and limericks Joyce’s work is full of, the night was highlighted by a drama and a set of dramatic readings from Joyce’s work. 

The drama, performed by Rory Johnston’s Strolling Players, presented a collection of excerpts from Joyce’s last and most-difficult work, “Finnegans Wake.” 

“That ‘Finnegans Wake’ play was the West Coast premier of a play that was written by the Irish playwright, Denis Johnston,” Bishop said. “The director is the playwright’s son. It was kind of hard to follow if you don’t know Joyce’s work, so I wish it had been set up better.”  

The set of dramatic readings were entitled “Joyce’s Women.” They enlivened, with a welcome passion and sensuality, some of the richest passages in all of Joyce’s work. Performed by the Bay Area Bloomsday Players, a quartet of women who - transplants from Ireland, garbed in period dress - had brogues to accompany them.  

“(Grania Flanagan) did a good job of reading Molly (Bloom from ‘Ulysses,’) and that reminded me of what a strong feeling Joyce had for, let’s say, the physical actuality of a woman’s life,” said Sheldon Brivic, professor of English at Temple University and author of “Joyce’s Waking Women: An Introduction to Finnegans Wake.”  

“Even though (Joyce) was born in the 19th century and had certain old-fashioned attitudes,” Brivic said, “his attention to the psychological lives of women was very important. It influenced and impressed a lot of women at the time, (especially) women writers.” 

Some might wonder who comes to these things - if it’s just academics, or maybe just people with a stunning likeness to Joyce - but Bishop says there are others.  

“There’s many academics or people who are really devoted to Joyce, but there’s also a lot of lay people,” Bishop said, “who come regularly, who are unaffiliated with the schools at all. They may be into the arts, or just interested.”  

Of course, the term “lay people” begs comparison to a certain type of religious commitment, and the Joyceans don’t deny it. 

“(The Joyce Scholar) Fritz Senn said studying Joyce is a great substitute for life,” Brivic said with a grin. “I’ve been studying Joyce for 35 years. It’s something that engages, keeps you discovering new things. I’ve written four books on Joyce, and I’m doing something else right now, but I hope to get back to it.” 

Michael O’Shea, professor of English at Newberry College in South Carolina, perceived a distinct difference between students of Joyce and those who spend their time with other authors. 

“Of all the literary groups I’ve been involved with, this one seems able to retain a sense of enjoyment of literature,” O’Shea said. “The work is serious in the sense of being rigorous, methodical, thoroughly-researched and examined, but most of the people working with Joyce’s texts retain a sense of humor and retain the capacity to weave that humor into their work.” 

They look a little more ragged than they do on their respective campuses, where, wearing their collared-shirt uniforms, they stride absently between desks and podiums.  

This week they wear blue jeans, beat-up sneakers and conference t-shirts, shabbily tucked, which say things like “Extreme Joyceans” or “Unmitigated Joyce.” They look like kids with lollipops. Their candy – James Joyce.  

So is the Joyce conference the literary equivalent of a religious gathering, a world entered yearly by a group of devotees who find true community perhaps only with each other? 

“‘Ulysses’ is about two people who are alone, and they come together at the end and sit down and drink cocoa and talk,” Bishop said. “So I think Joyceans - just because they like the book - are drawn toward the value of communion and coming together. Everybody I know that comes to these things, or almost everybody, likes joke-telling and song-telling and nonsense and being a little off-color – the things that Joyce is.”  

He looked across the verandah of Krutch Theater to the staircase and the people milling out and off towards downtown and Beckett’s Irish Pub to rejoin the rest of the crowd.  

“We also have kind of a bash,” he said. 

Tonight: A two-hour, one-man show, sampling Joyce’s work along with commentary, performed by Trinity College Don and Joyce Scholar David Norris. Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Avenue Admission: $10. Call the box office at 925-798-1300 

WALNUT CREEK — State officials say they will attempt to shut down a pharmacy believed to be the source of cortisone shots tainted by meningitis that caused three deaths. 

The Attorney General’s Office filed a petition Tuesday alleging Doc’s Pharmacy in Walnut Creek used inadequate sterilization equipment and improperly used equipment, contributing to the May 11 contamination, the Contra Costa Times reported. 

Up to 38 people received the shots at two Contra Costa outpatient clinics.  

Of those, 13 were hospitalized following the injections, five of whom contracted meningitis, including the three that later died. Twenty-five other patients continue to be monitored and receive care. 

The petition alleges “gross negligence” by the pharmacy and its owner, Robert Horwitz. It says Horwitz did not supervise the technician who prepared the batch of shots and that she did not properly sterilize her hands. 

Horwitz is scheduled to appear before an administrative law judge in Oakland on Friday.  

Officials say they will seek to shut down the pharmacy and to suspend Horwitz’ pharmacy license until a hearing is held. 

“There has been a significant departure from the standard of care here that we believe poses an extreme threat to public health,” said Lloyd Paris, a deputy attorney general working on the case.

EL SEGUNDO — Aviation experts building a flying replica of the world’s first airplane have found the Wright stuff was a little wrong. 

Orville and Wilbur Wright made four brief flights Dec. 17, 1903, marking the first time a manned, heavier-than-air plane sustained powered flight. That same day, a gust of wind mangled their handmade aircraft and it never flew again. 

Now, new research on the 1903 Flyer – including by Air Force test pilots who flew a jet modified to behave like the original plane – shows the beginnings of aviation could well have meant the death of the Wrights that winter day. 

“I’d say it was almost a miracle they were able to fly it,” said Jack Cherne, a TRW Inc. engineer who is chairman of the Wright Flyer Project, sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

The group is one of at least three nationwide that aim to complete flying reproductions in time for the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flights near Kitty Hawk, N.C. 

None, however, has accumulated the wealth of data that the AIAA group has on the 1903 Flyer, which was later reconstructed and is now on display at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

“It’s like balancing a yardstick on one finger, two at one time. If you lose it, it goes – quickly,” said Fred Culick, a professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology who is first in line to pilot the plane. 

The exercise also humbled Air Force test pilots, each with hundreds of hours of experience flying the world’s most advanced aircraft, when they recently tried their hands at the stick. 

“Every pilot, his first try, crashed the simulator. It took less than a second. That’s how quickly it gets away from you,” said Capt. Tim Jorris, one of a small group of pilots at Edwards Air Force Base who took turns flying the simulator as part of a senior project. 

The pilots eventually took to the skies in a Learjet 24D programmed to fly like the original Flyer. Most had to rely on a computer-assisted stability augmentation system to keep the business jet aloft. 

“I thoroughly cannot imagine the Wright brothers, having very little experience in powered aircraft, getting this airborne and flying,” said Major Mike Jansen. “My respect for what they did went up immediately the first time I took the controls.” 

As the project’s members begin work on the replica they intend to fly, perhaps as early as next summer, they are tweaking the Wrights’ original design to improve the plane’s performance. 

Modifications will include changes to the plane’s airfoil, or shape of its wings, and its canard, which will boost its stability in the crucial pitch axis. A more powerful Volkswagen engine will drive the twin propellers. And a computer feedback system will assist the pilot in keeping the plane aloft. 

The “stand-off” replica will ultimately seem virtually identical to the original to the casual observer. 

“The only point to this is to give the public the impression of the first flight — repeatedly and safely,” Culick said. 

Ken Hyde, a retired American Airlines pilot who is spearheading his own effort to complete a flying reproduction, said straying from the original design defeats the purpose of honoring the Wrights. 

Hyde said his The Wright Experience flyer would change nothing from the original design, except the quality of some materials. He hopes to learn to fly the airplane — while tethered in a Virginia wind tunnel — before attempting to leave the ground. 

“What is the purpose of changing the airplane in the first place? You’re not going to learn their secrets of how they were able to develop flight in such a short time,” Hyde said. “It’s certainly not a tribute to them; it’s a tribute to us today.” 

Members of the AIAA group said their effort balances authenticity with safety. 

“We want the experience, but we don’t want to kill ourselves,” said Cherne, who worked on the Apollo moon missions. 

——— 

On the Net: http://www.wrightflyer.org 

OPEC’s decision not to increase oil output beyond current levels offered little to cheer consumers, but some energy analysts suggested that motorists and buyers of home heating oil might still benefit if Iraq moves quickly to resume its crude exports. 

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed Tuesday to stick with its existing production quotas and to meet again in September to review market conditions at that time. 

The cartel braced for softer crude prices as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein showed a willingness to resume the oil shipments he suspended a month ago in a dispute with the United Nations. 

“Maybe Saddam has done the American consumer a favor,” said Peter Gignoux, head of the petroleum desk at Salomon Smith Barney in London.  

“I guess the consumer comes out the winner in this because prices will come down.” 

The head of Iraq’s OPEC delegation, Saddam Hassan, told reporters earlier that Baghdad was prepared to renew its daily exports of 2.1 million barrels of oil “within a week” – if the U.N Security Council extends the oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq without any reference to a proposal to overhaul sanctions. 

Iraq had vigorously objected to the U.S.-backed British proposal. In the face of Russian opposition, Britain abandoned the plan in favor of a simple rollover of the oil-for-food program now in effect. 

On Tuesday, the Security Council voted to extend by five months the oil-for-food program, which allows Baghdad to sell unlimited amounts of oil provided revenues are used to buy food, medicine and other essentials. 

Afterward, Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri declined to say whether Baghdad will accept the extension and resume its oil exports.  

He said a reference in Tuesday’s resolution to a prior June 1 resolution, which refers to the U.S.-British plan, “is unacceptable in principle.” 

OPEC president Chakib Khelil told a news conference that a resumption in Iraqi exports might have a short-term “psychological” impact on oil markets but added that OPEC expected prices to stabilize later in July and August whether or not Iraq comes back to market. 

“There was a complete consensus on not increasing production at this stage,” he said after the OPEC meeting. 

OPEC pumps about two-fifths of the world’s oil, with an official production of 24.2 million barrels a day. 

Several oil ministers played down Iraq’s potential impact on prices. 

“It’s just another source of supply and we have said we will handle either shortage or glut in the market,” Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi told reporters just before the meeting. Saudi Arabia is OPEC’s biggest producer. 

Naimi foresaw an increase in seasonal demand for crude as refiners begin processing heating oil for sale this winter. 

“We will probably see (inventory) withdrawals in the next few months,” he said. 

Mehdi Varzi, senior energy consultant at London-based investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, agreed that oil prices were unlikely to collapse if Iraq restores the exports it suspended on June 4. 

He said, “I don’t see why prices should spike, unless there’s a rebound in the world economy.” 

OPEC delegates plan to meet again Sept. 26 to review market conditions at that time.  

A possible decrease in demand due to the slowing U.S. economy and a downturn in growth in Europe was “our main concern,” OPEC Secretary-general Ali Rodriguez told the news conference. 

Leo Drollas, chief economist at the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies, warned that the rising demand for heating oil was sure to push up crude prices in the fall and winter. 

“The U.S. is out of the woods as far as gasoline is concerned, but in Asia and Europe, the demand for oil is starting to build up again,” Drollas said.

GENEVA — After 15 years of knocking at the door of the World Trade Organization, China is finally on the verge of entering the global trade forum. 

Officials said Wednesday that after six days of talks at WTO headquarters, just about every aspect of terms of membership was settled, clearing the way for China to join the Geneva-based body soon. 

“This meeting has resulted in a major breakthrough in all the issues regarding China’s accession,” said Pierre-Louis Girard, the Swiss diplomat chairing the talks. 

“As a result of this development I think we can with some confidence envisage a wrapping up of this process, which has lasted now for 15 years, in what I hope will be the very near future,” he said. 

Chinese chief negotiator Long Yongtu said he would stay in Geneva until the next round of talks, scheduled July 16, to speed things along. 

The hope is that China’s entry into the WTO can be officially endorsed at November’s ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, to add gloss to what are otherwise likely to be tricky discussions on whether to launch a new round of trade talks following the collapse of the Seattle conference in 1999. 

Under this scenario, China would become a full member early next year. 

“After going through this long negotiation process we know it is still not time for celebration, and there is still a lot of work before us,” said Long. 

However, Girard listed a whole series of areas where agreement had been reached, including patents and other intellectual property rights; subsidies; agriculture and antidumping measures. 

One of the outstanding arguments over agriculture was apparently resolved Wednesday, relating to concern felt by developing countries about a U.S.-Chinese deal on agricultural subsidies. 

Under WTO rules, developing countries have the right to subsidize 10 percent of agricultural output, but Washington refused to accept that figure for China. The two nations finally agreed on 8.5 percent. 

India, South Korea and Malaysia were concerned that this may set a precedent, and might even prompt the United States to demand stricter subsidy terms for developing countries across the board in the future. 

They therefore insisted that the final WTO agreement must contain a sentence stating that the U.S.-China bilateral deal does not set a precedent. Washington rejected this. 

Girard refused to elaborate on the nature of the compromise. But he said that the wording of the WTO text would make it clear that the agricultural subsidy commitments “are solely those of China and will not prejudice developing countries existing rights or future negotiations.” 

The biggest remaining problem to finalizing the Chinese terms of entry appeared to be over what constitutes a “branch” of a company — an issue linked to U.S. insurance giant AIG. 

Under the membership agreement, new companies entering the life insurance market in China must have 50 percent Chinese ownership. 

AIG claims that it is exempt from this because it is already doing business in China. It is not clear whether a new AIG office would be a branch of the head office or would constitute a new company — in which case the 50 percent ownership rule would apply. 

The issue has caused strife between the United States and the European Union, which insists that the same rules must apply to all insurance companies. EU companies operating in China are joint ventures, with a high level of Chinese ownership. 

Beyond the WTO-wide talks, China is still trying to settle a bilateral deal with Mexico. That also may hold up the process as other nations wait to see the details of the Mexican agreement. 

Other countries waiting to join the 141-nation WTO include Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. 

———— 

On the net: 

World Trade Organization — http://www.wto.org 

“Discretionary” money is a rare bird these days in the jungle of school finances. 

As the Berkeley Unified School District’s budget continues to shrink, central office staffers are doing all they can to pull in new state and federal grants to bolster the funding at various school sites. 

In some cases schools are entitled to state and federal money – based on enrollment and income levels – that comes earmarked for specific programs. In other cases, the district must file a competitive application, describing in minute detail what it plans to do with funds, and then wait with fingers crossed as the first day of school looms larger and larger on the horizon. 

But what about money for those ideas that teachers hatch over the summer? What about money for a “Classroom Publishing Center,” so students can truly grasp the power of the written word; or a few hundred dollars for a sculpture class that exposes students to an entirely different form of expression. 

How about field trips to Aquatic Park, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, or the public library? How about $50,000 to support an unprecedented, community-driven effort to help failing high school freshman get back on track? 

Money for these kinds of things very likely would not exist if it were not for the Berkeley Public Education Foundation. 

The foundation was founded in 1983, just five years after Proposition 13 capped local property taxes, leaving parents and others to watch in despair as local school funding dried up. 

“If you think the (school) board meetings are tough today, they were pretty horrendous (in the early ’80s),” said Berkeley Public Education Foundation Executive Director Mary Friedman. 

Friedman witnessed the change as her three children passed through Emerson elementary school from 1973 to up until 1986. At the beginning of the period, Friedman said, “It was how a school is supposed to be.” There was art and music instruction twice a week for every class. There was a nurse and a P.E. specialist and more.  

By the mid-’80s, all of it had fallen victim to budget cuts. 

Friedman and a number of her friends got so fed up with watching the school board approve cut after cut that they decided to form the Berkeley Public Education Foundation.  

Although former school board member Steve Lustig helped spearhead the movement to launch the foundation, the level of public discontent with the school board ran so high at the time that Friedman et al decided to keep the foundation completely separate from the board. Its mission was to give direct support to Berkeley’s public school teachers, and show them how much they were appreciated by the community. 

In its first few years, the foundation was a modest affair. In the 1984-85 school year it gave away $6,684 to help schools buy extra books and begin to build “school gardens.” The following year the number doubled to $13,298, with the money going again towards books, maps and extra science equipment. 

For contributions, Friedman used any list she could get her hands on: lists of neighborhood residents; lists of parents at certain schools; lists of parents associated with particular sports teams. For an office, she used her dining room table. 

“It was very primitive,” Friedman said. 

But the money poured in at an increasing rate. The wake of Proposition 13 was so devastating, Friedman said, that all through the eighties there was a heightened awareness about the need to direct more money back into schools, in any way possible. When the state government gave a tax rebate in 1988, for example, the foundation raised $120,000 by asking people to hand their rebate checks over to the foundation. 

All around the state, “Local Education Foundations” like the Berkeley Public Education Foundation were popping up, giving the communities a way to come together and lend support to schools, whether financial or otherwise. 

“You had programs being cut that people really thought were important and were counting on,” said Susan Sweney, executive director of the California Consortium of Education Foundations. 

“Most of the foundations (there are over 400 in California today) got started with something being cut, or (people) wanting to do some creative, innovative things that they couldn’t do,” Sweney added. 

As the Berkeley Public Education Foundation grew, it took on a leadership role around issues of education in the community. When it looked like the district would have to go a year with no music program at all in the mid-’90s (until new funding kicked in through the Berkeley Educational Excellence Project (BSEP) parcel tax), the foundation raised $300,000 in six months and presented it to the school board. The program was saved. 

“That’s the best kind of campaign,” Friedman recalled with evident pride. “When you’re just looking at bridge funding.” 

A few years later, the foundation launched a campaign to raise the money needed to fully fund the district’s ambitious plans for the new Rosa Parks school, created through months of meetings and consultation with the people living in the neighborhood around the school.  

Before becoming involved in a project, Friedman said, “We need to see that the people who are going to benefit most directly are really committed.” 

Tapping foundations, businesses and individual donors, the Berkeley Public Education Foundation was able to raise the $1.1 million needed to move forward with the construction of Rosa Parks. 

The foundation has helped with other spontaneous fund raising campaigns over the years. It has grown from a organization of concerned outsiders to an organization that partners closely with the school board and even has an office in the district’s central administrative building. 

And all the while the foundation has continued to pump discretionary funding to Berkeley teachers, one at a time, for everything from Winter Mountaineering lessons, to a lesson meditating on “African Oral Tradition & Walt Disney.”  

In the 2000-2001 school year, the Berkeley Public Education Foundation contributed $717,209 in classroom grants, money for the Longfellow Theater remodeling, and money for the Berkeley High Health Center.  

The dollar amounts may not be staggering, but the base of community support that the foundation represents for school initiatives is invaluable, according to Sweney. 

“Really it isn’t a lot of money,” Sweney said. “What it is, is money that has no strings on it. It’s discretionary. That’s what makes it very powerful. 

“It’s money that allows a community to do something that they think is very important.”

Tuesday, July 3

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a weeklong conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panel on Finnegans Wake as well as looking at issues such as Joyce and carnality, computers, border-crossings, and cinema. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce.  

$15 - $25. 642-2754  

Landmarks Preservation Commission 

4 p.m. 

Civic Center Park 

MLK Jr. Way and Center Street 

Review of the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Repair and Rehabilitation of Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. 

705-8111 or 644-6915 (TDD) 

Wednesday, July 4 

Ice Cream Social 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Bring your own picnic, ice cream provided by LHS. Free museum admission today with a library card, regular admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132  

4th of July at the  

Berkeley Marina 

Noon - 10 p.m. 

Families are invited to picnic on international food, hit the beach, take free sailboat rides, get their faces painted or relax with a massage. People can decorate their bikes at the Shorebird Nature Center and participate in the Decorated Bicycle Parade at 7 p.m. Madame Ovary’s egg puppets will perform and Adventure Playground will be open all day. Wacky Art Cars will be on display. Music begins at 2 p.m. with Zambombazo 2; Bird Legg and the Tite Fit Blues Band come on at 5 p.m.; Kollasuyo it at 7 p.m. and MotorDude Zydeco’s at 9 p.m. Fireworks at 9:30 p.m. Cars in by 7 p.m. when street closes to traffic, out only after 10 p.m. Free admission. No alcohol. Sponsored by the city. 548-5335 

Thursday, July 5

Public Works Commission 

7 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. 

Discussion and possible action regarding adoption of a new street-sweeping policy. 

Housing Advisory Commission 

7:30 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis St. 

The Rental Housing Safety Program will be among the items under discussion. 

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week Capoeira Arts Cafe and company, Brazilian extravaganza. 

LGBT Catholics Group  

7:30 p.m. 

Newman Hall  

2700 Dwight Way (at College)  

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This meetings discussions will center on “What do we/can we expect from the Church?” 654-5486 

Berkeley Metaphysical  

Toastmasters Club  

6:15 - 7:30 p.m.  

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month. Call 869-2547 

Bear Safety 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Learn how to travel in bear country without mishap. Wilderness guide Ken Hanley will discuss the characteristics of black bears and grizzlies for anyone venturing into their territories. Free. 

527-4140 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Dubliners, Ulysses, Marginal Feelings in Joyce, and Joyce and Anarchy. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 642-2754  

Community Environmental  

Advisory Commission 

7 p.m. 

2118 Milvia Street 

First floor conference room 

Among agenda items, a follow up on arsenic in playgrounds and the California Environmental Quality Act and Skate Park tank enforcement. 

705-8150 or 644-6915 (TDD) 

Friday, July 6

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women: The Arts,  

Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave.  

Taught by Helen Rippier Wheeler, this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Today, view the 1939 movie “The Women.” Free. Call 549-2970 

James Joyce Conferenc 

9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, Ireland and the Politics of Culture, Joycean Border-Crossings, and Joyce and Frank Zappa. $15 - $25.  

642-2754 

James Joyce Conference  

Closing Banquet 

6 - 11 p.m. 

UC Faculty Club 

UC Berkeley Campus 

Joycean entertainment and dancing. Reservations required, call 415-392-1137. 

Homage to Chiapas 

7 p.m. 

Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Avenue 

Bill Weinberg, author of “Homage to Chiapas.” 

548-2220 

Saturday, July 7  

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit sailing and windsurfing cooperative, give free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333 

Sunday, July 8 

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit sailing and windsurfing cooperative, give free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

Tibetan Nyingma Institute Open House 

3 - 5 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Free introduction to Tibetan Buddhist culture, including: Prayer wheel and meditation garden tour, Tibetan yoga demonstration, information on Tibetan art project, class and program counseling and a talk on “Relaxation and Meditation.” Followed at 6 p.m. by “Mind and Mental Events.” Free.  

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Sylvia Gretchen on “Mind and Mental Events.” Free. 

843-6812 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th  

Opening day for the new, family-oriented West Berkeley Market. 

Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Monday, July 9 

Draft Environmental  

Impact Report for UC Berkeley Northeast Quadrant project 

7 - 8:30 p.m. 

105 North Gate Hall 

UC Berkeley 

Public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Northeast Quadrant Science and Safety Projects, which will replace old, seismically poor research facilities with modern, safe structures. 

642-7720 

Tuesday, July 10 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Wednesday, July 11 

What’s Cooking? 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Fun experiments you can do in your own kitchen. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

“Global Banquet”  

7:30 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Part of the Anti-Globalization series. Tonight a presentation of “Global Banquet,” a look at farmers both local and in developing countries trying to survive in the global economy. Discussion led by Anuradha Mittal. Small donation requested. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Thursday, July 12 

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week East Bay Science and Arts Middle School evoke the sounds of Trinidadian Carnival with a steel drum performance. 

(gp) 

Hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Slide Presentation. 

Twenty years in the making, the 150-mile Tahoe Rim Trail is now complete. Tahoe Rim Trail Association board member Trena Bristol joins TRT through-hikers Steve Andersen and Art Presser for a slide presentation on great day hikes and backpacking trips on the TRT. Free. 

527-4140 

(gp) 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Remediation of Under Prescribing  

Pain Medication 

5:30 - 7:30 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1902 Hearst Avenue 

A public hearing on AB 487, Remediation of Under Prescribing Pain Medication, with Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, medical experts, and patients. 

540-3660 

art.SITES SPAIN 

7:30 p.m. 

Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore 

1385 Shattuck Avenue 

Sidra Stitch, author of “art.SITES SPAIN: Contemporary Art and Architecture Handbook,” will present a slide show and talk on the most recent trends in art and architecture in Spain. Free. 

843-3533 

Friday, July 13 

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women; The Arts, Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Free.  

Call 549-2970 

Saturday, July 14 

Sunday, July 15 

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn drive train maintenance and chain repair from one of REI’s bike technicians. All you need to bring is your bike. Free  

527-4140 

Buddhist Practice 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Mark Henderson on “Fearlessness on the Bodhisattva Path.” Free. 

843-6812 

(gp) 

Second Annual Wobbly High Mass 

7:30 p.m. 

La Pena Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck (@ Prince St.) 

Presented by Folk This! and friends, an evening of musical satire, subversion and sacrilege. This year’s theme is “Reclaiming Tomorrow,” a historical journey toward a future society without classes or bosses. 

$8 

849-2568 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Monday, July 16 

Tuesday, July 17 

Intelligent Conversation  

7 - 9 p.m.  

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center 

A discussion group open to all, regardless of age, religion, viewpoint, etc. This time the discussion will center on best vacations, trips, and travel experiences. Informally led by Robert Berend, who founded similar groups in L.A., Menlo Park, and Prague. Bring light snacks/drinks to share. Free  

527-5332 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Berkeley School Volunteers 

10:30 a.m. - noon 

1835 Allston Way 

Orientation for volunteers interested in helping in academic and recreation programs being held in Berkeley public schools this summer. 

644-8833 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

(gp) 

Wednesday, July 18 

Blisters No More: Finding the Proper Boot Fit 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

REI footwear expert Brad Bostrom will show you how to make your feet more comfortable out on the trail. Bring your boots and socks to this interactive clinic. Free. 

527-4140 

(gp) 

Berkeley Communicator Toastmasters Club 

7:15 a.m. 

Vault Cafe 

3250 Adeline 

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month. 

527-2337 

Ice Cream Day at LHS 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Make your own ice cream and compare it to a commercial brand. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

(gp) 

Support Group for Family/Friends  

Caring for Older Adults 

4 - 5:30 p.m. - 3rd Wednesday of each month 

Alta Bates Medical Center  

Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

3rd floor, Room 3369B (elevator - B) 

The group will focus on the needs of the older adult with serious medical problems, psychiatric illnesses, substance abuse, and their caregivers. Facilitated by Monica Nowakowski, LCSW. 

Free. For more information call 802-1725 

Thursday, July 19  

LGBT Catholics Group  

7:30 p.m. 

Newman Hall  

2700 Dwight Way (at College)  

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This meeting will be a game night.  

654-5486 

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week The Waikiki Steel Works perform vintage acoustic Hawaiian steel guitar music. 

Berkeley Metaphysical Toastmasters Club  

6:15 - 7:30 p.m.  

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month.  

Call 869-2547 

(gp) 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

(gp) 

Backpacking Yosemite’s High Country 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Slide Presentation. 

Marvin Schinnerer will share highlights from two favorite trips out of Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows. Free. 

527-4140 

Berkeley School Volunteers 

3 - 4:30 p.m. 

1835 Allston Way 

Orientation for volunteers interested in helping in academic and recreation programs being held in Berkeley public schools this summer. 

644-8833 

Friday, July 20  

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women; The Arts, Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Free. 

Call 549-2970 

Saturday, July 21 

(gp) 

Ohtani Bazaar 

4 p.m. - 9 p.m. 

Berkeley Higashi Honganji Temple 

1524 Oregon Street 

Games, prizes and activities for children. Japanese food will be available. Free admission. 

236-2550 

Sunday, July 22 

(gp) 

Ohtani Bazaar 

Noon - 7 p.m. 

Berkeley Higashi Honganji Temple 

1524 Oregon Street 

Games, prizes and activities for children. Japanese food will be available. Free admission. 

236-2550 

Buddhist Practice 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Jack Petranker on “Going Beyond the Way We Live Now.” Free. 

843-6812 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Tuesday, July 24 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Round-the-World Journey 

7:30 p.m. 

Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore 

1385 Shattuck Avenue 

Brad Newsham, author of “Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home,” will present a talk and slide show. Newsham took a 100-day trip through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa looking for a stranger to bring to America. Free. 

843-3533 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Wednesday, July 25 

Toymaker Day 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Make toys out of recycled materials with artists from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. Museum admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132 

Thursday, July 26 

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week The Brazilian Workshop under the direction of Marcos Silva, Jazzschool students perform traditional Brazilian music. 

(gp) 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

(gp) 

Wilderness First Aid 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Jim Morrisey, senior instructor at Wilderness Medical Associates, will teach you the basics of field repair for the human body: Blisters, wounds, fractures, lightning strikes, snake bites and more. Free. 

527-4140 

(gp) 

Ancient Native Sites of the East Bay 

7:30 p.m. 

Room 160 Kroeber Hall, University of California Campus 

Andrew Galvan, an Ohlone Indian and co-owner of Archaeor, will discuss and share the benefits of osteological studies of prehistoric human skeletal remains. Prof. Ed Luby, research archaeologist for the Berkeley Natural History Museums, will discuss his work on mortuary feasting practices. $10 

841-2242 

Southeast Asia and Japan 

7:30 p.m. 

Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore 

1385 Shattuck Avenue 

William Ford, author of “Southeast Asia and Japan: Unusual Travel,” will present a talk and slide show of his adventure travels. Free. 

843-3533 

Return of the Zapatour 

7 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Members of the Chiapas Support Committee report on their trip to Chiapas, including slides and videos. $8 - $15. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org 

Friday, July 27  

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women; The Arts, Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Free. 

Call 549-2970 

Saturday, July 28 

Sunday, July 29 

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics  

11 a.m. - Noon  

Recreational Equipment, Inc.  

1338 San Pablo Ave.  

Learn how to adjust your brakes from one of REI’s bike technicians. All you need to bring is your bike. Free  

527-4140 

Buddhist Teacher 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Eva Casey on “The Life of Padmasambhava.” Free. 

843-6812 

West Berkeley Market 

11 a.m. - 5 p.m. 

University Ave., between 3rd and 4th Streets  

Family-oriented weekly market. Crafts, music, produce, and specialty foods. 

654-6346 

Tuesday, July 31 

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

Wild Women Travel Writers 

7:30 p.m. 

Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore 

1385 Shattuck Avenue 

An evening with members of the Wild Women Travel Writers’ Group, authors of “Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel,” will read from their book and conduct a panel discussion on the “Art of Travel Writing.” Free. 

843-3533 

Writing and Resistance  

In A Culture of Amnesia 

6 - 7:45 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center 

3105 Shattuck Avenue 

Classroom #2 

Part of a workshop series on concepts and strategies for resistance through the spoken and written word, taught by Joyce E. Young. $12. 

849-2568 www.lapena.org

Throw the rascals out; vote third party in 

Editor: 

It seems that none of the state legislators who voted for deregulation of the power industry will be running for re-election. So how are we going to turn the rascals out? 

Simple. Just remember that all the politicians who got us into this mess were members of either the pro-business Republican Party or the pro-business Democratic Party. If we can’t vote against individual rascals, we can vote against the two parties who joined hands to perpetrate this outrage. 

But since you can only vote against someone by voting for someone else, we need to have a party on the ballot that is not responsible for the current energy mess. 

The Peace and Freedom Party is close to having enough voters registered as its supporters to regain its ballot status.  

Voter registrars are reporting a big swing in registrations away from the two major parties and into the independent category. But the “Declines to State” classification will not be putting any candidates on the ballot. 

So at this point, a very useful step towards resolving the energy crisis might be to switch our registrations, to get the Peace and Freedom Party back on the ballot. 

Marion Syrek 

Oakland 

Look behind headlines to understand Oklahoma City 

Editor: 

There is a similarity and a difference between the children killed at Waco and the ones killed at Oklahoma City. The similarity is that none of the children deserved to die; the difference is that one of the groups of children was killed by U.S. government agents who are paid by our federal tax dollars. 

While outraged letter writers use the words “monster” or “the devil” to describe McVeigh, you’ll notice none of them used the words “crazy” or “insane” since anyone who saw McVeigh on TV knew these terms didn’t apply. 

I grew up in western New York and attended the same business school as McVeigh (although I had graduated before he was born), served in the U.S. Army overseas (he during the Gulf War era, myself during the Vietnam War era) and am labeled an “Urban Terrorist” by the Feds for my participation and frequent arrests and jail terms for non-violent civil disobedience protesting nuclear weapons and nuclear power. 

What the U.S. media focused on was “what” happened at Oklahoma City rather than “why” it happened.  

My point being that while I don’t condone killing children at Waco or Oklahoma City, I can understand why the former led to the latter. 

Joe Kempkes 

Oakland 

Editor:  

In the true tradition of good works, Beth El should sell the Codornces creek area of its Oxford property to the city for a dollar, and Beth El should scale back the size of its project. This would update Beth El good works to present day living conditions. 

Timely good works today in Berkeley include creek opening and actions to minimize projects that use lots of automobiles - those global warmers and polluters.  

The Beth El help for after school programs and for the elderly are certainly admirable. But the historic tradition of good works includes many instances wherein a doer cites such things as helping the elderly, when the doer would be more relevant to the spirit of good works by taking on a different issue.  

In South Africa of some 15 years ago, for instance, the government touted its wonderful social welfare system for elders.  

The government talked a lot about its help to the elderly.  

But what was needed 15 years ago was good works to change the South African government so that black as well as white seniors in South Africa received the good works.  

It is hoped that Beth El will seize the moment and join forces with others engaged in Berkeley's updated good works, such as opening the creeks.  

Ted Vincent 

Berkeley

The residents of the 19th century Victorian at 1545 Dwight Way would be the first to admit how spacious and attractive their front porch is, but they tend not to sit out on it too much. 

They know what they like about it: the pleasant breeze, the late afternoon and its fade to the colors of twilight. But they want to keep the neighbors at ease and avoid any mistaken ideas. 

“The stigma’s still there,” Tim Falke said. “It would be, ‘Well, they’re just a bunch of drug addicts hanging out on the porch.’ 

“Until I became one, I was saying the same thing. And at the same time I was saying that, I was addicted and I couldn’t quit.” 

Falke is a recovering, prescription-drug addict, and the Dwight Way house, a clean and sober home, is owned, run and under continued renovation by a non-profit organization called STEPS (Sobriety Through Education and Peer Support). 

After completing treatment for drug addiction at a program in Oakland, Falke learned about the STEPS house and thought the peer support there would help his recovery.  

But the name STEPS also stands, in a way, at least, for Gary Ferguson, who founded it. A recovering addict, Ferguson lives in the house and is its community director. 

“There were six people here when we started,” Ferguson said. “Currently there are 15 people, and eight available beds.” 

But before the move-in could even happen in April 2000, Ferguson and others had their work cut out  

for them. 

“This place was filthy,” Ferguson said. “Me and three other board members came in and just did a bunch of stuff.” Then (the non-profit organization) Christmas in April came in and worked on the house. 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson attended the open house STEPS hosted last month, and said he liked what he saw. 

“Many of the programs in the county that offer assistance to individuals with alcohol and drug addictions have been started by grassroots individuals who have themselves gone through some of these challenges,” Carson said in a telephone interview Monday.  

“I’ve known Gary for a long time, and he’s going about all these things the right way.” 

Ferguson explained that there had been some misunderstandings about the kind of house it was when the project was first announced. 

“These are the same people that say they’re liberals, and that’s why they came to Berkeley. But when healthcare comes, and this is healthcare,” he said, pointing down to the floor of the kitchen. “When the reality of healthcare comes, they say, ‘Oh, no, what is this a halfway house?’  

“It’s not a halfway house,” Ferguson said, “and that needs to be made clear. It’s a clean-and-sober house for people who choose to live in a clean and sober environment so they can repair some of the things that have happened in their lives.” 

While it’s not a halfway house, rules are strict. Residents must attend two meetings each week and there is random drug testing. If a resident fails, he can reapply once for readmission after an absence of 30 days, Ferguson said. 

Ferguson, like Falke, says he feels no hostility toward the members of the community. He saw very clearly why misconceptions occur. 

“What I can do for that man is show him, through my life, that I have changed,” Ferguson said. “That I have made other choices, that I am an asset to this community, and that I deserve a place in this community just like he does.”  

Ferguson laughed, relating how one neighbor, seeing all the volunteers working to bring the house together, had had a change of heart. 

“He said, ‘Anybody that’s got that many kinds of people helping them work on their house can’t be all that bad, but we got our eye on you.’ And he smiled.” 

Carson said he hoped that the community even more. 

“If there are private organizations like Christmas in April to help them further improve the facility,” Carson said, “that would go a long way towards creating the right kind of environment. 

“They need an environment that doesn’t take them away from the community, and that gives them support and helps them remain productive people,” Carson said. “We need to identify different segments of the community to work as a board, who could help bring resources to this facility.”  

Like any good program director, Ferguson expressed, in his own genial way, the types of assistance the house is still in need of.  

“There’s a bathroom area that needs to be redone,” Ferguson said. “There’s some electrical work that needs to be done as well. 

“We’re asking for carpenters, plumbers, all people of trades to come and help us restore this house to its original beauty so it can change and become beautiful just like the people who are changing inside of it.” 

Bedroom furniture, garden equipment, the needs are plenty. But Ferguson is confident. 

“I’m hoping people (will see us) and say, ‘You know what, man, those people are really trying, not just talking about it. They’re doing their part.’  

“STEPS is doing its part, so I’m hoping we can get people to come and help,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”  

STEPS can be reached at 540-5459.

Berkeley Lite’s an occasional column of commentary, illuminating those who’d like to shine us on.  

You’ve seen these commercials on TV. 

Oh, come on, even YOU turn the tube on sometimes. 

There’s this woman from Philip Morris grinning in a helicopter (not a hair out of place, dare I say) as she delivers supplies to (well-dressed) war-ravaged refugees - some smokes, too, I’d wager. Think the ad’ll make us forget loved ones lost to lung cancer?  

Good deeds. There’s the wealthy landlord Reddy, importer of underage girls for his (and allegedly his sons’) sexual greed. The judge took the man’s good works – seems he had a school built in his home town in India – into account when handing down the sentence.  

Charity. Also makes me think of that check-cashing company purchase of 100 dictionaries for Franklin Microsociety School in west Berkeley, an area from which most real banks have long-since fled. Hope the microcity school teaches the young’uns to calculate the interest these places charge. 

Another grammar school lesson: When you put scrawny trees out in the street, some SUV’s gonna clobber them. 

Doesn’t take a scientific genius to figure that out. Well, surprise, a couple of the ah, immature trees – red sunset maples (which will grow up in a quarter of a century) stuck out in the street on University Ave. got knocked over. Our Measure S dollars at work – right?  

All that work building little islands for trees that will be run over and still, the nearby intersection at Shattuck and University avenues remains un-reengineered and dangerous as ever. 

On the brighter side of lite. 

That judge in the Reddy case who knocked time off for “charitable” behavior, also added jail time for the severity of the man’s misdeeds. This part of the ruling actually gave me faith (me of little of that stuff) to see a Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong stand up to the prosecution and defense, which had suddenly become a team- imagine the Giants holding hands with the Dodgers. The guys had struck a deal, a plea bargain in lawyer-babble. The judge, however, said the prosecution-defense agreement failed to take full account the girls’ trauma and Reddy’s attempt to shut witnesses up. Would a male judge have done the same? Hope so. 

In another justice story, remember the local cops who were giving out lattes to people who – mon dieu – obeyed the speed laws. 

Well, I’ve got a better one. How ’bout us simple citizens giving lattes or something to Berkeley’s finest who do 25 in the 25-mile zones posted on our main streets. Ever seen a cop doing 25 on Dwight Way, Ashby or Sacramento? Give him (or her) a latte.  

Or a voucher to the City Hall Cafe. 

That’s the now-empty room on the left when you walk into the newly renovated Civic Center Building. 

More of our tax dollars at work. The powers that be thought someone would want to open a cafe there but, according to Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz, cafe owners don’t think they can make a big enough profit from the city hall crowd. Now the city’s looking for someone with a coffee cart - or something. 

Meanwhile, they seem to keep the lights burning bright in the to-be-cafe room.  

I guess it’s just in case some coffee-cart person wants to check it out. 

Or something. 

AT&T Communications of California Inc. is accusing Pacific Bell Telephone Co. of overcharging for access to its local telephone infrastructure to keep competition at bay, according to suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court. 

The suit is a high-stakes dispute in the aftermath of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a law Congress adopted to open monopolistic phone services to competitors to cut consumer costs. It allowed competitors to build their own infrastructure, buy phone time from their competitors to resell, or lease a competitor’s infrastructure to offer a competing phone service. 

AT&T, along with MCI Worldcom Network Services Inc., allege that San Francisco-based Pac Bell, which controls about 75 percent of California’s residential telephone market, is unlawfully making it too expensive to compete in an area that Congress required opened to competition. 

Pac Bell, a unit of San Antonio-based SBC Communications, the nation’s second-largest local phone company, said the lawsuit’s motive was an effort to thwart or stall Pac Bell’s entrance into California’s $16 billion annual long-distance market. AT&T, MCI and Sprint carry 80 percent of California long-distance phone service. 

“It’s clearly an effort by them to stall our entry,” said Bill Mashek, a Pac Bell spokesman.  

“The rates that we charge our competitors to use our network were set by the Public Utilities Commission here in San Francisco.” 

The suit came nearly a week after Pac Bell asked regulators to allow it to move into the state’s long-distance market. 

Regulators, using a carrot-and-stick-approach, said that Pac Bell could only sign up long-distance customers if it convinces state and federal officials that its local phone market is truly competitive. One provision is that competitors have access to phone lines and other technology to provide their services. 

The suit also contends that the state’s Public Utilities Commission has unlawfully allowed the alleged lofty prices for the competitors to use Pac Bell’s infrastructure.  

AT&T and MCI said that the PUC authorized Pac Bell to charge $1 billion in overhead costs to lease local telephone systems, a figure that is more than double what AT&T and MCI said is necessary. 

An AT&T vice president told The Associated Press that California’s local residential telephone market, which is virtually controlled by Pac Bell, could never be opened to competitors if the courts do not alter the pricing arrangements that the state Public Utilities Commission approved in 1999. AT&T said Pac Bell is authorized to charge more for AT&T to lease equipment than it could recover from residential customers. 

“We have no plans to enter the market ... if prices remain the same,” Rose Johnson, an AT&T vice president, said. “This is not a threat. This is a fact.” 

AT&T, a subsidiary of AT&T Co. of New York, is separately challenging the PUC’s approval of non-overhead costs of leasing the equipment from Pac Bell necessary to offer local phone service. The PUC is reviewing those costs. 

Commission spokesman Armando Rendon said regulators have not seen the suit and could not comment. 

AT&T’s Johnson acknowledged that she hoped the suit could thwart Pac Bell’s application into the long-distance arena until it reduces leasing prices. 

“If they’re allowed into the long distance marketplace while they have these conditions, they will very quickly monopolize,” Johnson said. 

On Wednesday, Pac Bell submitted a 3,000-page application with the PUC in a bid to provide long-distance service in California. The PUC said that it would not make a recommendation to federal regulators for at least two months. 

SACRAMENTO — California enters the third day of the new fiscal year Tuesday without a state budget, while Democrats are faced with rounding up an additional Republican vote because a lawmaker left for a trip abroad. 

Democratic Assemblyman Lou Papan of Millbrae left Sunday morning for a 10-day vacation to Spain. Now, Assembly Democrats must find five GOP votes instead of four to approve a 2001-02 budget by the required two-thirds margin. 

Papan voted for the estimated $101 billion budget three times last week. Each time, Republicans held out over a quarter-cent sales tax issue and the budget failed to gather enough votes in the Assembly. 

The Senate also failed to approve the budget early last week and hasn’t voted on it since. 

Neither chamber took up the budget Monday, and the Senate adjourned until Thursday. 

Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg of Van Nuys ordered members to stay within three hours travel time from Sacramento, but no sessions were scheduled until Thursday. 

Papan, whose district includes south San Francisco, Daly City and Millbrae, is not eligible for re-election next year because of term limits. 

Papan’s office issued a statement Monday that said he scheduled the trip “several months ago,” anticipating the Legislature would meet the June 15 constitutional deadline to approve a state budget. 

A six-member panel of lawmakers negotiating a budget plan did not send a budget to the full legislature until June 22. The June 15 deadline is rarely met and holds no penalties. 

The next missed deadline was Sunday, the day the budget was to take effect. Previous court rulings prevent the state from shutting down if a budget isn’t adopted by July 1. 

Meanwhile, budget negotiations continued Monday among party leaders, but little progress was made. 

As a condition for voting for the budget, Republicans are insisting that the Legislature agree to extend a quarter-cent sales tax cut that is scheduled to expire Jan. 1 because of a sagging economy and lower state budget reserves. 

Allowing the cut to expire would give the state an additional $600 million in the new fiscal year. 

Democratic leaders tried to pick up Republican support for the budget Friday by offering an array of agriculture-friendly and other targeted tax breaks. But GOP lawmakers say they won’t budge on a spending plan that includes a tax increase. 

—— 

On the Net: 

See budget information at http://www.lao.ca.gov 

Papan’s Web site at http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a19/ 

WASHINGTON — Consumers, a key force keeping the economy afloat, continued their vigorous spending in May. That, along with improvements in manufacturing and solid construction activity, made economists more hopeful the country will be able to skirt a recession this year. 

The latest batch of economic news Monday offered encouraging signs for an economy that has been stuck in low gear since last year. 

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel. It may not be a beacon but it’s promising,” said Richard Yamarone, economist with Argus Research Corp. “All three reports are good news and support an economic recovery.” 

Consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity, rose in May for the second month in a row by 0.5 percent, a better-than-expected showing that came despite the choppy economy and a rash of layoffs. 

The Commerce Department’s report also showed that Americans’ incomes grew by 0.2 percent for the second straight month. The spending and income figures aren’t adjusted for inflation. 

“The consumer has been the economy’s savior,” said Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors. “Neither rain, nor heat nor lack of income will stay the consumers from their rounds of spending money.” 

Meanwhile, a key gauge of industrial activity in June turned in its best performance in seven months. Even with the improvement, the measure was at a level indicating that the manufacturing sector of the economy remained in recession. 

The National Association of Purchasing Management said its purchasing index rose to 44.7 percent from 42.1 percent in May. An index above 50 signifies growth in manufacturing, while a figure below 50 shows contraction. June’s 44.7 percent reading was the highest since 47.9 percent in November. 

Analysts were heartened that the index regained some lost ground and were hopeful that the worst of the manufacturing recession may be over. 

“Manufacturing remains weak but is firming,” said Merrill Lynch economist Stan Shipley. 

In a third report, construction spending rose by a bigger-than-expected 0.3 percent in May, following a 0.4 percent rise. Lower interest rates have helped keep the industry stable during the slowdown. 

All of May’s strength came from spending on big government projects, such as schools and highways, and increased spending on housing. 

To stave off recession, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates six times this year. The most recent reduction, of a quarter-point, came last week. The other five cuts were each by a bolder half-point. 

Economists predict that the economy in the recently ended second quarter will probably hit its lowest point since the slowdown began in the second half of last year. Many believe the economy grew by a barely discernible rate of 0.5 percent in the April-June quarter. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said one of the biggest factors determining whether the country will skirt a recession is how well consumers hold up during the slowdown. 

With Monday’s reports, economists said they are increasingly hopeful the economy will rebound near the end of the year as the Fed’s interest-rate cuts and Congress tax-cut refunds take hold. 

The increase in consumer spending in May was led by a 1.2 percent jump in purchases of costly manufactured goods, such as cars and washing machines. That followed a tiny 0.1 percent rise in April. 

Spending on nondurable goods such as clothes and food rose 0.5 percent in May, compared with a previous 1 percent increase. Spending on services grew by 0.3 percent for the second month in a row. The services category includes such things as gas and electric utilities, visits to doctors, bus and train fares and rent for housing. 

None of the spending figures are adjusted for inflation. 

With spending outpacing income growth, the personal savings rate — savings as a percentage of after-tax income — dipped from a negative 1 percent in April to a negative 1.3 percent in May, matching a record monthly low set in January. 

The savings rate doesn’t provide a complete picture of household finances because it doesn’t capture gains realized from such things as higher real estate values or financial investments, economists say. 

“Consumers are staying in red and meanwhile keeping the overall economy in the black,” said National Association of Manufacturers President Jerry Jasinowski. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Consumer income and spending: http://www.bea.doc.gov/briefrm/tables/ebr8.htm 

Purchasing managers: http://www.napm.org/ 

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is proposing the first new offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in more than a decade with plans to offer new oil and gas leases in an area covering 1.47 million acres, Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced Monday. 

Norton said the lease area along the Outer Continental Shelf – at least 100 miles from the shorelines of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi – has enough oil to run a million families’ cars for six years and enough natural gas to heat the homes of a million families for 15 years. 

“Clearly, development of resources in the OCS is an important part of our national energy strategy,” she told reporters. “My decision today represents a very reasonable compromise.” 

A final decision on the sale will be made in October and, if approved, an auction for the leases would take place in December, Norton said. 

Interior officials said they expect the auction to raise $136 million. Since 1982, the government has collected $110.4 billion from its oil leases. Drilling could begin in the next two to 10 years, officials said. 

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush listened to the people of Florida and worked with governors of states adjoining the Gulf of Mexico to “come out with a plan that is environmentally sensitive and balanced.” 

The area, known as Lease Sale 181, originally covered 5.9 million acres when it was proposed by the Clinton administration in 1997 after consultations with then-Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles. 

Opposition from Florida’s tourist industry and environmentalists delayed the sale. Bush revived the plan when he took office, but it met with immediate opposition from his brother, Jeb Bush, who succeeded Chiles as Florida’s governor. 

Speaking from his parents’ summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, Jeb Bush said the compromise “reflects significant progress in Florida’s fight to protect our coastline.” 

“Any lease sales that do occur in the 181 area will occur off the coast of Alabama, not Florida,” he said. “Floridians have spoken loud and clear, and their voices have been heard by President Bush.” 

Charles Lee, senior vice president of the Florida Audubon Society, said the proposed sale “sounds like a big improvement over what was put on the table in Lease Sale 181. 

“I think most of us would prefer to prevent drilling anywhere in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but it sounds like it’s moving in the right direction, and the right direction is as far away from Florida as we can get it,” he said. Some environmental groups were still upset. 

“More rigs mean more pipelines and tankers, and thus a higher risk to Florida and Alabama’s coastal economies and fisheries,” said Frank Jackalone, the Sierra Club’s Florida staff director. 

The House, with Florida Reps. Jim Davis, a Democrat, and Joe Scarborough, a Republican, leading the effort, voted last week to block the sale as part of an appropriations bill for the Interior Department. The Senate has not acted on the legislation and it could be September before any ban could become law. 

While the decision reduces the size of the leasing area, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., expressed worry that it also might foreshadow more drilling and exploration. 

“Now is the time to begin serious consideration of a national energy policy that doesn’t put sensitive coastlines or other environmental systems at risk in order to drain America first,” he said. 

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., called the proposal “the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent — to allow big oil companies into the rest of the Gulf of Mexico.” 

The sale area originally came as close as 17 miles to Pensacola in Florida’s Panhandle. The area being offered for lease was reduced to one-fourth its original size in response to widespread opposition in Florida and from environmentalists nationwide. 

The new lease area would begin 285 miles west of Tampa and would be at least 138 miles from Panama City, Fla. It also is 146 miles from Port Fourchon, La., but only 64 miles from Venice, La., Interior Department officials said. 

Oil and gas rigs now dot the western and central waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but no federal lease has been offered in the eastern gulf since 1988. Officials estimate that the new, reduced lease area contains at least 185 million barrels of oil and 1.25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 

All but one of Florida’s 23 House members voted against offshore oil drilling. Many said they now support the administration’s proposal, partly because Florida risked infringing on neighboring states that want the oil leasing revenues. 

“There’s only so far we can push our sovereign rights,” said Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. “It’s only so long before the state’s going to look a spoilsport in the equation.” 

Scarborough said the House measures last week to delay new leases and to ban new permits for Great Lakes drilling were “political earthquakes for the administration and had a very significant impact on moving them toward the inevitable.” 

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines — A Muslim separatist group said Monday it was looking into an unconfirmed report that its rebels saw members of the extremist Abu Sayyaf moving hostages, including an American the abductors say they beheaded. 

Despite the Abu Sayyaf’s repeated claims to have killed Guillermo Sobero of Corona, Calif., three weeks ago, soldiers scouring Basilan island in the southern Philippines for kidnappers and captives have never found his body. 

Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said Monday that its rebels reported seeing the Abu Sayyaf marching hostages through the jungle about 10 days ago, including all three Americans seized at a beach resort May 27. 

Kabalu stressed the information could not immediately be verified, and MILF leaders were seeking a better explanation from rebels in the field. 

“They said they saw the Americans and they were still alive and Sobero was still alive,” Kabalu told The Associated Press by telephone. “We are still trying to verify this.” 

That might take days, he said. 

Kabalu said the Americans were recognizable “by the color of their skin and the shape of their noses.” 

Military chief of staff Diomedio Villanueva said he did not know whether the report was credible. 

“I don’t have any confirmation from our ground troops,” Villanueva told Associated Press Television News. “It will be better if (the MILF) can help us in this matter by bringing out the body or the person of Mr. Sobero.” 

A spokesman for the military’s Southern Command said officials had not given up trying to find Sobero alive. 

“In the absence of concrete proof that he is dead, our position is that he is still alive, and that would add credence to the report of the MILF,” Lt. Col. Danilo Servando said. 

U.S. Embassy officials did not return phone calls. 

The Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday quoted the MILF as saying Sobero might still be alive. 

The MILF has helped in the past with hostage releases and recently signed a cease-fire with the government. 

The two other American hostages are Martin and Gracia Burnham, a Christian missionary couple from Wichita, Kan., who have lived for years in this impoverished Southeast Asian island nation. 

The Abu Sayyaf says it is fighting for an independent Muslim state. The government calls the group a band of bandits specializing in kidnappings for ransom.

A 78-year-old woman was nearly killed Saturday afternoon when an attempted purse snatch escalated on the 2300 block of McGee Avenue. 

As the victim prepared to leave her home about 3:30 p.m. she noticed a car driving slowly back and forth along her street, said Lt. Russell Lopes, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department. When she was about to get into her car, a man allegedly grabbed her from behind, took her purse and ran to the car parked directly behind hers.  

He ran to the same car she had seen driving up and down the block earlier. Lopes said the victim started screaming that her purse had been stolen, and her 60-year-old brother, who shares the McGee Avenue home, ran out and began punching the suspect in the face through the open car window as the suspect attempted to start the car.  

At the same time, the victim opened the passenger door and attempted to retrieve her purse from the seat, Lopes said. When the victim had her upper body in the car the suspect allegedly sped in reverse causing the open car door to deeply cut the victims legs, which caused her to fall and hit her head on the cement.  

Lopes said the suspect then sped away. 

The victim was in stable condition after surgery at Highland Hospital in Oakland.  

Police are still looking for the suspect described as a white or Hispanic male, 26-30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet 1 inch with black hair in a ponytail driving a blue or gray 1989 to 1991 model two-door car. 

••• 

A man walking home was attacked and cut deeply by a man with a knife near Mabel and 67th streets just after midnight on Saturday. 

Lopes said the victim was approached by a casual acquaintance that accused the victim of owing him $20. The suspect allegedly pulled a folding blade and slashed at the victim, cutting him severely on the right hand. 

The victim was treated at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley and released. No arrests have been made. 

••• 

The manager of the Ramada Inn at 920 University Ave. was arrested for spraying a traveler in the face with an aerosol can of air freshener. 

Lopes said the victim, who lives in Hartford, Conn., was loitering with a group of friends in the lobby of the Ramada Inn when the manager asked him to leave.  

When he refused, the manager allegedly sprayed him in the face with an air freshener burning the victim’s eyes. 

The suspect was arrested and charged with assault with a caustic chemical and the victim, who declined medical attention was served a citation for trespassing. 

Coming off of a rousing victory over Modesto Christian on Friday, the St. Mary’s boys’ basketball team went into the weekend portion of the Cal Basketball Team Camp with hig spirits. But after an easy win over outmanned Mater Dei, the Panthers came crashing back down to earth. 

Going up against Northgate in the first round of the 16-team tournament that ended the camp, the Panthers were the favorites. Even without sophomore DeMarcus Nelson, who injured his knee and back on Friday, St. Mary’s took a quick 9-0 lead in the opening minutes. But Northgate’s 3-2 zone slowed the Panther attack, forcing point guard DeShawn Freeman to dish the ball by denying him penetration, and the Northgate shooters came alive. 

Without Nelson, the Panthers’ pressing defense was a step slow in their second game of the day, leading to several easy layups for the Mustangs. When their wing shooters got hot late in the first half, the Panthers found themselves down by six at halftime. 

It got worse in the second half, as Northgate continued to get open looks as the Panthers scrambled around on defense. They extended their lead to 17 with six minutes to go, and looked assured of a big upset win. Freeman took things into his own hands in the closing minutes, blowing by the defense for several acrobatic layups. But in the end, the best St. Mary’s could do was close the gap to six points with less than a minute remaining. 

“We looked really slow out there today,” St. Mary’s head coach Jose Caraballo said after the loss. “I’m not sure we deserve to win tonight if we play like we just did.” 

But the Panthers still had an inspired effort left in them to close Saturday’s action. They were up against BSAL rival Salesian, who had fallen in overtime to Riordan (San Francisco). The Panthers beat Salesian three times last season, and Chieftan star John Winston plays on the Oakland Soldiers with Freeman, Nelson and St. Mary’s sharpshooter John Sharper, so the teams are very familiar with each other. 

Playing without Nelson and center Simon Knight, who is out for the summer following knee surgery, Freeman and Sharper dominated, leading their team to an eight-point victory in their third game of the day. 

The Panthers didn’t have much rest ahead, however, as the win over Salesian earned them a spot in Sunday’s consolation final four. Facing Bishop O’Dowd, St. Mary’s once again showed why Caraballo feels they are ready to take on the top teams in the state with a dominating 20-point win. 

“This tournament is a good test for us to prove we’re ready to take on the D-1 level schools,” Freeman said. “We’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.”

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $4 adults; $6 children age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under. Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648  

Lawrence Hall of Science “Math Rules!” A math exhibit of hands-on problem-solving stations, each with a different mathematical challenge. “Within the Human Brain,” ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning experiments. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; June 21: 6 a.m., Solar Eclipse Day Computer Lab, Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 p.m. $7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4. 642-5132 

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

924 Gilman St. All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted $5; $2 for year membership. All ages. July 6: Victim’s Family, Fleshies, The Modern Machines, Once For Kicks, The Blottos; July 7: The Stitches, Real MacKenzies, The Briefs, The Eddie Haskells, The Spits 525-9926  

Albatross Pub Music at 9 p.m. unless noted otherwise. July 3: 9 p.m., pickPocket ensemble; July 4: Whiskey Brothers; July 5: Keni “El Lebrijano.” 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473  

Berkeley Arts Festival June 30: 7:30 p.m. Marvin Sanders and Vera Berheda, plus Mozart, Beethoven, Hadyn and Fuare in the gallery; July 1: 11 a.m., “Free Jazz on the Pier” The Christy Dana Quartet (on the Berkeley Pier). All shows at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted Donations requested 2200 Shattuck Avenue 665-9496 

Freight & Salvage All music at 8 p.m. July 6 and 7: Ferron. 1111 Addison St. www.freightandsalvage.org; 548-1761 

Live Oaks ConcertsBerkeley Art Center, July 15: David Cheng, Marvin Sanders, Ari Hsu; July 27: Monica Norcia, Amy Likar, Jim Meredith. All shows at 7:30 unless otherwise noted Admission $10 (BACA members $8, students and seniors $9, children under 12 free) 

Leopold’s Fancy July 2: 8 p.m., Traditional Irish music, part of “Extreme Joyce/Reading On the Edge,” a conference celebrating the works of James Joyce. Free. 2271 Shattuck Ave. 642-2754 

Dramatic Joyce July 3: 7:30 p.m. Dramatic interpretations of the works of James Joyce by local and international actors. Introduction by UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop with commentary by and conversation with the audience. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” Free. Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus 2601 Warring Street 642-2754 

“Cuatro Maestros Touring Festival” July 4: 8 p.m. Music and dance performed by four elder folk artists and their young counterparts, accompanied by Los Cenzontles. $12 - $18. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300 

“Do You Hear What I Am Seeing?” July 5: 7:30 p.m. One man show by David Norris, a two-hour sampling of Joyce’s works with Norris’ insights. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” $10. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300 

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046 

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822 

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

Pacific Film Archive July 3: 7:30 p.m., Pineapple. Pacific Film Archive Theater 2575 Bancroft Way (at Bowditch) 642-1412 

Ako Castuera, Ryohei Tanaka, Rob Sato Through June 30, Tues. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Group exhibition, recent paintings. Artist’s reception June 9, 6:30 - 9 p.m. with music by Knewman and Espia. !hey! Gallery 4920 B Telegraph Ave., Oakland 428-2349  

“Watershed 2001” Through July 14, Wednesday - Sunday Noon - 5 p.m. Exhibition of painting, drawing, sculpture and installation that explore images and issues about our watershed. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

Rachel Davis and Benicia Gantner Works on Paper Through July 14, Tues. - Sat., 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Watercolors by Davis, mixed-media by Gantner. Opening reception June 13, 6 - 8 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth St. 527-1214 www.traywick.com 

Constitutional Shift Through July 13, Tuesdays - Fridays, noon - 5 p.m. Permanence and personal journey link Hee Jae Suh, Ursula Neubauer and Marci Tackett. Korean-born Suh explores an inner psychological world with a dramatic series of self-portraits. Neubauer explores self-portraiture as a travel map of identity with multiple points of view. Tackett explores Antarctica’s other-worldly landscape in a series of stunning digital photographs. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977 

“The Trip to Here: Paintings and Ghosts by Marty Brooks” Through July 31, Tues. - Sun. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m. View Brooks’ first California show at Bison Brewing Company 2598 Telegraph Ave. 841-7734  

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541 

“Musee des Hommages,” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” July 12 - August 18, Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Reception July 12 from 6 - 8 p.m. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through August 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541 

Images of Portugal Paintings by Sofia Berto Villas-Boas of her native land. Open after 5 p.m. Voulez-Vous 2930 College Ave. (at Elmwood) 

“Queens of Ethiopia: Intuitive Inspirations,” the exceptional art of Esete-Miriam A. Menkir. Through July 11. Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Ave. 548-9286 ext. 307 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 - 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.

1-2-3-What are we fighting for? 

Editor: 

Let me get this straight: The CIA brings peace to Jerusalem; Bush and Putin exchange Father’s Day greetings. Listen, folks ... the revolution’s gone and frankly, comrades, I don’t give a damn. 

George Kauffman 

Berkeley 

Beth El gave neighbors lip service while stonewalling 

Editor: 

I am writing with reference to the Beth El Project and a statement which is constantly made by Beth El spokesmen. I would like to set the record straight regarding the allegation that Beth El has been trying to work with the neighbors over a four-year period and, in fact, has met with them a number of times (15 was mentioned at the June 24 City Council meeting), all to no avail. The implication of this is, of course, that the neighbors are difficult, demanding, and unreasonable. 

I would like to point out that in all of these meetings, Beth El has not responded in any significant way to the requests of the neighborhood regarding size and parking. We met, Beth El listened, went away, and returned with its plan unchanged except for a few minor revisions which in no way significantly impacted the design or project. 

This has certainly been a frustrating process: Beth El paying lip service while stonewalling. Whenever I think of what could have been, in terms of cooperation between citizens and developers, I am reminded of a ZAB meeting at which neighbors of a Dwight Way project that was approved by ZAB, spoke about how they supported the project. From the very beginning, they said, the developer worked with them in a straightforward and honest fashion to reach a conclusion acceptable to all. They were pleased and proud to speak in support of the project. I was struck, at the time, by the difference between that project and the one we are faced with on Oxford Street. And, I might add, I still am. 

This project has taken four years to get to this point. If Beth El sticks to the facts and tries to work out the problems in a forthright, cooperative manner rather than appealing to the emotions, we might get somewhere. 

Carol Connolly 

Berkeley

Monday, July 2

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, and Joyce in the Classroom. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 

642-2754  

Tuesday, July 3

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panel on Finnegans Wake as well as looking at issues such as Joyce and carnality, computers, border-crossings, and cinema. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 

642-2754  

Wednesday, July 4

Ice Cream Social 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Bring your own picnic, ice cream provided by LHS. Free museum admission today with a library card, regular admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132  

4th of July at the Berkeley  

Marina 

Noon - 10 p.m. 

Families are invited to picnic on international food, hit the beach, take free sailboat rides, get their faces painted or relax with a massage. People can decorate their bikes at the Shorebird Nature Center and participate in the Decorated Bicycle Parade at 7 p.m. Madame Ovary’s egg puppets will perform and Adventure Playground will be open all day. Wacky Art Cars will be on display. Music begins at 2 p.m. with Zambombazo 2; Bird Legg and the Tite Fit Blues Band come on at 5 p.m.; Kollasuyo it at 7 p.m. and MotorDude Zydeco’s at 9 p.m. Fireworks at 9:30 p.m. Cars in by 7 p.m. when street closes to traffic, out only after 10 p.m. Free admission. No alchohol. Sponsored by the city. 548-5335 

Berkeley Communicator  

Toastmasters Club 

7:15 a.m. 

Vault Cafe 

3250 Adeline 

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month. 

527-2337 

Thursday, July 5

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week Capoeira Arts Cafe and company, Brazilian extravaganza. 

LGBT Catholics Group  

7:30 p.m. 

Newman Hall  

2700 Dwight Way (at College)  

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This meetings discussions will center on “What do we/can we expect from the Church?”  

654-5486 

Berkeley Metaphysical  

Toastmasters Club  

6:15 - 7:30 p.m.  

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month.  

Call 869-2547 

Bear Safety 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Learn how to travel in bear country without mishap. Wilderness guide Ken Hanley will discuss the characteristics of black bears and grizzlies for anyone venturing into their territories. Free. 

527-4140 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Dubliners, Ulysses, Marginal Feelings in Joyce, and Joyce and Anarchy. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 

642-2754  

Friday, July 6

Therapy for Trans Partners  

6 - 7:30 p.m.  

Pacific Center for Human Growth  

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)  

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.  

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session  

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522 

Strong Women; The Arts,  

Herstory and Literature 

1:15 - 3:15 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center  

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way) 

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program. Free.  

Call 549-2970 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, Ireland and the Politics of Culture, Joycean Border-Crossings, and Joyce and Frank Zappa. $15 - $25.  

642-2754 

James Joyce Conference  

Closing Banquet 

6 - 11 p.m. 

UC Faculty Club 

UC Berkeley Campus 

Joycean entertainment and dancing. Reservations required, call 415-392-1137. 

Saturday, July 7  

Free Sailboat Rides  

1 - 4 p.m. 

Cal Sailing Club 

Berkeley Marina 

The Cal Sailing Club, a non-profit sailing and windsurfing cooperative, give free rides on a first come, first served bases on the first full weekend of each month. Wear warm clothes and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children must be at least five years old and must be accompanies by an adult.  

Visit www.cal-sailing.org  

 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 

548-3333

More than 50 environmental organizations settled their stands on Civic Center Park on Saturday to celebrate Berkeley’s first David Brower Day. The event was sponsored by the Earth Island Institute, the city of Berkeley, the Ecology Center and radio station KPFA. The five-hour event began at noon and attracted about 2,500 people.  

Instituted by the City Council last November, the David Brower Day is meant to honor the late environmental activist, but it is also an opportunity for his followers to raise awareness of environmental issues.  

“This is about getting young people tuned into the environment and the need to protect the environment,” said John A. Knox, executive director of the Earth Island Institute.  

One of the big attractions of the afternoon was the so-called Eco-Restoration Decathlon, an 11-step course from stand to stand destined to make children think about the environment in an entertaining way. After taking part in a number of activities such as making recycled paper, climbing a wall, recording a video on energy or tasting roasted corn from Chez Panisse, the children received a certificate of completion.

Campaign finance reform will be taken up by the House of Representatives just after returning from the Fourth of July recess, sometime during the week of July 9. The League of Women Voters warns that now is the critical time for concerned citizens to mobilize to get Congress to pass no bill other than the ”real reform bill,” the Shays-Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Bill.  

This is the strong, bipartisan bill previously pushed through the House twice and based on the McCain-Feingold bill that the Senate passed in April. It will stop corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals from giving unlimited amounts of money to candidates’ campaigns and the political parties. 

The League of Women Voters urges you, yes YOU, to act! We need a landslide of public support from members of all parties and independents for the Shays-Meehan bill. Here’s what you can do. Write, call, fax, or e-mail your Representative in Congress — both in Washington and at here in California. 

The message is: 

•You support the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill because it will ban soft money and close the sham “issue” ad loophole that allows campaign spending to escape from disclosure; 

•You oppose all weakening amendments and especially ”poison pills” designed to kill the bill or weaken bi-partisan support; 

•You want the voices of citizens to be heard in politics over special interest money and only Shays-Meehan will do this. 

(Address your letters to: Representative, U.S. Congress, Washington, D.C., 20515. Call the Capital switchboard with a direct message or to get an e-mail address: 202-224-3121 or your representative’s local district office.) 

This is a tough battle that needs every citizen's involvement, regardless of party affiliation. Although the House leadership has agreed that campaign finance reform legislation will be scheduled for floor action right after the Fourth, they will be pushing the Committee on House Administration bill. 

This bill falls short of the definition of meaningful campaign finance reform and doesn’t ban soft money or limit money for sham ”issue” ads. The champions of reform in the House, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) and Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA), will offer their bill on the floor as a substitute to the committee bill. You need to make your Representative understand the importance to you that s/he support only Shays-Meehan. 

Background on the process clarifies why only Shays-Meehan will do. If Shays-Meehan, based on McCain-Feingold, passes, it will go directly to the Senate for final passage and we will know exactly what the provisions are. 

It would bypass a conference committee, controlled by opponents in the House leadership and necessary to resolve the differences between some other House bill and the Senate’s McCain-Feingold. The opportunity to pass meaningful campaign finance reform legislation will not have been squandered. 

President Bush says he will sign campaign finance reform into law if Congress passes it. We need to give him that opportunity with Shays-Meehan/McCain-Feingold. Contact your Representative today! 

Jo Ann B. Price is the president of the Berkeley/Albany/Emeryville League of Women Voters

The City Council decided not to include a campaign finance reform program as part of the $524 million budget approved last week because the city manager’s office decided the proposed program had not been thoroughly studied. 

Councilmember Dona Spring had proposed funding $150,000 over the next two years for the Local Campaign Finance Reform program. The voluntary program, in theory, would have reduced the influence of well-heeled campaign contributors on local politics by setting campaign spending limits and providing public matching funds to serious candidates. 

But the city manager recommended the council hold off on approving the funds until the policy is thoroughly discussed and evaluated, according to Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz. 

Spring said the finance reform program could be considered again during the midyear budget cycle.  

“The Berkeley mayoral race now costs upwards of $300,000 and that’s as much as some congressional races cost in rural areas,” Spring said. “When candidates have to raise those kind of dollars, they become beholden to whatever special interest they’re getting money from.” 

Spring added that the high cost of campaigns precludes potential candidates who don’t have access to large contributors from participating in the public process.  

“Democracy is not working correctly if only those with the gold rule,” she said. 

Philips Lighting Company, one of the world’s largest lighting company’s with 10,000 employees in North America alone, has chosen Berkeley as the place to show the nation how its energy efficient light bulbs can help ease the growing energy crisis. 

Starting last week, the company began a project to replace all the bulbs along an entire block of Telegraph Avenue – in ground level businesses and more than 40 residential units – free of charge. 

Philips officials estimate that the move will reduce energy consumption on the block by up to 45 percent, cutting the amount the block pays PG&E each year to $5,840 from an estimated $10,512. 

“A big part of these projected savings come from installing compact fluorescent bulbs, which are a fantastic but surprisingly little-known solution for home and office,” said Larry Wilton, President and CEO of Philips Lighting Company North American, in a written statement. “Really, if we could stop debating over long-term

A night of stories was the idea, and a lot of people seemed to have it Friday night as an eclectic group of writers, scholars and performers assembled for a panel discussion at the Julia Morgan Theater. 

Part of the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Berkeley Stories event was organized to benefit the David Brower Center, an environmental and art center recently proposed and partially approved by the city. 

As people edged slowly through the doorway into the dimmed theater, smiling at the few spare seats, a steady hum was rising.  

As panel moderator Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Books began his introduction, the event title received his quick and candid attention.  

“There’s something a little bit self-indulgent or self-congratulatory or almost embarrassing about devoting an evening to Berkeley stories,” Margolin said. “You know: ‘Aren’t we unique?’ and ‘Aren’t we wonderful?’ or something like that.  

“Yet on the other hand, it’s something that I really feel strongly we have to do. That this sense that Berkeley is unique,” he said, “is something that really had better be made articulate.” 

The panel members all lived in Berkeley at some time or another. Usually they arrived as part of the strange migration to the Bay Area that began in the late ‘50s and stretched out into the ‘70s. Most have been here since. 

But to call it a ‘panel discussion’ isn’t right. It was a chat. Or a tete-a-tete. It was informal, intimate. 

Before beginning his story, artist Leonard Pitt wondered if the audience might reach the mass critical to the resolution of a serious question.  

“Does anyone here remember Wilkinson’s Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue?” he asked. 

To some nods and yesses, he responded excitedly.  

“You do?” he said. “I’ve not been able to find anybody who remembered that place, and I thought I couldn’t pass up this evening with all of you here.”  

Determined, Pitt cut into the roaring laughter.  

“It was on Shattuck on the east side of the street. Can anyone remember exactly what block it was on? Between Center and Allston, or between Center and...?” 

“Between University and the next street south,” a woman in the audience yelled. 

“Really?” he responded, seeming surprised. “On the last block?” 

“Yeah,” she replied, irrefutably. 

Sometimes, instead of a question that needed answering, it was just a brief confirmation passed between friends.  

“I got a place, by the way, on Dwight Way,” said poet Al Young. “And I don’t know how many of you remember Al Baker, I think his name was. He ran a cigar store?”  

To the audience shouts he responded, “You remember him,” and went on.  

“Al said, ‘I own a property on Dwight Way, and there’s an empty place in there,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just go over there until further notice?’  

“I didn’t know he was gonna sell the place,” Young laughs. 

Sometimes there was simply the feeling of doors being opened. 

“Then meeting Maxine,” said actor Earl Kingston of panel member and author Maxine Hong Kingston, “of course she was the Berkeley co-ed of my dreams.” 

This intimacy gave way to many kinds of stories, many of which related to each other in strange ways. 

“You’re going to hear about a lot of connections tonight,” author Ernest Callenback said, “some of which we [panel members] don’t know about either. 

A panel- member would tell a story and it would later come out that the story’s subject had contributed to a publication or acted in a film that another panel member had been involved in. And these were only the connections that occurred within the panel. 

“I want to finish by telling you another paranoid story,” Callenbach said. “We’re going to probably fall into patterns here this evening.” 

Callenbach told a story about the day the editors of the Canyon Cinema News, a periodical calendar of underground film events, discovered that they had some unexpected subscribers. 

“We received a check from the CIA library,” Callenbach said. “Worse of all the check was not for [the usual subscription price] of $3, it was for $2.40. They had given themselves a discount.  

“Now, after a few more beers, we decided we would play a little game. We made up a cryptogram and it said, ‘CIA cheapskates take unwarranted discounts and do not pay full price.’”  

They sent the CIA its last issue with this note.  

“About 10 days later a check comes in the mail for [the difference],” Callenbach said. 

Later, political-scientist Jeff Lustig confirmed Callenbach’s belief that there would be some content overlap.  

“Being on a panel is like being in the surf or something, with the different currents,” Lustig said, “I keep getting pulled off what I was thinking of saying. 

“Ernest Callenbach mentioned Canyon [Cinema] and paranoia,” Lustig said, which made him think of a related anecdote about his friend Bob Turpin. 

“We were driving in from Canyon to Berkeley,” Lustig said, “telling some jokes or something, and his 7-year-old daughter said, ‘Daddy, what’s paranoia?’ because the word kept cropping up. And he very pertly said, ‘Paranoia, honey, is when you think there’s more people after you than there really are.’”

SAN FRANCISCO – News that Gov. Gray Davis intervened in contract negotiations between Bay Area Rapid Transit and several unions has cooled most BART employees, delaying a possible strike that was scheduled to begin at midnight Saturday. 

None of the three major unions went on strike, despite threats earlier Saturday from one union that said it planned to strike regardless of Davis’ intervention if a resolution wasn’t reached by the deadline. 

Norma Del Mercado, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3993, issued a statement six minutes prior to midnight, saying the union would not strike as a sign of solidarity with BART’s other unions. 

BART officials said commuter trains would continue running as usual. 

“BART service will operate according to normal schedules as a result of the governor’s decision to begin the fact-finding process associated with a 60-day cooling off period,” BART Board President Willie B. Kennedy said in a statement Saturday. “We are disappointed that we were unable to reach a new contract agreement by June 30.” 

Larry Hendel, spokesman for the Service Employees International Union Local 790, also said the members of that union would report to work. 

A spokeswoman for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 confirmed they would hold off on picketing as well. 

But Del Mercado said the AFSCME may take further action. 

“First we question the governor’s legal authority to issue an order affecting our union when neither AFSCME nor BART management has requested a ’cooling off’ period,” Mercado said in the statement. “Early next week we intend to get a court order to remove our union from the governor’s order.” 

Del Mercado said union members are “trying to protect our jobs and our membership.” She said BART district management has used the “language in our contract to erode our union one by one.” 

Del Mercado alleged that when a union member leaves a position, the job description is “tweeked” and then a non-union person is brought in to fill that job. 

AFSCME members fill budget, payroll, financial and construction supervisor positions at BART, Del Mercado said. They also hold train controller positions, a job that’s similar to air traffic controllers, Del Mercado said. 

Davis convened the panel to help quell heated contract negotiations between the groups and prevent a disruption of public transportation. 

BART’s three largest unions, represent 2,800 employees. 

Union organizers requested Thursday that the governor intervene to keep commuter trains running through the summer. On Friday, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown also urged Davis to invoke the “cooling off period,” saying it would allow further negotiations and a continuation of transit service. 

“A work stoppage or lockout would create a grave disruption to thousands of people commuting for work throughout the Bay Area,” Davis said in a statement. “A prolonged work stoppage would cost millions to businesses and employees and may even cost many their jobs.” 

Carol Vendrillo of El Cerrito, Franklin Silver of Oakland and Berkeley Judge Joseph R. Grodin were appointed by Davis on Friday to investigate the issues surrounding the labor dispute. 

Grodin is a former State Supreme Court justice and Vendrillo and Silver are professional arbitrators, according to Davis’ spokeswoman Hilary McLean. 

She said both BART and union organizers were amenable to the three looking into the matter. And she confirmed the panel may be doing more than just fact-finding. 

“They have expertise in the area of mediating disputes,” McLean said. “And I believe that’s part of their goal — that they can aid in resolving the dispute. That would be in everyone’s best interest.” 

The panel will likely hold public hearings in a fact-finding effort before submitting a written report to Davis by July 6.

RICHMOND – Unidentified attackers killed two young men on a residential street shortly before midnight Friday, police said. 

Jason DePaul Reed and Stanley Arness Gordon Jr., both 19, died from multiple gunshot wounds at the scene, said Deputy Bill Brinks with the Contra Costa Coroner’s Office. 

Richmond homicide Detective Joe Valle said Saturday police investigators did not know what events led to the attack or the motive behind the shooting, the Contra Costa Times reported. 

The bodies were found next to a gray Chevrolet that Reed’s mother, Loretta Anderson, said belonged to him. 

“When other people had some kind of dispute, he would step in and try to resolve things,” Anderson said. 

Gordon, who lived with a guardian in Hercules, had been shot and wounded a few months ago, Anderson said. He had been friends with Reed since junior high school.

LOS ANGELES – A laid-back but focused attitude prevailed Sunday morning among representatives of movie and television actors and producers negotiating to avoid an industry-crippling strike. 

The contract for the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists expired at 12:01 a.m., but most of the 100 negotiators appeared in good spirits as they returned to the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers later that morning. 

“We’re all working over there,” said SAG spokesman Greg Krizman, who would not comment on whether an agreement was close at hand. But unnamed sources told the Los Angeles Times that an agreement could be reached as soon as Sunday. 

The alliance’s courtyard also offered a sign that the closed-door negotiations were heating up. 

During talks Saturday, the courtyard invariably held at least five or six negotiators taking a break; some of them killed time tossing a football. After two and a half hours of talks Sunday, the courtyard had drawn only a few people for cigarette breaks. 

“We couldn’t find the football,” Krizman joked. 

Television crews crowded outside the headquarters Sunday in anticipation of an agreement. The pace of the talks picked up as the contract deadline approached, although the expired contract will remain in effect as long as the talks progress. 

Both sides said they remain committed to reaching a new contract that would avert a potentially damaging walkout for the entertainment industry. Neither side has commented in detail about the status of negotiations. 

Uncertainty over the negotiations had prompted studios to accelerate production. Even with an agreement, Hollywood production could stall because producers wouldn’t start a new movie until an actors’ deal was made final, and it takes nearly eight weeks to complete preproduction work. 

Fall TV shows, which begin filming in the summer, also could be delayed for weeks. 

Among the guilds’ top concerns is increasing pay for the nearly 75,000 actors who earn between $30,000 and $70,000 annually. 

Only about 2 percent of the guilds’ membership earn more than $100,000 a year, including multimillion-dollar celebrities such as Jack Nicholson and Russell Crowe. 

Krizman said a strike was not imminent. Even if talks broke down, he said, the guild would require a strike authorization vote from members before initiating a work stoppage. 

That vote would take between four and five weeks to complete. 

Fears of a walkout rumbled through the entertainment industry for much of last year when the robust economy prompted speculation that union demands would be steeper. 

The fluctuating market has since cooled that sentiment and has been credited with pressuring both sides to reach a compromise without a work stoppage. 

Last year, the actors’ unions staged a six-month strike by commercial actors that might have driven as much as $1 billion worth of work overseas. 

The actors’ negotiations have been more low-key than the Writers Guild of America talks in May. 

The writers guild settled its new contract in early June, increasing overall pay by more than $41 million over the previous agreement. After that, many analysts predicted the actors would accept a similar deal.

The City Council unanimously approved the city’s $524 million two-year budget Tuesday with a unanimous vote and many are saying the rare council consensus is an endorsement of City Manager Weldon Rucker. 

“The manager really tried to include the desires of the councilmembers and meet the needs of the city,” said Dayle Bartlett, aide to Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek. “And as evidence of his success there was a 9 to nothing vote to support him.” 

Rucker is quick to deflect praise by saying it was a cooperative council that is really responsible for the smooth budget process, which in the past has been fraught with ill will and acrimony. 

“The results were favorable, but it is really due to the staff and the commissioners buying into the process and the participation of all the councilmembers establishing their priorities,” Rucker said. “From there it was relatively easy to focus in on including those priorities.” 

Rucker also gave credit for the success of the budget to staff members Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Budget Manager Paul Navazio who were the architects of the budget. He said working out a municipal budget is like trying to hit a moving target because revenues are subject to uncertainties such as the current energy crisis, which can cause fluctuations in state and federal funding as well as the local economy. 

“Phil may be one of the best budget people in the nation and Paul brought a tremendous energy to the process,” Rucker said.  

The last biennial budget was approved on June 22, 1999 by vote of 5-3 with one abstention. According to Councilmember Kriss Worthington, that budget was approved after the progressives fought with the moderates who were aligned with former City Manager James Keene. Keene left Berkeley in August to take the city manager post in Tucson, Ariz.  

Rucker, who has worked for the city for 29 years, was previously acting city manager from 1993 to 1996. He assumed the post as acting city manager again after Keene’s departure and was given the position officially by the City Council in February.  

Rucker is credited by both factions on the council for proposing a budget that found a solid middle ground between council priorities and what was available in the city’s coffers. 

“It was an astronomical improvement over the last budget process,” Worthington said. “The city manager took both the mayor’s suggestions and (Councilmember) Dona (Spring)’s suggestions and put almost all of them in and took the time to explain the reasons for those suggestions he didn’t include.”  

Both Mayor Shirley Dean and Spring submitted budget recommendations for programs they felt needed more funding or for new programs that were not included in the city manager’s proposed budget.  

Dean agreed that Rucker did a good job of finding a practical middle ground. An example is the recommendations for arts grants. Dean suggested $143,000 in her proposal; Spring wanted $70,000 and the city manager suggested $100,000 which is the amount the council finally approved.  

Dean said it’s important the council work to stay focused on the current budget proposals and not try to add programs that would tip the budget’s balance. 

“The city manager certainly deserves a lot of credit for balancing the budget and getting unanimous agreement,” Dean said. “But the budget is only a plan. Now it’s up to the council to stick by what’s been approved and not wander all over the place.”  

Currently the budget is not technically balanced. For example in the adopted budget expenditures during the first year are greater than revenues by nearly $5 million. But according to Kamlarz, the budget cannot legally pencil in certain grants or include unspent funds from previous year’s programs, both of which he said would cover expenditures. 

Bartlett summed up the budget process: 

“The councilmembers are happy, our reserves are healthy and if there’s any problems, we still have the midyear review opportunity to rethink, redo and if necessary reformulate things.”

Saturday, June 30

Berkeley Farmers’ Market 

10 a.m. - 3 p.m. 

Center Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Milvia Street 548-3333 

First Annual Brower Day  

David Brower’s Environmental Legacy Celebrated 

Noon - 5 p.m. 

Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park 

Outdoor festival celebrating the Earth and the late David Brower. Lee Stetson will perform “The Spirit of John Muir” in the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, 12:30 and 2 p.m., and at 3 p.m. a special screening of "In the Light of Reverence" by the Sacred Land Film Project. Julia Butterfly Hill will join filmmaker Toby McLeod for a special panel following the film. 415-788-3666 

Science of Spirituality 

5 p.m. 

St. John’s Presbyterian Church 

2727 Collage Avenue 

Professor Andrew Vidich will speak on “Rumi: Mystic and Romantic Love, Stories of Masnavi.” Childcare and vegetarian food provided. Free. 

925-830-2975  

Bonfire III: Stories  

and Songs By the Sea 

7:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Marina 

Spinnaker Way, near Olympic Circle Sailing Club 

Come for Havdala and share stories, sing and watch the flames dance. Bring food and drink to share, kosher s’mores provided. 

848-0237 

Know Your Rights 

11 - 2 p.m. 

2022 Blake St. 

Copwatch workshop: Learn what your rights are when dealing with the police. Special section on juvenile rights.  

548-0425 

Bay Area Eco-Crones 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

1066 Creston Road 

Networking, information sharing, project planning and ritual.  

Call ahead, 874-4935. 

2001 Paul G. Hearne  

Leadership Award Workshop 

4 p.m. 

North Berkeley Senior Center 

1901 Hearst Ave. at MLK 

Michai Freeman, one of 11 recipients of the 2000 Paul Hearne Leadership Award of $10,000, will discuss how she applied for the award and how you can too. The award is given by the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and is open to any individual with a disability.  

RSVP required. Reserve your space by e-mailing your name and address to michai@gladtobehere.org, or by calling 548-6425 ext 2. First 10 registrants will receive free membership to AAPD. 

Sunday, July 1

Buddhist Psychology 

6 p.m. 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute 

1815 Highland Place 

Annette Anderson on “Insights from Buddhist Psychology.” Free. 

843-6812 

Jazz on the Pier 

11 a.m. - 1 p.m. 

Berkeley Pier  

The Christy Dana Quartet performs on the Berkeley Pier at the foot of University Ave. and Seawall Dr. The CDQ ensemble led by trumpeter and jazz educator Christy Dana with the Bay as a backdrop. Bring your folding chairs, sunblock and jackets. Free.  

AC Transit Bus 51M 

649-3929 

Music and Meditation 

8 - 9 p.m. 

The Heart-Road Traveller 

1828 Euclid Avenue 

Group meditation using instrumental music and devotional songs. Free.  

496-3468 

Monday, July 2

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, and Joyce in the Classroom. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 

642-2754  

Tuesday, July 3

Berkeley Camera Club  

7:30 p.m. 

Northbrae Community Church  

941 The Alameda  

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 

Call Don, 525-3565 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panel on Finnegans Wake as well as looking at issues such as Joyce and carnality, computers, border-crossings, and cinema. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 642-2754  

Wednesday, July 4

Ice Cream Social 

Noon - 2 p.m. 

Lawrence Hall of Science 

UC Berkeley 

Part of the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday FUN-days. Bring your own picnic, ice cream provided by LHS. Free museum admission today with a library card, regular admission $3 - $7. 

642-5132  

4th of July at the  

Berkeley Marina 

Noon - 10 p.m. 

People can decorate their bikes at the Shorebird Nature Center and participate in the Decorated Bicycle Parade at 7 p.m. Madame Ovary’s egg puppets will perform and Adventure Playground will be open all day. Music begins at 2 p.m. with Zambombazo 2; Bird Legg and the Tite Fit Blues Band come on at 5 p.m.; Kollasuyo it at 7 p.m. and MotorDude Zydeco’s at 9 p.m. Fireworks at 9:30 p.m. Cars in by 7 p.m. when street closes to traffic, out only after 10 p.m. Free admission. No alcohol. Sponsored by the city. 548-5335 

Berkeley Communicator  

Toastmasters Club 

7:15 a.m. 

Vault Cafe 

3250 Adeline 

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month. 

527-2337 

Thursday, July 5

Summer Noon Concerts 2001 

Noon - 1 p.m. 

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza 

Shattuck at Center St. 

Weekly concert series. This week Capoeira Arts Cafe and company, Brazilian extravaganza. 

— compiled by Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole 

LGBT Catholics Group  

7:30 p.m. 

Newman Hall  

2700 Dwight Way (at College)  

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This meetings discussions will center on “What do we/can we expect from the Church?”  

654-5486 

Berkeley Metaphysical Toastmasters Club  

6:15 - 7:30 p.m.  

2515 Hillegass Ave.  

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month.  

Call 869-2547 

(gp) 

Bear Safety 

7 p.m. 

Recreational Equipment, Inc. 

1338 San Pablo Ave. 

Learn how to travel in bear country without mishap. Wilderness guide Ken Hanley will discuss the characteristics of black bears and grizzlies for anyone venturing into their territories. Free. 

527-4140 

(gp) 

Quit Smoking Class 

6 - 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center 

2939 Ellis Street 

A six week quit smoking class. 

Free to Berkeley residents and employees. 

Call 644-6422 or e-mail at: quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

James Joyce Conference 

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. 

Clark Kerr Campus 

2601 Warring Street 

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Dubliners, Ulysses, Marginal Feelings in Joyce, and Joyce and Anarchy. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25. 

642-2754  

Let The Sales Tax Yo-Yo 

Remember the state’s economic boom way back in 1998-2000? Because of those flush times, Californians are enjoying a nice sunny-day bonus this calendar year: a quarter-cent cut in the state sales tax. 

Didn’t notice? Well, the cut will save each person only about $31 a year. But that adds up to $1.2 billion in state revenue.  

And now that gloomier economic times are here the state needs every quarter-cent it can get to avoid making deep cuts in programs such as health care and education. 

The quarter-cent was added a decade ago, when recession was slamming California. As a result of a political compromise, legislators crafted the law in a way that the amount would automatically be cut in good times and be reinstated in bad.  

So, at the end of this year, it’ll be back. Maybe. 

Republicans, you see, want to cut that amount from the sales tax permanently, and they are threatening to block passage of the $100-billion-plus budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.  

They’re being penny-wise and pound-foolish. 

The tax was raised in 1991, with a provision that it would be cut again if the state had two consecutive years with budget surpluses amounting to more than 4 percent of the state’s general fund total.  

Since then, the state has enjoyed several billion dollars’ worth of other tax cuts as well, including cuts in the income tax and a major reduction in the vehicle registration tax.  

The state’s tax burden is now at about the national average, and there has been little clamor for more cuts. 

Critics point out that by nature, sales taxes are regressive, hitting low-income people hardest because much of their income goes for necessities — even in California, where groceries and prescription drugs are exempt.  

Some moderate Democrats have expressed concern about letting the sales tax climb back to its previous statewide level of 7.25 percent. They don’t want to be depicted by their 2002 election campaign opponents as tax-raisers. 

But this is not a new tax or a raised tax. It merely is reverting to its former level. If better times return, the tax cut will go into effect again. Rainy days are here.  

The prudent thing for California this year is to put this money to use on important state programs. 

– Los Angeles Times 

June 26  

Affirmative action loses more ground 

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court took a step in the right direction of ending all discrimination, even that based on the seemingly benign intention of helping minorities. The matter remains unresolved, but the United States is closer to the day when people are treated as individuals, not members of favored or disfavored groups. 

The case was Texas v. Hopwood and involved the University of Texas Law School’s policy of granting special preferences to the admission of Latino and African-American applicants. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the policy as discrimination against whites.  

The state of Texas appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, allowing the 5th Circuit ruling to stand. 

“It’s an important decision,” Ward Connerly told us; the Oakland businessman also heads the American Civil Rights Institute and was co-author of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, which banned such discrimination in state government. In 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court, similar to this new case, allowed Prop. 209 to stand without comment.  

And just last year the California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 209. 

“It’s a not the decisive decision I would like to see, which will have to await further court action,” he added. “But there’s a steady pattern coming from the courts, two steps forward, one step backward, to get rid of preferences in this nation. That does not bode well for those wanting preferences for race, gender and ethnicity.” 

He pointed out that on May 29, the Supreme Court also refused to hear a case decided by the 9th Circuit Court allowing — in a step backward — such preferences to stand at the University of Washington. 

“This is an untenable situation in the long run,” Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, told us of the conflicting decisions. “Sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to settle this issue.” 

The cases that might do this include a lawsuit against affirmative action at the University of Georgia, which last month was argued before the 11th U.S. Circuit, a lawsuit against the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions policy and another against the U of M’s Law School admissions policy. 

The continuing confusion, he explained, stems from the 1978 Bakke decision concerning admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis, in which the high court splintered, producing six different opinions.  

Four members were four affirmative action, four against. Justice Lewis Powell also was in favor, but only to the extent that race may be taken into account as one factor of diversity among many. His opinion turned out to be the “controlling” opinion most cited since then. 

Mr. Clegg pointed out that such confusing decisions not surprisingly produce confusing results in cases in lower courts. Moreover, the historical discrimination that the Bakke case was supposed to remedy ended a generation ago. 

From our position here in California, in the midst of a society that is increasingly mixed racially, ethnically, culturally and in many other ways — with intermarriage producing combined backgrounds in offspring — the best chance of harmony is to treat persons as individuals. 

Quotas and other forms of discrimination are the prescription for division and hatred. We hope that the Hopwood decision is a harbinger of the Supreme Court finally ending the confusion by taking up a major case and ruling clearly against preferences. 

The Orange County Register  

June 26, 2001 

Bracing for blackouts: Will FERC’s cap lower the price? 

As the political temperature rises along with the thermometer, the guiding hand of government is beginning to reappear on the West’s energy landscape.  

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has devised a new floating price cap for electricity that moves with the mix of plants operating at any given hour in 11 western states. 

The free-market purists inside FERC have resisted this reality. But after more than a year of skyrocketing prices and billions of dollars of bleeding in California, FERC is reluctantly attempting to define a decades-old law that is supposed to keep prices “just” and “reasonable.” 

The idea is to cap the price of power at any given time based on what it costs the least efficient generator to produce power. In theory, this is supposed to provide a reasonable reward to generators that are more efficient.  

The question is whether this indeed will be reasonable, or excessive. The only track record — and it is limited — is what has happened inside California for the past few months. Here a similar price cap has been in place, but only when demand has crept close to outstripping supply.  

The resulting price has been less than in a troubled market without caps, but far more than California paid before the market went haywire. 

Any price cap can be gamed and this one is no exception. The FERC system creates the obvious incentive for power producers to withhold electricity from an efficient unit (suddenly down for “maintenance”) and offer as a replacement some pricey power from an inefficient “peaker.”  

If any grid operator throughout the West bites at this bait, all 11 states lose, and potentially lose big. 

FERC is misguidedly attempting to avoid another form of short-term price intervention, which would be to cap the price of each generating facility based on its actual costs. This smells too much like the era of regulation for some.  

Yet compared to FERC’s new, ever-floating price cap, a firmer cap would have been easier to implement.  

Perhaps more important, this system stood a better chance of increasing the availability of supply since it would have removed any incentive to withhold power to game the price. 

That said, FERC’s new cap is an important political milestone. FERC should remain ready to learn and react quickly to any lessons about this cap that the market may soon teach us. 

June 19, 2001 

The Sacramento Bee —  

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June 21, 2001 

The Sacramento Bee — Justice Stanley Mosk: California loses its tribune of human rights 

For longer than most Californians have been alive, state Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk, who died Tuesday at age 88, was California’s brightest beacon of liberty. From the beginning of his public career, when he served at age 30 as the youngest Superior Court judge in the state, to the end of his tenure as the longest-sitting Supreme Court justice in California history, he turned his abundant energy and intellect to protecting and expanding individual rights. 

In 1947, as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, he struck down as unconstitutional racially restrictive real estate covenants used to prevent blacks and others from buying houses in particular neighborhoods, a decision that prefigured a later U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Elected as attorney general in 1958, he fought to force the Professional Golfers Association to end its whites-only clause. 

Appointed to the high court in 1964 by Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, he wrote decisions barring prosecutors from racially discriminating in removing jurors and the University of California from using racial quotas in admissions. Some saw this latter ruling as a detour from Mosk’s generally liberal views, but for Mosk it was consistent with his understanding of equal treatment under the law. 

Mosk’s greatest contribution to the law and rights was pioneering the theory of “independent state grounds.” The rights of the people were lodged not just in the Bill of Rights and the transitory interpretations of the U.S. Supreme Court majority, Mosk argued. They were embedded as well in state constitutions, which sometimes offered greater protection to individuals than the minimum required by federal courts. The doctrine, widely adopted by state courts around the country, is the source of many path-breaking state privacy rulings and has given states the chance to become agents for legal change. 

A devoted liberal, Mosk was also an adept politician, twice elected to statewide office and handily winning reconfirmation to the court each time he appeared on the ballot. He knew how far and how fast the court could go without provoking a public backlash. Personally opposed to the death penalty, he nevertheless followed the law in capital cases, even voting to expand its application. Had Gov. Jerry Brown named Mosk chief justice in 1977, instead recklessly appointing the rigid and mercurial Rose Bird, chances are good that California could have been spared a decade of polarization that harmed the courts and set the state on a course that limited some of the rights that Mosk so eloquently championed. 

In choosing a successor to Mosk, Gov. Gray Davis must remember that he isn’t replacing just a single justice. He is filling a void on the court that has lost its best legal mind, its best writer, its institutional memory and its most watchful guardian of individual rights. The chances of finding another Stanley Mosk are slim. But the governor who uses Mosk as a model won’t go far wrong, for either the court or California. 

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June 20, 2001 

The Sacramento Bee — Paying for the pill: Court points the way to gender equity 

Last week, a federal judge ruled under federal antidiscrimination laws that a Seattle drugstore chain must cover the cost of birth control pills for female employees. That welcome outcome might come off as old news to California women, who have enjoyed the benefits of a similar state law signed by Gov. Gray Davis back in 1999. But the suit, filed by Planned Parenthood on behalf of Jennifer Erickson, a pharmacy manager for the Bartell Drug Co. stores, is very important to women here and in the 11 other states that have passed gender-equity prescription-coverage laws. 

That’s because Bartell doesn’t use an HMO or outside carrier to provide health insurance. Instead, like many large companies, it is “self-insured” and pays for insurance claims out of a company cash reserve. According to a 1974 federal law, these “self-insured” companies are exempt from state insurance law, and therefore don’t have to pay for birth control pills, or the other Federal Drug Administration-approved contraceptive prescriptions in states where such coverage is mandated. 

With this ruling, Bartell will have to pay. Beyond Bartell, however, it’s unclear the impact this decision will have on employers nationwide. Planned Parenthood representatives say they hope the decision will scare companies into compliance or spur other cheated female employees to seek justice in the courts. 

But even if the Bartell decision gets applied broadly, women at companies with fewer than 15 employees and those who purchase their own insurance would still have to open their own wallets for birth control. This will only change with a revision of federal law. 

Critics contend that forced coverage of birth control will send monthly insurance payments through the roof. Their argument doesn’t make much sense. Why battle against paying for a relatively inexpensive prescription that can prevent a $10,000 pregnancy, plus continued health costs for an additional child? 

Maybe this is the reason a federal bill, the Equity in Prescription Coverage Act, has languished in Congress since 1997. This year, the bill has been reintroduced, and it is time for Congress to act to make the coverage available to all women. In 1998, Congress approved contraceptive prescription coverage for members of the House, the Senate and their families. Maybe this year, they’ll see fit to return the favor and extend the benefit to the rest of us. 

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June 26, 2001 

The Fresno Bee — Cal Grants still beyond reach for many 

California’s expanded student aid program was supposed to pave a golden road to college for thousands of graduating high school seniors this year. Get good grades and prove your financial need, students were told, and the state will give you a Cal Grant — up to $3,500 a year for tuition and other expenses at a public university or $9,708 at a private university. 

The trouble is, the state’s application process has proven to be so complex that many students who most need scholarships haven’t been able to get them. 

California now must either simplify the Cal Grant process or provide extensive application assistance to prospective students — probably both — if the state is to deliver what Gov. Davis has touted as “the most generous college financial aid program in the nation.” 

Despite a Cal Grant funding boost of 35 percent, the California Student Aid Commission, or CSAC, expects to hand out 2,100 fewer awards this year. It’s not for a lack of need. 

More than 100,000 high school seniors applied. A third were rejected for not meeting income or achievement guidelines. 

What’s truly worrisome is the one in four students who may have been eligible but were disqualified because they’d omitted application information or, in some instances, simply checked the wrong box. The complex, six-page federal application form required by CSAC asks detailed questions about a student’s family assets and income, including tax return information that some applicants may not have had by the March filing deadline. 

California had expected to give $221 million in grants to incoming college freshmen by fall. But officials have only spent $186 million on awards. 

The balance — $35 million — has been sent back to the state’s general fund. 

Meanwhile, thousands of students who could have used a slice of that money for their college dreams are pondering how to pay tuition fees in the fall. Returning college students and others who took time off after high school aren’t entitled to grants but can compete for a set pool of financial aid through a separate Cal Grant program. 

There are plenty of qualified applicants in this group: More than 51,000 prospective students were eligible, yet more than half were turned away for lack of funds. So why not shift the untapped $35 million — an amount less than the state has been known to burn in a single day of electricity purchases — to the grant program for older and re-entry students? 

Despite long odds in a summer when the governor wants to increase his budget reserve, some legislators are sensibly trying to do just that. If they succeed, some 20,000 students whose average family income is $19,000 will get the help they need to go to college. 

But in the longer term, if California is to keep its promise, the Cal Grant application process needs major surgery, soon. 

Habitot Children’s Museum “Back to the Farm” An interactive exhibit gives children the chance to wiggle through tunnels, look into a mirrored fish pond, don farm animal costumes, ride on a John Deere tractor and more. “Recycling Center” Lets the kids crank the conveyor belt to sort cans, plastic bottles and newspaper bundles into dumpster bins. $4 adults; $6 children age 7 and under; $3 for each additional child age 7 and under. Monday and Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Tuesday and Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day) Kittredge Street and Shattuck Avenue 647-1111 or www.habitot.org  

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821 

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648  

Lawrence Hall of Science “Math Rules!” A math exhibit of hands-on problem-solving stations, each with a different mathematical challenge. “Within the Human Brain,” ongoing. Visitors test their cranial nerves, play skeeball, master mazes, match musical tones and construct stories inside a simulated “rat cage” of learning experiments. “Saturday Night Stargazing,” First and third Saturdays each month. 8 - 10 p.m., LHS plaza. Space Weather Exhibit now - Sept. 2; now - Sept. 9 Science in Toyland; June 21: 6 a.m., Solar Eclipse Day Computer Lab, Saturdays 12:30 - 3:30 p.m. $7 for adults; $5 for children 5-18; $3 for children 3-4. 642-5132 

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu  

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall. 

924 Gilman St. All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted $5; $2 for year membership. All ages. June 30: The Cost, Pg. 99, Majority Rule, 7 Days of Samsara, Since by Man, Creation is Crucifixion; July 6: Victim’s Family, Fleshies, The Modern Machines, Once For Kicks, The Blottos; July 7: The Stitches, Real MacKenzies, The Briefs, The Eddie Haskells, The Spits 525-9926  

Albatross Pub Music at 9 p.m. unless noted otherwise. June 30: Larry Stefl Jazz Quartet; July 3: 9 p.m., pickPocket ensemble; July 4: Whiskey Brothers; July 5: Keni “El Lebrijano.” 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473  

Anna’s Music at 8 p.m. June 30: Anna and Susie Laraine and Peri Poston; 10 p.m., The Ducksan Distone. $2 weeknights, $3 weekends. 1801 University Ave. 849-ANNA  

Ashkenaz June 30: 9:30 p.m. Tropical Vibrations. 1370 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054 or www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley Arts Festival June 30: 7:30 p.m. Marvin Sanders and Vera Berheda, plus Mozart, Beethoven, Hadyn and Fuare in the gallery; July 1: 11 a.m., “Free Jazz on the Pier” The Christy Dana Quartet (on the Berkeley Pier). All shows at 8 p.m. unless otherwise noted Donations requested 2200 Shattuck Avenue 665-9496 

Freight & Salvage All music at 8 p.m. June 30: Jim Hurst & Missy Raines, Due West; July 5: Druha Trava; July 6 and 7: Ferron. 1111 Addison St. www.freightandsalvage.org; 548-1761 

Jupiter All shows at 8 p.m. June 30: Go Van Gogh 2881 Shattuck Ave. 843-8277 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts July 1: 1 & 2 p.m., “Kourosh Taghavi: The Beauty of Iranian Music and Stories of its Origins” $5 - $10. 2640 College Ave. 654-0100 

Live Oaks Concerts, Berkeley Art Center, July 1: Matthew Owens; July 15: David Cheng, Marvin Sanders, Ari Hsu; July 27: Monica Norcia, Amy Likar, Jim Meredith. All shows at 7:30 unless otherwise noted Admission $10 (BACA members $8, students and seniors $9, children under 12 free) 

125 Records Release Party June 30: 9:45 p.m. Anton Barbeau and Belle De Gama will celebrate the release of their albums The Golden Boot: Antology 2 and Garden Abstract respectively. These are the first two albums released on the 125 Records label, founded by Joe Mallon with his winnings from his appearance on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” $5. Starry Plough 3101 Shattuck Avenue 841-2082  

Leopold’s Fancy July 2: 8 p.m., Traditional Irish music, part of “Extreme Joyce/Reading On the Edge,” a conference celebrating the works of James Joyce. Free. 2271 Shattuck Ave. 642-2754 

Dramatic Joyce July 3: 7:30 p.m. Dramatic interpretations of the works of James Joyce by local and international actors. Introduction by UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop with commentary by and conversation with the audience. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” Free. Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus 2601 Warring Street 642-2754 

“Cuatro Maestros Touring Festival” July 4: 8 p.m. Music and dance performed by four elder folk artists and their young counterparts, accompanied by Los Cenzontles. $12 - $18. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300 

“Do You Hear What I Am Seeing?” July 5: 7:30 p.m. One man show by David Norris, a two-hour sampling of Joyce’s works with Norris’ insights. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” $10. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300 

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046 

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822 

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org 

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Through August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813 

Films 

Pacific Film Archive June 30: 7, 9:10 p.m. Nenette and Boni; July 3: 7:30 p.m., Pineapple. Pacific Film Archive Theater 2575 Bancroft Way (at Bowditch) 642-1412 

Exhibits 

Ako Castuera, Ryohei Tanaka, Rob Sato Through June 30, Tues. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Group exhibition, recent paintings. Artist’s reception June 9, 6:30 - 9 p.m. with music by Knewman and Espia. !hey! Gallery 4920 B Telegraph Ave., Oakland 428-2349  

“Watershed 2001” Through July 14, Wednesday - Sunday Noon - 5 p.m. Exhibition of painting, drawing, sculpture and installation that explore images and issues about our watershed. Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893 

Rachel Davis and Benicia Gantner Works on Paper Through July 14, Tues. - Sat., 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. Watercolors by Davis, mixed-media by Gantner. Opening reception June 13, 6 - 8 p.m. Traywick Gallery 1316 Tenth St. 527-1214 www.traywick.com 

Constitutional Shift Through July 13, Tuesdays - Fridays, noon - 5 p.m. Permanence and personal journey link Hee Jae Suh, Ursula Neubauer and Marci Tackett. Korean-born Suh explores an inner psychological world with a dramatic series of self-portraits. Neubauer explores self-portraiture as a travel map of identity with multiple points of view. Tackett explores Antarctica’s other-worldly landscape in a series of stunning digital photographs. Kala Art Institute 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977 

“The Trip to Here: Paintings and Ghosts by Marty Brooks” Through July 31, Tues. - Sun. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m. View Brooks’ first California show at Bison Brewing Company 2598 Telegraph Ave. 841-7734  

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541 

“Musee des Hommages,” Masterworks by Guy Colwell Faithful copies of several artists from the pasts, including Titian’s “The Venus of Urbino,” Cezanne’s “Still Life,” Picasso’s “Woman at a Mirror,” and Boticelli’s “Primavera” Ongoing. Call ahead for hours 2028 Ninth St. (at Addison) 841-4210 or visit www.atelier9.com 

“New Visions: Introductions 2001” July 12 - August 18, Wed. - Sat.: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Juried by Artist- Curator Rene Yanez and Robbin Henderson, Executive Director of the Berkeley Art Center, the exhibition features works from some of California’s up-and-coming artists. Reception July 12 from 6 - 8 p.m. Pro Arts 461 Ninth St., Oakland 763-9425 

“Geographies of My Heart” Collage paintings by Jennifer Colby through August 24; Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2541 

Images of Portugal Paintings by Sofia Berto Villas-Boas of her native land. Open after 5 p.m. Voulez-Vous 2930 College Ave. (at Elmwood) 

“Queens of Ethiopia: Intuitive Inspirations,” the exceptional art of Esete-Miriam A. Menkir. Through July 11. Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery 3023 Shattuck Ave. 548-9286 ext. 307 

“The Decade of Change: 1900 - 1910” chronicles the transformation of the city of Berkeley in this 10 year period. Thursday through Saturday, 1 - 4 p.m. Through September. Berkeley History Center, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Wheelchair accessible. 848-0181. Free.  

Readings 

Weekly Poetry Nitro Mondays 6:30 p.m. sign up, 7 - 9 p.m. reading. Performing poets in a dinner atmosphere. June 25: Featuring Steve Arntsen; July 2: Featured artist April Ipock. Cafe de la Paz 1600 Shattuck Ave. 843-0662 

“Berkeley Stories” June 29: 7:30 p.m. Stories of local Celebrity Artists. Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 2640 College Ave. 549-3564  

Tours 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Free. University of California, Berkeley. 486-4387 

Berkeley City Club Tours 2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley. The fourth Sunday of every month, Noon - 4 p.m. $2 848-7800  

Golden Gate Live Steamers Grizzly Peak Boulevard and Lomas Cantadas Drive at the south end of Tilden Regional Park Small locomotives, meticulously scaled to size. Trains run Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rides: Sunday, noon to 3 p.m., weather permitting. 486-0623  

St. Mary’s shines at Cal team camp 

Jose Caraballo said in March that his St. Mary’s basketball team would be ready to play with any team in the state next season. The Panthers took their first step toward proving that on Friday, beating reigning Northern California champion Modesto Christian, 42-35, at the Cal Basketball Team Camp in the RSF Fieldhouse. 

“We just want to make sure we can compete at this level, and the only way to figure that out is to play teams of this caliber,” Caraballo said. 

The game wasn’t the most formal, with a running clock and uneven officiating, but the Panthers’ diversified offense and suffocating pressure defense left no doubt that it meant a lot to the home team. Despite a distinct height disadvantage (6-foot-10 center Simon Knight had knee surgery last week and is lost for the summer), St. Mary’s used their superior quickness and shooting to put Modesto Christian away. 

“We’ve got the best guards in the state, on the West Coast, and we’re proving that we’re a force to be reckoned with,” said St. Mary’s point guard DeShawn Freeman. 

The most spectacular matchup was at the point, where Modesto Christian’s Richard Midgely faced off against Freeman. Midgely, who has verbally committed to Cal, is considered by many to be the top point guard in California, but he looked a step slow at times against the quicksilver Freeman, who penetrated seemingly at will.  

“We both know each other’s games. I’m good, and that’s all that matters to me,” Freeman said. “We’re both big-time players, so it’s all good.” 

Freeman converted several spectacular layups over the Modesto Christian big men, but also dished out assists to John Sharper and DeMarcus Nelson on the wings. Sharper was hot early, hitting two three-pointers in the first five minutes. 

“We’re improved with DeMarcus, no doubt. Now when I drive, I can go either way, because I’ve got John on one side and DeMarcus on the other to kick the ball out to,” Freeman said. 

Friday was Nelson’s first game with the Panthers. The sophomore transfer from Vallejo High inserted himself nicely into the offense, penetrating and shooting pull-up jumpers with ease, but looked a little confused at times in Caraballo’s full-court press defense. But given a full season of work with his new coaches and teammates, last year’s Cal-Hi Sports Freshman of the Year should add another dimension to an already fearsome defense. 

“The fast-breaking and up-tempo stuff is part of the reason I wanted to play here. It’s good for me, makes me a better player,” Nelson said. 

The newest Panther said he isn’t worried about moving from the point to a wing position. 

“I can do other things. I can pass, I can rebound, I can defend. So it’s not a real big adjustment for me.” 

Without Knight, the inside work fell to forward Chase Moore. Moore is just 6-foot-4 and was overmatched by the oversized Modesto Christian front line, which included a seven-footer. The Crusaders dominated the boards but failed to capitalize on several putbacks, and Moore showed a nice touch by pulling up over the seven-footer for three straight scores in the second half. 

Meanwhile, the Crusaders were simply outmatched in the open court. Freeman, Sharper, Nelson and fellow guards Matt Straus and Tim Fanning were never all on the court together, but at times it seemed like the Panthers had seven men on the floor, scrambling to get their hands on the ball. With Moore cleaning up any sloppy Crusader outlet passes, when the ball left Midgely’s hands it was in serious jeopardy. 

“As long as I have this type of player, I’m going to play this type of ball,” Caraballo said. “I’ve got John and DeShawn back, and they’re great players. Now with DeMarcus? Look out.” 

The Panthers played it cool after the game, probably because they have more challenges ahead this weekend. They were set to play De La Salle on Friday night, and will face perennial SoCal power Mater Dei at 9 a.m. today. After the morning round of games, the 16 teams in at the camp will be placed in a tournament which will culminate with a final four on Sunday. 

“It’s good to get out here against these teams. It lets us know that we can play at the D-1 level,” Freeman said.

About 30 representatives of local and state health-care institutions met to discuss California’s inadequate hearing screenings for newborns at the Berkeley-based Center for the Education of the Infant Deaf Friday. 

The group, convened by CEID Director Jill Ellis and Assemblymember Dion Aroner, has met once each year for three years to discuss the need for hearing screenings for newborns and the role early recognition of hearing problems plays in the  

language, cognition, social, and emotional  

development of deaf and hearing-impaired  

children. 

“It’s everybody’s issue,” Aroner said in her introductory remarks. “We have to cross the border incomewise as well as every other way, to ensure that every youngster has been screened, so that we can ensure that when these kids will be entering school, they are not going to have such a significant deficit that they will never catch up.” 

In July 1999, the state legislature passed AB 2780, which makes all hospitals approved by the California Children Services responsible for providing hearing screenings to all newborns. The law also allocates state funding for screening tests and follow-up services. But few hospitals meet the state requirements.  

According to specialists, this is a serious problem because screening a newborn’s hearing helps optimize the treatment for hearing loss. Studies have shown that a hearing-impaired child diagnosed within the first six months of life has a much greater chance of reaching the reading and speaking level of a child with no hearing loss by age two or three. 

“Most people in California are unaware that there is a law because many hospitals here are not doing (the screening) yet,” Ellis said. “Fifty percent of the deaf kids are healthy kids. So many times they are not identified until they are two and a half or three years old.” 

The experience of Sarah Moulton and Tammy Taylor, both mothers of hearing-impaired children who attend the CEID, illustrate the difference between early- and later-identified children with a hearing loss. Moulton’s daughter, Kirian, was about two years old when doctors diagnosed her severe-to-profound hearing loss. Today, Kirian is articulate, but she has to struggle more than children such as J.B., who was tested at the birth and received his hearing aid when he was only 10 weeks old. Thanks to the early diagnostic evaluation and the early intervention program he was soon enrolled in, J.B. now has the language of other two year olds. 

Nationally, the number of babies screened has increased from 35 percent to 65 percent. In California that figure only reaches 19 percent. But according to Rick Jimenez from Natus Medical, a company producing medical devices for newborns, the number of children who are screened and don’t receive follow-up services is even more alarming. The first two hearing screenings happen before the baby leaves the hospital, he explained. The diagnostic evaluation happens later. Today, in 30 to 50 percent of the cases of newborns referred for diagnostic evaluation, there are no records of whether the babies are actually screened.  

AB 2780 addresses that problem, but it may still take more than a year until the state requirements are put into practice. Hospitals have until Dec. 21, 2002 to be certified for a hearing screening program and many of them are likely to wait until the last minute.  

“The hospitals are not ignoring this programs,” said Toni Will, director of the UCSF Hearing Coordination Center. “But there are obstacles.” Challenges include the cost of the equipment required to perform newborn hearing screenings and inadequate staffing. Another issue still to be addressed is the problem of insurance coverage for the tests. 

At a time when commentators around the world are still taking turns lambasting President George Bush’s decision to withdraw from the 1997 Kyoto agreements for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by industrialized nations, representatives from India, Indonesia, South African and the Philippines have been in Berkeley this week studying strategies for reducing such emissions in their own cities. 

It’s all part of the Cities for Climate Protection Program (CCP), a global campaign launched by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives in 1993 to help cities around the world create and implement aggressive strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

More than 400 city and county governments in the United States, Europe, Asia, African and Australia are participating in the program today, including, as of Thursday, New York City.  

In the United States alone about 100 participating cities managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a total of 10 million tons in 2000, according to Michelle Wyman, director of public affairs for ICLEI’s U.S. office, which is in Berkeley. 

Berkeley has been part of the CCP program since the very beginning and has a detailed plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that is in some ways a model for other cities to follow, according to ICLEI Outreach Coordinator Susan Ode. While the Kyoto agreement would have called for the United States to reduce its emission levels to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, for example, the Berkeley plan approved in 1998 aims to reduce emissions to 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. 

“We are thrilled that staff from our international offices are here to learn about how effective local action on climate protection has been in the United State,” said Nancy Skinner, international director of the CCP campaign, in a written statement. “They will take what they learn here to engage cities in their own countries to reduce global warming pollution in their communities.” 

A study by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences concluded earlier this month that greenhouse gas emissions could raise temperatures by between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees before the end of the century, contributing to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns. 

The visitors to Berkeley this week have little trouble imagining the impact of such a change. 

“As an island nation, the Philippine people are concerned about sea-level rise, and the increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes and tropical storms,” said Pam Gallares-Oppus, CCP Regional Manager for Southeast Asia and a native of the Philippines. 

In India, climate change is “something people are facing every day,” according to Ramamurthi Sreedhar, one of two visitors from India in the Berkeley ICLEI office this week. Sreedhar said extreme weather events such as droughts, cyclones and floods have helped people at least understand the potential impact of global warming – even if there is still reluctance to acknowledge the ways in which they contribute to the problem, both as individuals and as a nation. 

“They have to recognize that there are certain activities of their own that are effecting it: energy use, cutting forests, and industries not following regulations,” Sreedhar said.  

But in a country where nearly 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, Sreedhar added, the emphasis tends to be on finding ways to expand industry and create new jobs rather than on environmental protection. 

Even the pollution regulations that are in place in India are often not obeyed, Sreedhar said. 

“Enforcement systems are weak, so you can get away with violating laws.” 

These are just some of the obstacles that Sreedhar, Gallares-Oppus and the other visitors to Berkeley this week must work to overcome when they return home and attempt to persuade municipal leaders to join the CCP campaign, said CCP Technical Program Coordinator Jim Yienger. 

“To get cities to agree, you need to go through a political process,” Yienger said. “That’s basically the first step.” 

Sreedhar said he plans to concentrate on cities with populations ranging from 300,000 to 1.2 million to start, with the hope that in relatively small communities (both Bombay and Delhi India have more than 10 million people) it will be easier to organize support for the CCP strategies and objectives. 

In the past CCP-participating cities have worked to: create building codes that enhance energy efficiency; launch home weatherization programs; promote solar energy use; create energy audit plans for businesses; encourage dense residential develop near public transit hubs; implement and expand recycling programs; and promote greater reliance on “green” power generation, to name just a few strategies. 

“A lot of political commitment is required in these kinds of activities,” Sreedhar said. “It’s easier to generate that kind of interest in small places.” 

Lorraine Mashiane, a representative from South Africa’s CCP office visiting Berkeley this week, said she has been amazed to see how far Berkeley has come already in its own efforts to reduce emissions.  

“The amount of work that has already been done; the efforts by everybody – the whole community – not just a particular group of people; it’s really impressive,” Mashiane said. 

The South Africa CCP office has already sent out invitations to 25 South African cities to submit proposals for how they might become involved in the CCP program, Mashiane said. She said she expects to choose five cities to work with intensively in the year ahead. 

Leluma Matooane, another South African CCP representative, said some cities in South African have already begun efforts to reduce emissions, in part because air pollution has reached levels where it significantly impacts the quality of life. The cities of Cape Town and Durban, in particular, suffer from a “brown haze” created by automobile exhaust and oil refinery emissions, he said. 

But while most of the foreign CCP representatives in Berkeley this week were looking for tools to improve the quality of life at home, the recognized that there was only so much they can do working in isolation.  

“The climate change thing is a global issue,” Mashiane said. “It’s not just about a particular country.” 

According to Skinner, the United States is responsible for 26 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year, although it accounts for only 4 percent of the world population. 

Matooane said Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto commitments represents a “setback” for those working to reverse climate change everywhere. But, he said, “It doesn’t stop us from doing something about it.” 

Berkeley Observed 

Looking back, seeing ahead 

In 1898 a group of north Berkeley women founded a club devoted to educating the public on the healthful benefits of living simply in homes designed to provide plenty of fresh air, sunlight and greenery.  

The club was called the Hillside Club. The ideals promoted by the club were published in pamphlets and distributed to the public.  

In reaction to the excesses of the Victorian Age, the club advocated that homes should be simple and free of unnecessary decoration; wood siding should be left unpainted to weather naturally; and interiors should be filled with handmade or homemade furniture and decorative objects.  

The club believed that the benefits of country living could be developed in Berkeley, thereby creating a new kind of city that was in harmony with the landscape. 

Writer and naturalist Charles Keeler, a great proponent of this “arts and crafts” philosophy and an important influence in the founding of the Hillside Club, wrote a book “The Simple Home” in 1904 that describes how to achieve such a house.  

Architect Bernard Maybeck, whose name is associated with the concept of “building with nature,” designed his first “simple home” for Keeler at the top of Ridge Road in 1895.  

The house was built of unpainted redwood, both inside and out, and all the construction members were left exposed. Soon the north Berkeley hillside was covered with unpainted wood-sided houses set in lushly informal gardens. 

Even the neighborhood public Hillside School was designed in the rustic, back-to-nature style.  

It was built in 1915.  

It was covered with unpainted brown shingles and its wide covered porch was supported with posts of unpeeled redwood logs.  

The children went to school in a building very much like the homes they lived in.  

On September 17, 1923, a raging wildfire swept down from Wildcat Canyon destroying much of the early hillside neighborhood including the original Hillside School.  

Only a few of the early homes north of the university campus still stand.  

Susan Cerny writes Berkeley Observed in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association

Last summer, eight members of the Berkeley Bishops Chess Team traveled to Straffen, Ireland, to compete with the top-rated European Junior Champion Chess Team.  

This week the Berkeley Bishops are hosting nine children and five adults from Straffen, continuing the cultural exchange that began with a chess tournament last year. 

Straffen is a small village of 850 people, situated 40 miles west of Dublin. Last year Straffen Elementary School won the title of Junior Champions of Europe.  

The Berkeley Bishops spent a week with host families in the village. When the final tournament was played the Bishops won two out of three matches.  

Organizer Elizabeth Shaughnessy was the Irish Women’s Chess Champion in 1970 and former head of the Berkeley Board of Education.  

Shaughnessy said she was the first to start a school-based chess program on the West Coast in 1982 when she founded the Berkeley Chess School. Since then enrollment continues to climb, with 4,000 kids enrolled throughout the Bay Area in this year’s program.  

“It is the largest program on the West Coast,” Shaughnessy said.  

The children participating in the program generally range from third to sixth grade with a few exceptions.  

“If a younger kid is particularly bright, we let them join,” Shaughnessy said.  

How do kids benefit from such a program? 

“It helps the kids to learn how to focus, to problem solve, how to make decisions, and understanding the consequences of those decisions,” said Lanette Chan-Gordon, executive director of the Berkeley Chess School. 

Shaughnessy said, “The kids learn the responsibility of their own decisions.” 

A part from chess, the Irish children are enjoying their trip. 

Straffen student Niall Kiernan,11, was impressed by the Golden Gate Bridge. 

“We don’t have anything like that in Ireland,” he said. “There are more lights here too.” 

Donal Spring, 14, also of Straffen, agreed that not only were there more lights, but there is “more sun too.” 

The weather in Ireland made a big impression on Mahnoosh Moghadam, 9, of Berkeley, who visited Straffen last year with the team.  

“They have a lot of rainbows there. It’s always raining. I saw two rainbows at a time. Lots of horses too.” 

The big rematch is on Monday. 

OAKLAND — Unions representing BART employees have asked Gov. Gray Davis to help avert a strike on the commuter train network. 

BART’s three largest unions, representing 2,800 employees, have voted to authorize a strike beginning midnight Saturday. 

But they also have asked Davis to impose a 60-day cooling off period that would allow negotiations to continue. 

“Should the governor grant our request, BART riders can be assured there will be no strike on Sunday morning,” said Larry Hendel with the Service Employees International Union 790, which represents maintenance and clerical workers. 

A Davis spokesman said Friday evening the governor has not yet decided how to respond to the requested intervention. 

BART managers have opposed the cooling-off period, saying they to reach an agreement this weekend. 

“They have to get serious at the bargaining table,” BART General Manager Tom Margro said of his union counterparts. 

A strike would affect 335,000 commuters in the San Francisco Bay area.

SAN JOSE — The nation’s largest state lottery prize, a record $141 million, couldn’t have gone to a more deserving man, according to friends and neighbors of Alcario “Al” Castellano, a retired grocery store clerk who volunteered often to help Mexican-American groups. 

Castellano, 66, chose the one-time cash option when he bought his ticket, which means that within the next six weeks he will receive $70,794,364. After taxes, Castellano will net about $50.9 million. 

“My wife and I will never be able to spend all of this money. This is for our family and future generations,” he grinned. 

The former migrant farm worker plans to retire in comfort, take vacations with his wife, and most importantly, provide for his family.  

He said he would immediately pay off his three children’s student loans. 

“I am the luckiest man alive today because I have a loving wife, three great children and some grandchildren,” he said.  

“I am proud to take care of their every need from now on because I just got luckier.” 

The couple also plans to donate to local charities they are familiar with, particularly ones fostering education, leadership and arts and culture for Latinos. 

“We know that winning the Lotto will change our lives,” Castellano said. “The one thing we do know is this will not change our core values.” 

Castellano thanked his wife Carmen profusely for the years of support that she had given him. 

She wants to visit Mexico, Europe and Peru. 

“I’ve always dreamed of seeing those pyramids,” she said. “Now maybe our dreams will come true.” 

Castellano is a fairly quiet man, but one whose face is well-known at the city’s many Mexican American cultural events, acquaintances say. Often behind the lens of a video or still camera, Castellano has spent many years amassing images of the city’s rich Hispanic culture. 

“He was the most supportive person,” said Melinda Chacon, a box office worker at Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose who met Castellano when he videotaped a beauty pageant she was in. “He’s very well deserving. I’m sure everybody felt the same way.” 

Carmen Castellano, a semiretired secretary at 62, is a board member of the folkloric dance group Los Lupenos, among other organizations. 

“We went through a pretty rough year last year, and he and his wife have been there doing pretty much whatever they could,” Maria De La Rosa, the dance group’s artistic director. “He took it upon himself to come in and clean for us, mopping the lobby, vacuuming the floors and taking the garbage out.” 

Castellano was the dairy manager at a San Jose Safeway store before he retired with a bad back, said coworker Bob Skillicorn. 

“You sit and think ’It’s a sin for one person to win that much money.’ But when it’s someone like him, well, I’m really happy for him,” Skillicorn said. “He’s a real down to earth individual and a very strong family man. I know he’ll do the best for his family and community by giving back something.” 

Castellano bought the ticket Saturday at Alex Wang’s liquor store, where he has bought tickets for 15 years. 

“We’ve known each other so long,” Wang said. “He’s a nice guy. He’s smiling all the time.” 

Wang’s smiling, too: he gets $705,000 for selling the ticket. He plans to buy a car for his wife, Ling, and put the rest in the bank. 

Wang said Castellano always marked two of his own numbers and let the computer do the rest with quick picks. The winner was the last number he bought that day: 3, 22, 43, 44 and 45 and Mega number 8. 

Ticket buyers must decide at the time of purchase whether to take a one-time payment or 26 annual checks. Castellano chose the lump sum when he bought his ticket Saturday. 

He said he woke at dawn Sunday, brewed coffee, and plucked his ticket from the refrigerator where it was posted with a magnet. 

He sat down to read the paper and began matching the numbers, one by one. 

“Now, what’s going on here?” he said to himself. “Is this real? I can’t believe it.” 

He went outside for a walk, came back into the kitchen and checked the numbers again. He woke Carmen, “and she started getting hysterical and started dancing.” 

Born in New Mexico, he moved with his family to California to pick crops when he was 9. He volunteered for the Army after high school in the mid-1950s. He and Carmen met at a dance in Salinas. 

He has been a member of the local chapter of the American GI Forum, a Hispanic veterans group that produces annual Cinco de Mayo and Fiestas Patrias festivals. He shows up with his video camera at Hispanic parades, mariachi festivals, charity fund-raisers and other community events so often that the newspaper called him “the Mexican-American community’s unofficial videographer.” 

The largest previous single-state lottery prize before the current record jackpot was $118.8 million in 1991 in California — that was shared by 54 winners. 

The largest multistate jackpot came in a Powerball game in 1998: $295.7 million, shared by 13 machinists in Westerville, Ohio. The world’s largest jackpot ever won by an individual was $197 million, won by a nanny in Boston in 1999 in the multistate Big Game lottery. 

The Castellanos were quiet and nervous as they turned in the ticket Thursday, Lottery spokeswoman Norma Minas said. 

With shouts of “Arriba!” whistles and thunderous applause, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa was greeted like a conquering hero here at a gathering of Hispanic officials. 

Though Villaraigosa lost the race to white candidate James Hahn, Hispanic officials, buoyed by census data showing their growing numbers, believe that victory – greater political power – is inevitable. 

This year, census findings showed there were 35.3 million Hispanics in 2000, or about 12.5 percent of the population. They now rivals blacks, who number between 33.9 million and 35.4 million, as the country’s leading minority group. 

“It means influence, it means buying power, it means having a greater voice and being able to have more officials that can represent that voice,” said Deborah Ortega, a city council member in Denver, Colo. 

Ortega was one of about 900 Hispanic elected officials, from city council and school board members to members of Congress, that attended this week’s National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund annual meeting. 

At the conference, they swapped strategy on how to translate their growing numbers into political power by mobilizing the immigrant vote and by backing “crossover” candidates with broad appeal in areas without Hispanic majorities. 

Many were brimming with excitement generated by Villaraigosa’s campaign, which they said raised the profile of Hispanic politicians and demonstrated Hispanic voters’ support and higher-than-average turnout. Hispanics made up 22 percent of the electorate June 5, compared to 15 percent in 1997. 

“I have no tears. I put all my sweat on that battlefield,” Villaraigosa said Thursday to a crowd of about 500 who greeted him with hugs, cheers and a standing ovation. “There was an energy, an excitement there, that all of us can tap into.” 

There are about 5,000 Hispanic elected and appointed officials across the country, ranging from sheriffs and school board members to mayors and U.S. representatives. 

Still, Hispanics represent just 1 percent of elected officials in the country. Hispanics account for 4 percent of members of Congress and there are just seven Latinos in elected, statewide offices. 

On one hand, these numbers “generate great pride,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO Educational Fund. “On the other side, they show we have so much more work to get done.” 

Much of that work lies in cultivating crossover candidates that appeal to voters beyond the Hispanic community. The association chose the Bay Area as the site for its conference to highlight San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales’ success at garnering votes outside the Hispanic community, which accounts for about 30 percent of the city’s population. 

Hispanic leaders are hoping to apply the lessons learned in California to North Carolina, Arkansas and other areas that saw explosive growth in Hispanic populations over the last decade. 

Forthcoming mayoral elections in New York and Houston promise to be high-profile tests of Hispanic candidates Fernando Ferrer and Orlando Sanchez, and the association plans to make phone calls and walk precincts in those cities to get out the vote. 

“The Latino mayors of large cities that have succeeded have that crossover appeal,” said Michael Madrid, vice president of San Antonio, Texas-based political consulting firm Guerra DeBerry Coody. “It allows them to transcend ethnic labels.” 

Dale Prairie, a council member in Bernalillo, N.M., said he plans to take that lesson to heart in his next campaign. He believes he lost a bid for county treasurer because he did not have the votes of high-tech employees and elderly people. Now he realizes the importance of courting those constituencies. 

“Latinos are looking forward to growing more in numbers and being able to win more elections in their own communities,” he said. 

Besides appealing to broad coalitions of voters, candidates must also attract a new bloc of immigrant voters. Since 1993, 5.3 million immigrants became naturalized citizens; of those, 2.3 million were Hispanics, said Louis DeSipio, an associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Helping immigrants to register to vote, teaching them about voting rights and the importance of voting, and urging them to go to the polls were the focus of one workshop at the conference. 

Officials also dug into the nuts and bolts of governing at workshops on school finance, municipal budgets, education and affordable housing. Such discussions indicate political maturity in the Hispanic community, Madrid said. “It’s not just about breaking into the system, it’s about making the system work.” 

What’s next? “Short of electing somebody to the White House, electing a United States senator is the next breakthrough we need to make,” Vargas said. 

“The last election in 2000 broke new ground. You had two middle-aged white men speaking Spanish,” Vargas said. “Success at the ballot box is going to require Latino strategies. We want these parties to work for the vote of the Latino community.” 

On the Net: 

National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials: http://www.naleo.org/

LOS ANGELES — Frustrated by the postponement of a state hearing on workers’ rights, dozens of immigrant workers rallied outside Gov. Gray Davis’ local office Friday and urged full enforcement of labor laws. 

A delegation of activists delivered a letter to Davis’ office and met with a member of the governor’s staff who assured the workers there would be a budget increase for the Department of Industrial Relations and agreed to look into the group’s request to have a meeting with Davis, said Joann Lo with the Garment Worker Center. 

A phone call to Davis’ press office was not immediately returned. 

“We demand more attention and resources to ensure the rights of workers to fair wages, safe working conditions and an efficient process to demand recourse for labor law violations,” the 

letter stated. 

“Conditions for immigrant workers are not better now than they were under the previous administration, and the Department of Industrial Relations continues to fail under your administration to adequately uphold and enforce current labor laws.” 

Day laborers marched up and down the sidewalk in front of the Ronald Reagan State Building alongside janitors and garment and restaurant workers carrying signs that said “put labor laws into action.”  

Wearing brightly colored T-shirts and chanting in Spanish, a couple hundred workers turned out for the midday rally. 

Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, is chairman of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee that had been scheduled to hear from the workers Friday.  

The meeting was postponed until July 26 because of schedule conflicts, Koretz said, including prolonged budget negotiations that are under way in Sacramento. 

Workers want the next budget to include an additional $5.5 million for enforcement of labor laws.  

The budget likely will include about a $5 million increase, Koretz said, which is only part of what is needed to improve the situation. 

“Funding is the problem. There’s not enough funding for inspectors. If the laws were enforced actively it would make a huge difference,” Koretz said. 

The Department of Industrial Relations is so short-staffed and underfunded that the average employer of immigrant workers is likely only to get a random visit from inspectors every 60 to 100 years, Koretz said. 

Immigrant workers who claimed to have fallen victim to corrupt employers spoke through interpreters Friday to tell of their own experiences and frustrations in trying to get the state to respond to their complaints. 

Mateo Cruz, a day laborer who said he cleaned restaurants for 40 days for one employer, contends he is owed $2,000 after putting in 12-hour days. 

Yeny Saavedra, a garment worker who says she worked up to 15 hours a day sometimes, filed a complaint against her employer for failure to receive overtime pay, but has not received any funds. She said she is owed some $15,000 in back overtime pay, penalties and damages. 

The workers want a commitment that the hearing will be held at the new scheduled date of July 26, and Koretz said he hopes it won’t have to be rescheduled again. 

“One way or another we’re going to have a hard-hitting hearing, and we’re going to dramatize (these abuses) as much as possible,” he said.

SAN QUENTIN — They call them the “worst of the worst” – death row inmates who spend hours fashioning weapons out of unlikely materials and hurl filthy concoctions at passing guards. 

Some want violent inmates evicted to other facilities, pointing to an increase in attacks on staff as proof that aging San Quentin State Prison, built in 1852, isn’t equipped for the bleeding edge of 21st-century malefaction. 

“The people in (maximum security) prisons are in more secure prisons than our current death row,” says Stephen Green, assistant secretary of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency. “That’s the problem with San Quentin. It just simply isn’t as secure as it should be to have that kind of inmate there.” 

Part of the nation’s largest prison system – California has 160,000 inmates – San Quentin doesn’t have the no-contact design of modern prisons, which use remote-control doors and other innovations to keep prisoners separate from guards. 

At San Quentin, officers have constant hand-to-hand dealing with inmates, pushing in and retrieving food trays, exchanging clean laundry for dirty, and escorting prisoners to the showers and exercise yards. The cells, which are made of bars, have a metal screen in front, but that’s not enough to stop “gassing” attacks, the noxious practice  

of throwing mixtures of urine and feces. 

Officers also are at risk when they collect an inmate’s food tray.  

The design of the food slot means the officer and inmate are inches apart and if the officer is distracted, sometimes intentionally by another inmate, the inmate can pull the officer’s hands through the slot. 

While the majority of death row prisoners do not cause problems, attacks have increased threefold in the past year and a half in the Adjustment Center, the place where the most disruptive death row inmates are sent, prison officials say.  

Forty-five of the center’s 85 inmates have attacked guards, according to prison staff. 

“We’ve had officers that have had their arms grabbed as they’re trying to issue a tray of food and the inmate takes a slashing device and slashes at their wrists,” says Tony Jones, president of the San Quentin correctional officers’ union. Some inmates have made spears by rolling up a newspaper very tightly, coating it with oatmeal to create a hard crust and then finding a piece of metal for the tip, creating a weapon “every bit strong enough to stick into a cement wall or stick into you.” 

A number of ideas have been floated about what to do with San Quentin: Close it, move death row, split death row into two or break it down into smaller units distributed to maximum security prisons throughout the state. 

A state study on the feasibility of closing San Quentin is due at the end of this month for review by state officials and the governor, who has final say. 

Meanwhile, a more modest proposal is making its way through the Legislature that would send up to 30 of the most troublesome inmates to California State Prison, Sacramento, a modern facility next to Folsom State Prison. 

That idea, put forward by Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, has passed in the Assembly and is scheduled for a Senate committee hearing July 10.  

Not surprisingly, the bill is less than popular with residents of the Folsom area. 

Jones opposes the idea of closing San Quentin. 

“We’ve rebuilt this institution in the last 10 years completely. I don’t think that it’s a broken-down institution that can’t go on,” he said. 

But he thinks getting rid of the worst death row inmates is a good idea. 

“Even if it was to move 10, it would help,” he says. “You’re housing an inmate in a facility that currently poses a clear and present danger to all staff that works with them.” 

Inmate advocates say not all violence can be blamed on inmates.  

They suggest some of the recent violence may have been in reaction to restrictions on visiting and access to exercise yards. They oppose the idea of moving inmates away from San Francisco, which is where a large number of death row lawyers practice. 

“The only people who should be moved out are the ones who suffer from severe mental illness,” says Robert Bryan, who represents a number of death row inmates. 

Steve Fama of the Prison Law Office, which provides free legal services to help improve inmates’ living conditions, said he’s concerned that inmates who get moved out won’t have the same access to legal resources like law libraries and will be allowed fewer attorney visiting days. 

Fama’s also unsure whether the increased assaults are “the start of the trend or merely another turn of the wheel” and thinks the state should take a closer look at the Adjustment Center to see what’s going on with inmates, staff and supervisors. 

“The idea that moving 10 or 20 inmates ... is going to solve the problem is a little naive,” Fama says.

LOS ANGELES — California’s power crisis and the struggling technology market will keep the state’s economy teetering on the edge of recession for at least the rest of the year, economic forecasters say. 

Even without factoring in the continuing costs of keeping the state’s cash-strapped utilities in operation, California’s economy – the fifth largest in the world – is rapidly slowing and will struggle to keep from shrinking, according to the Anderson Forecast released Thursday. 

Californians are jittery over the reliability of the state’s power system, worried about their jobs and have lost much of their confidence in the economy, said Tom Lieser, senior economist with the quarterly report, based at the University of California at Los Angeles. 

The UCLA economists estimated consumer spending in the first quarter, adjusted for inflation, declined 3.3 percent in the state as paper riches based on vanishing stock options, known as the “wealth effect,” disappeared. “The recent weakness of taxable sales ... likely means that the wealth effect on consumer spending, which was an important determinant of the 1999-2000 gains, is now dead in California,” Lieser said. 

He estimated the state’s unemployment rate – 4.9 percent in May – would reach 6.3 percent by 2003 before turning around. 

One bright spot in the forecast was state exports, which remained high with 13.2 percent year-to-year growth from the first quarter last year, Lieser said. 

But the power crisis, fueled in part by increasing demand from the high-tech industry and limited hydroelectric capacity due to drought in the Northwest, is an increasing drain on the state. 

California has spent billions of dollars buying electricity for its largest utilities, which have been losing money for the past year due to high wholesale power prices and deregulation rules that prevented them from passing the high costs on to consumers. 

A report prepared by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research group that co-sponsored Thursday’s Anderson Forecast forum, concluded that by bailing out the utilities and shielding consumers, the state would end up with huge debt and more rolling blackouts this summer. 

The report suggests the power crisis would end sooner if consumers bore the brunt of rising electricity costs because that would force conservation. 

That drew sharp criticism from Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis. 

“Already without a rate increase we’ve had an 11 percent reduction in energy use from last May to this May,” Maviglio said. “And there’ll be a rate increase hitting June bills that should cause even further reductions.” 

On the national front, Anderson Forecast Director Edward Leamer said the risk of recession had dropped slightly from an earlier report, from 90 percent to 80 percent. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Anderson Forecast: http://www.uclaforecast.com 

WASHINGTON — A researcher who had been preparing to work on human cloning has agreed not to attempt an experiment or research until the legality of the effort is determined, the Food and Drug Administration reported. 

FDA spokesman Lawrence Bachorik said Friday that his agency has inspected a lab set up by Brigitte Boisselier in an effort to attempt human cloning. 

She signed a statement committing not to attempt human cloning and not to do research using human eggs until the legality of human cloning is determined, Bachorik said. 

Lawmakers have been preparing legislation to outlaw human cloning. In the meantime, FDA has insisted that no experiments can go forward without its approval.  

That hasn’t discouraged a religious organization called the Raelian Movement, which argues that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial scientists. 

Its leader, Rael, started a lab – directed by Boisselier – where he vowed to clone a human somewhere in the United States. 

Another group, led by an Italian fertility doctor, is promising to find another country where cloning is legal. Both teams say they have people ready to volunteer for the first human effort. 

In its issue due on newsstands Monday, U.S. News & World Report says that a federal grand jury in Syracuse, N.Y., is investigating the Raelian lab. Bachorik declined to say where the lab is located. Boisselier formerly taught chemistry at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Boisselier told a House energy and commerce subcommittee in March that her lab had received a letter from FDA warning that it would be against the law to proceed with cloning without permission. 

At that time she said she did not know whether the company operating the lab, Clonaid, would proceed anyway. 

She dismissed safety concerns, saying the problems have all come in cloning animals and do not apply to potential human cloning.  

She said she was working with a father who was devastated by the death of his son and wants to clone him. 

The FDA says any human cloning experiments in the United States would need its approval and, based on safety concerns, the agency would not approve any applications at this time.  

Clones are created when the genetic material from a single cell is injected into an egg cell that has had its genes removed. The resulting baby would be like an identical twin born years later. 

Ethicists note that the clone would not be a copy of the original person.  

He or she would grow up in a different environment at a different time, said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON — Screening tests for breast cancer, cervical cancer and colorectal cancer will be covered by Medicare beginning on July 1, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday. 

The new coverage comes under a law passed by Congress last December. The legislation calls for The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to phase in coverage for certain tests and therapies that detect diseases early, when there is the best chance for treatment. 

“Medicare must play a leading role in preventing, containing or slowing illness,” said HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. “By increasing preventive services we can save lives.” 

Under the law, most preventive services require a 20 percent co-pay of a Medicare-approved amount. The new law applies to those who are not considered at high risk for cancer – those who are considered high-risk cases are already covered. Under the new measure, women can request coverage every two years for Pap Smear tests, which help millions detect precancerous cervical cells in time to prevent cancer.  

Medicare recipients are also now entitled to a screening colonoscopy every 10 years. 

On The Net: 

Medicare: http://www.medicare.gov 

WASHINGTON — Defying a veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed sweeping patients’ rights legislation Friday night, promising millions of Americans new health care protections and the ability to sue their HMOs. 

The 59-36 vote sent the bill to the House, where the White House and Republican leaders were hoping to rework it to restrict lawsuits. 

The legislation is a “going to protect the patients of this country, the families, the children, the women, the workers in this nation,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., a leading supporter. 

GOP critics saw it differently, and said so. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, said the measure was “more concerned about protecting the rights of trial lawyers than providing Americans with affordable high-quality health care.” 

But an alternative proposal that would have reduced the threat of lawsuits, supported mostly by Republicans, was swept aside, 59-36, moments before the final vote. 

Designed to combat HMO horror stories, the legislation as originally drafted would give an estimated 190 million Americans new protections such as the right to emergency room care, access to specialists, minimum hospital stays for mastectomies and access to government-run clinical trials. 

Patients could appeal any HMO’s denial of care to an independent reviewer. The legislation also would permit patients to sue if they lose their appeal and to recover substantial damages if they win in court. 

President Bush issued a veto threat against the bill last week, saying he agreed with the need to protect patients but was concerned the measure would prompt lawsuits, drive up the cost of insurance and cause businesses to cancel coverage. 

Republicans made the same point repeatedly during the debate, and Democrats agreed to a series of changes they said would alleviate the problem. 

“I think we made a lot of improvements,” Daschle told reporters. “And I think the president should reconsider” his veto threat. 

Republican officials said that was unlikely, at least until Democrats agreed to further reduce the threat of lawsuits and the potential for enormous sums to be awarded in damages. 

Supporters and critics of the bill have generally agreed on the need for patient protections – an issue that garners consistently high support in public opinion polls. 

But they clashed often over the lawsuits that Democrats, aligned politically with the nation’s trial lawyers, say are necessary to enforce those rights. Republicans, generally aligned with the health insurance industry, tried at several points to curtail the potential for suits. 

One change, adopted on Thursday, would shield an estimated 94 percent of the nation’s employers from lawsuits. 

The bill’s supporters agreed to others on Friday. 

One would limit class action lawsuits. Another would require virtually all patients to complete an independent appeal of an HMO’s denial of care before going to court. 

Supporters raised objections to proposals to limit damages that patients could recover in successful lawsuits, and also objected to further restrictions on patients’ abilities to bring suits. 

“At some point Senator Kennedy and Senator (John) McCain and Senator (John) Edwards are going to get serious and negotiate” on the legal issues, said Nickles, referring to the lead sponsors of the measure. 

Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., proposed the amendment to foreclose most suits while independent appeals were ongoing. 

Passage, on a vote of 98-0, means denial of care decisions will ultimately be reviewed by “somebody who is objective, somebody who is an expert,” he said, and will result in “doctors making decisions instead of lawyers.” 

Thompson’s amendment would permit lawsuits in limited circumstances when appeals were in progress, principally when they consumed more than 31 days. 

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, authored the amendment to reduce the potential for class action suits, and it, too, cleared on a vote of 98-0. 

But other changes advanced by critics were swiftly sidetracked by the bill’s supporters. 

Among them was one amendment by Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., to ban all patients’ rights lawsuits against employers with 15 employees or fewer. It was killed on a vote of 55-43. 

——— 

The bill, S. 1052, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov 

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, experiencing heart problems for the third time since last November’s election, expected doctors to implant a pacemaker Saturday to even out a rapid heartbeat. Declaring himself otherwise fit, he said he would resign if ill health began hindering his work. 

Looking trim and bit pale at a surprise White House news conference, Cheney tried to minimize his latest ailment by predicting he would return to work Monday and welcoming the prospect of a second term. 

He has suffered four heart attacks over a quarter century, the last one in November, and was hospitalized in March to reopen a partially blocked artery — a health history that has become a nagging political question for the administration. 

“The doctors have assured me there’s no reason why either the procedure or the device that’s being implanted should in any way inhibit my capacity to function as the vice president,” said Cheney, 60. 

The odds were that he would need the pacemaker implanted, Cheney said, and he seemed resigned to it. “I look on this an insurance policy,” he said. 

The 30 minute news conference was conducted with almost no notice, a rare breach of protocol that aides hoped would give Cheney a chance to deliver the news before it leaked. Bush advisers felt they had mishandled the November and March hospitalizations, which raised questions about whether Cheney was fit to remain as next in line to the presidency. 

“If it were the doctors’ judgment that any of these developments constituted the kind of information that indicated I would not be able to perform, I would be the first to step down,” the vice president said. “I don’t have any interest in continuing in the post unless I’m able to perform adequately.” 

Clearly trying to ease any voter concern, he repeated the sentiment in the news conference – and again for a Philadelphia radio station. “If the docs ever come in and say, ‘Look, we really think you ought to ease off,’ I’ll be the first to recognize that and step down and let somebody else take over,” Cheney told WPHT. 

An unusually influential vice president, Cheney headed Bush’s transition team, played a major role in Cabinet and top personnel selections and chaired the White House energy task force. He is a top foreign policy adviser, the chief congressional lobbyist and sure to be at nearly every important White House meeting. 

Cheney said he informed Bush on Tuesday that doctors were recommending the test and, probably, a pacemaker. The news was closely guarded, though some in the White House spent as much as two days preparing for Friday’s announcement, which included a statement from Cheney’s doctor. 

In that statement, Dr. Jonathan Samuel Reiner said Cheney wore a heart monitor for 34 hours and the device detected four brief episodes of abnormally fast heartbeats. “Mr. Cheney felt none of these occurrences,” the statement said. Advisers later said Cheney wore the device over the weekend at home, not at work. 

Saturday’s test will involve running thin wires through a vein in Cheney’s leg, and into his heart.  

The wires have sensors that detect the way electricity ripples across the muscles that pump the heart, and will help doctors assess the risk of future arrhythmia. Doctors will decide on the spot whether to implant the pacemaker. 

That device is about the size of a pager, weighing less than 80 grams, and is placed under the skin of the upper chest. It can correct an irregular heartbeat with a low-level shock. 

More than 150,000 Americans, mostly over 60, have pacemakers. The devices are usually used to adjust slowing heartbeats; Cheney’s rapid heartbeat could be more serious. 

“This has the potential to become a serious issue,” said Dr. Jeff A. Brinker, a cardiologist and pacemaker specialist at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. He called Cheney’s type of arrhythmia “more disturbing” than a normal pacing problem with the heart. 

Cheney said the pacemaker was merely insurance against the possibility that his heart would again begin pumping out of time. “It may never actually be needed,” he said. 

He calmly fielded 26 questions and showed some humor. With a crooked half-smile, he said the pacemaker is “an energy efficient device. It runs for five to eight years, without having to replace the batteries.” He also repeated that his wife, Lynne, “is in charge of my food supply.” 

Aides say he has lost more than 20 pounds in recent months, 

Cheney said Bush would have to decide who would be the GOP running mate in 2004 but “if I’m in shape to do it, and if my health permits, then I’d be perfectly happy to serve.” 

PARIS — Secretary of State Colin Powell voiced doubt Friday that a U.S.-British plan to overhaul sanctions on Iraq would be approved soon by the U.N. Security Council. The problem is Russia, which is holding out. 

“We’ve had some progress over the last 24 hours with the French and the Chinese, but I’m not saying they are all aboard yet,” Powell said. 

In New York, acting U.N. Ambassador James Cunningham announced that four of the five permanent council members – the United States, Britain, China and France – had agreed on a list of military-related items that might be exported. The list would have to be reviewed by the U.N. committee monitoring sanctions against Iraq. 

“We were very encouraged” by the support from France and China, Cunningham said, calling the list a key part of the U.S.-British plan. 

But Russia, Iraq’s closest council ally, remains adamantly opposed to the proposal, and did not agree on the list. Russia has threatened to veto the resolution if it comes to a vote. 

Powell said Russia was protecting its commercial interests and was not convinced all sanctions would ultimately be removed. 

The secretary of state said he would speak to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov over the weekend. Cunningham and other diplomats said they expect high-level diplomatic contacts to continue ahead of a Tuesday deadline. The Security Council scheduled another meeting on Iraq for Monday afternoon. 

The U.S.-British plan would lift most restrictions on civilian goods entering Iraq while plugging up lucrative Iraqi smuggling routes and tightening enforcement of an arms embargo imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi government vehemently opposes the plan. 

The proposal is incorporated in a resolution to extend the U.N. oil-for-food program, which allows Iraq to sell oil if the proceeds are spent on food, medicine and other essential goods. When agreement wasn’t reached on a sanctions overhaul in early June, the program was extended until July 3. 

The current Security Council president, Bangladesh’s U.N. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, said he expects another temporary extension because of differences on the sanctions overhaul. 

“I believe the bigger resolution is not possible,” Chowdhury said. “It is absolutely difficult.” He explained that his assessment was based on a discussion on Iraq held by the council behind closed doors Friday afternoon. 

While in the Middle East, Powell lobbied Foreign Ministers Hubert Vedrine of France, Tang Jiaxuan of China and Jack Straw of Britain by telephone. 

As he flew from Jordan to Paris for a meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Powell told reporters he was pleased with the success he had rallying other Security Council members to support a new sanctions policy. 

In Jordan, Powell said, he promised King Abdullah II that the United States would try to minimize the impact of the new sanctions. Jordan, a neighbor and key trading partner of Iraq, has voiced deep reservations about the U.S.-British proposal, worried that it would devastate its economy. 

In New York, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Riyadh Al-Qaisi reiterated Baghdad’s vehement opposition to the plan during an open Security Council meeting Thursday and at a press conference on Friday. 

Iraq halted all oil exports, except to its neighbors, in protest. Al-Qaisi said Friday that Iraq will not resume oil exports if the Security Council approves a resolution that makes any mention of altering the current sanctions.

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico — Fighter jets dropped dummy bombs on the U.S. Navy’s firing range on the island of Vieques on Friday, while security officers detained five protesters who invaded Navy lands. 

F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets conducted exercises over the range on the island’s eastern tip, said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode. She said the exercises would continue into the night and would conclude either Friday night or Saturday. 

Among three protesters detained Thursday was New York State legislator Adam Clayton Powell IV, who was turned over to U.S. marshals. In a court appearance on Friday, he refused to post $2,000 bail and was returned to a federal detention center in the San Juan suburb of Guaynabo. 

No trial date has been set for Powell, the latest of several New York City politicians to join local protesters in calling for an immediate end to the bombing.  

At least 73 people have been arrested for trespassing on restricted lands since the bombing resumed last week, Goode said. 

The five detained on Friday were captured near the fence bordering the island’s civilian area, where most protesters have been detained. 

Although President George W. Bush this month ordered the Navy to leave in 2003, many Puerto Ricans say that is too long to wait. 

Three other New York politicians who were imprisoned for protesting were freed Friday morning after spending 37 days in jail. 

State Assemblyman Jose Rivera, 65; Bronx County Democratic Party chairman Roberto Ramirez, 51; and New York City Councilman Adolfo Carrion Jr., 40, walked out of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn shortly before 9 a.m. 

Their fellow prisoner, the Rev. Al Sharpton, also convicted of tresspassing during Vieques protests, must remain in jail until Aug. 15. 

In the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan, meanwhile, tensions had subsided after a Thursday night clash between opponents of the bombing and pro-U.S. statehood activists, who raised a U.S. flag above a chapel built as a center of prayer for those who oppose the Navy bombing. 

Five people were injured in clashes between the groups, and many demanded that the U.S. flag be lowered. 

On Friday, the U.S. flag still flew at the top of the pole, above a Puerto Rican flag and a smaller blue-and-white Vieques flag. Police stood guard around the flagpole. 

——— 

On the Net: 

U.S. Navy site: www.navyvieques.navy.mil 

Anti-Navy site: www.viequeslibre.org 

Dear Tom and Ray: 

I've been reading your column for a long time, and I've noticed an interesting pattern in the questions. I see a lot of dealerships trying to “wait out” customers on repairs that should be done under warranty. I was under the impression that if the dealership does work under warranty, it gets the same amount of money as if it had done the work for a retail customer. So why would they want to wait people out? Am I wrong? — Matt 

TOM: Well, legally, they can't “wait people out” as a way to avoid fixing a problem, Matt. If you complain about a problem while the car is covered under warranty, the manufacturer is obligated to fix the problem, even if the warranty expires before they actually fix it. 

RAY: But you're right that a lot of dealers are not eager to fix problems under warranty. Generally speaking, the manufacturer pays a lower labor rate to the dealer for warranty work. And, since the parts come from the manufacturer, the dealership can't earn its usual markup on the cost of parts, either. 

TOM: Plus, it's hard to sweet-talk the manufacturer into buying a fresh set of fuzzy dice every time they come in. 

RAY: But a lot of the fault here lies with the manufacturer. The manufacturers have traditionally made it less appealing for dealers to do repairs under warranty. In order to keep dealers from taking advantage of the warranty reimbursements, they've historically made those reimbursements small and authorization hard to get. 

TOM: In recent years, most manufacturers have seen the effects of these policies (angry customers), so they've increased their warranty reimbursements and have used other means of ensuring that unnecessary work doesn't get charged to them (like installing secret video cameras in the coffee machine). But manufacturers still don't pay as much as you do when you make an appointment. 

RAY: Despite the disincentive, some dealerships have realized that doing warranty work graciously can be good – in the long term – for business. Such good service can create a customer for life. And, over a lifetime, that customer can be worth a lot more to the dealership than the few hundred bucks they forgo by replacing the customer's transmission under warranty. 

TOM: But until warranty repairs generate income equivalent to nonwarranty repairs, there will always be dealers out there who will shirk the warranty work -- assuming they've got enough work that they can pick and choose. So you can blame the shortsighted dealers, but some of the blame also has to go to the manufacturers for creating this customer-unfriendly disincentive.  

Got a question about cars? Write to Click and Clack in care of this newspaper, or e-mail them by visiting the Car Talk section of cars.com on the World Wide Web.

NEW YORK — An interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve is usually cause for celebration on Wall Street. But investors had to sleep on it before rallying the day after the Fed’s sixth such move of the year. 

Analysts weren’t surprised by the initially cautious response to the rate cut Wednesday; the market has become increasingly convinced that better corporate earnings, not Fed policy, will presage any business turnaround. 

“We still haven’t seen the effect of the initial rate cuts, so it’s harder to get excited about the sixth one,” said Rafael Tamargo, director of equity research at Wilmington Trust. 

The rate reduction also was widely anticipated, meaning investors had been buying and selling on lower rates ahead of the official announcement. And the cut was smaller than the market had wanted — a quarter of a percentage point, rather than the half-point many money managers predicted. 

What changed? 

“I think people thought about it overnight and realized it didn’t matter” that the cut was smaller than expected, Tamargo said. “What mattered was that the Fed had made the cut and indicated it would cut again if necessary.” 

Still, the market’s reaction illustrates one of the frustrating truths about Wall Street in an economic downturn. 

Although the Fed’s interest rate cuts have provided a buffer against strong selloffs by reassuring investors that help is on the way, the reductions haven’t provided a catalyst for a significant, sustainable rally. 

Instead, with more than 600 corporate warnings this quarter, the market has become even more hesitant to commit to stocks of companies that can’t say their performance will soon improve. 

Analysts say the market is mired in what’s called a trading range, with the averages unable to advance or fall below a certain level. 

The Dow Jones industrials, for example, have been trading between 10,500 and 11,400 since mid-April. The Nasdaq has been hovering between 2,000 and 2,300 since about the same time, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has traded between 1,200 and 1,300. 

“In a trading range, people generally trade off extremes in investor sentiment,” said Richard Cripps, chief market strategist at Legg Mason in Baltimore.  

“What we’ve seen this week is a market that had become oversold and negative, so people started buying.  

“They’ll sell when the market becomes too high. But the overall market won’t advance beyond that.” 

Don’t expect the time of year to help either. Summer is traditionally a slower time for Wall Street and business deals. Trading volumes tend to decrease as the nation goes on vacation. 

All of these factors played a role this past week. 

So did news that a federal appeals court had reversed a lower court ruling that had ordered the breakup of Microsoft intensified the positive sentiment. Analysts say bargain hunting influenced trading, too. 

The end of the quarter was still another contributor. With the second-quarter ending Friday, professional money manager spent the early part of the week selling and adjusting their portfolios.  

As the week wore on, that pressure decreased, allowing stocks to advance somewhat. 

New earnings warnings on Friday dampened investors’ enthusiasm somewhat, although the indexes managed moderate gains. Trading volume was also light before the Independence Day holiday. 

“The problems still remain, and until there’s solid signs that the economy and earnings are improving, the sustainability of any advance is going to be questionable,” said Charles White, portfolio manager for Avatar Associates. 

For the week, the Dow lost 102.19, or 1 percent, after dropping 63.81 to 10,502.40 on Friday. 

The Nasdaq gained 125.70, or 6.2 percent, for the week, following a 35.08-point gain to 2,160.54 Friday. 

The S&P 500 index was essentially unchanged for the week, slipping 0.97, or 0.1 percent. It dipped 1.82 Friday to 1,224.38. 

The Russell 2000, which measures the performance of smaller company stocks, 23.99 or 4.9 percent for the week after gaining 9.65 Friday and closing at 512.64. 

The Wilshire Associates Equity Index, the market value of NYSE, American and Nasdaq issues, was $11.41 trillion Friday, up $94.69 billion from last week. A year ago the index was $13.62 trillion. 

Lisa Singahina is a business writer for The Associated Press.

PALO ALTO — Computer and printer giant Hewlett-Packard Co. has asked its 45,000 U.S. employees to take pay cuts or use additional vacation days in an effort to trim costs. 

According to a memo released Thursday, employees have three choices: a 10 percent pay cut, eight additional paid vacation days, or a 5 percent cut and four additional vacation days. The program is not mandatory. 

The vacation must be taken before the end of October, when HP’s fiscal year ends. The pay cuts would last through Oct. 31. 

Accrued vacation days are a liability, the company says, and the program would help HP save money. 

The company has been hard-hit as demand for personal computers, peripherals and servers collapsed amid the economic downturn. 

Analysts expect Hewlett-Packard to earn 20 cents a share for the third quarter, which ends July 31, and 30 cents a share for the fourth quarter ending Oct. 31, according to Thomson Financial/First Call. 

A year ago, the company earned 49 cents in the third quarter and 41 cents in the fourth quarter. 

In January, HP announced it was cutting 1,700 marketing positions. Four months later, HP said it was trimming 3,000 management jobs. The company currently employs about 90,000 people worldwide. 

International employees also will be asked to make sacrifices, but their choices will depend on local labor laws. 

Shares of HP were up 9 cents, to $27.34, in early afternoon trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. 

——— 

On the Net: 

Hewlett-Packard: http://www.hp.com 

SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Gray Davis is asking a state court for a 60-day cooling-off period to avert a BART strike. 

Attorney General Bill Lockyer is scheduled to make the request Friday morning in San Francisco Superior Court. 

Three unions representing 2,800 workers of the San Francisco Bay area’s commuter train system have voted to strike.  

A cooling-off period would keep contract negotiations going, and prevent a strike for the summer. 

“It would take effect very soon, if the court acts on it,” said Lockyer spokesman Nathan Barankin. 

Davis made the request Thursday after receiving a fact-finding report warning a strike would “endanger the public’s health, safety, and welfare.” 

A strike would affect 335,000 commuters in the San Francisco Bay area.  

The last BART strike, in 1997, paralyzed Bay Area traffic – and BART ridership has increased since then. 

Union leaders who requested the cooling-off period last week said they were pleased by the governor’s move and noted that four such periods in recent decades have led to negotiated contract settlements.  

Only the 1997 cooling-off period led to a strike.

American business men buy IDs in back-alley market 

ORLANDO, Fla. — The mother of a Marine killed in Vietnam received his dog tags in an Independence Day ceremony after two Florida businessmen found them for sale in a back-alley market in Ho Chi Minh City. 

Rob Stiff and Jim Gain were so sickened at the discovery of Lance Cpl. Allan George Decker’s tags that they returned to Vietnam in May to buy them and hundreds of others.  

Upon returning to America, they began trying to reunite soldiers and their families with the lost tags. 

On Wednesday, the men gave Decker’s mother the tags at the Orlando cemetery where he was buried after his death in 1968. 

“I just hope that other families can find the kind of peace that I have felt today,” Ruth Decker said. “The Lord had his hand in this from the beginning.” 

Since the end of the war, Vietnamese field workers have found all sorts of military debris: boots, helmets, badges, buttons, medals and dog tags. 

Servicemen usually wore the tags – silver discs that listed a soldier’s name, military identification number and blood type – around their necks, but in the field many put them in their boots so they wouldn’t jingle. 

Stiff and Gain weren’t looking for war mementos when they traveled to Vietnam in January. They wanted to check the commercial climate for possible business ventures. But in a market not frequented by tourists, they found the dog tags dangling from a string. 

“It was really eerie and we were disgusted,” said Stiff, 27. 

Despite their revulsion, they left the tags there. But back home in America, they couldn’t escape the memory. 

“People asked, ‘What if they’re fake?”’ Stiff said.  

“Well, our question was, ’What if they’re real?”’ 

In May, they returned to Vietnam to buy all the American dog tags they could find. It took days to scour Ho Chi Minh City and sort through thousands of tags – some printed in Vietnamese, others destroyed or illegible – and returned home with about 640. 

The total cost of the tags was $180. They sometimes paid less than 14 cents each. 

Stiff and Gain transcribed what was printed on each the best they could, then complied a database of names and ID numbers to list on their Web site: www.founddogtags.com. 

A dozen tags matched names listed on the black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. 

“One day, Jim comes into my office and says, ’You won’t believe this. We’ve got matches for the Wall,”’ Stiff said. 

One of the first names they uncovered was Decker’s. With the help of Rep. Ric Keller, an Orlando Republican, and the Defense Department they tracked Ruth Decker to her home in Punta Gorda and called her June 21. 

“She was so full of joy,” Stiff said. 

Decker began his Vietnam tour as a machine-gunner with the 2nd Battalion, 27th Regiment of the 3rd Marine Division on Feb. 16, 1968. 

On Aug. 25, 1968, the 19-year-old Marine was killed in Quang Nam province, one of more than 58,000 Americans to die in Vietnam. He had lost his dog tags during his six months in Vietnam. 

“Allan was killed on a Sunday, and we didn’t receive the word until the following Thursday,” said Ruth Decker. “My husband and I were just crushed.” 

“But the next day, we received a letter from his buddy,” she said. “He said that Allan believed in God very strongly, and He will take care of him. And that was my consolation right from the beginning.”

CHICAGO — United Airlines is pulling the plug on its $4.3 billion purchase of US Airways – a deal that has been in trouble for months because of a weakened economy, industry woes and antitrust concerns. 

While stopping short of declaring the deal dead, the two airlines said Monday that they are talking about scuttling it. 

United is convinced the deal will not win regulatory approval, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said last month he expected the government to reject the merger. 

The deal would have been the biggest airline merger in history. But both airlines have problems of their own to sort out – United has slipped to No. 2 behind American Airlines and US Airways has shaky finances. 

Some experts see the long-expected collapse of the deal as good news for everyone. 

“It’s good for United because it can focus on its real business challenges. It’s good for US Air because they can focus on being a stand-alone carrier. And it’s good for the consumer, who won’t lose a lot of competition because of the merger,” said Michael Boyd, an industry consultant in Evergreen, Colo. 

United unveiled the merger plan in May 2000, hoping to increase its presence in the lucrative East Coast market and nearly triple its daily flights to more than 6,400 a day. 

It quickly ran into opposition from rivals, unions, Congress, consumer groups and state attorneys general, many of whom complained it would reduce competition, particularly in the Washington area. 

To try to ease antitrust concerns, United agreed in January to sell some US Airways assets to American Airlines, including half of US Airways’ Washington-New York-Boston shuttle. 

But experts said a complicated, costly deal no longer made financial sense for United. 

The airline reported a worse-than-expected first quarter loss of $313 million and said it expects a double-digit decline in revenue for the second quarter. United also signed a contract with its pilots last year, giving them 45 percent raises over four years. 

The Association of Flight Attendants had threatened to strike United if the merger proceeded. 

United will have to pay US Airways a $50 million breakup fee if it ends the agreement after Aug. 1. Before that date, the breakup fee is substantially higher, but United is asking to pay only $50 million. 

US Airways stock sank $3.41 to close at $20.89 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. United’s parent, UAL Corp., fell 45 cents to $34.70.

Mail pouring in for hospitalized boy attacked by pit bull 

OAKLAND – Tensions are rising and extra workers have been brought in to handle the high volume of mail from well-wishers to the Richmond boy attacked by three pit bulls earlier this month. 

Officials at Mechanics Bank have clerks working steadily to sort through letters, cards and checks to Shawn Jones, who lies in critical but stable condition recuperating from his wounds. 

The account set up for Jones by the Richmond Police Department is off-limits to everyone, even Jones’ family, until a trust has been set up. 

Police say several of Jones’ relatives who have had little contact with him have come forward seeking access to the money donated to him. This has caused concern among potential donors, volunteers say. 

“The majority of (donors) I have spoken with are very concerned about where the money will be directed,” said Richmond police Sgt. Enos Johnson. “They have clearly stated that the money should go to the boy and have been adamant about that.” 

Central Oakland improving crime record with new residents 

OAKLAND – New residents in Central Oakland have helped transform the once violent neighborhood into a family haven. 

The high tech boom not only created new jobs but attracted thousands of new residents — mainly young families — into this East Bay community, displacing drug violence. 

With a population of about 400,000, Oakland is improving its crime record faster than similar-sized cities with higher murder rates. 

Gwendolyn Singleton, a long time Central Oakland resident, feels happy to see children playing and her neighbors working in their yards. For her it’s difficult to believe it is the same street where her son was gunned down six years ago. 

Oakland homicide rate plummeted 53 percent between 1992 and last year. 

Only one of the 37 slayings during the first half of this year was in Oakland’s central area. 

A San Francisco Chronicle analysis shows that last year drugs were the motive for only 14 percent of the 85 killings in the entire city of Oakland. 

Drugs motivated 40 percent of the city’s slayings in 1992.

Approved by the City Council last Tuesday, the city’s budget is based on funding streams that include property taxes, parking fines and sales tax. 

The largest contributor to the city’s General Fund – which pays for most of the city’s basic services and the personnel that provide them – is property taxes at 22 percent. Over the next two years property taxes are expected to add $45 million to city coffers.  

The next largest contributor is sales tax, which city officials say will probably account for $19 million or 14 percent over the next two years. 

Taxes charged on utilities contribute 13 percent or $27 million.  

Funding streams in the 5-7 percent range include parking fines, which were raised from $22 to $23 to help pay for various programs in the new budget. That should bring in about $14 million. The hotel tax is expected to bring in $6.5 million. 

Enterprise Funds are kept separate from General-Fund taxes. They are generally raised for a single purpose such as the sewer fund which is financed through property taxes.  

The Sewer Fund, according to the municipal code and state law, is supposed to be spent only on programs related to the city’s sewers. Over the next two years the sewer fund will raise $18 million and will pay for the city’s multi-year project of updating the entire system of sewer lines.  

Other Enterprise Funds include the Permit Service Center Fund, Off Street Parking Fund and the Marina Operation Fund.  

In total, through various taxes and fees, the city is expected to bring in $517 million over the next two years.