University of California clerical workers overwhelmingly have approved a new contract, ending a bitter, two-year fight with UC management over wages and workplace safety. -more-

COMMUNITY MEETINGS -more-

Sarah Jones has a hard time sitting still. -more-

FRIDAY, MAY 2 -more-

Departing Planning Director Carol Barrett gets the Harry Truman Award for this week. Truman, you may recall, said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and that’s exactly what Barrett is doing. -more-

You wouldn’t know it from the burly 41-year-old’s sanguine demeanor, but when William Mendoza returns home next week, he will face the threat of murder, torture and kidnapping at the hands of paramilitary agents opposed to the union activism that Mendoza and other union leaders have been engaged in for the last two decades. -more-

For four years the Crowden Music Center has brought some of the Bay Area’s finest chamber musicians to Berkeley as part of its Sundays at Four concert series. This weekend, the center is hosting the Empyrean Ensemble, a professional contemporary music ensemble in residence at the University of California, Davis. -more-

GRANDSTANDING -more-

In his first state of the city address, Mayor Tom Bates touted a congenial City Council, praised new development and warned of a looming budget deficit. He also promised to enhance the city’s business environment and to improve educational services for the city’s youth. -more-

Berkeley High School Drama Department -more-

The education establishment has shown itself to be an advocate of low standards, false educational theory, poor selection and training of teachers, and it is incredibly wasteful with taxpayer dollars. Today’s teachers suffer from the inability to pass on the accumulated knowledge of civilization from one generation to the next. Teachers unions operate as political organizations while masquerading as professional groups, and now they want to eliminate one of the few objective tools we have to measure their performance. -more-

Local UC lab escapes federal contract review -more-

Bike cop spots suspect -more-

In an unlikely alliance, UC Berkeley’s mathematics department joined with the Aurora Theater Company last week for a discussion at the Bechtel Engineering Center entitled “Hardy and Ramanujan in Berkeley.” -more-

Lawyers for Tod Mikuriya, M.D. — a psychiatrist who has lived and practiced in Berkeley since 1970 — have filed a motion to dismiss the case against him brought by the Medical Board of California (MBC). -more-

JAKARTA, Indonesia — News of controversial Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir’s upcoming public trial is throwing new light on the horrific Bali nightclub bombings that killed 193 people in this southeast Asian nation last October. -more-

A PEOPLE OF STARTS -more-