A standoff between police officials and an armed suspect ended peacefully Monday after 24 hours of negotiations. -more-

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 -more-

On Sunday afternoon I heard a KQED broadcast of a taped lecture/discussion with author Salmon Rushdie. I wasn’t listening very carefully, and at first I thought Rushdie was commenting on the current state of affairs in occupied Iraq. Eventually I realized that the tape had actually been made sometime in February, before the U.S. invasion started. He was expressing his apprehension about what might take place after the war—destroyed infrastructure, civil chaos, rise of the kind of religious fundamentalism which has caused him a lot of grief in his own life—in short, everything that has indeed happened. -more-

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12 -more-

Glen Ellen, just north of Sonoma, resembles a tiny mountain village in which to hide, get lost, walk and hike, and create. It is all of that and a whole lot more, as both Jack London and M.F.K. Fisher discovered. -more-

A conservative legal group has sued the Berkeley Unified School District, claiming that it has violated California’s ban on affirmative action by seeking racial balance in its elementary schools. -more-

IN LOCK-STEP -more-

Bay Area mothers successfully maintained the region’s reputation as the world’s premier area for breastfeeding mothers, but fell well short of beating their own world record. -more-

So Kennedy bails on 2700 San Pablo Ave. after overcoming the opposition of unappreciative locals. I just hope his counterpart in the White House takes a lesson from this! After five years and countless hours of his precious time why the sudden drop in interest when he’s only a few steps away from leaving his imprint for posterity on the West Berkeley landscape? Perhaps it’s true that he’s beckoned by the siren’s call challenge of developing yet larger oversized projects in a declining rental market but then again maybe there’s more to this story than immediately meets the eye. -more-

Berkeley’s Aquatic Park was dark Saturday night, but the moon was bright and nearly full when about 400 locals pushed dozens of haunting, peace lanterns onto the park’s lagoon, the fulfillment of a Berkeley man’s promise to an aging Japanese woman. -more-

Space here won’t allow me to reply to all of the recent statements regarding city employees. While some have been empathetic to the plight of workers scapegoated for the budget problems, some others have wrongly characterized employees in labor unions as greedy, self-serving, and equivalent to welfare cheats. -more-

Just what’s so special about 2140 Durant St.? -more-

Armed robbery -more-