The University of California plans to appeal a court ruling it claims could shut UC out of some of the most lucrative investment opportunities on the market. -more-

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 -more-

This issue of The Planet marks a watershed. It’s the last one for which Michael Howerton is managing editor. The house joke is that we decided to hire him because we knew that if we didn’t like him he’d be gone soon. In fact, we had already decided to hire him when he learned that his historian wife had been awarded a prestigious fellowship to spend a year in Rome, and, oddly enough, he wanted to go with her. Because he seemed so well suited to the job, we decided to hire him anyway for the four month duration, and we haven’t regretted it. -more-

“Measure for Measure” has more than enough for a contemporary American audience: a corrupt official who tries to extort sexual favors, misguided attempts to legislate morality, squeamishness about the death penalty. -more-

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15 -more-

It’s older than the Campanile, older than Sather Gate, older than the city of Berkeley itself. And on Aug. 30 Gorman & Son Furniture, a Telegraph Avenue fixture that grew out of a tragic fire and an immigrant’s pluck, will pack up and leave town. -more-

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After years of preaching by animal advocates, pet owners are finally getting the message and spaying and neutering their animals, and Bay Area animal shelters are getting smaller numbers of abandoned cats and dogs. The flip side is that the ones they do take often prove the most difficult to place, requiring considerably more human investment than newborn pups and kittens. -more-

In the film “The Sum of All Fears,” last year's Ben Affleck nuclear terrorism flick, actor James Cromwell plays a president up for reelection who in one scene recounts his political assets in a humorous speech to the press. That he admitted to smoking a little weed while serving in Vietnam, he jokes, should help his reelection campaign to carry California. -more-

Berkeley-based Youth Radio scored yet another journalistic triumph when the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) awarded the innovative program its Salute to Excellence honors for a radio documentary examining the violent culture created by the high murder rate in Oakland as seen through a teenager’s eyes. -more-

Confronted with a blistering state report on the state of Berkeley’s schools, Board of Education Directors took their first step toward addressing the 500 concerns raised in the evaluation by meeting with its authors earlier this week. -more-

University of California students who sued to block fee hikes will have to fork over the cash, at least for now. -more-

It’s time to tune out the bleating elites and vacant talking heads whose doomsday warnings about these exciting times raise questions about their sanity. They need to spend more time with their de Tocqueville, who could have warned them that here in America nothing is more chaotic than democracy itself. Let’s debunk five myths about the recall. -more-

I guess I’m just the kind of gal who likes to sleep around. I wasn’t always this way. From the time I was four, until I was eighteen, I had my own bedroom: two single beds, (one for an occasional invited friend to use), wall-to-wall closets and an orange and green shag carpet. I didn’t have to share it with anyone. I lived like a princess in my parent’s home for fourteen years. It’s the longest I’ve stayed anywhere. -more-

Ahmed Amin just wants to play football. He’s 17, and Cupertino High’s starting tight end. His older brother Hassan, 19, would rather chase girls around the DeAnza College campus. But Ahmed has to miss school and practice every third Wednesday to report to the INS office an hour away. And Hassan recently spent a night in jail for immigration violations. -more-

Deep in the East Bay Express's Gary Coleman for California Governor issue, you find an interesting, and disturbing, passage: -more-

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The seventh exchange between Berkeley and Japanese progressives culminated earlier this month in an invitation for Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates to attend a mayoral conference in Hiroshima. -more-

It doesn’t take long to be charmed by Point Richmond. Moments after leaving Interstate 580 and turning south, away from the sprawling unsightliness of the ChevronTexaco oil refinery, you are in a town square that seems to have escaped time. -more-