President Bush likes to say diversity is America’s greatest strength. But when it comes to schools seeking a passing grade under the landmark education law he championed, a diverse student body can be a school district’s greatest liability, according to a study released by Berkeley-based Policy Analysis for California Education. -more-

SATURDAY, JAN. 3 -more-

FRIDAY, JAN. 2 -more-

EYESORE -more-

“David Ireland: The Way Things Are” gives an in-depth look at the work of one of the West Coast’s foremost artists. Although his work has been seen at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum, as well as in Rome, Zurich, Madrid and Kyoto, this is the first retrospective for the 77-year-old multi-talented artist. -more-

Members of Berkeley’s Persian community met this week to organize a Sunday evening dinner to raise cash and collect medical supplies for relief efforts in ancient city of Bam, Iran, where Friday’s 6.7 earthquake left at least 30,000 dead and thousands more injured and homeless. -more-

If someone were to, say, set up a catapult in the Berkeley Hills and lob a rock down on the streets of the city every few months, the police in Berkeley would do their best to arrest that person before someone was killed. Yet, a situation with a similar risk to life and property exists on one of our streets, and the city has been repeatedly notified of it but will do nothing about it at all (or next to nothing, but I'll get to that.) There is an old, diseased elm tree standing on Tacoma Avenue near the corner of Colusa. The tree is falling down in sections. Every few months it drops a branch. Some of the branches fall from a height of perhaps 50 feet. It happened a year ago, the branch only hit asphalt, and the city came out and cleared the branch out of the street. Luckily, nobody was injured. Then on Oct. 25, it happened again. This time the branch crushed the hood and fenders of an automobile (as it happens, my automobile.) The force was so great that when the hood was pushed down upon the engine block by the impact of the branch, a bolt punched right through the hood. The damage cost more than $1,800 to repair. If the branch had hit a person instead of an inanimate object, that person would have been grievously injured or killed. -more-

Though a state Administrative Law Judge upheld the finding that a well-known Berkeley construction company “willfully” exposed both workers and the public to asbestos during a Hayward building demolition last year, a lawyer for the company is hailing the decision as a partial victory. -more-

As our new governor makes the state’s fiscal crisis worse by cutting the vehicle license fee, and as he reneges on promises not to cut education, don’t blame me or my fellow Berkeleyans. -more-

Transbay BART commuters still smarting over the new 10 percent fare hikes can take solace at some good news: Starting next month, timed transfers return to the 12th Street/Oakland and MacArthur stations. -more-

At exactly midnight on Christmas Eve, somebody took out the main cable box on our street with small arms fire, I think, perhaps as an East Oakland-type of commentary on the continually descending quality of Comcast’s programming. We tend to be blunt and plain-spoken out this way. -more-

So we’ve got a second baby waiting in the wings, just paddling around in that ever more cramped fetal health spa, waiting for his call-up to the big leagues. In fact, by the time you read this, he may already be here, or, if it turns out to be a busy decade for Berkeley-related news, he may already be a teenager. In these waning days of relative calm the second most important conversation around our house (after “Do you think we’ll go absolutely bat-poop insane raising two babies under a year old in a crappy student apartment?”) is about what we ought to name the new addition. -more-

The Christmas shopping season fortunes of Berkeley’s independent merchants proved as varied as the inventories of the shops and stands that line city boulevards, according to interviews with shopkeepers. -more-

During the dedication of the Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park in Richmond last October, 300 guests listened as a succession of politicians praised the park’s 87-year-old namesake for her 50 years of relentless advocacy for open space. -more-