BOSTON—Global Exchange executive director and Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin was forcibly removed from the floor of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) Tuesday night after unfurling a “Code Pink, End the Occupation of Iraq” banner right within several feet of the 502-member California delegation. In the end, it took three Boston police officers and eight plain-clothes security people to remove Benjamin. Three reporters with notebooks and a television camera were near her when the incident occurred a few minutes after 10 p.m. Tuesday. -more-

Only months after electing a new Local Station Board, Berkeley’s KPFA radio station is again facing heated internal debate reminiscent of that which consumed the station back in 1999. -more-

On Thursday morning the Committee for Affordable Student Family Housing (CASFH) filed suit against the University of California in Alameda County Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that the university has acted illegally by approving plans that call for the demolition of 564 units of student family housing in Albany Village without having considered the environmental impacts that will result from the displacement of low-income residents. -more-

Nearly 50 anxious South Berkeley residents crowded into a room at the Young Adult Project on Oregon Street Tuesday night to hear a police update on the city’s first murder of the year and share their concerns with police, city officials and each other. -more-

Eight years in the making, the Zoning Ordinance amendments which implement the University Avenue Strategic Plan sailed through their penultimate hurdle Wednesday night when the Berkeley Planning Commission voted 6-1 to approve a draft and send it on to the City Council. -more-

In olden times King Midas of Phrygia made the mistake of preferring the music made by the god Pan, playing reed pipes, to that of Apollo on the lyre. Big mistake. Apollo changed Midas’s ears to those of an ass (a comment on his taste, no doubt), so the king was forced to wear his hat pulled down over his ears, and no one knew except his barber, who was sworn to secrecy. After a while the secret got to be too much for the barber, so he went down to the river and whispered it into a hole in the bank to relieve himself. But reeds grew on the spot where the barber had deposited his secret, and as the wind blew through them they whispered the secret again and again: Midas has ass’s ears, Midas has ass’s ears, Midas has ass’s ears. -more-