Staff members and patrons of the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library have been devastated by the loss of Library Assistant Charlene Rochelle Agos, who was killed in a traffic accident in Oakland the night of Aug. 15. -more-

Why did about 400 students at Berkeley High get shut out of classes in one of the school’s most popular programs just eight days before the start of school? -more-

Sally Hindman has made a name for herself in Berkeley as the homeless advocate who co-founded Street Spirit. But if all goes according to plan, her biggest legacy could be in Varna, Bulgaria. -more-

With Berkeley as little as a month away from rolling out a state-of-the-art online system to track homeless residents, some local homeless service providers are wondering if the new technology will catapult them into the 21st century or send them back to 1984. -more-

NEW YORK—There are many stories to tell at this convention. The known storylines inside Madison Square Garden are familiar Republican themes that are repeated over and over: the recycled compassionate conservatism, John Kerry’s misrepresenting his war record, the war on terror, George Bush is the only candidate who can protect you, and of course, Bush will cut your taxes even more. -more-

It’s Tuesday evening on the corner of 34th Street and Sixth Avenue. The sidewalk is packed with protestors hemmed in by a wall of police. Traffic had been diverted. The protestors are chanting and yelling and waiving signs, and have made passage up and down the sidewalk nearly impossible. -more-

Yet another player has joined the ranks of would-be East Bay gambling—and though it’s identity remains obscured, the firm’s sales pitch is breathtaking in the promises it implies. -more-

County education administrators have indicated their intention to certify Berkeley Unified School District’s roughly $90 million budget, ending three years of strict supervision over the cash-strapped school district. -more-

Two major issues come before Berkeley’s land use agencies this week, when the revised municipal landmarks code comes up for consideration by the Planning Commission Wednesday night and the Zoning Adjustment Board conducts its final hearing Thursday on a use permit for the Seagate Building. -more-

“I want a zippered, hooded sweatshirt with the letters SFSU splashed big across the front,” says my friend Corrie. We are in the student bookstore at San Francisco State University shopping for textbooks, but very quickly we have migrated to the other side of the room and are perusing racks and racks of work-out clothes and underwear that sport the logo SFSU in the school colors that, I learn for the first time, are gold and purple. -more-

WAR CRIMINALS -more-

If you didn’t watch the Republican National Convention, you didn’t miss much. Most of the convention speakers before the president spoke from the same biased script: Republicans are strong on defense; Democrats are not. Republicans are macho action figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger; Democrats are “girlie-men.” George Bush is resolute; John Kerry waffles. For four days viewers across the nation saw the worst face of partisan politics, an event carefully orchestrated to demean John Kerry and to convince voters that only George Bush could keep them safe. -more-

For over 20 years, Berkeley law has required developers of new apartment buildings to offer 20 percent of their units at levels affordable to people with lower-than-average incomes. It’s a trade-off with developers (for which they’re handsomely rewarded) to make sure that, as Berkeley develops, poorer people aren’t steadily forced out of the city. That same law requires those units to be evenly dispersed throughout the building, because poor people shouldn’t be sequestered in special poor sections of apartment buildings. -more-

The dozen or so petitioners at Saturday morning’s Sick Plant Clinic at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden brought offerings ranging from dried leaves to big branches: a sheaf of photographs, a pear, a Japanese maple twig, an orchid growing on a bark slab. -more-

Most Saturday mornings you can find Marty Schiffenbauer at the counter at Ozzie’s, the venerable soda fountain in the Elmwood Pharmacy at 2900 College Ave. -more-

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 -more-

I just finished a collection of natural history essays by Howard Ensign Evans, a retired entomologist in Colorado. One of the pieces, about a meadow where he and his wife had enjoyed songbirds and wildflowers, concludes with this paragraph: -more-

TUESDAY, SEPT. 7 -more-