Family members of a Berkeley man who mysteriously died in a California Youth Authority prison last weekend said Wednesday that they suspect foul-play and a cover up. -more-

Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board members authorized a key document last week paving the way for the tallest structure to rise in downtown Berkeley in decades, the nine-story Seagate Building slated to replace four 1920’s era low-rise structures on Center Street. -more-

Berkeley school officials believe that recently-reported “plummeting” state test scores at highly-rated John Muir Elementary School are incorrect and are seeking to have them revised by the state Department of Education. -more-

When Almateen Tweedie heard someone pounding on her front door the morning of Oct. 30, she assumed the guests were friends of her young sons. -more-

Without Sylvia McLaughlin and her fellow “tea ladies,” San Francisco Bay might’ve become just another example of urban sprawl—filled in, paved over and transformed into a flat urban plain. -more-

Commercial parking, landmarks and creeks consumed the lion’s share of the Berkeley Planning Commission’s Wednesday night session, producing lots of talk and no decisive action save for one member’s abrupt walkout. -more-

It’s hard to believe that it’s been only three years since Saudi Muslim extremists commandeered commercial aircraft and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What was before September 11, 2001, a small fire fanned by a few fanatics has become a firestorm which threatens to engulf the world. The historic willingness of human beings to kill and be killed for a religious ideology has been demonstrated again and again since 9/11, most recently in the appalling occurrences in North Ossetia, now part of Russia, where men and (most tragically) women were willing to kill defenseless children who had done nothing to harm them, in support of an abstraction which is essentially meaningless to non-believers. -more-