Agreeing with critics and city staff that their planned five-story, two-building project at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and University Avenue wasn’t the best piece of design Berkeley has ever seen, the developers tried to get a city board to come up with an alternative Thursday. -more-

With only City Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s two appointments yet to be named, the panel responsible for helping to formulate a new downtown plan is almost in place. -more-

Peralta Community College District Trustee Marcie Hodge stepped up two campaigns last week—one against Peralta’s Office of International and Global Education, the other for the 6th District Oakland City Council seat currently held by Desley Brooks. -more-

Were drums of radioactive waste from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory buried in South Richmond? -more-

The East Bay’s self-styled “social capitalist” organization Rubicon Programs officially opens in Berkeley Thursday morning with a celebration at its downtown offices. -more-

Neighbors of the Berkeley Adult School (formerly Franklin School) planted the northeast corner of the site (Curtis and Virginia streets) on Saturday. Schoolhouse Creek Commons, which is allied with Partners-for-Parks, welcomes donations and assistance with the project. For more information, contact James Day at 559-8368 or dayork@infinex.com.. -more-

The Zoning Adjustments Board voted unanimously Thursday to declare Dwight Way Liquors a public nuisance and to order its closure. -more-

Dolores Huerta is coming to Berkeley this Friday to advocate against the School of the Americas where Latin American soldiers are trained in torture techniques. -more-

Prosecutors have filed felony charges against the 46-year-old Oakland man whose car ran a red light and killed a 20-year-old UC Berkeley student at about 2:30 a.m. Thursday. -more-

Gunshot -more-

To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit -more-

VOTE! -more-

In the morning, before anyone is awake, I go downstairs and make coffee. From the living room I hear the pop and bubble of my husband’s oxygen machine. In the kitchen I feel the cold, uneven, sticky floorboards under my bare feet and I am annoyed. -more-

After reading Paul Rauber’s commentary “South Berkeley’s Crime Enablers,” I feel sure that he misunderstood my opinion piece. Mr. Rauber refers to my “venomous Oct. 25 commentary” accuses me of “tossing around incendiary” charges of racism and then concludes by saying that my opinions “Make a firebomb look kind of benign by comparison.” Mr. Rauber’s choice of language and metaphor suggests that by merely raising the question of racism, I have somehow caused a harm comparable to the destruction of a firebomb. This is a surprising repudiation of the value of free expression coming from a man who makes his living as a writer. -more-

It’s me again, lead plaintiff for the 14 South Berkeley citizens suing our South Berkeley drug house, responding to the latest distortions of our case in the editorial pages of the Daily Planet. In her Oct. 28 editorial, Executive Editor Becky O’Malley’s paints us ordinary neighborhood folks as vindictive harpies “with blood in their eyes” intent on unconstitutional punishment of Lenora Moore, owner of the drug house at 1610 Oregon Street. “If anyone . . . has broken a criminal law,” O’Malley asks, “shouldn’t they be charged and tried in accordance with the Constitution?” -more-

It had just started to drizzle and I had ducked under a freeway overpass to keep dry. I was tired from walking all day and sat down on a worn, discarded mattress. I looked around at bottles and trash strewn everywhere and a rat scurried near my foot. It was starting to get dark so I decided to take my chances in the rain. I headed out, not sure where I was going, hungry, getting cold and I had to go the bathroom. My cell phone rang. It was my wife. She was finally home! I had locked myself out and left my wallet home. Homeless for a day? No, I was keyless. -more-

“I sing the wrath of Achilles ...” If The Iliad doesn’t recount the fall of Troy so much as it does the seemingly endless war of attrition that preceded it, and of deeds of arms on the field, and vanity and wounded pride in the tents behind the lines—then Gary Graves’ Achilles and Patroklos (staged by Central Works at the Berkeley City Club) isn’t just a deliberately anachronistic parallel between Homeric heroics and the quagmire of occupation following the invasion of Iraq, as it is more an attempt to view the different facets of interpersonal experience as conditioned (and distorted) by an interminable war. -more-

TUESDAY, NOV. 1 -more-

The little Crataegus trees—hawthorns, thorntrees—in that grassy strip of Sacramento Street between Dwight Way and University Avenue bloom in the spring with pretty white flowers, but this is the season when they come into their own. They dress themselves in red berries while they still have leaves, then drop the leaves and keep the berries. On their slender horizontal branches, the berries hang gracefully and usefully all winter. -more-

TUESDAY, NOV. 1 -more-