News

The 80 or so people that packed a sunny south Berkeley backyard Thursday morning didn’t seem to need convincing that Phil Angelides, 53, would be their pick for governor on Nov. 7. -more-

Fourteen-year District 1 Councilmember Linda Maio might have thought she’d breeze through the fall election without a challenge: She’s off on vacation without having put a penny into a campaign account. -more-

A book scheduled to be released next month revives decades-old charges that California attorney general candidate and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown had close ties with individuals related to organized crime during Brown’s tenure in the 1970s as governor of California. -more-

The Berkeley school board met Wednesday for the first time after summer vacation. Mateo Aceves took the oath of office as the new student school board director for the coming school year. -more-

Photo I.D.s, brand-new textbooks and lots of good advice marked Tuesday’s freshman orientation at Berkeley High for the Class of 2010. -more-

With hallways and classrooms still filled with construction tools and rubble and workers only taking a short break to make way for brief speeches and a hurried open house public tour, the Peralta Community College District cut the ribbon this week on the new $65 million downtown Berkeley City College campus a day before fall semester classes were scheduled to begin. -more-

At the UC Berkeley back-to-school media briefing on Wednesday, Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau made the announcement of a new position in the UC system—vice chancellor for equity and inclusion—deemed to be one of the first such cabinet level positions in the country. -more-

While the Democratic Party tent might be big enough for hawks such as Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton and radicals like Cynthia McKinney and Maxine Waters, there’s no room for people of other political stripes, most notably Green Party members. -more-

August 26 -more-

By the time I finally learned how to pronounce Oakland documentary filmmaker Yakpazua Zazaboi’s name without stumbling over it, he had dropped out of sight and I lost contact with him for a couple of years. Yap, as he’s called on the streets, was the premier videographer of Oakland’s Sideshow Movement in the years between 1999 and 2004, recording hours of footage at the immense after hours gatherings at the Pac ‘N Save parking lot on Hegenberger and then, when the police chased the events into the neighborhoods, following them into the heart of the neighborhoods of Deep East Oakland. -more-

The men in the office slept on the floor, had to forego bathing and ate rations provided by the National Guard, but they were able to broadcast nonstop after the devastating hurricane. The men were five dee jays for 1540 Radio Tropical Caliente, some of the workers for the ethnic media of New Orleans that survived Katrina to provide first response services and eventually overcome financial blows and play a role in the rebirth of the city. -more-

Diversity is not just a lofty abstraction: it tastes great, and you can dance to it. With the exception of the wet months, the Bay Area calendar is full of street fairs, music festivals, parades, and other events where you can hear everything from mariachi to taiko and sample endless variations on grilled-meat-on-a-stick. -more-

State Assemblymember Wilma Chan, who co-sponsored legislation that led to the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District in 2003, says that contract negotiations to sell Oakland Unified School District Lake Merritt-area property that were authorized in that legislation “should be slowed down” until more information can be obtained about the controversial deal. -more-

When Ehren Watada signed up for the army, he thought he was being patriotic. But after talking to veterans returning from Iraq and studying documents that showed Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction there, the 28-year-old lieutenant became convinced that the patriotic position was to refuse deployment to Iraq. -more-

Student test scores at Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) charter school dropped significantly in two key areas from last year to this, according to a report on the California Standards Test (CST) recently released by the California Department of Education. -more-

Biotech Partners, formerly Berkeley Biotechnology Education, Inc/BBEI, received a surprise $150,000 grant from the Bayer Foundation on Wednesday, which reaffirmed Bayer Corporation’s commitment to the model biotechnology school-to-career program that the company established with the city of Berkeley 13 years ago. -more-

UC Berkeley custodians welcomed students moving into southside dormitories with an informational picket line on Sunday, calling on the administration to give them fair wages. -more-

After more than a decade crunching numbers as the head of Berkeley’s Finance Department, E. Frances David will be making a shift south to become assistant city manager in Hayward. -more-

Pacific Steel Casting Corporation will hand over their health risk assessment report to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in the first week of September, according to Elizabeth Jewel of Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners, the company’s public relations consultants. -more-

As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches on Aug. 29, displaced Americans from Louisiana and the Gulf Coast have been slowly rebuilding their lives and looking for a place to call home. -more-

Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp took some time off from his busy schedule recently to answer a few questions as he begins his fourth year as principal at BHS. -more-