The purple ribbons fluttering in the wind inside the Berkeley High School courtyard symbolized the loss of BHS Vice Principal Denise Brown for the entire Berkeley Unified School District Monday. -more-

Seven years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published “The Kept University,” a story about a $25 million five-year liaison between the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and California’s premier public university, UC Berkeley. -more-

With the final campaign expenditures for the November elections in on Jan. 31, it became definitive that the top spender was the losing challenger for District 7: George Beier. -more-

When Charles Hamilton teaches jazz at Berkeley High, every note has to be perfect. -more-

With a November deadline looming, the panel of citizens charged with helping the city draft a new downtown plan will pause to take stock Wednesday. -more-

Lately opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com has been getting complaints not only about outrages and abuses in the wider world, and about our own supposed transgressions in the pages of the Planet, but about letters to the editors and other responsible parties in other media which the proprietors of same didn’t print. For example, we ran a couple of letters lambasting the San Francisco Chronicle for a particularly lame editorial on Lt. Ehren Watada’s refusal to fight in what he terms an illegal war. The editorial writer claimed that “no soldier can be allowed to pick and choose assignments, a notion that undercuts the necessary hierarchy of military order.” He or she must have been out the day they studied the Nuremberg Trials in history class in high school. To be fair, the Chronicle did publish one snappy letter the next day making this very point, but two other good ones which the Chron didn’t see fit to print ended up in the Daily Planet instead. Which is fine. Happy to be of service. -more-