Eighteen-year city employee Stephen Barton, asked to resign last Tuesday, was publicly pummeled in a memo by the Berkeley city attorney Wednesday, a six-page document addressed to the mayor and City Council and filled with attacks aimed primarily at Barton, but also at the city manager, deputy city manager and other city staff. -more-

Twenty-three young men and women were sent out to conquer the real world on Friday. -more-

The Berkeley City Council tonight (Tuesday) will take another look at the mayor’s controversial Public Commons for Everyone Initiative. At the last meeting, an exhausted council did not address the specifics in the measure intended to enhance shopping areas by removing persons whose behavior is unacceptable. -more-

Berkeley police found the body of the year’s second murder, 46-year-old Terrence Marlow Broadnax, shortly after noon Friday in a fourth-floor apartment at University Avenue Homes. -more-

World Can’t Wait called on all Berkeley High School students Monday to sign a letter protesting the U.S. military’s requirement that Berkeley High give student information to military recruiters unless the students request the school not to. -more-

There’s plenty of blame to go around in the Berkeley Housing Authority situation. A friend of a friend took a job there briefly a few years ago, after a successful career at similar agencies elsewhere, and left quickly after describing the organization to my friend as “sneaky, underhanded and dysfunctional.” An elderly tenant whose rent is supplemented with a Section 8 certificate says that her landlord successfully claimed that she hadn’t paid her rent when she actually had, and therefore he collected double rent for at least several months. Others complain that even though they had Section 8 certificates they were never able to get into Berkeley apartments because vacancies always went to friends of staff. -more-