Sunday’s second Berkeley International Food Festival Sunday will celebrate the story of how a West Berkeley neighborhood overcame ethnic, racial and economic boundaries through food. -more-

A popular Albany physician and her two daughters were shot to death by her distraught husband in a secluded Tilden Park parking lot Monday night. He then turned the gun on himself. -more-

If anything, the week got worse. On Tuesday, I wrote a blog about the internet abuse of children, our disassociation from what happens right in front of our faces. I didn't know when I wrote it that I had witnessed the scene of an unimaginable horror the evening before. -more-

A packed council budget hearing at the Tuesday evening City Council meeting brought out people with requests ranging from homeless services to arts to emergency road access. -more-

When Mayor Tom Bates saw the crowd that had assembled at Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting to address the question of development at the former site of Wright’s Garage—a commercial complex proposed by realtor John Gordon near the intersection of College and Ashby avenues and approved March 8 by the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB)—he asked why it was on the agenda at all. -more-

Just a bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth accompanied the interrupted consummation of the apparent deal between local politicians and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce last week. Mayor Bates and some council allies made a vigorous show of enacting new laws aimed at getting untidy people out of shopping districts, seemingly in return for the Chamber Political Action Commitee’s cash contributions to their re-election campaigns, but in the end nothing was enacted except concept statements, and everyone knows the devil’s in the details. -more-