Warm water pool users got a look at what the proposed warm water pool at the Berkeley Unified School District’s Milvia Street site would look like on Wednesday at the Disability Commission meeting. -more-

The public hearing at the Tuesday night City Council meeting was supposed to focus on whether the council should uphold or overturn a commission’s landmark designation of the 1939 art deco structure that houses Berkeley Iceland at Derby and Milvia streets. -more-

Elmwood neighbors and merchants lost their bid to overturn zoning board approval of a proposed retail development at College and Ashby avenues at the City Council Tuesday. Opponents say the proposal for stores, a gym and large restaurant-bar is too big for the small shopping district. -more-

The UC Regents are scheduled to approve two key environmental documents Monday, setting the stage for a major expansion at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. -more-

Few people who’ve encountered him are indifferent to Mark Rhoades, whose departure was announced this week by city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. -more-

President Bush increasingly inhabits a parallel universe. His Thursday press conference displayed a remarkable disconnect from the current thinking of most Americans and even of many elected officials in his own Republican party. Most Americans, from all parties, now understand that our main, our only, goal in Iraq is to get out, though there are still some differences of opinion as to the manner of our going. There has been approximately no progress toward the subsidiary goal of helping the indigenous Iraqis establish a civil society based on what in this country we call democratic values. Staying there longer won’t change much. It’s possible that immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces would exacerbate the factional war among Iraqis, but even that is not certain. -more-