It began with a flimsy yellow ribbon and ended with a riot, two arrests and a courtroom hearing. -more-

Judge Barbara Miller ruled late Thursday that the chain-link fence at the UC stadium oak grove does not violate the preliminary injunction against any alteration at the site. -more-

The first day of the new school year went off without a hitch for Berkeley public schools Wednes-day. -more-

Oakland Unified School District board members were informed on Wednesday night that a $1.4 million district deficit in the adopted 2007-08 budget—which district officials had said had been whittled down from a projected $4.3 million deficit last June—was now up to $4.7 million in updated figures recently compiled by the district’s interim chief financial officer. -more-

The battle lines over just how much and how high new development should rise in downtown Berkeley are growing, with UC Berkeley weighing in on the side of greater density. -more-

For openers, whining (or whinging, if you’re British). I very seldom try to take a whole week off, and even then I try to fill this space via e-mail if I can. In fact, the last time I tried this, I was in Oxford when the University of California at Berkeley suckered one of its devoted alumni into letting them off the hook on the City of Berkeley’s righteous lawsuit challenging just one of the university’s several mammoth expansion schemes which are proposed over the next 20 years. Planet reporters did a good job of covering the fireworks, but it would have been fun to see them close up. -more-