News

Becky Lyman of Code Pink debates Lee Wolf of the San Francisco State Young Republicans in a demonstration / counter-demonstration at the Berkeley Marine Recruitment office, 64 Shattuck Square on Wednesday. -more-

The law barring construction and substantial renovations of existing buildings perched atop active earthquake faults doesn’t apply to the University of California, one of its lawyers said Thursday. -more-

Accused by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office of lying about where he lives to maintain his seat on the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, Rent Board Member Chris Kavanagh stepped down temporarily from his post while he battles the charges in court. -more-

There’s a new sign posted at the Albany Waterfront Park announcing an “Albany Bulb Clean-up Project” beginning Monday, Sept. 24, and going on for two weeks. It warns that “heavy equipment” will be used but assures that the “cleanup will not have a permanent impact on the Albany Bulb’s landscape or usability.” That is meant to be reassuring. On past occasions when bulldozers were used they tore up wide swaths of lush vegetation. Robert Barringer, who called the Bulb home for years, recalled how “they took down a lot of trees and shrubs and they laid them out like corpses.” As for impact on “usabilty,” that’s a very big question. -more-

As late as a little over a year ago, the name of the rising African-American political family dynasty in East Oakland was Hodge. But what appears on the surface to be a growing family feud in East Oakland politics may mean that might soon change. -more-

Point towers and pointed tensions dominated Wednesday’s DAPAC meeting, and by the time the session ended, a resolution for downtown Berkeley’s future skyline remained elusive. -more-

The administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, left for practically politically dead by some local media outlets, rose dramatically from the grave on Tuesday night to win its second major political victory of the year, securing the nearly-unanimous City Council confirmation of its two Port Commission nominees. -more-

Representatives of eight Native American tribes say UC Berkeley has failed to provide adequately for the return to their tribes of remains and artifacts it holds at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. -more-

Rights activist and devout Episcopalian Jane Jackson passed away peacefully Sept. 26 in her beloved Santiago de Cuba. She is survived in the U.S. by her two daughters and their families, by her daughter and her family in Havana, and by all those whose lives she made better during her lifetime of struggle for the rights of people everywhere. Jane was a brilliant, tenacious, determined champion of justice. It is impossible to list all the world’s, the country’s and her neighborhood’s problems to which Jane gave her time, energy, money and love trying to solve. -more-

I-M-P-E-A-C-H-! will be spelled out at the Berkeley Marina Sunday, thanks to the efforts of Brad Newsham and some 1,500 others. -more-

This week Berkeley High School students sat for the first of three sets of the California Exit Exam for the new school year. -more-

On Wednesday morning, Berkeley parents, teachers and elementary school children walked or rode on bikes to school to make a statement about global warming, obesity and to mark International Walk to School Day. -more-

Alisha, a shy 6-year-old from Nepal, cannot recognize or write her own name. -more-

Accused by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office of lying about where he lives in order to maintain his seat on the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, Rent Board Member Chris Kavanagh stepped down temporarily from his post, while he battles the question in court. -more-

Most everyone attending Saturday’s forum on Mayor Tom Bates’ Public Commons for Everyone Initiative agreed on one part of the proposal: Berkeley needs more public toilets for everyone. -more-

Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium oak grove tree-sitters, who first took to the branches last Dec. 2 on Big Game morning, seemed at first to have suffered a legal setback on Monday afternoon when a Fremont judge issued a preliminary injunction. -more-

Last week, essential workers at two of Berkeley’s largest institutions said they were headed toward walkouts. By Monday afternoon, one strike threat had ended but the other was moving forward. -more-

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won the running battle she held over the weekend for the attention of the Oakland electorate with her Democratic Presidential rival, Senator Barack Obama, announcing the endorsement of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums during a hastily convened Monday afternoon appearance at Laney College. -more-

Fired in 1999 when, as KPFA’s general manager, she stood up to national Pacifica management, Nicole Sawaya will take the position of the boss she battled in the bloody KPFA vs. the Pacifica Foundation Board fight. -more-

Homicide detectives have arrested a pair of alleged gang members for the May 6 West Berkeley beating death of Agustine [CQ] James Silva Jr., 19, of Antioch. -more-

The Berkeley Police Department (BPD) is looking for two men who sexually assaulted a 27-year-old woman early Friday morning. -more-

Like Superman, Berkeley’s citizen downtown planners will be leaping tall buildings Wednesday night—though they’re already well past the traditional single bound. -more-

Two new names were added to Berkeley’s list of late-night dining spots after the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) approved their permits Thursday. -more-

In what would appear to be the most stinging rebuke possible to the conduct of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office in the November 2004 Berkeley Measure R Medical Marijuana initiative election, a California Superior Court judge has ordered that a new Measure R election be held in November of next year, and that Measure R proponents be reimbursed for litigation and recount costs. -more-

Preserving California’s Japantowns will call upon Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Thursday to nominate the city’s pre-World War II Japanese heritage sites to the State Office of Historic Preservation. -more-

For many years I resisted the growing of roses. My mother, a passionate rose grower, employed a gardener whose name, extraordinary to recall, was Budd. Mr. Budd was my introduction to the professional horticulturist. I do not remember seeing him busy with spade or hoe. As with my father’s relationship with Peter-who-cleaned-the-car, work seemed to consist of employer and employed standing side by side, gazing at potential problems, in my mother’s case perhaps a grandiflora (of which she later grew an impenetrable 10- foot hedge, not as difficult as it looks) that needed to be shifted, or for my father, an engine requiring carburetor adjustment, my mother’s loquacity occasionally interrupted by a gruff Hampshire “argh” or “um,” my father’s silence only broken by the cough of partial combustion. -more-

Players on the Berkeley High School women’s field hockey team often spend more time riding a bus to their games than playing them. There are few nearby opponents and sometimes they have to ride as far as San Jose. -more-

UC Berkeley’s biofuel bonanza—$635 million in expected corporate and federal funding—got off to an early start Monday with word of an unexpected $10 million advance from Washington. -more-