Amir Hassan, a 9-year-old Emerson elementary school student is dead, his mother has been hospitalized, and detectives are focusing their investigations on her, police said. -more-

The hands putting up the brightly colored rainbows, hearts and flowers on the walls of the library at Emerson Elementary School Thursday belonged to teachers, friends and classmates of Amir Hassan, the fourth-grader who was found dead inside his Shattuck Avenue apartment Wednesday morning. -more-

With a smile and a soupçon of praise for the legal talent arrayed before her, Judge Barbara J. Miller retired to her chambers Thursday afternoon to ponder the fate of UC Berkeley’s stadium area development plans. -more-

While the city’s appraiser said the air rights over a rebuilt City Center Garage is worth $850,000, a developer planning a building adjacent to the garage valued the rights the developer would buy at $22,250. -more-

Alta Bates/Summit nurses and their supporters were walking the picket line Thursday in the second day of what the California Nurse’s Association calls “the biggest RN strike this decade.” -more-

Just before the turn of the last century, the United States entered into a war with Spain which was to cost the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and many more Cubans. Spaniards and residents of the Philippines, and which would lead to decades of colonial domination by the United States. It is generally conceded that a major factor which precipitated the entry of this country into the Spanish-American war was the role of what was called “the yellow press,” the sensationalist newspapers which with lurid headlines and passionate front page editorializing whipped up a popular frenzy against Spain. The Hearst newspaper empire played a major role in this effort, which was a guaranteed circulation builder in those days. -more-