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-

A widely publicized recent poll that reportedly showed that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is losing support among “likely Oakland voters” was not intended as a poll on success or failure of the Dellums administration, was never intended for release to the public, and the organization which commissioned it is now conducting an internal investigation to see how its results got released to political columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle. -more-

On Monday, Oct. 1, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported selected results of the David Binder poll concerning Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. -more-

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums meets with North Oakland residents this Saturday, holding a city charter-mandated community town hall meeting from 10 a.m. to noon at the Peralta Elementary School, 460 63rd St. -more-

UC Berkeley plans a major overhaul of landmarked Bowles Hall, and they’re looking for an architect to show how to do it. -more-

Visitors to Berkeley High School will now have to show photo identification to enter the campus. -more-

The Binational Health Week, organized locally by the Berkeley Organizing Congregation for Action (BOCA), starts today (Friday) to promote mental health and physical fitness in the city. -more-

Soon oh very soon, we’re going to change this world. -more-

Some Berkeley school board members expressed concern that Berkeley High School (BHS) did not meet the benchmark for the 2007 Academic Performance Index (API) scores. -more-

UNIMPEACHABLE -more-

Two pieces of e-mail arrived in my inbox on Sunday. One was about the recently-launched effort to recall Mayor Tom Bates. It asked “What is Tom Bates doing wrong?” The second was for an Oct. 15 benefit for the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, which is suing the city for its approval of the huge restaur-ant and bar complex at the old Wright’s Garage. I couldn’t help but laugh, because this e-mail had so simply answered the question posed by the first. If Tom Bates had been doing his job, ordinary people wouldn’t have to sue our city to get justice. They wouldn’t have to stage benefits when a letter to the mayor would have sufficed. -more-

As Halcyon Neighborhood Association (HNA) celebrates its 15th anniversary, we’d like to share with the larger community the principles that have allowed us to achieve so much in our corner of south Berkeley. -more-

Last May, in my daughter’s Berkeley High School music class, a fellow classmate, Herbert, walked out the door with my daughter’s laptop computer, iPod, Timbuktu bag and cell phone. The other students said, “Oh, he is always stealing.” She saved for a year working at the Pacific Center and back stage at school to buy the laptop; I am a single mom. The teacher witnessed it and reported it to the school security guard. -more-

Bush administration neo-conservatives, allied with a group of U.S. senators, appear to have successfully torpedoed the upcoming Bush administration-sponsored Middle East peace conference. Initially billed as a gathering that would propel Israel and the Palestinians toward a “final-status” agreement, the November conference’s goals have now been reduced to little more than establishing a “set of principles” as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it. -more-

When the Berkeley Planning Department proposed last January to re-zone the West Berkeley properties occupied by Urban Ore and the city’s transfer station—two of northern Alameda County’s recycling hubs—for auto dealerships, it might have seemed that the bureau had exhausted its capacity to dream up bizarre land use schemes. That impression was dispelled last Wednesday evening, as senior planner Matt Taecker presented the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC—sounds like daypack) with a vision of a high-rise downtown as surreal as the notion of replacing Berkeley’s major recycling facilities with auto dealers. -more-

It was a couple of throwaway sentences deep into the second page of an Oakland Tribune murder arrest story, so innocuous that if you read it, you probably hardly noticed. And that’s what makes it so insidious, why it should make us worried, and why the police practice involved ought to be brought to a halt. -more-

2206 Jefferson Ave. in central Berkeley is a charming enigma of an old Berkeley house. Precisely when it was built and how it arrived where it is are matters of some mystery. -more-

Some promising plant sales and garden events will happen over the next couple of weeks. One thing to remember about plant sales: Most of them accept payment by cash or check only, as it’s not feasible for them to set up a credit-card facility for such infrequent events. So remember your checkbook along with your walking shoes and some cartons or recycling boxes to tote your plants. -more-

For those of you who’ve been reading this column for some time, you know that I have what might be called a conflicted relationship with the building codes. Basically they bug me. I’m glad they’re there but they still bug me. -more-