Once known for tolerance toward the downtrodden, Berkeley turned a corner Tuesday night, advocates for the homeless and mentally ill say, when the City Council voted to give police greater power to cite people lying on city sidewalks. -more-

Oak grove tree-sitters had cause for gratitude on Thanksgiving when over 80 Berkeley community members and students, led by the “Berkeley Grandmothers for the Oaks,” defied UC police orders, risked arrest, and successfully delivered bulging bags of food and jugs of water to the arboreal protestors. -more-

If the Berkeley City Council gives its approval tonight (Tuesday), the city will award a $50,000 sole source contract to the nonprofit corporation Build It Green to prepare the groundwork for a pilot solar project. -more-

Two years of grueling and sometimes acrimonious effort comes to an end Thursday night when the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee holds its final meeting. -more-

The Oiled Wildlife Care Network closed down its bird rescue center at the Berkeley Marina Monday and moved operations to the International Bird Rescue and Research Center in Cordelia. -more-

Extensive interviews, discussions and reviews marked the two-day visit to Berkeley High’s International High School by the International Baccalaureate Organization as part of an application to accredit the program within the institution’s International High School last week. -more-

What’s nice about book reviews is that, well done, they turn a monologue into a dialogue. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah for an author to reveal his thought processes and his conclusions on the printed page, and even more to submit to the judgment of his peers about whether or not he got it right. At our house we’ve been planning for a while now to form opinions about two new books by two Bobs, Robert Reich, now a Berkeley snowbird who teaches at UC’s Goldman School of Public Policy in the months when Cambridge is unpleasant, and Robert Kuttner, who’s still mostly an Easterner. They’re co-founders of The American Prospect, a worthy if sometimes dull journal of opinion populated mostly by center-left thinkers with a Boston background who have a lingering affection for the Democratic Party in some of its manifestations. -more-