Crammed into two standing-room-only buses, planning commissioners, city staff, business owners and interested citizens set out for a five-hour tour of West Berkeley Saturday. -more-

Willard Middle School Vice Principal Margaret Lowry—under investigation by the Berkeley Board of Education for improper conduct involving two special education students—has been removed from her position and will be replaced by Thomas Orput, vice principal of the Berkeley Adult School. -more-

Berkeley’s facing neither layoffs nor program cuts in the next fiscal year, but without taxpayers ponying up to pay for them, there will be no new services, City Manager Phil Kamlarz told the City Council last week. -more-

With the full Oakland City Council scheduled to vote on Mayor Ron Dellums’ police recruitment augmentation plan at its regular 7 p.m. meeting today (Tuesday), maneuvering over the final shape of the plan continued through the weekend. -more-

A diverse representation of Oakland interests came out Monday morning in support of Mayor Ron Dellums’ industrial zoning plan, asking that the City Council make no changes in the proposal. -more-

There is still hope for Berkeley Iceland. And it comes in the form of Tom Killilea and his non-profit Save Berkeley Iceland. -more-

Berkeley’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission decided Thursday that Business for Better Government, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, must file campaign contribution statements for 2004 and 2006 retroactively with the city. -more-

In December 2007, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell came to Oakland to announce that he was turning over two more areas of control to the state-operated Oakland Unified School District: personnel and facilities management. -more-

Tuesday’s City Council meeting, which was mainly devoted to a discussion of the light brown apple moth, ended in a surprise finale, with an 11:30 p.m. vote to extend the meeting until midnight falling short of the needed two-thirds approval. The council had been in session since 5 p.m. -more-

The four dozen protesters picketing the downtown Marine Recruiting Center early Friday morning had a different message than the anti-Iraq War/anti-military recruiting demonstrators seen there almost daily since September. -more-

The Berkeley High School Girls Basketball team won the North Coast Section Division I Championship for the second year in a row on Saturday at the Oracle Arena. -more-

Berkeley’s Planning Commission meets Wednesday night to focus on a single issue, the city’s Draft Climate Action Plan. -more-

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With the Academy Awards over, it’s time for a new year of thrilling cinematic chills. How about: “Spoiler Dilemma, Take Three,” starring Ralph Nader? -more-

Imagine a bus route so fast that it’s like a vehicle free of tracks. It would be 10 times cheaper and ride along a 15-mile stretch from Bay Fair BART station in San Leandro to Downtown Berkeley. Each stop would be about half mile apart and bus drivers would have the ability to turn stoplights green using GPS technology and have an electronic sign informing riders when the next bus was scheduled to arrive. This $400 million budgeted project would provide elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. While the city of Berkeley does have a toned down version of rapid transit systems, they still have to drive alongside the traffic of regular cars. -more-

A spectre is haunting the Democratic Party, the spectre of an ugly—albeit unnecessary—floor-fight over Florida and Michigan delegates at the national convention in August. -more-

I’ve been walking at the Marina and Cesar Chavez Park for 14 years. My dog Grace loved our walks and runs around the perimeter and in the center where it was pure nature. In the early 1920’s the area was the city municipal dump and in the 1990s it was landscaped and converted to a public park, North Waterfront Park. Now, Cesar Chavez Park, it has become a beautiful haven for all manner of nature beings with a Wildlife Sanctuary at the northern end. Red tail hawks, black shouldered kites, hummingbirds, finches, crows, ravens, pelicans, burrowing owls, ground squirrels, rabbits, feral cats, gopher snakes, great blue herons, snowy egrets, Northern Harriers, sea gulls and more. There are beautiful native plants, sages, fennel, pampas grass, purple and white statice, pine trees, purple thistle plants, matilija, or, “fried-egg” poppies, and crimson clover. It’s wild with nature. I walk there every day to enjoy the sounds, scents and sights. -more-

I’m standing at my desk as I type this; I’ve tilted the keyboard and nestled it inside a cardboard box, next to the mouse, which I’ve precariously propped at a steep angle on various piled-up objects. I’ve done this because of the pain I experience when I sit, but in fact standing seems only incrementally better than sitting. So I don’t know how long I’ll last before I give up and go back to bed. -more-

After reading the recent article about AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal as well as being an attendee of early February’s planning commissioning meeting for Berkeley, I would like to support the argument for a positive response towards the BRT proposal. -more-

I am a senior major in Civil Engineering and City Planning at UC Berkeley. I am very interested in transportation planning, especially parking policies. Recently, I came across a parking study "The Smart Parking Seminar" conducted by the Metropolitan Transportation Committee (MTC.) The allocation, use of limited on and off street parking resources, and parking policies continue to be highly debated issues both locally and nationally. The MTC's parking study identifies some local parking policies, requirements, and recommendations to "managing constrained parking conditions with smart growth and Transit Oriented Development (TOD) policies and programs." Here's my thought on the parking study. -more-

So far there have been many surprises in the contest for the 2008 presidential nomination. Six months ago, it appeared the probable candidates would be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton; now it seems they will be John McCain and Barack Obama. Last year it appeared the leading issue would be the war in Iraq; now it’s likely the great debate will be about the economy. -more-

Trust the Aussies (“…from the Land Down Under/Where the women something and the men something-else-that-rhymes with ‘under’—maybe ‘blunder’?—but definitely not whatever the women do”) to get all weird about gender issues in the unlikeliest places. They’re blessed with several species of casuarina, a useful and engagingly weird clade of trees, and what do they call them? “She-oak.” And what do they mean by that? Why, “like oak but inferior.” -more-