News

Posted Sun., April 13—Preliminary results from testing water collected from the Berkeley Aquatic Park last week after a sewage spill showed no contamination, city officials told the Planet on Friday, but a section of the lagoon remained closed to the public throughout the weekend. -more-

The UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. came to the defense this week of law professor John Yoo, author of one of the "torture memos” for the Bush administration, and said the controversial professor could not be fired. -more-

Posted Fri., April 11—Tomorrow (Saturday) will be a day unlike the usual Saturday in Berkeley. Throngs will be headed for the UC Berkeley campus, but not for classes or football games. -more-

Posted Fri., April 11—Is the Hayward Fault, which runs diagonally through Berkeley, a “tectonic time bomb in our back yard”? -more-

As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco Wednesday, Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. -more-

Judging by comments at a Wednesday night hearing, Ber-keley residents like faster bus service but hate the notion of losing car lanes to bus expressways. -more-

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of Ber-keley’s Aquatic Park. -more-

After five years on the back burner, the Southside Plan is finally coming to a boil—with the Planning Commission set to discuss the document later this month. -more-

By a 5-4 vote, Berkeley planning commissioners voted Tuesday night to endorse the recommendations of the Joint Density Bonus Subcommittee over a more developer-friendly staff report. -more-

Solemn firefighters from Berkeley, Livermore and Pleasanton will march through the streets of Berkeley Saturday morning, honoring one of their own, Jay Walter Randall. -more-

The newly empowered school board of the Oakland Unified School District moved swiftly to exercise authority granted by California State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell, voting on Wednesday to hire an interim district superintendent on a one-year basis while the board looks for a permanent superintendent. -more-

An Oakland education and labor attorney has filed a California Superior Court lawsuit against the City of Oakland and its recent decision to spend $7.7 million of Measure Y money on police recruitment, asking that the court immediately halt the collection of Measure Y taxes until the original community policing mandates of the bond measure are met. -more-

Warm-water pool users lobbied the Berkeley Board of Education to save the Berkeley High School Old Gym and warm pool right before the board discussed a report recommending the site’s adaptive reuse at the school board meeting Wednesday. -more-

It wasn’t all fun and games at the Berkeley Federation of Teachers’ community rally against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.8 billion state education budget cuts Wednesday, although there was some clowning around. -more-

SIRs are due May 1. What are SIRs, you might ask? The answer: a Student’s Intent to Register at a college. In the next several weeks, Berkeley High School (BHS) college-bound seniors will be deciding where to spend the next four years of their life. -more-

Tuesday's story on the light brown apple moth should have differentiated the roles of the United States Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The USDA is responsible for the New Zealand testing of a new product to eradicate the moth, USDA named the Technical Working Group on the moth and the April 1 telephone press conference included experts from both the CDFA and the USDA. -more-

Posted Wed., April 9—As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco today (Wednesday), Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. -more-

Posted Wed., April 9— The United Healthcare Workers-West members who met with the press outside the San Francisco Federal Building Tuesday are in a fight—but this time it’s not with their corporate bosses. -more-

Posted Tue., April 8—A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare's Berkeley campus at noon Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of the Berkeley Aquatic Park. -more-

A five-year-old city skateboard park that was to cost $200,000 and ended up costing four times that amount today is splitting at the seams. -more-

A small but dedicated crowd turned up to mark the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination by reading aloud his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” at the downtown Berkeley Public Library on Friday. The event coincided with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council’s National Day of Nonviolence, started nine years ago by the organization’s former director Jamal Bryant to encourage youth to fight against community violence. -more-

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the Oakland Police Department’s street strip-search policies are generally constitutional—though portions of it are not—but trials in individual cases must be held before the court can determine whether constitutional rights have actually been violated. -more-

Demolition of the strip mall at the corner of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way will begin June 1, said developer Chris Hudson. Some preliminary dismantling of the building is already visible. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education will discuss a report recommending adaptive re-use of the Berkeley High School Old Gym on Wednesday. -more-

Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates settled a seven-year-old lawsuit with the state Department of Education Friday. In the settlement the state agreed to study the pass rate for special education students on the California High School Exit Exam. -more-

Former 16th District Assemblymember Wilma Chan has filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) against 14th District Assemblymember Loni Hancock—Chan’s opponent in the race to succeed termed-out 9th District State Senator Don Perata—charging that Hancock has illegally used her assemblymember officeholder account to pay a campaign staff member. -more-

The state agriculture department’s plan to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM) “is like the 9-11 terrorist policy applied to agriculture,” Miguel Altieri, UC Berkeley professor of agroecology and an entomologist, told the Planet Monday. -more-

A federal decision on a plan to create a new North Richmond reservation for a landless tribe of Pomos who want to build a casino is months away, a federal official said Monday. -more-

Berkeley Planning Commissioners face back-to-back meetings this week where they’ll juggle two political hot potatoes on succeeding nights. -more-