News

Posted Wed., April 16—A Berkeley woman who admitted murdering her 9-year-old son will spend at least eight years in prison under terms of a plea bargain announced Wednesday. -more-

Posted Wed., April 16—The Berkeley Unified School District rescinded 38 of the 60 potential layoff notices it sent out to teachers and counselors last month in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to cut $4.8 billion from the state education budget. -more-

While laughter at a funeral might seem incongruous, then so was Jay Walter. Speaker after speaker described a man both outrageously public and exceedingly private. -more-

Results from testing water collected from the Berkeley Aquatic Park last week after a sewage spill showed no contamination, city officials told the Planet Monday. -more-

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. -more-

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. -more-

In the 400 years since the first slavery ships docked on the Virginia coast, the African-American Freedom Movement has raised up a continuing series of larger-than-life leaders—Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X. But arguably the most talented of that group, but perhaps the least appreciated, remembered, or studied, is the man whose 110th birthday anniversary is being celebrated this month—Paul Robeson. -more-

Jupiter Beerhouse and Restaurant’s proposed expansion into adjacent Café Panini would replace the cafe, zoning officials told the Planet Monday. -more-

Berkeley’s City Council Monday spurned a Planning Commission proposal to have a city density bonus law in place in the event Proposition 98 passes in the statewide June 3 election. -more-

Construction begins Wednesday on the new guest house at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. -more-

Berkeley Technology Academy’s (B-Tech) hour-long discussion on youth violence with Barrios Unidos co-founder Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez Friday was the first of many events the school hopes to host for its Latino students, who make up 45 percent of the school’s population. -more-

A prosecutor told jurors today that they should convict Christopher Hollis of murder for firing shots that killed his close friend Meleia Willis-Starbuck, a popular Berkeley High School graduate and Dartmouth College student. -more-

A red Pontiac Firebird collided head on with a Berkeley public school bus carrying five students from John Muir Elementary School at 3:50 p.m. Friday. -more-

Campus evacuation -more-

Robbery -more-

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-