UC Berkeley students were preparing to stage a candlelight vigil at Wheeler Hall Tuesday night as the Daily Planet went to press, and may take over the building once again next week to protest the 32 percent tuition hike. But this time, they say, it will be an “open occupation.” -more-

Not everyone is happy with Berkeley’s latest plan, which seeks to make buses whiz through the city’s transit corridors. -more-

The UC strike reached its peak at 3 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, when students and custodians dumped days-old trash from the different campus buildings outside California Hall, where UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau works, to protest recent custodian layoffs. -more-

A student group at UC Berkeley’s school of law Tuesday called on the U.S. Justice Department, the Pennsylvania Bar and the University of California to “conduct full and thorough investigations” of former government lawyers who crafted the Bush torture memos, including John Yoo, a tenured faculty member at their school. -more-

The Berkeley City Council voted Nov. 17 to amend the city’s noise ordinance, unanimously allowing nightclubs, open-air festivals and other venues to exceed sound limits if they obtain the proper permits from the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board. -more-

The Berkeley Police Department announced Tuesday that they have arrested a man suspected of being involved in a Berkeley homicide that took place in May. -more-

Next time you find a pothole on your street or graffiti in your neighborhood, call the city. It might just work. Or so promises the City of Berkeley, which launched a 311 call center program at the Nov. 17 City Council meeting to troubleshoot these kinds of problems. -more-

The Berkeley City Council at its Nov. 17 meeting adopted the Citywide Pools Master plan which proposes to expand or revamp the city’s existing public pools and relocate the warm water pool from the seismically unsafe Berkeley High School Old Gym to West Campus. -more-

Years ago, I met a guy who’d been to Afghanistan, and I was surprised to hear that the country really existed. I thought it was a mythical land out of a fairy tale, and I’d never heard of the Pashtuns. That was back in 1968. -more-

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For over 20 years three owner-operated businesses have served students in the Bear’s Lair Food Court, in the Student Union on UC Berkeley’s campus. Haitham Alloun is a Palestinian immigrant who came to UC Berkeley in 1977 as an international student, only to discontinue his studies due to the fact that he had to work long hours to support himself and his family. He owns The Coffee Spot. Ann Vu came to this country from Vietnam, and has succeeded in building her business up over two decades to become a model for many students on campus from Southeast Asia, and especially women of color. Ann owns the Vietnamese restaurant, Foods.Healthy Heavenly Foods. Arnoldo Marquez has operated El Taqueria Tacontento for five years after purchasing the business from his uncle who owned the business for 15 years before. Throughout this time students have been provided with quality food at low cost in a quick and friendly manner. -more-

My name is Arnoldo Marquez and I am the owner of a business in the Bear’s Lair named El Taqueria Tacontento for the last five years. It’s a business preceded along with my family for a total of 20 years. I along with Ann Vu, owner of Healthy Heavenly Foods, and Haitham Alloun, owner of The Coffee Spot, have provided good food at reasonable prices to the Berkeley community on campus for 20 years. -more-

I can’t tell you how proud I am of my daughter and her fellow students at UC Berkeley. She was one of the 41 students who occupied Wheeler Hall on Nov. 19 to protest the 32 percent fee hikes, teaching furloughs and layoffs being imposed on higher education in California. She studied hard to get the grades necessary to get into Berkeley and she’s working part time to help pay for it. She appreciates her education, but she fears that the state’s public university system is being privatized. Instead of providing an affordable quality education to any student with the grades to qualify, higher education in California is rapidly becoming an expensive commodity that only the rich—and a handful of poor students with financial assistance—can afford. -more-

At its Nov. 17 meeting the Berkeley City Council endorsed the construction of a ferry terminal at the Berkeley Marina. I present information here about how costly this ferry service to San Francisco will be relative to other modes of public transportation and ask if a Berkeley ferry terminal is a good allocation of diminishing state and federal resources. -more-

The threat of Sarah Palin is as real as was that of George W. Bush, a decade ago. The fact that Palin is so popular, to begin with, among voters who see things differently than I and has the animal magnetism and the classic ability of the corrupt and successful politician to charm and to fool the masses, bodes strongly in favor of her being the one to defeat in 2012. -more-

After years of highly contentious and difficult work, we have before us some possible Downtown Plans—not all that much different from one another. We’ve learned a lot and many good ideas have been put forward. Expertise in various areas is far more widespread than when the process started. And yet, who today, in the current economic situation, can believe in any variation of the plans before us? It is, sadly, time to go back to the drawing board. -more-

Celebrating my first wedding anniversary on Nov. 10, while mourning the passage of the referendum in Maine, I continue to wonder whether Proposition 8, the ban against same sex marriage in California, created more marriages than it prevented.   -more-

At the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Haste in Berkeley, there is a unique bookstore. On the sidewalk where the entrance to Cody’s Books once stood, a man arranges rows and rows of books of every conceivable description. Next to the books is an old card table with a battered coffee can and a hand-lettered sign that says, “Books 50 Cents.” The sign used to say, “Books 25 Cents,” Like everywhere else, nowadays, inflation has taken its toll. -more-

Oakland is a complicated city, impossible to understand in a single season or to explain in a single story. For Mayor Ron Dellums, especially, there is no overall way to explain all of his actions of the past three years. You must search and pay attention, and put together pieces from disparate places and times. -more-

Before the Obama administration buys in to General Stanley McChrystal’s escalation strategy, it might spend some time examining the Aug. 12 battle of Dananeh, a scruffy little town of 2,000 perched at the entrance to the Naw Zad Valley in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. -more-

At the “Open University” meeting organized by UC protesters last week, art history Professor T.J. Clark spoke of “imagined communities” made up of networks of participants who connect via the newest technologies. Indeed the students who barricaded themselves inside UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall last Friday used cell phones and Twitter to communicate not only with the crowd of 2,000 supporters surrounding the building, but also with those occupying buildings at other UC campuses. This new statewide movement, which brings together faculty and campus workers as well as students, aims to save public education. Can it succeed? -more-

Hindsight is, indeed, 20/20. Ah, that I knew then what I know now. Oh well. That’s just the way things are. Nonetheless, it’s embarrassing when you’re supposed to know all about a subject and, in reality, you’ve made plenty of the same mistakes that everyone else has made. -more-

When I worked in San Francisco, I could see the walls of three neighboring highrises and a narrow slice of sky from my cubicle. There were few signs of life: a hummingbird checking out the flowers on a 10th-floor balcony, a passing gull, once every few months a window washer. Mostly there were pigeons. Singles and pairs stopped by to preen, court or just hang out. I came to appreciate them as a connection, however tenuous, to the natural world. -more-