After more than four months of intensive organizing efforts, Berkeley Bowl workers rejected unionization effort in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised election Thursday. -more-

FRIDAY, OCT. 31 -more-

FRIDAY, OCT. 31 -more-

Although the very name “Faculty Club” perhaps conjures images of aloof inaccessibility, the 101-year-old Berkeley campus institution is anything but. -more-

TOLERANCE -more-

A prominent Berkeley contractor has been cited for 17 violations of California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) regulations from their renovation of a Hayward commercial building, including the improper removal, handling, and dumping of asbestos material. -more-

With all the attention on the budget battles in Sacramento and Washington, the financial crisis facing cities has slipped mostly under the radar. But cities provide most of the front line services used by Californians, and throughout California those city services are on the chopping block. -more-

Considering unusual places to see fine art in Berkeley? -more-

Berkeley scored a victory against the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), after a regional regulatory board ordered the lab to implement the highest possible standards to clean up contaminated groundwater at its Berkeley Hills campus. -more-

I contemplate the depth beneath my stride -more-

Depending on how you look at things, it’s either a wonderful or a terrible time to be an independent filmmaker. -more-

Following a heated five-hour sentencing hearing Tuesday, three UC Berkeley students—Michael Smith, Snehal Shingavi and Rachel Odes—are waiting to learn what, if any, punishments the university will mandate for their actions during a March 23 campus anti-war protest. -more-

My first memory of Roger Montgomery was when I was a graduate student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley in 1978. I took his class on Community Development. Roger was well-known at the time as being a critic of the infamous federal “Urban Renewal” program that had displaced so many low-income minorities from inner-city neighborhoods during the 1960s that it had been informally renamed the “Negro Removal Program.” Roger had provided expert faculty support to a movement to block urban renewal in the west Berkeley flatlands, and had helped to stop a substantial degree of displacement that would otherwise have occurred. Roger was a passionate political progressive, and he brought his passions into his classroom teaching in a way that I greatly admired. I particularly remember him drawing a picture on the blackboard of the widely heralded urban renewal in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, home to the University of Chicago, and I was struck by the way a policy activist like Roger could think in such distinctly visual images. -more-

Berkeley school district officials are preparing for discussions on an administrative overhaul for Rosa Parks Elementary School, after standardized test scores released last week showed that student performance declined. -more-

Berkeley has sent seven firefighters and one engine to San Diego to do battle with the most destructive of the Southern California wildfires. -more-

The older son of notorious Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy was scheduled to enter a guilty plea today, Friday, Oct. 31, as part of the agreement that will complete the prosecution of family members for smuggling young Indian girls into the country for sex and cheap labor. -more-

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Well, you gotta hand it to 9th District State Senator Don Perata. Thanks, in part, to a calendar-challenged Superior Court judge and Attorney General Bill Lockyer (both of whom seem to think that four days equals four years), Mr. Perata has figured out a way to stretch his term limit from the voter -mandated two to a more convenient (for him) three. Now it looks like Mr. Perata, may have simultaneously managed to snooker his toughest opponent out of the race against him. -more-

In The New York Times the other day, Iraq’s new interim president, Iyad Alawi, thanked Americans for liberating his country and then made a simple request: please bring back the Iraqi army. -more-

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Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series by UC Berkeley journalism students on the paths of Berkeley. -more-

About 30 years ago, A.J. Ayres and other kids in his neighborhood rode their BMX bikes to Crescent Park, a private park with three inlets in the Park Hills area of Berkeley. The park has served the neighborhood for more than a half-century. He remembers they would stage plum fights there in August, when their ammunition got spoiled and wouldn’t hurt as much. -more-