In a countdown to today’s Super Tuesday vote, Sen. Edward Kennedy was cheered Friday by thousands of Barack Obama supporters, who had queued up for blocks along Telegraph Avenue and crowded into the pews and aisles of Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland to hear Kennedy speak on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidate. -more-

The World Can’t Wait ratcheted up the protests at the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center Friday, when three demonstrators dressed in orange jump suits to symbolize the garb worn by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay chained themselves to the recruiting center doors at 64 Shattuck Square. -more-

Five members of the People’s Park Community Advisory Board resigned last week after falling out with UC Berkeley officials over the university’s reluctance to sponsor an open competition to choose a new design as part of ongoing efforts to remodel the park. -more-

Richmond’s Design Review Board (DRB) voted to approve Chevron’s plans to upgrade its refinery, but before the vote was taken Thursday night, few folks had anything nice to say about the world’s seventh largest corporation. -more-

The first of the 184 trees slated for removal within two weeks on the Gill Tract at Buchanan Street and San Pablo Avenue was felled on Friday. -more-

Bill Huyett, Berkeley’s new superintendent of schools, began his first day in the district with the most tedious of tasks: moving in. -more-

Berkeley’s Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) meets Thursday night to weigh in on three critical housing issues now before the Planning Commission. -more-

Neighbors of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center are once again on the war path, this time over an e-mail which they said tipped off hospital employees about an annual traffic monitoring survey held last week. -more-

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposals to fix a projected $14 billion state budget deficit could cost Alameda County as much as a half a million dollars in borrowing costs alone and millions of dollars more in federal matching money, according to a veteran county supervisor. -more-

Advocates of single payer health insurance in California are saying that the collapse of the Nuñez-Perata-Schwarzenegger health care bill is a good thing and are moving forward with reviving their own single-payer legislation. -more-

PRIMARILY PRIMAL -more-

OUT OF CONTROL -more-

For 95 years, Children’s Hospital has cared for the children and families of this community. From day one, in 1912, our mission has been to serve any child, no matter the family’s ability to pay. We have never wavered from that mission. Over the years we have cared for hundreds of thousands of children. -more-

I’m a resident of North Oakland, and Ms. Roy’s comments in the Daily Planet regarding the expansion of Children’s Hospital are profoundly disturbing to me—not least since I’m also the sister of a little girl who died in childhood of a rare form of cancer that strikes only children (Wilmes’ tumor). Today, thankfully, almost all forms of children’s cancer are treatable. If my sister, Cathy, had been born just a few years later, chances are she’d be alive today. -more-

As a mother of a teenager, I am proud that Berkeley High School was the last high school in the nation to cave in to federal pressure and give students’ contact info to the military. Though the elected school board had voted to opt out, the school had to comply eventually to preserve federal funding. Parents may opt out, as I did, but signing up for college info opted us back in, so we are receiving deceptively seductive, glossy brochures that don’t mention that enlistees are trained to harden their hearts and kill, possibly torture, and may be killed. -more-

Today, “Super Tuesday,” millions of Americans will select either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president. Both carry historic liberal values and are capable of doing an excellent job as president. The question voters will have to decide is not who can do the job “on day one”—they both can—but rather who would be the best fit for these tumultuous times. -more-

(Posted on Feb. 5, at 11:45 a.m.)—On several occasions since the war began in 2003, the Berkeley City Council has publicly and passionately stated its opposition to the war in Iraq. On January 29, 2008, the Berkeley City Council approved a series of recommendations intended to impede the recruiting activities of the downtown Berkeley Marine Corps office, which for many people in Berkeley has become a symbol of that war. -more-

Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree. -more-