While Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and City Manager Phil Kamlarz were hitting back swiftly against a recent San Francisco Chronicle article that the officials say mischaracterized the city’s proposed Climate Action Plan (CAP), Councilmember Linda Maio, a veteran Bates ally on the council, was indicating that some of the Chronicle’s concerns may have actually been prompted by suggestive language in the plan itself. -more-

A tired and decidedly testy Berkeley City Council worked into the early morning hours of Earth Day Wednesday morning before abandoning efforts to move forward with the city’s proposed Climate Action Plan (CAP). -more-

There will be no free seats at the Berkeley High School graduation this year. -more-

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District last week released the results of the air monitoring it carried out near West Berkeley's Pacific Steel Casting last year. -more-

Nearly two months after Alameda City Manager Debra Kurita resigned, the island city is still trying to sound the depths of the financial crisis caused by her falsely inflated budgets. -more-

This space doesn’t usually take requests, but when my 94-year-old mother calls up and insists, it’s hard to say no. What she wanted when she called last week is not hard to come up with, after all: a forthright denunciation of the Obama administration’s apparent plan to let the torturers and their instigators off the hook. Thinking people everywhere (I’m one of them) have rushed to their keyboards to do their best to make sure the current government doesn’t get away with letting their predecessors get off scot free. MoveOn is on their case to make sure they don’t forget. -more-