News

The Sequoia Apartments at the corner of Telegraph and Haste, the building which housed Mario's La Fiesta for more than 30 years, experienced a big, smoky fire two-alarm fire Tuesday afternoon, attracting fire crews from all stations in the city of Berkeley. -more-

It looks like the nine-story SNK Realty Group’s Arpeggio building, under construction on Center Street in downtown Berkeley, is on hold, at least for the moment. Passersby have noticed that construction has been halted for several weeks. The sales office on the site has closed, and the Planet’s calls to the sales number listed on the project’s website instead reached an independent Oakland real estate broker, who said that units would not be for sale until at least June. -more-

A new study could show that the radio frequency radiation levels of some PG&E SmartMeters is significantly higher than previously thought, a spokesman for an environmental health coalition said. -more-

Last Tuesday (February 15) the Berkeley City Council discussed open government, Bradley Manning, the Affordable Housing Impact Fee, and PG&E's pipelines in Berkeley. -more-

You would think a 52-year-old garage sale might have run out of things to sell. But the White Elephant Sale (WES) keeps restocking and plugging along, annually offering tens of thousands of objects, from odd to ordinary, in the cause of raising money (some sixteen million, so far) to benefit the programs of the Oakland Museum of California. -more-

Shahram Farshchi, 56,the driver of a car which crashed on Sunday into at least four other cars on Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany was arrested by Berkeley police, according to a series of stories in the Albany Patch online newspaper. The driver told the paper that he believed he might have suffered a seizure, but this theory has not yet been confirmed by police or physicians. Three people were taken to the hospital with possible injuries, but all were released after treatment. -more-