With state plans to turn the East Bay’s shoreline into a new state park, Berkeley’s Seabreeze Market is optimistic that it won’t get blown off the map.  

“Well, it certainly doesn’t look grim,” said Dottie Radcliffe, co-owner of the 23-year old fresh foods market. Located between Interstate 80 and a heap of dirt at the mouth of the Berkeley Marina, the grocery is in the heart of the planned 8.1 mile Eastshore State Park. 

City Council, however, was not as confident as Radcliffe that the market would remain when state officials begin developing the park next year. During last week’s council meeting, the council unanimously passed a resolution pleading that state planners keep the Seabreeze. 

City Council cannot alter the state plan, but it could influence its design. Council has criticized planners for banishing an independent art group from planned park space and for advocating the construction of sports fields near the Albany coastline. 

Council is now concerned that despite park plans calling for a market, restaurant and deli in roughly the same place as the Seabreeze, the plan doesn’t mention the market by name.  

But the state’s Chief Planner Don Neuwirth said the plan is written to preserve the Seabreeze at its current site. 

“We’re not allowed to lock a specific concessionaire into the plan,” said Neuwirth, adding that he included an identical style market to give the Seabreeze an advantage when the parcel’s contract is open to concessionaire bids. 

The Seabreeze is not a typical state park vendor. While most food operators at state parks sell packaged foods and sandwiches the Seabreeze sells fresh produce, baked goods, smoothies, gourmet seafood and deli sandwiches. 

But Ron Schafer, district superintendent of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, said a competitive advantage the Seabreeze might have over other bidders would stem from its experience, not its food selection. 

The parks department judges concessionaires on a point system, and an incumbent concessionaire gets additional points, Schafer said. “From a management perspective, we know visitors already like their service.”  

Although state officials agree the market is likely to remain at the park, some environmentalists want to see its operations scaled back to better resemble a traditional park concession stand. 

Norman La Force of the Sierra Club thinks the park concessionaire should not double as a produce market. He said the current market, after the park is established, would attract regular shoppers as well as park patrons and thereby crowd the park’s limited parking facilities. 

The environmentalists may get their way in scaling back concessionare operations. Park officials said the Seabreeze’s current home, built from shipping containers, might be razed to build a parking lot. In this case, the market would be moved to a nearby park headquarters building and there may not be room for the Seabreeze to sell produce. 

Shop owner Radcliffe said she is willing to eliminate her market to stay in the park, but doesn’t agree with La Force’s position. 

“If you’ve been stuck on the freeway, you’ll see that most cars aren’t coming this way,” she said. Besides, she added, most of the produce sold at the shop is fruit: “It would seem a shame to stop selling fruit to the kids at the park.” 

Radcliffe’s customers agree with her. Since the East Bay Regional Park District became the Seabreeze’s landlord two years ago, she has collected more than 9,000 signatures from customers asking that the deli continue to sell the same goods at the same location. 

Although he didn’t sign the petition, Radcliffe has a powerful supporter outside City Hall. “They make a really good salmon sandwich,” Neuwirth said.

To the Editor: 

Regarding Michael Goldberg’s letter (Forum, Sept. 11) I don’t think Councilmember Maio would deny that there are other sources of traffic in Berkeley besides those commuting here for work. Her arguments referred to the impacts of Measure P, the height initiative, which threatens the potential for meaningful amounts of housing, particularly affordable housing, to be built in Berkeley. People who work here but live elsewhere are major contributors to Berkeley’s traffic problems. 

Mr. Goldberg states that it is a mistake for Berkeley to look at itself in isolation. Measure P is a fine example of isolationist thinking. Neighborhoods are not static and neither are cities. I am glad that Mr. Goldberg raised the issue of what other communities are doing. While Berkeley is offering the rest of the Bay Area an example of how to obstruct the provision of housing with Measure P, communities throughout the Bay Area and beyond are promoting housing in their existing commercial areas (e.g., Oakland, San Jose, Livermore, Fremont, Mountain View, etc.). The larger outcome of this strategy is to relieve pressures for development on undeveloped green space. 

I would also ask Mr. Goldberg if he believes downtown Berkeley has become a more vibrant, enjoyable place in the last 10 years. The atmosphere in Downtown Berkeley has improved because of the addition of housing and residents to the downtown as well as commercial investment. Many of our other corridors in Berkeley – University Avenue, Shattuck Avenue near the downtown core, and San Pablo Avenue - would benefit from similar investment. Buildings that have commercial services on the ground floor and housing above create safer, livelier streets. To be economically viable, these buildings need to be more than 28 feet tall, the limit proposed by Measure P. 

Certainly we can not provide housing for everyone who works in Berkeley or grew up here, but we can resist efforts to limit the expansion of housing opportunities in Berkeley. Berkeley residents can demonstrate positive leadership in the face of a regional housing crisis by voting “No on P.” 

Nancy Bickel 

president 

League of Women Voters  

of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville 

For a team that went 1-10 last year and was widely considered the joke of college football, the Cal Bears were remarkably restrained about being ranked No. 23 in the nation in this week’s Associated Press poll. Heck, some of them didn’t even know. 

“I had no idea we were ranked,” junior cornerback James Bethea said Tuesday. “It doesn’t change much. We still have to go out and play this weekend.” 

Bethea’s mind must have been wandering at the end of Monday’s practice, because head coach Jeff Tedford told his players about the ranking, the Bears’ first wince October of 1996. But Tedford said the national recognition didn’t seem to affect the players much. 

“We’re not going to get too excited three weeks into the season,” Tedford said. “It’s really great for the people around the program, the alumni, more than the team.” 

Quarterback Kyle Boller was the recipient of several awards for his performance against Michigan State on Saturday, including Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Week and national Player of the Week honors from USA Today and ESPN.com. Boller threw for two touchdowns, ran for another and caught a touchdown pass from wide receiver LaShaun Ward during Cal’s 46-22 upset of the Spartans.  

It’s hard to say who’s harder on Boller, Tedford or the quarterback himself. Boller has completed 61.5 percent of his passes and thrown seven touchdowns to just one interception, but both he and Tedford say there’s still plenty of work to do. Boller said he played “pretty well, but I missed a few throws.” 

“Kyle’s making good decisions, but I think he can still play better,” Tedford said. “Of course, I’m probably the wrong guy to ask. “Unless he completes every ball I’m going to think there’s room for improvement.” 

Notes: Cornerback Jemeel Powell was named Pac-10 Special Teams Player of the Week after a 90-yard punt return for a touchdown against Michigan State... Middle linebacker John Klotsche tore his ACL on Saturday and could miss the rest of the season. Tedford said Klotsche could possibly return by the end of the season but called it “unlikely.” Senior Marcus Daniels, who started the opener against Baylor, will take over Klotsche’s spot... Sophomore linebacker Sid Slater is done for the season after suffering what Tedford termed “a complete blowout of his knee.” Slater tore both his ACL and MCL as well as his meniscus. Slater was a special teams player... The Bears will arrive at Maxwell Family Field at 11:30 a.m. for the “March to Victory” before Saturday’s game against Air Force, which kicks off at 2 p.m.... Cal will unveil its new video board at Saturday’s game... Cal hopes to spur ticket sales with a three-game package for the final three home games of the season. The package, which includes games against UCLA, Arizona and Stanford, will cost $77 for a reserve seat, a $35 savings over individual tickets.

Wednesday, September 18 

Kick Off Party for the Berkeley Coffee Initiative 

7 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center  

3105 Shattuck Ave. 

Music, speakers and events in support of the Berkeley coffee initiative, Measure O. 

(415) 575-5338 

$5 at door 

Community Prostate Screening 

Appointment required (through Thursday) 

At the Markstein Cancer Education Center, on the Summit Campus of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. 

In honor of National Prostate Cancer Awareness Week. 

869-8833 

Free 

Peace Walk and Vigil 

6:30 p.m. every Wednesday 

Meet at Downtown Berkeley Bart Station 

Join us for a peace walk along Shattuck Ave. for one hour. 

528-9217 

Free 

Thursday, September 19  

Freedom From Tobacco 

6 to 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center  

A quit smoking class. First of six Thursday evenings through Oct. 24.  

981-5330, quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Free to Berkeley and Albany residents, students and employees. 

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237 Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

Buddhist Peace Fellowship  

with The Deer Park  

Monastery - Public Lecture 

7 p.m.  

Berkeley Community Theater  

1930 Allston Way  

Join Vietnamese peace activist Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn for a public lecture, “Deep Listening: the heart of compassionate action” 

433-9928 

Suggested donation - $20 

Saturday, September 21 

Buddhist Peace Fellowship with The Deer Park Monastery - Public Lecture 

9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Lake Merritt, Oakland -  

Lakeside Park, Bandstand Area 

Join Vietnamese peace activist Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn for a public lecture; “Coming Home: a day of community and healing”. 

433-9928 

$45, $25 - Seniors, $65 - Donor Level  

BREAD and Roses Garden Party 

1 to 5 p.m. 

Peralta Community Garden, Berkeley 

Hopkins & Peralta, Wheelchair accessible  

BREAD's birthday party - five years of dismantling corporate rule through local currency. 

644-0376 

$12 advance, $15 door,  

low-income rate $10 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) 

9:15 to 11 a.m. 

St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. 

mtbrcb@pacbell.net 

Free 

Do-It-Yourself all-Natural  

Body Care from Your Kitchen 

Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Learn how to make your own all-natural skin care from products you might already have in your own kitchen. 

548-2220, Ext. 233, erc@ecologycenter.org 

$10 for members, $15 for nonmembers 

Third Annual David Brower  

Youth Awards 

6 p.m. 

Schwimley Theater, 1920 Allston Way 

Celebrate the next generation of environmental activists at Earth Island Institute’s award ceremony. R.S.V.P. 

(415) 788-3666, Ext. 260  

www.earthisland.org/bya 

Coastal Cleanup Day 

10 a.m. 

Work at the outflow of Strawberry Creek to clean up the San Francisco Bay coastline. 

info@strawberrycreek.org or 848-4008 

Fall Plant Sale 

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

200 Centennial Dr. 

Annual plant sale featuring rare and unusual plants. Members-only preview and auction from 9 to 11 a.m.  

643-2755, www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden/ 

Free  

Memorizing Windows 

8 p.m.  

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St.  

Dancer Lucinda Weaver and writer Alan Bern host an evening of dance, poetry and stories. 

526-7901 or abbern@sbcglobal.net 

Sunshine Workshop 

10 a.m. to noon 

Sixth floor, City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. 

Get up to speed on open records laws, open meetings laws and sunshine ordinances. Experts, including Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition, will speak. 

BerkeleySunshine@Yahoo.com 

Free  

East Bay Shoreline Clean Up 

9.am. to 12 p.m. 

Sea Breeze Market and Deli - meeting/staging area. 

On the corner of West Frontage Rd. and University Ave., Berkeley. 

Arrive promptly to sign appropriate waivers , get coffee and listen to safety talk. We will provide bags, tally cards and a raffle of donated prizes; groups of ten or more need to pre-register by calling 644-8623. 

Free 

The county has rejected Berkeley Unified School District’s budget for the second straight year, citing a $3.9 million deficit and a vague financial recovery plan, county officials said Tuesday. 

The Alameda County Office of Education is requiring the district to develop a new fiscal recovery plan and revise its budget by Dec. 15. The county will then decide whether to approve the new budget or send the district back to the drawing board. 

The Tuesday ruling was no surprise but still a blow to Superintendent Michele Lawrence and members of the Board of Education, who made fiscal recovery the top priority this year. 

“I think this is evidence of past mismanagement,” said Sean Dugar, one of seven school board candidates vying for three slots on the panel in November. 

Board President Shirley Issel, who faces re-election in November, said the public has a right to question board oversight of the budget. But Issel distanced herself from the board majority, arguing that she was one of the few to acknowledge the district’s financial problems when they surfaced two years ago. 

Board member Ted Schultz said the district has done as much as possible in recent months to address the deficit and to fix years of sloppy accounting practices. 

“I think we’re making progress,” said Schultz, who will retire at the end of his term. “I’m sure everyone’s a bit frustrated in that we’d like to move more quickly, but these things take time.”  

The school board has approved millions in cuts since January, when the extent of the 2002-2003 deficit became clear – laying off teachers, cutting administrative staff and increasing class sizes, among other measures. 

But by June, it was obvious that the board would not meet its goal of balancing the 2002-2003 budget before the close of the 2001-2002 school year. 

In the end, the board passed a budget June 26 that included a $2.8 million shortfall. After further study, district officials revised the deficit estimate to $3.9 million. 

Faced with a lingering shortfall, the board also approved a fiscal recovery plan June 26. The 2 1/2 page document was short on specifics, but suggested that further layoffs, solvency for the district’s cafeteria fund and the sale of district property, as a last resort, are all possible remedies. 

County Superintendent Sheila Jordan said Tuesday that the recovery plan is “inadequate” and in a letter to the district called for a new plan by Dec. 15.  

Crafting a new, workable recovery plan could prove difficult. By law the district cannot lay off any more certified teachers and administrators this year. Because employee salaries and benefits make up about 85 percent of the district’s budget, the rule is a significant stumbling block. 

“It’s going to be a challenge,” said Issel, acknowledging that the district may not be able to make all the cuts this year. 

School board candidate Nancy Riddle said she hopes that the district will listen closely to community concerns. 

“Last year, it was pretty top-down,” Riddle said. 

District officials have long contended that because they did not learn the magnitude of the budget problems until January, they were rushed to make cuts and did not include the community as much as they would have liked. 

Issel said the public process will improve this year. 

The county rejected last year’s budget after discovering that the district had not properly accounted for millions in revenue. 

This year the numbers were in proper order, Jordan said, even if they revealed a $3.9 million deficit. 

“That’s a very significant statement of progress – everyone knows what we’re dealing with now,” she said. 

But, even if the district has made progress it still faces a series of long-term financial concerns. In a letter to Berkeley Unified Tuesday Jordan pointed to, among other things, a decline in student enrollment, which will lead to a dip in state funding next year. 

Issel said she was not surprised by Jordan’s ruling or the points in her letter but is troubled by the persistence of budget issues, which dominated last year’s debate and now seem poised to again. 

“It’s going to take over the agenda once again, which is the thing that is to me the most disappointing,” Issel said. 

Berkeley’s Superintendent Lawrence and Associate Superintendent of Business and Operations Jerry Kurr were unavailable for comment Tuesday.  

To the Editor: 

Supporters of Measure P, the height initiative, represent a broad spectrum of political interests and geographic locations.  

The common concern agrees with the wisdom of Berkeley's new General Plan, which states as a goal to “encourage sensitively designed, thoughtfully planned in-fill development that is compatible with neighboring land uses and architectural design and scale.”  

For a while now, “in-fill” buildings have been allowed permits that mainly offer expensive and cramped living quarters, at a far greater density and height than the General Plan promised. The proposals are even more dense than the “ticky-tackies” apartments of the ’60s and ’70s. Plans show two bedroom apartments built into only 600 square feet, some rooms as small as 7 feet by l0 feet, some looking at an air shaft.  

As of April 2002 there were l,000 new units in the pipeline, meeting our “fair share” as set by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), in one year instead of five.  

We are hearing that if the height initiative passes Nov. 5 in Berkeley, the whole “smart growth” proposition will go down the tubes in the entire Bay Area. Smart growth has not been publicly reviewed either by our Planning Commission or City Council, and yet it is being promoted as if it were law. One of ABAG's recent publications shows a map indicating southwest Berkeley is an impoverished area, ripe for changes like it or not.  

Martha Nicoloff 

Berkeley

Cal’s Kirk named Pac-10 Player of the Week 

Cal senior midfielder Brittany Kirk has been named the Pac-10 Women’s Soccer Player of the Week for Sept. 10-16, Commissioner Tom Hansen announced Tuesday.  

Kirk posted a goal and had the game-winning assist in a 2-1 win over No. 3 Santa Clara Sept. 13. In Cal’s first road game of the season, Sept. 15 against Saint Mary’s, Kirk helped the Bears escape with a 1-1 tie as she scored with 14 seconds left in regulation.  

The assist against the Broncos was the 18th of Kirk’s career, moving her into a tie for third place on the California all-time list. She is only six assists away from surpassing U.S. national team star Joy Fawcett’s school record of 23.  

Cal (4-1-1 overall, 0-0-0 Pac-10), which is ranked as high as No. 4 in this week’s Soccer Buzz poll, visits Fresno State on Sunday. 

Cal softball champs to take White House trip 

President George W. Bush and the White House will honor Cal’s 2002 NCAA champion softball team on Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C.  

The Bears will make the cross-country trip Monday and spend two days in the nation’s capital before returning to Berkeley.  

On Tuesday, the team will tour the White House before Bush addresses Cal and other spring NCAA champion teams. Bush will pose for photos with the teams in the State Dining Room. Cal’s two seniors on the ‘02 squad - pitcher Jocelyn Forest and third baseman Candace Harper - will present Bush with a custom Easton bat with the Cal logo and 2002 NCAA softball champions inscribed on it.  

Later Tuesday, the Washington chapter of the California Alumni Association will host a reception for the team.  

“I think it is a fantastic opportunity, especially with everything going on in the world, that we can go back and meet the president,” said head coach Diane Ninemire. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us. It’s just something else that makes winning the national championship so special. It is a bond these women will have forever.”  

In May, Cal won its first NCAA championship with a 6-0 victory over defending champion Arizona.

The fight for mayor has a new battleground – campaign finance. 

Treasurer of the Tom Bates for Mayor Committee has asked the city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission to examine three-year-old contributions made to incumbent Mayor Shirley Dean he says were illegal. 

According to treasurer Mal Burnstein, a $3,000 donation in 1999 was not properly reported to the city, and Dean has since used the money to finance her bid for re-election against former state Assemblyman Tom Bates. 

In a second formal complaint against the mayor, Bates supporter Carrie Olson says that Dean accepted more than the city’s $250 donation limit when she ran for mayor in 1998. 

Dean denied both allegations. 

“This is a political thing... We have never underreported anything,” she said. 

In regard to Burnsteins’ charges of inaccurate reporting, Dean said she followed the city attorney’s advice in complying with city law. 

Burnstein says Dean raised $7,750 more than she needed to cover her 1998 campaign debt and that $3,000 of the surplus was not reported as part of this year’s campaign when in fact it is. 

Dean maintains that the $3,000 was reported as an office support expense. 

“We worked with the city attorney on how to repay our debt and this is what she advised,” Dean said. 

And Olsen’s charge that Dean’s campaign took illegal contributions was unlikely to be true, said Dean. 

“We handle close to 2,000 checks... If we made a mistake with one of those checks, which I’m not sure we did, we’ll fix it,” she said. “We’re talking about a $100 mistake.” 

Burnstein, though, said every dollar counts when it comes to election spending. 

“We want to make sure we have a level playing field,” he said. 

The Fair Campaign Practices Commission will hear the complaints tonight at its 7:30 meeting. 

To the Editor: 

I would like to correct a statement in the Sept. 14 Daily Planet. In an otherwise informative article, “Lights out while neighbors squabble over signal patterns,” says the City Council mandated a public process to help resolve the issues and that, “In a pair of public meetings in August, run by the city's dispute resolution service, neighbors aired a series of competing concerns.” The meetings were not run by the city's dispute resolution service. Actually, Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service, a nonprofit organization doing conflict resolution and facilitation in Albany, Berkeley and Emeryville over the last 15 years, conducted the two meetings and will conduct the meeting to be held on Sept. 25 at Willard Middle School. Our actual and perceived independence is a crucial aspect of the work we do. Our job is to facilitate a civil discussion of the issues among all stakeholders, including the City, and not to any way take sides in the discussion. 

We have recently moved to new offices at 1968 University Ave., near San Pablo Avenue. Stop by and say hello or call us at 548-2377 if you find yourself in a conflict, large or small, that you would like help resolving. 

Brad Smith,  

president of the board 

Berkeley Dispute  

Resolution Service

A BART scheduling change designed to ease travel to the San Francisco International Airport has added up to five minutes to the Berkeley-San Francisco-Daly City commute, raising concern among riders and public transit advocates. 

“It gets annoying,” said Ming Yue, a Daly City resident who commutes to her job in Berkeley. 

The scheduling change, in effect since Sept. 9, eliminated “timed transfers” for riders on the Richmond line headed to San Francisco and Daly City in the morning, afternoon and early evening hours. Before, in the morning, when direct trains were 15 minutes apart, a Fremont bound train with a timed transfer could save commuters as much as five minutes even though they had to switch to a San Francisco bound train in Oakland. Now BART is telling people to go directly from their first boarding station to San Francisco. 

The delayed commute may affect ridership, said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Oakland-based, nonprofit Transportation and Land Use Coalition. 

“Anytime that the waiting times could be increased for transit... it impacts people’s likelihood of taking transit,” Cohen said. “It impacts those marginal riders choosing between BART and driving.” 

But BART spokesperson Ron Rodriguez said he could not recall schedule changes making an impact on ridership in the past. He also argued that an additional five-minute wait will not convert BART riders to drivers, and played down the inconvenience for commuters worried about arriving late to work. 

“If you or your boss are reducing your day to five- or seven-minute segments, you’re in deep trouble,” he said. “Bosses don’t own us.” 

To accommodate an expected ridership jump on Richmond trains, BART has expanded the length of the direct Richmond-San Francisco-Daly City trains from six or eight cars to10 cars. 

At night, there is no direct Richmond-San Francisco-Daly City service. BART has kept timed transfers in place at night. 

BART eliminated the daytime transfers that had been in place since the early1990s, as part of a larger schedule shakeup in preparation for direct service to San Francisco International Airport, which is scheduled to start in January. 

Other schedule changes include extending the Dublin-Pleasanton line to Colma in preparation for service to the airport. 

Currently, the transit agency has designated only the Dublin-Pleasanton line for direct service to the airport. But BART spokesperson Ron Rodriguez said the agency may include other lines. 

If the Dublin/Pleasanton line provides the only direct service, Berkeley commuters will have to transfer at the West Oakland station to get to the airport. A ride from the Downtown Berkeley BART station to the airport will cost $5.15. 

That price includes a $1.50 airport surcharge and a recently-approved, system-wide 5 percent fare increase that goes into effect in January. 

To the Editor: 

The curtailment of Berkeley Adult School's 'senior aquatics' because of lack of city funding is curious. My understanding has been that older adult programs are state-funded through school districts. Also curious, is the failure of the Berkeley senior programs director to provide visible advocacy in this matter? 

Likewise, the Commission on Aging, and as demographics clearly show most elders are females, the Commission on Status of Women. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

Berkeley

City Council voted Tuesday to keep West Campus Pool open this winter and to investigate ways to keep Willard Pool open as well. 

Egged on by a about 100 Berkeley swimmers, council unanimously reversed its May decision to close both pools Nov. 15 to Apr. 15.  

“I’m very happy,” said Sydney Velin, a water aerobics class member and a leader in the swimmer’s fight to keep the pools open this winter. 

The closure was an idea to save the city approximately $80,000 to help offset its budget deficit. Now swimmers will help pay part of the cost and the city will search for other programs to cut. 

West Campus Pool, at Curtis and Addison streets, will remain open year-round. The pool is home to the 120-member Berkeley Bears youth swim team and the 50-member free senior water aerobics class. Both would have been severely impacted by a pool closure. 

To lower the city’s costs at West Campus Pool the Bears agreed to an annual rent increase from $12,000 to $22,000. The aerobics class, which was canceled last month due to a lack of funding will be restored permanently. Class members and city officials will meet to discuss how the students will pay for the class. 

The fate of Willard Pool at Telegraph Avenue and Derby Street will be decided at an Oct. 15 City Council meeting. City staff argued that poor winter attendance at Willard Pool made keeping it open too expensive.  

This year Willard Pool averaged 26 users on a typical day in March, and 177 in July. To keep the pool heated and operating during the winter months costs the city $27 a swimmer, while in July it cost only $4. 

Still, council asked the staff take a month to consider ideas to increase attendance and funding for the pool before shutting it down. 

If Willard closes this winter, the Berkeley High Water Pool Team will have to find a new home, and residents who lap swim will have to go to one of Berkeley’s four other pools. A shower program for the homeless will continue at Willard this winter even if it closes. 

Saving the pools does not come without a price. The Department of Parks Recreation and Waterfront, ordered to trim $100,000 from its budget, must now look to other programs for cuts. Many of the programs that were spared involve after school and summer youth programs, said Lisa Caronna, the department director. The pool closures would have saved the parks department approximately $80,000. Closing only Willard Pool will save the city $57,000, Caronna said. 

HEBRON, West Bank — Israeli police and Palestinian officials in the West Bank said they believe extremist Jewish settlers planted two bombs in a Palestinian school yard Tuesday. One device exploded, injuring five children. 

Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, spokesman for the Jewish Settlers’ Council, said the bombing was an “immoral and illegal act.” 

Israeli military officials said the explosion occurred near a water cooler in the courtyard of the Ziff junction secondary school south of Hebron. The second bomb was found and safely detonated. The Israeli military controls the junction, a remote region populated mainly by Bedouins. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ office, meanwhile, said the government had rejected a Palestinian cease-fire proposal during a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York. 

The proposal by Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath called for an end to Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians in a first phase and an end to all attacks in the second. Peres’ office said the plan was unacceptable because it would allow attacks on those not classified as civilians during its first phase. That was taken to mean Jewish settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Shaath said the cease-fire also calls for an Israeli commitment to stop killing suspected Palestinian militants and destroying houses. “If Israel will do that, then this will pave a way for a comprehensive cease-fire, but unfortunately Mr. Peres said that he rejects it,” the Palestinian minister said. 

In other developments, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition by the families of two Palestinian suicide bombers to prevent the destruction of their homes by Israeli forces, Army Radio reported. The two bombers carried out a Dec. 1 attack in which 11 Israelis were killed. Relatives denied they knew of the suicide attackers’ plans. 

Israeli troops entered the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza earlier Tuesday and blew up metal workshops where the Israelis say Palestinians were making weapons, the latest in a series of almost nightly raids by Israeli forces in Gaza.

SAN RAFAEL – The Marin County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to have staff draft a consumer privacy ordinance by Oct. 15, giving the board time to monitor developments in a lawsuit filed by two banks against San Mateo County over a similar law. 

Last week, Marin supervisors tied 2-2 over whether to support a privacy ordinance similar to one in San Mateo County. Neither side backed down today from their earlier stances, but Supervisor Annette Rose, who was absent last week, mediated a compromise that appealed to everyone. 

Every person at today's meeting, from financial industry representatives to angry citizens, spoke in favor of tighter privacy laws that protect personal financial information but disagreed over the cost of implementing and defending such restrictions. 

Supervisor Cynthia Murray said that in a budget year when the county will be receiving $4 million less from the state, spending $200,000 to defend a symbolic ordinance seems frivolous when the money could be spent on child health care. 

Supervisor Harold Brown, who first proposed the ordinance last week, countered that argument by saying it is OK to spend money on lawsuits if they make a point to state legislators and prove to the public that the  

board is listening to their complaints. 

Rose said she supports the idea of a privacy measure and wants it in place soon, but she also worried about the cost of the lawsuit and expressed doubts about being able to enforce it. San Mateo County is dealing  

with the issues of cost and enforcement, she said, so it is in Marin County's best interest to wait a month before taking any firm action. 

The other four members of the board agreed. In the meantime, they decided to have legislation for the Oct. 15 meeting drafted to reflect developments in San Mateo County, where Bank of America and Wells Fargo have filed a lawsuit to stop its restrictive ordinance.

OAKLAND — Three former Oakland police officers were inappropriate, even uncivilized — guilty of bad appearance and vulgar language — but innocent of any criminal wrongdoing, a defense lawyer said Monday in his opening statement at the Riders trial. 

“This is going to be a simple case if you don’t want to know the truth,” said Mike Rains, who represents Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 37, one of the officers facing a combined 26 felony charges, including beating suspects and falsifying reports. “The truth in West Oakland is ugly. The truth for these guys was ugly.” 

The former cops on trial along with Mabanag are Jude Siapno, 34, and Matthew Hornung, 30. Frank Vazquez, the alleged ringleader of the group, which was known as “The Riders,” is believed to have fled to Mexico to escape prosecution. 

Prosecutor David Hollister, in his opening statement last week, said the officers systematically set up young black men and conjured false accusations against them to feed their egos. 

But Rains painted a picture Monday of overworked cops under a tough mandate to reduce street-level drug crime. 

“These guys were out there doing a job with the knowledge and approval of their supervisors,” Rains said. 

He played an Alameda County jury of six men and six women excerpts from a police surveillance video showing two quick drug deals to give them a sense of the “insurmountable task” cops face in trying to get dealers off the streets. 

“The Oakland Police Department declared war. They declared a war on crime and criminals,” Rains said. “They sent their soldiers out to fight the war and those three soldiers are on trial for that war.” 

The officers, who have since been fired, are on trial for their activities during the summer of 2000. Siapno faces the most serious charges, including kidnapping and assault. All have pleaded innocent. 

The scandal, which has resulted in the dismissal of about 90 criminal cases, mostly drug-related, and 17 civil rights suits by 115 people, surfaced after a rookie officer reported what he saw on duty with Mabanag, his training officer. 

Keith Batt, now a police officer in Pleasanton, is the prosecution’s key witness. During the preliminary hearing last July, Batt gave a disturbing view of the officers’ “stop and grab” tactics in which suspects randomly were accosted on the street, handcuffed and put in the patrol car before they were questioned about their activities. He called their methods illegal and immoral. 

But Rains took steps Tuesday to discredit Batt, calling him a “smart,” “cunning,” “know-it-all” who was failing training. Any wrongdoing he thought he saw cannot be trusted, Rains said as he recounted Batt’s first night on the job. 

“Keith Batt went out into the darkness of West Oakland,” Rains said. “That was the third time in this man’s life that he had been in West Oakland. ... He had never ever been out there in the middle of the night and he had never been out there in a blue uniform — a target.” 

Police and city officials have repeatedly called “The Riders” a rogue group, but they have, nonetheless, instituted a series of protective measures, including more internal affairs investigators and more supervisors. The department also created an Office of Inspector General, an internal audit division, and has generally increased internal scrutiny. 

Judge orders striking  

Santa Cruz County employees  

back to work 

SANTA CRUZ — A strike by 2,000 Santa Cruz County workers continued for a second day Tuesday in a battle over pay and health care. 

On Monday, Santa Clara County Superior Court Presiding Judge Jack Komar ordered 195 county employees back to work, ruling their jobs were essential to health and safety. A hearing on that issue was to be held Friday. 

Also on Monday, the county and Local 415 of the Service Employees International Union agreed to get a state mediator involved in the dispute. 

The first-ever strike by workers in the county closed offices in Felton, Aptos and Watsonville, shuttered the Simpkins Family Swim Center in Live Oak and drastically reduced services in the offices that stayed open. 

Planning Director Alvin James predicted the strike was having its intended effect when asked how soon the strike would make county functions impossible. 

“[They already were] about a minute after the doors opened [Monday] morning,” James said. 

County workers voted to strike last week, complaining they were being paid an average of 7 percent less than workers doing the same jobs in neighboring counties. They also want improvements in health benefits. 

“We have been negotiating for 3 1/2 months, but we have basically been stonewalled on 95 percent of our proposals,” said Nancy Elliot, SEIU county chapter president. 

Mother, daughter die  

in Union City house fire 

UNION CITY – A two-alarm fire that raced through a mobile home late Monday night killing a mother and daughter while they slept, a Union City fire spokesman said. 

The cause has not yet been determined but foul play is not suspected. 

Neighbors in Central Park West, a long-established neighborhood near the Hayward-Union City line, reported seeing flames at the back of the family's mobile home at 2526 McArthur Ave. at 11:03 p.m. . 

Firefighters arrived at 11:10 p.m. to find the home engulfed in flames but knocked the blaze down within 15 minutes, firefighter spokesman Roberto Munoz said. 

Upon entering the home, firefighters found the body of a 10-year-old girl huddled under a window in the kitchen. Firefighters could not revive the girl, who had sustained both burn and smoke inhalation injuries, said Munoz. 

She was taken to St. Rose Hospital in Haywood where she was pronounced dead. 

Upon further inspection, firefighters later found the body of the girl's mother lying on the bedroom floor near a night table. Munoz said that neighbors said the woman was disabled with Multiple Sclerosis but moved around with the help of a walker and two different wheel chairs. 

She was pronounced dead at the scene. 

The father, who was apparently working away from home during the fire, was called at work and has been meeting with a crisis counselor. 

SACRAMENTO — Nearly all the blackouts that swept California during the state’s 2000-2001 energy crisis could have been avoided, according to a report released Tuesday by state power regulators. 

The analysis by the California Public Utilities Commission and Portland-based McCullough Research found that all Southern California blackouts and 65 percent of Northern California blackouts occurred because generators ramped down production at their power plants. 

On all but two of the 32 statewide blackout or service interruption days between November 2000 and May 2001, the state’s five largest non-utility electricity generators were not operating at maximum capacity, according to commission President Loretta Lynch. 

The report was presented Tuesday to the Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation of the Wholesale Energy Market. It’s based on information obtained through the committee, which has collected more than 1 million documents and subpoenaed more than two dozen energy companies. 

“The only reason that is imaginable as to why generators would not generate power ... is because they thought that withholding (energy) from the market would drive the price up,” said the PUC’s general counsel Gary Cohen. 

The state claims it was overcharged nearly $20 billion during the power crisis by the five largest generators: Duke, Dynegy, Mirant, Reliant and AES/Williams. 

Cohen said the findings discredit the energy companies’ claims the crisis was caused solely by a lack of energy. 

“It wasn’t a question of California not having enough generatable capacity,” Cohen said. “That’s the story we heard over and over again from the generators when all this stuff was happening. This report shows that those excuses were simply untrue.” 

But Jan Smutny-Jones, executive director of the Independent Energy Producers, challenged the findings, arguing that California’s generators actually increased output by 88 percent during the energy crisis. 

“California’s merchant generators ran at historically high levels to power our state throughout the crisis,” Smutny-Jones said in a statement. “Our collective failure to address the state’s dysfunctional electricity market is what cultivated the energy crisis.” 

Gov. Gray Davis blasted the energy companies, calling their actions “inexusable.” 

“Their price gouging hampered California’s economic recovery, and that was bad enough,” Davis said. “But purposely putting the lives of Californians in jeopardy in the name of greed is inexcusable. This report is more fuel for the U.S. Department of Justice to take appropriate action.” 

SACRAMENTO — Using the label invisible man, the leading candidates for lieutenant governor accused each other Tuesday of piling up lousy participation records in their current jobs. 

The Republican nominee, state Sen. Bruce McPherson, R-Santa Cruz, said Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante broke a promise to voters by missing most meetings of the University of California Regents and the California State University Board of Trustees. 

“Mr. Bustamante has been an invisible lieutenant governor,” McPherson said a news conference. “Four years ago, (he) looked into the eyes of California voters and promised to make education a priority. He has broken that promise.” 

Aides to Bustamante said the Democratic lieutenant governor’s record as a regent and trustee was much better than McPherson claimed and that the senator had missed or ducked nearly 1,000 votes this year in the Legislature. 

“Bruce McPherson has been the invisible man,” said Bustamante spokeswoman Deborah Pacyna. 

McPherson said Bustamante has attended only 4 percent of trustees’ meetings and 17 percent of regents’ meetings since he became lieutenant governor in 1999. 

But the attendance at both boards can be figured differently, giving Bustamante a better record. The two panels typically meet for two or three days every couple of months, and sometimes their meeting dates coincide. 

Committee meetings are mixed into the sessions and, depending on when they are there, board members can be recorded as present at a committee meeting but not at a full board meeting. 

According to an Associated Press check of the minutes of trustees’ meetings, Bustamante has been to at least part of the four trustees sessions held this year, and Pacyna says he plans to attend a fifth Wednesday. 

But he attended only two of 21 trustees’ meetings in the previous three years for which attendance records are available, for an overall record of 24 percent. 

McPherson, counting attendance at full trustees’ deliberations, said Bustamante was present at only one of 25 board sessions, a 4 percent record. 

McPherson said Bustamante attended 17 percent of regents’ meetings, but when attendance at regents’ committees is counted the lieutenant governor has been to at least two-thirds of the regents’ sessions. Bustamante’s office says he’s actually been to more than three-fourths of the meetings. 

Bustamante’s staff said McPherson didn’t participate in a total of 966 votes on 730 bills this year. 

A McPherson spokesman, Adam Mendelsohn, said the vast majority of those missed votes were abstentions at the hectic end of the session on bills that McPherson didn’t feel had been adequately analyzed. 

“We’re not making a centerpiece of our campaign that we vote on every issue,” Mendelsohn said. “Abstaining is a policy statement.” 

Davis signs bills to protect  

energy market, promote solar energy 

SACRAMENTO — Power companies will be required to start building generating plants within 12 months after receiving a construction permit under a new law signed by Gov. Gray Davis Tuesday. 

Davis also signed two other bills that his energy advisers called attempts to shape the energy market and boost the state’s solar energy resources. 

Written by Sen. Steve Peace, D-El Cajon, the power plant law will give companies 12 months to begin construction of new plants after the state approves the projects. 

Calling it the “use it or lose it bill,” Peace said the new law was created to stop energy companies from trying to sell or trade their permits after receiving them to turn a profit. 

“Oftentimes these permits become commodities themselves and are traded, and consumers have to bear the brunt of that,” said Richard Katz, Davis’ adviser on energy issues. 

New law says rewards can be collected even if suspect dies 

SACRAMENTO — Rewards can be given even in cases where the suspect dies, under a bill signed Tuesday in response to a Sacramento spree killing last year. 

State law had authorized the governor to offer rewards for the arrest and conviction of criminals. That created a legal problem a year ago when security guard Joseph Ferguson killed himself during a shootout with police after a shooting rampage through Sacramento. 

The bill Gov. Gray Davis signed Tuesday clarifies that the reward can be offered regardless of whether the suspect is alive. 

“This bill will ensure that all tipsters are rightfully rewarded for their efforts to help law enforcement officials,” Davis said. 

In Ferguson’s case, Davis issued the reward anyway, and said at the time he would seek clarifying legislation. 

CHICAGO — McDonald’s Corp. said Tuesday that weaker-than-expected sales in the United States and Europe this summer have prompted it to reduce its estimate of 2002 profits, dropping its stock to a seven-year low. 

The hamburger giant also said it will slow the pace of new restaurant openings abroad in connection with a U.S. initiative that entails adding lower-priced items, renovating older restaurants and focusing on improving service. 

The announcement underscored McDonald’s continuing struggle with a sales slump at its 13,200 restaurants in the United States, where the proliferation of fast-food and casual-dining competition in recent years has eroded its sales and market share. 

The company, based in suburban Oak Brook, said it is cutting its full-year earnings forecast to $1.43 per share or more, citing flat sales in July and August and a more cautious outlook for the fourth quarter. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call had estimated $1.49 per share. 

It pegged third-quarter earnings at 38 cents to 39 cents a share, virtually unchanged from the 38-cent figure of a year ago. Wall Street analysts were anticipating 42 cents a share. 

McDonald’s shares fell $2.39, or 11 percent, to $19.30 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange — the lowest level since October 1995. 

McDonald’s hopes to jump-start U.S. sales and its declining stock price with a plan that initially calls for selling two sandwiches — the Big ’N’ Tasty and McChicken — for $1 each next month, followed by an eight-item “dollar menu” in November. 

The program also will involve customer service initiatives, particularly during the lunchtime rush, and investments in its restaurant facilities ranging from new signs to improved drive-throughs to complete remodelings. 

The company also will reduce its share buyback program to $500 million in 2003, said Jack Greenberg, chairman and chief executive officer. 

Broker Charles Schwab to cut 10 percent of staff 

SAN JOSE — Charles Schwab Corp. announced Tuesday it will cut about 10 percent of its work force, or roughly 1,880 jobs, as the discount and online brokerage continues to struggle with weak trading volumes. 

In August, the San Francisco-based company hinted it would be making cuts but provided no numbers. At that time, the company had about 18,800 employees. 

It was not immediately known what business units would be targeted by the layoffs, which are expected to be completed by the end of November, said Greg Gable, a Schwab spokesman. 

The layoffs will represent Schwab’s second major payroll purge in two years as the brokerage continues to adjust to a bear market that has spooked investors and pinched the company’s profits. 

HP announces $1.3 billion  

services deal with CIBC 

SAN JOSE — In one of the biggest deals since its Compaq Computer Corp. acquisition, Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday signed a $1.3 billion contract to provide computer services to Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. 

Under the seven-year agreement, HP will manage a large percentage of CIBC’s computer infrastructure, ranging from desktop PCs and software to servers and networking gear. HP also will handle purchasing and program support. 

The services business is the largest and one of most downturn-immune areas in the information technology industry. The potential from combining HP’s and Compaq’s services divisions was a big selling point for their $19 billion marriage. 

“As the third-largest IT services organization in the industry, we are better poised than ever to continue to drive clear business value for our customers,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president of HP services. 

Northern California businesses can seek disaster aid 

SACRAMENTO — Small businesses in Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino and Tehama counties may apply for low-interest loans to offset business they lost because of reduced revenue to farmers and ranchers caused by hail and freezing in March, the Small Business Administration. 

On Monday, the SBA said similar loans for similar reasons and a similar time period are available to small businesses in Contra Costa, Napa, Sacramento, Solano, Sonoma and Yolo counties. 

The businesses could qualify for 30-year, 3.5 percent loans of up to $1.5 million to help meet their financial obligations and operating expenses. Actual property damage from the hail or freeze isn’t necessary to qualify. 

The deadline to apply is April 16 at the SBA’s Sacramento office. 

Farmers or ranchers who suffered damage may be eligible under a different program offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Services Agency. 

——— 

On the Net: www.sba.gov 

SAN FRANCISCO — Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao reneged on a year-old pledge to help 200 garment workers collect more than $1 million in unpaid wages, the factory employees charged Tuesday. 

Speaking at a rally near the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco’s posh Nob Hill district, about 100 workers said Chao had ignored their cause after using it for her own publicity. Chao was scheduled to give a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California at the hotel, where the unpaid laborers staged a protest against Chao. A statement faxed from the Department of Labor in Washington said the speech had been canceled due to a scheduling conflict. 

A local politician, however, accused Chao of dodging the long-standing issue. 

“It’s pretty clear she’s trying to avoid this,” said Chris Daly, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.  

“It’s ridiculous to suggest (Chao) changed her schedule just to avoid the Wins workers,” said Sue Hensley, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of Labor. 

The Wins grievance stems back to August 2001, when the plight of the workers first made headlines in San Francisco. At that time, Chao vowed to take up the case in the name of justice. 

According to the Oakland office of Sweatshop Watch, more than 200 garment workers — mostly Chinese immigrant women — worked for months without pay at Wins of California, Win Fashion and Win Industries of America. All three factories are owned by Anna Wong and her husband Toha “Jimmy” Quan.

SANTA CRUZ — Calling Santa Cruz a sanctuary from federal authorities, medical marijuana advocates — joined by city leaders — passed out pot to about a dozen sick people at City Hall. 

“Santa Cruz is a special place, and today we’re letting the world know how compassionate we can be,” Mayor Christopher Krohn said. “We’re taking a stand.” 

More than 1,000 community members jammed into the garden-like courtyard for a supportive demonstration during the giveaway. Some held signs reading, “DEA Go Away” and “U.S. Out Of Santa Cruz.” 

Several people in the crowd lit marijuana cigarettes, but it was mostly an alcohol and drug-free gathering, which was what organizers requested. 

Marijuana is illegal as a medicine or as a recreational drug under federal law. But state law, and county and city ordinances, say it’s legal if recommended by a doctor. 

Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Richard Meyer said he was appalled by Tuesday’s event, and feared the community is sending a dangerous message to its children. 

“Marijuana is an illegal drug in this country,” he said. 

But Mike Corral, who helped distribute the marijuana, said the only message sent was that “marijuana is medicine.” 

In Santa Cruz and many California communities, local law enforcement works closely with growers and distributors who help sick people obtain marijuana. 

Krohn and his colleagues didn’t handle the marijuana Tuesday, but stood in solidarity with the clinic workers and users. 

Police Chief Steve Belcher said his officers didn’t plan to arrest registered, legitimate members picking up their medicine. However, he said, “This is not going to be a smoke-out at City Hall.” 

People who showed up to smoke marijuana without a doctor’s recommendation could face arrest, he said. 

The City Hall pot distribution comes less than two weeks after DEA agents arrested the owners of a local pot farm and confiscated 130 plants that had been grown for use as medicine. 

There was no official city sponsorship of the event. Council members and medical marijuana advocates simply acted on their own in a public space, said City Attorney John Barisone. 

Hal Margolin, who said he suffers chronic back pain, said he was relieved to receive his weekly marijuana dose. 

“We don’t buy it, we don’t sell it, we don’t ship it in interstate commerce and we don’t give it to children,” he said. 

Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington also allow marijuana to be grown and distributed to people with a doctor’s prescription. 

Community members in this liberal central California community repeatedly have supported medical marijuana. 

In 1992, 77 percent of Santa Cruz voters approved a measure ending the prohibition of medical marijuana. Four years later, state voters approved Proposition 215, allowing marijuana for medicinal purposes. And in 2000, the city council approved an ordinance allowing medical marijuana to be grown and used without a prescription. 

Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill Tuesday designed to combat elder abuse. 

State Assemblyman Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who authored the bill, said the legislation received bipartisan support from the beginning. 

“[The bill] will help protect our seniors and dependent adults from physical abuse by increasing punishments for those who batter our elders.” 

The legislation establishes a new crime, “battery on an elder or dependent adult,” and sets the punishment at a fine of up to $2,000 and/or imprisonment in a county jail for up to one year. 

Those enhancements put elder battery on par with battery of a peace officer or spouse.  

The maximum penalties in Simitian's bill double those in existing law. 

The bill also protects elders when they are third-party victims, rather than the intended or primary victim. 

LONG BEACH— Trustees of the nation’s largest public university tentatively approved a tough new smoking policy Tuesday for the university’s 23 campuses that includes the authority to cite violators. 

The policy would also give California State University presidents the authority to set smoking regulations, such as banning smoking within 20 feet of campus buildings. 

A final vote, which is expected to easily pass, was scheduled for Wednesday’s board of trustees meeting. 

“In light of the well established health risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke and the desire of the CSU to provide an environment for learning that is as free of health hazards as possible,” the staff recommends adoption, said Jackie R. McClain, CSU’s vice chancellor of human resources. 

Under the policy, a CSU president would be required to meet with faculty and staff before setting a campus smoking policy because it could affect working conditions. Presidents also would have to meet with students. 

Violation of the policy could result in misdemeanor citations, McClain told the board. 

Although some campus presidents could ban smoking altogether, that was deemed unlikely. 

Smoking has been banned in California’s public buildings since 1994. CSU also prohibits smoking within five feet of the entrances and exits of buildings, a limit set by state law. 

A student group first lobbied CSU for stricter smoking policies in May. The group, C.O.U.G.H. (Campuses Organized and United for Good Health), addressed the dangers of secondhand smoke and asked the board to delegate authority to campus presidents to prohibit smoking within 20 feet of university buildings. 

“I would encourage the presidents as you evaluate your campus to ... embrace the recommendations the students came forward with,” said Trustee Frederick W. Pierce. “I think that’s in the best health interests of those visiting our campuses.” 

Couple marries in a coal mine 

ASHLAND, Pa. — Some couples search the world over for the perfect wedding spot. 

A. John Dalton found it 400 feet below the earth’s surface. 

Dalton and his new wife, Sarah A. Yurkunas, were married Saturday in the Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine, an anthracite mine that closed in 1931 and is now a tourist destination. 

A brief power outage nearly derailed the nuptials. But once power was restored, the wedding party and guests boarded the Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine & Steam Train for the trip inside Broad Mountain. 

“I am the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners,” said Yurkunas, who grew up in Summit Hill, amid the region’s anthracite mines. 

But it was Dalton who suggested the venue, 1,800 feet into and 400 feet below the mountain’s peak. 

“You always hear of so much tragedy with mines, we thought, ’Why not connect them with something good?”’ he said. 

Ashland Mayor Rosemarie P. Noon, who officiated, said the site had at least one advantage. 

“For the rest of your lives,” she told the couple, “there is no place to go but up.” 

You never know... 

POCONO PINES, Pa. — One person’s reject can be someone else’s fortune. 

Just ask newly rich deli clerk Paula Buckley. 

The 21-year-old clerk at Pen Mart bought a $10 Power Play ticket because it was rejected by a customer — and then hit the $400,000 jackpot. 

Powerball tickets can’t be reissued the way other lottery tickets can, said Sally Danyluk, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission. 

Buckley, whose mother is the store’s manager, learned she had won Monday morning. 

“I ran the ticket through the machine and it said, ’Do Not Pay’ because it was a $400,000 winner, and we cannot pay those out at the store,” she said. 

The numbers were chosen by the machine at random. 

“The first thing Paula said was she was going to pay off her mother’s car. Her mom was hysterical, crying,” said Georgene Pechette, who works part-time at the store. 

Stay in the house 

FORREST CITY, Ark. — He’s no Harry Houdini, but he did manage to escape from a locked jail and return without anyone noticing — once. 

Upon Joseph Smith’s second attempt to escape the lockup and return undetected, he wasn’t so lucky. Smith, 33, was caught just hours after the escape and returned to jail. 

Tyrone Hall, 24, who also escaped with Smith, managed to elude capture by slipping back into the same window the two had pried open to freedom. He learned the trick from Smith. 

St. Francis County Sheriff Dave Parkman said Smith admitted to having used the same window Sept. 1 to escape, spent the night on the loose and returned unnoticed. It was Hall’s first reappearing act, the sheriff said. 

Smith had been held on a bench warrant and on a charge of driving on a suspended drivers license. Hall was held on two counts of breaking and entering, commercial burglary and theft. The two are now charged with second-degree escape. 

Both are now housed in a maximum security cell. 

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — It is stone masonry in the sky, and the role model here is the Greek builder Archimedes, who said, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” 

A trail crew living and working in the Yosemite backcountry is rebuilding a terrifyingly steep granite stairway, moving rocks the size of computer terminals on the shoulder of Half Dome in Yosemite. 

The crew — five men and a trail boss — work on slopes with sheer drops of thousands of feet on either side. 

Since June their job has been to rebuild the last half-mile of the spectacular Half Dome trail. To do it, they are replacing or rebuilding more than 400 rock steps just below the steel cables that lead to the top of the granite monolith, which is 8,842 feet above sea level and 4,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley. 

“This is not rocket science,” said Brian Ward, the foreman or crew boss. 

It is science nonetheless. The 21st century trail crew uses winches, levers, rollers and muscle — the techniques that built the pyramids of Egypt. 

There are no architectural drawings to guide them. The work is done relying on judgment and experience. Ward and Greg Torres, two of the top rock- layers in the business, make the calls. 

The Greeks built temples and forts atop hills in their rockbound country, but there was nothing like the glacier-carved cliffs of Yosemite in the ancient world; there is nothing like the smooth, glistening rock of Half Dome anywhere — the foot trail up the peak is famous for its difficulty. 

The crew on Half Dome, National Park Service employees, were hand-picked for this job, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of September. “This is the first time I’ve worked on a trail like this,” said John Ray, 44, who has worked on Yosemite trails for 13 seasons. He’s seen most of the park and a lot of the 800 miles of back country trails. This one is different. 

“It is all rock on rock,” he said. By that he meant there is no soil and no cement to hold the trail together. “It is pretty challenging to me.” 

Ray helped rebuild the steep Mist Trail on the cliffs at Vernal and Nevada falls, where thousands of people climb thousands of steps cut into the rock. 

Four hundred forty-two steps. That’s only the first stage of the 8.2-mile trip from the valley floor to Half Dome. The difference is that once out of the fir and pine forest, the trail leads steeper and steeper from the timberline up an exposed granite shoulder on 442 steps to the base of the dome itself. 

This piece of rock has no official name; the crew calls it “the Sub Dome.” Here is where the steep steps begin, straight up with nothing but air on either side. Beyond the steps is a small saddle and then 600 yards of sheer slope. To climb the last leg, hikers must pull themselves up by hanging onto steel cables. 

The Half Dome trip is a famous hike, the next best thing to rock climbing. On a typical summer Saturday, 1,000 people make it to the top of Half Dome. Many others turn back, gasping in the thin air. Others are terrified by the sheer slopes and can’t go on. 

But enough hikers have made the trip since the trail up Half Dome was opened in the 1870s that it has become worn and dangerous. This spring, the nonprofit Yosemite Fund put up $110,000 to rebuild the trail. 

It was just in time. 

Some of the steps and the carefully built up switchbacks, which connect sections of the steps, were no longer well-anchored and could have let go. 

“They were not tied into anything,” said Ward, the crew boss. 

“The trail had the potential to be dangerous,” Ray said carefully. “The potential was there for someone to get injured.” 

The potential also always exists that the crew could get hurt, moving hundreds of pounds of rock up and down the steep slopes, walking on the slick rock in most any weather. 

One slip, and ... well, they don’t like to think of that. 

The tools alone could ruin their day. They manhandle 18-pound crowbars — trail bars they call them — sledge hammers, a gasoline-powered jackhammer that weighs 70 pounds, a kind of winch called a grip hoist and chisels. 

It is dangerous work. 

The crew works four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday. The trail is closed from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. those days, open the rest of the time. 

Armed Robbery 

Police are searching for a suspect who robbed two 19-year olds at gunpoint Monday night on the 2800 block of Derby St. One male and one female were walking to the female’s house when a suspect grabbed the female from behind the neck and pointed a black pistol at the male, police said. The female gave the suspect her cell phone and bag. The male victim then took a step toward the suspect at which point the two began a brief struggle. The female yelled for the male to stop fighting. The suspect took the male’s wallet and fled from the scene. The suspect is described as a black male in his mid 20s, 5 feet 9 inches tall with a muscular build. He had a closely cropped fade hairstyle and was wearing a black sweatshirt and baggy blue jeans.  

Assault and Robbery 

An adult male waiting for a bus with groceries early Monday morning was assaulted and robbed on the 2800 block of Shattuck Avenue. According to police the victim was sitting at a bus stop when a suspect sat next to him and proceeded to go through the contents of the bag. When the victim told him that the bag was full of food, the suspect punched him under the eye and demanded his wallet. A second suspect then started punching the victim from behind and took the victim’s walkman from his bag. Both suspects fled from the scene. 

Construction of the $34 million Milvia Buildings at Berkeley High School is five months behind schedule and at least one of the two structures will probably not open by next school year, district officials said. 

“We’ve been struggling with trying to maintain the schedule,” said Lew Jones, manager of facilities planning for the Berkeley Unified School District. 

Last year the project was set back when crews discovered an old PG&E storage tank, among other problems, while digging. Delays in the delivery of steel also slowed progress, he said. 

The district and the contractor, Arntz Builders of Novato, will push to open the northern building, which will house administrative offices, a cafeteria, a new library and five classrooms, by the start of next school next year, Jones said. 

But the southern building, including a new pool, dance studio, two basketball courts and a locker room, will likely open a month later, in October, he said. That won’t be a problem because the high school already has a pool and gym. 

Construction of the two new buildings on Milvia Street on the east end of campus began in February 2001 and was slated for completion in April 2003. 

Deborah Palmer, project manager for Arntz Builders, said the steel supplier, Roscoe Steel of Billings, Mont., is not to blame for the delivery delays that have held up the project.  

At the heart of the problem, Palmer said, were flaws in building plans by ELS Architecture and Urban Design of Berkeley that forced Berkeley Unified to alter its steel orders. 

Ed Noland, associate principle of ELS, said the steel issues emerged after the state’s Department of the Architect called for a stronger building. The state’s input was a “valuable process” that will ultimately ensure the safety of Berkeley High students, Noland said. 

Parents advising the district on construction said they have been pleased with the progress of the project. 

“Things are going smoothly,” said Bruce Wicinas, a member of the Citizens’ Construction Advisory Committee, noting that the project has sparked an interest in architecture and building among students. 

Bill Savidge of the Site Facilities Committee said his group is “totally excited” about the project and praised school officials for working well with parents. But, he said, last year the district was distracted by pressing issues like accreditation at Berkeley High, and did not focus sharply on the facilities.  

The parent committee, Savidge said, is pushing the district to clarify its food services plan for the new cafeteria and take a hard look at its budget for furniture in the library and common areas. 

“They have a really limited budget for furnishings,” Savidge said. 

Jones said there is probably enough money to pay for the furniture. But, he added, high school administrators, who must decide exactly how much they want to spend, have not yet come up with a figure.  

The district has several other high school construction projects in the pipeline, including a revamp of the gymnasium, an upgrade of the warm water pool and a transformation of the space formerly occupied by Berkeley High’s “B” Building, which burned down in April 2000. 

The “B” Building space is covered with asphalt and community members are pushing for a green space in its place. 

Jones said a green space is likely but said that all the projects in the pipeline are on hold until the district finishes building the Milvia Buildings. Then it must assess its construction budget and space needs at Berkeley High. 

The district has spent $50,000 on a facilities study that will analyze its space needs districtwide. Jones said he hopes to present a report at the Board of Education’s Sept. 25 or Oct. 9 meeting. 

Savidge said space allocation throughout campus could be complicated by Berkeley High’s plan to shift to a series of schools-within-a-school in fall 2003. 

To the Editor: 

The Patriot Act has been widely condemned by plenty of main streamers. In fact I am surprised it took Berkeley so long. 

Congratulations are in order. In as much as we don’t live in New York I hope we can say we have fully honored those who died and can now get on with our lives. It was not another Pearl Harbor. We are lucky the fatalities were so small, especially compared with worldwide mortalities from starvation and diseases.  

I fail to see the connection between suicide bombers and the Islamic religion just as I see no relation between pro-lifers who bomb clinics and Christianity. I am astonished that there are those in the world who would attack academics in general for asking about the cause of the bombers’ hatred. If one has cancer surely one can ask a physician where it came from.  

Arthur B. Waugh 

Berkeley

Dylan Casey’s first serious bike wasn’t meant for racing.  

It was an old Cannondale, bought from a friend for $100 when he needed to get around UC Santa Barbara back in 1991.  

It was quite different from the Trek 5700 he rode on Sunday as a member of the U.S. Postal Service pro cycling team at the 109-mile San Francisco Grand Prix road race. Yes, the U.S. Postal Service team – the team with Lance Armstrong on it. 

Casey, a Berkeley native who currently splits his time between Mountain View and Gerona, Spain, rode alongside Armstrong as a team domestique – a specialist rider who chases down breakaways in a race and helps team leaders to conserve as much energy as possible in the early stages of the race. On this day, Casey’s trademark yellow shoes could be seen late into the race, as he protected team leaders Armstrong and George Hincapie, the event’s defending champion. 

Casey, who moved to Walnut Creek with his family when he was 12, has ridden with the USPS team during his professional career. He is a two-time national time trial champion (1998 and 2002), and won a third national championship in 1998 in the individual pursuit, a track race in which two riders compete against each other, starting from opposite sides of the track. His two 1998 championships gained the attention of USPS team managers, who were assembling what has become the most formidable men’s cycling squad in the world. 

And although he may be better known for his domestic cycling feats – including a stint on the U.S. Olympic team in the track racing event – Casey has also made his presence known abroad. Among his best results in Europe, home to the most competitive races in men’s world-class cycling, was a stage win in the 2000 Tour of Luxembourg. 

It’s a long way from Wildcat Canyon to Gerona. But for the down-to-earth Casey, who looks like he could be your kid brother, it’s all in a day’s work for Postal.  

“Ah, it’s just a plane ride,” he says, smiling. 

Sometimes he takes that literally. One day last month, after a snafu with an airline that delayed him in Europe then lost his luggage, Casey landed in Chicago at 3:30 p.m. on a Sunday, raced a criterium at 4 p.m., then flew back to Europe, landing in Brussels on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday he started the five-day Tour of Holland, finishing ninth overall. 

You can’t interview a USPS rider without asking The Lance Question. What’s it like to ride with a guy who will probably be talked about as the greatest cyclist ever?  

“When you’re around Lance, he seems like an ordinary, everyday guy,” Casey says. “He’s fair, he’s very honest. He knows how to bring out the best in his teammates and friends. And Lance has a certain work ethic and a vigor for life and for cycling. He exudes this aura of confidence and vitality, and that seeps into all of us.” 

Teammate Kenny Labbe says that Casey’s status as a world-class time trialist contributes greatly to a team effort in a road race like the SF Grand Prix. “Dylan’s specialty is short-distance time trials,” he says. “He’s one of the best riders in the world at the 20-30 minute distance. That skill, translated to teamwork, is very valuable. We can put Dylan at the front [of the race] to make the other guys work harder.” 

On Sunday, Casey was strongest in the final two laps of the large 10-mile circuit that makes up most of the SF Grand Prix course. At the same time that Casey protected, Hincapie attacked. He pulled away from the field just past the 3:30 mark, at one point leading by over 30 seconds. But hampered by an injury he suffered at the Clasica San Sebastian in Spain last month, Hincapie eventually pulled back, finishing 15th. Postal teammates Armstrong and Vjatcheslav Ekimov, an Olympic gold medalist and Tour de France rider, stayed with the lead pack until the final furious sprint on the Embarcadero. 7UP/Nutrafig’s Charles Dionne, an irrepressible 22-year-old native of Quebec, won the race. Ekimov finished fourth and Armstrong sixth. The top seven riders were all timed in 4:18:49. 

“It went really well,” Casey said of his race as he walked his bike back to the team truck. “I did my job well, and I rode a lot better than I think people expected me to ride.” Indeed. In a race that’s been dubbed “the toughest bike race in America” because of its inhumanly steep climbs on Fillmore and Taylor Streets, Casey finished 33rd of 132 starters, less than five minutes under the lead pack. 

Lance Armstrong made a press room of toughened pros laugh Sunday when asked what strengths Casey brings to the Postal squad. 

“Dylan is our high-tech analyst on the team – he gives us a lot of feedback on things like MP3 players and espresso makers,” Armstrong said. “I heard he took the guys out on a local ride the other day and made ‘em suffer.”  

A hint of a playful smirk crept across Armstrong’s face as he added his closing salvo.  

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t win today.”

Tuesday, September 17 

Berkeley Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Arthritis Foundation - “Easy and Fun Things To Do In The Water” 

Noon to 2 p.m. 

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium - Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Video presentation. Group meets every third Tuesday of each month. 

644-3273 

Free 

Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate 

7:30 p.m. 

Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave. 

Naomi Klein, one of Ms. Magazine’s Women of the Year, will speak on her new book. 

845-7852 

“How to Grow Dahlias” 

1 p.m. 

Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 

A presentation by Dr. Erik Gaensler, vice president of the California Dahlia Society. 

524-4374 

Free 

Breast Self Exam for Seniors 

10 to 11:30 a.m. 

Maffley Auditorium, Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way 

Workshop to educate women with physical limitations about accessing breast health care and do-it-yourself exam education. 

869-6737 

Free 

Simplicity Forum 

7 to 8:30 p.m  

Claremont Branch Library  

2940 Benvenue Ave. 

A panel of people who will share their experiences and ideas for living inexpensively but richly.  

549-3509, www.simpleliving.net 

Free 

Wednesday, September 18 

Kick Off Party for the Berkeley Coffee Initiative 

7 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center  

3105 Shattuck Ave. 

Music, speakers and events in support of the Berkeley coffee initiative, Measure O. 

(415) 575-5338 

$5 at door 

Community Prostate Screening 

Appointment required (through Thursday) 

At the Markstein Cancer Education Center, on the Summit Campus of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. 

In honor of National Prostate Cancer Awareness Week. 

869-8833 

Free 

Peace Walk and Vigil 

6:30 p.m. - Every Wed. 

Meet at Downtown Berkeley  

Bart Station 

Join us for a peace walk  

along Shattuck Avenue for one hour. 

528-9217 

Free 

Thursday, September 19  

Freedom From Tobacco 

6 to 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center  

A quit smoking class. First of six Thursday evenings through Oct. 24.  

981-5330, quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Free to Berkeley and Albany residents, students and employees. 

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237 Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

Buddhist Peace Fellowship with The Deer Park Monastery - Public Lecture 

7 p.m.  

Berkeley Community Theater  

1930 Allston Way  

Join Vietnamese peace activist Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn for a public lecture, “Deep Listening: the heart of compassionate action.” 

433-9928 

$20 suggested donation  

Saturday, September 21 

Buddhist Peace Fellowship with The Deer Park Monastery - Public Lecture 

9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Lake Merritt, Oakland  

Join Vietnamese peace activist Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn for a public lecture; “Coming Home: a day of community and healing”. 

433-9928 

BREAD and Roses Garden Party 

1 to 5 p.m. 

Peralta Community Garden, Berkeley 

Hopkins & Peralta, Wheelchair accessible  

BREAD's birthday party - five years of dismantling corporate rule through local currency. 

644-0376 

$12 advance, $15 door  

low-income rate $10 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) 

9:15 to 11 a.m. 

St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. 

mtbrcb@pacbell.net 

Free 

Do-It-Yourself all-Natural  

Body Care from Your Kitchen 

Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Learn how to make your own all-natural skin care from products you might already have in your own kitchen. 

548-2220, Ext. 233, erc@ecologycenter.org 

$10 for members, $15 for nonmembers 

Third Annual David Brower  

Youth Awards 

6 p.m. 

Schwimley Theater  

1920 Allston Way 

Celebrate the next generation of environmental activists at Earth Island Institute’s award ceremony. R.S.V.P. 

(415) 788-3666, Ext. 260  

www.earthisland.org/bya 

Coastal Cleanup Day 

10 a.m. 

Work at the outflow of Strawberry Creek to clean up the San Francisco Bay coastline. 

info@strawberrycreek.org or 848-4008 

Fall Plant Sale 

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

200 Centennial Dr. 

Annual plant sale featuring rare and unusual plants. Members-only preview and auction from 9 to 11 a.m.  

643-2755, www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden/ 

Free  

Memorizing Windows 

8 p.m.  

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St.  

Dancer Lucinda Weaver and writer Alan Bern host an evening of dance, poetry and stories. 

526-7901 or abbern@sbcglobal.net 

Sunshine Workshop 

10 a.m. to noon 

Sixth floor, City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. 

Get up to speed on open records laws, open meetings laws and sunshine ordinances. Experts, including Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition, will speak. 

BerkeleySunshine@Yahoo.com 

Free  

East Bay Shoreline Clean Up 

9.am. to 12 p.m. 

Sea Breeze Market and Deli  

meeting/staging area. 

On the corner of West Frontage Rd. and University Ave., Berkeley. 

Arrive promptly to sign appropriate waivers , get coffee and listen to safety talk. We will provide bags, tally cards and a raffle of donated prizes; groups of ten or more need to pre-register by calling 644-8623. 

Free 

Sunday, Semptember 22 

Yoga/Tibetan Jack van der Meulen on “The Theory and Practice of Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga.”” 

3 to 5 p.m. - Introduction; 6 to 7 p.m.- Lecture by Jack van der Meulen 

Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Place 

Kum Nye is a system of movement, breath, and awareness exercises. 

843-6812 

Free 

Tuesday, September 24 

Sustainable Business Alliance of the East Bay 

5:30 to 7:30 p.m. 

Panoramic Room of the Gaia Building in Berkeley 

Reception and talk by Mal Warwick of Mal Warwick Associates, entitled: “You Don’t Have to Choose: How One Company Does Good While Doing Well” 

282-5151 

Members $8, Non-Members $12 

Wednesday, September 25 

“Healing Our Hearts for the Sake of the World” 

7:30 p.m 

First Congregational Church  

2345 Channing Way 

A reading by Sylvia Boorstein. Proceeds support The East Bay Dharma Center. 

595-0408 

$5 to $10 

When Berkeley needs to buy an appliance, it shops around. But not for the lowest price. 

Companies such as General Electric and Office Depot are blacklisted because they are not socially or politically responsible, according to the City Council.  

Because Office Depot refuses benefits to employees’ same-sex domestic partners, city leaders bypass the store. 

GE does business with the U.S. Department of Defense. But under the city’s no-nuclear resolution, the city does not. 

How much do these political statements cost the city? Officials will have that sum by the end of the year.  

The city is now tallying how much it spends buying from “acceptable vendors” who are not necessarily the cheapest, said Heather Murphy, Berkeley’s acting purchasing manager.  

Under city law companies must declare whether they qualify for Berkeley’s shopping list, by Berkeley’s rules, so costs associated with assessing a company’s political and social correctness are small, Murphy said. 

The only real cost of imposing the sanctions, according to officials, is the money lost when a blacklisted company offers a better price than any other vendor.  

The city has sanctions on about a dozen companies. 

Council’s most recent cause for a sanction was to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last week, council passed a special purchasing resolution preventing the city from doing business with a company that drills for oil in the pristine coastal plain. 

Although drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge is illegal, Congress is currently rethinking the matter. 

U.S. Public Interest Research Group representative Athan Manuel said resolutions like Berkeley’s are an invaluable tool in the struggle to protect the refuge. 

“We’re trying to bring home the message that drilling in the arctic is a risky business proposition,” said Manuel, who worked with Councilmember Dona Spring to bring the resolution to the council. 

West Hollywood passed a parallel resolution. A number of other cities – including San Francisco – are considering similar resolutions, Manuel said. 

The city’s Murphy agreed that local resolutions serve a worthwhile purpose. She said management at Office Depot is negotiating a change in its spousal benefits policy that would provide for same-sex partners. 

“They’re feeling the pressure,” she said. 

Oakland and San Francisco also have sanctions against the office supply chain. 

Murphy said some of Berkeley’s most effective sanctions are the benefits sanctions and those against companies that fail to pay a “living wage.” 

Companies that contract with the city for more than $25,000 of services must pay employees a minimum wage of $9.75 an hour with benefits or $11.37 an hour without benefits. The ordinance also applies to businesses that lease city land. 

City officials are threatening Restaurant Skates by the Bay with a lawsuit because it is not paying its employees a livable wage, the city says. 

Other city restrictions prohibit: using tropical hardwoods and old-growth redwood in construction; trading with companies that do business in the Tibet region; and buying from companies that help the government build or stockpile nuclear weapons. 

To the Editor: 

I have been a resident of west Berkeley for nearly 11 years, living around the corner from Pepito's Deli. I have patronized this local treasure ever since. Maria Magana has been a well respected, long term small business owner, providing employment to numerous people, giving friendly service, great food and conscientious community contributions (supporting Rosa Parks Elementary School) for well over 10 years. 

I and many others were devastated to suddenly find Pepito’s closed and fenced in earlier this month. I then learned more from the Sept. 7 Daily Planet article by Dan Krauss. We have further learned from Maria Magana that she was in court, attempting to deal with the dispute with landlords Leo and Helena Chen, at the very moment the Berkeley Police Department served an eviction notice to the site and required her employees to leave. Pepito's has been closed ever since, extinguishing a truly bright light in west Berkeley. A large quantity of food was undoubtedly spoiled and a number of people are now unemployed.  

How does this serve an upstanding small business owner or our community? If Maria Magana was “the victim of bad legal advice” as you indicated in your Daily Planet article, why is she now the victim of a business closure, facing unemployment and uncertainty? Why could an agreement with the law enforcement agencies and individuals not be reached? If a neighborhood business like Pepito’s is not the type that the city intends to support, than what is? 

I trust that further attention and mediation will be given to this situation so that Maria Magana can resume her business. Otherwise, not only are we losing an outstanding small business owned and run by a woman of color, but we are adding to San Pablo Avenue blight with one more closed building. We do not need that. Please use the power of your position to bring resolution to the dispute between Maria Magana and the Chens.  

Rebecca Herman 

Berkeley

OAKLAND — Miguel Tejada singled home the winning run in the ninth inning as the Oakland Athletics snapped Anaheim’s six-game winning streak and tied the Angels for first place in the AL West with a 4-3 victory Monday night. 

Ray Durham and Jermaine Dye homered for the A’s, who opened a key four-game series by handing Anaheim just its second loss in 18 games. Both teams are 94-56 with 12 games to go in baseball’s most competitive division race. 

Troy Glaus hit a three-run shot in the first inning to match a major league record with a home run in four straight at-bats, but that was all the offense Anaheim could muster. 

Cory Lidle pitched seven strong innings, and Billy Koch (10-3) worked the ninth for the victory. 

Glaus, who hit a career-high three homers Sunday against Texas, repeated a feat that had been accomplished 31 times before with a long homer to right. He struck out in the fourth to end the streak.

At least 30 of the 41 pro-Palestinian students who took over UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall in April have decided to face official student conduct hearings rather than accept a probation deal from the university, according to student leaders. 

“I don’t feel I need to plea bargain if I’m innocent,” said Roberto Hernandez of Students for Justice in Palestine, which led the April occupation that attempted to win university divestment from Israel. 

Refusal to accept a settlement means students will face penalties approved by Dean of Students Karen Kenney after formal hearings. Student conduct boards, made up of pupils, faculty and staff, can recommend penalties up to and including expulsion, though Kenney will have final say. 

The university is offering students a one-semester probation if they choose to skip a formal hearing. Students who make it through the probationary period with no further violations would receive marks on their records but would not face suspension, expulsion or any other penalty, Kenney said. 

Kenney said a “handful” of the 41 protesters have accepted the probation offer. SJP leader Hoang Phan said he is aware of only two students who have taken the deal, and would not release their names, citing privacy concerns. 

But Neil Rajmara, the university’s director of student judicial affairs, said the number is greater than two, and added that he expects more students to accept probation in the coming days. 

Most students have until Wednesday to decide if they will take the deal or go to a full hearing. University officials hope to wrap up all cases by the end of October. 

The 41 students are among 79 protesters arrested by UC Berkeley police after occupying Wheeler Hall April 9 and demanding that the nine-campus University of California system divest from Israel. 

The UC Board of Regents, which governs the system, has come out against divestment. 

The Alameda County District Attorney dropped criminal charges against the “Wheeler 79” in June, but the university continues to pursue student conduct charges. 

Most of the students face four conduct charges: unauthorized entry onto university property, disturbing classes, disturbance of the peace and failure to comply with the directions of a university official. 

At least one of the protesters, Hernandez, is also charged with physical or verbal abuse. Hernandez allegedly assaulted a UC Berkeley police officer April 9, but was cleared of criminal charges. 

Phan said the students will exercise their right to request public hearings. 

“We’re going to call for a public hearing because students have a right to know what the university is doing to student activists,” he said. 

The chairperson of a conduct hearing, under university regulations, has a right to close the hearing to maintain order or protect the privacy rights of students involved – including any that might appear as witnesses. 

University officials declined to speculate on whether a closure might be necessary in the case of SJP hearings. But Kenney confirmed that, in the past, chairpersons have closed proceedings before they began when there was word of a large-scale protest that might disrupt the hearings. 

Phan argued that, in pursuing student conduct charges, UC Berkeley is lashing out at SJP for its political beliefs. 

“The sanctions have nothing to do with the content [of SJP’s speech],” Kenney replied. 

Officials have long held that they are pursuing student conduct charges because the Wheeler Hall activists, in disrupting classes, interfered with UC Berkeley’s core mission: the education of its students. 

Activists have countered that the disruption was minimal and that educating students was the central purpose of the takeover. 

Six of the 41 students who face charges were seniors last year, and the university has withheld their diplomas pending the completion of the student judicial process. 

The purpose of the policy is to prevent graduates from leaving the university, diploma in hand, without facing student conduct charges, Kenney said. 

But Anne Weills, one of several lawyers representing the students, argued that the withholdings are actually an attempt to “chill free speech.” 

“The university always tries to suppress students who go against the grain,” Weills said. 

Hernandez is among the six graduates, and UC Berkeley has accepted him to a doctoral program in comparative ethnic studies. Because he does not have his diploma, Hernandez is not officially enrolled, although the ethnic studies department is allowing him to take courses. 

Hernandez said his real concern is a university fellowship and loans, worth about $22,000 per year, that are on hold as the judicial process plays out. 

“If I don’t receive my fellowship, I don’t have the means to stay in the program,” he said. “I’m down to my last $156.” 

Kenney said she could not comment on individual cases, but noted that the university plans to conduct hearings for the six graduates first.

To the Editor, 

Your article on the UC Berkeley commemoration of Sept. 11 was hardly balanced. It was not “politics as usual” across the campus. At the very same time of the official campus gathering on Sproul at noon, another official campus gathering took place at Hertz Hall, drawing an audience of 1,000 that filled the hall and spilled outside. 

One hundred and fifty students and community members performed music of various cultures and centuries ending with the Aaron Copland's setting of “simple gifts” and a Benediction written for the victims Sept. 11. The mood in the hall and its surrounding area was thoughtful and meditative. And throughout the day, a different group of students stood by the campanile intoning solemnly the names of those who died on Sept. 11. It is a shame that not just the national but also the local media are bent on presenting only the discord at our university. This caricature is not only a inaccurate, it belittles the greater spirit of our community. 

Marika Kuzma 

Berkeley

A $1.4 million budget scare for the Berkeley Unified School District has vanished, district officials said. 

Last week district officials thought that a state money transfer was going to deny them access to $1.4 million this year and compound the district’s roughly $4 million deficit.  

But county officials now say districts are allowed to “spend” deferred money – if the state reimburses the district next year, according to Berkeley’s Associate Superintendent of Business and Operations Jerry Kurr. 

Because the dollars in question will not actually come from the state this year, Kurr said the district can float bonds to raise some of the $1.4 million. The district would repay those bonds once the deferred state money flows to the district during the 2003-2004 fiscal year, likely in July or August 2003, Kurr said. 

The $1.4 million budget scare arose after a district official came away from a state budget workshop last Thursday with the impression that the district would not be allowed to spend deferred dollars. 

But Kurr said that during a follow-up workshop on Friday, county officials, who have jurisdiction over Berkeley Unified, told him they would allow the practice given the state’s gloomy fiscal picture. 

“It was a one-day panic,” Kurr said. 

The state will defer about one-quarter of the district’s funding in three areas. Roughly $1 million of the $4 million Berkeley Unified receives to support its desegregation plan, $195,000 of the $725,000 the district gets in transportation dollars and $125,000 of the $500,000 it gets in “school improvement program” funds, which go to professional development and other services, will be held.  

State legislators deferred spending in these and other education programs in an effort to plug a nearly $24 billion shortfall and balance the 2002-2003 budget. Critics called the move an accounting trick. 

Some observers have raised doubts about whether the troubled state government will be in a position to repay the deferred dollars next year. 

But Bill Fong, fiscal consultant for the California Department of Education, said there is almost no chance that the state will fail to pay back the money. 

To the Editor: 

The concept of “smart growth” referred to by Councilmember Linda Maio in her Sept. 7 letter to the editor is a propaganda tool designed by regional planners to accomplish a predetermined goal, in this case selling the urban public on the benefits of intensifying development within cities to purportedly save open space beyond the urban boundaries.  

It enables developers to purchase for a song, and develop with public subsidies, countless dozens of distressed sites that lie along the urban transit corridors. The proposed 2700 San Pablo Ave. development by Patrick Kennedy of Panoramic Interests and Reverend Gordon Choyce of Jubilee Restorations Inc. appears to be an example of one such site.  

No evidence has ever been presented that piling up housing on transit corridors can or will actually reduce suburban sprawl or alleviate traffic congestion.  

What regional and Berkeley city planners and Berkeley city councilmembers refuse to recognize is that transit corridors are integral parts of neighborhoods, often single story homes bordered by one and two story commercial strips. Over the last few years hundreds of neighbors near proposed oversized developments have told the City Council they want reasonably sized structures that fit into the fabric of their neighborhoods. They know that providing Berkeley's fair share of regional housing does not have to forfeit Berkeley's low-key urban character and our current quality of life. Two story mixed-use developments can do the job just fine and some developers are quite able to do that in Berkeley.  

Unfortunately, Linda Maio never saw an oversized development she didn't like. Or, if she said she didn't like it, she voted for it anyway. As a councilmember she should be familiar enough with the height initiative (Prop P – “P” for preservation) to know that it will not cripple Berkeley's ability to create new affordable housing. It may, however, cripple the ability of a few developers to recreate Berkeley into their own overscaled fiefdom. Prop P will put the reigns of democracy back in the hands of neighborhoods and who is better suited than that to determine the future of their environment. 

Peter Teichner 

Berkeley

Because the dollars in question will not actually come from the state this year, Kurr said the district can float bonds to raise some of the $1.4 million. The district would repay those bonds once the deferred state money flows to the district during the 2003-2004 fiscal year, likely in July or August 2003, Kurr said. 

The $1.4 million budget scare arose after a district official came away from a state budget workshop last Thursday with the impression that the district would not be allowed to spend deferred dollars. 

But Kurr said that during a follow-up workshop on Friday, county officials, who have jurisdiction over Berkeley Unified, told him they would allow the practice given the state’s gloomy fiscal picture. 

“It was a one-day panic,” Kurr said. 

The state will defer about one-quarter of the district’s funding in three areas. Roughly $1 million of the $4 million Berkeley Unified receives to support its desegregation plan, $195,000 of the $725,000 the district gets in transportation dollars and $125,000 of the $500,000 it gets in “school improvement program” funds, which go to professional development and other services, will be held.  

State legislators deferred spending in these and other education programs in an effort to plug a nearly $24 billion shortfall and balance the 2002-2003 budget. Critics called the move an accounting trick. 

Some observers have raised doubts about whether the troubled state government will be in a position to repay the deferred dollars next year. 

But Bill Fong, fiscal consultant for the California Department of Education, said there is almost no chance that the state will fail to pay back the money. 

The late Bill Hicks had a vision for his diverse, west Berkeley neighborhood. The long-time community leader and barbecue fan wanted to showcase the unique cultures of west Berkeley in one big annual blowout. On Sunday, the party began. 

At the First Annual Heritage Day, local residents, artisans, musicians and city leaders joined to celebrate, on University Avenue between Third and Fourth streets. While some residents have said the neighborhood lacks a sense of community, Willie Phillips, president of the West Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation, said Heritage Day might change that. 

“It's an opportunity to bring west Berkeley together,” said Phillips. “You have so many very diverse groups in the neighborhood, this event provides them the chance to share their own heritage with each other.” 

In addition to bringing cultures together, sponsors are hoping the festival will provide economic empowerment for local artisans in the mostly working-class neighborhood. 

Many vendors at Sunday's festival, including Yüksel Dinccag, a photographer and local artist originally from Turkey, sold a few items and shared a bit of their culture. 

“I want people to become familiar with Turkish art,” said Dinccag, who sells traditional Turkish head scarves along with a selection of her own photography. Embroidered with ornate and colorful borders, each scarf tells a different story.  

Pam Jackson, a veteran painter who recently moved to the Bay Area from Detroit, said she is delighted with such opportunity to showcase her paintings in Berkeley.  

“Berkeley is a fabulous place to be an artist,” Jackson said. “I think today was a great idea. [Heritage Day] creates good business opportunities for Berkeley.” 

Though business has boomed on Berkeley's retail-friendly Fourth Street, many area residents were happy to see another part of west Berkeley shine on Sunday.  

“It's small but nice,” said Berkeley resident David Sims of the afternoon celebration. “[West Berkeley] needs it. There's very little of anything here.” 

In an effort to show residents the city cares about west Berkeley, city planners attended Sunday's festival and spoke with the neighbors. 

“We have to go out and meet people and not wait for them to come to us,” said Iris Starr, senior redevelopment planner for the city. 

Displaying sketches of the city's proposed transit hub for the western stretch of University Avenue, Starr emphasized that Berkeley needs to find new ways to involve its residents, many of whom do not speak English. 

Finding such a common language is one of the goals of Heritage Day, according to organizers. Many hope the festival will become an annual event similar to south Berkeley's Juneteenth Day, a cultural celebration marking the end of slavery in the United States. 

At the very least, organizers are confident that residents will learn a bit about the rich history of the area through the festival. 

A fan of history herself, Betsy Morris, secretary for the WBNDC, said the area is not only unique for its ethnic diversity but also for its social and political tradition. 

The Socialist and Communist parties of early 20th century were formed in the area, according to Morris. In addition, the cooperative movement and a strong union affiliation developed in west Berkeley, originally known as the Oceanview district. The beginnings of today's Longshoremen's Union were at one time centered in west Berkeley as well, Morris added. 

Today the neighborhood still shows signs of its port of entry past. While much of the Japanese population has moved out of west Berkeley, a number of Japanese fish markets remain. 

Large concentrations of Latinos and blacks - relegated to the area west of San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley during segregation - still make up most of the population. 

BERKELEY – Police arrested one man and were searching for one or two more after a botched armed robbery Sunday afternoon at an electronics store. 

The Berkeley Police Department received a report at 1:34 p.m. that two or three men had robbed the Cambridge Sound Works on 2350 Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley. 

After confronting the clerks with a handgun, the men apparently tied the clerks’ hands and locked them in a back room of the store, police said. 

They then loaded about $30,000 worth of stereos and TVs into the back of a U-Haul truck and fled the scene. 

Shortly after the robbery was reported a Berkeley police officer spotted a U-Haul matching the truck's description at Sixth Street and University Avenue in west Berkeley.  

The driver refused to pull over and led police on a chase through Berkeley, Oakland and into Hayward. The pursuit never exceeded speed limits, police said. 

Units from all three cities responded and the chase ended only after the U-haul plowed into a police car at a Hayward intersection. 

Police have identified the suspect in custody as 25-year-old Ricky Sanders of Hayward, who has been charged with robbery.

ALAMEDA – Ralph Appezzato, the mayor of Alameda and a candidate for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, died Monday in what authorities described as a possible suicide. He was 67. 

Alameda police Lt. Bill Scott said that at 8:52 a.m., the mayor’s wife called police indicating that her husband was not breathing and needed assistance. 

Police and Fire Department personnel responded to the mayor's home in the 2900 block of Sea View Parkway. Appezzato was pronounced dead in the living room. 

“Preliminarily, it appears that the mayor may have taken his own life,” Scott said. 

Detectives from the Police Department's Violent Crimes Unit are investigating the death, Scott said. The Alameda County Coroner's Bureau will determine how Appezzato died.

BRISBANE — The couple’s driveway is a steep, narrow trail that winds through a sun-drenched landscape of hardy California scrub. Their front steps are rocky footholds in the earth. Their living room is nestled within the shady embrace of a sprawling oak tree. 

For a dozen years, Besh Serdahely and Thelma Caballero have lived in a pair of elaborate huts in a park on San Bruno Mountain, in a canyon flush with ferns. San Francisco Bay glimmers in the distance through leaves that buffer a breeze scented with hummingbird sage. The stillness is punctuated by birdsongs and the faraway hum of Silicon Valley’s commuters. 

But the couple may soon lose their roost. San Mateo County officials recently stapled a 30-day eviction notice to the tree, and the case will go to a judge if they’re not gone by Sept. 26. 

“Here it is peaceful,” said Caballero, shielded from the sun by a straw hat, a cream-colored man’s shirt, surplus Army pants and worn work gloves. “There are too many people in the city.” 

The hideout is just 10 miles south of San Francisco, where thousands of people without homes compete nightly for shelter, many ending up in doorways, beneath bridges and along railroad tracks. 

Serdahely and Caballero lived in the city until another hermit offered them the home he had begun to craft with discarded lumber and corrugated plastic amid the roots and branches of the 300-year-old oak. 

Authorities have known of the couple’s tree-squatting for years. They moved to evict them after a recent review of property lines revealed that the hideaway is on land owned by the county rather than the state, Deputy County Manager Mary McMillan said. 

Because of health and safety concerns, county law prohibits anyone from living in a park — especially one teeming with rare and endangered plants and insects such as the San Francisco Wallflower and the Mission Blue Butterfly. 

Until the county comes for them, the couple is staying put, content to compost their waste in their open-air outhouse and use water from a nearby spring. 

Caballero, a former housekeeper from Honduras who thinks she’s in her 40s, and Serdahely, 58, a former laborer, said they met at a San Francisco soup kitchen in the late 1980s and got married at City Hall. 

Caballero, who has schizophrenia, and Serdahely, who struggles with alcoholism, lucked into the mountain hideaway through a circle of friends they met along the railroad tracks just south of town. The original owner was moving in with a schoolteacher, and was looking for the right people to inherit the spot.

Alleged gambling operation busted in Redwood City 

REDWOOD CITY – A 47-year-old restaurant manager was arrested Sunday for allegedly using a Redwood City taqueria a cover for an illegal gambling operation, San Mateo County Sheriff's Office said. 

Gerardo Delrio Rivera, of Menlo Park, is accused of permitting gambling at Tacos El Camino, selling alcohol to minors, and other business violations, Lt. Michael Lopez said. 

Sheriff's deputies raided the restaurant, located at 2627 El Camino Real, at around 12:30 a.m. Sunday and allegedly found between 60 and 80 gamblers playing cards. 

Authorities seized $2,896 in cash, 30 decks of cards, 152 pairs of dice, and a two-way radio. The gambling patrons were released at the scene. 

Rivera was booked in San Mateo County jail for gambling related violations and was released after posting $10,000 bail.  

He is scheduled to appear a San Mateo County courtroom to faces the charges on Oct. 22. 

Panhandling ordinances start up in Santa Cruz 

SANTA CRUZ – The life of a panhandler in downtown Santa Cruz got a little more difficult this week. 

The Santa Cruz City Council in July passed a number of ordinances pertaining to panhandlers and loiterers in certain areas of downtown. Some of those ordinances went into effect this week, according to Trisha Husome with the Santa Cruz City Clerk's Office. 

As a result, people will no longer be able to ask for spare change or block the sidewalk within 14 feet of stores, cafes, and other downtown businesses. The practice is also outlawed at bus stops, near crosswalks, on public transportation vehicle, near banks or ATM machines or while sitting on public property such as the downtown benches. 

The council also passed an ordinance prohibiting the display of noncommercial display devices, such as the cardboard signs often used by panhandlers.  

Oakland man arrested in connection  

with slaying of grandfather 

OAKLAND – Police report that a 24-year-old Oakland man is in custody on suspicion of shooting to death his sleeping grandfather. 

Kimsoth Chea could be arraigned today in connection with the killing of Chea Prak, 79, of Oakland, according to Sgt. Gus Galindo of the Oakland Police Department's Homicide Division. 

Officers were dispatched to 1211 Eighth St. at about 1 a.m. Sunday on a report of a shooting. When officers arrived at the residence, they found the Prak shot dead in his bed. 

East Palo Alto man’s body flown  

to Greece instead of Mexico 

EAST PALO ALTO — The body of an East Palo Alto man headed to his hometown in Mexico for burial took an long, unexpected detour and instead ended up in Greece. 

Instead of finding the body of family patriarch Robert Castaneda, 68, in the casket that arrived in his hometown of Apatzingan in the Mexican state of Michoacan, weeping relatives found the body of a black man with a cigar and a book with a picture of the World Trade Center on the cover. 

Castaneda was nowhere to be found. A relative in Mexico immediately phoned family members in East Palo Alto to say Castaneda’s body was missing.

SAN JOSE — Cary Stayner was sane when he murdered three Yosemite National Park tourists in 1999, a jury decided Monday in what means he could face the death penalty. 

The jury took less than four hours to reject the defense claim the former motel handyman was unable to understand what he was doing. 

Stayner stood for the verdict and showed no emotion as it was read. 

If he had been found insane, he would have received an automatic life sentence. The penalty phase of the trial, in which the jury will decide whether Stayner should be executed or sentenced to life in prison, begins Tuesday. 

The same jury convicted Stayner last month of murdering Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, of Eureka, and their Argentine friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16, while they were staying at the lodge where he worked outside the park. 

Family members said they were relieved by the decision. 

“I always knew he was sane. Just seeing his face you can tell,” said Silvina’s father, Pepe Pelosso. “His confession speaks on its own. The cold way he expressed the killings, there is no doubt.” 

Stayner, 41, already is serving a life sentence for another 1999 slaying, that of park nature guide Joie Armstrong. He had pleaded guilty in that case in a deal that spared him from a possible death sentence. 

Defense attorney Marcia Morrissey had argued that a legacy of family mental disorders, a troubled childhood that included the highly publicized kidnapping of a brother, and voices that he said told him to “do the job” were evidence that Stayner was insane. 

Prosecutors said proof of Stayner’s sanity was in his confession to the FBI, in which he detailed his methodical efforts to cover his tracks. 

Stayner strangled Carole Sund and Pelosso and dumped their bodies in the trunk of a rental car that he later torched, burning the victims’ bodies beyond recognition. He sexually assaulted Juli Sund, slashed her throat and covered her naked body with brush on a hillside. 

The crime was unsolved for nearly six months until Stayner struck again, snatching Armstrong and beheading her near her cabin in the park. 

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the Internet’s leading purveyors of pornography has offered to purchase the Napster trademark and Web site address for nearly $3 million in hopes of cashing in on the bankrupt song-swap company’s notorious reputation. 

Barcelona, Spain-based Private Media Group Inc. offered to snap up Napster’s most valuable remaining asset — its unique brand identity — for 1 million shares of Private’s common stock, the bidding company announced in a release issued last week. 

The company’s chief executive, Charles Prast, said his company is interested in using the Napster trademark merely to place a familiar brand name on a peer-to-peer network for his pornography seeking customers. 

Not content to remain mired in the print pornography world, Private has branched out into the Internet and even offers adult content for mobile phones and PDAs like Palm and Pocket PC devices. 

Earlier this month, a Delaware bankruptcy judge blocked the sale of Napster’s assets to its chief investor, Bertelsmann AG. The former song-swapping giant prepared to convert its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization filing into a Chapter 7 liquidation proceeding.

Credit card scam exposes  

hole in e-commerce security 

SAN FRANCISCO — A mysterious credit card scam involving more than 100,000 bogus Internet transactions has delivered another alarming reminder about online commerce’s security weaknesses. 

Although no money was actually transferred in the scheme, more than 60,000 of the illicit transactions received authorization codes during a con job exposed late last week. 

The authorization codes verified the validity of those account numbers, opening the door for more widespread theft had the ruse not been detected. 

All the affected account numbers have been deactivated and investigations have been opened by federal authorities, said John Rante, president of Online Data Corp., a Chicago-based credit card processor that authorized the bogus transactions. 

“People have nothing to be concerned about,” Rante said. “We are cooperating with the authorities and we will catch the people behind this.”

SAN JOSE — Despite a lackluster economy and continuing layoffs, California’s high-tech industry grew slightly last year with Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego accounting for most of the new jobs, according to a report released Tuesday by an industry trade group. 

Overall, the industry grew just 1 percent, adding only 12,000 jobs to the state’s economy. Most of those jobs were created in Southern California, according to the report by the American Electronics Association. 

San Jose and San Francisco were hardest hit by reduced payrolls, although the Silicon Valley remained the nucleus of technology activity. Oakland and Sacramento saw the most growth in Northern California, generated largely by the influx of companies seeking less-expensive areas in which to conduct business. 

The American Electronics Association’s annual California “Cybercities report” surveyed eight metropolitan areas, and includes companies creating or producing high-tech products. It does not include biotechnology or the dot-com sector, which experienced a devastating implosion last year. 

The report confirms what economists and industry observers already knew: 2001 was a very bad year for high-tech. 

The survey found: 

n San Jose, which continues as California’s leading “cybercity” with 280,842 jobs, lost 4,961 high-tech jobs last year. San Francisco lost 2,139 jobs and Orange County lost 1,075. 

n Los Angeles and Oakland accounted for the largest increases in high-tech jobs with 2,764 and 2,140, respectively. San Diego saw high-tech employment jump by 1,038 jobs and Sacramento enjoyed an increase of 581 jobs. 

n San Jose, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco accounted for 658,000 of the state’s 997,951 high-tech jobs last year. 

“This isn’t news,” said Tapan Munroe of Munroe Consulting in Moraga, who attributes the high-tech employment drought to the lack of sales. “Companies over-invested in technology going back to 2000, business isn’t buying any equipment and they don’t need these guys. We’re going to get back slowly but we’ll never see the heydays of the past.” 

Although the Silicon Valley and San Francisco took the brunt of the downturn, Munroe said, the East Bay area weathered the storm better because of a more diversified economy — everything from oil refineries to biotechnology. 

While the American Electronics Association survey focused on 2001 data, the negative employment trend continued into the first half of 2002. 

“Sadly, I’ve not heard a single CEO tell me they are seeing improvement in the economy on the horizon,” said Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Manufacturers Group, which represents 190 high-tech corporations. “Most of them are hoping to ride out the storm, but the storm continues. The water hasn’t stopped rising. We’re climbing in the boat.” 

“The outlook for high-tech jobs is pretty discouraging,” agreed Tom Lieser, a senior economist at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. “There is some indication of improvement in semiconductor sales, but high-tech companies want to be convinced of a sustainable increase in demand for their products before adding jobs.” 

Richard Carlson, chairman of Palo Alto’s Spectrum Economics, calculates that a total of 100,000 Silicon Valley jobs were lost from the beginning of 2001 to June of this year. 

“The bottom of the job market was February,” said Carlson. “The worst has passed. It’s not coming up like a skyrocket, but it is coming up. It’s stabilized as compared to dropping like a stone.” 

Carlson monitors California Economic Development Department data, statistics that are more current than those used by the American Electronics Association.

SANTA CRUZ – The attorney for a Santa Cruz County couple who are planning to distribute medical marijuana on the steps of Santa Cruz City Hall said that he expects federal agents to be at the distribution. 

Valerie and Michael Corral were operating a small marijuana farm for medical marijuana users in Northern Santa Cruz County that was raided on Sept. 5 by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents. In protest of the raid, the couple and several members of the Santa Cruz City Council are planning to distribute marijuana to the sick at City Hall today. 

The couple's attorney, Ben Rice, said that he expects federal agents will be at the raid but does not believe they will make any arrests. 

“I expect the Feds will be here but just as observers,” Rice said. “They're not going to come in and arrest all of these sick, dying people on the evening news.” 

The Santa Cruz City Council has passed a resolution condemning the raid and several members of the council have indicted they plan to help distribute the marijuana today. 

DEA spokesman Richard Meyer would not comment on the administration's plans. 

“Our policy is not to confirm or deny future plans by our agents,” Meyer said. 

Meyer did say that despite the passage of California's Proposition 211 – the medical marijuana initiative – possession and distribution of the drug remains against federal law. 

“What they're doing is completely illegal,” Meyer said.

Berkeley went to sleep Friday night a progressive college town, but it woke up a skateboard mecca. 

The long-awaited Berkeley Skatepark, located beside the Harrison Park soccer fields, opened for business Saturday to the delight of hundreds of boys, some from as far away as Hayward. 

When the ribbon was cut, throngs of skaters exploded into the park to submerge into 8 1/2-foot bowls and hurl themselves into the foggy morning sky. 

“It’s freaking awesome,” said David O’Kefe and Ross Wunderlich of El Cerrito. 

Professionals gushed as well. San Francisco-based “THRASHER” magazine,a skating staple, has already declared Berkeley’s skatepark the best in the Bay Area. 

George Johnson of Altman General Engineering, the park’s designer, said size sets Berkeley’s park apart. At 18,000 square feet, the skatepark dwarfs other local venues. 

“It’s faster and bigger so skaters can skate with a continuous flow,” Johnson said. 

More importantly, skaters say, the park will legitimize their sport and spare them the harassment they say they have received for years. 

“Finally kids have a place to hang out where they’re not going to get hassled.” said Wyatt Miller, a Berkeley skater.  

Miller and his mother Kate Obenour started lobbying the city for a skate park after Wyatt and his fellow 12-year old friends were handcuffed and given $75 citations for skating on the UC Berkeley campus. 

“I didn’t want my son to be an outlaw,” Obenour said. So in 1997, she organized local skaters to attend City Council and Parks and Recreation Commission meetings. After two years of persistent lobbying, council approved funds for the skatepark. 

But that was just the opening saga of the skatepark’s development. 

Scheduled to open in 2001 at a cost of $380,00, the park was derailed when the original contractor, Morris Construction, hit groundwater contaminated with the carcinogen chromium 6. The city spent $265,000 to clean up the chemicals, and built a gravel base below the concrete bowls to prevent further contamination. 

In 2001, the city allocated an additional $400,000 to complete the project, with the final cost now estimated at $750,000. 

Not everyone is thrilled about the park. Some local businesses fear that an influx of kids from around the Bay Area could increase crime and vandalism in the heavily industrial neighborhood at the edge of northwest Berkeley. 

“Everyone’s kind of nervous because it’s new,” said Doug Fielding of the Association of Playing Field Users. 

But city officials say they have alleviated the concerns of local merchants.  

“We’re going to have someone there [supervising] two hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon, and then from 6:30 until closing at 9:30,” said Ed Murphy, project manager for the city’s Parks and Waterfront Department.  

Murphy added that the police department would make frequent patrols of the park to make sure that it wasn’t being used during off-hours. 

Berkeley skaters say the park’s appeal will improve the neighborhood and provide them an opportunity to make friends with kids from other cities.  

“There’s going to be a whole community that develops here,” Miller said, adding that regulars will make sure that skaters respect the park and the surrounding area. 

Like many Berkeley skaters, 13-year old Jonah Most has skated at the Alameda skatepark, and recognized a lot of familiar faces. “It was so hard to get [to Alameda],” Most said. “It’s great to have a place now where you can just roll out of bed and come and see a lot of your friends.” 

To the Editor: 

Ms. Rhiannon’s Sept. 4 letter “How to give a housing subsidy” responding to my previous letter on Berkeley affordable housing public policy contained several points that I would like to address. 

Ms. Rhiannon claims that “two nonprofit housing corporations... [are] self-monitoring and self-inspecting, and they receive the lion’s share of city housing funds.” These assertions are inaccurate. Based on funding allocations released from the city of Berkeley’s Housing Trust Fund (HTF) – a pool of federal, state and local revenues used to fund city-supported affordable housing developments, rehabilitation’s or acquisitions – at least a half dozen East Bay-based nonprofit housing development organizations have received HTF loans over the last decade. 

Over the last ten years, HTF funds have been widely distributed amongst these half dozen developers after undergoing a careful, democratic selection process. Each year, nonprofit developers submit affordable housing proposals before the city’s housing department and the Housing Advisory Commission, a nine-member board appointed by the City Council. The commission votes to allocate HTF funds based on each proposal’s merits, the developer’s experience/track record, and the critical housing needs each proposal addresses. All HTF-funded developments are subsequently monitored closely by the city and by state and federal monitoring agencies if their dollars are used. Also, all HTF-funded housing developments are subject to city housing ordinances, including city monitoring and inspection agencies. Additionally, there is no connection between HTF-funded developments and Berkeley’s separate Redevelopment Agency or the city’s federally-sponsored Housing Authority. 

Finally, Ms. Rhiannon claims that the Federal “Section 8” affordable housing program “limits tenant’s freedom to contact [Berkeley’s] codes and inspections or other agencies regarding repairs since tenants who complain risk homelessness.” This assertion is incorrect. Any tenant in Berkeley, including private, nonprofit or federally-subsidized units, can contact the city’s codes and inspections unit, regardless of their unit’s status. It is also a very serious violation of local, state and federal laws/ordinances to threaten a tenant with eviction if a tenant requests repairs for his or her unit. 

Chris Kavanagh 

Berkeley’s Housing Advisory Commission

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Cal has already exceeded expectations. The Golden Bears are not content, however. 

Cal quarterback Kyle Boller accounted for four touchdowns – two throwing, one running and one receiving – as the Golden Bears humbled then-15th-ranked Michigan State 46-22 Saturday. 

The Bears moved into The Associated Press poll with a No. 23 ranking and the Spartans fell out of the Top 25. 

One season after going 1-10, first-year coach Jeff Tedford has the Bears believing. 

The last time the Bears beat such a highly ranked team was Oct. 5, 1974, when they defeated No. 14 Illinois. They’re 3-0 for the first time since 1996 – Steve Mariucci’s only season before leaving for the San Francisco 49ers – and have defeated a Top 15 team for the first time since 1974. 

Despite tripling last year’s win total, the Golden Bears were businesslike after first silencing, then emptying, Spartan Stadium. 

“I think it’s just an attitude that we’ve been trying to instill since Day 1,” said Tedford, who replaced Tom Holmoe after he was 16-39 over five seasons. “We’re going to expect to win and do things the right way. When I look at our kids, I don’t see any surprise in their faces.” 

Some picked the Spartans (2-1) to be one of the surprising teams in the nation, but what they did Saturday showed that the consistency problems the program has been plagued with for years are still lingering. 

“We didn’t coach. We didn’t play. We didn’t do anything. ... I’m mostly disappointed in myself. I’ll take the hit. Put it all on me,” Michigan State coach Bobby Williams said. 

Receiver Charles Rogers might have been the only Michigan State player who didn’t have an awful game. He caught nine passes for 166 yards and a TD. He has caught at least one TD pass in his last 11 regular-season games – one short of the NCAA record held by Marshall’s Randy Moss, Michigan’s Desmond Howard and Pacific’s Aaron Turner. 

Counting last season’s Silicon Valley Bowl, Rogers has caught a TD pass in 12 straight games. 

“I’d rather have the win,” said Rogers, who also broke the school record with his seventh straight 100-yard game. “Luckily, it wasn’t during the Big Ten season. We still have nine games left this season and still have a chance to make our run and we plan on doing so.” 

Michigan State (2-1) plays No. 12 Notre Dame (3-0) at home Saturday. The Spartans have won five straight over the Fighting Irish, who are off to their best start since 1996. 

The Bears will play Air Force at home on Saturday before beginning the Pac-10 season at home against Washington State and at Washington. 

Tedford has brought Cal immediate respect one year after the team went a miserable 1-10. The passing game was Tedford’s specialty at Oregon and Fresno State before that, and so far the Bears have outscored their opponents 91-10 in first halves and 150-57 overall. 

“We know we have the athletes to play with anybody in the country,” Ward said. “Our coaching staff has told us that, and we’re all believers. We expected to win here, so we’re not surprised.” 

Defense has been the real surprise for Cal, however. The Bears forced five Michigan State turnovers and gave up only one, and they’re plus-10 in turnover margin this season after ranking 114th out of 115 Division I-A schools with a minus-17 margin last year. 

Michigan State drove to Cal’s 1 and 2 on consecutive drives in the first quarter, but the Spartans turned the ball over both times. They also fumbled the kickoff after two of the Bears’ first-half scores. 

Cal’s first-half outburst began with Jemeel Powell’s 90-yard punt return for a TD – the Bears’ longest in 36 years – midway through the first half. 

Ward returned a kickoff 56 yards, breaking several tackles, to set up Mark Jensen’s career-long 51-yard kick, which gave Cal a 12-0 lead. 

A trick play made it 22-0 with 19 seconds left in the half. Ward, a receiver, went in motion from left to right, caught a pitch from Boller, then lobbed the ball back to the quarterback for a 14-yard TD. 

Michigan State had brief hopes for a comeback in the second half. 

On the opening drive, the Spartans went 91 yards, capped by Smoker’s 15-yard TD pass to Rogers. On Cal’s next play, Jason Harmon intercepted a pass by Boller. 

Smoker’s 2-yard pass to Jason Randall cut the deficit to 25-14 midway through the third quarter. 

The Bears quickly ended the threat with Boller’s touchdown run, James Bethea’s second interception and Boller’s two TD passes. 

“That deflated us a bit,” Williams said. 

Boller was 19-of-33 for 232 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. He caught a 14-yard TD pass from receiver LaShaun Ward in the second quarter and scored the first of Cal’s three second-half touchdowns on a 2-yard run. 

“This is awesome,” Boller said. “Playing quarterback for a 1-10 or 3-7 team like I have is not fun. This is.” 

There was nothing moderate about Mayor Shirley Dean’s re-election campaign kickoff Sunday.  

The two-term incumbent basked in the enthusiastic support of approximately 150 supporters as she geared up for what her backers admit will be a tight race against Tom Bates. 

“We are going to win this but we are up against an incredible machine,” Dean told supporters at her still unfurnished campaign headquarters at 2200 Shattuck Ave. 

Bates, who represented Berkeley in the State Assembly for 20 years and is married to former Berkeley mayor and Assemblywoman-elect Loni Hancock, has the backing of the progressive majority of city counsel. 

Considered a moderate in Berkeley politics, Dean listed among her accomplishments: downtown renewal, improved cooperation between the city and the school board, new housing development and construction of the Interstate 80 pedestrian overpass and sports fields at Harrison Park. 

“This place [downtown] was a dead zone eight years ago,” she said.  

Dean noted that when she took office in 1994, Shattuck Avenue storefronts were empty and sidewalks were littered with trash and spare bicycle parts. Under her leadership, Dean said downtown has been transformed into a bustling commercial and arts district. 

Dean said that her administration has helped alleviate the city’s housing crunch by working with developers and neighborhood groups to build new units that do not detract from the character of neighborhoods. 

She also noted that city efforts to reach out to the school board were starting to bear fruit. Dean credited the city-sponsored school health clinic for a recent California study showing that Berkeley has the lowest teen pregnancy rate in the state. 

Dean, however, said Berkeley still has issues to tackle. She bemoaned the city’s playing field shortage and called for the inclusion of fields at Eastshore State Park. 

“We turn away 500 kids every year for sports teams because the council majority refuses to face up to the issue. That’s a disgrace,” Dean said. She also voiced support for additional downtown parking spaces and transportation improvements to help commuters who work in the city center. 

Dean’s election eight years ago ended 16 years of progressive rule. She said that with the progressives already enjoying a 5-4 City Council majority, a Bates victory would leave the progressive faction unchecked to pursue its agenda. 

“I’m the person with the finger in the dyke holding back the big machine from rolling over everybody,” Dean said. 

Dean successfully held back challenges from progressive Don Jelinik in 1994 and 1998, but Bates is seen as a tougher challenger. Whereas Jelinik had difficulty raising campaign funds and was considered by some as too far to the left, Bates has built a strong campaign war chest and is viewed as a moderate who can appeal to different segments of the electorate. 

According to the candidates Bates has raised $90,000 to date and Dean has garnered $65,000. Berkeley campaigning finance law forbids donations from businesses and limits personal donations to $250. 

Bates, who began campaigning in July, said he would use his contacts with state lawmakers to lobby on the city’s behalf.  

“I’m working to get people to work together to improve schools, increase affordable housing and make the Berkeley an environmental center again,” he said.

To the Editor:  

We miss Pacifica radio. We need you. We want you. We yearn to have you back. Pacifica and KPFA reflect so much of our heart and soul and mind. Like a spurned parent, like a separated lover, like an abandoned child, the city of Berkeley begs you to come home. The departure of Pacifica from Berkeley was the single biggest loss that the city has experienced in my years in office.  

This tragic departure revealed new lows in listener disempowerment, union undercutting, worker and volunteer lockout and counterproductive conflict .  

Our 91-year-old vice-mayor was so upset she was willing to be arrested. KPFA and Pacifica symbolize so much of the progressive peaceful vision manifesting Berkeley’s concern for human rights and justice, here and everywhere. 

On City Council I fight fiercely for greater representation of people of all races, especially Asians, Latinos and African Americans who are under-represented in hirings and appointments. I fight strongly too for representation of people of all ages especially students and youth, who are severely under-represented as well. We fight for the environment, for unions, for affordable housing, to shift money from policing to youth services, for increased funding for health and education, disabled accessibility, senior’s needs and for all our progressive values. The information available through KPFA and Pacifica has been central to virtually all of the social movements and political struggles of our lifetime.  

Thousands of people are awaiting the return of Pacifica with outstretched arms, open minds and wallets, yearning to see you thrive in our warm embrace, dreaming of Pacifica’s return to its home and eager to ride in the parade to welcome you back. Just think how good that parade could be for the next fund drive.  

Kriss Worthington  

Berkeley City Council member

Cal senior Pat Fisher scored his second game-winning goal in as many games to lead the Golden Bears to a 1-0 win over the Denver Pioneers at Edwards Stadium on Sunday. 

Fisher scored in the 50th minute on an assist from sophomore Calen Carr. Carr gathered the ball on the flank, juked past two defenders and put a perfect cross right to Fisher’s feet. Cal’s lone senior field player coolly slammed the ball past Denver goalkeeper Brian Lux for the game’s only goal. 

“It was pretty easy for me, I just put the ball in the corner of the net,” said Fisher, who scored his first goal of the season Friday against St. Mary’s. “Calen did all the hard work, so he should get most of the credit. I don’t even know how he saw me.” 

Cal head coach Kevin Grimes, however, praised Fisher for his overall play on the weekend. 

“Pat is definitely capable of coming up with big scores at big times,” Grimes said. “He was in position to score twice this weekend, and both times he knocked it in.” 

Cal had a few more scoring opportunities after the goal but couldn’t put another one away, and Denver rallied for several good shots in the final 15 minutes. Cal goalkeeper Josh Saunders made several nice saves, including a point-blank bullet he deflected away, to preserve his third shutout of the season. 

Sunday’s game was part of the California adidas-Legacy Classic, and Cal clinched at least a co-champion spot with the win. But for the Bears, who started the season 1-2-1, just getting two wins was plenty of reward for a hard weekend of work. 

“These are the games we have to win if we want to make the playoffs,” Fisher said. 

• MORAGA – Senior midfielder Brittany Kirk scored a goal with 14 seconds left in regulation to help No. 7 California secure a 1-1 tie at St. Mary’s Sunday afternoon at Garaventa Field. The tie improved the Golden Bears record to 4-1-1, and the Gaels are 1-4-1.  

“We showed great character in getting the tying goal,” said Cal head coach Kevin Boyd. “We battled to the end. We’re 4-1-1, and all six teams we have played so far have either been regionally or nationally ranked at some point this season. We’ve played a really good schedule and feel we’re doing quite well right now. We’re doing a great job playing like a team and getting results as a team.”  

Sunday was Cal’s first road game of the 2002 season and its fifth in a row without starting All-American forward Laura Schott and starting defender Kim Stocklmeir. Schott is nursing an MCL sprain and may return next Sunday against Fresno State, while Stocklmeir is out with a broken collarbone and will be out until at least mid-October.  

Kirk, who also tallied a goal and an assist in the Bears’ 2-1 victory over No. 3 Santa Clara on Friday, headed in the game-tying goal against St. Mary’s with a shot to the left corner following a scramble in front of the goal.  

The Gaels grabbed a 1-0 lead with under nine minutes to play in the game when they capitalized on a counter attack opportunity. Sarah Burgess fired a shot past Cal goalkeeper Sani Post after receiving a pass from Sarah Takekawa.  

In overtime the Bears outshot the Gaels 4-0, but neither team was able to score. SMC’s Ruth Montgomery finished the game with six saves, while Post tallied seven. 

Daily Planet Wire Services contributed to this story.

A handful of pro-Palestinian students involved in the April takeover of UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall have accepted disciplinary action, according to university officials. 

Dean of Students Karen Kenney said she could not discuss the specifics, citing student confidentiality. But she confirmed that, in some cases, the deal includes a probationary period of a semester or more. If there are no further violations, students will receive marks on their records but will not face suspension or any other penalty, she said. 

Kenney said some of the 41 students facing conduct charges, which range from trespassing to disturbing the peace to disobeying a university official, have not yet reported to her office to face those charges.  

But the university has offered similar deals, known as “informal resolutions,” to any students who have appeared and will make the same offer to the remaining students, she said. 

Students can either accept an informal resolution or take part in a hearing before a student conduct board composed of faculty, staff and students. 

The student conduct board can dismiss the charges or recommend penalties ranging up to expulsion. Kenney has the final say on any punishment. 

“We hope to resolve all these cases, one way or the other, by the end of October,” Kenney said. 

The 41 students were among 79 people arrested by UC Berkeley police after occupying Wheeler Hall and demanding that the nine-campus University of California system divest from Israel. 

UC’s Board of Regents has come out against the divestment movement. 

Last spring the Alameda County District Attorney dropped all criminal charges against the “Wheeler 79” in exchange for the payment of court fees.

To the Editor: 

I am writing to express my family’s heartfelt thanks to the Berkeley Police Department and especially to the drug task force for their continued efforts in controlling the drug dealing in our tough neighborhood. As longtime residents of south Berkeley, we have experienced the difficulties of co-existing with drug dealing on our corners and the impact of crimes that occur in neighborhoods plagued with this problem. We share with our neighbors the desire to live in a safe and healthy environment. Please keep up your efforts. We have noticed the recent improvements. 

Laura Menard  

Berkeley

Cardinal nip Cal water polo 

LOS ANGELES – No. 4 Cal and No. 1 Stanford duelled each other for 28 minutes, but the Cardinal came out on top by the narrowest of margins, 8-7, in the semifinal match of the SoCal Tourney at USC’s McDonald’s Swim Stadium. The loss was the Bears’ (2-1) first of the young season while Stanford remains undefeated (5-0).  

Stanford dominated the first half of play and went into the break on top 5-2. But the Bears came roaring back to make a game of it, outscoring the Cardinal 5-3 in the second half.  

Juniors Will Quist and Attila Banhidy paced the Bears’ attack with three goals apiece and senior Andrew Stoddard added a score of his own - his fifth of the tournament.  

Junior goalkeeper Tim Kates played solidly in the net, tallying six saves. 

Cal volleyball wins tournament 

DALLAS, Texas - The Cal women’s volleyball team (9-0) continued its unbeaten streak and won its third consecutive tournament with a 3-0 (30-20, 30-21, 30-21) victory over host Southern Methodist (4-5), Saturday evening at the DoubleTree Invitational in Dallas, Tex. The Bears are 9-0 and have won all 27 games in those nine matches this season.  

Cal has now established a school record for consecutive games won (27, the old record was 21 set in 1993) to start a season and have tied a school record (with the 1989 squad) by starting the season with nine consecutive match victories.

Today is the deadline for Faiz Aldabashi and his brother Ali to clear loiterers from sidewalks around their south Berkeley shop Easy Liquor at San Pablo Avenue and Haskell Street. If they fail, the brothers say, the state will strip them of their liquor license.  

“It’s bull,” said Faiz. 

But authorities disagree. What happens in front of a liquor store, they say, is the owner's responsibility. If the loitering continues, state officials said Easy Liquor could be the third liquor store in south Berkeley shut down or stripped of its alcohol license this year. 

In January, the city closed Brothers Liquors at 3039 Shattuck Ave., after authorities discovered various criminal activities run from the store. A few months later, J & B Liquors at 3242 Adeline St., lost its alcohol license for selling liquor to minors. 

ABC officials would not comment on the Easy Liquor case, but Ali said he was asked to clean up his store and hire a security guard.  

Ali said he has complied with ABC demands. Last week he ripped out an old cracked floor and installed a new one. He has also reduced store hours, closing at 11 p.m. instead of 2 a.m. Additionally, he has installed four hidden cameras on the inside and outside of his store to deter criminal activity. 

But Ali is skeptical that his changes will be enough to appease ABC inspectors. 

“This place has always been a hangout,” he said.  

During a morning interview with Ali, a tall man in a hooded red sweatshirt paced in front of the store. Ali said he was a drug dealer. 

“You see that guy walking by? Do you think I could do anything?” he said after he waved to the man. “If I say anything, he’s going to get pissed off.” 

Ed Kikumoto, a community organizer with the non-profit Alcohol Policy Network, had no sympathy for Ali’s plight.  

“It goes with the territory,” said Kikumoto, who organized neighbors against Brothers Liquors. “These business owners are in a quandary because they are selling a product that gets people into trouble.” 

Faiz disagreed. “Honest to goodness, if they took away the liquor license, if we stopped selling liquor, they (the loiterers) would not leave the corner,” he said. 

The law is not on the brothers’ side. The California Business and Professions Code states that the ABC can suspend or revoke a liquor license when a store fails “to take reasonable steps to correct objectionable conditions on the licensed premises.” 

“It puts responsibility on you as a business owner… It’s a privilege, not a right (to own a liquor store),” Kikumoto said. 

ABC officials would not comment on the Easy Liquor case, but Ali said he was asked to clean up his store and hire a security guard.  

Ali said he has complied with ABC demands. Last week he ripped out an old cracked floor and installed a new one. He has also reduced store hours, closing at 11 p.m. instead of 2 a.m. Additionally, he has installed four hidden cameras on the inside and outside of his store to deter criminal activity. 

But Ali is skeptical that his changes will be enough to appease ABC inspectors. 

“This place has always been a hangout,” he said.  

During a morning interview with Ali, a tall man in a hooded red sweatshirt paced in front of the store. Ali said he was a drug dealer. 

“You see that guy walking by? Do you think I could do anything?” he said after he waved to the man. “If I say anything, he’s going to get pissed off.” 

Ed Kikumoto, a community organizer with the non-profit Alcohol Policy Network, had no sympathy for Ali’s plight.  

“It goes with the territory,” said Kikumoto, who organized neighbors against Brothers Liquors. “These business owners are in a quandary because they are selling a product that gets people into trouble.” 

Faiz disagreed. “Honest to goodness, if they took away the liquor license, if we stopped selling liquor, they (the loiterers) would not leave the corner,” he said. 

The law is not on the brothers’ side. The California Business and Professions Code states that the ABC can suspend or revoke a liquor license when a store fails “to take reasonable steps to correct objectionable conditions on the licensed premises.” 

“It puts responsibility on you as a business owner… It’s a privilege, not a right (to own a liquor store),” Kikumoto said.

LOS ANGELES – California’s Libertarian Party voted Saturday to drop its candidate for governor because he spat on a radio talk show host. 

The party’s 15-member executive committee voted to rescind its endorsement of Gary Copeland’s campaign and to censure him for “repugnant” and unprofessional conduct. 

The Libertarian Party has about 98,000 registered members in California. 

The committee’s resolution also called on Copeland to apologize and to withdraw from the campaign. The state Legislature was urged to allow the party to remove his name from the November ballot. 

“There was just a lot of anger over what he did,” party chairman Aaron Starr said Saturday. “Everybody was quite appalled.” 

Copeland, 46, said he will continue to run. The radio host “deserved to be spat upon,” he said, and discounted the committee’s resolution. 

“It means absolutely nothing. They were not the people who voted for me in the primary. They were not the people ... who nominated me,” he said in a telephone call Saturday night from his Orange County home. 

The controversy has resulted in at least two death threats, Copeland said, but it also has given him “more press than I can handle” and donations have increased his campaign warchest from $6,000 to $20,000. 

“Now people know who I am,” he said. 

Copeland said he spat on KABC-AM radio host Brian Whitman after a Sept. 8 interview at the station’s Los Angeles studio. 

Copeland said that Whitman had applauded U.S. immigration control efforts. Copeland said he compared the efforts to the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans. 

The radio host then switched off his microphone, and when Copeland got up to leave, he heard Whitman make what he considered an insulting remark, so he spat on him. 

“He had just stepped over my line,” Copeland said. 

“Anyone who would strip the rights of minorities and espouse the greatness of government while disallowing our First Amendment rights deserves to be spat on.” 

Copeland won the party’s nomination in the March primary. The party had initially supported another candidate whose name wasn’t on the ballot after a judge ruled he didn’t qualify. 

The candidate, former Bellflower mayor Art Olivier, was barred from running for office because he failed to indicate a party affiliation on his voter registration form. 

The executive committee’s resolution asked voters to cast write-in votes for Olivier. The state Legislature also was asked to allow the party to choose future candidates at its annual convention rather than a primary election. 

“We want to be able to select the candidates who represent us,” Starr said. “Why does the state have any business telling us who we think our candidate should be?”

OAKLAND — The alleged ringleader of a violent clique of Oakland police officers known as “The Riders” will be conspicuously absent as defense lawyers launch their case next week. 

Whether that will help or hurt the case against the four former officers accused of misconduct remains unclear. 

“My intention is to try this case as if Frank Vazquez is sitting there,” said Alameda County Deputy District Attorney David Hollister. 

Hollister delivered his opening statement Thursday. Defense lawyers are scheduled to present their openings Tuesday. 

Authorities believe Vazquez, whose nickname was “Choker,” fled to Mexico to escape prosecution. 

Still, Hollister made Vazquez’s allegedly brutal leadership of “The Riders” a focal point of the trial’s first day. He outlined the accusations against Vazquez, repeated threats he made against rookie Keith Batt — who eventually turned in the four former officers — and even showed the jury of six men and six women a photo of Vazquez in uniform. 

The veteran training officer bragged about beating up a suspect after emptying a canister of pepper spray into his mouth, Hollister said, and then glossed over the incident in a police report and pressured the suspect to sign a falsified account. 

The officers, who have since been fired, are on trial for their alleged activities during the summer of 2000. They face a combined 26 felony counts, including beating suspects and falsifying police reports. 

Outside court, Hollister said he and defense lawyers for Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 37, Jude Siapno, 33 and Matthew Hornung, 30, agreed not to tell jurors that Vazquez is a fugitive. 

Peter Keane, dean of the Golden Gate Law School, called the decision unusual and extremely risky — for both sides. 

“The jury is going to wonder why he isn’t there: ’Where is he?’ ’Have you given him a pass?”’ Keane said.

VALLEJO – Police Department reports that a house fire that sent twin 12-year-old boys to a Sacramento burn unit was started by three or four suspects who lobbed Molotov cocktails through the home's windows. 

Police Sgt. Don Hendershot said the fire set at 913 Miller St. at about 11:30 p.m. Friday may have been in retaliation for a prior confrontation between the victims' family and another group. 

The twins are now at the Shriners Hospital burn center in Sacramento, where one boy is listed in critical condition with burns on 35 percent of his body, and the other boy is being treated as an outpatient. 

Vallejo fire spokesman Bill Tweedy said the fire destroyed the family's house and arson investigators are conducting a criminal probe. A preliminary damage estimate is at $200,000. 

The firefighters called to the blaze struck a second alarm immediately after arrival upon finding a full-blown fire in the house and flames coming out of every window. 

Everyone inside the house escaped unharmed expect for the 12-year-old twins. 

Tweedy says that firefighters had the fire under control by 12:16 a.m. but stayed at the scene throughout the morning to extinguish hot spots and assist with the criminal investigation being handled by Vallejo police. 

OAKLAND – A spokesman for the Oakland Police Department says an early morning homicide that claimed the life of an 81-year-old man appears to have stemmed from a family dispute now that a relative is in custody. 

Sgt. Gus Galindo would not release the male suspect's name or relation to victim Chea Prak, but he did say they were relatives. 

Prak's murder, which is the city's 81st of the year, occurred at about 1 a.m. in the 1200 block of 12th Street. 

Responding officers discover Prak dead at the scene from what appears to be gunshot wounds, Galindo said.

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco city officials diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from the Hetch Hetchy Water and Power System and left the aging water system vulnerable to natural disasters and decay, a newspaper reported Sunday. 

The money that could have been used to repair the aging system was siphoned off to finance city programs and salaries, according to a report by the Chronicle in its Sunday edition. 

The lack of repairs to the water system come at a time when engineers warn that a large earthquake could cause enough damage to the Calaveras Dam in Alameda County to cut off most water to 2.4 million Bay Area residents for two months. 

Some now charge that the diversion of Hetch Hetchy funds constitutes mismanagement. 

“The politicians used the Hetchy system as a money machine in the basement of City Hall,” said Jim Chappell, president of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research. “For decades, there has been gross irresponsibility in the siphoning of funds clearly needed for Hetchy maintenance.” 

City records show that $670 million went to the San Francisco’s general fund and not to make repairs on any portion of Hetch Hetchy’s deteriorating system. The diversion of money to that city fund is legal, however, and the former head of the city’s Public Utilities Commission defended past expenditures that were made using Hetch Hetchy money. 

“There is nothing wrong in my view with using Hetchy power resource to generate money for the general fund, which pays for cops, parks and recreation and everything that people hold dear,” former San Francisco PUC chief Rudy Nothenberg told the Chronicle. 

There is a proposed fix that would mend some of the water system’s ailments. This fall, San Francisco voters will be asked to approve a $1.6 million bond measure that would cover the city’s costs of rebuilding the system. 

Overall, the Hetch Hetchy rebuilding and restructuring would cost $3.6 billion, with San Francisco’s suburban neighbors raising the balance through increased water bills over the next 13 years. 

During that period, San Franciscan’s water bills would triple. 

The Hetch Hetchy system consists of 167 miles of aqueduct and is more than 75 years old. It includes 21 reservoirs, 25 tanks, two pump stations and 40 miles of tunnels. 

Several warnings to repair portions of the decaying system have been ignored, the Chronicle reported. 

In 1987, a consultant to the city PUC faulted the agency for its lack of familiarity with the condition of the system and poor planning. Seven years later, city supervisors budget analyst Harvey Rose said the city PUC lacked the basic information to prioritize what had to be done to keep water flowing through the system. 

And three years ago experts examined the system and concluded a strong earthquake would cause massive failures throughout the Hetch Hetchy.

Two years ago, Berkeley received a $450,000 state grant to install two sets of traffic lights along Telegraph Avenue and make several other street improvements. Today, those lights sit dark, covered with yellow caution tape. 

Delays in awarding the installation contract and routing power to the lights, located at the Russell and Stuart street corners, have played a role.  

But the real stumbling block has been a complicated, shifting debate over traffic, bike lanes, student safety and neighborhood politics. 

The city applied for the state’s “Safe Routes to School” grant in 2000, hoping that the traffic lights would protect children crossing Telegraph Avenue on their way to Willard Middle School on Stuart Street and LeConte Elementary School on Russell Street. 

But early this year, neighbors got wind of the plans, raised a series of objections and condemned the city for failing to include them in the plan to install lights.  

“The neighborhood was almost entirely left out of the loop,” said Wim-Kees van Hout, a Derby Street resident who has been active on the issue. 

In April, City Council directed the transportation department to finish installing the lights, but prohibited staff from switching them on until the completion of a thorough public process. 

In a pair of public meetings in August, run by the city’s dispute resolution service, neighbors aired a series of competing concerns.  

Some Russell and Stuart Street residents worried that traffic lights, replacing the existing stop signs, would turn their streets into major thoroughfares, with cars racing to catch green lights. 

A plan to install “right turn only” signs, advocates argued, would divert cars off Russell and Stuart Streets and eliminate the thoroughfare concern.  

But another set of residents worried that “right turn only signs” would simply push traffic onto other neighborhood streets. 

Throw in concerns about bicyclists’ safety, raised by the Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition, and the thicket of interests and clashing personalities became almost unmanageable. 

But in recent weeks, van Hout said, the neighbors, school safety advocates and bicyclists, after much hard work, reached consensus on a signaling plan for the traffic lights. 

The plan includes, among other things, flashing yellow lights that convert to double yellow and then red, and a separate signaling system for bicyclists and pedestrians. 

Van Hout said the agreement marks a major milestone in the process. 

“It is almost unheard of in Berkeley city politics that you have a coalition like we have now of groups that were at such loggerheads,” he said. 

But Assistant City Manager for Transportation Peter Hillier questioned the depth of neighborhood support for the “consensus” plan and argued that it poses significant public safety risks. 

“It’s confusing and it’s complicated,” Hillier said. “Because it’s complicated and confusing, people will do unpredictable things. If people do things that are unpredictable, that creates potential safety problems.” 

But van Hout argues that the double yellow system has had success at several San Francisco intersections and that a public information campaign, combined with the continued presence of a crossing guard at Stuart Street, could work to acclimate residents to the proposed signaling system. 

Hillier said van Hout’s proposed public education campaign is “unrealistic” and warned that accidents could happen while residents acclimate to the proposed system. 

Hillier raises his concerns about the neighborhood plan and details the latest city proposal, which includes a more conventional signaling plan, in a Sept. 11 letter to area residents that should hit mailboxes in the coming days.  

City officials and neighbors will discuss the competing plans in a Sept. 25 meeting at Willard Middle School, and staff plans to make a final recommendation to City Council in October. 

City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whose district includes the traffic lights, said there is “a lot of room for compromise” between the city and neighborhood plans, and urged a quick resolution. 

“I’m opposed to spending another year or two debating the specifics,” said Worthington. “I think we have a responsibility to the safety of the kids and the whole community (to turn the lights on).” 

But George Rose, a sixth-grade teacher at Willard who has long been an advocate for the lights, worries that any neighbors who do not get their way will go City Council and seek to further delay the process. 

“May main concern is how politicized this process has become,” he said. “It’s kind of sad when kids are at stake.”

To the Editor: 

So in Thursday's Daily Planet, I was reading about how upset College Republican Bret Manley was, and about the criticism he had for the student speeches made at the Sept. 11 memorial on campus. Mr. Manley's quote was: “I thought those were absolutely inappropriate. I almost look at it as a funeral service. You don't go to a funeral service and talk about war.” 

But then I remembered the speeches that President George W. Bush gave at the memorial services that he had attended that day. I distinctly remembered Mr. Bush going to great pains to “renew our commitment to win the war,” and swearing that “what our enemies have begun, we will finish.” 

It sure is hard to imagine Mr. Manley losing sleep over the inappropriate behavior of his fellow republican President Bush. But I guess anything is possible in Berkeley. 

Christopher Cantor 

Berkeley

Until the late 1930s the blocks south of the university were a family oriented, residential neighborhood with churches of different denominations. St. Marks Church and other churches in the area are survivors of a residential neighborhood that no longer exists. When St. Marks was constructed, for example, there was a full residential neighborhood across the street, between Bancroft and Allston, where the sports facilities now stand.  

St. Mark’s Church was dedicated in February 1902, and replaced a Victorian styled, wood-frame church constructed on this site in 1877. The church is dedicated to Rev. William I. Kip California's first Episcopalian bishop.  

St. Marks is the most significant example of the Mission Revival style in Berkeley, and one of the Bay Area's most outstanding examples as well. It is the best surviving work of architect William Curlett (1845-1914), a native of Ireland who arrived in San Francisco in 1871 and established his architectural practice around 1877.  

Its square-shaped, four-story bell tower, at the corner of Bancroft and Ellsworth, is the church's most prominent feature. The tower consists of two arched entries on the first floor, with an open loggia with two arched openings on all four sides. (These openings were reopened during the church's recent restoration.) At each of the four corners are turrets with domed tops and on top of the tower is an octagonal lantern with a octagonal domed roof topped by a cross. 

On the west side of the church, facing Ellsworth Street, the Mission-styled gable end of the main sanctuary contains a beautiful stained-glass rose window by Tiffany. Another bell tower, on the southwest corner, is only two stories tall, but also has a domed roof and a simple arched entrance. The cruciform shape of the church is said to be modeled after Mission Don Carlos Borromeo in Carmel. The road screen, pulpit and lectern were carved in the interior design studios of Vickory, Atkins and Torrey. 

Along Bancroft Way (east of the main bell tower) is an open, one-story arcade resting on an arched colonnade that has a slopping shed roof. Rising behind this arcade is the large, three-story sanctuary. A second arcade connects the church to the parish house next door, which was added in 1912 and designed by Willis Polk. The arcades are a perfect design element to modify the mass and height of the sanctuary and to provide a pedestrian scale at the sidewalk.  

Susan Cerny is author of Berkeley Landmarks and writes this in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.  

The Cheap Suit Serenaders just weren’t made for these times. The impetus for the band came when two collectors of vintage 78 rpm records bumped into each other at an Alameda Flea Market more than 30 years ago. An animated discussion between the two men revealed a shared love for the recorded music of the late 1920s, a boom time in the music industry.  

Al Dodge and acclaimed cartoonist Robert Crumb became good friends who would complement and inspire each other. 

“Crumb and Al really hit it off,” said Robert Armstrong, Dodge’s childhood friend. “Al called me up and said, ‘Hey, Crumb really likes this old music too.’ ”As adolescents in Pasadena, Dodge and Armstrong took music lessons from a World War I veteran, learning old songs on mandolin and banjo.  

Shortly after, Armstrong moved to the Bay Area, and the trio began trading records at Dodge’s house on McGee Street in Berkeley. They then went on a one-year, sort of anthropological road trip, relying on the kindness of friends and strangers in their quest for their Holy Grail – what they thought must have been thousands of 78 records in people’s closets, cellars and attics.  

The fact that Crumb and Armstrong are both cartoonists and fans of vintage music isn’t as strange as one might think. “Certain parts of American culture have an appeal,” Armstrong said. “I could tell Crumb was influenced by earlier cartooning styles. One day, while he was looking for comics, he came across old records. We have a shared love of old culture.” 

The trio played instruments, too, and soon formed an impromptu group dubbed “R. Crumb and the Keep on Truckin’ Orchestra,” an ironic jab at Crumb’s most famous cartoon image. When Terry Zwigoff joined the group, a name change was in order, and a gig at an upscale San Francisco wedding provided inspiration for the name Cheap Suit Serenaders.  

“We were these grubby, poor guys playing a fancy wedding in Pacific Heights,” Armstrong said. “We all went to the Goodwill Store on Valencia Street and bought 10-dollar suits.” Armstrong credits Dodge with inventing the name. 

The Suits went on to record three records in the 1970s for the now-defunct Blue Goose label. Appropriately, they also made two 78 records, including 1972’s “River Blues”/”Wisconsin Wiggles.” The second 78 has a title unsuitable for print in a newspaper, but was based on an English folk record from the 1930s. 

Although the group does not focus on any one genre, they continue to find inspiration in the time period.  

“In 1926, they figured out how to make records using electronic microphones,” Armstrong said. “Record companies sent out scouts all over the country to find talent and preserved all these old regional styles that were disappearing.  

At the same time there was lots of cross-fertilization, because you could finally hear music from the other side of the country. Jazz bands influenced Hawaiian bands; the blues influenced hillbilly music. It was a good time in recording.”  

The Great Depression ensured that only the most commercial bands survived, something that still affects the music business today. “Everything is so homogenized now,” Armstrong said.  

The Suits are now far apart geographically, and only get together once a year to recreate their bathtub-gin era magic. “Everyone’s off doing other stuff,” said Armstrong.  

Terry Zwigoff produced a documentary on Crumb three years ago. Instrumentalist Bob Brozman tours the world. Crumb lives in France. And Armstrong lives near Davis, playing in three bands, painting custom guitars, and teaching children’s illustration classes. 

“We all probably wish we were living in a different day and age,” said Armstrong, 52. “There is something that is missing from contemporary music, a lyrical quality. Radio, MTV, that stuff falls flat on my ears. But I’m out of the loop—that’s young people’s music.”  

While serious about their music and collection of classic instruments, Armstrong points out that the whole exercise is fun.  

“We don’t want to seem precious. We’re not a museum recreation. We want to keep the spirit alive – there’s a certain fun encoded in the music.”

Saturday, September 14 

Basic Personal Preparedness 

9 to 11 a.m. 

Fire Department Training Center  

997 Cedar St. 

Learn five critical steps to take care of yourself, your family and your home. Classes open to those 18 or older who live or work in Berkeley. 

981-5605, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Free 

Congressman Dennis Kuchinich  

7 p.m. 

Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley Campus, near University Avenue 

Chair of the House Progressive Caucus will speak. Keith Carson, Country Joe McDonald and performance artist Shelly Glaser will also be on hand. 

http://www.bfuu.org/rscongress 

$10 in advance, $12 door 

Heritage Day 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Fourth Street and University Avenue 

International BBQ and beer festival 

Free 

Spin for the Stars Fund-raiser 

9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Spieker Aquatics Complex, Recreational Sports Facility on UC Berkeley campus 

Noncompetitive swimming and stationary cycling event. Proceeds will help Cal STAR enhance its facilities and programs for the disabled. 

$20 registration fee, $35 for biathlon  

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237, Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

“Standing Together for Trees” 

9 a.m. to noon 

Fellowship Hall, Cedar St. near Bonita St. 

Updates on local and world forestry issues. Presentations by Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, and Kristen Kirk or Forest Forever. 

636-7659 

Free 

West Berkeley Open Air Market 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

University Avenue between  

Third and Fourth streets. 

West Berkeley celebrates Neighborhood Heritage Day with crafts, food, live music, art and family entertainment. 

841-8562 or sfbayshellmounds@yahoo.com 

Free 

Sunday, September 15 

Knowledge of Freedom/Undoing Negativity 

6 p.m. 

The Tibetan Nyingma Institute  

1815 Highland Place 

Nyingma Institute instructor Abbe Blum reads from “New Beginnings” 

843-6812 

Free 

Bay Area Workers Democracy Network Forum 

3 p.m. 

390 27th St./Broadway St., Oakland 

The Fight Against Government Intervention - dicussing the need to build a democratic trade union movement. 

(415) 661-1371 

$5 donation 

Monday, September 16 

Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation (BEST) Coalition  

meeting, 6 to 8 p.m. 

Central Library, Kitteredge Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

Group joins pedestrians, bicyclists, mass transit users and land-use advocates. Topics of discussion include: Berkeley height initiative, pedestrian issues and employer incentive plans. Potluck. 

652-9462, imgreen@jps.net 

Tuesday, September 17 

Berkeley Fibromyalgia Support Group 

Arthritis Foundation - “Easy and Fun Things To Do In The Water” 

12 to 2 p.m. 

Alta Bates Medical Center, Maffly Auditorium - Herrick Campus 

2001 Dwight Way 

Video presentation. Group meets every third Tuesday of each month. 

644-3273 

Free 

“How to Grow Dahlias” 

1 p.m. 

Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 

A presentation by Dr. Erik Gaensler, vice president of the California Dahlia Society. 

524-4374 

Free 

Breast Self Exam for Seniors 

10 to 11:30 a.m. 

Maffley Auditorium, Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way 

Workshop to educate women with physical limitations about accessing breast health care and do-it-yourself exam education. 

869-6737 

Free 

Freedom From Tobacco 

6 to 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center  

2939 Ellis St. 

A quit smoking class. First of six Thursday evenings through Oct. 24.  

981-5330, quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Free to Berkeley and Albany residents, students and employees. 

Simplicity Forum 

7 to 8:30 p.m  

Claremont Branch Library  

2940 Benvenue Ave. 

A panel of people who will share their experiences and ideas for living inexpensively but richly.  

549-3509, www.simpleliving.net 

Free 

Wednesday, September 18 

Kick Off Party for the Berkeley Coffee Initiative 

7 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center  

3105 Shattuck Ave. 

Music, speakers and events in support of the Berkeley coffee initiative, Measure O. 

(415) 575-5338 

$5 at door 

Peace Walk and Vigil 

6:30 p.m. - Every Wed. 

Meet at Downtown Berkeley Bart Station 

Join us for a peace walk along Shattuck Ave. for one hour. 

528-9217 

Free 

Saturday, September 21 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) 

9:15 to 11 a.m. 

St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. 

mtbrcb@pacbell.net 

Free 

Do-It-Yourself all-Natural  

Body Care from Your Kitchen 

Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Learn how to make your own all-natural skin care from products you might already have in your own kitchen. 

548-2220, Ext. 233, erc@ecologycenter.org 

$10 for members, $15 for nonmembers 

Third Annual David Brower  

Youth Awards 

6 p.m. 

Schwimley Theater, 1920 Allston Way 

Celebrate the next generation of environmental activists at Earth Island Institute’s award ceremony. R.S.V.P. 

(415) 788-3666, Ext. 260  

www.earthisland.org/bya 

Coastal Cleanup Day 

10 a.m. 

Work at the outflow of Strawberry Creek to clean up the San Francisco Bay coastline. 

info@strawberrycreek.org or 848-4008 

Fall Plant Sale 

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

200 Centennial Dr. 

Annual plant sale featuring rare and unusual plants. Members-only preview and auction from 9 to 11 a.m.  

643-2755, www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden/ 

Free  

Sunshine Workshop 

10 a.m. to noon 

Sixth floor, City Hall, 2180 Milvia St. 

Get up to speed on open records laws, open meetings laws and sunshine ordinances. Experts, including Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition, will speak. 

BerkeleySunshine@Yahoo.com 

Free  

East Bay Shoreline Clean Up 

9.am. to 12 p.m. 

Sea Breeze Market and Deli - meeting/staging area. 

On the corner of West Frontage Rd. and University Ave., Berkeley. 

Arrive promptly to sign appropriate waivers , get coffee and listen to safety talk. We will provide bags, tally cards and a raffle of donated prizes; groups of ten or more need to pre-register by calling 644-8623. 

Free 

The St. Mary’s Panthers played 42 minutes of pretty good football on Friday, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for six minutes of horrible football. 

Bishop O’Dowd High scored 28 points in six minutes during the second quarter that propelled the Dragons to a 28-13 win in Berkeley. Quarterback Danny Brethauer threw consecutive touchdown passes of 22 and 30 yards and running backs Tyson Butler and Zach Walker each ran for a score during the rally. 

“We really self-destructed for those eight or nine minutes,” St. Mary’s head coach Jay Lawson said. “I though we regrouped pretty well after that, but you can’t take those minutes away.” 

St. Mary’s actually got out to a strong start, stuffing the Dragons on two straight runs to get possession on downs near midfield and scoring on a Fred Hives plunge from the 1. But after the teams traded punts, the Dragons started gaining yards in big chunks. Walker ran outside for gains of 17 and 13 and Brethauer started to find his rhythm. 

On a 4th-and-11 from the St. Mary’s 22-yard line, Brethauer dropped back and scrambled to his right away from pressure. After a few seconds, the senior signal-caller found Drew Glover in the corner of the end zone for a touchdown. 

“Danny made a great play on the first touchdown,” O’Dowd head coach Paul Perenon said. “The protection broke down and he bought himself some time. That wasn’t where the play was supposed to go, but he made something out of it.” 

The Panthers went three-and-out on the ensuing series, and punter Jason Haller’s kick went just five yards to the 30-yard line. Brethauer immediately hit Jordan Murchison on a fade pattern for another touchdown, giving O’Dowd a 14-7 lead. 

Hives, who had 94 yards on 22 carries in his debut as starting tailback, coughed up the ball two plays into the next drive with the Dragons recovering on the Panthers’ 26. Butler scored on a nine-yard run moments later. Then it was St. Mary’s quarterback Steve Murphy’s turn to fumble, and O’Dowd’s Shea McIntyre picked up the ball and ran out at the 27-yard line. On the next play Walker cut a run back inside and scored through the Panthers’ defense. 

“We just made a lot of mental errors in the second quarter,” Murphy said. “I made one myself when I fumbled the ball away.” 

That was all the scoring until St. Mary’s scored a consolation touchdown on a pass from sophomore Scott Tully, who played most of the second half, to wide receiver Will Reid for a 28-yard touchdown. 

Tully was 6-for-14 passing for 105 yards in his first varsity action, while Murphy threw for just 58 yards before shifting to running back. But while Tully is taller and has a stronger arm than Murphy, the sophomore also looked anxious at times, overthrowing receivers and misreading their cuts. Don’t expect a quarterback controversy to arise, at least not yet. 

“I liked the way (Tully) stood in there and threw the ball,” Lawson said. “But he also made some mistakes. We just needed to do something to get things going, and Scott did that a little bit.” 

The Panthers have several issues to work out before next week’s game. One is protecting Murphy from pass-rushers, as the quarterback was harassed every time he dropped back to pass. He was only sacked once officially, but he was forced to scramble most of the time and even escaped one sack by pitching the ball to Hives at the last second for a short gain. Murphy is mobile but undersized, and throwing while being chased isn’t his strong suit. 

St. Mary’s will also have to do some serious work on special teams. Haller’s first three punts went a total of 21 yards, and his best effort of the day, a 34-yarder, was returned 26 yards by O’Dowd. Jon Taranto was the punter before going down for the year with a knee injury, and the St. Mary’s coaches are hesitant to use tight end Nick Osborn, who is a soccer goalkeeper, due to ankle injuries. Also, one of Brendan Slevin’s extra-point attempts was blocked. 

The Panthers will try to address their problems before facing El Cerrito next week. Murphy finished his postgame interview on a determined note. 

“This game isn’t our whole season. I wanted to win it, for sure, but it’s over,” he said. “We have to concentrate on beating El Cerrito next week. A 9-1 season wouldn’t be so bad.”

Berkeley must reduce barriers to development if it hopes to comply with the state’s housing law and retain control of its zoning ordinances, state regulators say. 

Last month the state rejected Berkeley’s plan to meet its quota of planned affordable housing – 1,269 units by 2007, saying the city is not on a track toward supplying enough housing. 

If Berkeley fails to lift development constraints, as the state is requiring, the city could be vulnerable to unwanted developments. 

City officials say that a Sept. 4 meeting between housing staff and state regulators helped bridge some of their gaps in the plan, called the housing element, but state representatives were not as optimistic. 

Cathy Creswell, deputy director for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, said that the city must simplify its approval process for housing projects, which developers say can stall housing projects for years. 

“We’re hearing that people trying to build housing are facing significant barriers,” she said. 

Unlike most California cities, which almost always approve legally-zoned affordable housing developments, Berkeley allows neighbors to petition developments they think would hinder their neighborhood or demolish historic structures.  

Developers say Berkeley residents have abused their right to influence development. 

“It’s a pity that the city has to spend thousands of hours because a few people want to stop an affordable housing project they say is unsuitable for a neighborhood,” developer Patrick Kennedy said. 

First a series of appeals delayed Kennedy’s proposed four story apartment complex and commercial space at 2700 San Pablo Ave. Now its a neighborhood group’s lawsuit. All told the project is several years behind, Kennedy said. 

But Berkeley refuses to consider changing its housing policy. 

At the recent meeting with Creswell, Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton said that to offset the city’s arduous permit process, the city offers developers some perks. Berkeley requires only one parking space per new unit of housing, while most neighboring towns, including Albany, require two. 

Barton added that the primary obstacle to developing affordable housing in Berkeley was not the permit process, but city funding, which the city is now addressing. The City Council placed a measure on the November ballot to increase home sales tax. Proceeds from the tax will go to replenish the city’s housing trust fund, which subsidizes affordable housing developments.  

Although Barton said he was optimistic that the state department of Housing and Community Development will in the end sign off on the housing element, Creswell said changes are needed. 

Little public support exists for loosening zoning approval procedures. Residents recently criticized the housing policy, saying it is too lenient. 

Berkeley debated its housing element for three years before City Council approved it last December. Any policy changes would require more public hearings and could turn into months of additional debate. 

However, if the city’s housing plan is rejected again, it risks losing significant control over new development. Without a valid housing element, a developer has more leverage to sue the city over a rejected project by saying the city cannot reject affordable housing because it hasn’t met its quota. 

Lynda Hart is one developer threatening to sue the city over a rejected project. 

“Since they don’t have an approved housing element they don’t have a leg to stand on,” Hart said recently. 

To the Editor: 

Congratulations on an impressive Sept. 11 front page.  For a fleeting moment, just quickly scanning the headlines, I thought I was back in the Berkeley I once knew, the Berkeley that existed before the Sixties ruined it: patriotic (God bless our firemen and the flag), decent and moral (cracking down on massage parlors), and respectful of the law (O’Donnell goes to prison). Then I read on.  Oh well.  It was nice to imagine that my old hometown was back again, just for a minute or two.  Maybe some day… 

Jeanne Gray Loughman 

Berkeley

Senior midfielder Brittany Kirk had a goal and an assist to lead the Cal women’s soccer team past third-ranked Santa Clara, 2-1, Friday at Edwards Stadium. 

The seventh-ranked Golden Bears improve their record to 4-1, while the Broncos, the defending national champions, fall to 2-2. Cal beat the Broncos 2-1 last year in Santa Clara. 

Both teams were missing starters – for Cal, forward Laura Schott and defender Kim Stocklmeir were out; Santa Clara missed U.S. under-19 national team defender Jessica Ballweg and forward Bree Horvath. But Santa Clara seemed to be hit harder than Cal, as the Broncos used just one player off its bench. 

Kirk got the Bears on the scoreboard in the 23rd minute. Taking a Dania Cabello pass, Kirk spied Santa Clara goalkeeper Erin Pearson off her goalline and chipped Pearson from 20 yards out for her first goal of the season. In the 25th minute, Kirk again shot from just outside the Broncos’ penalty area, but her shot slammed off the crossbar. Cal’s Tracy Hamm pounced and struck the ball past Pearson to make the score 2-0. The goal was the freshman forward’s third this season. 

“We were a little fortunate certainly on that first goal that went in,” Cal coach Kevin Boyd. “But you create your own luck when you’re working hard, and we’re working hard. 

“I was laughing with them before the game that maybe they weren’t quite as strong in the net and that maybe we should shoot [more]. We just discussed that we want to follow up balls on the keeper because she might drop one.” 

Boyd was going to substitute Kirk out in the first half due to the senior midfielder’s chronic foot problems, but her productive minutes changed his mind. Kirk didn’t leave the match until the 71st minute. 

“We’ve been worried about her body and how it’s been holding up,” Boyd said. “But she got a goal and an assist on the second one. She was playing very well and had her confidence up. We were going to leave her until I saw her energy start to drop.” 

Santa Clara improved in the second half, picking up its pace and creating more dangerous chances than it had in the first 45 minutes. 

The Broncos finally scored in the 55th minute, taking advantage of a Cal foul on All-American midfielder Aly Wagner. Wagner took the ensuing free kick, firing it past the wall and Cal goalkeeper Sani Post into the lower right corner of the net for her third goal of the season. 

The Broncos were a bit sluggish in the first half, perhaps distracted by the recent death of Lark Chastain, the mother of head coach Jerry Smith’s wife, U.S. national team and San Jose CyberRays defender Brandi Chastain. A few of the Broncos attended Lark Chastain’s memorial service Thursday. 

But Smith wouldn’t make any excuses. 

“We had a little bit of a tough week this week,” Smith said. “I just think you have to give a lot of credit to Cal. They played really well in the first half. I thought we outplayed them in the second half but didn’t create as many chances. They were the hungrier team and wanted to win the game more than we did.”

A Congressman crusading against weapons in space who is scheduled to visit Berkeley Saturday won’t need to worry about weapons assaults above his head. This week – in a statement of protest – the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution declaring a person’s space directly overhead a weapons-free zone. 

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio is scheduled to speak 7 p.m. Saturday at UC’s Wheeler Auditorium against Star Wars, a proposal to put weapons in space. 

This week the city also made a move to support Kucinich’s federal legislation known as the Space Preservation Act, which protests deploying weapons into space. The city’s resolution to side with Kucinich’s cause is the first formal support the Congressman has received. 

Councilmember Dona Spring, who sponsored the Berkeley resolution, hopes the city’s support will help propel the debate about weapons in space to the forefront of national and even international politics. 

“Our resolution is a model for the country,” Spring said, adding that she believes weapons in space is a bad idea. 

“It continues escalation of the arms race and makes our nation even less secure,” she said. Pollution in space would also be a problem, she said. 

Kucinich’s bill is currently in the House International Relations Committee, where it has been since February. 

Many countries sympathize with Kucinich’s position against putting weapons in space, according to Carol Rosin, president of the Institute for Cooperation in Space. Although no international treaties have addressed the issue, on Nov. 29 the U.N. General Assembly voted 156-0 to take steps to address it. Meeting the consensus call last month, Russia and China issued a joint statement denouncing the deployment of weapons in space. There is a similar resolution in the works in Japan, and local resolutions supporting the Space Preservation Act are being considered in Berkeley and cities and towns across the nation. 

“Every weapon you know about will be up there [without the legislation],” Rosin said. “Along with many you can’t even imagine.” Those include psychotronic devices that can be “directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of ... mood management or mind control.” 

Kucinich’s bill does not propose to hinder industrial and military work in space, just ban weapon deployment. 

“The act allows for the military industrial complex to continue with their research and development, so long as it is not related to space-based weapons,” said Rosin.  

Kucinich’s proposal would impact space weapons construction at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, said Mary Lia Kelly of Tri-Valley Cares, a watchdog organization of nuclear development complexes. 

Production of such weapons would be halted under Kucinich’s plan, Kelly said.

To the Editor: 

Councilmember Linda Maio makes the astonishing claim (Forum, Sept. 7-8) that Berkeley will be able to add thousands of residents without increasing the number of cars. Huh? How would that happen? It has never happened anywhere else in the world. Berkeley has no means to require new residents to take local jobs and walk to them. They are legally entitled to drive to jobs in San Jose or Redwood City. If Berkeley's population increases by 10,000 and an amazingly high 90 percent of them don't have cars, then that is still 1,000 more cars on Berkeley's streets. 

Maio also asserts that Berkeley can't be “already too dense” because the population has dropped by 8,000 since 1970. That's like saying that air pollution can't be a problem because it's lower than it was in 1970. Proponents of higher density and more crowding should tell us how many more people they want in Berkeley. Will 10,000 be enough? 50,000? 100,000? 

Mark Johnson 

Berkeley 

Cal men’s soccer beats St. Mary’s 4-0 

The Cal men’s soccer team recorded its second win of the season Friday afternoon at Edwards Stadium with a 4-0 victory over St. Mary’s College. The Bears improved to 2-2-1 and the Gaels fell to 1-3-1, their third straight loss for the season.  

The Golden Bears wasted no time as senior Patrick Fisher put Cal on board less than four minutes into the game, assisted by freshman Garrett Terracciano.  

Sophomore Carl Acosta started it up again for the Bears six minutes into the second half with a 10-yard shot assisted by Fisher and freshman Pieter Berger. Cal continued to press as sophomore Mike Munoz scored his second goal of the season in the 60th minute off of a pass from Calen Carr. Cal added an insurance goal as Berger scored his first goal of the season in the 69th minute, assisted by sophomore Angel Quintero. 

Women’s volleyball still undefeated 

DALLAS, Texas - The Cal women’s volleyball team (7-0) remained undefeated with a 3-0 victory (30-8, 30-20, 30-27) over Texas-San Antonio (1-7), Friday at the DoubleTree Invitational in Dallas, Tex. The Bears are 7-0 and have won all 21 games in those seven matches this season.  

Cal’s 7-0 record ties the school’s best start since 1993,when the Bears also started off the season 7-0 and won 21 straight games.  

Against Texas-San Antonio, Cal was led by senior outside hitter Leah Young and sophomore outside hitter Mia Jerkov with 11 kills apiece. Jerkov also had a team-best .409 hitting percentage.

A plan to reduce Berkeley air pollution and possibly save a homeless shelter may have to wait until the city budget crisis clears up. 

In the coming weeks, advocates at the Ecology Center plan to ask the city to convert its fleet of 24 garbage trucks from diesel to cleaner biodiesel fuel. The $100,000 to $300,000 price tag, though, has some doubting that the city can afford a conversion. 

Furthermore, denying a conversion would likely further delay the expansion of a city homeless shelter at Harrison Park. 

That project is already on hold because of bad air quality. The shelter sits next to the city’s waste transfer station where its diesel trucks contribute to air pollution the city says is at “dangerously high” levels. 

Using biodiesel, made of soybean oil instead of petroleum, in the city’s sanitation trucks would reduce soot emissions and other harmful particulate matter by 80 percent, Ecology Center representatives said. The center, which provides the city’s recycling service, uses biodiesel fuel in its 10 recycling trucks. 

City Councilmember Linda Maio, who will bring the request before council, said councilmembers will likely support the idea. But the price might prohibit action, Maio said. 

“We squeaked through the budget this year to come up with another $100,000. ... It’s a matter of cost,” she said. 

Biodiesel costs roughly $1 more a gallon than regular diesel gasoline, and is only about 82 percent as efficient. In addition, because the fuel is used in just one of every10,000 diesel engines, few suppliers exist. 

This is bound to change, said Dave Williamson, recycling director at the Ecology Center. If more cities like Berkeley change to biodiesel, prices will fall and availability will rise. 

Williamson said the effort is worthwhile because the Ecology Center’s 10 biodiesel recycling trucks spare the city10 tons of pollution each year, Williamson said. 

If the city followed suit, air pollution that threatens the neighborhood near Harrison Park could be improved, he said. 

Berkeley already has committed itself to reducing citywide diesel engine emissions. The city has begun converting some of its diesel vehicles, like fire engines and school buses, to compressed natural gas engines, which are as clean as biodiesel and are more fuel efficient. 

However, the compressed gas engines cost approximately $75,000 each, so acquiring the funds could take years, Williamson said. The advantage of using biodiesel fuel is that it can be used in a regular diesel engine, so the city would not have to buy new engines. 

“We see biodiesel as a ‘bridge fuel’,” said Williamson. “It’s a way to get cities into the alternative fuel game without having to buy more trucks.” 

City Council is expected to ask city staff to estimate the cost of biodiesel conversion. A final decision is not expected until December, which environmental activists say is a dangerously long wait.  

“We know from [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] reports that the air is bad. Why wait three more months to start solving the problem,” said Martin Bourque, Ecology Center executive director. 

Contact reporter at matt@berkeleydailyplanet.net 

To the Editor: 

Councilmember Linda Maio makes the astonishing claim (Forum, Sept. 7-8) that Berkeley will be able to add thousands of residents without increasing the number of cars. Huh? How would that happen? It has never happened anywhere else in the world. Berkeley has no means to require new residents to take local jobs and walk to them. They are legally entitled to drive to jobs in San Jose or Redwood City. If Berkeley's population increases by 10,000 and an amazingly high 90 percent of them don't have cars, then that is still 1,000 more cars on Berkeley's streets. 

Maio also asserts that Berkeley can't be “already too dense” because the population has dropped by 8,000 since 1970. That's like saying that air pollution can't be a problem because it's lower than it was in 1970. Proponents of higher density and more crowding should tell us how many more people they want in Berkeley. Will 10,000 be enough? 50,000? 100,000? 

Mark Johnson 

Berkeley 

A senior water aerobics class canceled by the city two weeks ago was reinstated Friday. 

Seniors can attend the class for free at the West Campus Pool until November, when the pool is scheduled to close, said class member Sidney Velin. 

The four-year old class, sponsored by the Berkeley Adult School, was abruptly canceled Aug. 28 after the school was unable to pay $14,000 to the city for maintenance fees. 

Senior class members blamed the closure on the city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront department for demanding immediate payment from the adult school, even though preserving the program would not have added to the department’s pool costs. 

- Matthew Artz

To the Editor: 

“Some people” aren't trying to “turn back the clock” on civilization. On the other hand, Jenifer Steele (Forum, Sept. 6) looks at our environment as us verses them and would prefer to live in a time before bounties on animal scalps were outlawed. Enlightened Berkeley citizens understand that raccoons descend from the hills in late summer and fall when what little humans haven't already eliminated of their normal food sources dry up. True Berkeley residents know to secure their garbage can lids and put their dog food inside. There is enough room in this town for both humans and raccoons if people just use some common sense. 

Jenifer does bring up a valid point about the lack of natural predators, since humans have wiped out those “varmints” too. For the cost of just the first two or three years of what would be an endless and expensive raccoon-neutering campaign, Berkeley could afford to re-introduce a local coyote population, start bringing back bobcats and help re-establish golden eagle and other raptor populations. Natural (esp. baby) raccoon predation rates would go back up, and the rest of us would get the bonus of living with a more vibrant and diversified wildlife population. True, some Berkeley newcomers would probably pack up their poodles and koi ponds and move back to whatever sterilized and sanitized suburban or ultra-urban environments they came from. 

But Hey! Our little town is already overcrowded. We won't miss them. Obvious question: How long would it take for the Tilden Park, El Cerrito, North Oakland and Oakland hills raccoons to move into any void created by an hysterical and expensive Berkeley neutering program? Answer: days and weeks for full perimeter penetration and months-plus for full Berkeley coverage. Every year this ill-advised program would have to start from scratch. Jenifer says in her letter: “Right On!...if the City Council wants to sterilize them.” Wrong! This “idea” comes from a single councilwoman abusing her position to impress her careless out-of-town friend in a city that's already millions in the red. A simple public awareness campaign, along with free raccoon-proof garbage cans for all who want them would accomplish much more at a fraction of the cost. Jenifer's dogs are unlikely to ever bark at or challenge a raccoon again, but their wildlife-phobic owner seems to have learned little from her $110 lesson. Her ornamental non-native fish and plants are indeed fair game for hungry raccoons, regardless of the tragic loss of the oh-so-valuable time of “two very busy people.” By the way, just clean up any raccoon scat at the same time that you clean up after your dogs. Wildlife experts say that this will practically eliminate the already minuscule risk of any disease transmission. 

My previous letter was the first I'd ever written to an editor. Someone had to defend the absolute right of raccoons to coexist in our shared environment, (raccoons aren't big on writing letters). The volume of supportive e-mails, phone calls and back slaps I received for speaking up just reinforces the fact that the squeamish supporters of this inane proposal are far outnumbered by the rest of us longtime Berkeley residents who refuse to go to war against our furrier neighbors. Long live the Berkeley Raccoons. 

David Shefik 

Berkeley

SAN FRANCISCO — Labor unrest spread further through the University of California’s system Friday, as lecturers from Santa Cruz joined their counterparts at Davis and Berkeley on rotating one-day picket lines. 

Accusing the administration of failing to bargain in good faith, the non-tenured lecturers staged a series of information picket lines at the Santa Cruz campus to protest working without a contract for more than two years. 

“For the past two decades they have treated us as casual labor,” complained Mike Rotkin, a longtime UC Santa Cruz lecturer. “For the past two years we have been negotiating for a new contract and gotten nowhere.” 

Lecturers from UC Davis refused to teach in May, followed by their colleagues at Berkeley earlier this month. In both instances, they held one-day work stoppages to try to force the university back to the bargaining table. 

Friday’s action did not disrupt classes, which do not begin until next Wednesday. The protests are expected to continue through the weekend, said California Federation of teachers spokesman Fred Glass. 

The university maintains it has offered the lecturers the best deal it can given state budget limitations. Lecturers are industry professionals hired to supplement the university’s tenured professors’ teaching schedules. 

“We have to wait to see what kind of budget cuts we are going to face before we can know what we can offer,” said Paul Schwartz, a spokesman for the office of the President. 

The University of California could face up to $154 million in cutbacks in the upcoming budget, Schwartz said. 

Gov. Gray Davis has until January to finalize the cuts. Statewide, California faces up to $750 million in education budget cuts. 

A state mediator has been appointed in a bid to re-ignite the stalled talks. 

If that fails, labor action could spread beyond the Davis, Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses, Glass warned. 

“There is a wave of anger washing across the UC system as lecturers take action to get the university administration to bargain in good faith,” Glass said. “It’s been two years at the bargaining table and we’ve seen little progress.” 

The lecturers have for years accused the university of exploitation. 

The Santa Cruz lecturers voted this week to form a strike committee, putting them in a legal position to walk off the job as early as Oct. 7. 

In addition to the lecturers’ labor action, clerical workers have staged similar work stoppages and protests to demand better wages. 

The future of Reddy Realty, Berkeley’s biggest and most infamous real estate company remained in doubt Friday. 

Residents of the Reddy’s estimated 1,000 apartment units received letters Friday informing them that the company was going out of business and was in the process of assigning their properties to an outside property management company. 

A reddy employee, however, said that the company was only changing its name and that it would continue to own the buildings. 

A city official speculated that the company planned to relinquish the management of their properties to an outside firm, but retain ownership under a new name. 

In March 2001, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, the company’s former head, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and transporting a minor for illegal sex. The charges stemmed from an investigation into the death of a young female tenant who died the previous November of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a faulty heating unit. 

The “Reddy Realty” sign on the company’s Shattuck Avenue offices had been taken down as of Friday. The only sign on the storefront was for Jay Construction.  

n Assault, robbery 

Three teenage boys punched and robbed a 16-year old Berkeley High School student at 12:28 p.m. at the corner of Miliva and Blake streets Thursday, police said. The victim was attacked by a group of male teenagers, police said. One member of the group asked the boy if he had any money. When the victim said that he didn’t, the suspect punched him in the throat. The victim tried to escape, but was thrown down to the pavement. Three males took the victim’s watch and CD player. Police found one suspect with the watch, but the other two are at large. 

n Assault 

Six or seven teenage boys attacked a male at the intersection of Russel and Grant streets Thursday morning, police said. According to police, the suspects asked the victim if he had money. When the victim said that he did not, they hit him. The victim was not robbed and did not require medical attention. The suspects were described as black males between the ages of 16 and 18.

Marin woman escapes injury when car plunges from carport 

MILL VALLEY – A Marin County woman narrowly escaped injury Friday morning when she drove forward instead of backward out of her carport and her Mercedes landed three feet below on top of her home's roof. 

Southern Marin County Fire District spokesman Jeff Allen said a wall on top of the roof prevented the car from falling 60 feet to the ground.  

Allen said the elderly woman was not injured during the 11:25 a.m. incident at 370 Richardson Way in the Tamalpais Valley. 

Fire crews were still trying to get the car off the roof late this afternoon by using a series of jacks and ramps, Allen said. 

Union City police investigate triple homicide 

UNION CITY – Union City police are gathering clues Friday in a triple homicide after three bodies were discovered inside a ransacked home late Thursday night. 

Union City Police Capt. Brian Foley said the three Asian victims had been beaten so badly that a cause of death is unclear. 

Foley said authorities received a call shortly before 10 p.m.  

Thursday notifying them of an unconscious woman inside the two-story house at 33056 Compton Court, which a couple had been renting since August of last year. 

The person who called 911 was the mother of a woman who had been living at the house. The mother, who was interviewed at police headquarters earlier today, was apparently concerned after not hearing from her daughter for several days, authorities said. 

When Fire Department crews arrived at the home to investigate last night, they found multiple bodies and called for assistance from police, who confirmed that two Asian men and an Asian woman, all in their 20s or 30s, were dead. 

“There were obvious signs of trauma to the extent that cause of death is difficult to determine at this point,” Foley said. 

Police said the victims may have been dead for several days inside the home, a cream colored house with a red tile roof.  

Second suspicious fire in  

five days at San Jose mall 

SAN JOSE – Arson investigators are picking through the charred remnants of a convenience store this morning as they investigate the second suspicious fire in five days at a strip mall on Tully Road. 

The fire probably began with an explosion, said San Jose Fire Department spokesman Greg Spence, because 911 callers reported hearing an explosion and firefighters also found glass shards on the roadway in front of the store. 

The fire at The Tully Road Market, located at 1709 Tully Road, was reported at 2:48 a.m. and firefighters extinguished the blaze about 40 minutes later, Spence said. 

The store is destroyed, Spence said, and damage is estimated at $175,000.

OAKLAND— In the opening statements of a trial involving three former Oakland police officers, the prosecution attempted to paint the trio as ruthless, egotistical cops out for themselves with no regard for others. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney David Hollister told the jury on Thursday that the defendants, known as “The Riders,” regularly disregarded the law when making arrests that often involved young black men. He outlined the cases of five alleged victims and showed the officers’ pattern of “hitting corners.” 

“Ride up fast,” Hollister explained. “Grab them, handcuff them and search the area.” Then make the evidence fit the alleged crime, he said. “The problem is the level of deceit and the shortcuts used in the police reports.” 

Hollister said Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 36, Jude Siapno, 34 and Matthew Hornung, 30, went too far in their quest to increase their arrest numbers. 

“The defendants fed off this attention,” he said. “They liked being looked up to by the younger officers. ... There’s no doubt about it — they were producing numbers.” 

The officers, who have since been fired, are on trial for their activities during the summer of 2000. They face a combined 26 felony counts, including beating suspects and falsifying police reports. Siapno faces the most serious charges, including kidnapping and assault. 

Frank Vazquez, the alleged ringleader of the group, is believed to have fled the country. 

Prosecutors wrapped up their opening statements Thursday. Defense lawyers, scheduled to make their opening statements next week, say the officers simply were doing their jobs in a tough neighborhood. All have pleaded innocent. 

Mike Rains, Mabanag’s lawyer, said outside court that the officers are scapegoats. 

“The department was saying, ’We better do something,’ and they did something,” he said. “They are scapegoats. There’s another side of this case the jury needs to see.” 

It took two months to seat the Alameda County panel of six white men and six women — who are predominantly white — for the trial, which is expected to last through year’s end. 

The scandal, which has resulted in the dismissal of about 90 criminal cases, mostly drug-related, and 17 civil rights suits by 115 people, surfaced after a then-20-year-old rookie reported what he saw on duty with Mabanag, his training officer. 

Keith Batt, now a police officer in Pleasanton, is the prosecution’s key witness. During the preliminary hearing last July, Batt painted a disturbing picture of the officers’ “stop and grab” tactics in which suspects randomly were accosted on the street, handcuffed and put in the patrol car before they were questioned about their activities. He called their methods illegal and immoral.

OAKLAND – The Oakland Fire Department has determined that a five-alarm blaze that charred 15 acres and threatened homes Tuesday was accidentally caused by a brush-clearing crew. 

“The fire was the result of what we believe is a spark generated from a weed whacker with a steel blade on it that hit a rock,'' said Deputy Chief Ron Carter. 

He said the crew had been hired to do the work by a property owner in the area.  

According to Carter, it has not been decided whether the crew or property owner could be forced to pick up the tab for putting out the fire. 

“We haven't made that determination as to whether any penalty fines or anything will be assessed,'' Carter said. 

He would not comment on reports that the property owner had been cited by the city in the past for failing to clear brush from his land. 

Fire crews are still on scene on a fire watch today, Carter said, but could clear the area tonight if it is determined safe to do so. 

A total of 200 firefighters from Oakland and other jurisdictions were brought in to knock down the blaze near Keller Avenue and Mountain Boulevard on Tuesday. Six air tankers and four helicopters also assisted in the firefighting effort. 

OAKLAND – A 27-year-old Florida man charged with allegedly stalking a former college classmate over a nine-year period delayed entering a plea in Alameda County Superior Court this morning. 

Daniel Barbalace of Boca Raton was arrested Saturday and faces two counts of burglary and one count of stalking, said Deputy District Attorney Mark McCannon. Although Barbalace did not enter a plea today, his bail was increased to $150,000. 

McCannon said that Barbalace and his alleged victim, an Alameda County woman, first met in 1993 as freshmen at a college in Rochester, N.Y. 

Since then, an alleged pattern of harassment and stalking emerged. 

"He's known this woman for a nine-year period,'' McCannon said.  

"Throughout that period he had repeatedly followed her and harassed her in hopes of establishing some type of dating relationship.'' 

The woman repeatedly rebuffed his advances. 

Several years after college, the woman moved to the Bay Area.  

Barbalace allegedly tracked her down, McCannon said, finding out where she lived and worked. Then on Sept. 2, he flew in from Florida and contacted the woman on the street. He also allegedly broke into her residence and stole several items, according to authorities. 

He then flew back to Florida but returned to the Bay Area several days later and was arrested Saturday. 

Barbalace is scheduled to return to court in Oakland on Tuesday to enter a plea.

SEBASTOPOL — A raid on a pot farm on the outskirts of Sebastopol netted federal agents thousands of mature marijuana plants and ended with the arrest of the owner of a Petaluma medical marijuana club. 

Pot club owner Robert Schmidt, 51, was being held for investigation of assaulting a Drug Enforcement Administration agent during the raid Thursday at the home he rents. 

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that a source said Schmidt was arrested after he tried to strip another agent of his firearm. 

Schmidt had rented the six-acre property since March. 

His Petaluma club, Genesis 1:29, also was raided Thursday. 

Computer hard drives were seized at the club, and crossbows and knives were seized at the ranch, agents said. 

Neighbors said Schmidt was growing marijuana for Genesis and numerous other clubs around the Bay Area that sell marijuana for medical use. 

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, an initiative allowing medical use of marijuana with approval from a physician. 

But possession of marijuana remains a federal offense, and the Justice Department has stepped up enforcement since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge last year. 

“Trust has built up between the sheriff’s department and the medical marijuana community, and the DEA, by these kinds of actions, really puts that at risk,” said Ernest “Doc” Knapp, spokesman for the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana. 

Neighbors said Schmidt told them he had more than 5,000 plants. Some said they began complaining about Schmidt a month ago.

MONACO — Below the gilded dome of the Cathedral of Monaco lies the body of Princess Grace. Flowers are arranged over the marble slab of her tomb, and a wooden plaque instructs visitors: “Silence and Respect.” 

In the two decades since her death on Sept. 14, 1982 — she died at 52 of injuries suffered in a car crash — silence and respect have been hard to come by. 

Monaco, once a sleepy resort favored by European royalty, is now a popular tax haven with celebrities, bankers and sports figures. 

Streets once known for elegance and wealth are now clogged with trinket shops and tourists, and the lives of the princess’ royal children are tabloid fare. 

Palace officials say there are no special plans to mark the 20th anniversary of her death on Saturday; only the annual private ceremony at the palace chapel. 

But Prince Rainier III — who married Hollywood actress Grace Kelly in a fairy-tale wedding in 1956 — is determined to keep her memory alive. 

He dedicated this year’s palace yearbook to Grace, filling it with her photographs and testimonials extolling her good works. The portrait of the princess on the cover is displayed on roadside billboards all over the principality. 

“Princess Grace is always present in our hearts and in our thoughts,” he wrote in the preface, praising her for “carrying out to perfection her role as spouse and mother.” 

The Princess Grace Foundation, now led by her daughter Princess Caroline, funds a classical dance school, medical research, children’s hospitals and charities. 

Streets carry her name, the National Museum houses roses bred in her honor, and the Princess Grace Irish Library has 8,500 books, including signed works by James Joyce. 

“She was very attached to her Irish roots,” said library administrator Judith Anne Gantley. “It’s a way of contributing to her memory, but in a living way.” 

Princess Grace brought elegance and charm to an already glamorous principality. Her prestige heightened with the energy she devoted to her philanthropic enterprises — and stars such as Frank Sinatra, who were attracted to the palace. 

Most media attention in recent years has been on the lives of Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, the eldest and youngest of her three children, and Grace’s son, Prince Albert. 

Caroline’s third husband, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, has been in trouble for attacking a German photographer and beating a hotel owner. 

Stephanie’s 18-month marriage ended when her husband was photographed romancing a Belgian stripper, and she has had two children out of wedlock. 

Meanwhile, Prince Albert has played the bachelor well into his 40s. The principality had to change its succession law to allow one of his sister’s sons to take the throne should he fail to produce an heir. 

A few yards from the tomb of Princess Grace, two vending machines sell pamphlets on the cathedral — in several languages — and cathedral “souvenir medallions.” 

“The principality is the principality,” said visitor Paqui Moreno, when asked about scandals. “That doesn’t change what’s here — the views and everything are still here.” 

RENO, Nev. — For a few days last month, Nevada’s seventh largest “city” was in the Black Rock Desert. 

The Bureau of Land Management said on Friday that attendance at this year’s Burning Man event was a record, with 29,083 people tallied on Aug. 30. 

The rest of the year, Elko is the seventh largest city with 16,708 people, according to the 2000 Census. Carson City is sixth at 52,457. 

The BLM said attendance was up 14 percent from last year. 

Burning Man organizers pay the BLM $4 per person. The agency said the $572,000 collected would about equal the costs of administering the annual desert outing 100 miles north of Reno.  

The collections would equate to 143,000 people who attended the 7-day event. 

The playa where Black Rock City is located has reopened after being temporarily closed for the event. Workers are cleaning up the area, which will be inspected by the BLM early next month. 

Burning Man organizers were commended by the BLM earlier this year for their thorough cleanup efforts. 

“Burning man is the largest ‘leave no trace’ event in the world,” said Terry Reed, field manager of BLM’s Winnemucca office. 

“We have found no evidence of environmental damage caused by past Burning Man events and we don’t expect to find any this year.” 

Along with the attendance, the 239 citations issued by BLM rangers was up this year, the agency said. Of those, 136 were for drug related offenses. Of the 1,288 patient visits to the Regional Emergency Medical Services Authority, 22 were drug related and 10 involved alcohol. 

Most of the visits, which were up 25 percent from last year, were related to heat, sun exposure and dehydration. Twenty-four patients were taken to Reno for treatment of head injuries and broken bones. 

Area motorcross bikers are frustrated. And they’re teaming up to take action. 

“It’s time bikers were shown the same respect as skaters,” said biker John Wold, 33-year-old graphic designer. 

Berkeley’s new $750,000 skate park is scheduled to open Saturday but bikers are not permitted to use it for their two-wheeled acrobatics. As commuters raced down Interstate 80 Tuesday evening, dozens of bikers met in a parking lot near the pedestrian bridge at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park to plot a strategy. Their goal: a new park for motorcross biking, otherwise known as BMX. 

“The city of Berkeley is a big fan of volunteer-park building,” said Stephen Swanson, the president of Berkeley Partners for Parks.“This piece of land and an adjacent smaller piece are what we are hoping will be the site of a new bike park,” he said, as bikers huddled together on an 11,000-square-foot piece of land at Aqautic Park, adjacent to the bay. 

Planning of the new park began in democratic fashion. Some bikers proposed concrete and wooden ramps. Others preferred just dirt. A fence was suggested to define the area, to protect it from vandals and keep pedestrians from wandering into the action. A bathroom or a portable toilet would also be needed. The bikers voted against electricity to keep costs down and to ensure the park would close at an early hour. 

Their motivation was part survival, part envy. Development of the new Eastshore State Park threatens a current dirt bike course called the Shady 80. Bikers are seeing other recreation groups, like skateboarders, get more attention from park and city officials. 

They think the new park can be created for about $75,000 and even less if only dirt obstacles are used. 

“All we need is to haul in some fill dirt, which contractors would donate free of charge,” said biker Jeremy Swanson. 

Bikers like Jake Taylor, who has done much of the building and maintenance of jumps at Shady 80, would gladly volunteer services at a new park. 

“We just need a water source, and maybe a tool shed for rakes and shovels,” Taylor added. 

The idea is gaining support. Kate Obenour, who was a chief lobbyist for the Berkeley Skate Park is also pushing for the creation of a bike park. So is Councilmember Linda Maio, who represents the district where the park is proposed. 

“I think when a sport arises from the youth, like this one has, we should support it,” Maio said. She suggested that perhaps neighboring cities like Albany and Oakland could invest in the project as well. 

The bikers plan to meet again at the same place 7 p.m. Sept. 24. 

To the Editor: 

How many police officers will it take to cite a motorist who violates the pedestrian right of way on Adeline Street near the south Berkeley post office. 

Up to eight. 

Six on motor bikes, three westbound and three eastbound. One in a vehicle and one undercover crossing the street. Too bad for motorists that don’t recognize undercover police. 

Bob Moghaddacy 

Berkeley

Wrap barbed wire around a baseball bat. Beat a friend with it onto a plywood plank doused with lighter fluid and sparked into a table of fire. Then check to make sure he’s bleeding. 

It’s all for fun and sport in the world of amateur hardcore wrestling, documented in "The Backyard," a film by Paul Hough screening at the Pacific Film Archive Sept 18. 

All around the world teenagers gather in backyards to beat the crap out of each other, using dangerous implements and moves they see on television. Some of them with ambitions to become professional wrestlers see the backyard as a kind of rudimentary training ground. Others do it just because they like it. 

Hough traveled across America in search of makeshift wrestling rings and Pits of Pain dug in vacant lots. A skinny, long-haired amateur who calls himself The Lizard talks the talk of a pro wrestler. He has the cocky showmanship for WWF but not the weight. The movie follows him out of the backyards of central California to Las Vegas where a wrestling promotion company had searched for the next big thing. 

Most other kids don’t have their sights on professionalism. They wrestle for fun and do their best to put on a show. These are not teens who didn’t make the wrestling team at school who are practicing their holds and throws at home. No, these kids use razors and thumbtacks and barbed wire for grandiose scenes of brutality. 

A pair of brothers, Bo and Justin Gates in rural Nevada worked up a whole storyline for their matches. "3 Stages Of Hell" is a three-act drama of increasing pain, wherein two rival brothers – one the mother’s favorite, the other the outcast – battle to the "death," ending with one throwing the other into a sheet of flaming plywood covered in barbed wire.  

The Gates’ mother played the part of the mother. A girlfriend videotaping the scenes cries behind the camera as her boyfriend is thrown into a pit of barbed wire. The scene, and many others in the film, is disturbing. There are no special effects. Later, while drying her eyes, Bo’s girlfriend tells Hough how proud she is of Bo’s accomplishments. 

Some parents like Bo and Justin’s mom support their sons’ hardcore interest. Granted, some wrestling involves only garbage can lids, thin plywood and sheets of corrugated tin to make a big noise. There’s no bloodshed here. But other parents are horrified when they see what their kids do. One distraught mother, after weeping after her son body-checked onto a field of thumbtacks, pleads to Hough’s camera for parents to stop the madness. Her son and his wrestling partner, meanwhile, sullenly pick up their gear and go somewhere else, away from mom’s hysterics. 

This kind of wrestling-as-bloody-spectacle is not new, said Mike Lano, Berkeley-based wrestling journalist, photographer and historian who has been covering the sport for 40 years. With Hough he’ll be presenting the film at the PFA next week. In the 1970s in Memphis, TN "garbage wrestling" became popular on the circuit, involving garbage cans and dirty tricks. Lano said this kind of hardcore wrestling settled in Japan during the 80s and came back into American professional wrestling when promoter "Cactus Jack" brought it to Philadelphia in 1993. 

Wrestling is, of course, more of a choreographed performance than a contest. "A lot of wrestlers are a team, and they are protecting each other," said Lano. The boys in the backyard have agreed to hurt each other. Although they can imitate what they see the pros doing, they don’t know how to protect each other from serious harm. 

The kids tell the camera that they are only inflicting surface damage – just a little blood, but nothing seriously crippling. In England, a group of boys taping their wrestling exploits surreptitiously use razors to cut their foreheads so that blood pours over their faces for the camera. One, while talking to Hough, had a rivulet of blood streaming down his face. "I hit a vein, obviously." 

Lano said there has been no documented case of an amateur backyard wrestler being maimed or crippled. Nevertheless, he predicted "someone is going to die. They’re not properly trained."  

Professional wrestler Rob Van Dam is featured in the film at his home. Although he deplores the potential for serious harm these kids are putting upon themselves, the backyard is clearly a place where there is a lot of enthusiasm for wrestling. Some proud parents say in the film that backyard wrestling is a show that the boys put together and promote on their own, which is better than them doing drugs or crimes. 

While watching the film the question looming over the viewer is “Why?” Why would kids want their friends to break glass over their heads, or to stomp thumbtacks into their arms, or scrap a cheese grater across their foreheads? At the end of the film Hough offers an explanation from one of the Gates brothers, who confesses that his father abused them so now violence is oddly comforting.  

That explanation, though, doesn’t ring true. When Hough asked the kids to explain themselves, their answers are stiff and forced. The truer answer seems to come from the images of the teens at play. The howls of approval at a particularly gory stunt and high-fives and the excitement of putting on a good show for the camera are the more convincing reasons why. 

Like slam dancing at a punk rock show or getting into a bar fight, amateur wrestling violence seems to be part of a young person’s aggressive energy (not exclusively male – there are girls doing this, too). The backyard barbed wire pit is another outlet for it, modeled after the professional hardcore style. 

Lano said the World Wrestling Federation recently retired its hardcore wrestling shows; amateur garbage wrestling is on the decline. "It’s grown in periods when wrestling is really cool," said Lano. As amateur wrestling lives by the sword of professional popularity, it also dies by it. "The business is very cyclical. Right now is the worst down cycle. It’s not cool." 

Friday, September 13 

Dope Sick, Mommy’s Friend and Cellofane 

9:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$5 

From Ashes Rise, Manifesto Jukebox & Submachine 

8 p.m. 

924 Gillman St. 

525-9926 

$5 

Garmarna 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$16.50 in advance, $1.50 at door 

Moodswing Orchestra 

9:30 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$11 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Saturday, September 14 

Amandla Poets 

9 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$11 door/ Free for 12 and under 

The Cheap Suit, The Serenaders 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$18.50 in advance, $19.50 at door 

Tipsy House Irish Band  

9:30 p.m. 

The Albatross Pub  

1822 San Pablo Ave. 

843-2473 

$3 

The Good Life, Denail  

& The Velvet Teen 

8 p.m. 

924 Gillman St. 

525-9926 

$5 

Lisa’s Birthday Party: The Wore,  

Lemon Lime Light 

9:30 p.m. (21 and over) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$5 

Sunday, September 15 

Fairport Convention 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

Monday, September 16 

Anouar Brahem 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$15.50 in advance, $16.50 at door 

Tuesday, September 17 

Cortableu 

8:30 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$8 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Wednesday, September 18 

John Dobby Boe & the Steve Slagle Trio 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

Red Archibald and the International Blues Band 

9 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$8 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Thursday, September 19 

Houston Jones 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

The influences, Plus Ones  

and The Simple Things 

9:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

841-2082 

$5 

Friday, September 20 

Cris Williamson, Teresa Trull  

& Barbar Higble 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

Double Fling Ding, The Crooked Jades & Bluegrass Intentions 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$12 door/ Free for 12 and under 

New End Original, Counterfeit  

and Lo Lite 

8 p.m. 

924 Gillman St. 

525-9926 

$5 

Redmeat 

9:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$6 

Saturday, September 21 

Memorizing Windows 

8 p.m. 

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 

Dancer Lucinda Weaver and Writer Alan Bern present an evening of dance, poetry, and stories.  

526-7901, abbern@sbcglobal.net  

Free 

Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

Fernando, Garrison Star  

and Old Joe Clarks 

9:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-2082 

$7 

Jack Wembly, Phemomenauts  

and Rock ’n Roll Adventure Kids 

8 p.m. 

924 Gillman St. 

525-9926 

$5 

West African Highlife Band 

9:30 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$11 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Sunday, September 22 

Broceliande 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$15.50 in advance, $16.50 at door 

Dick Hindman Trio 

4:30 p.m. 

Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St. 

845-5373 

$10-$15 

Les Yeux Noirs 

8 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$12 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Monday, September 23 

Pieta Brown w/ Bo Ramsey 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$15.50 in advance, $16.50 at door 

Tuesday, September 24 

Zydego Flames 

7:30 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$8 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Wednesday, September 25 

DP & Rythym Riders 

9:30 p.m. 

Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. 

$15 door/ Free for 12 and under 

Karen Casey & the Niall Valley Trio 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$15.50 in advance, $16.50 at door 

Thursday, September 26 

Kriby Grips, Michael Zapruder, Joe Bernson 

9:30 p.m. (21 and over) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$5 

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$19.50 in advance, $20.50 at door 

Friday, September 27 

The Cracked Normans, Paradigm & Soul Americana 

9:30 p.m. (21 and over) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$5 

Eric Bogle 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$16.50 in advance, $17.50 at door 

Saturday, September 28 

Barry & Alic Oliver 

8 p.m. 

Freight & Salvage, 1111 Addison St. 

548-1761 or www.freightandsalvage.com 

$16.50 in advance, $17.50 at door 

Paradigm, Matt Easton Band 

9:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

841-1424 

$6 

BACA National Juried Exhibition 

Through Sept. 21, Wed.-Sun. Noon to 5 p.m. 

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park 

40 artists from across the U.S. including 28 Bay Area artists. 

644-6893 

Free 

"Before and After"  

Reception 4 to 6 p.m.  

Through Sept. 19  

Albany Community Center and Library Galley, 1249 Marin Ave. 

Jim Hair's photographs of the San Diego Hells Angels motorcycle chapter from the 1970s.  

524-9283  

Images of Love and Courtship 

Through Sept. 15 

Gathering Tribes, 1573 Solano Ave. 

Ledger paintings by Michael Horse. 

528-9038 

Free 

"Balancing Acts" 

Through Oct. 10 

Gallery 555, 555 12th St. in Oakland City Center 

Oakland's 'Third Thursday' art night features Ann Weber's works made of cardboard. 

http://www.oaklandcitycenter.com.  

Free 

"Poems Form/From the Six Directions" 

Through Sept. 15 

Pusod: Center for culture, Ecology & Bayan, 1808 Fifth St. 

A visual poetry exhibition and presentation of a wedding happening, a Filipino tradition. Poetry workshops presented by Eileen Tabios 7 to 9 p.m., Aug. 14, 21 and 28. 

883-1808 

Free 

“Virtually Real Oakland - The Magic, The Diversity and the Potholes” 

Through Sept. 21, Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. 

Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St., Berkeley 

Exhibit by Ken Burson; digitally enhanced photos of Oakland. 

644-1400 

Free 

Richard Misrach, Berkeley Work 

Though Oct. 13 

UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way 

On view in Gallery 2, presents two photographic series by this internationally recognized Berkeley-based artist.  

642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

$7, $5 BAM/PFA members, $4 UC Berkeley students 

Misch Kohn - Celebrating Sixty Years of Printmaking 

Through Oct. 16: Tues.-Fri., Noon to 5:30 p.m.; Sat., noon to 4:30 p.m. 

Kala Arts Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 

549-2977, kala@kala.org 

A Thousand and One Arabian Nights 

Through Sept. 28, Fri.-Sun. 8 p.m.; Sun. 4 p.m. 

Forest Meadows Outdoor Amphitheater, Grand Avenue at the Dominican University, San Raphael 

Marin Shakespeare Company’s presents this classic story with original Arabic music. 

415-499-4488 for tickets 

$12, youth; $20 senior; $22 general 

Henry IV: The Impact Remix 

Eighth Street Studio, 2525 Eighth St. 

Sept. 13 through 21, Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m. and Sun., 7 p.m. 

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts 

2640 College Ave. 

Impact theatre’s first Shakespeare production staring Rich Bolster as Prince Hal and Bill Boynton as Falstaff. 

464-4468, www.impacttheatre.com 

$15 general/$10 students 

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar 

Through Oct. 12 

Thurs. through Sat. 8 p.m. 

LaVal’s Subterranean Theatre  

1834 Euclid 

234-6046 

$10 

The House of Blue Leaves 

Through Oct. 27 

Berkeley Rep's Roda Theater  

2015 Addison St. Berkeley 

647-2917 or 888-4BRTTIX 

$10 to $54 

The Shape of Things 

Sept. 19 through Oct. 20 

Aurora Theatre Company  

2081 Addison St. 

Play by writer/director Neil LaBute's spins a morality tale of a young art student, his art major girlfriend, and the Pygmalion-like changes that bring into question how far one should go for love. 

843-4822, www.auroratheater.org for reservations 

$26 to $35  

Wednesday, September 11 

Poetry for Peace Benefit Reading 

7:30 p.m. 

Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave.  

Proceeds will benefit refugee relief agencies. Readings by Frances Payne Adler, Ivan Arguelles, Ellen Bass and Judy Grahns. 

845-7852  

$2 

Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik 

8:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

Featured poets: George McKibbins and Sean Shea.  

841-2082 

$7 door, $5 w/ student I.D. 

Saturday, September 14 

Shirley Imura 

8 p.m. 

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 

527-9753, sheflerium@earthlink.net 

Free 

Wednesday, September 18 

Poetry Flash @ Cody’s 

7:30 p.m. 

Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave.  

Readings by Meg Kearney and Cornelius Eady. 

845-7852  

$2 

Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik 

8:30 p.m. (21 and older) 

The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. 

Featured poet: Anthony R. Miller 

841-2082 

$7 door, $5 w/ student I.D. 

Sunday, September 22 

Poetry Flash @ Cody’s 

7:30 p.m. 

Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave.  

Readings by Piri Thomas and Max Schwartz. 

845-7852  

$2 

Sunday September 29 

Poetry Flash @ Cody’s 

7:30 p.m. 

Cody’s Books, 2454 Telegraph Ave.  

Readings by Margaret Kaufman and Robert Funge. 

845-7852  

$2 

“Band of Outsiders” directed by Jean-Luc Godard with “No Such Thing” directed by Hal Hartley. 

Thurs., Sept. 12 through Wed., Sept. 18 

Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck Ave. 

848-1143 

www.fineartscinema.com 

$7 adult, $5 seniors, $4 children 

Cinema Preservation Society presents two by Deborah Dickson, Susan Froemke and Albert Maysles 

Thurs, Sept. 19 through Wed., Sept. 26 

Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck Ave. 

848-1143 

www.fineartscinema.com 

$7 adult, $5 seniors, $4 children 

Friday, September 13 

Lecture by Dr. Paul Farmer 

7:30 p.m. 

St. Joseph the Worker Church  

1640 Addison St. 

Dr. Farmer will speak on Health Care and Human Rights: Solidarity with the Haitian People. Benefit for Partners in Health. Music by Vukani Mawethu Choir. 

558-0371 

$5 to $15 donation 

Saturday, September 14 

Basic Personal Preparedness 

9 to 11 a.m. 

Fire Department Training Center  

997 Cedar St. 

Learn five critical steps to take care of yourself, your family and your home. Classes open to those 18 or older who live or work in Berkeley. 

981-5605, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Free 

Congressman Dennis Kuchinich  

7 p.m. 

Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley Campus, near University Avenue 

Chair of the House Progressive Caucus will speak. Keith Carson, Country Joe McDonald and performance artist Shelly Glaser will also be on hand. 

http://www.bfuu.org/rscongress 

$10 in advance, $12 door 

Heritage Day 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Fourth Street and University Avenue 

International BBQ and beer festival 

Free 

Spin for the Stars Fund-raiser 

9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Spieker Aquatics Complex, Recreational Sports Facility on UC Berkeley campus 

Noncompetitive swimming and stationary cycling event. Proceeds will help Cal STAR enhance its facilities and programs for the disabled. 

$20 registration fee, $35 for biathlon  

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237, Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

“Standing Together for Trees” 

9 a.m. to noon 

Fellowship Hall, Cedar St. near Bonita St. 

Updates on local and world forestry issues. Presentations by Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, and Kristen Kirk or Forest Forever. 

636-7659 

Free 

West Berkeley Open Air Market 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

University Avenue between  

Third and Fourth streets. 

West Berkeley celebrates Neighborhood Heritage Day with crafts, food, live music, art and family entertainment. 

841-8562 or sfbayshellmounds@yahoo.com 

Free 

Sunday, September 15 

Knowledge of Freedom/Undoing Negativity 

6 p.m. 

The Tibetan Nyingma Institute  

1815 Highland Place 

Nyingma Institute instructor Abbe Blum reads from “New Beginnings” 

843-6812 

Monday, September 16 

Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation (BEST) Coalition  

meeting, 6 to 8 p.m. 

Central Library, Kitteredge Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

Group joins pedestrians, bicyclists, mass transit users and land-use advocates. Topics of discussion include: Berkeley height initiative, pedestrian issues and employer incentive plans. Potluck. 

652-9462, imgreen@jps.net 

Tuesday, September 17 

“How to Grow Dahlias” 

1 p.m. 

Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 

A presentation by Dr. Erik Gaensler, vice president of the California Dahlia Society. 

524-4374 

Free 

Breast Self Exam for Seniors 

10 to 11:30 a.m. 

Maffley Auditorium, Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way 

Workshop to educate women with physical limitations about accessing breast health care and do-it-yourself exam education. 

869-6737 

Free 

Freedom From Tobacco 

6 to 8 p.m. 

South Berkeley Senior Center  

2939 Ellis St. 

A quit smoking class. First of six Thursday evenings through Oct. 24.  

981-5330, quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Free to Berkeley and Albany residents, students and employees. 

Simplicity Forum 

7 to 8:30 p.m  

Claremont Branch Library  

2940 Benvenue Ave. 

A panel of people who will share their experiences and ideas for living inexpensively but richly.  

549-3509, www.simpleliving.net 

Free 

Wednesday, September 18 

Kick Off Party for the Berkeley Coffee Initiative 

7 p.m. 

La Peña Cultural Center  

3105 Shattuck Ave. 

Music, speakers and events in support of the Berkeley coffee initiative, Measure O. 

(415) 575-5338 

$5 at door 

Last season, Berkeley High was within 24 minutes of winning the Alameda-Contra Costa Athletic League title. Tied 7-7 at halftime of the regular-season finale against Pinole Valley, the Yellowjackets collapsed and ended up losing 35-14. This year, the Jackets hope they will have the staying power to outlast the Spartans and several other contenders. 

Berkeley is the league’s deepest team, with backups that could start at most other ACCAL schools at nearly every skill position. The only real questionmark, however, comes at the most important position – quarterback. 

The battle to take snaps for Berkeley is a two-way battle between juniors Jeff Spellman and Foster Goree. Spellman, a transfer from Bishop O’Dowd High in Oakland, is the more polished of the two, while Goree is more familiar with the Berkeley offensive system after starting for the junior varsity last season. Goree looked fairly impressive during a scrimmage last week, while Spellman sat out as he waited for his eligibility to be confirmed, which it was late this week. 

While the two quarterbacks are similar in athletic ability and neither has stepped forward to claim the starting job yet, there are no plans to play both on a regular basis. Head coach Matt Bissell and offensive coordinator Clarence Johnson agree that a platoon system isn’t the ideal situation when it comes to running a team. 

“We really want to use one guy,” Johnson said. “That’s the one position where you can’t split time. It’s not good for either kid, and it’s not good for the team.” 

Whoever ends up behind center will have a plethora of weapons to utilize. The Yellowjackets are stacked at tailback once again, with Craig Hollis ready to step in as the main runner after backing up 1,000-yard rusher Germaine Baird last season. But Chris Watson is another talented back and could force his way into the lineup at some point this season. Hollis averaged 10 yards per carry last season but must prove he can be the feature back behind a line anchored by twins Anthony and Ray Cole. 

Berkeley also boasts great talent at wide receiver. Senior Sean Young averaged more than 25 yards per catch last season as the main deep threat. Young has committed to play at Cal next season and is looking to have a big year before heading east to Memorial Stadium. But Young will have to do more than just run down the sidelines this season, as neither quarterback has the arm strength of last year’s starter, Raymond Pinkston. Both Young and fellow wideout Roberto McBean will have to work on crossing routes in order o get the ball on a regular basis. 

One benefit of Berkeley’s huge student body is having a lot of student bodies in uniform. Berkeley is one of the few teams that doesn’t need to have players going both ways, giving the Jackets an advantage in both fatigue and practice time. The only player who will start on both sides of the ball is Rodny Jones, a 6-foot-5 athlete who will see time at both tight end and defensive end. Jones has the potential to be a big factor on offense as an underneath option to Young and McBean, as does senior Robert Hunter-Ford, who will also play defensive end. Both have the physical talent to be impact players, and coaches say they have improved their mental games since last season. 

“I see good things happening with those guys,” Bissell said. “Rob has shown that he now has the mental aspect of being a good player. As long as he’s motivated he’ll be a force for us.” 

The heart of the Berkeley defense will be middle linebacker Owen Goldstrom, a first-team all-league pick last season along with defensive tackle Myron Seals. If 290-pound tackle Jamal Lucas-Johnson can stay healthy this season, the Jackets will be solid up the middle. 

The talent just keeps on coming in the secondary, headed by cornerback Justin Cain. If Spellman doesn’t end up as the quarterback, he will see time at safety. With eight returning starters, Bissell is counting on the defense to carry the offense while the quarterback situation works itself out. 

Bissell will try to avoid the academic pitfalls of last season as the Jackets lost several key starters for the Pinole Valley game due to grades. As a first-year coach he went through some growing pains while learning the ins and outs of the system, and he expects this year’s team to be more successful the in the classroom. But a lot of that is up to the players. 

“We’re talking about a situation where we’re trying to reverse a trend that’s been growing for a while,” Bissell said. “There’s a culture where mediocrity in the classroom is acceptable. We’re trying to instill the idea that striving for a C is not acceptable.” 

Even if all the players stay eligible, it won’t be easy to take down Pinole Valley, which has claimed three league titles in a row. Although stud running back DeAndre McFarland is gone, the Spartans are loaded once again with a huge offensive line and big-play receiver Thomas DeCoud. Pinole Valley will be dealing with a coaching change, as Steve Alameda takes over for longtime head man Jim Erickson. El Cerrito and De Anza also return some talented players, while Alameda, Encinal and newcomer Hercules will try to climb into the top of the standings. 

“Pinole Valley is the top dog,” Bissell said. “The championship goes through them until somebody beats them.” 

Berkeley will only play nine games this season, as the scheduled season opener against Mission San Jose was canceled when the school decided to disband its varsity program.

Berkeley officials say they will move ahead with an ordinance that would protect consumers’ personal financial information, despite a lawsuit challenging similar laws in San Mateo County and Daly City. 

Wells Fargo and Bank of America filed suit in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday alleging that the existing San Mateo County and Daly City ordinances, which fine financial institutions for sharing consumer information without customers’ consent, violate federal law. 

The filing came just hours before the Berkeley City Council asked the city manager’s office Tuesday night to develop a similar ordinance based on the San Mateo County model. 

Councilmember Betty Olds said the city will watch the lawsuit carefully, but plans to move forward with its own ordinance.“It’s privacy,” she said. “Nothing makes us madder than having our financial secrets passed around.” 

Assistant City Attorney Zach Cowan said it was too early to determine how the case might effect Berkeley’s ordinance, but said it will likely have an influence on how the measure is drafted. 

“I’m sure it’s relevant, and when we get there, we get there,” he said. 

Wells Fargo and Bank of America spokespeople said it is too early to determine whether they would pursue legal action against Berkeley or other local governments that pass financial privacy measures in the coming months. 

The city of San Francisco and Marin, Alameda and Contra Costa counties are considering similar ordinances. 

Under existing federal law, financial institutions may share or sell consumer information unless customers sign a document opting out. The San Mateo and Daly City ordinances prevent companies within their borders from sharing information unless customers opt in. Violations result in fines of up to $250,000. 

Daly City passed its ordinance after the financial services industry spent more than $10 million on lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat a similar statewide measure drafted by state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo. 

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Bank of America said their companies already have privacy policies that prohibit them from sharing consumers’ financial information with other institutions.  

They said the banks filed suit because the local ordinances make it difficult for them to share customer information with their own affiliates and provide quality customer service. 

For example, said Wells Fargo spokesperson Donna Uchida, the ordinances may prevent the company’s banking operation from telling its credit card operation that a customer is in solid financial standing and is deserving of a credit card. 

City Councilmember Dona Spring said the Berkeley ordinance would allow companies to share information within their own walls. 

“We have no interest in regulating banks other than protecting consumers,” she said. 

Uchida also raised concerns about scattered municipalities passing different ordinances. 

“We believe the patchwork approach... s going to confuse customers and create havoc in the marketplace,” she said. 

Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean raised similar concerns about a hodgepodge approach, arguing that the issue would best be handled on the state level. 

“What I would hate to see would be a lot of ordinances that are quite different,” she said. 

If local government does address the issue, she said, it should be done on a countywide level to ensure greater uniformity. 

But Jennette Gayer, consumer associate with the California Public Interest Research Group in Los Angeles, said local governments should take up the issue. 

“If the state can’t get it done, then local government should get it done,” she said. 

Gayer said a growing number of local laws would put increasing pressure on financial institutions to cave in to statewide consumer protections. 

Tom Casey, San Mateo County Counsel, said he was confident that the county’s ordinance is legal under federal law and said he would “vigorously defend” the measure. 

To the Editor: 

For all you patriotic folk out there who are gung-ho for a Middle East colonizing war, my question is, “When are you leaving?” And when you get there will you even realize your enemy is also you? 

Traditionally, the most enthusiastic are those who stay safety at home while the young and impressionable, lacking wisdom but possessing raging hormones, are sent to give their lives to fight lunatic wars. 

So, stand first in line but don’t push. Hopefully you’ll return more enlightened, but not in a body bag. 

If you must have war let it be a war against your atrophied brain. 

Charmaine Soldat 

Berkeley

LOS ANGELES — An amateur astronomer hunting for asteroids may have discovered a piece of the rocket that launched the Apollo 12 astronauts to the moon in 1969, a NASA scientist said Thursday. 

The object was first spied on Sept. 3 by Arizona astronomer Bill Yeung. Follow-up observations and calculations of its path suggest it is orbiting the Earth once every 48 days at a distance twice that of the moon. 

Although initially believed to be an asteroid, astronomers now suspect it is a rocket fragment, possibly the third stage of the massive Saturn V launched Nov. 14, 1969, with astronauts Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon and Alan L. Bean aboard. 

“It’s a detective story and we’re looking at the evidence here,” said Paul Chodas, an astronomer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Complex orbit calculations suggest the fragment, which stands nearly 59 feet tall, was captured into Earth orbit in April, explaining why it had not been spotted before. Prior to this spring, the rocket stage had likely spent three decades orbiting the sun, Chodas said. 

On the Apollo 8 through 12 missions, NASA designed the third stage, which boosted the astronauts from Earth orbit toward the moon, to sail past Earth’s lone natural satellite. 

That close passage by the moon was designed to swing the stage into solar orbit and away from Earth. 

The first four times, it worked perfectly, but NASA engineers made an error on Apollo 12, leaving the third stage stranded in Earth orbit. Eventually, in the early 1970s, it drifted from the Earth’s bounds and began orbiting the sun. 

In April, the Earth apparently snagged it back, Chodas said. 

Looking forward, NASA astronomers said there is a 20 percent chance the rocket will end up hitting the moon — as did the third stages of the Apollo 13 through 17 missions. 

There is also a 3 percent chance it could strike Earth, as did some Apollo stages in the 1960s. Most of the rocket body would burn up in the atmosphere, although some pieces could survive the fiery re-entry, Chodas said. 

In the past, astronomers have suspected other near-Earth bodies are actually Apollo rocket fragments. None has been confirmed, Chodas said. 

When a football team loses three players who gained 70 percent of its yards the previous season, there’s usually not much room for optimism. So why is St. Mary’s High head coach Jay Lawson so upbeat about the upcoming season? 

“I feel better heading into this season than I did last year,” Lawson said. “We’ve got a lot of talent coming back.” 

While tailback Trestin George and receivers Chase Moore and Courtney Brown have taken their prodigious talents to college campuses, Lawson has the rest of his offense back, including quarterback Steve Murphy, who went through on-the-job training last season after moving behind center two months before the first game. 

Lawson, who took over as head coach last season, also welcomes back nine varsity linemen, an amazing number considering he will only carry 28 players on his roster. Even the loss of 280-pound junior Jon Taranto to a knee injury in a scrimmage doesn’t hurt too much with so many experienced linemen in the fold. 

Leading the charge on in the trenches will be 6-foot-6, 290-pound Leon Drummer, who has verbally committed to play at Cal next season. Drummer is following closely in the footsteps of current Cal sophomore Lorenzo Alexander, who ended his St. Mary’s career with All-America honors. Drummer has the potential to do the same and should dominate on both sides of the ball. 

Taranto’s injury did put an end to plans to play 275-pound Jarrell Booker next to Drummer on the left side of the offensive line, a sight that would have made any defensive lineman weak-kneed. Booker will switch over to the right side, providing Murphy with the biggest bookends in the Bay Area to protect him in the pocket. Throw in 260-pound Ed Cheveres and the Panthers shouldn’t have to worry much about opposing linemen getting a big push. 

The line will need to be strong following the graduation of George, who ended his St. Mary’s career with the school rushing and scoring records. Junior Fred Hives steps into George’s XXL-sized shoes, but he’s not as fast or explosive as his predecessor. Hives should excel running between the tackles, however, with a bruising running style. 

“We’re definitely going to run the ball inside more with Fred,” Lawson said. “Behind our linemen, Fred could be just as productive as Trestin.” 

Murphy should be much-improved this season, although he was impressive during the latter stages of last season while throwing 10 touchdowns to just two interceptions. Murphy is the unquestioned leader of the offense and has tightened his throwing motion. His improved pocket presence, combined with his speed, should make him one of the Bay Area’s top run-throw threats. 

“Murphy will be huge for us this year,” Lawson said. “He’s really improved his intangibles. By the end of last season, he was leading the team really well, and he’s a dramatically improved player.” 

Sophomore Scott Tully will also get some snaps this season as Lawson grooms him to take over when Murphy graduates. Tully is a prototypical pocket passer at 6-foot-3 and has a stronger arm than Murphy. When St. Mary’s gets out to a comfortable lead Murphy will shift into the backfield with Tully at quarterback. 

The main target in the passing game will be wideout Ryan Coogler, a speed-burner who made some big plays last season. The senior, also an outstanding track performer, will provide a deep threat to keep defenses honest. Nick Osborn moves from the interior line to take over for Moore at tight end. While not as athletic as Moore, Osborn is a better blocker and a big target for Murphy on short routes. 

With only 28 players, Lawson obviously needs most of his talented players to go both ways. Drummer and Booker will anchor the defensive line, while Coogler and Murphy will play cornerback. Murphy is a major-college prospect as a defensive back, where he was the Most Valuable Defensive Player at Cal’s summer camp. 

“I like to play both positions as much as possible,” Murphy said. “I’ll end up being a cornerback in college, but quarterback is probably more important to the team right now.” 

Lawson will balance Murphy’s offensive leadership with his defensive playmaking, along with his other two-way players. The Panthers actually had fewer varsity players last season, so there should be more chances to give Lawson’s stars a breather during games this year. 

“I think we’ve got enough players this year that we should be able to give guys a few series off in every game,” Lawson said. 

The Panthers have a tough non-league schedule, with games against Oakland Tech, McClymonds and El Cerrito. The biggest test comes today, however, in powerful Bishop O’Dowd, a traditional rival from back in the days of the old ACCAL. The game, which was originally scheduled for Saturday at El Cerrito High’s field, was moved to St. Mary’s due to a field conflict. The Dragons downed St. Mary’s, 27-6, to start last season at O’Dowd’s field in Oakland, so the Panthers are anxious to get a shot at revenge. 

“I’ve been waiting for this game since they beat us last year,” Murphy said. “We’ve been working all summer to beat them.” 

St. Mary’s is the consensus favorite in the Bay Shore Athletic League, which the Panthers won with a dramatic last-minute win over rival Piedmont last season. Piedmont will look to emphasize the running game after losing quarterback Drew Olson to UCLA, where he played a key role in the Bruins’ comeback win over Colorado State last week. John Swett and St. Patrick could also challenge for the league title.

Berkeley’s opposition to the Patriot Act was timely. 

Just hours before New Yorkers commemorated the one-year anniversary of last year’s attacks Wednesday, city councilmembers Tuesday night adopted a resolution condemning the Sept. 11-inspired legislation. 

“Under the Patriot Act, agencies like the FBI or state police or John Ashcroft can detain people whenever they want. And detainees are not given any opportunity to defend themselves,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, author of the Berkeley resolution. 

A lack of due process and a violation of civil liberties were the reasons behind council’s opposition, Worthington said. 

Federal legislators, though, who passed the bill last October with bipartisan support, claim that expanded authority granted to law enforcement officials under the PATRIOT Act are critical to national security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. 

Despite Berkeley’s unanimous decision to condemn the legislation, most Americans support the PATRIOT Act, said UC visiting instructor Dab Schnur of the political science department.“Council’s vote serves to illuminate how far out of the mainstream Berkeley has become,” he said. 

Coming on the eve of Sept. 11, Schnur added that the vote contained irony and a “peculiar charm.” 

For Worthington, though, the decision was within the nation’s spirit on the attack’s one-year anniversary. 

“It’s patriotic to stand up for our values and defend our civil rights,” he said. 

Before the resolution’s passage, Councilmember Polly Armstrong led efforts to water down the city’s condemnation. Two clauses in Worthington’s original draft were struck, and city opposition was narrowed to “parts of” the PATRIOT Act instead of deploring the entire piece of legislation. 

“I doubt anyone on council has even read the whole thing,” Armstrong said. She also said that the two sections removed from the original proposal were ambiguous. 

All council members seemed pleased, and many surprised, by the unanimous decision to adopt the condemning resolution. 

“It was very unusual for us,” said Councilmember Betty Olds. 

Among other things, the PATRIOT Act gives law agencies more power to detain immigrants, conduct wiretaps and monitor the Internet. 

Schnur said it was unlikely that Berkeley’s resolution against such federal policies would have any impact. 

To the Editor: 

Shirley Dean has been on the Berkeley City Council for over 16 years, and now that she’s running for re-election as mayor, she suddenly has become interested in creating more playing fields, even though she knows there’s practically no room left for laying fields in our city. But wait, she says, there’s our waterfront, which is being transformed into a new Eastshore State Park. “We might start by eliminating some of the huge parking lots that are planned.” 

Surely you know, Mrs. Dean, that “huge parking lots are not being planned, and that any incremental increase in parking spaces would barely accommodate the current uses of the waterfront, let alone large new playing fields. 

So why is Mrs. Dean willing to take on the Sierra Club and other environmental groups with this nonsolution? My guess is that she figures these organizations will probably support her challenger, Tom Bates, since his credentials as a conservationists are impeccable and he was the prime mover in the State Assembly for the creation of the Eastshore State Park. So why not make a play for the soccer moms and dads? What is there to lose?  

Just our respect, Mrs. Dean. Oh, yes, and our waterfront. 

Gloria Wong 

Berkeley

While clerical workers sat down to discuss contracts with UC administrators Thursday – the first meeting since last month’s three-day strike – negotiators had at least one additional worry on their minds. 

Another campus union may be making the job of negotiating a pay raise for clericals, represented by the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), more difficult. 

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents service workers on campus, has a contract with the university. It gives its employees a raise if other union employees get raises. Known as a “me-too” clause, the AFSCME provision, according to AFSCME officials, goes into effect if either the Coalition of University Employees’ clericals or certain technical and health care workers on campus get more than a 2 percent raise for fiscal year 2001-2002. 

The me-too clause means that CUE is essentially bargaining for two unions – itself and AFSCME, union officials said. If CUE is successful in getting its desired 15 percent pay raise, which would cost the university $100 million over two years, the university would be forced to shell out additional millions for AFSCME employees. 

CUE, which represents 1,900 telephone operators, childcare workers, administrative assistants and other clerical workers at UC Berkeley, is pushing for its pay raise over two years. But UC is sticking to its offer of 3.5 percent over a two-year period. After months of negotiations, neither side has shown much flexibility. 

President of Local 3 of CUE Michael-David Sasson said that the me-too clause hurts CUE’s bargaining position enough so that the union has moved to file a complaint with the state Public Employment Relations Board asking the me-too clause to be voided. 

The negotiations impact 18,000 clerical workers throughout the UC system. 

"One of [CUE’s] unfair practices was that the university had agreed to another contract with another party to language that effectively tied their hands in relationship with us," Sasson said. 

But UC spokesperson Paul Schwartz denied that the “me-too” clause pertained to salary negotiations with CUE. 

Schwartz said the university’s position that a raise of 2 percent for the 2001-2002 fiscal year – part of the two-year 3.5 percent offer – is the only workable proposal. A 2 percent raise would not activate the “me-too” clause in the AFSCME contract, according to union officials. 

CUE employees have been without a contract since November 2001 and raises are expected to be paid retroactively for the 2001-2002 fiscal year. State budget cuts have limited what UC can offer, Schwartz said. 

AFSCME officials downplayed the harm done to CUE because of the “me-too” clause. They said the clause fosters fellowship between them. 

"A ‘me-too’ clause assures that low-wage workers won’t be pitted against each other," a spokesperson said. 

Margy Wilkinson, CUE’s lead negotiator, said that the provision only applies to across-the-board increases, otherwise known as cost-of-living increases, and could be circumvented through other types of raises. 

“There are many other things that the university could offer us that would not bring that into play,’ she said. “They could make adjustments without invoking the language in the AFSCME contract, including the one thing we’ve talked about a lot — merit increases.” 

The clerical workers represented by CUE were once represented by AFSCME, and though the recent strike illustrated solidarity among campus unions, the struggle for representation caused conflict in the mid ’90s. 

CUE was formed in 1995 as an alternative to AFSCME. 

“It wasn’t responsive to us and the contracts were consistently weak,” said David Kessler, a longtime library assistant at Bancroft Library who was once represented by AFSCME. “AFSCME was interested in harmony with UC and collecting dues. They were after labor peace, not labor justice,” he said. 

To the Editor: 

As one who has developed housing in Berkeley since 1972, I dispute the self-serving arguments attributed to the developers in the Daily Planet’s article “More trouble over housing” (Aug. 31). 

The taxpayers of Berkeley have been the victims of numerous spending scams since the Rads took over the city in 1984. Much of the problem is based on the fallacious notion that a nonprofit entity is inherently good. The mafia and al-Qaida are nonprofit entities. Neither has ever declared a profit or paid taxes on income. Nonprofits are often tax dodges that prey on gullible liberals. Instead of paying taxes on income, the nonprofit disguises the income as fees, salaries and expense accounts. 

For a number of years the taxpayers of Berkeley have been subsidizing nonprofits and related developers who claim they are building “affordable housing” due to Berkeley’s supposed “critical housing shortage” (quotes from the article). 

There is no housing shortage in Berkeley, critical or otherwise. With the demise of the dot-coms and the freeing of rents in vacated units, there is a serious surplus of housing in Berkeley. This surplus will only grow because of overconstruction of housing in surrounding areas and vacancy decontrol within Berkeley. There is no ideological justification any longer for Berkeley taxpayers to subsidize developers. 

Alan Wofsy 

Berkeley

OS ANGELES — A judge Thursday threw out a politically damaging $78 million civil fraud verdict against GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon’s family investment firm, ruling that William E. Simon & Sons and other investors were the fraud victims. 

Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, in a written ruling, dismissed the huge compensatory and punitive damages verdict against William E. Simon & Sons and a nearly $20 million verdict also levied by a jury against another investor group. 

“This decision is of course inconsistent with the jury’s verdict,” Chalfant wrote. “The court believes in the jury system and has found that juries usually reach the same decision that the court would. Not this time.” 

Simon, who faces Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in the November election, had maintained that the July 30 jury verdict would not stand. 

“Today is a new beginning for our campaign,” Simon told a press conference packed with supporters at a hotel near the courthouse an hour after the verdict was thrown out. 

“I have said all along that the jury verdict was fundamentally flawed and would be overturned and that’s exactly what happened this morning,” he said. “Now the people of California will get the kind of campaign, at least from me, they deserve.” 

A half-dozen protesters chanted “We believe the jury” outside the Omni Los Angeles Hotel and carried signs reading “It took a Wilson judge.” Chalfant was appointed the bench by former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican. 

The jury had awarded the huge verdicts to Edward Paul Hindelang of Santa Barbara, a convicted marijuana smuggler who founded Pacific Coin, a Van Nuys pay phone company in which Simon’s firm and others invested. 

Hindelang’s attorney, Geoffrey L. Thomas, said he will appeal Chalfant’s decision. 

“It’s hard to know what the judge was going to do and this was certainly an option that we considered. It simply sets up the final phase on appeal,” Thomas said. 

Simon was not personally named in the lawsuit, but with corporate wrongdoing in the spotlight the fraud verdict was political poison that stunned the GOP and struck at a key theme of Simon’s first-time candidacy, his boasts of private-sector success. 

The verdict became another setback for his stumbling campaign, spooking donors and becoming the focus of a Davis attack ad that remains on the air. 

The lawsuit arose from a 1998 acquisition of Pacific Coin by investors including William E. Simon & Sons, the New Jersey and California firm Simon started with his brother and father, a former U.S. Treasury secretary. 

Hindelang had served 30 months in prison in the early 1980s, but the investors didn’t know that at the time, they said. 

The investors planned to grow Pacific Coin, but with the pay phone market shrinking, the company faltered, fell into debt and was seized by its lenders in December 2000. 

That same month Hindelang sued Simon & Sons, alleging the investors defrauded him by concealing a perilous and ultimately failed plan to take Pacific Coin public and make huge profits. 

The investors countersued, accusing Hindelang of committing fraud and costing them millions by hiding his troubled drug past. Simon & Sons invested $16.5 million in Pacific Coin and lost it all, and Simon personally lost $1.2 million. 

Jurors found unanimously for Hindelang and awarded him $65 million in punitive damages and $13.3 million in compensatory damages from Simon & Sons. The other investor, B-R Investors, was assessed $10.9 million in punitive damages and $8.9 million in compensatory damages. 

In his 36-page ruling, Chalfant wrote that it was “an immutable fact established by overwhelming evidence that Hindelang defrauded” the investors by failing to disclose his criminal convictions, his negotiations with federal authorities to forfeit drug proceeds and that Pacific Coin may have been founded with drug money. 

The judge wrote that investors’ testimony “that they never would have invested $26 million in Pacific Coin had they known the truth was uncontradicted and undisputable, underscoring the magnitude of Hindelang’s fraud.” 

The judge awarded the investors $125,000 to cover costs they paid for investigations of Hindelang. 

To the Editor: 

If Willard Pool and/or West Campus Pool closes this winter, why not arrange with Berkeley Unified School District to invite displaced swimmers to both south and north pools at Berkeley High School as appropriate? If BHS again decides to use its north pool (due to the closing of Willard) then the public still should be able to use north during hours when the kids aren’t there. 

Berkeley swim programs at BHS for the public employ two lifeguards while one guard at the other pools seems to be sufficient. These two should be enough to survey both north and south pools at BHS if they’re open during the same hours. (There is a connecting door that is usually open.) This means the extra cost to the city for running two pools rather than one would be much less trifling and certainly less than operating three pools, and should be a bargain for everyone. 

Terry Cochrell 

Berkeley

OAKLAND – Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark has announced a series of demonstrations this month designed to allow voters to become acquainted with new electronic touchscreen voting equipment. 

Demonstrations of the new voting technology are scheduled to take place throughout the month at public libraries across Alameda County. 

County staff members will be available to show how the new equipment works as well as provide election information, voter registration forms and information on enlisting as a poll worker in Alameda County. 

Anyone interested in having a demonstration of the new equipment at a festival or for any group should call the registrar of voters' office at 272-6948.

ALAMEDA – A defense attorney for suspended Oakland Raiders football player Darrell Russell said this afternoon that her client has been vindicated by a prosecutor's decision to drop all the sexual assault charges he had been facing in Alameda County Superior Court. 

Russell, 26, had been accused of 25 felony sex charges for allegedly drugging a 28-year-old Sunnyvale woman in late January and videotaping two of his friends having sex with her in what prosecutors charged as rape. 

The football player was in court this afternoon in Alameda for a continuation of his preliminary hearing. But instead of having his case put over for trial, Russell heard prosecutors call for a dismissal of all charges. 

“He's very appreciative that the district attorney was willing to reexamine the evidence with the principle of justice in mind,'' defense attorney Cris Arguedas said. 

Charges against Russell's co-defendants – Ali Hayes, 27, and Naeem Perry, 25 – were also dismissed. 

Arguedas said she was not surprised by the move. 

“There was insufficient evidence to convict. That has been our position all along,'' the attorney said. “When the prosecution put on its case and it was challenged by the defense, it fell apart. There was no credible evidence to believe these crimes were committed.'' 

Attorneys for the defendants had accused the woman, a model who appeared topless in Playboy magazine, of making false rape claims against Russell, a two-time Pro Bowler, in the hopes of collecting millions of dollars from the football player, who was suspended from the NFL after testing positive for the drug Ecstasy. 

Prosecutor Kevin Murphy rested his case in the preliminary hearing of evidence in June after showing a graphic videotape of the disputed sexual encounter in which Hayes and Perry had sex with the woman while Russell operated the camera. 

The woman and prosecutors claimed she was drugged while the defense said the woman consented to have sex with them. 

Murphy could not be reached for comment this afternoon.

FREMONT — Cecilia Chang says she used to look the other way when people talked about “heavy stuff” — civil liberties, constitutional rights, discrimination. 

Now she carries a stack of petitions, cajoling signatures from strangers to bolster a presidential pardon campaign for her friend Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese-American scientist once suspected of spying against the United States. Two years ago on Friday — Sept. 13, 2000 — Lee was freed from nine months of solitary confinement as the investigation around him crumbled. 

While convicted on a single count of copying sensitive nuclear weapons data, Lee received an apology from a federal judge for his treatment. The activism his case inspired continues to flourish in Chang, along with many other Asian-Americans who have no personal connection to Lee. 

“It was really a watershed moment in terms of Asian-Americans coming of age,” said Karen Narasaki, president of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium in Washington. “For the first time, you had Asian-American professionals thinking about criminal justice and the issue of whether the government is always right.” 

In Fremont, Chang has started a new group inspired by the Lee case, Justice for New Americans. In Sacramento, activist Ivy Lee created the Chinese American Political Action Committee, which has about 30 members. And in Detroit, Marie-Ange Weng formed the Council of Asian Pacific Americans, a coalition of organizations with about 1,000 members. 

Weng helped create her group shortly after Lee was released.

SACRAMENTO— More than 700 acres purchased Thursday from the state’s largest private landowner will expand California’s park system, perhaps by year’s end, officials said. 

The 731 acres along the state-designated Wild and Scenic South Yuba River was acquired from Sierra Pacific Industries for $3.56 million by the Trust for Public Land, which will sell it to the state for the same price as soon as Proposition 40 funds become available, said trust spokeswoman Mary Menees. 

Voters approved the bond initiative in March, “and this important acquisition is already delivering on its promise,” state Resources Secretary Mary Nichols said in a statement. 

The property will expand popular South Yuba River State Park. 

The purchase was made with a low-interest loan from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.  

The trust plans to repay the loan with the Proposition 40 money, along with contributions it is seeking with help from the Sierra Fund and the South Yuba River Citizens League. 

The groups praised Sierra Pacific Industries for not logging the site for more than two years, even after a land-exchange agreement expired in December 2000.  

The Anderson-based company now will use the money to buy timberland elsewhere. 

The sale “reflects our commitment to creating a balance between wild land preservation, economic investment and responsible forest management,” company President A.A. “Red” Emmerson said in a statement. 

The land sale is part of an umbrella agreement announced last summer in which the trust plans to buy and preserve up to 30,000 acres of Sierra Pacific’s timberland. 

The trust, the U.S. Forest Service and other groups are trying to convince the timber giant to sell, trade or otherwise safeguard land it is preparing to log along a section of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.  

The timber stands on its land northwest of Lake Tahoe, near Sierra City. 

SAN FRANCISCO — Online powerhouse Yahoo Inc. and regional phone giant SBC Communications Inc. on Friday will unveil a high-speed Internet service designed to convince more people that broadband is worth the extra money. 

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo and San Antonio-based SBC have been working on the service since they joined forced last year. The new service, available in all 13 states where SBC provides phone service, will allow subscribers to surf the Web at speeds up to 25 times as fast as traditional dial-up modems. 

The new service’s content is supposed to be just as big of a selling point as its speed. Yahoo has developed a souped-up version of its popular Web page that will provide subscribers with a wide range of exclusive entertainment options and other applications unavailable anywhere else. 

“We have been programming to the lowest common denominator until now,” said Jim Brock, a Yahoo senior vice president who oversaw the project. “This is going to change the broadband landscape.” 

The alliance between Yahoo and SBC stems from a recognition that the fast speeds and “always on” connections provided by broadband aren’t enough to persuade most people to dig deeper into their pockets to pay for the service. 

“Broadband adoption is going to have to be content driven,” said industry analyst Mark Kersey of the La Jolla research firm ARS Inc. “There has to be something available on broadband that people can’t get on dial-up before people will pay more.” 

The average monthly charge for a digital subscriber line — one of the most widely used forms of broadband — is $51.36, according to ARS. The average monthly price for a high-speed cable modem is $45.31, ARS said. 

In contrast, the most popular dial-up services charge $20 to $24 a month. 

To promote their new service, Yahoo and SBC will offer promotional discounts of $29.95 to $39.95 per month, depending on which of three transmission speeds a subscriber wants. After six months, the subscription rate will become $42.95 to $59.95 per month. 

The companies are confident price won’t discourage subscribers. 

“This will bring broadband to the masses,” predicted Jason Few, an SBC vice president overseeing the new Yahoo service. Subscribers should be able to launch the service within a week of signing up, Few said. 

Yahoo and SBC aren’t the first formidable partners to enter the broadband market with lofty ambitions. 

Microsoft’s MSN service and regional phone carrier Qwest Communication last year rolled out a high-speed Internet service that hasn’t made a significant dent in the market, Kersey said. 

The broadband market has been growing steadily, but not at the rapid clip that telecommunication providers envisioned when they made huge investments in broadband networks during the late 1990s. 

There’s about 15.2 million broadband subscribers today, up from 9.1 million a year ago, ARS said. 

The new Yahoo and SBC service will have a big customer base to build upon. 

SBC has about 35 million residential customers in California, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Connecticut and Nevada. The company already has 1.7 million broadband subscribers and 1.6 million customers with dial-up Internet services. 

Yahoo is counting on the new broadband service to help it recover from the dot-com bust that wiped out a large chunk of its advertising revenue. The company has been trying to sell more fee-based services under a new management team led by former Hollywood executive Terry Semel. 

“We view this as a foundation for developing compelling subscription products,” Brock said. 

SAN FRANCISCO — The Internet digital photo site Webshots seemed destined to dissolve in the dot-com meltdown a year ago as its owner, ExciteAtHome, prepared to go bankrupt. 

But Webshots’ co-founders lobbied for another try at developing the site into a profitable business — a goal that doesn’t look as farfetched as it appeared when ExciteAtHome was poised to pull the plug. 

About 150,000 new users register at Webshots each week, up 50 percent from a year ago. More importantly, a significant number of those users are subscribing to the site’s premium services, an about-face from the carefree days when At Home gave away everything for free. 

“We have a better sense as businessmen what this space is all about now,” said Narendra Rocherolle, one of the three Webshots co-founders who bought the site back from ExciteAtHome eight months ago at pennies on the dollar. 

Redwood City-based Webshots is among a handful of nearly dead Internet businesses trying to reincarnate themselves under new management teams. 

Gone is the giddiness of the bubble years; it’s been replaced by a no-nonsense approach. 

“We’ve put the crack pipe away,” said Chris Kitze, who invested $9 million of his dot-com fortune to revive Wine.com, one of the Web’s biggest busts, with a strategy that mostly promotes the sale of premium wines. 

“It used to be all about getting the ’first mover’ advantage on the Internet. Now that people have become more rational and sane, there is an understanding that it’s all about becoming the last man standing.” 

It’s been an excruciating education for some businesses on the comeback trial. 

To get its second shot, high-speed Internet connections supplier Yipes Enterprise Services went bankrupt in April after burning through nearly $300 million in venture capital. The San Francisco company had approached dozens of suitors to sell out to, but couldn’t find a white knight. 

SACRAMENTO — A boom in the number of college-age students and laid-off workers means enrollment at California’s community colleges is skyrocketing. 

But the spike in enrollment — the largest in 12 years — has not been met by an equal increase in state money. 

Roughly 20 of the 108 campuses have already cut classes, despite swelling enrollment. And with a bleak state budget outlook in years to come, college officials worry it will only get worse. 

Community College Chancellor Thomas Nussbaum announced this week the number of students attending state community colleges has climbed by more than 115,000, or about 6.9 percent, compared to last year. Nearly 3 million students attended California community colleges last year. 

“Our main concern is that we are not going to be able to serve all of them in the future,” Nussbaum said, adding the funding shortage could mean fee increases next year. At $11 per credit, California currently has the lowest community college fees in the nation. 

Part of the problem, school officials say, is the formula that connect enrollment and funding. Under the state’s master plan — a 1960s education blueprint that guarantees every student the right to go to college — community colleges are obligated to accept every person who has a high school or general education diploma. 

But the state only increases funding up to a maximum of 3 percent above the previous year’s enrollment. This year’s state budget included a $118.7 million increase for California’s community colleges, which equals a little more than $1,000 per additional student. 

Community colleges already get significantly less than any other public school system or university, according to Mark Wallace, spokesman for the chancellor’s office. 

On average, the University of California receives nearly $27,000 per student in state funding, California State University gets $10,905 per student, and community colleges receive $4,690 per student, Wallace said. 

“There’s a concern nationally that community colleges are not being funded adequately to keep the supply of workers flowing into the economy,” said Sharon Tate, dean at East Los Angeles Community College. “We need to have some equity in the funding formula.” 

East Los Angeles College, which has 10.25 percent more students so far this year and could see an increase of up to 30 percent, had to cut courses and increase the average number of students per class. 

Jason Delgado, 20, a student at Sacramento City College, said he has noticed larger class sizes this year, but said he didn’t have any trouble getting into the courses he needed. 

“I lucked out and had teachers that were willing to take more students than the required amount,” he said. “We brought chairs in from other rooms, and some students were sitting on desks, but it worked out.”

WASHINGTON — A California lawmaker said a symbolic argument having nothing to do with water is holding up his critical water bill. 

CalFed, a program to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, would get $3 billion if the bill sponsored by Rep. Ken Calvert is passed. The delta provides drinking water for two-thirds of the state and irrigation water for Central Valley crops. 

Calvert, R-Corona, has been trying to get the legislation to the House floor since March. After he helped resolve disputes over water deliveries to Central Valley farmers and a grant program for other western water projects, Calvert now says the bill is being held hostage by an argument over federal labor law. 

At least two other bills to clean polluted waterways and improve railroad tracks used by freight trains are being delayed by the same argument, according to House Democratic leaders. 

The argument is over the Davis-Bacon provision that guarantees high wages for workers on federal construction projects. Democrats on the House Resources Committee, along with a few pro-labor Republicans, tacked it on to the CalFed bill last fall. 

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told Republicans in the spring that he would not allow a vote on any bill that has the wage language in it. 

“It’s adding unnecessary cost that otherwise might save the taxpayer money,” said Greg Crist, Armey’s spokesman. “It makes no sense to pay more in a way that’s arbitrarily set.” 

On the other side are labor unions and their supporters in Congress. 

“We are perplexed as to why any member of the committee would have opposed this amendment,” wrote Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, and Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., in a report accompanying the bill. “The Davis-Bacon law has long been a vital cog in the economic progress of this nation.” 

Calvert, who opposes the wage provision, said the entire argument is irrelevant because California labor law is more generous than federal law. 

“There are people who hold strong opinions on both sides and I’m just trying to get this bill done,” Calvert said. 

Calvert has tried to persuade labor interests that the federal provision is meaningless in California because of state law. But Kathy Roeder, spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO, said unions consider it important to have Congress on record in support of the prevailing wage issue. 

Calvert also has tried to convince his own party leaders to back off their position. 

Democrats have argued that Republicans could call for separate votes on the wage language in the three delayed bills. But Republicans don’t want to put the matter to a vote at all. 

Meanwhile, time is running out on Calvert and his hope of getting CalFed through Congress and to the president. Without his bill, or a similar measure in the Senate also awaiting action, CalFed almost certainly will not get an infusion of federal money to pay one-third of its $9 billion cost. 

Calvert said he has no choice but to keep trying to break the stalemate. 

“That’s why legislating is a tough business,” he said. “I’m hoping we can use logic to move this bill ahead.” 

SAN JOSE — There are two things to consider in judging the sanity of Yosemite killer Cary Stayner: the criminal and his crimes. 

There’s his deformed head, a legacy of mental disorders, a troubled childhood and the voices that he said told him to “do the job.” There’s also Feb. 15, 1999, the day he plotted, acted and began covering his tracks in the three methodical killings. 

The defense asked jurors Thursday to focus on the killer, his twisted mind and his traumatic upbringing. The prosecution told them to look at how he killed the Yosemite National Park tourists and tried to get away with it. 

The Santa Clara County Superior Court jury was left to sort out the rest, weighing the testimony of two psychiatrists who reached opposite conclusions about whether Stayner was crazy or whether he knew precisely what he was doing when he killed — and that he knew it was wrong. 

“The thing that screams loudest from the beginning to the end of this case is that the crimes are the result of a mental disease or defect,” defense lawyer Marcia Morrissey told jurors. “These were senseless acts, they were bizarre acts.” 

Prosecutor George Williamson conceded in his closing argument that Stayner had mental problems, but he said it didn’t mean he was insane — that is, incapable of knowing he was killing or distinguishing right from wrong. 

“People who kill like this defendant are not normal,” Williamson said. “He obviously has issues.” 

The jury deliberated for less than three hours before adjourning for the weekend. Deliberations will resume Monday with testimony from a defense expert, who found Stayner insane, being read back to the jury. 

The same jury convicted Stayner last month of murdering Carole Sund, 42, her daughter, Juli, 15, of Eureka, and their Argentine friend, Silvina Pelosso, 16, while they were staying at Cedar Lodge, where he worked as a handyman outside Yosemite National Park. 

If jurors find him sane they will hear more evidence and decide whether Stayner, 41, is executed. If found innocent by reason of insanity, he will spend his life behind bars — a sentence he’s already serving for murdering park nature guide Joie Armstrong. 

Williamson, the plainspoken, Kojak-quoting, to-the-point prosecutor, said the issue of Stayner’s state of mind was a “no brainer.” 

He took less than 30 minutes to cover two months of evidence, slipping in digs along the way at the defense, which spent all Wednesday in its closing argument and another hour Thursday during its rebuttal. 

“I’m not going to stand up here and waste your time,” Williamson said. 

The proof of Stayner’s sanity came right from his own mouth, he said. 

In his confession to the FBI, Stayner detailed how he chose his victims, how he tricked his way into their room at the rustic lodge where he worked, how he used a rope to kill two of them quietly, how he meticulously cleaned up afterward and how he tried to throw investigators off his trail. 

Williamson revisited the facts in the case, repeatedly saying that “he had to have enough sense” to know his prey were in an isolated section of the lodge, to recognize they were vulnerable and to know there was no man who might stop him. 

In convicting Stayner last month, the same panel rejected defense claims that his warped mind prevented him from forming the intent required for a first-degree murder conviction. 

Williamson, who has drawn on the wisdom of the lollipop-sucking TV detective Kojak to sum up evidence, said the defense had merely dusted off that evidence for the sanity phase.

SACRAMENTO — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it has adopted its recovery plan for the threatened California red-legged frog, the amphibian believed to have inspired Mark Twain’s short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” 

Plans include protecting and restoring the frog’s habitat; monitoring its population; researching both the frog and threats to the species; and re-establishing populations within its range. 

The plan outlines what state and federal agencies should be doing, and what private landowners and organizations can do voluntarily. However, the service said there is no requirement for specific action or spending. 

The plan seems to track the draft proposal, “which is not a perfect plan but ... in general sets out a reasonable plan for recovery,” said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The devil is in the details.” 

The frog’s range has brought it into conflict with developers, who have fought protections both within the agency and in federal court. 

Once prized as a culinary treat, the population of the largest native frog in the western United States has declined significantly since the 1865 publication of Twain’s short story about a frog named “Dan’l Webster” that could “get over more ground in one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.” 

Although the world frog-jumping contest is held each spring at the Calaveras County Fair, bullfrogs now are used because the red-legged frog no longer is found in the area. 

The frog’s historic range has shrunk 70 percent because of habitat loss and the introduction of new predators. The service said it still can be found in 256 streams or drainages, mostly along the north-central coast. But the Center for Biological Diversity says there are now only four places known to have populations greater than 350. 

Developers and conservationists have been fighting over protecting that land since the service designated more than 4 million acres as critical habitat in March 2001. The 4 million acres cover parts of 28 of the state’s 58 counties, from Tehama and Plumas counties in the north to the Mexican border. 

SANTA ANA — California’s Libertarian Party is considering dropping its candidate for governor because he spit on a radio talk show host. 

The party’s 12-member executive committee was scheduled to meet Saturday to vote on whether to rescind support for Gary Copeland, who admitted to The Orange County Register he spit on the radio host. 

“We were mortified when we first heard of this. It takes 10 votes of the executive committee, and we have the votes,” said party chairman Aaron Starr. “The party has to take a stand on this.” 

Copeland said he spat on KABC radio host Mark Whitman after Whitman switched off Copeland’s microphone during an interview Sunday at the station’s Los Angeles studio, the newspaper reported Thursday. 

The host turned off the mike when Copeland was recounting past abuses of immigrants and suggested that Whitman supported such treatment. Copeland got up to leave, heard several on-air comments from Whitman, then turned and spit on him. 

“Since I could not say what I believed, I thought I would show what I believed,” Copeland said.

The Associated Press 

LAGUNA NIGUEL — A fired nuclear power plant employee was sentenced to 90 days in jail Thursday for threatening former co-workers and amassing illegal weapons. 

David Reza pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a harassing telephone call and a felony count of possessing an assault rifle. 

Authorities said Reza called a union representative after he was fired from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in January and said: “They have taken my job, they have taken my life ... I’ll take my guns and go to San Onofre and whack a bunch of people.” 

Deputies served search warrants at Reza’s Laguna Niguel home and a storage unit in nearby San Juan Capistrano, finding 54 weapons at the house and more than 250 in the storage unit. Among them was a hand-held, anti-tank rocket launcher 

They also found 4,000 to 5,000 rounds of ammunition and four inert hand grenades lying next to a container of explosive powder. 

Reza said the weapons were antiques he had been collecting since childhood. 

Orange County Superior Court Judge Carlton Biggs ordered Reza to report to jail on Oct. 11 and placed him on three years of probation. He must stay at least 300 yards away from the power plant and cannot contact the plant’s employees. 

The 44-year-old mechanic also was fined over $2,000 and ordered to turn over most of his gun collection to a gun dealer, Deputy District Attorney Patti Sanchez said.

CHP chase ends in SF with  

two crashes, four arrests 

California Highway Patrol officials said a high-speed chase across the Bay Bridge early Thursday ended in San Francisco, with two crashes and the arrest of four suspects in the South of Market area. 

The fleeing van, bearing homemade paper license plates, sped up to between 80 and 100 mph at times on the bridge, according to Shawn Chase of the CHP, before crashing just after 1 a.m. on the offramp from Interstate Highway 80 at 5th Street. Although shots were also fired there no one was injured, according to Chase. 

One of the East Bay men eventually arrested was believed to be a suspect in an Oakland homicide earlier this week, Chase said.  

But Oakland police spokesman George Phillips clarified afterward that seeming similarities between this vehicle's description and one linked to the death of John Roane in a West Oakland residence Tuesday proved to be nothing after all. 

The killer in the Roane case remains at large, Phillips said, adding that these individuals may have taken off because of unrelated warrants or some other reason. 

Before the suspects were taken into custody – and one more person inside the van got away –- the van allegedly crashed into another car by running a red light at Sixth and Folsom streets. Although a man inside the other vehicle was injured, he refused medical treatment and went home. One suspect who had gotten out of the van was also injured when the vehicle ran over his foot, said the CHP spokesman. 

The early-morning chase also led officers onto rooftops and into an auto shop in the neighborhood around Folsom before the incident wrapped up around 1:30 a.m. San Francisco police assisted at the scene. 

Calpine says no power contract, no plant 

HAYWARD — Even though the California Energy Commission has licensed the 600-megawatt Russell City Energy Center in Hayward, Calpine Corp. says it won’t build the facility without a power contract. 

In announcing the licensing Wednesday, Gov. Gray Davis said the natural gas-fired plant “is necessary to improve energy reliability in the Bay Area.” The commission approved the plant, which is expected to cost $300 million to $400 million, on a 5-0 vote. 

But Calpine, which had been expected to begin construction next spring and put it into commercial operation in the summer of 2005, said low wholesale prices for electricity have made the company wary of new projects. 

“We’re not moving into new construction of plants without power purchasing contracts,” Calpine spokesman Kent Robertson said. “Current market conditions are an obstacle.”

Blaming it on the dog 

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Fire Department investigator trying to find out what sparked a $5,000 kitchen fire has come up with a beastly suspicion: the doggie did it. 

Pablo Martinez believes a trash-loving chocolate Labrador retriever named Brooke started the fire by turning on the stove while jumping to get at a garbage can. 

Martinez talked with tenant Tracy Jonas and asked her to retrace some of her actions before the fire. 

Jonas and a friend had cooked hamburgers Monday night. They put the fat in a re-sealable plastic bag and placed the bag in the trash can, where they also discarded the meat wrapper. 

“I knew Brooke’s reputation. But I thought I was being wise putting the trash can on top of a counter next to the stove,” Jonas said. “I guess Brooke was a little wiser this time.” 

After Jonas and her friend left the apartment Tuesday, “the dog apparently knocked the switch on the old stove, turning on the burner while trying to jump up and get the trash can,” Martinez said. 

The dog is fine but somewhat traumatized, Jonas said. 

“I could see that she was guilty,” the woman said. “Her tail was wagging and her head was down.” 

Boston squash comin’ up 

BOSTON — In its 102 years, Symphony Hall has hosted an auto show, an escape by Harry Houdini, mayoral inaugurations and meetings of the Communist Party. 

But never, it is believed, a sporting event. Until now. 

On Thursday, the U.S. Open squash tournament is set to begin, drawing 11 of the world’s top 12 players to the venerable music hall to compete for prize money and promote their sport. 

Workmen were busy Wednesday constructing the 22,000-pound portable court and surrounding it with 550 seats. Squash — similar to racquetball but played with a smaller and less bouncy ball — is played within a glass-enclosed box. 

Things could get loud at the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra — Symphony Hall’s construction predates the science of echo-muffling concert hall acoustics. 

That’s fine with Martin Heath, of Scotland, the world’s No. 11 player. 

“That’s what you want, you want a bit of atmosphere,” Heath sai

Alfred in Alfred 

ALBANY, N.Y. — Two small colleges — each named Alfred and each sharing the tiny village of Alfred — are considering a merger, in part to stop the confusion over their shared name. 

Under the proposal, the State University College of Technology at Alfred would become a contract college within the private Alfred University located across the street. The State University of New York system would still own the grounds and employ the staff, but the private institution would handle administration. 

“It’s very confusing,” said William Rezak, the president of Alfred State. “There’s a lot of market confusion between the two of us.” 

The two schools are in Alfred, a village of only 1,000 permanent residents in western New York. The number of people in Alfred swells to 6,500 including students and people who commute into the town to work at the schools. 

Rezak said it is not unusual to have parents and prospective students show up at the wrong campus. “We get each other’s mail,” he said. 

Last week’s flap over red, white and blue ribbons had critics calling UC Berkeley unpatriotic. This week, however, university administrators and students put the name-calling behind them and hoped Wednesday’s commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks would be free of politics. 

Not a chance. 

While a solemn moment of silence and a handful of poignant stories about Sept. 11 made their mark on the university’s central commemorative event at Sproul Plaza, a series of political speeches and the color of commemorative ribbons generated the most reaction. 

The ribbon war began last week when UC Berkeley’s conservative student newspaper published an article about university plans to distribute white ribbons, rather than red, white and blue, so as not to offend or exclude anyone. 

After national news outlets picked up the story, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl attacked the piece in the campus journal, defended campus patriotism, and said his office would pay for red, white and blue ribbons. 

At Wednesday’s commemoration, dozens of students attached the red, white and blue ribbons to their shirts and backpacks. 

“I’m proud to be an American and I think it’s appropriate to wear red, white and blue,” said Jesse Gabriel, president of the Associated Students of the University of California, the undergraduate student government. 

But a group of about 20 students clad in black displayed white ribbons instead and emphasized that they were mourning the loss not only of the Sept. 11 victims, but of the Afghan civilians who lost their lives in the subsequent war against the Taliban and al-Qaida.  

“People who suffered on the day of Sept. 11, or as a result of Sept. 11, in the aftermath, weren’t all U.S. citizens,” said ASUC Sen. Mary Boktor. 

Several students scoffed at the controversy, arguing that the campus journal had distorted the story and politicized an event that should not have been political. 

But Seth Norman, managing editor of the journal, California Patriot, said the story was accurate. 

“We stand behind the reporting 100 percent,” he said. 

Defenders of the article added that the student newspaper cannot be blamed for the spread of the story to other outlets. 

The politics of Sept. 11 and its aftermath were also on display in a series of speeches that 12 students, chosen by the university, gave on Sproul Plaza. 

Joshua Braver, a freshman, warned that politics since Sept. 11 have taken a “jingoistic turn,” while graduate student Snehal Shingavi criticized President George W. Bush, who is expected to make a speech before the United Nations today calling for decisive action against Iraq in an ongoing war on terrorism. 

“Today will be a day of reflection and thoughtfulness,” Shingavi said. “Tomorrow, unfortunately, will be day of war.” 

Bret Manley, president of the College Republicans, took a different tack in his speech, focusing on the impact Sept. 11 had on bringing the nation together. 

“For the first time in my life, we were more than citizens, we were a nation,” he said. 

Manley criticized students who made overtly political speeches. 

“I thought those were absolutely inappropriate,” he said. “I almost look at it as a funeral service. You don’t go to a funeral service and talk about war.” 

The day was not focused on politics alone. In the morning, a group of about 40 people from many different faiths gathered in a “circle of remembrance” sponsored by the University Religious Council to share their reflections on Sept. 11. 

Shortly thereafter, scholars at the International House released a group of doves as a symbol of peace. 

A candlelight vigil was planned for Wednesday night. 

Amidst the solemn recital of names remembering the people killed on Sept. 11, I feel our grieving is incomplete. Can we truly honor the humanity of our loss if we do not also honor the four thousand civilians that we killed, albeit accidentally, during our retaliation in Afghanistan? Those people were not “collateral damage.” They had names. They had families. They, too, had hopes for the future. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont

Thursday, September 12 

Clean Elections 

7 to 9 p.m. 

A presentation on campaign finance. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. 

548-2440 

Free 

The 14th Small Business  

Development Trade Fair 

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

The Pauley Ballroom in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, near Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way, UC Berkeley 

The event will introduce small businesses to the UC Berkeley community and give campus departments a glimpse of the services and products small businesses have to offer.  

Caterina Rando discusses her new book “Learn to Power Think: A Practical Guide to Positive and Effective Decision Making” 

Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave. 

559-9184, www.bookpride.com 

Lecture by Rev. Richard Gilbert 

Noon 

UC Berkeley Faculty Club on UC Berkeley Campus 

Visiting professor at Starr King School for the Ministry will speak on “The Difficult Art of Being Gentle in a Violent Time” 

leehenalawrence@yahoo.com 

Friday, September 13 

Lecture by Dr. Paul Farmer 

7:30 p.m. 

St. Joseph the Worker Church  

1640 Addison St. 

Dr. Farmer will speak on Health Care and Human Rights: Solidarity with the Haitian People. Benefit for Partners in Health. Music by Vukani Mawethu Choir. 

558-0371 

$5 to $15 donation 

Saturday, September 14 

Basic Personal Preparedness 

9 to 11 a.m. 

Fire Department Training Center  

997 Cedar St. 

Learn five critical steps to take care of yourself, your family and your home. Classes open to those 18 or older who live or work in Berkeley. 

981-5605, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Free 

Congressman Dennis Kuchinich  

7 p.m. 

Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley Campus, near University Avenue 

Chair of the House Progressive Caucus will speak. Keith Carson, Country Joe McDonald and performance artist Shelly Glaser will also be on hand. 

http://www.bfuu.org/rscongress 

$10 in advance, $12 door 

Heritage Day 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Fourth Street and University Avenue 

International BBQ and beer festival 

Free 

Spin for the Stars Fund-raiser 

9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Spieker Aquatics Complex, Recreational Sports Facility on UC Berkeley campus 

Noncompetitive swimming and stationary cycling event. Proceeds will help Cal STAR enhance its facilities and programs for the disabled. 

$20 registration fee, $35 for biathlon  

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237, Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

“Standing Together for Trees” 

9 a.m. to noon 

Fellowship Hall, Cedar St. near Bonita St. 

Updates on local and world forestry issues. Presentations by Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, and Kristen Kirk or Forest Forever. 

636-7659 

Free 

Thursday, September 12 

Clean Elections 

7 to 9 p.m. 

A presentation on campaign finance. 

The Ecology Center 

2530 San Pablo Ave. 

548-2440 

Free 

The 14th Small Business  

Development Trade Fair 

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

The Pauley Ballroom in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, near Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way, UC Berkeley 

The event will introduce small businesses to the UC Berkeley community and give campus departments a glimpse of the services and products small businesses have to offer.  

Caterina Rando discusses her new book “Learn to Power Think: A Practical Guide to Positive and Effective Decision Making” 

Boadecia’s Books, 398 Colusa Ave. 

559-9184, www.bookpride.com 

Lecture by Rev. Richard Gilbert 

Noon 

UC Berkeley Faculty Club on UC Berkeley Campus 

Visiting professor at Starr King School for the Ministry will speak on “The Difficult Art of Being Gentle in a Violent Time” 

leehenalawrence@yahoo.com 

Friday, September 13 

Lecture by Dr. Paul Farmer 

7:30 p.m. 

St. Joseph the Worker Church  

1640 Addison St. 

Dr. Farmer will speak on Health Care and Human Rights: Solidarity with the Haitian People. Benefit for Partners in Health. Music by Vukani Mawethu Choir. 

558-0371 

$5 to $15 donation 

Saturday, September 14 

Basic Personal Preparedness 

9 to 11 a.m. 

Fire Department Training Center  

997 Cedar St. 

Learn five critical steps to take care of yourself, your family and your home. Classes open to those 18 or older who live or work in Berkeley. 

981-5605, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes.html 

Free 

Congressman Dennis Kuchinich  

7 p.m. 

Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley Campus, near University Avenue 

Chair of the House Progressive Caucus will speak. Keith Carson, Country Joe McDonald and performance artist Shelly Glaser will also be on hand. 

http://www.bfuu.org/rscongress 

$10 in advance, $12 door 

Heritage Day 

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Fourth Street and University Avenue 

International BBQ and beer festival 

Free 

Spin for the Stars Fund-raiser 

9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Spieker Aquatics Complex, Recreational Sports Facility on UC Berkeley campus 

Noncompetitive swimming and stationary cycling event. Proceeds will help Cal STAR enhance its facilities and programs for the disabled. 

$20 registration fee, $35 for biathlon  

Sukkot Holiday Workshop 

7 to 8:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 

Join Dawn Kepler, director of Building Jewish Bridges, for hands-on crafts, food projects, creative sukkah decorations and tips for making your own sukkah (hut). 

848-0237, Ext. 127 

$10 BRJCC members/$12 public 

“Standing Together for Trees” 

9 a.m. to noon 

Fellowship Hall, Cedar St. near Bonita St. 

Updates on local and world forestry issues. Presentations by Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, and Kristen Kirk or Forest Forever. 

636-7659 

Free 

By Jennifer Dix 

Special to the Daily Planet 

The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra may be firmly grounded in Berkeley, but that doesn’t mean conductor Kent Nagano is always easy to find.  

“I think he’s in Berlin today,” said BSO director of development Jennifer Easton, reached a few days ago at the symphony offices. “Or he might be on a plane right now.” 

Berlin, London, or anywhere in between: take your pick. It’s business as usual for the 50-year-old Nagano, whose international reputation continues to soar even as he maintains his dedication to the Berkeley ensemble he has headed since 1978. The California native, who counts among his mentors Frank Zappa and Olivier Messiaen, has won worldwide acclaim over the past decade as a guest conductor in some of the most famous concert halls of Europe and the U.S. The Chicago Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, all vie for his talents. He’s been principal guest conductor for the London Symphony since 1990 and was director of England’s famed Halle Orchestra from 1991 to 2000. Currently he serves as principal conductor for the Los Angeles Opera and music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, in addition to his Berkeley post. 

His admirers often wonder how long Nagano will continue to stay in the Bay Area. As one observer noted, “It's like a top-notch professional painter choosing to teach at Crossroads School instead of UCLA.” Every time a major American orchestra announces the search for a new conductor, Nagano’s local fans watch nervously to see if their native son will be wooed away. 

But Nagano, who lives in San Francisco with his pianist wife, Mari Kodama, and their young daughter, has repeatedly said publicly that the Bay Area is where he wants to be. And Berkeley’s orchestra, while not on the radar screen of most major classical musicians, offers something that many conductors might envy: a forum for experimentation. 

“The thing about Berkeley is it allows [Nagano] to do things he can’t do elsewhere,” says Easton. “He can try new things he can’t try elsewhere; this town is more open to creativity.” 

Nagano is known for varied programs that offer a sampling of styles old and new. Next Wednesday’s season opener at Zellerbach Hall is typical. It features works by Beethoven, Messiaen, and Gyorgy Ligeti, and a symphony by Galina Ustvolskaya, a Russian composer little known in the west. Each of the works has a spiritual theme or text. While some are familiar, others are little known. 

The Pacific Mozart Ensemble, a choral group directed by Richard Dick, once again joins the BSO for this innovative program. First up is Ligeti’s choral work “Lux  

Aeterna,” a haunting, shimmering piece based on the Latin Mass for the Dead. Stanley Kubrick borrowed this music for the soundtrack of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” 

The choral ensemble is also heard in “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” Beethoven’s only oratorio. This rarely heard work is a dramatic, emotional piece that depicts Christ’s inner struggle at the Garden of Gethsemane. Soloists include soprano Pamela Coburn, tenor Bruce Sledge, and bass Christopher Robinson. 

It is not surprising that Nagano would choose a piece by Messiaen, a composer who is a personal friend and for whose work Nagano has been a leading interpreter. “L’Ascension,” written in 1933, is a four-part instrumental work inspired by Christian scripture. It remains one of Messiaen’s most popular pieces. 

Of particular interest is a short orchestral piece by octogenarian Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya which will almost certainly be new to local audiences. Her Symphony No. 4 (“The Prayer”), described as a one-movement “pocket” symphony, is packed with dramatic force despite its brevity. Ustvolskaya, born in 1919, spent most of her life living under the Communist regime. While she was sometimes honored for her music, she frequently ran afoul of the Soviet authorities for exploring themes considered inappropriate to Communist life.  

Still living today in her native St. Petersburg, Ustvolskaya shows an independent spirit born of long years of resistance. When Nagano telephoned her to request permission to perform “The Prayer,” her first reaction was to hang up on him. He persisted, and now Berkeley concert goers will be able to enjoy this work for themselves.

Despite an encouraging start to the season, the Cal football team played to a tiny crowd of 24,619 fans at Memorial Stadium on Saturday against New Mexico State, a fact that surprised several Bears players. 

“I definitely expected more people to show up,” senior safety Bert Watts said Tuesday. “I guess we can only hope to win more games and get more fans out there.” 

The crowd, which barely filled one-third of Memorial Stadium’s seats, was concentrated in the alumni sections and student section on the sidelines, with some of the corner sections barely populated at all. When the Cal chant leaders tried to get the two sides to coordinate on a cheer, it took several tries to get things going. 

Remarkably, Saturday’s attendance was lower than any of the Bears’ home games last season, a 1-10 disaster that may still be keeping fans away. Other factors include a lack of parking in the stadium area, with fraternities nearby charging $20 or more for a spot, and lack of enthusiasm over watching the Bears play low-profile New Mexico State. 

“I can understand why people didn’t come,” said wide receiver LaShaun Ward. “When you think about it logically, they didn’t know what to expect. They probably thought the opposition wasn’t too tough, but a win’s a win for us.” 

The Bears face a sterner test this week against No. 15 Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich. Wideout Geoff McArthur thinks an upset of the Spartans will prove to fans that Cal might be a team worth watching in person. 

“I think if we come back off the road with a win, they’ll understand it’s not a fluke,” he said. 

Even the orgy of scoring in Cal’s 70-22 opener against Baylor didn’t attract additional fans. In fact, the attendance dropped nearly 3,000 from the first game to the second. Apparently a 48-point win wasn’t impressive enough to draw people away from their television sets. 

“I hope everyone was home watching the game on television,” Watts said. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself. I’d hate to think no one saw us win.” 

Head coach Jeff Tedford, who came to Cal from football-crazy Oregon University, wasn’t convinced the crowd was actually smaller in his second game with the school. 

“When I looked up during the game, it looked like there were more people in the stands,” Tedford said. “I was surprised to hear there were actually less than the first week. It’s not something we worry about during the game, but I was hoping there would be more people there.” 

Tedford said the home-field advantage was a big factor in the Ducks’ rise to prominence while he was an assistant in Eugene, and he hopes to build the same kind of fan base in Berkeley with some success on the field. 

“If you can create that kind of atmosphere, it can help your team a lot,” he said. “I think we’ve given the fans every reason to be optimistic at this point. We just have to do our jobs and hopefully we can win some support back.” 

One encouraging sign was the spirit of the student section for the first two games. Chants of “We love Tedford!” and “Undefeated!” have rung out late in games as students get used to cheering for a winning team. 

Watts said he has gotten plenty of support from fellow students on campus. 

“I’ve talked to a lot of other students who seem really excited about us,” he said. “I talked to people who watched the Baylor game on television and went out and bought season tickets.” 

Senior defensive end Tully Banta-Cain, who gave the crowd something to cheer about with 4 1/2 sacks against the Aggies, admitted puzzlement over the reduction in crowds despite the team’s winning ways. 

“Even last year when we were losing we were getting big crowds, and now that we’re winning we’re not. That’s pretty weird,” Banta-Cain said. “Not to dis the fans who are up there, because that shows who the true fans are.” 

NOTES: Wide receivers Chase Lyman and Junior Brignac continue to battle injuries. Brignac has an ankle sprain and Lyman a hamstring pull that will keep each out of Saturday’s game. Tedford said it’s too early in the season to consider redshirting either player... Defensive end Tom Canada continues to be away from the team with what Tedford termed “personal issues.” Canada, a senior, missed the New Mexico State game and will not travel to East Lansing... Banta-Cain’s mother, Joya Banta, produces a website that follows her son and the Cal football team through the 2002 season. It can be found on at www.joyadesigns/tully.com.

Budget shortfalls threatening to close two Berkeley swimming pools have already cost 50 seniors their four-year-old water aerobics class. 

Seniors at the West Campus Pool, at Addison and Curtis streets, say the city has unfairly singled them out while it battles with the Berkeley Unified School District about pool fees. 

“This is discrimination against seniors,” said class member Sydney Vilen.  

The water aerobic classes, provided free by the Berkeley Adult School, were abruptly canceled last month after the school was unable to pay the city $14,000. 

City officials said that this year’s tight budget gave them no choice but to pull the plug on the program.  

Senior criticism of the class cancellation comes amid increasing public anger about the city’s scheduled November through April closure of the West Campus Pool and Willard Pool on Telegraph Avenue. The pool closures are also cost-saving measures. 

Under a 1991 agreement, the school district and the city are supposed to reimburse one another for use of each other’s facilities. For several years, however, neither side has bothered to make payments, said Lisa Caronna, director of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department. 

But now that the city is strapped with a budget deficit it has asked the school district to pay the money it owes. Under the 1991 agreement, the school district is supposed to fund a portion of electricity, gas and water expenses for school-sponsored water programs estimated to cost about $80,000 a year. 

Caronna said the money is vital to the parks department, which has been asked to cut $100,000 from its budget. 

The pools cost Berkeley $800,000 a year, Caronna said, but they bring in only about $200,000.  

Adult school principal Margaret Kirkpatrick said she did not realize that the school was responsible for pool costs. She added that, due to school board budget constraints, the adult school did not have $14,000 for the program. 

Seniors say the city’s decision was punitive.“They wouldn’t even give us a grace period until November [when the pool is scheduled to close for the winter],” Vilen said. 

Caronna, though, said the budget crunch is forcing the pools to ask users for more money. 

“We are a small city and run five swimming pools so when we don’t get attendance, we look for programs that weren’t heavily attended,” Caronna said. 

At the city’s urging, other swim organizations such as the Berkeley Bears youth swim team have increased their yearly dues, from $12,000 to $22,000, to help pay for their own programs. 

The seniors, however, haven’t taken such an approach. 

One idea called for seniors to pay $22.50 a month to take the class. But the current enrollment would not pay for a teacher who was previously paid with school board grants, a pool official said. 

The senior water aerobics class was the only adult swim program the school district offered. All school district youth swim programs will continue while the city and school district discuss exactly how much money is owed for use of the city’s pools.

As everyone is well aware, Sept. 11 was the one-year anniversary of tragic events. The fire service lost over 340 firefighters as a result of that tragedy. An event we as firefighters and a nation hope never to witness again. Shortly after Sept. 11 the Berkeley Firefighters Association set out to do whatever we could to assist our brothers and sisters of the fire department of New York City. As a membership, we went out to the community of Berkeley and began a campaign called, “Fill the Boot for the FDNY.” Firefighters from Berkeley were on street corners to raise donations for the families of the fallen firefighters of the FDNY. As a result of our efforts from the Fill the Boot campaign, the Berkeley Firefighters Association was able to raise $80,000. This money was donated to the Widows and Orphans Fund of the FDNY last December. 

I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of over 100 members of the Berkeley Firefighters Association Local 1227 to thank the citizens of Berkeley and the surrounding communities, plus local merchants for their donations and hard work for our cause. The overwhelming support that we received from the community made our Fill the Boot campaign a huge success. 

Marc Mestrovich 

Berkeley Firefighters Association Local 1227

Lady Jackets start with loss 

The Berkeley High girls’ volleyball team lost its first match of the season on Tuesday, falling to Castro Valley 15-8, 15-7, 15-12. Vanessa Williams led the Jackets with five kills and 10 digs, while fellow senior Amalia Jarvis had 12 digs. 

Field hockey players honored 

Cal’s Michelle Wald, a senior midfielder, was named Co-Offensive NorPac Player of the Week and Kelly Knapp, a sophomore goalkeeper, was awarded Defensive Player of the Week in the first week of NorPac standings.  

During Cal’s roadtrip to the Midwest, Wald scored a pair of game-winning goals. Both goals came in 1-0 victories over cross-divisional rival Southwest Missouri and Big Ten foe Indiana.  

Knapp recorded four shutouts and made 35 saves in Cal’s first five games. She stopped a season-high 10 shots in a 1-0 win over cross-conference rival SMS. Against the Big Ten, she posted two eight save games, a 1-0 win over Indiana and a tough 1-0 OT loss to Ohio State. 

Alta Bates benefit this weekend 

Berkeley Tennis Club will host the 11th Annual Alta Bates Summit Celebrity Classic on Saturday. The Classic is a benefit for the Comprehensive Breast Center, a full-service, state-of-the-art breast cancer clinic at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley.  

Participating celebrities include fomer tennis pros Tracy Austin, Zina Garrison and Vic Braden. Joining them will be James McDaniel of “NYPD Blue,” Brad Sherwood of ABC’s “Whose Line is it Anyway?”, Nick Stabile, formerly of “Dawson’s Creek,” “Grounded for Life” star Donal Logue, Robert Pine, who starred on NBC’s “Chips,” actor Kirk Fox, Candid Camera host Peter Funt, KGO co-anchor Ed Baxter, and SF Chronicle Columnist Ken Garcia. Sports stars include former SF Giants pitcher Bill Laskey, former Raider Ben Davidson, Pro Football Hall of Famer Dave Casper, former baseball standout Vida Blue, former 49er and TV/radio broadcaster Mike Shumann, former Oakland A Claudell Washington, former 49ers Jimmie Johnson, Ray Wershing and Eric Wright, former slugger Dave Kingman, and Rick Barry, who hosts KNBR’s midday talk show. KTVU reporter Faith Fancher will MC the event.  

Events on Saturday include an exhibition match with Tracy Austin and Zina Garrison at 11:30 a.m., celebrity doubles matches throughout the day and a gala dinner at 7:30 p.m. at the Claremont Resort. 

The Classic is the largest event of its kind in the country and has collectively raised more than $2 million for a wide range of life-saving and -enhancing services. Tickets to watch the Tennis Classic are $25 each (children 10 and under are free); admission cost includes box lunch. For ticket information call (888) 337-8800. For more information visit www.absfdn.org.

Jay Kelekian, who in 1994 helped lead the city’s fight against the end of statewide rent control, was named executive director of the city’s rent board last week. 

Most recently a management analyst for the city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, Kelekian accepted a three-year contract to head the board which mediates conflict between landlords and tenants. He starts the job in October. 

Kelekian, a rent control advocate, was selected by a majority of pro-tenant rent board commissioners, despite landlord disappointment with Kelekian. 

“The impression we got was that he wasn’t very interested in our concerns,” said Robert Englund of the Berkeley Property Owners Association, which participated in the interview process. 

The rent board is overseen by nine publically elected commissioners and was constituted in 1980 to decide how much landlords can raise rent each year, to enforce rent control laws and to settle housing disputes. 

During the board’s first 15 years, tenant and landlord advocates battled for control of the board.  

However, after passage of the state Costa-Hawkins Act gave more power to landlords, public sentiment turned against them and pro-tenant advocates dominated the board. 

“The image most small property owners have of the rent board is that they are there to punish us,” said Englund. 

The commissioners sit as an appeals jury on disputes between landlords and tenants. Landlords say that some rent board decisions are so unabashedly pro-tenant that landlords have appealed rent board decisions to Alameda County Superior Court.  

Tenant rights advocates, however, counter that landlords have abused their Costa-Hawkins privileges. They add that the landlords’ victory in the state legislature requires the rent board to take an activist position to protect the rights of Berkeley tenants.  

Kelekian said he does not want to become bogged down in housing politics. 

“My goal will be to provide all of the board members with accountable and fair information and see that the laws are administered in an unbiased way,” he said.  

The executive director position is primarily managerial, but Kelekian will still have authority to impact policy. He will be responsible for the hiring of hearing examiners who serve as trial judges in disputes between tenants and landlords, as well as for working with rent board commissioners to set policy goals. 

Kelekian said that to deal with the increase of evictions since the end of rent control, the rent board should place greater emphasis on tenant outreach and eviction monitoring.  

Rent Board commissioners were divided on a new director. After interviewing five candidates, they decided to negotiate a contract with Kelekian by a vote of 5-4. 

The narrow margin highlights the split on the board between those who want to forcefully push tenant’s interests and those who fear that taking too strident a pro-tenant approach could embroil the rent board in unnecessary litigation with landlords. 

Kelekian’s base of support came from the activist wing of the rent board, although the entire board supported his candidacy after it was evident that he had enough support to be offered the position. 

Kelekian is no stranger to the rent board. From 1984 to 1994, he worked for the board in several capacities, and has worked as a management analyst for various city departments during the last 18 years. 

He says his familiarity with city government should help him at the rent board. 

“I hope my experience will allow me to facilitate even closer ties with other departments to create stable affordable and habitable homes,” he said.  

(Note: The letter’s author proposed a development for 1155 Hearst St.) 

The state's rejection of the city of Berkeley's Housing Element, citing “too many development restrictions,” highlights the long litany of mistakes, delays, political chicanery and downright illegal actions designed to hinder the legal development of property in Berkeley. Such is unfortunate experience. 

Our original development application met all existing zoning standards until the city, in an attempt to stop our development, downzoned our property making it financially impossible for us to build any more new units. This decision is currently the subject of legal action. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board asserted that it does not need our affordable housing project (as defined by the state) to meet its state mandated goals, yet there are 4,000 families on the Section 8 waiting list, up to 3,000 homeless people in Berkeley, and the city manager is on record as stating that the city “has never met its regional fair share housing allocations.”  

The ZAB denied our application, assuming incorrectly that California Housing Law is not intended to apply to Berkeley. In fact the law states that charter cities are specifically included. There is no exception in state law for Berkeley or any other city. The City Council will have an opportunity to correct this misinterpretation and avert any lawsuit. 

Finally, we are not “trying to skirt the zoning rules.” In fact we have complied with everything the planners have requested. We are just a mother and daughter using our life's savings, attempting to comply with city and state law while enhancing a small rental property we have subsidized for 30 years.  

If the city follows the law there will be no necessity for future action to protect our legal rights and recover some of the money lost on this endeavor. Perhaps if the laws were routinely followed without delay, housing could be built in a more timely fashion to address the waiting lists of people desperate for housing. 

Lynda Hart 

Berkeley

LONDON — As much of the world paused Wednesday to mourn the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, a group of Islamic militants praised the “positive outcomes” of the violence they claim to reject, and offered support to the aims of Osama bin Laden. 

The fundamentalists, in what appeared to be the most radical Muslim gathering on the anniversary of the terrorist atrocities, said al-Qaida had a “rational justification” for the attacks, but denied having ties to bin Laden’s terror network. 

“The attack in New York was a counterattack for the attacks in Iraq and Palestine,” said Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who attended the meeting at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London. 

“One Muslim decided to take action... He took one eye for a hundred. He still has 99 eyes to go,” al-Massari added and praised bin Laden as a hero “fighting for his beliefs.” 

A dozen or so men with kaffiyehs over their faces stood on the steps of the north London mosque, barring about 50 journalists from entering the building, which is widely regarded as a center of radical Islam in Britain. 

Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed said the meeting at Finsbury Park Mosque, titled “Sept. 11, 2001: A Towering Day in History,” argues that the attacks were justified because Muslims must defend themselves against armed aggression. 

“I don’t believe in using violence,” Mohammed told journalists before the meeting. “Definitely al-Qaida has got rational justification for what they did on Sept. 11. Maybe I disagree with them, but they have the right to fight back especially after they (the United States) bombed Sudan, then they bombed Afghanistan.” 

Mohammed heads Al-Muhajiroun, a militant group that recruits on university campuses and encourages members to join armed struggles abroad. It says its goal is to make Britain an Islamic state. 

A statement issued at the end of the meeting condemned “any and all aggression against the government of the Taliban” — the ousted Afghan regime. 

It accused the United States of acting as if it is “above any law” and said “the only Islamic response to such unparalleled arrogance and oppression is to do one’s utmost to resist the oppression no matter how weak one may find oneself.” 

Al-Masri, who lost his hands and left eye fighting the former Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, said this Sept. 11 was “a day of thinking and rethinking and getting the message out. I know many Muslims are oppressed. This is not a day to celebrate,” said al-Masri, who is a prayer leader at the mosque and denies supporting terrorism. 

His funds were frozen by the U.S. Treasury for his alleged membership in the Islamic Army of Aden. That organization is linked to al-Qaida and claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. 

He has had British citizenship since 1985, and is protected by British law from extradition to Yemen.

As a Berkeley pedestrian and advocate for persons with disabilities, I am moved to thank the Berkeley Police Department for their work protecting pedestrians in the crosswalk. Red flags didn't work. There have to be real consequences for unsafe drivers before more pedestrians are killed. Thank you, Berkeley police. 

Tim Donnelly 

Berkeley

This week, four women from Costa Rica’s budding disability rights movement are visiting a city that plays host to some of the world’s foremost political experts: Berkeley. 

The women, representatives of Foro por los Derechos Humanos de las Personas con Discapacidad (Human Rights Forum for the Disabled), based in Costa Rica’s capital of San Jose, hope to pick up valuable lessons about organizing the disabled so they can wage an effective political campaign on the homefront. 

The activists are currently fighting to win implementation of Costa Rica’s Law 7600, passed in 1996. The groundbreaking legislation guarantees access to public transportation, education, the workplace, recreation, health care and more for the disabled. But according to “El Foro,” as the organization is known, Costa Rica has a long way to go to make the law a reality. 

The activists’ fight currently centers on public transportation. Law 7600 gave the government seven years to create accessible bus service, but with the deadline only eight months away, none of Costa Rica’s 5,000 buses are accessible, advocates say. 

The El Foro representatives, hosted by Berkeley’s Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, or DREDF, have visited a number of local advocacy and service organizations and sat in on a disability law course at UC Berkeley Tuesday night. They said they have picked up a number of lessons that will help in their struggle. 

“I think the most important thing we’ve learned here is strategies – how to build an agenda, a communication strategy, political ways to fight,” said Catalina Derandas, an attorney with El Foro. 

But Andrea Vargas Carmiol, a student active in El Foro said the burgeoning movement has learned a more basic lesson in Berkeley, where college students helped kickstart the national push for disabled rights in the 1970s. That lesson is that building a largescale movement and creating real change is possible. 

“In the United States, the movement of people with disabilities started many, many years ago and we are just beginning,” Carmiol said. 

The relationship between El Foro and DREDF dates back to October 2000, when DREDF convened an international conference of disability advocates in Washington D.C. on the 10th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, which helped inspire similar legislation in 40 other countries. 

Derandas said Dr. Federico Montero, who would soon co-found El Foro, was in attendance and began to build a relationship between the Berkeley group and the Costa Rican movement. 

DREDF then won a $48,000 grant from the U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to conduct a Dec. 2001 workshop in Costa Rica. 

A second State Department grant, totaling $58,000, is paying for the current visit to Berkeley and a follow-up forum, run by DREDF, in Costa Rica this December. 

It saddens and angers me that the air quality issue is impacting the expansion of the Harrison House Homeless Shelter. The shelter is located on the outskirts of Berkeley in an industrial neighborhood because most of the citizens of Berkeley don't want “those kind of people” in their neighborhood. Now these same Berkeley people are telling us they are so concerned about the impact of the air quality on the well-being of the people they sent to this neighborhood that their facilities shouldn't be expanded. Boona cheema, the person who has devoted much of her life to working with homeless people said it best. “What do you think the answer is going to be when you ask a homeless mother with two kids if she would rather live on the streets or in safe, warm housing in West Berkeley?”  

The Berkeley City Council and the community should support the provision of as much additional housing for the homeless at Harrison House as is practical and desired by the people who are devoting their lives to improving the overall welfare of those people who need this type of support. 

Doug Fielding 

Berkeley

Some oil may never be removed  

from ship near Golden Gate 

SAN FRANCISCO — Divers have pumped most of the oil from a sunken ship near the Golden Gate, but they may not be able to get all of it out. 

Oil in the SS Jacob Luckenbach, which sank in 1953 after colliding with another ship, has been seeping from the freighter periodically for at least 10 years. The leaks killed thousands of seabirds, fouled beaches from Point Reyes to Monterey and stumped the U.S. Coast Guard and environmentalists before they pinpointed the Luckenbach as the culprit earlier this year. 

Since June, divers have pumped more than 55,000 gallons of oil from the freighter, which is 175 feet below the surface. 

But tanks on the starboard side of the ship are buried 20 feet deep in the ocean floor. Three cargo decks with trains, trucks and parts are stacked above them, but they’re starting to cave in, making the area unsafe for divers, said Kim McCleneghan, a senior environmental scientist with the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response. 

For those tanks, McCleneghan said the best idea may be to let sand flow in and seal any cracks, preventing the oil, which is extremely thick, from escaping. State and federal agencies and the company doing the salvage still need to discuss their options. 

Airports report less activity 

Officials say there are fewer planes flew in and out the Bay Area's three major airports Wednesday, a downturn in air traffic that airlines prepared for given the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks involving hijacked planes. 

A spokesman for Oakland International Airport said there was 30 percent less flight activity at the Oakland Airport than on a typical Wednesday. 

“It's because of the day, and what happened,” the spokesman said.  

He said that last night, Mexicana airlines canceled two flights that were scheduled to arrive in Oakland today in response to Tuesday's announcement that the United States has been put on a high state of alert against a possible terrorist attack. 

HMOs disclose plans to drop  

coverage in parts of NorCal 

SAN FRANCISCO — Tens of thousands of Medicare patients in parts of Northern California will lose coverage by two major HMOs at year’s end. 

PacifiCare of California said it will leave Contra Costa and Alameda counties on Jan. 1, a move that will affect more than 10,000 seniors. The group also said Monday it will drop another 12,000 members in Butte and San Joaquin counties. 

In addition, Health Net said it will pull out of the Livermore area, which means 460 Alameda County patients must find new coverage. 

Monday was the deadline for HMOs to notify the government whether they would continue to serve the elderly and disabled who rely on Medicare for health coverage.

Santa Cruz Council to pass out  

medical marijuana at City Hall 

SANTA CRUZ — City leaders plan to join medical marijuana users at a pot giveaway at City Hall next week. Their goal is to send a message to federal authorities that medical marijuana is welcome. 

The invitation comes one week after agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested the high-profile owners of a pot farm and confiscated 130 plants that had been grown to be used as medicine. 

“It’s just absolutely loathsome to me that federal money, energy and staff time would be used to harass people like this,” said Vice Mayor Emily Reilly, who with several colleagues on the City Council plans to help pass out medical marijuana to sick people from the garden-like courtyard at City Hall next Tuesday. 

City Attorney John Barisone said that although the City Council did pass a resolution denouncing the raid, there is no official city sponsorship of the event. He said council members and medical marijuana advocates are acting on their own accord in a public space. 

Judge: inmates can receive mail  

downloaded from Internet 

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has overturned a California Department of Corrections policy barring inmates from receiving mail containing printed material from the Internet. 

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, in an opinion made public Wednesday, wrote that inmates have a right to receive mail and that the government did not adequately justify the ban, first imposed in 1998. 

The case stemmed from a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that inmates were entitled to communications mailed to them regardless of whether they originated from the Internet. 

The corrections department adopted the policy on grounds that Internet-generated mail may contain hidden coded messages, which could pose a danger in the prison. 

Wilken said the department “failed to articulate any reason to believe that Internet-produced materials are more likely to contain coded, criminal correspondence than photocopied or handwritten materials.” 

Yosemite killer’s lawyer says evidence  

tips scale toward insanity 

SAN JOSE — With no dispute remaining over the guilt of motel handyman Cary Stayner and little question he suffered from mental problems, his lawyer tried to spare his life Wednesday by proving he was crazy when he murdered three Yosemite tourists in 1999. 

Defense lawyer Marcia Morrissey reviewed testimony in the sanity phase of Stayner’s death penalty trial that she said proved he was insane. 

From symptoms of schizophrenia to obsessive compulsive disorder to psychosis, Stayner suffered an illness that was greater than a sum of its parts, she said. 

His problems were so severe that psychiatrists could not agree just what afflicted him. 

“It’s just a function of the fact that Mr. Stayner has so many other problems,” Morrissey said. “It’s hard to say exactly what.”

FORT COLLINS — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory has confirmed that a Los Angeles County woman contracted West Nile virus. 

The Rocky Mountain News reported in Wednesday’s editions that researchers confirmed the case by testing a blood sample. 

The case is believed to be the first appearance of West Nile virus west of the Continental Divide. It’s a baffling finding because West Nile has not been seen in Utah, Arizona, Nevada or anywhere else in California. 

This week officials said a Houston-area man visiting relatives in Los Angeles fell ill in a probable case of West Nile virus. However, they believe the man was likely bitten by an infected mosquito in Texas. 

“How she got it, your guess is as good as mine,” lab director Duane Gubler said Tuesday. “This virus continues to surprise us.” 

Migrating birds could have carried the germ north from Central America or Mexico, Gubler said. However, under that scenario, Gubler said the virus would probably have been detected in sentinel chickens or horses. 

“California has one of the best, if not the best, surveillance system in the country,” Gubler said. 

The California woman lived near Los Angeles International Airport and worked for an air-courier company, Gubler said. 

“It’s possible, since it was in the area of the L.A. airport, that the virus came in a mosquito that hitched a ride on a plane.” he said. “It’s pure speculation.” 

No human West Nile cases have been reported in Colorado. 

Nineteen more Colorado horses tested positive for West Nile on Tuesday, bringing the statewide equine total to 117. At least 31 of those horses have died, according to the state Agriculture Department. 

Nationwide, 45 human West Nile deaths and 1,086 human cases have been confirmed this year by the CDC. 

SACRAMENTO — California’s Department of Education would be placed under the control of the governor as part of a new legislative proposal released Tuesday to restructure the state’s education system. 

The plan is a proposed expansion of the state’s master plan for education, which guarantees every student the chance to go to college. 

Any elements of the new plan must be approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor to take effect. 

But Sen. Dede Alpert, D-Coronado, chairwoman of the master planning committee, called the plan “a comprehensive way to improve our system of public education.” 

The committee wants to make the Department of Education part of the governor’s cabinet, meaning the superintendent of public instruction would no longer be responsible for the state’s educational programs. 

Instead, the governor would be held more accountable for California’s education system, said Charles Ratliff, the committee’s senior consultant. 

“The governor has the major authority with the budget,” Ratliff said. “He’s able to veto and blue line spending items and set up budget priorities, yet he escapes any responsibility for what happens in schools.” 

But the governor has other priorities besides education, said department spokeswoman Nicole Winger, while “the superintendent acts on behalf of the public schools.” 

Although state officials said they hope the new master plan will work as well as the original, some educators have expressed skepticism. 

One strongly contested part of the plan is its recommendation to eliminate college acceptance policies that give an advantage to students who have taken advanced placement, called AP courses, in high school.

The following describe bills Gov. Gray Davis signed Wednesday: 

n Adds certain moving violations to existing law that requires boat operators to pass a boating safety course if convicted of specified moving violations. The bill also extends the nighttime ban on personal boat operation and excludes diveboard users from existing life jacket requirements. 

n Requires the state Department of Transportation to compile, summarize and make available highway congestion data. 

n Increases penalties against someone who falsely poses as a practicing attorney. 

n Clarifies the existing law to specifically authorize Internet bids on public works and other public contracts. 

n Simplifies the process for filing claims with the Senior Citizen’s Homeowners and Renters’ Tax Assistance Program. 

NEW YORK — Yahoo.com’s home page was devoid of its usually vivid colors Wednesday, its white background replaced with gray. Amazon.com carried drawings, essays and poetry from New York City schoolchildren. 

“I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words,” eighth-grader Stephanie wrote. “It may be the last time you see them.” 

The Internet, already home to some poignant electronic archives, marked the Sept. 11 anniversary in its own way. Some Web gathering spots emphasized the medium’s power for instant reaction to galvanizing events. Others stressed not expression, but reflection. 

Topica, which sends more than 50 million messages a day to about 4,000 corporate and community discussion lists, took down its site and suspended service for most of the day. 

Anna Zornosa, the company’s president, said Topica worried that commercial advertising, could be seen as inappropriate or insensitive on a day of reflection. 

Banner ads at AOL Time Warner sites were replaced with pictures of candles and links to a site where visitors could learn of opportunities to give money, volunteer and remember.

n Vending Machine Heist 

Three vending machines at the Berkeley Adult School were broken into early morning on Tuesday. Coins were taken from all three machines. 

n Home Burglary 

A burglar kicked open a door and proceeded to steal a television and VCR from a home on the 1300 block of Hopkins street around 3:40 p.m. Tuesday. The burglar was seen escaping in a late 1980’s Oldsmobile. 

n Scooter stolen 

A sky blue 1980 Honda motor scooter, license 5U4962, was stolen from the 2000 block of Allston Way at 6:03 p.m. Tuesday. The robber was described as a black male in his early 20s wearing a white shirt with a blue Adidas logo. 

UNITED NATIONS — As U.N. weapons inspectors moved ahead with plans to return to Iraq, the United States and Russia clashed on Tuesday over whether to take Baghdad at its word or impose a new ultimatum. “We have seen this game before,” said a skeptical Colin Powell. 

The secretary of state reaffirmed Washington’s call for a tough anti-Iraq resolution by the U.N. Security Council, despite Iraq’s sudden about-face on inspections. 

But Russia’s foreign minister said he saw no immediate need for new U.N. demands if the inspectors are quickly dispatched. He was backed up by Arab leaders, Moscow’s traditional allies. The “logic of war” may now be replaced by “the logic of peace,” said one. 

The 15-member Security Council majority decided, despite a U.S. request for more time, to quickly schedule a meeting, possibly Wednesday, with chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to discuss renewed inspections. The Americans, supported by Britain and Colombia, wanted first to prepare a new resolution, diplomats said. 

Blix then met with Iraqi representatives, after which the Iraqis announced talks were set for Sept. 27 to make final plans. 

In the Middle East, the business of preparing for war went on, as American warplanes flew under aggressive new rules over Iraq, and U.S. commanders considered basing heavy bombers closer by. 

At a U.N. news conference at which Powell and Russia’s Igor Ivanov laid out conflicting views, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed for them to stick together on Iraq. 

This is “the beginning, not an end,” he said. “We should try to maintain the unity of purpose that has emerged.” 

The Security Council then went into closed-door consultations on a timetable for dealing with the fast-changing Iraq issue. 

The council sent weapons inspectors into Iraq after the 1990-91 Gulf War, to ensure that President Saddam Hussein’s regime destroyed any chemical or biological weapons it possessed, and any capacity to produce those or nuclear weapons. 

The inspectors left in 1998, ahead of U.S. airstrikes, amid Iraqi allegations that some were spying for the United States and countercharges that Baghdad wasn’t cooperating with the inspection teams. 

The international “unity of purpose” Annan cited emerged after President Bush, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last Thursday, forcefully called for the Security Council to threaten action against Iraq if it did not allow the inspectors back. 

If the world body didn’t act, Bush made clear, Washington would feel free to launch a military attack. 

Bush’s was the opening move in what may become a high-stakes diplomatic chess game.

UNITED NATIONS — Iraq unconditionally accepted the return of U.N. weapons inspectors late Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, nearly four years after the inspectors left Baghdad. 

“I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of inspectors without conditions to continue their work,” a pleased Annan said. 

“There is good news,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said moments earlier. Sabri refused to comment further and left U.N. headquarters after a day of negotiations on the text of the letter. 

Sabri and Arab League chief Amr Moussa had met late with Annan to transmit the letter from the Iraqi government. 

Under Security Council resolutions, sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that its weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed.

The Union City Police Department sought to reassure citizens Saturday that a brutal triple homicide this week was not a random outbreak of violence. 

The police said that the murder victims, Johnny Li, 33, and Deborah Yao, 26, who were engaged to be married, and a man believed to be a friend of Li's whose identity has not been released, were specifically targeted by their attackers. 

The three were found dead Thursday night inside a two-story house at 33056 Compton Court, which Li and Yao had been renting since August of last year. The police said the three victims had been beaten so badly that the cause of death was unclear, and they had been dead for at least a day before they were discovered. 

Investigators believe that at least two attackers, most likely known by the victims, were let into the house prior to the killings.

NAPLES — Three men reportedly overheard talking about a terrorist plot were pulled over and detained for 17 hours Friday before authorities said the men were apparently kidding around and released them. 

Afterward, the three drove to a rest stop, where they told reporters they were medical students heading to Miami for training and denied making any comments or jokes about terrorism. Police declined to say what the men told them during questioning. 

“If this was a hoax, they will be charged,” Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter said angrily after an all-day search of the men’s two cars turned up no sign of explosives. 

It was unclear what charges, if any, the men might face in Florida or Georgia, where a woman told authorities she heard them plotting at a restaurant Thursday morning. 

At the rest stop, Ayman Gheith, who has a long beard and wore a skull cap, said the woman may have been influenced by his appearance. 

“She saw obviously the way I was dressed and maybe she put a little salt and pepper into her story,” he said. 

The men later told CNN they were unaware of any problems in the restaurant. “The words 9-11, the words September weren’t even mentioned in the conversation. Or September 13th. We were talking about what we were going to do in Miami,” Gheith said. 

The cars were stopped after the Georgia woman reported overhearing three men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent making “alarming” comments during breakfast at the restaurant in Calhoun, Ga., said Mickey Lloyd of the Georgia Department of Public Safety. 

According to authorities, one of the men said Americans “mourned on 9/11 and they are going to mourn again on 9/13.” They also said the target of “possible terrorist activities” was in the Miami area. 

Georgia officials issued an alert based on the woman’s report and the cars were stopped at 1 a.m. after one went through the Interstate 75 toll booth east of Naples, authorities said. The men told CNN they paid the toll, but that the attendant was confused about whether they had. 

The men were detained in a van while authorities used dogs and a robot to go through the cars. 

“The whole time I kept asking, ’Why are we being pulled over? Why is this happening?”’ Kambiz Butt said during the TV interview. 

Police did not tell them why they had been detained until shortly before their release, Omar Chaudhary added. 

The men are of Jordanian, Iranian and Pakistani descent — one a U.S. native, another a naturalized citizen and the third the holder of a valid visa, authorities said. 

Relatives of the men criticized the investigation, suggesting they had been singled out because of their heritage. 

“I don’t know what the lady in the restaurant heard or assumed. She must have had some kind of prejudice,” father Javed Chaudhary, a Pakistani immigrant, said from his home in Independence, Mo. He said his son is 23 and was born in Detroit. 

“I feel like we don’t have freedom here anymore. Anybody can call anybody to make any kind of accusation. And the authorities treat you like you are a criminal.” 

Hana Gheith of suburban Chicago also said she didn’t believe the report about her brother, who she said is 27. She said he was driving to Miami with friends to find an apartment before starting a training program at a hospital. 

“My brother doesn’t joke about these matters,” she said, her voice at times shaking with anger. “A lot of Muslims suffered in 9/11.” 

The woman who reported the comments is Eunice Stone of Cartersville, Ga., a 44-year-old nurse who told Fox News Network that she was eating at a Shoney’s restaurant in Calhoun when she heard the men talking. The town in rural north Georgia has a population of 10,000. 

“I thought anybody that’s laughing about 9-11, I know they have that right, but there’s something wrong with them,” Stone told Fox. She later told The Associated Press the incident was “kind of scary.” 

Associated Press reporters John Solomon in Washington and Brendan Farrington and Tal Abbady in Miami contributed to this report. 

OAKLAND — Two summers ago, a band of four Oakland police officers who called themselves “The Riders,” patrolled the streets, administering their own brand of justice. 

Prosecutors say the officers, who since have been fired, routinely beat up suspects, concocted evidence and falsified police reports. 

Now, Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, 36, Jude Siapno, 34 and Matthew Hornung, 30, are on trial for 26 felony charges stemming from their West Oakland patrols during the summer of 2000. Siapno faces the most serious charges, including kidnapping and assault. 

Frank Vazquez, the alleged ringleader of the group, is believed to have fled the country. 

Defense lawyers say the officers simply were doing their jobs in a tough neighborhood. All have pleaded innocent. 

Assistant District Attorney David Hollister began presenting his opening statement to the jury Thursday. 

“We look forward to finally get the opportunity to present our case,” he said. 

It took two months to seat the Alameda County panel of six men and six women for the trial, which is expected to last through year’s end. 

The scandal, which has resulted in the dismissal of about 90 criminal cases, mostly drug-related, and 17 civil rights suits by 115 people, surfaced after a then-20-year-old rookie reported what he saw on duty with Mabanag, his training officer. 

Keith Batt, now a police officer in Pleasanton, is the prosecution’s key witness. During the preliminary hearing last July, Batt painted a disturbing picture of the officers’ “stop and grab” tactics in which suspects randomly were accosted on the street, handcuffed and put in the patrol car before they were questioned about their activities. He called their methods illegal and immoral. 

Batt also hinted at a conspiracy of silence among the police brass who supervised “The Riders.” 

Police and city officials have repeatedly called “The Riders” a rogue group, but they have, nonetheless, instituted a series of protective measures, including more internal affairs investigators and more supervisors. The department also created an Office of Inspector General, an internal audit division, and has generally increased internal scrutiny. 

RICHMOND – State officials have announced the completion of two waste cleanups in Richmond, laying the foundation for future development. 

Varying levels of asbestos and lead laden soil, debris and other materials have now been disposed of at both the Seacliff Marina and the Richmond Townhouse Apartment sites, allowing for future commercial and industrial development, a spokesperson for the California Environmental Protection Agency said this week. 

“We are committed to working with communities and other governmental agencies as we continue the state's efforts to restore contaminated sites to productive use,” said Ed Lowry, director of the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is part of the state EPA. 

A 1986 soil investigation of the Seacliff Marina site, formerly a repair and maintenance ship yard, unearthed elevated concentrations of metals and asbestos, triggering a clean-up plan that was completed in 1998. A residential request in June 2001 prompted further cleanup activities as an elevated, encapsulated mound of soil and debris containing asbestos was removed from the site. 

In the end, roughly 119,000 cubic yards of material was removed onto the adjacent Port of Richmond Shipyard No. 3 site, capped with compacted materials to prevent exposure and ultimately disposed of offsite, paving the way for approximately 11.6 acres of unrestricted land use. 

In late 1998, the Contra Costa County Health Department alerted the Department of Toxic Substances Control of high levels of lead in the soil at the Richmond Townhouse Apartments site. Once owned by the Pullman railroad manufacturing company, the 10-acre Richmond Townhouse site went through initial cleanup efforts from April to August 2000 due to years of exposure to lead-based paints. 

About 11,000 cubic yards of lead-contaminated soil surrounding the five apartment buildings at the site were removed and the area was later re-landscaped and backfilled with clean soil. All lead-contaminated soils were disposed of offsite.