The Seva Foundation, a Berkeley-based non-profit organization best-known for its work on international eye care medical programs and community development has been pressed into disaster relief because of the crisis surrounding the South Asia Tsunami. -more-

Mayor Tom Bates slammed UC Berkeley’s revised expansion plan released Monday and warned that Berkeley would likely resort to a lawsuit if the plan didn’t detail specific projects or exact locations where the university intends to build over the next fifteen years. -more-

Catherine Debose has experienced the best and worst of the pioneering effort in Berkeley to allow mental health patients to seek help from one another. -more-

Though the Saul Zaentz Film Center, Berkeley’s own little bit of Hollywood, will lay off all its employees Jan. 14, efforts are underway to find someone to pick up the reins. -more-

In the wake of a fiasco in which three of Chancellor Elihu Harris’ planning and development initiatives were abruptly canceled or put on hold, a newly-elected member of the Peralta Community College District’s Board of Trustees said that trustees need to end the practice of “instant voting” on land development and facilities proposals without proper study. -more-

Repeated problems over the past two weeks have forced operational changes and three temporary shutdowns during the latest round of cleanup operations at Campus Bay, where developer Russ Pitto hopes to build a 1,330-unit housing complex atop a mound of buried industrial waste. -more-

• -more-

Click here to view the latest work by Justin DeFreitas -more-

In the past ten years I have hired people to take care of my disabled husband who often have had physical and psychological problems of their own. I have employed manic depressives who could not get out of bed, sufferers of ADD who were too hopped up to follow instructions, illiterates who could not read labels on pill bottles. I once hired someone and neglected to find out if he could make a simple sandwich and a salad for Ralph. He couldn’t. Another man had spent so much time in prison, he was unable to figure out how to use the coffeemaker. Coffee and tea had always been served to him. -more-

Date Beater Charged -more-

An economic tsunami is rapidly approaching this land. Those of you in the national congress, as well as state and local leaders, who are going along with HUD housing cutbacks, as well as myriad other Bush & Co inequities, are contributing to the ever-mou nting waves headed our way. -more-

Those activist judges that President Bush warned us about have struck again! -more-

Not since 1929, the year that marked the beginning of the Great Depression, has wealth in the U.S. been so heavily concentrated among the richest 1 percent of the population. This trend towards economic inequality increased sharply in 1970, and since that time there has been an enormous shift in the distribution of national income from the working class to the wealthiest Americans. For every consecutive year between 1970 and 2000, the annual incomes of the richest 10 percent of Americans have risen, without exception, while the annual incomes of the bottom 90 percent have declined. Even more startling, however, is that this income shift went almost entirely to the richest 5 percent (annual incomes of $178,000 and above), with the richest 1 percent (annual incomes ranging from $384,000 to $777,000) seeing the greatest increase compared to all other income groups. This trend is likely to grow by leaps and bounds during Bush’s second term in office. -more-

TUESDAY, JAN. 4 -more-

Walking on water is not part of the normal human behavioral repertoire. But for some insects, it’s routine. Check out almost any pond or creek and you’ll see water striders, known to some as Jesus bugs, skating along the top with their cruciform shadows tracking them below. There’s a nice collective name for these creatures and others that exploit this liminal habitat: neuston, dwellers on the surface. -more-

TUESDAY, JAN. 4 -more-