As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco Wednesday, Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. -more-

Judging by comments at a Wednesday night hearing, Ber-keley residents like faster bus service but hate the notion of losing car lanes to bus expressways. -more-

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of Ber-keley’s Aquatic Park. -more-

After five years on the back burner, the Southside Plan is finally coming to a boil—with the Planning Commission set to discuss the document later this month. -more-

By a 5-4 vote, Berkeley planning commissioners voted Tuesday night to endorse the recommendations of the Joint Density Bonus Subcommittee over a more developer-friendly staff report. -more-

Solemn firefighters from Berkeley, Livermore and Pleasanton will march through the streets of Berkeley Saturday morning, honoring one of their own, Jay Walter Randall. -more-

The newly empowered school board of the Oakland Unified School District moved swiftly to exercise authority granted by California State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell, voting on Wednesday to hire an interim district superintendent on a one-year basis while the board looks for a permanent superintendent. -more-

An Oakland education and labor attorney has filed a California Superior Court lawsuit against the City of Oakland and its recent decision to spend $7.7 million of Measure Y money on police recruitment, asking that the court immediately halt the collection of Measure Y taxes until the original community policing mandates of the bond measure are met. -more-

Warm-water pool users lobbied the Berkeley Board of Education to save the Berkeley High School Old Gym and warm pool right before the board discussed a report recommending the site’s adaptive reuse at the school board meeting Wednesday. -more-

It wasn’t all fun and games at the Berkeley Federation of Teachers’ community rally against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.8 billion state education budget cuts Wednesday, although there was some clowning around. -more-

SIRs are due May 1. What are SIRs, you might ask? The answer: a Student’s Intent to Register at a college. In the next several weeks, Berkeley High School (BHS) college-bound seniors will be deciding where to spend the next four years of their life. -more-

Tuesday's story on the light brown apple moth should have differentiated the roles of the United States Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The USDA is responsible for the New Zealand testing of a new product to eradicate the moth, USDA named the Technical Working Group on the moth and the April 1 telephone press conference included experts from both the CDFA and the USDA. -more-

NEWS BLACKOUT IN GAZA -more-

The one thing that was clear at last night’s joint Planning and Transit Commission workshop was that not much is really known about AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit proposal. That may surprise many people after the multitude of public hearings and thousands of pages of material written by AC Transit, BRT supporters and those who support better public transit but are opposed to dedicating public roadways to busses that will come once every 10 minutes. -more-

Opposed to BRT” does not fairly describe my position. We citizens have been offered a bad choice: accept BRT in roughly its present form or oppose BRT. Given these lousy choices, I choose to oppose. -more-

Using its absurd draconian police powers embedded in its Blight Ordinances, the City of Oakland has fined a woman resident of Oakland the amount of $951.00 as a penalty for leaving her garbage can on the street curb for a couple of days. -more-

Ask the average American to name a famous war-tax resister and most folks would probably cite Henry David Thoreau. But how about Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem and Julia Butterfly Hill? -more-

With the Time Magazine, April 7 issue, the BP program at Berkeley now becomes so useless that one can not find words to describe it. On March 29, the chief scientist at the United Kingdom’s Department of Environment, Farms and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Dr Bob Watson, was cited for his calling on the European Union to drop its whole bioethanol program as being a causer of increased emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) not a reducer of such emissions. And a paper in ‘Nature’ has now stirred up charges that the IPCC report with various supposed control steps for global warming are basically unattainable pipedreams. -more-

The Governor’s proposed budget would have a devastating impact on California’s public education system, already noted for being 47th in the nation for per pupil spending. This budget does not consider the educational needs of our children or the protection that voters put in place with Proposition 98, which the Governor will have to set aside in order to slash education funding. He needs the support of two-thirds of the legislature to set aside Proposition 98. -more-

When the Battle of Basra opened on March 25, President Bush described it as a “defining mo-ment” for the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Within days, however, the White House was scrambling to distance itself from the shellacking the Iraqi Army took at the hands of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. -more-

Since the division of the Oakland Police Department into three geographical districts late last year—a move that is key to Mayor Ron Dellums’ goal of moving OPD into a community policing model—the mayor has begun quietly going around to meetings of the city’s various Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils, trying to get a community assessment of how the new police realignment is working. -more-

I’ve been the Mulch Queen, or at least her Majesty’s faithful herald, for years. The sight of our locally predominant clay soil lying naked to the elements upsets me. I know what happens when it gets walked on and rained on—yes, rain does compress soil over time if that soil doesn’t have nearly perfect drainage or spongelike absorption—and dried to dust by the sun. -more-

The Berkeley Art Center’s current show, “Loom & Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale,” is full of revelations. -more-