Oakland police said today (Wednesday) that they have made what they consider a major breakthrough in the city’s restaurant takeover robberies, announcing the arrest of three suspects following a Tuesday night takeover at K&T Nail Salon at 108th Avenue and Bancroft in East Oakland. -more-

The East Bay has been plagued by takeover-style restaurant robberies this summer, with 11 robberies in Oakland, one in El Cerrito, one in Hayward, one in unincorporated Castro Valley, and two in Vallejo. -more-

ST. PAUL—Alaska Governor and current Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant, but the family says she will bear the child and marry the father. -more-

One person was injured today (Tuesday) in a shooting at Johnson’s House of Style at 2914 Sacramento St. -more-

The citizens’ group working on an alternate version of the Berkeley city attorney’s draft sunshine ordinance—which promises greater access to open government—will hold a public meeting at the Lutheran Church of the Cross on Sept. 9 to get community input on their recently released document. -more-

Supporters of Berkeley’s venerable Long Haul angered by last Wednesday’s raid will rally at Sproul Plaza Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. -more-

Back-to-back fires -more-

Many in the media will be asking for a long time if Democratic nominee Barack Obama hit a political home run last Thursday night. However, if he didn’t completely leave Denver’s Mile High Stadium soaring majestically, then he hit an inside the park home-run. Either way he made it home. -more-

An Alameda County Superior Court Judge has taken the first vote in the 2008 local general election, ruling that certain portions of AC Transit At Large Board challenger Joyce Roy’s submitted ballot statement were either false or misleading, and ordering them removed. -more-

ST. PAUL—Schennile Hytower was waiting for her number 67 bus to go to work. It would carry her out to the airport where she manages one of the restaurants. A Michigan transplant, she has been in St. Paul for over a year now, “It’s a nice place,” she says as she boards the bus towards downtown. “I also have mixed feelings, but there’s more work here,” says Hytower on, Labor Day. She’ll have to change buses there to get to her airport job. -more-

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention. -more-

With two months left to go for the November municipal elections, candidates for the Berkeley Board of Education are pushing for endorsements and mobilizing supporters through fundraisers, campaign kick-offs and websites. -more-

It's all over but the clean-up. Here are all the convention pictures. -more-

The legal battle over UC Berkeley’s building plans at Memorial Stadium is back in the state Court of Appeals for the second time. -more-

Denver—Civic Center Park, the park which some protesters have been using to hold demonstrations since last Saturday, was discovered on Wednesday morning to have a new six and half foot high fence. It was not immediately known why this occurred. -more-

Flames gutted one of Berkeley’s busiest gas station early Thursday morning, causing more than $700,000 in damage to the independent station U.S. Smog & Gas at 3000 Shattuck Ave. -more-

UC Berkeley police, guns drawn, raided an empty Long Haul Infoshop Wednesday morning, seizing 13 computers and other gear in a search for the source of threatening e-mails. -more-

It’s an anarchist “free space.” -more-

DENVER—Congressmember Barbara Lee is tough to keep up with. In a relentless pace, she often outruns even her staff. That staff can be seen here in Denver, scurrying behind this determined Alameda County congressional representative. She can be fiery and fierce when she needs to be, and she always plays to win. -more-

The first round of the legal battle over the Memorial Stadium ended late Tuesday, and lawyers for the losing side are preparing their appeal. -more-

Million-dollar condos? In Berkeley? Yes, says Don Peterson, president of SNK Development, the company now building the nine-story-plus Berkeley Arpeggio on Center Street. -more-

UC Berkeley students might have noticed something missing from campus when they returned from their summer vacation on Wednesday. -more-

At his annual back-to-school press briefing Monday, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau said the university, in response to ongoing budget woes, would cut back on hiring new faculty and not replace retiring faculty, which would gradually increase the current 18:1 student-to-teacher ratio on campus. -more-

Berkeley City College student Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield pleaded not guilty Monday to murder charges at the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. -more-

Despite troubling economic news nationally, last week witnessed two major advances on the Berkeley labor front and a protest by city workers in a neighboring city: -more-

Revamped classrooms, management changes and a record enrollment rate for kindergartners marked the first day of Berkeley Unified School District’s new school year on Wednesday. -more-

At a public meeting Wednesday the Berkeley Board of Education unanimously approved a schematic design for the $35 million South of Bancroft project, which would build about 55,000 square feet of new buildings and improve landscaping in the southern part of the Berkeley High School campus. -more-

Until earlier this month, students at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley could pretty much eat their lunch anywhere they wanted. -more-

With concerns rising in Oakland over the issues of crime and violence, the Daily Planet sat down with Rashidah Grinage, Director of People United For A Better Oakland (PUEBLO), to talk about public safety in the city. PUEBLO is a progressive, non-profit group that has been working, among other things, on police reforms in the city for the past two decades. It is one of the most credible voices on the left on police and public safety issues. -more-

Richmond city officials, a would-be gambling tribe and a coalition of environmentalists are anxiously waiting for a final ruling on the legality of a $335 million city pact with the Scotts Valley Band of Pomos. -more-

A funeral was held for the mother of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums at small, semi-private services Wednesday morning at Fouche’s Hudson Funeral Home in North Oakland. -more-

East Bay firefighters are watching the skies with concern as high-risk fire conditions arrive with the start of what they expect will be a three-day heat wave, said Deputy Berkeley Fire Chief Gil Dong. -more-

Four takeover robberies in Oakland last weekend reflect a continuing crime trend in the East Bay. -more-

Welcome Week fraternity party has violent consequences -more-

DENVER—Next to the “Big Tent” housing bloggers and policy forums here in Denver is an unmarked suite where some of the nation’s leading environmental activists are at work. This is the office where Environmental America, Progressive Future, the Progressive Future Education Fund, Community Voters, and the Public Interest Network are plotting the biggest voter outreach and mobilization drive in environmental group history. -more-

Nearly a century ago, Berkeley and Albany were at war over waste. -more-

What’s a feminist to think? -more-

We’ve taken to watching major news events on the Internet, on the biggish screen of my desktop computer. This has two advantages. The most obvious one is that we don’t currently have a working TV. I know, I deserve to have my official media membership card lifted on the spot for being dangerously out of touch. -more-

AN AD FOR THE DEMOCRATS -more-

The recent five-day tactical strike called by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) against the University of California is yet another example of the difficult road facing organized labor, particularly those unions who represent low-end or unskilled workers. -more-

The following letter is being published in light of the outright physical removal of a long-time programmer from the KPFA studios, and the recent bannings and firings of unpaid staff. It was previously sent to the station over four months ago. -more-

If any women’s rights issue should be without controversy, the proposition that women should get paid the same amount as men do for the same work would seem to be primary. Who could be against that? Well, it turns out that Republican presidential nominee John McCain is against it. Oddly a group of women who purportedly are acting for women’s rights are going to support McCain, and by doing so, back his position that women aren’t entitled to be paid the same as men are paid for doing the exact same job. -more-

On the university seal, at Sather Gate and on every other UC branded item, the motto “Let there be light” is paired with an open book and the five-pointed university star that emanates rays of light representing the discovery and sharing of knowledge. On UC’s website one can view the following: “Principles of community for the University of California, Berkeley, are rooted in our mission of teaching, research and public service. They reflect our passion for critical inquiry, debate, discovery and innovation, and our deep commitment to contributing to a better world. Every member of the UC Berkeley community has a role in sustaining a safe, caring and humane environment in which these values can thrive. We place honesty and integrity in our teaching, learning, research and administration at the highest level.” Also highlighted on UC Berkeley’s website are the university’s fundamental missions, which are teaching, research and public service. -more-

I am thinking in moments. I was born nearly 10 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and nearly 16 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My baby sister is five years my junior, my best friend and “sister” is five years my senior. My young cousin was born in the 1990s, and my goddaughter was born in 2000. Many of the children I work with are two generations removed from the civil upheaval of the 1960s. I find it ironic that Barack Obama was born eight weeks after the world received that fateful news that shots struck the presidential motorcade in Dallas. -more-

When it comes to party politics, Joseph Lieberman is neither a donkey nor an elephant: He is a politician of a genus that is quite a conundrum. He is more of a platypus, doing a dance of policies that is hewn together by very contradictory political allegiances, and it is duplicitous at best. Once upon a time, he was a Democratic senator from Connecticut, who was also a vice presidential candidate on the Gore ticket. While he ran on the Democratic ticket, he very shrewdly kept his Connecticut senatorial bid alive. After the so called failed ticket of Al Gore, he served his term as the senator from Connecticut (he won his bid). Then suddenly he found himself lost in a primary by a challenger who was a newcomer, and was against the war in Iraq. Then the senator did a political do-over and shed his Democratic skin faster than you could say Connecticut, and turned around and ran as an independent: so much for staying true to your political ideals. It was the sort of political chameleonic act that should have alarmed the voters of the state, and should have raised eyebrows in terms of what he really stood for. -more-

As Democrats left Denver, there was an overwhelming consensus that the 2008 Convention was extraordinarily successful. Dems united behind Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Here are a few final thoughts about the week. -more-

Wednesday: So far, all of the Democrats' Denver convention objectives have been met: the convention logistics have been flawless; Michelle Obama's speech argued effectively that she and her husband are Americans, "just like you"; Hillary and Bill Clinton gave Obama the resounding support required to unify the Party; and Democrats began to explain why Obama is the right choice for America while John McCain is not. -more-

Oakland is facing a chickens-coming-home-to-roost summer, where years of official and unofficial neglect of the root causes of crime are now surfacing into what some members of the public, politicians, and elements of the media are labeling a public safety “crisis.” -more-

This is the season when the mudflats of San Francisco Bay swarm with southbound migrant shorebirds: willets, godwits, curlews, dowitchers, plovers, and, outnumbering all the rest, western sandpipers. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, scientists from the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science) attempted to estimate the birds’ year-round numbers. For western sandpipers, they came up with average fall and winter counts of over 100,000 individuals and spring counts of over 500,000. The peak spring count exceeded 700,000. That’s a lot of avian biomass, even at nine-tenths of an ounce per bird. -more-

We’re all trying to do our part to be a little greener these days. I see you down at the market with your cloth bags, you Prius drivers (not to mention drivers of 25-year-old cars, another very green tack). Many of us, nay, most of us, are trying to do something and studies have revealed in the recent past that most Americans are even willing to pay more for items such as organic produce and cleaner energy. -more-

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 -more-

Thousands of glass art objects—strange, striking, beautiful, and combined in fantastic arrangements—currently populate the special exhibit galleries of San Francisco’s de Young. They range from palm-of-your-hand pieces to gigantic supernovas of glittering glass tentacles, singular, vivid, bowls big enough to float baby Moses down the Nile, and hallucinogenically hued “marbles” blown as big as sofa hassocks. -more-

“The initial idea I had for the play,” said Itamar Moses, a 1995 Berkeley High graduate and emerging playwright, of Yellowjacket, his play commissioned by Berkeley Rep that opens Friday, “was about what I did in school, hiding in the newspaper office. A simpler play, about the paper. I thought there probably was a play there. -more-

Before Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands—before Sam Shepard, for that matter—a prominent American playwright tied together a crime spree in the West, an offbeat sense of romance and the Existential angst of war babies and wannabe great artists. The result was The Petrified Forest, which launched both Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis when the Hollywood film version got made. -more-

“I came to be in the Bay Area for one year, in 1984,” said Thomas Simpson, founder of AfroSolo, the annual festival of African-American solo performance that includes tributes and art exhibits. “I was in theater, from Nashville, and this was to be a step between there and L.A. or New York. For my 39th birthday in 1991, I had a party and invited artists to perform who I knew from taking a workshop on developing solo pieces. It occurred to me it should be staged every year as a way for us to tell our own stories, form our own works.” -more-

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what crisis we should focus on: Global warming? Growing food shortages? The energy crunch? The looming danger of a deadly flu epidemic? -more-

Ten years after the release of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), the first and greatest of all vampire films, Carl Th. Dreyer released Vampyr (1932), the next great vampire film, and one that took the genre in a new direction. Vampyr is the vampire film reduced to its essence, to an unrelenting flow of eerie imagery, off-kilter camera movements and a hushed soundscape consisting of sparse, enigmatic dialogue and a muted, foreboding score. Less plot than impressionist montage, the film is an almost surrealist blend of unexplained actions and haunted faces. Imagine Dracula as presented by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. -more-

The Oakland Magic Circle, oldest stage magic club in the West, will hold their annual Interclub Competition this Monday at Bjornson Hall, 2258 MacArthur Blvd. near Fruitvale Avenue. At 7 p.m., a buffet banquet with close-up magic at the tables; the show at 8 p.m.—a competition of magicians and mentalists (mind readers) from all over Northen California, with illusions, sleight-of-hand, clairvoyance ... a warm atmosphere, everybody welcome. www.oaklandmagiccircle.com. For more information, contact David Sament at (415) 786-8365 or david@magicdavid.com. -more-

We’re all trying to do our part to be a little greener these days. I see you down at the market with your cloth bags, you Prius drivers (not to mention drivers of 25-year-old cars, another very green tack). Many of us, nay, most of us, are trying to do something and studies have revealed in the recent past that most Americans are even willing to pay more for items such as organic produce and cleaner energy. -more-

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 -more-