Short skirts, long skirts, itsy-bitsy polka-dotted mini skirts, ruffled skirts and pleated skirts, and even a kilt or two took over the steps of Sproul Plaza Wednesday at noon to protest the sexual predator on the UC Berkeley campus who is going around lifting women’s skirts on desolate street corners and dark alleyways. -more-

Three young men filed suit Tuesday against the Boy Scouts and their former Berkeley Sea Scouts master, seeking damages for their sexual molestation on board the S.S.S. Farallon. -more-

Community members continued throughout the week to place flowers, candles and notes at the intersection of Derby and Warring streets, where 5-year-old Zachary Cruz was hit and killed by a welder’s truck on Friday, Feb. 27. -more-

Berkeley police are still investigating the fatal accident of 5-year-old Zachary Cruz, a LeConte Elementary School kindergartner who was struck and killed Friday, Feb. 27, by a contractor’s truck at Warring and Derby streets. -more-

Two tragic accidents involving Berkeley public school students, occuring within a month of each other, have put a spotlight on traffic safety and improvements. -more-

Berkeley police and Berkeley High School are still investigating a report made by a student Feb. 25 that he had been threatened by another student from the school with a gun or an imitation firearm at the end of the lunch period. -more-

In last November’s battle of Berkeley mayors, incumbent Tom Bates outspent former Mayor Shirley Dean more than 2 to 1 to win re-election to the post he had won from Dean six years earlier. -more-

Despite a crowd of public transit advocates packing last week’s meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, many of them seeking more money for the embattled AC Transit bus agency, MTC Commissioners opted to give the largest single allocation of new federal money to a project to provide BART service between the Coliseum BART Station and the Oakland Airport. -more-

German media giant Bertlesmann bought legendary Berkeley independent publishing house Ten Speed Press Monday through its New York-based publishing unit Random House. -more-

Statewide education cuts have forced the Berkeley Unified School District to consider eliminating at least 118 teaching positions in the 2009-2010 school year, district officials announced last week. -more-

The struggle over the size of Wareham Properties’ latest Berkeley project entered a new phase last week with the first public meeting to gather insight for an environmental impact report (EIR). -more-

UC Berkeley, already the instigator of a new plan for downtown Berkeley, is leading the effort to reshape West Berkeley as well. -more-

A divided AC Transit Board chose Oakland corporate attorney and former State Senator Loni Hancock’s campaign field organizer Joel B. Young last week to fill the vacancy left when At-Large Board Member Rebecca Kaplan left for the Oakland City Council. -more-

Sexual assaults continue -more-

Golden Gate Fields moved closer to the auction block Monday when the Toronto Stock Exchange ordered shares of Magna Entertainment removed from its listings. -more-

TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT -more-

Ashby Flowers, the tiny store on the southwest corner of Telegraph and Ashby, is one of those places that (you can supply the cliché) “saves your bacon,” “covers your butt,” “salvages a bad moment,” when you suddenly realize that you forgot (take your choice): Valentines’ Day, Mother’s Day, spouse’s birthday, anniversaries, or whatever special moment you need to commerorate with plant life. -more-

The salt marsh harvest mouse is an endangered rodent that lives in the marshes around the San Francisco Bay. Because of development around the Bay Area, the tiny mouse’s existence as a species is now threatened. -more-

What is activism at UC Berkeley today? What limits it? What promotes it? What mechanisms challenge and shape the way we interact with problems in our world? Is sending an e-mail letter to a politician a form of activism or pressing support for a social cause on Facebook or attending an hour-long rally? -more-

I’ve been especially monitoring the letters and commentaries since the O’Malleys have made public their need for financial support from the community for their newspaper. -more-

Is President Obama trying to copy the failed notions of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, with his policies of “guns and butter,” as he pursued social progress on the domestic front and imperialism abroad (wars on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). By the time President Johnson was driven from office in the presidential primary elections in early 1968, his record and his legacy were left in shambles. -more-

One of the more disturbing developments in the Middle East is a growing consensus among Israelis that it would be acceptable to expel—in the words of advocates, “transfer”—its Arab citizens to either an as-yet-unformed Palestinian state or the neighboring countries of Jordan and Egypt. -more-

About a half-hour before the scheduled Oscar Grant march and rally in Grant’s hometown of Hayward last week, Hayward police in full riot gear set up a blockade line in front of the City Hall building. Across the street at the Hayward BART station, where protesters were gathering, a group of early teen Latino boys were bouncing around at the edge of the sidewalk, periodically shouting “Fuck the police!” at the officers lined up across the way. Well, not actually shouting it. In fact, they seemed at great pains to make sure that while their friends and some of the protesters heard what they were saying, the police did not. -more-

When Lisa Owens Viani summoned spirits (and bodies) from the vasty deep of bureaucracy, they showed up. Furthermore, they made specific promises. -more-

David Bacon, Berkeley-based labor journalist, photographer, KPFA radio commentator and Daily Planet contributor, will speak on his book, Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon, 2008), followed by a discussion and book signing, at the first Berkeley Daily Planet Book Forum, at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Hillside Club and Black Oak Books, along with the Planet. -more-

The New Century Chamber Orchestra will present The Glory of Russia, a program of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives, Op. 22, featuring pianist Anne-Marie McDermott; Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35, featuring McDermott and trumpeter Adam Luftman; and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, Friday at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. -more-

Other Minds—the 14th New Music festival founded by former KPFA programmer Charles Amirkhanian—presents three evenings of diversity and depth in contemporary music, beginning tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m. through Saturday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St., with such legends of New Music as Ben Johnston, John Schneider, Chinary Ung and other composers and musicians from Brazil, Canada, Poland, Argentina, Estonia, including Michael Harrison, collaborator with Terry Riley and La Monte Young. Panels with the artists start at 7 p.m. Tickets: $25; festival passes: $60-150 (415) 292-1233 or otherminds.org -more-

David Bacon, Berkeley-based labor journalist, photographer, KPFA radio commentator and Daily Planet contributor, will speak on his book, Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon, 2008), followed by a discussion and book signing, at the first Berkeley Daily Planet Book Forum, at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Hillside Club and Black Oak Books, along with the Planet. -more-

Golden Thread Productions, the Bay Area’s specialists in theater and other performances exploring Middle Eastern identity, will co-present, with Sunbula: Arab Feminists for Change, and ASWAT Bay Area Arab Music Ensemble, “What the Women Say” their annual evening of poetry and performance for International Women’s Day on Sunday, dedicated this year to the women of Gaza, featuring poetry by Deema Shehabi and Dina Omar, a staged reading of the blog writings of Majeda Al Saqqa from Gaza and a performance by Al-Juthoor dance company at La Pena Cultural Center. -more-

Just an hour up the road in Sonoma County, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts presents the second annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival this weekend, March 6-8. -more-

Other Minds—the 14th New Music festival founded by former KPFA programmer Charles Amirkhanian—presents three evenings of diversity and depth in contemporary music, beginning tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m. through Saturday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St., with such legends of New Music as Ben Johnston, John Schneider, Chinary Ung and other composers and musicians from Brazil, Canada, Poland, Argentina, Estonia, including Michael Harrison, collaborator with Terry Riley and La Monte Young. Panels with the artists start at 7 p.m. Tickets: $25; festival passes: $60-150 (415) 292-1233 or otherminds.org -more-

At the heart of Berkeley’s downtown, behind the commercial facades of University Avenue, stands a cluster of four century-old residential buildings. Shoppers at Berkeley Hardware who park next to these relics may pause and wonder about them occasionally. -more-

I could be handy mending a fuse -more-