At 1:00 on Thursday afternoon Officer Jamie Perkins of the Berkeley Police Department announced the arrests of three robbery suspects, all Richmond residents, who were responsible for a series of North Berkeley robberies. -more-

Southside Lofts residents emerged victorious once again Tuesday when the City Council voted to uphold the Zoning Adjustment Board's decision to deny a use permit for a laundromat in the building. -more-

Even as the Oakland City Council voted to support AC Transit's Bus Rapid Transit plan Tuesday evening, Berkeley residents rallied vociferously against it at their council meeting, prompting Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates to say around 10:30 p.m. he would try to glue together the best parts of BRT to address the community's concerns. -more-

A state audit has found that the city of Oakland's use of federal stimulus money includes a lack of a valid contract, inadequate review of contractors' reimbursement requests, significant accounting errors and inflated job numbers. State Inspector Laura Chick's report analyzed the use of $3.1 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money by the Oakland Workforce Investment Board, which is a city agency, and the nonprofit Oakland Private Industry Council, which received all of the stimulus funding in question. -more-

BART today unveiled a new program that will take more than 60 of the agency's police officers out of their cars and place them on bicycles starting this summer. -more-

A 20-year-old Berkeley man who was fatally shot in San Francisco's Bayview District on Saturday night has been identified by the San Francisco medical examiner's office as Stephen Powell. -more-

The 6.9 magnitude earthquake that ravaged eastern Tibet’s Kyegundo on April 14 has brought to sharp relief the region’s contentious place in China’s geopolitical fold, deepening the divide between the fractured township’s predominantly-Tibetan population and the Chinese government apparatuses. -more-

A Kyle Harty Strang Memorial will be held on Tuesday April 27, 2010 from 5-7pm in the BHS Little Theatre. The public is welcome. -more-

When Conservatives’ attempts to eliminate HUD failed, they focused on Section 8. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments Program was established in 1974. It provides housing assistance to low-income persons who rent. It has been one of the best possible uses of federal funds because it countermands need for costly welfare-type expenditures associated with sheltering seniors with small incomes who are willing, able, and eager to live independently. -more-

The Berkeley City Council will be holding an 8 p.m. time- specific presentation and discussion on the Bus Rapid Transit Build Option at its first meeting after its spring break tonight (Tuesday.) -more-

-more-

Is your new iphone dangerous? California State Senator Mark Leno has proposed legislation requiring all cell phones sold in the state to carry information about their radiation levels on sales boxes, usage instructions, and advertising displays in stores. San Francisco is considering similar legislation for cell phones sold in the city. -more-

I'm writing to ask for your help in getting folks from Berkeley to a critical rally in Sacramento on April 21st. Below you will find specific details of the bus pickup times and locations. Everyone is welcome to come aboard one of these BFT/BCCE buses we just need to know who's coming. If you can please spread this info far and wide we would be so appreciative. -more-

According to a press release from Los Angeles artist Matt Cornell, students at UC Berkeley were surprised to discover a new brand of toilet paper in the stalls of the law school building this morning. -more-

Herein another experiment in our never-ending quest to find the right model for reporting news of Berkeley and the rest of the urban East Bay on a shoestring in our spare time: This week we’re trying to do two shorter issues instead of one humongous one. -more-

In this space in the next few days you'll find links to websites and articles that you might not have seen. -more-

Amid celebrations around the signing of a new treaty between the U.S. and Russia on reducing the number of nuclear weapons, Hisham Badr, Egyptian ambassador to the United Nations conference on disarmament, played crow on the cradle: “We in the Middle East feel we have, short of a better word, been tricked into giving concessions for promises that never materialized.” -more-

The Rippowam River rushed by at the foot of our dank street, or, depending on the season, gurgled its way to Long Island Sound. I would sit on the stone embankment overlooking the water, ignoring the garter snakes in the crevices. The Ferguson Public Library children’s room was another 1932 shelter. Story hour was held in a separate room with a large picture window. I played stamping books, using a piece of black crayon stuck on the end of a protractor. It slipped off, jamming crayon into my palm, still imbedded there in a tattoo effect. -more-

Chickens were not high on the agenda when we went to Kaua’i. We hoped to see some of the endangered native forest birds, and the seabirds that nest on the North Shore. But chickens were inescapable. They greeted us at the airport in Lihue. They wandered around the hotel where we spent the first night. There were chickens on the beaches, chickens along the highway. (But relatively few road-killed chickens—far fewer than the dead armadillos you’d see in a comparable-sized chunk of Texas.) -more-