News

For members of the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church on Ashby Avenue, the best way to celebrate the upcoming anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is to take action and continue his legacy, instead of just reminiscing about it. -more-

Mayor Tom Bates chastised UC Berkeley on Tuesday over recent revelations that it has set January deadlines for architects to submit qualifications to renovate Memorial Stadium and build a new academic building for its business and law schools. -more-

In the wake of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to renege on last year’s education funding agreement, Berkeley education leaders were united on one conclusion: If the governor gets his way, the financial impact on Berkeley public schools will not be good. -more-

Facing an estimated $1 million shortfall, library officials Wednesday presented their board of trustees with a restructuring plan that calls for laying off between 11 and 13 employees and centralizing teen-service librarians in the main branch. -more-

Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission gave their blessings Monday to the Ed Roberts Center, a starkly modern building planned for the western entrance of the South Berkeley BART station. -more-

San Mateo developer Dan Deibel has yielded to critics of his proposed condo and commercial project for the 700 block of University Avenue and agreed to more testing for archaeological artifacts at the site. -more-

Berkeley Planning Commissioners Wednesday voted to give developer Avi Nevo their tentative approval of his plans to convert two apartment projects into condominiums. -more-

Berkeley schools will apparently see the effects of the passage of Measure B sooner than expected. -more-

On Jan. 6, a soldier from Afghanistan’s nascent national army was killed, along with two assailants, when troops were sent in to eradicate an opium field in Uruzgan province. The central government of President Hamid Karzai recognizes that these could prove the opening shots of a new opium war. A month earlier, on Dec. 11, Karzai’s finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Where Democracy’s Greatest Enemy Is a Flower,” pleading for international support for crop-substitution programs. Opium is the key to power for Afghanistan’s warlords, who still control much of the country. -more-

DOESN’T GET IT -more-

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

It is always interesting to see the great fits of outrage that flow in recent years from the camp of my liberal-progressive-Democrat friends whenever there is some revelation of a moral transgression of a prominent conservative. First there was Bill Bennett and his gambling binges, then Rush Limbaugh and his prescription drug habit, and Bill O’Reilly and his sexual harassment of a Fox News employee. Now comes Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator, who admits accepting a quarter of a million in public dollars from the Bush Administration to promote the president’s education law. In a column, Williams calls this “an obvious conflict of interests.” -more-

(Names have been changed to prevent me from embarrassing and being therewith scorned by my otherwise adoring children.) -more-

Spat Takes Nasty Turn -more-

Firefighters rushed to the vacant home at 2828 Fulton St. Monday evening for the second time in as many weeks. -more-

Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Carol Spooner cover many of the issues regarding the recent Staff Local Station Board (LSB) election at KPFA. However, to really understand what the LSB did you must know some pertinent facts that Brian Edwards-Tiekert left out of his article on the LSB decision. -more-

Kudos to Superintendent Michele Lawrence, Shirley Issel and Terry Doran of the Berkeley School Board, and City Councilmember Darryl Moore for attending the packed Berkeley Alternative High School Meeting Jan. 10, where they heard touching stories of seniors who have overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their young lives to make it to their last year of high school. Worried parents, passionate students, and some outraged adults gave much heartfelt testimony to a sympathetic Michele Lawrence about their very real concerns. -more-

Thai Garlic Restaurant -more-

Sandwiched between the two UC Berkeley campuses and Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve is a narrow wedge of hillside marked by narrow one-lane roads threading through some of Berkeley’s most distinguished houses, including the creations of Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Morgan, Bernard Maybeck and William Wurster. -more-

Workers assemble the last of the scaffolding that now encloses the entire western and southern walls of the Gaia Building. Though representatives of developer Patrick Kennedy declined to state the reason for the recent work, tenants have reported more leaks in a structure that has been partially stripped of stucco. The stucco has been replaced at least three times in the last two years. -more-

FRIDAY, JAN. 14 -more-

In a genre of architecture where squat and boxy seem perpetually in vogue, Cragmont Elementary School is a resplendent, 45,000-square-foot, $8 million exception. Nested into a hillside on Regal Road, Cragmont frames views of San Francisco Bay. -more-

FRIDAY, JAN. 14 -more-

Democracy in action can be pretty disappointing. It hardly seems like four years ago that a few hardy souls from greater Berkeley rounded up our raggedy old winter clothes and jumped on a Southwest flight to Washington to protest George W. Bush’s usurpation of the presidency when he’d clearly lost the 2000 election. While we were there, we thought we were making a brave showing with our clever banners, even though the weather was abominable. Much to our chagrin, when we got home we discovered that no one who’d been watching the televised inauguration had seen us, or even heard about the protest. When we saw Fahrenheit 9-11 this year, many in the theater were surprised to see the 2000 inaugural protest footage which Michael Moore included, since it never made it to home TV. -more-