SAN FRANCISCO—As a musical based on her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple” continued its run blocks away, Alice Walker told a group of women Wednesday that the United States’ military presence in Iraq is morally wrong, and to ensure the country’s next generation understands her views, she’s written an anti-war children’s book. Continue reading
Over 50 people met in downtown Berkeley to Step It Up, joining hundreds across the Bay Area for the National Day of Climate Action.
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A slideshow on the Dia De Los Muertos celebrations in San Francisco’s Mission District.
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University of California, Berkeley professor Alex Zettl’s research group has built the smallest radio tube yet from a single carbon nanotube.
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A program nurtures the talents of disabled artists.
Adults and toddlers participated in a Sing-Along at the UC Village in Albany.
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Encinal High welcomed alumni during its annual homecoming.
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BERKELEY–For the millions of Americans who will travel by car to be with loved ones for the long Thanksgiving weekend, soaring gas prices spell bad news. But despite the financial strain, experts say most people will not change their plans. Continue reading
BERKELEY – A week after the Senate confirmed Michael Mukasey for Attorney General, more than 50 students and activists gathered Wednesday to demonstrate an interrogation technique that Mukasey called repugnant but refused to call illegal: waterboarding. Continue reading
SAN FRANCISCO — When Manuel Quezada immigrated illegally to the United States from Jalisco, Mexico in 1965, he said all you needed to get a social security number and driver’s license was your Mexican birth certificate.
Quezada, who now has a green card and works as a sales representative for Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley, said it doesn’t make sense to him that it is so difficult now for undocumented workers to get identification cards. Continue reading
SAN FRANCISCO — Months after The Wall Street Journal announced takeover plans by Rupert Murdoch, surprise has once again rippled through the news industry as the enterprising media mogul announced that he plans to put an end to the Journal’s online subscription-based system. Continue reading
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order Tuesday that halted fishing in the San Francisco Bay a week after a devastating oil spill wreaked havoc on marine life. Continue reading
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BERKELEY — Chang-Qin Wu didn’t miss his second court date. He’d traveled all the way from Shanghai to guarantee it. By 9:30 a.m. Oct. 19, he was seated in the Berkeley Courthouse opposite his accuser and former landlady to find out whether the trans-Pacific flight would be worth it. He hastily tugged his blazer over his shoulders and sat up straight as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Marshall Whitley entered the small claims court.
Across the aisle, 78-year-old Esther Yang of El Sobrante shuffled to her seat, propped her feet on her metal walker’s support bars and with a trembling thumb sifted through the photographs and faded receipts she’d brought along as proof of her claim. Wu, she said, had never paid her the $1,000 rent for November 2006 and left apartment No. 3 in her building at 1117 Brighton Street in Albany filled with trash and an overflowing sink. It cost her $6,325 to clean it up.
Find out what’s happening on The Richmond Beat
RICHMOND — On November 9, 2004, a utility pipeline exploded in Walnut Creek and killed five people, injured four, destroyed a nearby residence and forced neighboring Las Lomas High School to evacuate. In September, the pipeline operator responsible for the explosion, a subsidiary of the corporate giant Kinder Morgan called KMGP Services Company, was convicted of neglecting safety rules and fined $15 million in damages.
Kinder Morgan operates pipelines transporting gas and hazardous materials under the surface of Richmond city streets. And now some city officials are demanding that the company and other pipeline operators start abiding by a federal law that requires them to educate the public about potential dangers and safety precautions needed to prevent disasters like the one in Walnut Creek.
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SAN FRANCISCO — When Independence High School senior Jocquay Thomas attended his first Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board meeting last August, he was amazed that anyone could ask the U.S. Navy questions.
He was also struck by the fact that there were only five minutes at the end of the meeting for public comment. Board members had much more time to talk and ask questions. So the 18-year-old decided he wanted to apply to be on the board. Today, he is the youngest member on the panel formed in 1994 to involve the community in the environmental cleanup of the Hunters Point shipyard.
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BERKEKEY — Last Friday, UC-Berkeley junior Tyson Ross took the mound at Evans Field for the first time in what will most likely be his last season as an amateur baseball player. It was a Golden Bears intra-squad game with eight or nine die-hard fans attending. But almost twice as many Major League scouts were on hand to watch the pitcher who Baseball America last week ranked the 11th top college prospect for the 2008 Major League Baseball draft.
“I try not to get too caught up in the draft,” the 20-year-old Oakland native said. “It’s just one day in your life. I don’t think it will change things for me that much.”
Ross’ energy is focused on the Bears’ upcoming season. Two weeks ago, the physically imposing yet approachable 20-year-old hung a picture in the Bears’ locker room of Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Neb., the home of the College World Series. Ross wants it to be the first thing his teammates see on their way into the locker room and on the way out. Continue reading
The Board of Supervisors passed an historic ordinance Tuesday, which will make San Francisco the nation’s largest city to offer photo ID cards to its residents, without consideration of their immigration status.
SAN FRANCISCO – Magie Crystal looks at her dressing room as a mosh pit. It’s her, the client and at times, an armful of underwire, foam-padded, contour cups. The referee? An unforgiving mirror.
Crystal is to the San Francisco boom of late what personal shoppers were to women in the 1980s, or what valets were to Victorian England: a niche service that emerges in times of plenty. Continue reading
By Maria Jose Calderon and Brittney Johnson
Hundreds of parents, teachers and schoolchildren marched through central Richmond on October 12 to protest both the violence in the city and the recent upsurge in immigration raids. School of Journalism students Maria Jose Calderon and Brittney Johnson captured the rainy but spirited afternoon in this audio slide show. Continue reading
Former criminal offenders got free legal advice Saturday, Nov. 3, in order to get better access to jobs and housing. Continue reading
By Majo Calderon and Kiran Goldman
RODEO BEACH – Concerned residents of Mill Valley gathered at Rodeo Beach today to watch as workers rescued birds and scooped and bagged sand contaminated from Wednesday morning’s oil spill. A number of onlookers sadly looked through binoculars and said they were frustrated that they were not allowed to walk onto the beach to help.
“I thought I might come down and see if they needed any help picking up birds or rescuing some sea lions, but it looks like you can’t even go down on the beach,” said Jay McGill, a longtime surfer from Mill Valley, who had to travel to north of Point Reyes today to find a beach to surf that had not been touched by the oil spill. Continue reading
Oakland – A downtown Oakland street was sectioned off today for the unveiling of a $4.5 million Uptown Transit Center, which will serve as a major new hub for AC Transit buses and BART.
With musical entertainment from the Oakland School of the Arts Ensemble and catered food and refreshments, over 100 people gathered under a white tent at T.L. Berkeley Street (formerly 20th Street), between Telegraph and Broadway, to celebrate the one-block redesign, which provides a transfer point for ten local, rapid and transbay bus routes, right next to the 19th Street BART station. Continue reading
ALBANY – With the snip of a red ribbon stretched across the new track surface, and a celebratory glass of champagne all around, Golden Gate Fields’ horse racing season was officially open.
After being closed for a 4 month renovation, live racing resumed Wednesday on the new Tapeta track, a synthetic surface made of wax coated sand, rubber and fibers. The $10 million track, only the second in the country, is impervious to weather, requires less maintenance, and will be safer for both horse and rider.
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BERKELEY — A day after the Berkeley City Council voted to approve plans by Verizon to install 17 antennas atop UC Storage in South Berkeley, residents who were protesting or simply hoping to end the deal are disappointed and annoyed. Continue reading
One week after General Pervez Musharraf declared emergency in Pakistan, college students in Lahore are filling the shoes of the city’s detained professionals in protest against the second “martial law” their generation has seen
