BERKELEY -- If former Colorado Senator Gary Hart had his way, this year’s presidential campaign would look a lot different.
The noted author of 13 books was on the UC Berkeley campus this week to promote his latest book, The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States, and to issue a foreign policy challenge to all candidates vying for president in the upcoming November elections: “sit down for half a day and come up with a grand strategy for the U.S,” he declared.
BERKELEY -- An undercover police officer, dressed in a black sweatshirt, baseball cap and jeans, approached a UC Berkeley undergraduate last night and asked for his ID at Kip's Restaurant on Durant Avenue. Leaning against the wall, suddenly looking pale and terrified, the youth handed over three IDs, one of which turned out to be a phony. The officer cited him for minor possession of alcohol and possession of fake ID.
BERKELEY -- Professor Ignacio Chapela insists that he's "not going anywhere," even though he has been denied tenure and his contract with UC Berkeley is set to expire December 31 of this year. "I'm not looking for other jobs, " he explained, from his spare office on the third floor of Hilgard Hall. " I feel wanted, needed and accepted here, and I am being kicked out illegitimately."
BERKELEY -- One man came from as far away as Canada's Manitoba province to spend Labor Day weekend in West Oakland. Another flew in from a small town in West Virginia. They joined nine Bay Area residents for a four-day workshop in a form of media for which a small East Bay organization has acquired an international reputation: Community radio.
BERKELEY -- The number of students with psychiatric or psychological disabilities who enrolled in the Disabled Students Program at the University of California, Berkeley, has grown steadily over the past eight years, statistics show. For a program that pioneered the equal rights movement for disabled students and provides a wide range of services to them, the influx marks another chapter in a history of innovation.
BERKELEY -- Berkeley alumnus Rex Walheim, the astronaut who marked his first venture into space last spring by unfurling an enormous Cal flag outside the Atlantis space shuttle, urged graduating seniors today to persist against odds at the December Graduates Convocation.
BERKELEY -- Two California-based International policy and political science experts interviewed today reacted with an air of wait-and-see cautions as China formally announced a major transition of power in the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
BERKELEY -- Christin happened upon a storefront shop at 2277 Shattuck Avenue during an early morning stroll in downtown Berkeley. Lured by the store's old-fashioned scarlet awning and ornate tiling encircling the immaculate picture windows, she went inside and spoke with Wayne Anderson, the shop's owner and resident crank.
BERKELEY -- After nearly an hour of scouting possible houses on the streets of Berkeley near Civic Center Park for our property records search, we discovered a curious-looking candidate: A wooden shingled house on Dwight Way with two dragons hung above the door on the porch entrance.
BERKELEY -- For religious Jews, god is everywhere. That means you have to "bring god into the bedroom too," says Miriam Ferris, wife to a rabbi and mother of nine kids. Ferris is an Orthodox Jew who follows the ancient Jewish ritual of visiting a mikvah, where she submerges herself into holy waters before resuming marital relations with her husband.
SAN QUENTIN -- Rolando Cruz talked himself onto death row.
In 1985, Cruz was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a ten-year-old girl in Illinois. In the absence of any physical evidence linking him to the crime, Cruz and his alleged accomplice, Alejandro Hernandez, were convicted on the strength of statements they made implicating each other and falsified police testimony. Cruz was exonerated after serving ten years on death row when DNA evidence proved he was not the assailant.
SAN QUENTIN -- The death chamber at San Quentin State Prison was crowded. There were only about 20 visitors here on a recent weekday tour of the premises -- during executions up to 180 witnesses peer into the mint-green, bolt-ridden steel and glass chamber -- yet it was still hard to breathe.
SAN QUENTIN -- The California state prison here is a sprawling complex clearly visible from the San Rafael Bridge, but the lives of those inside the penitentiary, and the execution of its death row inmates, are absent from the public's consciousness.
SAN QUENTIN -- I don't envy the people in positions to make decisions about the death penalty, nor those who carry out the executions that take place in a pale green chamber here in this California state prison overlooking San Francisco Bay.
Times commentators assess the death penalty and conditions behind bars during a recent visit to San Quentin State Prison, home to California's Death Row.
BERKELEY – Downtown Berkeley is often downright noisy, with buses honking, trains rumbling underground, traffic lights beeping, and the homeless yelling. It’s so loud that any kind of subtle or inspiring sound can be overwhelmed unless you listen closely. If you do, you’ll often be able to hear impromptu melodies from a bamboo flute. Soft as it is, the music continues steadfastly, persistently, and soothingly.
BERKELEY -- Two men are in police custody after allegedly robbing a Berkeley man using a red laser pointer as a simulated gun, Berkeley police said.
BERKELEY -- Trading occasional barbs, Mayor Shirley Dean and former Assemblyman Tom Bates squared off Saturday in a debate about the arts at Aurora Theater downtown where the two Berkeley mayoral candidates also shared their plans for improving access to the arts for artists and ordinary residents.
Dean and Bates agreed on many ideas, including their desire to infuse art into the daily lives of all city residents, turn the first floor of the former City Hall into a gallery, create stronger alliances between schools and community groups, and get artists into subsidized housing and workspace?but differed on how to raise funds and provide parking downtown.
BERKELEY -- Berkeley and Oakland hills residents, saying they fear for their homes and lives, today urged local agencies to move forward on projects to help prevent the spread of fires.
The Times researched Alameda County public records recently to explore the history of three buildings in Berkeley and Oakland. Three teams of staff members report:
BERKELEY -- Like most newcomers from overseas, I came to the United States for more freedom. However, the very first lesson I learned in this country was freedom is a relative term. How else can you explain the American fixation for owning firearms?
BERKELEY -- When the East Bay Express newspaper ran an article about Berkeley’s new Harrison Park they called L A Wood and asked if they could label him a gadfly—someone constantly criticizing and a general nuisance. The park, with its frequently used soccer fields and concrete skatepark, is built on land loaded with industrial pollutants and outfitted with signs courtesy of Wood warning of the potential health hazards. "People who know me know I’m hardly the gadfly," he said.
BERKELEY -- Trading occasional barbs, Mayor Shirley Dean and former Assemblyman Tom Bates squared off Saturday a debate about the arts at Aurora Theater downtown where the two Berkeley mayoral candidates also shared their plans for improving access to the arts for artists and ordinary residents . Dean and Bates agreed on many ideas -- their desire to infuse art into the daily lives of all city residents, turn the first floor of the former City Hall into a gallery, create stronger alliances between schools and community groups, and get artists into subsidized housing and workspace -- but differed on how to raise funds and provide parking downtown.
BERKELEY -- Lisa Greco is a goalball pro -- she's been playing the sport for 21 years.
"It's a game that blind people can excel at -- sometimes better than other people," the 34-year-old computer consultant says, pulling a kneepad into place before the start of the regular Wednesday night practice in the gymnasium at the Berkeley Adult School on University Avenue.
BERKELEY -- When the U.S. Federal Appeals Court in San Francisco ruled last June that it was unconstitutional to require public schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, one small group of citizens here applauded the news amid the tumult of moral outrage that erupted across the nation.
BERKELEY -- Three armed robbers stormed through Cambridge Soundworks in downtown Berkeley early Sunday afternoon, binding staffers by their wrists, loading stereo equipment into a U-Haul truck and leaving behind a dead dog before leading police on a low speed chase down I-80, Inspector Arnold Lui with of the Berkeley Police Department reported.
BERKELEY -- A 16-year-old Berkeley High School student was assaulted and robbed Thursday as he walked home from school, Berkeley police today reported. A 17-year-old Oakland man is being held on charges of assault and robbery in connection with the incident, which took place on the corner of Blake and Milvia Streets at 12:28 pm.
BERKELEY -- The haunting cry of a trumpet pierced the dawn silence early Wednesday at a fire station in Berkeley as residents, firefighters and police officers observed last year's terror attacks at a memorial gathering Staffers from the Berkeley Police and Fire Departments and several public officials including Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean spoke briefly at the event, driving home a message of pride and remembrance.
BERKELEY -- As the sun set on a long day of remembrance and grief across America, nearly 200 Berkleyeans offered up prayers of peace, hope and love last night at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park at a community gathering to mark the one-year anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.
BERKELEY -- It all started in 1973 with a dream of a better future. That was the year a poor black woman named Dorothy Everett (now Ellington-Turner), a divorced mother with nine young children to support, decided to try to earn more than the $2 per hour she was making as a cook.
