Posted Wed., April 9—As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco today (Wednesday), Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. -more-

Posted Wed., April 9— The United Healthcare Workers-West members who met with the press outside the San Francisco Federal Building Tuesday are in a fight—but this time it’s not with their corporate bosses. -more-

Posted Tue., April 8—A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare's Berkeley campus at noon Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of the Berkeley Aquatic Park. -more-

A five-year-old city skateboard park that was to cost $200,000 and ended up costing four times that amount today is splitting at the seams. -more-

A small but dedicated crowd turned up to mark the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination by reading aloud his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” at the downtown Berkeley Public Library on Friday. The event coincided with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council’s National Day of Nonviolence, started nine years ago by the organization’s former director Jamal Bryant to encourage youth to fight against community violence. -more-

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the Oakland Police Department’s street strip-search policies are generally constitutional—though portions of it are not—but trials in individual cases must be held before the court can determine whether constitutional rights have actually been violated. -more-

Demolition of the strip mall at the corner of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way will begin June 1, said developer Chris Hudson. Some preliminary dismantling of the building is already visible. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education will discuss a report recommending adaptive re-use of the Berkeley High School Old Gym on Wednesday. -more-

Reminders of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, 40 years ago on Friday, were everywhere last week. His sonorous voice was replayed again and again on every radio station—his picture was in every paper. For me, the most immediate and vivid memories of that dreadful week in 1968—indeed, of that whole dreadful year—came flooding back at the Tuesday farmers’ market, to which Full Belly Farms brought huge fragrant bunches of lilacs. -more-