Although police and school officials say they think gangs do not have a major presence at Berkeley High School, they admit the kids would know most about student membership in West Side Berkeley or H2O Front Berkeley—the two most prominent Berkeley gangs.

“Even in the junior high you’ll pick up notebooks and they’ll have H2O written all over it,” said Berkeley police Sgt. Patricia Delaluna, a gang expert. “The kids know better than anybody who’s all involved.”

However, even students are in discrepancy about the presence of gangs. Two juniors at Berkeley High, Rafi Susman and Michael Salaverry, said they don’t think gangs exist in their school.

“I don’t worry about that, not at Berkeley High,” Salaverry said.

His friend said even though there aren’t gangs at the school, there still is criminal activity.

“There’s gang-like activity but they’re not labeled as gangs,” Susman said. “I think here it’s more about ridiculous individuals than ridiculous gangs.”

However, other students are positive of the presence of gang-like groups, which sometimes engage in criminal behavior but do not label themselves as “gangs.”

“There’s gangs, but sometimes they’re called cliques,” said Cervon Rogers, a freshman at Berkeley High. “Then they say the ‘turf’ they’re from, they do signs, they target each other.”

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Lt. Col. Brad Jensen, who teaches UC Berkeley’s Air Force ROTC program, plans to soon retire after 26 years of military service. His job has taken him all over the country, including Louisiana, Utah, Guam, California, Virginia and North Dakota. Berkeley marks his last stop.

When he enlisted in 1982, the Gulf War was underway. “We sat alert, we had our airplanes, aircraft and missiles on alert and Russia was the big threat,” Jensen said. “We thought the world might end in a nuclear holocaust.”

He nodded to the dozens of Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force members doing training exercises in the middle of North Field. “We send cadets around the world for language training and cultural immersion to try and get them prepared to go work in the Balkans or the Middle East or Asia,” said Jensen, who speaks Dutch, Spanish and French. “They’re going to be stationed anywhere in the world.”

What has changed most about the military between then and now, he said, is a greater understanding of the enemy.

“In some ways, it’s a much harder threat to defend against than the Russians were during the Cold War,” Jensen said. “You know what their missiles were, you knew if we didn’t threaten them they wouldn’t hurt us. But we don’t know that with the terrorists–they want to destroy us and we don’t know where they are.”

When campus police were first alerted to the tree-climb protest outside Wheeler Hall, they drew an immediate connection with the oak grove protest near Memorial Stadium.

Yet, despite the huge tree banner filled with grievances against the university, those occupying the tree outside Wheeler Hall stressed that they had no direct connection to the tree-sitters east of campus.

Still, tree protesters from both areas shared one ideal in common — that of free speech.

Wheeler Hall tree protesters called for the democratization of the UC Regents and condemned the BP Deal. But they said, in the end, it was an issue of free speech and student activism.

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While a temperature influence on male longevity is an important finding in itself, global environmental health professor Kirk Smith said temperature stress might impact humans in other ways more pertinent to public health in the face of climate change.

“We want to look and see if this population of kids born in times of temperature stress are themselves more sensitive to temperature, whether they have increased death rates later on in adulthood in reaction to temperature extremes, whether or not they were sensitized in the womb,” he said.

But the effect of climate change on the population depends on the way in which climate change occurs, he said.

“If (climate change) is a slow rising in temperature, you might expect the population to get used to it,” he said. “If it affects variations in temperature, then it could have an effect.”

When the case seemed cold, homicide detectives in the Berkeley Police Department received an unexpected tip about the 2006 shooting death of Wayne Drummond, Jr. As a result, two men were arrested.

Police have charged Berkeley resident Brandon Crowder, 20, and Richmond resident Nicholas Beaudreaux, 22, with the murder of 23-year-old Drummond, who died on the steps of UC Berkeley sorority, said Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.

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As John Garamendi spoke to a packed student audience at Wheeler Auditorium yesterday, the lieutenant governor’s old image of UC Berkeley–where he attended in the 1960s–sometimes seemed to be at odds with the new.

“Last night was pure Berkeley–fun stuff,” he said, referring to the Berkeley City Council meeting that drew protesters and media outlets from all over the nation. Then he asked how many in the audience had attended.

None of the attendees of Political Science 179 raised their hands.

Later, Garamendi encouraged his listeners to peacefully protest against potential student fee increases. The UC Board of Regents had discussed in January the possibility of raising student fees in response to proposed university budget cuts following California’s budget crisis.

“Do you know what marching is?” Garamendi asked. “Do you do that anymore here?”

The vote by City Councilmember Kriss Worthington to send an apology to the Marine Corps Feb. 12 surprised Berkeley residents because of its unusually moderate stance.

After several hours of public comment from anti-military and pro-military sides, the Berkeley City Council’s 7-2 vote  clarified their support and respect for military service members but did not include an apology to be sent to the Marine Corps.

Pro-military protesters called for an apology in regards to a letter that was passed Jan. 29 which described the recruiters as “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” This language elicited nationwide response as council members received more than 20,000 e-mails and phone calls in the last two weeks.

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A dance-off held at Barrows Hall on Friday night to promote nonviolence turned into a chain-reaction fight that required UC Berkeley Police to evacuate the building.

Bones Entertainment, a non-profit organization founded by Richmond resident Raashida Manning, hosts “turf wars” where dance groups compete in “turfing,” a kind of dance that combines street dance, hip-hop, popping and mime.

The “Face Off” dance, which started at 6:30 p.m. on the 8th floor of Barrows Hall, had about 400 people in attendance according to police. By 8:30 p.m. it turned into a fight involving around 20 people, but no injuries were reported.

Manning said she started Bones Entertainment two years ago after her nephew was killed. She said she wants to promote nonviolence by giving young dancers a place to compete.

“These kids do this dancing, and there’s not really a place they can go to do this,” Manning said. “I’ve worked with all the dancers in the area and they do it to stay out of trouble.”

Manning said she had five security people at the event Friday. None of her previous four dance-offs turned into fights, she said.

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