A daily roundup of the biggest headlines in Bay Area and national news.

Obama Enters Round Two

100 days have passed since President Barack Obama’s first day in office, marking a dramatic shift from the previous administration, CNN reports. Obama, who has an approval rating over 60 percent, will still face challenges passing legislation on health care and immigration in the days ahead.

Chrysler to Declare Bankruptcy

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the car company Chrysler plans to file bankruptcy and form a government-backed alliance with Fiat. The deal between the two companies will be announced later today.

Confirmed Swine Flu Cases Double

The World Health Organization announced today that the number of confirmed swine flu cases worldwide has risen to 236, with most of the new cases stemming from Mexico, CNN reports. There were just 147 cases as of yesterday.

Berkeley residents will soon see a new mural at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

The mural, which depicts Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama, was approved earlier this month by the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education.

The school’s Principal Jason Lustig said the school has been thinking about painting the mural in the barren sixth grade plaza for about a year.

“We’re excited about it,” Lustig said. “It’s something that we wanted to do.”

Some members of the community have raised concerns that depicting President Obama in a mural before he’s even finished his first year in office is premature.

However, Lustig said the mural honors the election of the first African American president in the United States and that President Obama’s politics are not related to the painting.

“(The mural) is not a statement about whether or not you agree with (Obama) politically,” he said. “He’s our first African American president and that deserves honoring in and of itself.”

District Spokesperson Mark Coplan said the only real issues down the road are what the district will do with murals a decade after they’ve been painted and whether the district will restore or paint over them.

Coplan said the Parent Teacher Association at the school has given the district permission to paint over or cover the mural if deemed necessary in the future.

The mural is the newest addition to a vast collection of murals that decorate district property.

Coplan said mural painting is a way to make buildings and structures better reflect the communities they serve.

“In our schools, it very clearly is a desire on part of the school population to personalize institutionalized space,” he said.

A daily roundup of the biggest headlines in Bay Area and national news.

First US Swine Flu Death

A Mexican toddler visiting the US with family died on Wednesday of what health officials have confirmed was swine flu, the New York Times reports. There are currently 91 cases in 10 states, and a Bay Area school has temporarily closed after a student attended class whille sick with the disease.

Bay Area Bus Crash Kills at Least Five

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, at least five people were killed and many more were injured when a bus carrying French tourists overturned on Highway 101 Tuesday afternoon.

US Stocks Rally

The Wall Street Journal reports that US stocks hit three-month highs. A representative for the Federal Open Market Committee said the economic outlook has improved since March, but that it will “remain weak.”

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and UC President Mark Yudof spoke at the Academic Senate meeting Thursday after tossing down dirt for a groundbreaking ceremony for the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies. While both alluded to budget concerns, neither had any new or specific information to share.

Yudof, citing the $450 million budget deficit, told the audience that tough times were ahead and that all departments should deal pragmatically with the funding gap.

“I think it is very important to take a hard look at your programs and not just cut everything across the board,” he said.

He also mentioned a student fee increase, soon to be further discussed in a press conference Wednesday. Yudof said that the campus community should anticipate roughly a 10 percent increase. (Click here to read more…)

A daily roundup of the biggest healdines from Bay Area and national news.

Boy Dies in Skateboarding Accident

A 16-year-old boy died in South San Francisco on Monday after being flung from his skateboard on a steep hill, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ford Loses $1.4 Billion

Ford announced today that they lost $1.4 billion in quarterly earnings, but that they have enough money to survive the year, the New York Times reports. Ford’s two domestic rivals are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Deadly Swine Flu in Mexico

Reuters reports that a deadly new strain of swine flu has killed as many as 61 people in Mexico and has already spread to the US, where several people have become ill.

A daily roundup of the biggest headlines in Bay Area and national news.

Parks to Receive Funds

Among the areas that are getting stimulus funds, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Wednesday that 22 national parks are receiving a total of $97 million, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. These include Bay Area locales like the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Point Reyes National Seashore and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. The money is expected not only to preserve the parks, but to create jobs and sustainable projects.

Freddie Mac Official Found Dead

David B. Kellermann, the acting chief financial officerat Freddie Mac, allegedly committed suicide in his home on Tuesday, The New York Times reports. The mortgage-buying company was taken over by the federal government in September after facing severe losses.

Obama Remains Popular

President Barack Obama boasts high approval ratings at 63 percent, with 26 percent of Americans saying they disapprove of the way he is handling his job, the Los Angeles Times reports. Although only a third of Republicans agreed with the President’s actions so far in the Pew Research Center’s survey, he soared in approval ratings for his work in foreign affairs. Approval from younger voters dropped somewhat, from 73 percent in February to 61 percent.

Proposals for upcoming labor negotiations between the University of California and UAW Local 2865 —which represents graduate student employees in the UC system—face a vote today.

The vote will likely determine the course of upcoming talks with the university that will lead to a new contract. A second measures asks for graduate students to approve giving the union negotiating board authority to call a strike, shall talks break down.

Negotiations will commence May 1 before the current contract with the university expires September 30. 

UAW Local 2865 Executive Board President Christine Petit declined to comment on the specifics of proposals. She said terms in the proposals have been made available to union members, but are not public information.

“These latest proposals are based off of surveys that members fill out, as well as priorities coming out of the last negotiations,” she said.

 Yet, while voting continues, critics within the union allege there are issues of transparency which challenge the integrity of the vote.

“There is a vote to give the union’s bargaining team the authority to call a strike, if necessary, and to approve the union’s initial bargaining demands,” former union official Scott Armstrong said via e-mail. “The union is having the vote basically without allowing the people voting to know what they are voting on!”

Armstrong said the union has not been held accountable enough to union members who have seen stagnating wages in the past ten years.

“They don’t try hard enough for higher wages,” he said. “ It’s much easier to bargain for things that sound good … the union might sit better if no one knows what is going on.”

He added that concessions made by the university granting childcare subsidies for graduate employees and other benefits were not substantial enough, despite a five percent wage increase the first year of the latest contract. 

But Petit said the gains made by the union are not negligible.

“We’ve gotten substantial wage increases since we unionized,” she said. “Five percent is nothing to balk at.”

First year graduate student Mark Dewit who voted today, said he felt he was properly informed about the two measures from friends he has in the union. He added that union members made themselves available to members who wanted to know more about the proposals, in addition to collecting comments and data through the petition.

“They took input in that regard,” he said. “I was pretty well briefed on the outlines of what they’re going for.”

A daily roundup of the biggest headlines in Bay Area and national news.

Freddie Mac Executive Found Dead

David Kellerman, the acting chief financial officer at mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home today in an apparent suicide. Freddie Mac, the number two mortgage finance company in the nation, lost more than $50 billion last year, according to the Associated Press.

Fewer People Moving

The New York Times reports that fewer Americans moved in 2008 than in any year since 1962. Overseas immigration is also at its lowest rate in over a decade. The slumps appear related to the recession.

DeYoung Museum Dragged into Family Dispute

The city of San Francisco has agreed to sell 76 items of tribal art previously pledged to the DeYoung museum in an attempt to resolve a family inheritance squabble. The museum is battling on of the family members in court over a $3.7 million donation that was set to be used to help sustain the collection of Oceanic art, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The controversial restructuring of International and Area Studies has continued to make headlines since its announcement in March. A recently formed student coalition submitted its petition against the change to campus administration, expressing concerns about lack of consultation and the projected absence of academic advocacy. Executive Vice Chancellor George Breslauer responded in e-mail, asserting that there were indeed many consultations and that “this change in reporting lines was neither intended to, nor going to, damage or eliminate the teaching programs.” However, in his latest e-mail, Breslauer did not mention a change that many students are passionate about; the impending departure of Professor Ananya Roy. As an extremely popular professor on campus, Roy’s intention to leave Berkeley after next semester is an issue that does qualify as an undeniable shift for the teaching program.

It would be hard for anyone to believe that this issue would have developed in the same way without Roy’s input. Her aversion to the restructuring process was immediately shared with students on the night that the plan was shared with the campus, thus setting much of the student resistance in motion. Although Breslauer says otherwise, Roy has repeated that she, as associate dean of academic affairs for international and area Studies, did not feel that she was consulted about the restructuring. Roy intends to leave the campus within a year, partially due to this process.

In reporting on this issue, the vast majority of students I talked to said that the elimination of the IAS dean position (one of the main changes in restructuring), would not affect them. Indeed, who does personally interact with the dean of the department? Students were instead most passionate and disapproving of the change when asked about Roy’s intention to leave.

When Breslauer states that the teaching program will not be affected, he very well might be right. Only time will tell once the proposed restructuring is actually implemented, and even then most students said they would not miss the dean. However, the resistance vocalized by Roy has turned out to be pivotal as students become much more likely to protest when their favorite professor says something is unequivocally wrong. At the very least, transparency becomes an issue. If the campus had shared information and address the concerns Roy said she and other staff members shared in a memo, individuals within the division may have had a greater understanding of the change and would have felt less blindsighted. Many have wondered why, if Breslauer says there is nothing to worry about, that not made clear to faculty and staff like Roy who are clearly upset about it?

Although consultations took place, clearly there was a breakdown in communication somewhere. And that, for many, is enough reason to be concerned.

- Leslie Toy