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Four tree-sitters began climbing down from an 80-foot-tall redwood tree near Memorial Stadium this afternoon after UC Berkeley officials agreed to create a committee that will oversee future campus development, a spokesman for the protesters said. UC officials declined to comment on the reported deal, saying they will speak after the nearly 2-year-long standoff ends. But protesters atop the tree pumped their fists in a show of victory. Before climbing down, one of the protesters, nicknamed Huck, shouted, "We love you" to cheering supporters below. The protesters' deal with the university does not include amnesty from criminal charges, said their...

The standoff between UC Berkeley and four tree-sitters outside Memorial Stadium intensified Monday as work crews prepared to remove the protesters from a stripped-down redwood. Workers used bulldozers to clear and level the ground surrounding the redwood, one of two trees standing in the center of the grove after crews cut down 40 other trees over the weekend to make way for a $124 million sports training center. "The university is preparing for what will we hope be a quick and safe extraction in the coming days," campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said. "We had hoped it wouldn't come to this....

BERKELEY — University of California, Berkeley officials said this afternoon that negotiations between the tree-sitters are over and the university is now considering what steps to take to get the four tree-sitters down from their perch within the next day or so. Just two redwoods remain standing in front of Memorial Stadium. Four men continue living in one of the redwoods; the second tree is to be transplanted elsewhere on campus. The university cut off deliveries of food and water to the tree-sitters at 9 a.m. today. In an update this afternoon, university Dan Mogulof said negotiations and discussions with...

UC Berkeley officials warned today that "the clock is ticking" for four tree-sitters perched in a redwood tree outside Memorial Stadium. University police and other campus leaders spent much of the day talking with the remaining members of a 21-month protest over plans to cut down a grove of trees to make way for a $124 million athletic training center. The talks went on as logging crews worked with chainsaws and heavy machinery to clear the trees that were cut down Friday, Saturday and today, after a state appeals court rejected requests to delay construction. By this evening, 40 of...

Berkeley's latest political battle may be coming to an end: the UC has won a series of decisions in cases brought by local activist groups seeking to prevent the destruction of grove of trees right next to the law school. UC wants to build a sports facility there for our athletes. The battle over this grove of trees has created a real circus on campus. At one point, perhaps two dozen people were living in the trees. Some came down voluntarily, and when the UC started plucking them from the trees, one protester known as Dumpster Muffin climbed to the...

BERKELEY -- Except for a lone redwood holding four tree-sitters, UC Berkeley today finished cutting down the long-embattled Memorial Stadium trees that protesters had been fighting to preserve for 21 months. Arborists removed 42 oaks, redwoods, laurels, and other trees from the grove, leaving 28 around the perimeter. Several others, including a mature redwood, are slated to be transplanted to make way for a $124-million student athlete training center. The university has no immediate plans to forcibly extricate the tree-sitters, but hopes they'll come down voluntarily now that the grove has been removed, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. The campus...

BERKELEY - Crews began cutting down trees next to Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley late Friday, 21 months after activists climbed into the trees to protest the university's plan to raze them to build a $140 million sports training center center. Work crews with chainsaws and bulldozers arrived at the university grove Friday and by 4 p.m. six trees had been chopped down. Clad in black ski masks, the four remaining tree protesters who were driven into a single redwood several months ago, remained in the tree Friday and at times sparred with arborists, tossing a bottle and branches toward...

BERKELEY, CA (KGO) -- U.C. Berkeley may begin cutting down the oak trees at the center of an ongoing battle. They pulled out the chainsaw after a huge legal victory on Thursday. At about 8:30 am on Friday, the chainsaws started up and branches of the tree that is home to the four remaining tree sitters began coming down. U.C. says this is the beginning of the end, but supporters say they are not giving up without a fight. For starters Friday morning, tree cutters removed every branch below their first platform. "We want to continue to make conditions for...

The state Court of Appeal refused Thursday to issue an order barring UC Berkeley from bringing the chainsaws to chop down trees at Memorial Stadium. Stephan Volker, attorney for the California Oak Foundation, said he will appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court Friday morning, asking the state’s highest court to preserve the grove—at least for the moment. The ruling prompted an email alert to supporters of the ongoing tree-sit:“the appeals court has ruled, UCB can cut trees any time they want, get ready, we need witnesses & direct action.” The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the...

BERKELEY, Calif.—UC Berkeley officials said they would immediately move forward on their long-delayed plan to build a new sports center after an appeals court refused Thursday to block the project that inspired lawsuits and tree-sitting protests. The California Court of Appeal denied a request from two citizens groups for an injunction barring construction of the athletic training facility near Memorial Stadium. Although the groups indicated they plan to take the case to the state Supreme Court, campus officials said they wouldn't wait any longer.

BERKELEY —Two groups defeated in a lawsuit against UC Berkeley's plan to build a $125 million athletic training center near an earthquake fault appealed the ruling Thursday to the state court of appeals. In the first step of the appeal, the California Oak Foundation and the Panoramic Hill Association will ask the court to forbid construction of the facility until the court begins deliberations on the case, which could take 10 to 18 months, according to a statement from the two groups. The court could make a determination on whether UC Berkeley can begin construction while it awaits the outcome...

A Berkeley nonprofit has demanded that a conservative political group stop airing a television ad that seeks to tie Barack Obama to a 1960s radical, claiming the ad uses copyrighted footage from a documentary film without permission. A lawyer for the Free History Project, which produced the Academy Award-nominated 2002 documentary "The Weather Underground," sent a cease-and-desist letter Monday to the Florida-based American Issues Project, which created the ad and has bought air time for it in the presidential battleground states of Michigan and Ohio. The ad notes that the Weather Underground, a radical group, bombed the U.S. Capitol and...

BERKELEY, Calif.— A judge has lifted an order blocking the University of California from building a sports center that has been the focus of an impassioned tree-sitting protest. Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller's ruling Tuesday clears the way for UC Berkeley to begin constructing an athletic training facility where several dozen oak trees now stand. Opponents of the project say they plan to appeal. University officials said they have promised construction will not begin until the state appeals court has ruled.

BERKELEY —UC Berkeley will voluntarily delay construction of a $125 million athletic training center at Memorial Stadium until a state appeals court considers a lawsuit opposing the project, university officials said Monday. The project, which is increasing in cost by $750,000 a month due to delays from the lawsuit, is now stalled until at least the end of September, said Cal spokesman Dan Mogulof. The $125 million project has been held up in court since December of 2006. In July, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller ruled in favor of the school and against three groups who sued the...

Chainsaws lopped off all lower branches of the last remaining bastion of the Memorial Stadium tree-sit Thursday as UC Berkeley prepared for their final moves against the protesters in the oak grove. Contract arborists, equipped with Plexiglass shields, worked from the platforms of two cherrypickers, whacking off the branches of the redwood and two nearby oaks. “The removal of these branches will make it very difficult for those who are illegally occupying university property to move back into the trees they had formerly occupied, and will help prevent new protesters from joining them,” Vice Chancellor Nathan Brostrom said in a...

BERKELEY _ Arborists from UC Berkeley are sawing down lower branches of redwood trees and Coast Live Oaks at the protest site in front of Memorial Stadium this morning. The idea, university spokesman Dan Mokulof said, is to ensure that no one else can join the protest. It will also confine the four remaining protesters to a single, tree he said. They remain in the tree pending resolution of an appeal of lawsuits challenging the university's decision to cut down the trees and build a sports training facility on the site. No one is being harmed, Mokulof said. "We're trimming...

Legal filing pulled over technicality, homeowners group says — BERKELEY — Two plaintiffs who sued to stop UC Berkeley from building a $140 million sports training center next to the university's football stadium have withdrawn a motion for a new trial.The California Oak Foundation and the Panoramic Hill Association — two of the three plaintiffs that sued the university in December 2006 to stop the center from being built on a grove of trees — where protesters have been living for 20 months — had filed the separate motion in Alameda County Superior Court based on alleged building code violations.But...

The Berkeley mayor's race promises a dramatic reprise this year with a rematch between incumbent Tom Bates and the former mayor he unseated in a hard-fought election six years ago, Shirley Dean.The mayor's race normally is every four years, but Bates' current term is ending in two years because of a charter amendment that moved the vote for mayor to presidential election years.Missing from the race will be Zachary Running Wolf, an outspoken advocate for the Cal stadium tree-sitters who ran unsuccessfully for mayor two years ago. He declared his candidacy again this year and filed papers, but he lacked...

The fight between UC Berkeley and two groups fighting to stop a sports training center from being built will drag on after the state Court of Appeal on Thursday left in place an injunction stopping construction. The case now returns to Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller for further work and hearings. The city of Berkeley, the Panoramic Hill Association and the California Oak Foundation sued UC Berkeley in December 2006 to stop it from building its $140 million sports training center, where 44 trees are planted. People have been living in the trees since then, and at least...

UC Berkeley, poised to clear the Memorial Stadium oak grove for a sports training center, has asked the city for help to control a growing encampment on a nearby street median of people who support tree-sitting protesters. Campus Police Chief Victoria Harrison last week asked the Berkeley police and city manager's office to remove the encampment, which includes 10 to 20 people, tents, dogs, sleeping bags and banners along about 100 feet of the city-maintained divider on Piedmont Avenue. "The median is not meant to be a campground or a park. It's a major traffic artery for campus," said Harrison....

UC Berkeley asked a state appeals court Friday to allow the campus to begin construction of a sports training center next to Memorial Stadium, where tree-sitters have waged a protest for the past 20 months. The university is eager to get started on the project and clear out the four remaining tree-sitters before the Cal football team's first game at Memorial Stadium on Aug. 30, when 70,000 fans are expected to converge on the area, a UC attorney said. In a 77-page brief filed with the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco, the university says it has suffered extreme...

BERKELEY _ A nude woman running in and out of traffic lanes on the I-80 freeway near Gilman Street disrupted traffic early this morning and required the California Highway Patrol, the Berkeley Police and ultimately, the Berkeley Fire Department to handle the situation. . . .

UC Berkeley has been hit by a new delay in its plan to cut down trees in a grove occupied by tree-sitters next to Memorial Stadium and build an athletic training center there. A 17-month-old court order blocking the project had been set to expire after Tuesday, following this week's decision by an Alameda County Superior Court Judge allowing UC to build the center. But beginning today, the injunction will be extended at least 20 days following a notice of appeal filed by two groups that sued to block the project, the California Oak Foundation and the Panoramic Hill Association....

Berkeley -- Angry shouts of "Shame! Shame!" erupted in the Berkeley City Chambers Thursday night after the council declined to appeal a court ruling against the city allowing UC Berkeley to build an athletic training center next to Memorial Stadium. The conflict has drawn wide attention because of a 20-month protest by tree-sitters at the project site who have demanded that UC preserve the grove of more than 80 oaks, redwoods and other trees next to the stadium. The city had sued - along with stadium neighbors and a tree preservation group - to block the project. The other two...

Score one for the Berkeley tree-sitters. Hours after UC Berkeley won a court decision Tuesday allowing a long-blocked athletic training center to be built next to Memorial Stadium, supporters of illegal tree-sitters occupying the project's site commandeered a new tree on the main campus and strung ropes from it to the besieged aerial protesters. But late in the day, campus officials reached an agreement with the protesters to remove the lines and abandon the newly occupied tree, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said. Campus officials were stunned Wednesday morning to find two more tree-sitters able to travel with ease and,...

Berkeley’s treesitters and Memorial Stadium neighbors who had sued to block construction of a gym at the site of the adjacent oak grove were dealt a resounding setback Tuesday. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller issued a judgment that upholds the university’s plans for a four-level gym at the grove site and hits the litigants—including the city and the late City Councilmember Dona Spring—with an order that they pay most of the university’s legal bill. Her order also ends, on July 29, the injunction which has blocked construction and the destruction of the grove. Construction could begin immediately...

Berkeley -- UC Berkeley can build its proposed athlete training center, an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled late today, handing a crucial victory to the university in a protracted battle marked by a highly publicized protest by tree-sitters since December 2006. The long-awaited ruling by Judge Barbara Miller said the university has overcome the legal barriers to the project, which has been blocked by a court injunction since February 2007. Miller said the injunction can be lifted in a week. She postponed the removal of the injunction for seven days to give opponents an opportunity to appeal to the...

UC Berkeley, eager to resolve the tree-sitters' standoff outside Memorial Stadium before football season begins, asked a judge Thursday to allow construction on a sports training center to begin as soon as next week. The university also asked the city of Berkeley, a neighborhood group and a group of oak tree advocates, who have sued UC to block the project, to put up a $1.5 million-a-month bond if they choose to appeal the judge's ruling on whether the $125 million training center can be built safely and legally. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller said she will decide soon...

One of the four tree-sitters at the Memorial Stadium oak grove descended from the foliage Monday, leaving three protesters attempting to stop UC Berkeley's plans to build a sports training center. Jeffrey "Muskrat" Musgrave, 30, climbed out of the trees at about 12:30 p.m., and was arrested by UC police. He was charged with trespassing, violating a court order, vandalism and possession of marijuana, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. Musgrave was taken to Berkeley city jail, where he is expected to be cited and released, Mogulof said. Musgrave, who joined the 19-month-old tree-sit protest last week, came down due to...

BERKELEY - As they promised, members of a large University of California service workers union went on strike this morning, throwing up picket lines at the Berkeley campus and other UC facilities. The scene was peaceful in Berkeley. Union members carrying signs are handing out leaflets about their dispute with university management; people driving by are honking constantly in support. The union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, represents nearly 20,000 workers, including bus drivers, cooks, custodians, gardeners and parking attendants at the university's 10 campuses and hospitals. The strikers are ignoring a restraining order issued Friday by...

BERKELEY -- Three of the Memorial Stadium tree-sitters left their perches today and Tuesday night, leaving just four protesters making a stand against UC's plans to build an athletic training center in the grove, UC Berkeley officials said. The three protesters, who have not been identified, climbed down from the trees late Tuesday night, campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said. One of them was arrested by campus police while the other two climbed up a different tree, he said.After talking to police this morning, the two came down. All three have been charged with trespassing and violating a court order to...

University hopes concessions set stage for athletic training center next door - UC Berkeley made key concessions Friday in its long-running standoff with the city, tree-sitting protesters and neighbors of Memorial Stadium that the university hopes will clear the way for its plans to build an athletic training center next to the stadium. In documents submitted in Alameda County Superior Court, the university says it will scrap all non-football events at Memorial Stadium and drop plans to attach a concrete support beam to the stadium's west wall, two roadblocks cited in a judge's interim ruling in the case last week.UC's...

Two protesters sitting in trees near Cal's Memorial Stadium surrendered their roosts on Wednesday, officials said, leaving seven tree-sitters remaining in the 18-month-long standoff against UC's plans to build an athletic training center. Bradley "Squirtle" Costello, 20, said he came down about 6:30 p.m. because he wanted a cigarette and a hot meal, UC spokesman Dan Mogulof said. Mathew Marks, 24, said he would come down on the condition that he could make a statement to his supporters and give his personal belongings to them, Mogulof said. "We're very encouraged by this development," Mogulof said. "It suggests our strategy is...

The Berkeley City Council added an emergency item to its agenda late Tuesday night and dispatched two city officials to the University of California, Berkeley oak grove to check on the welfare of nine people living in trees there. Assistant to the City Manager Jim Hynes and Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong were directed to the grove late Tuesday. They were expected to report their findings back to the council later Tuesday night, although their report might be postponed to later this week if the council meeting runs long. Since UC Berkeley stopped allowing food and water into the grove...

A group of tree-sitters' 18-month-long standoff with UC Berkeley intensified Monday, as the city of Berkeley demanded the protesters be allowed food and water. "The city's concern is that even though there's not a lot of sympathy for the tactics utilized by the people in the trees, we do feel their health and safety should not be put at risk," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. "To starve people out of the trees does not seem rational." City officials have asked the university remove a pair of barriers, erected last week on city property, that block the sidewalk and prevent protesters...

Fewer than a dozen protesters remain in the grove of oak trees next to the university's football stadium. UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university and police remain in constant contact with the eight to nine tree-sitters that remain. He said currently all the remaining protesters are saying they do not need any more food and water and are fine. Police passed medical supplies up to the tree sitters Sunday, Mogulof said, because some had minor cuts they wanted treated. However, university officials and police currently are not allowing food and water up to the trees. Mogulof said if...

Berkeley -- Cody's Books, the legendary Berkeley bookstore that catered to literati nationwide for more than half a century and was firebombed in the 1980s because of its support of the First Amendment, has closed its doors, the victim of lagging sales. The bookstore, which in recent years had closed its flagship store on Telegraph Avenue and its branches in San Francisco and on Berkeley's Fourth Street, finally settling in early April in one store on Shattuck Avenue, shuttered that store Friday. Calling it "a heartbreaking moment," Cody's owner, Hiroshi Kagawa of the Japanese firm IBC Publishing, said in a...

Wednesday's ruling by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller that Cal's long-delayed athletic training center is sort of legal and sort of not largely advances the legal notion that there really is something called "semi-pregnant." Put another way, when both sides effusively declare victory, what you have is a ruling that doesn't really say much at all. But what did you expect? This is Berkeley. Miller said that the $140 million project doesn't actually sit on a fault line, although one suspects that the 3 or 4 extra feet of leeway won't really mean much when the building slides...

BERKELEY - A day after UC Berkeley claimed victory in its battle to build a sports training facility, the university changed its stance on removing tree sitters and decided to bring down those who don't put up a fight, a campus spokesman said late Thursday. About 5:15 p.m. Thursday an arborist in a cherry picker removed a man in his 20s who came out of the tree "very quietly," said university spokesman Dan Mogulof. The man was arrested on suspicion trespassing and could face other charges as well, Mogulof said. The man, whose name was not released, was the second...

BERKELEY —The University of California, Berkeley claimed victory Wednesday and could be able to move forward with plans to build a $125 million sports training center soon but not before it answers a few more questions about its long-awaited project for the court, a judge ruled late Wednesday. Judge Barbara Miller was ruling on three consolidated lawsuits to stop the project. ``The university has prevailed on every legal challenge to halt construction of the proposed student athlete high performance center. This is a major victory for our students,'' said Nathan Brostrom, Vice Chancellor for administration. ``Make no mistake the university...

UC Berkeley's plan to build a state-of-the-art athletic training center next to Memorial Stadium violates a state law that prohibits new construction on earthquake faults, a judge ruled tonight. The university had argued that the plan - which prompted a group of protesters to occupy a grove of trees outside the stadium for the past 18 months - does not violate the Alquist-Priolo Act because the facility would be a separate structure that does not touch any fault lines. But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller ruled that the proposed training center is an alteration of the stadium, which...

BERKELEY -- About 200 protesters rallied on the ground below a tree-top encampment of protesters in a grove of trees next to Memorial Stadium this afternoon as a judge was expected to rule on the fate of an athletic training center planned for the site. Two of the protesters were arrested, while workers hired by UC Berkeley dismantled more of the tree-sitters' roost, cutting ropes, removing supplies and tearing out improvised structures. By early afternoon, most of the protesters' ropes were gone, and one of two large platforms high in the trees toppled to the ground. The year-and-a-half-old tree protest...

BERKELEY -- One of the activists who have perched in a grove outside UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium for the past year and a half was hauled out of her tree Tuesday, as the university began removing tree-sitters' gear in advance of a judge's ruling that could lead to a climax in the long-running protest. The tree-sitter was taken down by two arborists who were part of a crew hired by the university to remove wooden platforms, pulley systems and other infrastructure that the protesters have built high above the ground as part of their effort to keep the university from...

About 25 University of California, Berkeley, police officers and a cherry-picker have converged at the Berkeley Oak Grove, where five climbers are being threatened and may have to come down today, according to Save the Oaks spokesman Doug Buckwald. Buckwald said he began receiving calls on an emergency phone network from climbers who "have sent word by cell phone their belief that this is it - they are coming in to get them right now." Protesters have been in the trees since UC regents voted in December 2006 to approve a plan to build a sports training center and other...

Officials have been trying to keep it quiet, but 24 UC Berkeley researchers and seven staffers have been harassed by animal rights activists in recent months, in some cases having their homes or cars vandalized."What they all have in common is that they all work in animal research," UC Berkeley spokesman Robert Sanders said of the targeted employees. In several instances, the activists have shown up outside researchers' homes in the middle of the night with bullhorns and chanting, "Animal killers." Sometimes they have scrawled slogans on the sidewalk in chalk.On more than one occasion, rocks have been thrown through...

BERKELEY — After 21 years, Berkeley's Juneteenth celebration — the most established and consistent festival of its kind in the East Bay — has been cancelled by its organizers because they could not meet planning and safety deadlines, city officials said Monday.The Berkeley Juneteenth Association Inc. sent a letter to the city April 18, saying it had decided to scrap the festival, which generally draws 15,000 to 20,000 people to the Alcatraz/Adeline corridor in south Berkeley on Father's Day.News of the cancellation did not surface until this week, and there are conflicting stories as to why the festival fell apart."I...

Union members shout demand for 'living wage' at meeting campus meeting - Campus police escorted UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau out of the back of a building Thursday after angry union members took over a meeting, yelling and screaming about living wages.About 350 people showed up to a meeting where Birgeneau was supposed to answer questions from the Berkeley Staff Assembly, a campus group open to all employees.About 90 percent of the protesters wore green shirts, designating their affiliation with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.The union, which represents about 900 campus employees in service and medical...

An East Bay assemblywoman and state senate candidate says a recent mailer slamming her record on education shows nothing more than an American Indian tribe's vengeance about her opposition to its big casino plans in San Pablo — and even her main rival came to her defense. Democratic voters in the 9th Senate District recently received a mailer accusing Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, of trying to weaken state academic standards in legislation she sponsored in 2006. Hancock faces off in the June 3 state Senate primary against former Assembly Majority Leader Wilma Chan of Alameda. But the mailer wasn't paid...

BERKELEY — Michael Rossman, one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, died last week after a short battle with leukemia. He was 68. Rossman died at his Berkeley home surrounded by family and friends, said his wife, Karen McLellan. Rossman was at Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus on the afternoon of Oct. 2, 1964, when 3,000 students sat around a police patrol car and kept it from taking student protester Jack Weinberg to jail. One by one, people took off their shoes and hopped onto the top of the police car to speak,...

BERKELEY — Playing to the UC Berkeley's liberal reputation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark told graduating seniors Tuesday that they will be responsible for "rebuilding" the country after President Bush's term ends. In a rambling and mostly off-the-cuff speech under a hot afternoon sun, Newmark said he no longer has the energy to save the world but has been encouraged by the drive of the younger generation. "The bad news is I'm going to ask you to do it," he said. "The good news is you're already doing it." Newmark founded the eponymous Web site in 1995 as an e-mail list...