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Body found next to train tracks in East Oakland By Sean Maher, Oakland Tribune Posted: 12/15/2008 07:48:41 AM PST OAKLAND - Police found the body of a 44-year-old Oakland man who had apparently been struck by a train near tracks in East Oakland Sunday afternoon. Officers responding about 3:45 p.m. to 98th and Railroad avenues, found the naked body lying next to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, police said. Alameda County Coroner's officials were able to identify the man through a fingerprint match to criminal records, said Deputy Ronnie Kaho'ali'i at the coroner's office. The man's name is being withheld pending notification of his family. Officials found two known addresses for him, one in Watsonville and one on 55th Avenue in Oakland, but are still investigating whether the man was currently homeless. They are treating the Oakland address as his last known. Two trains had gone by recently and investigators are trying to determine which of them struck the man...

Marin singer/songwriter Kathryn Keats calls her debut CD, "After the Silence," an apt title that celebrates her new life, a second chapter free of the relentless fear of being hunted down and killed, murdered by a psychopath who had once been her songwriting partner, her mentor, her lover. read the full story here....

BART Board Director James Fang Calls Eleanor Mason Ramsey "Incompetent" - SFGate This is from today's "Matier and Ross": “BART barking: Quite a tempest at BART headquarters the other day, as a dozen African American and Chinese American contractors led by Hunters Point activist and trucker Charlie Walker confronted the board over what they view as a lack of transit jobs going to minorities. Walker and his pals lit into the board, complaining that they were losing out on contracts while BART hemmed and hawed over completing the necessary "disparity study" to prove that, in fact, minority contractors aren't getting enough work. Unless things changed pronto, Walker warned, he would make sure President-elect Barack Obama (whom he claims to know personally) halted all federal contracts with the financially strapped transit agency. Having had enough of the rant, board member James Fang of San Francisco tried to duck out of the meeting, only to be corrall...

Exodus of blacks saddens Oakland - Inside Bay Area : “If new estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week are correct, Oakland has about 27,000 fewer African-Americans than it did in 2000. Many local experts and officials question the magnitude of that decline, and the methods census officials use for measuring it, but few doubt that the actual drop has been significant. In 1980, the census counted about 47 percent of Oakland as African-American, the highest census rate reported after a four-decade growth spurt. Today, after three decades of decline, the estimate is closer to 31 percent.”

Daughter of "Real Housewife" adjusting to Berkeley - Inside Bay Area : “By Kristin Bender. Oakland Tribune BERKELEY — After "The Real Housewives of Orange County" aired on Tuesday night, UC Berkeley student Kara Keough said she had more than 200 friend requests on her Facebook page. She ignored most of them but accepted the people who go to Cal. "You never know, I might meet some of them some day," she said sitting in a coffee shop in the shadow of UC Berkeley this week. Keough, 20, has changed her stance on Berkeley after angering some people last month when she bashed Berkeley on the reality television show that features five "housewives" living in an Orange County gated community.”

Oakland families get homes for the holidays : “Santa paid an early visit to East Oakland on Saturday, when nine low-income families received keys to homes they helped build themselves. "I know I was somebody before, but now I've got a piece of the rock," said Lynette Knight, 58, a Wells Fargo manager who now owns a three-bedroom home on Edes Avenue. "I told the kids, 'We're going home. This is ours.' " The homes are part of a 54-home Habitat for Humanity development on a former auto junkyard near the San Leandro border. So far, 26 homes in the development - the largest Habitat for Humanity project ever in the Bay Area - have been completed, and the rest are due to be finished next year.”

Undercurrents: The Bay Area’s Lack of Local Day-to-Day Media Reporting. Category: Columns from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Thursday June 19, 2008 : “By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor Thursday June 19, 2008 One of the great ironies of these times—something historians in our grandchildren’s time will probably better be able to understand and explain—is that we are experiencing an explosion of information and internet discussion concerning local events while simultaneously seeing a drying up of direct news media reporting on those events. The Berkeley Daily Planet, bless our hearts, has two reporters covering Berkeley city government, and another to cover the Berkeley Unified School District and the various dealings of the Berkeley School Board. But that is a rarity. Across the border in Oakland, no media outlet—aside from the East Bay News Service’s Sanjiv Handa—regularly covers Oakland City Council or Oakland city government, no media outlet at all regularly covers the Oakland Unified School D...