Many of the 20,000 people from Ethiopia and Eritrea living in the Bay Area call Oakland home. Oakland North is taking a look at the culture and history of the Ethiopian or Eritrean community in Oakland with “North Africans in Oakland” a series of profiles of everyday people living in the city.

Angie Markle is proud of her dog, Regie, a small, black Chihuahua Terrier mix. Regie is a social therapy dog with Paws for Healing, a nonprofit that provides canine assisted therapy. Markle takes him around to visit children and veterans in the hospital, and sits with kids when they’re reading in the library or nervous because they’re in court. Markle carries around business cards with a picture of Regie sitting like a good boy on the front, and information about his breed, and his story, on the back.

A SWAT team is preparing to search inside the CVS drugstore at Pleasant Valley Avenue and Broadway in the hunt for a suspect who attempted to rob the store early Friday morning.

Two Fruitvale area elementary schools denied permission to become charter schools earlier this year had that decision reversed by the Oakland Unified School District board at a special meeting Wednesday night.

In an effort to prevent the Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders and Golden State Warriors from being lured away to places like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a group of city officials, business leaders and developers rolled out an ambitious “public-private” partnership plan on Wednesday morning that would transform the Coliseum site and bring up to 32,000 jobs to the area, Mayor Jean Quan said. The City of Oakland is in a “position of strength” to keep its three…

Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every week, we will publish a photo submitted by one of our readers. This week’s photo is by Stella Zubek.

One of the groups trying to recall Mayor Jean Quan from office suspended operations on Monday. That leaves at least two groups left, but that doesn’t mean the recall effort has become any less confusing.

In January, the OUSD board voted to reject charter school applications from two elementary schools, ASCEND and Learning Without Limits. Shortly after the denial by the school board, school and district officials began meeting over a compromise measure that would allow the schools to become charter schools but also have stronger ties to the district than other such schools.

Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Tuesday, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s Banner.

Final arguments wrapped up in the case of the City of Oakland versus Hiral Patel, the owner of the National Lodge, an International Boulevard hotel accused of catering to prostitution.

In December, 2010 the city attorney’s office sued the National Lodge and the Economy Inn under California’s Red Light Abatement Act, which requires hotel owners to prevent prostitution on their property. The lawsuits include many instances of crime, including prostitution and child prostitution. The city is now trying to shut down both hotels in an ongoing trial that continues Friday.

As soon as Reverend Daniel Buford took the podium in the council chambers at Oakland City Hall on Tuesday night, bright, hand-drawn, multi-colored signs with inscriptions like “Stop the Swap,” “Give the $ Back” and “Not another dollar to Goldman Sachs” popped up around the room. Buford, a minister at Allen Temple Baptist Church on International Boulevard, began speaking about the city’s relationship with Goldman Sachs, and a rate-swap deal the city and the bank agreed to in 1997 relating to $187 million in city debt.