North Siders Want More From Casino

Don Barden, the Detroit businessman whose company, PITG Gaming, won the city's lone slot license plans on building a casino on the North Shore. The band of North Siders organized under the umbrella of Pittsburgh UNITED wants Barden to sit down with them to negotiate a community-benefits agreement. However, even though their fight for an agreement is just in its second week, they haven't made much headway, thanks to a casino operator who says he's already penned an agreement and to their alleged best bargaining chip, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, apparently staying out of the fight.

• by Violet Law

Front Lines

A multimedia theatrical production tries to make sense of Iraq -- by relying on the voices of those who have been there

• by Chris Potter

Is City Ethics Code Unethical?

Mark Rauterkus, a South Side political activist and vice chair of the Allegheny County Libertarian Party, doesn't do anything by half measures. He is running in not one, but two races on the November ballot. And last month he filed not one, but three complaints with the city's Ethics Board ... and one of those complaints alleged a lack of ethics by the board itself. Rauterkus' complaint against the board arises from a section of its own ethics code. The code asserts that any person filing or "precipitating" the filing of a complaint against another person could be subjected to an ethics investigation if "the person publicly disclosed or caused to be disclosed that a complaint against a person had been filed with the board."

• by Chris Young

DA investigating Post-Gazette's use of Scaife court records

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala is deciding whether to file criminal charges against the Post-Gazette and reporter Dennis Roddy for their reporting on the divorce of rival newspaper publisher Richard Mellon Scaife. On Sept. 16, P-G reporter Roddy wrote a story based on sealed court documents outlining all of the gory details of Scaife's ongoing divorce dispute with his wife, Margaret "Ritchie" Scaife.

• by Charlie Deitch

"First Step" Taken Against Domestic Violence by Police

This summer's promotions of officers with domestic-abuse incidents in their pasts drew a firestorm of criticism from the community. In response, last week city council president Doug Shields introduced legislation to amend the city code, providing departmental "zero tolerance" policies on domestic violence. While not everyone is satisfied with the legislation as it now stands, Jeanne Clark of the National Organization for Women says it was "always intended as a first step," and that refinements to the ordinance are welcome and expected.

• by Melissa Meinzer

Protester has misdemeanor charges dismissed

Misdemeanor charges have been dismissed in the case of an anti-war protester who had maintained he was only trying to photograph a Pittsburgh police sergeant in action when he was arrested April 3. The protester, Noah Willumsen, a University of Pittsburgh student from Bloomfield, was among 25 demonstrators picketing Shadyside's Marines recruiting station, on Ellsworth Avenue, on April 3.

• by Marty Levine

District 9 Challenger Seeking Debates

The independent challenger for the District 9 council race is looking to stir things up in the campaign to replace the district's indicted lame-duck councilor, Twanda Carlisle.

• by Charlie Deitch

Zaiaka

Kumar's personal selection includes a few dishes unfamiliar to us and others that are rare in local Indian establishments.

• by Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth

Modern Veggie

The chef who transformed Pittsburgh's signature meat-and-potatoes dish into pierogie Dippin' Dots can make a plate of vegetables into high art -- or, at the very least, something to exclaim over.

• by Al Hoff

Under the Wire: Local music venues in flux

Change is afoot among Pittsburgh venues. But change can be good.

• by Manny Theiner

D.C.'s Middle Distance Runner performs at Garfield Artworks

You'll definitely find yourself mentally adding in the "chika-chik -- ahh"s.

• by Aaron Jentzen

Duquesne U alum Anthony Rankin seeks mainstream success

Unlike music students with their hearts set on a classical or jazz career, Rankin clearly wants to be a rock star.

• by Manny Theiner

Matthew Shipp brings "forward-thinking" jazz to Warhol

"You listen to a playback and you think, 'How did I get here?' So that's what's really cool about this."

• by Mike Shanley

Douglass Brothers' release offers simple dreams, a sense of humor

On weekends, they just want to kick back, drive to small bars around the tri-state area and purvey their basement-crafted bar rock.

• by Manny Theiner

Boris is from Japan and out of this world.

The record moves like a shape-shifting force of nature, as narrated in existential Japanese.

• by Andrew McKeon

Manufactured Landscapes

Photographer Edward Burtynsky documents "the landscape that we change [and] disrupt in the pursuit of progress." This documentary about his work isn't a rallying cry, or even an indictment, so much as it is a visually stunning record of fact. Yet I couldn't help wondering whether the film might have benefited from some outrage.

• by Al Hoff

The Jane Austen Book Club

Yes, it's a chick flick, but it's also surprisingly entertaining, as though you'd genuinely enjoyed a Jane Austen novel after someone forced you to read it.

• by Harry Kloman

King of California

A teen-age girl and here mentally unstable father search for buried Spanish treasure beneath South California's concrete retail pods, in Mike Cahill's dramedy.

• by Al Hoff

Manda Bala

This vibrant essay depicts Brazil as a nation so off-balance politically and economically that a new order has evolved: a symbiotic ecology where the rich steal from the poor, the poor steal from the rich, and all live in various states of protracted misery

• by Al Hoff

The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts' Artist and Emerging Artist of the Year shows enliven two-dimensionality.

Jenkins has achieved a multi-sensory experience through entirely visual, two-dimensional means.

• by Savannah Guz

Two new local housing developments anticipate greener times.

What these projects show, though, is that many aspects of traditional architecture and planning do make palpable environmental sense.

• by Charles Rosenblum

This Just In: Oct 3 - 10

Highlights from the local TV news.

• by Frances Sansig Monahan

Letters to the Editor: Oct 3 - 10

Readers lash out at last week's cover story on transwoman Jessi Seams.

Rich Irony

What goes around comes around for Trib publisher

• by John McIntire

Reversing the Field

Fans reveal sports heroes on the other side of the ball

• by Jody DiPerna

Local theatrical legend Leon Katz returns to discuss his controversial project revolving around a century-old notebook of Gertrude Stein's.

Katz, now 88, began deciphering the notebooks more than a half-century ago, after befriending Stein's life-partner, Alice B. Toklas, in Paris.

• by Bill O'Driscoll

Therese Raquin

But while these petit bourgeois types are indeed confined -- an important theme -- the actual size of the space negates the sense of claustrophobia.

• by Michelle Pilecki

Almost, Maine

Cariani's characters all possess hearts as big as the outdoors in which they live, and he's theatrically smart enough to inject sufficient bittersweet notes to vary the play's emotional schematic and break up what could have been an exercise in monotony.

• by Ted Hoover

Art

South Park Theatre has taken a risk and reaped some great rewards.

• by Robert Isenberg

Westerners take charity to the Third World in City Theatre's season-opener.

"It's about two very intense days, the most meaningful days in these people's lives."

• by Robert Isenberg

Srishti Dances of India presents its latest premiere.

Odissi, says Dey, is "very sculptural," intended to replicate religious icons; Manipuri has a wider lexicon and range of motion.

• by Lissa Brennan