* DNA's Identity Crisis
If defense attorney Bicka Barlow and a growing group of skeptical lawyers and scientists are right, we have built our justice system's use of DNA evidence on statistical sand.

* Dellums Hits a Dead End--or Does He?
An old political truism holds that we get the leaders we deserve. In this case, Oakland has gotten the mayor it was promised, and many of his most ardent supporters are still right there with him.

* The Loneliest Republicans in the World
What's it like to be a McCain supporter in a city that votes more than 80 percent Democratic?

* Gunning for the Status Quo
If--or when--the city shuts it down, San Francisco's gun club (yes, there is one) will go out with a bang.

* A Shot in the Dark
You might not notice them unless you're looking for them, those little white boxes mounted on poles high above the street, at corners where guns and crack pipes hold more sway than police. All day and all night, from gang hangouts in Bayview to the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, the cameras are rolling--all 71 of them.

* Ready? Set. Shop!
You might call Carrotmob "Flash Mob 2.0," since it combines the whimsy of those events with the Sierra Club's seriousness of purpose, hitting the sweet spot between the Bay Area's two dominant poses: pointless irony and earnest do-gooderism.

* Best Turf War in the Making (San Francisco magazine Best of the Bay 2008)
From the Freeway Revolt of the '50s to Chris Daly's recent Rincon Hill stickup, San Franciscans love nothing more than a good planning war. Now, as the massive Eastern Neighborhoods plan begins its crawl through the approval process, we're in for the mother of all development battles.

* American Dream Catcher
We applaud the heroes of international microfinance, who transform lives with loans as small as $50. But right here, in the nothing-comes-cheap Bay Area, Ben Mangan has found a way to vault people making less than $20,000 a year into the middle class. Now if only he could get the government to back his effort.

* Connected
From Willie Brown to Emperor Norton, certain larger-than-life politicians have left their fingerprints all over the Bay Area. Al Gore has never held (real or imagined) office here, but the newly minted Nobel Laureate has his fingers in just about every local pie (pdf).

* Who You Calling Chicken?
If you happened by city hall on a recent Friday evening, you would have stumbled on a particularly San Franciscan phenomenon.

* The New Oakland (San Francisco magazine special report): Politics
Here's hoping for the politics of hope.

* The New Oakland (San Francisco magazine special report): Crime
People are taking crime into their own hands.

* Captain of the Skyline
As the president of San Francisco's outspoken Board of Supervisors, he's been vilified as a hidebound preservationist and accused of being on a political power trip. So why would we trust Aaron Peskin, of all people, to forge our new downtown?

* Junk Mail, Be (Nearly) Gone!
Bringing power to the addressee, a local company is primed to make unsolicited mailers--well, most of them--a thing of the past.(pdf)

* On Duty, Offline
Your fifth grader has more tech access than the city's average police officer.

* Not-so-generous--to a Fault
Ever since San Franciscans discovered that we're far less charitable than our counterparts in Los Angeles, we've been hanging our heads in shame. But the truth is, all of California should be embarrassed.

* Justice Firebrand
When foreign criminals try to lay low in the States, Moira Feeney and her colleagues at the Center for Justice & Accountability put a hurting on them. (pdf)

* on Mother Jones.com's man in the Middle East, David Enders

* on SF Supervisor Chris Daly's blog

* Baku-Ceyhan: the Geopolitics of Oil
The oil pipeline connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey via Georgia is operating after years of protest. Will it heal or intensify the conflicts of the southern Caucasus?

* Letter from Georgia
In a place with this much history and this much pain, the past is very much alive.

* A Flood of Disappointment
A scheme to build dams in the Lesotho Highlands is watering South Africa's thirsty cities while making beggars of the region's already impoverished residents.

* Unlikely Hotbeds
Student activism is taking root on campuses with little or no history of dissent.

* A Managed Disaster?
After careful review, the Bureau of Land Management has decided it was right all along about opening the Powder River Basin to coalbed methane drilling.

* A Radioactive Recipe for Profit
Billionaire and Bush backer Harold Simmons hopes to turn his Texas dump into a radioactive storage facility. He may well get his wish.

* A Spurious 'Smoking Gun'
Why has the news media ignored a Congressman's assertion that White House officials used evidence they knew to be false to build their case for war?

* A Time of Worry
For America's Afghan immigrants, last year's optimism has given way to uncertainty and apprehension.

* Lighting Up Soweto
Guerrilla technicians challenge the privatization of South Africa's public resources.

* A Violent Cease-fire
In Gaza, truce has little impact for Palestinians defending homes.

* Closure: The Daily Reality of Israel's Occupation
Like much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Beit Ummar is effectively blocked off -- in this case, by four Israeli army checkpoints in little more than a mile. Palestinian traffic is barred from most major roads and, to avoid the roadblocks, Palestinians spend hours bumping over rutted donkey tracks or traversing olive groves.

* In Old Hebron, Home is No Refuge from Political Violence
As headlines from Israel recount weekly deaths and destruction, the view from porches and living rooms in the ancient town of Hebron show violence is literally at residents' front doors. PNS correspondent Chris Smith reports rights groups and Palestinian families say Israeli settlers are increasing attacks on neighbors.

* Down and Out in Jordan
Refugees from Iraq Live Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

* Timber Towns Search for a New Economy
Like most other California logging towns, North Fork has fallen on hard times. Its last mill, which employed nearly 400 people at its peak, closed in 1994. North Fork then lost its bank, its doctor, its laundromat, its pharmacy and more than half its restaurants; in short, it lost many of the things that make a town a town.