* PR-Occupied Berkeley
The Israeli/Palestine conflict plays out on campus as a war for public perception.

* Death to the Penalty
A new court case could put a period on the ultimate sentence.

* On the Block
A pilot program in Oakland, California, combines community policing with social services and gets at-risk young men off the street.

* The New Face of South Africa (.pdf)
Born free, South Africa's first post-apartheid generation asks, what's next?

* Thoughts on Occupy SF
Clearly, this wasn't just another San Francisco protest.

* Generation Politics
The Tea Party gets all the press, but the Millennials are the future.

* Who's Your Mayor?
With Gavin Newsom becoming either lieutenant governor or a lame duck, a decade's worth of pent-up ambition is rushing the stage. Is this--for better or worse--the progressive bloc's chance to run San Francisco?

* Unlimited Partnerships
Headhunting for Silicon Valley, whimsically speaking. (see pg. 40)

* Give me your tired, your poor, your Internet-censored ...
Hotspot Shield lets users do an end run around government censorship and surveillance.

* A New Map of the City
A rundown of what some of our neighborhoods might be called if we resolved never to offend anyone, anywhere, ever again. (see pg. 40)

* Ironing Out the Carbon Crisis
Climos is peddling an idea that is elegantly simple in its outline, fiendishly complex in its details, and, at least at first blush, batshit crazy: It aims to fight global warming by seeding the ocean with iron. (see pg. 32)

* Danger Ahead
San Francisco can justifiably claim that when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases, no major American city is doing better. But all that really means is that we're failing less badly than anybody else.

* 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.

* 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
Just how effective are San Francisco's surveillance cameras?

* 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.

* 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.

* The New Oakland (San Francisco magazine special report): Politics
Spend some time listening to Ron Dellums, and you'll hear a lot about this "model city" and his quest to forge a progressive metropolis from the tired bones of the former one.

* 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?

* 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.

* 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 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.