BERKELEY -- If former Colorado Senator Gary Hart had his way, this year’s presidential campaign would look a lot different.

The noted author of 13 books was on the UC Berkeley campus this week to promote his latest book, The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States, and to issue a foreign policy challenge to all candidates vying for president in the upcoming November elections: “sit down for half a day and come up with a grand strategy for the U.S,” he declared.

BERKELEY -- An undercover police officer, dressed in a black sweatshirt, baseball cap and jeans, approached a UC Berkeley undergraduate last night and asked for his ID at Kip's Restaurant on Durant Avenue. Leaning against the wall, suddenly looking pale and terrified, the youth handed over three IDs, one of which turned out to be a phony. The officer cited him for minor possession of alcohol and possession of fake ID.

BERKELEY -- Professor Ignacio Chapela insists that he's "not going anywhere," even though he has been denied tenure and his contract with UC Berkeley is set to expire December 31 of this year. "I'm not looking for other jobs, " he explained, from his spare office on the third floor of Hilgard Hall. " I feel wanted, needed and accepted here, and I am being kicked out illegitimately."

BERKELEY -- One man came from as far away as Canada's Manitoba province to spend Labor Day weekend in West Oakland. Another flew in from a small town in West Virginia. They joined nine Bay Area residents for a four-day workshop in a form of media for which a small East Bay organization has acquired an international reputation: Community radio.

BERKELEY -- The number of students with psychiatric or psychological disabilities who enrolled in the Disabled Students Program at the University of California, Berkeley, has grown steadily over the past eight years, statistics show. For a program that pioneered the equal rights movement for disabled students and provides a wide range of services to them, the influx marks another chapter in a history of innovation.

OAKLAND -- The small gray tombstone over the hill on the far side of the Evergreen Cemetery near Mills College in Oakland looks just like the hundreds of other stones crowded into the lot.

But underneath this granite marker, almost half of the victims of cult leader Jim Jones rest anonymously, 409 former members of the People's Temple buried together in a single grave that lists no names.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Protesters shouted antiwar chants outside a tightly-guarded downtown hotel here this evening while Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz gave a speech outlining the Bush Administration's Middle East policies, including its increasingly bitter relations with Iraq.

SAN FRANCISCO --- Declaring that California's schoolchildren should not be made to bear the brunt of the state's multibillion dollar budget deficit, administrators, teachers and parents from numerous state unified school districts rallied here today against cuts in education.

SAN FRANCISCO -- HIV infection rates are up for the fifth year in a row and reported cases of syphilis have risen from just 20 two years ago to 249 this year, San Francisco public health officials announced today. Officials estimate that more than 1,000 San Franciscans will contract HIV this year, joining nearly 9,000 residents living with the virus.

MEMO from OAKLAND -- Barry Donelan looks down from his six foot height, places his hand on his hip right above his Oakland Police Department handgun, and explains in a thick Irish brogue how he found himself one day trying to keep the peace on the streets of an American city so far from his Dublin home:

"I'm just a blue collar lad that needed a blue collar job to support his family," he says. "And Oakland hires Irish people."

BERKELEY -- Berkeley alumnus Rex Walheim, the astronaut who marked his first venture into space last spring by unfurling an enormous Cal flag outside the Atlantis space shuttle, urged graduating seniors today to persist against odds at the December Graduates Convocation.

RICHMOND -- A new safety evaluation of the General Chemical Works facility here released tonight by an independent consultant reports that workers may have under-reported "near-misses," or hazardous incidents that could have resulted in catastrophe over the past year. The county-funded evaluation also criticizes the plant for following lax safety procedures.

OAKLAND -- A 32 year-old Oakland man was arraigned on six counts of murder and attempted murder today in Alameda County Superior Court in connection with the Nov. 21 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Berkeley in which a Brink's armored car guard was slain.

Prosecutors said the charges fall under special circumstances clauses and could carry the death penalty if the suspect is convicted.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jewish demonstrators protested outside the doors of the Egyptian consulate here this evening to demand an end to a controversial Arab television series airing in that country.

RICHMOND -- When the City of Richmond overwhelmingly approved an ordinance last winter making it illegal to camp in public, Terry Messman was hardly surprised.

Messman, the editor of Street Spirit, a homeless rights newspaper, has seen anti-camping legislation emerge in several cities in the Bay Area. Gentrification, he said, fuels the need to displace the homeless.

RICHMOND -- Deputy Public Defender Patrick Cannon spends his days here defending accused traffic violators, drug addicts, wife beaters and killers. At night, the UC Berkeley graduate says he sleeps soundly. "I'm an advocate," he told a group of visitors at his office here recently. "It's not my job or the DA's job to decide who's guilty."

It is his job, however, to make sure his clients receive every right they are entitled to under the U.S. Constitution. And it's that point that nettles him most, Cannon says, insisting that Contra Costa County falls far short on this important score when it comes to African-Americans.

OAKLAND -- Doctors, researchers and community leaders gathering at a summit here today called for greater attention to the special plight and needs of Asians and Pacific Islanders suffering from the HIV virus and AIDS, claiming that these groups largely have been ignored in expert dialogues about the fatal disease.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The fierce struggle in the stands for Barry Bonds’ season record 73rd home run ball is ending in an equally ferocious battle inside a courtroom here with attorneys tangling over complex questions of property law.

SAN FRANCISCO —A meeting to discuss complaints about violations of the city’s public records access laws turned into a vicious confrontation today between an AIDS activist and a city health official over the public disclosure of citizen testimony.

BERKELEY -- Two California-based International policy and political science experts interviewed today reacted with an air of wait-and-see cautions as China formally announced a major transition of power in the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

BERKELEY -- Christin happened upon a storefront shop at 2277 Shattuck Avenue during an early morning stroll in downtown Berkeley. Lured by the store's old-fashioned scarlet awning and ornate tiling encircling the immaculate picture windows, she went inside and spoke with Wayne Anderson, the shop's owner and resident crank.

OAKLAND -- Our investigation into one of Oakland's most historic buildings began in the sterile offices of a modern downtown building and ended in the loft of a dusty pipe organ.

BERKELEY -- After nearly an hour of scouting possible houses on the streets of Berkeley near Civic Center Park for our property records search, we discovered a curious-looking candidate: A wooden shingled house on Dwight Way with two dragons hung above the door on the porch entrance.

EL CERRITO -- Todd Ogden has just about seen and done it all and he's not stopping. The 92 year-old man is arguably the oldest and most colorful bartender in El Cerrito. He is a longtime local cowboy who twice failed in marriage, lost a small fortune, but retains a heart of gold, longtime friends and loyal customers say.

BERKELEY -- For religious Jews, god is everywhere. That means you have to "bring god into the bedroom too," says Miriam Ferris, wife to a rabbi and mother of nine kids. Ferris is an Orthodox Jew who follows the ancient Jewish ritual of visiting a mikvah, where she submerges herself into holy waters before resuming marital relations with her husband.