Gere, researching a role he will play in the film "The Flock," spent about four hours with deputies last week going door-to-door to check on registered sex offenders.

White said Gere wanted to meet with his deputies to get insight for his character. While riding with deputies, the star of "Officer and a Gentleman" went into the homes of several registered sex offenders and spent several minutes talking with them.

"If there's one thing my generation learned the hard way, it is that there can be no democracy without freedom and no freedom without sacrifice," the World War II veteran and former presidential candidate told a black-tie audience at a military ball Saturday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

"The difficult, even deadly, business of grinding down the terrorist insurgency in Iraq is part of a global struggle for freedom," Dole said at the ball, which was sponsored by the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Museum & Library.

"Right now Bush is in a funk, and I hope he pulls out of it — he's about hit rock bottom," Dole said. "I'm glad he's now decided — and he should have a long time ago — he's going to fight back."

A play about the life of Lech Walesa, the shipyard worker and labor leader who helped topple communism in Poland, premiered in his home city of Gdansk.

The play, called "Walesa: A Cheerful Story Hence a Very Sad One," chronicles the feisty Walesa's rise from strike leader and Solidarity founder in 1980 — which won him the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize — to the fall of communism in Poland in 1989-90.

Walesa, a former shipyard electrician, was hounded by secret police and interned with other democratic activists before peacefully leading the country's transformation to democracy. He served as Poland's president in 1990-95.

Playwright Pawel Demirski wrote the story as a "tragic comedy," said Natalia Ligarzewska, spokeswoman for the Wybrzeze Theater in Warsaw, Poland, where the play debuted.

She said Walesa had dropped in on rehearsals last week and "laughed a lot." He bought tickets for himself, his family and his friends for Sunday's show, she said.

Joan Rivers, who has openly joked about her own cosmetic surgery, stopped by a local hospital to celebrate the opening of an elective surgery center before heading to a nearby performance.

"I go to hospitals all the time and I'm excited to be at this one," she said. "From what I've read and seen, this is going to be a fantastic place."

Rivers said she likes to take advantage of events like the one held in this community just north of Detroit when they coincide with her public appearances. She was performing at nearby Warren.

The hospital opened the center earlier in the week. Outside the event, a red carpet was set up to greet guests, which some said was as a nod to Rivers' red carpet appearances as a fashion critic at the Oscars.

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