RECREATION The fine-limbed young woman rising from the foam on TIME'S cover is neither a naiad nor the creation of a fashion editor's imaginative whim. She is Mrs. William J. Anderson III, named Michael because she is the third of three daughters in a family that had been hoping for a boy. She is swimming not at Saint Tropez but at Sea Island, Ga.; she comes not from such routinely celebrated places as Manhattan, Boston, or Philadelphia, but from ...

Think of a green businessman and Ray Anderson isn't likely to be the first to come to mind. He's not a fresh-out-of-business-school, Silicon Valley visionary — he's well over 70 years old, and his accent marks him as a lifelong Georgian. He doesn't make solar panels or wind turbines or cellulosic biofuel. His company, Interface, manufactures carpet tiles, which is about as ordinary as you can get. But Fortune has described Anderson as "America's greenest CEO," and ...

The woman who was denied a marriage license by a Louisiana justice of the peace because he refused to marry interracial couples said the official should lose his job. Beth McKay said she never could have expected what she heard from Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell when she called his office a week ago to officiate her marriage to her African-American fiance, Terence. McKay spoke with Bardwell's wife to make arrangements for the ceremony. "At ...

Last year's inaugural Prix Pictet photography award for environmental sustainability produced a stunning shortlist of photos. This year is no different with 12 photographers in the running for the first prize of 100,000 CHF ($97,500). The theme in 2009 is described simply as "Earth." The aim is to highlight how man exploits the planet's resources and how this impacts the landscapes and communities surrounding them. In an extraordinary series of photos Canadian Christopher Anderson captures how the quest for raw ...

Richard Strandlof said he survived the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon. He said he survived again when a roadside bomb went off in Iraq, killing four fellow Marines. He'd point to his head and tell people he had a metal plate, collateral damage from the explosion. None of it was true. On Friday, the FBI arrested him on the rare charge of "stolen valor." Strandlof, 32, was held "for false claims about receipt of military decorations or medals," an FBI ...

Elizabeth McCutchen and a friend were walking to book club two weeks ago in quaint Farmville, Virginia, when they strolled by a home on First Avenue. "Something smells dead," her friend said. They were thinking animal. A dog, a cat, something like that. They never imagined they were smelling the remains of massacred humans. It was Thursday, September 17. But another 24 hours would pass before police made the gruesome discovery. Richard Samuel McCroskey III -- a 20-year-old rapper in ...

An Army vet helping other veterans struggling with addiction, a drummer providing free music education to New Orleans students and a bartender providing clean water to communities worldwide are among the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2009. Roy Foster's Stand Down House has provided life-changing services to nearly 900 veterans since 2000. Derrick Tabb's Roots of Music program is giving more than 100 young people an alternative to New Orleans streets. And Doc Hendley's nonprofit Wine to Water has ...

One of America's pre-eminent political power couples made a rare joint appearance Friday, when Bill and Hillary Clinton took the stage at the former president's Clinton Global Initiative conference. "I want to begin by expressing my extreme indebtedness to the Clinton Global Initiative, to all of you who participated, for giving me the first chance I have had in a week to see Hillary," Bill Clinton told the audience of social activists and business leaders at the closing session of ...

It's rarely a shock when a star's personal demons rear up in the form of a police blotter. Robert Downey Jr.'s '90s jail stints, Christian Slater's 59-day stay behind bars on assault charges in 1998 and Lindsay Lohan's alleged coke-fueled car chase this summer all followed a pattern of prior troublesome behavior. Each performer was known to have spent time in treatment for addiction. For these celebrities, a mug shot somehow seems as appropriate a career visual as a red carpet wave. But the ...

Unlike television crime shows in which machines can instantly spit out results, toxicology testing to determine what drugs are in a person's body can be a long and painstaking process. The Los Angeles County coroner's office estimates that toxicology tests on the body of Michael Jackson could take six to eight weeks. The results are needed to determine the singer's cause of death, a spokesman for the coroner said. The singer's autopsy last week was inconclusive, although officials said ...