The government's cash-for-clunkers program appears to be working like a charm, so — time to shut it down. Good old Washington! Offering rebates of up to $4,500 to folks trading in their gas guzzlers for new, more fuel-efficient cars, the program has been everything a stimulus package ought to be: a quick and efficient way to spur private-sector spending in support of a worthwhile civic goal. ...

Don't look now, but they're all around you. They're standing by the copy machine, hovering by the printer, and answering the phone. Yes, they're the overworked, underappreciated interns: young, eager, and not always paid. And with just 20% of the graduating class of 2009 gainfully employed, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, there are more and more of them each day. The importance of internships for securing full-time work has dramatically increased over the years: ...

Judd Apatow is working much harder on this article than I am. He wants to meet at 8 a.m., suggests six different events I can accompany him to and sends me more e-mails checking on my progress than my editor does. The two-minute video interview that I promised TIME.com turns into Apatow taking my camera, directing me for 15 minutes and editing it himself. It's not entirely surprising — after all, I'm lazy — but it helps explain how ...

One of the most telling, and overlooked, aspects of the brouhaha over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the particular cast of Gates' defenders. There was Deval Patrick, the fresh-faced black governor of Massachusetts, who called the arrest "every black man's nightmare." There was Vernon Jordan, noting that the event "tells us that the election of Barack Obama did not automatically erase racism." There was former Congressman Harold Ford, moderate to a fault, passionately insisting that once ...

TIME senior writer Karen Tumulty sat down with President Barack Obama on Tuesday afternoon to talk about his work both in public and behind the scenes to push a health-care-reform measure through Congress. Here's an excerpt of the full transcript, which will be published on TIME.com on July 30. TIME: So how much of your day are you spending on this President Obama: Well, I think over the last two, three weeks I'd say I'm spending at least ...

No one is ever going to accuse the French of knee-jerk exuberance. Case in point: the reaction to Monday's announcement by government officials that France's main unemployment index actually shrank in June — the first reversal in rising joblessness since April 2008. Did the French cheer the news as a rare ray of light in an otherwise recession-blackened sky? Not a chance. Pundits and economists were quick to pooh-pooh the announcement as either a fluke or statistical sleight of hand, ...

California may be the center of the marijuana trade and the controversies over its legalization. But Florida has surpassed it in one important category: the Sunshine State is now the country's leader in indoor marijuana cultivation. It is a potent distinction because most of the marijuana grown this way is cultured hydroponically — that is, mostly without soil and with a carefully calibrated cocktail of chemicals and lighting — to create some of the highest level of highs on ...

In her first public appearance, the woman who made the 911 call that led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Wednesday she would make the call again if placed in the same situation. The arrest and its aftermath have sparked accusations of racial profiling, and even President Obama has become involved. He plans to meet Thursday with Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, at the White House. Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct ...

Congressional Democrats and a barnstorming President face deep skepticism from the American public about the details of their effort to change the nation's health-care system, even as enthusiasm for the prospect of reform remains high, according to a new TIME poll. By significant margins, survey respondents said they believe the final health-reform legislation is likely to raise health-care costs in the long run , make everything about health care more complicated and offer less freedom to ...

Remember Conficker? The hugely talked-about computer worm seemed poised to wreak havoc on the world's machines on April Fool's Day. And then ... nothing much happened. But while the doom and gloom forecast for the massive botnet -- a remotely controlled network that security experts say infected about 5 million computers -- never came to pass, Conficker is still making some worm hunters nervous. Phillip Porras, program director at SRI International, a nonprofit research group, said Conficker infects millions of ...