Maybe the success story of the year came out of the horror of the football season: a death by cocaine. On June 27, the free safety of the Cleveland Browns, Don Rogers, died at 23. In the first assembly of training camp, Coach Marty Schottenheimer observed simply, "Life is a fragile thing," and charged each player with applying the lesson "in his own way." No one noticed at the time, but the Browns set about becoming a team. Already the ...

The hunt for a monster can warp the pursuers. The wanted man was one of the most loathsome creatures of modern times: "Ivan the Terrible," who hacked at his naked victims with a sword as he herded them by the thousands into the gas chambers he operated at the Nazi death camp Treblinka. American and Israeli officials were certain they had found him in John, formerly Ivan, Demjanjuk, a retired suburban Cleveland autoworker of Ukrainian descent. He was extradited to ...

For months residents sensed that all was not right at the Oxford Apartments, a 49-unit low-rise building on Milwaukee's crime-infested west side. A power saw buzzed at odd hours. The putrid odor of rotting meat flooded the corridors. Occasionally, a tenant would hear a cry or the thump of a falling object on the second floor. When police entered Apartment 213 last week, they were shocked to find a freezer covered with Polaroid photographs of mutilated men. Inside they discovered ...

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 ...

More than 35,000 fugitives across the United States were arrested in June as part of an annual sweep that teams the U.S. Marshals Service with local law enforcement in a summer push to clean up the streets, U.S. Marshals said Thursday. Among the 35,190 fugitives apprehended during Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Operating Nationally) were 2,356 fugitive sex offenders, the service said. "This might be considered the cream of the crop for the most violent felons that are out ...

Chinese investors want to cash in on the country's NBA fever with a bid to buy a 15 percent stake in the Cleveland Cavaliers. Chinese-born businessman Kenny Huang is heading the deal, estimated to be worth more than $70 million. Huang has masterminded previous sports deals, including introducing Mandarin advertisements in the Houston Toyota Center, home of Rockets and Chinese basketball star Yao Ming. With his U.S.-based partner Marc Ganis, Huang founded SportsCorp China, a company that facilitates sports ...

The Orlando Magic toppled the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night to claim a spot in the NBA finals championship series for the first time in 14 years. The Magic's 103-90 home win in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals earned the team a trip to Los Angeles to face the Lakers. Orlando made it to the title round in 1995, one year before Shaquille O'Neal left for Los Angeles. "Tonight was a tough night, it was disappointing," coach Mike ...

Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk, 89, is physically able to be deported to Germany to stand trial, Justice Department lawyers told a federal appeals court Thursday. The government lawyers provided the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a medical report to support their argument that the judges should lift their stay temporarily blocking the deportation. The medical details were filed under a court seal, but in a related filing the government said the report by a ...

Doctors at a Boston hospital expressed optimism Friday that a man not yet fully awake after undergoing the second partial face transplant in the nation would recover fully. "The operation is now over, but the healing has just begun," Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, the chief plastic surgeon on the team, told reporters about the 17-hour procedure, which took place Thursday at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "He has not seen himself yet." Surrounded by more than two dozen medical personnel, ...

Robin Williams' heart surgery "went extremely well" and he is expected to make a full recovery in eight weeks, according to his surgeon. Williams' publicist quoted the surgeon in a news release Monday that revealed the procedure was done on March 13 at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. "His heart is strong and he will have normal heart function in the coming weeks with no limitations on what he'll be able to do," said Dr. Marc Gillinov, a cardiothoracic surgeon ...