It was one of the more unusual crime scenes in American history. The slumping, tarpaulin-covered sweat lodge had disgorged dozens of victims onto the red dirt near Sedona, Arizona. Some were burned, some were unconscious, others were in various stages of organ failure. Two were already dead, and a third would later die at the hospital. What had happened was immediately clear to first responders: these unfortunates, all of whom had paid nearly $10,000 to participate in a ...

Claude "Butch" Jones would seem an unlikely client for the Innocence Project, a legal foundation that has freed 254 men and women through DNA evidence since 1992. Jones was not, in the broadest sense, an innocent man. He was an alcoholic and an armed robber who once, while serving time in Kansas for murder, doused another inmate with lighter fluid and, in the words of his own defense attorney, "torched him." When Jones was executed by the state of Texas, ...

Millions of viewers have been transfixed by the parade of forensic experts presented by the prosecution over the last few weeks in the trial of Casey Anthony, a 25 year-old mother who stands accused of killing her two year-old daughter Caylee and dumping the child's body near their Orange County, Florida home in 2008. The ubiquitous broadcasts of the trial are as compelling as anything that fans of the fictional forensics drama, CSI: Miami, might encounter. But ...

Like other ethnic groups before them, American blacks are steadily climbing the political ladder, winning more state, local and national offices each election. Some 90 black mayors are now serving in U.S. cities and towns, including Newark and Gary. That is not surprising, because those cities have black majorities. But last week brought the most dramatic evidence yet of black political progress. Los Angeles, the nation's third largest city, elected its first black mayor, although the Negro population is a ...

The four women and two men walked silently to their red leather armchairs in Room 110 of the Federal District Court Building in lower Manhattan. As dozens of reporters and spectators listened intently, the clerk asked Jury Foreman Richard Zug, an IBM computer specialist, if the panel had come to a decision. "We have," replied Zug. Reading carefully from the verdict form, Zug announced, "On actual malice: to the question, Has the plaintiff proved by clear and convincing evidence that ...

General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, walked into the celebration of Saudi Arabia's national day in Washington D.C. and was immediately posed with the question of the day. "Is it true?" Hayden was asked by a Time reporter. "Nope," Hayden said, immediately adding to the accumulating statements on the paucity of evidence that Osama bin Laden was dead. About an hour before, the Saudi government itself declared that it "has no evidence to support recent media ...

It is now conventional wisdom that the U.S. faces an acute fiscal calamity. America's problems are severe: a deficit that is more than 10% of GDP and total debt that is more than 70% of GDP. But all evidence suggests that the U.S. does not face an immediate crisis. Take a look at the simplest indicator: the day that Standard & Poor's raised its now famous warnings, the markets decided to lower America's borrowing costs, and the ...

New evidence of Soviet spyingIt read like a chapter of seabed science fiction, but last week Swedes were taking very seriously indeed a report by their government charging the Soviet Union with a spectacular underwater spy effort off the Swedish coast. After a six-month investigation, an official commission concluded that up to six submarines had been involved in a bold intrusion into the waters near Sweden's Musk Island naval base last October. The fleet was said to include three advanced miniature submarines, some equipped with tanklike ...

For 13 chilling days in October 1962, it seemed that John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev might be playing out the opening scenes of World War III. The Cuban missile crisis was a uniquely compact moment of history. For the first time in the nuclear age, the two superpowers found themselves in a sort of moral road test of their apocalyptic powers.The crisis blew up suddenly. The U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union, despite repeated and solemn denials, was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. An American ...

The Cove, a spectacularly compelling documentary that was as well financed as it is well intentioned, starts with a glimpse of seeming paranoia. A man in his late 60s is driving, anxiously checking his mirrors and talking about the people he's sure are pursuing him. He's wearing a surgical mask and gives the impression of Jason Bourne as a possibly batty senior citizen, still dodging bad guys and, maybe, swine flu. It turns out he's Ric O'Barry, a forgotten face ...