‘Growing up bin Laden’ Book: Osama’s son Omar Speaks

For Omar bin Laden, the fourth eldest of Osama bin Laden’s 20 known children, the awful realization that his father was a terrorist mastermind who was plotting a global conspiracy that would destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people and even his own family came gradually. Of course, there were warning signs: Omar’s childhood was marked by regular beatings and survivalist training; the growing army of ruffians and retainers who called his father “Prince”; and that Afghan mullah who had given his father an entire mountain in Tora Bora

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A Spanish Island’s Quest to Be the Greenest Place on Earth

At the moment, the project that will transform the future of El Hierro doesn’t look like much more than a hole in the ground. Or two, to be exact: one on top of a mountain, another smaller one down below, and in between, a long stretch of pipeline tinted the same color as the scrub that grows so abundantly on this volcanic island.

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Eric Kim: Global marketing chief of Samsung

Just a few years ago, Samsung was the brand you bought if you couldn’t afford Sony or Toshiba. Suddenly it’s the name that consumers all over the world–especially young ones–seek out for the most fun and stylish models of everything from cell phones to flat-panel plasma TVs.

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Time’s Person of the Year: You

The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

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