An interloper is shot The man walking along the sidewalk next to the 8-foot-high fence that separates the South Lawn from tourists and placard wavers seemed suspicious. When the Secret Service officers approached him, he allegedly reached into his coat and turned on them with a loaded 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. One agent quickly drew his service revolver and fired, wounding the would-be gunman in the right arm. The interloper, David A. Mahonski, 25, an unemployed electrician from Williamsport, Pa., was ...

Every day, as he ambles through the cobwebbed halls of the New Orleans criminal court building, public defender Richard Teissier feels he violates his clients' constitutional rights. The Sixth Amendment established, and the landmark Gideon Supreme Court case affirmed, the right of poor people to legal counsel. At any given moment, when Teissier is representing some 90 accused murderers, rapists and robbers, his office has no money to hire experts or track down witnesses; its law library consists of a ...

For much of the past decade, the Iranian government has tolerated what it considers a particularly depraved and un-Islamic vice: the keeping of pet dogs. During periodic crackdowns, police have confiscated dogs from their owners right off the street; and state media has lectured Iranians on the diseases spread by canines. The cleric Gholamreza Hassani, from the city of Urmia, has been satirized for his sermons railing against "short-legged" and "holdable" dogs. But as with the policing of ...

When the Egyptian government blocked Internet access and mobile texting capabilities in an attempts to thwart protesters' ability to organize, Kosta Grammatis had new ammunition to pitch his big idea: what if there was a satellite service for Internet and phone — affordable for the average Egyptian — that could not be shut off? Grammatis knows a satellite that might be up for sale, and he and a few others want to raise money to buy it. They formed a non-profit called Buy ...

In the golden years, at a dinner party for the Duchess of Devonshire, Ethel Kennedy slipped in a worldly addendum to the grace she said before the meal. "And please, dear God, make Bobby buy me a bigger dining-room table." It was an understandable plea from the mistress of Hickory Hill, the Robert Kennedy family's child-beswarmed antebellum homestead in McLean, Va. After Bobby's death, Ethel was left to raise a brood of 11. Today the nine surviving R.F.K. offspring form ...

We'll never know what it was like to be aboard Air France Flight 447 as it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, apparently killing all 228 aboard. For now, the closest we may get is listening to the passengers on a similar Airbus 330 jet whose flight computer put it into an uncommanded dive over northwestern Australia last October. Qantas Flight 72 had been airborne for three hours, flying uneventfully on autopilot from Singapore to Perth, ...

Kathryn Stockett never intended to write a best-selling novel. In fact, when she started writing her debut novel, The Help, she didn't think anyone would ever read it. But since coming out in February, her story about the complicated relationships between African-American domestic servants and the white women who employed them in pre-civil rights Mississippi has spent over 30 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list. Stockett talked to TIME about growing up in Mississippi ...

Many large modern cemeteries store data on the identity of remains via computer and keep track of grave locations with the aid of satellites. The previous leadership at the cemetery blew unknown millions trying to develop a similar system, but ended up just handing money to favored contractors who did little in return, according to an Army investigation last summer. As a result, Arlington tries to keep track of around 30 burials a day on pieces of ...

At ByDesign Financial Solutions, a debt-counseling service in Modesto, Calif., they're working overtime these days. "Our call volume went up 97% in the past five weeks, which has left us scrambling," says Martha Lucey, president of the nonprofit agency. "[The callers] are close to the max on their credit cards, and they just can't figure out how to manage. We've seen credit-card companies decreasing lines of credit, and the [debtors] don't have any room left. They just ...

Do you think you're more likely to look at an online ad if it contains 1> a picture, 2> an animation, or 3> just text? The answer: just text. Surprised? Well, now consider the man who was checking his e-mail when he came across a dating-service ad featuring a picture of a bikini-clad woman. He looked at the woman's face and chest once — and then at the surrounding text five times. The Internet has cracked open a brave new world for ...