Feb. 28 was definitely a bad day for JOHN ARBOGAST, a State Department lawyer who specializes in U.N. affairs. Running late, he stuffed a bunch of papers into one of his three bags and hurried to his car. Then he drove off, leaving the bags on the car roof, with predictable results. RONALD T. NELSON, a passing motorist, found Arbogast's briefcase, which held personal items. But Nelson tells TIME that when he returned it, Arbogast said that papers in the ...

In the State of Utah the rock of ages has assumed strange forms. Geologically, as observed in such scenic reservations as Bryce Canyon National Park, The Cedar Breaks, Zion National Park , the rock has been sculptured by erosion, forming unearthly peaks and terraces, ornate gorges, petrified and ghostly cities. Utah's religious rock of ages—its dominant church—is equally exotic. It is, as everyone knows, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or, more familiarly, the Mormon Church. Fully ...

As a gubernatorial candidate last summer, Georgia Republican Nathan Deal boasted of having backed measures to bar undocumented immigrants from federal health care, and public colleges. He supported a bill that, starting July 1, will become one of America's most punitive state immigration laws. And now he has released a report indicating that Georgia's largest industry, agriculture, suddenly has 11,000 openings — which, he suggested, should be filled with some of the state's 100,000 ex-convicts, about ...

The most surprising thing about Friday's vote by lawmakers in Albany to make New York America's sixth and largest state where gays can marry one another is not that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a patient display of vote-counting that would have impressed Lyndon Johnson, peeled off enough Republican Senators to pass his bill. Instead, what was most eye-raising was how quickly opponents of gay marriage had shape-shifted their arguments to try to stave off a legislative vote ...

The slow pace of America's economic recovery means many states are still hurting financially. As many as 15 states still can't agree on a budget, and that's a problem, because in many states the fiscal year begins next month. Parents are understandably anxious about what this all means for the upcoming school year. And they should be. An analysis released earlier this month by the National Governors Association and National Association of State Budget Officers ...

Until 14 months ago, Johnny Mathis was best known as an athlete: he could high-jump 6 ft. 5 in., only 2 3/4 in. short of the Olympic record . Then the San Francisco State College sophomore started to sing in San Francisco nightclubs during his spare time. A record executive heard him, and now the talented young Negro is the star of his own LP called Johnny Mathis . As a singer his virtues are many, for he can ...

Visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the bald eagles on Camano Island in Washington State's Puget Sound are more likely to see a different bird in the sky: a police chopper skimming the cedar forests in search of an outlaw. Colton Harris-Moore, a gangly 18-year-old with furtive eyes and a dimpled chin, has been on police blotters since he was accused of stealing a bike at the age of 8. Since then, he is suspected of having committed nearly ...

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, ...

On Nov. 23, 2010, in Cayuga County, New York, Phil Niles pleaded guilty to animal cruelty. He was ordered to pay a fine of $555, and not to have contact with animals for one year. Niles, who had been a longtime employee of Willet Dairy, had been caught hitting a cow on the head with a tool on an undercover video taken by the group Mercy for Animals in 2009. But some are moving to make that very ...

In a barebones basement office in Buffalo, New York, Katie Campos, an education activist, is plotting a revolution. She and her miniscule staff of the education reform advocacy group, Buffalo ReformED, are against incredible odds. In less than a week they are trying to get a controversial law through the New York State Legislature that is known as the Parent Trigger. It's a powerful nickname for game-changing legislation that would enable parents at any persistently failing school ...