Daren Briscoe

Political squabbling over how to store waste could hold back the industry.

The District of Columbia has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. But that's a distinction the nation's capital will soon lose—if Robert Levy prevails.

When Cory Booker first ran for Newark city council in 1998, one of his opponents, George Branch, said, "[Booker's] a Rhodes scholar; I'm a roads scholar." The implication was not just that Booker lacked street smarts—it's that he wasn't quite black enough.

A 58-year old general surgeon at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Va., Dr. Randall Lester has been fixing broken bodies since his medical residency at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970's, when the hospital's pioneering liver transplant program was just starting up and marathon 18-hour surgeries weren't uncommon.

He almost cut French class. But Colin Goddard made the fateful decision to attend that Monday morning—and wound up full of bullets. One student in Cho's path.

Among the racy and obnoxious Super Bowl ads selling everything from beer to insurance, at least one commercial interruption had a more serious intention. VoteVets.org, a political action group affiliated with a coalition of left-leaning organizations including MoveOn.org, ran an ad (only in certain markets) where Iraq war veterans, including an amputee, spoke out against President Bush's "surge." NEWSWEEK's Daren Briscoe recently spoke to VoteVets cofounder Jon Soltz, who served as a captain...

The release of the long-awaited Iraq Study Group report has renewed focus on the ongoing debate about the way forward in Iraq. The blue-ribbon panel urges an approach that focuses more on diplomacy and less on the military.

Rep. John Lewis says the new Washington monument to Martin Luther King Jr. will inspire a new generation.

Nancy Pelosi walks out of an airport the way others might flee a burning building. A car is waiting outside and the California congresswoman, straining under the weight of a suitcase, a fold-over bag and a pile of newspapers, cannot reach it quickly enough.

When First Lady Laura Bush launched the National Book Festival six years ago, it hardly seemed controversial. But last year poet Sharon Olds refused the First Lady's invitation as a protest against the Bush administration's policies in Iraq.

The danger of delaying childbearing, of course, is that a woman who eventually wants a baby may be unable to have one because her eggs are no longer viable.

Mark Pilat took a deep breath, braced himself and knocked on the door. A deportation officer with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency--that's "ICE" in Fed lingo--Pilat and his team converged on a sprawling trailer park outside Columbus, Ohio, last week.

With this issue, we launch our "giving back awards" in recognition of people who, through bravery or generosity, genius or passion, devote themselves to helping others. From hundreds of nominations, these folks were chosen for imaginative approaches to difficult problems. We hope they remind you of someone--maybe yourself.

For weeks, John Allen Muhammad had tried to dominate the courtroom, making believe he was a worldly wise trial lawyer. The convicted sniper, already sentenced to death for one of the murders in the 2002 killing spree that left 10 dead and three wounded, is now on trial in Maryland.

Online sleuths can claim another victory. Howard Kaloogian, a Republican candidate in California's 50th Congressional District, has removed a picture from his campaign Web site that he claimed was evidence that journalists are distorting how bad conditions are in Iraq.

With a seasoned cop's knowing eye, Lake Worth, Fla., police agent Brian Hermanson cruised recently through some known gang hangouts. He was soon onto potential trouble: someone rolling through the neighborhood in a blue Lincoln and flashing gang signs.

Knees are the bane of all athletes, but they're particularly nettlesome to aging amateurs, whose joints have endured years of pounding. Fortunately, some of the technology inspired by doctors who treat professional athletes is trickling down to weekend warriors.

If you want to get a fix on the future of the Internet, have a look at Google's map site. At first glance it may not seem much different from its competitors.

It is the most beautiful and most sacred part of "the Grounds," as the University of Virginia calls its campus. In a white-columned gallery along the "Lawn" are arrayed 104 rooms reserved for the best and brightest students.

The White House has a new plan to revive its conservative base: a tough approach to the nation's borders. Karl Rove met with House Republicans last week on immigration, an issue that has prompted sharp criticism of the president's proposals for a guest-worker program for the past two years.

Jan Danielsson, a 28-year-old student at Uppsala University in Sweden, flirted with the dark side for months, and he finally crossed over for the purest of motives.

The six-week search for Natalee Holloway in Aruba--especially for fans of tech-worshiping shows like "CSI"--has raised questions about why investigators haven't been able to use high-tech equipment to find her.

ANA OLIVEIRAWith charisma and optimism, she hopes to vanquish HIV/AIDS.We all set goals for ourselves. Some of us are just more ambitious than others. Take Ana Oliveira: "I want to stop the spread of AIDS," says the executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City.

Insisting they had "no moral alternative," a group of influential black pastors who support President George W. Bush wrote an open letter last week urging him to substantially boost U.S. aid to Africa and asking him for a meeting.

BUSINESSUps and DownsOften, when a particular currency goes up, the stock market in that region will too. So why have European equity markets been rising over the last several weeks, even as the euro has fallen?

Brenda Paz's life was in danger. When the 17-year-old was arrested by Virginia police in June 2002, she unexpectedly started telling them vivid tales about life as a member of the violent Mara Salvatrucha street gang, better known as MS-13.

When reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison surfaced in the spring of 2004, Ron McAndrew felt the same outrage that many other Americans did. But there was one emotion that the retired Florida Department of Corrections prison warden didn't feel: surprise.

Military recruiters are already scrambling to enlist enough soldiers to meet wartime demands. Now they're facing a new obstacle: punk rockers. With militaryfreezone.org, an antiwar band from Pittsburgh, Anti-Flag, has started a campaign against an obscure provision of the No Child Left Behind Act dictating that public-school districts supply high-school students' names, phone numbers and addresses to military recruiters.

They were prepared to die, even the truck drivers and supply clerks; any American who sets foot in Iraq must be. They made out wills, as the military requires, and left behind letters and videos for their families.

It ranks among the nation's worst incidents of racial violence. And while more than 80 years have passed since it convulsed their city, its remaining survivors are still determined to have their day in court.