What would motivate 45 health enthusiasts to dish out $2,300 apiece for 30 minutes on a stationary bicycle at a trendy health club? Two words: Bill Clinton. The former president showed up late last month at Soul Cycle, a new fitness center in New York City's upper west side, to raise cash for his wife's financially fit presidential campaign.

LOS ANGELES- When Hilary Swank moved into an old farmhouse in rural Louisiana to begin filming The Reaping, a kind next-door neighbor promptly appeared, bearing a freshly baked pecan pie to welcome the actress to the neighborhood. Easing down the front porch steps, the neighbor also mentioned a piece of friendly advice: "Watch out for the ghosts."

Marie Connelly has only one picture of her child. An abortionist at a Planned Parenthood center in South Carolina produced the ultrasound image to confirm Connelly's pregnancy moments before her abortion four years ago. Connelly recently went back to the center to ask for the picture, which was still on file. She wishes she had seen it before her abortion: "I would have crumbled."

NEW DELHI- Strolling down the Rajpath, the broad, ceremonial boulevard in the center of India's capital city of New Delhi, an American might think of his own country's capital. Tall trees and sprawling lawns line a broad avenue flanked by a towering war monument and a dome-topped presidential residence. Groups of visitors snap photographs of the column-lined Parliament House, the seat of government for the largest democracy in the world.

CHARLOTTE- In a small, yellow building near a pawn shop and a used car lot in west Charlotte, the student artwork outside a third-grade classroom at Brookstone School is revealing. Bright letters on long strips of blue, white, and green paper read: "Drugs are a bad thing to do," "Get high on God," and "Gangs kill people."

CAMP LEJENUE, N.C.- On a crisp morning on the North Carolina coast, traffic bustles through the main gate of Camp Lejeune, the largest U.S. Marine Corps base east of the Mississippi. The 156,000-acre site includes 11 miles of beach for amphibious operations training, 98 maneuver areas, and more than 40,000 Marines.

High-school social-studies classes aren't usually the stuff of national news, but they don't usually involve this combination: a public-school classroom and a Christian evangelist who lectures on the dangers of Islam.

That unusual mix propelled a Raleigh, N.C., high school into the national spotlight late last month and sparked an acrid debate over the nature of Islam and the limits of free speech in public schools.