The bent basketball rims in the girls' gymnasium at Ensley High School in Birmingham, Ala., recently made way for coach Roderick Jackson to play offense on a different sort of court more than 700 miles away.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 18 that Mr. Jackson could sue the Birmingham Board of Education for firing him as Ensley High coach. He contends that school officials fired him as a coach but kept him as a teacher because he complained that his female basketball players did not receive the same facilities and funding as the boys' team.

When Kizzy Coleman walked into the Women's Help Center in Jacksonville, Fla., six years ago, she faced a true "crisis pregnancy": At 21 years old, Ms. Coleman was the mother of two children, she was in an abusive relationship, she had just been evicted from her home, and she had just learned she was pregnant.

Alicia White would have turned 15 next month. The ninth-grader at Red Lake High School who liked talking on the phone and going to church with her grandmother was looking forward to a summer youth group trip to Tennessee. Instead, Alicia will be buried next week, along with at least eight other victims of 16-year-old Jeff Weise.

When Ashley Smith began reading The Purpose Driven Life, she couldn't have imagined that just weeks later she would be reading chapter 33 to a quadruple murder suspect who had forced his way into her apartment at gunpoint. She also couldn't have imagined that her calm faith would lead to the calm surrender of a vicious killer.

Authorities arrested Brian Nichols at Mrs. Smith's Duluth, Ga., home on March 12, some 24 hours after the convicted rapist grabbed a gun from an Atlanta courtroom deputy and began a killing spree that left four dead.

What does it mean that Israel's Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian leader, are embarked on what seems to be a real peace process? If it works, we'll never know the depth of its importance because we won't know who lives because of it and who would otherwise have died, as Abigail Litle died two years ago this month.

Ty Mosler walked away from his management position at the Family Christian Bookstore in Asheville, N.C., after eight years because of a quandary he never thought he'd face: A change in the Christian store's operating hours meant Mr. Mosler would have to miss going to church at least half of the year.

When John Edwards takes the national stage to debate Vice President Dick Cheney on Oct. 5, he is sure to relish talking about Robbins, N.C., the blue-collar mill town where he grew up.

Though many things have changed, Robbins' Southern, small-town atmosphere remains: Old men in worn overalls and mesh caps eat fried chicken in the Little Village restaurant on Main Street. Street lamps line the two blocks of downtown bearing red, white, and blue banners reading: "Robbins: Hometown, USA."