TIME PERSONS OF THE YEAR. Bono. Bill and Melinda Gates. They are The Good Samaritans, "For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow...."

And what of Mother Nature? Managing editor James Kelly writes, "Natural disasters are terrible things, but what ultimately defines us is not what happens to us but how we react...."