New York - The editors of TIME Magazine name the 100 most influential people in the world now, in the new issue (on newsstands Monday, April 19th.) The "people who shape our world" are profiled in five categories: "Leaders and Revolutionaries," "Builders and Titans," "Artists and Entertainers," "Scientists and Thinkers," and "Heroes and Icons."

"Your list might not match ours, which we hope makes this exercise intriguing. And we especially had fun matching writer with subject," says Jim Kelly, Managing Editor of TIME.

TIME's editors invited well-known people to write profiles of many of the 100 honorees:

• Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism in the National Security Council, writes about OSAMA BIN LADEN: "In death he will become a martyr and further inspiration to radical Islamists-until someone offers an effective ideological or religious counterweight."
• Sidney Poitier writes how OPRAH moved him when she said she was inspired to do something with her life when, as a girl, she watched him receive an Oscar in 1964 for Lillies of the Field.
• Donald Trump, mogul and star of the hit NBC series The Apprentice, writes that reality TV producer "MARK BURNETT is a great visionary, able to see into the future with far better accuracy than any of his competitors."
• Phil Simms, ex-quarterback for the New York Giants, says New England Patriots coach BILL BELICHICK is "not as dull as people think. Heck, he goes to Bon Jovi concerts!"
• Two TIME 100 honorees write about other honorees: BONO of U2, writes about fellow honoree AUNG SAN SUU KYI of Myanmar, calling her "a real hero in an age of phony phone-in celebrity." He apologizes for failing to thank her in accepting a Grammy for the song he wrote about her, Walk On.
• Investor WARREN BUFFETT writes on philanthropists BILL and Melinda GATES, "There are no two people I admire more for their contribution to mankind's welfare."

Only four honored on the 2004 "TIME 100" were also named TIME 100 People of the Century in 1998-1999: BILL GATES, NELSON MANDELA, POPE JOHN PAUL II and OPRAH WINFREY. At the close of the 20th century, TIME's editors named the 100 most influential people of the past 100 years in a series of six issues, culminating with the selection of Albert Einstein as the Person of the Century. Now, TIME is reviving the concept for this issue on who has the most influence in the world right now.

The 2004 TIME 100 includes 84 men and 22 women, with individuals joined by teams including hip-hop artists Outkast , Toyota's top two, The Al Jazeera Satellite Channel, the Google guys, a couple of Korean Cloners and the only husband and wife pairing - Bill and Hillary Clinton. The list is truly international - 40% are US-based and 20% from the UK, but other nations range from France, Germany, Switzerland and Gibraltar to Tibet, Brazil, China, India and Burma.

CNN Presents: TIME 100 airs on Sunday, April 18, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. (ET) and will replay on Saturday, April 24, at 6 a.m., 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. CNN's Aaron Brown hosts the one-hour program. During the week of April 19, CNN, CNN Headline News and CNN Airport Network will air profiles during regularly scheduled programming.

To select the TIME 100, editors "identified three rather distinct qualities", writes TIME's Editor-at-Large Michael Elliott.
TIME 100 Introduction online: www.time.com/time/subscriber/cover/0,9171,1101040426-612295,00.html

"First, there were those who came to their status by means of a very public possession of power; President George W. Bush is the pre-eminent example. Others, though they are rarely heard from in public, nonetheless have a real influence on the great events of our time. Think of Ali Husaini Sistani, the Grand Ayatullah of Iraq's Shi'ites, who in effect has a veto on plans to transfer power from those who occupy his country to its people."

"Still others affect our lives through their moral example. Consider Nelson Mandela's forgiveness of his captors and his willingness to walk away from the South African presidency after a single term," Elliott writes. "The President of China has power... So does Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hollywood producer, who can made pretty much any film or TV series he wants, or Fidelity's Abigail Johnson, whose family firm controls the destiny of $900 billion of mutual-fund money. But Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of North Korea, has power too - nuclear weapons programs do that for you - despite the fact that his nation is an economic basket case... few would doubt that Pope John Paul II has changed countless lives. So, sadly, has Osama bin Laden, even though he is holed up in a remote village somewhere in the Hindu Kush."

TIME'S Joel Stein asks in a separate essay, "BEING NO. 101: What Kind of Person Just Missed the Cut" "Am somewhere in the top 1 billion, or am I down around Dennis Kucinich?," Stein muses. One candidate who didn't make TIME's list: Paul Farmer, 44, a professor at Harvard Medical School who spends much of his time at a charity hospital in Haiti. Stein called Farmer in Haiti to tell him he missed out; he was clearly bummed out, Stein reports. Farmer said: "I was reading PEOPLE magazine recently, and a pop star - her first name is Jessica, but her last name escapes me, a blond - was saying how nice it was to be on the top of some list, the name of which also escapes me." Stein concludes, "Jessica someone" I was not believing for a second that this guy has ever read PEOPLE." Then Stein told Farmer Simon Cowell made it by singing Elton John songs off-key. To that, Farmer responded, "Who's Simon Cowell?" TIME's Stein offers, "Maybe someone should spend a little less time saving people's lives and a little more time reading his PEOPLE. "I tried to make Farmer feel better by telling him other important people missed the list, like Tony Blair, Alan Greenspan, Colin Powell and Paula Abdul... The problem with Farmer's career, it seemed to me... is that he doesn't have a publicist, agent, manager or even a stylist."

"We think our list shows that greatness lives - that a few people can affect the lives of billions around the globe," Elliott writes in TIME's introduction. Excerpts from TIME 100 profiles:

Leaders And Revolutionaries

The lead profile is of GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America: "The war will be the prism through which he will be judged. If successful, his battle against terrorism and campaign for democratization in the Middle East will be viewed as a hinge of history, in which a closing door opened and light came slowly, gradually in. But if deemed a failure, the war will stamp his legacy as having created a more bitterly divided country and a more chaotic, fractured world. We do not know yet... We do know that this unassuming man became a radical gambler with his fate and with humanity's," writes columnnist ANDREW SULLIVAN.

Bush profile online: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040426-612293,00.html

• General JOHN ABIZAID, Chief of U.S. Central Command: The roots of terrorism "certainly don't lend themselves easily to military solutions," Abizaid tells TIME. Patience, Abizaid thinks, is an ally of the enemy, writes TIME's Mark Thompson.
• KOFI ANNAN, U.N. Secretary-General: "It is Annan's destiny to be handed the very worst problems, and then only after they have been unsuccessfully addressed by others," writes Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the Clinton Administration from 1999 to 2001.
• BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON, former U.S. President, and U.S. Senator from New York: "After all the scandal and controversy, the Clintons remain the brightest stars in the Democratic galaxy. Her memoirs were a blockbuster; his are certain to be... Are they burnishing a legacy or laying the groundwork for a second Clinton presidency?," writes TIME's Karen Tumulty.
• LUISA DIOGO, Mozambique's first female Prime Minister: "Diogo has consistently used her contagious passion for Mozambique to drive real economic change and has become an outspoken advocate of transparency, accountability and good governance in a region that has long been victimized by corruption," writes Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme.
• RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Prime Minister of Turkey: Western leaders have been scouring the Muslim world for moderate politicians who see their future in democracy and pluralism. Erdogan may be the best find yet, writes TIME's Andrew Purvis.
• TOSHIHIKO FUKUI, Head of the Bank of Japan: Japan is the world's fastest-growing major developed economy, turning in an impressive 6.4% annualized gain in the final quarter of last year. "Much of the credit belongs to Fukui," according to TIME's Jim Frederick. TIME calls Fukui "Japan's Greenspan," explaining he "has boldly set out a series of unorthodox monetary-easing programs designed to counteract the country's crippling six-ear bout of deflation."
• BILL GATES, Chairman of Microsoft Corp., Philanthropist: "Both Bill and Melinda [Gates] bring an extraordinary blend of head and heart to the incredibly tough job of intelligently giving away billions of dollars... There are no two people I admire more for their contribution to mankind's welfare, " writes Warren E. Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (himself a TIME 100 honoree).
• HU JINTAO, President of China: To leave his mark on China's long history, Hu will have to encourage something his predecessors blocked: political reform, writes TIME's Matt Forney.
• POPE JOHN PAUL II: "At the beginning of his papacy, I admit, I had my doubts... Nevertheless, with the passing years and remarkable courage, the Pope has pointed out the path to reconciliation with other religions, but above all with the oldest, to which Christianity owes so much," writes Elie Wiesel, a human-rights activist and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
• JOHN KERRY, Democratic Presidential Candidate: Kerry "will have to prove not only that his policies are better than the incumbent's, but also that he will be a tolerable guest in the dens and kitchens of the nation for the next four years," writes TIME's Joe Klein.
• KIM JONG II, Leader of North Korea: The possibility of nuclear proliferation is one of the great existential threats of our time... In the next few years, finding a way to disarm North Korea while satisfying Kim's iron determination to secure the survival of his regime will continue to be a priority for Kim's neighbors and Washington, writes TIME's Michael Elliott.
• OSAMA BIN LADEN: "In death he will become a martyr and further inspiration to radical Islamists - until someone offers an effective ideological or religious counterweight," writes Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism in the National Security Council.
• LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA, President of Brazil: Lula "has become the developing world's new spokesman, a pragmatic populist who matches his anti-Yankee bluster with economic sobriety. His successes with pension and tax reforms have made Wall Street want to samba," writes TIME's Tim Padgett.
• VLADIMIR PUTIN, President of Russia: If his second term goes the same way as his first, he will be remembered as the man who could have done great things but succeeded only in leading Russia down yet another historical blind alley, writes TIME's Paul Quinn-Judge.
• CONDOLEEZZA RICE, National Security Adviser: "Though others may call the shots, Rice's proximity to power has made her the foreign-policy voice of the White House... She will have her pick of Cabinet posts in a second Bush term; she can go to either State or Defense if either Colin Powell or Rumsfeld departs. How Bush will manage without her in the White House is another question," writes TIME's Michael Duffy.
• GRAND AYATULLAH ALI HUSAINI SISTANI, Defender of Iraqi Rights: "Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last April, Sistani has gone from being a relatively unknown 'quietist' in Najaf's Hawza seminary, preaching that Shi'ite clerics must stay out of politics to becoming a political institution," writes Hassan Fattah, editor of the weekly Iraq Today. Says Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, "His message is very simple: Democracy equals elections; elections equal democracy."
• ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE, Prime Minister of India:, "Vajpayee's greatest trick - and one that places him among the world's most significant figures- is his pursuit of peace with Pakistan while heading the Bharatiya Janta Party (Indian People's party), which rose to power in the 1990s on a wave of Hindu chauvinism," writes TIME's Alex Perry.
• WU YI, Vice Premier and Health Minister of China: "In a nation ruled by men who often seem disconnected from their 1.3 billion subjects, Wu has made it her job to care about people," writes TIME's Hannah Beech. "She was appointed Health Minister during the SARS crisis last year," Now Wu has turned her attention to a far deadlier plague... HIV positive citizens in China."
• ABU MOUSAB Al-ZARQAWI, Leader of Ansar-al-Islam: "Al-Zarqawi is said to be a commander of Ansar al-Islam, the Kurdish guerilla group linked to al-Qaeda, which may be behind the wave of suicide bombings in Iraq," writes TIME's Romesh Ratnesar. "With much of al-Qaeda's leadership destroyed, al-Zarqawi is an archetype of the new terrorism threat: a global operator plugged into a network of like-minded Islamists from London to Lahore."

Artists and Entertainers

• In a TIME interview, NICOLE KIDMAN, Actress, says: "For 10 years my marriage defined me far more strongly than my work," Kidman tells TIME of her union with Tom Cruise. "I wasn't choosing movies for any other reason than dabbling here and there because I thought, Oh, well, I want to keep my hand in." Though her post-Oscar movies have not been big hits, her new willingness to experiment is being noticed. "Oh, I'd like to think I have a sliver of vulgarity," she tells TIME's Belinda Luscombe.
• FEERAN ADRIÀ, Chef: No one has had more to do with Spain's emergence as the pacesetter in international haute cuisine than AdriÀ... his restaurant, El Bulli... gets 1 million reservation requests a year, only about 8,000 of which he can honor, writes TIME's Jamie Graff.
• MARK BURNETT, Reality Television Producer: "I had never planned on being the star of a hit TV show until Mark Burnett came to me to do The Apprentice," writes Donald J. Trump, president and CEO of the Trump Organization, and real-life star of Burnett's hit NBC series. "He convinced me by promising that it would require no more than three hours per week of my time. It turned out to be more than 30. But I'm not complaining. His idea to keep the show close to the way I operate in my business life was, I think, crucial to its success. He found that very interesting, and at first I couldn't see why. Now I do." Trump calls Burnett " a great visionary... His No. 1 talent is having the right idea at the right time. Where that kind of talent comes from is always a bit of a mystery, but I think his insight into our culture has to do with coming from Britain. Being new to a culture can make your observations more acute."
• JERRY BRUCKHEIMER, Producer: "Bruckheimer projects have grossed more than $13 billion. He has done it by showing that commercial entertainment can be big and brawny but not entirely brainless," writes TIME's Desa Philadelphia. Bruckheimer says he simply makes "what I like".
• KATIE COURIC, NBC News Anchor and "Morning Companion": Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Entertainment, News and Cable, tells TIME he hasn't forgotten the interview Couric did with President George H.W. Bush in October 1992. Zucker was overseeing TODAY when Couric, on tour of the White House with Barbara Bush, surprised him with some tough questions on the upcoming election (which Bush later lost to Bill Clinton). "I was in the control room trying to help," says Zucker, "but mostly just watching in amazement. It was one of the most remarkable moments of broadcast journalism I've ever seen." One look at Couric's televised colonoscopy and thousands were moved to do the same; colon-cancer screenings have risen 20% nationwide (and untold lives saved) in what researchers call the Couric effect, writes TIME's Richard Zoglin.
• SIMON COWELL, Television Personality: "At a time when the record industry is floundering, American Idol has discovered unlikely stars," writes TIME's Jim Poniewozik. "What the show understands and the music biz often doesn't," says Cowell, is that "it's personalities, it's conflict, it's all of those things that actually make [performers] interesting."
• JOHN GALLIANO, Fashion Designer: "Galliano has reinvented Dior, transforming it from a dowdy duty-free label into a must-have global brand - and the most intrepid creative machine in international fashion," writes TIME's Kate Betts.
• FRANK GEHRY, Architect: He has profoundly reordered the idea of constructed space among people who don't think about buildings for a living but who work in them, live in them - and pay for them, writes TIME's Richard Lacayo. "The message I hope to have sent," Gehry says, "is just the example of being yourself. I tell this to my students: It's not about copying me or my logic systems. It's about allowing yourself to be yourself."
• NICHOLAS HYTNER, Head of Britain's National Theatre: British theater sets the pace worldwide, and Hytner's National now sets the pace in Britain, writes TIME's Richard Zoglin.
• PETER JACKSON, Director of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Over a seven-year stretch in his native New Zealand, Jackson brought this vast canvas to life, eventually earning nearly $3 billion in movie theaters and oodles more on home formats, writes TIME's Richard Corliss.
• NORAH JONES, Singer: Jones has reintroduced the world to the human voice, writes TIME's Christopher John Farley.
• CHARLIE KAUFMAN, Screenwriter: The three-act structure of most movies, Kaufman proved, may be satisfying, but it doesn't unearth honesty, writes TIME's Joel Stein. "I don't know what the hell a third act is. It's not a concern of mine," says Kaufman, a former sitcom writer, adding, "I have a tendency to hire people who tend to be unattractive to the studios. Maybe this is a bad idea."
• KEN KUTARAGI, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment: Thanks to Kutaragi, video games take in more money than movies, writes TIME's Lev Grossman.
• GUY LALIBERTÉ, CEO and Co-Founder of Cirque du Soleil: How did a hippie with a résumé that listed fire breather and accordion player transform a ragtag band of Québécois buskers into a $500 million entertainment juggernaut?, asks TIME's Mitch Frank. "Childlike naiveté, says Lalibert".
• HIDEO NAKATA, Japanese Film Director: "After the surprise success of a U.S. remake of The Ring in 2002, three more U.S. versions of Nakata films are on the way," reports TIME's Richard Corliss. "It's a rare instance of a Japanese director making a Hollywood film - an event that may fill Nakata with the anguish and wonder his own movies engender."
• BRUCE NAUMAN, Artist: "When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it," says Nauman. "At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically I would start over every day and figure out what art was going to be." If there is something about contemporary art that you find baffling or unnerving or belligerent, chances are Nauman is somewhere behind it, writes TIME's Richard Lacayo.
• OUTKAST, Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton, Musical Group: OutKast's dominant season was no cultural blip. Andre and Big Boi have been stretching the boundaries of commercial music for a decade, writes TIME's Josh Tyrangiel. In their own words, "We are/ The coolest motherfunkers on the planet."
• SEAN PENN, Actor: It's one of our great guilty pleasures to watch him surface those terrible emotions we all feel but dare not share, writes TIME's Richard Schickel.
• AISHWARYA RAI, Actress: "Ash" is the most recognized female face in Bollywood. Now she is about to make a breakthrough in the West, writes TIME's Alex Perry. Rai finds her arrival in Hollywood a little hard to believe. "For a long time I was skeptical," she says. Her hope, she says, is to lead an Indian invasion, to 'catalyze' Bollywood's crossover to the West."
• J.K. ROWLING, Author of Harry Potter series: Even as Rowling maintains her reclusive lifestyle, writing her sixth Potter book while her baby sleeps, her power has become too great to ignore, writes TIME's Nancy Gibbs.

Builders and Titans

• BERNARD ARNAULT, President of LVMH: He may not have created LVMH's brands, but more than anyone, Arnault understood their worldwide potential and how to exploit it, writes TIME's Peter Gumbel.
• JOSEPH (SEPP) BLATTER, President of FIFA: "FIFA's (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) top spot is easily one of the world's most influential nongovernmental jobs," writes TIME's Bill Saporito. Blatter beat back an election challenge from African soccer supreme Issa Hayatou. "Just after the elections I felt bitter, but we have to look forward and be optimistic. They lost the power game," says Blatter. IFA's principal business is running the World Cup tournament, which will be next staged in 2006.
• WARREN BUFFETT, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway: "His number should be retired, his jersey hung from the rafters of the New York Stock Exchange, and the pantheon closed because he has no equal in the game," writes James J. Cramer, markets commentator for TheStreet.com and co-host of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer. "He's our Mozart who has mastered the monetary métier. He's our Shakespeare, a financial writer who puts everyone else to shame."
• LORD JOHN BROWNE, CEO of British Petroleum: "John Browne is an oilman's oilman... BP is now the second largest of the oil majors after ExxonMobil... The path of an oil leader is rarely smooth... But Browne is tough and prepared to play a long game," writes John Elkington, chairman of SustainAbility.
• MICHAEL DELL, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Dell: The company racked up $41 billion in sales last year and wants to boost that to $80 billion, reports TIME's Cathy Booth Thomas. "That's only 10% of the $800 billion market, not a lot," Dell says, with a tiny smirk of his own.
• CARLY FIORINA, Chairman and CEO Hewlett-Packard: "Fiorina led the company forward on many fronts, modernizing how HP did business, how it was organized and how it looked at the world," writes Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson PLC.
• Google Inventors, SERGEY BRIN and LARRY PAGE: "Other companies would boast about how users spent 45 minutes on their site," says Page. "We wanted people to spend a minimum amount of time on Google. The faster they got their results, the more they'd use it." Six years later, Google has indexed 4 billion Web pages, sees 200 million searches every day and has entered the language as a verb, writes TIME's Chris Taylor.
• STEVE JOBS, CEO of Apple: "I think you're seeing for the first time what Apple's innovation and engineering and marketing can do when we don't have-" Jobs says, pausing for a beat, "that operating-system feeling." What's next? Jobs will say only, "What drives us is delighting customers," writes Josh Quittner, editor of Business 2.0.
• ABIGAIL JOHNSON, President of Fidelity Management & Research: "Johnson has seen to it that Fidelity's technology is the envy of the industry... Now she's reinvigorating a performance-driven culture, giving Fidelity some sizzle by encouraging managers to make bigger bets on their best ideas", writes TIME's Dan Kadlec.
• RUPERT MURDOCH, Chairman and CEO of News Corp: "When asked what he has learned about being so powerful in the U.S., Murdoch smiles and says, "You make a lot of enemies." "Murdoch has exercized more power over a longer tenure than any business leader in the world today," writes John Heilemann, journalist and author of Pride Before the Fall.
• DAVID NEELEMAN, CEO of JetBlue Airways: Launching a customer-oriented, low-fare airline on the cusp of what turned into the greatest crisis in U.S. aviation history was fortune. With a top-class product (new airplanes, leather seats and live TVs on board), JetBlue challenged the skeptical perception of new airlines, writes TIME's Sally Donnelly.
• HIROSHI OKUDA and FUJIO CHO, Chairman and President of Toyota: It is the devastatingly efficient assembly-line method called the Toyota Production System (TPS), which has revolutionized the way factories are run worldwide. Few people have done more to perfect "the Toyota Way" than chairman Hiroshi Okuda, 71, and president Fujio Cho, 67, writes TIME's Jim Frederick. "From the very beginning Toyota learned much from other carmakers. Sharing what we have discovered is a way to give back," says Cho. After the introduction of the Prius, the first mass-market petroleum electric hybrid car, a hybrid SUV is scheduled for release this fall. "Any car maker who says hybrid cars can't be profitable I would tell them to start looking for a new line of work," says Okuda. On the future of Toyota, "We need to continue innovating," he says.
• LINDSAY OWEN-JONES, CEO of L'Oreal: "I had what was perhaps an unrealistic ambition," Owen-Jones, 58, told TIME, "to put a Maybelline lipstick in the hand of every woman in China." He has transformed a once modest French firm into the world's largest cosmetics company, writes TIME's Jennie James. Key to being a successful business leader" "The ability to dream rather than simply plan," Owens-Jones says.
• AZIM PREMJI, CEO of Wipro: Premji transformed Wipro, his family's vegetable-oil business, into one of the world's most important outsourcing companies, writes TIME's Aravind Adiga. Wipro and its peers help U.S. firms grow by keeping their costs low and raising their productivity, says Premji. "And if American companies don't grow," he points out, "they don't create jobs."
• HOWARD SCHULTZ, Starbucks Founder: Starbucks has become a global iconic consumer brand, as well as the place millions of people hang out, read, listen to music, take off their shoes and hop online. Schultz didn't invent good coffee, of course, much less café culture," writes TIME's Barbara Kiviat, "but he did mass produce and Americanize both."
• LEE SCOTT JR., CEO of Wal-Mart: It's important that the effervescent, customer-focused culture that "Mr. Sam" created be preserved and communicated as Wal-Mart expands across China and other global markets, writes TIME's Bill Saporito. That means empowering employees wherever they are, says CEO Lee Scott Jr.: "We cannot grow if we are not a great place to work."
• BELINDA STRONACH, Canadian Politician: As she campaigned across Canada's vast distances this winter, some admirers were already comparing her to the young Margaret Thatcher. Stronach is now expected to run for (and win) a seat in Canada's Parliament in national elections, which are expected by summer, writes TIME's Stephen Handelman.
• THE AL-JAZEERA TEAM, satellite channel: "With an estimated 35 million viewers, the network is being imitated across the region. Al-Jazeera has angered Arab governments by giving airtime to rebel movements and for tackling taboo topics like polygamy and apostasy," writes TIME's Scott Macleod. "Nothing has made al-Jazeera so famous as the journalistic hospitality it has extended to Osama bin Laden through the al-Qaeda leader's interviews and doomsday warnings. ** TIME has an exclusive photo of al-Jazeera's founders.
• DANIEL VASELLA, Chairman and CEO of Novartis: Vasella says his first responsibility is to his investors. But in an industry that has plenty of critics, he also believes in a credible commitment to ethical practices, writes TIME's Unmesh Kher.
• MEG WHITMAN, CEO of eBay: Whitman is the quiet giant of the Internet world, one of a mere handful of Silicon Valley CEOs who survived the dotcom bubble with her reputation unscathed, writes TIME's Chris Taylor.

Heroes and Icons

• BONO apologizes in his profile for TIME of AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Moral Leader of Myanmar: "Suu Kyi is a real hero in an age of phony phone-in celebrity," writes BONO (who is also a TIME 100 honoree). Though U2 wrote the song Walk On to honor her, at the Grammys, Bono writes, "in front of an audience of millions, I did what I've begged others not to do. I forgot to say thank you to the woman in front of the song. Thank you."
• DR. ARTHUR AGATSTON, Author of The South Beach Diet: Dr. Agatston is planning to write a book about heart-disease prevention - the book he really wanted to write in the first place, reports TIME's Joel Stein. "The idea was not to fit into a bathing suit in a few weeks but to prevent heart disease," he says.
• LANCE ARMSTRONG, Five-time Winner of the Tour de France: If Armstrong wins the Tour de France again this summer, he will establish a new standard for the sport, writes TIME's Bill Saporito. His mantra: Don't make long-term plans. "I spent many years before I got sick wondering what I was going to do, and it was a distraction. I know what I am doing this year and next, and they deserve my attention," says Armstrong.
• DAVID BECKHAM, Soccer Player with Real Madrid: "Beckham, 29, is an icon of modern masculinity at a time when gender roles are changing faster than runway styles... It ain't easy being the metrosexual pinup boy, but Beckham doesn't flinch from the term," writes Marian Salzman, E.V.P., chief strategy officer of ad agency Euro RSCG Worldwide. Add Designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, "We think that David Beckham is one of the contemporary icons, a reference point, internationally acknowledged by millions of men and women. We are inspired by his positiveness, by his beauty, for being an excellent athlete."
• BILL BELICHICK, New England Patriots Coach: "He's not as dull as people think. Heck, he goes to Bon Jovi concerts! I once told Bill I had a video of him dancing at one of those concerts," writes Phil Simms, CBS broadcaster and ex-quarterback for the New York Giants, where Belichick served as defensive coordinator. "He had this frightened look in his eyes, so there must be some tape of him out there."
• JACK BOGLE, Founder of Vanguard Mutual Funds: "In light of the past years' revelations about mutual-fund abuses, Bogle seems remarkably prescient... As he wrote in his senior thesis at Princeton, a financial enterprise must serve investors 'in the most efficient, honest and economical way possible.' In his 50-year career he never wavered from those principles. Bogle's success in making Vanguard an industry giant demonstrates that it is possible to do right by the consumer and still do well," writes Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York.
• BONO, Lead Singer of U2 and Human Rights Activist: "Bono is a hero. Not because he's a rock star, but because he's a rock star who is willing to spend time on things that are tedious and boring - like long sessions with Senators and Administration officials, meetings at the World Bank and the IMF on torpid Washington Saturday mornings. He has dedicated his life to making sure that such extreme poverty comes to an end," writes Bobby Shriver, who with Bono, founded Debt AIDS Trade Africa
• SHIRIN EBADI, Iranian Human Rights Champion: Her Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 gave Ebadi even greater moral authority inside Iran, injecting fresh hope into a pro-democracy movement that has suffered escalating repression at the hands of the mullahs, writes TIME's Scott Macleod. "When you are hopeless," she says, "you are at a dead end."
• MEL GIBSON, Actor and Director: "The Passion of the Christ, which has so far been seen by tens of millions of people in the U.S. alone, proves again what we have long known about nonreligious movies: artists should write about and direct what they know. They should produce from their passion... From Gibson we have learned that we should not be afraid, should not run from controversy and should be willing to employ a work ethic and invest the dollars necessary to compete