"New Orleans is experiencing what appears to be a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, one that mental health experts say is of an intensity rarely seen in this country. It is contributing to a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple... View full entry
China has introduced "mobile execution vehicles," or vans in which lethal injections are performed. "Makers of death vans say they save money for poor localities that would otherwise have to pay to construct execution facilities in prisons or court buildings. The vans ensure that prisoners... View full entry
Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops. BBC View full entry
Philadelphia has suffered a history book's worth of indignities at the hands of progress...with a booming downtown feeding rising home prices, it appears the pendulum is swinging back in favor of the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia Enquirer | related? View full entry
Two series of photographs here: In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster and Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. go>> View full entry
With Mexican voters more polarized between rich and poor than at any time since the 1910 revolution, there's talk that the United States' most populous neighbor ”” and the main source of its legal and illegal immigration ”” could descend into political anarchy and economic... View full entry
The New York Times reviews John McPhee's new book, about transportation & infrastructure; McPhee's topics include "a pond in France where sea captains pay $15,000 for a weeklong ship-handling course using scale models." New York Times. View full entry
Judge Juan Torruella, from the Boston Court of Appeals First Circuit, warned of the eventual establishment of concentration camps as a prelude of mass deportation of illegal immigrants. He also had harsh words for domestic spying and indefinite detentions in a speech delivered in Spanish to the... View full entry
A tomb raider leads police to the oldest tomb ever discovered in the western Mediterranean. NYTimes. View full entry
A new exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky's work shows how the artist used his synaesthesia - the capacity to see sound and hear colour - to create the world's first truly abstract paintings. Review Looks like Frank Lloyd Wright & Carlo Scarpa can thank synesthesia too ... View full entry
BBC online is offering an in-depth report on the growth of the world's urban populations. View full entry
"The biggest sea change is that this fair has become virtual," said Perry Rubenstein, a Chelsea dealer. The night before the opening, he said, collectors could be seen flashing cellphone images of works on which they had first dibs. NYT View full entry
Sheriff's deputies evicted people from an urban community garden to make room for a warehouse Tuesday, touching off a furious protest in which actress Daryl Hannah and others climbed into a walnut tree or chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels. More than 40 people were arrested. la... View full entry
Photographs of children living in the tunnels, sewers, drains, and other underground spaces of Addis Ababa. BBC. View full entry
Walead Beshty's installation recreates the unsettling life of a 2001 Iraqi Embassy turned squatter haven in East Berlin. UCLA exhibit / interview | NYFA review View full entry