The deadly collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh has heightened awareness about cheap clothes. Many Americans have become used to inexpensive clothing, but the garments are also discarded at a remarkable rate: Billions of pounds of clothing are recycled each year; nearly half is exported.
China has been building museums with abandon, opening about 100 annually in recent years. Two of the biggest opened on the same day last fall on opposite banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River. But filling these museums — with both art and visitors — is proving more challenging.
When Margot Adler learned that a cousin had hidden from the Nazis in Amsterdam, she was stunned. Adler started digging around and discovered that like Anne Frank, 25,000 Dutch Jews hid, and two-thirds of them survived. Her cousin was one of them.
Scientists in Canada were working at an experimental research farm, testing crops like corn and barley. But packs of Canada geese had been swooping in and destroying the crops. Two border collies were hired to chase away the geese.
In Italy, the youth jobless rate is nudging 40 percent, a record high in post-war history. Demographer Stefano Rosina says the Italian welfare system has always been skewed toward the middle-aged and elderly, leaving Italian youths with no political or trade union representation.
The late Indian leader Mohandis Gandhi, who became known as Mahatma, or venerated one, had an appendectomy decades ago. Afterward, doctors took samples of his blood. Two microscope slides bearing that blood are being auctioned in London.
What do you do when you can't openly wage a campaign for the presidency? Some Iranians inside and outside the country have turned to the heroine of an online graphic novel who has embarked on a virtual campaign.
Shunning the formalities of his office and focusing on poverty, Pope Francis is drawing a sharp contrast between his 2-month-old papacy and those of his predecessors.
The 1,200-year-old European pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James is undergoing a revival. Tens of thousands of people are walking across France to the Spanish coastal city of Santiago de Compostela, and the relics of St. James. Once a religious affair, it's now a cultural and social phenomenon as well.