Lunch at the site of the future Ramu nickel and cobalt mine in the remote hills of Papua New Guinea is a hurried affair, food shoveled into eager mouths. But the menu is as divided as the two distinct groups of workers squatting in the heat, swatting away flies and filling their bellies before their nine-hour, seven-day-a-week shifts begin again. In one huddle are local laborers chewing chunks of sweet potato and the canned fish known in pidgin dialect ...

On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that has caused anguish in the world of special education and children's mental health. The case, Forest Grove v. TA, centers on the question of whether families with a disabled child have a right to seek reimbursement for private-school tuition from the state if the child did not first receive special-education services in public school. The legal question is a narrow one, but the case raises ...

Th e Food and Drug Administration on Thursday released a preliminary report on the safety of meat and milk from cloned animals. Their verdict: that these food products are no different from those derived from conventionally bred animals, and are therefore safe to eat. But don't expect your local butcher to be selling hams or rib eyes from cloned animals any time soon. The FDA's report is now available to the public and open for a 90-day comment period. ...

One of the fringe benefits of being a Middle East correspondent is that my travels in the region have allowed me to start a decent little collection of oriental rugs. This may sound like a travel fantasy from the age of empire, but rugs are among the most practical pieces of furniture for the modern nomad looking to create a portable home. Originally designed to fit on pack animals, modest-sized rugs easily fold into airplane carry-on luggage; their irregular, ...

Public interest in "The Real Housewives" of hither and yon notwithstanding, the well-behaved trophy wife is not, generally speaking, a character we're dying to know more about. And beautiful Pippa Lee is a trophy wife of the highest order. Polite, restrained and seemingly vacant, the heroine of writer/director Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, cooks a mean butterflied lamb, keeps a meticulous house and floats around in silky pajamas, all the while gazing fondly at her ...

At the national stadium in the Guinean capital, Conakry, it's oddly quiet — the only sounds that can be heard are the muffled beats of a drum band practicing nearby. The other strange thing in a dusty and garbage-strewn city is how clean the stadium looks. Many of the walls and exit tunnels have been freshly painted. That's the only sign of what happened here on Sept. 28 when human rights groups say Guinea's year-old military junta opened fire on an opposition rally, killing 157 ...

Three years ago, Dr Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, examined a comatose 43-year-old Belgian patient, Rom Houben, who for the past 23 years had been assumed by medical professionals to be brain dead. Laureys, who runs a coma study group specializing in such cases, performed sensitive clinical and imaging tests on Houben and made a startling discovery: the former engineering student who suffered a brain injury in a car accident in 1983 was ...

So here's what free speech has come to on campus: "Name the freshman sluts!" an anonymous post demands on the Indiana University page of a multischool gossip site. So-and-so "has herpes!" proclaims an unsigned post on Texas Christian University's page. Among the profundities on the University of Alabama page: "Frats=fags." Horny guys, lowbrow debates and run-of-the-mill spam all seem to be in abundant supply on CollegeACB.com . But what sets this site--and others like it--apart from the coarse ...

Earlier this month, Lieut. Colonel William F. McCullough, commanding officer of the 1-5 U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand province, took part in an exercise in insurgent reintegration. He rose from a dusty couch and extended his hand to one Abdul Khalik, whom his men had detained for the previous three days on suspicion of insurgent activities. "What do you want him to do now," asked McCullough's translator. "Anything he wants," said McCullough, taking Khalik's hand and shaking it, "so ...

Humans have expended a great deal of intellectual energy over the past few thousand years trying to understand the morality of seeking pleasure. Most of philosophy begins with the question of what defines the good life. But what if the answer to what makes us happy comes down to how much of a particular chemical is circulating in our brain at any particular moment? The neurotransmitter dopamine isn't quite that powerful, but evidence has been ...