There is a slight knocking noise on the phone line, not nearly the worst interference I've heard on a phone call to Mexico, but Kevin Huckabee apologizes anyway. "Sorry about the noise in here," he says in the same low Texan half-mumble I remember from our first meeting in Jurez two months ago. "Some guy is banging on his cell wall, I don't know why." Huckabee, 47, is talking to me from a phone inside Cereso prison on ...

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Monde. Pride is visible in the windows at the Souk Al Waqif. The shop fronts in this touristy area are covered with posters of the Emir of Qatar and his son raising the World Cup in triumph. Plaster replicas of the golden sculpture can be bought at the souvenir ...

You're an architect who comes from a family of builders. Those two professions don't always get along. Did having a foot in both camps help you? My father told me, "Why ever would you want to be an architect? You can be a builder!" A builder is like a little god, somebody who does things, doesn't just draw things. Since then, I've never betrayed the idea that architecture starts with construction. Architecture is the art of making good, solid, safe ...

During the real estate boom, new home construction became a game of ever increasing square-footage. That had a certain logic to it: If you saw your house as an investment to make you rich, bigger could only mean better, right? Now that the economy has unfurled and people are realizing that prices don't always go up, houses are getting smaller — and more practical. Instead of feeding the desire for flash, architects and homebuilders are responding ...

When America's Catholic bishops gather next week in Baltimore for a four-day conference, they will hear an update on the Catholic Church's ongoing fight to convince the country that marriage as an institution should never include gay couples, and they'll get a sneak peek at how that fight will be waged in the coming year. Videos aimed at priests and deacons are being produced in English and Spanish to give the pastors better tools to reach their ...

How close did Gary Faulkner, the shaggy Colorado construction worker arrested in Pakistan on Sunday, come to tracking down his prey, Osama bin Laden in the mountains along the Afghan border? Very close, according to his brother, Scott, a physician in Fort Morgan, Col. Scott says that during his last two visits to Pakistan, wanna-be bounty hunter Faulkner had located a cave on an 18,000 ft mountain where he saw "a bearded man in a white robe ...

One of the most ambitious efforts to transform city skylines around the globe is nearly invisible. That's because the changes, aimed at drastically reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions in tall buildings, are happening in places most people never venture--in subterranean boiler rooms, behind radiators, under desks and inside the massive walls of office towers built decades ago. Skyscrapers look modern, but they are among the worst culprits in urban areas when it comes to energy consumption and carbon emission, ...

For most Americans, a job is a social undertaking. On assembly lines and at construction sites, in offices and around operating tables, many hands make light work. Yet a team of psychologists has found that people may work harder when alone. In groups, the researchers say, Americans become "social loafers."The team tested a group of Ohio State University students swimming laps, while others were making noise clapping and shouting. Each noisemaker let his output drop by half when he switched from solitude to a group of four. ...

The railroad station in the Angolan town of Dondo hasn't seen a train in years. Its windows are boarded up, its pale pink faade crumbling away; the local coffee trade that Portuguese colonialists founded long ago is a distant memory, victim of a civil war that lasted for 27 years. Dondo's fortunes, however, may be looking up. This month, work is scheduled to start on the local section of the line that links the town to the deep harbor at ...

Sunday's presidential run-off in Haiti had been billed as the most important in the country's history. It came 14 months after the earthquake that devastated the capital Port-au-Prince, with international donors hesitating to fund crucial construction projects under the lame duck presidency of Ren Prval. The long run-up has had its share of drama: the return of two former rulers of the country, archenemies Franois "Baby Doc" Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide; a cholera outbreak; the disqualification of ...