This week, Linda Garibay's monthly welfare check will drop by $43. The unemployed mother of two will struggle to afford clothes, soap and shampoo. She'll be squeezing by on an income of $490 per month, all of which comes from welfare, and spending it all on shared rent for her sister's apartment and diapers and clothes for her kids. She's trying to find a job, but says she's had no success since a clothing store fired her ...

When Marcia Rasmussen set out for a spring run on the trails of Sequoia National Park last week, it felt like just another season of backcountry training. But it hadn't been just another winter. All of a sudden, the snow underneath her trail collapsed and she fell into an icy creek that swept her downstream. Trapped in a snow tunnel for three hours, she almost died of hypothermia before she was rescued. "It's a very different situation ...

A blanket of water hides the devastation underneath it. Miles and miles of villages, small cities, and farmland are spoiled by standing flood water. First the waters raged for days, then they seemed to pull back almost as fast as they came but the damage had been done with such fury that more than 1.5 million were left homeless. "Everything was drowned," flood victim Mohammed Farooq Basha said. "The water came to the second floor we called for help. No ...