Less than two weeks before the far-reaching mechanisms of Minnesota's government might come to a halt, Jessica Lund's mind is filled with thoughts of snikerdoodles. Lund, 38, has Down syndrome and was helping to bake the cinnamon-sugar cookies with a care worker in a group home on a recent afternoon. Five other adults with developmental disabilities live with Lund in this 2,000 square-foot rambler that looks like any other on a suburban block of Golden Valley ...

Buying a home is more affordable that it has been in decades. But what's even more affordable in a lot of U.S. cities? Renting. The price-rent ratio compares the price of a property with the annual cost of renting. When the figure falls below 17, the monthly cost of a mortgage, taxes and maintenance is less expensive than that of signing a lease. On average, that is now the case in the U.S. But in a number of large cities, ...

It saves people who cannot eat Brown-haired, blue-eyed Jason White looks like any sturdy, active, eight-year-old boy. But Jason is different; he cannot eat a bite of food. Ever since doctors removed his diseased stomach and part of his intestines five years ago, he has been fed almost entirely by vein, and seemed destined to spend his remaining years in hospitals. Now, outfitted with a newly designed life-giving vest, Jason is living at home and thriving. The polyester mesh vest, ...

The little shed behind Joy Whitehouse's modest home is filled with aluminum cans--soda cans, soup cans and vegetable cans--that she collects from neighbors or finds during her periodic expeditions along the roadside. Two times a month, she takes them to a recycler, who pays her as much as $30 for her harvest of castoffs. When your fixed income is $942 a month, an extra $30 here and there makes a big difference. After paying rent, utilities and insurance, Whitehouse is ...

Every morning, on her top-rated MSNBC show Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski interviews the most powerful people in the political and entertainment worlds. But in her blunt new book Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You're Worth, Brzezinski reveals that like many women, she found herself underpaid and underappreciated in her job. As recently as three years ago, her male co-host, Joe Scarborough, was making 14 times as much as she was. TIME ...

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 ...

From Arizona to Amsterdam, immigration remains one of the most contentious and divisive debates for Americans and Europeans alike. It is also, it seems, a debate fueled by large-scale misconceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. A new survey released Thursday has found that Americans and Europeans both tend to greatly overestimate the immigrant population in their home countries — but, when armed with accurate population figures, they hold significantly more lenient views towards migrants. In the U.S., for instance, the ...

When Melissa Rothrock, 33, decided in the spring of 2009 that she wanted to become the first in her family to go to college, she knew a traditional program was out of the question. The mother of four children--one of them just an infant--couldn't afford a babysitter, and her husband was on the road for days at a time as a truck driver. An online ad targeting stay-at-home moms got her thinking about distance learning. She filled out her information, ...

Time and again during the 18 harrowing years she allegedly spent in captivity, Jaycee Lee Dugard must have had the chance to cry for help. She assisted her alleged abductor, Phillip Garrido, with his home business, sorting out orders by phone or e-mail. She occasionally greeted customers alone at the door. She even went out in public. But she apparently never made a run for it, returning each day instead to a shed in the backyard of ...

As their due date creeps closer, many pregnant women pack a go bag for the hospital: toothbrush, iPod, cute bringing-baby-home outfit. But in recent months, savvy mothers-to-be have started tucking in one more important item: a kit to collect and donate the blood in their babies' umbilical cord. Cord blood is a noncontroversial source of stem cells, yet experts estimate that 99% of this potentially lifesaving resource gets thrown away postpartum. Unlike the stem cells in human embryos, which can ...