The first concern for Fort Worth's parents is the health of their children. Four hundred miles from the Mexican border, the threat of swine flu — now known as H1N1 virus — has been serious enough to cause citywide school and daycare shutdowns. So far the number of suspected and diagnosed cases of H1NI in Fort Worth hovers in the teens, but with schools closed until at least May 11, parents must now battle a different disease: cabin fever. ...

On a typical weekend afternoon, Beijing's Silk Street Market buzzes with the sound of tens of thousands of tourists haggling over antiques, jewelry and knock-off Gucci handbags. Rickshaw drivers normally scoop up these marketgoers, pedal them to their hotels and return with pockets full of foreign currency — a lucrative cycle drivers can repeat dozens of times a day. In recent months, though, the Silk Street Market's once reliable bustle has thinned dramatically. "I haven't seen a single tour bus ...

Suspected Maoist rebels in eastern India "stopped" a train Wednesday, but the number of passengers aboard was not immediately clear.

The automobile business is great. Just ask someone who's in it. "People want to buy cars," says Rod Buscher, CEO of Summit Automotive Partners in Denver, which owns 30 assorted dealerships nationwide. And he really wants to sell cars. The problem is that would-be buyers lack either the income or the access to credit that would allow them to drive a new Malibu or Lincoln or Camry off the lot. That won't last forever; in fact, the automobile business figures ...

The Obama administration's initiative to deploy additional federal resources in the fight against rising drug-related violence along the Mexican border was criticized as insufficient in a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. The administration's plan to send hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the border "represents a significant step forward" but is not enough, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, said. Mexican drug cartels, believed to be operating in more than 230 American cities "from Appalachia to Alaska," represent a ...

Suraj Suroj uses his motorcycle for all of his family's transportation needs. In his case, that means transporting himself, his wife and his two sons to and from work and school. Typically, all four of them squeeze onto the motorbike together on the crowded streets of Delhi, India. "We need more space," Suroj says with one of his sons sitting in front of him and the other clinging to his back. "We can only travel about 20 kilometers or 25 ...

If you're one of the dwindling ranks of the still-employed, you know you're among a fortunate bunch. In this market, a job is about the only asset that still has value. So, if your livelihood were threatened, how far would you go to hang onto it? Would you lie to your colleagues? Would you flirt with your boss? Those were some of the questions posed to 1,200 American workers in a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive from Feb. 25 ...

Nadya Suleman, the California woman who gave birth to octuplets in January, says she's buying a house of her own, despite news reports otherwise. "I earned it. ... No, my father did not purchase this house for me. I did it on my own," Suleman told Radar magazine's Web site during a video tour of the home. "It's 1,000-square-footage bigger than the old house," she said as she showed the 2,583-square-foot house in a cul-de-sac with manicured lawns in La ...

AlixPartners, a turnaround firm, said at the beginning of the year that 10% to 26% of retailers were in financial distress and were in danger of filing for Chapter 11. It is worth considering how the researchers came up with that number, given that there are tens of thousands of retailers and hundreds of thousands of stores in America. Why wasn't the number 9% or 27%? The answer is that the forecast is virtually useless, something like counting the number ...

Nathan Chan is the ideal worker for the new green economy. He graduated last year from the California Institute of Technology with a double degree in environmental engineering and English literature. From there he went to Columbia University, where he's finishing up a master's in public administration with a focus on the environment. Chan, 23, has interned for the Audubon Society, calculating the venerable nonprofit's carbon footprint, and he's probably forgotten more math and science than the average environmentalist ever ...