IMMIGRATION
It's the American Melting Pot, version 2.0. A wide-ranging and provocative new study of immigrants' integration into U.S. society has concluded that newcomers today are assimilating more quickly than their predecessors did 100 years ago -- with Cubans, Vietnamese and Filipinos among those leading the way.
DISASTER IN CHINA
The death toll from a powerful earthquake that toppled buildings, schools and chemical plants climbed to nearly 10,000 in China's worst-hit province Tuesday, while untold numbers remain trapped after the worst quake in three decades.
As the death toll in earthquake-ravaged areas of China soared to nearly 10,000 Monday, members of South Florida's Chinese community reached out to relatives abroad and began talk of preparing aid for the victims.
LEBANON
With the beleaguered Lebanese army looking on, opposition and pro-government militias traded gunfire in northern Lebanon on Monday in a continuation of the fighting that has killed at least 50 people and paralyzed most of Beirut.
THE MIDDLE EAST
President Bush sets off this week to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday, but the festivities are likely to be muted by the dimming prospects for brokering regional peace deals during the Republican administration's waning months in power.
HAITI
Haiti's efforts to install a new leader, following last month's firing of the Caribbean nation's prime minister, suffered a serious setback Monday after lawmakers rejected President René Préval's choice for the job.
A new political crisis engulfed Pakistan Monday after one of the two main parties in the coalition government pulled its ministers out of the cabinet.
When Ali Ateya was killed last month at the age of 23 -- a victim of an American airstrike on a block of concrete tenements in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, according to his family -- there was no money for his burial.
CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas. The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair, and the stumps of her legs where her calves should have been were crusted with dried blood.
SERBIA
Serbians head to the polls Sunday for crucial parliamentary elections, still bitterly divided between nationalist anger and tentative optimism about a European future.
