CHOLUTECA, Honduras -- When Hurricane Mitch tore into this sleepy Pacific coastal province of dairy farms and cane fields in October 1998, its torrential rains and winds swept away an entire way of life -- and opened up unexpected new vistas of change.

NEW YORK -- If your house is flooded during a hurricane, is the damage covered by your homeowners insurance policy? Will it cover a motor scooter stolen from the back yard? Or your son's possessions when he moves into his college dormitory?

In the first presidential debate designed to focus on minority issues, the Democratic contenders aggressively sought to outmuscle one another on the topics of race and poverty and derided yesterday's Supreme Court decision banning most affirmative action in public schools.

Last year, while visiting Houston, I got a look at New Orleans West (NOW), an emergency charter school for 400 Hurricane Katrina evacuee children that Houston officials opened within a few weeks of the tragedy. It was the idea of Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). It...

It's been almost four years since the night Hurricane Isabel washed away North Carolina Highway 12, along with homes, sand dunes, power lines and utility pipes on the Outer Banks. Pounding waves carried away a section of Hatteras Island, leaving behind a 2,000-foot-wide, 15-foot-deep gash in the...

NEW ORLEANS, June 20 -- In this city still half-emptied from one of the worst floods in American history, one question provokes the ever present doubt.

SHELBY, Miss. -- From 2001 to 2005, the federal government spent nearly $1.2 billion in agricultural subsidies to boost farmers' incomes and invigorate local economies in this poverty-stricken region of the Mississippi Delta.

Last June at Wolf Trap, when New Orleans R&B icon Allen Toussaint sang "Yes, We Can Can," the 1970 hit he wrote and produced for Lee Dorsey, it was hard not to think of it as the perfect anthem for a resilient, rebuilding city.