Powerful aftershocks jolted this crumbling city on Tuesday, hampering rescue efforts and toppling already fragile buildings, including the cupola of L

Infant mortality has been declining slightly in the United States. But 28,000 children under the age of 1 still die every year.

Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood, one that strikes the poor disproportionately. Up to one-third of children living in inner-city public housing have allergic asthma, in which a specific allergen sets off a cascade of events that cause characteristic inflammation, airway constriction and wheezing.

As the recession grinds on, more and more of the nation

Once the world

THE wolves came at night, crazed by the scent of lost sheep without shepherds and bodies buried beneath the rubble. In the early hours of Jan. 13, 1915, an earthquake had rocked the rugged Abruzzo region of Italy. In Pescina, birthplace of the writer Ignazio Silone, 3,500 of the town

At twilight on Monday, seven wooden coffins lay on the ground under a gnarled tree in Onna, a tiny village eight miles from here. A woman was slumped in grief over one, while people comforted her. After a few moments, five men strained to lift four coffins into a funeral van.

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.

Among the audacious proposals in President Obama

With 663,000 more jobs disappearing from the American economy last month, swelling the total number of jobs surrendered to the recession beyond five million, the government