Eleanor Klibanoff

Americans buy 25 million Christmas trees every year. They're slow-growing crops, but the trees can be a smart investment for small farmers like the Carroll family in Louisa, Va.

Students at several law schools say events in Ferguson and New York have left them too upset to study. Others are more concerned about how the extra study time will affect the grading curve.

Last month, American aid worker Peter Kassig was executed in Syria by the Islamic State militant group. The 26-year-old emergency medical technician had worked in hospitals, clinics and refugee camps throughout the region for more than two years. He was known for treating anyone who needed him, regardless of political ...

Looking for a stylish sweater for the holidays? Forget cashmere. Instead, go for the light-up, dancing Santa.

This season, holiday shoppers are demanding the ugliest, gaudiest, tackiest sweaters out there. They need them for ugly sweater parties, ugly sweater fun runs — even an ugly sweater party cruise.

All that ...

What's your temperature?

That's the question of the hour. The Ebola virus has made taking your temperature part of everyday conversation. People in West Africa are doing it. People returning from the region are doing it. And so are the overly paranoid in the United States.

For anyone who's been ...

You have to go. You know, um, go potty.

You are in a foreign country. And things are certainly looking a bit foreign.

Do you sit or squat? Can you toss toilet paper down the bowl or hole?

Let the signs guide you.

That is, if you can understand them.

...

Last week, 13 women died in India after undergoing sterilization procedures in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, possibly because of tainted pills administered after the surgery. This tragedy has cast a negative light on sterilization.

But in fact, female sterilization is the world's most popular form of family ...

When Rebecca "Mama" Barclay died in the summer of 2011, hundreds gathered for her funeral at a small Baptist church a few miles outside Liberia's capital, Monrovia. Men came in suits, women in black outfits or church robes and children in white to honor the 69-year-old woman, who was a ...

Following on a pledge to use his office's discretionary powers to adjust the U.S. approach to immigration, President Obama reportedly plans to remove the threat of deportation for up to 5 million people who entered the U.S. illegally.

The administration's shift in approach was reported by The New York ...

If you're one of the billions of people who use Facebook and Google on a daily basis, you may have noticed some new messaging coming from the websites themselves. Both companies have launched Ebola relief fundraising campaigns in the past week, calling on their massive user logs (translation for nonsocial-media ...

When Tom Magliozzi, cohost of NPR's Car Talk, died this week from complications of Alzheimer's disease, he left behind a fan base that extended far beyond the United States. Tom and Ray, his younger brother, took calls from and gave advice to people all over the world.

Take, for example, ...

When American nurse Kaci Hickox came home after treating Ebola patients in Liberia, she was quarantined in a tent at Newark Liberty International Airport for three days — even though she showed no signs of illness.

The idea of putting a possibly sick person in quarantine goes back to the ...

"Journalism is my calling, the print media is my struggle and independence is my motto," says 42-year-old Solange Lusiku Nsimire, a Congolese editor and mother of six.

And it's hard to imagine a more difficult place to be a journalist than the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). At least ...

"If someone you know is sick with sudden fever, diarrhea or vomiting, you should call 117 for advice."

"Healthcare workers who take care of Ebola patients have to wear protective clothes do not be afraid of them."

"People with Ebola who go to the health centre early have a better ...

Yesterday, public health officials announced that Ebola had been identified for the first time in both Mali, a country that neighbors Guinea, and New York City. The arrival of the virus in another West African country is a cause for concern. The World Health Organization has sent a team of ...

By now, it's well known that there are a limited number of ways you can contract Ebola: from the blood, sweat, saliva or other bodily fluids of someone who already is ill with the disease.

There are many more ways you can't get Ebola: by meeting someone who has recently ...

What's for dinner on World Food Day?

How about a humble meal of dried termites stirred into a sukuma wiki stew? With a side of sorghum couscous?

World Food Day was invented by the United Nations in 1979 and first celebrated the next year. One goal is to promote ...

Officials in Cleveland are tracking down those who may have come into contact with Amber Joy Vinson, the second Dallas nurse to be diagnosed with Ebola.

Vinson flew on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday while she was running a 99.5 degree fever. Vinson had told ...

There are 165 million children toiling as child laborers around the globe, a number that Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi has dedicated his life to reducing. His organization, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Childhood, works to free children in India from forced servitude and enroll them in school. The ...

Sitting in the empty auditorium, 10 minutes before Yoram Bauman's set begins, I start feeling bad. Low turnout is hard on a stand-up comedian, but what was he expecting for a comedy gig at 6 p.m. on a Monday ... at the Inter-American Development Bank, of all places?

When ...