The streets are safer in Baghdad than in Caracas, Venezuela, where the soaring homicide toll is a blemish on the revolutionary government that promised reform. (NYT)

Damon Conrow, 26, believes that the only way to rescue himself from a debilitating drug habit is to spend more time in state prison. (Standard-Examiner)

A two-year investigative project uncovers huge, covert national security buildups in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks, hidden from public scrutiny. (WP)

Run almost entirely by ex-cons, a D.C. outreach organization works to help gang members and at-risk youth.

A serious drug epidemic sweeps across Northern Virginia, where upper-middle-class adolescents are getting hooked, overdosing and dying.

Following the devastating earthquake, many Haitian women and girls now face a new kind of terror. (Time)

A comprehensive 25th-anniversary look back at a devastating day in Philadelphia's history, when police bombed a row house. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

California parents demand to know what environmental factors are causing the high number of birth defects in their community. (LAT)

Homeowners like Vicki Valentine are getting evicted, not because of unpaid mortgages, but because of small debts owed to local tax collectors. (Huffington Post)

Twenty years after providing blood samples for diabetes research, the Havasupai tribe got them back -- after charges of medical fraud and a prolonged lawsuit. (NYT)