In 1985, David M. Kennedy visited Nickerson Gardens, a public housing complex in south-central Los Angeles. It was the beginning of the crack epidemic, and Nickerson Gardens was located in what was then one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

"It was like watching time-lapse photography of the end of the world," he says. "There were drug crews on the corner, there were crack monsters and heroin addicts wandering around. ... It was fantastically, almost-impossibly-to-take-in awful."

By Howard Fischer

Phoenix, AZ – Brewer went to the White House last year, after she signed SB 1070, touted as the toughest law in the nation aimed at illegal immigrants, but before the Obama administration went to court to block it. The governor painted this picture of the meeting after she came out.

(We just completed our meeting this afternoon. It was a very cordial discussion of what's taking place in Arizona and dealing with the security of our border and illegal immigration into the state of Arizona and into America.)

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's mother, 92-year-old Dorothy Howell Rodham, has died.

The Clinton Foundation just sent this statement to the news media:

In the early days of high fidelity, which I remember from childhood, the idea was that it was "almost like being there" when you listened to a record, something the old recordings never really delivered. The five CDs and six-plus hours of The SMiLE Sessions are certainly almost like being there, in the studio with the studio musicians — and, occasionally, The Beach Boys themselves — and Brian Wilson, as he tried to realize something he heard in his head.

The early reports are that everyone's OK after LOT Airlines flight 16 from Newark, N.J., to Warsaw, Poland, had to land on its belly today because of problems with the landing gear. According to CNN, Polish TV says there were 230 people on board the Boeing 767.

Local TV cameras were rolling as the plane came in.

As a million or two customers in towns and cities across much of New England begin another day without power since Saturday's "historic October snowstorm," frustration is growing, The Hartford Courant reports.

"The state's largest utility said Monday that it was stepping up its efforts to restore electricity to more than 700,000 customers still without power as of Monday evening," the Courant says.

Artist Ai Weiwei, who earlier this year was jailed by Chinese authorities for nearly three months, said today that the government there has sent him a $2.4 million tax bill.

"His supporters," the BBC says, say the bill and accusations that he owes back taxes "are part of a plot to silence Mr. Ai, who is an outspoken critic of the government."

People who visit their primary care doctors for routine care often find themselves poked, prodded and advised in all kinds of unnecessary and unhelpful ways.

Add it all up, and the cost of the dubious tests and medical interventions runs to about $6.8 billion a year. The annual checkup, an American medical tradition, is a prime offender.