Michael Dudley

<p>A jury has awarded a poor rural Ohio neighborhood populated mostly by African Americans nearly $11 million, having determined that racist motives lay behind the water authority's decades-long refusal to supply water to the community.</p>

<p>With their share prices dropping and prospects for fresh capitalization remote, there are growing concerns that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be heading for failure, and with it grave repercussions for the entire U.S. economy.</p>

<p>For the New Statesman's Andrew Stephen, last month's power failure in Washington D.C. exemplified the deterioration of America's infrastructure, which he likens to conditions he found in the dying days of the Soviet Union.</p>

<p>The Guardian U.K. observes that the end of cheap oil is changing driving habits, boosting public transit use and encouraging localization. In short, they are making America a bigger place.</p>

<p>Americans have been storing a staggering amount of personal belongings in self-storage units. But along with the foreclosure crisis, storage companies are now seeing people foreclose on their lockers.</p>