Quality Of Life

Breast cancer survival rates have improved in recent years, and women have more treatment choices, including -- in cases of early-stage cancer -- the opportunity to forgo chemotherapy. A new study shows, however, that women who undergo chemotherapy experience more symptoms in the year after surgery. Researchers led by Dr. Patricia A. Ganz of UCLA, found that women who have chemotherapy can have symptoms that persist for even a year. These include vaginal symptoms, musculoskeletal pain and weight problems.

By Chris Kraul Weather-beaten rancher Leonardo Bautista brings to mind the character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel who waited years in vain for a pension. Only Bautista is waiting for a new road, or any other benefit to filter down to those who live at ground zero of Colombia's oil boom. Every day, 150 crude-laden semitrailer trucks grind over his town's dirt road, raising dust and spewing oil. Bautista and his neighbors want a paved road to mitigate the noise and environmental damage, and to leave room for other vehicles, which often get muscled off course as the lumbering tankers swerve to avoid potholes.

The young man with the books slips past bullets and smoke, hurries beyond the looters to make it home before dark to study and hide until daybreak, when the newly dead lie scattered amid casings and mortar dust on the streets of Mogadishu. Omar Nor follows a dangerous map toward a better life, but sometimes he despairs that war is all he'll ever know. Since his childhood it has thumped in his chest and claimed his friends, like in December, when a suicide bomber sneaked into a graduation ceremony and spattered his suit and tie with the blood of classmates.

Teddy Pendergrass, the soul singer who combined hyper-romantic love songs with a virile, sexy stage presence to become the quintessential R&B boudoir crooner before a 1982 car accident left him paralyzed, died Wednesday in his native Philadelphia. He was 59. Pendergrass, best known for the sandpaper voice behind the 1972 hit "If You Don't Know Me By Now" while he was with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, had undergone colon cancer surgery last year and had been in declining health ever since, his son, Teddy Pendergrass II, said in a statement.

The Obama administration has outlined a three-pronged strategy in Afghanistan, focusing on security, governance and economic development. But the implementation of those elements has been woefully lopsided. Since 2002, 93% of the $170 billion the United States has committed to Afghanistan has gone to military operations. As the country prepares to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we also need to focus on providing a surge in the quality of life for the Afghan people. U.S. Agency for International Development workers are tremendously dedicated, but there are not nearly enough of them, which means the agency is heavily dependent on private contractors.

On the wall across from Tucker Johnson's easy chair is a three-paneled drawing he believes was an early clue to his son's mental illness, an exacting sketch of the Pillsbury Doughboy, first intact, then split in two, then unrecognizable. Parks, as his family calls him, was a senior at Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego when he drew it. When his father asked him what it meant, he said, "That's how I feel." Tucker Parks Johnson Jr. was 24 when doctors diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, a condition marked by wild mood swings.

Latinos believe education and hard work are key to a successful future, but they are more likely than other young people to drop out of school and live in poverty, according to a new Pew Hispanic Center study being released today. The study, based on a survey of more than 1,200 Latinos ages 16 to 25 and an analysis of census data, presents a portrait of the assimilation of a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, one that will have a significant effect on the nation's politics and economics in coming years.

It's been a busy summer at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The joint task force in charge of the 226 remaining detainees is spending about $440,000 to expand the recreation yards at Camp 6. At nearby Camp 4, which offers communal living for the most "compliant" captives, the soccer yard is being enlarged. At Camp 5, a maximum-security facility, a $73,000 classroom is under construction. In March, the task force added art classes to the thrice-weekly instruction it offers in Arabic, Pashtu and English, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

One is the face of despair; the other, of hope. Zeinab, 22, believed only death could provide an escape from her husband's merciless beatings. So she set herself on fire, leaving one-third of her body covered with oozing, blistering burns. She faces a lifetime of disfigurement and the likely loss of her two children unless she returns to her abusive marriage. Twelve-year-old Nazira's classroom is a sweltering tent, and her desk is a plastic mat on the ground. But her teachers say she is one of their brightest pupils, encouraged by a mother and father who want her to get as much education as she can. Her eyes sparkle when she describes her ambition: to become a doctor.

As the Clinton White House discovered to its grief more than a decade ago, and the Obama White House is learning, no minefield of American politics is as uncharted and explosive as healthcare reform. And no piece of healthcare reform is as explosive as the issue of cost control. Consider the conniption being thrown by Republican senators and other conservatives over a $1.1-billion provision in the stimulus package to fund "comparative effectiveness research."