Sam Dolnick New York Times

• Hurricane Irene: Recovery slower in New York suburbs

  Tropical Storm Irene swept through the desolate streets of New York on Sunday, flooding low-lying areas and leaving millions of homes without power along the Eastern Seaboard as it continued on to New England. Most New Yorkers emerged from their makeshift bunkers to find little of the widespread devastation the authorities had feared. But the after...

• Hindus find a Ganges in Queens

  It was just after dawn last Sunday when a pair of pilgrims lighted incense on the shore and dropped two coconuts into the sacred waters, otherwise known as Jamaica Bay. The shells bobbed in the surf, not far from clay bowls, rotting limes and waterlogged rags that had washed back ashore, flotsam from previous Hindu ceremonies to mark festivals, bir...

• Talk radio hosts reject blame in shooting

  During Tucson's first rush hour since a weekend shooting left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, talk radio hosts pushed back against arguments that their heated political rhetoric had played a role in the tragedy.Phone calls poured in to stations across the dial to denounce Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pi...

• Tortured with cigarettes, blades for being gay

  After he had been punched, kicked and stripped of his clothes and jewelry, the 17-year-old man was given a choice: the bat or the pipe.

• Visiting Ground Zero, asking Allah for comfort

  Nearly every year since September 11, Hadidjatou Karamoko Traoré has made sure that her three children were dressed in their best clothes, and taken them from their tidy brick home in the Bronx to the pit where the World Trade Center stood, and where her husband, their father, worked and died. After the attacks, all that was found of Abdoul-Karim ...