Few people understand the criminal justice system like Wendell Poole. He spent 21 years, four months, 16 days and three hours in prison for assault with the intent to kill two people during an argument. He arrived home middle-aged and paranoid, flinching at the sound of passing cars. He needed a job, a place to [...]

When the women in a San Francisco mother’s group called the Pace Mamas read about Tahira Ramzhan, a 25-year-old mother of four struggling to raise her family in Kabul, Afghanistan, they immediately wanted to help.
“We wanted to connect with her, to send her a message that a group of women in the United States cared [...]

Less than a minute after I arrived alone, on Amtrak from Manhattan, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. My ex-girlfriend, who was being as gracious as she could be after enduring a couple of years of cancer and four (partly successful) combinations of chemotherapy, was lighting a candle.
Or trying to. And it became [...]

What do you do when the system says you are innocent but won’t let you get on with your life?
David Lemus and Olmedo Hidalgo were released from prison in 2005 after having served 14 years for a murder that a New York judge found they had been wrongly convicted of.
No one disputes that Hidalgo is [...]

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer.
Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”
“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it,” said Mark Bedau, chief operating [...]