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The Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020 if nothing is done to alleviate the situation there, a recent U.N. report found. By almost every indicator, Palestinians in Gaza today are worse off than they were in the 1990s — squeezed by a high birthrate, dwindling resources and trade and travel restrictions.

McDonald's already offers menu items that cater to local tastes in India. But this month, the fast-food chain said it was going a step further by announcing a plan to open its first vegetarian-only restaurants in the country.

The automaker, a symbol of Italy's industrial revolution and the country's biggest employer, had threatened to shut down its operations. It's part of a wider problem: A decade of globalization and three years of the euro crisis have accelerated Italy's industrial decay.

More women are running for Congress than ever before. This year may be the product of a unique political climate, but is a broader change on the way?

A little-known, but longtime nuclear standoff ended this week when U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted a 26-year-old ban that kept New Zealand naval ships from docking at U.S. bases. The ban stems from New Zealand's nuclear-free policy that forbids U.S. nuclear ships into its ports.

Drug- and gang-related shootouts have killed 20 people so far this year in France's second largest city. The crime wave has prompted one Marseille politician to call for the army to be sent in. The city's isolated housing projects breed despair and are home to a parallel economy based on drugs.

Roosevelt, N.J., born in the economic tumult of the 1930s, was designed to be a utopia: Bauhaus-style ranch homes built around the communal industry and agriculture. It was one of 99 cities the federal government built. On the town's 75th birthday, the results of that experiment are mixed.

Emma Straub's novel, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, centers on small-town girl Elsa Emerson's transition into movie star Laura Lamont. Straub says her main character came to her while she was reading an obituary of real-life actress Jennifer Jones. "I was just struck by her life," Straub says.

Everything in this year's presidential election is supersized, except for the number of swing states in play. That's forcing a bigger pot of money to be pumped into a smaller pool of states. "There is such focus on relatively few markets that the levels of advertising we're seeing are really uncharted waters," one media analyst says.

Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Zynga are on a shopping spree. They're buying small startups with innovative products and apps. But many times the buyers don't care about what the small companies were producing. They just want the engineers.