Features

  PROVIDENCE, R.I. / AP Every submarine in the US fleet was designed with the height, reach and strength of men in mind, from the way valves are placed to how display screens are angled. That’s going to change. With women now serving aboard submarines, defense contractor Electric Boat is designing what will be the first Navy subs built specifically to ...

  CHITUNGWIZA / AP Zimbabwean boys as young as 10 hurry every weekend to a boxing ring whose nickname, Wafa Wafa, in the local Shona language suggests that whoever enters will be lucky to come out alive. No one has died in the ring, let alone suffered serious injury. But the exchanges can be brutal and bleeding is part of the ...

  SARANAC LAKE, NY / AP Sunita Halasz has tips for ‘driving electric’ along lonely roads in New York’s Adirondack Mountains: know the locations of charging stations, bring activities for the kids during three-hour recharges, turn on the energy-hogging window defroster in just 10-second bursts. And have a backup plan. “When we really go anywhere, I have a whole list of ...

  BAGHDAD / AP The Iraqis guarding Baghdad’s many checkpoints, on the lookout for car bombs and convoys, don’t know what to make of Ali Al Moussawi when he pulls up in a truck displaying shelves of glossy books. The mobile bookstore is the latest in a series of efforts by the 25-year-old to share his passion for reading and revive ...

  ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA / AP As usual, it started with a call on a satellite phone from Italian rescue officials in Rome. They were relaying a distress call they’d received from a migrant smuggling ship adrift somewhere off the coast of Libya. On board the Golfo Azurro, Guillermo Canardo was taking notes. “Two boats,” he said. “One hundred people ...

  WASHINGTON / AP How often do students miss school? Are they ready for college? Are they physically fit? Is their school a welcoming place? States are beginning to outline new ways to evaluate their schools, rather than relying just on traditional measures such as test scores. The plans are required under a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds ...

  DEARBORN / AP In her job as a refugee case manager, Fatimah Farooq would come to work in a hijab and speak with her clients in Arabic. Nonetheless, she found herself being asked whether she was Muslim. It’s not easy, Farooq says, navigating her dual identities as black and Muslim. “I’m constantly trying to prove that I belong,” said Farooq, ...

  New York / AP On the island where Lyon Farrell comes from, they cherish the golden sand and hanging 10. In the place where he’d love to land next winter, he’ll need a snowboard, not a surfboard, and will get more mileage out of a backside 1260 than riding waves. Farrell is that rarest of birds — an elite snowboarder ...

  New York / AP Miss Kindergarten is in the million-dollar club. So are Lovin Lit, the Moffatt Girls and about a dozen other teacher-entrepreneurs who are spinning reading, math, science and social studies into gold by selling their lesson plans online to fellow teachers around the world. Despite worries from some educators, such online marketplaces are booming, driven by rising ...

  HARTFORD / AP Rick Maynard found the manila envelope containing letters from the battlefields of World War I while he and his sister were cleaning out the basement after their father’s death. The more than three dozen letters were written, some in pencil, by Paul Maynard, Rick’s great-uncle. “He was on the front lines,” said Rick Maynard, the parks and ...