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While the rest of America frets over an unemployment rate of 6 percent, unemployment on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Lakota Nation, is estimated to be between 60 percent and 80 percent. A century and a half of mistreatment and neglect by the federal government has left Pine Ridge and other Lakota reservations with staggering rates of poverty, homelessness, alcoholism, diabetes, teenage pregnancy, murder, suicide and infant mortality. Some Lakota tell Terje Langeland that their tribes need to wean themselves off government assistance, through education and the formation of small businesses. "We're more or less sitting here expecting handouts," says Homer Whirlwind Soldier, an elder from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. "We need to teach our kids to be self-sufficient."

With 1.6 million customers, 400 branch offices and 7,500 employees nationwide, Orkin is the most recognized name in the pest-control industry. But an Orlando Weekly investigation of Orkin's business practices reveals forged documents, faked pest-control treatments and shoddy workmanship and "portrays a company focused on maximizing profits, even when that means cutting corners," writes Jeffrey C. Billman.

During the height of the anthrax scare two years ago, Cipro was widely seen as a silver bullet against the fatal illness, and Bayer Pharmaceutical vowed to keep the nation armed. Now a class action lawsuit against Bayer claims the antibiotic left many users with a variety of debilitating ailments, including severe joint pain, tendinitis and muscle ache, severe anxiety and panic attacks, insomnia and depression. Although those claims are open to dispute, Patrick Rucker reports that the decision to widely use Cipro against the anthrax attacks “now seems to have been hasty and made without a full appreciation of the consequences.”