Congress left Washington for its August recess without taking action on a farm bill that is set to expire next month. This failure offers an opportunity to take a long look at our policies on food and hunger.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has murdered United Nations health workers attempting to administer the polio vaccine in rural villages and has convinced villagers that the vaccine is a Western plot to infect Afghan children.

Paul Bailey, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is gravely ill. Until last week, he wondered how his wife would be able to stay in their New Hampshire home after he dies of cancer.

As if there were not enough going on around the Mediterranean already, Gibraltar has raised its head again. The latest round of cross-border tension appears to have started in a row last year over fishing rights, when Spanish fishermen were expelled from Gibraltar’s waters for using large nets. Gibraltar’s answer to Spanish dragnet fishing was to dump blocks of concrete into the sea to create an artificial reef.

The link between a college education and success in adult life is much discussed and much documented.

Is there a constituency for governing among House Republicans? That’s what Speaker John Boehner needs to find out during the August recess.

Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez has broken a raft of records over his 20 years in professional baseball. He batted in at least 100 runs in 14 seasons; his 10-year, $275 million contract was the largest ever in baseball; and, as of Monday, he has been given the most severe punishment ever for using performance-enhancing drugs, a 211-game suspension that, if upheld, will keep him off the field through all of next season. Twelve other players accepted 50-game suspensions, which will allow them to be eligible to play in this season’s playoffs.

One can only hope that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc. and the new owner of The Washington Post, doesn’t mean it when he says he won’t be involved in the Post’s day-to-day operations. This is precisely where fresh thinking is needed in the newspaper business.

It’s been one month since a runaway Maine oil tanker train en route to New Brunswick derailed and exploded in a small Quebec town, costing nearly 50 people their lives.