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West Coast

Growing high tides have turned this photo — taken from Pompano Beach, Florida, after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — into a regular occurrence along the U.S. coastlines.

New report forecasts a troubling picture of rising tides, frequent flooding on coasts

Climate Change

Some Americans think major flooding will not affect the country until decades from now. A recent report says major implications may be arriving much sooner.

Jonathan Erland says the VFX crew working on "Star Wars" didn't just create the things you saw on screen. They had to build from scratch the equipment that made those visual effects.

The visual effects pioneer responsible for the original ‘Star Wars’ thinks movies today may rely too much on effects

Arts
A 1923 Ku Klux Klan parade in Albany is pictured

In the shadow of a racist past, Portland still struggles to be welcoming to all its residents

Conflict
students

US law students, driven by their own family stories, are helping asylum-seekers

Justice
Homeless

In California, where homelessness has risen, cities are looking for long-term solutions

Economics
Farm book

What’s it like to be a migrant farmworker? One anthropologist lived and worked alongside them.

Books

“I’ll never feel the same about berries,” says Seth Holmes. In “Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies,” he describes the bone-crushing work that he and Mexican migrant workers did to put fruit and vegetables on your table.

Vegetables at a Whole Foods Market in La Jolla, California. Much of its produce comes from the state’s Central Valley, where it's picked by migrant farmworkers.

How the produce aisle looks to a migrant farmworker

Business

How does picking the tomato compare to the onion? And what about strawberries? One Mexican American migrant farmworker who lives in California’s Central Valley took us to the produce aisle to tell us what he sees when he’s at the supermarket.

Vietnamese immigrants pray to a small shrine erected five years ago. The area was once littered, covered in graffiti, and a frequent stop for the city's public works department. But after one neighborhood resident placed the statue on the corner, local Vi

Can you name the West Coast city where a Buddhist shrine turned a neighborhood around?

Geo Quiz

In the American city we want you to name, a Buddha statue purchased at a hardware store managed to turn an eyesore of a street corner into a shrine and gathering place.

Blue whales are the largest creatures that have ever lived. They were hunted to near extinction in the 20th century and have only recovered since to perhaps 10% of their pre-whaling numbers, but new research has found that the Northeastern Pacific populat

Here’s the green success story of the California blue whale

Environment

A new study of blue whales in the eastern Pacific has found that the population of the behemoths there has bounced back to near pre-whaling levels. But other populations of blues elsewhere are not doing nearly as well.

Pete Knutson and his son Dylan sell local Pacific salmon at outdoor markets around the Seattle area. The sign on their stall at a recent market in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood reads, “In response to multiple customer inquiries regarding the Fukushima i

Worried about radioactive ‘Fukushima’ fish in the US? Don’t be, scientists say

Environment

Nearly three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, many consumers in the US remain concerned about radiation in fish from the Pacific Ocean. One Seattle fisherman finally got his fish tested, and found what many scientists have also found: there’s nothing to worry about.