New wristwatches quietly vibrate to tell you of new text messages, phone calls, tweets, and emails. You can check a snippet of text, or check the weather.

Cities across the country are remaking parts of their core into districts aiming for a lively nightlife, but they often end with something that has all the charm of a mall meeting Disney's Epcot Center. A few cities have had success, though, with non-prescriptive, less-regulated approaches.

Along with cats, toxic byproducts of farming and industry, and clearing of forests, there is a less recognized factor in the massive disappearance of birds. The relentless spread of deer populations has been bad for birds in the East, because the deer are eating every bit of available vegetation.

Chinese authorities suddenly let Chen Guangcheng leave a hospital and fly to New York City, where he was greeted with cheers as he arrived at a Greenwich Village apartment that will be the home for him and his family.

The readers are also kinder to authors' first books, according the Harvard Business School study. This is true in the aggregate, since customer reviews vary wildly and are often "gamed" by publishers.