As states have closed down mental hospitals, they've struggled to find housing for the mentally ill. In Florida, assisted-living facilities have become the de facto solution.

It takes just a high school diploma and 26 hours of training to run one of Florida's mental health assisted-living facilities — that's lower than the state requirements for becoming a beautician, a barber or even an auctioneer.

Children taking stimulant drugs like Ritalin for ADHD aren't at greater risk of having a heart attack or other serious cardiovascular problems, according to new research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

But critics of the widespread use of prescription amphetamines to treat the symptoms of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder — 2.7 million children are taking the drugs — say this latest study still doesn't give ADHD drugs a clean bill of health.

In 1985, David M. Kennedy visited Nickerson Gardens, a public housing complex in south-central Los Angeles. It was the beginning of the crack epidemic, and Nickerson Gardens was located in what was then one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

"It was like watching time-lapse photography of the end of the world," he says. "There were drug crews on the corner, there were crack monsters and heroin addicts wandering around. ... It was fantastically, almost-impossibly-to-take-in awful."

WYSO staff, volunteers and listeners had a wonderful time at our annual Silent Auction, February 11th at the new Hollenbeck Bayley Creative Arts and Conference Center in Springfield. 

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's mother, 92-year-old Dorothy Howell Rodham, has died.

The Clinton Foundation just sent this statement to the news media:

In the early days of high fidelity, which I remember from childhood, the idea was that it was "almost like being there" when you listened to a record, something the old recordings never really delivered. The five CDs and six-plus hours of The SMiLE Sessions are certainly almost like being there, in the studio with the studio musicians — and, occasionally, The Beach Boys themselves — and Brian Wilson, as he tried to realize something he heard in his head.

The early reports are that everyone's OK after LOT Airlines flight 16 from Newark, N.J., to Warsaw, Poland, had to land on its belly today because of problems with the landing gear. According to CNN, Polish TV says there were 230 people on board the Boeing 767.

Local TV cameras were rolling as the plane came in.

As a million or two customers in towns and cities across much of New England begin another day without power since Saturday's "historic October snowstorm," frustration is growing, The Hartford Courant reports.

"The state's largest utility said Monday that it was stepping up its efforts to restore electricity to more than 700,000 customers still without power as of Monday evening," the Courant says.

Artist Ai Weiwei, who earlier this year was jailed by Chinese authorities for nearly three months, said today that the government there has sent him a $2.4 million tax bill.

"His supporters," the BBC says, say the bill and accusations that he owes back taxes "are part of a plot to silence Mr. Ai, who is an outspoken critic of the government."