In Los Angeles, the Police Department buys a 40-foot refrigerated trailer truck every six months just to hold DNA evidence.

Cities vary widely in the use of DNA testing.

Many police departments still use DNA evidence the way they have used fingerprints and tire tracks: to determine whether a suspect committed the crime.

'John Doe' is typically used in a warrant when the accused is known by an alias or by a physical description.

Subprime lending is growing faster in black areas than in white areas.

Community groups contend that door-to-door loan sales are often followed by foreclosures.

Groups that work in black neighborhoods around the country have contended that much of subprime lending is 'predatory lending.'

Nine of 10 whites in Chicago borrow from top-drawer banks and mortgage companies, which the industry calls prime lenders. They lend to people with A credit ratings, making loans at competitive rates.

About 100 firefighters a year die in the line of duty in the U.S. Heart attacks on the job and vehicle accidents on the way to the fires account for about half. The other half are traumatic deaths while fighting fires.

A foundation representing firefighters who die in the line of duty is calling for Congress to strip the Centers for Disease Control of its role investigating firefighter deaths.

New York state ethics rules prohibit lawyers from soliciting gifts from clients 'for the benefit of the lawyer or a person related to the lawyer.'

The Adversity Index was created by msnbc.com and Moody's Analytics to track the economic fortunes of states and metro areas. Each month, the Adversity Index uses government data on employment, industrial production, housing starts and home prices to label each area as expanding, at risk of recession, in recession or recovering.

There is no accurate or useful 'profile' of students who engage in targeted school violence. Some come from good homes, some from bad. Some have good grades, some bad.

After every massacre in a school, Americans grasp at quick cures. 'Let's install metal detectors and give guns to teachers' Let's crack down on troublemakers, weeding out kids who fit the profile of a gunman. Let's buy bulletproof whiteboards for the students to scurry behind, or train kids to throw erasers or cans of soup at an attacker.'

Even with good maps, there's no guarantee that the public will get the word about landslide hazards, or that state and local governments will take action to discourage or prevent building in dangerous areas.

History is the best guide to the future.

The scientific effort to inform the public about landslide risks often runs head-on into powerful economic interests.

The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year - far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Huguette Clark has had her own tax liens - four times, the IRS has filed to collect taxes from her.

William Andrews Clark was caught in a bribery scandal during a campaign for the U.S. Senate - he was said to describe the Montana legislators this way: 'I never bought a man who wasn't for sale.'

Federal regulations forbid delaying inspections for fracture-critical bridges like the fallen Minneapolis bridge - the kind with a lack of redundancy in design, so that a single failure in a load-bearing part can cause the entire bridge to collapse.

Federal agencies that own bridges have some of the worst records for on-time inspections. Nearly 3,000 bridges owned by U.S. government agencies went more than two years between checkups.

The Federal Highway Administration has allowed states to take advantage of a loophole in federal regulations, delaying bridge inspections to every four years instead of the two years normally required.

It's hard to say whether the general incidence of school violence of all types is increasing or not.