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This week on the Reading Life: Susan talks with Minrose Gwin, whose most recent novel is “The Accidentals.” We’ll also hear from Kate Lacour, whose odd and beautiful new art book is “Vivisectionary: A Convocation of Biological Art.”

Approximately 10,000 people were left homeless in Bangladesh's capital city, Dhaka, after a fire burned through hundreds of shanties in a slum on Friday night.

Many residents, most of whom are low-wage garment-factory workers, were celebrating the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha and were not home when the fire broke out. While some people sustained injuries, no deaths have been reported, according to the BBC.

Britain would face gridlock at ports; shortages of medicine, fuel and food; and a hard border with Ireland if it left the European Union with no deal, according to a leaked government document.

The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world.

On rare occasions, Dad and I would get together for lunch. It was 2014, and I had just started a job at NPR. Dad was retired and lived 60 miles away.

From what I remember, we ate dim sum, which meant driving through the heart of downtown Los Angeles, the massive skyscrapers glistening in the afternoon sun.

It was quiet in the car. I was thinking about how Mom and Dad used to make this commute to LA every day for work. Two hours in the morning, two hours at night.

Dad interrupted my thoughts, pointing to a building on the side of the freeway.

For more than 30 minutes on a frigid February morning, Robert Findley lay unconscious in the back of an ambulance as paramedics hand-pumped oxygen into his lungs.

They were waiting for a helicopter to land at a helipad just across the icy parking lot next to Mercy Hospital Fort Scott, which closed in December. The night before, Findley had fallen on the slick driveway outside his home while checking the mail. He had laughed it off, ate dinner and went to bed.

In the morning, he wouldn't wake up. Linda, his wife, called 911.

The water off the coast of the Riviera Maya was warmer than I expected, but far murkier. Endless pieces of seaweed, floating on and just below the surface, wrapped themselves like wet masking tape around my flippers and mask as I examined the second-largest reef in the world.

"It's the sargassum," my divemaster from Tulaka Diving told me resignedly. "It's coming over from Brazil, and getting worse every year."

Updated at 6:32 a.m. ET

A suicide bomber killed at least 63 people and wounded 182 in an explosion at a packed wedding hall Saturday night in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to the country's Interior Ministry.

An Afghan government spokesperson said the bomber detonated inside the hall, where more than 1,000 guests had gathered to celebrate a wedding.

"Everybody was running," a waiter at the hall, Sayed Agha Shah, told Reuters.
"Several of our waiters were killed and wounded."

Marium, an orphaned dugong cared for by biologists in southern Thailand, had what it takes to win over the Internet. Few could resist pictures and videos of the button-eyed mammal being fed sea grass and bottled milk and even being cuddled by her caregivers, all while seeming to wear a satisfied smile.