The September 11 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks consisted of suicide attacks used to target symbolic U.S. landmarks. Four passenger airliners—which all departed from airports on the U.S. East Coast bound for California—were hijacked to be flown into buildings. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed, with debris and the resulting fires causing partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, leading to a partial collapse in the Pentagon's western side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, initially was steered toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. In total, the attacks claimed the lives of 2,996 people and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and $3 trillion in total costs. The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terror and invading Afghanistan.

A U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003 overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein. Life in Baghdad was portrayed by American media as generally a euphoric time among the Iraqis. Yet, some spent their days recovering loved ones from mass graves, lotting cement depots, returning to school, hundreds of thousands of Shias participated in an unprecedented pilgrimages to the holy city of Karbala, kids played with abandoned weapons, men relaxed by the Tigris river, and innocent children fell victim.

The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicenter near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake. Death toll estimates range from 100,000 to about 160,000. The government of Haiti estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged. This is what ordinary Haitians had to say.

Heroin addiction in San Juan, Puerto Rico is rampant. Addicts are visible all throughout the city. For the last three decades, Puerto Rico's public health officials have unsuccessfully fought a full-scale public health crisis. Today, the island has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the U.S. and more than 50 percent of all newly reported cases come from intravenous drug use.