NPR News

Every day in Mumbai, some 5,000 deliverymen called dabba wallahs hand deliver 200,000 hot meals to doorsteps across the city. It's an intricate network that requires precise timing and numerous handoffs from courier to courier. The century-old service is a staple for the city's office workers. (See how it works in this video.) But as the city has changed, so too has the service.

Grindstone Island's lone public dock is just three miles north of the U.S. mainland, a straight shot by powerboat across the St. Lawrence River from Clayton, N.Y. Part of the Thousand Islands, Grindstone Island sits in a waterway shared by the U.S. and Canada.

Mike and Nancy Leighton's problems began on May 19, just as Mike was settling in to watch the Preakness Stakes. A neighbor in Leroy Township, Pa., called Mike and told him to check the water well located just outside his front door.

"I said, 'I'll be down in 15 minutes.' I wanted to see the race," Leighton said. But as the horses were racing, Leighton's well was overflowing. Typically, there's between 80 to 100 feet of head space between the top of the well and its water supply. But when Leighton went outside, the water was bubbling over the top.

Somalia is synonymous with failed states, pirates and Islamist militants. But in the nation's northwest lies a peaceful, stable territory with an elected government known as Somaliland. The enclave broke away from the fractious Horn of Africa nation in 1991 and has been going it alone ever since.

To the disappointment of its residents, Somaliland has not been recognized as an independent nation, but its stability is attracting investors that other parts of Somalia can only dream of.

Naylea Omayra Villanueva Sanchez, 22, lives on the edge of the Amazon rain forest in Tarapoto, northern Peru.

"Where I live, there's only jungle," Villanueva Sanchez says through an interpreter. "A university education is inaccessible."

And that's true in more ways than one. Villanueva Sanchez is in a wheelchair, the result of a motorcycle accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down.