CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Lifestyle trend:  Some Americans — especially single adults — are choosing to live in tiny homes or apartments that cost only a fraction of full-size residences. New York City just held a competition for architects to design user-friendly "micro-units" under 300 square feet. San Francisco wants to change its building code to approve apartments of just 220 square feet. CNN reported about frugal people who build their own mini-houses so small they don't require mortgages. Maybe "reverse snobbery" will cause some of these folks to sneer at millionaires in their huge mansions.

Two sour economists, Marc Faber and Robert Wiedemer, predict global meltdown. "The data is clear: 50 percent unemployment, a 90 percent stock market drop and 100 percent annual inflation... starting in 2012," Wiedemer said while promoting his gloom-and-doom book, Aftershock. All we can say is: We sure hope they're wrong.

Bearing arms in West Virginia: A Braxton County teen-ager is charged with shooting his uncle to death with a stolen pistol as the uncle sat on a couch. The youth says he was handing the gun to his uncle when it accidentally fired.

Biology professor Amy Bishop, with a Ph.D. from Harvard, was denied tenure at the University of Alabama. So she took a pistol to a faculty meeting and killed three fellow biologists. Well, at least, it shows that gun violence isn't limited to drug-filled slums and hillbilly hollows.

Britain's Telegraph reports that puritanical Taliban fanatics in Afghanistan beheaded 15 young men and two women because they held a late-night party with music and dancing. Incredible.

U.S. Senate nominee Todd Akin, who caused an uproar by saying women can't become pregnant from "legitimate rape" because their bodies reject attackers' sperm, apparently has a political ally. His wife told the conservative National Journal that God wants him to win, and will cause a flood of cash donations to his campaign.