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When salesmen can't compete on price, they try to out-nice each other.

We've been collecting stories this month about the good things Americans are doing to improve their communities. The project is called Participation Nation, and there is still time for people to get involved.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is expected to tap a veteran U.N. troubleshooter to take over from international envoy Kofi Annan. At the same time, U.N. military observers are wrapping up their mission. By next week, all of the unarmed U.N. military observers will be out of Syria.

A federal court has rejected part of Florida's new election law that would have restricted the number of early voting days. The ruling, affecting five counties, is a win for groups who say the new law was meant to suppress voter participation in areas with large minority populations.

Americans love burgers, but cooking leaner meats on the grill requires some scientific know-how. We turn to Cooking for Engineers blogger Michael Chu for some technical tips for success with leaner meats.

Matt Fisher's sister was killed in a 2010 car accident caused by another driver. Her insurance company resisted paying her estate. Fisher wrote a blog post about the case. Now the story is national.

A group of Catholic nuns say they're worried about the way GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will approach poverty and safety-net programs, if elected. So the nuns have invited him, and his running mate Paul Ryan, to spend a day with them, helping the poor. Sister Simone Campbell discusses the invitation with guest host Jacki Lyden.

Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and longtime U.N. troubleshooter, will try to broker a peace between the Assad regime and its opponents.

The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge asked engineers to dream up a replacement for the antiquated flush toilet. Michael Hoffmann and his team at Caltech responded with a solar-powered toilet that disinfects waste and reuses wastewater to flush. Better yet, it pumps out hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells.

Each year, you need a new influenza vaccination to protect against the ever-changing seasonal flu virus. Then there's more exotic influenza variants such as swine flu and avian flu. Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH, discusses the ongoing quest to develop one vaccine that could protect against all influenza variants at once.