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The faltering U.S. economy has led to more scrutiny of government spending. Foreign aid has come under attack from both budget hawks and even mayors who claim money should be spent on infrastructure in America and not Afghanistan. In fiscal year 2010, the U.S. international affairs budget was almost $57 billion. The number seems astounding, yet this is roughly 1 percent of the total U.S. budget. According to Oxfam America, Americans spend more money on pet care each year than the government forks out in foreign aid.

Foreign assistance dollars are used to help promote democracy and economic stability; to lift people out of poverty; for security and military assistance; and for counter-terrorism measures. U.S. commercial interests and national security also come into play. In 1948 the United States created its first major foreign aid program — the Marshall Plan — to help rebuild Europe’s infrastructure and economy. Most countries outside of Western Europe, Canada and Australia are recipients of U.S. foreign aid, although some countries benefit more than others. Here are the top 10 recipients of United States foreign aid, based on fiscal year 2010 figures from the Congressional Research Service.

As a hobby, birding offers numerous spectacular photo ops on a budget you can brag about to your penny-pinching friends. Aside from minimal equipment, accommodations and trip fare, you can generally hike on your own or join a group for an affordable guided tour to a new area. While there are too many phenomenal birding destinations to cover in one article, I have rounded up five locations that are extremely popular with bird watchers.

It’s a sitcom staple that’s as old as the genre itself. Television executives, eager to bring in hordes of viewers to the networks signing their paycheck, pull out whatever stops possible to try and bring in lofty TV ratings. One way of doing this, based on conventional wisdom, is creating a sitcom around a familiar personality. Through the years, many successful stand-up comedians have received their own series. There have been plenty of duds, but some of these laughers actually turned out to be smash hits and have endured the test of time through the TV afterlife known as reruns — not to mention lucrative sales of DVD box sets.

The aging process is natural and inevitable but that doesn’t mean we have to like it one bit. Creams, lotions and potions are all the rage as people try to hold back the hands of time, but eventually we all succumb to the cells in our body breaking down and making us age. Disease, trauma, environment, poor diet, lack of exercise and stress all contribute to the aging process, but there are some surprising things we can do to slow it down.

Looking to explore the final frontier? Unfortunately, a visit to the International Space Station is still beyond the financial grasp of most U.S. citizens. The good news is, several venues exist nationwide were you can still get a taste of space. Here are 10 sites, from observatories to space museums, which are well worth checking out.

The year 2011 has been an historic and deadly year for tornadoes in the United States. First, there were a record 875 tornadoes in April, smashing the previous one-month record (542 in May 2003). A total of 305 tornadoes swept across the Southeast, mostly Mississippi and Alabama, from April 25 to April 28, making it the largest four-day tornado outbreak in the nation’s history. The outbreak resulted in at least 321 deaths, the most in the U.S. from an outbreak since 1936.

The damage had not even been cleared from those tornadoes before a monstrous tornado tore through the heart of Joplin, Missouri, the afternoon of May 22. The tornado leveled a large part of the city, killed 154 people and injured around 1,000. The Joplin tornado ranks as the deadliest tornado since 1947. Thanks to today's better forecasting, and improved warning procedures, there have been fewer casualties from tornadoes in the past half-century. A look at the 10 deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history begs the question of how many of the deaths from those storms could have been avoided today.

Love to eat? Then food festivals are a safe bet when it comes to outings you might enjoy. They come with great grub, a sociable atmosphere and usually feature live entertainment and games. While almost every urban center has a food festival that draws tens of thousands of people, there are a number of small towns around the United States where an annual food festival is the biggest area event of the year. Here are five great small-town food festivals that draw crowds from a distance.

The following toys were popularized in yesteryear, yet have enduring appeal today. In some cases, the genesis of these fun items was the result of some pretty serious stuff … like defense research during World War II. In other cases, these toys have spawned serious competitions, become cultural icons and generated controversy. Who would have thought that just one little plastic shape or ingenious idea, first sold for a couple of bucks, could still create so much buzz a half century later?

When it comes to historic sites from America’s colonial period, names such as Philadelphia, Boston, Jamestown, and Williamsburg immediately come to mind. But scattered along the eastern United States are many important locations that are often overshadowed by the more popular tourist destinations. For colonial-American history buffs interested in something different, here are five historic sites off the beaten path. Each site offers self-guided and group tours provided by enthusiastic and knowledgeable members of historical societies. Best of all, the crowds are much smaller.

Some of the most beautiful objects in the night sky are the various types of planetary, diffuse, and reflection nebulae that adorn it. But beyond just pure aesthetics, nebulae serve as seeds for heavy elements that propel the life cycles of stars. As stars end their stable period of fusing hydrogen into helium and then ever-heavier elements through the periodic table, they finally shed their outer layers, creating vast shells of gas that lay the foundation for the next round of stars, planets, and, in one case that we know of, life.