PANMUNJOM, REPUBLIC OF KOREA (Analysis) — Since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s offer of dialogue with the South, Seoul and Pyongyang have wasted no time reestablishing communication channels in hopes of creating an atmosphere that would reduce tensions on the divided Korean peninsula.
No strangers to winter’s tempestuousness, Chicagoans were nonetheless caught unprepared for the blizzard that blanketed the city with nearly two feet of snow over two days beginning Saturday, January 13, 1979 — pelting the prairie with flakes so big and white they seemed a hallucination.
WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now the fight to silence WikiLeaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.
Forty years ago last fall, the late Richard Pryor took the stage at the Hollywood Bowl for a gay rights fundraiser and delivered what was perhaps the most incendiary monologue of a career that was both famously — and literally — combustible.
What the audience of 17,000 mostly gay, white men anticipated was to be regaled by the virtuoso in his prime. What they in fact got was a conflagration, as Pryor lit into the LGBT community for what he characterized as their indifference to African-Americans’ struggle.
WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now, the fight to silence Wikileaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has quietly voted to give intelligence agencies the permission to conduct warrantless surveillance on U.S. citizens for an additional five years.
Senators took a vote on Tuesday of this week to end debate on a bill, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect texts and emails of foreigners abroad without a warrant — even if those texts and emails are communicating with, and thereby exposing, American citizens in the U.S.
BEIJING — There has been a growing focus on the economic development underway in Africa. There is a reason behind this seemingly new interest of Western powers in events happening in Africa, and the reason is simple: China is a new power dominating business on the continent and has clearly caught the West’s attention.
This week marks the 37th anniversary of a pledge made by the United States in 1981:
The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”
ALBANY, NEW YORK – Prisons in New York state are rolling out a program that will ban most reading material and end inmate care packages from families. The program is currently being tested at three state prisons, but plans to implement the directive at all 54 of the state’s correctional facilities are aiming for a Fall 2018 start date.
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA — The unfolding of events since U.S. President Donald Trump announced his unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, against international law and U.N. resolutions, revealed the historical bond between the settler-colonial state and Guatemala — the latter being the first country after the U.S. to declare its intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem.
