News & Features

Less than two weeks before his death, I was scheduled to interview Rodney King on the public stage at the annual Leimert Park Book festival in Los Angeles. I had two conflicting thoughts about the interview. One was that if the well-worn term accident of history term ever applied to anyone, it was King. The second was what made King, 21 after that fateful night of his beating by four white Los Angeles Police officers captured in shocking detail on videotape, still such an enduring figure, name and most importantly, a symbol. 

President Obama's jobs plan centers on: 1) putting millions of people directly back to work to rebuild America’s tattered infrastructure and 2) providing money to states to rehire over 450,000 teachers.  If the Republicans had enacted the president’s employment legislation when he proposed it in 2011, rather than declaring it dead-on-arrival, the economy could have churned out 227,000 jobs last month rather than the anemic 69,000. This is the point that Obama was making when he tripped over himself on June 8: Americans need quick action on jobs.

What does it mean to be a “prostitute”? In terms of nomenclature, where are the distinguishing lines drawn, and where do societal representations, judgments and perceptions of “harlots” shift? When does seduction, service or servitude become the primary motivation for a woman/man of the night—and how, specifically, do different cultures remember or revere these individuals?

The fatal encounter lasted only a few seconds. According to the police report, Jude was in his car with his girlfriend placing an order at Taco Bell, and was told to drive to the front window to pick up the order. As he pulled away from the drive-through, he nearly ran over Adkins  as he was walking his dog. Adkins cursed loudly at Jude and approached the passenger window of his car. Jude and his girlfriend said they then saw Adkins swinging something that resembled a bat. At that point, said Jude, he shot Adkins with a pistol that he had on his lap, then called 911.

With only three weeks of campaigning to go before Mexicans elect a new president, López Obrador – known in Mexico by his initials, AMLO – has moved into a statistical tie for first place with Peña Nieto. The political resurrection of AMLO has stunned observers, with the prospect of a leftist government being elected in Mexico now a real possibility.

Sports journalists are jockeying to declare baseball's impending death. None of these doomsayers knows exactly when America's pastime will cease to be (the Mayan calendar proves remiss in this regard), but rest assured, it will occur sometime in the future. Realistically, the death of Major League Baseball is a long way off. Despite the breadth of criticism baseball receives, the sport thrives off the support of diehard fans, corporate sponsorships, and regional popularity. 

A crackdown last year on several western pro-democracy groups on charges that they had received funding from foreign governments and agencies to stir up chaos in Egypt is strongly affecting the ability of local humanitarian NGOs to receive funding for their activities and keep going. Needy Egyptians, living in areas the government considers low priority, have been turning to these NGOs for support.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican whose agenda of union-busting and gutting public services outraged many in the state, became the only governor to have survived a recall election in American history on Tuesday as he prevailed over his Democratic opponent. His victory foreshadows the rise to power of politicians more likely to bow to a rising oligarchy than heed the interests of their constituents -- a disturbing sign given Social Security and Medicare are on the federal chopping block.