News & Features

Six months after the United States and Cuba resumed full diplomatic relations, the expectation that the resumption of ties would encourage changes in Cuban society has not been met. On the contrary, the Raúl Castro’s regime has increased arbitrary arrests of dissidents and brutal attacks on the Ladies in White, a pacifist group of wives and mothers of the arrested who march through the streets dressed in white and in silence, dampening hopes of the exhausted Cuban nation that change would finally arrive.

The election walk-over for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the nightmare that has haunted the GOP party leaders from the moment that Trump and Cruz declared their candidacies. Both men are the most polarizing presidential ticket candidates since Sarah Palin turned the GOP White House bid into a running Comedy Central riff. This election go-round it’s far worse than when Palin was on the ticket in 2008 and later made some soundings about a 2012 presidential bid. 

 Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students are witness to the culture war between liberal student activists battling against what they see as a racist, patriarchal and sexist culture, and their critics, convinced that universities are becoming less hotbeds of vigorous debate, but places where hypersensitive students are coddled, and unpopular views are effectively squelched. As is the case with any group of students, the views of Chinese nationals toward cultural appropriation, trigger warnings and other hot-button campus issues reflect the full spectrum of opinion.

With the recession now in the rearview mirror, black people want to be part of the nation’s economic recovery. Hillary Clinton proposes a menu of solutions to raise incomes for struggling families. They range from tax cuts for child care to encouraging corporations to share their rising profits with workers. In an interview with The Root, Clinton’s senior policy adviser, Maya Harris, underscored the candidate’s plan to “unleash small-business growth.” Harris says black women, who represent the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, would benefit.

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” That’s from Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This is the King whose bust is in Obama’s Oval Office. This is the King the president paraphrases after bombing seven countries in as many years, which he did after a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in which he said as head of state, he could not follow King or Mahatma Gandhi alone.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to Facebook in Palo Alto and hugged Mark Zuckerberg at a townhall, he went up several notches in cool. The image of the two men hugging was splashed all over Indian media. But there’s no such thing as a Free Hug. Instead there’s Free Basics. Facebook has blanketed newspapers and billboards in India drumming up support for Free Basics. The ad budget, says one news report, is about one third of all its India revenue.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) obtained a settlement from a federal district court in Los Angeles that bans four “mortgage modification scammers” from offering relief services, resolving charges that they deceived homeowners facing foreclosure. The settlements stem from an FTC complaint against HOPE Services and HAMP Services, which are based in Lake Forest, in Orange County. Pretending to be a “nonprofit” with government ties, HOPE and HAMP stole the mortgage payments of consumers who were promised mortgage modifications, deceptions that contributed to homeowner foreclosures and bankruptcies, the FTC said.

So the question that once seemed absolutely ludicrous to think let alone ask is now a question that can be seriously asked and even to an extent answered. Just how would Trump govern? There’s little reason to think Trump is suited to patient, give-and-take negotiation and compromise to get his initiatives through Congress. His style is to bellow, bully, and harangue to get his way. As for the issues, Trump has been on the political scene long enough to have enough of a paper trail to piece together from his statements in debates and interviews and speeches a fairly accurate picture of what he will say and do on the big-ticket issues.