News & Features

Analysts and members of the Iranian-Canadian community say they are optimistic about a thawing of relations between Iran and Canada now that a new government is in power. Despite the fact that a large and dynamic Iranian diaspora calls Canada its home, recent relations between the two countries have been complicated. In 2012, the Harper government put Iran on the list of State Supporters of Terrorism, closed the Canadian embassy in Iran and expelled Iranian diplomats from Canada. 

It’s hardly Santaland but as Christmas approaches, Montoo’s bakery in a dingy lane in central Kolkata is one of Kolkata’s hottest addresses. The man I ask for directions says there’s no sign outside, but you’ll know it from the smell of cakes baking. But when I finally get there, it’s more Dickensian than Willie Wonka -- a sweat shop for cakes. The rooms are cramped and dingy, the paint peeling, the passageways narrow. ​

Put simply, Donald Trump, once the Clown Prince of American politics has become the Most Important Person of American politics today. Outrageous as he might be, he is not just setting the cat among the pigeons. He is the cat among the pigeons. He is setting the agenda and everyone else gets to react to it. As testimony to that, the Republican Party’s leaders, while trying to distance the party from Trump’s outrageousness, are nervous about going the full distance. 

His unapologetic race baiting is a big part of what rocket-launched him to the front of the GOP presidential pack and at a couple of points when he slid a bit, launched him right back to the front. The race-baiting is hardly new. The instant a multimillion-dollar settlement was announced in 2014 with the five young African-American and Latino youths falsely convicted and imprisoned for assault and rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989, Trump loudly ranted against the settlement and did everything possible to whip up another round of racial hysteria over the case. 

For years, civil rights groups have blamed the gaping disparities in school discipline on racism and said that they would challenge school officials nationally to find better ways to discipline black students instead of shoving them out of their school doors. Many education officials counter that factors other than race explain the disparities in suspensions. Though they don't spell out what those factors are, the disturbing implication is that black students are more prone to carry knives and guns, pick more fights, act unruly and engage in illicit conduct than whites at schools. 

A large majority of California’s registered voters believe that electronic cigarettes lead to nicotine addiction among young people and need to be regulated, according to a new study by The Field Poll. Close to two-thirds of African-Americans, three-quarters of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites believe that e-cigarettes and other vaping products could lead to people becoming addicted to nicotine. 

It is certainly true that higher education in the United States is prohibitively expensive, and that $1.2 trillion in student loans is a scarily high number. There are a lot of people struggling under the burden of high loans with high interest rates, people who are working jobs that they don’t love in order to repay those loans, families that are placed under high levels of stress by that loan bill that keeps coming month after month. 

Ebony Magazine stirred a mini-firestorm of rage when it dredged up an old photo shot of the TV Cosby show family, plopped it on its November cover, and then fractured the picture. The obvious point being that embattled comedian Bill Cosby not only disgraced his legacy but disgraced the hitherto near sacrosanct image and legacy of the celebrated Cosby TV show family, the Huxtables. The premise of the show was that there is fully intact, respectable, high-achieving, prim and proper black middle-class families.