News & Features

The report titled “Separate and Unequal,” by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, found that “white students are increasingly concentrated today, relative to population share, in the nation’s 468 most well-funded, selective four-year colleges and universities, while African-American and Hispanic students are more and more concentrated in the 3,250 least well-funded, open-access, two- and four-year colleges.”

This August marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington -- that watershed moment of the civil rights era that showed how mass movement could force the nation to address issues of inequality and change the political direction of the country. Had America not recently experienced some of the most poignant, traumatic, and racially-charged episodes in years, this march anniversary may have only been a nostalgic, obligatory, nod to the past. 

Today, the average American has less money, as wages for most of the population continue to stagnate. In the 60s, it was not too difficult to drop out and tune in without risking future economic turmoil. Gen. X and the generations since are not so fortunate (relative to the rest of the world, of course, they were), and their worldviews, dreams, expectations, heroes, and fashions vary as a result. 

While drones have played an increasingly prominent role in America’s military and surveillance operations – at home and abroad – lesser known is the growing use of this new technology in civilian life. Some of these applications are far less sinister than one might expect. For Jason Lam, owner of San Francisco’s first personal drone shop, the aerial crafts could just be the latest and most exciting wave in the field of digital photography. 

In the coming weeks, Holder may tell exactly how he’ll wind that war down. It shouldn’t surprise if he does. President Obama and Holder have been hinting for a while that it’s time to rethink how the war is being fought and who its prime casualties have been. Their successful push a few years back to get Congress to finally wipe out a good deal of the blatantly racially skewed harsh drug sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine possession was the first hint. 

The sheikh, who lived in Ain Tarma had urged everyone to Jihad, her husband told her, but Jihad apparently took on many faces. One could take arms and fight or one could help finance the fight and if neither were possible, then one could still do Jihad –”Jihad Al Nikah,” which translates roughly into English as sexual Jihad. One could and indeed should (for it was a God-ordained duty) marry the young widows of all the men who had lost their lives in the fight. 

All of the more than 47 million Americans, including 22 million children, who receive SNAP will see their food assistance reduced, when a modest boost in benefits to SNAP recipients, which policymakers included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to strengthen the economy and ease hardship, expires on Oct. 31. For a family of three, that cut will mean a reduction of $29 a month—$319 for the remaining 11 months of the fiscal year.

Over the years, the Bachelet family has stayed on good terms with the Matthei family. But the Bachelet campaign doesn’t mind reminding the voters who was on which side in the 1970s. Spokesman Álvaro Elizalde stresses that the campaign is about the issues–education reform and a new constitution. But he still brings up Michelle Bachelet’s record during the dictatorship. Like her father, she was also tortured.