A group of influential women, led by feminist author Gloria Steinem, is making a renewed push in New York for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to allow a vote on a bill that would require businesses to give their employees paid sick leave. Two years after quashing that effort, Quinn says …
NARATHIWAT, Thailand — As the violence-plagued provinces of southern Thailand continue to struggle with a shadowy insurgency, the restive region is battling a new enemy: a drug cocktail made from a local leaf that is seducing the young. The drug, kratom, is far less debilitating than the methamphetamines and heroin …
FOR more than two decades, the glass-domed Air Terminal languished beside the rail lines of Rome’s Stazione Ostiense in a state of abandonment. Squatters occupied its hollow vertical spaces, and the surrounding area could only be described as seedy. Then, two years ago, the giant high-end supermarket chain Eataly began …
WHITTIER, Alaska — The gleaming white Sapphire Princess docked in this deep-water port this month, unloading its passengers and taking on another 2,600 guests headed first to Glacier Bay and, eventually, Vancouver, B.C. Every day of that trip the cruise ship — whose Web site invites passengers to see Alaska’s …
CARACAS, Venezuela – More than two decades after Latin America’s last right-wing dictatorships dissolved, a new kind of authoritarian leader is rising in several countries: democratically elected presidents who are ruling in increasingly undemocratic ways. Unlike the iron-fisted juntas of a generation ago, these leaders do not assassinate opposition figures …
ÉDGAR TORRES, a toddler in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, was asleep in bed when a gang from up the hill came looking for his mother’s 16-year-old godson. After killing the teenager, they were leaving the house when one of the murderers, for no apparent reason, turned and fired ten …
BODH GAYA, India, July 20 (UPI) — The 2,500-year-old tree under which Gautama Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment is alive and healthy, Indian scientists said Thursday. The Bodhi tree, a large Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa,) is in Bodh Gaya in India’s eastern state of Bihar, about 60 miles …
I was there when the euro began, to the extent that I could be there without ever leaving Times Square, and now I have my own personal euro crisis. This is different from the euro crisis that has European leaders bickering and everybody else worrying about an economic Excedrin headache. …
The health of public pension plans — the retirement plans for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other state and local governments — has gotten plenty of attention lately. Some plans are hurting, and numbers from state and local governments suggest their public pension plans are underfunded by about $1 trillion. …
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — As home to the world’s cheapest gasoline, Venezuela has long had to contend with the hemorrhaging of supplies as smugglers haul gas across the border to cash in where the fuel costs far more. In neighboring Colombia, drivers pay 40 times as much as Venezuelans to …
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Four years ago, Frank Schubert was a well-paid political consultant for what he jokingly calls “the forces of evil” – tobacco, timber and pharmaceutical companies – when he agreed to lead the 2008 campaign to repeal gay marriage in California. What started as a professional challenge has …
The basic premise of electoral politics is that it’s supposed to give your elected officials an incentive to do a good job. If they get into office and screw everything up, they’ll lose, and they know it, so they’ll at least try not to screw everything up. Right? Now, try …
