Month: June 2021

According to this year’s index from Reporters Without Borders, the United Kingdom ranks No. 33 in the world when it comes to press freedom. Call it a low B on a letter-grade scale: well behind those curve-blowing Scandinavians, of course, but in the same ballpark as France or Spain.

Nigeria, meanwhile, comes in at No. 120, the rough equivalent of a D+. You aren’t North Korea or Saudi Arabia, sure, but you’re still at the back of the class.

You’ll find similar results on the Democracy Index: the U.K. at No. 16 (“Full Democracy”), Nigeria at No. 110 (the lowest-ranking “Hybrid Regime,” one slot away from “Authoritarian”).

But these two countries, as different as they can be, are facing similar sets of questions about whether — and if yes, how and how much — to regulate online content. And they both seem to be coming down on

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, the health insurance program that helped fuel the backlash tea party movement and ultimately his own candidacy.

If Trump couldn’t get Congress to do away with the law — and he couldn’t, even with Republicans in control of both chambers — he vowed to choose Supreme Court justices who would declare Obamacare unconstitutional.

“If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush’s appointee John Roberts on Obamacare,” Trump tweeted in 2015, referring to the decision Roberts wrote that preserved the law’s mandate for Americans to buy health insurance.

But two of the three jurists Trump picked for the court — Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with Roberts as part of a 7-2 majority Thursday to deny standing to a group of conservative states that claimed the law harmed them. It was

Tallahassee

In his continued push against the “indoctrination” of students, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed legislation that will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints to support “intellectual diversity.”

The survey will discern “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” in public universities and colleges, and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” according to the bill.

The measure, which

WASHINGTON — From Boston to Austin, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been the undisputed queen of the tote bag for left-leaning Americans looking to show their support for women’s empowerment or opposition to former President Donald Trump.

But Trump is now out of office and as independent bookstores, boutiques and cafes are reopening to serve up lattes and a little impulse buying after a year full of pandemic and politics, plus the death of Ginsburg, retailers are looking for who will be next to adorn kitsch.

Many up-and-coming politicos probably covet the unique spot Ginsburg holds in liberal hearts and tchotchkes. But according to the people who make and sell political books and baubles, it’s unclear who will take her place — or if liberals even want to keep broadcasting their politics on their air fresheners and keychains after so many years of all-consuming political

The race to replace Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who cannot run again because of term limits, is gaining another candidate — a nuclear engineer who says he’s running as a Democrat to offer voters another alternative to the Trump brand of politics.

Chris Jones, the former head of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, a nonprofit organization based in North Little Rock, announced his candidacy Tuesday. A political novice — he once served as student body president at Morehouse College, a historically Black university in Atlanta — Jones, 44, said he was turned off by the political divisions of the past few years.

“Our campaign is about lifting people up and building a fair Arkansas so there are opportunities for all of us,” he said, adding that “the reality of

The constitutional free fall in the country continues unabated. Supremo KP Sharma Oli initiated the free-for-all as soon as he took the reins of government in February 2018 by concentrating unprecedented authority in his secretariat. Instructions began to flow directly to the senior administrators. Whenever a cabinet colleague dared to assert, the Prime Minister reshuffled them like a pack of cards.

Oli had already packed various constitutional organs with his loyalists during his first term in office in 2015 and through his party’s share of the division of spoils with the Nepali Congress. When it appeared that the Parliament may come into the way of his autocratic ambitions, he fast-tracked two ordinances—one to split the political party and another to use the Constitutional Council at will. A controversial attempt to ‘abduct’ an MP was also made to strengthen the legislative position of the chief executive.

Once Supremo Sharma Oli realised

Ambassadors met in person in New York as a fragile cessation of hostilities continues to hold, following 11 days of deadly conflict this month which engulfed the Occupied Palestinian Territory and several cities across Israel. 

“These recent events have made clear once again the costs of perpetual conflict and lost hope”, said Mr Wennesland, officially the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.  

He spoke via teleconference from Jerusalem, and shortly after the UN and partners announced a $95 million flash appeal to support people in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

Political and humanitarian response 

Mr Wennesland stressed the need for the sides to return to the negotiating table, though warning against a “business as usual” approach. 

“At

“The governor said ‘no,’” Osten said, adding that the ruling parties in the House, Senate, and governor’s office “sort of have veto authority” when crafting a budget implementer. Compensation for East Windsor was to come from the Mashantucket Pequot/Mohegan Fund, grants that are distributed annually to each of the state’s 169 towns.

The grant program was initially designed to provide money to towns — and not the General Fund — which Osten said she believes is what Gov. Ned Lamont’s office is planning. He added that the massive, multibillion-dollar budget would hardly be impacted by $3 million per year, and that the state would pay nothing if the East Windsor property sold within the year.

“Why would a sitting governor of a state kill a project that was going to create 2,000 jobs in construction and 2,000 jobs when (the casino) is functioning, and then when the town is hurt

Heading into Memorial Day weekend, a poll had just shown Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams with his largest lead of the contest, and the mayoral candidates were spread out across the city, trying to catch up. Scott Stringer was down at One Police Plaza for a press conference on cutting bureaucratic bloat in the NYPD; Kathryn Garcia was in front of Moynihan Train Hall, rolling out a detailed plan for infrastructure projects in every borough. Maya Wiley was in Morningside Heights, pushing for the State Legislature to give victims of sexual abuse more time to sue, and Andrew Yang was in Tribeca, unveiling a proposal to help low-income seniors stay in their homes.

And Adams was in a park in Inwood, talking about dirt bikes.

By his side was Adriano Espaillat, the uptown U.S. representative and someone whose endorsement is one of the

Editor’s note. This is the first in a two-part series. The second can be found here..

In the beginning they were immigrants or pilgrims, fleeing an old world that no longer suited and seeking a new one. In time they became colonists, developing neighborhoods of the New World. As the complexity of shaping their new world grew, involvement with the Old World became more and more difficult to endure. And so, they became patriots, determined to have a life that suited their philosophy of independence, willing to fight for rights they considered natural. Finally, fitfully, with fragile steps, they became Americans, free of the encumbrances imposed by a foreign power which neither understood nor cared to understand what they considered of penultimate value: individual freedom.

Oh, that it had ended there, the pilgrim-colonist-patriot standing proud and strong as an American. Sadly, the drama had one more act to be