There are three good reasons for Iran to go back to the table, says Patrick Lawrence.
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In the News
William J. Astore analyzes the fallacies behind the U.S. drive to wage war from the air.
By Andrew Roth in Moscow and agencies @ TheGuardian.com, Jun. 10
Russia’s three major newspapers have put out nearly identical front pages of their Monday editions in a show of solidarity with a detained journalist. Kommersant, Vedomosti and RBK, among the most respected daily newspapers in the country, published a joint editorial under the headline “I am/We are Ivan Golunov”, calling for a transparent investigation into the case of the prominent investigative journalist.
Golunov was beaten and kept in custody for 12 hours without a lawyer after he was stopped by police in Moscow on Thursday on suspicion of drug dealing. Golunov was transferred to house arrest on Saturday following a public outpouring of support.
The papers dismissed evidence presented in the case against the journalist.
Russia’s media landscape is fragmented, and such a show of solidarity in the media is rarely seen. All three papers have faced pressure from authorities and covert censorship [....]
The fate of a much-praised economic policy in politically overhauled country
By Andualem Sisay Gessesse @ NewBusinessEthiopia.com, June 7
An article published recently by Addis Standard, a local media, titled, Ethiopia’s developmental state dead or alive? prompted me to raise the issue in the middle of a conversation with my colleagues from different disciplines. I meant to find out what exactly do they know and think about the policy and whether they feel it has a future in the now politically overhauled government and country.
“The Ethiopian version of developmental state is very much different from what we have seen in other countries like the Asian Tigers. The government has tried to implement developmental state policy under its biased political landscape which favors certain group of the society because of their ethnicity or political attitude,” says a civil servant working at a federal government agency for many years now.
“Yeah, I don’t think the Asian Tigers divided their people under such bias, and focused only on building those beautiful roads and bridges starving their people. Had that been the case, per capita income of a South Korean today wouldn’t have been over $25,000,” explains the civil servant who later asked not to be identified by name when informed about this article [....]
Who's the faker?
President Trump hailed his new deal with Mexico to avoid tariffs, but the terms were actually agreed on months ago, officials in both nations said. It was unclear whether Mr. Trump accepted the deal as a face-saving way to escape the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs.
By James Clark @ TaskandPurpose.com, June 5
"Everyone knew that it was building up and thought it could get violent."
More than four million Venezuelans have fled their country amid an economic and humanitarian crisis, UN agencies say. The pace of people fleeing has "skyrocketed" since the end of 2015, with around one million leaving in the last seven months alone, they found.
The agencies said countries hosting the migrants and refugees were in "urgent need" of international support [....]
The exodus means Venezuelans are now "one of the single largest population groups displaced from their country", the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a joint statement on Friday [....]
By Robert Barnes @ WashingtonPost.com, June 7
When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns reporter, reporters and lawyers start searching for clues.
In a purportedly just-the-facts speech Friday to the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, Ginsburg gave plenty to dissect.
She teased pending decisions in cases about whether the census may contain a question on citizenship, and if the court would for the first time decide that a state’s electoral maps are so influenced by partisan gerrymandering that they violate voters’ constitutional rights.
Be prepared for sharp disagreements as the court finishes its work this month, she said. So far, only a quarter of the court’s decisions have been closely divided, she noted. “Given the number of most-watched cases still unannounced, I cannot predict that the relatively low sharp divisions ratio will hold.” [....]
Members of the military deployed near the U.S.-Mexico border have been assigned to spend a month painting a mile-long stretch of barriers to improve their "aesthetic appearance."
By David Robinson, PoughkeepsieJournal.com, May 10
New York’s top hospital executives and doctors received millions in salaries, bonuses and other perks at the same time politically charged fights were raging over reducing health care spending. As patients shouldered rising medical bills, some hospitals used seven-figure payouts to drive executives to hit profit and performance goals, USA TODAY Network found.
Bonuses totaling about $80 million went to 366 hospital officials in the Hudson Valley, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and other communities across the state in 2016 alone, the most recent data show. That is an average bonus of about $218,000. Much of the money flowed to leaders of New York’s most powerful hospital networks as they consolidated health care wealth, notwithstanding financial hardships facing patients and some smaller community hospitals.
“It’s supposed to be about their health care mission and not supposed to be about the money,” said Doug Sauer, chief executive officer of the New York Council of Nonprofits. “These are charitable organizations. They’re not private business, but there is a point where it begins to look like a for-profit business.” [....]