Up Front

Recent revelations about the deplorable working conditions at an Apple factory in China provide a cautionary tale about globalization and consumerism. On Jan. 26, the New York Times ran a front-page article that exposed some of the facts of life...... Full story

  You’d notice if 160 million women were missing from the U.S. population. You couldn’t help but notice, actually. There aren’t that many females in the whole country. Yet that’s how many girls have been lost in Asia...... Full story

As the United States completes its withdrawal from Iraq, it is worth pausing to remember the determined peace activists who opposed the war from the start, including one who took up their cause and became president. Some of them gathered in...... Full story

The past several years have seen a groundswell of bans on plastics — from plastic bags to foam cups. The rationales for such policies range from downright foolish to simply misguided. Lawmakers offer the more outlandish claims. For example,...... Full story

As the popularity of vampires wanes, zombies seem to be coming into their moment. The Walking Dead has become a hit show on AMC. Atlanta is trying to claim the title of Zombie Capital of the World. Even the federal government is getting in on the...... Full story

Perhaps you don’t want to “rejoice” at the news that America’s nine-year involvement in a war is about to end. After all, there is still a lot of pain to remember — too many lives lost; too much sorrow still lingering;...... Full story

Say this for Moammar Gadhafi: He vowed to go down fighting, and he did. At any point in the last eight months, he could have bailed out of Libya for a comfortable exile — in Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or some other state unlikely to turn him...... Full story

It was only a matter of time before some bigot drew a bead on Mitt Romney and decreed him unfit to be president solely on the basis of his Mormon faith. So it went the other day, when Southern Baptist minister Robert Jeffress took the stage at a...... Full story

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is again in the news. The two Americans released this month by Iran have reported that when they complained about conditions in their Tehran prison, the jailers would “immediately remind us of comparable...... Full story

  Politically, if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that there’s nothing we can all agree on. But one thing comes close: The presidential campaign is too darned long. A couple of years ago, I reread...... Full story

The recent Republican presidential candidates’ debate in front of the so-called tea party turned out to be a disturbing walk on the wild side. The candidates’ meeting with representatives of the overwhelmingly older, white and suburban...... Full story

New York City’s World Trade Center is nearly 2,000 miles from the Rio Grande Valley. Yet the unspeakable acts that were committed 10 years ago directly affected local residents in many ways. It’s easy to see how the terrorist attacks...... Full story

For those of us who lost family members on 9/11, the intense feelings of grief, anger, sadness, fear and worry are with us every day — not just on the anniversary of the attacks. On some level, there is no moving on. There is no closure....... Full story

  Piracy off the coast of Africa has grabbed headlines in recent years, but there is another type of piracy that has received far too little attention. Pirate fishing around the world is costing fishermen their jobs and income, and harms the...... Full story

In March, a few days after NATO planes began bombing Libya, Moammar Gadhafi delivered a speech to the nation he had ruled for more than four decades.“Great Libyan people,” he began, “you are now living through glorious...... Full story