Students walk outside Pershing High School, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in Detroit. Pershing is one of up to 38 schools in Detroit and other urban communities that the state hopes to close, potentially affecting 18,000 students and marking the first time that the state could close traditional public schools explicitly for academic reasons. Despite the announcement, some schools likely will remain open. State officials next will determine whether a closure would be an “unreasonable hardship” for children with no better schools to attend
Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

What to do when a school is infested with vermin, when textbooks are outdated, when students can’t even read? Perhaps the answer is sue the government.

That’s what seven students in Detroit have done. Their class-action suit filed against the state of Michigan asserts that education is a basic right, and that they have been denied it.

Usually, such education-equity cases wend their way through state courts, as all 50 state constitutions mandate public-education systems, while the country’s guiding document doesn’t even […]

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Canadian Border Services Officer Boakye-Cotie processes a Syrian refugee family at Toronto Pearson International Airport in December 2015. Non-U.S. countries resettled more than twice as many refugees as the U.S. in 2017.
Credit: Kenneth Allan/Canada Border Services Agency/Pool/Anadolu Agency

The number of refugees resettled in the United States decreased more than in any other country in 2017, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This represents the first time since the adoption of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act that the U.S. resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world.

The U.S. has historically led the world in refugee resettlement. Since 1980, the U.S. has taken in 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees resettled worldwide.

But in 2017, the U.S. resettled 33,000 refugees, the country’s lowest total since the years […]

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Pig carcasses in a midwest plant. US meat workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker.
Credit : Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Amputations, fractured fingers, second-degree burns and head trauma are just some of the serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers every week, according to data seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

US meat workers are already three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker, and pork and beef workers nearly seven times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries. And some fear that plans to remove speed restrictions on pig processing lines – currently being debated by the government – will only make the work more difficult.

Government and industry bodies point out that there have been reductions in worker injury rates over the last couple of decades, although the figures still remain higher than average. They argue that despite the lifting […]

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Richard Spencer
Credit: YouTube

Richard Spencer, like the rest of his white supremacist cohort, has long advocated the expulsion of unwanted migrants.

He now knows precisely what that feels like.

This week, in a development first flagged by HOPE not hate, a British anti-racism organization, Spencer learned that he would be unable to travel to Sweden to take part in a conference for young white supremacists. As Spencer’s pal Christoffer Dulny, another white supremacist member of the so-called “alt-right” movement, wrote on Twitter, Spencer was slated to be a “secret guest” at the conference, but will be a no-show instead, having been turned away at a “European airport and denied further travel.”

“The global anarcho-tyranny lives and thrives,” Dulny added.

Per Swedish media, Spencer was prevented from traveling during a layover in Poland. Polish authorities told Spencer that he was barred from traveling in the country, and that “he has to return to the United States,” according to Sweden’s Fria Tider outlet.

It’s unclear if Spencer has been barred from all European countries or […]

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Pakistani residents cool off at a canal during heatwave as temperatures reach 44 degrees celsius in Karachi on May 30, 2018.
Credit: Rizwan Tabassum//Getty

Steep U.S. cuts to global climate funding are taking a toll on developing countries, even as South Asia and other vulnerable regions face looming risks from global warming.

The United States has halved its contribution to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for the first time in nearly 30 years, India Climate Dialogue reported on Friday. In 2014, the United States gave $546 million to the GEF, which convenes an assembly once every four years.