Author: Reporter

Not coming to America: Why the U.S. looks less like a dream and more like a place to avoid in 2025

The world may be rethinking the American dream. For centuries, people in other countries saw the United States as a place of welcome and opportunity. Now, Donald Trump’s drive for mass deportations of migrants is riling the streets of Los Angeles, college campuses, even churches — and fueling a global rethinking about the virtues and promise of coming to America. “The message coming from Washington is that you are not welcome in the United States,” said Edwin van Rest, CEO of Studyportals, which tracks real-time searches by international students considering studying in other countries. Student interest in studying in...

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U.S. initiatives to promote democracy abroad as a “beacon of freedom” are decomposing under Trump

Growing up in the former Soviet Union, Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez’s father and grandparents would listen to Voice of America with their ears pressed to the radio, trying to catch words through the government’s radio jamming. The U.S.-funded news service was instrumental in helping them understand what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain, before they moved to the United States in the 1970s. “It was a window into another world,” Spivakovsky-Gonzalez said. “They looked to it as a sort of a beacon of freedom. They were able to imagine a different world from the one they were...

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Autopsies indicate an intentional system of brutality as Ukrainian POWs die in Russian prisons

“Everything will be all right.” Ukrainian soldier Serhii Hryhoriev said this so often during brief phone calls from the front that his wife and two daughters took it to heart. His younger daughter, Oksana, tattooed the phrase on her wrist as a talisman. Even after Hryhoriev was captured by the Russian army in 2022, his anxious family clung to the belief that he would ultimately be OK. After all, Russia is bound by international law to protect prisoners of war. When Hryhoriev finally came home, though, it was in a body bag. A Russian death certificate said the 59-year-old...

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U2’s Bono questions if the world still values mercy as peace retreats in an age overshadowed by war

Cannes is a short trip from Bono’s seaside villa in Eze-sur-Mer. He bought it with The Edge in 1993, and considers himself grateful to a coastline that, he said, gave him a “delayed adolescence.” “I can tell you I’ve slept on beaches close to here,” Bono said with a grin. “I’ve woken up in the sun.” But that does not mean the Cannes Film Festival is a particularly familiar experience for the U2 frontman. He was there to premiere the Apple TV+ documentary “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” which captured his one-man stage show. Before coming, Bono’s daughter, the actor...

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Burden of history: Okinawa solemnly marks 80 years since the end of one of the harshest battles of WWII

Okinawa marked the 80th anniversary of the end of one of the harshest battles of World War II fought on the southern island. With global tensions escalating, its governor said on June 23 it is the Okinawan “mission” to keep telling the tragic history and its impact today. The Battle of Okinawa killed a quarter of the island’s population, leading to a 27-year U.S. occupation and a heavy American troop presence to date. The June 23 memorial came one day after U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, adding to a sense of uncertainty on the island about the heavy...

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Trump abandons promise to avoid war by inserting U.S. into Netanyahu’s undeclared war with Iran

Donald Trump expressed certainty that his big gamble to directly assist the Israelis delivered a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear program, even as many supporters and detractors alike were warning that U.S. military action could draw the United States into an expansive regional conflict. Trump, in brief remarks to the nation on June 21 from the White House, said the U.S. strikes “obliterated” three critical Iranian enrichment facilities and “the bully of the Middle East must now make peace.” But it is a risky moment for Trump, who has belittled his predecessors for tying up America in “stupid wars”...

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