Since the turn of the New Year, governments worldwide — including in the U.S. — have curtailed civil liberties in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The essential American right of free assembly, for example, has been restricted across much of the country.
Economic inequality across countries has been declining for decades. China’s economic boom has been a big reason, along with technology that has brought energy and clean water to poorer countries.
As American lawmakers argue over whether to fund a wall along the United States’ southwestern border, the federal government has moved ahead with plans to replace some of the fencing it built there years ago with a 30-foot-tall steel bollard wall. Meanwhile, a growing number of countries worldwide have built border walls and other barriers to try to control the flow of people and goods.
The World Health Organization has proposed rescheduling cannabis within international law to take account of the growing evidence for medical applications of the drug, reversing its position held for the past 60 years that cannabis should not be used in legitimate medical practice.
California’s eugenic sterilization program disproportionately targeted Latinos — especially Latina women, who had a 59 percent higher risk of forced sterilization than women of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, new research finds.
