Contributing Writers

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has criticized the United States for intensifying its embargo at a time when Cuba is facing a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. “The Biden administration policy toward Cuba today has been the Trump administration policy toward Cuba,” says Carlos Fernández de Cossío, director general for U.S. affairs in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He says Cuba also rejects U.S.

More than a dozen civil society groups in India have written an open letter to Johnson & Johnson and the U.S. government, urging the pharmaceutical giant to cancel export of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccine doses to rich countries and instead focus on distributing them in the Global South.

Tuesday marks 10 years since the state of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis for a crime many believe he did not commit. He was put to death despite major doubts about evidence used to convict him of killing Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, including the recantation of seven of the nine non-police witnesses at his trial. As the world watched to see whether Davis’s final appeal for a stay of execution would be granted by the U.S.

We speak with California Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about border guards whipping Haitians, U.S. immigration policy, raising the refugee cap, investigating the full 20 years of the War in Afghanistan and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Democrats are still divided over President Biden’s sweeping $3.5 trillion spending plan to expand the social safety net, increase taxes on the rich and corporations, improve worker rights and combat the climate crisis. Senate Democrats are hoping to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, but this will only work if the entire Democratic caucus backs the deal, and conservative Democrats have balked at the price tag.

More than a dozen civil society groups in India have written an open letter to Johnson & Johnson and the U.S. government, urging the pharmaceutical giant to cancel export of Indian-made COVID-19 vaccine doses to rich countries and instead focus on distributing them in the Global South.

We look at the attack on reproductive rights in the United States, as the Department of Justice sues Texas over a new law that bans abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy. The law makes no exception for rape or incest and allows anyone in Texas to sue patients, medical workers or even a patient’s family or friends who “aid and abet” an abortion.

Miami Herald Haiti and Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles discusses new revelations about the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

Thousands of asylum seekers, primarily from Haiti, have sheltered in a makeshift camp at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Del Rio International Bridge, as the Biden administration has vowed to carry out mass deportations. On Sunday alone, the Biden administration said it sent three deportation flights to Haiti, with several more flights expected in the coming days.

On the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we examine the legacy of the historic protests with three veterans of the movement: Nelini Stamp, now the director of strategy and partnerships at the Working Families Party; Jillian Johnson, a key organizer in Occupy Durham who now serves on the Durham City Council and is the city’s mayor pro tempore; and writer and filmmaker Astra Tayor, an organizer with the Debt Collective.

This week some of gymnastics’ biggest stars shared scathing testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s failure to stop Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor and serial sexual abuser. 

Lawyers say that after the FBI was first told of Nassar’s crimes, he abused another 120 people before his 2016 arrest.

Thousands in El Salvador took to the streets Wednesday to protest President Nayib Bukele’s growing consolidation of power and a new law making El Salvador the world’s first country to recognize the highly volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender. Protesters in El Salvador are also criticizing a recent court ruling that paves the way for Bukele to run for reelection in 2024.

As the debate over booster vaccine shots heats up in the United States, global health leaders have issued an urgent call for global vaccine equity. The WHO reports vaccination rates on the African continent fall far below its target for 70% of the population of all countries to be vaccinated by mid-2022. “The science is not completely behind the need for booster shots yet,” says Zane Dangor, special adviser to the foreign minister of South Africa, who has called on the U.S.

On the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we examine the legacy of the historic protests with three veterans of the movement: Nelini Stamp, now the director of strategy and partnerships at the Working Families Party; Jillian Johnson, a key organizer in Occupy Durham who now serves on the Durham City Council and is the city’s mayor pro tempore; and writer and filmmaker Astra Tayor, an organizer with the Debt Collective.

This week some of gymnastics’ biggest stars shared scathing testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s failure to stop Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor and serial sexual abuser. 

Lawyers say that after the FBI was first told of Nassar’s crimes, he abused another 120 people before his 2016 arrest.

Thousands in El Salvador took to the streets Wednesday to protest President Nayib Bukele’s growing consolidation of power and a new law making El Salvador the world’s first country to recognize the highly volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender. Protesters in El Salvador are also criticizing a recent court ruling that paves the way for Bukele to run for reelection in 2024.

As the debate over booster vaccine shots heats up in the United States, global health leaders have issued an urgent call for global vaccine equity. The WHO reports vaccination rates on the African continent fall far below its target for 70% of the population of all countries to be vaccinated by mid-2022. “The science is not completely behind the need for booster shots yet,” says Zane Dangor, special adviser to the foreign minister of South Africa, who has called on the U.S.