New Orleans

Migration roils global politics, even as it ebbs

In 2018, the United States is set to take in fewer political refugees than in any year since 1977. President Trump is revoking the protected status Washington has offered for decades to more than 400,000 immigrants who fled turmoil in their home countries. In Hungary, border guards have withheld food from rejected Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers to convince them to drop their appeals.

A lesson from the Sears bankruptcy

Once called the colossus of retailing, Sears filed for bankruptcy on Monday. While the Sears name may yet reemerge in smaller form, its demise offers a cautionary tale – and not just on the need for constant innovation in business. While Sears was long a trusted brand name, it never was a vital center in the local communities that it served.

Antismoking laws gain local traction

When the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce was convening experts and community leaders around a health initiative, the idea of raising the smoking age from 18 to 21 kept coming up. Within a mere two weeks, legislators in both Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., passed ordinances in November 2015. “The amount of interest and the momentum behind this idea surprised even us,” says Scott Hall, senior vice president for civic and community initiatives, in a phone interview.

NAFTA’s replacement will have to do, Untangling the Skripal poisoning case, In US tariff talks, Japan should push principles of free trade, Sexual abuse survivors also face #MeToo consequences, Forced evictions are a global problem

“The North American free-trade agreement was ... stitched back up without major damage to the Canadian economy...,” writes Campbell Clark. “The peace treaty worked out [recently] isn’t going to be a glowing ode to the principles of free trade.... The deal ... doesn’t have so-called poison-pill demands that the U.S. made last October.... Could [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau have done better if the Canadian team hadn’t been pushed aside when the U.S. and Mexico started to hammer out the framework of an agreement in summer? It’s hard to know.... It’s not the ‘win-win-win’ deal Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland kept talking about during negotiations.