Oklahoma City

On US-Mexican border, the rules change, but human impulses don't

Checking her calendar in a park across the street from the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville earlier this week, her guess is close: 15 days ago. There had been nothing in the news then, and no one had been talking about it until she heard from a friend of a friend that asylum-seekers were lined up on the bridge connecting Reynosa, Mexico with Hidalgo, Texas – a few miles south of McAllen. At first she was surprised, says Ms. Hamilton, a retired educator who lives in Harlingen – then eager to learn what supplies the asylum-seekers needed.

A journey along the shoals of a gentrifying L.A. neighborhood

The tale of Frogtown is, on the surface, a familiar drama of longtime residents watching as developers descend upon their “undiscovered” neighborhood. Dig a little deeper, though, and what you find is a community that has, for most of its history, held fast to its local character while enduring the convulsions of growing cosmopolitanism. Winding through the narrative is the L.A. River.

War games 'very provocative'? To S. Korea, so is calling them off

The military exercises that the United States holds with South Korea every summer, code-named Ulchi Freedom Guardian, have been a vital part of the two countries’ alliance since the 1970s. The main goal of the exercises, which rely heavily on computer simulations, is to ensure that the two militaries are prepared for a sudden crisis, namely an attack by North Korea. It had threatened to call off its June 12 summit with the US, and did call off a meeting with Seoul, over the “Max Thunder” drills in May. This summer’s exercises would have been “very provocative,” Mr. Trump said at the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last week.

Why nations are not alone in fighting graft

By itself, this news out of Romania on Thursday may not mean much outside Romania: A court sentenced the country’s most powerful politician, Liviu Dragnea, to 3-1/2 years over a fake jobs scandal. As a triumph for rule of law in one of Europe’s most corrupt countries, the sentence was a big one. Romania is one example.