Politics

How do we ensure that motivated students from low-income backgrounds pursue higher education? Since 1964, a major part of the answer to that question has been the existence of the TRIO programs: six programs with a goal of getting economically disadvantaged students into college to help end cycles of poverty. The programs include Upward Bound,…

May is a blur of commencements and the Obama administration is in full gear. One important target this spring is black colleges. Michelle Obama flew to Pine Bluffs, Ark., Saturday to deliver the commencement address at University of Arkansas — Pine Bluff; tomorrow, her husband will address graduates of Hampton University in Virginia. The administration…

IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A MOM Happy Mother’s Day to all our readers who are moms. This is a holiday that retains value, although it is primarily promoted by the flower and candy industries.  One important aspect of motherhood in our time is the effort to balance career and family. Three busy women share…

April was a good month for jobs recovery with payrolls swelling by 290,000. Unemployment went up too, but, according to Salon, even that is a healthy sign Good news on the jobs front: In its best showing in years, the U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs in April, considerably exceeding the consensus expectation of economists. Hiring…

Panic Room: Dow Drops and Rebounds http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704370704575227754131412596.html Do you hear that? No it’s not a stampede, it’s the panic that washed over Wall Street and the country yesterday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average went into a 1,000-point tailspin. At its afternoon low, the Dow had plummeted 998.50 points, its biggest intraday point drop ever.…

Shortly after he ousted a guy named Corn Pop for breaking the rules at the all-black pool, Joe Biden considered calling the police to escort him to his car once his shift ended. Corn Pop belonged to a gang known as the Romans, and Biden, the lone white lifeguard at Prices Run—one of the few…

The death of Umaru Yar’Adua, at age 58, may have been the most anticlimactic moment in his short and chaotic time as president of Africa’s most populous country. Just two years after he won a much-disputed election in 2007, Yar’Adua, who was known to suffer from kidney problems, flew to Saudi Arabia last November for…

If they’re already complaining at Galatoire’s in the French Quarter about the impact of the oil spill, I wonder what Mrs. Chase and the brothers at Dooky Chase are saying. As the pending disaster snakes its way toward the Gulf Coast like a creepy crawler, the toll it will surely exact is the zillion-dollar mystery. Restaurants and cuisine are the…