Joshua trees, the tall, twisty succulents that mark the Mojave Desert, are survivors.

Unlike coast redwoods or giant sequoias, they largely escaped harvesting and habitat losses when Europeans colonized their home. They flourished, in fact, until the last decades of the 20th century brought sprawling development and a changing climate.

Three ...Read more

No one likes a snitch.

But there are times when reporting poor behavior or telling the truth to authority is valuable for societal health. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recognized this fact and has launched a national public awareness campaign calling on everyday citizens to report hate crimes when they see them.

The FBI Pittsburgh ...Read more

It appears that President Joe Biden’s administration is finally taking “no” for an answer from Iran. Since the summer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled that his patience is not infinite when it comes to his offer to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal. This week, Blinken went a bit further, saying, “We will look at every option ...Read more

Former President Donald Trump spent much of his four-year term packing the federal court system, all the way up to the Supreme Court, with conservatives and strict constitutionalists as he worked to overturn laws protecting women’s abortion rights. But that very court system could soon turn into Trump’s nightmare as he attempts to block ...Read more

The Biden administration has acknowledged that in the last fiscal year the U.S. failed to issue roughly 80,000 green cards that should have been given to legal immigrant workers. The shortfall adds to a backlog of more than 1 million people waiting to receive employment-based visas. Congress should ensure those green cards are used — and then ...Read more

For more than a year the world has been fixated on developing and deploying a vaccine for the coronavirus, but scientists have been working for decades to come up with a vaccine for another deadly infection — malaria. And now, finally, the long-awaited malaria vaccine is available.

The World Health Organization has approved use of the ...Read more

First came October’s ominous headlines from half a world away: China was suddenly darkening Taiwan’s air defense zone skies with record numbers of warplanes — 150 sorties in the first two weeks of October. Their undeclared fly-by missions were far more menacing than Beijing’s eruptions of propaganda-machined war clouds.

But on Wednesday...Read more

It’s possible that 2021 will be the year that California begins to end the state’s housing crisis.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that effectively eliminated single-family zoning in most of California, making it easier to build more housing in more neighborhoods. That was a big deal because restrictive zoning has ...Read more

It has been a rough few months for the internet.

In June, Fastly Inc.’s content delivery network failure forced some of the world’s biggest e-commerce and media websites offline. Later, there were massive data breaches at T-Mobile US Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch streaming service. And last week, Facebook Inc.’s main social network...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Not all Sacramento legislation is complicated, wonky and understandable only by special interests. Some is simple and sensible. Other bills are simple and nutty.

Gov. Gavin Newsom acted on all three types after the Democrat-dominated Legislature sent him 836 measures — mostly complicated and wonky — before adjourning ...Read more

Oct. 11 marked the official closure of the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (also known as the “Group of Experts”).

For nearly four years, the Group of Experts has been investigating human rights violations in Yemen amidst ongoing conflict, which has resulted in more than 100,000 dead — including over 12,000 civilians — and over 4...Read more

It was a president named George Washington who said, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter,” and right now Merrick Garland is leading us. Cheated out of a seat on the Supreme Court and failing as U.S. attorney general, the poor man is furthering the prospect of Americans having to...Read more

Social Security is the largest single program in the federal budget and it’s about to get bigger. The recently announced 5.9 percent jump in the annual cost of living adjustment is the largest since 1982. Retirees will see an average of $92 added to their monthly benefits next year, raising the typical amount to $1,657, the Social Security ...Read more

Just over a year ago, a deal was signed on the White House lawn between Israel and two tiny Arab Gulf countries. It was billed as a game changer in the Middle East.

Called the Abraham Accords, the deal normalized relations between the Jewish state, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and got the ball rolling with Sudan and Morocco. The ...Read more

Three weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated his resounding defeat of a recall attempt led by pandemic deniers, declaring that "science was on the ballot" and had emerged victorious, California got the sort of tough vaccine mandate the science recommends.

Unfortunately for those of us who don't live in Southern California, it came from the ...Read more

The most glaring flaw in media coverage of Washington is that it focuses heavily on process and seldom on substance. That's certainly been the case with coverage of the Build Back Better Act, the comprehensive reform package now being dickered over on Capitol Hill.

If you're following the debate via the news, you probably have heard about the ...Read more

If Steve Bannon and other former aides to President Donald Trump refuse to testify before the congressional committee looking into the events of Jan. 6, should they be held in contempt? Plenty of partisans seem to be rooting for this result. I’d suggest to this and future Congresses that witnesses should be held in contempt only if the members...Read more

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the words were ubiquitous, scrawled on pieces of cardboard held aloft at protests, written on banners unfurled by legions of demonstrators, painted in large letters on city streets.

“Defund the police” became the clarion call for Americans sickened by the indifference toward decades of police ...Read more

Until the spring of 2020, global commerce functioned like a finely tuned machine consisting of thousands if not millions of gears, all meshing in perfect sequence. A cargo ship leaving China on a two-week voyage could be timed within 30 minutes to dock in Los Angeles to offload its containers. Prescheduled trucks and trains would be waiting to ...Read more

Around the world, governments are challenging the immense power of Big Tech, causing politically motivated showdowns between their officials and tech companies to become increasingly commonplace.

In mid-September, just as voting began in Russia’s parliamentary elections, Apple and Google capitulated to ongoing government demands to remove ...Read more