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Even at Starbucks? A conversation grows about hidden racial bias

Videos of two black men leaving a Starbucks in handcuffs last week has confronted many Americans with one of the nation’s most troubling and divisive questions: How deep does racism still run? Half a century after lunch counter sit-ins that cemented the civil rights movement, the similarities between the images then and those from a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks were jarring: police officers escorting two stone-faced black individuals from a storefront after they had insisted on equal treatment. In this case, two black men were waiting for a friend, but not making a purchase, in one of the most overtly progressive corporations in the nation.

Why Bob Corker is bucking GOP tribalism, in a Tennessee tradition

Here’s the rub: Mr. Bredesen is a Democrat. Corker, in fact, was so concerned that the very conservative Congresswoman Blackburn would lose his seat that a few months ago, he floated the idea of running for reelection after all.

Moon shot for peace between the Koreas

In coming weeks, the world’s most heavily armed border, or the line between North and South Korea, could soon be the scene of the greatest peacemaking in 2018. On April 27, Kim Jong-un is expected to cross the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone and become the first North Korean leader to set foot inside South Korea. Then, if all goes well at that historic meeting, President Trump could, either in May or June, fly to a yet-unknown country and become the first sitting president of the United States to meet a North Korean leader.

In Kim story, a likely ratings boost for diplomatic repairman designee Pompeo

For a year, Mr. Trump’s short-lived first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, isolated himself on the State Department’s storied seventh floor to pursue a slash-and-burn department reorganization. With one Republican and a rising number of Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee already saying they will vote against confirmation, the former Kansas congressman looks unlikely to get an affirmative committee vote and faces an uncertain outcome in a full Senate vote later this month.

How an activist who helped transform postwar Germany views its newest challenges

In American terms, you might best think of Gesine Schwan as a German Eleanor Roosevelt. To be sure, Professor Schwan was never a president’s first lady. During the great depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt famously lent her voice to workers who lost their jobs, to second-class women, and to African-Americans.

For still-stateless Palestinians, cultural life serves as a building block

On the top of a steep hill in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinians’ de facto capital, the new Mahmoud Darwish Museum unfolds like the pages of an open book. In one wing of the milky colored stone building, poems written in the neat hand of the man celebrated as the Palestinian national poet are on display alongside items like his writing desk and the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which he penned. Recommended: How much do you know about the Palestinians?

'A real rock:' The one-of-a-kind warmth and steel of Barbara Bush

The first time Colin Powell met Barbara Bush, they were seated next to each other at a French Embassy luncheon. General Powell was an Army corps commander at the time – not yet a top Washington insider – and he was intimidated, a bit, by the formality of the situation. “Call me Barbara,” she replied.

How the world made macro strides in curbing microbeads

When it comes to eliminating plastic waste, a great deal of progress is being made at the smallest of levels: microbeads. Used as exfoliators in such personal care products as face washes and shower gels, these tiny plastic spheres often end up in waterways and oceans, with the potential to pass toxins to fish and humans. Microbeads are so small they can’t be filtered out of the water system once washed down the drain.

Maple syrup inc.: Vermont’s maple syrup tradition goes high tech, high finance

On the rugged western slopes of Vermont’s Mt. Mansfield, a web of plastic tubing connects some 71,000 tree taps to one of the frontiers of Vermont’s rapidly changing maple syrup industry. Workers package up sleek bottles holding cardamom-infused and pecan wood-smoked maple syrup – two of about a dozen flavors that Runamok’s owners Eric and Laura Sorkin have developed in the two years since they ditched bulk syrup production and started this artisanal, direct-to-consumer business. The Sorkins have been upending conventions here since they started sugaring a decade ago, a few years after they quit jobs in Washington, D.C., to farm in Vermont.

India’s swing in favor of girls

A string of protests has erupted in India over recent days – in the streets, on social media, and, notably, among Bollywood actresses. The size of the protests suggests a strong challenge to India’s historic fatalism about the role of girls and women as weak, submissive, or expendable. Rape remains a particular problem in India, even after mass protests in 2012 over an attack on a young woman in Delhi.