Partisan commencement speeches?
No Republican or conservative has been invited to make the commencement speech this year at any of the 50 top U.S. liberal arts colleges, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.
Los Angeles Times
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Second term scandals
Every U.S. president since Richard M. Nixon has been faced with scandal in his second term, with an administration’s vulnerability to scandal peaking in its fifth year.
CSMonitor.com
Poverty in suburbia
The number of people living in poverty in the suburbs has risen by 64 percent in the last 10 years, or twice the rate of urban poverty growth. An estimated 16.4 million Americans under the poverty line ($23,021 for a family of four) now live in suburbs, 3 million more than in cities.
CNN.com
The health of immigrants
The longer immigrants live in the U.S., research shows, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes—mainly due to their increased consumption of fat- and sugar-laden junk food. Immigrants’ American-born children have higher incomes than their parents, but on average live shorter lives.
The New York Times
China's favorite TV subject
Of the 200 prime-time dramas on Chinese TV last year, 70 were about the Chinese-Japanese war of 1937–45. Many of these war shows were filled with gore and hatred of the Japanese, featuring such scenes as Chinese heroes slaughtering entire companies of Japanese soldiers, or a lone Chinese soldier ripping a screaming Japanese opponent in two with his bare hands.
Qz.com
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
Smartphone collisions, and morefeature Fifty-three percent of all adult mobile-phone owners have been banged into because someone was peering at their smartphone.
-
Food stamp benefits soar, and more
feature The government spent $74.6 billion on food stamp benefits last year, up from $30.4 billion in 2007.
-
Prime-time TV gets racier, and more
feature The networks’ new trick is to show fully naked characters with their breasts, buttocks, and/or genitals pixelated.
-
A warm start to the year, and more
feature The U.S. just experienced the warmest start to a year since records began, in 1895.
-
Potter films rake in billions, and more
feature The Harry Potter movie series has earned $6.37 billion at the box office over the past decade.
-
Jersey Shore captures 8.45 million, and more
feature The season premiere of MTV’s Jersey Shore was viewed by 8.45 million people, more than the average audiences of network news broadcasts on ABC and CBS.
-
Wal-Mart's jump in midnight sales, and more
feature Wal-Mart says its stores see a jump in midnight sales on the first of each month, when cash-strapped shoppers receive their monthly government benefits.
-
Over 40 million Americans receive food stamps, and more
feature For the first time, the number of Americans receiving food stamps topped 40 million in March.