Author: Reporter

Jimmy Carter tried like no president ever had to put human rights at the center of American foreign policy. It was a turnabout dictators and dissidents alike found hard to believe as he took office in 1977. The U.S. had such a long history of supporting crackdowns on popular movements — was his insistence on restoring moral principles for real? The Associated Press reached out to several former political prisoners, asking what it was like to see his influence take hold in countries oppressed by military rule. They credit Carter with their survival. Michèle Montas witnessed the impact from...

Jimmy Carter already had drawn months of media scrutiny as a devout Southern Baptist running for president. Then the 1976 Democratic nominee brought up sex and sin as he explained his religious faith to Playboy magazine. Carter was not misquoted. But he was certainly misunderstood, as his thoughts in the wide-ranging interview were reduced in the popular imagination to utterances about “lust” and “adultery.” Nearly a half-century later, interviewer Robert Scheer still believes Carter was treated unfairly. He recalls the former president as a “real” and “serious” figure whose intent was smothered by the intensity of a campaign’s closing...

The Biden administration recently stopped taking mobile app appointments to admit asylum-seekers at a Texas border crossing that connects to a notoriously dangerous Mexican city after advocates warned U.S. authorities that migrants were being targeted there for extortion. U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave no explanation for its decision to stop scheduling new appointments via the CBP One app for the crossing in Laredo, Texas. Several asylum-seekers have said that Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, had threatened to hold them and make them miss their scheduled asylum appointments unless they paid them. Humanitarian...

The separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border has always caused Isabel Allende pain: When she saw it during the Trump administration, her first impulse was to help reunify children and parents through her foundation. Then, the legendary Chilean author thought, she had to write a book. “The Wind Knows My Name,” which grapples with immigration, violence, solidarity, and love, is the latest novel by the award-winning writer who — with more than 77 million books sold — is considered the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author. Released earlier this month, it is available at bookstores in the...

With traces of winter’s unusually heavy snow still lingering but a warm sun finally shining, farmers were out dawn to dusk in early May on their tractors, planting corn and soybeans across southwestern Minnesota fields many have owned for generations. The threat of losing these beloved family farms has become a constant worry, affecting many farmers’ mental health and raising concerns of another uptick in suicides like during the 1980s farm crisis. Much of the stress stems from being dependent on factors largely outside their control – from the increasingly unpredictable weather to growing costs of equipment to global...