News stories by Peter Costantini, page 2

SEATTLE, US, Sep 28 (IPS) - A widely condemned Trump administration program designed to slash legal immigration to the United States, initially terminated by the Joe Biden administration, has been reinstated by court rulings on a Republican lawsuit. Human-rights and immigrant justice advocates have gone on the legal and political offensive against the decision, and are pressing the Biden administration to bypass the court’s roadblock.

SEATTLE, Apr 07 (IPS) - “A crime against humanity” and “a disgrace to our great country”: that’s how 99-year-old Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nazis at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, characterized the Donald Trump administration’s coercive separation of thousands of immigrant children from parents seeking asylum.

PHOENIX, Arizona, Jan 12 (IPS) - The Valley of the Sun is a vast, flat stretch of Sonoran Desert, etched by arroyos and studded with small, jagged peaks. It spans about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west to east and 40 miles (64 kilometers) north to south in south-central Arizona (the state that borders southern California to the east). After cruising through southward on one of the tangle of freeways that vein the expanse, we can leadfoot it another 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast to Tucson across much the same hardscape, only gradually gaining elevation. The saguaro cacti grow more thickly, but the higher cordilleras maintain a discreet distance most of the way.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, US, Nov 02 (IPS) - "If things could talk, then I'm sure you'd hear a lot of things to make you cry, my dear. Ain't you glad, glad that things don't talk." – Ry CooderIt sits stolidly, bolted onto a concrete base outside the Maricopa County Recorder's office in Phoenix, Arizona. Weighing in at around 600 pounds,  it sports "anti-tampering features" and "heavy-duty, all-weather construction". Security agents check it periodically and it appears to be watched by a camera. As I scrutinize it, a man in an SUV pulls up and deposits a ballot in its slot. He tells me he votes this way every election, then drives off.

SEATTLE, Oct 23 (IPS) - By late September, the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States had claimed 200,000 lives. That's equivalent to a slightly higher toll than the 418,500 United States deaths in World War II, adjusted for relative population and duration.

SEATTLE, Jan 04 (IPS) - A century ago, Italian immigrants told a joke: "Before I came to America, I thought the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I learned three things: one, the streets were not paved with gold; two, the streets were not paved at all; and three, they expected me to pave them."

SEATTLE, Washington, Feb 07 (IPS) - "Enhanced interrogation": the George W. Bush administration bureaucrats who coined the term had perfect pitch. The apparatchiks of Kafka's Castle would have admired the grayness of the euphemism. But while it sounds like some new kind of focus group, it turns out it was just anodyne branding for good old-fashioned torture.

SEATTLE, Dic 23 (IPS) - Since his college days, John Schmitt says, he's been "very interested in questions of economic justice, economic inequality."

SEATTLE, Jun 03 (IPS) - "Supersize my salary now!"  The refrain rose over a busy street outside a McDonald's in downtown Seattle.

SEATTLE, Washington, Jul 29 (IPS) - Puzzled by the immigration debate in the United States? Remember the Maginot Line.