Akron

Readers write: New Monitor design

I just received the newly formatted April 22 & 29 Weekly Print Edition. The articles were clearly separate but came together as a whole message. And more: I could clearly isolate each article as I read it, which made my reading experience very efficient. I have been a subscriber since 1972 and have found each iteration of the Monitor to be an advance.

Trump lowered tensions with Iran: why he had to step in

As Venezuela appeared last month to be on the brink of a momentous political shift, President Donald Trump’s national security team assured him that indeed the strife-torn South American country was about to take the turn to new leadership the administration had been encouraging for months. Now it’s tensions with Iran that have surged to their highest levels yet under the Trump administration.

Abortion wars: In Louisiana, softer tone paves way for sharp restrictions

Most Saturdays, college freshman Taylor Gautreaux rolls out of bed just after 6 a.m., puts on something carefully neutral – no slogans or religious symbols – and drives about 45 minutes from her dorm in Hammond, Louisiana, to Baton Rouge. On those mornings, Ms. Gautreaux joins a group that gathers just outside the property lines of Delta Clinic, a squat brick building off Goodwood Boulevard on the city’s west side. Other times women have already lined up, waiting for one of the last three abortion clinics in the state to open its doors.

Food aid for hungry North Koreans?

For a young leader – with a nuclear arsenal at the ready – North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has enjoyed the high prestige of meeting an American president twice in the past year, not to mention summits with the heads of Russia, China, and South Korea. The United Nations estimates 40% of North Koreans will suffer severe food shortages in coming months, a result mainly of bad weather as well as too much spending on armaments. The last time North Korea saw mass famine was in the mid-1990s.