Self-defeating belligerence

January 07, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Kim Jong-un wants to be an international power player. With each provocative act, he becomes more isolated.

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The chief justice for Alabama’s Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday halting the state’s probate judges from distributing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing a March ruling by the Alabama high court that upholds the state’s banning of gay marriage, Chief Justice Roy Moore said the judges "have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary" to the state law. The discrepancy between the US Supreme Court’s decision last June to allow same-sex marriage and Alabama’s own prohibition of the practice have caused “confusion and uncertainty,” Mr. Moore wrote in his administrative order.

California residents are hopeful that upcoming storms could quench the state’s drought problems, despite possibilities of catastrophe. Thanks to El Niño, a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that brings up temperatures and precipitation, meteorologists are anticipating a “parade of storms.” El Niño years typically bring heavy rainfall to the West Coast. While El Niño promises much-needed relief after a four-year dry spell, the storms associated with the phenomenon can bring their own sometimes catastrophic problems. In 1997 and 1998, for instance, severe storms destroyed crops, caused mudslides, and killed 17 people.

Around 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats. Undeterred by the bitter cold and the rough winter seas, migrants are continuing to risk the journey to Greece in the hope of a better future in Europe. Most of them are Syrian refugees escaping the civil war. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 3,771 migrants overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe last year. It says that makes it the deadliest year on record for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014.

Officials at Wheaton College are taking some unusual steps this week: they have initiated the process to fire a tenured professor. School administrators at the Chicago-area Evangelical Christian college announced on Tuesday that they are beginning the termination process for Larycia Hawkins, a professor of political science, over comments that she posted on social media suggesting that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The attempt to fire Prof. Hawkins may come as a surprise to many given the common misconception that tenure grants professors a job for life. Tenure does guarantee professors certain rights, but it doesn't provide unconditional job security.

Oscar Ray Bolin was first found guilty of murdering three women nearly 30 years ago. In the decades since, every one of the verdicts delivered by juries in three separate trials was reversed at least twice by appeals courts, although ultimately he was convicted again in each case: 10 times by 10 juries, to be exact. It now appears Mr. Bolin's legal pleas are coming to an end. Unless an appeals court or the US Supreme Court steps in, Bolin will be executed Thursday at 6 p.m. in Florida State Prison for the 1986 slaying of Teri Lynn Matthews.

As winter temperatures drop, New York City's homelessness crisis has once again taken on a new level of urgency. Acknowledging the poor shelter conditions and high volume of people living on the streets, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the details of a comprehensive plan Wednesday to overhaul the city’s overburdened shelter system. One of the first tasks is to gradually get rid of the dilapidated “cluster site” shelters for homeless families. As part of the Shelter Repair Squad 2.0 mission, the city will first increase the number of shelter inspections and issuing a complaint hotline for shelter guests to report crumbling conditions. After problems are identified, a rapid response repair team will be called to prompt action, and finished repairs will be continually monitored.

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