400,000 Enslaved in the Land of the Free | U.S., Europe Drift Apart | Currying Favor in Japan

Forced labor in the U.S. is far more common than you think, bolstered by tighter immigration laws.

A health care worker was on a routine visit to the home of an Iraqi couple in suburban El Cajon in Orange County, California, in early 2016 when the housekeeper surreptitiously slipped her a note. The health care worker gave the note to authorities who translated it from Indonesian to discover that the housekeeper claimed she was being held against her will.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations descended on the residence, arrested those responsible and rescued the housekeeper. But thousands of others remain trapped. According to the Walk Free Foundation's 2018 Global Slavery Index, 400,000 people in the U.S. — that's nearly 1 in 800 — are enslaved.

Chadian millennials use poetry to stir debate on unemployment, corruption, pollution and inequality.

By day, Didier Lalaye is pursuing a Ph.D. in medicine and developing a mobile health service for Chadian children through the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. But the 34-year-old isn’t satisfied with bringing change through medicine alone. By night, he also takes to the stage under the name of Croquemort ("croak-more"), a French colloquial expression from Chad that essentially means to wake up the dead. His nom de guerre is fitting: Croquemort is among a growing band of Chadian millennials taking on the central African country’s many social ills — with slam poetry.

From John McLaughlin, former deputy director of the CIA: The Europe we’ve come to rely upon is struggling, as Russia meddles, U.S. support flags and some countries waiver on democratic commitments.

The Continent is something most Americans — those born after World War II — have more or less taken for granted. But now we need to seriously worry about Europe. There have been serious friction points like the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example, but for the most part America could count on Europe to be stable and loyal in times of trouble. Now, cracks are definitely widening — both within Europe and between Europe and the United States.

Perhaps because I saw Europe peacefully transformed in the post-war years, I’ve always considered the EU, even with its flaws, one of history’s most impressive experiments in democratic governance. But the strains on it today are partly of its own making and partly stimulated from outside.